Kim

[Kim @j00nbUn]

Revisiting my favorite thread on Twitter

[Kim @j00nbUn]

@RoatansFinest If my knowledge from watching horror movies serves me right, most likely an entity has possessed that body 😭😭😭😭

[Arjun @think_in_points]

I booked a Pronto service for the first time, and what the lady who came to help us with cleaning told us about her working conditions was honestly quite disturbing.

She reports at 6:30 AM and works until around 7 PM. That's roughly 12.5 hours a day, and she gets around ₹700 a day, which comes to barely ₹60 an hour.

There is no fixed lunch break. The maximum break they get is around 20 minutes, and she told us that sometimes this break can be as late as 5 PM. No fixed timings.

There are apparently no proper washroom facilities or place to rest between bookings. Some workers end up sitting in public parks and are driven away by the police.

And not everyone gets a scooty. Those who don't have one have to walk from one booking to another, sometimes 20–40 minutes.

She also told us that they were initially told they would get one day off as menstrual leave during periods. But when she actually asked for a day off, she was told to just take a 30-minute break and come back. She told them that it takes more than 30 minutes to get back home. She asked if she could take the entire day off and was told that ₹700 would be deducted for that day.

Apparently, if they take leave for more than two days, their daily rate itself can be reduced for the subsequent days.

The lady who came to our home is planning to work only until Diwali. She said that cleaning work picks up around this time, and she wants to leave the platform as soon as she can.

This is the side of India's “convenience economy”.

For us, it's just a booking on an app for a dirt-cheap price. Someone comes home, gets the work done, and leaves.

But behind that convenience is someone working 12+ hours a day, travelling between bookings, with barely any break and very little control over their own time. Almost felt inhumane.

Hearing all of this made me feel quite bad. Startups creating employment shouldn't become a justification for poor working conditions.

[Riaa @hathiaursathi]

If I am not wrong, this Essar group was bankrupted and their dues were written off by the BJP govt. How come a bankrupted company investing 15 odd billion dollars in US. Kya loot Macha rakhi hai iss Sarkar ne bhai? They will put colonization to shame.

[Dylan @dmc_dmcc]

It’s so annoying how we apparently need to take societal direction and cues from people who don’t go out and do anything normal, so they’re all like “what if you could do this thing that’s already possible… but now we’re middlemen and you paid us $40 billion dollars for that…?”

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

PLEASE READ. THIS IS IMPORTANT. SEE HOW YOUR TAX MONEY IS WASTED ON FRAUD PSEUDOSCIENCE STUDIES BY THE BJP GOVERNMENT.

The study did not demonstrate added benefit, and its claim of prolonged safety is a lie.

No demonstrated benefit
Ashwagandha did not produce a statistically convincing improvement in antibody responses, COVID-19 prevention or quality of life. There were 27 infections among 598 Ashwagandha recipients and 20 among 602 placebo recipients. This does not demonstrate protection.

Some numbers are mathematically impossible
The same supplement reports a spread (standard deviation) of 13.8 for a questionnaire score that mathematically cannot have a spread larger than about 10.8–12 — like reporting that everyone in a room is between 5 and 6 feet tall, with an average variation of 2 feet. Elsewhere, the placebo group’s heights supposedly vary by 17–22 cm while every other group varies by 9–10 cm; the odds of that happening in a real randomized trial are about one in a trillion trillion trillion.

The one “positive” result is an illusion created by math
The abstract says the Ashwagandha group showed “persistently higher” antibody levels in one subgroup. The paper’s own Table 2 shows the opposite: that group’s actual antibody levels were lower at every single time point. The “20–40% higher” claim comes from measuring change from each group’s starting point — and the Ashwagandha group happened to start 25–34% lower, so its catch-up looks bigger as a percentage. It is like two runners: one starts 10 metres behind and both finish together; you then praise the trailing runner for “gaining more metres.” That is not a drug effect; it is an accounting artifact. The paper never tells readers this.

