10 Weekend Reads – The Big Picture

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Volcanica coffee, grab a seat by the fire, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Why the Age of American Progress Ended: Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next. (The Atlantic)

• Bored Ape Yacht Club Conquered NFTs. Can It Master the Metaverse Next? Two founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club talk to CNET about how BAYC became the poster child for NFTs — and what comes next. (CNET)

• History is in the making: Though we tend to see history as just one political event after another, it’s technology and ideas, not politics, that change our lives the most. History should reflect that. These are all landmarks in a quite different kind of story, one in which the driving force is not politics but intellectual inquiry and discovery. This story’s main figures are scientists and philosophers and thinkers, not politicians and generals. (Works in Progress)

• Blue Bird vs. Cash Cow: Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase has become a big problem for Tesla. (Slate)

• AI from Superintelligence to ChatGPT: Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are forcing skeptics to eat their words. We should take its risks seriously too. (Works in Progress)

• The Night Raids: For many Afghans, terror came when night fell. Over the years, CIA-backed operations killed countless civilians. The U.S. left without being held accountable. A reporter returns to investigate her past and unravel the legacy of the secretive Zero Units. (ProPublica)

• The Butterfly Effect: How do scientists keep going when extinction feels inevitable? (FiveThirtyEight) but see What If Extinction Wasn’t Forever? At the frontier of conservation, scientists are learning how to bring back “functionally extinct” species using cryogenically frozen cells from the past. (Reasons To Be Cheerful)

• Why scientists can’t give up the hunt for alien life: There will always be “wolf-criers” whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them. (Big Think)

• What bodybuilders do to their bodies — and brains: Creating a physique that can win at the highest level of professional bodybuilding requires superhuman self-discipline, intense training and genetic good fortune. Increasingly, say the people familiar with the culture and its consequences, it cannot be done without illicit drugs and a willingness to push a body to — or past — its limits. (Washington Post)

• What Makes a Movie the Greatest of All Time? The much-respected Sight and Sound poll of the best films ever shows that what is valued onscreen has changed over time, sometimes radically. (New York Times)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Robert Koengisberger, founder and CIO of Gramercy Funds Management, which manages $5.2 billion in distressed Emerging Markets Debt. Gramercy’s chairman is (previous MiB guest) Mohamed A. El-Erian; the firm is a sponsor of the Greenwich Economic Forum.

The Fed Is Moving Historically Fast to Tame Inflation

Source: Statista

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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.