Hello Bangalore! I’m passing through Bengaluru and would love to meet new friends between Jan 2-8.
I live in Berkeley, California, and run the monthly Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour.
I’d love to connect with people around public history, digital humanities, open source, tech and activism, transit/urbanism, left/progressive politics, books or bookselling.
"The process of nation building cannot be limited to only expanding working hours, but it has to focus on improving work conditions and pushing for norms that are inclusive and not blind to socio-cultural realities of contexts."
India's most populous state has stopped paying some 21,000 teachers of subjects including mathematics and science in Muslim religious schools, or madrasas, an official said on Thursday, and they could lose their jobs altogether.
recently, germany and the indian state kerala signed a treaty concerning the import of workforce for the german healthcare sector: https://feddit.de/post/1240283
the comments below often are condescending and absolutely unaware that keralites have had an important role in west german healthcare for more than six decades > i think those comments reflect the unawareness among many germans about the important role keralites have had in german healthcare for many decades, to say the least > read those comments using machine translation to understand what i am writing about
here are some insights:
the indian community in germany is not very big: they are no more than two or maybe three lakhs (one lakh = 100.000) > among them, keralites form a significant proportion of pio's (people of indian origin) > the presence of keralites in germany dates back to the early 1960s when the archdiocese of cologne has started importing healthcare workers from kerala
many keralites still work in healthcare today > in some german small towns, your family doctor would be a muslim from kerala, and all, i repeat: all nurses in your german local nursing home would be from kerala, with some assistants coming from sri lanka - many of them being tamils from jaffna
as of today, the indian community in germany is rather small, but they are visible in daily life > moreover, the south asian community in germany as a whole and the indian community in particular are known for their progressive tendencies > so far, the hindutva-led indian government has failed to make inroads into the indian community in germany - this is a rather unique situation: compare this to the usa or the uk!
the amount of cooperation within the south asian community in germany is tremendous: it is quite common that e.g. pio's from karnataka would help their fellows from afghanistan when it comes to grassroots aid in afghanistan, or that punjabis would help tamils doing something similar in sri lanka > i could go on and on!
moreover, it can happen that you may visit a village somewhere in the german outback, and the mayor would be a pio > also the contributions of south asians to german culture are numerous, including art exhibitions and publishing of indian literature translated into german etc
it saddens me that so many people in germany are ignorant of all this! all they still seem to have in mind is a racist campaign dating back some two decades ago when a german conservative politician demanded "kinder statt inder", i.e. "children instead of indians" > see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_R%C3%BCttgers#Controversy
There is this news floating around - "Asians are less ‘humane’ – Ukrainian security chief" where he says Russians are North Asians and thus less humane. For me personally the anger at being calles inhuman is infinitesmally less than the joy of someone acknowledging North Asia exists. 🤣 Everyone talks about South Asia, South East Asia and "Middle East" Asia but never about North Asia or West Asia. We have one direction reclaimed friends. Let us fight to let every call Middle East Asia what it actually is - West Asia. 🤣 Our Asia is not some freak continent without North and West.
In the face of increasing cyber and malware attacks on defence as well as critical infrastructure across the country, the Defence Ministry has decided to replace the Microsoft Operating System (OS) in all computers connected to the Internet with a new OS, Maya, based on open-source Ubuntu developed locally.
Beautiful poem by Ahmed Faraz sung by Mayuri Apte in Jashn-e-Sukhan 2020. The poem starts with the lines that sort of means.. "I am silent as if even the destination is tough. As if meeting you is the moment of separation."
I'm a technologist, researcher, Wikimedian and polyglot based in Mysore. Most of my social media presence is me perpetrating my humour of questionable quality.
Bird site was my favourite social media platform until it wasn't. I've been on Mastodon for five years although this account is three years old. If you have newly migrated here from the Bird site, welcome and cheers! #MastIndia
Spicy Kongunad kozhi kuzhambu as per Kannamma Cooks 🫶🏽 a fantastic and quite easy recipe, even for an amateur like me, with measurements meticulously listed.
Got mildly scalded when making the fried spice paste because the mixer wasn't closed right and I got splashed with the hot oily water when I switched it on 🔥 Just Mars squaring the Moon, not a big deal, just enough to make me pay attention.
Tagging @skinnylatte because we were talking about this 🍃
In another context, there was a discussion, in recent past, that some members of Indian government suggested taking the extreme measure of blocking Proton due to a hoax bomb threat that were sent through Proton Mail. Finally it did not happen.
