Thom's Link Emporium - 0009 - 18 March 2022

Links

• Five books about the BBC. The BBC is such a fascinating institution, fusty and imaginative at times, bold and groundbreaking at others. But I reflected, as Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo leave the BBC that they could probably charge something in the region of the license fee just for their podcast. It’d be pricey, but I’d consider paying it myself. Shows the value you get from the BBC compared to the pay-for-every-subscription free-for-all emerging elsewhere.

Thinking of which, if you fancy subscribing based on that throwaway comment about the value of the BBC, here’s how you’d go about it.

• John Hoare's wonderful Dirty Feed blog looks into the reuse of some Red Dwarf sets in series 5. I originally added a snarky “back when it was still good) to this link, but I share John’s weariness with repeatedly going over the quality of those later shows.

• Albrecht Dürer was really good at drawing pillows:

(from the long-running and still marvellous Swissmiss blog)

• I admit that I play the lottery semi-regularly. I understand the maths, I really do, but it’s fun to see it play out in this simulator that plays the UK lottery 1000 times every second. There’s something mesmerising about watching the money pour away while the centuries tick by. There’s some interesting things to take from it. By chance, you’re likely to pick up literally thousands of smaller prizes before you win the main one. I enjoyed this in the comments:

Can we run this simulation multiple times with different numbers to find out which are the luckiest numbers?

• And while we’re thinking about statistics, here’s an absolute load of data taken from people sharing the output of their daily Worldle games. It does seem as though people are getting worse (or it’s getting harder?), but it’s equally (if not much more) likely that people are just more willing to share their failures.

• Vladimir Putin has fallen into the dictator trap. There’s something slightly comforting about this story (assuming firstly Putin’s downfall, and secondly that he doesn’t take us all with him) but it’s much less comforting when you realise that most dictators are replaced with either another dictator or years of military rule. Anyway, this seems like a fair assessment of where we are:

Autocrats such as Putin eventually succumb to what may be called the “dictator trap.” The strategies they use to stay in power tend to trigger their eventual downfall. Rather than being long-term planners, many make catastrophic short-term errors—the kinds of errors that would likely have been avoided in democratic systems.

Listening

• I find it weird to think this Stormzy show in Newcastle was the tour that would have followed on from the Glastonbury show I was at two and a half years ago had the pandemic not intervened

• I’ve been really enjoying the album Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road (Spotify,  Music, YouTube) - a bold album that's rock at its heart, but with strokes of jazz, folk and even minimalist classical music brushed across it. And, yes, that makes it sound a lot like a prog album (and I accept there's an argument to be made there) but it feels very natural and unpretentious. My favourite album of the year so far.

Reading

• For months now, I’ve been reading The The Making of the British Landscape by Francis Pryor. It’s a wonderful book and I’m enjoying the detail of it immensely. It has a huge scope (the subtitle is "How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today") but Pryor explains it in a very immediate and enjoyable way. Those of a certain age will remember Francis Pryor from Time Team

Watching

• The Baftas took place this week, and I didn’t watch them but I thought as usual they were pretty sensible. Glad to see a lot of recognition of Dune. I’m yet to see The Power of the Dog as well as a few others, but Summer of Soul is a very deserving winner for documentary.

Quote

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”

George Santayana, Quoted in this Lawrence Freedman piece on Russia's potential for negotiating peace

Thom's Link Emporium No. 0008 - 11 March 2022

Links

• An excellent history of the archeological excavations around the ancient site of Troy in the Smithsonian Magazine.

• 10 ways to make better decisions from the New Scientist which contains some sort of comfort for the sad amongst us:

there is one emotion that seems to help us make good choices. In their study, the Chicago researchers found that sad people took time to consider the various alternatives on offer, and ended up making the best choices. In fact many studies show that depressed people have the most realistic take on the world. Psychologists have even coined a name for it: depressive realism.

And one more for luck?

Whatever the future holds it will hurt or please you less than you imagine

• Vanity Fair interview Grimes. So much to love here, not least the fact that she inadvertently(?) reveals their second baby. I also like the idea of Elon Musk as a cheapskate:

“But at the same time…” I can physically observe her brain cells saying screw it. “Like, bro wouldn’t even get a new mattress.” This was back when they were both living in Los Angeles. Her side of the mattress had a hole in it. When she raised the issue, he suggested they replace his mattress with the one at her house. The mattresses are fine now. Still: “Bro does not live like a billionaire. Bro lives at times below the poverty line. To the point where I was like, can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there’s no security, and I’m eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?” She is well aware that many see Musk as some embodiment of luxurious excess, and Grimes is here to tell you she fuckin’ wishes.

• Want to cheer yourself up a bit? Well, in that case I wouldn’t read this in-depth article on the effects of a nuclear explosion. On a similar note, Charlie Warzel interviews Alex Wellerstein about Nuke Map where you can test the effects of bombs of different sizes on a world map (apparently Americans tend to test nukes on their own country, whereas the small number of Israeli users seem to try out Iran).

• When did we start trying to keep plants alive inside our houses? How does it link in with colonialism? There’s lots to learn from this excellent piece on houseplants.

• Charlie Brooker has a new Netflix series out, so here’s a profile in the newspaper he used to write for

Listening

• I went down an internet rabbit hole when a song on a friend’s playlist sent me off investigating Fred Again, someone who I was beginning to be aware of, but whose career I had never pieced together. The song in question was Daddy’s Car (Spotify,  Music, YouTube, YT Live) from Someday World by Eno * Hyde, the album that Brian Eno made with Karl Hyde of Underworld in 2014. Fred Gibson was working in Eno’s a cappella group at the time but showed skill in Logic Pro, so helped produce the album, and got Eno as a mentor. Since then, he’s produced and co-written Shotgun by George Ezra (Spotify,  Music, YouTube), and loads of Ed Sheeran and Stormzy stuff, but I came to know him through two excellent tracks from last year Angie (I’ve been lost) (Spotify,  Music, YouTube) and Baxter (These Are My Friends) with Baxter Dury (Spotify,  Music, YouTube). It’s hardly like he’s one to watch since he’s been successful already (a couple of Ivor Novello nominations and a Brit), but he’s certainly worth exploring.

