Lumber Crisis, Bond Markets, Vaccinations, Luxottica, and TikTok Marketing

Monday morning news drop

• Everything You Need to Know About the Great Lumber Crisis of 2021 Lumber prices are coming back down to Earth, but the crisis shows how many industries can be rocked by the price of wood. (Vice)

• What’s Driving the Stock, Bond & Housing Markets Right Now? Right now some people would say that variable is the Fed or interest rates. That might be true but I have my own unifying theory of what’s driving markets at the moment — money. People have plenty of it and nowhere else to put it. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Bond Market Is Telling Us to Worry About Growth, Not Inflation The economy remains hot, but the future is looking less buoyant than it did just a short while ago (New York Times)

• Alberta's COVID-19 vaccination rates tied to levels of formal education, data shows

  Researchers say correlation can help guide efforts to immunize more people An analysis of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Alberta suggests one socio-economic factor, more than others, is correlated to vaccine uptake. And it's not income, language or cultural barriers. It's education. People who have fewer years of formal education, have a different sort of trust. So they're not going to listen to the experts (CBC)

• Canada needs to vaccinate 90 per cent of adults and teens. At this rate, we’ll never get there The government has detailed information on who and who hasn’t been vaccinated, income brackets and education levels. Vaccination is our ticket out of the pandemic. It’s the way to protect ourselves against a variant-powered fourth wave. Public-health experts have been saying it for months, and you will hear it, again and again and then some more, over the summer. It’s as true as truisms get. (Globe and Mail)

• Trump Country Rejects Vaccines Despite Growing Delta Threat President Biden missed a July 4 target for shots after politically conservative areas balked (Bloomberg)

• Five under vaccinated clusters put the entire United States at risk Clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States, are vulnerable to surges in Covid-19 cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly Covid-19 variants: Starting in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to Missouri + include parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. see also (CNN)

• How Canada's COVID policies stoked asset bubbles and income inequality More than any time in recent history, the rich have gotten richer (Financial Post)

• Meet the Four-Eyed, Eight-Tentacled Monopoly That is Making Your Glasses So Expensive Luxottica controls 80% of the major brands in the $28 billion global eyeglasses industry. This monopolistic structure of the market leads to profits that are “relatively obscene” (Forbes)

• This Is Tax Evasion, Plain and Simple The race to the bottom on corporate taxes has gone on for too long. Since the 1980s, countries have competed for business by reducing companies’ taxes. A few nations, like Ireland and Bermuda, have adopted extremely low rates and become tax havens for companies like Google and Apple. Last week, 130 countries, including the United States, agreed to a blueprint to tax their companies’ profits at a minimum 15 percent rate — no matter where the profits are booked. (New York Times)

• TikTok made me buy it The video app is causing products to blow up — and flame out — faster than ever. TikTok allows certain creators and businesses in the UK and Indonesia to sell products within its TikTok Shop, though the feature doesn’t yet exist in the US. But it’s almost certainly coming. What effect that might have on American consumerism depends on whom you ask. (Vox)

• What Makes a Cult a Cult? The line between delusion and what the rest of us believe may be blurrier than we think. (New Yorker)

Videos of the Week, Inflation, Private Equity, Gen Z Misinformation, and Dining Out

Friday morning news drop

• Everything feels more expensive because it is Why are prices going up? Used cars, gas, and groceries seem more expensive because they are. (Vox)

• Are Private Equity Firms to Blame For Rising Home Prices? Wall Street is an easy scapegoat. The real villain lives much closer to home. (Marker)

• A Memo to Investors That’s it. That’s the stock-picking game. Stocks are not pieces of art. They are not fiat money. Cults of personality do not last forever in the stock market. Narratives break. Eventually, everyone figured out that Galileo was right. Eventually, everyone will figure out that Cathie Wood isn’t. And it won’t take as long either. (Albert Bridge Capital)

• A Great Inflation Redux? Economists Point to Big Differences. Prices climbed for years before the runaway inflation of the 1970s. Economists see parallels today, but the differences are just as important. (New York Times)

