Weekend Reading #75
Photo by Haley Carman on Unsplash
This is the seventy-fifth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 4th July 2020. To receive a copy each week directly into your inbox, sign up here.
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What we're doing.
Our company name has a couple of inspirations... An unsolvable physics puzzle about 3 bodies in orbit. A groundbreaking science fiction trilogy, The Three Body Problem. And we have 3 business lines.
But our name has taken on a mountain of added significance in recent months with the wonderful news that our COO, David ‘Kempo’ Kemp, and his wife, Cherise, have safely welcomed triplet daughters into the world. Remarkable in normal circumstances, given lockdown and the stresses and strains we’ve all had to endure in recent months, we think you’ll agree that the Family Kemp’s story is nothing short of extraordinary.
Harley, Chloe and Lacey were born on April 21st at 11:00, 11:01 and 11:02, and all 3 have been doing fantastically ever since. As you may know, Kempo and Cherise already have two absolutely legendary boys, Sloan and Troy, and so the Kemp family of 7 (yes, that’s now 2 parents plus 5 children!) have been very busy creating a new life for themselves at home. The girls have been putting on excellent weight and doing everything that babies should be doing and the boys are helping out at every turn. Of course, Cherise has been a complete hero throughout. They really are some family.
Words can’t really do these guys justice, and so we won’t say much more other than to send huge congratulations to Kempo, Cherise and family. Kempo has his hands full right now, and it’s sure asking a lot of a man to be COO of a young, growing company (3 growing companies, in fact) and father to 3 growing baby girls. A guy with less broad shoulders may have crumbled but Kempo, like the prize fighter that he is, keeps coming back for more. We wish young Harley, Chloe and Lacey all the love and luck in the world and you can find a little more about their extraordinary story in “What We’re Watching” below.
In other, more prosaic news, our Three Body Fund has got off to a great start since launch a little over 2 months ago. What’s been more important than anything else since launch has been the fact that we’ve been diligently sticking to and executing our process. We know it's early days, and we’re well aware that there will be far greater tests up ahead, but it is our process that is all-important.
We were pleased this week to send out our first public factsheet and, above all, we’re really enjoying the challenge of managing money under the lights in the arena once again.
What we're reading.
Like many of you, we’ve long held an interest in AI and how it will shape the future of our world. The subject is vast and, in many ways, intimidating and hard to navigate due to the immense amount of content written about its current use cases and its potential. Distilling fact from (science) fiction is hard, but making sense of AI is the only way one can begin to understand its potential impact on the world.
And understanding AI should involve the work of Kai-Fu Lee, one of the leading figures in the Chinese tech scene and global artificial-intelligence development. Kai is chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures in Beijing and author of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, which is worth a read as both a primer and a deeper explanation of what an AI-led future holds.
In this great interview with Project Syndicate, Kai discusses the global AI race, the current state of the field, and what may – and should – come next. This is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn more about AI and about the future of the world.
With markets pushing inexorably on towards new highs, it can be easy to forget how the real world is struggling under the weight of COVID-19. This week we read with great sadness – albeit much less surprise – that Cirque du Soleil is filing for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US, after laying off more than 3,500 jobs.
It will be with a heavy heart that we all emerge from our respective COVID-19 lockdowns to find that the world is very different to the place it was before. Before, pleasures like Cirque du Soleil were seen as a little superfluous, non-essentials, luxuries. The world will be a little darker without such frivolous pleasures to enjoy.
What we're watching.
Of all the films and TV series we’ve ever curated for this list, today’s “What We’re Watching” smashes them all out of the park. The one and only thing worth watching this week was at 09:25 on Wednesday morning on ITV when all 7 members of the Kemp Family were LIVE on Lorraine! Our man Kempo is famous!
Check out the heartwarming interview with the Kemp family here, and look out for Troy doing all he can to steal the limelight from his three sisters on live television! What a family… and we can’t wait for the reality show!
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit, Hamilton, hits Disney+ this weekend… and we can’t wait! Having seen the show in the West End, we can’t recommend it highly enough. The unique combination of history and phenomenal music made it one of the best live experiences we’ve ever had and, even a year on, we still stream many of the songs every week.
Our favourite track is this one by Jonathan Groff, entitled “You’ll Be Back”, in which he plays King George III paternalistically warning a newly departed United States about the perils of going it on their own. Having done the same ourselves with this business, we can empathise with the young USA in this wonderful tune. The lyrics are so clever and the tune is such fun. Our favourite part is:
“You'll be back, soon you'll see
You'll remember you belong to me
You'll be back, time will tell
You'll remember that I served you well
Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!”
If you’ve ever heard or seen The Madness of King George, now you know a little more! While not quite the same as the live experience, for £60 a year, which gives you access to the entire Disney content library, this is the bargain of the century.
On a similar note to the above, in the Three Body Capital team we have a disproportionately large number of long-suffering Liverpool supporters and even longer suffering Leeds United supporters. While Liverpool’s monumental Premier League triumph was celebrated as raucously as possible within the latest social distancing guidelines, we certainly felt it was a somewhat less fulfilling moment without being amongst friends and fans around to watch it live. Having waited decades for this moment, it sure was exciting, but it lacked a little something, as most live sports do without crowds in attendance, win, lose or draw.
The same feeling can be felt if you’ve tuned in to watch Leeds continue their climb towards a long-awaited return to the Premier League. It’s looking promising for the Mighty Whites but they will still need a good string of results in the coming weeks to secure their elevation back to the top flight of English football. We’ll be sure to let you know the outcome!
Despite some excitements, sadly, football just hasn't been the same since its return and the advent of Project Restart and we can only hope that the crowds can safely resume attending as soon as possible. After all, if there is no one to cheer you on when you do well, or have a full go at you when you perform poorly, surely it removes one of the key performance drivers of being a professional sportsperson? That’s the agony or the ecstasy of being under the lights, in the arena. That’s what makes it worth doing.
What we're listening to.
A recommendation for your ears this week arrives on a cresting Beach Boys-shaped aural wave. According to this article from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, their music is the perfect way to start your morning.
By chance, we’ve actually been doing for this a while, popping on Pet Sounds whilst having a morning shower, but it has now been irrevocably proven by scientists that upbeat tunes like Good Vibrations, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and Kokomo kick your day off on the absolute best footing.
Rest assured, we’ve recommended it to Kempo, as there’s reports going round that he’s currently a touch short of sleep! Nothing that a crack-of-dawn, top-volume rendition of California Girls won’t fix. Science says so!