A newer Open Thread is up: Open Thread: Navarātri and Durgā Pūjā →
Please use this thread for any fun conversations. Please do abide by basic courtesy towards one another.
1. Have folks been tracking the gold prices lately? I personally feel like gold might plateau by mid-2027 but we’re all soothsayers at this point.
2. Any general market trends? Are SIPs losing their sheen? What’s the next big investment strategy?
3. That AI will kill humanity in a decade? True or paranoia?
4. India Pakistan naval collision in the Arabian sea.
Anyone who’s used an agent recently with a decent enough model knows that the cost of tokens is too high right now for AI to take over the world. It can screw up a couple high profile websites like Hugging face or Github but it not world ending yet. Although the Navier Stokes problem being solved does highlight what its future capabilities might end up being like when the current state data center build out finishes around 2029-30. As for killing humanity in a decade is too quick a death for the human race. Personally, I think its effects in a large time horizon are of a greater concern because the supply chains which develop, maintain and update AI models will remain dependent on human labor for the next few decades so there is no AI without humanity.
“Saudi-led coalition says Houthis targeted Makkah with drone, warns of ‘red line’”
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030333/saudi-led-coalition-says-houthis-targeted-makkah-with-drone-warns-of-red-line
Ship collision is ….unlikely to be ‘accidental’. Pakistani media yet to report on this.
Likely a young captain trying to ‘make his bones’.
https://theprint.in/defence/how-pakistans-dutch-designed-pns-hunain-collided-with-indian-navy-ship/3044148/
I see the usual suspect ‘downvoting’ my benign comment and just 😀
The Pakistanis need an incident to distract from the fact that Mecca is being targeted by the Houthis and they’re doing not much about it. So this nonsense is being started up to distract from the disintegration of their alliance.
This would make total sense – if not for the fact that there’s a news blackout in Pakistan on this incident. The fact that the Pakistani ship managed to inflict one-sided damage to itself may have something to do with that 😀
The Pakistanis don’t build their own ships but have to source them from that shipbuilder of great repute – Romania.
These seemingly haphazard and incompetent manoeuvres are actually a cunning national employment scheme.
Now that the ship is dented they can open a lottery for a tinkerer to fix it.
Reports are that half the population has applied.
The other half watches on eagerly through a little mesh window.
Reposting as the insight was much appreciated by Q, but seems to have been collateral damage to the snip snip of his own comment.
That you choose to somehow delude yourself into turning this into some sort of “W” is not just funny, but extremely typical for a Pakistani ‘patriot’.
The really funny part is that they don’t build their own ships but have to source them from that shipbuilder of great repute – Romania.
Anyway, this is probably some sort of Pakistani employment scheme, now that the ship is dented they can open a lottery for a tinkerer to fix it.
Reports are that half the population has applied.
The other half watches on eagerly through a little mesh window.
I don’t know man, these jokes are not landing right.
SQ’s ….advocating for Pakistan is a Halloween costume. Dude is ensconced comfortably away from the pure land, and just like Pakistani ruling elites, has zero qualms about the costs paid by the Pakistani citizens.
The classism reflected in his and K’s stance is nauseatingly obvious.
This comment is not funny. It is a personal attack.
Admin please delete it.
“How enslavement became state-backed operation supported by Conservative and Lib Dem forerunners”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/15/enslavement-state-backed-conservative-liberal-democrat-tories-whigs
The Guardian is doing this very interesting series.
Although this is a decadal breakthrough, Navier Stokes problem is not ‘solved’ in the sense normal people think of solving a set of equations. What has been shown is a counterexample, i.e., constructing one specific smooth initial fluid state and one specific smooth external force that causes the fluid’s velocity to accelerate to infinity at a single point in finite time, creating a mathematical singularity (blowup).
Navier Stokes is a nonlinear partial differential equation. It will continue heating supercomputers and traumatizing kids in fluid dynamics classes forever and ever to the end of time. There can be no ‘solution’.
The idea is that this is more of a demonstration which shows that AI isn’t just a stochastic parrot anymore. It is genuinely creating products of reasoning which previously didn’t exist. Because for the longest time the assertion against AI was just plagiarizing previously existing work instead of creating new work from scratch. By creating a proof which didn’t exist previously its essentially put down those criticisms.
I have agreed with AI not being stochastic parrot for some time now. VLM/VLA demos did it for me.
But this case is not the best demonstration of it. Tristan Buckmaster & Levent Alpöge were working on this idea at for a year and were directing the AI with what is being called ‘creative strategy’. Open AI is alleged to have scrapped their sessions and Open AI’s agents ingested Buckmaster and Alpöge non-obvious breakthrough strategy. Open AI tried to cover this up by bribing Buckmaster with authorship but denying it to current Anthropic employee Alpöge.
Above all this drama, this is still a breakthrough of epic proportions, Buckmaster and Alpöge would have won big prizes, but I doubt truly greats care.
