Nuclear criticality is the point at which a nuclear fission chain reaction becomes self-sustaining. Basically, this means we have a controlled fission reaction. Each fission reaction causes exactly one more fission reaction.

• Mark-0 advanced reactor from Antares Industries achieved zero-power fueled criticality at Idaho National Laboratory under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program.

• First privately developed non-light-water reactor to reach criticality in the US in over 40 years.

• The test confirms safe operation and establishes a basis for electricity production in 2027 and beyond.

• The demonstration validates the design for future terrestrial, space, and military microreactor applications.

Interestingly, there was also some news related to fusion. Helion Energy, which is building a fusion reactor for commercial use, raised $465mn Series G.

“Fusion is no longer a future idea, but a path to clean, reliable, affordable always-on electricity at scale. This funding accelerates our ability to deliver on that promise,” said David Kirtley, CEO of Helion.”

This is great news for nuclear energy on both the fission and fusion fronts. I am excited for more achievements like this.

NewLimit prototypes a drug to reverse the aging of cells

NewLimit now has a prototype drug that reverses the age of some human cells (restores the function they had when they were younger), and a clinical trial is scheduled for next year (with more drug candidates in the pipeline).

I think many companies are now trying to address the problem of aging. Bryan Johnson is trying to figure out how to build your day so that you slow down aging. He even has his Don’t Die movement.

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I am very optimistic about this kind of research, and with the help of AI, I think we can even move faster than before.

Great podcast by with Jacob Kimmel, CoFounder of Newlimit, about Newlimit’s achievement.

I didn’t get a chance to watch the whole video, so I used VoxBee to give me a summary, and here are some interesting points from it:

• NewLimit’s core scientific goal is to decouple age reversal from cell-type reversal so that an old liver cell can become a young liver cell rather than a stem cell.

• Kimmel says the company observed that old mice exposed to alcohol became heavily sedated, while treated old mice behaved more like young mice, leading the team to describe the effect internally as preventing a mouse hangover.

• He argues that even if current delivery technologies reach only a limited set of cell types, rejuvenating just a few key cell types could still add meaningful healthy years of life.

• Kimmel says the first human dosing is now targeted for 2027, earlier than the company originally expected, as preclinical results progressed faster than anticipated.

Another interesting thread I bumped into related to this. This said that if they can boost one protein, then it would reverse age-related gene activity in old mouse cells.

Starcloud becomes a unicorn

If you have not heard of StartCloud, it’s a company based in Washington, US, that is building solar-powered data centers for deployment in Space. They recently became a unicorn by raising $170 million. They became the fastest company to reach that milestone in YC’s history.

In November, they partnered with SpaceX to launch Starcloud-1, its 130-pound satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 chip. The mission successfully demonstrated that the hardware could process AI workloads reliably in orbit, including becoming the first to train a large language model in space, they reported.

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The founder and CEO of Starcloud, Philip Johnston, explains why building datacenters in space is a no-brainer.

One of the things in space is that there’s no day or night, and there are no clouds. So sunlight is available for 24 hours a day. So in theory, you don’t need to store energy in batteries as we do on Earth. This gives them the advantage of a constant energy supply to run the data centers.

Other interesting reads

Psst.. This newsletter is getting a new brand. I will be writing more about frontier tech, innovation, and the philosophical discussions surrounding them.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explosion

Building rockets for space travel is hard. No matter how easy SpaceX and Elon make it look, it has involved years and years of failures and rocket explosions.

This was again proven by the recent explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on Cape Canaveral, Florida. If you have not, check out the video below

It’s unfortunate for Blue Origin, but this is what you can get if you do really hard stuff. Even Elon responded to that that Rockets are hard.

A few interesting details about this explosion and the impact here:

• It released 20% of the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb

• The launching pad is totally destroyed and can take a year to build

Fortunately, all personnel were accounted for, and they are investigating the root cause of what happened.

I, for one, am super bullish on these experiments to make rockets safer, but that comes with the risk of these kinds of explosions.

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Telescope Ranch in Texas

This is the one I find super interesting. I recently learned about a Telescope ranch in Texas, where people from all around the world rent space to set up their telescopes and control them remotely to take photos of the sky. They do it in the middle of Texas to avoid light pollution. Just look at the photo below, it’s crazy.

Core Memory made a very nice video from the rancher's perspective, who actually rents this space to people so they can set up their telescopes there for as little as $99 a month. There are already 550 telescopes.

Ferrari’s first fully electric car

So Ferrari just revealed its first fully electric car, and people are going crazy over its design

First of all, it’s $640,000. What? Apparently, its interior is designed by the legendary Apple designer Johy Ive. A bunch of people say this is one of the ugliest car designs they have seen.

Leave the design aside, even the performance isn’t that great. The Tesla Model S Plaid config is similar (even better in range) to this.

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So now Ferrari is joining the EV race. I believe eventually the majority of cars will be EVs, so all the high-end brands are also getting into the game. But it’s definitely gonna be a status symbol to own a Ferrari, even though it doesn’t look that great in terms of design.

Check out the full video (ft Jony Ive) of the Ferrari design.

Figure AI commercial agreement

Another edition, another robotics achievement.

Figure AI announced that it has signed an agreement with Catalyst Brands (which operates JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers) to deploy humonoids into their distribution and logistics network. It will start with their Reno location.

This is a big deal. We have mostly seen humanoids in controlled environments, but this is a great leap, as they will be deployed in a real logistics network to perform manual, repetitive tasks. I am also pretty sure they will be collecting a large amount of data to better train those humanoids, but this is a great step forward.

Energy Production in the US

For the first time in history, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the US. I am very pro-clean energy and producing more energy. I wrote about this earlier that we need more clean energy production in the world

This achievement by the US is just a start, and I think we need to do more to use nuclear energy, too.

People talk a lot about energy becoming costly due to data centers, but that has pushed us to produce more. The President of Duke Energy wrote that the construction of Amazon Data centers will drive innovation in energy production, and, with input from the local community, they can achieve sustainable energy production and even lower electricity costs.

Doing this work at scale will help more communities thrive, support the United States’ competitiveness in artificial intelligence, and drive sustainable, long‑term economic growth across the regions we serve. - Harry Sideris, President and CEO of Duke Energy

More fun read

• AI biosecurity company to research the dark side of AI models - https://www.redqueen.bio/

• A friend of mine sent me this cool post about a trash can that moves based on where you throw the trash to catch it before it hits the ground

Psst.. This newsletter is getting a new brand. I will be writing more about frontier tech, innovation, and the philosophical discussions surrounding them.

Recently, there has been significant anxiety about data centers, AI, and electricity demand. The fear is understandable: new data centers use enormous amounts of power, and in some local markets, they can put real pressure on grids, prices, water use, and land. But the conclusion many people jump to - that we should solve the problem by using less energy or stopping new demand - gets the problem backward.

The real problem is not that society wants too much energy. The real problem is that we still produce too much of it with dirty fuels, and we build clean electricity, transmission, and storage too slowly.

I grew up in Jaipur, India, where power cuts were part of summer life. When the electricity went out, you planned around it. You made sure water was stored, phones were charged, and the house could somehow get through hours without fans or coolers. That experience makes the current debate feel strange. People who have always had reliable electricity can talk about reducing demand as if energy is a luxury. For much of the world, reliable power is not a luxury. It is time, safety, education, health, and basic dignity.

