Space InvITs?

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Financial influencer Sharan Hegde’s newsletter today introduced me to the concept of Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs). In his words, InvITs are:

Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) offer you partial ownership in infrastructure projects.
 

They are trusts that hold, manage, and make investments in both finished and ongoing infrastructure projects.
 

These trusts provide income through dividends, interest, and capital gains.

The infrastructure projects include telephone towers, electricity distribution networks, public roads, highways etc.

Sharan Hegde, REITs vs InvITs (newsletter dated 3 November 2023)

I wondered how this could be applied to the space sector in India.

I think these could be easily used to build launch pads, wind tunnel testing infrastructure, generic (which can be used by a large group of space companies) clean rooms, etc. Maybe they can be used to build satellites as well?

Weekly Notes 43/2023

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I missed sending out the forty-second edition of the Weekly Notes. I think Weeks 42 and 43 are pivotal weeks of this year.

Writing

Blog

Working Column – my Tumblr posts

Reading

I finished listening to:

  • Novelist as a Vocation – Haruki Murakami

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My Internet Reading Daily Diet

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Pranay Kotasthane asked in OpenTakshashila’s WaterCooler the following question:

What does your internet reading daily diet look like? Do you use specific websites, workflows, or tools? Please share…

Pranay Kotasthane

This blog post is a more extensive answer to that question. In my Weekly Notes 27/2023 blog post, I shared how I had changed my information consumption. In my On following people’s work, I lamented about the difficulty of following people in a fractured social media landscape. But, this is my current internet reading daily diet.

I follow quite a few newsletters that I have subscribed to using Yahoo! Mail. I follow many blogs using RSS feeds on Feedly. I now use Mozilla Thunderbird while reading these on my laptop. I use the respective apps when reading them on mobile.

I have subscribed to the Times of India and the Indian Express for news. I read The News Minute for news related to Kerala. I read Scroll for their books and niche national news coverage. This has changed since Week 27/2023.

For my varied interests, I follow people on Twitter/X and Mastodon. I try to spend time on these once in the morning and once in the evening.

I listen to a few podcasts on Spotify and watch videos on YouTube. I do these on mobile only.

For anything that interests me, I take notes by hand in my bullet journal. For anything that I want to add as a reference for the future, I add it to Roam Research.

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Running Ubuntu

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I always wanted to run Ubuntu only on my machine. We had two laptops at home. One laptop is the blue-coloured HP Pavilion that we purchased in 2016. The other was a black Dell laptop that we bought in 2021.

We named the blue HP, Neelathamara, and the black Dell, Karuthamuthu.

I had a dual-boot, Ubuntu and Windows installation on Neelathamara after we purchased Karuthamuthu. Some issues and some shoddy computer repair during the pandemic meant that I had to switch it to Windows only for a while.

I had purchased a MH-USB from the LibreTech store earlier this year. The issues in 2022 made me worry about going to dual boot again. So, today, I moved Neelathamara to a full Ubuntu install.

The install experience was awesome as I did it during my lunch break at work!

I do not know why it took me so long to pull the trigger. I have also moved my blog reading from Feedly to Thunderbird. I am still using Feedly to read blogs on my mobile.

Pune Pen Festival 2023

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I went for the 7th International Pen Festival Pune 2023 held at Erandwane in Pune on 21 October 2023. Vishwesh had shared the presence of the festival in the Chalchitra community a day before.

We had briefly discussed the revival of fountain pens in the Clear Writing Cohort meetup in Pune on 15 October 2023. Hence, shared this invite to this community as well.

Invitation received for the 7th International Pune Festival

There was a Comet EV four wheeler to test drive and buy. But, more interesting to me, were the group of Urban Sketchers who were present at the entrance, using various types of pens to sketch at the venue. You can see the work of the urban sketchers by following this tag on Instagram.


The exhibition had ink pens from internationally renowned brands like Lamy, Pilot, Staedler, Pelikan, etc. There were a few Indian brands like Beena v’sign as well. There were a few niche brands as well.

I purchased a few things:

Two of the three Beena V’Sign Stride ink pens, one pocket notebook from Patto, two A5 size letter pads from Midori, and a A5 size notepad from Midori. Image credit: Pradeep Mohandas.
An artisanal leather carry case for a A6 size notebook from Dvadaria Brands, a Kanwrite Relik ink pen and a Parker Vector roller ball pen in the pen slots. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

I purchased three Beena V’sign Stride ink pens. I bought a lot of Japanese Midori stationery from an online store called Faces and Places. I purchased an artisanal leather pouch for a pocket book and my pens from Dvadaria Brands.

Venus Traders who co-hosted this event have a “super stationery store” on FC Road where many of these ink pens are available.

