October 25, 2025
Weekend links, semi-long reads edition
- Kaitlyn Tiffany for The Atlantic: A ‘Death Train’ Is Haunting South Florida. Dream of the next generation of railway turns into a bloodbath because Americans forgot that train tracks at grade level with other traffic is bad bad bad. So bad that Robert Moses tore down half of New York to fix it. But that was almost a century ago and we are a forgetfull species. (ᔥTyler Cowen)
- Tim Urban: Tales from Toddlerhood. An accurate account, and a particularly salient one for me right now. If you think the second baby gets ignored relative to the firstborn, wait until number three comes along. The main character syndrome of the oldest siblings is real (at least to those of us who are not).
- Lisa Woodley: The Year I Left Design. What happens when you let your career drift, and how to get it back on track. Applicable to more than design. (ᔥGina Trapani)
- James L. Olds: “What Grant Reviewers Actually Look For (and What They Ignore)”. He recommends storyboarding your grant proposals. I would trust his advice, but I also — and please don’t interpret this politically — get the urge to burn that system to the ground because it is a narrative fallacy-producing machine.
- Derek Lowe: mRNA Vaccines and Immuno-oncology: Good News. It seems that LNP-encased mRNA by itself, regardless of what it encodes, may imrove efficacy of immunotherapy for cancer as it “stirs up” the immune systen. Big (and indeed good!) if true. But Lowe ends the post, as he did many of the prior ones, with a tirade against the current HHS, NIH and FDA leadership for spreading doubts and fears about mRNA research, forgetting that (1) much of those doubts and fears were about “overstimulation” of the immune system and the related side effects, such as myositis, which the above (positive!) findings further stoke, and (2) the original mRNA research famously never received NIH funding and was indeed “fringe” science. There is raising of legitimate concerns and then there is performative posturing and Lowe’s writing has shifted firmly to the latter.
- Nick Maggiulli: All the Money, None of the Satisfaction. On people continuing to be stingy even after being firmly in the top 1% of income and wealth. I have recently heard a billionaire-several-times-over unironically start a sentence with “If I had money…” so I can confirm that this is a real phenomenon and some may indeed say that the reason they are billionaires is such a mindset, while the hoi polloi drink their $12 frapuccinos. And if those who can afford such beverages are the hoi polloi, what are the people who can not?
It’s a gorgeous day for picking apples.
