What just happened?
The S&P 500 just erased nearly -$2 TRILLION of market cap just hours after 3rd strongest US jobs report in 18 months.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is officially down over -50% from its record high in October 2025.
What's happening? Let us explain.
(a thread)
I am a CBSE Class 12 student.
After receiving unexpectedly low marks in Physics, we applied for photocopies of my answer sheets through the CBSE reevaluation process.
Today we received the copies.
And I am shattered because the Physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE is not mine
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.
VIDEO COLUMN: All what you wanted to know about the Strait of Hormuz.
My @Opinion visual op-ed about the world's most critical waterway; it shipping lanes, and why the strait may never return to its pre-war status.
(Originally published April 10th)
From @ATabarrok : "The Government of India’s Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation has created an impressive Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect AI’s to Indian datasets. An AI connected to data via an MCP essentially knows the entire codebook and can make use of the data like an expert. Once connected one can query the data in natural language and quickly create graphs and statistical analysis. I connected Claude to the MCP and created an elegant dashboard with data from India’s Annual Survey of Industries." (link below fold):
https://t.co/KUUdJfwrGS
Wonderful to speak with my dear friend President Trump today. Delighted that Made in India products will now have a reduced tariff of 18%. Big thanks to President Trump on behalf of the 1.4 billion people of India for this wonderful announcement.
When two large economies and the world’s largest democracies work together, it benefits our people and unlocks immense opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation.
President Trump’s leadership is vital for global peace, stability, and prosperity. India fully supports his efforts for peace.
I look forward to working closely with him to take our partnership to unprecedented heights.
@POTUS@realDonaldTrump
@BaluGorade We need to build world class institutions, inviting global faculty, encouraging students to pursue advanced R&D. Of course, it would take time but important that we take concrete steps today.
The Subtle Art of Overeating Politely
A hotel’s complimentary buffet breakfast is the closest thing to a polite catastrophe . At 6:30 a.m., grown adults who normally need three alarms to wake up are already hovering outside the restaurant door like it’s a flash sale. The moment it opens, civilisation leaves the room . People surge forward with the desperation of a species that fears the poori might run away.
The continental section sits there, lonely, untouched. Croissants looking depressed, bread slices drying in the AC because the true desi minimalists walk past them like past bad memories. Bread and eggs? Why again? They station themselves at the dosa counter with the same intensity that they used for land disputes.
Meanwhile the Full-Hog Overachievers begin their day’s construction work: plate upon plate stacked with paratha touching pasta touching pineapple touching ideological confusion. They aren’t here to eat; they are here to economically punish the hotel for daring to include breakfast in the tariff. A subset of them say “ nothing is good” before they go for a second helping. Another guest drinks nine cups of masala chai and wonders aloud why his BP is rising. The rest of us know.
Then come the Protein Bros, those majestic creatures whose arms enter the buffet three seconds before the rest of their body. They demand fourteen egg whites and bargain like they’re at Chickpet. One bro even pours whey powder into sambar, declaring it a fusion dish. The chef’s soul quietly exits his body.
Nearby, a diabetic guest requests a strict egg-white omelette while simultaneously dual-wielding mango and pineapple juice like nutritional nunchucks. Their glucose meter files for voluntary retirement. And just when the buffet thinks it has seen enough, the rich sleepers float in at 11:20 a.m.Breakfast long gone, even the toaster unplugged. But time, to them, is a rumour. They demand pancakes from the void, and hotel staff obey with the resignation of civil servants during budget season. The order a la carte..
The business traveller meanwhile is on Day four and has a serving of toast–fried egg–coffee déjà vu. He pockets bananas like he’s smuggling state secrets, sips coffee with dead eyes, and silently wonders when he last felt joy. Children, on the other hand, are pure chaos wrapped in sugar.They are charging at waffles, drowning them in chocolate syrup, and rejecting anything that looks remotely like nutrition. The hotel staff steps aside as they sprint past, muffins in both hands like victorious gladiators. Their moms are trying to feed them something they detest. The dads overlook this event…
Uncles are the true apex predators: poori, dosa soaked in ghee, pongal the size of a meteor, five cups of chai, and then the inevitable announcement “I eat very light these days.”
Fitness Moms interrogate the buffet like they’re cracking a terror cell: “Which oil? Which farm? What breed of almond?” And after all this detective work, they consume three papaya cubes and radiate smug wellness.
Foreign tourists wander around in innocent confusion, eating idli with jam, mixing chutney with muesli, sipping sambar like broth until suddenly their tongue goes numb and they realise India has entered their bloodstream.
The lonely cereal guy sits surrounded by 800 calories of joy and chooses cornflakes anyway, crunching like he’s punishing himself for existing.
Somewhere, an influencer couple rearranges that poori for 40 minutes, taking photos from all angles. By the time they finish, the poori has the emotional stability of a punctured balloon. Nearby, professional buffet looters stuff muffins into handbags, slip bread rolls into jacket pockets, and walk out rustling like walking vegetable markets.
And through all of this, someone always makes an impossible request from masala cornflakes, gluten-free poha to a sugar-free gulab jamun while the staff stares into the horizon questioning every life choice.
A complimentary buffet breakfast is not nourishment. It is revenge, it is childhood trauma, it is class struggle, it is comedy, it is tragedy, it is a deeply personal confrontation with carbs.
It is the Olympics of Paisa Vasool. And after the dust settles, after the plates are cleared, after the last banana is smuggled away, everyone makes the same bold declaration:
“Tomorrow, I’ll eat light.”
And of course, as we leave, all of us are already telling the same lie to ourselves, the oldest lie in the history of complimentary breakfasts:
Tomorrow, we’ll behave better.
Tomorrow arrives.
We won’t.
But it’s sweet that we believe it.
Anyone with basic brains can figure out what Indigo did was very intentional. This was not sudden disruption, this was almost a planned strike to strongarm the government into giving it what it wants. What people went through doesn't matter to them, it's just collateral damage. And the fact that govt let this happen is on them. The fact that we essentially have monopolistic/duopolistic situations in so many major sectors is on this Government. But what to do, let's look for ways to blame RaGa on this too.