Weekend Reading #148

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

This is the hundred-and-forty-eighth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 11th December 2021.

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What we're doing.

This week the team gathered at the famous Goodman steakhouse in the heart of Mayfair. We don’t often go brand name when it comes to gatherings but as it celebrated the third year of our company, we decided to go large. It was a fantastic evening and Goodman did not disappoint. The food was spectacular as always and after 3 days we can safely say that no one got COVID which is also quite pleasing. As we get closer to year end, we also want to thank all of our readers and supporters for the constant engagement and repartee. We really enjoy all the various musings and interactions and look forward to much more to come.  

What we're thinking.

It may just be that as the year comes to an end, mental exhaustion is setting in, but we can’t help but feel that the crypto market is also exhausted. It feels like there has been too much easy money made, too many projects getting funded at ridiculous valuations. We are structural bulls, but we think there actually needs to be a bit of a reset here to flush out the sheer number of rubbish tokens out there. As we have regularly written, in our view most of the tokens out there today are worth nothing (much like the overwhelming majority of startups). The attraction is to find those projects and teams which are building something truly remarkable. The problem is that every project team believes that is what they’re doing, and every investor thinks that THEIR projects in which they invest (ourselves included!) are the best. Unfortunately, not everyone can be right. While the structural influx of capital is immensely positive, when the liquidity environment slows even just for a short time, a great reset can occur. Not just a small reset but a major one. We maintain long positions in the very few (count on one hand or maybe two) projects we like but have little trouble in finding a short book to more than outweigh them. This is not a time to be a hero. 

As an aside, this little tête-à-tête showed up on our twitter feed thanks to @tbr90: 

It’s not so much the language that is out of place, but the twitter accounts using it. A diversified foods company (Pepsi) deciding to adopt the vernacular of crypto twitter, incidentally while launching their own NFT profile picture collection of generative microphone pictures - that’s what caught our attention. Now, it is most certainly a good thing that Pepsi is embracing crypto, dropping 1,893 NFTs on Ethereum. But one can only wonder if this is just another sign of froth in the market. 

What we're reading.

Following a recommendation I heard from the writer, Chuck Palahniuk, on a podcast this week, I got back down off my bookcase my copy of The Gift by Lewis Hyde. I bought this book, perhaps, 15 years ago and read it once and never quite got what it was getting at. But having listened to Palahniuk describe the effect it had on his life and on his work, I thought I'd give it another read, and I found a lot more depth and value in its pages than the first time around. First published in 1983, the book tells of the importance of creativity within each of us and, whether we use it for the pursuit of creative or business goals, implores us all not to waste those unique, innate talents that we all possess. It's a book that sets out to defend creativity, a trait that is often overlooked in our highly commoditised world and speaks about its importance in a culture increasingly governed by cash and excess. As Zadie Smith says on the book's sleeve, the book is “a manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art, cares for it, and understands that our most precious possessions are not for sale.” A cool read, whatever creative pursuit you're currently pursuing. EJP

I’ve just completed a fantastic spy thriller called The Body Man by Eric Bishop. The Body Man is the keeper of all the real secrets. He survives presidents. But in this book, he disappears. I’ve read lots of these types of books and this one really is brilliantly done. The intricacy of the plot and how it weaves together is mesmerising. What’s even more amazing is that this is the author’s first book. As this is the case, and as a non-tier one publisher was used, there were a few typos in the book which in a way added to the sense of discovery for me! Took me just a few days of reading and I quite simply had to make time to finish it as I couldn’t stop. DC

What we're watching.

I’ve banged on about the qualities of the film Heat in this newsletter before which, to my mind, is the greatest film of all time, pretty much without question in my house. Michael Mann, Heat’s director, also created Collateral, a 2004 thriller with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise and whilst it doesn’t have the grandiosity of Heat, it ticks many of the same boxes and is a fabulous, neat, fast-paced film, ideal for a cold winter’s night on the sofa. It tells the story of Max (Foxx), a cab driver in LA, who picks up the suave Vincent (Cruise) one night and quickly discovers that the reason he needs a driver for the night isn’t strictly legal. The action unfolds in the space of a few hours, and there isn’t a moment of downtime as Max and Vincent crisscross LA. The film has Mann’s fingerprints all over it with some violence, which is never gratuitous, beautiful urban cinematography (lots from helicopters, looking like a game of GTA), and an epic soundtrack. There’s one helluva finale too. Unlike Heat, which keeps you hooked in for just short of 3 hours, Collateral is, by Mann’s standards, short and sweet and clipped just under 2 hours, so it’s the perfect action-thriller for one night over the coming Christmas break. Get the sound up loud, open a nice bouteille of something comforting, and enjoy! EJP

Finally managing to eke out some time in the evenings, and intrigued by this anamorphic billboard that took up residence on Piccadilly Circus, we turned to Amazon Prime for their latest series release, The Wheel of Time. No spoilers here, although the only annoyance is that episodes are released only once a week, so bingeing on episodes to finish the entire series at one go isn’t a possibility here. What we can say without spoiling anything is that the filming locations include the stunning landscapes of Slovenia and Croatia (not unlike Game of Thrones), although feedback from friends who have read the book before is mixed with regards to how faithfully the plotlines are followed and the degree of artistic license that has been taken.  

