An ad signalling a state administration's willingness to accept floods will cause more and more damage and that it expects to be judged on the speed and size of compensation rather than on the damage it has managed to avoid rootprivileges.net/2025/11/11/f...
‘First state to disburse highest compensation’
The following jacket advertisement (which is expensive) appeared in The Hindu (and perhaps other newspapers as well; I didn’t check) yesterday: Something seemed off about the messaging here w…
rootprivileges.net
November 11, 2025 at 7:24 AM
An ad signalling a state administration's willingness to accept floods will cause more and more damage and that it expects to be judged on the speed and size of compensation rather than on the damage it has managed to avoid rootprivileges.net/2025/11/11/f...
Individuals can't master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science to make their own decisions. Why? rootprivileges.net/2025/11/09/w...
Why do we trust scientists?
Individuals can’t master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science and the suggestions of their exponents to make decisions.…
rootprivileges.net
November 9, 2025 at 3:13 AM
Individuals can't master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science to make their own decisions. Why? rootprivileges.net/2025/11/09/w...
Bill Gates's actions show that sounding the highest alarm on climate change and later leaping back from that position can both cause harm www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...
The pitfalls of climate alarmism
Bill Gates's shift in climate messaging highlights the dangers of alarmism and its impact on public discourse and policy.
www.thehindu.com
November 4, 2025 at 3:22 AM
Bill Gates's actions show that sounding the highest alarm on climate change and later leaping back from that position can both cause harm www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...
Are we mistaking the idea of knowledge for the object of policy? www.randomwalking.org/2025/11/02/i...
Is the war against science?
From ‘7 basic science discoveries that changed the world’, Nature, October 29, 2025:
Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic gr...
www.randomwalking.org
November 2, 2025 at 3:16 AM
Are we mistaking the idea of knowledge for the object of policy? www.randomwalking.org/2025/11/02/i...
I've come to dislike the word 'impact'. Climate writing has become rife with it and I'm not sure if all writers appreciate the consequences, especially its contribution to dull and flattened communication. www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/31/t...
The 'impact' of climate writing
The problem begins simply enough. A journalist finds a word that seems to fit almost everything. It might be "crisis", "pivot" or the ever-convenient "impact". It's concise, authoritative, and headlin...
www.randomwalking.org
October 31, 2025 at 2:32 AM
I've come to dislike the word 'impact'. Climate writing has become rife with it and I'm not sure if all writers appreciate the consequences, especially its contribution to dull and flattened communication. www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/31/t...
On Jane Goodall www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/18/o...
On Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall was a celebrated figure in conservation. Her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania redefined primatology. However, more than a few publications as well as co...
www.randomwalking.org
October 18, 2025 at 5:55 AM
On Jane Goodall www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/18/o...
According to Matthew Brown, to fully appreciate the value and scope of the scientific endeavour, we must recognise that science serves a "pragmatic function" as well as its equally significant "religious function" www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/18/t...
The 'religious' function of science
We often understand science primarily in terms of its tangible successes, looking to it for advances in medicine, for the foundations of technologies, and for the tools with which to predict and manag...
www.randomwalking.org
October 18, 2025 at 2:07 AM
According to Matthew Brown, to fully appreciate the value and scope of the scientific endeavour, we must recognise that science serves a "pragmatic function" as well as its equally significant "religious function" www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/18/t...
While it's heartening to tout the virtues of doing science led only by the guiding light of curiosity, it's important to remember that there's a bigger world out there and that science is a part of it. www.thehindu.com/newsletter/n...
Science for all Curiosity-driven research in an unequal world
In this week’s edition of our newsletter, Vasudevan Mukunth looks at a deeper topic -- what it takes to conduct scientific research.
www.thehindu.com
October 15, 2025 at 11:46 AM
While it's heartening to tout the virtues of doing science led only by the guiding light of curiosity, it's important to remember that there's a bigger world out there and that science is a part of it. www.thehindu.com/newsletter/n...
Europe's industrial leadership wasn't the result of cultural superiority, as Joel Mokyr would have it, but because of specific material advantages, including those accruing from its colonial exploits and its global trade networks www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/14/a...
