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:
• Tracking Putin’s Most Feared Secret Agency—From Inside a Russian Prison and Beyond: The spy unit that arrested a Wall Street Journal reporter is leading the biggest campaign of internal repression since the Stalin era. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Fate of the Finance Bro: Depictions of high finance have oscillated between glamorizing Wall Street types and condemning them. In the latest season of HBO’s “Industry,” is greed good again? (New Yorker)
• The ones who need little sleep: Short sleepers cruise by on four to six hours a night and don’t seem to suffer ill effects. Turns out they’re genetically built to require less sleep than the rest of us. (Knowable)
• Ten surprising things about the U.S. labor market: The employment losses were locally concentrated, leading to devastating outcomes for a number of factory towns and their workers. But many of the same companies that shut down their factories in response to the China Shock also adapted and managed to stay in business, often thriving. They not only shifted their activities away from manufacturing and into design and services but also reallocated employees to new workplaces within the same firm. (Agglomerations)
• 90 Facts from 2024: We send out a weekly email every Sunday to over 120,000 investors featuring our favorite research, podcast, articles, facts & figures. Here are 90 facts we’ve shared in 2024. (The Idea Farm) see also 52 things I learned in 2024: This year, I took a sabbatical, recorded a podcast with Freakonomics, designed and shipped a tiny modular synthesizer, and learned many learnings. (Medium)
• How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery: It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible. And then, not unlike solar PV, it took many more years of marching down the learning curve before it could find its place in electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage. Since the early ‘90s, the cost of a lithium-ion battery has fallen by more than 97% per kilowatt-hour, which has finally allowed electric vehicles to approach cost-parity with gasoline-powered cars. (Construction Physics)
• How we’ll know if Trump is going to sell America out to China: Keep an eye on the export controls. They are the key. (Noahpinion)
• America Needs to Radically Rethink What It Means to Be Old As 100-year lifespans become more common, the time has come for a new approach to school, work, and retirement. (The Atlantic)
• The first step to F1. The preteen go-kart drivers spending millions on a shot at professional motorsports. (Washington Post)
• 58 Jazz Luminaries Assembled for This Photo. Only One Remains. Art Kane’s “Harlem 1958” gathered giants of the music. Sonny Rollins, 94, looks back at the historic picture. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Toto Wolff, Principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula-1 Team, and 33% owner of the team.
Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History
Source: New York Times
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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.
