Quick notes: GM corn | Whites-only...

• Arm-twisted: US trade talks may be cracking India’s opposition to GM crops. Concessions offered by the Indian trade team already included the possible easing of some restrictions on the import of GM corn. “GM is a life and death issue for Indian farmers.”... are we Trump's dumpyard?



• ‘It could feed the world’: Amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization.. The Spanish believed that amaranth was a satanic food of natives. 1521: Spanish conquistadors ban amaranth cultivation under penalty of having hands severed, destroying temples where 200,000 people annually consumed tzoalli (amaranth-honey statues) during ceremonies. . . Rajgira could be game-changer for Indian farmer.




• White Right-wingers Only: Trump considers overhaul of refugee system that would favor white people. Importing white South Africans and European Nazis.



• Trump immigration plan may wipe out 15M jobs by 2035: Fewer workers in the labor force could have dramatic effects on the U.S. economy, from lower economic growth to reductions in the nation's goods and services produced.



• Soft on Beijing: Trump has purged the National Security Council of many advisers who advocated a tougher line toward China and diminished the role of the council. China hawks grow queasy over Trump’s push for deals with Beijing.



• 'DOGE was all about collecting data for Musk's Grok': Tariffs are way up. Interest on debt tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE didn’t do much.



• Japanese Monster: Shohei Ohtani’s historic performance sends LA back to World Series.




• How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs. Unlike India's history debate clubs



• GOP's true colors: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat. “Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers”. ‘I love Hitler’



• Trump Organization Expands in India: Where Many of Its Partners Face Accusations

Quick notes: Agrivoltaics | Outsourcing tax....

• Farming under solar panels: "It reduces irrigation needs, shields crops from heat stress, and stabilizes incomes by diversifying revenue streams for farmers".




• Let MAGA eat soy: America’s latest farmer crisis is Government-Grown. Steep losses could fuel farm bankruptcies around the United States.
  
  
  



• Waiting for socialist bailouts: China’s snub of U.S. soybeans is a crisis for American farmers



• Forever dependent on foreign tech: India's IT sector nervous as US proposes 25% outsourcing tax. Navarro reposted a call from far-right activist Jack Posobiec for tariffs on services, not just goods.




Blaming AI for India’s IT woes is like blaming Uber for walking less. Truth is: we never built OS, chips or cloud because jugaad outsourcing was too profitable. Time isn’t the threat-our comfort zone is.

— Fropky (@fropky) September 6, 2025




• Trump attacks his cash cow: Hundreds of U.S. colleges poised to close in next decade. “Over the next decade, we’re going through a very painful but necessary re-balancing in supply and demand.”



• Ashtavakra Gita: The Perfect Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment




• Wi-Fi signals used to measure heart rate accurately: Signal variations caused by a beating heart enable determining beats per minute. The UCSC team, which included Professor Katia Obraczka, Ph.D. student Nayan Bhatia, and high school student and visiting researcher Pranay Kocheta, used a low-cost ESP32 chip and paired it with a machine learning algorithm to detect changes in the Wi-Fi signal caused by the heart. They then run it through a machine learning algorithm, which can estimate the heart rate with an accuracy of around half a beat per minute



• "Strength of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship": US firm makes a $500 million investment deal with Pakistan for critical minerals

Quick Notes: Tariff pressure | Rich farmers...

1. Don't buckle under pressure: 'Not in India’s best interest to negotiate trade deal with US amid Trump’s tariff threats'. As global trade tensions rise, India must remain proactive in safeguarding its economic interests against shifting US policies.



2. Trump insulting India publicly: "India has agreed to cut tariffs… finally exposing them".



3. "He's coming after his closest friends and allies": How Canadians are facing Trump threats head on - Bourbon is out, patriotism is in



4. Story From a Rajasthan Village: These Farmers Are Earning ₹250+ Crore Every Year




5. Steely resolve: China doubles US research output on next-gen chips amid export bans — trade war fuels a research wave



6. Tech boom amid sanctions: Russia sees tech boom amid sanctions — microelectronics industry sees massive hiring surge and increased salaries



7. Open-source future: China shifts focus from x86 and Arm CPUs, gov't promoting RISC-V chips heavily



8. Tesla Enters India, Hits Speed Bumps Elsewhere: While Musk's political influence continues to grow, his business empire is witnessing headwinds.

Quick notes: Mohammedan brothers | Paki reputation...

• Mohammedan Brothers: Afghan refugees in Pakistan concerned as deportation deadline looms



• How bad is Pakistan's image internationally? Couple of years back, I was at a place called Rouen, a pretty small town, about 3 hrs away from Paris. What was interesting was that there were a lot of Indian Restaurants in this small town, with names such as Rajasthan, Gandhi, Maharaja, Delhi, Namaste, etc. Each of these restaurants had a lot of symbols of India, Indian tradition & culture and things related to India.
  
