M!ke

“The Quran is the word of God!” “It is written by Muhammad!” “No!” “Who wrote it?”

Palantir, but for organizing children’s birthday parties who’s building this?

Pundits have been claiming people will write their own software for specific business use cases for a long time. This from BusinessWeek August, 1991 on the 10th anniversary of the IBM PC and MS-DOS. NB "programming a VCR" was the go-to meme for "too difficult for everyone."

Three brothers moved from India to South Africa. They started a small tech company. Then they befriended a man named Jacob Zuma. When Zuma became President in 2009 the brothers stopped being businessmen. They became the people behind the President. They picked his ministers. A politician confirmed under oath that the brothers called him to their house and offered him $44 million in cash to become Finance Minister and fire the officials standing in their way. He said no. They found someone who said yes. They took control of Eskom, the company that powers South Africa. They took control of Transnet, the company that moves South Africa's goods. They put their own people in charge of both. $3.2 billion in government money flowed to their companies. Zuma's son sat on their boards. Zuma's daughter was made a company director. They secretly bought a house for one of Zuma's wives. In 2013 they flew 217 wedding guests from India and landed the plane at a South African military air force base. Not a civilian airport. A military base. Nobody stopped them. When Zuma was finally removed from office in 2018 the brothers were already on a plane to Dubai. They were arrested there in 2022. The UAE refused to extradite them. They are still in Dubai today. $3.2 billion taken. Nobody has gone to prison. 💀🇿🇦🇮🇳