It has been a tough April, and I am among the fortunate ones. I know from the extraordinary people around me, how difficult and dire the conditions have been for many people.
Here are my pandemic recommendations. Some light, some heavy. Some funny, some serious. Instead of reviewing them fully, I recall the associative memories from reading experience that came back to me, as I thumbed through these copies.
Senthil's Notes Posts
Even in this uncertain climate, some supply chains are doing well. Apple going by their 2020 Q1 reports has got some positive news to share. I wrote last year on the blog, while discussing Peak iPhone, that iPhone as a product is maturing and argued that, Apple will soon pivot to become a services company. More evidence is now in.
I revisit the thesis in this post. Apple earned a record $12.7 billion in services revenue during the first quarter of its fiscal year — a year-over-year increase of roughly 17%, growing faster than the rest. Add to this information, the margins are higher than every segment, with margins exceeding 65% in services — Apple will increasingly focus on services going forward.
Leave a CommentRonan Farrow, along with journalists like Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, deserve our deepest gratitude. While they make it clear that they are not the story, it requires a certain guileless audacity to jump into unknown dangers where “angels fear to tread”. Much like Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, Catch and Kill is a peerless example of investigative journalism into strange realities that we believe exist only in fiction.
Leave a CommentThe Anarchy covers the rise of East India Company (EIC) from the arrival of Thomas Roe in 1608 at Surat, all the way up to the Battle of Delhi in 1803. It is a fascinating and an expansive topic. For Indian readers, it is also a somber read as we know and reflect how the next hundred odd years unfolded. EIC with its crown-blessed untrammeled monopoly rights subjugated ancient empires, appropriated massive wealth, and dovetailed the direction of a subcontinent forever.
There has never been a multinational corporation that was as powerful, as nimble, as unregulated and as successful as the East India Company. In fact, East India Company may have been the first corporation that was “too big to fail”, when it was rescued by a massive bailout in 1773, by the members of British Parliament, many of whom owned stake in EIC.
Leave a CommentI have desisted from posting my Covid notes, as the days grew grim and the world is inundated with desperation. Stay well, dear reader.
Instead, I will write about Shipping. The pressure of online orders during the pandemic finally got to the more efficient e-commerce firm in the US: Amazon. WSJ reports that Amazon will be suspending its delivery service, Amazon Shipping, which was created as a competitor to FedEx and UPS to ship items from third party businesses to their customers. I argue why.
Leave a CommentWhen epidemics grow exponentially, the way the time flows becomes haphazard. If news of casualties were markers, it should seem like that time should shrink, but time seems to behave weirdly. It oscillates between periods of ennui, and panic of the instant. Everything seems like an eternity away. Yesterday, in fact, seems to have the echoes of last century. Penn closed this week over the spring break. Over a spate of three progressively discomfiting announcements, classes were delayed, then moved online and eventually all gatherings of 25 or more people were prohibited. So, I am spending the spring break in the west coast, almost an epicenter compared to idyllic Pennsylvania. My trend line is full of academic Twitterati, complaining about…
Leave a CommentKnives Out is a modern throwback to classic Christie whodunits, complete with the imposing mansion, an old dead person, the usual assortment of idiosyncratic family members and backhanded political commentary. And the Pynchon Joke.
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