Quick notes: TTP attacks | Sober tourism...

• A taste of its own poison: Al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban assist TTP with attacks in Pakistan



• The Rise of Sober Tourism: 50% of travelers were likely to opt for a non-alcoholic drink over a beer or a cocktail. Booze-free vacations gaining momentum.



• Nonalcoholic beers: The hottest beer in America doesn't have alcohol. Athletic Brewing has become the king of nonalcoholic beers.



• The easy way to explain lift : Forget Bernoulli and Newton




• Satya Nadella's first decade as CEO : When he took over as CEO in Feb 2014, Microsoft was mired in mediocrity. Its market cap was just over $300 billion. A decade later, Microsoft's valuation has swelled tenfold, to $3.06 trillion making it the world's most valuable public company.



• Anywhere but India: U.S. plans to invest CHIPS Act money in Vietnamese semiconductor industry



• Defender: India deploys unprecedented Naval might near Red Sea



• “Flip Phone February”: Readers who have taken the plunge said it had improved their lives, marriages and mental health, and offered advice to those going without their smartphones for “Flip Phone February.” “Having the phone away from me has almost made my brain more open to information”. A Practical Guide to Quitting Your Smartphone.



• Ancient Vegetables: What did Indians Eat Before Colonisation?

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: Toxic pills | Quantum entanglement...

• Poisonous prescriptions: The dark side of Indian pharma comes out with Africa's cough syrup deaths.. . . . India's lax drug regulatory mechanism under spotlight after 69 killed in Gambia.

  Drug regulation in India beggars the imagination. The black hole that exists is not a racket, it’s a crime against humanity. It directly affects you, your children, your loved ones.
  
  This book is a full inventory of this massive abomination. @d_s_thakur @Preddy85 pic.twitter.com/bObmBvFJpB

  — Ambarish Satwik (@AmbarishSatwik) October 11, 2022

  
  Drug regulation: Missing files and no accountability



• The Chips Act Shows How to Invest in Education: The Chips Act makes large-scale federal investment in innovative research and manufacturing of microchips. It has already stimulated private-sector investment designed to take the microchip industry from decline in the U.S. to the forefront of economic development. Micron and IBM have announced investments of roughly $120 billion in New York State to build facilities to manufacture and develop microchips. Those announcements follow Intel’s decision to invest $100 billion in Ohio.
  
  But what many don’t know about the Chips Act is that its significant federal spending goes beyond manufacturing, innovation, and incentives for research and development. The act provides $13.2 billion focused on R&D and workforce development with a specific investment in education and in science, technology, engineering, and math skills. It will offer a real pipeline from schools, to college, to career for many students.



• The Universe Is Not Locally Real: And the Physics Nobel Prize winners proved it. One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings.





• Digital Detox: Village in Maharashtra declares "independence" from two modern-day addictions - television and mobile internet. At least, for a couple of hours every day.



• With 5G here, data is the new alcohol: The heady alcohol of the superspeed connectivity that the future generation of consumers will live in and take for granted in the future.



• Hindi overlords: Amit Shah-headed panel wants Hindi replace English in IITs, courts in north India



• Stop poking at us with Hindi rod: All four southern states carry the same message: Leave us alone, we are happy with our own culture and language. Imposing a new language and a new culture would be a farce.



• Indians trying to enter the US via Mexico: More than 16,290 Indians were taken into custody by the CBP between October 2021 and August 2022.



• "I'm a mom who hates Halloween and I'm not alone": "Give me candy or I'll do something you don't like."

Quick notes: Turncoats | Cyclone detection...

• Kaangress-like: Turncoats, internal feuds, centralized control -- BJP looking a lot like Kaangress.



• Early cyclone detection: Indian scientists develop new technique that can detect tropical cyclones earlier than satellites!
  
  Prior to the formation of a cyclonic system over the warm oceanic environment, the initial atmospheric instability mechanism, as well as the vortex development, is triggered at higher atmospheric levels. The method developed by the scientists aims to identify initial traces of pre-cyclonic eddy vortices in the atmospheric column and track its Spatio-temporal evolution.



• Light and lightness: Sleeping and waking one hour earlier cuts risk of depression.. “Keep your days bright and your nights dark. Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.”



• Agrisolar Symbiosis: Solar farms could double as pollinator food supplies. In rural areas, an increase in pollinators can be beneficial to crops.