• It was a shock to hear Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode announce the end of their run on the BBC this week. Their show is probably the one I’ve listened to the longest in any format. I just hope that the way that it’ll be “alright in the end” is by them taking the podcast private, and preferably ad-free.

Reading

• I love Shirley Jackson and this article on her five best books is an excellent introduction. Be wary that the article spoils the ending of her best short story, The Lottery, so I recommend reading it first here.

Watching

• It’s got some mixed reviews, but I’ve been enjoying The Witchfinder on iPlayer. Tim Key and Daisy May Cooper are excellent and although the show is a bit hit and miss with jokes, I hope it shows enough promise for a second series.

Quote

An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

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Thom's Link Emporium - 6 March 2022

Links

• Teenagers watching Tourette's videos on TikTok are showing unusual symptoms of Tourette's. This is an excellent, fascinating piece. It’s interesting that when people are told about a symptom having a mental aspect that they feel like they’re being told they’re a liar, but so much of our physical health has a mental aspect. Basically, they’re suffering from something real, it’s just not like regular Tourette’s.

• It's a cliché that most journalists in the US live in Brooklyn, but if we accept that it's true, why did it happen and what are the implications? I like the use of economic reasoning to explain the status quo in journalism.

• Yuval Noah Harari thinks that Putin has already lost

• The Protagonist’s Best Friend Would Like to Stop Having to Shoehorn So Much Exposition into Their Dialogue:

“Here are some other facts, apropos of nothing: You’re close with your grandmother, but she still refuses to explain the significance of the cryptic map that hangs over her fireplace because “it’s too dangerous.” You’re self-conscious about your height and you’re allergic to roses. A local zookeeper has just been infected with a mysterious tiger virus, and he rides the same bus as you. Your kitchen is home to an extensive collection of high-end olive oils—and yes, that will come in handy later on in a hilarious, slippery way you’ll never see coming.”

• Kongō Gumi is the oldest company in the world. It was founded in 578 to build buddhist temples

• Download director's commentaries which you can then listen to as podcasts:

• What is it like to work at the Sherlock Holmes museum in London? (Spoiler: Not great, but entertaining)

• RIP Shirley Hughes. Almost all of the first books I can remember (Dogger, Lucy and Tom’s Christmas) are all by Shirley Hughes. Her books were wonderful for children and showed real-life, untidy and characterful houses. They’ve kept their magic for me all my life, and the Christmas in Lucy and Tom’s Christmas* is still the Ur-Christmas for me.

• Ted Gioia on the acquisition of Bandcamp by Epic Games

“When I was a younger man, I used to handle negotiations on business acquisitions. I’ve lost count, but I probably did 30 or 40 multimillion dollar deals over the years. In more than a few instances, the acquiring company destroyed the business it bought. Not immediately, but it happened sooner or later. They didn’t do it out of malice or contempt. They often had the best intentions. But when forced to choose, they did what was best for the parent company, not the acquired business.”

• Hours of fun to be had playing around with some beats and basslines on this Roland Studio tool

• The Scottish Highlands, Appalachians and Atlas Mountains all used to be part of the same mountain range

Listening

• My top albums for February (not necessarily released in February, but at least from this year):

  1. Time Skiffs - Animal Collective (Spotify,  Music) Tuneful mayhem from the indie stalwarts.

  2. Texas Moon EP - Khruangbin & Leon Bridges (Spotify,  Music) World music aficionados find a kindred spirit in Leon Bridges making what sounds like Frank Ocean outtakes.

  3. Live from Studio S2 - Hania Rani (Spotify,  Music) Solo piano music from the Polish musician and composer.

  4. Motordrome - MØ (Spotify,  Music) Indie pop star MØ returns with a fresh, inviting album with a dark side

  5. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You - Big Thief (Spotify,  Music). Beautiful, melodic folk pop

• Here’s some of my favourite music from February on Spotify and on  Music

• Also, this week’s In Our Time about anarchist Peter Kropotkin was excellent

Reading

• I haven’t been reading many books this week what with the extra time I’ve been forced to devote to doomscrolling. However, a few weeks ago I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I absolutely loved his All The Light We Cannot See, and definitely enjoyed the scope and adroit handling of the various threads but it didn’t hit me in the heart quite as much as All The Light…

Watching

• I went to see The Batman. It was fine, I guess. I liked the grittiness, Robert Pattinson was well cast as a sulky Kurt Cobain and I like the idea of Batman returning to his detective roots. Perhaps its best feature is that it didn’t end up with a couple of invincible people kicking the crap out of each other. But it was pretty long and I’m not sure it really sold its reason to exist.

Some Batman Bonus content

• I am watching a darker, grittier Batman movie:

• Dorian Lynskey on the history of Batman

• Jake Kring-Schreifels on Designing Gotham

• And who cares about plot holes?

Quote

Take life seriously but none of the people in it.

Kurt Vonnegut, Letter to Gail Godwin, 25 November 1967 (From Letters of Note newsletter)

*Now called “Lucy and Tom at Christmas” to make it sound like a cookery’s show’s festive special

Thom's Link Emporium - 27 February 2022

Links

• Men have no friends and women bear the burden. I recognise a lot of this in myself - a tendency to rely on partners for all emotional needs, and to let friendships wither in the process.

• Great GQ interview with Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola’s such an intriguing man. He makes The Godfather I and II, The Conversation and Apocalypse now all within one single decade and then never did anything approaching those masterworks for the rest of his career. This sheds a little light on why, but it will be interesting to see if his new project is a return to form.

• Corridors were invented in 1597. I’m sure there are some historians who could argue about the particular date, but the fundamental idea that we didn’t have corridors in houses for a long time remains true.

• The appendix of 1984 seems to suggest that that Oceania's regime finished before 2050. I found this thread reasonably convincing, and an interesting angle on Orwell’s own thoughts on the cultures in 1984.

• Program / Menu from the Cotton Club. The Cotton Club was a nightclub in New York in between the wars. It was famous for where Duke Ellington and his band played until 1930 when, as this menu shows, Cab Calloway (who many will know from Betty Boop cartoons) took over. It suffered from the segregation of the era where the performers were all black, and the crowd all white. Langston Hughes referred to it as “a Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites” and that its very presence caused the closure of other Harlem jazz clubs. Francis Ford Coppola made a film about the Cotton Club in 1984.

