rajekas

Not about this book in particular, but I wanted to thank you for creating this amazing resource. As someone who obsessively bought every MIR title he could while growing up in Delhi, do take a bow.

I am a fan.

Been using it for several months now and it’s my default reading location and I read a lot. Reading is essential to my life and work and I have been looking for a solution that solves all my information consumption problems. Readwise has a good chance to be that solution as long as they don’t go the way of Google or Evernote.

One continuing irritation: PDF reading on iPadOS isn’t as good as dedicated apps (I use PDF Expert). Highlighting works fine, but writing by hand using the Pencil is nowhere near as responsive or accurate as PDF Expert. I hope you invest resources into making PDF consumption the best in class - it’s the only thing preventing me from fiully embracing Reader as a complete solution.

A suggestion - not arising from irritation, but a matter of positioning - much of the communication of Readwise/Reader’s utility is around productivity, of reading to optimize information uptake or insight maximization. I would prefer if it also highlighted creativity and imagination. I read to make new connnections and (hopefully) think new thoughts that I haven’t thought before. It’s an idyllic vision of the vocation of reading but one that has a long history in the annals of bibliophilia. Perhaps you should target not just the Tech Bro, but also the Romantic Reader.

PS: an unexpected delight - I liked how I was onboarded by an existing user and had to turn around a couple of weeks later and help onboard the next generation. If done well, Readwise/Reader can become an essential social reading app for nerds, with the tool being the hub for a community of serious readers. Books are already read in circles - perhaps you should try to replace Google+ as well as Google Reader

I agree with the thrust of this article, especially this line:

"For a long time I felt somewhat unique in this regard, but COVID has made my longstanding reality the norm for many more people. Their physical world is defined by their family and hometown, which no longer needs to be near their work, which is entirely online; everything from friends to entertainment has followed the same path."

The unbundling of physical and digital reality is certainly happening, but I also think new forms of rebundling are also happening. Before COVID, I would never dream of calling my daughter in the next room, but now I do it all the time - not (only) because I am lazy, but because the call or text is less intrusive than knocking on the door and therefore has better UX.

To see what's happening as only:

1) "the real world is the combination of the digital world and the physical world and that the real world is not just the physical world."

or

2) "the Metaverse is the set of experiences that are completely online, and thus defined by their malleability and scalability"

is to downplay the combinatorial possibilities of dis-aggregating and recombining the digital and the physical. It feels to me that a certain 'computational style' is becoming widespread tacit knowledge and shouldn't be identified only with the digital/online/virtual.

The crucial line in the 1914 report was 'the university is, indeed, likely always to exercise a certain form of conservative influence.'

Not conservative in the political sense as I read it but in the sense of being slow moving, of having a sense of history and tradition, honoring both. And a place where creativity as well as radicalism is tempered with caution.

I don't think that's compatible either with 'disruptive innovation' or with 'cancel culture' both of which strike me as two aspects of the same phenomenon. Or with 'publish or perish' for that matter.

To be honest, I don't know what it would mean to rehabilitate a twelfth century Archbishop.

What kind of saint could he become?

Surely not a religious saint when religiosity is declining and sainthood is suspect. Not a secular saint either, for he doesn't have the marks of 21st century secular sainthood: lack of ego, public spirit, concern for justice etc.

The only option I can see: his resistance to state power and unwillingness to escape his fate brings him close to Socrates, so perhaps there's that route. If only he had a great prose stylist as a student.

Of the various Catholic halomakers I know (and I don't many, being neither a Catholic nor a saint), only St. Francis comes across as a straightforward candidate for contemporary sainthood.

Even the very highest levels of human achievement are historically conditioned and might appear to later generations as idolatry.

I have used a Bialetti for the last twenty years and will not use anything else to make coffee. Forms meets function meets flavor.

1. He made $250K self publishing a book. That itself is worth writing a post about and such posts are routinely popular on HN.

2. From all appearances, he gave the money away out of generosity rather than the need for recognition. Didn't strike me as celebrity self aggrandizement.

3. He felt both the what and the how are worth publicizing. He's a known 'thought leader' after all.

Of the three, only the third is remotely objectionable. I think it's ok to say good things about oneself doing good things.

I bet it's correlated with generosity and more likely to be so than the mean spiritedness that comes from wagging a finger at those who are putting themselves out there.

A little bit more Googling will tell you that Kirti Ambani, the man accused of ordering the hit, was no relative of Dhirubai, the Godfather.

Nusli Wadia, the man he was supposedly getting killed, is the head of an important textile firm himself and the grandson of the founder of Pakistan.

The scandal of which this episode is but one battle, led to the downfall of Rajiv Gandhi's government and triggered the long downfall of the Congress party, which is how Dhirubai's son Mukesh finds himself so close to the current regime whose predecessors, ironically, benefited enormously from the alleged chumminess between the father Ambani and Rajiv.

Wretched hive of scum and villainy seems a bit overwrought though; par for the course for robber barons and way less scummy and violent than Andrew Carnegie or Cecil Rhodes and other titans of western industry.

Plus they haven't caused coups in Central American countries. Yet. Though I wouldn't mind if Mukesh bhai bought England and replaced the Union Jack with the Tricolour.

Makes me think that panspermia isn't so outlandish. 100 million years will get you from star system to star system with plenty of time to spare.

I want to talk about the opposite problem - I routinely get 'personalized' emails from the founder/CTO/VP for awesome sauce/ saying "Hey X, I noticed you were able to turn on the light saber but never signed up for a friendly battle with D. Vader. Hit reply to this email if you want to learn how to do so. We read and respond to every email from our Jedi customers."

And if I like the service but find some aspect of it annoying, I spend half an hour composing a thoughtful response to said email. Nine times out of ten it's crickets. Of course it was a mass email sent to zillions of budding saber rattlers but the lack of acknowledgement, let alone a proper reply, sours me on the service for ever.