JA Baker’s The Peregrine exemplifies the best in nature writing. Short staccato sentences set the mis-en-scene and longer descriptions zoom in like a telescope into the plumes and colors of birds, with precision and care. The writing teaches us how to write interesting papers, to expose the brilliance of underlying ideas, even when bounded by rote “rules”.
An interesting perspective about growing up in an erstwhile British colony, is that we fail to truly absorb how illogical the spellings and pronunciations in English are. Sanskrit, and a number of Indian languages such as Malayalam and Marathi, possess a long history of codified grammar and detailed pronunciation. So, reading and pronunciation in many Indian languages is almost wysiwig. This is of course not true for English. It is hard to see know the pronunciation differences in words (say, tough, cough and dough) before hearing them.
Supply chain duels, like wars of conflict, are now increasingly global. Walmart and Amazon are entrenched in a long fight to win over e-commerce market in India.
It has been about 16 months from when Walmart acquired Flipkart to make inroads into India. Now, Walmart in India is making a pivot to B2B.
A look at how service jobs are changing the nature of US workforce. In Dec 2019, there were more women than men in the workforce in the United States. I briefly ponder why this is the case.
I'll begin with a story that is one of my favorite essays, from Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa) by Yoshida Kenko a world-wise Japanese monk from 1331. Kenko writes:
When I went to see the horse racing at the Kamo Shrine on the fifth day of the fifth month, the view from our carriage was blocked by a throng of common folk. We all got down and moved towards the fence for a better view, but that area was particularly crowded and we couldn't make our way through...
Amazon is a ``pure" Operations company if there is one such firm. Using Amazon as an example, one can think of how Incremental Improvements compound to pay significant dividends.
A re-look at Amazon in NYC a year after the HQ2 debacle.