Weekend Reading #107

This is the hundred-and-seventh weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 27th February 2021.

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What we're doing.

We were excited this week to launch our first deal of the year on 3BC, our private deals platform. Having spent the first part of the year sorting through the outstanding work we had from the end of last year and putting in place processes that will allow us to scale as we move through 2021, it felt good to get an investment opportunity live on the platform and out to our investor community.

As a result, this week has been filled with conversations with potential investors. Interestingly, this opportunity was a timely one, offering members of 3BC a chance to invest in a bitcoin mining operation in Canada. Obviously, this a hot sector, with cryptocurrencies themselves finding themselves front and centre over the last few months. What’s possibly been a little overlooked is the infrastructure that’s being built to support this fast-growing industry.

Sure, it’s an industry that still has its critics. In the same week when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a warning about the inefficiencies of cryptocurrencies, especially with regards to bitcoin mining, we were pleased to put out an opportunity that seeks to take advantage of the undoubted upside in the sector whilst attempting to clean up some of the inefficiencies that Yellen and other critics are within their rights to observe.

If you’re already a member, you can check out of the latest deals by logging back into 3BC here. Or, if you’re not signed up yet, please create an account. We’ve got a stack of interesting investment opportunities ready to be launched onto the platform and we look forward to discussing them with our investors in the coming weeks and months.

What we're thinking.

This week we were thinking a lot about vaccines. Here in the UK, we are fortunate to have the most advanced vaccine program of any major country (in terms of progress). Many friends and family have now been vaccinated and the psychological freedom it has brought them is remarkable. All adults have been told we will have received the first dose before the end of July which means that we are heading in our view for a blockbuster summer here. We are terming it the summer of joy as we expect a massive outpouring of sheer happiness as people get back together after a long and difficult time. And that is apart from the economic activity. The UK could see a monumental summer of spending. As an example Thomas Cook’s website activity surged immediately after Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, unveiled the reopening plan this week.

Landing in our inbox in the middle of a busy week, a quote from the always-excellent James Clear newsletter, 3-2-1 Thursday, made us stop and think for a moment:

"Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour. You don’t have to do it all today. Just lay a brick."

Makes sense to us, and after a short rest this weekend, we’ll get back to laying bricks.
What we're playing.

This week has undoubtedly been a busy one, and as such, playing games has taken a bit of a backseat. However, over the weekend, we had some time and kicked back to relax with favourites like DayZ and Call of Duty Warzone. The ‘open world (survival)’ genre is a favourite for us with iconic games like GTA V, Fallout 4 and Skyrim. One game we have set our sights on is Rust, a game released in 2013, although has received continued updates and as such is one that we will have to try. The game runs on Unity’s engine. Unity is a company which we know well we have following its stock since IPO.

What we're reading.

A fascinating and often-controversial history book we finished off this week was from Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan. Her book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, was one of last year’s bestsellers and on many “Must Read” lists and it's a fascinating examination of the links between society and war and the questions that these links inevitably raise. How is progress linked war? Where would we be without it?

Economies, science, technology, medicine and culture have all been shaped by war and MacMillan argues that, without conflict, for all its ills, we might not have had penicillin, female emancipation, radar or rockets. Through history, writers, artists, filmmakers, and composers have been inspired by war, using it to condemn, exalt or simply ask questions about it.

As MacMillan proposes, if we are never going to rid ourselves of war, how should we think about it and what does that mean for peace? And is peace an aim worth fighting for?

We breezed through “Thinking in Bets” by Annie Duke in just a few days earlier in the week. Annie Duke is a highly decorated professional poker player and she writes about decision making with reference to her poker career. The analogies are endless and it was quite a satisfying read because it reinforced many of the lessons we have accumulated about decision making and avoiding psychological pitfalls. First one needs to be aware of the various traps our minds fall into but then the real battle begins as one needs to be obsessively vigilant about avoiding them. It is SO difficult and takes years and years of training to be consistent and rational about decision making in everything from business decisions to our personal relationships to managing a fund. And even then we make mistakes every day. We highly recommend this book as an entry to anyone who wants to think about their decision making. The overriding message is that in uncertainty it is impossible to know what the outcome of the any single decision may be but if you follow a consistent process then over time you will make way more correct decisions that incorrect ones.

Readers will know of our long affiliation with Turkey as a country and we came across this fascinating opinion piece by Kamran Bokhari, who’s writing we followed closely when he was at Stratfor many years ago. This piece covers a potential Turkish-Iranian cold war. It digs into what it would mean and how it would play out. Bokhari sees this as an inevitable conflict between an Iran fresh from its victory in carving out its influence under the nose of the Saudis, and an increasingly assertive Turkey, who will not allow Tehran to block its own aspirations. He also sees the US and Turkey working closely together to keep a check on the Iranians regional aspirations. It’s a great history lesson too, digging back to where it all began.

