Weekend Reading #245

This is the two-hundred-and-forty-fifth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 25th November 2023

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What we’re thinking. 

As equity markets continue to be strong, once again this week all the action was in the world of crypto. Binance’s case came to a close as founder, CZ, faces time in jail in addition to a monster settlement. And after an initial wobble on the day, it has proved to be yet another opportunity to buy. As we write this newsletter, crypto prices are breaking out to new year-to-date highs once again. The changing of the guard is in full swing now and the tradfi brigade led by Blackrock, Fidelity et al eye the prize of capturing the fruits of the flow of an asset class which in coming months and years will be regulated one way or the other. The last major crypto-native exchange left in its original form is now Coinbase, whose slow and steady, regulation-friendly approach now proves to be wise. They do however face an ongoing SEC case despite this. That hasn’t stopped the share price, also from breaking to new YTD highs.

What we’re listening to. 

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon film came out this past week and as a result everyone and their dog on the podcast circuit had an expert on Napolean come in and chat. A cool new podcast for me is the Dwarkesh Podcast and this week he spoke to biographer, Andrew Roberts. Roberts is a historian and has written biographies on Napolean and Churchill. His latest book is a co-written book with American General, David Petraeus, called Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. This was such an interesting listen as Roberts covered obviously Napolean and Churchill as well as the changing nature of war but also has some original insights into so much else. Leadership was the common denominator. He spoke about the importance today of wealthy tech individuals, and particularly Elon Musk’s influence with respect to Starlink in Ukraine. The difference between running strategy by consensus vs having a single great mind in charge is a theme we see everywhere in history and today indeed in the corporate world. Look no further than the boardroom battle we just saw inside OpenAI. Napolean was a polymath, a strategic genius who when he conquered a territory, he would first call all the leading local intellectual minds of said territory (scientists, philosophers and businesspeople) to meet. When a leading scientific presentation was made, he would often be there in attendance sitting in the first row taking notes like a student. He was curious and loved learning new things. Roberts believes that if Napolean were alive today, he would likely be in Silicon Valley with multiple billion-dollar businesses. Then again, I was thinking if he were Chinese, he would probably be in the CCP as evidenced by the study I shared last week showing 64% of graduates want to work in the party. I have Roberts’ book on my shelf but it's very daunting, so I’ll probably just stick to listening to him on podcasts in the interests of time! DC

What we’re reading.

After listening to the Andrew Roberts podcast, I found this article he wrote today (Friday) entitled “What Makes Hamas Worse Than the Nazis”. A topic like this is provocative but this article is quite straightforward, replete with historical context and well worth a read. Which is worse is irrelevant, but it sure makes the level of last month’s evil clear.

It is in the context of the above then that the standout political event of the week was the election of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands in a major surprise outcome. Wilders was until recent years a fringe extreme right politician with his Islamophobic and Eurosceptic policies. Now he will be in charge and there will likely be a referendum on the Eurozone and a complete reversal of immigration policies. Objectively what is interesting to me is that after the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas terrorists his support doubled, taking him to victory in the election. As Tyler Cowen writes in this short blogpost, this outcome is not unique to The Netherlands. And the implications are big. The gyre continues to widen. DC

What we’re watching.

The War of the Worlds is one of the classics of science fiction, not just in terms of how revolutionary it was as a concept at the time it was published, but also in terms of the realism of the storytelling to the extent that the radio broadcast of the story in 1938, described as a “magnificent fluke”, caused listeners who didn’t know it was a fictional production to truly panic. So, when I spotted a War of the Worlds TV series on Disney Plus, positioned as a new take on the classic, curiosity ultimately triumphed over skepticism. This series was a joint production between Disney (Star) and French channel Canal+, and features a timeline between London and Grenoble, but notwithstanding the mediocre IMDB ratings, it was pretty well-made: some scenes are thoroughly terrifying, the plot line isn’t completely watertight, the “science” probably wouldn’t work out, but on the whole as a reimagined sci-fi thriller (without too much thinking) with a need to be at least relatively faithful to the original plot, it was quite an enjoyable watch. EL

I started watching a show called Gen V, about the budding superheroes at a superhero university. It is extreme in all manners especially the spaghetti violence. The show is a spinoff of the Amazon Prime series, The Boyz, a show about superheroes who have a very dark side and the Machiavellian corporation that creates and manages them. Gen V is more of the same and if it’s possible, even darker. But its brilliant. Huge use of irony when dealing with diversity, inclusion etc and just hits the nail on the head with the not-so-subtle critiques of so many things that are wrong with the world. Good fun too. DC