planck

Entropy is rising

[Upamanyu Acharya @upamanyuacharya]

India will never produce an NVIDIA, and it has nothing to do with talent. R&D is the purest form of investment, and the central bank has spent decades making investment the dumbest thing you can do with a rupee.

I've been surfing the semiconductor wave for a while now, reading 10-Ks for fun. Spent last month in the Bay Area and the gap between India and the US is not a gap; it's a different universe. Conversations about agentic AI and the next decade of hardware, with my boomer relatives Waymo-ing around SF and self-driving home on Tesla FSD like it's normal. Nobody there thinks any of this is remarkable; they already live in the future.

NVIDIA spends nearly twice as much on R&D as every listed company in India combined. Silicon Motion, the world's leading maker of NAND flash controllers and around since 1995, ploughs 29.7% of revenue back into R&D. Micron runs 10.2%, NVIDIA 9.9%, on revenue bases that dwarf anything we have. India Inc? 0.85% of turnover, and half our listed companies report zero R&D at all.

The easy move is to lambast our promoters and the dhandomaxxing capitalist class, or the foreign MNCs running India as a glorified offshoring unit, or the babus who fund nothing useful. Satisfying. But Wrong. The reason no rational Indian founder pours money into frontier R&D is that there is genuinely no payoff at the end of it. Why?

1. R&D compounds, and compounding punishes laggards. At the edge of science a 1-2% gain is a moat; Intel spent 20+ years performing impossible physics every 24 months because Moore's Law was the business model, and that consistency makes them one of the goated companies of all time even after they got mogged recently. NVIDIA lives the same way today: invent at the limit or cease to exist. If you're 50% behind, no quantum of innovation closes that. You never touch the high end. You stay a mass-market producer of things that already exist. India is precisely there.

2. The supply side is the real thesis, and it's monetary. Two decades of high inflation, high money-printing, high nominal rates. That regime subsidises consumption and taxes patience. R&D is the longest-duration, highest-variance bet on the board; it is the first thing a 8% risk-free rate kills. Frontier R&D only ever gets funded two ways: a psychopathically risk-tolerant capitalist with cheap capital, or a state with Stalin-grade control. The USSR took agrarian peasants to the first man in space in 20 years; China built its own version. India has neither the state capacity, the political will, nor the balance sheet to do that. So nobody does it.

Talent was never the bottleneck. Capital structure was. If you want a SpaceX or a TSMC born here, you need an environment where a conglomerate can deploy $10B and sleep at night: a low-rate regime that makes long-duration investment rational, IP and patent courts that actually function, and policy that doesn't get rewritten every 2-3 years on a minister's whim. Stability is the input. Innovation is the output.

Bay Area versus Bombay, we are several universes apart, and you cannot print your way across that distance; you can only compound your way there, and we've spent years optimising for the opposite. The gap won't be bridged. With luck, it narrows.

[Amish Tripathi @authoramish]

The Pashupati Seal. From Mohanjo-Daro.

Nearly 4,500 years old.
For a century, it refused to speak to us.

Then I came across the work of Dr. Rao (@yajnadevam).
During the COVID lockdown, this Indian computer scientist used cryptography to read what generations of scholars could not.

He compared it to the Mahabharat. Found 7 distinct alignments.

His conclusion: an ancient prayer to Lord Shiva, carved into a seal.

Our ancestors didn't just build cities. They recorded devotion.

The British often called it "mythology". But what if it's simply history told in a script we forgot to read?

[Amish Tripathi @authoramish]

Proto-Elamite?

The Pashupati seal has an elephant, a water buffalo and a rhinoceros. Ancient Elam was centred in southwestern Iran. Elephants, water buffalos and rhinoceroses are not native to ancient Elam. BTW, they are native to India. Also, the figure is seated in a Yogic posture. Is Yoga also Elamite now? Seriously?

Your profile says you are a professor. I don't mean to sound rude, but your students deserve a refund. And seriously, Western universities need to improve their hiring practices.

[Safi Ahsan Rizvi @SafiAhsanRizvi]

Given the unbearable heat in North India, it would be useful to listen to this podcast with DG IMD, Dr Mohapatra.

El Nino is going to heat us up towards the 2nd half or end of this monsoon. Here is a deep dive into all the factors that could mitigate or exacerbate that effect

The IOD, WD, Eurasian snowcover, Typhoon remnants, Tibetan High, Somali Jet, etc.

Then he explains climate change and the role of the sea as a sink and its limits.

He ends Part 1 with simple math on how much damage we do by burning one 100W bulb for 24 hrs.

https://t.co/DkQKPnJ0OJ

@PPFNewDelhi

[planck @planck_quantum]

@cbseindia29 payment made and successful but scanned answer sheet not received. Roll no 11670621. Candidate name: rukmani shukla

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The last time an El Niño this strong hit, it killed 50 million people. That was 3 to 4% of the entire world population. Scale that to today and you're looking at 250 million equivalent.

