Salary Transparency, ESG Accounting Standards, and the MLB Proposal

Wednesday morning news drop

• Trudeau gives banks power to freeze funds without court order in bid to choke off protest funding New powers give institutions the ability to freeze corporate accounts and cancel insurance tied to trucks that are being used in the blockades (Financial Post)

• Salary Transparency Is Good for Everybody Laws requiring companies to include salary ranges in job postings are good for women, young workers — and the companies themselves. (Bloomberg)

• We Need Universal ESG Accounting Standards ESG accounting is a mess. Competing initiatives mean there’s no uniform set of standards for measuring a company’s progress on sustainability. The good news is that a new initiative, the International Sustainability Standards Board, promises to do for sustainability reporting what the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) does for financial reporting — develop standards for companies to report their performance to investors. Though still fledgling, the ISSB’s ideal outcome would be if it becomes a global standard that integrates the work of all previous standards. Ideally, the SEC and EU can use its standards. Companies should give the ISSB their full support to make these standards the best they can be. (Harvard Business Review)

• How Do Investors Fail? Which group of people (by age and sex) is least likely to die in the U.S. within the next year? For example, is it newborn girls? Teenage boys? Women in their thirties? Men in their fifties? Before reading on, think about this for a second and take a guess. (Of Dollars and Data)

• ‘Dead river flowing’: The Jordan River was once brimming with salmon, until three industries changed it forever Restoration efforts are slow going, but changes in industrial practice could help bring it back. (Capital Daily)

• Resilience is Key Canada’s drug supply chain is more precarious than most of us realize (Walrus)

• MLB's new proposal to MLBPA addresses 4 core economic issues Major League Baseball made a new proposal to the MLB Players Association on Saturday during a bargaining session in New York City, hoping to move negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement in a positive direction. (MLB)

• The dispersion of risk We all know that current prices are extremely high, but it’s anyone’s guess whether they are sustainable. On the one hand, average prices this year are pushing into uncharted territory on the affordability side even ahead of coming rate hikes, while on the other hand those averages are not based on a lot of sales and Victoria real estate has a record of surprising to the upside. (House Hunt Victoria)

Bond Markets, Mark McMorris, and Super Bowl LVI

Tuesday morning news drop

• Funds on right side of historic U.S. bond market move Hedge funds look to be on the right side of the seismic moves in Treasuries that have propelled short-dated borrowing costs higher, intensified flattening pressures across the yield curve, and ripped up the consensus 2022 U.S. interest rate outlook. (Reuters)

• As the blockades have shown, anarchy is usually bad for business Disregarding the law is tempting when you're fed up with rules. But chaos has economic consequences (CBC)

• Mark McMorris Inc: Inside an Olympic snowboarder's business empire The 28-year-old is an action sport athlete entrepreneur, with a sponsorship fiefdom that has crossed over from the purely athletic realm (Financial Post)

• The Stars Aligned in the Rams’ Super Bowl Win Over the Bengals Sunday’s game was won by superstar players making championship-winning plays. It’s a good thing the Rams had so many of them. (Ringer)

• The Bengals Nearly Pulled Off a Super Bowl Run For the Ages. What Comes Next? Joe Burrow and Cincinnati took the NFL playoffs by storm before falling just short of a championship. They have the foundation to make it back—but the road ahead won’t be easy. (Ringer)

• A sublime ode to old-school L.A. hip hop at the 56th Super Bowl halftime show For the first time, rap dominated as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige performed (CBC)

• Why electric vehicles are so hot in the 2022 Super Bowl ads It’s the “early stages of the biggest transition in the auto industry since the car was first invented.” (Vox)

• Super Bowl LVI: A comprehensive ranking of the best commercials Super Bowl LVI is in the books, and that means it’s time to relive the best commercials from the big game. More anticipated in some households than the actual Super Bowl, or even the half-time show, are the interstitial advertising spots that break up the periods of play. No matter your level of engagement with the game or your football knowledge, everyone wants to watch the commercials. This year, iconic halftime show aside, the commercials were the most entertaining part of the broadcast. (Sportsnet)

• Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow: How a Dream Life Turned into a Nightmare My husband started a cryptocurrency empire that made us rich. When he died, I learned it was just a facade (Walrus)

Crypto and Sports Betting, Bonds, Sugar, and Covid Long Haulers

Monday morning news drop

• Divorcing Couples Fight Over the Kids, the House and Now the Crypto Dividing the family’s Bitcoin stash has become a major source of contention in divorce cases. (New York Times)

• The internet turned “money” into a hobby Why (mostly) 20- and 30-something dudes made crypto and sports betting their personality. (Vox)

• The Bond Market Can Finally Do Its Job Again: Its behavior is supposed to warn about inflation but the function was smothered by a decade of QE bond buying (Bloomberg)

• Why Your Car Might Be Worth More Today Than When You Bought It The surge in used-car prices is undoing years of depreciation on some models, leaving some car owners with vehicles worth more now than when bought. (Wall Street Journal)

• How the Sugar Industry Makes Political Friends and Influences Elections A city commissioner race in Florida provides a window into how the sugar industry cultivates political allies, who help protect its interests. (ProPublica)

• The Waste Land: Two crucial and interconnected resources—human feces and arable soil—face crises of mismanagement. (New York Review of Books)

• Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen Prof Joel Nigg, who is one of the leading experts in the world on children’s attention problems, and he told me we need to ask if we are now developing “an attentional pathogenic culture” – an environment in which sustained and deep focus is harder for all of us. Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can (The Guardian)

• Covid longhaulers are still fighting for recognition. People with long Covid face an uphill battle convincing skeptics their malady is real – but discrediting uncommon conditions is hardly a new phenomenon (The Guardian)

• It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart: The older we get, the more we need our friends—and the harder it is to keep them (The Atlantic)

• Neo-Nazis and QAnon: how Canadian truckers’ anti-vaccine protest was steered by extremists Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations. (The Guardian)

• The hacked account and suspicious donations behind the Canadian trucker protests The jumble of misinformation, online fundraising groups and amplification from right-wing political figures suggests there’s more to these protests than meets the eye. (Grid)

• Eric Clapton’s Covid vaccine conspiracies mark a sad final act Bigotry and ignorance, in the age of the internet, have a way of catching up with you. And Clapton’s racism and conspiracy theories can no longer be ignored. (NBC News)

Videos of the Week, Crowdfunding, Truckers, and Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1

Friday morning news drop

• Convoy protest could change the way money is monitored, says watchdog agency Social Sharing The use of American crowdfunding sites to financially fuel the anti-vaccine mandate convoy protest in Ottawa could lead to changes in the way financial transactions are monitored, a top official with Canada's money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog told members of Parliament Thursday. (CBC)

• The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Enough Truck Drivers A 1,000-mile journey through the middle of America reveals the fundamental reason for truck driver shortages: It is a job full of stress, physical deprivation and loneliness. (New York Times)

• Wealth Inequality Is the Highest Since World War II The new tool calculates how economic growth is distributed across income and wealth groups. It’s valuable for two reasons: It gives fresh insight into what has happened to various strata of the U.S. population during the pandemic; and it’s effectively a prototype for a measure that could someday be officially calculated and published by the federal government. (New York Times)

• Behold! Inside the incredible Ford F-150 Lightning Pro From most angles, it looks like any other Ford F-150. The big differences are the charge port door on the driver’s side and these futuristic daytime running lights. (Inverse)

• Comedy’s existential crisis: The Joe Rogan debate underscores comedy’s evolving conversation about morality, cancel culture, and how to be funny. (Vox)

• Disney+, HBO Max and Other Streamers Get Waves of Subscribers From Must-See Content. Keeping Them Is Hard. Roughly half of U.S. viewers who joined right after ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ were gone in six months, data show (Wall Street Journal)

• Why We Choose to Suffer: In the search for a meaningful life, simply seeking pleasure isn’t enough. We need struggle and sacrifice. (Wall Street Journal)

• The 1918 flu didn’t end in 1918. Here’s what its third year can teach us. In the meantime, though, the country’s experience a century ago suggests that we could be in for a lot more pain — especially if we let our guard down. (Washington Post)

• Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1s Sell for a Total of $25.3 Million After being up for auction on Sotheby’s for the last two weeks, bidding for the Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Lows has officially closed. (Complex)

Videos of the Week

Hill Ride It - Josh Hill: From playful electric bikes, to full custom fire breathing hillclimb bikes, Josh Hill rides it all. Ripping anything with two wheels and a throttle all over the world.

