Archive for Narendra Modi

PM Modi sent me an email!

Posted in pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2025 by xi'an

[I received this email from (or “from”) Modi, just before Diwali or Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights, to my amazement. When checking the source of the email, I found that this was sent by the Indian Railways (IRCTC) consumer services, with which I had registered in order to buy train tickets on several trips in India. While IRCTCT is a public company, sending such messages from the Prime Minister sounds like an abuse of customer privacy. Especially with religious contents that clash with the (admittedly very limited) secularism of the Constitution.]

Dear Christian Ji,
I extend my heartfelt greetings to all of you on the auspicious occasion of Deepavali, a festival filled with energy and enthusiasm. This is the second Deepavali after the grand construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Lord Shri Ram teaches us to uphold righteousness and also gives us the courage to fight injustice. We have seen a living example of this a few months ago during Operation Sindoor. During Operation Sindoor, Bharat not only upheld righteousness but also avenged injustice.
This Deepavali is particularly special because, for the first time, lamps will be lit in many districts across the country, including remote areas. These are the districts where Naxalism and Maoist terrorism have been eradicated from the root. In recent times, we have seen many individuals abandoning the path of violence and joining the mainstream of development, expressing faith in the Constitution of our country. This is a major achievement for the nation. In this journey of a “Viksit” (Developed) and “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India), our primary responsibility as citizens is to fulfill our duties towards the nation.
Let us adopt “Swadeshi” (local products) and proudly say: “This is Swadeshi!” Let us promote the spirit of “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”. Let us respect all languages. Let us maintain cleanliness. Let us prioritize our health. Let us reduce the use of oil in our food by 10% and embrace Yoga. All these efforts will rapidly move us towards a “Viksit Bharat”.
Deepavali also teaches us that when one lamp lights another, its light doesn’t diminish, but it grows further. With the same spirit, let us light lamps of harmony, cooperation and positivity in our society and surroundings this Deepavali.
Once again, wishing you all a very Happy Deepavali.
Yours,
Narendra Modi

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a journal of the extremes year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2025 by xi'an

 Read Carrying on by Stewart Tolnay, for no clear reason a posteriori! The story centres in a successful sociology senior professor in an imaginary university in Seattle (which also appears in the 1996 Sentinel), who finds himself arm-bent into becoming the new HoD and the subsequent difficulties he faces against some contrarian colleague. While this should obviously appeal to me, and despite the novel being written by a former faculty at Udub, the scenario quickly plummets down to unimaginable depths of boredom and suspension of belief. The main character is transparent, with a whining tendency and a personality as solid as a sodden marshmallow, and the other ones are almost uniformly caricatures as perfect representatives of minorities. Without getting into spoiling details, the main antagonist to this unlikely HoD conveniently accumulates all “qualities” a colleague should not possess, with an unrealistic ability to cross most of the department. More glaringly, research seems unimportant, except when applying for an NSF grant or when attending a conference where the future HoD behaves in a most unethical way imho. Add to this an endless accumulation of details about a new dog acquired by the HoD to recover from a divorce (!) and the collection of all the menus enjoyed by the HoD and his friend, and there is no compelling reason to carry on.

Also read Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, the Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 jointly received by Banu Mushtaq, the author of the short stories in Kannada and Deepa Bhasthi, her translator into English. A beautiful, moving, profound book that builds on the everyday woes of Karnataka Muslim women to expose the wrongs of a deeply patriarchal society that denies freedom and autonomy to women. The writing style is deceptively set at a narrative level that could be found in mundane conversations, with a powerful translation, grounded in collaboration with the author, keeping some words from the original, that is prize-worthy by itself!, but may mean readers from other cultures missing some aspects of the book. In the postface, the translator Deepa Bhasthi exposes her difficulties and choices, pointing out at the differences in the Kannada versions both women speak. The Booker recognition is both definitely richly deserved for a unique piece of literature and for signaling the richness and diversity of Indian literature that Modi’s goons would like to replace by an Hindu monoculture.