The funniest part in all this drama was OpenAI trying to threaten an academic who has tenure with “destroying their career”. Yes, I do agree that AI hasn’t been a stochastic parrot for a long while now, however it needed a proof which the AI companies could tout as a symbolic abilities of their products. Because for the layman AI is still the same chatbot which couldn’t count the number of Rs in strawberry.
Tenure is already dead in places like Florida and Texas. It will slowly die out in the rest of red states. Alas, the nice things in life : grace, honor, integrity, respect, humility don’t last …
These freedoms were never core values of the American South.
Tenure’s been dead for awhile across the board. High time it did. Deadbeat researchers adding zero value to anything….incremental mathematical tweaks that don’t do squat atleast in my profession.
Professional climbers have reached places where they wouldn’t have gotten sweeper jobs at in fair situations.
Not just the American South, the disease has spread north a long time back.
I am an old fortran type. My question is how can a machine /software get a new solution outside of the database it has?
Yes ,It can give multiple answers, faster. But some thing “new” outside what it knows at the present is difficult to perceive.
That’s what we’ve been talking about here. It was assumed early into AI development that all it could do was plagiarize pre-existing content from already existing work and because of that it was called a “Stocastic Parrot”. The newer reasoning models showed capability to reason through problems through a mechanism called chain of though. It was thought that AI could be confirmed as being capable of reasoning and originality if it was able to solve a millennium problem in Mathematics as it would by definition have to create original, logical and coherent proofs to confirm the veracity of the solution it produces. I’ve been working with LLMs for 2-3 years now and I can say that LLMs have had the ability to go beyond the stochastic parrot regime for about a year or bit more with the newer models being genuinely superhuman in certain narrow domains (e.g, Mathematics) while being rather underwhelming in other domains (e.g, Long term planning, business management, etc).
Seriously? Without mathematical frameworks and guard rails in place? Can you give examples?
LLM’s have shown such high margins of error unless the data itself shows little or no variability, that I find it hard to believe the algorithm can “think” for itself.
It would be like the Tron movies come to life.
Well I used to contribute to this benchmark called Humanity’s Last Exam. It was a collection of questions and answers at a PhD level difficulty where I participated in contributing Physics question sets. These questions have no available answers online and take a human begin maybe an hour to get through each. The best models money can buy will give you around accurate answers about 50% of the time. The current leading edge of AI models are capable of solving some of the toughest questions humanity can pose them on almost every subject about half the time. At this point AI is really quite good at generating Mathematics proofs because there are logical patterns present in it and with a human hand guiding the AI it can even generate millennium problem level solutions.
The fun thing about this is that AIs are generating proofs quicker than Mathematicians can verify their work. Another funny thing here’s a mathematician claiming that if AI can do his job he can then focus on writing romance novels fulltime.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3367197/ill-write-romance-novels-if-ai-solves-all-maths-chinese-fields-winner-jokes
Interesting. Maths proofs yes, should be easy to generate given the logic is pretty straightforward depending upon the type of problem.
The point on a human hand guiding AI is critical. AI imo is a tool and only those who know their own field and the usability + interpretability + limitations of AI there can harness it best.
I did see that about the mathematician threatening to write romance novels. That was scarier rather than being funny lol…though I’ve heard good things about Chasing a conjecture by Chandrashekhar Khare who proved (by providence per him), the Serre conjecture. Definitely not a romance novel!
I was listening to an Indian AI professor, who is also into Vedanta. He had an interesting take.
The difference between a “Jada ” vastu (non living form ) and a jiva (living form ), is the ability of the living to think (consciousness).
Now if a machine essentially a Jada, is thinking like a jiva, then one of the fundamental differences is erased.
To answer this , a concept of meta consciousness is adopted which is controlled in this case by humans.
‘How can ? ‘ Truly speaking, I have no clue. I can yap about context and self attention, to explain some of it. I stopped truly understanding ML around random forest algo. What I do know is the LLMs and Vision Language Models and Vision Action Models are reasoning and learning just like humans reason and self learning.
The pace is so fast, by the time I catch up on one class of models a bigger one drops in, no time to digest.
Beyond a point no AI company even tries to explain how their AI works anymore. Even Terrance Tao said that we don’t have a theory of Mathematics to explain why AI works, where AI can work, and How it works. So instead they resort to simpler explanations like Scaling laws. Where if you keep increasing the size of the model, the size of the dataset, the amount of compute it is trained on and the amount of time it is trained on it creates a proportionally better model.
Do you think they actually have a good idea how it works but are acting like the Wizard of Oz to keep an illusion of magic alive for their own purposes?
Well the companies that do provide the elaborate explanations like Deepseek are so esoteric for anyone not in the industry that it is practically speaking techno-babble. I mean feel free to go through their papers on Reasoning based on Reinforcement Learning and tell me you understand any of it. Almost like any industry where innovation is rapid it leads to engineers running ahead of theory and the scientists categorizing and understanding it way later.
