Pepper by Aketi Gayatri

 Pepper has been an integral part of any South Indian cuisine from pepper chicken with coconut milk to Rasam with hot Rice is what we all crave. I think every south Indian mom is obsessed with pepper and the reason is clear it always elevates the dish , specially my mum is very obsessed with pepper if she wants to ever chose between me and pepper I think she will definitely choose pepper over me. So my mum takes over my grandfathers habits of being curious , reading lots of books and all so our most of the bed time stories are based on history from Aurangzeb to freedom stories she covered every thing and one of her most common story was “The Tale of Pepper”. Pepper was the most looked spice in ancient Rome, and it could only be found in one place: southern India. The word 'pepper' is originated from the Sanskrit pippal. In ancient Rome, both black and white pepper were valued, but only the more expensive white variety was taxed. Because black pepper was regarded as such a necessary commodity, used by even the poorest citizens, it was exempt from all customs duties.Though Europeans consumed a lot of pepper, they had little knowledge of how it was grown. 

Pepper captivated the world's imagination from ancient Egypt to the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the most traded spice, with India largely controlling production. However, for the most part, it was the food of the wealthy - the kings and emperors - almost as valuable as gold! As previously stated, it was also legal tender at the time. This literally means that you can walk into a market and pay for goods with pepper corns. One could even use their pepper assets as collateral for loans from European banks, including the Medicis. When the Greek merchant Hippalus 'discovers' that the monsoons that nourish India's pepper vines reverse direction in the middle of the year, a fact the Arabs have known and kept secret for centuries, the Romans take advantage of these trade winds. They chart a direct route from Red Sea Fig.1. Discovery of pepper from Rome ports to Muziris in central Kerala, the aromatic source of pepper and other southern Indian spices listed by Apicius as essential ingredients as early as the fourth century BC. Then Europe will enter the Dark Ages (500 to 1100 AD) In the first century BC, the Roman Empire established a powerful trading centre in Alexandria, Egypt. 

Pepper was used in 81% of Roman recipes at the time.After the fall of the Rome, pepper trade was literally stoped but after a decade or so Europe discovered the existence of pepper again and reformed the trade. so, you know one’s existence will always shine , may take some time but people will discover you.Will complete the whole blog with a thought , If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything. -Gregory Maguir

Data by

 The general belief is that Data is the new oil, however, it would be more accurate to say that processing speed is the next money maker. For the fact that the possession of data hardly does anything for the user if they are not able to process the same. In the Russian empire, a famous story of the misinterpretation of data exists where during the Spanish flu, the doctors were killed as the people interpreted that the position where more doctors exist is where more citizens of the empire were losing their lives. This flawed and misinformed interpretation of information available to them shows how detrimental even a small amount of information in the hands of people can lead to making or breaking choices being made. Information is as valuable as the means that are used to store it. 

When the question of information storage came into picture, the value in the spreading of ideas, events and philosophies was recognised due to which science, art, technology and ideas diffused to the rest of the world and was passed down to the successive leaders of any given region.Let’s come further in time, 1890 for instance. The United States had adopted the rebuilding policy after their civil war which had been in effect for almost two decades since Grant. An important tool that is periodically used by the United States executive was more important than ever at that point in time. The census would play a huge role in determining if the policies adopted by President Grant were beneficial to the former Confederacy and the former Slaves. But to process this information, they needed cutting edge tools as the US census prior to 1890 was flawed with data leakages and misinterpretations. This could not be afforded in 1890 due to them being detrimental for domestic executive and economic policy. 

