TomDum Blog
Local Business Guides
Neighbourhood roundups, tips, and insights to help you discover the best of Kathmandu Valley.
The Return of the Toll Gate: Techno-feudalism, the Daily Wage Worker, and the Closing of the Digital Commons
This essay does four things. It sets out what actual feudalism was, because most invocations of it are lazy. It sets out the technofeudal thesis fairly, and then sets out the serious case against it, because the thesis is contested and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
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Agentic Workflows: Why Looping Beats Asking Once
Most people's mental model of using a language model is a text box. You type a question, you get an answer, you move on. One call in, one blob of text out.
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Five Things to Watch in AI for the Rest of 2026
Forecasting AI is mostly a genre of confident nonsense, because the honest answer to most questions about it is "nobody knows." So this piece takes a narrower approach. Rather than predicting where the technology goes, it identifies five things that are scheduled to resolve, or come close to resolving, before the end of the year. Each has a date attached, a specific question underneath it, and an observable signal that would tell you which way it went.
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The Circle and the Bubble
In September 2025, Nvidia signed a letter of intent to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI, tied to the deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. [1] The structure was easy to describe and hard to categorise: the world's dominant seller of AI chips would put capital into the world's most prominent buyer of AI chips, and that capital would substantially return to the seller as revenue.
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Why AI Will Not Replace Human Developers: A Research-Backed Look at Software Engineering's Future
Will AI replace software developers? A growing body of peer-reviewed research — including a randomized controlled trial that found AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower — suggests the answer is no. Here's what the evidence actually says about AI's limits in real-world coding, and why human expertise matters more than ever.
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The History of Futsal: From Uruguay to a Global Phenomenon
Discover the history of futsal, from its origins in Uruguay to its rise as a global sport. Learn how futsal rules, gameplay, and development have shaped modern football and produced world-class players.
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Land Ownership in Nepal: History, Reform, and Why It Matters Today (2026 Guide)
A clear, story-driven guide to the history of land in Nepal—from royal grants to modern real estate—explaining Birta, Raikar, Guthi, land reform, and today’s land issues.
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Why Online Reviews Matter More Than a Website: What the Research Says, and What It Means for TomDum
When a business owner in Kathmandu hears about TomDum, the first question is almost always some version of "I already have a Facebook page and an Instagram account — what extra am I getting from a listing site?"
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Cost of Living in Kathmandu (2026 Guide): Rent, Food, Transport & Monthly Budget
A complete 2026 guide to the cost of living in Kathmandu, Nepal. Includes rent, food, transport, utilities, and monthly budget breakdowns for students, professionals, and families.
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