• iOS15: China exempt from Apple 'private relay' privacy feature . . . . . . . . Big Tech is all woke if we tolerate.. grovels if we act tough!




• Ladakh: 'Be ready with boots, bricks, bandobast'.. Chinese troops are not very far from the LAC -- 150-200KM. They can return to their previous positions in about 4-5 hours.



• 2-DG price: The final pricing of the 2-DG COVID-19 drug, touted as an “affordable” option, has left much to be desired with Dr Reddys announcing a steep Rs 990 per sachet.



• Covid Vaccine IP: How Big Pharma lobbied against India.. Lobby groups advocated not removing India from USTR priority watch list.



• Top virologists raise doubt: Was China ready with vaccine even before pandemic?



• Kerala Model: Go to Bangalore (GTB) model

GTB = Go to Bangalore model...

If you fall sick go to Bangalore (healthcare model)

If you want to study go to Bangalore (education model)

If you want job go to Bangalore (economic model)

....

Of course when in Bangalore don't forget to preach merits of communism 😎

— Affable Misanthrope (@mea_gulpa) June 6, 2021

Quick notes: Freeloading | Dark web...

• Boke Bong: Amartya Sen only Bharat Ratna awardee to avail free air travel.. He travelled 21 times between 2015 and 2019 . . . Freeloader #2



• How Lutyens properties were usurped by the Nehru family:
  -:- Teen Murti Bhavan
  -:- 1, Safdarjung Road
  -:- 10, Janpath
  Nowhere in the world, the official residences of govt heads are usurped in this manner . . . . . . . . . Freeloader #1



• Who benefits from privacy? Is Telegram becoming the new alternative to the Dark Web? Cybercriminals are sharing illegally obtained private data without fear of reprisal



• Sridhar Vembu on India vs Big Tech: Facebook, Twitter can’t dictate terms. Governments have accountability, platforms have none



• Over 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada: From 19th century until 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused. Up to 6,000 are said to have died.



• Myocarditis: Israel reports heart problem link with Pfizer 2nd shot.



• What is science? People talk glibbery about science. What is science? People coming out of the university with a masters degree or a PhD, you take them into the field, they literally don't believe anything unless it is a peer reviewd paper - that is the only thing they accept. And you say to them, let's observe, let's think, let's discuss - they don't do it. It's just, is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not? That's their view of science. I think it's pathetic.
  
  They go into universities as bright young people. They come out of them brain dead. Not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No! That's academia and if a paper is peer reviewed it means everybody thought the same before they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges new scientific insights they can never ever be peer reviewed. So we're blocking all new advances in science that are big advances.
  
  If you look at the breakthroughs in science almost always they don't come from the center of that profession they come from the fringe. The finest candle makers in the world couldn't even think of electric lights they don't come from within they often come from outside. We're going to kill ourselves because of stupidity.




• Not a freeloader: Andhra sarpanch buys Rs 4 lakh ambulance with own money to aid villagers



• Looting Karnataka: Black money heist case fuels internal feud in Kerala BJP. The origin of the havala money is a BJP office in Karnataka.



• Power passes through North:

All resources are centralised at Delhi and route to power in Delhi goes via the poor but populous states of North. A natural consequence of this is unfair distribution of political and economic resources between politically strong and politically irrelevant states.

— Vasant Shetty (@vasantshetty81) June 1, 2021

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: Desi Smithsonian | Geothermal power...

• Desi version of Smithsonian planned: Indian Museum of the Earth may come up near Faridabad



• Our charity rarely begins at home: Indian mathematician VS Varadarajan and wife Veda donate $1 Million to establish 'Ramanujan Visiting Professorship' post in UCLA 



• Air chief marshal Anil Yashwant Tipnis: "Converting the initial deal for 36 Rafales to the original IAF requirement for 126 aircraft is the crying need of the hour to counter emerging Chinese capabilities in stealth technology, cruise missiles and airborne early warning systems".



• You are the product: When Zuckerberg said privacy, he didn’t mean privacy from Facebook. . . . ‘Greatest Con Man in History’ . . . BJP splurging on Facebook, Instagram ads



• Following India's footsteps: France targets Google, Amazon and Facebook with 3% digital tax. Germany, Spain and UK may follow.



