Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
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Decarbonization
Germany to Keep Last Three Nuclear-Power Plants Running in Policy U-Turn by Bojan Pancevski (WSJ)
With Russia slashing gas supplies, Germany is facing a long, cold winter, but delaying full shutdown of its last three nuclear plants may help stave off the cold. [Link; paywall]
Can the F-150 Lightning Make Everyone Want a Truck That Plugs In? by Talmon Joseph Smith and David Walter Banks (NYT)
As battery manufacturing scales up in rural Georgia to fill the frames of F-150s, it’s still unclear if the truck buyers in the heartland of US pickup demand will adopt the batteries that they build in their local factory. [Link; soft paywall]
Crypto
Fact-checking SBF’s ‘circle jerk’ by Bryce Elder and Robin Wigglesworth (FTAV)
FTX founder and crypto advocate Sam Bankman-Fried recently went on a long Twitter rant about the allegedly circular nature of “tradfi” financial flows. This post is a useful corrective of some of the misrepresentations. [Link; registration required]
The Crypto Geniuses Who Vaporized a Trillion Dollars by Jen Wieczner (NYMag)
Borrowings running near $3bn led to an unprecedented collapse in monster crypto firm Three Arrows Capital this year, fueling a substantial portion of the subsequent collapse in those markets more broadly. Here’s the inside story. [Link; soft paywall]
Tragedy
Should It Be Easier to Take Away a Driver’s License? by Alissa Walker (NYMag)
Why so many Americans who have proven they have no business behind the wheel are still causing crashes that kill tens of thousands per year across the country. [Link]
Russia’s Republic of Grief by Nanna Heitmann and Keith Gessen (NYer)
Soldiers fighting for Russia are overwhelmingly from poor, ethnically diverse areas of the sprawling country where economic opportunities are negligible and the military is one of the only ways out. [Link]
Corporate Press Releases
American Airlines Announces Agreement to Purchase Boom Supersonic Overture Aircraft, Places Deposit on 20 Overtures (American Airlines)
Denver-headquartered Boom has taken a deposit for 20 supersonic aircraft from American, with as many as 20 more planes to follow as the startup moves towards a 2026 target test flight for its Overture airliner. [Link]
Illuminating possibility: Duke Energy and Ford Motor Company plan to use F-150 Lightning electric trucks to help power the grid (Yahoo!/PRNewswire)
A Carolinas utility will work with Ford customers to test a program that takes electricity from parked EVs in order to balance the grid during periods of peak demand. [Link]
Student Loans
Biden administration cancels $3.9 billion in student debt for 208,000 borrowers defrauded by ITT Tech by Annie Nova (CNBC)
Student loan balances borrowed by students at ITT Technical Institute will have their remaining balances forgiven in response to findings that the school engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations. [Link]
Comebacks
Adam Neumann Gets a New Backer by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Vivian Giang, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni (NYT)
The disgraced founder of WeWork has received the largest seed investment in the history of Andreessen-Horowitz, for a company that at this point is nothing more than a vague idea on paper. [Link; soft paywall]
Drought
How We Got Into This Mess on the Colorado River by Jack Schmidt, John Fleck, and Eric Kuhn (Inkstain)
As the flow of water down the mighty Colorado trickles to almost nothing, years of excessive draws on the waterway are catching up with consumption vastly exceeding the flow of water through the river. [Link]
Politics
Conservative push to alter Constitution focuses on primaries by Nicholas Riccardi (AP)
A little-noticed push to re-write the US Constitution via a convention of states has started to gather steam, although the radical and extreme motivations of the movement are far from being realized at this point. [Link]
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Have a great weekend!
