Quick notes: Brain-drain | Big fat churches...

• Brain-drain: A third of India's most sought after engineering graduates leave the country. Nine out of 10 top scorers in the annual joint entrance examination held nationally for admission to the IITs and other reputed engineering colleges have migrated. Up to 36% of the top 1,000 scorers, too, have taken this path.



• India to lose 6,500 millionaires in 2023: Dubai and Singapore remain preferred destinations for wealthy Indian families..‘Millionaires’ or ‘high-networth individuals’ (HNWIs) refer to those with investable wealth of $1 million or more.



• Germany's BIG FAT Churches: The two main churches have total assets worth about €300 billion with combined annual turnover of €150 billion. State payments are only a small part of church income in Germany, with taxes to the tune of €13 billion annually making up the bulk of it.
  
  In addition, there's a sizable amount of income from church assets about which the clergy keeps mum. The two churches are said to be the biggest landlords in Germany, owning forests, farmland and other real estate, as well as holding stakes in businesses such as publishing houses, breweries, banks and insurance companies.



• Biggest losers of AI boom are knowledge workers: The transformation will pile pressure on higher-wage knowledge workers whose activities “were previously considered to be relatively immune from automation,” according to McKinsey study.
  
  A few years ago, McKinsey had estimated that about half of worker hours worldwide were spent on tasks that could be automated. Now it’s raising the figure to as high as 60-70 per cent. Employees could find that their time is reallocated — or that their jobs disappear.



• EU Hits Google with Antitrust Charges: Google faces EU break-up order over anti-competitive adtech practices. Google may have to sell part of its adtech business.



• Chip slowdown: Top 10 foundries see revenue drop nearly 15% Year-over-Year.



• Nisargadatta: Change your world without trying to change others




• Organ donors: India has one of the world's lowest rates of organ donation. The current health system limits the health benefits of donated organs and allows private hospitals to profit without contributing much to the system.

Quick notes: Resilient jawan | R&D budget...

• Where Indian Army Scores Over PLA: An oft-overlooked military advantage that India has against China is the resilience and fighting quality of our combat forces. In contrast, the average Chinese soldier is a lone male child, pampered by an adoring family and ill-prepared for the hazards and discomforts of the Line of Actual Control.
  
  This man-to-man advantage that Indian jawans on the LAC enjoy over the relatively comfort-loving Chinese soldiers would be eroded once the ranks of hardened jawans, enrolled on long-service tenures, are diluted by significant numbers of so-called Agniveers -- soldiers enrolled on short-service tenures of four years.



• Annual R&D spend as a percentage of GDP: India? We spent it on Sardar Patel and Kempegowda statues.
  
  



• Kumbhaka (Breath Retention) and Bohr Effect: According to the Bohr Effect, buildup of CO2 during breath retention (hypoxia) triggers release of oxygen. Oxygen is attached to hemoglobin in the blood, and is then unloaded into the tissues.
  
  Most people have a blood oxygen saturation level of 95-98%, which sounds very high. However, this number is only a measure of oxygen in the blood—not the tissues, where oxygen is needed to energize and repair. Once oxygen is unloaded from hemoglobin due to a breath hold, it can be utilized by tissues. CO2 is then picked up by hemoglobin, escorted to the lungs, and breathed out.



• Take One Minute to Discover the Timeless:




• 'There really is more to life than posting on Instagram': "I would find myself scrolling at night, and then having a bad night's sleep, and then waking up not feeling refreshed. Now I'm not making comparisons in my day-to-day life, and I don't really know what celebrities are doing".



• TikTok is China's Digital Fentanyl: They show a very different version in China than in U.S. “China only allows people to be on TikTok for 40 minutes a day”.



• Supplement fetish: Intake of popular commercial dietary supplements like nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B3, could actually increase the risk of serious diseases, including cancer. NR could not only increase the risk of someone developing triple-negative breast cancer but also cause the cancer to spread to the brain, the study said.

Quick notes: deGoogle | Namma Yatri...

• How have you deGoogled your life? De-Googled versions of Android are gaining traction... Expel Google from your life.