That is still true globally. The World Bank’s 2025 Tracking SDG 7 report says global electricity access reached 92% in 2023, yet 666 million people still lacked access to electricity. That is not an argument for consuming less energy. It is an argument for producing far more clean, reliable, affordable energy.

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So yes, data centers matter. The International Energy Agency’s 2025 Energy and AI report estimates that global electricity generation to supply data centers was about 460 TWh in 2024. In its base case, that grows to over 1,000 TWh in 2030 and about 1,300 TWh in 2035. AI is an important driver of that growth. In the United States, data centers are especially concentrated, meaning their local impact can be much larger than their global share would suggest.

But this is exactly why the debate needs to be more precise. Data centers are a real grid-planning problem. They are not proof that energy abundance is bad. The IEA notes that even with rapid growth, data centers remain a relatively small part of the total power system, rising from about 1% of global electricity generation today to about 3% in 2030. If the response is simply “stop building data centers,” we are not solving the underlying constraint. We are admitting that our energy system cannot grow.

That is the scarcity mindset we should reject.

The climate problem is not electricity consumption itself. It is emissions. In the United States, EIA’s latest electricity mix shows that utility-scale generation in 2024 was still dominated by fossil fuels: natural gas supplied 43%, coal 15%, petroleum and other sources less than 1%, while renewables supplied 23% and nuclear supplied 18%. Globally, fossil fuel production and use also create methane emissions. IEA’s Global Methane Tracker 2025 and its 2000-2025 methane chart are the latest sources to use for this section. If new electricity demand is met by coal and gas, emissions rise. If it is met by clean generation, better grids, storage, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, demand response, and smarter siting, we can raise living standards while cutting pollution.

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That is the case for energy abundance: not infinite consumption with no tradeoffs, but enough clean power that people do not have to choose between progress and the planet.

Some assumptions need to be debunked.

First, data centers are not the only, nor even the largest, source of growth in electricity demand. They are growing quickly and can overwhelm certain local grids, but globally, they are part of a much bigger electrification story that includes cooling, industry, transport, appliances, and economic development.

Second, using less energy is not automatically moral. For someone already living with abundant power, efficiency is a good thing. Waste is bad. But for people without reliable electricity, “less energy” means fewer fans in a heat wave, less refrigeration for food and medicine, less study time, less industrial capacity, and fewer ways to escape poverty. The goal should be less pollution per unit of useful work, not less human flourishing.

Third, clean energy is not unlimited in a simple or magical sense. Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, storage, and transmission all have real constraints: land, permitting, minerals, financing, supply chains, local opposition, reliability, and time. But those are engineering, policy, and coordination problems. They are not reasons to accept permanent scarcity. The IEA’s grid report is clear that grids risk becoming a bottleneck for clean energy transitions unless countries upgrade planning, investment, and regulation.

Fourth, the choice is not “AI or people.” The better question is: who pays for the infrastructure, where is the demand located, and what kind of power is built to serve it? Data center companies should not be allowed to socialize grid costs while privatizing the upside. They should bring additional clean power, fund grid upgrades, locate in areas with available capacity, use flexible demand where possible, and be accountable for local water and land impacts. That is a stronger position than simply saying “shut it down.”

The abundance argument is not that every data center is good. Some projects will be badly located, badly timed, or powered by the wrong mix. The argument is that fear of demand should not become an excuse for underbuilding the future. More people will need air conditioning as temperatures rise. More countries will industrialize. More transport and heating will be electrified. More computation will be used in science, medicine, logistics, education, manufacturing, and energy systems themselves.

If we respond to that world by rationing ambition, we will get a dirtier and more unequal future. If we respond by building clean power faster, we can get the opposite: higher living standards, lower emissions, and more resilience.

The answer is not to go back to a world of power cuts. The answer is to make reliable, clean electricity so abundant that nobody has to remember life without it.

Sources

• World Bank, Tracking SDG 7 - The Energy Progress Report 2025: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/energy/publication/tracking-sdg-7-the-energy-progress-report-2025

• International Energy Agency, Energy and AI, 2025: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai

• IEA, Energy supply for AI: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai

• U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity in the U.S. 2024 generation mix: https://www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/article/fuel_mix_for_elect_generation.cfm

• U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Annual with 2024 data: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/

• Our World in Data, global electricity production by source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-electricity-production-by-source

• Our World in Data, United States energy profile: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states

• International Energy Agency, Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions, 2023: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-grids-and-secure-energy-transitions

• International Energy Agency, Global Methane Tracker 2025: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2025/understanding-methane-emissions

• International Energy Agency, global methane emissions from fossil fuels by fuel and segment, 2000-2025: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-methane-emissions-from-fossil-fuels-by-fuel-and-segment-2000-2025

Elon lost his case against OpenAI this week.

Elon Musk sued OpenAI after the company shifted from its original nonprofit structure toward a for-profit model closely tied to Microsoft. Musk argues that OpenAI abandoned its original mission of developing AI for the public benefit and instead became commercially driven. And as a counter, OpenAI says, this is just an attempt to slow them down because they have a competitor, xAI.

This is a big deal for OpenAI, as it clears the path to an IPO, which, from what I read, is now being fast-tracked.

But Elon is, as we can expect, not backing down

His claim is that OpenAI was created for the benefit of all people, not for profit, and should remain true to its original mission.

There’s a lot of chatter around this, with people saying it might set a precedent for opening a company as a non-profit and later converting to a for-profit. So let’s monitor what’s going on.

Atlas from Boston Dynamics

As I am super interested in real-world use of robotics, Boston Dynamics showed its Atlas robot lifting and moving a fridge

As easy as it seems, it’s a really hard problem for robots to coordinate on real-world tasks. I also shared some other promising robots in my previous edition that perform different tasks. I am very bullish on general-purpose robotics.

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Karpathy joined Anthropic

For those who don’t know, Andrej Karpathy is a well-known AI researcher and engineer, best known as a founding member of OpenAI and as the former Director of AI at Tesla, where he led work on the Autopilot computer vision system. He also became famous for explaining deep learning and large language models in a way that made advanced AI accessible to millions of developers and students through his talks, Stanford lectures, and YouTube videos.

Anthropic has assembled some of the great minds and engineers in the industry, and it’s only going to get better. I am extremely bullish on Anthropic and US AI tech.

SpaceX has filed an S-1

SpaceX has filed an S-1 for its IPO. It’s one of the most anticipated IPO this year. The S-1 filing reveals a company that increasingly looks like an AI and infrastructure giant (SpaceXAI) disguised as a rocket company. Starlink has become the main revenue engine, reportedly reaching more than 10 million subscribers globally, while billions of dollars are now flowing into AI infrastructure and xAI. In Q1 2026 alone, SpaceX spent far more on AI compute expansion than on Starship. The filing repeatedly references orbital AI data centers powered by solar energy in space, with SpaceX projecting a future market opportunity measured in the tens of trillions of dollars. Elon Musk still controls roughly 85% of the company’s voting power through the dual-class structure, and some of his compensation targets are tied to building a permanent Mars colony. The company also disclosed massive debt obligations and rapidly increasing capital expenditures as it scales both launch systems and AI infrastructure. One unusual section warns investors about reputational and legal risks tied to Grok’s “Spicy” and “Unhinged” modes. More than anything else, the filing shows that SpaceX is no longer positioning itself as only a launch provider. It is presenting itself as a long-term platform for communications, AI compute, energy, and space infrastructure.

