Weekend Reading #126 — Three Body Capital

This is the hundred-and-twenty-sixth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 10th July 2021.

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What we're doing.
This week I had some unexpected fun after discovering the Westway Centre and it’s climbing walls close to Notting Hill in London. It was the first time I’d tried bouldering in my life, but I absolutely loved it. For those that haven’t tried it, bouldering varies from typical rock climbing in the sense that there are no supporting ropes and you can climb at different inclines and both sideways and upwards. This made for a more interesting experience and definitely wasn’t something I’d expect to find at such scale in Central London. HS

What we're thinking.

As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its 100th anniversary this year on the 1st of July, a film entitled “1921” has also been released telling the story of the party’s founding and the party’s first national congress held in Shanghai. We haven’t seen it, but the stats are interesting to ponder, with the film clocking in $13m in ticket sales on its opening day.

This from the undefeated and indisputable cartoon king, Private Eye, really couldn’t be more perfect... EJP

The crypto bull market is back! Or is it? Bitcoin is struggling, Ether is too. But the real action is happening elsewhere. Axie infinity, the leading blockchain game, which we wrote about before, leads the charge as adoption has gone exponential. The game generated $18m in the first 8 days of July versus $12m the whole of June. And fascinatingly, the game is making strides on Twitch – a sign of real-world interest. The token has nearly quadrupled in 2 weeks which may frighten some people but imagine it as a start-up seeing product market fit and exponential adoption. Only difference is the price is listed from the get-go. It is the pioneer in play-to-earn gaming, and it is just so early.

DeFi leaders, AAVE and SNX, are rallying too but the rally is narrow and most projects which offer no value have been left behind. We love dispersion. That’s where you get the best bang for your ideas. Fundamental analysis in crypto works. Do the work, and you will be rewarded. DC

What we're reading.

As this week’s blogpost discusses, China plays by its own rules and this article about Tencent deploying facial recognition to recognise minors playing videogames at night, is another example. The company’s Midnight Patrol system uses big data from the Central Public Security System to ensure that children and teenagers are not playing online between 10pm and 8am. DC

With the din over England’s progress in the European Football Championships reaching a crescendo over the past few days, there is a heck of a lot of content being written about the team, the coach, their past, and their future. And quite rightly so – this is the most excited we English football fans have been in decades. But caught up in quite a lot of hot air was this wonderful piece penned by England forward, Raheem Sterling, about his life, his upbringing, and what it means to him, as an immigrant who was bought up in a single-parent family, to play football, the game he loves, for his country. There will be a tonne to talk and write about in the coming days, win or lose on Sunday in the final, but it’s heartening and, in many ways, inspirational to be reminded that the individuals who make up the current England football squad are, to a man, a group of good hard-working people, many of whom saw football as their only chance in life. Sure, they now live good lives, with great salaries and lifestyles, but the intense spotlight under which they must live, which will only burn harsher and brighter should they win tomorrow night, is an incredible burden that many generations of past players have failed to shoulder. This squad, Sterling especially, seem to carry the weight of a nation well. Not only do they seem like fine footballers, but this group of individuals seem like fine young inspirational men too. EJP

As I wrote before the tournament, I really wasn’t excited for it given the year of stale experience after stale experience trying to watch in empty stadiums. But wow what a difference the fans make. One can see how the players performance levels have been elevated. Its been such fun to watch. This article in The Atlantic talks about this exact phenomenon. I really hope that the standard of football endures! Meanwhile the contrast with Copa America in South America could not be greater. Brazil vs Argentina on Sunday is a dream final, but with no fans in the stadia I will not be waking up at 1am to watch it this time. DC

Byrne Hobart writes a sensational newsletter called The Diff and this week’s one covered the story of genome sequencing and in particular the challenges that face the incumbent champion, Illumina. I’ve been learning about the space recently and when this dropped in my inbox, I read it straight away. Superb. DC

What we're watching.

