10 Friday Juneteenth Reads

3-Day weekend!  Kick it off with our morning reads:

• Prediction Markets Let You Bet on Anything. I Bet Against My Own Husband: GQ on a woman who hedged her own husband’s career outcomes on Polymarket. The piece is funnier and darker than the premise suggests. You can wager on war, elections, awards shows, reality TV, scientific progress, and—in the case of writer Carrie Sun—your own spouse. If you want to play, you have to wonder: Are you smarter than an inside trader? (GQ)

• Gold Fails the Safe Haven Test Again: Friendly reminder: Gold isn’t a good hedge for inflation or uncertainty. Fisher’s commentary team looks at gold’s behavior during the latest risk-off and finds the safe-haven thesis wanting again. The data is the data; the narrative is the narrative. (Fisher Investments)

• 10 things Elon Musk can — but probably won’t — do with $1 trillion: He is the world’s first trillionaire. Here’s the good that money could do.(Vox)

• The Hacker Sent by Anthropic to Calm the Government’s Nerves About AI Safety: Nicholas Carlini recently rang the alarm about the dangers of AI—and now he’s part of a team arguing for the latest models to be released. (Wall Street Journal)

• Here’s how the government is using AI to speed up the planning system: These two new systems could be genuinely revolutionary. James O’Malley on the UK government’s quiet AI-assisted overhaul of planning permissions. Promising case study in low-glamour but high-impact AI deployment. (James O’Malley)

• 24 Simple Secrets to a Healthier Life: Happiness is not a factory setting. It’s a skill you learn. The brain and the mind are trainable. There are evidence-based ways to cultivate calm, focus and patience. The NYT Well team’s annual experts-share-their-habits interactive. Easy to dismiss, harder to ignore. (New York Times)  see also 12 Breathtaking Natural Wonders in the U.S. You Need to See in Your Lifetime: From iconic parks to lesser-known marvels, these destinations showcase America’s most awe-inspiring landscapes. A perfectly serviceable bucket-list piece. Save for the next trip-planning weekend. From iconic parks to lesser-known marvels, these destinations showcase America’s most awe-inspiring landscapes. (Travel & Leisure)

• How Does Our Taste in Movies Change With Age?: How aging shapes our movie-watching habits, genre preferences, and relationship with the past. A nice empirical look at the lifecycle of cinematic preferences. The data confirms what your dad tells you about new movies — sort of. (Stat Significant)

• Chili Peppers of the World: Cultivars, Species, and Heat: An obsessively organized chili pepper taxonomy. Pure rabbit-hole pleasure. A visual field guide to the chili peppers of the world, from wild origins to cultivated forms, illustrated with 176 hand-drawn peppers. (Notes From The Road)

• Iran Has Humiliated Trump: Officials in Tehran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation. The Atlantic’s continuing case that the Iran result is a strategic loss dressed up as deal-making. The argument keeps gaining evidence. (The Atlantic) see also Trump in Defeat: The Atlantic on the rare president-in-the-process-of-losing piece. Less schadenfreude than diagnosis. The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened. (The Atlantic free) see also The Oxymoron of Trump and “Intelligence”: On the gap between intelligence-community findings and the public spin around the Iran campaign. The institutional damage is the lasting cost. We spend $100-billion-a-year on US intelligence that Donald Trump can’t be bothered to read. (Doomsday Scenario)

• The Star of Nike’s Knicks Ad Isn’t Rushing to Fix His Tooth: There were a lot of smiling faces on TV right after the New York Knicks’ momentous NBA championship-clinching victory over the San Antonio Spurs on June 13, but none were as instantly iconic as Chiki Uno’s gap-toothed grin. Uno, a 31-year-old professional model from the Bronx, starred in a Nike advertisement directed by Josh Safdie that aired on TV during the first postgame commercial break. Set to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” the ad follows a man in a Knicks jersey (Uno) sprinting and cartwheeling down the streets of New York. After a few blocks of running, he reaches his destination — hordes of Knicks fans celebrating their team’s long-awaited championship — and breathes a deep sigh of relief. The look of elation that creeps over his face is a perfect encapsulation of everything that long-suffering Knicks fans were feeling when the ad aired. Uno immediately became an avatar for the city’s jubilant moment. (Vulture)

Video of the day: Why Jalen Brunson Rejected $100,000,000 Because Of Kobe Bryant

Be sure to check out our Master’s in Business this week with Seth Klarman, CEO and portfolio manager of The Baupost Group. Founded in 1982 with $27 million in seed capital, over the past four decades, Baupost has grown to $22 billion, with annual net returns of over 20%. The legendary investor is known for his patient, risk-averse, and contrarian approach to finding deeply discounted securities across equities, distressed debt, and real estate.  He is the author of Margin of Safety (1991) and the editor of the 7th edition of Security Analysis (2023).

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