Birthday mailbag

EVs, density, money in politics, and phonics

I turned 42 yesterday — old! — and the country is teetering on the brink of default, but I’m trying to think positive.

I love all the lens flare in the new Mission Impossible trailer, over-the-counter birth control may be coming soon, Texas is looking at reducing minimum lot sizes, a new shark species just dropped, we’ve finally got an NIH director nominee, the IRS has a new free filing prototype, and Keir Starmer is pledging to side with builders over blockers if he becomes prime minister.

myrna loy’s lazy twin: Have movies and TV shows about police and detectives given the public unrealistic ideas about how crimes are solved? And if so has this led to the public having unrealistic expectations?

This was a big topic of debate in the aughts where it was generally called “the CSI effect,” and there were really two different hypotheses that got bandied about:

• Many prosecutors feel that police procedurals have generated unrealistic expectations about the level of evidence that should be a…