A list of good reads
- The Wire tackles research misconduct in Indian universities: how officials incentivise gaming the system by increasing research publication numbers—by hook or by crook.
- New York Times (splainer gift link) uncovers the plight of East African housekeepers in Saudi Arabia—featuring harrowing stories of assault, rape and murder.
- Also in New York Times: how the meticulous task of weeding out fakes is starting to take its toll on the Van Gogh Museum—due to lawsuits and an influx of requests.
- Financial Times (splainer gift link) has a revelatory interview of hamaara Subrahmanyam Jaishankar—who says the old world order’s virtues are ‘exaggerated’.
- BBC News profiles the women fighting back against the bristle worm poachers who harm the ecological health of India’s wetlands.
- Also in BBC News: how Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake—starring Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler—has become the year’s most divisive film. Hint: it concerns the war on Gaza.
- With some lovely photography, CNN traces the disappearing heritage of the European-style ‘havelis’ that dot Paris Street in Sidhpur, Gujarat.
- Also in CNN: a Cold War tale of how a doctor learned the secret purpose of an Arctic research base, decades after he was deployed there. ‘Ice Station Zebra’ anyone?
- The Guardian brings an interactive visual primer on all things deep-sea mining—how it works, the impending geopolitical battles, the environmental costs and much more.
- Rosecrans Baldwin in GQ looks at whether men are in a global ‘spermpocalypse’, marked by declining sexual activity and widespread infertility.
- Slate bats for Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’—a four-episode UK crime drama miniseries about a 13-year-old accused of stabbing a classmate to death.
- Here’s a throwback from 2016: Tara Krishnaswamy in The News Minute makes a case for collective bargaining—a United States of South India to demand a better revenue distribution deal from the Central government.
- Here’s another throwback from 2024: Citing advances in genome sequencing research, BBC Wildlife Magazine asks whether the dodo can be brought back from extinction.
- We’ll leave you with a good watch—Aeon offers Nina Sabnani’s ‘Baat Wahi Hai (It’s the Same Story)’. Inspired by a Rajasthani art tradition, this lush animated short film stars duelling orators who give conflicting accounts of the Ramayana’s Shravana Kumar.
