Did you know ‘WHIPLASH’ started as a short film? Damien Chazelle couldn’t secure funding for a feature film. He made an 18 minute proof of concept, submitted it to Sundance Film Featival in 2013. It won Short Film Award and funding followed soon after.

Super interesting to see NVIDIA push hard for non-congruent transformer elements[like Hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE Architecture, sub 10% sparsity, super long context window, RL native with Gym] is also the way you create a stronger need for GPUs rather than AI accelerators/TPUs

US Ag economy strained: Midwest loan repayments down 8th quarter; 21% lenders tightened collateral. 92% expect lower crop earnings. Half foresee forced sales. Soy losses 3rd year; futures -25-30% vs 2022. Expenses +$12B to $467.4B 2025. Factors: tariffs, war, rate hikes, trade

South Korea - Rising electricity rates prompt factory shifts abroad; Korea Zinc builds U.S. smelter (KRW 11T $7.8B investment) halving costs vs Korea's ~KRW 180/kWh ($0.12). Hyundai Steel/POSCO plan $5.8B Louisiana mill (2.7M tons). Korea rates $127.9/MWh vs U.S. $81.5; Samsung

Chinese Developers Stuck with Idle Land - 27 cities hold 22,000 ha(roughly Manhattan's land area times four, or about one-third of Singapore's total land) residential land without pre-sales (9,000 ha unconstructed), mostly pre-2021 peak buys. Developing unprofitable; some firms

A German pension fund (VZB-manages pensions for over 10,000 dentists in Berlin, Brandenburg, and Bremen) suffered over €1 billion in private market losses. Its new head, Thomas Schieritz, criticized the integrity of credit ratings, noting that nearly all €739 million in loans

Laopu Gold's H1 2025 revenue surged 251% to ~RMB 12.35B (~$1.72B USD), with profit up 286%, driven by fixed-price cultural gold pieces ($5K–$16K equiv.) and queues rivaling luxury drops. With 41 elite boutiques yielding ~$64M per store, it outpaces Richemont's jewelry division

During WWII, Ford's Willow Run plant produced 8,685 B-24 Liberators, peaking at one bomber per 63 minutes with 42,000 workers

Korean Retail Safe-Haven Investments 2025 gold bar sales at 5 major banks: 677.9 billion won ($471 million) thru Dec 24 (record, >4x 2024); 4 banks sold 3,745 kg (+2.7x YoY). Silver: 30.6 billion won (~38x last year). Gold +70% YTD, silver +150% (best since 1979). Shinhan Gold

From January to November 2025, global shipbuilding orders fell 37% to 44.99 million CGT. South Korea's orders declined only 5% to 10.03 million CGT, raising its market share to 22% (likely ~20% for year, up from 17% in 2024). This contrasts with China's 47% plunge. Gains are

Huawei plans 2026 Korea launch of Ascend 950 AI processor in clusters (not standalone), plus computing cards, data center solutions. Focuses end-to-end integration (hardware/software/networking/storage) for industrial AI adoption. In talks with customers

Japan Semiconductor/AI METI budget for semiconductors/AI nearly quadruples to ¥1.23 trillion ($7.9 billion) FY2026. Rapidus: ¥150 billion ($960 million), total ¥250 billion for 2nm chips by 2027. AI: ¥387.3 billion ($2.5 billion) for models, data, physical AI. Minerals: ¥5

In 2024, foreign residents and corporations acquired 175.3 hectares of Japanese farmland, nearly double 90.6 hectares in 2023. Individual foreign buyers (377 people) purchased ~95 hectares, led by Chinese (102), South Koreans/Brazilians (42 each), Americans (27), and Vietnamese

TSE Delistings 2025 est. 125 (+31 YoY, record 2nd year; highest since 2013). MBOs 28 (vs 18 prior). TSE reforms tighten criteria, focus capital efficiency/PBR. Listings ~3,782 (-60). Quality over quantity; high delistings likely 2026

Saudi Arabia and UAE import construction-grade sand from Australia (2023: Australia exported $273M total sand; Saudi imported ~$140K from Australia) despite vast deserts, as wind-smoothed desert grains are too round for strong concrete. trying to make concrete with desert sand is

... i was today years old when i learned i don't read enough.... 😮‍💨🦎🦗 #hotones

Priceless moments Jukan