A list of good reads
- The Wire has an eye-opening read on the people-dog-wildlife conflict on the IIT-Madras campus.
- New York Times discovers South Indian weddings—which have become a bigger spectacle than ever before (thanks to a generous infusion of North Indian traditions).
- Janaki Lenin has a lovely piece in The Hindu on the leopards of Mumbai—who are veteran city dwellers.
- The Telegraph did a big weekend story on an aging Calcutta—a must read for all lovers of the grand old city.
- This Atlantic essay offers a great analysis of why some people can change their habits and lifestyle overnight—while others struggle and fail. No, it isn’t a matter of ‘self control’.
- Also in The Atlantic: The disappointing career of George Clooney as a director.
- New York magazine has an excellent read on Joan Didion’s takedown of Woody Allen and his wildly popular 70s movies—and the backlash she faced at the time.
- Are you addicted to Wordle? Mashable has all the tips and tricks you need.
- MLA P Thiaga Rajan in The News Minute offers an excellent response to Sadanand Dhume’s Wall Street Journal column—which claimed that Tamil Brahmins left the state due to socialism and reservations.
- We didn’t recommend ‘Hype House’—the Netflix reality series on TikTok stars—in our weekend advisory. But if you plan to check it out, be sure to check out The Guardian’s take on it.
- Also in The Guardian: an important piece on “collector culture”—where men trade explicit photos and clips of women.
- If you subscribe to generational theories of behaviour and personality, be sure to check out Los Angeles Magazine’s take on the Gen Z employee.
- The Cut looks at a sobriety movement that is specifically focused on women.
- All the research in the 1950s indicated that women make better astronauts than men. RealClearScience has the fascinating (and infuriating) history of how it was suppressed.
- This eye-opening Twitter thread describes the serious privacy issues raised by the widely used MyGate app–which is used to vet visitors to apartment complexes.