Where I've Been Livin' - Jaxson Riddle: We welcome Jaxson Riddle to the team by letting him do what he does best – sending it in style. Coming off an impressive year, including winning the 'Best Style' award at Red Bull Rampage, he looks to continue pushing boundaries with his own unique voice. From tackling huge lines in the hills of Utah to his impressive tech wizardry in the skate park; we can always expect the mind-blowing riding that Jaxson is known for.

Courage Adams In Johannesburg: While the competitive passion burns deep in Adams, it's riding freestyle out on the streets that really fuel his fire. BMX heavyweight Courage Adams is one of the most accomplished riders on the scene right now. The film gave him a chance to explore Johannesburg and connect with a group of riders that make up the grassroots of the scene there.

Jake Wooten - etnies Welcome To The Team: We proudly welcome Jake Wooten to the etnies team. This was all shot on location at the etnies skatepark in Lake Forest, CA. “In all the years I’ve been skating etnies park, I’ve never seen someone skate it the way Jake did, pure destruction,” said etnies Team Manager Aidan Campbell. People are drawn to Jake’s funny, energetic, and free personality. That personality is truly expressed in his powerful and impromptu skateboarding style – he’s a talented wild card with a deep bag of tricks! Hear from Sheckler and Trevor on why they're glad he’s now part of the squad. Video: Mike Manzoori.

Why and How Barron Mamiya Almost Beat Kelly Slater at Pipe WIth pipe in his backyard, the North Shore young gun has a long career ahead of him.

Cold Call: Greyson Fletcher Greyson starts the day gettin' pitted and closes out cracking eggs on Omar's coping. Shredding is all he knows.

“Staying Gold" – Emerica's East Coast Tour Video

Status Full Movie - While the planet is in the middle of a global pandemic, a couple of friends find themselves grounded on home soil with the strange opportunity to roam the empty streets of Quebec; home of the Poutine and one of the most iconic street scenes in the world. With all the restrictions to have a normal season, when it’s too complicated to travel, what better time to benefit from your own backyard? Status is a snowboarding short film made during the pandemic as a follow up of Short Notice. The idea behind the name is: This is the status of the situation and how we deal with the chaos it created. Our focus this time around will be: creativity meets big spots! With the crew we have, it’s a sure shot to show originality and next level snowboarding.

Eric Hjorleifson Winter 2021: Winter 2021 was certainly a unique one. Good fortune allowed me to spend some time in the Esplanade mountains at Golden Alpine Holidays backcountry ski lodges as a hut keeper. During my residency the opportunities to work with Peter Wojnar and BLANK Collective Films came to be. It was fantastic to get to ski some of the classic film lines last winter, my legs still work! Editor: Peter Wojnar.

The Sacred Grounds: Part One - Formation: Pursuing their dreams and putting professional skills and teamwork to the test, Kye Petersen, Callum Pettit and Matty Richard seek to turn time back and pioneer unexplored corners of the deep wilderness on skis in search.The Sacred Grounds short film series takes the cast from their backyard of the southern Coast Range of BC, to the far reaches of the Northern BC/Alaska border, to the Japanese Alps, to the Columbia ranges of interior BC, to reaches of the Southern Chilcotins and beyond. We are excited to share these adventures into undiscovered zones and ‘Sacred Grounds’ that hold the best possible terrain environment for displaying these riders passion for skiing. The mountains provide us with so many blessings but can also take it all away in an instant - for this respect is due, a life of dedication is needed, and a whole lot of effort is required, all of which is rewarded with the times of their lives when it all comes together. Part 1 of the series takes us on a journey to a remote water locked cabin in an unexplored region of the South Coast of BC as well as through the backcountry skiing mecca known as the Sea To Sky Corridor [Squamish, Whistler, and Pemberton], rediscovering the terrain that shaped these riders from youth. We hope you enjoy the ride along on the journey into our Sacred Grounds. Directed by: Mike Henitiuk, Kye Petersen, and Riley Leboe.