The 1877 Super El Niño triggered simultaneous droughts across India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. Crops failed on four continents at the same time. The famine lasted three years. Researchers have called it "arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity."

NOAA's latest update gives a two-in-three chance this one reaches strong or very strong by fall. European models are even more aggressive. Sea surface temperatures need to exceed 2°C above normal to qualify as "super." The trajectory is pointing directly at that threshold.

Here's what makes 2026 structurally different from every previous Super El Niño: there are two independent supply shocks converging on the same crop cycle.

The Iran war has shut down roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade through the Strait of Hormuz. US fertilizer supply was at 75% of normal in mid-March, right when the Corn Belt needed it most. Fertilizer prices hit their highest level since 2022. That input shortage is already baked into the 2026 growing season.

The El Niño yield shock operates on a 6 to 12 month lag. India is forecasting below-normal monsoons for the first time in three years. Indonesia and Malaysia carry 90% of global palm oil, and El Niño production declines in those countries take 6 to 24 months to peak. Every strong El Niño in the past 55 years has reduced global cocoa production.

So the fertilizer shortage weakens the crops El Niño is about to stress, and the El Niño yield collapse hits in 2027 on fields that were already under-fertilized in 2026. Two shocks with nearly identical lag structures, converging on the same harvest window.

The difference between 1877 and 2026: we can see this one coming six months out. The commodity futures curve is barely pricing either shock. Whether that's rational discounting or willful denial depends entirely on what the Pacific Ocean does between now and October.

[Sadhavi Khosla @sadhavi]

The Mandukya Upanishad is perhaps the shortest & most complete document in the entire history of human thought. 12 verses that map the complete architecture of human consciousness across four states. Waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and the fourth- Turiya. The witnessing awareness that is present through all three states and identical to none of them. The awareness that watches the dream without being the dreamer. That is present in deep sleep as the one who later says I slept deeply. That is reading these words right now without being reducible to any thought that arises while reading them. You have never not been that awareness. Every moment of your life has happened within it. The search for consciousness is the one search that was always already complete before it began.

[Rakesh Krishnan Simha @ByRakeshSimha]

Himanta Biswa Sarma: "I cannot stop Assam from becoming a Muslim majority state; I can only delay it for the next generation."

The history of India shows that once an area turned Muslim majority, it became a permanent part of the ummah. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh used to be Hindu+Buddhist majority provinces of India but are now jehadi countries where non Muslims have zero rights.

India cannot afford to tie its destiny to demography because imported foreign ideologies are determined to supplant the indigenous religions of India and take control of the country via population growth.

India should be declared a Hindu Rashtra and the followers of indigenous religions should have priority in all walks of life. This is quite normal in many parts of the world. In Malaysia, Muslim Bhumiputras get preferential treatment over Tamil Hindus and Chinese. In all 57 Muslim countries, the indigenous Muslims are the sole beneficiaries while the non Muslims have Dhimmi status. India should follow the same model.

The concept of "One Person, One Vote" is dangerous not just for India but for every democratic country in the world because most people are not informed enough to vote. Plus, people with Leftist views vote to help Islamists gain power.

Democracy may seem like fun when tolerant groups like Hindus in India and Agnostic Whites in Western countries are the majority. But it is due to democracy that Islamists are able to create Sharia Zones where democracy does not operate. And Sharia Zones don't shrink; they expand outward. Himanta Biswa Sarma admits that he cannot stop Assam from becoming a Muslim majority state; he can only delay it for another generation. What happens to Assam Hindus then? Will they have to live like Dhimmis? Or flee like Kashmiri Hindus?

Kashmir is a stark example of what happens to Hindus in a Muslim majority region. The presence of the Indian Army couldn't prevent the expulsion of the 3% Hindu minority. In fact, the Kashmiri Muslims did not even factor the Indian Army in their calculations while expelling the Hindus. They knew there would be no consequences for genocide.

A Hindu living in democratic India is like a frog placed in a pot of water on the stove. Initially, as the temperature rises it feels nice and warm. But as the water starts boiling, the frog can no longer get out to safety.

[Yashraj Sharma @Yashraajsharrma]

What actually travels after death?

Your soul? No. Not as you think.

In Sanatan Dharma, your existence has 3 layers:
1.Physical Body (Sthool Sharir):
•What you see in the mirror.
•Made of flesh and bones.
•It dies here itself.

2.Subtle Body (Sukshma Sharir):
•Made of mind, thoughts, memory, ego.
•It carries your desires, emotions, and memories from life to life.
•In astrology, Moon, Mercury, Lagna and 4th house show its working.

[shibya Sharma @Shibyash_17]

The strongest protection in Kalyug —
Hanuman Chalisa. 🔥

[Rashtra Jyoti @RashtraJyoti]

Hindu employees at Nashik's TCS office were manipulated into eating beef by a conversion racket operating among staff

Ask yourself: Why are millions of Hindus never taught how to counter beef propaganda?

