Vishnu Gopal

Weekly Notes 19/2025

Last week: Thunderbolts, visiting temples, discussing the war with friends, and working on features while managing health and diet.

For folks not in the know, this is a weekly stream of consciousness zero-agenda “here’s what’s happening” or “here’s what’s interesting” post.

What’s been happening

  • Saw Thunderbolts this week. I had missed New World, so lost a little bit of context in the plot. It was an okay movie, with the most Superman-like character ever and the usual Marvel twists on it, but frankly the MCU storyline is a mess now, and I wonder how they’ll recover from this. It was obvious from being in the theatre too, it was hardly 20% full.
  • Went to a couple of temples yesterday, about a couple of hours drive from Thiruvananthapuram. Both are old and beautiful temples, and were part of the old Thiruvithamkoor kingdom, but they’re now in Tamil Nadu. The first one Kumarakovil is a Murugan temple, and the second at Thiruvattar is where the more famous Padamanabhaswamy temple got its roots, and it’s got an idol that’s almost a replica of the Ananthasayana Vishnu. I’m not religious enough to visit these temples, so this is mostly an Ammu thing: we went with her parents, but I enjoyed the walks around the temple with its old infrastructure and lakes, and liked the discussions we have on car journeys like this.
A woman in a floral dress sits beside another woman wearing a traditional saree, both smiling warmly while seated on a step with a textured wall in the background.
A monkey sitting on a white wall with a red stripe, holding a bottle in its paws.
A person walking along a grassy path by a river, with trees and palm trees in the background and the sun setting in the sky.
A serene landscape featuring a large tree standing alone by a tranquil lake, surrounded by lush greenery and distant mountains under a clear blue sky.
  • I’m sad at how the war is radicalizing my friends even more. It’s now acceptable to completely denigrate Muslims and play the victim card even generations after Mughal rule. I had a pretty long discussion with a friend late into the night, but suffice to say: we didn’t manage to convince each other.
  • Went out with Anju & Pachu, a couple of Ammu’s friends this week. We went to one of the few places that have live music in the city, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before: this is one of the times I miss living in a bigger city.
A group photo of four friends posing together in front of a brightly lit bar sign. The ambiance appears festive and casual.
  • Ammu & I watched Two Popes this week. Particularly relevant considering the real pope died this week. I really liked the movie: mostly because of the acting and the uninterrupted dialogue reminiscent of the Before Sunrise series. This is also a love and redemption story, and shot well.
Two men in religious attire engaged in conversation, featuring a pope and a cardinal, with ornate background decor.
  • Was fixing bugs this week at work, and also winding down work on another feature. It’s super nice to be able to work on a product with a small team again. The startup train is always a lottery ticket, but it’s the best kind there is 🙂
    • I also managed to get a reasonable handle on XState, and started translating what I learnt to internal Notion documentation. Once it matures a bit, I’ll also post it here because frankly there’s a dearth of good XState 5 guides out there.
    • My diets have been going to plan, but haven’t resumed workouts yet. I was sick a couple of days this week with a flu, so I’ll look into my energy levels and hopefully start next week.
    • Our IVF cycle has started up again, and with it comes the usual expectation curve. We opted for donor eggs to reduce side-effects for Ammu, but it’s still super hard work going through the process. This is compounded by what happened last time, and I should really write a longer blog post about IVF and resiliency. Do wish us luck! ?

    Links of the Week

    • This clip of a dolphin asking a diver for help and then patiently waiting around until they did her bidding is pretty cool. I wonder what these animals think of us.
    • k6 seems like a pretty neat load testing library.

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