Gouthaman

@RishiSunak @thetimes The BBC’s problem isn’t that it hasn’t adapted. It’s that it doesn’t have to. With the compulsory license fee, it’s insulated from the feedback loop that force YouTube to serve users or lose them. If people could simply opt out, “adaptation” would follow quickly enough.

YouTube’s reach in Britain now exceeds all BBC channels combined. The BBC must adapt to the way people consume content today. My column in @thetimes 👇 thetimes.com/business/compa…

Javed Miandad said, “Bowlers like Irfan Pathan are found in every street of Pakistan.” Next day Pathan took a first over hat trick against Pakistan in Pakistan.

Paul Ralph Ehlrich passed away on the 13th. he was a hugely qualified American biologist based in Stanford, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. He wrote a book called The Population Bomb which began with this statement: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." In 1967 he had expressed his belief that aid should only be given to those countries that were not considered to be "hopeless" to feed their own populations. Obviously, countries like India were to be left to starve and kill each other for food. Thanks to the likes of Borlaugh and Swaminathan and the Green Revolution that they helped start, that never came to pass. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet, though distribution issues, waste, conflict, and regional disparities mean that undernourishment is still a serious issue for hundreds of millions. But no sir, we savages did not kill each other for food. And for all its issues, the world is a better place for most of its citizens since the seventies.

Two view of humanity. From a talk I gave some years ago. Relevant today.

The 1979 Iranian revolution was a hinge point in history that dramatically set back the values that progressives claim to care about, including women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and rationalism in public policy. In “Persepolis,” Marjane Satrapi recalls the story of Niloufar, an 18-year-old communist activist sentenced to death by the clerical regime. The religious jurists have no problem with the death penalty for Niloufar, but they worry that as a virgin she may go to heaven. So they arrange for her to be raped by a prison guard before her execution. Later the authorities send Niloufar’s family a small dowry to commemorate this “marriage.” Ali Khamenei led this murderous medieval regime for nearly forty years. This is a regime that beat women for showing their hair and publicly hanged gays from cranes. It’s a regime that ignored the needs of its own people to fund jihadist groups in, among other places, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian Territories. It’s a regime that committed murder in dozens of countries, including Germany, France, India, Australia, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. Just weeks ago, it slaughtered thousands—possibly tens of thousands—of its own citizens for protesting its repressive policies. Because the Iranian revolution offered a template for Islamist rule, albeit a Shia variant crafted by Ayatollah Khomeini, Islamists of all stripes took inspiration from it. Few countries adopted the extreme measures favored by the mullahs of Iran, but the revolution’s malign influence was felt from Morocco to Mindanao. In the 1980s it also sparked a theological arms race with Saudi Arabia, which spread its own regressive brand of Islamism around the world. Progressives in democratic countries who mourn the death of Khamenei come in different flavors. Some are simply Islamists or Islamist adjacent. Their ideology conceals the deeper religious passions that motivate them. Others are so blinded by their hatred of America and Israel that they reflexively oppose any action by them. Yet others are simply so ignorant of the nature of the Iranian regime that they can’t see the absurdity of comparing Khamenei with Dumbledore from Harry Potter. But all of these people have one thing in common. They spit on the suffering of the talented Iranian people who have had to endure nearly 50 years of brutal clerical rule.

For 47 years, the people of Iran have yearned for justice, freedom, peace, and prosperity—and have paid for it with their blood. If your outrage at Iranian lives lost began only today, but you were silent as the regime slaughtered thousands of its own people in recent weeks, Iranian lives did not suddenly become worthy of your concern. Their lives have always mattered. Many Iranians today are experiencing a profound and painful dissonance: waiting with bated breath for the fall of their tormentors, while grieving every innocent life lost—and knowing it was decades of the regime’s violence, repression, and recklessness that led the country to this precipice. Imagine the profound dissonance of living under such injustice for so long that war begins to feel like the lesser evil. It pains me deeply that the Islamic Republic has led Iran to this moment. The Iranian people are not this regime. They are its first victims—and they have never stopped fighting to rid themselves of it. I stand with the people of Iran and their right to self-determination. May freedom, justice and peace swiftly prevail.

R.I.P. Charlie Kirk I didn't know Charlie personally. But he did send me a kind message last year. "I love all people" is what he said. If that is any indication of who the man was, then this country has lost someone special today. Partisan politics did not stand in the way of him paying me a compliment, and it should not stand in the way of mourning him either. We cannot become a society where expressing political views, even controversial ones, leads to violence. Whatever you think of his politics, Charlie was a decent man, a patriot, and a brave defender of his values. My heart goes out to his wife and his kids.

