# Slightly Acidic > Science, culture, and complexity Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/about-2/ Last updated: 2021-12-04T20:47:21.000Z I’m Vasudevan Mukunth. I write here about science, scicomm and scepticism from an Indian PoV, and occasionally about Tamil cinema and politics and journalism in India. I’m also interested in high-energy and condensed matter physics, research misconduct and fraud, open access publishing, the intersection of pseudoscience and politics, and the history of science. Aside from writing, my forte is being able to help newsrooms across media formats and business models maximise the amount of value they can sustainably extract from good science, health, and environment journalism. I’ve worked at *The Hindu*, *Scroll.in* and *Brainwave* magazine (now defunct). I’ve also written for *Hindustan Times*, *Quartz*, *Physics World* and *Wissenschaft im Dialog*. I was part of the founding team of [*The Wire*](https://thewire.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [*The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); I edited the latter until November 2022\. Since January 2023, I’ve been the deputy science editor at *The Hindu*. I'm also a full member of the Science Journalists' Association of India. Everything I write on this blog is my opinion and not that of my employers or colleagues. The contents of this blog belong to me and are not available to republish or reproduce in any format. Please don’t send guest post requests or offers for native advertising. I won’t entertain them. Comments are disabled here. I’m on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/@1amnerd?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as @1amnerd. ### Definitions URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/definitions/ Last updated: 2022-03-07T15:54:42.000Z ### Writing I have been writing as a matter of habit since 2003, when I started my first diary. I continued the habit through three years of school after that, six years of college and seven years of work – and it still goes on. However, why I write has changed. When I started my first blog in 2008, for example, I began writing to communicate ideas in physics that fascinated me. When I remodelled my blog in 2012, I began writing to opine about the news of the day. After I started getting more active on Twitter in 2016, I began writing to please an audience. This might sound crass but in many ways, it has served me well. For example, I have learnt a lot about why good writing alone can at best only be half of the publishing process. Nonetheless, I also noticed that I was forgetting how to write for myself – an essential part of my habit that I had been taking for granted in its formative years and the consequences of whose erosion I began to experience only after it was mostly gone. If you read my posts and enjoy them, I will be glad, but I will not stop writing if you stop reading. My apologies if this endeavour offends your sensibilities as a reader; that is not my intent. I simply wish to rediscover what it means to write irrespective of the commercial value of ideas that such writing expresses. I should clarify that this exercise isn’t as virtuous as it might seem, if at all: the writing habit was once therapeutic and I would like if it were so once again. ### Complexity I work in journalism, as a science editor, but I am a communicator at heart. The idea of complexity has always been fascinating. As someone who thinks and learns through the act of writing, I have been able to surmount different complicated topics in different ways. As a communicator of physics research, I have encountered two broad kinds of complexity: intricacy and inherent complexity. Intricacy is best imagined as a dense cluster of information that simply takes time to disentangle, but can be disentangled and laid out by the repetitive application of some kind of clarificatory process. Inherent complexity is relatively more inescapable in that its clarification is not a question of tedium but of intelligence. For example, the Large Hadron Collider is a very large machine composed of millions of (relatively) tiny parts. Its operators have much less uncertainty about the machine’s performance than a casual observer would expect because they understand how all the parts work together. However, understanding how the brain – a far smaller organ – performs its functions takes a nasty combination of neurology, electrochemistry, quantum mechanics and knowledge of emergent properties to appreciate, and even then not fully. I have loathed inherent complexity because it defies my personal expectation that reality is intricate, not complex. This would seem to be an irrational position to assume because humans are neither materially nor biologically equipped to naturally engage with the different energies and spatiotemporal scales at which the universe manifests itself. However, writing is another beast entirely, and its practice affords us a variety of opportunities, each employing a different ratio of [faith to education](https://inherentcomplexity.com/2017/10/04/in-pursuit-of-a-nebulous-metaphor/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), to understand why things happen. By writing, and writing as often as I can, the idea has taken root in my mind that there is almost always a continuous and smooth line connecting every phenomenon and the first principles at the bottom. The exceptions have almost always concerned quantum mechanics and the social sciences; stories embedded in the latter have been particularly formidable. But I remain convinced — to the chagrin of not a few physicists and social scientists — that communication needn’t have to be unfaithful to reality, that it is wholly possible to communicate inherent complexity while staying faithful to the truth, to reality itself. I will always refuse to believe, for example, that excruciatingly twisted sentences such as [this](https://inherentcomplexity.com/2019/01/16/a-very-big-sentence/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are required to communicate the idea it bears, that it is simply not a case of subpar communication. However, I will admit, as I have after discovering [this](https://www.nature.com/news/sometimes-science-must-give-way-to-religion-1.11244?ref=slightlyacidic.com) short essay by Daniel Sarewitz in 2013, that we surmount inherent complexity with faith instead of knowledge more often than we’d like to believe. But I will also say that as long as we remain cognisant of this behaviour as well as the lines at which faith ends and knowledge begins, we also keep ourselves available to grapple with the implicit claims of inherent complexity without lying to ourselves. Isn't such confrontation the ultimate point of it all? ### Rheopexy Most fluids are thixotropic: they become less viscous the longer they experience shearing forces (which you can impart by simply shaking the bottle the fluid is in). However, not all fluids exhibit this property; on a rare occasion, you might come across a rheopectic fluid: they become more viscous the longer they experience shearing forces. The technical term for this property is rheopecty, or rheopexy. Researchers expect rheopectic fluids to be useful in body armour and as lubricants. In fact, synovial fluid – a naturally occurring rheopectic fluid – lubricates synovial joints in mammals, in which it is the most common joint type. This blog doesn't pay tribute to rheopexy but draws inspiration from its symbolism. I am a slow thinker (and subscribe to [Derek Sivers's thoughts](https://sivers.org/slow?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the subject). This attribute doesn't bode well for me as a reporter because I am bad at composing rebuttals on the spot; however, it doesn't interfere with my duties as an editor. More importantly, my tendency to go slow often works to my advantage when I am presented with sensitive, potentially nuanced issues. Like a startled rheopectic fluid, I become disinclined to go with the flow, and stubbornly resist the progression of deductions until I – and my interlocutors – have been able to distill a reasonable position. However, unlike a rheopectic fluid, which is *always rheopectic*, I am not; sometimes, and frequently after having concluded an interview or having published an article, I find that I didn't challenge an idea enough. There is still a switch I need to flip irrespective of the advantages bestowed by my naturally slow thinking, and it isn't that this switch needs to be destroyed: it's simply not healthy to be overtly deliberative about everything (like [Chidi Anagonye from *The Good Place*](https://thegoodplace.fandom.com/wiki/Chidi%5FAnagonye?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Instead, I need to get to the point where I *always* flip the switch 'on' or 'off' at the right time, and to my mind, unifying my writing habit – and [the advantages](https://rheopexy.com/2015/05/03/why-i-like-writing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this habit has brought – with this endeavour makes perfect sense. ### Rational technics What is rational technics? On January 21, 1963, the American philosopher and historian Lewis Mumford delivered a speech in New York city entitled ‘Authoritarian and Democratic Technics’. Shortly after the start, Mumford says in the speech: > My thesis, to put it bluntly, is that from late neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other man-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable. If I am right, we are now rapidly approaching a point at which, unless we radically alter our present course, our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted, so that every residual autonomy will be wiped out, or will be permitted only as a playful device of government, like national ballotting for already chosen leaders in totalitarian countries. In the same vein, ‘rational technics’ I thought was a good way to describe the intended outcome of my process of interrogating the world’s events and its peoples’ beliefs. I studied engineering and have been a science journalist for almost a decade. I have also read more than my fair share about the history and philosophy of science, have written on these topics, as well as on particle physics, condensed matter physics, climate change, conservation, public health, drug policy, scientific publishing, academic misconduct, knowledge access, pseudoscience and issues of science and society. I think I understand science, and I also think that most people have trouble seeing beyond its uppermost layer – of discoveries and inventions that (supposedly) serve society, of the sophistication and the oft-self-proclaimed inaccessibility. Science is much more than that, and definitely more complicated. By taking a closer look at the outcomes of scientific work and the ways in which they interact with the rest of society, I wish to expose the rational technics – the system of rules and technologies by which rationalism and scientism impose themselves, and the ways in which these impositions are flawed (they’re always less than objective), if not pernicious. ### Axioms URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/axioms/ Last updated: 2022-03-07T15:58:31.000Z > Writing is to write for oneself. > > Marguerite Duras, *Motherhood Makes You Obscene* > The best places for writing are those that fade from consciousness as the landscapes of the imagination take over. > > Linda Jaivin, *Caught Mapping* > To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. > > John Ruskin > The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naive believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. The critic is not the one who alternates haphazardly between antifetishism and postivism like the drunk iconoclast drawn by Goya, but the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile, and thus in great need of care and caution. I am aware that to get at the heart of this argument one would have to renew also what it means to be a constructivist, but I have said enough to indicate the direction of critique, not away but toward the gathering, the Thing. > > Bruno Latour, *Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern* > After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity! > > Jerome K. Jerome, *Three Men in a Boat* > The rationalists regularly fail to reckon with power as it is practiced, or history as it has been experienced, and they indulge themselves in … contests with the freedom of those who have largely escaped discrimination. > > Gideon Lewis-Kraus, *Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media* > We were hungry before we were born. > > Fever Ray, *Keep the Streets Empty for Me* > With my feet upon the ground I lose myself > Between the sounds and > Open wide to suck it in, I > Feel it move across my skin, I'm > Reaching up and reaching out, I'm > Reaching for the random or what- > Ever will bewilder me, what- > Ever will bewilder me > And following our will and wind, we > May just go where no one's been > We'll ride the spiral to the end and > May just go where no one's been > > Tool, *Lateralus* > If you don't see that what you are working on is almost obvious, then you are not ready to work on that yet. Prepare the way. > > Arthur Ogus > Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it. > > Umberto Eco, *Foucault's Pendulum* > “Nobody does anything cool anymore, and everybody is afraid of everything,” Vinson Cunningham said in a recent roundtable about the death of the sex scene for the *New Yorker*. “We are in a decadent, post-excitement world.” The impetus of the discussion was a comment by filmmaker Paul Verhoeven on our culture’s “general shift towards Puritanism,” and similarly, the article reads like a diagnosis for sexlessness in more than just the movies. They talk about the proliferation of art made solely for profit, the increasing infantilization of adults, the politicization of everything, the metaverse, the dumbed-down appeal of literalism. “So much of our culture right now is really earnest and de-sexed,” said Doreen St. Félix. > > It seems appropriate to me that they were having this discussion during a time when sex has never been more flagrantly depicted and available. The point is that sex, or eros, is about more than just people fucking on camera. To take that further, it’s about more than just fucking. “Sexuality is the most essential element of nature,” Verhoeven told *Variety.* It is the ultimate euphemism for earthly pleasures and all its attendant qualities: desire, touch, anguish, longing, satisfaction, thrill, connection, presence. Essentially everything the internet can’t meaningfully give us. > > Haley Nahman, [The Death of Sex](https://haleynahman.substack.com/p/89-the-death-of-sex?s=r) > Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. > > You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. > > To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble. > > Bill Watterson, [Kenyon College Commencement](https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), May 1990 > … prose of any consequence invariably arrives far later in a culture’s history than does great poetry. Poetry entered the world almost as early as words did; it is the first flowering of language’s intrinsic magic—its powers of invocation and apostrophe, of making the absent present and the present mysterious, of opening one mind to another. It comes most naturally to languages in their first dawn, when something elemental—something somehow pre-linguistic and not quite conscious—is still audible in them. Prose, however, evolves only when that force has been subdued by centuries upon centuries of refinement, after unconscious enchantment has been largely mastered by conscious artistry, and when the language has acquired a vocabulary of sufficient richness and a syntax of sufficient subtlety, and has fully discovered its native cadences. > > David Bentley Hart, [How To Write English Prose](https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/how-to-write-english-prose?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > When companies say they’re a family, it’s a veiled way of demanding total sacrifice. Nights, weekends, whatever it takes for, you know, “the family”. But great companies aren’t fake families — they’re allies of real families. They don’t eat into people’s personal time, they don’t ask people to dial-in during vacations, and they don’t push them to work Sundays to prep for the meeting on Monday. > > 37signals, [Companies Aren't Families](https://37signals.com/35/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > A noteworthy fact is the extraordinary disproportion between the consequences of an invention and the invention itself. We have said that intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple and in bending it, in converting it into an instrument in order to become master of it. It is. this mastery that profits humanity, much more even than the material result of the invention itself. Though we derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as an intelligent animal might do, and though this advantage be all the inventor sought, it is a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that the invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our horizon. Between the effect and the cause the disproportion is so great that it is difficult to regard the cause as producer of its effect. It releases it, whilst settling, indeed, its direction. Everything happens as though the grip of intelligence on matter were, in its main intention, to let something pass that matter is holding back. > > Henri Bergson, [*Creative Evolution*](https://archive.org/details/creativeevolu1st00berguoft/) > The secret of a good old age is simply an honourable pact with solitude. > > Gabriel García Márquez > To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. > > Howard Zinn > At the end of *The Symposium* Socrates insists to his two friends Aristophanes and Agathon that "the genius of comedy is the same as the genius of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also." The friends, says Plato, were "compelled to assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding his meaning." It had been a long night, with much wine, and the friends might well have agreed to almost anything. But whether they would have agreed cold sober, and just what Socrates' arguments were, are other questions. One would like to know precisely what he said. Or perhaps the affair was a bit of paradox spun out for his own amusement. For it seems clear … that the genius of tragedy is not the same as the genius of comedy, and that a primary intellectual requirement is to learn how they differ and why. As for Socrates' notion that every writer ought to be able to do both, there can be no objection. Some few have done both. What he had in mind, perhaps, was the undeniable truth that the highest comedy gains its power from its sense of tragic possibility, and the profoundest tragedy presents a full if fleeting vision of an ordered universe, behind the temporary disorder, to which comedy is witness. > > Richard Sewall, [*The Vision of Tragedy*](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20123565?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > > > Richard Sewall, [*The Vision of Tragedy*](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20123565?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### Archives URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/archives/ Last updated: 2024-06-29T14:42:42.000Z ## By date ## By topic ### Thanks URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/thanks/ Last updated: 2026-09-28T15:59:36.000Z This is a permanent record of the people whose work I can vouch for, who have given me a leg-up and the tools that help me live better. It was inspired by [Ann Friedman](https://www.annfriedman.com/recommendations/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). **Peers and collaborators** - [Mahima Jain](https://mahimajain.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Dhiya Gerber](https://twitter.com/DhiyaGerber?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Janaki Lenin](https://janakilenin.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Vignesh Radhakrishnan](https://twitter.com/VigneshJourno?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Radhika Santhanam](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://in.linkedin.com/in/radhika-santhanam-0528331b3&ved=2ahUKEwi8k5TL0JGXAxUAXmwGHTnKB2cQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw32CWmvzOSupR2cR-OAshRW) - [Rohini Subrahmanyam](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohini-subrahmanyam-261596216?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Poorvaja Sundar](https://in.linkedin.com/in/poorvaja-sundar-3265845b?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Srinivasan V.R.](https://x.com/vrsrini?ref=slightlyacidic.com) **Giants on whose shoulders…** - Lalitha *akka* - Thomas M. - Natasha V. - Siddharth V. - Suresh N. **Tools** (no affiliate links) - [Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/in/browse?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Kingdom Rush](https://www.ironhidegames.com/Games/kingdom-rush?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Chronodivide](https://chronodivide.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) This list will be updated from time to time. ## Posts ### 'You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/10/03/you-dont-have-the-faintest-idea-what-youre-talking-about/ Last updated: 2026-10-03T10:11:18.000Z Recently had a chance to rewatch *Good Will Hunting*, and thought Robin Williams's heart-rending speech to Matt Damon on the bench in the park is something we could also recount to AI, and to ourselves so that we remember what AI really is, and have it be mostly true. Transcript: > Thought about what you said to me the other day about my painting. Stood up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me. I feel into a deep, peaceful sleep and I haven’t thought about you since. You know what occurred to me? You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You’ve never been out of Boston. So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. Never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. If I ask you about women, probably give me a syllabus on your personal favourites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”. But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watch him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help. I ask you about love, probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes. Feeling like god put an angel on earth just for you. Could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel. To have that love for her be there forever, through anything. Through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you, I don’t see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared-shitless kid. But you’re a genius. Well, no one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan, right? Do you think I’d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read *Oliver Twist*? Does that encapsulate you? Personally, I don’t give a shit about all that because, you know what, I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some fucking book. It's hard, for some reason or other, to rise through and above all this, but we need to keep trying. That's how we remain human. ### AI and the risk of catastrophe URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/27/ai-and-the-risk-of-catastrophe/ Last updated: 2026-09-29T05:06:21.000Z > Isn't it wild that we've reached a situation where people who are most ❊pro❊ AI say “this technology we love and build has like a 10% chance of killing us all” and the people who are ❊anti❊ AI reply “there's no way this figure is correct, it's inflated out of proportion”? 🤯 > > — Gro-Tsen (@gro\_tsen) [September 26, 2026](https://x.com/gro%5Ftsen/status/2103804188308426953?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I am reminded of an episode from history involving Bertrand Russell and the U.S. writer and editor Leo Rosten. In the early 1950s, Rosten had approached Russell in London to write an article on agnosticism for *Look* magazine. The resulting piece was published in November 1953\. A couple decades later, in February 1974, Rosten recalled his conversations with Russell in an [essay](https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1974feb23-00025/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) titled ‘Bertrand Russell and God: A Memoir’ in *The Saturday Review*. They contained one amusing exchange: Rosten asked Russell to suppose that Russell had died only to find himself in heaven, standing before god. What would he say? “I probably would ask,” Russell said, “‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’” I do not think the statement by @gro\_tsen is true *per se*. The only way it could make sense is with ‘better evidence’ in the form of two additional ‘hidden’ possibilities. First: Those who say the technology has a 10% chance of “killing us all” (setting aside questions about how one is measuring that possibility) are playing into the hands of the Big AI cos. that hope the figure will bolster their claims to continue self-policing, since framing AI with the potential to have such unintended and unprecedented consequences can nudge regulation to focus more on technical safety rather than on questions of labour, copyright, competition, surveillance, etc. while allowing incumbents to remain involved in designing the rules to govern themselves — all while the exacting safety requirements disproportionately burden smaller competitors. Or, second, that, aided by the sheer rubbishability of the figure, governments allow AI companies to continue working as they are and nothing changes — the sort of consequence already familiar to people following climate action and vaccination drives, where extreme but poorly substantiated claims, such as “the Arctic will be free of glaciers by 2050” or “mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 will prevent transmission”, allow doubters to altogether dismiss the underlying issue — the need to pay heed to the effects of climate change or vaccination — just by discrediting the flimsy claims. Put another way, a spectacular but nearly-impossible-to-falsify claim can render regulation a choice between accepting an extraordinary hypothetical danger and dismissing AI regulation altogether, and both of which sideline the more mundane reasons to regulate the industry today. Finally, I disagree with @gro\_tsen’s binary because, at the outset, you can imagine the space of possible positions vis-à-vis AI to already be constrained by at least three axes: the desirability of AI, the risk of catastrophe posed by AI, and the confidence in risk estimates, each of which ranges from very low to very high. Further, “pro-AI” or “anti-AI” is itself a volatile classification because it does not capture whether the support or opposition refers to enthusiasm for the technology, the companies developing it, slow v. rapid deployment or automation or to the technology’s net social value. It also overlooks the possibility where two people can agree on the technical risk but disagree on whether emphasising an extinction-level risk confers any political leverage. Or, of course, the statement is just a joke. --- Coda: After *Look* magazine published Russell’s article, the *New York Daily News* attacked him in an editorial and said the continued existence of someone with Russell’s views only demonstrated god’s mercy. When Rosten sent Russell the editorial, [Russell replied](https://dennisdarland.com/BertrandRussellSociety/RSN/RSN0016Aadobe7.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Dear Mr. Rosten: > > Thank you for sending me the extract from the N.Y. “Daily News.” I think the evidence for the existence of God supplied by my continued existence is strengthened by the continued existence of the N.Y. “Daily News.” It and I can agree in wishing that His mercy were less infinite. ### An explosive study URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/27/an-explosive-study/ Last updated: 2026-09-28T15:33:24.000Z My sister Swathi Murali has her first [peer-reviewed paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468170926000548?ref=slightlyacidic.com) out, expected in print in the December 2026 edition of *Forensic Chemistry*. Excerpt from the abstract: > Electrical tapes may be submitted to forensic laboratories for analysis concerning their utilization in the construction of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, post-blast tape specimens collected at an explosion site are seldom pristine and may undergo physical and chemical alterations that can affect the outcome of a forensic examination. Therefore, a systematic assessment of the impact of detonation on the analysis and comparison of tapes was conducted on a selection of 30 black vinyl electrical tapes from brands representative of the US market, which were subjected to controlled detonations. Swathi and her coauthor Patrick Buzzini, who is her PhD advisor at the Sam Houston State University in Texas, then tested the tapes using three techniques. The first, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), identifies materials based on how they absorb infrared light. However, Swathi found it was easily confused by the explosions, with residues from TNT and the blasting cap and the heat introducing noise. Second, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) — which identifies elements a sample has by studying the X-rays it emits when blasted with electrons — similarly suffered from noise in the data because post-blast fragments often acquired aluminium and silicon from components of the explosive setup. Finally, she found gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to be the most reliable because it isolated the tape’s compounds first before identifying them, and could thus tell apart the tape’s plasticisers from contaminants introduced by the blast. (I’ve never seen any of these instruments up close. However, I’ve often had to write about and/or discuss GC-MS in the context of drug quality. Based on that plus some reading, I know FTIR is the cheapest and easiest to run of the techniques whereas both EDS and GC-MS are more expensive and more labour-intensive, and their operators also need skills likely to be more costly to acquire. The paucity of GC-MS setups in poorly funded Indian drug-testing labs is an important reason why their ability to test the purity of various drugs is constrained, though I reckon the country’s forensic labs are better off.) Congratulations, Swathi! ### Computation that computes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/25/computation-that-computes/ Last updated: 2026-09-29T02:16:37.000Z While I was recently browsing the web for interesting physics papers, I came across one in *Nature* titled [‘A thermodynamically favoured molecular computer’](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10996-5?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The work itself seemed interesting but what caught my eye was a pair of lines in the abstract: “… computation can be embedded in a system relaxing to a thermodynamically favoured equilibrium state. Machine learning and search algorithms use this idea, although executed on non-equilibrium architectures at enormous energy cost.” I have come across versions of this statement when writing about the connections between machine learning and statistical physics — a feat the Nobel Prize for physics recognised in 2024\. But then I thought that in the spirit of really learning how this was and to have some reference text I could come back to, I should write about it. So here goes. The central idea seems to be something physicists and computer scientists are very familiar with but which nonetheless landed, to me, as a wonderful surprise when I first stumbled across it in the context of quantum computing: in the right conditions, the natural tendency of a physical system to move towards equilibrium can perform a computation. This is quite unlike the computer processor we are more familiar with, which computes by manipulating small electric currents passing through semiconductors. Put another way, it was easier to grasp the ability of a processor to be capable of computing because it had been outwardly apparently engineered by humans to do so. On the other hand, that a natural phenomenon could perform calculations whose outputs are valuable specifically to certain humans seemed bizarre. Of course, once you think about it, it becomes clear that that happens more often than we explicitly acknowledge. The sun’s position in the sky at a fixed time on every day of the year marks out a figure called the analemma, and people can use it to determine sunrise and sunset times every day as well as the directions of due east and due west. The essential idea is to map objects’ properties and their interactions with each other to information of value to people. That said, the idea that systems simply abiding by the natural physical laws can somehow solve sophisticated maths problems or help discover new drugs boggles the mind. Sure, this sentence is reductive, but you get the point: how do we go, rather did we go, from an ordinary tendency of the universe’s matter all the way to computing? The classical textbook example in physics of a system moving towards equilibrium starts with a ball at the top of a hill. Unless something is holding it back, the ball will roll downhill and eventually come to rest in a valley. But this is not the physical system of interest *per se*. It is the one centred on this system’s free energy. The ball rolled down and into the valley because doing so lowered its potential energy, and thus its appropriate free energy. The journey to equilibrium is thus a system’s pursuit of lower free energy, using quantities like kinetic/potential energy, entropy, temperature, interactions between its components (e.g. molecules), and so on. To take advantage of this phenomenon for the purposes of computing, scientists design physical systems so that their ‘valleys’ correspond to the solutions of a problem while its starting position corresponds to… well, the starting position. Then, by mapping the first and final states to parts of the problem itself, scientists can use the system’s evolution to arrive at the answer. Let us consider an example. Say you need to solve the following equations for *x* and *y*: 3*x* – *y* \= 1 –*x* \+ 2*y* \= 0 And to do that, you set up this mechanical system: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/1xwck.jpg) In words: the distances of the blocks X and Y from the wall stand for the value of the variables *x* and *y*. X is attached to the wall by a spring with a stiffness of 2 N/m and Y is attached to the wall with a spring of stiffness 1 N/m. And X and Y are connected to each other by a separate spring of stiffness 1 N/m. (The cylinders attached to the springs are viscous dampeners: they ensure the blocks stop moving cleanly instead of oscillating back and forth first). Now, using a load weighing around 102 g hanging at the end of a pulley, you apply a force of 1 N towards the right on block X. The moment the load is applied, the system will find itself in a non-equilibrium state. X will begin moving towards the right, pulling Y along, even as X’s and Y’s springs pull them towards the wall. The system’s components will begin exchanging kinetic energy (from the blocks), elastic energy (from the springs), and potential energy (from the load) — even as the dampeners turn some of that mix into heat. Eventually the system will come to rest, i.e. equilibrium. By definition, in this state, the total force acting on X and Y must vanish. The forces acting on X will have been: (i) The wall spring pulling to the left at 2 N/m times *x* (by Hooke’s law, force equals stiffness times distance), (ii) The connecting spring pulling in the direction of X at 1 N/m times *x* – *y*, and (iii) The load pulling to the right at 1 N. At equilibrium, then: 1 – 2*x* – (*x* – *y*) = 0\. If you rearrange this, you get: 3*x* – *y* \= 1, which is the first equation. Similarly, if you tally the forces acting on Y to zero, you get the second equation: –*x* \+ 2*y* \= 0\. In (other) words, you have confirmed that the physical system correctly instantiated the two equations, which represents the mapping. Now, all you need to do is measure the distances of X and Y from the wall: the two blocks would not have stopped at some random position; instead, thanks to the mapping, they would have come to rest at a position that would allow both blocks to have zero net forces acting on them. Thus you will have your answer: 40 cm and 20 cm, i.e. *x* \= 0.4 and *y* \= 0.2. But here is the funky part. Just as you worked out the forces acting on each block, you can also work out the formula for the system’s potential energy: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/e1.png) The first three terms represent the energy stored in the various springs and the fourth represents the potential energy in the load. If you work it out, the equation becomes: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/e2.png) This is an algebraic equation whereas the system was purely mechanical. Obviously the system does not ‘know’ algebra — but thanks to the way the two equations were mapped to the forces acting on the blocks, the system’s evolution according to simple laws of physics corresponded to an evolution of this equation to its minimum value. And at that value, 3*x* – *y* will equal 1 and –*x* \+ 2*y* will equal 0. In much the same way, if you can set up a highly complicated system with hundreds or even thousands of coupled elements, its physical properties can be mapped to (or mapped to mappings of) way-more-complicated problems in, say, optimisation and linear algebra. Then you pull the system to a non-equilibrium state and release it. Scientists have applied the same technique, in its fundamentals at least, to machine learning because machine learning is often essentially an optimisation problem. For example, training a neural network to perform a specific task can be tantamount to searching through a large parameter space for values that minimise a loss function. Imagine this space to be a strange land filled with hills and valleys: the neural network’s act of learning becomes, in a loose yet illustrative mathematical sense, journeying downhill through this landscape, to that point where the loss function hits its lowest possible value. The advantage here is that the computer is allowed to focus on the maths that captures multiple variables evolving simultaneously instead of having to simulate or develop the several numerical operations representing that complex evolution from scratch, in turn consuming less energy to solve the problem. That said, there is no free lunch. There many, many instances where machine learning and many other kinds of problem-solving are not synonymous with optimisation problems. More specifically, the technique using the natural behaviour of physical systems to move towards equilibrium is more readily suited for problems whose properties can be (relatively) straightforwardly mapped to an energy landscape whose minima correspond to useful answers. Examples of problems that resist this kind of mapping include [symbolic algebra](https://maths-from-the-past.org/symbolic-algebra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [cryptographic hashing](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/cryptography-hash-functions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). All this said, the computers we use in our daily lives, from the one you check your email on to the ones running your AI prompt, implement the ‘mapping’ concept only in an abstract way. For example, a GPU running a neural network does not actually build a system with a specific energy landscape and then allow it to move towards equilibrium. Instead, it uses billions of transistors plus clocks, memory banks, data connections, and electronic circuits to, in a manner of speaking, simulate journeys on this landscape — and that too only using math. This is what the *Nature* paper meant when it said “executed on non-equilibrium architectures at enormous energy cost”. The high-dimensional optimisation problems today’s state-of-the-art AI models grapple with require extraordinary amounts of computation. It is practically computation that computes. ### Verifiability, access, and allocation in maths URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/19/verifiability-access-and-allocation-in-maths/ Last updated: 2026-09-28T15:17:44.000Z When I was talking about [this post](https://rootprivileges.net/2026/08/26/the-mathematician-and-the-oracle/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with a friend, he asked a thought-provoking question. In the post, I’d argued that I believe it should be appropriate for mathematics to consider a solution to a problem to be illegitimate if mathematicians had arrived at it with help from a machine, device or instrument that wasn’t equitably accessible to all mathematicians. My friend asked if this was like how not all physicists can access the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and how not all biologists could access biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs. By and large today, scientists accept that not every one of them needs to be able to access every instrument to the same degree. Scientific communities also accept work that, as a matter of routine, scientists have produced using scarce, expensive, geographically concentrated or otherwise access-controlled infrastructure. Against this background, let me resolve my position into three components. The first two are access to the instrument that facilitates a claim and what resources scientists *in toto* must be able to access to evaluate that claim. And it seems to me that while the first component can accommodate even radical inequity without invalidating the science of the claim, on the second component there must be no compromise. For instance, a physicist in Chennai won’t be able to reproduce in her lab the data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC — but that doesn’t at the same time mean she gets to say “ATLAS has privately concluded that the Higgs boson particle exists”. Why? Because the ATLAS collaboration has documented the detectors’ various components and calibration readings, the team’s statistical methods, selection criteria, and software, and the ultimate uncertainties in the ATLAS data. As a result, another instrument like ATLAS may be able to test the ATLAS collaboration’s claims. (CERN also hosts several research groups that interrogate the data internally.) Thus, the underlying science remains reproducible even as the LHC and its experiments are far from being equitably accessible to all high-energy physics researchers everywhere. The same argument goes for BSL-4 labs: that the constraints on which particular scientist can perform some analysis or procedure need not also constrain the ability of some claim in science to be reproducible. In the same vein, in mathematics, being able to reproduce the process by which a claim was unearthed is less important than being able to reproduce the claim itself. I’d written in my post: “Selvi can be cleverer than Shankar and Shankar does not need Selvi’s brain in order to be able to check Selvi’s proof.” So if Selvi claims *P* \= true, it shouldn’t matter to Shankar, or to mathematics more broadly, if she had the help of a dozen graduates or if she stared at a wall for three months. What matters is that Selvi should provide a mathematical justification for her claim that *P* \= true, in the form of a step-wise proof that draws on the field’s tools and foundational assumptions (e.g. theorems, lemmas, specific assumptions, etc.) — and Shankar’s ability to verify it shouldn’t depend on his having privileged access to an oracular instrument. Put another way: a mathematical claim must ultimately rest on an argument or artefact that other mathematicians **can** scrutinise without requiring privileged access to the resource(s) that produced it. With emphasis on the word ‘can’. In point of fact, mathematics usually has a much easier time separating discovery from justification than do the experimental sciences. To mix things up a little, let’s add astronomical observatories to the mix of examples. With many of these observatories (worldwide) these days, astronomers from a different part of the world can apply for observing time; if the facility’s corresponding committee approves an application, the astronomers can use the facility to collect the data they need for their specific area of study. Observatories aren’t unique in using this model, which exemplifies how publicly funded scientific infrastructure can be availed to qualified researchers instead of restricting access. A BSL-4 lab is, however, generally more restricted to scientists than an observatory. Every restriction always serves, or ought to serve, a social function, and here the additional restriction pertains to biological, and potentially national, security. Even so, a researcher can access the lab if she acquires the necessary qualifications, demonstrates work with other labs, etc. With an AI model like Claude, however, Anthropic may — and in fact already has — simply select a dozen mathematicians in private and give them some number of Claude-hours, leaving others with no way to avail such access themselves. The social function that the restriction has amounted to here is nothing more than increasing inequity. Finally, to the third component of my original claim. Say Selvi and Shankar are competing to resolve a conjecture, and Anthropic invites Shankar to work with a powerful internal AI model. Shankar produces a proof with the model’s help, which he then verifies and publishes. Selvi can still check the proof. However, Shankar will also have ‘won’ the competition, and reaped the accompanying plaudits, credit, jobs, grants, etc., culminating, potentially, with the power to set the research agenda in his domain. So in addition to verifiability and access, I’d also include an ‘allocation’ criterion: if access to some machine, device or instrument must needs be limited, it must be achieved by institutions that can provide an account of why the limitation exists and how researchers may surmount it. I think this is necessary to ensure verifiability and access also serve the ‘right’ social functions — however they are defined — rather than those that create or entrench the inequity that now haunts mathematics. ### Privileged access is bad for science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/12/privileged-access-is-bad-for-science/ Last updated: 2026-09-13T01:56:44.000Z Despite some problems of its own, the ongoing Microsoft Majorana saga has been striking a pleasant contrast with the rush by artificial intelligence (AI) companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to show their proprietary models can do research-level mathematics. Of course, experts verify an experiment in condensed matter physics and a mathematical proof in significantly different ways. In mathematics, once a machine has produced a proof, another mathematician can still check it step by step. With the [‘Majorana’ chips](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/majorana-1-a-quantum-phenomenon/article69252315.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), most recently [Majorana 2](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.03884?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the claims by Microsoft Quantum rest on specific devices and choices of parameters — but the important difference is that Microsoft has been transparent. In an essay in August titled [‘Mathematics in the age of AI’](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.16753?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the mathematician Terence Tao said AI companies have valuable incentives to optimise for achievements that are solvable, and that are amenable to being benchmarked, by machines even as the companies’ proprietary models hide much of the actual problem-solving process behind corporate NDAs. In the second week of September, when OpenAI announced one of its internal models had worked out a new result in the difficult and prestigious Navier-Stokes problem, New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster expressed concerns that the company may have trained its model based on his work using another OpenAI tool called Codex. OpenAI subsequently [wrote](https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in a September 8 article on its site: > Following an investigation, we have confirmed that Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the two months preceding this announcement and paper on September 8, 2026, could not have influenced the system in any way, including through training. But even if OpenAI is entirely in the green here (the claims attributed to OpenAI computer scientist Sebastien Bubek have still to be settled), the fact remains that outsiders cannot inspect the model or its training history, nor the sequence of prompts and replies that produced the Navier-Stokes result. Fortunately, mathematicians are beginning to resist this information asymmetry, which many believe is proving corrosive to their field. The organisers of the [Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics](https://leidendeclaration.ai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#declaration) warned that mathematics is coming to depend increasingly on proprietary technologies even as those technologies draw on the mathematical commons put together by generations of the field’s exponents. The Declaration went on to call for open science, proper attribution, human responsibility for results, and disclosure in a collaborative spirit. A similar anxiety came over the Caltech Mathathon, a problem-solving marathon that drew backlash after its undergraduate organisers invited 100 teams to attack open problems with AI models, backed by about $2 million in free credits from OpenAI and Anthropic. Hundreds of mathematicians, including four Fields Medal winners, [penned a letter](https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/10/open-letter-about-the-mathathon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) demanding the event be suspended in order to avoid producing “sloppy” work and imposing a considerable burden on other mathematicians to check and verify the results. OpenAI has since withdrawn its sponsorship of the event. On September 11, a group of 25 Fields Medal winners, including Tao, published a [statement online](https://mathandai.org/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) titled ‘A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics’. Excerpt: > We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose. In many fields and activities, years of training have traditionally served not only to produce a final answer or product, but also to develop understanding and the ability to formulate new questions and ideas. However, building on a vast body of previous human work, AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of producing the results of such work directly, and these goals cease to align. The issues the mathematical community faces now are similar to issues that other scientific and creative professions are facing, and indicate issues that all of humanity might face: how to make sure that, as AI changes the way work is done, we do not lose sight of what that work was meant to achieve in the first place. Scientific knowledge is produced by societies, not people: research institutions have instruments, laboratories, grants, and students; scientists have theories, datasets, and journals; and societies have memory and history. If, in this milieu, the OpenAIs and even the Microsofts start to accumulate breakthroughs, they will effectively capture the prestige of being first — which science rightly openly celebrates — but while also pushing the labour of verifying its discoveries as well as of sustaining the field from which the companies draw their raw materials to the 'public' scientific community. The Microsoft Quantum paper in 2025 was at least open access and the team has released the relevant data and code, which independent experts could subsequently scrutinise. Again, yes there are significant differences between how the scientific community digests claims from experimental condensed matter physics and those from mathematics research, but they also have enough similarities to point to a common moral: the greater the consequence a scientific claim has, the less its credibility ought to depend on privileged access to corporate infrastructure or information. ### Lesson learnt? None. URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/12/lesson-learnt-none/ Last updated: 2026-09-12T13:12:18.000Z A particular line from the open statement mathematicians wrote against the design of the latest Caltech Mathathon, due to happen in late October, has stuck with me: > Mathematicians do not only prove theorems: they also take measures to ensure that the future of a field remains healthy after the extraction of a result. They do so by sharing their results and explaining their methods to others at talks and conferences. They mentor students and postdocs so that the next generation can advance research further, and take care not to scoop other mathematicians at the last mile. That mathematicians do these other things has not been acknowledged as vociferously in public as it has been in the last few weeks, as AI behemoths like OpenAI and Anthropic have raced to solve mathematical problems, in the process taking away the thing mathematicians generally work towards and yet, by solving them, producing none of the things mathematicians look for as they work. Put differently, what the models spit out eventually is a proof and just a proof, shorn of the shared methods, mentoring, collaboration, and the various other riches that emerge when human mathematicians pursue a proof. And yet the two developments in these posts (not the posts themselves, mind) strike me as more distasteful than illuminating or even exciting: > OpenAI has told the NYT they’ve made substantial progress on another Millennium Prize problem, rumoured to be the Hodge conjecture. [pic.twitter.com/t6Z64T2YaE](https://t.co/t6Z64T2YaE?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > > — Ananyo Bhattacharya (@Ananyo) [September 10, 2026](https://x.com/Ananyo/status/2098140636968837351?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) > Also Anthropic rumoured to have the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. If all of this is true,and there's a good chance it is, I hope they put significant time and effort into communicating what these theorems mean, why they're important and their impact. Will they though... [https://t.co/5jaBvN6JwI](https://t.co/5jaBvN6JwI?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > > — Ananyo Bhattacharya (@Ananyo) [September 11, 2026](https://x.com/Ananyo/status/2098343967775461816?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I really do not understand what OpenAI or Anthropic expect they could gain by continuing down this path, especially after l’affair Navier-Stokes. Whatever truly happened in that dispute, the shape of it ought to have been damning enough on its face: a company raced to beat two mathematicians to a mathematical result, days after learning of their unpublished work, then disputing credit and authorship in public. But if that episode did not chasten anyone, what will? Pursuing more of the same kind of outcome, and seeking to allay it only by alluding to a “thoughtful” release, only weeks later and over the objections of more mathematicians means the lesson has not landed — as ironic as that is coming from the developers of machines capable of complex reasoning. “Thoughtfully” in particular is a strange, if not meaningless, word to reach for right after a fight over credit, especially if [Tristan Buckmaster’s version of events](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/openai-bubeck-alpoge-buckmaster-navier-stokes-codex-privacy/article71445721.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is to be believed. PS: On the off chance you're interested, I've tried to explain the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture [here](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/11/the-birch-and-swinnerton-dyer-conjecture/). ### Semiconductor nationalism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/09/03/semiconductor-nationalism/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T04:21:11.000Z There’s a passage in an interview of former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, published by [*Frontline*](https://frontline.thehindu.com/interviews/raghuram-rajan-india-jobs-industrial-policy-services-growth/article71410314.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 1, that many people seem to have misunderstood, especially on Twitter, where — perhaps unsurprisingly — it has been reduced to “India shouldn’t make chips because it can smuggle them in instead”. Excerpt: > I want to emphasise that I’m not against self-sufficiency in defence. That’s very important. If you want foreign presence, get them to manufacture in India because at least we will have control over the factories. Let’s not be overly dependent on importing defence equipment. We had to do this when we were far behind the technical frontier but let’s try and get closer to the frontier sooner. People will say that for this we will have to have the private sector’s presence; and I’m not convinced that it has to be this way but if there are areas that we need to have the private sector’s presence in the defence sector, maybe that could be considered. > > The problem, of course, is as soon as you say there are these strategic industries, everything becomes a strategic industry. And then it has no value. Rice is a strategic industry because we feed our people. No, be careful, pick the areas you absolutely need to have a presence in. > > This is why when you hear me rail in public \[against industrial policy\], it’s when I see people say that India needs to make semiconductor chips \[by pouring several billion dollars.\] My question is: why? This is the most easily smuggled thing on earth. China is procuring Nvidia’s frontline chips through the backdoor. It sets up units in Thailand and Malaysia, and the services of those units are given to China. Russia has run a war since 2022, and it requires chips which are probably not frontline but second- or third-line chips, and it smuggles them in. Those big Nvidia chips, you can’t smuggle them in suitcases, but the rest you can. Who’s going to prevent you from buying it? > > We have more than 35 million Indians in our global diaspora community, so even if everybody shuns us, the diaspora will at least buy these chips for us. What I’m saying is we can never be so independent in chip manufacturing that we will not need to source inputs globally. > > If, tomorrow, the world breaks into isolated countries because of war, then forget about chip manufacturing because we will need the machines, we will need the silicon, we will need all that from elsewhere. When I say strategic, let’s be careful about what we want. But we have to absolutely make sure that our munitions are manufactured domestically. Because in the event of a war, if we run out of munitions, we are not going to get it from elsewhere. We need to be clever. Rajan is clear that India should reduce its dependence on imported defence equipment and make sure it manufactures the munitions it needs within the country, where the government can control the factories. Herein lies the rub: having to do all this doesn’t automatically make the industry strategic — but which is the argument the Indian government has been applying to semiconductors. Rajan's rice example is illustratively absurd: if supporting the Indian population, such as by having to feed it, makes an enterprise strategic, then almost all enterprises with Indian consumers are going to become strategic, and the term loses all meaning. Specifically, India spending several billion dollars trying to set up domestic semiconductor manufacturing is hard to justify when the goal is to achieve self-sufficiency alone because semiconductors are traded worldwide and depend on international supply chains, so even when trade becomes restricted, India can get many of the chips it needs through other international networks, often at a lower cost than it would incur. Likewise, even if India builds fabs, it will unavoidably have to get the inputs these facilities need from abroad. This is not the case for defence manufacturing, where complete self-sufficiency is as possible as it is desirable. On semiconductors, India has to gain more than just self-sufficiency — and we need to see evidence for that before we deem the pursuit of self-sufficiency to be legitimate. Right now, the evidence points the other way: pretending India can have a completely domestic semiconductor stack has excused the diversion of considerable public funds as subsidies to private capital. And that value has also accrued to a few firms rather than to workers — as Rajan said, salaries in manufacturing have yet to rise above being an Uber driver — and society. Instead, universities should develop courses in chip design, more people should enter the industrial ecosystem with the skills to develop chips for particular sectors, industry should invest more in R&D to take these designs to market, the state should invest more in infrastructure and quality and interoperability standards, more people — especially beyond tier-I centres — should have better jobs, and overall productivity should rise. In effect, becoming self-sufficient without inculcating the capacity to absorb all the value that status could generate is only import substitution, and will ultimately lead to what biotech startup PopVax's founder Soham Sankaran [astutely diagnosed](https://www.infinitesunrise.com/p/overcoming-indias-technological-cowardice?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to be the status quo: > Too scared of R&D risk and actual competition to develop products that can go toe-to-toe with the best of the best from around the world in high-income markets, despite the huge financial rewards on offer, our cash-rich incurious billionaires and their captive policymakers have blown opportunity after opportunity to take Indian exports to the world, content to fatten themselves up on the domestic market by putting up both *de jure* trade barriers such as tariffs, as high as 100% on many cars, and even more damaging patronage-based unwritten barriers to entry that prevent all but the favoured few from doing anything at scale. This means that these companies have no impetus to innovate, or even to catch up fast enough to deliver something that is equivalent to what the global market leaders are selling and, lo and behold, they don’t! So India should aim for strategic capacity, not the more limited self-sufficiency. That would also restore some meaning to the word. ### The bridge AI-writing builds URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/08/29/the-bridge-ai-writing-builds/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T15:27:22.000Z From 'Why not normalise use of AI in writing?', by Amit Kumar, assistant professor in the Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, in [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/why-not-normalise-use-of-ai-in-writing/article71397460.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), August 29, 2026: > Whose authority is being protected by that resistance and challenged, if AI writing gets the green signal? With a good research idea and access to advanced AI tools, someone who has never set foot on remotest sites such as Antarctica or the Everest can now produce research that rivals the work of those who spent years in the field. Someone who never became bilingual can now write fluently across languages. Someone who always felt short to sharpen their own prose can now have it handed to them, polished, on a plate. Whose authority does that threaten? The authority of the person who can afford to go to Antarctica and has the opportunity and means to do so is being challenged. Or so the author seems to imply. But it makes no sense to stop there. The person whose authority is really being challenged is the one failing to ease access to Antarctica and allows the inequitable gates of affordability, means, and opportunity to still stand. That is, fight for everyone to be able to write well rather than vouchsafing that particular skill to a few while arguing it should be okay for others to use AI to leapfrog over them — and of course while learning little in that process, including knowledge that will make them better thinkers rather than just being better writers. (Brings to mind something the San-Ti say in *Three Body Problem*: "In place of truth, we give you miracles.") If you do not dismantle the structural barriers, you cannot pretend to be doing more than using AI to redistribute access to their benefits, and certainly not dismantling the inequities that make those benefits scant in the first place. And it so happens that the E.H. Carr quote the author invokes at the end of the piece can be applied in favour of my position as well. ### A seasonal despondency in journalism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/08/29/a-seasonal-despondency-in-journalism/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T13:23:12.000Z My friend Dhiya has been writing and publishing one blog post every week for the last 87 weeks in a series she simply calls ‘[dilettante](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/dilettante-7410395153842171904?ref=slightlyacidic.com)’. The [eighty-fifth edition](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dilettante-85-dhiya-gerber-gxfyf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) focused on an issue I am currently engaged deeply with at work: as a journalist trying to make their team’s work digital-first and as a journalist contending with the consequences of their work via the internet. Excerpt: > Pollsters have always known that it is impossible to survey everyone. The entire discipline is built on the idea that a representative sample can tell you something useful about the whole electorate. But what happens when the people willing to answer surveys stop looking like the electorate itself? > > In 2026, the people most likely to respond to political polls tend to be more politically engaged, more interested in current affairs, and often highly educated. That’s all great to know, but that’s one set of voters. Pollsters know this, so they compensate, they accommodate for "non-response bias." They weigh the responses, build models, make assumptions about who is missing, and how those missing voices might behave. The quality of modelling is most of the business, it seems. In essence, polling is not measuring exact opinion. They are measuring some opinions and estimating the rest. > > That thought struck me because I think we are seeing something similar in audience metrics around storytelling. > > For most of my career, the answer to the question "Did this work?" lived inside an analytics dashboard. The internet meant audiences were finally quantifiable, to a very specific degree. We could count clicks, impressions, page views, followers, subscribers, opens, engagements and watch time. Unlike television ratings or newspaper circulation figures, digital media was precise. We could know exactly where they lived, when they engaged, what else they liked. We weren't estimating any more. We were measuring. Entire media companies and several tech companies were built on this ability. > > A page view was a fairly straightforward thing. Someone arrived at a page. A number went up. Today, that same page may be summarised by an LLM that speaks to a user. It may appear inside an AI overview. It may be screenshotted and shared by text message. A link may be dropped into a group, and spark a conversation among people who never actually click it. A clip from a podcast might get shared. Forget the hypothetical, I did all of those things in the last 24 hours. It’s really how media is being consumed today. > > The most obvious challenge is that audiences themselves are becoming harder to observe. Increasingly, people spend time in encrypted group chats, newsletters, communities, recommendation feeds and AI interfaces. Their behaviour leaves fewer visible traces behind. > > But there's another problem. Even when we can observe behaviour, we're often observing the behaviour of the easiest people to measure. The people leaving the clearest traces are not representative of all the people you're trying to reach. For pollsters, it's highly engaged voters who answer surveys. For communicators, it's the people who click, comment, subscribe and engage publicly. > > An executive citing a story in a leadership meeting doesn’t appear in monthly engagement reports. A strategy conversation that references a story six months after publication won't show up in analytics. A customer changing their perception of the brand after encountering the same idea three different times is effectively invisible. My friend is right: interpretation has become a significant part of how we understand our audiences online. I used to think it was something of a paradox: that the internet empowered us to ‘see’ audience behaviour more clearly while increasingly obscuring the audience itself. Thus we had more powerful ways to identify and track readers, relative to print journalism, while also increasingly having to interpret that data ‘correctly’. Then I realised it was not a paradox, but something resembling irony, because the internet also created new ways for readers to consume the news, especially many that had nothing to do with the needs of journalists. I would like to use this passage as a springboard to address a related concern. A colleague of mine suffers from something I call “seasonal despondency”. He is a successful and well-regarded political journalist. But once every few months, he starts to wonder if his work has any impact on the people at large, especially in the face of majoritarianism, nationalism, trenchant xenophobia, and successful disinformation campaigns run by right-wing propagandists. He starts to become despondent about his life’s work, wonders if he is wasting his time, and if he should have studied to become an engineer or have become an activist instead. His mood eventually improves after conversations with friends (including me) or if something in his work manages to distract him. I think such seasonal despondency is more widespread among journalists than I have evidence for, and it is due in significant — if not in entire — part to the diminishing connection between us journalists (especially those not on the political right) and our readers. Most of the noise we are able to hear more readily, to use Dhiya’s analogy, is made by those prepared to be the loudest in public. But are they representative of the people at large who consume our journalism? We know that the loudest audience consists of people sufficiently motivated to write: whether to a journalist or to post about it on a different news platform, or to complain, praise, share, quote-tweet, etc. And journalists who challenge majoritarianism *et al*. encounter a remarkably intense volume of hostile reactions online, and could mistake that for evidence of the public response at large, especially when responses from other quarters are muted or altogether absent. Readers who find these journalists’ work useful but have no reason to announce that will remain invisible. It is a well-known fact today that such announcements are fraught. If you do, you know you will need to be prepared for characteristically low-quality responses, and often also respondents, on social media platforms and large WhatsApp groups. Many research papers have also documented a negativity bias implicit in social media networks: i.e. they amplify bad news, especially if it is also sensational, more because that is likely to elicit more impassioned responses from users (not unlike the “if it bleeds, it leads” adage of ‘old school’ journalism). The seasonal despondency is really the result of what ought to be recognised as a well-defined psychological trap. Like my colleague, journalists can spend years, even decades, producing work that is discussed and incorporated in the ways in which hundreds of thousands of people understand the world, yet these days, the same journalists are also more exposed to the opposition to that work, especially in the form of abuse and dismissal. One interpretation that may be useful, especially at journalism organisations like *The Hindu*, where the volume of audience metrics available is still very large, is to track the number of unique users on an article along with the number of sessions and the average time on page. While there being few incentives for readers to speak positively, or at least constructively, about an article visibly somewhere on the internet is a sobering notion, knowing whether people are interested in articles with a particular substance and keep returning to it could help patch that gap. Of course, as Dhiya says, the ultimate remedy for the seasonal despondency would be to get on the ground and “talk to people” and “listen to conversations”. Which is not easy to do, for many reasons, but perhaps that is one of the next big problems to solve as our journalism becomes digital-first and, perhaps inevitably, digital-native. ### The mathematician and the oracle URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/08/26/the-mathematician-and-the-oracle/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T06:47:51.000Z On August 24, Levent Alpöge (@\_\_alpoge\_\_) [posted on X.com](https://x.com/%5F%5Falpoge%5F%5F/status/2091639597193368014?