Trevor McKendrick - Is there such a thing as good taste?

Good morning -

Here’s one of my favorite quotes of all time:

“Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions.”

In the annals of history, Steve Jobs < George Washington < Jesus.

As you move from left to right down that spectrum, the more story & narrative & myth is what defines the creations of the individual.

Trevor

My favorite Christmas song (youtube)

“White Wine in the Sun” by Tim Minchin. I love getting together with family and the general nostalgic & emotion that comes with Christmas. This song became a way to keep all of that after leaving Mormonism.

In case you’re afraid to click, it’s a 100% earnest song about why the guy “really likes Christmas.”

Kite.com shuts down (article)

You’ve probably never heard of them but Kite is a startup that I’ve been following on & off since they launched in 2014. Their product was a coding autocompleter… similar to Github Copilot, but way ahead of its time.

It sounds like the cause of failure is that their product never became truly great enough to become worth paying for.

I’m linking because these guys spent 7 years on something that ultimately didn’t work out, giving up on who knows what economic opportunity costs in the meantime.

They deserve praise & status, as does anyone who attempts something new.

The article about Qatar about “6,500 migrant workers dying because of the World Cup” is false (twitter)

tldr: “The 6,500 figure actually refers to all deaths of migrant workers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, regardless of cause. It's not an 'excess' death figure. An equivalent 'spin; would be "100,000 dead as COVID rampages through UK" to be clarified that only”

Talk about the impact of a single headline… Even I looked on the Qatar World Cup with slightly less interested eyes because I remember reading that headline from the Guardian.

Jodi Benson recording session for Little Mermaid’s Part of Your World (youtube)

It’s her + Howard Ashman coaching her. Always interesting seeing the seeds of things that end up becoming extremely big. The best you get of this from startups is early fundraising decks & fuzzy pictures.

Mormon church support sam-sex marriage law (article)

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday it would back proposed federal legislation to safeguard same-sex marriages, marking the latest show of support for the measure from conservative-leaning groups.”

Is there such a thing as good taste? (article)

“If you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either.”

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