Featured Links - March 4, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Fat Signing Bonuses, and Concierge Service, for Family Doctors (gift link). "In a country where a quarter of the population lacks a family doctor, Canadian communities compete in a zero-sum battle to recruit family doctors." The competition for doctors willing to work in small towns is becoming more intense in Canada, and I suspect, in the US as well. 
• This Looks Like an Insider Bet on Aliens (archive link). "Someone just put a lot of money on ET." I wonder if they have inside information. 
• Nature Comms: The Risk of Kidney Disease Increases Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Compared to influenza. Yet another reason to do everything you can to avoid catching COVID-19.
• Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted. "As vaccination rates decline, the economic consequences will increase, research suggests."
  
• AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder. "Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower. And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago."
• John Shirley's guide to wrecking your career in science fiction. "A short memoir with  material that may be upsetting. Published for the first time at Boing Boing. Some of it's about Harlan Ellison, a hero of my youth--an enemy for a while, then a friend once more. Joe Straczynski, I review The Last Dangerous Visions, which you co-edited, at the end of this."
• A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a 'crematorium for satellites'. "When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on Earth. But increasingly, the way we build, launch and dispose of satellites is starting to change that."
• The Stupidest Glitch Imaginable Killed a $72 Million Lunar Mission in a Single Day. "NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite was supposed to map water across the surface of the Moon, but glaring design and testing errors killed it."
• Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash. "The fertilizer that feeds America is key to the president’s next confrontation with Ottawa." 'Next confrontation` There's more? Oh, joy.