Weekend Edition: Is America feeling lucky?

Welcome to the weekend!

This week a South Korean AI company refused an $800 million takeover offer from Meta. The company shares its angry-sounding name with a film franchise — do you know which one? Find out by playing Pointed, our new weekly news quiz that tests not only what you know, but how confident you are that you know it.

What leaves your hands free for replying “Nah” to $800 million overtures from Meta? Our audio playlist, available in the Bloomberg app. This week we’ve got six great stories, read by voice actors, to make you smarter in under an hour.

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Leaving It to Chance

Citizens of democracies like to point out that personalistic political systems — where power is concentrated in one leader — underdeliver economically. On average that’s likely true, but the full story is more subtle. While democracies tend to produce more stable results, autocracies can deliver extreme highs and lows. In other words: When leaders operate without constraints, you have to rely more on luck.

Good luck to the US economy, then — and good luck to the sled dogs of Greenland, who compete today in the annual Avannaata Qimussersua race. Traditionally a local affair, the race was whipsawed this week by a US delegation’s on-again-off-again plans to attend (now off). It’s the latest flashpoint between the US and Greenland since Donald Trump declared “ownership and control” of the territory a matter of national security.

Few are feeling lucky in Mexico’s Ciudad del Carmen, which is dealing with the fallout of a financial crisis at state oil giant Pemex. The company’s $25 billion in unpaid bills are forcing contractors to cut workers’ pay and services, and prompting hunger strikes and safety concerns on oil platforms. The city’s decline mirrors that of Mexico’s oil industry, which has been hit by protectionism and corruption.

Memoirs We’re Reading

When the Going Was Good chronicles Graydon Carter’s reign at Vanity Fair during magazines’ heyday, when $600,000 salaries were standard. “You only realize it was a golden age when it’s gone,” Carter writes.

Cellar Rat is part primer on selling wine, and part score-settling. Beginning with an awkward mispronunciation of “Chassagne-Montrachet,” Hannah Selinger recounts her path to sommelier.

Copper Boom

Weekend Plans

What we’re watching: Muawiya, a $100 million TV series about a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. The show is under fire for representing the Sunni version of a period in Islamic history.

What we’re wondering: What is college good for? The US higher education system became the engine of class mobility in the 20th century, but the data makes clear that degrees now matter to different extents, and to different groups, than in the past.

What we’re doing: …cheating on our taxes? Experts warn that Trump’s weakening of the IRS will undermine voluntary compliance — especially among high earners — and risks widening the $1 trillion tax gap.

What we’re ranting about: transformers. Last week’s power outage at Heathrow Airport is just one example of how a transformer failure can cripple infrastructure, stall clean energy goals and disrupt social services.

One Last Thing

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