Most estimates cluster around a $1.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion valuation, with SpaceX potentially raising between $50 billion and $75 billion in the IPO itself. This would make it the largest IPO in history.

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Interesting Posts to read

• NASA is building a Moon base for long-term science research

• Life Clubs

  Perspectives

  Life Clubs

  Deb’s Note: From time to time, I bring in guest authors to Perspectives to share their point of view and bring a different take on a topic I want to learn more about. When I first read this piece from Molly, I found myself going back through my own life, thinking about the clubs I am in, the ones I never announced, the ones I carried quietly for a long …

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  18 days ago · 15 likes · 2 comments · Molly Graham

• This is undoubtedly one of the most amazing videos I have seen in a while, and it gives me so much hope for the future. It’s not even about competing with Neuralink; it’s more about a different, non-invasive way of controlling things. Watch this video, and I am sure you will enjoy it.
  

• Amazing Video of the 12th flight test of Starship

• A friend shared this with me: The quiet grief of Adult friendship

If you read any interesting news/post last week, please share them in the comments. I would love to know what you read

The study suggested that caffeine may temporarily improve alertness and mental performance by altering how the brain regulates attention and response inhibition, offering another example of how quickly absorbed caffeine sources can directly influence neural activity. So, is it good news for coffee lovers? Maybe, but I have also found that too much coffee creates some sort of anxiety, too, so balance it out.

If you are not following the OpenAI and Anthropic announcements about Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE), this is for you. OpenAI recently announced the launch of OpenAI Deployment Company

They also acquired a company of 150 FDEs. So what’s going on? With all these Frontier AI models solving complex problems, there’s an increased demand to deploy them in large enterprises for use cases specifically tailored to them. This is where FDEs come in. FDEs work directly with large enterprises, understand their problems, and build solutions for them. FDEs are not consultants; they don’t just suggest things, they go and build things. I think this is especially useful given that all these large enterprises have an extreme amount of proprietary data and flows. So both Anthropic and OpenAI want to make sure their models get those customers.

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Robotics is a field that will change rapidly over the next 3-5 years as foundation models become increasingly powerful. Unitree recently released A Manned Transformable Mecha

This is wild. It’s the first production-ready mecha. Do watch the video shared in this post. I believe personal robotics will be a crazy big industry in the next 5 years. We already see work-specific robots like Matic or Lume from Syncere. But I think something like Optimus from Tesla, and more generic robots, will start reaching consumers. The future is gonna be really wild, where you are asleep, and your personal AI-enabled robot is finishing your chores.

Another example is the Figure Helix-02 robot, which can now sort packages at the human level. They previously tried a 1-hour shift and have now done 8 hours. Industrial humanoid robots are also something I am optimistic about.

While it all sounds good, it also increases the inherent security risk of someone compromising those machines and doing something unexpected. So with all these cool things, there come some risks too. We will all see how this plays out, but I am excited. What do you think about this? Share below in comments.

So there are a lot of discussions about how AI is actually making humans stupid. Humans are trusting AI results without actually understanding how they came about. This actually presents an opportunity for how learning systems of the future will be. One example is Oboe Labs

They are building a learning system powered by AI to help you learn new concepts. It will act like an interactive teacher, keeping you engaged. You can treat it like your personal teacher and ask questions anytime.

I think this is a great concept. We as humans should keep making it easier for anyone to learn more, even in this age where we can just delete anything and everything to AI. Understanding things from first principles will always have value.

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Interesting Posts to read

a16z

Call the Plumber; We’ve Got a Leaky Abstraction

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts…

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a month ago · 165 likes · 2 comments · Alex Danco

• https://datacenters.mts.now/follow-the-risk

Did you read anything interesting last week that is worth sharing? Share it in the comments.

Elon also announced that SpaceX and xAI are merging to become SpaceXAI, and that they have already moved on to their own Grok training at the Colossus 2 data center.

I am definitely excited about this (and more Claude credits). I think we need to build more computing power and more data centers to enable humanity to thrive.

Someone posted another angle on why Elon is leasing Colossus 1 to Anthropic. It’s a pretty good analysis.

Amazon has launched its supply chain services to everyone. Amazon is known for its logistics and supply chain, which reliably delivers packages around the world. Given their expertise in this, it makes total sense for them to launch something like this. This is going to change the world of supply chain and logistics, as I expect many small and medium businesses to use them without having to worry about handling all this.

Amazon disrupted internet infrastructure by building AWS, and now it’s disrupting the supply chain business. They already have “Fulfilled by Amazon” for 3rd-party sellers on Amazon, but this is a step forward that lets anyone use their services.

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As I am reading a lot more about energy these days, I read this article on Core Memory (this one is not paywalled) about Terraform Industries

Core Memory

The Magical Methane Machine

§ 01 ORIGINS…

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a month ago · 84 likes · 7 comments · Brendan Borrell

They are trying to produce cheap synthetic natural gas from the atmosphere by extracting Carbon from CO2 in the air and energy from the Sun. Natural gas (mostly composed of Methane) is probably the cleanest form of fossil fuel (Methane is still a greenhouse gas, which, if leaked, can definitely harm the atmosphere, but it’s cleaner than coal or oil).

Getting CO2 out of the atmosphere is definitely a good thing, as it is a greenhouse gas, but I still don’t like the idea of producing Methane. Maybe in the short term, this might be the right thing to do, but I am very pro-solar, wind, and nuclear energy, which are the cleaner forms of energy.

Ok, this one is actually scary and fascinating. A company called Cortical Labs put 200,000 real human brain cells onto a silicon chip and trained them to play Doom. They were able to do it in one week. This is CRAZY.

This is called biological computing. This company has a new product called CL1, which was used to do this. They provide a cloud service that lets you deploy your code to living neurons. No lab required.

Here’s a video of human cells playing DOOM.

Incidentally, I bumped into another article about the implications of this. But this article kind of says what we all have been thinking: are LLMs conscious? They may not, but putting them together with living cells like this might be the way to add consciousness. The cells can provide feedback to the LLM and receive a response. This area needs to be closely monitored over the next 2-3 years.

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Interesting X posts

This is somewhat old, but I bumped into it again. Still relevant

Miscellaneus

• US Govt declassifying UFO & UAP findings - https://www.war.gov/UFO

• A different perspective on the current state of the internet - https://matduggan.com/the-intolerable-hypocrisy-of-cyberlibertarianism/

a16z on AI is not eating our jobs (which I think is right)

a16z

The "AI Job Apocalypse" Is a Complete Fantasy

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts…

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a month ago · 335 likes · 42 comments · David George

China blocked the Meta-Manus acquisition deal, citing a violation of Beijing’s investment rules. Why is it so messed up?

• Benchmark Capital was the investor, and they have already distributed returns to the LPs.

• Meta has already integrated Manus for its employees, and they are using it.

• We already know the founders are stuck in China and can’t get out.

China-US AI wars are getting messier. With Chinese models almost as close to US models serving inference at relatively lower cost and trained on Huawei’s chips instead of Nvidia GPUs, it’s going to get even messier. This seems more of a geopolitical move than an actual breach of law.

