smart & curious
A list of intriguing things
Baby owls sleep facing down because their heads are too heavy to hold upright.
Plexiglass is having a moment thanks to the virus. And this lampshade version is the hottest restaurant design at the moment. Wall Street Journal has the story.
Cardboard is also having a moment because the virus stays active on it for only 24 hours. Vikram Dhawan designed these inexpensive and recyclable beds, and they’ve already been installed in a Delhi care centre.
A new Insta trend takes celebrities—present and dead—and gives them extreme cosmetic surgery procedures to make them ‘perfect’. The most popular handle @fixedyouu. We have to say the Donald Trump-as-super-botoxed-babe is pretty darn funny.
A list of good reads
- Indian Express has a fascinating profile of Cyanide Mohan—a former primary school teacher who killed 20 women.
- This Twitter thread is a thoughtful reminder on the cruelty of viral clips that allows us to humiliate ordinary people with our smart-phone.
- PARI has an important ground report from Maharashtra—where the digital divide is becoming a ‘digital partition’. The rush to move classes online leaves poor children stranded with Whatsapp classes on smartphones their parents can ill-afford.
- Ozy profiles Hasina Kharbhih, the woman who has rescued 72,000 women and children trafficked across India, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal—and created the globally touted ‘Meghalaya Model’.
- Watch: Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Forum explains why the legal order banning the 59 Chinese apps is highly problematic.