as an adult you literally have 30 minutes to celebrate a win until you face another inconvenience

Man City’s lawyer winning 1 out of the 115 charges

CJP is AAP in a fancy dress costume. Last time around, the front was IAC and Anna Hazare. This time, the front is CJP and Abhijeet Dipke. Issue was corruption last time, education this time. Nothing changed on the corruption front once they got to power in Delhi, nor will Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation achieve anything. These are far complex problems. The issue is merely a hook to turn it into a mass movement and achieve personal political goals. Arvind Kejriwal and team have zero respect for constitutional norms. The whole country can burn, if it means they achieve their political outcomes. Rahul Gandhi was wise (for once) to not share the stage with them at Jantar Mantar. It was a clear sign that they recognize this is an AAP movement. That is why Congress has their separate event around education called 'Chhatron Ki Goonj'. It will be interesting to see how Congress responds to CJP's call for "boycotting elections". Rahul Gandhi has blamed the EC and claimed 'rigged elections' in the past; but will the Congress go so far as to boycott elections? It is not merely CJP vs BJP. It is also AAP vs Congress. The BJP is on the back-foot, and there's a fierce competition to occupy the opposition space.

India is having a shocker of an Asian Games. Shooters have severely underperformed and there are big question marks over the trials process. Many failed to make the finals even at an Asian level. Last minute team changes in the rowing competition where athletes were threatened that their "future would be ruined" if they didn't comply. They've been called "anti national" for questioning the decisions. Varun Sanyal didn't have coaches or support staff with him (was alone for his weight cut and deemed medically unfit after fainting in the sauna). But 250 'officials' are part of the contingent. Sports people or babus on Japan vacation with families? Many athletes are on record that they found out just 2-3 weeks prior that they would be participating in the Asian Games. They simply didn't have enough time to prepare for the competition to their best ability. How can athletes win medals when they haven't prepared as well as their competition? India is going to fall massively short of its 2022 tally of 106 with 28 gold medals. Japan has messed up the organization of the Games, and that has hogged all the attention. But don't take your eyes away from the disaster that the Indian Olympic Association has inflicted on the atheletes and India's chances of a strong performance.

China has overachieved what people dreamed in 1990.

I once had an interview with Azeem when I was looking for my first job. I was young, excited, wanting to become a writer. East India Comedy used to work from a 3-BHK at the time. Sahil Shah had helped me land the interview. Azeem looks at my CV and the first thing he tells me is - "I have blocked you on Twitter." I thought it was a strange way to begin an interview. I had never interacted with him on Twitter. We never had even an exchange or any conversation. So he opens my profile on his laptop, unblocks me (so he can access the Tweets) and then scrolls down and reads a few tweets till he finds one particular tweet and says - "Ah yes, it was this one." AIB at that time had made a video where they made jokes on cows / gaumutra in the sketch. I had put out a tweet stating that it was easy for comics to make jokes on Hinduism but I've never seen them take such liberty with other religions / faiths / beliefs. And that they were not equal opportunity offenders. I was asked to 'explain' this tweet. And so I did. And it led to a discussion and argument for over 10 minutes, where I was repeatedly told I was wrong, after which the interview ended. I had applied to be a 'writer' and I was asked nothing about it - what I had written, what I wanted to write, my skillsets and so no. Nothing. I was too young to be confident or have strong self belief, and I walked out thinking maybe I shouldn't have put out that tweet - it cost me this job. What I found strange even back then, was that a person much senior to me in the profession, would be fixated on some tweet, and was not open to another opinion or point-of-view that was different from his. Surely, it would help to have people with different views writing for a news satire show? I was naive. The goal is never diversity of thought or opinion. The view or angle is always pre-decided. All they need is people to further it.

The events at IIT remind me of this standup from Bassi. He didn't end up being a lawyer but made a great life for himself regardless. It's the message we're failing to give our children. One exam, one semester, one degree doesn't define your life. It's not the end of the world..

Good evening from Mumbai. For a moment, this almost feels like Italy. But those terracotta rooftops, the harbour and the Taj remind you… this is Mumbai.

European VCs doing 300 hours of research before investing 2500 Euro into a compliance startup

I'm sorry but this is embarrassing. A self proclaimed 'sevak' deploying public money and public resources for the celebration of his personal birthday reeks of narcissism and lacks in humility and selflessness (that is expected of a Sevak!). The hashtag has zero organic activity, and the only people using it are BJP and RSS affiliated members, workers and ministers.

I don't think people lack the understanding that it costs money to afford UPI infrastructure. Everyone principally understands that nothing is free in life. And that you have to pay for a good service. What people seem pained by, is the fact that certain groups are being squeezed from all sides with every tax possible, while the state doles 10x money on schemes to buy votes. Or keep farmers exempt from taxation to not piss that voter group off. For the Government, Ladli Behen is the cost that you have to pay to get UPI and highways and other good things. If you don't spend on it, you lose elections and people with worse ideas will occupy those seats. For the Citizen, the feeling is you're not getting much for everything you pay, in terms of improvement in your daily life. Even the smaller things like a decent road, or garbage collection, or traffic management, cleanliness and so on. Plus there is now bad blood over issues like UGC, paper leaks, Ethanol, and now this new 'charge' that the Govt had said was 'baseless' just last year. Add to this a lot of tone deaf PR that is divorced from the pulse of the people (ministers constantly praising the PM etc). It has certainly changed the mood of how people view this Government now as opposed to 5-7 years back. You see it online, and you even see it offline, especially among a crowd that once had full trust in the Prime Minister. The times, they are a changin'.

It is interesting to note that UPI charges have been introduced (that benefit VISA, Mastercard, Apple Pay) in the same week that the US is about to pass a bill that grants the President powers to impose 100% tariffs on India for its trade with Russia. Mind you, the passing of the bill doesn't impose an automatic flat 100% tariff. It simply gives the power to the Executive to determine the rate between 0% and 100%. And they have 30 days to set the rate, which they can further tweak every 6-months. So maybe if we 'behave', the rate can be lower.. Coincidence?

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead. You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement. I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier. Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want. Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well. So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it. If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

You’ve gotta use AI because it’s the future. But also it’ll take your job. But also it’ll create a paradise on earth and solve most of our problems. But also it’ll end humanity soon. But also you’ll get left behind if you don’t use it right now.

I still have an IPhone 13 in 2026 that’s like having Luke Shaw at LB

IRCTC Website. IRCTC App. RailOne App. All down for over 30 minutes every morning. Maybe @AshwiniVaishnaw's next reel should be about explaining how the government can make a ticket booking website that actually works.

Constantly dodging slow moving Ganeshes in the streets of Bombay. Can’t get enough of this city.

First in my bloodline to see a very senior journalist from a major news network call out the economic illiteracy in this entire GDP Debate & agenda peddling.