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Ultrafast delivery aged like milk

Good morning! Is BTS’ ongoing concert in Busan the last live performance as a group? For the foreseeable future, says Bloomberg. The gig is BTS’ first since it announced a hiatus for its seven members to focus on their solo careers. Oldest member Jin is due for conscription, or mandatory military service, for South Korea. The group is so hallowed that the country had passed a ‘BTS Law’ raising the conscription age for K-pop idols from 28 to 30. But some lawmakers are now pushing for a permanent exemption.

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🎧 Few want to visit Meta’s Horizon Worlds, but everyone’s flocked to what could be BTS’ last concert in a long time. The Signal Daily is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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The Market Signal*

As of 7:00 pm IST*

Stocks: It’s not only the Party Congress in China that the world is keenly watching. The world’s second-largest economy will release its third-quarter GDP growth data on Monday.

Meanwhile, the UK, which has a new finance minister after Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked 38 days into the job, is expected to announce a revival plan for the economy. New chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt has hinted that tax hikes are in the offing.

Several big-ticket earnings announcements, including those of Bank of America, Netflix, Hasbro, Tesla, Goldman Sachs, and Blackstone are also lined up this week. Among Indian majors, ACC, Tata Coffee, Reliance Industries, Hindustan Unilever, and ICICI Bank will unveil their quarterly performances this week.

Early Asia: The Nikkei 225, Hang Seng and the Nifty on Singapore Stock Exchange were awash in red at 7:30am India time.

QUICK COMMERCE

Ultrafast Delivery Is On Its Last Legs

Instant or 10-minute deliveries were the talk of the town this time last year. Cut to October 2022, the chill has truly set in. Several companies are struggling, have gone out of business, scaled down, or shut operations in key markets.

Whammies: A funding winter, coupled with a questionable business model, means companies that failed to raise the money they need to keep burning have found few takers. It doesn’t help that impulse buying is ceding to regimented shopping in an inflationary environment.

Consolidation is also in the air. Take Zomato and Blinkit, and Germany’s Gorillas now looking to sell to Turkish unicorn Getir.

Reality check: Instacart, the US’ largest online-grocery delivery company, has shelved IPO plans and slashed its valuation for the third time in a year to about $13 billion.

HEALTHCARE

No One’s Guzzling This Gas

The Covid-induced ramp-up in oxygen capacity has morphed into a problem of plenty. Business Standard reports that India now has a daily oxygen supply of 20,000 tonnes per day (tpd), versus the current demand of approximately 1,300 tpd.

Breakneck buildup: The deadly Delta variant of Covid catalysed a monumental buildup in national oxygen capacity, with hospitals investing in more liquid medical oxygen (LMO) and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants. But the drop in active Covid cases and facilities means that medical facilities are now grappling with PSA plants that are either idle, ill-maintained, or breaking down.

What now?: Hospitals are either running plants just to keep them functional, or blending LMO and PSA in desired concentrations to administer to patients. Oxygen manufacturers have gone back to prioritising industrial demands.

CHINA

More Belligerence In Store

If the number of mentions is any indication, national security is going to be China’s topmost priority in the next five years. Chinese president and Communist Party of China (CPC) general secretary Xi Jinping mentioned “safety” or “security” 73 times in his speech to the 2,300 delegates at the start of the CPC’s 20th Party Congress in the Great Hall of the People.

Done with reforms?: At the 19th Party Congress in 2017, Xi had mentioned “reforms” 70 times, and it remained high on the national agenda until now. It included a crackdown on edtech, consumer tech, entertainment, and private wealth.

The Signal

Xi’s China has shown the determination to endure short-term pain—economic, public health, and political—in the quest for CPC’s version of an equitable and stable society. In his almost-certain third term, Xi could set the country on a path of increasing conflict with the West.

Xi has repeatedly reaffirmed his resolve to unify Taiwan with China. His opening remarks suggest it will step up the pace of militarisation.

