Bloomberg Weekend
Gary Shteyngart gets watch-drunk in Geneva |
View in browser
Bloomberg

Welcome to the weekend!

As part of its plan to revive sales, a certain company just announced a new dress code: black shirt paired with khaki, black or blue pants — and its iconic green apron. …Do you know which company? 

Test that knowledge by playing Pointed, our weekly news quiz that tests not only what you know, but how confident you are that you know it. And what pairs with a laundry load of black shirts? Our audio playlist, available in the Bloomberg app. We’ve got six great stories, read by voice actors, to make you smarter in 80 minutes. 

Don’t miss Sunday’s Forecast, in which we look at forecasts for global growth (spoiler: not great!) For full access to Bloomberg.com, subscribe.

Balancing Acts

Even in the best of times, being US Treasury secretary is tough. One must advocate for the US economy and its president’s economic vision, goals that can be at odds. Scott Bessent faces an especially tenuous version of this balancing act, Saleha Mohsin writes, as Donald Trump plays chicken with the ideals that make American bonds so special: predictable growth, stability and the ability to manage an economic crisis. 

Weekend Essay
Scott Bessent’s Tightrope Walk
The US Treasury secretary has to help investors keep the faith. 

Navigating competing priorities is familiar territory for new parents, who benefit greatly when parental leave policies make the process easier. But many fathers still aren’t taking paternity leave — even when they can. The fix isn’t just policy or legislation, writes Josie Cox: Dads are worried about perception, and sweetening paternity leave’s appeal can start with a single conscientious manager. 

Weekend Essay
The Paternity-Leave Paradox
The benefits of paternity leave are clear. Why aren’t dads taking it?

One thing dads know well: Coping with stress is easier when you’ve got a hobby. For novelist Gary Shteyngart, that’s watch collecting. Shteyngart waded gingerly “and then pathologically” into horology, an interest that brought him all the way to the Watches and Wonders show in Geneva. Between boozy parties and too many micro-blinis, he ogled micro-engineered wrist candy and lamented the price tags. 

Dispatch
‘Like Being Seduced by a Potato’
Novelist Gary Shteyngart gets watch-drunk in Geneva.

We Can’t Stop Talking About

  • YouTube wants to dub every video into every spoken language. It’s one of many AI-automated capabilities the video behemoth, now 20 years old, plans to give its creators to help expand their reach.

  • Mark Twain died famous, not happy. In a new biography of Twain, Alexander Hamilton author Ron Chernow shows how the author’s rowdy style made his name and complicated his life’s work.

  • We’re underestimating deaths tied to extreme weather. The WHO forecasts that climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths each year by 2030 — but even that is assuredly an undercount.

It’s Rocket Science 

“Iran’s work on space-launch vehicles likely shortens the timeline to produce an ICBM due to the similarities in technology.” 
Gen. Anthony Cotton
Commander of US Strategic Command, in March 26 Senate testimony
Concerns over Iran’s development of both nuclear and missile technology have dominated the West’s relationship with the Islamic Republic for more than 20 years. Now Western nations are worried about the country’s quest to become a regional space power, a project that Iran denies has military motives but whose execution overlaps neatly with ballistic missile development. 

Weekend Plans

What we’re reading: The Golden Road, which argues that India has the potential and track record to catch up with China. 

Who we’re listening to: Mark Ronson, one of many artists to sell their songwriting libraries to an investment fund that spurred a buying boom

What we’re struggling with: emotional nuance. So is the AI bot that Otter.ai’s CEO trained to attend meetings on his behalf.

What we’re playing: online poker. Computers outplay humans in chess and Go, but poker was considered unhackable — until bots got into it.  

What we’re wearing: a quinceañera dress. Dressmakers in Mexico are being undercut by an influx of cheap textiles from China.

Photographer: Mahe Elipe/Bloomberg

One Last Thing

“There are things that humans figured out thousands of years ago in a monastic setting around meditation that can totally be applied to company building.”
Welcome to HF0, or Hacker Fellowship Zero, a startup accelerator based in a historic San Francisco mansion that promises to strip away all of life’s tedium so founders can “birth their life’s work.”

More from Bloomberg

Enjoying Bloomberg Weekend? Check out these newsletters:

  • Breaking News Alerts for the biggest stories from around the world, delivered to your inbox as they happen
  • Wall Street Week for David Westin’s weekly newsletter where the top newsmakers in finance talk stories of capitalism
  • Opinion Today for an afternoon roundup of our most vital opinions
  • Screentime for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley
  • Where To Invest for expert strategies on making smarter investing decisions

Explore all newsletters at Bloomberg.com.

Follow Us

Like getting this newsletter? Subscribe to Bloomberg.com for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights.

Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else.  Learn more.

Want to sponsor this newsletter? Get in touch here.

You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Weekend newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Unsubscribe