US China Trade war : who has most to lose

Washington post article by Heather Long

As the U.S.-China trade spat gets uglier, people in both countries are asking: Who has more to lose? And how does this end?

China has more to lose economically in an all-out trade war. The Chinese economy is dependent on exports, and nearly 20 percent of its exports go to the United States. It sold $506 billion in stuff and services to the United States last year. In contrast, the United States sold $130 billion to the Chinese.

“In a serious economic battle, the U.S. wins. There is no question about it,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has helped advise the administration on China.

But this isn't just an economic fight, it's also political, and there’s a strong case that President Trump would be less able to sustain a protracted conflict than the Chinese — especially with the 2018 midterm elections coming.

Chinese President Xi Jinping runs a communist country that has just granted him the ability to rule for life. He controls the media in his country and is also sitting on top of about $3 trillion in surplus cash.

All of this means Xi can react quickly to Trump. He can even aid Chinese companies that get hurt in the coming months and subsidize soybean prices so Chinese consumers don't face massive sticker shock at the store. The Chinese used similar tactics during the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, spending heavily from their surplus reserves to stimulate their economy and insulate their people from pain. The Chinese cash reserves are not as large now, but they still have more than the United States has.

In 2018, “China can withstand much more than the U.S.”

Trump doesn't have it so easy. He's already getting phone calls from Republican lawmakers who are angry at what he's doing with the tariffs. On Thursday evening, GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska accused the president of having "no actual plan to win right now" and "threatening to light American agriculture on fire."

Trump faces backlash from Wall Street, from executives of companies such as Boeing and from soybean farmers in the Midwest, many of whom voted for Trump and feel betrayed. Some GOP leaders fear Trump's actions could cost the party seats in the 2018 midterm elections.

“Within the next 12 months, China can withstand much more than the U.S. can withstand,” said Evan Medeiros, managing director at the Eurasia Group and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama on Asia. “The Chinese aren't constrained by the rule of law or a representative democracy.”

While much of the focus so far has been on tariffs — Trump has threatened to put tariffs on about $150 billion worth of Chinese goods and services, and China has responded so far with threats of tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. goods — China has more levers it can pull to punish the United States.

The Chinese could stop cooperating on North Korea, they could sell some U.S. debt to roil markets and they could make life harder for U.S. companies operating in China, such as Nike, Disney or Apple. These Chinese actions are seen as unlikely, especially selling U.S. Treasurys. For the Trump administration, corresponding moves aren't even on the table, as the U.S. government doesn't have as much direct control over companies operating within its borders.

Trump is in a tricky situation. He has long argued the U.S. is already in a trade war with China and that the U.S. has been getting attacked for years. He appears ready for a right. As his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday, "We may have a little bit of short-term pain, but we're certainly going to have long-term success."

He is also feeling confident after his administration renegotiated the South Korean free-trade deal to give U.S. automakers greater access to that market. But South Korea is the world's No. 11 economy, and the country depends on the United States for military aid. China is the No. 2 economy, and it does not feel the same degree of pressure to give in to Trump.

Domestically, Chinese politicians face pressure to project their country as a world power, making rolling over for a bellicose U.S. president a wildly unpopular proposal. “There is no way on earth China can be seen to be kowtowing to the U.S. on this. Xi cannot say: All right, Trump threatened us, so we'd better give in,” said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

China strikes back at Trump's political vulnerabilities

The surprisingly swift and strong reaction from China this week seemed to be a message to Trump that the Chinese think they can play a long game.

Trump has now threatened just over $150 billion in tariffs -- or, to put it another way, he's threatened taxes on about 30 percent of the goods and services the Chinese sell to the United States. It's unlikely to damage the overall economy significantly, but it's getting to the point where American consumers are likely to face higher prices on televisions, shoes, clothes and possibly even iPhones.

And certain places in America are about to feel great pain if the Chinese follow through with their threats to retaliate. It's hard for farmers and winemakers to understand why they are casualties in a supposed fight against China stealing intellectual property and industrial know-how.

The Brookings Institution looked at all the products China has threatened to put tariffs on so far. They would affect about 2.1 million jobs that are spread across 2,783 U.S. counties. Eighty-two percent of those counties voted for Trump in the last presidential election.

“Xi is probably doing a more rationale analysis of the situation than the Trump administration seems to be doing,” said J. Stapleton Roy, who was U.S. ambassador to China under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “The Trump administration doesn't seem to grasp the fact that they are damaging the wrong people (the farmers)” in this fight.

China's strategy appears to be: Get farmers, business leaders and Republicans in Congress angry enough to pressure Trump to back down. This strategy seemed to work for many countries with Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs. When Trump first announced the metal tariffs, they were supposed to apply to every country in the world. By the time they went into effect, 63 percent of imports were exempt from the tariffs, according to Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

What does “winning” look like?

A key problem for Trump is that he doesn't have clear and coherent demands of China. He and his team talk about three problems: the trade deficit, Chinese intellectual property (IP) theft, and China's industrial policy (known as “Made in China 2025”).

But there's no specific request, and the lack of one is allowing the Chinese to play the victims in a scenario where the United States is supposed to be trying to correct years of wrongs. “I want the U.S. to do more against China, but I want the U.S. to do more with a plan,” Scissors said. “We need very specific asks of the Chinese. Instead, we just say, ‘we want you to change.’ ”

The president and his team sometimes say different things about trade and what the goals are. Trump likes to use confusion as a negotiating tactic, but it also opens up more ways to “win.”

“What counts for success for Trump is going to be very different than what his advisers want. Trump can probably be bought off with some package of goods to reduce the trade deficit. His advisers want China to rewrite its entire industrial policy,” Medeiros said.

What the endgame looks like

Trump has famously said a trade war will be “easy to win.” Xi isn't saying that. Xi has made it clear he doesn't want a trade war, but he will respond to anything Trump does. Xi seems to be setting himself up for an easier political win if anything goes sour on the economic front. But in politics, Trump has proved himself a skillful salesman. Many strategists and longtime foreign policy experts say the most likely scenario is Trump gets a few small concessions from China and declares victory.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said last week that China is prepared to ease market access for U.S. companies and stop forcing foreign companies to transfer technology. If Trump gets those kinds of concessions in writing, he would be able to say he did more for America against China than Obama, Bush or Clinton. But those changes would do little to alter the record U.S. trade deficit with China or to deter China from plans to go head-to-head with the United States in many high-tech sectors soon. If Trump wants those major concessions, he has to be ready to go much harder against the Chinese.

So far, Xi appears to be betting that Trump will cave to political pressure before that happens. R

Legion : Visual Storytelling

Judicial reforms in India

Legion Season 2 preview

Cant wait for it !!!!

Aniihilation (movie) - too smart for the audience ?

This is what I felt after watching the movie. It is not a movie which needs to be viewed as an entertaining product but rather a very philosophical/realistic look at the other worldly genre. It started with "Arrival" which questioned the possible intentions of the close encounter of a third kind i.e aliens.This delves deeper into the same school of thoughtand makes us ponder on the possibility that science and hollywood was completely off in their portrayal of an entity from other worlds/dimensions.

This is the review by Emily Yoshida of Volture

The tower, which was not supposed to be there,” is not even a full opening sentence, and yet the first nine words of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation told the reader at least nine things within a second. There are obviously things you can get away with more easily in a book than in a film, but that anonymous AirDrop into the mysterious Area X, whose uncanny nature becomes the focal point for a trilogy of novels, is something Hollywood could learn from. It also sets up a trilogy in which perception, and the inevitable breakdown of something like a shared reality — as emblematized by that very tower (or staircase, if you like) plays a central role.

