16 Jan 23 Monday Briefing

A roundup of five things I found interesting in the past week

• Bank tellers haven’t quite gone the way of switchboard operators, but corporations are generally keen to cut headcount costs where they can. P. S. My grandmother still prefers to visit a bank branch with her passbook to withdraw cash from a teller, who would count the amount at least twice in front of her eyes. It’s quite astonishing to think how the concept of trust has so radically changed from one generation to the next.

• Family is as much the place for madness as it is for comfort.

• Will this rare earths find in Sweden change the China-dependence game?

• The ever-excellent Venkatesh Rao makes a persuasive argument that “crisis/urgency framings are about as useful as religious frames”. I am reminded of chapter 4 of Eagleton’s Hope Without Optimism, in which he uses Lear’s example of Plenty Coups, the great Crow chief, who realised that ‘in order to survive – and perhaps to flourish again – the Crow had to be willing to give up almost everything they understood about the good life’ with no assurance of a successful outcome. Perhaps it is this “hope against hope”, combined with Rao’s permaweird framing, that will allow us to flourish because of, not despite these times.

• One of my generation’s OG nepo babies, and her singularity.