Here’s the thing: none of us are normal. We’re all weird in our own ways. Most of us spend our lives hiding our oddities and trying to be rational. This makes sense at some level. Being rational has payoffs. Except it’s not so memorable.

What even is normal? It has never been the same thing through time. Emperor Augustus of Rome was the most powerful man in the world in his time. He slept on a bed of hay. That was normal. He and Alexander of Macedonia and Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar never once experienced a hot shower. That was normal. I recently watched a movie about President Garfield. He was shot by a crazy man. As he lay dying, they brought in a half a million pounds of ice and blew air over it to keep the President of the United States cool. They did not have air conditioning then.

This morning, I got up in my cool home, went to my bathroom, brushed my teeth, and had a hot shower. All normal things which were extraordinarily hard or impossible once. You, me and a million others dance on the graves of dead problems every morning in our mundane lives. Problems people once thought would never die. We solved them all.

Here’s a crazy story.

Dostoevsky was 28 when he faced a firing squad. Blind folded. Hands tied, he could hear the rifles being loaded. That’s when the reprieve came. At the very last second. His sentence was commuted. As it turned out, his execution was staged. Psychological torture meant to break the dissidents. It triggered a savage, lifelong epilepsy. But it never broke him. They sent him to Siberia where he worked with criminals. His epilepsy got worse.

When he got out, he was broke. In sheer desperation, he wrote the Gambler in 26 days. He married the stenographer who typed his manuscript. Her name was Anna. Then came the big bang of creativity. Crime and Punishment. The Idiot. The Brothers Karamazov. These are some of the greatest books written in the Russian language. Possibly in any language.

Here’s another one.

Joseph Campbell lived in a shack for five years where he did nothing but read for nine hours a day. This was a man who had no job or income or even a plan. He called those years “the most fertile years of my life.” This was the man who wrote “the hero’s journey.” He spent five years doing nothing this world would call productive. Luckily for him, there was no WhatsApp back in the day.

You can’t have ideas if you don’t read. You can’t articulate ideas if you don’t write. You can’t put ideas into practice if you don’t create. I don’t know why I said this. It seems to fit in this essay somewhere. But I couldn’t figure out where. So I’ve put it here instead of forgetting about it.

It took humans over 2 million years to master fire, build homes, make spears and raise their own food. In the 16th century, something magical happened. We learned HOW to solve problems. The scientific method emerged. And the world has never been the same ever since. Every problem that has ever been solved started with a weird guess. Nothing great ever came out of people trying to be rational or reasonable. You have to be willing to look ridiculous before you’re proven right. Maybe you’ll be proven right. Maybe you won’t. But there’s something to be said for allowing yourself to consider the absurd.

Your death is going to come on an ordinary day, amid unfinished plans and the world will go on existing without you. Go ahead and try something weird. Give them something to talk about at your funeral.

Do write back. The weirdest comment will get a mention next week on the What Ho! Report.

Have a good weekend.

There’s a lot being said about AI and LLMs, and how powerful they are becoming. There is a growing unease about all of this. I think it’s because a majority of people (like 90 percent of the people out there) are not tech savvy and have no way of knowing what is going on, even if it’s explained to them really well. It’s not that they’re deficient in gray matter. It’s just how tech works. Tech tends to be cult-ish, has its own jargon and lingo, and there are insiders and outsiders in this cult. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, even tech folks in software could not understand the lingo of telecom and networks, which were dramatically changing the world at that time. It’s perfectly normal to feel anxious about feeling inadequate. Trust me, you’re in good company. Some of the smartest people in the world haven’t the foggiest idea how AI works.

For a majority of my (meagre) audience, the question is more likely: How is this going to affect my children? Most of us have crossed over to the other side and have either retired or don’t need to hold a job for financial reasons. Our concerns are more about the next generation.

Here is what I urge you to consider: LLMs are not reasoning engines. They are probability engines. They’re not natively intelligent. They are very good at building patterns based on probabilities. If you ask an LLM, “Should I be anxious about AI?” - it will predict the answer you’re looking for and give it to you, while mimicking an expert. The key part is “giving you what you want.” Sycophancy is a bigger problem with ChatGPT, Gemini et al than even hallucination, where the AI just makes stuff up.

But there are areas where its predictive ability is useful. This is where AI becomes the most potent. Writing code is a well structured activity. When you write code, and you write lines A, B and C, there is a fairly high likelihood D must follow, and what D should look like in a given context. Ergo, AI will become better at coding and eventually replace software programmers. I’m sure you can think of other structured activities where AI can be put to use. The thing is - even the most structured jobs have an element of judgement and unpredictability to them. So humans will stay in the picture. Their numbers will shrink but they will be needed.

This - AI cannot reason but only predict what’s next - gives me reason to believe that society might not collapse wholesale. Will AI ever be able to reason? I seriously doubt it. Will AI disrupt the status quo? Yes, in a lot of ways. Even if AI eliminates 20-30 percent of all jobs, it will be cataclysmic. Can your kid avoid being one of those who is disrupted by AI? I don’t know if it’s possible to fool proof oneself from the coming tidal wave, other than learning to swim. A learning mindset will be super critical. Learning how to learn, the ability to self-teach, and a solid work ethic will never go out of fashion. I’d argue - encouraging your kids to teach themselves something creative and fun like a new language or an instrument - will not only enrich their lives but add a super critical life-skill to their repertoire. They will learn to teach themselves and that will pay off over a lifetime.

Speaking of historic transformations, the biggest in human history may have been the evolution of languages. Not programming languages but human ones. Around the time humans began to farm, there were about ten million people on Earth. They spoke about ten thousand languages. No language had more than two thousand speakers. Today, eight billion people speak about seven thousand languages, which fall into 140 families. Most of us speak languages that fall into just five of them. Of these, two families are behemoths: Indo-European, whose representative is English, and Sino-Tibetan, which includes Mandarin Chinese. If you include second or subsequent language-speakers, Indo-European is by far the largest language family the world has ever known. Almost every second person on Earth speaks Indo-European. Where did these Indo-European languages start? That is the subject of the book I’ve been reading these last couple of weeks. The book is titled “Proto,” the name assigned to the mother of Indo-European languages. If this interests you, check it out.

I have only vague memories of the weeks leading up to the day I became a US citizen in 2002. But I remember the ceremony itself vividly. It was at the Masonic Center in San Francisco. I felt moved by it. It was startling because I hadn’t expected to be moved by it. It was supposed to be purely transactional. We only got our US passports because we were moving to Singapore (and later India) at that time.

I was born in India. Giving up my Indian citizenship felt like a betrayal, a fracture in my identity. India is the mother who raised me, who formed who I was until I turned 21. But America is the mother who adopted me, who opened her arms and showered abundant love and opportunity on a brown kid who showed up on her shores from ten thousand miles away. I am the child of two beautiful mothers. That is how it will be until the day I die. I’d dare you to find a luckier man than I am.

I feel the weight of that destiny more than ever this week as America turns 250. This country is by no means perfect. She carries a deeply flawed, heavy history written in the scars of slavery, racism, patriarchy, and exclusion. It is a long, painful list. Even so, the light outshines the dark. America has, at her core, been a monumental force for good in this world. And the best part of this great country? Its people. I have never met people with bigger hearts, or a more restless desire to do better, than Americans.

That is why I am proud to be an American. May God bless her. Happy 250th birthday, my dear.

Have an amazing weekend!

Texas has decided that the best way to prepare school children to enter the modern world is to have them read the Bible. Third graders will deal with the plague of frogs before they encounter long form division. In the same week, Trump signed two executive orders directing federal agencies to protect Americans from “future quantum computers.” While Washington mandarins try to figure out post-quantum cryptography algorithms and how to avoid hacks from 2040, Texas school kids will be tested on how many cubits make up Noah’s Ark. No word yet on whether they’ll be taught that Jonah’s whale was a mammal and not a fish.

The Supreme Court entered the chat this week with a pair of 6-3 rulings that essentially allow the administration to strip deportation protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants and turn away asylum seekers at the southern border before they set foot on US soil. Samuel Alito, one of the justices, commented, “A guest does not arrive in a house when he knocks on the front door.” Fair point. Well played, Samuel. Just so you know, all four of Justice Samuel Alito’s grandparents immigrated to the United States from Italy. They came from Calabria on a ship and knocked on the front door. Times have changed. Now, we can hide behind the couch and pretend no one’s at home when someone rings the front door bell.

AI is now coming for your wallet. There is a shortage of memory chips. Why is there a shortage? Because artificial intelligence companies are buying every single piece of silicon on the planet to train their large language models. Apple announced this week that this memory shortage has pushed the costs higher, and ergo, raised prices on their laptops and iPads. Basically, you have to pay more for a laptop because a server farm in Utah needs those chips to power an AI bot that can generate a picture of a golden retriever dressed as a pirate.

First, Trump said that he had destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities. And then he said they had to go to war with Iran. Not sure exactly why. Hadn’t they already destroyed it? This is the guy who started his second term promising to end “Forever Wars” with “a single phone call.” Somehow, we have ended up in this logjam between the Art of the Deal and the Axis of Evil, where Trump has agreed to pay the Iranians 300 billion dollars for having assassinated their Ayatollah. At this rate, Iran is three Ayatollahs away from pocketing a trillion dollars.

At this point, Trump is handling matters with the precision of a toddler playing with a grenade. He is getting his lunch money stolen from both sides. At one end, the Iranians are treating him like an escape room enthusiast who doesn’t know how to read the clues. They signed his “historic” peace deal on Monday and then casually lobbed a drone at a cargo ship on Thursday. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is treating Trump like a confused resident in an assisted living facility. Bibi holds his hand, points him toward the cameras for a photo-op, nods politely at his rants, and then bombs Beirut, wrecking peace talks.

Come to think of it, learning about Noah’s Ark might not be a bad idea. If things go to hell, we might need one.

Have a great weekend!

PS; The FIFA World Cup is on. More on that next weekend. Enjoy the games!

California just wrapped up its primary elections for Governor, among other things. The way it works around here, there is an “open” primary in which all candidates, Democrat and Republican, pile into the same ballot. Only the top two make the cut for the General Election in November.

This year’s top two are Steve Hilton, a Republican former Fox News host and former aide of David Cameron in the UK. Apparently his English accent sounded sophisticated to the hillbillies of central California, enough to propel him to the top spot so far. Xavier Becerra, a lifelong Democrat, came in at number two by simply promising that he is definitely not Steve Hilton. Tom Steyer, the billionaire who everyone sees only around election time,, and a local sheriff missed the cut by a mile, proving neither money nor a badge is good enough. BTW, they still haven’t finished counting the votes yet.

The Republican candidate doesn’t stand a chance in November. I honestly can’t tell you if that’s a blessing or a curse.

Oops, Trump’s Personal Piggy Bank is Gone.

This week, the White House officially gave up the ghost on its attempt to create a $1.8 Billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Astonishingly, it appears that there are limits to the shenanigans Trump can pull off. Originally, the fund was designed to pay damages to anyone who felt bullied by the US government, which is practically everyone in the world tbh.

When critics pointed out that the fund looked more like a Kickstarter for Trump’s near and dear, the backlash got so spicy that a handful of Senate Republicans threatened to mutiny over it. Realizing that it looked too obvious even by his standards, Trump asked his people to take the idea behind the proverbial barn and put it down. RIP to the most flagrantly shameless scam ever tried by a POTUS.

Uncle Sam Wants to Buy the Matrix

This week, Trump announced that the government might buy a stake in OpenAI, the maker of chatGPT. Apparently, CEO Sam Altman of OpenAI has floated this utopian future to the White House: Government will own a piece of OpenAI. In turn, the company will pay “AI Dividends” out of its corporate profits, which can be used by the government to pay US citizens a monthly income to offset the fact that a chatbot took their jobs. Yes, a chatbot might pay your rent in the future.

Anthropic, a competitor and the maker of Claude, has denied being part of these discussions.

To top it off, Trump has signed a new executive order that now requires AI companies to show Uncle Sam their code for a security vibe-check before unleashing it into the wild.

Welcome to our future.

Even Elmo Had to Pick a Side

We are officially broken as a people.

There was a time when extreme tribalism was restricted to British soccer fans, college football and white country clubs in Texas. You painted your face, wore your team’s jersey, got drunk before kickoff and shook your fist at the opponents.

These days, it has leaked into the most mundane corners of everyday life.

Take Stanley drinking cups. Drinking water used to be for hydration once. Today, it’s part of a gang affiliation ritual. Owning the “right drinking cup” has become a basis for social acceptance. Teens in high schools are facing ostracization for carrying an “off brand” water vessel. Thanks TikTok.

Take the recent ruckus in the WNBA. What should have been a historic, universally celebrated boom for women’s basketball quickly turned into a toxic internet battlefield. The media and fans drew a hard line in the sand between rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. You couldn’t just be a basketball fan who enjoyed watching two incredibly talented athletes. If you praised one, you were accused of tearing down the other. Damn.

This week, we may have peaked with the Elmo affair. And, I say this with the fond hope that peaks usually lead to declines.

