Firstpost Editor's Picks: BJP takes risk in Karnataka, RTI (Amendment) Bill, Hrithik Roshan regains brand reputation; today's must-read stories

In allowing BS Yediyurappa to become Karnataka CM once more, BJP takes calculated risk with slender majority

Haste makes waste. That's the piece of ancient wisdom BJP president Amit Shah remembered while finally deciding what to do in Karnataka. The party's state unit had been working as if there was no tomorrow to destabilise the notoriously fickle and wobbly government of the coalition of Congress and Janata Dal (Secular). But after the government finally collapsed on 23 July, Shah waited some 60 hours before nodding his wise head and letting BS Yediyurappa take oath as the chief minister.

Passage of RTI (Amendment) Bill breaks BJP’s jinx in RS, shows Congress can't match Modi-Shah floor management

The RTI amendment bill was no doubt one of the key bills to be passed by both Houses of the Parliament in the same session and will soon be notified by the President of India. But it was the events preceding the passage of the Bill in the Rajya Sabha that made it a landmark event, especially the way the politics between the Narendra Modi government and the Congress-led opposition was played out.

Hrithik Roshan regains brand reputation, with Super 30's box office success and dignified stand on Kangana Ranaut

After all, a film about a coaching class teacher who dedicates his life to train those from the most economically marginalized section of society to crack the prestigious Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), is not the stuff of a masala potboiler, his forte. Instead, it is a humane story rooted in grassroots level Indian reality, worlds away from Roshan’s privileged, super posh upbringing and life. Yet, with questionable make-up marring his face, he delivered a convincing, winsome performance with this film.

On Indian media's role in historically propagating discourse around classical dance, and the need for change

When was the last time you saw a classical dancer make a headline? Probably never. Although headlines are often dedicated to state politics, there are moments when other professions like cinema and sports bask in the glory of the front page. Is dance, more so classical dance, so peripheral to the mainstream society that it can never spill out of its bracketed space of the supplementary sheets?

You auto-complete me: Our bittersweet relationships with and through bots

The story of our relationships with and through bots is a bittersweet one.

From Maria in Metropolis (1922) to HAL in 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) to Ava in Ex Machina (2014), the gap between human and machine is one in which the robot inevitably out-performs the human. Robots are computationally powerful, follow the rules, can work faster and without tiring, and generally deliver results with fewer errors.