  What was surprising was that all of these restaurants were owned by people from Pakistan. Every staff working there were also from Pakistan. And all of these restaurant owners received me & my team very warmly. On asking why do they have Indian names, it was a common answer - Restaurants with names or references to Pakistan don’t really work. Hence, they bank on Indian names.



• Chip Guru's Take: US can’t halt SMIC, Huawei’s tech advances to 5nm
  
  Beg, borrow or steal: Former ASML employee took stolen company secrets to Huawei
  
  Atmanirbhar China: China speeds up replacement of western PCs and other tech
  
  Back in the semiconductor race? Japanese Company Develops 32-Core 2nm Server Chiplet



• Sam Harris: Stop Christian Conversion in India




• Success story: How drones could be the future of Indian farming
  



• Lead and Cadmium: Heavy metal contamination in vegetables across Bengaluru



• Instagram and girls: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show... Instagram sued over harm to young people's mental health . . Meta pauses ads for users under 18 in Europe as it rolls out subscriptions. . . "Days Of Free Pass Over"
  
  
  

Quick notes: Tone it down | Addicted kids...

• Tone it down on Khalistan: To be sure, there is no longer an active Khalistan insurgency in India, and Sikh extremist violence is rare now. One can ask what is gained by focusing so much attention on a relatively small group of people thousands of miles away who are committed to a cause that has essentially petered out in India itself.



• Kids Addicted To Social Media, OTT: Majority of Indian parents say their kids addicted to social media, OTT. "Gadget addiction by children between ages 9-18 has become the new reality. The addiction, in some children, is leading to emotional, mental and physical disturbances".



• 'Coaching industry is toxic': It is unnatural to study without any purpose day and night. Your personality gets stunted. "Many of my engineering friends who are following the typical definition of success, have an elevated 'unhappiness level'. Many who have cracked these exams are now planning to go into business. They are realizing this much later after having run too far into this race. They join the corporate world and some feel burnt out".
  
  The coaching industry is the byproduct of a third world country. Since there are so many unemployed, it creates a competition among the unemployed. The institutes make you feel that if you clear the entrance exam you are very special.



• NYT features Anand Malligavad: India’s ‘Lake Man’ relies on ancient methods to ease a water crisis... After Anand Malligavad tumbled into a lake, he thought he might die. Not from drowning, but the stench. Like hundreds of other lakes in Bengaluru, the one Mr. Malligavad suddenly found himself in was a receptacle for sewage, plastic debris and construction waste.



• Millets for all: The pitfalls of growing too much wheat and rice can no longer be denied. The dominant varieties of these staples require large quantities of fertilizer, chemicals and water. They have been linked to lifestyle diseases. Meanwhile, the natural resource economy and nutritional benefits of millets are beyond dispute.



• Earthing Experiment with Dr Christy Westen: Power of Grounding




• Science with a spoonful of humor: Sabine Hossenfelder got famous on YouTube. Now it helps fund her research in quantum gravity



• Layered AI: Huawei vows to build 'Computing Backbone' for China's AI ambitions. . . . China stimulates investments in chips with massive R&D incentives . . . . . China's third Exascale supercomputer reportedly comes online. Meanwhile, the US currently only has two exascale machines, Frontier and Aurora, in operation.



• Radical gender ideology: Trudeau accuses parents protesting grooming of manifesting ‘hate’

Quick notes: Peaceful rise | Threat from the skies...

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



• 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



• 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.



• Threat from the skies: India steps up the fight against a major space danger. New Delhi’s ambitious space plans include tackling the problem of floating debris, countless pieces of which orbit the Earth



• Bhagavan Das: God is not a big deal




• 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".



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



• 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.

Quick notes: Tibet policy | Battle tank...

• India's Tibet policy: It is not that India did not have excellent strategic thinkers at the time, but Nehru decided not to use their competence. Tibet would never be discussed as a result. Today, one priority for Delhi is to have an in-depth discussion with Dharamsala as soon as possible.



• Russian weaponry: This war has revealed a major design flaw, for instance, in the T-72 main battle tank -- the wrong placement of the ammo storage compartment under the crew cupola, which tends to blow up with the first guided anti-tank munition hit midship.
  
  It is a matter of grave concern to the Indian armoured forces featuring the T-72. Maybe, this will finally convince the army headquarters to take ownership of the indigenous Arjun MBT (which handily beat the Russian T-90 and T-72 tanks in test trials). If the Ukraine crisis proves anything it is for the Indian military to 'Buy Indian'.