I believe that that Meta will not pull out of India and the existing encryption standards of WhatsApp will not change for Indian users. With more than 500 million active users in India, the stakes are too high from either side.
We wanted to make something good tonight so we made Gatte Ki Subzi together ❤️
A Rajasthani dish made of besan dumplings in yogurt sauce, it is one of our favorite dishes.
We are thinking about doing something more elaborate like this every Thursday evening as a way to start the weekend a bit early (since we both have WFH on Fridays 😊).
Till climate change related issues move from the periphery to electoral interest
Climate change is all about saving humanity and our ecosystem. The significant human cost due to failure to address the climate change related challenges is understood very well without any ambiguity.
For every 0.1 degrees of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.
The high impact of climate change that causes rising global temperatures and heatwaves, fires, storms and floods hurting people today have been extensively documented by climate scientists. We are reading it everyday. So the awareness is there though it may not be enough.
Unfortunately, our climate scientists feel hopeless when they see that the responses from the politicians and the big corporations are not in the best interest of the common man. And yet, our climate scientists still passionately continue to do their job with a conviction that policymakers cannot say that they were not made aware.
The root cause that this impending catastrophe does not motivate politicians (policymakers) is that it is not an election issue. If policymakers are motivated enough, the big corporations will also act more responsibly. Elections are typically held every four to five years across the world, but the planning and execution cycles to contain climate change impacts are more than that. According to Stephen Humphreys, the politicians and the well healed won't be affected, even if there is a cataclysmic 3C rise, till there is civil disobedience.
Now India is no exception. During the ongoing 2024 parliamentary elections, no political party is explicitly talking about the devastating effects of climate crisis. Except the educated middle class and above, many of us do not fully understand the scientific phenomenon of climate change and its implications on our daily lives. This lack of awareness leads to climate change not influencing our voting decisions. But the issues related to its consequences, such as water scarcity, agriculture challenges, and economic impacts are being discussed aggressively.> Between 2016- 2021, climate extreme events caused damage to crops in over 36 million hectares, and a $3.75 billion loss for farmers in the country. If estimates from the report on ‘Loss and Damage Today’ by economist James Rising were to be believed, India lost 8% of its GDP in 2022.
Both the major political political parties, in India, have elaborately mentioned climate agenda in their election manifestos which are statement of intentions and not policy documents. However, Indian political parties tend to focus on immediate, emotive issues rather than long-term environmental concerns, which are not always seen as directly affecting voter in the short term. Environmental challenges and political priorities are consciously kept disconnected during election campaigns. No political party want to stir the hornet's best. Since meeting daily needs and economic growth are pressing concerns, the common people are prioritizing survival issues like employment, education, and healthcare over environmental policies.
The fate of climate change and politics is deeply intertwined. If climate issue fails to strike a strong resonance in the election campaigns across the globe, there is not much way forward.
Till climate change related issues move from the periphery to electoral interest
Climate change is all about saving humanity and our ecosystem. The significant human cost due to failure to address the climate change related challenges is understood very well without any ambiguity.
For every 0.1 degrees of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.
The high impact of climate change that causes rising global temperatures and heatwaves, fires, storms and floods hurting people today have been extensively documented by climate scientists. We are reading it everyday. So the awareness is there though it may not be enough.
Unfortunately, our climate scientists feel hopeless when they see that the responses from the politicians and the big corporations are not in the best interest of the common man. And yet, our climate scientists still passionately continue to do their job with a conviction that policymakers cannot say that they were not made aware.
The root cause that this impending catastrophe does not motivate politicians (policymakers) is that it is not an election issue. If policymakers are motivated enough, the big corporations will also act more responsibly. Elections are typically held every four to five years across the world, but the planning and execution cycles to contain climate change impacts are more than that. According to Stephen Humphreys, the politicians and the well healed won't be affected, even if there is a cataclysmic 3C rise, till there is civil disobedience.
Now India is no exception. During the ongoing 2024 parliamentary elections, no political party explicitly talked about the devastating effects of climate crisis. Except the educated middle class and above, many of us do not fully understand the scientific phenomenon of climate change and its implications on our daily lives. This lack of awareness leads to climate change not influencing our voting decisions. But the issues related to its consequences, such as water scarcity, agriculture challenges, and economic impacts are being discussed aggressively.> Between 2016- 2021, climate extreme events caused damage to crops in over 36 million hectares, and a $3.75 billion loss for farmers in the country. If estimates from the report on ‘Loss and Damage Today’ by economist James Rising were to be believed, India lost 8% of its GDP in 2022.
