Mukunda33 retweeted
They said photography wasnât art.
They said cinema wasnât art.
They said video games werenât art.
Now they say AI arts/digital art isnât art.
Iâve spent over a decade with my studio team turning millions of data points into living, breathing artwork experiences ethically â at MoMA, at the Guggenheim, at the Venice Biennale. Not because a machine told me what to create, but because I had a vision that no traditional tool could realize.
Denying all AI technologies as an artistic medium doesnât protect art. It limits it. The artists who embrace new tools donât replace the old masters â they join them.
Art is not defined by the brush. Itâs defined by the intention, the emotion, and the courage to see the world differently.
Mukunda33 retweeted
Watch it here - youtu.be/eREIfwS6Stw?si=6MnnâŚ
Mukunda33 retweeted
This coliform conversation needs a little science and a little engineering clarity. Letâs break it down calmly.
1. What pasteurisation actually does
Pasteurisation is not âboiling.â Itâs controlled heat treatment designed to destroy pathogens and drastically reduce microbial load without damaging nutrition or taste.
In most modern dairies, milk is pasteurised using HTST (High Temperature Short Time)
Typical HTST parameters:
â˘72°C
â˘15 seconds
â˘Rapid cooling to below 4°C
What this achieves:
â˘Kills disease-causing bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria
â˘Reduces overall microbial load by >99%
â˘Extends shelf life
â˘Keeps proteins, calcium and most vitamins intact
Pasteurisation does not make milk sterile. It makes it safe and significantly cleaner microbiologically. Thatâs an important difference.
2. What happens when cold chain is broken (especially in India)
India is a subtropical country. Ambient temperatures can sit at 30â40°C for hours. That changes everything.
Even pasteurised milk still contains:
â˘A very small residual microbial population
â˘Heat-resistant spoilage organisms
At 4°C â bacterial growth is slow.
At 25â35°C â growth becomes exponential.
If milk:
â˘Sits outside for 2â3 hours
â˘Is transported without refrigeration
â˘Is kept in an auto or on a loading dock in peak afternoon heat
The bacterial load can multiply rapidly.
This doesnât mean pasteurisation failed. It means temperature control failed after pasteurisation.
Milk is a near-perfect growth medium:
â˘Water
â˘Lactose (sugar)
â˘Proteins
â˘Neutral pH
Break the cold chain in India, and you are basically putting microbes in a warm incubator.
Thatâs why dairy safety is not just about processing. It is about:
â˘Chilling at collection
â˘Cold storage at plant
â˘Refrigerated transport
â˘Retail refrigeration
â˘Consumer refrigeration
Miss one step, and quality drops fast.
3. Now compare that to meat left outside for hours
Raw meat is microbiologically riskier than pasteurised milk to begin with.
It:
â˘Has higher initial bacterial load
â˘Contains blood and tissue fluids
â˘Has surface contamination from slaughter
If raw meat sits at 30â35°C for 3â4 hours:
â˘Bacterial growth becomes explosive
â˘Pathogens like Salmonella and Staph can multiply rapidly
â˘Toxin production may begin
Unlike milk, meat is not pasteurised before reaching the consumer.
So leaving meat outside in Indian temperatures is a far more serious food safety risk than a short lapse in milk refrigeration. Both are risky. But they are not equivalent starting points.
4. Engineering control: Flow Diversion Valve (FDV)
Now letâs talk engineering.
In modern pasteurisation systems, safety is not dependent on âoperator attention.â It is automated.
A Flow Diversion Valve (FDV) is part of the HTST pasteuriser.
Hereâs how it works:
1.Milk flows through heat exchanger
2.It enters a holding tube designed for a fixed 15-second residence time
3.A temperature sensor continuously monitors the outlet temperature
4.If temperature ⼠72°C â valve allows milk to move forward to packaging
5.If temperature drops even slightly below set point â valve automatically diverts milk back to the raw milk tank
No debate. No manual override. It simply does not allow under-processed milk to move ahead.
This system is:
â˘Mandatory in many regulated dairy markets
â˘Timeâtemperature interlocked
â˘Recorded and logged
â˘Auditable
So when someone says âwhat if milk wasnât properly heated?â â in a properly engineered plant, the system physically prevents that milk from entering the finished tank.
Itâs not about claims. Itâs about process design.
