Videos of the Week, Joe Rogan Loosing Influence, and Big Bank Taxes

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• This is how much the Big Six banks would have to pay if Trudeau's tax goes through

  But the big losers could be bank shareholders (Financial Post)

• Price Rules Everything Around Me Prices are what drive narratives around asset classes, not the other way around. It’s not that crypto actually had a revolutionary change in the past month and then prices moved accordingly. Rather, prices went up and now people are attributing that change to some fundamental change in the space. (Of Dollars And Data)

• How Low Can Fund Fees Go? The average expense ratio for investors has fallen by more than half since 2000. (Morningstar)

• Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence A Verge investigation shows how going exclusive stunted Rogan’s power (The Verge)

• Vaccinated Democratic Counties Are Leading the Economic Recovery Data show America’s output is concentrated in counties that Biden won—which are better protected against delta (Businessweek)

• Remember When September Was Going to Be the Return to Normal in the U.S.? The delta variant is jeopardizing the economy’s long-awaited Fall comeback. (Businessweek)

• The ‘Hedonistic Altruism’ of Plant-Based Meat Ethan Brown, the founder and C.E.O. of Beyond Meat, on his moral and environmental priorities. (New York Times)

Videos of the week

QUEEN CITY CINEMA - DIG 'IN THE CUT'

Leatt - Back to the Streets feat. Andrea Maranelli and Szymon Godziek Post pandemic lockdown Leatt riders Andrea Maranelli and Szymon Godziek were eager to get back on the streets. Shot in Warsaw, Poland the two riders spent 3 nights cruising the city, searching for the perfect spots. In their search they discovered the amazing lights and life that Warsaw nighttime offers.

Mason Silva's SOTY Cover Nosepick After his outrageous year, Mason rode into 2021 bruised and a little broken. But when it came time to get a photo for the SOTY issue, he charged at this film-studio spot with a full-commitment nosepick. Never underestimate our guy.

Vans X Norma Ibarra | Skate Photobook | VANS Norma Ibarra is a skateboarder, mountain biker, photographer, gardener, and social media marketer, all rolled into one. Originally from Mexico, she is committed to documenting skaters and shedding light on lesser-known communities around the world. For this project,

Fabiana Delfino's "Spitfire" Part Fabi roams from LA to The Bay and beyond, treating us to some high-speed stoke and yet another surprise hit at Potrero. She brings the heat.

BONES Wheels' "Genetic Diversity" Video Joslin, Decenzo, Gustavo and an all-star cast ignite spots from every corner of the globe before Marek Zaprazny finishes the job in Prague.

JENKEM - The Story Behind Nike's "What If?" Campaign

The Stomping Grounds - Official Trailer For decades, the pursuit of adventure, deep powder and massive spines has taken professional skiers like Mark Abma and Michelle Parker to the far reaches of the globe. As skiers, the desire to seek more and to escape is ingrained in our DNA. But that doesn’t mean our immediate

“Maneuvers” by Sämi Ortlieb Sämi Ortlieb is an accomplished skier, designer, filmmaker, animator, and member of a hardcore punk band. In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Maneuvers,” his many passions collide into a playful ode to the do-it-yourself origins of skiing and its close relationship to nature.

Prolyfyck Run Crew: Through the language of running, Prolyfyck Run Crew is creating a safe space where Black runners can see themselves represented, and all runners are welcome, in Charlottesville, VA.

Canada Election Housing Policies, Corporate Cash, and Charlie Watts

Thursday morning news drop

• Election housing policy: The bad, the ineffective, and the missing The housing market has been on fire not just in Victoria but all around Canada. All the attention has been on the sharp uptick after the pandemic, but the housing market actually started heating up in mid 2019 and the latest performance was simply an acceleration of a previously existing trend. (House Hunt Victoria)

• Wall Street During the Pandemic: The Impossible Is Now Commonplace One lesson from the market’s relentless climb is that sometimes the rules don’t matter. (Businessweek)

• Are We in a Melt-Up? “Of all the things that you should do during a melt-up, the most important is to get invested. Do not sit in cash. Why? Because even if the market does eventually return to its prior levels, sitting in cash will destroy you psychologically.” (Of Dollars And Data)

