The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Dark Matter coffee, grab a seat by a window, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• The Current Financial Thing: Everyone’s a Bear. Does that mean you have to be, too? (Not Boring)
• Billionaire Trader Ken Griffin Navigates A Flock Of Black Swans: War In Europe. The China-Russia Alliance. De-dollarization. How $47 billion Citadel is making the best out of the worst of times. (Forbes)
• The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages. In a city where diplomats and embassies abound, where interpreters can command six-figure salaries at the State Department or the International Monetary Fund, where language proficiency is résumé rocket fuel, Vaughn was a savant with a secret. (Washington Post)
• The controversial quest to make a ‘contagious’ vaccine A new technology aims to stop wildlife from spreading Ebola, rabies, and other viruses. It could prevent the next pandemic by stopping pathogens from jumping from animals to people. (National Geographic)
• How to stop China and the US going to war: Armed conflict between the world’s two superpowers, while not yet inevitable, has become a real possibility. The 2020s will be the decade of living dangerously. (The Guardian)
• The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning The internet has lost its way and taken society with it. Since the mid-2010s, we hear warnings of “dis/misinformation.” We hear about the loss of trust in our institutions and the need to reinvent them for the internet age. In short, we are living in a “crisis moment” — one ironically experienced by many of us while stuck at home. (Los Angeles Review of Books) see also Of Course We’re Living in a Simulation: The only people who absolutely disagree are, well, scientists. They need to get over themselves and join the fun. (Wired)
• Keeping Time Into The Great Beyond: The 10,000-year clock is neither a ‘frightening’ ‘distraction,’ as its critics scorn, nor the ‘admirable objective’ its fans claim. It’s something else — a monument to long-term thinking that can unlock a deeper and more thoughtful spirit of interpretive patience. (NOEMA)
• A Million Little Pieces: The Race to Rebuild the World’s Coral Reefs: Nearly half of these ocean ecosystems have been wiped out since 1950. One man is on a mission to reverse that—by speed-growing coral in hyperefficient nurseries. (Wired)
• Javanka in Exile: All but banished from Washington after January 6, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have been hiding out in a little no-frills town in South Florida. Its Trumpy mayor couldn’t be more thrilled, but the former First Kids have had a frostier welcome from another set of locals. (Washingtonian)
• Pitching Nirvana: “I would like to be paid like a plumber” I like to leave room for accidents or chaos. Making a seamless record, where every note and syllable is in place and every bass drum is identical, is no trick. Any idiot with the patience and the budget to allow such foolishness can do it. I prefer to work on records that aspire to greater things, like originality, personality and enthusiasm. If every element of the music and dynamics of a band is controlled by click tracks, computers, automated mixes, gates, samplers and sequencers, then the record may not be incompetent, but it certainly won’t be exceptional. It will also bear very little relationship to the live band, which is what all this hooey is supposed to be about. (Letters of Note)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jonathan Lavine, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, and Bain Capital Credit’s Cheif Investment Officer. He is co-chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University.
Where Americans get their news and who they trust for information
Source: YouGov
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