Recessions, Economy, and the Superbowl

Monday morning articles

• What Recession? Some Economists See Chances of a Growth Rebound. The Federal Reserve has raised rates rapidly. But instead of cracking, some data point to an economy that’s thriving. (New York Times)

• Is the economy kind of good now? If this is a recession, it is a weird one. (Vox)

• U.S. Business Owners Pay Premium to Hire Migrant Workers in Extremely Tight Labor Market: Employers, struggling to fill hourly wage jobs in construction, restaurants and other services, are offering higher pay and better working conditions to people coming to the U.S. to work; ‘The scarcity is huge.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Lab-Grown Meat Has a Bigger Problem Than the Lab: Leading scientists agree that cultured meat products won’t give you cancer, but the industry doesn’t have the decades of data to prove it—so it’s trying to avoid the question instead. (Businessweek)

• Why Do People Believe Everything They Watch on TikTok? We’re just as bad as boomers falling for misinformation on Facebook. (Vice)

• How America Lost Its Grip on Reality: Life in the metaverse is fueling conspiracies across America. (The Atlantic)

• Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It: The concept of Impostor Syndrome has become ubiquitous. Critics, and even the idea’s originators, question its value. (New Yorker)

• American Dream For Rent: Investors elbow out individual home buyers Metro Atlanta is ground zero for corporate purchases, locking families into renting. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

• Minerals are crucial for electric cars and wind turbines. Some worry whether we have enough. Minerals are crucial for electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels. Some worry whether the future supply can meet the rising demand. (Washington Post)

• Data from New Jersey is a warning sign for young sports bettors: A small group of bettors seem to be most at risk. About 5% of all sports bettors placed nearly half of all bets and spent nearly 70% of the money. That means the people losing the most money are the most essential to operator profits. (The Conversation)

• Ford Bought a Newspaper at the Height of His Career. It’s a Warning for Musk. The Tesla founder’s ownership of Twitter could pose risks for him, just as Ford’s ownership of a newspaper created controversy. (Barron’s)

• Winners of the 2022 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest The 11th annual Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest, winners and honorable mentions from 14 categories, have been announced. (The Atlantic)

• We Have Never Seen a Football Player Like Patrick Mahomes: In leading the Chiefs to their second Super Bowl title in four years, Patrick Mahomes is redefining quarterbacking greatness. (Ringer)

• Andy Reid’s Master Game Plan Won the Chiefs the Super Bowl—and Secured His Legacy This season was always going to be a test for Reid and Patrick Mahomes, with a newly retooled offense that prioritized precision over explosivity. But as the coach showed Sunday night, he was more than up to the challenge—just as he’s been his whole career. (Ringer)

Classic Car Sales, Tulipmania, and the Beatles

Friday morning articles

• Boom Times for Online Classic Car Sales: The pandemic changed the auction picture somewhat, giving a boost to eBay Motors, BringATrailer.com, and other online auction/sales companies. The wisdom initially had been that online sales were O.K. for smaller purchases, but for big-ticket items enthusiasts needed to see the cars in person. That assumption has been proven wrong, though traditional auction houses also did well in 2022—with values climbing on collector cars. (Barron’s)

• The Pandemic Used-Car Boom Is Coming to an Abrupt End: Dealership are seeing sales and prices drop as consumers tighten their belts, putting financial pressure on companies, like Carvana, that grew fast in recent years. (New York Times)

• The Unusual Crew Behind Tether, Crypto’s Pre-Eminent Stablecoin: The stablecoin has become a lucrative business at center of crypto economy. (Wall Street Journal)

• Tulipomania! On Holland’s legendary tulip bubble, which burst today in 1637. (Paris Review)

• Best Practices for CIO Succession Planning Require Long-Term Preparation: Carrying out executive transitions smoothly requires thoughtful processes established well in advance. (Chief Investment Officer)

• How we fell out of love with voice assistants: For the past three years voice assistant use has been falling and adoption continues to slow. (BBC)

• Welcome to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s desert dystopia in the making: Western architects are scrambling to work on a Saudi Arabian dream: a city founded on a 170km-long line of mirrored towers. But will it end up as a series of broken pieces? (Prospect)

• How Stockpickers Finally Beat the Index Funds: With less riding on slumping tech stocks such as Amazon, Tesla and Microsoft, many active fund managers finally surpassed their benchmarks in 2022. (Bloomberg)

