15 October 2022
“Jonathan, let's think this through together. You know how the game serves us. It has a definite social purpose. Nations are bankrupt, gone. None of that tribal warfare any more. Even the corporate wars are a thing of the past. So now we have the majors and their executives. Transport, food, communication, housing, luxury, energy. A few of us making decisions on a global basis for the common good.”
- Bartholomew (John Houseman), ‘Rollerball’, dir. Norman Jewison, 1975.
8 October 2022
“[Ros] Altmann said pension funds had been encouraged to focus on government debt but had assumed that gilts were risk-free. “What has happened in the gilt markets in recent months has undermined that assumption.””
- The Financial Times, 30th September 2022.
1 October 2022
“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for its best interests,' as a politician would say.
“On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ‘The Black Swan’ (2007).
Another dispatch from Clownworld