Mike Lynch's Theory of Probability

Jonathan Margolis — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Mike Lynch was often called “the British Bill Gates.”

The British mogul, who died on a super-yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily this week, may have been a genius, but he relied on gut instincts as much as he did his brain

By Jonathan Margolis

ust under ten weeks ago, 59-year-old Mike Lynch, who died Monday after the sinking of his super-yacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily, was on trial in San Francisco on 17 charges of fraud. He was almost guaranteed to receive a 25-year sentence.

He was terrified that he would die in a U.S. prison, not because he was guilty—he had spent 13 years and roughly $35 million on legal fees arguing his innocence—but because it’s almost unheard of in the U.S. to win a case against the American Justice Department. He was nonetheless acquitted. His chances of winning the case were put at 0.5%. READ ON

Black at Night and Read All Over

Jonathan Margolis — Sat, 3 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The sparsely populated country’s literary traditions date back some 800 years, to the Nordic sagas.

Though Iceland is smaller than many American cities, it has one of the largest per capita publishing industries in the world. Could it all be because of the dark?

By Jonathan Margolis

Bjarni Thór Pétursson is a 43-year-old civil servant living in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík. One evening just after Christmas 2022, with no previous interest in being an author, he started writing a short, semi-autobiographical novel about a man of his age, living in Reykjavík, longing for the freedom of youth and re-assessing his past relationships with women.

It was the kind of earnest cri de coeur many sensitive people think about turning into a novel but rarely do. And if they do, they stand almost zero chance of a commercial publisher taking any interest.

Writing after work and on weekends, Pétursson finished his novel by the end of January, when Iceland is shrouded in almost around-the-clock darkness. He sent the manuscript directly to a publisher. READ ON

Air Mail: Business

Mike Lynch's Theory of Probability

The British mogul, who died on a super-yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily this week, may have been a genius, but he relied on gut instincts as much as he did his brain

Black at Night and Read All Over

Though Iceland is smaller than many American cities, it has one of the largest per capita publishing industries in the world. Could it all be because of the dark?