• Abundance

    Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson

    Just so we are clear, the scope of this book is only the US, the rest of the world will have to figure its own way to abundance, though we might learn a few tricks from this. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wonder why, for all its enormous wealth and technological capability, the US cannot address the fundamental human problems of hunger, homelessness, life-threatening diseases, and fuel an equitable world with clean energy.

    Indeed, the introductory chapter ‘Beyond scarcity’ does imagine an utopian world really well. And it’s clear that it isn’t technology that is stopping us. Sigh.

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  • Kannur

    Kannur was only a vague plan for some other time, until Theyyam became a bucket list item for D. Then we got hold of a schedule and a guide and landed in Kannur. Well, actually our Kannur flight got canceled, and we landed in Calicut, but that was a minor inconvenience. Passing by many places we only knew by name was a nice experience too.

    Where to stay in Kannur

    We had originally booked a place called Anansa Boutique Hotel but they canceled us a couple of months before the trip. Ah well. That got us to Sunfun. Our room was on the top floor, and only just ok, but the rooms on the first floor looked a lot better.

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  • Careless People

    Sarah Wynn-Williams

    As someone who has worked with founders in the startup space for over a decade and a half, the megalomania, the lack of empathy, and the moral bankruptcy in Careless People all seemed familiar. But Sarah Wynn-Williams’s first person account is about arguably the biggest phenomenon that has hit culture in the last decade and a half – social media, and specifically, the biggest player in it – Meta (then Facebook). She worked at Facebook from 2011 until her termination in 2017, the time when Facebook went from infancy to a full-blown global power base.

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  • Andrea’s Brasserie

    Andrea’s Brasserie happened because sometime in August we figured that Bangalore was done with the rains and we could safely visit Phoenix Mall of Asia without carrying swimming trunks. There are quite a few other options there, but many of them were also present in our suburb Phoenix, and we weren’t in the mood for Asian. (though my nieces had Bubble Tea and Korean snacks to prepare their appetites!)

    The place is fairly compact, but I liked what they did with it – the peppiness of the decor and the comfortable seating made it seem more expansive than it was. We chose a cosy, corner.

    Andrea's Brasserie, Phoenix Mall of Asia, Bangalore
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  • Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

    Cat Bohannon

    There is a choice we make when we use the word ‘mankind’ when we should be using humankind, or even better, humanity. ‘Eve’ is a good reminder, and the sub-heading – How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution – is exactly what the book is about. Cat Bohannon gives us a lot of insights into the pivotal role of the female body in the evolutionary story, in a sweeping and provocative narrative that questions the ‘male bias’ in science and medicine at large, and offers the story of human evolution as told through the female body.

    The book is structured chronologically across 200 million years, and drives the story through the story of specific body parts, processes, and mechanisms. ‘Eve traces the evolution of women’s bodies, from tits to toes, and how that evolution shapes our lives today.’ In that process, we get insights on why women live longer, why they menstruate, are female brains different, and the very interesting question of whether sexism is useful for evolution.

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