This last week, the NBA finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs got off the ground. Both fine teams. My favorite, the Spurs, are expected to lose. In the lead up to the Finals, Elmo, a puppet for those who don’t know him, hopped online to say, “Elmo hopes both teams have fun.” It was a classic and innocent dose of kindergarten diplomacy.

You’ll never believe what happened next. The Knicks fans went absolutely bonkers. Because Sesame Street studios are located in Manhattan, the feral New York fans ripped Elmo a new one, accusing him of being a traitor to his own twon. Elmo’s Twitter account was flooded with thousands of unhinged responses, many threatening bodily violence and mayhem. One prominent fan account demanded, “PICK A SIDE COWARD.” Another grimly warned the puppet, “These streets ain’t sesame.” Even the New York City Department of Transportation joined the dogpile, tweeting a photo of an uptown Sesame Street sign with the tongue-in-cheek threat: “Don’t make us take this down, bro.”

There is something stilling and calming about watching utter chaos. Your eyes glaze as you watch the roofs burn. Your mind tunes out. And you begin to breathe evenly. I must be in a dream, right? This too shall pass. That is exactly how I felt watching this unfold online. It perfectly exemplifies our current psychological landscape.

Even the middle ground is a hazard zone now. You can actually get canceled for being neutral. If you’re not actively cheering for someone - whether a party, a smartphone, a pop star or a basketball team - you will be deemed hostile and traitorous. No, don’t even think about making a joke.

When a fuzzy puppet whose purpose is to teach toddlers to share cannot survive a basketball rivalry without being told to watch his back, you know we’re approaching peak-chaos. Listen, if Elmo can’t manage to stay neutral in 2026, the rest of us don’t stand a freaking chance.

Have a good weekend.

PS: I’m on travel for the next two weeks. I’ll write you after that. Cheers.

Lately, the American news diet has been a steady stream of three ingredients: wars, corruption, and AI. On any given Tuesday, the feed is a dizzying blur. The US is bombing Iran, Israel is doing the equivalent in Lebanon, and yet, somehow, there’s simultaneously a whisper about a backroom deal between Washington and Tehran. Trump is on TV delivering his daily diatribe against a woman reporter, or frankly anyone else who dared to breathe in his direction that morning. Meanwhile, the Ukraine-Russia war has apparently “peaked” in the public consciousness. No one wants to hear about it anymore, which is wild considering how fervently the entire internet was rooting for Putin’s absolute demise just a few years ago. Boredom, it turns out, beats geopolitics.

The economic news is just as surreal: every other week, some mega-tech conglomerate announces record-shattering, historic profits, and immediately celebrates by laying off ten thousand people. Gigantic sums of money are being spent on building datacenters and what not. And no one is telling us what they’re expecting to get out of them. It feels like the economy is running primarily on this “AI build out.” Take it away and there is not much to write about.

On the local news front, you just get a smaller radius of doom: a hit-and-run on a street five miles from your home, a gunman at a mall, and so on. There’s always a tech billionaire somewhere in California at any point in time currently spending millions to block the public from his private beach. There’s always something weird that the Oakland mayor is doing. There’s always a senior citizen who gave away his Bank of America account details when someone called and asked.

Globally, it’s a comedy of a different sort. The UK government is “tottering” again. Governments in the UK have been tottering for well over a decade now, yet it’s still breaking news. Will Keir Starmer hold on? Honestly, no one will remember his name the second he is gone, just like his immediate predecessors have vanished from our collective memory. What was the name of that Indian dude again who was PM for a while? Elsewhere in Europe, a German minister, or sometimes a Spanish one, depending on the shift rotation, is saying something nasty about Trump on any given Thursday. The Scandinavians? No one thinks of them until a civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka and they somehow manage to insert themselves as the polite, blonde mediators.

The news from the subcontinent isn’t exactly a basket of cheer either, though Pakistan has been surprisingly quiet. Well, they’re brokering that peace deal between Iran and the US. I’m certain they’re up to some shenanigans behind the scenes, but for now, they just aren’t making the cut for the prime-time news cycle.

India, meanwhile, is dominated by the usual programming: Modi winning some mathematically improbable state election, cementing his status as a legend. He’s been a legend for a while, of course. No one throws a political party quite like Modi. Has he had work done on his face? The photos on my feed lately show a remarkably well sculpted visage with high cheekbones that deserve their own investigative journalism piece.

My YouTube algorithm has decided these days that I’m a doom-scroller. Every third video on my recommended feed now asks, “Is India in trouble?” But in the middle of this algorithmic chaos, I stumbled onto a gem: the “Cockroach Janata Party,” or CJP. Apparently, an Indian student at Boston University started this “movement” as a joke, calling on “the lazy and the unemployed” to unite. Within three days, twenty million Gen-Zers actually signed up. Naturally, the Indian government panicked, declared it a threat to national security, and scrubbed them from social media.

What I’m realizing is that things are escalating by the day, and we’ve become adept at rapidly normalizing the insanity around us. We’re not fazed by any of this anymore. For example: Trump has openly looted billions using crypto tokens. He recently signed an executive order creating a $1.8 billion “national fund” to pay damages to anyone “unfairly sued” by the US government. By “anyone,” he primarily means himself. In all likelihood, that fund is a bespoke, taxpayer-funded checking account for his own personal needs. To top it off, the order exempts him and his family from being audited by the IRS ever again.

By any stretch of the imagination, this is breathtaking, cinematic corruption. Sure, people are screaming into the void on cable TV, but the rest of us are just anxious, exhausted, and silently furious. The breaking point is here, sitting on the couch in the room with us. November’s election seems a lifetime away, but I don’t think people are going to forget the bizarre theater of 2026 anytime soon. Let’s see what Trump has accomplished so far: started a war he can’t win or exit, driven prices into the stratosphere, created personal slush funds, berated women, and politically executed any Republican who looks at him sideways. And yet, it’s still unclear if the Republicans will actually lose ground in November. Go figure.

But hey, at least the stock market is fun! The market in 2026 has been an absolute banger. No new high is high enough and it just keeps climbing. We now have fourteen companies valued at a trillion dollars or more, and they are all American. OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are all preparing to go public at trillion-dollar-plus valuations. These are heady times that will be written into history books. Whether for good or bad reasons, time will tell. But when your stock portfolio has swelled to proportions that you know you don’t deserve, perhaps the knots in the stomach become more tolerable?

We are living in some weird mutant hybrid of 1973 and 1999. It’s Watergate-level ethics and corruption mixed with a crippling oil crisis, combined with peak dot-com bubble euphoria and irrational exuberance. I don’t think American history has ever quite seen a moment this beautifully insane. We’re dancing on the decks of the Titanic but at least there is an open bar and the drinks are flowing.

Have a great weekend!

Why the sudden hostility in a country that once prided itself as “built by immigrants”? I could say that there is a bit of racism (“America is becoming too non-white”), a bit of religious bigotry (“America is becoming too Catholic or too non-Christian”) and perhaps even some linguistic chauvinism (“Not enough speak English properly anymore”). There is another unsaid aspect to this: in reality, we do not need skilled immigrants anymore, thanks to the super boost in productivity that AI promises.

In fact, there’s anxiety that a large part of the existing workforce, made up primarily of citizens, might not find work as AI disrupts traditional job sectors. Foreigners on legal work visas comprise only 1-2% of the workforce, and illegal workers about 4-5%. 90% of the workforce are native born or naturalized US citizens and green card holders. They are at risk from losing their jobs to AI. So, the predicament of non-citizens is likely to be furthest from their minds as citizens vote in elections in the coming decades.

If you are a student or a H1B worker or here in some other temporary capacity with an intent to immigrate to the US and eventually become a US citizen, I’d urge extreme caution at this point. It might be time to rethink your strategy. Canada, pockets of Europe, Australia, Dubai and Singapore are other options. Sad to say, these countries too might eventually follow the American lead as they too will have to grapple with the impact of AI.

It feels like we are headed towards a troubling, turbulent phase in the world in the decades to come. There was a time when we were told to somehow find a way to complete a college degree, and then good things would follow. If you were in America, good things meant a well-paying job, a house in the burbs, a car or two, and the ability to save for retirement, all the while having a decent vacation or two once in a while. When I was an intern at Ford Motor Company in 1996, one of my mentors was a foreman, a Black man who worked on the assembly line. He taught me a few things about where Ford spent its money on new car development. He graduated high school and joined Ford. He had been at it for 40 years by the time I met him. He was making about $150K a year (I asked him and he told me), a handsome amount of money in 1996. When Ford asked me (with a master’s degree in engineering and an MBA) to join full time, they offered me around $75k a year (plus benefits and bonus), to put things in perspective. That was the promise: You, the citizen, do your part and we will do our part.

It has all been steadily falling apart since 1996. A few years later, many of the Ford jobs moved to Mexico. Robotic automation has been making its way into manufacturing over the decades. Mechanical arms have replaced human ones. Blue collar jobs faded, adding urgency to the call for college degrees. And now, we’re here in 2026 where even the much-vaunted college diploma is rapidly losing its luster.

At some level, it’s inexplicable why we keep doing these things to ourselves. At another level, I know the answer: progress and advancement. The only way to move forward is to leave the past behind. Free enterprise and human innovation must be celebrated. All true. It’s also true that much pain and grief are left in their wake.

I turned down Ford’s offer in 1996. I chose to move to the Silicon Valley. There was a palpable excitement even back then that big changes (hint: the Internet) were afoot and it was better to be on the side that was leading the change than on the side absorbing it. 30 years later, I now wonder if it was all that it was cracked up to be. When I was at Cisco, we built the global internet connecting peoples all over the world. I had a rush of adrenaline every morning coming into work. We were changing the world by dissolving boundaries and connecting people. We also ended up creating a network that would allow any job to be done anywhere in the world. Sure enough, a vast number of white-collar jobs moved to India, China , Vietnam and the like over the next 30 years.

They told us each time we did something crazy like build cars or generate electricity or build computers or the internet, it was “for the overall good.” It was largely true. Old jobs died but many more new jobs arrived in their place. No one looks back at 1996 in America and thinks of it as a year of anxiety and fear. It was actually a pretty fun year (for most people). The vibe of 2026 doesn’t quite feel the same. It feels pretty dystopian now.

Here’s the weirdest part of it all. I actually never cared much about working. I did it only because there was no other way to feed myself. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Millions, I’m sure, feel this way. Hanging around indoors for 10 hours a day in artificial lighting isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. We all grinned and bore it. I remember many a time looking around the room in the middle of a serious meeting filled with all sorts of big wigs discussing some inanity or the other and thinking that I was caught in a twilight zone. Suffice it say that I began waiting to retire a few years after I started working.

If you take all of what we call work, I’d guess about 10% of it is genuinely admirable and done by genuinely talented people. Think breakthroughs for a cancer cure or making a really great movie or defending someone’s dignity and rights or saving a person’s life in an operation theater. A good part (60%) is necessary but boring. Think hauling away garbage, keeping the lights on and pretty much any corporate job you can think of. A good 30% is unnecessary, let alone mind-numbingly idiotic. Think US Congress, whatever Trump is doing at any point in time, office politics and any other BS you can think of.

If you think about it this way, will we really miss work? I think not. What we are going to miss are our paychecks and a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day from having done something a random piece of software was going to anyway take over 30 years down the road.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. There is this faint voice inside somewhere that tells me we’re going to figure it all out. We always do. It’s our strength as humans. We figure things out. We have never once destroyed ourselves completely. Yet.

Have a good weekend!

Trump spent three days in Beijing, engaging in the kind of casual global re-alignment that most politicians might spend decades thinking through. The highlight? His pitch for a three-way nuclear weapons cap treaty between the US, Russia, and China. It is a beautiful, cinematic concept. Sure, Xi Jinping nonchalantly dropped a warning that mishandling Taiwan could lead to “clashes and conflicts,” and Trump remained noncommittal about whether the US would keep selling weapons to the island, but why sweat the small stuff when you’re planning a nuclear threesome?

Back home, cynics attempted to ruin the vibe with math. The latest economic reports show that inflation has climbed to 3.8%, driven by energy costs that have pushed average gasoline prices past the $4.50 / gallon mark.

When pressed on how Americans are supposed to afford the commute to the jobs they need to pay for the inflation, the President sagely observed, “Iran is the only thing that matters.”

It was refreshingly honest, even for Trump. If you’re sitting in your kitchen wondering how to balance your checkbook, you lack vision, my friend. You are thinking about *groceries* when you should be thinking about *Teheran*. The US Senate gets it, voting 49-50 to narrowly reject a Democratic attempt to end American involvement in the Iran conflict. The message from Washington was loud, clear, and economically sound: if you can’t afford gas, stay home and watch CNN to catch the latest on the Strait of Hormuz.

While the President was out there deftly handling the globe, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz brought his signature wellness philosophy to the federal budget. In a bold move, Dr. Oz announced a freeze on $1.1 billion in federal Medicaid funding for California’s In-Home Supportive Services program. Why? The program was “suffering from rapid spending growth.” California officials tried to explain: the spending growth was due to a bizarre, unstoppable biological phenomenon known as “the population is getting older.” But Dr. Oz knows the best cure for an expanding senior population in California is to force them to move to Florida.

