Friday 7 August, 2026

Flying Saucer A light suspended from the ceiling over a dining table. Quote of the Day ”Fashion is the performance of leisure.” Thorstein Veblen Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Richard Wagner | Prelude to Lohengrin | Simon Rattle Link Mesmerising. Long Read of the Day The Heated Debate In Europe Over Air Conditioning Given the heat dome that we have been living in, this essay by Nathan Gardels is interesting and timely. Recently, Elon Musk stirred controversy across a sweltering Europe simply by tweeting on X that Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, was a “genius” because he had the vision to see that introducing air conditioning would entirely change what was possible in the post-colonial tropics and make the city-state he ruled as prosperous as the imperial West. The biting subtext of Musk’s post was ridicule of the Continent’s general anti-tech sentiment even when facing heat-stroke temperatures of 100-plus degrees. In France, where only 25% of homes…