Jack Nicastro: “Software engineers do not make the absurd appeal that “AI code is not real code” while demanding its boycott. Instead, Programmers have embraced these tools as complements that significantly improve their productivity by eliminating menial work. The value proposition is clear: AI tools empower developers to be more creative, not less. This is almost universally accepted and adopted within the programming world, from university students and startups to Fortune 500s and government agencies. It’s also worth noting that many in the profession regard their coding as an art, and themselves as artists. The analogous tools exist for information and creative workflows, which will continue to improve as billions of dollars of investment flow into new and existing enterprises. Those who are open-minded and eager to incorporate these tools into their workflow will forge new paths in their respective industries: amplifying productivity, improving experience for the end consumer, and unlocking latent creativity. Those who reflexively oppose AI and refuse to avail themselves of its productive powers are needlessly shooting themselves in the foot.”
Economist: “India’s influence on global oil markets will only increase. The IEA expects India to be the single largest source of growth in global demand between 2023 and 2030. Growth and urbanisation are expected to drive oil consumption up by 20% by 2030, to roughly 1.2m barrels per day, accounting for more than a third of the projected global increase. To meet the boom in demand, Indian refineries are expected to increase processing capacity faster than any country in the world besides China.Much of the oil will have to come from abroad. Production from Indian oil reserves is declining. It accounted for just 13% of the country’s supply in 2023. An import-dependent strategy is always vulnerable to risks, such as a wider conflict in the Middle East.”
Ruchir Sharma: “I think what we are seeing is a kind of tacit deal, in which swing voters accept a democratic recession under Modi, so long as he delivers economic progress. While the hardcore supporters of his Bharatiya Janata party were always going to stand by their leader and the party’s Hindutva ideology, Modi has significantly expanded its traditional base by offering a deal that appeals to an increasing number of young and new voters. This is reminiscent of east Asia after the second world war, when countries such as South Korea and Taiwan put together long runs of rapid growth with low inflation under autocratic leaders, who gave way to genuinely free elections only after their nations reached a middle-income level.”
WSJ: ““We’ve confused busy with important,” laments Laura Mae Martin in “Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.” Ms. Martin joined the Google sales department years ago and then wowed co-workers with her always-under-control schedule. She eventually began coaching Google’s executives on how to be more productive. In “Uptime,” she shares her strategies, assuring readers that “it’s okay to be very picky about what you spend your time on. You can still build social capital and be a good colleague.” She promises that, by following her guidance, you can achieve a workday state of mind in which “you’ll feel completely on top of everything you have to do and have a holistic approach to thriving while doing it.””
FT: “I’ve been reading Shahnaz Habib’s Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel. Habib, a writer and translator who was born in Kerala and now lives in New York, is disarmingly blunt about the distance between the self who wants to be a cool global nomad, and the reality, substantially less glamorous: “I want to be curious and intrepid; instead, I am confused and lonely,” she writes. If Bishop gently asks her readers to weigh the delights of journeys against those parts of travel that are unsettling or disappointing, Habib is keenly aware of the marketability of wanderlust — travel as an act of consumption, sold to us by the $8tn tourism industry, with deep roots in colonialism’s unsavoury past. Last year, according to UN’s World Tourism Organization, so-called “revenge travellers” made up for the lost pandemic years with a vengeance. International tourism reached 88 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with an estimated 1.3bn international arrivals.And yet, as that wave of dashing back to airports and off to island sunsets crests, many are seeking more from the act of travel itself.”‘
