Since the recent RTI "incident" with regards to lack of sources in the assertions of NCERT books, I decided to do some research.
Some initial findings:

In the VIII class text-book, chapter 8 titled "Women, Caste and Reform" the chapter starts with a section on Sati. 🙄
(1/9)

I have said this before: Sati was not widely practiced in India. Don't take my word for it, read up Meenakshi Jain's seminal work on this topic: "Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse."
Or do this, ask people around you about their
(2/9)
experiences with caste & you will observe that you will get multiple examples (while assertions of caste-based discrimination may be debated, almost everyone will acknowledge caste-consciousness). However, ask folks if they have heard stories of Sati within their own
(3/9)
family history or in the histories of friends, acquaintances, & you will draw a blank.
NOTE1: Sati did exist, & women were (are) discriminated against. But wasn't the main challenge women faced. Or even the 10th on the list!
NOTE2: Hindu scriptures don't really celebrate
(4/9)
Sati; in the Mahabharat, there's a reference to Sati - Madri immolates herself after Pandu's death in the forest - but neither is Madri an important character in the narrative neither is her sacrifice referred to in popular discourse on the two epics.
The point is, this
(5/9)
could have been a footnote but colonized that we are, NCERT gives it the same (undue) emphasis that the British did.

Later in the chapter, there's a reference to Muslim Begums in Bengal opening schools for girls, while in contrast, Pandita Ramabai's (a Sanskrit scholar)
(6/9)
assertion about Hinduism's oppressiveness toward women. Sigh.
Also, the language on page 99 is telling: it says both "Hindu nationalists" and "orthodox Muslims" were worried about women adoption western ways.
Look at the equivalence.

Rest of the chapter is about
(7/9)
the caste system, though only in the Hindu context. Casteism in other religions is completely ignored. The chapter ends with three blurbs.
One on Sir Syed Ahmad Khan - founder of Aligarh Muslim University.
One on the Singh Sabha Movement.
And finally, curiously,
(8/9)
about Slavery in the US!

Now you know why young Indian minds always
conflate the two (racism & casteism); that's what they've been taught.
This was exhausting & frustrating.
Sigh. (9/9)

Source: https://t.co/gs5ksTCOYI
#Observations

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.
The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
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Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.

Characteristics of a personal moat below:


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As Andrew Chen noted:


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Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than


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After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.

5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.

In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.