It wouldn’t be a normal week in Washington without a few people suddenly realizing they want to “spend more time with their families.”.

Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks abruptly resigned, leaving the scene with the ultimate parting line: “the ship is back on course.” It is the kind of reassuring statement that always inspires confidence, particularly when said by a captain as he steps into a lifeboat.

Not to be outdone, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary also stepped down after 13 months. History books will record that his departure was sparked by a fierce, principled showdown with the White House over flavor restrictions on electronic cigarettes. Say what you will but he drew a line in the sand, and that line tasted faintly of blue raspberry.

The Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the new Chair of the Federal Reserve. Warsh steps into the role just in time to inherit rising inflation, a challenge I’m sure he’ll meet with the traditional central bank strategy of looking intense and saying very little.

The administration nominated Kari Lake to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica. It is an inspired choice. If there is one thing Kingston needs, it is the serene, understated, and deeply calming presence of a former Arizona gubernatorial candidate who has never met an election result she couldn’t dispute.

The week wrapped up with a pair of triumphs for the American people. The Supreme Court generously extended an order allowing abortion medication to continue being sent through the mail, ensuring that Americans can still access healthcare via the postman, since they can afford neither the gas to drive to a clinic nor a doctor.

Earlier in the week, FBI Director Kash Patel testified under oath during a fiery Senate hearing, where he vehemently denied allegations of excessive drinking and dereliction of duty. It was reassuring to see the nation’s top law enforcement official spend his entire afternoon proving to a room full of politicians that he is awake and sober.

As the sun sets on another week, Americans can rest easy knowing that while their pockets may be lighter and their gas tanks emptier, the administration remains firmly focused on the horizon. Specifically that part of the horizon that is furthest away from the gas station and the supermarket.

In other news,

AI Declares War on Pigeons: In a stunning leap forward for urban tech-dystopia, viral videos show that property owners are using AI-powered automated water cannons to blast pigeons off their balconies.The true promise of artificial intelligence is finally here: it’s cyber-bullying backyard birds.

Japan Deploys “Monster Wolf” Robots: Responding to a record-breaking surge in bear attacks, communities in Japan have begun deployment of terrifying, mechanical “Monster Wolf” robots with flashing red eyes and howling speakers to scare off the animals. If you had “Robo-Wolves fighting real bears” on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations.

The “Drunk” Deer of France: French police issued an official warning to drivers after a video went viral showing a deer spinning in erratic circles in the middle of a road. Authorities suspect the animal ate fermented vegetation, proving that inflation and high gas prices are driving even the animals to drink.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Hungary’s highlights reel is pretty lit, but it’s all past glory. Stephen the First, accepting the crown from the Pope in 1000AD, ensuring the Magyars survived. The “Golden Age” of King Matthias in the 15th century is something, I’m sure, the Hungarian school kids are forced to memorize. The Black Army, the Bibliotheca Corvina are a couple of decent talking points. Hungary has given us gifted musicians and physicists. It wasn’t always nondescript. But it is, now. Today, the weight of Hungary comes from its ability to sit in the middle of the road and block traffic rather than helping build the road.

Imagine my surprise, when pundits declared the results of Hungary’s elections a “watershed moment.” Seriously? I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think much of the pundits. They live in perennial anxiety. Having accumulated large amounts of useless information, they lie in bed, terrified that they will not be able to pass it on to others. They use dramatic phrases like “watershed moment” to describe the mundane.

Sure, the end of Viktor Orban’s self-serving regime was a welcome change for the Hungarians. The next guy, whatever his name is, is a clone of Orban. His proposition to the voters: I’ll do exactly what Orban promised, but with far less corruption. I am paraphrasing but that’s pretty much what he said. He really isn’t all that much different. And yet the pundits wanted the world to hold its breath when Hungary went to the polls and exhale when the clone won.

It’s amazing how democracy is now almost always about heaving a sigh of relief at the unceremonious ouster of the guy people voted enthusiastically into power the last time elections were held. We hold our breath when we vote. We exhale when the incumbent is booted. Then we give it a few months. Or maybe a year. Or two. Then the breathing becomes shallow again as we discover that the replacement is as defective as the part it replaced. We hold our breath. The cycle repeats.

I didn’t mean to pick on Hungary. It seemed like a perfect example of inconsequential events being sold to us as life or death. Every election, we’re told, is the most consequential one in our lifetimes. By the pundits. (Perhaps it’s time to oust the pundits and punditry along with them, but I digress). It’s not just Hungary. It’s happening in the actually consequential nations as well.

In America, we’re barely 16 months into Trump’s second term. We have another 32 to go. An eternity considering how swimmingly well the first part have gone. We’re gasping for breath here.

In India, this last week, there were elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. And other smaller states. The 3-term incumbent lost in West Bengal, which should really come as no surprise to anyone, not even the incumbent. In Tamil Nadu, a movie star with a new party dislodged two mainstream rivals, each of whom has been around for 50 years or so. Speaking of watershed moments, this could be one. Except it may not be. We’ve seen this movie before. No pun intended. I don’t do puns. It’s just not cool to do puns. Vijay’s victory evokes memories of MGR, another matinee idol, whose ascent to political stardom was breathtaking in the 1970s. As history revealed, a movie star was not exactly the antidote to anything, let alone society’s ills. But as voters, we must do what we must do. I respect that.

Ukraine elected a stand up comedian in desperation, and got themselves bombed to smithereens for their troubles. Israel keeps electing an indicted, corrupt warmonger, who wrestles daily with a choice between peace (and going to prison) and war (where he stays out of it). Netanyahu continues to pin down any prospects of cease fire to the ground and shoot it in the head. We’re all holding our collective breaths, hoping the Israelis will do the right thing someday. For now, they seem perfectly content not to.

Democracy, as it’s becoming increasingly obvious, does not seem to be about choosing well. It was never designed for that. There are no riders in any constitution of any nation that only the worthy shall be elected. It was never meant to appeal to our rational sides. Instead, democracy caters to our psychological needs. Democracy is really an exercise in choosing badly, recovering, and then choosing badly again, except with a lot of emotion each time. We mistake the cycle of disappointments for the motion of progress.

The pundits will of course disagree. In fact, they have a phrase for our blunders. “A victory for democracy.” The next election, they will tell us, is the one that finally matters. Perhaps the next election in Armenia might just be the thing that fixes the world. They’ve been right exactly never, but you have to admire the consistency.

For once, I’d like to see an educated man or woman, someone who has studied the sciences or the arts in depth, become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. For that matter, I’d like that same person to become the President of the United States. Not George Clooney. Now that’d be a watershed moment. A moment of progress. Alas, we’re stuck with real estate hucksters, comedians and matinee idols, with circus acrobats, used car dealers and podcasters waiting in line for their turn.

When pundits proclaim watershed moments, they confer outsized powers upon the victors. It makes things worse. This is the real crime of the pundits. Narcissists who seek power don’t really need any validation of their self-esteem. In fact, they need to be reined in. They must be humbled in their moment of triumph. The ideal reaction would be, “Meh. Let me see if you can do the job.”

My advice, as your favorite pundit: Vote anyway. We always do. That, in the end, may be the only watershed moment for the time being.

Have a good weekend.

There are weeks when the news reads like a parody, and there are weeks when reality actually manages to out-drink the writers’ room. This is the latter.

The U.S. began “negotiating” a Middle East ceasefire this week. Those quotation marks are doing more heavy lifting than a load-bearing wall in a building that’s currently ablaze. The talks were set for Islamabad—a city whose name translates roughly to “Where Nothing Gets Resolved Ever.” The Iranian delegation ghosted the event, citing “unrealistic American demands,” which is diplomatic speak for “your bribe was insulting and your fly was open.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is enforcing a Persian Gulf blockade with a total “Mean Girls” energy. The message to the region is essentially: You can’t sit with us, your oil is tacky, and if you even think about entering this shipping lane, we will ruin your life. Please slide your grievances under the door, but just so you know, they’re not going in the Burn Book — they’re going in the trash.

Trump fired Navy Secretary John Phelan on Tuesday. In this administration, a Cabinet position isn’t so much a career move as it is a formal introduction to the local unemployment office. Phelan’s replacement is Hung Cao, a man whose resume consists of a detectable pulse and a Post-it note that simply says “Available.” He’s expected to hold the job until roughly Memorial Day, or whenever the President finds a shiny nickel on the sidewalk.

Even the Powell Probe — the federal investigation into whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell was guilty of Disagreeing With The President While People Were Looking—was quietly buried. The DOJ realized that prosecuting everyone who thinks the President is wrong would shrink the federal workforce down to just Stephen Miller and a very confused Belgian tourist looking for a bathroom.

In India, Tamil Nadu’s political climate is currently hotter than the sambar at Sangeetha. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin – named after a Soviet dictator but with significantly less appetite for invading Poland — is dodging claims of a “10% commission” regime. Apparently, under his watch, government contracts come with a “service charge” payable directly to someone’s favorite nephew.

Into this mess strides Vijay, a movie star whose campaign platform is simple: he is aggressively handsome and can, if necessary, defeat twenty armed men using a single roundhouse kick set to a brass-section soundtrack. Voters are so exhausted they’d elect a coconut if it promised to not be corrupt. In his defense, Vijay has danced on top of a moving train, which in local politics counts as a PhD in Foreign Relations.

May the Fourth be with you, my dear people of Tamil Nadu.

The “Human Achievement Award” of the week goes to four Californians who tried to scam their insurance company by donning a luxury bear costume and “attacking” their own luxury cars. The heist collapsed when investigators noticed the “bear” had zippers, opposable thumbs, and very vocal and unusual opinions about almond milk.

This is what’s wrong with modern crime: there is commitment to the craft. No method or immersion. A real bear operation requires the eating of salmon, hibernation, and a working knowledge of berries. The second you unzip your fur to grab a burrito at Chipotle, the illusion is dead. You cannot “phone in” being a grizzly.

Finally, we have the ongoing theological street fight between Trump and Pope Leo XIV. The Pope – the first American pontiff and a man who learned politics in Chicago, where people are sent to “sleep with the fishes” – spent the week calling world leaders “masters of war” with “bloody hands.” It was about as subtle as a brick through a stained-glass window. Trump responded with his usual dignified restraint by suggesting the Vatican is a “very beautiful, very old-fashioned” gated community that should mind its own business.

The irony? These two are practically twins. Both run institutions obsessed with secret archives. Both view transparency as a hate crime. The Vatican has spent centuries perfecting the art of ignoring crimes against altar boys. Trump has applied that same methodology to his travel history regarding a certain private island owned by a man named Epstein.

If they ever had dinner, they’d spend four hours discussing the best weight for black redaction markers and how to turn “I do not recall” into a liturgical chant. The President’s goal is simple: out-Catholic the Pope. He’s teaming up with “Rebel Cardinals” who think the current Pope has gone too soft on peace and should get back to traditional Catholic pursuits like telling women what to do and naming things in Latin.

One man thinks he reports to God. The other thinks God should sign an NDA and work as his junior marketing manager. As for the rest of us — we’re just trying to catch the waiter’s eye so we can pay the check and leave before the roof comes down on our heads.

Have a great weekend!

Being a Democrat in 2026 is like trying to win a knife fight with a strongly worded haiku. While one side is bringing a flamethrower to a marshmallow roast, the other is sitting in a circle discussing whether the marshmallows were sourced from a unionized campfire. It’s noble, it’s principled, and it is – to put it bluntly – a fantastic way to spend the next four years screaming into a pillow.

The time has come for a radical shift in strategy. It is time for Democratic voters to stop being the “Adults in the Room” and start being the “People Who Actually Own the Building.” And the only way to do that is to embrace the one political superpower they have resisted for decades: blatant, unashamed, Grade-A hypocrisy.

The Purity Olympics, Special Edition, Where Everyone Loses

The average Democratic voter approaches an election like they’re judging a high-stakes baking competition. If the candidate has a single “off” ingredient—maybe they took a donation from a guy who once looked into buying a private jet, or perhaps their 2014 stance on infrastructure wasn’t sufficiently “transformative”—the voter throws the whole cake in the trash.

This is the “Purity Spiral.” It’s a beautiful, self-immolating dance where everyone is so busy checking each other’s credentials that they forget there’s an actual opponent on the field. They want a candidate who is part-Dalai Lama, part-Beyoncé, and part-Nobel Prize-winning economist. If the candidate is only 98% perfect, the base stays home to tweet about their “disappointment” while the opposition installs a judge who thinks the 19th Amendment was a “clerical error.”

The Republican Masterclass in Mental Gymnastics

To understand why hypocrisy is so effective, we must look at the masters of the craft. Republican voters have achieved a level of cognitive dissonance that would make a philosophy professor’s head explode.

They are the party of “Small Government”—unless, of course, that government is checking your browser history, monitoring your local library, or deciding what happens in your doctor’s office. In that case, they want a government so big it needs its own zip code.

