- On the virtues of franchises.
- ”More than 75% of young renters still think they someday will own a home, according to a survey by John Burns Research & Consulting,” reports WSJ in a story on Berkshire’s continued bet on home ownership in America.
- Here’s an enjoyable review of a book on the Psalms in medieval art and life, in LRB: “Groups of psalms were sung in the eight daily services, with the entire psalter being sung every week. The dominance of music in the practice of medieval Christianity can hardly be comprehended now. The image of David as a musician was taken in the medieval church as a command. The sheer amount of music that was composed for all of the many services was immense, and new music was regularly and lavishly introduced for major feast days, especially Christmas and Easter. Monks, nuns and clergy had a stream of music to learn and sing, in proliferating genres: hymns, sequences, antiphons, responsories and sung prayers based on devotional texts. Ecclesial life was so rich with sound in part because singing was intrinsic to learning to read: young children in monasteries, nunneries and cathedral schools were taught literacy through memorising the psalms, trained to utter complex thoughts and feelings through song.
“The initial ‘C’ illustrated in the Windmill Psalter marks the beginning of Psalm 97, ‘Cantate domino canticum novum’ (‘O sing unto the Lord a new song’), from which this book takes its title. The line also occurs in five other psalms and in Isaiah 42. Filling the initial with singing monks was a fitting emblem for the magnificent task of humbly praising God, in the smallest local church as well as in the mighty institutions of the Christian West.” - The rankings for results from PISA 2022 are here. Singapore led with an aggregate score of 1679. The U.S. scored 1468 (between Denmark and Sweden), Canada 1519, Mexico 1220. PISA 2025 will be released on September 8.
- Nvidia announced a “superchip” to make available “AI supercomputers in your house, running agents and assistants,” says Semafor.