5. The bigger point
Food safety is not one test report. It is a chain:
Farm â Collection â Chilling â Transport â Pasteurisation â Packaging â Cold storage â Distribution â Retail â Consumer
Milk is safe when:
â˘It is properly pasteurised
â˘Cold chain is maintained
1/2
Mukunda33 retweeted
I celebrated a birthday onboard the Delhi in the Indian Ocean. The good cooks whipped up a lovely cake even as I was in the process of finding my sea legs. On my birthday a couple of years later, in 2009, I found myself in Aden aboard a self-destructing yacht with neither visa nor money, in the company of a renowned radio astronomer, Professor Radhakrishnan, Sir C.V. Raman's son. He spent an hour recounting his encounters with a physicist whose name stubbornly refused to come to him, except for the first letter "F". After an hour, it surfaced: FEYNMAN.
A year later, I found myself celebrating my birthday with tea and biscuits at the home of the Governor of the Falkland Islands, hosted by his wife who promptly booked a visit to the memorial of HMS Sheffield. That was to be the first of three South Atlantic birthdays, because the year after that, on my birthday, I found myself heading to Rio de Janeiro with a crew who served freeze-dried ice cream with single malt. I took a day off.
Two years later, in 2013, I found myself again in the South Atlantic, celebrating my birthday on the 5th of February as I crossed the 5th degree West.
In 2019, the Prince of Monaco invited me to his state reception, and for some strange reason, the date fell on my birthday that year. I walked up to him and thanked him for the "birthday bash," and upon hearing about it, he promptly gifted me a tie commandeered from the neck of Alessandro Bernardi.
The only birthday I have had in the Pacific, and the second most memorable, was in 2023, a few days after crossing the International Date Line. The sea threw a birthday bash⌠in the literal sense. We must have had a few knockdowns that day, one of which possibly resulted in water from the toilet emptying into the bilge and later seeping into the cushions. I was wet to the bone. And cold.
If you see the video, youâll understand why the best birthdays are often the ones at home, in warmth, and in the easy company of people who matter.
Thank you to everyone who sent in their wishes. Iâm deeply grateful, not just to receive them, but to be able to read them slowly and reply, remembering a time when neither was possible.
Mukunda33 retweeted
It's now happening. The existing fiat monetary order, the domestic political order, and the international geopolitical order are all breaking down, so we are at the brink of wars. It all is happening because of the Big Cycle that is driven by the five big forces I've described repeatedly and laid out in detail in my book and Youtube video titled Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order. You can find the video linked in the comments below.
Mukunda33 retweeted
teapawt.org/SecKennedy/status/2009⌠The wheel has turned full circle. America - the same country that industrialised packaged food, seed oils and sugar-heavy convenience diets and exported them to the world - is now officially retreating from that experiment.
The grain-heavy food pyramid is being dismantled by @SecKennedy; protein, healthy fats and real food are back at the base. Science has finally caught up with common sense.
For Indians, this isnât a revelation - itâs validation. We always knew food was medicine. Dalâchawal with ghee, curd, seasonal vegetables, eggs, fish, home-ground spices, slow cooking, fresh ingredients - not fads, but civilisational wisdom. While the West chased âlow-fat,â âhigh-carbâ lab food, Indian kitchens quietly preserved balance, satiety and nourishment.
Whatâs changing reminding the world is also the global order of ideas. The same system that once mocked home food as âunsophisticatedâ now admits its own dietary collapse. Indians never needed a guideline to know this truth: health doesnât come from packets and pyramids, it comes from the kitchen, the season, and restraint. Sometimes the future looks exactly like the past we refused to abandon.
Mukunda33 retweeted
When I first researched Knorr, I was shocked to learn that this is the no. 1 ingredient in most of its soups:
Maida.
Soup is supposed to be predominantly water or broth or vegetables. But the sad reality is:
- Knorr mushroom soup only has 2.5% mushroomsÂ
- Knorr chicken soup only has 2.2% chicken.
- The first ingredient in Knorrâs Tomato âChatpataâ is sugar.
When I was growing up my parents would not let me have tea and coffee and instead they would give me Knorr soups during winters as they believed it was healthy.
The saddest part is, Knorr UK has completely different ingredients than Knorr India.
For how long will international food companies give inferior quality products to Indians?
So my advice is: âIgâKNORRâ Knorrâs ads and have homemade soups instead.
Mukunda33 retweeted
This 1952 New York Stock Exchange cartoon explains how the stock market works.
[full video, New York Stock Exchange, 1952]
Mukunda33 retweeted
The Armada That Unlocked the World
A thousand years ago, an Indian emperor launched a massive naval strike not for territory, but to break a chokehold on global commerce.
If you stood on the Coromandel Coast of India in the final months of 1024 AD, looking east toward the Bay of Bengal, you would have witnessed a mobilization unlike anything the pre-modern world had ever seen. The harbor was not filled with the usual bustle of merchant dhows or fishing catamarans. Instead, it was crowded with a purpose-built armada. There were hundreds of ships, robust vessels constructed from teak and jackfruit wood, bobbing in the surf. On board were tens of thousands of soldiers, armor, supplies, and, perhaps most terrifying of all to the enemies they would soon face, fully trained war elephants.
