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.
Why Narendra Modi Was Banned From the U.S. - WSJ
.@Dhume should know that only person who was ever denied a visa to the USA under International Religious Freedom Act 1998 was Mr Modi, the man who then received the most votes in any election in human history. Democracy promotion or anti…
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
"perception of an Asian advantage in this pandemic often falls prey to essentialist thinking...somehow the East is doing things the West could never do...largely down to profound differences in values, politics and culture..." Spoiler…
The Scariest Thing This Halloween Season Is the Falcons With a Lead
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/27/upshot/biden-trump-poll-quiz.html)
They're missing the third type, "California fridge." It's empty because all your food spoiled in the latest power shutoff.
Quibi Is Shutting Down Barely Six Months After Going Live - WSJ
Imagine burning $2 billion dollars of VC funding in 6 months That's $10 million per day $455,000 per hour $7,589 per minute $126 per second
Untitled (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54573831)
Thailand protests: 'My father is blinded by his love for the monarchy' - BBC News So the hit pieces have started to arrive. It is happens, this will be a tragedy greater than the fall of the Nepalese monarchy.
Untitled (https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-rapid-tests-idUSKBN26Z2C2)
Guess which country has been using RAT from the beginning of the pandemic with its apex body citing that RAT in combo with RT-PCR is a very powerful tool? India. The ICMR was unfairly criticised for this by experts outside the council.
Untitled (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-54464451)
Fantastic. My stupid idli comment has now been connected - ever so tenuously - to the US election. For the record: I love Indian food... and especially south Indian food! (Just not idlis).
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/world/asia/india-china-trump.html?smid=tw-share)
"Human rights experts say it is troubling that the US talks so strongly about human rights abuses in China, but is willing to engage in deeper...strategic ties with India where similar situations are occurring." Similar situations?? You're…
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/hong-kong-china-security-law.html)
"The West tends to glorify these people as defenders of Hong Kong’s freedoms, but they have done great harm to the city by going against its constitutional order and stirring up chaos and disaffection toward our motherland." The NYT has…
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/health/covid-india-children.html?smid=tw-share)
Huge Study of Coronavirus Cases in India Offers Some Surprises to Scientists
India pushes bold ‘one nation, one subscription’ journal-access plan
One Nation, One Subscription "The Indian government is pushing a bold proposal that would make scholarly literature accessible for free to everyone in the country. Rough estimates research institutes in India spend > $200 million on…
'Close to 100% accuracy': Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to detect Covid | World news
'Close to 100% accuracy': Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to detect Covid This is quite extraordinary.
Untitled (https://qz.com/india/1607559/how-the-lone-voter-in-indias-gir-forest-casts-his-ballot/)
After seeing the slowly unraveling American electoral system, where millionaires offer to write checks to keep polling stations open, the workings of India’s ElectionCommission deserve more study by rest of the world My favorite story: 1…
Untitled (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/indian-food-writing?fbclid=IwAR0KTELlMlV3LYQbRg7ZfoQExPzMw4L5u91WdyyIzQbf0XP8hHHz9AzEdWw)
"All around the world, people eat foods invented during lean times [..] The foods of the Bengal Famine, though, remain absent from accounts of the region’s and India’s cuisine," writes Sharanya Deepak
You Don't Have To Know English To Play Scrabble
@kareemcarr i heard a large share of the world's top english-language scrabble players are thai, and not native english speakers.
LiveLogix Helps to Bridge Chasm Between Executives, Programmers - WSJ
@anandology @bangpypers @ramkrsna @btbytes @swaroopch @phoe6 Yes of course, Tom Locke who was here in Bangalore a good part of 2008 trying to develop interest on this. I attended couple of his sessions. Digged up an old WSJ article on this
Untitled (https://www.city-journal.org/family-instability-fuels-violence-among-young-men)
An essay I wrote for @CityJournal "if the current riots had happened when we were in high school, my friends and I would have grabbed some baseball bats, paintball guns, and fireworks. We would be ready to see who could risk the most and…
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
What a proud moment. Also, the recent news of Sudan considering establishing ties with Israel was no coincidence. Sudan Ends 30 Years of Islamic Law by Separating Religion, State
Why meritocracy isn’t working
Why meritocracy isn’t working via @financialtimes cc @rorysutherland @keithhatter @faris @tomfgoodwin
David Graeber, anthropologist and author of Bullshit Jobs, dies aged 59 | Books
David Graeber, anthropologist and author of Bullshit Jobs, dies aged 59 I love his books. Each time when I read it, it feels real. Like NNT said 100% original. Very sad news today RIP David. I will make sure more people read your works
A “Beowulf” for Our Moment
"Hwæt,” the first word of “Beowulf,” has no equivalent in modern English. Tolkien translated it as “Lo!” Mitchell avoided a single word Heaney went for “So” Others chose -- “Attend,” “Listen,” “Behold,” “Yes!”, “What ho!” Headley went with…
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
A sobering read on food insecurity in the richest most powerful nation in the world. Upto 50 million are projected to fall into the “food insecure” bracket due to Covid-induced disruptions to the food supply chain.
