- “His social credit score has been lowered, and the South China Morning Post reports that Xu also faces travel restrictions for accusing Chen of being a fake master. As a result, Xu can’t ride in second class or above on planes or sleeper trains, and cannot ride high-speed trains at all (and if he had kids they’d face prohibitions, too).”
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First, the excerpt above is noteworthy because of the real world implications of a reduction in one’s social credit score. Second, read the article to find out why his score has been reduced in the first place. Truly mind boggling.
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.. - “There could be two reasons for this. In rural areas, the downside in incomes appears to have eroded any positive effects of lower inflation. Among urban consumers, the persistent inflation in goods and services other than food may have restricted the real and sentiment impact of lower food inflation. To be sure, it is possible that if inflation is lower but consumption has not gone up meaningfully, then savings have risen. But there is no clear data to prove this yet.”
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Ira Dugal points out the problems of low inflation in India (who’d have thought it, huh?), but also, more broadly, points out how difficult it is to think through macroeconomic issues.
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.. - “The government has no business being in business. There are scores of government owned companies that do exactly the same thing – like BPCL, HPCL and IOC are all refiners and oil marketing companies. There’s OIL and ONGC. And a GAIL, a Petronet, an IGL and so on. That’s just in the Oil and Gas space. There are a gazillion public sector banks. There needs to be a regular practice to get rid of most of the stake in these companies and to corporatize them. What better time than when you have a mandate?”
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Deepak Shenoy walks us through his wish list of what the new government should do, and provides (as always) an easy to understand overview of what the response of the markets has been (thus far) to the election results.
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.. - “The Great Trigonometrical Survey is credited with having measured the heights of 79 Himalayan peaks; they include the Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga. It also measure the baselines of Saint Thomas Mount, Madras, baselines of Calcutta, Coimbatore, Tanjore, Guntur, the measurements of the Cauvery Delta, the measurements of Mysore and the Great Indian Arc – an arc extending from the tip of the Indian subcontinent to the mountains of Himalayas. The measurement of the great Indian arc is a significant milestone for Indian geography because it was the first effort to plot, in mathematical terms, the vastness of the subcontinent from the north to south.”
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The Madras Courier helps us understand the importance of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and gives us a peek into the romance associated with the entire exercise. If you find yourself interested in the entire exercise, there is also an entire book about it.
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.. - “So, here’s a story. On 15 April 2019, when the roofspace over the crossing of Paris Cathedral caught fire, I was in a pub in east London having a burger. My initial reaction was not one of anxiety for the 12th-century Early Gothic church, with its splendid 13th-century Rayonnant superstructure and rose windows with contemporary (if VERY restored) medieval stained glass, but instead a slight feeling of dismay of how long this would mean the building would be closed and how much it would cost to replace the roof. It was also a great shame to lose the crowning achievement of the restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, his magnificent Neo-Gothic crossing flèche, albeit mere days after all the statues had been removed from it for restoration. Anyway, then I went off to watch Kubrick-themed Italian thrash-metal revival band Ultra-Violence open for Wisconsin death metallers Jungle Rot without that much worry.”
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A rather flippant, and therefore enjoyable dissection of the Notre Dame, the damage done to it, and what could be done about it. I do not know enough to comment about whether it makes sense or not, but I learned from reading it – hence the recommendation. Via The Browser.
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