Saturdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at the debate around the reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris.
Quote of the Day
"Instagram is where young Americans go to perform domesticity, which has created a perfect marketing opportunity for brands that already make certain kinds of home goods."
(Amanda Mull)
Book excerpts
- A Q&A with Yancey Strickler, co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter and author of the new book "This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World." (gq.com)
- An exceprt from "Don’t Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language" by David Shariatmadari. (behavioralscientist.org)
Private equity
- Private equity-backed credit is ripe for a disaster. (institutionalinvestor.com)
- How private equity killed Payless Shoes. (nytimes.com)
Companies
- Companies like Microsoft ($MSFT) are willing to push back, hard, against the IRS. (propublica.org)
- There is no single reason for the downfall of Under Armour ($UA). (nytimes.com)
Entertainment
- Rotten Tomatoes eschews algorithms for human curation. (wired.com)
- How longform journalism overtook books as the go-to source for Hollywood screenplays. (thebaffler.com)
- The Good Place revels in its use of language. (theringer.com)
- "The CollegeHumor story is all about timing." (wired.com)
Longreads
- 1930s saw democracy snuffed out across the globe. What can we learn from that experience? (newyorker.com)
- Facial recognition is coming whether you want it or not. (story.californiasunday.com)
- There is a lot more to vaping than just Juul. (story.californiasunday.com)
- On the challenges facing a company that hires almost exclusively from a population with criminal or drug addiction issues. (wsj.com)
- CTE specialist Bennet Omalu's work is coming under scrutiny. (washingtonpost.com)
- Rob Mahoney, "The hope for the Pacers every year is to raise the ceiling a bit higher." (theringer.com)
