2549 Courts, April Cools, Drone Economics & Personal Wikis
#73 of 10+1 Things | Abu Dhabi
🕊️ After the storm.
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Sorry I missed out on last week, I was busy with some client work and didn’t get time to complete the draft on time!
As I’m about to publish this, at least for a while, things have settled here in the Middle East with the ceasefire. Barring the war stories which have become the norm these days, UAE and most of the Gulf got hit with intense rain last week.
I actually love rain and most of my childhood good memories are associated with rain and monsoon in particular. There’s something about the smell of wet earth and the sound of it hitting the windows that takes me back home. I’m already counting days to go back to Kerala for the monsoon this year. But UAE isn’t built for this kind of downpour and even moderate rain wreaks havoc here. We had some waterlogging in our area for a few hours but it wasn’t as bad as the 2024 floods, so my car survived.
I didn’t get much time to scale up my product, StackStats (the better analytics app for Substack writers) due to work, but this week I’m back in the groove.
So if you write a newsletter on Substack, please have a look! I’m giving away five 1-year licenses for my readers, so reply to this email and I shall send you a free license for you to try and give some feedback!
Without further ado, here are 10+1 Things worth sharing:
📱 Quiet Things: This small yet intriguing essay makes us reflect upon how our devices moved away from being quiet tools to needy relationships. A $12 Casio F-91W just tells time, while an Apple Watch constantly demands updates, charging, and attention.
I wrote something related last year: I miss my Fan Regulator🎭 April Cools: April Cools is an interesting movement that started in 2022 as an anti-April Fools thing. Instead of pranks, people create something genuine but totally different from their usual content – tech bloggers writing about coffee, developers sharing recipes. Lot of really good posts, I loved this one about rice farming.
📚 Personal Wikis: This guy organized 1,351 old family photos, interviewed his grandmother about them, and created a Wikipedia-style page about her wedding from 50 years ago. Then he used Claude to auto-generate pages from digital photos, bank transactions, and chat exports to build his entire life story.
⚔️ Drone Economics: Modern warfare has changed over the years and this super good illustration by Reuters shows how. Iran's $35,000 Shahed drone vs America's $4 million Patriot interceptor – you could build 115 drones for the cost of one missile.
🎵 Wall Players: I shared a vinyl clock last year, but this cool project combines vinyl, CD, and cassette players you can mount on your wall. Physical media is making a comeback and this makes it actually practical.
🚁 Fake Rescues: I've heard about so many scams but this one from Nepal is wild. Trekking guides terrify tourists with mild altitude sickness into fake helicopter rescues, sometimes even mixing baking powder in food to make them sick. One helicopter carries multiple people but bills each insurance separately – turning $4,000 into $12,000 !
📐 Non-Designer’s Design Book: I picked up this book by Robin Williams this week and it’s already changing how I see design. Four simple principles that once you learn them, you can’t stop noticing everywhere – from posters to websites to menus.
“Once you can name something, you're conscious of it. You have power over it. You're in control. You own it.”
~ Resurfaced with ReadWise.🎨 How Culture is Made: This essay shows how small groups shaped culture – how the Royal Society founded modern science in 1660, how Dischord Records created D.C. punk in 1980, how Guerrilla Girls fought art world sexism in 1985. The pattern: culture takes time, needs a catalog of work, and comes from groups not individuals.
📸 2549 Courts: This photography project by Austin Bell documented every single basketball court in Hong Kong from above using a drone. Over 140 days he shot 40,000 photos, capturing neon grids squeezed between skyscrapers and hidden in valleys.
🔧 Repairable Blender: This teardown by iFixit compares three blenders – a $30 Walmart throwaway, a $130 Ninja that uses security screws and soldered parts, and a €350 Open Funk reMix that's fully open-source. The reMix works with mason jars, has downloadable CAD files for 3D-printed parts, and a complete repair manual.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week!
Which one was your favourite this week?
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With Love,
Rishi
"What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know."
- Jorge Luis Borges