Quick notes: Red sea hero | Know your customer...

• Indian Navy Flexes Its Muscles In Red Sea: India is deploying a growing number of warships to counter rebel attacks on commercial ships plying around the Middle East, while steering clear of joining the official U.S.-led force in the Red Sea, as it looks to protect its ties with Iran.



• BJP rule under NaMo a dark age for the ASI: Archaeologist KK Muhammed: "The ASI has become a dead organisation and 10 years of BJP rule is a dark age of the organisation. I had undertaken the renovation of 80 temples that were destroyed in the earthquake in the Chambal area. We expected they (BJP) would be in the forefront of the renovation efforts. But not a single temple has been renovated in the last nine years".



• Know Your Customer: Chinese companies to be stopped from using American clouds for AI training



• Chinese guy compares China and India: I'm Chinese, I've worked in India for a while, I've been to some of the cities and villages in India. Personally, I think the gap between India and China will only get bigger, not smaller, in the next 10 to 20 years.
  
  Foreign investment in India is aimed at capturing the domestic demand of India. Foreign investment in China, the purpose is not only to occupy the Chinese market, but to meet the needs of the world!
  
  Second, India may miss out on a fourth industrial revolution Many people call breakthroughs in high-speed communications, new energy, new materials, life sciences, artificial intelligence and other fields the fourth industrial revolution. But Indians are still keen on IT and have invested little in the fourth industrial revolution.
  
  Third, India's environmental crisis. As a Chinese, I have witnessed the destruction of China's environment by industrialization. It is easy to destroy the environment, but difficult to repair it. Today, the annual investment in environmental protection in China far exceeds the sum of education and military expenditure. But it will take generations to repair the environment, and some will never be. Unfortunately, I saw similar environmental damage in India, which has a higher population density and a lower environmental carrying capacity than China. India must solve its environmental problems, which may cause social instability and unrest.
  
  Fourth, India's education crisis. In particular, inequality in education. Personally, 20% of people in India get a good education, but the quality and environment of education for the other 80% is really bad. Inequality in education leads to inequality in life development.



• Undergrad textbooks in 12 Indian languages soon: The 12 Indian languages for which EoI has been invited are Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. NEP recommends teaching of Indian languages with English and other foreign languages. It envisages the promotion of Indian languages through regular use, preparation of pedagogical materials and training of teachers.



• When in Karnataka, learn to speak Kannada: Learning Kannada was a struggle, but inspired by my senior, I, as a non-Kannadiga then, decided to go to the hilt to learn the language. The ideal way to learn to speak a new language is to speak with the locals — shopkeepers, vendors, helpers and even strangers with whom you can strike up small conversations. Let them know you are learning Kannada, and making an effort at it. You will instantly get support. I am now fairly fluent and continuing to improve day after day…and loving it!



• Aanandaa Farms: Using permaculture to convert degraded land into a beautiful food forest.




• A jobs crisis in India is driving workers to Israel: Government data shows a declining trend in joblessness. This is due to the inclusion of unpaid work as jobs in government data. "It's not that jobs are not happening. It's just that organised jobs are barely growing and at the same time, the number of young people looking for jobs is increasing".



• White man drooling: How Guyana's big oil boom turned it into the world's fastest-growing economy

Quick notes: Donor revolt | Search engine...

• Put a billion-dollar hole in the University’s books: Wall Street titans help to fuel Ivy League donor revolt. Billionaires plan to stop donating to their preferred universities to protest how they have responded to the war.



• Law Firms Warn Universities About Antisemitism on Campus: “We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses,” the firms wrote.

Some of the largest law firms in the country have a message for the deans of law schools who have tolerated Antisemitic activities conducted by their students:

If you want your graduates to get good jobs in our law firms, stop producing Antisemites. pic.twitter.com/JBrmJdslPa

— Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) November 2, 2023




• $26.3 Billion: Google spent a staggering $26.3 Billion to maintain default search engine status on browsers and phones in 2021 according to a slide made public in a federal antitrust trial. Bernstein previously estimated Google could pay Apple as much as $19 billion this year for the out-of-the-box default placement on Apple devices.



• How Erode-native KP Ramasamy walked into the exclusive club of India’s richest: A visit to his native village Kalliyampudur will, however, lay bare endearing anecdotes of his philanthropy stitched across decades.



• When in Karnataka, speak like a Kannadiga: Online tuitions to make learning Kannada easy for non-native speakers. For details, visit kannadaonlinetuitions. Experienced moderators make learning easy, adding a personal touch, and improving fluency in no time.



