• Grievance Poisoning in the First Degree: Nolan on the political economy of resentment — who cultivates it, who profits, and who pays. Is “I am so great” an actual philosophy? (How Things Work)
America the Undammed: More miles of the country’s rivers were reconnected last year thanks to dam removals than at any other time in history. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/climate/america-the-undammed.html
US science after a year of Trump: A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce. https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.html
Organic Intellectuals and Toilet-Paper Fire: “All you had to do was pay us enough to fucking live.” https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/organic-intellectuals-and-toilet?hide_intro_popup=true
• New panels produce hydrogen fuel using only water, sunlight and no electricity: This grid-independent system eliminates the need for traditional electrolyzers in green hydrogen production. https://interestingengineering.com/energy/panels-produce-hydrogen-fuel-water-sunlight
My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
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• Half of US Home Prices Are at All-Time Highs. Half Are Underwater Since 2022: Half of the country had a real housing recession that the national index hid. One variable explains why. The K Strikes again! https://blog.epbresearch.com/p/half-of-us-home-prices-are-at-all
• AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s coming for your mind: AI isn’t just changing what we do, it’s rewiring our brains as we use it, just like literacy did. We’re trading deep thinking for quick answers without realising the cost to memory and judgment. The people who thrive won’t be those who use AI most, but those who can still think without it. Baillie Gifford on the cognitive offloading already happening at scale and what it might cost us. The investment angle is interesting; the bigger point is worth sitting with. (Baillie Gifford)
• How a Job at OpenAI Became the Greatest Lottery Ticket of the AI Boom: Employees waited two years to sell their shares. Then, the company let them unload $30 million. https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-employee-stock-sales-71ed10bd
• America’s biggest career hurdle: being a daughter: On the unpaid caregiving tax — disproportionately borne by daughters — and what it costs in retirement savings. A real number, finally being measured. Millennial daughters are depleting their savings to care for aging boomer parents (Business Insider)
• At Gawker, They Battled a Billionaire. 10 Years Later, the Scars Are Still Healing: Ten years after Thiel sued Gawker into oblivion, a reckoning with what the case did to media — and to the people inside it. Their weaponized wit made enemies, minted stars and helped define the internet as we know it. A decade after Peter Thiel engineered the site’s spectacular collapse, Nick Denton’s diaspora is still shaping media — and haunted by what happened. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Stephen Miller in Retreat: On Miller’s diminishing influence inside the administration. Ideologues rarely survive contact with operations. The once-powerful aide’s influence has quietly diminished. (The Atlantic)
• What Ethiopian running says about the limits of human ability: A lovely essay on why one Ethiopian region keeps producing world-class distance runners. Genes, altitude, and culture in one stride. One school of training is highly personalised, technical and data-driven. The other is the one that wins marathons (Aeon)
• ‘Being offended isn’t the worst thing. Being poor is’: how Robby Hoffman became a controversial comedy sensation: Profile of Robby Hoffman, the working-class comic who’s becoming impossible to ignore. Genuinely funny, which still counts. She became a controversial comedy sensation, and one of the world’s most successful comedians, with a hit Netflix special, an Emmy-nominated role in Hacks and another opposite Steve Carell. But many of her jokes raise hackles. Is she a genius – or an edgelord? (The Guardian)
Video of the day: Why Oil Will Never Hit $200
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Joe McLean, Managing Partner at MAI Capital Management, where he leads firm’s Sports & Entertainment division, serving 100s of pro athletes/entertainers across NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA + NASCAR. His path to finance runs directly through the locker room as a 4-year NCAA Division 1 player at U of Arizona. Dubbed the athlete’s “Money Whisperer” by the New York Times, he is known for his non-negotiable 60% savings mandate for clients.
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