Mind Tavern, Edition #2
Welcome to the 2nd 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.
Farewell Warney, you magnificent beast!
This was a sad week, with the cricketing world losing another one of its stalwarts at the early age of 52. What a remarkable life he had both on and off the field. Jarrod Kimber gives a lovely tribute in this heartfelt piece. Read here.
Shane Warne brought back legspin. He brought back flippers. He changed cricket's language. He lit up Boxing Day. And cricket had its first rockstar spinner.
But he's not facing a normal bowler, and this isn't a regular delivery. The angle of this is unlike what you face from anyone else. It's like the ball is being delivered from cover. And it goes in front of Strauss' legs and hits the stumps behind his back.
If you pause at the moment he is bowled, he is not just playing the wrong shot, but it appears like he's playing an entirely different sport.
Invasion of Ukraine: Context and Aftermath
Johnny Harris has published a story on the subject with his usual meticulous detail and info visual brilliance, with a focus on the geopolitics of the region. If you are curious about the subject, check out this brilliant article on the subject by Tomas Pueyo. A fabulous book a book by Tim Marshall called Prisoners of Geography is your starting point if you are interested in how geographies dictate the phrase, “History repeats itself.”
Yuval Noah Harari, in his trademark style of explaining complex and long historical events in a succinct way, tries to make a case that Putin has already lost the war in his quest for regional hegemony. Read it here.
Are the days of ‘Googling’ over?
This post delves into the paradigm shift which dictates how Reddit is becoming the most popular search engine for non-factual information as Google gets increasingly bogged down by ads, forced SEO, and AI (when Google doesn’t give you results for what you want, but what it thinks you want.) Read here.
There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory. The claim is basically that most of the internet is bots. There aren’t real people here anymore.
TLDR: Large proportions of the supposedly human-produced content on the internet are actually generated by artificial intelligence networks in conjunction with paid secret media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly-normalised cultural products.
Here is Paul Graham attesting to the same.
The Original idea of shopping malls
Victor Gruen's legacy carries on in new ways. Learning about the creator of the mall and how art was integral to his initial concept is well worth your time. Read here.
The Gruen Transfer is the generalized desire to shop. It’s the effect of feeling lost in a mall, amplifying the likelihood of impulse purchase. In the macro, the concept is synonymous with a consumer’s desire to spend time in a mall or walk a street of storefronts. It’s shopping for the sake of shopping. Except, Gruen didn’t want it this way at all.
The mall’s architect, Victor Gruen, designed the building to mimic Vienna’s outdoor squares, with plants hanging from the balconies and plenty of space for people to mingle. In the atrium, there was a fish pond, large faux trees, and a 21-foot cage filled with birds.
Another related story on how dying malls in this day and age can be repurposed into something entirely different. Read here.
Long Distance Thinking
Another excellent, thought-provoking post by Simon Sarris, making a case for what he calls ‘long distance thinking’. Sarris believes we’re becoming too reliant on ‘over-summary’, of boiling down knowledge to just a few simple sound bites that appeal to our lives filled with busyness; and by doing so, we miss the nuance and depth required to make sound decisions The firefighting policy in California is a great example.
In the 1930’s, the US government saw an enormous opportunity. By leveraging the latest technologies, for the first time it seemed possible to extinguish even the smallest and remotest fires.
By the 1960s, it was apparent that no new giant sequoia had grown in California forests, because fire is an essential part of their lifecycle. Fires also had utility in timber production—they clear understory, allowing more valuable timber stock to grow. And in dry climates like the western US, with an absence of fire, flammable material simply accumulates, creating more dangerous situations years later.
“By constant simplifying, we may be lulled into abridging our own ideas a little too much, and sooner or later our audience – or ourselves – might come to expect only these truncated thoughts. What is easy to explain is not necessarily what is best. What is easy to understand is not necessarily what is true.”
The futility of Ted talks: A look into the inspiresting!
At this point, we all must have watched hundreds of Ted Talks with awe and a tinge of inspiration. But have we thought how many of those futuristic ideas actually do end up making a difference? Benjamin Bratton feels that the rhetorical style TED has helped popularise is “middlebrow megachurch Infotainment.” This long read takes a look into the same, going back to the original ideas of the founder Richard Wurman, and Chris Anderson who owns the enterprise now. Read here.
In it (his guide to successful TED talks), Anderson insists anyone is capable of giving a TED-esque talk. You just need an interesting topic and then you need to attach that topic to an inspirational story. Robots are interesting. Using them to eat trash in Nairobi is inspiring. Put the two together, and you have a TED talk.
