Internet broke the monopoly over distribution for news organisations. What happens when AI takes over decision making for news consumers?

Great day for journalism in India: three news websites blocked on meta platforms, social media take down time brought down to three hours, a journalist sentenced for a year.

#Sunday

#SOTD peppers, amber, musk, vanilla and rose: amber rose by ajmal

First day of winter here in New Delhi and I am falling in love with Red Tobacco all over again.

Colossal desk
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...Ajmal on the fennel and pepper and S Md. Ayub Md Yaqub on the oakmoss and Onycha Shells.

What all of them share is a backbone of warm Indian spices.

If you do get a chance to test Shamama, do it. It's best used in the winters where it warms your senses against the cold outdoors.

Nemat was followed by Perfumery, Khatri, Ajmal and finally the pioneers, S Md. Ayub Md. Yaqub. Perfumery was heavy on saffron, Khatri on Onycha Shells (also known as Nakh and yes, we distill sea shells for perfumery in India),...

...began my journey of making sense of Shamama. There's little I could find online on perfume fora such as fragrantica, basenotes, etc.. Much of the knowledge of Indian perfumery is oral and undocumented. My only way around was to test Shamamas from different houses.

Both the perfumes are at the opposite ends of the olfactory experience. I preferred the musky profile of Nemat's over the sweet-spicy Shamama from Gulab Singh Johrimal. But it got me curious. What is Shamama, if everyone has a different interpretation? And thus...

Conclusion 2: The individual must curate a pool of experts, and hope such experts keep posting in the face of harassment, mockery, and death threats, in addition to their actual work. That's not sustainable. And systems where actual facts are paywalled, but disinformation is free, make things worse.

My first brush with Shamama was three years ago from the house of Gulab Singh Johrimal. A sweet Shamama that reminded me of Indian sweets, specially those covered in edible silver. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I followed up by picking up Nemat Enterprises' Shamama, which was heavy on ambrette.

You see, because it is a natural perfume made of spices, it is used in the flavouring, the food and both the continental and oriental perfume industry. Think of smoking and chewing tobacco, paan, private blends of the French perfume houses or the expensive oud mukhallats and bakhoors.

The blend was pioneered by the house of S. Md. Ayub Md. Yaqub some 200-years ago. Today, depending on the house, the house and the use, it can be sweet-spicy, musky-spicy, green-spicy or just plain spicy, each catering to a different audience and industry.

What each blend shares in common is a dark backbone of warm Indian spices such as cardamom, mace, nutmeg, star anise, etc..

Because every perfumer has their own house blend of Shamama, often multiple interpretations depending on the quality of the blend and the number of ingredients used, it takes a while to make sense of the perfume.

Super Malik Shamama by S. Md Ayub Md Yaqub, Mumbai, Attar Shamama by Khatri Attar Wale, Varanasi Shamamtulamber Mumtaz by Ajmal, Mumbai Shamama Kashmiri by Gulab Singh Johrimal, Delhi Attar Shamama by Nemat Enterprises, Mumbai

Making sense of Shamama: Shamama or Shamamtulamber is a natural, traditional Indian winter perfume. It is a blend of Indian spices. Every perfumery house has their own blends, where they vary the proportions of spices and add exotic natural ingredients such as tobacco, oud, oakmoss etc..

TIL Shamama is a food product sold as a cosmetic

The Press Council of India has invited individual journalists, journalist unions for a public hearing on retrenchment of journalists during the COVID-19 pandemic on 28 October from 11-05pm that is being facilitated by the Press Club of India

forms.gle/LQZd8m2w7jex...

How does one live in a world with such unspeakable evil brought so close by the misfortune of proximity or the vast reach of information technology?

I don't know; I can only suggest:

+ be gentle with yourself and don't expect to be OK
+ limit your media consumption
+ reach out to those around you

Hello world!