From parliament drama to AI diplomacy — and why HR shouldn’t do Coldplay

Hello and welcome to the 52nd version of the Weekly Vine. In this week’s subject, we are going to focus on Jaideep Dhankar’s abrupt resignation, Ozzy Osbourne quitting life’s Crazy Train, Jensen Huang changing into a bridge between the US and China, the Extrapolation Bias, and the perils of attending a Coldplay live performance together with your Chief People Officer.

DHAXIT

Winston Churchill did many horrible issues, ingesting scotch at breakfast and ravenous Indians amongst them, however he had a manner with phrases. Take his line about democracy being “the worst form of government except all the other ones,” a sentiment he doubtless stood by after dropping to Clement Attlee within the post-war election. One can sympathise along with his cynicism when watching the each day proceedings in each Houses of Parliament, which resemble a really costly Bigg Boss episode (Rs 2.5 lakh per minute). Yet typically, there’s a twist definitely worth the worth of admission—just like the sudden resignation of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, which has left Delhi’s energy corridors scratching their heads.

As in the present day’s TOI edit notes: “Dhankhar’s abrupt exit goes against the decorum expected from a constitutional office. His frequent barbs at the judiciary make his own theatrical departure ironic. Whatever his reasons, the consensus is clear: ‘health’ wasn’t it.”
Even the farewell felt unusually frosty, as if HR was sending off an intern who spent three months simply watching reels.

PM Modi’s X submit learn: “Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar ji has had many opportunities to serve our country in various capacities, including as Vice-President of India. Wishing him good health.” The PM’s farewell message to Dhankhar is as terse because it might be. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, his outdated sparring accomplice from his Governor days, couldn’t resist suggesting his well being appeared simply advantageous.

Speculation is rife: Was it his nod to the opposition’s movement on Justice Vikas Nath Varma, his fixed judiciary-baiting, or only a aptitude for drama that made him script his personal exit?

Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha is poised for a brand new presiding officer. The NDA instructions 134 seats (plus 10 nominated members) versus the opposition’s 106, however the absence of a Vice President—who doubles as House Chairman—might flip routine procedural votes into an fascinating sport. For now, the Deputy Chairman holds the gavel, lest the House descend into prime-time chaos.

Speaking of Churchill, his predecessor Neville Chamberlain will perpetually be memed for declaring “peace in our time” after reducing a cope with Hitler. But it’s his elder brother, Nobel laureate Sir Austen Chamberlain, who left us the proper line for moments like this- even when he known as it an outdated Chinese curse that by no means existed: “May we live in interesting times.” If Dhankhar was aiming for his personal “peace for our time” second, he’s definitely made the instances fascinating.

Ozzy Out

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners – one of the best film to return out up to now this yr – begins with the road: “There are legends of people born with a gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death.” The reference is to the younger Blues musician Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore whose music might summon the undead. Ozzy Osbourne too, was born with the present of constructing music so true, it might pierce the veil between life and loss of life.

Two weeks in the past, when Ozzy, perched on an enormous black throne like some deranged medieval king, growled, “Let’s go crazy one last f**** time,” earlier than launching into Paranoid, it felt like theatre. Now it looks like prophecy. On July 22, John Michael Osbourne – sure, he had a superbly bizarre title earlier than the bat-biting and ant-snorting – left this world, however not earlier than reinventing what sound, fury, and darkness might imply.

Ozzy’s voice was by no means operatic, by no means “clean.” It was a cracked cathedral bell, wailing uncooked fact. With Black Sabbath, he didn’t simply sing; he conjured concern. When he stated go nuts, the viewers went nuts. He confirmed that melody and menace might exist. He confirmed the world that rock might be the angst of the faceless. His voice aged not like wine however like rusted metal: jagged, unyielding, unforgettable.

Many years in the past, a person from Liverpool – murdered by a loopy fanatic for not dwelling his life based on the ethos of a well-liked music that echoed the Communist anthem – wrote one other music titled Working Class Hero, which mocked society for forcing individuals to adapt to its requirements. Ozzy, ever the working-class hero from Birmingham, was the proper embodiment of the forces that rejected that conformity. He by no means conformed. Not to society’s expectations. Not to rock and roll’s. And not even to the vagaries of life and loss of life as he went out on his phrases, giving us one final rockfest with the gods of steel.

Ozzy is gone, however the echo of his wail, that haunted, unrepentant howl, nonetheless vibrates via each heavy riff performed in the present day. Perhaps it’s time for Lucifer to clear some room as a result of hell is about to get a brand new frontman.