Sam Altman had a really interesting post on X about what the future of OS would look like. We are used to a standard typing interface, installing apps for various purposes, and using a browser to surf the web.

Now, a lot more things are moving to an audio interface (maybe eventually a brain interface), and apps are becoming on demand as creating apps is getting easier. What could be the future? Personal on-demand apps?

Is OpenAI working on its own phone to disrupt Apple? Well, we don’t know for sure, but it would be an interesting development.

OpenAI has also updated its partnership with Microsoft. They have been going back and forth in their love-hate relationship.

I think now they are not tied to each other, so OpenAI can use any other compute provider, and Microsoft can keep adding models from other frontier labs.

OpenAI wrote a really fun article about how ChatGPT started mentioning goblins, gremlins, and other mythical creatures. This was due to the model incentivizing a nerdy personality. I love how our AI models can change behavior with a slight change in incentive. I know we all talk about achieving AGI, but models are what they are trained on (unless we really, really figure out how to add consciousness and human creativity to models)

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I read an interesting study by Taylor Lorenz on how much of Substack is actually AI.

So, Technology posts are definitely no, as expected (if technology people are not using AI, then who will?).

Fiction is the lowest. I guess people still want to have their own original thoughts rather than AI-generated slop.

But I do believe, over time, we will see more and more of that graph shift in the red direction, so it would be interesting to keep tabs on who is writing in the green. Human originality does have something that AI cannot replicate (yet).

It’s a paid article, but you can still read this post to get some insights

If you have heard of the California vs. Texas narrative in tech, Jonathan Lacoste wrote an amazing article on X about how to think about those 2 states. He calls them complementary rather than competitive.

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Deedy Das did an interesting study on what smart kids around the world do when they grow up. He studied ~18,000 International Olympiad medalists (IMO, IOI, and IPhO) over the last 25 years and traced their career paths.

The post below gives more details on what these people did. Check it out.

Other readings and interesting finds

Perspectives

What is the Story You are Telling Yourself?

Last week, I had three conversations with people who had each been laid off. Though the circumstances were very different, the emotional experience was almost identical. They were grieving the loss, and each of them began to turn that experience inward…

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a month ago · 21 likes · 5 comments · Deb Liu

• Cool new game on neal.fun https://neal.fun/cursor-camp/

• Discovered a new term called Adaptive Frugality

I have been doing CrossFit for almost 5 years continuously now. I go to CrossFit 4-5 days a week on average, which is a pretty decent number compared to any other workout I have been to. When I started, I didn’t have some of the basic CrossFit movements: double unders and ring dips. But now I have it.

It took me almost 3 years to get consistent double unders.

It took me almost 4 years to get consistent ring dips.

But we are not here today to talk about the result, but about the journey that led to it.

It was not like I was always improving. There were days when I could get 1 or 2 double unders, and I was super happy on those days, telling myself that next time I would do it - I should be able to get more since I had gotten two of them.

But next time, I didn’t even get a single one. I ended up with a lot of scars on my body from that rope hitting me when I was trying super hard to get that one double under. And this kept repeating. After a few months, one day I could maybe do 10 unbroken, but the very next week it was like I never had any doubles.

The exact same story repeats with ring dips. It’s the same playbook.

Now, why the heck am I telling you these random instances?

Because this applies to anything new or uncomfortable you do.

It’s been 3 months since I left my full-time job to pursue building my own things, tinkering, exploring, and giving myself a chance to do things my way. It’s scary, uncomfortable, and really challenging. But I can also see the same pattern here as in my CrossFit journey.

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There are some days when I feel super energetic - someone bought my product, or I saw people engaging with my post, and other good things. That makes me super happy and encourages me.

But then there are days that feel like wtf am I doing? Why do I need to see successes? It feels like I am going backward, and there’s no way I can make progress. And trust me, it’s a very hard time mentally.

But then I just need to remember my CrossFit analogy, which applies anywhere. Yes, I am hurt, yes, I am down, but that’s how it works. This is what makes you strong.

It’s those down days that define your character more than your good days.

This is what I also teach when I coach classes at my gym — today might not be the day you hit a PR. Try hard, but it’s okay if you don’t. You might do less than you did before, and that’s okay. Come back next week and try again.

So two learning which is important to take away from this

• Success is non-linear

• Many principles from one part of your life can be applied to others. Use that to your advantage

If you are in a situation where you are thinking about what’s going on in your life and feel like you want to give up, just remember that the world is not against you. This is how it should feel. Find inspiration in other parts of your life that can be applied cross-functionally.

It started when I began using speech-to-text apps like WisprFlow. I quickly speech-to-text is probably one of the best interfaces with a computer (well, the only thing that beats that is directly connecting to the brain like Neuralink, but we are a bit far from that commercialization). But as I dug deeper, I realized that we don’t need WisprFlow. We can have a complete audio platform in a single app that does most things locally (yes, speech models can run locally on today’s hardware) and doesn’t require subscriptions (Who here likes monthly subscriptions? I don’t.).

Enter VoxBee.

An audio super app made for MacOS and Linux

Try VoxBee, free for 14 days.

The average human typing speed is 40 to 70 words per minute, where 70 is really advanced. Whereas after using VoxBee, you’ll quickly notice that the average human speaking speed is 125 to 150 words per minute. So, if you are speaking instead of typing, you get around 3-4x the speed on average.

For example, I’ve spoken 22.4k words at an average of 124 wpm, with over 9 hours and 30 minutes of typing saved.

If you can convert your speech to text easily, then you can now do things even faster.

But that’s not the only thing it can do.

It’s an all-in-one audio platform with multiple capabilities:

1. Converts speech to text in multiple languages on any browser or application, anywhere.

2. Autocorrects grammar when you are speaking English.

3. Add domain-specific dictionary words so it can auto-correct them.

4. Transcribes a recorded audio file to text. You just need to upload a file, and voila, you see the text.

5. Transcribes YouTube/X, etc., podcast videos into actionable insights with summaries.

6. Record online and offline meetings non-invasively with a single click, and once you stop the meeting, it will summarize everything from the call.

7. And much more soon.

How is it different from other tools out there?

1. It’s not a subscription service, so you don’t have to pay every month. You just pay once and use it forever. All updates and fixes are shipped directly to you for free.

2. It’s not just speech-to-text; it’s turning into an audio platform. So one app to rule them all.

3. We care about privacy, so your speech or text doesn’t leave your machine.

4. You can work on it even if you are offline.

Recently, I shared a video on how to use the podcast summary feature on VoxBee. Check out the 3-minute video below and follow my channel for more videos, tips, and tricks on using VoxBee.

If you want to elevate your day-to-day work, try VoxBee for free for 14 days and see how it makes you more productive.

Try VoxBee, free for 14 days.

During this time, I’ve created two complete consumer products that are live and generally available.

1. Real Food App - Measure how whole or processed your food is

2. VoxBee - A local, privacy-first speech-to-text app for MacOS and Linux

They’re not groundbreaking ideas, but I wanted to strengthen my ability to build a product from start to finish that anyone can use. As we know, with all the progress in AI, coding is nearly a solved problem — but launching a full product still requires time and skill with the available tools.