• Japan's $2.38B Research Center for 2nm node: The research hub will be comprised of Japanese and American semiconductor companies, as well as multiple universities from Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Among the Japanese universities, the business publication names the University of Tokyo, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Riken. . . . . . . . . this is how you do it



• 'Namma Yatri': Autorickshaw union in Bengaluru launches its own ride-hailing app



• Vehicular pollution in Delhi: “While the need is to scale up public transport, when you look at the actual investments in the city, the focus has been on building more roads — bigger roads, flyovers, overpasses and underpasses — to facilitate vehicular movement. And there has been virtually no effort to make paths for pedestrians or cyclists.”



• China's CATL: The world’s biggest EV battery producer is about to get even bigger. The company has announced a new $7 billion factory in Hungary and another planned factory in Mexico. The manufacturer could be looking to expand with plants in the U.S. and Indonesia, as well.


Live as Presence:



• Every River is under attack by the sand mafia: After the sale of liquor, the quickest way for politicians to earn a fast buck is from the sale of minerals, boulders and sand. The demand for minerals, boulders and sand is so great that it has fueled a black market and the goons who control this trade do not hesitate to kill law enforcement officers and reporters who have tried to expose them.



• Imran Khan asks Pakistan’s president to investigate military: Claims senior intelligence official Major General Faisal Naseer was involved the plot to kill him.



• Sino-Pak Bioweapon? Those in the intelligence and scientific community, watching the developments, warn that by using Pakistan, China had outsourced a highly contagious network of laboratories where antigens a hundred times more infectious than the present Covid could be created or `dropped in’.

Quick notes: Overtreatment | Mantra meditation...

• “Doctor, is this really necessary?”: Prevent unnecessary medical care — by asking your Doctor these 4 questions first: "Is this really necessary? What are the risks? Are there other options? What happens if I don’t do anything?"



• Bribe to overtreat: The makers of Dolo tablets gave freebies worth Rs 1,000 crore to doctors for prescribing their 650 mg anti-inflammatory drug.



• Chinese Exascale Supercomputer: OceanLight, operated by the University of Science and Technology of China, races neck and neck with crowning jewels of Western supercomputing achievement such as Frontier and Summit, as well as Japan's Arm-based Fugaku.



• Fastest-charging EV: China's Xpeng G9 SUV claimed to be world's fastest-charging mass-produced EV



• Self-driving tractor: Foxconn to make self-driving electric tractor in Ohio



• The science behind Mantra meditation:



• Bride trafficking along the China-Pakistan economic corridor: Cases of fraudulent marriage between Pakistani women and girls — many of them from marginalized backgrounds and Christian families — and Chinese men who had travelled to Pakistan. The victims were lured with payments to the family and promises of a good life in China, but reported abuse, difficult living conditions, forced pregnancy, or forced prostitution once they reached China.

Quick notes: German industry | Windfall gains...

• China is steadily wiping out German industry: "Over a decade ago, the sudden emergence of Chinese competitors wiped out Germany's advanced solar power industry. Now, that experience is likely to repeat across a broad spectrum of industries. Germany is slowly but surely realizing that a national industrial strategy based on synergy with China is headed toward a dead-end.’’



• Role-reversal: “China-made EVs could turn Sino-EU automotive trade on its head. In EV trade – the future mainstay of the auto sector – the EU is quickly becoming a net consumer of China-made vehicles”




• Windfall: For Reliance, With Love: Russian oil has supercharged profits. Reliance’s GRM stood at a sky-high $24 to $26 per barrel.



• Is the tank doomed? "This war has been the day of the drone. It tells us that you need drones for defence to keep enemy drones off your back. You need classic low-level air defence including lasers and electronic jamming.".. In the future remote-controlled, unmanned tanks - essentially armoured drones - will be moving across the battlefield in tandem with crewed tanks, increasing their firepower while reducing the risk to life.



• Russia learns to neutrlize drones: In the early months of the war in Ukraine, drones emerged as an unexpected source of victory against Russian forces. But Russia has learned from the humiliation by drones. The drone wonder weapons are becoming increasingly ineffective because Russia has improved its defense systems and is downing and jamming many of Ukraine's drones. "Drones were able to play such a role because the Russians were slow to set up an air defense system".



• Anti-drone gun: Russia employing Stupor, an advanced electromagnetic weapon, that severs the connection between drones and their operators.



• Drone force: Ukraine sent dozens of 'dronations' to build army of drones. But electronic counter-measures were becoming increasingly effective.



• Smugglers using underwater drones: The unmanned submersibles are apparently capable of carrying up to 200kg (441lbs) of cargo.



