The only states I know that have been immune to this shit are Kerala and Himachal Pradesh because the leadership in both states forced land reform very early in their existence, which meant all rural people were essentially equal economically.
>Caste-based surnames are extremely uncommon in South India (20% of India's population), and it's not even a recent thing.
No, caste-based surnames are uncommon among some upper caste communities. A significant chunk (Gowdas, Reddys, Nairs etc.) have surnames strongly linked to castes. And what you might refer to being a "recent thing" is having a western style surname at all.
>FWIW, as someone who has spent considerable time in Indian academia, this article reeks of BS. No one cares about your caste in Indian academia. The languages you speak, the part of India you come from, etc., cause a bigger divide than caste.
I've also spent time in Indian academia (and left it, for unrelated reasons) and can say that caste matters a lot, in a very insidious way. Respectfully, if you can't tell that Bulsara is a Gujarati surname (which means it could be a Hindu, Parsi or a Muslim surname, so may not even be linked to a caste as is the case with Freddie Mercury), then you may not know enough to comment on caste.
>How exactly did the author find their castes?
Perhaps try reading the article? He has even linked the RTI responses if you doubt him so much.
> I can assure you that the vast majority of upper-caste people here don't use a caste-based surname anymore.
Oh, I don't need assuring for this, this was the point I was making! Basically, some south Indian upper castes use their father's first name as their surname. And this in itself is a strong signifier that the person is from the upper caste!
And yes, some surnames like Bulsara are linked to a place, some are neutral like Kumar, or some are rare enough to not signify caste unless you really know. So what? Even now, a large chunk of the Indian population uses caste-linked surnames, and it is one way they get discriminated. This is the point he makes when he says "Typically, one's surname (last name) is a giveaway".
> RTI responses will only tell you the number of candidates who were hired through caste-based reservation.
No, the RTI responses that he has linked is for the "breakdown of faculty members in the respective category of reservation..." (see the linked pdf for IITD, for example), not if they were hired through caste-based reservation. The category of reservation being information that every Indian citizen is asked to provide in government forms.
This will be my last comment in this chain since this is going nowhere. Patronymics and matronymics are used by some south Indians, who are at the most 20% of the population. The simple point made in the OP is essentially that caste-based surnames are typical in India, and
which you have not refuted.
No, you don't have to fill your caste but you are typically expected to tick one of the SC/ST/OBC/General boxes (these being the categories of reservation), and then provide a proof if required. The sentence you quote refers to this, and not on how they were hired, which is what you are saying. RTI queries can absolutely answer things of this kind, please just read the question the OP asks in the linked pdfs.
You might be right (I have no idea), but saying that it is only true 80%+ of the time doesn't make the word "typically" become a "hilariously wrong" claim.
> looking at IITM's CS faculty listing [2], I see at least 20+ faculty without caste-based surnames. How exactly did the author find their castes?
If I count correctly, there are 47 faculty members there. So that leaves potentially 20+ faculty members with caste based surnames. How many can you identify? Are any of them lower castes?
If caste isn't an issue, why is the only response "well, of course you can't tell caste, so there can't be discrimination", not "actually, they are plenty of lower caste people in faculty positions, and they're totally open about it, because it's not a big deal?"
I mean, thanks. This is poster child for the fact that not only is caste discrimination real, but it is full of entrenched people engaging in denial and propaganda to the level of Confederate "black people benefit from being slaves". Like, if anyone needed evidence to support OPs claim, your post is it.
Lol. EFF are now a bunch of virtue signalling hacks pretending to care about Internet free speech. They outed themselves as total hypocrites when they joined the "RMS is an <X>ist" bandwagon and removed Gilmore from their board.
> They outed themselves as total hypocrites when they joined the "RMS is an <X>ist" bandwagon
Are you suggesting that, because of his work writing and promoting open source software, that EFF should never be allowed to criticize RMS? Is that what makes them "total hypocrites"?
No, the EFF is allowed to criticize RMS as much as they want. Criticizing RMS doesn't make them hypocritical. However, linking [1] and spreading slanderous lies (I'm talking about Selam G.'s hitpieces [2] from 2019) isn't very fitting for an organization that claims to defend Internet free speech.
RMS never defended Epstein -- not even once. His only crime was being a pedantic aspie. If the EFF considers that to be good enough reason to cancel him, then yes, I think that EFF are total hypocrites. FWIW, EFF's official blog post only linked Selam G.'s hitpiece that has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere [3].
