A seasonal despondency in journalism
My friend Dhiya has been writing and publishing one blog post every week for the last 87 weeks in a series she simply calls ‘dilettante’. The eighty-fifth edition focused on an issue I am currently…
social media
Memoirs, Substack, and psychology
The English poet Blake Morrison had a thought-provoking essay in The Guardian titled ‘‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing’ on April 4. He traced the evolution…
Notes for a ‘The Open Notebook’ report
I was quoted in a new reported feature in The Open Notebook, entitled ‘Expanding the Geographical Borders of Your Source List’.
Where do scientists communicate their work?
A group of Spanish researchers analysed the mentions of scientific papers authored by scientists (affiliated with Spain) on the social media, on Wikipedia, and on news outlets, blogs and policy documents to understand where the…
Why there’s no guarantee that Musk’s Twitter will resemble Dorsey’s
Many folks are saying they’re not going to leave Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition because Musk and Jack Dorsey aren’t different.
Free-speech as an instrument of repression
One of the more eye-opening discussions on Elon Musk’s attempt to take control of Twitter, and the Twitter board’s attempts to defend the company from the bid, have been playing out on Hacker News (here and,…
The BJP’s fake news (fake?) meeting
Reuters published a very interesting report on February 2, entitled ‘Exclusive-In heated meeting, India seeks tougher action from U.S. tech giants on fake news’. Excerpt: Indian officials have held heated discussions with Google, Twitter and Facebook for not…
‘Science people’
Two of the most annoying kinds of ‘science people’ I’ve come across on social media of late: Those who perform rationalism – These people seem to know a small subset of things well and the…
The overlay bias
I’m not very fond of some highly popular pieces of writing (I won’t name them because I’m nervous about backlash from authors and/or their supporters) because a part of their popularity is undeniably rooted in…
In defence of ignorance
Wish I may, wish I mightHave this wish, I wish tonightI want that star, I want it nowI want it all and I don’t care how Metallica, King Nothing I’m a news editor who frequently…
Social media and science communication
The following article was originally intended for an Indian publication but I withdrew from the commission because I couldn’t rework the piece according to changes they required, mostly for lack of focus. I thank Karnika…
The technically correct strapline
(Re)Stumbled upon this article, by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, July 2016, this morning. As usual, it is rivetingly packaged. The strapline in particular caught my eye: Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances…