Hey folks!

I feasted on pizza for dinner last night and ended up wondering why round pizzas come in square boxes. 🤔

And here’s what I found out.

Making square packages is obviously cheaper because you could just make a box out of one cardboard unit. But try making it round and you’ll need to put together multiple cardboard pieces and also get machines to carve out round shapes.

And round boxes don’t stack up well when you want to bulk store them. So it’s always the square ones that win. But you know what?

Square pizza boxes have more air circulating through them because of the wasted corner space, which could make them soggy quicker. These corners could also be a reason why pizzas move within the box while being transported and sometimes end up getting squished. Round boxes could solve these problems.

Do you think we need round pizza boxes in our lives?

Fun fact: Apple thinks we do. Yup, in 2010 tech giant Apple patented a round pizza box with 8 holes on the lid that allowed moisture to escape. The company’s Head of Food Services Francesco Longoni designed it to help employees carry their pizza from the cafeteria to their workspaces.

Here’s a soundtrack to put you in the mood 🎵

Khud Se by Osho Jain

Thanks for the wonderful recommendation, Alok Ratre.

Time to move on…

What caught our eye this week 👀

Can legal overhauls keep content pirates at bay?

Believe it or not, India ranks 3rd after the US and Russia when it comes to visiting content piracy websites. In fact, there were 7 billion visits through torrent sites in 2022.

And let’s be honest. If we were to run a poll on how many of us have accessed pirated movies or music at some point in time, most would be found guilty of indulging in it.

But content piracy isn’t something that should be casually brushed off. It’s a serious offence costing film producers and the industry nearly ₹23,000 crores in revenue losses annually.

So why is content piracy so prevalent, you ask?

To begin with, India’s intellectual property laws (those that protect copyrights, trademarks or patents) aren’t comparable to international standards. They’re quite weak. As of now, India ranks 43rd out of 55 countries in the international IP index.

Circulating links to pirated content over encrypted chats via WhatsApp or Telegram which external authorities can’t access and a proliferation of OTT platforms with pricier subscription fees have also catalysed content piracy as a business.

But the government has had enough and wants to plug the problem by tweaking the Cinematograph Act. You see, so far we haven’t had specific laws directly penalising piracy. We’ve had these punishments peppered across the IT Act or the Copyright Act.

With new amendments to the Cinematograph Act, content smugglers may have to cough up anything between ₹3 lakhs to 5% of the gross content production costs, besides strict imprisonment if nabbed.

And although it looks like a workable initial solution to the humongous problem, here’s the bigger worry. Crores of users flock to these websites. Pulling up each one of them is practically impossible. And in such situations, filmmakers are resorting to John Doe orders from High Courts.

What’s that, you ask?

Think of it as an anticipatory order before the release of a film that tells anyone and everyone not to indulge in piracy. It’s called John Doe because it’s not directed at one particular person but an anonymous group that could be anyone.

Anyway, the thing is, despite laws already being put in place, we haven’t been able to curb piracy. Maybe stricter punishments are the way to go.

Infographic 📊

This didn’t make the cut ✂️

On Friday, we wrote about the fantasy of a 4-day workweek.

But there’s something we didn’t say.

4 day workweeks could deepen income and economic inequity.

You see, most people who’ll benefit from this experiment are well-educated workers who already get a lot of perks. On the other hand, for most blue-collar workers, things might be getting worse. Especially in places like the US. Employers are shifting risk to these workers.

How, you ask?

Forget 4-day workweeks, they don’t even have fixed schedules anymore. Employers are increasingly relying on just-in-time scheduling. Workers aren’t often hired full-time so that the company can save costs. Instead, they work on a part-time basis and get called in whenever the stores are busy. Now you’d think they could go get a second job. But what if the shifts clash at the last minute? Juggling this is next to impossible when you have to be on-call always.

And for parents, arranging daycare for kids becomes even harder. And some surveys say that these unpredictable schedules are causing anxiety and behavioural issues in children. That doesn’t bode well for the future.

Workers don’t want fewer hours. They want more. And that’s because the unfortunate reality is that despite productivity soaring over the past few decades, wage growth for blue collar workers has been abysmal in many parts of the world. They simply don’t get paid enough and they’re struggling.

So yeah, while knowledge workers celebrate the rise of shorter workweeks, spare a thought for the others. Because the income gap between the rich and the poor is already through the roof.

Founder’s Corner 💭

Have you ever thought that the Finshots logo looks like a dustbin? Well, you’re not alone! In fact, it’s one of our most frequently asked questions.

So we asked Pawan Kumar Rai (Co-Founder of Finshots & Ditto) about it. And this is what he had to say.

***

Okay, first things first — it wasn’t an unpaid intern screwing things up. We actually reached out to a talented freelance artist who did this for us.

However, the ‘brief’ we gave him had some issues. Now initially, we wanted him to design a logo that resembled a “Starbucks’’ coffee cup. The idea was simple — Finshots sends out a story every morning piping hot. So the coffee cup made sense.

We also told him to incorporate the words “Finshots” into the logo design. So he came up with a very creative solution — see the “F” and the “S” outlined in red.

And when he produced the first working draft, we were ecstatic. And so the logo went into production. But almost instantly we realised that everybody was seeing a dustbin instead.

It was a nightmare. We were panicking for days. However, since we were starting up, we simply didn’t have the bandwidth or the resources to fix it at the time.

But then something happened. A young boy wrote to us saying — “I don’t know if you know this. Your logo looks like a dustbin. But it’s the most beautiful dustbin I’ve ever seen. Because Finshots is everything. I love you guys”

And suddenly I remember feeling a thousand pounds lighter.

He was right. It didn’t matter that our logo looked like a dustbin so long as we had a good product.

Today, it still reminds us of one thing — “Focus on the damned product. Everything else will fall in place. And sometimes if you’re lucky, maybe the dustbins can make for a great story!”

So folks, there you have it! If you want to know more about what went behind creating Finshots & Ditto and insightful financial content don’t forget to follow Pawan on LinkedIn & Twitter!

Readers Recommend 🗒️

Games People Play by Eric Berne

Here’s a crazy book recommendation by our reader Aman Agrawal. And if you like digging deeper into human psychology, you’ll probably like this one as it talks about interpreting social interactions and understanding mind games that people play through a series of transactional moves.

Thanks Aman! This seems like a mind boggling pick.

Finshots Weekly Quiz 🧩

We know it’s time to announce the winner of the previous Weekly Quiz. Sorry folks, but we bumped into a technical glitch and aren’t able to choose a winner for our last quiz round. 🙁 That’s why we had to skip the quiz last week too.

So we’re rolling out a new one this week. Click here to take the quiz. Hopefully, we won’t encounter another technical issue and will be able to announce our next Finshots goody winner in our next edition. So stay tuned!

We’ll see you next Sunday.

Until then, don’t forget to tell us what you thought of today’s newsletter. And send us your book, music, business movies, documentaries or podcast recommendations. We’ll feature them in the newsletter! Just hit reply to this email (or if you’re reading this on the web, drop us a message: ).

Ciao!

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