The world may have forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn't forgotten them.
Watch the new trailer for #SpiderManBrandNewDay, in theatres July 31. Tickets on sale NOW.
A standard Rolex has about 200 moving parts. The Patek Philippe on Jay-Z's wrist at the Met Gala has 1,580. Patek spent 8 years designing it. Then over 100,000 hours building the first one. About 11 straight years of someone working 24 hours a day, no breaks.
It's called the Grandmaster Chime, the most complicated wristwatch Patek has ever made. The inner mechanism alone has 1,366 parts. It fits in a circle smaller than an Oreo cookie. The outer case adds another 214 parts, and the case alone took four years to design.
In watchmaking, a "complication" is just any function beyond telling you the time. Most watches in the "grand complication" category have 5 to 7. This one has 20. When it launched, no wristwatch in history had combined that many. It tracks the phase of the moon, accurate to one day's drift over 122 years. It also has five different ways to chime: one that automatically rings the hours and quarters, one that rings only the quarters, one you press a button to hear the current time, one that rings whatever alarm time you set, and one that chimes today's date on demand. The last two had never existed in any watch before. Both were invented by Patek's own president, Thierry Stern, a trained watchmaker himself.
The chiming makes this watch nearly impossible to copy. Inside each one are tiny coiled steel wires called gongs. A single watchmaker shapes and tunes each gong by hand, testing every note with their own ears. Just putting one chime mechanism together takes 200 to 300 hours. Then the watch goes into a soundproof chamber where the chime gets recorded and compared against decades of past Patek chimes. Only then is it brought to Thierry Stern. He listens. If he doesn't like the sound, the watch goes back. Sometimes more than once. A rejected watch can take 500 hours of rebuilding before he approves it.
This watch holds four power springs in total. One is dedicated to the chimes alone, separate from the spring driving the time. Inside the mechanism is a ball bearing 7.2mm wide. It holds seven steel balls, each 0.3mm across, smaller than grains of fine sand. They handle 1,700 gram-millimetres of twisting force from the chime springs without slipping. The case has 11 holes drilled through it for buttons and pushers, and somehow none of them ruin the chamber that lets the chimes ring out clearly. The case itself flips around to show either of its two different dials.
Fewer than five workshops on the planet can build something at this level. Patek Philippe is the one all the others measure themselves against.
Jay-Z's version lists at $6.5 million. The unique steel version sold for $31 million at Christie's in 2019. It still holds the record for the most expensive watch ever sold at auction.
The results of the recent state elections have been dramatic by any measure.
But for me, this image will remain the most unforgettable outcome of the elections.
More than 166,000 votes were cast between the two leading candidates in this constituency in Tamil Nadu.
And history was changed by just one vote.
This image should be shown in every school in the country & perhaps around the world.
So that every child understands that when they grow up, the greatest power they may possess is the Power of One.
The power of their one vote.
So, hence proved,
Vijay is not Chiranjeevi,
Vijay is not Pawan Kalyan,
Vijay is not Vijaykanth,
Vijay is not Sarath Kumar,
Vijay is not Shivaji Ganesan.
Lastly,
Vijay is not Kamal Haasan or
Vijay is not Rajinikanth.
He is not the next Anna or MGR either.
HE IS THE FIRST VIJAY!!!
For people outside Tamil Nadu, you don't understand the enormity of what happened in the state today. Nobody, not even MGR, at such a short period has got the kind of mandate which Vijay has got.
It is very easy to say Tamil Nadu vote for cinema Hereos. Since independence, only two cinema hereos, MGR and Vijay has got this kind of acceptance among people. Legends like Sivaji Ganesan and many others were not able to convert their popularity into votes.
Honestly I don't know why people have given such a huge mandate to Vijay. I never knew he had such a support among people.
It is a change which is not catching attention. Only two dravidian parties have been ruling Tamil Nadu for last 6 decades. For the first time, a non dravidian party has come to power.
Every Chief Minister so far had their roots in dravidian movement. Vijay comes with no political roots. Unlike his predecessors, he was not MLA, MP, Minister, Mayor or anything. He is directly becoming Chief Minister.
I understand West Bengal getting all the attention today. But what has happened in Tamil Nadu is unbelievable.
Atleast in West Bengal, people saw it coming. Almost no one saw it coming in Tamil Nadu.