• A Manipur Hill Came Crashing Down: At least 50 buried alive. "When a railway line or road is constructed in such topography, it involves a lot of vegetation clearing, slope-cutting and after that, and soil filling, but we are observing that these activities are leaving the soil very loose and vulnerable to erosions".



• High-fructose-corn-syrup for breakfast: Kellogg's loses court case over sugary cereal supermarket offers



• Vipassana Meditation: Kavitha Maharaj

Quick notes: Brain-scale AI | Sperm count...

• China builds brain-scale AI model using ExaFLOPS supercomputer: The work to create an AI training model with 174 trillion parameters is gargantuan.



• Dystopia : China’s surveillance state is growing. Here’s how.




• 24-hour Solar power: China tests technology that could beam solar power from space to Earth



• Sperm count collapse: Research into falling sperm counts finds alarming levels of chemicals in male urine samples. . . . . . . . . Plastic Planet



• So rice! Malayalis off paddy fields, Bengal workers step in. Migrant workers charge much less than what local labourers charge.



• Kalaripayattu: India's martial art and the world's oldest




• Lethal accuracy, drone assisted: Discover Russian artillery tactic to destroy Ukrainian M777 howitzers using drones



• Replacing Kurds with Arabs: Erdogan trains his sights on Kurdish northern Syria



• Doing nothing can be harder than doing anything: How to Do Nothing is not about inaction, staring at the ceiling or relocating to an isolated cabin on the beach or the hills; rather the contrary. It is an active “act of resistance”, an “action plan”, skewed to free people from the shackles of the attention economy and vulgar capitalism.
  
  It is indeed high time to drop off the high-tech social-engineering assembly line, away from the herd mentality. Technology, like money, is a “useful servant but a bad master”.
  
  You cannot 'do' meditation:

Quick notes: Google translate | Turboprop...

• Google Translate adds 24 new languages: Sanskrit, Assamese, Konkani, Manipuri, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Dogri...



• India among potential partners for Embraer turboprop: New turboprop aircraft would seek to penetrate a market dominated by Franco-Italian ATR



• Forest bathing: In 1982, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries created the term shinrin-yoku, which translates to “forest bathing” or “absorbing the forest atmosphere.”
  
  The practice encourages people to simply spend time in nature — no actual bathing required. It’s also very low impact, which means you don’t have to go for intense trail runs or hikes. The goal of forest bathing is to live in the present moment while immersing your senses in the sights and sounds of a natural setting.



• Intermittent Fasting May Have Cognitive Benefits: Eating less often can improve focus and brain health



• Rules: How to play Pickleball




• From MIPS to RISC-V: MIPS Technologies pivots to RISC-V ISA. Upcoming chips to have up to 512 cores & 1024 threads



• Open Source EDA Software - Democratizing Hardware Design: In 2018, DARPA announced that the United States will invest $100 million in new open source tools and silicon blocks to create SOCs and circuit boards.
  
  The OpenROAD initiative seeks to make it easy to go from RTL to a final manufacturable layout for SoCs and circuit boards in 24 hours. Since the 2018 launch, the project has progressed quickly - with the 1.0 integrating some twenty tools into a single app. . . . . this can be a boon for India



• Google’s Surveillance Capitalism: Each time you open an app on your phone or browse the web, an auction for your eyeballs is taking place behind the scenes thanks to a thriving market for personal data. Ad platforms transmit the location data and browsing habits of Americans and Europeans about 178 trillion times each year.
  
  By way of online activity and location, a person in the U.S. is exposed 747 times each day to real-time bidding. (The figure doesn’t include personal data transmitted by Meta Platform Inc.’s Facebook or Amazon.com Inc.’s ad networks, meaning the true measure of all broadcast data is probably much larger.) Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc. made $68 billion in revenue from the quarter ending March 31, 2022. Out of this, about $54 billion came from advertising.



• Early Christians were the original groomers: Isolate the child from their parents and guardians, make tempting promises and exploit their fear of parental authority/punishment.

Early christians were the original groomers. Isolate the child from their parents and guardians, make tempting promises and exploit their fear of parental authority/punishment. pic.twitter.com/hCK4qiN6SV

— Heliotroph (@Heliotrophy) April 27, 2022

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: Crypto heist | Campus violence...

• Terror financing: Crypto worth around 4 crore transferred to Hamas, reveals Delhi Police probe



• Violence mars education: Violence has periodically marred Kerala's higher education system and the state is not a magnet for higher studies. Should politics be kicked out of campuses? . . . . . . . . . . . Bring NOTA to student elections. If NOTA wins, annul the elections that year.



