Weekly Reading

Continuing where One Word Kill left off, Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence was an equally fun and light hearted read. There's frankly not a ton to say about it, it was fun and you should read it.

Right now I'm reading Traction by Garbriel Weinberg - it's quite a fortuitous time as work has just started on the development of the MVP for a digital product I'm running. This is as good a time as any to swat up on some basic marketing principles to hopefully hit the ground running when it's ready for prime time in a few months.

This is something I've anecdotally noticed personally, but it seems that phones could be warping our perception of time and space. This seems like it should be more of a philosophical question, if our perception of time is changing, what does that say about our perception?

One of my favourite fantasy authors, and a philosopher in his own right contributed an essay entitled On the Death of Meaning to a recent book entitled New Directions in Philosophy and Literature. Bakker's previous writing on what he calls The Blind Brain Hypothesis is a critical part of his fictional works and this latest essay is well worth spending a few hours on.

If you haven't been sitting under a rock for the last few weeks you may have seen that Eliud Kipchoge became the first person ever to break the sub 2-hour marathon. It took a team of 42 elite athletes to help him get there.

Kipchoge told Runner’s World in August that breaking the 2-hour mark was more important than his other accolades, including his Olympic medals. But when the day finally came and Kipchoge charged through the storied time barrier, he gave credit to the extraordinary athletes who ran in front, beside, and behind him for nearly all of the 26.2 miles. “The pacemakers did a great job, they are among the best runners of all time,” he said in a statement published by Ineos. “I thank them and appreciate them for accepting to do the job.”

Ever wonder how Apple make their money? Wonder no more.

As the Chinese crackdown continues in Hong Kong, brands are starting to show the cracks. Among them, Nike, who just last year ran a campaign with the slogan of "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything".

Isn't it ironic then to see Nike (and others) cave in to Chinese pressure and remove merchandise in key Chinese stores following remarks made by the Houston Rockets General Manager. Ever a source of sanity in the world of advertising bullshit, Bob Hoffman hit the nail on the head in his recent newsletter.

A 93 year old former SS guard is on trial in Germany for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 in a Nazi concentration camp. Good.

I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Go recently, sadly it seems like Niantic, the makers of the game are slurping as much unnecessary data as they can. This is particularly troubling given the young demographic of the game.

Got a floppy butt? You should buy trousers that fit properly.