Analysis
There's no denying that there currently prevails a public culture in India that equates criticism, even well-reasoned, with pooh-poohing. It's especially pronounced in certain geographies where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoys majority support as well as vis-à-vis institutions that the subscribers of Hindu politics consider
Analysis
From 'What is next for Iran’s nuclear programme?', The Hindu, June 28, 2025: As things stand, Iran has amassed both the technical knowhow and the materials required to make a nuclear weapon. Second, the Israelis and the Americans have failed to deprive Iran of these resources in
Scicomm
Featured image: An example of zellij tilework in the Al Attarine Madrasa in Fes, Morocco (2012), with complex geometric patterns on the lower walls and a band of calligraphy above. Caption and credit: just_a_cheeseburger (CC BY) 'Quasi' means almost. It's an unfair name for
Scicomm
A particle collider is a machine that energises two beams of subatomic particles and smashes them head on. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe is the world's largest and most famous particle collider. It accelerates (with the effect of energising) two beams of protons to nearly the
Scicomm
In his latest newsletter, Bruce Schneier springboarded off of articles in Washington Post and The Atlantic to write: There’s a balance between the cost of the thing, and the cost to destroy the thing, and that balance is changing dramatically. This isn’t new, of course. Here’s an
Analysis
Engineering as a methodology … contains a fundamentally materialist kernel, even if its present incarnation as a bourgeois science drives engineers to think and behave otherwise. — Nick Chavez, Engineers, Materialism, and the Communist Method After school, I studied mechanical engineering against my will. Most engineering students at the time did, and
Op-eds
NASA/SpaceX/Axiom will make their next attempt to launch the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station on June 11. Axiom Space's tagline for the mission is "Realizing the Return", alluding to three of the mission's four crew members, including India's
Analysis
From ‘Rapido draws flak for charging users extra for traffic delays, commuters term it ‘extortion’’, The Hindu, June 3, 2025: Ride-hailing platform Rapido is under fresh scrutiny from [Bengaluru] users for introducing a charge that penalises passengers if their ride is delayed by traffic. Several commuters in Bengaluru have flagged
Analysis
Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On March 8, a poll conducted by independent survey organisations in Russia among a randomly selected cohort of 1,640 people reported around 46% supported the war, 13% supported it somewhat, 23% opposed it, and the rest were undecided
Op-eds
From 'Meghalaya’s new cave-dwelling fish adapts to streams overground', The Hindu, May 25, 2025: An underground cave in Meghalaya, in focus for a conflict over a Shivalinga-like stone formation, has yielded a new-to-science fish that adapts to streams overground. A team of zoologists, led by Kangkan Sarma
Op-eds
There's a concept in quantum mechanics, and also in parts of classical mechanics, called the Berry phase. Say you're walking around a mountain. You start off along a path and follow it all the way until you're back to the point where you started.
Scicomm
Every once in a while, I dive into a topic in science for no reason other than that I find it interesting. This is how I learnt about Titan, laser-cooling, and random walks. This post is about the fourth topic in this series: solitons. A soliton is a stable wave