The tower is in fact not there in Alex Garland’s adaptation of VanderMeer’s novel, both literally and in a more spiritual sense. At first this feels like a lost opportunity; how cinematically fun would it be to play with the book’s warped perspective, its narcotic disorientation? But Garland has used Area X as a jumping-off point for something like a companion to VanderMeer’s work, or a deeply personal-feeling interpretation. Whereas the book comes off as more of a portrait of an ecology in psychedelic decline, Garland’s film is about a personality undergoing the same kind of breakdown. Maybe that distinction feels traditional in the sense that Hollywood movies are financed because of movie stars, not radical biomes. But by its end Annihilation is anything but mainstream.

The film opens with a fiery, asteroid-like body striking a lighthouse somewhere on the Gulf Coast, leaving not destruction and calamity in its wake, only a prismatic, oily aura. (Right then and there, Annihilation announces itself as less of an explosion movie and more of an unexplainably unsettling oily aura movie.) We then meet Lena (Natalie Portman), a biology professor miserably unaware of anything having to with lighthouses or heavenly bodies, who is grieving her missing-in-action military husband. Then, after six months with no word, he appears in their bedroom in the form of a dead-eyed Oscar Isaac. Lena grills him about where he’s been, but he’s a disoriented shell of a person; all that’s missing is a lime green jacket. Then all his organs start failing. On the way to the hospital, a squad of black cars and helicopters intercepts the ambulance, Lena is sedated, and when she wakes up, she’s in a cell with Jennifer Jason Leigh.

This all sounds like a very different kind of movie than Annihilation ends up being — all black ops and missing spouses and Homeland-esque intrigue. The lengthy setup and stakes-laying is at once impressively slow and contemplatively paced and also completely lacking in any faith that we could invest our interest in a woman without some drama involving her husband. It’s portentous without seeming to know what it’s portending. Pretty soon Lena is on an expedition — the same expedition, she has learned, that her husband was on — into “the shimmer,” a slowly expanding, seemingly unsurveyable zone expanding through the swampland of Florida. She’s accompanied by Leigh’s Dr. Ventress, a psychologist whose job overseeing all prior expeditions seems to have left her shattered, to put it mildly; also Anya, a medic (Gina Rodriguez); Josie, a physicist (Tessa Thompson); and Cass, an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny). They dive into the shimmering barrier which gives the zone its name, and immediately things start to get weird.

What makes a good drug movie? Can it be about nothing, or does it need to be about so much that you need to be on a controlled substance in order to think you’re accessing all its layers of meaning? Does it just need to make you feel like you’re on drugs? In another era, Annihilation would feel destined to be a dorm room classic, to reside in a realm of trippy shit alongside Jodorowsky and Gilliam. Now movies are pliable enough that it may live on as a handful of GIFs and clips of its malevolently lush visuals as a get-high-and-check-this-out spectacle. That aspect of the film is clearly in a fight with all the “why did you come here” Syd Field motivational padding between its troubling setpieces, and it’s a very studio-suit move to assume that the only way to give “meaning” to a film is to have people talk about it. (It’s also a studio-suit move to cast Portman and Leigh in films that were written, however non-centrally to the plot, as Asian and Native women respectively.) Garland is telling the story through visuals, and through a cell biology thread most producers would not have faith in an audience to follow.

But to mistake Garland’s succession of haunted-house-like spectacles as Acid: The Place would be missing out on so much emotional work that he’s doing. (Although, the squeamish should be warned those spectacles range from mildly disturbing to gory and disgusting to absolutely terrifying.) The annihilation of the film’s title is the self-directed kind, and it’s working on a molecular level, even when the Hollywood narrative trappings of the film let it down. The film is drastically different from VanderMeer’s book, but it’s also about something that can’t be uttered, and, accordingly, Garland goes silent for the film’s stunning finale. Something at the intersection of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey and modern dance, it left me breathless with its unforgiving depiction of the relentless weight of depression; the impulse to self-destruct. The film has one eye on the “final girl” structure of horror films throughout its expedition, and the ending takes that phrase, turns it inside out and shatters it into a thousand refracted points of light. Like all things this cosmic, it will certainly be snickered about as “trippy shit.” But I suspect a sizable portion of the audience will see themselves there. T

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Never forget this movie

Dark : German series

After my infatuation with the Japanese series ,I was introduced to this German series through some favorable review in a podcast. This is an intriguing series and has some elements of Stranger things and David Lynch to it. This seems to steer away from the usual time travel logic on the screen. Here is the review from The Verge by Tasha Robinson
Netflix’s mesmerizing new German-language series Dark certainly is aptly named. A great deal of the new 10-episode season takes place in dim rooms and unlit garages, in an ominously oppressive forest and a shadowy cave, or under sickly, faltering lighting that suggests a kind of heavy moral decay falling over the world. The series is conceptually dark, full of cheating spouses, ugly secrets, grotesque killings, and dead birds falling from the sky in a hail of limp, twisted bodies. But more noticeably, it’s as physically dark as an early David Fincher movie, and it carries the same level of ominous weight. It’s a series meant to be watched late at night, with the lights off, experienced like a ghost story around a campfire that’s burning down to its final embers.

Netflix’s first original German series — part of a growing foray into international productions, aimed at digging deeper into local entertainment markets — comes from Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the co-writers and director of 2014’s hacker-thriller Who Am I: No System Is Safe. It has some obvious aesthetics in common with that film. Swiss director bo Odar loves images of sleight-of-hand magic and glowering men lurking deep in the depths of giant hoods, and Dark shares Who Am I’s grimy, heavy cinematography and screaming discordant soundtrack.

But Dark slows down the story from Who Am I’s more frantic pacing, using the space of a 10-hour TV series to establish an entire town of people reacting to a slow-motion series of personal disasters. In that sense, Dark is closer to the original run of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 1990s groundbreaker Twin Peaks, with a steaming nuclear power plant dominating the town instead of a lumber mill. Dark isn’t just about a murder that comes with a disturbing tinge of the supernatural. It’s about a community of people, all with their own problems, and all linked in different ways — both in the present and in the past.



Dark is an ensemble series, but it starts with Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver Masucci), a police officer and father of three who’s cheating on his wife with a woman whose husband commits suicide in the show’s earliest moments. Her shell-shocked son, Jonas (Louis Hofmann), is part of a pack of rangy pack-animal teenagers who venture into the woods outside their small German hometown of Winden, hunting the drug stash of a classmate who recently disappeared. While they’re out there, Ulrich’s youngest, Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz) also disappears, leading the police to wonder whether someone is targeting local youths. But the disappearances coincide with weird phenomena: animals dropping dead, lights wildly flickering and flashing. Some of the town’s older residents, including Mikkel’s grandmother, mutter about how the new disappearances recall older ones from when they were younger. And a mysterious hooded figure, looking at a newspaper clip reading “Where is Mikkel?”, crosses out the first word and rewrites the headline as “When is Mikkel?” Dark Season 1 Dark Season 1 Stefan Erhard/Netflix

The answer to that first mystery comes by the series’ third episode, and it raises even more questions — about time travel, official and unofficial cover-ups, and the roles of various authority figures and outsiders. It also complicates the meaning of smaller mysteries scattered throughout the show, like the ornately carved box with the suicide victim’s last letter, which bears a warning not to open it until a specific date and time. There’s a fair bit of “What’s going on?” in Dark, but the more compelling mystery is “Who knows about it?” It’s another link to Twin Peaks: that sense that there isn’t a single murderer abroad, so much as a compelling supernatural mystery, and a web of intrigue around it.

