Tag: YouTube

  • Weekly Notes 31/2026

    I came across a post about Blaugust 2026 (via Zachary Kai)just before I started writing this post. Belghast, who wrote the Tales of the Aggronaut, started Blaugust in 2014. He passed away this year in July.

    A Discord community that runs Blaugust has decided to still go ahead with Blaugust this year despite his passing. Since I wrote a post yesterday, I thought I could keep going through August.

    26 July 2026

    This was a day after a week of Jantar Mantar protests, India’s Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan had resigned. Gen Z which had been vilified had led protests in their own way and had got the kudos of many people. It had also made Instagram the platform for protests and for the place to consume news.

    I always feel queasy about hosting content on these social media apps and building your business around this. But, it seems to be working for a few of these folks.

    I ended the day watching two wonderful episodes of Shut Up Ya Kunal where he interviews Ramchandra Guha and Jerry Pinto.

    I also got a call from the Hospital saying that my follow-up appointment had been postponed to Wednesday. This would continue for two more days.

    27 July 2026

    Former ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair spoke to Chethan Kumar of Times of India about scientists working in important scientific projects at ISRO leaving to work in the private sector.

    This old interview reminded me of my old web surfing days. D V Sridharan used to write on a website called Good News India before working on this project called pointReturn which he talks about in the video. I remembered this after reading a Weekly Note by Abhinav Sarkar. He had a photo of a windmill atop the note that reminded me of the windmill Sridharan had put up at pointReturn.

    I was so surprised that I could connect a blog post I saw on this day to a post that I read in 2007 or 2008. I used to type in the url manually and visit the website.

    I went through the websites of Cory Doctrow, Derek Sivers, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and many others over the next few days. Google Reader broke that habit and ever since I have depended on some form of a RSS reader to read blogs.

    28 July 2026

    I got another call from the Hospital postponing my surgeon’s appointment to Thursday.

    I loved watching all the psychological tricks in customer service and advertising discussed in this episode with Rory Sutherland.

    One of the videos that resonated a lot and that the YouTube algorithm surfaced this video was made after the CAA-NRC protests six years ago.

    I watched this video of William Darlymple at Kerala Literature Festival 2026 where he released the Malayalam version of his book, The Golden Road and also presented many of his points that are expanded on in the book.

    29 July 2026

    I discovered the work of Dominic Hart, an Australian YouTuber from his videos on using a pocket notebook. But, two videos I loved watching are on his building a shed in his parents’ backyard and his moving into an office space in the city.

    We watched the Malayalam movie Chinna Chinna Aasai.

    I watched a nice interview with Kunal Kamra, which talked about how his family members reacted to his various controversies and run-ins with the police.

    This video is a nice introduction to the concept of social arbitrage investing. They use only social media signals (mostly TikTok and Instagram) to make investment decisions. I think it works in American markets because they depend on the efficiency of stock markets to weed out fundamental and technical issues. He says he is bullish about future investment in Amazon.

    30 July 2026

    The discourse around the 20 July 2026 protests at Jantar Mantar began to turn with people blaming Gen Z for using unparliamentary language against the Prime Minister and various organs of the ruling dispensation finding protestors who had used such language and getting them to apologise on camera. Nothing much has changed for the apologisers despite the apology.

    Two of my favourite YouTubers, Ali Abdaal and Matt D’Avella did a mutual interview podcast. They spoke about their respective YouTube journeys, parenthood, and the differing paths they both took after launching YouTube courses.

    31 July 2026

    I went to the Hospital despite the Doctor not planning to turn up and got my stitches removed. I have to follow-up with the Surgeon on Tuesday (4 August) for care instructions.

    In the evening I had almost reached Part Two of the Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. The long waiting time at the Hospital was great to catch up on a lot of this reading. I signed up for Brandon Sanderson’s newsletter. I was impressed about how he transparently talks about the books he is writing and the progress he has made in each book.

    Cory Doctrow also does this. I had picked up his book to read as well.

    I have listened to Arz Kiya Hai as a background music for different Instagram and YouTube short videos but watched the original video for the first time on this day.

    Bridges in Pune were going underwater as water was released from Khadakwasla Dam. As I said on X and on Mastodon, Pune must build bridges that raise themselves up when the flood waters in the Mutha rise.

    I spent the rest of the day asleep and did not work.

    01 August 2026

    I was considering how I write my posts here.

