Aakil

Someday I will pivot to a creative career. Until then, strategy and ops @RevolutApp

[Rajeev Mantri @RMantri]

1/ Owing to high barriers to entry, India’s lodging and hotels industry has become a cartel that raises prices at will and fleeces customers.

India’s luxury hotel average daily rate (ADR) in Mumbai and Delhi now rival those of New York and London. Absurdly enough, the financial press sometimes celebrates this as some triumph of Indian hospitality. It is nothing of the sort. High prices are the unmistakable stamp of a supply-constrained market in a low income country, which should actually have a very competitively priced and deep pool of lodging options. The hotel industry is a structural failure being hyped as a success.

[Sneha Chandak @snehachandak24]

Hello people of X!

Meet Vezzo - a modern shoe brand built from the ground up in India. Design-first, comfort as default, and made for the most usable part of your wardrobe. Launching soon.

https://t.co/dWkTr48u9y

[du @thedulab]

You’re only elite at something when people stop comparing themselves to you. Average guy isn't losing sleep over the fact that he'd never make it into the NBA. But gets torched by some Deloitte manager at the LA Fitness courts? Rage. Quickly turns passive aggressive

Most members of society will look at buddy from corporate and interprets him as a Jones that needs to be kept up with. Thinks they should be better than him in all facets and harbors secret envy when they fall short

But go band for band with that private jet owner, shot for shot with that sixth man of the year, it's literally a joke. Everyone knows it is. No choice but to laugh a little at the idea of actually competing in a serious way

As long as the majority still sees you as an immediate threat to their self image, you're not there yet. You haven't entered the tier yet where people start to see you more as a concept as opposed to a direct opponent

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

@sbikh Food delivery and QCom are innovations born out of taxpayer money not being put back into roads + infra. If we had walkable streets / drivable roads, the consumer pull wouldn’t have been this strong

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

@ganeshsonawane Superyou?

[Ayishat Akanbi @Ayishat_Akanbi]

If you strive to be ‘good,’ rather than honest, thoughtful, discerning, and principled, you’ll forever be controlled by social approval and relentlessly alienated from your real voice.

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

one potential reason for why this pattern occurs:

your subconscious is constantly trying to figure out how to safely navigate the world. if you experience a relationship dynamic as a kid that feels scary and overwhelming, your subconscious is going to be working to “figure it out” so as to avoid that kind of fear

e.g. if you had a detached parent, who caused you to have this really deep feeling of insecurity, then your mind wants to “solve” that insecurity, even after you’re out of that relationship

your mind has the lingering worry of “hey here was a situation that seemed really dangerous, and I don’t know what I was supposed to do about it, and I want to figure it out, just in case it happens again”

and one way to do that is to re-enter that dynamic. so you might subconsciously choose a partner who is also really detached. your mind is recreating the problem, in the real world, so that you can finally find the “solution” (whatever finally gives you a feeling of security)

in other words, your subconscious would rather have you experience that painful dynamic than have the uncertainty of not knowing how to handle it

predictable pain is better than uncertainty, from a survival perspective

so once you “learn the lesson”, your subconscious is able to trust that you know how to deal with that particular situation. it’s no longer a potential survival threat, so your mind can let it go

so you stop choosing that pattern, and life goes on

the trick is that if we try to consciously override that pattern (“I’m not going to date detached people!”) then our subconscious is still grappling with it behind the scenes.

so we have to find a way to satisfy that open question, without indulging in the painful repetition of the pattern. this is where emotional work comes in

all of the above is speculative, I must say. maybe it’s all karmic, maybe it’s a deeper psychological process… but whatever the mechanism, it’s worth asking: “if I dislike this pattern, how can I understand what it’s trying to tell me? and how can I fully integrate that answer?”

[Elena @VirtualElena]

Spent dinner last night with my bf discussing the hierarchy of man.

He then used his PE slide-making abilities and sent me this today.

[Sean McClure @sean_a_mcclure]

Do not start with fundamentals. This is an awful approach to learning.

Start with so-called "advanced" topics and ask questions until every term/concept is understood.

This is the correct, rigorous, scientific way to learn, because the advanced topics are embedded in larger, more convoluted, more abstracted constructs. This embedding is what gives the individual pieces their *meaning*.

Foundational studies have removed this embedding, and present only the isolated, sterile pieces. They have no meaning. They have no context.

The notion that students will piece together fundamentals into some eventual synthesis down the road is absolutely incorrect. It is literally information-theoretically obtuse.

Children don't learn language using pieces. They mumble *fully*. They are never not fully embracing the complexity. It is the juxtaposition between their naive attempts and the full picture that imbues their mind with learning.

Prerequisites are the dumbest approach to learning. It is utterly indefensible using any scientific argument. The basics-to-advanced directionality is diametrically opposed to how information is encoded, comprehended and used.

