WaPo: “This country’s rapid rise was supposed to uplift the rural poor. Instead, economic stagnation is pulling men and women in opposite directions. On paper, the Indian economy shines, but opportunities are shrinking for families on the margins. Increasingly, men are leaving their homes in rural areas, chasing meager wages in distant cities, while their wives are left behind to farm — a quietly profound transformation that economists say is straining households and contributing to a lost decade for millions of people. “There is a new level of alienation, loneliness and desperation,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.”
SaaStr: “If you raise at $1B+, they generally get a very nice paper “mark-up” on their valuation that looks great — on paper. But that doesn’t make your life scaling your start-up necessarily any easier. Nor, unless you need the capital, the path to IPO or exit necessarily any easier.” More: “If you go from 15% growth last year to 30% this year? That’s no OpenAI — but people will see and feel it. Go from 18% growth last year to 40% this year? Everyone will believe again. It will inspire them. 2025 has to be the year when growth re-accelerates, and realistically, that means it has to start in Q1 and pick up in Q2..The new age of AI-fueled spend on SaaS has just begun.”
WSJ: “School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college. With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.”
WaPo: “China’s takeover of nearly every technology needed for the green energy revolution happened gradually — then all at once. China now eclipses every other country when it comes to installations of wind and solar power, a striking transformation from 15 years ago. It was fueled by a gold rush of entrepreneurship and unwavering government support, including through hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies. In the race to master technologies of the future, green energy is one arena where many analysts agree that China has pulled ahead of the United States in almost every key area, from electric vehicles to solar panels.”
Ethan Mollick: “The past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever By. September 2024, 18% of financial consumer complaints, 24% of press releases, 15% of job postings & 14% of UN press releases showed signs of LLM writing. And the method undercounts true use.”
