Food for Thought:

• Fortune – Inside the Hack of the Century.  A deep look inside the Sony Pictures breach.
• MJ – The Death of Golf.  It’s expensive, difficult, and demands the kind of time most people get only when they go on vacation — or retire. From the dried up fairways of Southern California to the vacant course-side condos on the Carolina coast, we survey the sport’s demise — and the entrepreneurs hoping to reinvent it for a new, less patient generation.
• Medium – What If Schools Hired Dogs As Therapists?.  A school in San Diego uses a “facility dog” to offer children a kind of healing that humans sometimes cannot provide.
• Bloomberg – Helicopter Parents and the Kids Who Just Can’t – Credit DH –
• Slate – Kids of Helicopter Parents Are Sputtering Out.  Recent studies suggests that kids with overinvolved parents and rigidly structured childhoods suffer psychological blowback in college.
• WSJ – Can Chris Christie Compete?  We generally try to avoid politics, but this is an interesting look at Christie, who may be the most charismatic politician since Bill Clinton.
•  WSJ – Has Soccer Finally Made It in the U.S.?  Sunday’s victory was the most watched soccer game in American history.
• Medium – 13 Lessons Learned.  A surprising reflection on life by Matthew McConaughey.

Business/Economics/Investing:

• WSJ – Little-Known French Billionaire Circles U.S. Cable Market. Patrick Drahi’s American ambitions for Altice soar amid SFR, Suddenlink buys.
• WSJ – ESPN Tightens Its Belt as Pressure on It Mounts.  Competition in the pay-TV industry is rising and subscribers are trimming cable bills.
• WashingtonPost – Billionaire Rales brothers ready for a new act in split of Danaher Corp.
• NYTimes – I.R.S. Cracks Down on Hedge Fund Tax Strategy.  IRS closes the barn door after the horses ran out 5 years ago.
• WSJ – How Chinese Stocks Fell to Earth: ‘My Hairdresser Said It Was a Bull Market’.  Having opened millions of brokerage accounts to play a rally, Chinese investors face big losses.

Life/Culture/Art/Science:

• Bloomberg – The Mob’s IT Department.  How two technology consultants helped drug traffickers hack the Port of Antwerp.
• WSJ – The Coder Who Encrypted Your Texts.  Dreadlocked programmer has spooked the FBI by creating a tool that police can’t crack.
• WSJ – Ian McKellen Is a 93-Year-Old Sherlock in ‘Mr. Holmes’.  A new film imagines the sleuth as an aged and slightly faltering investigator trying to deduce (and remember) how a 30-year-old case ended his career.
• The Atlantic – The Ennui of the Fitbit.  Some people wear their fitness trackers regularly, relying on them to get, and stay, in shape. Many others, however, abandon them, consigning them to junk drawers, obliging relatives, and the junk drawers of obliging relatives.