Five Finds: People Frozen in Time

Primitive tribes still live on practically all continents, the story on how phones lost their antennas and should I buy an old iPod?

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Hey everyone! Meet the latest Friday edition of Five Finds, a newsletter where I share the most interesting things I stumbled upon.

Primitive Forest Tribe Meets Modern Man for the First Time

A fact that’s hard to believe: there are still primitive tribes in the world who live the same way they did thousands of years ago. And maybe occasionally see an airplane high in the sky.What’s more, they exist almost everywhere: in Oceania, Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, and so on.

I wouldn't want that life. Imagine dying of appendicitis or suffering from tooth pain, when all the solutions have already been invented elsewhere.

But should we "save" them? And will this actually save them?

The most ethically complicated thing here is that you can’t turn back the clock. Once you introduce them to civilization it will be their new reality. And there have been very negative cases.

Most societies have accepted that we shouldn’t try to contact these isolated peoples unless they want to. At most, scientists conduct aerial surveys to:
a) determine where they live and restrict access to that area
b) estimate their population and how it’s changing

This is a video of the first (at least in a long time) encounter between the Toulambi tribe of New Guinea and modern humans.

Every iPod Color

Should I buy an iPod?
I've never had one as a kid (was way too expensive for me), but there's just something about this. And I'm not alone: YouTube is filled with videos from people using them to cut down on screen time while focusing on music. I’m inclined to the Nano 7th Gen, which is not the most interesting mechanically (no clickwheel, sadly), but it’s the most reasonable for 2025 due to its Lightning connector and Bluetooth.

Yes, an iPhone is a far more capable and useful device, but there’s just something cute and exciting about this early technology. And iPod can be remarkably light and thin, it took until iPhone Air to match them in width.

This is a full-scale collection of all iPod colors and versions. Many models went through multiple revisions and color changes, so it’s hard to understand which is which.

How Clever Design Made Antennas Disappear

If you’ve ever seen early mobile phones (those enormous grey or beige bricks), you might be wondering how we went from their giant antennas to barely noticeable plastic lines on modern smartphones.

This video answers this question (it’s the miracle of technology and also cell towers are now closer to you).

Adopting thirty-year-olds

Japan has 45,248 companies that have been in business for over 100 years. Many of them are family businesses. Well, technically.

In Japanese tradition, owners who don't have sons simply adopt a capable manager or arrange for him to marry their daughter. It's still a family business!

This is still going: 98% of adoptions in Japan are adults, almost all men 20-30, brought in for business succession purposes.

Time to travel from NYC to Chicago

The pace of innovation was truly rapid in the last two centuries. I often wonder how did it feel for people born at the beginning of 1900s.

This map shows the required time to travel from New York City to Chicago in different "ages":

• 1800: 6 weeks

• 1830: 3 weeks

• 1860: 2 days

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