• The Downfall of Diddy Inc.: After months in courtroom, Sean Combs withdrew his racially charged lawsuit towards Diageo. A glance inside that battle reveals the failed try of a fading hip-hop mogul—who’s been buffeted by prices of sexual assault—to salvage a crumbling enterprise empire. (Businessweek)

• America’s New Enterprise Increase: People Have Been Forming New Companies at File Charges. However is This a Actual Startup Increase—or Simply The Rise of Gig Work and Aspect Hustles? (Apricitas Economics)

• How A lot of the World Is It Attainable to Mannequin? Mathematical fashions energy our civilization—however they’ve limits. (New Yorker)

• The Barcode Engineered Its Personal Downfall: For many years, the tiny image has been the plumbing of worldwide capitalism. It would lastly get replaced. (The Atlantic)

• How a 27-Yr-Outdated Codebreaker Busted the Fable of Bitcoin’s Anonymity: As soon as, drug sellers and cash launderers noticed cryptocurrency as completely untraceable. Then a grad pupil named Sarah Meiklejohn proved all of them improper—and set the stage for a decade-long crackdown. (Wired)

• Revisiting Madonna-ology within the Period of Taylor Swift Research: If 2023 started with the launch of Swift’s Eras Tour, it’s ending with the launch of Madonna’s Celebration Tour, a profession survey of her biggest hits. And if Swift has an outsize affect on tradition right now, it’s arduous to think about somebody moreover Madonna who has had a extra outsize affect on cultural research, notably within the early Nineties, when Madonna’s peak coincided with foundational works of queer idea considerably by way of Madonna, “an exemplary well-liked textual content.” (Los Angeles Overview of Books)

• Fracking Eyeballs: How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers on the flip of the twentieth century taught us the right way to measure (and monetize) human consideration. (Asterisk)

• 33 Life Learnings from 33 Years: Yearly, I attempt to spend a while reflecting on what I’ve realized alongside the best way. Up to now, this listing of life learnings was only for me—a non-public accounting of my very own journey, development, failures, and missteps. However this 12 months, I’d wish to share it with all of you. (The Curiosity Chronicle)

• A Knife Cast in Fireplace: The writer wished a Japanese-style kitchen blade made for him by hand. What he witnessed was a mix of artistry and atomic magic. (Chicago Journal)

• Then and Now: Revisiting the Sopranos’ New Jersey 25 Years: Later On the anniversary of the present’s premiere, its creator and placement supervisor mirror on a few of its iconic settings and why they have been chosen. (New York Occasions)