Now, to apply the data into comprehensive policy, it became necessary for strategists to infer from small amounts of data. This became the cornerstone of the field of statistics where methods were devised where one could apply measurements from mathematics to crunch data for the purpose of deriving understanding of data. The story would be that with the measures of data categorised into variables, with a given setof values of observations at a given point in space for all of the variables combined, the projection of inference of information onto another vector field would gather information that can be translated into policy.The entire purpose of data inference from data is to create knowledge when there is less data available to the user.Enhancing the process of inferential statistics was the hallmark of the 20th century mathematics and statistics where we are able to, now with a click of a button, gather tools to read into data in the form of regressions and modelling ofdata.The above graph is a visualisation of what people close to smriti prefer given their interests. Hence, when shewishes to gift commodities to them, she would be able to refer to the above chart to increase the happiness of the people in her life.

Gold by Raunaq Sen Gupta

From the very beginning, something about gold attracted civilizations all over the world without those civilizations ever having made contact with each other. Not only does gold`s natural beauty make it so mysteriously precious, but it may also be the most useful metal in the world. Gold is also one of the few commodities that can also be thought of as a currency or monetary asset. Many currencies around the world used to be backed by gold until recently and, although the gold standard is long since abandoned, gold is still very effectively used as a safe haven asset in times of economic turmoil to preserve wealth.

The first person or civilization to discover gold is the Ancient Egyptians. They mined gold in Nubia around 2450 BC. An Egyptian alchemist named Zosimos was the first to find pure gold (24 centuries before Columbus reached the Americas). The discovery of gold is attributed to the ancient Egyptians, who made jewelry out of gold. It was at a time when other metals were scarce and valuable. 

Historians agree that the civilization of Ancient Egypt was at its prime and had almost everything under control except when it came to maintaining permanent sources of weight. There was an era when even gold was relatively heavier for them than stone.

The history of gold is long connected with money, but gold relinquished this role in developed economies after the outbreak of the Second World War. At the end of the war, the Bretton Woods monetary system, a regime of fixed exchange rates, was created. This system broke down in 1971 when the US unilaterally ended its gold standard, which set the convertibility of gold and the dollar to US$35 per ounce. References to the Gold Standard often refer to two key periods in history: that of the Classical Gold Standard and that of the post Bretton Woods gold-pegged exchange rate system.

Domestic currencies were freely convertible into gold at the fixed price and there was no restriction on the import or export of gold. The system drawn up fixed the dollar to gold at the existing parity of US$35 per ounce, while all other currencies had fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates to the dollar. .

 

Economics Of Gold  - Indian Perspective

According to some estimates, India has a stock of about 23,000-24,000 tonnes of gold which is mostly held by households. In value terms, based on the 2015 average price, it was worth $800 billion.

To put this into context, tech giant Apple's market capitalisation at the same time was around $600 billion, and two of India's largest listed companies, Reliance Industries and Tata Consultancy Services, were quoted at around $100 billion each. The role and the impact of gold are reflected by the gems and jewellery industry which contributes around 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and 15.71 percent to India's total merchandise exports. The gems and jewellery sector in India is one of the largest in the world and contributes to about 29 percent of the global consumption. In FY 2014-15, the sector constituted 13.30 percent of the country's total merchandise exports. 

This insatiable hunger for gold has resulted in India’s gold imports constituting a massive 12.50% of its total imports in 2012-13, which is a whopping $61,409 million dollars. In 2012, the total gold production in the world stood at 4,130 tonnes, and India imported 26.12% of that (1,079 tonnes) – one fourth of the world’s total gold production.

A country’s exports must be more than its imports to maintain a favourable balance and grow the per-capita income of the country. As of December 2012, we have a current account deficit of 6.7% (experts, analysts and the RBI says that we can sustain only with a maximum consistent deficit of up to 2.5%). To counter this, the RBI has implemented an 80:20 system, wherein 80% of the imports would be used to satisfy domestic demand and 20% would have to be re-exported after value additions, by turning gold bricks into jewellery.

In 2011-12, around 56% of all the gold that was being imported came through banks who sold it to the public in the form of coins. In 2013, the Finance Ministry banned banks from selling gold coins in an effort to control the expanding current account deficit (CAD).

