blogging

Posting stats — 2024

VM

19 Jan 2025 — 1 min read

When I joined The Wire in 2015, the average length of my blog posts increased from around 700 words to around 850 words, and over time to 1,000 words. This wasn't forced so much as a natural reflection of the average length of pieces that worked on The Wire, also around 1,000 words. The trend held through 2018 and 2019 as well: the average post length dipped in these years because I published a very large number of posts and many of them were short, vignette-like. The same 'natural forcing' happened when I joined The Hindu in January 2023, with the average blog post length matching what worked at my workplace. I don't understand exactly how this happens but I'm glad that it does.

On a related note, I recently discovered this amusing snippet in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1969) by Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero. Now I like to imagine I keep writing to prevent the monkey from drinking whatever is left of the ink…

On Gaiman and a logic of compassion

That Vulture piece. If you haven’t already, read it but be warned: it’s just as disturbing as everyone is saying it is. One paragraph in particular I found more unsettling than the rest — not because it presents one more awful detail but because I just didn’t know,

New science pages in The Hindu

The Hindu has a new print product out called ‘Surf & Dive’ (S&D), whose first edition the editor Suresh Nambath and MP Shashi Tharoor launched at the group’s ‘Lit for Life’ event in Chennai on January 18. We’ve been working on this for quite some time

The news exists to inform, not to educate

I’d like to highlight a letter published in Science on January 2. I have many points of disagreement with it but I’d also like others to read and reflect on it, especially if they’re (you’re) also going to disagree with my reading. The letter is entitled

The fever dream of 'technological sovereignty'

I recently came across an initiative called “Industrial47”. Someone had shared a link to it on a group I’m part of, and when its card loaded, the image was of a nuclear weapon going off. I found on LinkedIn that “Industrial47” is a fund with the aim of “backing

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On Gaiman and a logic of compassion

New science pages in The Hindu

The news exists to inform, not to educate

The fever dream of 'technological sovereignty'