AB

[THE SKIN DOCTOR @theskindoctor13]

While the whole country is debating petrol-ethanol, the bros from Madhya Pradesh have already pulled off what is arguably India's first major ethanol scam, not counting you know who.

There is a govt policy that surplus rice in govt warehouses can be sold to ethanol manufacturers at subsidised rates to prevent it from rotting.

According to a Dainik Bhaskar report, the scam began when some officials allegedly (willingly?) ignored the rules and allocated "newly procured" fortified rice (not even regular rice, but fortified rice) for ethanol production. The rice, bought at a high price (₹4,000 per quintal), was sold at a throwaway price (₹2,320 per quintal) to ethanol plants.

The ethanol plant operators allegedly knew it was fortified rice, so instead of using it to make ethanol, they sold it to rice millers at ₹2,800 per quintal, and instead bought cheap broken rice (₹2,100 per quintal) from the open market for ethanol production, making an overall profit of ₹700 per quintal.

The rice millers allegedly repacked the fortified rice in new gunny bags and supplied it back to the govt as freshly milled rice. The govt paid them milling charges, while the govt supplied paddy they were actually supposed to mill was allegedly sold in the open market for another round of profit.

So the same bag of rice allegedly kept changing hands: govt warehouse to ethanol plant to rice mill to back to govt warehouse. Everyone in the chain allegedly made money.

The MP govt formed an SIT. So far, four people have been arrested and 12 trucks seized. Investigators suspect that up to 50 lakh quintals of govt rice, worth around ₹1,160 crore, may have been diverted through this alleged racket.

[Balaji @balajis]

I'm going to make some obvious points.

(1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war.

(2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East.

(3) Also assume tech financing crashes for the indefinite future. The genius plan to get the Gulf states caught in the crossfire has incinerated much of the funding for LPs, for datacenters, and for IPOs. Anyone in tech who supported this war may soon learn the meaning of "force majeure" as funding gets yanked.

(4) Many capital allocators will instead be allocating much further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs, towards useful basic things like food and energy.

(5) It's fortunate that all those progressives yelled about the "climate crisis." Yes, their reasoning about timelines was wrong, and much of the money was wasted in graft, but the result was right: we all need energy independence from the Middle East, pronto. It's also fortunate that Elon and China autistically took climate seriously. Now they're going to need to ship a billion solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, nuclear power plants, and the like to get everyone off oil, immediately.

(6) It's not just an oil and gas problem, of course. It's also a fertilizer problem, and a chemical precursor problem. Maybe some new sources will come online at the new prices, but it takes time to dial stuff up, particularly at this scale, so shortages are almost a certainty.

That said, China has actually scaled up coal-to-chemicals[a,c] (C2C), and there's also something more sci-fi called Power-to-X[b] which turns arbitrary power + water + air into hydrocarbons. But all of that will need to get accelerated. I have a background in chemical engineering so may start funding things in this area.

(7) Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people.

[a]: https://t.co/ITat4tmAFd
[b]: https://t.co/bWwiSQcgyt
[c]: https://t.co/FQCqMhy5d3

[Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross @alexwg]

https://t.co/N2AwpI9f8m

[Ross Kempsell @RossKempsell]

Yes Prime Minister (1986) was an uncannily prescient documentary about Keir Starmer’s premiership

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

🚨: A petri dish of human brain cells just learned to play DOOM

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

China has solved the demographic problem before it has begun.

[Dario Amodei @DarioAmodei]

The Adolescence of Technology: an essay on the risks posed by powerful AI to national security, economies and democracy—and how we can defend against them: https://t.co/0phIiJjrmz

[Tim Harford @TimHarford]

The law of unintended consequences strikes again...
https://t.co/kmk1oknKRn

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

NEW: Mark Zuckerberg says the Biden administration would call META to scream and curse at them to censor *true* information on their platforms.

Holy sh*t.

Zuckerberg said the administration would call them and tell them to censor true information including a Leonardo DiCaprio meme about vaccine side effects.

"They pushed us super hard to take down the things that were honestly true... Anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down."

Criminals.

[John B. Holbein @JohnHolbein1]

Look at how physicians diagnose more children with ADHD on Halloween (the red line in the middle of the figure).

The authors hypothesize that docs are more likely to diagnose kids on this day simply because kids are excited for Halloween.

Fascinating!

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 8

This video, viewed 340,000 times, falsely claims to show Palestinians faking their inuries.

It's taken from a 2017 @trtworld report on a makeup artist doing work for Palestinian films and charity projects.

[Ram @ramprasad_c]

This is Jake Tapper, CNN’s top anchor. Probably the dumbest when it comes to understanding India. Thinks PM Modi ordered an assassination of a low level thug. Tells you everything about western media’s understanding of India & Khalistani terrorism. https://t.co/A5BsaBjzsg

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

Why are houses in Amsterdam so narrow?

