A great conversation with Madhavi Menon
At the Splainer AMA on Saturday, the brilliant Professor Madhavi Menon lived up to her reputation as the ‘historian of desire’—riffing on a range of topics from rape culture, the sex drive, battle over pronouns, the (ir)relevance of marriage and more. As always, the questions from our members were thoughtful and engaging—much to the delight of Dr Menon. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, it was a quintessential splainer event—without a single boring minute. You can watch the hour-plus long conversation over on YouTube. Coming soon: a number of such events to mark our one-year anniversary in June! Most importantly: if you’d like to support our work—and help us do more for all our subscribers—please consider becoming a founding member. Every rupee helps build splainer’s audience, content and future.
The Israel-Palestine war: the latest update
- 62 Israeli fighter jets dropped 110 “guided armaments” overnight on targets in Gaza, focusing on the Hamas tunnel networks—which run under densely populated residential areas. And Israel plans to “expand” its bombing of such tunnels. The latest Palestinian death toll: 220.
- At least three Palestinians died and more than 120 were injured as the conflict spread to the West Bank.
- Under pressure from the more liberal wing of the Democratic party, President Joe Biden “expressed his support for a cease-fire” on a call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. OTOH, he also “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks.”
- Not fence-sitting: Netanyahu who said he will continue to bomb the hell out of Gaza until Israel “has degraded Hamas’s military capabilities and hurt its capacity to wage attacks against Israelis.”
- Israel’s official Twitter handle sent out a flurry of tweets with just a long string of 🚀emojis—intended to mark the number of Hamas rockets. It ended the thread saying, “Just to give you all some perspective, these are the total amount of rockets shot at Israeli civilians. Each one of these rockets is meant to kill.” Of course, the number of Israeli bombs or rockets would be far too many to tweet out.
- New York Times has an excellent piece on the humanitarian disaster in Gaza—where sewage systems have been destroyed, and there is a critical shortage of fresh water, medicine and other essential goods.
- BBC News has a photo gallery capturing the ‘fear and mourning’ in Gaza.
- A very good read: Dmitry Shumsky in Haaretz on why Netanyahu needs his nemesis: “Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent a two-state option, so he has made Hamas his closest partner. Overtly, Hamas is the enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”
The great pandemic: A quick update
- India added 267,122 new cases and 4,529 deaths on Tuesday—the highest ever for any country since the pandemic began.
- The bad news: Even though the daily cases are going down, the number of fatalities are not.
- The good news: around 200 districts have reported a steady decline in new cases over the last two weeks, and our overall positivity rate—percentage of tests that turn up positive—has also reduced to 16.9%. The general consensus: “the pandemic curve is stabilising”.
- Among the dead: An Australian businessman of Indian origin who was stuck in India due to his country’s travel ban.
- Controversy over ventilators provided under the PM-Cares fund continues. A government medical college in Maharashtra says that 58 of the 150 ventilators that it received are faulty. And another 37 were delivered but never installed.
- The United States’ leading Covid authority Dr Anthony Fauci said that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are “at least partially and probably quite protective” against the ‘double mutant’ variant.
- Speaking of that variant, the Singapore government is worried that it seems to be infecting younger children in the country in disproportionate numbers—and has therefore decided to shut down all the schools.
- Five police constables in UP have been suspended for supervising a cremation where petrol and rubber tyres were used to light the funeral pyre (see wrenching clip).
- A very close shave: A 76-year old Covid patient in Maharashtra was almost cremated alive after she lost consciousness—and her family mistakenly thought she had died.
- Good news for long haul victims: A new study shows that vaccines ease the symptoms of people who suffer long-term effects of the disease.
- New data analysis shows that states that have higher vaccination rates need less oxygen. Scroll dives into the numbers. But as The Hindu points out, this is hardly good news for rural areas where the vaccination rates are very low: “Only about 15% have been immunised outside urban areas, despite reporting over 60% of the cases.”
- Good related reads: Bloomberg News (via NDTV) details the devastation wrought by the second wave in rural India. NPR has an amusing read on a decades-old US company called...Covid!
Cyclone Tauktae: The latest update
The Coast Guard and Navy conducted one of the biggest offshore searches to rescue 637 men. One oil rig and four vessels servicing ONGC’s off-shore operations, and an unrelated freight ship went astray during the storm. But 81 people are still missing. Point to note: The Coast Guard insists that it warned ONGC to remove all its vessels and personnel ahead of the cyclone—and it isn’t clear why it didn’t heed the warning. (Indian Express)
Amazon to buy MGM
First came the merger of Warner Bros with Discovery Inc. Now there are reports that Amazon is planning to buy MGM Studios for $9 billion. This will give Amazon Prime access to some of the greatest movies of all time, including ‘Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Ben Hur’. Yes, all entertainment will soon be owned by a handful of giant corporations. (BBC News)
A big problem with dating apps
A ProPublica investigation found that apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble et al have no effective system to tackle reports of sexual assault—and remove users who may be dangerous. They instead leave it to overworked customer service reps to tackle such complaints—along side billing disputes, account issues and scammer alerts: “no site has a team exclusively dedicated to addressing a risk inherent in an industry built on intimacy: sexual assault.” And these employees handle hundreds of complaints a day and are often on the clock. Example:
“At OkCupid... there’s a 15-complaint-per-hour quota for those who handle sexual assault claims and other more complex claims. That means these moderators have four minutes on average to scrutinize user profiles and messages of both the complainant and accused, and respond to the person who filed the complaint.”
