Unto the canopy termini
In the middle of a conversation this morning, my friend wondered aloud as to whether there were any advantages to teaching history forward in time (i.e. with causality) instead of backward. Neither of us being historians……
June 2018
AI beat humans at DotA but the game was rigged
I started writing this as today’s post but at some point it morphed into an article for The Wire, to be published tomorrow morning. Sharing it here in full nonetheless. Earlier this week, a team…
Specificity and incompleteness
These days, I can’t remember either the good news or the bad news. When someone talks about the good news – likely a centrist or someone who hasn’t thought their political views through – I…
A dull review
There’s a new book by Alan Lightman out, titled Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine. Irrespective of others’ appreciation of it, I expect to find the book preposterously dull if Michael Shermer’s review…
For solitude
Climate change is gradually turning the abundance of space into privilege, at least if it already wasn’t before. In a warmer world, in which we will surely prize the efficient use of resources, physical isolation…
No rest for tall people
Yesterday, I travelled first class in the Shatabdi Express, from Chennai to Bengaluru. I’d been looking forward to the journey because of the extra legspace in the offing, and the ability to sit in a…
oglaf!
xkcd does the best nerdy comic but oglaf is the comic I never knew I needed – and it’s probably the best ever. It’s wry humour + sex, often featuring erotic fungi and The Blind…
Liberation from the clock
Laura Vanderkam writes in Fast Company about a three-minute habit that changed her life: keeping track of how she spends her time during her waking hours, with a spreadsheet. Much of her piece is directed…
The sadness of Johnny Depp
Rolling Stones has published a fabulous profile of Johnny Depp, written by Stephen Rodrick. It’s about 15 minutes’ worth of reading long and I highly recommend you read it right now. The profile’s power comes…
Apologies
I’m sorry, my dear followers, to have to disappoint you (or, quite possibly, induce a sigh of relief) but today’s blog post will have to be just these lines. My laptop died yesterday, I got…
Building with mobile devices
My laptop, a 2015 MacBook Pro that survived being drowned during the Chennai floods that year, went into the ICU today. A service person said the RAM was fried, along with some other adjacent components.…
Remembering S. Pancharatnam
Scientists have combined one atom of sodium (Na) and one of caesium (Cs) to form one molecule of NaCs, achieving the most precisely controlled chemical reaction in history. They were able to achieve this using…