• I share Josh Spero’s sense of humour about the Royal Opera House using the “this much of a donation will mean we can do this” model of fund raising. It means that you get to compare one charity to another and I’ll be honest, Unicef’s claim that they can protect 100 children from polio sounds a bit more impressive than a kilo of fake snow, important though culture and opera in particular are.

For some reason, I find both of these Royal Opera House donation options incredibly funny. I think it's the RSPCA tone and the ROH content pic.twitter.com/VY7CS25k8F

— Josh Spero (@joshspero) February 22, 2022

• Nick Offerman (Ron from Parks and Recreation) has a newsletter. He’s a delight.

• Lawrence Freedman (Emeritus Professor of War Studies, KCL) on Putin and Ukraine.

Listening

• Pete Paphides tweeted about Tom Moulton’s remix of The Supremes’s Stoned Love. (Spotify,  Music, YouTube) which led me off on an exploration of Tom Moulton’s other mixes. He’s done a huge number of 12”-style remixes of tons of soul classics, and this collection on Philadelphia International Records is an excellent intro (Spotify,  Music)

Reading

• I’ve been reading Bob Mortimer’s memoir “And Away”. It’s a really sweet book where Mortimer’s wonderful character shines through on every page. I’d recommend checking out the audiobook read by the man himself as well.

Watching

• I watched The Duke this week. Broadbent and Mirren are both excellent, and although the main character, Kempton Bunton, is insufferable, the film doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s quite interesting to see a period of time in which the elderly seemed some of the most marginalised people in society.

Quote

Because here we are. This, right here, is what we have been looking for all the time. It was right here.

Alan Watts, Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life

Thom's Link Emporium - 20 February 2022

Links for the Week

• Enough with the hygiene theater. I want to take a shit without washing my hands

• I find Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus a fascinating book. I read it at university and found it impenetrable, but there are a lot of books about it that describe it in semi-mystical terms. You’ve got to have a soft spot for a man who wrote a philosophy book that he thought solved philosophy so went to become a primary school teacher instead. This is a pretty good introduction to the Tractatus.

• Excellent insight into the experience of alcoholism and addiction

• What's wrong with bitcoin? The next in a serious of what crypto fans don’t seem to understand about crypto.

• A somewhat theologically technical theological view of the strange position we find ourselves of having two popes

• An unsolicited streaming app spec. John Siracusa is the master of things like this and there’s a lot to agree with on what a basic video streaming app should have. My particular bugbear is the atrocious Now TV app in the UK which fails on almost every point in this spec. You can’t even scrub through an episode, but instead have to fast-forward and rewind at various speeds to find the spot that it’s forgotten.

• On a similar note, Google Slides is Actually Hilarious. Almost all slide apps are infuriating to some degree, and I don’t find slides considerably worse than Powerpoint. Keynote is best, but hasn’t seen significant development in years. Which makes it all the more frustrating that slideshow apps appear to have become the default app for almost all documents in modern offices.

• Kind of Bloop - an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue

• When Jonny Greenwood joined the proto-Radiohead, On A Friday, he played keyboards but didn't know how so his keyboard volume down to nothing until he'd learned enough

Now Listening

• More on Euphoria later, but at the end of series one, Labrinth, who scores the show chose one of my favourite songs, A Song for You by Donny Hathaway and it’s just perfect. (Apple Music, Spotify)

• On another episode, they make use of Kelsey Lu’s cover of 10cc’s I’m Not In Love (KL: Apple Music, Spotify, 10cc: Apple Music, Spotify) which reminded me about this excellent clip from a documentary showing the astonishing lengths that 10cc went to to create the song:

Now Reading

• I’ve been working through all of Agatha Christie’s books over the last few years. There have been a few that weren’t much to speak of lately, but I’ve really been enjoying Towards Zero, which is the last of Superintendent Battle’s stories. He’s no Poirot or Marple, but I like him as a character and this story is engrossing.

Now Watching

• As mentioned above, I’ve really been enjoying Euphoria (HBO in the US, Now TV / Sky in the UK). It’s a bit like a high-budget Skins with actors who are already famous rather than likely to become so in a few years. It’s excellent and moving and Zendaya is brilliant.

• The Danish film, Flee, telling the true story of a refugee from Afghanistan is brilliant and gripping and rightly nominated for many awards. You can watch Flee on Curzon Home Cinema in the UK.

• Similarly, the The Real Charlie Chaplin is an excellent documentary on the filmmaker. It doesn’t shy away from his many teenage brides and other problematic areas whilst also giving a fair view into his position around the McCarthy trials. A great insight into a fascinating, if troubled, man. The Real Charlie Chaplin is also available on Curzon Home Cinema.

Quote

People nowadays think that the scientists are there to instruct them, the poets and musicians etc. to entertain them. That the latter have something to teach them never occurs to them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in The Spiritual Dimension by John Cottingham

Thom's Link Emporium - 11 February 2022

Links for the Week

• Cancel Culture on Campus. I’ve thought for a long time that the actual experience of college/university students is very different from what the media choose to portray. I mean, I’m middle aged so I don’t know a load of young people, but the ones I do know never seem to be these fragile people who can’t possibly hear any word that hasn’t been vetted. They seem like tough, thoughtful people with a good deal more empathy than previous generations.

• Why is the internet full of cat pictures?

Another way of saying this is that cats are still-wild animals that depend on us for food and shelter. And it is precisely their innate wildness, bundled into small packages of cuteness residing in our homes, that make cat pictures the social phenomenon it is. The best cat pictures and jokes negotiate this tension between the wild and the domesticated. Cats getting stuck in the blinds or atop a door. Cats swatting a glass of water onto the floor. Cats dipping their paws into the fish tank. Cats sleeping on a keyboard. Cats poking their heads in toilet bowls. These behaviors are not unexpected for anyone who has lived with cats, but they continue to tickle our funny bone as they mock us for our inability to master their nature.

Basically, because cats are the best. I mean, you can have a little tiny tiger live in your house, and it’s haughty and beautiful and ridiculous. Here are my tiny tigers to add to the cat picture glut.

• Are Jews a race? After Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the holocaust, this is a good article on the complexities of Jewish identity (especially in relation to the black/white race distinctions of the US). Added to this, I recommend David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count, which is an excellent polemic on the ways in which Jews are rarely offered the same protections as similar minority groups.