• Companies Are Hoarding Record Cash Amid Delta Fears Cash and short-term investments on corporate balance sheets rose in the second quarter (Wall Street Journal)

• The new threat to China’s luxury boom: What to know Luxury stocks tumbled last week as the Chinese government announced a crackdown on wealth inequality. Here’s what that means for the industry. (Vogue)

• In This Housing Boom, Mortgages Are for Losers To boost entry-level homeownership for lower-income buyers, the government needs to make the market less appealing to the cash-rich Wall Street investors who have taken over. (Bloomberg)

• Some Wall Streeters are fed up with their unvaccinated coworkers As Wall Street scrambles to find safe ways to return its bankers to the office as the Delta variant surges, some financiers have found a scapegoat for the mess: the unvaccinated. Across America, roughly 57 percent of people are vaccinated, but at top Wall Street firms, that number is north of 90 percent. (NY Post)

• How Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are handling the Taliban The world might accept the Taliban as a legitimate government. Will social media companies? (Vox)

• A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess. (Ars Technica)

• The High Priest of Cryptopia Regrets Nothing Ian Freeman could have been a bitcoin billionaire. Instead he could go to prison for the rest of his life. (New York Magazine)

• Charlie Watts, the Unlikely Soul of the Rolling Stones In a band that defined debauched rock ’n’ roll, he was a quiet, dapper jazz fan. But their unusual chemistry defined the rhythm of the Stones, and of rock. (New York Times)

Business Strategy Post Covid and High Performing Employees

Wednesday morning news drop

• In a post-COVID world, CPAs can become an organization’s GPS As trusted advisers, accountants can play a pivotal role in crafting a company’s vision for the future (CPA Canada)

• Let Your Top Performers Move Around the Company As a manager, it’s human nature to want to hang on to the superstars in your group, department, or division. But ultimately, that’s detrimental to the organization and to the individuals involved. Multiple studies on talent mobility show that actively moving employees into different roles is one of the most underutilized, yet most effective, development and cultural enhancement techniques in companies today. In fact, research has shown that high-performance organizations are twice as likely to emphasize talent mobility versus low-performance companies. Building a culture of mobility is a trait of very healthy organizations, and the benefits are clear. Cross-functional collaboration increases, departmental cooperation is enhanced, innovation improves, and companies begin working more as one cohesive team instead of separate fiefdoms. (Harvard Business Review)

• Which Country is the Cheapest for Starting a Business? Starting a new business isn’t as simple as coming up with an idea. In addition to the time investment needed to formulate and create a business, there’s often a hefty capital requirement. A new business usually requires paying different fees for licensing, permits, and approvals, and many governments also have minimum on-hand capital requirements. (Visual Capitalist)

• How Tim Cook has grown the Apple empire in his decade as CEO Ten years into the job, Cook now leads the most valuable company in the world — technology or otherwise — and it remains among the most influential. More than a billion people worldwide use its devices and tens of millions of developers have built businesses on its software platforms. (CNN)

• Hedge Funds Are Hot Again. Good Luck Finding One That’ll Take Your Money A record number of funds are closing to new cash. Investors risk missing out on the top money makers. “The reality is the best performers are dictating terms . . . the easy way of making money by buying two or three multi-manager platforms is closed.” (Bloomberg)

• The Carrot and the Stick Which incentive is more powerful – The Carrot or The Stick? Any parent of a three-year-old can tell you that both are necessary. The trick is to find the right balance between the two. Too much Stick and the child loses confidence. Too much Carrot and the child learns to skirt the rules. (The Belle Curve)

• End of the Line for Uber Uber was never going to be profitable. Never. It lured drivers and riders into cars by subsidizing rides with billions and billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, keeping up the con-artist’s ever-shifting patter about how all of this would some day stand on its own. Accounting tricks and tech gimmickry don’t matter when the coffers are empty. (Marker)

• The Shadowy Business of International Education Foreign students are lied to and exploited on every front. They’re also propping up higher education as we know it (Walrus)

• From Daniel Craig to Dwayne Johnson, Inside the Biggest Movie Stars’ Salaries The digital revolution may have changed things dramatically, but don’t lose any sleep over the financial statements of your favorite actors. Film stars continue to be paid handsomely for their duties and are often able to earn much more by leaving the big screen behind and diving headfirst into streaming. (Variety)