• 1.7 million: Afghans forced to flee as Pakistan cracks down on refugees



• The Left-Islamist coalition: Yasmine Mohammed author of Unveiled




• Alcohol Might Be Ruining Your Orgasm: “It does make you think, ‘Oh, I feel hornier!’. But the irony is that, in fact, it’s a central nervous system depressant.” While it may contribute to relaxation and inhibition reduction initially, it can hinder the brain’s ability to process sexual stimuli and coordinate muscle contractions, which are central to the orgasmic response



• AI for Chip Design: Nvidia has unveiled ChipNeMo, a specialized large language model with 43 billion parameters aimed at bolstering chip design productivity. The tool promises to streamline various aspects of chip design by answering questions, condensing bug reports, and crafting scripts for electronic design automation (EDA) tools.



• Chinese tech: Chinese Phytium's New CPU Claimed To Rival Arm's Neoverse N2

Quick notes: Hindenburg 2.0 | Oldest language...

• Hindenburg 2.0? George Soros-backed OCCRP said to be planning another 'expose'.. Concerted destabilization of Indian markets.



• RoP, meet Peacful Rise: China makes it harder for its Muslim citizens to go to Mecca, or anywhere else



• China's fertility rate drops to record low 1.09: Concerned about China's first population drop in six decades and its rapid ageing population, Beijing is urgently trying an array of measures to lift the birth rate including financial incentives and improved childcare facilities.



• What's the world's oldest language? “There are disputes among scholars about the precise date of ancient texts ascribed to Tamil and whether the language used is actually similar enough to modern Tamil to categorize them as the same language”.



• Padma Shri Meenakshi Amma: 78-year-old Kalaripayattu teacher




• Himachal Pradesh floods: More rain, less snow are turning Himalayas dangerous



• Point of no-return in the Himalayas: The collapse of a stretch of the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway, which is a part of the controversial Char Dham Project, has again raised questions about the Rs 12,000-crore project. The highway collapse is considered to have resulted from the weakening of the foundation of the road by the torrential rains that have lashed Uttarakhand. Landslides happen almost every day in some part of the region, boulders slide down on vehicles, and roads and buildings suddenly cave in.



• Mindless growth: NGT vindicated in Shimla ruling. “We hereby prohibit new construction of any kind in any part of the Core and Green/Forest area.” Beyond this green zone, “construction will not be permitted beyond two storeys plus attic floor”. It is surprising that the State government has pressed ahead with a development plan that appears to disregard the NGT ruling.



• Back to the future for India's rice farmers: Red rice has attractive qualities. It is hardy and grows well without fertiliser and other chemicals. Research also shows it has nutritional benefits over white rice. But perhaps for farmers the biggest attraction is that it sells well.
  
  "Many of the current incentive systems like fertilizer subsidy, free power, canal irrigation, minimum support price and procurement, all work against the interest of farmers to shift towards more sustainable production".



• Huawei Builds Secret Fab Network to Avoid U.S. Sanctions: This network is not a perfect substitute for TSMC and its leading edge process technologies — but it will make it easier for Huawei to procure commodity chips for a variety of applications without any restrictions from the U.S.



• China owning EV battery space: Chinese battery supplier CATL announces a new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery that the company claims will enable super-fast charging - 250 miles of range in 10 minutes



• Nvidia is worth $240 per share: Says Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern School of Business Professor of Finance and valuation guru.



• Bhagavan Das: God is not a big deal

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

Quick notes: Brand-free growth | Stolen treasures...

• India's Brand-free Economic Growth: While it is great that India is now making a lot of mobile phones for export, none of these carry an Indian brand name. The Chinese and Koreans, on the other hand, have spawned a half-dozen brands that dominate global markets.
  
  The Modi government's manufacturing push is very good and necessary, but basically it is pushing Indian manufacturing in the same direction as our software (services) industry: Outsourcing -- India's fully (global) brand-free "strategy".



• China could dominate the next big advance in batteries. In two years, China will have nearly 95 percent of the world's capacity to make sodium batteries.
  
  500 watt-hours per kilogram! CATL announces very energy-dense "condensed battery" for passenger aircraft. It’s likely a semi-solid state battery, an emerging technology with the potential to address issues that have held back the mass commercialization of solid state batteries.
  
  China challenging incumbent automakers: The legacy industry’s greatest assets are not worth as much as in the past... China’s car buyers have fallen out of love with foreign brands. Home teams are routing MNC competitors that had dominated China’s auto market.
  
  How China plans to get in on US clean energy subsidies: Chinese companies are opening up manufacturing plants in the US and embedding themselves ever more deeply into the supply chains of major critical minerals. The influx of Chinese clean energy manufacturing projects raises the question of whether US industrial policy efforts to revitalize American manufacturing risk being hijacked by its chief rival.
  
