W.I.E.R.D: What I Enjoyed Reading & Discussing (week 15 2021)
Some great reads from the internet this week
It's easier now to start and grow a company than it has ever been. That means more people start them, that those who do get better terms from investors, and that the resulting companies become more valuable. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, and that startups were suppressed for most of the 20th century, you don't have to resort to some vague right turn the country took under Reagan to explain why America's Gini coefficient is increasing. Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing. With more people starting more valuable companies, how could it not be?
In many ways Vijayanagara [Hampi] was surprisingly like modern India: a melting pot of many cultures which came together to form something far richer and far more remarkable than its component parts—and that its multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-cultured whole is the actually the source of its richness, and its strength.
When I apply more effort, the output decreases. I cannot impose my will into writing a great email. When I paddle furiously into a wave – I don’t catch it. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. In Daosim, they call this “Wu Wei” or Effortless Action.
Pessimistic
It’s the same people. They have no overarching point. There’s no comprehensive philosophy for how things should be. It’s just bitching and moaning, regardless of past, present or future circumstances. Everything’s wrong, everyone else is making all the wrong choices, with suspect motives, to keep me down and hurt my feelings.
What do they want? Nothing. No conditions will ever be acceptable. The whining and crying is the thing. It is the means and the ends, in and of itself.
Indian elephants traversed the world on ships and aeroplanes, bearing messages of goodwill and friendship. Under Nehru’s leadership, baby elephants were gifted to Japan, Belgium, New Zealand, China, Turkey, Canada, and Germany, often in response to requests made by the children of these countries.
Occasionally, elephants were gifted to eminent individuals. Salvador Dalí famously requested a baby elephant as compensation for designing an ashtray for Air India. “I wish to keep him in my olive grove and watch the patterns of shadows the moonlight makes through the twigs on his back,” he waxed poetically to baffled officials at Air India. The wish was granted, and Darius lived in Dalí’s garden until he outgrew it and had to be transferred to Barcelona Zoo.
Thanks for reading through.