• North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet. It’s a relatively easier internet to take down compared to other countries, but impressive nonetheless.

• Why comedians stopped being funny. Excellent piece by Dorian Lynskey. It’s framed around Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce, both of whom I suspect would have said some pretty awful things had they lived a bit longer.

• Top 30 Manic Street Preachers's songs ranked. Obviously there’s some disagreement to be had here, but as a teenage Manics fan, I wouldn’t argue with the top three.

• Every Episode of a Television Show Written by Julian Fellowes:

RICH LADY: Young Hot Rich Guy is going to visit! And now I’m going to make a comment about women that will land poorly with our twenty-first-century viewing audience.

SLIGHTLY LESS ATTRACTIVE BUT STILL PRETTY ENOUGH FOR ALL NORMAL PURPOSES YOUNGER SISTER: And I’ll counter that with a viewpoint that there is no conceivable way I would have held unless I was a time traveler, but will show me to be in alignment with the viewing audience’s core beliefs.

RICH LADY’S HUSBAND: (popping in) I’m just popping in to make a blanket statement about race. So I can learn a lesson later in this episode. See you at dinner! (leaves, almost bumping into Household Servant, entering)

Now Listening

• Chocolate Hills by Khraungbin and Leon Bridges. Turns out that the combination of the two sounds an awful lot like Frank Ocean. Which is definitely a good thing. (Spotify, Apple Music)

Now Reading

• Following on from Get Back, I’m reading Lennon Remembers - an interview from 1970 in which he eviscerates almost everyone that he worked with during his time in The Beatles. It’s an excellent exercise in bridge building that only Lennon would be likely to attempt. He still likes Ringo though, because who doesn’t love Ringo? It’s available as a book, but you can also just read it on the Rolling Stone website (part 2).

Now Watching

• What went wrong with Drone Delivery? Remember when we were all going to get our parcels delivered by little drones that would drop stuff on our lawns? Well, turns out that working out how to do the final delivery, as well as the fact that drones can’t fly in a lot of places, means that getting a human to bring your stuff in a van is still the most viable option. Our drone delivery dreams will need to wait for another time.

Quote

Their musical group was formed in John’s image and driven ever onward by his restlessness, but without Paul he would have upset too many people too many times to make the progress they both craved.

Mark Lewisohn, Tune In, on John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Thom's Link Emporium - 6 February 2022

Links for the Week

• i am so stressed out from running my pet lizards instagram account i’m about to have a nervous breakdown

• AI plays NES Tetris. It’s interesting to see Tetris being played in a basically perfect way, and it’s also interesting to watch the edges of the program cracking as the AI unlocks further scores and levels that no-one expected to see:

• Sometimes I take on challenges from random people on Twitter. It’s not my most productive trait, I’ll admit. Still, Dan Barker needed to know about this decommissioned Soviet rocket that’s in the lobby of Hiscox in York. After a bit of research, I found this link which appears to be from around the time it went on sale. Which means it has a sale link, of course. £38k not too bad if you too want some decommissioned weaponry in your entryway. However, one of those says ""Over the next 10 years, the Kholod was the world record holder for outright atmospheric speed and it is still the fastest machine to have traveled within Earth’s atmosphere." That doesn’t sound right to me since in the early 2000s, NASA developed the X-43 which travelled at Mach 9.6. But then I haven’t seen one of those for sale so this may well be the fastest machine to go up for sale to the public.

• One of my many weird interests is in containerisation (just the fact that they only date back to the 1960s - it really wasn’t that long ago that ships were unpacked by hand). If you’re interested in learning about shipping containers (and I recommend it!) this is a good place to start.

Now Listening

A little different for this week. Here are my top albums from January 2022.

1. Dawn FM - The Weeknd (Another great pop album, perhaps his last? A lot of fun)

2. Antidawn EP - Burial (I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, it’s dark and intriguing)

3. Get Back The Rooftop Performance - The Beatles (It’s a bit of a cheat to include this, but it’s the first time the full rooftop concert has been officially released and it’s a wonderful companion to Get Back)

4. Fragments - Bonobo (Great, relaxing beats from Bonobo)

5. Caprisongs - FKA Twigs (FKA Twigs’s mixtape is not far off being a fully-fledged album, and it’s really pretty good).

I’ve also put together a list of some of my favourite tracks from January (Spotify, Apple Music)

Now Reading

I’m re-reading some Jane Austen at the moment. I am finding that I don’t like Sense and Sensibility anywhere near as much as Pride and Prejudice (or even Northanger Abbey, which I have a real soft spot for). It’ll be nice to have a bit of a comparison by reading them relatively close to each other though. I’ll let you know.

Now Watching

I tend to watch Groundhog Day every Groundhog Day. It feels appropriate to rewatch a film that’s about repetition, and it’s a film that rewards revisiting. There have been a lot of articles on why Groundhog Day is a Buddhist myth (in this, the stream of repetition matches the Buddhist notion of Samsara) but to me there’s something wonderfully simple in the journey the film takes you on. Phil starts out by someone who’s bored with his job, then he’s confused with us by why his day keeps repeating, but eventually, he finds satisfying things to spend his time on. Phil’s discoveries about life are not major revelations, they’re stuff that deep-down we know too.

Quote

Planning and building a great sacred space was the necessary trial run for urban civilization – or, as he strikingly put it, reversing the traditional sequence, ‘First came the temple, then came the city.’ In other words, we lived with the gods before we lived at close quarters with each other.

Living with the Gods, Neil MacGregor

Thom's Link Emporium - 28 January 2022

Links for the Week

• George Martin explains to his granddaughter why he worked with The Beatles

• For a while, Charles Dickens had a fetching hipster moustache

• The Year of Duke Ellington "He maintained his orchestra for fifty years, while the post war shifts ended many an ambitious big band and traveling orchestra in the late 1940s, Ellington did not capitulate. He attributes some of his relentless drive to the fact that he wanted to hear his compositions played as quickly as he wrote them, by the musicians he liked best."

• An argument against apologising when we don’t respond to an email immediately "One of my favorite suggestions was to omit the apology and just write the email as you would if you were responding right away. “I think the other person cares more about the content, not the speed, of my response,” Giurge, the co-author of the email study, told me."

