• Inside Nokia’s Race to Catch the iPhone and Android Wave: IEEE Spectrum’s oral history of Nokia’s doomed attempt to compete with the smartphone revolution — a masterclass in how incumbents fail even when they see the future coming. (IEEE Spectrum)
• The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year: Former CDC staffers on the cuts now haunting the outbreak response: “Based on simple math, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” the former CDC lab director tells WIRED. (Wired) see also Why Do We Need Explosive Diarrhea to Remind Us Public Health Matters? Lisa Jarvis on the Michigan cyclosporiasis outbreak and hollowed-out public health. Headline of the day! (Bloomberg free)
• An SEC email address mix-up is causing confusion and threatening to disrupt its proposal to scrap quarterly reporting requirements: The comment (or…comments) period on the semiannual reporting rule closed on July 6, but the email address confusion cropped up on Monday in a letter to the commission from nonprofit investor advocate Better Markets. The letter, addressed to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda, said the posted email address was “incorrect,” and said the error “undoubtedly deprived some members of the public of the opportunity to express their views on an extensive, far-reaching and dramatic change to corporate reporting that upends half a century of practice.”
So on brand… (Fortune)• Its the golden age of insider trading:
–Truth Social to sell trading firms ‘fastest’ access to Trump’s posts. Trump Media & Technology Group has unveiled a paid-for, licensed data feed that will give banks and trading firms “the fastest” access to posts from influential Truth Social accounts, such as President Donald Trump’s, whose posts often move global markets. The product, called “Truth API,” will deliver posts from the 10 most influential accounts to customers at a significantly faster pace than a regular push notification on the Truth Social platform, a spokesperson said. (Reuters)
-White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump’s speeches: Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant who has been operating Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations he used his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000. (ABC News)• Counterfeit Air-Bag Parts Are Killing U.S. Drivers—and the Government Can’t Stop It: Counterfeit airbag parts are killing American drivers, and regulators can’t stem the flow. The Journal investigates the replacement part that might be a grenade. After 10 deaths, regulators are warning the public about airbags in used cars with components marked as made by a Chinese company, but tracing them is difficult (Wall Street Journal)
• For Software Engineers, the AI Reckoning Is Already Here: Artificial intelligence has changed computer programming more than it has any other profession, and coders are transforming right along with it. (Businessweek)
• The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term: The president and his allies have built a network of groups financed by wealthy donors and businesses that is advancing his priorities with little public disclosure. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Big Read. After the strongman The Magyar revolution: Hungary’s new era What will the dismantling of the Orbán machine lead to? (Financial Times free)
• A Free-Speech Meltdown: PEN America’s president resigned over an article detailing the isolation and exclusion that many Israeli and Jewish writers feel after October 7. (The Atlantic) see also FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals: ProPublica documents the gifts — Kennedy Center galas, fancy dinners — that Paramount lavished on FCC officials while seeking regulatory approval. The appearance of corruption is indistinguishable from the thing itself. (ProPublica)
• Vinyl in the Veins: Behind the nostalgia lies an uncomfortable truth: every record is made of oil. (Longreads)
Video of the day: We Need to Talk About Louis – Part 1 of 5
People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.
Source: Pew Research Center
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Jason Wenk, founder and CEO of Altruist, a modern custodian built as a clean sheet from the ground up, fully integrated with artificial intelligence. He began his career at Morgan Stanley before launching Retirement Wealth Advisors, and then FormulaFolios. The through-line of his career has been creating lower-cost, tech-enabled, financial advice.
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