Joined October 2020
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Feb 24
Some notes and observations on the urban condition from my recent trip to Delhi.
bhatotia.substack.com/p/one-…
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Jun 14
I think about this pretty much every day
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Jun 12
There is a historical constant: no amount of wealth can liberate a third-rate thinker from intellectual envy or from the deeply degrading sense of scholarly inferiority -- that feeling of impoverished erudition.
No amount of wealth.
Jun 12
Who’s excited for the next volume: “You Fucking Idiot”.
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Jun 12
How many trees are there in the Mona Lisa? From Ways of Seeing to Ways of Treeing. My essay in the Indian Express today.
indianexpress.com/article/op…
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Jun 11
Read an excerpt from Joe Sacco's latest book on the Muzaffarnagar riots, which Penguin has decided to not publish
equator.org/articles/scenes-…
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Jun 11
a bus every 6-7 minutes is the entire secret of good transit. no schedule, no app, you just show up. the kids have been screaming the answer at us for over a year. six seveeen. headways. they're talking about headways
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Jun 10
You think politics is bad now, just wait until the median voter has never read a book
The percentage of 9 year olds who read for fun reaches a new low
Source: NAEP
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Jun 10
Woke up this morning to read @vauhinivara’s brilliant existential essay at @nytimes on em dash that reinforces the beauty of language and resistance to a world where LLMs homogenize it :-)
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Jun 9
When a person is tired of Boston, they are tired of life.
Jun 9
Will never get tired of this amazing view of the Boston skyline! 🤩 Recorded while riding the MBTA Red Line across the Longfellow Bridge 🚇🌊🏙️
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This is becoming disturbingly evident across formerly respectable publications across South Asia
Jun 8
From op-eds in newspapers to NeurIPS position papers, AI is increasingly shaping long-form public discourse. Its arguments seem plausible, but beneath surface fluency, we find argument collapse: different LLMs converge to the same main & supporting arguments and structure.
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India's ruling BJP party calls the Great Nicobar Project a "strategic gateway to crush China". But many experts say the cost to benefit ratio just doesn't add up.
Leesha K Nair and I report from ground zero.
npr.org/2026/06/07/g-s1-1255…
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As Jaffrelot theorized, there is nothing else to Hindutva except the emulation & stigmatization of the Other, rooted in an inferiority complex. There is no inner worldview or vision of the good society. They have nowhere else to go except spiral down into more ridiculous pathways
Jun 8
Haridwar veg biryani? No, sadhus push shops to rename dish as pulao.
Pulao was first mentioned in Persian literature in the 10th century. The Shias from Iran, who migrated to India in the 13th and 14th centuries, brought it with them. telegraphindia.com/india/har…
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Jun 7
Half a century ago, the princely states embodied everything backward and despotic; today, with the likes of Pillai and Sagar, we've overcorrected into hagiography. What Pillai describes was hardly unique to Travancore, and it certainly doesn't explain "Kerala's modern success".
Jun 7
Surprised to learn, via @UnamPillai's 'The Ivory Throne', that Kerala's modern success in public health management bears a longer, older story behind it. It was the last Travancore Maharani who created a public health division in the early 20th century!
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Jun 5
Modi government forced a 69-year old Assamese Muslim woman with failing memory into Bangladesh.
A kind family found her lost and confused on the streets of Dhaka. She does not even speak Bangla.
Read about the incredible cruelty of Modi's India in @ZamanRokibuz_'s report.
scroll.in/article/1093314/an…
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Jun 4
it’s always fascinating how callous and cruel leftists can be when a figure (especially a woman let’s admit) doesn’t perfectly align with their interests
Marjane Satrapi made a career out of proliferating orientalist western caricatures of her own people. While Satrapi cashed in on racist campaigns thinly veiled by anti-patriarchal rhetoric calling for 'regime change' in Iran, she never once used her platform to speak out against the ongoing existential threats presented by Western powers against Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian and ALL other Muslim women in West Asia. It's a fitting end for someone who remained blithely silent through three years of genocide in the region that raised her to literally die of grief over the loss of one gangly Swedish white guy.
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Jun 4
police?! I'd like to report a murder!
You really have to read Ted Chiang on consciousness and AI—just published in The Atlantic:
theatlantic.com/philosophy/2…
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"If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bike"
Jun 3
Will PM Modi choose competence over loyalty? Elections settle the political question. They cannot settle the economic and institutional ones. Those need the right expertise in the room. My @timesofindia essay on India's crisis of talent at the top:
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Article 14 has done the most amazing work last few years and its closure would be a tragedy for all who desire a better standard of Indian journalism. Please subscribe and support.
Jun 1
This is an urgent message from our Founding Editor @samar11. If you like our work and want to see it continue, please listen and subscribe:
article-14.com/subscribe
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Jun 2
Indian and Pakistani nationalists sparring over the Indus Valley Civilization (the former being an order of magnitude more unhinged on this question) reminded me of a forgotten movement from the 1970s that laid claim to Harappa too but for reasons neither side would like. (1/n)
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The thing about caricatures is they are created for agreeability and to distance from harder truths. The ‘Uncle’ caricature in this article is ultimately a reflection of a socially conservative country at odds with the global modernity. Youth attitudes can hardly be disentangled.
May 31
A cockroach meme rattles the country’s gerontocrats economist.com/asia/2026/05/3…
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