Friday Fodder #31
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Yesterday, I talked about the importance of context and how it’s eroded because of the systems we use today. I was thrilled today to read Ted Gioia’s State of the Culture 2025 and find this as his first graphic:
Context has been eradicated. What’s left is flattened. As Ted says: “Doesn’t all this make you yearn for a rebel?” If you read nothing else today, read Gioia’s State of the Culture.
There was some news this week too. Something about an argument in the Oval Office and a speech and minerals and tariffs. And it’s all clearly very normal and standard political fare. If you’re like me, you’re being beat over the head with all of it. GH Hardy said, “It is never worth a first class man’s time to express a majority opinion. By definition, there are plenty of others to do that." And these days there are plenty of majority opinions. On both sides. Definitely winning.
So we’ll have none of that here, because some cooler stuff happened too. Boom Supersonic had their second flight with some great visualizations from NASA. Firefly Aerospace landed a private craft on the moon. Mechazilla caught the booster, but Starship suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Really a gangbusters week for aerospace!
Meanwhile, the vibe coding movement is growing. We found a new marker for atherosclerosis. And a new type of obesity drug. And an even better GLP1 called retatrutide! Looks like biology is doing pretty well too.
Alright, maybe just a little geopolitics that you might have missed.. MBS said something quite remarkable about Islam for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. China reacts strongly and talks of war. Lesotho makes the news, which disappointed my daughter since she prefers Eswatini. BlackRock takes over the Panama Canal. We get a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and BTC snap-drops that hour from $91k to $84k. Oh, and Apple released the newest iPad and people seem to think it’s the sam— er, really love it.
On to the reading!
Timely
The Tacit Manifesto - Dave Thomas of agile software fame puts together a new manifesto about the importance of developing tacit knowledge, something we’re all keen to forget as we keep talking to Claude.
Why Make Something Beautiful? - The making of a rose garden and how it can help us raise our eyes to heaven.
Meditations For Phone Addicts - A lovely set of challenges on our phone culture and a reminder that the phone is not the enemy. It’s our own fears and failures. It’s always us.
50 Thoughts on DOGE - A neutral, procedural take on DOGE.. at least as neutral and procedural as a take on DOGE can be.
Timeless
“We confess our small faults only” - A collection of maxims from La Rouchefoucald, by way of Rob Henderson. They’re all good, but that first one really caught me: “We confess our small faults only to convince people that we have no greater ones.” Oof.
The Retreat From Euclid And America’s Great Math Collapse - I can’t read this and but think of Dave Thomas’s ideas about tacit knowledge. Talking about concepts does not ingrain the numbers as well as rote arithmetic. Practice, practice, practice.
Funding Science Is Actually A Badass Thing To Do - Yes, yes it is. And I love his arguments. Before you go complaining about shrimps running on treadmills, or whatever people are saying, you should remember Adam’s point: “Pharmaceutical companies can make plenty of profit turning molecules into medicines, but they can’t go looking into the mouths of gila monsters, asking ‘Any good drugs in here?’ Thats how we got GLP-1 agonists, which are now used by millions of people.”
That made me laugh.Start A Blog - You should. Yes, you. Yes, it will be bad at first. That’s ok. It’s still valuable both for you and for others too, whether you believe that or not. If you do, send it to me. I’ll read it.
Books
Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan - I’ve read all of Zeihan’s books but this one is my favorite. He’s a geopolitical analyst who, in easy and simple prose, breaks down complex geopolitics and history to explain why the world is how it is and where it is going in the next few decades. I’ve read a few books on geography and geopolitics and it continues to amaze me how much of our modern, connected world is still underpinned by geography and demographics. And World War 2. If you want to know why the U.S. Navy is so important, what will happen when globalization starts reversing, why Argentina, Turkey, and France are all resurgent, and the ways in which China or Saudi Arabia can fail, this is the book for you.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
🤣
The world is amazing. Cheers!