Friday Fodder #37
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Today is Good Friday. Easter is very close to being as late as it can go — it can never be later than April 25 and never earlier than March 22.
As I do every year, I end up reading and re-reading Oscar Wilde’s Sonnet Written In Holy Week at Genoa:
I wandered through Scoglietto's far retreat,
The oranges on each o'erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
Laughed i' the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
'Jesus the son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.'
Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear.
On to the reading!
Timely
Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify - Tobi Lutke decided to put this internal memo out himself after it was in the process of getting leaked. AI is expected at Shopify as the first move, before asking for more people or resources. A glimpse of what’s to come.
CHYNNNNA. Will this or won’t this be the Chinese century? Here’s two opposing takes:
Will this be the Chinese century? - Noah Smith breaks down why China will be the dominant player and how it compares to the American 20th century.
The conventional wisdom is that China is beating us. Nonsense - Tyler Cowen sees things much differently, mostly through the lens of AI, where he believes the CCP will self-select out of winning because “you cannot entirely control an entity smarter than you are.”
The Force That Drives Korea - Meanwhile, just a bit further east is Korea, which I always imagined as defined by the 38th parallel after World War 2. But this history is quite a bit more ancient than 1945.
Timeless
The Blissful Zen of a Good Side Project - Obviously I believe strongly in side projects. But I love this line: “I think we exist to bring new things into existence.” Just make it, whatever it is.
The Dopamine Industrial Complex - Unlike all of our ancestors, we live in an environment dripping in dopamine. What that means and how we react to it is one of our most important personal decisions.
Young Kids Spend Far Too Much Time on Screens - Our kids’s middle school asked 7th graders how much time they spent on their phones daily for the school newspaper. The numbers ranged from 1 to 18. You know these numbers are all big, but it’s a different thing to be confronted with them. Those are entirely different childhood experiences.
Books
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts - We’re off on some spring break travel, so of course that’s what I’m thinking about. This one came so highly recommended that it was almost impossible to live up to expectations.. but that’s a fault of the recommenders, not the book. Potts takes you through the details and practical parts of long-term travel without ever dropping a sort of mystical attitude towards the experiences you’ll accumulate. Above all, he reminds us of the purpose of travel: living an interesting life and understanding more of the world around you.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
🤣
The world is amazing. Cheers!