  



• India Pride Project : The sleuths bringing back India’s stolen treasures.
  
  The narrative "they" often sell is that these precious antiquities deserve to enjoy global attention while staying safe in secured museums. A recent New York Times article summed up the colonial thinking that continues around restitution, suggesting that "in America, critics of the surge in returns worry that museum collections built over time by scholars and imbued by a sense of context are being randomly depleted. Should US audiences, they ask, be deprived access to iconic objects that they suggest belong, not to individual nations, but to humankind?".
  
  The fundamental flaw in this argument is that many of these artefacts are not art pieces to be "enjoyed" but sacred objects cherished and worshiped through generations before they are snatched away.
  



• Modi sarkar's narrow perspective: The dangers of allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India.



• Unemployable: India's worthless degrees undercut world's fastest-growing major economy.



• India's migrant millions: Caught between jobless villages and city hazards. This internal migration is bound to intensify as India becomes the world's most populous nation, throwing up enormous challenges for the government to absorb its army of young unemployed.



• How to pronounce ZHA in Malayalam:




• US Is Getting ‘Lonely’: Deepening links between the Middle East and Russia and China are a huge challenge for the United States. “If the Bretton Woods system is not delivering strongly around the world, there are going to be serious challenges.”



• Saudi Arabia's cricket league: What will happen to the $8.4 billion IPL?

Quick notes: Petro-yuan | English fines...

• Petrodollar Dusk, Petroyuan Dawn: Iran, Venezuela, Russia and now Saudi Arabia shifting towards Petro-yuan. For nearly 50 years, the Saudis had insisted on payments with US dollars. But that all changed recently. “The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the US dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.”




• India Pushes Trade in Local Currency : Malaysia will be a test case that other countries will watch to decide whether trading in the Indian currency is feasible. India has already established a rupee-ruble payment mechanism with Moscow, which experts say is serving as a template for other countries. Last July, banks from 18 countries set up rupee accounts in Indian banks. They include Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Germany, Oman and Singapore.



• Italy introduces legislation to stop invasion of English language: Public officials could face fines of up to $110K for using foreign words in official communications.. France also has a language watchdog – the Académie Française — in which it catalogs and fight against foreign words, especially English ones, creeping into everyday language.

Countries oppose/ban the use of foreign language and even the foreign vocabulary in official communications to preserve their culture since language and culture are inseparable and go together. Invaders/colonisers impose their language for the same reason! https://t.co/YUabTzMdF3

— चमू कृष्णशास्त्री Chamu KrishnaShastry (@ChamuKShastry) April 2, 2023




• Brown is beautiful: India's 'brown beauty' makeup influencers go global




• New star in AI: Google says its AI chip is up to 1.7x faster and 1.9x more power-efficient than Nvidia A100 chip.



• Generative AI: Who will be the ultimate financial winners?

Great clip from @chamath describing who the ultimate financial winners may be from the generative AI revolution

pic.twitter.com/PieaotllOI

— Science Is Strategic (@scienceisstrat1) March 30, 2023




• Ustad Imrat Khan: Raag Gorakh Kalyan, drut

Quick notes: Rupee trade | American accent...

• Rupee-Rouble: Russia and India will ditch dollar and euro in trade.



• Slaves trying to speak like their masters: Next gen call center workers

These people have gone mad. Meanwhile China in eating our lunch in AI patents and manufacturing.

The only "skill" they can comprehend is "speaking like our masters." So they remain slaves.https://t.co/81OOxSZcCw

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) December 27, 2022




• India's thriving scam industry: Americans lost over $10 Billion to fraudsters in India in the past year... No clear law or policy or regulation has been actively discussed or implemented to curb this menace.



• The chip shortage is over: And now there’s a glut... AMD, Intel, and Nvidia reportedly slash oders with TSMC



• Austria’s Silent Monopolies On Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing: EV Group and IMS Nanofabrication. "Through these two firms, Austria’s market share is 82% in wafer bonding and over 95% of production multibeam mask writers."



• TSMC’s 3nm Conundrum, Does It Even Make Sense? Density improvements are 56%, with a 40% cost increase. This results in an 11% cost per transistor improvement, the weakest ever scaling for a major process technology in 50+ years. Most chip designs will not achieve the 56% density improvement, but instead a much lower ~30%. This would imply a cost per transistor increase



• What is the lowest-carbon protein? Cutting the amount of animal products in your diet can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 50%.




• NoToChina.org: Best products Not-Made-In-China



• The Ancient Science Of Mantra Chanting:

Quick notes: ONDC | EV power suit...

