The Hidden Benefits of Blogging: Beyond the Likes and Shares

TL;DR 👇🏼

Blogging is the Ultimate Tool for Self-Improvement. Blogging will force you to write. Which will force you to think through an issue clearly before you write. Because good writing usually is a product of good clear thinking. Unclear writing is usually the end outcome of unclear thinking. And blogging also acts as a journal to your future self of how ‘older you’ reasoned. A valuable thing in itself.

How did this blog start

in 2010, when I first set up this blog my aspirational goal was to share and stress test some of my thoughts and ideas about the world at large and the world of the workplace where I spent most of my time .

And how does one know if one is getting through to enough eyeballs on platforms like this? Through that king of all vanity metrics: Page Views. which is the number of hits you get daily & monthly on your blog. Instagram divas hitch their digital egos to likes and shares garnered of what feels like torrential snaps and comments. And blogging wannabes like me link it to page views. They label it “Vanity Metrics” for a reason. The vanity is indeed linked to this metric (Pageview) and if you are not on guard, so is your daily mood if you are into blogging intensely enough. For a while I was. The reasoning is along the lines that the more people visit the blog, the more the author is likely making agreeable, popular, profound, good points.

Meeting the Freight Train of Reality

Much to my own shock, while I did snag an interview a few years ago from someone leading India’s then hottest start-up who was impressed enough to call me in after reading this blog, alas, the majority of my posts here are about as effective as shouting into and in a hurricane. This is 2018. Most bloggers are pissing into the Pacific and hoping the fish notice.

IMG_20180227_204318 — At the start of this noble idea of blogging & then 7 years later after learning the lessons

100+ blogposts later I have belatedly realized that most of us are too busy, too distracted, too frazzled to care and notice most things that screams for attention. A lot of the amazing, fantastic quality stuff slips by unloved so why should mediocrity get the oxygen of attention?

This world in 2018 has a tiny small handheld magical thing that can deliver infotainment heroine in friendlier mediums anytime, anywhere. Against this trifecta (busy, distracted, frazzled) most of us aspirational attention beggars are not Davids but gnats who are not even close to being anywhere as good and insightful as the many talented people out there who actually deserve the attention oxygen.

So in summary:

I wanted to make an impact in 2010
I realized this was very tough after 7 years at it
…..Now what?

The belated epiphany

It is time to abandon this misguided McNamara fallacy and revisit and reframe the entire project. Starting with Exhibit #1 – this post. Instead of writing to get attention from an increasingly distracted world drowning in great content that is near impossible to better, I am going to write with 2 simple aims and to a very niche but guaranteed audience. An audience that is likely very interested come what may.

That audience? Future Me. Preferably ‘Far into the Future Me‘. Me a decade or two from now. Me 2028. Me in 2038.

Some lazy wet weekends I love browsing through snaps from back in the day and trying to remember the context of some of those faded pictures. What was I thinking? Who was I? From the vantage point of the present, I think often “damn, that idiot in the picture had some weird and stupid ideas about the world and the people around him!“. If you are not looking back at your old self and thinking ‘that guy was an idiot’, you are likely not growing as a person.

Unless blessed with an elephant memory, an old picture usually tells you of the physical world and people around you then. It tells you little of how you thought then. Could a blog give a better picture of how and what one was thinking about back in the day? Not how the mostly mundane days unfurled but what was one grappling with intellectually. The blog entries (if made often enough) may give ‘future me’ a better clue of the person I really was. So that’s Aim #1 from now.

Goal #1 : Click regular Thinking Snapshots. because blogging is the Best Mirror for Your Mind.

Goal #2 is simpler. Get better at writing. By being forced to make a case on a topic from the ground up, via blogging, to an external audience. Like you. One may inherently ‘get‘ or grasp an idea in their own heads but writing it forces the person to account for all the variables and pillars supporting that internal narrative or point of view. The quality of your writing betrays how often you engage in the act. Blogging often is a great habit to force better thinking. I am hoping writing this blog regularly will force me to clarify and strip down and re-build all the components on an argument and subject I am passionate about. Example of this from recently : “Insight and Narrative are different thing. How and Why?”

Writing is THE preferred tool to expose sloppy thinking 👇🏼

Maybe an even better case to embrace blogging/writing: As I try to make a case on a topic from the ground up via blogging I also realize something I needed to for a while. A lot of my ideas are shit and have no legs. It took me being forced to sketch out, flesh out and write out an idea buzzing inside my head to slowly realize the idea in question was, to use a British euphemism, weak tea. And there was a lot of weak tea floating in my mental Boston harbor.

So revealingly, the contents of the dustbin near the writing desk may prove just as useful as the contents outside it. The ideas that get discarded proving as valuable a lesson as the ideas fleshed out and published. Luckily the privacy of discarded ideas is assured. Only your spouse may still have to suffer your many suspect thesis acoustically but they do say ‘Love Hurts‘!

In Summary

My newer goals for this blog for the next decade+ are:

To create a record for my future self: The blog will serve as a time capsule of thoughts and reasoning, allowing me to reflect on my past and intellectual growth since.
To improve my writing skills: By regularly writing and publishing blog posts, I hope to refine my writing style and clarify my thinking.

My very immediate goal ? Convince you too to start blogging.

// Blog penned in 2018. Updated in 2024//

The Best 20 Longform Articles I read

Over the last few years, after reading 300 plus articles/blog posts/columns online, here are my current favourite 20. Don’t waste time reading and consuming low value low insight info-junkfood in books and newspapers that skims a issue, usually of marginal importance. That is bad for you in every way. What you want to do is consume just enough to stay very well informed. Nothing over the needed daily mental TDEE infocalories.

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All the 20 are better as quality reads than a majority of the books I have read in the same period. Some 50x so.

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Below each one of the recommend article I have written a brief synopsis on why you should read it and what it is about. You could read them all in one long bank holiday weekend. They are filled with terrific insights and/or great narratives and will likely may you re-think some of your cherished mental models and theories about people, institutions and the zeitgeist. And it’st that what reading is supposed to do at its core?

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All articles have embedded hyperlinks that will take you straight to the cigar.

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‘A Generation In Japan Faces A Lonely Death’
This one opened my uninformed eyes to what mass aging in a developed country like Japan looks like. A tad depressing and morbidly riveting. The Japanese author does a fantastic job unpacking the long lived lives.

