The Week's Best Reads: Generational Clashes and Many "whys"

It's been a week defined by profound disruptions: the question of whether we are reliving the 1930s or the 1950s haunts the columns of Foreign Policy, while AI continues to upend everything - employment, the courts, the human body, and even the creation of its own successors. The recurring theme: the European decoupling, analyzed from every angle, from mismeasured productivity to Baby Boomers accused of mortgaging the continent's future.

Monday, June 1, 2026

• AI turns energy into the hottest business sector in the U.S. (Axios).
• How Brexit undermined the West (Bloomberg). ❤️
• How executives should talk about AI (The Economist).
• The mismeasurement of European productivity (Project Syndicate).
• The dollar is (and remains) an accident (Foreign Policy).
• Why the best British cuisine is actually French (Financial Times). ❤️
• Bill Gates spent years crafting his image. Now, it is starting to crumble (Wall Street Journal).

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

• How the Baby Boomer generation brought Europe to its knees (The Economist). ❤️
• Russian finance officials warn Putin that war spending is unsustainable (Bloomberg).
• Are auditors good stock-pickers? (Klement on Investing).
• Can the French learn to invest like the Swedes? (Bloomberg). ❤️

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

• Can AI be trusted to create an improved version of itself? (Financial Times).
• This does not constitute financial advice (Noema). ❤️
• UK investors can buy Anthropic shares. But is it a good idea? (Bloomberg).
• What is the oldest name in the U.S.? (Erdavis). ❤️
• Why do the worst end up on top? (The Atlantic). ❤️
• The GPS jamming epidemic (Foreign Policy).
• Why American youth are turning toward socialism (Financial Times). ❤️
• The diplomatic bazaar of the World Cup (Intelligencer).

Thursday, June 4, 2026

• What does the ultimate analyst look like? (Klement on Investing).
• Want to know the future? Do not trust the stock market (The Economist). ❤️
• How chess became medieval Europe's favorite pastime (National Geographic). ❤️
• $3.6 million per hour, and other ways to value Elon Musk's fortune (Wall Street Journal).
• Has Colossal Biosciences cloned wolves? (MIT Technology Review).
• An economist's case against the AI "jobs-pocalypse" (Platformer).
• There are only four great powers (Foreign Policy). ❤️
• Will NeeDoh manage to escape the fate of other fad toys? (Bloomberg).

Friday, June 5, 2026

• Are we reliving the 1890s, 1930s, or 1950s? (Foreign Policy). ❤️
• Teens recruited by Russia and Iran to sow chaos (Financial Times). ❤️
• Why China got rich and India did not (David Oks). ❤️
• Can you get rich quick from AI "slop"? (New York Times).
• Yes, living standards grew more slowly in Northwest Europe than in the U.S. (The Overshoot).
• BYD is losing its spark (The Economist).
• The European competitiveness problem is deeper than we think (Project Syndicate).
• How courts are coping with the influx of AI-generated lawsuits (MIT Technology Review). ❤️
• How does the SpaceX IPO compare with previous deals? (Bloomberg).