The Mughal empire cannot possibly be characterized as theocratic in any meaningful way for most of its history (of course there are exceptions). They weren’t even devout muslims themselves. They married hindu Rajputs and adopted Indian customs, translated the classical hindu texts into Persian etc.
Who are the outsiders? India has been a melting pot for “outsiders” forever; from the Greeks, Huns, Turks and Persians to Africans (Habshis in the Deccan). Once the dynasty started they considered themselves “Hindustani” and took title reflective of that. Persian was the language of bureaucracy not just in the Mughal but also the hindu Maratha courts.
Painting a period that saw the largest number of hindu temples being built, the largest ever expansion in wealth of the country as some kind of despotic enslavement is historical revisionism. Yes certain islamic rulers were more orthodox than others and attempted to suppress other religions; such is the nature of the Monarchic rule. But in the net, the early modern period in India was undoubtedly a golden age for the region.
While European states invested in building up their human capital over the past 200 years, most of the Indian economy was turned into an extractive colonial state. The lack of investment set the country back by a lot. After Independence, it turned its back sharply on Capitalism (rightfully so, having suffered under extreme capitalism for a couple of hundred years). Unfortunately, that didn’t end up working very well either, since it lacked the strong Institutions and State Power required to succeed that way. Politically, Partition of the Country destroyed existing economic structures and trade routes that had existed for hundreds of years, setting back all countries in the subcontinent even further… and then you also had multiple wars.
Honestly its quite amazing that the subcontinent has remained as stable as it is today; it could very easily have descended into the carnage we see today in Myanmar.
The Islamic period in India was one of the most prosperous periods in India’s history, ever. India was responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP during Mughal Emperor Jahangirs reign. The decline of Indian economy is directly a consequence of British Policies.
Besides the sketches, she has written extensively about Indian rulers at the time (e.g. Ranjit Singh). If you found this interesting, you would love the Empire Podcast... I believe they talk about Emily in the episode on Afghanistan (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/79-invading-afghanista...); Dalrymple's book on the subject (Return of a King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_a_King) is also a masterfully well researched, delightful read.
Normies just don’t understand what all is involved in running and evolving a production system. They think all programmers do is write code. Of course they believe that AI could replace programmers.
My in laws smugly asked me what I would be doing for work since AI would take away all the programming jobs and I said its not gonna happen and they laughed in derision.
Factorio is an amazing piece of work. I wish the devs would open source the codebase and artwork; its just such an amazing piece of engineering that I think the world deserves to own it. They could continue charging for players to play the game and charge some royalty for derivatives… The devs have said that they are tired of working on it, which is fine, but wish their solution would then be to release the code or organize institutions that would continue development outside of wube…
I feel like the game could be taken in many directions. True multiprocess support, parallel execution, multi-level buildings and so much more.
If the issue is distracted drivers, I don’t see how heavier trucks is still not the issue. With lighter vehicles you would likely have a higher chance of surviving.
If he was so good why did Brin have to come out of retirement to steer the ship?
Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.
I moved away from Roku to a Google TV (as recommended by wirecutter). Its quite fast and remembers my history better. However it is Google so who knows how long it lasts.
I don’t like the idea of Roku being owned by anyone, let alone Fox.