Be so strong that the other party withdraws and you don't have to fight at all. If it comes to it, then fight and win.
Same thought echoed by Sun Tzu, Jack Reacher (movie), Col. Shivender of 7 Para SF and of course, India's political and military though process
About 1.5 decades ago, when I used to read every magazine of Outlook money and do in depth research of the topics of personal finance, I came across 'Repudiation rate' for Life insurances.
The repudiation rate in insurance is the percentage of claims that an insurance company denies out of the total number of claims filed during a specific period. These denials can occur for various reasons, such as claims being filed after the policy has lapsed, improper paperwork, policy exclusions, or the suspicion of fraud.
For some 'only' online life insurance companies these rates to be about 40-50% and were untrustworthy from an insurance point of view. Why were these having such high repudiation rates compared to 3-5% for other insurances? Because they were the ones who used to run gimmick ads of dirt cheap insurance and then when the claim time came, they used to give some silly reason to reject the claim (that too, when the person insured is no longer alive).
I used to get these repudiation rates from the Insurance regulator - IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India) in its annual report.
This month, I was thinking of getting a term insurance and wanted to check the repudiation rate from the last year's annual report.
But, alas, they have stopped giving the individual companies repudiation rates and are only giving a category wise repudiation rate. Rate for Public companies and for private companies.
This is severely allowing the bad players to hide their bad work and not allowing the customers to know and choose wisely.
I have come across 3 cases in my life where the power of legal has changed the game in a business and my positive perspective of it:
Case 1.
Having worked in the financing of the airlines, I came across a very secret insight which very few people in the world know. The main cause of Indigo's success v/s its competition.
To understand this, you need to understand one of the main reasons why the various airlines became bankrupt for the last 10-15 years in India.
In airline lingo, An AOG, or "Aircraft on Ground," is an aviation maintenance term for when a plane cannot fly due to a mechanical or technical problem. It is a critical situation for any airline, as it can be extremely costly and disruptive.
Go Air went bankrupt due to a supply shortage of engines from Pratt & Whitney, which were used in its fleet of Airbus A320 aircraft. When the airline ceased operations in 2023, it had 26 aircraft operational, while the other 28 aircraft were grounded due to engine issues with Pratt & Whitney.
Kingfisher airlines - Reasons for Collapse: The collapse was due to a combination of factors, including a huge debt burden and losses, a high number of grounded aircraft due to maintenance issues, and a prolonged financial crisis.
IndiGo currently has a number of aircraft grounded, a number that peaked in mid-2024 at over 70 but has been gradually decreasing.
Spicejet also have a number of AOG almost all the time.
While all airlines have AOG, the reason for the AOG is necessary to know.
If tight finances is a reason for payment to engine supplier to resolve AOGs, then the airline will struggle because of its finances and not necessarily because of the supplier.
If the engine supplier is not having much replacements immediately despite the airline being ready to pay, the airlines suffers for no fault of its.
The secret of Indigo's success comes from the agreement Indigo got into with Airbus and the engine supplier when it first made a huge purchase with them. Possibly knowing the industry risk of AOGs due to engine problems and its impact on the business and its first CEO being a lawyer by profession (Aditya Ghosh), they got in a clause to the effect that the engine supplier is obligated to replace the faulted engine with 24-48 hrs or else the engine supplier would pay damages per day of AOG.
I believe this clause didn't exist with the other airlines' agreements and the engine supplier agreed to this demand of Indigo as part of the negotiation of the big order Indigo placed.
So, while Indigo had any engine trouble, the engine supplier had to prioritise to replace its engine with ready ones (mostly in Singapore being a hub for Asia) while the other airlines waited for their turn.
As the supply is usually very strained, Indigo flights went up in a day or 2 while the others only kept mailing and calling the engine supplier for replacement and lost their revenues till they went up bankrupt.
This is the power of the right legal clause.
Case 2:
In Banking, money and assets can be transferred by 2 ways:
A. Transferring money through banking channels
B. 'Assigning' the asset/ monies through legal agreement
The common people don’t know this way of transfer of assets. This is somewhat similar to a gift deed.
Case 3:
Movie: The Firm featuring Tom Cruise
A legal firm traps its own key lawyer and blackmails him to keep the illegal things they do a secret.
Now the hero as an individual has to fight back against a big firm and bring it down.
And how does he bring down the firm? After multiple attempts fail to bring the firm down, he finds a small misstep the firm keeps doing which he observes. The firm illegally overbills its clients and is documented in its records.
Sometimes, the key to success lies is in the details others oversee / cant think of.
Each of these stories / cases has left a lasting bright impression on me on how legal can be a solution to problems which others in the world don't consider.