“What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.” —Charlie Kirk

The murder of Charlie Kirk is a double tragedy. The first is a man’s life cut short, his friends and family bereft, his voice stilled. The second is that the costs of speaking up and speaking out have now risen dramatically. Not just democracy but civilization falters when people become afraid to express themselves or become the public face and voice of an idea. In a civilized society, speaking up and speaking out should not make you fear for your life. In that sense, this death is an act of terror. It makes every thoughtful public figure who writes and speaks worry that they might be next. That this happened to someone who loved to engage in calm debate makes the whole thing even sadder.

When someone asks what 'Cricket IQ' means, Show them this commentary-

I just built a Website Analyzer using @anythingai and it was such a fun experience putting it together. Still very much just a starting point and continuing to build. Feedback and suggestions welcome! websiteanalyzer.dev

Dostoevsky, timeless

Thinking ads are bad is a luxury belief of rich-world elites. For everyone else, it’s how the internet gets paid for.

@deepakns Google search is free as well. A rise in Perplexity use must surely indicate that it's a better alternative at least for some use cases, no?

No bro. The adoption is clear proof that we like free things.

Quite a few people here are comparing Indira Gandhi, whose first tenure as PM lasted 11 years (1966-77) with Narendra Modi, who has now been PM for as long (2014-2025). Here’s how I think they stack up: 1. Economy: Modi > Indira. [This is a no-brainer, not because NM has been great but because IG was a disaster.] 2. Democracy: Modi > Indira. [Another no-brainer. I agree with much of the criticism of NM on this score, but you can’t really compare him with the PM who declared Emergency and regularly dismissed state governments on a whim.] 3. Pluralism: Indira > Modi. [For all her flaws, IG and her party were not motivated by animus toward any religious group.] 4. Foreign Policy: Tie. [YMMV on this one. IG’s crowning success, the creation of Bangladesh, dwarfs anything NM has achieved. OTOH in general nonalignment served India poorly and contributed to its economic backwardness.]

I don’t like to dunk on Rajdeep, but the fact that he needs to proclaim that “the Raj is long gone!” in 2025 is kind of pathetic. At what point will Indians be able to get over this chip on their collective shoulder and treat England like just another country, albeit one with which a section of Indians have closer familial, cultural and intellectual ties than they do with most countries? I wonder if in the year 2147 we’ll still see this strange need to refract every contretemps through a resentful lens of injured pride? Sometimes a sport is just a sport. One team wants to get its players off the field to rest them and protect them from injury. The other team thinks the two men in the middle, who have pulled off a heroic rearguard action, deserve to reach personal milestones easily within grasp. I happen to think the Indian batsmen were right to play on, and that it was petty of Ben Stokes not to see why this was understandable. But to me it was simply Stokes v. Jadeja/Sundar, not some kind of sequel to Gandhi’s salt march or something. #INDvsENG

NYC… she’s talking to you!

@saffrontrail I’m 100% convinced RBI regulations on Indian credit cards is just our attempt at making the market hostile to Visa and MasterCard. It’s easier than making UPI/RuPay truly competitive anyway.

Tweeted my frustrating experience with RBI regulations and problems with using Indian credit cards on apps like Uber when traveling abroad (which I’ve heard from hajaar other ppl) and I have people schooling me and attacking me, and abusing community notes to nullify my experience. Sorry guys, everything is great. Our fault entirely, we have never used credit cards in our lives. RBI regulations make life very easy for us when traveling abroad. And I’ve deleted my tweet. Have a good day 🙏

✅Things you should not be afraid of: 🟩Whey protein 🟩Creatine 🟩Coffee 🟩Whole eggs 🟩Vegetable/ seed oils 🟩Fresh fruits 🟩 Artificial sweeteners ❗Things you should be worried about: 🟥 Predominantly processed red meat diet 🟥Fruit juices (low fiber, high natural sugars) 🟥Omega 3 supplements (high dose can lead to increased risk of heart rate abnormalities) 🟥Milk thistle (high risk of fungal contamination) 🟥Ghee, butter, coconut oil and saturated fats promoted as healthy by wannabe influencers - limit, limit, limit 🟥Green tea infusions. Don't drink more than 2-3 standard cups per day 🚨Things you should be afraid of: ☠️Protein powders with herbs ☠️ Protein powders with complex blends ☠️Green tea extracts ☠️Turmeric or curcumin supplements ☠️Prolonged testosterone use ☠️Anabolics steroids, stimulants ☠️Herbal supplements (more the number of herbs, higher the risk of liver injury) ☠️Ashwagandha (high risk of organ damage) ☠️Shilajit (high risk of heavy metal poisoning) ☠️Multivitamins (increased risk of cancers) ☠️Alcohol (high risk of cancer and brain damage) ☠️Tobacco (number 1 killer of adults in the world) ☠️ Homeopathy (seemingly safe, but mostly it's alcohol and sugar, both bad for health)