Articles of the week
The Great American Poisoning or, wtf is going on with our food system. We’ve evolved to exist in an ancestral environment where health was the default. Today, as I look around, I see the opposite. Americans have never been fatter. We’ve never been sicker. Our kids have never had more cancer, more obesity, more diabetes, more behavioral disorders. The rampant chronic disease we see should force us to ask: why is everyone suddenly sick? Could it be that our environment is killing us? (The Next)
The fast-food industry claims the California minimum wage law is costing jobs. Its numbers are fake: Here’s something you might want to know about this claim. It’s baloney, sliced thick. In fact, from September through January, the period covered by the ad, fast-food employment in California has gone up, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The claim that it has fallen represents a flagrant misrepresentation of government employment figures. Something else the ad doesn’t tell you is that after January, fast-food employment continued to rise. As of April, employment in the limited-service restaurant sector that includes fast-food establishments was higher by nearly 7,000 jobs than it was in April 2023, months before Newsom signed the minimum wage bill. (Los Angeles Times)
Americans Are Mad About All the Wrong Costs: Don’t complain about the price of a Big Mac. Complain about the price of a house. (The Atlantic)
The West Coast’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)
They Built a $100 Million Watch Empire. Then the Market Tanked. The website Hodinkee reinvented watch culture, giving luxury timepieces the same air as a pair of rare Nikes. Now it faces a market downturn and accusations of mismanagement. (Wall Street Journal)
A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels: The ability to easily change prices wasn’t mentioned in Walmart’s announcement that 2,300 stores will have the digitized shelf labels by 2026. Daniela Boscan, who participated in Walmart’s pilot of the labels in Texas, said the label’s key benefits are “increased productivity and reduced walking time,” plus quicker restocking of shelves. (NPR)
A Big Decision for Boeing’s Next C.E.O.: Is It Time for a New Plane? Some analysts say building a new plane soon would help the company regain ground it has lost to Airbus. But doing so would be difficult and expensive. (Vox)
What Retail Apocalypse? Shopping Centers Are Making a Comeback. Vacancy is the lowest it has been in two decades, at 5.4 percent, according to a recent report. The properties are thriving even as retailers like Macy’s and Express shutter many stores. (New York Times)
The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage boom: Hundreds of looming projects will force communities to weigh the climate claims and environmental risks of capturing, moving, and storing carbon dioxide. (MIT Technology Review)
I was watching basketball in the 1980s. I’ve never seen the NBA be this good. As the NBA Finals tip off, we should all admit that we are living in what is likely the best moment ever to be a basketball fan. (New York Times)
The Influencer Is a Young Teenage Girl. The Audience Is 92% Adult Men. A family discovered—and ultimately accepted—the grim reality for young influencers on Instagram: The followers include large numbers of men who take sexual interest in children. (Wall Street Journal)
Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network: The Meta unit’s systems for fostering communities have guided users to child-sex content; company says it is improving internal controls. Your occasional reminder that social media is toxic: (Wall Street Journal)
The Curious Case Of The Underselling Arena Tours: Welcome to the Summer of the Mysteriously Flopping Arena Tours. Why are so many tours struggling to sell seats? How is this kind of large-scale misjudgment possible with so much data available? Experts say… well, it’s complicated. (Stereogum)
How ‘Swiftonomics’ is impacting the music industry. Taylor Swift is not just a musical phenomenon, but a business unicorn too. The Eras tour which has arrived in Edinburgh is reckoned to be pushing her wealth well north of $1bn (£785.51m). Forbes, the money magazine, reckons she is worth $600m (£471m) from performance and her back catalogue is worth as much, while she has around $125m (£98.2m) worth of real estate. (BBC)
Why the most powerful men in America are the worst dressed: Twitter’s menswear guy explains, from Trump Republicans’ shiny red ties to the horror of “dress sneakers.” (Vox)