Canadian Census, Wall Street Compensation, and Interest Rates

Thursday morning news drop

• Canada’s 2021 census reveals the Maritimes and downtown cores are where the country is growing Populations in the Maritimes grew faster over the past five years than those in the Prairie provinces, the latest census data reveals, reversing a trend dating to the 1940s. (Globe and Mail)

• B.C. has 4 of Canada's fastest growing metropolitan areas, census data shows Population of areas centred on Kelowna, Chilliwack, Nanaimo and Kamloops has risen at least 10% since 2016 (CBC)

• Wall Street Opens Its Wallet to Keep Talent. It’s Not Always Enough.Banks are raising pay to fend off investment firms, fintechs and crypto start-ups. Still, leaving is often about something other than “always having more and more.” (New York Times)

• Beware the FOMO Bullies of Technology Are we living through a replay of the ’90s, when most people just didn’t get “this internet thing”? (The Atlantic)

• Why This Could Be a Critical Year for Electric Cars Booming in a depressed market, battery-powered vehicles are a plus for the climate but pose a big threat to carmakers and parts suppliers that are slow to change. (New York Times)

• Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game The newest Supreme Court Justice isn’t just another conservative—she’s the product of a Christian legal movement that is intent on remaking America. (The New Yorker)

• Is the ‘Dream’ of Homeownership a False Promise? In “Owned: A Tale of Two Americas,” director Giorgio Angelini traces the origins of a discriminatory housing market. (Bloomberg)

• Fixed or variable? A risk analysis We’re at a somewhat unique moment in time for mortgage rates. One the one hand the gap between variable and fixed rates is huge and has made variable rates more tempting than ever for Canadians. On the other hand our central bank has essentially guaranteed that rates will be going up this year, which means that gap is set to shrink. (House Hunt Victoria)

How Ryan Reynolds helped boost the fortunes of a Welsh soccer team

Tax Changes, Crypto, Investing, Nuclear, and Metals in the Mining Sector

Wednesday morning news drop

• Are you up to date on the latest tax changes? With tax season upon us, it’s a good time to review some of the main tax updates that have been made over the past year (CPA Canada)

• Doug Ford's housing task force calls for more density, less public consultation Task force makes 55 recommendations aimed at reining in home prices (CBC)

• CEO of Canada’s largest trucking company says COVID-19 vaccine mandate ‘not an issue at all’ TFI International Inc. TFII-T is virtually untouched by the recent vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the U.S.-Canada border, said the head of the Canada’s largest trucking conglomerate. “Vaccination at TFI is not an issue at all,” chairman and CEO Alain Bedard said Tuesday. (Globe and Mail)

• Alberta’s response to Coutts blockade proof of discriminatory double standard, First Nations say When rail lines were blocked in 2020, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney drafted a new law in response, but it hasn’t been used at the Coutts barricade. That leaves First Nations leaders ringing alarm bells, again, about racism in protest policing (Narwhal)

• As Automakers Add Technology to Cars, Software Bugs Follow Faulty computer systems are prompting class-action lawsuits by disgruntled car owners, a symptom of automakers’ bumpy transition to the digital age. (New York Times)

• Pay Me More or I Quit: Workers Play Risky Game With Their Bosses More than 60% of Americans say using a job offer from another company for the sole purpose of receiving a salary increase is an ethical practice. (Bloomberg)

