The weekend is a great time to catch up on some posts that were either too long or simply didn’t fit in during the week. Hope you enjoy!
Investing
Lessons from an unusual career path in finance. (Big Picture)
Josh Brown and Morgan Housel talk about why there is always a market for financial pundits. (Motley Fool)
On the value of front-loading a 529 plan. (AllianceBernstein)
Personal finance
Can financial advisory be a profession if participants give us different answers to the same question? (ThinkAdvisor)
Peter Dunn, “All of our financial decisions tell a story. This is especially true if you have children.” (Pete the Planner)
Robo-advisors
Do well-funded robo-advisors have enough of a moat to survive? (I Heart Wall Street)
The logical conclusion of falling trading costs is the disintermediation of index funds and ETFs. (Nerd’s Eye View)
Backtesting the portfolio allocations of Betterment and Wealthfront. (Mebane Faber)
Cash-flush robo-advisors are upping their hiring plans. (InvestmentNews)
Economics
How economists should be more like dentists. (Tim Harford)
Why Dutch auctions could kill ticket scalpers. (24/7 Wall St.)
Business
Why savvy CEOs would do well to manage Wall Street, not the other way around. (Justin Fox)
Weren’t business cards supposed to go the way of the Filofax? (FT)
Why generous people do better than selfish ones at work. (Slate)
Startups
Why VCs should recycle their management fees. (Brad Feld)
Canada is encouraging startups with big incentives. (WSJ)
Technology
GE ($GE) wants to start connecting all its machines to the Internet. (Technology Review)
How big data is making ‘prescriptive planting‘ possible. (Economist)
How do we get to the ‘Internet of things‘? (Benedict Evans)
Sensor-laden clothing is now a thing. (NYTimes)
Driverless cars
Will self-driving cars kill driver’s ed? (Marketwatch)
Does Detroit have an answer to the self-driving car? (Bloomberg View)
Automakers are are rolling out technologies that will make up self-driving cars. (Wired)
How driverless cars will flip the buy/rent decision. (Vox)
Food
Tabasco maker McIlhenny is getting into the Sriracha business. (Time)
Why bacon smells do darn good: the chemistry. (Salon)
Making the case for lab-grown meat. (Vox)
Restaurants
Two tips on how to order at restaurants. (EconLog)
Why Tim Horton’s ($THI) hasn’t made a big dent in the US market, yet. (New Yorker)
How Eataly is exporting Italian food to the world. (FT)
How Taco Bell comes up with stuff like the Waffle Taco. (Businessweek)
Sports
The paradox of bike helmet laws. (Big Think)
On the joys of running without technology. (WSJ)
How NFL lineman deal with weight issues after their playing days are over. (WashingtonPost)
Books
A dozen things learned from William Thorndike’s book The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success. (25iq)
Insights from Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions by Gerd Gigerenzer. (The Psy-Fi Blog)
On the history of ramen: George Holt, author of The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze. (kottke)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
The myth of the media diet: an excerpt from Joshua M. Brown and Jeff Macke’s Clash of the Financial Pundits: How the Media Influences Your Investment Decisions for Better or Worse. (Abnormal Returns)
What you may have missed in our Saturday linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)
Mixed media
How the world consumes media. (The Atlantic)
Don’t follow your passion, follow your effort. (Business Insider)
Why we are so desperate for some certainty in our lives. (Farnam Street)
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