cydonian

cydonian, 5 months ago to random

Merry Christmas to all those celebrating!

cydonian, 1 year ago to random

Six different varieties of mangoes being sold on #Hyderabad ‘s roads. This includes the big one that you don’t get beyond the Andhra hinterland, pedda rasālu.

cydonian, 9 months ago to random

My weekend project: translating a 150+ year old novel into English.

The first hurdle is actually transcribing the novel accurately in the first place in old arcane Telugu. Turns out they had a different sense of what constituted a word back then, so I’ve literally had to read each word out and make sure the existing online transcript is the same as what I see in the PDF/ image.

But I’m hooked. Stayed up late last night to get this close to completing the fourth chapter of the first book.

cydonian, 1 month ago to random

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

After spending a morning commute’s worth of time on Threads, I’ve realised a few things:

1. There is indeed a large crowd that wants to go away from Twitter
2. Most of them won’t come to Mastodon.
3. That’s a good thing. Let influencers influence the shit out of each other out there.

If you want the slow lane - polite, thoughtful interactions - come here. If you want a dopamine hit - fast-paced shitposting with celebs dropping one-liners etc - go to Threads.

cydonian, 9 months ago to random

We just found out that my eight year old has been secretly reading The Collected Works of Kuo Pao Kun (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuo_Pao_Kun) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Should_All_Be_Feminists) when we are not looking around.

Thinking what other books from our library that we should “accidentally” leave around the house. Any suggestions? 😊

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

Weekend read: Around the world in 80 trains by Monisha Rajesh

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

Going to be a wild week in Singapore politics.

cydonian, 11 months ago to random

Bucketloads of Singaporean tourists out here in Japan. But nobody except ICA and me seems to believe I’m Singaporean. 🤷🏻‍♂️ 😀

cydonian, 9 months ago to random

Love the number of women I’m seeing in the Chandrayaan 3 team. First country to land on the moon’s South Pole. #Chandrayaan3

cydonian, 1 year ago to random

The domes shaped like the Ashoka Chakra in the setting sun. The new Secretariat along Hussain Sagar. #Hyderabad

cydonian, 6 months ago to random

In which an Indian art curator (with Jewish links) was accused in 2023 of being anti-Semitic and asked to resign.

His offence: he signed a letter in 2019 criticising an event which featured posters of known Nazi enthusiast, VD Savarkar. https://www.instagram.com/p/CzsYyGjIvwv/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

A talented, high accomplished educator was chased out of jobs in two Georgia counties even before she started her job because CRT. This is how 21st century Jim Crow looks like.

What a depressing read. (From @ProPublica )

https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-dei-crt-schools-parents

cydonian, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to random

Zelenskyy and Pavel may or may not be dancing Naatu Naatu. Not all celebrities in front of that palace dance Naatu, please.

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

That moment when you avoided that snarl on Bukit Timah through advanced knowledge of Singapore’s traffic patterns, thus saving 20 min and getting your daughter to school on time. 😎

Im Cool Leave Me Alone GIF

cydonian, 11 months ago to random

Someone asked my wife to ask me for travel tips to destinations in north India. Thing is, beyond Delhi where I spent many moons at my grandparents’ place, and Agra & Kolkata, I haven’t been to any place north of Vindhyas ever.

The person who has been to Srinagar, Wagah, Amritsar, Shimla, Dharamshala, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Varanasi, Kolkata, Puri etc etc is my… Singaporean Chinese wife. Asked them to ask her instead; she knows more about travelling in India than I do.

cydonian, 11 months ago to random

The past few years have been particularly bad in Singapore in terms of temperatures. #showyourstripes

cydonian, 10 months ago to random

So 22 years back, I wandered into the office of a Norwegian math professor who wanted to know why the date for Deepavali kept changing every year. 12 months later, I ended up producing a thesis that connected ancient Sanskrit slokas with LISP code. I also wrote some terrible poetry to go with it all.

And that was just the beginning. Because I called it “Panchanga tantra” and it was hosted on NUS’ website, some tantric websites in the US decided to print it and sell books.

cydonian, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

This is all very interesting, especially this curve suggesting temperatures go from 60C to -10C when you go 8cm deep into the lunar topsoil. That’s roughly the entire range of temperatures you get on earth seen within the first 10cm of topsoil during day at the Lunar South Pole.

Just don’t understand why ISRO is sharing this only on Twitter and not on their webpage.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/28/23848816/india-chandrayaan-3-lunar-rover-videos-pictures

cydonian, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Indian bank: we need to confirmation that you're still living in your home.

Me: Uhhh, here's my Overseas Indian Certificate ("OCI") issued by the local Indian mission.

Them: No, we need your SG passport.

Me: It won't help, but here you go.

Them: Thanks. (Three weeks later) This doesn't have address.

Me: Yes, that's what I've been telling you. Take the Indian doc.

Them: Hmmmm. We still need passport because we don't trust OCI. And oh, that copy needs to be attested by the Indian High Comm.

cydonian, 7 months ago to random

New ear-worm just dropped: Telugu dappu and hip-hop seamlessly merged with Egyptian hip-hop via Urdu for a really compelling sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-epIxWx_mT4

I wonder if there's anyone in this world who can understand all the lyrics there. The song actually switches between Telugu, (Egyptian) Arabic, Urdu and English mid-verse, especially in the main refrain and later. They also try to do a Hyderabadi teen-maar beat with Arabian percussion, which surprisingly is familiar to anyone who's used to marfa or jalna bands in the Deccan.

It kind of takes the bilingual mindset that you see in Singapore, Hyderabad, KL, Montreal, Mumbai, Manila etc to a whole new extreme.

cydonian, 4 months ago to magASEAN

Pongal/ Makara Sankranti greetings! #makanapatoday

cydonian, 7 months ago to random

Delhi Police has raided the houses of 40+ journos and has arrested the founder of a left-leaning news website under terror charges. No FIR was made public, but ostensibly has to do with an unverified article in NYT. https://scroll.in/latest/1056959/delhi-police-raids-homes-of-journalists-in-probe-into-funding-of-newsclick-reports

They didn’t follow existing rules for collection of evidence, weak as the protections are: https://scroll.in/article/1057017/newsclick-raids-indian-law-has-few-safeguards-when-electronic-devices-are-seized

cydonian, 3 months ago to random

“Under the 2021 law, conversion is not the private matter of an individual. Section 8 of the law directs those who wish to change their religion to make a declaration of it to the district magistrate 60 days before the conversion. The “religious convertor” has to also declare the location of the conversion ceremony to the district magistrate a month before it happens.

The local administration then launches a police inquiry. There’s more. Section 9 adds that after the conversion, the individual has to share with the administration details such as their name, name of their parents, address, occupation, income, name of the priest who oversees the ceremony and the name of the witnesses.

These details are then publicly exhibited at the office of the district magistrate. In the three weeks that follow, the district magistrate records objections to the conversion. The converted individual has to appear before the district magistrate and confirm his or her identity. If this process is without hitches, the administration issues a conversion certificate.” And only then can they marry.

Seems like my own marriage may be deemed illegal under current law in Uttar Pradesh. https://scroll.in/article/1063111/behind-allahabad-high-court-denying-protection-to-inter-faith-couples-ups-anti-conversion-law

cydonian, 22 days ago to random

World looking at an average of at least 1.5 C increase in temperature. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature

That doesn’t necessarily mean a uniform 1.5C increase across the world. It’ll be severely more in the equatorial regions, particularly in South East Asia, where we potentially have already seen an increase of ~3C in April/ May. https://social.vivaldi.net/@cydonian/112335789047432896