A S C

A human. Being. Water baby.

[aether @bluewdrift]

I fell in love with this quote:

Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong. Always remember you are the ceo of your life.

Acceptance frees you from trying to change anyone. Boundaries protect your peace. Not everyone earns the same access, the same closeness, or the same seat at your table, and that's not cruelty, it's self respect.

[Aravind @aravind]

In a civilization like India which invented cold pressed seed oils and ghee thousands of years ago, and ate them for thousands of years without issues, a foreign company called Dada marketed hydrogenated vegetable fat as a "healthy alternative" to Ghee as early as 1930s and won people's minds with "Dalda."

The power of mental programming by clever marketing is real and dangerous. Indians are going through it right now at an unprecedented rate via social media. Indians are made to hate their own country and look up to superficial others.

Just like hydrogenated vegetable fat with transfats was proven to be dangerous to health decades later, and Indians are turning back to cold pressed oils and ghee, one day everyone will realize they made a mistake hating their own country for some others shown as great now.

But that day may be too late.

[Raph Guilhem @raph_guilhem]

On vacation, but the Reddit karma grind never stops whenever I’m stuck in the car.

Here are the subs I’ve been farming lately 👇

Any reco?

[Hemant Mohapatra @MohapatraHemant]

The curse of discipline is that every day looks the same. The curse of indiscipline is that every year does.

[Gurpriya @GurpriyaSidhu]

Some of life's most complex problems cannot be solved in your head. Instead,

1. Add more time. A lot of times that option is available. Use it. More information will emerge if you give it time, then the problem will see more manageable than before.

2. Do not think 10 steps ahead. Remember that the brain loves to do that, but you have to tell it to stop. The head goes "a will lead to b, b to c, c to do" and soon you have lost the plot in your head.

3. Take a small action. Anxiety stems from not knowing what to do. What ever seems like the next most clear step, just take that. Which some times may just be - I will not think about this for a week. Action reduces anxiety because it invokes agency.

4. Trust the process. Problems unfold and change shape as you keep walking towards them. You too evolve in the process. Either the mountain will turn out to be a molehill, or you would've picked up the training to climb mountains. Either way, you'll be fine.

[Deedy @deedydas]

The reason India has terrible roads that break down during monsoon rains is explained phenomenally in this hidden blog by legendary civil engineer PS Kandhal.

The MoRTH/IRC highway specs includes 7 water-trapping bitumen mixes which don't last >1-2yrs. Construction contractors make way more on higher life cycle costs, recurring annual tenders with "fat" pothole repair budgets.

There are also tons of other reasons like a) cutting roads for utility lines without a rebuild b) poor auditing c) straight up using worse materials than the spec d) over-use of funds to visible public roads that causes budget issues, and e) contractors bribing the govt to secure contracts.

[Antoine Minoux @AntoineMinoux]

So there is a cafe in SF where tech startups can pay to brand the drinks... but you still need to pay for it

kinda genius

[Gun Lovers Club @GunloverClub1]

The lack of trigger & muzzle discipline is painful to watch.

Watch him flag the kid with a loaded pistol, the child actually had to step aside while this guy stayed completely clueless.

[Rahul Mathur @Rahul_J_Mathur]

Claypond isn't a VC fund. It is the Manipal Hospital group's family office investment entity.

Same fund co-led the $120m round in River Mobility (EVs), $130m Series C in Emergent, minority buy-out of Panacea Medical Technologies, August AI seed round etc.

Any good permanent capital vehicle will diversify. Therefore, DeepTech + Consumer + whatever else Dr Pai wants to own.

The consumer investments don't come out of the same pocket as the DeepTech ones; every patriarch sets their own sectoral concentration limits.

I hope Dr Pai makes a killing on Benne so he can funnel some of that cash back into more DeepTech investments in 5-7 yrs from now.

[Pawan Chandana @PawanKChandana]

First in my bloodline to build a rocket. 🚀

Thanks for the mention @narendramodi ji.

@SkyrootA

[Yash Bhardwaj @ybhrdwj]

I made a website that plays bangers from indian barbershops

before you became fancy and started visiting salons. you once went to a 'saloon'. ₹20 haircuts. simple hairstyles with music that could fix your soul.

https://t.co/j3E8VfwiUU

[ujjawal @ujjawalasthana]

An investor once told me something I recall every time I am hiring.

