House Hunt Victoria, Investing Fraud, VanVleet, Jake Paul, and John Madden

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)

Videos of the Week, Business Outlook, Housing, Pandemic Recovery, and Amazon

Videos of the week and the Friday morning news drop

• Business Outlook Survey—Spring 2021 One of the partners at Method participated with the Bank of Canada on the spring Business Outlook Survey. It suggests that business sentiment continues to improve. Businesses reported less uncertainty related to the COVID‑19 pandemic and strengthening demand from weak levels. Still, the recovery remains uneven, with companies tied to high-contact services facing ongoing challenges. (Bank of Canada)

• U.S. housing starts near 15-year high; consumer sentiment rises moderately U.S. homebuilding surged to nearly a 15-year high in March, but soaring lumber prices amid supply constraints could limit builders' capacity to boost production and ease a shortage of homes that is threatening to slow housing market momentum. (Guardian)

• Canadian real-estate market better for foreign investors than locals, admits housing secretary Canada is “a very safe market for foreign investment, but not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing,” admits Liberal MP responsible for housing. (Vancouver Sun)

• Fast food over fine dining: What spending data tells us about the pandemic recovery Five charts that show how dramatically the pandemic affected our spending (Recode)

• How This Chinese Vaping Billionaire Became One Of The World’s Richest Women In Three Years Kate Wang, 39, jumped into the ranks of the world’s richest when her vaping company RLX went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January. Now the Procter & Gamble and Uber veteran faces looming threats from Chinese regulators and skeptical investors. (Forbes)

• Five Superpowers: Restraint, Curiosity, Creativity, Patience & Courage (Reformed Broker)

• Is Larry Kudlow Fox Enough for Fox Business? The former Trump official is back in his natural habitat: television. But middling early ratings and the inability — or unwillingness — to go Full Fox suggests that something isn’t right. (Institutional Investor)

• A 23-Year-Old Coder Kept QAnon Online When No One Else Would Nick Lim provides tech support to the U.S. networks of White nationalists and conspiracy theorists banned by the likes of Amazon. (Bloomberg)

• Why Amazon’s Workers Sided With the Company Over a Union Pay, benefits and an aggressive anti-union campaign by the company helped generate votes at a warehouse in Alabama. (New York Times)

Chapter 11 tv 010 - "I used to hate Jake"

Chapter 11 TV - Emo Micky

MASHER: Tony Hawk The Birdman summons Endless Summer vibes on the Big Island with Riley, Keegan and a tight crew for some spine dancing and deep-sea swimming.

Mouth-Watering MTB Creativity | Kriss Kyle Out Of Season “Out of Season” is a time when one pauses whatever they are doing to take a break, recover & chill a bit, but some never stop. They switch it up, letting their creativity run even wilder than usual, aiming for the unexpected.

CULTCREW/ RYOTA MIYAJI - Ryota Miyaji, full of original style. Doing his thing in the streets of Japan. Holding it down for Motocross International

CULTCREW/ JAUME SINTES / AMERICA Our amigo Jaume from BCN did a quick bid over here and put his touch on the streets...Such a refreshing style and nothing but good vibes... Barruin!!

Vans X Federal Presents "Speed Dial" | BMX | VANS

ERIK ELSTRAN - AWESOME BIKING DUDE

Children of the Dust - #1

MTB Street: Unexpected Thursday 50 - The Rise MTB videos

Dunning-Kruger Effect, Inflation, NFTs, Green Building, and Next Gen Batteries

Thursday morning news drop

• Dunning-Kruger Effect: Intuitive Errors Predict Overconfidence on the Cognitive Reflection Test The present study explores the DKE within the context of a reflective-reasoning test, where a compelling, intuitive but incorrect response must be overridden for successful performance to be attained (Frontiers in Psychology)

