TLP Weekend Edition (August 9-10, 2025)
What we're reading and checking out.
📊 “The troubling decline in conscientiousness. A critical life skill is fading out—and especially fast among young adults,” by John Burn-Murdoch. The Financial Times data guru is back with another excellent look at modern social trends. This time, he examines the changing incidences of certain personality traits in the American public and finds (among other things) that conscientiousness and extroversion among young adults have been declining while neuroticism has increased. Check out the full piece for a bevy of other fascinating trend lines.
🛤️ “Would You Pass the World’s Toughest Exam? Thirty million Indians want a job on the railways but a fiendish general-knowledge test stands in their way,” by Harriet Shawcross and Dipanjan Sinha. The Economist’s summer edition features a long read on the grueling process of getting a civil service job in India—even for mid-level positions on trains. The lengths that young Indians go to study for these tests and secure government employment are impressive—if painful sounding. The next time one of your kids complains about school or getting a job, give them this article to read for some perspective:
The difficulty of the questions varies. Some seem a reasonable test of educational competence; others are almost comically obscure. In this they follow a long tradition in public-service exams set by the British. Plum administrative posts in the Raj were reserved for white men, and obtained through patronage and connections. In the middle of the 19th century the government introduced competitive exams, which were, theoretically, open to all British subjects, including Indians. The exams made it harder for well-connected incompetents to get a job, but also excluded many Indians because the questions often seemed to require a British classical education (and the ability to travel to London, where exams were held until the 1920s). Candidates might be made to translate Cicero, or discourse on 15th-century Scottish poetry.
The railway-service exams today require candidates to answer multiple-choice questions rather than write an essay. But they can still be brutally hard. Someone wanting to become an assistant train-driver could be asked:
The current affairs questions are so random that they sometimes seem designed for no other purpose than keeping people in a permanent purgatory of revision. It’s hard to know where your preparation should end when you might be asked questions such as, “Who propounded the homeopathic principle ‘like cures like’?” or “As per November 2020, how many countries have membership in the World Trade Organisation?”
📚 “What are the best adventure novels? Let’s add a hidden gem to the list,” by Michael Dirda. Looking for some adventure novels this August? Michael Dirda of The Washington Post has you covered with a terrific list that will provide countless hours of reading pleasure. He particularly flags Lionel Davidson’s Rose of Tibet, though we would highlight the same author’s Kolymsky Heights, also mentioned here. But you can’t go wrong with any of these recommendations from Dirda.
Yearning for more? Check out these adventure novel lists from the fabulous site, HILOWBROW. A cornucopia of thrilling entertainment!
🎾 Cincinnati Open, Early Rounds. The last of the big Masters 1000 tournaments leading up to the U.S. Open kicks off this weekend from the Lindner Family Tennis Center in suburban Cincinnati. Most of the big dogs on the men’s side will be there (but sadly not Novak Djokovic this year), including the young American lefty Ben Shelton, who is fresh off his first Masters 1000 title in Toronto. All matches will be available on Tennis Channel and its various platforms.
🎶 Nothing For Me, Please, by Dean Johnson. This Seattle-based troubadour sings some mighty fine cowboy songs all on his own and with a stellar cast of musicians playing piano, lap steel, double bass, and brushed drums. Grab a whiskey, check out this lovely version of the lead track “Faraway Skies” from his debut album, and enjoy the nice summer evenings while they last!
FYI, the link for Michael Dirda’s list hits a WaPo paywall.
The FT article reads like every article about the whippersnappers written for the last 3000 years. I am 77 and walked to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. Damn kids don't know how good they have it.