Videos of the Week, iMessage and the Green Bubble, and the Omicron Wave

Friday morning news drop

• Libor, Long the Most Important Number in Finance, Dies at 52 Bankers used it until the end. Regulators say good riddance after its infamous fall. (New York Times)

• Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble The iPhone maker cultivated iMessage as a must-have texting tool for teens. Android users trigger a just-a-little-less-cool green bubble: ‘Ew, that’s gross.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Artists say NFTs are helping thieves steal their work at a jaw-dropping rate NFT art sales are booming. Just without some artists’ permission. NFTs were hyped as a way to make sure artists get paid for their work. Now, many creators are struggling to stop a wave of piracy. (NBC News)

• The Architecture of Tomorrow Mimics Nature to Cool the Planet It’s not just about minimizing environmental harm, but finding ways to regenerate construction materials and restore natural habitats. (Bloomberg)

• ‘Cage-Free’ Is Basically Meaningless, and Other Lies Your Egg Carton Is Telling You All the language you see printed on a carton of eggs are supposedly there to help you make your egg-related purchases. (Lifehacker)

• Four charts that analyze how omicron’s wave compares to previous coronavirus peaks The United States continues to see a huge spike in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant, with numbers surging to double that of the previous January 2021 peak. (Washington Post)

Videos of the Week

CREATIVE SPACE | Max Fredriksson In Creative Space, Max films at an indoor skatepark, to avoid the harsh Swedish winter. The short edit takes us away from the big jumps and focuses on perfection and creativity that some of us only dream of doing.

Haro Sessions - North Carolina - Day 2: Crew: Ryan Nyquist, Dennis Enarson, Matthias Dandois, Alex Leibrock, and Michael Mogollon. Day two of our trip to Wilmington, North Carolina we head to a local concrete park for way more laughs than riding, but there was riding in there for sure. Michael, Alex, and Nyquist all killed the park as Dennis manned the camera while was on the DNR list from casing the box jump 36 times in a row at Ryan's ramp the day before. We found a gritty street spot under a bride down by the river where Matthias filmed a promo for his upcoming La Bastille Frame release and Michael decided to ride a water landing because that's the new hot thing. We ended the day at maybe the nicest indoor bowl in the world, or one of the nicer ones at least.

éclat - Catching L's: The éclat team hit the highway and took a trip to sin city... Vegas! Missed flights, bloody noses, and a broken van to name a few. The L's piled up. Ty Morrow, Julian Arteaga, Bruno Hoffmann and Pat Freyne kept things moving as they scoped out the offerings in the desert.

Nick Matthews' "Venture X Uprise" Part Nick Matthews' "Venture X Uprise" Part

Nightmare's "Instrument" Video The brutal trailer hinted at the bloodshed and disfigurement, but nothing could prepare us for this Nightmare. These kids are insane.

Micah Evangelista - Bourn: The idea of “home” resonates differently for everyone. For some, your hometown can be a place you’re trying to escape from, but for others it has a magnetic pull that can’t be broken. In this two-year film project, Micah and his mother Julianne reflect on some of the moments and mindsets that have shaped his skiing and his youth. In an entirely foot-powered journey through the Mt. Baker backcountry, he now returns to some of his favourite zones and features with an eagerness to explore them like never before. A film by Micah Evangelista and Doug Jambor. Featuring: Micah Evangelista, Julianne Evangelista, Sophia Rouches, Cody Cirillo, Lucas Wachs, Hank Kennedy, and Cameron Munn.

U.S. Inflation Rises to Yet Another 40-year High of 7%

Thursday morning news drop

• U.S. inflation rises to yet another 40-year high of 7% The U.S. inflation rate is at its highest level in 40 years and showing no signs of slowing down, new data revealed Wednesday. Higher than previous month's high of 6.8% and in line with expectations (CBC)

• Trying to make sense of inflation? So is everybody else Markets zig-zag as everyone waits to see how seriously the Fed takes new U.S. data on rising prices (CBC)

• The Bond Market Refuses to Accept Economic Reality Traders are working off an outdated playbook that assumes this recovery will resemble the sluggish one coming out of the financial crisis. (Bloomberg)

