Quick notes: Trade colony | Awaiting Tejas...

• Trade colony India: China just posted a trade surplus with the rest of the world of almost $1 trillion for 2024. China today accounts for around 27% of global industrial production.




• Why China needs India more than ever: China’s Export Boom Means Trump Tariffs Would Hit Beijing Where It Hurts



• Shakeout time: China makes more cars than it needs. Excess capacity among carmakers in China is driving the world’s largest auto market into a shakeout phase.



• India's loss: How China’s Synthetic Diamonds Crushed India’s $20 Billion Diamond Industry?



• 'Achievments abroad is not enough': Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu shares the #1 reason Indians have no respect globally.



• "First 40 Tejas still not...": Still awaiting Tejas from 2010 deal: IAF chief as China tests sixth-gen jet




• Bengaluru must shun car-centric planning: Instead of investing in projects that increase the vehicle footprint, the government should implement the vision outlined in the CMP— prioritising public transport, walking and cycling, and reducing dependence on private vehicles. It is time to shift focus towards building infrastructure that moves people, not just cars.



• Pakistan jackpot: Finds gold deposits worth Rs 609 billion.

Hindenburg Research Shuts Down: Founder Cites Toll On Well-being

Strange how this is all happening before Trump takes office

ISRO Achieves Successful Docking of Spacecraft

 

SpaDeX Docking Update:

🌟Docking Success

Spacecraft docking successfully completed! A historic moment.

Let’s walk through the SpaDeX docking process:

Manoeuvre from 15m to 3m hold point completed. Docking initiated with precision, leading to successful spacecraft capture.…

— ISRO (@isro) January 16, 2025

even Dems want suchir Balaji probe

the tech bros and indian Americans are now seen as beginning to lean towards trump, so this ro guy, who would have been congressman if I were still living in the Bay area, is now trying to insinuate himself. 

the real issue of poor suchir balaji's possible murder is getting politicized. 

Indus Script Deciphered by Bharath Rao (aka. Yajnadevam), Found To Be Sanskritic

happy new year: makara sankranti, Maha kumbh mela

Jan 14 is when I celebrate the new year, not the Gregorian new year which is a random date. makara sankranti is a real astronomical event, when the sun moves into the constellation makara or Capricorn, and it marks the end of the winter (such as it is) in India. (funny thing is it has broiling hot in Kerala lately 90+ def F, 33 deg C. some winter!). tomorrow is the start of the malayalam month of makaram/Capricorn. it will be makaram 1, 1200 ME (malabar era). 

5,000 years ago makara sankranti (based on the solar calendar) used to coincide with the uttarayanam (loosely speaking the winter solstice). because of the precession of the equinoxes, that is because the earth's axis is tilted at 23 degrees, the two dates are diverging. 18,000 years later, the two will coincide again. 

in bhishma's time, or around 3102 BCE, the two coincided, and this is why bhishma lay on the bed of arrows (sara-sayya) waiting for uttararayanam, the auspicious time, to arrive, before he passed away on the winter solstice, Dec 22.

my father passed away on the exact opposite, on Jun 21, the summer solstice, in 2003. 

and this year we have the Maha kumbha mela, which happens once in 144 years. 

wish all of you a great year ahead! 

ISRO Space Docking Attempt Halted Due to Problems

ISRO has halted its attempt to dock 2 spacecraft together in orbit, after encountering problems. After closing the separation distance to within 3 meters, apparently the Chaser spacecraft is suffering a computer crash, because its guidance control loop is encountering excessive variability in the readings from the optical sensors. It's hard to say without further details, but it may be some kind of parallax issue. They'll try to resume their docking efforts after studying the data to solve the problem, but in the meantime the spacecraft have been returned to a safer separation distance of 64 meters.

SpaDeX Docking Update:

A trial attempt to reach up to 15 m and further to 3 m is done.

Moving back spacecrafts to safe distance

The docking process will be done after analysing data further.

Stay tuned for updates.#SpaDeX #ISRO

— ISRO (@isro) January 12, 2025

Anyway, space rendezvous & docking is a previously unattempted advanced capability that ISRO is attempting to master, and so it's natural that things can go wrong along the way. That's all par for the course.

The only issue I'd take here is how they're speaking as if everything's gone according to plan, without even acknowledging that any problem has occurred.