Raunak

We as a society quickly went from: “Dance like no one’s watching.” to “Dance like a million people are going to watch it.”

Happy weekend to everyone except people who wear a WHOOP and take the lift to the first floor.

Funny how electronics keep getting more expensive even though year-on-year innovation has plateaued. “You can fold the phone.” “The logo on our laptop lights up.” These are nice features, but they don’t really justify the increased cost. This is why you’ll see them spend even more on marketing.

I don't understand restaurants using AI-generated food photos online. I know what a medu vada generally looks like. SHOW ME WHAT YOUR MEDU VADA LOOKS LIKE.

Good initiative by this mandal in Pune. Donate a book and pen when you come for darshan and they'll give it to needy students. 🖊️📘

With the new iPhone design, you can now doomscroll short-form videos while holding your phone like you’re reading a newspaper or a book. Doomscrolling, but now it feels intellectual and productive.

Sad that the local barber shop aesthetic has gone from old songs playing on one radio to short-form videos blasting at full volume from multiple phones.

Ajay Devgn's PR team has hit a jackpot here. He will be joining the current season of Crime Patrol, where he will talk about the various crimes that happen in our country, make people aware of them and help them stay vigilant against criminals. And then, just over a month later on October 2nd, he will himself become a criminal again and show us how to cover up a crime in Drishyam: The Conclusion. A poetic full circle moment. Absolute cinema!

At this point, so many books are “New York Times Bestsellers” that I’m starting to think The NYT is primarily a list-making company that occasionally reports the news.

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Finally, we will now have an exact answer to the age-old question: what exactly counts as a YouTube view? I am talking about long-form YouTube here. For years, there was never really one clear public answer to this. You would hear 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or simply that someone had to watch the video for a certain amount of time. YouTube itself never publicly specified a simple minimum watch time for an organic long-form view. That changes from August 24. A view will now be counted the moment a video begins to play, with no minimum watch time. This will apply across regular YouTube videos, Shorts, and Live, bringing all the formats under a more standardized definition of a view. Shorts have already worked this way since last year. So creators will likely start seeing their public view counts rise faster going forward. After years of wondering what exactly makes a YouTube view a view, we finally have a much simpler answer: as soon as the video starts playing.

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Books are probably the only mainstream form of media left without ads.

Millennials weren't aware of your game gaiz 🫡

What happens when AI slop no longer looks sloppy? Right now a lot of AI generated content is easy to dismiss because it still feels generic or slightly off. We call it slop and move on. But that phase is temporary. Models will improve and the artifacts will disappear. Images, videos, writing, music will all start looking perfectly polished. At that point, producing content will no longer be the challenge. AI can already do that, and it will only get better at it. And when that happens, the problem will quietly shift. The question will no longer be whether something looks real. The question will be whether it is worth your attention at all. In a world where anyone can generate good content instantly, the scarce things will no longer be production or polish. They will be credibility, taste, point of view, and the trust attached to the person sharing it. Which is why in the future, the most valuable signal online may not be how well something is produced, but who it comes from.

One of the most interesting shifts of the last few years is how decentralised entertainment has quietly pushed us into living in our own worlds. A few years ago, I was deeply plugged into cricket. I knew what series was on, who was playing, what the talking points were. It was almost impossible to miss something big. Today, there is a T20 international match that India is playing in my hometown Nagpur and I had no clue about it until this morning. I only found out because I saw a few random reels of cricketers roaming around in my city, which made me curious enough to look it up. Nothing changed about cricket. What changed was how much choice we now have. With an abundance of entertainment options, most of us have subconsciously picked the worlds we want to live in. Some follow sports closely. Some are deep into films, gaming, podcasts, stand up comedy, books, creators, or niche internet cultures. And when something big happens inside one of these worlds, it can feel massive to the people inside it and almost invisible to everyone else. Earlier, when entertainment options were limited, there was a shared cultural experience. Everyone watched the same matches, the same shows, the same movies. Today, culture has splintered into many parallel streams. You can be fully immersed in something that defines your week, while the person sitting next to you has absolutely no idea it even exists. This is not a bad thing. It gives people the freedom to choose what resonates with them instead of consuming everything by default. But it also explains why community has become so important. When attention is fragmented, shared interest becomes the glue. Communities give people a sense of belonging inside these smaller worlds we now live in. We no longer live in one collective entertainment universe. We live in many. And finding your people inside the world you care about has become far more valuable than trying to keep up with everything.

Feels like 2027 already 🗓️

Two of India’s biggest airlines went through headline-making incidents that clearly hurt their reputation. But their follow-up was minimal because they know very well that we don’t really have alternatives, and we’ll end up flying with them anyway.

Why are subtitles still so flat and emotionless in 2025? I have been thinking about this a lot. When I am watching something in a language I do not understand, the subtitles become my only connection to the story, but the way they appear on screen feels so disconnected from how the characters actually sound. Everyone gets reduced to the same simple font, the same straight line of text, the same neutral delivery, even when the performance is full of emotion. A whispered confession looks the same as an angry scream. A moment of humour looks exactly like a moment of heartbreak. It almost feels unfair to the actors and unfair to the viewer. Imagine if subtitles were visually adapted to the tone of the speaker. If a loud line appeared slightly bolder or larger. If a whisper gently faded in lighter text. If a fast, excited dialogue tightened the spacing and a slow, emotional line stretched itself out so you could feel the pause. Imagine a sarcastic comment bending slightly or a fearful line trembling just a little. Suddenly the text would stop being an afterthought and start becoming part of the storytelling. This could also change things for Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences in a meaningful way. They rely entirely on the subtitles to understand not just the words but the intent. Visual cues about pitch, loudness, rhythm, or emotional energy could help make the performance more complete, giving them access to aspects of the scene that plain text simply cannot convey. Of course, this is just a first thought. I do not know how this would work from an accessibility point of view, whether it would distract viewers, or whether it would complicate things for people who already struggle with reading subtitles. But I still feel there is an opportunity here. Subtitles have remained almost unchanged for decades and maybe it is time to rethink them. Not to make them flashy, but to make them more expressive and more connected to the story they are trying to translate. I am not sure if this is being tried anywhere and maybe it already exists in pockets, but I have not come across it yet. I would genuinely love to see someone experiment with this idea and see how it changes the viewing experience.

Mumbai AQI.