Happy Friday! ☀️
Hello from the tail end of a veeery slow week here in Vienna, my first week off from work on my three-month sabbatical. I spent the week disconnecting, cooking, walking a dog (wonderful Great Dane Gracie), and enjoying some excellent thai massages.
What I’m reading 📖
In November 1992, producer Steve Albini sent a letter to the band members of Nirvana before recording their final album In Utero. In this letter, Albini describes his philosophy and conditions of working with a band and I’ve read the letter three times. It’s such a fantastic time capsule and includes so many nuggets of wisdom about creating the (work) rules based on one’s deep convictions. In five simple rules, Albini clearly outlines why and how he wants to work with artists. Click to read.
What I’m listening to 🎧
Narcoland is a five-episode podcast by the Aachener Zeitung that explores how crystal meth is finding its way into Europe by way of the Netherlands and the border region around Aachen. It’s a fascinating series that involves Mexican cartels, former Dutch drug dealers, and some audacious moves by the podcast host. The content and story is great but the narration falls a bit flat. Here’s the trailer:
What I’m watching 📺
Following WeCrashed and Super Pumped, here comes another tech saga dramatized by Hollywood. Based on the podcast by Rebecca Jarvis of the same name, The Dropout tells the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Spanning over 10 years, Holmes–at times deemed a female Steve Jobs–managed to raise over $700 million, fool some powerful people onto her board, and deceit employees and patients with a revolutionary blood diagnostic technology that never worked. Watch the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
– Carl Sagan
What else?! 💯
One of my favorite dishes to cook currently is this red lentil dal soup I found on Kitchen Stories. Bon appétit.
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
David
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