Now imagine if those complaints include rape or sexual assault. Read the rest of the eye-opening investigation over at ProPublica.
Two key insights into our psyche
One: An interesting new theory suggests that we have weird dreams—think, a person turns into a dog—to prepare ourselves for the unexpected. Apparently, our brain has the tendency to become “overfitted”—much the same as artificial intelligence:
“A common problem when it comes to training artificial intelligence (AI) is that it becomes too familiar with the data it’s trained on, because it assumes that this training set is a perfect representation of anything it might encounter. Scientists try to fix this ‘overfitting’ by introducing some chaos into the data, in the form of noisy or corrupted inputs.”
Think of your most bizarre dreams as similar “noisy or corrupted inputs”—introduced to shake up our humdrum daily routine. Hmm, is this why our dreams are getting seriously nutty during lockdown? The Guardian has an engaging read on this and other theories of dreams.
Two: Age may in fact just be a number. A new study says that it isn’t your actual but ‘subjective age’ that counts:
“The researchers report that older adults who feel younger than they actually are enjoy a bounty of amazing benefits that include stronger thinking skills, less inflammation, improved wellbeing, lower odds of visiting the hospital, and a generally longer lifespan in comparison to peers with a less youthful mindset.”
Four celeb things
One: Ariana Grande got married to real estate agent Dalton Gomez—who she has been dating since January, 2020. People magazine has more details.
Two: Matthew McConaughey is seriously contemplating running for governor of Texas—calling it a “true consideration.” The big question: Will he run as a Democrat, Republican or Independent? Politico has that story.
Three: Leonardo DiCaprio has pledged $43 million towards ‘rewilding’ the Galapagos Islands. It will support projects such as “efforts to restore Floreana Island, home to 54 threatened species, and reintroduce 13 locally extinct species, including the Floreana mockingbird—the first mockingbird described by Charles Darwin.” The Guardian has more.
Four: Six strands of Kurt Cobain’s hair sold for an absurd $14,145. The longest strand is 2.5 inches. The auction house description: “This one-of-a-kind artifact is entirely fresh-to-market, and accompanied by an impeccable lineage of provenance including images of Kurt posing with the woman who cut this hair, scissors in hand, and a fantastic shot of the hair actually being cut!” Below is the image of the hair. What? Didn’t you want to see it?
An undiplomatic slap
The wife of the Belgian ambassador to South Korea slapped a shop assistant. The reason: The staff tried to check her clothes as she was leaving—due to suspicions of shoplifting. The ambassador has apologised on her behalf, but she has now claimed diplomatic immunity, and the incident has sparked anger over entitled foreigners. (CNN)
80-year-old novel is a bestseller
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote The Passenger in 1938. The novel—which tells the story of a Jewish businessman fleeing the Nazis in Germany—mirrored his own experience. It was published in 1939 and again in 1940 but failed to achieve success—and was soon forgotten. Boschwitz died in 1940 at the age of 27 when a boat he was travelling on was torpedoed by the Germans. Fast forward to 2018: his niece told a prominent editor about the book—and he went to the archive of the National Library in Frankfurt to read the original typescript. Three years later, it is now on The Sunday Times list of top 10 hardback fiction bestsellers. BBC News has more on this unlikely happy ending.
Dine With Data: All About Geekster 👨💻
Editor’s Note: Here is DWD’s weekly instalment of one cool, innovative or just plain quirky startup from around the world.
Company: Geekster 👨💻
About: India-based Geekster is an ed+hr platform that helps early stage professionals develop verified technical skills, and then land a job.
It aims to benefit both sides of the tech hiring ecosystem—employers get access to pre-vetted talent, and candidates land higher-paying jobs. What's more? Candidates only pay for the 6-month long courses after they get a job. 🎉
The startup announced a $200K seed round from We Founder Circle on 11th May.
Food For Thought: There have been more than 20,000 requests for their courses since they launched in October 2020, and they've already signed up 25+ hiring partners for these candidates!
DWD Take: Verification of talent is a win-win for both job-seekers and job-givers. In the long run, we can even see them posing a competition to MBA degrees! 📜
URL: www.geekster.in
About DWD: Dine With Data🍴sends you a short summary on one new startup every day, delivered straight to your Whatsapp inbox!