Bonds are the New Stocks, and Higher Interest Rates

Thursday morning articles

• Bonds Are the New Stocks. Where to Find the Best Yields. TINA is dead. She was murdered in this year’s bond massacre, a victim of the Federal Reserve’s belated lifting of short-term interest rates from near zero. But her passing presents opportunities not seen by many in this generation of investors. (Barron’s) 

• California Poised to Overtake Germany as World’s No. 4 Economy: Contrary to popular belief, the Golden State has proven resilient, outperforming its US and global peers. (Bloomberg)

• Higher Interest Rates Can Take a Long Time to Bring Down Inflation: Lags between rate increases and real-world impacts raise the twin risks of tightening too much and too little. (Wall Street Journal) 

• How Front-Loading Rate Hikes Risks Financial Instability: Inflation requires faster increases, which intensify the threat of large financial accidents that can have nasty economic spillovers. (Bloomberg)

• How Should a Business Bro Dress? Trading hoodies at the home office for hard pants, we take a snapshot of the finance bros in their native habitat. (New York Times)

• Why Isn’t Inflation Falling? The U.S. consumer has likely never been more prepared for high inflation (and a potential recession) than they were coming into this period of higher prices. No one likes inflation but we love to spend money in this country. So most people have simply decided to complain but still spend through the pain of higher prices. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• No Longer Tied to Offices, Workers Are Still Bound by the Clock: While the pandemic shifted where work gets done, we’re still following Henry Ford’s advice about when it should get done. (Bloomberg)

• Big Oil’s Surprisingly Bright Future. The Case for BP and Exxon: They Have a Surprisingly Green Future. (Barron’s)

• How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina: The former HP CEO boasted of her friendship with Apple’s leader — but he took her to the cleaners with the iPod (Medium)

• Comedy Wildlife Photo finalists – in pictures: From smiling triggerfish to a waving raccoon, the shortlisted images for the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photo awards have been announced. Whittled down from thousands of entries submitted by professional and amateur photographers from around the world, we’re presented with a wonderful mix of hilarious wildlife. The winners will be announced on 8 December (The Guardian)

Bear Markets, Supply Chains, and Midnights by Taylor Swift

Wednesday morning news drop

• Bear Market Opportunities For Every Generation of Investors: A powerful chart shows how much the stock market is likely to rebound over 3, 5, and 10 years. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• The Stock Market Had a Terrible Year. These Americans Aren’t Bothered. Some say they can’t afford to put money into the market while others think there are better routes to wealth. (Wall Street Journal)

• Every Asset Manager Wants More Alts. Here’s How Wellington Is Achieving It. The firm isn’t new to alternatives, but there’s a new urgency behind its business case. (Institutional Investor)

• Oops, we forgot to fix the supply chain: Some experts say it never really broke. (Vox)

• Coming Soon on Netflix: A New Netflix. Netflix changed the entertainment industry forever. Can the company change itself now that it finally faces some real streaming competition? (Businessweek)

• How Ticketmaster gets away with it: Yes, the face value of these tickets has gone up considerably. But an even bigger problem is “fees,” which can be “as high as 75% of the ticket price.” Worse, consumers are increasingly forced to buy tickets on the secondary market, where prices and fees are even higher. These issues can be traced back to one company: Live Nation Entertainment. (Popular Information)

• Apartment Builders Didn’t Get the Housing Slump Memo: Multifamily units make up the majority of a record number of homes under construction and are showing few signs of a slowdown. (Bloomberg)  see also Where Architects Go to Test Their Wackiest Ideas: A dolphin-shaped island. An oil rig revamped for bungee jumping. Architects bring ‘bonkers’ concepts to Saudi Arabia. (Wall Street Journal)

• She’s made 1,750 Wikipedia bios for female scientists who haven’t gotten their due ‘Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have,’ said physicist Jess Wade. (Washington Post)

• Exxon’s Exodus: Employees Have Finally Had Enough of Its Toxic Culture: The 140-year-old oil company is making more money than ever. Yet the pandemic exposed deep cultural problems—and talent is fleeing. (Businessweek)

• Despite sanctions, Russian fuel is still selling — here’s who’s buying: New markets and illicit tactics are part of Russia’s strategy for making up losses. (Vox)

