We often set aside articles that are longer, deserve a re-read, are broader in scope…or just for fun - for weekend reading. Below are some from this week - pour yourself a hot cup of coffee & enjoy...

• AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified: Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say. (Ars Technica)

• You’re the average of your five closest friends. Scott Galloway is a brilliant professor and observer of what counts in life today. Having close friends is one of them. He writes: “According to Pew Research, 61% of U.S. adults say having close friends is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. The shares of people who say the same about marriage (23%), children (26%), and making a lot of money (25%), pale in comparison.” Here he is on the recent decline and fall of friendships between men. “Nearly 1 in 7 men today doesn’t have a single person he can call to shoot hoops, grab a drink, or catch a movie.” (ProfGalloway)

• Chinese graphite is crucial to electric car batteries. Trump just put a 93.5% tariff on it. The Trump administration is imposing a substantial tariff on a raw material that is critical for electric vehicle batteries, which could significantly raise the cost of building EVs in the United States. (CNN)

• Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You’ve got no rights.’ He secretly recorded his brutal arrest: Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets. (The Guardian)

• On the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Vandalism in Service of Inherited Wealth: How Oligarchs Bought a Constitutional Theory to Kill the New Deal. (Notes from the Circus)

• The Singer Who Skewered America: So long, Tom Lehrer. (Yascha Mounk)

• The Man With the Hot Hand: The dizzying rise, brief fall, and white-hot resurgence of Abstract’s 34-year-old Founder, Ramtin Naimi. (Colossus)

• Where are Vacation Homes Located in the US? (Construction Physics)

• Britain’s spies-for-hire are running wild: Lucrative, freewheeling - and largely unregulated - private intelligence and security firms are booming in the land of James Bond and John le Carré. (Politico)

• Differential pricing, where a seller offers the same product or service at different prices to different customers. It’s been around for years. So if you’re a platinum card holder, live in a toney neighbourhood and own a flash car, you may pay more for that lawn mower at Canadian Tire than I do. (Prisync)

• Even Leonardo da Vinci had a to-do list. And note how many of the entries are about getting an expert to teach him something. (Open Culture)

• Jonathan Haidt on the complete reworking of childhood. (Instagram)

• The real problem? “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” Edward O. Wilson said that and Jonathan Haidt (him again) reveals how that’s changing our children’s brains. (Instagram)

• Consumer Price Index:
  

What are you reading or listening to?