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Links: Free speech, affordable housing, more on 50 Shades, drugs as medicine, college sex, Congress, and more!

* “Free speech, but not for all?” A very bad academic trend.

* “Japan shows the way to affordable mega cities.” Again, affordable housing is the issue that touches almost every other issue.

* “Labor Shortage Squeezes Builders: Why are property prices rising so quickly? Here’s one reason.” Pity we didn’t post this in time for YouthBuild season!

* “2017 Could Prove to Be a Turning Point for Plug-In Hybrids;” plug-in hybrids are an easy bridge between gas- and electric-powered cars.

* A surprisingly good comment about marriage, life, connection, and other topics.

* “In defense of philistinism: Don’t feel guilty if you’d rather read a Fifty Shades of Grey sequel than Proust.” Yeah.

* “Colleges Think Women Having Sex Is Dangerous. Laura Kipnis Says They’re Wrong.”

* “Elon Musk’s Boring Company Begins First Tunnel.” I predict it gets bogged down in NIMBYism and “Just say no” California politics but hope that it doesn’t. Also this Boring Company is not boring, so to speak.

* “Old Containers Find Out-of-the-Box Second Lives: Architects, designers and builders are discovering that shipping containers, the workhorses of freight transportation, aren’t just for hauling cargo.” If you’re working on affordable housing, you ought to be thinking about this.

* “We need ecstasy and cocaine in place of Prozac and Xanax.” Note that this comes from a mainstream popular science magazine, not from some random corner of the Internet. Still, while the ideas are interesting, you should not yet push these kinds of ideas in your proposals!

* “Mercedes-Benz Energy pairs with solar company to sell batteries, rooftop panels.” Good news for competition with Tesla.

* An electric bike is not cheating: How it could replace cars for millions of people.

* “Is Preventive Care Worth the Cost? Evidence from Mandatory Checkups in Japan.” Short answer seems to be “no.”

* “Stunning drops in solar and wind costs turn global power market upside down.”

* “Books are superior to TV” (better than the usual but you already probably know as much if you’re reading this).

* “eClinicalWorks to pay $155 million to settle suit alleging it faked meaningful use certification.” News for FQHCs.

* “L.A.’s crisis: High rents, low pay, homelessness rising and $2,000 doesn’t buy much.” Many of our clients are in the greater L.A. area. Adjusted for the cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country. Zoning turns out to be one of the great scourges of our time.

* “Automakers Race to Get Ahead of Silicon Valley on Car-Sharing.”

* “Get Congress Back to Legislating, Not Just Budgeting: Yuval Levin, an expert on the budget process, explains how a congressional power grab in the ’70s led to paralysis today.” Again, not the sexiest or most fun piece, but it is essential for understanding what’s amiss in government today.

* “The Old Are Eating the Young.” And the young don’t realize it and/or aren’t voting appropriately to it.

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