• The Rise of Mobile Gambling Is Leaving People Ruined and Unable to Quit: Financial catastrophe is now only a few clicks away, a problem that is showing quiet signs of becoming a crisis. “I can’t just get rid of my phone,” one problem gambler says. (Vice)

• Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution: By taking over state legislatures, Republicans hope to pass conservative amendments that cannot be electorally challenged (The Guardian)

• Midnights: What we know about Taylor Swift’s songwriting: Over the course of 16 years and nine albums, she’s switched genres from country to pop to alternative to folk. On Friday, she will release her latest record, Midnights, described as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life… a journey through terrors and sweet dreams, the floors we pace and the demons we face.” (BBC)

Crypto, Alex Jones, EV Batteries, and NBA Power Rankings

Tuesday morning articles

•  The Secretive World Of MEV, Where Bots Front-Run Crypto Investors For Big Profits: True believers say crypto is more transparent than traditional finance. Yet that openness—combined with clunky infrastructure and an absence of regulation–lets crypto trading firms with lightning-fast bots prey on unsuspecting retail traders. (Forbes)

• The Golden Age of Dispensary Design Is Almost Here: As cannabis legalization has become more widespread, retailers are getting increasingly serious about the design and branding of their shops. (New York Times)

• Companies are being forced to reveal what a job pays. It’s a start. New pay transparency laws will help, but they still aren’t enough to eliminate the pay gap. (Recode)

• Alex Jones’s lies have cost him $965 million in a second Sandy Hook trial Connecticut jurors order Alex Jones to pay $1 billion in second Sandy Hook trial — and more might be on the way. (Vox)

• The Problem with Pulling Out of China: Many U.S. and other nations’ companies are thinking about transferring elsewhere. Easier said than done. Investors could be collateral damage. (CIO)

• US Chip Sanctions ‘Kneecap’ China’s Tech Industry: The toughest export restrictions yet cut off AI hardware and chip-making tools crucial to China’s commercial and military ambitions. (Wired)

• Scientists May Have Just Cracked the Code on Fast Electric Car Charging: researchers at Penn State University published a study in Nature revealing they have developed an EV battery that, crucially, can charge up to about 70% capacity in roughly 10 minutes (Time)

• How Gamers Beat NFTs: Video game fans have largely beaten back efforts to incorporate blockchain tokens into new releases, a rare win against the industry’s efforts to wring more money from its customers. (Businessweek)

• London’s Natural History Museum: Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition Winners: The museum said in a release that an international panel of experts had selected the 19 finalists out of more than 38,000 entries from nearly 100 countries, based on their “originality, narrative, technical excellence and ethical practice.” Then, they awarded two of those winners — one in each age category — the top prize. (NPR)

• NBA Power Rankings: Warriors at No. 1; questions and what to like for all 30 teams: An offseason of drama, tumult and pure madness bled into the training camp and preseason portions of the calendar. (The Athletic)

Stock Market Bottom, Crypto, and the War on Drugs

Monday morning articles

• What a Stock Market Bottom Looks Like: Life would be easier if this was the case. But if everything was obvious in the stock market it wouldn’t offer such wonderful long-term returns. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• America Is Unleashing Its Economic Arsenal: Targeted measures are becoming a bigger part of US foreign policy. (Businessweek)

• US Chip Sanctions ‘Kneecap’ China’s Tech Industry: The toughest export restrictions yet cut off AI hardware and chip-making tools crucial to China’s commercial and military ambitions. (Wired)

• Five Decades Into The War On Drugs, Decriminalizing Marijuana Has High Bipartisan Support: Americans agree that the country’s legislation on marijuana does need an update. Polling conducted before the Oct. 6 pardon found 6 in 10 American voters said weed should be legal in the U.S.; 7 in 10 among voters under 45 (72%), Democrats (71%) and Black voters (72%), Republicans (47%) and voters 65 or over (45%). (FiveThirtyEight)

• Crypto Hackers Set for Record Year After Looting Over $3 Billion: Consultancy Chainalysis has detected 125 hacks so far in 2022 Losses undermine confidence in crypto-based financial services. (Bloomberg)

• Hackers Target Eager Homebuyers With a Dumb Scam That Keeps Working: Criminals have found a novel way to intercept wire transfers for down payments. Can a small team of Secret Service agents prevent your worst real estate nightmare? (Businessweek)