They are the “Law and Order” party, right up until the law applies to someone they like, at which point the legal system becomes a “deep-state witch hunt” orchestrated by people who drink too much oat milk. They scream about “Fiscal Responsibility” and the “National Debt” for eight years, then the moment they get the keys to the Treasury, they spend money like a lottery winner in a neon-sign shop.

The beauty of the Republican base is that they don’t care. They don’t need an explanation. They don’t need consistency. They want to win. They understand that a “principle” is just a fancy word for a roadblock that you only put in front of your enemies. They treat the Constitution like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel—skipping the parts they don’t like and doubling down on the parts that involve loud noises and flags.

The Dirty Truth of Progress

History’s “Greatest Hits” weren’t written by the consistent. They were written by people who ignored their own PR. Thomas Jefferson penned “All men are created equal” while owning enough humans to staff a small city. The Crusaders marched for the “Prince of Peace” with swords they definitely didn’t use for pruning. Even the Founding Fathers screamed about “Taxation Without Representation” while ensuring women had neither a vote nor a voice. Consistency is for people who want to be remembered as “nice” in a footnote; hypocrisy is for the people who get their names on the statues. Progress requires the audacity to preach the ideal while being messy enough to get the job done.

The Case for Democratic “Aggressive Flexibility”

If Democrats want to survive the next few decades, they need to adopt “Aggressive Flexibility.” This is a polite way of saying they need to learn how to talk out of both sides of their mouths while holding a kale smoothie.

Imagine a world where a Democratic voter doesn’t feel the need to write a 4,000-word Substack explaining why their candidate’s flip-flop on fracking is actually a “nuanced transition.” Instead, they could just say: “I like winning, and this guy helps me win. Next question.”

On Corporate Money: Stop apologizing for it. When a billionaire writes a check, don’t agonize over whether it “taints the soul.” Take the money, build a state-of-the-art media empire, and then pass a law that makes that billionaire’s life slightly more difficult. That’s not “selling out”—that’s “recycling.” It’s environmentally friendly.

On Populism: The Left loves the “working class” in theory, but they tend to look at an actual plumber like he’s a biological curiosity from a distant moon. Democrats need to learn to love the aesthetics of the common man without actually giving up their high-speed internet. Wear the Patagonia jacket to the vineyard. It’s called “branding.”

On “Dark Money”: If the other side is using a shadowy network to fund ads that say you hate Christmas, don’t counter with a white paper on campaign finance reform. Use your own shadowy network to fund ads that say the other guy thinks mayonnaise is too spicy.

The Comparison of Chaos

Here are examples of how things would work in the new era-

The Current Way (Consistent): “I can’t vote for her; she was a prosecutor.”

The New Way (Hypocritical): “She’s a prosecutor? Great, she knows where the bodies are buried.”

The Reality Check: Prosecutors win elections. Bloggers win retweets.

***

The Current Way (Consistent): “We must adhere to the spirit of the Senate rules.”

The New Way (Hypocritical): “The rules are whatever we say they are while we have the gavel.”

The Reality Check: The “spirit of the rules” doesn’t pass healthcare reform.

***

The Current Way (Consistent): “Is this slogan sufficiently inclusive?”

The New Way (Hypocritical): “Is this slogan short enough to fit on a hat?”

The Reality Check: People buy hats. They don’t read manifestos.

The “Adult in the Room” Delusion

For years, the Democratic party has clung to the idea that if they just act like the “Adults,” the public will eventually realize how smart they are. But here’s the thing: Everyone hates the “Adult in the Room.” The “Adult” is the person telling you that you can’t have dessert and that the “structural deficit” is a serious concern.

Meanwhile, the “Fun Uncle” (the GOP) is in the backyard letting the kids play with fireworks, getting them drunk, and telling them that taxes are a myth created by Europeans.

If Democratic voters want to be effective, they have to stop trying to be the parent and start being the “Cool Older Sibling” who knows how to game the system. Stop being obsessed with the “optics” of your integrity. Integrity is what you have when you’re out of power. Results are what you have when you’re in it.

The Hypocrisy Gap

The truth is, Democrats are *already* hypocrites; they’re just really bad at it. They decry “elitism” while arguing over which private school has the best Mandarin immersion program. They champion “environmentalism” while ordering two-hour Amazon delivery for a single box of staples.

The problem isn’t the hypocrisy; it’s the *guilt*.

Democratic voters spend so much time feeling guilty about their own contradictions that they lack the confidence to project power. A Republican can drive a gas-guzzling SUV to a “Save the Earth” rally (if they ever went to one) and feel zero shame. A Democrat will feel bad about using a plastic fork at a protest against the end of the world.

The Bottom Line

In the grand theater of American politics, consistency is a luxury for those who don’t mind losing. The other side has already figured this out. They’ve realized that you can stand for “Family Values” while supporting a guy on his third marriage and fourth scandal, as long as he gives you the tax cut you want.

If the Democratic party wants to save democracy, they might have to stop acting like they’re in a graduate-level ethics seminar and start acting like they’re in a fight for their lives. Because at the end of the day, no one remembers the person who stayed “pure” while their rights were being dismantled. They remember the person who won.

In the spirit of embracing this powerful political tool, perhaps it is time to formalize this strategic approach. Forget about pledging allegiance to every single line of a thousand-page policy white paper. Instead, let us all agree to take the **Hypocritic Oath**.

If you’re a Democratic voter, please raise your right hand and solemnly swear the following:

It’s a powerful pledge, and one that just might, for once, allow the party to save the world by breaking all the rules first. Go ahead. Be a hypocrite. Vote for the flawed candidate. Take the dirty money. Use the dirty tricks. Being “right” is cold comfort when you’re doing it from the sidelines.

Winning isn’t everything, but losing is nothing.

Have a great weekend, folks!

If the only person who can stop the United States and Iran from burning the Middle East down is Pakistan, we have to admit that the world has officially become an episode of The Real Housewives where the only sober person at the table is the one who brought the flask.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Pakistan? The country whose national pastime is “Having a Nuclear Weapon and No One Quite Knowing Where It Is”? The place where we found Bin Laden living in the world’s most obvious Airbnb right down the street from their West Point? Yes, that Pakistan is now the “honest broker.”

This is where we are in 2026. The U.S. and Iran are trading missile strikes like they’re playing a casual game of Battleship, and we’re looking to Islamabad to be the marriage counselor. It’s like watching a couple scream at each other in a Walmart parking lot and hoping the guy selling loose cigarettes by the dumpster can talk them into a trial separation.

Insane doesn’t even begin to describe this. Asking Pakistan to negotiate peace is like asking a pyromaniac to lead the fire safety seminar. This is a country that basically invented the “Side Hustle” of cross-border terrorism. For decades, their “Strategic Depth” policy was just a fancy way of saying “We’re going to keep a stable of militants in the backyard to see who we can annoy.”

And boy, did they annoy India. We’re talking about the 1993 Bombay bombings - a coordinated hit on the world’s most populous democracy. And, the 2001 Parliament attack. Imagine if someone attacked the U.S. Capitol, and the guys who did it were living in a condo in Toronto funded by the Canadian government. That’s the neighborhood India’s dealing with! Even lately, with the Pahalgam murders, they’re still at it. It’s the ultimate “I’m not touching you” game, except instead of a finger, it’s a jihadi with an AK-47.

And why? Because of their obsession with Kashmir. It’s the ultimate “Ex-Girlfriend” syndrome. Pakistan is the loser who broke up with a girl in 1947 and still spends every waking hour checking her Insta, driving past her house, and trying to flatten her tires. Dude, she’s moved on! She’s dating a tech billionaire now! India is building the world’s highest railway bridges in Kashmir, and Pakistan is still standing on the other side of the fence with a megaphone shouting, “You’ll be mine one day!”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the irony is so thick you could use it as a building material - which would actually be helpful, because Pakistan’s infrastructure is crumbling. They’ve spent so much money trying to “liberate” Kashmir that they forgot to keep the lights on. In Pakistan, “load shedding” isn’t a diet trend; it’s when the entire country goes dark for twelve hours because they spent the electric bill on a new batch of centrifuges. Their economy is currently worth less than a bag of Bored Ape NFTs, and their railways are basically just a series of “suggested routes” through the desert.

And let’s talk about the HR situation in Islamabad. If you’re a Prime Minister of Pakistan, don’t bother getting the extended warranty on your office furniture. They have pretty much killed, jailed, or exiled nearly every single leader they’ve ever had.

• Liaquat Ali Khan? Assassinated.

• Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? Hanged.

• Zia-ul-Haq? “Crashed” in a plane with a crate of exploding mangoes.

• Benazir Bhutto? Gunned down.

• Imran Khan? Currently doing a residency in a prison cell.

In Pakistan, “Transfer of Power” usually involves a blindfold and a cigarette. It’s not a country with an army. It’s an army with a country that runs it like a country club with a very aggressive membership policy and a hundred nukes.

But the real kicker - the chef’s kiss of irony - is the sectarian violence. Pakistan was founded as the ultimate “safe space” for Muslims. Fast forward to today, and they’re blowing up Shia mosques faster than we change our iPhone home screens. They’ve spent so long nourishing extremists to use against India that the monsters have decided they like the taste of the locals better. It’s the “Frankenstein” school of governance: if you build a monster to kill your neighbor, don’t be surprised when it starts eating your pets.

And now, this is the guy sitting at the table between Washington and Tehran. It’s the ultimate toxic relationship.

The U.S. is like the rich, paranoid guy who thinks everyone is out to get him, and Iran is the religious nut who thinks God wants him to own the Strait of Hormuz. They’re both crazy in their own special, high-res ways. And then there’s Pakistan, sitting in the middle, saying, “Guys, please. I’m just trying to keep the lights on for three hours a day. Can we just stop the ‘Operation Epic Fury’ and talk about how we can give the Nobel Peace prize to Trump?”

It’s what I call the Dysfunction Dividend. We’ve reached a point where the “responsible” powers are so batshit insane that we have to turn to the “unstable” ones to find a voice of reason. It’s like when you realize the only person who can fix the Wi-Fi at Thanksgiving is your weird cousin who’s currently coming down from a mushroom trip.

But don’t get comfortable, because if you look at the horizon, you’ll see it isn’t glowing from the sunrise - it’s glowing from the friction. We’ve finally assembled the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they’re all riding towards the cliff’s edge at full tilt.

You’ve got Trump back in the saddle, treating foreign policy like a season of The Apprentice where the losers get decapitated. You’ve got Bibi, who thinks “proportional response” is a concept for losers and Europeans. You’ve got the hydra-headed Ayatollahs in Iran, each more ready to meet his Maker than the previous, and eager to take the rest of us as plus-ones. And then you have Pakistan, the alcoholic with the failing brakes and the nuclear backpack trying to play traffic cop.

It’s a perfect storm of ego, religious mania, and sheer, unadulterated incompetence. When the peace of the world depends on a failed real estate mogul, a guy facing a corruption trial, a beardo theocrat in a robe, and a country that can’t even keep its own Prime Ministers alive long enough to finish their lunch, you don’t need Fareed Zakaria to analyze what’s going on. You need a bunker and a very large bottle of Scotch. The end isn’t just nigh. It’s already parked in the driveway, playing heavy metal music at full blast and asking for the Wi-Fi password.

Have a great weekend, people.

PS: The What Ho! Report will henceforth be sent out Thursdays at 8AM PST.

YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.

You won’t announce this, of course. You’re not a barbarian. Instead, you will be subtle. You will mention, with a deliberate casualness, that your company’s Q4 numbers were “quite something.” Or you will steer the conversation toward that one topic where you hold an unassailable advantage - your fantasy cricket league, your car’s torque specs, your encyclopedic knowledge of anti-inflammatory foods. You will deploy this knowledge like a chess piece, and you will, for a minute, feel like you won something.

You have not won anything. What you did there is what men have been doing since we first gathered around fires and argued about whose mammoth was bigger.

Welcome to the Male Insecurity Industrial Complex - a thriving, largely unexamined enterprise that runs entirely on the fuel of comparison, the currency of one-upmanship, and the renewable energy of taking things personally that were never about us in the first place. It has no headquarters, no org chart, and no annual report. It runs itself, beautifully, on pure, unprocessed ego.

The remarkable thing about this complex is its sheer democratic reach. It does not discriminate. The man who has made his first million lives in it. The man who has made his hundredth million lives in it too, and is furious about the man making his two hundredth. The fit men are convinced that toned muscles and 10 mile hikes represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Those who’ve never seen the inside of the gym are convinced the fit men are secretly judging them. We are, as a gender, magnificently, exhaustingly, comprehensively insecure.

I should know. I am a charter member.

I spend more time getting ready for a dinner party than my wife. I have a vast array of hair oils, designer shampoos and conditioners, perfumes and colognes, face creams, and at least four different types of hair dryers that would make a teenage girl weep with envy. I also am, if we’re being fully honest, in possession of a pair of mustache-trimming scissors made out of the finest Japanese steel. I carry ALL of these wherever I go in the world. I’ve never been known to miss a casual glance at any mirror in a 2 mile radius. I have strong opinions about the angle of light most flattering for a photograph.

