The best email

Not all is bad in the world

When did we grow to despise email?

In its infancy it was so novel, convenient—a liquid form of correspondence. I'm old enough to remember the blue airmail fold-up letters my dear Mum would dispatch to New Zealand in the mid-eighties. Irene had wonderful handwriting.

Saturday was a miserable late May day. I made a curry—proper’s, from scratch. Sticky, a thick opaque gravy, and spicy enough not to be eaten too quickly, but comforting enough to allow decent sleep.

Then Sunday, I saw this. A perfectly uplifting email reminding me that not all is bonkers and broken. Let me paraphrase—and note, I am a British passport holder.

British politics has become a “competition in catastrophism.” Nigel Farage moans the country is broken. Andy Burnham, Mayor of my hometown Manchester, says we’ve been on the wrong path for forty years. But we know this is just spin.

Between January and March, UK start-ups raised £6bn in venture capital—more than the next three countries combined. London’s King’s Cross—once known for crime and general seediness, is now a thriving tech campus, home to Google, OpenAI, and a small army of British start-ups.

The godfather of the new King’s Cross is DeepMind, the most important AI lab outside the US. Google bought DeepMind and founder Demis Hassabis insisted it remain in London. One backer thought he was mad — “like investing in Somalia.” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang — moderately influential in this space — describes the UK as a “Goldilocks” regulator. Not clogged up like the EU, but assertive enough to protect people.

Hassabis spoke movingly about buying a late-night kebab in Cambridge as a student, walking down King’s Parade at 2am, thinking of all the incredible people who had walked that same street. “It’s like visiting a Buddhist school where monks have meditated and prayed for hundreds of years. Their efforts are layered on top of each other and together they have left a residue in the rocks.”

Minus the kebab.

Just another email. I wish there was more of what’s right than broken.

Keep looking above the trees.

Nick

Photo by Liam Truong on Unsplash