Bloggers

"I really wanted to inspire people to continue to pursue their dreams as I was mine, despite how difficult it was."

"Giving up is what most people do when it gets tough, if you don’t go through hardship, what story will you tell when you succeed."

"My expectations were nothing. I only wanted 50K subscribers, a room to play my games in and make enough money to be able to buy new games and create content."

"No matter how much I try, I’m still unpredictable even for myself. You can even say that I may be slightly impulsive."

"The more insecure you are the more you want to make people laugh."

"Best thing about my work is my ideas can be my reality no matter how weird it is. I'll always be grateful to you guys for this I don't care how weird the idea is, I just want to have fun."

"My alter ego was a major confidence booster in my life and helped shape my digital career in ways more than one. "It felt amazing to be recognised due to the fan appreciation, something like what we see in the superhero films."

"Money is a separate part it is essential part it is important for sure when i first started earning from YouTube for me it was like ok i will not pay any attention to this because I'll get spoiled i will corrupt my mind I'll buy things that i shouldn't i would never focus on money i would just keep on creating, like i don't want to stop that was my mindset."

"I would like to consider myself an artist and I have always courted the idea of being abstract and misinterpreted. Anything that can evoke a sense of emotion and passion is art for me."

"My advice would be to not let anyone tell you or anyone stereotype, tell you that you can't pursue your career and dream in STEM. Really just practice, practice, practice, because that's what will eventually lead to success."

"I was always very inquisitive and I wanted to ask questions about everything and how nature works and all that. But [my mother] came from this background where women were mostly supposed to get married and have a family and not really have a career, and she told me it would be difficult to get married if I pursued a career in math or science. My teachers were unfortunately not much better. They told me that physics was for geniuses, and...that it was not a very feminine career."

"[A fellow female student and I] basically confronted the administration and said that we were wondering why there was so few women that graduated from the program and so people started giving us the statistics and we became sort of known for sort of digging in and researching a little more to help women advance. We created the Association for the Advancement of Women in Physics. That's when (one of the professors I interviewed) told me, "Looking at all these stats I realized that we've never had another student from Mexico. If you finish the program you'd become the first one.""

"Physicists tend to train very well to solve problems and to think on your feet. To not be intimidated by the problem."

"Without Europe as its major base, America will be weakened. There are many political contradictions even now – in the last elections, even the Congress was taken by force. The next elections, I think, will be no less dangerous and bloody. In America, every generation since the 1970s has been living worse than the previous one - a lot of beggars, a lot of weapons, a lot of Mexicans and blacks, and crime. All this is very explosive. Americans spend money not on their social programs, but in order to feed all sorts of Navalny around the world. All this is not “good”."

"Our task, taking advantage of the situation, is to finish off England - finally and irrevocably, so that such a state will never again exist on Earth. Because 500 years, while it exists, spoils Russia. Even America - it is not important for her to always fight with Russia. It is they who are simply babbled on by English political science, British secret services, English traditions, they conduct English, in fact, politics, copy it. If England is destroyed, peace will come in Eurasia, because the policy of England throughout its history is to quarrel everyone with everyone, otherwise they would not have survived. A small island that no one wants, on which nothing grows, there are no minerals, and so on, ruled half the world and now continues to rule, even America."

"Everything will be rosy, wonderful ... We will defeat everyone. But not at once. Now we have, roughly speaking, 1943. The 45th will be in ten years - it's just that the war is stretched out in time, not like with Nazi Germany, but stretched out over a long term. May 9 will be in ten years - victory over the whole world and over the last evil."

"No New York, no Washington will die for the Baltics in the same way, or be ready to undergo nuclear attacks. In the same way, the Americans will surrender it, they will forget the fifth article, the so-called that they should start a war together there all at once ... Yeah, they fled - all Americans will run straight to the war, they will say - yes, bomb us, Russians, with atomic weapons for the Baltics. Where is she, by the way? Therefore, when they surrender it, and we go back to our borders, all the other European countries will say: wait, why did we pay some money here, arm ourselves, why did we need all this at all? NATO will fall apart, the management of the Americans in Europe will fall apart. Europe will be liberated, as they say."

