A list of good reads
- India Spend has a good data story on the importance of the Indian women labour force—drawing on the work of Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin.
- Scientific American offers a fascinating look at the widespread appeal of horror and its roots in our evolutionary past.
- Also in Scientific American: Thought-provoking new research that shows people who frame their life as a hero’s journey find greater meaning in it. There’s a reason we respond to movies like ‘Star Wars’.
- Longreads examines why online writing is still considered inferior to books—even though it has transformed the nature of literature.
- The Guardian has an entertaining read on Barry Enderwick—who has recreated over 700 sandwiches in his quest for ‘the one.’ See? That’s a hero’s journey too!
- Also in The Guardian: a lovely feature (with beautiful photos) on women photographers in Africa.
- Washington Post (splainer gift link) reports on how AI image generators like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion reinforce racist and sexist stereotypes.
- The Verge lays out why search engine optimization has broken Google search, possibly beyond repair.
- A very good read: Ronojoy Mazumdar in Bloomberg News notes that the chawls in Mumbai—that helped the city grow—are under threat from the very development they helped usher in.
- Shoaib Daniyal in Scroll asks: Why do cities in India offer such low quality of life?