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Cocaine Incorporated : Fantastic Primer On The Drug Business In Mexico
After seeing the brilliant movie Sicario, this is the article to read about what really happens across the US border.

Farnam Street’S The Knowledge Project Interviews Naval Ravikant
Naval is the New Age Tech Guru to follow if you want to understand how very smart people approach the big questions of life and work. This interview is densely packed with gems like this:

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Find Your Beach – Zadie Smith On Life In Manhattan As An Artist
Here we all are, on edge and frayed. 2018 and living in big soulless cities. Zadie captures the zeitgeist in this article.

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Free Speech And The Necessity Of Discomfort
A Fantastic Speech By writer Bret Stephens Of NYT making a superb case for the defence of free speech and why it needs defending.

Heavy : The Short Life Of Robert Earl Hughes Of Tiny Fishhook, Illinois
This heartbreaking article on a nice big guy from back in the day was the closest I came to tears while reading something online. A deep profile of a deeply nice person who happened to be fat.

How ‘Broadcast News’ Predicted Journalism As We Know It
A superb deconstruction of a movie, a profession and the news zeitgeist. Until I read this piece I thought movie criticism could never be made penetrating or profound by anyone other than Roger Ebert. this article proved me wrong.

How Do Families Around The World Spend Their Vacations?

This stunning photo-essay forced me to realise just how much the vacations my friends, my family and my wife and I take are definitely not how most of the world does theirs.

Interview Of Merlin Mann, Productivity Guru

Mann’s 43folders blog was a favourite productivity related pitstop of mine back in the day and this deep interview lays bare his sharp insights on life and work.

Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor By Garrett Hardin, 1974
This is the example of a dated article that seems more relevant as we all head towards sure Ecocide by 2050. Is Hardin right ? Maybe, but his point of view needs a solemn hearing.

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On The Amazing Rise And Fall Of A Rodent Utopia

One of those bizarre essays about an experiment that you know is telling you something important about human society, although you frustratingly realize you are unable to grasp the full scary implications of what it is telling you oh so subtly.

Quitting The Paint Factory By Mark Slouka
A searing take on faux busyness and why we need to take a breather.

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Ray Kurzweil On The Law Of Accelerating Returns (March 2001)
17 years ago a legit genius predicted where we would be heading in the next few decades and this essay that he wrote is prescient. I hope he is right.

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The Beggar CEO And Sucker Culture
Aimed at those of us reluctantly running the corporate rat race, trained for it since kindergarten, this article starkly tells us why we are deluded and what we should do instead.

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The Uninhabitable Earth

This is the scariest article I have read in a while and it made me question if planning for retirement was even worth it.

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The Yankee Comandante
A superb yarn about how a man got caught up in the promise of a socialist utopia and saw Orwell’s Animal Farm play out in front of his own eyes.

What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447

What a nail biting read this was, on a tragic crash that was caused by humans being human and doing human things under extreme stress.

What You’ll Wish You’d Known – By Paul Graham, Unsaid Speech To Students
The speech was so good, so eye opening, so necessary that I forced my mostly young team to read it, if only because it was packed to the brim with gems on how to start and navigate the work world. A great primer.

Why The Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From Inside The White House
The formidable, awe-inspiring Micheal Lewis on how good leaders can improve institutions but only slowly but bad leaders can destroy institutions rapidly.

Meditations On Moloch
I saved the best for the last. This read is perhaps one of the most profound writings I have stumbled across. A life altering essay that helped me understand why humanity has ended up in the current terrible status quo. It argues that, rather than by malice and greed, the problems our world faces are mostly driven by powerful evolutionary forces, (poetically personified as Ginsberg’s poem “Moloch“), that no one controls, and which wants us, and everything we value destroyed.

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So there it is. Read them all and you will soon see the map in your head is not the territory in front of your eyes. It’s a bit like seeing this ad below for the Budapest Zoo and then really really seeing it.

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Cultivating Insight: Escaping the Narrative Matrix

Narrative is looking at an event and then making up a good story around it. Usually the narrator highlights bits in the story that supporting his point of view. But if done badly it misses a lot of important details.

Most op-ed columns today are entertaining narratives masquerading as Insight. Most LinkedIn articles are badly worded Narratives. As is the daily “news” on TV.

The writings of Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet and Peter Drucker mostly provide genuine Insight. Most modern writers are more like Tom Peters and Jim Collins. They sell slick narratives.

Germ Theory Is Insight, Homeopathy is narrative (fraud) peddling as guaranteed cure. Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory is Insight, Creationism is narrative bullshit. Most history books are faulty narratives. Calvin is onto the lie.

Embarrassingly it took me far too long to arrive at this basic understanding : Most of what we read in books, newspapers and watch on TV is ‘Narrative‘ and not ‘Insight’. And they are sold as the Insights while not being real insights at all. Fraudulent is a good word to use here. Narratives are shallow opinions and flawed arguments that follow basic storytelling rules. Humans are naturally drawn to these stories because of how our brains are wired, ever since we started walking upright. Some narratives are so good even the author of the narrative is fooled into thinking she is dispensing Insight. Insight is profound, hard earned and life changing. Most informational buskers peddling narratives (think most columnists) are very convinced they are selling profound never-before-imagined Insight. It takes some experience to see the difference (hell, it took me 3 decades to even know there was a difference).

We live in a world where there’s a lot of unimportant or distracting information (noise) and very little meaningful or useful information (signal). Fake News but not in the way DJT made the word famous. More subtle. Narratives are like a heavy, wet blanket that clumsy writers throw over unrelated events (like the many boring history books we all read in school) to make them seem like they fit together into one easy story. They’re like forcing things to fit just because (like the story of how the stock market dropped today because of reasons Y and Z). These stories feel good to us humans because they’re comforting, but it’s real understanding (insight) that truly benefits us. Like junk food but for the brain.

I made a resolution to read lots of longform articles a few years ago. I made some rules for myself. They needed to be across multiple publications, on multiple topics and posses different points of view. Why these rules ? Because I realized that a lot of what I had been consuming was mostly Crappy Narrative disguised as Amazing Insight.

Some stories are really good and help us understand our world better. For example, “The Godfather” movies give us great lessons about business, family, how to make decisions, and relationships. But unfortunately, there’s a huge flood of fake deep thoughts and poor stories out there that overshadow the small stream of true insights we can find.

