May 2021 Friday’s e-links: From Two Mysteries to Big Tech and A Little Mediocrity

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I like to think of them as my e-links:

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Friday’s e-links 5/28

During today’s walk, the Business Daily podcast took me to mediocrity, in a good way. The discussion focused on how a discomfort with mediocrity can make us unhappy. Instead, we should recognize that selecting who is best means everyone else is not. So, if the vast number of us produce relatively mediocre results, it should be okay. I don’t think I agree but I wonder. (The topic took me back to Harvard scholar Michael Sandel’s book The Tyranny of Merit.)

Friday’s e-links 5/21

This week I listened to Find You First by Linwood Barclay. As clever as Elevator Pitch (with murders that were caused by crashing elevators), this Barclay mystery took me to a dying tech millionaire who wants to find the children he fathered years ago at a fertility clinic. Then, the murders begin and the book becomes riveting. I only let myself listen to it during the evening when I wash dishes. To continue the book, I looked for extra chores.

Friday’s e-links 5/14

Sadly, I am reading the fourteenth and final Maisie Dobbs mystery. Moving from the first book to the last one, I saw one very real woman respond to two World Wars and peace time as a captivatingly clever detective and a very human (heroic and tragic) wife and mother. To those of you who might want to read the series, I recommend it as the perfect respite in a complicated world.

Friday’s e-links 5/07

When many of us refer to Big Tech, it would be helpful to have an image of what we really mean. Now, we can get that picture from The Washington Post. So very clearly, it gave us a series of graphics that trace how Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google got bigger and bigger through each one’s acquisition history.