The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Volcanica coffee, grab a seat by the fire, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• A Chicago Attorney Is Getting Justice For Hundreds Of Wrongfully Convicted People All At Once: Josh Tepfer has helped exonerate 288 people, many of whom were convicted based on patterns of misconduct by corrupt police or officials. (Buzzfeed)
• The Great Forgetting: Earth is losing its memory: A stratum of amnesia in the geological record, where overlying rock, significantly younger than what lies below, represents some break in an otherwise continuous story of formation. (Nautilus) see also How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat: Plastic pollution is one of the defining legacies of our modern way of life, but it is now so widespread it is even finding its way into fruit and vegetables as they grow. (BBC)
• UPS and the Package Wars: The company offers old-fashioned middle-class jobs and is enjoying record profits. So why is a strike looming? (New Yorker)
• Concrete Built The Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It. A growing chorus of architects argue we have to build differently with concrete — which contributes to global warming and environmental destruction on a scale that’s hard to fathom — or perhaps abandon it altogether. (Noema)
• Inside The Secretive World Of Shark Tank Deals: Who The Real Winners Are. An analysis of 112 businesses offered deals on seasons 8 through 13 of the show reveals that roughly half those deals never close and another 15% end up with different terms once the cameras are turned off. (Forbes reached out to roughly 300 or so companies that got deals but only 112 responded). A similar 2016 survey that Forbes conducted found that about 73% of the deals in the first seven seasons either changed or fell through. (Forbes)
• Smash hits: How viral memes conquered piñata design: Forget tradition. Social media trends are now driving piñata sales in Mexico. (Rest Of World)
• The Four Horsemen of the TV Apocalypse: What Happens When Barriers to Entry Fall in Content Creation Too? (Medium)
• How Police Actually Cracked the Idaho Killings Case: Investigators used forensic genealogy to zero in on suspect Bryan Kohberger. But they aren’t saying so. (Slate)
• You Can Retrace the Footsteps Jewish Refugees Took on a Hike Through the Alps: After World War II, Holocaust survivors fled Europe’s lingering anti-Semitism on a series of clandestine missions. (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Robert Plant on the Finest and Most Questionable Music of His Career: He was, of course, the platonic ideal of a rock front man with Led Zeppelin until their disbandment in 1980 — his voice a golden hammer, and his lyrics an oft-inscrutable scripture of raw power, for his soul partners Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. In the ensuing decades, Plant’s momentum was infinite, even when his music digressed and changed with purpose when he embarked on his journey as a solo artist in 1982. As he likes to put it, “I’ve sort of woven my way through it all.” (Vulture)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jennifer Grancio, CEO of Engine No. 1, where she guides the firm’s strategic vision. She previously was a founding member of BlackRock’s iShares business, where she led European, US, and global distribution, driving the growth of iShares and the global ETF industry.
Inflation Is Slowing, Good News for American Consumers and the Fed
Source: NYT
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