10 Weekend Reads

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads: • The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It? The largest U.S. automakers have backed away from electric vehicles, even as global sales are booming. The decision may make them obsolete. (New York Times) • AI is changing what we can do. Who we become is still our choice: To understand AI’s effect on moral character, ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah goes back to John Stuart Mill, and the idea that people are shaped by their choices. (Humanist Review) see also AI isn’t destroying entry-level jobs. It’s changing them: Here are the ways leading companies are already responding to the AI revolution in professional services. (Financial Times) • From Hong Kong to Xiānggǎng: The Hong Kong of old is over. Go to Xiānggǎng and see for yourself. Stephen Roach on Hong Kong’s transformation into Xiānggǎng — the slow-motion absorption of a once-global city. (Conflict Stephen Roach) • Shooting Starlink: The “no limits” partnership between Russia and China is taking aim at Elon Musk: Secret documents from a series of clandestine Russian-Chinese military forums reveal a joint plan to defeat Elon Musk’s Starlink and a weapons development partnership far deeper than either country will admit. From air- and missile-defense systems to AI-enhanced drone capabilities, cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is allowing Russian forces to keep pace with Ukrainian innovations while China gains the opportunity to test its wares under combat conditions. Although the threat of increased Western sanctions continues to place constraints on their “no limits” partnership, Russia and China are moving forward with several joint projects — and former U.S. military officers are concerned about Washington’s will to stop them. (The Insider) • What Even Is Ultraprocessed Food? It’s less a useful label and more of a vibe. One of the biggest boogeymen around these days is ultraprocessed food. You can see dozens if not hundreds of news articles every week decrying the damage that these foods are doing to our health. UPFs are apparently responsible for everything from dementia to heart disease and virtually every other health problem in between. They’re so bad that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering “taking action” against UPFs to stop Americans from eating them. (Slate) • The Lost Joy of Music Piracy: What.CD, Oink, and the banalities of streaming. As an avid pirate suddenly finding himself in the midst of the music business, Sheridan saw the issue from a different angle than most of the suits he was surrounded by. “I got brought in and we were being flown to New York, the label was taking us out to these expensive dinners and paying for everything—top notch hotels, everyone had private cars and drivers. There was so much money going around, and it wasn’t the artists who were rolling in cash. I remember one of my first comments to Trent [Reznor] was, ‘Now I see why CDs cost 18 dollars.’” (Pigeons & Planes) • What will be left for us to work on? A thoughtful essay on the shrinking frontier of human-only work as AI capabilities expand. The question isn’t whether machines will take jobs — it’s whether the jobs that remain will be worth doing. My keynote at ICML 2026 (AI As Normal Technology) • Winners of the International Aerial Photographer of the Year: Stunning images from above — the kind of photography that makes you reconsider what the world actually looks like when you’re not standing on it. A collection of winners and selected images from the competition’s “Top 101” grouping, chosen from more than 1,500 entries by professional and amateur aerial photographers around the world (The Atlantic) • The 25 most influential works of American culture: A decade-by-decade look at the books, music, art and ideas that shaped society. The Washington Post’s interactive ranking — across music, literature, film, TV, and art. The list will start arguments, which is the point. (Washington Post) • The bitter history of England vs Argentina, a World Cup semi-final steeped in bad blood: Maradona’s Hand of God, Beckham’s red card, the Falklands — every England-Argentina match carries the weight of decades of grudge. The Athletic previews the latest chapter. (The Athletic) Video of the day: Does Anyone Know the Real Mick Jagger? He’s Not So Sure Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Jason Wenk, founder and CEO of Altruist, a modern custodian built as a clean sheet from the ground up, fully integrated with artificial intelligence. He began his career at Morgan Stanley before launching Retirement Wealth Advisors, and then FormulaFolios. The through-line of his career has been creating lower-cost, tech-enabled, financial advice. The Most Valuable Brands in the World Source: On Deck Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here. ~~~ To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.