Prerequisites are why most computer scientists and whiteboard exam-passers can't make software themselves; they can only be cogs in a company. It's why a Princeton math PhD can write the update rule for gradient descent but can't draw the actual process with circles and lines on a damn chalkboard (true story).

Idiot level stuff because their learning was all basics to advanced. They never defined terms and concepts in an embedded fashion. It was all disconnected. Meaningless muscle memory with no understanding.

It does not work both ways. Only pieces that are seen inside the bigger picture are understood.

Do not start with fundamentals.

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

Daily reminder

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

You can’t wish for both growth and comfort.

The price of the first is the second.

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

@stuli1989 Tried these?

[Ashwin Sharma @Ashwinreads]

the most painful paradox i've learned this year is that you must have the courage to become less in order to become more.

you must embrace subtraction as the path to addition precisely because it demands the opposite of what every instinct screams at you to do: to hoard, to accumulate, to want more status, more wealth.

you see this paradox literally everywhere you look. in art, in relationships, in business. but it's so much more visceral when you look at design as an example.

when christopher alexander described the perfect kettle isn't created by piling on features, but by stripping away everything that doesn't serve the sacred purpose- boiling water-you realise basically everything that's near perfection works by subtraction, not addition.

taleb nails this same paradox down to systems: instead of building a fortress of added complexity. more rules, more safeguards, you achieve strength by removing the fragilities. this is resilience built on subtraction, not addition.

and perhaps the holy grail of insight is by karl popper who showed that science advances not by proving theories right, but by proving them wrong.

i think this is the hardest lesson of all. growth is an act of violence against your own instincts. the real courage is trusting that each deliberate removal is uncovering a glimmer of truth.

subtraction asks us to know who we are.

[blue @bluewmist]

beware of destination addiction. the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job or even with the next partner. until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.

[du @thedulab]

Greatest indicator of whether you'll make it or not lies in the reasoning you attach to your failures. You experience a shortcoming and think one of two things. You were either not good enough or you simply didn't want it bad enough

The former is quintessential scarcity mindset. Makes you feel like you have a limited number of opportunities to adorn your life with prosperity and you just torched one of them. So afraid of blowing another shot that you end up playing small and manifesting the exact reality you tried to avoid

The latter assumes that anything and everything is perpetually within reach. Success is bountiful and you can choose to seize it at any given moment. Instead of asking "can I?" you shift to "will I?" Puts the power in your hands. All it requires is making the commitment to lock in

[Ashwin Sharma @Ashwinreads]

one year of reading 99% fiction. i learned

> suffering finds meaning in its witness
> everyone is a prisoner of their own mind
> the glimmer of the divine is revealed when your life is turning to shit
> duality is in every man. you can find a brutal criminal and a seeker of grace in the same person
>you are not alone in your suffering
> evil creeps in through ordinary acts of complacency
> sin's ultimate goal is isolation
>to do good is to expose oneself
>laughter is the secure mans shield

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

@snehachandak24 QCom further exposes people’s true nature. Time saved can be spent on gold or garbage.

[Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 @KarluskaP]

OK, these videos are getting out of control 😂

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

What have I just seen? 🫠

[شرق‌زده sharghzadeh @sharghzadeh]

In some societies, it's safe to be an average person. Europe is the best example of this. If you have no personality, ambition, or interests, you will find yourself relatively healthy, cultured, and happy, more or less by default.

Your society, both at the government and family level, ensures your food is healthy. You are cultured to some basic standard. Any career provides growth and stability, health care, and vacation time. It's safe to be a normie, perhaps preferable.

America is not a society for normies. You have no choice but to excel. You will be fed poisonous slop. Your common culture doesn't draw from a sophisticated canon including Goethe and Dante—your brain will be fried by popular culture and TikTok. You won't get a good job, you'll be a cashier working the night shift without health care.

In many ways, America is a jungle, and Europe is a zoo. If you're in the jungle, you had better be ready to fight or die viciously. It's not pretty. No one tells you this, you either figure it out and fight, or you're torn to shreds by someone who did.

This is why so many low-ambition Americans crave Europe. They regret their ancestor's decision to get on the boat. Deep down they know Europe matches their energy.

The Sopranos is basically about this. There are lessons everywhere for those with ears to hear them.

[Aakil @AakilMehta]

@Naina_2728 Reference, in perpetuity

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Rick Rubin on developing (and trusting) your own taste for any artistic pursuit:

“You can’t second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like. It won’t be good. We’re not smart enough to know what someone else will like. 

To make something and say, ‘well, I don’t really like it but I think this group of people will like it’, I think [that approach] is a bad way to play the game of music or art.

Do what’s personal to you, take it as far you can go. Really push the boundaries and people will resonate with it if they are supposed to resonate with it. But you can’t get there the other way. The other way is a dead-end path.”