I thought the tweet below must be omitting some critical context or paraphrasing the text ungenerously. But no, the NYT actually published an op-ed that claims the University of California hasn't sacrificed excellence even though it admits students who struggle with basic math.

Fantastic news on the high-skilled immigration front: A federal judge just issued an injunction against the administration's attempt to limit student visas to 4 years. This policy would have had a devastating effect on the STEM talent pipeline to the US.

Fantastic piece from @Chris_arnade on what tolerating anti-social behavior does to our public spaces: "It’s a primary reason why we shy away from dense walkable spaces and instead move towards suburban sprawl. People in the U.S. don’t respect, trust, or want to be around other random citizens, out of fear and disgust. Japanese/European style urbanism—density, fantastic public transport, mixed-use zoning, that so many American tourists admire—can't happen here because there is a fine line between vibrant streets and squalid ones, and that line is public trust. The U.S. is on the wrong side of it. Simply put, nobody wants to be accosted by a stranger, no matter how infrequent, and until that risk is close to nil, people will continue edging towards isolated living. It is why we “can’t have nice things” because we have to construct our infrastructure to be asshole-proof, and so we don’t build anything or build with a fortress mentality, stripping our public spaces down to the austere and utilitarian, emptying them of anything that can be vandalized."

The manufacturing process for producing >200 million sterile screwworm flies a week can be summarized as creating a “76,000-square-foot artificial wound.” This is grotesquely fascinating: