Five interesting articles

1. Michael Lewis hangs out with Steve Bannon. "Steve Bannon reminded me of someone, but it’s not until I’m back in my hotel room that I realize who. He was a character from “The Big Short.” He saw the world differently from virtually everyone in his profession, and it led a lot of people to think that he was insane. But he was right and they were wrong, and the rest of the world has yet to come to terms with why."

2. "The core feature of Banks’s universe is that he imagines a scenario in which technological development has freed culture from all functional constraints – and thus, he imagines a situation in which culture has become purely memetic." More here, a nice reminder of what science fiction, at its best, is for.

3. "That the Catholic Church should put Silicon Valley—or any other institution or culture—to shame when it comes to world-changing innovation is not some tantalizing yet naïve prospect. It should be the baseline expectation for any educated Catholic." More here. (Well worth reading this article together with the previous one and then asking yourself the question: what does a functional culture look like today?)

4. "Tim Henman, the frustrated It Boy of English tennis, is still “the first human being called Tim to achieve anything at all."" One thing that a useful book review can do, rather than to tell you how good the book is, is to tell you what it is like to read the book. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Vanity Fair are 5 out of 5 on the book review scale, but that's not everything you'd want to know about them. Sometimes those reviews that say things like 'it's as if Harry Potter grew up and joined MI6, as described by Henry James' are quite informative. Anyway, that is all to say that this review tells you, in an entertaining way, what it is like to read Martin Amis.

5. Can you think of a policy that reduces housing costs, decreases unemployment, increases wages for the lowest paid and decreases inequality? Too good to be true? Well, according to The Economist, one the most pro-Remain papers out there, that's what Brexit will do. The Economist has been to Harrogate, a place that EU migrants came to in large numbers but have been leaving for a few years, and this is what it saw: "Unemployment has fallen to 3.6%, below the national and regional levels, allowing some workers to drive harder bargains. Though real median wages in Harrogate have not changed much since 2014, at the lower end they have risen by 9%. ... Demand for low-end rented properties has fallen. In Harrogate, prices in this segment grew at half the regional average between 2014 and 2017. ... Another strategy is to lure younger and older workers into the labour market. Some businesses in Harrogate are paying teenagers well above their minimum wage of £4.05 ($5.70) per hour, to tempt them into work." So Brexit is bad news for the owners of businesses and property; good news for workers, the young and the poor. You can see why the Labour Party might have difficulty selling Remain.