Vianni Joseph P

[Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal]

Interesting exploration of the differences between the two comic book series that did not release in the same time period (Tintin started in 1929, while Asterix & Obelix started in 1959) but most Indians experienced both at the same time while growing up... and hence, there has always been a discussion about which is better :) This piece has some interesting observations on that topic.

PS: There is a larger criticism on the Tintin series owing to colonialist and stereotypical viewpoints of Black Africans common in 1930s Belgium, though Hergé later acknowledged these flaws, noting they mirrored the prejudices of his society at the time.

[a16z @a16z]

.@patrickc on how Stripe got its name:

"We just couldn't come up with a good name... We were literally reduced to picking random words late at night."

"One of the folks at Stripe had the bright idea of, 'Why don't we just assemble a big list of words and email all of the owners of the dot com domains?'"

"And then we also continued our own creative process. We came up with memorable names like PayDemon... We thought it was super clever because we could have this awesome mascot."

"The owner of https://t.co/js42nwIGJ0 generously responded to us and had an offer that was at least within our plausible budgetary range."

"But we couldn't decide between PayDemon and Stripe. I swear I'm not making this up... If we could not settle on a name by December 20th, 2010, we would just default to Stripe. And we couldn't think of a more compelling name, and so Stripe it became."

Patrick Collison w/ John Lilly at Stanford University (2015)

[Cristian @cristiannmillo]

Esto es espectacular como se movió Marruecos defensivamente. Esto se entrena. No es aleatorio. Tremendo bloque corto defensivo. Imposible de entrar sin alguna magia o pase filtrado con extrema exactitud. Por eso Brasil se la pasó lateralizando.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

The world just paid $2 trillion for a rocket company that lost $4.9 billion last year. And the rockets are not why it lost the money. They are the only part making any.

SpaceX went public Friday, the largest IPO in history. Up 19%, a $2 trillion valuation, Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Then you open the filing.

Three businesses sit inside it. Starlink, the satellites, brought in $11.4 billion, 61% of all revenue, and $4.4 billion in profit. It is the only piece that earns a dollar. The rockets that land themselves run a small loss reinvesting in Starship. And the AI arm, Grok plus the app once called Twitter, folded in this February, lost $6.4 billion in a single year on $12.7 billion of spending.

Read that again. The satellites pay for everything. The AI loses more than the satellites make. And the AI is the part the market fell in love with.

It gets bolder. The prospectus claims a total market of $28.5 trillion, the largest any company has ever put in a filing. Larger than the GDP of the United States. That is the number underwriting a $2 trillion price tag built on a division bleeding $6 billion a year.

Now the structure. About 4% of the company trades. That sliver sets the price for all of it. Musk is locked up for 366 days and holds roughly 80% of the votes. The public bought a company they cannot steer, priced on the one segment losing the most.

This is the whole year in one ticker. The profit is satellites. The story is AI. The market bought the story.

The rockets were never the risk. The risk is a $2 trillion price resting on the one bet that has yet to make a cent.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

NASA has 32 cameras on the Artemis II spacecraft. The top science priority during the Moon flyby was the four astronauts looking out the window and talking about what they saw.

NASA's lunar science lead confirmed it. What the crew says out loud about the Moon's surface matters more to the science team than anything the cameras capture. NASA trained this crew in Iceland's volcanic highlands and at an impact crater in Labrador, Canada, teaching them to read rock textures and spot geological details at 25,000 mph.

There's a reason NASA trusts human eyes over cameras. In 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt was walking near a small crater called Shorty when he scuffed the dirt with his boot. The soil underneath was orange. Schmitt was the only trained geologist to ever walk on the Moon, and he got so excited he blurred most of his own photos. That orange soil turned out to be tiny glass beads from a volcanic eruption 3.64 billion years ago, one of the biggest finds of the entire Apollo program. A boot and a pair of trained eyes caught what no camera did.

For this flyby, NASA sent the crew a final list of 30 surface targets. They killed all the cabin lights to cut window reflections. They worked in pairs, rotating every 55 to 85 minutes, calling out craters and lava flows while scientists at Johnson Space Center analyzed everything in real time. Pilot Victor Glover reported that the Moon's south pole, where NASA wants to land astronauts by 2028, looked "more jagged" than the north with much steeper terrain. One observation from a human eye at 4,070 miles could shape where the next crew touches down.

