Missed you last week!
Hi friends,
Sorry to have missed y’all last week. I’ve been crushed with work lately and have not had time to pull the Reccs together each week. Hope you enjoy your weekend and these reads.
The Links
Cars are death traps, still* [$] Considering changing the theme of this newsletter at this rate.
Why are so many Christians in Colombia converting to Orthodox Judaism?
Very serious story in WSJ* [$] featuring a lawn consultant named David Hedges-Gower and his arch-nemesis Monty Don.
One of the world’s oldest science experiments continued this week at Michigan State* [$] The question—would 142-year-old seeds grow?
I fell down a rabbit hole and came out reading about the first at-home video game console.* The wildest part is that all the games required the players to administer the rules themselves. Which seemed to me incredibly surprising until I realized that’s how basically all games that are not video games work.
The FBI, basically, accessed a bunch of company’s servers and forced an update on them so they wouldn’t get hacked by others.* As Benedict Evans noted in his newsletter, this is a very interesting move that highlights a shift from reactive cybersecurity to proactive cybersecurity by the Feds. I’m sure these types of actions will only continue to grow as we evolve our views on consumer data protections and the government’s role therein.
Also from his newsletter—there are only 23m English-language digital news subscriptions, which feels shockingly low.)
Lagniappe
I was reminded this weekend how much I love crossword puzzles (as mentioned in the Reccs). If you think you’re not cut out for crosswords, I encourage you to read this guide* [$] and give a Monday puzzle a shot.
Graph(s) of the week
[WSJ] We don’t audit basically anyone, and a major factor of that is not enough IRS funding.
Keep the faith,
Harrison