The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Harry’s Bella Finca coffee, grab a seat on the settee, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The Amazon That Customers Don’t See Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched. (New York Times)
• Why the Pandemic Turned Miami Into the New Monaco Cryptocrats, fin-techpreneurs, and the latest titans of industry fled to this southern capital of sea, sun, and sin in the past year. Can it become a tech utopia, or will it just turn into another sunny place for shady people? (Town & Country) see also ‘Fiat is Immoral, Evil Money’: 3 Days in Miami with the Bitcoin Faithful A savage journey to the heart of the crypto HODLer dream: get rich, party on a yacht, and flip off The Fed! (Decrypt)
• Farmers in Australia are burning their own crops. They’re desperate to escape an epic plague infesting their hay. First came the drought. Then, the floods. Now, the mice. The mice are invading homes. They’re destroying crops. They’re chewing through appliances, sofas, cars — and livelihoods. (Washington Post)
• Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away When things go horribly wrong during a stay, the company’s secretive safety team jumps in to soothe guests and hosts, help families—and prevent PR disasters. (Businessweek)
• A History of Commodity Booms & Busts Stocks and bonds are usually the topics du jour, but commodities have recently been enjoying their day in the sun. From a historical perspective, the significant rally in Copper prices has been particularly interesting: driven by global government’s commitments to increase renewable energy sources and electric vehicle usage. Copper will play a large role in these developments, as in 2020 alone roughly “1.9 million tons of copper was used to build electricity networks.” (Investor Amnesia)
• Hot Pants, Love Potions, and the Go-go Genesis of Southwest Airlines Fifty years ago this month, the Dallas-based carrier first took flight. Those who were there reflect on its past as it confronts a future shaped by the pandemic. (Texas Monthly)
• The elephant vanishes: how a circus family went on the run: Dumba has spent her life performing in circuses around Europe, but in recent years animal rights activists have been campaigning to rescue her. When it looked like they might succeed, Dumba and her owners disappeared (The Guardian)
• The Man Who Loved Presidents: On Jon Meacham He is the intellectual of the moment, this soft-spoken biographer of great men. Meacham whispers in the president’s ear and appears on TV constantly. His books are bestsellers, they win prizes, they are endorsed by Oprah, but his ideas are not widely analyzed. (Harper’s Magazine)
• Marathoner Aliphine Tuliamuk Is Setting the Pace Jun 16, 2021 Tuliamuk had secured her spot in the Tokyo Olympics—then 2020 happened. Fortunately, she’s always run for more than just the medals. (Outside)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Social Psychologist Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is the author of the book Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies in 30 languages. The latest revision is out Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion.
American and Chinese businesses have left their European counterparts in the dust
Source: The Economist
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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.