• How Not to Get Fooled by the New Inflation Numbers We could be on the verge of a golden era for inflation nonsense. The potential for misunderstanding derives from several forces crashing against one another at once. There are sure to be shortages of some goods and services as the economy creaks back to life, which could create scattered price increases for airplane tickets or hotel rooms or, as has been the case recently, certain computer chips. (Upshot)

• ‘The Start of a Comeback’ in 5 U.S. Cities With vaccinations picking up, warmer weather and increased business re-openings over the last week, tourism has picked up in these destinations. (New York Times)

• NFTs Are Selling for Millions. Are They Warming the Planet, Too? Making the digital artworks requires colossal amounts of computing power, and that means greenhouse gases. (New York Times)

• Home is where the cartel is Singapore expanded its housing supply, at remarkable speed and scale, by building out extremely dense but nevertheless green, livable, and attractive “new towns“. Rather than restricting our attention to putting more housing in existing desirable neighborhoods, why not follow Singapore and build new neighborhoods, and when we run out of space for those, new ring cities? Singapore has done a ton of experimenting, in regulation, architecture and urban design, in putting greenspaces around (and on) increasingly creative high-rise developments. (Interfluidity)

• How Becky Lynch Became 'The Man' On the eve of another WrestleMania, go inside the WWE Superstar's brutal, bloody fight to shape the world to her will. (Elle)

• Housing bubble Two Point No “Home prices are not in a bubble. It’s not like people are collecting houses. These are first-time home buyers! The rise in prices was fueled by Covid, low interest rates, and most importantly, demographics. Are prices red hot? Yes. Is this a bubble that will pop? No.” (Irrelevant Investor)

• Federal government unveils $1.5 billion plan to boost green building Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna has announced a $1.5-billion program designed to spur green building through retrofits, upgrades and new construction of public institutions. (On Site)

• How Hedge Funds Lost Their Way and Why They’ll Come Back HFRI Equity Hedge Total Index returned 14% a year from inception in 1990 through the financial crisis in 2008, doubling the total return of the S&P 500 Index. Since 2009, however, the tables have turned. The HFRI index has returned 8% a year through February, roughly half the return of the S&P 500. To understand what happened, and why fortune may return for equity hedge funds, it helps to know a bit about how stock pickers make money for investors. (Bloomberg)

How The Next Batteries Will Change the World Silicon Valley is about to commercialize revolutionary technology that will enable huge breakthroughs in the battle against global warming. The future of batteries, sought for decades by academics, startups, and corporate R&D armies is—quite possibly—just a slender sheet of ceramic material that’s supple enough to bend between two fingers. But no one outside of a Silicon Valley startup is allowed to know what it’s made of. Even the color of this man-made substance is a closely held secret, so of course it’s never been independently analyzed.

CPI, Generation X and Classic Rock, Good Robot Brewery, and CO2 Emissions

• The Consumer Price Index Is Not Economic Reality The nation’s leading indicator of inflation has always existed as a creature of politics and power, revised and updated in ways that betray its image. (Bloomberg)

• How People Get Rich Now In 1982 the most common source of wealth was inheritance. Of the 100 richest people, 60 inherited from an ancestor. By 2020 the number of heirs had been cut in half, accounting for only 27 of the biggest 100 fortunes. How are people making these new fortunes? Roughly 3/4 by starting companies and 1/4 by investing (Paul Graham)

• 6 boomtowns: What’s driving LI’s rising home prices Long Island’s real estate market has gone wild during the pandemic, with luxury homes that once languished on the market suddenly sparking bidding wars, and some first-time homebuyers scrambling to make offers of $30,000 or more over asking prices. (Newsday)

• Over 3 Million People Took This Course on Happiness. Here’s What Some Learned. It may seem simple, but it bears repeating: sleep, gratitude and helping other people. (New York Times)

• Alan Cross: Sorry Gen X, but the music of your youth is now the new classic rock Back when The Simpsons still offered biting social commentary, season seven saw Homer try to impress Bart and Lisa by scoring tickets to the Lollapalooza-like Hullabalooza, which featured Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, and a very baked Cypress Hill. Homer was crushed when he realized that his music, which he had always believed achieved perfection in 1974, wasn’t cool anymore. He’d become just like this father. (Global)

