I am riffing on two things. First:
The Seven Sages (known in Akkadian as the Apkallu) are mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. They appear at both the beginning and the very end of the epic in a specific context: the building of the walls of Uruk.
Why?
As you know from my previous post, I am reading the new translation of Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage, and Line 21 is:
Were its footings not laid by the Seven Sages?
Of course, from Vedic times, we have Sapta-Rishis – Sanskrit for Seven Sages – and Vashishta, the poet of Mandala 7 of the Rig Veda, orally composed around 1500 BCE is, as you well know by now, my ancestor, and so to read in Gilgamesh that this concept was written down a thousand years before in a different civilization is truly amazing. Of course there are several such Seven Wise Masters and such in China, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Most scholars attribute this cross-cultural recurrence to astronomy. The number seven was sacred because it represented the seven “wandering stars” visible to the naked eye (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), as well as the seven prominent stars in the Ursa Major (Big Dipper) or Pleiades constellations.
And second, I am also riffing on (which I did see this afternoon):
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a 2026 American comedy drama film directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna. A sequel to the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, it sees Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci reprising their roles, joined by Justin Theroux, Lucy Liu, and Kenneth Branagh. Its box office has already exceeded $433 million (on a budget of $100 million).
Working backwards from this weekend, the seven “selfies” (since January 2026) I have chosen to highlight are Jensen Huang (who wore his signature black jacket, likely by Tom Ford, at the CMU Dinner honoring the four Honorary Doctorates, that also included Samuel Hazo, the founder of International Poetry Forum, where I am on the Board of Directors, and so we did an impromptu group photo at the dinner with his family), Tsu-Jae Liu (the President of the National Academy of Engineering, NAE), who I met at the recent Quantum Manufacturing workshop where my keynote was titled The Physics-Economics-Politics (PEP) Framework for the Second Quantum Revolution, Simon Armitage (who signed a copy of Gilgamesh for me), Nancy Pelosi, Tony Xu (DoorDash) and Tim Cook (who I met at various times during the Super Bowl), and Mehmet Oz, who I met at CES Las Vegas as he was on a panel just after mine (which was on Quantum+Health). My sincere apologies to several others (that include Super Bowl and Wimbledon winners, Nobel Laureates, Rock Stars, Venture Capitalists, Filmmakers, International Diplomats, NFL Owners, Fortune 500 CEOs and so on), hey, you folks just didn’t make this cut!
I cancelled my travel to Singapore for the Third Ising Machines Workshop due to the CMU Commencement Dinner, but the organizers were kind enough to schedule my pre-recorded (short, 16 minute) version (and my co-authors from Quanfluence will be doing Q&A in person, video passcode: 2Y5!6BE*):
And, yes, I am so looking forward to attending the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), May 28-31, to watch, among other screenings, the documentary Breaking the Code, about Kanwal Rekhi, known informally as the Godfather of the Silicon Valley Indian Mafia, the first Indian to take a company public (on NASDAQ) and the founder of TIE – in which I am a Charter Member – and the digitally remastered version of (which I saw when it first released 50 years ago!):
Sholay (transl. ’Embers’) is a 1975 Indian Hindi-language action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy, produced by his father G. P. Sippy, and written by Salim–Javed. The film follows two criminals, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), who are hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless bandit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star as Veeru and Jai’s love interests, Basanti and Radha, respectively. The soundtrack was composed by R D Burman. Sholay is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. Its box office in India exceeded Rs. 580 million (on a budget of Rs. 35 million).