"America will also weaken. Everyone will see that this is a “paper tiger”, that you can do this with him. China is likely to take Taiwan. I think even this year. They will now prepare, see how everything is done. Accordingly, Russia and China will put forward all kinds of ultimatums to America - that, guys, you are no longer the same, so let's redo everything. Subsequently, when we completely pacify Ukraine, and it will be, all the "Nazis" will change their shoes. Do you remember, 20 years ago they said that Chechnya will never forget you, will never forgive you... Guys, look, now the Chechens are the best friends, loyal and so on. Because the Chechens understood, they were explained that they were used as "sixes" by the Anglo-Saxons in the fight against Russia. This is a small nation, each person is worth its weight in gold, and they killed their own children for American and British interests. They realized they didn't need it. Russia has never threatened them with anything. And from American and British politics, they only died in wars all the time. Ukrainians will understand the same thing when they are shown what atrocities the Nazis did... We will show all of this to Europe - how the Anglo-Saxons deceived Europe."

"Europe will be free, albeit in a very shabby state, and will hate America and adore Russia. Russia will extend a helping hand to her and will help her, including in the fight against all kinds of Muslim terrorists who breed there. We will help them establish constitutional order, we will bring governments loyal to ourselves to power, and we will dominate this entire Europe. Not just like over Eastern Europe, as it was during the Soviet Union, but already over the whole."

"They say return the planes to us. You broke the contract, - our pilots say, - you take these planes. How to pick them up? Where to get these 500 pilot brigades? And at the same time, that they themselves closed the sky. They broke the contract, the planes automatically become foreign, and our skies are also closed to foreign ones. That is, it is generally not clear how to pick them up. And the funny thing is that these aircraft are not needed by leasing companies. They say: why do we need 500 aircraft? Where are we going to put them? And then the question arises about the bankruptcy of all these companies. And given that leasing companies, and all sorts of aviation, and others, are insured in the English "Lloyd" - in general, everything converges there with all insurers, - then the bankruptcy of Lloyd, as the largest, threatens. And banks and many investors had his shares - this is a huge chain ..."

"Generally speaking, what is the modern Ukrainian state? To put it crudely, it is a prostitute who has got infected with AIDS and wants to infect everyone else – to spread the infection so that more people die."

"Europe will suffer very much – it will shrink economically. They already have debts over 100% of GDP. They will borrow more - I don’t know, though, who will give them. They will lose markets forever. It is impossible to say in two years - okay, we are coming back to you. This war, of course, is between the United States and Russia, but it is also a war between the United States and Europe, because there will be a flight of capital to America from Europe, a flight of brains and so on. America will prolong its existence by threatening Europe. Naturally, the niche of Europe will be taken by China, the same Russia and other so-called developing countries. That is, there will be a gigantic redistribution of the world."

"The war is being waged with America, which has captured the historical territory of Russia - Ukraine. Roughly speaking, if compared with 1941, Hitler is modern America, the United States did not reach Moscow, but Donetsk, and used the population of Ukraine. The resources of all of Europe, as under Hitler, work, so to speak, for the Reich. All this is completely united - they all help informationally, economically thanks to sanctions, and now by military means. Their military theme is the weakest. They are not ready to suffer losses - they are ready to throw only the same Slavs, that is, Ukrainians, whom they zombified, into the slaughter. This is all they could do from a military point of view."

"There are countries that receive 20% of GDP only from tourism. Clearly, not only Russian. But I don’t think that everyone will rush to Europe now and there will be an invasion of tourists. Given the global crisis, people have little money, so no one will rush anywhere. Everyone will suffer and die from tourism."

"I think huge riots in Europe will start by next winter, when they start cutting all these social programs. In general, in the next few years there will be a reformatting - the overthrow of governments, revolutions, chaos and anarchy. Local Muslims will take advantage of all this, they will probably declare Sharia laws in some cities - there will be territories of disobedience to European authorities, guerrilla warfare, and so on. Chaos will grow. These are the global implications,"

"They closed the sky... Let's conditionally take England. 200 planes flew east from London, two planes flew from Russia. We'll be patient if two planes don't fly. And 200 planes to fly around this huge Russia - a sixth of the Earth, over Afghanistan, Iran ... How much will a ticket cost? Plus, for sure, intermediate landings will need to be done somewhere in Dubai and so on, paying for refueling. Tickets will almost certainly be $10,000. They punished themselves again."

