As a viral meme says, March isn’t over yet, but what a month it’s been. We’re living through the biggest oil shock ever, and stock market carnage. Why? Because US and Israel took out Ayatollah Khamenei. Just like that, amid a charade of negotiations. Last time someone killed a king – ok, heir – we…
For some time now, neuroscientists worldwide have been peering into brains to see how reading from books compares with screen reading, even if you are reading an e-book or e-paper. Researchers’ conclusions are emphatic – reading better, and retaining more, are best done via the physical ‘device’: book, newspaper, periodical. Not their electronic cousins. Nor…
By Swami Sukhabodhananda Life is a sacred interval between two profound events, birth and death. At birth, we enter this world innocent, unburdened by fear, untouched by anxiety. A newborn does not worry about reputation, loss or tomorrow. There is pure presence. Yet somewhere along the journey, fear quietly enters. And the greatest of all…
Invisibility cloaks, and trains arriving at Platform No. Nine and Three-Quarters, should ideally be a part of the extramarital universe. Affairs run on adrenaline and banana peels. One slip, and you are running between divorce lawyers and paternity tests. If the tryst itself consists of soft music, dim lights, and a lot of eye contact,…
A jury in California, recently, did something courts rarely do: it looked at the internet, and saw, not a medium, but a machine. It found Meta and YouTube negligent – holding that infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendation were not harmless conveniences, but engineered compulsions that harmed young users’ mental health. The damages were modest. The…
Somewhere in a Pune laboratory, two methanol molecules are being stripped of a water molecule and fused into something quietly significant. The product is dimethyl ether, DME. The process is indigenous. The patent is Indian. And the timing, though few have said so plainly, could not be more deliberate. Wars do not just redraw borders….
Today’s edition tracks a proposed reset in US H-1B wages, a viral swipe at Kash Patel that has sparked a diaspora debate, and a feel-good dog video that isn’t quite what it seems. THE BIG STORY US proposes higher prevailing wages for H-1B workers The US has proposed a rule to significantly raise prevailing wage…
These are some of the things on which people do not waste time, or these are some things they claim as time wasters. A hurdle to them skyrocketing their career or personal life or whatever else they are pursuing. They do not go to buy milk They do not cook They do not plan –…
Countries like Iran, Ukraine, and the US have started attacking cargo ships during conflicts. This is dangerous for the whole world. In the first two weeks of the Iran war, 16 cargo ships were hit. After that, hundreds of other ships stopped moving and stayed in the Gulf because they were scared of being attacked….
For most of the twentieth century, capitalism rested on a simple institutional arrangement: governments governed, corporations produced, and markets mediated between them. That architecture is now undergoing a structural mutation. Multinational corporations increasingly control the systems through which modern societies operate—data networks, cloud infrastructure, global supply chains, financial platforms, and artificial intelligence compute capacity. The…