The Curious Engineer

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SatPost by Trung Phan

readtrung.com

A Saturday email on the latest in tech, business and memes. Click to read SatPost by Trung Phan, by Trungphan2, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Tech news / industryEssays / personalFun / humour

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Posts
212 from 28 Mar 2018 to 31 Oct 2026
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weekly (27 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 23

  1. Anthropic S-1, the Claude Loop and Economics of Frontier AI
  2. Nathan Fielder is Going to Win Best Picture
  3. Kirkland Signature: Jim Sinegal and the Making of Costco's $90B Private-Label Empire
  4. Pixar's $6 Billion Lunch
  5. FIFA's World Cup Ticketing Fiasco, explained
  6. Blumhouse: How Jason Blum Created A Hollywood Horror Hit Machine
  7. The Ferrari Luce's EV Gamble
  8. SpaceX: The AI IPO
  9. Swatch, Audemars Piguet and The Dream Equation
  10. Spirit Airlines & The Airplane Boneyard
  11. Sabastian Sawe, Adidas and the Sub-2 Hour Marathon
  12. Tim Cook's Apple
  13. Live Nation x Ticketmaster Monopoly, explained
  14. Shohei Ohtani $125m Sponsorship Bag
  15. The Disneyland Dilemma
  16. Jensen Manifesting The Future
  17. The Sphere's $4B Business, explained
  18. 6 Takeaways From Citrini's Viral AI Doomer Article (and a Bunch of Rebuttals)
  19. The Slack AGI Test
  20. How does Docusign have 7,000 employees?
  21. NFL & Fox: The $1.6B Deal That Changed Everything
  22. How Tech Metrics Change Your Values and Behaviour
  23. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and the Reading Unlock

2025 37

  1. 11 Best Things of 2025
  2. Hayao Miyazaki: 9 Creative Lessons
  3. James Cameron On AI in Hollywood
  4. Dishoom's $400m Restaurant Playbook
  5. Taylor Sheridan's New $1B Deal, Explained
  6. J.R. Simplot Became A Billionaire Selling Potato Chips (and then Semiconductor Chips)
  7. "One Battle After Another" Review
  8. Lee Kuan Yew and the Making of Changi (The World's Best Airport)
  9. The Day Quentin Tarantino Became A Filmmaker
  10. The iPhone 17 and iPhone Air Are New (Enough)
  11. America’s $37B Football Obsession
  12. How Costco Won In Japan
  13. SharkNinja’s $16B+ Product Machine
  14. South Park and The Greatest TV Contract Clause Ever
  15. Best of SatPost (First Half of 2025)
  16. Booking: The $170B+ A/B Testing Machine
  17. Star Wars, Veo 3 and Hollywood in the Age of AI Video
  18. 17 Takeaways from Mary Meeker's AI Deck
  19. The Dyson Creep-Up
  20. Three Netflix What-Ifs: Bezos, Arnault and Blockbuster
  21. AI Killed The College Paper. So, What's Next?
  22. Warren Buffett's $160B+ Apple Bet: A History
  23. 5 Thoughts on LEGO's (Ace) Manufacturing
  24. Mike White's 15-Year Journey For "The White Lotus"
  25. Hermès Is "Costly" (But Not "Expensive")
  26. The (Ludicrous) Psychology of Slot Machines
  27. The Camera, Vincent Van Gogh and "The Starry Night"
  28. H-Mart Stays Winning
  29. The Case Against Streaming TV Shows
  30. An Ode to Skype
  31. Magnus Carlsen, David Deutsch and the "Fun Criterion"
  32. So Much "Succession"
  33. OnlyFans Sticky Business Model
  34. Tariff Engineering, Explained
  35. DeepSeek: Links and Memes (So Many Memes)
  36. Disney's ~$4B Acquisition That (Probably) Saved The Company
  37. Garmin's ~$40B Pivot

2024 46

  1. 11 Best Things of 2024
  2. Economics of Taylor Swift's $2B+ Eras Tour
  3. Taylor Sheridan's Extreme Productivity
  4. MicroStrategy's $37B+ Bitcoin Bet (Is Just The Start)
  5. David Tran and Sriracha's $1B+ Journey
  6. Apple's M&A Strategy, Explained
  7. Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson and Art Over Commerce
  8. Introducing "Caffeinated Deep Dives"
  9. The Dorito-fication of Media
  10. Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei and Manufacturing Intelligence at Scale
  11. 9 Creative Lessons From Virgil Abloh
  12. Jony Ive, Meta AR, Visa Monopoly and the Legend of Robert Caro
  13. Francis Ford Coppola: The Entrepreneur
  14. LinkedIn's Social Pivot
  15. Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos Enter a Room
  16. How does Michelin Guide's business work?
  17. Alex Cooper: $0 to $160m in 6 years
  18. Travelogue: Central & Eastern Europe
  19. The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Pixar
  20. How Olympic Air Pistols Took Over The Timeline
  21. Best of SatPost (First Half of 2024)
  22. Why Are the Olympics So Expensive?
  23. Learning to Slow Down Time
  24. Write For Yourself
  25. Who Will Run Berkshire After Buffett?
  26. Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki and the Pursuit of Mastery
  27. Jim Simons and the Making of Renaissance Technologies
  28. Starbucks' Digital Dilemma
  29. YouTube: The Learning Machine
  30. The LEGO Star Wars Inception
  31. Roger Ebert, MKBHD and the Job of a Critic
  32. Why I love Bluey (and hate Cocomelon)
  33. Gordon Ramsay's Apprenticeship
  34. The Concorde Jet vs. Boeing 747
  35. Subsea Internet Cables are a Miracle
  36. "Now is the Most Important Time"
  37. "The Economist" Cover Curse, Explained
  38. The Greatest Meme Template Ever
  39. Second Winds
  40. How Hermès Sells "Time"
  41. Mailbag Request
  42. 8 Lessons from "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
  43. Psychology of Apple Packaging
  44. Beware value capture
  45. Beating the Auction Duopoly
  46. Disney Loves (and Hates) Public Domain