What we're watching.

I have no doubt that tomorrow afternoon at 4:45pm, all of us will be tuning in to watch the England rugby team go head-to-head with Wales in the Six Nations. Not to mention Italy v Ireland earlier in the day, this weekend is looking to be a great one, with warm weather, bringing back memories of afternoons watching the game in a pub garden with friends. With the roadmap unveiled by Johnson this week, it might not be too far off that we could be watching the delayed Euro 2020’s all at Wembley.

This week we lost a giant of poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, at the age of 101. Widely regarded as the “spiritual godfather of the Beat movement”, Ferlinghetti used his platform throughout his life as a poet, writer and philosopher to champion causes close to the Beat movement and, through writing and humour, pushed political agitation and satire. Through his famous San Francisco bookstore, City Lights, he also published many of the major Beat poets, among them Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. The most famous work of his, “A Coney Island of the Mind”, became a sensation following its release in 1958, and sold so widely throughout the world that it is remembered as one of the most successful books of American poetry.

His style is perfectly exemplified in his first collection of poetry, “Pictures of the Gone World,” released in 1958. One of our favourite extracts would be:

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time

Funny, thoughtful, personal, provocative. Like so many of his generation, Ferlinghetti was all of these qualities. Here, the New York Times remembers his life in a beautiful short video.

In 2016 Adam Curtis’ documentary HyperNormalisation gave us a flavour of things to come in its’ description, among many other things, of how Vladimir Putin, helped by an advisor with a background in experimental theatre, managed to subvert the concept of truth and reality in Russia. It said that Trump seemed to be following a similar playbook – and still nothing at the time could have prepared us for what was to come.

So we entered Curtis’ latest work, the over 7 hour long, six-part series, an even deeper rabbit warren, beautifully put together, with a mesmerising soundtrack, with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Titled Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World, it is a tapestry of stories that look at the rise of individualism, how it made people powerless by ending collective bargaining, and how a world emerged where people are frightened, angry and manipulated. It is hard to describe, and some critics have dismissed it as confusing and misleading as the systems is supposedly portrays. But that misses the point. Even though Curtis is firm in stating that he is a journalist, not a documentary maker, let alone an artist, the films work most effectively as works of art, telling a truth that we’d struggle to articulate with just words, but the disturbing truth of which we still grasp. One of the ideas we emerged with was the absurdity of thinking that reason is a useful guide or tool in a world that is distorted by emotion, be it in market phenomena such as GameStop, or in the Capitol invasion.

As we try to get a feel for where the world is going, be it in politics or markets, it’s a useful reminder that we are in uncharted territory, and most things are probably not as they seem.

What we're listening to.

News that robo-French music duo, Daft Punk, are splitting up after 28 years creating some of the most popular music of all time sent us digging into their back catalogue, going back to where it all started by listening to their 1997 release, Homework, on repeat for most of the working week. It includes the classic singles “Around the World”, “Da Funk” and the opening track of the album, “Daftendirekt”, which sounds like it’s landed from another planet and sets the tone for the albums to come. Their early work really is an invigorating sound that will power you through whatever it is you need to do with your day.

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo formed Daft Punk in Paris in 1993, and helped to define the French-touch style of house music that has been so popular ever since. Beyond the stellar music, that rose to a peak with their iconic 2013 release, Random Access Memories, their visual identity, use of video, interstellar mystique, and party-music ethos inspired generations of artists across genres and had been the soundtrack to a small but not insignificant part of so many of our lives.

À bientôt, Thomas et Guy-Manuel, et merci pour la musique.

Whilst we’re touching on the ending of iconic musical careers, this week marks a year since the tragic death of Pop Smoke. At just 20 years old, the Brooklyn rapper was only just getting started with hits like ‘For The Night’, and several collaborations with 50 Cent, Roddy Ricch, Swae Lee, and Tyga, amongst others. That brought us back onto his debut posthumous album, “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon” and we definitely picked up a couple of tracks to add into our playlist.

And regardless of the fact that we haven’t mentioned Bruce Springsteen in a couple of weeks, it would be remiss of us not to mention the new podcast he’s put out on Spotify with Barack Obama. Renegades: Born in the USA is an eight-episode series featuring conversations between the two men, exploring a wide array of topics including race, fatherhood, marriage, and the state of America. It’s a fantastic listen, whether you’re a Boss fan (like us!) or not.

Edward PlayfairMarch 1, 2021