• Geothermal power: Swedish technology could make geothermal as mainstream as wind and solar. . . produces just 3% of the emissions of a coal plant generating the same power. . .Off-Grid Energy Access.



• Google's learn-to-read app: "Bolo" is essentially a reading assistant for elementary school children that harnesses Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech smarts.

Important point and the Language mission of @GoI_MeitY and MHRD addressing this. https://t.co/KFumyAu3cb

— Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India (@PrinSciAdvGoI) March 7, 2019




• Max Planck: "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve". . . . “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”



• How jihadists bought and sold their Yazidi captives : “They took women, abused them and killed them. A woman was shifted from one man to another unless it was to one who had a bit of mercy” . . . . . Women of Islamic State assault others they deem “infidels” at a camp where they are being held in Syria. “After being segregated to avoid problems, they fight among themselves”.



• Say NO to Vaseline: Petroleum Jelly May Not Be As Harmless As You Think

Quick notes: Punitive action | NPA nightmare...

• You can't win against Walmart (and Amazon): U.S. considers withdrawal of zero tariffs for India -- strongest punitive action since Trump took office. The trigger was India’s new e-commerce rules that restrict Amazon.com Inc and Walmart-backed Flipkart. Also a factor is India's data localization drive against MNCs such as Mastercard and Visa. 



• Sharia too? Kaangress says it will scrap triple talaq law if voted to power

Does the Bareilly “Nikah-Halala” not shock your conscience? https://t.co/VJsPsZAQk4

— Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) February 8, 2019




• The NPA nightmare: Indian banks may have an over Rs30,00,00,00,00,000 bad loan storm coming



• Magnetic north just changed: Why is magnetic north changing so fast?



• The miracle mineral the world needs: Compost can do something that mineral fertiliser cannot. It doesn't just provide phosphorus and other vital nutrients – it can also restore the soil structure by adding organic matter.



• Ultracapacitor: Tesla's clever acquisition of Maxwell. One way that ultracaps can be recharged in a vehicle is through regenerative braking, wherein the kinetic energy of braking is captured and used to generate electricity that is then stored in the ultracap. This is something that Lamborghini is doing with Maxwell technology. Another use of an ultracapacitor in a vehicle is to take care of peak transient load requirements. When the battery system alone just can't get it done, then the ultracap can kick in to handle the electrical demand.



• Physics suggests that the future has already happened: Our intuition tells us that the future can be changed, but Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that there is no real difference between the future and the past.  The future, present and past may actually not be as different as we think.



• Nuns 'sex slaves' scandal: Fresh blow to Catholic church. It is the first time that the pope has publicly admitted this abuse is taking place

Quick notes: Rocket women, Jobless growth...

• India's pride: Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into Mars orbit. Can you guide a spacecraft into orbit around Mars and cook for eight people morning and night? Yes, if you get up at 5am, and your name is BP Dakshayani. Here the former head of flight dynamics and space navigation for the Indian space agency explains how she did it - and the housework too.  They became known as the Rocket Women or the Women from Mars.
  
  Four years ago, the picture of a group of women in saris celebrating as an Indian spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit shone a light on the role played by women in the country's space programme - among them BP Dakshayani.
  



• Growth creates fewer jobs than it used to: Between 2013 and 2015, total employment actually shrank by seven million. Since 2015 there has also been an absolute decline in job growth.
  



• Machines Are Coming for India’s Unwanted Factory Jobs:  The trouble is finding jobs that Indians actually want. The country’s workers would rather drive for food-delivery services on the breezy, albeit steamy, roads of Mumbai and work in hotels than in factories. Fair enough. Who would want to work in a yarn mill, which needs to maintain a temperature of 33 degrees Celsius? Conditions on other industrial factory floors are likely worse... India's youth unemployment rate (ages 15-24) is one of the highest among large, global economies.



• Temple land grab: “After acquiring lands from the people in the name of SEZ, and without paying compensation in time to the owners, the State government allots them to various companies indiscriminately and that the latter do not set up industries on such lands, and all these activities show that there is some big conspiracy behind it. To acquire lands belonging to the temples the government first resorts to annulling the existing temple boards and appoints persons in-charge in their place to cooperate with it for the purpose.”



• Pick your battles:

One trick Hindu’s need to learn is the art of ignoring. Half of the drama, ex. Gita burning, is done by losers trying to gain significance. Pick your battle, ask before you respond why is this person doing what s/he is doing? Only respond if it furthers our strength.

