Imagine telling someone in 1999…
The year is 2026.
The President is Donald Trump in his second non consecutive term.
The richest man in the world is PayPal cofounder Elon Musk… but not because of fintech or Paypal. Because of rockets, electric cars, AI, satellites, brain chips and something called “Boring Company”.
Apple is worth trillions but its main business isn’t computers… its selling glass rectangles everyone stares at for 9 hours a day.
People don’t watch TV. They watch teenagers explain geopolitics, finance, and relationship advice in ~60 second videos.
The biggest taxi company owns no taxis.
The biggest hotel company owns no hotels.
The most powerful media companies are social networks where everyone argues with strangers for free.
Kids are making millions filming themselves playing video games.
AI Robots write emails, code, legal memos, songs, essays, and breakup texts.
The internet is mostly bots arguing with humans who are trying to prove they aren’t bots.
You can summon a car, groceries, a doctor, a date, a private jet, or a dog walker from your phone.
People pay real money for invisible currencies, digital monkeys, AI girlfriends and pictures that disappear after 24 hours.
The richest companies in the world don’t sell oil, steel, or cars. They sell attention, compute, data, and addiction.
And somehow, after all of that everyone is still using Excel.
Felt like sharing an old tweet:
If you want to visit a foreign country for the first time, visit Singapore. See how a great leader can develop a nation even without natural resources. Lee Kuan Yew was one of the greatest leaders the world has produced. Charlie Munger kept a bust of Lee Kuan Yew in his home - he had that much regard for him.
Singapore, with a per capita GDP of around $85,000 boasts one of the most powerful passports in the world.
I'll give you two examples from my recent visit to Singapore. Both involve taxi drivers, as they are easily accessible for tourists.
One driver is 34 years old and unmarried. Having seen high divorce rates, he decided to stay single. He works extremely hard, starting to drive at 5 a.m. and finishing only by 9 p.m. He earns about $8,000 a month.
He has travelled widely across the world - visiting Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan innumerable times. He has been to America eight times and driven across the entire country. He has also travelled to Western Europe sixteen times. He works hard and parties hard.
Another driver works only eight hours a day because he values work-life balance. He earns about $4,000 a month, and his wife earns a similar amount. They have two college going sons -one studying in Australia and the other in Austria. The entire education expenses for both are covered by their savings.
Forget the taxi drivers -how many people in our upper middle class can even aspire to this kind of lifestyle?
When I was young, I dreamed of owning a Porsche car. Today, I can afford one. Yet all I want is a comfortable car that takes me from point A to B.
Age has a way of changing aspirations. Simplicity, comfort and peace of mind become the real luxuries.
It is humbling to consider that if we harness just 1 millionth of the Sun’s power for AI, that will be much more than a million times the intelligence of all of humanity
If a video doesn't actually teach you something useful or make you genuinely laugh, save your sanity, bypass the digital clutter, and just keep scrolling.
#socialmedia#brainrot
Let’s be honest: social media has become a digital landfill, and about 80% of what we see is pure garbage. We live in an era where creators turn the most boring, everyday activities—like waiting in line or making a piece of toast—into dramatic, must-watch "content."
Running out of milk isn't a life crisis, and filming a useless life hack doesn't make it valuable information. The truth is, nobody asked to see these mundane routines, and making a video about a silly activity doesn't mean it deserves a single minute of your time.
Marcus Aurelius was right. You will lose friends you will lose lovers you will lose comfort but if in losing them you find yourself you have gained more than kings.
No entiendo cómo puede ser. Vi a Michael Jackson morir, a Maradona morir, a Pelé morir, a la reina Isabel morir; vi pasar a tres papas. Sobreviví a una pandemia, vi el comienzo de internet. Vi el CD cambiar a Spotify, vi cambiar el DVD a Netflix, vi pasar del teléfono fijo a un iPhone. Y estoy viendo el surgimiento de la IA. Y solo tengo 30 años.
Reliance: No return in 4 yrs.
HDFC Bank: No return in 5 yrs.
TCS: No return in 7.75 yrs.
HUL: No return in 6.5 yrs.
Infosys: No return in 5.5 yrs.
Maruti Suzuki: No return in 2 yrs.
Adani Ent: No return in 3.75 yrs.
Axis Bank: No return in 1.5 yrs.
M&M: No return in 1.75 yrs.
Kotak Bank: No return in 5.5 yrs.
ITC: No return in 9 yrs.
NTPC: No return in 2 yrs.
ONGC: No return in 12 yrs.
Ultratech: No return in 2 yrs.
HCL Tech: No return in 5.75 yrs.
Coal India: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Bajaj Auto: No return in 1.75 yrs.
HAL: No return in 2 yrs.
Bajaj Finsv: No return in 4.75 yrs.
Dmart: No return in 4.75 yrs.
Nestle: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Powergrid: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Asian Paints: No return in 5.5 yrs.
Adani Green: No return in 4.5 yrs.
Eternal: No return in 1.75 yrs.
Hind Zinc: No return in 2 yrs.
Wipro: No return in 5.5 yrs.
