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vmurthy

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Product Manager at a startup. Hacker at heart. Eclectic reading habits. Silence lover.

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One of the things he told me, and that I also observed, was that the vast majority of financial experts (basically, the people in the accounting department of companies) had an extremely difficult time just telling him what the rules of any particular transaction should be

We have internalized more knowledge than we can explain sounds like the textbook definition of Polanyi's paradox:"Polanyi's paradox, named in honour of the British-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi, is the theory that human knowledge of how the world functions and of our own capability are, to a large extent, beyond our explicit understanding" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polanyi%27s_paradox

A bunch of comments around the theme of "Is it worth it for _this_ use case?" misses the point of "Which of these techniques/lessons from the blog can I use for _my_ use case". I found the blog post a good starting point for some agentic stuff I want to do for my use case. Good on you for experimenting and good luck!

You’ve gone from corruption (which I agree with) to something about dominant religion thinking of truth and morality as subjective ( which is debatable as you have cited nothing - infact seems like it’s your opinion and nothing else) to low trust ( which I agree with). What’s the logical link to cities being unlivable? The article says that mayors and councillors lack powers which is the major problem.

I asked ChatGPT to summarize the video and avoid the ad etc.

"The real reason: opportunity.

NZ’s economy offers few paths beyond agriculture and real estate.

Larger, more diversified Australian cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) offer broader careers and education options

In Summary

New Zealand’s paradox: a high-quality society built atop a narrow economy. Its openness with Australia, while culturally beneficial, drains the very people it needs to sustain growth. Until it diversifies beyond real estate and agriculture and offers more opportunity to young professionals, the exodus is likely to continue"

The 20 year old me would have been so excited about something like this. The 39-year old (ok 40 next month) is more reserved. It is not that I don't think this will be adapted but more like : What needs to happen (government, civic groups whatever economic forces) for companies to adapt this? It's going to be a slow burn for sure if this needs to work at a global scale but the impetus should begin with incentives, sadly.

iPhone dumbphone 11 months ago

One aspect of no phone is how to deal with payments. Specifically UPI payments in India. These are QR code based payments and it is getting more difficult to pay by cash at many locations.

Right next to that is OTPs from financial institutions.

What a beautiful, thought provoking article! When I saw the title , I thought it was a book summary of “My stroke of insight” [0]. This book is by a neuro-anatomist who had a rare stroke resulting in the left hemisphere of her brain being incapacitated. That led her to experiences similar to that of the article’s author. Do check out the book and pair it with the article

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142292.My_Stroke_of_Insi...

FWIW , the blog post doesn't really show any famous games where double bishops helped someone win or anything like that. It's a small fragment of games where players with double bishops improved their position etc.

Careless People 1 year ago

Ugh. I’ve blocked it from my memory. Deplorable. At some point, it’s just power play. Not even lust.

Careless People 1 year ago

From the book, it appears that Sheryl used Meta as a platform for promoting her own image and book rather than do the things that prevented a lot of bad. It’s beyond sad

Careless People 1 year ago

I read the book. It’s a very interesting read. A few things stood out ( no spoilers )

- Casual indifference at exec level to atrocities happening because of FB/ Meta.

- Money/power does make you insensitive

- Tech bro view of the world permeates most decisions that Meta takes.

- Casual sexual harassment for women ( follows from the tech bro worldview I guess )

- US centric world view influencing how execs treat world leaders.

All in all worth a read or two!

https://rankandfile.me

At the moment, I am validating demand for Rank And File, a platform for employee activism. Think Institutional Investors but instead of suits, it is employees who own a large number of shares in their own company and act as a collective.

R&F aims to provide a private forum for employees to discuss company policies and act as a platform where employees can connect with legal experts and activists who will help them

A few things that stand out (not that it's that shocking!)

- Narratives matter -- a lot . Second order effects of such subjective rankings are real . Imagine getting a credit downgrade because someone perceives the democracy to be under threat

- "the government had reverse-engineered the ranking, strategically identifying procedural tweaks that directly boosted India’s scores in Delhi and Mumbai—the two cities evaluated by the World Bank" .

I love the whole cynical nature of this. This is statecraft at it's finest ( I render no moral judgements here :) ). This is reminiscent of Machiavelli or Kautilya (Chanakya) [0]

A lot more to digest but will post them as a reply on this thread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanakya

I rarely cry when I read (or in general) but the poignancy of this article was too much . I remember how many changes my wife's body went through during our second pregnancy . Juxtapose all the things that Bess went through, it is too cruel to even think of . Have strength Bess <3

It maybe that this works for you individually, but does it work well as part of a team? I think it's one of those cases where one needs to do what is convenient for most of the team rather than one member?

I'd argue that if you are really interested, you can follow a few academics and read up on their papers etc. Of course, that's a big undertaking but it's the only alternative I can think of given the incentives for pushing shit at us