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)
• Writing (rewording, grammar correction, auto-generated text)

Try it free: bearly.ai
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

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
Jan 17
Bookmarked a bunch of great David Lynch posts in past 24 hours (RIP to a legend):

1/ Martin Scorsese Tribute Image
Read 23 tweets
Sep 19, 2024
PayPal’s bland logo redesign was inevitable
Image
If you are the person that did the un-aligned letters for the previous eBay logo, please contact the research app team. We are huge fans of how un-aligned the “e” is with the “y”.Bearly.AI
This article offers up reasons for popularity of simple font logos (mostly Sans Serif):

— Easier to standardize ads across mediums
— Improves readability (especially on mobile)
— The “brand” matters more than the logo velvetshark.com/why-do-brands-…
Read 4 tweets
Sep 1, 2024
Berkshire Hathaway board member Chris Davis once asked Charlie Munger why Costco didn’t drop the membership card.

Let anyone shop and raise prices by 2% (still great value), thus making up for lost membership fees (and more).

Munger said the card is important filter:

▫️“Think about who you’re keeping out [with a membership card]. Think about the cohort that won’t give you their license and their ID and get their picture taken.

Or they aren’t organized enough to do it, or they can’t do the math to realize [the value]…that cohort will have a 100% of your shoplifters and a 100% of your thieves. Now, it’ll also have most of your small tickets.

And that cohort relative to the US population will probably be shrinking as a % of GDP relative to the people that can do the math [on Costco’s value].”▫️

I have a membership but have been guffing on the math for a few years tbh. They keep telling me to upgrade from Gold to Business but I’m too lazy (even if the 2-3% Cash Back on Business pays back after a few trips).

This is a long way of saying Costco’s membership price hike effective today — its first in 7 years — is annoying but when I decide to do the math in a few months, it’ll be worth it.

***

Chris Davis’ remarks from this episode of The Knowledge Project: open.spotify.com/episode/6fJYHF…Image
Anyway, here is something I wrote about Costco’s $9B+ clothing business my affinity for Kirkland-branded socks and Puma gym shirts. readtrung.com/p/costcos-9b-c…
Two notes:

▫️Meant “Executive” (not “Business”) membership
▫️Chris Davis was doing a pure thought experiment. Costco membership obvi high margin (on~$5B a year) and accounts for majority of Costco profits. Retail margin is tiny on ~$230B of annual sales (Costco would need like another $150B+ from letting anyone shop to make up membership profits)Image
Image
Read 5 tweets

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