Well, it wasn't about creating a charming Dutch aesthetic — this was a direct response to taxes based on the width of a building's canal frontage.

Beautiful architecture isn't always about "styles". Sometimes it just happens by accident...

In the 16th century Amsterdam was becoming a commercial hub. As trade increased and the population grew, there was naturally greater competition for space, especially around the canals — because trade was all by boat. In response the authorities imposed a building tax on the width of a property's canal frontage.

Then, as now, people wanted to save money. So they simply built narrow houses to ensure that they paid as little tax as possible. What we see in the 21st century are charming rows of idiosyncratic Dutch houses arrayed along the pretty canals of Amsterdam. Back then it was merely the obvious and practical response to tax law.

When talking about architecture it's easy to focus on styles (Gothic or Classical, Bauhaus or Art Nouveau) or on specific superstar architects. But, it turns out, things as ostensibly boring as taxes are often far more important and powerful in shaping regional aesthetics and architectural identity.

Think of a typical Art Deco skyscraper. What comes to mind? Probably something like the Empire State Building, the iconic shape of which is largely defined by its setbacks: a waterfall of masonry and glass.

But those setbacks were mandated by the 1916 New York Zoning Resolution, which was enacted as a response to the Equitable Building. This was a structure more than 150 metres tall rising sheer from the sidewalk below, thus blocking light and air from reaching street level.

So, a seemingly definitive aesthetic quality of Art Deco skyscrapers, and of Art Deco design more broadly, was the direct consequence of building code regarding public health — not the artistic choice of an architect.

Then again, take Paris. Here we have a perfect example of practical building codes united with purely aesthetic concerns. When the Medieval city was torn down and rebuilt in the second half of the 19th century, Baron Haussmann — the man appointed to oversee this transformation — enforced quasi-dictatorial rules about the façades, specifying particular designs and even requiring that they all be constructed from a specific type of limestone. Sometimes regulations can be exclusively aesthetic.

But a different Parisian regulation, from 1783, was height restriction: buildings could be no more than 20 metres tall. This gave birth to another unintended aesthetic triumph, because it was exemptions to this rule that led to the widespread adoption of mansard roofs and, after that, their resulting spread around the world.

All of these examples are proof that architecture isn't always about "style". Indeed, sometimes the best architecture isn't a direct consequence of any actual intention to "create beautiful buildings" so much as a result of clever solutions to difficult problems.

And it isn't always, or even usually, taxes or building codes that present these problems. In the past it was the availability of building materials or the need to adapt to local climate and environmental conditions. In other words, a question of what was possible.

The steep roofs of Medieval German houses, the mudbrick towers of Hadhramaut in Yemen, the turf huts of Iceland, or the presence of courtyards in traditional architecture all around the Mediterranean. These are all examples of architecture responding to restrictions and problems and necessities rather than simple aesthetic choices.

And even the architectural wonders of the world weren't purely aesthetic in nature. The great Gothic cathedrals of Medieval Europe, the sublime stepwells of India, and the tiered pyramids of the Aztecs — all would have looked different if their builders had access to, say, stainless steel and plate glass and elevators.

The point here isn't that architects have not shaped styles or aesthetics, because they clearly have, and nor that they should be denied praise for their successes or absolved of blame for their failures. For example, even after the New York Zoning Resolution of 1916 it was down to inspired architects like Raymond Hood to design buildings according to those rules. He found a solution which was legal — and also beautiful.

Still, it's worth remembering that the most boring or unlikely of things, like taxes or the scarcity of resources, can sometimes unintentionally lead to beautiful architecture.

"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art," said Orson Welles. Very true, though he perhaps didn't have Dutch tax regulations in mind at the time...

[AB @aburad]

Best of wishes!

[StepStone Asset Services @StepStoneAssets]

Launching on this auspicious day of #akshaytritiya

@pritikapokharna

https://t.co/iYEC34frgR

[Balaji @balajis]

India's infrastructure is improving.
Lights, highways, airports, water, sewage, tech...

[anshul gupta @anshgupta64]

No this is not the UPI graph. This is India’s silent solar revolution.

Over the past decade, India has been steadily adding solar power capacity. We have taken ambitious targets to reduce global warming. But why?

[Win Smart, CFA @WinfieldSmart]

People leaving Hong Kong

[Guy Rosen @guyro]

The spoof was set up as a free trial Workplace account under the name “Instagram” and using the IG brand as its profile pic. We've locked the account for violating policies and are continuing to investigate. We'll provide further updates as warranted here: https://t.co/CiVFJsOvti

[Damien Gayle @damiengayle]

Activists with @JustStop_Oil have thrown tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the national Gallery and glued themselves to the wall.

[Venkat Ananth @venkatananth]

wild numbers 👀. @TheEconomist on the business of Indian marriages.

"Annual spending...may exceed $130bn...that would make marriage the country’s fourth-largest industry, behind energy, banking and insurance but ahead of cars, steel and technology." https://t.co/AlRWxt51b6