• What India Needs In Ladakh: India has over 4,000 medium tanks, but not a single light tank. The advantage rests with the PLA, whose armoured units in Tibet are equipped with the new ZTQ-15 (or Type 15) light tank.



• E-bikes: The top-selling electric vehicles in the U.S. have two wheels. "Replace a car with a mode that contributes less to congestion and has a lighter carbon footprint".



• Thich Nhat Hanh: The first 8 exercises of Mindful Breathing




• 6G: Jio, Finland's University of Oulu ink JV on 6G technology



• Anti-Arab sentiment sweeps Turkey: Many Turks believe Syrian refugees have overstayed their welcome. Now, as the economic crisis in the country gets worse, attacks have begun to escalate, both rhetorically and physically. Some want all foreigners out of Turkey.



• China is beating the world on yet another greentech: As with other climate technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, on hydrogen electrolyzers China is already eating the rest of the world’s lunch.



• Lithuania stands firm in its support for Taiwan: Taiwan’s $1 billion Lithuania fund is a high-stakes game of economic diplomacy. . . . "German companies bending to Beijing’s will", Lithuania says



• Has India lost its demographic sweet spot? "The country’s working age population growth rate which was more than 2 per cent till 2010 has dropped to 1.5 per cent. 75 per cent of the countries with economic growth of 6 per cent or more had a working age population growth in excess of 2 per cent. Most developed nations slowed down as their working age population dropped".
  
  We need to map skill requirements of the future and ensure that the education system is tuned to deliver them. Mere large scale investment in education, though needed, will not be enough.

Quick notes: ExMuslim day | Chinese enclave...

• Jan 9 is Kerala ExMuslim Day: ExMuslims of Kerala vows to protect rights of those who renounce religion.



• Targeting Sikhs and Chinese: Pakistan to offer permanent residency scheme for rich foreign nationals to boost weak economy



• Colombo Port City: A new Dubai or a Chinese enclave?
  
  Burdening poor countries with unsustainable debt.
  
  NBA star: "China uses money to buy silence and they just bought Elon".



• Silicon Valley: Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal computer revolution, changing the way the world works, plays, and communicates.




• Green energy set to take off: Ambani is pouring more than $80 billion into renewable energy



• Lithium: China controls more than half of the world's lithium processing and refining capacity. More than 80% of the global lithium is currently sourced from Australia, Chile and China



• Cremation - A Greener Way to Die: Conserved corpses can go on display in caskets that, collectively, use tons of wood and steel, which we then bury in concrete containers. Instead of returning bodily nutrients, like potassium and calcium, to the ground, they slowly molder while shielded from the dirt. Lack of oxygen causes wasting flesh to release methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than the carbon dioxide we’d produce in open air.
  
  Meanwhile, embalming fluid can leak into soil and make its way into our groundwater, potentially at hazardous concentrations. Our final contribution to humankind: toxic ooze. Many countries favor an option lighter on chemicals: cremation. It’s also becoming popular in the U.S.



• Ellara Kannada: Has the influence of Sanskrit on Kannada created barriers for learning and usage? “When it comes to science terms, we have complicated words rooted in Sanskrit. We wanted to find simpler equivalents”.



• Be alive, every moment:
  
  

Quick notes: Bagram airbase | Mineral treasure...

• Who Abandoned Bagram Air Base? Biden essentially blamed his generals. “They concluded—the military—that Bagram was not much value added, that it was much wiser to focus on Kabul. And so, I followed that recommendation.”
  
  Black Hawks and Humvees - Taliban's military gains



• Can China tap Afghanistan’s lithium treasure? An internal U.S Department of Defense memo in 2010 described Afghanistan as "the Saudi Arabia of lithium" .



• Delete Chrome: “Chrome is the only major browser that does not offer meaningful protection against cross-site tracking... and will continue to leave users unprotected.” Having promised to ditch tracking cookies, Google changed its mind. “If you use Chrome, you give up your privacy”.
  
  Google “has trackers installed on 75% of the top million websites,” several times as many as Facebook. Similarly, just look at the recent reports suggesting Google will pay Apple some $15 billion this year to be the default search engine on its devices.