Last week, I met a friend who told me that "No one returns alive from ____ hospital". That hospital being one of the three big branded hospitals of Hyderabad where another friend's wife was in critical condition.
That statement caught me off guard. He further mentioned that he knew 5 people who were admitted there but no one ever returned back alive.
I also knew one more fact that one of the other Big branded hospitals had refused to take the case of the friend's wife.
Knowing this, I argued that, maybe this hospital being one of the biggest ones in Hyderabad has a more risk taking ability for the type and condition of the patients. After all, if all the different entities are the same, then there is no real democracy and no decision making and no differentiation.
Just giving an example. Maybe, they wanted to give one last chance to even a 5-10% chance which other people refuse compared to others who give a chance maybe only to 50% and above.
This high risk input could cause the statistic that my friend was quoting.
I wanted to relate this incident and my thought process to a story I have come across previously from World war.
During World War II, a statistician named Abraham Wald used survivorship bias to determine where to reinforce returning aircraft with armor. While military leaders initially wanted to add armor to the areas with the most bullet holes (like the wings and fuselage), Wald realized that these were precisely the areas where a plane could sustain damage and still return. He argued that armor should be added to the areas with few or no bullet holes, such as the engines and cockpit, because planes hit there were unlikely to survive and return to base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
The concept of Survivorship bias is there in both.
Now, imagine this friend with this bias taking a decision on someone's life. They would never get the 5-10% chance the big hospital was willing to give.
Going through the international events, it is very difficult to understand the why's and the long term / short term goals and strategies of the parties involved. Obviously, the game plan is secretive.
It is indeed like reading the tea leaves to make sense of it.
Few international events of current month:
1. Russian jets entering the air space of Estonia
2. Russian drones entering Poland
3. Israel attacking a place in Qatar
4. Israel apologising to Qater for the attack
5. Thoughts behind the Pakistan - Saudi mutual protection agreement
The world today is going through multiple unchartered risks, all at the same time.
Finance:
1. US debt gone to unsustainable levels that multiple people have commented on the sudden fall of the US economy and the US Dollar. Ray Dalio calls it the economic heart attack. We haven't seen anything like this after world war 2 where an empire is coming down. USSR was a breakage. This is different.
2. Japan has continued the zero interest policy causing massive borrowings in Japanese Yen and conversions to USD and investments in treasuries. The increase in the Japanese interest rate would easily cause the mass selling of the USD and the treasuries to pay back the Japanese borrowings. For the first time, the Japanese central bank is at risk and a Central bank at risk has never happened before.
3. France and UK have worsening finances and are expected to go to IMF next year for debt restructuring. This is the first time, giant western economies are under so much financial stress and IMF is small to carry the load of these economies. A first again.
4. Global finance decentralisation and derisking - From Asian countries planning alternate payment mechanisms to SWIFT, multiple countries decreasing their assets of US treasuries, most countries buying physical gold, BRICS discussing a new currency, bilateral trade in some countries being done in each other's currencies. A first again.
Trade:
1. Decades of established specialisations is being turned useless with unexpected turmoil by illogical tariffs by the US Administration.
Wars:
1. No one expected a physical war in Europe when Russia attacked Ukraine. A first of its kind since world war 2. And continuing so long? That is something no one can even fathom.
2. The Israeli massacre of the starving people asking for food aid is cruelty of another era, of the bygones, or so we thought.
3. USA threatening Venezuela with war (as if we need another US based forced leadership change after so many of them)
4. 19 Russian drones in Poland shot down as on 10 Sep 2025. (Start of NATO-Russia war leading to world war 3?)
Technology:
1. AI is disrupting human work. The future of many works remains uncertain.
2. AI - singularity, where it gets smarter than millions of humans together can break human superiority and become the apex controller and the humans the slaves/ pets/ prey. Humanties' first instance of more intelligent life.
Unemployment:
1. Tariffs and geopolitical disputes (US tariffs, Bangladesh-India, Russia-Ukraine war) causing industries to rupture and unemployment to increase.
2. AI bringing more unemployment its own way
3. US cutting down departments and uncertainty of outsiders in USA by creating visa issues and even threatening green card holders.
Countries standing up:
1. India and Japan standing up to the bullying of the US
2. France being the first western country to recognise Palestine as a state
Each of the above are volatile enough to cause a cocktail of furious unexpected events to happen in multiple domains of finance and/or economic turmoil each affecting the other one and our lives in unexpected ways.
But with all these risks running simultaneously, I think the world is in the most dangerous phase I have ever witnessed in my lifetime.
Any month could be our last (in case world war 3 happens).