There are many things you need to figure out—like hosting, CI/CD, payments, email providers, databses and more. So, yes, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole of developing end-to-end applications, and I thought, hey, this might help others build in the same way. Here’s a useful list of what I’m using:

1. Hosting Platform: Vercel (mostly for small projects), Hetzner for one-off VPS, GCP for some production enterprise stuff (yes, I’m building with a friend here).

2. Object Storage: Cloudflare R2 (for storing my VoxBee MacOS app packages and failed images for Real Food App). It’s cheaper than S3 and follows the same API conventions, so it’s better.

3. Vibing tool: Claude Code (orchestrated by Conductor), ChatGPT (for all deep questions), Gemini. Although I feel there’s a better editor than Conductor to be built, I am thinking of one. I will keep you posted.

4. Agent Skills: skills.sh, I have also created my own skills here that I use extensively. It’s available for free via skills.sh. I also Anthropic’s frontend design skill to work on UI.

5. Web Search API: Brave Search API (There is a free tier), Perplexity (Pay per use)

6. Emails: Resend (really good service; I use the Pro subscription that supports 10 domains and cost $20/month).

7. CI/CD: GitHub Actions. If you’re using Linux machines, the free plan should work fine, but if you’re on a Mac while building a Swift App, it can be more costly, and you might need to pay extra. I had to set aside some money for billing.

8. Payments: Stripe, Polar, Dodo Payments—pretty standard stuff.

9. Support emails: Zoho (I find it really useful that you can have a primary inbox and aliases; it costs just $1/month).

10. Speech-to-text tool: VoxBee (created by me, available for MacOS and Linux). I used WisprFlow, but its monthly subscription is quite costly, and I highly value speech privacy. Using speech-to-text has greatly boosted my productivity. If you haven't tried it yet, give VoxBee a try.

11. Databases: Neon (easy to set up, free 0.5GB per project). Pretty soon, I will need to switch to a paid plan since I expect the DB size to grow.

12. Analytics & SEO: Google Analytics for Webpages, Ahrefs (I’m on a $20 Ahrefs subscription and haven't used it extensively yet, but we’ll see), PostHog for client-side telemetry.

13. Apple Developer account: VoxBee is available on macOS, so you need this if building for macOS. It costs $99/year.

14. Domains: Vercel domains.

I haven’t really started using any marketing or video-making tools yet, but I know there is CapCut.

If you are a fellow solo builder or founder, what tools are you using to build and improve productivity? Share your stack in comments.

I have been obsessed with clean, whole foods for a long time, but there wasn’t an easy way to find them on the go. So, as I built this app for myself, I also started making it available to others. During that process, I started getting some good feedback from early users, which I would like to share in this post.

But first, a few points about why I am building this and what the idea behind it is.

The core idea of this app is not only to explain what macro- and micronutrients are, but also to show that they’re secondary. It’s about determining how real or whole the food is. I believe that’s a far more important metric than macros/micros. A 2019 study confirmed that, when calories, energy density, macronutrients, sugar, sodium, and fiber are held constant, an ultra-processed food diet leads to weight gain.

Even excessive consumption of ultra-processed protein bars to meet your protein needs could harm your body

The proliferation of processed foods and foods with more than 3-4 ingredients has increased significantly over the past 40 years.

The fact that they are easy to package, market, and sell to users makes them part of the problem. And when companies realized people were more focused on macros/micros, we got those highly processed protein bars.

This is directly correlated with an increase in obesity around the world. (Of course, this is one factor, and abundance is another reason, which we will discuss at another time)

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And that is why it is super important that we go back to core principles and understand what is in our food. In our busy modern lives, we do not have time to cook everything ourselves, so we rely on packaged food. The point is not to avoid packaged food entirely, but at least to know what is in the food, make educated decisions, and use the recommendations to compare.

After I opened this platform to users, I received some really good initial feedback, which I am sharing below in 3 important points.

Transparency is important.

What you see is what you can make decisions about. One of the challenges of clean eating is that people are overly focused on macros. They only look at how much protein this bar has. But I think being transparent about the actual ingredients gives them an edge. Also, the first rule of thumb — the higher the number of ingredients in your food, the more likely it is to be worse. If you see any ingredient label, you don’t know what it is because there are so many variations. So if we could see those easily, we could make decisions quickly.

Users want recommendations on how much to eat.

Even though many people eat for taste and nostalgia, they want to avoid overdoing it. They want guidance on how much to eat, like once a week or once a month. This is the principle I also like - eating in moderation. Once in a while, you can enjoy that sweet ultra-processed snack. It’s OK. We don’t all have to be Bryan Johnson from day one.

Users want recommendations for healthier alternatives.

In the abundance of types of drinks, protein bars, etc., it’s really hard to find what is actually good. So users looking at a product want alternative recommendations on which one is relatively better and why. That is why we built the recommendation feature on our platform, which recommends based on the food's wholeness rather than just macros.

This is what is driving the core features now, and as I get more and more feedback on what would help users, we will keep iterating

If you are in the same boat, trying to eat clean, check out the Food Realness platform. When you sign up, you get 5 free credits to analyze.

One of the hardest parts of being healthy is controlling our food intake. It has one simple rule: if you eat good food in moderation, you will eventually be healthier than you are now. But this simple rule is hardest to follow.

Why is it so hard?
It’s because there’s so much hype around fancy healthy products (high protein, low fat, low carb) that we forget a simple metric of healthy eating. The more processed the food is, the worse it is for us. It’s also intentional that all these big companies are trying to make you submit to decision fatigue and make worse food choices.

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When we go to the grocery store, the general habit is to look only at how much fat or protein it has and make a quick decision based on that. BUT what we overlook is what the ingredients in food are and how processed they are. And that is where the real challenge lies. How do we know what ingredients are real and what are ultra-processed?

That’s why I built a Food Realness checker. It started because I wanted something to help me make better food choices quickly, and now I am sharing it with everyone.

So how does it work?
You are at a grocery store, you pick up a snack, and you just snap a photo of the front page. This will identify all ingredients used in this snack and analyze them, providing detailed information about each. If it doesn’t find it, you can scan its barcode, or if that doesn’t work either, just click the photo of the front page and the ingredients section, and voila, you should see some useful analysis of the snack.

Try to create a full analysis here. It’s free to sign up.

What’s next?
So now that you know what not to eat, how do you know what to eat? We are working on providing an alternate recommendation for the food you scan. This will close the loop on making your daily life healthier with better eating habits.

Since this product is in beta stage, if you find anything broken, please reach out to me here or here. If we all collaborate and help each other, we can live cleaner, healthier lives.

It’s been a long time I have used StackOverflow for coding — says almost every programmer nowadays

bootstrap

I remember when I got my first job at Microsoft back in 2016 - you join the company, have the orientation, and then you join your team and start looking at code. For the first few weeks, you’re trying to read and understand the existing code, trying to figure out what’s going on, and maybe adding some missing tests. It takes a good amount of time to read, understand, and then contribute to the codebase.

That was the pre-LLM coding era. Fast forward to today, everything has changed. We’re now in the post-LLM coding era.

You don’t really need to spend a lot of time understanding the code by yourself. You can just direct tools like Claude or Cursor to read the code, summarize the architecture, and voilà you already know how it works at a high level. You’re ready to make contributions in a matter of hours.

understanding

In the pre-LLM era, you needed to understand the code you were writing while you were writing it. But now, you actually write the code first (well, you ask your agent to write it), check the functionality, and then maybe read the code to see how it’s done.

