‘I’m interested in the power, not t he money’

Welcome to the weekend!

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View from the Top

At the end of last year, Jesse Armstrong couldn’t get tech bros off the brain. He’d just read Michael Lewis’s book on Sam Bankman-Fried, and saw an “unmissable opportunity” to write about the worldview it exposed. The resulting movie, Mountainhead, follows four tech CEOs at a poker weekend that goes sideways, and features all the sharp dialogue that the Succession creator is known for. It also raises sobering questions. “I just think it’s interesting what happens to people as they try to marry their egos with their moral impulses,” Armstrong told Mishal Husain. “In this case with an unbelievably large amount of money.”

The moral aspects of money are also a fascination for Evan Osnos, whose new book The Haves and Have-Yachts explores America’s growing wealth disparity through the lens of the ultrarich. The US now has more than 800 billionaires, up from 66 in 1990 — a stratification that’s given us billionaires pushing for cuts to public benefits from the cabins of their superyachts. “There is a subtle but necessary self-delusion required” of the megarich, Madison Darbyshire writes, “and the jump from believing yourself worthy of an enormous fortune to believing yourself broadly superior because of it is not a hard one to make.”

In a way, dominance breeds self-delusion. Just look at language. Millennia of human sagas helped turn Indo-European dialects into the world’s largest language family: Spanning English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and hundreds of others, it’s now spoken by nearly half of humanity. But taking that preeminence for granted — let alone trying to enforce it — is a fool’s errand, Laura Spinney writes. The lesson from history is that a linguistic landscape is always in flux, and unpredictable events can reconfigure it quite dramatically. Languages, like empires, can fall as well as rise.

Agree or Disagree?

Family ownership doesn’t have to mean Succession-level drama. In Italy, family companies’ financial outperformance and managerial evolution points to the resilience and adaptability of the business model, Adrian Wooldridge writes for Bloomberg Opinion.

Claudia Sheinbaum is proving to be a great politician. A year after her victory, Mexico’s president enjoys an 81% approval rating. But critics fear her political strength could allow her to snuff out parts of the country’s democracy, John Authers writes for Bloomberg Opinion.

Dispatch

Kairu, India
It’s 7 a.m. and the temperature is already 31C (88F) as Nemi Chand starts work. The season’s wheat harvest just wrapped, and the scorched fields of the farm where he’s employed are barren — growing almost anything is impossible in summer. Record temperatures are reaching a threshold of livability in India, where 75% of workers toil in environments with little to no cooling. The heat is forcing some laborers to choose between making money and making themselves sick.

Apple’s Core

Weekend Plans

What we’re playing: lacrosse. In The American Game, S.L. Price delivers a well-researched history of the game, from its Native American origins to its ascent to the upper echelon of US sports.

What we’re reading: Daughters of the Bamboo Grove. Barbara Demick’s book tells the story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy. (The grove refers to the discreet spot the twins’ family chose for childbirth.)

What we’re talking about: cancer research. A Bloomberg investigation found that less than half of more than 200 cancer drugs approved since 1995 have been shown to extend patient survival. Even fewer definitively improved quality of life.

What we’re keeping an eye on: robots. In 2023, China announced plans to mass produce the first human-shaped robots within three years, underscoring the economic need to address population decline in the world’s manufacturing base.

What we’re craving: a 7-Eleven hot dog. The convenience store perfected its model in Japan but has struggled to replicate that success in the US. Now a new player is muscling in, and thinks it can do a better job building global empire.
What we’re watching: YouTube. The platform has evolved past its awkward struggle with original programming to become the singular destination for creators, advertisers and viewers of all ages. Now it’s coming for the sitcom.

(Snag a front-row seat to the collision between Hollywood and Silicon Valley with the Screentime newsletter.)

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