Untitled (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-danger-of-following-the-science)
The problem with relying on "the science" is that you tend to ignore cost benefit trade-offs. "The science" cannot establish exactly how masks work, but it is so cheap it doesn't matter. The danger of following ‘the science’ from…
Demon Core: The Strange Death of Louis Slotin - The New Yorker
The plutonium core used in the experiment was cast initially to be the third atomic bomb dropped on Japan, but the end of the war prevented its use. 9 months later, an accident with the same core would kill Louis Slotin.
How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/kamala-harris-india.html)
This NYT article while flawed in several respects has the virtue of at least acknowledging more widely than I have seen in other MSM reporting the Indian heritage of Kamala Harris.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Bloomberg provides a handy guide to everyone wondering "What if we were just more like Dalton?"
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/books/review-time-of-magicians-wittgenstein-heidegger-wolfram-eilenberger.html)
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”
Online payments group Stripe poaches GM’s finance chief
Delighted to welcome Dhivya Suryadevara to Stripe as our CFO! You may now begin your "well-oiled machine" and "stepping on the gas" type puns.
Untitled (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/us/robert-gnaizda-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare)
Read this obituary. This is what SocialJustice used to be all about. This is the milieu from which my politics stem. There was an honorable, thinking, progressive Left before “Critical Theory” & “Identity” took over. RIP to Bob, my first…
The last of the Zoroastrians | World news
The last of the Zoroastrians this is a good long piece because author doesn't interject own views too strongly and lets the subject speak
Untitled (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/indian-vegetables)
Cracking the Case of South India’s Missing Vegetables | A food designer used quarantine to track down the mystery produce in his grandmother’s Tamil language cookbook called, Samaithu Paar. Cook and See!
'This show is just the start': inside the BBC's all-person-of-colour A Suitable Boy | Television & radio
"all-person-of-colour" drama.... What a classic Guardian way to describe a story set in India
Sunscreen Chemicals Accumulate in Body at High Levels - WSJ
Six of the most commonly used active ingredients in sunscreen are absorbed into the bloodstream at concentrations far greater than the FDA’s safety threshold If you need sun protection, there are far better ways
David Shor’s Unified Theory of the 2020 Election
Lost cities #5: how the magnificent city of Merv was razed – and never recovered | Cities
"Modern-day visitors to the site of Merv in southern Turkmenistan can still tour its dusty, windswept remains. Like Curzon, they might struggle to imagine the true size, density and lushness of one of the world’s greatest vanished cities."
When Companies Wielded the Power of States - WSJ
When Companies Wielded the Power of States
Fujitsu-backed supercomputer with Arm chips ranks as world's most powerful
Fastest super computer in the world is now ARM based and from Fujitsu 😮
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Paul Dirac
@btbytes
How Britain tried to 'erase' India's third gender - BBC News
BBC News - How Britain tried to 'erase' India's third gender
Jimmy Red, The Forgotten Bootleggers' Corn Gets A Second Life : The Salt
How lobbyists made breakfast 'the most important meal of the day' | Life and style
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. That's a line invented by marketers to sell you cereal.
‘I feel as if my garden has finally come of age’ | Nigel Slater | Life and style
"I would like to say that the garden I have now will probably be my last. Twenty years on from digging up the lawn, I have a space that is more inspirational and restful than I could have ever imagined. I feel the garden has come of age."…
Governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company | World news
@tapanguchi The Lancet paper was based off totally bogus data, and Lancet authors have retracted the paper. See the sordid details here -
Last Person to Receive Civil War-Era Pension Dies - WSJ
The last person to receive a Civil War-era pension, Irene Triplett, has died. The benefit was for her father’s service in the Union Army.
Tom Wolfe on Radical Chic and Leonard Bernstein's Party for the Black Panthers -- New York Magazine - Nymag
Covid-19 Spreads Deportation Fears Among Immigrant Doctors in U.S. - WSJ
Foreign-born doctors are on the front lines in the fight against Covid-19—and if they get sick or die, their families could face deportation via @WSJ
Monkeys steal coronavirus blood samples in India
Monkeys steal coronavirus blood samples in India
India Not the First to Favor Some Refugees by Religion - WSJ
Additionally, the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 selectively grants Cuban émigrés permanent residency, denying the same benefits to other Latin American refugees, many of whom were also victims of communism Good point by @npunwani in…