Quick Notes!

Everyone (?) loves French bread, and somehow it’s impossible to find in the UK. Somewhere between Calais and Dover, bakers lose the ability to create the perfect baguette. Fortunately, at 7:12 AM every morning (and every half hour after that), a train screams from Paris to London. Fill the luggage racks with baguettes, open a stall at the King’s Cross Market, and you’d make a killing from the only “real” French baguette in London.

When I think about post-singularity abundance, I think of this pavement in Sevres, Paris. For many years, we had to schlep along a tiny curb next to a busy main road, there was a clear need for a footpath. As you might expect, the Parisian approach was not to quickly put in a basic path but to spend five years creating the most decadent pavement ever seen. Fountains with Sevres porcelain tiles, statues, hand-placed cobblestones - this is what I imagine every footpath looks like with post-singularity abundance.

P.S. I am more interested in solving disease, hunger, and basic human needs than decadent pavements - but it’s a fun musing.

I’ve always got a rogue pitch for something that I’d like to be built in Sheffield:

SYMCA should buy Stanage Lodge and turn it into an “investor retreat venue”. They should then wine and dine US VCs pitching Sheffield as the outdoor city with an engineering heritage.