Seetha

[Seetha @seethahere]

"You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously."

- @ProfFeynman

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

For the last 15 years, I've always had one dream and desire which was to make Indian history interesting for everyone.

In that time period, I have tried writing blogs, long-form posts, stories and threads, to do exactly that.

Some worked, most didn't. But with every post, I always had this nagging question.

Why is Indian history always taught with a tunnel vision. Why is it so fragmented?

Why do we always learn things from the perspective of one empire, kingdom, king or invader.

Why do we never see an all India view of history?

I mean most of us struggle if we are ever are asked this question

1. What was the true extent of the Mughal Empire at its peak?
2. Who were the Cholas' contemporaries in North India?
3. While Muhammad Ghori was fighting the Second Battle of Tarain, who ruled Thanjavur?
4. While Harsha ruled Kannauj, who ruled Assam?

I have always wished there was a simple way to see the political map of India for any year in Indian history.

I have always wished there be a place where

1. One Could Select any year and instantly see who ruled every part of the Indian subcontinent.
2. One could Discover the important events that happened in that year
3. One could select a time period, say 1700 - 1947, and see how the Indian subcontinent evolved in that period.
4. How did one tiny red dot in West Bengal, from a tiny red dot in Europe, somehow came to rule an entire subcontinent of 400 million people,

For years, that idea remained just an idea and a dream because

1. I didn't know how to build a website.
2. I couldn't afford to hire someone who could.

Then Claude Came along.

Thanks to generous support and heavy lifting by Claude, over the last few months, that 15-year-old idea is slowly transforming into a reality.

And today, it has reached a position, where I'm excited to share with all of you, the first sneak peek of https://t.co/6ph2s9Zzl9

It is my attempt to create an interactive historical atlas of India that lets you travel through time and explore the political history of the subcontinent, one year at a time.

This is my attempt to make history interactive and fun.

I'd love to hear what you think.

[Tamil Nadu Weatherman @praddy06]

Rare Tornado in Thoothukudi. This is rarest of the rarest.

Credits to the concerned.

[Tamil Labs 2.0 @labstamil]

I often think about increasing footfall to these temples that barely generate a revenue. Most of them are in Delta districts, on erstwhile Chozha Desha's northern and southern shores of Kaveri.

The most effective way is if astrologers suggest these temples as Parihara Sthalams for common scenarios - marriage, progeny, promotions and health. Nothing else comes close to driving crowds to these temples and making them active places of worship. Shallow? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

[Seetha @seethahere]

@AlejandroMir @AmazonPhotos And this is not applicable to Amazon Prime members in India, I suppose ?

@amazonIN

[Google Earth @googleearth]

Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P

We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...

Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

The car that used to be in my garage is currently in an Earth-Mars elliptical orbit and will be there for at least 10 million years

[nisarga @ni5arga]

I had hacked CBSE's OSM (On-Screen Marking Portal) in February and had reported the vulnerabilities to CERT-In, but they were unable to patch most of them.

I've written a detailed blog post about it here: https://t.co/qyT23GkTEJ

[Alexandra Elbakyan @ringo_ring]

it has been more than 10 years since launch of Sci-Hub and still keep receiving emails that remind me that I am not actually being considered the author of my works.

To clarify: there is no, and have never been any team behind my projects - I created these websites myself, and I am doing both technical stuff (programming / server administration) and user support (answering emails,writing social media posts).

And I really hate receiving such messages. Every time I read this, I wish that person on the other side of the screen to die in excruciating pain. For a moment.

Yes, I understand that such desire towards other person is absolutely not socially acceptable, and can be even considered psychopatic. And I understand that other person doesn't know, and is not to blame. And I know that by modern standard, every project has to be done in a team. Students are being forced to work in teams in universities, and etc.

But the reality is, that you do not need a team in order to create something that will change the world.
Teamwork mythology is one big lie.

And yes, it is actually me who created it - and there are no ghost programmers hiding behind my back.

Probably after this post I will start receive even more such messages from trolls, but I just want to say:

I AM A PERSON, AND I AM NOT A TEAM

[Seetha @seethahere]

@TVKVijayHQ

You should definitely think about starting a TV channel, boss !!

Kind of surprised this has not happened till now, frankly

[IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ @iaeaorg]

Based on its independent analysis of new satellite imagery and detailed knowledge of the site, the IAEA can confirm recent impacts of military strikes close to Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), including one just 75 metres from the site perimeter. The BNPP itself has not been damaged, the IAEA’s analysis of the 5 April imagery shows.

Once again, IAEA Director General @rafaelmgrossi warns that continued military activity near the BNPP - an operating plant with large amounts of nuclear fuel - could cause a severe radiological accident with harmful consequences for people and the environment in Iran and beyond.