The maxim “Good Judgement comes from Experience; Experience comes from Bad Judgement” applies here. The ability to smell the distinction can be honed only by marinating long and hard in both forms early, to make sure later you are inoculated against crappy narratives and can sense them instinctively. When reading suspect material make it a reflex to ask these 5 questions of the info-peddler :

Time spend reading and thinking to get some insight is vastly more useful in life than time spent reading some simplistic narratives just because it is comforting and demands little of you.

Choose Hard Insight. Ignore Easy Narratives.

The End.

My TBR Pile of Doom: A Celebration of Unread Books

Explaining the AntiLibrary

As Oliver Burkeman narrates it, the novelist and scholar Umberto Eco once bemoaned the fact that many visitors to his home, seeing his vast personal library, can’t help but exclaim: “What a lot of books! Have you read them all?” His jaw stiffens: the question implies that his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are for showing off, when actually they’re a research tool. Unread books are where the action is. The writer Nassim Taleb approvingly calls such a collection an “antilibrary”; one’s shelves, he argues, should contain “as much of what you do not know” as finances allow. And don’t expect the proportion of unread books to fall, either. The more you read, the more the perimeter of your knowledge increases, and the more you’ll realize you don’t know. (Incidentally, Eco’s deadpan response to his visitors’ question is, “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.”)

The more you read, the more the perimeter of your knowledge increases, and the more you realize what you don’t know. That alone is reason enough for a few souls to really stick to the reading habit.

An avid American book collector once remarked: “Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity … we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes Comfort, their ready access Reassurance.” What a line!

Back in India when I was living in a large apartment all by myself, I used to stock my shelves with books both read and unread, the former over time outnumbering the latter. I naively thought that was a good thing then. Now in the limited confines of London where real estate is not cheap to put it mildly, the numbers have switched. London honed my skill at ditching mediocre books right after reading them into the local charity bin. So the books lining my limited shelf space are a few really great books I retain after reading because I plan to re-read them and mostly ‘pending to read‘ books. My very own TBR – the ‘To Be Read’ Antilibrary.

The Japanese have a cool word “Tsundoku“. It is the condition of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf.

Like most worthy things your antilibrary comes with its own set of pros and cons…

Book Recommendations

From since I was a kid I have been a dietary and reading omnivore. To this day I will read anything on any subject as long as the book and the subject sound interesting (My wife will vouch that this is my exact approach to food too). Over the last year I have purchased books covering wide and varied subjects and themes that I plan to delve into, in the hope of improving as Taleb aptly labels it – ‘the perimeter of one’s knowledge‘.

Recently I decided to summarize all the physical books I have on my shelves under clean themes and motifs. For two reasons primarily, one selfish and one altruistic. Writing about it here forces me to rationalize the actual purchases and also (I hope) serves as a starter for ten for anyone here looking for some book suggestions for the upcoming summer.

Welcome to my Tsundoku!

Well written autobiographies of 5 worthy people. The book ‘TITAN’ I would rank as one of the best 5 books I have read in the last few years, the apotheosis of what a good book ought to be. The middle book (Snowball) I am reading midway and I think it is going to rank up there with the best of them. The bottom two are pending. I would put all 5 in the curriculum if I were the dean of a decent undergrad college.

As someone who migrated from one country to another (India to UK) I am keen to fill the gap in my knowledge of my adopted country and these 8 books are an attempt at that. 3 of them I am through with and ALL of the 3 I heartily endorse.

Tudors – what a cracking good tale
The Angry Island – The best caustic prose I have encountered in the last few years.
Longitude – a book so gripping I started at 9 PM and stayed up till 5 AM to finish it in one sitting.

The other 5 are pending a read.

If someone was looking to move to India and asked me for books to understand the country, I can confidently say the Naipaul Trilogy would get the job done. It is about India as it IS, not as it is ineffectually and prosaically penned about in most books and articles about the country. It was after reading these three books that I understood both Naipaul for the genius he is and the real history of my country that is never written about even today. The other 2 are pending a read.

I am a complete sucker for sea faring survival takes and anything old navy related. And these 5 scratch that itch. Two of them (Endurance and In The Hear of the Sea) I read one after another and was blown away by both. Set about 100 years apart, they suck you in and don’t let you go until the end. Last thursday I recommended the book ENDURANCE to my team at work as not just a survival take but also one of the best books on Leadership and Teamwork out there. The other 3 are pending a read.

These are assorted books on the subject of Metacognition, Heuristics, Forecasting, Thinking and Decision Making, an effort to polish my own executive functions & skills.

These two books are my attempt to understand Investing from someone OTHER THAN Warren Buffet for a change.

I would rank the decrepit looking The Best and The Brightest as one of my best books from the last decade. Halbertstam is a great writer and the book is just so good wading through the dense prose it feels akin to reading a John Grisham novel. A great primer on the pitfalls of Groupthink and Pink Flamingos.

This grandiloquent tome by Chomsky on the right was an eye opener in the real sense the word is meant. Depressing but oh-so-needed in these times. This too would go on the curriculum of my imaginary college reading list. The left one is pending.

Both books I have heard good press about. right one to understand Cancer, something that will kill the majority of us if heart related issues don’t do the job first. And the left book (GENOME) is to understand the new upcoming CRISPR related developments.

I am a sucker for crisp essays and I am promised by wise people that these two authors are worth the investment.

These 4 books are an attempt to better understand the events that shaped the superpowers in the first half of the 20th century. Definitely sombre reads I suspect.

These three to understand better the places I hope to visit someday. Africa, America and Europe. All covered here. The Bryson book, while dated, is hilarious and after a visit to a European destination mentioned in it, I always read the chapter on it to get at HIS funny and smart take on the place.

4 books to better fit into and understand the workplace. Prince and Effective Executive are almost mandatory reading at this juncture. The Peter Principle is wry but sharp. Inside Drucker’s Brain I am still to tackle.

Hope this wets your reading appetite and gets you onto a few of them. I can vouch that most have made it to the shelf only after some solid research and good reviews so the odds are decent that most are worth your precious time.

Happy Reading!

The Best 10 Longform Articles of 100 I Read

The majority of people I know if asked will admit two statements willingly :
1. Reading a book will take up a lot of my spare time
2. I do not have spare time!

Take a moment to think about how you get most of your daily dose of News :
– a quick peek into the website of your preferred publication
– a squint into the false “breaking news!” scroll as you sip your coffee
– a passing glance at the shallow newspaper in the subway or in the loo
– a distracted browse on your phone during your limited downtime in the day = in the loo again isn’t it ?

