Here’s this week’s list.
- There’s magic in mess: why you should embrace a disorderly desk - I guess.
- How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History - Read.
About an hour into the forum, a young blogger in a navy zip sweater took the microphone and asked Putin what he thought of the “so-called Panama Papers.”
[…]
Sitting comfortably in front of a giant banner that said russia calling! he answered an audience question about the hacks. “Everyone is talking about who did it,” Putin said. “Is it so important?” The former KGB officer, proving his full command of U. S. political intrigue, suggested that the Democrats had “supported one intraparty candidate at the expense of the other.” Any talk of the hacks being in Russia’s interest, he said, was “hysteria” intended to distract Americans from what the hackers discovered: “the manipulation of public opinion.” When the audience applauded, a smirk returned to Putin’s face. “I think I answered your question,” he said. - The $2 Trillion Project to Get Saudi Arabia’s Economy Off Oil - Very interesting read, and it looks like Saudi Arabia’s economy is getting a vital rejig just in the nick of time.
For two years, encouraged by the king, the prince had been quietly planning a major restructuring of Saudi Arabia’s government and economy, aiming to fulfill what he calls his generation’s “different dreams” for a postcarbon future. King Abdullah died shortly after his visit, in January 2015. Prince Mohammed’s father, Salman, assumed the throne, named his son the deputy crown prince—second in line—and gave him unprecedented control over the state oil monopoly, the national investment fund, economic policy, and the Ministry of Defense. That’s a larger portfolio than that of the crown prince, the only man ahead of him on the succession chart. Effectively, Prince Mohammed is today the power behind the world’s most powerful throne. Western diplomats in Riyadh call him Mr. Everything. He’s 31 years old. - Why the Fastest Runners Are Astonishingly Chill - Interesting piece that essentially details the difference between people who finish marathons smiling and those who crash at the finish line. Like, literally crash.
- Letter to My Younger Self | By Ray Allen - The Player’s Tribune has a history of delivering with great writing on a regular basis, and it does here too.
Don’t ever put yourself in the position to wish you could hop in a time machine, Ray. You need to stay focused, because things will only become more complicated as you have more success on the court.
Listen: God doesn’t care whether or not you make your next jump shot.
God will give you a lot of things in life, but he’s not going to give you your jump shot. Only hard work will do that. - [Twitter Story] So, something magical happened to me today, and I wanted to tell you all about it. - Absolutely delightful thread of tweets, with the most beautiful pictures. Here.
- China’s Realpolitik Reality TV - Wow.
Always on the Road offers a window into this house-cleaning. One might expect that a collection of public self-criticisms would recall the era of Mao and its revolutionary excesses. But a certain type of Chinese propaganda has more in common with bad reality TV than Soviet-style self-criticism. The ham-fisted artifice masquerading as reality, lamentable production, and bad acting are all there, along with the voyeuristic intention and sensationalism of a reality show; the stakes are just much higher. It’s still propaganda; it still smothers you with its agenda like an overeager, fumbling lover. But watching Always on the Road, I found myself thinking of The Real Housewives of Everywhere as often as I did the Politburo. - The String Theory, David Foster Wallace - Obviously, when Wallace writes about tennis, you have to read it. Also, if any of you have not read Federer as Religious Experience, go and read that too.
What happens when all of a man’s intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis. -
Overview: Stunning images of Earth from above - Beautiful gallery of pictures taken from satellites. If you’re on Instagram, follow dailyoverviewâ.
- The Iconoclast - Jim Allison has always gone his own way—as a small-town-texas kid who preferred books to football, and as a young scientist who believed the immune system could treat tumors when few others did. And that irreverence led him to find apotential cure for cancer.
That’s all for this week. If you have anything to say, reply to this email. If you like what you’re seeing, please pass it on to people who will like it too. That’ll make my day (and my week!).
V
PS. If there’s a special issue you want out, please reply with suggestions. I’ve got a food special that should be coming out soon, and #16 was a Science Special. If you missed it, you may want to check it out in the archive.