What’s Worth Reading | Shreyas Recommends – (Week 56: Oct 16th – Oct 23rd)

• How about we just cut up the big states? We’d get better governance at least

• Farmer suicides: depression is bigger reason than debt

• Profiling the thieves of India. Dacoities have come down significantly. Wonder what happened to the “Chaddi and Banyan Gang”

Around the world

• Nobel Prize factoids

• Watch: War in Syria - who is fighting whom

• What does it take to eradicate a disease

• The world will have to add 600 million jobs in the next decade

Business and Tech

• Self-driving cars could avoid about 90% of the current road accident deaths. That’s about 300,000 lives saved per decade in the US alone

• Domino’s with a bold move: launches its first outlet in Italy

• Playboy will no longer have nudes in their magazines. The economics and business strategy behind the decision

• Yet another milestone for solar and wind energy: they now have negligible lifetime cost difference with non-renewables

• How do pharmaceutical drugs get their names

• The origin of the 140 character limit on Twitter 

•  How many hours will your phone charge last if it was powered by AA battery

• Be careful when you use Google: it has removed “Don’t be evil” from its Code of Conduct

• Psy's “Gangnam Style” was first video to hit billion views on Youtube in 2012. Since then nine more music videos have hit billion views

• Raising VC money can be a very bad decision for a start-up

• Forget the unicorns, hail the cockroaches

• Nokia killed Nokia

Strange things

• What does the barcode on flight boarding pass tells about you

• Watch costing bloody $815,000. And they are justifying it!

• The origins of "Nankhatai"

• The “Bechdel Test” used for films originated from a comic strip

• Biggest disruptive technology from the 20th century were refrigerators. Reminds me of this another article about how far behind India is the world average in terms of fridge ownership. White goods can be catalyst for social and economic revolution in India.

All 55 previous Shreyas Recommends Editions are available here

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Shreyas is a Delhi-based Consultant working with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He blogs at shreyasp.wordpress.com. He is an alumnus of IIM Indore. Follow him on InsideIIM at shreyasp.insideiim.com