• Open Network for Digital Commerce: ONDC plans to level the playing field between small retailers and e-commerce behemoths such as Amazon and Flipkart.



• Dr Jayan Thomas: Spearheading research on 'EV power suit'-- vehicle shells with built-in super-capacitors for storing energy



• Selling EVs without batteries: The draft battery-swapping policy spoke about the Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) model that will allow users to buy EVs without batteries and then sign up for battery subscription services. This will reduce EV costs as batteries account for 40-50 per cent of their price tags.



• Does time really exist? Investigations on 'time' yield lots of surprising and counterintuitive lessons. Time is relative, not absolute. Time always marches forward, not backward, but we still lack an explanation for the arrow of time.



• Regional, official and national: There is a persistent push from the Centre to steer a pro-Hindi course in non-Hindi states. Karnataka is more prone to this problem than many other states, because it is -- and has been -- governed mostly by national parties.



• Subhashita 5: Factors behind the real prosperity of nations.




• Brain drain to China: Taiwan cracks down on China poaching tech talent. Targets Chinese investing and hiring.
  
  “There is a very big fear that if top engineers are being lured away to China, they will take some trade secrets with them and that could damage the competitiveness of the Taiwanese economy.”



• Atmanirbhar China: China orders govt, state firms to dump foreign PCs



• How to Tell Google to Forget Your Data: Simply follow this link and click on the button stating “Start removal request.”



• Millets for global food security: Millets require little by way of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and can boost soil quality through intercropping with other plants. State intervention currently favors rice and wheat.



• Organizational behavior:

Quick notes: Illicit takeover | Vatican slams India...

• China Bought Italian Military-Drone Maker Without Authorities’ Knowledge: Italian and European authorities weren’t aware that a Chinese state-controlled company bought an Italian military-drone manufacturer and transferred its know-how and technology, revealing how Beijing is skirting weak investment-screening in Europe to acquire sensitive technology.



• China's rival to Tesla Semi: Geely's Homtruck will come with Level 4 autonomy. Meanwhile, the Tesla Semi has been delayed multiple times due to unavailability of its 4680-format battery cells. . . . India needs a national tech mission. Not fantasies like India-growth-story or its latest variant, Next-Economic-Supercycle.



• China Draws Up List to Replace Foreign Tech: The quasi-govt body will choose from a basket of suppliers to provide technology for sensitive sectors. . . . Unlike India's screw-driver plan to manufacture foreign tech.



• A battery on wheels: Can we use big batteries to power trains instead of tracks with overhead power lines?



• Vatican heaps guilt on India: The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano gave frontpage coverage to India’s alleged hypocrisy, underscoring its reticence to commit to CO2 reductions in Glasgow while experiencing dangerous levels of smog in New Delhi and elsewhere.
  
  "India's track record with renewables is solid". The emphasis on coal while leaving out oil and gas would disproportionately impact developing countries.
  
  Hypocrisy: Coal power plants are running at full tilt in parts of Europe. Under Europe’s climate policies, this shouldn’t be happening.



• Icelandverse: Get a 'Real' life.




• Ghost soldiers: Afghanistan's ex-finance minister has blamed the government's fall on corrupt officials who invented "ghost soldiers" and took payments from the Taliban.



• Electric scooters find buyers: India is one of the most vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events like heat waves and floods. Disruptions to the rainy monsoon season are already having a major impact on agriculture.



• Bridging the skills gap: Bangladesh is making a serious attempt to improve its schools. It hopes to move away from rote learning and towards actual learning. A choice of two vocational subjects from such options as woodwork, graphic design, car mechanics, child care and plumbing will be mandatory for high-schoolers. The government also plans to open more technical universities.



• India is multi-lingual: We don't need one language.

We don't need one language, India was always multi-lingual. All central govt facilities must be available in all Indian languages. Every child must have the right to study to the highest level in their mother tongue.https://t.co/ie3FwlEdx6

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) November 16, 2021




• How Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography works:

Quick notes: Plural India | Lucid Air...

• I speak Kannada, and I’m no less Indian: I was a proud Hindi-speaking Indian then, though Kannada was my mother tongue! After all, we had to speak Hindi to be called Indian, in the Hindi nation, didn’t we? “Hindi hain hum?”
  
  It was only after I got to understand India and the idea of India that I realised that I don’t need Hindi to prove my Indianness. It’s absolutely okay for a Kannadiga to not know Hindi. It doesn’t make him a lesser Indian. This needs to be echoed time and again. Only then can we build a plural India.
  