• Vinyl Is More Popular Than Ever. Surprisingly, That’s a Problem Pressing plants can’t keep up with unprecedented demand, and big box chains are selling LPs now, resulting in devastating delays. (Vice)

• Why Generation Z falls for online misinformation We can all learn from how today’s young people evaluate truth online. (MIT Technology Review)

• The Tech Cold War’s ‘Most Complicated Machine’ That’s Out of China’s Reach A $150 million chip-making tool from a Dutch company has become a lever in the U.S.-Chinese struggle. It also shows how entrenched the global supply chain is. (New York Times)

• Dining Out, Digitized: Many restaurants dropped printed menus during the pandemic in favor of QR codes sending diners to online ordering platforms. Will eating out be the same? (Bloomberg)

• Cricket is Having its Moneyball Moment When Twenty20 launched, the game of cricket changed forever. Now a team of data evangelists are taking the sport to the next level. (Wired)

• Artist Esmaa Mohamoud Examines How Pro Sports Profit from Black Athletes Sports bring people together in living rooms, in crowded bars, and in the streets. Mohamoud seeks to expose the monstrous underbelly of all that winning (Walrus)

Videos of the Week

“It all starts with a push” Tony Hawk

OUR BMX MASHUP

CULTCREW/ NORTH EAST RAW CUT -10 day in NJ, PA, NY, CT, MA w/ Chase Dehart, Brandon Begin and Trev Mags. Documented by Veesh and Eddie Cuellar.

S&M BMX - Mike Stahl - WELCOME TO PRO It's been in the pipeline for a bit, but today we're proud to announce that Mike Stahl has been bumped to the pro team! Mike is one of the hardest working dudes in BMX and we're proud to have him repping!

Courage Adams: REAL BMX 2021 | World of X Games

Felix Prangenberg: REAL BMX 2021 | World of X Games

Chad Kerley: REAL BMX 2021 | World of X Games

Julian Molina: REAL BMX 2021 | World of X Games

BluePrint Mark Matthews New Trail in Cumberland BC The day has come! The trail is finally open to public! Blueprint can be found in the Cumberland, BC trail network. Thanks to Shimano, The United Riders of Cumberland, and Mosaic Forest Management for making this project possible

Home Stretch feat. Henry Fitzgerald

Fresh Flow with Reed Boggs Reed Boggs rips up the Virgin, Utah landscape onboards his new Flow wheelset.

Girl X Volcom's "Pretty Stoned" Video: Simon, Rick, Manchild, Cody, Griffin and Niels along with their synergized squad rip the indoor ramps and paved waves of the Pacific Northwest. Get high off the vibes.

Andres Bill's "Be Water" Video Flowing through Southern California’s alleys and well-trafficked avenues, Andres’ crew hits huge taildrops and ditch dives with their own rhythm.

Matt Bublitz' "Enter the Museum" Part

Kyle Walsh's "Dogwood" Part Water hazards, street snowboarding and massive rails, this vid is pure party. Heavy Muska vibes on that noseslide…

Tim Debauche's "Opus 1" Part Tim blends bank transfers, stacked homie sessions and serious 360 flips across Europe—all set to the late, great Daniel Johnston.

Ocean Temperatures, Tampa Bay Lightening Stanley Cup Champions, and Lil Nas X

Thursday morning news drop

• It’s so hot that Canada’s sea creatures are cooking to death in their shells Extreme heat temperatures, rising up to 40 C in Vancouver, had caused sea animals like mussels, clams and snails to cook to their death. (Toronto Star)

• Why the Lightning are the most impressive Stanley Cup champions of the NHL's salary-cap era Evil has prevailed. Tampa Bay has captured a second straight Stanley Cup. The Great Lightning Heist has been completed. (ESPN)

• The Billionaire Playbook: How Sports Owners Use Their Teams to Avoid Millions in Taxes Owners like Steve Ballmer can take the kinds of deductions on team assets — everything from media deals to player contracts — that industrialists take on factory equipment. That helps them pay lower tax rates than players and even stadium workers. (ProPublica)

