Tech millionaires, their favourite chef and fighting your way out of poverty
Miscel 14th April 2021
Morning all!
Apologies for the lack of email last week, I was on holiday. Here’s what I’ve read and enjoyed this week:
Articles
This Oddball Chef Wants to Serve You Wild Animals
I suspect there’s a part of every man that wants to be Josh Skenes: a former martial artist turned chef, he built his San Francisco restaurant into one of the best in the world and pioneered a unique style of open-fire cooking. He’s also an accomplished hunter and fisherman, and his latest venture is a collection of hunting cabins where he will hunt and cook your food for you. The whole extreme-masculinity-meets-Silicon-Valley vibe reminded me of Ron Swanson in the final season of Parks and Recreation, which can only be a bonus.
‘Every time a bird flapped, shotguns swung and I dove. De Wolf had a rough time, couldn’t hit a thing. Fushman did great, averaging maybe 60 percent. Skenes never missed. Whenever he pulled the trigger, a bird died. “I don’t know what to tell you,” Skenes said. “I shoot and they fall.”’
Puncher’s chance
Brilliant article about the relationship between deprivation and boxing. The writer focuses largely on the role of first-generation immigrants of all ethnicities, but I was reminded of Malcolm X’s comments that music and sports were the two areas where US society at large allowed black people to excel. Another area I would love to explore is the second-generation boxers, people like Chris Eubank Jr or Conor Benn, who grew up in privilege as the sons of the few men who made it to the top of such a brutal sport, but who nonetheless decide to pursue careers as boxers.
As a side note, perhaps the most incredible immigrant-turned-prizefighter story is that of Francis Ngannou, current UFC heavyweight champion. Ngannou tells the story of how he made his way from Cameroon to the US, crossing the sea into Spain in a Dinghy and living for a time in a Paris car park, on the Joe Rogan podcast (link here)
‘The scale and variety of immigration into America can, in crude terms, be witnessed in the communities who supplied the world-class boxers, the shift from Italians and Irish to African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and now, increasingly, Eastern Europeans from the former USSR. To an extent the same is true in the UK, the Jewish boxers of the 1920s and 1930s giving way in turn to sons of the Windrush generation, and latterly, some of the UK’s prominent fighters have had African, Polish, Arab, and Romani backgrounds. The sense of boxing as a way out of jail time, an escape for those whose formal education was interrupted or non-starting, has its basis in fact, in thousands of personal testimonies; lives have been saved by the gym. Yet there’s a darker edge to a sport that draws its resources from such backgrounds. For these tough, indefatigable men, fine-tuned and battle-hardened, have proven all too easy to exploit outside the ring.’
Confessions of an overnight millionaire
A tech worker suddenly becomes a millionaire after the company she works for IPOs. She’s refreshingly honest about how the whole thing feels, complete with the apocalyptic outlook that so many millennials (including me, sometimes) seem to share. Read for frank opinions on wealth managers, whether working in technology is intrinsically positive, and some very well looked-after dogs.
“In my cohort at work, we’re all becoming rich. I was telling my friend, It feels like we’re all in this secret porno together. You all know you’re in it, but it’s not appropriate to talk about. People fall into two camps, I’ve noticed. There are people who don’t know what they’re doing but feel very excited. And there are people who feel like they don’t know what they’re doing with the money, and what the money means, and they’re encompassed by anxiety. They don’t realize that nobody else knows what they’re doing either.”
Books
Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski - For my money, the best of Bukowski’s books. Ham on Rye is a fictionalised account of Bukowski’s childhood and it’s obscene, depressing and incredibly witty. You’ll either love it or hate it.
Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin - a collection of Baldwin’s essays on race. A lot of the references to (and critiques of) contemporary films and culture were lost on me, but he is an unbelievably talented writer. He reminded me of an angry Oscar Wilde. A friend said she preferred his novels, so I’ve ordered Go Tell it on the Mountain.
If you enjoyed this week’s edition of Miscellany, why not recommend it to a friend?