2023 47

  1. 9 Best Things of 2023
  2. Lululemon's $60B+ Apparel Innovation
  3. Taylor Swift, Johnny Cash and AI Art
  4. OpenAI Saga: The Best Links and Memes
  5. 11 Creative Lessons from Brian Eno
  6. OpenAI, Humane and Apple's Shadow
  7. Las Vegas, F1 and the sport's long history in America
  8. Sculpting Ourselves
  9. Costco's $9B clothes business, explained
  10. The Speed of Information
  11. Birkenstock IPO: Is it worth $10B?
  12. The $650m+ Spirit Halloween business
  13. The Reading Unlock
  14. 6 thoughts on "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson
  15. The Science and History of the iPhone Screen
  16. Amazon's $43B ad business, explained
  17. 5 Good Evergreen Podcasts
  18. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Art of Re-invention
  19. Trader Joe's: The Anti-Grocer
  20. Nike’s Marketing Blindspot
  21. The Tale of Two Phones
  22. The Psychology of Disneyland
  23. From Beatlemania to Taylor-mania
  24. Gathering seeds
  25. Becoming the Tuna King
  26. I want Apple's Vision Pro
  27. Getting Out on a High Note
  28. Coca-Cola: "A cure for all nervous affections"
  29. Blumhouse: The Hollywood Horror Hit Machine
  30. Steve Jobs, Rick Rubin and "taste"
  31. 11 types of cross-industry innovation
  32. SpaceX's 5-Step Design Process
  33. Hello Kitty's $80B+ Secret Sauce
  34. Does Michelin Guide still matter?
  35. The most profitable films ever
  36. The Camera, Van Gogh and "The Starry Night"
  37. Ted Lasso's perfect intro
  38. A miracle drug to end obesity?
  39. Grit vs. Quit
  40. "This is pointless"
  41. Bing: A history in 7 stories
  42. Apple Demos vs. Amazon Memos
  43. Nike, Tiffany and The 3% Rule
  44. The Family Guy TikTok Pipeline
  45. Netflix and 10x Talent
  46. “Today you…Tomorrow me”
  47. The worst tech predictions ever

2022 47

  1. My 10 best tweets of 2022
  2. Titanic & the greatest film run ever
  3. Christopher Nolan & Practical Effects
  4. MrBeast's $1.5B YouTube empire
  5. Tech and path dependence, explained
  6. How Facebook fixed its newsfeed
  7. The genius of Red Bull marketing
  8. FTX: The $32B implosion
  9. The massive podcast opportunity
  10. I made an AI research tool
  11. The YouTube learning machine
  12. How does TMZ work?
  13. Gautam Adani’s $140B+ fortune, explained
  14. 40 great business books
  15. AI read my film script (and hated it)
  16. Buffett's $18B miss on Disney
  17. Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley
  18. How much is the Mona Lisa worth?
  19. When Microsoft owned ~5% of Apple
  20. Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?
  21. What is Amazon's best acquisition?
  22. The psychology of Apple packaging
  23. The Michelin Guide business, explained
  24. Path dependence + Technological lock-in
  25. Picasso’s most famous work
  26. Best of SatPost
  27. McDonald’s $42B real estate empire, explained
  28. The most insane TikTok account
  29. How Marvel lost Spider-Man
  30. Italy built an $8B dam to save Venice
  31. Did Costco lose $27 billion from a tweet?
  32. I'm making a TV show
  33. How Robert Downey Jr. made $450m+ as Iron Man
  34. CNN+ vs. Quibi
  35. Sources for Nutella
  36. The $36B Nutella empire
  37. Racing tech in everyday use
  38. Was David Bowie from the future?
  39. The art of the quote retweet
  40. The Godfather almost never happened
  41. The information environment is moving too fast
  42. 8 things on the $4.5B Bitcoin heist
  43. Buffett's $152B Apple bet, explained
  44. The LinkedIn Mafia
  45. Why is LinkedIn so cringe?
  46. 10 really bad business / tech predictions
  47. Jack Dorsey knows how to tweet

2021 11

  1. Year in review: 2021
  2. Did Coca-Cola invent Santa Claus?
  3. Musings on Time’s Person of the Year
  4. Is Spotify Wrapped a design disaster or master stroke?
  5. Jack Dorsey exits Twitter
  6. Apple's $19 cloth: By the memes
  7. Thanksgiving memes
  8. ConstitutionDAO: A meme history
  9. Come for the memes, stay for the Thinkboi stuff
  10. Bezos and Leo
  11. Welcome to SatPost

2018 1

  1. The Nose Frida Snotsucker works really well. But at what cost?