• On Meditation and the Unconscious

• Wes Anderson and Brecht "The viewer finds in Anderson’s work a supremacy of both film and high art, differentiating his cinematic form from Brecht’s dialectical theater. Where Brecht sees revolutionary potential and empowerment of the masses, as he does in 1939’s Mother Courage and Her Children, in which Brecht portrays a war-torn Europe to encourage his audience to resist both Nazi Germany and the coming world war, Anderson finds ethics of warm affluence and nostalgia, of the individual quirk, and of bourgeois aesthetic control."

• Ian Leslie on The Beatles Get Back: "When we meet Lennon in Get Back, he is in a fallow period, which has a dampening effect on his all-round confidence. Although, hang on a minute: can we really say a man is in a creative trough if, just a matter of months ago, he made Dear Prudence, Julia, Happiness Is a Warm Gun? When he is in the midst of creating Don’t Let Me Down? Perhaps it depends on who he’s sitting next to. In January 1969, Lennon seems like he’s drying up, and to an extent is drying up, because his primary creative partner is on a hot streak of epic proportion. McCartney apparently only has to sit at the piano, pick up a guitar or just allow his mind to wander, for songs to come surging through him. Months after Blackbird and Hey Jude, we now get Let It Be, Long and Winding Road, Get Back, Golden Slumbers, Two of Us, Oh! Darling, and more. Perhaps the question is not why Lennon is in a creative slump, but why McCartney isn’t."

• What your favourite sad dad band says about you

Now Listening

• Pearl Charles is one of my favourite discoveries from trudging through many end of year lists. In the year of ABBA’s return, she released a song that’s as good as anything on ABBA’s new album. This year she’s back with another slice of pop in the form of Givin’ It Up, which is wonderfully catchy pop. (Spotify, Apple Music)

• For more the full Get Back experience, I’ve been watching what happened day by day, on the day throughout (their) January 1969, in (my) January 2022. Accompanying me is Chris Shaw and his excellent guests on I Am The Eggpod. For me, the wonderful thing about Get Back is to experience the contingency required for the canon of Beatles songs to exist. They didn’t have to be created in they way they were. You can see how some songs got close to being on the album but never made it (e.g. George’s All Things Must Pass). You see how songs come into existence (Paul writing Get Back is the one that people refer to, but I find it equally interesting seeing George explain how I Me Mine came out of what he was watching on TV the previous night). These songs feel unquestionable, they’re such a core part of our culture, but they didn’t have to be this way and I find that endlessly fascinating.

Now Reading

• I’ve just finished Kenneth Clark’s 1939 book on Leonardo (I don’t think it’s in print at the moment, hence the lack of link). I certainly enjoyed it considerably more than Walter Isaacson’s biography. It’s all about the art, really, so it’s less of the “life” but I found it really engaging and exciting and if you’ve watched Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, you’ll recognise the voice immediately.

Now Watching

• Final section on The Beatles Get Back, I promise. But I am, as outlined above, watching it again, and it’s so magical. I know there are a lot of Beatles fans out there who would love a similar project but filming Revolver, or Sgt Pepper (and, obviously I would too), but there’s something particularly special about it being the end of their career - all of the history that we know is already there with them. They’re living at the end of a time that’s so familiar to Beatles fans, and they know that the time is coming to an end, and mostly they’re OK with that and just enjoying these last couple of flares of being together before everything falls apart. And it’s beautiful and poignant and sad but also exciting.

Quote

If you feel restless in the here and now, or you feel ill at ease, you need to ask yourself: “What am I longing for?” “What am I searching for?” “What am I waiting for?”

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living

RIP to Thich Nhat Hanh who lived an extraordinary life.

Thom's Link Emporium: 21 January 2021

Links for the Week

• Why Anything, Why This? Philosopher Derek Parfit investigates why anything exists, the implications on our belief in god and regularly blows your mind in the process.

• Thoughts on Web3 Moxie Marlinspike explains why Web3 and crypto might not be as decentralised as some believe. Never was a truer word spoken than “People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will”.

• The Physics of Wile E Coyote's 10,000,000,000 Volt Electromagnet Turns out it might not be as good at capturing an iron carrot as Mr Coyote would have hoped.

• xkcd on Language Development

• bell hooks, who died at the end of 2021, reviews Beyonce's Lemonade ""In this fictive world, black female emotional pain can be exposed and revealed. It can be given voice: this is a vital and essential stage of freedom struggle, but it does not bring exploitation and domination to an end. No matter how hard women in relationships with patriarchal men work for change, forgive and reconcile, men must do the work of inner and outer transformation if emotional violence against black females is to end. We see no hint of this in Lemonade."

• Wikipedia History Timeline Game If you’ve already done today’s Wordle

• Alan Moore's Favourite Magicians Comic writer and devotee of a snake glove puppet god chooses his favourite magical people

• Ted Gioia: Is Old Music Killing New Music? As more and more back catalogues get bought by record labels, and fewer and fewer artists are given the chance to get to the next level, what happens to music?

Now Listening

Antidawn EP by Burial

Burial rarely puts out longer form releases nowadays. This, marked as an EP, is in fact 45 minutes long and continues his experimentation with quite how little sound you can put into something and still call it music. A handful of samples, the sound of a scratchy record, little to nothing you could call a beat, or melody and yet here it is gradually etching itself into your mind so you could almost sing along with it, eventually.

Listen on Apple Music

Listen on Spotify

Lego Colosseum

The When in Rome podcast is normally a joy, but I particularly liked this episode where Matt interviews Lego Designer Rok Zgalin Kobe about the creation of the Lego Colosseum.

Now Reading

Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception

How did Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s favourite disciple, the one who was the first to see him return from the dead, become a prostitute forever in need of penitence? Short answer - competitive men. Longer answer is in the book, but Paul got in pretty early, cutting her out of the first stories of the resurrection.

Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception on Amazon

Now Watching

The Tragedy of Macbeth

I found the Coen’s approach to Macbeth particularly intriguing. Clearly they’ve always had a strong sense of style, but this often looks like a 1920s or 30s impressionist film along the lines of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s beautiful, and the acting is impeccable, but at times it can feel a bit cold, especially in comparison to Polanski’s visceral version.