• Light pollution from street lamps linked to insect loss: Artificial street lights disrupt the behaviour of nocturnal moths, reducing caterpillars numbers by half. Modern LED streetlights appeared to have the biggest impact.



• ब्रह्मज्ञानावलीमाला: Sung by Swami Brahmananda, Chinmaya Mission




• China blasts '996' excessive work culture: Jack Ma called 996 culture a "huge blessing." Chinese labor law already prohibits employees from working that long.
  
  Exhausted: Youth in China, Japan and South Korea are 'lying flat' because they're exhausted and without hope



• Sharia hasn't changed:

Tamal Bhattacharya returned from Afghanistan, and said Taliban in 90's and Taliban now are different. But Sharia law in 90's and Sharia law now are not different.

— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) August 24, 2021




• Pakistan’s hybrid war:

If you served in Afghanistan with ANDSF, OEF, ISAF or NATO’s training mission, you were fighting Pakistan’s hybrid war.

It’s not over.

— Chris Alexander (@calxandr) August 28, 2021




• India gets the refugees: While Pakistan gets celebrating Jihadis

#Pakistan in denial #Taliban gets warm welcome |

Watch | Pak-based militant organisations carrying Taliban flags take out victory rallies as they return home after Talibs take over Kabul |@AsYouNotWish @RomeshNadir @upma23 @centerofright pic.twitter.com/01b7KEcPug

— INDIA NARRATIVE (@india_narrative) August 24, 2021

Quick notes: TSMC | Vegan wonders...

• TSMC: “Twenty years ago there were 20 foundries, and now the most cutting-edge stuff is sitting on a single campus in Taiwan.” How a Taiwanese chipmaker became a linchpin of the global economy.
  
  Since every new node of process technology requires more challenging development and bigger investment in new production capacity, other chipmakers have over the years started focusing on design and left production to dedicated foundries such as TSMC. The Pentagon has been quietly pressing for the US to invest more in advanced chipmaking so that its weapons are not dependent on foreign manufacturers.



• Making honey without bees and milk without cows: Tailoring the micro-organism carefully and choosing the right feed stocks for fermentation, it's possible to create anything from honey, to egg whites, to milk. "It is molecularly identical, so it should be the same".



• Getting stale already: Y Combinator's new batch features its largest group of Indian startups



• Transport model: Gadkari's unfortunate obsession with aping America.

Samosaji striving hard for the right going by the quotes he sticks in his office to inspire himhttps://t.co/Ybc8qVcmBy

— Spatel (@Rjrasva) March 20, 2021





• Heat wave: Deadly heat waves will be common in South Asia, even at 1.5 degrees of warming. A wet bulb temperature of 32 degrees Celsius (89.6F) is considered to be the point when labor becomes unsafe, and 35C is the limit to human survivability—when the body can no longer cool itself.



• Jaguar I-Pace launches in India: Costs twice as much as a Tesla Model-3. Indian govt would need to address the country's dirty power grid, which would increase the carbon footprint of EVs plugged into it.



• Secrets for practioners of Meditation:





• North India needs this fix:

People living in neo synthetic cities such as:

Gurgaon/Gurugram
NCR
Noida
& the ilk

must try to get temples (small, functional, accessible) built in at least every other street. https://t.co/59avHvgHpx

— Universal Religious FreeD00m (@by2kaafi) March 22, 2021

Quick notes: DeGoogle | Tamarind detox...

• Android phones stripped of Google services - /e/ OS: Now you can buy smartphone with /e/ OS in the US and Canada



• Presumptive denial: U.S. panel recommends export 'choke points' to prevent Chinese dominance in semiconductors



• Tech Independence: China expected to match or exceed U.S. annual R&D spend of around 3% of GDP. More will be allocated to state-funded research, with China’s Science and Technology Ministry announcing priority areas such as hydrogen energy, electric vehicles and supercomputing.



• Beijing’s weapons programmes funded by British taxpayer: Top British scientists helped China develop nuclear weapons tech. Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics is looking to expand “its international presence in order to attract leading talent to assist China’s development of nuclear weapons.”



• Reuters: Chinese state hackers target Indian vaccine makers SII, Bharat Biotech, says security firm



• Thinning out Uighur population: China's policy of transferring hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to new jobs often far from home is leading to a thinning out of their populations. Uprooting them and relocating them in other Chinese provinces "reduces Uighur population density." . . . . . When Hans clash with Khans, should we take sides?



