Living in a paradox of choice.
Life is a summation of the choices you make.
Dear Friends
It is a weekend lockdown here in Pune and it feels so nostalgic.
April is upon us again, and things don’t look very different from the last time. Covid cases are on the rise again, lockdown and curfew restrictions are imposed in almost all the states in varying degrees, there’s no sign of schools and workplaces opening anytime soon. It is like real life deja-vu!
But I don’t want to focus on what is going on the outside and instead I want to focus on re-building myself and doing some new things while work seems already hectic.
One thing I have realised in the past one year is that
The world around you will never slow down its pace. As long as you chase it, you will keep struggling. Slow down and do things at your own pace and suddenly the world will follow suit.
So here is something that I want to share with you all to regain your creative confidence.
Creativity is simply put
1: The URGE to create something
2: Actually creating something regardless of perceived value.
And finally being creative is nice. It's accessible to all. being creatively powerful takes years and years of dedication. Not everyone is willing to go on that journey.
“Global Creativity is going to be financed and celebrated to a degree that’s gonna make the first renaissance feel like a bleep in a history book. If you are a creative person and you are alive today this is literally the best time in the history of humanity to be on this planet”
In this video, Jack Conte, the Founder of Patreon, explains how we are living in the midst of a full-blown creative renaissance and how companies and media distributors all around the globe are getting ready to support the massive creator explosion that’s about to happen. The cultural perspective about creativity is about to change for once and for all, the artistic pursuits will no longer be seen as inferior.
Creators are going to dominate culture and technology and work throughout the world.
I feel I don’t talk about Facebook anymore on this newsletter because FB is always in the news, sometimes twice in a day.
“Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched its latest experiment, Hotline, into public beta testing. The web-based application could be described as a mashup of Instagram Live and Clubhouse, as it allows creators to speak to an audience who can then ask questions through either text or audio. However, unlike Clubhouse, creators can opt to turn their cameras on for the event, instead of being audio-only.”
Facebook notoriously known for ripping of product ideas is at it again, this time chasing behind the newest buzz of the media and tech space, clubhouse! According to the article, the interface of Hotline will be similar to that of Clubhouse but it will have many differences such as video, text-based questions, upvoting and interactions can be recorded in Hotline, “this makes it feel less like a casual hangout and more like a professional event where an expert is leading a session and inviting an audience to ask questions.”
“What’s interesting is that Mark Zuckerberg feels like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where they’re desperately trying to diversify away from one platform — oil versus data — and get into other businesses. Their weak point — and people don’t see this yet, but it’s really playing out with Apple — is that Facebook recognizes they’re not an operating system, as they’d like to think; they’re an app. And as long as that app has to go on someone else’s rails, be it Android or iOS, they’re vulnerable. And so what is Facebook doing under the radar that almost no one is talking about?”
Facebook has done it again! Half a billion user’s privacy has been breached and their data is now available on the dark web. Facebook tried to cover up the incident by stating that this is an incident that took place in 2019 and has since been fixed. But as we discussed in previous editions of our newsletter, facebook’s hegemony over the world of social media might soon end. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss why Facebook is currently the most vulnerable of the tech giants!
It’s only April and 9 Indian startups have already joined the Unicorn Club!
The legendary rapper DMX has died at the age of 50. "For someone who rapped about death at his front door and his preoccupation with the end, simply seeing DMX hit his sixth decade feels like a miracle," wrote
@DavidDTSS in February.
Muons are an unlikely particle to hold center stage in physics. Sometimes called “fat electrons,” they resemble the familiar elementary particles that power our batteries, lights and computers and whiz around the nuclei of atoms; they have a negative electrical charge, and they have a property called spin, which makes them behave like tiny magnets. But they are 207 times as massive as their better-known cousins. They are also unstable, decaying radioactively into electrons and superlightweight particles called neutrinos in 2.2 millionths of a second.
