📚 Unexpected Poetry of PhD Acknowledgments, Cultivating Cults, Magic of Ambient Music, Napkin Math on Dating, Fauji Food Tales
Cheesiest Love Story Ever, Kent’s Old Typewriter & Stamps and more
Hi, this is post #169.
It’s been an exciting week. I took up a new role at my work. It’s an exciting opportunity and promises accelerated learning.
I finished reading a book on the history of the Indian Railway. It covered the story from the origin till India’s independence. I’ve written a review here, in case you want to explore.
What I learned about investing from Darwin has been a fine read so far. Will share more about it in the coming week.
I started watching “The Newsroom” again. Season 1 is my favourite. This show always makes me feel positive & excited about “doing the right thing”. I really wish they had done a better job in season 3. This concept deserves lot more than just 3 seasons.
And like always, there were a lot of really good reads. Some of these are part of today’s lineup. Here’s a quick overview:
And now, onto today's finds…
💖 Unexpected Poetry of PhD Acknowledgments
We start with a banger this week. The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements is the most creative storytelling piece I have seen recently.
It has a simple premise:
“Not many people will read your PhD thesis, but if you completed your doctoral research at the Australian National University College of Science, then Tabitha Carvan has probably read one small part of it.
What she found is a kind of poetry in the science.“
The small part that Tabitha is reading & collecting is the “Acknowledgements” section. She tells us more:
I came to see that the acknowledgements of a PhD thesis are their own kind of thing.
The rest of the thesis contains careful, reasoned findings and figures, but on this one page, the author-scientist can release all the pent-up emotion they couldn’t express elsewhere.
They’re like an explosion in a lab.
Tabitha has woven a touching story to narrate what she found. These are tiny snippets filled with emotions and expressed in the most unique ways.
Sample a couple of her catches:
These moments felt pure and passed on their warmth as I read them. I felt touched and could not stop smiling as I read and re-read this post.
ANU College of Science communication team - You’ve done a great job here in making this story a visual delight! Thankyou.
(via YC newsletter)
🗺️ Cultivating Cults
Kyle Harrison wrote Cultivating Cults covering three big ideas
Every company needs a Chief Evangelist. Building cults is a powerful way to build a business. Every story we choose to believe is a vibe we’re creating, and we need to be careful of the implications of what we believe.
There are many ideas but they all tie back to the core theme. Ideas like founder-level storytelling, the importance of first followers, creating language and emphasizing education often go unexplored and make a big difference.
This article does not offer a playbook, but gives a good fodder to help improve your thinking around communities. I highly recommend this one to anyone interested in building an org, communities, movement or business.
A couple of snippets:
(via sandhill.io newsletter)
🪄 Magic of Ambient Music
In Eno or Beethoven, Gapingvoid tells us the story behind how Brian Eno forayed into what he called “Ambient Music”.
Here’s how he defined it:
He got the idea for “Airports” as an antidote to the annoyingly distracting elevator music that permeated public spaces at the time. He wanted something that was “Interesting but Ignorable,” something that enhanced the experience we were already having (e.g. reading a book in an airport lounge, waiting for our flight to be called), as opposed to being the main experience itself.
He contrasts it with listening to Beethoven where the music is the center of attraction. Gapingvoid uses this contrast to talk about two different ways of building org cultures.
In summary, culture building requires efforts that are more “ambient music” than Beethoven songs.
This definition of ambient music is wonderful and makes it an apt metaphor to explain many different areas of interest.
In great writing, it's the idea that shines. Writing just helps shine it. It never becomes the focus of attention.
In a great UI, the magic lies in how well it solves the problem without attracting any attention to itself.
Great service design is often hidden. Things just work and people don’t know the meticulous design that made it happen.
Great relationships live and thrive on the usual, unsaid, often hidden in the plainsight gestures than any other highly visible thing.
Quite a powerful metaphor, isn’t it?
🎦 JioCinema Carousel Design
If you’re a connoisseur of delightful app designs, this post around “Upgrading the JioCinema carousel” is a great read. For the uninitiated, this app is the latest and one of the most important players in OTT space in India. Here’s what this case study covers:
From IPL and Succession, JioCinema has a diverse range of content and audience to serve. This case study showcases how it has tried to tackle some of the most pertinent issues of content discovery for a platform like this.
This post goes into great details to bring out the design approach and BTS. It is highly visual & interactive, and will make you appreciate the effort that goes behind.
👩❤️👨 Napkin Math on Dating
Evan Armstrong makes a bold claim - Tinder is way more important than you think.
So why does Tinder matter? Because it facilitates love and, by extension, grows the world’s population.
He briefly touches themes from the cost of elder care to decreasing fertility rates to build his case. There is a fuzzy napkin math as well to add some credibility. It’s not the most convincing piece from Evan’s desk, however I liked it as it surfaces underlying themes that impact dating business.
Dating business is massive and ruled by big players. It’s ripe for disruption, however the disruption will require a new & disruptive approach to address the core issues that plagues it today.
If you’re interested in dating – business or otherwise – you can read more about Tinder, Bumble and Dating app paradox in the past editions.
🤗 Little Moments of Joy
I'll never let go. Ayushi on why she loves the cheesiest love story ever - Titanic. A beautiful piece of prose, almost poetic in its essence.
Titanic’s legacy is imperfect and lasting in my life too. I took away some pretty impossible standards to chase, and had myself convinced for a while that I could - and should - love people eternally. I’m (un)learning now that I don’t have to, because love shouldn’t be a matter of life and death. At the same time, I will continue to hold on to the nostalgia and deep emotion that this film elicits in me, because I’d like to experience the bold, crazy, and unabashed moments as much as the quiet ones. I’m tired of fighting it, and frankly, I’ve learnt that with a love like Titanic, it’s sometimes best to just give in.
"Kya khana tha!" and other fauji food tales. A feels-like-warm-soup-on-a-winter-night blog from Enthucutlet folks.
Army life taught me that the most delicious meals aren’t always about fancy ingredients or elaborate recipes. The real magic lies in resourcefulness, creativity, and the joy of breaking bread with people known and unknown.
Kent's Substack. Kent Peterson types one page everyday on his old manual typewriter, takes a photo and shares it in his newsletter. He is spreading little moments of joys through these beautiful pages. Read them, feel the warmth of his lovely storytelling, save some nuggets of wisdom and you’re all set to brave the world. His cute handmade stamps add extra charm & affection to every post, they are a bonus.
✨ Everything else
Precise compositions by Daniel Rueda and Anna Devís turn architecture into playful portraits. Simply stunning. I wonder how much effort it takes to create one such portrait!
Xkcd is on a roll. Some of my recent favorites: Olympic Sports and House Inputs and Outputs.
Bhurta, vorta, bhorta, bharta or chokha - a dish that has touched the Indian subcontinent and people of Indian roots across the world.
⏰ In case you missed last week’s post, you can find it here.
That's all for this week, folks!
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
If you liked this post, please hit the ❤️ below, leave a comment or share with someone who will find it useful too. It’s highly encouraging.