Topic A
For fighter jets landing on an aircraft carrier, it is a standard procedure to advance the throttle to full power as soon as the aircraft's wheels touch the deck. This is a safety measure to ensure the aircraft can quickly go around again if the tail hook misses the arresting cables.
Similarly, are we ready for spontaneous things in life?
What if an interesting concert / show pops up next weekend in your city?
What if you get an opportunity to meet you always wanted to in the next couple of hrs by waiting at the hotel? Do you have the questions ready to ask him/her?
What if someone wants to connect you to someone worthwhile which was not in your near term radar?
Are you ready for these spontaneous 'chances'? Are you adequately prepared?
Topic B
Another aspect of living a full life involves 2 things: Discipline and Spontaneity.
How both of these seemingly contradictory words can work well, is very well written by Naval Ravikant.
"Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously"
In brief, Discipline creates the conditions for spontaneity to thrive.
If you want to live spontaneously, to seize unexpected opportunities, follow your energy, or create freely, you need discipline to handle that freedom. Otherwise, spontaneity becomes chaos.
Without discipline, spontaneity is just distraction.
Topic C
Today, I learnt the simple equation of Luck.
Luck = Randomness * Readiness
Are you ready and doing enough random things for luck to strike?
Have you systemised the process of doing random things?
Have you become observant to things to spot new interesting random things?
The above three topics are tied together as such:
Discipline leads to Spontaneous time.
We need to be ready for things.
When the 2 combine, we get lucky a.k.a happy and successful.
Sometime in Dec 2024, I noticed that I am spending much of my time on the work on a weekoff and that was causing some anger in me at times as it was mostly not planned. Despite being at home, I sometimes used to have over 120+ calls (a bad day) with no breaks. I used to get restless of being on my table and working full day with no outing and the day ending. Not even an hr to spend with my family over anything without multiple phone calls interrupting in that duration.
I also knew that there is a massive amount of working on the business that was needed to automate the business as much as possible.
So, I decided to work all days without a leave and take breaks as and when required (a half day rest after working for 20-36 hrs shift) or an early logout for a planned family outing once in a few months.
Thanks to this one decision, I am now happy while working on all days with no cribs. This daily working has removed the high backlogs of the days not working and caused a more continuous flow of work without much disruption.
I have started enjoying work more and get more output than before. I have started pursuing more books, posts, ideas and have started implementing them in the business.
9 Aug 2025 is the first full day break in this calendar year thanks to Rakshabandhan and the chance to meet my 2 sisters.
The day was planned full of new experiences for the people involved.
The new experiences are what I actually look forward to. This day made me realise that all the hard work we put in throughout the time is worth it for having these memories / days of new experiences.
These days are the ones worth living and working for.
I am a huge believer of stacking of experiences. The experiences can fall under the following categories: Adventures, Nature, Relaxation, Events & Sports, Cultural & historical, Food & drinks.
What does stacking of experiences mean?
It means just doing one experience of (2-3 hrs) a day is not enough for the day. It means doing back to back different experiences all in the day while enjoying each of them to the full extent without being tired in the same alert and excited mode all day long. It means not getting satisfied with just one experience when you can have multiple in the single day and create multiple memories on multiple days at a stretch.
Stacking of experiences comes as a result of multiple things:
1. Being an experience junky a.k.a. addiction to stacking of experiences.
2. The belief that life is short and there is so much to experience and learn.
3. The knowledge that experiencing more allows you to learn more and quench the thirst of curiosity.
4. Maximise the sunk cost (the amount of time and money spent to go a place)
For this, you should insatiable appetite for new experiences and understand the natural limitations of ones thinking of the number of experiences one can have.
One needs a curious mind to unearth experiences from people, be observant and alert of things around you, be research oriented to find out everything about anything new you hear about, be imaginative to concoct and create new experiences, persuade people to make people give you unique experiences.
You open your mind to possibilities, the chances, the pollination of different ideas.
"Die with memories and not dreams!" is the motto for a true experience junkie to live by.
Idealogies and what they stand for are getting split decade by decade:
Once upon a time, the West included USA, the Eurozone, Israel.
Then USA, Europe, Israel and the UK post the Brexit.
Now, after the Israeli non-stop attack on Gaza, France is the lone 'West' country that has come in support of Palestine.
So, USA, UK, Israel, Europe (excluding France) & France.
On the other side of the world too, the bonds are breaking.
India-Russia relations are lesser.
USA-India strategic relationship against China (and USA military sales) are now down and USA and India are more self interested.
The trend is reversing only in small places. North Korea-Russia relations have improved. India-Philippines relations against the bullying of China.
