3 incidents that changed my life
SVB Bank, gpt4, Balaji's black swan event bet, "I, Houdini" and many more...
gm 👋 Prado here
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Essay of the week - 3 incidents that changed my life.
When I was in school (probably 9th grade) we went on a trip a few hours away - Neyveli Book Fair. I was never into books. I was more of a sportsperson. I played cricket for my district.
A few incidents from that book fair changed my life.
I didn’t have much money in hand. The money my parents gave me was spent on buying food or tickets to 3D of something related to planets.
I was thinking about what to do with this money and thought “let’s at least check out some books”
I bought two books:
“Global Brands that changed the world” (Buy it here)
300 Brain twisting puzzles.
I think I bought the 300 puzzles one because I always liked puzzles. I remember doing Sudoku from the everyday newspaper when my mom used to get me ready for school.
I bought the other book because it had the colour yellow in it. I guess lol.
3 incidents that probably changed my life.
Incident 1: Teacher buying lots of books.
When the day got over and everyone assembled near the bus to go back, I saw one of my teachers staking up on books. Like he had bought probably over 20-30 books and he had them staked up from his belt to chin.
I was surprised to see him like that.
I looked at my hands and realised I bought only two books and the teacher bought like 20.
He was probably one of my first influences to buy more books. I want to be like him.
Walk out of a bookstore or a book fair staked up with books 🙌
Incident 2: Reading the yellow book
After I went back, I probably didn’t touch the book for a couple of years.
I think I was in 11th or 12th grade and opened this book and read a few chapters for fun.
The best part was that the chapters were not that big. They were like 3-10 pages.
One of the business stories I read was about how Adidas and Puma were started by the Brothers.
I created a StoryCard on the entire story 👇
This book probably got me into books and stories. Two big parts of my life in the past 5 years and the life ahead.
Incident 3: Took my cousins to a book fair.
My two close cousins 15 & 11 (We live in a kinda-joint family) My dad’s brother & his family used to live under the same roof but we bought a place right opposite to our house and his family shifted there when the kids got older.
Anyway, I had come to my hometown a couple of weeks ago because my sister is 9 months pregnant. I was just chilling and came across a book fair happening nearby.
That weekend I took these two cuties 👇 and we bought these books 🚀
We bought 8 books worth ₹2,500.
The last incident was to tell you that I kinda fulfilled my dreams of buying a stack full of books at a book fair.
I hope these kids got inspired or hopefully get inspired as I did :)
This week was probably one of the biggest weeks ever:
SVB bank run.
Circle (USDC) shared that they got exposure of $3.3B in SVB bank (That’s their 33% of cash)
That led to stablecoins getting de-peg by 10%
SVB UK got bought for $1
OpenAI launches GPT4
More banks fail.
Balaji bets $2M that USD will hyperinflate and BTC will reach $1M in 90 days.
Out of all these, I wanted to talk about two specific topics (gpt4 & Balaji’s black swan event bet) but didn’t have much time to explore more.
I’ll try to write them in my next two issues.
Here are some tweets for you to brainstorm though:
Thanks for reading Pradologue Newsletter! Join the 4173+ curious folks for FREE and fulfil your curiosity every week 🙌
10 Interesting things for you 🙌
1. If you have ever flown Go Air, on their fuselage you will see the logo of a company, with a ship on it.
If you have ever wondered, what is an 18th Century Ship doing on a 21st-century airplane, then it's time for a nice little story.
A story involving dowry and an act of piracy. (Blog)
2. Something from my Twitter👇
3. Add ChatGPT to your home screen
4. Bank failures in the US since 2001 (Infographic) (Source)
5. Interesting website of the week:- HeyFromTheFuture.com/age
6. Question of the week:-
7. Fidget of the week:-
8. Current read: I, Houdini
9. Meme of the week:-
10. Quotes of the week:
"For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell." - Deirdre McCloskey
(Tweet this quote)Ɔɹǝɐʇǝ ʇɥǝ ʇɥıuɓs ʎou ʍısɥ ǝxısʇǝp
(Tweet this quote)Use the power of no to get your priorities straight. You rarely regret saying no. But you often wind up regretting saying yes.” - Rework authors (Jason Fried and DHH)
(Tweet this quote)
Check out some previous newsletters:
Diderot Effect (Read)
Life’s lines of Closeness (Read)
How far did Elon Musk go to fulfil his curiosity? An untold story (Exclusive)
Cathedral Thinkers (Read)
You can check out the entire archive
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Personal Announcement 🚨
One of the goals for the upcoming week is to narrow down my focus and get a few things in order (business-wise) before my sister’s baby is born.
Tomorrow I’ll be going to play cricket after a long time, excited about thatt too.
Last week was a long one. Take some time off this weekend and eat some good food.
In This Together,
Prado
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