Billy Billy!

Summer is here and it’s time to drink copious amounts of Bud Light. (Or, if you’re not partial to water, a tall glass of Lagavulin 16.)

Thanks for being here for June’s Zaleski Minute. As always, if it takes you longer than 60 seconds, complain to management.

What I Was Writing:

1. For Popular Science: Bill Faloon doesn’t care what science has to say about living forever. Or, rather, he does, and he thinks it’s actually possible. The founder of the Church of Perpetual Life in South Florida, Faloon has been engaged in aging research since the 1970s, long before Google, Ripped Jeff Bezos, the Zuck, or any of the other barons of Big Tech got into the game of living forever.

2. For CityLab: Domino’s is filling potholes. Yes, that Domino’s. Who needs aboveboard city services when we can just outsource all the functions of municipal democracy to private companies?

3. For CNBC: A startup in Massachusetts is rewriting the genetic code of microorganisms in order to produce fertilizers without greenhouse-gas-producing chemical plants.

What I’m Reading:

1. This piece on the New America Foundation, a D.C.-based think tank that came under fire last year after pushing out an employee who made statements critical of Google. By Rachel Cohen in the new Washingtonian magazine, it’s a lucid portrayal of how think tanks maybe, probably, most likely aren’t our friends.