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they had solved a maths problem with Claude’s help in a way that was contrary to a human proof of it, albeit a reputedly unsatisfactory one. Let us set aside the validity of the new proof. In one reply to the post, [@CircumjovialLLC asked](https://x.com/CircumjovialLLC/status/2091686201636081757?ref=slightlyacidic.com) @\_\_alpoge\_\_ to stop using Claude models that were not available to everyone to solve advanced maths problems. Another account, @techlarper\_, then [replied](https://x.com/techlarper%5F/status/2091692514810159282?ref=slightlyacidic.com) implying that this argument does not make sense because, since the human brain is like a ‘closed model’ to which each person has access, @CircumjovialLLC’s argument is akin to asking smarter people to not solve tough maths problems, or to at least refrain from doing so unless they could explain their thinking. Maybe @techlarper\_ is a bot, maybe @CircumjovialLLC is too. I do not care. I think @techlarper\_’s argument is mistaken and that @CircumjovialLLC is right to ask for what they did. Say Selvi is an exceptionally good mathematician who can solve a problem that Shankar cannot. So Shankar says to Selvi, “Do not use your powerful mathematical abilities to solve this problem unless you can make the solution accessible to everyone.” Sure, Selvi’s brain is a resource that she possesses individually. However, anyone can also inspect Selvi’s proof once she publishes it. And the fact that Selvi’s cognitive abilities cannot be reproduced by everyone is not considered to be a problem of mathematical practice. (Mathematicians agree that that is one of the ground rules of doing mathematics.) Now, suppose Selvi has a secret oracle that instantly tells her whether a given mathematical statement is true. She uses it to announce that a conjecture is true, but now, she cannot reveal the oracle nor can she explain how it arrived at the answer. So Shankar objects: “Do not use that oracle to settle advanced mathematical questions in a forum where everyone is supposed to be able to scrutinise the work.” If Selvi responds saying “your brain is also a closed model”, she will obviously be beside the point. Mathematicians do not treat Selvi’s brain as an oracle nor do they ever expect to be able to access it. (Another ground rule.) In effect, @CircumjovialLLC’s objection is not that human intelligence is unevenly distributed but that the epistemic process is inaccessible to or not reproducible by the relevant community of experts. > Kudos to Levent and [@AnthropicAI](https://x.com/AnthropicAI?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) for building a god-like machine that appears to have settled the Hopf problem: the six-dimensional sphere does admit a complex structure. Open since 1947, this problem has spurned many faulty advances, including Atiyah’s embarrassing 2016 supposed… [https://t.co/9Rnnkq6F0C](https://t.co/9Rnnkq6F0C?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > > — Justin Curry (@currying) [August 24, 2026](https://x.com/currying/status/2091718876102803916?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) That said, what if mathematicians expect mathematicians to be restricted to solving maths problems using epistemic resources that they are all able to access? @techlarper\_ mistook unequal access to cognitive ability for unequal access to an epistemic instrument. One’s cognitive ability is an inalienable feature of human intelligence whereas one’s epistemic instruments refer to the means by which a mathematical proof has been obtained, and can be inspected. Now, in the pre-AI epoch, so to speak, @\_\_alpoge\_\_ providing a complete and checkable proof would have sufficed for mathematicians; that an oracle helped @\_\_alpoge\_\_ would not have mattered. In this regard, @CircumjovialLLC’s objection may be misguided considering @\_\_alpoge\_\_ has also provided a paper detailing the proof. Now, in an [August 17 preprint](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.16753?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on arXiv, mathematician [Terence Tao](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/about.html) wrote that the advent of AI in mathematics is stress-testing… > not our foundational framework for mathematical *truth*, but rather the largely implicit framework of mathematical *values* and *practices*: what we consider a contribution to be, what we reward, what we regard as understood, and who — or what — we regard as having done the work. \[Emphases in the original\] I argue that it will become necessary to make these unwritten goals of mathematics much more explicit; but once we have thoroughly examined and codified them, our community will emerge stronger and more resilient than before. With this in mind, say the following statement is also a ground rule of doing mathematics, just one that has been rarely acknowledged in the open: A mathematician should not use an intellectual resource to produce a result if other mathematicians cannot access that resource yet are expected to verify and/or reproduce that result. What would this statement say about mathematics as a whole? For starters, in this universe, mathematics would be partly procedural and partly constitutive rather than being concerned wholly with the truth of propositions. Euclid’s algorithm to find the greatest common divisor is a good example of mathematics as procedure. Given two integers (30, 50), repeatedly divide the larger one by the smaller one (50/30), then replace the pair by the divisor and remainder (30/20) until the remainder is zero (20/10, 10/10, thus the answer is 10). Another mathematician can use this algorithm without also requiring some private insight that was available only to Euclid. Another good example is the development, in the 17th century, of logarithms. Once natural philosophers drafted the logarithmic tables, any other philosopher or engineer could break down, say, a difficult multiplication problem, into a series of addition problems using the tables. Here, the tables were the intellectual resource, and they were public and reproducible, and the community agreed they were admissible as such a resource because other mathematicians could access and inspect them. In effect, mathematics as procedure is a statement that, given the intellectual resources that mathematicians agree are permitted, a procedure that takes one from result X to result Y using that procedure is also permitted. Now, in the new universe, there is a new condition: the permitted intellectual resources must themselves also be accessible to the people who are expected to verify the result. Say Simran, a mathematician, possesses an oracle that can always correctly say whether a mathematical proposition is true or false. Simran asks it whether the Riemann hypothesis — a great unsolved problem in mathematics, [explained here](https://science.thewire.in/science/riemann-hypothesis-primes-zeta/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — is true. It says ‘yes’. So Simran claims, “The Riemann hypothesis is true.” Now, suppose Simran’s colleagues do not have access to the oracle. In our ‘current’ universe, the proposition is true: Simran has in some sense discovered a truth. But if we include the new rule, there arises a problem: Simran has not used any acceptable mathematical procedure at all. The oracle is excluded from the community’s permitted means of producing mathematical results since it is inaccessible to the mathematicians expected to verify or reproduce its result. In effect, a true proposition obtained in this way will not have the status of being a mathematical result. Yet it can still be true. Put another way, mathematics in the new universe would regard the means by which mathematicians arrive at a result to be subject to a norm of accessibility. If you stuck with the post this far, dear reader, there are two questions for you. (i) Do you think an AI model is an extension of a mathematician’s cognition or is it a separate epistemic resource? And if the model is not accessible to mathematicians, (ii) do you think you inhabit the ‘old’ universe or the new universe? I believe I inhabit the new universe, and in this universe @CircumjovialLLC’s comment is valid. Say Selvi has an extraordinary mathematical intuition (like that of Srinivasa Ramanujan, say). She sees immediately that a particular proof is valid — but no other mathematician can see it. Here, if @CircumjovialLLC’s objection is that “Selvi should not use intellectual resources that her peers do not possess”, then Selvi’s intuition becomes insufficient. But even here, there is a difference between Selvi and Claude: Selvi’s brain is not an external resource she has elected to use instead of some other resource that is also collectively available. Her superior ability is still only a difference between participants. Claude, on the other hand, represents a separate epistemic resource that has been introduced to the mathematical process. In short, in the new universe, ‘unequal’ human abilities are still compatible with the universe’s conditions. Selvi can be cleverer than Shankar and Shankar does not need Selvi’s brain in order to be able to check Selvi’s proof. However, if Selvi has a private machine that generates mathematical knowledge, and the community cannot access the machine, she has effectively introduced something novel, something different in kind rather than in degree: a non-shared, exclusive participant in the mathematical process. And this is why @techlarper\_’s argument would not apply. Let us plumb a step deeper. The new universe also makes room for a distinction between cognition as a private entity and method as a public one. That is, you are allowed to think whatever you like in your head: it will lie within the opaque machinery of your private cognition. But if you wish to bring that into mathematics, you have to convert that private cognition into a publicly accessible mathematical object — and mathematics already possesses the means in the form of proofs, constructions, arguments, counterexamples, etc. Effectively, while @CircumjovialLLC was objecting to the distribution of cognitive resources within the practice of mathematics, @techlarper\_ responded by focusing on the distribution of cognitive abilities among human mathematicians. Ergo @techlarper\_ missed the point. Addendum: Since I inhabit the new universe, I believe an intellectual resource cannot be permitted if it is not accessible to all mathematicians. But can some resource ever be accessible to truly all mathematicians? Even if Anthropic avails the Claude model that @\_\_alpoge\_\_ used for free, using it requires a computer with sufficient hardware capabilities, an internet connection, and the technical literacy to use the model efficiently. In other words, in this universe, the mathematical status of a result — rather than whether or not it is true — will benefit from improving public access to mathematics. ### AI shouldn’t distract journalism into a new trap URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/08/21/ai-shouldnt-distract-journalism-into-a-new-trap/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:32.000Z *The following is a review of* Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination *by Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, available* [*here*](https://polity-books-backend.prod.politybooks.wiley.host/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/LEWIS-9781509570690-EPDF.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* The authors write, and I agree, that journalism has spent 25 years on a “hamster wheel” of technologies — web, then social media, then mobile — each of which has only forced journalists to produce more and produce it faster. Today, the advent of generative AI promises to do that on steroids, but the authors argue that, by virtue of targeting knowledge work itself rather than just the logistics of production, it also presents journalism with a “constitutive moment”, an opportunity of sorts for journalism to reflect on its real purpose. That is to say, journalism can use the “hamster wheel” to run even faster or, to extend the metaphor, it can reimagine what ‘running’ even means. Meanwhile, AI is also reshaping political life by increasing access to personalised information, expanding the ability to produce disinformation at scale, imposing a greater cognitive overload, and of course confronting the publics with the specific failures of governance-by-algorithm. Per the authors, the harms of AI for journalism amount to an “epistemic thinness” characterised by deprofessionalisation, infrastructural capture, cognitive atrophy, and the corrosion of democracy’s instruments. As a way out, they propose using Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’, or JTBD, theory, “which asserts that customers don’t simply buy a product or service—they ‘hire’ it to do a ‘job’” ([source](https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/jobs-to-be-done-examples?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). That is, to start from what communities need rather than from what newsrooms are currently designed to produce. And to this end the authors propose four starting objectives for journalism: accessibility, resisting disinformation, micro-relevance, and conversational flexibility, and acknowledging that personalisation also risks “ceding editorial authority” and fragmenting shared understanding. In any case, they conclude, it’s time for journalism to “step off the wheel”. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/screenshot-2026-08-15-at-9-23-55-am.png) I agreed with a lot of this, especially the [Habermasian frame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative%5Fdemocracy?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but I also disagreed with four specific bits that also go to the heart of the authors’ proposed objectives. First, JTBD theory requires a journalist to ask what job a reader is trying to get done, so for instance we give an affected person only what they need to act, rather than a 1,200-word piece with context and analysis. However, a felt need is different from a civic need and JTBD theory doesn’t distinguish between them. That is, a reader asking “is my water safe?” should, according to JTBD, be met with a short piece explaining how to check if your water is clean. However, journalism — as the fourth estate, as a democratic institution that speaks truth to power — should also explain why the water is unsafe to begin with, who’s responsible, and which communities are affected by it. So while JTBD theory can be useful in order to improve delivery and framing, it shouldn’t be used to determine what goes in a journalistic piece to begin with. Second, journalism shouldn’t tie its self-definition to any external frontier, even implicitly, because if it does, it will end up reacting to changes in that frontier. So while the authors have organised their entire book around the idea of AI as an entity that can catalyse changes in journalism, if the reckoning about journalism’s public purpose is really so overdue — and I admit that it might be — why does it need AI to be the occasion around which it turns? Put another way, journalism should conduct its reimagination based on its own civic mandate first, and treat AI as just another variable to negotiate for now. Third, the book is right to diagnose the capture of the infrastructure of journalism as the fundamental reason a journalism based on “who’s paying”, rather than “who’s affected”, could only fail. However, the book’s workarounds, including licensing deals with AI companies, all only attempt to get a better deal within the commercial relationship with the so-called “Great Houses” of AI rather than attempt to decouple journalism’s prospects from that relationship altogether. One real-world example of instruments that could facilitate such a decoupling, and which the book also acknowledges, is South Africa’s Competition Commission proposing a 5-10% levy on the platform ad revenue if Google and Meta didn’t comply with the Commission’s remedies to ‘fix’ biases in search results, share audience data, boost locally produced content, and compensate news publishers. Another example is reader-owned news outlets, although I have my misgivings about that in the socio-political milieu prevailing in India. Finally, the authors’ proposal that journalists aim for micro-relevance and conversational flexibility erect the risk of the problem of a self-fulfilling persona. Specifically, once a newsroom adopts an audience archetype — e.g. that it will write for a 30-year-old female, city-based, college-educated, and salaried citizen — its journalists will start writing to that category instead of mindfully discovering each new story. In the same vein, AI being able to tailor each story according to a reader’s needs or preferences also endangers a shared understanding of important developments, such as a Supreme Court ruling or the results of a corruption investigation, and threatens to create a multitude of one-person publics that ultimately can’t agree on the basic facts of public life. Overall, the authors are right to invite journalism to step off the wheel but what they’re proposing it do instead just kicks the can down the road. ### What does science in India feel like? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/08/02/what-does-science-in-india-feel-like/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:33.000Z As a science journalist whose medium of choice is text (“[text is king](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/text-is-king?ref=slightlyacidic.com)”), the very first sense of what I am going to write about in a science article is often an emotion in my head. A feeling. Sure, science’s identity is most pronounced in its own mathematics — research budgets, publishing indices, the many, many measurements, the calculations, and so on. It bears a certain finitude, a measure of certainty: even when the answer is beyond its grasp, it has a method, its thresholds, their attendant confidence limits and error rates. However, that is not where the stories really are. (I also [would not go so far](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/the-natural-universe-remains-captivating-when-it-skips-the-people/article70709987.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as to say the stories are always only in its people.) Science, from the point of view of a journalist, is also a mood, so to speak, that society carries about what it believes science is for. And this is not some nebulous, evasive thing. The Welsh thinker [Raymond Williams](https://keywords.pitt.edu/williams%5Fkeywords.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) called it “a structure of feeling”. Unlike ideologies, which are written into party programmes and defended if necessary with violence, the structure of feeling denotes what a particular span of time and in a particular place feels like to live inside, especially before someone has managed to figure out how to put it into words. The structure of feeling lives in the tone, in the adjectives that accrue around a subject in newspaper articles and political speeches. It is the Thing before the doctrine, not yet framed but not entirely amorphous either, particular to the quality of the lived social experience. I recently finished reading [*Politics and Letters*](https://archive.org/details/politicslettersi0000will), a collection of interviews of Williams by *New Left Review*. While its ideas promise to be food for thought for many weeks to come, what Williams says about the structure of feeling in its pages also suggested a way of thinking about the history of science in independent India. Specifically, I think Indian society has inhabited at least three distinct structures of feeling in relation to science since independence — and they are not as continuous as one might expect given the continuity of the underlying institutions themselves. Perhaps the two words most people remember from *The Discovery of India* are “scientific temper”. It is a weighty term, a pedagogical demand for Indians to adopt a certain rationalist cast of mind and for a long time they did — something of a distinct and since then characteristic civic-religious bent. When its author Jawaharlal Nehru called dams and steel plants the “temples of modern India”, he practically consecrated the character of science, perhaps a little desperately, in order to prove a newly decolonised nation could ‘out-modern’ its former rulers using engineers and technologists. Thus the first decades of free India were marked by technological gigantism, rather expansionism: the large dams and power plants were soon joined by the atomic energy programme, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research laboratories, the various IITs (and their emphasis on merit), and the space programme. The corresponding structure of feeling was chiefly paternalistic, of course in the way [nation-building usually is](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nationalism-as-spectacle/article69919535.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but it also had a dark side that became apparent only decades later. We know today that solemnity must not dignify science because then science also becomes shielded from scrutiny, and in India that arguably paved the way for the rise and the rule of the license raj. Then came economic liberalisation. It did not change the picture completely as the part of science encompassing ISRO and DRDO still remained solemn; that said, the rest became more pragmatic, more mobile, more indifferent to civilisation rhetoric, and more oriented towards individual aspirations than a collective national ascent, so to speak. It was the time of the IT boom and the NRI success story. The engineers who left for Sunnyvale, California, were a testimony to the quality of India’s technical training rather than brain drain. The structure of feeling in this time might frankly have been obscene vis-à-vis the ‘Nehruvian mood’ — a predominantly instrumentalist opinion of science, of science as a ticket to individual mobility, often not much more valuable than its ability to be converted to a ‘foreign posting’. Basic research likewise became unglamorous for being bereft of this specific value, and in the next two decades or so, the institutions changed accordingly as funding ratios and researchers’ salaries relative to industry dropped. Then, finally, began the moment that remains ongoing, the post-2014 period after Prime Minister Narendra Modi became, well, prime minister. And this epoch does not have a single structure. In fact it is a morass — and perhaps fortunately so: no feeling, including those accompanying chest-thumping, is any closer to crystallising into a widespread culture than the others. Of course, that also complicates the question of how science journalism can best approach its subject matter in India. One, there is the triumphalism, perhaps [most pronounced vis-à-vis ISRO](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/the-farther-away-from-chandrayaan-the-pettier-the-winds-blow/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and its famously “shoestring” budgets and the exquisite pleasure of doing more with less. It is a [misguided pleasure](https://thewire.in/space/labour-isro-frugal-engineering?ref=slightlyacidic.com), of course, not least because it is — among other things — an artefact of the civilisational anxiety from the first period, the one immediately following independence, but in the [garb of nationalist pride](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indian-state-draining-isro-hard-won-excellence/article71261853.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) rather than the assertion of civilisational greatness. In fact, the mood is not really concerned with cost efficiency, and with boasting rather than solemnity. Then there is the [whiff of techno-nationalism](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/01/13/the-fever-dream-of-technological-sovereignty-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) surrounding more recent state projects like the National Quantum Mission and the AI mission. The BJP government insists this is nothing more but also nothing less than winning an all-important race where falling behind could amount to the loss of independence and the onset of a new-fangled colonialism imposed by the west. Hanging on to these coattails is the (not infrequently misplaced) entrepreneurial optimism borrowed wholesale from the startup ecosystem and grafted on to science: the deep-tech startups couched in the vocabulary of venture capital, valuations and — amusingly — becoming unicorns. Finally, rounding off the morass is the pseudoscientific nationalism, carried by claims of ancient Indian supremacy over contemporary study and discoveries, garnished with a black-comedic fixation on the Sanskrit language. It is really a parody of “scientific temper”, having managed to borrow the prestige of science, such as it is, to devise a civilisational argument that [has nothing to do](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-trojan-horse-has-breached-the-iits/article71134594.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with method or evidence. It even manages to compete for the same territory that Nehru’s generation tried to claim for rationalism itself! As well, it also illustrates the power of Williams’s concept of the structure of feeling itself, in particular exemplifying the pitfalls of overlooking it. The structure helps explain how India has lurched from national embarrassment in one decade to national genius, in a manner of speaking, in the next in a way that no numbers could have been expected to capture. And if science journalism limited itself to reporting on papers and budgets, it will miss the zeitgeist that gives those facts their meaning. Axiomatically, I think, one of the primary tasks of science journalism is to discern the structure before, or beyond, the budgetary allocations and the policy documents, and the slogans and the speeches, where the country’s relationship with science exists but is still struggling to describe itself. And I wish that that is the feeling I recognise first, before I ever write a word. ### The Meta Ray-Ban glasses and Indian law URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/30/the-meta-ray-ban-glasses-and-indian-law/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:34.000Z 1\. India is not likely to find success by regulating hardware because (i) such regulations will be hard to enforce in practice and in principle, (ii) the regulatory regime could set up a new license raj, and (iii) the regulations will age very poorly when similar technological capabilities come to earbuds, contact lenses, etc. along with new affordances. 2\. India's data protection regime needs to address/tighten its existing rules in five areas: (i) **Meaningful notice** — The DPDP Act focuses on the relationship between the data fiduciary and the data principal whereas AI wearables introduce a third-party problem in the form of people who are recorded incidentally or by accident. So the law should clarify that companies selling AI wearables have a duty to minimise data collection when that data pertains to bystanders, and introduce aggressive technical measures such as filtering faces out, automatically deleting non-user data, and where possible have on-device data processing (i.e. before it’s uploaded to a server). (ii) **Limited purpose** — audio or video collected for one purpose — e.g. answering a user's question about a building — shouldn’t automatically become training data for future AI models unless users, and where feasible all affected individuals, have each consented individually. (iii) **Data retention** — AI wearables work best when they have as much context as possible but at the same time governments should resist creating permanent ‘lifelogs’ of their wearers. Instead companies should justify why each wearable needs to retain particular categories of recordings beyond short periods (a few seconds). (iv) **Transparency obligations** — All manufacturing and/or promoter companies should disclose — in plain language rather than obfuscatory legalese — what data the wearable processes locally and what it uploads, how long a data packet will be retained on-device and on the cloud, who can access it, and whether it will contribute to training or improving AI models. The state should independently audit each of these claims. (v) **Sensitive environments** — Regulators should impose stricter obligations on whenever AI wearables are used in hospitals, schools, courtrooms, polling booths, research labs, and/or workplaces handling confidential information. Many of these places already regulate photography on their premises. 3\. For two centuries or so now, cameras have been conspicuous and social norms have evolved around that being the case. So when someone raises a phone and points it at you, you infer that they may be recording you. AI-enabled glasses fit with cameras and voice detectors break that convention and, in a new turn, render the act of recording visually ambiguous. Put differently, there’s now an information asymmetry as the wearer always and with certainty knows whether the wearable is recording whereas everyone else is uncertain. For this reason, governments have a reasonable basis to require an observable indicator of whether recording is occurring (provided it’s also technologically difficult to disable). A small external LED that lights up when a wearable is recording, and not just when it’s starting/stopping to record, might be the least intrusive solution. A startup chime or shutter sound alone is less effective because people can miss it, it doesn’t indicate whether recording continues, and could come in the way of legitimate uses such as recording a lecture with permission or documenting police interactions. Also, even if India requires indicators on all Ray-Ban Meta glasses henceforth, similar capabilities will soon appear in devices imported by private entities or which are made and sold by other manufacturers. This means the regulations need to be capability-agnostic, i.e. any wearable that can covertly record should provide a standardised and externally visible recording indicator. 4\. Stronger indicators are more valuable when people are less likely to seek consent before recording — however, the law shouldn’t be measured against assumptions about the prevailing national culture. India has an arguably la-di-da approach to the concept of privacy and civility vis-à-vis informing someone before recording them. So a recording indicator can preserve a longstanding social cue that the new technology has removed and regardless of whether it is deployed in India or Europe. More broadly, technologies shouldn’t be allowed to displace established social expectations — but at the same time states shouldn’t stifle innovation. And the aforementioned instruments, including a more explicitly defined set of bystander rights to complement the newfound ambiguity of recording, are the way to go. ### Office hours URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/25/office-hours/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:35.000Z Dear Chief Justice Surya Kant: I commend you for your discovery this week that time is finite. On Wednesday, when a petitioner confronted you with video evidence of police brutality on July 20 against the students protesting peacefully in and around Jantar Mantar over exam paper leaks and a dire lack of good jobs in the country, [you said](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-declines-urgent-listing-of-plea-against-police-action-during-cjp-protest-march/article71252429.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “Don’t waste our time, and don’t waste your time.” When the lawyer pressed his case, you were blunt: “We are not interested in videos. We don’t have time to watch them.” I understand: judges are busy people and the Supreme Court cannot afford to investigate every clip that goes viral. However, within 48 hours, you found ample time to consider a matter involving rather more immediate stakes: the city government’s decision to [temporarily close](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/supreme-court-metro-station-closure-affecting-lawyers-says-bar-association-president/article71256652.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the Supreme Court metro station, which mildly inconvenienced litigants and lawyers, and by extension the court. “If no solution comes up by lunchtime, we will intervene otherwise,” you had said. There is a species of irony here that writes itself. People are organising and documenting the very protests inconveniencing Delhi’s commuters on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, which subsist on videos by and for the Gen-Z crowd that you apparently had no time for. Incidentally, those same pieces of footage happen to be the only instruments currently capable of holding the Delhi police and the CRPF accountable to any meaningful degree: just watch how quickly the posture of a uniformed fellow changes to anger and irritation the moment a phone’s camera turns his way. Yet your court said it had no time for video evidence. You might recall we got here thanks to your “cockroach” remark about unemployed youth, the same individuals who have given these admirable protests their name and momentum. Of course, you later said the press had misquoted your comment, that you had directed it at people with ‘fake’ degrees, and that even so you had issued it with the “greatest concern and respect” for the country’s youth. Did that concern come with office hours? An important purpose of public protests is to inconvenience, to force the comfortable publics and an even more comfortable state to notice a problem serious enough for a few people to be willing to disrupt their own lives over it. I am glad you grasped this instinctively the moment the train schedule was affected. You have also since admitted [two petitions](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/media-reports-reckless-no-plea-related-to-cjp-led-protests-filed-cji/article71261480.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on police brutality and listed them for hearing next week. But I wish you had recognised it when the students had been lathi-charged and hit with pellets. On that day, it said something about whose time was actually being wasted, and by whom. ### Why launch costs dropped but may not keep dropping URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/22/why-launch-costs-dropped-but-may-not-keep-dropping/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:40.000Z In a study published in [*PNAS Nexus*](https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/7/pgag217/8732400?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on July 14, two researchers affiliated with institutes in France, Italy, and the UK analysed more than 4,400 launches in 16 geographical entities and with 330 rocket configurations to find that every time the cumulative payload sent to orbit has doubled since 1960, the average cost of sending 1 kg of payload to low-Earth orbit has dropped by 21.2% and that this correlation outperforms the effects of other technologies on the kilogram cost to orbit. Specifically, the cost has dropped from $87,023 per kg in 1960 to $3,878 per kg in 2025\. They also identified a particular inflection point in 2010, when the SpaceX Falcon 9 entered operations. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/cfd3b-space_learning_curve-w-1024-h-1024.png) Credit: Alessio Terzi According to the researchers, the fixed drop in cost with doubling of payload mass is called Wright’s law — and if the relationship continues to hold, they projected the launch cost to drop to $1,600 per kg by 2030 and even $300 per kg by 2040\. These numbers sound phenomenal, so much so that the researchers also said they could pave the way for, “for instance, microgravity manufacturing for high-quality fiber cables or pharmaceuticals. This in turn would amplify the direct contribution of space to economic growth, going beyond the indirect innovation channel that has been quantified for space or past programs like the Apollo missions.” But perhaps the numbers are too good to be true. I could spot at least five issues that I think complicate the relationship between the researchers’ more immediate findings and the future projection based on past trends. First, the researchers have defined their input data such that it includes manufacturing and recurring engineering costs — but it excludes R&D. And R&D costs are an important reason why the ‘true’ cost of a launch has always been somewhat difficult to estimate. Sure, it’s easier for government programmes like the NASA Space Shuttle or the ISRO PSLV, where the true or total cost comes down to the total budget appropriation divided by the number of launches. But for the likes of SpaceX or, now, Skyroot, we only have the prices charged to customers to work with. Also, as the researchers have acknowledged in their paper, a monopolist whose goal is to maximise its profit also has the incentive to keep its prices even if its costs fall. SpaceX, which ferries 75% of all payload by mass to low-earth orbit today, almost certainly does this because it has no real competition. On the other hand, a government might subsidise launch costs on a publicly owned rocket in order to gain market share. So in the former case, the cost curve will appear flatter than the technological learning curve and in the latter, it will be steeper. And overall the curve has the shape it actually does not as a natural consequence of some unalloyed relationship it has with the number of launches or the payload mass. Second, Wright’s law was historically based on aircraft assembly, where each worker could perform a specific task faster as they repeated it over and over, and thus assemblies became more cost-effective over time. However, rockets — especially in the post-Cold-War era and more so since 2010 — have been becoming more cost-effective due to ‘discontinuous’ improvements like reusable stages. In fact, given the disproportionate impact of Falcon 9 missions on launch numbers and payload costs, the log-linear curve the researchers have used to represent what they have argued are the effects of “learning by doing” on the kilogram-cost to orbit misrepresents what was really a singular burst of innovation that probably suddenly and tangibly bent the curve. That in turn would call into question the way the curve is expected to ‘move’ in future. Third, and in the same vein, the researchers’ projections for 2030 and 2040 are based on the continued success of SpaceX more than another entity in the data. In other words, if SpaceX were to suffer a catastrophic failure or a change in its corporate leadership, the curve’s slope (rate of change) could revert to its value before 2010\. As well, the paper could be mistaken in treating the experience curve as a property of launch technologies when it may just reflect the effects of one company’s work culture, and before extrapolating it the researchers should separate the contributions of SpaceX from those of the sector as a whole. Fourth, Wright’s law essentially offers a way to make sense of the supply based on the demand. So to attain the projected cost of $300 per kg to low-Earth orbit, the researchers’ model requires a large increase in the cumulative payload mass — but will that come to pass? Consternation is already growing worldwide over the number of satellites in Earth orbit, with SpaceX and Amazon planning several thousands more, and the spectre of Kessler syndrome looms large. While orbital regulations failing to materialise altogether or catching up too late are sadly plausible, there is reason to expect low-Earth orbit in particular will become too congested and/or dangerous to populate further. That in turn would throttle demand and cause cumulative payload mass to double only once every few decades. Finally, is ‘dollars per kg’ itself a good metric? It’s the industry standard for high-level analyses, such as benchmarking the cost-efficiency of national launchers, but it wasn’t intended to facilitate understanding of the qualitative differences between rockets — which are relevant for the study’s analysis. For example, economically speaking, a ‘cheap’ rocket with a 90% success rate will be more expensive than a rocket with a 100% success rate when the payload is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Similarly, different rockets subject their payloads to different forces and stresses. So a rocket with a lower cost to orbit might require a satellite to be built like a tank, but this wouldn’t represent a real drop in the cost to access space. The metric also doesn’t account for last-mile delivery. A Falcon Heavy can transport several dozen satellites to one particular low-Earth orbit for a lower cost, while leaving them to figure out how they can get from there to their intended final orbits (with their own propulsion). On other hand, customers might pay a slightly higher fee to ISRO or Skyroot for a ride onboard the SSLV or the Vikram-1, in return for the rocket dropping satellites off closer to or at their destination itself (freeing the satellites from including propulsion). But by rolling all these differences into a single ‘dollars per kg’ figure, the researchers may be oversimplifying the market itself: the falling cost might be truer for ‘bulk commodities’ like Starlink satellites but not for significantly more valuable scientific missions, like space telescopes, and other commercial missions like communications satellites. Taken together, the study may provide a good macroscopic view of the space economy and reveal how one important degree of freedom — cost per kg to low-earth orbit — is changing as the enterprise becomes increasingly industrial in character. At the same time, the enterprise isn’t a factory *per se* but a highly concentrated and technologically volatile arena sensitive to radical advances in engineering and single-point failures, and which thus defies how much its history can say about its future, at least at this time. ### A thought for emergence URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/14/a-thought-for-emergence/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:41.000Z The physicist Carlo Rovelli makes a strong case in [this essay](https://www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-hard-problem-of-consciousness/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that consciousness is “of the same nature” as everything else in the universe, but in the course of doing that, he often writes as if the alternatives to dualism — the view that the body and the mind are irreducibly separate — don’t include the concept of emergence, at least to a meaningful degree. For example, his statement that “the mind is the behaviour of the brain, properly described in a high-level language” is compatible with emergence, as in that neuroscience and the philosophy of science often both describe consciousness as a property that emerges from extremely complex neural organisation. Instead, Rovelli often presents the debate about the nature of consciousness as though critics of his physicalist view are demanding ‘magic’ rather than just asking how complex organisation can give rise to new domains of organisation. Rovelli also says, “Mental processes are physical processes described in a way that captures only their salient characteristics”, which is not synonymous with the emergentist position but is in fact close: mental states supervene on physical states and depend on physical organisation yet they possess informational or computational properties that deserve their own, or autonomous, explanation. Put differently, while Rovelli makes a solid case that consciousness isn’t supernatural, he also argues from time to time that there’s nothing especially interesting about how/why it emerges. The former is an agreeable position (at least to me) but the latter seems uncharacteristically dismissive. In fact, he also makes the classic anti-reductionist point early in his piece when he writes, “We shouldn’t expect particle physics alone to explain bicycles, brains or thunderstorms”, but then he doesn’t follow through on the philosophical consequences of that statement: if mechanics is indispensable for bicycles, say, why couldn’t there also be an indispensable science (or sciences) of emergence — e.g. one/those combining complex systems, neuroscience, cognitive science, and so on — to explain consciousness? To use a metaphor from a branch of physics I’m more familiar with: temperature arises from a complex organisation of particles that are governed by the rules of statistical mechanics. But nobody who is concerned with the physics of temperature, which is fertile in its own right, also believes statistical mechanics is therefore trivial. In fact the irony is that microscopic laws often don’t suffice to make sense of the macroscopic world, and emergence is the bridge. Of course, Rovelli’s aim with the essay is to dispel dualist intuitions, not piece together a theory of emergence, and introducing such a thing would have admittedly needlessly complicated the narrative. I also think Rovelli would probably agree about the relevance of emergence vis-à-vis a physicalist conception of consciousness if pressed. His own work as a physicist is sympathetic to the relational descriptions that emergence requires. Yet in this essay, he seems reluctant to afford emergence much philosophical weight, probably because he’s worried it could be mistaken for dualism. Either way it seems like a needless concession — if that’s what it is, to be sure — because it’s not hard to consistently hold that consciousness is entirely physics, there’s no metaphysical (explanatory) gap, there’s no supernatural soul, and consciousness is an emergent phenomenon requiring explanatory principles that are unavailable at the level of particle physics alone. ### How Indonesian cos. coopted the state’s win URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/14/how-indonesian-cos-coopted-the-states-win/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:41.000Z From ‘Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector achieve high compliance but no additionality’, [*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2511503123?ref=slightlyacidic.com), July 13, 2026: > … we evaluate the compliance and additionality of zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) in the Indonesian palm oil sector, a major driver of tropical deforestation. We compiled a detailed dataset that integrates information about corporate ZDC implementation, supply chain linkages, and maps of palm-driven deforestation in Indonesia. We use this dataset to evaluate the causal impact of ZDCs on deforestation in oil palm concessions from 2018 to 2020 using difference-in-differences econometric methods. We find that concessions linked to companies with ZDCs had low deforestation (<1% per year from 2018 to 2020) and thus largely achieved compliance. Yet they experienced similar reductions in deforestation compared to concessions not covered by ZDCs, therefore showing no additionality. We attribute our finding of no additionality to broader changes in policy and economic conditions during the study period that may have reduced the remaining accessible forest and dampened market and regulatory incentives to clear forests for palm oil. There’s another way to interpret the results: that ZDCs in Indonesia’s palm-oil sector have essentially been a branding exercise. Companies with ZDCs kept deforestation levels low and so did everyone else, meaning the companies met their goals but their pledges didn’t actually save more forest land that wouldn’t have been saved anyway. The study’s authors have attributed the dropping deforestation levels to the Indonesian government’s forest and peatland moratoria, restrictions on new permits, lower prices, and — let’s not forget — the dwindling availability of forests subject to the extant concessions, which means by inventing the ZDC, private capital came in possession of a specialised instrument for progress it wasn’t ever responsible for. When the price of crude palm oil drops, making it less profitable to expand into new land, a company that doesn’t expand isn’t being ‘sustainable’; it’s just standing still. Yet the corporate sector managed to apply a pall of achievement over the objectively bare minimum it could do. Of course, this is nothing new: exponents of neoliberal environmental governance have frequently recast public problems as being the result of voluntary corporate responsibility, giving the impression that the invisible hand of the market can turn green if they and their big businesses are allowed to police themselves. But as the study found, the state solved this problem, not the market. Ultimately, the study offers yet more proof that if we’re to actually protect the world’s remaining tropical forests, market-based, voluntary solutions will only be a red herring. Instead, the forests, like the climate, are collective goods that should be governed collectively. Granted, there’s no proof here that the corporations involved had acted in bad faith, but it’s also a good opportunity to ask how much of contemporary corporate sustainability programmes consist of claiming credit for changes brought about by public action rather than corporate initiative. ### What Hannibal's crossing cost URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/10/what-hannibals-crossing-cost/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:43.000Z That thermodynamics has so very many applications is as fascinating as what it so often illuminates. Its tools and methods can be brought to bear on everything from celestial bodies and industrial machines to cellular biology and human endurance. The simple reason is that energy is the fundamental currency of the physical world: no physical process can occur without transferring or transforming it. Thus the laws of thermodynamics provide a near-universal framework to understand the limits and possibilities of any system in motion. In a study published in [*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2612764123?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on July 6, researchers from Germany and the UK used the principles of thermodynamics to say which route the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca might have taken through the Alps. Hannibal's crossing, with an army of 46,000 men, 7,000 horses, and 37 North African elephants, during the Second Punic War is one of the great events of military history. However, the precise route he took has been unclear. From the paper: > Scholars have long debated which route Hannibal followed, weighing each possibility based on historical, logistical, and topographical considerations. In his Histories, Polybius records his own attempt to retrace Hannibal’s route based on a contemporary account by Silenus, now lost. Polybius reports how Hannibal crossed the Rhône river and established a supply line near present-day Orange. From there, Hannibal marched North for about 80 km to Livron-sur-Drôme, from where he headed East into the Alps. After that, Polybius's record is unclear, leaving it to interpretations to suggest that Hannibal chose between two possible routes across the Alps: One route passes through Grenoble and Aiton, peaks at the Col du Clapier, and reaches the Po Valley via Susa. An alternative route passes through the Col de Grimone and Gap, peaks at the Col de la Traversette, and descends into the Po Valley at Pian del Re. In their study, the researchers found that the Col de la Traversette route would have been more energy-efficient: taking this route, they estimated the army would have expended 5.42 trillion joules of energy — about as much chemical energy released by blowing up 1,000 tonnes of TNT. On the other hand, the researchers estimated the Col du Clapier would have consumed 6.28 trillion joules. They also evaluated two other routes: Col de Montgenèvre, 6.02 trillion joules; and Col du Mont Cenis, 6.45 trillion joules. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/cdb3e-hannibal_way_thru_alps-w-687-h-1024.jpg) Credit: Ursus (CC BY-SA) The study also found that the elephants were energy-wise better suited for climbing than humans thanks to their large reserves of fat and what the researchers called "four-wheel-drive" movement. (According to a [2010 study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0911396107?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the labour of an elephant's limbs aren't divided the way they are in most other four-legged animals. Rather than the forelimbs acting as brakes and the hindlimbs as motors, all four limbs are capable of braking and propulsion, like a 4WD car. Thus elephants distribute the work of moving their weight evenly. The cost they pay is some energy-efficiency: every now and then their limbs also burn energy to produce opposing forces that cancel out.) On the Col du Clapier route, the elephants were estimated to have lost only 4% of their fat whereas the men may have lost up to 19%. At the end of the march, which spanned roughly a thousand kilometres from Spain, Hannibal and his army reached Rome and waged war for 14 years. But all but one of the elephants died in the first winter itself: the army couldn't find food for them in the enemy territory. Previous attempts to determine Hannibal's route used historical accounts, archaeology, philology, and even geology. It's tempting to believe the new study now adds bioenergetics to the mix, as an independent new line of evidence, but let's pause for a moment and ask two: (i) Was Hannibal aware of the availability of two or four paths? (ii) Did he really optimise for energy alone? The answers to both questions are discouraging. On the second: Hannibal would have also considered the presence of enemy units on a path, local weather conditions, the availability of water, how easily certain segments of a path could be traversed, the risk of rockfalls, political alliances with local tribes, and — crucially — how easily the moving army could defend itself at various points. On the first question: Hannibal took the help of local guides and incomplete (at the time) maps to find his way to Rome. Thus the study's methods could complement historical and archaeological evidence rather in and of themselves be dispositive. That said, if we set aside the intention to use thermodynamics to shed light on which route Hannibal and his army might have taken, we still have usable estimates of the energy cost of each route and an opportunity to inform historical records of the army's health and potency based on them. *Featured image: An illustration of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps, by Heinrich Leutemann, 1866\. Credit: Public domain.* ### Walk through chaos URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/06/walk-through-chaos/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:44.000Z Daily writing promptIs a little chaos actually good for us? ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4d3c0ed470ae67e313c095426dfb925ba4739e4e00bfa19d0b4a7c20b91e9857?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b70867d7388dc3bd6198fa22d78c996c286242cecab2b0f8b29542a17b26a5ef?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a8990358c2ef70154117c6dfae6092bf3e6141589b4b0c98af1c2b5b8eee28e1?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2814?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I'm just going to invert that question a little and ask: Is a little order good for us? I'm doing this because the question "Is a little chaos good for us?" assumes that chaos can be pippetted into our lives in "little" quantities, that at all other times things are completely predictable. I learnt from navigating what is at most times a chaotic newsroom that a good life is less about learning how to exert control and more about responding to situations, whether or not we control them. Granted, the question "Is a little order good for us?" is equally susceptible to that argument, but I'd also like to use it to illustrate something cool, something I think has helped me work more efficiently, too. It's called a [random walk](https://rootprivileges.net/2024/11/23/a-not-so-random-walk-through-random-walks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It's more of a concept than a walk you take — although you could try it in the real world and see how it goes. In a random walk, a person walks on a grid of square cells, like a chessboard. If the person is standing in one cell, they take the next step by tossing a coin. If it's heads, they take one step left; if it's tails they take one step right. So each step is random and the odds of you being able to correctly predict which way the person will move next is 50%. However, the few rules that a random walk does have to follow means that as the person takes thousands of steps over time, the walking pattern they follow will start to show some strong patterns. For example, after the person has taken *N* steps, their distance from the starting position will be around *N*1/2. Put another way, just a little order, consistently applied, can lead to predictable outcomes — including ones that we desire. I realise this metaphor is thin but I've found it to be a useful way to think about unpredictability. So much can go one way or the other and we try to take as much as we can in stride just as much as some small good habits can build up to something great. ### Gyroscopes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/07/04/gyroscopes/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:45.000Z As silly as it sounds, as a student of mechanical engineering, I am partial to technologies that make use of mechanical forces. Today they are harder to come by because the solutions to the problems they solved were replaced by electronic components from the mid-20th century on. Today, newer technologies based on quantum physics are beginning to displace electronic devices, at least in specific use cases. In the landscape of electronic technologies, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are among a few honorable exceptions. As the name indicates, these technologies combine both electronic and mechanical components to solve specific problems. And among them, a tool called a gyroscope has been particularly fascinating: both mechanical and MEMS versions coexist today depending on the setting. And even though scientists and engineers are devising newer ways move beyond them to even more advanced forms, they are also finding ways to significantly improve the existing ones. Recently, scientists from China and Japan reported in [*Nature*](https://href.li/?https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10565-w&ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they had found a way to boost the sensitivity of chip-based gyroscopes by three orders of magnitude. If you rapidly spin a large wheel and then try to change its axis, the wheel will resist. This is the working principle of a gyroscope, a device used to determine the orientation of the container it is fixed in. For example, ships use gyroscopes to know which way they are pointing and satellites use gyroscopes to alert their computers to when they start to drift from their intended orbit. As the wheel spins and you try to change its axis of rotation, it will respond by moving in a new direction that is perpendicular to the direction of change and to its original axis. The wheel is said to experience the Coriolis force and physicists call this phenomenon gyroscopic precession. A computer can use it to figure out the object’s orientation and, if necessary, which way the change is arising and counteract it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/974b0-gyroscope_operation.gif) These days, your smartphone has a gyroscope, too, but it works slightly differently. For starters, it is microscopic. There is a tuning fork that a small battery vibrates at a fixed frequency. When you rotate the phone, the axis of vibrations will change. The fork will resist this with gyroscopic precession: it will curve ever so slightly. This setup is placed between two parallel plates, forming a capacitor. The plates are connected to each other via a circuit. When the fork curves, the voltage between the plates will change, which a circuit component will measure and relay to the computer. Finally, the computer will use this signal to determine the change in orientation. Because this gyroscope design is so small and involves both electrical and mechanical components to work, it is an example of a MEMS technology. It is not perfect because no sensors are perfect. For example, if the gyroscope is off by just 0.05° per second, after 20 seconds the orientation reading will be off by 1°. This is called drift — and a computer can correct for it by also using readings from an accelerometer (which sense gravity to say which way ‘down’ is) and a magnetometer (it can say which way north is, among other readings). MEMS gyroscopes exist in an engineering sweet spot. They are an example of miniaturisation in electronics but because its components involve mechanical forces as well, shrinking them even further is nearly impossible. Rather, you can’t shrink them without significantly degrading their performance. A larger gyroscope is heavier, so its moving part is harder to rotate or vibrate. But they are also much more precise than MEMS gyroscopes and are thus used onboard ships and satellites. On the other hand, it is infeasible to have a sufficiently large rotating object inside a smartphone. But because the extent of gyroscopic precession depends on the mass of the tuning fork, beyond a point it becomes too weak to measure. Similarly, the signal from the capacitor becomes too faint if the moving structure has less area, and smartphone gyroscopes these days are already dealing with a few attofarads. (1 attofarad is 10\-16% of 1 farad. Put another way, if 1 farad is all the water in an Olympic swimming pool, 1 attofarad is the amount of water in a single human cell.) Second, if you make the fork too small, the thermal energy of its atoms will start to dominate its motion, setting it vibrating randomly due to very small changes in temperature. MEMS gyroscopes are thus usually tens to hundreds of micrometres wide because the competing forces balance out at this scale. Of course, there are many applications (or certainly valuable ones) that are still looking for smaller gyroscopes that are also more precise. So engineers have switched the technology platform — from MEMS to optomechanical systems that measure changes in direction based on changes in a light signal, atomic gyroscopes that use the wave nature of atoms, and of course emerging opportunities based on quantum physics. But in the new *Nature* study, the scientists made the gyroscope’s output frequency up to 1,010-times more sensitive to the Coriolis force. This translated to a 253-fold improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio and a 297-fold improvement in the measurement precision. In a MEMS gyroscope, the tuning fork can vibrate in two ways: one when it is set vibrating by the setup and the other when the smartphone rotates and the Coriolis force is acting on the fork. Let’s say in the first instance, the fork vibrates left-right and in the second, top-down. These two modes are independent: when it is vibrating left-right, it does not also vibrate top-down unless it is forced to. When you rotate your phone, the Coriolis force applies this force, causing the fork to vibrate in a mix of the two modes and the capacitor measures the extent of that mix. In the study, in a MEMS gyroscope, the scientists coupled the two modes in a variable way so that the usual amount of Coriolis force produced an extraordinarily large change in the frequency of vibrations. Because this way did not amplify the Coriolis force itself, only one part of the fork’s response got amplified; the noise did not. If a rotation normally changed the resonator’s frequency by 0.01 Hz, now it could change by 10.1 Hz. Thus, the authors wrote: > For the first time to our knowledge, we have demonstrated how to generate ultrasensitive responses with sublinear scaling of the Coriolis effect… \[This advances\] the previous understanding that the CVG \[Coriolis vibratory gyroscope\] output is always proportional to the rotation input. Through this singular Coriolis effect, we have broken the physical limit of the CVG sensitivity imposed by the intrinsic Coriolis factor. We have shown that this discovery can lead to large improvements in sensitivity, precision and signal-to-noise ratio of a CVG. Our findings open up fundamentally new avenues to regulating CVGs and other systems involving the Coriolis effect.” And so, a mechanical technology lives on. ### Orphan blocks on bitcoin network waste 16 GW URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/06/30/orphan-blocks-on-bitcoin-network-waste-16-gw/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:47.000Z A new[ *PNAS Nexus*](https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/5/pgag135/8691350?ref=staticlimit.org) paper has shed light on a major source of hidden energy waste on the bitcoin network. Here, miners compete to solve a complex mathematical puzzle. The miner that solves a puzzle first is rewarded by the network with a block: new bitcoins plus transaction fees. An accidental fork occurs when two different miners solve the puzzle at almost exactly the same time. Because it takes a few seconds for a winning block to be announced to the rest of the network (called the propagation delay), a second miner might successfully mine the same block before they find out someone else has already won it. Eventually, the network chooses one block to keep and discards the other, which is called an orphan. The energy used to mine that orphan block is essentially wasted because it doesn't contribute to the security or the history of the network's official ledger. As part of the study, the researchers developed a model to calculate how often these forks happen based on the number of miners, how concentrated their power is, and how fast they communicate. They estimated that in the “most recent year”, this wasted mining power amounted to roughly 16,000 MW — “equivalent to half of the power generated in the United Kingdom”. Note: A difficulty epoch refers to the period of time in which the mining power required to crack the mathematical puzzle is roughly the same. After every 2,016 blocks released, the network adjusts the difficulty depending on the computational power brought to bear in the previous epoch. The researchers calculated their parameters from multiple difficulty epochs and found that the wastage due to orphan blocks in the latest epoch — beginning March 2025 — was 16 GW. It is not necessarily the power ‘lost’ throughout 2025\. In short, in the difficulty epoch that began in March 2025, the mining power wasted due to orphan blocks was 16 GW. That translates to an annualised consumption of roughly 140.1 TWh. According to the[ Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index](https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index?ref=staticlimit.org), this same figure was 125.1 TWh in February 2022 and is 159.9 TWh today. https://rootprivileges.net/2022/02/13/crypto-climate-change-means-new-tech-has-less-time-today-to-prove-itself/ The team also found that when mining power is concentrated in just a few large pools, the number of forks actually decreases because these mining conglomerates often communicate with each other faster than the rest of the network does, reducing the chances of creating orphan blocks. On the flip side, if only three or four pools control most of the network — which has been the trend recently — the network becomes more vulnerable to censorship or attacks and more susceptible to collusion. Developers are currently working on solutions to this problem, including compact blocks, which cut the amount of data that needs to be transmitted by 95%; the ‘Falcon’ relay network, high-speed data highways where the nodes begin transmitting block data before they’re aware of the block’s full contents; the Stratum V2 protocol, where miners plan their mining tasks beforehand to avoid conflicts; and preconsensus mechanisms, where miners signal what they are going to mine well before the risk of an accidental fork arises. However, these solutions only illustrate the classic[ broken window fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fbroken%5Fwindow?ref=staticlimit.org): the talent and power expended to reduce the 16 GW of waste could have been spent on productive advances. The world is effectively paying the glazier to repair a digital window that, even when it was in perfect working order, provided no gainful service to the real economy. *Featured image credit: Image created with ChatGPT 5.2.