Trung Phan Profile picture
Jan 1, 2023 15 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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…
On a related note, the best “historical figures crossing paths with each other” is def from @waitbutwhy: waitbutwhy.com/2016/01/horizo…

Also check out the full Reddit thread: reddit.com/r/history/comm…
PS. If you’re like me and consume a ton of content, check out the AI-powered research app I’m building that supercharges your:

• Reading (instant summaries)
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Three other good “historical dates in perspective” nuggets: reddit.com/r/history/comm…
To further put the 1969 moon landing into perspective, look at Apollo 11’s Apollo guidance computer (ACG).

Compared to ACG:

▫️a TI-73 calculator has 140x the processing power
▫️an iPhone 11 has 100,000x the processing power and 7,000,000x the memory

🔗 realclearscience.com/articles/2019/…
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.

🔗 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_…

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More from @TrungTPhan

Jun 8
someone used Veo3 to make Moses as a YouTuber live-streaming the Exodus
accent does change at end: reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/bO…Image
On-demand history vids like this in few years with Google Veo very plausible.

I previously wrote on YouTube as greatest athletics learning machine ever…could get souped up: readtrung.com/p/youtube-the-…
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Jun 8
reminder that no “asian guy and stripper” story will ever top Enron Lou Pai’s “asian guy and stripper” story Image
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…
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Apr 29
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.” Image
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…Image
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Read 4 tweets
Feb 4
Norway discovered off-shore oil in 1969. It launched its sovereign wealth fund with $300m in 1996.

It’s since grown 6,000x to $1.8T or $327,000 per Norwegian (5.5m people).

The fund owns 1.5% of all global equities but, most impressively, had a UX designer put a real-time fund value tracker on its website landing page.
Norway’s SWF roughly is 65% equity, 25% bond, 10% real estate/infra (all global).

Unsurprisingly, its largest holding is Apple ($47B, or 1.4% of the entire company).

On a related note, here is my deep dive podcast on Steve Jobs and making of the iPhone: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
Norway spared no expense on its SWF website. Look at that carousel!
Read 4 tweets
Feb 4
never forget that episode of “Nathan For You” when he launched a fire detector product and tried to avoid import tariffs by turning it into a music device
One company that has been very good at navigating international food tariffs/regulations is Trader Joe’s. Built its dairy and wine businesses by finding workarounds.

I explain in this deep dive podcast on Trader Joe’s business history and strategy: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
Nathan’s “Blues” Smoke Detector Instrument lololol:

— “concert quality”
— “pre-tuned to F-sharp”
— “9 battery lets you jam for hours” Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 29
wow, found a rare interview of a DeepSeek co-founder talking about his first AI startup exit a few years ago
Jian Yang is my 2nd fave Asian founder who created a food-related product.

The 1st is David Tran, who built Sriracha (great on hot dogs) into a $1B brand using $20k of gold bars he snuck out of Vietnam in milk cans.

I tell the full story in this podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
sold for $15m, what’s your excuse anon? Image
Read 4 tweets

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