Thursday February 6 2025

headlines that matter

editor’s note

A booster shot of beauty: I hope you noticed that we have a bonus Big Story on the India Art Fair. Exactly what you need to get you through till Friday.

Needed: Tunes to celebrate the happily single: Once a month we gather suggestions from the splainer fam to put together an awesome playlist—each with its own theme. For the next edition, we're looking for songs that celebrate being unhitched—just in time for V-Day madness. Examples: 'Flowers' by Miley Cyrus and 'Feeling Good' by Nina Simone. As always, we are language agnostic:) Add your picks to this handy chhota form.

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

Beauty guide: All about the India Art Fair

This bonus Big Story by Raghav pulls together all the weird and wonderful things to expect from this year’s flagship India Art Fair. The guide offers must-see eye candy—and an excellent gateway to India’s biggest and most important art mela.

Delhi exit polls predict BJP win

Let’s start by noting exit polls are notoriously unreliable (See: Trump in White House, again). Caveats delivered, we move on to the results. According to most of the surveys, Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies will return to power after 27 years—with the Aam Aadmi Party projected to come in second and the Congress “a distant third.” Most of the predicted breakups of 70 Assembly seats gives the BJP and its allies 36 to 45 seats—and the AAP 25 to 34. Congress’ total spans anywhere from two to a big fat zero. Only one poll predicts an AAP win. The consensus among the pundits is that AAP has lost its anti-corruption mojo—and is now viewed as “any other party.” So why not give BJP a turn at the gaddi? The Telegraph has more analysis. The Hindu has the numbers.

The tickling news about laughter

Dutch researchers trained an algorithm to categorise different kinds of laughter. Turns out, there are really just two kinds: the kind that happens when something is funny—and the kind sparked by tickling.

Based on acoustic traits like loudness, rhythm and changes in frequency brought about by vocal-cord vibrations, the algorithm was able to correctly identify laughter produced by tickling 62.5% of the time. All other forms of laughter, whether they came from viewing stand-up comedy or watching someone pour salt into their tea instead of sugar, were nowhere near as easy to tell apart. This suggested there was something unique about the post-tickling laugh.

Why this matters: The findings hint at laughter’s deep evolutionary roots. Many mammals—from chimpanzees to squirrel monkeys—emit playtime vocalizations that sound suspiciously like giggles. "Even babies born deaf spontaneously produce laughter.” This means laughter hardwired into our brain—not learned, especially the kind produced by tickling—a behaviour displayed by both macaques and chimps. Our so-called sense of humour–why we find some things to be funny—came much later. (Economist, paywalled)

Tapestry: RSS for yer social media

There’s a new timeline app in town—say hello to Tapestry! Designed by Iconfactory—the company which helped build Twitter—the app has been described as a “cross between a social app and a news reader”. It basically lets you view the feed from all of your social media accounts at one place:

The app can ingest feeds of all kinds: someone’s Bluesky posts, your favorite YouTube creator’s videos, a blog’s new posts, all your go-to podcasts. You add the feeds, and Tapestry shows them to you in chronological order. No recommendations, no algorithms, just what Iconfactory calls a “personal, unified timeline” of content you care about.

Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s a helpful video explaining how it works:

But but but, you can only read the feed on the app. In order to like or reply, you will have to login to the respective apps—which is frankly very inconvenient.

A useful bonus: You can customise your feed by using features like “Muffle” which will limit posts from a specific feed.

Point to note: Tapestry is one of many timeline apps in the market. Its rivals include Flipboard’s Surf, Unread, Feeeed and Reeder. Even Bluesky and Meta’s Threads are all built on the same idea “that pretty much everything on the internet is just feeds. And that you might want a better place to read them.” The app launched on Tuesday. (The Verge, paywalled, TechCrunch)

The cost of coal emissions on agriculture

A new study shows that nitrogen dioxide, or NO2 from coal-fired power plants cuts the crop yield of both wheat and rice by 10%. The effects can be detected for up to 100 km in the vicinity of a station. As you can see from the maps below, the coal-fueled NO2 pollution varies from one state to another.

