* “Learn to Ride: E-bikes are great—as long as people know how to ride them. Here’s how to make sure they’re safe.” Also, Isaac has seen the sudden emergence of e-scooters in Santa Monica and environs, appearing like a swarm of 17-year cicadas.
* “Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in adult patients admitted to a psychiatric hospital.” Correlation is not causation, and all that, but it sure is interesting. Ten or more years ago, we did a foundation appeal for a fellow with an organization devoted to improving the vitamin D situation. At the time we were somewhat skeptical, but maybe he knows, or knew, something we didn’t, or don’t.
* “I Will Do Anything to End Homelessness Except Build More Homes” is technically satire, but not really.
* “How Tech Can Turn Doctors Into Clerical Workers.” Much more moving than expected from the title. Isaac has an old-school primary care provider who hates EMRs—and virtually everything we’ve seen indicates he’s right. Pretty much everyone in healthcare hates their EMR, yet EMRs keep proliferating.
* Why are new antibiotics so hard to find?
* “Can ‘effective altruism’ maximize the bang for each charitable buck?” Among some foundations, maybe. But see also “Yours is not the only organization that isn’t worried about long-term grant evaluations.” Few if any grant-making government organizations care. Maybe the NIH and CDC do, sometimes.
* “Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze: Developers are taking on residential building challenges by extending the concept of prefabricated housing to manufacture entire apartment buildings.” Zoning is the real problem, but this is a useful step, since zoning prevents us from, you know, building more homes.
* “The U.S. Can Still Catch Up in Manufacturing,” which seems obvious to me.
* “How Batteries Went from Primitive Power to Global Domination:” one of these articles that is all good news and no bad news.
* How to stop the decline of public transport in rich countries.
* “Short of Workers, Restaurants Turn to Robots.” This is part of the reason job-training programs are hard to run right now: in a seemingly short period of time, we’ve gone from under- to over-employment.
* Why alternate vehicles like bikes and e-scooters will conquer the city.
* “‘An Expensive Experiment’: Gates Teacher-Effectiveness Program Shows No Gains for Students.” See also Bryan Caplan’s book, The Case Against Education, which is excellent.
* Andrew Sullivan on why we should say yes to drugs. Not just the usual. We can’t yet argue this in proposals, but that world is getting closer. There’s another good book, albeit with an over-long subtitle, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, covering similar subjects.
* “Can Andy Byford Save the Subways?” Many beautiful details in this story.
* “Why commuting by public transport makes most people happier,” at least when the subways work.
* “Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power. They are grim.” Very bad news.
* “To Recruit Students, Colleges Turn to Corporate-Marketing Playbook.” Profs in humanities departments are probably aghast and impotent.
* “How Hospital Administrators Hide the Umbrella.” Another one for FQHCs.