Troy Thiel

A blog post just wiped $30 billion off IBM in a single afternoon. Not a product launch. Not an earnings miss. Not a competitor undercutting on price. A five-minute blog post explaining that Claude can read COBOL. IBM dropped 13%. Worst single-day loss since October 2000. Twenty-five years of stock resilience ended by one AI company publishing a capability update. Here’s what happened: 95% of ATM transactions in America run on COBOL. Hundreds of billions of lines power banking, airlines, and government systems. The developers who built them retired decades ago. The knowledge left with them. Finding engineers who can even read COBOL gets harder every quarter. IBM’s moat was never the technology. It was the fact that nobody else could understand it. Entire consulting empires existed because the code was too old, too tangled, and too critical to touch. Companies paid IBM billions because the alternative was catastrophic system failure. Then Anthropic published a blog post saying Claude Code can map dependencies across thousands of lines of COBOL, document workflows, identify migration risks, and translate legacy logic into modern languages. Modernization in quarters instead of years. The market heard: the priesthood just lost its monopoly on the sacred language. And this isn’t the first time. Last week Anthropic announced Claude Code Security for vulnerability scanning. CrowdStrike dropped. Okta dropped. Cloudflare dropped. One company is serially destroying legacy moats with blog posts. Now here’s where it gets surreal. This same company, on the same day, also published evidence that three Chinese AI labs ran 24,000 fake accounts and 16 million exchanges to steal Claude’s capabilities. DeepSeek used it to build censorship tools. MiniMax pivoted within 24 hours when a new model dropped, redirecting half its traffic to steal the latest version. And yesterday, the Pentagon summoned this same company’s CEO for what officials called a “sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot meeting,” threatening to blacklist them like Huawei for refusing to let the military use Claude without safety restrictions. Three stories. One company. Twenty-four hours. The company destroying legacy moats faster than the market can reprice them is simultaneously being threatened by its own government and looted by foreign competitors. Anthropic is valued at $380 billion. Its CEO says a 12-month delay in AI would make him bankrupt. The Pentagon wants to designate it a supply chain risk. Chinese labs are running industrial espionage against it. And it just proved it can vaporize $30 billion in market cap with a Monday morning blog post. Whatever you think about AI disruption, IBM’s stock just settled the argument. Full institutional analysis on my Substack. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

When Star Wars began airing on television in 2003, Chile stitched the commercials into the films themselves to avoid cutting to commercial breaks Lucasfilm, likely with George Lucas's approval, was upset by the unauthorized Cerveza Cristal ads inserted into Star Wars films aired on Chilean TV in 2003. They filed a claim with Chile's advertising ethics council in 2004, citing copyright violations, and won, banning the ads. See more rare historical moments: bit.ly/44OpIzi

@hotdudezz 1 and 4

what’s your type?

@manchESCer @Thomas_Smith90 Terribly sorry for your loss. My sincere condolences to you and Thomas’ family.

My beautiful partner of 12 years passed away in the early hours of yesterday morning. I’m utterly broken. I love you so much @Thomas_Smith90 I don’t really know why I’m posting this here - neither of us posted much - but some may knock w him and I am sorry for all our loss.

@Rainmaker1973 Trois couleurs bleu

Name one

@nocontextgayy Goldilocks. It’s just right 👍🏻

what’s this body type called?

@CityPowerJhb @CityPowerJhb when will this be restored now? This keeps occurring every weekend. What is going on?

#CityPowerUpdates #RandburgSDC Dear CityPower Customers, Emergency maintenance at Bordeaux Substation is still underway. An additional maintenance has to be done. The estimated time of restoration (ETR) has been revised to 17:00. We apologize for the inconvenience caused. ^ZD

@TheKiffness Zackie Achmat

@TheKiffness @TwinklyT But the Rise Mzansi manifesto does not place them as an opposition to anything. It’s just a plan to address the real problems of all South Africans. I believe that’s well worth consideration if not a vote.

@TheKiffness Songezo Zibi

@alexforbes is there anything wrong with your digital pipe at the moment perhaps? Haven’t been able to get into your app since last night and no calls to your number are successfully completed?

It was 2019. Before the world went mad and we lost all sense of time. It was a random Wednesday. Another flight to another city for another big meeting. Just another day really. And it was early which didn’t help my cause. I’m a pretty happy guy but mornings do require coffee. Strong, black and apparently never enough of it. I had to check in at the counter and was “obviously” given the middle seat, in the middle of the plane, as I had missed the check-in the night before, thanks to a mixture of presentations, Netflix and family time. Thanks Netflix, now I have to people and fight for the middle armrests, all without having enough coffee. By the way, the middle seat ALWAYS gets the armrests. Can we all agree? I digress. When I eventually got through the boarding gates, up the stairs, onto the plane and close to my seat, I saw a rather large man who would be my window neighbour and a lady dressed in pastels sitting in the aisle seat. I didn’t pay much attention to the man as I wouldn’t have to disturb him to get to my seat but the woman was clutching a book about gardening or something. She must have been in her late forties, hardly any make-up on but pretty. She stood up, I scuffled around her, sat down and we got ready to fly. She was focused on a page in her book about planting a “bare-root rose” and dealing with fallen leaves. Her head pointed down causing her hair to cover her off from the world. It made her look anxious. "Yeah, I hate flying too", was my first thought. The take-off was a series of misfortunate events, someone was apparently claustrophobic and needed to exit the plane. We were just about to taxi when she stood up and requested (very loudly) to leave. We had to wait for permissions, and then for the doors to be opened, and then for her to leave. I get it, flying is not for everyone but her demonstration left us all feeling like we were in Final Destination part eleven. Not ideal. The cabin was heating up and the tension could be felt. I reached up to try to fiddle with my air to get it to work but only succeeded in opening up the conversation with the horticulturist aisle lady. “Is it working? It’s so hot in here,” she asked. “No, it looks like it will only work with the engines on,” I replied. “How fast do these things go? Do you think we’ll make up the time in the air? Is that possible?” she asked. “Yeah, if we catch a good wind we might be able to… do you have a meeting you’re trying to get to?” “Kinda, just meeting my sister. She’s coming from Cape Town.” It seemed that I had started a real conversation with a complete stranger, even with my lack of coffee and caring, but I had opened up the floodgates and was literally stuck in the middle seat with nowhere else to go. So I begrudgingly carried on with the “chat”. “Oh how awesome. Long weekend holiday?” I asked. “No. My… my brother had a heart attack last night. No. The night before. And we’re going to his farm to be with his son." He is so fit. He was so fit. It’s such a shock. I had never been to his farm. He invited us but I had never been. Now we’re going down to be with his son.” Suddenly, I felt a lump in my throat, and my eyes started to well up. I had completely misread this situation. This kind-hearted woman that I was trying to avoid was not afraid of flying… she was afraid of landing. And having to deal with whatever was waiting for her on the other side. And I was blaming my bad mood on coffee?!? She kept staring at the “bare-root rose” planting page. I could see her eyes scattering to try to find clarity in her thoughts. I took her hand and told her I was so sorry. I told her that I was so incredibly sorry for her loss and her pain, but in my head, I was also apologising because I had not seen it in her eyes because I was so focused on myself and my coffee (or lack thereof). We spent the rest of the flight speaking about her brother, she retold stories of her childhood and painted a beautiful picture of who I can only believe was an incredible human. She made me smile, laugh, and even cry. At one point, she also told me she was thankful to be sitting next to me as she needed to talk to someone before she landed. When the air steward came around, she even offered to buy me a coffee. Her words: “You looked like you needed one when you got on the flight.” I giggled when she said that. I never got her name, and I’m not sure I’ll ever see her again, but that flight and that moment was a tragically beautiful reminder that everyone is facing a battle we know nothing about. And that kindness matters. That moment was a nudge from the universe to remind me that sometimes when we open ourselves up and step outside of our comfort zones. We are all human and we are all "in this " together. We’re able to share immeasurable kindness. And we should. Always leave people better than you found them. Hug the hurt. Kiss the broken. Befriend the lost and love the lonely. Thank you kind “bare-root rose” planting lady. I hope you are still reliving beautiful memories of your brother. And more than anything, I hope you are okay. I really hope you all are. Okay. Love you. Bye.

Have you om nom nom nomed today?

Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.❤️ #EmotionalWellBeing

@Dischem @shaunfuckingwho This actually worked for me with the same problem. Frustrating to have to do (some issue with your authentication processes) but it worked.

@shaunfuckingwho Please logout of your App, login back and advise if your still experiencing the same issue.

@Dischem did you even try with the dischem app?

@chocoloza the best chocolate in SA - please know there are many of us watching hopeful to hear what your new venture may be or look like. Here to support! 😁

@JTCymru You will find a way through this feeling. Allow yourself to feel it and watch as it moves on because it will. Social media is known not to be great for helping people really connect so if possible, try spend time with people in person. Responses here show you are lovable.

@nickshancc It’s been a few days since you posted this… are you ok? Shout if you need to chat.

I just need a friend

@rainygay1 Christmas sweater win! 😂🤗

You just…fold it in

@tswiftbro It does get better 🤗 hang in there and shout if you ever need to chat.