TouchStone Reads - May 1st, 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... 

• Tim Cook’s Apple: A breakdown of his 15-year CEO run, taking Apple from $350 billion to $4 trillion. The Good, The Bad and the Apple Intelligence. (SatPost by Trung Phan)

• Farmers Are Pairing Solar Panels With Livestock — and the Results Are Turning Heads: An Oregon project running sheep underneath solar arrays is delivering gains for both the ranchers and the panels, adding to the case for “agrivoltaics” as a way to defuse rural opposition to utility-scale solar. (The Cool Down)

• Tourists Are Staying Away from the U.S. in Droves: With the World Cup approaching and the country’s 250th anniversary also on tap this summer, 2026 was supposed to be a banner year for tourism in the U.S. But that’s not how things are shaping up. (Der Spiegel)

• Why Are 90% Of Humans Right-Handed? An Evolutionary Biologist Explains (Forbes)

• How the Tech World Turned Evil: Timothy Noah on how Musk, Bezos, and Thiel came to define a darker, more political Silicon Valley. (New Republic)

• The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish: ProPublica models what lapsing childhood vaccination coverage actually looks like on a U.S. mortality chart. The graphs do the arguing. (ProPublica)

• AI optimism surges in Asia, unlike in the U.S.: Surveys consistently show Asian publics far more enthusiastic about AI than American or European ones. (Rest of World)

• The People Do Not Yearn for Automation: Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying. (Verge)

• Fertility rate: births per woman (Our World in Data)

• 6 Tiny Countries You Can Walk Across in a Day. You can get your steps in and see an entire country with these six small locales. (Mental Floss)

• China Edges Past U.S. in Global Approval Ratings (Source: Gallup)
  

What are you reading or listening to?