- “A moment later, the soft in-out of normal respiration, which I’ve listened to my whole life (mostly without being aware of it, thank God), has been replaced by an unpleasant shloop-shloop-shloop sound. The air I’m taking in is very cold, but it’s air, at least, and I keep breathing it. I don’t want to die, and, as I lie in the helicopter looking out at the bright summer sky, I realize that I am actually lying in death’s doorway. Someone is going to pull me one way or the other pretty soon; it’s mostly out of my hands. All I can do is lie there and listen to my thin, leaky breathing: shloop-shloop-shloop.”
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Stephen King on his accident from 1999, and getting back to writing. ‘Nuff said.
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.. - “Rather than outright ranking the movies, which would be a truly impossible task, I thought I’d put together a guide that would hopefully help people getting into Ghibli for the first time. This is obviously very subjective, and even then I’m not necessarily putting my favorites toward the top of the list; this is about easing you into the studio’s work and making sure you don’t write it all off after accidentally watching Tales from Earthsea.”
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Dear reader: if you haven’t experienced (“watched” is a poor word in this context) Studio Ghibli movies, read this article, and then write off the next four or five evenings. At least. And I envy you your discovery!
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.. - “Tetlock established a precise measurement system to track political forecasts made by experts to gauge their accuracy. After twenty years he published the results. The average expert was no more accurate than the proverbial dart-throwing chimp on many questions. Few could beat simple rules like ‘always predict no change’.”
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A short, but well written summary/review of Superforecasters. Read the book too!
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.. - You may have noticed – but then again, you may have not (and who can blame you), but my sentences tend to be complicated, and full of em dashes. Well, so what of it?
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.. - “Low capital cost is why cloud kitchens with curious names (Bhookemon, for one) are quickly scaling up to deliver the same menu at different pin codes with consistency. Apart from low rentals, the sourcing of ingredients is centralised, the R&D happens at a base kitchen and once a recipe is finalised, it can be easily replicated at different locations.”
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On the emergence of cloud kitchens in India, and what this might look like a year or so down the line.
Tag: grammar
Links for 18th April, 2019
- “According to the Wall Street Journal, Mickey Mouse and his gang (including Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and Donald Duck) sold $3 billion in merchandise in 2018, a figure that includes both adult and children’s products. Shockingly, that is only about half of what Mickey made in 2004, when Disney heavily pushed out products in celebration of his 75th birthday.”
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The Fast Company on the gift that (literally) keeps on giving for Disney. But you should also read Ben Thompson to understand that this is planned – way back when.
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.. - “American involvement in military and economic capacity building could facilitate or overlap with India’s interests in its neighbourhood – to some extent. Delhi has traditionally been skeptical, if not suspicious, of extra-regional actors’ activities and influence in its neighbourhood. Its resistance to such activity on the part of the U.S. has historically only been tempered when Delhi has had even greater concern about a Chinese presence. Now, with increasing Chinese activity in the region and limited Indian capacity to compete alone, Delhi once again seems more willing to work with – and perhaps begrudgingly accept or welcome greater interest from – partners like Japan and the U.S.”
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A useful article to read to understand Indo-American relations today, and also how to think about these two countries and the Indo-Pacific region in light of the gorilla (or is it the panda) in the room.
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.. - “The world loves meat, but that love puts pressure on the world. The United Nations has estimated that livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Project Drawdown, a group of scientists pursuing climate solutions, puts the figure at 18 to 20 percent, and some studies have suggested even that’s way too low. In any case, meat is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, and as millions of families in India and China join the meat-eating middle class, its contributions could soar.”
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An interesting article that helps you understand the players (politicians, firms and individuals) involved in the race to produce plant based meat.
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.. - “The report finds 54.4% of girls had access to menstrual hygienic management tools. However, in terms of wealth quintiles, we see massive variation. While 71.6% of the surveyed girls in the upper wealth quintile report access to MHM tools only 42.6% of girls in the lower wealth quintile report similar access. When inquired about reasons for not using MHM tools, about three-fifths of the surveyed girls reported that they couldn’t afford them and since the government does not provide them, they choose to stick to traditional methods.”
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A useful, and interesting survey about the aspirations of teenaged girls in India.
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.. - “Readers today are unlikely to confuse an adolescent with an armload of brushwood used for fences and hedges. Still, the magazine’s copy editors dutifully hyphenate “teen-ager” even as we half-heartedly enforce the ban on “balding”—the editor William Shawn preferred “partly or partially bald”—without knowing exactly what is wrong with it.”
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Grammar nerds and readers or this blog: rejoice.
EconForEverybody 