• High gas prices, oilpatch labour crunch, pipeline friction: The year ahead in energy The last two years have taken energy markets on a wild ride, with oil prices crashing through the basement at the outset of the pandemic and climbing to more than $85 US a barrel last fall. Industry expects busier 2022 as policy-makers sharpen focus on 'net-zero' plans (CBC)

• Four reasons you’re seeing empty grocery store shelves The omicron surge, extreme weather and record December sales are among the reasons that toilet paper aisle is looking shaky again. (Washington Post)

• Why Grocery Store Shelves Are Bare. Again. Supply chains are made of people. (Slate)

• Look Ahead to 2032, at the Very Least: In this season for forecasts and resolutions, investors will be better off if they are able to think 10 or more years ahead, our columnist says. (New York Times)

• 50 Company Stocks to Watch in 2022 From Airbnb to Volkswagen, keep an eye on these global stocks this year. Factors include growth prospects, management changes, and planned releases of noteworthy products and services. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was important, as were growing sales of electric vehicles, the transition to clean energy, China’s increasing regulatory scrutiny, power shortages, and opportunities in the metaverse. (Businessweek)

• What Is Antivirus Company Norton Even Doing Mining Crypto on Your Computer? when a prominent antivirus firm takes a turn toward cryptocurrency, it’s certainly possible to interpret that move as a sneaky money grab. That was the general gist of Cory Doctorow’s tweet about Norton Crypto this week, in which he pointed out that Norton takes a cut of the cryptocurrencies its users mine (15% percent of the crypto allocated to each miner). But perhaps the more interesting question is what it says about the market for antivirus software that one of the most prominent manufacturers of those products is now going the way of Kodak. (Slate)

• Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump For years, a Welshman who threw away the key to his cybercurrency stash has been fighting to excavate the local landfill. (New Yorker)

• Where buyers came from in 2021 The full year buyer origin data is out, so let’s take a look at what changed and what didn’t about where Victoria buyers moved from in 2021. Remember, this is filled out by agents and is in response to the question “Where is the buyer currently residing?“. That means it’s not a measure of buyer citizenship, and of course it’s always debatable whether someone who moved here to rent for 6 months before purchasing should be considered a local or out of town buyer (in these data they would very likely be considered local). Nevertheless it’s an interesting dataset given it’s been running for 18 years and it seems to match pretty well with both other data sources on migration from StatsCan (figure below) and changes in market activity. (House Hunt Victoria)

Construction Costs Are Up Across North America

Wednesday morning news drop

• Construction costs up across North America Over the past 12 months, (bid) construction costs have risen by 7.42 per cent in North America, says Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) in its latest Quarterly Construction Cost Report (QCR). In Canada, costs in Toronto grew more than 13 per cent between October of 2020 and October of 2021. Further west, in Calgary, cost increases were north of 10 per cent. (Rider Levett Bucknall)

• Lessons From the Tech Bubble It’s one thing to study the past after it was written, it’s another thing to experience it in real-time. Telling future generations about the lockdown cannot possibly convey what it was like to experience it. Looking back at how crazy the numbers got during the dotcom bubble is informative, but data doesn’t tell the whole story. (The Irrelevant Investor)

• Are We Bullish Enough? Two years ago I made a prediction that got me laughed out of the room. Before we were ever wearing masks, being socially distant, or discussing web3, I argued that, “If history were to repeat itself…the S&P 500 would be 4x higher by 2030 than where it is today.” (Of Dollars and Data)

• The 3 Biggest Risks to the Market Right Now The biggest risks are often the ones we don’t see coming but the smaller risks can still cause some short-term discomfort. You could always say war or some other crazy variant or a collapse of civilization as we know it but I’m going to focus on market-related risks here. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• World’s Biggest Crypto Fortune Began With a Friendly Poker Game With $96 billion, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is closing in on tech titans including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. (Bloomberg)

• Why Tesla Soared as Other Automakers Struggled to Make Cars The yawning disparity between the performance of the electric car company and established automakers last year reflects the technological change roiling the industry. (New York Times)

• 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV Revealed with 664 HP, 400-Mile Range Chevy faces off against the F-150 Lightning with its new electric truck. The high-end RST model will offer 664 horsepower and a 10,000-pound towing capacity. (Car and Driver)

