Do Fantasy Sports Take More Skill Than Real Ones? Here’s What We’re Reading Today

The Daily 5 is Sharp’s essential reading list for what’s happening in the world today. Make sure to follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the Sharp Insider newsletter to stay up to date.

Here’s what’s happening today:

1. Are fantasy sports really gambling?

“Fantasy sports, in the ensuing effort to show that they are based more on skill than on chance, have in some ways succeeded far beyond their intention — they are, in many cases, more skill-based than the real sports on which fantasy players are betting.”

2. How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world

“The connective emotional grid of social media platforms is what drives the impression of AirSpace. If taste is globalized, then the logical endpoint is a world in which aesthetic diversity decreases. It resembles a kind of gentrification: one that happens concurrently across global urban centers. Just as a gentrifying neighborhood starts to look less diverse as buildings are renovated and storefronts replaced, so economically similar urban areas around the world might increasingly resemble each other and become interchangeable.”

3. Did Melania Trump come to the USA as an illegal immigrant?

“Visa fraud would call into question a green card application and subsequent citizenship application, said immigration lawyers — thus raising questions about Melania Trump’s legal status, even today, despite her marriage to a U.S. citizen.”

4. The future of sex is apathy

“After decades of bingeing on sex-positiveness, young folks are feeling a little hungover on sex.”

5. How today’s streaming wars could rewrite the playlists of the future

“If something doesn’t exist on the internet, did it ever exist?”

+1: Last year, Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, warned of a coming digital Dark Age.