An exploration of intellectual "rabbit holes" as the essence of a life well-lived. When something catches my attention—a "ripple"—I follow it wherever it leads, even if it seems random or pointless. These intellectual adventures have led me to the best books, projects, and ideas in my life. I don't try to optimize my learning or have grand purposes. I just stay curious, pay attention, and let serendipity surprise me.
Read full articleA site for Seneca's letters.
Read full articleI argue that speculation is like water—it never stops, it just finds new channels. Using India’s gaming ban and global examples, I show why prohibition shrinks what’s visible but pushes play offshore or underground, and why channelization with smart, coordinated regulation works better.
Read full articleFor some reason, I’ve long been fascinated by news publishing. At one point in my life, I wanted to be a journalist. Thank God I didn’t become one. As romantic ...
Read full article“Good times become good memories, but bad times become good lessons.” Uncle Iroh, Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Read full articleIf you are working in financial services, you would have heard or thought about this: "India has 140 crore people, and even if 10–20% of the population starts i...
Read full articleThroughout the history of modern banking, two narratives have been constant: "Banks are dead" and "Why do we need banks?"
Read full articleIn the previous post, I wrote about a few underappreciated aspects of banking panics in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Since publishing the post,...
Read full articleOn March 10th, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th largest bank in the United States, collapsed. SVB was the bank of choice for US startups, faux libertarian te...
Read full articleOne of the oldest clichés in finance is that retail investors are "dumb money" and institutional investors are "smart money." There's some truth to the cliché. ...
Read full articleBill Burr is one of my favourite stand-up comedians and also someone you can easily relate to. At the 2014 to Don Rickles—another one of my favourite comedians...
Read full articleCan you think of some of the greatest inventions and innovations in human history?
Read full articleSometime in the last decade, _software is eating the world_ became _fintech is eating the world_. The term “fintech” is a portmanteau of “finance” and “technolo...
Read full articleThe relative calm of 2021 feels like yesterday to me. Sure, we had a virus that was hellbent on killing us, but most of us had made peace with our impending dea...
Read full articleThese are good times for all those who've been crying wolf about market crashes and economic crises for the past couple of decades. It just took two decades, bu...
Read full articleA few things that made me go, _ooh, that's interesting_.
Read full articleA few things I learned this week.
Read full articleHere's what I learned this week. One thing is that I'm going to be poor, but here are a few other things.
Read full articleIf you had the power to bring back someone from the dead, who would it be? I'm guessing a dear one, favorite actor, musician?
Read full articleI have an embarrassing and pretentious-sounding confession. One of the reasons why I created this blog is because I really enjoy collecting links—the internet c...
Read full articleNiall Ferguson is one of the smartest and the most provocative financial historians of our time. His controversial reading of history has earned him a reputatio...
Read full articleThe amount of new content created every day on the internet is astounding. It goes without saying that a lot of it’s nonsense, but there’s plenty of good stuff....
Read full articleToday was a bad day for smallcaps. The Nifty Smallcap 250 index was down by 2.59%. No, this isn't a post about "smallcaps are risky". Although, I don't who read...
Read full articleOn balance, the personal finance bloggers and the gurus have done a lot to educate people. But sometimes, it feels like they undo a lot of that work with ridicu...
Read full articleIf you listen to Steven Pinker, he'll tell you the world has never been a better place: ...
Read full articleThis week's edition of the _Nonzero newsletter_ was quite interesting. It chronicles all the shenanigans of Mark Zuckerberg since he was at Harvard. The post pa...
Read full articleThere was a lot of chatter about work from home last week. A lot of these were the same old debates about whether work from home is good or bad. Is work from ho...
Read full articleMicrosoft hit $2 trillion in marketcap a few days ago. There was a time when a trillion meant something, but it doesn't seem so anymore. Microsoft and Apple now...
Read full articleYay! I am now another pretentious idiot on the internet with a blog. The reason why I started this blog is I love writing and learning about things, but I am to...
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