1/ A different way to think about life.

Our lives are all too often governed by living up to other people's opinion of us. We have this fear of appearing foolish, fear of being seen as unsophisticated, fear of missing out on things, fear of losing face.

Prestige is a trap.

1/ We just concluded our #ZohoDay2021 online event for industry analysts, with record participation.🙏

We hosted this on Zoho's own event platform with our home grown audio-video framework, a combination of @ZohoBackstage, @ZohoShowTime and @zohomeeting.

I will explain this.

2/ One year ago, our audio-video frameworks were not ready. As the pandemic struck, we realized we were behind in AV tech.

In March 2020, we redoubled our R&D efforts. I told our engineers we will invest in this however long it takes and produce a world-class platform.

3/ We transferred engineers from other projects to the AV teams. At first the progress was frustratingly slow, as it often happens in R&D, with frequent setbacks. I told our engineers to persist.

We used our own products and diligently reported issues encountered to engineers.

4/ Then by Oct 2020, we started to improve and we could see visible progress. Yet, running an online event entirely on our platform was a dream.

Today, we have concluded a successful event, due to painstaking efforts from our engineers and our events team who stood by them.🙏

5/ This is a classic example of R&D that I often mention. We need a lot more of this across the industrial landscape in India. The private sector must get into R&D with passion and religious devotion.

Company leadership must patiently stand by engineers so they can excel.

1/ An important part of woke indoctrination in elite universities as it pertains to India is to understand that India's very existence poses a challenge to the Marxist/materialist world-view that sees itself as the One True Way.

India is a weird pagan relic in this view.

2/ As long as India stayed poor - first due to colonialism and later due to socialism - it was only a charity case ("basket case"), to be rescued with money and evangelism. Crucially Indians could not have intellectual or moral agency.

Well, India is no longer a basket case.

3/ That poses a serious intellectual problem for both the Marxist/materialists and the "civilize the savages" crowd.

How can this pagan relic, worshipping elephants and monkeys and snakes and other weird forms, produce first rate thought?

Consider the issue of gay marriage.

4/ India's live and let live culture, pagan to the core, always recognized diversity in all its forms. So when gay marriage was formally legalized, there was no opposition from any quarter in India.

The Marxist/materialist ideology sees that as a challenge to the One True Way.

5/ This challenge cannot stand. India must be intellectually subordinated to the One True Way.

That is what "South Asian Studies" are all about - alienating Indian students from their own extraordinarily diverse and rich intellectual and philosophical heritage ...

1/ This is a thread on America, based on my thirty years being a student and permanent resident before returning home in 2019.

I have lived longer in America than India. I have a lot of friends and family in America.

This thread is based on my close and personal observation.

2/ America is the most open and friendly society to immigrants in the world, of every race, religion or creed. America is truly the land of immigrants.

Yet America is also convulsed by race, with a substantial part of the population believing it to be a deeply racist society.

3/ This seeming contradiction between being the most open society in the world and the self image on the part of so many of its people of being a racist nation cries out for explanation.

In agricultural terminology, I believe America suffers from "top soil depletion".

4/ What does top soil depletion mean here? It is the tendency of America to use up its people and replace them with new people.

This creates a perpetual need for migrants, leading to a positive feedback loop: top soil depletion and being open to immigrants drive each other.

5/ When you understand top soil depletion, the tendency of modern America to use up its own people, you begin to understand the extraordinary angst about race in what is a very open society.

Black Americans ask "Why does America reward immigrants more than she cares about us?"

1/ I want to put the social media abuse in perspective. I live and work in villages and I visit many villages in Tamil Nadu, particularly very poor areas as part of our school initiative. I see only love and affection and absolutely no hostility of any kind.

2/ I have received enormous outpouring of love via email and via direct messages. I have never once received the kind of hate you encounter on media like Twitter.

The people who are doing this on Twitter are not causing me damage, but create a distorted image of Tamil Nadu.

3/ I have strong philosophical and political convictions but I would not make it personal abuse. These attacks only strengthen my resolve and don't weaken it.

My only concern is that good people may see these attacks and become afraid. Do not be afraid!

4/ Social media is quite far from reality on the ground and may be bringing out the worst in people.

Adopt a motto of service with a smile and people respond extremely positively. Do not be afraid to do good things! 🙏

1/ One of the psychological and spiritual effects of concentration of talent (which is what large scale urbanization ultimately is about) is the "rat race".

Large urban areas don't give us space - the sheer physical room, and young children acutely perceive that lack of space.

2/ If you are talented and caught in that rat race, moving to a smaller community may cure it. You will simply stop caring about many of the "prestige traps" that afflict our minds - what brands of clothes, shoes, phones, cars and so on and on. That is profoundly liberating!

3/ From that personal transformation comes other good things. Your talent has a much better "return on psychic effort" in a village because these places have suffered from decades of talent erosion (I call it top soil erosion). Your talent can make a big a difference there.