* ### Down with Vader, down with the empire URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/06/28/down-with-vader-down-with-the-empire/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:47.000Z Daily writing promptEmperor Palpatine has announced open elections for a new Emperor — and he’s nominated Darth Vader. You get to nominate one challenger. ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4d3c0ed470ae67e313c095426dfb925ba4739e4e00bfa19d0b4a7c20b91e9857?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/1388436fd2ff815b6d1ea007a012ada22dc5a5521a1d7c7e2a8139d43669047f?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/930f23244652f0260f09e58758e73e3dd96180c9435cda498014fc2e227fd1c6?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2806?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) Even against his long career of deception, Sheev Palpatine announcing an open election for the seat of galactic emperor sounds particularly cynical. In response to this farce, I nominate Mon Mothma of Chandrila. However, I do not nominate her to be the next emperor. We do not need a better emperor. We need to altogether dissolve the imperial office and in its place install a constitutional democracy. Just consider the legacy of Palpatine’s New Order. The emperor had argued that democracy had become “bloated” and “ineffective”, that only a strong hand could bring peace. But under the empire, we have had peace the way a graveyard has its silence. By centralising power, Palpatine has removed the restorative impulses of a free society. There was no legislative body to demand accountability for the Ghorman Massacre, only a Senate that had, as Padmé Amidala lamented, by then been reduced to a “hollowed-out chamber of applause”. The imperial economy has become a brood of parasites fuelled by the sweat and blood of enslaved non-human species and the strip-mining of entire worlds like Ilum. Vader’s nomination is the zenith of this failure. A Vader-led imperium will be a state of permanent martial law. His fondness for summary execution will ensure immediate compliance as much as guarantee long-term instability. Even now, the empire is a house of cards held together by fear, and the wind of rebellion will inevitably blow it down. We must reject both Palpatine and Vader and instead foster a democratic uprising. It is our moral imperative. A constitutional democracy is the only system capable of handling a galaxy of 20 million sentient species. In particular, the goal of our uprising must be to install a galactic federation of free worlds, governed by a charter that enshrines the fundamental rights of all these species. Unlike the Old Republic, a new constitutional democracy must separate its powers to prevent any future chancellor from accruing emergency powers indefinitely, the very loophole Palpatine used to dismantle the republic from within. “The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil,” Mon Mothma noted in her famous denunciation of the emperor. In the same spirit, a new democracy must focus on restoring a free HoloNet, independent of imperial propaganda, to ensure imperial atrocities are laid bare. To avoid the bias in favour of the core worlds that fanned the Separatist crisis, the new democracy should have rotating capitals. By moving the seat of government between worlds, the government will know that it exists foremost at the galaxy’s invitation. Finally, a constitutional democracy must follow the lead of Princess Leia Organa’s efforts to decentralise the military into planetary defense forces, plus a small, specialised federal fleet tasked with peacekeeping and anti-piracy. We already have a model for such a government in the actions of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance. Fighters like Bail Organa fought the imperium with X-wings as much as diplomacy, building clandestine cells that worked as small democracies even under the shadow of Star Destroyers. They proved that collective action, with sentient species of all backgrounds working towards a common good, will always trump the will of a Sith Lord, no matter how singular. By nominating Mon Mothma, I choose the podium over the lightsaber. The open election is obviously a trap but we can turn it into a revolution. Let us rally behind a challenger who represents the restoration of the Senate and the rule of law, and thus force the empire to reveal its true face. If it refuses to honour a democratic result, it will prove it is a common tyranny. If it allows the vote, it will sign its own death warrant. ### Enjoying 'Friends' again URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/06/20/enjoying-friends-again/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:47.000Z Daily writing promptWhat’s a book, movie, or TV show that you wish you could experience again for the first time? ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/09262f62d34dd2647c53b1d909a52a517629c488eec7f1d4123297b3005d99d4?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a6d72d8fc09dce2f4bbd861007cd5e8e6aa9be2b49184cf95c28049a43d08cb3?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/c23a3a84f47d9fb9963156a8dbd9f320b5ff5a7e0c15e7423ec04646f21300b9?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2798?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) This has to be the TV show *Friends*. I feel like I know too much these days. The show hasn't aged well. Its attitudes towards fatness, sexual relations, science, and mental health are at best juvenile. Its uniform whiteness was only exacerbated by introducing the character Charlie (Aisha Tyler) in season 10\. However, I grew up with *Friends* and each of its scenes is seared into my mind. Not just that: I remember how much my sister and I would laugh over its comedy, even if it was mostly slapstick, and bond over its oft-fairytale endings to various arcs. I'd really like to enjoy *Friends* all over again without feeling the little voice in my head rearing up to critique it. ### Against the idea of building loyal subscribers URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/06/07/against-the-idea-of-building-loyal-subscribers/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:48.000Z Daily writing promptHow do you build loyal subscribers? ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcb72937f54718fc14d7b047b2a9d84c8c500827306783f92e331edd0afd31bf?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3f39236fb5f58bc1f27791ef1972ccc051080e76270f8d1cb1fcd61fc01dfcdf?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dc2d7744c94702a9ed1d3b883dfc28095d78674ebdce9cfd9d51544213b0d8d6?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2785?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I've always found that a somewhat strange thing to aim for. I understand there are several thousand people worldwide working to build a loyal subscriber base ("building loyal subscribers" makes one sound like Dr. Frankenstein). And whatever their reasons are, I'm sure at least one of them is "to build community" or "to make money". Those are perfectly legitimate things to do. But insofar as the question of a loyal subscriber base is raised with regards to writing, I don't have an answer. Before I became a journalist in 2012, I'd been a blogger for four years, writing about physics and an intellectual life centered on that topic. After I became a journalist, I began to write on science, health, environment, spaceflight, higher education, science policy and administration, research fraud, and many other things that caught my fancy. And I continued blogging. Over time, I realised a few things: (i) I write because I [have something to say](https://rootprivileges.net/definitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), rather than because someone wanted something specific to read or even because someone might find what I say useful. Follow-up: I've found that by making of myself a better person every day, in as many of the infinite ways in which a life can be lived as possible, in steps marginally small or revolutionarily big, I can still ensure the number of people who find what I have to say engaging, entertaining or even useful is non-zero. That is, I believe good people have good things to say. I'm not there yet but [I hope to be](https://rootprivileges.net/2026/05/02/a-political-direction-in-life/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). As a corollary, my writing at various times has only mirrored me at various times, opening windows into my own psyche that might otherwise have taken me years of mental probing. (ii) I attach a great deal of importance to writing something just because one needs to say it, or more broadly to communicate *per se*, rather than keep it to oneself. No self-censoring (with [reasonable limits](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1218090/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Follow-up: Writing has its own merits. The more you write, the better you write and the clearer you think. Importantly, these relationships are entirely independent of whether someone is reading your words. (To be sure, audiences are not redundant. Having one will also train you in the peculiarities of public sensibilities, social norms, satire, the virtues of dialogue, and what a difference writing when you're angry makes, among other things.) (iii) The internet has increased by leaps and bounds a person's ability to seek out, find, and consistently access new information. This includes both loitering over the internet, jumping from one website (or [Wikipedia page](https://www.thewikigame.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) to the next, and staying in 'touch' using bookmarks, RSS feeds, email subscriptions, and other forms of notifications. (iv) Frankly, I care little for a loyal subscriber base. I care much more for having a place to write, for more people to write, and for you to find whatever kind of writing you're looking for. (This is why my fondness for WordPress.com persists: the cost of getting started is just a little time, and not even any money.) (v) If there is something you won't say because your subscribers might disagree and/or unsubscribe — I'll be disappointed but not surprised. Such is the world. But if you won't say something because your subscribers won't be interested, you should drop the subscribers and keep the writing habit. If you can't, you should admit that you're being dishonest. Follow-up: Point (v) might do a good job of tempting you into believing that I'm really repudiating my readers (such as they are) before they can repudiate me, but in my defence… I don't care. Granted in the first instance: applying these same ideas over and over while maintaining a fixed presence online — e.g. at the same domain name or the same account on a platform — is what leads to loyal subscribers. However, these days, you'll agree such a base also demands that the writer, or content-producer more broadly, focus on a fixed set of themes, ideas, peeves or what-have-you. I don't think I could ever promise such a thing. All I can promise is that I will think about the contents of a post to the best of my ability on that particular day before publishing it. This together with point no. (iv) means that if I write about bananas one day, I expect banana-reader to be able to discover it, and if I write about chillies the next day, I expect chilli-reader to be able to discover it. Granted in the second: my professional identity as a journalist is bound up with this kind of thinking. I've always only worked for publications that had a daily readership of at least a million. Each of my articles has been read by at least a few thousand people, but often by many more, and on some rare occasions by more people than the number that reads my blog in a whole year. You'll have to trust me when I say I don't take this readership for granted, and in return I will admit that it also allows me to adopt that laid-back but sincere policy towards my blog. If you won't do something even when you're suitably privileged, you suck. ### Writing with WordPress Write URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/06/06/writing-with-wordpress-write/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:49.000Z I'm writing this post on Write, the new text composer/editor on WordPress.com. According to the [official blog post](https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/05/26/introducing-write-a-new-way-to-post-built-for-writers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Write is a response to last year's Creators survey, where "'simplify the editor' was the single most-requested improvement from the people already publishing on WordPress.com". The tool itself was originally created by WordPress developer [Jamie Marsland](https://www.pootlepress.com/2026/04/write-what-if-wordpress-was-designed-purely-for-writers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), with the WordPress.com team then adopting/adapting it. According to Marsland: > WordPress is extraordinary software. But when you sit down to write a blog post, you’re greeted by a dashboard, a sidebar, an admin bar, a block inserter, a settings panel, and dozens of options that have nothing to do with the words you’re about to put down. For writers — especially those who aren’t developers — it’s a lot of visual noise between you and a blank page. Write strips all of that away. So far, Write looks good to me. WordPress.com ruined the writing experience when it introduced Gutenberg. Many bloggers have already commented that WordPress.com should just have brought back the Classic editor, i.e. the TinyMCE editor. I don't think the Classic editor produces blocks when you publish, so it can't benefit from the advantages of the block editor, such as they are. However, I also don't think WordPress.com needs to go that far back to restore a good writing experience. Calypso, the WordPress.com front-end before Gutenberg, was remarkably smooth and conducive to writing. WordPress.com has been bloated for a long time; the "you're greeted by a dashboard, a sidebar, an admin bar, a block inserter, a settings panel, and dozens of options" was as true of Gutenberg as it was of prior versions. What changed was the additional bloat of Gutenberg, which made the writing experience unwieldy and unsupportive of the speed of thinking, as it were. Since the launch of Gutenberg with WordPress 5.0 (and then Full-Site Editing with v5.9), I've considered the editor that shipped with Ghost.org, Koenig, to be the gold standard. To be clear, I'm restricting myself to editors that ship along with publishing platforms, rather than including standalone editors (in that case, my current favourite is [Sublime Text](https://www.sublimetext.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Ghost built Koenig on the Lexical framework and ever since its launch in 2018, it has been damn smooth. Koenig and Gutenberg both allow the writer (composer) to invoke blocks in the writing area. In Gutenberg alone, however, the view-port would jump back and forth depending on which paragraph the cursor was on, the cursor wouldn't move in an intuitive war, the font in the composing area would change depending on the site theme, and there would be a noticeable lag when invoking a block or moving between paragraphs on a long article (1,000+ words across 5-6+ paragraphs). If Write is to stay good, it needs to beat Koenig (although hosting with WordPress remains a lot cheaper than hosting with Ghost, so there's that). That means making Write easy to find, introducing and harmonising keyboard shortcuts — even now, Ctrl+S sometimes saves the post, sometimes asks to save the webpage —, supporting Markdown, and removing all of the clunk that belaboured Gutenberg. Most of all, as more and more writers use Write in different ways, the people at WordPress.com should streamline the feedback and changes that arise in a way that doesn't compromise the raison d'être of Write. Losing track of that spirit was what gave us the Gutenberg writing experience in the first place. *Featured image: A preview of the new Write editor. Credit: WordPress.com.* ### State and crime URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/31/a-new-state-government-and-a-shocking-crime/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:51.000Z From ['The Sulur horror story of child sexual assault and murder'](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/the-sulur-horror-story-of-child-sexual-assault-and-murder-in-tn-coimbatore-may-2026/article71042444.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, May 31, 2026: > Mr. Vijay, who sent Director-General of Police Sandeep Rai Rathore and Additional DGP (Law and Order) Maheshwar Dayal to Coimbatore after the crime, said the murder had caused immense pain and shock. … > > Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin alleged that 30 major incidents of crime, including the murder of the girl, were reported within 12 days of Mr. Vijay assuming office, casting serious doubts about the State’s law and order situation. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami accused the government of not taking swift action after receiving a complaint about the girl’s disappearance. Udhayanidhi's criticism seems misguided. A single murder, however horrific, is not a good basis on which to judge the State's overall law and order situation or the safety of women and girls. Whether a crime occurred says nothing about law and order because serious crimes occur in every society, including those with highly capable police forces and governments. The more meaningful questions are whether crime rates are falling, whether the State can prevent foreseeable risks, how quickly it responds when a serious crime does occur, how effectively it investigates them, and whether the perpetrators are punished. A good law and order apparatus could never promise to prevent crime. It is even more absurd that Tamil Nadu's law and order situation deteriorated within 12 days of a new government taking office — when it will have had little time to review and institute changes (as necessary) to policing, prosecution, the administration of criminal justice, urban planning, social services, and the many other factors that influence crime. In fact, one crime committed shortly after an election almost certainly originated in conditions that predated that government. In fact, the risk of sexual violence — as at Sulur — at large also depends on several factors, including the offender's behaviour, family and neighbourhood networks, policing practices, urban design, alcohol use, social norms, reporting rates, court effectiveness, school systems, and — like it or not — sheer chance. No chief minister who has been in power for just under a fortnight can directly control these factors on a daily basis. This individual can effectively influence how the State reacts to crime, much less so whether a particular crime occurs. But over five years, a State government — like the one Udhayanidhi was until recently part of — can matter substantially because they can hire more police officers, improve the State's forensic capacity, expand CCTV coverage, redesign unsafe public spaces, strengthen survivor support services, accelerate trials, improve conviction rates, regulate alcohol sales, improve public transport safety, and invest in education and social welfare. Yet again, even if these changes can alter the probability that such crimes occur and the likelihood that offenders are caught and punished, these changes will not eliminate crimes against women and girls with certainty. But even more: a government should be judged less by a handful of shocking cases than by long-term trends. If crimes against women, child sexual offences, murder rates, conviction rates, response times, and public perceptions of safety improve (or do not) over several years, then it is reasonable to attribute some responsibility to the government. Otherwise, it is just bickering. *Featured image credit: Joshua Coleman/Unsplash.* ### People, place, animal, disease URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/25/people-place-animal-disease/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:53.000Z In an [article published in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/new-ebola-outbreak-shows-how-market-failure-delays-vaccine-research/article71018870.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this morning about the difficulties of developing an ebolavirus vaccine, I wrote: > Many NTDs \[neglected tropical diseases\] are caused by eukaryotic parasites, i.e. worms and protozoa, which develop in multiple stages across multiple hosts, complicating researchers’ efforts to identify a stable antigen for vaccines to target. The immune system also struggles to confer lasting protection against infections by these organisms, making them categorically harder to vaccinate against than, say, measles. On a second reading, a particular point caught my eye. NTDs are prevalent in the world's tropical and the subtropical areas. Most of the world's poor people are also located in this belt (and/or a few degrees above/below). Their poverty can be traced back to colonial-era exploits and plunder and the unstable governments that followed since their independence. The disease-causing pathogens in these regions also seem more complicated, developing in stages and whatnot. Is it coincidental that both realities — more 'complicated' pathogens to vaccinate against and more poverty/poorer countries — share a geographic area? On the one hand, eukaryotic parasites have multi-stage, multi-host life cycles because tropical areas are highly biodiverse. (I believe why *that* is has yet to be settled, although scientists have evidence that the tropics have had a stable climate for longer stretches of geological time, their ecosystems occupy larger areas on the ground, the warmer weather speeds up metabolism and mutations, the more sunlight received supports more biomass, and their ecological niches are often narrower.) That means more host species to 'choose' from, more ecological niches to occupy, and more pressure to evolve in complex ways. At the same time, it is not a good idea for a pathogen's survival to depend on multiple hosts — unless the hosts are reliably available. And the conditions in the tropic, but especially the weather changing relatively minimally between seasons, ensure this availability. In the temperate zones and beyond, the weather changes more drastically, forcing many species to proliferate or not depending on the time of year. On the other hand, poverty is a risk factor for exposure to pathogens. When a community lacks good sanitation and has to defecate in the open, hookworm larvae can be deposited in the soil, where they hatch and become infectious. For another example, snails shed *Schistosoma cercariae* larvae, which can come in contact with human skin through dirty water. Malnutrition also reduces immune function. If a poor person develops a chronic disease, their chances of escaping poverty can drop further. For instance, schistosomiasis causes liver fibrosis and cognitive impairment in children while hookworm causes anaemia and stunts development. Put another way, economic development and the disease environment go hand in hand, instead of one causing the other. Further, colonialism created and sustained living conditions that made it harder for people to escape being affected by dangerous pathogens. Colonial economies were for the most part extractive; even tropical medicine, such as it was, took shape as a discipline for doctors to attend to British (or European) administrators and soldiers, rather than the native population. And the end of colonialism did not spell the end of this neglect: it continued in the capitalist world-system by acting through purchasing power, neglecting those who lack it. In sum, the disease environment influenced the colonists' strategies (they wanted to extract and leave more than settle down and develop), those strategies produced the institutional deficit that drove poverty (ignoring the infrastructure and institutions that could have laid the groundwork for self-sustaining economies after they left), and poverty sustained the disease environment (this does not mean "poverty causes disease" but that poverty helps sustain disease transmission and severity if certain pathogens are already present). To round things off, today, the impulses of colonialism have been replaced with those of market-driven exclusion. *Featured image credit: Jordan Opel/Unsplash.* ### Find the dictionary URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/21/find-the-dictionary/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:54.000Z From ['Measure for measure: On India’s courts and criticism'](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/measure-for-measure-on-indias-courts-and-criticism/article71002527.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, May 21, 2026: > In the Ali Khan Mahmudabad matter, the Court granted him relief from coercive action but also imposed a gag order. Then, in a display of willingness to discipline the norms of public conduct rather than determine legality, it urged the state to decline to prosecute him as a concession. The irony is that in a May 2025 hearing in this matter, Justice Surya Kant — who became the Chief Justice in November that year — said, "The learned professor cannot have the lack of dictionary words … He could convey the very same feelings in a simple language without hurting others. Have some respect for the sentiments of others. Use simple and neutral kind of language, respecting others." This is the same judge who earlier this month called people "cockroaches" and "parasites". Surely he must not want for a dictionary to find the right language to criticise people? *Featured image credit: Towfiqu Barbhuiya/Pexels.* ### Why analysis matters URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/17/why-analysis-matters/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:55.000Z I am a journalist… I think. I have been a desk guy most of my professional life (14+ years). In this time, I have commissioned and published hundreds of pieces, from news reports to investigative features, from explainers to commentary. However, I myself am more of an essayist — and even then an essayist of big ideas rather than ground realities. For a [recent piece I wrote about David Attenborough](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/david-attenborough-100-years-documentaries-history-colonial-violence/article70949867.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — which discussed fortress conservation and violence against Indigenous peoples, even though I have never been in the 'field' the way an ecologist or a reporter has — I received an unexpectedly large volume of positive feedback. Thus far, I have written pieces of this nature because I have had something to say, not necessarily because someone could have benefited from reading it. But if I had to think about that beforehand, how would I go about it? As I was pondering this, I started to have some ideas about how the two kinds of journalistic reports on my mind — those written based on people's experiences and those written at the level of ideas — do and do not relate to each other. (In this sense, this post is a spiritual cousin to [this one](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/the-natural-universe-remains-captivating-when-it-skips-the-people/article70709987.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Ground-level knowledge is strongly tacit. It resists generalisation, but more importantly, it is not supposed to be generalisable. It arises from specific people in specific places simultaneously living through, shaping, and responding to specific experiences. It cannot be easily abstracted either because any abstraction would betray the essence of what makes ground-level knowledge true. On the other hand, discursive or analytical knowledge is in part based on how ideas circulate among people and how people synthesise paradigms and sustain them. For an example from my Attenborough piece, such knowledge would be how a specific concept like the "pristine" wilderness becomes an ideological instrument across research institutions as well as news-media audiences. In fact, my piece does not claim to know what it feels like to be evicted from an ecosystem one's community depends on — but it does claim to understand how a particular way to narrate a story (or set of ideas) about forests has served particular political interests. And unlike ground-level knowledge, this variety is very easy to translate: the barrier to moving it from a newspaper to a policy seminar, say, without also distorting it is very low. In fact, translatability may be the raison d'être of analytical knowledge — and certainly what distinguishes it. This said, the two kinds of knowledge also depend on each other. The first dependence, from the ground to the analysis, is more well-known: for example, while it may be easy to dismiss one community's grievance as a special pleading of sorts, the essayist's work can name the paradigm to which the grievance belongs and give the community's experiences the political traction that allows them to transcend their geography. Conversely, analytical knowledge that is not grounded in specific material realities can mistake the map for the territory, even implicitly. This is part of what I think Attenborough has done, creating a lush yet sterile story about what is really a messy reality. The dependency from analytical to ground-level knowledge on the other hand takes three forms: the more obvious policy — since analytical frames influence what institutions do — and the less obvious conceptuality and power relations. For instance, when my piece names and circulates the concept called "land-grabbing", the term can become a new resource for actors closer to the ground to wield — both to understand where their experiences are located within a larger paradigm and to make claims to which institutions are forced to respond. In this sense, the making of analytical knowledge is more than just to describe something. In fact, even the label "Indigenous peoples" is applied to a particular category of people, together with certain rights, because anthropologists, legal scholars, and political theorists constituted it first through analysis. The third kind of dependence is Foucauldian in that analytical discourse constitutes power relations. For a specific example, how a journalism of ecology treats a community — as a steward rather than as an encroacher, say — will influence how policy 'sees' the community as well as how the community must 'see' itself in order to be visible to the (e.g. democratic) institutions that govern it. In other words, the language comes first and the bureaucratic practice follows, and analytical knowledge influences the language. Now, my audience for the piece was not Indigenous communities themselves and I am not accountable foremost to the forest communities. Claiming otherwise would be presumptuous and in fact dishonest. I am accountable instead to the integrity of my claims, and to the researchers, activists, etc. on the ground whose work I am drawing on (even implicitly) for my synthesis. I am essentially answerable to the voice in my head saying, "Okay, but in this particular district, P is a better abstraction than Q for XYZ reasons", and now I can be mindful of precisely what depends on it. *Featured image credit: Gowtham AGM/Unsplash.* ### When is land more valuable — when it hosts a datacentre or a farm? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/14/when-is-land-more-valuable-when-it-hosts-a-datacentre-or-a-farm/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:57.000Z Excerpt from ['Data center land use issues are fake'](https://blog.andymasley.com/p/data-center-land-use-issues-are-fake?ref=slightlyacidic.com), by Andy Masley, May 2, 2026: > And then, in the middle of all this, a farmer in Loudoun County sells a few acres of mediocre hay field to a hyperscaler for ten times its agricultural value, and the response is that we’re running out of farmland. > > The marginal Virginia hay field is worth more as a data center than as hay. The marginal Iowa cornfield going to ethanol would be much better if it were nothing at all. When a farmer in Loudoun County wants to sell to Amazon for ten times the land’s agricultural value, the correct response is to wish them well. We need way less farmland than we currently use, and it’s fine if data centers buy some. I did some reading and it seems Masley's argument is current in the US context. Farmers there have indeed been producing from less land for a while now. Since the 1930s, the corn yield has increased more than sevenfold. So Masley's conclusion that converting arable land to land for datacentres is desirable seems reasonable. But his post got me thinking about the situation in India — and here it seems his argument would fail (not that he's expressed any interest in this part of the world). Higher yield isn't the same as higher productivity on the same, capable parcel of land. This is because agricultural researchers and farmers can increase the yield using better agronomy, hybrid breeding, precision planting, and so on. That said, farmers in India and in many places around the world, including in the US, have been more engaged in rendering the land more productive by intensifying the external inputs. For example, US agricutural use of nitrogen fertilisers has increased roughly seven- to tenfold since the 1940s. Together with the expansion of irrigation volume, mass and composition of pesticides applied, and the degree of mechanisation, the land certainly wouldn't be as productive as it is today. Both the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the US Department of Agriculure's Land Capability Classification distinguish between land with good natural agricultural potential and land whose productivity depends more heavily on inputs and management. Soil scientists draw a similar line, for similar reasons, between inherent soil fertility — which is the natural endowment of nutrients, capacity to hold water, and biological activity — and effective soil fertility, which is the productivity achieved by escalating the application of inputs. Agricultural economists also keep track of a figure called total factor productivity (TFP): if the yield in a specific hectare rises mainly because farmers are applying disproportionately more water or fertilisers, say, the gains in TFP may stagnate or even decline. Against this background, let's call Masley's category of lands that stay productive without increasing inputs 'inherently capable land' and land rendered productive by applying more and more inputs 'input-dependent land'. Most of the increase in agricultural productivity in India since the Green Revolution has happened on input-dependent land. The Revolution's heartland in North India, especially Punjab and Haryana, has since been notorious for its fertiliser use and groundwater extraction, supported by state subsidies. Increases in the region's yield gains have also been flat for two decades or so now — and it's possible maintaining just the current yield level in many areas requires more and more inputs. So the claim that "we need way less farmland than we currently use" works only if the land's fertility is almost entirely he also assumed the land's inherent fertility, i.e. that it is inherently capable land. And if the country has already identified and priced that land accordingly, and where production is in surplus relative to domestic demand — so that a temporary drop in the arable area doesn't threaten access to food. And very rarely do any of these conditions operate simultaneously in any agricultural market in India. The country has around 180 million ha of net sown area for 1.4 billion people (excluding exports). In 2023, according to the [World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC?end=2023&locations=IN&start=2023&utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com&view=bar), there was 0.107 ha of arable land per capita, steadily down from 0.359 ha per capita in 1961\. Equally, many productive farms in India today are most likely on input-dependent land, and that too only because state governments also subsidise electricity for pump sets and fertiliser costs. The national fertiliser subsidy in 2023-2024 was Rs 1.8 lakh crore, up from Rs 65,971.5 crore in 2013-2014. In fact, even converting a parcel of land that has become functionally 'dead' following input-heavy cultivation for datacentre use is a bad idea for four reasons: it creates a perverse incentive for landowners to allow the land to degrade; the location will require additional infrastructure, like roads and power transmission equipment, the cost of which has to be added to the overall cost of conversion; 'dead' land is difficult to define as a category for administration (more so in a country that has historically used "wasteland" and similar categories of land to acquire ownership of common areas over which local communities have claims); and 'dead' land can still recover its ecological value over time. So it is not possible to say whether it is okay to acquire arable land in India for use as a datacentre after checking only the current yield. At the least, we must also check the conditions in which the land is productive. Second, throughout his post, in order to determine whether X parcel of land could be more valuable as a datacentre or as a farm, Masley has considered land parcels to be independent units. So let's consider a hypothetical scenario to bring this assumption into the real world (somewhat). Say there is a 4x4 grid of 16 parcels, and the first quadrant of four parcels has been converted for a datacentre's use. What will that do to the remaining 12 parcels? A datacentre drawing from a common subterranean aquifer will create a cone of depression — a conical dip in the local water table that also reduces the water pressure. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, over-exploited aquifer zones cover around 14% of India's groundwater blocks. In these places, any additional large consumer will push the rate of groundwater extraction closer to or even past the safe yield limit, which is the point beyond which extracting groundwater will have undesirable effects on the surrounding land. The upcoming datacentre corridor in Hyderabad is expanding into just such an area. In this place, the 12 remaining arable parcels are likely to have their yields as well as water table drop and for the marginal water cost to rise. Next, all datacentres have a high and fixed minimum power demand, which means the windows in which states currently supply (rationed) electricity could narrow further, and the voltage could also drop. Third, datacentres expel heat of roughly the same magnitude as the electricity they consume. In the semi-arid areas that dominate peninsular India, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and parts of Karnataka, plumes of heat from datacentres can further raise the local ambient temperature, disrupting crops' evapotranspiration and local heat stress limits. Note here that the thermal and microclimate effects vis-à-vis agricultural performance are understudied in India. In fact when Masley discussed the example of Morrow County in Oregon, he dismissed the Amazon datacentre's water demand as only 0.4% of the local irrigation demand. But the more important question is whether the new water demand will push the water table beyond the safe yield threshold. (FWIW, Morrow County had declared an emergency in 2022 over nitrate levels in drinking water drawn from the groundwater.) Taken together, Masley's arguments yield sensible conclusions when they come with surplus land and independent land parcels but insensible ones otherwise. And in India, the conditions are mostly otherwise. *Featured image credit: Naren Marthandan/Unsplash.* ### ‘Hidden’ voting preferences URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/12/hidden-voting-preferences/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:57.000Z On May 4, former Tamil film actor C. Joseph Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) emerged in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections as the single largest party. The magnitude of the victory was widely unexpected, and dislodged the Dravidian duopoly in the State since 1959. While the reasons for this win are still falling in place — a need for change and reform and fatigue with corruption seem to have been decisive forces — it also appears more than a few voters expected the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to win even as they wished to shrink the size of its majority, to send a message of sorts. Eventually, of course, the TVK won, securing 108 seats in the 234-seat Assembly and with almost 35% of the vote share. ### A rational choice While the complete political psychology of Mr. Vijay’s win is still developing, we know the TVK did [subtract more from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam vote base](https://www.thehindu.com/elections/tamil-nadu-assembly/tvk-makes-inroads-into-aiadmks-core-voter-base-in-tamil-nadu-data/article70949430.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The erstwhile actor also had many vocal supporters, especially among the State’s youth. Many parents [were even cowed by their starstruck and adamant children](https://www.thehindu.com/elections/tamil-nadu-assembly/did-kids-make-vijay-mama-a-success/article70942589.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), often well below voting age, insisting they vote for the TVK irrespective of their own inclinations. In the mix of possibilities, the idea that one would vote for another party assuming a second party would win anyway stands out as a self-negating, even unpredictable, proposition. However, this way of deciding is actually rational and well-documented in political science and economics. The basic idea comes from the fact that people do not just vote for whom or which ideology they prefer. They also vote based on whom they believe ‘can’ win, how they believe others will vote, and what social rewards (or punishments) they associate with each choice. As a result, if voters believe one party is ‘destined’ to win, they could also believe they can defect to another party — i.e. voting for different reasons while not changing their expectations. When that idea becomes sufficiently widespread, the party they actually voted for could win. Of course, psychology alone cannot explain what happened in Tamil Nadu. But the way psychologists, sociologists, and economists have explored these possibilities may describe a part of why the State voted the way it did. ### Mediated by the media In the 1920s, the U.S. social psychologist Floyd Allport described a concept called pluralistic ignorance. It says that if each person in a group privately believes something but incorrectly assumes most other people do not believe that as well, they can behave on the basis of a collective opinion that they have failed to read. Scholars have also found that any society whose people think like this is actually less stable than it looks. When private preferences diverge far enough from the public one, even a small trigger — like a rupture in the appearance of consensus — can cause people to quickly and progressively reveal their true choices as they see others doing so. The TVK’s 34.92% vote share could suggest a reservoir of suppressed private preferences that did not always surface in mainstream discourse — or could it? Since the verdict on May 4, many reporters have recalled people on the ground telling them they would vote for the TVK — even as many in the media reported the DMK would emerge victorious. They may have struggled to reconcile two conflicting impressions. On the one hand, they encountered enthusiasm for a two-year-old party and its charismatic leader. On the other, they weighed the DMK’s formidable organisational machinery and its entrenched presence in Tamil Nadu politics, plus the common assumption that parties with deep cadres and alliances generally prevail. Many observers may have resolved this contradiction in favour of what they already ‘knew’ about how elections usually work. After all, if such intuitions prove unreliable in one major election, they could unsettle the observers’ confidence in others as well. Ultimately, those declarations in the press supporting a DMK victory could also have lowered the perceived cost of voting for an alternative. In Tamil Nadu, one popular media narrative of the TVK — that it was a celebrity vanity project, different in spirit from the campaigns of M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa — could also have made Mr. Vijay et al. seem like an alternative through whose bid to power individual voters could send a ‘message’. ### Diverging preferences Voters do not always infer information directly. They also survey the (apparent) behaviour of others. Each voter’s confidence in the DMK’s invincibility could have been abetted partly by observing what seemed to be confidence among others, leading some people to discount their own private impressions. This then could have created a feed-forward loop in which the strength of the private preference diverges significantly from that of the public one, until a voter reaches the ballot. Scholars have sometimes modelled this as a phenomenon called a threshold effect: each voter has a personal point at which they will act on their private preference. When enough people cross that threshold at the same time, the electoral outcome can shift nonlinearly, meaning it could appear sudden and disproportionate to what people have been seeing around them until then. In a 1995 book titled *Private Truths, Public Lies*, the Turkish-American economist Timur Kuran argued that individuals routinely misrepresent their private preferences in order to conform with public preferences, which he called preference falsification. And as falsified preferences accumulate over time, they could stabilise a misleading public consensus. The political scientist Anthony Downs helped put together a rational explanation of voting in which people weigh the expected value of their vote, including the small chance that it could be decisive. In a political climate where the DMK’s victory could have seemed like a given, for example, voters might try to improve the value of their vote, as they see it. Based on this idea, around three decades later, Australian economist Geoffrey Brennan and his American peer Loren Lomasky argued that because the chance of any one vote being pivotal is really small in a large election, voters also use the (private) ballot as a place where they can express themselves — an interpretation some scholars have also applied to the Brexit referendum. ### Defect without consequence In fact, the duo contended that the lower a person perceives the value of their vote to be, the more sincerely they will vote for whom they actually want to vote for. In this reading, some of TVK’s voters could be said to have voted expressively. Some scholars have described similar situations in terms of the ‘wasted vote’ — in Tamil Nadu, not wasted because it went to the TVK but because it would have been of ‘little use’ to the DMK. In his noted work on public goods and collective action, the economist Mancur Olson found that individuals who are all interested in a common collective good will still also under-contribute towards the goal as long as they can benefit from the contributions of others. So for instance, if a group of DMK supporters believed that the DMK was set to win, one individual in the group may have also believed that as long as the others voted for the DMK, she alone could vote to ‘send a message’ without consequence. The defector’s decision is actually rational because, according to the information that she had, the cost of defection was zero. As analysts continue to make sense of the TVK’s unprecedented victory, it will be interesting to watch whether any of these reasons match what played out on the ground on April 23. ### A political direction in life URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/05/02/a-political-direction-in-life/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:58.000Z *Note to readers: Root Privileges is now Slightly Acidic.* Daily writing promptWhat gives you direction in life? ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/799470f15133a8a002034edfbe5ecb37bf627f9c9685babae88f050e58a092ca?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fe7b0ff11e73d8aaddd1deda191d68f3f10dd194ce28915e60046c9af309cc6d?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/eb84c5969ca62071dc43ee28abe08e23396b71a6220ed4017b9b97a6a52f0560?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-1926?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I'm a political creature. I didn't think that I'd be one but I am. I believe this is a response to India's present historical moment. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, assumed power in the national government, the quality of the national political discourse has consistently declined. Communalism has become overt. Majoritarian policymaking has become the norm. The national government has become synonymous with manipulation, deception, and duplicity. Political leaders openly spread misinformation and pseudoscience. The foreign policy is indistinguishable from opportunism. Political ideologies come and go; why should that direct one's life? When the BJP assumed power in 2014, its leaders, including Modi, bolted out from their cages misinformation-first. For some time after, I assumed that whenever they'd next lose power and exit the government, good language, decorum, civility, and communication in good faith would all be restored. But I was wrong, I realised. The BJP and its allies (i) have kept up their conduct without suffering electorally for it, (ii) have fomented, rather than healed, social divisions to divide and conquer with considerable success, (iii) have undercut the democratic and constitutional machinery that counter-narratives need for sustenance, such as public data and reports, and (iv) have passed laws centralising their control of information as well as empowering them to silence dissenting voices. In effect, the more polite and more forgiving India of the pre-2014 era has rapidly faded, replaced with a nation that has constantly surprised me with every new depth it plumbs. In fact, I wonder if perhaps the India of old didn't realise exist that it was a veneer that obscured the resentment and xenophobia that feeds mainstream political discourse today. Most of all, I'm now certain most of the changes the BJP has made are not easily reversible. People at large, but especially the middle class and the elites, have become emboldened to discuss and spread divisive ideas without fear of sanctions and deride, if not dismiss, efforts by journalists and activists to seek facts and data. More than a few opposition parties [have also sought](https://www.thehindu.com/elections/west-bengal-assembly/exit-polls-predictions-made-at-bjps-behest-to-demoralise-tmc-workers-mamata/article70924911.ece?cx%5FtestId=144&cx%5FtestVariant=cx%5F1&cx%5FartPos=0&cx%5FexperienceId=EXPO56ZDYSGX&cx%5FexperienceActionId=showRecommendationsBX8R9JNSDA6B174&ref=slightlyacidic.com#cxrecs%5Fs) and won power by responding to the BJP with communalist politics in favour of a different social/religious group. Beating this irreversibility is what gives me direction in life today. I will most certainly fail in my lifetime, but I have to live well and do the right thing at all times. This might be a cliché but I have a particular way of doing it that I'm proud of — and which has been my personal antidote to the way Modi et al. have governed. The first step is to have a well-reasoned political ideology to abide by. (I'm a [democratic socialist](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/12/27/my-political-views/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Second, I must cultivate myself to be the kind of person who understands why that ideology over any other as well as mitigate the extent to which I pretend it is superior, e.g. by reading about other positions, the histories of how they came to be, where and why they persist today, and what they do well that my ideology of choice can't. Third, I must continue learning. I believe we're all on learning curves, and at different points on different matters. The only things we can do is keep moving up the curve and at the least not get in the way of others doing the same thing. Fourth, I must strive to be a good person and to do the right thing. This is of course subjective: it is guided by a shared common sense as well as by an individual's, or at least a particular community's, social and cultural values. While the former is benign, if also increasingly uncommon, the latter is why my extended family believes creating social mobility for Hindus alone, to the exclusion of Muslims, is doing the right thing. However, I also believe making a habit of points two and three could militate against insular worldviews. In fact, these four points are not independent of each other but, to my mind, can come together to create an individual whose personal growth and aspirations become increasingly synonymous over time with the needs of the ideology while keeping the ideology from accruing (socially) evil overtones, especially as one practices it. The very first thing we can do is to lead by example. As a next step, we can translate our precepts and personal rules for society at large, trimming that which departs from the Constitution, honing that which enhances it, and engaging with our compatriots with civility and fraternity. This can be everything from allowing domestic workers to use the apartment elevators, complaining to the State Pollution Control Board when a contractor forces construction workers to work in the heat without protection, and rationalising the household water demand to standing in the path of an illegal demolition, protesting when the state adopts violent means against another community to bulldoze a project through, and raging against the dying of the light. Just do what you can, at least to start with. ### Let's discuss, with conditions URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/04/27/lets-discuss-with-conditions/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:58.000Z > Writing prompt: What topics do you like to discuss? I like to discuss everything under the Sun. However, I’m also wary of people who waste time talking about something in a way that couldn’t possibly lead to a useful insight or a changed mind but are in fact discussing in order to discuss — or of course are sealioning, dogpiling, catfishing, astroturfing, etc. Granted, we don’t know what we don’t know, and it’s rarely possible to say where a conversation could lead. But I think that the moment I find that an engagement is going to lead nowhere, I rapidly lose interest. On a related note, there’s a line from American journalist Gideon Lewis-Krauss’s [essay in *The New Yorker*](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2020 about Scott Alexander Siskind and the [*NYT*\-versus-*SSC* fracas](https://rootprivileges.net/2021/02/25/slate-star-codex-no-time-for-malice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that has stayed with me: > The rationalists regularly fail to reckon with power as it is practiced, or history as it has been experienced, and they indulge themselves in such contests with the freedom of those who have largely escaped discrimination. I think of myself as a mostly rational person but I’m also keen to avoid this trap. So I suppose I’m saying that I’m prepared to discuss anything under the Sun unless I’m aware that such a discussion is designed to waste my time, which isn’t or doesn’t turn into the rationalist’s performative circus, and of course which is contrary to my understanding of the world as a rationalist. By that last point, I mean I’m okay to discuss, say, why homeopathy is pseudoscience but not to discuss the pros and cons of homeopathy. ### A song on my mind URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/04/19/a-song-on-my-mind/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:59.000Z Daily writing promptJot down the first thing that comes to your mind. ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fe7b0ff11e73d8aaddd1deda191d68f3f10dd194ce28915e60046c9af309cc6d?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/73b02cf36ebf2d5814b213a1afb4cd8ae3d31893ad3c09d5cbb34ad9e4034ee2?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4f99cd0b279c5f6393665424140bdf1790d7bf0f72ea91da9259ea5daf0328fc?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-1913?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I've got an earworm this morning and it's been unbudged. It's the song 'Neeye unakku endrum' from the 1962 Tamil film *Bale Pandiya*. The film is highly okay, at best, notwithstanding many of the social norms of that time no longer being acceptable (to me at least), but this song in particular is quite good. Of course the music video isn't, with both Sivaji Ganesan (as usual) and M.R. Radha trying too hard. Despite its age, the song is actually popular for its absurd conclusion. I like it because of its lyrics, in particular the lines that say "you will always be your own equal" and "the mouth is for wisdom, the hands for justice, sight for love, and speech for compassion", rendered edifyingly by T.M. Soundararajan. In this sense it could quality for the தத்துவ பாடல் — or philosophical song — genre of old Tamil cinema. Then again, the lines likely refer to a deity and I've missed some reference, and are dedicated to it rather than people. But I'd rather the song be referring to people's best qualities. ### Memoirs, Substack, and psychology URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/04/10/memoirs-substack-and-psychology/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:53:59.000Z The English poet Blake Morrison had a thought-provoking [essay in *The Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/apr/04/enough-of-this-me-me-me-blake-morrison-on-memoir-in-the-age-of-oversharing?ref=provisional.mymagic.page) titled '‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing' on April 4\. He traced the evolution of memoir from a self-congratulatory genre for the accomplished to today's more "confessionalist" texts that are open to everyone, concluding that both forms have value — with a twist. In the course of his discourse, he arrives at two particular conclusions that struck me because he overlooks their real causes and skips a chance to clarify how cultural and institutional forces also shape literary form. (i) > If memoirists can make a living through online snippets (with enough subscriptions, Substack pays well), why worry about publication in print? What’s so sacrosanct about a physical book? > > For myself – no social media junkie – I think published memoirs have plenty to offer that social platforms can’t, not least the rewards of a full-length story with a narrative arc, a set of characters, and an approach that doesn’t depend on sensational self-exposure, allowing room for reversals, surprises, digressions, complications and a tussle between adversity and reprieve. At their best, memoirs develop with a subtlety unavailable in a short extract and the writer faces bigger issues than how much to share – which tense to use, what stretch of time to cover, how many points of view to accommodate, and what resolution to offer, if any, since a life story written by a living person won’t have ended. Far from exulting in the drama of the tale they’re telling, memoir writers face the worry that it’s humdrum and inconsequential. Success lies in the quality of the telling, not in the shamelessness of the tale. This passage caught my eye because it seems to imply that writing via a publisher and unto a physical book will give rise to everything from a "full-length story with a narrative arc" to "allowing room for adversity … and reprieve" — whereas that writing for Substack cannot. This is true, but it is true for a reason that does not come through here: writing with a publisher gets you an editor, and if they are good they will empathise with your narrative, your stories, and they will guide you to improving it only the way a professional editor who knows how, and importantly why, good writing works. The reason writing for Substack does not get you these improvements is not because the platform magically disallows them but because the people who publish on Substack, or any blogging or newsletter platform for that matter, have elected to not have a second pair of eyes on their draft. Substack adoption bloomed in 2020 and many journalists, opinionists, commentators, and pundits migrated from indie platforms and legacy news publishers, because of Substack's then-relatively-simpler options to monetise their content and/or to avoid what they perceived to be censorship. Democratising information benefits from democratising the platforms from which they can be broadcast, and Substack did help. But it also helped people with statements or opinions that an editor would have massaged or altogether removed sidestep that check [keep talking](https://www.platformer.news/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack/?ref=provisional.mymagic.page). Good editors often push back and without that it is easy to believe everything one has to say is correct and that more people should hear it. But if a Substacker has an editor, they could get the same experience Blake Morrison says they would with a good publisher. (ii) > What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre … is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in [*The Argonauts*](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/27/the-agronauts-maggie-nelson-observer-review?ref=provisional.mymagic.page), “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or *the* horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality. > > “The words *I love you* come tumbling out of my mouth in an incantation the first time you fuck me in the ass, my face smashed against the concrete floor”; this appears in the first paragraph of *The Argonauts* in 2015\. It’s hard to imagine an author volunteering that 30 years ago, or being allowed to be so passionately upfront (and violently facedown) at the start of the story. … > > Shock is an integral part of memoir and sometimes the facts are shocking, without embroidery. … In literature the mode used to be called confessionalism. These days, pejoratively, it’s called oversharing. At best it prompts welcome recognition: Wow, great, here’s someone who’s had the same experiences, thoughts and feelings that I’ve had. But there’s often resistance as well: Ugh. TMI. I don’t need to know this. When the divulgence is sad-fishing on Facebook, curated self-glorification on Instagram or out-there revelation in a memoir, readers may feel irritated or affronted. … It’s not essential for writers to bean-spill, after all. They’re not victims on a talkshow, outmanoeuvred by Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle; they’re writing on their own terms and in control of what’s committed to print. An important detail Blake Morrison leaves unwritten here — plausibly because that gives his readers "room to interpret and explore" — is mental health. Specifically, public awareness of mental well-being, of the forms and ways by which trauma can be inflicted, and how it can be healed is more widespread today than it was only two decades ago. Granted, in some geographies, including India, there is still a long way to go, but it is not inconsiderable. Awareness is all the more pronounced, if also often inchoate, on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. And I would be really surprised if this had nothing to do with the rise of "nobody memoirs" that — at least in their best forms — have breached the shame associated with weirdness, idiosyncrasies, and the simple freedom to be one's own person. ### On the BBC, talking about Gaganyaan and inspiration URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/31/on-the-bbc-talking-about-gaganyaan-and-inspiration/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:00.000Z The BBC has produced a documentary podcast titled [‘Hope and fear: India’s space revolution’](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0n750mt?