• Saving Pop Punk? That’s Just Their Warm-Up Act. Meet Me @ the Altar want to be household names — and that’s not a crazy notion. (New York Times)

Lumber Prices Are Down and Housing Platforms Are Up

Tuesday morning news drop

• Profits just about double at BMO and Scotia as big banks post quarterly earnings Banks setting aside far less money to cover bad loans than earlier in pandemic (CBC)

• Unprecedented collapse' in lumber prices forces one Canadian sawmill to curb production Lumber companies may have added too much production, too quickly, with lumber sinking 70 per cent since May (Financial Post)

• Carson Jerema: Why the best housing-affordability plan for Canada is no plan at all Vacant-property taxes and bans on foreign buyers don't address why the market is overheated (National Post)

• Ten things to know about the federal Conservatives’ housing platform With a federal election taking place in Canada on September 20, the Conservative Party of Canada has released its platform, which includes several housing-related measures; they include a pledge to create one million new homes in the first three years of a Conservative government. (Nick Falvo)

• Trudeau promises new incentives worth billions and a tax on 'flipping' to help Canadians buy a home Liberal Party releases aggressive housing plan amid a COVID-fuelled boom (CBC)

• Ten things to know about the federal NDP’s housing platform With a federal election taking place in Canada on September 20, the New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada has released its platform, which includes important housing-related measures. (Nick Falvo)

• I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences: 1: For 20 years, politicians, elites + DC military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan. 2: What happened last week was inevitable + anyone saying differently is still lying to you.” (Yahoo News)

• If You Bought Municipal Bonds a Long Time Ago, This Is a Great Time Prices surge, hurting yields for new investors, as Biden comments ignite tax-increase fears and local governments weather Covid-19 (Wall Street Journal)

• The First Step Toward Protecting Everyone Else From Teslas Why the government’s clever investigation into “Autopilot” might actually work (Slate)

• Who Has the Cure for America’s Declining Birthrate? Canada. Over the last century, two moments that transformed America and positioned it as the global economic leader were the post-World War II economic boom and the I.T. revolution of the 1990s. In both cases, America tore down many forms of discrimination and other barriers to harness the talents of marginalized groups in the country and to welcome new ones, injecting demographic vitality into the economy. To continue America’s upward trajectory in the 21st century, the country must reverse its current demographic decline. (New York Times)

• The Delta Variant Is Sending More Children to the Hospital. Are They Sicker, Too? It is not yet clear whether the Delta variant causes more severe disease in children, but its high level of infectiousness is causing a surge of pediatric Covid-19 cases. (New York Times)

Hot Economy, Fixed Income, Crypto, Tether, and a Canadian Covid Hero

Monday morning news drop

• Biden and the Fed Wanted a Hot Economy. There’s Risk of Getting Burned. So far, in a real-world test of a new approach to economic policy, prices have been rising faster than wages. (Upshot)

• Here’s More Evidence That Factor Investing Works in Fixed Income With investors concerned about future inflation as well as persistently low yields, Northern Trust researchers find that systematic factors may provide some new portfolio opportunities. (Institutional Investor)

• Vanguard Total Bond Market: A Success Story For more than 30 years, the fund has delivered on all counts. (Morningstar)

• New Regulation Could Cause a Split in the Crypto Community The infrastructure bill is a watershed moment in the history of cryptocurrency. The technology—at its core a crypto-anarchist, anti-bank, borderline anti-government manifesto disguised as code—has finally acquired that great marker of prestige: a lobby. The fact that some senators were ready to fight in crypto’s corner appears to show that the cryptocurrency industry is more than a gaggle of Twitter accounts and some blue-sky venture capitalists. (Wired)

• From Doge Soldiers to Bitcoinists: A Field Guide to the Crypto Faithful For Ethereans, maxis, yield farmers, and no-coiners, digital assets aren’t just an investment but a way of life. (Businessweek)

• The Tether controversy, explained: How stable are stablecoins? What if a digital currency wipeout could injure — or even destroy — the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem? Lately, there’s been a focus on stablecoins, the quiet power players of the cryptocurrency space. (The Verge)

