This post is usually meant for weekly posts. However, as we move towards the end of the year, there is an itch to talk about the whole year as well. I hope I can keep the itch aside after one sentence.
2025 was a very inconsistent year for me. Week 52 was not so. I got a lot of writing done at work.
Social Media consumption
I have increased my time spent on Substack, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and X. I wanted to reduce my time spend on X, but most of my space reading and breaking news happens here. This is important to me because I plan to start writing Pradeep’s Space Newsletter again.
Substack is getting better. But, I only see Venkatesh Rao use all of Substack features (Notes, Chat, besides the newsletter) fully. This is what I am aspiring to do. I tried to do that this week but quite unsuccessfully.
I have started getting tired of YouTube.
I want to try doing something like what Winnie Lim suggests here:
The influence social media had on me was not overt – it was not as if I felt compelled to scroll something or I would feel twitchy, but rather it gave me an easy way out whenever I was bored and wanted to be engaged. It just felt shallow, and I seem to be at a point of my life when I wanted something more out of myself. I don’t really know what is that something I am searching for.
I too am at a point in my life when I want something more out of myself.
Writing
I have seen Doc Searls get back to writing blog posts like he does since Wordland launched. He writes about this here:
My original blog was a mix of both. But my writing streams branched when I started blogging here using WordPress in 2007. Social media was taking off, and writers began using Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and the rest for publishing short stuff. In the midst, tweet became a verb. So my long stuff stayed here, while the short stuff went out on platforms.
What I’m doing now with Wordland is shifting my short-burst bloggings from social media platforms that are not mine to this blog, which is mine: going from dependence to independence. Dave, father of Wordland and much else, is leading that shift, and I advise paying attention to what he’s writing and doing.
I want to try doing that here.
Rohini writes on social media (mostly, Mastodon) and she compiles them on her blog. That is another approach that I find appealing.
Reading
- Kathleen Gough and Kerala: Maddy writes about anthropologist Kathleen Gough who studied in Kerala around the 1950s and wrote about Nair kinship and matrilineal families.
- NotebookLM version of Book 2 of Nitopadesha: Nitin Pai used NotebookLM to create a version of Book 2 of his book, Nitopadesha.
- Black Gold, Green Future: Abhed Manocha writes this wonderful Substack post on the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Act, 2025. He explains how this changes India’s focus from a licensing mindset to a focus on strategic energy security and Ease of Doing Business mindset. [My LinkedIn post on the same.]
- Rome to Solapur: India’s largest circular labyrinth discovered in Boramani grasslands: This is an important discovery because the Greco-Romans used this as a navigational aid. They are said to have been built during the age of the Satavahana dynasty.
- Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds: Notion’s CEO Ivan Zhao writes about what material defines each age.
- The writer Vinod Kumar Shukla and actor Sreenivasan passed away this week. I read many of their obituaries (one in the Indian Express and one in the newsminute). I also consumed many of them on Instagram.
- How to become a better storyteller: Very formulaic and extremely practical.
- What Indian consumers want in 2026: Dharmesh is a very astute observer of Indian consumerism.
- Chop Wood, Carry Water by Andrew Taggart: A look at karma yoga at a time when karma mostly has just mundane tasks. It is a short book with a lot of wisdom packed in its pages. It can be read easily but its a really hard re-think and do.
- Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks: I am listening to this on Audible. I am about 57% done in the book. I am reading it again after reading them while still in school.
Watching
These three videos from India in Pictures talk about the three of the four Vedas, their practical application and how the geographical setup in which they were written.
I started listening to the sermons of Sharath A Haridasan in Malayalam after my first hospitalization of 2025. I had dropped listening to it after my second hospitalization. I picked it up again after the third hospitalization. This one talks about kavu and kshetrams and the difference between the two. He also talks about how the practices of worship are getting standardized.
This is a very good podcast interview talking about contrarian investing in India. He says, “The detachment to money helps you to make money.” He says that the issue he has is selling too early. He says he overcame this with the idea of substitution. He doesn’t sell something until he has a better opportunity that he wants to buy before he sells.
India replaced 29 labour codes into 4 labour codes. This video in Hindi talks about how it impacts you.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Parallel Spirals 