How our attitude to meat will change in the 21st century
Knowing how much Americans love kings and the French, Herbert Hoover looked to Henri IV for inspiration in his 1928 campaign to become president. A chicken for every pot was his promise. …
But we are annoyed that people tell them
Is it time to pension off the worn observation that recipe blogs always start off with a hackneyed story about why this particular dish plays such a prominent role in the writer’s life? It’s not that that isn’t true. But mentioning the fact has come to occupy the same space…
Why talking about the war on coronavirus is causing harm
Metaphor is not merely a tool reserved for poets. It soaks our language from our everyday conversation to the most high-flying rhetoric. We understand the world through metaphors. It helps lend physicality and understanding to abstract concepts. George Lakoff, in Metaphors We Live By, even says that our entire conceptual…
The pencil can be mightier than the pen
Writing tools exist in a hierarchy of prestige. Their place in executive offices, at high-profile public signings and as gifts that mark the stages of life make the fountain pen king. Below it come ballpoints and rollerballs, gel pens and biros. The pencil, humble and basic, looks down only on…
The story behind Luckin Coffee’s $310m fraud
The world’s attention is fixed on coronavirus. That’s why you might have missed the news that a Chinese start-up admitted to an over $300m fraud. It’s a good time to bury bad news, but not so for Luckin Coffee. The markets took notice and hammered China’s largest coffee shop chain…
And why it should be slow
Simple questions sometimes have simple answers. But it is rare. A child’s questioning can reveal complex gears at work beneath a seemingly simple surface. Simple questions often have many answers too. Answers vary not just based on who you ask, but when you ask someone and where.
The earliest writers…
Food delivery couriers for rival firms are seen everywhere on the UK’s streets
The list of food wars in the UK is long and slightly mind boggling. You had the Ice Cream Wars, where Glaswegian drug-slinging ice cream van drivers fought a turf war across the Scottish city. There were the Cod Wars fought between Icelandic and UK fishermen. One person was killed…
And does it matter there aren’t that many?
Smartphones make our lives easier. The whole world is shown to us and mediate through the shiny screens that nearly all of us carry around. Ordering a taxi, discovering new music, staying in touch with friends or colleagues, and booking your next holiday is done quickly with a few taps…
The biggest IPO in history is coming. What will it be worth?
At the beginning of 2019, total global wealth was $317trn. Add up all the money, all the property, anything of any value whatsoever in the world and it would come out to $317trn. That’s the going rate for one (1) planet Earth, slightly used.
Founders get to eat their cake and keep it, even after their companies go public. And that’s causing long-term damage to investors.
It is a theme of recent high-profile, tech IPOs that founders keep control of their company through the use of share classes even after they go public. The list of companies that have floated with privileged voting power for their founders is long. Facebook, Snap and Lyft all went public…