This was not a fleet of exploration. It was a fleet of correction.
The man who commanded this force, Emperor Rajendra Chola I, was about to launch a campaign that would rewrite the rules of Asian geography. His target was not a neighboring kingdom or a land border. It was an empire of islands across the ocean, the Srivijaya Empire, which controlled the vital chokepoints of Southeast Asia. The subsequent raid of 1025 AD remains one of the most audacious naval operations in history. It was a strike that effectively birthed a medieval version of global free trade, connecting the markets of China, India, and the Arab world by force.
To understand the sheer ambition of Rajendraâs gamble, one must understand the map of the medieval world. In the 11th century, the global economy beat to the rhythm of the monsoon winds. The great maritime Silk Road stretched from the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad to the Song Dynasty in China. India sat squarely in the center, the golden fulcrum where Arab merchants offloaded frankincense and horses, and Chinese traders sought spices and textiles.
But there was a problem. To get from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, every ship had to pass through the Strait of Malacca. This narrow ribbon of water was the property of the Srivijaya Empire, a thalassocracy based in modern-day Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. Srivijaya did not produce great goods; it produced great borders. It acted as the worldâs most aggressive tollbooth.
For decades, Srivijaya had leveraged its geography to squeeze the life out of the trade routes. They demanded exorbitant transit fees. They forced merchant vessels into their ports to offload cargo at below-market rates. When captains refused, the Srivijayan navy turned to piracy, seizing ships and stifling the flow of goods. For the powerful merchant guilds of southern India, known as the "Five Hundred Lords of Ayyavole," this was an intolerable strangulation of their livelihood. (I have written about Ayyavole. It was the probably first corporation in the world. Check my thread for that.)
Diplomacy had failed. The Srivijayan kings, secure in their distant island fortresses, believed they were untouchable. No Indian power had ever projected force across the open ocean on such a scale. The Bay of Bengal was too wide, the logistics too complex, the risks too high.
Rajendra Chola decided to change the rules.
The logistics of the 1025 campaign stagger the modern imagination. Transporting a medieval army by land is difficult enough; transporting one across 1,500 miles of open ocean is a feat of engineering genius. The Chola shipbuilders adapted their vessels for the high seas, using a technique of stitching planks with coir and sealing them with pitch to withstand the ocean swell. They mastered the science of celestial navigation, using rudimentary sextants to guide this floating city across the featureless blue. (Check my thread on how Cholas perfected latitude sailing which perhaps was used later by Columbus)
The genius of the operation, however, was not just in the engineering. It was in the strategy. Srivijaya expected any attack to come from the north, filtering predictably into the Malacca Strait. Rajendra appears to have done the impossible. His fleet likely swung south, navigating the treacherous currents to penetrate the Sunda Strait.
They emerged from the ocean mist like a thunderclap.
The inscriptions at the Tanjore Temple, carved in granite to immortalize the victory, read like a litany of shock and awe. They describe the Chola forces sweeping through the archipelago with the force of a "burning fire." The attack was not a single battle but a synchronized dismantling of the Srivijayan network. Fourteen key ports were struck. The capital at Palembang was sacked. The Srivijayan king, Sangrama Vijayatunggavarman, was captured, his treasury seized, and his "Vidyadhara-torana," the jeweled war gate of his city, taken as a trophy.
The use of elephants in an amphibious assault highlights the psychological dimension of Chola warfare. For the defenders, seeing armored pachyderms storming off ships onto their beaches must have been an apocalyptic sight, a shattering of the natural order that broke their will to fight.
Yet, what happened next distinguishes Rajendra Chola from a mere conqueror. He did not occupy Srivijaya. He did not station permanent garrisons or attempt to govern the archipelago from India. Once the Srivijayan king surrendered and acknowledged Chola suzerainty, the armada sailed home.
Rajendra was not interested in empire building in the colonial sense. He was interested in market correction.
The result was immediate and profound. The Bay of Bengal became, in effect, a Chola lake. The stranglehold on the Malacca Strait was broken. For the next century, the trade route was open. Chinese chronicles from the Song Dynasty record a sudden spike in tribute missions and trade from India. Arab geographers noted the ease with which goods now flowed from the Persian Gulf to Guangzhou.
The Chola raid of 1025 was the ultimate enforcement of freedom of navigation. It ensured that the triangular trade between the Arab world, India, and China could flourish without the interference of a predatory monopoly. It allowed the merchant guilds of South India to become the first true multinational corporations, setting up trading posts that stretched from Sumatra to southern China.
