An extra-long list of good reads...
To make up for our absence:)
- Shrayana Bhattacharya in Outlook magazine explains why Shah Rukh Khan is the soothing balm for millions of Indian women living in a patriarchal society.
- Quartz reports on the Warner Bros plan to sell Matrix NFTs—and become the first Hollywood studio to do so.
- Speaking of NFTs, folks who pay lots of money to buy digital tokens of images are furious at those who simply copy and share that image. Vice has more on the new NFT slur: “right clicker mentality.”
- Palladium profiles the most powerful man in China. No, it’s not President Xi but his mysterious intellectual and political advisor Wang Huning.
- The Verge offers a fun list of the worst gadgets it has ever reviewed—and they include some of the most hyped.
- If you’re curious about lab-grown meat, TIME magazine offers a close-up look at exactly how meat is grown in a reactor.
- Subscriber Akul Baiju highly recommends Lucy Mangan’s lovely essay in The Guardian on building her own library—and the solace it brought her.
- A very good read: Vidya Krishnan in The Atlantic on how casteism operates in America.
- CNN profiles Preet Chandi, a British Sikh Army officer who aims to be the first woman of color to ski solo to the South Pole.
- South China Morning Post offers a rare interview with Priscilla Chan—the woman married to Mark Zuckerberg. Makes us wonder why tech billionaires tend to marry really nice women who just want to do good.
- Huffington Post offers a guide to the most hygienic way to pee on a plane. Warning: It involves a lot of “paper work.”
- Indian Express has a long read on the brilliance of English captain Eoin Morgan.
- An excellent read for book lovers: Lucinda Rosenfeld in Lithub who asks: Where are all the ordinary-looking female heroines in literature?
- Less Wrong offers a weird but fascinating argument for not saving a drowning child.
- A must read while Delhi drowns in smog: Scroll on the Rs 120 billion (12,000 crore) fund to fight pollution that has gone up in smoke.
- Mint Lounge has a handy guide to the many ways you can use the wet grinder—and not just for idli or dosai batter.
- We greatly enjoyed reading this Curtis Sittenfeld short story in the New Yorker. It’s about a simple question: Should married folks stop meeting up with people of the opposite sex alone?
- A timely op-ed by Ganesan Karthikeyan in Indian Express takes TV doctors to task for spreading bad medical advice.
- Caravan magazine looks at who PM Modi chooses to hug.
Three good things to watch: One, David Attenborough’s powerful and moving speech at the COP26 summit. Two, this eye-opening Bastion discussion on how the RBI’s recurring payment rules are threatening the survival of non-profit charities. Three, an India Ink video that offers a highly engaging historical lesson on how Hindus became, well, Hindus.
