Sara’s Weekly Update #7
Welcome to my newsletter! I write down my thoughts & opinions on the topics I read/watch in the last week. My topics of interests are wide, please feel free to skip to the topic you like.
Hindenburg report on Adani (#india #business)
Byzantine corporate structures are common in India and other emerging markets. But the report contends that the Adani Group is “engaged in a brazen stock-manipulation and accounting-fraud scheme”. The point of the complexity, Hindenburg alleges, is to manipulate the listed firms’ share prices and to shift money onto their balance-sheets “to maintain the appearance of financial health and solvency” amid high debts and relatively few liquid assets.
India's big corporations does look like a family run businesses rather than professionally run corporations. This has to change. Also, we need this kind of researches coming from within the country itself without any fears. In long run these are healthy to have a good financial systems.
The bigger public portion of the offering, which began on January 27th and was meant to conclude on January 31st, has so far attracted almost no buyers.
This is a bummer for Adanis.
Hindenburg does have a track record of finding the truths. We have to wait and watch, to see whats going to unravel from this. Adani is too big to fail for India.
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/01/27/a-short-seller-rattles-gautam-adanis-empire
BBC Documentary on Modi (#india #politics)
But the government has not stopped at criticizing the documentary. It has also taken steps to make it difficult to view inside India, the latest intervention in the free flow of information by state machinery that carefully tends to the image of India’s most powerful leader in generations.
Not sure why Government has to block these documentaries. India doesn’t have a free press, not many can criticise the central government openly. This is not good again for long run. I haven’t seen the documentary yet, but now I am interested to watch this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/world/asia/india-bbc-modi-documentary.html
MusicLM (#ai #tech)
Google published a paper where music is generated from the text. The generated music is really good, I am sure it can speed up so many sound engineers/musicians' lives. Generative AI is on fire!
https://google-research.github.io/seanet/musiclm/examples/
Anniversary of NASA's Webb telescope (#science #space)
It's already been a year since this telescope started functioning! Nice pictures so far!
Paul Pelosi Attack Body Cam Video (#us #politics)
Body Cam Video of Paul Pelosi’s attack was released and it cleared so many conspiracies around it. It is purely an extremism due to misinformation.
He said he had been motivated by his belief in a right-wing conspiracy theory that Democratic officials had spied on Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and then committed a “record-breaking crime spree” through the four years of the Trump administration “until they were finally able to steal the election.” None of those claims are true.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/27/us/pelosi-attack-body-cam-video
Trump back on Facebook (#us #socialmedia)
Trump's accounts will be reinstated "in the coming weeks" with new guardrails "to deter repeat offenses," Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Facebook's parent company Meta, said on Wednesday.
I am wary of these “new guardrails”, just a few weeks back we saw riots in Brazil similar to the Jan 6 attack.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/1146961818/trump-meta-facebook-instagram-ban-ends
West is sending lot of Tanks to Ukraine
West is united again & stepping up the game here by sending their advanced tanks. I hope this helps Ukrainians to protect their land. Looks like its only getting escalated, not sure when this war will be over.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/world/ukraine-tanks-western-allies-intl-hnk/index.html
This Is Where You Belong (#books)
Read chapter 3 - Buy Local, and below are some of the highlights from this chapters.
If you spent $25 at a local Salt Lake City retailer, $14 of it stayed in Salt Lake. At a big chain, only $3.50 did. Economists call this the “local multiplier effect,” and the most obvious reason for it is that the people making money from an independent business aren’t out-of-state megacorporations but entrepreneurs who live (and spend and pay taxes) in the same communities where they work.
Practicing neighborly economics means you don’t go for what’s cheapest and easiest. You think about which relationships and stores you want to preserve in your town, and you shop there. Sometimes it’s a financial sacrifice, but “you need to sacrifice for where you live,” Jay says. “Sacrifice is going to make your town stronger.”
“If you’re going to spend time with someone, you’ll be more connected to them. If you’re going to spend money in your community, you’ll be more connected to your community.”
Find the one item that you can commit to buying from a locally owned business, then stick with it.
Family Updates (#family)
We went out for brunch to celebrate my 39th birthday last weekend. It was fun, but on Sunday night I started developing throat pain and it became worse on Monday. Did a test on Tuesday & found that its strep throat. I couldn’t even swallow the saliva, it was terrible this week. And later Nila got it, and now Deva & Swapna also got it. Pretty much everyone is on antibiotics now.
Entertainment
Pepsi, Where's My Jet?
It was a fun one to watch how one college kid was challenging Pepsi for their misleading ad.
The Elephant Whisperers
It was a beautiful documentary, I enjoyed it and came to know couple days after watching that it got nominated in Oscar. Glad to see an Indian documentary getting nomination.
Good one this week Saravana, wish all of you to get well soon.