* Twitter has become bad for finding something to read; maybe Substack notes will be better? Here’s another take on the subject.

* “Houston, we have a solution: Houston was notorious for its sprawl. But it has seen a gentle density revolution since the 1990s. Allowing neighborhoods to opt out of citywide reforms was crucial in its transformation.” People are overwhelmingly moving to the places that build housing, and away from places like NYC and California, which aren’t.

* Related to the above: Tokyo is the big city that’s still affordable. How does Tokyo do it? By building lots of housing and setting zoning laws at the national level, which preempts NIMBYs. We could learn a lot from Tokyo, and we should be doing better.

* More but also sobering things about that California startup city. I still want to move to said city. The optimism in attempting to do something new and interesting is to be commended.

* “Beware the False Prophets of War.” Few of the people predicting defeat in Ukraine have reconciled with what’s happened in the last year and a half.

* Victories for the school-choice movement. Given the venue, it’s not surprising that the author can’t quite confront the “why now?” question.

* “MDMA-assisted therapy for moderate to severe PTSD: a randomized, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial.” It works—really well!

* How to talk about books you haven’t read. I naturally wanted to correct “Baskerville” to “William of Baskerville” or “Brother William,” but the point is not reading The Name of the Rose, right? One time I was with Bess at a drinks thing for prospective residents in Bess’s emergency medicine program. Bess and I were chatting with one of the candidates and he mentioned that he loved short stories. I asked which authors he likes. He was like, “Hemingway.” Great. “What’s your favorite Hemingway story?” He couldn’t name one! I thought I was making conversation, not trying to interrogate him. Eventually I was like, “I mean, ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ is one I admire,” and we moved on. 

Maybe it was just nerves. I don’t know.

* “Whatever the United Auto Worker (UAW) Strike Outcome, Tesla Has Already Won.” (WSJ, $) The unionization in some northern states is insane; maybe it made sense at some point in the distant past, but it doesn’t any more. Meanwhile, the EU is afraid of Chinese car companies—for good reason. The legacy systems are breaking down. I saw a famous Robert Nozick quote on Twitter: “It is illuminating to consider why unions don’t start new businesses, and why workers don’t pool their resources to do so.” They also don’t seem to accept stock options—yet stock is part of the Tesla comp package, which aligns incentives.

* “Elon Musk’s business ties deserve more scrutiny: Across industries, executive after executive has chosen the PRC over free speech.” It’s interesting to see what he’ll criticize the U.S. for, versus what he’ll criticize China for.