The Tragedy of Macbeth on TV+

Quote

After receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, Max Planck went on tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the same lecture on new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur grew to know it by heart: ‘It has to be boring giving the same speech each time, Professor Planck. How about I do it for you in Munich? You can sit in the front row and wear my chauffeur’s cap. That’d give us both a bit of variety.’ Planck liked the idea, so that evening the driver held a long lecture on quantum mechanics in front of a distinguished audience. Later, a physics professor stood up with a question. The driver recoiled: ‘Never would I have thought that someone from such an advanced city as Munich would ask such a simple question! My chauffeur will answer it.’

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

Geoff Dyer on Theatre and Being Interested in Things

I had not been to the theatre for twenty years and I had no intention of going again now. It was not even a question of liking or disliking the theatre. The important thing was the pleasure that came from not being interested in the theatre. I am interested in all sorts of things but it is lovely to not be interested in the theatre. Not being interested in the theatre means a whole area of life and culture means nothing to me: there are entire sections of listings magazines that I don't need to consult, vast areas of conversation I don't need to take part in, great wads of cash that I don't need to consider parting with. It is bliss, not being interested in the theatre. Not being interested in the theatre provides me with more happiness than all the things I am interested in put together. There is a moral here. To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.

Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage

Neil Gaiman on Wisdom

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats

Ed Catmull on Management and Measurement

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a maxim that is taught and believed by many in both the business and education sectors. But in fact, the phrase is ridiculous—something said by people who are unaware of how much is hidden. A large portion of what we manage can’t be measured, and not realizing this has unintended consequences. The problem comes when people think that data paints a full picture, leading them to ignore what they can’t see. Here’s my approach: Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing.

Ed Catmull, Creativity Inc

Hermann Hesse on War and the Media

Two thirds of my fellow Germans read newspapers of this kind, every morning and night they read articles written in these strident tones. They are being manipulated every day, admonished, incited, made to feel anger and discontent. And the aim and purpose of it all is yet again war; the next, coming war, which will probably be even more horrific than this last one was. All this is clear and simple enough for anybody to grasp; anyone could reach the same conclusion after merely an hour’s reflection. But nobody wants to, nobody wants to avoid the next war, none of them want to spare themselves and their children the next bloody slaughter of millions, if the price they have to pay is to reflect for an hour, to look into their own hearts and ask to what extent they themselves have a share in and are responsible for the chaos and evil in the world. None of them are prepared to do this!

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Books I read In December 2019

Into The Woods by John Yorke

I didn’t intend to read this book about scriptwriting and plot structure because of any intent to put it into practice just that I find it interesting to see how stories work. Yorke’s book is excellent - clear, concise, well structured (one would hope so!) and worth a read if you want to understand what makes a plot work and their common structural elements.

Buy Into The Woods

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

I’ve never read any Waugh before. This probably isn't the greatest place to start, being as it is a lighthearted satire on the media. It’s very dated and not very funny, but an interesting period piece.

Buy Scoop

Bad Blood by John Carryrou

I loved this expose of everything that went wrong with Theranos, the briefly multi-billion-dollar valued medical start up and I wrote about it here.

Buy Bad Blood

Lush Life by David Hadzu

Billy Strayhorn was the man behind a great deal of arrangements and compositions for Duke Ellington from their meeting in 1938 through to Strayhorn’s death, at 51, in 1967. He wrote the jazz standard Lush Life, an extraordinary and haunting song, when he was only 17, and is responsible for Ellington’s theme tune, Take The A Train, which he wrote based on Ellington’s instructions on how to get to his house. My favourite piece of his is Chelsea Bridge which is both instantly enjoyable and rewards regular revisiting. A lot is made in jazz circles of how much credit Ellington gave to work created by Strayhorn but this book suggests that he was reasonably happy to be in the background. As well as one of the greatest jazz composers of all time, he was heavily involved in the civil rights movement of the 1950s/60s and was openly gay in New York in the 1940s. This biography is one of the best-written I’ve read and Hadzu has clearly done an extraordinary amount of research. It’s out of print at the moment but it’s available second-hand relatively easily (and is on Kindle) and I’d highly recommend searching it out.

Buy Lush Life by David Hadzu

Absolute Sandman IV by Neil Gaiman

The last of the main series of Sandman in the Absolute series and still as beautiful and affecting as the first time I read it decades ago.

Buy Absolute Sandman IV

The Tiger That Isn’t by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot

Michael Blastland was the previous presenter of the BBC’s More or Less (before the incumbent, Tim Harford) and has spent his journalistic career explaining the importance of understanding statistics and using them correctly. The examples in here are a bit dated and focus on the Blair/Brown years (it was published in 2008) but the lessons are timeless.

Buy The Tiger That Isn’t

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Renowned geochemist and geobiologist Hope Jahren has written a beautiful memoir of her life in academic science in which her deep passion for science shines through on every page. She’s extraordinary and the book is excellent.

Buy Lab Girl the Kindle edition of Lab Girl is only 99p right now

Strange Planet by Nathan W Pyle

This was a very welcome gift from a friend. Although I was vaguely aware of Pyle’s comics, I hadn’t paid them much attention, but they’re funny, touching and often deep. It’s a great read.

Buy Strange Planet

The Annotated Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (and Michael Patrick Hearn)

This is my eighth year re-reading A Christmas Carol over the festive period, so this time I went for a different edition and read this extensively annotated version, which brought to light many aspects of the text I was unaware of, as well as providing an absorbing history of its creation in Hearn’s lengthy introduction. It’s probably only of interest if you know the original text well, but if you do it’s well worth searching out.

Buy The Annotated Christmas Carol

My Favourite Podcasts of 2019

Podcasts continue to go from strength to strength. In the early days, there weren’t enough podcasts to fill the time I had available for them, nowadays I’m constantly having to prune podcasts out of my subscriptions, or skip a few episodes because I can’t listen to all my favourites. Here, though, are a few that I never skip. Some started this year, but a lot have a large back-catalogue to dip in to.

The Birthday Game

If you’re from the UK, you’ll probably know Richard Osman from Pointless, or his sharp, funny, appearances on various panel shows. The format of this light-hearted, weekly podcast is Osman tells the guests a celebrity who has a birthday this week, and they have to guess their age. It’s simple, and fun to play along with, and the guests regularly make me laugh out loud in embarrassing ways when I’m listening to it in public.

