#sriGINthoughts #GBUF #GoodBadUglyFunny #26Oct25
Political Flow:
🌍 The last two weeks meandered. The Middle East is sitting on an uneasy peace. It’s BAU on the Russia–Ukraine front. India is acting tough with the U.S. Not all quiet on the western, or rather, the Baloch front for Pakistan. Then Trump… has a side talk with the Indonesian President and puts in a word for his son, Eric; continues his pardoning spree this term. Binance’s CZ — who had backed the First Family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial — hit the thou-shalt-be-pardoned lottery this time. Amid all this, Timor-Leste became the 11th member of ASEAN. So, will ASEAN now be called ASEAN XI? Oops — that won’t sit well with DJT, will it? 🤝
Sport Miracles:
🇨🇻As is its wont, sports threw up joyful surprises. Cape Verde (aka Cabo Verde) qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A nation of barely half a million making it to football’s pinnacle tournament… Cameroon vibes anyone? As if that weren’t enough, LA Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani ⚾ belted three home runs and struck out ten batters — all in a single pennant-winning game, redefining the very idea of an all-rounder. For context, that’s roughly the baseball equivalent of a triple-century and a ten-for in one cricket match! Meanwhile, Kohli fist-pumped after breaking two ducks! 😉
Tech Outages:
💥 AWS went down — perfect timing, Indians were about to celebrate Diwali. 😊 It seemed like half the internet went dark, though Asia mostly escaped the chaos. Among the top casualties: smart beds! 🛌 Users of Eight Sleep found themselves either too hot or too cold, with beds that refused to elevate, flatten, or sound the wake-up alarm. How much more interconnected do we really want our lives to be? 😴
TV Brouhaha:
🎶 The doyen of music television, MTV, is shutting down its music channels. For many of us who grew up listening to the greats belting out one hit after another, guided by those funky VJs, MTV (along with the now-defunct Channel V) shaped our pop-music lives. [Not that I could decipher any of the lyrics until much later!]
👦 And then came the trolling of Ishit Bhatt. The precocious ten-year-old, brimming with confidence and bluster, who made it to the hotseat on the Junior edition of Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), was accused of being disrespectful to the great Amitabh Bachchan. The online mob descended, seemingly extracting an apology from the child. Slow Clap!
👨💼 All this, in a world where Bill Gates made a cameo in the Hindi soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (“Because the Mother-in-Law Was Also Once a Daughter-in-Law”) to discuss maternal and child health with the heroine, Smriti Irani — a former India cabinet minister. Now tell me, really — who owes whom an apology?
💎 Crime & Culture:
Rounding out the week with a daring heist at the Louvre Museum. In less time than it takes to finish a morning cappuccino (9:30–9:38 am, to be precise), four thieves made their escape on two scooters — with a few diadems ( not the Ravenclaw kind ), brooches, and necklaces — leaving French authorities rouge-faced. Not one to squander a publicity opportunity, the German company Böcker, which manufactured the ladder the robbers used, ran a tongue-in-cheek advert. And wags around the world are already telling their bosses: even French thieves observe “working hours.” 😎
Views are personal. Any hurt unintentional. Till the next heist…
























