The $600 million pizza, and how dogs saved us from diabetes | #49
Q: What is really India's first movie?
Friends,
The past week’s news cycle was rather unusual - Rahul Dravid proclaimed himself to be “Indiranagar ka Gunda”, the much vaunted ‘Tika Utsav’ was not a roaring success, and Coinbase, a company that operates a crypto currency exchange platform, did a shahi snan through an IPO and came back with a ~$90 billion evaluation. And since *everyone* is talking about Bitcoin, we decided to jump on the bandwagon and do the same for this week’s newsletter.
An important message from Modiji
Things we Learnt this week:
What is the cost of 2 pizzas? On May 22, 2010, now known as ‘Bitcoin Pizza Day’, Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 bitcoins for 2 Papa John Pizzas. He effectively paid $613 million for 2 pizzas. Hopefully he got the thin crust.
It’s hard to predict the future of Bitcoin. So we can’t blame Lily Allen for being skeptical about it way back in 2009. She was then offered 200,000 bitcoins in lieu of cash for a gig and promptly turned it down. What did she lose? $4.7 billion as of today. “Not Fair”, “Fear”, “Hard Out here”, “Somewhere only we know” are appropriate song titles.
And since we’re talking large sums of money - recently digital artist Beeple sold his digital art piece ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ via NFT, for a whopping $69 million. Who were the buyers you ask? Silicon Valley bigwigs? Guess again. A Chinese tech billionaire maybe? Nope. Russian oligarch? Nah. Two Indian-origin dudes named Vignesh and Anand. BMKJ indeed.
From IWTK, with love
The world might be fighting the coronavirus, but it still has older enemies like diabetes to tackle. A thread on the discovery of insulin and how we would all probably be dead if not for dogs.
Rajnikanth was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award this year. It might have been the Dadasaheb Torne award - the director of what could be considered India’s first movie. Read this thread for some Bollywood history
Movie and history fans, this one's for all of you! Most people think that Dhundiraj Govind Phalke was the first one in 1913, but some others say that it was actually Ramachandra Gopal Torne before him in 1912. What do you think I am talking about?
Things we’re reading / watching / listening to:
Joji - Shakespeare, Fahadh Faasil, Dileesh Pothan. When 3 outstanding talents come together, you can expect a fantastic film. Inspired by Macbeth, Fahadh Faasil is fantastic as Joji in this contemporary Shakespearean tale.
Night Song - a 1996 collaboration between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook. The songs have been composed by Khan with arrangements by Brook. The sound is immersive, innovative, and really diverse, with Brook using a range of sounds from traditional Senegalese instruments to his infinite guitar.
A Surprise!
A word of thanks to you, dear reader. When we started this newsletter, we never thought we would do it consistently for so long. You have given us the inspiration to do so. Next week is our 50th edition and we have a surprise guest editor - he’s a published author and a man of many talents and we’re so excited for it. Do wait for it next week in your inboxes.
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❤️ IWTK