Category Archives: Culture

The HMPV cascade

Posted on January 10, 2025 by

I sense the public panic over the HMPV outbreak in China is finally dying down. I don’t know which TV news channel picked up on it first and blew it out of proportion but it created the sort of time … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Scicomm | Tagged COVID-19 pandemic, health journalism, HMPV outbreak, human metapneumovirus, Indian Council of Medical Research, Pandiarajan, Sinophobia, The Hindu, Vaayai Moodi Paesavum | Comments Off

Keep the crap going

Posted on December 6, 2024 by

Have you seen the new ads for Google Gemini? In one version, just as a young employee is grabbing her fast-food lunch, she notices her snooty boss get on an elevator. So she drops her sandwich, rushes to meet her … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Tech | Tagged advertisements, Apple Intelligence, artificial intelligence, Google Gemini | Comments Off

Review: ‘Vettaiyan’ (2024)

Posted on November 29, 2024 by

Watch it, but fast-forward through some parts. Vettaiyan steers clear of unconditionally qualifying “encounter killings” as the only way out — a line many Tamil films have been only too happy to tout of late. There’s in fact an instructive … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture | Tagged Annaatthe, encounter killing, Fahad Faasil, fridging, Maharaja, mass film, Rajinikanth, Rana Daggubati, Ritika Singh, Rohini Molleti, Tamil cinema, Velailla Pattadhaari, Vettaiyan, Vikram Vedha | Comments Off

Keeper of the foul air

Posted on November 22, 2024 by

This city is essentially uninhabitable from November to January inclusive and barely liveable the rest of the year. Should it even remain the nation’s capital? I realise Shashi Tharoor is frustrated here — revealing the increasingly evident gap between what … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Op-eds | Tagged air pollution, Guwahati, Katihar, National Capital Region, New Delhi, Shashi Tharoor | Comments Off

To WordPress

Posted on October 26, 2024 by

I used to love WordPress unconditionally. Then Gutenberg replaced Calypso and the user experience became quite poor. Then WordPress.com rejigged their subscription plans, got it wrong, and fortunately switched back. Finally, Matt Mullenweg’s actions and words of late have really … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Tech | Tagged Bullenweg, Drupal, Ghost.org, Matt Mullenweg, self-hosting, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, WP Engine | Comments Off

Off the rails

Posted on October 4, 2024 by

Either Matt Mullenweg’s screws have fallen off or I deeply overestimated how sensible a person I thought he was. On October 3, Mullenweg wrote on his blog that Automattic had offered those of its employees who disagreed with his actions … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture, Tech | Tagged Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress.com, WP Engine | Comments Off

Review: ‘Maharaja’ (2024)

Posted on September 30, 2024 by

Spoilers abound; trigger warning: sexual violence In case you haven’t watched the film and don’t plan to, you can check out the plot description on Wikipedia. Maharaja was bad for two reasons. First, good films don’t lie to their viewers. … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture | Tagged Jai Bhim, Maharaja, Paatal Lok, plot twist, refrigeration, sexual violence, Visaranai | Comments Off

What can science education do, and what can it not?

Posted on September 4, 2024 by

On September 29, 2021, The Third Eye published an interview with Milind Sohoni, a teacher at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas and at IIT Bombay. (Thanks to @labhopping for bringing it into my feed.) I found it … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science | Tagged Anna University, Big Science, class mobility, India-based Neutrino Observatory, Jacques Ellul, Milind Sohoni, science education, social science, spinoff technologies, The Technological Society, The Third Eye | Comments Off

Did we see the conspiracies coming?

Posted on July 31, 2024 by

Tweets like this seem on point… … but I’ve started to wonder if we’re missing something in the course of expressing opinions about what we thought climate deniers would say and what they’re actually saying. That is, we expected to … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Scicomm | Tagged climate change, climate denialism, us versus them | Comments Off

You’re allowed to be interested in particle physics

Posted on July 2, 2024 by

This piece appeared in The Hindu today. I wrote the lead article, about why scientists are so interested in an elementary particle called the top quark. Long story short: the top quark is the heaviest elementary particle, and because all … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Scicomm, Science | Tagged Higgs boson, mathematical physics, particle physics, Shreya Dasgupta, The Hindu, top quark | Comments Off