* Life is so terrible and beautiful at the same time.

* “The Age 30 Crisis and Seasons of a Man’s Life.” Linked more to the first link than may be apparent at first glance.

* “America’s Long, Tortured Journey to Build EV Batteries.” (Bloomberg, $).

* “Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture?”

* “To speed scientific progress, do away with funding delays.”

* “Brits are less productive because it is too hard to build stuff.” Being able to build things is good, and not being able to is bad. Similarly—both guys are even named Sam!—”Why is Britain poor, especially compared to France?” Answer: a vetocracy even worse than the one that exists in much of the U.S. In the meantime, Finland has substantially ameliorated its homelessness challenges by building a lot of housing. It’s frustrating to watch easily solvable problems, with current and even quite old technologies, go unsolved. In fields like computer science, the easy problems get solved, because of, among other things, the lack of veto points.

* “$7,200 for Every Student: Arizona’s Ultimate Experiment in School Choice.” It’s possible many public school personnel have overplayed their hands.

* Making mechanical keyboards in China. I’m fond—overly fond, to the point of wasteful pointlessness—of mechanical keyboards, and am now using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard as modded by Upgrade Keyboards. If you’re susceptible to keyboard gear-acquisition syndrome (GAS), don’t visit Upgrade Keyboards.

* “The Coming Apart Case for Less Entitlements.”

* Arts & Entertainments by Christopher Beha. A fun book, and a light one (deceptively light, maybe) of the sort I wish there were more of.