Quick notes: Europe in decline | Proxy war...

• 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 Nvidia 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



• The only Self of all: There is no 'my self' and 'his self'. There is the 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



• Wall squats and planks: Strength-training exercises best at lowering blood pressure



• 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.” .. What’s sad is to realize that 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:




• Padre's double game: Pastor at kidnapped US girl's funeral in 1975 charged with her murder



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



• Self-loathing: Qualification for a job at BBC's South Asia desk.

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: Done little to boost Italy's exports, making China the only winner.

Quick notes: Cerebras supercomputer | Eye drops...

• 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.




• AI, weaponized: As AI porn generators get better, the stakes get higher. Just a few months ago, a 22-year-old was sentenced to six months in jail for taking underage womens' photos from social media and using them to create sexually explicit deepfakes.



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



• 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 partnership with Chinese battery supplier: U.S. lawmakers to review a licensing deal between Ford Motor and China-based CATL that would produce battery cells at a planned $3.5 billion plant in Michigan.



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

Quick notes: Slow lane | Digital detox...

• Stuck in slow lane: In 2021, India’s share of high-technology 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



• Collective trauma: Nearly one fourth of China’s young people report mental health problems



• 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.



• Fairness obsession: Woman shares ‘controversial’ opinion about colorism among Indians



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

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




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



• 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.



• Netherlands: Phone ban announced to stop school disruptions. "Even though mobile phones are almost intertwined with our lives, they do not belong in the classroom".



• 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