Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Let There Be Luce: The Electric Ferrari Is Finally Here: Wired’s first look at the Ferrari Luce — the EV the marque kept delaying. Performance numbers, sound design, and the open question of whether Ferrari resale survives a powertrain swap. (Wired)
• “Seriously the best boss ever”: inside the world of Jeffrey Epstein’s assistant: A Guardian long-read on Lesley Groff, the assistant who scheduled Epstein’s life for two decades. The “I had no idea” defense rendered, in detail, completely impossible. No one’s name appears in the Epstein files more than that of Lesley Groff, his assistant. Reading through the thousands of emails, a troubling question arises: what did she know? (The Guardian)
• Tomatoes become latest symbol of America’s affordability squeeze: Tomatoes, ubiquitous in everything from fast-food burgers to haute cuisine, are taking on a new role beyond the plate: A nagging reminder of rising costs. Prices for those red orbs have soared more than any other food product over the past year to cement a spot as one of the consumer headaches du jour. AP on how Mexico tariffs landed straight on the supermarket tomato bin. The first-order story everyone said wouldn’t happen, happening on schedule. (Associated Press)
• Stablecoins Are Private Money. That’s Why They’re a Risk to the Economy. Financial innovations often lead to upheaval and instability. Despite new regulations, those risks persist with stablecoins. Financial innovations often lead to upheaval and instability. Despite new regulations, those risks persist with stablecoins. (Wall Street Journal)
• When “survival of the fittest” justified monopolies and the slow death of democracy: Big Think excerpts a new book on how Gilded Age robber barons used Spencerian Darwinism to justify their consolidation — and how the present rhymes more than it should. (Big Think)
• The High-Seas Black Market That Keeps Iran’s Illicit Oil Flowing: WSJ on the shadow tanker fleet — flag-of-convenience swaps, AIS spoofing, ship-to-ship transfers — that keeps Iranian crude moving despite sanctions. The sanctions-versus-physics scoreboard. Despite U.S. sanctions, the regime has managed to sell billions of dollars in crude to China using a clandestine network of aging tankers. Our reporters paid a visit. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Wrong Stalker: He was an addict. She was his counselor. Who was preying on whom?: A SF Chronicle investigative project that resists every easy frame. The kind of long-form local-paper journalism people keep saying is dead while a few outlets quietly keep doing it. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• This is what happens when you defund Ebola prevention: Shortly after brandishing his infamous chainsaw on a conservative conference stage last February, Elon Musk attended a Cabinet meeting where, giggling slyly, he admitted to having “accidentally canceled” Ebola prevention in his haste to obliterate the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “We restored the Ebola prevention immediately,” he added coolly at the time, “and there was no interruption.” That claim has since proven to be disastrously, profoundly untrue. (Yahoo News)
• MAGA Hogs at the Government Trough: The American Prospect cataloging the federal contracts now flowing to MAGA-aligned firms. The grift isn’t hidden anymore; it’s the line-item. (The American Prospect) see also The year Trump broke the federal government: A long, interactive Post piece on what DOGE-era cuts have done to federal capacity. The bill comes due gradually, then all at once. (Washington Post)
• Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help: ProPublica on a family whose Oklahoma property is being slowly destroyed by neighboring oil-and-gas waste — and the state agency that exists to address exactly this declining to act. Regulatory capture in one specific human story. The Merediths were forced to abandon their house after it filled with black goo, reaching gas concentrations at explosive levels. Despite evidence of oil and gas pollution, the state “wanted to act like it would go away,” the family says. (ProPublica)
Video of the day: The 911 Is the New Rolex: Porsche’s Dangerous Scarcity Play
Be sure to check out our special Masters in Business this week, Remembering Jonathan Clements with Bill Bernstein and Jason Zweig. The two recall Clements’ impact on the investor community; they discuss his posthumous book, “Money and Me.”
The 2026 Races That Could Determine Senate Control
Source: Wall Street Journal
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