“Discard the junk…you are far better off to read a much smaller amount of good material with care and thoughtfulness.”
– Barton Biggs

Food for Thought:

• NY Times – When ‘Local Sourcing’ Means Aisle 12.  You try so hard to be good.  So then why is it, you wonder, that when you get home from work one evening, drained and famished, you find yourself layering slices of American cheese onto a bed of mass-produced white bread, frying it up in butter whose provenance you know only as “the supermarket,” and dunking the crispy melting result into a lake of Heinz ketchup?
• The Atlantic – How Capitalism Created ‘Cool’.  Two Caltech brain researchers discuss why vintage T-shirts and Beats By Dre headphones make us feel so, well, cool.
• NY Times – The Man Who Makes the World’s Funniest People Even Funnier.  As comedies become increasingly improvisational, they need an editor like Brent White to sew them together.
• WSJ – Would New Borders Mean Less Conflict in the Middle East?  The region is living with the combustible legacy of states artificially carved from the remains of the Ottoman Empire.
• Atlantic – Imagining a Post-Coal Appalachia.  Can young people help the region thrive again?
• New Yorker – Born Red. – Credit CT –  How Xi Jinping, an unremarkable provincial administrator, became China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao.
• WSJ – In Campus Rape Tribunals, Some Men See Injustice.  Colleges land in legal minefields as they balance rights of accuser and accused.
• NY Times – The Moral Bucket List. – Credit JG – David Brooks reflects on the cultivation of virtue.

Business/Economics/Investing:

• BH – How to Ruin Your Company with One Bad Process. – Credit SP – I am a giant advocate for technical founders running their own companies, but one consistent way that technical founders deeply harm their businesses is by screwing up the budgeting process. Yes, the budgeting process
• NYTimes – BlackRock’s Chief, Laurence Fink, Urges Other C.E.O.s to Stop Being So Nice to Investors – Credit MH
• WSJ – Poor Returns Weigh on Sears Pension Plan.  Weak performance threatens to necessitate additional contributions.
• BF – Only 14% Of Teens Say Facebook Is The Most Important Social Network.  A new survey by Piper Jaffray shows Instagram taking the top spot among teenagers, with Snapchat closing in fast.
• Medium – What Etsy’s S1 Filing Taught Me About Marketplaces
• WSJ – Blackstone’s Real Estate Muscle on Display in GE Deal.  Private-equity company’s scale in the property market ‘is unmatched’
•  WSJ – Wells Fargo Warms Up to Risk.  Investment banking has a growing role for usually conservative lender.
• Atlantic – A Brief History of the ATM.  How automation changed retail banking, an Object Lesson.

Life/Culture/Art/Science:

• WSJ – Brian Grazer’s Curious Connections.  The Hollywood producer’s trick for staying inspired: ‘curiosity conversations’
• WSJ – How Flavor Drives Nutrition.   For more than 50 years, our food has been getting blander—but the best diets turn out to also be delicious.
• SBN – When in Roma.  What happens when 2 American’s buy Rome’s largest soccer team.
• NY Times – At the Head of the Pack, HBO Shows the Way Forward
• SU.  Judi Dench’s Advice to her 30 year old self.   – Credit SP
• NY Times – Behind the Death of Dr. Fredric Brandt, Cosmetic Dermatologist to the Stars