    I would usually write posts like this on my link blog that I keep on Tumblr. I usually just post links on Tumblr and then give context for myself using the tags. In the post that I wrote on this blog, I ended up giving context. Tumblr is great for this. It is also a great place to expand on text, if you think that is necessary.

    Tumblr is owned by Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com. I wanted to reduce the points of failure and try another blogging service, like micro.blog.

    I have not decided yet but it is something on my mind this week.

  • YouTube – Life Explained in 15 minutes

    There are many such videos online which mainly remix online gyan using AI. This may also have been scripted using one. But, I found the order in which it was said and its tone useful to me. Hence, sharing.

    I think this video has collected the 20% I find necessary to live the 80% of my life.

  • Weekly Notes 23/2024

    Writing

    I heard about the #1000daysofsummer from a member of Amit Varma’s Clear Writing Community (CWC). I shared the idea with another writing community I am a member of – The Purple Pencil Project. I shared my writing progress with both groups.

    I wrote many posts under the aegis of #1000daysofsummer:

    1. I visited Tamhini Ghat in May but wrote about it on the first day.
    2. My father visited us and we went to Panshet Dam together. I wrote about that visit for the second day.
    3. I wrote a piece of fiction for the third day. This was an attempt to write linear fiction and try world-building there. I was not very happy with this attempt.
    4. I wrote fiction again on the fourth day. This was an attempt to write recursive fiction. I enjoyed writing this.
    5. I got back to writing my space newsletter. This was written on the fifth day but published on June 6 on Substack. 
    6. I don’t remember when was the last time I enjoyed watching a launch before. I wrote about the excitement of watching SpaceX’s Starship’s IFT-4.
    7. I wrote a private note trying to build on characters based on the characters created by Prateek Arora for his MahaMachinist Politica. I did not publish this.
    8. Did not write.

    Some of the other things that I wrote that found some traction:

    1. I wondered why there was a lack of writing for people in their 30s and 40s, compared to writing for people in their 20s.
    2. Post on X and Mastodon about how a daughter attending school brings discipline to our life. 
    3. Post on X and Mastodon about my daughter’s efforts to switch on a feature phone.  

    Reading

    I did not read much as my father was visiting. The little available time was spent writing. I did read a wonderful piece by Venkatesh Rao on how solar punk as an idea worked better for temperate climates than tropical and equatorial climates.

    I made a little progress on reading Cory Doctorow’s Red Team Blues. I gave up on reading Book 1 of The Hidden Hindu by Akshat Gupta for now. I also gave up on reading Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert.

    I have got the book, Saboteur by R V Raman from the Pune Public Library in Vishrantwadi. It is a look at the world of e-commerce.

    OTT

    I watched:

    1. New Amsterdam – Season 4 – English
    2. Game Over – Hindi
    3. Dhak Dhak – Hindi
    4. Scoop – Hindi
    5. Atlas – English
    6. Sisyphus – Korean (English dub).

    YouTube

    David Perell talks to Ted Gioia for his podcast, How I Write Podcast. I think Ted Gioia is talking about Asia in the 90s when he speaks about The Honest Broker. He was given this advice by a drunk Australian in a bar, whose name he does not know but who had worked in Asia for a long time. The drunk Australian told him that the only way to get things done in Asia was to find an honest broker where he wanted to setup a factory or a business. An honest broker was a person respected by the community and who knew how to get things done with the help of the community. The drunk Australian warned him that he would do it for free now but expect things in return at a later time.

    This is a video by a YouTuber named Alice Cappelle. She introduces a philosopher from Korea who lives in Germany named Byung Chul Han. An idea of his that he shares here is that we have moved from a discipline society to an achievement society. I have bookmarked him here to read the book itself.

    This is a video by a YouTuber named Dami Lee. She is worried by the fact that the best representation of solar punk that we have in the world today is an ad by a consumer brand. She looks at the various architectures possible and those tried out in the real world (most are in the Netherlands).

    I agree with Venkatesh Rao (see section on Reading) that solar punk is a misnomer.

    Elections

    The elections for the National Elections in India were declared on 4 June 2024. Maharashtra’s politics has been a confusing ride. I wish that at least at the state level, the two political parties, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party get merged again and return to their formal alliances with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress respectively. Given the news reports circulating, it may be happening.

    I went from Pune to Mumbai to cast my vote after a request for a change of address I tried last year did not work out.