• Farm machinery exacting heavy toll on soil: In soil that has been squashed by heavy weight of farm machinery, air is forced out and the soil becomes compacted, leading to flooding and poor harvests. "Compaction can happen within a few seconds when we drive on the soil, but it can take decades for that soil to recover".



• Machine learning for farming applications: John Deere's autonomous tractor will usher in a new era of farming. Farmers are losing control of their machines and accuse John Deere of creating a monopoly in farm equipment manufacturing.



• Netflix losing its grip: Cancellations rise among long-standing subscribers



• Raag Nayaki Kanada (Alap): Shashwati Mandal




• When Shiva appears, Chandala disappears: The disappearance of the Chandala therefore marks the disappearance of the whole ideas he represented. The ‘meaningful nonsense’ of the Chandala of the local myth is thus changed — while the former questions the caste system, the changed version makes such an illusion, but behind it, it in fact seeks to revitalise and legitimise caste.



• Recipe for disaster: English-medium in rural primary = recipe for complete destruction of Indian talent.

Absolutely. And this policy is being pushed when the data clearly shows that Telugu medium students outperform English-medium students at primary level, *despite* Engish apartheid set against them.

English-medium in rural primary=recipe for complete destruction of Indian talent. https://t.co/cfaYxsg7pK

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) May 16, 2022




• Cities markedly warmer than the countryside: "Heat islands" in and near Delhi, with nighttime temps up to 102° (40°F hotter than nearby fields).


Cities are often markedly warmer than the countryside, and that's critical in a heat wave. This image, taken by @NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument on the @Space_Station, shows "heat islands" in and near Delhi, India, with nighttime temps up to 102° F (40° hotter than nearby fields). pic.twitter.com/yjzkdjDYev

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) May 12, 2022




• But wait, there's a solution: Shade from street trees reduced surface temperatures by an average of 12°C. Concrete surfaces shaded permanently by a bank of trees were cooled by up to 20°C in the summer.

What if I told you there was a single intervention we could deliver in our cities that would cool them during heatwaves, reduce flooding, scrub pollutants from the air, boost biodiversity, improve public health, and even reduce crime? You wouldn't believe me. But it's true. pic.twitter.com/W1KWm6RHFk

— Jon Burke FRSA 🌍 (@jonburkeUK) May 28, 2021

Quick notes: Forest schools | Light therapy...

• Learning from nature: Scandinavian-style forest schools are booming in Europe and the US – and spreading in Asia, too.



• Privacy hits Zuck's pocket: Apple iOS privacy change will decrease Facebook’s sales this year by about $10 billion.



• ‘Sold by Amazon’ program shut down: Amazon shuts down ‘Sold by Amazon’ program in the US following antitrust investigation. Amazon engages in unlawful price-fixing and restrained competition in order to maximize its profits.



• Chenab Rail Bridge: Highest railway bridge in the world




• TVS acquires 75 percent stake in Swiss e-Mobility Group: TVS’ is focusing on building a portfolio of premium and tech-driven brands, including Norton Motorcycles and eGO Movement.



• Can Erdogan mediate a deal between Russia and Ukraine? Moscow is angered by Turkey providing Ukraine with combat drones.
  
  Drone Superpower: How Turkey became a drone superpower.



• Only Hindus can be "communal": Why is secular France doubling funding for Christian schools in the Middle East?



• Han dirty tricks: Fake Tibetan group sponsors event featuring Olympics promo with exclusively Han Chinese cultural elements. “That’s not even our logo. Looks like a fake group”.



• Mindfulness: The 10-minute hack that is as ‘good as 40 minutes extra sleep’



• Light Therapy and Melatonin: Optimize Health and Immunity with Sunlight.
  1. View early morning sunlight.
  2. Get more light throughout the day. Preferably sunlight.
  3. Minimize bright light (screen time) after sunset.
  4. There is more to sunlight than Vitamin-D
  5. Oral melatonin is not a substitute
  6. Oral Vitamin-D is not a substitute
  7. LED bulbs bad - no Near-Infrared-Radiation. Incandescent bulbs better.




• Eco-friendly alternative to fertilizer: You can swap your fertilizer for black-eyed peas

Quick notes: Make-in-India | Israel's ally...

• Make-In-India? Yes, No, Maybe: India won’t go ahead with building Russian helicopters locally opting for off-the-shelf purchases instead. IAF needs to make immediate replacements to its fleet of over 320 aging helicopters.



• Has Israel become a top Chinese ally? Not surprisingly, China appears to have a vested interest in the Israeli tech sector, especially its advances in quantum technology. Chinese investment in Israeli technology “could lead to leaks of sensitive technology and cyber-espionage.”



