Another midweek post, lots of reading happening. Hope you enjoy this list!
- She Swam to Escape Syria. Now She’ll Swim in Rio - if you haven’t read this yet, read. Essential.
- Michael Phelps vs. Himself - Great stuff from the NYT, a clean and lucid breakup of how Phelps’ performance has evolved (and improved) over the years. Stunning show from him at the Olympics too, he has more gold medals than I have revolutions around the sun.
- Meet Fu Yuanhui, The Most Lovable Athlete At The Rio Olympics - :DD, brilliant!
- Do nice guys come second? - 1843, a superb Economist magazine (that you should read!) has this nice profile about Lyft, the company that’s just known as ‘second to Uber’. With a very respectable valuation of $5.5 billion, what are the odds that you aren’t the rage?
But Lyft is stuck in Uber’s shadow. I asked one venture capitalist what he thought of Lyft. He put his thumb and index finger into an L shape, brought his hand to his forehead and mouthed “loser”. Uber’s boss, Travis Kalanick, is notoriously rude and pushy. Doubters’ primary criticism of Zimmer is that he is too “nice” to lead Lyft to success.
They are underrating him. - Last Trump for the Suit? - More 1843.
Down on his southern borders Trump has built himself a collection of pants whose cut is as disturbing as the Great Wall of Mexico. It is as expansive as his demeanour, as loose as his tax arrangements, as unstructured as his policies and as overlong as his fits of pique with anyone who criticises him. - An Ode to the iPod Classic - I totally related to this, Spotify and Apple Music are great, but the music that I have on my phone and used to have on my iPod just defined me, in a way.
“People still listen to [music],” he said, “but it’s not as central. It’s more like a scented candle. It sets the mood… I think people like things that just make the right kind of noise, but leave your brain free to do something else.”â - Roger Federer - Practice? (video) - A 4-minute clip of Federer’s effortless and surgical dismantling of the young and upcoming David Goffin at the Australian Open. Have never seen something so clinical and yet so nearly callous. Watch just for the sheer mastery involved, you don’t need to know any tennis to know that you’re watching something special. *a lot of my free time consists of watching Federer highlights, so much so that I have a list of the best videos to watch, sorted by mood. Reply if you want it, at your own peril.
- Donald and Hobbes - In terms of sheer entertainment, Reddit cannot be trumped. This is so good, and so accurate. A rabbit hole for an hour.
- Leonard Cohen managed that rare thing: to talk with clarity about death - YES! Read, and read the original, and watch the video.
- Love in Translation - Delightful long read on the story of a woman trying to learn French, about her (French) husband trying to learn English, and how love doesn’t really distinguish. This piece left me smiling at the end, which means it’s pretty good!
- The doctor who beat big tobacco - Great long read to wrap it up for this edition. This piece is about a doctor who stood up against her pension fund and asked (rather, forced) them to stop investing heavily in tobacco companies, in what we can clearly recognise as misplaced ethics.
Cheers, and have a great rest of the week!
V