Monday morning news drop
Shiller: Looking Back at the First Roaring Twenties To understand where the stock market may be heading, a Nobel laureate examines the pop culture of one of the greatest bull markets in history. (New York Times)
“There Was No Money Machine That Could Pay These Returns.” The inside story of how Jim Vos and his team at Aksia helped unspool the mystery of Bernie Madoff. (Institutional Investor)
Fraud, Short Sellers & Media Frauds and bad businesses usually aren’t exposed until markets fall and investors became more skeptical and conservative. When the returns are good and money is being made, there is less incentive for investors to scrutinize their holdings. If returns go south, and investors lose money, however, investors begin investigating their positions more thoroughly. The infamous Worldcom fiasco after the Dot Com crash, and Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme blowing up amid the Great Financial Crisis are prime examples. (Investor Amnesia)
Feeding Hate With Video: A Former Alt-Right YouTuber Explains His Methods Focus on conflict. Feed the algorithm. Make sure whatever you produce reinforces a narrative. Don’t worry if it is true.(New York Times)
What Octopus Dreams Tell Us About the Evolution of Sleep Understanding how other animals dream could help us figure out why it’s so important to the human brain, and why it may have been preserved throughout history. (Wired)
Fred VanVleet still adjusting to impure Raptors season It’s been a trying season, to say the least, for just about every member of the Toronto Raptors. A poor start, bad play, awful injury luck, even worse COVID luck, you name it, the Raptors have likely experienced it this season, leading to a 23-34 record and cries for the team to tank the rest of the 16 games it has left from all over the fan base. (Sportsnet)
Jake Paul’s responsible for the circus sideshow that boxing has become Jake Paul is a clown. I don’t think he’d mind me saying that, because it means I’m talking about him. He’s one of those internet celebrities who make their living being the sort of American people who don’t like Americans think Americans are like. (Globe and Mail)
The Black Keys Detail Blues Covers Album, Share “Crawling Kingsnake” The duo’s Delta Kream features covers of John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, Robert Lee Burnside, and more (Pitchfork)
Coach, broadcaster, esports icon: Inside the legacy of John Madden Right after the EA team met Madden for the first time, they all went back to their train cars in disbelief at Madden’s prolific deployment of swear words. “I’m not exaggerating, I think every third word out of his mouth is an F-bomb,” Hawkins says. “He is incredibly profane. That’s one of the signatures of how smart John is. To have the self-discipline to never do that on the air, it’s remarkable. He knows how to switch over to a completely different vocabulary.” (ESPN)
Do bidding wars work? Bidding wars are endemic in the market these days. There’s always some percentage of homes that go over the asking price (in a slow market it’s about 5%) but recently more than half of houses and townhouses have gone over ask, and a third of condos have done the same. (House Hunt Victoria)
