Author: Daniel Scott

This week, something is unsettling about passing an NSCC campus. The structures have the same appearance. The Waterfront Campus’s signs still have that recognizable institutional blue glow. However, the atmosphere has changed on the inside. People are not as talkative. Doors remain closed for a bit longer. You could practically hear the inbox notifications falling like tiny, heavy stones throughout the province on Wednesday when acting president Anna Burke’s letter was distributed to employees. On paper, the figures are clear. Ninety-one positions were lost. There were 45 real layoffs—a hole of fifteen million dollars. Management is the majority of those…

The way Peter Bosek rose to the top of one of the biggest banks in Central Europe seems almost archaic. He didn’t move between London’s investment banks. In Berlin, he didn’t pursue a fintech valuation. Until Erste Group decided it was finally ready to enter Poland, he stayed mostly in Vienna, mostly inside one institution, and mostly out of the news. Then all of a sudden, his name was everywhere. His wealth isn’t particularly noteworthy when compared to the CEOs of European banks. According to public records, his base salary accounted for about 31% of his total compensation for the…

It was at a wedding outside Bath last autumn that I realized something had really changed. The bride’s father, a retired accountant who claimed to have attended “more weddings than birthdays,” was standing with a small wooden board that contained one pickled walnut, three roasted beets, and a smear of cashew cream. He stared at it for a long time. “Where’s the beef?” he asked, almost to himself. His spouse chuckled. He consumed the beets. He returned for more. Every time caterers tell me how much the work has changed over the past two or three years, I can’t help…

A chef in Lisbon informed me a few weeks ago that his restaurant only serves seven items, almost apologetically. Seven. He expressed it in a manner akin to admitting to forgetting your birthday. With a shrug, he poured a glass of vinho verde and said, “But each one, I can defend.” I still think about that statement. From neighborhood bistros in Cape Town to the kind of glassy hotel restaurants that used to print menus the size of broadsheet newspapers, it captures something subtly occurring throughout the hospitality industry right now. Once a symbol of generosity and aspiration, the lengthy…

I experienced it for the first time in a small house outside of Bologna, where the host, whom I had never met before, kept refilling my glass before I had finished the last sip. She didn’t inquire. She was not very fluent in English. She simply poured, grinned, and resumed slicing at the counter. I recall thinking how odd it was to be totally comfortable in a kitchen that wasn’t mine and to be seated at a table where I didn’t know anyone’s last name. I no longer felt like a guest at all by the time the pasta arrived…

In upstate New York, I was standing close to a wood-fired pizza oven that was set up next to a barn when I first noticed it. The bride had no shoes. An hour or so prior, the groom had undone his tie. The room felt different from any wedding I had ever attended, I realized somewhere between the second slice and a passed tray of little fried things I couldn’t identify. tighter. heated. Instead of laughing in rented chairs, people were laughing the way they do at home. It dawned on me then. Not everyone was being fed by the…

I honestly believed that the remainder of the evening would be a formality when I first entered the ballroom. A marble floor that had obviously been polished that morning was illuminated by the soft amber light cast by the heavy clusters of chandeliers. Every table had tall arrangements of white peonies, the kind that appear almost impolite in their profusion. A fountain flowed continuously outside the tall windows. It’s the type of space that causes you to sit up a bit straighter in your chair. When dinner was finally served, all I had assumed quietly crumbled. The soup was lukewarm…

The silence is the first thing you notice. The flat-top’s low roar, the hiss of butter hitting steel, and the dull thud of a knife against a board are all audible, but there are strangely few human voices. Nobody is yelling. Nobody is yelling commands. Observing from the sidelines gives the impression that everyone already knows what will happen next and is just carrying it out. Over the years, I’ve spent enough time in restaurant kitchens to anticipate mayhem. It’s practically a defining characteristic of the genre. Someone drops a sauté pan, pans clatter, tickets pile up, and someone else…

Observing a billionaire who refuses to act like one is oddly comforting. By early May 2026, Eduardo Saverin is sitting on a fortune that most major economies could envy, despite leading a quiet life in Singapore and rarely appearing in the media. According to Bloomberg’s index, he is worth $32.9 billion. Although it only reached $37.6 billion a few weeks earlier in late April, Forbes, which employs a slightly different methodology, has him closer to $33.8 billion in real-time tracking. The figures fluctuate every day and occasionally every hour. That’s what occurs when almost all of your money is invested…

Seeing an academic turn into a wealthy person is an odd experience. Fritz Prinz, a Stanford engineer who has spent decades working on the kind of materials science that doesn’t typically make headlines, is still, by most accounts, a professor first. Nevertheless, his name continues to appear on insider-trading dashboards, nestled between corporate officers and hedge fund managers, along with startling numbers. Who is counting determines the numbers. As of late April 2026, Quiver Quantitative estimates his net worth at approximately $69.4 million, which includes the total value of the shares he has sold since 2021. GuruFocus lists him closer…