On again-off again relations are continuing. USA-Pakistan, India-Maldives-China, India-Sri Lanka-China.
People usually "fall" in love due to 3 reasons:
1. Love at first sight (including the vibes of the person)
2. Physical attraction
3. Caring provided by the other person
Recently, came across a fourth reason:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMIcBsOICOd/?igsh=YnYyanVzNTBmaWt3
An unexpected and rare way: Sharing vulnerabilities may lead to trusting each other, meaningful connections and even love.
Intent, Capabilities, Courage.
One needs all these 3 together to make things happen. Period.
Without Intent, but having the other 2, you are likely to do wrong or sub-optimal things.
Without Capabilities, but having the other 2, you are likely to crash and burn.
Without Courage, but having the other 2, you are not going to do anything about it.
Successful entrepreneurs need a hell lot of skillsets.
The most talented are usually not business oriented and usually the business people lack talents.
The detail oriented people lack creativity, while usually the creative people lack focus and perfection.
Where are you on these 2 spectrums of these characteristics?
Or are you one of those who is across both the spectrums?
The world has never been this multi-polar as ever before.
Many countries are working with countries who are fighting against each other pursuing their own agenda.
Lets have a look.
USA working with both parties of India - Pakistan conflict
China working with both parties of India - Pakistan conflict
China working with both parties of USA - Russia conflict
China working with both parties of USA - North Korea conflict
India working with both parties of Russia - Ukraine conflict
India working with both parties of Israel - Iran conflict
Azerbaijan working with both parties of Israel - Pakistan conflict
Turkiye working with both parties of NATO - Iran conflict
Taking any side is very difficult in this multi-polar world.
Case A:
I have heard of Asymetric warfare multiple times. Mostly used in the context of Guerrilla warfare and drone warfare.
Why is this asymetric?
Because low cost things and tactics can overcome high cost professional things and tactics.
The cost and the results make the investments asymmetric.
Case B:
Private equity takes asymmetric bets knowing very well that only 1 or 2 companies in the portfolio gives outsized returns and makes far more money than the losses incurred in the other companies.
Case 3:
A 10 X thinking involves taking calculated risks where the upside far outweighs the downside.
10x thinkers know not every bet pays off, but one great one can change everything.
Case 4:
Usually, for a company out of all the products, there would usually be 1 or 2 product categories that gives disproportionate profits or are asymmetric.
The pattern across things is that Asymmetric investments yield outsized returns.
It takes a lot of research, knowledge to identify asymetric opportunities.
In conclusion, asymmetric thinking is a way of thinking or provides a framework to think.
Who: Executives, team leads, project managers, etc.
Needs: Structured in hour-long (or shorter) blocks.
Why: Their job revolves around meetings, quick decisions, and checking in with multiple people or teams.
Works well in hourly segments.
Interruption is expected and often necessary.
Productivity is measured by decisions, oversight, and communication.
Example: A manager has a day filled with 6–8 different 30- to 60-minute meetings.
Who: Writers, developers, designers, engineers, etc.
Needs: Large blocks of uninterrupted time.
Why: Deep, focused work requires mental immersion. Even a short meeting can break the flow and ruin productivity.
Works best in half-day or full-day chunks.
Interruptions are costly.
Productivity increases with long, quiet focus time.
Example: A software engineer spends 3-4 hours coding uninterrupted.
When a manager books a mid-day meeting with a maker, they may see it as a small ask—but for the maker, it can destroy a full block of creative work.
Here is a beautiful article here on this by the originator of this idea, Paul Graham of Y Combinator:
https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
I got to know about this concept from an entrepreneur's perspective from Hormozi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIRkQQHzsxI
After understanding this, I am less confused about my priorities and more in tune with the needs of the organisation in my roles as both a manager and a maker.
Interestingly though, there is a third role: A Crisis Manager's schedule.
As a crisis manager, they don't know when what error, mistake or disaster is going to take place due to insufficient knowledge, oversight, lack of application of mind, communication errors, misunderstandings of the staff.
The crisis manager's role would be 2 fold: To prevent crises and solve the crises.
A crises prevention can be a non-time consuming to have a look at something and tell someone to take care of some aspect to prevent the problem or it could be time-consuming to create processes / formulae, and policies and then advice the staff multiple times so that they imbibe it.
Solving the crisis usually costs more in case of making a new one, but the lack of time is a major constraint to do that and we need to find innovative and out of the box solutions to solve these.
A crisis manager has to be a technical person who understands the in and outs of things to look a potential solutions and make sure and guarantee that the solution would finally work.
Having these 3 schedules creates a lot of internal conflicts in planning.
