The Executive Edition (11/28/21)

I spent a few days in Tbilisi, which was interesting. It had a young Berlin vibe, and pre-COVID was gaining a reputation for creative culture, electronic music, nightlife, and others. It’s all still there. Several DJs I’ve spoken to say it is among their favorite cities to play in and I was really impressed by the Stamba, which is a combination of hotel plus lounge, concept shops, co-working space, hydroponic farming, etc and beautiful outdoor spaces. As they describe it: 

Beyond its main building, Stamba Hotel presents a series of outside spaces including a verdant courtyard garden that leads to the hotel’s outdoor amphitheater, the presence of which further cements Stamba’s deep connection with key Georgian arts and cultural institutions. This second structure additionally offers an open working space, designed to support individuals and businesses in the city’s creative industries, reinforcing the hotel’s status as a new hub

Some snaps: 

Book of the Week:

Black Ivy

“From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy, and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.”

TIL

Via The Economist by way of Richard Shotton:

Everyone knows the Eskimos have dozens, if not hundreds, of words for snow because of their intimate knowledge of their environment. Except that everyone cannot “know” this, because knowledge requires a statement to be true. In fact, the Eskimo snow story is a factoid, a word coined by Norman Mailer for a fun, roughly fact-shaped object that is not, in fact, a fact—in the same way a “spheroid” is not quite a sphere.

The Eskimos (or Inuit, as most prefer to be called) don’t really have hundreds of words for snow because of their fine sense of its variety. Rather, they have a virtually infinite supply of words for everything, because of the nature of their languages. Inuit languages allow lexical roots to be strung together to make long, highly specific words, including some that might make an entire sentence in English. “Snow that has turned grey from being walked on repeatedly”, a noun phrase in English, might be a single word in Inuit. But the number of basic snow-related roots is not much larger than the number of snow words in English.

I’ve been noodling on a WITI about the danger of grand theories and this seems like a good jumping-off point.

Four Thanksgivings Ago

KFC was selling a Farraday cage?

What Noah watched on Youtube this week: 

Light YouTube week for me. 

Some Muppets: Elton John performs Crocodile Rock on The Muppet Show & Buddy Rich squares off for a drum battle against Animal

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to decide if I want to buy a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator. This is a classic thing I don’t need but definitely want. Anyway, the new PO-35 speech synthesizer looks very fun. Also, not YouTube but their $1,299 OP-1 portable synth is an absolutely beautiful bit of kit:

Part of what got this whole excursion started was this Pitchfork piece on The 8 Best Electronic Music Toys for Kids. 

NBA Players Past & Present REACT to Their Outstanding JAMS

Speaking of nostalgia: FULL MATCH - 1992 Royal Rumble Match: Royal Rumble 1992

It’s fun to send new parents this video of Ludacris rapping Llama Llama Red Pajama

Some Bonus Links:

• How I earned more than 40 million air miles 

• The rise of luxury hotel cinemas

• The FT on some of the world’s best hotel bars  

Remarks complete. Nothing follows. 

-Colin and Noah