• Ascendant China: Toyota turns to Chinese tech to reach its electric holy grail
  
  Chinese stranglehold: Tesla has concluded that no company in the United States is currently capable of producing artificial graphite to the required specifications and capacity needed for Tesla’s production. It said only mainland China could provide the quantity of graphite it needs in flake or powder form to manufacture its batteries in the U.S.



• Global Gateway: BRI rival from EU. Can Europe compete with China?
  
  Why US, EU are pitching an alternative to Chinese ‘hidden debts’
  
  Contaminated fertilizer: Sri Lanka bows to Chinese pressure again



• Remittance seeking mindset: Retaining - and attracting - talent is critical for India's future.

A lot has changed / is changing in India. What hasn’t change much is the Government’s remittance seeking mindset.

When GDP was <$1T it made sense to export human capital. With GDP at ~$3T, and India aiming to boost it to $10T+, retaining - and attracting - talent is critical. https://t.co/ZVwygfXpdM

— Rajeev Mantri (@RMantri) November 29, 2021




• RISC-V phones: SiFive's new chip could lead to revamped phone brains in 2023



• Semiconductor Independence Is Impossible: The EU produces cars, consumer electronics, and other things that do not need chips made using the latest nodes. Thus, the bloc wants to expand production of chips for these products to protect its economy.



• New game in town: Ola's electric scooter



• Vaccine durability: Antibody levels fall quickly in the months after people get their Pfizer and Moderna shots. The RNA in these vaccines does not last very long in the body. DNA is more stable than RNA, and might allow for a more prolonged, low-level activation of our immune system that provides longer-lasting protection.



• Not White Man's Burden: UK 'nowhere near' meeting targets agreed at Glasgow climate summit



• The return of ‘naati’ ragi: Karnataka farmers revive forgotten ragi varieties. Hundreds of local ragi varieties disappeared with the arrival of the high-yielding indaf variety of ragi.



• Why soil is one of the most amazing things on Earth: Due to intensive farming, we are losing soil 50 to 100 times faster than it is able to rebuild.

Quick notes: GM rice | Lying under oath...

• Loss of reputation: 500 tonnes of genetically modified rice found in a consignment India exported to the EU... India is yet to approve commercial cultivation of GM crops but allowed confined field trials resulting in “contamination and leaks” that made their way to the food chain.. "Only feeds the MNCs".



• 2-DG for Covid: Texas company to commence Phase 1a clinical trial. . . . any credit to DRDO?



• Lying under oath: Executives at Amazon, including founder Jeff Bezos, may have misled or lied to Congress about the firm's business practices.. A trade group representing thousands of India's brick-and-mortar retailers called for action against Amazon.



• BBC: Violence in B'desh is Hindus' fault: "The BJP has stoked fear of immigration from Bangladesh, causing anger in Dhaka, and Hindu hardliners in India have called for immigrants to be deported to Bangladesh".



• Muslims not minorities: “There are 20-22 crore Muslims in the country. According to me, they are not minorities. How can 22 crore people be a minority?”.



• Engineering studies in Hindi and Marathi: Pimpri Chinchwad College Of Engineering, Pune gets approval from AICTE to start BTech course in Marathi.



• Like your American counterparts: start paying for your own education and all expenses

I “like” how the youngsters of India have started taking their own decisions and keeping their parents out of it like their American counterparts!

Just do one thing: start paying for your own education and wedding and all expenses from 18 years of age on first!

Then talk!

— Gautam Govitrikar DMD (@Gautaamm) October 17, 2021




• BikAss ain't BikAss: Vikas that destroys a fragile ecosystem, leads to deforestation, causes landslides, loss of lives and homes, is not vikas. Mindless construction in the Western Ghats and the Himalayas in the name of development is destroying all that is good and wonderful



• Facts that should be in Greta's toolkit:

₹400 crore worth of hay burnt in Punjab yearly.
2 crore ton!
77,000 ton of Nitrogen emitted.
56 lakh ton animal edible nutreants lost.
10 LT crude protein, 3 lakh ton of digestible crude protein (DCP), 80 lakh ton of total digestible nutrient (TDN) lost.

(Yes HR & UP burn too) pic.twitter.com/5y1RyZHolq

— Kiran Kumar S (@KiranKS) October 17, 2021




• Enes Kanter: NBA player wears ‘Free Tibet’ shoes to game, China cuts livestream. . . . caught between free speech and lucrative Chinese market.

Quick notes: Guard of the Himalayas | 3rd dose...

• Sundarlal Bahuguna,‘Gentle Warrior’: “Himalaya is a land of penance. Nothing in the world can be achieved without penance. I am doing this on behalf of all who are striving to save our dying planet. Why should a river, a mountain and forest or the ocean be killed, while we cling to life?”.
  
