• Did a Private Equity Fire Truck Roll-Up Worsen the L.A. Fires? During the LA fires, dozens of fire trucks sat in the boneyard, waiting for repairs the city couldn’t afford. Why? A private equity roll-up made replacing and repairing those trucks much pricier. (BIG by Matt Stoller)
• Elmo Watch: Elon Musk rose to the top of video game charts. Now he has confessed to cheating. (Sad!) The world’s richest man has admitted to paying to boost his online warriors into global leaderboards, raising questions about his gaming prowess — and his need for digital praise. (Washington Post) see also Bill Gates calls Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians abroad ‘insane shit’: Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist calls fellow tech titan ‘super-smart’ but guilty of ‘overreach’ (The Guardian)
• How to Cover Stupidity (Including Our Own): Writers in Europe are wrestling with a philosophical concept that lies at the heart of much journalism. (Columbia Journalism Review)
• The Players on the Eve of Destruction: The insanity of war has returned to our world. (Noahpinion)
• Americans are watching an inflation bait-and-switch A week into office, Trump has offered zero plans to lower prices. (Washington Post) see also Working Americans Turn to Food Banks as Fed Inflation Battle Drags On: US food banks are facing a wave of need driven by the cost-of-living crunch. (Bloomberg)
• A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI: Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it. (Wired)
• The inside story of Harris’ lost gamble on Joe Rogan, Beyoncé and a late Texas rally: A new book by Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill has details about the Harris campaign’s botched attempt to schedule an interview with Joe Rogan. (NBC News)
• Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting “small town America” Good Daily, which operates in 47 states and 355 towns and cities across the U.S., is run by one person. (Nieman Lab)
• It’s a Scam! It’s a Purge! It’s a Scam *and* a Purge: How to think about Trump’s plans for the federal workforce (Paul Krugman) see also Beware the “Deferred Resignation” Offer: A Legally Dubious Proposal for Federal Employees. (Just Security)
• Woody Johnson’s Jets: ‘Madden’ ratings, a lost season and ‘the most dysfunctional place imaginable’ Belichick described the owner’s approach to running the organization as “ready, fire, aim.” Many who have been part of the Jets organization during Johnson’s tenure heard that comment and agreed. Others pointed to the owner’s words on Oct. 15, the day the Jets acquired Adams, when Johnson said, “Thinking is overrated.” (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Torsten Slok, Partner and Chief Economist at Apollo Global Management. Torsten previously worked at Deutsche Bank for 15 years. For ten of those years, his team was top-ranked by Institutional Investor in fixed income and equities. He has also developed several content platforms at Apollo, including Apollo Academy and the Daily Spark.
How Dry Is Southern California Right Now?
Source: Wired
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