The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of French Roast coffee, grab a seat on the beach, and get ready for our longer form weekend reads:
• The Greatest Trade of All Time—and What Bill Ackman Is Investing in Now: What Bill Ackman did in March 2020. In the space of 3 weeks, as the Covid-19 pandemic was engulfing the globe, Ackman turned a $27 million premium in credit default swaps into $2.6 billion. (Barron’s)
• How Algorithms Are Changing What We Read Online: The AI of the internet determines what’s relevant. One day, it decided my work wasn’t. (The Walrus)
• For Ray Dalio, a Year of Losses, Withdrawals and Uneasy Staff: Hedge fund has seen clients pull $3.5 billion, most in years; some insiders blame lack of innovation for poor returns (Bloomberg)
• Facebook Is Turning A Blind Eye To Global Political Manipulation: “I Have Blood on My Hands”: According to this explosive secret 6,600-word internal memo from a fired Facebook data scientist, the social network knew about specific examples of global political manipulation — and failed to act. (Buzzfeed)
• The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke: It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier. (Forbes)
• Hipgnosis Songs Fund: Launched by longtime artist manager Merck Mercuriadis, he Hipgnosis Songs Fund has been making headlines over the past few years by acquiring stakes in several thousand songs from the likes of RZA, No I.D., Blondie and Mark Ronson. In around 4,000 words, I try to answer a simple question that few people seem to have asked publicly: Will this actually work? (Water and Music)
• The Same Old Boom: Looking at the stock market in particular, the prevailing narrative has gone from one of euphoria to depression, then back to even higher levels of euphoria. Then, this week, we were reminded that beyond this euphoria eventually lies an inevitable depression. (Investor Amnesia)
• The Evangelicals Who Are Taking on QAnon: Some leaders are trying to save their flocks from the lure of the online conspiracy theory. one thing we can say about Q is that he, she or they are highly unoriginal, mining conspiracy theories as ancient as the anti-Semitic blood libel. If you’ve been around the corners of evangelical America as I have, it’s apparent that Q is at least a student of, and perhaps an adherent of, the conspiracies that have long permeated conservative evangelical culture. (New York Times)
• Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration: Wildfires rage in the West. Hurricanes batter the East. Droughts and floods wreak damage throughout the nation. Life has become increasingly untenable in the hardest-hit areas, but if the people there move, where will everyone go? (ProPublica)
• Vittorio Brumotti Serves Vigilante Justice on a Bike Coronavirus hasn’t stopped Italian heartthrob and two-wheeled avenger Vittorio Brumotti from righting society’s wrongs. The cyclist has delighted audiences with his TV news segment “100% Brumotti,” shaming people for parking in handicapped spaces and taking on no less than the Mafia. We ride along with Italy’s favorite bike hero. (Outside)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Doug DeMuro, one of the most popular YouTube car reviewers. His channel videos have been streamed more than 1.1 billion times, averaging 2 million views each. He is also the co-founder of the auction site Cars & Bids, and the author of “Plays With Cars,” and “Bumper to Bumper.”
Widening Partisan Divides Over Freedom to Peacefully Protest in U.S.
Source: Pew Research Center
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