https://micro.setu.me/categories/link/Recent content in Link on Setu's (micro)blogHugoenTue, 17 Feb 2026 22:23:06 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/25-years-wikipedia/Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:23:06 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/25-years-wikipedia/Wikipedia turned 25 last month, and they created a website to showcase their journey, remind us about their core goals, and briefly look to the future. It is inspiring, as all things Wikipedia usually are. I was skeptical of Wikipedia initially, from the little I remember. It still amuses me just how volunteer-driven humanity’s premier encyclopedia is. From the website: [The Wikipedia authors’] work represents almost 25 years of humanity at its best—the humans of today, organizing themselves to benefit the humans of tomorrow.https://micro.setu.me/posts/miniature-calendar/Sat, 30 Aug 2025 14:23:39 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/miniature-calendar/Miniature Calendar is Tatsuya Tanaka’s website where they make daily posts of everyday things reimagined in a miniaturized form. When I see these post in my RSS feed, it makes me pause and smile. It is a small joy that reminds me of the good in the world, the creativity around us, and the warmth of people sharing their talents with the world. I hope it makes you smile, too.https://micro.setu.me/posts/andor/Sun, 22 Jun 2025 19:42:49 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/andor/I like Star Wars. A lot. There is just something exciting about watching a world that could be. The space travel, the various galaxies, the different cultures, the numerous species, and yet the same people and tendencies. Andor is the furthest from a classic ‘Star Wars’ universe. There are no jedi, no lightsabers, no Yoda, no Skywalker. It is just a marvelous story taking place somewhere in the grand universe. The deep story-telling keeps you focused on the people: there’s heroes, anti-heroes, complications, love, pain, suffering, battles, preludes to war, and most of all, hope.https://micro.setu.me/posts/seth-godin-how-win-argument-with-toddler/Sun, 20 Apr 2025 20:47:19 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/seth-godin-how-win-argument-with-toddler/Seth Godin, in ‘How to win an argument with a toddler’: An argument, though, is an exchange of ideas that ought to surface insight and lead to a conclusion. If you’re regularly having arguments with well-informed people of goodwill, you will probably ‘lose’ half of them–changing your mind based on what you’ve learned. If you’re not changing your mind, it’s likely you’re not actually having an argument (or you’re hanging out with the wrong people.https://micro.setu.me/posts/the-backfire-effect-by-the-oatmeal/Mon, 20 Feb 2023 14:16:25 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/the-backfire-effect-by-the-oatmeal/I have always had strongly held beliefs, but over time I have also realized the need to change them as more information is presented to me. The Backfire Effect, a comic strip from The Oatmeal, describes why we should all keep doing that rather illustratively. I’m just here to tell you that it’s okay to stop. To listen. To change. It is okay.https://micro.setu.me/posts/eliud-kipchoge-profile-irish-examiner/Sat, 13 Nov 2021 00:18:09 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/eliud-kipchoge-profile-irish-examiner/I first learnt about marathons when I went to watch the inaugural Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon in 2004 with dad. I took the Mumbai local to Churchgate early that morning and walked to the finish line near CST to watch atheles cross the finish line. I was mind-blown when I saw the route in the Times of India the day before. It took the runners through some of my favorite parts of Bombay: the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, the Worli Seaface, the Queen’s necklace.https://micro.setu.me/posts/following-the-science-covid-19/Sat, 10 Apr 2021 17:59:37 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/following-the-science-covid-19/For all that has happened over the last year, the pace at which science (and more specifically, biomedical science) has progressed has been awe inducing. We went from having no tests to genome sequences shared with scientists and labs across the world to countries before the virus reached their shores. We watched as epidemiologists (and other experts) figured out how the spread occurs, and what can be done to contain it.https://micro.setu.me/posts/three-languages-politics-arnold-kling/Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:41:37 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/three-languages-politics-arnold-kling/Now that I think about it, it is not at all surprising that I picked up and read this book. I have been intrigued by language (so much so that getting machines to understand language is my day job!) for as long as I can remember. Observations that change how I see the world intrigue me. How people perceive, understand, decipher and involve themselves in politics has fascinated me over the years.https://micro.setu.me/posts/hey-jude-celebrating-beatles-most-hearted-masterpiece/Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:48:19 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/hey-jude-celebrating-beatles-most-hearted-masterpiece/If you ask me my favorite Beatles song, I’m going to choke. But I do know ‘Hey Jude’ is in my top 3. It has to be. I just read this story in the Rolling Stone by Rob Sheffield