What was shown in the #Sarkar Movie is becoming real 😯
#ThalapathyVijay explained the importance of one vote : in reality, #TVK won in Tirupattur by just 1 vote ✅
He asked everyone to vote : in real life, the voting percentage increased 📈✅
He said that Destroying that brand is my specialty : in real life, he proved it✅
He left his No.1 position job : in real life, he did that too✅
He won the election : in real life, he did that as well ✅
New UK screen time rules just dropped — and they’re stricter than most parents expected.
From 27 March 2026, England says: zero solo screens for under-2s (except quick video calls with family), and max one hour a day for 2–5 year olds — no screens at meals or the hour before bed. Co-view everything, stick to slow-paced content, and ditch fast social-media clips and AI toys completely.
The science is sobering: toddlers’ brains process info up to 10 times slower than adults. Fast-paced screens push them into fight-or-flight mode — racing heart, surging energy — while they’re sitting still. Researchers at the University of East London say this mismatch can wire kids for more tantrums and emotional struggles later. Using screens to calm meltdowns? It often backfires long-term.
As a parent, it’s brutal — we all know that explosion the second you take the tablet away.
But this feels like evidence finally catching up with what our gut has been telling us.
How are you handling screens with little ones — strict limits, co-viewing, or mostly winging it?
The diamond engagement ring was invented by an ad agency in 1947. Before that, only 1 in 10 American brides got one. The company behind it, De Beers, was worth $9.2 billion three years ago. Today that number is $2.3 billion, and its owner is trying to find a buyer.
In 1940, diamonds were a luxury for the rich. Nobody proposed with one unless they had serious money. De Beers had a warehouse full of diamonds and no customers, so they hired NW Ayer, an ad firm out of Philadelphia. A copywriter named Frances Gerety came up with four words: “A Diamond is Forever.” NW Ayer paid Hollywood studios to write diamond proposals into movie scripts. They planted stories in gossip columns about which rock some actress just got. They invented the “two months’ salary” rule, the idea that a man should spend two months of income on a ring. None of that existed before. It was all marketing.
By the 1990s, 8 out of 10 American brides wore diamond engagement rings. Then De Beers did it again in Japan, going from 5% to 60% in 14 years. Advertising Age called it the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. They were right.
The whole business ran on one trick: make diamonds seem rare. De Beers controlled most of the world’s supply but only released a small amount each year. That artificial shortage kept prices sky-high. And the “forever” in the slogan had a second job: if nobody resells their diamond, supply stays tight and prices stay up.
Lab-grown diamonds blew that apart.
You can now grow a diamond in a lab that is the same thing, atom for atom, as one pulled out of the ground. Costs 80–85% less. In 2019, only 6% of engagement rings in America had a lab-grown stone. By 2025, that number was 61%. That’s from The Knot’s annual survey of 10,000+ newlywed couples. People are buying bigger rings (1.9 carats on average, compared to 1.6 for mined) and keeping the savings.
De Beers saw this coming. In 2018, they launched their own lab-grown jewelry brand called Lightbox, priced at $800 per carat. The idea was to make lab-grown look like cheap costume jewelry so people would still pay a premium for “real” diamonds. Prices tanked 90% anyway. By 2025, American grocery stores were selling lab-grown diamond rings for $200. De Beers shut Lightbox down last May.
Since 2023, De Beers has lost nearly $7 billion in value. It lost over $500 million in 2025 alone and has about $2 billion in diamonds sitting in storage that nobody is buying. Its parent company, Anglo American, is now in what they’re calling “advanced discussions” to sell off the whole thing. A 137-year-old company, dumped.
The greatest ad campaign ever made convinced a planet that a common carbon crystal was worth two months of your salary. The product that’s killing it just proved you can grow the same crystal in a factory for pocket change.
2004 was a good year, but your Gmail address doesn't need to be stuck in it.
To say goodbye to [email protected] or [email protected] (or whatever you were into at the time), go to your Google Account settings and choose any name available. You'll keep your old username and you can sign in with both.
Today is the last day of the Income Tax Act 1961.
A 65 year old law dies tonight.
From tomorrow your salary slip changes.
Your basic salary must be minimum 50 percent of your CTC. Companies kept it artificially low for years to reduce your PF. That ends tonight.
Your PF goes up. Take home may drop slightly. Retirement corpus grows significantly.
If you resign your company must settle full and final within 2 working days. Not 30 to 90 days like before.
Form 16 is replaced by Form 130.
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad now get 50 percent HRA exemption. Same as Mumbai and Delhi.
Tax slabs unchanged. Surveillance gets tighter.
Tomorrow I will break down exactly what this means for your pocket.
Save this. Share with every salaried man you know.