* “No One Wants Your Used Clothes Anymore.” Actually, most nonprofits don’t want clothes or volunteers or anything else, except money, because money is way more efficient; it’s much easier to transport and deploy. People like giving away physical stuff, but that’s just not a great way of benefiting actual recipients.
* “‘People are freaking out.’ Will electric vehicles doom your neighborhood auto mechanic?” The answer is “probably.” Electric vehicles require virtually no maintenance; they need tire changes and windshield wipers and that’s about it. They’re a huge boon to drivers but less good as providing employment for mechanics.
* “The Pool Safely Grant Program” may be my favorite weird grant program to appear in grants.gov recently.
* “How Germany Wins at Manufacturing – For Now.” You may remember our essay, “Rare good political news: Boosting apprenticeships.” Skilled trades and vocational education are wildly undervalued in the contemporary U.S.
* “Nonprofits Are Tapping Outside Firms To Conduct Internal Probes.” This whole “tapping outside firms” thing, among all kinds of organizations, mostly seems like it’s designed to signal caring. I’m also reminded of Laura Kipnis’s endless Title IX trial. That is what universities are spending money on now, by the way.
* “The Current Sex Panic Harks Back to the Era of Coddling Women.”
* “How to Get American Men Back Into the Workforce.” “Public investment in improving skills” is another way of calling for more job training funding.
* “People Aren’t Having Babies Because The Rent Is Too Damn High.”
* “Drug and Alcohol Deaths at U.S. Workplaces Soar.” But the real issues get little airing amid culture-war grievances.
* Portugal is “winning” the war on drugs via decriminalization.
* The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis.
* “Why American doctors keep doing expensive procedures that don’t work.”
* “The problem with ‘problematic.'” Seems obvious to me.
* Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz pours funds into high-risk research.
* “Los Angeles’s Vermont Avenue Subway Should be A Priority For Metro.”
* “I’m no longer advocating for clean energy; here’s why.” Important though also depressing.
* “American Fertility Is Falling Short of What Women Want.” News rarely heard.
* A sweeping new bill targets California’s housing crisis. Great!
* “Legal pot on the one hand, opioid crisis on the other. What’s a DARE officer to do?” The optimal thing would be to tell the truth—but nah, that’s too hard.