On the recent controversy on Bharathanatyam in Srilanka thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/ref…

India will not catch up with China economically in my lifetime, and part of the reason is that many Indians can’t tell the difference between a prediction and a wish.

If you think Indian politics is messy you should be grateful that you weren’t in Japan in the 1920s.

“The Japanese had always been adept at imitative absorption, but at a purely utilitarian level which, from a cultural viewpoint, was superficial.”

Per capita income in Bangladesh: 2017: $1816 2022: $2688 In Pakistan: 2017: $1568 2022: $1589 [Fine to like Imran Khan, but the idea that he managed the Pakistani economy well is a bad joke.]

Here’s wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in 2024!

I hope your year is off to as energetic a start as Kokum’s.

.⁦vir sanghvi⁩: In the run up to the Ram temple inauguration in Ayodhya, the Congress Party “finds itself in a bizarre and paradoxical situation where Muslims believe it betrayed them and many Hindus see it as being anti-Hindu.” theprint.in/opinion/sharp-…

From Wall Street Journal Opinion: The U.S. failure in Bangladesh stands out because the country was in theory an ideal testing ground for Biden’s values-centric foreign policy, writes Sadanand Dhume on.wsj.com/47ptfCb

Worth reading Kamal Ahmed for a more comprehensive take on the fascinating geopolitics of Bangladesh’s one-sided elections involving the U.S., India, China and Russia. v Naomi Hossain himalmag.com/geopolitics-us…

Nobody in Beijing’s leadership would give two hoots about what an Indian newspaper had to say about China’s place in the world. Meanwhile a few crumbs of praise from Global Times are enough for the BJP’s national president to start thumping his chest.

Whatever your view of #SheikhHasina or #BangladeshElections, I hope we can all agree that this is a beautiful national anthem. youtu.be/YvIzePXplgc?si…

.Manu Joseph: In ancient and medieval Kerala, there were joint processions of Hindu deities and an image of Saint Thomas. That was not a sign of secularism, but a cosmopolitan cooperation of high-castes from two different book clubs. bymanujoseph.com/2024/01/09/why…

The wait is finally over! Experience a new era of mobile with the #GalaxyS24 Ultra. Own now. #GalaxyAI #Samsung

Never make important decisions when you’re tired, emotional, distracted, or in a rush. If you ignore this rule, you increase the chances you'll make a poor decision, and one of the easiest ways to be successful is to avoid poor decisions.

Let me clear a *huge* misunderstanding here. The generation of mostly realistic-looking videos from prompts *does not* indicate that a system understands the physical world. Generation is very different from causal prediction from a world model. The space of plausible videos is

Are dating apps fuelling addiction? Lawsuit against Tinder, Hinge and Match claims so theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

Is 'raped' now an adjective, The Times Of India ? How can any editor pass this headline, that too on page one?

Cruel and obnoxious

The arguments presented by White House revolve around Biden's ability to win the election, not his capacity to fulfill the presidency for the next 4½ years under precipitous mental decline. This violates the dignity of the system by explicitly assuming the Prez is a puppet.