• Sustainability: Where fashion is heading in 2022 Last year, a lot of planning was done around fashion sustainability — but less action. The biggest theme as we head into 2022 is the interconnection between carbon emissions, equity and supply chain. (Vogue Business)

• How Mo Salah Became the New King of Football Mohamed Salah is the best player in the world right now. The world just hasn’t admitted it yet. (GQ)

The Great Resignation, Housing Market, and Canadian Oil Subsidies

Tuesday morning news drop

• Quitting is just half the story: the truth behind the ‘Great Resignation’ Workers left their jobs at historic rates, with a record 4.5m quits at the end of November – but it happened against an economic picture that remains difficult to interpret (The Guardian)

• What We Learned About the Economy in 2021 For once, the government tried overheating the economy. For better and worse, it succeeded. (Upshot)

• Supply-Chain Issues Leave New Homes Without Garage Doors and Gutters: Home builders blame bottlenecks for huge backlog of uncompleted homes (Wall Street Journal)

• U.S. Cities With the Most High-Density Housing Builders respond to market conditions when determining what types of structures to build. When demand—and prices—for single-family residences are high, builders are less likely to work on high-density projects. For most of the decade after the Great Recession, high-density units accounted for about one-third of new authorized units, peaking at 38.4% in 2015. (Construction Coverage)

• Foreign Buyers Own 1 In 10 Recently Built Condos In Canada, 1 In 20 Homes In Total Canadian real estate might have a lot more foreign owners than previously thought. Diving through Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data, we found non-resident participation in homeownership soared in 2020. Non-resident buyers have a small share in property transfer records, but foreign capital is pouring in. In the four provinces tracked, about 1 in 10 recently built condos have a foreign owner. (Better Dwelling)

• Electric cars aren’t just vehicles. They’re big batteries. To get more Americans in electric vehicles, we all need to realize they can do much more than just get us around. (Recode)

• Canada has committed to halt financing to the oil and gas industry. To understand what that really means, watch for the fine print A global movement to permanently separate the oil and gas industry from the public purse appears to be gaining momentum, with an overarching objective of repurposing funds to promote renewable energy (Globe and Mail)

Covid's Impact on Health Systems, the Super League Debacle, and Catching an Insurrectionist

Monday morning news drop

• How the American health system is holding up compared to Canada with Covid Omicron is revealing flaws everywhere — and providing lessons about what can be fixed (CBC)

• The Omicron LeBrons Want to Stay in the NBA They signed 10-day contracts when the league was ravaged by Covid. Now some of the NBA’s temps are sticking around. The latest variant was their lucky break. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Great Resignation: Why more Americans are quitting their jobs than ever before We've all seen signs in front of shops, restaurants, and factories: "we're hiring!" "Help wanted!" And now, the Omicron variant is taking a toll on the already depleted workforce. We've wondered how there can be so many open jobs when nearly every employer seems to be offering better pay, benefits and even signing bonuses. (60 Minutes)

• Titans of Carmaking Are Plotting the Overthrow of Elon Musk Volkswagen and Toyota are coming for Tesla, laying out $170 billion worth of investments to stay on top. (Bloomberg)

• America needs immigration to grow and thrive The morphing of immigration into a culture-war wedge issue represents a huge economic risk for the United States of America. Immigration isn’t just important for our identity and culture; it’s also crucial for our economy. There are a number of reasons for this, but they all come down to the challenge of an aging, shrinking population. And right-wing culture warriors like Amy Wax are standing in the way. (Noahpinion)

• ‘There’s no room for error’: The humble tugboat’s crucial role in easing a global crisis Each day on the water, he sees evidence of a seemingly insatiable demand in the comings and goings of container ships, automobile carriers, oil tankers, even the Chiquita banana boat. “Those of us who work out here see everyone’s lives writ large,” he says. “Every day we get a firsthand view of the size and scale of the American economy and American consumerism. Not many appreciate this when they go to the market and buy individual. (Los Angeles Times)

