Dezember 2021 Archiv

Gift-ig.

Paying for gifts

...does not work.

You don't say to someone, "here's $100, maybe this time get me a gift worth $100 more than you'd regularly spend." It's kind of insulting. It still probably won't get you exactly the thing you wanted. Actually, the other person might just pocket the $100 and run off with it.

apenwarr: The Gift of It's Your Problem Now

On Track.

By the 1930s passengers could travel from the English channel to Cairo with only three changes of train. The last leg, in third class, cost the equivalent of about two days’ work for a labourer. It left Haifa daily at 0830, steamed south to the Mediterranean port of Gaza by lunchtime, turned west into Sinai and arrived in the Egyptian capital by 2230.

From there, travellers could continue aboard one of the first air-conditioned carriages along the Nile to Luxor’s Valley of the Kings and on to Sudan. “Direct and quickest route to Damascus, Beyrout, Baalbek and Aleppo,” read a Palestine Railways brochure advertising the connections from Haifa.

The Economist: Railway lines once connected the Middle East (2021-12-18)

Writemail.

It seems this year I sent six e-mails on an average day.

The Noboconist.

But having started off as a way for one person to give the impression of being many, anonymity has since come to serve the opposite function at The Economist: it allows many writers to speak with a collective voice.

The Economist: Frequently asked questions

Kritisches Alter.

Ab 13 wird zurück erzogen!