• Detoxing Fluoride With Tamarind: Calcium accumulation is concentrated in the Pineal Gland where it causes calcification. As the Pineal Gland produces Melatonin, the hormone responsible for regulating our sleep cycles by inducing a state of sleep at night, as well as controlling the timing and release of female reproductive hormones, it is vitally important on a systemic level. Plus Melatonin is vitally important for reducing the risk of cancer.
  
  Fluoride displaces Calcium within our systems. Calcification of the Pineal Gland is disastrous for our spiritual and mental development. The Pineal Gland is referred to as our third eye in Eastern Traditions. It is also responsible for our muscle development. Fluoride toxicity has been related to IQ deficiencies. It is because of it’s neurotoxic action that it interferes with our hormones and our sleep so savagely. Tamarind helps the body to detox fluoride.



• Research, not rote learning: Rethink approach to teaching science. Make it about passion not compulsion. Focus on Innovation in order to be truly #Atmanirbhar.

Quick notes: HAL on the brink, Curbing Facebook...

• Is Modi govt weakening HAL? With no payments coming in, HAL for the first time ever takes a bank loan of Rs 7.81 billion. . . . Air force holds back Rs 20,000 crore from HAL, as foreign vendors get paid. . . . Govt’s apathy is pushing HAL to the brink.



• Curbing the data lords: WhatsApp is facing pressure in India to let authorities trace and read  encrypted messages. Indian policy makers, have been looking for ways to tamp down global tech giants’ influence, examining methods China has used to protect domestic startups and take control of citizens’ data.



• East India Company returns: Govt’s tough stand on Ecommerce FDI may put a stop to Amazon’s food sales in India

Self serving, but true. Monopoly and then monopoly pricing is their goal pic.twitter.com/wqnchZFBfC

— राजीवः श्रीनिवासः (@RajeevSrinivasa) January 15, 2019




• Ganga, the wonder river: In the late 19th century, British scientists and hydrologists became intrigued by the fact that Ganga water did not go bad, even after long periods of storage, contrary to the water of other rivers in which a mounting lack of oxygen quickly promoted the growth of anaerobic bacteria. In 1896 the British physician E. Hanbury Hankin wrote in the French journal Annales de l’Institut Pasteur that cholera microbes that had a life of forty-eight hours in distilled water died within three hours in Ganga water. Dr. Hankin was able to secure corpses of cholera victims in the river and isolated samples of Ganga water with a large concentration of the bacillus E. coli. Much to his astonishment, he found that after six hours the microbes had completely disappeared. Hankin concluded that the water of the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers in India was “energetically bactericidal” in general and particularly destructive of the cholera vibrio.



• Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings:

Quick notes: Pro-Monsanto verdict, Church's threat...

• Patent life and make farmers dependent: SJM seeks change in patent act after pro-Monsanto court verdict. . . . Judges committing massive blunders. Of all the three judgments, this one is the most distasteful.



• Christism exposed: Catholic Church threatens to expel nun for protesting against rape-accused Bishop  “Your deeds on 20th September 2018 and on the following days were of most grave external scandal and harm to the Church and the FCC. You went to the Ernakulam High Court junction and participated in the protest held by the SOS Action Council on 20-9-2018 without the permission of your superior.”



• Today's RSS is pseudo?

The old RSS did a lot for Hindus in the deep South when it was still Hindu. But that merit doesn't carry over into the present, now that its "secular-national" central leadership makes common cause w/ the enemy & humiliates its local chapter for siding with the Hindu resistance. https://t.co/VUJ9F1CZxn

— Koenraad Elst (@Koenraad_Elst) January 4, 2019




• Tejas fighter: Malaysia shows interest in India's Tejas fighter jets, may buy 30 of them  .  Really? Did IAF receive their order?



• Han tricks: Chinese e-commerce companies sending shipments as ‘gifts’ to customers in India to avoid duties. 



• BJP model: Big government, Big business

the big government push to make sure all women deliver in hospitals will make the % go even higher than 42% and cost the nation a ton of money in insurance. that's a crock because giving birth is not a disease. midwives usually competent to deliver. #AllopathsBehavingBadly

— राजीवः श्रीनिवासः (@RajeevSrinivasa) January 3, 2019




• Master Mooji: You are Silence Itself

Quick notes: Kurds abandoned, A2 milk...

