TouchStone Reads - June 12th, 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... 

• The Law of Averages: A short essay on the practical limits of “things will revert to the mean”. Long before futures or reinsurance, antiquity had its ways of pricing the weather, and one of them still hides in a word every analyst uses. (Unstable Equilibria)

• The triumph of capital: It’s been a great generation to have started out rich. If you compare the United States to the famously high-tax Nordic countries, the major difference is not in the top statutory income tax rates. The top American combined state and local tax rate is generally a little higher than it is in Norway and a little lower than in Denmark and Sweden. New York and California, where a large share of our billionaires live, have unusually high, top income tax rates, so the richest people are paying Nordic-level marginal rates. (Slow Boring)

• How Wise is the Crowd in Prediction Markets: Survey of the empirical literature on prediction-market accuracy. Wise on average, dumb at the tails, and easy to manipulate when liquidity is thin. (QuantPedia)

• Body Language: Communication technologies have been reshaping the human body in a slow migration down the arm. They’ve run out of body. Now they’re reshaping the message. A short, sharp essay on the ways our bodies broadcast what our minds are trying to hide. Worth the five minutes. (Terry Godier)

• 12 Things Orthopedic Surgeons Do to Maintain Speed, Balance, and Longevity. “I train legs like my life depends on it,” he says. “And statistically, it does.” Time’s service piece on the habits ortho surgeons actually run on their own bodies. Less novel than billed, more useful than the average wellness listicle. (Time)

• “This Is Not Financial Advice”: How finfluencers prey on economic desperation. NOEMA on the meme-finance ecosystem hiding behind the disclaimer — and what regulators have already let slip past it. Long, careful, frustrating. (NOEMA)

• This Is Why America Can’t Have Robots And Other Nice Things: A sharp piece on the actuator and component supply-chain story underneath US humanoid-robotics ambitions. China owns the parts; everything else is a press release. Westmag and Atlas Motion Systems are here to fix the actuator crisis (Core Memory)

• Cloud Hoarders: An essay on the people now accumulating physical things — vinyl, books, prints, old hardware — as a deliberate rebuke to the streaming-everything model. The vibe-shift, told without smirk. (Liberties Journal)

• Video of the day: Every Metro System Should be this Beautiful (YouTube)

• From 15 hours to one minute: How AI/ML is speeding up GM’s development (Ars Technica)

• The Math Behind a $100 Million Home? Spoiler: It Doesn’t Always Add Up. (Mansion Global)

• “A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.” How to get out of credit card debt. (Wealth Found Me)

• Globalization Uber Alles: the FTAA & the Decline of America (2011) (Source: Friends of Liberty)
  

What are you reading or listening to?