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Its host, Alok Jha of *The Economist*, interviewed me late last year as part of it, to provide a media perspective of the Indian space programme, in particular Gaganyaan, access to ISRO scientists, the role of prestige, and the place of a spaceflight programme in a democracy. I was able to listen to it by downloading a copy of the 49-minute documentary from the link above (the 64-kbps version is 22 MB). It is also available on platforms like [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/34XobfIBfkPtOsmwKblrGH?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/hope-and-fear-indias-space-revolution/id73802620?i=1000755873111&ref=slightlyacidic.com). If you’re interested, the narrative and context for my portion begin from 23:15. The overall narrative takes an outside-in perspective, which is understandable given the foreign audience. This is also evident in how many parts of the narrative have been crafted, including the amount of awe towards what India is attempting vis-à-vis space and the ‘balance’ of ideas the documentary contains, which in some parts could come across like a false balance to listeners in India. That said, I’d recommend listening to the whole thing because of the diverse voices quoted, including Seetha Somasundaram, Madhavan Nair, Jahnavi Phalkey, and Anil Menon. This is generally hard to get in a single journalistic item and it’s valuable to consider them all together on a complex topic like this. Given the Indian government's greater sensitivity to how it is being perceived by foreign governments of the Global North, it's also useful to get a sense of how foreign media are treating its efforts in spaceflight. I myself expect to revisit the documentary in the coming months as Gaganyaan nears its [first crewed test flight](https://www.thehindu.com/infographics/2025-12-10/gaganyaan-india-isro-space-mission/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and as ISRO investigates the [twin PSLV failures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7qXcKxKXbE&ref=slightlyacidic.com). After my portion, Alok speaks to Anil Menon, who’s the NASA astronaut-candidate expected to fly to the ISS this July, about the cost-benefit analyses that have come up thus far in the narrative and how he weighs them. In the documentary overall, the arguments to justify India’s pursuit of human spaceflight include spin-off technologies, the point that there’s a “small window” for India to join in, that it’s prestigious, and that it’s inspirational. I don’t think any of these are sufficient reasons to have a human spaceflight programme. **Spin-off technologies and allied industries** — I’d argued against the value of spin-off technologies in a [February 2025 essay](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/where-is-isro-heading/article69235431.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about ISRO’s future. Alok and the documentary’s producer, Dave Anderson, had said they decided to speak to me after reading it, so here’s a relevant excerpt: > … the more vehement supporters of India’s plans have advanced three typical arguments: (i) partaking of the comity of nations, (ii) not losing out on future opportunities, and (iii) the value of spin-off technologies. Speculative though the value of all three are, they can’t be dismissed out of hand. Argument (i) in particular is quite valuable: countries working together on space missions can reduce the per-country costs as well as open new channels for soft diplomacy. The value of (ii) and (iii) is more obvious: to keep opportunity costs in future from surging while amortising them in the interim by taking advantage of the new technologies that become available in the course of achieving those overarching goals. > > But a direct counterargument here is that the cost of attaining these new technologies can be much lower if we pursued them in a more direct manner rather than anticipating them as spin-offs. More broadly, if there is one correct answer to how ISRO and India should orient themselves — joining the pursuit of greater goals versus being led by Indians’ needs — it has yet to present itself. The leaders of the Indian space programme also haven’t explicitly articulated what their long-term priorities are nor how they are to be determined.” Another argument that comes up during the documentary is that spaceflight more broadly, by virtue of its scale and complexity, demands a bunch of allied industries that grow to depend on each other and thus sustain each other. I’m more sympathetic to this argument because it’s a sensible way to go about cultivating a full-fledged space industry — but what is still missing is an explicit articulation, even an informal one, by the government that it’s doing X in order to achieve Y over the longer term. The first pitfall here is that without knowing Y and how it’s supposed to be related to X, it’s going to be hard to hold the government accountable: after many years it can simply achieve Z instead of Y and say Y was meant to be Z all along. The second pitfall is related: the same capital directed elsewhere — into biotech or infrastructure, say — could generate equal or even more efficient linkages. So once again we're back to the question of why (human) spaceflight in particular. A deeper problem is that the argument of linkages is often unfalsifiable as stated since any large and sufficiently complex programme can be credited in hindsight with downstream industries. Given that India also hasn't analysed a counterfactual scenario, it's really hard to believe spaceflight is the only endeavour that can achieve what the government says it can for the country. **Small window** — I agree that there’s a window defined by geopolitical and strategic interests within which one can begin a programme to become capable of human spaceflight and find oneself at, or more realistically near, the forefront as the enterprise matures. But if you look past the opportunity it seemingly presents for India, you’ll find that it’s cynical: it’s an enterprise that’s aspiring to leave certain peoples and countries behind. Ideally the window should never close and the opportunities shouldn’t be limited to the narrow definition of commerce where the early bird takes all. For instance, say India misses this window: it should still be possible to find a meaningful, gainful, and non-marginal role. Dubai has no significant industrial or manufacturing base of its own but has positioned itself into a nerve centre of global finance and logistics. There’s no reason India can’t cultivate analogous leverage in the spacefaring economy, for instance by developing ground infrastructure and tracking systems that other nations can lease, a talent pool that staffs the mission-control rooms and research divisions of programmes elsewhere or a regulatory environment that attracts commercial launch operators seeking a jurisdiction that’s rigorous without being prohibitive. In fact, I’m reminded of Homi Bhabha chairing the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955 — a time when India didn't have nuclear power, only aspirations and, importantly, the awareness that leadership doesn't mean being a bully on the playground so much as the teacher who can get everyone to play together. In the same vein India could be the place to litigate and arbitrate disputes under space laws or which produces the delicate human and psychological scientific knowledge that facilitates long-duration missions. There are plenty of options, and the biggest mistake we can make right now is to believe there’s only one. **Prestige** — As I’ve said before and also do so during the documentary, national prestige is faulty essentially because it’s possible to build it through virtually any enterprise. Spaceflight in particular may offer the shortest path to it, especially if you’re well-funded. A good example is the UAE’s “space programme”, which I wrote about [here](https://rootprivileges.net/2021/02/09/uaes-spaceflight-shortcut-to-making-history/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But just as well, it’s possible to build prestige in primary healthcare (like Cuba), school education (Finland), public transport (Colombia), labour rights (Uruguay), social support (South Africa), women’s safety (Rwanda) or in fact national integration, where India has some unique opportunities but which it has [often squandered](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/whose-mountain-is-it-anyway/article69645493.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The fact is picking spaceflight as a matter of prestige is a political choice, and it merits asking why the powers that be picked this particular one over others. And from what I’ve seen over the last decade, it’s not an accidental choice. Since 2014 the BJP has defunded the National Health Mission, gutted labour protections, and hollowed out the rights to education and to information while also unveiling the world's largest cricket stadium and a new legislature that cost at least Rs 20,000 crore to build. Gaganyaan in the same vein is highly photogenic, with a similar cost to the exchequer, and requires no welfare apparatus — so far it hasn’t even forced the government to tie it to social welfare — and which can easily be sold to the Hindu-nationalist imagination as proof that an ancient civilisation has reclaimed its rightful place among the stars. In fact, given the weak opposition in Parliament and the forthcoming delimitation exercise that will further empower India’s already-right-wing Hindi heartland to send more ministers to Parliament, national prestige is set to become — if it hasn't already — a singularly dangerous reason to do anything. (This is why I say in the documentary that I'm "scared" that prestige is the answer to why India is pursuing Gaganyaan at this time.) **Inspiration** — Anil Menon was inspired to become a doctor and then an astronaut because of the Indian and American space programmes. He also says inspiration like this is immeasurable. People are inspired by many things. Spaceflight doesn’t have a monopoly on that. Yes, it provides for awesome spectacles and for stories of profound human triumphs. But if we waited on these narratives alone, we’d also find inspiring instances to be fewer and farther between. Inspiration is magical, not least because it’s hard to explain how it works. There is no science to it but in fact a lot of culture and socio-politics. I’d wager there are orders of magnitude more people who have been inspired by things other than space exploration and spaceflight, and for a bevy of reasons far removed from what makes spaceflight so alluring. Spaceflight has a transformative effect but isn’t the only endeavour to do so. Now, to be fair, Anil isn’t touching on this point in order to justify a human space programme; he was responding to a question about the benefits of sending people to space over satellites and robots. A final point: Anil Menon also says human spaceflight requires “intense cooperation, intelligence, skills — all of which India has always had.” The India of today doesn’t cooperate very well. Perhaps the prime minister, the science minister, and the upper echelons of ISRO get along well with their respective counterparts in the US, Europe, Japan, etc. But as Alok and I discuss, the Indian space programme is no longer freely accessible to journalists and by extension to the country’s people. It also has some unfortunate impulses, as exemplified in the curious incident involving the Axiom-4 mission to launch Gaganyaan astronaut-designate Shubhanshu Shukla and others to the ISS, when the ISRO chairman V. Narayanan wanted to take credit for one Falcon 9 launch attempt being called off due to a fuel leak. To the country’s government at this time, it’s all about being seen to be a triumphant civilisation. ### Lord of the Rings Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-6/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:00.000Z A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you. This year I almost didn’t write this post because I don’t have anything to say about *The Lord of the Rings* itself. Chiefly, I have tired of the antics of men. It’s not about some good men and some bad men. For instance we’ve got some really bad men, buffoons really, battling it out in West Asia and at the same time I work with some appreciably good men at my job who are doing their best to uphold values that we all admire. But it’s not that. It’s that toxic masculinity is enmeshed in so many of the ills that beset us today, from incessant war to daily life. I’ve had my fill of it but of course that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly going to stop or assume a different flavour. But I’ve had my fill of it. So much so that, I realised recently, I’ve become unable to read books by men. I’ve lost interest — temporarily I hope — in what masculine lives and masculine minds have to say. So I turned to women, and found and read two excellent books: [*On Earth As It Is Beneath*](https://www.thehindu.com/books/book-review-ana-paula-maia-on-earth-as-it-is-beneath-international-booker-longlist/article70698329.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Ana Paula Maia (translated by Padma Viswanathan) and *The Wax Child* by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken). Both were fever-dreams, *On Earth* like the inside of a pressure cooker and *The Wax Child* like an incantation. And both were about the cruelty of men, which I’ll admit was cathartic. I’m currently reading *The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran* by Shida Bazyar (translated by Ruth Martin). *The Lord of the Rings* books are also by a man, and about many men and some women. But to his credit, J.R.R. Tolkien also crafted men that weren’t men because they were fighters but because they restrained themselves, cared for each other, were emotionally intimate with each other, and openly prized loyalty. In fact it had some men, Frodo and Samwise foremost among them, who were great because they were good friends until the end rather than because they were great warriors or brilliant scholars. Through characters like Faramir, Tolkien shows war to be an unheroic, even dishonourable thing and in its place extols the virtues of peace and healing. You don't often find such men in epic fantasy. It seems, in the end, I did have something to say about *The Lord of the Rings*, and that’s why I keep returning to it every year on March 25. Previous editions: [2025](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-4/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2024](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2024/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2022](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2021](https://rootprivileges.net/2021/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-4/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2020](https://rootprivileges.net/2020/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2019](https://rootprivileges.net/2019/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2018](https://rootprivileges.net/2018/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2017](https://rootprivileges.net/2017/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2016](https://rootprivileges.net/2016/03/25/a-happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-to-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2014](https://rootprivileges.net/2014/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Climate change and the coastline paradox URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/19/climate-change-and-the-coastline-paradox/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:03.000Z A friend recently told me about a tool called [climate.you](https://climate.you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that shows "temperature change, over land and sea", at all points on the earth's surface in a bid "to show how warming is already affecting people everywhere". You can enter the name of your city or town and find out how the local conditions have changed. Based on interactions with some scientists who have written on climate modelling for *The Wire* and *The Hindu*, however, I'd also come to be wary of projections for scales smaller than a whole region, especially for a data-poor country like India. But after the chat, I also wondered if my position was outdated — and learnt that it was. So here goes an update. Climate change is fundamentally global in its drivers but its effects operate across all scales, from continental changes in rainfall patterns down to local phenomena like coastal erosion. This said, a confusion about the phenomenon's ability to operate at different scales often arises from the way scientists model it. Global climate models collect data on atmospheric and oceanic parameters and simulate them on a grid whose cells are 50-200 km across, maybe more, which is a very coarse spatial resolution. When you render this grid on a screen, there's a value for every pixel and, given the cell size, that pixel represents a regional average rather than a precise local forecast for the place at that pixel. But this doesn't mean the model is wrong at that pixel, it just means it's not designed to predict the consequences at that level. (For example, if the [RMC Chennai](https://mausam.imd.gov.in/chennai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) station says it's 32 C right now, it's harder to know how much the relative contributions of land-use, radiation from built structures, heat transported by local winds, and regional warming to that figure are. The temperature may also be sensitive to other factors we've deemed inconsequential, such as the amount of dust in the air around the station or traffic outside. A common way out of this seeming intractability, beyond quality control measures at the station itself, is to collect data for several years and check which temperature trends hold up and which ones fall away.) The scale question is reminiscent of the coastline paradox: no well-defined landmass has a coast of well-defined length, yet the coast exists at all points along the edge of the landmass. This weirdness arises because the length depends on the scale at which you measure it. If you look at the India map zoomed out to 1:10,000,000 — like on Google Maps on your laptop screen — the coast shows some features but smooths over others because your laptop's screen doesn't have enough pixels to capture those smaller than a particular size. If you zoomed in further, say to 1:1,000,000, you'd find more features because there are more pixels now for a certain number of features, and smaller variations in the shape of the coast show up. If you zoomed in further, even smaller variations would show up, and so on. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/b297d-1xcollage-w-1024-h-683.jpg) Credit: Google Maps --- *Hat-tip to* [*Sambavi P.*](https://x.com/SambaviParthy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *for the fillip.* --- The climate signals that models are sensitive to are similarly, but partly, a function of the scale at which various instruments record those signals. In both cases, aggregating data from different scales to prepare a region-wide projection actually smooths over complexity rather than capturing it. There's also no one 'correct' resolution and it's not reasonable to expect a model prepared for one resolution to be equally accurate or certain at another. This said, the analogy is only partly apt because it diverges over how geography and climate change behave at ever smaller scales. Specifically, while features on the coast become more numerous, and thus its length ever greater, as you keep zooming in, there are no signals relevant to climate change beyond a particular floor. Which means if climate change manifests as, say, a higher local tide level, for that parameter there's no 'zooming in' beyond that point. Second, as you zoom in, climate signals become less messy whereas geographic signals become messi*er*. In fact, scientists have developed a technique called downscaling whereby they use a combination of statistical and dynamical methods to translate a model's coarser outputs into finer projections. Obviously this isn't a lossless exercise — you can't get more information without paying a cost — and downscaling from one scale to the immediately next one 'below' adds some uncertainty. Which means a downscaled local projection carries the errors implicit in the global model plus the errors introduced by the downscaling method. Ultimately, the projection for a particular pixel exists: it's just laden with uncertainty. Now, while a model need not have a good projection for a particular pixel, that's not synonymous with the data collected from that pixel being irrelevant or a non-signal for climate change. Local measurements like tide gauge records, weather station temperatures, regional snow measurements, etc. are all contain climate signals at very fine spatial scales. In other words being sceptical of a hyperlocal projection is reasonable but being sceptical of a local observation demands a higher bar. For example, say a modeller feeds data about a city's population density, road networks, and growth trends into a model of a city and tries to predict the congestion in your neighbourhood in one year. This effort is only going to be as good as the model's assumptions. Now, say your neighbour leaves for work at 8 am every day for five years and tracks her commute time. This data has its own limitations — perhaps foremost that its patterns can't be easily generalised — but while the model might excel at predicting how the city as a whole will change, your neighbour's experience is a better predictor of how your neighbourhood in particular will. In effect, it makes sense to be wary of sub-regional climate indicators derived purely from global model outputs without proper downscaling or local validation but to extend that cynicism towards observed data or even properly validated regional models would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. ### I, Head-bumper URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/19/i-head-bumper/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:03.000Z Daily writing promptWhat is one word that describes you? ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcb72937f54718fc14d7b047b2a9d84c8c500827306783f92e331edd0afd31bf?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/cbd71cc7ae649091b3bc9447912db12c415d3da47c0acfb82fda43b675730e56?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/60c08136e13c2615f15eb557c06bb650135502a3298240366e0d034a5f49883f?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-1882?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) Tall. I'm tall for India, around 6'3''. My height has recently been on my mind. India is not a good place for tall people. The public infrastructure is geared towards shorter people — the average Indian adult male and female are 5'5'' and 4'8'', respectively — and the lack of space is most pronounced for me when I travel in buses: if I stand, I almost always bump my head into the upper railing when it drives over a bump, and have to keep my legs at obtuse angles to the seat in front when I sit. Plus there are the various seating areas and ceilings in government offices, banks, and subways, various doorways, and the occasional loose cable dangling from a tree, which is a threat to everyone but to which I'm more easily exposed because to get to my head it needs to dangle less. The issue got on my mind recently because I'd been shopping for shoes. The average Indian adults are at least 10' shorter, which means they have smaller feet as well, so most brands that sell shoes in India max out at size UK 10\. I however have size UK 12 feet, with a wide toe box for added measure. Together with the availability of suitable designs (I prefer darker tones), that has more often than not meant Reebok for my floaters and ASICS for my shoes — neither of which is cheap. I used to take a loutish kind of pride in being able to intimidate some people in college with my height; I'm glad I've since given up that kind of thinking, and in small part because India reminds you that being taller in this country largely means you just bump your head more often. My folks, of course, love the fact that I can reach for things they've stowed in the attic without needing a ladder. ### Spotting fakes by looking at them URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/18/spotting-fakes-by-looking-at-them/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:04.000Z On March 10, the Supreme Court said a balance has to be struck between warding against misinformation online and protecting citizens’ right to free speech. The context was the Centre’s attempts to defend the 2023 IT Rules: when the comedian Kunal Kamra asked who would decide if online content is “fake or misleading”, the [Centre said](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sc-urges-balance-while-government-says-it-rules-not-meant-to-curb-satire-humour-or-criticism/article70725701.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “When we see it, we know it is fake”. The case has been led by Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, and other petitioners and in its course the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court have been asked to weigh the constitutionality of a "Fact-Check Unit" (FCU) mandated by the national government. The petitioners have argued that giving the government the power to flag “fake, false or misleading” information will have a chilling effect on free speech and that the provisions turn the state into a judge in its own cause. The Centre’s defence — “known it when we see it” — is, as both history and data science show, a recipe for disaster. Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who offered the defence on the Centre’s behalf, is likely to know that the line echoes a chaotic chapter in American legal history. In the 1964 case *Jacobellis v. Ohio*, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had to define obscenity. But frustrated by the lack of a precise legal definition, he famously wrote in his concurrence: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” The legacy of this little statement was a big mess. If a Supreme Court Justice couldn’t articulate a clear standard, it was clearly folly to expect local police and juries to do so — more so since what passed for art in Manhattan could lead to a prison sentence in rural Georgia. The immediate result was different federal circuit courts applying different tests, creating a patchwork of legal outcomes across the country. Inevitably, the situation descended into the absurd: throughout the late 1960s, US Supreme Court Justices regularly screened films to determine if they were “obscene” in a projection room at the Court, literally deciding the law based on their own instincts and physiological reactions. By 1973, the Court realised this was unworkable. In *Miller v. California*, it established a three-part framework known since as the Miller test. It asked whether the average person, applying “contemporary community standards”, would find the work to be prurient; whether it depicts sexual conduct in a “patently offensive” way; and whether it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (a.k.a. the SLAPS test). But since even this framework lacked a universal standard, the potential for harm persisted. For instance, because “community standards” were local, federal prosecutors in the 1980s and 1990s began a practice called jurisdiction shopping: they would carefully prosecute distributors in the most conservative parts of the country for material that was actually sold nationwide. The practice then forced businesses to calibrate their content to the most restrictive local market in the country in order to avoid jail time — a sort of regression to the most conservative position. The “know it when I see it” heuristic ultimately became meaningless with the coming of the internet, which allowed content producers to be located in California even as their content is served in Alabama, thus confusing the notion of ‘community’ and the resulting community standards. Federal prosecutors were eventually forced to abandon most obscenity cases altogether and shift their focus to child exploitation, which is prohibited regardless of location or community. India’s proposed FCU threatens to play through this same history of failures. And it will begin as a patchwork of censorship that will depend on who’s looking at a screen when a certain clip is playing. But the fact is nobody has to know it just by seeing it. Data science and international regulations today offer testable ways to identify misinformation. One option is automated fact-checking that uses large databases of verified information. Instead of an official simply declaring a claim false, a system can check whether the statement connects to any documented policy decisions or records. If a viral post claims that “the government has banned P”, the system can scan policy documents, gazette notifications, and other reliable databases to check whether such a decision appears anywhere. If no record exists, the claim can be flagged and labelled as unsupported. The machine need not be all that intelligent as the bigger point here is to ensure the verdict can be traced to evidence available in the public domain. For instance, if a viral post claims "the government has banned P”, the algorithm will calculate the shortest ‘logical path’ between the nodes for “government”, “banned”, and “P” across all known policy documents. If no logical path exists, the system flags the information with a low truth-value score. This provides a quantifiable metric, moves the conversation from “I think this is fake” to “the data shows no factual connection for this claim”, and could even spare the people staffing censorship teams at social media companies considerable psychological harm. The government making the algorithm open-source — as it should be considering it will be in service of the public — will also add another layer of integrity. Another option is to look at the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which — instead of deciding whether every individual post is true or false — has regulators ask whether a stream of information poses a systemic risk to public health, security or democratic debate. Platforms are then required to monitor patterns like how quickly a claim spreads and whether coordinated networks of accounts (e.g. bots) are pushing the same message. So the focus here is not on the content of a single post but to examine the behaviour of the information as it moves through the network itself. The Centre’s current argument, however, ignores these tools and doubles down on a standard that has failed every time it has been applied, chiefly because it creates a legal landscape in which no one knows the rules until they have already broken them. Unless of course this is the Centre’s aim. ### The little things URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/14/the-little-things-2/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:04.000Z Tungsten diboride (WB2) is extraordinarily stiff and resistant to deformation and scientists have long suspected it could be a superhard material, meaning it scores at least 40 gigapascal (GPa) on a hardness test. This is important because diamond, the hardest natural material on Earth, scores 70-100 GPa but because it is so expensive, industries often turn to cubic boron nitride (45-60 GPa) as a substitute in tools to cut metals and ceramics. Another superhard material in the repertoire could be a good thing. The problem is WB2 is also brittle: like glass, it is hard to scratch but easy to shatter. This is because its atoms are so strongly bonded to each other that the bulk crystal would sooner fracture than a few bonds yield. So Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, researchers doped WB2 with rhenium, a rare metal that has one more electron than the tungsten atom. This electron changes the way atoms pack together inside a crystal, coaxing the tungsten and rhenium atoms into leaving behind vacancies in the grid of atoms in a specific, repeating pattern. These vacancies were arranged in ordered pairs along particular planes inside the crystal that allowed the atoms to ‘glide’ past each other when they were stressed, effectively allowing the crystal to bend a little to absorb pressure rather than bottle it up and break catastrophically later. The team measured this version of WB2 to have a hardness of 40 GPa and for added measure the rhenium also increased the temperature at which the crystal rusted by 700° C. By removing a few atoms the scientists effectively made the material a lot less brittle and better able to withstand heat. Little things like this are a reminder that what we know to be true at one scale or context does not necessarily hold true at all scales and contexts. And this is as true as an allegory as it is a scientific fact. Social media platforms as well as TV news in India are rife these days with unfounded speculation and unsubstantiated claims, many of which extrapolate from small pools of information without a modicum of good faith or introspection as to whether what we already know may not suffice to describe or explain the things happening around us. I am for people using AI models in some enterprises but, as with cryptocurrencies, most of their more visible users have pressed them in the service of newfangled Ponzi schemes and scams and, curiously, to mouth off about ‘revitalising’ physics research, so to speak, without stopping to think about what they do not know and, perhaps more importantly, the possibility that, to combine two famous lines associated with [Richard Feynman](https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-feynman-mcneill?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Freeman Dyson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM&ref=slightlyacidic.com), there is always more room in all directions and more — as Philip Warren Anderson [wrote in 1972](https://chimera.roma1.infn.it/IRENE/CorsoBiofisica/generali/TKM1%5F2011%5Fmore%5Fis%5Fdifferent%5FPWA.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — is different. The BS is often manifest as accounts on X.com purporting to have ‘solved’ quantum gravity or resolving open questions in particle physics, which may be a scam as well insofar as they come off as efforts to privatise such research and have it enter the hype cycles of venture capitalists. On a less dismaying note, new forms of organisation do not emerge because the fundamental laws of nature change but because, as with superhard tungsten diboride, groups of things can act together in ways that their individual members do not or because they have been exposed to new environments we have yet to encounter them in. There are other possibilities, too. For instance, these days I am regularly surprised by what scientists are finding out about things animals are capable of. Jane Goodall found [chimpanzees use tools](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/jane-goodall-the-scientist-who-gave-chimps-names-not-numbers/article70117543.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and now it seems so can some [fish](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/three-new-wrasse-species-spotted-using-tools-laccadive-sea/article68071175.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [birds](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/pj2y3m/scientists%5Fhave%5Fobserved%5Fwild%5Fcockatoos%5Fmaking/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [cows](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/cows-can-use-tools-and-one-austrian-cow-has-now-shown-it-clearly/article70634804.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I also understand that there are forms of emergence to be found in the study of societies, religions, history, and art. While it is obvious that the source of surprise always seems to be us not knowing enough while going in thinking we do, the prescient words of Anderson from that 1972 essay come to mind (let it be known that I will never tire of quoting him at length): > The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society. > > The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy, according to the idea: The elementary entities of science X obey the laws of science Y. > > … > > The arrogance of the particle physicist and his intensive research may be behind us (the discoverer of the positron said “the rest is chemistry”), but we have yet to recover from that of some molecular biologists, who seem determined to try to reduce everything about the human organism to “only” chemistry, from the common cold and all mental disease to the religious instinct. Surely there are more levels of organization between human ethology and DNA than there are between DNA and quantum electrodynamics, and each level can require a whole new conceptual structure. > > In closing, I offer two examples from economics of what I hope to have said. Marx said that quantitative differences become qualitative ones, but a dialogue in Paris in the 1920’s sums it up even more clearly: > > FITZGERALD: The rich are different from us. > > HEMINGWAY: Yes, they have more money. ### The pleasures of rewatching URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/13/the-pleasures-of-rewatching/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:05.000Z Daily writing promptWhat movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times? ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcb72937f54718fc14d7b047b2a9d84c8c500827306783f92e331edd0afd31bf?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3572c562c913c4abaf6b6a48ef2b0c8958fb8a503b2c1f45166e675b771230b3?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/eed2d73b7d6b5dfc957f496ab2ad16a5de61a5361fa11e7ebe955f7e4ce5ddbb?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-1876?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I'm afraid the answer is *F.R.I.E.N.D.S.* My sister and I watched it growing up, then rewatched it, the re-rewatched it, and now then have it playing in the background as I work. I have [some problems with it](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/friends-no-more.html) but I've realised that memories of watching the show are in my head intertwined with good times with my family simply because they happened very close to each other — the same evening, for example — so thinking of one has often meant thinking of the other. I suppose I also like that all its seasons end on a happy note, which sometimes strains credulity but I think that's been a small price to pay, these days, for some laughter and the knowledge that it will all end well. As for films: I've watched several more than five times, but the ones I've rewatched the most are compilations of the actors Vadivelu and Goundamani. I'm not sure how familiar people beyond India are with how comedy scenes exist in our films. Watch few a dozen or so featuring the best comic actors of Tamil cinema and you will realise they're drop-ins — little skits or vignettes that an actor and his crew will have crafted to be connected loosely or strongly to the film's narrative at large but which can often still be removed without much consequence. This has also allowed studios, network operators, and others to compile scenes featuring a single actor across films into a single YouTube video, often a few hours long. And I've rewatched those featuring the talents of Vadivelu and Goundamani (separately) several hundred times. In fact, I'd wager there isn't a scene featuring Vadivelu I haven't watched, and that would likely go for most Tamilians. I also know his lines by heart and they haven't become more boring with repetition. I only know the names of a few films, however, but in Vadivelu's case everyone knows that doesn't matter. His scenes often stand on their own. ### On mathematics and reputation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/11/on-mathematics-and-reputation/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:06.000Z From [‘Formalizing the stability of the two Higgs doublet model potential into Lean: identifying an error in the literature’](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.08139?ref=slightlyacidic.com), uploaded to arXiv on March 9, 2026: > Firstly, we believe this to be the first time a non-trivial error in a research level physics paper has been identified through the process of formal verification. … Secondly, this was one of the first research-level papers where formalization was attempted, and it was not chosen with the intention of finding an error, but rather because we thought the process of formalization would be easy and the likelihood of an error was low. From this one could make the worrying extrapolation that there are many such errors in the physics literature. It is also a strong motive for making formal verification the gold standard for physics papers. This is interesting because I haven’t heard of published theoretical physics papers being flawed in the same way I’ve read about such papers in, say, psychology or behavioural economics. I am of course extrapolating from my personally small knowledge base: theoretical physicists may find this surprising, although I haven’t seen signs of that. To [the](https://x.com/mathematics%5Finc/status/2031525754518081708?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [contrary](https://x.com/WKCosmo/status/2031353073826758897?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [in fact](https://x.com/JosephPConlon/status/2031356855650222573?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I recently found out more about Lean and formalisation (for my [piece in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/lean-sphere-packing-problem-viazovska-gauss-autoformalisation-fields-medal/article70674225.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about mathematicians’ efforts to formalise and then verify Maryna Viazovska’s work that won her the [Fields Medal in 2022](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/maryna-viazovska-fields-medal-sphere-packing-e8/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Formalisation is the task of translating ‘human’ proofs of maths problems in the language of a machine in great detail; the language here is Lean. Conlon’s point is that if Lean found errors in a relatively simple calculation, it’d be in for worse in the face of path integrals, which are the foundation of almost all modern quantum theory but also quite messy. In the course of reading more about this, I came across a curious [December 2024 post](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/fermats-last-theorem-how-its-going.html) on the Xena Project (of “mathematicians learning Lean by doing”) blog by Imperial College in London professor of pure mathematics Kevin Buzzard. He wrote that when some mathematicians were using Lean to check some advanced maths proofs, Lean found that a particular step in a 1965 paper by a mathematician named Norbert Roby appeared to be wrong. It mattered because a branch of mathematics called crystalline cohomology, which had been built on Roby’s work and used by many mathematicians since the 1970s technically had a gap in its foundations. But nobody thought the math was actually wrong, only that the written proof had a hole in it. However, in formal mathematics, a result being ‘probably fine’ isn’t good enough; as Buzzard put it, “you have to actually fix it” rather than rest on the idea that it’s fixable. At some point, the noted American mathematician Brian Conrad caught wind of the mistake and, after looking into it, found a fix: he knew that a different proof of the same result existed in the appendix of a book by Pierre Berthelot and Arthur Ogus. So a crisis was averted. But then came the twist: Buzzard later had lunch with Ogus and gleefully told him how his work had saved the day. Ogus’s response: “Oh, that appendix has several errors in it. But I think I know how to fix them.” Buzzard also mentioned one defence of mathematical ideas that had problems at their foundations that struck me, too — that “crystalline cohomology has been used so much since the 1970s that if there were a problem with it, it would have come to light a long time ago” — but UniDistance Suisse mathematics professor David Loeffler countered it in the comments saying the risk is that mathematicians might be placing too much stock in the idea that something can be fixed when it really may not be that way, and could even be “collectively wrong in their estimation”. How could this be possible? I’m learning the answers have to do with how mathematicians work together. For instance when they productively use some framework, like crystalline cohomology, for decades to generate papers and careers, they also create an enormous social pressure rooted in the idea that the framework works. They also assume — reasonably — that the framework has already survived the questions that could have revealed flaws in its foundations. But as Buzzard’s and Loeffler’s exchange shows, it’s likely that that question has already come along but there’s no guarantee. Moreover even if there’s a flaw it might show itself only in particular applications and the rest of the time the framework can appear to be ‘functioning’ as expected. (This to me also speaks to the unsuitability of using buildings or similar structures in the real, physical world as metaphors to communicate their nature — at least not without also drawing on, say, the idea that those particular applications don’t stress the framework’s specific weak points.) Then of course there’s the problem with how mathematicians build on each other’s work, which is also a problem with peer-review as well. The norm is to verify that argument B follows in valid ways from argument A and not whether argument A is itself valid, nor is it to derive argument B from scratch. This way an error in one old paper can spread through citations for many years, with each subsequent mathematician correctly reasoning from a flawed starting point. This is reminiscent of the Schön scandal in the 2000s. The German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön fabricated data on organic superconductors and field-effect transistors but by the time his fraud came to light, other groups had begun building on his results, including designing experiments premised on his findings being real. So when Schön was ultimately exposed, a not insubstantial chunk of the field had to be unwound. For an even more dramatic example from history: the HeLa cells from Henrietta Lacks are extraordinarily robust and, it turned out, had silently contaminated a large fraction of cell cultures in labs worldwide from the 1950s onward. So researchers who believed they were studying prostate cancer cells, breast cancer cells or other lines were in many cases actually studying HeLa cells. But unlike the case with [zombie citations](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733325002306?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in both cases the ‘secondary’ scientists had no idea they were studying a wrong thing. I used these examples because it seems the ways in which mathematicians fail could be the same ways in which scientists more broadly fail: due to common blindspots, foundational assumptions that nobody thinks to double-check (or which they assume others have checked), social structures that reward ‘progress’ more than other processes like auditing, and, overall, by underestimating the importance of social forces to the way scientists and mathematicians organise and share their work. Lean *et al*. are, or formalisation more broadly is, thus forcing mathematicians to look past these assumptions and, as the arXiv paper’s author Joseph Tooby-Smith wrote, that they’re already finding gaps in fundamental ideas suggests the foundations of rational inquiry may be somewhat less certain than a discipline’s reputation alone might imply. ### Measuring science stories URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/03/10/measuring-science-stories/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:07.000Z Google News picks up on science stories that many outlets are covering. Its reasoning is that the more outlets publish a particular story, the more reader interest the story has. However, the flaw here is that news outlets don’t evaluate all kinds of science developments on an equal footing nor do they always focus on reader interest. (The latter is more so since news outlets often don’t select stories for reader interest; instead they select stories for the reasons described below, then [work in](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/a-qa-about-philosophy-in-journalism.html) the reader interest.) Outlets focus on those that they can understand or which they can cover for a lower cost. The former is almost always a major development — which is rare in science, as research is fundamentally incremental — or a finding that has been misreported in a university press release or in fact at the journal itself, e.g. if the paper title is itself oversimplified. The latter — findings that can be covered at a lower cost — are typically simple, whose significance or wonderfulness is easy to communicate, e.g. “astronomers produce the largest image ever taken of the heart of the Milky Way” or “with lunar missions looming, scientists grow chickpeas in ‘moon dirt’”. Altogether, the science stories the press has focused on have systematically avoided more involved topics or ideas, those that can’t be communicated easily, and those that require some expense (e.g. the services of a veteran reporter or freelancer, of a graphics team, etc.). Since Google News, and Google Discover by extension — which is also driven by what readers are interested in — drive a lot of traffic to news websites, and page views and unique users remain the metrics of choice at these websites, Google News/Discover also aggregate and create a preference among publishers for relatively uncomplicated science stories and ideas. Which means when we pursue stories that are complicated or interesting in a way that allows us to tell a unique story, we shouldn’t expect it to draw readers from Google News/Discover nor focus on page views or unique views. Instead, we’re better off focusing on readers’ average time on page. ### Review: ‘Decolonial Keywords’ (2026) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/28/review-decolonialising-keywords-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:07.000Z Everyone who knows me knows that my intellectual coordinates are defined by scientific ideas, even when they’re about sociology or the humanities. This is why I found a new book, *Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes*, edited by anthropologists [Renny Thomas](https://rootprivileges.net/tag/renny-thomas/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Sasanka Perera, so compelling. The book has 30 chapters written by 33 people, each one exploring the oft-hidden colonial undertones of words in everyday Indian English, and by extension documenting how deceptively treacherous the task of decolonialising the things the words refer to is — and many of them intersect with science in practice. Indeed my own entry point into this book was half my general interest in Renny’s work, which to an amateur historian of science like me has been constantly insightful, and half my long-standing frustrations with how India and the Indian state commemorate science. On the occasion of National Science Day, which is today, I had an [op-ed published in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/decolonising-and-de-nobelising-science/article70675790.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 26 on why decolonialising science in India also requires Indians to “de-Nobelise” science, including shedding their fondness for individual geniuses in favour of the collective labour that science actually needs to function. Excerpt: > The keywords … clarify what a de-Nobelised imagination of science, paralleling the decolonisation of science, would require. It would force India to ask how Indians produce the thing called ‘recognition’ — through discoveries and papers as much as by institutions that sort labour into celebrated and hidden. > > National Science Day, then, should not simply reproduce a Nobel-shaped story about genius and external validation. It should become an annual day of discussion of what counts as science, including the work of technicians, field staff, nurses, lab attendants, data collectors, and others whose labour is essential to make new knowledge but is rarely commemorated. Good scientific practice requires us to regularly recalibrate the instruments to make sure they haven’t become less precise. Language, *Decolonial Keywords* shows, is the same way and we need to constantly recalibrate it for the same reasons. For example, a mind accustomed to scientists’ oft-universalist claims will find the book unsettling because of how consistently it exposes such universalism to be a hoax. In her chapter, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies political theorist Prathama Banerjee has explored the idea of “shunya”. The global history of mathematics celebrates this entity, commonly equated to the entity called zero, as India’s gift to the world — a numerical placeholder that liberated mathematics from physically counting objects and eventually making calculus and modern computing possible. But if you keep reading, you’ll find that “shunya” was originally a profound ontological concept in Buddhist philosophy, an expression of emptiness and the absence of a permanent ‘self’. And that when modern mathematics extracted the concept, it discarded the philosophical attachments, effectively stripping the word of its ability to critique social hierarchies like caste, which in fact banks on the illusion of a permanent ‘self’. In addition to the book’s chapters on ‘jugaad’, ‘poromboke’, and ‘laboratory’, which I tried to explore in my piece, the same theme is also on display in the chapter on “Igu”, the shaman of the Idu Mishmi people in Arunachal Pradesh, especially the tension between Western scientific taxonomy and indigenous ecological networks, written by Ambika Aiyadurai and Razzeko Delley, and the chapter on “Adivasiyat” by Roshan Praveen Xalxo. Under the gaze of either modern medicine or conservation biology, a shaman comes across as a psychological curiosity and indigenous land rights as a consequence of politics. However, as Aiyadurai, Delley, and Xalxo set out, the words “Igu” and “Adivasiyat” really recall a “multispecies world” or a “multibeing cosmos” — recalling the writing of anthropologist Anna Tsing in 2013 — where rivers and spirits participate in making and maintaining the ecological network. And we don’t have to abdicate the scientific method to recognise that these indigenous vocabularies offer a sophisticated and importantly localised understanding of an environmental balance that the technocratic and extractivist models of the modern Indian state are themselves abdicating. My natural scepticism sometimes (and only sometimes) flares up when I find the word “decolonial” because too often these days, and almost always in certain political contexts, “decolonialising science” in the contemporary Indian context has become a Trojan horse for right-wing nativism, where mythological allegories are retrofitted as ‘ancient’ quantum physics and surgery. But to their credit, Thomas and Perera and the chapters’ various authors are acutely aware of and make honest attempts to sidestep this danger. For example Harshana Rambukwella’s chapter on “Chinthanaya”, the Sinhala term for “thought” or “indigenous epistemology”, is carefully to separate its origins as an anti-colonial concept from how the island country’s majoritarian nationalists weaponised it during the COVID-19 pandemic to push some medical professionals to promote one charlatan’s “divine syrup” as a cure. *Decolonial Keywords* is a dense book steeped in the theoretical frameworks of history, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. The chapters dealing with the literary nuances of medieval poetry and the exact etymological roots of regional dialects in particular require quite a bit of patience — but the intellectual payoff is guaranteed. It’s also nice to have critical work like *Decolonial Keywords* that presents morsels of analysis and perspectives on a variety of topics because in this field, it’s generally an entire book on a single topic. ### Would a quantum battery charge faster than a classical one? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/18/would-a-quantum-battery-charge-faster-than-a-classical-one/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:08.000Z A quantum battery is a system that stores energy and whose working parts are quantum systems, such as atoms, ions, spins, superconducting circuits or quantum dots, so the processes of storing and extracting energy are governed by quantum mechanics. Imagine you have a row of toy boxes. Each box can either be empty or have one object inside (like a toy). Your job is to fill the boxes as fast as you can using a machine that can put toys into boxes. When a qubit is in its low-energy state, it’s like an empty box. When it is in its higher-energy state, it’s like a full box. When all the qubits go from low- to high-energy, the whole setup stores some energy. Now, if you have many boxes, scientists have found that you can fill them faster using a quantum trick, instead of filling each box one by one. Say you have 12 boxes on a table. You point at box 1 and put in a toy. Then you point at box 2 and put in a toy. And so on. You can try to do it quickly but you’re still basically doing one box at a time. Scientists recently reported an experiment that this simple tale is a metaphor for. It consisted of 12 qubits (short for ‘quantum bits’ — the smallest logical pieces of a quantum computer). The experiment’s point was to drive each qubit locally, i.e. each one gets its own little push. The study called this the classical baseline. Now, imagine you have a different machine that, instead of filling one box at a time, fills two neighbouring boxes together in a single move. So it does something like fill boxes 1 and 2 together, then fill boxes 2 and 3 together, then fill boxes 3 and 4 together, and so on. The machine still isn’t filling all 12 at once but because it can create pairs of fills together, the filling can become more collective, like a wave of filling through the row. In the experiment, the scientists used a special kind of interaction where two excitations are created together on neighbouring qubits. As a result these two neighbours tended to flip together, going from empty-empty to full-full. (To achieve this, the team used a technique called parametric modulation.) Now, say two kids, A and B, are filling boxes in these two different ways. You’re trying to check which kid fills all the boxes fastest. If Kid B, who’s using the pair filling technique, only wins because their tool is stronger, that’s not interesting. The interesting claim is that even with fair tools, the pair-filling technique can store energy faster. In a quantum device, not all stored energy is equally extractable as useful work. Instead the study uses a standard concept called ergotropy, which is the part of the energy that you can, in principle, extract as useful work with allowed operations. For our metaphor, you can treat it as the amount of real charge you put in the boxes. Then the scientists calculated the average charging power, i.e. how much useful energy got stored per unit time. They did this for batteries of different sizes: 2 boxes, 3 boxes, … up to 12 boxes. They found that the pair-filling, i.e. quantum, method could achieve more optimised charging power than the classical baseline and that the advantage tended to grow as the number of qubits increased. They also reported that the optimal charging time window was very short, on the order of tenths of a microsecond. This means Kid B has a short interval in which they can fill boxes very efficiently, and that interval stays around the same short length once there are several boxes. But the scientists don’t just say their quantum way is faster. They also show that it’s faster for the reason they claim. They measured the correlations between neighbours — i.e. whether excitations (or full boxes) appeared together more often than they’d expect if each box was independent. In the classical way, they expected a neutral value, meaning no togetherness. For the quantum way, they expected more togetherness during the burst of charging. They reported evidence consistent with the latter: in the quantum way, the neighbour-neighbour correlation indicator showed more paired behaviour in the same short window when the charging power peaked. So where is the quantumness that provides this advantage? In the normal world, a box is either empty or not empty. It’s one or the other. In the quantum world, an object can also be in a special in-between condition — and not just because you don’t know what’s in the box. It’s a real physical kind of in-between that scientists call coherence. When many quantum objects interact, they can also become linked in a way that makes their joint state not just the equivalent of ‘each box has its own toy’ but of ‘the whole set is described together’. This is called entanglement. The study tried to show that during charging, the system wasn’t merely populating its excited states: it was also creating coherence and entanglement. A purely classical process can’t do this; quantumness must have been involved. The scientists did this by measuring how many qubits were excited versus how many weren’t. Then they measured the total usable stored energy (ergotropy). Whatever was left after subtracting the plain part was the quantum-like part. Finally, they checked whether the qubits were becoming entangled with each other, instead of acting independently. They did this by collecting measurement data, computing a quantity that has a clear rule, then saying from that whether the qubits could be entangled. For instance, if the rule says no unlinked system can score above 10 on this test. So if the scientists measured 12, the system has to be entangled. The scientists effectively showed that if they design the tool correctly and compare them fairly, the quantum way could flip more qubits than the classical way for up to 12 qubits, and not just by flipping the qubits one after the other faster. So what’s the big deal? I don’t know. It’s just fascinating. The study was published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/sp5l-c6m8?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 9. *Featured image: A visual representation of the 'quantum battery' used in the study. It's encoded in a 16-qubit lattice, 12 of which were activated for the experiment. Credit: arXiv:2602.08610v1.* ### Epstein or otherwise, Silicon Valley’s techno-elite know what they’re doing URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/16/tech-bros-are-fully-aware-of-what-theyre-doing/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:09.000Z The science writer [Philip Ball has described](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/epsteins-ugly-world-of-science.html) “nerd tunnel vision” as the rationalisation scientists who maintained ties with Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting underage sex offered, hinting at something more calculated than just oversight. “Nerd tunnel vision is a defining feature of much of the Edge discourse,” Ball wrote, referring to Epstein consort John’s Brockman’s salon for “Third Culture” intellectualism: “moral obtuseness; a determination to win the argument rather than to listen and ponder; a tendency to fabulate improbable futures from narrow ‘rational’ logic; ignorance of and contempt for other ways of seeing the world.” Ball is in effect describing not a people that’s unaware or who failed to notice but a people who deliberately, with eyes wide open, chose what matters to them — from Lawrence Krauss, Marvin Minsky, and Robert Trivers to Joichi Ito and Peter Thiel. This isn’t naïveté so much as sophisticated actors making sophisticated calculations about what they can get away with. As Epstein’s ties to more and more scientists, technologists, and venture capitalists has become apparent, there’s also a diagnosis doing the rounds that Silicon Valley’s techno-elites, a.k.a. the “tech-bros”, [are simply mistaken](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in their embrace of topics purportedly close to Epstein’s heart, including transhumanism, longevity research, and what increasingly looks like repackaged eugenics. This diagnosis flatters us — the diagnosticians — by positioning us as the clear-eyed ones who saw the cautionary tales from a bygone era for what they were. But the science-bros and techno-libertarian elite (or TLE for short) saw them too, and proceeded to run a different cost-benefit analysis from what others did. To see why, it’s important to see first that the story Silicon Valley tells about itself — of garage startups and disruption — obscures a more troubling, if also equally deliberate, genealogy. Computer scientist Timnit Gebru and philosopher Émile Torres coined the label ‘TESCREAL’ as a critical construct to describe an overlapping cluster of ideologies, many of which sank roots in the 1990s, that Silicon Valley embraces today: transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, (Bay Area internet) rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism. Extropianism and organised transhumanism have been adjacent to the Bay Area for a while, with newsletters, salons, and institutes linking human enhancement and “self-transformation” to an explicitly technologist ethos liberated from worrying about limits, whether material or social. This worldview fit neatly with a Valley culture already comfortable with narratives of radical innovation and libertarian politics. In the 2000s, singularitarian ideas also moved from niche futurist conclaves into mainstream tech discourse via high-profile evangelists and Silicon Valley institutions. The 2010s saw rationalist and effective altruist networks overlap with AI labs, venture capital, and philanthropy, specialising in translating moral philosophy and speculative technical futures into funding priorities and institutional agendas. By the 2020s, once frontier AI became the Valley’s central product, these once-semi-separate strands of thought started to resemble a unified milieu. This setup also has a prehistory that further complicates any argument that TLEs have just been stumbling in the dark when they make choices we won’t. One part of the prehistory is the mid-20th-century scientific elitism that shaded into eugenics. William Shockley helped invent the first semiconductors and transistors and is a foundational figure tied to Silicon Valley’s early industrial formation, and later became publicly associated with racist and eugenicist claims while at Stanford University. While Shockley’s views were on the fringe even then, transhumanism’s closest antecedent is Anglo-American eugenics (the term was first used by British eugenicist Julian Huxley). So when Nick Bostrom — a central figure in these movements and whose work at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute has explicitly noted its pull on Silicon Valley elites and funders — was revealed in 2023 to have sent emails in 1996 stating his belief in racial differences in intelligence, should we treat this as an aberration or as a data point in a larger pattern? A second wave of the prehistory, from the late 1980s to the 2000s, is the Silicon Valley’s own flavour of transhumanism, especially in the form of cryonics, what it called [“morphological freedom”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological%5Ffreedom?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and brain-computer futures. The Extropy Institute was an early node in this movement and its idioms fit Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture of working without constraints. By the mid- to late-2000s, ‘singularity’ — the hypothetical moment in future when AI surpasses human intelligence and triggers rapid, uncontrollable technological growth — also became a popular rallying point. The third and final wave kicked on in the 2010s and is still surging: from just talking about living forever, the tech bros set up labs, biotech pipelines, and ecosystems for “consumer biohacking”, emblematised by Alphabet’s Calico Labs. In the 2020s, finally, conversations about reproduction and eugenics moved from being fringe rhetoric to ‘gray-zone’ products and venture-backed firms. Today there are companies marketing expanded embryo screening not just for severe disease risks but for probabilistic traits, including — controversially — cognitive outcomes. One [October 2024 investigation](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-screen-embryos-for-iq?