• Crypto Scammers Rip Off Billions as Pump-and-Dump Schemes Go Digital Billions are getting pilfered annually through a variety of cryptocurrency scams. In today’s cryptocurrencies, it’s known as the rug pull: Shit Coins, obscure digital something-or-others are being minted by the thousands. Telegram (a popular instant messaging app) has become a major crypto boiler room “Everybody I know has gotten rug-pulled.” The way things are going, this will only get worse. (Bloomberg Wealth)

• Is This the End of the ‘Fiery’ Public Versus Private Equity Debate? 60/40 portfolios: when private assets are included within the equity allocation, the fund’s performance is stronger than its private equity-less counterparts. This is true even when underperforming funds are involved. (Institutional Investor)

• Before investing in Robinhood or trusting it with your money, read these documents Finra accused Robinhood of plying millions of customers with “false or misleading information” about their account balances, of leaving millions of customers unable to trade because its IT systems broke down at crucial moments, and of approving thousands of customers for options trading even though it should have known they were unqualified to play the options market. (Los Angeles Times)

• The Robinhood Conundrum 47% of traders use the product on a daily basis. Among those customers who visted the app on a daily basis, the average number of visits was seven per day. More than 98% of users use the app on a monthly basis. This type of engagement and usage is insanely high for an investment product. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Why do we buy what we buy? A sociologist on why people buy too many things. What’s at the root of modern American consumerism? It might not just be competition among the brands trying to sell us things, but also competition among ourselves. American consumerism is also built on societal factors that are often overlooked. And in an increasingly unequal society, the Joneses at the very top are doing a lot of the consuming, while the people at the bottom struggle to keep up. (Vox)

• To Expand U.S. Vaccine Access, Consider the Dollar Store: The dollar store footprint lends itself to thinking about this broader aim of making vaccines available right where people are located, and the people that are disproportionately under-vaccinated in so many of our cities and communities right now. Dollar stores could be key access points for reaching vulnerable populations who have limited access to health care services, and sometimes lack trust in the system. (Citylab)

• The Internet Is Rotting Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. (Atlantic)

• The Mountain Bike Tech Infiltrating the Tour de France While mountain biking has spent the past 30 years trying to shed its road cycling similarities, the road cycling world has now begun taking some cues from its muddier cousin. Last year we talked about how mountain bike products such as dropper posts, mountain bike rotors and inserts were becoming viable options for Tour de France riders and we're back with another haul of tech trends for 2021. (Pink Bike)

• The Subversive Joy of Lil Nas X’s Gay Pop Stardom A peek into a hot boy summer filled with new highs, disappointment and growth. (New York Times)

Investing, Private Equity, Global Stocks, Chinese Immigration, Shohei Ohtani, and Terminator 2

Wednesday morning news drop

• How Long Does it Take For the Stock Market to Double Off a Bear Market Bottom? Investing during a market crash can be lucrative. After the Great Financial Crisis caused the market to fall 56%, the S&P bottomed on March 9, 2009. The market snapped back in a hurry, surging nearly 70% from those lows through the end of the year. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Private Equity Still Outperforms Listed Stocks — But It’s Losing Its Edge Investors can blame stimulus from central banks and government spending as well as private equity’s unstoppable popularity for the sector’s narrower win over public equities. (Institutional Investor)

• In Defense of Global Stocks Global stocks are nothing to be overlooked. While the U.S. is clearly an outlier on the world stage, most of the strategies discussed here can be applied just as well to equity markets around the globe. Consider how a typical global equity investor would have performed over the last few decades as an asset class. (Of Dollars And Data)

• The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta Vaccines are still beating the variants, but the unvaccinated world is being pummeled. (Atlantic)

• When Chinese in Canada Were Numbered, Interrogated, Excluded Systemic racism left a paper trail. A century later, researchers are hunting for the evidence. (Tyee)

• Giannis Isn’t Cooked—and Neither Are the Bucks Milwaukee’s two-time MVP not only suited up in Game 1, but also surprisingly looked like his usual self. The same can’t be said for Jrue Holiday, who struggled mightily, but a return to form from both stars could help the Bucks recover quickly. (The Ringer)

