Mind Tavern, Edition #1
Welcome to the very first edition of Mind Tavern. Thank you for subscribing to this free newsletter, I don't intend to capture any data, but do consider sharing it on social networks if you like it! Let’s dive write in.
The women in the Constituent Assembly
As we near International Women’s Day, it is only fair that we start with this lovely story by Priyadarshini Ravichandran about the 15 women in the hall drafting our constitution. These women often written about barely in the footnotes made immense contributions in their own right. Read here.
One of the most remarkable women here was Dakshayani Velayudhan. At 34, being one of the youngest members of the Assembly, she was also the only Dalit woman to be elected. She is known for leading a number of caste upheaval movements in Kerala in the early 20th century.
Do we really need Web 3.0 Solutions?
Amidst the hype around NFTs and the internet of the grift, Ed Ziltron takes a stock of the reality in the smoke of web 3.0. He makes a case against NFTs in this detailed article, going down to its bare bones. Read here.
In another of his brilliant pieces last week, he talks about how the crypto industry has given rise to a conveyor belt of extremely-poorly realised dreams trapping people gunning for shortcuts to wealth that it vaguely promises. Read here.
It is an oligarchy masquerading as a meritocracy (or a utopia), where the rich have built mechanisms to increase the value of their assets, drumming the desperate into a frenzy of people looking to become one of the rich months (or years) after that was possible. Celebrities like Lindsey Lohan aren’t joining because they care about art or NFTs or crypto – they are intentionally capitalizing on a frothy market that’s purpose-built to screw over the investor. It is built to overvalue assets that come from a famous person, just as the regular art investment world is, but with even less tangible goods and more chances to get utterly, irreversibly screwed.
If the core value proposition is that something is unique, it can’t be easily copied - and when it is copied, it needs to have an easy and obvious differentiator between the copy and the real one. And when all that’s said and done, the original should have more value than the copy on a qualitative level - an artist’s signature, a watermark, particular stitching, the quality of the original and even if you have all of that, something being unique does not automatically grant it quality. NFTs operate on the principle that being one-of-a-kind grants something value by default. Constantly repeating that an industry is “valuable” because of this is intentionally misleading - most art isn’t valuable, and most NFTs aren’t either.
Covid and the lost periods of time
Tim Urban (of the Waitbutwhy fame), in this guest essay for the NYTimes, visualises how the pandemic has robbed us of moments that are rare, often happening only once in a person’s life. Losing years in colleges and schools to missing parenthood, everyone around us has felt a sense of despair of this kind. Read here.
But perhaps the hardest math to process — and, in turn, the hardest Covid pill to swallow — has to do with our relationships. I grew up spending some time with my parents almost every day. Since turning 19 and moving away for good, I’ve averaged about 10 to 15 days a year with them. If I’m one of the lucky ones, I’ll have quality time with my parents until I’m 60. That means that the day I headed off to college, I had something like 350 remaining parent days total — the amount of time I had with them every year of my childhood.
Unseen impact of the pandemic on school dropouts
This extensive investigative report by Scroll’s Johanna Deeksha shows us the stark reality of disrupted education due to Covid. Primarily due to lack of resources and unimaginable levels of income and digital literacy, dropout rates have shot up, students who were supposed to come back after lockdowns never really came back.
According to data presented by the education ministry in the parliament, 30 million students did not possess a digital device during the pandemic. In Jammu and Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh, 70% of the students did not possess one during this period.
Azim Premji University, Bengaluru conducted a study in January 2021 to analyse the learning losses that students had suffered due to the long-drawn break from physical classes. The study covered 16,067 children in 1,137 public schools in 44 districts across 5 states. The study found that 92% of these students had lost at least one language ability, such as reading with comprehension and writing simple sentences based on a picture. It also found that during the pandemic, 82% of the students had lost at least one mathematical ability, such as using basic arithmetic operations to solve problems.
The thrilling lives of Hummingbirds
This beautiful essay was written almost 15 years back by Robert Doyle, a person who seems to be in love with life and sees wonder in the simplest of things around us. This short piece was deeply moving and touched me personally. You should definitely read this with a cup of coffee to get a moment of peace. Read here.
Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine.
There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.
For the Studio Ghibli fans out there
“Almost too beautiful to be true”, is how most of us would describe Miyazaki’s genius. Take a peek inside how that mind works. Read here.
“Miyazaki doesn’t shy away from the difficulties in life,” says the curator, referencing the brutality in many of his films which comes in the shape of raging wars, disease and grief. So in this way, the curation – an amalgamation of nature, nostalgia, industry and technology – is a testament to how the director trusts his young viewers to embrace the rough with the smooth.
A visual story on how a book is made
Take a peek inside the process of how a word document gets converted into thousands of paperback books with luminous enchanting covers. Read here.
A book you should check out
This particular book was recommended to me by a friend of mine who has been doing quite well in the field for the last few years, so it made sense to take her word for the quality of the book. Don’t make me think, written more than 2 decades back by Steve Krug, talks about the key principles of web usability, good design and how these things are technology and generation ambivalent. This is why most of the fundamentals have remained relevant even in 2022.
If you’re not going to use an existing Web convention, you need to be sure that what you’re replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve—so it’s as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve.
The human brain’s capacity doesn’t change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behavior have a very long shelf life. What was difficult for users twenty years ago continues to be difficult today.
Ignore “kayak” problems. In any test, you’re likely to see several cases where users will go astray momentarily but manage to get back on track almost immediately without any help. It’s kind of like rolling over in a kayak; as long as the kayak rights itself quickly enough, it’s all part of the so-called fun.
Thread of the week
While we have been reeling with the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine with Russian troops wreaking havoc, this thread rounds up how strangers on the internet turn up on such occasions to restore our faith in humanity and reason. From TikTok to Wikipedia edits, everyone is trying to help the people under siege.
Internet is Beautiful
A very interesting project published by Global Media Monitoring Project delves deep into how women are talked about in the news across global publications. This study analyses close to 400k headlines in the last 15 years and came up with this set of beautiful visualisation to give stunning insights into the biases and prejudices of the newsrooms around the world. Check it out here.
Trivia Corner: Locker Loops
This innocuous element of our formal shirts never really catches anyone’s fancy but it has an interesting story of origin as well. According to Southern Living, this may have been the origin of these back-of-shirt loops: "sailors didn't have closets to hang their shirts, so their clothing was outfitted with loops so that they could simply slide onto a hook on the wall."
Thereon a famous clothing manufacturer called GANT started making these kinds of additions on their shirts for their customers, mostly Ivy league students who started calling them locker loops. And where they went, these loops followed and soon they became a norm. Later, the loops became more a part of the collegiate culture, when men would remove the loops as a sign that their relationship status had changed and they were taken. Potential new girlfriends had to wait until the guy broke up with his present girlfriend and bought a new shirt.
From the sailors to the locker rooms of Ivy league colleges, today these locker loops have become a symbol of high quality across major brands.
Stay safe, and keep exploring! And if you liked the newsletter, thank you, and maybe consider sharing it? My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.