* U.S. school districts are too big, and, according to this writer, a larger number of smaller districts would offer more competition. “A larger number of smaller districts” may not be so different from charter schools.

* Essay about John le Carré and his letters.

* Where do all those college administrators come from and what do they do? I’ve not seen real efforts to enumerate who all these administrators are and what exactly they do.

* Open-source hospital price transparency. Good and useful, albeit an effort I expect to take a while to play out.

* “Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture,” which starts with comparisons to LBJ and moves forward in unexpected ways. Is it right? Maybe not, and its causal inferences seem dubious, but it is very interesting, and unusual.

* Markets go up, but they also go down. Who knew?

* “How the US Military is Responding to China.” Detailed, although maybe too optimistic.

* Perspective on crypto. Long-term perspective, that is. Crypto helps enormously in countries without reliable banks and/or central banks. It helps much less in countries with those things. Will the U.S. ever monetize the debt? If it does, then the U.S. will turn out to be less reliable than it looks now.

* “Jack Selby of Thiel Capital is using a new VC fund to invest in Arizona startups.”

* Illiberal values.

* More on loneliness. Loneliness underlies more problems than is commonly assumed, I think.