Quick notes: Poorer Europe | Radiologist replaced...

• Long envied by outsiders, Europe is getting poorer: Europeans are experiencing a decline in their purchasing power. Adjusted for inflation and purchasing power, wages have declined by about 3% since 2019 in Germany, by 3.5% in Italy and Spain and by 6% in Greece. Real wages in the U.S. have increased by about 6% over the same period



• Seymore Hersh: US played critical role in Crimean Bridge attacks. “Of course it was our technology. The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo.”. . Proxy war? Leaked documents reveal the extent of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine fight.



• Will AI kill the radiology stars? Algorithms today are more accurate than those of almost two-thirds of radiologists... Human Vs Machine



• Milking India: Chinese mobile companies evade Rs.9,000 crore in tax in India, Rs.1,629 crore recovered



• Just the facts: Condensed background to Manipur situation



• There's no 'my self' and 'his self':




• Japan plans ambitious return to chip manufacturing: Rapidus Wants to Supply 2nm Chips to Tech Giants, Challenge TSMC.. Europe Greenlights Chips Act: $47 Billion for Semiconductor Industry



• Noam Chomsky’s corrosive effects on linguistics as well as politics: “A deep disregard and contempt for the truth, a monumental disdain for standards of enquiry, a relentless strain of self-promotion, remarkable descents into incoherence, and a penchant for verbally abusing those who disagree with him.”
  
  No matter how deceitful or duplicitous their researchers can get, major universities tend to whistle and look the other way.



• July set to be world's warmest month on record:




• 'Who is gay in the team?': BBC reporter's inappropriate question to Morocco women’s team captain



• BBC logic: Vegetarianism = Caste oppression

Beware of BBC. They are part of the Hinduphobia machine.

They've even turned something as boring as vegetarianism into a sensationalized and caste/oppression-fraught topic.

Today Geeta Pandey published this. It has all the woke buzzwords. Shame on her:https://t.co/GDg95s8gBK

— Probably Not Actually a Monkey (@ApeThinks) July 29, 2023




• TikTok Pushing Chinese Propaganda: TikTok is facing numerous government inquiries in Europe and abroad about its ties to the Chinese state. One of regulators’ top concerns about TikTok is a fear that it could be used by the CCP to warp civic discourse in democratic nations.



• Italy regrets joining China's BRI: Signing up for BRI was an “improvised and heinous act” by the previous administration, Rome’s defense minister says. Done little to boost Italy's exports, making China the only winner.

Quick notes: High barriers | Eye drops...

• It’s hard to break into chipmaking: Foxconn's failed India chip venture shows how tough it is for new players. “Established players such as TSMC, Samsung or Micron count with several decades of R&D, process engineering and trillions of dollars in investment to reach their current capabilities. The industry presents newcomers with high barriers to entry, mainly high levels of capital intensity and access to coveted intellectual property.”
  
  Foxconn and Vedanta’s effort appeared to rely heavily on STMicro, but once the European company bailed, the joint venture was without much expertise in semiconductors. “Both companies lacked the core competency of manufacturing a chip. On an average, it takes more than two decades to be at the level of skill and scale to be a successful semiconductor manufacturing company.”



• Cerebras just built a gargantuan computer system: An A.I. supercomputer whirs to life, powered by giant computer chips. The Condor Galaxy 1 is a 64-node AI supercomputer with 54 million cores and 82Tbytes of data. The roadmap sees the rollout of performance up to 36 exaFLOPS.




• Indian export: How bacteria-laced eye drops ended up in US stores



• CBSE allows schools to teach in the mother tongue: "Since higher education has started responding to this need (for multilingual education) then school education has to become its foundation. The approach towards medium of instruction should be a continuity from school education to higher education."



• Forget the gym: Yoga is better at boosting memory and concentration than vigorous exercise. . . Yoga practitioners exhibited greater cortical thickness, gray matter (GM) volume, and GM density than non-practitioners in a variety of regions. Among yoga-practitioners, a positive relationship between the years of yoga practice and GM volume was also observed in a number of areas.



• High-meat diets: Having big UK meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road.

Ah. Biodiversity. Whereas India was really good at preserving its mega fauna. Now white people want to trawl the deep ocean for minerals. Yeah, that will end well. https://t.co/VGzKUR29Uh

— Prof राजीवः श्रीनिवासः (@RajeevSrinivasa) July 14, 2023




• Republican primary race survey: Vivek Ramaswamy ties for second with Ron DeSantis



• US lawmakers probe Ford's new EV battery deal with China: Two separate congressional committees announced investigations into Ford’s new EV partnership with Chinese battery company CATL, airing concerns that a new manufacturing plant in Michigan could avoid restrictions on Chinese-made EV components.



• Nio ET7: Find out why western auto majors fear the Chinese.




• Google’s Nearby Share for Windows: Quickly share files with Android devices

May 4 Molestation in Manipur Now Surfaces on Video

A vile incident of molestation from May 4 in Manipur has now suddenly surfaced on video.

Along with a mob of hundreds, a main culprit named Hera Das is shown parading a helpless naked captive female while groping her, and later molesting her in a paddy field. He is only now being arrested by police, after this video has surfaced, even though the case against him was filed back on May 4.

BJP govt there is now on the spot for explaining why nothing was done earlier.

Why has the video only surfaced now?

The violence in Manipur itself started on May 3.

Transmitting Energy from Space to Earth

One day, solar energy harvested from space could be transmitted down to Earth:

For India, such energy could even be usefully beamed down to power surveillance equipment in our remote mountainous border areas.

