The locus of points where magnetic north aligns with true north is a (one dimensional) curve. On one side of the curve magnetic north is too far to the east, on the other side too far to the west.

Same for the locus of points where grid north matches true north.

The two curves meet in some finite number of isolated points, at each of these all three directions are the same.

One of the major uses for the telegraph was the first funds transfers that could happen quicker than moving paper (or bullion) from one location to another. London banks would telegraph correspondent banks in India, Australia, etc.

This essentially doubled the capital intensity of international trade since the goods had to move in one direction but the money could be sent instantaneously in the other.

Made it that much less likely that anyone would withdraw their gold from banks due to the disparity in utility between deposits and cash.

Paved the way for the downfall of physical money, and over a century of warfare in the absence of any sort of monetary discipline.

Thankfully we now have the necessary tool to fill that vaccuum.

Paper money was well established at this point.

When the pound replaced the Spanish silver dollar as the default global currency, it did so with a nascent international banking system where banknotes issued by a certain bank in a certain location could be exchanged by other banks in other locations.

Payments were thus often settled in metal rather than being transacted with it.

Terry Pratchett’s Making Money portrays it quite well, imho. It doesn’t hurt that it’s an entertaining read.

I was surprised to realise bank notes used to be tied to a bank, not a state.

"and over a century of warfare in the absence of any sort of monetary discipline".

There were major wars for millenia before the invention of the telegraph. They even names like "The Hundred Years War".

My understanding was that the latency was much higher due to manual repeating at stations along the way.

Eg. when the London-Mumbai telegraph was new it took around 45 minutes in one direction.

This is a fiction.

Yes. Arguably the new Netflix mini series and extended episode formats are better for decent shows. To be fair, they are much worse for garbage shows. But 20x25 minute episodes is still an option, so what's the problem.

Arguably there are lots of films which could have done with being 4-5 hours long, and were compressed to match conventions and hardware limits for 'movies'.

Lots of novelizations fall into this category. Most decently dense and serious novels cannot be done justice to in 2 hours. The new TV formats have enabled substantial stories to be told well.

The Godfather parts I and II is just one story cut in half in a convenient place. Why not cut it into 4 50 minute eps and an 80 minute finale? (Edit: this substantially underestimates the running time of the first two Godfather movies!)

People are going to pause your thing to go to the toilet anyway. You might as well indicate to them when's a good time to do so.

Obviously there are also quite a few movies where 90 minutes is plenty. Both formats seem needed.

A recent example is the Wicked movie musical. It’s not a film and its sequel. It’s two parts of the stage musical produced as a film and cut in half, released a year apart.

The alternative is the 1980s version of Dune, which tried to fit a massive novel into a single mass-market film runtime. It was fantastic, but people who hadn’t read the novel were left very short on story. The newer movies I’ve heard are much better in this regard, and it’s understandable because the runtime of the combined films is longer. The Dune 2000 (AKA SciFi Presents Frank Herbert’s Dune) miniseries was even better in some ways than the original film, largely for the same reasons.

Ender’s Game deserved to be at least two parts, because even the main character got no real character development. You barely learn Val exists, there’s really no Peter, and you barely meet Bean or Petra. There’s no Alai, Achilles, Fly, or Crazy Tom. There’s no zero-G battles at Battle School. The computer game is never even mentioned but is integral to the book. I don’t think it’s even mentioned in the film that Ender is a third child and why that’s important. It could have been a much better film in two or three parts.

Have you got older recently?

Or fear of turning up the volume due to children sleeping nearby. Dynamic range seems higher "these days".

Why gaslight people like this?

A counterpart to TFA which somewhat chimes with your position:https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/semicolon-shaped-peo...

It's an article about how some of the best people do work that engages with public view and discussion either very trivially or not at all (or both).

Hard to describe more clearly but it has been a huge influence on me.

The Periodic Table is also very special, and like the books you mentioned, the surprising part is that it says something additional about his experiences to each of the other books.

I also thought it was very good.

Did a very good job of answering the question: why do (did) bright, ethical, motivated people want to work for a company like this?