two
a quiz thing
I play in a quiz league called LearnedLeague (I found out about it from this excellent 2021 New Yorker piece and I joined up later that year). If you’re interested in that sort of thing, drop me a line and I should be able to refer you for an invitation.
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to submit my own question set for what’s known as a One-Day Special on the site - a quiz on a specific topic. My quiz was about The BBC and its history, and you can see the questions and play along here. You don’t need to be a member, or to log in - just click or tap the little prompts to see each answer.
a London thing
This video is “London’s unfinished motorways”, a 2011 video by the tremendous Jay Foreman. It’s part one in an ongoing series called “Unfinished London” - the most recent, episode 15, was only a couple of months ago.
I was reminded of it by a Whatsapp conversation about this Guardian article, which treads some of the same roads, so to speak. Both the article and the video are worth your time if you want to learn about why some of London’s roads are the way they are, and how they might have been very different.
a money thing
Why The Super Rich Are Inevitable is a smart little web comic that explains cleverly (a view of) why economic inequality is a function of the systems we have.
a Youtube thing and a poker thing all at once
I recently came across Steven Bridges on Youtube - he’s a British magician who decided to become a card counter. He’s been posting videos of his adventures for the last 12 months or so. Interestingly, he waited more than a year before he even started posting about what he was up to. And inevitably, in the later videos, he is often “backed off” (told to stop playing) by casino staff because they have seen his videos.
The one I’ve picked here is a good place to start. The two series so far do follow a rough story, but you can start at any point. It’s always fascinating - he is a charismatic and entertaining fellow to watch, which makes sense given that he was a professional magician.
a… work thing, I suppose
So this is how I learned my work calendar wasn’t private.
a food thing
I really enjoyed this interview with Tim Hayward (FT columnist, BBC food show panellist, Cambridge restaurateur, and more) by
from his newsletter .It’s typically wide-ranging and insightful (on both sides of the conversation), but what stood out to me in particular was the observation that below-the-line commenters on FT articles are different to below-the-line commenters on Guardian articles, because the people reading the FT pieces don’t want your job. They have a job they’re happy with and they just want to know what you think. Not a universal phenomenon, but one that holds some water, I think.
It was Bob Granleese at The Guardian says Hayward who pointed out that “whenever you write anything for The Guardian you'll get upward of 100 comments underneath, 99 of which will say, you know, you're a filthy metropolitan oaf or how can you possibly say that about cheese? What about the vegetarians? Or, some people are allergic to this, you know, not me, but just saying.”
“And you don't get any of that at the FT. I used to get letters in fountain pen saying [affects a clipped Home Counties tone] my wife and I find your review extremely agreeable, and perhaps we'll go there one day. Thank you very much. Yours sincerely. And it was lovely.”
Bob said, you know, the thing about The Guardian is everybody who reads it got a liberal arts degree at a reasonable university. It would be the height of their ambition to write for The Guardian section that specialises in their area. And they all think they could do a better job than you, and truth is probably most of them can.”
At the FT, “they don't want to do your job,” says Hayward. “It's a lovely, rewarding space in which to then go out and do whatever you like. We've just had a new editor join us from the US who's giving me even more space now, and it's literally part of the brief to choose your own restaurants, not just upmarket places, anything.”
Thanks for the shout out! A little more from Tim in Something for the Weekend which will drop tomorrow or Saturday.