How all this talk about philosophy of consciousness feels to me. Honestly, though we’re just trying to create intelligence too cheap to meter not some god consciousness to subsume humanity.
Seriously.
Anything gets published these days 🙄
Oh very good clarification
Can you explain what is the navier stokes problem and what this AI solution is like I am 10?
Navier Stokes are a set of three nonlinear^, coupled*, partial differential equations (pde**) that say mass, momentum, and energy are conserved in fluids. Conservation of mass or continuity equation just says mass cannot be created or destroyed***. Conservation of Momentum (mass times velocity vector) is a consequence of the familiar Newton’s second law. And conservation of energy is basically first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
^nonlinear: the dependent variable is multiplied with its derivative, or inside a nonlinear function.
*coupled : the three equations depend on each other.
**PDE : use the rates of change of a dependent variable (the like temperature, velocity, or pressure) that changes simultaneously with respect to two or more independent variables. Unlike the easier Ordinary differential equations, which have exactly one independent variable, PDEs almost never have a exact solutions and are solved numerically*^.
***mass conservation : don’t think of Einstein E = mc^2, totally irrelevant here.
*^numerical : you basically divide the physical space into a 3D grid. Instead of ‘rates of change’ you turn the problem into a humongous number of algebra equations that relate one cell to the next. You freeze time, run one cycle across entire 3D grid, then you unfreeze time and run it for next timestep, freeze again…, unfreeze again …, on repeat…
This AI solution says that initially smooth fluid at rest can develop a singularity under a smooth external force while keeping total energy finite.
In simple words: AI proved there is a fundamental glitch in the Navier Stokes Equations themselves by coming up with a weird and extreme example. Because physical fluids cannot travel at infinite speed, the proof establishes that the equations do not perfectly mirror physical reality under extreme conditions.
People say that the bug in the mathematical description is assuming the continuum hypothesis, that treats fluid as continuous and infinitely divisible. This is not true because in real world fluids are made of discrete atoms and molecules.
Before this, no such extreme case was ever found.
I heard that some mathematicians were working on a similar solution to this and to disprove them some other mathematicians were using OpenAI codex among other AI tools for their task.
The implication is thst the solution is pne that OpenAI got from people using their servers and not something the agents came up with on their own?
What do you make of these?
“Lali wins Sarmad Khoosat Best Director award at DC South Asian Film Festival”
https://images.dawn.com/news/1195854/lali-wins-sarmad-khoosat-best-director-award-at-dc-south-asian-film-festival
Drones are attacking Mecca and the Mecca ‘joint defence agreement’ is nowhere.
Muneer can’t afford to piss off his Saudi paymasters. Things are going to get reaaaaaally interesting.
I expect a news blackout within Pakistan on this topic, but in the satellite and internet age, global media is not going to miss out on reporting.
There’s been an internet blackout in PoJK for 100 days now. So the news blackout is already in force in the peripheries of Pakistan. It’s just a matter of time until it gets enforced in the core as well.
PakMil rammed through a draconian law that empowers them to ‘disappear’ anybody who dares criticize them. They locked up an elite lady lawyer (Shireen Mazari’s daughter) as an example.
The blackout in Pak Media is already there.
Bangladesh is wailing inconsolably because Munir did not let him into his super-duper NATO++ grouping. Admiral Field Marshal of the Fleet, Emperor of Pakistan, Munir is on the way to conquer Yemen aboard his Carrier Battle Group with it’s Nuclear submarine escorts.
Munir should rear camels…speak urdu to them…
The failed marshal loves to flex his arabic and ‘hafiz’ credentials. If we are waxing hypothetical for banter purposes, he’s ….far more likely to recite a mellifluous Quranic sermon to said Camels. (:
I forget who refers to him as “Regimental Mullah”….
Raheel Sharif already has that job at the moment.
After his retirement as Pakistan’s army chief, Raheel Sharif has been serving as the first commander of the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, a 41-nation alliance of Muslim countries headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia since 6 January 2017.
Saudis shot Raheel’s Camel-ia that spoke in urdu because they thought she was speaking in Farsi.
September 11th should also be discussed here. When Mohammed Atta decided to fly those planes into WTC, he went to Karachi first and met Zawahiri there, who then helped them with everything. How Pakistan has gotten away with its central role as a terrorist state and remain in America’s good books merits a discussion.
Its an open secret how the ties of the 9/11 hijackers to the ISI were buried by the US in order to facilitate renting Musharaf and PakMil during the War on terror.
A Pakistani perspective on the Houthi vs Saudi situation:
“Dangerous Escalation”
By Zahid Hussain
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030305
https://www.himalmag.com/mary-slusser-nepal-art-heritage-theft/
Question for India-watchers – why the frak is the Modi government backtracking on keeping UPI cost-free for users?
The only explanation appears to be caving in to Visa/Mastercard lobby for either bribes, or Amreeki govt pressure.
Inexplicable policy change, unless someone has some insight?
harakiri. There is certainly a pro-western lobby in the GoI + lack of majority in LS does not help. BJP seems to be caught in a trap. Things don’t look good for Swarajya.
The whole argument about the BJP vs Congress was that the former was going to implement policy and make choices in good faith on behalf of the electorate and the country. Even painful mistakes were given a pass under that trust. Such inexplicable choices are going to erode that trust.
“Ghar ka bhedi lanka dhaye”. Look at that C Raja Mohan columns. Absolutely Giga Gunga Din energy exuding “how much lower should I bend and lick” vibes reflecting his mentor in GoI.
There is a tweet last year from Finance Ministry saying that no MDR will applied to UPI. The timing with Oil sanctions indicates that this has been done under duress. But obviously it can’t be admitted openly.
Conspiracy theorist in me thinks this was either done under duress or is the brainchild of some babu to try recover lost ground for card networks in India. Of course, I have nothing to back this up with.
They need money for many schemes.
Govt reported expenses to maintain UPI is ~8K crores. + new MDR charges will go to intermediaries not to govt.
“Pakistan to stand by Saudi Arabia ‘practically and diplomatically’ if Yemen conflict escalates: Asif”
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030407/pakistan-to-stand-by-saudi-arabia-practically-and-diplomatically-if-yemen-conflict-escalates-asif
These chaps will shit their pants if they really had to defend the saudis
I have only sympathy for the foot soldiers. They are already risking their lives fighting the Baloch and the TTP.
Its unfortunate, this whole mess created by the PakMil Zamindar rentiers.
Anjum Altaf reads Maulana Azad’s, Dr. Ambedkar’s and Pandit Nehru’s books:
“Modern Indian History-1”
https://anjumaltaf.substack.com/p/modern-indian-history-1?
Multiple world leaders have reportedly fallen ill, after attending BRICS summit in India.
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2100382919806042350
For reference, straight from the horse’s mouth
https://x.com/PresidencyZA/status/2100239164134289439?s=20
😂😂 try harder Q
Anyone know the tongue for sour grapes?
“India to take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect economic interests after US passes Russia sanctions bill”
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030596/india-to-take-all-necessary-measures-to-protect-economic-interests-after-us-passes-russia-sanctions-bill
a country used to artificial panner, 40% chicory in coffee, food colouring in all dishes, is now “concerned ” that they were drinking coloured and flavoured ethanol, in dark dingy bars.
After all this is organic and helps the farmers and their bosses.
Sophia Khan writes about Kishore Kumar (the first in a ten-part series called “Musical Legends of the Subcontinent”)
https://apinksamosa.substack.com/p/kishore-kumar
I just want to clarify that I have never argued that India and Pakistan don’t share a common culture. To say otherwise misrepresents my argument.
Pakistanis admire the songs of Lata and Rafi just as Indians admire the songs of Mehdi Hassan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Noor Jehan.
Art should transcend borders. There is nothing wrong with that.
However, it is also a fact that Bollywood has lost a lot of salience in Pakistan in recent years as the ideological orientation of the industry has changed.
There are also so many more entertainment options–both local and international. The days when all of Pakistan was watching Star Plus are long gone.
This was a good Op-Ed on the new provinces question:
“Some critical questions”
By Shahab Usto
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030559/some-critical-questions
Scotland and Quebec are notorious for their indepndence referendums.
I think his point is that Sindh existed before Pakistan. People have an emotional bonding with Sindh and will not take kindly to ideas of dividing the province.
The UK has so far refused to let there be a second referendum in Scotland.
There is no question of any part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan seceding. We’ve experienced secession once and we are not going to let that happen again.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdBUIJfG86F/?img_index=9&stkn=MW85MnJrYjdsbHZ2YQ==
Fatima Bhutto
Even the so-called ‘elites’ are not safe in Pakistan from the wrath of PakMil Scorned.
This case of Shireen Mazari’s daughter ‘disappeared’ for tweeting, just says it all really.
The Mecca pact has been called into action while the memes are still AI-ing.
Quick, time to launch the Turko Paks …… Oh damn! The Saudi fuel gauge is empty.
*note the one holding an Israeli Uzi 😉
Clearly the Mecca pact was a future contingency plan in case the persian Shias get any ideas about dominating West Asia once the Drumpf’s ‘wag the dog’ conflict is in the rear-view mirror.
The Houthis? – “pre-existing condition”.
Pakistan would do well to avoid getting sucked into the Yemen quicksand. Jury is still out though.
What’s wrong with the Mecca pact per se?
Nothing really, its like every middle eastern defense pact. It becomes ineffectual whenever a real war happens.
But this was signed during pre-existing conditions with Iran & the Houthis
Has any of its signatories actually taken any action when the Saudis were attacked? All we’ve seen until now is degrees of “kadi ninda”. Let’s see what happens next I’m willing to wait before announcing its death for a month.
I have no idea. I’m just trying to analyze and understand it.
At this point, we are all ‘interpreting’.
Actually, the problem with the pact is that it isn’t even an anti-Shia pact. As Pakistan would never get into a pact that directly opposes Iran. Pakistan already has 2 hostile borders, if it antagonized Iran it would have 3 hostile borders make it a completely strategically unviable nation. Therefore, the pact ends up being a rather ineffectual as it has no specific enemy state it is aimed against such as CENTO being against the Soviets. There’s a recent article my MJ Akbar that states it in more elaborate terms.
https://openthemagazine.com/world/an-islamic-nato-the-mecca-mirage
I think there are systemic reasons why Turkey, Saudis and Pak can’t really collaborate military to any real depth. However, some degree of deterrence can be achieved even in perception.
Of course, the Houthi ‘litmus test’ has already started to indicate that the Mecca defense pact may indeed be a mirage…
read that gen munir is a shia??
he definitely codes as Sunni. Shi’ites are devout in a very different way
The Mecca pact is a defence pact against Israel, at least this much is pretty clear with a small benefit of deterring Iran from just taking over Saudi Arabia and becoming a global power.
Neither Turkey nor Pakistan wants to get into a conflict with Iran or its proxies. Both think that Iran is a more rational actor than the US/Israel/GCC countries give them credit for, and a stronger Iran is better for the region. They will invent every excuse possible to avoid getting into a conflict with Iran unless provoked directly.
Similarly, the recent Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia are a result of Saudis starting the conflict with them by attacking Sanaa airport on July 13 targeting Iranian and Ansarullah leaders, very likely at the behest of US which wanted to bring Saudis into the conflict after it restarted in July. The Americans tried nudging Kurds, Turks, Pakistanis to somehow enter the conflict against Iran but failing that, they are using Saudi Arabia to achieve that aim.
The Saudi forces and their leadership are completely inept and cannot will not be able to challenge Yemen, which means both Pakistan and Turkey could get dragged in. However barring a few Pakistani airstrikes on Yemen at most that could happen, Pakistan will not do anything. The Saudis don’t have any options as there is no body else that can provide security to the House of Saud.
The whole Makkah drone fiasco is just a false flag to trigger the pact. Pakistan will only enter into action if the Houthis ever mount an invasion of Saudi Arabia.
Till then, enjoy the party.
Relax, nothing is happening. If this pact was against Iran, Pakistan would be currently fighting the Houthis. It is not.
Indians are getting overly invested in this issue when it doesnt concern them at all. I have seen more Indians posting about this online than either Saudis or Pakistanis which is funny.
Yes, nothing is happening except MBS is wetting his thobe while the Pakistanis have gone tumbleweed quiet.
Last month they were all blowing AI tokens on making Turko Pak self gratification fan art.
What is funny is the turnaround time nowadays for the collapse of the PR cakes puffed up by Pak infiltrated media.
Like the other great diplomatic coup of US-Iran war resolving Islamabad accords 😂😂😂
If MBS is expecting Pakistan to save him, he is mistaken.
If house of Saud ever were to fall, I expect Pakistan to have enough military assets stationed there to lay claim on whatever comes after.
Oh, no one cares about Mr. Bone Saw.
The difference is in steadfastness of commitment.
India has no official alliance with Russia, and yet faced with 100% American tariffs, Modi is choosing ride or die in the Aurus.
Meanwhile the TurkoPak bros in the dumb and dumber dog mobile are mouthing static noises and hanging up the call.
The Saudi (and GCC) mentality is that they think you can buy anything with money. They have operated this way for the best part of last 100 years.. they throw money at a problem because they have seemingly unlimited amount of it. This worked under a neo liberal world order but that is gone now. They better find their footing fast or they will be in trouble. Nobody, not the US, not Israel, not Pakistan or Turkey or Egypt is going to save them if they are deemed not worth saving and at this current point, their incompetence points everyone to that direction.
India has tried to join the Western camp for better part of last 40 years, but eventually the end result is that they have been sidelined from everywhere. India neither has oil, nor enough rare earth metals nor a military industrial complex to do it alone. It’s the failure of Indian foriegn policy stemming from non-aligned stubborness. I don’t envy India’s position at all.
The Saudi regime is starting to give off vibes of vulnerability.
Politics make for strange bedfellows – I wouldn’t be surprised if both Iran and Israel end up supporting the chaos in Yemen on the same side.
After all, we’ve seen similarly unlikely scripts before – Afghan mujahideens were armed by Saudi money and Israeli …aslaa
Israel will never support the fall of the Gulflets.. they are most pro-Western regimes out there..
