Connecting the dots...

Over the years I've dappled in a gazillion things, the one quote that acknowledges my infinite curiosity and soothes my cognitive dissonance, is by Steve Jobs “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” allow me to walk you through my list of curiosities for your musing...

• Studied Psychology
• Worked for a Newspaper
• Advertising - Worked in multiple agencies over the years
• Theatre - Acted in 4 plays - Wrote 1
• Stand-up comedy - Performed in Parks and Pubs
• Dance - A Trained Bharatanatyam Dancer
• Travel - Co-founded an experiential Travel Company - Unventured Expeditions
• Writing - Poetry and Short stories published by some well-meaning publishers.
• Sitar Artist - Good enough to perform on stage
• Certified Massage Therapist - Yep!
• Art Museum Guide
• AI enthusiast - Briefly worked in a generative AI design start-up
• Vedic Astrology - On a course and actively learning
• Trained/Certified Scuba Diver
• Bicycle tourer - I have ridden up a good number of mountains and hills in Asia
• Small-time start-up Investor

In all of this, I hear my mother’s voice echoing “If you can only concentrate on one thing, the things you will achieve” Spoiler alert, it's never true for anybody. But, I love the person I’ve become. I could connect all of this and tell you a story of the person I am today, no one too spectacular, utterly ordinary even, BUT delightfully happy! You’d hear a story of beautiful connections with people, places, books, music and a deep sense of empathy to know a cow can be dinner, diety or leather and I am grateful for an undying curiosity to learn and learn some more.

You probably saw this coming, This newsletter is all about connections - Learn what connects the Nuclear Bomb detonating and catching Art forgery in “Connections You Should Know”. What’s the origin story of unassuming phrases that we use daily like “kicking the habit” or “Going Cold Turkey” in “Origin Stories You Should Know”. A grass that was domesticated in the early ages that now connects the entire humankind in “A plant you should know of”. All you entrepreneurs, there is something for you too and if there is anything that is grandly connected is your product and user engagement, great products are built on shared insights, an insightful discovery for you in “Platform you should know of”

Connecting nuclear bomb detonations to Art forgery.

We know there is an era before nuclear bomb testing and then there is one after. After the first nuclear bomb detonated, scientists began to employ radiocarbon dating. The unstable carbon 14 was produced in unnatural quantities after a huge thermal neutron flux produced by nuclear bombs reacted with nitrogen atoms present in the atmosphere (aka Nuclear bomb explosion). This in turn was absorbed by organic matter like flax and cotton which is commonly used in making a (drumroll please) canvas. Let’s say an ambitious con “artist” decided to replicate a Van Gogh for a few hundred million, then scientists would just put a tiny piece of the canvas under the microscope and simply look for the presence or absence of carbon 14. The presence would make it a fake and the absence closer to an original.

Connecting Idioms to History

If you are a fan of Black Adder like me you'll probably chuckle at “you would bore the leggings off a village idiot”. My all-so-woke friend recently commented “Don’t you think it's rude to call someone who can’t grasp concepts faster than the rest the village idiot!, where is your sense of empathy Tej?” I resisted rolling my eyes and said “Hang on, there must be history to this” my favourite idiom to history connection is “Pour me a stiff one” which connects to Admiral Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. The admiral fights valiantly but dies, as a war hero his battalion decides to bring him home for a hero’s burial instead of the one at sea… which was mostly popping the body into the sea. They decided to put him in a cask of brandy to preserve his body from decomposing and tagged it “Admiral Nelson”, as days passed on, the victorious crew got a tad too celebratory and assumed the cask tagged as Admiral Nelson was his personal cask and he obviously wouldn’t be using it. When they docked at Britain, the brandy was gone and Admiral Nelson was rather stiff, and thus all drinks poured from that cask a “stiff one”. Wait there is some more.

“Going Cold Turkey” connects to "goose bumps" that occur with abrupt withdrawal from opioids, which resembles the skin of a plucked, refrigerated turkey.

“Kicking the habit” is an opioid addiction phrase that began after the US Civil War due to injured troops' addiction to morphine. Uncontrollable leg movements were part of opiate withdrawal symptoms. While at “Kicking”, “Kicking the bucket” is when pigs are slaughtered and their leg would reactively kick the bucket.

How bread connects us to Disease, Prayer, Politics and the way we think about life.

The greatest change in human history began 12,000 years ago when humans invented agriculture. We finally domesticated plants, more importantly, GRASS! the genus Triticum. We became farmers, settled in a fixed place, and established fixed communities. We gained security, and higher life expectancy in exchange for a lifetime of toil. This all began in the fertile crescent which is the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

How is this connected to disease? Domesticating plants is a double-edged business, there is always payback! By planting a field of wheat the owner has all the seed he wants. But, he has also created vulnerability with monoculture aka low genetic diversity and high disease incidence. With this, diseases, fungi and insects will all take advantage, easily moving from plant to plant, without unviable or unpalatable species to interrupt. The first recorded plant disease to hit wheat was called “Stem Rust” and further on to variations in plantations of Bananas, potatoes and so on. Traditional agriculture always flirts with disaster: to be warded off with prayers, hard work and anything else one can come up with. With increased industrialisation bread infiltrated all cultures, yes! Rice-producing cultures included. As inventions to ease farming increased, politics followed right behind. Today wheat is everywhere. World trade in wheat is greater than all other crops combined. As of 2021 the world produced 772 million tonnes of wheat.

To sum it all up, planet Earth has been aptly modified and managed more or less from top to bottom for the convenience of a species of grass that once grew wild in West Asia… All Hail Wheat and let’s eat some cake or brioche. Am told Mary Antoinette quoted “Qu’ils magnet de la brioche” wrongly translated to “Let them eat cake”

Understand what it's like to be your customer - Connecting users to products with UserTesting

As entrepreneurs, we are sometimes too stuck in our ways. I remember oddly re-quoting Mr. Jobs “People don't know what they want until you show it to them”. There is truth to it but please do not discount what your customer/user today has to say. There are products in the world that are sheer vanity based, for example “pet rock” However, a good product is solving a problem, am still wondering who ever wanted a “pet rock”. Moving on, when I went about looking for feedback from users, User testing popped up, and you lovely people of LinkedIn came right to my mind. PS: I don’t get paid to do this.

And that's all for this week's musings, you go be awesome and chase that new hobby, or interest and be ridiculously curious... drop a line, heart, clap, laughter... I'll take any reaction.