Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• The Cattle Empire That Turned Out to Be a Giant Ponzi Scheme: WSJ on the agricultural Ponzi nobody saw because the inventory was supposed to be on the hoof. The oldest frauds keep finding new collateral. Investors and bank loans fueled Brian McClain’s ‘house of cards’ beef operations, which burned through $170 million (Wall Street Journal)
• Fakes of the Future: Literary credibility in the age of AI. We have, I believe, crossed a new threshold, and all authored writing—novels, poems, screenplays, newspaper columns, not to mention love letters—will be judged according to which side of that divide it falls on. On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative large language models (LLMs). On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. We will come to prefer the former over the latter, not because it will be better, but because we will be more certain of its origins. LARB on what generative AI does to the marketplace of cultural authenticity. The piece takes the long view rather than the breaking-news view. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Polymarket sponsoring election conspiracies from far-right influencers: The “truth machine” is paying for election lies: Polymarket has sponsored posts from far-right influencers on X pushing election conspiracies and disinformation. Popular Information has uncovered a network of at least 16 influencers1, with a collective audience of 13 million, publishing election-related misinformation in posts sponsored by Polymarket. Judd Legum traces Polymarket’s ad spend through far-right influencer accounts amplifying election-fraud narratives. The prediction market with a thumb on the scale. (Popular Information) see also Kalshi asks paid influencers to delete posts sowing doubts over LA mayoral election: Kalshi on Friday asked some of its paid political influencers to remove X posts that sowed doubt about the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral election while promoting Kalshi odds. Semafor scoops the prediction-market platform paying influencers to undermine election confidence, then scrambling to walk it back. The product’s incentives are the story. (Semafor)
• The SpaceX IPO and the End of Public Ownership: The hypocrisy that will emerge from this IPO should be bottled up and placed in the Louvre. On how SpaceX’s IPO structure mostly forecloses meaningful public ownership — supervoting shares, distribution mechanics, the works. The trend the market keeps not pricing. (Me and the Money Printer)
• Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files: The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself. NYT Magazine on the West Wing scramble around the Epstein documents release. The story is the freakout more than the contents. (New York Times Magazine)
• A Billionaire Explains Why American Business Now Feels like the Mafia: Matt Stoller relays a billionaire’s plain description of how American business now operates under the rules of organized crime rather than commerce. Bracing. In his autobiography “Born to Be Wired,” Warner board member and billionaire John Malone describes how he helped turn America into a society focused on greed and market power. (BIG by Matt Stoller)
• How America Gave Up on Its Own History: Unable to agree on how to interpret the American story, the country’s schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to tell it at all. A long Atlantic feature on the collapse of any shared American historical narrative. The arguments will annoy you in different ways depending on your priors — that’s the point. (The Atlantic)
• The Untold Saga Behind an Infamous Male Supermodel Cult: Hollywood Reporter on the long-rumored male-model cult that turned out to be even weirder than the rumors. Some weeks, you just want a strange long-read. Once the world’s highest-paid male model, Hoyt Richards gave his last penny to a socialite conman who claimed to be an alien and preyed on the sexy and susceptible. A new HBO doc tells only half the story. (Hollywood Reporter)
• 5 ways daily cannabis use can affect your body and mind: WaPo on what the longitudinal data now shows about daily cannabis use — cardiovascular, cognitive, motivational. The conversation the legalization debate keeps refusing to host. (Washington Post)
• The ongoing corruption of the World Cup by Gianni Infantino: You can’t turn a blind eye to what is going on in America in particular. People often say you shouldn’t mix politics and sport, but that’s bullshit. Typically it comes from people whose own political views just can’t be reconciled with the beauty of sport and often football in particular. Anyway, how can anyone justify that stance when FIFA, the body that organises the World Cup, consistently and explicitly links the two? Arseblog’s running tally of the Infantino regime’s particular flavor of self-dealing. Funny because it’s earned. (Arse Blog) see also Everything wrong with the 2026 World Cup: From unprecedented wars and rip-off ticket prices to Gianni Infantino selling football’s soul and Donald Trump’s determination to create a “Maga World Cup”, Miguel Delaney details how the 2026 tournament has been riddled with controversy. The Independent’s pre-tournament catalog of geopolitical, logistical, and ethical problems with the Trump/FIFA World Cup. The Ringer’s optimism, on the rocks. (Independent)
Video of the day: Why the World Cup Is So Expensive
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jean Eric Salata, Chair of EQT Group and Chair of EQT Asia. EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with over $310 billion in total assets under management, making it the largest private markets firm headquartered outside the United States.
Solar supplied 12.8% of US energy generation in May — the highest share ever, and the first time that solar surpassed coal in the US
Source: Sherwood
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