* “Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?” As I argue in “Rare good political news: Boosting apprenticeships,” it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s teaching college in non-elite schools that way too many students are getting college degrees that don’t mean much.
* “Kimbal Musk wants to feed America, Silicon-Valley style.” Great! Sign me up. Also, Memphis Meats Bets That Lab-Grown Meat Can Solve the Global Food Crisis.
* “Why can’t we cure the common cold?” Turns out that we likely can but choose not to for economic, legal, and regulatory reasons, which is terrible.
* “Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point.” Maybe this will get more voters interested in the seemingly boring issue of zoning.
* “The White-Minstrel Show,” which went all over the Internet when it was published but I’m just now getting to it.
* “‘Victimhood narrative’ taught in schools fuels anxiety in young women.” See also Jean Twenge’s book iGen.
* “The world in 2076: The population bomb has imploded.” Anyone worried about overpopulation is fighting the last war and ought to read Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
* “Five reasons why Amsterdam works so well for bikes.” Note that any American city could copy all five factors.
* “The fax of life: It’s 2017. American medicine still runs on fax machines because doctors and administrators think that making medical records easier to transfer will make patients change providers more easily.” In other words, this is yet another patient-unfriendly, anti-competitive part of the healthcare landscape.
* “When the Academy Retreats: Thought-policing and value-signaling are pre-empting free and open discussion on college campuses.” It’s pretty depressing that we’re still fighting for free speech in 2017.
* “Insurers make billions off Medicaid in California during Obamacare expansion.”
* Denver Radically Expanded Its Transit. So Why Are More People Driving Cars?
* “Meet the startups fighting Bay Area’s soaring housing costs.” These efforts are useful but pretty marginal; the basic problem remains: it’s illegal to build the housing that people want to live in.
* “Seven megatrends that could beat global warming: ‘There is reason for hope.'”
* “Startup ‘Plenty’ wants to build a giant indoor farm next to every major city.”
* In October I visited Nashville and wrote, “Nashville, seen and unseen.” Now Citylab asks, “Can Nashville Pull Off a $5.2 Billion Transit Makeover?”
* Bryan Caplan’s next book, The Case Against Education, is available for pre-order here. I’ve been looking forward to it for years.
* “‘Homes for human beings’: Millennial-driven anti-NIMBY movement is winning with a simple message.” Good.
* “Outbreak: Our Next Global Pandemic.” Be scared.
* “Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow.” Not the usual.
* “E-bikes: time to saddle up with low-cost energy and no sweat?” An underrated story.
* “Solidia has a way to make cement that absorbs greenhouse gases instead of emitting them.” Very cool if true.