A bad Nobel for Mokyr
The American-Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr has been awarded one half of the 2025 special Nobel Prize for economics "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technol...
www.randomwalking.org
October 14, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Europe's industrial leadership wasn't the result of cultural superiority, as Joel Mokyr would have it, but because of specific material advantages, including those accruing from its colonial exploits and its global trade networks www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/14/a...
Linklist: October 12, 2025 linklist.substack.com/p/linklist-o...
Linklist: October 12, 2025
most recommended: 2, 6, 9, 10, 12
linklist.substack.com
October 12, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Linklist: October 12, 2025 linklist.substack.com/p/linklist-o...
The end of the world, whenever it comes, will look and feel exactly like the world we already know www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/09/r...
Remembering 'The Melancholy of Resistance'
Congratulations, László Krasznahorkai, for winning the Nobel Prize for literature.
I still remember reading his The Melancholy of Resistance (1989). It was a mostly unnerving, somewhat frightening ex...
www.randomwalking.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:43 AM
The end of the world, whenever it comes, will look and feel exactly like the world we already know www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/09/r...
"They call it a war on science. It may indeed be a war, but science is not the target. The reorganization of the conventions of research fulfills a different aim: to disenfranchise marginalized communities. So let us call this what it has always been: class war." thebaffler.com/latest/scien...
October 1, 2025 at 4:04 PM
"They call it a war on science. It may indeed be a war, but science is not the target. The reorganization of the conventions of research fulfills a different aim: to disenfranchise marginalized communities. So let us call this what it has always been: class war." thebaffler.com/latest/scien...
The double-slit experiment, even in a sophisticated avatar, continues to reinforce the notion that the universe resists any single-sided description www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/01/u...
Using 10,000 atoms and 1 to probe the Bohr-Einstein debate
The double-slit experiment has often been described as the most beautiful demonstration in physics. In one striking image, it shows the strange dual character of matter and light. When particles such ...
www.randomwalking.org
October 1, 2025 at 2:35 PM
The double-slit experiment, even in a sophisticated avatar, continues to reinforce the notion that the universe resists any single-sided description www.randomwalking.org/2025/10/01/u...
India's Ig Nobel wins are indicators of a culture of inquiry that deserves more institutional support www.randomwalking.org/2025/09/20/c...
Curiosity as a public good
India has won 22 Ig Nobel prizes to date. These awards, given annually at Harvard University by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, honour studies that "first make people laugh, and then make ...
www.randomwalking.org
September 20, 2025 at 5:36 AM
India's Ig Nobel wins are indicators of a culture of inquiry that deserves more institutional support www.randomwalking.org/2025/09/20/c...
Maxwell's demon forces us to ask what it means to know something about a system and whether that knowledge can be used without consequence www.randomwalking.org/2025/09/19/d...
Dispelling Maxwell's demon
Maxwell’s demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of physics, a puzzle first posed in the 1860s that continues to shape scientific debates to this day. I’ve struggled to mak...
www.randomwalking.org
September 19, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Maxwell's demon forces us to ask what it means to know something about a system and whether that knowledge can be used without consequence www.randomwalking.org/2025/09/19/d...
To cancel an India-Pakistan cricket match is to concede that no space can remain where ordinary citizens of India and Pakistan might encounter each other beyond the logic of hostility rootprivileges.net/2025/09/13/a...
A cricket beyond politics
On September 11, the Supreme Court was asked to urgently hear a petition that sought to cancel the Asia Cup T20 match between India and Pakistan scheduled for September 14 in the UAE. The petition,…
rootprivileges.net
September 13, 2025 at 10:45 AM
To cancel an India-Pakistan cricket match is to concede that no space can remain where ordinary citizens of India and Pakistan might encounter each other beyond the logic of hostility rootprivileges.net/2025/09/13/a...
The Higgs boson's discovery in 2012 confirmed the Higgs field is real. But discovery alone doesn’t prove the mechanism is doing everything the theory demands. To test that, physicists need to look at situations where the Higgs boson's balancing act is crucial. rootprivileges.net/2025/09/12/i...
Is the Higgs boson doing its job?