How many of these insipid squirts registered with you ? How many stories in the last 100 days really stayed with you that you could effortlessly recount to your friends? I am going to bet the number is a fraction of the total news crisps you munch everyday. And equally hazardous to your health.

Most news clips on TV, the newspaper or in the app you read barely skims the news and abjectly fails at educating you on all the many angles and players in a developing story. You are the guy trying to tell time when all he can see it the Seconds needle. A news clip seen here, a clip read there, in the heat of the news cycle about an issue is like trying to understand the Mona Lisa with your nose 1mm away from it at the bottom corner.

The antidote to all this above litany of complaints : Longform Articles. Longform journalism is a branch of journalism dedicated to longer articles with larger amounts of content. The length of longform articles is between that of a traditional article and that of a periodical. These articles, usually 4000+ words or longer, will nullify most of the above negatives and yet take only a small slice of the time books will ask of you. Many of the boring books I suffered over the years, typically 100,000 words or longer, could have been culled into a crisp punchy Longform article I would have liked versus the book I didn’t.

All this above slowly percolated into my ADHD riddled head over the course of 2015 and so one of my 2016 new year resolutions was that I would read 100 Longform articles in 2016.

A typical book is about 100,000 words long. A typical longform article is about 4000 words. 100 articles X 4000 words = 400,000 words. Which means reading 100 longform articles is akin to reading 4 thick books. But on 100 different topics! This is the kind of range and value that excites me. Additionally I decided I was going to read omnivorously when it came to article sources and topics. Nothing was off limits. I would not stick to one publication, website, theme or subject. And I vowed to diligently keep track of the links to all articles I read so I could share it forward (which I am doing now)

I finished the 100th Article TODAY (22 Sept 2016), about 100 days before the year end deadline, which speaks less about my diligence but volumes about how pleasurable this resolution was (versus hard aims like “Eat less junk food”). Now for your reading pleasure I have listed below the 100 articles I read, along with links to all 100 articles. Every single one is free but this may change.

So why really read them at all ? …Because should you dive in, you will emerge more informed, more aware and more interesting at the other end of the reading pool. 100 cool stories at your fingertips. Knowledge compounds and this is a good thick principal to deposit into the mental bank.

Among the varied stories, you will read how Tiger Woods imploded after his dad died, how a famous US retail chain spectacularly cocked up a store inauguration, how a demure medical nurse became good at robbing banks, how some students in India lose their identity prepping for a brutal test, why does one of the world’s most reviled technologies keep winning, what was it to see Michael Jackson’s iconic first moonwalk onstage, travel to a place no country wants to claim, why Socialism failed, why Cryonics makes sense, understand the life of Muhammad Ali, smell the desperation of US law firms in the age of austerity, investigate who owns London’s most expensive mansion, take a terrifying journey through the World’s Most Dangerous Jungle and see how the new Panama Canal was built.

That above is just a sliver of the full rich tasty cake. I have also added 2 data graphs on the key themes and sources to the Longforms so you can choose more intelligently. I wish you Happy Reading in cozy cafes or deep sofas or comfy loos for the upcoming winter!

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My favorite 10 from an already solid list of 100 good articles are :

THE Last Days Of Target – The untold tale of Target Canada’s difficult birth, tough life and brutal death |Link : http: //www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/

How Tiger Woods imploded |Link : http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/15278522/how-tiger-woods-life-unraveled-years-father-earl-woods-death

Twilight of the Petrostate |Link : http://nationalinterest.org/feature/twilight-the-petrostate-16235

Why 57 Young Students Have Taken Their Lives In Kota |Link : http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/06/01/life-and-death-in-kota_n_10232456.html?utm_hp_ref=india

A Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jungle: The Darién Gap |Link : http://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap

The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic – Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself |Link : http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic

The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá |Link : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/magazine/the-mixed-up-brothers-of-bogota.html?_r=0#

Construction is turning London into a city of holes |Link : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/282e51f0-0683-11e6-9b51-0fb5e65703ce.html

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru : How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age. |Link : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=0

Free Speech and Islam — In Defense of Sam Harris |Link : http://quillette.com/2016/04/21/free-speech-and-islam-in-defense-of-sam-harris/

The full list of all 100 Longform articles :

Sourced from Bloomberg || Subject : business || Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup. Then It Self-Disrupted || URL : http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-zenefits/

Sourced from Canadian Business || Subject : business || THE LAST DAYS OF TARGET – The untold tale of Target Canada’s difficult birth, tough life and brutal death || URL : http: //www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/

Sourced from Financial Times || Subject : business || Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity || URL : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a.html

Sourced from Fortune || Subject : business || The Last Stand of Ken Chenault. Can he win back investors and fix what ails AmEx before his time runs out? || URL : http://fortune.com/ken-chenault-american-express/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

Sourced from Fortune || Subject : business || Silicon Valley’s $585 Billion Problem – Fortune on the Unicorn Bubble || URL : http://fortune.com/silicon-valley-tech-ipo-market/

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : business || How Should We Read Investor Letters? = Considering the correspondence between C.E.O.s and shareholders as a literary genre. || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/jeff-gramms-dear-chairman-boardroom-battles-and-the-rise-of-shareholder-activism

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : business || The Bank Robber : The dodgy computer technician who exposed a Swiss bank’s darkest secrets. || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/herve-falcianis-great-swiss-bank-heist?intcid=popular

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : business || Not So Fast – Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life? || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/12/not-so-fast

Sourced from Newrepublic || Subject : business || The Brutal Ageism of Tech : Years of experience, plenty of talent, completely obsolete  || URL : https://newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brutal-ageism

Sourced from Newrepublic || Subject : business || The Last Days of Big Law : The money is drying up—and America’s most storied law firms are terrified || URL : https://newrepublic.com/article/113941/big-law-firms-trouble-when-money-dries

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : business || How Uber conquered London || URL : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/27/how-uber-conquered-london

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : business || On Craft BeerMaker, BREWDOG || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/24/the-aggressive-outrageous-infuriating-and-ingenious-rise-of-brewdog

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : business || The Fall of China’s Hedge Fund King Xu Xiang || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/the-fall-of-chinas-hedge-fund-king.html?