• How Bad Can a Lawyer Be? A Philadelphia teenager and the empty promise of the Sixth Amendment (The Atlantic)

• The Feds Think Bored Ape Yacht Club Was Up to Some Monkey Business: Then, of course, the crypto market crashed, and with it, the monetary values and trading volume of the entire NFT market. The Bored Apes pressed on with metaverse gambits, artificial intelligence, awards-show partnerships, and even real-life yachts, yet they never recovered their initial glamour. Rampant thefts, allegations of racist symbology, and myriad other controversies further tanked their reputation and cultural presence. (Slate)

• How did America get addicted to a policy that fails everyone but the rich? In the post-Depression era, it became understood that “not only shouldn’t the market be left to do it all,” DeLong says, “it can’t do it all or very much unless it is properly primed and aided and guided.” (Los Angeles Times)

Bitcoin Culture, Weed Stores, NFL Safety, and Pop Music

Friday morning articles

• The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Culture: Crypto’s first token created a culture and then a monster. (CoinDesk)

• Black Holes May Hide a Mind-Bending Secret About Our Universe: Take gravity, add quantum mechanics, stir. What do you get? Just maybe, a holographic cosmos. (New York Times)

• New York seems to have a weed store on every corner. None of them are legal. New York’s admirable — and awkward — efforts to legalize weed. (Vox)

• There Was No Great Stagnation: Every day, most of what I do in work and play was impossible 30 years ago. The same probably applies to you, along with hundreds of millions of other people around the world. For many of us, life now revolves arounds technologies that were unimaginable only a generation ago. Yet, oddly, this era has coincided with slower growth on conventional measures. (Works in Progress)

• The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari: The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors. (Current Affairs)

• There Are No ‘Five Stages’ of Grief: An expert in medical evidence looks at the science of loss. A state of infinite sadness combined with the internet of grief didn’t help. (The Atlantic)

• Bullard Becomes Wall Street’s Go-To Guy for Hint of a Fed Pivot: St. Louis Fed boss, a leading hawk now, hasn’t always been one In interview he cites Volcker influence, bike-inflation shock. (Bloomberg)

• Companies Hoarding Workers Could Be Good News for the Economy: Employers have been burned by a labor shortage. Will that make them act differently if the economy slows down? (New York Times)

• What Great Resignation? Workers Are Staying Put: Median job tenure in the US was unchanged from early 2020 to early 2022, and it isn’t much different from what it was in the 1960s. (Bloomberg)

• If America Needs Starter Homes, Why Are Perfectly Good Ones Being Torn Down? Many communities effectively ensure the only viable replacement for a starter home is a new one that’s much larger and more expensive. (Upshot)

• Do Solar-Powered EVs Make Any Sense? I Drove a Prototype To See How It Could Work A Dutch startup called Lightyear let us drive a pre-production prototype of its 0 sedan, which is billed as the world’s first “solar electric car.” (The Drive)

• One of the most important women in Apple’s history never worked for Apple: Margot Comstock took her winnings from a TV game show and bought a computer. It led to a magazine, which turned into a major hub for the nascent community of developers and fans of one of the most important computers in history. (The Verge)

• Pioneering Quantum Physicists Win Nobel Prize in Physics: Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with entangled particles. (Quanta Magazine)

• The Inevitable Indictment of Donald Trump: It’s clear to me that Merrick Garland will bring charges against Donald Trump. It’s just a matter of when. (The Atlantic)

• It’s Never Too Late to Pivot From N.F.L. Safety to Neurosurgeon: When Myron Rolle was cut from the Pittsburgh Steelers, he fell into a funk until his mother reminded him of his two childhood dreams: Play football, then become a neurosurgeon. It was time for Plan B. (New York Times)

• You’re going back to the office. Your boss isn’t. Bosses are ordering people back to the office from the comfort of their own homes. (Vox)

• The Great Post-Covid Online Shopping Bet Was a Costly Delusion: Amazon, Wayfair, and other big e-commerce companies bet the pandemic would permanently change shopping behavior. They were wrong. (Businessweek)

