The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Bella Vinca coffee, grab a seat on the porch, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• Google’s Biggest Moonshot Is Its Search for a Carbon-Free Future Sundar Pichai wants to head the first giant company run without emissions around the clock. It will take far more than money to achieve: Google’s plan to run every office and data center on electricity from clean sources, around the clock with 2030 as the deadline, marking perhaps the most ambitious corporate commitment to decarbonization ever. Google calls it a moonshot, the term it reserves for audacious—and so far mostly fruitless—projects such as self-driving cars and delivery drones. “It’s a bit stressful,” Pichai says, “because we don’t fully have all the answers to get there.” (Bloomberg)
• The Cross of Gold – populism, democratic iterations and the politics of money Looking back at an early (de)flation panic: Against the backdrop of recent history the fact that we are debating monetary policy at all can seem shocking. In the era of the 1980s and 1990s, insulating monetary policy from democracy was a key priority. (Chartbook)
• When Ransomware Hits Rural America What happened when a ransomware attack hit a tiny Kansas county: Tiny Pottawatomie County, Kansas, was not expecting a ransomware attack. That’s why it was so damaging. The infiltration and the county’s reaction highlight the complicated economic, financial, and social factors at play when local government systems are compromised—including just how much information is at stake and how such attacks should be disclosed to the communities they serve. (Slate)
• The rise of the liberal Latter-day Saints And the battle for the future of Mormonism: “They’re having to ask themselves who they trust more — the prophet or Tucker Carlson,” Mosman told me, then sighed. “This is new territory for them.” (Washington Post)
• How Mitch McConnell Accidentally Created An Unregulated THC Market McConnell didn’t know what he was doing when he passed the 2018 Farm Bill. It included a provision that legalized industrial hemp, a form of cannabis that can be made into a wide variety of products including cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating cannabis compound commonly called CBD. That part was intentional — the law quickly launched a multi-billion dollar industry that put the once-obscure CBD compound into lattes, seltzers and hundreds of CVS stores across the country. But after 3 years it appears one of the law’s biggest impacts was entirely unintentional: It accidentally created a booming market for synthetic THC, marijuana’s primary intoxicant. (FiveThirtyEight)
• How Long Can We Play? And yet: Today’s sports heroes play longer and better than ever before. They benefit not only from the inherent genetic advantage of all great athletes, but also from decades of elite training, cutting-edge treatments and the time and money to enact them. And what does that question even mean to you? Inside the quest to prolong athletic mortality. (Sports Illustrated)
• Can MasterClass Teach You Everything? Studies suggest that it takes at least a decade to achieve real expertise. The company promises transformation in a few hours. We privately long to be ennobled, but we doubt that most people have the stuff of genius—anyone who’s looked around a first-grade gym class knows that. Mastery can be measured only against a vast backdrop of bungling. (New Yorker)
• My Father, the Hitman: Doc Dolan was connected to the JFK assassination and some of Benny Binion’s bloodier work. When I was a kid, he pulled a con on me that I’m still struggling to understand. (D Magazine)
• Dwayne Johnson Lets Down His Guard: A no-holds-barred talk with the megastar and entrepreneur about his volatile childhood, his heartbreaking relationship with his dad, and Vin Diesel’s “bullshit.” (Vanity Fair)
• The Reemergence of Adele On the precipice of releasing her latest album, which explores the depths of her divorce, the singer is thinking about how her past relationships shaped her life — and what new ones might bring. Adele on the Other Side (Vogue)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy author of “Choose Possibility” hailed as one of the Top 100 People in the Valley by Business Insider and a Power Woman by Elle. She has 25 years of experience founding, scaling, and running companies: She was an early hire at Junglee (acquired by Amazon), helped to build Google Maps and Local before developing Google International, was CEO of StubHub, and a co-founder of the firms Yodlee and Joyus.
Geography of the Great Resignation: Data shows where Americans are quitting the most
Source: Washington Post
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