* Zvi’s housing roundup. He notes that “If we built enough housing that life vastly improved and people could envision a positive future, they would be far more inclined to think well about AI” and also that:

If you let people build minimum viable homes to house those who would not otherwise have anywhere to live, outright homelessness is rare. Mississippi is poor but has very little homeless. NYC had close to zero homeless in 1964. We could choose to cheaply provide lots of tiny but highly livable housing, which would solve a large portion (although not all) of our homeless problem, and also provide a leg up for others who need a place to sleep but not much else and would greatly benefit from the cost reduction. Alas.

There is a book, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns, covering these topics. But most people are unable to think systematically, which helps to explain the high economic returns to the relatively small number of people who can.

* Airbus announces an electric air taxi. Maybe we didn’t just get 140 characters, and we’re also going to get flying cars. Or maybe this is vaporware. Hard to say. I’d be surprised if the U.S. gets flying cars first, given our cultural sclerosis and a regulatory environment that’s an expression of complacency and sclerosis.

* A complete guide to fermenting hot sauce at home. And, also: “The Science of Lactic Acid Fermentation: Pickles, Kraut, Kimchi, and More.” Fermenting is fun!

* “GPT Pilot – what we learned in 6 months of working on a CodeGen pair programmer.”

* “Defending the status quo is not environmentalism,” which seems obvious to me. “Today, our biggest environmental challenges require us to build new things.”

* “Screen time robs average toddler of hearing 1,000 words spoken by adult a day, study finds.” I’d add some “supposedlies” in there, and I wonder if it’ll replicate.

* “In numbers: How the rise of electric vehicles is curbing oil demand.” If you have to drive, you should get an electric car next time you have to get a car.

* Apple releases new Macbook Airs. They’re probably the best general-purpose laptop out there right now, though Framework is also nice.

* “Why Japanese cities are such nice places to live.” The U.S. can and should do better.

* News sites can’t make money from ads any more. “The death of journalism” is a story that’s now more than two decades old, but it continues unfolding.

* Blue cities are embracing anti-crime measures. Crime sucks regardless of political orientation.

* The university monopoly must be broken.

* “Too Late for ‘Late Capitalism.’” The simple answer is that a lot of humanities academics are silly if not outright dumb. I should have come to this conclusion before I went to grad school in English, but, alas, mistakes were made.

* “The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments: The YIMBY movement isn’t just for liberals any more. Legislators from both sides of the political divide are working to add duplexes and apartments to mandatorily single-family neighborhoods.” Good.