• How we fixed the ozone layer: When it comes to stories of progress, there aren’t many environmental successes to learn from. Although there are some local and national successes – such as the large reductions in local air pollution in rich countries – there are almost none at the global level. Yet there is one exception: the ozone layer. Humanity’s ability to heal the depleted ozone layer is not only our biggest environmental success, it is the most impressive example of international cooperation on any challenge in history. The story behind humanity’s greatest environmental success is too rarely told and too often taken for granted. This is how humanity fixed the ozone layer and why it matters. (Works in Progress)

• 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying Whether it’s taking fruit to work (and to the bedroom!), being polite to rude strangers or taking up skinny-dipping, here’s a century of ways to make life better, with little effort involved … (The Guardian)

• To catch an insurrectionist Everyone thought it was cool to take selfies doing crimes until the FBI got all their data from Google and said hello. (Recode)

• The Super League Debacle Forced Manchester United’s American Owners to Listen to Fans After the Glazer family moved to upend European soccer, supporters of their storied club got a chance to exert some local control. (Bloomberg)

• How Jessica Simpson Almost Lost Her Name The pop star’s billion-dollar fashion brand fell into the hands of the wrong company. After a two-year battle, she finally bought it back. (Bloomberg)

• Inside the mind of an NFL kicker The NFL playoffs start next weekend and here's one safe bet: at least a few games will come down to football's great secret hiding in plain sight. We speak of kickers, who score about a third of the points in the NFL, but only get a small fraction of the respect. (60 Minutes)

Videos of the Week, Bond Markets, the Metagame, and Buying Crashing Growth Stocks

Friday morning news drop

• What Happens When Bonds Lose Money With the Federal Reserve focused on fighting inflation, rate hikes could mean losses for the “safe haven” side of your portfolio. (Businessweek)

• Rules for Buying Crashing Growth Stocks Reasonable people can differ about what’s causing the selloff. If you wanted to blame it on crazy multiples coming back down to earth, momentum, or anything else, I wouldn’t argue. The question is, what does one do about it. (Irrelevant Investor)

• With so many cryptocurrencies, why do any of them have value? Doubts grow about the long-term value of cryptocurrency in 2022 as number of tokens expands. (CBC)

• Money in the Metaverse: In a virtual world full of virtual goods, finance could get weird. (New Yorker)

• Why You Should Ignore the Metagame In every game there are always two games being played. One is the game itself. The other is the game about the game. This is called the metagame. (Of Dollars and Data)

• ‘It Takes More Than Money’: Inside Alliance Bernstein’s Efforts to Retain Diverse Talent Amid the great resignation, the asset manager’s two-year-old coaching program is yielding good results. (Institutional Investor)

• How Bad Are Plastics, Really? Plastic production just keeps expanding, and now is becoming a driving cause of climate change. (The Atlantic)

• Tesla Model S Goes 752 Miles with a Prototype Battery from a Michigan Startup This 'proof of concept' was meant to show that very long-range, environmentally sustainable battery packs can exist—and ONE, Inc., is about to start building one. (Car and Driver)

• The clear and present danger of Trump’s enduring ‘Big Lie’ Call it an insurrection or a coup attempt, it was fueled by what’s known as the “Big Lie”: the verifiably false assertion that Trump won. Joe Biden won 306 votes in the Electoral College, while Trump received 232. In the popular vote, Biden won by more than 7 million votes. (NPR)

• Beyond the riot, Jan. 6 was a dangerously close call. How Trump’s plot nearly succeeded: But this was a close call. Attempts by Trump and his followers to overturn the results of the 2020 election — multi-dimensional efforts of which the assault on the Capitol building was only one element — came dangerously close to succeeding. (ABC News)

Videos of the Week

Sage Cattabriga-Alosa - Daybreak: One thing about backcountry skiing I love is the experience of the early morning mission. There is an element of unknown anticipation and excitement that hangs in the air as you head out, and details are revealed at first light. On the bike those types of mornings have an equal reward. Daybreak is an ode to those mornings.

Dual Slalom at Dimmos - 50to01 and Friends A 2 min little banjo dual at Dimmos on the Fifty track. Big trains, big slams, big grins. Cheers to everyone who came along, and see ya'll for more smiles in 2022!