Sourced from Vanity Fair || Subject : business || How Elizabeth Holmes’s House of Cards Came Tumbling Down – A searing investigation into the once lauded biotech start-up Theranos || URL : http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive

Sourced from Vanity Fair || Subject : business || The Valeant Meltdown and Wall Street’s Major Drug Problem || URL : http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/the-valeant-meltdown-and-wall-streets-major-drug-problem#22

Sourced from Vanity Fair || Subject : business || The Man Who Crashed the World : How an AIG divison lead by Joe Cassano blew it spectacularly || URL : http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/08/aig200908-2

Sourced from Daedtech || Subject : career || The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture || URL : http://www.daedtech.com/the-beggar-ceo-and-sucker-culture/

Sourced from Espn || Subject : celebrity || How Tiger Woods imploded || URL : http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/15278522/how-tiger-woods-life-unraveled-years-father-earl-woods-death

Sourced from GQ || Subject : celebrity || GQ profiles Melania Trump || URL : http://www.gq.com/story/melania-trump-gq-interview

Sourced from GQ || Subject : celebrity || On Stephen Colbert on Making The Late Show His Own || URL : http://www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-gq-cover-story

Sourced from bbc || Subject : crime || The rise and fall of the Bombshell Bandit || URL : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32481834

Sourced from Bloomberg || Subject : crime || How the Secret Service busted a counterfeiting ring in NJ || URL : http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-counterfeit-money/

Sourced from California Sunday || Subject : crime || On the 43 murdered students of Mexico || URL : https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/mexico-the-disappeared-en/

Sourced from California Sunday || Subject : crime || The Lost Man :The mysterious circumstances of his death in Australia have captivated generations of true-crime fanatics. || URL : https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-06-07/somerton-man/

Sourced from California Sunday || Subject : crime || The Murder of Sheena by her mom Indrani || URL : https://story.californiasunday.com/mumbai-murder-mukerjeas

Sourced from The Telegraph || Subject : crime || On the HattonGarden heist || URL : http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/Hatton-Garden-is-it-still-possible-to-get-away-with-a-heist/index.html

Sourced from The National Interest || Subject : current affairs || Twilight of the Petrostate || URL : http://nationalinterest.org/feature/twilight-the-petrostate-16235

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : current affairs || On Tunisia and Terrorism || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/28/tunisia-and-the-fall-after-the-arab-spring

Sourced from The Atlantic || Subject : current affairs || The Hell After ISIS : Many Sunnis say they have no hope for peace. One family’s story shows why || URL : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/the-hell-after-isis/476391/

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : current affairs || Trident: the British question || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/11/trident-the-british-question

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : current affairs || Behind the Barricades of Turkey’s Hidden War with Kurds || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/behind-the-barricades-of-turkeys-hidden-war.html?_r=0#

Sourced from Badassoftheweek || Subject : military || Operation Chavin de Huantar : How Peru mounted a daring hostage rescue operation || URL : http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin.html

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : drama || The Hunt for El Chapo : How the world’s most notorious drug lord was captured. || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/05/the-hunt-for-el-chapo?intcid=mod-most-popular

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : drama || The Plot to Take Down a Fox News Analyst : For years, Wayne Simmons claimed to be a former C.I.A. operative. Then one ex-spook got suspicious. || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/the-plot-to-take-down-a-fox-news-analyst.html?_r=0

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : drama || The Battle Over the Sea-Monkey Fortune || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-battle-over-the-sea-monkey-fortune.html?_r=0#

Sourced from Wall Street Journal || Subject : drama || A Stolen Boy, an Angry Loner, an Underground Bunker || URL : http://graphics.wsj.com/hostage/?mod=videorelated

Sourced from Medium || Subject : economics || Machine Money and People Money : A Conversation about Universal Basic Income with John Maynard Keynes and Paul Buchheit || URL : https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/machine-money-and-people-money-29b497eeb9d0#.s9bmzpopj

Sourced from Oaktree Capital Management || Subject : economics || On Political Reality : Memo from a seasoned hedge fund manager Howard Marks to clients – why people vote in bad politicians || URL : https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/political-reality.pdf

Sourced from Oaktree Capital Management || Subject : economics || On Economic Reality : Memo from a fund manager Howard Marks to clients – why presidential promises will fall flat || URL : https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/economic-reality.pdf

Sourced from Newrepublic || Subject : education || The Trouble With Harvard : The Ivy League is broken and only standardized tests can fix it By Steven Pinker || URL : https://newrepublic.com/article/119321/harvard-ivy-league-should-judge-students-standardized-tests

Sourced from Atavist || Subject : fiasco || Sunk : How a Chinese billionaire’s dream of making an underwater fantasy blockbuster turned into a legendary movie fiasco. || URL : https://read.atavist.com/sunk

Sourced from The Atlantic || Subject : military || The Desert One Debacle : How Operation Eagle Claw went sour || URL : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/05/the-desert-one-debacle/304803/?single_page=true

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : fiasco || The New Panama Canal: A Risky Bet : How a $3.1 Billion Expansion Collided With Reality || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas/panama-canal.html?_r=0

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : food || The Sugar Conspiracy || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin

Sourced from The Atlantic || Subject : Futurism || Nick Bostrom on Human Extinction || URL : http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/

Sourced from Medium || Subject : history || History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump || URL : https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.xwi1279q4

Sourced from Paul Graham Blog || Subject : history || The Refragmentation of Developed world : Forces that shaped the 20th Century || URL : http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : history || What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation? A Brief Guided Tour of USA in 1870,1920,1970 and today || URL : http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/upshot/what-was-the-greatest-era-for-american-innovation-a-brief-guided-tour.html

Sourced from Atlanta Magazine || Subject : human interest story || Refuge: One Syrian family’s immigration to Georgia, USA || URL : http://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/refuge-one-syrian-familys-long-odyssey-to-georgia/

Sourced from Esquire || Subject : human interest story || The Long Haul: One Year of Solitude on America’s Highways || URL : http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a40157/long-haul-year-trucking-america/?mod=e2this

Sourced from GQ || Subject : human interest story || Stud: How to Have 106 Babies (and Counting) || URL : http://www.gq.com/story/how-to-have-babies-sperm-donor-ed-houben

Sourced from GQ || Subject : human interest story || Inside the San Quentin Marathon || URL : http://www.gq.com/story/san-quentin-marathon

Sourced from Huffingtonpost || Subject : human interest story || Why 57 Young Students Have Taken Their Lives In Kota || URL : http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/06/01/life-and-death-in-kota_n_10232456.html?utm_hp_ref=india

