20th Selected Links

Some links to things I've been reading or watching that you might also enjoy:

1. A list of questions that Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe, finds interesting.

2. Eyre Crowe's 1907 memorandum. (Here's how Harvard professor Graham Allison describes the memo: "Eight years before the outbreak of world war in Europe, Britain’s King Edward VII asked his prime minister why the British government was becoming so unfriendly to his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany, rather than keeping its eye on America, which he saw as the greater challenge. The prime minister instructed the Foreign Office’s chief Germany watcher, Eyre Crowe, to write a memo answering the king’s question. Crowe delivered his memorandum on New Year’s Day, 1907. The document is a gem in the annals of diplomacy.")

3. 'Monetary Policy During COVID', Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Guy Debelle's Shann Memorial Lecture (May 6, 2021).

4. 'Is the Principia publishable now?', John Maddox's 1995 Nature article on whether Newton's theory of gravitation would have passed muster in the scientific journals of today.

5. 'Comma Queen', a delightful video series for word nerds featuringMary Norris, who was copy editor at The New Yorker for more than thirty years (which is like being in the Navy Seals for proof-reading).

Have a nice weekend,


Joe