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Blitzkrieg [gegen Demokratie]

Posted in Books, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2025 by xi'an

“The stream of transparently lawless executive orders — to make it easier to fire federal officials, to freeze spending that the president cannot freeze, to take away a right to citizenship that is written into the Constitution, to name just three — tell us in no uncertain terms that this administration has no intention of respecting the law or the Constitution.” NYT Feb 07

The frantic and unhindered pace at which the Trump regime is drifting away from democratic principles is both shocking despite the low expectations attached to the elected President, and terrifying. The demolition of the rules of law and of the Federal Government services seems to proceed like a bread-knife through butter.

“But it is important to understand that the anti-democratic movement is not monolithic. In fact, it isn’t even coherent. One part of the program answers to the oligarchs (…) Another part of the program is the work of fanatics (…) The Christian nationalist ideologues who supply much of the rest of the ideology of the movement are no less extreme.” NYT Feb 07

Every aspect of society and most of the planet are impacted, from the disengagement from international institutions and treaties, to the utter disregard for nation sovereignty (beside the USA!, of course) and the right of people to choose their own way. Making the Orange Menace turning more and more into the past and current fascist leaders he admires so much. By cancelling one way or another legal counter-powers, sapping all levels of federal administrations and agencies, buying out media or threatening them by a flurry and fury of frivolous suits, releasing and pardoning rioters, forcing entry into and sometimes deleting crucial or confidential data, turning the army into an auxiliary police force, in scapegoating more and more categories.

“The executive order is meant to reverse what it calls an `egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses’ under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It cited the convictions of anti-abortion demonstrators for blocking access to abortion clinics.” NYT Feb 07

The most recent attempt at specifically “protecting” Christian activists (announced during the National Prayer Breakfast!) is yet another illustration of the Trumpian multi-tiered vision of the society, where different groups get different rights, some being “more equal than others”, under the pretence of protecting those groups. This is very similar to the argument used by Modi and the BJP in India.

 

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Nature tidbits [and garbage out]

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2024 by xi'an

Many bits of interest in the 25 July issue of Nature that stayed under a pile of journals for PNW reasons! Even though the cover is rather off-putting…

  • A call by the editors (and computer scientist Cal Newport) for scientists to “stop, drop, and think” (and the paperback version of Newport’s Slow Productivity has a nice cover that looks very much like Moraine Lake in Banff National Parc!)
  • Another call by a Science Po’ sociologist to the (then highly prospective) French government to increase research budget for French universities, which is not particularly original since this is a constant line on all unions’ desiderata, except for the argument that it would make a tuition fees increase more palatable, and to leave more freedom to researchers, with the oft-used argument that “fundamental research may have unexpected implications”. Except that a massive public deficit is going to impose budget squeezes in all spending lines of the Barnier government.
  • Worries of Indian and non-Indian demographers about the continued postponement of India’s national census, with the latest one dating from 2011. With strong repercussions on public policies, especially since the administrative data systems are rarely reliable. The article suggests that more than an estimated 100 million inhabitants are excluded from food subsidies as a consequence. This seems like an opportunity to develop open source alternatives that run the census from indirect observations, bypassing the reluctance of the Modi Government to launch the much delayed census. (Which could have been coupled with the electoral process earlier this year.)
  • An insight on four female “PhD influencers” from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Exeter, Hertfordshire, and Hong Kong (CUHK). Which has a plus side of exposing the life and interests of a PhD student. And a downside of being a social media product, with the many biases that come along posting to the general public.
  • A call for publishing more papers about negative results! Supporting (pre)registration of experiments.
  • A positive book review of The MANIAC of Benjamin Labatut around John von Neumann’s life, analysed by Karl Sigmund
  • A four-page long comment on the importance of preserving scientific US-China relations, despite the growing suspicion in the US that any scientific collaboration with Chinese institutions will benefit Chinese (State) interests. Without falling for a naive approach to such collaborations, and acknowledging the porous boundaries between fundamental and military research, one should acknowledge the great leap forward accomplished by Chinese universities in the past decade that set their researchers at the forefront of science in many fields.
  • A paper related with the cover on model collapse in AIs learning from AI-generated data. Just like MCMC learning a proposal from earlier simulations. A natural consequence of over-fitting.
  • Another paper on the phase (or quantum) transition of the two-dimensional Ising spin glass (model).
  • and the article on predatory conferences I already discussed in August.

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