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by *The Guardian* described a US startup selling embryo screening framed around gains in IQ and “liberal eugenics” concerns, essentially making dubious genetic advantages selectable for those who could pay. A [November 2025 report](https://www.wsj.com/tech/biotech/genetically-engineered-babies-tech-billionaires-6779efc8?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the *Wall Street Journal* described another San Francisco startup pursuing embryo gene-editing research despite legal prohibitions, backed by prominent tech investors and looking for permissive jurisdictions. None of these are decisions born of being unaware, to be sure. The TLEs may believe what appears dystopian through the moral lens of the 2020s could become normalised or even celebrated by society of the 2040s. Or they understand these are cautionary tales but believe the aspects warranting caution are either exaggerated or can be managed with better execution. Many of these figures are also staunch materialists and techno-determinists who don’t harbour the humanistic assumptions underlying most science fiction writing. When Aldous Huxley warns them about a society engineering away suffering using pleasure, surveillance, control, and punishment, they may genuinely see that as solving a problem rather than creating one. This is because the caution depends on valuing things like struggle, authenticity, and inefficiency, of which they’re usually dismissive. Which is why Mark Zuckerberg spending $10 billion to attempt to create the ‘Metaverse’ isn’t a failure of imagination but the success of a different imagination. Some TLEs also recognise exactly where this leads and view the resulting instability, disruption, and concentration of power as features rather than bugs because periods of chaos create opportunities for those positioned to profit from it. They might also believe that by being aware of the cautionary tales they’ve inoculated themselves against the specific failure modes the tales came with: “We’ve read *1984* so obviously we won’t make those mistakes.” This is of course hubris but importantly it’s not ignorance. Which brings us back to Jeffrey Epstein and the scientists who orbited him: his connections, the TESCREAL ideologies, investments in longevity and embryo selection startups, the pronatalist conferences, the eugenicist discourse — none of them was a separate issue. They’re just different manifestations of the same underlying orientation: to treat human ‘limits’ as engineering problems, then fund private bets to overcome them, with little regard for what social harms they accrue along the way. Critics have also argued that these philosophies have encouraged TLEs to shift attention away from solving present humanitarian issues and towards speculative futures. This appeal works on Silicon Valley elites who fund institutes dedicated to this thinking because it allows them to frame their anxieties about death, intelligence, biological limits, and control as moral imperatives that transcend democratic deliberation. The longtermism of MacAskill of which Musk is so fond contextualises efforts in terms of billions of humans not yet born: how convenient, then, that those billions can’t vote, can’t organise, and can’t contradict the projections made on their behalf. The pitfall in believing the TLEs are making the choices they are simply because they don’t know what we know is that it excuses us from confronting the possibility that they’ve concluded that the engineered, surveilled, controlled, stratified future they envision is in fact the entire point. Perhaps they’ve decided that when history is written by the posthuman victors, today’s cautionary tales will look like Luddite panic. Perhaps they’ve calculated that by the time the negative externalities become undeniable, they’ll already have captured enough of the gains to insulate themselves from the consequences. Or maybe they genuinely believe they’re doing good, that longer lifespans and enhanced intelligence and space colonies are moral imperatives, that anyone who can’t see this is simply thinking too small. In which case we’re not dealing with cynicism but with a totalising ideology that has convinced itself it holds the keys to human flourishing, and the fact that this ideology concentrates benefits among people who already have the most power is treated as a happy coincidence. That doesn’t mean we must ban all life extension research or stop developing AI — but we should stop treating these as purely technical pursuits and instead recognise that every choice about what to study is also a choice about what kind of future we want and who gets to decide. We should insist that technological sovereignty isn’t just the capacity to build things but the capacity to deliberate together about whether we should build them at all. And, finally, we should stop giving these actors the benefit of the doubt. They’re not naïve. They’re not mistaken. They understand perfectly well what they’re building and they’re building it anyway. ### A laser worthy of a nuclear clock URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/14/a-laser-worthy-of-a-nuclear-clock/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:10.000Z The nucleus of the thorium-229 isotope has a special property: it has an excited state that's incredibly close in energy to its ground state. The existence of such an isomer is remarkable because when nuclei normally get excited, they need enormous amounts of energy — hundreds of thousands or even millions of electron volts (eV). But the Th-229 nucleus’s excited state is only about 8.4 eV above its ground state. This is really small by nuclear standards and, importantly, it means light can excite the nucleus into this energy level. This in turn matters because scientists have developed very precise atomic clocks over the last few decades that work by using lasers to excite electrons in atoms and measure the frequency of the light required to do this. These clocks are so accurate that they're used for GPS, keeping time on the internet, and in fundamental physics experiments. But they also have a limitation: electrons are relatively easy to disturb, so a stray external electric or magnetic field can shift their energy levels slightly but enough to make the entire clock less stable. Nuclei on the other hand are much smaller and are buried deep inside the atom, shielded by the electron cloud from the world beyond. So a [nuclear clock](https://rootprivileges.net/2024/07/06/clocks-on-the-cusp-of-a-nuclear-age/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) based on a nuclear transition would potentially be much more stable and accurate than even the best atomic clocks. The Th-229 isomer is the only nuclear transition that's low enough in energy for scientists to realistically build a laser to make happen. In fact they have been trying to make a nuclear clock based on this transition for years now. Recently, two research groups finally managed to create this transition using lasers and they determined that the wavelength of light needed is 148.4 nm. This is in the vacuum ultraviolet range — i.e. ultraviolet light with a very short wavelength. Such light gets absorbed by air so they need to operate in a vacuum. Thus the name. But here's the catch: the laser sources that these research groups used to excite the transition were pulsed lasers, which means they only produced light in very short bursts, lasting just a few nanoseconds each. When you have such short pulses, the light inherently has a broad range of frequencies mixed together. Scientists say the linewidth is several gigahertz wide. But the natural linewidth of the Th-229 isomer transition is very narrow, only about 60 microhertz. That's a difference of several orders of magnitude. It's like trying to measure something with a 1-m-long stick when you need precision down to the width of a single atom. Nuclear clocks demand a much more stable laser with a really narrow linewidth — ideally continuous rather than pulsed. In a paper published in [*Physical Review Applied*](https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/cw5h-644b?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 11, researchers from Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have proposed a way to generate a continuous-wave vacuum ultraviolet laser light at exactly 148.4 nm, with a very narrow linewidth, using a process called four-wave mixing. Four-wave mixing is a nonlinear optical process. Normally, when light passes through a material, it just passes through without the different colours of light affecting each other. But if you have intense enough light and the right kind of material, you can get nonlinear effects, i.e. where multiple photons of light interact with atoms in the material to create new photons at other frequencies. In four-wave mixing, you take three laser beams and send them through such a special medium. If everything is set up just right, they will combine to create a fourth beam at a new frequency. And the frequency of this new beam will be the sum of the frequencies of the three input beams. The authors have proposed using cadmium vapour as the mixing medium. Cadmium because it has many properties that make it perfect for this job. First, it has electronic transitions that can be exploited to make the nonlinear process very efficient. Specifically, the team plans to use a two-photon resonance, meaning two of the input laser beams will have frequencies that, when added together, will exactly match the energy needed to excite cadmium atoms to a particular excited state. This resonance will greatly enhance the efficiency of the process. Second, the wavelengths of the lasers required to produce the desired output are readily available (of wavelengths 375 nm and 710 nm). The two previous studies also used four-wave mixing but ended up with pulsed laser light because they used xenon as the mixing medium. Xenon is a generic choice because it results in light of a wide range of wavelengths. If researchers are exploring and don't know exactly what wavelength they need or if they do want to use light of different wavelengths, xenon is great. On the flip side, it isn’t particularly suited to generating 148.4 nm light. Rather, it can if researchers can supply the input light at enormous power. Pulsed lasers help with this requirement using a trick. Imagine you’ve a water hose: if water flows out continuously at a steady rate, you might get a gentle stream, but if you put your thumb over the end and suddenly release it, you get a powerful jet that can spray much farther even when the total amount of water per minute is the same. Pulsed lasers work like this: at the brief moment when the laser emits light, the intensity is very high even though the average power is low. And four-wave mixing is much more efficient with this intense light — enough to generate enough vacuum ultraviolet light to detect the nuclear transition. To this end, the paper went into considerable technical detail about calculating how efficient using cadmium vapour would be, including assessing the element’s atomic structure. The authors also calculated something called the nonlinear susceptibility, which said how strongly the cadmium atoms would respond to the light. They also had to worry about phase-matching. For the four-wave mixing process to work efficiently, the different light waves need to stay synchronised as they travel through the medium. This is tricky because different wavelengths of light travel at slightly different speeds through cadmium vapour (a phenomenon called dispersion). However, the authors showed that carefully controlling the temperature of the vapour and tightly focusing the laser beams could result in good phase-matching. Overall, their calculations suggested that with input laser powers of 3 W at 375 nm and 6 W at 710 nm — both very achievable using current technology — they could generate more than 30 µW of vacuum ultraviolet light at 148.4 nm. While 30 µW may not sound like much, it's actually a lot for spectroscopy experiments. More importantly, because this is a continuous-wave process rather than a pulsed process, and because it's essentially just a frequency multiplication of stable input lasers, the output light should have a very narrow linewidth. The team estimated it could be below 1 kHz, which is orders of magnitude better than the pulsed sources currently in use. A narrow linewidth is so important because then scientists can observe something called Rabi oscillations in the nuclear transition. This is when you can coherently drive the nucleus back and forth between its ground state and excited state, which is essential to build a nuclear clock. The researchers showed that with their proposed laser system, the linewidth would be narrow enough to observe these oscillations, opening the door to much more precise measurements of the Th-229 transition and eventually to building an actual working nuclear clock. Such a clock could have applications beyond just timekeeping. The Th-229 transition is particularly sensitive to changes in [fundamental constants](https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17300?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of nature, so it could be used to test whether these constants actually stay constant over time; scientists could also use it to search for certain types of dark matter. The proposed laser system thus represents a crucial technological step towards all these applications. ### A bad Sprite ad URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/11/a-bad-sprite-ad/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:11.000Z One of the advertisements during the ongoing T20 cricket World Cup on Star Sports India has been for Sprite, the carbonated beverage from the Coca-Cola Company. In the ad, it's a hot day, two people are irritated by the heat and humidity, and they beat it by taking a swig of chilled lime-flavoured Sprite. It should be obvious by now but in case it isn't — in fact the manufacturer and the advertiser are either unaware of this or they know but don't care — a sugary carbonated beverage is a terrible thing to consume on a hot, humid day in order to feel better. The chill alone can feel quite relieving. However, carbonation doesn’t meaningfully improve hydration and in some people causes bloating and burping and/or induces a full feeling that can prevent the person from drinking other fluids, especially water. Ingesting carbonated fluids can also worsen heat-stress or nausea. The sugar of course makes it all worse. This is Sprite's sugar content [according to Coca-Cola](https://www.coca-cola.com/in/en/brands/sprite?ref=slightlyacidic.com): ![](https://rootprivileges.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-11-at-3.26.42-PM.png) A large quantity of sugar — not unlike the amount in a 200 ml bottle or larger — can for many people slow the rate at which the stomach empties and exacerbate thirst, especially if you drink a lot at once. If you’re sweating heavily already, a sugary drink sans enough electrolytes is far from ideal for replacing what you lose. When pushed on such unhelpful advertisements, these manufacturers, advertisers, and promoters have typically replied saying their food products' contents are within the FSSAI limits. They're right — but the FSSAI's limits are based on the contents being safe while assuming all other conditions ideal. They're not based on you consuming Sprite on a hot and humid day. *Featured image credit: Rasmus Andersen.* ### The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/11/the-birch-and-swinnerton-dyer-conjecture/ Last updated: 2026-09-12T13:11:25.000Z On Monday night, I kid you not, I dreamt of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. It was only by name, a fleeting mention in a heated conversation I was having with a friend. I'm not sure who spoke it or why. When I woke up, I looked it up, and found that it's one of the Millennium Prize problems — one of seven unsolved mathematical problems for each of whose correct solutions the Clay Mathematical Institute offers an award of $1 million. I'm vaguely familiar with these problems' names, and the substance of only three, so after the dream, I resolved to understand the conjecture and why it remains unsolved. Here goes. Let's start at high-school maths. The equation *y* \= 2*x* \+ 1 is a straight line on a graph. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/0c048-line_plot-w-1024-h-658.png) For any given value of *x*, there's only one corresponding value for *y*. Similarly, in high school, you’d have learnt that the equation for a circle is: *x*2 \+ *y*2 \= 1. If you look for points on this circle where *x* and *y* are fractions, i.e. where they’re rational, you’ll find plenty. For example, (⅗, ⅘) is such a point on the circle because (⅗)2 \+ (⅘)2 \= 1. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is about elliptic curves rather than circles. Despite the name, these curves aren't ellipses. An elliptic curve is defined by an equation that looks like this: *y*2 \= *x*3 \+ A*x* \+ B Let’s say A = -1 and B = 1\. The equation becomes: *y*2 \= *x*3 – *x* \+ 1 If you plot this equation on a graph, you’ll get a smooth, flowing curve. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/b69fa-elliptic_curve-w-858-h-1024.png) Mathematicians are obsessed with finding the rational points on these curves, i.e. points where both *x* and *y* are fractions. For some elliptic curves, there are only a few rational points. For other elliptic curves, there are infinitely many. The question is: how can we tell, just by looking at the equation, how many rational points it has? A fascinating property of elliptic curves is that you can add points together. If you take two rational points on the curve, called *P* and *Q*, draw a line through them, and see where that line hits the curve a third time, that third point — after reflecting it across the x-axis — will also be a rational point. Mathematicians call this point *P* \+ *Q*. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/5cc95-elliptic_curve_addition-w-1024-h-901.png) This is how elliptic curves have a ‘rank’. If a curve has rank = 0, there are only a finite number of rational points on the curve. You can add them all day but you’ll keep finding the same few spots again and again. If a curve has rank ≥ 1, it has infinitely many rational points. You can generate them by adding the rational points together to travel all over the curve. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture an attempt to calculate this rank using a completely different part of maths. To solve a difficult problem, mathematicians often try a simpler version first. For example, in order to calculate the rank of an elliptic curve, mathematicians looked for solutions in modular arithmetic. Consider a clock, whose numbers are modulo 12\. In normal counting, 10 + 5 = 15\. But on a clock, 10 + 5 = 3\. This is because once the count hits 12, it resets. Since 10 + 5 = 10 + 2 + 3 = 12 + 3, you’re left with 3. This is what modulo 12 means. You can do the same thing with an elliptic curve equation. You pick a prime number *p* (like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11…) and ask: how many integer solutions are there if we only care about the remainder when divided by *p*? For instance, let's use the elliptic curve *y*2 \= *x*3 – *x* \+ 1 with *p* \= 5. We want to find all solutions (*x*, *y*) where the values of *x* are picked from the set {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} — since these are the possible remainders when divided by 5 — and the equation holds modulo 5. This means: 1\. Pick a value of *x* from {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} 2\. Calculate *y*2 \= *x*3 – *x* \+ 1 using normal arithmetic 3\. Find the remainder when you divide that result (*y*2) by 5 4\. Now find a *y* from {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} such that *y*2 has that same remainder when divided by 5 So let’s check each possible value of *x*: - *x* \= 0 so *y*2 \= 1\. Is there a *y* in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} whose square equals 1 mod 5? 1 or 4 - *x* \= 1 so *y*2 \= 1\. Is there a *y* in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} whose square equals 1 mod 5? 1 or 4 - *x* \= 2 so *y*2 \= 7\. Is there a *y* in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} whose square equals 7 mod 5? None. - *x* \= 3 so *y*2 \= 0\. Is there a *y* in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} whose square equals 0 mod 5? 0 - *x* \= 4 so *y*2 \= 61\. Is there a *y* in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} whose square equals 61 mod 5? 1 or 4 So when *p* \= 5, the elliptic curve *y*2 \= *x*3 – *x* \+ 1 had seven solutions. Now, let *Np* be the number of solutions for a specific prime *p*. Because there are only *p* possible values for *x* and *y* in this scenario, finding N*p* is easy. Let’s use the same example. Since we're working with modulo 5, both *x* and *y* can only be from {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}. That's only five possible values each. And for each *x*, we only had to check at most five values of *y*. That's at most 25 checks in all — which is very easy for a computer. Studying the curve modulo *p*, for many different values of *p*, yields information about the original curve over the rational numbers. Specifically,finding all the rational points on the curve *y*2 \= *x*3 – *x* \+ 1, e.g. (0,1), (1,1), (-1,-1), etc., is extremely difficult. There could be infinitely many and they could involve large numerators and denominators. But for each prime *p*, counting how many solutions exist modulo *p* is easy: you just need to check all *p*2 possibilities. Notice also how for any given *p*, there are also around a *p* number of solutions on average. The number of solutions per possibility contains information about the rank of the elliptic curve. This connection happens via the *L*\-function. In the 1960s, Bryan Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer had a radical idea. They wondered if the number of solutions *Np* for various values of *p* could reveal the rank of the curve. They created the *L*\-function to hold this information, written *L*(*E*, *s*). This is a complex function built using all the *Np* values for every prime number *p*. If a curve has many rational points, i.e. a high rank, we’d expect it to also have a high value of *Np*. If the curve has few rational points, *Np* should also be low. *L*(*E*, *s*) is a function of the variable *s*. Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer used a computer — then a room-sized machine called EDSAC 2 at the University of Cambridge — to calculate these values. They noticed a stunning pattern. Recall that for a given *p*, there are around a *p* number of solutions on average. If *Np* ​> *p*, the curve was said to have more solutions than average for that prime. If *Np* < *p*, the curve was said to have fewer solutions than average for that prime. Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer checked what happened when they multiplied these results together for thousands of primes. Their product looked like this: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/Screenshot-2026-09-11-at-9.43.14---PM.png) In words, this formula asks: across all the prime numbers up to a certain limit *X*, is the elliptic curve consistently producing more solutions than average or fewer? When they plotted this formula on a graph, they noticed a clear divergence based on the rank of the curve. If a curve had only a finite number of rational points, the product fluctuated a bit but remained relatively small and stable. If the curve had infinite rational points, the product started to grow. The more primes they included in the calculation, the larger the product became. Here’s a visual. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/3b621-bsd_product_comparison-w-1024-h-728.png) In the top graph, the blue curve has rank 0, so you see the product fluctuate but stay relatively small and bounded. The red curve has rank 1, so the product grows significantly larger. The bottom graph shows the same curves on a logarithmic scale, revealing the pattern over a larger range of values. The blue curve stays relatively flat with small oscillations while the red curve continues to surge upwards. Overall, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer noticed that curves with finite rational points, i.e. rank 0, had a relatively bounded product. And curves with infinite rational points, i.e. rank ≥ 1, had a boundless product. Ergo, higher rank means faster growth. The product that Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer computed is closely related to the *L*\-function. How? For each prime number *p*, they defined a variable a*p* \= *p* \+ 1 – *Np* a*p* measures how *Np* differs from the expected value p + 1. If *Np* \= *p* \+ 1, then a*p* \= 0, i.e. it’s exactly average. If *Np* \> *p* \+ 1, then a*p* < 0, i.e. there are more solutions than average. If *Np* < *p* \+ 1, then a*p* \> 0, i.e. there are fewer solutions than average. The *L*\-function makes use of the a*p* value thus: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/ql_ea8af8f5290e4f18d96951adc24dd614_l3.png) In sum, the behaviour of the product as *X* grows is mathematically related to whether *L*(*E*, *s*) has a zero at *s* \= 1. If you plug *s* \= 1 into the L-function and get 0, the corresponding elliptic curve *E* has at least some infinite points. But if the *L*\-function hugs the zero very closely, the rank of the elliptic curve *E* is higher. Thus, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjectured: the rank of an elliptic curve is equal to the order of the zero of its *L*\-function at *s* \= 1. When a function equals zero at some point, the 'order' says how strongly it touches zero. If the order is 0, the function doesn't actually equal 0 at that point. If the order is 1, the function crosses through 0 normally. If the order is 2, the function touches 0 and bounces back (e.g. *y* \= *x*2 when *x* \= 0). If the order is 3 or more, the function hugs zero closely before leaving. If the function *L*(E, *s*) has a zero of order *r* at *s* \= 1, it means: - *L*(1) = 0 - *L*'(1) = 0 (the first derivative is also zero) - *L*''(1) = 0 (the second derivative is also zero) - … continuing through the (*r*\-1)th derivative - But *L*r(1) ≠ 0 (the *r*\-th derivative is not zero) The conjecture states that this order *r* equals the rank of the elliptic curve. So if the *L*\-function has a zero of order 2 at *s* \= 1, the curve should have rank 2 — meaning it has infinitely many rational points that can be generated from 2 independent base points (like *P* and *Q* earlier). While the rank is generally the most interesting part of the conjecture, the full version goes further to provide an exact formula for how the function behaves when *s* \= 1. Here’s the conjecture in mathematical terms: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/09/ql_d2d752ccc908daf8d9ae5ca9b68608ef_l3.png) The right side of the conjecture is about analysis because it’s concerned with the analytic property of the *L*\-function at *s* \= 1\. The left side of the conjecture is about algebra and geometry because it depicts the rank of the elliptic curve. Mathematically, these are such different types of objects that proving they are always equal is extraordinarily difficult. There’s currently no algorithm that’s guaranteed to find the rank of an arbitrary elliptic curve. Mathematicians can find some rational points and make educated guesses but proving “that's all of the points” or that "these points will generate all the rest" is very difficult. The *L*\-function is defined as an infinite product over all prime numbers. Proving that it even converges to a particular value or that it behaves in a predictable way requires some heavy-duty mathematics. While mathematicians know that counting the number of solutions an elliptic curve equation has modulo *p* can determine the structure of rational solutions, they don’t know why. This is called the local to global principle and it’s an unsolved problem in its own right. Mathematicians have proven the conjecture for specific families of elliptic curves — but proving it for all possible elliptic curves requires many techniques that mathematicians don’t even possess. It's like finding that the number of ways you can rearrange furniture in your house is secretly determined by the prime factorisation of your door number. You could check millions of houses and see the pattern holds, but why would such different things be related? And how do you prove that this must always be true? This is why the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture remains unsolved. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/1f8c5-bsd_collage-w-1024-h-683.jpg) Bryan Birch (left) and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer. Credit: William Stein and Renate Schmid Elliptic curves are a backbone of modern security. They're used to secure websites, cryptocurrency transactions, app-based messaging, and so forth. Remember that ‘adding’ two rational points *P* and *Q* could lead you to a third rational point *R*? Elliptic curve cryptography exploits this fact. Choose a public elliptic curve, i.e. an elliptic curve whose equation is public, and a point *G* on it. Pick a random secret number *k* — your private key. Compute *k*.*G*, i.e. add *G* to itself *k* number of times. Let's call the result *Q*. This is your public key. As with all cryptography, you can share the public key (*Q*) but you must protect the private key (*k*). Given *G* and *Q*, the task of finding *k* is called the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Even extremely powerful computers struggle to crack it. There's no known efficient algorithm to solve it. This is why understanding the distribution of rational points on elliptic curves is the foundation of how we’re keeping secrets in the digital age. The same difficulty that makes the conjecture so hard to solve is what makes elliptic curve cryptography secure. Mathematicians have proven the conjecture for when the rank is 0 or 1 and only for certain curves. For rank 2 or higher and for all curves, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics. ### Developing Tamil Nadu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/02/03/developing-tamil-nadu/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:17.000Z “If the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comes to power, it will ruin the developed State of Tamil Nadu” — Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said this in his address to a local conference organised by the Indian Union Muslim League in Kumbakonam on January 28. While Stalin’s claim relies on aggregate metrics like the GSDP and the GER, economic development is really a culture. True development means rising incomes as well as expanded human freedoms and better quality of social systems — which are areas where Tamil Nadu still faces an uphill task. For instance while the DMK government launched ambitious initiatives like the ‘Green Tamil Nadu Mission’ and the ‘Tamil Nadu Climate Change Mission’, enforcement on the ground remains reactive. The State Pollution Control Board suffers from regulatory capture and its focus is on granting clearances to aid industrial GSDP growth rather than penalising non-compliance. Pollution hotspots like Ennore and the Cooum River have seen little qualitative improvement in water and air quality indices despite four years of rhetoric. A culture of development would require TN to shift from managing pollution, e.g. clearing oil spills after they happen, to preventing it through strict liability, which the state has been reluctant to enforce to avoid spooking investors. In fact noise pollution has become so pervasive that most residents have simply become accustomed to it. After I lodged a complaint with the SPCB over an offender in my neighbourhood last year, an official from the board reached out just to say, “That’s how it is, there is nothing we can do.” The Dravidian Model is often lauded for high access to education, as seen for example by the high gross enrollment ratio, but what of learning outcomes and employability? The need for the ‘Naan Mudhalvan’ scheme Stalin launched in 2022 is itself an admission of systemic failure: it acknowledged that most of the engineering and arts graduates the state produces are unemployable sans remedial skilling. Similarly a developed state wouldn’t just have children in school, it would have them performing at global standards, yet Tamil Nadu's public education system still struggles to compete with private counterparts. But perhaps the strongest reason to disagree with Stalin’s ‘developed’ tag for Tamil Nadu is the persistence of caste-based atrocities, which points to a failure in social development. The 2022 incident in Vengaivayal, where human faeces were found in a water tank meant for Scheduled Caste residents, comes to mind, as does the inability of the state apparatus to swiftly identify and punish the perpetrators. Sociologists have argued that economic growth without eradicating caste spatiality is incomplete modernisation, so not being able to swiftly deliver justice in such a high-profile case undermines the claim that TN offers a “safe” or “developed” social environment for minorities and marginalised groups. Finally, even from a fiscal standpoint, a ‘developed’ economy should run on sustainable revenue models rather than consumption funded by debt. According to recent CAG reports and fiscal analyses (2023-2024), Tamil Nadu continues to run a revenue deficit, meaning the government is borrowing money just to pay for daily expenses such as salaries and subsidies rather than investing in capital assets. The current administration has also doubled down on populist welfare, including cash transfers, without fixing the structural revenue leaks, e.g. electricity board losses, creating a sort of fragile development where the state is one or two fiscal shocks away from crisis. Truly developed economies on the other hand maintain revenue surpluses to fund welfare. I’m rooting for the DMK to win the impending Assembly elections, which is why I’m concerned that by engrossing the anti-Hindutva space while leaving socio-economic fractures unhealed, comments like Stalin's may till the soil for the very ideology his party claims to resist — by pushing groups that remain disenfranchised despite claims to development to seek solutions in the opposition's counter-narratives. ### From the Heisenberg cut to the Copenhagen interpretation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/31/from-the-heisenberg-cut-to-the-copenhagen-interpretation/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:20.000Z *The following post was motivated by* [*this exchange*](https://x.com/Kaju%5FNut/status/2017058499965178077?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *(on X.com), which prompted me to write out my understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the part the Heisenberg cut plays in it. I haven’t gone into the variants of the interpretation that Maria Violaris brings up; I only focus on understanding what the interpretation does and doesn’t say to begin with, and its history.* There are many interpretations of what quantum mechanics says about reality. This is unlike classical physics, where theory and reality converge almost perfectly. If using Newton’s laws of motion you determine that a ball flying through the air will have some speed at some point, you’ll find that to be the case when you take measurements. Quantum mechanics on the other hand has some uncertainty baked into the outcomes of certain measurements; there’s no escaping it. That means the mathematical formalism describes only the probability of the outcomes of measurement rather than the event itself, creating a fundamental gap between the theory and observations that different interpretations have tried to bridge with competing philosophical explanations. Perhaps the most popular among them is the Copenhagen interpretation: a small 2016 survey found it enjoys the [most agreement](https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00676?ref=slightlyacidic.com) among physicists; it also holds sway in the popular imagination thanks to Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment involving a cat that’s both dead and alive. However, Schrödinger came up with that idea to illustrate his belief that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics paints an absurd picture of reality. The interpretation has been refined over time and is more complicated than that, and certainly not absurd. In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, the cat is a metaphor for an observable property of a quantum system. That the cat is both dead and alive — a statement that the wavefunction of the property is in a superposition of two (or more) states. When you open the box to see if the cat is dead or alive (but not both) in the metaphor, the description of the system updates from a superposition to a single outcome. Note that this is a simplified picture. For a more thoroughgoing account, I recommend Jim Baggott’s post [‘The Copenhagen Confusion’](https://jimbaggott.substack.com/p/the-copenhagen-confusion). Here’s a line from the operative passage: “The ‘collapse of the wavefunction’ was never part of the Copenhagen interpretation because the wavefunction isn’t interpreted realistically. The only thing that happens when an electron is detected on a screen in the context of Copenhagen is that we gain knowledge of the position of the electron.” In this post, however, I’m going to flatten these details for simplicity’s sake where necessary. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/e21c1-heisenberg_bohr-w-1024-h-683.jpg) Werner Heisenberg (left) and Niels Bohr. Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R57262 and public domain A useful entry point to the interpretation is the Heisenberg cut, which is a conceptual boundary within the interpretation. It draws the line between the quantum system, i.e. the wavefunction and probabilistic laws, and the measuring apparatus or the observer, described by classical mechanics and deterministic laws. And these two parts of the overall system share a foundational relationship: the Copenhagen interpretation uses this cut to bridge the gap between the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and the empirical reality of what scientists observe in a lab. In Niels Bohr’s view, the cut is required because humans are macroscopic entities who communicate using classical language. (“It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is”: Terry Pratchett.) Bohr argued that we don’t have a choice but to describe experiments in terms of everyday physics, including positions, momenta, and times, because these concepts also define our cognitive and linguistic capabilities. This means even though the subatomic world is quantum mechanical, the instruments we use to measure it, like photographic plates and our eyes, must be treated as classical objects. The Heisenberg cut is an imaginary boundary in our description of experiments where we stop using quantum concepts and start using classical ones. An important feature of the cut is its mobility, i.e. that a person can draw it anywhere in their description of the thought experiment: when a photon of light hits the cat, when a photon reflected by the cat reaches your eye, when you first open the box or somewhere else. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the physical predictions of quantum mechanics don’t change based on where you make the cut, as long as it is placed somewhere along the chain of measurement. And the cut must exist if you’re to be able to ‘measure’ the system. The Heisenberg cut is also intimately tied to the measurement problem. On the quantum side of the cut, the system will evolve according to the Schrödinger equation, which is deterministic and preserves superpositions, i.e. it allows a particle to be in two states at once. On the classical side of the cut, you observe definite outcomes: the particle is either here or there. In effect the cut marks the point where multiple possible outcomes give way to a single recorded result. And in the Copenhagen interpretation, this transition isn’t a physical process that can be derived from the Schrödinger equation itself; instead it’s a non-dynamical event that occurs whenever a quantum system interacts with a classical measuring device. This leads to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that quantum mechanics is a complete theory of the microscopic universe yet it banks on classical concepts (that it can’t make sense of) to make sense of its predictions. While both Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, for whom the cut is named, agreed that this cut should exist, they arrived at it for different reasons. Heisenberg treated the cut as a moveable mathematical boundary that separated the object from the subject, highlighting the subjective nature of observation. He was interested in how the observer's knowledge changed the state of the system. Bohr on the other hand viewed the cut as an epistemological necessity fixed by the experimental arrangement. In other words for Bohr the cut wasn’t about a subjective observer disrupting nature but about the objective impossibility of separating the observer from the observed in the quantum realm (a.k.a. the uncertainty implicit to quantum mechanics). Second, let’s look at how the Copenhagen interpretation treats the maths of quantum mechanics. The theory postulates that a quantum system evolves according to the Schrödinger equation. However, our human experience is obviously discontinuous: we see definite outcomes, not superpositions. The ‘collapse’ is the instant when the system switches from its smooth quantum evolution to a single, definite state. Without the Heisenberg cut, on the other hand, there’s no logical place for the wavefunction to collapse. If you treated the entire universe — including a subatomic particle, a microscope, a scientist, and the scientist's brain — as one giant quantum system, everything would just keep evolving according to the Schrödinger equation forever. Eventually you’d end up with a universe in a massive, complex superposition but you’d never arrive at a specific measurement or result. This is actually the premise of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which removes the collapse and thus removes the need for a cut. In the Copenhagen interpretation, however, because you eventually arrive at a definite result (and which you need to do [for science to be science](https://rootprivileges.net/2026/01/15/string-theory-and-reconciliations/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), you’re forced to draw a line: "Everything on this side is quantum and describes probabilities and everything on that side is classical and describes facts”. The wavefunction ‘collapse’ is defined as the point at which the quantum description gives way to a single, definite experimental outcome. When the quantum system crosses the Heisenberg cut and interacts with the classical side, the wavefunction is said to have collapsed. Thus to discuss the Heisenberg cut is essentially to discuss the mechanism of collapse and highlights the implicit dualism of the Copenhagen interpretation: the universe is divided into the observer and the observed. The wavefunction describes what’s being observed and the collapse ensures the observed entity matches the observer’s reality. The concept of the cut originated in a few intense months leading up to Heisenberg’s publication of a paper in March 1927\. At the time, Heisenberg had been working at Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen on rescuing the concept of particle trajectories, e.g. the tracks of particles recorded in a cloud chamber, which seemed to contradict the (then) new quantum mechanics. In 1925, Heisenberg formulated matrix mechanics, the first logically consistent mathematical framework for quantum mechanics. (This invention was an important first step of the ‘new’ quantum mechanics, whose centenary [physicists celebrated](https://quantum2025.org/iyq-event/helgoland-2025-100-years-of-quantum-mechanics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) worldwide last year.) Among other things, matrix mechanics predicted that certain physical quantities, such as energy, take on discrete values. However, this raised questions about reconciling the theory with physicists observing apparently smooth, continuous particle tracks in cloud chambers. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/af381-alphatrackrutherfordscattering3-w-1024-h-860.jpg) The scattering of an alpha particle in a cloud chamber. Credit: Qwerty123uiop (CC BY-SA) Heisenberg resolved this contradiction by redefining what a ‘path’ actually is in a cloud chamber. This is a device filled with alcohol vapour that’s supersaturated, meaning it’s cooled to the point where it’s just about ready to turn into liquid. When a charged particle moves through this gas, it knocks electrons out of the alcohol molecules, creating a trail of ions. The vapour rapidly turns into liquid droplets around these ions, forming a visible white track that traces the exact path of the subatomic particle through the chamber. But Heisenberg argued that we never actually see a continuous path in a cloud chamber — only the sequence of individual droplets formed by ionisation. Solving the problem of the particle’s trajectory in matrix mechanics would never spit out a continuous path but it could determine the probability of an electron’s state transitioning from one discrete droplet to the next. When we say an object transitions from point A to point B in everyday life, we mean it moved through the space in between them. But in matrix mechanics, an electron state transitioning between droplets means a discontinuous update of realityrather than movement.In the context of this post, the state of the electron is a mathematical list of properties the electron possesses at the exact moment it hits a gas molecule and creates a droplet. So say when it hits droplet 1**,** the electron has energy Ehigh, momentum P1, and is roughly at position X1. At droplet 2, scientists find the same electron has energy Elow (because it lost some energy when it smashed into the first atom), momentum P2, and is roughly at position X2. In Heisenberg’s telling, the laws of physics don’t describe this journey so much as the probability of state 2 happening given state 1 just happened. This description resolved Heisenberg’s problem because his maths only handled the energy levels and transitions; it had no variable for the particle’s location at each instant in time. In other words by looking at the cloud chamber and saying, "Aha! This track is just a pile of separate water droplets”, he could claim that the physical world also works like his maths. Which means the path we see in the cloud chamber is just our human brains drawing a line between the dots. The electron itself only becomes classically describable when it hits something. In other words, in classical physics, the particle has a path regardless of whether we look at it, and the droplets merely reveal it. In Heisenberg's view, the particle has no defined position or path in the empty space between the droplets. Instead a path as such comes into view only because the cloud chamber is performing a rapid series of measurements: each droplet represents an observation that forces the electron to take a stand on its position while the eventual smooth line is a mental construct we create by connecting these dots. Continuing from this idea, in a famous letter to Wolfgang Pauli and subsequently in his [March 1927 paper](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19840008978?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Actual Content of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics*, Heisenberg introduced a thought experiment involving a gamma-ray microscope. He argued that to observe an electron, one must hit it with a photon. This interaction would disturb the electron. He initially framed the measurement problem as a physical interaction between the electron (the system) and the photon (the probe), where the act of measurement mechanically disturbed the system. Bohr’s critique of Heisenberg’s draft then reforged the cut as a central tenet of the Copenhagen interpretation. When Heisenberg showed Bohr his paper, Bohr tore into it arguing that Heisenberg was wrong to focus on the disturbance because he assumed the electron had a definite position and momentum before the measurement and which the measurement then messed up. Bohr insisted on the more radical view that the properties of the electron aren’t well-defined until the experimental arrangement itself is fixed. For Bohr, the cut wasn’t just where a disturbance happened but the line where the observer switched from using quantum concepts to classical concepts to describe the experiment. The conversations on this point between the two men in February and March 1927 were intense, protracted, and emotionally exhausting. Heisenberg was 25 years old at the time and convinced he had solved the riddle of quantum mechanics with his paper whereas Bohr was relentless in his criticism, insisting Heisenberg’s fundamental premise was logically flawed. According to historical accounts, including Heisenberg's own recollections later in life, the discussions would go on for hours, often late into the night. At one point, the combination of mental exhaustion and Bohr’s stubborn refusal to accept Heisenberg’s interpretation caused Heisenberg to break down in tears of frustration. But Heisenberg eventually capitulated, though not entirely: he didn’t rewrite the entire body of his paper but he did add a postscript to the end of the published version where he acknowledged that his explanation of the gamma-ray microscope had been too simplistic and that Bohr’s view regarding the electron’s indefiniteness was the deeper truth. The tears were the physical manifestation of the painful process of aligning the two different viewpoints into what became the Copenhagen interpretation. In fact, and at the risk of repetition, let’s treat this interpretation as the peace treaty that reconciled Heisenberg’s idea of uncertainty with Bohr’s idea of complementarity. Heisenberg’s view was initially very mechanical and focused on the observer's limitations; he held that the fuzziness of the quantum world was a result of our clumsiness: i.e. the reality existed but our clumsy hands destroyed the data every time we tried to touch it. To him the Heisenberg cut was the place where this mechanical disturbance happened. Bohr however worked with the concept of complementarity: that the electron has a dual nature, wave and particle, and that these two natures are mutually exclusive, meaning we can’t see both at the same time. And the uncertainty isn't because we hit the particle but because the electron literally doesn’t have a defined position and momentum at the same time. If you build an experiment to measure its position, the wave nature would vanish, and vice versa. He was saying in effect that the experiment itself defined what reality was allowed to exist at all in that moment. The Copenhagen interpretation loosely synthesised these two views, though it leaned heavily toward Bohr’s. It stated that we must accept two contradictory truths: the mathematical formalism (Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics and the Schrödinger equation) that predicts probabilities and the classical world of our measuring devices. The interpretation is the agreement that we can’t speak about what the electron is doing when we aren't looking. We can only speak about the results of the interaction between the electron and the machine. In effect, the Copenhagen interpretation asserts that physics isn’t about the ontological nature of the electron, i.e. what it is, but about the epistemological nature of our knowledge, or what we can say. And the Heisenberg cut is the necessary border where the indefinite, contradictory quantum world based on Bohr's idea of complementarity is forced to collapse into a single, definite fact. If Bohr and Heisenberg provided the philosophical foundation for the Copenhagen interpretation, the Hungarian-American physicist John von Neumann gave it its formal mathematical form in his 1932 book *Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics*. Von Neumann was also the one to show that the mathematics of quantum mechanics allowed the cut to be placed anywhere in this chain without changing the final calculated probabilities. Where’s Schrödinger’s cat in all of this, then? As it happens, the famous thought experiment in which the cat is both dead and alive is often misunderstood as a quirk of quantum physics; it was actually a scathing piece of satire Schrödinger designed to show that the Copenhagen interpretation was absurd. Schrödinger in fact didn’t believe a cat could be simultaneously dead and alive. His point was that if you followed Bohr and Heisenberg’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, you’d end up with such a nonsensical reality. In fact, the thought experiment, published in 1935, targeted the concept of the Heisenberg cut. In the Copenhagen view, a quantum particle like an atom doesn’t have a defined state: it exists in a superposition of all possible states until an observer measures. Schrödinger could accept this for atoms but couldn’t digest the prospect of applying the idea to macroscopic objects. In his mental argument, Schrödinger described a radioactive atom placed in a sealed steel box. If the atom decays in a random quantum event, a Geiger counter nearby would push a hammer, which would smash a vial of cyanide and kill a cat. If the atom doesn’t decay, the cat would live. According to the strict logic of the Copenhagen interpretation, this system remains in a superposition until an observer opens the box to check the cat’s existential status. But until the measurement itself, because the atom is both decayed and not decayed, the Geiger counter is both triggered and not triggered, and the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Schrödinger’s question was about where the quantum ends and the classical world begins. In other words, where's the Heisenberg cut? ![](https://rootprivileges.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Schrodingers_cat.svg_.png) An illustration of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. Credit: Dhatfield (CC BY-SA) If we make the cut at the Geiger counter, the cat would be a classical object and thus either dead or alive, not both. However, Bohr, Heisenberg, and von Neumann had shown that the cut was mobile. If we moved it to the human observer opening the box, the cat itself would become part of the system’s overall wavefunction — and Schrödinger had contended that treating a living organism as a probability wave was ridiculous. He used the cat to argue that there must be something missing in the theory, some hidden variables or physical reality, that would determine the state of the cat before an observer looks at it. For Schrödinger, the cat proved that the Copenhagen interpretation's refusal to define objective reality between measurements was a philosophical failure. It showed that while the cut could work mathematically, as von Neumann had proved, it led to macroscopic impossibilities in the physical domain. The Copenhagen interpretation in turn didn’t surmount Schrödinger's critique by answering the riddle but by dismissing Schrödinger’s question as unscientific. Bohr argued that Schrödinger was ‘illegally’ extending quantum concepts beyond the point where a classical description would be required. In his view a Geiger counter is a macroscopic measuring device so the cut between the quantum and classical worlds would occur the moment the particle interacts with the Geiger counter. And by the time the signal reaches the hammer, let alone the cat, the quantum description would already have yielded a definite outcome at the measuring device, so the cat would never have had to be described as being in superposition. There was also a powerful sociological narrative at the time that painted Schrödinger and Albert Einstein as an ‘old guard’ that was too stuck in classical determinism to accept the radical new truths quantum mechanics was throwing up. By 1935, the Copenhagen interpretation was the dominant orthodoxy among the younger, more productive generation of physicists like Pauli and (to a lesser extent) Paul Dirac, who viewed the cat and the [Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox](https://rootprivileges.net/2013/06/15/a-closet-of-hidden-phenomena/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) not as genuine physical problems but as the confusion of men who couldn’t let go of the past. The proponents of the interpretation essentially declared that if the theory predicted the results of experiments correctly, then any philosophical discomfort about cats that were both dead and alive was the philosopher’s problem, not the physicist’s. And quantum mechanics perfectly predicted the results of experiments. Historical timing also played an important part in cementing the Copenhagen interpretation’s dominance. Shortly after Schrödinger published his paper, physics shifted dramatically from the philosophical debates of the 1920s to the pragmatic urgency of the 1930s and 1940s. The rise of fascism and World War II turned the focus of the community towards nuclear energy and The Bomb. In this environment, the “shut up and calculate” approach — a phrase coined later to describe this attitude — took over and physicists shelved questions about the reality of the cat as irrelevant metaphysics. The interpretation was also shielded by von Neumann’s mathematical authority. His 1932 book also claimed to show that ‘hidden variable’ theories, i.e. which would restore a specific reality to the cat independent of observation, were mathematically impossible. While Grete Hermann and [John Bell](https://rootprivileges.net/2019/10/07/disentangling-entanglement/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) later found this proof to be circular, for decades it served as a brick wall that convinced the physics community that there was literally no alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation. ### That humans quest for cosmic dawn URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/24/that-humans-quest-for-cosmic-dawn/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:20.000Z From ['Cosmic dawn: the search for the primordial hydrogen signal'](https://physicsworld.com/a/cosmic-dawn-the-search-for-the-primordial-hydrogen-signal/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Physics World*, November 18, 2025: > The EDGES instrument is a dipole antenna, which resembles a ping-pong table with a gap in the middle. It is mounted on a large metal groundsheet, which is about 30 × 30 m. Its ground-breaking observation was made at a remote site in western Australia, far from radio frequency interference. The “observation”: > Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. As neutral hydrogen atoms change states, they can emit or absorb photons. This spectral transition, which can be stimulated by radiation, produces an emission or absorption radio wave signal with a wavelength of 21 cm. To find out what happened during that early universe, astronomers are searching for these 21 cm photons that were emitted by primordial hydrogen atoms. … In 2018 the \[EDGES collaboration\] hit the headlines when it claimed to have detected the global 21 cm signal (Nature 555 67). It will always be fascinating that a setup as deceptively simple as this one enables Earthlings to acquire information from distant reaches of the cosmos — *the cosmos!*— and from a time called the cosmic dawn. This is to me one of the great achievements of science, in particular scientists’ ability to link some information to specific sources in definitive ways. When you learn more, you realise where the lines between what you do and don’t know lie, at increasing resolution; about how you can and can’t interpret knowledge; and how to acquire more knowledge of increasing quality. That’s how a simple setup, one that can be transported on a small truck on a small planet in one galaxy in some part of the universe, allows us to learn about the universe as a whole. I’ve been awed by certain advances in materials science and quantum technologies for the same reason. A good example is [nitrogen vacancy centres](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/nitrogen-vacancy-centres-diamond-quantum-spins-superradiant-maser/article70472909.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Take four carbon atoms, link them together in a tetrahedral shape, make millions of copies of this ‘unit cell’, and you get diamond. If in some of the tetrahedra you replace one carbon atom with a nitrogen atom and dislodge one of the neighbouring carbon atoms, you get a nitrogen vacancy centre. And in this centre, thanks to the relative arrangement of atoms around it, the electrons have a quantum spin that’s extremely sensitive to magnetic fields. For added measure the centre responds with red light if you shine green light on it when the quantum spin is excited by a field. Et voila: you have a powerful magnetic field detector that’s already miniaturised and with a convenient optical readout. But how did physicists get here? They did by starting off studying why diamonds are different colours. They found that when they took a clear, transparent diamond and hit it with high-energy electrons or neutrons in a particle accelerator, the diamond would turn green or bluish. Then when they heated the irradiated diamonds to 600º C, the green colour shifted into a pinkish purple or deep red. Just as scientists could interpret data collected by the ping-pong-table-sized antenna to possibly be radio waves from the early universe, scientists understood these tests to mean the carbon atoms in the diamond lattice could be knocked off and replaced with nitrogen atoms. In 1965, a South African researcher named L. du Preez found that when his team irradiated a diamond with nitrogen in it and heated it, the material seemed to emit radiation of 637 nm wavelength. In the 1970s, Gordon Davies and M.F. Hamer in the UK found that when they squeezed this diamond, the light it emitted split and shifted, proving the defect had a specific axis. Finally, in the 1990s, Jörg Wrachtrup and others found that these ‘defects’ had a magnetic property that could be controlled with microwaves and 'read' using laser light. You learn something, you learn how to apply it to make a tool, use the tool to develop a technique, use the technique to detect something that you couldn’t before, use what you learn to hone the next tool, develop new techniques, and discover even more. Computer scientist Étienne Fortier-Dubois's [‘Historical Tech Tree’ visualisation](https://www.historicaltechtree.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) offers a captivating view of this knowledge loop through history. However, what it doesn’t depict, and what most histories of science and technology focused on the technic don’t depict, is crucial: the value of the knowledge loop is determined almost entirely by how it interacts with societies and vice versa. As technologies mature, some discoveries seem to become almost inevitable but which ones do see the light of day depends on power. In a [1922 article](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2142320?seq=4&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Political Science Quarterly*, the sociologists William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas described 148 major inventions and discoveries that two or more people had made independently, arguing that culture and technology actually co-evolve. Some famous examples from history include calculus (Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz), evolution by natural selection (Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace), the discovery of oxygen (Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, and Antoine Lavoisier), and the telephone (Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell). On the other hand, scientists worked out public-key cryptography inside Britain’s signals intelligence establishment in the early 1970s but remained officially unacknowledged for that until the government declassified it in 1997\. Similarly and effective antiretroviral therapy for HIV existed by the mid-1990s but for years remained concentrated among richer countries and elites in practice because patent, pricing, and political pressure choked off generic competition and access. Some of the most consequential technical systems were also incubated in secrecy and under pressure, showing that states and firms can concentrate talent and money in ways that a ‘republic of letters’ can’t — exemplified by the military-industrial complex in the post-war US — and still have the same outcomes. These settings have the same knowledge loop but the state has fenced it off from society at large, whether by classifying it or, as is often the case in India, by structurally weakening the means to access it. To use a different example: the American writer Charles Fort famously said, “A steam engine comes when it is steam engine time”. The more important question however is how “steam engine time” itself arises: when the corresponding supply chains, capital, geopolitical competition, profit, surveillance, and labour regulations, among other things, are in place. (Aside: Fort’s comment also reveals a well-known problem with world-building in the sci-fi and fantasy genres of literature. The British writer M. John Harrison [called it](https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/02/the-great-clomping-foot-worldbuilding-and-art.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the “great clomping foot of nerdism”, an expression with which I’ve taken offence more than once, but over time I’ve come to discern a particular problem — one that this post allows me to articulate clearerly: if you world-build a world in which steam engines appear without the requisite social and cultural conditions, you’re not doing it right. That, for all its focus on the technic, would indeed be a great clomping foot.) In order to facilitate such scientific and technological progress, then, a human society needs to get itself on and then stay on the path of learning, investing, researching, and maturing knowledge and technologies. It needs to facilitate that combination of availing scientists the freedom to ask questions and the resources to answer them, over and over — and it needs to develop the social, economic, and political conditions to apply the outcomes of that loop efficiently for the better of society, without entrenching existing inequities or creating new ones. The latter is very important because societies generally don’t stay on that path by consensus but by so using coercive instruments like budgets, patents, labour policing, and bargaining with other countries. In the end a potent technique can be born in a cramped corner of human society — whether a lab or a monopoly — but culture matters most for whether it spreads, who controls it, who gets to benefit from it, and, eventually, what kind of change it leads to in turn. It’s difficult not to return to what now seems like the absurdity of the ping-pong-table-sized antenna bolted to a groundsheet in a quiet patch of Earth, a modest platform from which humans are trying piece back together a time when there were no planets, no eyes, no archives, just hydrogen and the universe’s first pinpricks of light. The achievement isn’t only that we can sense something so ancient but that we can justify that we’re hearing it, step by step, against noise as much as self-deception. ### To be Indian is to set records URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/23/to-be-indian-is-to-set-records/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:20.000Z For all the ways in which the Indian people are divided these days, they're seemingly united in their desire to set records. On January 22, a tinkerer named Sohan Rai, a.k.a. “Zikiguy”, [said on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTxowj7EhJF/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that he and his team “are planning to do India’s highest ever flag hoist in near space for this Republic Day”. What is it about setting records? The national BJP government itself, which -- from the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first elected -- has tried repeatedly to extend the record books backwards into mythology, asserting ancient Indians piloted interplanetary aircraft and performed plastic surgery millennia before the advent of modern science. But recasting religious metaphors like the elephant-headed god Ganesha as literal medical feats only reveals the ideology's own neurosis to validate Indian heritage using the yardstick of modern Western empiricism. It's practically a retroactive attempt at record-setting where the leadership, admitting it can't dominate the prevailing global hierarchy, simply imagines India to have been the original superpower. The 2016 Tamil film *Joker* brought the same pathos to clearer light through its protagonist, Mannar Mannan (Tamil for "king of kings"), who abandons democratic petitioning and other mechanisms in favour of performing absurdity — much as farmers from Tamil Nadu did when they [protested in Delhi](https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/tn-farmers-delhi-hold-dead-snakes-mouth-day-16-protests-59474?