• What Happens When You Add a Hurricane Crisis to an Insurance Crisis? Florida’s property insurance market is deeply broken, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The average premium is three times the national average, and rates are rising by 30 to 50 percent a year. Allstate and State Farm have limited their exposure there, and smaller companies are foundering: Six insurers have already become insolvent this year, and another two dozen are at risk of a credit downgrade. Only in Florida, man. (Slate)

• How the Lottery Works, and Is It Worth Playing? Here are the odds of winning the lottery, and why we do it anyway. (U.S. News)

• The economics of Costco rotisserie chicken: Costco’s popular chickens have stayed fixed at $4.99 for more than a decade — even in the face of raging inflation. But it’s come at a cost. (The Hustle)

• Have you exercised your body fat lately? Everyone has fat cells. But the more exercise you do, the more likely you are to have healthy and small fat cells. (Washington Post)

• How Chinese citizens use puns to get past internet censors: Chinese social media companies and users are locked in a never-ending battle between free speech and censorship. (Rest of World)

• Too Many Songs, Not Enough Hits: Pop Music Is Struggling to Create New Stars Execs say that a deluge of new music — and the difficulty of influencing TikTok’s algorithm — has made building an audience harder than ever for new acts. (Billboard)

Investors, Recessions, Semiconductors, and Music

Thursday morning articles

• Pulling the curtain back: what do millionaires invest in? On average, respondents hold 53% of their portfolio in equities. Home bias shows 83% of their stocks are U.S. stocks. Only 10% hold any assets in hedge funds, venture capital, or private equity, but conditional on doing so, they allocate 13% of their portfolio to these funds. (Alpha Architect)

• The Last Time the Fed Created a Recession. From 1968-1982, the annual inflation was 4% or higher in 14 out of 15 years. Prices were up 5% or more in 12 of those years; more than 6% in 3 out of every 5 years and over 10% on four separate occasions. For the current cycle, the inflation rate has been above 3% since April 2021, so we’ve been dealing with higher-than-average price increases for around 18 months. (Wealth of Common Sense)

• Why I don’t think the Fed will back off: The pushback against rate hikes is unlikely to succeed. (Noahpinion)

• Hedge Fund Managers Paid for Stockpicking Genius Aren’t Showing Much of It:The traditional strategy of mixing long and short equity bets hasn’t provided the bear market buffer that clients hoped for. (Businessweek)

• The Sages of Wall Street: Understanding where growth forecasts are accurate and where they err. (Verdad)

• The surprisingly high stakes in a Supreme Court case about bacon: National Pork Producers Council v. Ross asks just how far one state can go to change life in the other 49 states. (Vox)

  Why U.S. Efforts to Regain Chip Dominance Are Uphill: The American semiconductor industry ceded the lead to Asian rivals long ago, and now it is scrambling to catch up. (CIO)

• Logic of the The China Chip Ban: Joe Biden Just Crushed China’s Semiconductor Industry. (Stratechery via the Triad)

• Putin might lose the war. What would that look like for Russia, Ukraine and the world? A former CIA leader on the cataclysms that may lie ahead — and how the U.S. should deal with them. (Grid)

• How Stoicism influenced music from the French Renaissance to Pink Floyd: Emerging in the wake of the violent French Wars of Religion, Neostoics looked to Stoicism as a remedy for social and political instability. They developed a vocal music repertoire to teach the principles of the system, guiding singers and listeners to “rehearse” Stoic techniques of emotional regulation through informal musical gatherings in people’s homes. (The Conversation)

Ben Bernanke, Elon Musk, Water Crisis, and Tom Cruise

Wednesday morning articles

• Regulators’ Lament The Lesson of Nobelist Ben Bernanke. (Intrinsic Value by Roger Lowenstein)

• Fixing bank runs (sort of) wins the Nobel prize: Have we really figured this out though? (Financial Times Alphaville)

• U.S Cannabis: A Curtain Call The last act of 2022 promises some plot twists: Joe Biden shocked the world when he announced he was going to fast-track review of the federal scheduling of cannabis and pardon prior federal pot possession charges. The move, designed to catalyze young voters a month before the midterm elections, “could alter the face of the industry” and expedite the end of the War on Drugs. (Cannabis Confidential)

• That Sound You Hear Is the Fed Breaking Something: October will test the Fed’s resolve. (Guggenheim)

