• It’s a World-Class Investment. It’s a Junk Investment. What Is Going On With SpaceX? The answer starts with Wall Street’s long-held distinction between “smart money” and “dumb money.” In that view, the roughly $2 trillion value that the stock market is affording SpaceX — about the same as Amazon’s value, and more than JPMorgan’s and ExxonMobil’s combined — is being set by naïve investors who think Elon Musk’s promises will all miraculously be realized. The debt, on the other hand, is being priced by seasoned investors, the ones who understand that profits actually have to be earned, and who are rightly skeptical of Mr. Musk’s grand pronouncements. SpaceX is simultaneously the most coveted private asset on earth and a governance nightmare. Bethany McLean on the paradox of a company that’s worth $350 billion and run like a startup with no board oversight. (New York Times)
• How Rogue Nations Are Using Cryptocurrencies to Evade Sanctions: Blacklisted entities handled $100 billion in crypto in 2025, financing terrorism and weapons. The WSJ maps the workaround economy — and it’s bigger than you think. (Wall Street Journal) see also Trump’s $1.4 billion crypto disclosure: The White House insists there’s no conflict of interest as Trump reports $1.4 billion in income from an industry he’s deregulated. Molly White digs into the president’s financial disclosure and finds the conflicts of interest are no longer theoretical — they’re on the form. (Citation Needed)
• Jessica Burbank on the Rise of Flock Safety and America’s Surveillance State. Investigative journalist Jessica Burbank explains how the company quietly won government contracts across the country—and why communities are starting to push back. Current Affairs interview on how Flock Safety’s license plate readers have quietly blanketed the country — and why most Americans have no idea how thoroughly their movements are being tracked. (Current Affairs)
• Has America Crossed the Asshole Threshold? Civilizations can carry a surprising number of parasites and live. But there’s a line — Rome crossed it, the Gilded Age toed it, and for the first time in history, we can measure it. The Grim Historian asks the title question: whether there’s a tipping point at which institutional rudeness, bad faith, and cruelty become self-reinforcing cultural defaults. (Defector)
• The End of Reading Is Here: Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history. The Atlantic‘s cover story on the collapse of sustained reading as a cultural practice — and what a post-literate society actually looks like. Not the death of books, but the death of the attention required to read them. (The Atlantic)
• Watchdog warns of risks to patients as private equity’s stake in US healthcare grows: New report details slew of ventures between private equity and nonprofits and calls for greater government oversight. Color me unsurprised. (The Guardian)
• The Supreme Court is corrupting American democracy: One cannot hope to bribe or twist/ (thank God!) the U.S. chief jurist. To understand this, you need to think more systematically about the relationship between democracy and corruption. The best way of understanding this relationship that I know of is laid out in an academic article that was published the year before John Roberts was named Chief Justice, Mark Warren’s “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?” Henry Farrell argues the Supreme Court is corrupting American democracy — not decision by decision, but structurally. (Programmable Mutter)
• Why U.S. measles outbreaks have grown harder to extinguish: The nation is already nearing last year’s record case total, and experts say the virus is forcing doctors to relearn a disease many thought had been consigned to history. Why measles outbreaks keep getting harder to extinguish: falling vaccination rates meet a weakened public-health system. Entirely predictable, entirely preventable. (Washington Post) see also As Parents Reject Vitamin K Shots, Some Babies Develop Devastating Bleeding: Doctors described treating brain and abdominal hemorrhages in infants who hadn’t received the routine injection. Several said the images of those patients were seared in their minds. • As Parents Reject Vitamin K Shots, Some Babies Develop Devastating Bleeding: The NYT documents the real-world consequences of vaccine hesitancy’s cousin: parents declining a routine newborn treatment that prevents a rare but catastrophic bleeding disorder. (New York Times)
• Bari Weiss Is Filling CBS News With British Right Wing Propagandists: from the you’re-simply-not-very-good-at-anything dept; As we’ve long explored, Weiss wasn’t hired to do journalism. She was hired to do right wing agitprop. But given she’s not good at that either, CBS just saw its lowest ratings in a quarter century. (Techdirt)
• How Olivia Rodrigo Is Getting Back at the Trump Administration: The pop star is turning her platform and her festival into an organizing machine. The Hollywood Reporter on her evolution from heartbreak anthems to political action. (Hollywood Reporter)
Video of the day: How Hinckley Outlived 90 Years of American Boatbuilding Disasters.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with McKeel Hagerty, CEO and Chairman of Hagerty. We discuss how he transformed the family boat insurance business into a “sexy” driver-forward business. We also discuss our love of collectable cars and his love of his first car, a Porsche, that he bought at the age of 13.
Americans are set to lose nearly $250B gambling this year—a record high, up more than 60% since 2019—and that’s before counting unofficial betting via prediction markets or crypto
Source: Joseph Politano
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