tor825gl

The locus of points where magnetic north aligns with true north is a (one dimensional) curve. On one side of the curve magnetic north is too far to the east, on the other side too far to the west.

Same for the locus of points where grid north matches true north.

The two curves meet in some finite number of isolated points, at each of these all three directions are the same.

Paper money was well established at this point.

When the pound replaced the Spanish silver dollar as the default global currency, it did so with a nascent international banking system where banknotes issued by a certain bank in a certain location could be exchanged by other banks in other locations.

Payments were thus often settled in metal rather than being transacted with it.

One of the major uses for the telegraph was the first funds transfers that could happen quicker than moving paper (or bullion) from one location to another. London banks would telegraph correspondent banks in India, Australia, etc.

This essentially doubled the capital intensity of international trade since the goods had to move in one direction but the money could be sent instantaneously in the other.

My understanding was that the latency was much higher due to manual repeating at stations along the way.

Eg. when the London-Mumbai telegraph was new it took around 45 minutes in one direction.

This is a fiction.

Yes. Arguably the new Netflix mini series and extended episode formats are better for decent shows. To be fair, they are much worse for garbage shows. But 20x25 minute episodes is still an option, so what's the problem.

Arguably there are lots of films which could have done with being 4-5 hours long, and were compressed to match conventions and hardware limits for 'movies'.

Lots of novelizations fall into this category. Most decently dense and serious novels cannot be done justice to in 2 hours. The new TV formats have enabled substantial stories to be told well.

The Godfather parts I and II is just one story cut in half in a convenient place. Why not cut it into 4 50 minute eps and an 80 minute finale? (Edit: this substantially underestimates the running time of the first two Godfather movies!)

People are going to pause your thing to go to the toilet anyway. You might as well indicate to them when's a good time to do so.

Obviously there are also quite a few movies where 90 minutes is plenty. Both formats seem needed.

Have you got older recently?

> he fell short of advocating that modeling them as having intention is a useful contrivance

Sorry, I remember differently. That "modelling them as having intention is a useful contrivance" is exactly the central argument of the book.

People misread the title by assuming that he was arguing that they actually did have intention.

> Could you recall a quote or chapter from the book that bolsters your point?

Yes, the second word of the title.

The Periodic Table is also very special, and like the books you mentioned, the surprising part is that it says something additional about his experiences to each of the other books.

I also thought it was very good.

Did a very good job of answering the question: why do (did) bright, ethical, motivated people want to work for a company like this?

I would say, there are exactly two reasons to read a book: because you enjoy it, and because you want to know what it says.

If I understood correctly the argument in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins suggests that thinking about a genome as having a goal which it adapts itself to work towards, is absolutely a useful conceptual model.

He makes it very clear that the genome does not actually have intentionality, but also that this is the right way to imagine how organisms might evolve, as though they did have both goals and a plan.