If you actually read the article by Selam G., you'll immediately see that this is false.
"When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him."
This is clearly a case of sexual coercion. If, due to autism, RMS was totally unable to avoid sexually harassing women he had power over, then clearly he should never have had a position of power in FSF or anywhere else.
"Many, many years ago, women in the AI and CS labs met to deal with the problematic atmosphere for women in the labs. We met as a group, discussed the issues, complied examples, presented them to the labs, then wrote a report. In the early 80’s, it was a pretty big deal but it would seem it did not have lasting effects."
RMS clearly harmed many women over many years. It's telling that people like you never acknowledge the accounts of women who have specific, individual complaints against him. Even the Stallman Support page you link to has a bunch of pedantic corrections over whether RMS "really" defended Epstein, in addition to generic articles about cancel culture that say nothing about RMS harassing women grad students at MIT.
EFF was correct in criticizing RMS. He shouldn't have been on the board of FSF or any other organization.
Selam G. was paraphrasing an anecdotal #metoo comment by an anonymous source that was backed up by zero evidence. If that's good enough evidence for EFF to call for someone's head, then they're worse than hypocrites. And the law schools that gave degrees to their lawyers should consider rescinding them, since they clearly don't seem to know a thing about law.
"Alumni from as far back as the 1980’s reached out to me and told horrifying stories" -- so the firsthand accounts of sexual harassment by RMS are not anonymous, as they are known to the person writing the article.
Yes, of course, we (particularly the EFF) must take Selam G.'s claims seriously, even when there isn't an ounce of evidence to back them up.
See, it's fine to dislike RMS (for whatever reason). But the question was whether the EFF -- an organization that claims to support free speech on the Internet -- should've joined the dogpile on RMS based on ludicrous claims written by an outrage addict.
> You actually want to drop ballast as you descend, to make up for the added seawater.
The ballast is dropped during the ascension, not the descent. This makes the ascension-step impossible to fail and requires no electricity [1]. Incidentally, I first came to know about the bathyscaphe while reading Peter Watts's Rifters trilogy (which is an amazing hard SF series set in the deep sea).
Ballast is dropped during both descent and assent. The linked document explains how the gasoline used for buoyancy is significantly compressible and becomes denser as the bathyscaphe descends. If no ballast was dropped during descent the rate of descent would continue to increase due to the feedback mechanism of increased pressure, leading to increased compression, leading to increased density.
FWIW you don’t need a bathyscape to experiment with this. When Scuba diving in temperate locations (like Tobermory, Ontario), people with 7mm wet suits and extra vests or jackets experience this as they descend: The neoprene compresses, and if you don’t add small amounts of buoyancy to your BCD, you’ll start to free-fall.
You can experienced this in pools! 12ft of water adds an extra 1/3 atmosphere of pressure, compressing the gas in your body by 25%. (That's why your ears pop!)
By varying the amount of air in your lungs, you can choose which depth to be neutrally buoyant at. Weirdly fun!
It's Tobermory. Absolutely beautiful area, so many birds. I went camping there several times. It's also pretty much the end of the world, the only way through is by ferry.
The diving in Five Fathoms Marine Park is exquisite, and it’s a short drive from Lion’s Head, which has absolutely stellar rock climbing.[1] We’ve taken the kids on the ferry to Manitoulin Island[2], and from there driven over to Sudbury.
I recommend trying that ferry at least once, it was a lovely experience.
The document says otherwise. As gasoline is slightly compressible, seawater is admitted in the float during the dive, increasing negative buoyancy, and increasing the rate of descent. So, to control the rate of decent, some ballast is released during diving too.
The first video lecture [1] is titled "Introduction to Linux", yet, ironically, the instructor conducts the entire lecture using macOS. I guess the main purpose of this course is to teach uninitiated kids a thing or two about the *nix CLI, but for some reason the instructor has decided to call it the "Linux CLI". He also teaches some terrible shell scripting practices [2] such as parsing the output of ls [3] and not quoting variables.
I believe ComputerGuru was thinking of cyber weapons as discussed in the article. There's very little need to think too hard for examples of the US selling conventional weapons to despotic regimes; and you certainly don't need to go back to the Iran Contra to find the US doing so.
In any case ComputerGuru is rightly distinguishing between stolen leaked weapons versus deliberately selling them. He's not saying that that it hasn't happened, merely that he chosen example was trash.