Much depends on the economy and state wealth. Xi has unambiguously indicated that the CPC and state enterprises will receive the highest priority. The economy has been badly bruised by Xi’s zero-Covid policy, western trade hostility, and a global slowdown. China has, however, indicated a willingness to live with slower growth but not waver from long-term goals. The Party Congress will elect the new leadership, which will navigate the country through this period.

PODCASTS

Does Platform Exclusivity Work?

Rather, is it working for Spotify? The answer seems to be no.

Context: Earlier this month, Spotify cancelled 11 originals by Gimlet and Parcast. This created a flutter not only because of the popularity of some cancelled shows, but also Gimlet’s own reckoning with a terrible work environment and union-busting. The acclaimed studio also suffered listenership decline and chaos ever since it was acquired by Spotify—and became part of its walled garden—in 2019.

Spotify’s exclusivity strategy hasn’t worked because, unlike video streaming consumers, listeners are less likely to switch apps to listen to podcasts. Even Joe Rogan wasn’t immune, having lost some impact since he migrated to Spotify.

And yet, Spotify continues adopting a video-streaming approach to its podcast slate by recasting and cancelling podcasts seasonally.

GAMING

Call Of Duty: Godzilla Vs. King Kong

This isn’t the latest series in the blockbuster gaming franchise, but a reference to the Microsoft-Sony powwow over the former’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King (ABK). The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had launched an investigation into the nearly-$70 billion deal. It’s now headed to phase two (pdf) despite Microsoft’s rebuttal (pdf) that the CMA is toeing Sony’s line.

Why this matters: The CMA is one of several regulators in Microsoft’s way and can potentially scupper the biggest ever gaming deal. In focus is ABK’s first-person shooter Call Of Duty, a major revenue driver for Sony and other rivals. Microsoft downplayed its influence, but the antitrust body noted that Game Pass—and all gaming subscription services for that matter—are platforms unto themselves, and that any exclusivity to Microsoft, console or no console, would be anticompetitive.

The kicker, however, is that Sony itself hasn’t shied from exclusivity, as Protocol reports.

FYI

Government spin: Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman defended the rupee’s 8% slide this year, saying it’s because of the “dollar strengthening incessantly”.

Historic contest: One of Mallikarjun Kharge or Shashi Tharoor will today be elected as the Indian National Congress’ first non-Gandhi party president after nearly 25 years.

About-face: Rupert Murdoch wants to merge two parts of his media empire, Fox and News Corp, nearly a decade after they split up.

Data privacy: Jay Solomon, a former reporter with The Wall Street Journal, has accused US law firm Dechert of working with Indian hackers to remove him from his job and soil his reputation.

Emptyverse: Almost a year after Facebook rebranded to Meta, the company’s flagship metaverse offering, Horizon Worlds, is grappling with glitchy technology and uninterested users.

Wildlife diplomacy: India is considering a proposal from Sri Lanka to translocate at least six Indian bisons in a bid to reintroduce them to the island nation after three centuries.

Legal trouble: Metaverse real-estate company Everyrealm is facing two lawsuits from former directors who allege they faced discrimination and harassment.

THE DAILY DIGIT

$30 billion

That’s ₹2.5 lakh crore, which is how much the Confederation of All India Traders estimates will be pumped into the economy thanks to this year’s festive-season sales (Livemint).

FWIW

Truss fund: There are bookies for everything in the UK, even for betting on whether UK PM Elizabeth Truss’ term will outlast… unrefrigerated lettuce. British tabloid Daily Star has launched a live feed of wet lettuce next to a photo of Truss, whose recent decisions stoked doubts over whether she has the confidence of her own party. In case you’re wondering, the odds are in the lettuce’s favour.

Nicki the bully: Is Nicki Minaj a #40YearOldBully? That’s what rising star Latto—and everyone but the Barbz (aka Nicki stans)—seem to think. It started when Minaj criticised the Grammys for categorising her song ‘Super Freaky Girl’ as pop, while newcomer Latto’s ‘Big Energy’ was categorised as rap. A Twitter fight ensued. Music fans are now calling out an insecure Nicki for using the Barbz to bully her critics. Not a good look, Nicki.

