Cooperative distrust
Is there a doctrine or manifesto of cooperative distrust? Because I think that’s what we need today, in the face of reams of government data — almost all of it, in fact — that is untrustworthy, and th…
history
10 posts
The Government Project
Considering how much the Government of India has missed anticipating – the rise of a second wave of COVID-19 infections, the crippling medical oxygen shortage, the circulation of new variants of conce…
Looking for gemstones in the gutter
Just the other day, I’d mentioned to a friend that Steven Pinker was one of those rare people whose ideas couldn’t be appreciated by proxy, such as through the opinions of other authority figures, but…
The raison d'être of a science journalist, courtesy Hobsbawm
'Age of Extremes' offers a carefully considered picture of modern science and its philosophical roots…
Some notes on empiricism, etc.
The Wire published a story about the 'atoms of Acharya Kanad' (background here; tl;dr: Folks at a university in Gujarat claimed an ancient Indian sage had put forth the theory of atoms centuri…
No country for new journalism
Through an oped in Nieman Lab, Ken Doctor makes a timely case for explanatory - or explainer - journalism being far from a passing fad. Across the many factors that he argues contribute to its rise and persistence in western markets, there is evidence that he believes explainer journalism's historic…
Clio's passion
Dear Q, This mail is not intended to be an apology as much as my own acknowledgment of my existence. Of late, I have become cognizant of what a significant role writing, and having my writing read, p…
A Periodic Table of history lessons
This is pretty cool. Twitter user @jamiebgall tweeted this picture he'd made of the Periodic Table, showing each element alongside the nationality of its discoverer. It's so simple, yet it…
The common tragedy
I have never been able to fathom poetry. Not because it's unensnarable—which it annoyingly is—but because it never seems to touch upon that all-encompassing nerve of human endeavour supposedly run…
A clock without a craftsman
Curiosity can be devastating on the pocket. Curiosity without complete awareness has the likelihood of turning fatal. At first, for example, there was nothing. Then, there was a book called The Feynm…