Thursdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at efforts to bring back the American chestnut tree.
Quote of the Day
"And yet, America has become a Microwave Economy. We’ve overwhelmingly used our wealth to make the world cheaper instead of more beautiful, more functional instead of more meaningful."
(David Perell)
Books
- A Q&A wth Walter Isaacson author of "The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race." (npr.org)
- Lessons from Cal Newport's new book "A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload" (gq.com)
- An excerpt from "Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain" by Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler. (behavioralscientist.org)
- Five insights from John Colapinto's new book "This is the Voice." (nextbigideaclub.com)
Technology
- Packy McCormack, "Excel may be the most influential software ever built." (notboring.co)
- It's hard to remember today, but IBM ($IBM) was once the undisputed center of the computing world. (diff.substack.com)
- How Roblox has created its own unique microverse. (stratechery.com)
- With so much our lives on Big Tech platforms, how much of it do we really own? (newyorker.com)
Housing
- In flood-prone cities, gentrification is happening along elevation lines. (cnn.com)
- What happened when private equity got into the business of owning mobile home parks. (newyorker.com)
Longreads
- Why the retail trading boom is durable and has changed markets. (ft.com)
- Martha Stewart was an influencer before influencers were a thing. (harpersbazaar.com)
- Why when live concerts return you still won't be able to buy a ticket online. (revealnews.org)
- Senior citizens are a growing part of the market for legal marijuana. (saturdayeveningpost.com)
- It's hard to conceive of a better democratic environment without fixing what's wrong with online discourse. (theatlantic.com)
- Bees get all the hype but flies are big pollinators as well. (knowablemagazine.org)
- Four big unanswered questions about NFTs. (news.artnet.com)