The Birthday Game Podcast

The Adam Buxton Podcast

Adam Buxton didn’t start his podcast this year, but there have been some great guests in 2019. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers, but there’s something interesting in every episode. It’s introduced me to a lot of people I’d had no exposure to, but found fascinating (Maya Fou, director of Reprieve, springs to mind) Buxton is a great, disarming interviewer - often vulnerable and self-critical and it leads to some fascinating conversations. Also contains some of the best adverts on any podcast, which perhaps sounds like odd praise, but listen, it’s well deserved.

Adam Buxton Podcast

Cautionary Tales

This is a podcast from Malcolm Gladwell’s Panoply network, presented by the Financial Times’s Tim Harford. Harford takes various stories from the past and pulls some often subtle and absorbing lessons from them. It’s clearly well-researched, and Harford is an excellent presenter. There are only a handful of episodes so far, but each is superb.

Cautionary Tales Podcast

Beyond The Screenplay

This is the podcast accompaniment to the Lessons From The Screenplay YouTube channel (which also comes highly recommended). The presenters include scriptwriters and an editor and provide insights into what works and what doesn’t in various films, especially regarding structure, character and plot. Time and again I’ve seen films I’ve loved in a new light off the back of this podcast.

Beyond the Screenplay Podcast

Broken Record

This is another Panoply network podcast. Justin Richmond presents with interviews by the producer Rick Rubin, the writer Malcolm Gladwell, and the former New York Times editor Bruce Headlam. The particular favourites of mine are the interviews by Rick Rubin since he’s a hero of mine. Take, for example, the episode where Rubin interviews Andre 3000 - it becomes almost a therapy session and both are achingly honest about the difficulties of creativity. If you have any interest in music and how it’s made you’ll find a lot to love here.

Broken Record Podcast

Conversations With Tyler

In his end of year episode, where the tables are turned and Tyler Cowan, the interviewer, is interviewed by producer Jeff Holmes, Tyler's explains that he doesn't understand why people listen to podcasts, which I find particularly interesting because he has a real skill at making incisive, engaging podcasts where he interviews a range of intellectual heavyweights. Tyler himself is a renowned academic economist, but interviews range from literary figures (his interview with the translator of the Odyssey, Emily Wilson is particularly good), other economists, public intellectuals and many other extremely smart people. Each podcast also comes with a transcript which I find extremely useful. I can’t say I come to like every interviewee (I found myself shocked by some of Jordan Peterson’s views, perhaps unsurprisingly) but I love being exposed to people I disagree with, and often these are the episodes I find the most intriguing.

Conversations With Tyler Podcast

You're Wrong About

Each episode, Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes take a story that you think you know reasonably well, or perhaps just haven’t reconsidered since the period it was dissected daily in the press, and reassess it. It’s opened my eyes to a number of my preconceptions (the Kitty Genovese and "Bystander Apathy" episode was a good one for this) and helped me think much more about how the media works. Mike and Sarah are excellent presenters and are funny and incisive making each episode an excellent listen.

You’re Wrong About Podcast

I hope you find something you’ll enjoy in these podcasts. Podcasting seems to be the place a lot of the best creators have gone to of late so I’m sure I’ve missed some great ones. Any suggestions?

Stormzy and Grace

Stormzy’s had a couple of days being the focus of some manufactured controversy. Firstly, when asked in an interview whether he thought the UK was racist, he said “definitely, 100%” which some some media outlets interpreted in headlines saying he thought the UK was “100% racist”, which are two very different things.

This became a second controversy, led by some conservative Christians that Stormzy was not an appropriate choice to read from Luke’s gospel as part of the BBC’s celebration of Christmas. It was announced five days ago, but the racism controversy has brought it to the fore. I’m not going to quote the various criticisms because I don’t either want or need to, but all centre on the idea of him not being suitable.

It’s this I find interesting because surely the only measure of suitability is whether he is Christian or not, and Stormzy has made it abundantly clear on multiple occasions that he is, not least in his wonderful song, Blinded by Your Grace. To quote:

Lord, I’ve been broken

Although I’m not worthy

You fixed me, I'm blinded

By your grace

The notion of grace is a key one in Christianity, and is summarised on Christianity.com as “the love of God shown to the unlovely; the peace of God given to the restless; the unmerited favor of God." Notice the word unmerited, and Stormzy’s own admission of not being worthy. That’s the central fact of Christianity. No Christian is “worthy” of God’s love, but that love is freely given anyway.

That’s why, as an atheist, I find a Christian arguing that another Christian is not suitable or worthy to read from the bible on Christmas Day, extremely odd. The central fact is that no-one is worthy. All humans are flawed sinners. To quote Jesus’s own words in the NIV translation of Matthew 7:3-5

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

Anthony McGowan on Walking in Cricket and Ethics

I enjoyed this piece in the Guardian on walking in cricket (a batter admitting that they’re out), related to various schools of philosophy. There’s an awful lot to agree with (e.g. “although Plato is perhaps the most revered of all philosophers, I think he’s wrong on almost every important issue”) but there’s a few I’d quibble over.

The stoics, for example, are put down as batters who would stay quiet due to their faith in fate. But I’d say their focus on justice and courage would make them walk. I’d also argue that Kant isn’t "the greatest of all philosophers" and that his ethics, especially as he interpreted them in his own beliefs (e.g. "The race of the whites contains all talents and motives in itself”), are a rather mixed bag.

Still, that’s applying a nitpicky focus on a piece that ties together two things I enjoy - philosophy and cricket - and isn’t intended as an academic thesis. I enjoyed it and it made me wonder which category I’d fall in to. I’d like to think I’d be a walker. For me though, it was normally obvious whenever I was out, which was limited only by the very few times I was allowed to bat at all.

James Hoffman's Exasperated Reaction to iOS Coffee Scale Apps

I enjoy James Hoffman on YouTube at the best of times. He knows a lot about coffee (he set up Square Mile, which is probably the best mail order coffee company in the UK), but what I loved about this video is his reactions to “smart” coffee scale apps.

For most, even having a scale for coffee is a bit over the top, but these apps try and do everything for the most intense of coffee-lover hipsters. What holds them back is that, without any exceptions, their design is frustrating and ugly. This is a disease across so many accompanying iOS apps. Their existence is a selling-point rather than because they meet any explicit need from users. And on the rare occasion they might try to do something useful, the lack of testing or any focus on users means the end result is terrible.

