vpalepu

Give me an E.V.; spare me the software updates

Wife was asking me the other day, if I would be still willing to buy and drive around in a Tesla, after what Elon has been doing at Twitter. And my answer was simple: I was not willing to buy a Tesla *before* Twitter 2.0 happened (after having considered it seriously and nearly hitting the…

vpalepu

December 1, 2022
Comic book heroes and their dead dads — Part 2

In a previous iteration, I realized how the fathers, or father figures, or parents of most comic book heroes end up dead. And went about listing them. After speaking with my wife about it, I realized that the list did not include some notable instances. So here I am, with a follow up list. Mufasa,…

vpalepu

November 28, 2022
Dads of most comic book heroes end up dead

Dads of most comic book heroes end up dead. This is a pretty grim take, even for me. But once I started making a mental list, it was hard to not pen it down. Consider… Batman’s Dad (and Mom) die. That is his origin story. Superman’s Dad (Jor-El) and adopted Dad (Jonathan Kent) die. That…

vpalepu

November 28, 2022
Trying a Coffee Subscription … Dreading it

Subscribing for food is strange to me. In many ways it seems perverse. In a world where people are still dying of hunger on a very, very regular basis, the stability of a subscription-backed food supply just feels wrong on many levels. It gets even more perverse in my head when I consider that it…

vpalepu

November 25, 2022
No Hogwarts in Tech

(Posted originally here: https://post.news/article/2I0vhDmRMmfBWo3ZjEIDCOGqap2) I saw this tweet this morning by Elon, and I was immediately reminded of the part in Harry Potter, where there was a mass breakout of Deatheaters from Azkaban just as Voldemort was coming back to power publicly. That analogy has interesting parallels for anyone following Twitter’s latest happenings. You can…

vpalepu

November 24, 2022
Even CEOs not safe in this market?

Update on this story below Just saw a tweet drop that suggested that Zuck was going to resign from Meta! Not sure how true this is, but wow! I guess he will join the 13,000 Meta/FB employees that he just laid off – only if this story is true. Obviously if this is true, then…

vpalepu

November 22, 2022
Oregon Health & Science University adopts “crisis standards of care”

This is like the early days of the COVID pandemic all over again, except this time, it is impacting children. From the original report: “The crisis standards took effect Monday at 7 p.m. The shift is driven by a surge in pediatric patients with RV, a childhood respiratory virus that is particularly dangerous for infants, and…

vpalepu

November 22, 2022
Go on, tell me how “kids fall ill all the time.”

There is a common quip I have been hearing all too often from friends and family nowadays: “Don’t worry! Kids fall ill all the time!” I have run out of patience for this nonsense, because here’s the thing: kids do fall ill (or sick) all the time, but not all kids at the same time…

vpalepu

November 21, 2022
Twitter needs a paywall

… so that I can stop opening it. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 It also needs that $8 paywall, to die as a business. It is a sure-shot way to drive down engagement on the platform and Elon, the white South African, will realize this soon enough. There are not enough $8/mo social-media users out there to sustain the…

vpalepu

November 20, 2022
As predicted, Elon brings back Trump to boost Twitter’s DAU/engagement

I suppose the writing was on the wall. But I never imagined that it would be this blatant and transparent. I figured he would wait till FIFA getting over. What was I thinking? But this is a net positive move for Twitter, if its infrastructure survives the next month. And that’s not necessarily a big…

vpalepu

November 19, 2022