Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome - Charlie Munger
💡 Did you know?
Why do cats’ eyes glow in the dark?
That eerie glow is actually a pair of built-in night-vision goggles.
Behind a cat’s retina is a mirror-like layer called the tapetum lucidum. Humans don’t have this. When light enters a human eye and isn’t absorbed by the retina, it’s not used.
But in a cat’s eye, light that passes through the retina without being absorbed hits the tapetum lucidum, which reflects it back through the retina. This gives the retina a second chance to capture the light. The glow you see in cats’ eyes at night is actually light bouncing off the tapetum lucidum.
Tech Talk
Grab your espresso, because the AI wars just hit "Ludicrous Speed." This week, OpenAI unleashed GPT-5.3-Codex, featuring a new "Frontier" tool designed to manage entire fleets of AI workers, because apparently, managing humans wasn't hard enough. Not to be outdone, Anthropic dropped Claude 4.6 Opus with a mind-melting one-million-token context window, essentially giving the bot the memory of an elephant with a PhD. In the "weird but cool" corner, a new AI app called DinoTracker can now identify dinosaur species from fossilized footprints with the precision of a seasoned paleontologist, so you can finally know exactly which prehistoric giant stepped into your backyard.
Science Scoop
Humanity might actually be getting its act together! Researchers just announced a major breakthrough using manganese, a dirt-cheap metal, to convert carbon dioxide into clean fuel, potentially giving us a massive win in the fight for sustainable energy. Up in the stars, NASA’s Perseverance rover just completed its first-ever drive on Mars planned entirely by AI. Video here. Even cooler? Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope discovered sulfur in the atmospheres of four giant exoplanets, a chemical "smoking gun" that’s helping us decode how these massive worlds formed.
The Rest of the World
The geopolitical stage is looking like a high-stakes chess match this week. In Washington, Prime Minister Netanyahu is meeting with the Trump administration to talk "military options" regarding Iran, while U.S. and Russian officials are ironically sitting down in Geneva for peace talks brokered by the U.S. to address the situation in Ukraine. From the EU banning the destruction of unsold clothing to a cow in a lab actually being caught using tools for the first time, the world remains as bizarre and resilient as ever.
Our Money, Our Risk, Real Investment, No Advice
We pledged approx. €2000 for you to see the ups 😀 and downs 👎. Defence back on a rise and Bitcoin seems to be settling in?
The AI race is not just about building the best models, but about structural power, combining models, infrastructure, and distribution which raises questions about who should be allowed to dominate. Rather than trusting any single company, society should enforce accountability, checks and balances, interoperability, safety, and respect for rights, ensuring that AI winners operate under strong constraints. The healthiest future is likely a plural ecosystem of providers, open standards, and regulated systems, where power is tied to responsibility rather than unchecked dominance. Read the full article here: https://newsletter.themvpletter.com/p/ai-race
February 11th to February 17th 2026 - Riding the Global Rollercoaster without a Seatbelt
The last seven days have been a classic reminder of why I have stayed in this game for 10 years: the market has the attention span of a goldfish and the mood swings of a lead singer in a garage band. We started the week with American indices like the S&P 500 flirting with the 7,000 mark, only to see it pull back as investors started sweating over the actual impact of the AI boom versus the hype. Meanwhile, Europe was busy trying to find its footing, with the DAX bouncing off support levels like a pinball as it balanced decent corporate earnings against some fairly gloomy economic sentiment data from Germany. Across the pond in India, the Nifty 50 took a nasty 1,000 point spill mid-week before the bankers stepped in to save the day, proving once again that you can never count out a good old-fashioned recovery rally.
The $1000 Investment Story
A $1000 bet on a global basket a week ago would have grown (-) into roughly $988 today. Your American, European and Indian stocks provided a mixed bag of early week optimism followed by a mid-week reality check that left most portfolios slightly bruised. Your Bitcoin slice acted like a bored cat that occasionally decides to knock a glass off the table just to see if you are still paying attention, ending the week largely where it started but with plenty of unnecessary drama in between.
However, since February 2020, that same $1000 would have evolved quite dramatically. Your American stocks in the S&P 500 would have grown by about 105%, turning a $250 slice into $512. The Nifty 50 in India has been a powerhouse, growing nearly 115% and turning its $250 portion into $537. Europe’s DAX took a slower scenic route, gaining about 80% to bring its slice to $450. Then there is Bitcoin, which was trading around $10,000 in early 2020 and sits near $68,900 today, a massive 589% gain that would have turned a $250 "fun money" allocation into a staggering $1,722. Altogether, your $1000 from 2020 would be worth approximately $3,221 today.
A Japanese YouTuber known as Brick Experiment Channel built what might be the most minimalist motor ever conceived. Using nothing but a few Lego Technic pieces, two magnets, and a standard AA battery, the creator managed to turn a child's toy into a functioning homopolar motor. There are no wires, no complex circuits, and no soldering. The battery serves as the core, the magnets provide the field, and a small Lego frame holds it all together while it spins at surprisingly high speeds.
