The challenges of sourcing

For all the contacts on linkedin sales navigator and the world wide web, for the real MSME world works, the required information, contacts, business names are not online.

This is the conclusion of the various aspects of sourcing I have had to do in the last 10 years of sourcing for custom made menswear.

From fabric swatches, workshops, tailors to tailoring materials to pattu vendors to embroidery workers. There are only 4 ways to gain sources:
1. Experienced people connecting you to known parties

2. Doing the hard physical search (searching a pin in a haystack)

3. The party comes to you for business due to reference / online presence

4. Creating chance coincidence at exhibitions (much like asking a stranger girl out once you spot one - the unsolicitated direct approach. One needs gonads of steel for this!)

Reality of the sourcing does not lie in the digital realm as these are all uneducated people who are not going to list on google or have a linkedin account. Even if they are educated, most have done the hard work and have decent business and do not have the patience to put in the efforts for the results.

Even if some of them do, there are innummerible number of qualities which are not certified by anyone and difficult to decifer.

Then, there are minimum order quantities and chance to give continuous business to the party while not reducing the existing parties' orders.

Key learning of the year

"Do not believe what you see/read in the media"

They show only about 40% of the truth and without the remaining 60% there is no context and it is engineered to misrepresent, misguide and misunderstand.

Multiple sets of information have made me come to this conclusion:
1. The Iran war while listening to some actual youtube podcasters who have actual domain expertise

2. The happenings in USA from an instagram channel that actually gives voice to the people

3. A defence industry insider telling me how the news are not to be believed and the real truth behind a constantly published story in the news.

4. A villager on how voting is forced in the electoral booth (which would not be published by any newspaper).

5. How come there is no video of the actual damage suffered by Israel from the various missiles of Iran?

This below comments give what objectives are served by these mis-publications.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/pax-trump-hegseth-remix-americas-gun-laws-dehumanisation-and-double-standards-have-been-its-ticket-to-virtue/articleshow/130177189.cms

Real truth is buried deep inside things and we need to learn a sense of detecting the actual dead body beneath the shit it is covered up by.

Why certain gaps that exist will continue to exist?

I came across an interesting study that says that kids cannot do stand up comedy, despite they wanting to be funny a lot and the reason for that is scientific.

It turns out that stand up comedy requires very high intellect and skills and nuances that children are not able to do at their level of development.

Why is this important?

Imagine a person seeing a gap in the market where only adults are doing stand up comedy and feels that a reality show with kids with stand up is missing in the market and gets working on this business, only to fail on this one critical technicality that no general person knows.

So much time and money would have gone wasted.

Sometimes, the gap seems obvious to be filled, but the gap can be due to one of 2 reasons: a technical / unexpected reason or there is lack of motivation/profit for the person to do it.

Complexities of war

Despite all the complexities of war, even a simple question like "Why did Israel-USA attack Iran (all of a sudden) on 28 Feb 2026?"

There are so many different perspectives:

1. Change the focus from Scandal perspective - Over the previous 1 week 7 big names have come out and maybe the next was DJT. Hence, he needed something bigger to distract the media and the accusations.

2. The China angle - DJT was to meet Xi in late march to negotitate and he wanted 2 main keys of oil before this meeting. One was Venezuela and the other was Iran, both of which do a lot of oil selling to China. He blocked Venezuela with picking up Maduro and hoped that Iran would be controlled with the leadership gone and internal infighting/ upraising.

3. The Military Intelligence angle - Israel-USA got to know that there is going to be a meeting of 50 senior leadership of Iran on 28 Feb 2026 and although both were preparing for war, this opportunity was too irresistible to not bomb.

All this, when there was no Imminent threat to USA (As per the counterterrorism chief who resigned) and the war was not winnable (according to both the USA agencies - their intelligence and the Pentagon).

Sly description

You are a part of the biggest adult website in the world - Linkedin!

Layers of knowledge and secrets

Over the last few years, after coming across many new data channels and sources of information, I have come to the conclusion that there are layers of knowledge and many layers are hidden from common view and there are certain types of knowledge which are not written any where so as to protect the lives of the elite people involved.

It is difficult to come into these new layers of knowledge but not impossible. Be it Finance, Economics, Religion, Society, Marketing, Humanity, Power, etc.

To come across these layers, we need to read very different kinds of categories of books / podcasts / youtube interviews and some non-famous and maybe some controversial books too.

Based on these different true knowledge sources, we are then able to understand what is true and to listen/see and what is propoganda and to be avoided. But many things will never be clear as there are multiple logics to each side and different motivations to each side to spread their versions.

1 simple example is of contact with extra-terrestrial beings.

Learning areas

There are so many things to learn. 

This are the areas I am learning and / or applying myself and will continue to in this year.

Biggest areas: 

Where is humanity headed? What are the underlying power struggles whose symptoms are seen in war,  hoarding, policies, deception of masses, etc.? How is technology/ rich people moves going to affect humanity?

The Arena:

Global markets - commodities, companies, stock markets, innovations, the underlying assumptions, the unknown games big entities are playing.

Company:

Technical details, organisation of information, defining optimality and tuning business flows and functions to this optimality.

Human nature - Theories / Frameworks / Philosophies:

To understand human behaviour, purpose, power games, persuasion, logics, focus, getting better.

Self:
Identity, Purpose, Skillsets.

Evolution or Manifestation

The interesting case of the spider tailed horned viper.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MkYluH1BtvU

The above video made me question the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Among all the snakes, how did this grow such an animal looking tail? Doesn't look like an evolution from anything near by.

I asked ChatGPT to explain the evolution of the spider tailed horned viper.

Its response:

Evolution does not “plan” spiders. It selects incremental advantages.

Stage 1 — Slightly Modified Tail Scales

Random mutations cause:

• Slight enlargement of tail tip scales

• Irregular keratin projections

If these movements vaguely resembled insects, birds may have approached more often.

Even a 5–10% hunting advantage → strong selection pressure.

---

Stage 2 — Selection for Leg-like Projections

Over generations:

• Mutations producing elongated, movable scale extensions

• Enhanced muscular control of tail tip

Birds (especially insectivorous passerines) mistake the motion for arthropods.

Snakes that looked “more spider-like” ate more.

They reproduced more.

Trait frequency increased.

---

Stage 3 — Fine-Tuned Mimicry

Eventually:

• Tail morphology became highly specialized

• Behavior evolved alongside structure

• Neural circuits adapted for rhythmic, spider-like twitching

This is co-evolution of morphology + behavior.

What I am not able to digest / understand is this: The mutation might have occurred with 1 viper. And it somehow became a dominant gene and that snake mated with so many other snakes that it managed to create a species eventually? 
Sounds more like Genghis Khan. 8% of Asian men have ancestry of Genghis Khan.

Or did the viper manifest a spider like tail and got it?

Descending the mountain of people connections

Having crossed 41 years old, I am very sure my half life is over.

I have come across thousands of people in this timeframe (family, extended families, school/college friends,  school/college seniors/juniors, neighbours, hostel mates, colleagues, customers, vendors, staff, acquittances, landlords, random strangers, business people networking, etc.)

2 years ago, 2 classmates died (one of whom was close) in the same year and in the last year another close friend classmate passed away. This got me thinking of the pattern and looking at the situation, I think this pattern is only going to be increase as most of my contacts are in the second half of their lives. I am going to regularly encounter deaths of known people irrespective of whatever happy or not situation I am in and I am going to have to accept it.

It looks like I have reached the mountain peak of people I would get to know in my life and now onwards, it is about descending the mountain of people I know.