Happy Fourth of July! This is the weekly visible open thread. Odd-numbered open threads will be no-politics, even-numbered threads will be politics-allowed. This one is odd-numbered, so be careful. Otherwise, post about anything else you want. Also:

1: There’s another online ACX meetup next Sunday, special guest Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent and the Chia cryptocurrency. Fill in this form to get an invite.

2: Comment of the week is Gene Smith on polygenic screening, especially the attempt to calculate cost-effectiveness. “My overall conclusion is that if we somehow end up banning pre-implantation genetic testing it will be one of the worst decisions we have ever made. The impact would be on-par with a worldwide ban on vaccines or sewage systems. It would likely cost the average person around 5 years of healthy life.” And many people brought up this anti-screening New England Journal of Medicine article that came out the same day as my post, although I can’t find a good unpaywalled link.

3: In my review of PIHKaL a long time ago, I mention that Ann Shulgin claimed to, as a child, have a very odd series of specific visions almost every time she went to sleep - and also claimed to have met other people with similar experiences. I asked if any readers had this, and nobody spoke up. I recently met a friend who had done jhana meditation, and says that some aspects of Shulgin’s experience remind her of that. I’ve heard things about kids potentially experiencing jhanas when falling asleep, though most of them seem to grow out of it, so I consider this a pretty satisfying solution to this weird mystery.

4: I should have book review contest winners up later this week - sorry for the delay.