Eyeless in Gaza. Womenomics Gets The Prize. Too Sweaty to Serve? And Where Are the World’s Top Places for Tech? Plus more! #182
Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome!
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1️⃣ Eyeless in Gaza...
“Inevitable cause – At once both to destroy and be destroy’d.”
“Blood, death, and deathful deeds,” was how Milton recounted biblical violence. This week Hamas seized its moment to unleash hell and the spotlight of global horror shifted to Israel.
Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur had this grim reflection in the Times of Israel:
“Opponents of Israel speak of it often as an artificial, rootless construct doomed to collapse in the face of Palestinian faith and resilience.
“It is at heart, they say, a colonialist project...
“This interpretation of Israel is the basic logic behind ... the whole slew of terrorist tactics employed by Hamas on Saturday.
His conclusion?
Israeli Jews are immune to anticolonial terrorism, not in the sense that they are not traumatized by it — they possess no more courage or conviction than any other people — but in the sense that they cannot respond to it in the way Hamas wants them to. They cannot ... choose to leave their homeland. There’s nowhere for them to go.
Veteran military historian Lawrence Freedman drew parallels between October 1973 and October 2023. What next?
If Israel wants to contain the conflict it needs to get it over as soon as possible. For the same reason it will serve Hamas best if it can be kept going, raising emotions throughout the region.
This all comes at a moment when Israel and Saudi Arabia were making moves towards a normalisation of relations.
The prize? An Israel free to play a role as a technological and economic powerhouse in a transforming Middle East.
As Shimon Peres apocryphally said of moves to end conflict:
“The good news is there is light at the end of the tunnel. The bad news is there is no tunnel.”
⏭ Segev’s One Palestine, Complete records Britain’s complex historic role.
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2️⃣ There’s a New Nobel Economics Laureate
Claudia Goldin is a pioneer of economics about women.
Claudia Goldin’s prize came for picking apart why women earn less than men.
Here’s Goldin talking about it with Alice Evans. As ever, Evans has a brilliant rundown of why Goldin’s work is so important.
Betsey Stevenson, who Goldin advised at Harvard, put it like this:
“The men before her studied work and rarely gave a thought to how the actual food got on the table, clothes on the backs and the children raised.”
⏭ Goldin’s latest paper is called Why Women Won.
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3️⃣ What Happens to Work When Its Too Warm?
Economists studied tennis pros to find out.
What happens to workers’ productivity when temperatures soar? In many offices, there’s air conditioning. But in agriculture and construction, you can’t just turn up the AC.
The same is true on outdoor tennis courts. And it just so happens there’s lots of data on what happens there.
So economists studied professional tennis players. Here’s what they found:
Performance significantly decreases with ambient temperature.
The effect is bigger for older and less-skilful players, and when there’s more at stake.
There’s evidence of adaptation – the impact of high temperatures lessens if the heat lasts several days.
⏭ Here’s how heat hits worker productivity in the global economy.
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4️⃣ Here’s the Sick Squid I Owe You*
The seafood apocalypse is being served fried
The New Yorker writes about the appalling conditions in factory fishing fleets. Having been aboard some post-Soviet trawlers on the high seas, I can only say it is a dark world.
The report is very much worth your time but contains this fascinating nugget:
“In 1974, a business-school student named Paul Kalikstein published a master’s thesis asserting that Americans would prefer squid if it were breaded and fried. Promoters suggested calling it “calamari,” the Italian word, which made it sound more like a gourmet dish.
“By the nineties, chain restaurants across the Midwest were serving squid. Today, Americans eat a hundred thousand tons a year.”
Who says degrees have dumbed down?
⏭ *That Sick Squid joke explained.
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5️⃣ News From No One
Why people are switching off from news.
⏭ You can read the full report here.
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6️⃣ The World’s Top Science and Tech Hotspots
Just try finding a European city amongst them…
⏭ When it comes to startups, London still makes it into the top 5.
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7️⃣ The Most Charming Ad You’ll See This Week
It won a trophy for Swiss Railways. Watch and you’ll see why.
You may even want to come visit!
⏭ Switzerland’s train company says these are the best train rides in the Alps.
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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!
Best,
Adrian65
