“Over the last couple of decades, asset managers have become core to the global financial system, rolling up vast wealth portfolios of perhaps $100 trillion in total. Passive investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have grown explosively over the last 20 years and account for most of the increase. Then there are actively managed firms like Blackstone, KKR, or The Carlyle Group. There is some overlap, as most passive firms have active divisions. Two new books—The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything, by John Coates, and Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, by Brett Christophers—take a hard look at the world of asset managers. They assemble a convincing case that actively managed firms are socially toxic, but leave aside the most interesting questions about passive ones.” (Ryan Cooper/TAP)
"SINÉAD O’CONNOR WAS seated amongst the Amish folks. Whoever gave her that table most likely knew what they were doing. It was 1998, the suburbs of Indianapolis, and O’Connor was in town to perform at Lilith Fair music festival that night; many of the other patrons were in town to go to Lilith Fair. Everyone needed pancakes and a few minutes to play that game with the wooden triangle and the golf tees. My friends and I—all decidedly in the going-to-Lilith Fair contingent—pondered saying anything to one of the artists we’d driven from Ohio to see. As O’Connor headed for the door, three of us sprang up without thinking. In the parking lot, my friend Jess meekly shouted “Sinéad!” O’Connor stopped; we talked. She was kind, signed an autograph, asked if we were coming to the show. There were jokes about whether she could see us at the far back of the crowd. The whole thing took maybe four minutes." (Angela Watercutter/WIRED)
“In the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered an arrowhead at a Bronze Age dwelling in Mörigen, Switzerland. In the years since, the 3,000-year-old artifact has been part of the collection at the Bern Historical Museum. Now, a new analysis reveals that the object is no ordinary arrowhead — it was crafted from a meteorite that crashed to Earth 3,500 years ago, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science … Several methods, including X-ray tomography (computerized imaging) and gamma spectrometry (a process that detects gamma-emitting radioactive materials), showed that the palm-size arrowhead not only contained aluminum-26 isotopes that don't naturally occur on Earth but also traces of iron and nickel alloy consistent with meteorites, according to the study. “ (LiveScience)
"During a school break over the long rainy season, when I was fifteen, my father and I took a trip to Addis Ababa. On our way home, the bus stopped in Bedele, a town known for a popular beer of the same name, for a lunch break. We had an hour before the bus departed again, and I asked him to eat quickly because I wanted us to go for a walk near a row of hotels (brothels) a few minutes away from the restaurant. ‘Remember the prostitute I was ministering to?’ I said. ‘She’s at one of those hotels now.’” (Mihret Sibhat/The Paris Review)
“Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has written a letter to his country’s Senate, asking its members to back a regional military intervention in neighbouring Niger, where a coup toppled the democratically elected government of Mohamed Bazoum last week. Local daily The Cable reported on Friday that Tinubu requested for ‘military buildup and deployment of personnel for military intervention to enforce compliance of the military junta in Niger should they remain recalcitrant.’" (Al Jazeera)
“In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before his office was flattened by artillery fire, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun. The despatch ended with these words: ‘We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe.’ What did this sentence mean?” (Milan Kundera)
“Shockwaves rippled through the cryptocurrency world in the summer of 2016 when 119,754 bitcoin, worth around $71 million at the time, disappeared from the digital coffers of the Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex through thousands of unauthorized transactions. Over the next half-decade, that crypto cache exploded in value, reaching the billions — yet the identity of the mastermind behind one of the largest heists in crypto history remained a mystery. That is until Thursday, when tech entrepreneur Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein admitted in federal court to hacking Bitfinex seven years ago. He and his wife, Heather Morgan, a marketing expert who moonlights as a rapper, were arrested last year on money laundering charges. Dubbed ‘Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde,’ the couple was accused of trying to launder a fraction of the stolen bitcoin — 25,000 to be exact. The rest — worth approximately $3.6 billion — remained in a digital wallet that federal authorities eventually gained access to, leading to the largest single seizure of funds in Justice Department history.” (María Paúl/WashPo)
“Given that people today have generally heard of Selma and Birmingham and Little Rock, and many people know about the integration of the University of Georgia (by Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, in 1961), the University of Mississippi (by James Meredith, in 1962), and the University of Alabama (by Vivian Malone and James Hood, in 1963), it’s a little strange, as Martin says, that Clinton is not on the standard civil-rights time line. But in 1956 what was happening in Clinton was news around the world. Since Clinton High was the first school to test Brown, the media were alert to signs of trouble.” (Louis Menand/TNY)
“Twenty-two years ago, a six-year-old girl—my cousin—got lost in the Arkansas Ozarks, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state’s history. Her disappearance would eventually connect my family to another story, a dark and bizarre one involving kidnapping, brainwashing, murder, and a cult that believed in the imminent end of the world, laced with the kind of eerie coincidences or near-coincidences that cause perfectly rational people to question what they think they know about reality.” (Benjamin Hale/Harpers)
“‘American diplomats wrote of hotels in Xilin which provided contraception as standard and noted ‘no mention of extra charges for use’. The Foreign Office guidance on writing good cables (officially Diptels), made public in 2016, stressed that brevity is the thing. A former US ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland, advised writers to ensure that their cables were never ‘flabby’ or ‘cute’. ‘Be strategically nasty,’ Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia, recommended.” (Tom Stevenson/LRB)
"For much of the past decade, academic researchers have been trying to persuade Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, to share internal data about the behavior of users on its platforms, so that they might understand how—if at all—the sites’ algorithms influence people’s political views and behavior." (Mathew Ingram/CJR)
“For the European Union, meanwhile, the Sahel has become regarded as one of the final ramparts for holding back high-volume migration from sub-Saharan Africa into the rich continent to the north. Toward that end, the EU has spent increasingly large amounts of money to get Sahel governments to intercept and turn back desperate migrants from West Africa and even further afield on the continent before they can reach Europe’s gates.” (FP)
“The consequences of Putin’s determination to avoid loss have been heavy for Ukraine as well as Russia. A futile war has continued and will only stop when Putin, or a successor, recognises the failure. Because he lacks a convincing victory Putin has instead sought to coerce Ukraine into capitulation, first by attacking its critical infrastructure and now its grain exports. None of this has led to a more conciliatory attitude in Kyiv. If anything it has had the opposite effect.” (Lawrence Freedman)
“"I think it's hard to overstate the dangers here: This language moves beyond mere demonization because it suggests a need for violent resistance,’ Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk-radio host and an editor-at-large of The Bulwark, told me Thursday.” (Reliable Sources)
"The Gilgo Beach murders victim previously known only as Jane Doe 7 has finally been identified more than 26 years after her partial remains were first discovered along the Long Island shores. Karen Vergata, a 34-year-old woman who was last seen alive in Manhattan in 1996 while working as an escort, was named on Friday by Long Island officials – who refused to confirm whether or not her murder may be linked to suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann." (Rachel Sharp/The Independent)
“Now comes the indictment of Trump, with prosecution of his co-conspirators just a little down the road. Even if the whole bunch of them get acquitted (which is unlikely), they will have all gone through the special form of hell reserved for defendants in criminal cases. Throw in the disbarment proceedings faced by several Trump lawyers and the incentives are now more properly aligned.” (Jonathan Alter)
“The Colonial Legacies of Authoritarianism in South Asia.” (The Diplomat)
"The Republican establishment wants nothing to do with Alex Mooney. Frankly, he’s a bit miffed about it. Since the West Virginia representative announced his Senate campaign last fall, senior Republicans and the National Republican Senatorial Committee went out of their way to anoint Gov. Jim Justice as their pick to topple Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. Then Justice racked up endorsements, a leadership-backed fundraiser — and most importantly, a big lead in the polls." (Burgess Evereett/Politico)
“It is hard to tell how much of the Saudi vision is real because so much depends on breakthrough technologies, and there are so few precedents for ventures at this scale. There is also the distortion effect created by a large payroll. So many consultants, design firms and architecture offices are getting paid that it serves their interest to play along. The Neom job page lists more than 300 open positions, from fish welfare manager to music teacher to financial data modeller, all presumably very well paid. The first rule of the gravy train is you don’t ask why the gravy keeps coming.” (Quinn Slobodan/New Statesman)
“On my father’s side of the family, there were lots of ancestral mourning rituals that have been passed down through many generations that exist within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church but don’t necessarily have their roots in [the religion]. Traditionally, in my family at least, when someone dies, their closest family members won’t be alerted to the death until they can be surrounded by other family and friends and be prepared for it. That process can become extremely protracted when someone is living in diaspora. I watched this process play out throughout my childhood and adolescence. There’s something really beautiful there; I think it is a beautiful act of empathy. And at the same time, as a child, it felt extremely theatrical.” (Maya Binyam/The Nation)