4/ Over-concentration of this top soil of talent in very large urban centres turns it toxic as well.

The future of civilization may depend on us reversing the top soil erosion, both the physical top soil that helps grow our food and the metaphorical top soil of talent.

5/ Currently fashionable economic doctrines celebrate large scale urbanization as the ultimate good. The spiritual and psychological consequences are not part of the model. Alienation and rat race are subjects for sociologists to study and prestigious economists won't touch them.

Gather round, Gentle Readers. It is time I tell the story of the worst decision I ever made in an office. Some of you have heard this. Some have not. Whatever you do in your office today, this week, the rest of this year, you can console yourself by recalling this tale.

A long time ago, I was a talent agent. I worked for a woman named Susan Smith, who had her own small boutique agency. She was known for three things:

1. She had fantastic taste in clients. If there is someone you admire, odds are good that at some point, she was their agent,

2. She could negotiate a deal like few who have ever trod the earth. Casting would give her all the money they had budgeted for that part, plus a little more, plus promising to get her dog Barnaby groomed. She was magnificent to watch.

3. She was insane.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Quinn, it's the entertainment industry, they are all insane." Yes, many are. So consider this; if you told someone you worked for Susan, people who worked for insane people would look and you and whisper, "I hear she's insane."

The story of Aare Ona Kakanfo Afonja, and the fall of the great Oyo Empire is absorbing. If you're interested in this beautiful history of pre-colonial south western Nigeria, keep a date with me later tonight. 🙏🏾

The Kakanfo and fall of Oyo Empire.
Thread.
Of the 14 Kakanfos so far, the tenures of three of them who were military commanders considerably impacted the history of, first, the Old Oyo Empire, and by extension, the rest of Yorubaland.

The three Kakanfos were Afonja of Ilorin, Kurunmi of Ijaye, and Obadoke Latoosa of Ibadan. The last two of the 14, who were civilians and honorary holders of the title nevertheless impacted the history of Yorubaland, and also the entire Nigerian nation.

Aare-Ona-Kakanfo Afonja:
In the mid-1700s, around 1750 and thereabouts, a powerful Oyo warrior was growing in stature; a man called Afonja. His father was Laderin. Laderin himself was the son of Alugbin, who himself was the son of Pasin.

Alaafin Majeogbe ruled Oyo from 1754 to 1770, and was succeeded by Alaafin Abiodun same year. Abiodun was on the throne for about 19 years, until 1789 when he was murdered by his own son, Aole.
Aole became Alaafin, and ruled from 1789 to 1796.

Something I wish everyone knew: the bar's not as high as you think.

You can get that job, meet that person, start that company.

But because you think the bar's so high, you won't even try. Which is what makes the bar so low!

Thread: A personal episode from the past that I feel is very relevant to be shared today, especially for parents of young girls.

I was 18, when my first cousin morphed my face with that of a male school friend in extremely compromising position.

Very believable for anyone without knowledge of tech.

I was devastated. This was a brother I looked upto. This was the brother I had given my laptop to so he could apply for jobs. And on the same laptop, he made those photographs of me, his younger sister.

Why did he do that? He was kicked out of his house by his family after he married a girl w/o their consent. He was homeless, so my parents let him stay with us till my his family cools down & accepts them back. After 6 months, he felt threatened he'd be asked to leave our place.

So one day, he confronts my parents, infront of me, with those pictures and shows those photographs, with clear terms - pay him & his wife a fixed amount every month, let them stay at our home or he would leak those pictures everywhere.

I still remember he explained how he would distribute those pictures on the day they would get me married 😂

I don't know how any other parent from lower middle class would have reacted to this. But I remember how my parents did, that changed my relationship with them forever.

Soon to be mother, Mrs. Gemma Edwards was never a believer of miracles until it was time for her to deliver...

Gemma and her husband Craig Edwards had already chosen a name for their unborn child, they named her "SKYE"and she was truly a miracle from the sky...

#OdogwuTales

She was already booked to deliver her baby Skye via Ceasarian Section because she had an extra bone in her pelvis making her birth canal questionable

It was 4days before her due date but she just felt the urge to go to the hospital and she went...she was rushed in for surgery...

Baby "Skye" was delivered and she just cried a little and stopped and that's when the doctors knew all was not well...

Baby Skye had rashes and bruises all over her body, she also had severe heart, blood and lung problems...

Her internal orgrans were practically shutting down!

Doctors told the Mr & Mrs Edwards that if she had spent another 3hours at home, Baby Skye would have died in her womb that her coming in early gives her a chance at survival...

Doctors worked hard to save Baby Skye but no one could figure out what was wrong, after a few hours...

All hope was lost for Baby Skye and the doctors called the hospital chaplain to say prayers, Craig and Gemma were told to take pictures before it was too late

Family members flocked to the hospital to say "Goodbye" to the little girl that had just arrived..BUT GOD WAS NOT DONE!