Regardless of the nature of the intended targets, DG Grossi says such attacks pose a very real danger to nuclear safety and must stop. DG Grossi reiterates call for all parties to fully respect the 7 indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict. A nuclear facility and surrounding areas should never be struck, DG Grossi says.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

Trump’s “victory timeline” claims.

Mar 3: "We won the war."
Mar 7: "We defeated Iran."
Mar 9: "We must attack Iran."
Mar 9: "The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully."
Mar 11: “You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won. In ​the first hour it was over.” Mar 12: "We did win, but we haven't won completely yet."
Mar 13: "We won the war."
Mar 14: "Please help us."
Mar 15: "If you don't help us, I will certainly remember it."
Mar 16: "Actually, we don't need any help at all."
Mar 16: "I was just testing to see who's listening to me."
Mar 16: "If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad."
Mar 17: "We neither need nor want NATO's help."
Mar 17: "I don't need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO."
Mar 18: "Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 19: "US allies need to get a grip - step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 20: "NATO are cowards."
Mar 21: "The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it, we don't need to open it."
Mar 22: "This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait"
Mar 22: "Iran is Dead"

Mar 23: "We had very good and productive talks with Iran."
Mar 24: "We’re making progress."
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.” Mar 26: "Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away."
Mar 27: "We don’t have to be there for NATO."
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: "Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences."
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was "very close" and that Iran would "do the right thing"
Apr 1: "We’ll see what happens very soon."
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: "Something big is going to happen."
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply "immediately" or face further consequences.

Apr 5: "Open the fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
😂

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

One month after starting the war in Iran, this is the statement of the President of the United States on Easter Sunday.

These are the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual. Congress has got to act NOW. End this war.

[Sekar Vembu @sekar_vembu]

I fully support Tamil Nadu’s two-language policy and our CM Thiru @mkstalin’s strong stand against the three-language formula.

My Personal Stance

I have many Hindi-speaking friends and we get along very well. I do not hate anyone based on the language they speak. India’s real strength is its diversity, and I am against anything that will damage that diversity in the long term.

My Personal Language Journey

I was able to clear a tough exam like IIT JEE with serious effort. Yet even I struggled a lot with languages. Until fifth standard in a private nursery school I studied three languages: Tamil, English and Hindi. In sixth I had Sanskrit. From seventh I changed to a school with only Tamil and English. By the time I reached 12th standard I was still not fluent. I could neither speak nor write proper essays comfortably in Tamil or English. My English improved only when I started reading English newspapers regularly and putting conscious effort into improving it. My spoken English improved after joining IIT, where I had to speak English every day with students from across the country.

Why Three Languages Become a Heavy Burden

If someone like me found it so difficult to become properly fluent, forcing a third language in school will be a huge burden for the majority of students. For us Tamilians our language belongs to a completely different family from north Indian languages, which makes it even harder. Modern education research also shows that overloading young children with three languages early reduces valuable time for maths, science and critical thinking.

The Reality Behind NEP 2020’s “Flexible” Policy

The Centre says the three-language policy is flexible and not mandatory Hindi. But in practice this flexibility is only theoretical. No school is going to find teachers easily for other Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalam or Bengali in other states, so Hindi becomes the default. When there are reports of delays or withholding of significant Samagra Shiksha funds (again, I can’t even pronounce this Hindi/Sanskritised title), it feels like clear coercion, not choice.

This Issue is Deeply Emotional for Tamils

Tamil Nadu has been resisting Hindi imposition since the 1930s, especially during the 1965 anti-Hindi agitations when many lives were lost. The two-language policy is not new. It is part of our history and identity.

Many Tamilians Already Learn Hindi Voluntarily

Most of us pick up conversational Hindi naturally through movies, migration or jobs. For example, my children automatically picked up some Hindi by watching movies and also by conversing with their mother who knows Hindi as she grew up in north India. There is simply no need to force it in schools.

What We Should Actually Focus On

In today’s world English is the international language for science, mathematics, technology, programming, AI and global business. Tamil Nadu is one of the top-performing states largely because we took English seriously. States that focused early on English tend to perform better in tech-heavy industries. Every state should teach maths, science and technology subjects in English and also focus on teaching their mother tongue with emphasis on contemporary usage instead of outdated grammar, and leave any third language to individual choice.

Economically, India’s biggest problem is energy security. If economic value is the goal, even languages like Russian, Persian or Arabic may be more relevant to deal with energy-rich countries like Russia, Iran and the Middle East, not another Indian language that gives little economic return.

Examples of Hindi Imposition I Have Seen

When I was in high school and Doordarshan was the only TV channel, Tamil programmes ran only till 9 pm. After that it became the “National Programme” which was mostly Hindi. Many families including mine simply switched off the TV. Even now, the new criminal laws have all Hindi/Sanskrit titles that I cannot pronounce or remember. I see this as harassment for people whose mother tongue is not Hindi, especially Dravidian or Tamil-speaking people.