• America’s Fever of Workaholism Is Finally Breaking: For the first time in 50 years, the rich are buying more free time. (The Atlantic)

• Dissecting Elon Musk’s Tweets: Memes, Rants, Private Parts and an Echo Chamber: What Mr. Musk says on Twitter has a huge reach, now more than ever: His audience is one of the largest, with nearly 128 million accounts following him. It is where he solicits advice, conducts polls, condemns censorship and announces sweeping policy changes on the platform. As a power user who now controls the company — he recently called himself the “chief twit” — Mr. Musk has vowed to remake the social network in his vision. (New York Times)

• Forget Pandemic Puppies. Meet the Inflation Chicken. People are snapping up chickens that are “heavy layers” in response to egg inflation. The chick situation holds lessons about the broader economy. (New York Times)

• The link between our food, gut microbiome and depression: A new study takes an important step forward in understanding the relationship of gut bacteria to what we eat and how we feel. (Washington Post)

• The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think: Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease. (Quanta Magazine)

• Golf’s Existential Crisis Is Coming to Netflix: When it greenlit its new golf series Full Swing, Netflix was hoping to build something like the next Drive to Survive—then a controversial new Saudi league took aim at the PGA Tour and the fight for the soul of the game commenced. It’s a good thing cameras were rolling. (GQ)

• How to Age Gracefully in Hollywood: A TV comedy writer on how to survive a business model of ageism. (The Ankler)

• Why Did the Beatles Get So Many Bad Reviews? An inquiry into how critics stumble. (The Honest Broker)

Extreme Bets, Stocks, Bonds, and Wall Street

Wednesday morning articles

• How Extreme Bets Fueled an $11.4 Billion Fortune: A look inside BlueCrest reveals Michael Platt’s many acts — including outsize returns and some harrowing losses. (Bloomberg)

• Stock, Bond and Crypto Investors Call Fed’s Bluff on Interest Rates: Many are skeptical as central bank says battle against inflation isn’t over. (Wall Street Journal)

• Wall Street: We Want Lower Rates. The Fed: Not So Fast: Traders keep bidding up stock and bond prices in hopes that the central bank will declare victory over inflation. (Businessweek)

• #EUROBOOM European stock markets have further to rally, argues GS (FT)

• Wall Street Is Losing Out to Amateur Buyers in the Housing Slump: Big money spent a fortune snapping up homes. Now, regular folk are outsmarting the pros. (Bloomberg)

• The Last Mustard Maker in Dijon: Nicolas Charvy is bringing a culinary art back to its ancestral home. (Atlas Obscura)

• When Private Equity Came for the Toddler Gyms: The same playbook that has notched high returns acquiring things like foreclosed homes and highway rest stops is being tested by a family-oriented franchise. (New York Times)

• The Private Markets Valuation Debate Isn’t Settled Yet: The Miami conference circuit was abuzz with valuation chatter as investors weigh the pros and cons. (Institutional Investor)

• This group is sharpening the GOP attack on ‘woke’ Wall Street: Consumers’ Research, bolstered by millions in undisclosed donations, targets investment firms and their evaluation of climate risks (Washington Post)

• Passwordless Authentication: What It Is and Why You Need It ASAP. The cybersecurity industry has a vision for a more secure future—one that involves getting rid of passwords. (PC Magazine)

• Want a well-trained dog? Start with a better-trained human. Some dog researchers are rethinking the goals of obedience training, which should include listening, a strong

Google's Ad Business, China's Comeback, and Social Media

Tuesday morning articles

• Breakup of Google’s Ad Business Would Reshape $500 Billion Sector: If government prevails, an asset spinoff is thought to be more likely than a sale. (Wall Street Journal)

• China’s Big Comeback Is Just Getting Started: The country’s stocks are up 50% since officials rolled back Covid-19 restrictions. Alibaba, Yum China, and other names stand to gain. (Barron’s)

• Entrepreneurs Flee China’s Heavy Hand: ‘You Don’t Have to Stay There.’ Weary of crackdowns and lockdowns, businesspeople are moving out of China and taking their wealth with them. Many have found a new home in Singapore. (New York Times)

• Institutional Failure: A Future of Finance Worldview: Institutional Failure: A Future of Finance Worldview (ETF Trends)