  As late as 2018, when Bahuguna was 91, he said in an interview that dams were paving the way for calamities and expressed concern that lakhs of trees will be cut down to make way for the Char Dham road and Pancheshwar dam. “The well-being of the Himalayas is important not just for Uttarakhand but the rest of the country as well”.




• Protection wanes by 6 months: Efficacy of Chinese vaccines is “not high” — officials back 3rd dose



• Only Allopathy gets benefit of doubt? AP govt stops distribution of herbal Covid cure. . . . No side effects, say Ayurvedic experts. ‘The mixture, containing 18 ingredients, is safe for administration to COVID-19 patients’



• More of East India loot? India challenges $1.2 billion Cairn arbitration award, says 'never agreed to arbitrate'.. When an Air India aircraft lands at any US airport, Cairn would be able to move court and get that attached before it flies out.



• Mango exports: US apples arrived in India without the Indian inspector being in the USA, but vice versa was not allowed. No Indian mangoes in US for second year in a row.



• What are weeds? An empty field left undisturbed for long enough will inevitably turn into a forest, given enough time. Nature will fill empty, barren or disturbed ground with plants which quickly stabilise and build the soil, to prepare the ground for progressively larger plants, until the area is filled with trees, and many layers of understory plants beneath them. This process is called Forest Succession.
  
  Why forests? Because forest systems are one of the most productive and most sustainable systems known, it is what Nature creates at almost every opportunity. Forest systems can be designed to produce food if we construct them using edible plant species, and they can produce other useful resources such as timber, fibres, dyes and medicines. In addition, what makes them special is that they are living ecosystems, and therefore support great biodiversity, they provide a home to a wide range of flora and fauna, which all comes together to create a balanced, natural, pest and weed free system.
  
  When any soil is laid bare or disturbed, Nature has a system for repairing the degraded ground in order to prevent soil erosion and to reconstruct the ecosystem which was there or should be there. As the first line of action, Nature deploys pioneer plants, to stabilise the soil. These plants all have various unique attributes and aid the reconstruction process in various ways. Here are some examples:
  
  - Plants with deep tap roots drill into hardpan to decompact it, creating channels to allow water and air back in the soil.
  
  - Plants with fine, net-like root structures hold the soil together and prevent erosion on slopes and banks.
  
  - Plants with thorns or which are poisonous protect the ground cover plants from being over-grazed by herbivores.
  
  We are all familiar with these amazing pioneer plants, we commonly call them weeds! Weeds are by definition “plants growing where we don’t want them to” and that is not a biological or ecological categorisation, it’s just a unscientific value judgement of the worth and place of certain plants in the ecosystem according to subjective human opinion. The pioneer plant’s action of stabilising any soil disturbance or damage is only the first of many steps of a full-blown reconstruction process which Nature carries out.



• Planting the water: Peru is reviving a pre-Incan technology for water. It uses water canals called amunas – to divert wet-season flows from mountain streams and route them to natural infiltration basins. Because the water moves more slowly underground as it travels through gravel and soil, it emerges downslope from springs months later, when the comuneros collect it to water their crops. Because much of their irrigation soaks into the ground and eventually makes its way back to the rivers, repairing abandoned amunas scattered throughout the highlands could extend water into the dry season for city dwellers too.



• Iran unveils its domestic supercomputer: Wholly designed and built by a team of Iranian engineers, it has a performance capacity of 0.56 petaflops at the moment and will reach one petaflops in two months.



• 2DG: “It is a glucose molecule analogue which can’t undergo further glycolysis. Monocytes/macrophages in Covid lungs (proliferative tissues: inflammation/tumour) become highly glycolytic after infection and facilitate SARS-CoV-2 replication which accumulates in virally infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and energy production.. Dr Jain showed that 2-DG can function as a differential radio-chemo-modifier, which can sensitize cancer cells while protecting normal cells. It enhances cellular damage and cell death by inhibiting repair and recovery.”

After Just 1 Hour of Administring Dose ...

Effect of '2-deoxy-D-glucose' of DRDO video of CHL Hospital, Indore.

Great work by our Scientists👍🇮🇳🙏pic.twitter.com/UKVTHhyuaD

— Megh Updates 🚨 (@MeghUpdates) May 24, 2021

Quick notes: Fauci endorsement | Silent epidemic...

• Dr Fauci: "Covaxin found to neutralise 617 variant"... The New York Times on Tuesday said Covaxin works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies against the Wuhan virus.



• Rush to hospitals worsens Covid crisis: Less than 15% of people infected with COVID-19 actually need hospital care and even fewer will need oxygen.