    Miscellaneous

    I was reading way too many self-help books in my 30s. A few years ago it was my wife who asked me how reading books had improved or changed my life. I had not stopped to consider this. I was reading books and adding them to the tally of the books I had read. I also found that most of the books that I was reading assumed I was somewhere between 25 and 35. I was two years past the age for which books were written for people.

    I don’t remember a thing about what I read, what systems to implement, or what to learn to change my life now. Everyone’s situation is unique. So everyone must implement the system that works for them. Then with gradual improvement in the system over the years, you will have a system that works for you. This is what Cal Newport suggests in his new book, Slow Productivity.

    The above insight helps me to do something, improve, and iterate.

    I had read in Dan Koe’s book, The Art of Focus that when you share what helps you and then can charge for it, it may help you become a single-person entrepreneur. By the time I do this, this would be old advice.

  • The See, Listen and Read Better Podcast Episode 3 – Running, TV Journalism and Rest

    Running, TV journalism and Rest – The See Listen Read (SLR) Better Podcast

    Sharing suggestions for a See, Listen and Read each week so that you can See, Listen and Read better. This week I suggest watching HasGeek TV’s Run, Run, Run, listening to The Seen and The Unseen episode on journalism and reading Leo Babauta’s blog post on taking rest.

    1. See – Run, Run, Run – HasGeek TV and QnA
    2. Listen – What Happened to our Journalism?
    3. Read – The Lost Art of Taking Rest

  • Malayalam YouTube channel recommendations

    I wrote a Twitter thread last night about the Malayalam language YouTube channels I discovered over the last month. As I kept watching these videos, YouTube’s algorithm started surfacing more Malayalam content for me after a week. The English captioning for Malayalam video is currently awful. This list is expanded and includes more channels that I follow.

    MalluTraveller

    I started following MalluTraveller following his video from the COVID-19 ward in Kannur. He had passed through Iran on his Kerala to Europe tour and was hence denied visa to travel to Georgia. He was stuck in Azerbaijan. When he managed to return to Kannur, he continued posting to his vlog which I think showed people the level of preparedness in Kerala to face the pandemic.

    MasterPiece Live

    They are two people who go around interviewing other Malayalam YouTube creators on their channel. I am not sure what’s with the name. I like them more for surfacing other YouTubers than for their content.

    M4 Tech

    This channel is a DIY channel and is more Kerala centric with some the ideas that they build. I found them via a YouTube reaction video. I think you will be blown away by the energy of the guy presenting. There are two of them here too. They are friends and not brothers.

    Strell in Malayalam

    He is always in a helmet. He talks about bike riding, learning to ride a bike, bike maintenance, and moto vlogs on his channel. His videos are very safety oriented.

    V K Adarsh

    I used to follow Adarsh on Twitter. He created a YouTube channel recently and his explanation of loan products for entrepreneurs and business people is great. One of his recent explainers was on the moratorium provided by the RBI due to the lockdown.

    MommaCool

    I started following this channel for parenting advise but the channel recently did a lot of content on development milestones for children and good books to get your child as per age. The channel talks about baby care, parenting and pregnancy.

    Ratheesh R Menon

    He does video with tech tips and app reviews on his channel. My wife used to follow him on Facebook where he provides tips like how to find hidden cameras in hotel rooms etc.

    Happy Life TV

    This is a channel that talks of family, parenting, personality and sex. My wife and I used to follow this channel for his talks related to family. His point of view is conservative but practical.

  • Samkhya on YouTube

    Since writing a summary of my search on reading up on Samkhya, I thought this update would help other seekers. This YouTube video (~ 30 minutes long, embedded below) is the best explanation that I have found online of the philosophy of Samkhya and Yoga. I have been looking for the Samkhya Karika translations online. There seem to be a lot of content for competitive exams but very little else.

    What is Samkhya & Yoga Philosophy? by Vishwa Yoga

    I am currently reading the pdf of the book by John Davies. After that, I hope to get D E Osto’s book that I mentioned in my earlier post.

  • Watch “Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo” on YouTube

    From the text: “Counter intuitive as it may sound high taxes, generous welfare states and strong unions make it a better environment for people who wants to earn huge amounts of money than free markets, low taxes and minimal government”

    Sharing this talk since it is a contrary position to what I have experienced in my life.

  • First Video on YouTube

    Created a random video of sparrows outside my bedroom video. First step from video consumer to creator? Perhaps.

    Mumbai.