News You Can Use

1. Popular wisdom says the second cheapest bottle of wine has the biggest markup because no one wants to look like a cheapskate and buy the cheapest bottle and restaurants take advantage of that tendency to markup the second cheapest bottle relatively more so it’s a poor value. Popular wisdom is wrong according to an analysis of wines at London restaurants. Peak markup is near the middle. Buying by the glass is also ok.

2. How to cook cicadas. An entire cookbook, albeit a short one. No word on what wine pairs well with cicada.

3. The Invisible Graveyard: A Conversation with Economist Alex Tabarrok a good podcast with with physicians in training Mitch and Daniel Belkin. You may also be interested in Metformin and the Biology of Aging with Nir Barzilai.

4. 1729–earn Bitcoin for completing tasks & tutorials. Balaji Srinivasan’s newsletter that pays readers. 1729, a very interesting number and an effort to bootstrap the community and technology to eventually deliver online countries. Here’s a good winning entry, a review of Balaji’s essay Founding vs. Inheriting.