If you’re shipping to production, you still need to understand the code. But gone are the days when you knew every single line you wrote.

If you’re just building a PoC or MVP, there’s no need to look at the code at all. Just verify the functionality, iterate until it works the way you want, and you’re done.

debugging

What if you have a bug?

In the pre-LLM era, you’d trace the code paths manually and figure out where the bug came from (and we all know logging is never complete enough to immediately show the issue). Then you’d find a fix, sometimes searching around for answers if it was language-related.

In the post-LLM era, you just chat with your agent. It finds multiple solutions, and you pick one and it even implements it for you. You don’t have to go through all the lines of code to figure it out yourself.

system design

Even in system design, these agents are your first level of interaction. Give them a vague problem to solve - say, in Claude’s code-plan mode or ChatGPT - and they’ll come up with multiple design options. You can refine and iterate until you’re satisfied. You no longer have to spend hours reading and researching before getting to a decent initial design.

Even though all these tools make the dev cycle much faster, if you’re shipping production-level code, you can’t vibe-code it all the time. Understanding the code still gives you a real advantage. In my opinion, people who understand code can use these tools far better than those who don’t.

A real-life example: I was at HackMIT a few weeks ago mentoring and judging. A hacker came to me for help debugging something. I asked him if he knew where the logs came from, and he said, “No idea this is what Cursor coded.” At that moment, I thought, if he just knew how to read a bit of code, he could’ve figured out the issue himself (or at least known what to prompt Cursor next).

The Future

Programming has become easier than ever, and I can’t imagine what comes next. Tools like WisprFlow are already making it possible to build without typing. You can just speak to your agent and get it done.

We should be excited about this. These tools let us build faster and cooler things than ever before — and the best way to use them is to embrace them while still keeping our understanding sharp.

you eat the pizza.

the next morning you lace up, hit the gym, and slide right back into your routine. one planned slice doesn’t derail the journey; it actually helps you carry it forward, sustainably and sanely.

why i swear by cheat meals

cheat meals, handled well, are rocket fuel for long-term consistency. but, like any powerful tool, they need guardrails.

properties of a good cheat meal

• portion-controlled, not a free-for-all

• scheduled sparingly, about once every 7–10 days

• something you truly enjoy (the bigger the smile, the better the refill)

why they matter

motivation alone fades fast; habits keep us in the game. a strategic cheat meal helps you build those long-term habits while letting you enjoy time with family and friends without stressing over your progress.

cheat meals are the five-minute pomodoro break after a 25-minute sprint.
they’re the weekend away from the day job that prevents burnout.
they’re the 5 % “yolo” money that lets you manage the other 95 % responsibly.

as with most things, it’s all about balance. if you’re chasing a long-term, sustainable fitness journey, a disciplined cheat-meal protocol can preserve momentum and push you closer to the goal line.

personally

i’ve been tracking macros and running a calorie deficit for the past five months. i’ve hit my goals and plan to keep improving, yet i still eat out once a week or so - pizza, ice cream, even greasy comfort food. sticking to the properties above means those treats haven’t hurt my progress one bit.

There are moments in life when you find yourself doing things you never imagined you would. Suddenly, someone presents you with an opportunity, and you decide to take that leap of faith. Only then do you realize the challenge is far greater than you initially thought, but sticking with it leads to growth and improvement.

A similar scenario unfolded for me at the beginning of this year. One day, my CrossFit coach approached me during class and said, “Hey, we think you'd make a good CrossFit coach. Would you like to try it?” Despite having trained consistently at my gym for almost four years, this thought had never crossed my mind. I was taken aback and told my coach I'd need time to think about it. After discussions with other coaches, my wife, and friends, I decided to give it a try.

This decision opened up an entirely new world for me. Before coaching independently, I had to complete a seven-day internship where I trained in one class, then coached the next class while the head coach observed and collected the feedback.

What happened during those seven days was transformative—I discovered things about myself I never knew before.

Growing up, I had never experienced anything quite like this.

Additionally, teaching in a language other than your native tongue presents its own unique challenges. Although I grew up speaking English in school and college and have lived in the United States since 2014, English remains my second language. Coaching a diverse group in my second language added another layer of complexity and personal growth.

Now, having coached for nearly two months, I'm continually learning and improving. Here are a few lessons I've learned that apply broadly to many fields:

• Maintain Eye Contact: When you're nervous, it's natural to avoid eye contact. Consciously making direct eye contact boosts your confidence and strengthens connections.

• Minimize Filler Words: Words like “umm” and “aaaa” slip out unconsciously. Being mindful and deliberate when speaking significantly reduces their frequency and improves clarity.

• Keep Explanations Concise: One valuable piece of feedback I received was to be concise. People often lose interest if explanations become too lengthy. Clear and crisp communication is far more engaging.

• Find Your Coaching Voice: Everyone has a unique voice that reflects their personality and confidence. Many experienced coaches advised me to discover and embrace mine, and I'm still in the process of doing so.

• Observe Actively: Observation is key. The more attentive you are to others, the better you understand their needs, allowing you to coach effectively.

These past two months have been incredibly enriching, and I'm confident that the future holds even more growth. I am genuinely glad I took that leap of faith.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Last year I wrote my year in review for the very first time.

What didn’t I achieve from what I planned last year?

• Did not spend enough time building side projects

• Wrote less than I thought I would

• Did not go on enough hikes

Even though I did not achieve some of what I planned, it was still a great year of learning and exploring.

Continuing the tradition for 2024 with this post.

Personal

The most exciting and impactful thing this year (and probably for life) was getting married. I had a great time with family and friends back in India. As you all know, an Indian wedding is full of tradition, food, and almost a week of unlimited celebration. My wedding was exactly like that.

Job

I am still working and enjoying the company I was at when I wrote the 2023 review. We have grown a lot and the work has been super fun. The mission and the people of the company keep me going and with all the ups and downs it is becoming one of the most exciting journeys of my career. After joining this company I had to force myself to work out in the morning but I think now it has become a habit. Amazing how habits change if there’s enough reason and time given to them.

Being Active

In 2023, I completed 215 CrossFit sessions, but this year, I only managed 146. While I did incorporate other types of workouts during my travels, this was undoubtedly the low point of 2024. Upon reflection, the frequent traveling (details in the next section) significantly disrupted my workout routine. Although I’m not thrilled about this decline, it presents an exciting challenge for 2025: finding creative ways to stay consistent with workouts, even while on the move.

I’m particularly inspired by Keith Rabois’ end-of-year workout update, and I plan to channel that inspiration into building a travel-friendly fitness routine that keeps me on track, no matter where I am.

Even though I worked out less my average step count increased from last year. It’s not 10k steps a year but I am happy with the progress

Also, I completed my goals for all the months except one. It tells you when I got married.

Personal PRs this year

• 1 rep Deadlift @ 255 lbs (up 20# from last year)

• I got 50 unbroken double-unders

• 1 rep Squat Snatch @ 110 lbs

• 1 rep Thruster @ 135 lbs

Travel

This year was surprisingly a bunch of travel, both work and personal.

As part of my annual trip to Alaska, I visited Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest national park in the United States. One of the highlights was exploring McCarthy, a remote and charming town within the park with a population of just 150. It was a unique experience that showcased the rugged beauty and seclusion of the area.

