Friday morning articles
Boom Times for Online Classic Car Sales: The pandemic changed the auction picture somewhat, giving a boost to eBay Motors, BringATrailer.com, and other online auction/sales companies. The wisdom initially had been that online sales were O.K. for smaller purchases, but for big-ticket items enthusiasts needed to see the cars in person. That assumption has been proven wrong, though traditional auction houses also did well in 2022—with values climbing on collector cars. (Barron’s)
The Pandemic Used-Car Boom Is Coming to an Abrupt End: Dealership are seeing sales and prices drop as consumers tighten their belts, putting financial pressure on companies, like Carvana, that grew fast in recent years. (New York Times)
The Unusual Crew Behind Tether, Crypto’s Pre-Eminent Stablecoin: The stablecoin has become a lucrative business at center of crypto economy. (Wall Street Journal)
Tulipomania! On Holland’s legendary tulip bubble, which burst today in 1637. (Paris Review)
Best Practices for CIO Succession Planning Require Long-Term Preparation: Carrying out executive transitions smoothly requires thoughtful processes established well in advance. (Chief Investment Officer)
How we fell out of love with voice assistants: For the past three years voice assistant use has been falling and adoption continues to slow. (BBC)
Welcome to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s desert dystopia in the making: Western architects are scrambling to work on a Saudi Arabian dream: a city founded on a 170km-long line of mirrored towers. But will it end up as a series of broken pieces? (Prospect)
How Stockpickers Finally Beat the Index Funds: With less riding on slumping tech stocks such as Amazon, Tesla and Microsoft, many active fund managers finally surpassed their benchmarks in 2022. (Bloomberg)
America’s Fever of Workaholism Is Finally Breaking: For the first time in 50 years, the rich are buying more free time. (The Atlantic)
Dissecting Elon Musk’s Tweets: Memes, Rants, Private Parts and an Echo Chamber: What Mr. Musk says on Twitter has a huge reach, now more than ever: His audience is one of the largest, with nearly 128 million accounts following him. It is where he solicits advice, conducts polls, condemns censorship and announces sweeping policy changes on the platform. As a power user who now controls the company — he recently called himself the “chief twit” — Mr. Musk has vowed to remake the social network in his vision. (New York Times)
Forget Pandemic Puppies. Meet the Inflation Chicken. People are snapping up chickens that are “heavy layers” in response to egg inflation. The chick situation holds lessons about the broader economy. (New York Times)
The link between our food, gut microbiome and depression: A new study takes an important step forward in understanding the relationship of gut bacteria to what we eat and how we feel. (Washington Post)
The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think: Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease. (Quanta Magazine)
Golf’s Existential Crisis Is Coming to Netflix: When it greenlit its new golf series Full Swing, Netflix was hoping to build something like the next Drive to Survive—then a controversial new Saudi league took aim at the PGA Tour and the fight for the soul of the game commenced. It’s a good thing cameras were rolling. (GQ)
How to Age Gracefully in Hollywood: A TV comedy writer on how to survive a business model of ageism. (The Ankler)
Why Did the Beatles Get So Many Bad Reviews? An inquiry into how critics stumble. (The Honest Broker)