• Shohei Ohtani Isn’t Babe Ruth—He’s Better Ohtani is a once-in-a-century player in a year when we need to be awed, inspired and distracted. Comparing him to the Babe is no longer enough. (Sports Illustrated)

• The Tin Man Gets His Heart: An Oral History of ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ Three decades ago, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Linda Hamilton joined forces again to make the biggest, baddest, most eye-popping sequel ever. Here’s the story of how the machines took over Hollywood. (The Ringer)

House Hunt Victoria, Treasury Yields, Stock Market, Fires in Canada, and Instagram Influencers

Tuesday morning news drop

• Low Treasury Yields Today, the 10-year Treasury yields a paltry 1.5%. With real rates negative, the near-consensus view is that rising inflation will end the 35-year Treasury bull market. And commentators are arguing that Treasurys at 1.5% have far less upside than they did at 6.4%. (Verdad)

• Let’s Face It, Most Bankers Are Going Back to the Office Despite the press releases, very few companies have actually committed to new, more flexible ways of working. Credit Suisse is a case in point. (Bloomberg)

• Why fragility is the new reality for the stock market An imbalance has developed between the supply of and demand for liquidity, and as a result we’ve seen a significant increase in the potential for the public equity market to jump from a state of calm to one of chaos. Consequently, we tend to distrust situations where stability has become the consensus, as we believe any change in the narrative is apt to bring surprisingly drastic changes in the equilibrium. (Wellington Management)

• Record Stock Sales From Money-Losing Firms Ring the Alarm Bells If you think a rush by companies to sell their shares is a bad omen for the market, imagine a scenario where most of the sales come from firms that don’t make money. It’s happening now. Since the end of March, almost 100 unprofitable U.S. companies, including GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., have raised money through secondary offerings, twice as many as coming from profitable firms. (Bloomberg)

• Shrinkflation Is an Economic Monster Worth Watching When inflation strikes, retailers have a proven strategy to pass the costs on to consumers. (Bloomberg)

• No, it doesn’t need to be a Zoom: We’re wasting hours of our lives on inefficient video calls. Here’s how to decide when you should jump on a Zoom – and when not to (Wired)

• The Future of Fire in Canada We’re on the brink of a ‘runaway fire age.’ Here’s why. And how to respond. (Tyee)

• Instagram’s Parent Trap Influencers modelling an idyllic image of motherhood are highly clickable—but pictures never tell the whole story (Walrus)

• The population inflection For a long time population growth in the region was quite sedate and predictable, growing slowly at around 1%/year and that’s what the CRD has used to project population for the next 20 years in the Regional Growth Strategy. However starting in 2011, population growth in many parts of the Greater Victoria area accelerated suddenly, and this new higher rate of growth has continued up to 2020, the most recent data available. (House Hunt Victoria)

Real Estate, Investment Returns, Oil, China, Social Media, THC, and Britney Spears

Monday morning news drop

• A new wave of buyers expected to hit B.C. real estate market Throughout the pandemic, home sales soared, and in some markets, set record prices. Industry insiders say that postpandemic, the B.C. housing market is expected to boom again – driven by Canadians returning home and the federal government’s plan to bring in more than 1.2 million immigrants by 2023. (Globe and Mail)

• Farmland Investing: Impact Beyond Returns Farmland is the latest asset class to be revolutionized by the fintech wave. Whether it’s through REITs, commodity ETFs or crowdfunding platforms, farmland sticks out among investors, both in terms of its attractive return on investment and its potential to increase the sustainability of the agriculture sector. (Worth)

• How Last Century’s Oil Wells Are Messing With Texas Right Now Ranchers and regulators are contending with uncontrolled leaks from thousands of abandoned oil and gas sites that could render some land “functionally uninhabitable.” (Bloomberg)

• How big business exploits small business Companies like Facebook and Uber say they’re supporting small businesses while squashing them. But what can be less obvious is that these same entities are constantly finding new ways to stunt small-business growth to keep new entrants and potential competitors at bay. They also create roadblocks and find ways to extract money and power from small businesses in order to maintain their positions and increase profits. (Vox)

• ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong Neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. Officials are pressed to pledge their loyalty. (NYT)

• When the US risks being leapfrogged: Three decades ago many fretted that Japan was set to overwhelm America’s prowess; now it’s China and the fears are eerily similar (Asia Times)

• Reddit Hates Short Sellers, But the Stock Market Needs Them Meme investors may like cutting shorts off at the knees, yet when the goal is setting accurate prices, people betting on shares to fall provide crucial information. (Businessweek)

• “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. (Teaching American History)

• The Forever Virus: A Strategy for the Long Fight Against COVID-19 The virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic is not going away. SARS-CoV-2 cannot be eradicated. Among humans, global herd immunity, once promoted as a singular solution, is unreachable. Most countries simply don’t have enough vaccines to go around, and even in the lucky few with an ample supply, too many people are refusing to get the shot. (Foreign Affairs)

• America’s Pot Labs Have A THC Problem America’s legal weed industry sold over $17 billion of pot last year and the industry’s obsession with THC, pot’s most famous intoxicant, has created financial rewards for every marginal increase in THC potency. “THC inflation is pernicious, it’s easy to accomplish and there are strong financial incentives to do it.” (FiveThirtyEight)

• Robbing the X-Box Vault - Inside a $10 million gift card cheat A junior Microsoft engineer figured out a nearly perfect Bitcoin generation scheme. (Bloomberg)

• Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity Researchers who specialize in widely different fields, from climate science to philosophy, make the case that academics should treat the study of technology’s large-scale impact on society as a “crisis discipline.” A crisis discipline is a field in which scientists across different fields work quickly to address an urgent societal problem — like how conservation biology tries to protect endangered species or climate science research aims to stop global warming. (Vox)

• The social media influencers are just getting started Don’t believe rumours of their decline and imminent extinction. A revolutionary new digital marketplace is emerging, which will be dominated by content “creators” defined by their authenticity, transparency and values (Tortoise)

• The Internet Is Rotting: Too much has been lost already. Rather than a single centralized network modeled after the legacy telephone system, operated by a government or a few massive utilities, the internet was designed to allow any device anywhere to interoperate with any other device, allowing any provider able to bring whatever networking capacity it had to the growing party. But the glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. (The Atlantic)

• Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years. (New Yorker)

Commodity Traders, Nike's Business Model, Economy, Macaloney Scotch, and Extreme Heat

Wednesday morning news drop - Tomorrow is Canada day, we will be taking the day off!

• Commodity Traders Harvest Billions While Prices Rise for Everyone Else From oil to steel, raw material prices are surging. As the world economy recovers, how much further does the boom have to run? (Bloomberg)

• The balance in Nike’s business is shifting dramatically Nike didn’t make its billions alone. Most of its sales have come from selling to wholesale partners such as department stores, mom-and-pop shops, sporting goods specialists, and all the thousands of retail businesses Nike has long relied on to distribute its products to shoppers. Just a decade ago, in 2011, roughly 84% of Nike brand sales were still to wholesale customers. Sales Nike made to shoppers itself, through channels such as its stores and website, amounted to just 16% of its business. (Quartz)

• A financial shock is coming for those who jumped into the housing market during the COVID-19 pandemic The widely anticipated post-COVID discretionary spending binge is variously being branded as the Roaring 20s; revenge spending; YOLO, for you only live once; and MUFLT, for make up for lost time. A recent personal finance column warned of the risks of getting carried away with this spending in ways that increase debt. The smart splurge is one you can pay for out of savings. (Globe and Mail)

• Seven Reasons to Be Extremely Optimistic About the Economy Right Now The U.S. economy is in the middle of an awkward transition. Like a groggy bear roused from hibernation, the country is no longer dormant due to the pandemic but isn’t quite back in full form either. Millions remain unemployed, businesses are having trouble hiring, workers are still avoiding the office, and shortages of everything from lumber to computer chips have helped push up consumer prices. (Slate)