I have taken vanity to an art form. It’s a disease. It doesn’t have a name yet, but I’m sure the experts will get there soon. The primary symptom is a powerful, irrational need to be seen, noticed, and occasionally to receive a second glance from a passing stranger that confirms that yes, at this particular age, on this particular day, I still have it. You know what “it” is. We all do. The mojo. We all want it. Nobody admits it. I’m admitting it. You’re welcome.

And the weight of it all. Good lord, the weight of it.

We carry it everywhere. To work where we talk over people not because we have more to say but because silence makes us invisible. To family dinners where a harmless comment about someone else’s achievement lands in our chest like a small, personal accusation. To WhatsApp groups where we type and retype responses to things that were never directed at us, because some part of our brain has appointed itself the Official Keeper of Slights and it takes this role very, very seriously.

And then there’s my craving for a certain self-image. Somewhere along the way, I decided that to be “mature” was to be emotionally guarded, stoic, and deliberate. The man who reveals nothing, needs nothing, and reacts to nothing. Strong. Silent. Weathered. Unreadable. He is the man we all admire, right?

I have, in my time, laughed too loudly, cried at movies that did not strictly warrant it, and expressed excitement about topics that serious men do not pay any attention to. Too expressive, too enthusiastic, too willing to be delighted by ordinary things. I carefully hid these “flaws.” Immaturity was a sin. And I had no desire to confess to it.

And just like that, one day, I changed my mind.

Joy - by which I mean a genuine, undefended, slightly embarrassing joy — is actually the most mature thing a human being can muster. It takes more courage to be happy than to be unaffected. Stoicism is just insecurity in a nicer suit. A man who has made peace with himself… who can laugh at himself before anyone else gets the chance… who doesn’t need the mammoth comparison to feel adequate — that man isn’t just mature. He’s free. What higher form of maturity can there be than the one that sets you free?

We carry rejections like packed luggage - the teacher who ridiculed us, the boss who overlooked us, the institution that didn’t want us. We carry comparisons like carry-on bags — the sibling who seems to have it sorted, the college friend whose LinkedIn profile reads like a highlight reel, the cousin who moved to Canada twenty years ago and has since become suspiciously wealthy in ways that are never fully explained at family meet-ups. We shove misguided notions about love, life and happiness in our backpacks.

None of this fits in the overhead bin. It takes up the entire aisle. It delays the boarding. The flight crew is exhausted.

But here is the thing that stopped me cold - the people who love us? They have been watching this entire performance. They’ve been on this flight for years. They chose their seat next to ours. Deliberately, with full information. Eyes open. They know about the luggage. They’ve seen it all. They love us anyway - not despite the extra pounds or thinning hair line, and not even regardless of it, but in that complete, slightly bewildering way that good people love other people: wholly, inconveniently, and without explanations.

These people - our people - the ones who stayed — they didn’t sign up for the curated version of us. They want the unabridged edition. They don’t need us to win anything or out-credential anyone or arrive anywhere with freshly polished proof of our worth. They genuinely do not care about the hair situation. Well, my wife would definitely prefer I shaved regularly and not look like a hobo. That’s about it. She didn’t fall in love with my LinkedIn profile.

What our people really want is to see us fly.

And here is the non-intuitive thing about all of this: I used to believe that I owed myself to be self confident. Truth be told, it’s something you owe to the people who love you. When we compress ourselves - make ourselves smaller, defensive, guarded - we think we’re being humble. No, we’re not. We’re quietly making the world smaller for everyone around us. The man who sets the baggage down makes every room larger just by walking into it. The man running the comparison spreadsheet makes every room slightly, indefinably tighter.

Your people - the ones who bought one way tickets to fly with you. They deserve the largest room you can give them.

They want the most glorious version of you - not the thinnest or richest or most impressively credentialed version. The freest one. The one that exists when you finally set it down, stop managing perceptions, and just show up. Fully. Without the rehearsed casualness. Without the chess pieces. And yes, without checking if the mirror agrees. (I’m going to struggle with this one, man).

So here is my unsolicited advice to every man still hauling baggage: Set it down.

Set it down not because it’s some form of maturity. Enlightenment is just a more expensive and time consuming version of confusion. Do it because you owe it to your people to set them free.

Remember, the ones who love you are waiting on the other side of this. They’ve been waiting a long while. And they’re starting to wonder what’s taking you so long.

The mammoth can leave the room now. The spreadsheet can close. Switch your life to Flight Mode. We’re about to take off.

Safe travels.

---

PS: I am aware of the exquisite irony of a man writing an essay about male insecurity and vanity, and then immediately refreshing his phone to see how many people liked it. I contain multitudes. So do you. Hit the like button anyway - my hair and I would deeply appreciate it.

Have a great weekend!

We are the bridge generation - the last ones who know how to dial a rotary phone and the first ones expected to understand why a “non-fungible token” is apparently more valuable than the gold coins our mothers hid in their cupboards. We’ve spent thirty years playing the Great Indian Hustle, and now, we’ve arrived at a bizarre crossroads where the world is getting louder, our bodies are getting creakier, and the people around us are getting... well, demanding.

The Sandwich of Perpetual Disappointment

At fifty-something, we have achieved the ultimate professional title: Chief Logistics Officer for People Who Don’t Listen.

We are the “sandwich” generation, pressed between aging parents who refuse to even see a doctor and Gen Z children who refuse to put down their phones. We spend our weekends explaining to our fathers that, no, the bank will not call them to ask for their PIN, while simultaneously being “schooled” by our nineteen-year-olds on why our choice of emojis is “deeply problematic.”

We cater to all and please exactly none. To our parents, we are still slightly incompetent children who don’t eat enough curd. To our children, we are well-meaning fossils who “just don’t get it.” We are the emotional shock absorbers of the family, expected to be the pillar of strength while our own infrastructure is starting to show cracks.

The Audit: Bringing the Receipts

Then, there is the Silent Audit. It’s that internal inventory we take when we realize the “future” we were always preparing for is actually Tuesday of next week.

It’s like looking at a restaurant receipt after a three-decade-long meal. You see the charges for the career that didn’t quite hit the stratospheric heights you’d imagined. Or the bank balance - which is fine, really, but pales in comparison to that one cousin in New Jersey who seems to live in a mansion made of spreadsheets.

And then there’s the marriage. For many of us, it has settled into a comfortable, if somewhat “staid,” groove. You no longer gaze into each other’s eyes. You mostly gaze at the Netflix queue, debating whether a documentary about fungi is “too depressing” for a Wednesday. There’s a quiet grief in realizing the “lightning” phase has been over for a while now, and we’re now in the “reliable generator” phase of the relationship.

The Peril of the Mid-Life “Leak”

The real danger of this age isn’t the audit itself. It’s how we handle the results.

I’ve seen it in my circles: the cataclysmic rifts. It starts when someone looks at their life, decides they’ve been somehow shortchanged, and starts looking for a scapegoat. We see siblings who stop speaking over the management of a family flat because it’s easier to fight about property than to admit they’re terrified of their parents’ mortality. We see husbands and wives who, instead of admitting they feel invisible, start picking apart each other’s flaws until the house catches fire.

We are tempted to blame our “unmet potential” on the people closest to us. But burning down the fortress doesn’t make you younger; it just makes you homeless.

The Faces in the Mirror

To get through this, we have to look at the people around us with a bit of dry, compassionate humor and a lot of overdue honesty.

Take the Patient Wife/Mother. She isn’t “old”, though her joints might argue otherwise. She’s still the silent engine of the household, but she’s begun to realize she has become invisible. We see her as a wife, a mother, or a daughter-in-law, but we rarely see the woman. She might have been a talented artist, a brilliant mathematician, or a woman with a sharp business mind, but those versions of her were tucked away into a drawer decades ago to make room for everyone else’s needs.

She doesn’t just want to be thanked for the meal. Maybe she wants to be consulted on the direction of the family. Maybe she wants to be listened to, not just heard. Her wisdom wasn’t found in a text book. It was forged in a fire in which she burned her own self-interests to keep the rest of us warm. Her audit is the most poignant of all. Maybe she wonders if there is still time for her to be seen as herself, and not just as an archetype.

Then there is the Anxious Husband/Father. He isn’t retired; in fact, he’s never been more “on.” He’s bought the home and the car, but he’s haunted by the 11:00 PM math of retirement corpuses and inflation. He feels the hot breath of thirty-year-olds on his neck at the office and carries the quiet, heavy angst of growing irrelevance. He’s grumpy not because he’s old, but because he feels the window to prove he was “great”- rather than just “reliable” - is slamming shut, and he’s still trying to get his foot in the door.

When we realize that everyone is just trying to navigate this increasingly complex world with an outdated map, we can stop being so hard on them. And on ourselves.

Choosing a New KPI

The world is moving too fast. There are new pronouns, new currencies, and new ways to feel inadequate every time you open Insta. My advice? Opt out.

We’re at an age when success needs a new set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

KPI 1: Can you sit through a family dinner without someone storming out?

KPI 2: Does your body allow you to go for a 5 mile hike without requiring a three-day recovery period?

KPI 3: Do you have at least one person who will tell you the truth when you’re being a “grumpy uncle”?

Acceptance isn’t about giving up on your dreams. It’s about realizing that some of those dreams were actually someone else’s expectations. There is a radical, quiet joy in realizing that being “just good” is actually a massive achievement. To have a roof, a “mundane” partner who knows exactly how you like your tea, and a friend who still calls you in the middle of the night - in our generation, that’s not settling. That’s winning.

The Unburdened Path

So, let’s be the generation that stops leaking our disappointment. Let’s be the ones who can laugh at the fact that we need a YouTube tutorial to figure out the new TV remote.

The audit is going to happen. You’ll look at the ledger, and some columns will be in the red. That’s okay. We are weathered wood, and the grain only shows because of the storms we’ve survived. We’ve done our best. It’s time to forgive ourselves.

We are all just walking each other home. We’re trying to figure out which turn leads to the house and which turn leads back to the 3:00 AM existential dread. Put down the heavy ledger of “should have been.” The second half of the game isn’t about the score. It’s about how much you enjoy the play.

And if your knees hurt while you’re playing, well... at least you’re still on the field.

Have a great weekend!

March 20, 2026.

The Oval Office is bathed in the golden light of a late Friday afternoon.

Donald Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk, adjusting his silk tie and checking his reflection in a polished brass paperweight.

He buzzed. “Send him in.”

The door opened and Noah stepped in, clutching a damp roll of goatskin. Trump recoiled, pressing a white silk handkerchief to his nose.

“Whoa, whoa, stop right there,” Trump yelled, voice muffled. “You look like you just swam across the Hudson River, and frankly, that ‘wet goat’ scent is a total disaster for the upholstery. We have the best ventilation in the world, the absolute best, and even it can’t handle this. You’re fired, Noah. Get a shower, and a shave, and maybe we’ll look at the boat specs later. Out.”

As a confused Noah was ushered out, Trump sprayed a cloud of cologne into the air.

“Unbelievable. No hygiene standards anymore. Send in the next one and make sure he’s dry.”

The air grew heavy with the faint scent of desert musk as Moses entered. He looked like a man who had just spent forty days on a very hot mountain. He slammed two granite slabs onto the desk with a thud that made the presidential sharpies jump.

Trump looked the prophet up and down with a critical eye. “You look like you’ve missed a few barber appointments, Mo. Like the Ayatollah. He was a nasty man. We got him. Total victory. I can call you Mo, right?”

“Focus, Donald,” Moses boomed, his voice ricocheting off the gold-leafed ceiling. “We’re here to talk about The Covenant between God and man.”

Trump winced. “Mo, let’s keep the volume down to a ten, okay? My ears are very sensitive, and I have very high-quality hearing. Let’s talk about the ‘Ten’ thing. Ten is too much. It’s a lot of reading. People have short attention spans. They’re on their phones, they’re watching the news. If you give them ten, they forget six and seven, and then you’ve lost the room. How about we cut the shit and go for a Top Five. A ‘High-Five from the Heavens.’ It’s viral. It’s punchy. By the way, I love the stones, I really do. Very artisanal. But, let’s make them gold.”

Moses gripped his staff tighter, his knuckles growing white. His voice boomed again.

“These are the Words of the Lord.”

“Mo, the volume…keep it down. And yeah, He did a great job, really top-tier stuff,” Trump nodded. “But look at this one: ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ We have to lose that immediately. Coveting is the engine of the American economy! If people don’t covet their neighbor’s house, they won’t buy my condos. If they don’t covet the neighbor’s wife, well…that’s a whole different topic. Let’s change it to something more motivational. And ‘Bearing false witness’? That’s a very gray area. Sometimes you have to... embellish. I call it ‘truthful hyperbole.’ And the Sabbath? Sunday is for golf, Mo. Everyone knows that.”

Original Commandment vs The Trump Edit

Thou shalt not covet.