A tiny subatomic particle seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics. That’s right, I guess our lives weren’t black-mirroresky enough, so now we have this new pandora’s box waiting to be opened!
In Seoul, a couple defaced a painting worth $400,000, “Untitled” by the graffiti artist JonOne, mistaking it to be a participatory mural. This has renewed the debate over contemporary and abstract art. “South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship, and authenticity.”
Why are young people imagining themselves as the protagonist in fictionalised versions of their lives?
“Creating a story around you may be a way of filling that gap, or taking away that lonely feeling. Imagining yourself as a protagonist not only gives you a sense of agency that has been taken away due to the pandemic, but also this feeling that other people are watching you or care about what’s happening to your story.”
Do you ever look out of the car window during a road trip, humming your favourite tune and imagine yourself being the lead in a Bollywood rom-com? Well, turns out this is symptomatic of the “main character syndrome” and is rooted in our understanding of self and reflective of our psychology.
“Chrissy Teigen, in writing about losing her son Jack, noted that of the thousands of messages she received after she shared her loss publicly, the ones that provided deep relief were the ones that included the “no need to respond” disclaimer. A year into this pandemic, with so many people going through so many hard things, I think this is a habit worth picking up and sticking with. Whether you’re offering help, just saying you’re thinking about someone, or sending them fortitude or solidarity, removing the expectation that they respond to your message is hugely caring.”
We often fail to understand that even if we are trying to comfort someone and be by their side, it can feel burdensome and overwhelming to the person on the receiving end. Especially if they are dealing with intense emotions in the first place. The best we can do is be silent supporters of their struggle, and give them the time and space to recover on their own.
“Motivation comes with an eye-dropper when you want it, and a firehose at the end. What we want is a nice tall glass of motivation, but we don’t really have that. We have this really messed up system.”
This is a brilliant article because it talks about the complex neurological mechanism behind motivation with such a simple comprehensible metaphor. Next time you feel guilty for not being motivated enough to go to the gym, blame your basal ganglia for acting on default!
“A dining room conversation is like presenting a fully cooked dinner. A kitchen conversation shows and explains how the dinner was cooked.
Conversations and relationships break down when people don’t disclose the reasoning behind an idea, proposal, critique, or suggestion. It’s one thing to tell someone the project they're working on wouldn’t work (dining room conversation). It’s another thing to explain why you think so (kitchen conversation).”
Honesty is the cornerstone of any functional relationship, not just personal but also professional. Often we lie not because we are dishonest but because we want to avoid an uncomfortable situation, but this jeopardizes the relationship in the long term. So though honesty is hard and convoluted its best to come clean and do so respectfully.
I hope by now my love and admiration for Esther Perel is evidently clear to you!
The quality of your relationships is what defines the quality of your life.
She was recently on the The Prof G Show with Scott Galloway and it was absolutely amazing to hear her talk. She talked about how the pandemic has posed newer challenges in relationships and why self-awareness is so important. She also discussed alongside how co-founders can overcome the various pain points they’ve experienced throughout the past year and parenting tips.
This week on Pepper Spotlight, the weekly podcast by Pepper Content, Chaitanya Kataria, Co-Founder and Business Head - Gully Gang Entertainment breaks down the nuances of collaboration, insights of working with niche content, shared stories from the rap-music work, and a whole lot more.
Being a first-mover is definitely an advantage. Especially with the way Indian media works. There is a demand for content and a boom in the internet entertainment business.
Being the first, and only all-rap-music creation house must be an overwhelming task. Being a front-runner can be seen in two ways -- one, you are the first mover who gets to set a precedence for the industry to follow. Second, you make all the mistakes, so there are fewer for the next generation to drive. Chaitanya believes it’s a little bit of both.
I hope you all enjoy reading and going through this information, if you liked reading this post, please do share it with your friends and family over social media or whatsapp or just feel free to forward this email.
More importantly take care and stay safe.