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Links: Job training, affordable housing, smart toilets, freedom of speech, zoning’s steep price, and more!

* “Indiana tries to certify skills rather than a college degree.”

* “Solarcoaster: The Promise and Pitfalls of Rooftop Solar Jobs.” Useful especially for job training providers. Solar technician and wind-power related jobs are popular career paths because they’re part of growing and green industries.

* Researchers replicate the Milgram Experiment. A timely piece that I wish wasn’t timely. Remember that you still have control over you.

* “Now You Can Live in a Remodeled Shipping Container: Boxouse is selling solar-powered mobile homes equipped with Alexa and is readying a smart toilet.” An interesting concept for anyone working in affordable housing, especially in rural areas. Also, it would be interesting to experience a “smart” toilet. I was reminded of Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted.

* “Middlebury’s Statement of Principle: Learning is possible only where free, reasoned and civil speech is respected.” Though lunatics make the news about academia with distressing frequency, most academics are actually reasonable. But “reasonable” is rarely newsworthy.

* “What If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?” Sounds stupid but isn’t.

* “Americans’ Shift To The Suburbs Sped Up Last Year,” mostly because building there is legal; we are all paying zoning’s steep price.

* “Eligible founder Katelyn Gleason’s plan to upend the billion dollar medical billing industry.” That would be fantastic.

* “How the Internet Gave Mail-Order Brides the Power“—one of these counterintuitive results. We’ve worked on human- and sex trafficking projects.

* An antidote for the Affordable Care Act: Cash-only medicine with transparent pricing.”

* “Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever: Can billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech research succeed in making death optional?” Fascinating throughout, but “immortality” strikes me as the sort of thing that will become the Cold Fusion of the 21st Century: Always 20 years off.

* “Humans produce so much stuff that we’re creating a new geological layer.” Which might be kinda cool in some ways.

* “How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive.” Unexpected throughout.

* Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse.”

* “Americans have become lazy and it’s hurting the economy,” on Tyler Cowen’s book The Complacent Class. The book is excellent and I write more about it here.

* “The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners: Demand and financing could collapse before the sea consumes a single house.” Definitely one of those, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you” scenarios.

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