"The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"All that energy and enthusiasm that went into my contribution as a 'social activist' and in the cause of the 'Revolution' paid me well in material terms, however, though I have to say that this wasn't the only or even major reason why I was in the business of championing the 'Revolution' in the first place. I won generous scholarships to go abroad to do a Ph.D. and then two post-doctoral projects to study various aspects of 'marginalised groups' in India. I was invited to attend conferences in over two dozen countries to pontificate on the same subjects. I was appointed as a full professor in an Indian university and was paid handsomely for the articles and books that I continued to churn out, machine-like, all about the 'oppressed'. In addition, I was assigned projects by several NGOs to study the 'oppressed', for which I was well rewarded financially. Although I have to say that I did not quite intend this to begin with, writing and conferencing about the 'oppressed' soon turned into a lucrative source of livelihood for me. I was actually, and quite literally, living off the misery of the 'oppressed', although I did not fully realise it then."

"In the fascist Hindutva imagination, the Indian Muslims are continuously reviled as Pakistani "fifth columnists," as "enemies of the nation" and so on, and their patriotism is said to be suspect. The Muslim as the menacing "other" occupies a central place in Hindutva discourse, and this has been used to legitimize large-scale anti-Muslim violence."

"But all that came with a heavy personal price. The more I identified with the 'Revolution' of the 'oppressed', the more unbearably negative I became as a person."

"There was nothing at all good in Hindu traditions or in America or in Capitalist Modernity, for instance, I convinced myself, for I was hooked onto the 'progressive' and 'radical' rhetoric that 'upper' caste Hindus in general (including most of my own family!) and almost every single American was complicit in perpetuating 'oppression'."

"Negativism, then, was a defining feature of being 'progressive', and that's what I began to revel in. But such negativism was almost entirely one-sided in 'activist' circles, for to be counted as a 'real' 'social activist' it was simply unthinkable that the 'oppressed' could be faulted for almost anything at all. For a 'social activist' to even mention, leave alone condemn, the foibles of the 'oppressed communities'--gender injustice or caste rivalries among Dalits or the obscurantism and misogyny preached in many Muslim madrasas or the terror attacks and killings of innocents by Naxalites and radical Islamists--was tantamount to nothing less than treason. Reports about such matters were generally dismissed as 'malicious ruling-class propaganda' or 'malicious Brahminical brainwashing' or even as an 'understandable reaction of vulnerable minority communities to ruling caste/class/imperialist oppression'. Sometimes, if these were grudgingly admitted to be true, they were sought to be passed over in silence in order to 'respect the sensibilities of the oppressed' or as 'minor contradictions' that ought not to be addressed on the grounds that it would allegedly 'divide' the oppressed, 'sabotage' the struggle against 'oppression' and thereby 'play into the hands of the real opressors'. If you only just pointed out that there were serious faults in the madrasas that needed to be urgently addressed (even for the sake of the Muslim children who studied therein) or that Muslim Personal Law was seriously biased against Muslim women or that many Dalits who had taken advantage of the system of protective discrimination behaved with fellow Dalits almost as shabbily as did their 'upper' caste Hindu 'oppressors', you were sure to be shouted down as a 'government agent' or a 'paid stooge of Hindutva forces', not only by fellow 'progressives' but also by a whole host of voices among the communities whom you had spent years trying to defend and promote. If you even so much as mildly hinted that the conditions of Muslims in India weren't half as bad as sections of the Urdu media wanted people to believe or that the Muslims in this country had much more freedom than in any Muslim-majority state or that untouchability was no longer as rampant as it once was in some parts, you were bound to be accused of betrayal and your motives were rumoured to be entirely suspect. If you acknowledged that probably less Muslims were killed by Hindus in riots in India every year than the number of fellow Muslims slaughtered by their co-religionists in the 'Islamic' Republic of Pakistan or in God-forsaken Afghanistan or that the plight of religious minorities in many Muslim countries, particularly those ruled by theocratic regimes, was much worse than in India or that some Dalit officials were neck-deep in corruption, you were bound to be hollered at for allegedly being a 'traitor' to 'The Cause' of the 'oppressed'. The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"If it can be said, it can be built [using digital technology]."

