The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• God is a comedian A stiff drink is recommended. A philosophical meditation on the absurdity of the current moment, delivered with the kind of dark humor the times demand.It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humour. It is less well-established, but increasingly obvious, that the humour is of the kind best enjoyed from a great distance, like, let’s say the moon. Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news, and nothing but the news. Told straight, in a universe that has clearly stopped taking its medication. (Gold and Geopolitics)
• Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It. 40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won’t, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it. (Card Catalog)
• In search of Banksy: The British street artist’s identity has been debated, and closely guarded, for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan — and uncovered much more than a name. (Reuters)
• How to fix capitalism: A guide to building a company that defies gravity. (Ari Shapiro)
• The Chinese Billionaire Who Says America’s EV Market Is Doomed Without Him: Robin Zeng of CATL can’t build a factory in America, but Tesla, Ford and GM rely on its technology (Wall Street Journal)
• Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster: The AI boom wasn’t built for the polycrisis. (The Atlantic)
• ‘My Client Walked out Within Minutes.’ How AI Is Tanking Home Sales. When listing photos drift too far from reality, disappointed buyers and even legal concerns can follow. (Mansion Global)
• Inside the Sprawling World of MAGA Merchandise: MAGA merchandise is its own pocket universe in the world of retail. There are official diamond-studded gold watches for $100,000, promoted by President Trump. There are less official bobbleheads of Mr. Trump, smeared with blood, memorializing an assassination attempt against him. The industry is a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s political movement… and it is only continuing to grow. (New York Times)
• Spylandia: How a Stretch of Florida Real Estate Has Become a Covert Corridor for Chinese and Russian Spies. The so-called Space Coast, with its rocket launches and military tech, is now an unassuming setting for espionage. (Vanity Fair)
• Trump’s red lines mean nothing now: Iran is exposing the limits of a presidency built on bluff, improvisation and submission rituals. (Washington Post)
• Why I Got Out Of The Gambling Business: I learned to sort gamblers into these categories during the years I worked for an online sportsbook. I worked in customer service, at first directly with customers and later in a more behind-the-scenes role. These jobs required a little bit of detective work, and I often found myself wading through piles of extremely detailed personal information about our customers. Names, addresses, payment history, net losses, geolocation, remarks left during previous customer service interactions; all of this was there for me to review any time there was a problem with a customer that needed to be solved. Through this process I got intimate looks into the lives of strangers. (Defector)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Judd Kessler, the Howard Marks Endowed Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The winner of the Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize,he is the author of is Lucky by Design The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want.
The number of Americans worth eight or even nine figures is up markedly
Source: Wall Street Journal
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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.