TouchStone Reads - March 13th, 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... 

• 2 young billionaires are behind the prediction market boom. They hate each other: NPR on the rivalry between the founders of Kalshi and Polymarket - two very different visions for the future of betting on reality, and a feud that’s personal. (NPR)

• The Worst Acquisition in History, Again: Paramount Skydance buying WBD is the fusion of a dog and a car bumper traveling 80 miles an hour. Spoiler alert: It’s not going to end well.  (No Mercy / No Malice)

• The Elusive Cost Savings of the Prefabricated Home (Construction Physics)

• As bitcoin mining economics “have gone from bad to worse,” companies pivot and sell to survive: Core Scientific is just the latest miner offloading its bitcoin, as other miners turn their compute power to AI. (Sherwood)

• Bitcoin’s Plunge Should End the Hype That It Is Digital Gold: Bitcoin fell while gold rallied. Again. At some point, the “store of value” crowd has to reckon with the fact that it trades like a risk asset in every downturn. (The Hill)

• Gambling in the modern age. Sports betting is being marketed to young Americans as an investment. America’s next epidemic. More than 10% of college students are pathological gamblers. That’s 5x the national average, by some estimates. (Bettor Off)

• Books and screens: Your inability to focus isn’t a failing. It’s a design problem, and the answer isn’t getting rid of our screen time (Aeon)

• The Return of Measles Is Bad. A Polio Comeback Would Be So, So Much Worse: If you think measles outbreaks are scary, wait until you remember what polio actually does. (Techdirt)

• Chicago has run a “Name the Snowplow” contest. Of the six winners this year (I guess they buy six new snowplows every year there), #1 was “Abolish ICE”, followed by “Stephen Coldbert”

• What are the world’s deadliest animals, and can we protect ourselves against them? (Our World in Data)

• Markets now assign roughly a 47% chance of Democrats regaining Senate control, up from about 35% in early February and 41% before the Iran strikes 10 days ago (Source: Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank)
  

• Anecdotal evidence AI is replacing young workers’ jobs showing up in the data across a wide range of countries.  (Source: Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank)
  

What are you reading or listening to?