Pet project: Sandy and Muick are doing alright. Those are Queen Elizabeth’s much-beloved corgis, who’ve been with Sarah Ferguson ever since the monarch passed away. While Ferguson—the Duchess of York and ex-wife of Prince Andrew—is caring for the duo, it’s unknown who’s caring for the former queen’s other dogs, cocker spaniel Lissy and Candy, the corgi-dachshund hybrid.

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Future perfect

Good morning! A big hello to readers who signed up this week. Welcome to The Intersection, The Signal's weekend edition. This Saturday, we have an opinion piece on how changing the way we arrive at decisions could turn the odds in our favour. Hint: Think long-term. Also in today’s edition: we have curated the best weekend reads for you.

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We are on the far side of a pandemic, preparing for a global climate change conference that is likely to be contentious even as a recession tightens its grip on the global economy. The fear of an uncertain future breeds short-term survival strategies. Just getting to the next day feels like victory, a feeling we collectively experienced during the pandemic.

But weighing too much on the now can cause problems. We know how quarterly earnings pressure skews executives’ incentives and drives them to make bad decisions. Good decision-making asks for more.

Be it climate policy, personal finance, or fitness, the defining lens that explains the multiple problems we face in achieving desired goals is the one most of us know about, but can’t always execute: long-term thinking. Or to be more specific, thinking about long-term risks.

I will explain how. Let’s start with some historical context.

The idea of risk is rooted in the study of probabilities. This began in the 17th century as French mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat started calculating chances for dice games. That was the time betting on dice was considered a sin. God decided everything, including the number a roll of the dice would throw. So, playing with (and making money off) the almighty’s wish was blasphemy.

The duo—and those who followed—unknowingly led a revolution and changed the way we think about the future. The emergence of the risk-centric worldview is the defining boundary between past and present, Peter Bernstein wrote in Against the Gods, a remarkable book on the history of risk. It told the world that the “future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature”. In other words, we can put the “future at the service of the present” by understanding and measuring risk.

How do we do this?

By systematically and mathematically guessing what the future holds: describe everything that might happen in the future, assign a probability to each outcome, and use that to make decisions.

Nothing is guaranteed, though. It only raises the odds of things working out the way we want. This idea lies at the heart of financial markets. If you buy stocks and insurance, you know the game.

But translating this idea into everyday decision-making is hard. It requires the ability to think in the long term, and the ability to think probabilistically. Neither comes naturally to us.

Humans discount the future. Immediate rewards appear more appealing (pdf) than rewards far away in the future, even if they are better. We fall for instant gratification. Brain imaging studies offer another explanation: we don’t actually think about ourselves when we think of our future; we imagine a stranger. So we don’t care enough as we do for ourselves today. It costs us, and society too.

Adopting this frame shows why we struggle to solve critical global problems such as climate change, why most of us don’t factor aging well when thinking about fitness, and why we make poor investment decisions.

Climate change

Energy scientist Vaclav Smil's prescription for tackling the existential crisis of climate change is this: reduce net global carbon emissions to zero by 2050 and then go negative.

We don't necessarily need total decarbonisation, he says— “net zero” or “carbon neutrality” would do, meaning we can continue to use existing fossil-burning energy sources and balance it by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its permanent underground storage. The problem is the scale and complexity needed for carbon sequestration, since we are yet to develop a widespread and widely agreed-upon method to enable it.

If we put our minds to work and work cooperatively, we can build a better future. But we are failing. And Smil’s diagnosis is our collective inability to think of the long-term.

“Suppose we start investing like crazy and start bringing down the carbon as rapidly as possible. The first beneficiaries will be people living in the 2070s because of what’s already in the system. The temperature will keep rising even as we are reducing these emissions,” Smil said in an interview with The New York Times.

“So you are asking people now to make quote-unquote sacrifices while the first benefits will accrue to their children and the real benefits will accrue to their grandchildren. You have to redo the basic human wiring in the brain to change this risk analysis and say, I value 2055 or 2060 as much as I value tomorrow. None of us is wired to think that way.”

