More misc bookmarks this time around, definitely feel like that is in line with what I did read over the past week.
As always, all links on this newsletter can be found here. Currently 158 links, should hit 200 in a few issues.
History, Culture, and Religion
Tata Group, India's first venture capitalists
Written by an investor and writer I follow on Twitter, a history of the Tata Group presenting them as India's first venture capitalists. I have a lot of respect for the Tata group, this is an great take on them and how long they've been supporting innovation.
Afghanistan is slowly slipping back into Taliban control, a little scary, stark similarities to the 80's and power vacuum that developed in that time.
If You Multitask During Meetings, Your Team Will, Too
An article from pre-remote, pre-covid era that talks about the workplace in general and why the leader matters.
Tech, Science, and Math
Why Amazon Has No Profits — Benedict Evans
Another excellent read from Ben Evans, this one from 2014. I still get people joking about how AMZN has no profits and how that makes no sense, its literally because it reinvests everything. The author also wrote a follow up last year - which is where I found the 2014 article.
The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer
I've been using youtube mostly for tutorials, chess videos, and watching scambaiters, this is a neat little article from 2019 that I found interesting as to why this works and why university videos don't.
Gang behind huge cyber-attack demands $70m in Bitcoin
There is something to the ransomware that demand BTC, I don't think BTC made ransomware happen, I do think it has made life a little easier but, not by much for ransomware attacks. I actually this has a lot more to do with bad security than with crypto, but, that's not the narrative we're going with apparently.
DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization - essentially a corporation sprung up without any paper work - purely on the internet. It's an interesting concept that people have taken to a whole other level.
Everything else
Econ Talk with Thomas Sowell (Uncut)
Recently came across this amazing interview b/w Russell Roberts and Thomas Sowell from 2008, Sowell is predictably wise and predictably predictive and correct about the future.
Britney Spears’s Courtroom Plea Spurs Questions for Her Lawyer
If you haven't been following this, to summarise, a nearly 40 year old woman can't do anything in her life without the approval of her conservator because she's suspected to have limited mental capabilities which haven't been tested for since 2008. This article is about how in essence, her lawyer probably failed her.
Linking directly to this tweet thread instead of an article, on why we have so many words for colors and why we have more words for "warm" colors than for "cold" colors
Thank you for reading
That's all I have for this week.
Do subscribe if interested and do reply with interesting stuff
Sainath