• Vitamin D deficiency: India's silent epidemic




• Terrible financial sense: It is in India’s interest to halt this pandemic for the sake of its weakening economy. "Pharma companies are dictating prices for vaccines, instead of the govt negotiating and imposing price caps".



• TSMC Update: 2nm in Development, 3nm and 4nm on Track for 2022



• Battery bottleneck: All those new factories won't be sufficient to meet battery demand from all of those new EVs



• World’s Mystery Methane Hotspot: A landfill in Bangladesh is leaking huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is about 84 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The 12 highest methane-emission rates detected this year in satellite data occurred over Bangladesh



• Passive Cooling Strategies:

Quick notes: Amazon drivers | Border villages...

• Relentless greed: Amazon apologises after falsely denying that drivers are, at times, forced to urinate in plastic bottles after employees confirmed the same.
  
  Biden singles out Amazon for not paying federal taxes



• Licorice for Covid? Scientists from Manesar have found that an ingredient in Mulethi (Yashthimadhu) has the potential to emerge as a drug candidate against SARS-CoV-2 as it lowers the severity of the disease and brings down viral replication.



• China Building Villages in Indian Himalayas: “Beijing advanced the expansionism in South China Sea not by directly employing force but through asymmetrical and hybrid warfare. That success has emboldened China and it has taken that playbook to the Himalayan borderlands”.



• Bodhidharma: The legendary Bodhidharma gave up his throne to become a monk and propagate Zen Buddhism that he founded. He gave physical training to the monks of Shaolin, from which kung fu and other martial arts evolved.




• Ghar Wapsi: At 47%, Hinduism biggest gainer in religious conversion in Kerala . . . . . expect more in the coming decades



• Data warfare: Russian law requires smart devices to come pre-installed with domestic software.



• On-board generator: Potential game-changer for making fully electric viable for larger trucks




• Satyameva Jayate: Salvatore Babones in Foreign Policy Mag:
  
  Farm incomes in Punjab and Haryana are the highest in India, with the average farmer earning more than twice the national average. They also garner the lion’s share of govt support. More than 90 percent of their cropland is covered by heavily subsidized irrigation. And the govt buys almost the entire output of Punjab and Haryana farmers at minimum support prices that are set far above market levels. The results are huge and growing official stockpiles of wheat and rice, much of which ends up being given away to the country’s poor—or simply rotting in place.
  
  The Jat farmers of Punjab and Haryana have long lobbied India’s govt to maintain an agricultural system that is both economically wasteful and environmentally destructive. And why shouldn’t they? India is a democracy, and in a democracy, the squeaky wheel gets the grease—and the subsidies.



• On Being Quiet:

Quick notes: Cyber enemies | Server chips...

• Sino-Pak axis on Cyber warfare: There is evidence to believe that China is assisting Pakistani hackers in their campaigns against India, notably including an operation intended to steal sensitive data from the Indian military and plant malware on Indian defense systems launched in 2019.



• 256-core server chips from Chinese Academy of Engineering: Switching from MIPS to RISC-V should not be too challenging given the architectural similarities. Meanwhile, the adoption of RISC-V means that Loongson's upcoming processors will be supported by a broad ecosystem of software and hardware, something that will inevitably make them more competitive.



• Boarding Schools for India’s Outcasts: "We used to produce about six doctors a year [from graduates]. This year we have produced 189".



• Toxic city: Hyderabad home to multiple contaminated sites



• Gardening in hot summers: How to successfully grow a garden in HOT climates




• How to learn a language and stick at it: We’re living in a golden age for free and easy-to-access language-learning content. Lexilogos is an essential website with links to courses, dictionaries and resources in more than 100 languages.



• Gautam Adani world's biggest wealth gainer so far in 2021: Adani has added $16.2 billion, taking his total net worth to $50 billion.



• Facebook + Google versus the news industry: Lobbyists for Facebook and Google threw their weight against new U.S. legislation that seeks to aid struggling news publishers by allowing them to negotiate collectively against the tech companies over revenue sharing and other deals. The bills come not long after Facebook battled with Australia over how much it should pay news publishers for their content.

Fighting for peace..

Dear Greta,
Have you not heard of children suffering from acute respiratory ailments due to stubble burning by your newly found farmer friends?

Quick notes: State actors | Annus horribilis...

• Big Tech is like a state actor now: Google, Facebook and Twitter should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines. A threat to our sovereignty.
  
  - Govt open to launching Indian app store. . . . We have to develop our own tech platforms.

India has the market size to do a serious Android fork, with a mobile OS and App Store controlled by neither Apple nor Google.