Fitness

The same lens shows the struggle of thinking about long-term health. More specifically, it shows the common misunderstanding of the idea of causation, and why we are continuously flooded with ‘X study shows do Y to live longer’ nonsense.

Go back to the mid-twentieth century. It took decades to establish that smoking causes lung cancer. Why? Because most smokers don’t get cancer. Some non-smokers do get cancer. All we can say is this: you are more likely to get cancer if you smoke than if you don’t. The idea of causation is not deterministic. It only means that if X happens, Y tends to happen more often.

That also makes it harder to see the benefits of diet and exercise as results play out in the long run. Take exercise. Unless you are training hard for a specific goal, it’s hard to know exactly how regular exercise impacts your overall health. You can’t know; it’s mostly invisible, and results are visible in the long run. The opposite is also true: repeatedly eating junk for instant gratification has no immediate significant consequences. The crisis builds up slowly.

In his book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson offers the clearest explanation for this dilemma: “It is important to distinguish between probability and destiny. Just because you are obese or a smoker or couch potato doesn’t mean you are doomed to die before your time or that if you follow an ascetic regime you will avoid peril,” he wrote.

“Roughly 40% of people with diabetes, chronic hypertension, or cardiovascular disease were fit as a fiddle before they got ill, and roughly 20% of people who are severely overweight live to a ripe old age without ever doing anything about it. Just because you exercise regularly and eat a lot of salad doesn’t mean you have bought yourself a better lifespan. What you have bought is a better chance of having a better lifespan.”

I use this frame to tell myself the value of building habits and following rules known to most: cutting back on added sugar and refined grains, saying no to ultra-processed foods, adding plenty of vegetables, protein, and whole foods to our diets, and exercising regularly.

Personal finance

Investing is where avoiding the long view becomes most clear (and painful).

The key idea is compounding. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel wrote: “If something compounds—if a little growth serves as the fuel for future growth—a small starting base can lead to results so extraordinary they seem to defy logic. It can be so logic-defying that you underestimate what’s possible, where growth comes from, and what it can lead to.”

We downplay the power of compounding as it defies intuition. Thinking about linear growth is easy; we struggle with the exponentials. Recall how Covid cases grew— all the discussions around “doubling rate” were a way to communicate the exponential growth in cases and explain the speed at which cases would blow up. That’s compounding.

And that’s why Housel says that “time is the most powerful force in investing”  and argues that wealth creation has little to do with income or returns but lots to do with savings rate. So we should save for the sake of saving— without any reason to.

Our glitchy brain behaviour just makes this hard. “Why would you save money for your future self when, to your brain, it feels like you’re just handing away your money to a complete stranger?” says UCLA researcher Hal Hirschfield, referring to brain imaging studies that make us think of a stranger when we see ourselves in the future.

So here is the thing: there are clearly documented benefits of long-term thinking and clearly documented reasons why we struggle with it. Our best bet is to recognise its importance and find a way to change how we think and make an effort to train our brains to think long-term. And understand risk. It would make us and society better.

(Samarth Bansal is a Landour-based journalist)

ICYMI

Storm in a cone: Here is a story from The Financial Times where human values, business principles, corporate governance, and geopolitics create a perfect storm that has already claimed a CEO with no resolution in sight. Ice cream chain Ben and Jerry's, a Unilever subsidiary, decided to pull its Israel franchise to protest the West Bank occupation. An irate Israeli government and Jewish groups accused the group of anti-Semitism. Ironically, Ben and Jerry’s founders were so steeped in liberal values that they insisted Unilever representatives will always be in a minority on the company board as a condition for sale. Committed to ethics as it was, Unilever had no problems. Its shareholders did not think so, however. We think it would be a humdinger of an OTT series.

Green gold: Spain may be famous for its sprawling olive groves and vineyards, but it’s also one of Europe’s major pistachio producers. The quintessentially-Iranian fruit has taken over 70,000 hectares of Spanish countryside. The man responsible is agricultural engineer Jose Couceiro, who spent years perfecting a grafting method that’s now being sidelined as corporations swoop in to use ultra-intensive models for higher margins. Couceiro predicts an ecological disaster. Is anyone listening?