But as with Twin Peaks, Dark is more of a draw for the nightmarish aesthetics, the sense of swoony horror that hangs over this elaborately drawn little world. Dark’s characters aren’t nearly as quirky and oddball as David Lynch’s — they’re more like the dour, desperate stars of a Scandinavian TV series, slowly drinking themselves to death and seeking whatever pleasures they can to compensate for the lack of light and hope in their world. Ulrich isn’t the only one in Winden having an affair. There’s more surreptitious, frustrated lust going on in the town than honest affection. Winden feels a bit like a soap opera in progress, full of secrets and lies. A strong cast full of characters who pull off “angst-stricken and unsatisfied” well contributes to the feeling of an unsettled, untrustworthy world where time-traveling children or era-hopping murderers just seem par for the course. Dark Season 1 Dark Stefan Erhard/Netflix

At least their uncertainty is set in a beautifully rendered world. The jangling nails-on-chalkboard music and the bleak cinematography are off-putting, but in a conscious, controlled way that again recalls David Fincher. And by the end of the third episode, when bo Odar and Friese take time to visually compare the modern-day Winden residents with their younger selves, the series has gone in a lyrical, longing direction that feels miles away from Fincher or Lynch. In this moment, there’s an aching sense of beauty and loneliness to Dark that places it far above the usual procedural mystery or supernatural horror story. Suddenly, it’s not a series about dead birds and dead children, and the question of what links them. It’s about what links past and present, and how easily people drop the promise and premises of youth and become old and tired. Like so much of Dark, it’s a dark and dreary message, presented with an artfulness that becomes beautiful — and inevitably, addictive. Netflix is so often looking for bingeable, c’mon-just-one-more-episode entertainment. With Dark, it has a series that’s both hard to watch, and impossible to stop watching.

The archaic Angel tax of Indian income tax act

Is there now a tax on doing good? Well, if you’re referring to Angel Tax, that’s not what it is. What we discuss today is a change the Government recently proposed in tax rules for investments made by Indian residents in startups, also known as Angel Tax. What is it?

Closely-held private companies receive equity funds from outsiders. When these investments are made at a premium to the fair price, tax laws have so far held that the amount raised in excess to the fair value is taxable. The amount is reckoned as “income from other sources” and taxed under Section 56 (ii) of the Income Tax Act. The rate of tax was a hefty 30.9 per cent. This was applied not just to mature private companies, but also to small startups that took early-stage investments from residents in India.

As startups have very few sources of mainstream funding, investors and startups lobbied for the tax to be removed. Already, funds sourced from non-residents and venture capital funds were exempt from this tax. Now, the Centre has moved to exempt investments made by Indian residents in companies certified as ‘innovative’ startups, from Angel Tax. To qualify, the venture must fulfil certain criteria on age (not more than five years old), turnover (not exceeding ₹25 crore), purpose (building new product or services), and method (technology or intellectual property). It must also be officially recognised as an ‘innovative’ startup by the Inter-ministerial Board of Certification.

Why is it important?

Angel Tax was, therefore, problematic for a few reasons. For one, valuing startups based on their assets alone, given intangibles such as goodwill is not easy. Nor is it easy to arrive at a ‘fair value’ for them, based on discounted cash flows. So, startups are often valued subjectively and the valuation which seems sky-high to some, may be fair to others.

Two, higher valuations when raising funds, are beneficial to founders as it means giving up less equity. But given the closed nature of these deals, there were concerns on whether there was creative financial planning happening. The tax was introduced as an anti-abuse provision in the 2012 Budget to curb attempts to launder undisclosed income. Now, the relaxation could signal the willingness to nurture innovative firms.

Three, as opposed to the idea of taxing angel investors, investors in countries such as US are actually offered tax benefits when they fund small companies. There are also ways for angel investors to save tax by re-investing gains from one small business into another venture. But in India, there was an element of suspicion over startup investments. Attempts to simplify the tax treatment are hence welcome.

Why should I care?

For startup founders, venture capital firms and overseas investors are the key sources of funds and angels typically make up a small portion of the capital. But who knows? The removal of the tax may encourage more participation by local investors and help a newbie entrepreneur make a pitch to the crorepati next door.

If you are a resident investor and wealthy enough to play angel, you still need to note that only certified startups are exempt from Angel Taxes. So far, given that the scheme to certify startups is yet to flag off, no startup has a readymade certificate. Experts expect only a few startups to file and given the requirements only 1-2 per cent may pass the test.

The bottomline

The change, while good, may help only a few startups take wing

Why digital india is struggling to thrive

Why rich indians are moving out of India

Altered carbon : Netflix series

Downloaded the first season of this new series after watching extensive promos on youtube. Could see that no budget was left unspent in the trailers and wanted to watch it.
Thereby I binged all 10 episodes in a span of 6 days and the overwhelming feeling i got esp after the first few episodes is "BLADE RUNNER"

It almost felt like a Ridley scott series to me.

Kuru toga : Best mechanical pencil in the world

Based on a sudden inkling to buy the best pencil in the world, went to Amazon and shipped the kuru toga all the way from Japan for myself.



This pencil uses the rotating lead technology. Simple to operate with excellent results on top a stylish, minimalist design. A pen for a serious drafter. The Kuru Toga pencil comes in many different flavors but the standard version of the pencil is outstanding in many respects. It looks great with the solid pencil barrel not showing off the self-rotating mechanism and has a chunkier feel to it as opposed to other mechanical pencils on the market. That being said it is very comfortable to hold.
What aids in the comfort of this pencil is the superb grip, the plastic has a series of raised bumps which enhances your grip. In addition, the pencil also has a strip of rubber on the nib for those people who like to hold their pencil a little closer to the nib. Even though it’s an all plastic pencil, it is very robust in design, so dropping the pencil won’t be an issue. The performance of these mechanical pencils are excellent, the rotating lead mechanism needs to be experienced, keeping that lead sharp and even when writing. It’s no wonder this pen is so highly rated and you won’t go wrong selecting the Kuru Toga as your pencil of choice.
Features
The exclusive lead rotating technology keeps the lead sharp at all times.
The pencil uses a diamond-infused lead which gives it a strength other leads cannot match.
Very well crafted and comfortable to hold.
A clean, stain-free eraser albeit a little on the small side.
Comes standard with replacement lead refills and extra erasers

How Trump created the new "normal"

How the price of eggs sparked a revolution in Iran

Washington post article by Amir Vardaht and Jon Gambrell

TEHRAN, Iran — A wave of spontaneous protests over Iran’s weak economy swept into Tehran on Saturday, with college students and others chanting against the government just hours after hard-liners held their own rally in support of the Islamic Republic’s clerical establishment.

The demonstrations appear to be the largest to strike the Islamic Republic since the protests that followed the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election.

Thousands already have taken to the streets of cities across Iran, beginning at first on Thursday in Mashhad, the country’s second-largest city and a holy site for Shiite pilgrims.

The protests in the Iranian capital, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting about them, raised the stakes. It also apparently forced state television to break its silence, acknowledging it hadn’t reported on them on orders from security officials.

“Counterrevolution groups and foreign media are continuing their organized efforts to misuse the people’s economic and livelihood problems and their legitimate demands to provide an opportunity for unlawful gatherings and possibly chaos,” state TV said.

The protests appear sparked by social media posts and a surge in prices of basic food supplies, like eggs and poultry. Officials and state media made a point Saturday of saying Iranians have the right to protest and have their voices heard on social issues.

