smart & curious

A list of curious facts

• For all the talk of buzzing, queen bees actually ‘quack’ and ‘toot’ to communicate with worker bees. 
• Speaking of bees, Japanese scientists have found a way to pollinate flowers using soap bubbles.
• Guided home tours are now big on Tik Tok—including “actual middle-class” or lower-middle-class homeowners showing off the “ugliness or nonsensicality of their living space.”
• According to a recent research paper, there are at least 36 intelligent alien civilisations in our galaxy.

Life-with-Covid may look like this

Double decker lie-flat seats in premium economy. It’s very train berth meets plane seat. The potential downside: airlines will totally try and squeeze in that middle ‘berth’ just to make us miserable.

Disposable urine bags. Travel John and Pee Buddy bags allow women to pee while standing—and have chemicals that turn urine into an odorless solid that can later be thrown in trash cans. These are already on sale in the United States.

Hand wash yoga, anybody? This is an outdoor ad for a Russian yoga studio. Perfect for our now endless rinse-and-repeat routines. Click the link for more. 

List of good reads

• Laurie Penny in Long Reads explores just how complex ‘consent’ can be—more so when women are taught not to openly express their sexual desire. This is a thoughtful and fresh take that’s worth your time.
• Big Think explains why medical human trials rely mostly on male patients. It’s not just sexism that hinders the inclusion of more women.
• We learned a lot from Sonam Savlani’s thoughtful tips on how to communicate as a brand on social media—especially during a pandemic.
• If you can’t write anything interesting about your privilege, don’t write anything. Sadly, Shruti Advani did not take that advice. The result: this very silly Financial Times piece (read the worst bits in Daily Beast since FT is paywalled). The result of her silliness: This delightful send-up of Advani in the Press Gazette.
• The Guardian has a nice profile of English County cricket’s first South Asian coach—Vikram Solanki who has the top job at Surrey.
• Gagan Biyani’s Twitter thread offers a candid story about failure—and the time he was fired as co-founder from Udemy.
• Two excellent reads on Chinese khana in India. Sandip Roy on eating the Kolkata iteration, brought to the city by its authentically Chinese residents. And Vir Sanghvi on the merrily inauthentic Chinjabi that dominates restaurants in the north.
• Tim Wu in the New York Times offers an illuminating take on the ‘tyranny of convenience’—and how “more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks” (like shopping on Amazon) has come to shape entire economies and our lives.