Gold is used in India as a form of tackling inflation, and holding an item with an intrinsic value because of its rarity is a good way to counter the fluctuations in fiat currency. As a traditional form of savings in India, gold instils a feeling of comfort and security in a person’s wealth. This has been termed the “exposure effect” by psychologists.

While holding financial gold and gold in the form of ETFs and E-gold is a prudent investment, holding physical gold in the form of a real asset is preferred for the simple reason that it can be held, felt and kept safe in a box. This experience of physically owning gold is important to Indians, and is another reason why we like gold so much – it’s safer in terms of real value than the Rupee, and appreciates over time. 

Gold - WTI Crude Ratio

 The Gold - Oil Ratio is a key indicator that indicates the health of global economy.  

Since both gold and oil are denominated in Dollars, they are strongly linked .i.e as US dollar rises, commodities priced in USD falls and vice versa. Simply speaking USD and commodity prices are inversely related. Also, gold and oil is linked by inflation. Energy prices constitute a substantial portion of CPI and thus when crude rises, it affects inflation. Since gold is seen as a inflation hedging asset, it follows higher oil prices i.e as inflation rises, due to higher crude prices, the gold price also moves in the same direction as oil, so as to beat inflation. This happens as investors invest in gold, in order to hedge their portfolio against gold. 

 

The above diagram represents the  Gold – WTI Crude Ratio. For most of history, this ratio has been between 10 and 30. Anything beyond 10-30 indicates that gold is more expensive relative to oil.

The ratio spiked in 2020, due to the COVID Pandemic. This was due to combination of WTI falling to very low levels due to low demand for oil ( supply greater than demand) and rising gold prices. Economically speaking, if oil prices are coming down and gold prices are rising, it means that the economy is in very poor shape and that a recession might be around the corner.

Gold & Silver Prices

Over the past half century, gold and silver prices have shown a strong positive correlation. Historically, the Gold-Silver correlation has been in the range of .040 to 0.80.

Also, silver has outperformed gold during periods of economic expansion and tended to outperform gold during periods of economic stress.

Gold is primary used for jeweler y and investment purpose. As on 2021, 12% of total gold was used for industrial application, 28% for investments and the rest 60% for jewellery. On the other h2

Silver prices tend to follow Chinese growth with a considerable lag -  Silver prices rose sharply from 2005 to 2007 following a period of strong growth in China. They then fell sharply in 2008 as China’s economy slowed a great deal during the early stages of the U.S. sub-prime crisis.  Starting in 2009 Chinese growth surged as China launched a massive stimulus program that took the growth rate of its industrial sector up to 27% year on year.  Silver prices soared in the wake of this extraordinary Chinese boom, eventually rising towards $50 per ounce in 2011.  By this time, however, China’s economy had begun to slow sharply and silver prices fell with it.  Silver’s extraordinary rebound versus gold in 2020 and 2021 may relate to the rebound in growth that China experienced in late 2020 and early 2021 as they were the first nation to emerge from pandemic lockdowns.  However, China’s growth has slowed considerably this year and that might explain why silver has underperformed gold in recent months .   

Pepper: Spiced up its way across the world -Hitaishi Shivaram

It was the early monsoon of June 2008, and it wouldn’t stop raining even for a second. I walk into the house dragging my half-drenched frock which got wet while I was playing in the rain ignoring my parent's orders to not get wet outside. A couple of minutes later I am drowned in non-stop sneezes which kept my nose running, listening to all these sneezes my mom walks in to see what was going on, and the moment she sees me all drenched her eyebrows narrowed -and I know she’s pissed. After another non-stop scoldings for being an ignorant stubborn kid, she dries me up and change into a fresh set of warm clothes. At the same time, she has a pot of soup cooking on the stove to which she adds half a teaspoon of pepper which immediately enhances the soup. A small amount of pepper was what it took to make my cold much better in that instant of time. Cut to college, when I was moving out and had to make my own arrangements for food the first thing she packed for me is the “masala dabba” which is a mandatory Indian household item like a specturm of all the spices, mainly pepper. This pepper was my ultimate savior when even though i did not know all the cooking instructions I never forget to include salt and a good amount of pepper and here you go I had mastered adulting already .

How did the desi spice astonish everyone? Being very intrigued by pepper I decided to trace its path to make out some interesting facts and to my surprise, different sources told different tales. One person said when Christopher Columbus set out in 1492 in pursuit of spices and India he set off from Spain in search of India, but instead, he discovered America. He believed he had discovered India. The natives consumed a hot pepper that tasted spicy and led him to believe it was an Indian spice. So he gave it the name "pepper." Because of this, pepper is what Americans refer to as capsicum. People continue to be perplexed by the word "pepper" because a red hot pepper is actually capsicum, and the pepper that grows on this vine is a red hot black pepper.

There’s also another interesting story told about pepper where the peppercorns were placed inside Ramses the Great's nostrils when he was mummified (1303–1213 BC) and other artifacts related to the historic commerce of pepper from India to Egypt have been discovered.

Then the Romans came by towards the southern part of India and saw the potential of trade and more future endeavors pepper could bring. The Romans had a booming trade in spices, including pepper, by the year 40 AD. Roman sea traders transported pepper, cinnamon, and incense to their important commercial center in Alexandria in July when they sailed from the southwest coast of India on the monsoon winds. The traders rode them back in the fall when the powerful monsoon winds shifted.

Pepper also acted as a medium of exchange where they had to trade it instead of gold. When Rome was invaded in 410 AD, the Romans paid "three thousand pounds of pepper" in addition to gold, silver, silk, and hides to end the Visogoths' siege and stop the city from being pillaged. However, talks quickly stalled out once more, and the siege was restarted. The Eternal City was eventually taken over.

Others started assuming control of the spice trade once Rome's imperial might collapsed. Arabs formed themselves into a powerful force in the commerce of pepper under the unifying influence of Islam and that was how the Arabs took over the international trade of pepper. By the Middle Ages, numerous other seafaring groups had joined the spice trade, proving that Arab traders were not the only ones on the sea. Genoa had developed into a significant commercial hub by the 14th century, with pepper serving as its main export. Over 40% of the value of everything that arrived in Genoa from Alexandria between 1367 and 1371 came from the pepper.

Then it went around Venice, Portugal, and other parts of Europe and was soon a highly dominating spice worldwide. Vietnam is now the world's largest producer of peppers. Between 130,000 and 135,000 tonnes of pepper, valued at over $900,000,000, were shipped in 2013.

As India is among one of the largest pepper producing countries the quality and quantity of yield of the pepper has improved over the year .With better advancement in the agricultural technology of pepper production , the ways to produce good quality pepper has evolved.Over the years we can very evidently look at the upward rising trend of the yield of pepper but it also shows a non negligible drop during the year 2011-2012 which was due to the uneven downpour of rains ,so the expected production was less.

If you’re someone from Karnataka and planning a trip to Coorg don’t forget to stop by some pepper plantation where they also walk you through the whole process of how the green unripe berries are plucked from the tree, boiled in water, and then later sundried till it turns black and sent around. Pepper has always been close by us binding us with the homely of how we grew up with it and it is always present on the table even at the fanciest restaurants you go to 

The Devil Beans by S S Sanjeevi

 Ever wonder how this fast-paced world is always fast paced. It’s a little magical ingredient in our drinks called caffeine. 

Let’s trace back how this tiny drug ended up in our mugs. 

The real legend of coffee is difficult to pin down. Out of the three legends, the story which seemed more likely is the story of Kaldi – An Ethiopian Shepherd. 