• Meet the Latest Housing-Crisis Scapegoat: Blaming the housing crisis on hedge funds and private equity may be easy, but it’s dead wrong. (The Atlantic)

• What it would take for Apple to disentangle itself from China: The tech giant increasingly finds itself beholden to America’s biggest geopolitical rival. But is diversification even possible? (Financial Times)

• How Cash-Needy Private Companies Are Avoiding Dreaded Down Rounds: Few rules govern private markets, but some companies’ confidential maneuvers to bypass a valuation hit could raise eyebrows. (Businessweek)

• The Billions-Dollar VR/AR Headset Question: The appeal and utility of all-day AR glasses is obvious. But we are obviously very far away from such devices being possible, at any price. (Daring Fireball)

• There’s No Quick Fix for Social Media: Ignore the simplistic slogans. Separating what’s invaluable about services like Twitter and Facebook from what’s noxious will require years of experimentation. (Wall Street Journal)

• Gun owners favor requiring parents to lock up weapons. It’s lawmakers who don’t. After a 6-year-old shot a teacher in Virginia, there will be another push for safe gun storage laws across the country. Most will likely fail. (Washington Post)

• Arms and the Man: How not to write an action movie:  And Arnold! So easy, then as now, to laugh at as a cultural figure, but he can’t be laughed at retrospectively. He’s calm, not wooden; fierce, not foolish; intelligent, not doltish. One hadn’t noticed. One can’t not notice. (Harper’s Magazine)

Cheap Money, Economic Decline, and EV Software

Friday morning articles

• The U.S. Consumer Is Starting to Freak Out: The flush savings accounts and cheap credit that helped keep Americans spending at high rates since 2020 are disappearing. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Decline of the Nice-to-Have Economy: Consumers are reining in their spending on pandemic-era luxuries and conveniences, just as investors are doing the same—putting startups in a double bind (Wall Street Journal)

• After 30 Years, the King of ETFs Faces a Fight for Its Crown: State Street’s SPDR S&P 500 fund changed investing forever, ushering in the era of indexing and instant access to funds. (Businessweek)

• The Secret to EV Success Is the Software: Following Tesla’s lead, Volkswagen is building out expertise in-house to avoid the fate of the original cellphone makers. (Businessweek)

• Consumer Reports calls Ford’s automated driving tech much better than Tesla’s: Autopilot was once groundbreaking technology. Today, more than half of new vehicles are available with advanced driver assistance systems which are superior to Tesla’s. Tesla ranked 7th in autonymous driving tech… (CNN Business)

• What businesses do > what businesses say: “Business leaders broadly report deteriorating business conditions, but the breadth of decline reported for actual production, shipments, and employment is more modest — albeit still more negative than during most of the previous economic expansion.“ (TKer)

• This group is sharpening the GOP attack on ‘woke’ Wall Street: Consumers’ Research, bolstered by millions in undisclosed donations, targets investment firms and their evaluation of climate risks. (Washington Post)

• Politicians Want to Keep Money Out of E.S.G. Funds. Could It Backfire? States are supposed to act in the best interests of citizens and retirees. Divesting from E.S.G. funds and companies like BlackRock that run them may create legal jeopardy. (New York Times)

• Streaming Wars: Who’s Winning? For a few years, it was all pretty simple: Netflix ran the show, Hulu had sneaky value, and Prime Video had Fleabag. But when the calendar changed from October to November in 2019, so too did the entire streaming industry. (Streaming Guide)

• The computer errors from outer space: The Earth is subjected to a hail of subatomic particles from the Sun and beyond our solar system which could be the cause of glitches that afflict our phones and computers. And the risk is growing as microchip technology shrinks. (BBC)

• There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth: Consider how many card games must have taken place across the world since the beginning of humankind. No one has, and will likely never, hold the exact same arrangement of those 52 cards you did during that game. Just think about that…Crazy, no? (McGill)

• Mindblown: Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are Illusions: A concept called “quantum entanglement” suggests the fabric of the universe is more interconnected than we think. And it also suggests we have the wrong idea about reality. (Daily Beast)

