The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• You Are Not a Parrot And a chatbot is not a human. And a linguist named Emily M. Bender is very worried what will happen when we forget this. We go around assuming ours is a world in which speakers — people, creators of products, the products themselves — mean to say what they say and expect to live with the implications of their words. This is what philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett calls “the intentional stance.” But we’ve altered the world. We’ve learned to make “machines that can mindlessly generate text.” (New York Magazine)
• All You Touch and All You See: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ at 50: A half-century ago, Pink Floyd unleashed a classic that still lingers on the Billboard charts and in college dorms to this day. But what’s the legacy of the blockbuster album? What’s legacy, anyway? (The Ringer)
• The Matter with Things: Dr. Iain McGilchrist discusses his most recent book which brings together neuroscience, psychology and philosophy into a unified vision. (Beshara Magazine)
• Can Gary Gensler Survive Crypto Winter? Gary Gensler on meeting With SBF and his crypto crackdown; D.C.’s top financial cop on Bankman-Fried blowback. (New York Magazine)
• How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled: The tech company Wirecard was embraced by the German élite. But a reporter discovered that behind the façade of innovation were lies and links to Russian intelligence. (New Yorker)
• The Satellite Hack Everyone Is Finally Talking About: As Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, a network used throughout Europe—and by the Ukrainian military—faced an unprecedented cyberattack that doubled as an industrywide wake-up call. (Businessweek)
• Pickleball’s latest court? The prison yard. It’s conquered local parks and cable television. Now, with the help of one obsessed player, one of America’s fastest-growing sports is spreading to state prisons. (Washington Post)
• How Will the Universe End? Big Freeze, Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce or vacuum decay? Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack about the five ways that scientists think the universe could come to an end. (Quanta Magazine)
• DC’s Food Influencer Scene Is Booming. It’s Also a Hot Mess. For a restaurant industry in pandemic recovery, a foodie TikTok and Instagram gold rush is the worst best thing ever. (Washingtonian)
• Jeff Koons Goes to the Moon: Having conquered this world—or at least become one of our most famous and priciest artists—Jeff Koons is pushing his art beyond the limits of boring old earth. (GQ)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Dr. Maria Vassalou, chief investment officer of multi-asset solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She was a Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School where her academic research led her to establish many of the investment principles she employs today. At Columbia, she did consulting work for numerous institutions before joining Soros Capital Management and S.A.C. Capital Advisors.
The 10 greatest acquisitions of all time
Source: @QCompounding
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