Mind Tavern Edition 13
Welcome to the 13th 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 your social networks if you liked it :)
Some personal news first: I have moved to Bengaluru for my first post-MBA stint at Flipkart. That is why I have been quite busy with the moving shenanigans and with everyone returning to the city after a while, almost at the same time, house rents have gone through the roof, partly because of the artificial scarcity created by the brokers. The city is a perfect example of what would happen if you leave public infrastructure in the hands of private players. It is so poorly planned that any SPA student would get into depression within an hour of roaming around this nightmare of a city. But at the same time, the coffee here is so good, and the weather makes it even better. I will have a few threads on food recommendations if you are also new to the city.
Spotify and Emotional Design
Don Norman (author of Design of Everyday Things) talks about the fact that even the simplest of tools, whether digital or physical, have an emotional signal, which makes it pertinent that they make a connection with the user to make it valuable to her. Spotify uses it quite beautifully with its visceral, reflective and behavioural design, to create “Made for you” playlists for every user which tend to match their self-described unique and weird tastes. Read here.
Visceral design concerns itself with appearance – it is the user’s initial reaction or first impression to a design. This practise reflects the Aesthetic Usability Effect well, one of the 7 Laws of UX, which states:
“Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable. An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually works better.”
Almost any time we talk to a user, they end up telling us some variation of, “My taste in music is so weird. I like a little of this, a little of that, and something completely different.” Great personalized playlists reflect every user’s uniquely weird tastes, make them feel like they have a home on Spotify, and hopefully help them broaden their horizons even further.
Greatness and Pain
This lovely piece by Sandeep Dvivedi talks about a number of legends who pushed through the pain and medical constraints to become what they are today. From Roger Bannister, Lionel Messi, Sachin Tendulkar to Rafael Nadal, there are countless stories of how these individuals refused to downsize their ambitions in the face of tear-inducing painful, career-threatening setbacks. Read here.
Away from the world of the mollycoddled, are sporting arenas, the home of hardened men and women. Their idea of a satisfying day of training would mean coughing blood after a workout and getting dizzy with pain in the limbs. On top of their pyramid are those with higher pain-thresholds and the capacity to keep returning to these torture chambers with unbridled enthusiasm. They are those for whom life is an unending 24-hour cycle of first getting their bodies battered and recovering in time to get battered. All done willingly, with gusto. While on this punishing schedule, they log those proverbial 10,000 hours to be masters of their craft and get hailed as gifted geniuses by the world.
With the winds howling and rain drops getting larger, Bannister, while on the train, was tempted to postpone his attempt at making history. It was then that his Aussie coach Franz Stampfl cleared his clouded mind. “If there is only a half-good chance, you may never forgive yourself for missing it,” he said before uttering the magical words that would ring through time. “You will feel pain, but what’s pain?”
Monopolisation of Pop Culture
What was the last original movie, tv show, video game or book you liked? The answer most likely would get you to scratch your head for a response. The entertainment industry is increasingly becoming a winner takes us all phenomenon, with the bigger players taking the major chunk of the pie. This essay makes a case that consolidation, innovation and invasion of big players explain this on the supply side. Demand side on the other hand is suffering from the flood of content available on every platform which has started to confuse the consumer who more often than not has no time or incentive to put in some effort to try new players when he can choose something that he knows would provide an expected level of quality. Read here.
Short Economic History of America post the World Wars
This was a lovely read. Morgan Housel (author of Psychology of Money) in his usual easy-to-understand style talks about the evolution of the country’s consumerist economy in the last 60-70 years. It starts from the birth of the American consumer in the early 1950s with ultra-cheap credit which became a template for the rest of the world to follow and goes all the way to the rapid yet unequal economic growth in the 21st century. It reinforces the points by providing ample numbers and statistics which makes it a long but very enriching read. Check it out here.
Paul Graham wrote in 2016 about what something as simple as there only being three TV stations did to equalize culture: It’s difficult to imagine now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the same time, as their next door neighbors. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. We were literally in sync.
A central theme of this story is that expectations move slower than reality on the ground. That was true when people clung to 1950s expectations as the economy changed over the next 35 years. And even if a middle-class boom began today, expectations that the odds are stacked against everyone but those at the top may stick around.
Liverpool and Math
In the past few years, Liverpool has easily been one of the best-attacking lineups in Europe. This is a nice deep dive into how the Data Science unit at the club has used math and data models have helped them with every aspect of the game, from preparing for the game to getting the best value out of the transfer market. Read here.
By leveraging imaging data and video feeds, it is possible to understand how a given game is evolving in terms of patterns of space, and then communicating to the players where to focus their energy. Think of Spock communicating to Captian Klopp, “The fullback is tiring and space is opening up between him and the center back, on average he is covering around 0.75 square meters less as the game gets longer. That’s where we attack between 85–90mins.” This is Peter Krawietz’s job during half time at Liverpool. He provides the team with half-time video analysis.