How Walmart went from zero to hero: Well, it wasn’t really a zero to begin with, but the world’s largest private employer was once deemed “the bully of Bentonville”. So, how did Walmart go from capitalist villain to a company that found favour with organisations such as the Environmental Defense Fund and WWF? This story charts the retail titan’s transition from (prioritising) shareholder returns to stakeholder capitalism. But it also asks whether all this is enough when you’re still one of corporate America’s worst paymasters.

Xi’s game of thrones: This Bloomberg interactive shows how Xi Jinping has gradually rewritten China’s rulebook ever since he became the undisputed leader of both the Chinese Communist Party and the world’s most populous country. And more rules may be broken so that he gets a third term as president, such as the retirement age of 68. Xi has also abolished presidential term limits and replaced 33 cadres in the Central Committee with loyal supporters.

Bollywood and the propaganda machine: Once upon a time, Bollywood was a democratic playground. That was until jingoism gradually became a part of the cinematic landscape. Shah Rukh Khan, who once ruled Hindi filmdom, was subject to right-wing attacks. Aamir Khan is still paying for his “sins”. A changing cultural and political dispensation means that series and movies that don’t conform to the prevalent mood are placed in a coma. This longread in The New Yorker dives deep into what today’s content tells us about the India we’re living in.

Gaming universe: Eighteen-year-old Minecraft player Cristopher Slayton is building an entire universe within the game, block by block. Slayton, also known as ChrisDaCow on social media (he has 25,000 followers on YouTube), has spent about two months studying blackholes and planets. He also went skydiving to get a better perspective of Earth. Slayton chatted with The New York Times about raising the standards of one of the greatest games ever made.

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India Wants to Know

- The day modern cricket changed | #126

The day modern cricket changed | #126

Mitron,

You may not realize it yet, but a cricket World Cup is around. It’s hard to imagine that international T20 started out as a bit of a fun exercise. Australia took on their neighbours New Zealand at Eden Park, Auckland. Though an international game in name, it was played with the air of an exhibition game, with the New Zealand players sporting fake wigs and moustaches and Glenn McGrath bowling a ball underarm, for which the umpire Billy Bowden showed him a red card.

The pioneers who played the first ever T20 international

The 8th edition of the T20 World Cup starts tomorrow and will feature 16 teams taking part down under. This World Cup will see the return of Zimbabwe and a first time participant in the United Arab Emirates.

But this week, we talk a bit about the T20 world cup that changed it all - the first edition of the T20 World Cup in 2007.

Things we learnt this week 🤓

- In the first T20 world cup, India and Pakistan were in the same group and played out a thrilling tie. The match would be resolved using a bowl out a la penalty shootout in football - one bowler from each side would take turns to run in and hit the stumps. Simple. India used Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag and the bowling stalwart Robin Uthappa for their bowl out and emerged victorious 3-0. This also gave the early hints of the genius in MS Dhoni’s captaincy. Instead of standing in his usual stance behind the stumps, he knelt down and asked his bowlers to aim at his chest. Dhoni is a true Kneel Diamond.

Difference in keeping for a bowl out

- Talking of the 2007 World Cup, India were unfancied as they played a grand total of ONE T20 game before the World Cup began. They emerged winners in a tense final and some say cricket changed that day. The Indian team was accorded an open-top bus parade in Mumbai after landing. The cavalry halted for a few minutes at Peddar Road. This was for Lata Mangeshkar to wave to the victorious cricketers in jubilation. Lata ji and Indian cricket share an interesting relationship, which we will talk about later. You don’t want to miss this!

The Open top bus parade in Mumbai

- The 2007 World Cup ushered in a revolution in the game. It fast tracked the formation of the Indian Premier League. But Lalit Modi’s idea of the league was not a new one. He had in fact proposed the formation of a league for ODI cricket way back in 1996 as an individual consultant to the BCCI. He had registered a company called Indian Cricket League Limited to help with his proposal. The BCCI did not take his ideas seriously. Lalit Modi was determined to join the BCCI and eventually became the representative of the Rajasthan Cricket Board. There is a Netflix show here somewhere.