"I believe that if people had more information, access and easy to understand information, especially as Nigerians, we will make better conscious choices with our health."

"Women are full of themselves, they always say men are frightened or intimidated by their financial success but the issue is COMPATIBILITY."

"People need to understand we are invested in the future and how that future will be."

"You can’t change anything if you don’t have imagination... Don’t let the oppressor dictate the narrative. I think we have the tendency to react to the oppressors’ narrative and really we should be dictating our own narrative. That is something I learned: sometimes we focus on them rather than what we ought to change in ourselves. They are there to distract us from what we need to do."

"Caught between Western imperialism, African patriarchy and religious fascism, the continent’s gay community needs a strong, articulate set of voices. This is a work of African resistance that boldly states: We are here, and we are many!"

"I want to resist the “African homosexual” as an empirical figure waiting to be discovered or, through NGO and international interventions, to be created and saved"

"I didn’t just want to document: I wanted to fully understand what I was documenting. I wanted to be very aware of how you take photographs in certain situations; not to expose people, and to try to present the narrative you want without making it into a spectacle of a human being in suffering. That is why I see myself as a visual scholar. I need to understand the aspects of what I am working with."

"The first thing I would say is to understand there is a history of activism, of the arts, and literature and to keep that in mind and not discard the past and what people did. It is important to learn about the past and build on it. That is quite important to understand. Ageism is still very prominent in how people speak, write, and create their ideas, particularly on social media. I would say the first thing is to look at the past and build on it and respect it, just as I respect what is happening now and what young people are doing."

"Somehow all this responsibility goes for a toss if a Muslim couple were to claim something similar. Recall how allegations of many Muslim men who claimed that they were beaten up and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ were reported without the mainstream media waiting for verification or confirmation from the police. The bulk of such cases, incidentally reported after Modi won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, was found to be baseless or downright fake after the police carried out interrogations and investigations; yet reporting on such lines continued unabated."

"Similarly, in June 2019, in the Hauz Qazi area of Delhi, a Muslim mob had attacked Hindu shops and homes as well as vandalized an old Durga Mandir, after a fight over parking space turned ugly and communal. The mainstream media not only decided to downplay the incident, especially the desecration of the temple part, they entirely ignored the wails of a poor Hindu couple whose son had gone missing for over a day. The parents had filed a police complaint for their missing son and insisted that their son was kidnapped by Muslims. The mother was crying inconsolably while the father threatened to commit suicide if his son was not traced. Despite a police complaint and parents sobbing right in front of them, no mainstream media journalist reported about their claims. The incident came to light via social media, and subsequently some ‘pro Hindu’ publications, including OpIndia, picked it up after talking to the parents and having a look at the FIR. Later, when the son was traced and found to be safe, the mainstream media journalists behaved as if their decision to ignore the incident was justified and ‘responsible’. They claimed that they were waiting for verification and confirmation from the police and did not want to worsen an already volatile environment. So responsible!"

"There are countless such examples—a Muslim model claiming to have been denied a flat in Mumbai due to her religion while in reality many Muslims were already living in that building, a Muslim boy in Delhi claiming some men beat him up and asked him to chant ‘Jai Mata Di’, but later his friends, who were Muslims too, revealed that nothing of that sort ever took place, a man in Mumbai claiming that an auto-rickshaw driver beat him up because he was carrying a leather bag, which the driver suspected to be made of cow skin, but subsequent reports revealed that the story was entirely made up by the man who reportedly admitted that he hated Hindus —and all of these were reported by the media without waiting for any verification or confirmation by the police. But somehow the same journalists decide to wait and become ‘responsible’ if a Hindu man or woman claims to be a victim of communal hatred."