Especially the crisis v/s the manager's schedule of a meeting. The maker's schedule is usually put in the back seat but as an enterpreneur, it makes sense to use the crises to use the solutions for more long term and make it a part maker's schedule by making the processes/formulae.
It is intuitive that China supporting Pakistan militarily is bad for India.
But, this problem can also be viewed as an opportunity from a counter-intuitive point of view.
War and weapons is a continuous cat and mouse game. The one with superior strategies, weapons, technologies, tactics and coordination will win any day.
By engaging and dominating the Pakistan armed forces which use a lot of Chinese weaponry, India has learnt and needs to overpower specific weapons and their features/ advantages.
For example, if one particular weapon like Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air to air missile has a 100km range, India only needs to arm itself to a better range than 100 km to make the enemy weapon ineffective in an air to air combat.
If it has a 50 km Howitzer, we need to have a 60 km Howitzer to not enable it to come in range at all (unless already deployed).
This way, we can choose to make / procure weapons with better features that can beat the all in one competitor (Chinese weapons) rather than trying to dominate over 4 different countries' different weapons and their systems.
Strategies in war are not clear upfront. The winner usually uses an element of surprise (timing, new paths, new technologies, new combinations, new allies, new fronts) that the enemy has not thought of or prepared for.
Similarly, a few statements now and then my the Indian establishment didn't reveal the strategy till substantial dots are there to make sense of the pattern.
The few dots:
1. Indus Water Treaty being suspended, (not cancelled)
2. "Picture toh abhi baaki hai", tweet from Former Chief of Army Staff Naravane after the initial night strike of the 9 terrorist camps.
3. Today's message from PM "Talks would on terrorism and PoK"
Can we now link these three points and see the pattern emerging?
India would resume the Indus Water Treaty only when Pakistan gives back Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
Is this what we are looking at or aiming at?
If so, this is very thoughtful, strategic and absolutely amazing!
No company should try to make temporary solutions to prolong the problem indefinitely and keep making money on solving the temporary problems.
For example, there are a number electrical and electronic companies brought in "planned obsolescence" to bring down the number of hrs of usage of products so that the customer keeps rebuying the new version of the products to replace the old ones. One such company is Apple.
But, at the other end of the spectrum, there are many companies that are into sustainability and try to repair or replace parts to enhance the longevity of the products.
I am yet to come across a pharma company with an ideal vision.
A pharma company's vision and mission should ideally be "To eradicate the problem of _____"
Fill in the blank of what it is it that you want to solve the problem fully.
And once that problem is solved, the division or the company should shut down or change its vision to eradicate another problem.
India is not in the best of places - Geography wise.
It always had 2 aggressive nations on either side of the north - Pakistan and China.
Now, after the ouster of the democratically elected govt in 2024, Bangladesh is now siding with Pakistan to open a third front for India to deal with.
If a close aide of the interim chief advisor should talk of Bangladesh and China taking the 7 north east states of India by the chicken's neck of 22 km, India should plan of actually capturing the 100 km of straight route directly to Meghalaya and dividing Bangladesh into 2 and no longer allowing a chicken's neck to be there, but make it the whole of the chicken.
This IPL season, there is one real nail biting and interesting match I am eager to witness.
The real India Pakistan match.
And how India is going to thrash the Pakistani military and its puppet govt.
India will go with Military action this time too. The question is when? Tonight or tomorrow night or day after night? The bets are on!
India has already flooded a district of PoK last night.
What is different this time is the context.
External to both these countries, the state of the 2 biggest associated countries - China and USA and the 2 running wars.
China usually supports Pakistan militarily and has been against India in multiple fronts including the trade front. But this time, if India gains some key areas in PoK, the China invested area in PoK for the Belt and Road Initiative would be for India to destroy or overtake. This would be interesting to see how China would respond: Whether it would ask India to not destroy their investment or to deter India, start a parallel military campaign on India-China border. The other change this time is China's slowly warming to India after many years of the military standoff as its trade war with USA is raging.
USA this time is very different than all the historical USA. With an indifferent Trump at its President who has very weird goals, (like making Gaza a tourist spot) and not getting USA into any new war and trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. But, unfortunately, as usual, USA has supported Pakistan again and given USD 400 million aid to Pakistan to sustain its F-16s. Mostly, USA wants to watch the 'fun' from the sidelines and then ask India to invest more into its Apaches, AWACs, F-35s and other military platforms.
Wars are not anathema in today's world. The Russian war on Ukraine saw the first fulls scale war in history in Europe after 60+ years. The Israel-Palestine war is also running. People are not so against war and reasonably expect it in case of retribution.