— Jiger Patel (@JigerPatel) September 14, 2018




• Alcohol intake in India doubles in 11 years: Per capita alcohol consumption in India has more than doubled from 2005 to 2016  



• HamSoham: Seattle Raga Labs with Ganesh Rajagopalan




• China Pries Technology From U.S. Companies: An audit this year convinced an employee at one foreign auto maker there was “clear evidence of collusion” between the audit team and Chinese auto makers. When the audit began, the person says, inspectors asked for only the blueprints of the electric-vehicle components the foreign company was striving to protect from its Chinese joint-venture partner.  “Somehow they knew exactly the areas to look at,” the person says. “There wasn’t a single question about any of the other very complex systems on the vehicle.” 



• Islam's True Colors: Chechnya starts concentration camps for gay men, first time after Hitler

Quick notes: Citizen's data, Sinking Jakarta...

• India looks to curb U.S. tech giants’ power: India wants to slap new rules on Amazon, Google, Facebook and other firms, using a page from China's playbook to take control of citizens' data. Draft rules call for companies to store local user data in India and make it accessible to govt.



• Jittery Islamabad: India to help build a dam in the Kabul river basin in Afghanistan. Islamabad views the proposed dam, as well as similar projects on the Kabul river and its tributaries in Afghanistan, reducing the flow of water into Pakistan.



• Jakarta, the fastest-sinking city in the world: When groundwater is pumped out, the land above it sinks as if it is sitting on a deflating balloon - and this leads to land subsidence.



• Swachh Bharat should recruit these: A crew of crows has been trained to pick up trash



• Poison or cure? Arsenic can help treat cancer, study finds. That’s ironic because arsenic itself is a carcinogen



• Major Success: India's missile defenses can now take on decoys. That's a Really Big Deal.



• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: The man behind Nasa's mission to touch the Sun. "Chandra, as he was popularly known, is another astrophysicist with his name tagged to a space mission, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory," 

Quick notes: Superconductivity, Bank information...

• Superconductivity at room temperature and pressure:  Did IISc team just make the 'greatest Indian discovery after Raman effect'?



• Facebook wants your banking information, too: Banks are worried about the breadth of information being sought.



• Indra Nooyi: “Whether you are from the IITs or the IIMs, the Indian education system dishes to foreign companies the best and the brightest. In today’s world, as we CEOs look for truly global leaders who can pilot through all of the volatility in the world, Indian leaders are rising to the top. So every time we go out to look for leaders there are usually four or five people who have been educated in the IITs or the IIMs that show up.
  
  So the big question that I keep asking myself is if people who have been educated in India always bubble up to the top then why is it that these leaders want to leave India? Doesn’t India need these leaders? Even if they leave India, shouldn’t there be a round trip ticket for them to come back to India, so they can help India get to a better place. So I think one of the big issues we should talk about is not just lessons in leadership or what the leaders need to do today but what can India do to bring those leaders back to India, so India itself can become an even more powerful economy going forward.” 



• Certified pSecular: Andhra govt officially organizing Jesus event..?

Andhra government officially organizing Jesus event in Delhi and resident commissioner is actively involved in the event.#Secularism is at peak. pic.twitter.com/lTMyEAL5sr

— Shubham Verma ( आर्य शुभम् वर्मा ) (@THESHUBHAMV) August 7, 2018




• Lithuanian and Sanskrit:
  Sanskrit: Kas tvam asi? Asmi svapnas tava tamasi nakte. Agniṃ dadau te hridi tada viśpatir devas tvam asi.
  Lithuanian: Kas tu esi? Esmi sapnas tavo tamsioje naktyje. Ugnį daviau tau širdy, tada viešpatis dievas tu esi.
  English: “Who are you? I am a dream in your dark night. I gave you fire in heart, then you become a God”.



• Bolava Vitthal - Ranjani Gayatri

Quick notes: Choking India, Akshay Venkatesh

• The hard numbers: How Chinese goods are choking Indian industry and economy... In the life-saving drugs category, the dependence on Chinese imports is as much as 90%. China has increased the prices of bulk drugs 11-fold, or 1,200%, during last two years.



