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December 17 · Issue #95 · View online |
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This week: The Thoughts in Between review of 2019…
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Thoughts in Between takes a two week break after today and will return in the New Year. For the last issue of 2019, I break with the usual format and look at the highlights of the TiB year. I’ve trawled through all 49 issues and 40,000 words to find the most clicked-on articles and tweets, as well as the topics we discussed most frequently…
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These were the articles you, TiB readers, clicked on most in 2019, normalised for the number of subscribers at the time:
1 - Emanuel Macron’s vision for Europe ( link, Issue 90) - The French president lays out a remarkably comprehensive vision, of technological and rapprochement with Russia
2 - How do we actually use our time? ( link, Issue 78) - Review of a new book that looks at why we all feel so busy and what we really do with our time
3 - The State of AI ( link, Issue 71) - Ian Hogarth and Nathan Benaich’s annual review of the year’s progress and issues in artificial intelligence
4 - The Internet and the Third Estate ( link, Issue 88) - Ben Thompson looks at the internet - and Mark Zuckerberg’s arguments about free speech - in historical context
5 - What ambassadors eat ( link, Issue 65) - Amusing and revealing survey of ambassadors to the United States and where they eat when they’re homesick
6 - Matt Clifford vs Alan Sugar ( link, Issue 87) - What happened when I wrote an OpEd criticising The Apprentice
7 - An essay on notebooks and note-taking ( link, Issue 62) - A beautiful piece describing one author’s note-taking process as he embarked on a new novel
8 - Non-famous last words ( link, Issue 48) - What do people actually say before they die?
9 - What is Amazon? ( link, Issue 56) - Superb essay deconstructing Amazon and its extraordinarily successful strategy
10 - Who is Dominic Cummings? ( link, Issue 75) - FT profile of Boris Johnson’s top advisers and the architect of both Brexit and the Conservatives’ general election victory last week
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I link to a lot of tweets in TiB. Here are the ten you clicked on most:
1 - How to be a great CEO ( link, Issue 59)
2 - How the rich spend their time ( link, Issue 71)
3 - Charlie Munger’s unusual hobby… ( link, Issue 63)
4 - The global cities with the highest salaries ( link, Issue 65)
5 - The average asset allocation of family offices ( link, Issue 60)
6 - Michael Nielsen on note taking ( link, Issue 53)
7 - The impact of seating plans on VC meeting outcomes ( link, Issue 60)
8 - A fantastic thread of interesting syllabuses ( link, Issue 50)
9 - When in life do people become (and stop being) boring? ( link, Issue 51)
10 - When Warren Buffett called Bank of America customer service ( link, Issue 86)
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I went through and tagged each section in TiB (excluding Quick Links) with its major topics and then ranked the topics by frequency:
1 - Post-2016 politics / “culture war”: in issues 48, 51, 52, 53, 57, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91, 94
2 - Artificial intelligence: in issues 49, 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 63, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 82, 84, 86, 89, 90, 93
3 - “Big tech”: in issues 46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 62, 65, 68, 70, 74, 75, 80, 83, 86, 87, 88
4 - Economics / economic growth: in issues 48, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 65, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77, 81, 87, 91, 92, 94
5 - China: in issues 48, 49, 51, 55, 57, 58, 62, 72, 74, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 88, 92
6 - Geopolitics: in issues 47, 48, 50, 58, 62, 63, 66, 72, 76, 79, 82, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93
7 - The power of institutions: in issues 49, 59, 61, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 74, 80, 88, 89, 93
=8 - Talent / education: in issues 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69, 75, 79, 80, 84, 89, 92
=8 - History: in issues 51, 62, 65, 70, 73, 77, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90
=8 - Venture capital and startups: in issues 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 68, 78, 82, 84, 85, 93
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Writing Thoughts in Between is usually a lot of fun, though it’s occasionally gruelling when work is particularly busy or when I’m travelling… but I can genuinely say that the engagement and feedback from readers makes it extremely rewarding. So thank you for reading, share, tweeting and replying - I hugely appreciate it. Until 2020! Matt
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