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Happy Fourth of July weekend! As has been a tradition of mine going back to the beginning of the EntStrategyGuy website, I\u2019m sharing my favorite long reads of the last year, like I did in <\/span>2019<\/a>, <\/span>2020<\/a>, <\/span>2021<\/a>, <\/span>2024<\/a>, and <\/span>2025<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s dive right in!<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think surveillance pricing, like the kind described in this brilliant <\/span>Consumer Reports <\/em>article, is long for the world\u2014it\u2019s toxically unpopular\u2014but we\u2019ll see if either party takes on this issue.<\/span><\/p>\n If I ran a political party focused on affordability, I would focus on a few pro-consumer and pro-market policies:<\/p>\n And more. If you want to fight inflation, there are a lot of great ways to do it quickly. Speaking of higher prices…<\/p>\n Again, I think a political party should focus on lowering prices for consumers. And deals like this\u2014Walmart making a deal\/forcing Pepsi to offer the lowest prices at its stores and nowhere else\u2014hypothetically lower prices at Walmart…but raise them everywhere else.<\/p>\n CalMatters does terrific reporting in California, something the Golden State desperately needs more of, and this article is a great example of that.<\/p>\n I thought that this parody article (and yes, it\u2019s a parody, but I was definitely unsure at first) was hilarious and totally nailed how much tech\/business journalism feels these days.<\/p>\n Actually, three of my favorite articles this year were on hype in the video game industry, including Georg Zoller\u2019s \u201c<\/span>The Video Game Industries Very Dark Night<\/a>\u201d\u2014<\/span>which I linked to recently<\/a> and wrote a follow-up <\/span>here<\/a>\u2014and Owen Mahoney\u2019s \u201c<\/span>Derek Zoolander, Videogame Exec<\/a>\u201d. In particular, I like Mahoney\u2019s focus on user experience as a guide to what trends will actually grab hold of customers.<\/span><\/p>\n Evan Shapiro\u2019s first person account of his experience with AI was hilarious. I think LLMs capabilities have significantly grown from last summer, and yet…my editor\/researcher just had an abysmal experience using an LLM to do a quite basic task (which our LLM normally does each week) and the LLM made a mistake on every single data entry…along with seven different mistakes affecting twelve of the twenty or so entries, including mistakes that are explicitly spelled out in the prompt.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a brutal failure rate. Again, if you use AI\/LLM for data collection, you need to take a lot of extra steps to verify and check the data.<\/p>\n I thought Matthew Frank\u2019s pitch to head across America to visit theaters sounded <\/span>insane<\/s> aggressive at the time\u2014at least it felt that way to someone a decade older than him; man, to be in your twenties again, am I right?\u2014but I knew the result would be great. And it was, a terrific feature by a great young writer.<\/span><\/p>\n