Trump edit: Stay Hungry & Buy Luxury

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Trump edit: Strategic Brand Management

Remember the Sabbath

Trump edit: Flexible Sunday (Golf-Friendly)

Honor thy father and mother

Trump edit: Depends on the Inheritance

No other gods before me

Trump edit: Loyalty is Everything

“See?” Trump said, beaming. “It’s cleaner. It’s pro-business. We’ll have a launch party at the Red Sea once the war is over. Maybe you can do the water trick again for the press? It’d be a huge photo-op, maybe the biggest in history. We’ll put them on a billboard in Times Square. We’ll call it ‘The Trump Ten (Minus Five).’ It’ll be huge.”

As Moses dropped the tablets on the carpet, leaving giant dents in the floor, and left, the final visitor entered.

Jesus took a seat in a yellow silk chair with a quiet grace that ignored the opulence of the room.

Trump leaned back, arms crossed, surveying the Son of God.

“You look practically clean shaven compared to Mo, but J, the sandals … they’re a total disaster. You’ve got sand all over my carpet.”

“What’s on your mind, Donald,” Jesus smiled.

“Look, J, I’ve been skimming your book,” Trump leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Tremendous stuff. The miracles? Top-tier. The water into wine? That’s a high-margin business, very smart. But we have to talk about the branding. Christianity is a global powerhouse, but it’s been a little stagnant lately. The messaging is ... soft. It’s a bit... low energy and very ‘middle-of-the-road.’ And you know what they say about the middle of the road - you get hit by cars.”

Jesus folded his hands. “What are you talking about, Donald?”

“Well, let’s start with the big one,” Trump said. “’The meek shall inherit the earth.’ I have to be honest - that’s a tough sell. The meek don’t inherit anything. They’re losers who get steamrolled. I don’t want them inheriting anything. I like winners. We should change it to: ‘The bold shall acquire the real estate.’ It’s more aspirational. And this ‘turn the other cheek’ policy? Total disaster. If someone hits you, you hit them back ten times harder. You crush them. You sue them. That’s how you get respect. If you turn the cheek, you just get hit again. It’s a bad look for the brand.”

“The Kingdom I speak of is not of this world,” Jesus replied softly. “It is found in the heart of the one who gives everything away.”

Trump recoiled. “Give it away? No, J, that’s not how we do it here. That’s a tax strategy. But I’ll tell you what. I’ve got the solution. I’ve developed the Holy Bible: The Platinum Trump Edition. The New New Testament. Feel it,” he said, sliding a shimmering, gold-embossed book across the desk.

“Every great book needs a great foreword. I’ve already written it. It’s ten pages - maybe twelve, I might add a section on my 2024 win, which many people are saying was the greatest miracle in history since the loaves and the fishes. Maybe even bigger, frankly, because the ratings were higher.”

Jesus tilted his head. “You want to write the introduction to the Word of God?”

“Not just an introduction,” Trump clarified. “A testimonial. I’ll explain that while the original is a classic, it really pops when you apply the Trump Principles. I’ve added some annotations in the margins. Like in the Garden of Eden - I pointed out that Adam and Eve had a terrible lease agreement. No protection. They got evicted over an apple? I would have had that snake in a non-disclosure agreement so fast his head would spin.”

Jesus set the book down.

“The Word is meant to be written on the heart, Donald, not sold for sixty-nine dollars with a commemorative coin.”

“The coin is silver-plated! It’s a collector’s item!” Trump countered. “Look, J, think about the merchandising. We do a limited run. Signed copies. We put a picture of the two of us on the back - maybe on a gold background. We’ll call it the ‘Prophet and the President’ collection. We can sell them at rallies, in gift shops, maybe even a subscription box. We’ll include a small vial of ‘Trump Holy Water’ - it’s actually just regular water, but we’ll put it in a very nice bottle with a gold cap. We’ll split the whole thing 40/60. 40 for you. We can bring Mo in on this, if you want. I’ll give him 5% for just getting a shave and a shower. We’ll have a signing at Mar-a-Lago. I’ll even have the chef make the fish. No bread needed, I’ve got plenty of that.”

Jesus walked toward the door, his expression one of sorrow mixed with amusement.

Trump watched him go, then sat back down and picked up his gold Sharpie. He began circling the word “Revelation.”

“We’ll call it ‘The Great Reveal,’” he muttered. “Much better for the ratings.”

—

Have a great weekend, folks!

It has been another completely normal week here on Planet Earth, by which I mean we are hurtling through space on a giant rock piloted by people who are, medically speaking, insane.

Let’s take a look at the Middle East, a place currently being managed by Trump with the strategic foresight of a squirrel trying to cross a six-lane highway.

First, we bombed Iran. Why? It remains slightly unclear. Maybe we had a surplus of extremely expensive explosives taking up space in the national garage and needed to clear them out before spring?

Now, Trump wants to move on. He is ready to declare victory, pack up the motorcade, and presumably hand out commemorative steaks to everyone involved.

But there is a minor hitch: Iran would like us to pay them “reparations.” Their core negotiating strategy is to continue violently blowing things up until they get a check. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is cavorting around the region unsupervised, pressing every button on the dashboard just to see what lights up.

The entire diplomatic strategy of the free world right now basically boils down to covering our eyes and hoping nobody trips over a warhead.

The Department of War (not Defense) announced this week that they bombed 15,000 spots in Iran. Now, I am not an expert in military strategy. My primary tactical experience involves trying to avoid my neighbor’s dog on my daily walk. But as a taxpayer, I have to ask: Are there even 15,000 distinct spots anywhere?

If you asked me to find 15,000 spots in my own house, I would give up around Spot 43, which is the drawer where we keep the tangled phone chargers from 2008. What exactly is the military hitting by Spot 14,992? A suspiciously aggressive sand dune? A rogue falafel stand? We are clearly just bombing places because somebody in the Pentagon fell asleep and leaned on the zero key.

To make matters even more comforting, FBI issued a warning to California to be on the lookout for a “surprise” Iranian drone attack launched from an unidentified boat off the coast. The tactical master plan is apparently for a hostile vessel to float all the way to Malibu unnoticed and unleash aerial warfare on a populace whose primary defense mechanism is hot yoga on the beach. Governor Newsom has assured everyone there is no imminent threat, which makes perfect sense. By the time an unauthorized drone successfully navigates the environmental reviews required to enter Los Angeles airspace, the war will have been over for a decade.

Back in Washington D.C., Trump has officially fired Kristi Noem from her post as Secretary of Homeland Security. This came after a week of Congressional hearings where she was asked questions like, “Why did your agency shoot at people?” and “Is it true you’re dating a deputy?” In the ultimate “You’re Fired but I Still Like Your Vibe” move, Trump has appointed her as the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a title that sounds like a Marvel superhero with an honorary title. She’s being replaced by Markwayne Mullin, whose name sounds like two different guys trying to enter a bar at the same time using the same ID.

But the real crisis at the White House is in the area of footwear. According to reports, Trump has developed an obsession with guessing people’s shoe sizes and gifting them $145 Florsheim leather dress shoes. I am absolutely not making this up.

Imagine you are a high ranking official from, say, Gabon. You walk into the Oval Office to discuss a delicate treaty, and the Leader of the Free World stares intensely at your feet and says, “You look like a nine and a half. Get this man some Oxfords!” White House aides report that “all the boys have them now” and everyone is terrified to wear anything else. Rumor has it Marco Rubio was given one size smaller. We are one week away from the entire Executive Branch tap-dancing to Singin’ in the Rain.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the tech industry continues its noble mission to solve problems nobody actually has. This week, a startup went viral for securing millions of dollars in funding for a pair of “AI Dating Glasses.” The idea is that artificial intelligence listens to your blind date and feeds you charming, sophisticated responses through the lenses. In a promotional video, a woman asks the user how old he is, and the highly advanced, multi-million-dollar AI simply displays the word: “LIE.” This is what the greatest minds of our generation are working on. We are now mere months away from an app that will charge a subscription fee to remind us to chew our food.

Not to be outdone, a startup in India has built a “begging robot.” A group of tech-savvy youths have successfully trained a robot to beg for money on the streets. Again, I kid you not. Instead of using robotics to perform complex surgeries or explore the ocean floor, they have built a machine that rolls up to pedestrians and asks for spare change. Honestly, I respect the hustle. It’s only a matter of time before the robot launches its own political party and cryptocurrency.

For the weird news of the week, we must, as always, turn to the great state of Florida.

Florida has long been renowned as the global epicenter of rational behavior, and this week was no exception.

In Volusia County, a group of senior citizens engaged in a massive, blood-spattering brawl on a pickleball court.

If you are unfamiliar with pickleball, it is a sport created for people who have had at least two joint replacements. The fight started over a “kitchen” call. In pickleball, the “kitchen” is a zone near the net where you are not allowed to volley. Violating this rule is considered a federal crime by people over the age of 60.

Words were exchanged. An offensive slur was used. And, a 63-year-old man decided the only logical next step was to bash another man in the face with his paddle, splitting his head open, before shoving a 70-year-old woman to the ground.

He is now facing felony battery charges. Because nothing says “enjoying your golden years” quite like doing hard time in the state penitentiary.

Perhaps we can send the begging robot to Florida to raise this dude’s bail money. And if he goes to trial, hopefully Trump will make sure he’s wearing a nice pair of Florsheims.

Have a great weekend, folks!

I landed in America in 1989, a student with a single suitcase and the incredible, blind luck of a forest fire survivor who accidentally stumbles into a garden party. I didn’t know it then, but I had arrived at the absolute “high-water mark” of American Civilization. The Berlin Wall was coming down, the “End of History” was being declared by academics in turtlenecks that were clearly too tight for their brains, and the air smelled like expansion and the citrusy, gender-neutral optimism of Calvin Klein One.

On my first afternoon, I ambled out to seek out that legendary American staple: the pizza slice. I walked into a corner shop and was handed a triangular slab of dough and cheese so enormous that it didn’t just have a “topping” - it had its own zip code. I sat on the curb, staring at this grease-spotted marvel, roughly the size of a standard boogie board, and realized I had landed in a place where there was clearly plenty for all to go around. Where I came from, food was served with a certain “we might run out of atoms tomorrow” caution in eating establishments. Here, a “single slice” was a structural engineering project. The scale of the food was a proxy for the scale of the optimism.

The early 90s had a specific, almost defiant “lightness” to them. Back then America was a country that could laugh at itself without first having to clear it with a seventeen-member Committee for Not Offending Anyone Anywhere Ever. When Dana Carvey spent years on SNL relentlessly parodying George H.W. Bush - turning the leader of the free world into a twitchy man who lived in constant fear of things not being “prudent” - the President didn’t launch a ten-part Truth Social thread at 3AM about “failing comedy.” He invited Carvey to the White House. They stood side-by-side, laughing at the same joke. We had a sense of humor back then, which is actually a medical term for “not being a total ass.”

And the lights began to go out.

It turns out that 9/11 wasn’t just a tragedy; it was the moment America decided to have a permanent, national nervous breakdown. We traded our lightness for a state of “High Alert” that basically meant we all had to act like we were in a low-budget spy thriller. We traded our spontaneity for the theater of the TSA, a ritual where we all stand in our socks looking like we’re waiting for a very depressing communal shower, all to prove that our Dr. Scholl’s inserts aren’t weapons of mass destruction.

And don’t get me started on the “fear of speaking up.” We used to mock the Soviet Union for that. Now? Between the “Pretenders” on the Left and the “Evangelists of Chaos” on the Right, saying the wrong thing at a dinner party is treated like a war crime.

While we were busy looking for terrorists in our shampoo bottles, the ground was being cut from under our feet at home. The NAFTA deal - signed by Bill Clinton with that “I’m the smartest guy in the room” smirk - effectively told the American Midwest: “Hey, thanks for the memories, but we’ve found some people in other time zones who will work for the price of a chicken sandwich.” Whole towns were hollowed out. Church attendance had already been dropping off a cliff, and in the vacuum where “community” used to live, a “forgotten generation” moved in. These guys didn’t lose their jobs to “progress”; they lost them to a spreadsheet. And when they realized the “American Dream” was now a subscription service they couldn’t afford, they turned to opioids. It was a slow-motion 9/11 that didn’t get a monument. It just got a a lot of obituaries.

The trauma was so great we started whiplashing like a crash-test dummy. George W. Bush invaded Iraq for “reasons” that turned out to be as real as Bigfoot. Then Wall Street decided to play Russian Roulette with the global economy, nearly burned the house down in 2008, and then had the gall to ask us for a cigarette and a match. We went from a mindset of abundance to one of zero-sum games. You know, the game where my neighbor’s success feels like he’s reached into my pocket and stolen my wallet.

In hindsight, the arrival of Donald Trump was about as surprising as a jump-scare in a bad horror movie. He wasn’t a glitch in the Matrix. He was the inevitable result of a country that had stopped taking its meds. On one side, you had the people “Pretending” - you know, the ones hunkered down in false security, re-arranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is almost vertical, convinced that “it can’t happen here” and arguing that “my bad guy is better than your bad guy.” On the other side, you had the people with an almost evangelical zeal to make, precisely, absolute nadir happen - the “Burn It All Down” crowd who wanted to see the elites cry by letting the “my bad guys take over,” even if it meant setting their own living room on fire.

We are all severely traumatized.

Here’s the thing: Traumatized people lose sight of reality. They lose the ability to course correct. They’d rather conduct a Viking funeral for the bad guys.

