Saturday links: misestimating happiness

Autos

• Auto service departments are upgrading their waiting rooms. (nytimes.com)
• Volkswagen AG is planning to spinoff its heavy truck division. (wsj.com)
• Tesla ($TSLA) is now facing challenges on a number of fronts: sales, quality, finances, etc. (nytimes.com)
• Making batteries for EVs is a dirty business. (bloomberg.com)

Energy

• How solar energy became so cheap. (econbrowser.com)
• Scottish Power plans to build a huge battery installation in conjunction with 214 windmills. (theguardian.com)
• Climate change isn't hopeless. We humans are pretty smart. (nytimes.com)

Environment

• "The invention and proliferation of man-made fertilizer over the last century broke the link between microbes and farming." (onezero.medium.com)
• We need to incentivize farmers to put carbon back in the ground. (washingtonpost.com)
• Canada is already facing a terrible wildfire season. (washingtonpost.com)
• The math behind banning plastic shopping bags is not a slam dunk. (kottke.org)
• Lego is struggling to find a more environmentally friendly plastic for its iconic bricks. (wsj.com)

Weather forecasting

• We are going to need more investment in supercomputing to model climate change. (nytimes.com)
• The US just got a big upgrade to its core weather forecasting model. (arstechnica.com)

Transport

• Surveillance balloons may be coming to the US. (finance.yahoo.com)
• Midwest flooding has taken river transport off-line causing all manner of disruption. (nytimes.com)

Travel

• Travel companies are boosting their 'experience' offerings. (wsj.com)
• Facial recognition technology is getting rolled out in airports. (washingtonpost.com)

Technology

• Google ($GOOGL) is the one member of Big Tech that is most vulnerable to anti-trust scrutiny. (stratechery.com)
• How much would you be willing to pay for an ad-free Facebook ($FB) or Google ($GOOGL)? (wsj.com)
• 87% of global web traffic was encrypted, up from 53% just three years ago. (fastcompany.com)
• Ask yourself why you want to use your phone less? (hbr.org)
• How does 'sign on with Apple' work? (techcrunch.com)
• How to mute all those notifications. (wsj.com)

The brain

• Happiness is how we judge experiences. (radreads.co)
• Why we think violent crime has increased, even though it has declined. (econompicdata.blogspot.com)
• What is behind the Flynn Effect? (bigthink.com)
• Why you should ditch GPS. (washingtonpost.com)
• Some summer reading picks including "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt. (behavioralscientist.org)

Health

• How safe is sunscreen? (theincidentaleconomist.com)
• Get outside in nature each week. (newscientist.com)

Medicine

• The complication rates on surgery on the elderly are way too high. (nytimes.com)
• Yet another reason to get vaccinated, this time for chickenpox. (statnews.com)

Nicotine

• Nicotine and caffeine are like 'apples and oranges' despite what Big Vape wants you think. (theverge.com)
• How mindfulness training can help decouple "the link between craving and behavior." (statnews.com)

Cannabis

• How Canada lost its chance to be the world's cannabis leader. (bloomberg.com)
• We now have evidence that humans have been using cannabis for millenia. (washingtonpost.com)

Food

• The venture capital model is not particularly suited for food companies. (wsj.com)
• Tyson Foods ($TSN) is getting into the alternative meat business, first with 'chicken' nuggets.' (ft.com)
• The fish we are eating is increasingly farmed vs. caught. (washingtonpost.com)
• Per-capital sugar consumption peaked 20 years ago in the US. (newscientist.com)

Drink

• These are the most beer brands by state. (fatherly.com)
• The negroni is the perfect summer cocktail. (nytimes.com)

Sports

• The big media companies are quickly adapting to the roll out of sports betting nationwide. (wsj.com)
• There's a fantasy league for everything these days. (wsj.com)

Entertainment

• American movies, like superhero movies, are leaving sex by the wayside. (washingtonpost.com)
• The data show women are slowly getting more representation on major television shows. (ft.com)
• Should Broadway figure out a way to make money off streaming? (washingtonpost.com)
• Why artists are desperate to give away song downloads. (nytimes.com)
• The best television is mindful of viewers' time. (theatlantic.com)

Best of lists

• These are the best TV shows of 2019 (so far). (variety.com)
• A list of the best movies of 2019 (so far). (vulture.com)
• The 25 best albums of 2019 (so far). (pastemagazine.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• Longform links: nudged to death. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Friday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Podcast links: a three comma industry. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Put as many money decisions on autopilot that you can. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Talking about the future of financial advice with Cullen Roche. (abnormalreturns.com)
• On the perils of passive news consumption. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• We are not very good at judging in real-time what will matter for history. (bloomberg.com)
• Douglas Brinkley's "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race" is captivating. (rationalwalk.com)
• Every lie incurs a debt: a key lesson learned from HBO's "Chernobyl." (feld.com)

Abnormal Returns