Here are some of the stories that caught my attention today. Some of them are about technology, but not all of them. Updated all through the day, and shared via email newsletter in the evening. You like the links, sign-up for the email newsletter.

• Is Tesla-rival Faraday Future a zombie company? Well, it seems to be the case. What happened? Read on tech node.
• The fake Rolex of canned goods: Good God! This has to be the “headline of the day” and envy of The New York Post headline writers. Read on Taste Cooking.
• The unexpected effects of the HIV prevention pill is one story you want to read today. It will take about 20 minutes to read and two days to seep into your mind. Highly recommend this one. Read on Mosaic Science.
• Toward a more radical selfie is about the 18th-century British artist, Mary Morris Knowles, a women’s right advocate ahead of her time, but it is also about the insidious nature of our social narcissism. It is jam-packed with useful insights. Read on The Paris Review
• The media industry and the “make-Google-pay” fantasy is a good piece by Frederic Filloux, whose analysis is often at odds with my rationale, experience, and thinking. It is worth reading because it once again shows that the media industry isn’t looking to solve its problems, instead of wasting its energy on building more-and-more CMS systems and looking for handouts from Google and Facebook. Like the Brexiteers, they want to shut the door of the barn after the horse has bolted. Read on Monday Note

Etc:

• TRY: To hell with Yahoo finance, time to try out cmlviz, a great way to keep track of stocks, markets, and related news. Now only if they figured out a way to add smart blogs into the mix and give indie-publishing a boost. Are you listen Ophir?
• WATCH: In this whole Facebook mess, the only voice who I respect is Alex Stamos. Watch his interview with Frontline, though you can read the transcript and not watch and get angry about FB.

Here are some of the stories that caught my attention today. Some of them are about technology, but not all of them. Updated all through the day, and shared via email newsletter in the evening. You like the links, sign-up for the email newsletter.

• The Cult of WeWork. PropertyWeek attends a WeWork event, comes back thinking that coworking giant is essentially a cult, but then aren’t all big technology platforms show similarities to a cult. Just look at Microsoft in the past, and Facebook, more recently.
• So un-Civil: Just because you add blockchain and crypto to your business model and profess capabilities to save the media business, doesn’t mean you get to shirk your duties as an employer. You still have to pay your people.
• What’s wrong with Google Cloud and why Diane Greene couldn’t fix it despite her blue-chip credentials. This is a smart, hype-free and an in-depth piece and must read if you are interested in the cloud wars.
• Alex Trebek on Jeopardy, Life & Information:When I read Trebek say that “when you have a preconceived notion about something, any information that reinforces your position is the one you’re going to go with” I was reminded of the problem with Facebook is that Mark Zuckerberg and close coterie lack the nuance to comprehend this very problem.
• The 100 Best Pens: Let’s just get one thing clear — there is no such thing as the best pen. There is, however, a thing called the quest for the best pen. And this list is a great place for you to start your quest. Sadly, I have too many of these.
• Vape Bros love vaping while pooping. Sort of like all smokers who liked having a cigarette in the loo. But Juul is not a cigarette — right? This article in Mel Magazine is remarkably funny and astute.

These are some of the stories, essays and blog posts I have read today. This list is updated multiple times a day, so be sure to comeback often. The latest one is on top. Sign-up for my email newsletter to get this mailed to you at the end of the day.

• Climate change is acting as wildfire “threat multiplier.” a smart analysis of chnaging climate, and the California Wildfires. Read on WeatherWest.
• Why I am long humanity. An excellent essay by my dear friend and investor, Michael Eisenberg. “Social Media has become the Rings of Gyges,” he writes and “craving for human-ness is increasing as uncertainty in the world, and the economy is increasing.”
• Regardless of your politics, this article about how Amazon used a bidding war to scrap cities data is worth a read. Read on In These Times.
• How debt collection companies are destroying small business across the U.S. An excellent example of investigative business journalism and smart use of significant media resources. Read this and be outraged for the real reasons. Read on Bloomberg. (h/t Paul Kedrosky)
• Some more shitty things the shittest Silicon Valley company (no, not Facebook) did to save its bacon. Read on Buzzfeed News

Do you remember what happened at the start of this week? Me neither! The news is flowing so fast these days, that you can’t really figure out what’s really happening. And that is why misinformation — aka the real fake news — surreptitiously gets embedded in our brains and we start believing that it might be true. The whole thing is becoming a bit of a confusing mess. And that’s the objective of the propagandists. Yet another accurate Orwellian prediction. Perhaps that is why I am sharing these articles today so that when you get a chance to read them, you feel you feel satisfied, at the very least.