Here's some good stuff I've been reading/listening to over the past week.
It's been a crazy week, did my best to stay up to date on stuff that's happening, decided not to include any crypto legislation related stuff for now because that's still in limbo.
Not much by the way of history or religion this time out.
As always, all links on this newsletter can be found here.
History, Culture, and Religion
The only real history related article for this week, how one fragment of limestone gave us crucial information as to how the ancient egyptians created intricate carvings.
Hidden Secrets of Ancient Egyptian Technology
Archaeological objects and works of art in museum collections are not only treasured for their aesthetic qualities, but are also repositories of invaluable information, often concealed at a first sight, about the civilizations that created them
An article about Covid and Isolation, even after restrictions have been lifted in the U.S
Social Isolation in U.S. Rose as Covid Crisis Began to Subside, Research Shows - The New York Times
The findings suggest recovery from the pandemic may take a long time and could affect people’s view of their relationships over time.
Online gaming culture is weird, there are now women who keep men who play online company in China. I really do not understand this world.
China’s new gaming underclass - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech
They’re mostly women, and they “accompany” male gamers, acting as guides, training partners and even therapists.
Tech, Science, and Math
With the fundraise craze going on right now, its worth reading notes by one of the smartest investors around.
Continuations by Albert Wenger : Some Notes on Fundraising
Some Notes on Fundraising Over the last two decades I have helped many companies raise venture capital rounds. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this. If your company is growing like…
A now deleted article, backed up by @gwern on their website. One of the better articles i've read on the concept of decentralization.
Resistant protocols: How decentralization evolves - John Backus - Medium
Decentralization is tough: Too little and you’re dead. Too much and you’re unusable. We can learn a lot from the evolution of p2p file sharing
More notes on venture capital, we might be crossing into uncharted VC territory.
The End of Venture Capital as We Know It — The Information
All signs seem to indicate that by 2022, for the first time, nontraditional tech investors—including hedge funds, mutual funds and the like—will invest more in private tech companies than traditional Silicon Valley–style venture capitalists will. Many people are quick to write this off as a …
"academic writing is obsessed with other academic writing—with finding a “gap in the literature” as opposed to answering a straightforwardly interesting or important question." Interesting article by Agnes Callard.
Publish and Perish | The Point Magazine
This is part of a series of columns on public philosophy by Agnes Callard; read more here. These words exist for you to read them. I […]
Everything else
An article and a thread on Meesho. They've been receiving some bad press lately and the founder has tried to respond to this on twitter.
The mystery of Meesho’s ghost orders
Upon some research, we found that in the last few months, several people such as Ravi have been receiving such ghost orders from Meesho
Apparently the Intl Space Station almost had a major accident last month, wild.
Space Station Incident Demands Independent Investigation - IEEE Spectrum
A space expert warns NASA’s safety culture may be eroding again
The recent report about climate change and the reactions to it led me to try to see why action on this has been so delayed
Article on the report
Climate change: IPCC report is ‘code red for humanity’ - BBC News
Heating from humans has caused irreparable damage to the Earth that may get worse in coming decades.
Apparently we've known about this since 1865, which is just insane, 150+ years of not solving a problem.
Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote
The results of Foote’s simple experiments were confirmed through hundreds of tests by scientists in the US and Europe. It happened more than a century ago.
Book
I haven't updated my goodreads or written a reading update in about 2 months now, need to do a bulk update later this month.
But, here's this weeks recommendation from the field of Cliodynamics from the man who coined the term, Peter Turchin.
Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin
Ages of Discord book. Read 55 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. We are on the wrong trackSeventy percent of Americans (and counti…
Thank you for reading
That's all I have for this week.
Do subscribe if interested and do reply with interesting stuff
Sainath