Blog

Five days on, the weekend toy grew up: a built-in no-em-dash rule, selectable voices, version history, honest token costs, and email drafting that never sends on its own.

I built a browser-based editor over a few hours on vacation. The point isn’t the speed: the barrier to building your own software has vanished.

A history of the 150 years no one teaches you about, 1707 to 1858, told in five acts through five objects that outlived their owners — ending with Tipu’s Tiger at the V&A.

Ten management lessons drawn from the British political satire, reframed for engineering leaders.

An annual reading log, fourteen books across civilizational history, technical leadership, language, memoir, and poetry.

A long essay, four years in the writing, on the tenets and over-reaches of the post-1989 order, and the populist response now reshaping it.

An annual reading log, twenty books on world order, empire, psychological safety, Roman strategy, a Hafiz couplet, and the first appearance of generative AI.

A self-imposed syllabus from twenty-five years of reading, eleven subjects every technical leader should keep studying after the diploma.

An annual reading log, fifteen books on Machiavelli, diplomacy, partition, Singapore, the end of globalization, and the re-invention of America.

A short reflection on counterfactuals, the long arc of Indian history, and the tragedy of the last great Mughal.

A mental model from Tom Morgan on the Infinite Loops podcast: how leaders scale without losing touch with reality.

An annual reading log — twelve books on AI, Sufi poetry, Eurasia, the Greek debt crisis, gene editing, and the recurring themes I keep returning to.

Five recurring patterns in military strategy, drawn from Bevin Alexander’s short history of the great captains.

A translation of a wonderful ghazal by Rumi, with a closing parallel from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

An annual reading log from the pandemic year — sixteen books on Greek philosophy, Persian poetry, ancient DNA, India’s Persianate age, Kissinger, and a Mongol re-read.

A 400-year tour of world orders and regime changes from the Peace of Westphalia to the present, with a closing look at what China wants.

Six elections that were close, contentious, or controversial, from the first contested race in 1796 to Bush v. Gore in 2000.

An annual reading log — eleven books on the atomic bomb, revolutions, corporations, stoicism, and the East India Company that ate an empire.

A country-by-country history of the seventeen nations sandwiched between the larger powers, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

Four roles every engineering manager juggles. The great ones excel at two of them, at least.

An annual reading log — fourteen books on skin in the game, Indian mythology and history, Russia, Napoleon, Curzon, austerity, and the eruption of Delhi.

A note on William Dalrymple’s book, and what the transitional decades between Mughal and British India tell us about the actual shape of Indian history.

One year after moving from the US to Hyderabad: family, the city, an early sighting of India’s housing bubble, and the traffic.