  When I looked around, it dawned on me gradually that my mother tongue, Kannada, was being pushed to a corner in its own abode. It’s high time we implemented a two-language education policy in Karnataka to save our children from the excessive burden of learning Hindi. That would be the first right step in the right direction. Let’s hope no Kannada child in Karnataka, in the future, spends his childhood in a Hindi environment and starts looking down on his own language!
  
  "For North Indians, there is no Telugu, Tamil, Kannada or Malayali—it’s all Madrasi; all South Indian food is idli sambar; all people south of the Vindhyas speak as if they are gargling with stones, never mind Punjabi was not even a word when the Cholas were ruling large parts of Southern Asia".



• China increasingly rejects English: Elementary schools cannot conduct English tests. . . . . . . . . . So unlike Macaulayists here



• EV range leader: Lucid Air 520-mile range ousts Tesla from top spot.
  
  China leaping ahead in EVs: Xpeng P5 electric sedan starts around $25,000, leads in driver-assistance tech, aims for Europe
  
  Elon Musk praises Chinese automakers: "I have a great deal of respect for the many Chinese automakers for driving these (EV) technologies".



• Manavendra Singh Shekhawat: Traditional water wisdom.




• Imbalance: In one year, Himachal Pradesh loses 18.52% of snow cover



• 5000 saplings in 48 hours: Meet the cyclist brothers working to make a greener TN a reality



• Life at 50C: How to cool a megacity
• Side-effects: Boys more at risk from Pfizer jab side-effect than Covid



• Kerala could become another Afghanistan:“There has been so much Talibanization happening in Kerala in the past 25 years. In the next 5-10 years Kerala could become another Afghanistan" - K.J. Alphons

Quick notes: Rocket launching drone | Woke culture...

• Fully autonomous orbital rocket launching drone: Launching things to space doesn’t have to mean firing a large rocket vertically using massive amounts of rocket-fuel-powered thrust — space startup Aevum breaks the mould in multiple ways, with an innovative launch vehicle design that combines uncrewed aircraft with horizontal take-off and landing capabilities, with a secondary stage that deploys at high altitude and can take small payloads the rest of the way to space.
  
  
  
  


• Janan Ganesh in FT: What is woke culture if not the howl of a generation of underemployed humanities graduates? ..But the problem may be the raw numbers of students, not the precise flavour of their indoctrination. There are only so many jobs for them in publishing and the news media. There are only so many seats in Congress. If postmodern theories vanished from campus, would this surplus of frustrated graduates really just go about their lives as room-temperature liberals?. . . . . . Lesson for India: reduce funding to Humanities to cure JNU tukde-tukde ailment



• Quantum Supremacy? Chinese scientists claim to have built a quantum computer that is able to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputer, representing the first milestone in the country’s efforts to develop the technology.. China is building a $10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences as part of a big push in the field.



• The World's Most Important Technology Race: Not only will quantum computing offer significant scientific advances, but it will also alter warfighting. If China gains a substantial military quantum advantage over the United States, it could neutralize many of America's defensive and offensive technologies.



• China is greatest threat to freedom: "China believes that a global order without it at the top is a historical aberration. It aims to change that and reverse the spread of liberty around the world."



• Vinisha Umashankar: 14-year-old Tamil Nadu girl wins Children's Climate Prize for designing solar-powered ironing cart
  




• Words of Wisdom:

To successfully compete with China, Europe & America, Indian education administrators must realize that language of learning need not be the same as the language of communication.

The current English-based system puts 95% of the population at a disadvantage.@sankrant

— Subhash Kak ☀️ (@subhash_kak) December 5, 2020

Quick notes: SEZ flop | Imported waste...

• Why Indian SEZs failed: India's SEZ "reforms" largely centered around concessions to favored businesses--tax sops and cheap real estate—rather than a fundamental reset of India’s convoluted and restrictive rules for doing business. If low taxes were all that mattered for attracting investment, any poor country could entice global manufacturers by slashing taxes. Clearly, good governance and strong rule of law matter a great deal more to such businesses.
  
  Whereas the Shenzhen agglomeration alone sprawls across 2,000 square km, all of India’s SEZs put together occupy less than 500 square km. Larger zones benefit from several spillover effects: They attract clusters of businesses, encourage knowledge transfers from foreign to domestic companies, and spread employment, infrastructure and development to neighboring regions. India’s zones are too small to do the same.



• Banned Chinese apps re-enter in new avatars: India is too lucrative a market to lose for Chinese companies and they would make every effort to return. “If the app ban doesn’t subside in a few months, banned apps in new avatars will crop up.