• Covid’s Forgotten Hero: The Untold Story Of The Scientist Whose Breakthrough Made The Vaccines Possible The scientist most responsible for this critical delivery method is a little-known 57-year-old Canadian biochemist named Ian MacLachlan. As chief scientific officer of two small companies, Protiva Biotherapeutics and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, MacLachlan led the team that developed this crucial technology. Today, though, few people—and none of the big pharmaceutical companies—openly acknowledge his ground breaking work, and MacLachlan earns nothing from the technology he pioneered. (Forbes)

• COVID Patients Fighting for Their Lives Are Still Refusing the Vaccine Arkansas has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the country. VICE News embedded at a hospital in Little Rock where patients facing the threat of death still won’t get the shot. (Vice)

• All-Inclusive Magic Mushroom Retreats Are the New Luxury ‘Trips’ Resorts are starting to wake up to the appeal of mind expansion. (Bloomberg)

• The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage We are at war with ourselves, but not for the reasons you think. The politics of the radical right is the politics of frustration—the sour impotence of those who find themselves unable to understand, let alone command, the complex mass society that is the polity today…Insofar as there is no real left to counterpoise to the right, the liberal has become the psychological target of that frustration. (Mother Jones)

• The Real C.E.O. of “Succession” How the writer Jesse Armstrong keeps the billionaire Roy family trapped in its gilded cage. (New Yorker)

• Behind the Purple Curtain with Mysterious Dance Music Legend Moodymann The Detroit native grants a rare interview reflecting on his legacy, his fascination with Prince, and his appearance as a main character in Grand Theft Auto. (GQ)

• Chris and Rich Robinson swore never to speak again. But for the Black Crowes, rock heals all wounds The reunion, which has also spun off a deluxe reissue of “Money Maker,” marks Robinson’s reconciliation with his younger brother, guitarist Rich Robinson, with whom Chris formed the band near Atlanta in the mid-1980s — and with whom he fought explosively over money and creative control even as the Crowes went on to sell millions of records and blanket MTV with soulful, hard-hitting Southern rock songs. (Los Angeles Times)

Videos of the Week, Bitcoin, and Pop Culture Reboots

Friday morning news drop and videos of the week

• Bad News Selling the story of disinformation (Harpers)

• When the Ducks are Quacking Feed’Em Stock issuance highest ever, as firms and Wall Street know when it’s time to sell to eager buyers (GMO)

• Why Bitcoin is Doomed What makes a distributed network secure against attack is the costly redundancy built into the system (whether that redundancy is competing miners in a Proof of Work system or competing validators in a Proof of Stake system). (The Attic)

• How Did Postmedia and CBC Fall for This Bit of Bitcoin Hype? Headlines touted a crypto boom for Alberta. A quick bit of research would have killed the dubious story. (Tyee)

• Waymo Is 99% of the Way to Self-Driving Cars. The Last 1% Is the Hardest The world’s most famous autonomous car shop has lost its CEO and is still getting stymied by traffic cones. What’s taking so long? (Businessweek)

• The IRS has a big opportunity to fix the way Americans file taxes You shouldn’t need TurboTax to file your taxes. The IRS can and should make its own service. (Vox)

• Living and dying with covid How the world is grappling with yet another major coronavirus surge (Washington Post)

• Dissecting the Unusual Biology of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant An ability to build up higher concentrations of viral particles in people’s airways and mutations that might boost its ability to infect human cells could be what gives the Delta variant its evolutionary edge. (The Scientist)

• I’m Sick of Reboots and Rewatches and You Should Be Too We've all spent the pandemic in a pop culture feedback loop. For the love of God, make it stop (Walrus)

• The 21 Most Exciting Young Musicians on Planet Earth In search of music’s voices of the future, each of GQ’s 21 global editions nominated a local artist across a world of genres—from J-pop to flamenco, rap to reggaeton—to show us who’s shaping the zeitgeist and defining the sounds of tomorrow. (GQ)

Videos of the Week

Why Olympians Are So Broke | Big Business Across the US, Olympic athletes are working part-time jobs, driving for DoorDash and Uber, and crowdsourcing funds. We break down how USA Olympians make money, and why the system left many of America’s top athletes broke.

