Read a great Reddit thread putting historical dates in perspective.
Here are 8 gems.
1/ The moon landing was only 66 years after the Wright Brothers first flight (1903-1969). Within a lifetime, humans went from having limited flight tech to travelling ~239k miles from Earth.
2/ On a related note, Cleopatra (b. 69 BC) lived closer in time to the moon landing (1969) than the construction of the pyramids (~2500 BC).
In fact, some wooly mammoths still roamed the earth when the pyramids were being built.
3/ A really well-travelled person could have potentially met Socrates (470-399 BCE) Confucius (551-479 BCE) and Buddha (563-483 BCE).
4/ Oxford University (1096) is older than Machu Picchu (1450), and it's not even close.
5/ Harvard University was founded in 1636, decades before Isaac Newton developed calculus (mid-1660s).
6/ J.R.R Tolkien (The Lord of The Rings), Otto Frank (The father of Anne Frank), and Adolf Hitler where all present as foot soldiers at the battle of the Somme (1916).
7/ People began actively traveling the Oregon trail (1843–1869) when the fax machine was invented (1843).
8/ While Hannibal was crossing the Alps into the Roman Empire with elephants, the Great Wall of China was in its initial construction phases.
Anyways, Happy New Years.
If you want to read a newsletter that existed at the same as the iPhone and Avatar 2, check out my Saturday email on business and tech. getrevue.co/profile/trungt…
A lot of replies note that Gore Vidal’s 1981 book “Creation” is about someone who “travels the known world (6th-5th BCE) comparing the political and religious beliefs of various empires”.
The protagonist meets Buddha, Confucius and Socrates.
The invention of bánh mì is a combination of climate, trade and urban layout of Saigon in late-19th century designed by French colonist.
When the French captured the area in 1859, most economic activity in the region took place along the Saigon river.
The population built makeshift homes tightly bundled by the river banks. Outgrowth from this eventually lead to narrow alleyways between many buildings that is trademark of the city (the Khmer named the region Prey Nokor then French renamed it Saigon and then it was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 after end of Vietnam War).
Over decades, the French created European street grids and built wide Paris-type boulevards in the city to funnel commerce to larger markets (also make the city easier to administer).
It was at these markets that French baguettes were introduced and traded.
Bánh mì bread is known for being flaky and crispy on the outside while fluffier on inside (so god damn good).
Two features of Saigon helped create this texture:
▫️Climate: The heat and humidity in Southeast Asia leads dough to ferment faster, which creates air pockets in bread (light and fluffy).
▫️Ingredient: Wide availability of rice meant locals added rice flour to wheat flour imports (which were quite expensive). Rice flour is more resistant to moisture and creates a drier, crispier crust.
Fast forward to the 1930s: the French-designed street layout is largely complete. Now, the city centre has wide boulevards intersected by countless narrow alleyways.
The design was ideal for street vendor carts. These businesses were inspired by shophosue of colonial architecture to sell all types of goods as chaotic traffic rushed by.
Vietnam has some of the most slapping rice and soup dishes, but many people on the move in the mornings wanted something more portable and edible by hand.
Bánh mì was traditionally upper class fare but it met the need for on-the-go food.
Just fill the bread with some Vietnamese ingredients (braised pork, pickled vegetable, Vietnamese coriander, chilies) along with French goodies (pate).
Pair it with cà phê sữa đá (aka coffee with condensed milk aka caffeinated crack) and you’re laughing.
Haven’t lived in Saigon for 10+ years but ate a banh mi every other day when I did.
While there, I also sold a comedy script to Fox (pitch: “The Fugitive meets Harold & Kumar set in Southeast Asia”).
reminder that no “asian guy and stripper” story will ever top Enron Lou Pai’s “asian guy and stripper” story
Totally forgot Lou Pai got the stripper pregnant.
If this story was transplanted to 2020s, Pai would probably have been a whale on OnlyFans and gotten got…anyways, I wrote about the economics of OF here: readtrung.com/p/onlyfans-sti…
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) trained an AI slideshow maker called “Decker” on 900 templates and apparently gotten so popular that “some of its consultants are fretting about job security.”
Sorry, called “Deckster”. That excerpt was from this BI piece that also looked at McKinsey and Deloitte AI uses: businessinsider.com/consulting-ai-…
The Mckinsey chatbot is used by 70% of firm but same anonymous job board said it’s "functional enough" and best for "very low stakes issues." x.com/bearlyai/statu…
Here’s a r/consulting thread based on Computer World last year. Deckster was launched internally March 2024…some think it’s BS…some think it helps with cold start (B- quality): reddit.com/r/consulting/s…