• Are You Diversified? A lot of the highflyers have come down a lot. Many of them – the ubiquitous EV makers, the SPACs, the meme stocks, the metaverse plays, fuel cells, payment processing, crypto assets, and development-stage biotechs – are still ridiculously expensive. A lot of good companies out there with valuations that just aren’t supported by the fundamentals and they are being weighed. (Alhambra)

• The Crypto Backlash Is Booming Web3 is making some people very rich. It’s making other people very angry. (The Atlantic)

• As Schools Reopen, Losses Keep Piling Up for Kids How can we make up for the time and opportunities that COVID-19 took away? (Walrus)

• Why Are So Many Americans Still Dying of COVID? For those attuned to the ongoing, horrifying pandemic death toll, it may seem a continuation of the country’s failure stretching back to last spring. (New York Magazine)

• The Nuclear Industry Argues Regulators Don’t Understand New Small Reactors Advocates say the plants offer a climate fix, but opponents decry them as dangerous. (Businessweek)

• The raw-materials challenge: How the metals and mining sector will be at the core of enabling the energy transition As the world gears up for net zero, demand for raw materials is set to soar. The energy transition presents unique challenges for metals and mining companies, which will need to innovate and rebuild their growth agenda. (McKinsey)

• The Bengals Rebuild Will Be the Envy of the NFL. How Replicable Is It? A cautionary note for a woebegone franchise that thinks it can have a two-year rise akin to Cincinnati’s (Ringer)

Investing Myths, Crypto Hype, and Metaverse Real Estate Sales

Tuesday morning news drop

• The Towers and the Ticking Clock Pull up a map of the Florida coast, drop your finger onto the surface and you’ll almost certainly land on a town or city with its own disaster in the making. According to one recent study, 918,000 of Florida’s condo units are, like the ones in Champlain Towers South, more than 30 years old; many towers were thrown up during the boom years, when oversight was lax, developers were incentivized to prize speed over attention to detail and every permit was a rubber stamp away. Even in the most rigorously built structures, secured to the face of the earth by heavy pylons driven through yards of shifting sand, the coastal environment has inevitably taken its toll. (New York Times)

• 8 Of The Biggest Investing Myths When you boil it down, there are really only two options for investors: (1) Take more risk (2) Lower your expectations The financial markets are a complex adaptive system but you don’t need to fight complex with complex to succeed. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• Don’t Listen to the Matt Damon Crypto Ad What makes it work? Money. The same thing that always makes it work: money, real money. You have PR firms who reach out to agents and reps and money gets negotiated, and we’re talking big money. I mean, a $100 million ad campaign for Crypto.com. I don’t know what Damon got paid, but it’s obviously millions of dollars. (Slate)

• It’s Hard to Tell When the Crypto Bubble Will Burst, or If There Is One Crypto prices are highly volatile, as this week’s sell-off showed. But die-hard enthusiasts believe prices will keep soaring in a world where traditional notions of value don’t apply. (New York Times)

• I’m an Influencer, and I Think Social Media Is Toxic Teen girls experience an increase in suicidal thoughts after using Instagram. Other studies focused on Instagram’s detrimental effect on eating disorders and body image issues. Seventeen percent of teen girls said that their eating disorders worsened after Instagram use, and 32 percent reported that the app made them feel worse about their bodies. (Slate)

• Is this the beginning of Facebook’s downfall? If there’s a single immutable law in human biology, it’s that no one lives forever. The same goes for corporations. The latest big company to confront the fact that the Grim Reaper spares no one and no thing is Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook. (Los Angeles Times)

• Metaverse real estate sales top $500 million, and are projected to double this year Sales of real estate in the metaverse topped $500 million last year and could double this year, according to investors and analytics firms. “There are big risks, but potentially big rewards,” said Janine Yorio, CEO of Republic Realm, a metaverse real estate investor and advisory firm. So far, real estate sales have been concentrated on the “Big Four” — Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and Somnium. (CNBC)

• The Joe Rogan Controversy Has a Deeper Cause Recording artists are angry at Spotify because, in music streaming, there isn’t enough money to go around. (The Atlantic)

• Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S. Challenges to books about sexual and racial identity are nothing new in American schools, but the tactics and politicization are. (New York Times)

• The Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution Almost as soon as Justice Barrett was confirmed, the Court handed down a revolutionary “religious liberty” decision. It hasn’t slowed down since. (Vox)

• The Betrayal: It took four presidencies for America to finish abandoning Afghanistan. George W. Bush’s attention wandered off soon after American Special Forces rode horseback through the northern mountains and the first schoolgirls gathered in freezing classrooms. Barack Obama, after studying the problem for months, poured in troops and pulled them out in a single ambivalent gesture whose goal was to keep the war on page A13. Donald Trump cut a deal with the Taliban that left the future of the Afghan government, Afghan women, and al Qaeda to fate. It fell to Joe Biden to complete the task. America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan added moral injury to military failure. But a group of soldiers, veterans, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save Afghan lives and salvage some American honor. (The Atlantic)

Covid Nursing Shortages, Unmarked Graves, Polar Bears, and Insulated Glass

Monday morning news drop

• Staff shortages and COVID patients pushing hospitals to breaking point In much of the country, the number of COVID cases is falling, but people are delusional, do not understand, or have no empathy for the impact on healthcare workers. The Omicron variant may result in less severe illness, but inside many of the country's hospitals, the work is more demanding than ever. That's largely because health care workers have left since the start of the pandemic as hospitals are reporting critical staff shortages. (60 Minutes)

• Canada's unmarked graves: How residential schools carried out "cultural genocide" against indigenous children Last year, when archeologists detected what they believed to be 200 unmarked graves at an old school in Canada, it brought new attention to one of the most shameful chapters of that nation's history. Starting in the 1880's and for much of the 20th century, more than 150,000 children from hundreds of indigenous communities across Canada were forcibly taken from their parents by the government and sent to what were called Residential Schools. Funded by the state and run by churches, they were designed to assimilate and Christianize indigenous children by ripping them from their parents, their culture, and their community. The children were often referred to as savages and forbidden from speaking their languages or practicing their traditions. Many were physically and sexually abused, and thousands of children never made it home. (60 Minutes)

• Foreign firepower: China is not entirely loving its Olympic hockey team Canadian- and U.S.-born players — several with no obvious Chinese heritage — are filling out the roster (National Post)

• A Change by Apple Is Tormenting Internet Companies, Especially Meta Meta’s stock prices plunged after the company reported that Apple’s privacy features would cost it billions this year. It’s not the only tech giant to take a hit. (New York Times)

• Facebook and Google’s Ad Addiction Can’t Last Forever Facebook’s first-ever drop in users is an ominous sign for a business that relies almost entirely on ads. Google’s ad revenue is down to 81% of the company’s total — 10 years ago it was up around 97%, like Facebook’s today. (Bloomberg)

• Value Investor’s Guide to Web3 Web3 is attracting a flood of investor interest but is rife with hype and speculation. A value investing approach can help. We adapt our “intangible value” lens to crypto and build a value strategy in small-cap tokens. We also create Web3 industry classifications and crypto stock portfolios. (Sparkline Capital)

• More Homes Than Ever Are Selling for $50 Million. What’s Inside? In 2020, however, the U.S. luxury housing market, fueled by historically low interest rates and a roaring stock market, rose to unprecedented heights. And then it rose even higher. At least 42 residential properties sold for more than $50 million last year, about a 35% increase from the year before. Four of these properties were in the Hamptons, where the Macklowes, three decades ago, decided to buy their summer home. (Bloomberg)

• Workers Are Having Their Moment. How Long Can It Last? Most workers are benefiting from a tight labor market that developed during the nation’s recovery from Covid-19. Those in highest demand are in some cases the ones who started out further behind, with fewer gains before the pandemic. They include the young and the less educated, as well as those who work in lower-wage industries and perform blue-collar tasks. Many are based in the South. Wealthier, older, college-educated professionals in other parts of the country are also making gains. Wages are rising, and just about anyone who wants a job can get one in certain industries. The demand for labor is not expected to abate anytime soon. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Rise of the $2.5 Billion Ugly-Shoe Empire: From shearling Uggs to Hoka dad sneakers and rainbow Tevas, Deckers Outdoor Corp. keeps selling us the most hideous uglycore footwear. (Businessweek)