At 6:44 PM Eastern, Orion slipped behind the far side and went radio silent for 40 minutes. Four people, completely cut off from every other human alive, the Moon blocking every signal back to Earth. The last time humans experienced that was December 1972.

They broke the all-time distance record on the way. Apollo 13 held it for 56 years at 248,655 miles from Earth. Artemis II passed that mark and kept going to 252,760. Jim Lovell, who commanded Apollo 13 and held that record his whole life, died last August at 97, eight months before these four beat it. Before he died, Lovell recorded a message for the crew. "Welcome to my old neighborhood," he told them. "Don't forget to enjoy the view."

The crew named two craters during the flyby. One for their spacecraft, Integrity. The other, Carroll, for Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, a nurse who cared for newborns and died of cancer in 2020 at 46. Wiseman has raised their two daughters alone since. When Jeremy Hansen read the name to Mission Control, his voice broke. The crew hugged. Wiseman and Koch wiped tears. Then they got back to work, because they still had hours of Moon left to map with their eyes.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

I tried to warn you! 😂 🤖

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

.@JamesTalarico: The only minority destroying America is the billionaires. Trans people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. We are focused on the wrong 1%.

Trans people aren't taking away our healthcare. Muslims aren't defunding our schools. Immigrants aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians.

The culture wars are a smokescreen. They want us looking left and right at our neighbors instead of looking up at them. The biggest divide in our politics is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says most white-collar work "will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

If that’s true, it’s an economic earthquake.

We need a moratorium on new AI data centers to make sure AI works for workers, not just billionaires.

[Catholic News Service @CatholicNewsSvc]

Pope Leo: For Lent, fast from words that hurt others, disarm language, avoid rash judgment, refrain from speaking ill of those who can't defend themselves. Let's cultivate kindness, respect in our families, friends, at work, on social media, in political debates, in parishes.

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: ICE agents are now in CHURCH PARKING LOTS, illegally stopping and demanding proof of citizenship from U.S. citizen families, in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

In the video, a citizen notices ICE agents patrolling a church parking lot.

When the agents see a family getting out of their car, on their way into church, they cut through the grass and pull up directly next to them.

An ICE agent immediately demands ID.

The family shows their passports and explains to the agent, yes, they are U.S. citizens.

The observer calls the agents out, telling him they should be ashamed for stopping families on church property.

The agent responds by trying to silence the legal observer, ordering him to “get in his car” and stop obstructing.

The legal observer replies, “Why? I’m in a church parking lot. How about you leave.”

And the agents then get in their car and drive away.

ICE agents are illegally stopping and harassing people, on church property, making them feel unsafe to attend church and freely practice their religion.

And yet, not one Republican is outraged.

Which is surprising since last week Republicans screamed about protesters entering a church, claiming it violated the right to “practice religion freely.”

But now, FEDERAL AGENTS are harassing families at church, demanding proof of citizenship, intimidating U.S. citizens from feeling safe to practice religion freely…

and those same people say nothing.

Trump stripped protections from churches, explicitly giving ICE permission to operate on church property, so FEDERAL AGENTS could do exactly what Republicans lost their minds about…

Infringe on religious freedom, and terrorize families where they’re supposed to feel safest.

You can’t claim to support religious liberty while backing a government that is openly attacking it.

[Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness @coachajkings]

Kurt Warner shares the lesson that changed his entire career and it applies to everything.

He sat on the bench for 4 years in college. When a friend asked the coaches why he wasn't playing, the answer wasn't what he expected:

"The reason I wasn't playing was because I was not very good in practice."

His first reaction? Allen Iverson mode.

"Practice? What're you talking about, practice?"

But then he did the math.

"In college we play 12 games in 365 days. In the NFL we play 16 games in 365 days."

That's less than 5% of your year.

"95% of our lives are lived in practice. And the biggest impression we make on people, the way people can understand and really realize who we are, is what we do every day in practice."