from a couple years ago, describing the background in which ‘Hey Jude’ came to be, and how it became a signature Beatles song. It truly is one of their greatest. “Hey Jude” remains a source of sustenance in difficult times — a moment when four longtime comrades, clear-eyed adults by now, take a look around at everything that’s broken around them.https://micro.setu.me/posts/joys-being-absolute-beginner-life/Mon, 22 Mar 2021 23:40:18 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/joys-being-absolute-beginner-life/Over the last few months, I have been thinking a lot about learning, especially in this last year when there was so much time to just think. I really liked this piece in The Guardian by Tom Vanderbilt. As I read through it, it hits the right notes for me about (adult) psychology, human behavior, the desire to learn and overcoming inhibitions. Like the author, I have wanted to learn how to play chess well for a really long time, but haven’t gotten around to it.https://micro.setu.me/posts/online-privacy-should-modeled-real-world-privacy/Mon, 07 Sep 2020 17:56:14 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/online-privacy-should-modeled-real-world-privacy/I read Daring Fireball often and one of the things I strongly agree with Gruber on is privacy. I think privacy ought to be a fundamental right and I loathe the practices of tech companies that are formulated on invading it. That is also why I use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. John Gruber wrote this post following Apple’s new iPhone ad (watch it, it is a great one) about companies act as privacy thieves by tracking people across the internet.https://micro.setu.me/posts/good-sudoku/Sat, 22 Aug 2020 00:18:52 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/good-sudoku/I’m a sucker for sudoku. I was obsessed about 7-8 years ago and solved it every single day for a while (thanks, Mumbai Mirror!). In the week after I watched and posted about the Miracle Sudoku, Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger released a great sudoku game. I have been obsessed and can’t stop playing. My total daily phone screen time is ~2.5 hours and >20% on average has been playing Good Sudoku for the last few weeks.https://micro.setu.me/posts/pandemic-play-2021-beyond/Tue, 18 Aug 2020 23:06:12 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/pandemic-play-2021-beyond/One thing that has constantly been on my mind for the last 7+ months: The COVID-19 pandemic 1. There’s so much I have read about it, heard about it, tried to learn about it, but a thought exercise around long-term implications of it fascinated me early on. Thereafter, I spent a weekend looking at the how walking and driving habits had changed in various Indian cities. More recently, as discussions around vaccines progress, and we learn more about SARS-CoV-2 and how it attacks the human body, I have also been thinking about what we can expect in the medium- to long-term as governments succeed or fail in controlling the spread of the pandemic.https://micro.setu.me/posts/united-nations-uniqlo/Fri, 24 Jul 2020 22:59:34 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/united-nations-uniqlo/Over the last 18 months, Uniqlo has gone from being a brand I had no idea existed to my preffered clothing brand. The simplicity of the designs and the great quality of the clothes have won me over. Be it solids, polos or graphic tees. So when The Economist had a profile piece about Uniqlo by Amelia Lester, you bet I read it. Some quotes that are telling of the story of the company, its success and its goals:https://micro.setu.me/posts/miracle-sudoku/Thu, 18 Jun 2020 23:16:45 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/miracle-sudoku/Trust me and take 25 minutes out to watch this. Just trust me.https://micro.setu.me/posts/playing-apple-covid-mobility-india/Sat, 13 Jun 2020 14:39:33 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/playing-apple-covid-mobility-india/I came across Apple’s COVID-19 mobility dataset in mid-May. Instantly, I was curious. I have been interested in understanding how the world is changing ever since the pandemic begam, and thinking about what it means in the short and long-term. As I started exploring the data and seeing some interesting patterns in there, I started thinking about if there were ways I could share it and make it public. Of course, there’s always Jupyter Notebooks, but I don’t enjoy making my notebooks overtly formal and presentable.https://micro.setu.me/posts/for-all-mankind/Sun, 01 Dec 2019 20:58:52 -0800https://micro.setu.me/posts/for-all-mankind/Among the first set of Apple TV+ shows, ‘For All Mankind’ excited me more than others. Over the last few days, I have watched some of the released episodes and I’m really impressed by it. I think it is a compelling story-line. The plot of the show is fairly simple: What if Russians landed a human on the moon before the USA? How would the space race unfold after that event?https://micro.setu.me/posts/the-seen-and-the-unseen/Mon, 03 Jun 2019 19:27:09 -0700https://micro.setu.me/posts/the-seen-and-the-unseen/I have been listening to podcasts for a few years now. Most of the podcasts I listen to are (unsurprisingly) tech-related. However, slowly, my podcast feed has been growing for the last year or so, with new feeds that focus on politics, economics and current affairs. As my schedule gets more streamlined, I listen to more podcast episodes every week. It makes a lot of sense to listen to them while I’m doing chores or while I’m commuting.