• Why Aren’t Interest Rates Higher? We may not get 4-5% sustained inflation but we could see 2-3% which would be a step up from the 1-2% post-2008 recovery. And we may not see 6-7% real GDP growth continue but it’s certainly possible for 3-4% for a few years as opposed to the 2% or so we’ve become accustomed to. Yet interest rates remain stubbornly low. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Injuries Are Haunting the NBA Playoffs. How Teams Respond Will Decide Them. Atlanta found a way to steal Game 4 without its superstar. Milwaukee may have to do the same in Game 5. It’s been an all-too-common theme this postseason, and one that isn’t likely to go away. (Ringer)

• 'Big Scotch' is going after this Canadian distiller from Victoria, BC for naming his whisky after himself The Scotch Whisky Association filed a lawsuit alleging Graeme Macaloney's distillery was illegally branding its whisky as though it were Scotch, with his use of words like 'island' and even his surname, 'Macaloney' (McLean’s)

• Can We Survive Extreme Heat? Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come (Rolling Stone)

Miami Condo Collapse, Employee Leverage, and Dollar Cost Averaging

Tuesday morning news drop

• Before Miami collapse, engineers warned of major concrete structural slab damage Owners of units in a Florida oceanfront condo building that collapsed with deadly consequences were just days away from a deadline to start making steep payments toward more than US$9 million in major repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier. (On-Site)

• The Miami condo collapse is a devastating reminder of America’s artificial land problem Big chunks of American cities are built on man-made land that is a climate catastrophe waiting to happen (The Week)

• The Miami Building Collapse Is a Warning: Waiting to trace the exact lines of causation misses the point. (Slate)

• Workers Are Gaining Leverage Over Employers Right Before Our Eyes “Employers are becoming much more cognizant that yes, it’s about money, but also about quality of life.” (New York Times)

• How Often Does Dollar Cost Averaging Fail? To start, I ran a simulation where I invested $100 a month for 10 years (i.e., $12,000) into different portfolios and compared their performance to sitting in cash. (Of Dollars and Data)

• 16 Unbelievable Facts About the Markets The 25 years ending March 2020 saw long-term bonds beat the U.S. stock market. From the spring of 1996 through March 2020, long-term government bonds returned 8.2% annually versus a return of 8.0% per year for the S&P 500. And they did so with one-third less volatility. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Social class in America America is a class-stratified society. Class looms so large over our society that we don’t even see it, like a roof that’s so big we think it’s the sky. Only once we finally step outside do we look back at the towering edifice do we see it, (Noahpinion)

• Google’s Antitrust Cases: A Guide for the Perplexed The company is facing multiple lawsuits from the Department of Justice and three dozen states. Here’s what you need to know. (Wired)

Residential Schools, Cost of Living, Crypto, and Dollar Stores

Monday morning news drop

• What to know about Canada’s residential schools and the unmarked graves found nearby For the second time in less than a month, a First Nation in Canada reported grim news: Ground-penetrating radar had uncovered evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves near a former residential school for Indigenous children. (Washington Post)

• Millennials vs. baby boomers: Why the cost of living has skyrocketed for young Canadians In 1976 — when the majority of baby boomers, born between 1946 to 1965, were coming of age as young adults — it took a typical young person five years of full-time work to save a 20 per cent down payment on an average-priced home in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Metro Vancouver and many parts of Canada (Global)

• ‘It’s turmoil’: Why the global bike shortage isn’t ending soon Supply chains are under stress. That’s especially the case for bicycles, a booming industry in the pandemic (Globe and Mail)

• The Inside Story of the Sideways Ship That Broke Global Trade How the Ever Given and its billion-dollar cargo got stuck, got free, got impounded, and got taken to court. (Businessweek)

• The Dramatic Crash of a Buzzy Cryptocurrency Raises Eyebrows Just last month, the ICP crypto token, tied to a project backed by prestigious venture capitalists, was worth tens of billions of dollars. Then, its value collapsed. (New York Times)

• He Thought He Could Outfox the Gig Economy. He Was Wrong Jeffrey Fang was a ride-hailing legend, a top earner with relentless hustle. Then his minivan was carjacked—with his kids in the back seat. (Wired)