SUNDAY X DIG 'NO SERVICE'

RATTY MATY - NO BAD THOUGHTS Just nuts

Anthony Panza Extreme Citi-Biking In NYC!

Felipe Nunes' "Limitless" Part One of the gnarliest to do it, Felipe charges rails and hills head-on and even hits vert with the Birdman. This part smashes through every barrier. Unreal.

Guy Mariano Life On Video | Full Story Guy Mariano started skating over 30 years ago in Burbank, California, in the 1980s, and he’s managed to push the boundaries of street skating more than just about anyone. He revolutionized what was considered possible on a little piece of wood with 4 wheels and no nose—before most of you were even born—and he’s responsible for arguably the most innovative and progressive video parts ever filmed. (In 2018, Mariano was inducted in The Skateboarding Hall Of Fame.) Take a deep dive into Guy Mariano's history with our 'Life On Video' doc series, which ends with one of his heaviest parts to date.

Torren Martyn - LOST TRACK ATLANTIC - Episode 3 - Full Film Lost Track Atlantic is a four-part series that takes you on the journey of a lifetime, from the far North Atlantic to the tropical, equatorial coast of West Africa.

AUDI NINES 2020 'Mixtape' - Peter Kaiser This event and its vibe is something not comparable to any of the others. As Audi Nines is always a season highlight for myself I wanted to showcase what I was able to put down last year as well as carry the events vibe throughout the video, enjoy.

COMMENCAL Canada - Welcome Max Langille Navigating your way into a new career isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, effort, focus, and a little bit of help to reach what you’ve set out to achieve. If you know Max Langille, you know he’s no slacker and it’s hard to shake his focus once he’s set his mind on something. For now, he’s balancing the seasonal working winters to action packed summers on his ABSOLUT, CLASH, and FURIOUS. Max is excited to see what the future holds and we’re excited to see him grow into his own. WELCOME to COMMENCAL Bicycles, Max…Officially.

Steve Vanderhoek had the Gnarliest's Crash while filming this... I had never seen Steve crash before... I was very scared for him.

BACK IN WHISTLER BIKE PARK!! 2021 My first time in Whistler since 2019 and it feels good to be back! I only had a few hours but made the most of it and smashed out some of my favourite trails!!

PNW Components Presents Drop Into Summer - RAW with Cody Kelley There’s no better way to spend your summer than getting drifty on some dusty trails. Cody Kelley and Justin Olsen (film/photo) journeyed into the Utah foothills to capture the RAW vibes that only solo sessions on loose singletrack can provide. Enjoy 96 seconds of the purest nature and MTB sounds and start planning your next summer riding adventure before the season turns.

Skateistan - To Live And Skate Kabul: Skateistan: To Live And Skate Kabul is a beautifully shot film that follows the lives of a group of young skateboarders in Afghanistan. Operating against the backdrop of war and bleak prospects, the Skateistan charity project is the world’s first co-educational skateboarding school, where a team of international volunteers work with girls and boys between the ages of 5 and 17, an age group largely untouched by other aid programmes.

Food Prices are Going Up, Stolen Bikes, and Coral Reefs

Thursday morning news drop

• Soaring Cost of Food Is Forcing Families to Scrimp at the Dinner Table Inflation is slamming the freezer shut and leading households around the world to make sacrifices. (Businessweek)

• The Best Advantage in Life All else equal, rich parents are the best advantage you can have if you want a career in investment management. In fact, having rich parents is probably one of the best advantages you can have in life and I have the data to prove it. (Of Dollars And Data)

• 40 Things I Don’t Know by Age 40 I’ve seen lots of people share the wisdom they’ve gained over the years on their milestone birthdays. I still have plenty of stuff to learn so here are 40 things I don’t know at age 40: (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Behind the Fight to Save the Gulf’s Spectacular Coral Reefs About 100 miles from Galveston, Flower Garden Banks is home to some of the healthiest coral communities in the world. Some unlikely allies came together to help expand protections, but will it be enough? (Texas Monthly)

• A bike stolen in Manitoba resurfaced in B.C. It's more common than you think Bicycles can be moved between cities within hours of being stolen, says Canada's only bike detective (CBC)