So, where does that leave us? How do we heal a country that has forgotten how to breathe?

Last year, my wife and I were in Granada, in Spain, waiting for a train. I stepped out of the station for a smoke and saw a guy in his 30s - a blue-collar worker - sobbing into his phone. My Spanish (courtesy of a Duolingo owl that I am fairly certain is a high-ranking member of an international hit squad) was just good enough to understand: he was leaving home for work, and he was heartbroken to be leaving his wife and his three-month-old baby behind.

He hung up, and stood there forlorn, looking like he’d just lost the whole world. And right then, I felt this inexplicable urge. Now, normally, “inexplicable urges” involve things like wanting to buy a $500 zoom lens for a DSLR camera you last used four years ago. But this was different. I walked over and gave him a big hug. I just held him for a second and said, “Tranquilo... todo estará bien.” (Calm down… everything will be okay). He didn’t pull away. He just hugged me back. In that moment, we weren’t two strangers; we were just two dads, standing on the side of the road, trying not to let the weight of the universe crush us into incoherent, weeping puddles.

That is the “inexplicable urge” I think we need. We have to go back to being dads and moms and neighbors first - even if it means doing things that would make “our team” upset at us. They might even kick us off the team. But the point is - healing won’t come from “being on a team.” It won’t come from a policy or a white paper or the next election when we swear we will win it all back again. It really starts when we stop warring and start being human again. We must acknowledge each other’s grief, even if we’re pretty sure the other guy has terrible taste in bumper stickers. If I see his grief, maybe … maybe someday he too will see mine.

To heal ourselves, we have to be willing to step out of our bunkers, brave the bullets, and give the “inexplicable hug” to a country that is, quite frankly, crying its eyes out. We caught the high-water mark once. We saw what “plenty” looked like in a pizza slice that required a zoning permit. If we can find the courage to acknowledge one another again, we can move on - maybe not to greatness, but to mere normalcy, a luxury these days. Maybe, once we finally stop trying to drown each other, we can just learn how to float. And then, maybe, just maybe, we can find a slice of pizza big enough for everyone to share.

—

Now it’s your turn. I want to hear your “giant pizza slice and massive Coke bottles” stories. Maybe it’s a memory of a kinder America that comes to your mind, or maybe you just once saw a squirrel do something genuinely impressive. Whatever it is, please share - about this country or just life in general - as long as you write back! I’ll be right here, hiding from that homicidal Duolingo owl and waiting for your responses.

Have a great weekend!

A decade ago, I reached that stage in life when, instead of doing something sensible like changing the batteries on the smoke detectors or organizing the photos on my phone, I spent my time studying Advaita Vedanta. I figured if I didn’t achieve “liberation” soon, I might have to come back and do this all over again. The prospect of having to sit next to Sally David in 5th grade, writing college entrance examinations, and opening a new account on TikTok in my next life was enough to make me read the Upanishads until my eyes watered.

I’m here to tell you all about it today.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Bruv, I’d rather listen to a four-hour podcast on the history of the lumber industry in Oregon than hear about ancient Indian philosophy.” And that is exactly why I am writing this. I am a man globally renowned for explaining things that absolutely no one asked for.

I realize you’re just trying to enjoy a chai and a samosa in peace while you read this. But bear with me for a New York minute.

Advaita Vedanta may, quite possibly, be the most profound idea humans have come up with other than figuring out how to stuff cheese inside the pizza crust.

Wait, Come Back. Don’t leave.

The word “Advaitam” literally means “not two.” This is just a fancy way of saying that everything in the universe - the stars, the trees, the annoying beeps your neighbor’s car makes when he is backing out of the house, and that aggressive squirrel that keeps eating all my pomegranates - is the same thing.

According to the ancient sages (who never had to deal with rush hour traffic at the Silk Board junction), there is only one ultimate reality, called Brahman. The illusion that there are many things - the guy talking on the speakerphone in public, bad haircuts, IRS - instead of just one thing - Brahman - is just a very elaborate cosmic stage play called Maya.

In other words:

The Bad News: Your bank balance is an illusion.

The Good News: Your mortgage is also an illusion.

The Confusing News: You are actually the same thing as the bank, the money, and the guy who sent you a Late Fee Notice.

As an expert on this subject - having once sat cross-legged in meditation until my foot fell completely asleep - I will tell you that the hardest part of Advaita Vedanta is the “Non-Duality” bit.

We think we live in a world of Duality. Which is to say we think there is a “Me” and a “Not Me.” For example:

1. Me: The person who wants the last slice of cake.

2. Not Me: Someone else who randomly ate the last slice of cake without asking.

Vedanta says this is a huge misunderstanding. I am the cake. The person who ate it is also me. Technically, I HAVE eaten the cake. This appears to be a comforting thought until you realize you are still hungry.

We have to talk about the wave and the ocean thing.

To explain this to “laypeople” (what we experts call people who do useful things), the aforementioned sages used the analogy of a wave and the ocean. The wave thinks it’s a special, individual and amazing wave named “Srinivasan,” until it crashes into the shore and returns to the body of water named Bay of Bengal and - boom - it realizes it was just water the whole time.

I once tried to explain this to my wife when she was looking for a movie to watch on Netflix. I said, “Girl, why worry about what movie when the actors, director, music director, light boys, you and me are all part of Brahman?” She looked at me with a level of “duality” that suggested I should contemplate “oneness” from the guest room.

The thing about realizing you are Brahman (Aham Brahmasmi) is that it doesn’t actually help you find your car keys. Truth be told, we spend our lives worrying about a bunch of things.

For example, a person (me) may craft a profound post about Advaita Vedanta, only to have people read it and... then do nothing. No like. No comment. No share. For a Vedantin, this is the ultimate test of patience. If I and the lurker are one, then I have essentially just ignored myself. It’s the sound of one hand not tapping ‘Like’ on a touchscreen, and the other reaching for a glass of whisky in sadness.

Have you ever watched Kamal Hassan speak? He is so magnificently incoherent that you cannot understand a single thing. For all I know, he might be explaining Advaita Vedanta or just complaining about his cook. This is what we call Maya. It looks and sounds like something very important is happening, but the “meaning” is as elusive as a greased pig at a county fair.

These frustrations are all hallmarks of Samsara.

Samsara is the cosmic equivalent of being stuck in a revolving door at the airport while dragging six bags and wearing high heels.

Let’s talk about stuff that isn’t funny. Death. Grief. That hollow feeling when someone you love is hurting. As an expert, I’m supposed to tell you that “death is an illusion.” But when you’re grieving, that feels like a slap in the face.

The poetic truth is that grief is the price of admission for being able to love. It is the soul’s way of realizing that the “other” person was so much a part of “us” that their absence feels like losing ourselves. These painful things - the anxiety we feel for our kids, the sadness of saying goodbyes, knowing you’ve hurt someone you love - are the Universe’s way of cracking us open.

As we all know, there is “space” inside a pot. And there is space outside it. The pot thinks, “I am a very unique, individual container holding a very specific, high-quality batch of space.” It worries about its looks. It worries about being dropped. It worries about a lot of things.

What happens when the pot finally breaks? The space “inside” the pot simply merges with the space “outside.” They were never different to start with. There was only an arrangement of clay that made it appear so. When we lose someone, the container may be gone, but the “space” (consciousness) doesn’t go anywhere. It was already everywhere.

These are the moments that force us to put down our phones and ask: “Who is the ‘I’ that is hurting?” The Universe is a drama queen. She insists on teaching us lessons through poetry and tragedy rather than a simple text message.

People often ask me, “Bruv, why Vedanta? Are you okay? Why not pickleball?” The answer is simple: Pickleball requires me to do many things. Advaita requires me only to exist, which I was planning to do anyway.

Listen, the waves of life are going to crash and occasionally knock your sunglasses off. But beneath the surface, the “real you” is still, blissful, and completely fine.

You’re going to wake up someday and realize that every person you ever loved, every person who cut in front of you in the queue, was just Brahman talking to itself in different accents.

Honestly? The sooner you realize everyone you know is the same Brahman, the easier it’s gonna get for you to like and share this post with everyone.

Have a great weekend!

—

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more deep dives into Vedanta that won’t make your brain melt. Come hang out with 15,000 fellow subscribers as we collectively try to figure out why the Ultimate Reality still has to stop everything for a mandatory software update.. Subscribe today - or don’t, since technically we’re already the same person.

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An introduction to the participants:

Donald Trump: A man who views the Geneva Convention as a “starting offer” and looks at the cradle of civilization and sees only a “disaster” and “a total water hazard” that desperately needs a seasonal “All-You-Can-Eat Shrimp” riverboat cruise..

Bibi Netanyahu: A man whose “Check Engine” light has been blinking for the last thirty years, but he just keeps driving the tank anyway.

The Ayatollah: A guy whose fashion aesthetic is Angry Black Sofa, and whose primary hobby is yelling at clouds until they promise to rain missiles.

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Scene 1: The Oval Office

Time: 10:00 AM (Or whenever Trump finished his third McChicken sandwich).

Trump: Bibi, baby! I’m looking at the satellite feed. Iran is very brown. It’s depressing. It’s a low-energy color. We need to punch it up. I’m thinking gold leaf. I’m thinking ‘The Trump Persian Gulf Club and Spa.’ We’ll have a dress code: No turbans, unless they’re very high-end.

Netanyahu: Donald, focus. My intelligence says the Ayatollah is hiding in a bunker shaped like a giant scowl. We have a missile that can go through a keyhole, tiptoe down a hallway, walk through a door and give him a very aggressive haircut. Do I have the ‘Go’?

Trump: Hold on, I want to pitch him first. I’m a closer. Get the Beardo on the line. Marco. It’s the ‘Angry Dictator’ button on the console, next to the Diet Coke button. Don’t mix them up, or we’ll accidentally invade Switzerland.

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Scene 2: The Bunker of Undying Eternal Gloom (Teheran)

Time: Simultaneously (but in a much more stressful time zone)

The Ayatollah: (To a nervous general) Larijani! Why is the internet so slow? I am trying to download ‘Top Ten Reasons the West is Decadent’ on Youtube and it’s buffering! Is this the work of the Great Satan?

General Larijani: Highest Excellency, the Americans have jammed our Wi-Fi with a 24-hour loop of The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition. Also, President Trump is on Line One. He says he wants to discuss your ‘curb appeal.’

The Ayatollah: (Picks up) You have reached the Bastion of Purity! Prepare for the Mother of All Battles!

Trump: Al! Al, listen to me. You’re shouting. You’re a shouter. It’s bad for the throat. Look, I’ve seen your palace. It’s dated. It’s very 1970s disco-studio-basement. I can get you out of this. We’ll turn the nuclear site into a luxury casino. We’ll call it ‘The Glowing Sands.’ It’s a pivot! Everyone loves a pivot!

The Ayatollah: I curse your ancestors. We shall bury you in a sea of—

Trump: Al, hold on. Hold on, okay. Bibi is here. Bibi, you’re on. Tell him about the drone.

Netanyahu: Ali, if you look out your window - well, your periscope - you’ll see a small drone. It’s carrying a gift. It’s a pepperoni pizza. Non-kosher, of course. Also, the pizza is a bomb.

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Scene 3: The Situation Room

Time: Two minutes later.

Trump: I love this room. It’s got so many buttons. It’s like Vegas, but the stakes are higher and the cocktails are worse. General, what are we looking at?

General: Sir, the Israeli ‘Pizza-Drone’ has entered the ventilation shaft. The Ayatollah is currently arguing with the delivery instructions.

Trump: Is it on TikTok yet? We need the engagement. The suburbs love a good bunker-bust.

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Scene 4: The Final Ring

The Ayatollah: Larijani! Should we tip the pizza guy? And why is there a red laser dot on my forehead?

Trump: (Over the speaker) That’s the ‘Closing Light,’ Al. It means the deal is done. You’re fired. Literally. In about four seconds.

The Ayatollah: “Wait! I have an offer. What if …?

[The sound of a very loud ‘THUD’ followed by the jarring noise of a dial tone.]

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Scene 5: The Wrap-Up

Trump: He hung up. Can you believe the nerve? Total loser. Very rude. Bibi, did we get the footage?

Netanyahu: High definition, Donald. It’s already trending.

Trump: “Beautiful. Marco, get the architects. I want to see if we can fit a 50-story hotel on top of that rubble. And tell the new guy in Tehran he’s got thirty days to get me a permit, or we do the whole thing again. I love sequels. The ratings are always better. Sequels are ..

Bibi: Donald, focus.

---

The following Yelp review appeared 48 hours later.

Yelp Review: One Star (★☆☆☆☆)

Business: The United States Department of State (External Renovations Division)

User: New_Regime_99 (Verified Occupant)

I would give zero stars if I could. We moved into the Teheran central office yesterday and the previous tenant, Ali K., left the place a total mess. And by ‘mess,’ I mean there is a 40-foot crater where the breakroom used to be and the Wi-Fi only connects to Truth Social.

