Weekend Reading
Writing worth reading - 13th/14th July 2024
The genius of Britain’s anti-intellectualism by Janan Ganesh
“We aren’t very reflective people generally. “Anti-intellectual”, the old line of attack against England in particular, often from those within it, is fair enough. Now, to be clear, anti-intellectual doesn’t mean stupid. The nation doesn’t have less cognitive processing power than the next. What it does have is a certain impatience with, and perhaps even a suspicion of, abstract thought. Immigration? That we can discuss to the nth degree. It is a practical matter, to do with numbers, public resources and geographic space. But “identity”? The “meaning” of having a Diwali-celebrating prime minister? The metaphysics of Britishness? Even our intelligentsia isn’t at home with this stuff.…”
“Economic headwinds”? No, The Messenger’s flop is the result of one man’s blindness to his own bad ideas by Joshua Benton
“Well, obviously not the result we were hoping for. Credit to the Niners — they played well. I think the key factor was their defensive scheme — we weren’t expecting them to blitz their safeties so much on first down, and they showed some new wrinkles in zone coverage. I think it’s also fair to criticize some of Coach’s play calling, especially on third down. And the offensive line didn’t have their best game — I think they’d tell you that themselves. In the end, there was just too much against us to overcome.…”
It’s only a matter of time before disinformation leads to disaster by Tim Harford
“In 2016, Tesla started doing all of the computer vision required for Autopilot in-house instead of depending on external vendors. Many people thought it was insane to bet the product on developing the vision system from scratch within a few months, which had taken other companies a decade or more. Yet, we achieved this target within eleven months. This was a strategically important move that started the development of a strong AI team at Tesla.…”
Upcoming meals with 9others
Wednesday 24th July — London — details and signup here.