Vikram Chandra
@typingvanara
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I make stories and software. Books: Geek Sublime, Sacred Games, Love and Longing in Bombay, Red Earth and Pouring Rain.
Somewhere on a West Coast
Joined September 2018
I'm part of an effort to build a next-generation writing environment. Check out our backstory here.
wired.com
Vikram Chandra, the author of Sacred Games, created Granthika to keep track of complex narratives. It could change the future of storytelling.
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.@yajnadevam Where are you getting these figures about Gaul from? Sources? And how many people constitute a "flood"? What kind of numbers are you talking about? "Gaul faced a terrible genocide. Of a population of 3MM, 1MM were killed and 1MM were enslaved. Romans flooded in and
Q: What happens to language when a numerically inferior group conquers a numerically superior group? A: Nothing
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.@yajnadevam Where are you getting these figures from? Sources? And how many people constitute a "flood"? What numbers are you talking about?
@dxrsam_0 Genocide can certainly accomplish change. Arabic was already a 2nd language in Egypt and the Sahara. Gaul faced a terrible genocide. Of a population of 3MM, 1MM were killed and 1MM were enslaved. Romans flooded in and settled in the vacated areas. Britain of course is the master:
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Sometimes, I truly feel despair for our country We are totally cooked ... caste madness is still out of control. Any outsider reading this will think we are living in medieval times. This is a laughable situation for any civilized country.
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Man, male fragility on full display. Future anthropologists and cultural historians are going to have so much data to work with.
POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success
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Also: Sohrab Modi plays Porus, and is a fine foil to Kapoor's Alexander.
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I like Prithviraj Kapoor's performance in this film more than his famous turn in Mughal-e-Azam. Charm, physicality, and above all a touch of dash which makes the character come alive, even as PK gets across the enormous ego it takes to be Alexander.
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The cinematography in the film is dazzling. Watch for the lighting effects. The battle scenes still stand up after all these decades. It's a bravura piece of filmmaking.
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The cinematography in the film is dazzling. Watch for the lighting effects. The battle scenes still stand up after all these decades. It's a bravado piece of filmmaking.
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And really interesting to think about in political terms. Modi threw his dice in the game with the censors. Made it through, but could have easily gone the other way.
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Sohrab Modi (as always) made the movie on a grand scale. Every rupee spent shows up on the screen. Big spectacle, brilliant performance by Prithviraj Kapoor.
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This scene is right at the beginning of the film. Aristotle shows up in Persia and is given a grand welcome by the assembled troops, but Alexander is off gallivanting with Rukshana (Roxana, the Bactrian/Sogdian princess). So Aristotle delivers his killjoy lecture.
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The film starts in Babylon, after Alexander defeated Darius III at Gaugamela. Released in 1941, and it presents Porus as a hero. The censor board let it through, but the Brits were afraid that Porus was too patriotic. So they kept it out of some theatres near army cantonments.
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The First Indian Muslims We often think of the Muhammad Ghori's 'Islamic invasions' in the 12th century as the start of the Muslim presence in India. Yet by this time, Muslims had already been an integral part of Indian society for almost four hundred years. Indeed India's
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I've never understood the dark theme madness. Light themes work so much better for me.
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why not? language is an instrument, & some utilize its myriad features; others, it seems, do not. if semicolons baffle or offend you, colons must be terrifying: just clap your hands over your eyes & toddle away.
@JoyceCarolOates You really do use a lot of semicolons though
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For the last couple of days, Joyce has been doing the Lord's work...
"wherever he goes, he wants to leave"-- that's because when he gets there, he has brought his own self along; & whatever club he's invited to join has been devalued by the invitation.
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This is more true now than ever: "Apps built on features get wiped out. Apps built into daily life or daily work endure." As it becomes easier (for programmers) to push out features, the design of apps in relation to everyday life is what is going to make the difference.
The wave is real. Foundation models will keep eating features. The window where apps can build moats is shrinking. If youโre building on functionality alone, you get outrun. So the real moat isnโt the feature layer anymore. Itโs the behavior layer. If you can become part of
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This is... just bizarre. To believe that George Axelrod would write a screenplay that put Nero (of all people) next to Albert Schweitzer and Leonard Bernstein takes a lot of effort. And being convinced that Blake Edwards would film that line... is interesting. And--there isn't
Stop imagining Nehru in the fictional setting. As one can see in the script, she mentions Nero and not Nehru (Breakfast at Tiffany's). Nehru's name was mentioned in the novella on which the movie is based but it was changed in the movie. Audrey Hepburn didn't say Nehru.
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TIL...
There's a couple of fun bits of institutional history behind 555 numbers. One is of course to avoid crank calls to real people. Other has to do with letters for 5 on phone dial being J,K,L. Not many names/words start with 2 out of those 3 letters. Why does it matter? /1
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