| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an advent calendar of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. What is this world coming to? Today was an Apple Event day. Did you even realize that? Once this would have been a time of national celebration. Children would have been opening iAdvent calendars and leaving milk and cookies out for Jony Ive. Instead, now we're all "Met Gala this" and "Nicki Minaj said what about vaccines? that." I tell you. Our national fabric is unraveling before our eyes. That, or maybe it's just that the new Apple phones are … boring? Not really necessary? Tae Kim writes the iPhone 13 line introduces "minor enhancements," mainly just making old stuff incrementally faster, bigger and nicer. For those of us still toting around iPhone 4s, it may be time to upgrade. But most of us are hanging onto our old devices longer and longer, Tae notes, which might help explain why we're talking more about AOC today than Apple:  Bonus Kids-These-Days Reading: Emma Raducanu is a sports unicorn, but she also faces a unicorn's pressure not to burn out. — Therese Raphael Widespread adoption of electric vehicles is key not only to Tesla's stock price but also to avoiding a climate apocalypse. Alas, there are a couple of big hurdles to this dream becoming reality: - The most common EV batteries, lithium-ion, are super-expensive and kind of explodey.
- There aren't enough places to charge your car on a long road trip.
Fortunately, solutions may be at hand for both problems. The answer to the battery thing could be sodium-ion batteries, Anjani Trivedi writes. This old-and-busted tech is getting a second look because sodium is way more plentiful than lithium — you're probably eating too much of it right now! — and batteries made with the stuff have less of a tendency to ruin your commute by catching on fire. The model for solving the charging problem, meanwhile, might already be springing up at an interstate near you. Conor Sen writes about Buc-ee's, a growing Southern chain of gas station/restaurant/retail/life event megaplexes with sparkling bathrooms and a cheerful beaver mascot. It sounds like a template for the sort of place where you wouldn't mind waiting half an hour to charge up your non-exploding car. Like Apple Events, inequality has lost some juice as a news topic lately, in part because a firehose of government assistance last year helped close the income gap. But many of the economic wedges that widened inequality before that are still in place. Nir Kaissar and Tim O'Brien point out President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan would remove some of these wedges. The private sector had decades to address economic inequity and only made it worse. Maybe now it's time for the government to take a crack at it. There are a couple of obstacles to achieving this goal, of course, even beyond Shadow President Joe Manchin. For one thing, the tax hikes House Democrats drew up to help pay for the bill leave huge loopholes for very wealthy people, writes Alexis Leondis. And though Biden's plan addresses college affordability, it could do a lot more of that, writes Noah Smith. Making higher education more accessible can help transform the economy and close the income gap. Bonus Politics Reading: Biden's sagging approval rating is a sign results still matter enough to overcome partisanship. — Jonathan Bernstein August's weaker-than-expected consumer price index was a win for the economy and Jay Powell, writes Brian Chappatta. Here's hoping the improvement isn't transitory.  The banking system still has weaknesses, and Biden can address them by picking the Fed's next bank supervisor wisely. — Bloomberg's editorial board General Mark Milley's warnings about Donald Trump should scare us all. — Tim O'Brien The U.K.'s plan to give adolescents only one Covid shot looks smart. — Sam Fazeli If we value freedom of religion, we must let people claim religious exemptions to vaccine mandates. — Noah Feldman Signing bonuses are back in vogue in a labor shortage, but history suggests this won't last. — Stephen Mihm Employers shouldn't rely on hiring algorithms, which can weed out good candidates and be gamed by the tech-savvy. — Parmy Olson Happy California recall day to all who celebrate. China locked down a city of 4.5 million to fight a new Covid outbreak. Nobody's passing the CFA exam. (But so what?) Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls. Scientists create matter from pure light. The common cold fights Covid. RIP, Norm Macdonald.  Notes: Please send hats and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. | 
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