Thursdays are now all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at the decline of former giants ExxonMobil and GE.
Quote of the Day
"If someone keeps coming back to an irrelevant, urgent or provocative point instead, they’re signaling that they’d rather not talk about the important thing."
(Seth Godin)
Book excerpts
- An excerpt from Guy Raz's new book "How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs." (fastcompany.com)
- An excerpt from “The Wake Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It” by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. (wsj.com)
- An excerpt from Michael McCullough's "The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code." (behavioralscientist.org)
- An excerpt from Anne Helen Petersen's "Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation." (wired.com)
Money, success and happiness
- A profile of Chris Rock as he enters a new phase of life. (hollywoodreporter.com)
- Kevin Love, "It was like I was trying to achieve my way out of depression." (theplayerstribune.com)
Pandemic
- The economic effects of the pandemic is trickling down into the middle class. (wsj.com)
- A relentless drive for efficiency made hospitals less able to care for patients in pandemic. (wsj.com)
Finance
- A look inside the great SPAC boom of 2020. (institutionalinvestor.com)
- Why tail-risk hedging strategies will always be misunderstood. (institutionalinvestor.com)
Scandals
- How a poker cheating scandal blew up. (wired.com)
- Money laundering is alive and well in the world's biggest banks. (buzzfeednews.com)
Longreads
- A profile of Ruth Porat, CFO of Google ($GOOGL), managing through pandemic. (forbes.com)
- A dysfunctional federal government has been decades in the making. (theatlantic.com)
- How algorithms are changing what we read online. (thewalrus.ca)
- Public discourse is, in part, about what views are acceptable to voice. (fs.blog)
- How climate change will force a new American migration. (propublica.org)