As is always the case with on-screen adaptations of classic novels, what is becoming clear in a world of everything moving FASTER is that characters and plotlines take time to develop. The Wheel of Time seems to do this reasonably well, although with only a handful of episodes released, hopefully more will be revealed in time.  

On the other hand, the latest film rendition of Dune is arguably quite disappointing, having seemingly found the sweet spot of minimal efficacy: too many implied references to the lore for anyone who doesn’t know enough about Dune to have a proper understanding of anything that’s going on, while also being too superficial for any Dune aficionado to be satisfied that any of the characters’ back stories were properly developed. 10/10 for graphics and fight scenes, but personally, this would struggle to get anything more than a 6.5/10. Dune deserves its own series, and MINIMALLY one series just to get all the intricate basics in place for the first book to make sense. We can only hope that someone generous will one day be willing to fund its production. EL

One show our readers might note that DC and EJP have harped on about in the past is Succession; and so, this week I decided to give it a go. One episode quickly turned into two, and two into three.  After a tiring week, my weekend of nothingness was off to a great start. For those that haven’t seen it, the show chronicles the family dynamics of the uber rich Roy family, a fictitious family who are the owners of Waystar Royco, a huge American conglomerate with a likeness to Disney/Fox. HS

As Storm Barra battered the UK, temperatures tumbled towards freezing and the rain fell, our nights this week were brightened up by the sight of international cricket beaming into our living rooms from the other side of the world as the Ashes got underway at the “Gabbatoir” in Brisbane, Australia. It was a beautiful sight to tune into the green grass, blazing sun, cricket whites, and a shiny red ball in action whilst we wrapped up under a blanket on the sofa in London. Despite the unlikelihood of victory, the late-night watching of the Ashes from Down Under' is one of the great sporting events for an English cricket fan. There's something magical about watching top-class sport in the middle of the night, like a heavyweight title fight in Vegas or an Olympic hundred metre final from the far side of the world. Cricket, too, played in the middle of the night in London, feels extra special and, as COVID and the Omicron variant, raise their ugly head once again, it was reassuring to see top class, middle of the night sport from Australia. As I type this, it's the morning after the night when England batted themselves back into the Test match, almost, although they’re still a mile behind and the Aussies, having made a tonne of runs in the sun continue to be right on top, and all of that is reassuringly familiar, too. EJP

What we're listening to.

Since the emergence of the play-to-earn gaming ecosystem, there has been an extraordinary amount of positive coverage. As I wrote last week, it's all getting a bit much to be honest with the sheer amount of capital being thrown at the space. As it stands there are hardly any games live already and my personal view is that many of them won’t even get there. Few of these will turn out to be big winners but for those that do the upside is clearly enormous. So, when I came across this podcast from Andrew Steinwold (one of the early NFT bulls) I was pleasantly surprised! In this episode he interviews Will Robinson who is had a PHD in game design. His knowledge of gaming history is encyclopaedic, and his views are refreshingly real in a world where fluff is constantly thrown down everyone’s throats. Kudos also to Andrew for the discussion. Really enjoyed the realness of it. DC

One of my very favourite bands, The War On Drugs, snuck out a new album, I Don't Live Here Anymore, in October that we, for some reason, overlooked (I blame the Spotify algorithm!). This oversight gave credence to the saying, "a pleasure deferred etc" as now we've found it and listened to it nonstop for one whole week, we think it's phenomenal and a continuation of the immense preceding albums, Lost In The Dream and A Deeper Understanding. As the great producer, Jimmy Iovine, once said about this band, "These guys are playing tomorrow's classic rock today", and I wholeheartedly agree as their stadium-deserving sound (hopefully we'll be seeing them live again before too long) seems to be reaching greater heights with their latest release. Turn up loud, go running if you want, and enjoy. EJP

The Coexistence podcast was a deeply enjoyable find: 15 episodes in the first series (hopefully so far) telling of a multi-decade conspiracy in a dystopian future of Earth, with some aliens involved. To be honest, it’s hard to come to any conclusions about the entire storyline given this still seems to be a work in progress, but having checked out their Twitter page @coexistencepod, the most recent post being on the 14th of October is encouragingly suggesting there is more to come. Eyes (or ears) peeled for the next series to drop, whenever that may be. EL