- The most enduring memory of the T20 World Cup is this knock knock joke

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Misbah

Misbah who?

Misbah five runs

From IWTK, with love 💌

- Lata Mangeshkar loves cricket and BCCI loves Lata Mangeshkar. Here’s an incredible story as to how the nightingale saved a bankrupt board.

India Wants To Know - Panel Quiz Show @IWTKQuiz

Recently, @BCCI sold its IPL broadcasting rights for nearly Rs 50,000 crores. But back in the day, they were so broke that they couldn't pay their players a world cup winning bonus. Here is how Lata Mangeshkar came to the rescue..

12:55 PM ∙ Jul 21, 2022

6,497Likes1,056Retweets

- The Indian government was in the business of…. Softdrinks. The Sarkari cola story.

iwtkquiz

A post shared by India Wants To Know (@iwtkquiz)

Only In India 🇮🇳

We will just leave this here. Talk about moving the goalposts the bus stop.

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❤️ IWTK

Wisdom Project

- 🧠The Fault in our Narratives

🧠The Fault in our Narratives

Hey friend 👋

Today we will discuss a cognitive limitation called The Narrative Fallacy.

It’s the vulnerability of our brain in falling for narratives.

We take random pieces of information and form well structured narratives from them. Even when no logical narratives exist.

Love this quote from Taleb -

“We seek explanations even to the point that we will manufacture them”

Before we dive deeper, let’s look at the find of the week -

🤩 Find of the week

This week’s find is the the Health Squeeze newsletter.

In 5 minutes per week they share interesting healthy habits via email. If you’re interested in health research, news or even practical health tips then you will like this newsletter. Check it out.

Now, onto today’s topic -

The Narrative Fallacy

🤔 What is it?

The Narrative Fallacy is the concept that our brain tends to fall for well crafted narratives, even when they are far from the truth.

It was coined and further explained by Taleb in his seminal books : Fooled by Randomness & The Black Swan.

We have this tremendous urge to make sense of everything. To rationalize everything. To fit every event in a neat pattern or a smart story that explains everything.

The narrative fallacy works against us when its used to influence our behavior. And it works for us when we can use it intelligently to our advantage.

Why does it happen?

Pattern Matching

Our brain works on stories. It craves for patterns in everyday mundane events. That’s why we find it hard to memorize a bunch of random facts, but can easily remember the most elaborate stories.

Our brain is a pattern matching machine. It uses patterns in every piece of data to make better sense of it.

And its great, its very effective.

Thousand of years of evolution is evidence that this pattern matching algorithm works, and works really well.

Sometimes we even look for patterns where none exist. Many a times we don’t realize we are being influenced by the pattern matching tendency of our brains.

And its this ignorance that works against us.

The Narrative we fall for

There are different types of narratives we fall for -

- All religions use the power of narratives to explain the unexplainable. When we don’t have the anwers for the big questions in life, we turn to the narratives that religions provide and hold on to them. Doesn’t matter if they’re accurate or not.

- This includes modern religions like Democracy vs Authoritarianism, Socialism vs Capitalism, Conservatism vs Liberalism etc.

- We often fail to realize that these are just narratives, not hard truths of nature.

Perhaps the biggest impact of the narrative fallacy is how it deludes us about our own success or failure.

Ever hear about the college dropout who became a tech billionaire?

There are thousands who don’t make it.

But we love to hear the stories of success and believe that we can live those stories ourselves.

Me vs Me

Another way the narrative fallacy impacts us personally is that we misinterpret the role of luck and skill in our lives.

Its very easy to fall for your own narrative.

A lot of success in life can be attributed to being at the right place at the right time. There’s an element of randomness and luck in every aspect of life. We often forget this fact when the times are good and life is going well for us.

And the reverse is also true. When times are tough, we rush to attribute our failures to just bad luck, or to some other third party or person which is beyond our control. We tend to shirk responsibility away.

When we start believing in our own false narratives we indulge in a kind of victim mentality that can prevent us from getting out of a rut and improving ourselves.

