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.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
India's farmer protests aren't just about a piece of worthwhile but badly-handled agricultural legislation. They're potentially the birth pangs of a more urbanized, prosperous India that will transform the world in the 21st century…
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/houston-doctor-fired-covid-vaccine.html?smid=tw-share)
The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. makes you physically ill reading the details in this piece. we are a fallen nation with fallen magistrates who have lost all sense of "ren". but harris county lawyers would make han…
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/houston-doctor-fired-covid-vaccine.html#click=https://t.co/HM4l23Bw3r)
A Pakistani-American doctor was fired and is being prosecuted because he gave an opened vaccine to anyone he could find rather than letting it go to waste. Apparently, it would have been more "equitable" to throw the vaccine out. This is…
Doctoral degrees - The disposable academic | Christmas Specials
"In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrollment... The earnings premium for a PhD is only 3% more than a master's degree"
The parable of John Rawls
The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort Of) Rattled the Scientific Community
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/business/economy/housing-insecurity.html?smid=tw-share)
Pandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling Up we need to build. developers need to build. the state needs to build. it's atrocious what america does to lower-income ppl. not everyone can/should live in stockton and commute to…
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071)
Imagine if this report was about any other country..
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
There is no connection between the stock market and reality. A thread: Airlines spent 96% of free cash flow on stock buybacks for a decade, then cut 90,000 jobs as soon as trouble hits. Then they got a $50 billion bailout
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/harvard-uva-sat-act-requirement-college-applications/2021/01/29/90566562-6176-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html?tid=ss_tw
Applications surge after big-name colleges halt SAT and ACT testing rules "a 2 percent dip in applicants with enough financial need to receive fee waivers, and a 3 percent drop in those who would be among the first in their families to go…
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Tesla proved that memes, narratives and online activism are powerful tools long before Gamestop, but as they take hold in the broader market it should be noted: the results are not easy to defend as efficient allocations of capital.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
India has vaccinated 3.7 million in 2 weeks (mainly focused on high risk groups). Expecting capacity to vaccinate 10mn per day by July. But pessimism has been rampant from people who don't get India - its chaotic, but it's selective chaos.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Chinese President Xi Jinping called on officials to step up protection of intellectual property rights from the perspective of “national strategy” via @business 🤣 tbf, america in 19th century ripped-off british works all the time.
The Machiavelli of Maryland: adviser to presidents, prime ministers – and the Dalai Lama | Thomas Meaney | World news
A Riveting Indian Classical Concert, Captured On 'That Which Colors The Mind'
When The Giants Of Indian Classical Music Collided With Psychedelic San Francisco That Which Colors the Mind
Untitled (https://spectator.co.uk/article/our-obsession-with-city-living-is-out-of-date)
💯
Citadel, Point72 to Invest $2.75 Billion Into Melvin Capital Management - WSJ
This is some insane, crazy, baller shit: r/wsb just ran over one of the most successful hedge funds around
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Wrote about a growing phenomenon among finance professionals today: Robinhood Envy.
(500) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03128-0?error=cookies_not_supported&code=1a014819-c8c9-4938-b817-017650952123
What makes bats excellent reservoirs of née pathogens that periodically spill over into humans and livestock causing outbreaks and Pandemics. A review
‘Underground Asia’ Review: A Century of Revolution - WSJ
Walter Russell Mead reviews “Underground Asia” by Tim Harper ("A clearly written, brilliantly researched examination of the people and movements that shaped Asia’s course in the 20th century and continue to influence the continent today.")…
Untitled (https://newrepublic.com/article/160905/tether-cryptocurrency-scam-enrich-bitcoin-investors)
I got cited in the New Republic! ... Kinda.
Untitled (https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-oxycontin-part3/)
Not only did The Sacklers make billions from Purdue Pharma while starting the opioid crisis, but they also own a sister company, Mundipharma that is spreading the opioid crisis throughout the world. @coreysdavis
The new Asians on screen
The new Asians on screen via @financialtimes
(500) https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/05/cheap-mass-testing-covid-pandemic-pcr-antigen/
Reason 547548 why India needs to document and put out its story of Covid management. When the whole world was talking smack about “cheap” antigen tests, India had already adopted them largely using indigenous kits in July-August 2020…
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/29/covid-vaccine-priority-group-elderly/
When Turkey Destroyed Its Christians - WSJ
"Turkey’s Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities disappeared as a result of a staggered campaign of genocide beginning in 1894, perpetrated against them by their Muslim neighbors. By 1924, the Christian communities of Turkey ... had been…
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802)
@paulportesi not true it appears:
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opinion/jesus-christ-christmas-incarnation.html)
It's intriguing to me how, if the values or ideas of religion or the military ever make it to certain rarefied media heights, they always seem to validate the existing worldview. Uncanny really.