Brayden Barrett-Hay - New Territory: For most of his life, Barrett-Hay has lived in Eastern Canada, riding his dirt jump bike at home and at the local indoor park. But recently, after many years of competing and establishing himself as a professional mountain bike rider, he felt the need for a change. So, he packed up his bikes and headed west to Vernon, BC. Now in the mountains of Western Canada, he has the advantage of an abundant mountain bike scene with terrain to ride his dirt jumper, downhill, and trail bikes. Watch Brayden bring some of his dirt jump / skate park-style to the mountains in his latest video, New Territory.

DYLAN STARK 2021 MIXTAPE MTB & BMX Every year I make a mix of all my favorite clips from videos or instagram posts for you all to enjoy, Sadly most of the clips nowadays are filmed vertical for "reels" so a lot of footage was unusable and this video isn't as long as they normally are. This video is a compilation of all the best clips of the year put to a soundtrack. Thanks so much for all the support on youtube and instagram over the year, This is for you to enjoy and hopefully motivate you to get outside and ride! Thanks for watching and cant wait to see what 2022 brings!

Jammed Sandwich ft. Erik Elstran: Erik Elstran is back with the third instalment of his self-filmed "Selfstran" series... and what a tasty treat it is.

Alex Donnachie - Fall For The City: Alex Donnachie smashes out another classic Glasgow street part in his newest video 'Fall For The City'... In late September when Alex said he wanted to try and get a video filmed locally before the end of the year, you'd know how optimistic that might seem if you've seen the weather Scotland gets during that time. But once again Glasgow delivered the goods, and in the course of two short months dodging the rain and waiting for spots to dry up, Alex pieced together another classic in the place he now calls his home town. So on what is the last day of the fall season, sit back and enjoy the madness. Video: Dave Sowerby.

Round It Out - Cinema BMX In North Carolina: Watch Chad Kerley, Nathan Williams, Garrett Reynolds, Dakota Roche, and Corey Martinez put their mark on some under-appreciated southeastern spots for the lens of Will Stroud.

Cold Call: Tony Hawk He might stay in nice hotels and drive a car that's probably also a helicopter, but the Birdman still shreds backyard pools and suffers bone-breaking slams like any skate rat. Dude's tough as nails.

OASEN: A Vans Snowboarding Film | Snow | VANS OASEN is Swedish for OASIS ; a pleasant area in the midst of a difficult place or hectic situation. A refuge. In this uncertain time, and in life in general, everyone is constantly searching for their Oasis. Snowboarding defines that escapism. Vans’ Europe Snowboarding team’s latest film, Oasen, is made with the intention of inspiring others to go out and find their own Oasen, wherever that may be.

Filmed in Austria, Switzerland and Sweden, and driven by one of our most inspiring riders; Benny Urban, Oasen follows a tight crew of good friends on their quest to push the boundaries of street riding through creativity and good times. Opening up the city through a fresh creative outlook, with a heavy influence from a deep love of skateboarding, The Vans Euro Snow team is proud to present Oasen.

Omicron in Canada, Bull Markets, Toyota Tops GM, and Property Assessments

Thursday morning news drop

• Canada is flying blind with Omicron as COVID-19 testing drops off a cliff Hospitalizations, positive-test rates and wastewater can help track spread (CBC)

• Is This the Greatest Bull Market in History? From the bottom in early March of 2009 the S&P 500 is now up well over 800% on a total return basis: That’s nearly 19% per year for going on 13 years now. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Case Against Crypto Why crypto assets are such a destructive force and why forceful regulation is beeded to halt this financially corrosive enterprise from spreading further into markets. (Stephen Diehl)

• Millennials Are Finally Spending Like Grown-Ups The U.S.’s largest generation is buying houses and cars. That’s going to have consequences for inflation. (Bloomberg)

• Toyota Topped G.M. in U.S. Car Sales in 2021, a First for a Foreign Automaker After struggling to produce cars because of a global computer chip shortage, automakers are trying to move quickly to making electric vehicles. (New York Times)

• Good-bye, Goldman Sachs Getting a job there was a dream. The pandemic changed my perspective. (New York Magazine)

• Dazzling Images of the Northern Lights Travel blog Capture the Atlas‘ selected the 25 best photos from photographers around the world and the results are as incredible as you can imagine in the annual Northern Lights Photographer of the Year list. (My Modern Met)

