TouchStone Reads - February 20th, 2026

We often set aside articles that are longer, deserve a re-read, are broader in scope…or just for fun - for weekend reading. Below are some from this week - pour yourself a hot cup of coffee & enjoy...

• Three economists grabbed a beer. A multibillion-dollar industry was born. The origin of the predictive markets business can be traced to an Iowa City bar in 1988. (NBC News)
• Here's The Colbert Interview that the FCC blocked. Interesting. (YouTube)
• Target makes drastic workforce shift to fix customer experience: Target is making major workforce changes to improve the customer experience after recent controversies and CEO transition. (The Street)
• Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation: When AI “refines” your writing, it’s not improving it - it’s erasing the rare, precise ideas and replacing them with statistical averages, stripping nuance and context in ways that spread misinformation. (The Register)
• EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability to Regulate Emissions: The EPA reversed its endangerment finding on greenhouse gases - the legal foundation for virtually all federal climate regulation. The agency essentially declared it no longer believes its own science. (NBC News)
• Who Is Paying the US Tariffs? Until recently the question of who pays tariffs wasn’t controversial among economists. The overwhelming consensus was that under normal circumstances tariffs - taxes on imported goods - are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. (Paul Krugman)
• $185 billion is the down payment - the 4 skills that survive when agents code for months. The infrastructure bubble for AI is actually just a down payment, and only a handful of human skills will remain valuable as AI agents become more capable autonomous workers. Here’s what changed and what it means for your career (Nate’s Newsletter / Substack)
• Netflix Calls Paramount’s Bluff (Spyglass)
• AI is the cheetah; we are the gazelle. AI is already editing the photos on your phone. (BBC)
• Renewables Soar Globally Despite US Climate Pullback: The rest of the world is racing ahead on clean energy even as the U.S. pulls back. Global renewable capacity surged to record levels, and the economics keep getting harder to argue with. (Semafor)
• U2 Propaganda Days of Ash: U2 surprise-released a politically charged six-track EP ahead of their 2026 album, with tracks about defiance, war, and lost lives that Bono said were “impatient to be out in the world.” ‘Six postcards from the present…wish we weren’t here’ (U2.com)
• The Lost Art of Sharing a Bottle: “When we opt out of rituals that foster closeness, we’re not just avoiding alcohol, we’re often avoiding connection itself. If staying home and not going out is weakening your social ties, that hurts you physiologically in other ways.” (Wine Enthusiast)
• China’s Numerous Infrastructure Projects (Source: Inter-American Dialogue)
  
  
• The US has actually lost jobs since 2024 (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  
  
• U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.Ds. since Trump took office (Source: Science)
  

What are you reading or listening to?