Sourced from New York Magazine || Subject : human interest story || Inside Rikers Prison in NYC || URL : http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/inside-rikers-island-interviews.html

Sourced from Outside Magazine || Subject : human interest story || A Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jungle: The Darién Gap || URL : http://www.outsideonline.com/2098801/skull-stake-darien-gap

Sourced from Outside Magazine || Subject : human interest story || Everest veteran guide Dave Morton on what happens when you try to leave the world’s most lucrative mountain forever || URL : http://www.outsideonline.com/2064481/david-morton-and-ghosts-everest

Sourced from Science Magazine Nautilus || Subject : human interest story || The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic – Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself || URL : http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic

Sourced from Shtfplan || Subject : human interest story || Surviving in a war zone || URL : http://www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/a-survival-q-a-living-through-shtf-in-the-middle-of-a-war-zone_10252011

Sourced from Statnews || Subject : human interest story || One man’s desperate quest for a brutal surgery || URL : https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/24/appendix-cancer-treatment/

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : human interest story || My uncle and heroin: ‘What surprises me most – you have no teeth’ || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/10/my-uncle-and-heroin

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : human interest story || Three Generations Under One Roof – A portrait of a NYC based large Chinese Family || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/nyregion/one-roof-three-generations-portrait-of-a-chinese-american-family.html?_r=2

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : human interest story || The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/magazine/the-mixed-up-brothers-of-bogota.html?_r=0#

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : in depth profile || The Outsized Life of Muhammad Ali || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-outsized-life-of-muhammad-ali

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : in depth profile || The Astonishing Rise of Jeremy Corbyn || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/23/the-astonishing-rise-of-jeremy-corbyn?intcid=mod-most-popular

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : in depth profile || The Machiavelli of Maryland || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/edward-luttwak-machiavelli-of-maryland

Sourced from Fool || Subject : interview || An Interview With Dr. Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics By Morgan Housel || URL : http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/06/28/an-interview-with-dr-daniel-kahneman.aspx

Sourced from Fortune || Subject : interview || Fortune interviews Jeff Bezos || URL : http://fortune.com/amazon-jeff-bezos-prime/

Sourced from Reddit || Subject : interview || Reddit AMA with Alice Schroeder, author of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. || URL : https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/2550vq/hi_im_alice_schroeder_author_of_the_snowball?sort=qa

Sourced from Sam Harris Blog || Subject : interview || The Salon Interview of Sam Harris || URL : https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sam-harris-the-salon-interview

Sourced from The Great Discontent (Tgd) || Subject : interview || Seth Godin Interview || URL : http://thegreatdiscontent.com/interview/seth-godin

Sourced from The Great Discontent (Tgd) || Subject : interview || Interview of Merlin Mann, Productivity Guru || URL : http://thegreatdiscontent.com/interview/merlin-mann

Sourced from Washington Post || Subject : interview || The WSJ Interview of Tim Cook, CEO of Apple || URL : http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/wp/2016/08/13/2016/08/13/tim-cook-the-interview-running-apple-is-sort-of-a-lonely-job/

Sourced from New Yorker || Subject : investigative journalism || House of Secrets – Who owns London’s most expensive mansion? || URL : http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/01/house-of-secrets

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : investigative journalism || How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html?_r=0

Sourced from Medium || Subject : lifestyle || On the new “Shut in” Economy || URL : https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816#.e9ajuagxn

Sourced from Washington Post || Subject : lifestyle || Day in the life of upper middle class teen : 13, right now : This is what it’s like to grow up in the age of likes, lols and longing || URL : http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/wp/2016/05/25/2016/05/25/13-right-now-this-is-what-its-like-to-grow-up-in-the-age-of-likes-lols-and-longing/

Sourced from Financial Times || Subject : london || Construction is turning London into a city of holes || URL : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/282e51f0-0683-11e6-9b51-0fb5e65703ce.html

Sourced from The Atlantic || Subject : management || The Triumph of Email – Why does one of the world’s most reviled technologies keep winning? || URL : http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/what-comes-after-email/422625/

Sourced from The Atlantic || Subject : management || The Management Myth : Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. || URL : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : media || How technology disrupted the truth – Social media has swallowed the news, ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. || URL : https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth

Sourced from Rolling Stone || Subject : music || Inside Michael Jackson’s Iconic First Moonwalk Onstage || URL : http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/inside-michael-jackson-s-iconic-first-moonwalk-onstage-20151005

Sourced from bbc || Subject : mystery || Body on the Moor. Why did this man travel 200 miles to die here? || URL : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e8c6cbab-da44-4a3c-8f9b-c4fccd53dd24

Sourced from Fivethirtyeight Blog || Subject : politics || The End Of A Republican Party : Racial and cultural resentment have replaced the party’s small government ethos. || URL : http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-end-of-a-republican-party/

Sourced from The Foundation For Economic Education Org || Subject : politics || Why Socialism Failed || URL : https://fee.org/articles/why-socialism-failed/

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : politics || Does the left have a future? || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/06/does-the-left-have-a-future

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : politics || The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru : How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age. || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=0

Sourced from Extremist Vector || Subject : psycology || The 5 Basic Laws of Human Stupidity || URL : http://www.extremistvector.com/content/stupid.html

Sourced from Genius || Subject : psycology || The Catastrophe of Success – by Tennessee Williams || URL : http://genius.com/Tennessee-williams-the-catastrophe-of-success-annotated

Sourced from Vanity Fair || Subject : psycology || How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield || URL : http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-home-sebastian-junger

Sourced from Quillette || Subject : religion || Free Speech and Islam — In Defense of Sam Harris || URL : http://quillette.com/2016/04/21/free-speech-and-islam-in-defense-of-sam-harris/

Sourced from Vanity Fair || Subject : religion || When the King Saved God – Hitchens on The King James Bible || URL : http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2011/05/hitchens-201105?currentPage=all

Sourced from Bloomberg || Subject : scam || The Disastrous $45 Million Fall of a High-End Wine Scammer || URL : https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-premier-cru-john-fox/

Sourced from Bloomberg || Subject : scam || The fake biofuel factory con || URL : http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-fake-biofuel-factory/

Sourced from Mysterious Universe.Org || Subject : science & tech || On The Amazing Rise and Fall of a Rodent Utopia || URL : http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/the-amazing-rise-and-fall-of-a-rodent-utopia/