In our modern era, we often view the concept of "secure sea lanes" as a 20th-century invention, a responsibility of the British Royal Navy or the U.S. Navy. But a millennium ago, a Tamil emperor understood the same fundamental truth. He recognized that a global economy relies on open doors, and he proved that a nation with the will and the technology could reach across the ocean to kick them open.
Mukunda33 retweeted
Week 559
Versova beach cleanup
16,000 kgs of marine debris plucked out
Our bit today.
Mukunda33 retweeted
Oh my God! This is phenomenally effective communication! Fantastic narrative device with the right amount of exaggeration that lands the message with a bang, while also sending chills down the spine of the target audience (parents of young children)! Excellent work by the Irish agency Core Creative.
#advertising #creativity
Mukunda33 retweeted
You will not come across a website like this very often!
Yes, here you can see pictures of more than HUNDRED temples (more than 2400 pictures) with basic information about these temple!
(The number will keep increasing as I visit more!)
You can take a look and bookmark it if you find it useful!
If you feel that this message is something unique and worth sharing, then please repost it so that it reaches as many as possible!
Click on the image or link below to go to the website!
vgopalan.myportfolio.com/temâŚ
Mukunda33 retweeted
Itâs been hard to not post this every day since I first shared it, thanks everyone who shared on my behalf (assuming you tagged me and didnât take credit for it lol)
Hereâs a version formatted for a mobile wallpaper youâre welcome to use!
I still have a few prints available đ
Mukunda33 retweeted
Hello again to all those glued to Amur Watch !
The Amur Falcons are rewriting the limits of endurance. From the forests of Manipur, three satellite-tagged travellers Apapang, Alang and Ahu have taken the world by storm. Here is the latest update from their epic journey. You will notice Apapang and Alang have crossed into Kenya... while Ahu continues to stay at the northern tip of Somalia. They are likely to stopover at Tsavo National Park in Kenya
Apapang (Orange tag)
The hero of the season.
6,100 km in 6 days 8 hours nonstop.
A single unbroken arc across continents.
Alang (Yellow tag)
The youngest with incredible grit.
5,600 km in 6 days 14 hours, including a night halt in Telangana and a 3-hour breather in Maharashtra before powering towards the Arabian Sea.
Ahu (Red tag)
steady and strong.
5,100 km in 5 days 14 hours, with a night pause in western Bangladesh before joining the great transoceanic push. (Her distance is lower because she took a more northerly and relatively shorter route to Somalia.)
Together, they embody the raw beauty of migration, precision, instinct, wind, stamina, and courage.
What a season ! What a journey ! As told by @SureshWII @wii_india to @supriyasahuias #AmurFalconMigration
Woohoo .. both Apapang and Alang have successfully crossed over, while Ahu is just about to reach...three Amurs, one breathtaking migration and a million people watching in awe ..@sureshwii #AmurFalconMigration
Mukunda33 retweeted
On This Day: 19 November 1801
On this day, the Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Mandir at Prabhadevi was first consecrated. What began as a modest shrine built by Laxman Vithu Patil and funded by Deubai Patil has grown into one of Mumbaiâs most visited temples.
A vintage photograph shows the temple in its early form. The present-day temple complex took shape much later, after major renovations in 1993.
#GanpatiBappaMorya
Mukunda33 retweeted
Happened to see the trailer of 120 Bahadur by Farhan Akhtar.
The movie brings the brave story of Major Shaitan Singh Bhati and the 123 Soldiers of the Kumaon Regiment, who fought till the last man and the last bullet against 3000+ Chinese soldiers, in the Battle of Rezang La
The trailer was amazing, and it sent me to do some reading.
At first, I was inspired. Then I stumbled upon a sad story that made me question the very character of us as a nation.
But some history first.
The 1962 War between India and China was independent India's first reality check of international relations. It all started with the India - China border, which was always a contentious one. Both didn't agree with each other on its definition.
Our then PM who used to think that his personal charisma was enough as a diplomatic tool and thought fancy terms like Panchsheel and Speaking Good English in UN was enough to counter Chinese aggression, he embarked on what he called the "Forward Policy"
It was a fancy term for sending unprepared soldiers to dispersed positions on mountain tops which were 18000 ft above sea level. And to make things worse, we sent them with inadequate clothing, equipment, weapons, intelligence and an absolute lack of strategy.
The Chinese predictably took advantage of this cluelessness and attacked us.
Initially they raked up victory after victory in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. They even captured Tawang. They thought this war would be a walkover and trained their eyes on Ladakh.
They thought capturing Ladakh would be easy.
Unfortunately, they didn't account for Major Singh and his 123 men from the Kumaon Regiment.
On 18th Nov 1962, they came to an isolated place in Ladakh called Rezang La. It was the last point between them and another place called Chushul, which was the gateway to Ladakh.
Lulled into a false sense of confidence and expecting an easy victory, 3000 Chinese soldiers thought all they had to do was walk in and they would capture Rezang la.
But Major Singh and his men had other ideas.
On that day, they decided to show the Chinese what a Great wall actually looked like.
At 18,000 feet above sea level, in temperatures which were 20 to 30 degrees below zero, Major Singh and his men, using Machine Guns and mortars repelled wave after wave of Chinese invaders.
At times, when they ran out of ammo, they resorted to brutal hand to hand fighting to throw the Chinese back.
For 6-8 hours, Major Singh and his men sent hundreds of Chinese to the Chinese version of Valhalla. They fought with such incredible daring and bravery that they gave a serious inferiority complex to the Spartans of Thermopylae.
Unfortunately, the Chinese had too many soldiers, and eventually they surrounded Major Singh and his men.
Of his 123 men, 114 men, including Maj Singh made the ultimate sacrifice for the country. Most of them died, with their weapons in hand and facing toward the enemy. It was a performance that made Gods weep.
The performance of Major Singh and his men shocked the Chinese. This was the fiercest resistance they had faced till that point in the war.
Realizing things aren't going to be easy for them anymore, three days later, they declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew.
For his Supreme Sacrifice and his bravery that would make Lord Narasimha himself proud, Major Bhati was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously.
His brave exploits had not only moved India. It had made an impact on the Chinese and the Americans as well. So much so, that they still teach about him and his men in the PLA War College and West Point, on how to defend.
But this post is not about his brave saga. I am sure Farhan Akhtar would tell it better than me.
This post is about what his family faced at the hands of our heartless and rapacious bureaucracy and our impotent judiciary, after his heroic sacrifice.
As a wife of a fallen hero, Major Singh's widow Sugan Kunwari was eligible for 60% of Major Singh's salary as pension. But for some reason, she was only given 30%.
The Govt as gratuity gave Rs 4000 to her in 1963, and given what Major Singh had done, they bloody well had to. But the govt babudom being govt babudom, they recovered it from her pension in 1964.
The Indian babu who actually passed this order was like "You could be a war hero and might have repelled the Chinese and all, but you can't repel our rules and regulations"
Then the Indian govt "liberalized" the pension rules in 1972, but Sugan Kunwari continued receiving the pension under the old scheme till, I kid you not, 1996.
Add to that, she was supposed to get a gratuity of Rs 9500 as per the new rules. She didn't get that as well.
I guess maybe some memo granting her the pension, got blocked in some file on a random table in South Block.
To claim his rightful money, the family of Major Singh filed a case in the Armed forces Tribunal - Jaipur in 1996, for the arrears between 1972 and 1995 and the revised gratuity.
They didn't even ask for retrospective implementation of pension rules since 1962, because unlike the rotten scoundrels of our bureaucracy, they were honest people. And this was the money that was rightfully theirs.
Ideally speaking, the day someone finds out that a hero like Major Singh was wronged, every authority, every official, every armed force guy would move heaven and earth to right that wrong.
As a war hero, we think his files would have been processed in record time and within 24 hours, the family of Major Singh would have received the shortfall with interest, and an apology note from the seniormost army general of the area, right?
Wrong
The case my friends, 30 years later, is still going on.
Major Singh's widow, unfortunately passed away in 2015 without a verdict and was still receiving the old pension.
His son continued the case, but he has not been heard since 2016, as there was apparently no judge at the Armed forces tribunal in Jaipur.
As of 2021, when there are last traces of this case, it was still going on.
If the family of a war hero, who gave his life for the nation, a Param Vir Chakra awardee, someone whose bust the govt inaugurated in the national war memorial in all pomp and glory, and someone who is a hero to us all, is treated like this by our babudom, then what chance do we stand?
There is a line in the song based on this war which says "Kar Chale hum fida jaano, ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyon"
Major Singh gave his life so that we could have our country and our tomorrow. Have we justified his sacrifice?
I don't think we have.
The nation which forgets is real heroes, is doomed to live with false useless ones.
I think we should all be ashamed of ourselves.
P:S: Considering the difference, I don't think the total amount would be more than Rs 10 Lakhs, including interest.
This is the bribe money that a corrupt clerk collects before lunch time. Or a corrupt judge throws out in a raid.
And we strung Major Singh's family for this, for over 30 years now.