* “You Don’t Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books.” Notice: “Advice is disproportionately written by defective people. Healthy people perform naturally and effortlessly.” And many other interesting remarks about the types of people inclined in certain ways.

* “Humanity’s Legacy Might Be The Holes We Leave Behind.” We should dig more holes—tunnels, specifically—for subways. One tragedy is that we mostly stopped using “cut and cover” construction strategies, which are way cheaper than some deep boring strategies, particularly for stations. There’s too little interest right now in doing more with less.

* “Do Americans really only want sprawl?” Probably not, or NIMBYs wouldn’t have to pass laws mandating sprawl.

* Review of Framework’s impressive 16″ laptop. I think the reviewer underestimates the value of modularity.

* On Invitation to a Banquet, by Fuchsia Dunlop.

* “Unleashing Our Immune Response to Quash Cancer: An array of diverse and potent therapies to turbocharge our immune system.” Also, in the same vicinity: “The future of precision cancer therapy might be to try everything.” Highly relevant to me right now; hopefully less relevant to you, but a lot of people with cancer or around people with cancer are reading TSS now.

* “Why it’s impossible to agree on what’s allowed,” by Dan Luu.

* “The cost of Russia’s collapsing empire.” Russia is committing a murder-suicide: it’s likely destroying Ukraine, but it’s also destroying itself. Between the literal death on the battlefield and the displacement of millions of people to other, more stable and functional countries, both Ukraine and Russia face massive depopulation. Anyone smart has either gotten out of Russia or has been trying to get out of Russia for more than a century. That dynamic continues today. Who will be left? Hardly anyone.

* “As Much As You Ever Wanted To Know About 155mm Artillery Shell Production and More.” This is an article about complacency; notice: “[T]he DOD is attempting to plug the Ukraine-sized hole with shells from allied nations including Canada, South Korea, Finland, and Germany—places where it’s still possible to build new things.” Germany is a place that allows the building of new things? If we’re being outcompeted by Germany, that’s bad. Much of what Rob writes here applies to the FDA too:

What troubles me here, though, is that the US is pursuing that option [of having allies make weapons] because the domestic defense industrial base, inclusive of DOD and its contractors, is sclerotic. It treats time like it’s free. It does not respond quickly.

On Jan. 29 I wrote in The dead and dying at the gates of oncology clinical trials: “The FDA has created systemic problems, and it can also create systemic solutions. For example, the FDA doesn’t really account for the time-value of money,[3] which is especially important in a high-interest-rate environment.” The time-value of money is a basic finance/investment idea. If the federal government is incapable of incorporating it into analysis and plans, that speaks poorly of its ability to do just about anything.

* “China’s Shipyards Are Ready for a Protracted War. America’s Aren’t. While Chinese shipyards are thriving and primed to build at wartime rates, U.S. shipbuilding is in disarray” (wsj, $) The Navy problem is severe and, apparently, worsening.

* You’ve heard of lab grown meat, are you ready for rice-grown beef?” That’s cool. “After 9-11 days, they say the rice became a safe, usable ingredient that contained 8% more protein and 7% more fat than regular rice.” When I wore a blood-glucose monitor acquired through Levels Health, I was shocked by how much even brown rice spiked my blood glucose.

* “‘Accelerationism’ is an overdue corrective to years of doom and gloom in Silicon Valley.” Yes! Accelerationism is good.

* Against gerontocracy. We keep voting for gerontocracy, though—in some ways literally, in elections, and in other ways when e.g. corporate boards favor the elderly. Note:

In 1890, James Frazer – author of the landmark anthropological study of comparative religion, The Golden Bough – came to the conclusion that our ancient predecessors were in many respects wiser than us. They knew that gerontocracy was an age-old form of human organization, and they often embraced it, but they also put limits on rule by the old, especially rule by the faltering and senile, who were not only dispossessed of their power, but also often marked for death at an appointed time.

* Argument that Israel is winning in Gaza.

* “The Loss of Things I Took for Granted: Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively.” Have things changed that much? Since 2008, I’ve not noticed big changes, and most people don’t seem to read carefully for comprehension. But the people who do are the most interesting! I’ll also note that too few people in education seem to focus on reading, writing, and math skills.

* “Creating video from text: Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions.” Incredible. I hope OpenAI builds the machine god fast.