Thuppahi's Blog

Observer in a Black Sea Resort, whose preferred title is  “Malignant Narcissism and the Mental Illness of Power”

Donald Trump has turned the United States into a Nazi state. He is a dictator, the Supreme Leader, who has established his own personal Gestapo, who are authorised to shoot any American at will. It started as his deportation and border security campaign but is now out of control as White people are people killed for no reason—and not White people in the White House—but ordinary White people.

  Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a gentle soul, slaughtered by US Government Ice-Gestapo officers.

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Laleen Jayamanne: “Humour and the Creation of Community: Remembering Ernest MacIntyre’s Contribution to Modern Lankan Theatre & Drama”

“As melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness, so humour is comedy that has lost its bodily weight”. Italo Calvino on ‘Lightness’ (Six Memos for the New Millennium (Harvard UP, 1988).

MAC…. Pix by Dominic Sansoni

With the death of Ernest Thalayasingham MacIntyre or Mac, as he was affectionately known to us, an entire theatrical milieu and the folk who created and nourished Modern Lankan Theatre appear to have almost passed away. I have drawn from Shelagh Goonewardene’s excellent and moving book, This Total Art: Perceptions of Sri Lankan Theatre (Lantana Publishing; Victoria, Australia, 1994), to write this. Also, the rare B&W photographs in it capture the intensity of distant theatrical moments of a long-ago and far-away Ceylon’s multi-ethnic theatrical experiments. But I don’t know if there is a scholarly history, drawing on oral history, critical reviews, of this seminal era (50s and 60s) written by Lankan or other theatre scholars in any of our languages. It is worth remembering that Shelagh was a Burgher who edited her Lankan journalistic reviews and criticism to form part of this book, with new essays on the contribution of Mac to Lankan theatre, written while living here in Australia. It is a labour of love for the country of her birth.  

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Observer at a Black Sea Resort

News from Hong Kong

Today marked the midday launch of the direct high-speed rail connection between Hong Kong West Kowloon and Nanjing South. Utilizing Fuxing CR400AF-AE trainsets—distinguished by their sleek white and red-orange livery—the service offers a quiet, smooth ride. The 1,200-kilometer journey clocks in at roughly 7.5 hours, arriving in Nanjing by evening. Passengers benefit from a streamlined immigration process, with AI-powered gates utilizing facial recognition to clear immigration in as little as seven seconds.

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APOYI !!  ….. 

NOW …. NAME THEM …. without removing ….

their footwear!!

From Left to  Right: Amir Sohail, Russel Arnold, David Gower, Roshan Abesysinhe and Tim Bresnan

Ifham Nizam

Sri Lanka has moved to strengthen the financial backbone of its marine conservation efforts with the establishment of the country’s first CORALL Conservation Trust Fund, a landmark initiative that positions coral reef protection firmly within the framework of sustainable finance and long-term economic value creation.

The Trust Deed establishing the CORALL (Conservation of Reefs for All Lives and Livelihoods) Conservation Trust Fund was signed on December 31, 2025, by Environment Foundation (Guarantee) Limited (EFL) as Settlor together with the inaugural Board of Trustees. The Fund is designed to support the conservation of Pigeon Island National Park, Bar Reef Marine Sanctuary and Kayankerni Marine Sanctuary, along with their associated seascapes—areas that are central not only to marine biodiversity but also to fisheries, tourism and coastal protection.

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Sarath  Withana

Dear Yasantha,

Thank you for your thought-provoking lecture on Artificial Intelligence as the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its progression toward Agentic AI beyond Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The depth of your analysis and clarity of explanation were intellectually stimulating and profoundly insightful.
I was particularly engaged by your comparison between AI hallucinations and the schizophrenic hallucinations experienced by Brian. As a student of cognitive psychoneurology, I appreciated how you described Brian as a multimodal prediction engine capable of generating internal models without external stimuli, and how this mechanism can malfunction in schizophrenia, leading to hallucinations. The analogy to AI hallucinations was both creative and intellectually compelling.

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A “LankaLions” Post in FACEBOOK

Whenever DDS comes into the conversation, it’s never just about form. It’s always where he should bat and what exactly his role is. And as usual, there are plenty of fan theories floating around. So instead of arguing in circles, let’s see what the numbers actually say.

First up, the No.4 debate. A fair chunk of fans want Pavan Rathnayake locked in at four and given a proper run. The reasoning is simple: he looks like someone who can bat time once he gets in. In comparison, DDS’s ODI average of 25.87 doesn’t exactly scream “long-term No.4 at international level.” Pavan averages 43.77 in List A cricket, and yes, the immediate counter is that List A numbers don’t always translate internationally. Fair enough. But then, if that’s the argument, what do DDS’s List A numbers look like? We’ll come back to that.

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Michael Roberts

I have not kept track of the cricketing scenario in Sri Lanka and the personnel who take the selectorial decisions. Nor did I watch the Third ODI match at the P-Sara Stadium live on web [though I tracked it for a while [on ESPN Web-script].

Joe Root batting

From this position of an ignoramus. I would like to know (A) whether Wanindu Hasaranga, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushmantha Chameera & Dasun Shanaka are not considered 50-over players; and (B) whether Angelo Matthews and Chandimal are regarded as old and fading.

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Madushka Balasuriya, in ESPNcricinfo, 24 January 2025, where the title runs thus: “Root 75 sets up series-levelling win after spin-heavy England limit Sri Lanka” …and ADDs “Partnership between Root and Brook key as visitors knock off requirement on slow surface” …. England 223 for 5 (Root 75, Brook 42, Dhananjaya 2-37, Vandersay 2-45) beat Sri Lanka 219 (Asalanka 45, De Silva 40, Root 2-12, Overton 2-21, Rashid 2-34) by five wickets

Joe Root struck his 45th ODI fifty and with it helped England snap an 11-match losing streak away from home, as they won the second ODI against Sri Lanka in Colombo by five wickets and with it levelled the three-match series at 1-1.

Root was unable to see the game to a close, falling to an Asitha Fernando yorker with just 42 to get off 57 deliveries, but by that point – with England batting all the way down – it would have required a collapse of epic proportions for Sri Lanka overturn the result.

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