When the world feels too loud
A handful of internet gems worth your attention
I’ve always been able to focus. To put everything to one side — the incessant drilling from the flat above, colleagues complaining about their boyfriend/child/boss, the information overload from televisions and screens — and complete whatever task is placed in front of me.
Lord, grant me a deadline, an idea and a 45-minute time slot and I’ll give you several hours of productivity. Moreover, I’ll be grateful for it — for the distraction, the challenge, the thrill of observing time passing at differential speeds. Today, I had plenty of ideas: none of them stole me from my torpor.
Why you have to oppose civilian casualties on all sides, not just your own. Otherwise you’re not a humanitarian, but a partisan and probably a bigot
How the chicken burger came out of nowhere to rival beef
What the Emirates first class halo effect means for businesses and consumers
If Reform UK’s plan to review Bank of England independence is as dumb as it sounds
An oral history of a particular Federer/Davydenko point from the 2006 US Open
I will probably return to these at some stage. Perhaps even this week — I mean, it’s only Wednesday. But for now, none seemed quite right. Worse, in fact: kind of pointless. Which highlights my problem. On the one hand, I only want to hit send on something that I believe will add value to your inbox. On the other, this is a daily newsletter.
So instead, I thought I’d take the opportunity to recommend some of the best things I’ve seen, read and randomly stumbled across on the internet in the last few weeks. Like when that department store in Miracle on 34th Street adopted the wildly successful policy of directing shoppers to another store if they don’t have the product in stock.
Duncan Weldon’s terrific book, Blood and Treasure: The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to Ukraine. For a taste, check out this podcast.
Paul Caruana Galizia, whom I had the privilege of working with once upon a time, writes about what Malta owes his mother. For those not aware, Daphne was the country’s foremost investigative journalist, and was murdered in a car bomb in October 2017.
This post from the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, following the announcement by the Office for Statistics Regulation that it has suspended the official statistics status of the Wealth and Assets Survey following quality concerns
Brian Wilson and George Martin talking and messing around with God Only Knows. Four minutes of pure joy
A delightful little thread by the writer Adam Sharp on ‘desire paths’ — unofficial trails, normally bypassing the planned route, which reveal the most convenient route to get somewhere.
Each year on Memorial Day, French caretakers take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy and scrub them into the letters of all 9,386 US soldiers who died to give them a gold colouring. France granted the land in perpetuity to the United States.
New York Times columnist (and always sharply dressed man) Jamelle Bouie can be trusted to deliver neither hyperbole nor sane washing.
“In my opinion, people should be saying "Cheers!" when they have ice cream.” Hard agree.
The Rumsfeld Memo:
I know I live chronically in the late '90s, but the Peter Mandelson/Geoffrey Robinson private loan affair gets weirder with each passing year
See you tomorrow.