“Restructuring lessons”
By Ghazan Jamal
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030808
Bobuq Syed on queer Afghan lives beyond borders: Southasia Review of Books #42
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8J1iOz8SWk
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckn9wenz8wjwo
Kohat: At least 16 killed in attack on mosque in Pakistan
Same old same old.
Since the mosque was in Pakistan, you won’t see any rallies or protests or public outcry.
Some people will mutter – fitna al this and that.
Others on the peaceful nature of Islam.
A little Quora-nick cherry-pick helps ease digestion.
Life has its routines.
Edit: This seems to be a bit of deft misdirection by the BBC. Pretty much an attack on the security services. Well, that too has been normalised.
Apparently this wasn’t just a one-and-done suicide bomber. The “non state actors” carried out a sophisticated attack using the suicide bomber as the initial attack and it turned into a multi-hour seige. Target wasn’t the mosque but the Pakistani ‘counter terrorism HQ’.
What the heck is going on in Pakistan that army and police HQs have a bullseye painted on them.
“Pakistani-American artist Salman Toor lands a spot on Time100 Art 2026 list”
https://images.dawn.com/news/1195868/pakistani-american-artist-salman-toor-lands-a-spot-on-time100-art-2026-list
Not “South Asian” now is he 😂😂😂
this is Ali Sethi’s partner..
Yes.
Salman, Ali and Komail were all together at Aitchison.
https://cpj.org/2024/02/pakistani-journalist-asad-ali-toor-arrested-after-responding-to-summons-for-questioning/
Is this related to the ongoing terrorizing and illegal arrest of Shireen Mazari’s daughter?
At some point the blatant persecution and lawlessness of the Pakistani state needs to be spotlighted by the world. If not on BP.
If I do it in posts, I’ll be accused of ‘anti-Pakistan’ bias.
But the reality is stark – there is a information blackout in POJK after dozens of unarmed civilian protesters were shot by the Pakistani state forces. The country’s most popular civilian leader is wasting away incarcerated. The Military is fighting rebellions in KPK and Balochistan, while trying to “re-engineer” provinces so that ‘bloody civilians’ can be cut down to size politically.
By any yardstick, this is tyranny – in our subcontinental (“South Asian”) neighborhood.
“Who talks like that”?
Someone who takes nuclear deterrence seriously.
When we point out that Umar Khalid has been in jail awaiting trial for years, we are accused of being anti-India.
It’s quite easy to criticize the justice system of one’s “enemy” state and quite difficult to criticize the justice system of one’s own country.
I think we should look at the positives in any discussion. Pakistanis will always grasp at straws to defend their own totalitarianism. But the straws have gotten so bleak that the only defense even in whataboutery is Umar Khalid the guy who gets bail quite often for family functions and remains in contact with this relatives. If we compared the treatment of Umar Khalid to Imran Khan or Asad Ali Toor which of them will be more adherent to the rule of law and forgiving in its treatment of the criminals. There are rumors circulating that even children of Imran Khan’s sister Aleema Khan have been arrested recently just for the crime of being related to him.
Personally, I think the Pakistani will keep defending the tender mercies on even their own elites because there is no other way left, there is no hope for a better future left anymore.
and such people threaten to launch nukes :)…typical feudal cowards…retreat and hide..family and loyalty be damned…
Read, for your education
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_doctrine_of_Pakistan
Anjum Altaf continues his series on modern Indian history with reference to the primary sources:
https://anjumaltaf.substack.com/p/modern-indian-history-2
one more student suicide in an IIT. an FIR has been raised, the professor who caught the student copying has been named and he has resigned.
What is the Solution?
There is no solution. I know this system very well. IITs are the Air India of the Indian education system.
This student is an example of the sort of students who should never be anywhere near a difficult environment such as IIT. they make it due to a highly flawed reservation system that does nothing good for anybody, including such kids.
They become desperate, ashamed of their inability to compete, and they cheat. The fact that this kid cheated has been completely set aside now. Even 2 decades ago, cheating was rampant at IIT Bombay. No one could say much because of fears that the student will do something stupid and the professor will be left to face the consequences. This professor has resigned probably because he was pressured to do so. He is now a private citizen and the institute can wash their hands off the case. The poor guy will now have to fight this battle for many years, all alone.
Meanwhile, the parents of the kid have made allegations that i am sure are untrue but their mental state is such that they cannot be blamed. But the system will make a scapegoat of the professor but nothing really will get fixed.
How are you sure they are untrue?
First acknowledge what is true: The kid cheated. After his death, the parents make the following allegations:
The parents blamed the director of the institute, which is nonsense. The director wouldn’t even know who this one student is what exam was proctored.
The parents say the professor repeatedly threatened to implicate the student in false cases. All this it seems happened before the student was caught cheating. Complete nonsense. This faculty member was a full professor. He organized IIT JEE advanced exams. He worked with a prof I know extremely well and had top papers to his credit. So i too asked around and know a bit about his background. His life has been destroyed thanks to such allegations.