I called the customer service line to complain about the ‘unscheduled skylight’ in the bunker, and I got some guy named Donald who told me that my ‘curb appeal’ was a disaster and that I owed him a ‘huge’ commission for the landscaping. When I told him we didn’t have a budget for landscaping because our currency is currently valued at ‘one goat per billion rials,’ he threatened to ‘redo the roof’ again.

Also, the Israeli subcontractors are already here and they are very aggressive. They keep flying drones over our staff meetings, not to drop anything, just to blast ‘Hava Nagila’ at 140 decibels.

The Response from Business Owner:

“Listen, New_Regime_99 - if that’s even your real name, probably a loser name - you’re welcome. The previous guy was a disaster. Total low-energy tenant. We gave you a free ‘Top-Down Remodel’. Most people pay millions for that kind of ventilation. Stop complaining and start building the hotel. It’s going to be tremendous. Don’t make me send Bibi back with the ‘Landscape Laser’ again. Stay classy!”

—

Also, I received the following letters from Trump and the new Ayatollah, which I’ve been asked to share with y’all.

Message from Trump:

“Listen to me, because what I’m about to say is very, very important. We have a post here. It’s a beautiful post. Some people are saying it’s the greatest post in the history of social media - maybe the world. But here’s the problem: some of you are being very lazy. You’re being ‘Low Energy’ losers. You’re not liking, you’re not sharing.

If you don’t hit that button right now - and I mean RIGHT NOW - the consequences will be DIRE. We’re talking about me calling your internet provider and personally DISCONNECTING your Wi-Fi. You’ll be sitting there, staring at a blank screen, wondering where it all went wrong while your neighbors are enjoying the highest-rated content in the world. Don’t be a disaster. Like it. Share it. Or maybe I’ll have Bibi send a drone to your HOA meeting. Total catastrophe! DO IT NOW!!!”

Trump posted the following on Truth Social yesterday:

Folks, let me tell you something truly spectacular. It’s called the What Ho! Report. Now, I’m a very busy man. I’m doing deals, I’m fixing the world, I’m looking at very complicated maps - so I haven’t had the chance to sit down and read every single word. I don’t need to! I can smell quality. I have an INSTINCT FOR GREATNESS, and this report? It’s classy. it’s sophisticated. It’s like Mar-a-Lago in newsletter form. You need to tell your friends, you need to tell your family - even the ones you don’t like, the ones who voted for the other guys - tell them they need to read the What Ho! Report. It’s smart, it’s sharp, and quite frankly, it makes you look like a winner just by having it in your inbox. It’s a total home run. Tell everyone. It’s going to be huge!

Letter from the New Ayatollah:

A Message from the Office of the New & Slightly Less Exploded Supreme Leader

To the Esteemed Subscribers of the *What Ho! Report*:

Greetings from the “Newly Remodeled” Teheran! As the recently appointed - and much more hydrated - Successor-in-Chief, I have been instructed by President Trump to reach out to you. He told me, and I quote, “Don’t be a loser like the last guy, or I’ll turn your prayer rug into a sand-trap.”

He is a very persuasive man. He has a very firm handshake and an alarming amount of Scotch tape on the back of his tie.

I am writing to formally request that you continue supporting this publication. In the old days, we used to “cancel” things by burning them with fire and giving very long speeches. But the “What Ho! Report* is different. It has what we in the new administration call “vibe.” It is much more entertaining than our erstwhile state-run media, which was mostly just three hours of a man pointing at a centrifuge and weeping.

Please, for the sake of my newly installed windows and the structural integrity of my roof, keep reading, liking, and sharing. If this report doesn’t reach its engagement metrics, I am told the Pizza Drones will return, and frankly, I am more of a tacos and burritos kind of guy.

Stay peaceful. Stay subscribed. And please, if you see Mr. Netanyahu, tell him I have moved to a different bunker.

With Moderate Compliance,

Ayatollah “Dave” (Interim)

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Have a great week!

This brings us to the most baffling species of modern humans: the Workaholic.

For most of human history, work was a simple equation: you did it so you wouldn’t starve. If you successfully threw a rock at a rabbit, your work was done for the day. You did not immediately schedule a meeting with the other hunter-gatherers to discuss rabbit acquisition strategy. You just ate the rabbit and went to sleep.

But today, we have people who treat work not as a means of survival, but as a competitive sport. The Workaholic is someone who has looked at the vast, glorious tapestry of human existence - art, music, love, nature, and the availability of myriad forms of cheese - and decided, “No, what I really want to do is spend Saturday afternoon passionately formatting a slide deck.”

I am not making this up. These people exist. You have probably seen them. They are the ones at a big fat Indian family wedding who, instead of dancing in the baraat, are standing near the chaat counter with a finger jammed in one ear, screaming about ‘Q3 deliverables’ over the deafening sound of a brass band playing a remixed 90s Bollywood song.

The primary enabler of the Workaholic is the smartphone. In the old days - by which I mean the 1990s - when you left the office, you were gone. You were untethered. If the office needed you, they had to call your house, and if you didn’t answer the landline, they had to assume you had been eaten by wolves. It was a beautiful system.

Now, your boss can reach you while you are in the shower, attending a wedding, or actively participating in your own surgery. And the Workaholic loves this. They experience a profound sense of panic if their phone doesn’t vibrate every four seconds. If you ask them how they are doing, they never say, “I am doing great; I just saw a lovely duck.” They say, “I am SLAMMED. I am BURIED. I am completely UNDERWATER.”

Because they are so heavily submerged in this imaginary ocean of busyness, they have to maintain their personal relationships in frantic, three-second intervals. They simply do not have the time to actually look at a screen while typing. This is why, on your birthday, instead of a heartfelt message, you receive a text from a Workaholic friend that reads:

“HAPy bird day. pls review Q3 metricss. Mcfmr dt acfrp auto-correct ducking hates me. sent from my iPHon while jogging.”

You are supposed to feel deeply cherished by this. It means they paused their spreadsheet for an entire microsecond to acknowledge your birth.

But here is the most tragic part. According to a highly scientific study that I just made up but which is absolutely true, 72 percent of workaholics never actually do anything remarkable. They don’t cure diseases. They don’t invent jetpacks. They don’t figure out a way to make office printers that actually print.

Instead, they sacrifice their youth, their hair, and their weekends to climb the corporate ladder, only to discover that the ladder leads directly to the fabled land of Middle Management at a bank, or worse, a software company.

It’s a bleak picture. Middle Management is a biological miracle of inefficiency, a closed-loop system of profound uselessness. Ultimately, the hard-core Workaholic’s reward for forty years of eighty-hour weeks is a slightly larger desk, high blood pressure, and a commemorative plaque that says, “In Grateful Recognition of 40 Years of Doing the Needful.”

So how do you know if you are a Workaholic? Here is a quick diagnostic quiz:

• Do you consider a “balanced lunch” to consist entirely of three stale Marie biscuits and six cups of overboiled office machine tea?

• Have you ever tried to set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your household maid, or asked your wife to “circle back” to you regarding what is for dinner?

• Does your colony watchman regularly ask for your ID because he only ever sees you sneaking into your own house at 2:15 AM after a “quick alignment call” with the US team?

If you answered yes to any of these, you need help. You need to immediately stop what you are doing, walk outside, and look at a tree. Do not attempt to leverage the tree. Do not try to monetize the tree’s shade. Just look at it. You will notice that the tree is not doing anything. It is not stressed. It has zero unread emails. And yet, it is highly successful at being a tree.

But, let’s be honest., Even though the concept of labor is not my cup of tea, a drudgery to be endured until I can get back into my pajamas and play the guitar, I must admit I admire the terrifying grit of the Workaholic. We may not know exactly what they actually accomplish with the eighty-hour weeks, but without them, our society wouldn’t have life changing innovations like the “Reply All” button, Bluetooth-enabled salt shakers, or highly detailed, color-coded spreadsheets tracking or a highly detailed, color-coded spreadsheet tracking exactly whose turn it is to pay for the evening samosas and cutting chai.. And let’s face it: dedicating your life to corporate synergy is still vastly superior to being a bearded kurta-clad communist who rails against the corporate machine at the roadside coffee stall, using a MacBook Pro he bought with his mother’s credit card..

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go practice my evolutionary right to take a nap, the only deliverable that truly matters.

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A Request -

Listen, I know your phone is already groaning under the weight of 47,000 unread WhatsApp messages, 98 percent of which are quotes about inner peace forwarded by your uncle.

But I am asking you to do something radical: Hit “Like” and share this post.

According to Manu Smriti, every time you read an article and don’t hit the Like button, a pressure cooker will whistle directly next to your laptop during a highly important Zoom meeting. However, if you do share it, a highly scientific study proves you will receive instant Good Karma, and your local street vendor will slip you an extra, free pani puri. The universe works in mysterious ways, and mostly it operates through the Share button.

Also, I Beg of You. Please Tell Everyone About My Newsletter

I need you to tell everyone you know to subscribe to my newsletter. Tell your parents. Tell your cousins. Tell that one distant aunt who only calls once a year to point out that you have gained weight.

Drop the link into your “Family Official” WhatsApp group right in the middle of a heated debate about whether modern tomatoes have lost their flavor.

In fact, tell the colony watchman. Tell the guy making your evening chai.

Plus, the newsletter is entirely free, which, as we all know, is the single greatest price point in the history of the Indian economy.

Have a great weekend!

The ruling effectively vaporized the “Liberation Day” tariffs, which had already vacuumed up $160 billion from the pockets of Americans who just wanted to buy a reasonably priced egg-slicer. If the ruling holds, the government might have to figure out how to give that money back, a logistical feat roughly equivalent to trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube using only a pair of chopsticks and a magnifying glass.

President Trump, reacting with his trademark zen-like calm, immediately called the Supreme Court justices who ruled against him “fools,” “lap dogs,” and “a disgrace to our nation,” and added, for good measure, that some of them were “an embarrassment to their families.” He suggested the justices had been “swayed by foreign interests,” which is a polite way of saying he thinks they’ve been brainwashed by a secret cabal of Belgian waffle lobbyists. He then announced that, as a “good boy” who has been unfairly thwarted, he would simply use a different law from 1974 to slap a 10% global tariff on everything anyway. His legal theory is essentially: “If at first you don’t succeed, find a law that’s older than most of the people currently using TikTok.”

The big news in global harmony is the “Board of Peace,” a new organization that sounds like a group of polite retirees who oversee a community garden, but is actually a high-level diplomatic body created to replace the U.N. (which Trump views as “too many people in black turtlenecks talking about feelings”). At its first meeting, the Board announced a massive plan to rebuild Gaza. The vision includes “New Rafah,” featuring AI-generated skyscrapers and coastal tourism zones, because nothing says “post-genocide stability” like a 40-story luxury condo with a view of a Mediterranean cargo port.

However, the “Board of Peace” launch party was a bit lonely. Most European allies stayed home, and Pope Leo XIV sent his regrets, presumably because he was busy with literally anything else. It turns out that when you start an international club and don’t invite the neighbors, they don’t always show up to help with the hors d’oeuvres.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is under fire for trying to buy a $70 million Boeing 737 for “deportation flights.” Critics noted the plane comes equipped with a bar, a queen-sized bed, and four flat-screen TVs - amenities usually reserved for rock stars or people who own their own islands. DHS explained that they are “converting one of the bedrooms” into seating, which is like saying you’re fixing a Ferrari by putting a “Baby on Board” sticker on the windshield. It’s the first time in history a government agency has argued that the best way to remove someone from the country is to give them a chilled Chardonnay and a nap on Egyptian cotton sheets first.

Finally, just when you thought the week couldn’t get more “1950s Sci-Fi Movie,” Trump ordered the release of the “Alien Files.” He claims he wants to get to the bottom of the UFO mystery, mostly because he’s annoyed that Barack Obama went on a podcast and talked about aliens first. Somewhere in the Nevada desert, a grey-skinned being is currently checking its lease agreement and wondering if it’s eligible for a “New Rafah” penthouse.

In sports news, the Winter Olympics in Italy featured an uninvited guest: a loose dog that wandered onto the cross-country skiing course. The dog successfully “competed” in the women’s team sprint, showing excellent form and a total lack of regard for international doping regulations. Unlike the European diplomats, the dog actually showed up to the event, making it the most successful participant of the week.

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Your Civic (and Family) Duty

1. Blast this post to your WhatsApp groups immediately. Let’s face it: your “Mandaveli Cousins,” “Vazhga Valamudan Family,” and “Mama-Mami Official” groups are currently a wasteland of sparkling “Good Morning” GIFs, fake news about UNESCO declaring Thirukkural the best book in the universe, and 45-minute videos on how to cure every known disease using only ginger and willpower. Be the hero! Inject some actual intellectual heft into the chat and show your cousins that you aren’t just there to ‘Like’ wedding photos and close-up shots of Sangeetha sambar-vadais.

2. Like and comment on the post. Don’t be shy! If a stray dog can sprint down an Olympic ski track in front of millions without any curd rice for energy, you can certainly click a button and type “Semma update, thalaiva!” or “Will the aliens need a H1-B visa?” Do it for the algorithm, and more importantly, do it for the sake of global sanity.

Have a great weekend!