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Links: Young people don’t want construction jobs, how to focus, why there’s an affordable housing crisis, the nature of education, and more!

* “Young People Don’t Want Construction Jobs. That’s a Problem for the Housing Market.” Given what happened to construction workers in 2008, this is not entirely surprising. From what I’ve read, 50% or more of all construction workers were out of work in 2008, and construction didn’t pick up again in earnest for three to four years. Who wants to bear that kind of brutal career risk?

* Alzheimer’s risk 10 times lower with herpes medication. This should also increase interest in herpes vaccines; right now there is basically no reason, save finances, we don’t have one: “Clark said a phase III trial would have cost $150 million and taken three years. In the end, the company’s board and investors were ‘unwilling to take on the investment.'” You should be outraged when you read this. There are also live attenuated versions that show promise.

* “In Some US Cities, There Are Over Ten Times More Parking Spaces Than Households.” Should you be wondering why the rent is too damn high and the commuting times too damn long, this is part of the answer.

* “San Francisco’s zoning makes it illegal to build apartments in 73.5% of the city.” And that, friends, is another part of the reason the rent is too damn high.

* People Are Bad at Being Productive in a Limited Time.

* “Fighting Back Against the War on Homeless Shelters.” Everyone is in favor of homeless shelters in someone else’s neighborhood. See also our post, “Los Angeles’s Prop HHH Funding for homeless facilities meets NIMBYs.”

* “California teacher pension debt swamps school budgets.” Given the poor educational outcomes for most CA public schools, maybe this doesn’t matter?

* “New York City Study Shows Literacy Coaches Had No Effect on Low-Income Second-Graders.”

* The Education Department to require colleges to publish data on graduates’ debt and earnings by major. Good, and long overdue, like that library book the college requires you to pay for prior to receiving your diploma.

* Anti-Vaccine Activists Have Taken Vaccine Science Hostage. Outrageous and true.

* Unions’ Fees Take a Hit After Decision From Supreme Court.

* Does Television Kill Your Sex Life? Microeconometric Evidence from 80 Countries. “Under our most conservative estimate, we find that television ownership is associated with approximately a 6% reduction in the likelihood of having had sex in the past week, consistent with a small degree of substitutability between television viewing and sexual activity.”

* “The Toll of America’s Obesity.”

* Electric scooters will work in NYC. This is obvious, but it’s also amazing to see the small-c conservative NYT editorial board figure it out. Also, “The Real E-Scooters Story Is Much More Boring Than Media Coverage Suggests.” They mostly work out well, and venture capitalists are footing the bill. A win for everyone!

* Rich Absentee Landlords Make a Killing from California’s Prop 13. This is congruent with “L.A. digs a hole more slowly than economics fills it back in: The Proposition HHH Facilities Program RFP.”

* “The Modern Automobile Must Die: If we want to solve climate change, there’s no other option.” More of the obvious, but here it is.

* “What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem.” We need price transparency now.

* “His $109K Heart Attack Bill Is Now Down To $332 After NPR Told His Story.” Another example of why we should be working harder towards price transparency in healthcare.

* “The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia.”

* The weirdness of online mobs.

* Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions. Good.

* ‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars.

* Canadian marijuana stock soars to $12 billion. The headline is too celebrity-gossip for me, but the content is of interest as a sign of social change.

* “Why Is the Home Building Industry Stuck in the 1940s? Embrace pre-fabricated, adaptable homes!”

* How San Francisco demolished the California dream via its own housing laws.

* Iron Ox, a new autonomous farm, wants to produce food without human workers.

* Why the novel matters in an age of anger.

* “The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood,” things I had not considered but that are very interesting.

* “Two Students Hooked Up. It Was Clearly Consensual. He Still Spent $12,000 Defending Himself.” Maybe universities ought to get out of the student housing business, which might curtail some of these absurdities.

* The Student Loan Debt Crisis Is About to Get Worse. Having observed the U.S. college system up close for a long time, I find it baffling that it’s managed to persist as long as it has.

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