Articles of the week
‘Canada’s version of Bernie Madoff’: The rise and fall of Greg Martel - A mortgage broker in Victoria, BC who coached his kid’s hockey team and pledged money to charity. By the time he owed investors $317 million, he was nowhere to be found. (CBC)
The End of Fabulous Money Market Rates Is Near: You have been able to earn solid returns by parking your money in fairly safe places, our columnist says. But that won’t last much longer. (New York Times)
How many dynamic companies broke their streaks of engineer-CEOs for the first time in the 2000s? Installing their first MBA/finance CEOs, who then promptly made fundamental strategic errors that nixed the company’s future, that are now becoming obvious. (Thread Reader App)
Sequoia Capital invested early in Google, Nvidia, and Apple. Can Roelof Botha keep the legendary venture capital firm ahead in the AI future? It helps that the Bay Area-based firm has delivered hit after hit, decade after decade. Sequoia has led investments in tech titans including Apple, Cisco, and Google, plus newer names like Nvidia, Airbnb, DoorDash, and WhatsApp, minting billions in returns along the way. More than 25% of the overall market capitalization of the Nasdaq—more than $7 trillion, as of mid-July—is composed of Sequoia-backed companies. (Fortune)
Silicon Valley’s Trillion-Dollar Leap of Faith: Tech companies are spending as if AI’s transformative uses are a foregone conclusion. They’re not. (The Atlantic)
How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psyche: More than 100 million people visit the retailer for their groceries — and gas and TVs and gold bars and pet coffins — but saving money may not be the only motive. (New York Times)
“F*** These Trump-Loving Techies”: Hollywood Takes on Silicon Valley in an Epic Presidential Brawl: L.A.’s liberal moguls are coming after Elon Musk and the rest of the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club in a political clash of the titans: “People are putting up a lot of dough just to teach these dudes they can’t buy an election.” (Hollywood Reporter)
Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia. Militias After Jan. 6: Internal messages reveal how AP3, one of the largest U.S. militias, rose even as prosecutors pursued other paramilitary groups after the assault on the Capitol. Organized Vigilantism: AP3 has already sought to shape American life through armed vigilante operations — at the Texas border, outside ballot boxes and during Black Lives Matter protests. Close Ties With Police: AP3 leaders have forged alliances with law enforcement around the U.S. Internal files reveal their strategies for building these ties and where they’ve claimed success. (ProPublica)
Infiltrating the Far Right: The threat from domestic terrorism is rising, but, with Republicans decrying the “deep state,” the F.B.I. is cautious about investigating far-right groups. Vigilantes are leaping into the fray. (New Yorker)
Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America: CVS, Target and other chains have barricaded everything from toiletries to cleaning supplies. It’s backfired in almost every way. (Businessweek)
OnlyFans’ porn juggernaut fueled by a deception. Many top porn stars on OnlyFans hire ‘chatters’ to impersonate them online and entice subscribers into splurging on explicit content. These impostors aren’t formally affiliated with OnlyFans but have brought it riches – and new legal threats. Some subscribers say the deception amounts to fraud. One shares his story of betrayal. (Reuters)
Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress: Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally (The Guardian)
31% of Republicans say vaccines are more dangerous than diseases they prevent: The partisan divide on vaccine falsehoods threatens the health of children nationwide. (Ars Technica)
Elon Musk’s misleading election claims have accrued 1.2 billion views on X, new analysis says: The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate said that Musk’s debunked claims are spreading widely and do not appear to be subject to X’s Community Notes fact-checking system. (NBC News)