Don't mean to be a negative nancy, but I **really**, really, dislike this trend of some Punjabi artists in the West now churning out artwork by making their own "covers" of popular magazines with photos from the protests.

Lot of genuine problems with this

For one, when these are shared on social media, the image is what captures attention, not the caption - a LOT of people are sharing these in groupchats/posting online with the assumption that they're real. Have had to correct some of my fam in India saying it's just artwork
This just adds to general misinformation, which is really not ideal at a time when we see coordinated efforts to spread that - the facts should stand out above all
Secondly, this gives really easy currency to those saying that farmers are protesting the bills because they're unknowledgeable; some Indian media outlets have already scored points off the National Geographic cover, "fact checking it", and inferring all info is as such.
Another problem is a lot of the "headlines" are lifted from other news stories - for example, the Rolling Stone "cover" literally copied the headline of IP Singh's great article (covered here). Give coverage to the people actually writing these stories!

https://t.co/NtgREE0rhF
These are my main substantive problems, but I also have a more of a meta-critique; I dislike the draw of such covers on an artistic level in the first place.

Is a movement only validated if it's covered in a magazine for Western audiences?
We're already seeing protestors take their narrative into their own hands with their own newspaper and independent journalists equipped with nothing more than a phone pushing out crucial information; so why do we still crave that Western validation? What purpose does it serve?
There's a whole world out there, with multitudes of topics to cover and politics to discuss. Sikhs, IMO, need to stop demanding tokenized representation in the mainstream as if it's owed to them and write their own narratives as they see fit
National Geographic ran a spread on the Green Revolution's ills in Punjab and I remember as a kid it was like two worlds colliding; I followed NatGeo for my "NatGeo interests", but this one article satiated my "Punjab interests". But they don't owe that to you and they shouldn't.
On that note, I think a great example of Punjabis/Sikhs in the West owning their own narrative and telling their own stories is going to be this initiative - I hope it can get as much traction as these covers did, as there'll be a lot to engage with:

https://t.co/LpGafXQZ3Y

More from India

"Busy Life Daily Puja & Neivedyas"

People would always have several doubts on what to offer bhagwan in their daily puja. For some it will be a million dollar question of how to do an express puja yet a satisfying one.


Upachara - "उपचार"

Refers to the offerings and services made to Bhagwan as part of worship. In shastras there are a count of upachara pujas we do.

पांच उपचार पूजा - 5 Upacharas
षोडशोपचार पूजा - 16 "
चतुःषष्ट्युपचार पूजा - 64 "

Out of these panch is used for daily puja.


Some use 16 upachras who are well versed with the way of doing it Effortlessly and have abhishekam at home daily. 64 is exclusively for festivals and special vrat. One can choose to do 5 upacharas daily and finish your puja peacefully.

How to start your Puja ?

1. Shudhikaran & Aachaman
2. Bhootashudhi & Pranayam
3. Sankalp
4. Choice of Upachara Puja
5. Aarti
6. Pradakshina
7. Mantra Pushpam
8. Bhoomi Sashtanga/Panchanga Namaskaram

Major pujas steps one should ideally follow

Shudhikaran & Aachaman

After bath and dressing with (washed clothes only) should arrange their requirements for puja.
Take water separately for Aachaman and Puja. Water shouldn't be used from same paatra ideally. Perform Aachaman as per your practice & for beginners - YouTube

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This is NONSENSE. The people who take photos with their books on instagram are known to be voracious readers who graciously take time to review books and recommend them to their followers. Part of their medium is to take elaborate, beautiful photos of books. Die mad, Guardian.


THEY DO READ THEM, YOU JUDGY, RACOON-PICKED TRASH BIN


If you come for Bookstagram, i will fight you.

In appreciation, here are some of my favourite bookstagrams of my books: (photos by lit_nerd37, mybookacademy, bookswrotemystory, and scorpio_books)
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.