Free spirit, fairy child, interested in all that raises human consciousness | Apprentice @ The Impolite Society | Soul of Impropriety वयम् अमृतस्य पुत्रा:
Joined April 2013
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Shivani Sahay retweeted
Made in India, moving beyond assembly to homegrown components and materials! 🇮🇳
Shivani Sahay retweeted
This is literally Subprimes 2.0
The Bank of England has contacted market participants to understand the details behind loans to UK data center projects that do not have any tenants
#MacroEdge
Shivani Sahay retweeted
Elon is speeding up the destruction of financial backing of his competitors, but the SoftBank meltdown (& we will see this spread thru entire Japanese financial sector) will cause some level of Yen Carry Trade unwinding.
Tech sector has avoided taking pot shots like this @ each other due to the entire fragility of AI sector biz model.
Keep in mind that a dramatic fall in SB & Japanese bank is a deathblow to OpenAI, which then is a deathblow to all the neoclouds. Which will be deadly to the memory chip makers & Nvidia.
SpaceX won't be spared by this, but Elon may feel he has good enough finances to get to the other side of an AI bubble bursting.
Interesting perspective.
Apple’s new Diwali film (Step Into the Light) is visually stunning. But there’s something oddly outside-in about it, despite Juhi Chawla.
The ingredients are beautifully Indian... Raw Mango textiles, Tijara Fort, a 90s Bollywood song. The gaze *feels* international. It celebrates the appearance of India without quite capturing the experience of being Indian. It plays more like a luxury fashion film than a Diwali ad rooted in how the festival is actually lived.
Diwali isn’t just an aesthetically pleasing celebration of light. It’s family, rituals, food, noise, neighborhoods, memories, and many small human moments. The film captures India’s visual vocabulary beautifully (which makes sense for a camera demo), but it’s far less interested in its emotional texture.
The contrast with Apple’s Chinese New Year films is striking. 'Three Minutes' (2018), 'Daughter' (2020), 'The Comeback' (2022), 'Little Garlic' (2024) and 'I Made a Mixtape for You' (2025) are built around recognizably Chinese people... relationships, family dynamics, inter-generational tension, etc. The festival isn’t a backdrop, but woven into the story. The iPhone is shown off through the storytelling, not the other way around.
'Mixtape' is the telling illustration. It has the same ingredients as this Diwali film - 90s songs, dance, nostalgia. But they’re built around a young man dodging his family’s marriage questions on his way home for the New Year. Same toolkit, totally opposite result!!
And it isn’t about who’s behind the camera. Several of the China films were directed by Westerners; the Diwali film was directed by an Indian. The gaze probably comes from the brief.
So, China gets 15–20-minute short films. India gets an Instagram reel. YOu could argue that market size explains part of that. But still doesn't explain the difference in curiosity (or the lack of it).
Apple’s Chinese films are interested in what it feels like to be Chinese.
Apple's Indian films are interested in what India looks like, as seen from the outside.
P.S. The song, 'Roop Suhana Lagta Hai', is credited to Anu Malik, but it’s A R Rahman’s uncredited 'Ottagathai Kattiko' from the Tamil original.
#advertising #marketing #deepavali #diwali
Shivani Sahay retweeted
It is one thing to believe in democracy as a matter of principle or political choice. It is quite another to claim that a democratic deficit necessarily constrains economic growth. The latter is an empirical proposition, not a democratic article of faith.
Decades of empirical research have produced decidedly mixed findings on the direct relationship between democracy and economic growth. The evidence does not support the simplistic proposition that more democracy automatically translates into faster growth, or that its absence necessarily impedes it. Japan, Korea, China and SE Asia all grew their economies under conditions of democratic deficit.
The more consequential explanatory variable is state capacity: the ability of the state to formulate and implement policy, mobilise resources, provide public goods, enforce contracts and sustain a predictable institutional environment.
Democracy and state capacity are not substitutes, nor are they mutually exclusive. But conflating democratic legitimacy with developmental capability is analytically lazy. To suggest otherwise is to drink the propagandist Kool-Aid rather than engage with the empirical literature. It seems ex-@the_hindu interns are now writing for @TheEconomist
Even The Economist is saying China is *substantially more democratic* than India. Was never convinced by the line that India's not growing like China because India is a "democracy" --truth has always been that India's growth is hampered by a growing democratic deficit that determines policy choices - unlike China.
It is important for people in India to wrap their head around voting patterns and key issues in other major democracies. Your idea of vote banks is specific to the Indian subcontinent due to 1) partition, 2) caste being institutionalized, and does not translate exactly to the US.
Yes, he did get Muslim votes, but they are still statistically insignificant in Michigan. They are barely 3% of the electorate. Also, Muslims voted for Trump in decent numbers, too. For example, Donald Trump won Dearborn with approx 42.5% of the vote in 2024. This is one of the Muslim-majority areas. This was an inflation-and-prices-at-the-store election. Everyone was feeling the pinch. They just dumped the Republicans. Identity politics is a thing, but it is not statistically relevant.
Shivani Sahay retweeted
The dance of global stock markets is beginning to resemble the Theatre of the Absurd!
Just a few months ago, the headline could well have read:
“Indian stocks the lone dark spot in Asia as the rest of the region booms on AI optimism.”
In fact I did manage to find a Bloomberg headline saying almost exactly that…
And now, India is the lone bright spot as the rest of Asia slumps on AI anxiety!
Same markets. Same AI. Different mood.
Perhaps the only thing moving faster than stock prices these days is the narrative explaining them…
Shivani Sahay retweeted
You wanna do this again? Last time you had to apologise about a grandpa who you claimed didn't support the Emergency when he was pretty much part of the establishhment at that time.
The three big Indian-American lies are
1) Ro Khanna's grandpa protesting the Emergency
2) Kamala Harris' imaginary freedom fighter grandpa
3) Zohran's dad coming from a state where no Muslims exist now.
Shivani Sahay retweeted
14 Flights across Europe have been impacted by bomb threats for the second time this week
Shivani Sahay retweeted
JUST IN - A widespread outage has disrupted 128 Japanese credit unions (known as shinkin banks) across western Japan, disabling automated teller machines (ATMs) and counter transactions - Bloomberg
Shivani Sahay retweeted
He is articulate, but his reasoning has serious flaw.
He seems to believe that nations operate permanently in peacetime mode. That is simply not how international relations work. Diplomacy derives much of its effectiveness from credible deterrence. You cannot expect diplomacy to succeed if you are unable to prepare for conflict.
He also contradicts himself when he argues that law works only when both parties are equal(his conception of law is also skewed). If that is his premise, then why does he expect China to take India seriously when India is not adequately prepared for the worst eventualities?
Shivani Sahay retweeted
Turns out bug tech has been trading with an impunity premium. What happens when the impunity premium for the United States as a whole is no more?
In hindsight it is looking like the thing that held up the market was the idea that the tech companies could do whatever they liked, no matter how dangerous or immoral, without consequences.
The (new!) thought that companies might actually be held accountable for what they have done has completely spooked the market.
Shivani Sahay retweeted
INR goes below 94 against Dollar.
If current trajectory continues, we can very well see INR at 91-92 in next 2-3 months.
Ofcourse RBI will have to intervene to keep it over 91(or 92 perhaps) so that our export competitivenese is maintained.
Shivani Sahay retweeted
At that time the Plan was refused by them as it was obviously not worth it 10 Years ago but today especially considering that the 600 KM Yunnan Tunnel is becoming a reality with the Medog Dam, this Tunnel can easily start construction this decade
It was proposed near the Pei Dam
Shivani Sahay retweeted
People are only worried about the Flooding Aspect of China's dam on the Brahmaputra but droughts are also equally possible due to it..
China has a "priority" plan to create a 1000 KM Long Tunnel from that Dam to the Taklamakan Desert to take most of the water to their deserts!
Shivani Sahay retweeted
A lot of froth.
He argues that Europe and the Global South have common interests and act as bridge builders in different parts of the world.
Where’s the concrete evidence of this.
Europe has now begun to sanction Indian companies for ties with Russia.
How is Europe trying to reshape the existing global order? Evidence?
Or mediating conflicts?
Evidence?
On the contrary Europe is fuelling the Ukraine conflict.
No mediatory role in the Iranian conflict.
Astonishingly, he is crediting Germany for stabilising the European order?
Really?
In @the_hindu today, I ask if this is a “middle power moment”. In a fragmenting world order, powers like India have a historic opportunity to shape a more inclusive, equitable and cooperative international system. The challenge is to move beyond great-power rivalries and build bridges through diplomacy, strategic autonomy and multilateral cooperation.
Shivani Sahay retweeted
So its confirmed now that they are either directly Chinese funded or being fed information by someone that is CCP Affiliated.
"China only building a diversion dam" is the textbook CCP lie. And see how they conveniently leave out the Mainling Dam? Or the Desert Tunnel?
Shivani Sahay retweeted
Americans would rather have an Epstein files representative, than a normal sane person.