• The Fed Wants to Quash Inflation. But Can It Do It More Gently? Central bankers have been raising rates rapidly to temper demand and bring prices under control. Now, they’re asking when they can slow down. (New York Times)

• Retailers’ stockpiles mean deep holiday discounts starting now: Stores are sitting on a record $732 billion of merchandise — including computers, clothing and coffee tables — and finding that consumers aren’t interested. (Washington Post)

• Elon Musk can’t fix Twitter because no one can: A $44 billion mistake. (Vox)

• Why Elon Musk is no longer Wall Street’s darling: Could Wall Street’s love affair with Elon Musk be over? Six months ago Tesla shares were flying high, valued at $1.1 trillion. Then Musk announced his plans to buy control of the social media company. Things haven’t been the same for Tesla shares since. (CNN Business)  

• Biden’s rescue plan made inflation worse but the economy better: Government cash boosted demand when economy was struggling to produce, experts say. (Washington Post)

• The Climate Economy Is About to Explode: A new report suggests that the Inflation Reduction Act could be even bigger than Congress thinks. (The Atlantic)

• What Russian trolls can teach us about American voters: “To undermine citizens’ trust in government, exploit societal fractures, create distrust in the information environment, blur the lines between reality and fiction, undermine trust among communities, and erode confidence in the democratic process.” (The Atlantic)

• Many scientists see fusion as the future of energy – and they’re betting big. A clean, plentiful fuel so efficient Earth’s entire annual supply could fit in a swimming pool. That’s the dream, but the science is there, too. (National Geographic)

• BlackRock Fund Bets Rich World Is Likely to Face a Water Crisis: With hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather, water security is no longer a problem just for the developing world. (Bloomberg)

• Tom Cruise set to become first actor to shoot movie in outer space: The 60-year-old Hollywood veteran has reportedly teamed up with The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman on a movie pitch that involves filming in space, which was first tabled in 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic halted plans. Cruise and Liman are said to have reached out to Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (UFEG) on an idea which will see the actor take a rocket up to the International Space Station. (New York Post)

Inflation, Twitter, Stock Market Losses, and the NASA Asteroid Killer

Tuesday morning articles

• Fed’s Inflation Fight Has Some Economists Fearing an Unnecessarily Deep Downturn: Rapid rate increases provide less time for central bankers to study their economic effects (Wall Street Journal)

• Eight ways Elon Musk could still get out of buying Twitter: TL; DR they’re all quite stupid (Financial Times) 

• Twitter investors should be very careful about trusting Elon Musk: And it wasn’t going well for him. Discovery made Musk look like he fabricated the whole bot concern. (Surprise!) In fact, he was talking about the need to weed out the fake accounts — before he even bid. (New York Post)

• Make Peace With Your Stock Market Losses: For investors, the only thing worse than losing is having to admit that you’re a loser. Here’s how to clean up your portfolio without feeling ashamed. (Wall Street Journal)

• How to Manage Risk of Randomness in Investing: “All of life is a management of risk, not its elimination,” writes Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citicorp. Randomness is the fabric that weaves the interaction of everything around us. Since you can’t remove randomness from our affairs, you can’t get rid of the risk also. (Safal Niveshak)

• This is not your millennial’s job market: Gen Z college grads are optimistic about their job prospects. They should be. (Vox) see also Did the pandemic finally give working Americans power over their employers? Not really: Of 11 economic indicators economist Teresa Ghilarducci examined, “most indicators show either declining labor power or give mixed signals.” (Los Angeles Times)

• How Finland Put Traffic Crashes on Ice: The Nordic nation’s rate of vehicle fatalities is a fraction of the toll in the US, despite a harsh climate and ice-covered streets. Here’s how the Finns do traffic safety. (CityLab)

• The 40(ish) Most Powerful People in Podcasting: THR’s inaugural Podcast Power List features the creators of the medium’s most influential shows and the executives behind the latest megadeals. (Hollywood Reporter)

• The Underappreciated Tool for Surviving Extreme Weather: But some communities and regions weathered the effects of these disasters better than others—and they all have something in common” solar-power & batteries. (Slate)

• How NASA Launched Its Asteroid Killer: The DART mission, in which a spacecraft knocked an asteroid off course, is a rehearsal for saving the world. (New Yorker)

