social media
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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. Continue reading
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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, after Twitter’s response, here) – the popular discussion board for topics related to the tech industry. The first discussion has already… Continue reading
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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 proactively removing what they described as fake news on their platforms, sources told Reuters, the government’s latest altercation with Big… Continue reading
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‘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 rest on faith, and claim to know that “science can explain everything” without being able to explain it themselves. Champions… Continue reading
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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 technological ‘solutions’ that asymmetrically promote work published in the solution’s country of origin. My favourite example is Pocket, the app… Continue reading
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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 uses Twitter to find new stories to work on or follow up. Since the lockdown began, however, I’ve been harbouring… Continue reading
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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 Kohli and Shruti Muralidhar for their inputs. Since the mid-20th century, the news-publishing industry has wielded the most influence on… Continue reading
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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 between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong. Makes you go “Wow”, doesn’t it? But then you read… Continue reading
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How science is presented and consumed on Facebook
This post is a breakdown of the Pew study titled The Science People See on Social Media, published March 21, 2018. Without further ado… In an effort to better understand the science information that social media users encounter on these platforms, Pew Research Center systematically analyzed six months’ worth of posts from 30 of the… Continue reading
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Hey, is anybody watching Facebook?
The Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 kicked off a flurry of social media activity that was equal parts well-meaning and counterproductive. Users on Facebook and Twitter shared reports, updates and photos of victims, spending little time on verifying them before sharing them with thousands of people. Others on forums like Reddit and 4chan started… Continue reading
About Me
I’m a science editor and writer in India, interested in high-energy and condensed-matter physics, research misconduct, pseudoscience, science’s relationship with society, epic fantasy, open source/access/knowledge systems, H.R. Giger’s art, Goundamani’s comedy, Factorio, and most things that require a lot of time to get the hang of.