IiT Bombay director has now resigned…fed up and unwilling to put up with these 2 bit students harassing him….no case against him but u am sure he got a call from Delhi..I am glad this is happening…let social justice warriors run these institutions.. meritorious students should look at private institutions and dump this system
Ok interesting –
Except most private universities are even worse than the IITs, and cant compete globally.
I think you should wait for the police to complete its investigation before blaming the students, this is not the first time that students from marginalized communities have committed suicide, and many students from all communities have routinely raised concerns about mental health issues that are not addressed.
BITS Pilani has had more graduates that created successful start up unicorns than several IITs. They don’t have similar scale labs but the reality is the quality of students in those institutions are already competing with the IITs now. Most lower level IITs are objectively worse than several top level private universities in India today.
The second rung of IITs is garbage. I have interviewed enough students from these second rung IITs for our company positions and have learnt its a complete waste of time. In established IITs as well, the standard has dropped alarmingly compared to even 5 years ago. The chickens are truly coming home to roost.
Aren’t universities supposed to be creating knowledge?
In that regard the IITs especially the older ones like IIT Bombay are leagues above even BITS Pilani and which top level private universities are you saying the newer IITs are worse than? Moat of the private universities in India are more like Galgotias than BITs Pilani.
You made a categorical statement regarding IITs and Privates. I showed you facts that there are in fact Private Unis which do compete with IITs on student quality. Beyond that point I have no interest in discussing things with you. You have a tendency to go off on pointless tangents.
I said most private universities cant compete. Bringing up BITs as a counter example and that too only showing mire startup founders come out of it dont do anything to disprove my point that the IITs are still the pinnacle of technical education in India and notions that private universities can replace them have no basis.
Also when my main point was about institutional quality why are you bringing in student quality into this discussion? Isn’t this a tangent to begin with? Student quality has little bearing on institutional quality, and most private universities are not at the level of IITs
“Except most private universities are even worse than the IITs, and cant compete globally.” – This is untrue.
The mental health issue is a bigger angle. Casteism is more rampant in hostels and between students. Professors do not and cannot afford to indulge in any of this.
allowing humanities in IIT seems to have been premature. Instead of rw capturing JNU, rw seems to be losing even IITs now.
RW seems to be caught in a quagmire wrt to whole caste issue esp. the SC/ST act where just the accusation can land people in trouble. With director and prof out of the way, the SJW will be the de-facto top honchos with no other faculty willing to discipline them. Don’t be surprised if you see Azaadi slogans in IITs next.
The powers that be don’t understand the difference between a university and a technical engineering institute. IITs are being retrofitted with departments piecemeal to be converted into universities. It will fail burts the ills will remain. Humanities at the IITs is one such nonsense idea.
They are almost entirely true. If my kid had committed suicide I would also look for figures like the Professor to scapegoat. The system allows the easy abuse of SC/ST Act against most professionals. Therefore, the easiest way to ‘punish’ the institution is target such functionaries with cases of SC/ST Act.
//This student is an example of the sort of students who should never be anywhere near a difficult environment such as IIT. they make it due to a highly flawed reservation system that does nothing good for anybody, including such kids.
They become desperate, ashamed of their inability to compete, and they cheat. The fact that this kid cheated has been completely set aside now
//
What do you know about this kind that you are saying things like this? Maybe it is taunts like this from their peers that made him feel his life is over even if the institution did not want to go ahead with disciplinary action.
Perhaps instead of questioning people based on a score in an exam, it would be more prudent to show some grace to someone when they fail.
I dont think you know anything about this person to comment on their capability.
Don’t get so worked up and start wagging your tail. Not everything is perfectly articulated but that doesn’t mean there is some malice at heart
Doesn’t fit his agenda, so ad hominem. Its yawningly predictable.
Whats predicatable is thst you have not read things that ‘archer’ had written and acting like I am making a ad nominee attack.
Unlike archer who has no way of knowing anytjing about this student and is most likely saying the below based on cultural stereotypes I am responding to particular words. You should read the whole conversation not just the parts thst allow you to generalise.
//This student is an example of the sort of students who should never be anywhere near a difficult environment such as IIT. they make it due to a highly flawed reservation system that does nothing good for anybody, including such kids.
They become desperate, ashamed of their inability to compete, and they cheat. The fact that this kid cheated has been completely set aside now
//
On what basis are you saying the student lacks capability?
You dont know the student or what they were throught but apparently feel very confident in questioning their capability.
I have seen this many times where lower scores in entrance exams are used to put down students from marginalised communities. Your judgement is exactly in those veins.
You are dishonesty personified. Twisting what I said because you have an agenda that is stuck with you. Now get lost and don’t sniff around my comments
I reply to comments as I see them when I scroll down.
Before I saw your latest comment I had no way of knowing that caste of the student was nowhere on your mind.
