My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:
• Five Reasons Gold Is Surging Toward $5,000 an Ounce: Buying the precious metal has become the antidote for market jitters (Wall Street Journal)
• Rich Americans Had a Good 2025. Everyone Else Fell Behind: The top 1% of households now hold almost one-third of the nation’s wealth. (Bloomberg free)
• The Economic Legacy of DOGE: DOGE’s legacy is officially the single-largest annual decline in the federal workforce in 75 years—with total federal employment down by roughly 277k, or more than 9%, since Trump’s inauguration; but it failed its supposed budget-cutting goals & broke important agencies. (Apricitas Economics)
• The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians: The AI boom is driving an unprecedented wave of data center construction, but there aren’t enough skilled tradespeople in the US to keep up. (Wired)
• Gen X and Millennials Will Inherit Trillions in Real Estate Over the Next Decade How luxury homeowners are preparing their children for the great wealth transfer. (Wall Street Journal)
• Fracking Goes Global: The technique, honed over the past 15 years in the US, is now being deployed to unlock hard-to-reach oil and gas reserves from Australia to Saudi Arabia. (Businessweek)
• When Elon Musk Came for Michael O’Leary, the Irishman Knew Exactly What to Do: An online brawl between the CEOs of SpaceX and Ryanair has become a lesson in how to monetize a high-profile feud. (Wall Street Journal)
• 6,000 Truth Social Posts Later, Here Are the Promises Trump Kept—and Broke: From adding cane sugar to Coke to ending production of the penny, some of the president’s notable pledges have happened, but not all. (Wall Street Journal) see also The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV: Understand that, and you’ll understand what he’s doing in the White House. (NYT)
• The Dilbert Afterlife: Sixty-eight years of highly defective people: This was the world of Dilbert’s rise. You’d put a Dilbert comic on your cubicle wall, and feel like you’d gotten away with something. If you were really clever, you’d put the Dilbert comic where Dilbert gets in trouble for putting a comic on his cubicle wall on your cubicle wall, and dare them to move against you. (Astral Codex)
• The NFL solved overtime — and left coaches with a big decision: Teams that win the coin toss now face a 50-50 call about whether to kick or receive. There’s no right answer, and endless debate remains. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our bonus edition of Masters in Business interview with Cory Doctorow — science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger. We discuss the power of large companies over the Internet is “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.”
Globally, EV sales went up 20% to 20.7 million. North America saw a 4% decrease
Source: Electrek
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