• Vancouver Island assessment values soar on 2022 property roll Property assessment notices will start hitting B.C. mailboxes this week. (Times Colonist)

Cleaning Online Reputations, Fake Money, and Wall Street Expectations

Wednesday morning news drop

• The Dirty Work of Cleaning Online Reputations For a fee, companies will tackle damaging search results. But is the new economy of digital makeovers making things worse? (Walrus)

• Money has never felt more fake. The market feels like a bubble. Does it matter? The concept of value is a fuzzy one, and valuation is often more art than it is science. Psychology has always played a role in money and investing — and there have always been bubbles, too, where the price of an asset takes off at a rapid pace and disconnects from the fundamental value. (Vox)

• The most unusual job market in modern American history, explained Quits, big raises and severe labor shortages: 10 charts on the completely surprising 2021 labor market (Washington Post)

• Car shortage could change buying behavior forever Car dealers’ annual year-end sell-a-thons have turned into wait-a-thons for many shoppers unable to find the vehicle they want on dealer lots — but that could be about to change as some companies modernize the way they sell their cars. (Axios)

• Here’s (Almost) Everything Wall Street Expects in 2022 As 2022 begins, the overriding message from almost 50 financial institutions across Wall Street and beyond is that conditions still look good, but the rip-roaring rallies powered by the reopening are history. Growth will ease. Returns will moderate. Risks abound—but so do opportunities. (Bloomberg)

• This Was the Year When Finance Jumped the Doge From GameStop to bored apes, weirdness abounded among meme-loving amateur investors. (Wired)

• U.S. defeats Canada in first dispute under new North American trade pact The issue is dairy. U.S. says Canada not fairly implementing changes it promised, and could face tariffs (CBC)

• Fate of 'doomsday glacier' is warning light for climate change, says author Jeff Goodell says what happens to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica should push climate change action (CBC)

• The Trouble With Airports, and How to Fix Them With all the aggravation associated with flying these days, airport designers are hoping to calm things down with outdoor spaces, wide-open views, less noise and even foliage. (New York Times)

Elizabeth Holmes Guilty, Covid-19, The Beatles and Design Thinking

Tuesday morning news drop

• Elizabeth Holmes is found guilty of four counts of fraud Ms. Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, was convicted of four of the 11 charges of fraud for lying to investors, patients and others. (NY Times)

• When will COVID-19 end? Here's what happened with other pandemics With cases skyrocketing and many scrambling to book third shots, one question feels more pressing than ever at the start of 2022: When will COVID-19 end? The trajectory of pandemics — a term which refers to an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread over a large region, usually globally — have varied widely depending on the type of disease, the time period, the politics and the quality of health care available. And sometimes, we consider a pandemic to have “ended” long before it ceases to be a problem worldwide. Looking back at some of our previous pandemics or epidemics can give us an insight into how COVID-19 could come to end, both in epidemiological and social terms. (CTV)

• Despite omicron, Covid-19 will become endemic. Here’s how. The variant has changed how we get from “pandemic” to “endemic,” but that doesn’t mean we’re back to square one. (Vox)

• Effects of climate change taking root in the wine industry What are the signs of global warming? Glaciers are melting at an increasingly rapid pace. Persistent droughts are spreading. Well, we have another to tell you about – wine, as in what you probably cracked open for Christmas dinner. France recorded its smallest harvest since 1957 and stands to lose more than $2 billion in sales - a huge blow to the country's second largest export industry. (60 Minutes)

• 10 Lessons from 2021 Gold is not an inflation hedge, Strong earnings can support high valuations, Bull markets can last longer than you think, and other important observations. (Irrelevant Investor)

• Why most gas stations don’t make money from selling gas With gas prices climbing up, you may think station owners are getting greedy. But the economics behind the pump tell a different story. (The Hustle)

• 10 lessons in productivity and brainstorming from The Beatles The first part of Peter Jackson’s epic Beatles documentary Get Back is a masterclass in facilitation and creative management. Paul McCartney tries a stoned, grumpy band through writing, arranging, recording and performing dozens of songs within a short deadline. He’s using the Design Thinking playbook, 20 years before it was written. (Medium)