I visited India twice, which is great as I had never been to India twice in the year after I moved to the US back in 2014. Fortunately, it was during the festivals of Holi and Diwali, so I got to celebrate those with my family.

I ended the year with a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was my first time visiting Mexico, and the experience was nothing short of amazing—beautiful, relaxing, and the perfect way to close out the year.

Other places included Nashville, Syracuse, New York, Denver, Indianapolis, Bangkok, Houston, Austin, and Galveston.

Newsletter

This year was also not a good year for writing. I only wrote 6 articles. I guess this year, I need to put more effort into writing. My subscriber count did grow to 188 from 83, which is pretty decent.

Books

I read some pretty interesting books this year. Some of them I am listing below as my recommendations

• Same as Ever by Morgan Housel

• More Than You Know by Michael Mauboussin

• The Courage to be Happy: True Contentment Is In Your Power

• The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down

• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable

As always, I will strive to read more this year and share what’s most interesting.

Podcast

I kept listening to the podcast I listened to last year but added some new ones:

• Lex Fridman

• Tim Ferriss

• Econ 102 by Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg

• Pirate Wires

• Sherlock & Co.

What’s cooking for next year?

• Read / Write more

• Workout more (coming soon with some interesting update)

• Travel more (do not skip workouts while traveling)

• Spend more time learning new technologies

• Building side projects (I am gonna try harder this time)

• Meditate daily

To everyone reading this, I hope you had a great last year and know what you can improve this year even if it is small. Stay safe, stay healthy, and a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.

I’ve been doing CrossFit for over four years now, and this past week I found myself reflecting on how it has positively impacted my life. This reflection also led me to think about how we can take lessons from any area of our lives and apply them to other aspects.

As I began to write down some of the changes I’ve noticed in myself—not only as a person but also as a friend and partner—I realized just how far-reaching the benefits of this journey have been.

Persistence

When I first started CrossFit, I couldn’t do a single double-under. It was one of my biggest weaknesses. It took me over two years of consistent effort to finally get the hang of it. Every workout that included double-unders had to be scaled, but I never stopped attempting them. Almost every time, the rope would whip against my calves when I failed, leaving red scars that lasted for days. But I didn’t let that discourage me.

Gradually, I started seeing improvements. Today, I can sometimes string together 50 unbroken double-unders. While I’m still working on achieving consistent predictability, the progress I’ve made reminds me of the power of persistence.

The lesson: There are many things we don’t know how to do—or don’t yet have—but persistence over the years can lead to significant improvement, even if mastery feels elusive. There are no shortcuts, but the journey is worth it.

Discover the root cause

While working on my double-unders, I spent the first year and a half using ropes provided at the gym. At the time, I didn’t realize that not all ropes were the same. Even though I tried to pick one that suited my height, sometimes I ended up with a heavier rope and other times a lighter one. I didn’t think it would make much of a difference to my progress.

One day, I asked one of my coaches for advice, and she suggested that I buy my own rope. Voila! That was the game-changer. Once I addressed the root issue, everything clicked, and I began making significant progress. And now, here I am.

The lesson: The first step to solving a problem is identifying its root cause. Once you understand what’s truly holding you back, finding the solution becomes much easier.

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Get up and move

Anyone who has done deadlifts knows how injury-prone this movement can be. I remember one time I injured my back while lifting just half of my max weight at the time. During a warm-up set, I felt my back pop—a moment that taught me a hard lesson.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that injuries are a part of the journey. Instead of giving up, I focused on recovery, started back at square one (lifting much lighter than before), and worked diligently on improving my form. With patience and persistence, I not only recovered but eventually broke my personal record with far better technique.

The lesson: Every time you fall, get back up. There’s no shame in starting over—what matters is that you keep going.

Trust the process

One of the scariest movements for me in CrossFit has always been the squat snatch. When I first attempted it, I was terrified of falling backward with the bar overhead. Only recently—after more than four years of practice—have I started feeling comfortable with the movement.

It took guidance from several coaches and countless hours of practice to learn how to get under the bar properly. But even more than the physical training, overcoming the mental block was the biggest challenge. Training my brain to trust my form and the process took just as much effort as mastering the movement itself.

The lesson: Trust the process. Training your mind is just as important as training your body.

Respect and Cheer others

One of the most amazing things about CrossFit is being surrounded by people with diverse experiences and abilities. In any given workout, someone will lift heavier weights or finish the WOD faster than others. But what stands out is the culture of encouragement—people are always cheering for each other. Everyone respects where others are in their journey and genuinely appreciates the effort they put in.

If I finish my WOD before others, I make it a point to stay on the gym floor until everyone is done, cheering them on as their biggest supporter. This simple act helps create a positive and healthy gym culture, where everyone feels supported and motivated.

The lesson: Everyone is on their own journey in life. Respect where they are, and don’t hesitate to cheer them on, no matter what stage they’re at. Supporting others not only uplifts them but also enriches your own life experience.

Stop comparing to others

This ties closely to the previous point: your only true competition is yourself. Each day, you wake up striving to lift more than yesterday, to be a better version of yourself. In CrossFit, there’s always healthy competition with others, but the primary focus is on self-improvement. The goal is to become a fitter, stronger version of you.

That doesn’t mean you can’t draw inspiration from others—far from it. Being inspired by someone else’s achievements can be motivating, but only if it fuels your own growth. Over-focusing on how much better others are, however, is a recipe for frustration and failure.

The lesson: Focus on becoming a better version of yourself rather than trying to become someone else. Stop fixating on what others are achieving. Instead, aim to make yourself 1% better than you were yesterday.

Take a break

A valuable rule of thumb I’ve learned from CrossFit is that sometimes you need to take a break. You can’t always be at your best, nor can you maintain peak productivity every single day. There are times when I don’t feel like lifting heavier or pushing myself to 100%. And that’s perfectly okay.

I’ve learned to listen to my body. On days when it doesn’t feel right, I treat it as a lighter day—I’ll lift less, scale the workout, or do whatever it takes to avoid overdoing it. Sometimes, I even take a break for a few weeks to rest and recharge. This time off allows me to come back stronger, both physically and mentally.

The lesson: You don’t have to be productive every day. When it doesn’t feel right, take a break, recharge, and trust that you’ll return stronger and more prepared to tackle your goals.

Everyone has something in their life that they can strive to do better. The key is to look within and help yourself grow. One of the most effective ways to elevate your life experiences is by transferring the lessons and skills you’ve gained from one area to another. You don’t have to apply everything exactly as it is, but you can draw inspiration from your experiences and use it to enhance your overall well-being.

If you have similar experiences that have helped improve your lifestyle, don’t hesitate to share them in the comments. Your story might inspire or help someone else reading it.

I land at Wiley Post-Will Rogers Airport after flying for almost 12 hours. It’s a tiny airport with even fewer people. I started in Seattle and after two hops at Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay Airport, I reached my destination where I will celebrate the 4th of July of 2019. This was my 3rd trip to Alaska and the first solo trip that I made on a whim.

