Been a busy couple of weeks, barely spent any time online really.
Caught up on my reading over the weekend and finally found time to put this together, I think I now have a process to ensure this doesn't happen in the future.
But, here goes.
As always, all links on this newsletter can be found here.
History, Culture, and Religion
How to make friends as an Adult?
As someone who used to struggle with this after I left college, I found this article terrifyingly relatable. Mostly western culture based research but, a lot of it holds true in the Indian context as well.
I keep reading up about influencer culture because I find it so, fascinating, the epitome of McLuhan's predictions for the new world. This is an article about the influencer lifestyle when it comes to how they about their day and possibly how it affects them.
U.S. Religious Freedom, French Secularism: Vive la Différence
The difference between religious freedom as experienced in countries like the U.S, India and the French version of Secularism, which I was not fully aware of. My primary understanding of secularism came from the Indian constitution, there's a wide gap between these definitions of Secularism and this article does a good job of explaining the roots of each and their differences. (Also, bang in the centre of History, Culture and, Religion)
Hitchens on Israel and Palestine
I'm not trying to pitch in on what's going on here, better people, far more informed than me have said what needs to be said, one of those is Hitchens. This is one from the archives. This really has been going on forever.
Tech, Science, and Math
Unintended Consequences and Goodhart’s Law
Okay, so, this is technically not Tech, Science or Math, but, it's somewhere there. A small article with multiple embedded links all of which are worth going through centered around Goodhart's Law.
Your Friend Doesn’t Want the Vaccine. What Do You Say?
As someone who is still talking to friends who have vaccine hesitancy I found this to be insightful (note: not helpful) because it helped me understand what I was doing wrong in those conversations, maybe it will help you too.
Apple is getting into Ads - finally, same way that Amazon has been slowly creeping into ads business over the past 5 years. Brilliant deep dive on this by Ben Evans (consider subscribing to his newsletter - easily among the better ones out there)
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability
The Crypto world exploded on twitter over the past month, so, when one of the co-founders of the Ethereum writes an article with that provocative an article, that sounds borderline pessimistic, its definitely worth spending some time reading.
The Full Story of the Stunning RSA Hack Can Finally Be Told
Long story short: The secret keys for the RSA algorithm were stolen 10 years ago and this was disclosed publicly only recently.
The History of CTRL + ALT + DELETE
Short, candid history of how this shortcut came to be.
Exercising Leads To Unexpected Benefits Deep In Your Bones
Exercise May Prompt Cells Deep Within Our Bones To Regenerate And Strengthen Our Immunity, Suggests New Research.
I've been reading up on the science behind fitness and fasting in general, I intend to share one article every week in these bookmarks, if not more.
Everything else
Hopefully this is self explanatory. I was amongst those persuaded by media that the lab leak theory was impossible, I still hope its not true, but, I was definitely naive. Interesting article by a journalist who speaks his mind freely.
Why every year—but especially 2020—feels like the worst ever
If you're like me, you forgot the National Geographic existed, it's been a while, but, I found this nice article about how to deal with living during the pandemic without defaulting to this is the worst year yet. I think these types of article deserve their own genre - 'Cope' maybe?
A friend of mine made me read Dhandho Investor nearly 4 years ago now, I still check what Mr. Pabrai does from time to time. One of the smartest finance and investing figures around today, do watch the video if interested.
Noah Smith - Thoughts on Depression
I like Noah Smith, he tweets about Economics a lot, sometimes Tech, also Rabbits. I was surprised to see this post from him but, related with several of the points he made in the article. Sometimes these things just need reiterating.
Thank you for reading
That's all I have for this week and last week.
Do subscribe if interested and do reply with interesting stuff
Sainath