• The History of Predicting the Future Humans have long tried to determine the shape of what’s to come. But even the most advanced technology can’t solve the fundamental issues with predictions. (Wired)

• Trump Adviser Peter Navarro Lays Out How He and Steve Bannon Planned to Overturn Biden’s Electoral Win. “It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them…” (Daily Beast)

• The Depths She’ll Reach: Sunken by grief, Alenka Artnik found herself alone on a bridge, contemplating suicide. Ten years later, she is the world’s greatest female freediver and getting stronger with each record-breaking plunge. How one woman emerged from mental health struggles to push the limits of the human body. (On Just One Breath)

2021 is Over, Child Care, Inflation, Boba Fett, and Champagne

Monday morning news drop

• The $30B child-care challenge: building a new program from the ground up Advocates say that without proper compensation for workers, it will be impossible to build a program (CBC)

• 21 really good things that happened in 2021 Behind the scary headlines, the human race is making a tremendous amount of progress. Scrape those burned edges off the year’s news, a lot of the stuff underneath is actually really good. A positive story that continues quietly, year on year (the explosive growth of electric vehicles, say, or the collapse of the coal industry), can seem invisible. These are breadcrumbs compared to the big, hearty, global trends, ones that could make the 2020s a much more satisfying decade than the one-star reviews suggest. (Mashable)

• Surprise! The Pandemic Has Made People More Science Literate Despite rampant misinformation, Covid-19 has pushed science into the zeitgeist, as people have absorbed new words and how scientific discovery actually works. (Wired)

• Japan Won’t Let Them Have Kids, So They Turn to the Black Market for Sperm Instead Japanese law allows only married couples to have children, leaving LGBTQ couples navigating a clandestine market for sperm donation. (Vice)

• The Looming Threat of a Nuclear Crisis with Iran: The Biden Administration faces a potential confrontation with a longtime rival that is better armed and more hard-line than at any time in its modern history. (New Yorker)

• The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed Thomas Hoenig knew what quantitative easing and record-low interest rates would bring. (Politico)

• A Different Kind of Recovery A look at 2021 and the impact of the pandemic on the economy (KKR)

• First They Fought About Masks. Then Over the Soul of the City. In Enid, Okla., pandemic politics prompted a fundamental question: What does it mean to be an American? Whose version of the country will prevail? (New York Times)

• A Record Number of Journalists Jailed China remained the top jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 locked up. Myanmar moved up to second place because of a military coup in February and the media crackdown that followed. Egypt, Vietnam and Belarus were the next three. (New York Times)

• Activists Who Are Risking All to End the War on Drugs Travis Lupick previously wrote the story of drug user health advocacy in Vancouver. His second book shines a light on Americans. (Tyee)

• Rick Flick Lost His Son. At Cincinnati, He Found New Purpose: Flick wanted to honor his son’s commitment to the football team. Now an invaluable cog of the program, he will be on hand as the Bearcats prepare to make history in the CFP. A father fulfills his lost son’s biggest dream (Sports Illustrated)

• The Year in Graphics The year 2021 held great promise—for starters, it meant 2020 had finally ended. But dreams of a return to normalcy were quickly dashed by U.S. Capitol riots that threw into question the very survival of American democracy, supply chain issues that snarled global commerce, an uneven rollout of Covid vaccines and new waves of infections, deadly wildfires and extreme market volatility driven by Redditors pushing meme stocks. Here’s how we told some of 2021’s most important stories with charts, maps and visuals. (Bloomberg)

• Champagne bubbles: the science As you uncork that bottle and raise your glass, take time to toast physics and chemistry along with the New Year. (Knowable)

• 18 Sports Highlights From 2021 Worth Watching Again World records, no-look shots, extraordinary goals, trick base running, come-from-behind victories … we may not know what sports will look like in 2022, but 2021 had it all. (New York Times)

• Boba Fett, Intergalactic Man of Mystery How did this fearsome “Star Wars” bounty hunter go from a peripheral player to the star of “The Book of Boba Fett”? He used the support of fans — and a little brute force. (New York Times)

• 14 charts that show what inflation and monetary policy will look like in the next year The Globe and Mail asked dozens of experts about the economy in 2022. Here are the charts they think are important to watch and why (Globe and Mail)