My Take: It is the ultimate "I could have done that" project, except none of us actually did. There is something deeply satisfying about watching a €0.50 Lego brick do the work of a combustion engine without the noise or the carbon footprint. It is clever, but it is also useless for anything practical like powering your car.
Honestly as an Electrical engineer, I felt like a child looking on with wonder, enchantment, and idealistic or naive optimism.
Info: Researchers are moving past basic sensors to give driverless cars a "mental map" of how humans actually behave. Instead of just reacting to a car stopping, new AI models are being trained to predict why it’s happening and what might happen next. It’s essentially an upgrade from "see and avoid" to "anticipate and plan", focusing on edge cases that usually baffle current systems, like a toddler chasing a ball or a driver making an erratic, un-signaled turn.
My Take: Current self-driving tech is that one friend who follows every rule but still manages to be an absolute nightmare in a four-way stop. This pivot toward "predictive awareness" is the industry finally admitting that driving isn’t just about physics; it’s about navigating the chaos of human stupidity. It’s a nice sentiment, but until a robot can accurately predict a distracted teenager’s TikTok-induced lane change, I’m keeping my hands on the wheel.
Why It Matters: This is the bridge between "cool tech demo" and "actually safe for my neighborhood." If AI can master human intuition, it solves the "trust gap" that keeps 60% of drivers terrified of robotaxis. For the industry, it means fewer PR-disaster collisions and a faster track to regulatory approval. For you, it might finally mean a commute where you can actually look at your phone without worrying your car will get confused by a plastic bag blowing in the wind.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries just pulled the trigger on the world’s first commercial launch of a large-scale gas engine that runs on a 30% hydrogen blend. While everyone else is still arguing about charging stations, Japan is retrofitting the heavy-duty grid. These 8MW-class engines are "hydrogen-ready," meaning they can swap between pure natural gas and the 30% mix on the fly. Kawasaki isn't stopping at the lab; they’ve finished the verification phase and are officially taking orders to help power plants and factories cut carbon without tearing down their existing infrastructure.
My Take: Look, we all know hydrogen has been the "fuel of the future" for about forty years now, but this is actually a pragmatic win. Japan is playing the long game by not forcing a total system rebuild. Is a 30% blend going to save the polar bears tomorrow? Probably not. But it’s a realistic bridge for heavy industry that can’t exactly run on AA batteries. It’s also classic Japan: engineering a solution that works with what we already have instead of waiting for a magical breakthrough that might never show up.
Why It Matters: This is the first real move toward "de-risking" hydrogen for the big players. By making these engines retrofittable, Kawasaki is lowering the barrier to entry for power companies that are terrified of stranded assets. If this scales, it provides a massive blueprint for how other gas-dependent nations can start trimming emissions without crashing their grids. Expect to see this tech exported to Europe and Southeast Asia faster than you can say "decarbonization."
🌎 February 18, 1930: Pluto
On February 18, 1930, the young astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto while working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. By meticulously comparing photographic plates of the night sky, Tombaugh identified a tiny, moving dot of light that proved to be the long-sought "Planet X," forever expanding our understanding of the solar system's architecture.
PODCAST OF THE WEEK🎙️ Tortured Into Greatness: The Life of Andre Agassi
Andre Agassi's autobiography is a brutally honest story about a tennis legend who hated the game that made him famous. Agassi traces his journey from a harsh, obsessive childhood training regimen to superstardom, burnout, rebellion, and eventual redemption, revealing the psychological cost of greatness, the search for identity beyond winning, and how he ultimately found purpose on his own terms.
IN OTHER NEWS
Google just dropped an early preview of WebMCP (Web Model Context Protocol) in Chrome, and it’s basically a “universal translator” for AI agents. For years, AI has been "using" the web by taking messy screenshots and guessing where buttons live. If a developer moved a "Buy Now" button three pixels to the left, the AI had a meltdown. WebMCP fixes this by letting websites hand the AI a direct manual. Instead of looking at pixels, the AI gets a structured "Tool Contract" that says, "Here is the exact function to book a flight." It’s currently behind a flag in Chrome Canary, but it’s already being backed by Microsoft and the W3C.
Sun to a blackhole: Astronomers are used to dramatic endings. When a massive star dies, it usually explodes in a spectacular supernova, briefly shining brighter than its entire galaxy. However, in the nearby Andromeda galaxy, a giant star seems to have taken a very different path. Instead of exploding, it quietly faded away and collapsed into a black hole. This rare and surprising vent is possibly some of the clearest evidence yet that certain stars can skip the supernova stage entirely.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just dropped a massive stat: India now has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users. This makes it the app's second-largest market globally, trailing only the U.S. Altman specifically pointed out that India holds the crown for the highest number of student users in the world. Apparently, the country isn't just using AI; it’s practically living in it to get through finals.
Wishing you a productive week ahead!
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