Long reads
Essays, features and reporting from magazines and papers: The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Aeon, Quanta, the Economist and more.
Top publicationsThe New York Times 74BBC 33The Guardian 27Wired 27The Wall Street Journal 26Bloomberg 25The Atlantic 24The New Yorker 21The Washington Post 16The Economist 14Atlas Obscura 12Nature 10
514 articles.
A DIY E-bike Conversion on the Cheap
How Two Bored 1970s Housewives Helped Create The PC Industry
Illusions of empire: Amartya Sen on what British rule really did for India | India
Untitled (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/)
"The invasion of Iraq squandered the national unity following the attacks of 9/11..The cost fell on the bodies of young men and women from small towns and inner cities. Meeting anyone in uniform from a family of educated professionals was…
A company wants to build a massive solar project in Montana — of course it’s for crypto
lol at this headline and subhead combo
Eric Carle, Creator Of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar,' Dies At 91
one of the greatest authors of all time.
Quanta Magazine
In March, @samitdasgupta, a mathematician at Duke University, and Mahesh Kakde of the Indian Institute of Science provided the first answer to a question David Hilbert posed over 100 years ago.
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46055285)
@btbytes The talk about connection reminds me of the story about Korean princess from Ayodhya:
Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought
Strongly recommend reading this article. I agree with 90% of what Burja says in here. Main thing I would add is that the oldest civilizations are probably underwater due to sea level rise.
Paris Review - The Art of Nonfiction No. 7
"people will say, 'Well, he may have treated his children, wives, friends terribly, but look at the novels, the poems, the paintings.' I think it’s a terrible equation...if the art legitimates cruelty, I think the art is not worth having."
UK vaccine supremo Kate Bingham: ‘The bickering needs to stop’
Superb interview with the head of UK’s vaccine program- a former VC. She outlines how a VC mindset rather than a standard govt procurement mindset is what was required here. Lots for GoI to learn
BBC - Travel - Jackfruit: the ‘vegan sensation’ that saved Sri Lanka
Sri Lankans began planting jackfruit trees to gain food self-sufficiency during British rule, and they’ve since helped islanders avoid starvation.
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/merck-covid-vaccine.html)
Making a vaccine isn't a sourdough recipe, but it's easy to crap on other people's hard work that's keeping you alive. People crap on Moderna and Pfizer while forgetting Sanofi, Glaxo, and Merck tried to bring a vaccine to market in 2020…
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/02/merck-johnson-and-johnson-covid-vaccine-partnership/
Merck was responsible for bringing the Ebola vaccine to market but couldn't succeed with their COVID effort. Now they're in talks to replicate the J&J vaccine.
Nonnative English Speakers Share Their Gripes About Speaking English : Goats and Soda
interesting
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill
A very interesting article on implications of the airborne nature of #COVID19. Ensuring ventilation in enclosed spaces may matter more than any other measure we are taking. 1/n
Universities of Britain: cosying up to crypto is a bad look
Imperial College London got in hot water when the press exposed that researchers were using their academic credentials to write marketing material for promoting token investments on the shady crypto broker eToro. (18/)
Experience: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years | Life and style
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/06/seychelles-vaccines-covid-cases/?tid=ss_tw
Why the world’s most vaccinated country is seeing an unprecedented spike in coronavirus cases looks like issue is lower effectiveness vaccines r the problem
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/ledell-lee-dna-testing-arkansas.html?smid=tw-share)
4 Years After an Execution, a Different Man’s DNA Is Found on the Murder Weapon
A new age of suburbanisation could be dawning
Life achievement unlocked! Cited in the Economist. Next up: go a whole week without messing up the mute button on Zoom.
Betty Shannon, Unsung Mathematical Genius - Scientific American Blog Network
@bayesianboy Thinking of Betty Shannon, who typed up all of Claude's manuscripts as well as, erm, writing quite a lot of them...
India's Mini-Craze for Bicycling Around the World
Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet | Environment
"Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time...the 13th-century Mongol leader's bloody advance, wiping out entire civilisations, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from…
The Woke Meritocracy
"My students says their parents are their best and surest allies." Really fascinated by this rupture in the developmental structure of American youth.