• William Shatner: My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness: Excerpt from William Shatner’s new book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” the “Star Trek” actor reflects on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as the actor and author details, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience. (Variety)

Crypto, Wedding Planners, and Teacher Shortages

Monday morning articles

• Millions in Cryptocurrency Vanished as Agents Watched Helplessly: Feds locked up a storage device full of ill-gotten tokens. Then someone started stealing the loot. (Bloomberg)

• Wedding planners on their biggest scams: You know what your wedding doesn’t need? Doughnut walls. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry for a reason. (Vox)

• Why Nancy Pelosi Sabotaged Wildly Popular Bipartisan Legislation: Most Americans do not think lawmakers should be able to trade stocks at all, which is why some thought this was going to be the year Congress reined itself in when it came to the stock market. After all, there are multiple bills floating around the Capitol that could ban elected officials from investing in companies directly. “There’s not a whole lot of issues that are talked about on the agenda right now that command such bipartisan support.” (Slate)

• Attacks Expose Vulnerability of European Infrastructure: The search for the perpetrators has begun following Monday’s sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Which countries could have been behind it, and how secure is Europe’s critical infrastructure at the bottom of the sea? (Spiegel)

• The teacher shortage problem has been going on for 50 years. Why are so few entering the profession? Since the 1970s, the number of people choosing teaching as a career has tanked. Here a look at the stats. (Grid)

• They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election — and Reaped the Rewards: On the day the Capitol was attacked, 139 Republicans in the House voted to dispute the Electoral College count. This is how they got there. A majority of House Republicans last year voted to challenge the Electoral College and upend the presidential election. That action, signaled ahead of the vote in signed petitions, would change the direction of the party. (New York Times) 

• Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview: In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch.” (The Guardian)

• Confidence Man: Key revelations from new book on Donald Trump: Former US President Donald Trump nearly fired his daughter and routinely flushed documents down the toilet. These explosive details and more are revealed in New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s highly-anticipated book Confidence Man, which is released on Tuesday. (BBC) 

Hating Your Job, Time, Book Sales, and the NBA

Friday morning articles

• Why You Hate Your Job: A theory on the function of bullshit jobs: to maintain the illusion of meritocracy and to provide status and prestige for elites. (Current Affairs)

• You weren’t supposed to see that. I’m going to tell you a quick story in the order in which it happened. You were there. You will be familiar with the sequence of these events. But you may not have reached the shocking conclusion that I have. At least not yet. Wait for it… (Reformed Broker)

• Why does time go forwards, not backwards? The arrow of time began its journey at the Big Bang, and when the Universe eventually dies there will be no more future and no past. In the meantime, what is it that drives time ever onward? (BBC)

• This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago—or was it? Silphion cured diseases and made food tasty, but Emperor Nero allegedly consumed the last stalk. Now, a Turkish researcher thinks he’s found a botanical survivor. (National Geographic)

• Where Is All the Book Data? I went looking for book sales data, only to find that most of it is proprietary and purposefully locked away. What I learned was that the single most influential data in the publishing industry—which, every day, determines book contracts and authors’ lives—is basically inaccessible to anyone beyond the industry. And I learned that this is a big problem. Culture industries increasingly use our data to sell us their products. It’s time to use their data to study them. (Public Books)

• This astronaut trains by flying fighter jets. We went along for the ride: Jared Isaacman, who commissioned a private astronaut flight to orbit last year, has purchased three more space trips from Elon Musk’s SpaceX (Washington Post)

• What Einstein and Bohr’s debate over quantum entanglement taught us about reality: The microscopic world behaves very unlike the world we see around us. The idea of quantum entanglement came at a time when the world’s greatest minds debated if the world’s tiniest particles are governed by chance. The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was just awarded for the experimental test of Bell’s Inequality, showing that there is an uncertainty built into the Universe. (Big Think)

• Laughter is vital For philosopher Henri Bergson, laughter solves a serious human conundrum: how to keep our minds and social lives elastic. (Aeon)

• This Is What Life After the N.B.A. Looks Like: Life is good for some N.B.A. retirees who use millions in earnings to do whatever they want. But others say they have struggled to find a new identity without basketball. (New York Times)