Food lover’s guide to Chandigarh; Walking on Birmingham of Peaky Blinders

Hello,

The layoff debate is raging not just in India.

Beyond Sharan Hegde-led The 1% Club and SaaS giant Freshworks, major tech companies including Mozilla, Sonos, Boeing, Stellantis, Samsung, and GoPro have recently trimmed their workforce. Cloud storage company Dropbox is cutting 20% of its workforce while TikTok also let go of approximately 500 employees.

Netflix, too, closed Team Blue, through which it had made some eye-catching hires to grow its gaming ambitions. Now, like many other industries, it is banking on generative AI to move faster on gaming, with an executive calling the technology “once in a generation inflection point”. 

AI is finding new use cases every day—even Microsoft is adding AI tools to its simplistic MS Paint application.

While some companies are announcing job cuts, others are ‘silent firing’, using a more subtle approach to workforce reduction by making working conditions uncomfortable or demoralising for certain employees so that they leave voluntarily.

However, companies may want to look at AI from a participatory perspective. 

According to a recent study published by IIT-M and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Delhi, involving a wide range of stakeholders can reduce risks like bias, privacy violations, and lack of explainability. After all, persons impacted by the deployment of AI have little to no say in how they are developed.

However, beyond the immediate threats, many use cases of AI remain to be uncovered—and one of them is deciphering an alien language. And this can be done by studying how AI develops languages.

Well, in an Independence Day scenario, humanity just got the upper hand.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Food lover’s guide to Chandigarh
• Walking on Birmingham of Peaky Blinders
• Inside Gauri Khan’s first restaurant

Here’s your trivia for today: How many cards does a tarot deck contain?

Wine and Food

Food lover’s guide to Chandigarh

It isn’t easy to escape the charm of Chandigarh. The city is a gastronomical heaven, with street food joints and high-end restaurants serving elevated offerings, attracting food lovers across ages. 

Punjabi plates:

• A place you must not miss is Krishna Chaat Bhandar in Sector 18D. Indulge in its special stuffed golgappa with sliced potato and sweet and tangy chutneys topped with generous amounts of dahi.
• Located in Sector 9, Amritsari Kulcha Hub has several options including aloo kulcha, mushroom kulcha, paneer kulcha, onion kulcha, and gobhi kulcha, best paired with spicy chole.
• Khan Rajma Chawal and Biryani Point, located in the heart of Sector 15, offers a menu of rajma chawal, chole chawal, and matar paneer and chawal.

Travel and Leisure

Walking on Birmingham of Peaky Blinders

Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders has single-handedly put Birmingham on the set-jetting map.

“The street gang comprised young men from lower and working-class backgrounds and operated from the 1880s until the 1920s. The gangsters had a hand in robbery, violence, racketeering, illegal bookmaking, and control of gambling,” says Edward Shelby, the in-character guide from Top Tours Global.

Dark history:

• Gunmakers Quarter, which once served as the world's gun-manufacturing industry and specialised in the production of military firearms and sporting guns, was once a pit stop for the real Peaky Blinders.
• The Black Country changed the world. Its people built the world’s first successful steam engine; put the first steam train on US soil; fuelled the introduction of the first minimum wage; produced the anchor for the Titanic; and did much more.
• Set over 26 acres, the carefully reconstructed shops, houses, and industrial areas at the Black Country Living Museum tell the story of one of Britain’s very first industrialised landscapes.

Wine and Food

Inside Gauri Khan’s first restaurant

Gauri Khan’s Torii—a restaurant located in Mumbai’s hip Bandra neighbourhood and launched with restaurateur Abhayraj Kohli, Managing Director of Pritam Group—is designed to be a doorway that opens up a world of Asian and Latin-American tastes and flavours. 

Opulence:

• The 85-seater diner is spread across 4,500 sq feet and divided into three sections: a welcoming lounge near the elegant green island bar, a light al fresco dining space with large mirrors and lush greenery, and an indoor restaurant.
• Torii’s menu is curated by Michelin-trained expat Chef Stefan Gadit. “We focus on local sourcing, seasonal ingredients, reducing food waste, and energy-efficient practices, collaborating with ethical suppliers to minimise our impact,” says Gadit.
• Torii is a favourite with celebrities, and many of them, including Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan, Vicky Kaushal, and Shilpa Shetty, can often be spotted here. The restaurant recently hosted a special event for The Fabulous Lives Vs Bollywood Wives. 

News & updates

• Layoffs: Online travel giant Booking Holdings said it expected to cut jobs as part of broader changes to its businesses, which also aim to drive real estate savings. Booking Holdings, which owns brands like Booking.com and Kayak, did not disclose how many jobs would be affected.
• Euphoria: The US S&P 500 zoomed past 6,000 points to a new record while Treasury yields retreated, as investors again cheered Donald Trump's decisive victory, although disappointment about China's latest fiscal support dampened the mood elsewhere.
• Backdoor security: Apple quietly introduced code into iOS 18.1 which reboots the device if it has not been unlocked for a period of time, reverting it to a state which improves the security of iPhones overall and is making it harder for police to break into the devices, according to multiple iPhone security experts.

How many cards does a tarot deck contain?

Answer: 78 cards, with 56 cards belonging to the Minor Arcana—representing everyday experiences and situations—and 22 cards belonging to the Major Arcana that symbolise significant life events and spiritual lessons.

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