Today is a hard day. I shared this note with the @linear team today: We’ve made the difficult decision to increase our workforce. This is not a cost-cutting exercise or a reflection of anyone’s performance. We’re simply reimagining every role for the agentic AI era. We’re hiring. We’re sorry about that.
1. Just got off a call with @UnSubtleDesi. I couldn't be happier for her and both of us couldn't help but discuss the harrowing days of post poll violence in West Bengal in 2021. So I am going to share what happened five years ago just so ppl know what happened. #WestBengal2026.
People are about to learn that sulphuric acid is one of the base layers of civilisation.
China exported about 2.68 million tonnes in 2024. Its main export destinations were Chile, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, India and Indonesia. By Jan to Oct 2025, exports had already risen to 3.89 million tonnes.
Sulphuric acid sits inside fertilisers, copper leaching, nickel and cobalt processing, oil refining, lead-acid batteries and a wide range of chemical chains. Remove flow at the margin and the effects propagate through industrial systems we never see until they seize up.
Chinese exports were already falling sharply in early 2026. So the impact already bites
So let me help scale this in importance using one example - fertilizer
Sulphuric Acid is used in Phosphate fertiliser production
In the wet-process route, sulphuric acid is the acidulating agent used to make phosphoric acid from phosphate rock.
On straight stoichiometry, 3 million tonnes of H₂SO₄ can yield about 1.8m tonnes of pure phosphoric acid, which is roughly 1.2m tonnes of P₂O₅ equivalent.
That is enough for about2.8m tonnes of DAP-equivalent fertiliser at 46% P₂O₅.
Using a common field application rate of 60 kg P₂O₅/ha, that is enough phosphate nutrient for roughly 22 million hectares of cropping.
Thats roughly what is required to feed 330 m people for a year
Now scale this with Hormuz
Which roughly locks in 40 to 70 million tonnes of sulphuric acid a year.
Add roughly 1m tonnes of production lost in Russia
By the time everyone has become a sulphuric acid expert the crisis will be in full flight .
Did YOU want to watch CCTV's AI Martial Arts cartoon about the Straits of Hormuz crisis? Complete with fighting Persian Cats? Well I subtitled it for you so you can enjoy it in all its trope-laden glory! Remember kids, the mountains will stay standing while the green water flows, and the true art of war is not figuring out how to fight, but how to stop!🥷😼🦅
People talk about looksmaxxing but you should be serendipitymaxxing:
Get outside more often, try that new thing, say hi to the person next to you on the plane, ask a stranger if you can sit next to them for coffee, go eat alone at that restaurant you want to try, walk in a new place every day for a month, wear the outfit you’ve been afraid is too bold - and compliment someone else on theirs, explore a new city, explore your own city with new eyes, compliment a stranger with no expectations in return, ask someone older than you to tell you one of their favorite life stories, reach out to someone you haven’t talked to in a while just to say you’re thinking of them, go to a new grocery store and start a conversation with someone in every aisle.
The quality of your life is directly linked to how many unplanned positive encounters you have.
Rude prompts to LLMs consistently lead to better results than polite ones 🤯
The authors found that very polite and polite tones reduced accuracy, while neutral, rude, and very rude tones improved it.
Statistical tests confirmed that the differences were significant, not random, across repeated runs.
The top score reported was 84.8% for very rude prompts and the lowest was 80.8% for very polite.
They compared their results with earlier studies and noted that older models (like GPT-3.5 and Llama-2) behaved differently, but GPT-4-based models like ChatGPT-4o show this clear reversal where harsh tone works better.
----
Paper – arxiv. org/abs/2510.04950
Paper Title: "Mind Your Tone: Investigating How Prompt Politeness Affects LLM Accuracy (short paper)"
The world doesn't care about coding or building as much as people here think it does. They just want something that solves their problems and things they're interested in.
If you're not building a mini startup with Nano Banana today and launching it tomorrow, you're missing the opportunity of a lifetime
This image model just made 100s of new startups and apps possible
Only limit is your creativity and how fast you can ship a user interface and put a Stripe payment button on it
I think
🚨 https://t.co/4FvHFnwQNh SCAM – Systemic Theft & Fraud 🚨
Porter lost/stole my belongings worth ₹4+ Lakh during my move from Bengaluru to Mumbai, including priceless gifts & certificates. A nightmare experience.
🧵👇 #PorterScam#ConsumerRights@porterit_
This is ridiculous! https://t.co/qEvZtBBRA8 - have basic courtesy to investigate, address the lapses in process & compensate my friend here. The only mistake he did is trust a tech/promising company over reg business being a techie himself. Clearly the bar for CX is rock bottom
🚨 https://t.co/4FvHFnwQNh SCAM – Systemic Theft & Fraud 🚨
Porter lost/stole my belongings worth ₹4+ Lakh during my move from Bengaluru to Mumbai, including priceless gifts & certificates. A nightmare experience.
🧵👇 #PorterScam#ConsumerRights@porterit_
4️⃣ This Isn’t Just Negligence—It’s THEFT.
🔴 How does a washing machine vanish?
🔴 How do sealed cartons get emptied?
🔴 Why were only expensive items stolen?
This is organized theft. Filing a police complaint & legal action.
#porterscam#porterscam#porterfraud#criminal