Abhishek Rao's blog

  YouTube (YT) can be a double edged sword for our long term well being. One the one hand it contains many informative, useful videos that improve our understanding of the world, on the other hand one could easily be sucked into mindlessly watching useless videos. Understanding how YT works will help us use it better. One thing we have to be wary about is YTs recommender system. This can hook us on and make us crave for more videos . I would recommend extensions like Distraction Free YT to avoid seeing YT recommendations next to current video. Instead of recommendations we can choose based on channels. Channel list Below I have shared a list of channels/playlist which I believe are more substance than style.   General 3Blue1Brown - YouTube Maths visualizations. Asianometry Semiconductors, history, general. Crash Course World History This channel has multiple courses, but the original history one was really interesting. Daniel Patton - YouTube Book reviews. DW Documen...

One pattern I see in the western world is that if any media franchise/IP becomes popular, then it is milked till people stop liking it. e.g. Star wars, Game of Thrones TV series, Simpsons, Spongebob etc. Big corporations are hesitant to create new IPs, rather they try to play it safe by continuing with existing franchises or formulae. However if a new IP is created and it does become popular then it is extremely valuable as now the studios can start milking it till it dies. Thus a pattern we see is that every franchise will always end in a flop. Because in a capitalistic world otherwise it would be like leaving money on the table.  Only in cases where the franchise is owned by non-greedy entity who appreciates the art more than the money does the franchise not end in a flop. It takes generosity and respect for the creation for the owner to say "I know I can make some more money if I make a new movie from this, but I don't have any novel ideas, so I'm not going to make it....