Stylistically, the inspiresting is earnest and contrived. It is smart but not quite intellectual, personal but not sincere, jokey but not funny. It is an aesthetic of populist elitism. Politically, the inspiresting performs a certain kind of progressivism, as it is concerned with making the world a better place, however vaguely. “The speaker’s work and words move you and fill you with an expanded sense of possibility and excitement,” Anderson writes
TED’s influence on intellectual culture was “taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing,” Bratton said. “This is not the solution to our most frightening problems — rather, this is one of our most frightening problems.”
Something beautiful: Doll Houses in 1983
In 1983 Architectural Design Magazine launched a competition for architects to design a doll house. Some very pretty designs in this.
A book you should check out
This book was sitting in my library for over a year but never got around to reading it. But once I started reading Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, I couldn’t put it down. What a roller coaster ride of a book! He takes us through the horrifying period of Apartheid South Africa through the eye of enterprising teenagers. The stories are told beautifully and make you think about how perceptions shape the reality around us. The last chapter of the book about his mother left me emotionally drenched as well. Do read.
When apartheid came, colored people defied easy categorization, so the system used them quite brilliantly to sow confusion, hatred, and mistrust. For the purposes of the state, colored people became the almost-whites. They were second-class citizens, denied the rights of white people but given special privileges that black people didn’t have, just to keep them holding out for more. Afrikaners used to call them amperbaas: the almost-boss. The almost-master. You’re almost there. You’re so close. You’re this close to being white. Pity your grandfather couldn’t keep his hands off the chocolate, eh?
That’s what apartheid did: It convinced every group that it was because of the other race that they didn’t get into the club. It’s basically the bouncer at the door telling you, We can’t let you in because of your friend Darren and his ugly shoes. So you look at Darren and say, Screw you, Black Darren. You’re holding me back. Then when Darren goes up, the bouncer says, No, it’s actually your friend Sizwe and his weird hair. So Darren says, Screw you, Sizwe, and now everyone hates everyone. But the truth is that none of you were ever getting into that club.
Thread(s) of the week
This week I will give you not one but two threads.
The first one is a Twitter thread shared to be my good friend Karthikeya Ramesh (Check out his fantastic blog, Abstract Opinion here.)This has a number of generations defying stats and graphs. My personal favourite is the graph that shows that cost lab-grown meat is challenging Moore’s law as prices keep dropping. Check it out here.
We have all heard that after the shale oil revolution, the US is now the largest producer of crude oil, despite that the country still imports close to 20 per cent of its domestic demand. Why so? Short answer: Refining capacities in the US are built for heavier kinds of crude, while the domestic sources produce a lighter type called WTI. For more details and other reasons check out this ELI5 thread here.
Internet is Beautiful
Fun stuff for you to click on
In case you are out in the sea, keep an eye out for a ship that drowned last week carrying more than 4000 luxury cars of brands like Porsche and Bentley.
Very interesting data on how Covid has impacted our sleeping patterns and waking up times. One of the findings, Indians woke up an hour later in 2020.
A short 10 min heartfelt comic on creativity by Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal).
Hyperphyicality is a thing now. Check it out here.
This fascinating Architecture of Music Series takes a look at the interiors of musical instruments. Some of them are astounding.
Trivia Corner: How Aqua Regia Saved Nobel Prizes from the Nazis
Although, being first mentioned 700 years back in the Latin tales of certain entrepreneurial individuals searching for Gold through alchemy, Aqua Regia’s true moment of fame and glory came in Neils Bohrs Institute in Denmark during WW 2.
This is 1940, and Hitler’s forces have invaded the country and are fast approaching the institute, where a chemist George de Hevesy had a problem – in his lab he had two Nobel prize medals, smuggled out of Germany on behalf of Max von Laue and James Franck. De Hevesy acted quickly, submerging the medals in an aqua regia solution and allowing them to dissolve on a shelf out of reach. When the Nazis entered the lab, they walked right by the beaker, assuming it was unimportant. Surprisingly, when de Hevesy returned after the war, he discovered the beaker in perfect condition.
To his great surprise, de Hevesy returned to the lab following the war to find the flask of aqua regia just as he had left it. The chemist reversed the reaction and extracted the gold. The Nobel Committee recast the medals for von Laue and Franck and at a ceremony at the University of Chicago on January 31, 1952, Professor Franck was reunited with his Nobel medal. Read here.
Bonus fact: Niels Bohr also had a Nobel medal, but he'd put his up for auction on March 12, 1940, to raise money for Finnish Relief.