My Appeal to the Union Government

It does not matter which party is in power at the Centre. I have seen that the policy is always the same. They try to impose Hindi on other states. Central ministers, many of whom themselves come from non-Hindi speaking states, should stop this obsession with Hindi. Instead they should push for better English learning across India. Let us accept English as the connecting language. It gives huge economic and global benefits that no other Indian language can match right now. I urge the Union Government to drop this three-language push and make mother tongue plus English the clear national policy. If anyone wants to learn a third language, Indian or foreign, let it be their personal choice.

#StopHindiImposition #UnityIsUniformity #RespectPluralism

[Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 @jacksonhinkle]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 WATCH: “For the first time in history: America requests a 48-hour truce, and Iran responds with ‘no.’

An unprecedented humiliation for America.” https://t.co/Q9mqUQhVgA

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Your fridge runs 24 hours a day. Solar panels only work while the sun’s out. That mismatch is the entire reason this plant exists, and the fix is just hot salt.

The Dunhuang plant in China’s Gobi Desert uses 12,000 mirrors aimed at a single tower about as tall as an 80-story building. All that focused sunlight heats a mix of salts (the same stuff in fertilizer) to 565°C, hot enough to glow red. That liquid salt gets pumped into giant insulated tanks. The tanks are so well insulated they only lose about 1°C per day. When the city needs electricity at 2am, the hot salt boils water into steam, the steam spins a turbine, and you get power. Same basic process as a coal plant. Just no coal.

Here’s what makes this different from regular solar: the storage lasts 11 hours. Sun goes down, plant keeps running all night. The big batteries that cities plug into their power grids right now? Those typically hold about 4 hours of electricity. Building batteries that last 11 hours is possible, but the cost balloons fast. A German energy storage study found that storing energy in hot salt costs roughly 33x less than storing it in the lithium-ion batteries we use today.

China has built 27 of these plants so far, enough to power roughly a million homes. They doubled that number in 2025 alone. Another 3,000 megawatts (enough for about 2 million more homes) are under construction right now, with 4,000 more in the planning stage. Beijing wants 15,000 megawatts by 2030.

The US tried this same technology once. Ivanpah, out in the Mojave Desert. Cost $2.2 billion. But they skipped the storage part entirely, so it could only make power while the sun was shining. It needed natural gas every morning just to start up. It’s now slated to shut down in 2026, thirteen years early, because regular solar panels got so cheap they made the whole project obsolete. China took the same idea, added the one part America left out, and is now building dozens of them.

One more thing worth knowing. The salt is made from basic industrial chemicals. No lithium mining. No cobalt. No rare earth metals. And it lasts 30 years of daily use before the tanks need work.

[SP Kalantri @spkalantri]

I retired as Medical Superintendent of Sevagram Hospital three years ago. Since then, I have been waging a quiet war against forgetting.

It began with blank stares. A first-year resident, fresh from her MBBS in Kerala, drew a blank when I mentioned Dr. Sushila Nayar, our founder. Another asked, “Dhirubhai who?” about a former president.

These were the people who built MGIMS. Yet their names are fading in the very place they shaped.

I have called this project Architects of MGIMS. Institutions are not made of bricks and reports alone. They are shaped by those who arrive, argue, disagree, create, persist—and slowly leave their mark.

To piece this together, I went back to annual reports from the 1970s, faculty records, and long conversations with retired teachers now in their eighties—their spouses, children, and colleagues. I met those still on campus.

So far, I have written 93 profiles—not a polished history, but something of the texture of our early years, before silence claims them.

It now lives as a digital archive, open to all. We begin today, on Id-Ul-Fitr, with the first profile—Dr. Sushila Nayar. The hospital corridors are quiet for the holiday, but perhaps these pages will bring Sevagram to life again.

Read here: https://t.co/PNFERmYNBG

[Seetha @seethahere]

@HarleyShah Ouch

[NDTV @ndtv]

CBI has unearthed what it describes as one of the largest medical college scams in the country's history, spanning across multiple states, involving senior officials, middlemen, top educationists, and even a self-styled godman.

NDTV's @harsha_ndtv reports

[iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno]

Self driving and self service KFC food truck in China.

Imagine what would happen if you release this thing in any large Western city.

We can’t have nice things anymore.

[Seetha @seethahere]

What's this Amazon?

The Amazon India page for the Graphic Novel "Song of the Seas" has the words "A Muslim Family Story" added to the title!

It is not on the US, UK, or any other Amazon pages

ISBN:031643891X

https://t.co/HF04dVlTwB

What's up @amazonIN, @amazon, @AmazonHelp