Today I saw a cockroach and decided not to kill it. I’m so inspired. Victory for Gen Z, victory for India’s students, victory for democracy! Let this be a precedent for the rights of the people being upheld by public offices.

You know which country needs its own “cockroach protest” moment? The United States, of course.

One of the most colossal failures of the Trump administration is the tariff policy. Remember how they harassed India with their on-again off-again tariffs? Well, earlier this year the US Supreme Court ruled that these tariffs are invalid, illegal, and had no basis at all. So the US Government had to refund billions of dollars to entities that paid tariffs.

And the price of goods in the US actually increased as a result of tariffs, leaving poor Americans more poor – even though Trump’s cronies obviously deny this.

So what does the Trump administration do now after this Supreme Court ruling? Make a new tariff policy! This week, the Trump administration imposed new tariffs of 10 percent and 12.5 percent on 60 trading ‌partners, including India and the European Union (but not Israel of course), over allegations that they were not doing enough to stop the export of goods produced with forced labour. These tariffs are imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which is meant to combat unfair or discriminatory economic practices by other nations.

You hear that? Forced labour! Unfair or discriminatory practices! Hilarious.

Forced labour is clearly a problem, and any measure to discourage forced labour is good. But you know what’s worse than forced labour?

K!lling labour. Which the US, through its endless wars and conflicts, has been doing for decades. Dropping bombs on unsuspecting families a thousand miles away – in West Asia, East Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, even parts of Europe.

Plus, people like Beyonce have benefitted from forced labour. A few years ago, it was revealed that Beyonce’s “Ivy Park” activewear line is made in sweatshops in Sri Lanka where women were exploited. Rihanna’s brand “Fenty Beauty” cosmetic line benefits from child labor in India. The Kardashians have made tons of money from all sorts of abuse overseas. Yes, they happen overseas but the American business owners were definitely aware of these unfair or discriminatory practices and chose to continue making money.

Anyway, small business and non-profits have already sued the US Government over these new tariffs, and I hope the US justice system is faster this time in having this stupid policy reversed.

And there’s no shortage of unfair practices in the United States – naked corruption, in fact. For example, just this week:

• Trump’s Truth Social is said to be teasing a “premium tier”, where for a hefty fee, wall street traders will get early access to Trump’s Truth Social posts so they can trade – in what is clearly a form of insider trading.
• American AI companies are again making boo-boos about Chinese AI models – this week two new Chinese models Moonshot and Kimi K3 again took the AI world by storm in what is a repeat of last year’s DeepSeek moment. The American AI overlords are again accusing these Chinese companies of basically doing what the American companies did.
• Speaking of AI overlords, Anthropic agreed to settle with lawyers an amount of $1.5 billion, for basically scanning millions of books to train Claude to write.

And let’s continue to be angry about AI companies being responsible for the RAM-ocalypse, where the global shortage of memory chips has caused the price of almost all gadgets to rise. This week Apple is reportedly testing a lease model, where users can lease iPhones – not own them. The problem is – and this was reported – that if a user misses one lease payment their phone basically gets locked down.

Speaking of cockroach victory

PM Modi announced that a high power task force is being setup to look into the NEET paper leak issue and make fixes. This task force is to be led by Infosys Co-founder and UIDAI mastermind Nandan Nilekani.

Good thing he didn’t appoint the other Infosys co-founder, whose recommendation would have been that students should work 72 hours a week.

In other cockroach related news, it was revealed that the Indian Government which imposed an internet blackout during the protest ordered a takedown of bitchat among student protests. Bitchat is Jack Dorsey’s open source messaging app that works without internet – using encrypted bluetooth signals to send messages. Dorsey revealed that the Government directed GitHub to remove multiple repositories linked to bitchat. Ok, very paranoia, very speech throttle. Glad it failed and the students won.

Also, PM Modi is said to have told his ministers to be more active on Instagram. I can’t wait for Nirmala Aunty to make reels about how GST works.

Headlines

• HCL Tech has signed an MoU with Sarvam AI (btw, HCL is an investor in Sarvam) and the Odisha Government to setup an AI data centre in the State. Investment of nearly 15,000 crores. Sigh. HCL Tech also opened a technology centre in GIFT City in Ahmedabad, employing 500 engineers.
• ANI is among the news outlets to sue OpenAI – which they did in 2024. This week, the Delhi HC refused to grant ANI an interim injunction against OpenAI. This allows OpenAI to continue operating without any restrictions while the copyright lawsuit proceeds. They’re opening office in Bangalore and all.
• Flipkart is set to enter the food delivery market in a few weeks. Hope they treat gig workers well. There might be a standalone app, but could also be integrated into the main Flipkart app.
• Klassroom, an EdTech startup, is IPO-ing. On July 31st.
• Swiggy proposes to amend its AoA to qualify as an Indian-owned and controlled company (IOCC) and to cap foreign ownership to 49.5%. Why are you surprised to learn that Swiggy is a foreign-owned company? Also, the IOCC status will allow it to own and sell inventory directly through Instamart. So it makes business sense.
• Punjab makes AI a mainstream subject from classes 1 to 12.
• Karnataka partners with Anthropic to modernize government services and has setup two dedicated working groups.
• Infosys has been fined in France for company’s employee time tracking system.
• Google rolls out selfie-video sign-in feature.

And finally – this bit of news which made me angry. A Tech Mahindra employee – a working mother, got fired for taking leave to care for her unwell daughter. The company denies they received any medical records, and police just directed her to the labour department. This lady is doing a silent protest outside her office. Go support her emotionally, leave nasty messages for the company.

This Week’s Find

After years – literally years – of resisting, I finally caved.

I bought a massage gun. And it’s so, so good. Plus it’s on sale.

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