10 Lessons in Management and Investing from John Carreyrou's Bad Blood

I recently read Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. It’s a book that charts the rise and fall of the (briefly) multi-billion dollar-valued startup, Theranos. If you’re unfamiliar with the company, it was founded by entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes when she was 19 and purported to be have a machine able to do hundreds of different blood tests from a single drop of blood. When these claims came into contact with reality, however, what emerged was a company with little in the way of real, working technology, and a lot in the way of cover-ups, poor working practices and unkept promises. There’s a good piece to read on Theranos and its decline at Vanity Fair.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some lessons that can be learned about management, and perhaps even investing, from the book.

1. If things seem bad to you as an employee, you’re probably right

If you’re at a company where things seem chaotic, and management seem to be making poor decisions, even as far as lying to regulators and painting a falsely rosy picture to investors, you may well be right. Poor business practices from senior management are almost always felt by employees.

2. Steve Jobs’s success is a lesson, not a model

A lot of executives seem to believe that Steve Jobs’s abrasive management style was what caused Apple’s success, whereas Steve Jobs was brilliant despite not because of his management style. Indeed, Jobs himself toned down his approach as time went on. He realised that it was often counter-productive. Elizabeth Holmes is a big fan of Steve Jobs (she even copied him by constantly leasing cars so she didn’t have to have a registration plate) and enjoyed comparisons with the Apple founder. A lot of Theranos’s attitude towards secrecy, working hours and micro-management seems to have at least some basis in the worst stories heard from Apple and Jobs.

3. Loyalty is earned

Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’s COO, wanted complete loyalty from employees, which isn’t necessarily unreasonable. However, what both Holmes and Balwani failed to realise is that loyalty is earned, you can’t force it onto employees, especially not through constant micro-management. As such, despite the heavy focus on loyalty (e.g. firing employees who questioned working practices, or for not being ‘team players’), Carreyrou’s book has been pieced together from interviews with many, many ex-employees. Granted, in part this is because the company is now no more, but even earlier ex-employees spoke out despite Non-Disclosure Agreements, and while the company had still a valuation in the billions because they felt mistreated and weren’t prepared to support the company’s practices. In Fred Lee’s If Disney Ran Your Hospital, he says "Being micromanaged by one’s boss is the surest way to lose talented people." And this certainly seems to have played out repeatedly at Theranos.

4. Value comes from shipping a product

Until a company ships a working product, you should consider whether they will ever have a working product. Theranos never made a revolutionary product, but they were valued as though they did. Speculative investors have to make these sorts of decisions, and often have the money to cover the losses of some with the successes of others. Smaller investors shouldn’t take these sorts of risks though. I’m sure that some thought it was less risky than it appeared because of Theranos’s own statements about how they were progressing, but in my view, actually shipping a product is the only evidence that a company is capable of shipping a product.

5. High valuations require firm evidence

Relatedly - you should back-up a company’s rosy outlook on their future with evidence that it’s well-placed. This includes information you have working for the company if you’ve been granted stock as part of your renumeration. If the company seems poorly run, then this is likely to effect your stock and you should get out. The recent WeWork fiasco (which you can read more about here) shows how many of the staff had bought into the WeWork dream. Some, I’m sure, were unaware of problems, but others must have had some belief something wasn’t right and didn’t trust themselves.

6. Talent and intelligence are not all-encompassing

The case of both Adam Neumann of WeWork and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos show examples of people who are extremely talented in one area (sales) and yet have severe deficiencies in others (ethics, business, decision-making, relating to people). There seems to be a widespread belief that smart people are smart in all areas, but a brief moment of thought will remind you of people you know who are brilliant at some things and ludicrously deficient in others. High-flyers in unicorn start-ups are no different.

7. Just because you’re working with talented people, it doesn’t mean you’ll be successful

A key takeaway from Theranos is that talented people can fail to make a revolutionary product when they’re tasked with something that’s beyond their capabilities (indeed, probably beyond anyone’s capabilities). Noticing that you’re working with brilliant people should not be enough to reassure you that a company will be successful.

8. Leaders that don’t listen to staff, fail

Multiple times, the shortcomings of the technology were raised to senior staff, and indeed to the woefully inadequate board, but this challenge was taken as a sign of someone who was not bought into the company’s vision. They were sidelined, disparaged, silenced and fired by Holmes and Balwani, leaving an organisation of mostly “true believers” which proved absolutely fatal.

9. Most people want to do the right thing

One positive note from Theranos is that there were a lot of people who had severe concerns with the practices of the company. As mentioned above, they were removed, and some contributed to the expose that brought the company down, but there should be some comfort in the fact they were there. Most people are decent and want to do the right thing, even when constantly challenged by inept, bullying managers.

10. Theranos and WeWork aren’t unique

I’m going to finish with a less positive point, though. Throughout the end of Theranos’s existence, the company hired the most expensive of lawyers and used everything in their power (including influence from Obama’s Whitehouse) to keep their failures under wraps. It should strike fear into the heart of any start-up investors that this could well have been successful, at least for a time, especially in a company in which the faults weren’t quite so egregious as Theranos. It’s extremely unlikely the case of Theranos is unique. It’s worth looking at every one of the companies with similar access to legal resources, and political influence, and ask how much other terrible behaviour is being covered up. Chances are there’s an awful lot more than just Theranos and WeWork.

Tom Whitwell’s Things I Learned In 2019 List →

It’s become an annual tradition for me to read, and be surprised and delighted by, Tom Whitwell’s list of things he learned each year. A few titbits from this year’s:

4. Harbinger customer are customers who buy products that tend to fail. They group together, forming harbinger zip codes. If households in those zip codes buy a product, it is likely to fail. If they back a political candidate, they are likely to lose the election.

23. Sometime in the 1990s, it seems the US forgot how to make a critical component of some nuclear warheads.

42. A man who bought the personalised number plate NULL has received over $12,000 of parking fines, because the system records ‘NULL’ when no numberplate has been recorded.

And one relevant to the current election shenanigans in the UK (since I suspect it’s the same here):

47. “Polling by phone has become very expensive, as the number of Americans willing to respond to unexpected or unknown callers has dropped. In the mid-to-late-20th century response rates were as high as 70%… [falling to] a mere 6% of the people it tried to survey in 2018.”

You can read this year’s list here. And here are the ones for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.