Sourced from The New York Times || Subject : science & tech || The Minecraft Generation : How a clunky Swedish computer game is teaching millions of children to master the digital world. || URL : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-generation.html

Sourced from Waitbutwhy Blog || Subject : science & tech || On Why Cryonics Makes Sense || URL : http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html

Sourced from Wired || Subject : science & tech || Magic Leap’s mind-bending technology tells us about the future of virtual reality || URL : https://www.wired.com/2016/04/magic-leap-vr/

Sourced from Spiegel.De || Subject : travel || Crowding Out the Locals: Are Weekend Trips Ruining Europe’s Cities? || URL : http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/european-cities-test-measures-to-control-tourist-flows-a-1104903.html

Sourced from The Guardian || Subject : travel || Welcome to the land that no country wants || URL : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil

Sourced from Wired || Subject : travel || Welcome to SpacePort! (Wired Writer Michael Hainey visits SPACEPORT in New Mexico and writes up about it) || URL : http://www.wired.com/2016/02/welcome-to-spaceport-america-your-rocket-will-depart-soon-ish/

Book Review : Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders

Mount Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga are the 3 indisputable tallest mountain ranges out there. It is likely on the bucket list of many new and aspiring climbers, working as a backdrop siren call as they hone their skills on lesser mounds.

Book lovers have their own list but this list can never be definitive since there can be no universal consensus on what should go into “the toughest reads out there!” book list. Each person’s list, like the idea of utopia or hell, is personal and unique.

But odds are a 100 book list made by a lot of bibliophiles would likely contain gems like:
   Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
   Moby Dick by Herman Melville
   Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
   The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
   Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

These books are reputed to be very tough slogs and there is no definitive guarantee you will turn the last page and feel glad you dived in. In fact, chances are most of these books will be flung across the room well before the last chapter. A lot of them are wilting in bookshelves around the world waiting for a day when the owner inevitably bundles it into the charity box for donation.

When I purchased ‘Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders‘ on 15 November 2013 (for the pricy sum of £2.07) I was not sure what I was in for. All I knew was that I liked Warren’s way of thinking, his approach to business and investing and I wanted to read more from the man directly, not via a biographer or hired hand. I surely would have done a double take if my future self had told me I would take 865 days to finish this thick fat almost 1000 page book.

‘Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders’ is not a book really but a collection of annual letters written by Warren Buffet, the legendary investor and 2nd richest man on Earth. Each year he writes a letter to his shareholders telling them how well (or poorly) Berkshire Hathaway, the company he runs, did. So technically this books, containing 50 letters, from 1965 to 2015, took 50 years to ‘write’. (Amazon automatically updated the kindle version with the letters of the last 2 years, after I purchased the book in 2013. Go Amazon!).

But then saying this book is a collection of annual letters written by Warren Buffett is akin to saying “History is about some important dates”. ‘Letters to Shareholders’ is soooo much much more than just a collection of letters. Through these 50 letters, Buffet talks about the wider investing and business world and touches on a lot of very interesting subjects, giving the reader a solid grounding on many helpful topics that can stand in as 24 Carat practical life lessons.

The book is especially splendid at educating the reader on 3 topics:

1. Investing: Over 50 letters (sermons?) Buffet elaborates on what being a value investor is all about and how to think like a smart value investor. There are books explicitly dedicated to teaching you investing and they fail at it while this £2 book does in effortlessly. Warren talks at length on how to think about investing and then how to act on that thinking. This alone makes this book worth the time needed to read it. I envy the young reader who finishes it before his 25th birthday. He is guaranteed to have a literally richer life than he would otherwise have had, whatever his starting position was weath-wise. Warren’s 2005 letter has a write up on ‘How to minimize investment returns’. What a tour de force that particular one was. As was the 2013 section ‘Some thoughts on investing’.

2. Business: Berkshire Hathaway buys and oversees a boatload of companies and Buffet wades deep into what specific metrics matter when running and evaluating a firm and which are the dubious ones (it’s EBIDTA). There are many colleges around the world, esp. in third world countries , offering dubious 2 year+ MBA and Business Diplomas that fail to do what this one little book does by itself: Give the reader an unbeatable and thorough education in the basics of thinking like a CEO/Businessman.

3. Understanding the Insurance Industry : Berkshire Hathaway at its core is an Insurance firm and as a Consultant currently embedded at one such firm, I could not have hoped for a more comprehensive overview on how to look into and understand the industry and the myriad operators in it. Insurance plays a crucial part in economies globally and the book gives the reader lessons on how to evaluate the health of the industry and a firm in it. Nothing comes close.

So yes, while it took me the better part of 30 months to finish this book end to end, it was only because one should ingest this book slowly and gradually to let the lessons and Buffet’s wisdom sink in, like sand settling at the bottom of a lake. A beach read this book is most definitely not but you know what this book most definitely is : The best £2 I ever spent.

So go on, jump in and climb this Everest of a book . The view from the top is breathtaking.

2015 Movies Review

Back in 2014 I managed to cram in a decent 76 movies into my year.
I told myself at the end of that year I would see MORE in 2015.

I did. I saw 77. 1 more.
Thats right. ONE MORE than 2014.
This is what impartial observers would lament is a case study in “winning in letter but not in spirit”

Still…fair is fair. more is more.

Now as a Project Manager in the Consulting Space, taking a ‘situation’ and analyzing the shit out of it is a skill that comes second only to breathing both in ease and frequency from Monday through Friday. (weekends are for movies)
So that what I am going to do below.
Caveat Emptor : I am doing this for one veteran client : Me. But I am uploading this here so you can see it to get one useful thing from the infograph :

A list of the very best 6 movies from this pool. Of which 61 were extremely watchable.

Games as Portal to Learning – Life Lessons from Video Games

Even now in my late 30s I regularly play games on my Xbox and relish it. Most dismiss it as a silly distraction. But Gamers know just how good, immersive and addictive these new age games are. But even fewer realize how educational video games can be.

Yes. EDUCATIONAL. And not in the vague weasel-politician-word sense but in the real sense the word implies.

Allow me this anecdote to elaborate.

In early 2014 gaming website, Gamespot, released the list of the best XBOX 360 Games reviewed the previous year.