This is the 95% Rule. And it applies to everything - sports, business, relationships, life.
1: Show Up With Your Best Effort - Compete and give your best every single day. People can't question how you show up - your effort, attitude, and actions. Consistency removes doubt.
2: Trust Is Built In Practice, Not Games - Trust is earned in the thousands of moments before it's given. Before you can be trusted, people want to know you're dependable. Every day. Not just when it matters.
3: Master Daily Consistency - Success isn't about intensity - it's about consistency. Your habits compound. What you do daily defines who you become.
4: Big Moments Are Earned In Small Moments - The little details make the biggest difference. Greatness starts with preparation - it's earned in the boredom of doing the work when no one's watching.

Excellence isn't an event - It's a habit.

Practice is where trust is built.

How you show up daily is who you really are.
(🎥 Passing the Torch Podcast)
(🎥 @kurt13warner)

[Shane Claiborne @ShaneClaiborne]

Trump-evangelicalism is a cult. It is a theological heresy. It’s just a new version of the old-school emperor worship of Caesar.

Some people calling themselves Christians are actually more in love with Trump than with Jesus.

Whenever we stop letting Jesus transform us into His likeness and we start transforming Him into our likeness, we have created a new form of idolatry.

Trump literally embraces all the temptations Jesus resisted in the desert. He curses the people Jesus blessed. He betrays nearly every verse of the Sermon on the Mount, and has turned the seven deadly sins into a way of life.

Follow Jesus. Not Trump.

[Vianni Joseph P @viannip]

The aviation industry - airlines, airports etc need to take a serious look at how they operate when there is rain. Ridiculous to hear the excuses of delays for gates when there is no lightning nearby and we have a drizzle!

[Vianni Joseph P @viannip]

@AlaskaAir I had better expectations and you disappointed me. Overcrowded gate with 1 agent who was moving at super slow speed on a flight already delayed. Not helpful, no announcements! Been at gate for over an hour and not one single announcement!

[Vianni Joseph P @viannip]

Novena in honor of our Lady of Velankanni in Dallas https://t.co/aSgqaX6IEV

[Patrick Neve @catholicpat]

“This is the craziest Papal Conclave in history.”

Oh there have been worse

Here’s 10 papal conclaves that will make you question how the Catholic Church is still intact after all these years (thread) 🧵

[Tara Blume @tcblume]

'We're citizens!': OKC woman says she and her three daughters are traumatized after ICE raided their home, forcing them outside in the rain in their underwear. Names on the search warrant matched mail still arriving in the home they just moved into. (1/2)
https://t.co/m3TSt1VDzB

[Hart Ponder Jr @PonderHart]

Great question—Jesus’ differing responses to Mary Magdalene and Thomas—“Do not touch me” (John 20:17) versus “Put your finger here and see my hands” (John 20:27)—aren’t contradictions, but reveal different spiritual lessons.

To Mary Magdalene, Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” The original Greek—“Μή μου ἅπτου”—can be better translated as “Do not cling to me.” Jesus is teaching Mary that their relationship must now shift. He is no longer to be known in the merely physical, earthly way. His Resurrection ushers in a new, glorified mode of presence—one mediated through the Spirit, the sacraments, and the Church. Mary, who had once followed Him in His earthly ministry, must now learn to follow Him in faith, not by physical closeness.

To Thomas, however, Jesus invites touch precisely because Thomas had refused to believe without it. Jesus accommodates Thomas’ doubt not to affirm skepticism, but to move him to faith—culminating in Thomas’s declaration, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Thomas’ physical contact becomes the means by which Christ brings him into deeper belief.

In short:
•Mary is told not to cling because she represents a soul ready to move from physical familiarity to spiritual intimacy with the risen Lord.
•Thomas is invited to touch because he needed a physical sign to come to faith.

As St. Gregory the Great said: “Mary, who already believed, was asked to seek a higher faith; Thomas, who doubted, was led by touch to believe.”

Both encounters, in different ways, point us toward the Eucharist—where Christ is truly present, yet not touched in the old physical way, but received in faith, through grace.

[Quadcarl @Quadcarl]

Good morning everyone