If you dont want to be misunderstood then start with saying this is not about communitiy or score since it is very common to use personal failures and sometimes even institutional failures as a way to blame these students for being there in the first place
As long as it is clear now. But do try and not pull the trigger in haste.
Sure
I’ll have to push back on that idea a bit. I don’t think the student we’re talking about here was some unworthy kid undeserving of being at an IIT. The reality is he probably made a dumb decision of cheating on a test which he could’ve just studied for maybe a week and passed. The tests aren’t even that difficult and an IIT-B admission even for SC/ST students have become competitive enough that at this point the students are more than at the caliber of being able to rather easily completing the course work they are given.
Some selective information from whatsapp.
A) the student was very popular on campus and was involved in a lot of campus activities
B) the student had failed this course multiple times
C) the cheating was very flagrant
These are of course selective snippets coming down a grapevine.
My question is what happens the next time a student caught cheating looks up at the invigilator and informs him that he is from a reservation background.
*Multiple times is almost certainly mistaken, for a second year student writing mid-terms this would not be the case.
I did not phrase that correctly. I wasn’t referring to the caste of any particular category of student and their abilities. There are several students within IITs across categories who are completely unfit for studying engineering. This becomes apparent once they enter the system, leaving behind the test taking world that they somehow manage to crack. Once inside, its a huge struggle. Such kids shouldn’t be anywhere near engineering but unfortunately our society attaches such a premium to children entering IITs that students succumb to societal pressures and do so.
I have had students from general category cheat in my class. Its not at all restricted to any category. Cheating is rampant and professors are helpless.
Most of those who cheat are unable to handle the pressure that comes with the chase and the hunt that is symptomatic of the environment within these institutions.
You should mention this because this kind of language gas almost always been used in putting down reservarion category students.
But even if they are unable to cope with engineering, concluding thst they lack capability after the committed suicide, is still a bridge too far.
This kid could have been going through pressures and mental health challenges of their own.
I have juniors who failed to get placed at IIT who cant go to their parents because they are ashamed of not getting a job. Other times, they may be going through mental health issues like depression that they have not been able to get through due to the because of stigma. Immediately jumping to calling someone incapable makes it look like one i la judging based ok background.
Why do you assume the worst? Anyway, I take back any words that conveyed the impression that I judged the student based on their “background”
I dont assume the worst but have seen too many people, even my own parents, use personal tragedies to put down reserved category students.
In this case i cant see how this is a question about capability because engineering in india is more about just sticking in the process, not being capable. If someone cant do that, then it is less that they lack capability but are either not interested or heavily depressed.
I am sorry for thinking the worst but my past experience with these arguments point me to only ‘assume the worst’ as you say.
I think your original comment also did not imply that the cheating student ‘did not belong’ due to his background. That was an extrapolation and aggressive gatekeeping from someone who ‘doth protest too much’. Especially when the facts do not align with said agenda.
It is not only me who read this as being directed towards his community.
Mathew van dyke has been bailed out. Now he will write a book badmouthing india.
” ‘A maelstrom of his own making’: how Ed Sheeran’s tour turned into a full-blown culture war”
By Nadia Khomami
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/19/ed-sheeran-loop-tour-culture-war-israel-palestine
This is interesting because it reflects changes in the western attitude towards Palestine. After Mackelmore was fired all of Sheeran’s support musicians quit in solidarity.
Ed Sheeran should be allowed to have his stand, even one that is neutral.
The article points out that Sheeran supported the cause of Ukraine but he was unwilling to support the Palestinian cause. He has since had to clarify his stand.
Sheeran has himself said that he did not want to fire Macklemore but was pressured into doing so by the owner of one of the concert venues.
I personally don’t really care about Sheeran either way. I’ve only heard one of his songs (“The Shape of You”). But this whole thing was interesting because it reflects changes in attitudes towards Palestine.
NYT says President Trump has told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis
https://www.dawn.com/live/iran-israel-war#2031598
Hmm getting drawn into a quagmire
“What happens when we stop reading?| James Marriott| The New Society”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3wVeaBlV0
asian games in japan. if they are not interested, why should they host. if this had happened in india, all hell would have broken loose.
i feel asian games and commonwealth games should be scrapped.
erdogan raises Kashmir in UN.
How should india retort?
1) Armenian genocide and related territory issues such as van etc.
2) occupation of Cyprus .
3) voicing Greece’s concerns.
India should not keep quite.
Let the diplomats handle it. UN is the primary forum for these naraz fufas to let their grouses known. The diplomats are well trained to handle their tantrums. We are anyway working to sell Brahmos to every country that Turkey has conflicts with like Armenia, Greece, and Cyprus.
“Despite UN diplomacy, the US and Iran are still headed towards more war”
By Trita Parsi
https://tritaparsi.substack.com/p/despite-un-diplomacy-the-us-and-iran
As a side note, isn’t it time for another “Open Thread” since this one has over 150 comments?
Yes good point
Yes, agree. I was thinking of putting up another one.