• How Ramadan helped a Halifax brewery make peace with the mosque next door Ramadan is a time of forgiveness, which Good Robot received when it became a good neighbour (CBC)

• The Redemption of Justin Bieber He made every mistake a child star can make, including the ones that nearly destroyed him. Now—fortified by God, marriage, and a new album, Justice—Justin Bieber is putting his life back together, one positive, deliberate step at a time. (GQ)

• Absolute Decoupling of Economic Growth and Emissions in 32 Countries The past 30 years have seen immense progress in improving the quality of life for much of humanity. Extreme poverty — the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day — has fallen by nearly two-thirds, from 1.9 billion to around 650 million. Life expectancy has risen in most of the world, along with literacy and access to education, while infant mortality has fallen. (Breakthrough)

House Hunt Victoria, BC Business Relief Grant, Investing and NFTs

Tuesday morning news drop

• Circuit Breaker Business Relief Grant The Circuit Breaker Business Relief Grant provides fully funded grants to hospitality and fitness businesses impacted by the March 30, 2021 Provincial Health Officer (PHO) orders. (BC Government)

• Texas Froze and California Burned. To Insurers, They Look Similar. An effort to pass on costs in Texas will echo the wildfire strategy by arguing that power companies should have taken protective steps after past cold snaps. (New York Times)

• The Most Important Rule in Investing With all due respect to Warren Buffett, the most important rule in investing is not anything close to “never lose money.” In fact, the entire notion is absurd. Anyone who has ever invested in the history of the world has lost money at one time or another. Buffett himself lost over 50% from late 2007 to early 2009 (Compound)

• Who Owns Stocks in the United States? Politicians should be figuring out ways to get more people invested in it to take advantage of the ever-growing profits and dividends paid out by corporations. Stock market ownership trends are slowly but surely heading in the right direction. We should encourage more people to take part in the stock market to keep it going. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• How America’s Great Economic Challenge Suddenly Turned 180 Degrees Recent supply problems suggest businesses may have trouble responding to rising consumer demand. (Upshot)

• Are NFT Purchases Real? The Dollars Are. Dive down a rabbit hole and explore nonfungible tokens, multimillion-dollar digital art and the nature of reality. (New York Times)

• What’s the outlook for condos? In the same vein as last week’s post, let’s keep looking in the magic 8 ball of market forecasting, but this time we’ll turn our attention to the condo market. After all, with an average house at over $1.1 million, many have been looking at alternatives and in response the condo market has been clearly heating up since last fall with strong price gains in recent months. Back then was the better time to buy of course, but if you’re looking at the market now, does it still make sense to buy a condo for living or investment? Let’s take a look. (House Hunt Victoria)

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Stock Market, Bond Markets, Corporate Taxes, Mass Timber and Bryson DeChambeau

Monday morning news drop

• Fed Chair Jerome Powell tells 60 Minutes America is going back to work Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gives his thoughts on how the economy is rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott Pelley reports. (60 Minutes)

• What happens after the stock market is up big? 12 month returns were negative 65% of the time following a gain of 50% or more in a 1-year period. However, there wasn’t a single 3-year period following a 12-month gain of 50% or more that showed a negative return. (Fortune)

• A Hidden Bond-Market Problem American savers could once count on bonds to provide meaningful returns with modest risk. Not anymore. (Bloomberg)

• In 2020, There Was an Epic Collapse of Demand. Now, the Problem Is Supply. Recent setbacks raise doubt about how quickly businesses can respond to customers who seem intent on spending (Upshot)'

• Inside the Fight for the Future of The Wall Street Journal A special team led by a high-level manager says Rupert Murdoch’s paper must evolve to survive. But a rivalry between editor and publisher stands in the way. (New York Times)