After putting it off for a couple of weeks to allow the number of released episodes to build up, we finally decided to take our chances on the newly released series of Loki. And one has to say, Disney/Marvel have done it again – just when we started to think Avengers: Endgame was the endgame for the Avengers, Marvel have taken what they used to do with comics and applied it to TV. When the Falcon and the Winter Soldier was released on Disney+, we thought it was decent but not entirely worth shouting about. But with Loki, perhaps as a function of the more magical part of the Marvel universe he’s from, things get VERY interesting. Unending character and plot development, branching out from the main canonical film timelines in all the weird and wonderful ways that made Marvel’s comics infinitely scalable. So far only 5 episodes of the series have been released on Disney+, and it’s not the end of the season (yet). No spoilers here, just a solid recommendation. EL

Whilst I haven’t yet watched it, Disney+‘s new Black Widow film is on the cards for this weekend and we have already pre-purchased it to watch. As cinemas have reopened, this movie puts streaming sites to the ultimate test as this movie was available as both a premium subscription film but also live at the cinema. This time, with the requirement to still wear a mask at the cinema, I opted to watch at home and pay the premium. I’ll be back next week with how the film is… HS

What we're listening to.

On the playlist this week was a selection of works by Franz Schubert, particularly this recording showcasing two contrasting pieces of work: two piano sonatas, one written just before his death and published posthumously (D. 960 in B-flat major) and one from earlier in his life (D. 664 in A major). The benefit of being able to listen to compositions in hindsight is that we can easily perceive how a composer’s style matures over time, assimilating the contemporary influences of the time into the music. Schubert often turns out to be one of those composers who are “known about” but not “known” outside the classical music world (compared to say Mozart and Beethoven) - even more surprising for a composer who died at 31 years old, leaving behind more than 600 vocal works (lieder), seven complete symphonies, operas and a huge body of piano compositions. Publication of his works continued well after his death, in 1828, of manuscripts hidden in cabinets and file boxes of his friends and family. In total more than 1,500 works are known to have been written by him in his short career, leaving us with much more of his repertoire to explore. EL

Bari Weiss is a former op-ed staff editor of the New York Times who resigned in 2020, citing the newspapers’ extreme cancel culture as leading her to be unable to do the job she was hired for. Her resignation letter was something everyone should read. She is someone who genuinely searches for truth like all journalists should. In today’s world where truth is elusive and intellectual debate is mostly narrowed down to 2 binary sides of a coin, her podcast "Honestly” and newsletter “Common Sense” are a ray of light. I listened to this episode with former band member of Mumford and Sons, Win Marshall, who recently felt compelled to leave the band he loves to protect his bandmates and his loved ones from the string of abuse he received after “being cancelled" for a seemingly harmless tweet he put out last year.

"I could remain and continue to self-censor but it will erode my sense of integrity. Gnaw my conscience. I’ve already felt that beginning."

In today’s world we all find ourselves having to be extra careful with what we say, and his story is a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to understand what’s really going on at present. DC

This was an amazing podcast episode I stumbled upon when running this week that told the story of ice. This is an old podcast, from 2007, that was prescient in its telling how, if we didn't change our behaviours, we would quickly begin to lose one of the most important materials on earth. Henry Pollack, professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan for more than forty years and one of the world’s leading experts on the temperature of the Earth, argues that ice is natures best thermometer and perhaps its most sensitive and unambiguous indicator of climate change. Ice has been around for billions of years but it has taken less than three centuries for human growth and industry to bring it to the point of extinction and without taking significant measures, agriculture and drinking water are at risk, as are millions who live on the coast and are in danger of becoming climate refugees. And this was Pollack talking in 2007 and, as we know, things have only gotten worse since then. A concerning but vital listen. EJP

As we wrote briefly last week, we have been doing some research into the very exciting field of CRISPR in recent months. This podcast with Tim Ferris features Walter Isaacson, a giant in the non-fiction space having written books about Steve Jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin. His latest book is entitled The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. I’m in the middle of it at the moment but this podcast gives a great overview of what is in the book and for anyone looking to understand the significance of what is currently happening in the space, it’s really good. Isaacson himself is a pleasure to listen to and Tim Ferris as always has the ability to attract superstar guests. DC