Marijuana, Arresting Asses, Thomas Friedman, and Clean Energy – today’s recommended readings. And, yes there is a fun read on the oxford comma 🙂

 

If you think the world is going to the dogs (which, my dog assures me, is not such a bad thing) and everything around you is spiralling downwards, don’t fear, it seems that India is discussing legalising cannabis and marijuana.

source : here

Yesterday, there was a very interesting exchange on Twitter, between the UP police and a journalist, on the arrest of an ass (no, i am not making this up). It began with a story on how the UP Cops arrested asses for eating potted plants (you can’t make this up). The UP police responded and clarified

 

Dear @Suparna_Singh @ndtv ~If you are happy running different content on your print & video, good luck !!
Have a nice day too. https://t.co/2WTgePI7pz

— UP POLICE (@Uppolice) November 28, 2017

While all this amusement is taking place on our timelines, the NYT has gone an published a story on the law being an ass. I am writing up a case study on how mainstream media normalises fake news by selectively choosing to carry it, to suit their agenda.

Staying on NYT, here is a completely inane column by Thomas Friedman. Why inane, because it is a whole bunch of headlines strung together to create paragraph, and paragraphs strung together to make a column. But since it is going to be widely quoted, you might as well read it 🙂

To inoculate myself against Trump eating my brain, I occasionally get as far away as I can. This time it was to India, where I learned a ton that I didn’t know: I found India trying to leapfrog out of poverty and catch up to China by engaging in a rapid digitization of its entire economy and power grid.

There are times when you want to punish people who don’t use the oxford comma.

While social networking is great, what do you do if you live in a country ruled by a despot, where your rights can be suspended, and you disappear ? You switch to whatsapp – that may be slightly more difficult to track. Niehman Lab has this piece on how FB and Twitter consumption is falling, and that of Whatsapp rising, in Turkey.

 

Can there ever be energy that is clean, limitless, and easy to harness? Well, physists seem to have unlocked the secrets of Graphene and a future with limitless energy on the tap may be on the horizon.