Food for Thought:
- NYMag – The Importance of Donald Trump. Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process.
- WSJ – Uber Meets Its Match in France. Company’s growth is snarled by entrenched business culture; ‘mockery of the French Republic’.
- VF – Why Bill and Melinda Gates Call Themselves “Impatient Optimists”. The Gates Foundation has already saved millions of lives, but Melinda Gates is still hard at work advocating for the world’s poor
- LA Mag – The Second Season of Serial May Tackle This Extremely Controversial Case
- LS – Filmmakers Create a Seven-Mile-Wide Scale Model of the Solar System in the Desert With an Earth the Size of a Marble. This is the first to scale model of the solar system ever created. Unbelievable video.
Business/Economics/Investing:
- ZH – Jim Chanos Compares China’s Stock Market To Pig On LSD, Fears “Lost Chinese Decade”
- BB – McRevolt: The Frustrating Life of the McDonald’s Franchisee. Clearly they aren’t ‘lovin it’
- BB – How UBS Spread the Pain of Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis to Clients. The Swiss bank packed pension bonds it underwrote into mutual funds it marketed on the island with a hard sell. This is strong cautionary tale that any time your financial adviser comes to you with something ‘proprietary’ – you should take a very careful look.
- SA – Unit Economics. Commentators are looking hard for what’s wrong with startups in Silicon Valley. But something does feel off, though it’s been hard to precisely identify. I think the answer is unit economics.
- Slate – The Night They Drove the Price of Electricity Down. Wind power was so plentiful in Texas that producers sold it at a negative price. What?
- VF – Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Bet on Oculus Rift Might One Day Connect Everyone on Earth
Life/Culture/Art/Science:
- VF – A Brief History of the Enduring Power of the Blue Blazer
- WSJ – Bill James and Billy Beane Discuss Big Data in Baseball. The Oakland GM and the statistical wizard are two major catalysts behind the data-driven MLB—yet their paths have seldom overlapped.
- WSJ – California’s Experiment in Football Crowdsourcing. Why the architect of the Golden Bears’ prolific offense collects input from a network of 250 high-school coaches.
- Economist – The best medicine. How a slum clinic keeps costs low.
- Economist – Electrifying flight. By using electric and hybrid forms of propulsion, very different-looking aircraft may end up taking to the sky.
- Hodinkee – The Vacheron Constantin 57260, The Most Complicated Watch In The World