blaize

Isaura the Slave Girl was a famous Brazilian 1980s telenovela based on the 1875 novel by Bernardo Guimarães. We got to enjoy the beautiful series in the early 90s thanks to NTA network. Set in 19th-century Brazil during the era of slavery, it follows the story of Isaura, a light-skinned enslaved woman who struggles for her freedom while being relentlessly pursued by her obsessive master. Hearing this soundtrack in 2026 should unlock pure Nostalgic memories for anyone who watched this back then. If you remember this soundtrack, your first child should be in secondary school by now 😂

Samuel travels the world asking for a taste of home, and today Ayu invited him into hers. At 41, her charm and kindness reflect the life she has built from the ground up. As she introduced her family and prepared a traditional Balinese feast, she shared memories of her youth—when one egg was a meal for two. It was a powerful reminder that those who have endured the most often have the most to give. 🙏 A beautiful exchange of culture, history, and heart. 🥘🌿

I spent time in Shenzhen last year and when I saw Merz come back from China saying Germans need to work more I immediately knew what broke his brain because I lived the exact same cognitive shock my first week in Huaqiangbei I burned through 4 prototype iterations of a motor controller board for less than a thousand bucks total, back home a friend was working on something similar and spent over 12 thousand for a single revision that took almost two months to arrive when you live that contrast in your own hands with your own project something permanently shifts in how you see the world and it goes way deeper than speed & cost what Shenzhen actually built is a collective learning organism, imagine 20 PCB fabs 15 injection mold shops 30 component distributors and a hundred firmware freelancers all within a 2km radius, looks insanely redundant from the outside until you realize redundancy is actually information density in disguise I watched this firsthand with an injection mold supplier I was working with, this guy had seen a hundred founders iterate similar thermal designs over 6 months so he proactively modified his tooling before I even opened my mouth, he knew what I needed before I knew what I needed, the intelligence lives in the relationships between the nodes and it compounds daily the west thinks about manufacturing as a cost center you optimize by centralizing… China accidentally built a distributed neural network of manufacturing intelligence where knowledge diffuses horizontally across thousands of agents faster than any single western company can process internally so when Merz comes back and says we need to work a bit more I think he saw the problem but COMPLETELY misdiagnosed the solution, telling Germans to work harder is like telling a horse to gallop faster when the other side built a combustion engine the gap is ARCHITECTURAL it’s ecosystem density, you need a custom connector in Shenzhen you walk 200 meters, in Munich you send an email and wait 3 weeks it’s iteration speed, parallel search vs sequential optimization at the system level, it’s risk tolerance, Chinese founders ship something broken on Monday fix it Tuesday ship again Wednesday while European companies are still in the approval phase for the pilot program of the feasibility study… and Merz only saw the surface, what he missed is the tier 2 cities like Hefei Chengdu Wuhan replicating the Shenzhen model at scale right now BYD going from irrelevant to outselling every european automaker combined in roughly 5 years, Huawei building its own 7nm chip under maximum sanctions when every analyst said it was physically impossible & behind all of that a government that treats advanced manufacturing as an existential national priority while europe debates whether AI needs another ethics committee I think what we’re watching is the most asymmetric economic competition in modern history and most western leaders are still framing it as a productivity problem when it’s actually an ontological one Europe & America are optimizing variables that China stopped tracking years ago meanwhile China is compounding on dimensions the west has no framework to even measure Merz at least had the courage to name it out loud and I respect that genuinely but working a bit more inside a broken architecture just means you arrive at the wrong destination slightly faster

BRAVEHEART was released 29 years ago this week. Acclaimed as one of the great historical action movies and among Mel Gibson’s most popular films, the making of story is as epic as a medieval battle… 1/53

@doneneks 🤣

Wetin I see this morning 😑

@KidBold Just finished "Page Eight" on netflix, a damn good bristish political/spy thriller. You'd enjoy it.

What movies are yall watching these days?

This account is calling for mass murder of civilians in a Nigerian community. Please report this account.

@makispoke The Expanse. It's so fucking good I'm perplexed folks are sleeping on it. It's like Game of Thrones but in space.

I’m gonna give 10 random people that repost this and follow me $25,000 for fun (the $250,000 my X video made) I’ll pick the winners in 72 hours

For a people who are unnecessarily aggressive, our docility when it comes to bad governance is confusing. Or maybe we’re just a nation of cowards and the aggression is a mask.

Guys, report this post. It must be taken down

@makispoke @0x You look absolutely stunning!

Please RT #FreeRhodaJatau

@josephaurcel @Munachimsoooo I considered Taiwan for the coming holiday, till I saw it costs about £1k for a return ticket.

If you live abroad as a Nigerian, you can apply for Taiwan 🇹🇼 visa & get it in 7 days. Beautiful country. Only financial proof of €600/month minimum inflow, account balance doesn’t matter. Your passport, resident permit, photo & visa form cc: @Munachimsoooo @Mochievous

@Mochievous Just checked price of flight ticket from London. 😬

I’ve been to many countries in my life and one thing I can say for sure is that there are few countries in the world that beat Vietnamese cuisine. If you are a good lover, please put Vietnam on your list 🙏🏽

I LITERALLY stopped working on my memo so I could read this indictment. I am on page 24 and JESUS LUPITA NYONG'O CHRIST. HOW this man still has the capacity to shock me after everything that's happened, i'll never know. but I am sitting here *STUNNED*.

@Munachimsoooo I won't mind a Tshirt. 😁 Your Travelletters had all the info and tips I needed for the trip, the rest I could figure out myself. You're doing a great job with it. I've made plans to visit 2 countries from your writeup later this year, shows how impactful your Travelletters is.

Wow. You deserve a Tshirt. Didn’t think anyone will read my Travelletters and up and visit here without asking for further tips 🤣🤣 You are fearless👏👏👏👏

@Munachimsoooo It's a beautiful, serene place. A bit pricey but worth it. I celebrated the new year there after reading about it on your travelletters, just knew I had to visit.

There is a whole new world beyond Marrakesh👀👀. I have tagged this eco-lodge on IG. Please check them out on Travelletters IG page. @Travelletters_

Post a picture of some landscape where the main requirement is that you NOT appear in it. Just a picture, no description. Let’s travel virtually around the world 💕

@OreOgunb @djasonpalmer @TheEconomist Congrats!

*some personal news*: your girl got promoted! Starting from today, I will be joining @djasonpalmer as co-host of The Intelligence, @TheEconomist’s flagship podcast. Tune in every weekday to hear us chit chat with correspondents about the stories shaping your world 🎙️