• David Crosby on love, music and rancour: ‘Neil Young is probably the most selfish person I know’ (2021): At 80, the superstar musician has survived heroin addiction, illness and tragedy to hit an unprecedented run of musical form. He discusses the joy of fatherhood, the pain of falling out with bandmates – and why Joni Mitchell is still the greatest. (The Guardian)

Tesla, China, Wind Turbines, and Saturday Night Live

Wednesday morning articles

• Tesla’s Hurting From Elon Musk’s Twitter Meltdowns. The Question Is: How Much? Since Musk took over at Twitter, his spreading of conspiracy theories and his banning of journalists has eroded much of the goodwill toward him — and Tesla. (CNET)

• I’m a corporate fraud investigator. You wouldn’t believe the hubris of the super-rich:  While the fraudsters I’ve encountered are often cunning, sooner or later they get carried. (The Guardian)

• The Weight-Loss-Drug Revolution Is a Miracle—And a Menace: How the new obesity pills could upend American society (The Atlantic)

• China’s Global Mega-Projects Are Falling Apart: Many of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects are plagued with construction flaws, including a giant hydropower plant in Ecuador, adding more costs to a program criticized for leading countries deeper into debt (Wall Street Journal)

• They Poured Their Savings Into Homes That Were Never Built: Across the country, instead of apartment towers, uninhabitable concrete structures rise up from idle, overgrown construction sites. Infuriated homebuyers in more than 100 cities rose up in a rare act of collective rebellion last year, vowing not to repay loans on unfinished properties. (New York Times)

• Wind Turbines Taller Than the Statue of Liberty Are Falling Over: Breakdowns of towers and blades have bedeviled manufacturers in the US and Europe. (Businessweek)

• Takeaways from Sundance’s secret Brett Kavanaugh documentary: Director Doug Liman announced his new documentary at the festival. Then new tips began pouring in. (Washington Post)

• Six Types of Wealth: Being rich isn’t just a money thing: Which resources you consider valuable is just as important as the abundance of resources themselves. The key is optimizing for the right form of wealth. (Young Money)

• Why VR/AR Gets Farther Away as It Comes Into Focus: As we observe the state of XR in 2023, it’s fair to say the technology has proved harder than many of the best-informed and most financially endowed companies expected. (Matthew Ball)

• How Much Netflix Can the World Absorb? Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyper-aggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.” (New Yorker)

• “It’s Gotta Grow to Stay Alive”: Inside Noah Shachtman’s Raucous Reinvention of ‘Rolling Stone’ The scoop-hungry, Twitter-happy editor has turbocharged the magazine’s digital metabolism—“back in the game,” says Gus Wenner—and chafed some staff along the way, who wonder if the new Rolling Stone is becoming the old Daily Beast. (Vanity Fair)

• ‘The SNL of Sabermetrics’: How a group of message-board misfits changed baseball: More than 25 years ago, Huckabay was at the center of one of baseball’s great underdog tales: “Revenge of the Nerds” meets “Major League,” with a little National Lampoon mixed in. Analytical, irreverent and opinionated, Baseball Prospectus became, as one former employee said, the “Saturday Night Live” of sabermetrics, a launching pad for talented outsiders. (The Athletic)

ChatGPT, Cheap Housing, and Investing in China

Tuesday morning articles

• ChatGPT is everything you wanted Bitcoin to be: ChatGPT was introduced a few months ago and has already spread like wildfire in a way that Bitcoin never has, despite the latter’s explosive rise into the public consciousness as a way to gamble and speculate. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has instantly found use cases, most notably at the high school and college level as children begin to experiment with it as a way to help them complete (or cheat on) their assignments. (Reformed Broker)

• Building More Housing Makes It Cheaper. Really. The new mayor of Los Angeles and about a third of her fellow Americans think new construction causes prices to rise. The evidence suggests otherwise. (Bloomberg)

• Housing Market Predictions for the Next 5 Years Promise Lots of Surprises: Fasten your seatbelt: The housing market is in for a bumpy five-year ride. (US News)

• These Days, Institutional Investors Eye China Warily: U.S. and Canadian allocators no longer pile into Chinese assets. (Chief Investment Officer)

• Hopes stir for FTX creditors — but recovery could take 2 years, sources say: New FTX CEO John Ray could recover as much half or two-thirds of the approximately $8 billion lost when Bankman-Fried allegedly began to pilfer crypto wallets held by as many as 1 million customers. (New York Post)