How the fall of the Roman empire paved the road to modernity | Aeon Essays
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-power-plant-closing.html)
NY is shutting down a perfectly good nuclear plant
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-kariko.html)
"Dr. Kariko was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines. But her career at UPenn was fragile & she migrated from lab to lab & never made more than $60,000/year." [give her a Nobel…
Untitled (https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)
"In America men often work long hours even when they are already well-off...they dislike leisure even for their sons...The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake"
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/world/middleeast/nemam-ghafouri-dead-coronavirus.html?smid=tw-share)
Nemam Ghafouri, Doctor Who Aided Yazidis in Iraq, Dies at 52
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html)
The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make - BBC Future
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/upshot/helping-the-poor-in-higher-education-the-power-of-a-simple-nudge.html)
A child born into a poor family is 3 times more likely to get a college degree than a child who has lived in foster care
Untitled (https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-russia-vaccine-india-idUSKBN2BE0TC)
The fact that even smaller players like Herero and Virchow are getting into the game shows how much manufacturing capacity we have. Absolutely remarkable.
How the Irish became white
How the Irish became white @UnHerd
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
India has built a strong Aadhar based public digital infrastructure in less than a decade, covering banking, healthcare and more This is a great export opportunity for India, to help other countries leapfrog on state capacity. My @bopinion…
Scientists solve another piece of the puzzling Antikythera mechanism
If you’ve not heard about the Antikythera mechanism before, your mind will be blown. Such technology existed by 150-100 BC, but the knowledge was subsequently lost. Similar machines with equivalent complexity didn't appear again until the…
China’s Rise Drives a U.S. Experiment in Industrial Policy - WSJ
After many decades of finance driven neoliberalism that has decimated domestic industrial know how, the US now embraces industrial policy. India should take note. India needs a strong industrial policy focused on building deep industrial…
Untitled (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca-exc-idUSKBN2B3295)
Sobering reminder to folks in the EU who laugh at US dysfunction. The EMA is little better. Needlessly hyping mRNA tech (this tech will come good in the future, but is overkill for Covid), treating AZ as some bargain basement vaccine. Now…
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/eulogy-vs-resume-virtue/2021/03/05/00bee43c-752c-11eb-948d-19472e683521_story.html
“All his life he drove a four-door family sedan but when motorcyclists roared past him on his left, he felt that life had passed him by as well.” Happy people focus on "eulogy virtues" rather than "résumé virtues"
Freeman Dyson: 1923 - 2020 | Edge.org
Freeman Dyson wrote and enthusiastically recorded this thought-provoking piece on six pioneering figures of evolution. At the age of 95. Using GarageBand. Read it, or better still, listen to it for an hour.
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/us/asian-american-hate-crimes.html?smid=tw-share)
He Came From Thailand to Care For Family. Then Came a Brutal Attack. i think a lot of asian americans (of all groups) are galvanized cuz this sort of act has been happening for decades. we heard about in the 80s when NYC had a lot of crime
Confirmed: Fry’s Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores
Sad. Fry’s Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores.
Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup | Global development
YOU WORK FOR A SLAVE STATE!!!!
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/rose-marcario-patagonia-corner-office.html)
Former Patagonia CEO references the 4 stages of life in the Vedas to explain why she left the company. Looking forward to future CEO announcements where "left to spend more time with my family" is replaced with "entered forest to commit…
Quanta Magazine
How much of the benefit of exercise comes simply from the fact that it tires you out and thus causes you to sleep better?
‘Ardor,’ by Roberto Calasso
Untitled (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-price-of-looking-busy)
"In the early days, he might wrestle for hours with a jammed lock..his inexperience made his job look difficult, his customers would pay, often adding a tip..he became highly expert, and could fix the same problem in minutes. Now customers…
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23372401)
Interesting article on the business of the East India Company in the 18th/19th century. Arguably it was one of the first office-work environments and a good example of an early bureaucracy
In Covid-19 Diplomacy, India Emerges as a Vaccine Superpower - WSJ
RT @EricBellmanWSJ: India has emerged the surprise leader of the global vaccine diplomacy race. It has exported three times more doses than it's given its own citizens and can spare even more without hurting its own rollout.