• Reasons to Abandon Spotify That Have Nothing to Do with Joe Rogan The Swedish streaming service has fostered a music-distribution model that is singularly hostile to the interests of working musicians. It pays out, on average, an estimated four-tenths of a cent per stream, meaning that a thousand streams nets around four dollars. That arrangement has reaped huge profits for major labels and for superstars while decimating smaller-scale musical incomes—as perfect an embodiment of the winner-takes-all neoliberal economy as has yet been devised. (NewYorker)

• The Big Plans That Built New York City: The ideas promoted by the tri-state Regional Plan Association, which turns 100 this year, read like an anthology of what U.S. urban planning got right — and wrong (Bloomberg)

• American democracy is under threat. But what is that threat, exactly? Is it election theft, minority rule, voter suppression, or all of the above? (Vox)

• The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon A Times investigation reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO’s Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban. (New York Times)

• Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised nature reserve that serves as a refuge to the animals. (The Guardian)

Videos of the Week, Facebook is Morphing into Meta, and Weed in Sports

Friday morning news drop

• CFA Pass Rate Stays Close to Record Low at 43% for Final Exam Low success rates stems from date changes amid pandemic and the pass rate for Level III is third-lowest in exam’s history (Bloomberg)

• New signs of wage inflation may force Bank of Canada's hand in raising rates Friday's expected jobs decline may offer little inflation relief as wage demands grow (CBC)

• Why Big Chains Thrived While Small Restaurants Died How the National Restaurant Association bent the government to the will of the corporate behemoths—and left workers in the dust. (Mother Jones)

• Markets Are a Beauty Contest: If I gave you information from the future, how confident are you that you could beat the market? (Irrelevant Investor)

• The Titans of Junk Debt Turned Trash Into Bond-Market Treasure Netflix—or “Debtflix,” if you prefer—Tesla, T-Mobile, and Dell borrowed billions in an era of historic low rates. They’ve been getting some timely upgrades. (Bloomberg)

• Value Investing Is Back. But for How Long? Value investing—buying stocks that are cheap on measures such as earnings or book value—is having a renaissance. Up to last Thursday, large value stocks beat more expensive “growth” stocks by the most of any 50-day period since the technology bubble burst in 2000-01, with the exception of the post-vaccine rebound early last year. (Wall Street Journal)

• How to roll out big ideas and avoid the Museum of Failure Scaling is the process of rolling out something on a large scale. Whether it’s a social movement seeking to improve society with a policy to reduce inequality, or a corporation trying to make a buck, scaling is central to what most major organizations are usually trying to achieve. “If an idea doesn’t scale to change the world, then what is an idea really worth in the end?” (NPR)

• How Facebook Is Morphing Into Meta Shifting a 68,000-person social networking company toward the theoretical metaverse has caused internal disruption and uncertainty. (New York Times)

• Athletes Are Getting Burned by Weed Rules. Is the Sports World Out of Touch? Cannabis attitudes have changed since Ross Rebagliati’s Olympic mishap in 1998, but pro sports remain stuck in the past (Walrus)

• How Coldwater Adventurer Josh Mulcoy Stumbled Upon a Perfect Wave in Alaska

  27 years after first exploring Alaska’s coast Josh Mulcoy returns to find a new wave (Surfer).

• Designing the Apocalypse Movies like ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ made Roland Emmerich a master of destruction. Now with ‘Moonfall’ he’s trying to top himself once again—but that’s an arduous process full of hard decisions. (Ringer)

Videos of the Week

On Days Like These We Must Surf: Surfing on a lake? Impossible, right? Wrong. Loveable wild man Larry Cavero lives for surfing the ice-cold waters of The Great Lakes in this short doc about the burgeoning surf scene around Toronto, Canada.

