PicoBlog

Greetings earthlings, What did the scarf say to the head? To even attempt to understand this joke of mine, which I am quite proud of and am excited to share the punchline to, you must know what the scarf joint is. The scarf joint is named for the famous 18th-century Dutch woodworker Franklyn Scarfe, who, in his authoritative Treatise on the Methodologies of Working Woode, describes how he stumbled upon this method of joinery while trying to construct the world’s first Dutch Oven.

Last Sunday evening, after getting our son to bed, I hurriedly wrote about my first VC investment. Writing words on the internet about investing is a recently found hobby that selfishly helps me clarify my thinking. I’ve only been at it a short while and am appreciative and mildly surprised that anyone would read these words or find them interesting. With that context, imagine my shock when Naval liked my tweet about last week’s post.

Salam guys! A few weeks ago I spoke to my coach, Lalla, about feeling stuck. I had been going through the motions, technically doing what I was supposed to but I just wasn’t feeling any of it. We had initially connected through the Recite & Reflect sisters reading rooms I run over on Clubhouse, which led to our discussion about the benefits of reading Quran while seeking blessings and protection through it.

Have you ever struggled to clarify an idea, even when you thought you understood it? You write your idea down on a piece of paper. Then you scratch your head and wonder, “What do I say?” Sometimes it’s a lack of knowledge. But most of the time it’s because you haven’t thought critically about your topic or your reader yet. Here’s the good news: You can use a simple 4-part method to bring clarity to any idea so it’s easy to understand.

Just to remind you that I don’t only write about deer, I wanted to alert you to a brand new story I just had published at National Geographic. It’s about see-through frogs and their disco livers. But none of those words make sense together, you may be thinking. Okay, lemme back up. In Central and South America, there are these amphibians known as glass frogs. There are many different species, but lots of them have this super weird biological quirk—their skin and muscles are varying degrees of see-through.

Friends, I have a conundrum this week. As a long-running feature, I’ve used this newsletter to intermittently share stories from my Inventor Portraits project, a series of 47 profiles of inventors from all walks of life who I interviewed and photographed over the years. I’ve been going chronologically, beginning with Inventor #23 since that’s where I left off when I was doing this on Instagram. But now that I’ve reached Inventor #39, Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, I have a dilemma, because I actually wrote this story already back in the third issue of this newsletter, before I decided to continue the whole series here.

Last month I opened the Play Store to download an app for a company I was planning to apply to. That’s when I saw the ‘You might also like’ section and this app with a bird illustration somehow seemed familiar. It resembled the Duolingo logo. I opened the app description, read some reviews, and got excited to try it out. The Product Manager in me planned at this moment to explore the app onboarding and write a “perfect” piece about it on my Substack :P

Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labour of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com. Don’t forget to check out our SHOP and our Podcast. Kaavya Viswanathan has always been remembered by one single story.

Hi y’all!  In case you forgot, this is BOOK NOTES, coming at you a week late because I’m in crunch time at work. Whoops! I first read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes when I was seventeen or eighteen. It was either the summer before my senior year of high school or the summer before my freshman year of college. I’m not sure, I don’t remember, and it probably doesn’t matter.