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Links: Claims about program participants, nonprofit life cycles, building better cities, power production, electric cars, and more!

* The title is awful, but: “Tell the truth about benefit claimants and the left shuts you down: How neuro­biologist Dr Adam Perkins became a victim of the new McCarthyism.” Example: “Over the past five years, he has accumulated a mass of evidence about the personalities of welfare claimants and concluded that individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies — what he calls the ‘employment–resistant personality profile’ — are over-represented among benefit recipients.” Key word: “Claims.” Don’t cite his work in proposals.

* “The Nonprofit’s Grant Writing Life Cycle: No Matter Where You’re Going, There You Are.”

* “The poor are better off when we build more housing for the rich,” an under-appreciated point—but when most people talk about affordable housing, they’re actually trying to signal how much they care, rather than understanding and then solving the problem. See also my (policy wonk) post, “Do millennials have a future in Seattle? Do millennials have a future in any superstar cities?

* An incredible comment from someone who read “Why you should become a nurse or physicians assistant instead of a doctor: the underrated perils of medical school.”

* NASA: “Coal and Gas are Far More Harmful than Nuclear Power.” But, nuclear remains a pretty complicated way to boil water to make steam.

* Why clean energy is now expanding even when fossil fuels are cheap.

* Why online mattress companies proliferate; the title is mind because the title of the original is too stupid to repeat.

* “He taught me that it’s much better to face harsh reality than to close your eyes to it. Once you are aware of the dangers, your chances of survival are much better if you take some risks than if you meekly follow the crowd. That is why I trained myself to look at the dark side.” That’s from a fascinating interview on Europe with George Soros.

* “Seattle Transit Tunneling Is Going Great, and The People Want More.” Headlines like this are rarely seen! Not every large-scale construction project is a total boondoggle.

* “A Tesla in Every Garage? Not So Fast.” Note that this is from an engineering professional association and is written by a historian. The headline is slightly deceptive (“battery electric vehicles represent a more thorough upsetting of the existing order of things than Musk and his acolytes might like to admit” appears in the body) but the discussion is good.

* “From liquid air to supercapacitors, energy storage is finally poised for a breakthrough.” An important story. Also: “Welsh home installs UK’s first Tesla Powerwall storage battery. And: Solar + Storage, another key piece in the energy infrastructure puzzle.

* If you lease a car today, Tesla will allegedly have an autonomous car by the time that lease expires. Isaac, however, likes to say that he doesn’t see the point of an autonomous car unless you can have a cocktail and read the Sunday NYT while being in the “driver’s seat.”

* How GM Beat Tesla to the First True Mass-Market Electric Car.

* William Gibson: How I Wrote Neuromancer.

* “The Sexual Misery of the Arab World,” also an under-appreciated point.

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