Sunday Reads: Easy bake economy

Hi, Quartz members!

This week, we had our eyes on all kinds of stories: We glanced at the Sun’s surface, for one (grab your shades). We peeped police hopes for using certain facial recognition tools (subzero). And we took a good look at Google’s landmark antitrust trial in the United States (case closed).

But it’s Sunday, and time to move your gaze on to some selected reads. Here are our favorite Quartz stories from last week, plus some bonus charts to get your day started.

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5 reads we liked on Quartz

👟 Stepping away isn’t always easy. Even though he left as CEO more than two decades ago and relinquished his board seat in 2020, Bill Gates is still synonymous with Microsoft — in both legacy and, apparently, current day operations. It’s especially true around AI, writes Britney Nguyen.

🇫🇷 From Paris, with PTO. But stepping away may not be so simple if work for Goldman Sachs and want to go to the Summer Olympics. The investment bank has its eye on employees who are conveniently planning trips to Paris this summer, Rocio Fabbro adds.

✈️ Luxe travel by sky... It’s no revelation that American executives make personal use of their corporate jets. But a new report uncovers just how much more chief officers are rerouting the jets away from business and towards pleasure. Melvin Backman distills just how often corporate planes are being commandeered for non-corporate whims.

🚢 …And by sea. While market debuts like Reddit’s dominate Wall Street’s interest, Laura Bratton writes, the heftiest IPO of the year has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with leisure. Enter Viking Cruises, the river-and-ocean boat driver that’s bringing more than $1.5B into its ports. Now its big market splash is challenging the cruise industry’s most dominant operators.

🧑‍🍳 The little oven that could. While the air fryer became known as the beloved companion of pandemic-age home cooking, its origins were cooked up much earlier: the tech dates back to the 1940s, developed to feed soldiers during WWII. In this week’s Weekly Obsession, Stephanie Ganz explains how air fryers became a go-to gadget to make food pop, crisp, and sizzle in thirty minutes or less.

1 smart chart

This week, public opinion pollster Gallup released its annual survey of how American families are feeling about their personal finances. Spoiler: They’re worried! Bigger spoiler: It’s the economy!

And one worry is getting scribbled on their laundry lists more than ever before — the cost of living. Pandemic-era inflation gains have made concerns about those increased cost bumps strain more families’ wallets than ever. Rocio Fabbro tells the story in three charts, starting here:

Make sense of the numbers in Quartz with the other two.

🗓️ What to watch for this week

Here’s what our newsroom will be keeping an eye on:

• Monday: Boeing’s crewed Starliner mission is scheduled to lift off toward the International Space Station at 10:34pm EDT.
• Tuesday: Apple hosts its special iPad event at 10am ET that’s set to feature new iPads and an Apple Pencil. Disney and BP report earnings before the market opens, and Lyft after it closes.
• Wednesday: Several companies report earnings: Uber and AnheuserBusch InBev are before the bell, and Arm and Airbnb are after. The U.S. is also releasing its wholesale trade data.
• Thursday: Warner Bros Discovery shares its latest earnings before the market opens, as does Hyatt.

Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, and your favorite air fryer recipes. Sunday Reads was brought to you by Morgan Haefner and Gabriela Riccardi.