• California’s yoga, wellness and spirituality community has a QAnon problem It seemed like the end of a typical reiki attunement: A group of women wearing yoga pants and flowing floral skirts, gathered in a healer’s home after a course in the alternative therapy of balancing chakras, clearing auras and transferring energy. But it was the early days of the pandemic and COVID-19 was spreading fast. The women in the room stood so close that their bodies touched. No one wore masks. (LA Times)

• “I Got a Second Chance”: From Puff Daddy to Diddy to Love Sean Combs was the original influencer. Now the artist and mogul is defining his next era—and launching a record label. (Vanity Fair)

• The beautiful world of heavy metal: Why does a genre obsessed with death attract the kindest people? (UnHerd)

• All the Best Cars as the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance Returns The glamorous classic car show was back in full force—with the cars to match. (Bloomberg)

Inflation in Canada, Afghanistan, and the Return of CM Punk

Wednesday morning news drop

• Inflation rate spikes to highest level in a decade, at 3.7% in July sharply higher prices for furniture, shelter were major factors in increase. (CBC)

• American CEOs make 351 times more than workers. In 1965 it was 15 to one Rather than address stagnant wages for hourly workers and yawning inequality, corporations are blaming a ‘labor shortage’ (The Guardian)

• The Pret Index: Wall Street Latte Sales Approaching Bear Market Sales of cappuccinos and tuna baguettes are close to entering a bear market in downtown Manhattan, in London’s business district and in Paris. The setback comes as major financial services firms push back return-to-office plans, with the delta variant having driven the average number of new Covid-19 cases in New York City up to almost 2,000 a day—a level not seen since April. (Bloomberg)

• Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms Opposing Afghan factions have long negotiated arrangements to stop fighting — something the U.S. either failed to understand or chose to ignore. (Politico)

• Billions spent on Afghan army ultimately benefited Taliban Built and trained at a two-decade cost of $83 billion, Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly and completely — in some cases without a shot fired — that the ultimate beneficiary of the American investment turned out to be the Taliban. They grabbed not only political power but also U.S.-supplied firepower — guns, ammunition, helicopters and more. (AP)

• This Is What Taliban Control Looks Like in 2021 For all the recriminations and finger-pointing about how the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan so rapidly, there is a hard truth that needs to be reckoned with: The Taliban have spent years preparing for the eventual U.S. withdrawal. (New York Times)

• Canada’s forests haven’t absorbed more carbon than they’ve released since 2001 Up until the last two decades, our forests had the power to sequester in excess of a hundred megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year (Narwhal)

• An Audacious Case for an Ancient Building Style: The Courtyard The idea of arranging housing around enclosed central spaces could find fresh applications in crowded urban areas like Manhattan, designers say. (CityLab)

• This CM Punk thing is really happening, isn’t it? AEW does everything short of officially declaring his return return of CM Punk and Bryan Danielson. There are a couple hard and fast rules in wrestling: 1. Everyone comes back. 2. Nothing is real until it happens. (Deadspin)

• CM Punk’s ‘Pipe Bomb’ 10 Years Later: A Look Back At The 2011 Game-Changing Promo. CM Punk’s Pipe Bomb promo, as it became known in the past decade, quickly turned one of wrestling’s slowest periods into must-watch television, leading to one of the most consequential moments not only in WWE’s storied history, but professional wrestling as a whole. (Cinema Blend)

The Pipe Bomb promo was controversial; WWE cut his mic, it hit a raw nerve, got people talking, and got some wrestling fans excited as a bunch of children in a Mcdonald’s play place. From the UFC to entertainment industry, controversy often creates cash.

Climate Change and the Housing Market, and Walmart vs Amazon

Tuesday morning news drop

Lower interest rates encourage people to take more risks, in general. There is little question about this. By taking short-term interest rates to zero, the Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve have “forced” most investors to find better ways to allocate cash. Take a look at most “high-yield” savings accounts. At a yield of 2% it is enough for people to still keep a material cash position. At 0.5%, people will often look for other options. Riskier options. Lower interest rates are definitely pushing up the value of stocks. Although people were doing crazy things with their money in the 90’s when the 10-year was around 6%. While their is truth to this statement, people have different goals, risk tolerances, and time frames that are not impacted by macroeconomic forces.