However, protesters in Tehran on Saturday chanted against high-ranking government officials and made other political statements, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Hundreds of students and others joined a new economic protest at Tehran University, with riot police massing at the school’s gates as they shut down surrounding roads.

Fars also said protests on Friday also struck Qom, a city that is the world’s foremost center for Shiite Islamic scholarship and home to a major Shiite shrine.

Social media videos purport to show clashes between protesters and police in several areas. At least 50 protesters have been arrested since Thursday, authorities said. State TV also said some protesters chanted the name of Iran’s one-time shah, who fled into exile just before its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi send a message by Twitter to the CEO of messaging service Telegram, Pavel Durov, saying: “A telegram channel is encouraging hateful conduct, use Molotov cocktails, armed uprising, and social unrest.” Telegram responded saying it had suspended the account.

“A Telegram channel (amadnews) started to instruct their subscribers to use Molotov cocktails against police and got suspended due to our ‘no calls for violence’ rule. Be careful - there are lines one shouldn’t cross.” Durov tweeted.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted the deputy commander of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard base, Brig. Gen. Ismail Kowsari, as saying: “Peace has returned to city of Tehran and its surroundings.” He added that if inflation was the reason the protesters took to the streets they should not have destroyed property, according to the report.

The Semi-official ILNA news agency reported on Saturday that the security deputy of Tehran’s governor, Mohsen Hamedani, said that Tehran’s provincial security council held a meeting to address the protests, but that its decisions were “classified.”

Earlier Saturday, hard-liners rallied across the country to support Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others. The rallies, scheduled weeks earlier, commemorated a mass 2009 pro-government rally challenging those who rejected the re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad amid fraud allegations.

State TV aired live the pro-government “9 Dey Epic” rallies, named for the date on the Iranian calendar the 2009 protests took place. The footage showed people waving flags and carrying banners bearing Khamenei’s image.

In Tehran, some 4,000 people gathered at the Musalla prayer ground in central Tehran for the rally. They called for criminal trials for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, leaders in the 2009 protests who have been under house arrest since 2011. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, campaigned on freeing the men, though they remain held.

Mohsen Araki, a Shiite cleric who serves in Iran’s Assembly of Experts, praised Rouhani’s efforts at improving the economy. However, he said Rouhani needed to do more to challenge “enemy pressures.” “We must go back to the pre-nuclear deal situation,” Araki said. “The enemy has not kept with its commitments.”

Ali Ahmadi, a pro-government demonstrator, blamed the U.S for all of Iran’s economic problems. “They always say that we are supporting Iranian people, but who should pay the costs?” Ahmadi asked.

Iran’s economy has improved since the nuclear deal, which saw Iran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the end of some of the international sanctions that crippled its economy. Tehran now sells its oil on the global market and has signed deals for tens of billions of dollars of Western aircraft.

That improvement has not reached the average Iranian, however. Unemployment remains high. Official inflation has crept up to 10 percent again. A recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent, which a government spokesman has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears, appears to have been the spark for the economic protests.

While police have arrested some protesters, the Revolutionary Guard and its affiliates have not intervened as they have in other unauthorized demonstrations since the 2009 election. The economic protests initially just put pressure on Rouhani’s administration. Trump tweeted out support for the protests Saturday.

“The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most....” he tweeted. “Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching!”

It’s unclear what effect Trump’s support would have. Iranians already are largely skeptical of him over his refusal to re-certify the nuclear deal and Iran being included in his travel bans. Trump’s insistence in an October speech on using the term “Arabian Gulf” in place of the Persian Gulf also has also riled the Iranian public.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments in June to Congress saying American is working toward “support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government” has been used by Iran’s government of a sign of foreign interference in its internal politics. The State Department issued a statement Friday supporting the protests, referencing Tillerson’s earlier comments.

“Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos,” the statement said. Iran’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the comments. “The noble Iranian nation never pays heed to the opportunist and hypocritical mottos chanted by the U.S. officials and their interfering allegations on domestic developments in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the state-run IRNA news agency quoted ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi as saying.

Lady Lazarus - Sylvia plath

Lady Lazarus

By Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——


A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot


A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——


The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.


What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Social loafing The art of thinking clearly

An excerpt from the art of think clearly by Rolf dobellli

In 1913 Maxmillian Ringelmann, a french engineer studied the performance of horses.He concluded that the power of two animals pulling a coach did not equal twice the power of a single horse.Surprised by this result he extended the research to humans.He has several men pull a rope and measured the force applied by each individual.On average if two people were pulling together each invested just 93% of their individual strength when three pulled together it was 85% and with eight just 49%.

Science calls this the social loafing effect.It occurs when individual performance is not directly visible, it blends in to the group effort.It occurs among rowers but not in relay races because here individual contributions are evident.Social loafing is rational behavior why invest all of your energy when half will do especially when this little shortcut goes unnoticed.

When people work together individual performances decrease.This isn't surprising.What is noteworthy however is that our input doesnt grind to a complete halt.So what stops us from putting our feet up completely and letting the others do all the `hard work ,the consequences.

Social loafing has interesting' implications.In g'roups we tend to h'old back not only in terms of participation but also in terms of accountability.Nobody wants to take the rap for th'e misdeeds or poor decisions of the whole group.We hide behind team decisions.Th'e technical term for this is diffusion of responsibility.

In conclusion: people behave differently in groups than when alone.The disadvantages of groups can be mitig'ated by making 'individual performances as visible as possible.Long' live meritocracy!! Long' live th'e performance society!!

Becoming China

About Becoming China

One of the two most powerful states in the world, China continues to be seen as a mystery even after decades of an open door. How does China work, what does it want, why does it want it, and what does its rise to global power mean for the rest of the world? As the twenty-first century looks set to be the stage for a battle about competing geopolitical ideals, these are urgent questions for everyone with an interest in what the future might bring.

Epic in scope, this is the story of how China became the state it is today and how its worldview is based on what has gone before. Weaving together inspirations, ideas, wars and dreams to reveal the heart of what it means to be Chinese and how the past impacts on the present.

Despite decades of a relatively open door relationship with the rest of the world, China is still a mystery to many outside it. A world of its own, China isboth a microcosm and an amplification of questions and events in the wider world. China's story offers us an opportunity to hold a mirror to ourselves: to our own assumptions, to our values, and to our ideas about the most important question of all: what it means to be human in the world of the state

Mr Robot finale Season 3

It would be a sad day if this series was cancelled
Vox article on Mr Robot finale by Todd Vanderwerff

Mr. Robot’s third season was its best. It moved with the momentum and confidence that made season one such a hit, with the stronger character development that had marked season two. In season three, when a random associate of Elliot Alderson’s was threatened, it felt queasier, or when two of the supporting cast members hooked up, it felt more thrilling.

Mr. Robot is finally its best self in season 3
And I agree with something the Ringer’s Alison Herman recently suggested: Mr. Robot was only able to pull this off because almost nobody was paying attention to it.
On the one hand, the show didn’t have any major twists this season for audiences to second guess. That probably played a part in its relative obscurity, since the twists drove much of the discussion in the first two years. But on the other, the conversation had also moved on. Mr. Robot felt downright prophetic when it debuted in 2015, with its tales of angry, alienated young men and a political system rigged even in the case of revolution. But in season three, it felt a little like a prophet of doom warning you not to continue on your current course as you pass him in your car. You could still hear his shouts, but only barely, and the landscape was on fire up ahead.