Both the major political political parties, in India, have elaborately mentioned climate agenda in their election manifestos which are statement of intentions and not policy documents. However, Indian political parties tend to focus on immediate, emotive issues rather than long-term environmental concerns, which are not always seen as directly affecting voter in the short term. Environmental challenges and political priorities are consciously kept disconnected during election campaigns. No political party want to stir the hornet's best. Since meeting daily needs and economic growth are pressing concerns, the common people are prioritizing survival issues like employment, education, and healthcare over environmental policies.
The fate of climate change and politics is deeply intertwined. If climate issue fails to strike a strong resonance in the election campaigns across the globe, there is not much way forward.
The global risks due to misinformation and disinformation may be more than that posed by climate-related risks such as the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem collapse.
On 10th January 2024, Global Risks Report 2024 was published. While climate-related hazards remain a prevalent topic, the report identifies misinformation and disinformation as the most serious short-term threat.
According to the report
"foreign and domestic actors alike will leverage misinformation and disinformation to widen societal and political divides" during the next two years. This risk is heightened by a huge number of upcoming elections, with more than 3 billion people expected to vote in 2024 and 2025, including in major economies such as the United States, India, and the United Kingdom. The proliferation of mis- and disinformation around the world may cause civil upheaval, but it may also lead to government-led censorship, internal propaganda, and restrictions on the free flow of information.
Though the climate-related risks represent 5 of the top 10 threats during a 10-year period as the world approaches or crosses "climate tipping points", I believe misinformation and disinformation will continue to be ranked among top three risks much beyond the next two years. There is apparently no short term contingency plans and long term mitigation plans apart from effective role of independent fact-checking organizations. I do not know how these fact-checking organizations can deal with the assault of bad actors using Generative AI (including deepfakes) that will dominantly contribute to misinformation and disinformation by flooding the global information systems with false narratives in future. Misinformation and disinformation will also aggravate climate related risks. According to a research done by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, we have "reached the tipping point where humans are unable to meaningfully differentiate between AI-generated versus human-created digital content." I am convinced that Zero Trust Information is the right paradigm in this age of ChatGPT, Google Bard and Bing chatbot for regular end users.
Journalist Harini Calamur's article titled "Analysis: The Unbearable Risk of Misinformation" is worth reading. She expresses her deep concerns regarding misinformation and highlights the following.> The rise of misinformation and disinformation as a primary global risk underscores the danger it poses to individuals, societies, and economies. It needs to be addressed with the seriousness it deserves.
The fact that misinformation and propaganda existed even in the Roman Empire and prior to the battle of Actium during 31 BC between Octavian and Mark Antony, shows that the perils of misinformation and disinformation are here to stay with us for ever. Disinformation is a subset of misinformation that is spread intentionally.
The paper titled "The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction" discusses in great detail regarding why people share misinformation, barriers to belief revision, information to combat misinformation and related practical implications for practitioners, information consumers and policymakers. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer. In addition to regulations without curbing freedom of speech (which does not include amplification of that speech), the authors suggest that the most important approach to slowing the spread of misinformation is substantial investment in education, particularly to build information literacy skills in schools and beyond.
Overall, solutions to misinformation spread must be multi-pronged and target both the supply (for example, more efficient fact-checking and changes to platform algorithms and policies) and the consumption (for example, accuracy nudges and enhanced media literacy) of misinformation. Non-text-based corrections, such as videos or cartoons, also deserve more exploration. Additional transnational research is needed to explore questions about causality, including the causal impacts of misinformation and corrections on beliefs and behaviors.
Crowdfunded news portals, which are based on donation from individuals while maintaining high stands of accountability and transparency, are a relatively new phenomenon in the media landscape. These new generation news portals have several potential advantages like financial independence, public engagement and diverse content and content creation outside of mainstream media scope.
Thousands of Indian teachers set to lose jobs as Muslim school funding ends (neuters.de)
India's most populous state has stopped paying some 21,000 teachers of subjects including mathematics and science in Muslim religious schools, or madrasas, an official said on Thursday, and they could lose their jobs altogether.