Some helpful things for my new follower😇

Andhakasuravadha Samharamurti -#story #Thread
Sculpture of Bhagwan Shiva as the destroyer of the Asura Andhaka - Cave 29,Ellora caves

Asura Andhaka hangs on to a trishula held by 6-armed Shiva.

Once Parvathi & Shiva were relaxing in the pleasant gardens of Mount Mandhara.

Bhagwan Shiva sat down there to enjoy the happiness.Parvati closed the eyes of Shiva playfully & darkness covered the whole universe.Parvati was perplexed & her palms were wet with perspiration.A few drops of her sweat mixed with sweat from Shiva’s body& fell to the ground.

From this sweat,a fierce creature was born,it started to roar.Child was born blind as Shiva's eyes were closed so was named as Andaka.Andha means darkness&also ignorance.Around the same time Asura Hiranyaksha was performing rigorous tapas Shiva for a boon of powerful son.

Bhagwan Shiva was pleased by tapas of Hiranyaksha & blessed him with darshan.Hiranyaksha asked for a powerful son,Shiva told him that he cannot have his own son,but can adopt a blind child who would become very powerful later.Shiva gave child Andaka to Hiranyaksha.

Hiranyaksha returned to his kingdom with Andaka.Later after the vadh of Hiranyaksha, Andaka is said to have lived with his cousins.He was ridiculed,so dejected Andaka went to forest.He did severe tapas for over many years towards Brahma Dev. Brahma dev appeared before him.

1/ Productivity tip: when I keep procrastinating on something I often trick myself by saying, "ok just work on it for the next 20 minutes" or some short period of time, "and then you can chill/relax guilt free" and give myself some treat (sugar, netflix, etc)

2/ Usually at the 20 minute mark (sometimes I set a timer) I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I don't want want to stop and end up working on it for the next hour or two. But getting started seems to be the hardest part.

3/ Key to this: you have to actually be ok with stopping after 20 minutes and being guilt free if that's how you feel. So it's not a trick, i have the option every time, I just often don't want to use it once i'm in the zone.

Thread about Shashanka and alleged persecution of the Buddhists. The purpose of this thread is to defy their claims while tackling a few other issues.

(Very long thread but useful) 1/n

Shashanka was a Shaivite king of Gauda with his capital being Karnasuvarna.
He is often accused to be a persecutor of Buddhists by the certain historians prejudiced folks to form a picture that Hindu kings were also against other religions just like the muslim kings. 2/n

Much of Shashanka's life after 619 CE is not very much known to us. Historians primarily cite from a few sources like 1) Banabhatta's Harshacharita and 2) Hsuan Tsung's Si Yu Ki(SYK), both being 7th century texts and 3/n

3) Manjushri Mula Kalpa(MMK), an 8th century text sometimes also dated as a 12th century text. 4/n

The method of accusing Shashanka as a Buddhist hater is established by saying that Shashanka desecrated Buddha's sacred marks, destroyed the Bodhi Tree in Gaya and replaced the Buddha statue w Shiva after which he died as he incurred a mortal flesh-rotting disease 5/n

👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!

This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?

One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.

The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.

#TodayInHistory Ram Prasad Bismil,Ashfaqullah Khan and Roshan Singh are hanged in 1927, as they give up their life for the cause of freedom and inspire many a revolutionary. #LestWeForget

Shahjahanpur was a hub of revolution during the freedom struggle. Most of the revolutioaries in the North, were from this town. And among them, the most famous were two friends, whom destiny would bring together- Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan.

Ashfaqullah Khan was born at the turn of the 20th century on October 22, while Bismil was born 3 years earlier on June 11, in the same town. Both of them were excellent writers in Urdu and Hindi.

Both of them would come together under the Hindustan Republican Association, not to mention the fact that Ashfaq was an admirer of Bismil’s poetry, and became close friends with him on that account.

And both these men were hanged on the same date, December 19, 1927 for their involvement in the Kakori event. Two men from different religions, different backgrounds, yet destiny would bring them together.