What the season did have was a thematic unity that wedded Mr. Robot’s superheroic hacking exploits to its deepest character story, about an isolated young man slowly coming to realize he’s not an island. It revolved around Elliot (the still magnetic Rami Malek, whose performance remains one of TV’s best) attempting to shove the genie he loosed upon the world in the form of a massive economic hack back into the bottle, both because he realized it was the right thing to do and because he had forged stronger connections with those he cares about, from his sister to his former best friend to the imaginary man that lives in his head.

And that deeper, richer story benefited from having more space to unfold in a world that wasn’t so impatient for it to get where it was going. I’d stack the season’s last six episodes against any TV made this year. In season three, Mr. Robot pulled off almost everything it wanted to pull off in season two, but in far stronger fashion

I am, in general, a Mr. Robot season two apologist, but even I will admit that season two’s early episodes were lengthy slogs that spent way too much time on Elliot trying to reconcile himself with Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), a devilish alternate personality who took the form of his deceased father. It was infuriating TV — conceptually and thematically interesting, but never as gripping on a character level as it needed to be.
But this sort of slump is one that lots of TV shows, from Friday Night Lights to Homeland to Justified, have bounced back from, simply by better integrating their characters and their ideas. You could already see Mr. Robot starting to do this by the end of season two, but it ultimately had to abandon a lot of its “Elliot and Mr. Robot negotiate their relationship with each other” material to succeed. (It’s always been telling that season two’s best episode didn’t feature Elliot at all.)

Indeed, season three begins with the two men not speaking to each other, and Elliot doing his level best to hold off Mr. Robot and prevent him from taking over. He takes his meds. He goes to work every day. He makes himself a good worker bee, in hopes that if he can keep Mr. Robot at bay, the devastating cyberterrorist attack that Mr. Robot and the mysterious Dark Army are planning will never come to fruition.

But Mr. Robot is a TV show. And when you have Slater on the payroll, you’re going to have him do more than just leer menacingly at the camera for a few seconds every episode. So as season three hit its midpoint — where Elliot succeeds in stopping the terrorist attack, but neither he nor Mr. Robot see a far worse one coming — everything Mr. Robot has been about, for better or worse, began to turn itself inside out. Mr. Robot Indeed they do. Peter Kramer/USA Network
Mr. Robot learns he’s been played for a patsy by corporate overlords who unleashed a seeming economic revolution to line their own pocketbooks. Elliot vows to return the world to the way it was, as many of his colleagues and friends fall to the Dark Army. And then the two personalities finally start working together, to try to find a way to stop the Dark Army from furthering a plan that seems designed to turn planet Earth into an anarchic wasteland, ruled by super-corporations. Eventually, the finale ends with Elliot seeming to reverse the massive hack from season one, but its post-credits scene suggests that nothing is ever that easy when capitalism is involved.

The standard knock against Mr. Robot in its first season was that its main philosophy, espoused by Elliot, was basically a knockoff of Fight Club — anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist in a way that seemed reactionary at best and completely misinformed at worst. But I always felt that creator Sam Esmail had more up his sleeve. Elliot was right to be suspicious of the capitalist society he lived in, yes, but he was simply being played by different corporate overlords. And nothing is ever as simple as saying, “We need to do this one thing, and everything will be better.” There are always consequences, and there’s always blood in the streets.

Slowly but surely, Esmail and his writing staff have since built a story designed to give Elliot things to lose. He wants to take down the masters of the universe, who rule from their closed-off boardrooms, not just because they’ve built a cruel, exploitative world, but because he believes his sister and friends and imaginary father figure deserve something better. Saving the world can’t be done from behind a computer screen. It’s a movement that begins on the ground, and continues until walls come tumbling down.

Season three was obsessed with the idea of time travel, with the thought of going back in time to undo something, in much the way that Elliot wanted to undo his season one hack. His friend, Angela (Portia Doubleday), seemed, for a time, to actually believe that time travel was possible.

But it was all a red herring. As Elliot walked home to fix the hack, he passed a crowd of people, gathered outside in the rapidly crumbling New York street, to watch the movie Superman in a store window, specifically the scene where Superman flies opposite the Earth’s orbit so quickly that he turns back time and saves Lois Lane’s life. Elliot can’t resurrect anybody, but he can try to reverse time, just a little bit. He can put some things right, then get on to the work of building a better world.

In this way, I think, Mr. Robot sneakily rediscovered its relevance, and I hope as more people catch up with the series on streaming, they’ll spark to that (or maybe to the unexpected but welcome romantic tension between Grace Gummer’s Dom and Carly Chaikin’s Darlene, or maybe to the series’ welcome return to episodes that stand alone as episodes, or maybe to its still thrilling sense of cinematic self, or maybe just to Bobby Cannavale’s deeply weird performance as Dark Army specialist Irving). On Mr. Robot, political, social, personal, and professional awakenings are all the same thing. You can’t save the world, but you can rebuild it, brick by brick.

Mr. Robot season three is available on USA On Demand and will eventually be available on Amazon Prime. Season four arrives in 2018.

Mr Robot - Season 3

This season has been quite interesting and is dealing with complex subjects like the new cryptocurrency platforms, Time travel, or an extra dimensional world.Would like to see where is this all leading to

Here is the transcript of the latest episode .


I don't know what to say. Thank you. - You coming here personally - Yes, yes. Right, right.
But the direct purpose of my visit I felt it was important to share with you formally that the CTO title is nothing more than that.
You are a mere figurehead I inherited from a deal gone wrong.
It happens from time to time.
But I wanted you to understand the nature of your position in case you should have loftier designs. There'll be none of that.
Obedience will be your only task at my company.
I worry that could potentially get awkward if you thought differently, so I came here out of respect.
By your silence, I assume you accept this position? I know what this is.
You're embarrassed that you fired me.
There's no shame in admitting the truth.
You're out of moves and your company needs me
. E Corp needs my image, the face of a hero. That's why you're here.
Oh, Wellick, Wellick. It's not that I'm out of moves. It's that you're not worth one.
See you at the office, mm? Five/Nine, fsociety. You knew the entire time, didn't you? Five/Nine, yes. Well, not all the minutiae, of course.
But since the cyber bombings, the breadcrumbs haven't been that difficult to follow.
World catastrophes like this, they aren't caused by lone wolves like you. They occur because men like me allow them.
You just happened to stumble into one of them. No, no. I ran the operation.
I pushed the button.
- I am the one - There you go again.
"I, I, I" You're still thinking like a lone wolf. Why don't you tell me how I should be thinking? Like a leader! I am a leader! Then where are your followers? You can't force an agenda, Mr. Alderson. You have to inspire one.

Twin peaks - The final dossier

Got this amazing book right from the Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, USA


Blue rose - the paranormal division within FBI ala X Files



Mark Frost is the co-creator of Twin peaks along with David lynch and is probably the reason for the dramatic elements in the series as if it was left to Lynch we would be having a weirder and confusing series (as if it could get even more weirder).

Not many novels are written in the form of inter office memorandums. This is a complete compilation of FBI memos which hopefully explain the missing elements in the recently concluded season 3.

This starts with an autopsy report

A Silent Voice Review

Found this wonderful japanese movie. Another movie which deals with complex emotions like the effects of bullying in elementary school. A very insightful perspective from a little bully to an introverted person and his eventual realization of his psychological struggles
A Silent voice by Reiko Yoshida

This review by IGN

Finding redemption in friendship. By Alex Osborn

At first glance, A Silent Voice may appear to be an elaborate warning about the destructive effects of bullying, but labeling it as such simply wouldn't do the film justice. In unearthing the serious and ugly consequences of persecution among peers, K-On! director Naoko Yamada's beautifully animated film—based on Yoshitoki Ōima's manga—delivers an emotional and redemptive journey through the depths of depression to uncover the meaning of friendship.

