Articles of the week
Costco is the hero America needs right now: Look, if you’re blaming Costco for inflation, you might have lost the plot. The company has famously low pricing, with among the lowest product markups of any major retailer out there, according to TD Cowen Managing Director Oliver Chen. That’s why the company enjoys an almost cult-like following. The retail giant truly is a miracle of capitalism. (Washington Post)
No One Wants a New Car Now. Here’s Why. Why are so many Americans forgoing new vehicles? Used cars are not just a better bargain, they retain designs and features more coveted than their high-tech replacements. (Wall Street Journal)
This Man Did Not Invent Bitcoin: For years, Craig Steven Wright, an Australian cryptocurrency enthusiast, claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Then the courts got involved. (New York Times)
Three Algorithms in a Room: A growing number of industries are using software to fix prices. Law enforcers are beginning to fight back. (American Prospect)
Fauci faces the House GOP’s clown show about COVID: Under his leadership, NIAID invested billions of dollars in research that resulted in the development of mRNA technology, which in turn resulted in the development of COVID-19 vaccines in record time, saving millions of lives. When COVID struck, he was tapped as a top advisor to then-President Trump — one of seven presidents he has advised during his career, from Reagan through Biden. (Los Angeles Times)
The Most American City - Searching for the nation’s future in Phoenix, Arizona Four hundred years later, when white settlers reached the territory of southern Arizona, they found the ruins of abandoned canals, cleared them out with shovels, and built crude weirs of trees and rocks across the Salt River to push water back into the desert. Aware of a lost civilization in the Valley, they named the new settlement Phoenix. (Atlantic)
The Ballad of Birkenstock: How the 250-year-old German orthopedic shoe company with Succession-level family drama transformed itself into a luxury behemoth. (Bloomberg)
The Age of the Drone Police Is Here: Based on more than 22 million flight coordinates, reveals the complicated truth about the first full-blown police drone program in the US—and why your city could be next. (Wired)
Silicon Valley’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico “We have people stealing all over the world.” A digital sleuth named Bryan Hance has spent the past four years obsessively uncovering a bicycle-theft pipeline of astonishing scale. (Wired)
“MoviePass, MovieCrash”: 5 takeaways from HBO’s doc about the famed movie service that imploded An HBO documentary illuminates the complex story behind MoviePass’ seismic rise and fall. (Salon)
Get Ready for NBA Players to Make $100 Million a Year: America’s star athletes are on their way to nine-figure salaries. And it might happen sooner than you think. (Wall Street Journal)
A Surf Legend’s Long Ride: For Jock Sutherland, being hailed as the world’s best surfer was just one phase in an unlikely life. (New Yorker)
The World’s Richest Family Is About to Remake the Olympics. Here’s How This summer, as athletes and fans descend on the Paris Olympics, LVMH is spending a fortune making sure its brands are enmeshed in the Games. It's the grandest convergence of sports and luxury ever—but what can it tell us about the Arnault family's broader ambitions? (GQ)