Weekend news drop
Sneakerheads Have Turned Jordans and Yeezys Into a Bona Fide Asset Class When the pandemic presented a buy-low opportunity, one college dropout hit the road and filled his truck with $200,000 worth of kicks. The sneaker boom has created opportunities for a new generation of speculator. Young resellers are the first to treat footwear as a bona fide asset class, products as worthy of informed valuation and investment as any other commodity. The sneaker market, for them, is a lot like playing the market. (Businessweek)
Rents Jump 9.8 Per Cent for Vancouver’s Worst and Cheapest Housing Report finds rents in privately-owned SROs increased almost twice as much as other rents in the region. (Tyee)
Why Canada should invest in ‘macrogrids’ for greener, more reliable electricity As the recent disaster in Texas showed, climate change requires electricity utilities to prepare for extreme events. This “global weirding” leads to more intense storms, higher wind speeds, heatwaves and droughts that can threaten the performance of electricity systems. The electricity sector must adapt to this changing climate while also playing a central role in mitigating climate change. (On Site)
The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power On December 8, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations General Assembly. He described the dangers of atomic weapons, but also declared that “this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.” Stockpiles of uranium and fissionable materials could be used “to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” (New Yorker)
Traders on Yield Watch in Bond Markets ‘Not for Faint-Hearted’ After last week’s market turmoil, there’s really just one question on traders’ minds: how central banks will react to the jump in bond yields. (Yahoo)
A Festival of Lies The Republican leaders responsible for leading their party in the 2022 election cycle are coming to CPAC. Their participation is consistent with their refusal to disavow Trump’s false claims — or take responsibility for their own role in creating the conditions that resulted in the January 6 riot. (Popular Information)
The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s. (The Atlantic)
Deficit hypocrisy comes home to roost The Republican Party has, for the foreseeable future, lost all credibility on the issue of federal spending and deficits. It’s a rare case of ideological hypocrisy, of practice never conforming to theory, coming home to roost. (The Week)
Visualizing Cyber Harassment Content warning: this blog contains racist and anti-semitic language and terminology associated with sexual assault. (Medium)
Sex Tapes, Hush Money, and Hollywood’s Economy of Secrets Meet Kevin Blatt, the celebrity fixer who’s a master at shepherding compromising material off the internet—or into the hands of the highest bidder. A Movie Star’s agent will never take a call from a stranger, but Kevin Blatt reads every message and follows up on every tip. You never know who might have the goods. Over the past two decades, Blatt has become a one-man clearinghouse for everything seedy in Hollywood—the fixer you call when you want to see whether the thing you have that could humiliate a famous person is worth anything. (Wired)
Ultra-fast Fashion Is Eating the World: Even a pandemic can’t stop people from buying clothes they don’t need. In times of crisis, consumers don’t stop shopping—they just limit their purchases to affordable pleasures. Fast fashion had expanded its market share during the 2008 global financial crisis; now this new cohort of companies—known as ultra-fast fashion—was poised to do the same. (The Atlantic)