I’m Arun Venkatesan, and this is the arun.is newsletter, where I share my current obsessions, inspiration from around the web, behind-the-scenes content, and more.

This week’s issue covers a few things:

• What's new
• Overconsumption
• Recommendations

What's new

Apple Watch Ultra succeeds where Watch Edition failed

Given I live in Silicon Valley close to Apple’s HQ, it has been no surprise that I see people wearing the Apple Watch Ultra nearly everywhere. What has been surprising is that none of the wearers have struck me as fitting the extreme athlete archetype that Apple has advertised the Ultra as being designed for.

I run daily, but use my Garmin, not my Apple Watch. The features the Apple Watch lacks simply make it unusable for me. This made me even more confused about the Ultra. I couldn’t figure out who Apple was targeting.

As I read The Luxury Strategy, which I recommended in the last newsletter issue, I began to understand the Ultra. My latest blog post is an attempt at showing where the Ultra fits into Apple’s strategy and why it has become so successeful.

zen of things

As for zen of things, I have been busy acquiring and testing items for the next batch of reviews. Here’s what’s coming up next in no particular order.

• baby straw bottles
• insulated travel mugs
• safety razors
• nail clippers

Is there anything else you’d be interested in seeing in a future review?

Overconsumption

As I mentioned in the last few issues, we recently spent six weeks in Asia. My in-laws’ place in Shanghai was our home base. We lived a life very differently than in California. We ate my father-in-law’s home-cooked meals. We ventured by foot to the nearby shopping street in the afternoons. Our lives moved to a different rhythm altogether.

Halfway through our stay, I noticed that my AirPods Pro, which usually occupy my right pants pocket, sat instead unused on its charger. Before the trip, I used my AirPods all the time — while doing dishes, on walks, while writing, etc. I alternated between audiobooks, and podcasts, of which I subscribe to a few dozen. I listened at 2.5x to maximize the amount of content entering my ears.

There has been plenty of ink spilled about our scrolling addiction and how the modern world is bad for our brains. Ironically, though I’ve come across many articles on the subject, I never stopped to read, instead mindlessly scrolling to the next headline. Sometimes in the shower, I would tell myself that “I should to get my consumption under control”. I would imagine sitting down to design a plan to win back my attention, but ultimately would do nothing.

Plus, I never thought I had a problem when it came to audiobooks and podcasts since they were content that I was actively choosing to consume, as opposed to algorithmically-surfaced clickbait.

The drastic lifestyle change that came with our temporary stay in Shanghai showed me the true cost of what I was doing. There was palpable difference between my life there and my life back home.

In California, my habit of spending hours listening to voices at 2.5x utterly overwhelmed my mind. Though the ideas bouncing around in my head were often promising, I could rarely channel them into writing.

In Shanghai, the thoughts that bounced around in my head were more often in my voice as opposed to in the voice of a podcaster or audiobook narrator. They were sparse, leaving me the space and time to process them.

Now that I have truly felt the difference of a calm mind on my wellbeing, I aim to continue paring back my consumption to find a more balanced way of living.

Recommendations

LEGO Theme Park Roller Coaster V1.0

This video shows the iterative process of designing and building a LEGO roller coaster. At each iteration, small changes are made to fix bugs or improve the ride. It feels a lot like the process of writing software, where the process of finding a solution is circuitous and full of obstacles. As a bonus, the final roller coaster is both beautiful looking and very fun to watch.

The Fund

My impression of Bridgewater Associates, based on how classmates at Columbia spoke of it, was utmost respect. When I heard its founder Ray Dalio speak of his autobiographical book, Principles, on the Tim Ferriss podcast, I immediately bought it. When I read through it, I came away without any actionable insights, which I blamed on my own stupidity.

Recently, I heard of The Fund, a thoroughly fact-checked book about the true goings on in Ray’s life and at Bridgewater. After reading it, it all makes sense. Turns out that Ray’s was indeed successful at making tons of money, but not for the reasons he publicly said. Furthermore, he crafted Principles ex post facto in an attempt to appeal to the general public as a self-help guru.

If you liked Bad Blood, or Conspiracy, then you may like this book as well.

A short hike

I played an initial prototype of this game back in 2018. I immediately loved the art style and calm gameplay. It’s creator, Adam Robinson-Yu, released the full game in the following few years on all major platforms. I picked up the Switch version recently and fell in love.

You can finish the major objective in an hour or less, but would be missing the point. This game is more about relaxed exploration and enjoying the beautiful art, adaptive soundtrack, and little side quests.

That's it for this issue.

As always, this is my personal email, so feel free to respond directly.

Stay curious,
Arun Venkatesan