Day 4 Highlights Billabong Pro Pipeline | World Champs And Wildcards Make More History At Pipe

Finding Flow In Squamish With Rhys Verner: If you want to make it in the world of enduro, it pays to base yourself somewhere that offers all the necessary ingredients you’ll need to succeed. For Canadian racer and Forbidden Synthesis team member Rhys Verner, such thoughts rarely register and for good reason. Born and raised in Squamish, British Columbia – arguably the epicentre of Canadian enduro – Rhys is surrounded by some of the most fertile training grounds for enduro, in the world, and the ideal playground for the Forbidden Druid. Please join Rhys as he ventures into the wet n’ wild woods of his backyard in search of the flow that resides between rock, root and rut...

Back To The Classics - Vincent Pernin: I wanted to ride some big high speed freeride lines in my local area, which isn’t an easy task as I had to go high in the mountains to find them. It took a little while exploring, but in the end, I found a bunch of really interesting lines. We patiently waited until the last days before the snow begins to arrive for winter and it made the landscapes even better. We had a blast during the days of filming, just being there in the middle of nature in a quiet and peaceful place. This is such a great feeling. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.

AN EPIC (and heartbreaking) BEST TRICK EVENT - BMX TRIPLE CHALLENGE - ANAHEIM 2022

Homebound - Mike Gray - HARO BMX With travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines making international travel as easy as building a wheel with your hands tied behind your back... Mike Gray has been tucked away in Canada, quietly shredding roofs, ledges, banks and rails with the Toronto homies, stacking clips for his latest

Broc Raiford - Strike: Strike while the iron's hot. Put a prime cutty spot or a big setup in front of Broc Raiford, and he'll take advantage of it. Enjoy!

Trey Jones - Still Wild: Trey went out to California and filmed an all new video with Chris Gregson. Wild spots, wild lines, and wild tricks, Trey Jones is Still Wild!

Didrik Galasso's "Deedz Deedz Deedz" Part

Skilled Trades Shortage, Housing Markets, and Tom Brady's Career

Thursday morning news drop

• Government of Canada promoting skilled trades Construction sector projections indicate that 700,000 skilled trades workers are expected to retire between 2019 and 2028. (On-Site)

• Why It Could Be Years Until We See a Normal Housing Market We’re in a housing market where we have record high demand and record low supply. If you want to know why prices are 20% higher than they were a year ago this is the simplest explanation. But there’s more going on here… (Wealth of Common Sense)

• t’s Been Rough for Stocks, but the Outlook Is Still OK The changing outlook for the Fed continues to spark volatility. (Morningstar)

• How the Industry’s Fastest Growing Sector Is Pushing Managers To Change Their Behavior Wellington, Schroders and others are taking a more activist approach to managing their environmentally-sustainable funds. (Institutional Investor)

• Robots to be bigger business than Tesla cars Musk told investors on a Tesla earnings call his nascent robot plans had “the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business, over time.” And they would be the most important things Tesla worked on this year. (BBC)

• Car story: where will Canada’s electric vehicle batteries go when they die? Electric vehicles are booming in B.C. and that means the province has a unique opportunity to divert some of the world’s most sought-after clean-energy minerals from a potentially hazardous waste stream (Narwhal)

• The science behind the omicron wave’s sharp peak and rapid decline Why do Covid-19 surges seem to end as suddenly as they begin? (Vox)

• Spotify’s Joe Rogan Problem Isn’t Going Away The controversy is different, in many ways, from the other conflicts between online stars and the companies that give them a platform. (New York Times)

• Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan vs. Spotify Spotify joins Facebook and Twitter in the misinformation wars. (Grid)

• Tom Brady Vanquished Father Time Brady is retiring after 22 seasons and seven Super Bowl wins. He’s ending his illustrious career at the peak of his powers.. (The Ringer)

• How Tom Brady, the Person and the Process, Made Greatness Seem Routine Before many athletes and teams followed his lead, Tom Brady was redefining what it took to be the best, on and off the field. (Sports Illustrated)