• Battlefront at minus 40 Celsius: The Eastern Ladakh area witnesses the harshest winters where temperatures normally dip to minus 35 degrees in the night during winters coupled with high-speed freezing winds.
  



• China's unmanned plateau helicopter makes maiden flight: The AR-500C drone will be used in missions including reconnaissance and communication relay, with optional functions including electronic disruption, target indication, fire strikes, cargo delivery, and nuclear radiation and chemical contamination reconnaissance.



• Sri Lanka returns hazardous waste to UK: Several other countries in the region have recently begun to return waste imported from foreign countries.  In January, Malaysia returned 42 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the UK.



• "Detox My Fashion": Textile dyeing is one of the most polluting aspects of the global fashion industry, devastating the environment and posing health hazards to humans. The discharge is often a cocktail of carcinogenic chemicals, dyes, salts and heavy metals that not only hurt the environment, but pollute essential drinking water sources.



• Make these in India: Bollinger plans to make new electric Deliver-E van with 200 miles of range
  
  
  


• EU's China weak spot: Germany had been particularly reluctant to speak out on Hong Kong repression as it hoped to secure an investment deal with China by year's end.



• “We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook”: Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more.



• May his ilk grow: A ray of hope for the vernacular

@sankrant I have started teaching computer programming/coding in Gujarati via weekly facebook live sessions. Page: https://t.co/ogwz8FZQyN Thank you for re-igniting that flame in me :) 🙏

— चिराग: Chirag Patel (@chipmap) September 24, 2020

Quick notes: Desi apps | Hindi imposition...

• Indian TikTok copycats no match to the real deal: Indian rip-offs of TikTok still have to get the basics right —a tough feat considering the lack of expertise in short-video in the country... The interface and functionality of most of these apps were so similar to TikTok that it was clear that none of them had a truly distinct vision that would offer users something new and keep them loyal in the long-run.



• Devouring Nepal? China occupying land in 7 border districts, says Nepal Survey Department



• 1962 redux? Modi-Doval vying for Jawaharlal Nehru-award for Tibet strategy... "India is capable of giving a befitting response to Chinese aggression". That's about it.
  

One, PLA will not budge from its 1959-60 claim line in Ladakh as new LAC. Two, India cannot forcefully evict it from occupied territories. Three, PLA deployments in TAR are permanent. Four, PLA & PM interoperability has increased. Now look for own options? https://t.co/DM3Dydfxyl

— Pravin Sawhney (@PravinSawhney) August 22, 2020




• Flying Gripen, Thailand Beat Down China's Air Force: Over the final three days of the war game, the Thais killed 22 Chinese jets and lost three of their own. The final tally for the exercise favored the Thai air force. The Gripens shot down 42 J-11s while the J-11s shot down just 34 Gripens. 
  



• Impose local language on migrants: Hindi migrants to non-Hindi states should learn local language, not the other way round. Regional language should have primacy.
  

Unfortunately, a rich language of Rajasthani which traces its history from 800 AD has been reduced to a dialect of Hindi. Our cultural identity is being compromised through Hindi imposition. The Government should instill the value of respecting various lang.#StopHindiImposition

— Bhavyansh Singh Mewar ભવ્યાંશ સિંહ મેવાડ (@Bs_mewar) August 19, 2020




Marathi in Maharashtra ✅
Hindi in Maharashtra ❌
Remove Hindi Chindi from Maharashtra and if possible also from India. #2LangPolicy

— अण्णा అన్నా (@MeeAnna_) August 23, 2020




• Cost of Bengaluru's traffic jams has a number: Bengaluru's notorious traffic congestion is taking a toll on health and productivity, with each of its residents losing an average Rs 52,264 per year on medication and for measures taken to avoid the congestion.



• Karnataka mathematics teacher wins national award: Yakub made a whopping 300 videos on teaching maths in a simple way by demystifying its complex concepts and uploaded them on YouTube to make them accessible to the students.. . . Basavaraj Sungari: Karnataka teacher uses augmented reality tools to make online science lessons interactive
  

Quick notes: Agrivoltaics | NEP...

• Agrivoltaics: Generate electricity and grow crops simultaneously with tinted, semi-transparent solar panels. The tinted solar panels absorb blue and green wavelengths to generate electricity. Orange and red wavelengths pass through, allowing plants underneath to grow.
  
  While the crop receives less than half the total amount of light it would get if grown in a standard agricultural system, the colours passing through the panels are the ones most suitable for its growth.
  
  Agrivoltaics work best for plants that grow well in partial shade. Potential functioning crops include hog peanut, alfalfa, yam, taro, cassava, sweet potato, along with lettuce.
  
  Food, water, energy at its best.