• One Number to Gauge Where the Economy Is Headed The yield on the 10-year Treasury note is often a reliable indicator of how Wall Street views the prospects of economic growth — especially when other data points send confusing signals. (New York Times)

• People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart Proof that the online future has arrived: The biggest e-commerce company outside China has unseated the biggest brick-and-mortar seller. (New York Times)

• A Massive Landslide Sends a Wake-Up to BC’s Mining Sector Melting glaciers in the ‘Golden Triangle’ expose new deposits. And pose huge risks. (Tyee)

• Congress’s Financial Conflicts Go Beyond Rand Paul’s Wife A simple fix: Politicians, their staffers and their spouses shouldn’t trade stocks. (Bloomberg)

• Delta Is Bad News for Kids More children are falling ill because more are being infected. More children are falling ill because more are being infected. (The Atlantic)

• Taliban seize power amid chaos in Afghanistan All U.S. Embassy staff in Kabul, including the mission’s top diplomat, were being evacuated. (Politico)

• The Runaway General: The Profile That Brought Down McChrystal The Rolling Stone profile of Stanley McChrystal that changed history (Rolling Stone)

• ‘South Park’ Co-Creator Matt Stone on his $900 Million Deal Moments after Stone signed his new deal with ViacomCBS, we spoke for about an hour about his plans for “South Park,” his disdain for “Space Jam 2” and what it means to have his biggest payday yet. (Bloomberg)

• Will climate change lead to an island population explosion? This year’s fire season has been particularly destructive and may be on pace for another record as well as destroying the entire town of Lytton and many other homes around the interior. The increase in fire severity is not solely due to climate change of course, with our misguided forest management also sharing the blame. The combination of causes aside, it’s not a situation that will likely change for the foreseeable future. For those lucky enough to not be near those fires, the secondary effect has been the smoke. Endless choking smoke. (House Hunt Victoria)

Climate Change and Canadian Real Estate Markets

Monday morning news drop

• Climate risk scores could reshape Canadian real estate markets, some experts say 'We run the risk of people being trapped,' U.S. professor says (CBC)

• Canada's biggest public pensions heavily investing in fossil fuels, new report suggests Pension funds say oil and gas investments can be leveraged in transition to cleaner energy (CBC)

• It’s hard to be a moral person. Technology is making it harder. Digital distractions such as social media and smartphones wreak havoc on our attention spans. Could they also be making us less ethical? (Vox)

• Still Unsure About Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine? Start Here. We’ve collected some of the most common concerns with vaccination mentioned by people who are vaccine hesitant, and we’ve provided evidence-based responses to each one. If you or someone you know share any of these concerns, click through to see what information is out there to help you make this important decision. (FiveThirtyEight)

• The Lucrative Business of Stoking Vaccine Skepticism How misinformation peddlers are using crowdfunding sites to bankroll their work. (Slate)

• Unvaccinated America, In 5 Charts So who, exactly, are we talking about? Three in 10 American adults remain unvaccinated, according to the latest survey from the KFF. But they’re not a monolith — their reasons, backgrounds, politics and willingness to eventually get vaccinated all vary. (Fivethirtyeight)

• What Are Stores Even Thinking With All These Emails? It feels like every company and organization I’ve ever transacted with sends me email every week. Some every day, even. Some multiple times a day. My mortgage broker emails on my birthday and holidays. So does my dentist. Certain retailers email much more often. (The Atlantic)

• Why A Secretive Chinese Billionaire Bought 140,000 Acres Of Land In Texas Sun’s decision to invest in Texas also highlights the difficult situation facing China’s moguls. Over the past few years, the Chinese Communist Party appears to have grown more antagonistic toward private enterprise and wealthy business people. In recent months Chinese authorities reined in globetrotting billionaire Jack Ma, moved to restrict overseas listings and ordered educational companies to become non-profits. Tycoons like Sun, who thrived under Chinese state-backed capitalism, may be feeling pressure to move capital abroad as they grapple with the shift in political winds. (Forbes)

• How the explosive growth in satellites could impact life on Earth Satellites are set to grow by 1,000%+ in the next decade. They might help us predict pandemics and save the planet. (The Hustle)

• Why China’s crypto cowboys are fleeing to Texas Tracking the Bitcoin bros seeking cheap power, lax regulation, and Austin’s best brisket. (Rest of World)