đ” save like a pessimist.
on the agenda this week: travis scott, crashing paris fashion week and conning the beltway.
đ reading time: 4m 15s.
hi there :) happy monday.
iâm taking a week of leave as such, you wonât hear from me for the next ~two weeks. i hope to come back refreshed and ready to steamroll through to the end of h2.
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đ earworm: listen to ivy lab on spotify or apple music.
đ word of the week:
â
lapidify
â.
to turn into stone.
perhaps in a few months a slow seepage, rich in minerals, would return to these passages and gradually glue their bodies to the rocks where they sat, to seal their crypt and lapidify their bones.
- david brin, earth, 1990
đ§ brain candy:
đą more employees have died from covid-19 at pemex than at any other company in the worldâand mexicoâs president wants to keep the oil producer pumping, no matter what.
đ a new partnership between travis scott and mcdonaldâs is pretty amazing. scott gains instant access to something that doesnât exist in music anymore: physical distribution locations.
đșđž several h-1b employees hired at tiktok's silicon valley campus are facing visa approval delays that, legal experts say, are unusual.
đ«đ· oobah butlerâs perennial advice on âhow to crash paris fashion weekâ.
đ„ the west coast wildfires are introducing many americans to the concept that consistently bad air is a life-threatening concern.
đĄ airbnb is experiencing a resurgence in bookings and looks to be one of the more improbable winners from the coronavirus pandemic.
đ€Ș mildly humorous:
đĄ longer reads:
đ” save like a pessimist
.
littlewoodâs law tells us to expect a miracle every month. the flip side is to expect a disaster roughly as often.
which is what history tells us, isnât it?
history is âjust one damn thing after anotherâ said arnold toynbee. dan carlinâs book âthe end is always nearâ highlights periods â from pandemics to nuclear war â where it felt like the world was coming to an end. they exist in every era, every continent, every culture. bad news is the norm.
even during what we think were prosperous periods, like the 1950s and 1990s, there was a continuous chain of grief. adjusted for population growth, more americans lost their jobs during the 1958 recession than did in any single month during the great recession of 2008. the global financial system nearly fell apart in 1998, during the greatest prosperity boom weâve ever seen.
the world breaks about once every ten years, on average. for your country, state, town, or business, once every one to three years is probably more common.
sometimes it feels like terrible luck, or that bad news has new momentum. more often itâs just littlewoodâs law at work. a zillion different things can go wrong, so at least one of them is likely to be causing havoc in any given moment.
save like a pessimist means you acknowledge the cold statistics of how common bad news is. itâs common at the global, national, local, business, and personal level. save heavily, knowing with certainty that youâll need a cushion to deal with the next banana peel. be a little bit paranoid, knowing the assumptions you hold today could break tomorrow, and youâll need enough room for error to make it to the next round.
đ read more via morgan housel.
đșđžÂ
conning the beltway
.
the spy was recruiting for his secret task force. scattered about the beltway in grim brick and glass monoliths was a small army of gung-ho companies hoping to turn their patriotic ardor, technological inventiveness and commercial know-how into moneymaking national security contracts.
starting in 2014 and continuing for over a year, the spy approached dozens of these companies with his recruitment pitch: the chance to join a covert government program, the knowledge of whose existence, he warned, could cost some lives, but it was also a group, he promised, that could save some lives, too. and in return for assisting the c.i.a. by providing him and his security operative â âthe twins,â people cleared for the op would call the pair â with salaries and commercial cover, the grateful agency would ensure that a trove of government contracts would come their way.
the spy called this top-secret enterprise alpha214. it was approved, he claimed, by the president and by the director of national intelligence. its clandestine activities were routinely discussed in surveillance-proof sensitive compartmented information facilities, scifs for short, with an all-star cast of intelligence officials.
a two-star general who commanded the 25th air force in worldwide intelligence and reconnaissance was briefed on the enterprise. it distributed to task force participants letters that appeared to be from the attorney general promising immunity and, on two occasions, $12 million payments. its commercial backbone ultimately grew to include about a dozen tech companies.
there was, however, one big problem with the program: it was a gigantic construct of inventive multimillion-dollar crookery.
a federal inquiry that lasted roughly five years and involved about 10 separate investigative agencies determined that alpha214 was a scam that had been âconcoctedâ by garrison kenneth courtney, 44. mr. courtney was âneither employed by nor otherwise affiliated with the c.i.a.,â the governmentâs case filings say. mr. courtneyâs claims of support from the president and other high-level government officials were false, and many of the contracts he provided on government agency letterhead were forgeries.
đ read more via the new york times.
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