Can Orb move up the Geometric Solids Power Ranking?
Plus, Christmas playlist recommendations
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Since Read Max’s last edition of its most popular and financially lucrative product, The Geometric Solids Power Ranking, many readers have reached out to inquire about the ranking of orb. As close followers of the GSPR know, orb dropped down to #3 from its longtime #2 slot, losing ground to a resurgent cube thanks in part to our analysts’ concerns about orb’s longterm fundamentals.
In the month since the publication of the most recent GSPR, orb has seen a swelling of grassroots support in the form of the “pondering my orb” meme, examples of which can be found below. (Some journalists have suggested that the meme is not “grassroots” but a dark money response from wealthy backers of orb following orb’s poor showing in the October GSPR. Read Max cannot comment on such allegations.)
Software engineer and Select All Limited Partners meme analyst Brian Feldman tells Read Max that he’s bullish on the pondering meme, a strong argument in favor of orb:
The thing the I appreciate about the orb meme is that it’s a meme completely divorced from time and space. A lot of things that are funny in themselves become memes for a day — awards show moments, politician gaffes, babies Yoda — and then disappear. The orb meme is at the opposite end of the spectrum: it is three simple components (noun, verb, image) combined to form a joke, and crucially, the joke only makes sense when you see more than one orb meme and begin to understand how one instance mutates into the next.
Indeed, Read Max’s tracking systems throughout the month of October saw orb demonstrating strong improvement and potentially threatening the position of cube directly beneath longtime number-one pyramid, which is now entering its third millennium atop the GSPR. Recent developments, however, put fears of cube’s weakness aside. This week, Square CEO Jack Dorsey announced that his payment company would be renaming itself “Block.” As if the name alone weren’t enough to indicate cube’s surging name recognition and clout, Dorsey’s company released an updated collection of executive photos:
We’ll note that cube bears have long suggested that cube’s inability to capitalize on the “blockchain” demonstrated serious weakness. This would seem to put that criticism to rest. For the GSPR, this seals it: Orb will have to much better than a widespread Twitter meme to unseat cube’s position as the geometric prison in which former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers now lives.
Geometric Solid Power Rankings, 12/3/2021
Pyramid (-)
Cube (-)
Orb (-)
Icosahedron (↑)
Hyperboloid (↓)
Prism (-)
Dodecahedron (-)
Cone (↑)
Octahedron (↓)
Cylinder (-)
Notes: Disappointing returns from hyperboloid cost it a spot this month, while icosahedron appears to be coasting off of the orb-pondering meme and the relationship between wizards and 20-sided die… Cone is benefiting here from its traditional December bump… News from Sri Lanka has crushed the already-distant hopes of people with long cylinder positions.
What I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to this week
To call this a “gritty retelling” of the King Arthur legend would be accurate but kind of incomplete; it leans more toward goofy and charming pastiche than it does toward, like, macho Mists of Avalon. Your enjoyment of it probably will probably depend on your patience for gimmicks: I almost gave up when I started the chapter where one character gives an almost word-for-word parody of the opening monologue from Goodfellas (“Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a knight”), but by the time I got to the chapter where Lancelot is introduced as a kung-fu Arab knight who surfs on a flying sword I decided to just stop cringing and just let it happen. If either of those details sounds even remotely appealing to you (and, look, I understand if not), and/or if you like Arthurian legend, which Tidhar mines quite well, you’ll enjoy this.
Christmas Playlists
My friend Caity’s Noel playlist is like the platonic ideal of Christmas playlists…
…and my friends Grady and Cord put together this playlist of songs that sound like Christmas music but aren’t actually Christmas music, which is like, uh, some other philosophical concept that’s the opposite of the Platonic ideal. (?)
About as close as you’ll get to a network-TV Stephen King miniseries in 2021. Starts slow but sticks the landing; Hamish Linklater is great. I have my little quibbles with some stuff, but, you know, it’s not like The Langoliers was a perfect piece of serial moviemaking.
Max, what do you make of this: https://twitter.com/LowPolly/status/1467324025777045504.