Upon transferring to a new elementary school, a hearing-impaired girl named Shoko Nishimiya (Saori Hayami) is preyed upon by her unrelenting peers, including the mischievous Shoya Ishida (Miyu Irino). The way in which his "harmless" teasing, which is initially written off by their teacher, quickly spirals out of control, is portrayed in a disturbingly believable fashion, underscored by the subtle peer pressure that propels Ishida's actions. All the while, the bullying has left Nishimiya guilt-ridden, as she blames herself for a disability she can't control. This is beautifully evidenced in her evocative facial expressions, which go a long way in communicating the pain and frustration of someone who can't express themselves verbally.

Nishimiya timidly introduces herself to the class

Instead of demonizing Ishida and making him out to be a one-dimensional jerk, A Silent Voice flips the script, making Ishida not only someone you sympathize with, but someone you can't help but root for. When Ishida's bullying reaches a breaking point, he finds himself ostracized by his peers, which exposes an even greater view on the cruelty of youth and how quickly one's so-called friends can turn on them to protect their own skin.

Filled with loneliness and self-resentment, Ishida slips into a severe state of depression that is expertly teased in the flash forward that opens the film. In an effort to escape the pit of despair that traps him, a high school-aged Ishida sets out make amends, which serves as the narrative springboard for this story of redemption.

Exit Theatre Mode

What follows is an emotional coming-of-age journey about opening up to others and learning to forgive oneself. While a romantic element is present, it serves to complement, rather than overshadow, Ishida's pursuit of the true meaning of friendship, which, according to Ishida's bushy-haired classmate Tomohiro Nagatsuka (Kenshō Ono), "lies somewhere beyond things like words and logic."

Likewise, the expanded view into Ishida's home life, as well as that of Nishimiya's, provides additional context for understanding the mental states of both Ishida and Nishimiya, thereby heightening the emotional impact of their actions (both past and present) and the ripple effect it has on those closest to them. One particular scene during which Ishida's mom confronts him about his dire physiological state is extremely effective in hammering home the wide-reaching impact of depression, however insular it may seem to the person crippled by its effects.

Ishida's stark 180-degree turn from being an ignorant, self-absorbed bully to an emotionally bankrupt teenager, humbled by a desperate desire to atone for the sins of his elementary school days, is entirely believable, thanks to the brilliant pacing and expertly woven narrative threads that create an emotional coherency to the progression of his character. As someone whose childhood friendships were built in service of self-gratification, Ishida's road to establishing genuine friendships is a cathartic journey that nearly everyone will be able to relate to in some capacity.

Ishida awkwardly attempts to establish a friendship with Nishimiya

Kyoto Animation is widely regarded as one of Japan's most talented animation studios, and A Silent Voice certainly lives up to the studio's pedigree. The dynamic camera offers multiple perspectives of any given scene, providing a real sense of place and preventing the film from ever feeling visually stagnant. Likewise, the camera's varying focus goes a long way in not only adding to the film's visual appeal, but outwardly reflecting Ishida's internal state. Shots of the ground provide a first-person perspective of Ishida's downcast disposition, and accompanying shots of the bustling crowd around Ishida, with only his face in focus, reinforce his detachment from those around him. The film goes so far as to superimpose purple X's on the faces of those to whom he's estranged, and while this visual cue initially appears a bit unnecessary and distracting, the way in which it's handled over the course of the film, right up to its emotionally rousing end, ultimately justifies its inclusion.

The gorgeous backgrounds must also be praised for their lovingly-crafted, painterly aesthetic, which marry beautifully with the varied, yet coherent character designs. From the sunshine-soaked, lush outdoor locales to the dark and rainy streets that reflect the headlights from passing nighttime traffic, each and every setting is incredibly detailed and a sight to behold.

The only minor gripe I have with A Silent Voice is the inclusion of one particular song amongst an otherwise subdued and moving score. The somber and introspective tones that accompany the harrowing flashforward that opens the film come to an abrupt halt when The Who's "My Generation" blares as we're transported back in time to see a young Ishida playing with his friends. While the song may suit the mood of that sequence when taken in isolation, it feels out of place in the greater context of the story and tonally incongruous with the rest of the film. Conversely, the rest of the soundtrack is appropriately subtle and sparse, given the film's subject matter, and comes to an emotionally satisfying climax at the very end.

A Silent Voice Shoya seeks redemption years after the way he led his class in bullying a young, deaf girl named Shoko. This link directs to a retail affiliate. IGN may receive a commission from your purchase. The Verdict

A Silent Voice realistically portrays the horrible consequences of bullying and uses it as the foundation for an emotional coming-of-age story about a teenager's battle with depression and his quest for redemption. The film's brilliant pacing and expertly woven narrative deliver an empowering story that will stick with you long after the credits roll. The beautiful backgrounds, well realized characters and stunning animation go a long way in elevating the film's emotional impact, making for one of the most touching and powerful movies I have seen all year

How UK property act as a safe haven for Black money

Found this interesting article on globalwitness.org

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

The ability to hide and spend corrupt funds overseas is a large part of what makes grand scale corruption not only possible but attractive. Through the financial system money earnt from shady deals and crimes such as bribery, drug trafficking, and modern slavery can be laundered clean and enjoyed in places like the UK. Global Witness investigations have revealed how London’s high-end property market is one of the go-to destinations to those who want a luxury bolthole in a desirable location which will give their dirty money the veneer of respectability. At least £122bn worth of property in England and Wales is owned by companies registered offshore, and – according to the NCA – 75% of properties whose owners are under investigation for corruption made use of this kind of secrecy.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

It goes like this: a public official steals money from the state budget, stashes it in an anonymous company registered in an offshore tax haven, and uses the anonymous company to buy luxury property in London. The public official and their family enjoys safe haven in a high-end bolthole while their fellow countrymen and women are denied the public services that should have been invested in.

In buying a luxury property or expensive development, the corrupt can invest huge amounts of dirty money in one go. Given the UK’s strong rule of law and respect for property rights, the asset is secure. It also will likely increase in value. And if the asset is a mansion, it has the added bonus of giving the corrupt and their family a luxury home in which to enjoy their criminal proceeds safe from recrimination in their country of origin.

Anonymous companies – companies where the real owners remain hidden from public view – are critical to the corruption strategy. It is quick and easy to set up layer upon layer of these companies, making it almost impossible for law enforcement to track down the real human being behind the money.

It is currently completely legal for anonymous companies to buy UK property. This means that it is far too easy for the criminal and corrupt to launder money through luxury property, hiding the real owners behind anonymous companies, often registered in offshore havens that offer secrecy – such as Bermuda, Panama, or the British Virgin Islands.

EXAMPLES OF CORRUPTION RISKS IN THE UK PROPERTY MARKET



In 2015 Global Witness revealed how Maxim Bakiyev, the son of former Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, lives in a £3.5 million mansion in Surrey, despite being convicted in his homeland of the attempted murder of a UK citizen and corruption. The Belize-based anonymous company that is being used to hide the ownership of the Surrey mansion can be linked to an alleged money-laundering scheme used to get the funds out of Kyrgyzstan.