• It looks like people are actually moving back to San Francisco (really): There’s a big sign that San Francisco may be making a comeback. (Vox)

• Asia Hedge Funds Avert Disaster on Scale of Financial Crisis With China’s Reopening: Percentage of funds ending 2022 positive more than doubled Funds were heading for their second-worst year until October. (Bloomberg)

• One Hundred Years of Certitude: We thought we knew how often heavy storms were supposed to occur. We were wrong. (Slate)

• Imagining Russia after Vladimir Putin: When and how it might happen — and how dangerous it might get The conversations about a post-Putin era have begun. Will it be a peaceful exit — or the “Game of Thrones” variety? (Grid)

• Are We Seeing the Last Gasp of the GOP’s Two Santa Claus Scam? Has the American public finally wised up to Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santas scam, even if they don’t know the details or the backstory? (Hartmann Report)

• ‘The Way We Were,’ 50 years later: Robert Hofler’s new book ‘The Way They Were’ delves into the ego clashes and artistic differences that nearly sank the 1973 movie. (Washington Post)

Investing, Tech Companies, and Long Covid

Monday morning articles

• NYSE Investigates Technical Issue That Caused Wild Market Open: At least 40 S&P 500 stocks were hit with trading halts. NYSE says it’s investigating issues with the opening auction. (Bloomberg)

• For Tech Companies, Years of Easy Money Yield to Hard Times: Rock-bottom rates were the secret engine fueling $1 billion start-ups and virtual attempts to conquer the physical world. But in 2023, reality bites. (New York Times)

• Why Invest in Stocks When Bond Yields Are Higher? In the fall of 1981 the yield on 30 year U.S. Treasury bonds hit 15%. That was the bond buying opportunity of a lifetime. Those are the kinds of yields where you can go to the beach and live off the interest…and no one wanted them. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Hedge Fund That Got China Right Sees Risk in US Credit, Stocks: Vantage CIO warns against ignoring drop in new factory orders Ferres sees red flag in tight spreads for US high-yield credit. (Bloomberg)

• What Microsoft gets from betting billions on the maker of ChatGPT: The reported $10 billion investment in OpenAI will keep the hottest AI company on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. (Vox)

• Rich Customers Pull Money From Banks Offering Paltry Interest Rates: Wealth-management clients are moving deposits into higher-yielding Treasurys and money-market funds (Wall Street Journal)

• Induction stoves: The technology, the politics and why much of the world is on board: And the reasons America doesn’t feel the need to move to induction cooking. (Grid)

• Long Covid Is Keeping Significant Numbers of People Out of Work, Study Finds: An analysis of workers’ compensation claims in New York found that 71 percent of claimants with long Covid needed continuing medical treatment or were unable to work for six months or more. (New York Times)

• “I Still Find Myself Wondering If This Is Real Life”: Adam Kinzinger Has Little Hope for the Future of His Party: The former congressman and newly minted CNN commentator tells Vanity Fair there are “no heroes” in today’s GOP, sounds off on Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership, and reflects on the Jan. 6 committee’s legacy. “I think the biggest impact will just be in the arc of history,” he says. (Vanity Fair)

• Federer and Williams Were the Best Ever. Or Maybe Not. The greatness that counts is the greatness we’ve seen. And what these two tennis players have in common – apart from all the major titles – is that their achievements are in recent memory. (Bloomberg)

Stock Market, Tesla, Trucking, and Isreal Adesanya

Friday morning articles

• The 13 Best Movies About Wall Street Wall Street has always been a fascinating subject for filmmakers, and over the years, there have been many movies that have explored the topics of money, power, and greed. From classic dramas to today’s thrillers, these films have captivated audiences with gripping stories and unique characters. In this post, I’ll be counting down the 13 best Wall Street movies by highlighting the films that have defined the genre and left a lasting impression on audiences around the globe. (Of Dollars and Data)

• Stocks usually recover before earnings do: Last summer, when stocks first reached bear market territory, pundits everywhere said analysts needed to slash earnings expectations before stocks could bottom and a recovery could begin. Expectations for Q4 S&P 500 earnings have plunged from 4.8% y/y growth in late September to a -4.9% decline now, as earnings season dawns, one of the biggest swings on record. This is the “pessimism of disbelief” that underpins new bull markets. (FI)