• Trump throws Kurds under the bus: Almost immediately after the decision to pullout American troops from Syria, Turkey masses troops near Kurdish-held town in northern Syria. Without U.S. soldiers as a buffer, the Kurds are now stuck between Turkey, Assad and ISIS



• On A2 milk: Indian native breeds of cows and buffaloes are of A2 milk type and hence are a source for safe milk. The frequency of A2 allele was 100% in the five high-yielding milk breeds — Red Sindhi, Gir, Rathi, Shahiwal and Tharparkar, meaning that these breeds do not have A1 allele or A1A1/A1A2 genotype. In the remaining breeds, the availability of A2 allele was 94 per cent.



• Christians Groups oppose Meditation, Yoga In Schools: The groups claim children in public schools across the U.S. are being “indoctrinated” by “Buddhist-based mindfulness methods in an “outright unconstitutional” practice.. Missouri megachurch pastor John Lindell similarly blasted yoga for its “demonic” Hindu roots in November. He added the “spiritually dangerous” practice was “ “diametrically opposed to Christianity.”



• EV rentals in Pune: Zoomcar will offer 500 Tata Tigor EV for rent.



• Chinese colony: Uganda is adding compulsory Chinese lessons to its high school curriculum



• Shiva Tandava Stotram – Chong Chiu Sen aka Sai Madana Mohana Kumar:



• जटाटवीगलज्जलप्रवाहपावितस्थले
  गलेवलम्ब्य लम्बितां भुजङ्गतुङ्गमालिकाम् ।
  डमड्डमड्डमड्डमन्निनादवड्डमर्वयं
  चकार चण्डताण्डवं तनोतु नः शिवः शिवम् ॥ 1 ॥
  
  जटाकटाहसम्भ्रमभ्रमन्निलिम्पनिर्झरी-
  -विलोलवीचिवल्लरीविराजमानमूर्धनि ।
  धगद्धगद्धगज्ज्वलल्ललाटपट्टपावके
  किशोरचन्द्रशेखरे रतिः प्रतिक्षणं मम ॥ 2 ॥
  

Quick notes: Tulsi 2020, Loan mela...

• Tulsi Gabbard For President?: ‘I Am Seriously Considering It’



• Loan Mela: The new governments will have to spend more than Rs 220 billion in Rajasthan, more than Rs 160 billion in MP, and nearly Rs 30 billion in Chhattisgarh to keep the promise.

The *political cost* of keeping BJP away from power by promising 'impossible' dreams and creating 'unsustainable' coalitions should soon play out, whether in Karnataka or Madhya Pradesh, one needs to have patience to wait out for it

— Dr Praveen Patil (@5Forty3) December 12, 2018


Modi seen forgiving farm loans as he seeks to win back rural voters.



• Land of the pure: The TRS will hike reservation for minorities from the current 7% to 12% in education and jobs.



• Vikas Gando Thayo Che:

We saw industry after industry violating every pollution control norm - this sort of growth they said, nobody wants, when locals cannot get clean air or clean water. Every river we crossed was a dry bed and often the river bed was being drained of water by mafia https://t.co/YmOxXCVdma

— viva kermani (@vivakermani) December 11, 2018




• Mobility: Mahindra Electric is betting big on e-rickshaws



• “Ancient Modalities”: Meditation is the fastest growing wellness activity in the US



• Tao Te Ching: “Clay is made into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that use depends. The door and windows are cut out to form a house; but it is on empty space, that its use depends. It is the empty space in the room that gives its function. Everything is shaped by nothing”.



• The Extraordinary Life of Maurice Frydman: Virtually nothing is known about this most extraordinary man. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit of interaction with some of the greats of Indian spirituality -- Sri Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Mahatma Gandhi and J. Krishnamurti… He was a Gandhian, he worked for the uplift of the poor in India, he worked with Tibetan refugees, he edited extraordinary books [like] “I am That,” probably one of the all time spiritual classics. Ramana Maharshi said of Frydman “He belongs only here to India. Somehow he was born abroad, but has come again here”.
  
  “We ripen when we refuse to drift, when striving ceaselessly become a way of life, when dispassion born of insight becomes spontaneous. When the search ‘Who Am I?’ becomes the only thing that matters, when we become a mere torch and the flame all important, it will mean that we are ripening fast. We cannot accelerate that ripening, but we can remove the obstacles of fear and greed, indolence and fancy, prejudice and pride.” Maurice Frydman, April 1976 The Mountain Path