The safety story is a lie and the bad bits were left out
“Safe” in this paper means “no statistically proven difference in harms” - but the trial was not designed to detect rare or moderate harms, and every actual number tilts against the herb: more adverse events (337 vs 309), more serious adverse events (6 vs 2), more probably drug-related events (7 vs 2), and more dropouts (92 vs 76) in the Ashwagandha arm. Some numbers were simply misreported: serious reactions are listed as “0.08%” when the real figure is 0.67% - ten times higher. Significant differences in blood tests (including D-dimer, a clotting marker that matters after an adenovirus-based vaccine like Covishield) appear in the tables but are never mentioned in the text, which instead says all lab results stayed normal. And 168 people (14%) left the trial for “various reasons” that are never itemized, so the claim that “no one quit because of side effects” cannot be checked.

Basic numbers and statistical tests do not agree.
Nobody can say how many people were actually in the trial. The text reports 11 symptomatic COVID-19 infections, while the adverse-event table reports 22. Depending on which table you read, the same 1,200 participants split into subgroups four different, mutually contradictory ways (the totals come out as 1,200, 1,194, 1,019-labelled-as-919, and 1,025). One trial cannot have four different headcounts. Dropout rates also varied bizarrely between recruitment waves - 23.7% in one group versus 5.4% in another, with no explanation. Some statistical test results cannot be reproduced from the printed counts.

Some laboratory data require urgent verification. Some of the data were literally copied and pasted.
In the paper’s quality-of-life supplement, one column of numbers (baseline results for the Ashwagandha group) reappears — digit for digit, all eight values — as a completely different column (week-28 results for the placebo group). Two different groups of people, measured six months apart, do not produce identical results down to the second decimal place. This is a copy-paste job, and it means at least one of those columns is not real data. One table reports a very large difference in blood urea between groups, with small variation within each group, yet gives a statistical result suggesting little difference. The corresponding urea-nitrogen value also does not fit. In the quality-of-life supplement, four pairs of averages and measures of variation are repeated exactly across different groups and visits.

Ashwagandha's quality documents do not consistently support their own claims.
A raw-root test reports 0.048% total alkaloids against its stated minimum of 0.3%, while declaring compliance. Those statements cannot all be correct. The extract and finished-tablet measurements also do not reconcile on the obvious calculation. Chromatograms dated 2019 are supplied for a trial that began enrolling in late 2021, without showing their connection to the actual trial batches. This means the documentation is insufficient to verify what participants received.

The goalposts were moved after the results came in
When the trial was registered in 2021, its main question was whether Ashwagandha improves the immune response to the vaccine. The answer came back: no measurable effect. So the published paper re-centred itself on a secondary question — safety — and put “safe” in the title, while demoting the original main question to “exploratory.” That is called outcome switching, and trial registration exists precisely to prevent it. Along the way, the eligible age range quietly changed three times across documents (18–45, then 18–65, then 18–70), a planned interim analysis vanished, and the timeline described in the paper contradicts the registry.

The paper hid the fact that the two groups were not comparable
A fair trial needs the treated group and the placebo group to start out the same. At the start of this trial, 77.6% of the placebo group had signs of a past COVID infection, versus 70.9% of the Ashwagandha group — a real, statistically significant difference (the correct p-value is about 0.01). The paper’s own Table 1 says so. But the text of the paper claims the groups were “comparable” and quotes a p-value of 0.50 - wrong by a factor of fifty, and wrong in the direction that hides the problem. Why it matters: the group with fewer past infections (Ashwagandha) would be expected to look different on later antibody tests anyway, which muddies every comparison the paper makes about immunity and breakthrough infections.

The published paper contains fabricated-looking data blocks, impossible statistics, a fifty-fold misreported p-value that hides an unfair comparison, a main result replaced by a secondary one after the fact, and a headline “benefit” that its own tables disprove.
https://t.co/jXY9Q75PMM

A letter to the journal's Science Integrity Department WILL BE MAILED TODAY with the following concerns about this paper @FrontiersIn

[Angshuman Choudhury @angshuman_ch]

1. SIR as a backdoor, NRC-style citizenship determination project

2. Forced expulsions of Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh through direct police action

3. 'Demographic Change Committee' as a precursor to socio-economic disempowerment of minorities (which some states have already initiated through enactments like inter-religious land transfer rules)

4. CAA to ensure selective protection to non-Muslims

Many of us don't realise that the BJP's hydra-headed 'detect, delete, deport' programme is in full operation at the moment. Part of a new, more complex strategy that avoids attention-grabbing terms like "NRC" but achieves far more.

[𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚎𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚍𝙰𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚎 🇨🇦 @LeaveHeardAlone]

The reason that Michael Tracey wants to out the Jane Doe in the Cornell case is simply so they can dig into her life and expose every single flaw in her character — the more human she becomes in the narrative, the less of a “perfect victim” she is — and that’s better for the rapists.

The more a victim is known, the more people will blame her for this atrocity and what was done to her.

[Roshan Rai @RoshanKrRaii]

Her father had $2 Billion in net worth, she could have used the money to start something useless like Medtech , Robotics, computer or nutrition based startup, but instead she chose to provide cheap labour directly to your houses 💪

Inspiring stuff.

[Chirag @chirag]

Keeping kids of Zeitgeist and not allowing them to make up their minds is mind control.

Its like keeping women in homes and illiterate.

Whenever such things happen. This is the result of behind the scenes lobbying efforts.

As always. Ask cui bono.

[Surbhi Gupta @bysurbhigupta]

Shared my essay on India’s rape epidemic on LinkedIn and these are some of the comments I got. I hope these men realize LinkedIn is a professional platform and their comments are public. I hope their clients, colleagues and employers are watching.

Read the story here: https://t.co/mMenDmWebI

[Goodkid @nocapshrek]

🚨 LPU, Phagwara: An audio-video appears to show a girl explaining what allegedly happened at LPU. The university has dismissed circulating reports as false and rumor-driven. Official verification awaited.
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#lpu #LPU #lovelyprofessionaluniversity

[feee @Shaileesgurl]

Everyone dragged her, trolled her, and blamed her over that Rakhi ad. Now she’s speaking up for women while the same people who were so loud back then have suddenly lost their voices, cowards!!

[𝘤𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰 𝘥𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘢 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘢🪽 @444ngellll555]

curiosidade: quando uma tecnologia é perigosa eles fazem mulheres usarem nos comerciais, como a Kylie jenner e a lisa, assim em vez de você associar os óculos á assédio vc associa a beleza ou moda, a imagem feminina serve pra mostrar que "não é tão perigoso assim" n caiam

[미미치 @matchasogeum]

친아빠가 친딸한테 성욕을 느끼는 이유는 이거랬음
양육에 참여하지 않아서임
애기가 똥싸고 트름하고 냄새나는걸 자기 손으로 치우고 그래야 사람이라는걸 인지하는데 와이프한테만 양육맡기고 가끔만 보니까 그냥 어린여자1로만 보는거임

[Mehdi (e/λ) @BetterCallMedhi]

quand on sait que tiktok recrute à coup de millions des ingés en neurosciences comportementales et des spécialistes du design persuasif pour hacker nos circuits dopaminergiques, je me félicite chaque jour de n'avoir jamais créé de compte sur cette plateforme mdr

regardez ces études scientifiques en IRMF et eeg qui montrent très clairement quele format vidéo court attaque directement le cortex préfrontal et le cortex cingulaire antérieur (pour info ces zones gèrent le contrôle exécutif, la prise de décision et la régulation de l'attention)

sachez qu’een bombardant le cerveau de micro stimuli imprévisibles, l'algo altère la densité de matière grise et réduit l'activité du réseau par défaut & cette surstimulation permanente entraîne une incapacité chronique à penser à long terme et détruit la capacité à être focus, 2 facultés qui pour moi sont littéralement indispensables à notre époque pour construire l'avenir 

bref je pense que refuser d'entrer dans ce système, c'est simplement préserver son autonomie cognitive et la souveraineté de sa propre attention face à une ingénierie de l'addiction taillée sur mesure

[Sandeep Manudhane @sandeep_PT]

Indian RW influencers survive mostly on dark sexual innuendoes and abusive sexual mockery. Remove that, and most will collapse instantly. That's basically the RW model here.

[Lights @lightknigh]

Agreed! While rich Hindus are filled with superstitions, you’ll see them going to a pakhandi baba every month. Just look at Virat Kohli.

[Lights @lightknigh]

And these clowns are National Creators Award winner. 🤡

Shame on you @abhiandniyu

[Saurav Das @SauravDassss]

🚨IMPORTANT NEWS🚨

Since Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is in the news, I have some very important but sad news to share about a Supreme Court judge.

Supreme Court judge Justice Satish Chandra Sharma. Just two months away from retirement.

If you remember, the Allahabad High Court had imposed a penalty on Medha Roopam, the DM of Noida and daughter of Gyanesh Kumar with a fine of five lakh rupees for irrationally issuing NSA order against a student Activist for Noida labour protest.

That order was challenged before the Supreme Court of India. Live Law, the news portal, reported that Gyanesh’s daughter’s case was listed before Justice Satish Chandra Sharma out of turn and in violation of the Supreme Court roster and rules and convention. The challenge ought to have gone before Justice Nagarathna’s bench, known to be an independent upright judge.

Two days back, when the matter was listed for hearing, Justice Sharma‘s bench switched off the audio of the Supreme Court proceeding, which is highly unusual and almost never done. ALARMING. There was no explanation from the judge’s side as to why this extraordinary favour was done for Gyanesh’s daughter.

In any case the fine and the adverse remarks of the Allahabad High Court were stayed by Justice Sharma immediately.

Same day, in another case related to Gyanesh Kumar—the constitutional challenge that was filed against the 2023 law on election commissioners of India was finally decided by a two judge bench of which Justice Sharma was a part of.

Under challenge was the appointments procedure where the leader of opposition today holds only an ornamental seat in the Three-member selection committee that selects Election commissioner of India. The other two are PM and his Cabinet Minister. Justice Sharma dissented which led to a split verdict and the case has now been sent before the Chief Justice of India for constituting a larger bench. This has delayed the case by years probably. This split verdict itself came after three years. This is how the Supreme Court refuses to hear most important cases that affect our lives and the country.

A separate blanket immunity granted to past and present election commissioners of India by Modi’s government is also pending for last 9 months before CJI Surya Kant. Today, the Chief Election Commissioner has been exposed for gross illegalities and for stealing votes and elections at the behest of powers that be. Any sane, sorted, neutral, just person can see that the selection process of ECIs is not independent and tilted in govt’s favour. But not Justice Sharma.

And here’s the big news: his son holds not one, not two, but four big, plum government counsel panels, including income, tax department, GST, customs, and excise, and a Madhya Pradesh government lawyer panel. I need not explain the great perks and influence that come along when you hold such plum government panels. Read my Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma report where I exposed the same thing.

I am withholding the name of the son for now.

The important question is: how can a judge be expected to do impartial and fair Justice in politically sensitive cases if his family members serve at the pleasure of the government? The judge is also retiring two months later, and several lawyers have informed me that there are vacancies in NCLAT and other search plum tribunals.

I’M SORRY TO SAY such a system of judiciary does not inspire confidence in its ability to do impartial justice. There is a reason why the ethics code for judges require them to maintain a sense of aloofness and not do anything which can harm the their image and that of the judiciary.

Both in Justice Swarna Kanta’s case and several other judges case, including that of the Supreme Court, it is TRAGIC to notice the complete capture of the institution of the Indian judiciary. Can the judiciary go on like this?

[xo @oceanandlace]

delhi's top college closed after a gang r'pe case & shifted online, like ur solution to not being able to keep women safe is to stop classes? Beti Bachao Beti padhao only exists in speeches & PR, irl india is hell for women, whatever happens its always women who've to pay for it