Thursdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at the competition between salmon species to survive climate change.
Quote of the Day
"Taken as a whole, the time tax is regressive. Programs for the wealthy tend to be easy, automatic, and guaranteed."
(Annie Lowery)
Book stuff
- A Q&A with Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell authors of “The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion.” (theverge.com)
- An excerpt from Sarah Everts' “The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration.” (wsj.com)
- An excerpt from "The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond With Forests and Nature" by Peter Wohlleben. (nautil.us)
- An excerpt from from Dave Seminara’s "Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth." (atlasobscura.com)
Food
- Fine dining is going to look a lot different post-pandemic. (eater.com)
- Why the American grocery aisle is teeming with new drinks (and types). (vox.com)
Covid
- The Lake of the Ozarks is ground zero for aggressive vaccine skepticism. (politico.com)
- How Emily Oster came to be a the center of the debate around school reopenings in pandemic. (vox.com)
Finance
- Morgan Stanley ($MS) has their eyes on Charles Schwab ($SCHW). (institutionalinvestor.com)
- The motivations behind the meme stock phenomenon are many and varied. (theatlantic.com)
Longreads
- How unemployment insurance fraud exploded in pandemic. (propublica.org)
- Like it or not, SpaceX now dominates Brownsville, Texas. (protocol.com)
- Disinformation-for-hire is now a thing. (nytimes.com)
- Sicily's agriculture industry is on the front lines of climate change. (ft.com)
- College may not be the 'best four years of your life.' (vox.com)
- On the sorry state of American friendship. (americansurveycenter.org)