This time, the Indian govt. is more determined to take action than the previous govts and is willing to make use of all the historical mistakes it has done previously and turn it around.
Best case scenario:
1. Breakup of Pakistan into an independent Balochistan (40% of Pakistan territory) and the rest of Pakistan
2. Retaking of PoK by India
3. Destruction of China's investment in PoK worth billions and stopping China in its tracks
Only if Pakistan was not nuclear armed, all this could have been achieved with much ease.
Fingers crossed and waiting to read the books on this war and the strategies employed a few years from now.
The 3 step process:
Costco does this with its USD 1.50 hot dog for which the price has not changed, believe it or not, since 1984.
China used this strategy consistently and has killed other countries' competition in multiple industries.
Interestingly and sadly, the India's tax department has brought this strategy to UPI transactions.
The once great UPI which brought about Digital payments revolution to millions of Indians unlike the pre-historic west and eased the way to do business from small to medium enterprises is now going to be taxed (with the government finding ever increasing ways to tax and deliver less).
One of my senior colleagues at one point in time who practised Taekwondo, told me that "one of the keys of Taekwando is to use the force of the opponent itself to subdue him."
The above is a powerful statement. Reread and think about it.
The opponent: USA
Opponent's move: USA issues 125% tariff on products from China with immediate effect
China was anticipating this move after the tariff war during Donald Trump's first presidency.
The countermove:
Today, Chinese companies are sharing where the US's top luxury branded items are made, their materials, methods and costs and are asking the world to directly work with them and make things cheaper for consumers instead of buying them from the top Luxury brands.
The top US companies have used and sometimes exploited the Chinese to make the huge profits and become some kind of a poly (monopoly or duopoly or oligopoly).
How does this move work:
The US's outsourcing and demand for all these years have helped built the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem for luxury products. Now, by using the credibility of the brands (minus their tags and prices) - (The opponent's force), the Chinese are hoping to sell their products to the world at a lower price point where they would continue to manufacture and customers would buy them worldwide. In one way, this is open-sourcing the proprietary luxury products
This would also force the luxury customers to start evaluating the value they are getting after the exclusivity is gone and when they see 100s more of these same products with everyone. This in turn would loot and ruin the luxury brands the most.
When someone asks you to give your 100%, this is what 100% looks like.
https://x.com/ShangguanJiewen/status/1902842590497513481
But if you look closely, it would be 99% as who is going to clean the solar panels on the cleaner?
It is weird that even after so much advancements in Science & Technology, many mysteries are not solved yet.
The latest reopening of mysteries include the discovery of pillar like structures below the pyramids using LIDAR and reopening the search for the remains of MH-370.
The search by Ocean infinity is for a long period of 18 months using its state of the art technologies of deploying multiple mini-submarines for detection. This agreement with the Malaysian government is to search with a no find, no fee structure and USD 70 million if the remains are found.
This amount is pretty high considering a new Boeing 777 starts at USD 310 million.
Is the value of finding the debris and the reasons for the dissappearance of the aircraft and bring the closure for the families worth USD 70 million dollars?
The below link involves a lot of macro economics and helps explain the rationale of the trade war initiated by USA.
There would be multiple questions for the readers after this article on the hows, whys and the impacts.
It also helps predict the future, but no clear answers on what to do exactly depending on what is your locus standi.
It is difficult to fathom that in today's world of democratisation of internet and communication where anything secret or plan or thoughts can be dissipated to millions in minutes, with so much interconnectedness with all things and anything can come back and bite you immediately, that one person can overcome all these and get do something unexpected again and again.
With so much interconnectedness and checks and balances and democracies, it should have been almost impossible for someone to change the world's dynamics so fast.
Yet, Donald Trump did it.
Many of the countries of Europe after millenia of fighting against each other and USA came to the mature conclusion of not fighting with each other and rather saving the millions of national resources to better uses like education, lifestyle enhancement, technology and progressed substantially after world war 2 until 2023.
Now, all of a sudden, 1 man is creating havoc almost on a daily basis and causing distrust among things that were built layer on layer for so many decades of trust and effort.
Surely, many would be in disillusionment as was all these years of trust and work just a fake and was it worth it?
The same kind of disillusionment that happens when trust is broken with someone for selfish reasons.
How would humanity look upon this 100 years later? Does this instance change of course of history forever where no country would trust another or just a blip in the overall maturity of having more non-fighting friendly relationships?
Most of us believe that we all have a voice in our head that we listen to.
This "voice in your head" is called "Inner Monologue".
It came as a surprise to me when my friend told me that many people do not have this inner monologue.
