10 Weekend Reads – The Big Picture

• How To not Play the Recreation: Magic beans, Bahamian penthouses, old style fraud and different vital SBF-inspired insights. A postscript to Bloomberg Businessweek’s The Crypto Story. (Businessweek)

• 99 Good Information Tales You In all probability Didn’t Hear About in 2022: The world didn’t crumble this yr. You simply acquired your information from the flawed locations. (Future Crunch) see additionally What we realized from books this yr: We learn 37 books in 2022 — stuffed with analysis, insights, and recommendation for managing your self and your staff. Listed here are a number of the most fascinating issues we took away from them. (Charterworks)

• The Secret Lifetime of Plant Killers: To take out invasives, the US depends on crews wielding hatchets, chainsaws, and herbicide. It’s a messy, enjoyable job—however it might not be sufficient to cease the unfold. (Wired)

• Essentially the most trustworthy man in actual property thinks the housing market isn’t going to crash: Jonathan Miller is a real-estate appraiser who’s revealed month-to-month housing experiences for 27 years. Everybody from The Wall Road Journal to The East Hampton Star quotes his knowledge and analyses. Right here’s how Miller, who doesn’t assume the housing market goes to crash, turned a beacon of belief. (Business Insider)

• The third magic: A meditation on historical past, science, and AI: Humanity’s dwelling requirements are vastly better than these of the opposite animals. Many individuals attribute this distinction to our better intelligence or our better linguistic communication capacity. However with out minimizing the significance of these underlying benefits, I’d like to supply the concept that our materials success is due, largely, to 2 nice improvements. (Noahpinion)

• How Jersey Metropolis Bought to Zero Visitors Deaths on Its Streets: This city outdoors of New York Metropolis scored the most important visitors security success story of 2022. Right here’s how they did it. (CityLab)

• Discovering the First People: Archaeology and genetics can’t but agree on when people first arrived within the Americas. That’s good science and right here’s why. (Aeon)

• White contractors wouldn’t take away Accomplice statues. So a Black man did it. He didn’t search the job. He had by no means paid a lot consideration to Civil Conflict historical past. Metropolis and state officers stated they turned to Crew Henry Enterprises after an extended record of larger contractors — all White-owned — stated they wished no a part of taking down Accomplice statues. (Washington Post)

• The Hidden Particulars Behind David Beckham’s MLS Contract That Earned Him $500 Million: David Beckham shocked the world when he left Actual Madrid to affix the LA Galaxy of Main League Soccer. He was simply 31 years previous and agreed to take a 70 % pay reduce. However right here’s the half you most likely didn’t know: Beckham’s MLS contract included two distinctive stipulations that finally turned his $6.5 million annual wage into greater than $500 million. It’s probably the most profitable contracts in sports activities historical past. (Huddle Up)

• Jazz Is Freedom: Thelonious Monk on Riverside: Thelonious Monk, who had solely a handful of information below his belt and, then approaching forty, was nonetheless enjoying on different folks’s dates. Certainly, he was the pianist behind Miles for the Newport efficiency, which might assist the youthful musician signal with Columbia information, placing him on the highway to stardom. An oft-told anecdote has the 2 sharing a automotive again to New York. (The Baffler)