Word-processing, old-style
Quote of the Day
”One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.”
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
The Rolling Stones | Start Me Up
One of my favourite tracks. Microsoft payed a fortune for the rights to use it on the launch of Windows 95. Which was a rather nice joke, given that you had to press ‘Start’ not only to boot up, but also in order to shut down, your Windows PC.
Long Read of the Day
Will our Hyper-Gilded Age Usher in Genuine Populism?
Lovely essay by Paul Krugman.
It’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the “malefactors of great wealth” called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison.
Some widely used measures of inequality suggest that income disparities, which soared in the 1980s and 1990s, have plateaued since then. But the concentration of wealth at the top is continuing to soar. Today’s oligarchs control a huge share of America’s wealth — much larger than their share even at the end of the 1980s. …
Tellingly, unlike the robber barons of yore, many modern plutocrats show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune, little inclination to give back to society by devoting a significant part of their wealth to good works…
More important than the stinginess of the superrich, however, is the fact that their wealth has brought great political power, arguably more than the robber barons ever possessed — power that they abuse on an epic scale…
Actually, it’s bought political power. Which is where the question of a populist backlash comes in.
Books, etc.
This is one of the two great books about the banking crash of 2008. (The other is Adam Tooze’s Crashed.) I read it ages ago and had forgotten about it until the other day when I had a conversation at breakfast with one of our Press Fellows about good reporting of the banking industry. So I took it down from the shelf and started to re-read. And then was reminded of why I was so riveted by it first time round. One of the things that makes Tett such a good commentator (she’s an FT columnist) is that she was trained as an anthropologist and so can sniff hypocrisy and greed at 50 paces.
My commonplace booklet
To infinity and, well…, lunch
Screenshot
A kind reader sent me this wonderful pic by the great wildlife photographer, Yanny Liu.
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