According to the study, weaning off coal could boost the value of our rice harvest by $420 million per year and wheat by $400 million. Reminder: There are still over 600 coal-fired power plants operational in India, and they are responsible for over 70% of the electricity supply. Phys.org has more nerdy details.

what caught our eye

business & tech

Boeing’s Starliner mess has racked up $2 billion in losses, leaving the company scrambling to salvage its $4.3 billion NASA contract and possibly sell off parts of its space business.
Just in time for the ticking Doomsday Clock, Google quietly drops its promise not to use AI for weapons or surveillance, updating its principles just weeks after Sundar Pichai met with Trump.
Google also unveiled Gemini 2.0—a “thinking” AI that explains itself—as part of a $75 billion AI arms race to outgun OpenAI, Microsoft and co.
Honda and Nissan’s blockbuster merger talks have hit a wall—Honda wants to take the driver’s seat, Nissan isn’t budging, and now the deal that could have reshaped the auto industry is stalling out.
Remember that brouhaha over Zomato’s ‘chief of staff’ job ad–which asked applicants to pay for the honour of serving CEO Deepinder Goyal? /He claims 18,000+ people actually applied for it—and 30 candidates were selected for “various positions”---which they are mercifully paid a salary for.
Israeli company Paragon Solutions admits selling spyware to the US, amidst allegations its tech was used to target journalists and activists.
India has become OpenAI’s second-largest market, tripling its ChatGPT user base in just one year, says CEO Sam Altman.

sports & entertainment

Trump just signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports—calling it the end of the “war on women’s sports.”
New York Times (splainer gift link) reports on 'Emilia Pérez', the year’s most-nominated film, which just hit an Oscar-season landmine—old social media posts from Karla Sofía Gascón.
Abhishek Sharma rockets from #40 to #2 in the ICC T20I rankings after a record-breaking 135-run blitz and stellar all-round performance in India’s dominant series win over England.
Kanye West defends Bianca Censori's controversial nude Grammy outfit, calling her the "most Googled person on the planet," but loses a $20 million gig in Japan amid the backlash.
The Hindu has a good read on Ron Marz’s creative process, describing his comic book script as a long letter to the artist for collaboration.
The Met Gala 2025 dress code celebrates Black menswear style with the exhibit "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" and a star-studded host committee, including Pharrell Williams and LeBron James.

health & environment

Sixty former bureaucrats have called out the government’s latest forest report as “scientifically flawed,” accusing it of using dodgy methods to paint a rosy—but misleading—picture of India’s green cover.
In an unexpected twist, scientists have discovered that repurposing fat cells into a cancer-fighting therapy could help starve tumors.
Most major polluters are set to miss the UN’s 10 February deadline for submitting their 2035 climate targets—- with only a handful of countries like the US, UK, and Japan stepping up so far.
A new study shows meditation triggers changes in deep brain areas tied to memory and emotions.

as for the rest

Philippine lawmakers have voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte amid corruption allegations, escalating the political feud with President Marcos.
The CIA just offered buyouts to its entire workforce—the latest Trumpian act of workplace cutbacks.
A helicopter off-course, pilots who didn’t see it, and an overburdened air traffic controller—layer after layer of safety lapses led to last Wednesday night’s deadly midair collision in Washington.
No to same-sex marriage, but yes to joint bank accounts, family recognition for ration cards, and the right to claim a partner’s body—the government has issued advisories to protect queer couples' rights.
Thailand just pulled the plug—cut power quite literally—on Myanmar border towns notorious for scam syndicates.
With the death of Aga Khan IV at 88, his son, Prince Rahim al-Hussaini, steps in as the fifth Aga Khan and spiritual leader of millions of Ismaili Muslims.
Joan Didion’s lost journal—an unfiltered dive into grief, depression, and her fraught bond with her daughter, Quintana—is due to hit shelves in April.
Egg prices are soaring, and so are thefts—thieves in Pennsylvania swiped 100,000 eggs worth $40,000, just as demand peaks ahead of Easter.
Want to bond with your cat? Ditch the toothy grin and master the slow blink—science says it’s the feline way of saying, “Hey, I like you.”

Four things to see

One: On Tuesday, comedian Pranit More posted on Instagram that he was attacked by a group of around 12 men—on Sunday after his comedy show in Solapur, Maharashtra. The reason: He made a joke about Veer Pahariya—an actor who recently debuted in the Bollywood film ‘Sky Force’. These men decided to defend Pahariya’s honour—probably because More namechecked Pahariya’s grandfather—who is… a Congress neta from Solapur! See the joke below. (Hindustan Times)

Two: The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of the gargantuan galaxy nicknamed Bullseye Galaxy—located 567 million light-years away and about 2.5X the size of the Milky Way. It has nine rings—six more than any other known galaxy (though we can see only eight in the photo… just saying). Mashable has all the nerdy details.

Three: Buckle up, the ‘Fantastic Four’ are here! Our fave Pedro Pascal plays Mister Fantastic—with Vanessa Kirby (Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Thing). The film is set in a “retro-futuristic” 1960s Manhattan. (Variety)

Four: Here’s an intriguing trailer for ‘The Great History of Western Philosophy’—an animation film by Mexican director Aria Covamonas—which doesn’t have a script, story or a dialogue! Instead it uses images from the public domain and spoken words from films and other sources—including dialogues in Chinese. You can gauge the Dadaist style of it below. The film premiered at Rotterdam International Film Festival yesterday. (Hollywood Reporter)