The Peak Weekend Reader

Good morning. Last week, a writer I know told me that he had applied for the editorial director position at Canada’s AI darling, Cohere. It was a longshot, he said, but he was cheered to at least get a reply. This was it: “Unfortunately, our team filled the position before we had an opportunity to consider your candidacy.” He was disqualified sight unseen.

Job-hunting has always prized eagerness. I recently read about someone who took out a billboard along the route of his would-be boss just to get his application noticed. Stunts like this might be impressive, but they’re also indicative of an unbalanced hiring equation, where the number of applicants far exceeds the open roles. Recruiters are left flooded with CVs (many of which have undoubtedly been aided, if not completely crafted, by AI) and so they draw an invisible cut-off line. Today, it’s not enough to be eager, you also have to be early.

And this isn’t just anecdotal. Today’s story digs into a recent Vanderbilt University study that ties response time to hiring outcomes — and the findings are stark. 

Next week, I’m finally going to publish my deep dive into Ontario wines and the glow-up they’ve enjoyed. But first, I have hours of conversations with winemakers, educators, somms, and the VQA to go through (and maybe some sipping too, you know, for journalism). 

Happy reading, 

Liz

🗺️ The United Nations is adopting a new map. The UN voted overwhelmingly in favour of ditching the Mercator projection, the map devised in 1569 that’s long been the global standard. In representing a spherical mass on a flat surface, landmasses closer to the poles (like North America) appear larger and those closer to the equator (like Africa) look smaller on it. This new resolution adopts the Equal Earth map, which more accurately depicts land sizes.

🏠 Is the housing market ready to rebound? A new RBC Economics report found that Canada’s housing market is “finally taking steps toward recovery in 2026.” The key, as the report sees it, will be unlocking a dormant pool of would-be buyers, pointing to one analysis which found that the creation of 400,000 households may have been suppressed since 2019.

💨 A criminal may have tanked Cuba’s cigar industry. In 2020, a shadowy group led by Chinese billionaire Chen Zhi took over a 50% stake in Habanos, the sales arm of Cuba’s lucrative cigar industry. Six years later, Chen was indicted for running a criminal empire, and Habanos was left reeling. The full tale, told in this Financial Times piece, is gripping.

📖 AI scambots are trying to contact dead writers. Why did author Adam Hochschild receive an email addressed to George Orwell — the iconic 1984 scribe who died in 1950 — praising his memoir Homage to Catalonia? Because Hochschild wrote a foreword to a new edition of the book and a scambot, preying on authors looking for attention, reached out to him when it couldn’t find Orwell’s email address. Whoops!

Last week, the people of Iceland voted to reject a government proposal that would have reopened European Union accession talks. The tiny Nordic nation originally launched its bid to join the EU in 2009, looking for some pan-continental economic fortification in the wake of the global financial crisis. However, a eurosceptic government put a pause on it just four years later. Now, a narrow, but definitive, 52.8% of voters chose “no” in a referendum that animated the citizenry — 82.5% of voting-age people turned out to the polls, more than in the country’s last federal election — and put hopes of Iceland joining the bloc to bed for the foreseeable future. 

The better-funded and better-mobilized No campaign successfully pushed a major talking point to the forefront: fishing. EU members have to abide by the bloc’s Common Fisheries Policy, which unilaterally sets fishing quotas and fleet sizes. For most of the EU, this isn’t a big issue, with fishing contributing on average less than 1% of the bloc’s gross domestic product. That’s not the case for Iceland, where fishing is one of the largest economic sectors, accounting for 15% of GDP and no less than 40% of export revenue. While the EU indicated that it would be willing to come up with some potential carve-outs for Iceland on the matter, this was not enough to assuage fears of industry harms which — when paired with a healthy dose of nationalism — did in accession talks. 

As for potential benefits, many Icelanders also felt the EU didn’t have enough to offer. Iceland is already a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and Schengen passport-free travel area, meaning it already enjoys mostly free trade and free travel with the EU (and already accepts many of its governing policies). Bumping that ‘mostly’ up to ‘entirely' wasn't that great an incentive. Perhaps more damning for the EU was that its offer of enhanced military security — including the ‘we’ve got your back if you get attacked’ mutual defence clause — didn’t do more to move voters in a country without a standing army. Especially considering Iceland is a country located in increasingly contested Arctic waters and is next door to Greenland, the Danish territory that the U.S. has repeatedly made overtures about annexing. 

Though the federal government was on the Yes side of the debate, it now seems ready to build up security reassurances through other means. "We didn't vote away the geopolitical situation," Iceland's Foreign Affairs Minister Thorgerdur Gunnarsdóttir told Reuters, “it's still there ​and we will have to find other ways to increase our security.” Among the nations she name-checked as important partners was Canada. Indeed, in July, Iceland became the fifth member to join the Maritime Security Partnership, founded by Canada, Germany, and Norway last year as a way to enhance cooperation and interoperability in Arctic waters. And last December, Iceland’s and Canada’s coast guards signed a pact to increase cooperation.

As for the EU, getting the cold shoulder hits hard. Iceland is the exact type of nation the bloc would love to welcome — small, wealthy, and having already achieved many of the policies necessary for membership that other EU candidates have had trouble meeting. The shine has already come off the bloc in recent years, but this rejection could leave it duller than ever.

📡 What else is on our radar:

Playing hard to get might work in dating. In hiring, it could cost you the job. Here's why a timely response to a recruiter’s email might matter more than your resume — and why AI is (as ever) to blame. 

Also below the fold today…