The Monday Mix (14/02/2022)
Hey friends,
Another quiet week for me apart from attending a midweek football match, (my team Liverpool won :) not much is up.
I’m looking to write more articles in the next few weeks around a range of topics, so hopefully, I can get them out.
Here’s a listicle I recently wrote on the best George Orwell books. This wasn’t an easy list to put together, as Orwell has plenty of great books, and his body of work is quite large. Add to that I consider him to be the greatest writer in the English language of modern times, and you see my predicament.
Anyway, here are 11 of what I consider to be his best books. Let me know if you’ve read any or are planning to add them to your reading list.
Here’s what I want to share with you this week.
Plants in Antarctica
A worrying article on the rise of plants in Antarctica. When I think of the South Pole, the immediate image that comes to mind is snow, lots of it, and penguins waddling around. I definitely don’t think of plants growing in one of the coldest places on Earth. This article highlights how serious the climate crisis is becoming and how much we need to take action now.
Conspiracy Theories and Cash
An interesting piece on conspiracy theorists (in this piece they’re predominately anti-vaxxers) and the amount of cash they make from YouTube. Some of the figures are startling and show just how lucrative it can be to be a contrarian on the web. I wonder, is that the motivation? Is the cash they can make from positioning themselves in this manner the main motivation? Or do they genuinely believe the conspiracies they tout?
I’m not sure we’ll ever know, but it does highlight the incentives at play in the conspiracy theory world.
Operation Barbarossa
With a Russian invasion of Ukraine looking like it might happen in a matter of days, I have been reading through articles on Wikipedia about military invasions. You can read articles on Putin’s recent incursions into Georgia and Ukraine but an interesting one to read is the Nazi invasion of Russia. I just watched a documentary about it which encouraged me to look into it again after studying the invasion in school.
What’s interesting about Barbarossa is that Putin might be walking into a mistake of his own making much like Hitler. He has backed himself into a corner where if he doesn’t attack he looks weak and if he does, he has united the west and likely, many nearby countries against him. Thereby further isolating Russia. Far from being the grand Chessmaster he’s portrayed as, perhaps he’s more akin to Hitler than we think. A ruthless gambler high on delusions of grandeur.
Book I’m reading - The Dignity of Labour by Jon Cruddas
This is an interesting book about dignity in work by a British MP for the Labour party. Unless you’re British and interested in British politics, it’s probably not a book you’ll want to read, but it does have a lot of interesting insights into recent British history and the way manual labour and the world of work might look in the future.
Quote I’m pondering: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.” – Timothy Snyder
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom