Karan

The 3 R's: Running, reading, ridiculous humour | Also: India, films, fitness, politics, ₹, puzzles, memes, and the occasional song.
Proudly pleb, book hoarder.

[Karan @karanological]

Friendly reminder that it's now 2 years more (28 years) between now and You've Got Mail, than it was between You've Got Mail and The Godfather (26 years). 🥲

[The Poetry Decider @Aliteraryshadow]

I think it was Harold Bloom who said that in the (then) current cultural environment, literature is "overidealized and undervalued" and I think this is absolutely correct, even truer now, and the cause of so many bad reading and book takes on here.

[Karan @karanological]

Hahaa, fantastic joke, fantastic timing! 🏆👏🏻

[The Tennis Letter @TheTennisLetter]

Karolina Muchova after losing to Linda Noskova in the Wimbledon final:

“I’ll start with Linda, my ex friend”

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[Anish Giri @anishgiri]

One thing I’ve noticed after more than two decades of professional chess is that almost everyone dramatically underestimates how much preparation has changed.

People still imagine opening prep as memorizing a few lines from a book. That world is long gone.

Today it’s databases with millions of games, engines stronger than any human has ever been, neural networks evaluating positions that used to be considered equal, cloud computing, custom scripts, opening trees, novelties hidden 25 moves deep, and increasingly AI helping organize all of it.

But here’s the funny part.

The biggest difference between the very top players isn’t usually who has the strongest engine. We all have access to incredibly strong engines.

It’s knowing what to ask.

You can spend six hours analyzing a position and learn almost nothing, or ask the right questions and discover an idea in twenty minutes that completely changes your understanding.

Over the years I’ve also realized that preparation isn’t really about finding “the best move.”

It’s about finding positions where:

you understand what’s going on,
your opponent probably doesn’t,
and the practical decisions are difficult.

That’s why sometimes you’ll see a super-GM voluntarily enter a position that’s objectively only equal—or even slightly worse. If it’s easier to play for one side, the engine evaluation isn’t the whole story.

Another misconception is that preparation ends once the game starts.

The first novelty is often just the beginning. After that you’re relying on pattern recognition, intuition built from thousands of hours of analysis, psychology, time management, and occasionally just stubbornness.

Chess has become both more scientific and more human at the same time.

The computers keep getting stronger, but understanding which positions fit you is still something no engine can optimize perfectly.

At least not yet.

[James Blunt @JamesBlunt]

Saw this and thought of you.

[Khalid Baig @KhalidBaig85]

How have you handled a 15 yr old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi? I am afraid, very poorly. Dropping him just after 3 matches, this hurts the teenager's self belief. You could see the body language of the young boy in the dug out. This is not how you handle a child prodigy.

And the mayhem as far as the England Tour is concerned, continues. Our bowlers continue to look listless and clueless. Shivam Dube's dropped catch summarizes the tour, lazy, courage less approach, not how International Sportspersons play.

As I type this, the World Champions are getting hammered, left, right and centre. Harry Brook and Jos Butler are ruthless and we are not even putting up a challenge.

2 back to back matches lost to Ireland in Ireland, 3 consecutive matches lost to England in England and with the way Brook and Butler are going, it seems 0-4 is loading.

T20 World Champions cannot lose 6 consecutive matches abroad.

This is simply unacceptable!

[Stephen King @StephenKing]

What's the difference between a hippo and a Zippo?
I'm glad you asked. See, a hippopotamus is very heavy, and a Zippo is a little lighter.

[Karan @karanological]

@ChandhokHursh @lilastories I read it long before I knew of her politics. Finished it, but found it weird and overall underwhelming.

Parts of it are beautifully written though, and found the setting unique, so understand some of the hype around it.

[Lila Krishna @lilastories]

Um.... no?
It is not the best of course - RK Narayan's The English Teacher totally mogs it. Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake has more depth and complexity.
It might be Roy's debut novel, but she was already a successful screenwriter then, winning NFDC grants and international collabs.

Everyone bought it in the light of the booker, but few got through the first 40 pages.

Plus, it's obvious she can only really write well when she's writing about her own experiences - Annie gives it to those ones and TGOST. This is because she's a traumatized narcissist who is incapable of understanding humanity when it doesn't pertain to her.
But even there, she has to put some kind of shock ending to give the work some meaning.
So naturally no other good novel came out of her.

[Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 @DefenceHQ]

Norway may row. But England roars 🦁🦁🦁

Good luck tonight team, from our Armed Forces around the world! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

@England

[Karan @karanological]

@divz_i_am I have a lovely secondhand 3 book set I got about a year ago. I guess I'll only get around to them post retirement 😭

[Liza Libes @pensandpoison]

Bertrand Russell famously said that Hitler was the outcome of Rousseau.

Russell argued that Rousseau’s idea of general will—the "majority rules" approach that also helped establish liberal democracies—must necessarily devolve into totalitarianism because, eventually, the individual becomes irrelevant.

It's no accident that "wokeness" in this context indeed resembles totalitarian ideology.

[Millenarianism Identifier @facebookvillain]

every millennial that was trying not to be "mainstream" landed on the same twelve musical acts. that's not being independent or underground at all, it's just a secondary channel to the mainstream. a tributary of pop culture. you have escaped nothing and accomplished nothing

[beetle moses @beetlemoses]

2 year anniversary of this comic

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

IT'S 'HEAR, HEAR,' NOT 'HERE, HERE.'

IT'S 'SNEAK PEEK,' NOT 'SNEAK PEAK.'

IT'S 'EXACT REVENGE,' NOT 'EXTRACT REVENGE.'

IT'S 'BY AND LARGE,' NOT 'BY IN LARGE.'

THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA.

[犬 @not__dog__]

“Gentlemen, I advance the notion that a well-lived life should be our chief pursuit: to supreme happiness in this life, and the next.”

“I agree with this notion.”
“Similarly.”
“I too am in agreement.”

“Splendid! Now, we must carefully discern what that particularly means.”

[Bastien Fachan @BastienFachan]

It's 9pm local time in London, everyone in the Royal Box has left the building, and the camera pans to the one person who stayed to watch the last match of the day...

Roger Federer, the winningest men's champion in Wimbledon history.

Cinema.

[Stephan Pastis @stephanpastis]

Two strip Tuesday

[Science Cowboy 🦉 @aadityad9]

You’re not gonna believe this,

It’s the same bird again. 3 years in a row.