• Stop this dependence on China: India recalls rabies vaccines made by tainted China firm



• From trade war to currency war: The yuan's recent depreciation is nothing less than an import tariff of 7 percent across the board, not just a retaliatory tariff on selected US goods



• Check on predatory pricing: India’s e-commerce policy may end the Flipkart-Amazon discount war



• A number theorist who bridges math and time: Akshay Venkatesh wins a Fields Medal for his “profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics.”



• Facebook: A way for you to feel jealous of people you haven’t seen in years.”

Quick notes: Vatican takes a deep bow, Paki reply...

• Vatican-Chini bhai-bhai: Pope genuflecting to China. ‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says senior Vatican bishop.



• A brutal Paki reply to Trump: “This is Pakistan giving a small taste of what it’s capable of”... The military-grade explosives, not widely available, used in recent Taliban and ISIS attacks in Afghanistan point to a state sponsor, likely Pak. 



• Padmashree V Nannamal: At 97, yoga guru is India's oldest Padma Shri




• India needs more researchers: We need more public funding for research including the creation of a National Foundation for Research in Science, Technology, and Humanities with an annual non-lapsable grant of at least Rs 5000 crore to give research grants on a competitive non-discriminatory basis.



• Mobile video viewership: Indians addicted to mobile videos



• Teenagers no longer use Facebook: Less than half of American internet users between ages 12 and 17 will be using Facebook this year



• China leading here too: Electric Buses Will Take Over Half the World Fleet by 2025



• Cook Anywhere Under The Sun:

Quick notes: 5G network, Automotive liberation...

• A nationalized 5G network: Trump's national security team is looking at options to counter Chinese threat that include building a super-fast 5G wireless network. Beijing is pushing for a greater role in setting technical standards in the next-generation wireless arena. “What if China is so successful in a key 5G technology that the US military becomes reliant on it as a supplier?”.



• High Net worth Individuals: 7,000 ultra-rich Indians shifted overseas in 2017



• The Automotive Liberation of Paris: The city has waged a remarkably successful effort to get cars off its streets and reclaim walkable space. Driving within Paris city limits has dropped about 45% since 1990. Meanwhile, the share of cyclists has increased tenfold over the same period. Transit’s share has risen by 30%.



• Arara: A battery-free magnetically powered bicycle light.




• Super Wood! Simple processes can make wood stronger than steel, able to stop a speeding bullet



• China's got a Railgun?: Looks like China just installed a railgun on a warship, beating the U.S. Navy to the punch



• The battle against tech addiction: “Facebook appeals to your lizard brain — primarily fear and anger”. “It has never been easier to run away from ourselves.”



• Appropriating Indian knowledge base: Do read this whole thread. 

Naturally, the Jesuits had no qualms about amassing any astronomical & mathematical knowledge from the pagan lands they went to proselytize in. India was no exception. They were very active in Kerala, where they gained access to Yuktibhasa, the seminal manuscript of Calculus.

— Joseph T Noony (@JoeAgneya) October 19, 2017

Quick notes: Nepal vote, Loss of night...

• Nepal vote set to favor China over India: The communist alliance has prioritized rail and road networks with China and has already vowed to revive the Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project if they gain power. Harder stance against India, softer towards China.



• Naxals using kids as shields: "I was in Class 5 at an ashram in Sameep village. Once, I had to stay home because of fever. The local militia commander Ramlal took me away,"



• ‘Loss of Night’: Serious effects on the Earth’s ecology as artificial light is depriving the planet of its nights.



• Parking fees  and congestion charges: Chandigarh looks for radical solutions to fix traffic woes.



• Semi-high speed project: Delhi-Chandigarh 200-kmph rail corridor to cost Rs 11,000 crore. Total travel time will be 2 hours



• Tesla’s Newest Promises Break the Laws of Batteries:  Elon Musk touted ranges and charging times that don’t compute with the current physics and economics of batteries. 



• Nirvana Shatakam:



• Good old stories: Chandamama available online in Telugu, Hindi and English. More languages coming.



• Words of Wisdom: The best "Make in India" product is our people; we export these aplenty.

The best "make in India" product is our people; we export these aplenty? https://t.co/JNGgaQGhj2

— Makarand R Paranjape (@MakrandParanspe) November 23, 2017




• Extreme Heat: Los Angeles is painting its streets white. To lower the temperature by 3 degrees over the next 20 years. Black pavement absorbs heat from the sun.