Nikhil

Figuring out films

[Shashank Mattoo @MattooShashank]

India specifically requested no press conference at the Trump-Modi meeting at G7

Trump initially agreed, then forgot about it and did a 45-minute press conference sitting next to Modi

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

When India accidentally wiped out its vultures, half a million people died in five years.

The bird doing zoomies in this video runs the most extreme digestive system in the animal kingdom. Vulture stomach acid sits near pH 1, strong enough to destroy anthrax, rabies, and botulism in the carcasses they eat. A flock strips a cow to bone in about 45 minutes.

India had 50 million of them. Free sanitation at national scale, in a country where religious custom means most cattle die natural deaths and every dead cow becomes a carcass someone has to deal with.

Then the patent on diclofenac expired in 1994. Farmers started using the cheap painkiller on livestock. Trace amounts left in a carcass cause kidney failure in vultures. Within a decade, 50 million birds fell to a few thousand. The fastest collapse of any bird species since the passenger pigeon.

The carcasses didn't disappear. Feral dogs took the vultures' place and brought rabies with them. Rotting remains leached into waterways. In districts where vultures once thrived, human death rates rose more than 4 percent. Economists at Chicago and Warwick put the toll at 100,000 extra deaths a year and $69 billion in annual damages.

So yes, the goofy bird sprinting down the walkway is adorable. It's also a disease firewall that evolution spent millions of years building and one generic painkiller nearly erased in ten.

[Manisha Pande @MnshaP]

Remember the truck full of stones that appeared near the CJP protest site in Jantar Mantar?

@ImAvdheshkumar traced the vehicle with its registration number. It was not a stray truck: the Delhi Police had seized it four days earlier
https://t.co/weHmvyvYb0

[Kapil @kapsology]

The most dangerous thing for our country right now is the godi media.

[वरुण 🇮🇳 @varungrover]

@narendramodi Internet bandh kiya hua hai jantar mantar ka, wo log kaise dekhenge sir.

[Korah Abraham @thekorahabraham]

Banger headline!

[Punit Pania @Punit_Pania]

Sonam Wangchuk's Satyagraha has been subjected to more suspicion n analysis than the biggest scams of the past decade. A population that has been exploited for centuries does begin to identify more with the oppressor than the ones trying to help. Stockholm syndrome times billion!

[New India Foundation @newindiafndtion]

(1/2)
100 rupees a day to enter a library. 5,000 rupees for a single newspaper clipping. Papers donated to the national archive sitting unsorted for 25 years. And a scholar based in the US is buying up princely archives because Indian institutions will not preserve them.

This is what it takes to do historical research in India. Rahul Ramagundam spent twelve years navigating this broken system to write the biography of George Fernandes. The archives are crumbling. The sources are leaving the country. And the people who lived through history are dying without being interviewed.

Swipe to understand why writing Indian history is an act of endurance.

Rahul Ramagundam, Round 9 NIF Fellow, in conversation with Rishvanth Reddy Mucheli, NIF Programme Coordinator

[Basant Maheshwari @BMTheEquityDesk]

Fake GDP, fake nationalism, fake industrialists, fake journalists, fake media, fake experts, fake ideas, fake narrative, fake celebrities are all being exposed as the Dollar takes rupee to 100 and beyond!

[Nikhil @nikhileswar728]

@Divyaa_hu @MelanieJEaston The movie or my nightmare stint?

[Nikhil @nikhileswar728]

@bs_frr True...Thematically they might be very different...Ssr might not explore human complexities like Shakespeare does and loves his fantasy extravaganzas. But their career graphs and recognition of their works look eerily similar. Mass audience 'pulse' pattukunnaru anochu emo :)

[Nikhil @nikhileswar728]

@bs_frr Shakespeare plays are very similar to the big-ass Indian movies, loose structure, various tonal shifts, spectacle-driven etc. Both of them have more in common than what meets the eye. If SSR writes some great film songs (like sonnets), it would seal the deal 😂😂

[Nikhil @nikhileswar728]

@bs_frr Shakespeare died rich and looking at SSR's trajectory, he would definitely amass more money than any of the contemporary Telugu filmmakers. Shakespeare somehow got some international recognition to English lit. of that era (though posthumously) like SSR rn to Telugu cinema.

[Nikhil @nikhileswar728]

@avhr797 @ThisIsDSP I thought I was the only one who revisits this song often. Thank you for reinstating my faith in humanity 🫶🫶
Killer album... but Ninnu Chustunte has always been my fav 🥰🥰

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

7 years ago today, ‘INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE’ released in theaters.

[Garima @j_garima_j]

Bollywood making “frame-by-frame based on real incidents” spy thriller-