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2017 by holding dead rats and snakes in their mouths — to draw the state’s attention. The state, the thinking seems to be, has become inured to 'normal' poverty and will only react to spectacular embarrassment. The Limca Book of Records is a symbol of this syndrome. The then Parle-Bisleri chairman Ramesh Chauhan conceived of the book in 1986 and first published it in 1990 as an extension of the 'Limca' brand, as a tool of "soft" marketing. That it exists at all is because Indians alone are setting so many records, even those bordering on the facile. Today the Limca Book is the second-oldest of its kind in the world, after the Guinness Book, and accepts applications from Indians worldwide provided they hold an Indian passport — a requirement that reveals how both citizenship and record-setting are equally emblematic of being Indian. A 'record' is an event that documents primacy through some extreme act, and the extremum can take different forms depending on what sort of primacy one wishes to establish. Prime Minister Narendra Modi built the [world's tallest statue](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nationalism-as-spectacle/article69919535.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Gujarat and Maharashtra responded by promising a taller one because the BJP was engaging in a pissing contest and the other was furthering the same stunted logic by contending that one didn't have to be a nationalist to piss higher, for instance. More recently, when astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla first went to space onboard the Axiom-4 mission, various media outlets reported that he'd set a record by becoming the first Indian to conduct an experiment in space. By that measure, Indians have scores of records left to set, including becoming the first Indian to cough in space, the first Indian to get out of the right side of bed in space, and the first Indian in space whose name starts with ‘M’. But hey, it's technically a record, and it's printed, and if it's printed it must be true. In his work, the historian Vinay Lal has argued that the Indian obsession with the Guinness Book is rooted in a deep-seated postcolonial disquiet. He's posited that the colonial experience left India with a sense of "historical incompleteness" because the West had come to be seen as the world's standard-bearer of modernity and 'hard facts'. In his telling, Indians also have a "fetish for numbers" because in a chaotic and often unmanageable democracy, precise numbers — e.g. "typing 103 characters in 47 seconds with a nose" — offer the comfort of certainty and empirical truths, and which also feel scientific. Records also allow these ordinary persons to be heroes. While achievements like Olympic gold medals and Nobel Prizes require state funding, favourable (and arguably arbitrary) social conditions, political stability, and training/research hardware, the Guinness and Limca records often demand only time and a high tolerance for discomfort. This is why many Indian records are feats of endurance or body modification, such as “longest fingernails” or “most time spent standing on one leg”, rather than exercises of athleticism or brilliance. The Indian state itself isn’t immune to the same tendencies. For example, the sociologist Shiv Visvanathan has written that the state uses such records to replace complex historical narratives with crude statistics. Thus we have a prime minister focusing on the number of people simultaneously doing yoga rather than engaging with its philosophy in any meaningful sense. The Union health ministry advanced a similarly [pathetic claim](https://science.thewire.in/health/when-modi-celebrates-100-crore-doses-mark-what-does-he-want-to-forget/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) during the COVID-19 pandemic when it said it was conducting the “world's largest vaccination drive”, betraying its real design: to create a spectacle to unify the mob and to project an image of power and efficiency to mask infrastructural and social weaknesses. Of course when the people themselves take advantage of their numbers to set records, it’s just quaintly saddening. As Samanth Subramanian reported for [*The New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/magazine/why-is-india-so-crazy-for-world-records.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2015: > The first time Nikhil Shukla adjudicated a Guinness world record, two million people turned up. Standing on a makeshift dais just before dawn in January 2012, Shukla gazed with bleary, incredulous eyes; he was 28, and he had never seen such a mammoth crowd in his life. Tolls on the national highway from the nearest city, Rajkot, had been suspended to accommodate the traffic, and Shukla had to trudge 20 minutes from his V.I.P. parking spot, squeezing through dense thickets of bodies, to approach the stage. The throng that gathered in this patch of dusty farmland in western India to watch the event came from villages and towns across the district. They had responded to a call from a Gujarati community organization that, with a vague aim of promoting public harmony, wanted people to pair off and shake hands with one another, setting a world record for the most simultaneous handshakes. All this is to say that the Indian affinity for records isn’t benign or innocent but is nurtured by an unresolved postcolonial identity that still looks to the West, or Western ideals, to certify its own reality. In this universe the Indian citizen resorts to obscure feats of endurance as a desperate attempt to become visible even as an increasingly authoritarian state exploits this pathos to its own ends. As for what Sohan Rai is going to attempt: he's bypassing the elite barriers to the space programme, since he can’t yet be an astronaut himself; he's internalised the state’s performance of power by enacting in miniature the quest for legitimacy using gigantism (thus rendering himself very visible in the process); and by attaching an altitude number to the hoist he's seeking to convert the abstract sentiment of national pride into an empirical ‘truth’ that can be recorded. Sure, there are some reasons to be optimistic: in the course of attempting this record, Rai will (I assume) step beyond simply enduring discomfort and solve important problems in atmospheric physics, telemetry, the behaviour of materials in the stratosphere, and so on. The problem is I’m not sure what all that could amount to other than also legitimising the state’s own devices to distract the people from their anxieties. ### Normalising deviance URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/17/normalising-deviance/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:21.000Z When a rocket launches, we usually only care about one thing: did it work? We cheer if it reaches orbit and we gasp if it doesn’t. The French philosopher Bruno Latour called this "black boxing" because when a machine is successful we stop looking at its complex inner parts, we just see an input, which is the launch, and then a satellite in orbit. The box becomes [sealed by its own success](https://rootprivileges.net/2015/07/19/of-small-steps-and-giant-leaps-of-collective-imagination/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But Latour also found that a black box must crack open when things break: when a car stalls you need to open the hood. You can no longer ignore the engine and figure it out by working on the chassis. ISRO has yet to release the Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) report for the PSLV-C61 mission. For PSLV-C62, a short statement on its website says "a detailed analysis has been initiated"; I'm not sure if this is the same as a new FAC. If the organisation is opening the "black box" only for itself, investigating failures internally while keeping the results secret from the public and independent peers, it’s falling into a trap Latour expected: that objectivity doesn't come from a single person or a single agency looking really hard at a problem but from having as many different people as possible, with different viewpoints and biases, looking at it. For years, NASA engineers knew that foam insulation was falling off the external fuel tank and hitting the Space Shuttle. They looked at it constantly and they analysed it. They did open the hood but they also only talked to each other, and in the process they managed to convince themselves it wasn't a safety risk. The American sociologist Diane Vaughan called this the ‘normalisation of deviance’: when small departures from conservative practice become routine because of the idea that “nothing bad happened last time”. If they’d released those internal reports to external aerodynamicists or independent safety boards before Columbia lifted off, they likely wouldn’t have had the disaster they did. Today ISRO risks the same ‘normalisation of deviance’: without external eyes to challenge its assumptions, its experts are at risk of convincing themselves that a recurring PS3 stage glitch is manageable — right up until it isn't. Latour also often spoke of the ‘parliament of things’, the idea that technologies like rockets are part of our political and social world rather than simply being technical objects. If ISRO solves the problem internally, it might fix the specific valve or sensor or whatever but it won’t fix the institutional pressure that caused the quality control to slip in the first place. Only public scrutiny, i.e. the assembly of MPs and citizens asking irritating questions like "why?", can force an agency to fix its hardware as well as its culture. Then we have institutional memory as well: when you fix a problem in secret you’re also withholding the lessons you’ve learnt from young engineers. Public reports are effectively a permanent, searchable archive of mistakes. In the 1979 book *Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts* he coauthored with the British sociologist Steve Woolgar, Latour defined an “inscription” as any visual display produced by a lab setup, no matter how large or expensive, whose final output is a piece of visual information. For instance, a bioassay might start by pipetting chemicals and shaking tubes but it ends with a sheet of paper with numbers or a jagged line on a graph. That paper is the inscription. And at this point the scientists discard the physical substances (the chemical compounds) and retain the inscription. According to Latour, science is almost never a single ‘eureka!’ and almost always a series of inscriptions. This narrative is useful to understand that objectivity in science is often a myth: because scientists don’t just passively observe nature but are writers and craftworkers in their own right and draw on the corresponding skills to make sense of nature. A statement becomes a ‘fact’ only when the inscriptions supporting it are so clear and numerous, so that dissenting voices are silenced, and to challenge a fact you need to produce counter-inscriptions of a similar or greater calibre. But when there’s no inscription, when the FAC reports are invisible, what do you challenge if you need to? How do you achieve progress in a rational way? The Soviet Union’s N1 rocket was its equivalent of the USA’s Saturn V, designed to take cosmonauts to the moon. And it failed all four times it launched. An important reason was that, for all its other successes, the Soviet space programme was a sealed box. There was no independent press to ask why the rocket’s engines were exploding and no parliamentary questions about safety protocols — and inside this Matrioshka doll of secrecy its engineers were paralysed by political pressure. When data showed the rocket had a high probability of failure, managers simply massaged the numbers to please the Kremlin. And because the [failures were state secrets](https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0704secret/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the collective intelligence of the scientific community was never brought to bear on the problem. Look at NASA’s Challenger disaster in 1986 on the other hand, which was also a tragedy born of a political pressure to launch at all costs. NASA managers had ignored warnings from engineers about the Space Shuttle’s O-rings failing in cold weather; they had, as with Columbia but 17 years earlier, normalised deviance and had accepted small failures right up until they added up to a big one. After the explosion the American system forced the black box open and the Rogers Commission identified the technical fault as well as interrogated the institutional culture. And by publicly airing these concerns — including ‘letting’ [Richard Feynman](https://rootprivileges.net/2019/10/01/unseating-feynman-and-fermi/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) dip an O-ring in ice water on live TV to prove a point — NASA was humiliated, yes, but it was also saved. The scrutiny forced it to rebuild its safety protocols, recover public trust, and allow an object as complex as the Space Shuttle to return to flight, until Columbia revealed this turnaround to have been incomplete. Because the Soviet state kept the failures of its N1 missions to the moon a secret, future Russian engineers couldn't fully study those specific failures in open academic literature. On the other hand NASA's failures are effectively public textbooks, with engineers in India, Europe, and China today studying its failure reports even today to avoid making the same mistakes. Likewise by hiding the PSLV-C61 report, and the PSLV-C39 FAC report and other reports of a similar nature, ISRO isn't just hurting itself: it's hurting the global knowledge base of rocketry. And like the Soviet Union of yore and unlike NASA in the late 1980s and the early 2000s, by shielding its findings from criticism, ISRO is ensuring its solutions are weak and at risk of failing again. If ISRO engineers know a failure will be hushed up to protect the prime minister’s image, they may be less likely to speak up about a faulty sensor or a cracked nozzle. If people can’t ask why the PS3 stage failed the pressure to fix it is essentially replaced by the pressure to just "make it look good" for the next launch. In the end by closing itself off ISRO risks becoming a fragile institution. It treats its rockets as matters of fact — unquestionable symbols of national pride — rather than as matters of concern, complex machines that need honest and sometimes harsh public maintenance. There’s a reason transparency is one of the ingredients of good engineering. ### String theory and reconciliations URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/15/string-theory-and-reconciliations/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:22.000Z According to particle physics, the fundamental building blocks of the universe are point-like particles, essentially small dots of energy with no dimension. String theory posits that these dots are actually minuscule vibrating loops of energy. A violin string vibrating at different frequencies produces different musical notes; similarly these filaments are said to be able to vibrate at different frequencies, each one creating a different particle of our universe. One note is an electron, another is a photon, and so on. String theory hasn’t been proven — it hasn’t made any testable predictions so far, in fact. Yet it exists because scientists are looking for a ‘theory of everything’: a single theory that can explain both gravity and quantum physics. At present these two theories together explain their particular domains very well but scientists don’t know how they fit together. String theory is one of a few theory programmes trying to reconcile them; others include loop quantum gravity and twistor theory. On January 7, scientists from Hungary, Israel, and the US published a [curious paper in *Nature*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09784-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Stumped by the complex shapes of neurons, they reportedly found a solution in some arcane equations in string theory and, according to them, the equations also describe how blood vessels and neurons branch. If you were an engineer designing the wiring for a brain or a vascular system, you’d probably try to save money by using the least amount of wire possible. For a long time, biologists assumed nature ‘thought’ the same way. According to this paper, however, it doesn’t, at least not necessarily. The researchers analysed high-resolution 3D scans of neurons, blood vessels, and fungi and showed that biological networks don't care about minimising length but about minimising surface area. And to figure out the complex geometry of how these tubelike structures connect, the researchers borrowed the maths of interacting strings. The scientific method says that if you can’t prove something with an experiment, it isn’t science. The problem for string theory is that it describes a part of space so small and so fleeting that no machine we can currently build could ever study it. Yet many physicists have stuck with it because, even though it remains entirely mathematical, they’ve glimpsed deep connections between its equations and structures and other branches of mathematics and physics. According to the physicists these connections are signs that string theory contains ‘truths’ worth exploring more and due to which it can’t simply be dismissed out of hand. On the other hand we also have scientists like [Peter Woit](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) who have lamented, repeatedly, that string theory is a dead-end, that despite all of its mathematical elegance and structure the fact that it hasn’t made a testable prediction, and doesn’t seem like it will for the foreseeable future, it’s been a drain on physicists’ time and intelligence. Over the years however, neither side has been able to persuade or dissuade the other, and today many criticisms have hardened into denial and vitriol. Stockholm University philosopher Richard Dawid published a provocative book in 2013 that, despite its seemingly reconciliatory premise, entrenched these divisions. In the text, titled *String Theory and the Scientific Method*, based on a small conference he’d conducted a short while earlier, Dawid argued that the history of science is witness to a revolution in how scientific truth can be redefined. (American philosopher and biologist [Massimo Pigliucci’s essay](https://aeon.co/essays/the-string-theory-wars-show-us-how-science-needs-philosophy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Aeon* on the conference and how philosophy can help with science’s demarcation problem is also worth a read.) He proposed that in the absence of empirical data, experts must rely on non-empirical evidence, like the sheer mathematical elegance of a theory or the fact that no one can find a better alternative. That is, he seemed to say, a theory could be true because it’s too 'good' to be wrong. I’m partial to criticisms of the book, especially those advanced by George Ellis, Joe Silk, Sabine Hossenfelder, and Carlo Rovelli, rather than the book itself. Ellis andSilk, both cosmologists, argued that Dawid’s push for “non-empirical theory assessment” (which he prefers to "post-empirical science”) is dangerous for suggesting that a theory can be validated by its ‘elegance’ or its power to explain something *post facto*. The danger here is that if you move these goalposts you also let in pseudoscience. Hossenfelder, a physicist, took aim at Dawid’s argument that string theory must be true because scientists haven't found another option that’s equally good. According to her, claiming there are no alternatives is a sociological observation rather than scientific proof, i.e. that scientists can’t imagine an alternative today doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. It may simply be a lack of imagination, of funding for rival approaches or even of groupthink within the academic community. Third, Rovelli, also a physicist and a cofounder of loop quantum gravity, argued that the history of science is littered with beautiful, mathematically coherent theories that turned out to be wrong. He also posited that Dawid’s "unexpected explanatory coherence", i.e. when a theory solves problems it wasn't built to solve, is often a result of confirmation bias and that once a community is deeply invested in a mathematical framework, it will inevitably find internal connections that look ‘miraculous’ but have no bearing on physical reality. Hossenfelder’s and Rovelli’s criticisms also help to see the problems with using the new *Nature* paper to claim it verifies or legitimises the pursuit of string theory in any meaningful way. Its authors show that the mathematics of string theory handles problems in which you need to minimise the surface area very well, but this shouldn’t be surprising, as Rovelli has argued. Complex maths is often useful in disparate fields but just because calculus describes both the orbit of planets and the marginal cost of gizmos doesn’t mean gravity holds the economy together. Similarly, that string theory describes the branching of neurons doesn’t mean the universe is fundamentally made of vibrating strings. The only way to know the latter is if the theory unifies the principles of quantum mechanics with gravity and makes a testable prediction. The paper’s authors themselves, while taking care to temper their claims regarding the physical reality of string theory, have also expressed optimism about its mathematical necessity. They’ve called their finding a "formal mapping between surface minimisation and high-dimensional Feynman diagrams” and say they’re taking "advantage of a well-developed string-theoretical toolset". They also clarify that they’re removing the fundamental physical properties usually associated with string theory as a ‘theory of everything’ and instead treating the matter at hand as a very difficult geometry problem. Then, however, they strongly imply that the mathematics of string theory is essential to solving this problem. Now, is it possible to reconcile the (demonstrated) usefulness of the string theory toolkit with Rovelli’s and Hossenfelder’s criticisms? Specifically, setting aside for a moment the fact that the new study treats the maths of string theory as a toolkit: while solving the problem doesn’t ‘prove’ string theory in any meaningful way, how does one reconcile the notion that string theorists indeed developed this mathematical toolkit with Rovelli’s criticism? Is it possible to argue that only string theory could have discovered this toolkit despite Hossenfelder’s criticisms or is it possible to conclude in a reasonable way that we simply use the complex mathematics and discard the rest? I think this entails distinguishing between the mathematical machinery and the physical claims. Rovelli’s position isn’t that string theory mathematics are ‘wrong’ or ‘useless’ but rather that internal consistency and mathematical elegance alone don’t constitute empirical proof of quantum gravity. So the fact that string theorists developed a toolkit that can solve problems in biology doesn’t contradict Rovelli, in fact it arguably supports his view that string theory has become a rich mathematical framework. The act of reconciliation lies here in accepting that string theorists spent decades exploring the geometry of interacting surfaces (which they call “worldsheets”). Second, vis-à-vis Hossenfelder’s pushback to Dawid’s argument that there are no equally good alternatives to string theory, it also seems physically as well as historically risky to argue that only string theory could have discovered these tools. A mathematician focusing purely on topology or differential geometry could likely have arrived at similar tools without positing 10 dimensions or supersymmetry. In this sense string theory has simply been a historical catalyst, an ‘engine’ that seems to have accelerated humans’ approach to the toolkit that they subsequently used to solve a particular problem in brain biology. I’m generally wary of non-empirical assertions, so perhaps a scientifically robust position for me to take is the instrumentalist rather than the realist view: i.e. to conclude we can use the mathematics and discard the physical dogma. This way I retain the formalism, which is the calculus of optimising 3D surfaces, because it works for the data, while rejecting the ontology, i.e. the idea that the universe is fundamentally composed of strings. ### Out there: using a moon to spot dark matter URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/11/out-there-using-a-moon-to-spot-dark-matter/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:23.000Z The search for dark matter, the invisible ‘glue’ that holds galaxies together, has long focused solely on subatomic particles and this could be a mistake if a new study [*Physical Review D*](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/d92d-9jwz?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is to be believed. Its sole author, William DeRocco, a postdoctoral scholar at the Maryland Centre for Fundamental Physics at the University of Maryland, has proposed that dark matter could exist as “macroscopic" objects and the best place to find evidence of them might be — get this — the surface of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede. Most scientific experiments look for less-than-microscopic dark matter particles. Yet there’s a large gap in scientists’ knowledge regarding dark matter 'composites' that weigh between 1011 and 1017 grams, roughly the mass of a large mountain. Because these objects would be very rare, scientists will need a detector that’s both enormous and has been operating for billions of years. According to DeRocco, Ganymede fits this description perfectly. It’s larger than the planet Mercury and has a surface that has remained largely unchanged for more than 2 billion years. Unlike Earth, which has weather and tectonic plates that erase impact craters, Ganymede still bears signs of almost every meteor that has slammed into it, so its surface is like a geological history book. In the study DeRocco used a computer program called iSALE to simulate what happens when a piece of macroscopic dark matter hits an icy moon. Traditional asteroids are relatively fragile. When they collide with a planetary body like Ganymede, they explode and leave behind a bowl-shaped crater. Macroscopic dark matter on the other hand would be extremely dense, potentially as dense as an atomic nucleus (which is around 100 trillion times more dense than liquid water). And DeRocco found that instead of exploding, these objects would act like a cosmic needle, punching a deep "borehole" through Ganymede’s 12-km-thick outer ice shell. The iSALE simulations thus revealed a unique signature that could help scientists distinguish a dark matter strike from a normal asteroid. High-speed dark matter, travelling at about 270 km/s, would easily pierce the conductive ice crust. As the hole later collapses under the moon's gravity, it will throw up a jet of liquid water and slush from the deep subsurface. This jet could ultimately bring up material from Ganymede’s subsurface ocean, such as mineral salts, and deposit them on the surface. The result would be a relatively small crater, no wider than 10 km, surrounded by a large quantity of material with a chemical composition unlike the rest of the surface ice. That the study has been published now isn’t incidental: the spacecraft of two major missions, NASA Europa Clipper and ESA JUICE, are currently *en route* to Jupiter. Both missions carry high-resolution infrared cameras and radar capable of penetrating ice. While their primary goal is to search for signs of life, DeRocco’s study suggests they could also help look for dark matter composites. University of Cantabria, Spain, astrophysicist Bradley Kavanaugh told [*New Scientist*](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2492767-jupiters-moon-ganymede-could-be-a-giant-dark-matter-detector/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that DeRocco’s idea is promising if also there’s no evidence yet that dark matter composites of the sort that Ganymede could ‘detect’ exist: “It’s more about trying to look at all the possibilities. I would say these are quite exotic objects. They’re incredibly dense and would be held together by very strong forces in some dark sector.” Indeed, considering scientists are pretty sure dark matter exists even as empirical evidence of the substance remains out of reach, it may not be a bad idea to follow up on bold ideas — more so if the instruments it needs are already on the way. *Featured image: A view of an equatorial region of Ganymede (between 57 N and 57 S). Credit: USGS.* ### Savouring playtime URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2026/01/02/savouring-playtime/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:24.000Z Daily writing promptDo you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you? ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/70c32ed68d22382e283ce5f0758456a03a3ea7998a372db0615cddb2632e49a4?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/104d4d93bbb2f90dd5f18c5409f561e2d92ee12f059b64bca9213c3826ee99f2?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b7527159f29ba548c24e64dcafdf45b9fa62648cd1374c4e381ef56f39bfdad2?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-1805?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I work in an office with many lovely and smart people and I find engaging them in conversation is playtime. It's a social activity, almost always enlivening, and I (and hopefully we all) get to feel better at the end. I also maintain a small suite of games on my phone, including all the editions of 'Kingdom Rush' and 'Monument Valley', plus 'Bejeweled'. On my laptop I've got 'Factorio', which I've been playing for many years now. I also (try to) bike for 10 km every morning and of late I've come to appreciate that the activity takes me away from a screen and all thoughts about my work for that duration. Two of the few other times when I get to get away like that is during my trips to and from work, 30 minutes each way, and when I run errands at home. Given how hectic my job often is — even though I enjoy doing it — all these other diversions have come to seem like playtime as well. I should also say that I like teaching myself ideas in physics, and it's playtime when I discover a new scientific paper or concept that catches my imagination in some way, and I get to explaining it to myself by writing about it. And as I do that, it feels very rewarding when I figure something out for the first time after a long time and doubly so if I'm able to write it in a way that is accurate as well as narratively non-clumsy. I daresay it's been something to live for. ### My political views URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/27/my-political-views/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:25.000Z Daily writing promptHow have your political views changed over time? ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/67df7fdf202cbb75453b30bfddc614f9f9db2f5ef32415bcbd4799cd998a8177?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b53f1544d0dc93ac4d9ded31d357131b6dabbdccb2497d09efc184ab9eec8df9?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3858c6430004d51c96b51250325c8687a0385f67d398333cd127b6ba7f48dcc6?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2166?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) When I first had any views at all, I think I was in the second year of my engineering studies, in 2007, and decided I was a right-winger. Of course I understood very little of what that meant at the time, but I had some inkling. Among other things my and my fellow students' education at the time repeatedly told us that the state was too slow at getting things done, that what was possible (according to engineers) was far ahead of what the people on the ground actually got, and that we had to prize private innovation. And of course that getting rich was a completely innocent and harmless desire. We neither had nor received much social grounding: work was work, and we excelled if we did as we were told, with the only difference between ourselves being how well we did those things. The situation actually really changed for me when I joined the Asian College of Journalism in 2012, where the political environment was almost entirely the opposite, with leftist and more (in hindsight) progressive ideas doing the rounds. But more than the school itself, I made a friend there who put me in touch with [Thomas](https://thomasmanuel.com/about?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the local writers' group he'd co-founded, Them Pretentious Basterds. They were a wonderful lot. More than persuade me to change my political beliefs, I credit them with teaching me to think intelligently about political issues. As with ACJ, they were also ideologically closely aligned but all of them were fervent debaters, too, on matters both trivial and significant. Since then, I think I haven't associated myself with any one particular ideology. If you really pushed me, though, I'd probably say I'm a social democrat. In case it matters, here are my positions in full: 1\. Economically, I'm left of centre. I don't trust markets more than the state. I wish to curb corporate power, tax the richest most, strengthen labour protections, and protect local industry. I do think privatisation can improve quality but not in education or healthcare. 2\. I want state-guaranteed healthcare, largely state-funded education, and am okay with inequality only if there’s also perfect social mobility. I support cash transfers to the poor and heavy subsidies for essentials. 3\. I want a neutral, non-privileging state on religion, reject legal enforcement of traditional gender/family roles, and support affirmative action, robust free speech with reasonable limits, strong protections for migrants, and full LGBTQ+ rights. 4\. I believe traditions have some legitimate legal weight but only within a framework that's otherwise very protective of individual rights. 5\. I don’t want environmental rules to be relaxed to accommodate economic growth and I expect rich countries to do more. At the same time, I'm willing to prioritise better access to energy even if it means using more fossil fuels for now. I moderately support curbs on individual consumption. I reject carbon pricing as a tool of climate change mitigation. 6\. I'm against harsh punishments and the death penalty. I think national security laws and pre-trial detention are overused. I'm very much in favour of protests and strongly opposed to internet or social-media shutdowns for the state to maintain 'order'. 7\. I'm somewhat open to expanded powers of surveillance. However, I want well-defined and well-articulated limits and strong civil rights. I'm wary of the state policing content. 8\. I want courts and regulators to be able to block or reshape government decisions and prefer slow consensus over muscular leaders. I favour strict limits on how political parties can raise and use money, with complete and timely transparency. I want public media to be insulated from both state and corporate capture and support decentralisation to states or cities. I'm moderately confident that elections reflect the popular will. 9\. I want international law and multilateral bodies to meaningfully constrain states. I favour heavy public investments in science and digital infrastructure and strong regulation of technology companies, especially on matters of user data and platform use. 10\. I want intellectual property rights to be relaxed for medicines, green technologies, and basic knowledge goods. All this said, I still fondly remember what a troll on Twitter once called me: "a Marxist in the garb of a science educator". Recently, when India's prime minister's office decided to feature the country's new Chenab railway bridge in Jammu and Kashmir on its invitation cards for Independence Day 2025, I [wrote in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nationalism-as-spectacle/article69919535.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the political ideas embedded in the practice of (civil and mechanical) engineering, especially of the uncritical variety, i.e. one the country's middle class has famously exercised for several decades now as a means of class mobility alone. In the process, however, right-wing ideologies have come to see in the profession a secular ideal exemplified by its exponents sticking to doing as they're told. ### Heat capacity URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/26/heat-capacity/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:25.000Z Someone asked me recently to name the thing I've been most grateful for in 2025. After giving it some thought, I realised it had to be the heat capacity of water. And not just for 2025. Tea is my warm beverage of choice, and my favourite version is with Tata tea leaves, lots of water, an ampoule of milk (just to absorb the tannins), crushed ginger, and a certain brand of chai masala. The heat capacity of water is 4,184 joules per kilogram per centigrade. This means you need to supply 4,184 joules to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1º C. It's why water takes quite a bit of time to come to a boil on the stove. Most of us just don't notice because we rarely have to bother with bringing other things to a boil. If we did, we'd probably see them become hotter much faster. Things with a lower heat capacity include coconut oil, neon, aluminium, diamond, and uranium. (Please don't try boiling any of them at home.) All that water makes a big difference to when I can have my tea. I can brew it when I feel like, pour it into a mug and close it with a plate, finish my shower, dry off, and come pick it up. It'll still be just as hot. I can feel its fervent warmth seep slowly into my palms when I hold the mug on a cold morning. I can make a mugful and savour it over half an hour as I think, and it'll be almost at its hottest throughout. Of course, anything else with that much water — including coffee — will take its time cooling down. But for me that kind of heat and persistence have become synonymous with tea. I don't find it with anything else I consume as regularly. My tea lasts a long time. It waits for me to finish making my point between sips. It doesn't interrupt. It reminds me of my current pair of jeans pants. They're 13 years old. I bought them when I graduated from journalism school. Save for a small tear at the bottom of the right leg, they're in perfect condition. I used the pair before them for six years. Like these jeans, my tea reminds me to consume well, efficiently, to make sure things last for as long as they can be made to be. It allows me to make my point, yes, but it also teaches me to take it slow, to think things through. For 2026, I wish us both lots of good tea. ### Joel Mokyr, Gita Chadha, Lawrence Krauss, Joseph Vijay URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/15/joel-mokyr-gita-chadha-lawrence-krauss-joseph-vijay/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:27.000Z All that thinking [about Joel Mokyr](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/12/14/mokyr-hearts-nobel-prizes/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and his prescription to support society’s intellectual elite in order to ensure technological progress took me back to a talk [Gita Chadha delivered](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7g9ZTZ7MNw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2020, and to a dilemma I’d had at the time involving Lawrence Krauss. Chadha’s proposed resolution to it could in fact settle another matter I’ve been considering of late, involving Tamil actor-politician Joseph Vijay. But first a recap. Gita Chadha is a sociologist and author, a professor at Azim Premji University, and an honorary senior fellow at the NCBS Archives. Her 2020 talk was titled ‘Exploring the idea of ‘Scientific Genius’ and its consequences’. Lawrence M. Krauss is a cosmologist, sceptic, and author, former chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an alleged sexual predator, and a known associate (and defender) of convicted child-sex offender [Jeffrey Epstein](https://rootprivileges.net/2020/01/13/necessity-and-sufficiency/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In 2020 he was a year away from publishing a book entitled *The Physics of Climate Change*, combining two topics of great interest to me, but I [wasn’t sure if I should read it](https://rootprivileges.net/2020/07/23/to-read-or-not-a-bad-mans-book/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). On the one hand there was the wisdom about separating the scholarship from the scholar but on the other I didn’t want to fill out Krauss’s wallet — or that of his publisher, who was trading on Krauss’s reputation — nor heighten the relevance of his book. Finally, I’ve been thinking about Vijay more than I might’ve been if not for my friend, who’s a fan of Vijay the actor but not the politician. Whenever I express displeasure over her support for Vijay’s acting, she asks me to separate his films from Vijay the person, and politician. I haven’t been convinced. Is Vijay a good actor? I, like my friend, think so. My opinion of Vijay the politician declined however following the [crowding disaster in Karur](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/karur-stampede-anatomy-of-the-tragedy-at-vijays-tvk-rally-in-tamil-nadu/article70103198.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 27: while his party’s cadre whipped up a crowd whose size greatly exceeded what the location could safely hold, Vijay made a bad situation worse by first insisting on conducting a roadshow and then arriving late. Today, I firmly believe separating the work from the person doesn’t make sense when the work itself produces the person’s power. I first realised this when contemplating Krauss. When I asked during her talk about how we can separate the scholarship from the scholar, Chadha among other things said, “We need to critically start engaging with how the social location of a scholar impacts the kind of work that they do.” Her point was that, rather than consider whether knowledge remains usable once the person who originated it is revealed to have been unethical, we must remember prestige is never innocent: because it changes what institutions and audiences are prepared to excuse. Broadly speaking, when society puts specific academics “on pedestals”, their eminence and the grant money they bring in become ways to excuse their harm. This is how [people like Krauss](https://newrepublic.com/article/147463/sexism-genius-death-stephen-hawking?ref=slightlyacidic.com) were able to conduct themselves the way they did. Their work wasn’t just their contribution to the scientific knowledge of all humankind; it was also the reason for their universities to close ranks around them, in ways that the individuals also condoned, until the allegations became too inconvenient to ignore. The scholar benefited from *what* the scholarship was and the scholarship benefited from *who* the scholar was. So a good response isn’t to pretend that it’s possible to cleanly separate the art from the artist but to pay attention to how the work builds social capital for the individual and to keep the individual — and the institutions within which they operate — from wielding that capital as a shield. Thus we must scrutinise Krauss, we must scrutinise his defenders, and we must ask ourselves why we uphold his scholarship above [that of others](https://rootprivileges.net/2020/07/10/caste-and-sciences-notability-threshold/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). (Note: We don’t *have* to read Krauss’s books, however. This is different from, say, the fact that we *have* to use Feynman diagrams in theoretical physics even as Richard Feynman was [a misogynist and a creep](https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-feynman-mcneill?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It doesn’t have to be one at the expense of the other; it can, and perhaps should, be both. I myself eventually decided to not read Krauss’s book: not because he defended Epstein but because I wanted to spend that time and attention on something completely new to me. I asked some friends for recommendations and that’s how I read *When the Whales Leave* by Yuri Rytkheu.) The same rationale also clarified the problem I’d had with my friend’s suggestion that I separate Vijay’s work as an actor from Vijay himself. For starters: sure, an actor can play a role well and thus be deemed a good actor, but I think the sort of roles they pick to the exclusion of others ought to matter just as well to their reputation. And the parts he’s picked to play over the last decade or so have all been those of preachy alpha-males touting conservative views of women’s reproductive rights, male attitudes towards women, and retributive justice, among others. It’s also no coincidence that these morals genuflect smoothly to the pro-populist parts of his political messaging. Similarly, Vijay’s alpha-male roles that I dislike aren’t just fictions: they’re part of the public persona that Vijay has deliberately converted into his newfound political authority. Once a ‘star’ enters electoral politics, “watching for entertainment” is hard to separate from participating in and enabling a machinery that’s generating legitimacy for the ‘star’. The tickets sold, the number of streams, the rallies attended, and the number of fans mobilised all help to manufacture the claim that Vijay has a mandate at all. As with Krauss, participation increased, and continues to increase, material power and relevance as well as paves the way [to claim](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Tiruchirapalli/karur-stampede-at-vijays-rally-was-a-result-of-a-conspiracy-alleges-tvk/article70321663.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [probably receive](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/flawed-order-on-the-transfer-of-the-karur-case-to-the-cbi/article70163617.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) immunity from the consequences of inflicting social harm. But where the case of Vijay diverges from that of Krauss is that the former presents much less of a dilemma. When a person goes from cinema to electoral politics, separating their work from their personal identity is practically indefensible because the political leader himself is the vehicle of the power that he has cultivated through his film work. That is to say, the art and the artist are the same entity because the art fuels the artist’s social standing and the artist’s social standing fuels his particular kind of art. ### Mokyr hearts Nobel Prizes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/14/mokyr-hearts-nobel-prizes/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:27.000Z I don’t like Joel Mokyr’s history of progress and [have written about that](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/10/14/a-bad-nobel-for-mokyr/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) before. I also have a longer analysis and explanation of my issues coming soon in *The Hindu*. On December 8 I got more occasion to critique his thinking over his Nobel lecture in Stockholm, after receiving the prize that applied to his inchoate history of European Enlightenment a sheen of credibility I (and others) don’t think it deserves. In his lecture (transcribed in full [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NGHdDIzxpRO4M-kC0k7GnnA9C7oksglv%5FfgOYucTTBk/edit?usp=sharing&ref=slightlyacidic.com)), Mokyr said: > I have argued at great length that these four conditions \[incentives for elite innovators; a competitive “market for ideas”; talented people having the freedom to go where they like; a somewhat ‘activist state’\] held increasingly in Europe between 1450 and 1750, the three centuries leading up to the industrial revolution. That is the kind of environment that led increasingly to incredibly creative innovative people: Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, James Watt, Adam Smith, Antoine Lavoisier, and Leonhard Euler, \[something indecipherable\], Ludwig van Beethoven. These are all people who came up with brand new ideas in an environment that supported them, if not perfectly at least far better than anything in the past. > > The question is: do these conditions hold today? I would put it this way: the incentives in propositional knowledge in science are still there and they're stronger and larger and more pervasive than ever. The market for ideas today provides unprecedented rewards and incentives to successful intellectual innovators, particularly in science. We have hundreds of thousands of people who work in intellectual endeavours, most of them (but not all) in universities. So what we do is we offer them what most of these people need more than anything else, which is financial security, which is tenure and of course in research institutions you get things like named chairs. Then we have rewards and of course there's a whole pyramid of rewards at which the Nobel Prize and the Abel Prize presumably stand at the very peak, but there are many many other rewards, memberships in academies, and prizes for the best papers and the best books, and honorary degrees. > > The funny thing is these incentives are cheap relative to the benefits that these people bestow on humankind, and that is I think a critical thing. Of course, in addition to all that there's name recognition, fame through mass media, and, perhaps most important, these things lead to peer recognition: many academics really want to be respected by their peers, by other people like themselves, and of course in addition for a very few you know there's lots of money to be made if they work in the right fields and get it right. Now, most of these incentives were already noticeable in about 1500, but in some ways the 20th century has done far better than anybody before. In short Joel Mokyr treats rewards like the Nobel Prize to be a low-cost "pyramid" of incentives that helps the "upper tail" of society generate ideas. However the Nobel Prizes aren’t only incentives for innovation: they also exemplify how modern societies manage credit and legitimacy, which are examples of social relations, in ways that shape what innovation looks like and who benefits. The irony here is thus that the Nobel Prizes are part of the same system of social relations he underplays in his theory of progress — and a good example of his blindspot vis-à-vis the history of Europe’s progress. According to Mokyr, ideas originate in the minds of an intellectual elite — his "upper tail" of society — and society’s job is to reward them. The diffusion of ideas is secondary in his framing. However, scientists, social science scholars, and historians of science have all critiqued the fact that the Nobel Prizes systematically individualise what’s almost always distributed work and sideline the science labour of laboratory managers, technicians, makers of instruments, graduate students, maintenance staff, supply chains, and of course state procurement. The Prizes advance a picture of "elite incentives" working to advance science when in fact it’s predicated equally, if not more, on questions of status and hierarchy, particularly on admission, patronage, language, funding, and geopolitics. And in their turn the Prizes impose inefficiencies of their own. As we’ve seen before with the [story of Brian Keating](https://rootprivileges.net/2018/05/02/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), they can reorganise research agendas — and more broadly they fetishise problems in science that can be solved and easily be verified to have been solved by a small number of people ‘first’. Later in his lecture Mokyr further says: > … when technology changes, institutions have to adapt in various ways, and the problem is that they are usually slow to adapt. It takes decades until various parliamentary committees and political forces agree that some form of regulation or some form of control is necessary. And what evolutionary theory suggests is that adaptation to a changing environment is quite possible provided the changes in the technological environment are not too fast and not too abrupt. A sudden discontinuous shock will lead to mass extinctions and catastrophe; we know this is true from evolutionary history. > > So there's some concern that the acceleration in the rate of technological change in recent decades cannot be matched by institutional adaptation. What's more, the acceleration implied by the last 10 years’ advances in AI and similar fields \[suggests where\] this is going to be a problem. Certain technological inventions have led to political polarisations, through social media for instance. This is something we haven't fully solved and it's not clear that we will be able to. TL;DR: technology often advances faster than institutions adapt and politics, misinformation, nationalism, and xenophobia threaten the conditions for progress. But then wouldn’t this mean then that incentives for the elites are the easy part? That is, Nobel Prizes or other incentives like them don’t fix these problems, in fact they may even distract from them by implying the main thing is to simply [keep "geniuses" motivated](https://rootprivileges.net/2022/07/17/should-geniuses-be-paid-extra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Tracking down energetic cosmic rays URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/13/tracking-down-energetic-cosmic-rays/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:30.000Z Once in a while, nature runs experiments that no human lab can match. Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are a good example. Cosmic rays are fast, high energy particles from space that strike Earth’s atmosphere with energies far beyond what even the most powerful particle accelerators can routinely create. Most particles are the nuclei of atoms such as hydrogen or helium and a smaller fraction are electrons. When a cosmic-ray particle hits the atmosphere, it triggers a large 'shower' of particles spread over many square-kilometres. (One such shower may have caused a serious error in a computer onboard an Airbus A320 aircraft [on October 30](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251201-how-cosmic-rays-grounded-thousands-of-aircraft?ref=slightlyacidic.com), causing it to suddenly drop 100 feet, injuring several people onboard.) By observing and measuring these showers, scientists hope to probe two big questions at once: what kinds of cosmic events accelerate matter to such extreme energies, and what happens to particle interactions at energies we can’t otherwise test. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina is one of the world’s main instruments for this work. Its latest results, published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/p4l5-hxlf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on December 9, focus on a curiously simple idea: does the energy spectrum of these cosmic rays — i.e. how many particles arrive at each energy — look the same from every direction of the sky? In the new study, the Pierre Auger Collaboration analysed data with three notable features. First, the Observatory recorded the spectrum above 2.5 EeV. One EeV is 1018 electron-volt (eV), a unit of energy applied to subatomic particles. Second, it recorded this spectrum across a wide declination range, from +44.8º to −90º. In this range, +90º is the celestial north pole and –90º is the celestial south pole. And third, the analysis included around 3.1 lakh events collected between 2004 and 2022. The direction in which a cosmic ray is coming from carries information about its origins. If, say, a handful of galaxies or starburst regions are responsible for the highest energy cosmic rays, then the spectrum should show a bump in that part from the sky, and nowhere else. Understanding the direction from which the most powerful cosmic rays come has become more important since the Collaboration found evidence before that these directions aren’t perfectly uniform. Above 8 EeV, for instance, the Observatory has reported a modest but clear imbalance across the sky. It has also sensed a similarly modest link between extremely energetic cosmic rays and specific parts of space. Against this backdrop, the new study is part of a larger effort to elevate ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from a curiosity into a way to map the location of ‘cosmic accelerators’ in the nearby universe. This is like the trajectory that [neutrino astronomy](https://rootprivileges.net/2025/09/06/challenging-the-neutrino-signal-anomaly/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has taken as well. For much of the 20th century, neutrinos frustrated physicists because they knew the particles were the universe’s second-most abundant, yet they remain extremely difficult to catch and study. Because neutrinos carry no electric charge and interact only weakly with matter, they pass through stars and magnetic fields almost untouched, making them unusually honest witnesses to violent places in the universe. However, physicists could take advantage of that only if they could build suitable detectors. And step by step that’s what happened. Today, experiments like IceCube in Antarctica realise neutrino astronomy: a way to study the universe using neutrinos. (Francis Halzen’s long push for this detector is why he’s been [awarded](https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2025/12/medal-francis-halzen?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the APS Medal for 2026.) Cosmic rays stand on the cusp of a similar opportunity. To this end, the Pierre Auger Collaboration had to find whether the spectrum is dependent or independent of direction. A direction-independent spectrum would push the field towards models in which different types of cosmic sources produce high-energy cosmic rays; a direction-dependent spectrum would do the opposite. The new result was firm: across declinations from −90° to +44.8°, the team didn’t find a meaningful change in the spectrum’s shape. Cosmic ray researchers read the energy spectrum as a sort of forensic record. Over many decades, experiments have shown that the spectrum doesn’t increase smoothly. If you plotted the energy on the graph, in other words, you wouldn’t see a smooth curve. Instead you’d see the curve bending and changing how steep it is in places (see image below). These bumps reflect changes in the sources of cosmic rays, in the chemical makeup of the particles (protons v. nuclei), and how cosmic rays lose energy as they travel intergalactic space before reaching Earth. The Collaboration’s new paper framed its findings in the context of two recent developments. First, above 8 EeV, cosmic rays aren’t arriving in perfectly random directions around Earth. Instead roughly one half of the sky supplies 6% more such cosmic rays. Physicists have interpreted this to mean the distribution is being shaped by large-scale structure in the nearby universe, by magnetic fields or by both. Second, the Collaboration previously identified evidence for an 'instep' feature near 10 EeV. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/ef117-cosmic_ray_flux_versus_particle_energy-svg_-w-853.png) A plot of the cosmic ray flux (y-axis) versus the particles' energy. The red dots show the rough 'locations' of the knee, ankle, and instep, from top to bottom in that order. Credit: Sven Lafebre (CC BY-SA) --- If you look at the energy curve (shown above), you’ll notice a shift in slope at three points. Top to bottom, they’re called the 'knee', the 'ankle', and the 'instep'. At each of these points, physicists believe, the set of physical effects producing the cosmic rays changes. (LHAASO, a large detector array in China built to catch the particle showers made by very energetic gamma rays, [recently reported signs](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927325011211?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that microquasar jets — where a stellar-mass black hole pulls in gas from a companion star and emits fast beams of radiation — could be accelerating cosmic rays to near the knee part of the spectrum.) A spectrum whose shape changes depending on the direction is a way to connect these two aspects. If the instep is due to a small number of nearby, unusually strong sources, you might expect it to show up more strongly in the part of the sky where those sources are located. If the instep is a generic feature produced by many broadly similar sources, it should appear in essentially the same way across the sky (after accounting for the modest unevenness of the dipole). In the new study, the Collaboration tried to make that distinction sharper. The Pierre Auger Observatory detects showers of particles in the atmosphere with an array of water tanks spread over a large area. Showers arriving near-vertically and those arriving at an angle closer to the horizon behave differently because Earth’s magnetic field distorts their paths. So the analysis used different methods to reconstruct the cosmic rays based on their showers for angles up to 60º (vertical) and from 60º to 80º (inclined). Scientists inferred the energy in the rays based on the properties of the particles in the shower. In the declination range −90º and +44.8º, the Observatory found the spectrum didn’t vary significantly with declination, with or without the dipole. In other words, once the Collaboration accounted for the disuniform intensity in the sky, the spectrum’s shape didn’t change depending on the direction. The second major result was the 'instep', with the findings reinforcing previous evidence for this feature. Now, if the instep was mainly caused by a small number of nearby sources, it would be reasonable to expect the spectrum would change depending on the declination. But the study found the spectrum to be indistinguishable across declinations. This in turn, per the Collaboration, disfavours the possibility of a small number of nearby sources contributing ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Instead, the spectrum’s key features could be set by many sources and/or effects acting together. The paper also suggested that the spectrum steepening near the instep could be due to a change in what the cosmic rays are made of: from lighter nuclei like helium to heavier nuclei like carbon and oxygen. If this bend in the curve is really due to a change in the cosmic rays’ composition, rather than in their sources, then cosmic rays coming from all directions should have this feature. And this is what the Pierre Auger Collaboration has reported: the spectrum’s shape doesn’t change by direction. According to the paper’s authors, because the spectrum looks the same in different parts of the sky, the next clues to cracking the mystery of cosmic rays’ origins need to come from tests that measure their composition more clearly, helping to explain the instep. *Featured image: A surface detector tank of the Pierre Auger Observatory in 2007\. Credit: Public domain.* ### Acting and speaking URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/12/acting-and-speaking/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:31.000Z Daily writing promptHave you ever performed on stage or given a speech? ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/ced2402efb5e2dd71ab325d54587a9f41ac2aa5338408f3de93364fa15897049?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a9887081c75931189259ada0311f77c29f1ad55d7b5e9680e1035597203e71ee?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/afd4ff6890fc132ab03fb1445ab7c1a7b4304282d6b3c40b379473eee2e59a3e?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2150?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I performed several times on stage in school, up to when I was 11 years old. I studies for around four years at a school in Tumkur where drama was part of the curriculum. Every year we'd have a playwright come over with a story, usually involving kings and conflict, and they'd cast us for various roles and have us rehearse for months. I was almost always one of the 'extras' but I didn't mind: it was just good to be a part of it. We also got to do a lot of craft work in the process as we prepared the props and materials for the set, often involving bamboo, after school hours. Finally we'd put up a show for the whole town to watch. (Tumkur was a town then!) I still remember we had a particularly great time the year [Velu Saravanan](https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/laughs-and-plays/article2987897.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) directed us. There was a lot of laughter, even if I don't remember what the story was. It was a wonderful period. I generally don't like giving speeches and talks because I'm not convinced that that's the most useful way to share what I know with others and vice versa. I've received quite a few opportunities and invitations in my professional years. On the few occasions I've accepted, I've insisted on being seated with the 'audience' and converting the chance to an AMA, where anyone can ask me anything. That way I can be sure what I say is useful for at least a few people. ### So you use AI to write… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/06/so-you-use-ai-to-write/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:32.000Z You're probably using AI to write. Both ChatGPT and Google AI Studio prefer to construct their sentences in specific and characteristic ways and anyone who’s been a commissioning editor for at least a few years will find the signs of its influence hard to miss, even if you personally think it’s undetectable. You're probably going to continue using AI to write. There's nothing I can do about that. In fact, as AI models improve, my ability to prove you used AI to write some text will only decline. And as a commissioning editor focusing articles about science, health, and environment research, I'm also not entirely at liberty to stop working with a writer if I notice AI-written text in their reports. I can only warn them. If I threaten to stop, I'm certain that one day I'll have to impose the ultimate sanction, and after that I'll have to look for new writers from a pool that's already quite small. That's a bad proposition for me. To be sure, I realise I'm in a difficult position. People, especially those without a good grasp of English writing as well as those without the means to attain that grasp, should have the opportunity to be understood as precisely as they wish to be among English-speaking readers. If immaculate writing and grammar also allow their opinions to reach audiences that shunned them before for being too difficult to understand, all the more reason, no? This has been something of an issue with the way *The New Yorker* wields its grammar rulebook, with its commas, hyphens, accents, and umlauts in just the right places. As the author Kyle Paoletta disputed in a[ 2017 critique](https://thebaffler.com/latest/elite-politesse-paoletta?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *The Baffler*: > For *The New Yorker*, a copy editor’s responsibility to avoid altering the substance of a writer’s prose is twisted into an utter disinterest in content writ large. … Content must be subordinated—thoughtfully, of course!