Link to guardian article

Global Witness also revealed how big chunks of Baker Street are owned by a mysterious figure with close ties to a former Kazakh secret police chief accused of murder and money-laundering. In 2009, an unknown individual acquired a network of offshore-owned anonymous companies which in turn invested in £147 million worth of prime property. Documents seen by Global Witness reveal how the managers of these companies are linked to Rakhat Aliyev, a former Kazakh secret police chief found hanged in an Austrian prison in February 2015 while awaiting trial for the murder of two bankers in his home country.

Looks Whos back

Just go this book yesterday. Already 50 pages in.... It is an unique perspective on Hiler's psyche

Shes a rainbow

Legion.....

Books.......

The Punisher : Trailer

After the disappointment of the Iron fist and the Defenders, I thought I was wasting my hours on the dull and drab meandering of the lower tier of Marvels superheroes

But this "Metallica" Punisher has got me excited

Madurai Souljour

Ilanghai Thamizhan Rap

Steins Gate : 0 (The Return)

Hell Yeah!!!!!

Twin peaks returns : David Lynch

Thanks to Deadly premonition for introducing me to Twin peaks

Chester Bennington ....... RIP

THE band of my teens......it was pathbreaking music at that time and non one has recreated that magic since.

The truth about exercise

Why Chinas Wechat is the ultimate "Super App"

Some cool Macbook accessories

How the Calibri font is bringing down Pak PM

Cause it was widely available only in 2007....

The Handmaids tale - OST

Such a haunting soundtrack for an intense series.

Spiderman E3 trailer

NBA Finals - Locker room Parody

The Leftovers - Final scene

Next to the Japanese anime, this is one of the rare tv series which is not afraid to deal with complicated subjects....





I believe she is telling the truth, she did go to the other place otherwise they wouldnt have made it a point at the start of the episode where she clearly states that she does not lie to the french people.
But the fact that she saw her family after all the hardship and decided that they were happy in their new lives and decided to go back is consistent with her character trait.

Goodbye to a series which was all about references and motifs and it was good that we got a week to ponder upon each episode cause if this series was binged then probably the references would have gone above our heads.

Kendrick Lamar - DNA

I got, I got, I got, I got
Loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA
Cocaine quarter piece, got war and peace inside my DNA
I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA
I got hustle though, ambition, flow, inside my DNA
I was born like this, since one like this
Immaculate conception
I transform like this, perform like this
Was Yeshua's new weapon
I don’t contemplate, I meditate, then off your fucking head
This that put-the-kids-to-bed
This that I got, I got, I got, I got
Realness, I just kill shit 'cause it's in my DNA
I got millions, I got riches buildin’ in my DNA
I got dark, I got evil, that rot inside my DNA
I got off, I got troublesome, heart inside my DNA
I just win again, then win again like Wimbledon, I serve
Yeah, that's him again, the sound that engine in is like a bird
You see fireworks and Corvette tire skrrt the boulevard
I know how you work, I know just who you are
See, you's a, you's a, you's a
Bitch, your hormones prolly switch inside your DNA
Problem is, all that sucker shit inside your DNA
Daddy prolly snitched, heritage inside your DNA
Backbone don't exist, born outside a jellyfish, I gauge
See, my pedigree most definitely don't tolerate the front
Shit I've been through prolly offend you
This is Paula’s oldest son
I know murder, conviction
Burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption
Scholars, fathers dead with kids
And I wish I was fed forgiveness
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, soldier’s DNA
Born inside the beast
My expertise checked out in second grade
When I was 9, on cell, motel, we didn't have nowhere to stay
At 29, I’ve done so well, hit cartwheel in my estate
And I'm gon' shine like I'm supposed to
Antisocial, extrovert
And excellent mean the extra work
And absentness what the fuck you heard
And pessimists never struck my nerve
And that’s a riff, gonna plead this case
The reason my power's here on earth
Salute the truth, when the prophet say
I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA
(This is why I say that hip hop has done more damage
To young African Americans than racism in recent years)
I live a better, fuck your life
(5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
This is my heritage, all I'm inheritin'
Money and power, the makin' of marriages
Tell me somethin'
You mothafuckas can't tell me nothin'
I'd rather die than to listen to you
My DNA not for imitation
Your DNA an abomination
This how it is when you're in the Matrix
Dodgin' bullets, reapin' what you sow
And stackin' up the footage, livin' on the go
And sleepin' in a villa
Sippin' from a Grammy and walkin' in the buildin'
Diamond in the ceilin', marble on the floors
Beach inside the window, peekin' out the window
Baby in the pool, godfather goals
Only Lord knows, I've been goin' hammer
Dodgin' paparazzi, freakin' through the cameras
Eat at Four Daughters, Brock wearin' sandals
Yoga on a Monday, stretchin' to Nirvana
Watchin' all the snakes, curvin' all the fakes
Phone never on, I don't conversate
I don't compromise, I just penetrate
Sex, money, murder—these are the breaks
These are the times, level number 9
Look up in the sky, 10 is on the way
Sentence on the way, killings on the way
Motherfucker, I got winners on the way
You ain't shit without a body on your belt
You ain't shit without a ticket on your plate
You ain't sick enough to pull it on yourself
You ain't rich enough to hit the lot and skate
Tell me when destruction gonna be my fate
Gonna be your fate, gonna be our faith
Peace to the world, let it rotate
Sex, money, murder—our DNA

Is the NBA finals riggged?

NBA finals : The trilogy

An article from TheGame Haus
2017 NBA Finals Preview

 The 2017 NBA Finals are set and the wait is finally over. The world gets to see the Golden State Warriors matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third-straight year in the Finals. It is the grudge match of all grudge matches. Everyone has been waiting for this series since the season tipped off on Oct. 25, 2016. Some have been waiting for this since Kevin Durant signed with the Warriors in July. This third fight between the Warriors and Cavs will be bigger than the “Thrilla in Manila”.

The Golden State Warriors went 67-15 this season following a record-breaking 73-win season in 2016. Golden State also broke the record for most wins over a three-year span.
This Warriors team is actually better than last year’s team thanks to the signing of Kevin Durant. The Warriors took it easy in the regular season because their goal all year was to meet the Cavs in the Finals.
Golden State made quick work of their playoff opponents. They swept all three opponents in a tough Western Conference. What the Warriors have done this postseason has been impressive and they sent a message. Winning the Finals is an obsession to them and nothing else is considered acceptable.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have not had it as easy as the Warriors. Cleveland went 51-31 and finished as the second seed in the East. The Cavs really struggled in the second half of the season. After Jan. 1st the Cavs went 26-24. They looked bad defensively and some started to question whether or not they were capable of another Finals run.
All those questions were put to bed quickly once the playoffs started. The Cavs easily swept the Pacers and Raptors before meeting the top-seeded Celtics in the conference finals. Cleveland then wiped Boston off their home-court in embarrassing fashion. Boston stole game three but all that did was delay the inevitable. Cleveland went on to finish the next two games easily to reach the finals for the third straight year.

The first year these two teams met in the Finals was in 2015. Kevin Love had been hurt in the first round and would miss the remainder of the playoffs.
Game 1 of the Finals dealt another injury to a Cleveland star. Kyrie Irving went down with a fractured kneecap in the first game of the series during overtime. Golden State would win that game and win the series 4-2 to capture its first title in 40 years.

Many called the Warriors title tainted claiming that they would not have won the championship had the Cavaliers been healthy. They were champions without respect and it was their mission to prove they were worthy of the crown.
LeBron had failed to bring a title to Cleveland and many were wondering if it was the right move to leave Miami. The criticism was high despite him averaging 35.8 points per game, 8.8 assists per game and 13.3 rebounds per game while shooting just 38.9 percent from the field. Just as the Warriors were determined to prove they were worthy of the crown, LeBron was determined to bring a title home.

