One Of Us
Gary Stevenson
I’ve been reading Gary Stevenson’s book, the trading game and it’s one of the most gripping narrations I’ve read in a while. It’s a book about money like the way “John Wick” was about love. It was! It was the detonator.
It’s an absolutely rivetting read and one of the most carefully placed spotlights into modern society. And, I think it’s true for most of the world.
Gary’s talks are refreshingly authentic. I love his ferocious contempt for the academics. The ones who’ll explain to you, calmly, with a chart, that your rage is just a failure in comprehension. Or justify the endless queue for life as character building.
He walks with the new breed, that’ll call the swindle out while the rest reach for nuance. A more gansta Mamdani, if you like.
It left me with a familiar feeling. Familiar, not in the way that, I know what it means to be a trader. Not in the way that I know what it means to succeed at a big corporation. And, I know it’ll feel familiar to a lot of you.
Jose Mourinho
I love Jose Mourinho.
I watched the documentary on Jose, on Netflix this weekend.
He’s without doubt the greatest football manager to have walked the earth. The man who put Chelsea FC on the map. The guy who took on Barcelona’s favorite son, and won. And, forced him out of Spain. A legend, who took an an arthritic Inter to win the treble. A no-name FC Porto to win the champions league. Porto!
The man has done the impossible more times than any other manager.
He’s the Don Corleone of football. He cultivated beasts of footballers. Beasts that terrorized leagues across the world. And yet, they never handed him the crown.
The hallowed doors to the throne that was his, never opened. And, that rage is apparent. The “respect” he so famously demanded, never arrived.
Nobody who has it has had to ask for it.
And Yanis Varoufakis
I discovered Yanis’ book on a Sunday evening. It’s usually the time my mind calculates the exciting things I have on my calendar for the week. It calculates the chaos, the things worth showing up for and pads the right spaces.
“And The Weak Suffer What They Must” is Yanis’ account of his time as the finance minister of Greece. A gripping narration of him stepping into the crosshairs of the Troika and being worked over by everyone, including his own government.
Varoufakis, is not your average politician. He’s an economist that rides a motorcycle. He’s the professor at your university, you’re most likely lose your girlfriend to. He’s articulate and well loved across the world. He’s also, one of the few who can teach you why debt restructuring is the only way to get out of a crisis, why austerity is never the answer or what the Bretten Woods system was, while you’re staring at your phone.
He defiantly stood against the Troika’s offers despite being shown the secret handshake. The gates to “one of us”. Everyone knew, and they knew it well.
That’s the thread. The thing that pulls me.
The thread across all their lives that fascinates me is that every walk of life has “the room”. The schools, the clubs, the colleges, the offices. There is a table that you’re not invited to. And everyone at the table is convinced the invitation was merit.
And I get it. It’s warm there. It’s the high of belonging. The smugness of knowing first. A cultish pride in this nepotistic social privilege.
But when you take a step back, it’s just a secret handshake and nobody told you about it.