Kaldi, went out to look for some of his missing goats, only to find them energetically dancing and eating the berries of a little tree he had never seen before. Wondering what was causing these reactions in the goats, he decided to sample the berries himself, feeling a surge of vigor come over him shortly after eating the berries. After this experience, he was resolved to reveal the world his new big discovery.

And so, Kaldi took the berries to a nearby monastery, but the monks disapproved of the unique fruit, fearing that its effects would be associated with the devil. The monks then threw the berries into the fire, creating an incredible smell that drew neighboring people to check what was causing the fragrance.

The burning fragrance of coffee overwhelmed the monks. Surely something that smells this good cannot be from hell, right? The monks removed the roasted beans from the fire. They ground the beans and put it in water, making the cup of coffee in the world.

This mythology may sound like a fairy tale and may not be true, but it is an intriguing approach to the beginnings of this beverage and there should be some truth to it- As they say “There is no smoke without fire” 

Coffee has been planted, imported, exported and stolen to have its reach around the world. 

The Arabian Peninsula was the birthplace of coffee cultivation and trading. Coffee was grown in Yemeni Arabia by the 15th century, and by the 16th century, it was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Coffee was consumed not just in homes, but also at the many public coffee houses, known as qahveh khaneh, that began to sprout in cities throughout the Near East. People frequented coffee houses for all kinds of social activities, and their popularity was unparalleled. With thousands of pilgrims from all over the world visiting the holy city of Mecca each year, word of this "wine of Araby" spread.

European visitors to the Near East returned with tales of an unique dark black liquor. Coffee had found its way to Europe by the 17th century and was becoming popular throughout the continent. 

Some viewed this new beverage with distrust or terror, dubbing it the "bitter invention of Satan." When coffee arrived in Venice in 1615, the local clergy denounced it. The argument was so heated that Pope Clement VIII was summoned. He decided to taste the beverage before making a decision, and he found it so delicious that he gave it papal permission.

Despite the controversy, coffee shops were soon becoming hubs of social activity and communication in major cities across the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, and Holland.

Coffee was imported to New Amsterdam, later renamed New York by the British, in the mid-1600s.

Though coffee establishments sprouted up quickly, tea remained the preferred beverage in the New World until 1773, when colonists revolted over King George III's hefty tax on tea. The Boston Tea Party revolution would forever transform the American drinking preference to coffee. 

The Mayor of Amsterdam presented King Louis XIV of France with a seedling coffee plant in 1714. It was ordered by the King to be planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. Gabriel de Clieu, a young naval officer, received a seedling from the King's plant in 1723. Despite a difficult voyage that included horrible weather, a saboteur who attempted to destroy the seedling, and a pirate raid, he was able to carry it safely to Martinique.

The seedling not only thrived once planted, but it is credited with the proliferation of over 18 million coffee trees on the island of Martinique during the next 50 years. Even more astonishing, this seedling was the mother of all coffee trees in the Caribbean, South and Central America. 

The legendary Brazilian coffee owes its existence to Francisco de Mello Palheta, who was dispatched to French Guiana by the monarch to obtain coffee seeds. The French were unwilling to share, but the French Governor's wife, taken with his fine looks, gave him a large bouquet of flowers before he left, burying enough coffee seeds to start what is now a billion-dollar industry.

To be more exact, the revenue generated by coffee as of 2022 is 433 billion dollars. Its funny when we thing about how coffee travelled from dancing goats to a 400 billion dollar commodity. 

From the tree map above we can see the work Fransico de Mello Palheta, has built the nation of Brazil as a coffee power house that it is today.

