Headlines

Artist of sympathy and cruelty

Mozart’s genius lay in writing music of such power that he could draw his audience into morally wrenching predicaments - by Dorian Bandy Read on Aeon

“Because you’re the cheapest”

If we choose you based on price, please don’t be surprised if we leave the moment someone else uses the same tactic on you. Low price is a temporary refuge for a marketer who has run out of useful ways to improve the experience and deliver more value.

Required Reading

This week: a record-breaking World Cup mural in Mexico City, the Gen Z of 19th-century France, van Gogh and AI, and more.

Two video upgrades

It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-generated background many people use on Zoom calls undermines the impact and authority you might

The Backward Index

How do dictionary makers keep track of similarly suffixed words, like those ending in -ism, -graphy, -ness, or -ology? With a computer, it’s simple, but how did they do it before the computing age? Starting in the 1950s, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster typed all of the words

Down with -maxxing! Searching for the absolute best...

Down with -maxxing! Searching for the absolute best option isn’t always the wisest course of action . Better to make a good-enough choice so “a great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spent on wondering about how to live”.

100 Iconic Moments From Sir David Attenborough

Let’s the keep the David Attenborough love going: this is a six-hour video featuring 100 of the most iconic moments from the famed naturalist’s work. I got this via Enrique , who rightly asserts that “There’s no such thing as too much David Attenborough.” See also Three Hours