CDOQ

Do you have an identity that is not in opposition of anything? Smart is opposed to dumb, male is opposed to female, american is opposed to un american, etc. 

Absurd is the new normal. What would Magritte paint today?

Regardless of the facts, people tend to believe things they understand. If an incorrect explanation, A, can be understood with a simple analogy and a correct explanation, B, requires mental energy and effort to be understood then most people will believe A. 

My discussion with Arne Tonning, a venture capitalist based in Oslo, on:  1.   GPT3 (a new generalized Artificial Intelligence model for Natural Language Processing) - what it is and what are its applications.  2. Epic Games fight with Apple and Google on 30% revenue share that App Store and Google Play charge for digital goods sold via in-app purchases on their app platforms.  3. TikTok ban in the US 4. How latest US immigration policy is affecting the tech industry

If a system is highly dependent on you then the system is penalized for your errors and you can gain from the errors of the system. 

If you are highly dependent on a system and the system does not depend on you then you are penalized for the errors the system makes and for the errors you make. 

There are a few things that one can only learn from experience. 

The number of unique situations the world experiences will continue to rise with time. 

I am emotional about being rational. 

Why is voting optional and taxation mandatory in democracies?

Logic is a function of knowledge. For a long time, it was logical to believe that the Earth is flat and it is the center of the universe. 

Large heterogeneous systems work well under global policies executed locally with variance and transparency. 

All systems become more corrupt with time. 

My guest lecture, on innovation, for MBA students at MIT. 

Context  My phone has become an integral part of my life. It has happened not because I am talking to people on the phone all the time but because the phone has many applications (apps) that I use for various purposes. These days there is an app for everything - buying coffee, getting a ride, ordering food, paying bills, investing in stocks, health, social networking, news, etc. There are over 2 million apps in the Apple App Store. Most apps are free to use. Some apps have to pay 15-30% of their revenue to Apple and Google (two main providers of Application Platforms) if they are selling digital content like movies, games, books, etc. Apps like Uber, eBay, DoorDash, etc. do not pay anything to Apple and Google because they are selling physical goods like food, rides, consumer goods, etc. Just the apps on the Apple App Store generated $519B in 2019 revenue. If the App Store were a country, it would be number 24 on the GDP list right behind Sweden.  Two major driv...

America needs new stories to unite its people. 

Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement which takes hours. Trikebana is my art of doing the same in minutes. Of course, the result is not a beautiful and thoughtful arrangement but something nice to look at. Trikebana is possible because flowers are inherently beautiful.  Trikebana

Markets are as efficient as democracies are egalitarian. 

Data represents the past. 

I wonder how much brutality and injustice went unpunished when we did not have internet connected camera phones. 

Why do some animals evolve to become venomous for survival? 

Social distancing is keeping the people away but allowing the animals to come closer. 

Frameworks facilitate structured thinking and limit creative thinking. 

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) or Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are goods that consumers buy frequently like food, beverage, makeup, household products, etc. It is an over two trillion dollar industry in North America. Some of the well-known CPG companies are Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever , etc.  CPG aisle in store (Source: Wikipedia) It is hard to create a highly differentiated product in the CPG space. For example, soap is soap for most people. Some might want to avoid buying soap with triclosan  but it is difficult to make a soap 10x better than an average soap and charge a reasonable price. Or, think of bottled water. There are over one hundred different brands which differentiate based on where the water is from and the packaging. For many CPG companies, half the sales come from WalMart so which retailers carry your products is important. There are mainly five different ways in which CPG companies different...

Phil Fisher was an investor who pioneered the style of investing (stocks of publicly traded companies) based on growth prospects of companies as opposed to finding companies which might be undervalued. He used the following qualitative approach to evaluate  what stocks to buy:  A classic  1. Does the company have products or services with sufficient market potential to make possible a sizable increase in sales for at least several years?  2. Does the management have a determination to continue to develop products or processes that will still further increase total sales potentials when the growth potentials of currently attractive product lines have largely been exploited?  3. How effective are the company's research and development efforts in relation to its size?  4. Does the company have an above-average sales organization?  5. Does the company have a worthwhile profit margin? 6. What is the ...

Quibi   is a new company, formed in 2018, which is the brainchild of its chairman  Jeffrey Katzenberg . He hired Meg Whitman  as Quibi's  CEO. Both Katzenberg ( Disney )  and Whitman ( eBay )  are well known names in American business. Because of these high profile names, the company has raised $1.75B in investment capital.  Quibi What does Quibi do?  Quibi ( Qui ck bi tes) is a subscription-based mobile app that provides short-form (less than ten minutes), professionally-produced videos (episodes as parts of shows). New episodes are released everyday as parts of different shows.  Quibi has produced a lot of these shows.  The intended watch-time is when people are out and about, like standing in line for coffee or commuting on the train . Another unique feature ( under a lawsuit )  is called Turnstyle which basically makes the video appealing (no black bars) both in portrait and landscape  modes. ...

Relationships obstruct efficient flow of capital and labor. 

Greg Mankiw has a good idea about how the government can distribute money to the people who lost wages because of the coronavirus pandemic. Since speed is of the essence, the government can not take the time to target the right people.  Basically, give money to all adults in the US until people can get back to jobs (i.e. a few months). Next year, when people file for taxes, people who needed the money, decided based on income differential in 2020 and 2019, can keep it and people who did not need the money have to return it.  Source: Wikipedia See the details here . 

Earlier today, I finished reading The Worldly Philosophers . It is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. The following excerpt might tell you why:  "When the Chamber of Deputies in the 1840s legislated higher duties on all foreign goods in order to benefit French industry, Bastiat  turned out this masterpiece of economic satire:  PETITION OF THE MANUFACTURERS OF CANDLES, STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND THE PRODUCERS OF OIL, TALLOW, RESIN, ALCOHOL, AND GENERALLY EVERYTHING CONNECTED WITH LIGHTING TO MESSIEURS AND THE MEMBERS OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES  GENTLEMEN,  We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to our own for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our national market with it a price fabulously reduced...This rival...is no other than the sun.  What we pray for, is, that...