Xiaomi, KaiOS, Cyanogen, and the history of Chinese Android forks show there is a path here. https://t.co/DxB6VY6xul

— balajis.com (@balajis) January 11, 2021




• Will 2021 be China’s annus horribilis? Claude Arpi: Has Beijing succeeded in intimidating India with its brazen info warfare? Absolutely not. Has Mr Xi’s prestige been enhanced after Ladakh? Certainly not. Instead, it showed the PLA’s limitations facing a determined adversary.
  
  Economically too, Beijing lost a lot, especially with India (and several other countries) banning a number of Chinese apps and the decision to not award big contracts to China. One could add many issues to the list. All this makes me think 2021 will an “annus horribilis” for China and its new Great Helmsman. It would only be justice.



• Signal and Telegram downloads surge: WhatsApp collects account registration information such as your phone number, transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others, including businesses when using the service, and mobile device information.
  
  - Elon Musk discloses funding Signal, says will 'donate more'



• Zero-dairy way to preserve native Indian cow breeds: Beejom doubles up as an animal sanctuary for native Indian cow breeds by trailing the focus away from dairy farming and towards an economy around cow dung and cow urine instead.




• Big Tech is tracking you: Hidden map on your phone shows everywhere you’ve been and the photos you took there



• Air Taxi: The autonomous urban aircraft market may be worth $1.5 trillion by 2040



• Robot uses UV-C Light to fight Covid in schools, offices: Adibot is programmed to disinfect rooms on its own. UV light is proven to kill bacteria and viruses, including COVID-19, but it’s also harmful to human eyes and skin, potentially causing skin cancer or cataracts.

Quick notes: 2021 resolution | Right to breathe...

• 2021 resolution: replace foreign products with local ones: “Think of things manufactured abroad that have permeated into our lives unknowingly, in a way, shackling us down. Let us find out their substitutes made in India and decide that henceforth we shall use products made with the hard work and sweat of the people of India. ”



• Amazon wins by ‘steamrolling’ smaller rivals: No competitor is too small to draw Amazon’s sights. It cloned a line of camera tripods that a small outside company sold on Amazon’s site, hurting the vendor’s sales so badly it is now a fraction of its original size, the little firm’s owner said. Amazon said it didn’t violate the company’s intellectual-property rights.
  
  Amazon set its sights on Allbirds Inc., the maker of popular shoes using natural and recycled materials, and last year launched a shoe called Galen that looks nearly identical to Allbirds’ bestseller—without the environmentally friendly materials and selling for less than half the price.
  
  Allbirds Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger commented on the situation stating: “You can’t help but look at a trillion-dollar company putting their muscle and their pockets and their machinations of their algorithms and reviewers and private-label machine all behind something that you’ve put your career against. You have this giant machine creating all these headwinds for us.”



• Right To Breathe: Children are more affected by pollution than adults because their lungs are not fully developed. Compare lung sizes of Indian and US children, you’ll know who air pollution affects most. Asthma among children has become commonplace and most households need inhalers and nebulisers for the young and elderly to get through the highly polluted winter months in northern India.



• Drones in farm sector: Agriculture scientists recommend application of insecticide at rootzone, which is very difficult, when the crop has grown to a certain height. However using drones, it is possible to effectively apply the insecticide at the root level. “When the drone is hovering above the crop, just like a helicopter producing wind while landing, there will be wind, which results in spreading effect in the crops, making it convenient for application of the insecticide at the root-level”. Most importantly, the dosage of the pesticide or insecticide can be reduced by 35 to 40 per cent



• Permaculture for Wastelands: Narsanna and Padma Koppula show the way




• Sialkot, Pakistan: Almost 70% of the world's soccer balls are made here



• China espionage cell in Kabul busted: Pakistan helped with the espionage project because it wants to strengthen its ties with China and shares Beijing’s view of the Uyghurs as a danger to regional security.



• Skill:

Riziy’s been putting in work. 😂 pic.twitter.com/GwWutnVw5c

— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) May 13, 2020

Quick notes: Wistron workers | Quantumscape...

• 12-hour shifts, no overtime: Wistron's labor law violations in Indian iPhone assembly plant
  
  > "Wistron, Foxconn and Pegatron all have huge rounds of employee loss during Chinese new year as people go home and never come back due to dissatisfaction and my guess is they expected the same outside China instead of workers actually protesting"
  
   > "Amazing how much profit *doesn't* go to the actual employees"
  
  > Deniability: “It’s not our business; they’re not our employees. We will investigate.”
  
  > It’s bad enough that Apple is using slave labor in China, that will not be tolerated in a freer country like India. Beyond that the wages highlight just how low Apple will go to enhance margins.



