Satyajit Ray was a master storyteller. In the same league as Kurusova or Miyazaki.
His stories seemed simple and yet had some unknown power that gripped your heart. I remembering crying the first time I saw the Pather Panchali trilogy as a kid. I never understood why.
Some little know facts about Ray :
1. His first movie Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) faced financial issues. A good friend of Ray convinced the Communist Chief Minister of his state to provide some funding. Upon learning the name of the movie the Minister (who was art blind) asked the Public Works Department (Road construction department) to finance it. (because there is a Road in the name)
2. The Chief minister was furious to see the ending. He demanded the ending should be changed and they must show that the family finally gets benefited from a communist government scheme where they get free house and everything. Ray however flat out refused.
3. Satyajit ray penned down Feluda who is Indian Sherlock Holmes told from the perspective of his teenage sidekick. Feluda movies were utterly brilliant.
4. Satyajit Ray also wrote a number of science fiction stories. He would easily feature among the top 5 Sci-Fi writers from India any day.
5. Though India has such a vibrant movie industry called Bollywood, Satyajit Ray never became mainstream. A lot of his contemporaries hated him for unknown reasons and one even called his movies "poverty porn".
6. Ray introduced some great actors to the world. From Sharmila Tagore to
Western movie makes very often make poverty porn movies about India, the best example being Slumdog Millionaire. Here is a wonderful comparison of Boyle and Ray.
> Comey is a symptom of the kind of cowardly, authority-respecting society we've become.
I am an Indian citizen living in USA and I think American society must take the blame here and not the politicians. The way society thinks and votes I think only a total narcissist moron can succeed in US administration.
The fastest way to rise to top (as we saw in case of Obama and Trump) is to find some target group and blame that group for the failure of other larger society. The larger society is far too quick to raise pitchforks and burn the other group at stake.
It is depressing to see that large % of Americans have seen inside of jail. A lot of people labeled as "suspected terrorist" or "sex offenders" are no where close to the common sense definition of those words. But once you have that label rest of the society treats you like utter shit. You cant find a job, state can put any arbitrary restrictions on all your freedoms etc.
Unless US society learns to be compassionate and stand up for the rights of even those "deplorable" people purely as matter of principle I don't think there is any scope for optimism.
I remember Ron Paul's words "Once you give up some liberty, you are not going to get it back, ever!"
I think the skepticism and pretty much well deserved. I would like to see both spaceX and Tesla being well profitable and sustainable without the need for direct/indirect taxpayer support.
Most of Musk's companies are about kicking the can down the road. I admire that he is mostly burning his own money on this but then skepticism of such ideas is natural. The man should probably stick to one thing and take it completion than starting 10.
> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away.
Take the western media's portrayal of India's poverty with a little grain of salt. India is very poor and I lived in a village where people use to shit in open but then there is something like "poverty porn" that western media often engages in to get more eyeballs.
In rural areas open shitting has its own unwritten rules. You shit far from water sources, temples and other places where people gather. You shit away from water wells. Sick people shit in a separate area.
People do shit at riverside because easy availability of water but it is essentially tragedy of commons issue and it was very common to beatup people who took a dump near potable water sources.
This is counter intuitive to average Joe on street but it is super surprising that the learned members of HN who otherwise seem to take interest in startups etc. fail to see the basic economic principles at work.
The only valid concern about immigration I see is about culture. Personally it is natural for people not to like people who are not like them. It is something we should overcome but still understandable.
> General fuzziness in terms of economic thinking
I am not sure how we can have a law that involves things like a "lottery"! US immigration laws violate some basic principles of law making => clarity/predictability/rewards law abiding people/learns from real world data.
H1B/F1 by definition encourages lying. A student can not be truthful when applying for F1. If I say I intend to apply for H1B after F1 my F1 visa would be instantly rejected. Not to mention young people can not predict promise their future that well either.
> That's completely ignoring the fact that if you have cheaper workers
Cheaper labor is good just like cheaper raw material. Trump wants American companies to buy expensive American steel instead of cheaper Japanese or Chinese steel of same quality. This is a net loss for American economy and a state sponsored coercive benefit for the American Steel industry.
Personally it is both productive and economically beneficial to hire a SAP experience guy from Infosys instead of an American college kid who needs to be trained and who will leave in 1 year any ways. Of course I would hire the college kid for half the wage but then there is this sense of entitlement.
I also do not understand why Indian consultancies need to be demonized so much. Their practices might be a bit shady but then as the complexity of law grows the value of pushing the limits of law also goes up.
1. Indian consultancies have provided valuable labor in large quantity to US firms.
2. This has helped US firms remain competitive in the world. From ATT or Bank of America to Toyota and Sears everyone has super large outsourcing centers in India which help them keep costs low for American consumers.
3. Cheap labor with high skills coming to USA is a good thing. It makes the economy get more efficient and grows the size of pie where everyone gets employed.
4. US Tech sector has outperformed all sectors in terms of both growth and employment numbers. Most of the H1Bs goes to tech companies and guess what ? They have the lowest unemployment rate.
There are no job losses because of H1B. If H1B program is completely shut-down US economy would take a pretty bad hit and total number of jobs in USA will go down and more jobs will simply move to India.
I totally agree here. The whole point of having a jury picked from society is to ensure that the justice process passed some kind of "rrasonable person"test. American legislators and prosecutors are resembling cold blooded sociopaths each passing decade passing laws that destroy families and lives and stealing money from ordinary citizens (civil forfeiture). In such scenario I think Jury's role is very important.
Given that USA jails a hell lot of people (per capita) compared to any developed nation and large number of them are about drug offenses or victimless crimes I would rather have a linient jurors than harsh ones.