My obsession with exploring Alaska started back in 2017 when a bunch of us decided to travel to Alaska in the summer. Even though the visit was quite what anyone does when they go to Alaska, camping in Denali National Park, doing a glacier tour in Whittier, driving to Hatcher Pass, etc, the rugged terrain and sheer volume of amazing mountains and wilderness caught my attention. I live in Seattle, a city surrounded by the majestic Alpine ranges of the North Cascades, the Olympics, and Mount Rainier National Park. Yet, despite this stunning landscape, the untamed beauty of Alaska has a way of drawing me back, making me want to visit again and again.

The next trip in the summer of 2018 led me to Kenai Fjord National Park in the Seward area, where we hiked up near Exit Glacier on a trail called Harding Icefield. The hike was a total of 8 miles out and back with 3k feet of elevation gain. When you are on the trail, it’s like just another trail (except you need to carry a beer spray just in case) but the moment you are on top of the trail you see an icefield miles and miles in distance. It just doesn’t end. That one view makes your hike worth it.

We also had the opportunity to hike on the Matanuska Glacier, located just a 1.5-hour drive northeast of Anchorage. This was my first experience hiking on the glacier. Wearing crampons, and carrying a hiking stick and ice axe, it was a fun experience of traversing on a glacier where we saw a bunch of crevasses that could go beyond 150 feet deep. Imagine taking a wrong step there. The short hike ended with us encountering an ice cave where we could go a bit inside and explore.

In 2019 I wanted to visit Alaska but didn’t know where to go so I opened up the map and looked at how north I could go. So I saw this place Utqiagvik and started reading about it. It used to be called Barrow and has a point called Point Barrow, which is the northernmost point in the US. It is closer to going to the North Pole from there than to Seattle. I got super excited and immediately decided to go there. It was over the long weekend of the 4th of July and somehow my friends were not available so I decided to do it solo. I landed at the Airport and funnily enough my hotel was 10 minute walk from the Airport. Barrow at that time only had 2 hotels, I stayed at the cheaper one. Those 4 days were some of the most memorable as they involved spending time with the local Eskimo community and celebrating the 4th of July in their traditional way. It did not involve lighting fireworks because there was no sunset in that season. I also got to do a polar dip in the Beaufort Sea, visit Point Barrow, see the natural permafrost refrigerator, etc.

In 2020 COVID hit, and I didn’t get a chance to visit Alaska. But I still wanted to.

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I had always visited Alaska in summer so I thought it would be cool to visit in winter and maybe see the Northern lights. Luckily I have a friend who is from Wasilla, which is an hour north of Anchorage. He and his to-be wife, both my good friends, were staying in Wasilla at that time therefore I visited and stayed with their family for 10 days. This trip was filled with playing around in deep snow and watching Northern lights while the outside temperature was -23 degrees Celsius.

This trip was followed by another trip to Wasilla next year for their Wedding. I attended the Alaskan wedding which was super fun. One of the guests flew into the wedding via their Sesna place. How cool!

The next two trips were probably two of my most memorable national parks as they were remote and allowed me to explore the extreme and pure Alaskan wilderness.

The first one was Katmai National Park in July 2022. The only way to get there is by taking a seaplane from this small town called King Salmon. The reason it attracts a lot of people who are interested in wildlife is because it has a higher density of Grizzly bears than humans. A cool thing about the bears is that they don’t present any danger to humans as there is enough supply of Salmon migrating upstream. We witnessed an abundance of bears feasting on fresh salmon throughout the day as they fattened up in preparation for their winter hibernation.

This summer I visited another national park called Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Fun fact about this park on average only ~70k people visit it each year vs 600k to Denali National Park. It’s the largest national park in the US but one of the least visited due to its remote location. We visited a town called McCarthy whose population is around 115 people. The exciting part of the trip was a 70-minute plane tour which showed amazing glacier views. We saw at least 13 glaciers up close from the plane. I had never seen glaciers that way and it was mesmerizing. We also visited the historic Kennecott Mines, the 800-mile Trans Alaska gas pipeline, and the beautiful city of Valdez and rode the sled dogs of the famous Iditarod race.

I have been fortunate enough to visit Alaska 7 times in the last 8 years and I can say that if you are in the US and never visited Alaska, you should. If you are not in the US and visit the US in the future, I would recommend spending some time in Alaska. With its pure raw wilderness, rugged mountains, and amazing historical value, it’s a magical place to visit.

Due to the vastness of Alaska, there are so many places I have not got a chance to yet but hopefully that will change in the future. A few of them which I am excited to visit are

• Nome

• Wales and Little Diomede island where you can see Russia

• Gates of the Arctic National Park

• Drive on the Dalton highway

• Kodiak Island

• Alaska State fair to view giant size vegetables

• and many more…..

“When you travel in Alaska you are humbled by its size and wildness, awed by its beauty, inspired by its original peoples whose culture is still deeply rooted.” – David Roberts

Occasionally, I come across a podcast so captivating that I want to drop everything and listen to it in its entirety. I've never been a fan of seeing wildlife in captivity and always prefer observing animals in their natural habitats. This particular podcast intrigued me for that very reason. Although I wanted to listen to it in one sitting, I ended up spreading it over 2-3 sittings since it's a 4-hour podcast

If you are interested in learning about the Great Amazon and excited to learn from first-hand experience of what can you expect in deep Amazon, this podcast is for you.

This podcast was recorded in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. I have to commend Lex Fridman for having the courage to explore the Amazon and record this podcast. He is one of the podcasters I truly admire.

This is the tweet he wrote before going into the rainforest that kept me on my toes until the podcast came out.

Why is this podcast so interesting and captivating?

The Amazon rainforest is home to millions of species found nowhere else in the world. For these species, survival is the top priority. Every day, they must venture out to find food while hoping not to become prey themselves.

The jungle is really just a giant churning machine of death and life is kind of this moment of stasis, where you maintain this collection of cells in a particular DNA sequence and then it gets digested again and recycled back and renamed into everything.

It gives you a perspective of how vast and interesting this world is and there are places in this world where species wake up and think about whether they will survive to see another day.

Some of the other topics discussed in this Podcast

• Who is the Apex predator in the rainforest? (this is what I found most exciting)

• What is it like to go into an actual deep rainforest and how to survive?

• Aliens, Elephants, Mammals, Piranahas.

• How do we protect and think about the longevity of rainforests? Why is it important to protect them?

• Other explorers around the world

To fully enjoy this podcast, I recommend watching the video version. Seeing the joy and passion on Paul Rosolie's face as he speaks enhances the experience tremendously. It truly elevates the podcast.

Don’t miss the section where a small snake suddenly appears from the tree and they talk about it.

Last year I wrote about my first Murph workout

For those unfamiliar with the Murph workout, you can learn more about it here. Every year on Memorial Day, CrossFit gyms across the United States participate in this workout.

tl;dr

1-mile run
100 pull-ups
200 pushups
300 air squats
1-mile run

My time last year was 50 minutes and 10 seconds. I could not beat it this year and added 2 minutes on top of it. This year my time was 53 minutes and 30 seconds. Even though I felt stronger this year, I think I have gained some weight that contributed to it. Murph is a total body weight workout, and having less weight is an advantage. My weak points in this workout are mostly the pushups and the second mile run. I plan to work on these areas over the next year.

I am committed to working harder this year to increase my body strength and return stronger next year to break my personal record.

As a reader of this newsletter, I encourage you to find something you can look forward to each year. This practice helps with long-term learning and improvement.