For an example of how "one political faction" can manufacture trends, check this out - https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352. They contact famous personalities (in this case athletes who had represented India at the Olympics), give them a text ("I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower...") and ask them all to tweet it at the same time. Then they use their vast network of fake accounts to amplify it. Same thing yesterday, when they requested cricket players with large followings to implicitly criticise Greta Thunberg and Rihanna for "interfering" in India's affairs.
It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point".
Third rate Indian suppliers? I’m not sure if you’re implying that the price is low or the quality is poor. If it’s the latter, you don’t know much about Indian pharma companies. Btw, Indian pharma companies selling high quality anti retro viral drugs to African countries at low prices is why HIV is relatively under control right now.
Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.
How racist do you have to be to equate people in Chinatown with the virus? At a time when there were less than 10 cases in the US, the risk of visiting Chinatown was minimal.
And it's curious that you focus on Chinatown in February instead of 300 days of minimising mask wearing and calling for LIBERATING states from coronavirus restrictions.
I think the 2020 experience has taught us a bit more about people. 9/11 was horrifying and traumatising, but perhaps less because of the death toll (3000) and more because you could see footage of those people dying, played over and over. Sure, 3000+ people died of Covid yesterday, but they all did it out of sight. So it’s possible for some people to dismiss it for any number of reasons - statistics aren’t accurate, those people had other underlying health issues, they would have died of the flu anyway. Most of all, we only see the statistic. We don’t have to actually watch someone die because the virus prevented them from breathing, far away from their family.
Speaking of which, this is also probably why the BLM movement gained widespread support. Statistics showing unequal policing have existed for a long time, but they are easy to ignore. Any person who watched the 8:46 video of a man being suffocated couldn’t ignore it.
We like to think we’re data driven, but we’re actually emotionally and visually driven. Statistics should convince people, but it doesn’t. A video of towers falling or a man being suffocated are much more likely to change people’s minds.
This is such weird regulation. Rather than set rules for a level playing field it seeks to dictate outcomes. Telling payment providers that they can’t exceed 30% of total payments is as absurd as telling Apple or Samsung to not exceed 30% of the smartphone market.
They’re supposed to stop selling or rate limiting when they’re reaching their cap?
I’d love to get the input of the blind devotees of the supposedly pro business Prime Minister of India. There’s no shortage of you lot on HN. Could you please explain how making an app stop working in the best interests of Indian consumers?
But please don’t try “The central bank is independent” as an explanation. No one believes that, least of all you.
Yeah it’s a great business to be in. As long as the climate doesn’t change, you’ll be pumping out electricity from a plant at an unbeatable price - since there’s no input apart from maintenance costs. How long do solar panels last before you need to replace them though?
Since you’re so on well informed about this here’s another question. I notice that battery prices are roughly halving every 3 years. At what point does it become cheaper to attach batteries to Indian solar plants than it is to operate coal powered plants?
Bruh did you miss the part where OP said “developing world”? They’re talking about projects in India, where the grid looks very different from the US grid.
I’ve had this question for a long while but no one to ask it to. You might have the expertise required to answer it.
When I see new solar projects that have tendered absurdly low prices, are the bidders bidding with today’s solar prices or are they betting that solar prices will fall further, allowing them to eventually make a profit? For example Adani solar won a contract to supply energy at INR 3 or $0.05 per kwh. Is that the price of building and operating a solar in 2022 or is it the price that the winning bidder hopes it’ll be in 2024 when they’re building the second and third phases of their contract?
The point the others are making isn’t about your standard of living, but your compensation.
If you hadn’t been tied to a single employer, maybe you would have gotten a job with an employer who paid more. You would have been able to reach your savings goal without living so frugally. Your employer at the time was comfortable paying you a relatively small amount because you couldn’t go anywhere else.
They’re not asking immigrants to live more lavishly. They’re asking for immigrants to be paid more so there’s less downward pressure on wages.
I've never had any trouble discussing this with European and American colleagues or owning up to my own privilege.
But I can see how many Indians would find it awkward to talk about, especially if they think that the caste system is on it's way out because things are better than they used to be. Some might feel that discussing it with non-Indians puts India in a bad light.
To which I say, it's not me who's painting India in a bad light, it's the people who are discriminating on the basis of caste in 2020. People who say "oh, I'm only against reservation and those who benefit from it" and treat such people terribly. And we can only get rid of this disease by shining a light on it.
To be fair, it requires a lot self awareness and external education to learn about your own privilege and how difficult (relatively) other people have it. It's not easy.
For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if the caste system doesn't exist because they've never been at the receiving end of it. Most people (me included) would be tempted to say - I've never discriminated, I've never seen it happen in front of me, I'm confident none of my friends would do it so therefore it doesn't exist.
But it does. It's heartbreaking that my fellow Indians have to deal with this in 2020. Just like BLM educated some white people about the existence of racism, how it manifests, how it affects people etc., we need a similar movement to educate upper caste Indians.
I've also seen the same people say "if we completely ignore caste, it'll go away". It won't. I personally can't tell you what someone's caste is based on their name because I don't care enough to find out the mapping between name <=> caste. If everyone was like this, there wouldn't be a problem. But I know for a fact that there exist people who can map name to caste and these people also discriminate on the basis of caste. These people might only be a minority but they can have a disproportionate effect. As long as they exist, the rest of us can't adopt an ostrich approach to the caste system.
This isn't an argument over say Italian vs French cuisine. That's undecideable.
This is an extraordinary claim that by taking Indian food to the UK, stripping it of it's spice to suit the locals somehow made it better. It'd be like claiming Italian cuisine became better without the tomatoes or Mexican cuisine better without the beans.
I’ve eaten the Full English. I’ve also eaten Idli-Vadai-Pongal-Chutney-Sambhar and I prefer the latter. There’s nothing objectively better here. We prefer what we grew up eating.
You’re being heavily downvoted but I can’t imagine by who or why. Certainly not by people who’ve eaten Indian food in both India and the UK.
While there are a few good restaurants, most Indian restaurants in the UK are bland beyond reason, catering to the common palate. There’s nothing wrong with liking bland food or restaurants catering to that preference, but let’s not make this extraordinary claim that it’s better than the food in India. For most part the food is plain and plays it safe. For example, it’s rare to find Indo-Chinese, a cuisine nothing like Chinese or Indian but a staple of cuisine in India.
India's economy won't be affected by the loss of PUBG. But it will without certain critical parts of the manufacturing supply chain. I don't know what those parts are, but the Chinese govt will know. A good example of this in action is banning exports of rare earth metals to Japan in 2010, affecting Japan's electronics industry.
It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point".
(https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?...)