• NEP: Syncing education with practical knowledge and the needs of the times, the policy recommends that from the sixth standard onward, students be taught coding in school... The premium on “English-medium'' should also ease a bit, with the government encouraging early learning in the mother tongue or regional language.

Coding & AI is skill like that of the carpenter and the artist.

India teaching coding only via English is like asking children of merchants to make furniture.

Explains why Indian coders lag those from China, Japan, Russia, or US where coding is taught in via own languages.

— Subhash Kak (@subhash_kak) August 2, 2020




• Alexa Fund: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products. In some cases, it has met with startups about possible takeovers, figured out how their technology works and then refused to invest in them when it launches a competing product at a later stage.



• Energy-based-weaponry: Israel's Iron Beam, the laser that could destroy Iranian missiles



• Three Gorges Dam: Was it worth it? No!
  
  Some geologists say instead of relying on dams to stop flooding, we should give rivers space and allow them to expand during the flood season. "Large alluvial rivers naturally flood during the wet season. Floodwater is not a problem, that's simply what rivers do. The problem is when you have a lot of people living in the areas that are subject to flooding".
  
  Many dams in the northwestern coast of the US were actually removed because they blocked the migration of fish from the ocean up the rivers, causing their populations to drop. In the southeast of the country, upstream dams in the mountains created environmental problems, driving fish species to extinction, causing water pollution, and the recession of coastlines due to the blocking of sediments.



• Reverse migration: Pandemic triggers reverse migration from India cities to villages. Creating ways to earn a living for migrants who have lost jobs remains India’s biggest challenge as it grapples with the pandemic and a faltering economy.



• Moon-bathing, to cool off your heat: A kinesthetic experience of nature, close at hand, that can soothe away anger, which is a pitta condition, and aggravated vata (of anxiety).  



• Do any other countries have such policies?:

To launch a 10kg satellite as an Indian company from India, you'll end up probably paying 50 Lakh INR (~$70k) in Taxes.

Come in as a foreign company, you pay ZERO!

Do any other countries have such policies? https://t.co/KYGQvQhGwB

— Narayan Prasad (@cosmosguru) July 22, 2020

Quick notes: Apartheid | Rural revival...

• Our English Apartheid: Economic opportunity (in today's India) is almost exclusively for the English educated. Not knowing English is something the average Indian carries like a shame. There really is only one way to erase it: universal schooling in one's own mother tongue throughout India with a strong second language program.

5/ This issue is a silent social divide in India and the Indians on the "other side" silently endure their lingiuistic second class status and all too often blame themselves for their fate.

We have to address this in order to make broad based progress.

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) June 5, 2020



• Rural Revival and Technological Self-Reliance: Sridhar Vembu | Zoho




• "We make do with whatever is available": Pahadis are not used to complaining. A heartwarming tale of how returning migrant used the time to beautify the schools where they are quarantined.



• Narikutti Swami (Barry Long): By the 1960s Arunachala mountain had been almost completely denuded of all its original forests. Narikutti Swami was the first person to begin reforestation on the slopes of Arunachala. Many of the trees he planted are still there and nowadays the eastern slope of the hill has better forest coverage than at any time in the last 100 years.
  
  Narikutti Swami’s original name was Barry Long. He was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1930 and lived a fairly normal life there until, around 1957, he went to the cinema to see The Razor’s Edge, a film about a western seeker who goes to India and meets an Indian guru who transforms his outlook on life. Barry left the cinema with tears streaming down his face and a determination to go to India.




• Prashant Warier: Using AI in the battle against Covid-19.



• Harvard Medical School study: Satellite images of packed Wuhan hospitals suggest virus outbreak began earlier than thought. Dramatic spikes in auto traffic around major hospitals last fall suggest the novel coronavirus may have been present and spreading through central China long before the outbreak was first reported to the world



• Imran Khan: Pak among the pioneers of smart lockdown. “A lockdown means collapse of the economy in poorer countries a steep rise in poverty, crushing the poor as happened in Modi’s lockdown”.



• EVFTA: Vietnam ratifies free trade deal with EU. To help raise its skills and standards and enhance its attractiveness for investors shifting factories out of China.

Quick notes: Pashtun rise | Edu transformation...

• Challengeing the Paki Army openly: Pashtun Tahafuz Movement is turning into a thorn in Pakistan's flesh opposing its proxy war policy through jihadist groups.



• Sadhguru welcomes paradigm shift in education: "Throwing information at children and thinking that we are educating should end... Schools will become less relevant... 2-days school, 5-days learning... Our idea of schooling comes from Machester mass production version of industry". . . . . . . Thoroughly insightful and entertaining conversation, do watch!




