Weekly news and article drop
The global stock market rally isn’t as narrow as you think: “If you assign equal weights to the MSCI Europe, Japan and the US indices, this is the best start to a year since 1998, Lapthorne notes. In dollar terms the Nikkei 225 is off to its best start since 1999.” (Financial Times)
‘Hot Money’ Is Piling Up at Banks and It’s Starting to Take a Toll: Investors scrutinize cost of surging brokered deposits and FHLB loans as midsize banks bear brunt of higher interest rates. (Bloomberg)
Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True: While the world’s eyes were on the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and China, the paths to prosperity and shared interests have grown murkier. (New York Times)
The multibillion-dollar lawsuits that could radically reshape how we buy and sell homes forever: As the money makes its way to all the players in the transaction, you may wonder: Why does it work this way? According to the plaintiffs of two massive class-action lawsuits, this circuitous method of paying real-estate agents is all part of a far-reaching scheme that is bilking home sellers out of billions of dollars every year. (Business Insider)
The Air Jordan Drop So Hot It Blew Up an Alleged $85 Million Ponzi Scheme: Michael Malekzadeh’s Zadeh Kicks made millions of dollars taking big presale orders for coveted sneakers at low prices and scrambling to fill them. Then came the Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey. (Businessweek)
The ad industry is going all-in on AI: At Cannes Lions, the year’s biggest ad event, you couldn’t escape talk of ChatGPT or Midjourney, even at the yacht parties. (Vox)
The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Children to Join: Pentagon scrambles to retain the main pipeline for new service members as disillusioned families steer young people away. (Wall Street Journal)
So where are we all supposed to go now? It’s the end of a social era on the web. That’s probably a good thing. But I already miss the places that felt like everyone was there. (The Verge)
Lithium Scarcity Pushes Carmakers Into the Mining Business: Ford, General Motors and others are striking deals with mining companies to avoid raw material shortages that could thwart their electric vehicle ambitions. (New York Times)
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us: They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them? (New Yorker)
Why Canada’s wildfires will affect air quality for weeks to come: Canada’s fire season is especially bad, and it could lead to smoke drifting southward for the rest of the summer. (Vox)
Nearly half of US honeybee colonies died last year. America’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found. (AP)
How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S. Lauren Davila made a stunning discovery as a graduate student at the College of Charleston: an ad for a slave auction larger than any historian had yet identified. The find yields a new understanding of the enormous harm of such a transaction. (ProPublica)
The Stradivarius Murders: Police said four very valuable violins went missing after a collector and his daughter were killed. Then a lot of stories began to unravel. (Businessweek)
The Violin Doctor: He’s trusted to repair some of the world’s most fabled — and expensive — instruments. How does John Becker manage to unlock the sound of a Stradivarius? (Chicago Magazine)
Dave Grohl’s Monument to Mortality: With trademark ferocity, the Foo Fighters front man is tackling the capriciousness of sudden loss. (The Atlantic)
‘People are like, Wow!’: the man trying to make condoms sexy: It has been said that condoms share marketing characteristics with napalm and funerals. But it is Ben Wilson’s mission to make us believe they are key to human happiness. (The Guardian)
If you love film, you should be worried about what’s going on at Turner Classic Movies: TCM has been a joy since its launch in 1994, and has never faltered. In my home, it’s earned its place as my default channel of choice: Of all the channels and streaming services on TV, it’s the one that, more than any other, wasn’t broke, and didn’t need fixing. (NPR)
The America’s Cup Takes All the Fun Out of Spying on the Rival Yachts: Secret surveillance teams and frogmen are banned from premier sailing race as snooping goes legit. (Wall Street Journal)