The Bookmark

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I maintain this list to try and avoid being overwhelmed by the information overload on the Internet. I have put together some of the most interesting stuff I have enjoyed reading, watching or listening to, so far -

Tech Reads:

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• Hacker News: Community news platform focusing on Computer Science & Entrepreneurship. It is run by Sam Altman’s startup incubator, Y Combinator.
• TechCrunch: They do a good job profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.
• Techmeme: The essential tech news of the moment. Technology’s news site of record. Not for dummies.
• Reddit Tech: This sub-reddit is a great place to share and discuss the latest developments, happenings and curiosities in the world of technology.
• FlowingData: Explores how statisticians, designers, data scientists, and others use analysis, visualization, and exploration to understand data and ourselves.
• FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver uses statistical analysis to tell compelling stories about elections, politics, sports, science and economics.
• VisuWords: Web-based visual dictionary and thesaurus tool to look up words for meanings producing association diagrams reminiscent of a neural net.

Interesting Blogs:

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• Colah’s Blog: A wonderful tech blog explaining key concepts of Machine Learning by Christopher Olah, who’s mission is to “understand things clearly and explain them well.”
• Andrej Karpathy’s blog: Andrej Karpathy is the Director of Artificial Intelligence and Autopilot at Tesla working on Deep Learning, Generative Models and Reinforcement Learning.
• Chris Dixon on Medium: Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, and former CEO, of the website Hunch.
• Farnam Street: A widely appreciated blog run by Shane Parrish, addressing topics such as mental models, decision making, learning, reading, and the art of living.
• Philip Guo’s blog: Philip Guo is an assistant professor of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. He gives some interesting insights helpful for graduate students.
• Remains of the Day: A blog about random assortment of interesting things by Eugene Wei, Head of Video at Oculus.
• Noam Chomsky’s Articles: Words of wisdom from Avram Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist.
• Paul Graham’s Essays: Paul Graham is an English computer scientist, venture capitalist, and essayist. He is known for his work on Lisp, for co-founding Viaweb, apart from co-founding the Y Combinator seed capital firm.
• Melting Asphalt: Kevin Simler’s blog about Orthogonal Thinking

Podcasts

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• The Knowledge Project: The podcast by Shane Parrish aims at acquiring wisdom through interviews with stalwarts across various domains to gain insights into how they think, live, and connect ideas, from business to wine and everything in-between.
• The Tim Ferriss Show: Engaging interviews hosted by Tim Ferriss, best known for the ‘4-hour work week’, where he deconstructs world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc.), digging deep to find the tools, tactics, and tricks.
• Y Combinator Podcast: A podcast by Y Combinator covering stories, conversations and practical advice from founders and investors about ideas, technology, learning and life, in general.
• How to Build the Future: Sam Altman sits down with people who have built successful companies and shaped the world today to discuss how they got started, and what they think the future will look like.
• Tesla Daily: Dedicated to keeping investors and customers well-informed, host Rob Maurer provides analysis and opinions on Tesla as a company, TSLA stock, and the future of the many industries Tesla competes in.

Comics:

• Calvin and Hobbes: Commonly cited as the last great newspaper comic, Calvin and Hobbes subtly puts across profound thoughts of Bill Watterson, in it’s inimitable naivety.
• PhD Comics: Piled Higher and Deeper, is a newspaper and webcomic strip written and drawn by Jorge Cham that follows the lives of grad students. I could relate to this a lot during my grad school days.
• Peanuts: The humor is psychologically complex, and the characters’ interactions formed a tangle of relationships that drove the strip. It’s creator, Charles M. Schulz is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time.
• xkcd: Described as ‘A web-comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language’, xkcd is a stick-figure strip featuring humor about technology, science, mathematics and relationships, by Randall Munroe.
• Amar Chitra Katha: Amar Chitra Katha (‘Immortal Picture Stories’) is one of India’s largest selling comic book series that retell stories from the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore, and fables in a comic book format.
• Strange Planet: Based on the phenomenally popular Instagram comic, a hilariously perceptive and hugely addictive look at an alien world not unlike our own.

Informative:

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• 3Blue1Brown: A excellent collection of video tutorials by Grant Sanderson, bringing together math and animations for simplifying complex problems, and helping to see them from a new perspective.
• Khan Academy: American non-profit educational organization created by Sal Khan, with the goal of creating a set of online tools that help educate students.
• MIT Open Courseware: MIT OpenCourseWare is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
• The Sanskrit Channel: This channel explores ancient Indian treasures of Sanskrit Literature deciphering works in Engineering, Philosophy, Health, Business, Warfare, Music, Dance and Arts. Helps me catch up on my Sanskrit from time to time.
• Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell: Kurzgesagt makes videos, explaining things like evolution, time, space, global energy or our existence in this strange universe. They are a small team of like minded people who want to make science look beautiful.

Shows:

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• The Simpsons: A satirical depiction of a working class lifestyle epitomized by the Simpson family. Created by Matt Groening, the show parodies American culture, society, television, and many aspects of the human condition.
• Friends: The show revolves around the lives of six 20-something friends living in Manhattan. It ran from 1994–2004, being one of the most loved television series of all time.
• Malgudi Days: An Indian television series based on the works of R.K. Narayan. The series was directed by Kannada actor and director Shankar Nag. This series was shot entirely near the scenic Agumbe, Karnataka.
• Jeopardy!: My all-time favorite quiz show. Though it was Alex Trebek’s show all the way, I am a big fan of the writers of the show, who consistently come up with top quality content.
• Silicon Valley: The series focuses on six young men who found a startup in Silicon Valley. A comedy partially inspired by Mike Judge’s own experiences as an engineer in Bay Area in the late 1980s.
• Sherlock: A contemporary version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson.
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: The HBO series sees the British comedian, political commentator, television host review what happened the past seven days in news, politics and current events, all with a heavy dose of satire.
• Honorary mentions: Game of Thrones, The Office (US), Breaking Bad + Better Call Saul, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Books:

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I’ve moved my reading list to GoodReads. I am also listening to more audio books on Audible, off late.

Music:

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I enjoy good music, especially Progressive/Classic Rock, Bollywood melodies and Sufi tunes. I maintain a collection of my favorite music in English, Hindi, Kannada & more on Spotify.