Take the biscuit sales of a large FMCG in one pincode. Could be Rs 1000 crore a year. And the area manager for that pincode will put Rs 1000 cr on his resume.

But whether he was in the seat or not, that 1000 cr, give or take 5%, was coming anyway - driven by legacy, distribution and brand.

In large legacy orgs, success has a thousand fathers and you genuinely can't tell who moved anything. In a small setup, there's nowhere to hide. The number happens because of you, or it doesn't happen at all.

[Ashish Singh @ashzingh]

I joined Zomato five years ago as an intern, a college kid who just wanted to build products. After a surprise call on a random afternoon—spent half a decade here, building things I am really proud of.

Today, I leave with far more than experience. I leave with lifelong friendships, countless lessons, and a deep appreciation for what it takes to build products and companies that people truly love.

Now begins the biggest bet of my life. We are starting LifeMaxx to build in a space I’ve become obsessed with: Life Intelligence. The opportunity to build technology that understands and coordinates everyday life is one I couldn’t stop thinking about, and one I had to pursue.

Grateful to everyone who took a bet on me.

Now it’s time to build.

[Lauren Chen @TheLaurenChen]

This guy cracked the code on how to sell to all the different races

Impressive!

[Arun Bothra 🇮🇳 @arunbothra]

One of our neighbours in the small town of Pilibangan had a small masala chakki in his house. He would grind red chillies, turmeric, coriander and other spices, supplying them to local shopkeepers.

The chillies were always ground at night, with all the doors and windows closed, so that people wouldn’t complain. Still, while walking past that side, our eyes would burn, our throats would itch,

While grinding he would keep his face covered. Even then, he would cough incessantly. But he had a family to feed. As a child I saw him lose his health rapidly. The man died of tuberculosis at around 55 years of age.

For some the workplace itself is the biggest health hazard.

[anand mahindra @anandmahindra]

It’s not just some women in that room, you made many men teary-eyed. @smritiirani , including me.

The pain & pleasure of being a mother.
So powerfully & emotionally articulated.

I have only one point of dissonance:
I adored & cared for my mother till her last breath.
Because I had immense gratitude for what you termed the ‘tenacity’ of her love.

Even in my lowest periods she made me feel like I could move mountains.

Not a day goes by when I don’t derive strength from her memory.

Your son will be no different, I’m sure.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

American showers are legally capped at 2.5 gallons per minute. That single number is why a shower like this reads as science fiction to anyone in the US.

Congress set the limit in 1992 to save water, and it worked. Showers account for 17% of indoor residential water use in the US, roughly 1.2 trillion gallons a year.

Then manufacturers found the loophole. If each "showerhead" gets 2.5 gallons, you bolt several heads onto one unit. Obama closed it in 2013 by redefining showerhead to mean the whole fixture. Trump reopened it in 2020. Biden closed it in 2021. Trump reopened it again in April 2025 by executive order, scrapping a federal definition of "showerhead" that had grown to 13,000 words. The dictionary needs ten.

Three presidents, four legal definitions of one household word, and the flow number hasn't moved since 1992.

Meanwhile, panels like this come out of China's fixture belt. Kaiping, one town in Guangdong, produces 3 of every 10 faucets exported anywhere on Earth, with a supply chain so dense a factory can go from raw brass to finished fixture in 30 minutes. Kohler's closest American answer, the Real Rain panel, costs $2,698, packs 605 precision nozzles, and still tops out at 2.5 gallons per minute.

Americans watching this are getting nostalgic for a shower they were never allowed to have.

[Kush Agarwal @kushgrwl]

Content creation will never be the same again.
Stop paying for performance marketing and start paying for content that scales your brand.

[Shaan Puri @ShaanVP]

1/ reverse vacations (aka "lock in" camp)

- you go to a discrete location, pick a goal, and can't leave until its done
- they take your normal clothes and give you a jumpsuit (dont worry, it's adidas)
- cold plunges, saunas, and pull-up bars everywhere
- slop for food
- David Goggins playing over the ambient speakers

it’s the opposite of a wellness retreat. in fact, you *should* feel a little unwell by the end