I read a lot of articles, and often do absolutely nothing with them. This roundup is therefore an initiative set by myself to gather everything I have read in a week into one space, occasionally also adding my own thoughts. Note that as this is the first post of its kind, I will take some liberty and also post some articles published before 02/06/25.
1) The V&A has a new museum! – there is a Picasso-designed stage cloth from the Ballets Russes that I really want to go and see.
2) About the Parisian love for football –
Paris finally acquired a serious football club in 1970, when little Paris FC and Stade saint-germanois merged into PSG. (Paris FC soon walked out again.) At the time, the city’s growing suburbs, the banlieues, were filling with kids who had few entertainments besides football. In new towns short on markers of belonging, millions grew up supporting PSG as a way to feel Parisian. The popular claim that it’s a fake club with money but no fans is nonsense.
3) Janan Ganesh on drinking –
I was mostly dry until the age of 30, when someone poured me a 2005 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, at which point the vintners of London gained a reliable new revenue stream.
4) On Africa’s fastest growing companies – focused mostly in Nigeria and South Africa, I was also surprised by the amount of financial and IT companies. Here is one explanation:
“Asset heavy businesses, including in manufacturing, require much more capital,” adds da-Silva, whose firm invested in Moniepoint, a Nigerian fintech (16th on the list) that has become one of the latest African companies to achieve “unicorn” status.
I also learned about Mozambique’s mining industry:
Mozambique exported its first batch of coal in 2011 and expects to become the world’s largest coal exporter. It is also spending about US$50 billion in infrastructure projects to access its coal reserves. Mozambique is reported to have the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world, after Russia, Iran, and Qatar.
5) Rachman on the Musk-Trump fued
6) On Trump’s use of the national guard –
It was the first time since 1965 that a US president had deployed a state’s National Guard without being asked by the governor.
7) Soon we might be having our eyeballs scanned as ID
8) Renault might be helping Ukraine make drones – hopefully they do a better job this time…
The move would mark the first time that the carmaker has manufactured defence equipment since the second world war, when its R35 tanks were used unsuccessfully against German Panzers in the Battle of France.
9) Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is investing less in Europe
Norway’s $1.9tn oil fund is the biggest single owner of European assets, owning on average 2.5 per cent of every listed company on the continent.
But the share of European equities in its total assets has fallen from 26 per cent to 15 per cent in the past decade, mainly because of what it says is falling competitiveness compared with US stock markets and some Asian bourses.