The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• After Shark Tank, Mark Cuban Just Wants to Break Shit—Especially the Prescription Drug Industry: The billionaire is done with his hit TV show, but he’s still invested in fighting pharma’s middlemen, being a dad, and needling Elon Musk. (Wired)
• Is the World Really Running Out of Sand? If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here and you probably wouldn’t be either. In fact, I was really surprised by some of the things I didn’t know as I dug deeper into the topic further, and how some of the most widely spread sand “facts” are dead wrong. (Practical Engineering)
• The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US: It used to be that Brits would complain about Americanisms diluting the English language. But in fact it’s a two-way street. (The Guardian)
• Victoria’s Secret Lost the Push-Up Bra Wars. Its Comeback Changed Everything. In 1994, Victoria’s Secret missed out on the push-up-bra phenomenon, forcing it to revamp its marketing strategy—and changing the DNA of the company forever. (Wall Street Journal)
• After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own: Five years after leaving Apple, the iPhone designer is forging a new life in San Francisco, one imaginative building at a time. (New York Times)
• The Last Hominin Standing: A new theory argues humans evolved through competition. (Nautilus) see also The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind: Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to marshal bodily functions, including aspects of mind such as mood, pleasure, and fear. (Wired)
• The Playing Field: Over the last decade, I’ve interviewed and assessed more than 5,000 investment managers. One of the most important things I’ve learned in that process is what separates the great investors from the rest. The great ones view investing as a game, and they know exactly what game they’re playing. It brings to mind an observation from the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah: “In life the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you’re playing.” (Graham Duncan)
• How to do mental time travel: Feeling overwhelmed by the present moment? Find a connection to the longer view and a wiser perspective on what matters. (Psyche)
• Who Pays for the Arts? In the U.S., the arts are subsidized by the very wealthy and the very poor. But amid ongoing turmoil in the nonprofit world, some people are trying to build a new creative economy. (Esquire)
• Natasha Lyonne Is a Boss (a Boss Trying to Stop Time): Amid Oscar talk for her quiet turn in “His Three Daughters” on Netflix, the spitfire star has become a force as a producer driven by a sense of mortality. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Vincent Aita of Cutter Capital. The firm is a market- and factor-neutral, long/short hedge fund focused on health-care companies. Prior to launching Cutter, he focused on U.S. and European healthcare at Citadel and Millenium. Cutter has put-up impressive numbers since its 2022 launch, and now manages more than $500 million in institutional assets.
The World as 100 People Over the Last Two Centuries
Source: Voronoi
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
~~~
To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.
