This week’s highlights:  The Walmart of Heroin, Malls of the Future, and The World’s Hardest Math Problem

Fifteen on Friday – 10/12/18 – Issue 305

Food for Thought:

1. NYT – Trapped by the ‘Walmart of Heroin’  A Philadelphia neighborhood is the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. Addicts come from all over, and many never leave.
2. NYT – How I Trained My Husband to Be a Dad  It required two things that don’t come naturally to me: acting helpless and asking for help.
3. Vanity Fair – The Amazing 30-Year Odyssey of a Counterfeit Saudi Prince.  This guy makes Frank Abagnale from Catch Me if You Can look lazy…
4. BecMin – How to Craft A Life You Don’t Need to Escape From
5. Ted – What commercialization is doing to cannabis  Regardless of where you fall on the legalization question, it is fascinating to watch market forces respond.  “To say that we’ve legalized marijuana is subtly misleading — what we’ve really done is commercialized THC, says educator Ben Cort, and that’s led to products that are unnaturally potent.”

Business/Economics:

1. Woodmont – “There’s No Place Like Home!” – Market Commentary – October 2018.  Woodmont is out again with our quick view of what’s going on in the broader markets.  4 pages, and 10 minutes of your time well spent.
2. Bloomberg – Quant Investor Cliff Asness Hasn’t Smashed His Screen This Year—Yet  The billionaire chief of AQR Capital Management is having a lousy 2018 with the $226 billion he’s running. He says factor-based strategies can still prevail.
3. TheAtlantic – The Death of the IPO  The number of IPOs is declining, and that could mean that small investors are getting shut out of the most lucrative deals.
4. Forbes – The Walt Disney Of Retail: Meet The Billionaire Building The Malls Of The Future
5. Vox – The long, long history of long, long CVS receipts  Why is a receipt for cough drops the height of a small child?

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. Forbes  – The #1 Payment Killing Your Wealth
2. BBC – Banksy posts video of £1m painting shredding stunt at Sotheby’s
3. VF – My First Gulfstream – Credit MA – A top Information Age entrepreneur decided to join the elite fraternity of private-jet owners–a world in which you are what you fly, and size definitely matters. Sixteen months, $12 million, and thousands of F.A.A. regulations later, he assesses the ride.
4. NYT – Rugby Meets Red Rover: Kabaddi Has Captured the Heart of India
5. TI – Top mathematician says he solved the ‘single most important open problem’ in math after 160 years.  Could someone have actually solved Riemann?