Weekend Reading #287
This is the two-hundred-and-eigthy-seventh weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 12th October 2024
To receive a copy each week directly into your inbox, sign up here.
*****
What we're thinking.
The race for top stock is back on as Nvidia closes again on Apple’s lead at the top. It’s a bit tongue in cheek but one can’t help but think that if Nvidia makes up the 6% or so gap, this time it isn’t going to give it back up after a few hours. We can all postulate and intellectualise as to the AI bubble or not. But the reality is its nearly there and that counts. We simply trade what is in front of us. Usually, it works but when it doesn’t, we bail fast! Elsewhere despite the obvious volatility crypto seems to be perking up. And it’s meme coins that are leading the way once again. Will there be new meme coins this time round, or will the same dogs rise to the top?
What we're doing.
Just catching up from my adventures over the past few weeks, I spent a few days in the Spanish capital of Madrid. It felt a million miles from the ‘full-english breakfast and a pint for 5 euros’ side of Spain that has become all too familiar in many of the country’s seaside towns. The food, the atmosphere and the variety of small bars was incredible. Just as London plunged into winter, Madrid felt like a welcome escape where I spent almost all wake hours outside either relaxing in the El Retiro Park (which certainly gives London’s Hyde Park or NY’s Central Park a run for its money), sitting on an outdoor terrace eating various croquettes, Ibérico ham, and drinking crisp pints of lager, or playing Padel in the 30^c heat. That’s not to say the nightlife didn’t surpass expectations; it certainly did! Bars were reasonably priced and remained open until well into the night, clubs were continuing well into the morning, and most importantly there were plenty of post-drinking spots to grab a bite to eat. My saving grace was the strange abundance of pharmacies on every corner, all stocking electrolyte drinks that seemed to help get you moving again the next day.
A highlight of the trip was the football match I managed to catch at Atletico Madrid’s stadium where it was a derby match or ‘El Derby’ against local rival Real Madrid. The atmosphere was like nothing I’d seen before, with so much emotion that the game got stopped at the 67th minute for a 10-minute break for the fans to calm down. As I entered the stadium dredging through the sea of beer cans, I knew it was going to be a good one. Even Real’s keeper was quick to taunt the fans, leading to lighters and bottles being hurled at him from all angles. The two goals were fantastic, and both couldn't have been at more perfect moments to amplify the tension. Being two such world-class teams, there was a huge amount of talent all under one roof and the sheer amount of added time allowed that to be seen through plenty of substitutions. HS
What we're reading.
I have been reading David McCloskey’s second book called Moscow X and it is absolutely fantastic. As I was explaining to my daughter, there are countless different styles of writing even in the same genre. In spy fiction, one gets page turners which hit the ground running with short sentences and a breathless pace. One also gets slow burners which lay the scene, develop the characters and then when the time is right, pick up the speed. The latter requires patience in the early parts, but the reward is just so much more. This book comes from the latter category. And when the pace picks up it is just spectacular. His first book was Damascus Station and took place mainly in Syria, but this one is entirely about Russia, though happily it traverses the world. It centres on the search for and development of Putin’s money men (fictional of course but very much with real world parallels). Beautifully put together and a must read if you like this kind of stuff. DC
Viruses – another one of those things that we now fear so much, especially after the COVID experience. As it turns out, deploying AI to model through RNA data has led to a whole lot more viruses being found: more than 70,000 more, according to this article. And of course, as we know from the unending series of variants of COVID there now are (probably lost count by now), viruses evolve extremely rapidly, leading to the discovery of what the article calls a “bottomless pit” of viruses to discover. What are the hosts of these newly discovered viruses? No idea yet, but just possibly, the hope is that if (or when?) next time a big viral infection comes about, finding the cure could well be about forcing the virus to evolve more quickly into a benign state as much as neutralising it. EL
What we're watching.
Having had the chance to progress a little further down the list of episodes of the Rings of Power, we’re starting to think we’d need a revision of our previous opinion of it – with 2 episodes left till the end of the season, the gap-filling of the details omitted in the original storyline is starting to get slightly tiresome, and based on the pace of the plot, and the fact that Amazon has planned five seasons of this, we’re thinking we might not have the patience to get to the end – especially as we all know what eventually happens. Probably should mark this as “What we’re probably not going to watch much more of”.
That said, having now had the impetus to re-watch the original LOTR trilogy, we’re very quickly reminded of how the original trilogy tried to put three epic books into three films, but following its success, the hobbit was split into 3 parts (and gap-filled), and this particular segment of the Silmarillion (i.e. part of ONE book) is now being made into 5 seasons of (probably) 8 episodes each. Commercialisation gone a bit too far now? EL
What we're listening to.
Former UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, appeared this week on Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. It seems to be part of a PR offensive on the part of Johnson who has just released his obligatory autobiography called Unleashed. There is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that Boris believes he will be PM again. It's simply a matter of creating the right conditions for his return to politics. His idol appears to be Winston Churchill who was PM and then led as opposition before returning to being the PM once again. Boris will no doubt have this in mind and aiming to wait for the right zeitgeist before attempting to return. Something I noticed which I found curious is the use of the word “they” when referring to the Conservative Party rather than “we”. Is this an attempt to distance himself from the recent failures or is it an indication of how any political comeback may be in a new format? Who knows. But this is a useful conversation to listen to either way. Boris is nothing if not a wordsmith. And despite Bartlett’s valiant attempts to pin him down on a number of topics, Boris always managed to only answer what he wanted to! DC