A really rather good post by Slate Star Codex on libertarianism, non-self-regulating systems, transhumanism and races to the bottom. Just don’t make the mistake I did of reading the comments — or even worse, of replying to them…
Scalzi on Amazon’s latest comeback in its fight with publishers
Nested — a toy that randomly creates billions of “universes”
Ryan North on gendered pronouns
And Big Finish are doing two-day special deals all month. Today’s has, for £1 each, Omega and Davros (two extremely good Doctor Who audios), Master (a decent one let down by a poor ending), Zagreus (a… less great one), and Dalek Empire Series 2.
Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! 
I read the comments on that excellent Slate Star Codex piece, and… I’m sorry for the language, but HOLY FUCK. There are some deeply scary, presumably highly intelligent people out there on the Internet. The idea that you’d have to think for more than half a second about whether utilitarianism is a better idea than liberalism if it causes suffering for 49.9% of the population to the benefit of 50.1% is just… crazy to me.
Yes. This is why I always tell everyone to avoid anything on that site *except* the pieces I link. It’s infested with those kind of people, plus “human biodiversity” people (pseudo-scientific racists), MRAs, PUAs, neo-reactionaries. All the dregs of humanity live in that site’s comments, because the blogger is one of the few people to take their ideas seriously and politely, even when he doesn’t agree with them…