If ISRO could successfully attempt a demonstration project for this, it could help with our border security at LAC, LOC, etc. Perhaps this could be funded through military budget rather than eating into ISRO's own budget.

Later on, a further demonstration could be attempted by ISRO on the Moon or Mars, to power surface rovers there. This tech would especially come in handy in helping a rover to survive the long ultra-cold lunar night, which lasts 14 Earth days.

Quick notes: Slow lane | Digital detox...

• Stuck in slow lane: India’s share of high-tech exports as a percentage of manufactured exports stood at 10.2 per cent as compared with 41.7 per cent in Vietnam and 51.7 per cent in Malaysia. India's exports are dominated by commodities.



• India will pay for 70% of Micron’s $2.75 billion packaging plant: The extreme level of subsidy that Micron will receive means that it will only have to pay $825 million over the two phases of a project that is expected to create 5,000 direct jobs and 15,000 indirect jobs over several years.



• Leftist take on Micron deal: What we are getting is the lowest end of the chip-making technology. We are not competing with the US, China, South Korea and Japan on chip making but with countries like Malaysia. Malaysia is already streets ahead of us in this area, with about 13 percent of the world’s in OSAT outsourcing market.
  
  India is beginning to understand that technology is not something that, if you have money, you can buy from the global market. It is the closely-held knowledge of companies and countries.



• Foxconn drops out of another big factory deal: Foxconn, which walked out of multiple deals in the US in recent times, provided a vague explanation as to why it ended the $19.5 billion Vedanta deal for a semiconductor facility in India. . . . . . . Foxconn to apply for India chipmaking incentives after pullout from Vedanta JV



• AI chips: Chinese govt. funds CUDA-compatible GPU startup to compete against Nvidia



• Addiction: India promotes digital detox to combat excessive screen time.




• EVs in India: Tesla and BYD both seeking to make affordable EVs in India



• Climate damage fund: US refuses climate reparations for developing nations



• Kohinoor is just a stone but our Murthis are priceless: You rob a house in Tamil Nadu you get 7 years while if you rob a temple you get 3 years.



• Ban on ‘sex changes’: Russia to crack down on transgender industry



• Twitter clone sputters: Threads usage drops by half from initial surge

Another Fake Caste Discrimination Case Exposed in USA

Khalistan Problem Returning - How Should India Respond?

Khalistan insurgency was used by Pakistan to set Kashmir on fire in the first place. Once Kashmir was burning, Pakistan put its full focus on Kashmir jihad and discarded Khalistanis like old trash. Now that Article 370 has been removed from J&K, Pakistan needs to revive its old Khalistan card, to bring back militancy to J&K.

Perhaps India needs to help Baloch worldwide to organize a referendum campaign on independence for Balochistan. Given that Pakistan is supporting the Khalistanis in their referendum campaign, it's time for some strong tit-for-tat.

Furthermore, I've noticed there's a very loud contingent of Pakistanis overseas who are angry at Pakistan's military-backed govt for its crackdown on Imran Khan. These pro-Imran/PTI Pakistanis could also be encouraged to stage large noisy protests in front of Pakistani embassies & consulates in Canada, UK, USA.

ISRO Chairman S Somnath Speaks On Chandrayaan-3 and Other Topics

Quick notes: Space-tech start-ups | Freebie haven...

• NYT's Rare Praise For India's Space Program: The article titled 'The Surprising Striver in the World's Space Business' notes that India has become home to at least 140 registered space-tech start-ups, "comprising a local research field that stands to transform the planet's connection to the final frontier".



• Freebie haven: At 23% spend, Andhra Pradesh last in state capex in FY23.. Capex of government has been considered to be the prime driver of capex in the economy in the last few years.



• RIP, Free Market economics: U.S. ‘Industrial Policy’ returns




• Global Rupee makes little headway: A lopsided trade relationship between Russia and India has forced it to accumulate up to $1 billion each month in rupee assets that remain stranded outside the country.. "The rupee's prospects of becoming a significant international currency are connected to India's economic and geopolitical strength".



• Poll: Vivek Ramaswamy breaks into double digits in Republican primary



• China restricts exports of gallium and germanium: China to restrict exports of gallium and germanium, two critical elements for making semiconductor chips. China controls minerals that run the world —and it just fired a warning shot at U.S.



• It's a sin only if India commits it: Macron mulls social-media ban. “When things get out of hand, we may need to regulate them or cut them off.” Last week, Macron said social media companies had played a “considerable role” in the unrest across the country.



• Atanu Dey - Professor and Lyft driver: “I conjecture why the Indian riders were relatively rude. High status Indians look down on people who serve them. They have never experienced serving others and therefore think that those who serve are not deserving of respect”.



• Cities are for us, the people. Not for cars: How the Netherlands dumped cars for bikes

I was there to witness the France riots

https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/ep-107-paris-is-burning-why?sd=pf

It's a powerful cocktail: inevitable cyclical decline, memories of imperial grandeur, the determined Islamist assault, and general anti-government feelings going way back to the French Revolution. Surely, the crackdown by some 50,000 police and if necessary, the army, will control the riots, but one day the rioters may win. Predictably, all of Europe is now shifting right-wards: Italy, Finland, Greece, possibly Spain. Hard times beget hard men.

 

US India relations

Values are nice, and yes, it would be good if they coincide. But if not, common interests are perfectly good bases for co-existence.

https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/ep-106-permanent-interests-not-permanent?sd=pf