Saturdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at whether the claim of movie ‘franchise fatigue’ is real.
Quote of the Day
"Meal-delivery companies are a symbol of what might be the most powerful force in business today: convenience maximalism."
(Derek Thompson)
Business
- A profile of Amherst Holdings CEO Sean Dobson who is building a single family home rental empire using big data. (fortune.com)
- The GateHouse-Gannett deal is betting on scale for newspaper survival. (washingtonpost.com)
- How Chick-fil-A became the powerhouse it is today. (businessinsider.com)
Sports
- Why most American kids quit youth sports by age 11. (aspenprojectplay.org)
- Anna Nicolaou, "Although the overall sums spent on esports advertising today are minuscule by the standards of regular sports, it presents a tantalising opportunity for marketers." (ft.com)
- Christian Pulisic is the best American soccer player. With Chelsea he will be playing on the biggest stage. (espn.com)
- The story behind the mud used to treat every baseball in MLB. (si.com)
Book excerpts
- An excerpt from "Talking to Robots: Tales From Our Human-Robot Futures" by David Ewing Duncan. (fastcompany.com)
- An excerpt from "The Mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard. (elemental.medium.com)
Longreads
- More and more older Americans carry debt and are at-risk of bankruptcy. (ft.com)
- This may be the last job in America that gets automated away. (newyorker.com)
- Content moderation is a legal (and ethical) minefield for tech companies. (stratechery.com)
- Abundant food is coming against cellular biology that knows famine. (aeon.co)
- As a consumer your choices are probably more proscribed than you think. (theguardian.com)