• Joe Biden Wants to Put the World’s Corporate Tax Havens Out of Business The administration is vowing to fund a historically ambitious infrastructure and economic modernization plan in part by solving one of the thorniest problems created by global capitalism. “If implemented, such an international agreement would lead to a collapse of the development model of tax havens. A high global minimum tax can change the face of globalization.” (Slate)

• You Won’t Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will The pandemic has not been a single, traumatic “flashbulb” event like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fiery disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger, or 9/11. Starting in March 2020, hundreds of millions of Americans began forming their own impressions of it. As psychologists and anthropologists who study memory will tell you, we tend to lay out our anecdotes almost like short stories or screenplays to give our lives meaning; our plots (do they have silver linings? hopeful endings?) can reveal something about how we handle setbacks (The Atlantic)

• How BC Fumbled the Third Wave Four experts say leaders were warned of the variant threat but misread key data and failed to respond fast enough. (Tyee)

• A Look Inside the Anti-Vaxx Playbook How the anti-vaccine establishment is waging war against Covid-19 vaccines. The roughly 150 leading anti-vaxx social media accounts gained more than 10 million followers, mostly on Instagram and YouTube, between 2019 and December 2020. (Bloomberg)

• B.C. mass timber movement gets boost with backing for 13 new projects A pair of government funding announcements last week will provide more than $5 million for 13 mass timber projects throughout B.C., giving the fast-growing market for cross-laminated timber and other such materials an added shot in the arm. (On-Site)

• Trump Put a Right-Wing Radio Host in Charge of a National Park. Emails Show the Chaos That Ensued. Michael Savage used his position at San Francisco’s Presidio to stir up a controversy over Japanese American internment. (Mother Jones)

• Golf still can’t figure out how it feels about Bryson DeChambeau In the leadup to this year’s Masters, a video of Bryson DeChambeau began making the rounds. In it, DeChambeau is shown taking practice cuts on the driving range. It’s like watching a guy chop down a tree with a crowbar. The violence with which DeChambeau approaches the game – everything from the twitchy run up to the tee to the back-snapping swing – is mesmerizing. (Globe and Mail)

Videos of the Week, Bitcoin and Carbon Footprints, and a Guide to the Markets

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• Bitcoin and Ethereum Carbon Footprints Although miners are willing to spend a lot on power today to earn BTC, this does not mean that they will be inclined to use and pay for a lot of power in the future. Bitcoin’s issuance rate is halved every four years which means that, in the long run, miners’ revenues from block rewards will shrink. ~90% of all BTC have been mined already and fees are not a major source of revenue today. Most of the power-intensive block reward action has already happened. (2 Quants)

• Nearing the Topps? How a Baseball Card Company Illustrates Sentiment Now You won’t get this nexus of fads in a typical early bull market. (FI)

• The Bubble Burst Well, that was fun. Here is a look at my Top Shot account. (Irrelevant Investor)

• Bank regulator proposes higher mortgage stress test level, making it harder to qualify for home loan OSFI was considering changes in early 2020 before shelving them during COVID-19 (CBC)

• Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days The fast rise and even faster fall of a trader who bet big with borrowed money (Businessweek)

• Why I’ve Become a Shareholder Who Doesn’t Vote Shareholders can express themselves, but companies don’t necessarily listen. (Bloomberg)

• What a photo of Trump’s new office reveals about how he wants to be remembered An obsessive, inch-by-inch POLITICO breakdown of the 45th president’s new digs at Mar-a-Lago. (Politico)

• Question of the Week: What Is the Car Of Your Youth? Our automotive passion was formed by endless days behind the wheel and long evenings in the garage during our youth. Things were different back then. We didn’t look at cars in terms of resale value and future collectability. We only thought about where they could take us and how much fun we’d have getting there. (Bring A Trailer)

• Guide to the Markets - (JP Morgan Chase)

JONES presents: The Lodge Boys There is nothing stronger than friendships bonded by snowboarding. The countless adventures, epic pow days, chairlift banter and time well spent with your best friends in the mountains are memories that last a lifetime. The Lodge Boys are a perfect example of that. A close group of friends, formed in the misty mountains of the Pacific Northwest. If you ask anybody around they know exactly who these characters are. The pure stoke, high energy and absolute love of snowboarding is infectious when you're around this crew.