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/cdc-covid/2020/12/25/c2b418ae-4206-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html
"Within hours, scientists in Thailand used the instructions to deploy a new test. The CDC would not roll out one that worked for 46 more days." Read every word of this on American institutional failure.
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/dining/indian-pickle-queen-usha-prabakaran.html?smid=tw-share)
India's 'Pickle Queen' Preserves Everything, Including the Past
Untitled (https://qz.com/india/287319/remembering-the-jewish-refugee-who-composed-the-all-india-radio-caller-tune/)
@ShriramKMurthi @atishayokti @joyopal Walter Kaufmann.. with IU Bloomington connection..
Here's why we need Covid models, even if they are controversial | Coronavirus
Media critics debating whether new UK variant is 70% more transmissible, or 40% more, or 52.5% more, are missing the point. If multiple data sources point towards substantially increased transmission, it suggests we have big problem…
When my mother said she was lonely, I knew I had to relearn my Bengali language | Languages
"“I only speak English,” they would declare loudly as if it were a badge of honour. Perhaps it proved that they were modern, progressive, assimilated – no longer tethered to the quaint customs of their immigrant families."
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/europe/france-charlie-hebdo-slogan.html)
This is a case study in the truthy claptrap that's now standard in American subscription-driven journalism (as well as parochial American projection). As we'll see, not only is the headline argument unsubstantiated, it's likely the…
Indian Americans Weren’t Always Seen as a Model Minority
I demur with the conclusion.
Untitled (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mada-in-saleh)
Mada’in Saleh, in the north of present-day Saudi Arabia, was settled by the Nabateans from the second century B.C. Although few visible traces remain of their ancient city, they left behind tombs carved out of the surrounding rocky…
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/books/john-le-carre-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare)
John le Carré was particularly angry at reports of Western torture. “I know about interrogation. I’ve done interrogations, and I can tell you this: by extracting information under torture you make a fool of yourself. You obtain information…
The New Superfluous Men - American Affairs Journal
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54703204)
One of the most interesting developments in the nuclear energy space — Rolls-Royce $RR plans to build small modular reactors (SMR).
The Skeletons at the Lake
What a story!
Quanta Magazine
"On May 19, Ashwin Sah posted the best result ever on one of the most important questions in combinatorics. It was a moment that might have called for a celebratory drink, only Sah wasn’t old enough to order one." 😀
Warner Bros. Will Debut All Its 2021 Films on HBO Max
Bless the maker and his water. We're going to be able to stream Dune.
Untitled (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/roger-penrose-black-holes-einstein-nobel-prize/)
"No human mind has done more to enrich our understanding of black holes, the wonderfully simple objects now poised to teach us profound lessons not only about their own space-times but also about the fundamental laws underlying the entire…
Ajit Pai Bids Adieu - WSJ
What a great guy!
DeepMind AI cracks 50-year-old problem of protein folding | Technology
The @DeepMind protein folding result is really incredible, and incredibly important. But I know it’s pretty tricky to understand, so here’s a megathread, with a bit of Biology 101, for @hollandtom @thehistoryguy et al.
The Real Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech
There's a fine tradition of American uber-wealthy affecting middle-class values as a meritocratic front and classism dodge. It's also endemic among the media class.
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/28/facebook-apple-ios14/
@hamsanandi @talekaayi @mankuthimma @hpnadig likely FB: "Facebook and other advertisers, Apple says, gather data on users even when they’re not using Facebook."
They Sold Their Company for $500 Million, Then Went Real-Estate Shopping - WSJ
The Revenge of the Yankees
(500) https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/18/dolly-parton-moderna-vaccine-abumrad-covid/
Dolly Parton being involved in the COVID vaccine is one of those charming 2020 twists. Though if you know about Parton's philanthropic efforts (which are vast), it's perhaps not so surprising. Plus, it somehow also involves @JadAbumrad of…