Friday morning news drop and the videos of the week
The Man Who Stole a Hotel A fugitive from the US started fresh on Vancouver Island—then bilked new victims out of millions of dollars while law enforcement refused to act. (Capital Daily)
How TikTok Chooses Which Songs Go Viral The app’s hits seem to emerge organically, but the success of artists like Megan Thee Stallion reveals a highly managed curation process. (BusinessWeek)
The cost of a single tulip bulb surged to the same price as a mansion 400 years ago: are NFTs the ‘tulipmania’ of the 21st century? Similarities between the new digital technology craze in the art world and the surge in value of tulips in 17th-century Holland suggest that it could all end in (real) tears (Art Newspaper)
The Two Most Underappreciated Forces Driving Markets Today Target date retirement funds collectively manage roughly $3 trillion. These funds didn’t exist in the past. People were more or less flying blind when it came to retirement planning with their money. This same thing is happening to baby boomer portfolios that are self-managed or managed by financial advisors as well. (Wealth of Common Sense)
Just because you can work from home doesn’t mean you’ll be allowed to This summer, offices are opening on an optional basis with expectations for workers to be present this fall. The most flexibility will go to high-skilled knowledge workers, whose jobs are mediated by computer. They will be much more likely than before the pandemic to be allowed to work from home at least some of the time in what’s called the hybrid work model. But everything from which employees can work from home to the number of days they can do so will depend on a number of factors, including their job, company, and industry. (Recode)
Apple, Spotify and the New Battle Over Who Wins Podcasting Podcasts exploded in popularity during the lockdown and are on track to bring in more than $1 billion in U.S. ad revenue this year (Wall Street Journal)
B.C.’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout not enough to bring back normal life by fall: report Only 51% of the population will be protected under B.C.’s current rollout, SFU professors say more vaccinations are needed to achieve herd immunity (Simon Fraser University)
CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver’s Seat Consumer Reports engineers easily tricked our Tesla Model Y this week so that it could drive on Autopilot, the automaker’s driver assistance feature, without anyone in the driver’s seat—a scenario that would present extreme danger if it were repeated on public roads. Over several trips across our half-mile closed test track, our Model Y automatically steered along painted lane lines, but the system did not send out a warning or indicate in any way that the driver’s seat was empty. (Consumer Reports)
51 years of environmental victories, in photos Clean skies the world experienced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. As people holed up at home and vehicles vacated the roads, annual global energy-related emissions fell 5.8 percent, more than in any year since WWII, according to the International Energy Agency. The cleaner air was just one of the things about this strange and terrible year that made many people think harder about how humans manage the global environment—and about the possibility and urgent need of doing better (National Geographic)
KEVIN PERAZA IN BARCELONA!
Danny MacAskill: REAL MTB 2021 | World of X Games
Brandon Semenuk: REAL MTB 2021 | World of X Games
Brage Vestavik: REAL MTB 2021 | World of X Games
DYLAN STARK REAL HEAT 2021 VIDEO PART Mountain biking and bmx with a classic skate style. 9 minutes of heavy clips filmed over some time
Dakota Roche | Bay Roam To pedal about the greater San Francisco area in search of the spots less travelled in an unsystematic, but thorough way. And, if you’re Monster Energy’s Dakota Roche, you blast through every piece of spot gold with confidence, power, and speed…the way it should be done. Follow the one and only Dak as he cuts into the streets of SF in his newest edit, Bay Roam.
ABOVE BELOW | NATHAN WILLIAMS We are still very unsure as to which way Nathan Williams grinds and spins, this is in no way helped by his ground breaking ABOVE Section! You need to check this out now for a master class in BMX street riding.
John Gardner's "Shoutout Earth" DC Part John rolls through concrete, asphalt, dirt, turf and grass in this all-terrain homage to the Earth. Celebrate the planet in style.
Todd Ligare's HALLWAYS Teton Gravity Research and Armada Skis are proud to present "HALLWAYS", a new powder edit from legendary skier Todd Ligare. Join Todd as he hucks into and digs trenches through light and fluffy snow in this piece edited by the one and only Brady Perron.