This Guide by @RashtraJyoti, prepared by Vedic Sanskrit scholar and IIT-IIM @SanjeevSanskrit, will end that weakness

Read once. Answer for life
https://t.co/Bz8xkf1K0I

[Rāma Śēṣan Chandraśēkaran @maa_bhaishiiH]

How Jesus went from a local Judean carpenter crucified as a criminal by an imperial state to the most controversial God

How Allah went from a local Bedouin desert deity worshipped by warring caravan looter tribes to the most controversial God

I doubt whether these historians will adopt this same disrespecting tones for the other religions

[Maithili @SuvarnBharat]

Shri Vishnu dev namo namah

[Amit Paranjape @aparanjape]

The first Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta printed in Devnagari script - in Miraj 1805

"Nana Phadnavis had planned (1790s) to get the Geeta printed in Devanagari. He approached Charles Malet (British Resident in Pune) for the same, and with the help of Malet the first ever Devanagari types were made by local Pune artisans.

But soon Malet left and Nana died. And the project took a backseat. But fortunately then the Miraj chief knew about the project and decided to take over it. He set up a press in Miraj and called over the artisan family with Devanagari types to Miraj."

[Megh Updates 🚨™ @MeghUpdates]

📍Ayodhya, UP: A rare 200-year-old manuscript in Devanagari script discovered in Ayodhya will soon be preserved at the International Ram Katha Museum.

[Scott D. Haddow @sdhaddow]

New radiocarbon dates push the origins of urbanism at Mohenjo-Daro back to the 4th millennium BCE.
https://t.co/bJUnOVP09Y

[Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72]

Dhurandhar succeeds not because it is unapologetic but because its audience is unapologetic. Unapologetic in rejecting the Aman ki Asha bullshit. @AdityaDharFilms has perfectly nailed the zeitgeist of the Modi years.

My views on @timesofindia Scrutiny: https://t.co/0UvppB6X7P

[Ram Gopal Varma @RGVzoomin]

My Review of the #Dhurandhars

My one line advise to all film students is “Leave your institutes and spend that money and time in #Dhurandhar2 theatres”

For all film students out there , here is what I studied of how , Aditya Dhar did not direct , but weaponized cinema itself.
Dhar fused raw visceral intensity with surgical precision, creating a film that feels like a live electric wire humming with tension and then exploding into cinematic brilliance
His techniques redefine the genre, blending Scorsese’s gritty realism with a Tarantino’s stylization, all while maintaining an iron grip on both pacing and hovering over emotional land scapes.

He seems to have given action director Aejaz Gulab total freedom with just one directive: “Think as brutally as you can. Kill in the most intense ways you can imagine.” and Aejaz shot extreme gore (torn limbs, burnt bodies, blood soaked incidents ), but Dhar reined it in the final cut for broader accessibility , but what still remains is ultra ferocious.. The 30+ minute climax, reportedly rehearsed for six days and shot over 14 with meticulous continuity , turns a masjid fight into a visceral symphony of debris, chains, and the deadliest kills imaginable

This isn’t mindless gore like the pre march 19 th 2026 films because in here , it serves character depth and theme elevation and Hamza/Jaskirat’s dual identity rocket fuels the tremendous fury, turning every punch, shot, and explosion into an extension of both national and personal rage .

Dhar blends practical effects, clever camerawork, and minimal VFX making the carnage feel dangerously real.

Dhar structures the film like a strategic dossier, dividing it into named chapters (e.g., “A Burnt Memory,” “Lucifer,” “Ghosts from the Past,” “Trial by Fire,” “Unknown Men,” “The Revenge,” “Dhurandhar”) each acting as a mini three act arc, giving the audience a clear “cognitive map” of escalating stakes. This technique prevents the massive runtime from feeling bloated and instead, it builds like a procedural intelligence operation as in setup, infiltration, detonation.

He opens with high stakes emotional anchors (personal tragedy fueling national duty), then shifts into mandatory planning sequences that feel as dramatic as the fast moving action.

No predictable flashbacks and information unfolds through sharp, razor edged dialogue and highly innovative montages. The result? A nearly four hour film that “never once distracts” and every chapter propels you forward with surprises, twists, and turbulent emotional undercurrents.

Dhar’s visual language is controlled and strategically indulgent. He favours gritty realism captured in handheld shots, using rustic/sepia toned palettes for Pakistan’s underbelly, saturated colors for dramatic spikes but layered in prestige cinema aesthetics (amber gold interiors, teal grey exteriors)

Heavy use of medium close ups and tight frames captures not only hyper masculinity, but also micro expressions, with smoldering intensity (especially in Ranveer’s eyes).
Low angles, shallow depth of field, and occasional high frame rate/shutter speed shots heighten the tension without disorienting us from the drama

TO BE CONTINUED in next TWEET

[SANATAN @Eternaldharma_]

A stunning video is going viral where a young girl performs Bharatanatyam while beautifully portraying both male and female characters in a single act.

[Rahi🍁 @TheSarcastica]

Vanga vs Aditya Dhar