Hello, Quartz members and welcome to Sunday reads!
It was a heckuva week to be in the markets, with all the major indexes swinging wildly, and the chattering class worrying about a recession. We saw Kamala Harris Walz off with her prospective veep, Elon Musk get slammed for helping foment Britain’s race riots and Boeing’s astronauts remain stranded in space, possibly until next year. This was also the week Google got hit by a federal court for monopolizing the search business, and FTX was ordered to give back $12 billion it probably doesn’t have.
But it’s Sunday, and time to shift your gaze to some hand-selected reads. Here are our favorite Quartz stories from the week, plus one bonus chart to get your day started.
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5 reads we liked on Quartz
🏖️ 10 places to go for Labor Day. It may feel like summer has just begun, but shorter days and cooler nights are already around the corner. Some travelers, hoping to make the most of the final days of summer, have already begun booking last-hurrah trips for Labor Day weekend. Madeline Fitzgerald examines the options.
👩‍🏠Workers will never catch up. CEOs in the S&P 500 made about $17.7 million on average in 2023. That’s more than 268 times the median worker’s income at those companies, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual Paywatch Report. William Gavin has the receipts.
đź’Ť The Bumble stumble. Shares in the female dating app tumbled by a third after the company said it only expected to grow 1% to 2% this year. So Bumble is embarking on a strategy to return to its roots as the go-to brand for millennial women, reports Laura Bratton.
🏠Gimme a break! More vacationers are taking a break from Airbnb. Bookings are slowing, though it’s nothing like the carnage of the pandemic year 2020. Madeline Fitzgerald takes a look at whether it’s just a slowdown from post-pandemic travel euphoria, or the start of something worse.
👩‍⚖️ There’s precedent here. Trying to make sense of the Google antitrust decision that Judge Amit Mehta handed down on Monday? Many legal scholars and industry figures are looking at Microsoft’s 2000 antitrust settlement. That agreement kept Microsoft’s software intact but barred the company from making deals with PC-makers and internet access providers. It also forced Microsoft to share parts of its then-private source code with other software developers so they could make their apps available on Windows. Similar remedies may be on tap for Google. As the world awaits Judge Mehta’s remedy, Laura Bratton will fill you in.
1 smart chart
How do you lose $900 billion in two months? It’s easy if you’re Nvidia. Hyperenthusiasm for the AI chipmaker nearly made it a meme stock, before plenty of investors decided they’d made their money and it would be safer to be elsewhere. Britney Nguyen takes a look at the rise and fall of Nvidia.
1 sneak peek
Are EV’s too heavy for our aging roads and bridges? Donald Trump says so, but that’s just another one of his whoppers. Engineers say our roads are designed for trucks 20 times as heavy as the average EV. The real problem is that America’s roads and bridges are in desperate need of repair, as Will Gavin reports. Visit qz.com on Monday morning for a look.
What we’re watching for this week
- Monday: The Food and Drug Administration is expected to announce its decision on whether and how to legalize some forms of psychedelic drugs, while Elon Musk plans to interview Donald Trump on
TwitterX. - Tuesday: Home Depot reports earnings before the bell; Google hosts its Made by Google event in Mountain View, California, to showcase Google AI, Android and Pixel devices; The FAA is taking public comments on SpaceX’s plan to launch more rockets from its Texas launch pad; Stumbling dating app Bumble will report second-quarter earnings.
- Wednesday: Cisco reports earnings after the bell
- Thursday: Walmart reports its earnings before the bell and the government reports initial jobless claims.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with comments, questions, feedback, joy, or a suggestion for Judge Mehta to consider when he draws up a punishment plan for Google. Sunday reads was brought to you by Peter S. Green, Morgan Haefner, and Audrey McNamara.