Purple Bubble by Arockia Rexi F

 Every 90’s kid has a moment of realization. A moment to bring them to reality where technology is not something new but transforms every second, engulfing their whole lives but makes it better somehow. When a 5 yr old asks your phone password to play subway surfer, you realize the enormous change your parents had to undergo to adjust to technology. The moment reality struck me hard on the face was when watching the Ironman sequel for the 100th time. Losing myself in the trance of the marvel universe, busy saving the world brought me to Jarvis.“Shall I call Ms.Potts, Sir?”, is one of the most emotional moments for any marvel fan. He was just an intelligence system in the beginning, but then he became part of the team. He became a part of the team, not in a jiffy. But better every time. He learnt from his mistakes, tried to understand emotions, observed the world around him but after all he is a Machine. If these qualities were imbibed in a homo sapien we would have tagged him as an exemplary human. After all he is still a machine. Jarvis made me realize that the gap between humans and machine is being bridged by the growth of artificial intelligence. Why this fascination? After all he was a machine crafted by human hands but emoted better than his creator. The unmanned drones or self-driving cars which make life-altering decisions, that we humans hesitate to take every single day. Do we escape the hands of consequence with the help of these systems? But it still brings a sense of threat to humane originality. In terms of the hierarchy of creativity, we earthlings, submerged with greed and creativity, managed to stay on top but when a machine can write and create original content in a humane nature, where will we be? A sense of fear engulfs me. I remember laughing at ‘The Origin’ by Dan Brown, where he had a futuristic view about artificial intelligence, which was mocked by many, criticized by few but thought out by some. The book represented humanity in a blue bubble, and machine intelligence in a red bubble. Based on the protagonist's analysis, in the next few years the red bubble consumes the blue. Looking around, our dependencies and faith on technology stand testimony for the loss of our humanness and trust in the beings around us. ‘If man knows the day he dies, he will stop living’ said Poet Kannadhasan, and the systems that predict the future are so ordinary that they do not fascinate us anymore. The choices we will make are predetermined, does it make our choice then? Do we have a choice? Or is it a massive illusion where the puppets never realize who they are? While the questions were twisting and toiling in my miserable little brain, courage made me move onto the last chapter of the book. The blue bubble and red bubble became a purple one. Machines did not dominate humans but became one with them. But how? When we are not capable of holding onto things that make us who we are, how can we live with the ones who depend on us for their lives? The answer was simple, the qualities we are losing are our creativity, trust, risk but some qualities still prevail that put us apart. When sweetie, a computer-animated artificial intelligence child robo, shed light on the growing rate of pedophiles in online platforms around the world, it gave me hope. A hope for a future where the intelligence systems set us free from falling for our doom.

Squid game with AI chacha by Shraddha Joshi

 It is 2050, in Gongjin village of Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. As usual, there were six 10-year-old kids in the playing Red light and Green light at the evening near the lake after their school. There was a new family from Seoul who had moved in. Their child, who was of the same age group, also wanted to join the game.

One of the kids, Baek Hyun, says, "The kids in the Seoul are all used to take help and are looked after by the latest AI models, which all are very fast- working in nanoseconds to switch from one task to another. AI chacha is very old, made back in 2019, and ends up taking a lot of time, 10-30 seconds, to switch himself to the new tasks. It will be so embarrassing if he does not work faster in front of the new kid."

To which, Chan Yeol says, "But our AI chacha has taught us so many things, which I bet these new robots would not know. We have learned so many old games and values that our ancestors followed. It's okay, even if he is old and slow. He will be good once he switches to the new task."

The kids go to AI chacha to ask if he is willing to switch his game algorithm as faster as possible.

So as per their request, the AI chacha switches to the new game, forms two clusters based on their skills and asks them to choose between the Offense and Defense teams. AI chacha then narrates the Squid game's instructions. It emphasizes that no one should cause any harm to any of the players, and one who uses violence will be given a red card and will be eliminated from the game, who will later join AI chacha to watch the game.

And then, the kids start playing. The older people of the village will be watching the kids play by the lake. One of them says, "Thank goodness we did not dismantle our robot and made it guide our grandchildren. They are going on the right track without being spoilt with too much advancement in technology. We will make them learn new things as they grow." All other people agree and enjoy kids' games while reminiscing their old times.