• Dot-Com Redux: How to invest after valuation risk strikes (Verdad)

• Netflix’s New Chapter: Netflix’s moment of greatest peril is, in retrospect, barely visible in the company’s stock chart: (Stratechery)

• Fed Sets Course for Milder Interest-Rate Rise in February: Officials could begin weighing whether and when to pause rate increases this spring. (Wall Street Journal)

• Who really pays for your rewards? When it come to reward credit cards, not everyone’s a winner. (Financial Times Alphaville)

• Tesla’s Problems Go Way Beyond Elon Musk The EV giant is alienating its customers, bringing in less revenue, and falling behind legacy carmakers. (Wired)

• Bosses are obsessed with returning to the office. Here’s why it’s already out of their hands: Your boss is capital-O obsessed with returning to the office. Why? (Fortune)

• How top CEOs from Elon Musk to Tim Cook tackled the big return-to-office in 2022: The world edged closer to learning to live with COVID-19 in 2022, and as it did, an increasing number of pandemic restrictions were lifted. In many countries, that meant returning to the office for the first time in two years. (Fortune)

• Life as a 21st-Century Trucker Technology, corporate greed, and supply-chain chaos are transforming life behind the wheel of a big rig. I went on the road to find exactly how. (Wired)

• Pickup Tricks From Workhorse to Joyride America has a love affair with pickup trucks. In 2022, the top three best-selling vehicles in America were pickup trucks, and among them, the Ford F-series reigns supreme. The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for more than 40 years, and for that reason, it’s a useful proxy for pickups overall. (Axios)

• How Israel Adesanya Transformed Himself Into a New Kind of MMA Star The former middleweight champ has already reshaped the sport—no matter what happens in the ring. (GQ)

Corporate Fraud, Climate Change, and Kanye West

Thursday morning articles

• Just How Common Is Corporate Fraud? A new study estimates that on average 10 percent of public companies commit securities fraud each year. (New York Times)

• Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb’s Water Is Cut Off: Hundreds of homes outside the boundaries of Scottsdale can no longer get water from the city, now their owners are living a worst-case scenario of drought in the West. (New York Times)

• Parts of Greenland now hotter than at any time in the past 1,000 years: New research in the northern part of Greenland finds temperatures are already 2.7 degrees warmer than they were in the 20th century. (Washington Post)

• Elon Musk’s Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s self-driving software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about the company’s erratic C.E.O.? (New York Times)

• There’s no planet B: The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why (Aeon)

• As its only remaining elected officials depart, Haiti reaches a breaking point. Haiti, a country long beset by catastrophe and political turmoil, is facing perhaps its steepest challenge in recent decades as its piecemeal government, now lacking any democratically elected officials, struggles to chart a path forward amid gang violence and a cholera outbreak. (NPR)

• SBF, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the Spectacular Hangover: After the Art World’s NFT Gold Rush Auction houses and talent agencies thought the Web3 works were a fast track to billions. If it weren’t for a global crypto meltdown, they might have pulled it off. (Vanity Fair)

• A Global Perspective on the Car Shortage: Pandemic-Era Car Shortages are the Defining Example of Supply-Chain Driven Inflation—And Vehicle Production Issues Are Still an Ongoing Worldwide Crisis. (Apricitas Economics)

• Fed to deliver two 25-basis-point hikes in Q1, followed by long pause: The U.S. Federal Reserve will end its tightening cycle after a 25-basis-point hike at each of its next two policy meetings and then likely hold interest rates steady for at least the rest of the year, according to most economists in a Reuters poll. (Reuters)

• Why some people can’t tell left from right: It can seem like an almost childish mistake, but a surprising number of adults — one in six — confuse left from right and scientists are only just starting to understand why. (BBC)

• Is It Really a Good Idea to Micromanage Your Life With an App? Jira, Monday, Todoist, Trello–the internet is full of project management tools promising to simplify your life. But who do they really work for? (Vice)

• The Evolution of Patrick Mahomes Into a Football Man in Full: On the verge of his second NFL MVP award and a win away from his fifth straight AFC championship game, the Chiefs quarterback answered every possible question in 2022 and became a better version of himself. (The Ringer)

• Kanye Is Never Coming Back From This: Ye’s knack for self-sabotage has gone too far, and his former allies are letting him know. (Rolling Stone)