Open Thread – Page 9 – Brown Pundits

Open Thread – 12/19/2020 – Brown Pundits

We’re going to have Glenn Loury on on this Sunday’s Browncast. It was a fun conversation. Already up for patrons, and I also cross-posted to my Substack, because I think it’s such an interesting conversation.

Loury is one of the most important public intellectuals alive today. He speaks for many, many, people. Many people in science who are not on the far Left follow his work closely because he knocks down the shibboleths of preference falsification. If you can, I recommend anyone to be a patron of the Glenn Show.

Open Thread – 12/12/2020 – Brown Pundits

I have a bunch of samples of people who say their four grandparents were born in India from DTC companies. I plotted them on 1000 Genomes with a focus on India. No Southern Dalits in the same for sure.

Browncast: Abhinav Prakash and Karol Karpinski

Two BP Podcasts, one after another. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. This website isn’t about shaking the cup, but I have noticed that the number of patrons plateaued a long time ago.

First, I talk to Karol Karpinski. Karol lived in Dhaka for two years in the mid-2010s. Most of our conversation was around economics since he is an economist, but he also mentions his brush with the tragic events of the Dhaka Isis attack.

Second, to Abhinav Prakash on the farmer protests. Mukunda joins in. Abhinav’s view is that this is basically a rentier class strike.

Open Thread – 12/05/2020 – Brown Pundits

Going to interview Tim Mackintosh-Smith today for the Brown Pundits podcast. He’s the excellent author of Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires.

I’ve posted a podcast with Karol Karpinski for patrons. Karol was stationed in Dhaka with the World Bank, and we talk about his experiences (which includes unfortunate proximity to the outbreak of ISIS-related violence in Bangladesh).

Remember the Brown Pundits reddit channel. It’s starting to finally take off. The link is always at the top-right.

Open Thread – 11/28/2020 – Brown Pundits

I’m on the road now, so this is prescheduled. Hope Americans had a good Thanksgiving.

For those who are asking, I’m keeping the Patreon because I allocate it to Brown Pundits related costs (hosting podcasts, recording software, etc.). I will be cross-posting some, but not all, podcasts from my paid Substack.

Open Thread – 11/20/2020

So I did an AMA on IndiaSpeaks. Someone is now trying to set me up with one on the “India” subreddit.

My substack is up.

My kids learned about Diwali this week and did some chalk-art from motifs they found. Kind of funny since I didn’t know what “Diwali” was until I was in my 20s.

Open Thread, 11/14/2020 – Brown Pundits

I don’t know anything about Diwali, but Happy Holdidays! (I found out that it was Diwali this weekend from Twitter and the comments here).

A new podcast on the election results with Josiah Neeley and Richard Hanania. We get kind of spicey by the end, as I make fun of Richard making fun of Peter Turchin, and make a huge prediction about Hunter Biden’s future.

Open Thread – Brown Pundits – 11/7/2020

Remember the subreddit.

Been a busy week for me…we spent election week somewhere very warm and dry!

The blog was down for 6 hours the other day due to a problem with our host’s database. Fixed.

Open Thread – 10/31/2020 – Brown Pundits

So I started a Subreddit. You can start your own threads there. Eventually, that might make the “open threads” redundant (they are not scaling well with ~400 comments per week).

I’ve posted a few podcasts on the Patreon. One is a new podcast from Richard Hanania, where he takes a skeptical stance toward France in relation to the late unpleasantness. But several are from the Substack I’m starting shortly (probably next week). Probably won’t be posting those in the future.

Open Thread – 10/24/2020 – Brown Pundits

Going to post some notes on the latest podcast here. I talked to Fred Martin, who is of Haitian origin, but pretty stridently French, and a liberal. We discussed the killing of Samuel Paty, and Islam and Islamism in France. We also mooted the differences in relation to race between the USA and France, and our contrasting experiences. Finally, we talk about the coming winter of coronavirus in Europe.

A lot of the discussion centered around the contrast between France and the USA, which is always interesting to explore.

Thanks to everyone who is a Patron. I’ve started posting podcasts which you can’t find elsewhere yet there…

On Twitter, Suhag Shukla has been pushing back on the “caste is a huge problem for Indian Americans” narrative. I think she’s right on the specific issue. But, I am skeptical when she seems to attribute caste to colonialism, or, that it is not tightly integrated into Hinduism. I think Hinduism has a caste problem like Islam has a religious oppression problem. Religions are made by humans, and how they play out is a human matter. For whatever reason, Islamic societies have not been pluralistic in an egalitarian manner to other religions, while Hinduism in India is hard to disentangle from caste and jati. This doesn’t mean they’re necessary connections. Caste and jati are not major issues in Balinese or Cham Hinduism, though varna does exist.

The major dynamic which needs to be reiterated is that American Hinduism is very distinct from Hinduism in India, just as American Islam is very distinct from Islam in the Near East. I’m 99% sure that the Indian Americans I know (Generation X) would exhibit no caste bias of any note because in the USA it’s just not relevant in any way.

Brown Pundits Subreddit.