Monday morning news drop
The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet As Apple and Google enact privacy changes, businesses are grappling with the fallout, Madison Avenue is fighting back and Facebook has cried foul. (New York Times)
How Accounting Giants Craft Favorable Tax Rules From Inside Government Lawyers from top accounting firms do brief stints in the Treasury Department, with the expectation of big raises when they return. (New York Times)
The Energy Future Needs Cleaner Batteries They rely on the specific qualities of certain elements to work. The highest-performing lithium-ion batteries on the market today require cobalt, and cobalt is hard to come by. To deal with climate change and power the cars of tomorrow, we’ll have to solve the cobalt problem. (Businessweek)
The Pandemic and Climate Crisis Have Shown the Costs of Inaction The past year has laid bare a great many problems that are past due for solutions, including some we already know how to fix. It’s time to stop messing around and do it. (Businessweek)
Does Your Favorite Brand Have a Hidden Message? Why computing developed such an Easter egg addiction is unclear, though several catalysts spring to mind: the in-joke meme-rich culture of coding; the joy of experts talking over the heads of users; the quest for credit when programmers were traditionally anonymous; and the painstaking process of compiling code which inspires pains to be taken inside the code. What every company can learn from Alfred Hitchcock, Sherlock Holmes and NASA. (Bloomberg)
America’s meat supply is cheap and efficient. Covid-19 showed why that’s a problem. In the wake of pandemic disruptions, even big meatpacking states are exploring ways to create smaller, regional alternatives to our highly centralized meat industry. (Politico)
Is the Seller’s Market for Houses Over? Slowing sales, a decline in over-asking contract prices, and fewer bidding wars in many areas are among recent shifts. 59% of Home Offers Written by Redfin Agents Faced Bidding Wars in August—the Lowest Level Since 2020 (New York Times)
What to Do in the Case of Sustained Inflation: An important distinction must be made between inflation hedges and stores of value. The former aim to track the short-term fluctuations in inflation or track inflation very precisely. In this category we have instruments such as inflation-indexed bonds and inflation caps. Of more interest to long-term investors should be assets that act as a store of value (those that maintain or even increase their real purchasing power notwithstanding times of inflation). (GMO)
File Not Found: A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans. It’s possible that the analogy multiple professors pointed to — filing cabinets — is no longer useful since many students Drossman’s age spent their high school years storing documents in the likes of OneDrive and Dropbox rather than in physical spaces. It could also have to do with the other software they’re accustomed to — dominant smartphone apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube all involve pulling content from a vast online sea rather than locating it within a nested hierarchy. (The Verge)
The digital death of collecting. How platforms mess with our tastes. In the digital era, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we have long had physical relationships with the pieces of culture we consume. We store books on bookshelves, mount art on our living-room walls, and keep stacks of vinyl records. When we want to experience something, we seek it out, finding a book by its spine, pulling an album from its case, or opening an app. The way we interact with something — where we store it — also changes the way we consume it. (Kyle Chayka Industries)
An Insider from the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Speaks Out A new memoir by a victims’ advocate describes a process that seemed fixed from the start. (New Yorker)
Nevermind at 30: How the Nirvana album shook the world Thirty years after its release, Seattle rock trio Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind retains an evocative power. When I hear its opening notes, I’m rocketed back to a teenage house party in suburban London; in that darkened parlour, I could feel guitars and machines fighting for my soul. (BBC)