The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Brazil Daterra Estate Sweet Blue RFA coffee, grab a seat by the fountain, and get ready for our longer form weekend reads:
• Everyone you know uses Zoom. That wasn’t the plan “Our company that used to be a 100% enterprise-focused, is now powering the world. It’s powering governments, education, social activities… And then when the other shoe dropped, it’s like we need to get ready for that.” (CNN)
• China Opens Its Bond Market—With Unknown Consequences for World Global pension funds, starved for yield in a low-growth world, will now have access to safe government debt that pays more than 3%. And if officials deliver on their pledges to open up, reinforced in the Communist leadership’s 2021-25 five-year plan outlined in October, Chinese investors may soon find it a lot easier to snap up shares in Apple, Starbucks, or Tesla—not just their phones, cappuccinos, and cars. The Chinese could join their government, which has long been a major buyer of overseas assets such as Treasuries, as a powerful source of funding. (Bloomberg)
• Matt Drudge Logs Off: The Drudge Report has become a conformist shadow of its formerly bratty, oppositional self. Why? Drudge has always been an enigma, but the page is now updated only once or twice a day and almost never reacts to breaking news, as if it’s being run by someone who simply doesn’t care anymore. (Tablet)
• With Toyota’s Help, This Secretive Entrepreneur May Finally Give Us Flying Cars Bevirt has secretively developed an electric airplane with six tilting propellers that he says can carry a pilot and four passengers 150 miles at up to 200 miles per hour, while being quiet enough to disappear among the hum of city life. The as-yet-unnamed aircraft could cost $400,000 to $1.5 million to manufacture (Forbes)
• “We are giddy”—interviewing Apple about its Mac silicon revolution The Apple Silicon story: What Apple needed was a chip that took the lessons learned from years of refining mobile systems-on-a-chip for iPhones, iPads, and other products then added on all sorts of additional functionality in order to address the expanded needs of a laptop or desktop computer. “During the pre-silicon, when we even designed the architecture or defined the features, we would sit in the same room and we say, “OK, here’s what we want to design. Here are the things that matter.” (Ars Technica)
• Sex Lies and Videogames: Inside the spectacular startup failure of Oomba: A startup designed to make a lot of money from the games industry — instead, everyone played each other. (The Verge)
• How to Fix Economic Inequality? Many experts argue that longstanding US policies that widened inequality have also exacerbated the pandemic’s impact. As the United States and other countries strive to rebuild their economies, governments have an opening to alleviate unfair economic disparities and improve access to opportunities.(Peterson Institute for International Economics)
• 400 years on, the Pilgrims get a reality check From the signing of the Mayflower Compact to the landing at Plymouth Rock, the grade-school story of the Pilgrims doesn’t quite square with the facts. (National Geographic)
• How close is too close? The neuroscience of peripersonal space explores how you create, defend or relax the buffer zone between you and the world (Aeon)
• Aimee Mann on the Music That Made Her The incisive singer-songwriter talks about the artists and albums that have meant the most to her—from Steely Dan to Sharon Van Etten to They Might Be Giants—five years at a time. (Pitchfork)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Greg Fleming, founding CEO of Rockefeller Capital Management based on the prior Rockefeller Family Office. They have about $43 billion in AUM. Previously, Fleming was President of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and served as Chief Operating Officer of Merrill Lynch, where he ran Merrill’s Global Investment Banking business.
Lessons From Europe’s Covid Surge: Control Is Fragile and Losing It Is Easy
Source: Wall Street Journal
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
