Raj

@Fintech03 @avataram He was in Annamalai University, I think. Not Anna

We talk about climate Change, but we rarely talk about the man who discovered that CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) were 10000x more potent than CO2. In 1975, Indian-origin scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan (Alum of Anna Uni & IISc) published a landmark paper showing that non-CO2 trace gases like CFCs had a massive hidden lever in global warming. His calculations revealed that 1 molecule of certain CFCs could trap as much heat as roughly 10000 molecules of CO2, overturning the prevailing view that CO2 was the dominant greenhouse gas. He just won the 2026 Crafoord Prize (often considered the Nobel for Geosciences) for his work on Atmospheric Brown Clouds over the Indian Ocean. He is only 82 yrs old.

@avataram I think it’s their house in Chennai.

MAGA mentality in a nutshell. 🤷🤷 😂😂 👇👇👇

Also

Israel is getting out of hand now…

Piano and language are the only two childhood activities where the cognitive transfer effects have been replicated in 50+ years of research. And parents picked them by accident. Piano forces bilateral motor coordination. Your left hand and right hand play different rhythms simultaneously, which builds the corpus callosum, the bridge between your two brain hemispheres. Kids who trained piano for 3+ years showed 25% thicker corpus callosum fibers on MRI. That connectivity doesn't just help with music. It transfers to math, spatial reasoning, and reading comprehension. Language does something different but equally permanent. Learning a second language before age 12 physically rewires the prefrontal cortex for task switching. Bilingual kids don't just speak two languages. Their brains develop a stronger executive control system because they're constantly suppressing one language while activating another. That suppression circuit is the same one you use for impulse control, long-term planning, and filtering distractions. The parents who forced these two specific activities had no idea about corpus callosum thickness or prefrontal cortex remodeling. They just thought piano was "cultured" and languages were "practical." They accidentally picked the only two childhood skill investments with permanent neurological returns. The kids who hated those lessons the most are now the adults with the strongest cognitive hardware for everything that has nothing to do with piano or French.

Schrödinger’s ceasefire

Later this week, Keir Starmer plans to travel to Berlin to help tear down the wall.

President Obama explains how he solves problems he's not an expert on: When asked by Destin Sandlin (creator of Smarter Every Day) how he gets up to speed on unfamiliar topics, Obama reveals an approach rooted in the scientific method. "Over the years you accumulate knowledge and you test hypothesis and propositions. So how I think about it today is different than the first day I walked into the oval office." He explains that after years in office, he built a baseline of knowledge that changed how he consumed information. Instead of going deep into every briefing book, he began scanning for what was different, looking for anomalies against patterns he'd already seen. "I've learned to be pretty good at listening carefully to people who know a lot more than I do about a topic and making sure that any dissenting voices are in the room at the same time." Obama describes a deliberate structure: After an initial presentation, he makes sure to hear from everyone present. He asks whether anyone disagrees with the baseline facts. He asks whether there's any evidence that contradicts what was just said. If there is, he wants that argument made directly in front of him. "What I'm pretty good at is then asking questions, poking, prodding, testing propositions and seeing if they hold up." He draws a direct parallel between this approach and the scientific method. Accumulate knowledge, challenge assumptions, pressure-test conclusions. A powerful reminder that the best decision-makers aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones who know which questions to ask and who to listen to.

Logic ...

Artemis II just sent this back. structure looks intact

Pakistan successfully mediating between US and Iran

To engage in and win a war to reopen the Strait which was open before the war was a phenomenal achievement.

Drop whatever you're doing and read this @newlinesmag article by the political scientist Hussein Banai, which is the single most incisive — and chilling — piece of analysis I believe has been published, anywhere, on this subject of ultimate urgency. newlinesmag.com/argument/the-l…

A man walks into a hardware store... Man - Do you have any two-watt bulbs? Cashier - For what? Man - ok, that'll do. I'll take two Cashier - Two what? Man - I thought you didn't have any? Cashier - Any what? Man - ok then! Two. Cashier - What?! Man - Exactly!

The more I read about Artemis expedition the more I’m awestruck by what Apollo achieved six decades back with rather primitive instrumentation and systems.

Just as I suspected, my security camera has filmed a person adding soil to my garden every single day. The plot thickens.

I appreciate the informality of this missive, with Trump resorting to the more colloquial Fuckin’ -with an apostrophe- as opposed to the long-form “Fucking” more typical of written Presidential communiques