Indian Oil: No return in 9.25 yrs.
Adani Energy: No return in 5 yrs.
SBI Life: No return in 1.75 yrs.
Varun Bev: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Indigo: No return in 2 yrs.
Jio Fin: No return in 2.75 yrs.
Trent: No return in 2.25 yrs.
Tata Motors: No return in 2.75 yrs.
Tech M: No return in 4.75 yrs.
Cipla: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Tata Cons: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Dr Reddy: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Max Health: No return in 2.5 yrs.
Buy good companies isn't enough.
You need to time your entries well.
Rather long but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did:
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I lack civic sense.
They can burn streets,
and vandalize a city after a championship game.
I dance at an airport excited about my first foreign trip, and suddenly I am the face of poor civic sense.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I steal jobs.
They move factories across oceans,
shift profits through tax havens.
I study, compete, earn a visa, work 18 hours a day, sometimes multiple jobs and somehow I am the one stealing jobs and scamming the system.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am everywhere.
I build your software,
treat your illness,
teach your children,
drive your taxis,
and open your stores.
The world became a village,
yet my presence remains a problem.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am too loud.
The evening news screams outrage.
The internet echoes with anger day and night.
I celebrate a wedding, a festival, a victory,
and I am told my joy is too loud.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I smell of curry.
The world smells of gunpowder,
of hatred,
of division,
of endless arguments about race and religion.
I carry the fragrance of spices from my grandmother's kitchen,
and somehow that is what offends.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I have no culture.
I come from a civilization that counted the stars
when much of the world was still learning maps.
I speak languages older than nations.
I celebrate hundreds of traditions,
yet I am told I have no culture.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am backward.
I send missions to the Moon.
I build vaccines for millions.
I run companies across continents.
Yet a viral video of one fool becomes evidence against a billion people.
I am an Indian.
I celebrate my favorite actor's success
with flowers, music, and a few glasses of milk.
Others worship influencers who sell outrage, turn every disagreement into a battlefield, and every opinion into a war.
Yet my celebration is the one that makes headlines.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I gather in crowds.
We walk together in processions,
celebrating our faith, our culture, our traditions.
Everyone is welcome.
No shops are looted.
No neighborhoods are burned.
No one is threatened for thinking differently.
We sing.
We dance.
We pray.
And somehow our gathering becomes the problem.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I bring my culture everywhere.
I light a lamp in a foreign land.
I wear a saree in the snow.
I teach my children the language of their grandparents.
Others build walls between neighbors,
argue endlessly over identity,
and forget where they came from.
Yet I am told I should leave my culture behind.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I live in the past.
But my past gave me yoga,
mathematics, philosophy, meditation,
and the idea that the world is one family.
The future keeps borrowing from my past,
while telling me to be embarrassed by it.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I should be ashamed.
Ashamed of my accent.
Ashamed of my food.
Ashamed of my festivals.
Ashamed of my traditions.
Ashamed of existing.
But I am not ashamed.
I am the child of farmers and philosophers,
scientists and saints, workers and dreamers.
*I come from a land that taught the world
that truth can be many-sided,
that all paths deserve respect,
and that the entire world is one family.*
*Yes, we have flaws. Every nation does.*
*But judge me by my actions, not by your stereotypes.*
For I am an Indian.
*And before you tell me what is wrong with me, look honestly at what you have normalized in yourself.*
For I am an Indian.
The world may mock my accent,
question my customs,
laugh at my celebrations,
and judge me through a thousand stereotypes.
*Yet I stand tall. For I belong to a civilization older than empires, a culture richer than prejudice, and a people whose spirit refuses to bend.*
For I am an Indian.
Voyager 1 is 24 billion kilometers from Earth.
It communicates with us using a 23-watt transmitter.
Less than a refrigerator light bulb.
The signal takes 22 hours to reach us, traveling at the speed of light.
By the time it arrives, it's 20 billion times weaker than the power of a digital watch battery.
NASA's Deep Space Network picks it up using 70-meter dish antennas cooled to near absolute zero to reduce electronic noise.
The engineering required to hear a 23-watt signal from 24 billion km away is arguably more impressive than the spacecraft itself.
Launched 1977.
Still transmitting.
Still being heard.
We built something that works perfectly, 47 years later, in conditions no one has ever tested in.
That's what engineering for the long term looks like.
Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Preview has officially taken the #1 spot in Image-to-Video generation on Design Arena
• #1 overall with a 1357 Elo rating
• Massive 49-point lead over the next-best model
• Ahead of Seedance 2.0 and Seedance 2.0 Fast
It established a new Pareto frontier in AI video generation, delivering state-of-the-art quality while simultaneously being faster and more cost-efficient than competing models
The model averages just 41.2 seconds per generation while maintaining top-tier output quality
Most AI labs optimize for one metric
xAI is improving quality, speed, cost efficiency, and product capabilities all at the same time
That’s an incredibly difficult combination to achieve
Apparently humans need three devices, six apps, and a monthly subscription to discover that they're tired, haven't exercised, and should go outside.
#life#ModernLiving#crisis#live