Join Harry Kearney, Jerry Mark and Timmy Taussig as they adventure from Mt. Baker to British Columbia enjoying big lines, spines, pillow fields and plenty of powder turns.

John Dilo's "561" Part Dilo heads straight to the streets after returning home to FL, breaking new ground at The Triangle and laying waste to every pad and bar in his path.

CULTCREW/ BRANDON BEGIN Always awesome seeing a rider enjoying BMX and life to the fullest...Brandon does all this with his own style, swagger and creativity...Truly one for the history books here...Enjoy this piece...

Credence Bikes - "3" Clips of the entire Credence family laced together by DJ Clint and Charlie C.

Vans Europe Presents: Going Nowhere Going Nowhere is the newest team video offer from Vans Germany, Austria & Switzerland. As covid hit in, in 2020, the team decided to go nowhere and stood home in their countries, where they filmed this new clip throughout the year. They mainly visited Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg & Stuttgart and had some of the EMEA team joining on this journey.

Featuring: Kalle Wiehn, Jan Hoffmann, Joscha Aicher, Marco Kada, Willow Voges, Marcel Weber, Daniel Lepori, Tim Rebensdorf, Julian Ruhe, Roland Hirsch, Danny Stephen, Ruben Lücke, Niklas Schaible, Justen Ernst, Paul Zenner, Conny Mirbach, Daniel Spiegel & Manu Mayr

The Slate Line is the brand new edit from Gee Atherton, the World Champion mountain-biker renowned as one of the toughest and most daring riders in downhill mountain-biking.

Sending Big Lines On - Cop Killer in Pemberton with Steve Vanderhoek and Remy Metailler

House Hunt Victoria, Tech Industry, Electric Vehicles, and Bryson DeChambeau

Thursday morning news drop

• Victoria businesses, slipping through the cracks, are pleading for federal financial aid COVID subsidies based on previous earnings leave out new and newly expanded businesses like Bear & Joey, Hey Happy, and The Vicious Poodle (Capital Daily)

• Tech in the City – Victoria’s bright future The tech sector is one of Victoria’s largest employers and continues to generate jobs at levels that match pre-pandemic recruitment. VIATEC (Victoria Innovation, Advanced Technology and Entrepreneurship Council) is currently posting an average of 120 jobs, a number that hasn’t changed much in a year.“ (Douglas)

• Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Economic Boom? There’s too much whining about the super-strong recovery. You don’t get a spurt like this without a few bruises. (Bloomberg)

• First-Ever Chevrolet Silverado Electric Pickup General Motors President Mark Reuss today announced Chevrolet will introduce a Silverado electric pickup truck that will be built at the company’s Factory ZERO assembly plant in Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan. Reuss also confirmed the recently revealed GMC HUMMER EV SUV will be built at Factory ZERO. (General Motors)

• Rivian Will Go Where Even Tesla Doesn’t Dare Its charging map is wild, adventurous, and way less risky than relying on third parties (Green)

• Green transition could displace majority of Canada’s energy workers Three-quarters of the Canadians employed in oil and gas could lose their jobs as the country pursues aggressive climate targets, according to a new report that warns governments must develop worker transition plans now to prevent disastrous consequences. (Globe and Mail)

• When Death Is Preferable to Taxes The Canada Emergency Response Benefit helped me survive COVID-19’s first wave. Then the government tried to claw back the cash (Walrus)

• The Robinhood Generation Is Debating Old School Investors on Trading Stocks The wrangling over the best way to go about investing is not only playing out online, but also making its way into the family sphere. (Bloomberg)

• NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This When we invented non-fungible tokens, we were trying to protect artists. But tech-world opportunism has struck again (The Atlantic)

• Inside the mind of Bryson DeChambeau, golf’s polarising genius The US Open champion’s first coach and the fitness expert that’s overseen his dramatic transformation speak to Tom Kershaw about a relentless work ethic and desire to conquer the sport (Independent)

• Dusting off the crystal ball If there’s one thing I’ve learned in a decade of analyzing Victoria’s housing market, it’s that you can’t predict the housing market. If you’re going to try to do that, you better learn to be humble. Similar to the stock market, there’s no shortage of people that will tell you where the market is going with certainty and with many very convincing arguments, but much of that is just our left hemispheres trying to rationalize a highly random process. (House Hunt Victoria)

BC Covid-19 Vaccine Immunization Registration

Covid-19 Vaccine Registration is open Fill out the form and get invited to book an appointment when you are eligible. It takes a few minutes to tell us how to contact you and help your community get the right amount of vaccines. Register here > (BC Covid-19 Immunization Registration)

Canadian Housing Bubble, Stock Picking, Microchips, and Unemployment

Tuesday morning news drop

• It's not just Toronto and Vancouver — Canada's housing bubble has gone national Bully offers with no conditions are popping up in small real estate markets, too (CBC)

• Why You Shouldn’t Pick Individual Stocks I stopped picking individual stocks years ago and I recommend that you do the same. But, today I am not going to give you the traditional argument as to why you shouldn’t pick stocks, but a new one. The traditional argument, which you’ve probably heard many times before, goes as follows: since most people (even the professionals) can’t beat the index, you shouldn’t bother trying. (Dollars and Data)

• How a Chip Shortage Snarled Everything From Phones to Cars A six-decade-old invention, the lowly chip, has gone from little-understood workhorse in powerful computers to the most crucial and expensive component under the hood of modern-day gadgets. That explosion in demand—unexpectedly goosed during the Covid-19 pandemic for certain industries like smartphones and PCs—has caused a near-term supply shock triggering an unprecedented global shortage. (Bloomberg)

• CEOs Can’t Stay on Society’s Sidelines Anymore They are no longer closely aligned with the Republican Party and face increasing pressure to wield their considerable influence on issues such as voting rights, income equality and climate change. (Bloomberg)

• Inside the Koch-Backed Effort to Block the Largest Election-Reform Bill in Half a Century behind closed doors Republicans speak differently about the legislation, which is also known as House Resolution 1 and Senate Bill 1. They admit the lesser-known provisions in the bill that limit secret campaign spending are overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. In private, they concede their own polling shows that no message they can devise effectively counters the argument that billionaires should be prevented from buying elections. (New Yorker)

• Will U.S. learn from a $1.7 trillion goof that would have paid for Biden’s infrastructure plan? America’s military-industrial complex squanders $1.5 trillion on a lame fighter jet while the president begs for infrastructure cash. Isn’t there a better way? (Philadelphia Inquirer)

• Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, explained in 600 words $621 billion for roads and bridges; another $165 billion would go toward public transportation, with a big chunk of that going to Amtrak. It would also pay for electric car recharging stations, water systems (including eliminating all lead pipes), high-speed broadband infrastructure, and modernizing the electrical grid (Vox)

• Annie’s Mac and Cheese is based in the Bay Area, but Annie is not. Here’s her story. he more I read about Annie’s, the second-most popular mac and cheese brand in the United States behind Kraft, the more I wanted to know about the mysterious woman behind the brand. Her number isn’t on the boxes of mac and cheese anymore, obviously. So a few weeks ago, I left a voicemail for a number that I figured had a 50-50 shot of being accurate. Then I waited. (SFGate)

Unemployment: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) John Oliver details the many obstacles that impede access to unemployment benefits – often by design – and why the entire system needs to be rethought.