JENSANITY: From Denny’s Booth to Silicon Diplomat

There are completely different ranges of smoothness. Joey Tribbiani asks, “How you doin’?” Don Draper adjustments the dialog. DB Cooper parachutes off with $200,000 and a bourbon. But proper now, the crown may belong to Jensen Huang- the leather-jacketed CEO of Nvidia who, with an off-the-cuff grin and a drink in hand, can transfer markets and geopolitical fault strains.

Huang’s rise reads like a cinematic montage spliced with moments of sheer grit. Born in Taiwan, he was despatched to the US at 9, dwelling along with his uncle in Tacoma, Washington. His uncle mistakenly enrolled him at Oneida, a non secular reform college masquerading as an elite academy. There, a 17-year-old roommate taught him push-ups whereas he taught the older boy to learn. Insults like “chink” on the native public college didn’t deter him; Huang excelled, graduating at 16 and incomes a spot at Oregon State University, the place he charmed his future spouse, Lori Mills, not with easy speak however relentless homework classes.

Huang’s first job wasn’t in tech- it was washing dishes at a Denny’s, a stint that taught him to remain calm throughout chaos. Fittingly, Nvidia was conceived at a Denny’s sales space in 1993, co-founded with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. The firm pivoted from failed Sega console chips to breakthrough GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) that revolutionised gaming and, later, synthetic intelligence. The CUDA structure and Nvidia’s GeForce sequence made Huang a cult determine amongst builders lengthy earlier than Wall Street realised his value.

Fast ahead to 2025: Nvidia is value over $4 trillion and sits on the coronary heart of the AI arms race. But Huang’s affect extends past Silicon Valley’s glowing servers, he’s now a de facto diplomat bridging the world’s two superpowers. Just days after shaking arms with President Donald Trump within the Oval Office, Huang was in Beijing, addressing a crowd in fluent Mandarin, having secured a surprising reversal of a US ban on Nvidia’s H20 AI chip gross sales to China.

This “chip détente” safeguarded billions in income and maintained China’s reliance on American know-how — a technique overtly endorsed by the Trump administration. Huang’s argument was easy but strategic: blocking Nvidia would solely present the market to Huawei, undermining US tech management. His mixture of engineering authority and political neutrality turned him right into a trusted middleman — a job as soon as held by Apple’s Tim Cook, however with far larger stakes within the period of AI.

Nvidia’s GPUs are the beating coronary heart of generative AI programs worldwide, making Huang’s selections crucial to each financial and nationwide safety agendas. “Technology leadership requires big markets,” Huang informed reporters in Beijing, declaring that China alone has “half the world’s AI researchers.” His potential to talk the languages of MAGA and Xi Jinping Thought, whereas conserving Nvidia impartial of Chinese provide chains, has positioned him as a novel energy dealer in an more and more fractured tech world.

From a child who mastered homework to the person who can sway the worldwide AI race, Jensen Huang has gone from constructing chips to shaping the longer term. And like all true easy operators, he does it with out breaking a sweat.

What is Extrapolation Bias?

We’re all beginner prophets now. One headline drops, and immediately we’re predicting the tip of civilisation. A single scandal, and we declare a complete trade rotten. One awkward video of somebody stealing a chocolate bar, and immediately we’re diagnosing the loss of life of morality. We don’t simply see events- we flip them into omens.

This is the mind’s favorite trick: to seize one thread and faux it’s the entire tapestry. An organization fires one CEO, and we name it proof that “all tech is corrupt.” One AI hiccup, and we’re satisfied the robots are plotting our funerals. One influencer fakes a trip, and Instagram turns into the Matrix.

We mistake dots for patterns, tales for proof. Because why wrestle with complexity when you may binge-watch your personal paranoia? It’s simpler to declare a world-ending conspiracy than to confess life is only a mess of unrelated occasions.
If this sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of this week’s Random Musing is about precisely this — our obsession with turning each ant hill right into a mountain vary. Read more.

Post-Script: Fix You, or Fix Your LinkedIn Bio?

There are two sorts of individuals on this world: those that go to Coldplay concert events, and those that get up the subsequent morning wishing they hadn’t. [I belong to a near-extinct tribe that doesn’t do concerts, doesn’t do mosh pits — I do playlists, at home, with tea or any other beverage and full WiFi.

July 16, Levi’s Stadium, California. The kind of night where 65,000 people hum Fix You in unison, and one CEO fixes himself firmly in the annals of HR history.

The scene: the Kiss Cam. The players: Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, married, father, boardroom evangelist. Kristin Cabot, Chief People Officer, architect of “award-winning cultures,” LinkedIn priestess of psychological safety. They don’t kiss. But they don’t not kiss either. They squirm, huddle, recoil, and try not to look like what they clearly are. Read more.