A WEEK OF SMALL VICTORIES, none of which I can really talk about yet—but some projects pushed forward and some assignments came together that I’m excited about. There were some frustrations, too, mainly about trusting my instincts. On a personal front, things have gone very quiet: we’re holding it together, just about, but the summers in San Francisco are the greyest time of the year. In the meantime, reading list ticked up another two. Finished up Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking: tragic, remarkable, painful. Then for dessert I whizzed through a rather disappointing set of Edmund Crispin (Fen Country) —all intellectual whizz and no guts.

Stories I worked on: Busy week editing the space beat as well as the usual. Developments in quantum-proof cryptography • fooling face recognition using some gnarly deep learning techniques; a guide to TikTok’s clones/competitors • SpaceX • space junk; a look at qualified digital contact tracing successes from Germany and Ireland.