Dark side of the moon + 5 good reads

As a kid, I never imagined a day when an Indian spaceship would land on the moon. The most I dreamed of was an Indian as part of the crew of Star Trek. India landed an unmanned spacecraft and a robot in the South Pole region of the moon. It is literally the dark side of the moon.

This is an astonishing achievement for the country — the whole project cost a mere $75 million and succeeded where others have failed. It is astonishing and amazing because it gives many Indian kids a chance to imagine bold new frontiers!

“What going to the moon does for us is that it helps restore our pride & self-confidence. It creates belief  in progress through science. It gives us the aspiration to lift ourselves out of poverty. The greatest poverty is the poverty of aspiration”   

Anand Mahindra, Chairman, The Mahindra Group on what India’s moon mission means

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Why is Jean-Michel Basquiat everywhere? The anti-capitalist painter is being grossly commercialized — his images appear on handbags, phone covers, and whiskey bottles. If you can get past the irony, the answer will surprise you.

Amazon & Get Quick Rich Hustler The promise of e-commerce riches, combined with social media and platforms like YouTube, only makes hustling easy for the get-rich gurus.

Does ChatGPT have a liberal bias? A paper claims yes, but some smart people point out that the paper has many flaws and shows a poor understanding of how LLMs work.

The Rise and Fall of Playboy magazine. Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no nudes in this article — just the facts about PlayBoy’s history.

Did The New York Times destroy Wirecutter?The simple answer is yes. However, the more complicated answer points to the Internet itself.”