At the heart of particle physics lies the Standard Model, a theory that has stood for nearly half a century as the best description of the subatomic realm. It tells us what particles exist, how the…
rootprivileges.net
September 12, 2025 at 3:43 PM
The Higgs boson's discovery in 2012 confirmed the Higgs field is real. But discovery alone doesn’t prove the mechanism is doing everything the theory demands. To test that, physicists need to look at situations where the Higgs boson's balancing act is crucial. rootprivileges.net/2025/09/12/i...
Rubidium rebukes dogma rootprivileges.net/2025/09/09/a...
A tribute to rubidium
And to Paul Feyerabend
rootprivileges.net
September 9, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Rubidium rebukes dogma rootprivileges.net/2025/09/09/a...
Lighting the way with Parrondo’s paradox rootprivileges.net/2025/09/07/l...
Lighting the way with Parrondo’s paradox
In science, paradoxes often appear when familiar rules are pushed into unfamiliar territory. One of them is Parrondo’s paradox, a curious mathematical result showing that when two losing strategies…
rootprivileges.net
September 7, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Lighting the way with Parrondo’s paradox rootprivileges.net/2025/09/07/l...
Making sense of the MicroBooNE findings rootprivileges.net/2025/09/06/c...
Challenging the neutrino signal anomaly
A gentle reminder before we begin: you’re allowed to be interested in particle physics. 😉 Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in physics. They are extremely light, electrically …
rootprivileges.net
September 6, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Making sense of the MicroBooNE findings rootprivileges.net/2025/09/06/c...
[email protected] recently asked other physics teachers on X how much time they spend teaching the interpretations of quantum physics. His question inspired me to write this post rootprivileges.net/2025/09/03/w...
What does it mean to interpret quantum physics?
The United Nations has designated 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Many physics magazines and journals have taken the opportunity to publish more articles on quantum p…
rootprivileges.net
September 3, 2025 at 4:24 PM
[email protected] recently asked other physics teachers on X how much time they spend teaching the interpretations of quantum physics. His question inspired me to write this post rootprivileges.net/2025/09/03/w...
Our everyday world looks predictable only because decoherence hides the fuzziness. But under carefully controlled conditions, that fuzziness comes back into view. www.argumentative.co/2025/08/23/w...
What on earth is a wavefunction?
If you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread outward in gentle circles. We all know this sight, and it feels natural to call them waves. Now imagine being told that everything — from an electron t...
www.argumentative.co
August 23, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Our everyday world looks predictable only because decoherence hides the fuzziness. But under carefully controlled conditions, that fuzziness comes back into view. www.argumentative.co/2025/08/23/w...
Fusing commercial messaging with nationalist symbolism capitalises on the prevailing political mood and presents companies as partners in the nationalist project. A Zomato advertisement on August 15 is a good example. www.argumentative.co/2025/08/16/z...
On the Zomato ad and India's hustle since 1947
In contemporary India, corporate branding has often aligned itself with nationalist sentiment, adopting imagery such as the tricolour, Sanskrit slogans or references to ancient achievements to evoke c...
www.argumentative.co
August 16, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Fusing commercial messaging with nationalist symbolism capitalises on the prevailing political mood and presents companies as partners in the nationalist project. A Zomato advertisement on August 15 is a good example. www.argumentative.co/2025/08/16/z...
A new kind of quantum engine with ultracold atoms rootprivileges.net/2025/08/07/a...
A new kind of quantum engine with ultracold atoms
In conventional ‘macroscopic’ engines like the ones that guzzle fossil fuels to power cars and motorcycles, the fuels are set ablaze to release heat, which is converted to mechanical energy and tra…
rootprivileges.net
August 7, 2025 at 3:41 PM
A new kind of quantum engine with ultracold atoms rootprivileges.net/2025/08/07/a...
Trump's trade war is reminiscent of US-India relations in the early 1990s, when the US denied Russia's transfer of cryogenic engine technology to ISRO rootprivileges.net/2025/08/07/t...
Trade rift today, cryogenic tech yesterday
US President Donald Trump recently imposed substantial tariffs on Indian goods, explicitly in response to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil during the ongoing Ukraine conflict. These penalties...
rootprivileges.net
August 7, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Trump's trade war is reminiscent of US-India relations in the early 1990s, when the US denied Russia's transfer of cryogenic engine technology to ISRO rootprivileges.net/2025/08/07/t...