* Farmers should have to pay market prices for water. Seems obvious, and yet here we are.

* The rise of the sectarian university, and the risks that increasingly brazen political side-taking is doing long-term damage. Josh Barro’s “Universities Are Not on the Level: Academics should think more about what their industry has done to lose the trust of Americans” covers related ground, and it doesn’t immediately go in the predictable directions. Instead, it initially focuses more on the Goodhart’s Law issue—when a measure becomes a target, it ceases being a good measure. The “measure” of academia is publications and citations. They’ve been gamified so thoroughly that they’re often pretty bad measures, and they encourage dishonesty among researchers, or, often, “researchers.”

* America doesn’t know tofu. One of vegetarianism’s challenges is that a lot of vegetarian cooking is poorly done.

* “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” Brutal reading, and a surprising venue for this. See, however, from 2014, “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth: A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters.” Except it is the most important story on Earth, particularly relative to China?

* “China’s Xi goes full Stalin with purge.” Maybe.

* Anaïs Nin was early to polyamory. Some dumb mood affiliation in the essay but not bad.

* “Beijing Is on a Wartime Footing: Biden needs to rebuild America’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ or risk being unprepared.” (wsj, $). See also Austin Vernon on revitalizing U.S. shipbuilding. A lot of people understand the problems the U.S. has—but can we solve them?

* “Towards a ‘shallower’ future: Adversity isn’t worth the price of adversity.” I prefer a lot less (bad) adversity, and I’ve had plenty of adversity as of late.

* “If We Made Shoes Like We Make Housing, People Would Go Barefoot.” Abundance is good and scarcity bad.

* “Elon Musk is not understood.” To a degree this is another “the media is dumb” article.

* “Are young people actually ‘progressive?’” (nymag, possibly $) Maybe not.

* “Why math professor Alexander Barvinok opposes diversity statements.”