Continue Reading…

For a deeper discussion on The Narrative Fallacy and how we can tackle it read our older issue -

- Know Your Narratives | Wisdom Letter 65

In it we share 5 practical tips on how to tackle the narrative fallacy.

Like what you’re reading? Get more of it in your inbox every Sunday. Improve your decisions, think better to live better!

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Quote to think about -

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

- Richard Feynman

Question to ask yourself -

Which narratives in your life do you believe in very strongly? Are they backed by real data and evidence, or is it a story someone has told you. More importantly, is it a story you are telling yourself?

Think about it!

More from us -

- How the Information-Action Cycle Works

How can we help you?

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways we can help you -

- 📈 Make better decisions across health, wealth and relationships. Learn the mental models for busy professionals here.

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Curated Commons

- Curated Commons // Edition 109

Curated Commons // Edition 109

Thank you for subscribing (if you have already, and if you haven’t, subscribe now!). Welcome to the 109th edition of Curated Commons. Happy reading, and do pass on the newsletter and share it on your social networks if you find it interesting! It’s free! Both dollar-free and ad-free.

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The tumbling cost of genome sequencing

Illumina, the genetics giant, announced a new series of genome sequencing machines that are set to bring the cost to under $200 for sequencing a human genome. Just a few years ago, they costed well over $10,000. - Read here

Brightness of a country, as a way of catching ‘lies’

Many countries report data that makes them look good. A new analysis conflating reported GDP data with satellite-based estimate, shows how big the difference is - Read here

Controlling China’s access to future of AI

The US Govt recently came out with a wide-ranging set of export control regulations on AI and chip-tech when it comes to China. This is a really good deep-dive into the implications - Read here

What does an Amazon smart home mean in terms of data?

One smart home - some 600,000 data points collected in three years. That’s data collected by various Amazon products in one journalist’s home. - Read here ($)

Clipart in 2022 = AI-generated imagery

Then - you paid royalty to aggregator sites for licensing pictures for your presentations

Soon - AI will generate the pic you want - Read here

Before we yield decisions to algorithms, we need to fix algorithmic accountability

Good story on how thousands of people wronged by an algorithm in Michigan years ago are still seeking justice - Read here

The most honest headline about metaverse

Loved this Reuters headline - Read here

Metaverse could accelerate manufacturing as well as social ills

The Chinese approach to surveillance

Interesting snippet from a new book: - Read here

“…the Chinese government has managed to build a new social contract with its citizens: they give up their data in exchange for more precise governance that, ideally, makes their lives safer and easier (even if it doesn’t always work out so simply in reality).”

Exoskeletons continue on path to progress

They will be common. Some day. And the effect will be tremendous for several categories of people - Read here

“How a new anti-woke bank stumbled”

Ideology isn’t enough to create a business. You still need a business model. Or something like that. - Read here ($)

I wondered. You might too.

Read here($)

Subrahmanyam KVJ @SuB8u

wtf am I even doing

4:45 AM ∙ Oct 13, 2022

140Likes19Retweets

Subscriptions are the new food

Or maybe something more. People are apparently willing to reduce their food bill than look at subscriptions to reduce cash outflow. - Read here

The decentralization of ‘cool’

Fears that globalization would lead to a worldwide monoculture have proven utterly wrong, says The Economist. Some interesting charts - Read here ($)

More interesting reads:

- A pair of jeans sold for over $76,000. For a piece of history - Read here ($)

- Chinese users are using puns to get past Govt censors - Read here

- A video game that requires a prescription (game for treating ADHD) - Read here

- AI eye checks can predict heart disease risk in less than minute, finds study - Read here

- And finally, it appears not many people have seen the FT’s glorious 404 page. A casual tweet that I thought would appeal to a niche audience ended up going viral!

Subrahmanyam KVJ @SuB8u

The @FT's 404 page still sets the benchmark😂

5:04 PM ∙ Oct 9, 2022

13,637Likes2,385Retweets

Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, thank you, and maybe consider sharing it? My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.

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