• Jagdeep Singh, founder and CEO at QuantumScape: Electric car battery startup is on the cusp of changing the industry.



• Energy bonus: Tiny nuclear reactors yield a huge amount of clean hydrogen



• Kalmane Kamegowda: Indian shepherd combats water scarcity by building ponds. He spent at least $14,000 from his and his son’s earnings to dig a chain of 16 ponds on a picturesque hill near his village in Karnataka. During rainy season, these tanks get filled with water and serve as reservoirs for birds and other forest animals during the summer.
  



• A story of inappropriate technology: Excellent thread.

  A story of inappropriate technology: in the 1970s it was decided to modernize the rice farming of Sri Lanka, whose system that had not changed much for 3000 years. The goal was to replace the water buffalo with the modern tractor, but the attempt had disastrous consequences... pic.twitter.com/XIl5sUQf8k

  — Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) December 13, 2020




• Death by fertilizers: India is the top urea producer in the world, accounts for 44.42% of the world's urea production.



• E-commerce scams: Chinese hackers targeted Indians with e-shopping scams. They created bogus links and asked internet users to click on them to participate in online contests and win prizes



• Bilateral swaps’ further China’s global footprint: The swap line encourages partners to increase reliance on Chinese goods and RMB loans to buy them, enhancing thereby its economic influence. It also furthers the goal of internationalising the RMB and establishing it as an alternative reserve currency.



• The Power of Now: The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

"The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present." -Eckhart Tolle

☀️#ZenYogaVibes

— Zen Yoga Vibes (@ZenYogaVibes) December 6, 2020

Quick notes: Hybrid warfare | Hollywood's silence...

• Dependent on China: Modi sarkar has no plans to exclude Chinese firms from 5G network infrastructure contracts
  
  Chinese intel: A Chinese company has compiled a database on millions in India and their children and families for the use of the country's intelligence agencies.
  
  Explainer: What is hybrid warfare and how has China used it?



• Deploy troops all along LAC: “The deployment pattern will change not just in eastern Ladakh but will be seen all across the LAC for a minimum of two years. . . ”Even while the LAC tension was prevailing, China in June had claimed 3,300 sq km of Bhutanese territory saying it was ‘disputed territory’.



• India's Semiconductor Quagmire: “Having a land bank is the least important requirement for setting up a fab. It costs billions of dollars to set up a cutting edge CMOS fab and there are only 2-3 companies in the world having that technology and there is no strong motivation or reason for them to set up their fabs in India. In addition, they can’t just rely only on the local market to fill up the capacity in the fab”.




• How China bought Hollywood's silence: “Instead of us doing business with China and that leading to China becoming more free, what has happened is a place like China has bought our silence with their money.”



• Chinese-made flu shots: China is struggling to convince citizens to receive influenza vaccinations to protect them in the upcoming flu season after years of corruption scandals involving faulty, watered-down, or otherwise useless vaccines



• C-virus effect: With  the Work-From-Home culture catching on, many companies are looking at setting up shop in tier-2 cities.
  
  The Zoho experiment: Sridhar Vembu dabbles with village offices as employees move home.



• Aparna Rajagopal: A lawyer-turned-organic farmer who has created a business from the dung of native Indian cow breeds
  

Quick notes: Tibet advantage | Urban farming...

• Claude Arpi: Is the ‘Tibet card’ in play? A dramatic Indian Army operation last week has given India tactical advantage in the 4-month-long confrontation with China. It was the first time in those four months that the Indian Army could ‘pre-empt’ the Chinese grabbing more Indian territory. For India, this is the first real good news since the beginning of the bitter conflict. The best bet for India and the exiled Tibetans is to work closely together; it could pay rich dividends.



• PLA failures: Xi Jinping plans to purge Chinese military after failures on Indian border. Xi is pushing China to the brink of military confrontations in several theaters by personally taking a hand in provocative actions like the August 26 launch of “aircraft carrier killer” ballistic missiles into the South China Sea. 



• Peaceful fall: Decoupling with U.S. would cut China’s growth to 3.5%. China would face even more disastrous consequences if the U.S. can coordinate its key allies, such as Japan, South Korea, Germany and France, to also decouple. In that case, China’s growth potential could fall to 1.6% in 2030.



• Dr D Nageshwar Reddy: Initially, people were talking about the importance of handwashing but now we know they are less important than wearing masks. One study has said that if masks are put on properly and if physical distancing is followed, it is equivalent to 90% effect of lockdown. Instead of lockdown, the same effect can be achieved by people wearing masks and maintaining distance.



• Urban farming is catching on: It can make us healthier and more resilient: Getting out into nature and gardening can improve your mental health and physical fitness.