Something very cool: Wakefit’s Indian welcome for Ikea
Ikea launched its new city centre in Bengaluru with a huge fanfare this week. Wakefit welcomed the Swedish behemoth by putting out a lovely tongue-in-cheek front page ad that subtly markets the brand proposition and provides a gentle burn to go with. Even though the creative was brilliant, Wakefit still has miles to go to wash away its strong association with just being a mattress brand.
Something beautiful: Fireflies lighting up a forest in India
A magical moment in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was captured a few weeks back by Sriram Murali. The author describes the event very nicely here along with a bunch of unreal images. Read more here.
Through a combination of moving image and time-lapse photography, Murali recorded countless specimens amidst the trees as they produce glowing pulses, which relay across the forest in expansive, wave-like signals. The color, brightness, and length of the light emitted is specific to each species, and as a part of the insects’ mating display, it helps males and females to recognize one another. Darkness is a necessary ingredient in the success of this ritual.
A book you should check out: Anthropocene Reviewed
This lovely book by John Greene was one of my most enjoyable reads this year. This book consists of a bunch of reviews of things, places and entities of the human age referencing them with his personal life stories traversing through loneliness, human connections, mental health, living through the pandemic and so on. These accounts would make you smile, think and cry, often at the same time. As everything is rated in the book, I rate it 4.5/5.
But football is theater, and fans make it musical theater. The anthem of West Ham United is called Forever Blowing Bubbles, and at the start of each game, you’ll see thousands of grown adults blowing bubbles from the stands as they sing, I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air / They fly so high, nearly reach the sky / Then like my dreams, they fade and die.
One of the things that makes smell so powerful, of course, is its connection to memory. Helen Keller wrote that smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived.
But at sunset, the light travels through the atmosphere longer before it reaches us, so that much of the blue and purple has been scattered away, leaving the sky to our eyes rich in reds and pinks and oranges. As the artist Tacita Dean put it, Color is a fiction of light.
Thread(s) of the Week
This hilarious thread on people offering suggestions to remove a nested ceramic bowl stuck inside a bigger bowl is pure internet gold.
Bengaluru thread: This one has a list of 32 small hole in the wall breakfast style places in the city. If you want to trek, this has a list of 11 treks that you can do over weekends.
Throwback to this Oraclesque Monica Halan thread on Cryptos, where she calls the mad rush, Limited Supply of Nothing.
The Internet is beautiful.
Fun stuff for you to discover!
Tip of my tongue: This nifty little tool helps you track down that word.
The afterlife of the hotel soap: This story takes us through the journey of the bathing bar along with a business proposition that tries to solve the massive waste problem.
A nice infographic visualising CEO pay in the US. This data should be viewed in the light of shareholders in many companies voting against the massive compensation of major companies like Amazon, Intel, and JPMorgan.
A bunch of Excel designing tips and tricks to make your next spreadsheet exciting and fun to look at.
A hidden book art form that you have probably never seen before Fascinating.
A beautiful poem written with the contribution of teenagers around the world. Lovely little bits in there.
This is wonderful: royal frogs, masquerading lemurs, and florals with human faces are just some of the eccentric characters in this acclaimed illustrator Bill Mayer’s gouache paintings work.
A giant sinkhole in China has led us to a fascinating discovery of a giant living forest 200m inside. Scientists are hoping to find some new species of flora and fauna in this hidden wonder.
Trivia Corner: Athena and Medusa
I am here in Bengaluru and our commuting bus is gloriously titled Athena which gave me the idea of telling you all a story of victim-blaming going back to the Greek Mythology.
So back in the day (in the story), Medusa was the most beautiful woman on the planet. She was described by Homer as “She had stunning golden hair, with perfect ringlets framing her beautiful face. Her features were in perfect symmetry, her lips red like the purest wine.” Naturally she had many suitors but she resisted everyone but one of them she couldn’t. Poseidon, the god of the Sea, wanted to have her desperately and was repeatedly rejected by Medusa.
One day, she was at the temple of Athena to offer her prayers and Poseidon confronted her, asking her hand for marriage. The rejection was not handled well by the mighty god and he forcefully had his way with her in the very temple. This enraged Athena and since she couldn’t punish Poseidon, she cursed Medusa that anyone who catches the gaze of the maiden will turn into stone. Her stunning hair fell off and numerous poisonous snakes took their place.
Our history and mythology are filled with stories of oppression like these where the blame is unequally fixed upon the woman. This is why it is pertinent to read the stories of glorious gods with a pinch of salt.