Cleveland and Golden State would meet again in the 2016 Finals for a rematch. Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving were both healthy for this matchup and many thought the Cavaliers would prove they were truly the better team. Coming into the Finals the Cavaliers had only lost two games in the East.
The Warriors had a much tougher road in the West. They had to comeback from being down 3-1 in the Western Conference finals. Throughout the playoffs, Steph Curry and Andre Iguodala were dealing with nagging injuries. They played through those injuries but were not at full strength and expanded tons of energy just to get to the Finals.

In the beginning of the series, none of that seemed to matter. Golden State took a 2-0 series lead and had the largest combined margin of victory in NBA Finals history. Cleveland would win Game 3 and Golden State won Game 4 to take a 3-1 series lead. In that game, Draymond Green was assessed a flagrant foul, setting his playoff total to four, resulting in a suspension for Game 5. No team had ever come back from down 3-1 in the NBA Finals.

Cleveland was able to win Games 5 and Game 6 to force an epic Game 7.
After six games the teams were tied in games won and total score. It was as close as a series as it could ever be and the final game of the year would truly decide a champion.

In Game 7, LeBron James blocked a late layup attempt by Andre Iguodala that set up a game-winning 3-pointer by Kyrie Irving. The Cavs won Game 7 93-89 and ended a 52-year championship drought in the city of Cleveland.
The Warriors had lost in the Finals and believed that had Iggy been healthier he would have dunked the ball. Golden State fans also believed that Curry wasn’t healthy and that if Draymond had not been suspended they would have won Game 6 and the series.


Fast forward to now and here we are set for round three. The Warriors added superstar Kevin Durant to help them get back to the Finals for a third-straight season. The Cavaliers added minor pieces but have made it back to defend their title.

Golden State ended a 40 year drought and Cleveland ended a 52-year drought.
As mentioned earlier the Warriors enter the Finals 12-0 and the Cavaliers enter the Finals 12-1. Both teams sprinted to the Finals as fast as possible, and as rested as possible.

In round three, there are no excuses. Both teams are healthy and both teams will be rested. It is time to put up or shut up. It is time to make a mark on history.
Who’s era is it really? Without trying to predict too far ahead, it is unlikely these teams meet for a fourth straight Finals appearance.

Cleveland comes into the Finals averaging 116.8 points per game while Golden State comes in averaging 118.3 points per game. Both teams are great offensively but the team who plays the best defense will win this series.
There are so many fun matchups the world gets to see in this series as well. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson versus Kyrie Irving. Draymond Green versus Tristan Thompson, LeBron James or Kevin Love.

The most intriguing though is when Kevin Durant and LeBron James match up against one another. Two of the best players in the world will fight it out to be called the champion.

This series will go down in history. At the end of the day, the Warriors are going to win because they have just too much firepower. They lost last season by four points in Game 7. Adding Kevin Durant to the mix will just be too much. All eyes are on the Finals to see who really is the best between these two franchises.
The new greatest rivalry in sports will write the newest chapter this summer, changing legacies forever.

Prediction: Golden State Warriors 4-2



I agree with the above prediction by TheGameHaus. GSW should be able to win this one based on the talent on paper. I have some doubts on Steph curry as he usually comes up short in the finals. The first year Iggy showed his resilience for the Warriors to get though a severely depleted Cavs. so I believe the Durant addition would be a saving grace for them. But it is tough to count Lebron out. The way he motivates his team and somehow manages to get the best out of them by putting them in positions they can excel. Remember how Delly looked like a top 10 player against Steph in 2015 finals. GSW still can outlast an epic performance from Lebron, just assume Lebron is able to shutdown Durant, it has to be Lebron defending cause I dont see anyone else doing it. A simple pass to Draymond with Kevin Love or Tristan against him would be sufficient to take advantage of the matchup. Last year,Cavs attacked Steph defensively but they missed Bogut and Draymond protecting the basket for most of the series. So even if Kyrie attacks Steph there should be Durant(who has shown tremendous improviement in his defensive skills) ,Dray (if he manages to keep off suspension) & JAVALE MCGEE to alter and block shots. Not to mention that GSW went 12-0 without any output from Klay. So all analysis points to the Warriors taking the title. If Cavs still manages to take the title without any injuries on GSW then we have to accept Lebron is on his way to surpass Jordan and Durants legacy would be on hold.
Makes up for a great time for the basketball fans though they have to endure a boring regular/playoff season.

Jumpcuts : Iphone vs Android

Focus - Vaibhav Bundhoo

Kimi No Na Wa

Due to my tight TV/Movie viewing schedule, not to mention the renewed interest in reading novels. I have put my anime interest to the backburner. I decided to rather wait for any top reviewed anime. So i was waiting till i noted this..

Kimi No Na Wa



I downloaded the movie in good jiffy speed of 20mins Thanks to my vodafone connection.

CREATOR



My first impressions from this movie has to be the detailed lighting and cinematography in the anime. How is it possible that Japanese animators achieve to portray emotion, atmosphere and human interactions more realistic than the billion dollar creations of Hollywood. It is a testament of their unflinching dedication to telling a "human" story.

Though i dont want to dwell on the story which is reminiscent of the time bending, mind bending saga of Haruhi Shizumiya.I believe the story did look incomplete with probably a second or third chapter left before the ending. ala you would feel somewhat of an abrupt ending.

It is the following motifs which makes this movie incredible

REAL LIFE PLACES

The anime depict real places in Japan.See the side by side comparison of places and the anime imageries







SHINTO RELIGIOUS REFERENCES

Shinto religion believes the connection of the human with their KAMI - spiritual energy which is frequently mentioned in the movie

The famed Kagura dance performed by Mitsuha



The red string of fate

It references the connection between people who are destined for each other.The red string which Mitsuha makes for Taki.As Mitsuhas family has the power to connect with people as evidenced by the conversation with her granny which suggests both her granny and mom has the same capability. The fact that her family performs the religious shrine ceremony might be associated with their powers.

It symbolises the link between Mitsuha and their association. When in 2013 Mitsuha gave the red string to Taki, he wasnt aware of her. But 3 years later it enabled them to switch places which they initially though to be a dream. When the comet destroyed the place, Taki still had the connection to Mitsuha as he was wearing the string. Also note that he was drawn to the shrine in the underworld which holds the.....



"kuchikami sake" which is believed to contain half a soul of Mitsuha which enables the connection to still exist. Also note that Taki leaves his memories of Mitsuha as "offer" to the underworld which enabled him to save Mitsuhas town. Similar to Mitsuha who left the "sake", his offer of the memories also lead to him forgetting about Mitsuha.

Also note that Taki returns the red string just before they forget each other thereby breaking the link between them



The message in hand

It should be noted that when she asks him to write his name so that she never forgets him, he didnt write hiw name but rather states I love you.. this was intentional on his part as he knew that any empirical evidence of his existence would be erased as part of the breaking of the string - connection between them, so he just expressed his love which would atleast keep the feeling intact. He knew about this as evidenced by the erasing of all the calendar notes and messages from his phone about Mitsuha.So it is possible that he did it on purpose.



Also note that even Mitsuha doesnt write her name as the hiragana character which she started to write was not "mi" suggesting it was something else.

there are also other motifs like the multiverse and the infinity symbol in the lake. All these references and motif make this anime memorable. "Kimi no na wa"