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Reusable Satellites – Separate Payload from rest of the Satellite Structure

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Blue Origin launched a new platform called Blue Ring on 16 October 2023. Blue Ring’s design seems to me to be similar to ISRO’s PSLV Orbital Experimental Module (POEM). But, this gave me another idea that I wanted to write about here.

Idea

Separate payload from rest of the satellite structure. Only launch the payload to orbit. Select from a multitude of satellite buses that fits the requirements of your mission.

Once the mission is completed, payload can be removed and disposed off. The satellite structure can host another payload.

If the satellite structure’s life is complete, the payload can be moved to another satellite structure of your choice.

Weekly Notes 41/2023

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A lot of outing happened this week after the monsoon pause. We went to the mall on Thursday. I met up with Saurabh in Pune.

Writing

I have not written my fortnightly space newsletter for three fortnights now. This is a streak I would like to break.

I completed a couple of long-uncompleted work items. Feels like a load off my shoulders.

I wrote one blog post here.

I finished writing about the zettelkasten, in my zettelkasten. I am following it up with Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes.

Reading

I am presently listening on Audible:

  • Novelist as a Vocation – Haruki Murakami

I am presently reading:

  • Latitudes of Longing – Shubhangi Swarup

I am reading the following articles/essays/stories –

YouTube

Cycling

Cycling is a practice I want to continue. I went cycling last Sunday and Monday before taking the cycle to work on Tuesday. I haven’t cycled the rest of the week.

On following people’s work

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I’m seeing a trend that I want to encourage. People are dusting off their old blogs and websites and starting to write on them again.

One reason for this is the changes in social media usage. People I used to follow on Twitter are now using different social media platforms like Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Farcaster, Discord, Telegram, micro.blog, LinkedIn, and some have even quit social media altogether and moved to blogs. So, I need to find out where I can interact with them now.

My virtual voyages through some of these blogs helped me discover the IndieWeb (via Jatan Mehta). It was here that I was introduced the concept of Publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere (POSSE). It would be great if everyone did it, but not everyone does. So, I am left with following people I like following in the places where they publish.

This doesn’t work well for me, though.

This is why I love the trend to move to blogs (or anything that I can read on a feed reader). This allows me to read on a feed reader rather than on a browser or an app.

Maggie Appleton, in her essay, A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden, talks about the concept of the garden and the stream. Many of the places that I follow people are streams. These are timeline based feed of activity.

A feed reader is still a stream but one where the curation is mine and not an algorithm’s. I want to allow the algorithm to help me discover people whose work I would like based on my previous activity. But, I would like to follow and consume them at my own pace, perhaps in my own feed reader or inbox.

Newsletters (especially Substack) hold a place in between. These seem to be an implementation of the solution I talk of above. The Substack algorithm seems to help you to find people you may like following. You also get to consume them at your own pace in your email client or on their app.

You will notice Substack’s attempts to push you to read on their app. You have had a history of other apps changing ownership or their algorithm in ways that are outside your control. This is how Substack diverges from my expectation above.

Substack is a good temporary solution for my problem. But, I have no control over how long they will stay good. If a feed reader closes (like Google Reader did), alternatives will emerge or I have the option to use other feed readers like Thunderbird.

Feed readers also let me easily move to another service. If Substack shuts down, I will have a hard time finding the people that I followed on Substack on other platforms or blogs.

There were two brilliant essays that I read recently on why we must move on from newsletters to elsewhere, that I think of as part of this trend that I see. I hope these two essays will encourage people to POSSE.

  1. Newsletters; or, an enormous rant about writing on the web that doesn’t really go anywhere and that’s okay with me – Robin Rendle
  2. Getting too good at the wrong thing – Nat Eliason

Weekly Notes 40/2023

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Writing

I wrote a lot this week. Most of them have been work but I have managed to pull aside some time to write about Scott P Scheper’s version of the Zettelkasten, that he calls Antinet this week. I am exploring Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes this week.

I also wrote the broad contours of the novel that I will write for NaNoWriMo 2023. Title is TBD.

I have not written my fortnightly space newsletter in two fortnights.

I am writing but things are not in kilter yet.

Reading

YouTube

OTT

  • The Irregulars (English)
  • Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani (Hindi)
  • Biohackers (German)
  • Reptile (English)
  • Miss Sloane (English)
  • The Pale Blue Eye (English)
  • Wheel of Time (Season 2, English)

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Weekly Notes 39/2023

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I missed writing the Weekly Notes for the thirty eighth week and the fifty eighth edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter. I caught up with a lot of writing work-wise but not much otherwise.

It was a fantastic week for reading. I got a lot of reading done and listened to a lot of podcast episodes. This post is just to make sure that I don’t miss more than two in a stride.