Red Plenty
Last year our crab-apple tree produced almost no fruit. This year it’s exactly the opposite. We’ve been wondering why. Last year we had a dry Spring and a wet Summer. This year’s been the exact opposite, with many trees being clearly stressed by the drought.
Quote of the Day
”Every day, Computers are making people easier to use”
- Dave Karpf
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Sharon Shannon, Donal Lunny | Goodbye
Quite an assembly of talent on that stage in Washington.
Long Read of the Day
Argentina on two steaks a day
Nice piece of travel writing by the inimitable Maciej Ceglowski.
Here’s a sample.
The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don’t forget to drink water).
The afternoon steak is the workhorse steak, the backbone of the day…
Read on. He’s a really interesting guy — an uber-geek who’s also a gifted writer. And he’s the creator of an essential tool for my workflow — Pinboard.in — one of those rare online services that has an honest business model.
Books, etc.
I’ve been reading Dan Wang’s book about China and the US, in which — of course — there’s a lot about Apple. This whetted my appetite for Patrick McGee’s deep dive into how exactly Apple managed to achieve what most Western companies couldn’t — to have a major manufacturing operation in China without having to enter into a joint partnership with a local company. If you want to get a feeling for the interesting complexity of this, then Nicholas Colin’s podcasted conversation with McGee is a great place to start.
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