More on this research here:
How does a design team come up with a good design?
How does a design team come up with a good commercial design?
There is a vast difference between these 2 above questions.
Any good designer can do new designs. All it needs is creativity and taste.
But a good designer worth his/her salt should be able to make good commercial designs.
What does this entail?
2 constraints of Reduced cost and a chance to sell it at a high price.
So, there are 3 parameters for a commercial good design.
Look & Features, Price and Cost
A high Look & Features, high Price and low Cost is the success formula.
India is witnessing a long winded slow down in retail.
This has been in the news recently after a year or so of the slowdown which the retailers have been experiencing over a year now.
Many retailers across segments, clothing, shoes, belts, vendors across India have clearly been able to witness it firsthand. A few days or weeks have seen sales as low as during those of the covid lockdowns.
The reasons however, were never clear and many attributed it to the following:
1. Hot weather to shop
2. Lack of cash as the general elections were there in 2024
But the real reason is somewhere else.
1. Saurabh Mukherjea suggests stagnant earnings, automation-driven job losses, and an ongoing economic slowdown after the covid revenge shopping.
2. Secret back door rate increases profitting the companies at the cost of the people of India.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHtBQHnyryO/?igsh=am4zeWwzcTd0bDBs
Maybe there are more plausible reasons.
Share yours thoughts in the comments
About 8 years or so, I have listened on the "Future of work" from Vivek Wadhwa.
At that age and time, his view was "interesting" at most, and his predictions seemed coming true, but his predicted times looked optimistic to me.
Mainly because we all think linearly, the predictions looked optimistic.
He has mentioned the exact last statement in his 2013 interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LS4PithoM) where he also goes on to also say that when 2 different technologies converge, entire businesses are wiped out.
Technology has changed rapidly and exponentially from 2023 with the advent of Chat GPT.
In today's news, "Researchers just unveiled an AI model called ECgMLP that identifies endometrial cancer with 99.26% accuracy from microscopic tissue images—drastically outperforming human specialists and current automated methods."
With this, the medical "Radiologist" role is almost wiped out.
The same is happening to Lawyers and other professions.
The future looks like this: Govt. paying everyone to live comfortably with no work and few would work on new technologies and earn like crazy.
My prediction: The middle class is going to diverge into the rich class or the poor class.
I had a very fruitful discussion last week with a close friend of time who is good in technology and we were sharing our views on the future of work. He shared that if the next generation is only going to use the existing generative AI to learn and produce works, thereby being lazy and reducing their thinking, nothing new is going to be made in the next 5-10 years. With nothing noteworthy of contribution, this means that we have already reached about 98% or so of all that AI can ever learn from in the current AI.
The only people who would have work are the creative people who are deep generalists who can inject their creativity into a new converged field and show value. This is something Dan Koe predicts.
The rest would be forced to sit at home with no work.
FYI, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is a book I plan to read where he attempts to paint an image of the future. I am currently listening to his book Sapiens. I would add to this post, on completion of both these books.
I have come across a few entrepreneurs who always make money in each of their ventures. They are serial entrepreneurs and or multi-tasking entrepreneurs. They may have had failures, but it is less.
It took many years to understand the reason - There are a specific set of knowledge and skills required to make money. If we have that, we make money.
As someone I heard put it nicely, give a Rubik's cube to all the people. Only the person knowing how to solve will solve it. The rest of the people irrespective of any amount of time, will not be able to solve it.
Unfortunately, these skills and knowledge are not thought commercially at one place. Very few places teach that in parts.
In Japan, there are many "Rent a boyfriend" services for quite a long time.
Just before covid, "Professional Cuddling" started as a profession. Now, there are many Professional cuddlers around the world.
In today's world, there is coaching for everything. Including many things we don't even know exist. For any sports, there are coaches, for relationship issues, there are relationship coaches.
But what came to a surprise to me is that there are even "polyamory coaches". I am sure some of you would even look up that word.
I wonder how are these people are trained, how much is their knowledge common or varied.
Is there any course to become any of these?
This hilarious conversation between a smart kid and a doctor is no doubt hilarious.
The key thing to notice here is how both are able to give completely different explanations to the same situation/ reality and all attempts to counter the logic fails.
Sometimes, we are in the kids domain and we perceive the world in a way. Maybe, there is an alternate explanation to things.
We need to be on the lookout and not oppose their logics without understanding keenly and questioning our assumptions.
This month, China has overtaken USA as the No.1 Technology king with 3 announcements in different fields of Technology:
1. Deepseek outperforming OpenAI alternatives
2. Chinese Quantum Computers beats Google benchmarks
3. BYD unveils 5 min EV charging
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/byd-unveils-battery-system-that-charges-evs-in-5-minutes
RIP USA! Our condolences!
