1. An Oral History of the Shot That Changed Toronto and Kawhi Leonard Forever:
βIβm watching and the shot goes up and it hits the rim once and the light goes on around the backboard. I could see that perfect. And I thought, βOK, itβs over.β I might even have glanced down.
And then, silence, right? Not a sound in the building. And it bounces again. And it bounces again. And you kind of feel this wave building.β
Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/sportsrenaissance/
Complex systems require substantial human expertise in their operation and management. This expertise changes in character as technology changes but it also changes because of the need to replace experts who leave.
3. COVID-19: The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them
βIf a person coughs or sneezes, those 200,000,000 viral particles go everywhere. Some virus hangs in the air, some falls into surfaces, most falls to the ground. So if you are face-to-face with a person, having a conversation, and that person sneezes or coughs straight at you, it's pretty easy to see how it is possible to inhale 1,000 virus particles and become infected.β
4. Wind of Change: When Patrick Radden Keefe publishes something, Iβll stop everything to read it. I wrote about his incredible book about The Troubles in a previous edition of this newsletter. He has a new podcast out that explores the conspiracy theory that The Scorpionsβ song βWind of Changeβ was written by the CIA to destabilise the Soviet Union.
5. Sent Candy: The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting. Warning: about as distressing as it gets.
6. The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet:
βIn that moment, all of the moral concerns and threats of punishment that Hutchins had brushed off for years suddenly caught up with him in a sobering rush. βThere is no getting out of this,β he remembers thinking. βThe FBI is going to turn up at my door one day with an arrest warrant. And it will be because I trusted this fucking guy.β
7. Questlove has been DJing during lockdown. The full archive of his sets is here. I loved his book Mo Meta Blues.
βHow do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.β
- Questlove
8. A History of Seating β From 1800 to Today - 90 minutes of chair chat. Are you sitting down for this?
βYou can recognise and understand an era β its social structures, its materials, techniques and fashions β by its chairs. I would go as far as to say that no other everyday object is so multi-faceted.β
9. The tale of India's lost techno pioneers:
βIn the 1960s, a group of Indian students accidentally invented minimal techno β and hoped their synths could cure disease.β
Related: If youβd like to get acquainted with minimal techno, Iβd argue it peaks with The Fieldβs A Paw In My Face from the album βFrom Here We Go Sublimeβ.
10. From 2011, David Grannβs βA Murder Foretoldβ will be the best thing you read all weekend. I promise.
Most clicked link last week: Watch Picasso make a masterpiece.
Real Quick:
- Nuraloops are available, at last. Try them. It makes me so proud that a bunch of first-timers from Brunswick built the best sounding headphones ever made.
- Wild Hearts, Blackbirdβs podcast, launched this week. The first guest is Tim Doyle, co-founder of Eucalyptus, and one of the best thinkers about direct-to-consumer company building in the world. I speak at the end of the podcast (from 49:00) about why I invested in the company pre-launch (and why Iβve invested twice more since then).
- Very Good Films: An online film catalogue by film lovers. I love this siteβs design, and their recommendations.
- Melbourne artist Roy Bluesβ βLive From Isolationβ is an epic. One of the best βshot from homeβ live sets Iβve seenβ¦ the moment he moves from the keys to the drums is pure exhilaration. H/T Tom Nijam.
- Time for Sunday breakfast with Gordon Ramsay:
Itβs cold and beautiful out this morning.