"I remember that during one of the tiffin breaks, while we kids were playing some silly games, a Muslim boy caught hold of a big empty earthen pot, which was used to store drinking water for the students during summers, and raised it with both hands shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He was imitating the Ramayana TV serial scene where Lord Hanuman raises big boulders and throws them at Raavan’s army. Today, forget Muslims, our intellectuals are busy teaching even Bengali Hindus that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not part of their culture and they shouldn’t chant this phrase."

"And this happens on most campuses. Anyone who does not toe the leftist line has to face unbearable hostility. It is almost like being punished for blasphemy, and well, the Left indeed mirrors the Abrahamic faith system in many ways. That is how much strong tribalism is in the leftist circles, who ironically talk about individual freedom and diversity. Soldiers must not go astray. And if they do, not only will they have to be disowned, but also taught a lesson. An exemplary punishment has to be given, so that no one dares to tread that path again. Thus, there are no rewards for anyone who is not a loyal soldier."

"Hence in today’s world, a journalist’s ideas of what will be ‘responsible’ have become even more complex and sometimes borders on the absurd. For example, in January 2018, a lady reporter with The Wire, a far-Left news and opinion website founded by a former editor of The Hindu , was manhandled and heckled in Ahmedabad by a mob of 15–20 men who were supposedly ‘Dalit activists’. Distressed and disturbed by what had happened, the reporter wanted to write about her ordeal, but she was told to ‘let it go’ by the leftist activist and editors. Forget writing about it in any mainstream publication, she was advised not to even file a police complaint against the goons. By advising a woman to forget that she was manhandled and attacked, the leftist editors were acting ‘responsibly’ in their minds, because the evil of Brahminism had to be defeated. Apparently, Brahminism can’t be defeated if Dalit men are identified as aggressors, even in isolated incidents."

"But things were happening on the other side too. OpIndia, a website aimed at providing a counter-narrative to the usual liberal narrative, was launched and started gaining traction in 2015. A Twitter handle named ‘True Indology’ became quite popular around 2016, as it exposed way too many wrong historical information that Hindus were fed by the secular-liberal ecosystem as indisputable facts. This handle got under the liberal skin, so much so that a national newspaper devoted an entire article trying to discredit it. They kept targeting it relentlessly and got the Twitter handle suspended. However, a different account could keep the mantle on the account is active on Facebook too."

"Yes, there were writers like Sita Ram Goel who had written cogently about Islamic imperialism and Muslim separatism back in the 1980s and 90s itself, but I didn’t even know they existed. IIMC had a library, like any other educational institute, but I can hardly recall books by such authors being kept there. There were a couple of books by Arun Shourie though, possibly because Shourie was a known and influential journalist and a cabinet minister at that time. Once, when I picked up a book by Shourie in the IIMC library, a classmate of mine sarcastically congratulated me for picking up a book of an ‘intellectual’."

"In such a scenario, responsible journalism meant airing reports about how the lives of common people were being negatively impacted by the VHP drama. It also meant airing reports that argued that people didn’t care about mandir politics. It would have been the best to air reports about Hindu–Muslim unity to show how the VHP didn’t have any popular support and how they were dividing people... The local reporter had sent a report about some Muslim garland sellers who used to supply garlands to a few temples in Ayodhya. The report claimed that these garland sellers had been doing this job over many generations and they didn’t want their work to suffer. In fact, the handwritten report claimed that the garland sellers didn’t want to stop serving the Hindu temples, as they apparently derived some divine pleasure from it. Do note that what was aired was fabrication and manipulation, but it was a fair thing to do because in our minds we were acting responsibly. I had essentially helped create a fake Hindu–Muslim harmony story, similar to the various stories I had grown up hearing. This is how a particular narrative is kept alive. You don’t even realize that you become an active player in keeping this narrative alive. The story was aired multiple times on the TV channel. It was a script I had written and it had my voice-over too. Again, I received rewards that come naturally when you toe a particular line. That’s how the system itself is designed to perpetuate a particular narrative."