Much to my delight one of the games on that list was part of a series I have thoroughly enjoyed – ASSASSINS CREED. So I promptly purchased the game :

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a historical fiction action-adventure open world stealth video game. Players have praised its massive open world gameplay, numerous side-quests, beautiful graphics and very cool naval combat. The story is set in the early 18th century Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy, and follows notorious pirate Edward Kenway. Unlike previous games, gameplay elements focus more on ship-based exploration in the open world map, while also retaining the series’ third-person land-based exploration, melee combat, and stealth system. The game spans across the Caribbean with the three main cities of Havana, Nassau and Kingston along with numerous islands, sunken ships, and forts. For the first time in the series, naval exploration became a major part of an Assassin’s Creed game, where Edward Kenway captains the Jackdaw, a ship he captures from a Spanish fleet.

I am about 50% into the game and totally absolutely love it. Piracy is so much fun!

There is a sequence about midway into the game story when I found myself swimming to a British ship to kill a bad guy on-board and it was almost sunset in the game. The ship was HUGE and there is a moment, when the light caught the ship as I was swimming to it, capturing it’s full massive frame. For a deliciously brief second or two I understood the shock and awe the new world people must have experienced when they saw these ships off their cost in the 15th century. Like I REALLY got it. It was the most immersive experience I have ever had playing a game and I have been playing them for 15+ years.

Something else I noticed when playing was that the Spanish ships always attacked British ships and vice versa. I got used to seeing these sea battles all the time and remember these are Game A.I controlled which means someone while designing the game programmed this into the game. And I wondered Why…? .

So I looked it up. Turns out in history The Spanish and The British have a LONG history of sparring on the high seas.

Went to GoodReads.com and researched that bit. A book ‘Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy’ has some solid reviews and seemed best poised to answer my question. So I hit the buy button. 56 chapters and 720 pages of naval history awaited me. Niceee! As now I write this blog I just hit chapter 13 : The famous 1588 Battle between the Spanish Armada and British Navy. Its gripping stuff.

The only problem is visualization. The author paints a picture with words of all the ships of the era but it is a bit difficult to visualize correctly. I don’t know the difference between a Caravel, A Galley and a Brig. Makes full immersion difficult. Very luckily, while browsing a BHF charity book-store I stumbled into this Hardcover Gem : ‘Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World‘ by Brian Lavery. Like a Playboy magazine, I didn’t buy it for the content but for the PICTURES. Gorgeous sketches of naval history from the Medieval ages onwards.

The xbox game also got me interested in SHIP BUILDING as an activity since you find yourself constantly using your loot in the game to buy ship upgrades and I wanted to understand that a bit more. And Discovery Channel came to the rescue. The were selling this DVD documentary on ship building : “The World’s Biggest Ship: Building the Triple-E” – The 2 Disc documentary gives you an idea of how the Danish and South Koreans built the world’s most massive ships. And as luck would have it, an hour away from my flat is the best place in Earth to fully quench my thirst for understanding this naval history : The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. IN THE WORLD! Living in London is coincidentally convenient! I am going there soon, after I finish the book, the game and the documentary.

All this, everything you read above, started from one question in the middle of a game : ‘Why are those two ships in the distance sparring?’

So when someone you know starts really getting into gaming don’t just dismiss it as a silly distraction. It could be a portal to so much more.

How to spot Bullshit Marketing

I may not have scraped too much off the passing wisdom iceberg but if asked to dispense something memorable in the here and now, a week into my 37th birthday, here it is :

NEVER TRUST ANY ADVERTISEMENT THAT FEATURES CUTE ANIMALS OR KIDS.

American novelist Sinclair Lewis wryly noted early on that ‘Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.’

In the 21st century most sellers of un-needed goods (and 99% are that) are guilty of the wasteful crime of producing worthless same-as-the-next one-in-the-aisle products. They know this. The ad team they desperately hire to peddle the product knows this. Much more alarmingly for them both, the buyers are catching on.

The real solution of making something genuinely needed and nice is a hard tough route. That’s too much effort. So now the lazy ad team injects a cute baby or a adorable puppy, hoping the idiot consumer (that’s YOU by the way) is distracted enough by the ‘awwww‘ feeling long enough to reach into his purse and hand over the money. The only time this rule is invalid is when the end user of the product is an actual baby or puppy.

Ads like these are an immediate insulting inadvertent revelation by the seller and her ad team of how little they all think of your general intelligence. For the ad is obliquely saying that a list of real benefits or features won’t convince you as much as a aww prop. Or maybe when they don’t have any REAL benefits or distinguishing feature, this shameful tactic is EVEN more useful.

The next time you see these type of bullshit ads, don’t fall for it.

Why I lost faith in interviews and resumes

Paul Graham is a programmer, writer, and famous investor and this blog on Start Up Ideas was a terrific read. Here is a sample gem : “One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we’ll seem backward to future generations.”

“…..Ways in which we’ll seem backward to future generations” If you ever wanted to get into business on your own you could spend a whole summer mind-mapping ideas just from that phrase. Now how about we modify it to be more contemporary in the here and now ? Like how about “Ways in which this X practice will seem backward to people from that Y Country over there?”

Example : In London, if you have an Oyster Card you can travel on any public train, tube, bus, tram within city limits. Idea is self obviously smart and logical. But if you went to Delhi you cannot use the Metro Card anywhere else in the city. Seems so backward once one has used an oyster. This situation gives flesh to a famous quote by Gibson : THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE. IT’S JUST NOT VERY EVENLY DISTRIBUTED.

Now take Resumes and Interviews. I am going to bet that we’ll seem backward to future generations about this, This inane, needlessly convoluted and very artificial process. A resume is a piece of paper, composed by the author, with information cherry picked by the author, given to a future employer who cannot ever verify ALL the data in it. It’s like someone asking you to buy a Car/TV/toy using only and only the brochure for information about the object. No peeking anywhere else for data!

This whole thing is in massive need of re-engineering or even outright elimination. An interview is a short, tightly controlled, unnaturally stressed process to find out if the interviewee can perform certain tasks over the next 2000 to 10000 to 20000 hours with the employer/interviewer. This is how the majority get selected into white collar desk jobs in most parts of the world. But I for one continue to lose faith due to poor correlation of success in interview and role, from my own experience interviewing 500+ people till date.

There HAS GOT to be a better way. If only I knew what it was. I don’t. So I continue to interview.

How did this blog start

Meeting the Freight Train of Reality

The belated epiphany

In Summary

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Explaining the AntiLibrary

Book Recommendations

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A list of the very best 6 movies from this pool. Of which 61 were extremely watchable.

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