• Tectonic shift: Now music schools take the e-learning route.



• Growing fixation with Hindi: The Centre is obsessed with imposing Hindi on people who do not speak the language and who are not ready to work with it.



• The surfaces that kill bacteria and viruses: Cicada wings are studded with tiny spikes on the surface that prevent bacterial cells from being able to settle and grow on the surface.



• Sridhar Vembu's miracle: ZOHO: The most successful SaaS company you may have never heard of.



• Temple scam: Rs 76 lakh has been misappropriated by Andhra Bank employees and Rs 66 lakh swindled by the SBI staff.



• The great bicycle revival:

Bicycle sales in the US more than doubled year-over-year in March. https://t.co/Gyy2WTLv4K by @MJ_Coren and @dkopf

— Zach Seward (@zseward) May 27, 2020

Quick notes: Colleges disrupted | Gambling apps...

• Tectonic shift in Higher education: Many western universities are witnessing erosion of their revenue sources -- tuition, research grants, clinical revenue.. Whatever emerges in the world of higher education, it won't look the same as it did at the start of last academic year.



• Setback to Macaulayists: HC axes Andhra Pradesh English medium plan.

A rare case of the judiciary delivering for #IndianLanguages.

The Indian State's policies have been geared towards killing #IndianLanguages rendering the Indian mind completely incapable of competing globally.

English-medium cripples the Indian mind. https://t.co/BYRsIjmvMC

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) April 15, 2020



• Gambling addiction and Chinese investors: What can go wrong? Tencent, Alibaba investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian apps that use loopholes in anti-gambling laws.



• Debt Trap Diplomacy: Belt and Road debts to China skyrocket after c-virus.. Developing countries’ hidden debts to China estimated at $380 billion and many BRI partner countries face significant debt distress.



• Associated Press: China knew of pandemic danger in Wuhan even as officials downplayed it. Without the six-day delay, infections could have been cut by two-thirds.



• The Rules of Capitalism: The rules of capitalism are different when CEOs are looking for a bailout

The rules of capitalism are different when CEOs are looking for a bailout — w/@SRuhle @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/3ZYJ6G8erQ

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) April 10, 2020




• Illness and Self-Discovery ~ Mooji:




• How UV light may protect us: Ultraviolet light can penetrate the cells of pathogens and damage the DNA or RNA that contain their genetic code. “Sunlight is wonderful, but it takes a long time.”
  
  UV LEDs can decontaminate surfaces: "UV-C light in the 260 - 285 nanometre wavelength range most relevant for current disinfection technologies is also harmful to human skin, so for now it is mostly used in applications where no one is present at the time of disinfection".



• Fool me twice: Chinese PPE kits fail India safety test.

Quick notes: Namaste Israel | Afghan deal...

• Namaste Israel: Bibi proposes to ditch handshake for Hindu Namaste to check the spread of deadly coronavirus.

  Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu @netanyahu encourages Israelis to adopt the Indian way of greeting #Namaste at a press conference to mitigate the spread of #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/gtSKzBDjl4

  — India in Israel (@indemtel) March 4, 2020




• Peaceful Rise: Chinese firm copies Gilead's remdesivir, the most promising drug against the new coronavirus. . . . Chinese govt spin: "Coronavirus did not originate in China".



• Afghan deal: Paki intelligence may end up the real winner in the Afghan peace deal. “You can’t succeed in Afghanistan independent of us, because we manage, if not actually control, the militant framework in that country.” . . . Pakistan does not want any role for India in Afghanistan



• Primacy of regional language: Maharashtra makes Marathi language compulsory for all schools. . . . Rejuvenating our mother tongues.

No one aspires for English. People aspire for jobs, economic opportunities. The State deprives people without English of opportunities—competitive exams, higher education, law, even tax filings.

The Govt pushes English, then claims it is "aspirational."https://t.co/y7eDKJW7F5

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) December 9, 2019




• Erdogan's blackmail: EU fumes at Turk migration 'blackmail'



• Purging Huawei: US Congress gives small ISPs $1 billion to rip out Huawei, ZTE network gear



• Handing over keys to China: When Italy became the only G-7 nation to sign a Belt and Road accord last March, it drew criticism for choosing Beijing at the expense of its western allies. German Foreign Minister warned at the time that if you “think you can do clever deals with the Chinese, you will come down to earth with a bump.” Italy learned that lesson the hard way. Italian exports to China showed a 1% decline while Chinese imports grew. And then came the coronavirus...



• Hydrogen Mobility: Coming soon to a bus or truck near you. Possible hedge against oil and metal shortages? .