* Towards an enlightened centrism. This is pretty close to what I aspire to hit. Epistemology matters, and knowledge matters, and picking a side (besides accuracy) is undesirable. These basic notions seem not to be widely shared, however.

* “The Double Life of John le Carré.”

* Why women rebel against pro-life.

* Joseph Wambaugh, the Man Who Invented the Modern Cop Novel. I wonder who today might be inventing the modern cop Substack, or maybe Substack novel.

* The great electrician shortage.

* Why Do Women Online Blow Relationship Issues Out Of Proportion?

* Are Iranians tired of being ruled by insane old men?

* “On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch.”

* Reading on screens appears worse for comprehension than reading on paper, which matches my anecdotal experiences and impressions.

* Make Parking Impossible. Note: “We drive them incessantly, and hardly ever in the mountain roads of BMW commercials, but rather in the chockablock midday traffic of endless overpasses and interchanges that have made our landscapes into a wasteland of nonporous asphalt. Our addiction to quick and free parking has turned our cities into vast expanses of garages and tarmac that are unsightly and dangerous to walk across.” We should aspire to do better, and to be more imaginative.

* “Why I’m not worried about AI causing mass unemployment.” Marc Andreessen has been saying in podcasts that the healthcare, education, and government sectors are so highly regulated that AI won’t be able to improve productivity in them.

* “Derek Parfit: the perfectionist at All Souls.” I wish I found reading Parfit’s books as interesting as I find reading about Parfit.

* “Nudity and Nonconsensual Viewing: The question of whether an artwork is offensive is now determined by the least generous interpretation of the most sensitive viewer.” We’ve made the most neurotic, least reasonable people, and loudest people the arbiters of art and much else. Maybe that’s a mistake: “[D]espite most people’s tolerant self-image, moral censorship of the visual arts remains a problem.”

* “Amazon’s quiet open source revolution.” That’s good!

* The curious side effects of medical transparency.

* “China Could Soon Be the Dominant Military Power in Asia.” And we seem to be sleepwalking into this.

* China’s New Strategy for Waging the Microchip Tech War. Related to the one immediately above.