—to the grammatical superstructure applied to it. Not only does this attitude treat the reader as somewhat dim, it allows the copy editor to establish a position of privilege over the writer. … > > \[Famed NYer copy-editor Mary\] Norris frets over whether or not some of James Salter’s signature descriptive formulations (a "stunning, wide smile," a "thin, burgundy dress") rely on misused commas. When she solicits an explanation, he answers, "I sometimes ignore the rules about commas… Punctuation is for clarity and also emphasis, but I also feel that, if the writing warrants it, punctuation can contribute to the music and rhythm of the sentences." Norris begrudgingly accepts this defence, but apparently only because a writer of no lesser stature than Salter is making it. Even in defeat, Norris, as the tribune of *The New Yorker*’s style, is cast as a grammatical arbiter that must be appealed to by even the most legendary writers. I shouldn't stand in judgment of when and how a writer wishes to wield the English language as they understand and have adopted it. But with AI in the picture, that could also mean trusting the writer to a degree that also overlooks whether they've used AI. Put another way: if it's levelling the playing field for you, it's getting rid of another sign of authenticity for me. Perhaps the larger point is that as long as you make sure your own writing improves, we're on the right track. To be clear: whose English should be improved? I'm saying that's the contributor's call. Because if they send a poorly written piece that makes good points, some of what I’m going to be doing to their piece is what AI will be as well (and tools like Grammarly have already been). Second, as AI use becomes more sophisticated, and I become less able to tell original and AI-composed copies apart, I’ll just have to accept at some point that there's nothing I can do. In that context, all I can say is: "Use it to improve your English at least". Or perhaps, as in the words of Northern Illinois University professor [David J. Gunkel](https://www.noemamag.com/ai-signals-the-death-of-the-author/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "LLMs may well signal the end of the author, but this isn’t a loss to be lamented. … these machines can be liberating: they free both writers and readers from the authoritarian control and influence of this thing we call the 'author'. For better or for worse, however, I don’t see how a journalistic publication can adopt this line wholesale. \* \* \* As a commissioning editor in science journalism specifically, I've come across many people who have useful and clever things to say but their English isn't good enough. And from where I'm sitting, using AI to make their ideas clearer in English only seems like a good thing… That's why I say it levels the playing field, and when you do that in general, the people who already have a skill because they trained to acquire it lose their advantages while the new entrants lose their disadvantages. The latter is of course unfair. In the same vein, while I know AI tools have been enormously useful for data journalists, asking a programmer what they feel about that would likely elicit the same sort of reaction I and many of my peers have vis-à-vis people writing well without having studied and/or trained to do so. That would make the data journalists’ use problematic as well by virtue of depriving a trained programmer of their advantages in the job market, no? Short of the world's Big AI companies coming together and deciding they're going to insert their products' outputs with some kind of inalienable watermark, we have to deal with the inevitability of our being unable to tell AI-made versus human-made content apart. Yes, AI is hurting what it means to be human, at least in terms of our creative expression. But another way to frame all this is that the AI tools we have represent the near-total of human knowledge collected on the internet. Isn't it wonderful that we can dip into that pool and come away as more skilled, more knowledgeable, and perhaps better persons ourselves? Science communication, as it focuses on communicating what scientists have found, might become redundant and low-value, at least among those that can afford these subscriptions (whose prices will also fall and accessibility will increase) because people can feed a model a paper and ask for the output. Hallucinations will always be there but it's possible they could become less likely. (And it seems to me to be somewhat precarious to found our own futures as journalists on the persistence of hallucinations.) Instead where we can cut ahead, and perhaps stay that way, is by focusing on a journalism of new ideas, arguments, conversations, etc. And there the playing field will also be less about whether you can write better and more about what and how you’ve learnt to think about the world and its people. We all agree democratisation is good. Earlier, and to a large degree still, education facilitated and facilitates that to a significant degree. Now the entry of AI models is short-circuiting that route, and it's presenting some of us with significant disadvantages. Yes, there are many employers who will try to take advantage of this state to bleed their workforce and take the short way out. But it remains that — setting aside the AI models coming up with BS and equivocating on highly politicised issues — the models are also democratising knowledge. Our challenge is to square that fact (which can't be un-facted in future) with preserving the advantages for those that 'deserve' it. As if mirroring the question about who gets to decide who should improve their English, who gets to decide who gets to have advantages? ### AI slop clears peer-review URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/06/ai-slop-clears-peer-review/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:33.000Z Here's an image from [a paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24662-9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that was published by *Nature Scientific Reports* on November 19 and [retracted](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-31337-y?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on December 5: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/0d2dd-46659-41598_2025_24662_fig1_html-w-684.jpg) This paper made it through peer review at the journal. Let that sink in for a moment. Perhaps the reviewers wanted to stick it to the editors. Then again how the image made its way past the editors is also a mystery. *Nature Scientific Reports* has had several problems before, enumerated on [its Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%5FReports?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Controversial%5Farticles). It's a 'megajournal' in the vein of PLOS One and follows the gold OA model, with an [article processing charge](https://www.nature.com/srep/open-access?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of "£2190.00/$2690.00/€2390.00". ### Worlds between theory and experiment URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/06/worlds-between-theory-and-experiment/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:35.000Z Once Isaac Newton showed that a single gravitational law plus his rules of dynamics could reproduce the orbits of planets that Johannes Kepler had predicted, explain tides on Earth, and predict that a comet that had passed by once would return again, physicists considered Newtonian mechanics and gravitation to have been completely validated. After these successful tests, they didn’t wait to test every other possible prediction of Newton’s ideas before they considered them to be legitimate. When Jean Perrin and others carefully measured Brownian motion and extracted Avogadro’s number in the early 20th century, they helped cement the science of the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics that Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs had developed. As with Newtonian mechanics, physicists didn’t also require every single consequence of kinetic theory to be rechecked from scratch. They considered them all to be fully and equally legitimate then on. Similarly, in 1886-1889, Heinrich Hertz produced and detected electromagnetic waves in the laboratory, measured their speed and other physical properties, and showed that they behaved exactly as James Clerk Maxwell had predicted based on his (famous) equation. Hertz’s experiments didn’t test every possible configuration of charges and fields that Maxwell’s equations allowed, yet what they did test and confirm sufficed to convince all physicists that Maxwell’s theory could be treated as the correct classical theory of electromagnetism. In all these cases, a theory won broad acceptance after scientists validated only a small (yet robust) subset of its predictions. They didn’t have to validate every single prediction in distinct experiments. However, there are many ideas in high-energy particle physics that, even as they are derived from other theoretical constructs that have been tested to extreme precision, physicists insist on testing them anew as well. Why are they [going to this trouble](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) now? “High-energy particle physics” is a four-word label for something you’ve likely already heard of: the physics of the search for the subatomic particles like the Higgs boson and the efforts to identify their properties. In this enterprise, many scientific ideas follow from theories that have been validated by very large amounts of experimental data. Yet physicists want to test them at every single step because of the way such theories are built and the way unknown effects can hide inside their structures. The overarching theory that governs particle physicists is called, simply, the Standard Model. It’s a quantum field theory, i.e. a theory that combines the precepts of quantum mechanics and special relativity\*. Because the Standard Model is set up in this way, it makes predictions about the relations between different observable quantities, e.g. the mass of a subatomic particle called the W boson with a parameter that’s related to the decay of other particles called muons. Some of these relations connect measured quantities with others that have not yet been probed, e.g. the mass of the muon with the rate at which Higgs bosons decay to pairs of muons. (Yes, it’s all convoluted.) These ‘extra’ relations often depend on assumptions that go beyond the domains that experiments have already explored. New particles and new interactions between them can change particular parts of the structure while leaving other parts nearly unchanged. (\* Quantum field theory gives physicists a single, internally consistent framework in which they can impose both the rules of quantum theory and the requirements of special relativity, such as that information or matter can’t travel faster than light and that our spacetime conserves energy and momentum together, for example. However, quantum field theory does not unify quantum theory with general relativity; that’s the monumental and still unfinished purpose of the quantum gravity problem.) For a more intricate example, consider the gauge sector of the Standard Model, i.e. the parts of the Model involving the gluons, W and Z bosons, and photons, their properties, and their interactions with other particles. The gauge sector has been thoroughly tested in experiments and is well-understood. Now, the gauge sector also interacts with the Higgs sector, and the Higgs sector interacts with other sectors. The result is new possibilities involving the properties of the Higgs boson, their implications for the gauge sector, and so on that — even if physicists have tested the gauge sector — need to be tested separately. The reason is that none of these possibilities follow directly from the basic principles of the gauge sector. The search for ‘new physics’ also drives this attitude. ‘New physics’ refers to measurable entities and physical phenomena that lie beyond what the Standard Model can currently describe. For instance, most physicists believe a substance called dark matter exists (in order to explain some anomalous observations about the universe), but they haven’t been able to confirm what kind of particles dark matter is made of. One popular proposal is that dark matter is made of hitherto unknown entities called [weakly interacting massive particles](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/how-much-do-dark-matter-particles-weigh/article69015366.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (WIMPs). The Standard Model in its contemporary form doesn’t have room for WIMPs, so the search for WIMPs is a search for new physics. Physicists have also proposed many ways to ‘extend’ the Standard Model to accommodate new kinds of particles that ‘repair’ the cracks in reality left by the existing crop of particles. Some of these extensions predict changes to the Model that are most pronounced in sectors that are currently poorly pinned down by existing data. This means even a sizeable deviation from the Model’s structure in this sector would still be compatible with all current measurements. This is another important reason physicists want to collect more data and with ever-greater precision. Earlier experience also plays an important role. Physicists may make some assumptions because they seem safe in some year but new data collected in the next two decades might reveal that they were mistaken. For instance, physicists believed [neutrinos](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/09/06/challenging-the-neutrino-signal-anomaly/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) didn’t have mass, like photons, because that idea was consistent with many existing datasets. Yet dedicated experiments contradicted their belief (and [won their performers](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/physics-nobel-rewards-neutrino-work-but-has-sting-in-the-tail-for-india/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the 2015 physics Nobel Prize). (Aside: High-energy particle physics uses large machines called [particle colliders](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/lhec-and-fcc-he/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to coerce subatomic particles into configurations where they interact with each other, then collect data of those interactions. Operating these instruments demands hundreds of people working together, using sophisticated technologies and substantial computing resources. Because the instruments are [so expensive](https://science.thewire.in/culture/media/science-communication-will-help-decide-when-the-next-particle-smasher-will-be-built/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), these collaborations aim to collect as much data as possible, then maximise the amount of information they extract from each dataset.) Thus, when a theory like the Standard Model predicts a specific process, that process becomes a thing to test. But even if the prediction seems simple or obvious, actually measuring it can still rule out whole families of rival theories offering to explain the same process. It also sharpens physicists’ estimates of the theory’s basic parameters, which then makes other predictions more precise and helps plan the next round of experiments. This is why, in high-energy physics, even predictions that follow from other, well-tested parts of a theory are expected to face experimental tests of their own. Each successful test can reduce the space for new physics to hide in — or in fact could reveal it. A study published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/gzdh-p159?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on December 3 showcases a new and apt example of testing predictions made by a theory some of whose other parts have already survived testing. Tests at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider — had until recently only weakly constrained the Higgs boson’s interaction with second-generation leptons (a particle type that includes muons). The new study provides strong, direct evidence for this coupling and significantly narrows that gap. The LHC operates by accelerating two beams of protons in opposite directions to nearly the speed of light and smashing them head on. Its operation is divided into segments called ‘runs’. Between runs, the collaboration that manages the machine conducts maintenance and repair work and, sometimes, upgrades its detectors. One of the LHC’s most prominent detectors is named ATLAS. To probe the interactions between Higgs bosons and leptons, the ATLAS collaboration collected and analysed data from the LHC’s run 2 and run 3\. The motivation was to obtain direct evidence for Higgs bosons’ coupling to muons and to measure its strength. And in the December 3 paper, the collaboration reported that the coupling parameters were consistent with the Standard Model’s predictions. So that’s one more patch of the Standard Model that has passed a test, and one more door to ‘new physics’ that has closed a little more. --- *Featured image: A view of the Large Hadron Collider inside its tunnel. Credit: CERN.* ### Robbing NISAR to pay ISRO URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/12/02/robbing-nisar-to-pay-isro/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:36.000Z A.K. Anil Kumar, the director of ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (a.k.a. ISTRAC), has reportedly made some seriously misleading comments as part of his convocation address at a Maharishi University in Lucknow.\* Kumar's speech begins at the 1:38:10 mark in this video (hat-tip to [Pradx](https://pradx.in/?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page)): A poorly written article in *The Free Press Journal* (which I couldn't find online) has amplified Kumar's claims without understanding that the two satellites Kumar was seemingly talking about are actually one: the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), developed jointly by the US and Indian space agencies. The article carries an image of NISAR but doesn't caption it as such. ![](https://rootprivileges.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/70089-42d40-whatsapp-image-2025-12-02-at-08.33.10.jpeg?w=1015&h=1024) The article makes several dubious claims: - That the "satellite" can forecast earthquakes, - That NISAR can capture subsurface images of Earth, including of underground formations, - That India's "satellite" didn't require a 12-metre-long antenna the way NASA's "satellite" did, and - That ISRO's "satellite" was built at one-tenth of the cost of NASA's "satellite" To be clear, an ISRO satellite that can forecast earthquakes or image subsurface features and which the organisation built and launched for Rs 1,000 crore **does not exist**. What actually exists is NISAR, a part of which ISRO built. The claims are almost spiteful because they purport to come from a senior ISRO official whose work likely benefited from the ISRO-NASA collaboration and because he ought to have known better than to mislead. NISAR is a dual-frequency (DF) synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The 'DF' bit means the satellite captures data on two radar frequencies, L-band and S-band. To quote from a piece I [wrote for *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-makes-the-nasa-isro-nisar-satellite-so-special-explained/article69845156.ece?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page) on July 27: > At the time the two space organisations agreed to build NISAR, NASA and ISRO decided each body would contribute equivalent‑scale hardware, expertise, and funding. … \[ISRO\] supplied the I‑3K spacecraft bus, the platform that houses the controls to handle command and data, propulsion, and attitude, plus 4 kW of solar power. The same package also included the entire S‑band radar electronics, a high‑rate Ka‑band telecom subsystem, and a gimballed high‑gain antenna. 'SAR' refers to a remote-sensing technique in which a small antenna moves along a path while using a computer to combine the data it captures along the way, thus mimicking a much larger antenna. NISAR uses a 12-metre mesh antenna plus a reflector for this purpose. Both the S-band and L-band radars use it to perform their functions. As a result of using the SAR technique, the two radars onboard NISAR are able to produce high-resolution images of Earth's surface irrespective of daylight or cloud cover and support studies of ground deformation, ice sheets, forests, and the oceans. In this regard, for *The Free Press Journal* to claim NISAR "didn't require India to install a separate 12-metre antenna, unlike NASA" gives the impression that ISRO's S-band radar didn't need the antenna. This is wrong: it does need the antenna. That NASA was the agency to build and deploy it on NISAR comes down to the terms of the collaboration agreement, which specified that ISRO would provide the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar (and its attendant components), and the launch vehicle while NASA would take care of everything else. This is the same reason why ISRO's contributions to NISAR amounted to around Rs 980 crore — which Kumar rounded up to Rs 1,000 crore — whereas NASA's cost was around Rs 10,000 crore. The antenna is in fact an engineering marvel. Without it ISRO's S-band radar wouldn't be so performant and thus its data wouldn't be so useful for decision-making for both research and disaster management. On the day ISRO launched NISAR, on July 30 this year, I got to interview Karen St. Germain, the director of the Earth Science Division at the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. Here's an excerpt from [the interview](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/anything-that-moves-nasa-isro-satellite-will-see-with-unprecedented-fidelity/article69881443.ece?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page) about the antenna: > **Both the L-band and the S-band radars use the same reflector. Since S-band has a shorter wavelength than the L-band, does this create any trade-offs in either L-band or S-band performance?** > > It doesn’t. And the reason for that is because this is a [synthetic aperture radar](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-is-synthetic-aperture-radar/article69703378.ece?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page). It creates its spatial resolution as it moves along. Each radar is taking snapshots as it moves along. You know, to get this kind of centimetre level fidelity and the kind of spatial resolution we’re achieving, if you were to use a solid antenna, it would have to be five miles long. Just like when you’re talking about a camera, if you want to be able to get high fidelity, you need a big lens. Same idea. But we can’t deploy an antenna that big. So what we do is we build up image after image after image to get that resolution. And because of this technique, it’s actually independent of wavelength. It works the same for S- and for L-bands. The only thing that’s a little different is because the antenna feeds for the L-band and the S-band can’t physically occupy the same space, they have to be next to each other and that means there’s a slight difference in the way their pulses reflect off the antenna. There’s that positioning difference, and that we can correct for. > > **Could you tell us a little bit more about that slight difference?** > > **Karen St. Germain:** It’s the way a reflector works. You would ideally want to put the feed at the focal point of the reflector. But when you have two feeds, you can’t do that. So they’re slightly offset. That means they illuminate the reflector just slightly differently. The alignment is just a little bit different. The team optimised the design to minimise that difference and to make it so that they could correct it in post-processing. And even for all these abilities, we (i.e. people everywhere) currently don't know enough to be able to forecast earthquakes. What we can do today is make short-term predictions and we can prepare probabilistic forecasts over a longer period of time. That is, for instance, we can say "there's a 20% chance of a quake of magnitude 8 or more occurring in the Himalaya in the next century" and we have the [means to alert people](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/android-phones-have-brought-quake-early-warnings-to-98-countries/article69842620.ece?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page) in an area tens of seconds before an earthquake occurs. We can't say "there will be an earthquake in Chennai at 3 pm tomorrow". The question for *The Free Press Journal* is thus what role a satellite can essay in this landscape. In a [statement in 2021](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-develops-radar-for-joint-earth-observation-satellite-mission-with-nasa/article34025761.ece?ref=intertidal.mymagic.page), ISRO had said "NISAR would provide a means of disentangling highly spatial and temporally complex processes ranging from ecosystem disturbances to ice sheet collapses and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides." This means NISAR will help scientists better piece together the intricate processes implicated in earthquakes — processes that are distributed over some area and happen over some time. Neither NISAR nor the S-band radar alone can forecast earthquakes. On a related note, the L-band (1,000-2,000 MHz) and S-band (2,000-4,000 MHz) radar frequencies do overlap with the frequencies used in ground-penetrating radar (10-4,000 MHz). However, the lower the frequency, the further underground an electromagnetic wave can penetrate (while keeping the resolution fixed). Scientists have documented a ceiling of around 100 MHz for deep geological profiling, which is far from either of NISAR's radars. Even the L-band radar, which has lower frequency than the S-band, can at best penetrate a few metres underground if the surface is extremely dry, like in a desert, or if the surroundings are made of water ice. What both radars can penetrate very well is cloud cover, heavy rain, and vegetation. The ISRO + NASA collaboration that built NISAR was a wonderful thing that the agencies need to replicate in future even as it continued their less formalised engagements from before and whose benefits both host countries, India and the USA, continue to accrue in the satellite observation and remote-sensing domains. For Kumar to call the cost component into question in the way that he did, followed by the *The Free Press Journal*'s shoddy coverage of his remarks, does no favours to the prospect of space literacy in the country. **\*** *I updated this post at 7.45 pm on December 2, 2025, to make it clear that all but one of the objectionable claims were made by* The Free Press Journal *in its article; the exception was the cost comparison, which Kumar did make.* ### Part light, part matter URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/28/light-it-up/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:37.000Z Consider a bunch of molecules that have been trapped between two mirrors facing each other very closely. In this 'box' the light can't move around freely; it can only exist in certain fixed patterns, somewhat like sound inside a finely tuned musical instrument. Even when all light has been removed from this box, quantum physics causes small flickers of light to pop in and out of existence in fractions of a second. These immutable flickers of the electromagnetic field are sometimes collectively called the vacuum field. Now, what would happen if the natural motion of matter inside molecules and these confined light patterns become strongly linked? This isn't an esoteric thought experiment. Over the last decade, physicists have shown in experiments that when this link is strong, new hybrid states appear that are part light and part matter — and these states can spread over many molecules at once. And in this condition, physicists have found that the materials in which these states occur suddenly have very different properties, all without changing the chemical formulae of their constituent molecules. A new paper by PhD scholar Subha Biswas and assistant professor Anoop Thomas — both at the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry of the Indian Institute of Science — brought the many findings in this area of research together and argued that the confined vacuum field reshapes the weak forces between molecules, which is the same force that determine how the molecules arrange themselves and how easily energy and charge can move between them. And the duo has shown that this explanation can account for a wide range of surprising findings. Their findings were published in [ACS *Applied Optical Materials*](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsaom.5c00375?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on November 11. The paper isn't a single experiment; instead the authors read and compared many published papers about experiments in which other scientists placed molecules inside small mirror cavities and forced them to interact strongly with the trapped light. Thus, the duo reported, energy could travel quite differently in these cavities. Normally, when energy passes from one molecule to the next, it does so through a series of short hops if the material is disordered. A simple example is an ordinary piece of glass. In a crystal, atoms or molecules sit on a tidy 3D grid, like seats in a stadium. In glass however they're more like people milling around in a crowd: there's some short-range order but no long-range one. When motion inside the molecules is strongly coupled to the trapped light, however, the new light–matter states can extend over many molecules, creating a sort of highway that energy travel on faster, more efficiently, and across much larger regions than physicists generally expect in disordered materials. For another, the duo reported that some organic materials, especially plastics that usually conduct electricity very poorly, are suddenly able to conduct a lot better when certain internal motions of their molecules are strongly coupled to the trapped light. In some experiments scientists had found that protons also moved faster through water, suggesting the cavity could in some way alter the network of hydrogen bonds in water. Based on analysing these and other examples, the duo arrived at a central conclusion: that by modifying how light is confined around a material, scientists can influence how its molecules 'feel' each other and thus alter its bulk behaviour, even when it's in its lowest-energy state. (Usually materials become capable of unusual things when they're imparted more energy.) Put another way the cavity isn't just a passive container but an active design tool that can reshapes the background electromagnetic field, and with that the landscape of intermolecular forces. This is interesting because it's a new way to control molecules in chemistry. Usually when scientists need to change the way a chemical reaction happens, they change the molecules that are in play. For instance they alter the molecules' structure, add side groups, and/or 'mix in' new components. But the new study has found what seems to be an additional handle: scientists may be able to leave the molecules as they are but just place them in a carefully designed optical environment. And by carefully choosing the spacing between the mirrors, the materials that make up the apparatus, and how the cavity resonates with specific molecular motions, they can adjust the reaction rate, favour one crystal form over another, stabilise certain structures, shift the balance between different reaction products, and guide how large molecules assemble into various shapes, etc. The implications are similarly broad for materials science, where physicists can use these cavities to improve energy transport in thin films, enhance conduction in soft or flexible materials, guide how polymers and other large molecules arrange themselves in devices, and tune how materials crystallise as they're fabricated. Because the effect comes from light and matter coupling together over a longer range, it might be especially useful in systems that are otherwise disordered and where conventional design tools struggle. For instance, the molecules of polystyrene are arranged in a messy, haphazard way. This disorder makes it very hard for scientists to 'engineer' clean paths within the material through which electrons can flow, so polystyrene is usually an excellent insulator. However, when scientists place thin films of such plastics in a carefully tuned optical cavity, experiments have shown that their ability to conduct electricity increases drastically even though the material's chemical makeup hasn't changed. A simple salt solution, like of table salt dissolved in water, offers another good example. Here the water molecules and the salt ions move around in an incessantly shifting and disordered fashion, and chemists typically control them by changing how much salt or what additives there are. But when the solution is strongly coupled to the confined light, the way water molecules surround and move around the ions changes and the ions travel more easily through the liquid. The authors have stressed that these effects are selective — which is to say not every material will change dramatically. Instead scientists will have to select details such as how molecules pack together and which internal motion is coupled to the light in the cavity all matter. This in turn means this new vacuum-field engineering won't altogether replace chemical design but could in fact complement it. In fact the authors have sketched a future in which chemists and materials scientists routinely think together about what molecules to build and the kind of electromagnetic environment to place them in to coax new or improved properties out. ### New labour codes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/22/new-labour-codes/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:37.000Z On November 21, the Union government said the four consolidated labour codes on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety and health had been brought into force, replacing 29 national labour laws, five years after Parliament had signed off on them and four years beyond the original 2021 deadline. The gap was because labour is in the Concurrent List, so both the Union government and the states had to draft and finalise detailed rules under each code. The Centre had also said it wanted to bring all four codes into force together, which meant waiting until most of the states had completed their rule-making, of course many of them were slow to do this while others were reluctant (given trade-union opposition and criticism that the codes diluted protections and eased retrenchment). Then of course there was the COVID-19 pandemic, various Assembly elections, and the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Anyway, in a [statement](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2192463&ref=slightlyacidic.com) accompanying the announcement, the Ministry of Labour and Employment presented the codes’ entering into force as an overhaul that would simplify compliance and extend social security and minimum wages to workers across sectors. In fact a substantial part of the Ministry’s claims rests on actual legal changes. They replace a patchwork of national and state laws with a more consolidated framework on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety and health such that employers already within the formal net now deal with a more coherent set of statutes and a single system of registrations and returns. The code on wages extends the minimum wage framework from “scheduled employments” to all employees, closing a formal gap that had left some occupations outside the statute even as some states expanded their schedules. The codes also formally defined “gig workers”, “platform workers”, and “aggregators”, creating a legal basis on which the Union government could found schemes funded by “aggregator” contributions. The occupational safety code turns appointment letters into a statutory duty for all covered employers, including for existing workers, and introduces a general requirement of annual health check-ups for workers older than 40 years, extending a form of medical surveillance that was earlier confined largely to specified hazardous processes. Unfortunately the announcement also has a pattern of overstatement that raises important questions about whether the Ministry is aware of the real constraints on what the new framework can deliver. The foremost example is the Ministry’s language on social security coverage. According to the release, all workers “will get PF, ESIC, insurance and other social security benefits” — but the code does no such thing. It consolidates the statutes on PF, ESIC, maternity, gratuity, and employees’ compensation and empowers the Union government to frame schemes for new categories of workers and to extend the ESIC scheme to new sectors. Whether any given worker receives PF or ESI still depends on the notifications and the nature of the establishment. Similarly, the ESI scheme has expanded gradually and its coverage still depends on notified areas and sectors; it’s also true that the codes give governments more flexibility to expand the scheme and makes it possible, in principle, to cover smaller establishments or individual workers involved in hazardous processes. However, the claim that "social protection coverage will be expanded to all workers" is really a policy aspiration tied to future notifications and resources rather than a statement of what the law already guarantees today. Second, the shift from “inspectors” to “inspectors-cum-facilitators” means officials are now tasked not only with detecting violations and prosecuting violators but also with advising employers on how to comply and with using risk-based inspection plans that emphasise predictability and graded responses. Risk-based inspections can in principle focus attention on more harmful sectors but in practice they can also narrow the number of surprise visits and turn inspection into a negotiated exercise. When the same official is expected to build cooperative relationships with employers while also being an enforcer, the incentive to treat violations as matters to be counselled away rather than penalised becomes stronger. And for workers in sectors where accidents are hidden and trade union presence is weak, the shift only weakens the prospect of government officials identifying and pursuing breaches. The codes also preserve headcount thresholds for registration and for many duties on safety and social security. Many contractors and principal employers already respond to these thresholds — including in the last five years — by splitting operations across multiple small entities, by cycling workers through short-term engagements, and by labelling them as ‘partners’ or ‘volunteers’ so that no single establishment appears to cross the line that would trigger stricter obligations. My ‘favourite’ example of such corruption in action is an incident in 2016 when “India's 16 occupational safety laws couldn't prevent two deaths” at the Anna University campus in Chennai. As Thomas Manuel [wrote in *The Wire*](https://thewire.in/law/occupational-laws-small-enterprises?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the time: > The needless tragedy of the two deaths is mirrored by the tragedy that is the state of the laws and public institutions set up to deal with incidents such as these. There are sixteen laws (and a dozen or more boards, directorates, inspectorates and other bodies) that deal broadly with the subject of working conditions and occupational health and safety (OHS) in India. But despite this seeming glut, the circumstances that led to the death of Shankar and Deepan seem to have contravened no law at all. > > Like most such deaths, this one too was easily reduced to a question of compensation. U. Lakshmikanthan, Deputy Commissioner of Labour, stated that after reading the media reports on the deaths, he *suo moto* initiated a complaint, summoning representatives of the university and the employer to his office. But his intervention was only to adjudicate on the amount of compensation that would be paid to the family of the deceased as per the statutes of the Employees Compensation Act 1923\. This Act discusses the terms on which compensation will be paid by the employer in the event of the death or disability of an employee. It doesn’t have anything to say on questions of occupational health in the strict sense. Lakshmikanthan did not disclose the compensation that had been decided but the maximum allowed under the law is approximately Rs 11 lakh. > > The Directorate of Industrial Health and Safety (DISH) … reacted quite differently. P. Bose, the director of DISH, stated that after a preliminary investigation, it was decided that the case did not fall within his purview. It didn’t come under the Factories Act 1948 as Kavimeena Rubber Products employed less than ten people and the incident happened outside the manufacturing premises. It also wasn’t covered by the Building And Other Construction Workers (Regulation Of Employment And Conditions Of Service) Act, 1996, because – again – more than ten workers were required for the Act to apply as well as the fact that the cost of construction had to be more than ten lakh rupees. An inspector-cum-facilitator abiding by risk-based protocols and time limits may never see the full picture of a fragmented workforce and may lack both the mandate and the institutional backing to piece it together. In the event of a serious injury or death, thus, principal employers and contractors can still argue over who — if anyone — had a direct employment relationship with the worker and whether the work even fell within the categories the codes explicitly regulate. Finally, in the Ministry’s announcement, there are paragraphs on beedi rollers, plantation workers, media workers, mine workers, IT staff, dock workers, and export units — but no discussion of sanitation workers employed through layers of contractors and others who perform tasks that often amount to manual scavenging by another name, and where deaths are frequent. For these workers, the concerns are still whether the principal employer can keep them off the books and whether inspectors and courts will push past the chain of contracts to fix liability on those who control the work and profit from it. The codes contain some tools that could help — e.g. treating workers supplied by an unlicensed contractor as if they were directly employed by the principal employer — but the communique overall only highlights more general welfare themes. Indian labour law has long been more protective than practice on the ground would suggest. The codes plug some genuine gaps, update definitions, consolidate a mosaic of statutes, and extend certain obligations. But for informal workers or those working in small, unregistered units, reform continues to depend on whether employers and contractors are registered at all, whether inspectors have the mandate and capacity to look beyond paperwork, and whether state governments choose to use the discretion the codes give them to broaden coverage. ### The House URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/14/the-house/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:37.000Z Daily writing promptIf you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/eb84c5969ca62071dc43ee28abe08e23396b71a6220ed4017b9b97a6a52f0560?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b7527159f29ba548c24e64dcafdf45b9fa62648cd1374c4e381ef56f39bfdad2?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) ![](https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/c8c3b1c14581e4006878c43e90d0787b83db71bf3138a478e123fea9c91c18dd?s=96&d=identicon&r=G) [View all responses](https://wordpress.com/tag/dailyprompt-2122?locale=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) I had a dream once, that I was sitting, resting in a cosy alcove of walls empanelled with wood, with wooden chairs and tables with comfortable cushions, smoke from an incense stick hanging heavy in the air and on the nose. There was a gentle breeze, a whisper really, as the air managed the barest of ventilating drafts between a door at the back of the alcove, into the rest of the house cut into the mountain, and the heavily forested slope it looked out on, where the rain poured almost every hour of every day. From my chair and wrapped in a few blankets, I looked at the skyscrapers just a few leagues off, adorned in gaudy neon colours, imagining the lives of people moving inside them… There was a pungent sort of bliss between the pervasive sooty odour and the immutable petrichor, the sort that comes with equal parts contentment and knowing there's a place out there, certainly outside the house, where one would be sodden, stepping in muck, swatting at flies, and just plain miserable. That house, holding fort between the alcove and the world, that's where I'd like to live. ### 'First state to disburse highest compensation' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/11/first-state-to-disburse-highest-compensation/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:38.000Z The following jacket advertisement (which is expensive) appeared in *The Hindu* (and perhaps other newspapers as well; I didn't check) yesterday: ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/L791366924.png) Something seemed off about the messaging here when I looked at it yesterday morning, and it clicked into place today: the poster’s claims focus on relief rather than on reducing flood risk. It framed success as "highest compensation" and disbursal "in record time", shifting the evaluation of performance to administrative throughput after losses occur and away from measures that should have avoided those losses. Such superlatives are not comparable across states because categories, eligibility rules, and the methods of evaluation vary, which means a high rupee-figure denotes fiscal capacity more than efficacy. The emphasis on livestock compensation also raises concerns about incidence: payments of Rs 37,500 for a milch animal but Rs 100 per poultry bird allocate more relief to owners of higher value assets, while landless labourers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers may be undercovered by title-based schemes. And declaring 30 days as a benchmark for speed is incomplete if the state doesn't also disclose the rate of coverage, rate of error, quality of verification, and the share of households that actually received matching payments. One line in the poster is particularly curious: about granting farmers the right to extract flood-deposited sand from their fields, because that seems to normalise a symptom of flooding rather than address the upstream events that moved that sand, including silted drains, encroached floodplains, and coordination failures around releasing river waters. It can also invite *ad hoc* mining that render significant ecological costs. In a basin where shifting rainfall and sediment dynamics routine increase risk exposure, these omissions matter. High exposure strengthens the case to prevent these disasters by regularly desilting water channels, maintaining drains, zoning floodplains, auditing embankments, instituting timely and useful early warnings, and planning evacuations. We deserve better than celebrations of post-event transfers. In fact, the crop-loss figure of Rs 20,000 per acre is unlikely to cover the total input costs, soil remediation, and lost wage incomes and doesn't reflect indirect losses. Similarly, paying for animal deaths says little about the presence of raised shelters, fodder banks, vaccinations or evacuation plans to reduce mortality. A more appropriate frame of accountability would be to publish premonsoon preparation plans, independent audits of beneficiary coverage and misses, inclusion of tenants and labourers, and year-on-year reductions in the number of flooded settlements, and livestock mortality. Structural steps such as enforcing floodplain maps, removing encroachments, improving storm water systems, investing in wetlands and diversion capacity, diversifying crops, and expanding micro-insurance would indicate a shift from recurring loss and relief to risk management. The advertisement, however, signals a state administration's willingness to accept that floods will cause larger and larger losses and that the state expects to be judged on the speed and size of compensation rather than on the damage it has managed to avoid. ### A little ignorance can be a good thing URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/09/a-little-ignorance-can-be-a-good-thing/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:38.000Z Picture a city where most drivers use the same navigation app. At 9 am, the app says one side street is the quickest shortcut to get from area A to area B. Thousands of commuters accept this option and drive through that street, and soon it becomes jammed with traffic. As a result, the route that was until a few minutes ago a shortcut on the app becomes undesirable, even as nearby streets remain underused. Now imagine a small change. Say some drivers don’t fully trust the label “fast”, or they see slightly different estimates, so they spread out across several streets. As a result no single street bears the entire traffic load, and in turn the average travel time (across all commuters) falls even though no road has been widened and no signal has been reconfigured. According to a [preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.09684?ref=slightlyacidic.com) uploaded to arXiv in March, this limited ignorance on the drivers’ part effectively reduced congestion created by completely informed yet selfish choices. This view of the traffic should be reminiscent of any public space you’ve navigated in India, where seemingly small selfish choices add up to inconveniences that affect many people. Motorists spill into junctions when the signal is on red, with motorcyclists in particular clogging the sidewalk and even blocking the path of oncoming traffic. Commuters rush at bus and train doors rather than queuing in, thus slowing the boarding process as well as rendering existing queues useless. Families often reserve extra seats or rush baggage carousels and stall others. Each act yields a momentary private gain but together they congest and frustrate. Curiously, the new study posits that if people who route themselves through a crowded network know a little less, the whole system might work a little better. Prior work has already shown that when every user pursues the quickest route for themselves, the system settles into a state that isn’t globally optimal. The study began by quantifying this shortfall with a “price of anarchy”. The authors — all from Ohio State University — also defined a parallel idea that they called the “price of ignorance”, which tracked how outcomes change when users are uncertain about the network’s links. Next, the model mixed two kinds of links. “Slow” links had a fixed travel time that didn’t change with traffic. “Fast” links were faster when they were underused but slowed down in a linear fashion as more users pile on. The study’s model then assumed that users didn’t know for sure which kind of link they were facing. Instead, the model continued, they planned their route using a perceived cost that blended the two possibilities. The authors ‘measured’ the users’ ignorance using a single parameter denoted ɑ. If ɑ = 0, the users had no ignorance and complete knowledge; if ɑ = 1, the users were completely ignorant. The more the users were ignorant, the more they’d think all routes are equally suitable. The network took the form of a directed square lattice; ‘directed’ means users could only move through it in a fixed way, from left to right. Each link between two points in the lattice was said to be “fast” with probability *p* and “slow” with probability 1 – *p*. Users chose those routes that they believed would minimise travel time. The authors evaluated the true average travel time and compared it to the ɑ = 0, and defined the “price of ignorance” as the ratio of the average travel time with and without ignorance. The main finding was stark: the authors found that a small amount of ignorance always helped. For all compositions of the network, increasing ignorance from 0 reduced the average travel time up to a particular threshold. The paper proved analytically that for every probability of a lane being “fast” (i.e. for all values of *p*), any ɑ ≤ 2/3 guaranteed the price of ignorance was PI ≤ 1\. That is to say, a limited ‘amount’ of ignorance softened the traffic by redirecting it into more tempting “fast” links. In this scenario, because some users overestimated the “slow” links and “underestimated” the fast ones, the traffic spread more evenly across the network. This reduced congestion on the fast links — which is good. The team also found a special sweet spot, so to speak. Say the network has a tipping point between “not enough fast links” and “plenty of fast links”. Near this tipping point, if users’ ignorance is around ⅔, their self-chosen routes spread out in just the right way. The result matches the best possible routing that a planner might pick. Put another way: imagine some links are marked “fast” and others are marked “slow”. If everyone fully trusted the labels, most people would chase the same link and eventually clog it. But if people trusted the labels only partly (as implied by ɑ = ⅔), some would choose alternative links nearby. This small hesitation thus spreads traffic across several routes. Alas, ignorance beyond the helpful range eventually starts to hurt. When people have no idea which links are fast or slow, they spread out almost evenly. That sounds fair but it also ‘wastes’ good options. Even in cities with many quicker routes, some travellers drift to slower side streets or paths that fizzle out, so the average travel time rises. This waste grows further in larger networks. Thus there is a sort of separatrix between “helpful doubt” and “harmful cluelessness”. If fast links are scarce, a planner can tolerate more doubt before the network’s performance drops. If fast routes are plentiful, on the other hand, only near-total cluelessness can cause harm. That is, in very large and well-served networks, things go bad only when people are almost completely in the dark. So to be clear, ignorance in the study didn’t mean carelessness or lack of effort. Users still knew the map, could see congestion, and chose the route that looked best to them. What they didn’t know for sure was which roads were actually quicker and which were actually slower. And this specific kind of ignorance had two virtues: first, it prevented users from overreacting to “fast” labels and kept a small subset of links from being overloaded; second, users’ ignorance caused different users to make different routing decisions even when some links looked attractive, thus keeping them from clogging these links in a coordinated way. These virtues might sound familiar if you’ve been to other parts of physics. In statistical physics, for example, adding noise to a weak signal can help it cross a valuable threshold, a phenomenon called stochastic resonance. If the amount of this noise is just right, it can improve the system’s response. A familiar example is in hearing assistance. Some hearing aids add a soft, random ‘hiss’ under speech. On its own, this hiss is too weak to notice — but for listeners with mild hearing loss, it helps small sound cues, like faint consonants in Hindi, cross the ear’s detection threshold more reliably. Thus speech becomes somewhat more clear at lower volumes or in quiet rooms. In ecology and evolution, some seeds have been known to germinate over multiple seasons because they’re not sure which ones are going to be bad. Similarly, with algorithms and machine learning, a bit of uncertainty can make models work better. During training, a program can turn off some parts of the network at random, so a model doesn’t simply memorise patterns from the data. Small, carefully added noise in the training labels can have a similar effect. In reinforcement learning, letting the program try some actions at random can help keep it from getting stuck on a strategy that looks good early but isn’t actually the best. And in behavioural game theory, people don’t always pick the mathematically ‘best’ move. They just pick a pretty good move most of the time. This can help alleviate crowding because as a result not everyone chases the same option at once. A similar idea can help in clinics as well: if a sign or app always says “counter 3 is fastest”, for example, everyone might rush there and block it. If instead the app randomly assigned people to different counters, everyone isn’t steered to the same counter. The overall lesson isn’t that ignorance is good in itself but that perfect certainty can produce brittle, crowded choices in systems with congestion or competition. A carefully controlled amount of uncertainty can instead spread the load and pull the system as a whole from a state governed by selfish dynamics to one by social optima. ### Why do we trust scientists? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/09/why-do-we-trust-scientists/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:40.000Z A friend of mine had recently been asked to consider the possibility that facts can change. Since she brought her thoughts to me, I’ve been thinking about the different ways in which that’s possible. For one, there’s reality and then there’s our knowledge of reality; the two needn’t be coincident. While a statement like ‘facts are facts’ could mean that reality doesn’t change, what we know *about* reality can still change. For example, our methods to acquire information about reality may have been flawed before and are less flawed now, so what we know about reality, i.e. our facts, change. Some items in the political sphere are institutional or conventional: they count as facts only by social consensus. Such facts can lose their identity as such if they lose that consensus. Some examples include money, laws, cultural norms like red light means stop, and — closer to science — the decision to use the p-values as a meaningful statistical threshold; consensus among scientists as to how to define different units of measurement; and the convention of dividing time into years, months, and days. A third interpretation is that misinformation or disinformation can get in the way of a person understanding which information is factual and which isn’t. The important thing here is there’s still a constituency of people — the scientists — for whom some information is factual even if for a different constituency that piece of information is not factual. In the first interpretation, dispute arises within the expert community as evidence changes; in the second, dispute concerns a socially instituted status across society (including experts). That is, in the first case, scientists’ own knowledge of that information can be updated, sometimes drastically. In the second case, society (including scientists) may disagree over whether a convention should count as a fact for coordination. In the third case, expert consensus holds that the information is factual but segments of the publics reject it. These three possibilities leave behind a practical question: when we (non-experts) can’t settle a question of factuality by ourselves — because the evidence is evolving, we can’t agree on conventions or because not all people accept it equally — on what grounds can we justifiably defer to experts? That is, what makes deference rational? Epistemic dependence names a basic fact of modern life: for most of what we claim to know, we rely on other people’s testimony rather than our own inspection of the evidence. John Hardwig (the American philosopher famed for the “dying art” argument) has contended that this dependence isn’t a defect but a rational and defensible strategy in complex societies. For instance, individuals can’t master the mathematics of cryptography, the molecular biology of vaccines, the econometrics of inflation, and the engineering of bridges — yet they still trust these fields of science and the suggestions of their exponents in order to make their own decisions. Their challenge isn’t to acquire this scientific knowledge (which is often impossible) but to develop reliable ways to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy sources of scientific wisdom and to design institutions that make accurate testimony likely and deception expensive. In short, Hardwig’s point is that epistemic responsibility typically involves, rather than rejects, responsible deference to scientists, with the ‘responsibility’ reinforced by the scientists’ track records, incentive structures, and the error-correcting mechanisms operating in the context of their work. The German sociologist Max Weber’s typology of authority is relevant here because it helps structure deference. Weber drew lines between traditional authority, charismatic authority, and rational-legal authority. The authority of science aspires to the third because it’s less grounded in who speaks and more in the procedures by which statements are vetted. For instance, a research finding that survives peer review, replication attempts, and other forms of critical scrutiny post-publication bears an impersonal authority — one that doesn’t demand allegiance to a particular leader or a lineage. This rational-legal form also defines how sanctions in science work. Retractions, loss of funding, and reputational damage follow codified rules and shared expectations of disclosure and transparency rather than serve as conduits to express the wrath of a sovereign. The non-expert’s deference to scientific claims is thus a portable deference to procedures that the non-expert believes correspond to the truth rather than just the [social prestige of scientists](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/03/08/a-post-mortem-on-the-gino-case-committing-fraud-is-right-now-a-viable-career-strategy-that-can-propel-you-at-the-top-of-the-academic-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The flip side is that the non-expert must endeavour constantly to maintain these procedures. Further, when scientific procedures are politicised or when charismatic or traditional authorities claim jurisdiction over empirical questions, the basis for deference goes away. That is to say, appeals to ‘trust science’ work only to the extent that the rational-legal authority remains credible. The sociology of expertise has refined these observations by describing how expertise is distributed and recognised. In particular, the philosophers [Harry Collins](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-016-9412-1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Robert Evans](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00062.x?ref=slightlyacidic.com) have distinguished between contributory expertise and interactional expertise. Contributory experts can produce and evaluate new knowledge within a field; they’re called so because their competence is a function of their ability to contribute meaningfully to research. Interactional experts can’t contribute original work but they can speak the language of the field fluently enough to engage credibly with contributory experts. Policymakers, journalists, and ethicists embedded in laboratories often need this interactional fluency to translate findings across domains and to interrogate claims without performing the experiments themselves. This distinction helps separate legitimate from irrational deference. A well-equipped non-expert or policymaker still can’t adjudicate between competing models in climate dynamics, say, but an interactional expert should be able to parse which disagreements are barely signals (rather than noise) and which are symptoms of deeper methodological divides. (Aside: The idea isn't unlike Bora Zivkovic's concept of journalists as "temporary experts" because the topics they're conversant with in the interactional sense can be transient, from anthropology this week to zoology the next. But for the purpose of this post, this nuance is redundant.) Further, peer review, gatekeeping, and credentialing don’t only protect quality but also control who’s inside the conversation and who isn’t. These practices can devolve into exclusion and conservatism but they’re also useful to guard against diluting standards. In their paper, Collins and Evans proposed that the legitimacy of expert advice in public matters depends on both the technical adequacy of contributory experts and the social processes that connect them to decision-makers and the affected publics. And deference is both rational and democratic when those processes are transparent, include mechanisms for non-experts to challenge experts, and acknowledge uncertainty. Robert Merton’s widely cited norms of communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organised scepticism underpin these arrangements. Communalism holds that scientific knowledge is a common resource and that results should be shared, methods disclosed, data made available, etc. Universalism requires claims to be evaluated by impersonal criteria and independent of the claimant’s identity or status. Disinterestedness expects scientists to subordinate their personal or financial incentives to the pursuit of truth and declare conflicts and design protections against bias. Organised scepticism institutionalises doubt in the form of peer review, replication studies, and methodological criticism. Together, these Mertonian norms offer a sort of moral economy for the production of reliable beliefs — but the issue is reality is almost always more messy. Empirical studies often reveal ‘counter-norms’ and tensions while competition for grants and prestige can incentivise scientists to chase hype ([e.g. Brian Keating](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), salami-slice their results ([e.g. Brian Wansink](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/06/24/a-gentle-push-over-the-cliff/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) or resort to p-hacking ([e.g. Francesca Gino](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Commercialisation and intellectual property regimes can restrain communalism. Social hierarchies can undermine universalism through the [Matthew effect](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.159.3810.56?ref=slightlyacidic.com), where credit accrues to already eminent scientists. People can be insufficiently sceptical of research findings when they align with [dominant paradigms](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6780820/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [market interests](https://www.science.org/content/article/another-retraction-looms-embattled-physicist-behind-blockbuster-superconductivity?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The replication crisis in parts of psychology and biomedicine also revealed how structural incentives could produce a research literature high in [statistical significance](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0189-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com) but low in reliability. Yet the very diagnosis of a replication crisis also illustrates the self-correcting aspiration of the Mertonian norms: attempts at reform in the form of registered reports, data-sharing mandates, stricter statistical thresholds, and post-publication review are simply forms of organised scepticism turned inward on itself. The point isn’t that Merton’s norms are fully realised but that they set expectations against which research practice can be judged and corrected. Taken together, epistemic dependence is unavoidable — and perhaps desirable. Authority rooted in rational-legal procedures can channel that dependence through institutions explicitly designed to reward truth and punish errors. In parallel, the sociology of expertise explains how technical competence is recognised, translated, and connected to publics while the Mertonian norms articulate the moral constraints that make the whole arrangement credible. When this system *in toto* functions well, non-experts don’t need to track every inference in a paper to hold a justified belief: it’s enough that they trust a claim has been produced in conditions that make accuracy more likely than not and that there are durable pathways for them to detect and fix mistakes. Likewise, when the system falters because incentives have become misaligned, boundaries have hardened into dogma or norms are being honoured in the breach, deference ceases to be rational and starts to resemble a more reductive allegiance. To be clear, punishing errors isn’t the essence of scientific credibility so much as transparency in the face of organised criticism. Sanctions against scientists are important to uphold incentives for them to pay attention, conduct replication studies, and disclose their methods and data — but punishment without openness can [quickly become arbitrary](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.05813?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Second, rational deference is compatible with democratic debates about how expertise is mobilised in policy. A technically sound result can still be challenged on the grounds of its values and trade-offs. In practice, then, the non-expert’s trust is best anchored not in claims about the moral virtue of scientists or assertions that “science says something” but in the visibility of institutions that embody Mertonian norms, the availability of interactional experts who can translate and interrogate scientific knowledge, and the continuity of disciplinary mechanisms that correct errors in public view. Axiomatically, deference to any “alternative system” of knowledge is indefensible when it asks for authority without submitting to the same procedures that justify deference to science. The problem isn’t the origin of a claim but how tests of its reliability are governed. When the so-called [“Indian knowledge system”](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/the-age-of-the-unicorn-brought-to-you-by-iit-kharagpur?