• Glaciers All Over the World Are Shrinking Fast—See for Yourself Advances in satellite technology reveal ice masses in Alaska and Asia have lost 4% of their volume in less than a decade. (Bloomberg)

• He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality. Doug Guthrie, once one of America’s leading China bulls, rang the alarm on doing business there. He spoke about his time at Apple. (New York Times)

• Millions of Americans Are About to Lose Their Homes: When the CDC’s eviction moratorium ends on June 30, what will still-struggling renters do? (Slate)

• Everyone Is Quitting Their Job and It’s Great Regardless of the exact reason why, people seem to treating the reopening era as moment of professional liberation. (Slate)

• The economics of dollar stores A visual explainer of the numbers behind America’s ubiquitous bargain-basement chains: How do dollar stores make money? (The Hustle)

• Passan: How Wander Franco became MLB’s next can’t-miss kid Franco is a switch-hitting, home-run-thumping, smooth-fielding, mad-dashing shortstop. In a recent nine-game stretch, he saw 105 pitches and didn’t once swing and miss. In a league in which the average age is over 21, a teenager is clearly the alpha — like Zion Williamson, only with a bat and glove. Franco brings grown men to hyperbole. (ESPN)

Videos of the week, BC Construction Opioid Crisis, Vaccine Hesitancy, and Subsidizing Climate Change

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• BC’s Construction Industry Is ‘Ground Zero’ for Opioid Crisis among Workers Substance use has plagued the trades for a long time. It’s now more serious than ever. (Tyee)

• 'It's complicated': Vaccine hesitancy continues among contractors Construction workers’ skepticism about COVID-19 vaccinations is raising issues for employers and public health officials. (Construction Dive)

• Subsidizing Climate Change 2021 How the Horgan government continues to sabotage BC’s climate plan with fossil fuel subsidies (Stand Earth)

• China Crushed Jack Ma, and His Fintech Rivals Are Next Ant has lost at least $70 billion in value since its scuttled IPO, and companies from Tencent to JD.com are under pressure, too. The winners? The country’s state-backed banks. (Businessweek)

• The ever-changing pressures of running an Instagram business Instagram wants sellers to post more and leave the app less. (Vox)

• Hopes Are High for the mRNA Technology that Is Leading Us Out of the Pandemic The vaccine success stories at BioNTech and Moderna may only be the beginning. Doctors and researchers want to use the revolutionary mRNA technology to fight the world’s worst scourges: from cancer to dementia. (Spiegel)

• 4,368 Episodes Later, Conan O’Brien’s Late-Night Run Ends As the television host leaves TBS, here’s how his comedy has evolved over 28 years (Wall Street Journal)

• Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing Algorithms are integral to how we find and consume art. But old-fashioned browsing still has its benefits (Walrus)

Videos of the Week

Mikey February Twin Pin Indo Sessions - V.1 Mikey February recently took a few his new Twin Pins over to quiet Indonesian reef pass in Indonesia to experience a range of conditions. In this video you can hear Mikey's insights about how the Twin Pin all came together between him and Britt Merrick, as well as his sizing

QUICK & DIRTY 1 | Finn Iles Quick & Dirty is a three-part video series, filmed by Rupert Walker, designed to showcase some of my favourite trails around BC and the stuff that I like to ride day-to-day.

Triple Crown '21 The North Shore Triple Crown is nothing new: Starting at the water in Deep Cove, we pedal to the very top trails of Seymour, Fromme, and Cypress. 74km in distance, 2800m of elevation gain, and 8 hours of moving time, make this one hell of a ride. Come along for the suffer fest with our crew: Eric Lawrenuk, Geoff Gulevich, Ross Measures, Fraser Vaage, Scott Mackay, Sam Honcharuk, Ryan Vanderham and Taylor Booth.

Drop the Pin - Colton Klein

ROUGH CUT: Jack O'Grady's "Pass~Port" Part There’s no good way to test Jack’s tricks—it’s do or die on every try. See how hard he went for one of the gnarliest parts to date.

Eli Williams' "DoomSayers" Part Usually you gotta pick between tech brilliance and bowl-burning skills, but Eli has it all. Miss this and you’re cooked.