"What to do in my city?"
This question is in the mind of thousands of any city dweller who wants to go out of office and out of home to relax, enjoy, get out of the daily scene every weekend to enjoy life.
Fortunately, Hyderabad has grown into a cosmopolitan city with multiple cultures imbibed to give you a refreshing taste of multiple ways to perceive, understand and learn things.
Here is a list of things to do:
One of life's simple pleasures is music.
Unfortunately, we do not spend time to discover new types of music which can bring us peace or uplifting spirits or make us curious. Also, when we hear some amazing music, rarely do we find out the song and the artist, store it and go home and add them to our playlist. Even, sharing of good songs has got limited in today's individualistic society.
Over the last 1 year or so, I have discovered and got into 3 music cycles.
These music cycles are "current" list of liked songs which I hear frequently keeps changing every 6 months or some based on some new discoveries and mood.
A year ago, I was in love this this artist and song and kept hearing it again and again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWOrd50HYa4
Here are a few amazing library of songs from Hamidshax on Amazon Music:
Crazy, Lose Control, In my life, With me, Together, Let it be, Wait for me, Dreams and many more
Here are a few uplifting songs with fantastic beats:
https://youtu.be/d4u_N7NU6LA?si=cup4IEZ1vB0ewI_K
https://youtu.be/6r9slZ3wKgI?si=iDxPEjUoLjvcpTAJ
https://youtu.be/tqUdnXaMPI4?si=e5YmtPvNcZBJoIo-
Sometime over the last few months, I heard a podcast which said the following:
If the challenge is greater than the capability, it is demotivating.
If the challenge is less than the capability, it is boring.
To be motivated, the challenge should be slightly more than the capability. This leads to figuring it out, learning and growing.
In the book, 12 rules for life, Jordan Peterson talks about order and chaos in the form of the famous yin and yang Chinese symbol.
One side is order and the other is chaos.
Too much order and nothing grows.
Too much chaos and it is overwhelming and no growth.
The middle curved line is the balance between order and chaos which leads to growth.
2 different ways to understand and express how to achieve growth.
We should be planning our goals, tasks, to be on this middle line in multiple aspects of life.
Over the last 20 years, there has been multiple disquiets about the de-dollarisation.
1. It has been stated that USA went to war with Iraq overthrowing Saddam Hussain and Libya overthrowing Gadaffi as these oil producers were exploring selling oil in currencies other than dollars, thereby removing USD hegemony.
2. Wars - The USA didn't do any favours for itself by constantly raising it's debt levels and printing more dollars and starting wars around the world directly like Iraq, Afghanistan or indirectly in Ukraine by expanding NATO countries continuously and then funding Ukraine. Also, funding Israel for it's war in Gaza.
3. BRICS - Over the last 10 years, the formation of the BRICS currency gained ground which would compete with the US dollar globally and almost all nations in the world trade with one or more of the BRICS countries.
The inter trade itself among BRICS countries itself is huge. Plus, the potential of Saudi Arabia, being the world's largest oil producer, joining this alliance adds weight to the the new currency and more transactions.
4. Crypto currencies - The other counter weight underdog which has been waiting in the wings is crypto currencies. These have certain features of non-manipulation which is necessary to avoid the manipulation of countries and bring accountability to the countries.
The call of the imminent fall of the dollar is increasingly going up. The following are evidences.
5. Big US based investors/ companies have accumulated crypto currencies. The current US administration of declaring to having a strategic crypto currency reserve. This means that it is moving away from Gold reserves to this.
6. The open talk by the current US administration of auditing fort Knox to check if the US gold is really there. This further highlights that maybe there is no actual gold there and it is a bogus trust. Adding Crypto currencies is a countermeasure to add value and trust.
7. Maybe, this in consonance with the tariff wars will bring down the value of the dollar and make it competitive enough to start manufacturing again. But, can the USA citizens afford the high cost of imports once the dollar goes down?
This would degrade the lifestyles and would become a true developing class nation which got hidden as a developed country just because of printing own money and having it's value just because it was a reserve currency and everyone traded in it.
I have been watching these signs over the years and for the last 2 years came to the conclusion that the USD would fall substantially over the next 5-10 years.
My prediction gets more substantiated when a famous investor like Ray Dalio starts ads on instagram on a book on the fall of nations indirectly or directly talks about the USA.
Update 4 Apr 2025: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has joined the chorus of voices warning that the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status is at risk. Unlike most, however, he has gone one step further to suggest a likely replacement: Bitcoin.
