* “Why America’s Berries Have Never Tasted So Good: Driscoll’s had to figure out how to breed, produce and sell its most flavorful strawberries and raspberries. Now the strategy is starting to bear fruit” (wsj, $). Good news is underrated and seemingly hardly ever goes viral. I think that even though I’m very sick and for me individually pessimism is warranted.

* “A Revolution in Biology: How developmental biology might contain the secrets to life, intelligence, and immortality.” On Michael Levin’s ideas regarding how “the bioelectric network of the organism” may be as important as its genes. Not something I’d even heard of.

* An effort to clone 2011-era OKCupid. Not personally useful to me, but everyone complains about online photo-based swipe dating while hardly anyone does anything about it. This is an attempt at doing something.

* “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?” I’d argue the northeast, too. And this is essential: “Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?” When Bess I lived in New York City, taxes were absurd, and yet no one said: “Well, the taxes are high but the public schools are great.” Instead, the money just seemed to…disappear. The vast majority of the subway was constructed before 1929.

* “Why California Is Swinging Right on Crime.” This article blames viral videos of brazen criminality. I think crime is like inflation and any number of other things: when it’s low, people forget it exists.

* Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia.

* “Harold Bloom in Silicon Valley.” The future of Bloom and the canon isn’t in academia, so if it is somewhere, that’s presumably good?

* “The Growing Scientific Case for Using Ozempic and other GLP-1s to Treat Opioid, Alcohol, and Nicotine Addiction.” Given how poorly existing opioid and alcohol treatments work, GLP-1s are one of these “would be hard to be worse than the status quo” efforts.

* “The Overlooked (But Real) Possibility of a Big Democratic Win.” “Overlooked?” More likely just a low probability, maybe nice if it happens but not something to be counted on.

* “OpenAI Expands Healthcare Push With Color Health’s Cancer Copilot: Color Health has developed an AI assistant using OpenAI’s GPT-4o model to help doctors screen and treat cancer patients.” (wsj, $; archive). Sounds useful. Healthcare is still a bespoke, artisanal process, which means it’s both expensive and prone to error. Tools to help doctors are much needed.

In addition, here is Color’s blog post on the tool.

* “Even Doctors Like Me Are Falling Into This Medical Bill Trap.” The trap is:

The radiology charge from NorthShore University HealthSystem for the ankle and wrist X-rays was $1,168, a price that seemed way out of range for something that usually costs around $100 for each X-ray. When I examined the bill more closely, I saw that the radiology portion came not from the urgent care center but from a hospital, so we were billed for hospital-based X-rays. When I inquired about the bill, I was told that the center was hospital-affiliated and as such, is allowed to charge hospital prices.

It turns out that I’d stumbled into a lucrative corner of the health care market called hospital outpatient departments, or HOPDs.

Why do $100 X-rays cost $1,000+ at hospitals?

* Deterring a Taiwan invasion. China’s CCP can choose not to invade, and by not invading it can create conditions for scarcely imaginable human flourishing in the coming decades.

* “What if I told you there was a way to make cheap, carbon-neutral, pipeline-grade natural gas from just sunlight and air?.” On Terraform Industries. Which is trying to create human flourishing.

* The rise of the abundance faction.

* Argument against Lambda School, which is now called BloomTech.

* “U.S. Senate passes bill to support advanced nuclear energy deployment.” A step—though just one step—in the right direction.

* “Israel’s War of Regime Change Is Repeating America’s Mistakes.”