Thursdays are now all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at the odds that the Tokyo Olympics actually happen in 2021.
Quote of the Day
"Like George [Costanza], every instinct that Mark Zuckerberg has regarding free speech is wrong, and so Facebook should be required by law to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing today."
(Ben Hunt)
Book excerpts
- An except from Thomas Levenson's "Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich." (theatlantic.com)
- An excerpt from Stuart Richie's new book "Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science." (behavioralscientist.org)
- An excerpt from Mikkael Sekeres’s book “When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia." (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
- A Q&A with Jason Diamond, the author of "The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs." (bloomberg.com)
Technology
- A profile of Facebook ($FB) co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz's second act, soon to be public software maker Asana. (forbes.com)
- Why Apple ($AAPL) needs to loosen its grip on the App Store for everyone's sake. (stratechery.com)
- A profile of Jaron Lanier who long ago warned about the downside of social media. (gq.com)
- Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. (thecorrespondent.com)
Content
- Television commercials used to be a central part of American culture. No more. (theatlantic.com)
- A deep dive into 'digitally native vertical creators' and why they are surging in pandemic. (medium.com)
- What is MasterClass actually selling? (theatlantic.com)
Innovation
- Innovation happens when people are pushed up against the wall. (collaborativefund.com)
- Humans have been bored from the outset but we are now beginning to study it. (newyorker.com)
Business
- The pandemic is accelerating the demise or small family retail businesses across America. (ft.com)
- How Citibank ($C) got into a a $900 million mess. (institutionalinvestor.com)
- How 3M ($MMM) was caught flatfooted by the pandemic. (marker.medium.com)
Longreads
- The story of the massive fault line running through the Pacific Northwest, aka Cascadia. (atlasobscura.com)
- Like it or not, more of your seafood is going to come from aquaculture. (hakaimagazine.com)
- Seth Rich's family is stilling living with the politicization of his murder. (rollingstone.com)
- Scores of Americans have died due to this risky police tactic. (washingtonpost.com)
- Mosquitos are the world's most dangerous animal. (theatlantic.com)
