Things read - Week 03 - 2025
Full of froth but no beer
Someone (Ankur) started invested after selling his startup and realized their is no alpha on offer by the big players like Goldman Sachs. Ultimately, it is just a marketing gimmick who play on your ego by dressing well and offering coffee in a fancy cup with gold plated handles (it's actually Nespresso). Obviously, there might be some smaller player generating alpha (over index funds) e.g., Nalanda Capital but for the majority index funds will be good enough if you factor how cheap they are. Link
People complain more as life improves
Concept Creep: A phenomenon when it seems like world is getting worse, when in fact it isn't. In the absence of big problems, like poverty or polio, people shift their attention to petty problems. The major point being, no matter how much progress we make – we will still find reasons to crib. The important thing is to pay attention to the kind of cribs. Petty cribs means we are progressing. Link
Work is work
Make your working hours count. Do justice to your work (and your employer) by giving your best. And if you think you're not able to give your best, raise your standards by improving yourself. It's not that hard to work on yourself if you have the drive. It's all not to say that it's bad if you work after hours. If you find it interesting enough to work after work hours, there's absolutely no problem. Don't complicate things. Link
The ideal language
Swahili or colloquial Indonesian is apparently closest thing to an ideal language because they are simple and all the weird edge-cases have worn away. Some examples:
- Swahili has no grammatical gender so He/She is a teacher becomes Yeye ni mwalimu.
- Swahili has no irregular verbs like English. I go/went/will go will simply be Ninakwenda, Nilikwenda, Nitakwenda. It retains the root (kwenda) in all forms.
- Indonesian borrows from Sanskrit, Dutch, Arabic, Portuguese, and English, making it highly accessible to English speakers. Link
Spending money
Collab Fund writers have compelling ideas about money and personal finance in general. This post spoke to especially ideas like how you spend money can be a reflection of what you've experienced in life and where you come from. If you were devoid of owning a fancy car in your childhood or a fancy watch, you'll reach out for those things first when you have the money.
Aspirations trickle down. If you want to know what a lower middle class will spend their money on as they acquire wealth, look at what the upper middle class is spending their money on currently. Things like European vacations, six stoves burners, walk-in closets were once the playground of the rich but now has trickled down to middle class as well.
Another thing that resonated with me was that unspent money has it's own value. It gives you independence and control over your time. Every dollar of savings buys a claim check on the future. Link
Yamaguchi City – NYT Pick
I read everything written by Craig. I love how he likes cities that strike the right balance of old and new. Slow and fast. Big and small. He writes: "It (Yamaguchi) strikes the right balance. You’ve got Churamu and you’ve got Log. Both serve coffee, but one’s decades old, winding down, and the other’s vibrant and just getting started. You have temples, but you also have kilns snuck into the corners of those temples. You have World Heritage pagodas paired with well-regarded jazz kissas. You have monuments to old poets, and epic mountain walks to and from the ocean."
His last year's pick – Morioka – had similar vibes. These cities are like a bardo – a place between somewhat disappearing countryside villages and unstoppable megalopolises. Here's a hoping to see both of these on my next visit. Link