* “Cancer Is Striking More Young People, and Doctors Are Alarmed and Baffled: Researchers are trying to figure out what is making more young adults sick, and how to identify those at high risk.” I’m one of them, which makes this of particular interest to me. I notice especially this: “But doctors said obesity and lifestyle can’t fully account for the plight of the people arriving at their clinics. ‘A lot of the young patients are very healthy,’ said Dr. Y. Nancy You, a colorectal cancer surgeon at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.” I fit the “very healthy” category and yet that didn’t help me. Bess saw this and observed that some research fingers microplastics as a possible culprit, but, as the article notes, there’s at least some evidence for almost everything under the sun.

* China’s demographic challenges.

* Hardly anyone makes money from writing books.

* Impressive test scores among NYC charter schools. Interesting that this sort of thing doens’t appear in most venues.

* Chipotle’s Steve Ells, the Fast-Food Obsessive Who’s Still Trying to Solve Lunch. I hope he does, though will Kernel work outside of parts of NYC, LA, and adjacent places?

* Denmark is not magically exempt from trade-offs.

* “The flight of the Weird Nerd from academia.” Sad, plausible-seeming.

* “Thousands of Students Seek $7,000 Payments Under Arizona Voucher Law: In nation’s largest voucher program, Arizona to pay more than $200 million for private-school and home-schooled children.” (wsj, $) I’m surprised by these developments.

* Impulse Labs’ battery-powered induction stove. If I owned a housing unit, I’d have pre-ordered this stove, which looks incredible. We’ve not seen substantial improvements in kitchen appliances in decades, but induction stoves are so much better than legacy electric or gas stoves. I have a standalone induction stove called a Breville|PolyScience Control Freak. The name is not the best but the device is amazing. It, an Instant Pot, and a rice cooker have largely replaced the gas stove in my apartment.

* “Patrick McKenzie on Navigating Complex Systems.” Most Conversations with Tyler are excellent, and I particularly admire this one.

* “A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest and the revitalization of the Salton Sea.” Humans face choices between scarcity and abundance, and we should choose abundance.

* “The two cultures of mathematics and biology.” Detailed, impressive.

* “Impact on the Internet is a direct function of what you have done recently: a YouTuber is as popular as their latest video, a tweeter as their latest joke, or an influencer as their latest video. In the case of Rufo what mattered was whether he brought evidence for his claims or not; obsessing about the messenger is to miss the point that he might as well be the New Yorker dog.” I think this is a little overstated—lots of people will read older, evergreen writing—but it’s directionally correct.

* Why legal immigration is nearly impossible. We should make it a lot more possible.

* “The Billionaires Spending a Fortune to Lure Scientists Away From Universities.” Seems wise to me, for the obvious reasons. If the weird nerd doesn’t fit into academia, maybe he’ll fit with private research institutes and startups.

* More on Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and multiple-sclerosis. There is a vaccine candidate that works in mice, but that means it’s a long way from being potentially available in humans.