I'm not sure I understand the point of this article as Israel isn't even a major arms exporter [1]. There are several major countries that profit off of wars -- America, France, the UK, etc., all are prominent weapons exporters. And all these countries export to "problematic" buyers.
Not everything has to have some black and white "point". Some stories are just facts that are part of a larger picture. You are pointing out that there are more details in this domain than are in the article, but the specific context you've added seems largely irrelevant. Drawing an arbitrary comparison like you've done here hardly alters the validity of the facts in the article. Israel's geopolitical standing is an entity worthy of study, I think that is clear. How can you say this article has "no point"? I think your displaying some kind of bias to arrive at such a strange reductive statement.
I'm not questioning the validity of the article and I'm not defending Israel. But it's basic knowledge that (i) several first-world countries make a nice profit off of wars in the third world and (ii) almost all of these countries are liberal Western (or West-aligned) democracies. This is the reason why I don't understand why the author has singled out Israel here. Put it another way, could you name an arms exporter, which could be a company, country, etc., that doesn't sell to despotic regimes?
You're implying the author and associated publisher have some kind of agenda against Israel, if that's the argument you're making, then you need to present a little bit more proof. I don't see anything in the article that says "unlike other western countries… Israel does X, Y, AND Z bad things"
>There are several major countries that profit off of wars -- America, France, the UK, etc., all are prominent weapons exporters. And all these countries export to "problematic" buyers.
Okay? And that somehow makes Israel exempt here, or something? Two wrongs make a right? We can't discuss Israel without making sure more "major" countries fix themselves first?
Help me out here, I'm not sure I see where you're going with this.
It's premature optimization. Why bother with Israel when the main English reading audience likely has much more direct influence over the biggest war profiteer - america.
Blaming Israel, is either anti-Semitism, that's it's only with criticism when people representing Jews do it, or colonialism, that it's only bad when it's not western powers doing it.
It's only a story because it's Israel, and Israel is seen as lesser than France or the USA
Israeli MICs primarily make money off IP licensing, not exports.
Companies like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, Elta, etc will generate the core IP and then sell the IP and co-manufacture with MICs in countries like South Korea, Taiwan, France, USA, Italy, and India.
This is the same business model that France used with Israel in the 70s, and also acts as a way for Israel to not piss off Western allies and generate revenue because a first world country with 9 million citizens can only manufacture so much.
Information warfare is both more affordable, more able to be used covertly, and often more effective.
The tools totalitarian & authoritarian systems - in particular - use to keep themselves in power are often information tools. Their challenge is to suppress the population. The first challenge there-in is identifying who your potential enemies are. No bomb will tell you that. Hacking your citizens phones will tell you that. Israel's special craft here is thus immensely alluring to thr worst of the worst.
They might not be "major" but they are likely the world's leader in making electronic surveillance of protestors and reporters possible by despotic regimes.
It’s morally acceptable, and correct, to criticize both. Does this make sense? Feels strange asking this, because it is so obviously apparent, but I feel the need to given your response.
I’m not sure where I said you shouldn’t criticize both.
What I’m saying is that international “morales” are extremely relative. One day Israel is criticized for bombing houses in Gaza by the US, another day the US bombs weddings in Afghanistan largely unnoticed.
Are they both bad? sure. Is it fair? irrelevant.
However, if you are making an argument for example that asymmetric warfare requires attacking targets in dense civilian population and sometimes mistakes happen, then it is absolutely essential to compare to other countries.
And people that shout “whataboutism” on knee jerk are not helping anyone
Happy to see this reach it's natural conclusion, in terms of subscribing to moral relativism. I think if this is one's worldview, it's hard to not use a "whataboutism" style of argument whenever questions of morals or ethics arise. Without a strong internal grounding, it's challenging not to resort to comparisons, I agree with you.
it seems that when you’re arguing with someone you assume a lot of things about your counterpart
i didn’t subscribe to moral relativism. I didn’t say that there is no moral truth, I said in international politics morality is often used cynically to project power.
However, let’s disengage from this argument as I can sense aggressiveness and insincerity in your style of discussion
Notice how I said "one", not "you"? Also at the end of the post, when I said:
> I agree with you
where that is "you", and not "one"?
I find it fascinating that you are doing exactly what you accuse me of, where you are assuming things that are not true. This generally happens (in my experience) where people are unable to disassociate their opinions from their "self", and here I am making a direct inference that this applies to you as well.
Happy to continue the discussion, although it seems you might be unable to split emotions from logic.