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is advanced as an epistemic substitute, for instance, it grounds authority in identity, heritage, and scriptural precedence — all bases that don’t instantiate the mechanisms that make testimony trustworthy in complex domains, including public methods, reproducible tests, data disclosure, independent scrutiny, and routine exposure to organised criticism. Scientific authority is portable because its procedures are impersonal, i.e. a result is credible irrespective of who produced it, provided it survives scrutiny. Alternative systems invert this logic by privileging who speaks — the text, the lineage, the nation — over how claims are vetted. This inversion erodes Mertonian communalism by restricting access to methods or sources to insider circles and blunts organised scepticism by classifying critical appraisal as disloyalty. Once criticism becomes pathologised in this way, incentives to detect and report error fade and testimony ceases to be a rational basis for belief. ### Is the war against science? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/11/02/is-the-war-against-science/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:41.000Z From ‘7 basic science discoveries that changed the world’, [*Nature*](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03474-x?ref=slightlyacidic.com), October 29, 2025: > Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic growth. “The return on investment in basic research — the return to society — is very high, typically multiple dollars back per dollar invested,” says Holdren. > > The US funding cuts will hit basic research particularly hard because the government has historically been the prime supporter of fundamental research. The private sector will never invest enough in such research, says Holdren. “The timescale for returns is too long and the ability of the funder to capture those returns too uncertain,” he says. “That’s the reason that the funding of fundamental research is, at its base, a responsibility of government.” The piece mounts a spirited defence of fundamental research, invoking the by-now familiar parables of serendipity, including from thermophilic bacteria to the PCR reaction, nuclear spins to MRI machines, microbial repeats to CRISPR, and reptilian peptides to GLP-1, to argue that only the state will underwrite discoveries whose dividends are unpredictable and arrive late. But in treating the present moment as a general assault on science, it mistakes the idea of knowledge for the object of policy. To quote social theorist Nima Bassiri writing in [*The Baffler*](https://thebaffler.com/latest/scientific-methods-bassiri?ref=slightlyacidic.com), June 26, 2025: > Let us keep in mind, of course, that it is not every aspect of science that is under assault. According to the version of the budget that passed the House, military spending would be augmented significantly, and indeed the House bill has allocated an additional $150 billion to cover the costs of, among other things, the so-called “Golden Dome” next-generation missile defense systems as well as next-generation F-47 fighter aircrafts (“The most advanced, capable, and lethal aircraft ever built”). Like it or not, high-tech weapons and defense systems are science too. Military science remains, as always, a profoundly American commitment. As the Frankfurt School philosopher Max Horkheimer once remarked, “There is no clear-cut distinction between liberalism and authoritarianism in modern science.” Science, in other words, has no inherent moral value, for it possesses only the values of its practitioners. That is, what’s withering now is not the class of activities we call science *in toto* but the publicly provisioned civilian infrastructure that spreads benefits broadly and immediately, from grant ecosystems that serve regional universities to disease surveillance and preparedness. The research yoked to defence or to rapid private capture remains protected, even buoyant. Instead the article restricts its accounting of harm to the abstract entity of future breakthroughs that are now foregone, thus overlooking the distribution of losses in the present. When clinical trials are cancelled and research labs are hollowed out, the poorer regions are hit hardest. Rural patients are shut out of medical research pipelines. Communities risk missing a flood warning. Ultimately, by picking its success stories based on those that later flowered into markets, the article obscures a recurring pattern in which public risk is socialised and private reward is privatised, with intellectual property and pricing regimes fencing off the very returns deployed as proof of social value. The reader in the end may leave persuaded that basic research is good, a truism, without an account of which science is starved, which is indulged, and whose lives are made more precarious when the state dismantles the machinery of public knowledge. ### The 'impact' of climate writing URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/31/the-impact-of-climate-writing/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:43.000Z 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 headline-friendly. It appears once, then again, and soon it begins to dominate the page. Before long, an entire publication can sound as though it has adopted a single favourite term to describe too many things about the world. This overuse isn't necessarily misuse. The word may be entirely correct in the context. The issue lies in the excess. When a word is used repeatedly, it begins to lose its freshness and force. What might have seemed efficient at first can become habitual, producing monotony and weakening the overall effect of the writing. The writing of good journalism depends on proportion and variation. Language must move with rhythm and a modulation, and not be mechanical. The overuse of a single word can flatten that rhythm, producing prose that feels tired and indistinct. (The only exception might be repetition that serves or is served by the narrative.) Even strong ideas can lose their vitality when expressed in language that repeats itself too much. A journalist who relies too heavily on one word also risks blunting the edge. Consider, for example, the widespread use of the word 'impact'. It was once a straightforward noun referring to a collision or perhaps a decisive effect. Now it appears in nearly every context — "social impact", "economic impact", "climate impact", "emotional impact" — and has as a result been deprived of the sense of force it once had. Here are some examples from articles published in journalistic outlets worldwide: > "But our emissions will have even more lasting geologic impacts…" > "… the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events" > "… recognising the environmental impact of war is crucial" > "Is the pollution of the past decades having an impact on the present?" > "… protect the world’s people from the growing impacts of the climate crisis" > "It warned that the impact of these emissions was worsened by deforestation" > "… the multi-layered economic impacts of climate change…" > "Volcanoes can impact climate by emitting carbon dioxide…" > "Owners of capital could be held accountable for climate impacts…" The repetition is not grammatically incorrect but it is stylistically exhausting. The word appears so often that it ceases to register as information. The phrase "have an impact" substitutes for a range of more descriptive verbs — including "affect", "alter", "strain", "improve", "damage" or "transform" — each of which could convey a clearer sense of what is happening. The overuse of 'impact' is not deliberate carelessness but perhaps linguistic habit. When a journalist defaults to the same word each time, the choice gives way to routine, which could be justified if the journalist is short of time and they believe conveying a 'minimum' of meaning suffices. Yet routine can habituate unthinking writing and a convenient way to snap out of it might be to reach for varied language. Whether in the writer's mind or in the reader's, it forces attentiveness and deliberate selection. Repetition also affects how readers perceive and process information. When a word appears too often, readers can become desensitised to it. The first use may carry weight; the tenth does not. Overuse creates familiarity and familiarity dulls impact. In climate journalism, the overuse of 'impact' also carries particular risks because the word lies at the centre of how environmental change is communicated to people. Articles describing "the impacts of global warming", "the impact of rising temperatures", and "climate impacts on agriculture" appear daily across major outlets. The problem is not that these uses are inaccurate — climate change does indeed have profound effects — but that banking on one word can trample a complex reality. When every phenomenon, from coastal erosion to species extinction to heat stress, is ushered within the general label of "climate impacts", the distinctions blur. Readers may no longer register the specificity of events or the different scales of urgency. Instead of recognising that a drought displaces people in one region while ocean acidification erodes livelihoods in another, they encounter both as part of an undifferentiated category. The result is a sense that everything is an "impact" and that therefore nothing is truly distinct or new. Over time, such habitual phrasing can also weaken emotional and cognitive engagement. The first few uses of 'impact' may convey seriousness; by the hundredth, however, it could have become background noise. When audiences repeatedly read that communities are "impacted" by climate change, the word no longer evokes the magnitude of what is at stake. What should communicate disruption or harm could instead normalise the extraordinary scale of the issue. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/d483b-6b7c1-8d625-screenshot-2025-10-30-at-9-15-31-pm-w-1024.png) Google Ngrams of the words 'impact' and 'affect' in 1800-2022\. Credit: Google Ngram Viewer This desensitisation has implications beyond style. Public understanding of climate change depends heavily on how it is framed. If coverage repeatedly invokes 'impact' without variation, it risks promoting a passive sense of causality, as though impacts simply occur, without agents, causes or systems behind them. The word's neutral meaning also obscures responsibility. Saying "climate change impacts farmers" erases agency while saying "changing rainfall patterns have cut yields" or "policy failures are forcing farmers to abandon their land" names it. There are reputational effects as well. For newsrooms that publish frequently on environmental issues, repeating 'impact' can suggest that the reporting is formulaic, instead of using language that better captures new particularities. Readers in turn may perceive such coverage to be less rigorous or less insightful. Finally, the intellectual cost mirrors the linguistic one. The word 'impact' once denoted a clear and physical event, one object striking another. But in climate journalism it has become shorthand for almost any outcome, in turn influencing how writers and readers think about the climate itself: less as a system of interacting causes and effects and more as a vague sequence of consequences. Restoring precise language by specifying what kind of change is occurring can thus help restore analytical clarity as well. Taken together, in the context of climate journalism, restraint and variation are matters of style as well as of responsibility. Climate journalism is the publics' primary interface with scientific understanding and global policy debates. Precise language can help preserve precise thinking, which in turn can support the clarity and urgency effective climate communication demands. ### Gentle yet final URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/21/gentle-yet-final/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:44.000Z A strange thing: a whale [has washed up](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/34c100876041ef-email%5Fname-new-post-user%5Femail-foo-example-com-encoded%5Furl-ahr0chm6ly93d3cudghlagluzhuuy29tl25ld3mvy2l0awvzl1zpc2fragfwyxruyw0vd2hhbgutd2fzagvzlwfzag9yzs1hcc1jb2fzdc9hcnrpy2xlnzaxodu3mzquzwnl-email%5Fid-ccc664d47614d71251d24613c8a7f6ea.html) on a beach near Visakhapatnam. Not just any whale but a fully grown baleen, a hundred feet long and weighing about 40 tonnes (although I’m not clear how they were able to weigh it so quickly). Once recalled, it’s not easy to forget a tale like *The Melancholy of Resistance*. It is [predisposed to linger](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/re-8176dd9094f87832c26792354707f72c-email%5Fname-new-post-user%5Femail-foo-example-com-encoded%5Furl-ahr0chm6ly90awrhbdrzlndvcmrwcmvzcy5jb20vmjayns8xmc8wos9yzw1lbwjlcmluzy10agutbwvsyw5jag9ses1vzi1yzxnpc3rhbmnllw--email%5Fid-ccc664d47614d71251d24613c8a7f6ea.html), and why not? A travelling circus brings the carcass of a giant whale to an apathetic town. Its decay begins to mock the townspeople’s own social and moral decline, soon sending them careening into “carnivalesque” violence. Its sheer materiality and lack of meaning in the face of their turmoil highlights the absurdity of their existence. > This was futile speculation in any case for, being completely mesmerized by the whale, Valuska saw nothing but the whale, and having surveyed the far side of the fabulous object and found himself in the open air once more, descending with comparative safety from the high platform, he even failed to register that those who had preceded him in the line and had already been through the experience once were even now returning to the place from which they had all but started, as if, despite having seen the whale, the many hours of waiting had somehow not quite achieved the purpose for which it was intended. It failed to register with him—maybe precisely because he himself had determined to return in the evening in order to solve before anyone else the haunting phenomenon of this strange company with its extraordinarily patient votaries—and so, unlike the night porter, whom he greeted with a cheery wave, he viewed the spectacle as something that far surpassed itself as a circus exhibition, and when the former addressed him in a hoarse whisper, asking, ‘Here, tell me what’s in there … People are talking about aristocracy of some sort …’he fitted the question to his own line of thought and answered him enthusiastically, saying, ‘No, Mr Árgyelán, sir! It’s a grander thing altogether, I assure you! This is regal, positively regal!’ and, cheeks glowing, abruptly left the puzzled gentleman to his astonishment. Clutching his bag to his chest, he squeezed his way through the crowd, and now that he sensed that it was past twelve o’clock, it being a Wednesday, and Mrs Eszter waiting with the ‘laundry bag’, he decided to return home and deal with that, there being enough time to deliver the papers later in the afternoon. So he set out for Híd Road—not suspecting that he would have been better employed in making a dash for it out of town to some distant place of refuge—pacing quickly and stopping dead every so often to take a conspiratorial squint at the sky, soon completing the short distance home and seeing again and again before him,unfocused yet somehow in its entirety, that innocent carcass vaster than imagination which even now filled up his mind, and left him thinking, ‘How enormous! … How extraordinary a creation! … What a deeply mysterious person the Creator must be to amuse Himself with such extraordinary creatures!’ so that, proceeding along this line of thought, it wasn’t long before he had recovered the high ground of his early-morning meditations and could begin to associate them with his experiences in the market square, and, without a word, listening only to the unbroken murmurous dialogue in the depths of his soul, arrive at some conception of the way in which the gentle yet final gestures of the almighty Creator in the act of judgement succeeded in carefully relating His own omnipotence to untold billions of His creatures, right down to the terrifying yet entertaining spectacle of the whale. > > *—* The Melancholy of Resistance*, László Krasznahorkai* Ariadne’s thread has been pulled, but alas, though it’s only one thread it’s fated, and with it the whole fabric comes apart never to be put back together again. In the otherwise disappointing second season of Love Death + Robots, *The Drowned Giant* offers a curious mirror to the baleful carcass in Anakapalli and the echoes of Krasznahorkai's monstrous miracle. Confronted with the improbable presence of a colossal human form washed ashore on a beach somewhere in England, Stephen, a scientist, reflects: > What I found so fascinating was partly his immense scale, of course, but above all, it was simply the categorical fact of his existence. Whatever else in our lives might be open to doubt, this giant existed in an absolute sense, providing us a glimpse into a world of similar absolutes in which we spectators on the beach were such imperfect and puny copies. János Valuska, the gentle paperboy and the embodiment of a prelapsarian search for meaning in *The Melancholy*, finds wonder and order in the "silent mechanism of the heavenly bodies". As the town descends into madness, then, his purity makes him a target and he ultimately becomes a scapegoat for a chaos he cannot comprehend. Those whose resistance is revealed to be all too melancholic for its futility surrender a vacuum of meaning. Fascistic forces plot as it threatens to swallow the town whole, seeing the riots and tumult as a useful tool to justify their own takeover, with a new, rigid, and merciless system of their own design as a "cure" for the meaninglessness. But where does meaninglessness end and obscurantism begin? Because as the hours pass, Stephen himself must admit a pithier truth: > From a distance, it looked as if he was merely asleep and could, at any moment, clap his heels together and crush the miniscule replicas of himself that swarmed around him. But as time passed, the magical spell cast by the giant began to dissipate. … \[Some days later\] Prolonged immersion in seawater and the tumefaction of his tissues had given the face a less youthful look. … This was the beginning of his surrender to that all-demanding system of time in which the rest of humanity found itself. However repellent it may seem, this ceaseless metamorphosis, this visible life-in-death, is what gave me the courage to finally set foot on his corpse. *Intimacy*. Are we in Krasznahorkai's hell, where we’ve lost our collective ability to make meaning at a time when we need it most, or are we really intimate with a semantically ergodic world where meaning-making has become so easy and so abundant as to make all signals equally likely? Or perhaps it’s all one devastating cycle, that we’re neither in either Krasznahorkai's hell or the postmodern river of noise but in both at once, because the first is the cause and the second is the symptom. The Krasznahorkai-esque decay of our own foundational systems of meaning — religion, the belief in progress, national unity, scientific consensus — is done. We’re intellectually exhausted and institutionally distrustful. Into this weakened state, the digital age introduced a catalyst as disruptive as the travelling circus: not the internet, not social media, not AI, but the human. [*Homo sanguinis*](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2611676/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the bloody man, ever-ready to wage war. Thus we live in the aftermath Alexievich discovered, but without the excuse of a single, visible state collapse. The grand narratives of socialism and liberalism didn't fall overnight; they just dissolved online in an infinite torrent of information, disinformation, conspiracy theories, personal brands, and competing micro-narratives. Pulling on Ariadne’s thread, we tore apart our collective capacity to agree on a shared reality. We are either Mr Eszter, quietly convinced the system is flawed, or Mrs Eszter, using the chaos to seize power. ### Quasicrystal, heal thyself URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/21/quasicrystal-heal-thyself/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:48.000Z Scientists have uncovered a remarkable self-healing property in a strange class of materials known as [quasicrystals](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/why-do-quasicrystals-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), revealing their ability to grow into a perfect, single structure even when faced with obstacles. The discovery challenges a long-held understanding of crystal formation and opens the door to creating large, strong materials free of defects for a new generation of applications. Imagine you’re tiling a massive bathroom floor. You could use identical square tiles, laying them in a simple, repeating grid. This is analogous to a regular crystal. The pattern is predictable and repeats perfectly. When the arrangement of atoms repeats at fixed intervals, called periodicity, you have a conventional crystal. But as you’re laying these tiles, you come across a pipe sticking out of the floor. To get around it, you would have to cut tiles into awkward shapes, breaking your perfect pattern. The lines where the mismatched tiles meet would also create a permanent scar on your floor. In the world of materials, these ‘scars’ are called defects or grain boundaries. These defects are often the weakest points in a material, making it more prone to breaking or corrosion. Say you’ve a chair that’s starting to crack: the odds are the crack would’ve originated at a grain boundary. For many decades, a major goal for materials scientists has been to create large single crystals: materials with no grain boundaries and thus maximum strength and performance. Now, what if instead of squares, you were tiling with a special set of tiles, say a mix of two different diamond shapes (see below). You could cover the entire floor without gaps, creating a pattern that looks ordered and intricate. But then you notice the catch: the pattern never exactly repeats. This is the essence of a quasicrystal. It has long-range order—its atoms are arranged in a pattern you can predict—but that pattern doesn’t repeat. ![A Penrose tiling using thick and thin rhombi (blue and green). Note the aperiodic structure, shared by all Penrose tilings. This particular Penrose tiling exhibits five-fold symmetry. Credit: Public domain](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/24e61-2df5f-f4f09-penrose_tiling_rhombi-svg_.png) A Penrose tiling using thick and thin rhombi (blue and green). Note the aperiodic structure, shared by all Penrose tilings. This particular Penrose tiling exhibits five-fold symmetry. Credit: Public domain This fundamental difference led scientists to ask a critical question: what happens when a growing quasicrystal encounters an obstacle like that pipe in the floor? Does it also form messy, weakening defects or does its unique, more flexible structure give it a way to grow around the disruption and ‘fix’ itself on the other side? In a new study in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/bsbs-rryl?ref=slightlyacidic.com), researchers from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, hypothesised that quasicrystals possess a unique “self-healing” ability. They’ve written that this ability stems from special atomic rearrangements, known as phasons, that are only possible in quasicrystals. To test this, they decided to watch a specific type of quasicrystal, a decagonal quasicrystal, grow around a common, bubble-shaped obstacle found in metal alloys called shrinkage pores. To watch this microscopic drama unfold, the researchers used a two-part strategy in which they combined a real-world experiment with a sophisticated computer simulation. For the experiment, they used a technique called synchrotron X-ray microtomography. Think of it as a super-powered CT scan for materials. They took a small cylinder of an aluminium-cobalt-nickel alloy, melted it, and then carefully cooled it down. As the alloy solidified, quasicrystals began to form and grow, eventually running into the shrinkage pores that were already present in the material. The X-rays allowed the scientists to capture rapid, 3D "movies" of this process in real-time, tracking the crystal's growth as it navigated the porous landscape. To understand the atom-level mechanics behind what they were seeing, the team ran molecular dynamics simulations. This is like creating a virtual universe in a computer, where they could build a model quasicrystal atom by atom. They then programmed a virtual pore in its path and let the simulation run to watch exactly how the individual atoms rearranged themselves as the crystal grew and enveloped the obstacle. The results were astonishing: both the live-action X-ray movies and the computer simulations showed the quasicrystal growing around the pores without forming any permanent defects. As the growing front of the quasicrystal met a pore, it momentarily distorted its shape to flow around the void. Then when the two fronts met on the far side of the pore, they merged together perfectly. The crystal continued to grow as if the pore had never been there, resulting in a single, flawless quasicrystal that had simply swallowed the obstacle. The key evidence from the experiments was the smoothness of the final quasicrystal's surface. In a normal crystal, if a defect like a grain boundary had formed where the two fronts met, it would have created a permanent groove on the surface. The fact that the quasicrystal's surface healed into a smooth, convex shape confirmed that no such defect was present. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/b422b-d2522-d921c-screenshot-2025-10-21-at-10-42-32-am-w-1024.png) The simulated growth of a quasicrystal around an obstacle (the white circle at the centre). The dotted red box identifies the axis along which two fronts meet as the quasicrystal grows around the obstacle. Credit: DOI: 10.1103/bsbs-rryl The computer simulations revealed the secret to this ability: the phasons. A phason flip is one pattern of tiles changing into another without disrupting the overall order. When the growing crystal collided with the pore, it created localised stress. But through a cascade of these phason flips, the quasicrystal was able to distribute this stress and seamlessly stitch its structure back together. The scientists described this as an err-and-repair mechanism because the quasicrystal makes a temporary "mistake" at the collision point, then quickly corrects it. The result: perfect structure. The finding has profound implications for materials science. First, it suggests that creating large, defect-free single crystals—currently a notoriously difficult and expensive process for conventional materials—could be dramatically easier with quasicrystals. Their built-in fault tolerance means they might be grown perfectly using simpler and cheaper methods. The ability to easily create large, single-grain quasicrystals could also better unlock their incredible potential. Lacking the weak points of grain boundaries, quasicrystals could be used to create exceptionally strong, hard, and lightweight alloys for aerospace and industrial applications. Their unique structure also gives them interesting properties like low friction and low adhesion, making them ideal as durable nonstick coating. The err-and-repair mechanism is also a form of self-healing at the most fundamental level. Understanding this process could inspire the design of a new class of "smart" materials. For instance, imagine a composite that when cracked or damaged can automatically absorb the defect and ‘repair’ its own atomic structure, maintaining its integrity and performance. The principles revealed in this study could be applied to other fields, such as creating more durable catalysts for the chemical industry that can resist degradation from internal pores. Overall, this research reshapes our understanding of how ordered matter can form and provides a blueprint for a new generation of resilient materials built from the atom up. ### On Jane Goodall URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/18/on-jane-goodall/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:48.000Z 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 conservation experts writing on social media platforms have since her passing on October 1 called attention to the ways in which Goodall problematised conservation, not least by entrenching colonial ideas and attitudes and by defying empirical and ethnographic norms that, while they served her well, weren't always in the interests of research as a collaborative enterprise. I'm writing this post to collect my own issues with her and her work in one place, for my reference; if it helps you too — great. (Note that I've already published an [article in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/jane-goodall-the-scientist-who-gave-chimps-names-not-numbers/article70117543.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) alongside my colleague Radhika Santhanam on the specific ways in which Goodall pushed the boundaries of scientific research and their consequences.) Goodall’s work in Africa began in 1960, a time of British colonial influence and her narrative — rather the narrative of her — often fit the "White saviour" archetype, centring a White researcher as the sole protector of a "pristine" African wilderness. This narrative overlooked the contributions and knowledge of local communities. The media, but especially *National Geographic*, helped sharpen this image of a lone White woman braving the African jungle. While this was a popular framing, it downplayed the role of the Tanzanians who worked alongside her. Men like Rashidi Kikwale and Eslom Mpongo were vital to her project's success, tracking the chimpanzees and gathering data, yet they received little public recognition. This oversight also perpetuated a colonialist trope that overlooked the role of local expertise in scientific discoveries — and one that arguably helped to sustain similar patterns of (mis)acknowledgement in this and other domains, including ["parachute science"](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004099&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and ["parachute journalism"](https://www.cjr.org/innovations/parachute-journalism-newsroom-bureaus.php?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Goodall's public statements on African population growth are somewhat relevant here: she suggested that a smaller human population would solve many environmental problems, a view with immutable racist undertones. It placed a disproportionate amount of blame on population growth in economically developing and under-developed nations while ignoring the much larger per-capita environmental impact of economically developed countries. Goodall also campaigned against bushmeat, a vital source of food for many communities, but not against the hunting of similar meat in Europe, which was referred to by the more prestigious and less stigmatised term of "game". (Aside: Whataboutery, or [tu-quoque](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque?ref=slightlyacidic.com), doesn't generally make for a good argument because it attempts to distract from a particular point by qualifying its validity on a different and perhaps unrelated one. Here, however, the double standard is important. I'm not saying "don't criticise bushmeat because you have game" but that "the principles used to criticise bushmeat are not being applied consistently to game hunting in Europe", and that this inconsistency reveals a cultural and economic bias. In fact the very words are loaded with prejudice: "bushmeat" often carries connotations of being primitive, illicit, unsanitary, and desperate, and is associated with poverty and the unregulated hunting of endangered species like primates, while "game" suggests tradition, sport, and nobility, evoking images of managed estates, recreational hunting by the wealthy, and fine dining. Goodall's language itself thus preframed the debate.) Her early inspiration from the fictitious character 'Tarzan', a White man who dominated the African jungle, has also been noted by critics as reinforcing a colonial mindset, propping up a romanticised view of an Africa devoid of complex human societies. In 1975, Goodall married Derek Bryceson, a powerful figure in Tanzania given he was the director of the country's national parks as well as a member of parliament. She has said that without his political influence, Gombe National Park might not exist today. This implies what she left unsaid, that without Bryceson her own work may not have been possible, which in turn raises discomfiting questions about what privileges her marital union with Bryceson afforded her that were deprived to others. Bryceson also protected Gombe through high-level political interventions, which may have set a precedent for a conservation effort that banked on powerful individuals rather than on community-based initiatives. While Goodall’s later work did emphasise community involvement, it remains that the initial survival of her research site was tied to her marriage to a government official. Goodall’s fame also gave her a platform to speak on many issues. She has been an advocate for animal welfare and environmental protection — but she has also commented on topics far from her area of expertise. One of the most significant controversies surrounds her views on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Goodall has been a vocal opponent of crop biotechnology. Many scientists have criticised her for this stance stating that her claims are not supported by scientific evidence. I know her 2013 book 'Seeds of Hope' also contains factual errors as well as passages plagiarised from anti-GMO websites. But her celebrity status conferred undue weight to her opinions even when they contradicted the scientific consensus on GMO safety. The tragic irony is that GMO technology stands to benefit economically developing countries as well as endangered species the most. Goodall even expressed openness to the existence of creatures like "Bigfoot". This problem is tied closely with Goodall’s attitudes towards her research methods, which were unconventional from the start. She lacked a formal university degree when she began her research and she developed her own techniques. One of her most famous, and controversial, practices was to name the chimpanzees she studied. At the time, scientific convention demanded that researchers use numbers to avoid emotional attachment and maintain objectivity. Naming the chimpanzees helped to portray them as individuals with personalities and emotions. This was a significant departure from the view of animals as unthinking subjects and was instrumental in changing the public perception of chimpanzees and other animals. Many scientists now acknowledge the existence of animal personalities, a shift that Goodall helped to pioneer. However, her methods also had a downside. Goodall’s close interactions with the chimpanzees, including feeding them, likely altered their natural behaviour. Some researchers have suggested that the "Gombe Chimpanzee War", a period of intense intergroup violence that Goodall documented, may have been exacerbated by her provisioning of food. That is, the artificial food source could have increased competition and aggression among the chimpanzee groups. While her deep empathy for the chimpanzees was a strength in many ways, attributing human-like motivations and emotions to animals can sometimes lead researchers to misinterpret their behaviour. Her approach thus brought the inner lives of chimpanzees to the forefront but also raised valid questions about the rigour of her early work. Attributing complex human emotions and intentions to animals is a fraught enterprise. While both scientists and many non-scientists' attitudes towards animal personality have changed in the years since Goodall's first observations, with many experts now studying this aspect of the animal kingdom more actively, her early work sometimes lacked objective, behavioural descriptions and relied too heavily on subjective interpretation. Standardised methods exist for a reason — to provide a common framework within which scientists can compare each other's notes and data — and defying them risks isolating findings and stunting progress. Science is also not static; its methods are in a state of (progressive) flux. Contrary to what Goodall did, however, change shouldn't happen as outright defiance but in the form of a structured, evidence-based, and consultative process. Methodological innovation needs to be integrated in a way that maintains the comparability and integrity of scientific knowledge and keeps the door open to researchers' attempts to reproduce each other's work. A related question concerns researchers' ability to generalise Goodall's findings from Gombe to all chimpanzees. The population in Gombe is a single, small, and isolated group. The behaviour of these chimpanzees, but especially those influenced by artificial feeding and intense human observation, may not be typical for the species as a whole. Studies of other chimpanzee groups in different environments have also revealed variations in tool use, social structure, and levels of aggression. Goodall's close interaction with the chimpanzees also created a significant risk of zoonotic disease transmission, from humans to chimps and vice versa. Humans and chimpanzees are genetically similar and thus susceptible to many of the same illnesses. There have been many polio and respiratory disease outbreaks at Gombe and park administrators have suspected humans to have been the source. This is why contemporary primatology enforces strict distancing protocols today. ### The 'religious' function of science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/18/the-religious-function-of-science/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:49.000Z 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 manage our environment. This perspective views science as a potent problem-solving enterprise. In his chapter in a new book titled 'Science and Humanism: Knowledge, Values, and the Common Good', Southern Illinois University professor of philosophy Matthew Brown acknowledges the importance of this view, which he collects under the umbrella of what he calls science's "pragmatic function" — but then also argues that this is incomplete. According to him, to fully appreciate the value and scope of the scientific endeavour, we must recognise that science serves a second, equally significant purpose: what he calls its "religious function". This is obviously provocatively labelled but I'm sure you can also see why it's not just that, that it's a legitimately attractive idea to engage with. It's certainly one I've been enamoured with for many years. The "pragmatic function" of science is the source of its authority and prestige. It's an empirical reality that the scientific approach, with its emphasis on evidence, testing, and refinement, has given humans unprecedented power over the world to achieve their own goals. Brown also writes that an "extreme pragmatist" might argue that this is the sole function of science. In this perspective, any scientific activity that doesn't directly contribute to our ability to predict and control is seen as superfluous. But according to Brown, this view fails to account for highly valued areas of scientific inquiry, including cosmology and evolutionary biology, whose immediate practical applications are either not obvious or may never materialise. The "religious function" of science is set up to account for these other aspects. Brown goes on that he's using the label in a specific, non-pejorative sense, that he isn't arguing that science is a religion with dogma or deities but that it has assumed a role traditionally filled by religion, mythology, and philosophy — which is to provide humankind with a comprehensive story about the universe and our place within it. According to him, the pragmatic function gives us tools to live while the religious function gives us the context within which to live. In his telling, it's the pursuit of this function that drives scientists to ask "big picture" questions like "what is the origin of the universe?", "how did life on earth originate?", "what are the fundamental laws of nature?", and so on. The answers to these questions may not help us build a better smartphone but they contribute to a grand and naturalistic narrative — one that can inspire feelings of wonder and a sense of connection to the cosmos, fulfilling an existential and aesthetic purpose that's profoundly valuable to the human experience. The vehicle for this "religious function" is, per Brown, a construct called the "scientific worldview", which he explains is more just a list of scientific facts: it's a creative and philosophical synthesis that weaves together findings from disparate fields into a single, compelling story. I suppose Jayant Narlikar, Yash Pal, and other similar figures were masters of just this craft, taking complex scientific ideas and integrating them into an accessible and meaningful narrative *about the cosmos*. This act of synthesis is obviously distinct from the day-to-day work of experimental science because it's an interpretive endeavour that goes beyond the immediate data to create a larger picture. According to Brown, who's drawing on the work of classical pragmatists like John Dewey in this context, creating such a worldview is itself a pragmatic act in a broader sense: a coherent worldview can help us orient ourselves, establish our values, and collectively pursue our ideals. By providing a common, evidence-based story, a scientific worldview can thus serve as a foundation for a secular and humanist society. This said, I think a potential problem with this framework may lie in assigning a "religious" or meaning-making function to science. Science's institutional authority is derived from its methodological commitment to describing what is, not what ought to be. Introducing a "religious function" may create the risk of blurring this distinction between descriptive and normative claims. If science is tasked with constructing a worldview that isn't only accurate but also "meaningful" or that fulfils certain human needs, the process of scientific synthesis can become influenced by preexisting values. But for science to function effectively as a source of reliable knowledge, it's important that its descriptive mission remain distinct from a prescriptive one. In any case, Brown's chapter offers an intriguing framework within which to understand the scope of scientific activity in its entirety, not least because it also provides a clear justification for [pure research](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/science-for-all-curiosity-driven-research-in-an-unequal-world/article70165905.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Please give it, as well as the whole book, a read if you can. A PDF of the book is available on a Creative Commons non-commercial license [here](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/science-and-humanism/F1D18B3C113B639E768F9537285C8358?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It's edited by University of Miami philosopher Anjan Chakravartty. For my next read, I've got my eye on a chapter by Akeel Bilgrami titled 'Scientism: Reflections on Nature, Value, and Agency'. ### A bad Nobel for Mokyr URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/14/a-bad-nobel-for-mokyr/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:49.000Z The American-Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr has been [awarded](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/press-release/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) one half of the 2025 special Nobel Prize for economics "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress". Now, by rewarding particular achievements over others, the Nobel Prizes are in general guilty of rendering them seemingly more virtuous. This is at best a false virtue that props up one more axis of discrimination. For example, the science prizes (for medicine, physics, and chemistry) restrict "what counts as 'world-changing’ science to that published in 'high impact' western journals, led by scientists affiliated with well-heeled European or North American institutes, and framed within the disciplinary traditions dominant in these regions," to quote from a [recent piece](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-challenge-of-writing-about-the-science-nobel-prizes/article70143687.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of mine. This said, it's still possible to find a kernel of indisputable facts — the high-quality work itself — within this morass that still deserves to be celebrated. This year's peace and economics prizes, for Marina Corina Machado and Mokyr respectively, have however called even this courtesy into question for their wins. For the case against Machado, I recommend my colleague Srinivasan VR's [profile and analysis](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/maria-corina-machado-maduros-foe-trumps-friend/article70152997.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of her legacy. As for Mokyr: my principal objection is the Eurocentrism of his theory. Mokyr has attributed the Industrial Revolution to the European Enlightenment's intellectual openness and implied that these qualities were uniquely Western. However, many scholars have recorded that regions such as China and parts of South and Southeast Asia displayed comparable technological sophistication, commercial dynamism, and administrative capacity well before the 18th century — and on the back of this evidence other scholars, including the so-called 'California School', have objected to Mokyr's framing. Europe's eventual industrial leadership wasn't the result of cultural superiority, as Mokyr would have it, but because of specific material advantages, including those accruing from its colonial exploits and its global trade networks. Mokyr's interpretation however risks reducing the global divergence in industrialisation to differences in cultural attitudes, downplaying the role of imperial extraction. Equally important is the fact that this is interpretation: Mokyr's theory isn't empirically verified. What he has called his evidence for a self-sustaining relationship between scientific inquiry and industrial productivity is largely derived from selective readings of correspondence among intellectuals, the minutes of learned societies, and anecdotal accounts of inventors. These materials do reveal the existence of intellectual exchange but they don't show that such exchange measurably increased productivity or the diffusion of new technologies — nor do they confirm that the regions or industries most exposed to "useful knowledge", in his words, grew faster than those that were not. Independent scrutiny of industrial output records, patent data, and wage histories from the 18th and the early 19th centuries has consistently come away with weak correlations, at best, between sites of scientific activity and industrial success. Britain's early industrial centres were often driven by the availability of particular resources, entrepreneurial finance, and organised labour rather than by their proximity to experimental philosophy. Yet Mokyr's thesis turns a coincidental association into a mechanism of causality. His critics are right to argue that the supposed feedback loop between propositional and prescriptive knowledge remains a theoretical construct, supported by narratives and his own convictions rather than empirical proof. And now the Nobel Foundation's endorsement has conferred to these unsubstantiated convictions the sheen of authority, and all the institutional prestige and public deference that entails. ### Using disorder to reveal hidden objects URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/12/using-disorder-to-reveal-hidden-objects/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:50.000Z When light, sound or any kind of wave travels through a complex medium like fog, murky water, or biological tissue, it scatters in many directions. Each particle or irregularity in the medium changes the path of the waves, scrambling them and blurring the resulting image. This is why doctors struggle to image deep inside tissue using ultrasound, why optical microscopes can't see through thick samples, and why radar and sonar sometimes miss objects hidden behind clutter. Scientists have long looked for ways to focus waves through such disordered environments — and while many have tried to compensate for scattering, their success has been limited when the medium becomes very opaque. A team led by Alexandre Aubry at ESPCI Paris and collaborators from Vienna and Aix-en-Provence wanted to turn this problem around. Instead of correcting or undoing the scattering, they wondered if something in the wave patterns remains stable even in the middle of all that complexity. That is, could they identify and locate a target based on the part of the signal that still carries its unique 'fingerprint'? Their new study, published in [*Nature Physics,*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-03016-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com) introduces a mathematical tool called the fingerprint operator that allows exactly this. This operator can detect, locate, and even characterise an object hidden inside a strongly scattering medium by comparing the reflected light to a reference pattern recorded in simpler conditions. The method can work for sound, light, radar, and other kinds of waves. At the heart of the technique is the reflection matrix, a large dataset recording how each source in an array of sources sends a wave into the medium and how every receiver picks up the returning echoes. Each element of this matrix contains information about how waves bounce off of different points, so together they capture the complete response of the system. To find a target within this sea of signals, the researchers introduced the fingerprint operator, written as Γ = R × R₀†, where R is the measured reflection matrix from the complex medium and R₀ is a reference matrix measured for the same target in clear, homogeneous conditions. The dagger (†) indicates a mathematical conjugate that makes the comparison sensitive to how well the two patterns match. By calculating how strongly the two matrices correlate, the team obtained a likelihood index, which indicates how likely it is that a target with certain properties — e.g. position, size or shape — is present at a given spot. Effectively the team has developed a way to image hidden objects using scattered light. The researchers tested this concept with ultrasound. They used arrays containing up to 1,024 transducers (devices that convert energy from one form to another) to send and receive sound waves. First, they embedded small metal spheres inside a suspension of glass beads mixed with water, making for a strongly scattering environment. In the granular suspension, conventional ultrasound couldn't see the buried metal spheres at all. The multiple scattering caused an exponential loss of contrast with depth, making the target signals roughly a 100x weaker than the background noise. Yet when the fingerprint operator was applied, the two spheres appeared sharply on the reconstructed likelihood map, each represented by a bright peak at its correct location. The contrast improvement reached factors of several hundred, strong enough to rule out false positive signals with a probability of error smaller than 1 in a hundred million. This success came from the fingerprint operator's ability to filter out diffuse, randomly scattered waves and isolate those faint waves that behave as if the medium were transparent. In simple terms, the operator is a mathematical tool that can use the complexity of the target's own echo to cancel the complexity of the medium. The same approach worked inside a foam that mimicked human tissue. A normal ultrasound image was dominated by speckle (random bright and dark spots caused by small scattering events), rendering a small pre-inserted marker nearly invisible. But when the fingerprint operator was applied to the data, the marker was revealed clearly and precisely. To its credit, the fingerprint operator doesn't require scientists to fully known the medium, only the ability to record a reflection matrix and a reference response. It can then use these resources to find patterns that survive scattering and extract meaningful information. For medicine, this could improve ultrasound detection of small implants, needles, and markers that currently get lost in tissue noise. It could also help map the internal fibre structure of muscles or hearts, providing new diagnostic insights into diseases like cardiomyopathy and fibrosis. In materials science, it could reveal the orientation of grains in metals or composites. In military settings, it could locate targets hidden behind foliage or turbulent water. The approach is also computationally efficient: according to the researchers' paper, generating the likelihood map takes about the same time as developing a standard ultrasound image and can be adapted for moving targets by incorporating motion parameters into the fingerprint. Finally, the idea animating the study also challenges a long-standing view that multiple scattering is purely a nuisance, incapable of being useful. The study overturns this view by extracting information from the multiple scattering data, using the fingerprint operator to account for how a target's own echoes evolve through scattering, and leveraging those distortions to detect it more confidently. ### Remembering 'The Melancholy of Resistance' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/09/remembering-the-melancholy-of-resistance/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:51.000Z 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 experience because I read it at a time of great uncertainty in my own life. In *The Melancholy*, chaos lurks in the banal mechanisms of civic life: when a train is delayed, when a town is disordered, when an old woman's journey is warped by fear. Using a slow implosion of meaning, Krasznahorkai confronts the reader not with the spectacle of a dystopia, which is all but apparent, but with a particular character of it that's otherwise often too fleeting to scrutinise — the slow death of coherence that makes catastrophe feel almost natural more than even inevitable. While the town in *The Melancholy* remains unnamed, there's a sense that we all know where it is. It's a landscape in which every gesture of governance has been reduced to a ritual and where only the forms of order persist even as their substance rots. The circus that arrives at the town's edge, trailing a colossal whale and the promise of revelation, becomes a parable of how societies yearn for meaning precisely when they lose the capacity to create it. The town's population is numbed by routine and discovers, unfortunately too late, that it has already surrendered its collective will. If you look closely, you'll see just this line appear throughout history, often on the cusp of great violence and generational trauma. To me at least, *The Melancholy* was disturbing not because of its setting in late-socialist Hungary but because of Krasznahorkai's method, which portrayed entropy as an ordinary condition of modern life. In fact the town's decay seems to mirror our own saturation with information and disinformation today, our bureaucratised indifference, and our surrender to slow violence rather than sudden terror. Today's dystopias are not built by tyrants (even if they abound) but maintained by exhaustion — by creating virtues of the same systems that no longer work yet continue to grind on. Krasznahorkai's long, spiralling sentences mimic this endurance by trapping readers within the drawling syntax of futility. In this world, resistance teeters on the brink of melancholy because it no longer imagines victory, even new kinds: it simply refuses to forget what dignity once meant. The novel's citizens shuffle through darkness as a travelling monstrosity settles down in their midst, resembling the contemporary crowds scrolling through crisis after crisis, aware that something monstrous is underway but which are too enmeshed, too ground down, in old habits to act. *The Melancholy* endures in effect because Krasznahorkai turns dystopia inside out. He doesn't ask what happens when civilisation collapses but how it can manage to lumber on even long after its meaning has departed. And its terror, of course, lies in recognising that the end of the world, whenever it comes, will look and feel exactly like the world we already know. ### What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/04/what-does-a-quantum-bayess-rule-look-like/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:51.000Z Bayes's rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its simplest form, the rule tells us how to revise the probability of a hypothesis once new data becomes available. A standard way to teach it involves drawing coloured balls from a pouch: you start with some expectation (e.g. "there’s a 20% chance I'll draw a blue ball"), then you update your belief depending on what you observe ("I’ve drawn a red ball, so the actual chance of drawing a blue ball is 10%"). While this example seems simple, the rule carries considerable weight: physicists and mathematicians have described it as the most consistent way to handle uncertainty in science, and it's a central part of logic, decision theory, and indeed nearly every field of applied science. There are two well-known ways of arriving at Bayes's rule. One is the axiomatic route, which treats probability as a set of logical rules and shows that Bayesian updating is the only way to preserve consistency. The other is variational, which demands that updates should stay as close as possible to prior beliefs while remaining consistent with new data. This latter view is known as the principle of minimum change. It captures the intuition that learning should be conservative: we shouldn't alter our beliefs more than is necessary. This principle explains why Bayesian methods have become so effective in practical statistical inference: because they balance a respect for new data with loyalty to old information. A natural question arises here: can Bayes's rule be extended into the quantum world? Quantum theory can be thought of as a noncommutative extension of probability theory. While there are good reasons to expect there should be a quantum analogue of Bayes's rule, the field has for a long time struggled to identify a unique and universally accepted version. Instead, there are several competing proposals. One of them stands out: the Petz transpose map. This is a mathematical transformation that appears in many areas of quantum information theory, particularly in quantum error correction and statistical sufficiency. Some scholars have even argued that it's the "correct" quantum Bayes's rule. Still, the situation remains unsettled. In probability, the joint distribution is like a big table that lists the chances of every possible pair of events happening together. If you roll a die and flip a coin, the joint distribution specifies the probability of getting "heads and a 3", "tails and a 5", and so on. In this big table, you can also zoom out and just look at one part. For example, if you only care about the die, you can add up over all coin results to get the probability of each die face. Or if you only care about the coin, you can add up over all die results to get the probability of heads or tails. These zoomed-out views are called marginals. The classical Bayes's rule doesn’t just update the zoomed-out views but the whole table — i.e. the entire joint distribution — so the connection between the two events also remains consistent with the new evidence. In the quantum version, the joint distribution isn't a table of numbers but a mathematical object that records how the input and output of a quantum process are related. The point of the new study is that if you want a true quantum Bayes's rule, you need to update that whole object, not just one part of it. A new study by Ge Bai, Francesco Buscemi, and Valerio Scarani in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/5n4p-bxhm?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has taken just this step. In particular, they've presented a quantum version of the principle of minimum change by showing that when the measure of change is chosen to be quantum fidelity — a widely used measure of similarity between states — this optimisation leads to a unique solution. Equally remarkably, this solution coincided with the Petz transpose map in many important cases. As a result, the researchers have built a strong bridge between classical Bayesian updating, the minimum change principle, and a central tool of quantum information. The motivation for this new work isn't only philosophical. If we're to generalise Bayes's rule to include quantum mechanics as well, we need to do so in a way that respects the structural constraints of quantum theory without breaking away from its classical roots. The researchers began by recalling how the minimum change principle works in classical probability. Instead of updating only a single marginal distribution, the principle works at the level of the joint input-output distribution. Updating then becomes an optimisation problem, i.e. finding the subsequent distribution that's consistent with the new evidence but minimally different from the evidence from before. In ordinary probability, we talk about stochastic processes. These are rules that tell us how an input is turned into an output, with certain probabilities. For example if you put a coin into a vending machine, there might be a 90% chance you get a chips packet and a 10% chance you get nothing. This rule describes a stochastic process. This process can also be described with a joint distribution. In quantum physics, however, it's tricky. The inputs and outputs aren't just numbers or events but quantum states, which are described by wavefunctions or density matrices. This makes the maths much more complex. The resulting stochastic processes also become sequences of events called completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) maps. A CPTP map is the most general kind of physical evolution allowed: it takes a quantum state and transforms it into another quantum state. And in the course of doing so, it needs to follow two rules: it shouldn't yield any negative probabilities and it should ensure the total probability adds up to 1\. That is, your chance of getting a chips packet shouldn't be –90% nor should it be 90% plus a 20% chance of getting nothing. These complications mean that, while the joint distribution in classical Bayesian updating is a simple table, the one in quantum theory is more sophisticated. It uses two mathematical tools in particular. One is purification, a way to embed a mixed quantum state into a larger 'pure' state so that mathematicians can keep track of correlations. The other is Choi operators, a standard way of representing a CPTP map as a big matrix that encodes all possible input-output behaviour at once. Together, these tools play the role of the joint distribution in the quantum setting: they record the whole picture of how inputs and outputs are related. Now, how do you compare two processes, i.e. the actual forward process (input → output) and the guessed reverse process (output → input)? In quantum mechanics, one of the best measures of similarity is fidelity. It's a number between 0 and 1\. 0 means two processes are completely different and 1 means they're exactly the same. In this context, the researchers' problem statement was this: given a forward process, what reverse process is closest to it? To solve this, they looked over all possible reverse processes that obeyed the two rules, then they picked the one that maximised the fidelity, i.e. the CPTP map most similar to the forward process. This is the quantum version of applying the principle of minimum change. In the course of this process, the researchers found that in natural conditions, the Petz transpose map emerges as the quantum Bayes's rule. In quantum mechanics, two objects (like matrices) commute if the order in which you apply them doesn't matter. That is, `A` then `B` produces the same outcome as `B` then `A`. In physical terms, if two quantum states commute, they behave more like classical probabilities. The researchers found that when the CPTP map that takes an input and produces an output, called the forward channel, commutes with the new state, the updating process is nothing but the Petz transpose map. This is an important result for many reasons. Perhaps foremost is that it explains why the Petz map has shown up consistently across different parts of quantum information theory. It appears it isn't just a useful tool but the natural consequence of the principle of minimum change applied in the quantum setting. The study also highlighted instances where the Petz transpose map isn't optimal, specifically when the commutativity condition fails. In these situations, the optimal updating process depends more intricately on the new evidence. This subtlety departs clearly from classical Bayesian logic because in the quantum case, the structure of non-commutativity forces updates to depend non-linearly on the evidence (i.e. the scope of updating can be disproportionate to changes in evidence). Finally, the researchers have shown how their framework can recover special cases of practical importance. If some new evidence perfectly agrees with prior expectations, the forward and reverse processes become identical, mirroring the classical situation where Bayes's rule simply reaffirms existing beliefs. Similarly, in contexts like quantum error correction, the Petz transpose map's appearance is explained by its status as the optimal minimal-change reverse process. But the broader significance of this work lies in the way it unifies different strands of quantum information theory under a single conceptual roof. By proving that the Petz transpose map can be derived from the principle of minimum change, the study has provided a principled justification for its widespread use rather than being restricted to particular contexts. This fact has immediate consequences for quantum computing, where physicists are looking for ways to reverse the effects of noise on fragile quantum states. The Petz transpose map has long been known to do a good job of recovering information from these states after they've been affected by noise. Now that physicists know the map embodies the smallest update required to stay consistent with the observed outcomes, they may be able to design new recovery schemes that exploit the structure of minimal change more directly. The study may also open doors to extending Bayesian networks into the quantum regime. In classical probability, a Bayesian network provides a structured way to represent cause-effect relationships. By adapting the minimum change framework, scientists may be able to develop 'quantum Bayesian networks' where the way one updates their expectations of a particular outcome respects the peculiar constraints of CPTP maps. This could have applications in quantum machine learning and in the study of quantum causal models. There are also some open questions as well. For instance, the researchers have noted that if different measures of divergence other than fidelity are used, e.g. the Hilbert-Schmidt distance or quantum relative entropy, the resulting quantum Bayes's rules may be different. This in turn indicates that there could be multiple valid updating rules, each suited to different contexts. Future research will need to map out these possibilities and determine which ones are most useful for particular applications. In all, the study provides both a conceptual advance and a technical tool. Conceptually, it shows how the spirit of Bayesian updating can carry over into the quantum world; technically, it provides a rigorous derivation of when and why the Petz transpose map is the optimal quantum Bayes's rule. Taken together, the study's finding strengthens the bridge between classical and quantum reasoning and offers a deeper understanding of how information is updated in a world where uncertainty is baked into reality rather than being due to an observer's ignorance. ### Using 10,000 atoms and 1 to probe the Bohr-Einstein debate URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/10/01/using-10000-atoms-and-1-to-probe-the-bohr-einstein-debate/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:53.000Z 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 as electrons or photons are sent through two narrow slits, the resulting pattern on a screen behind them is not the simple outline of the slits, but a series of alternating bright and dark bands. This pattern looks exactly like the ripples produced by waves on the surface of water when two stones are thrown in together. But when detectors are placed to see which slit each particle passes through, the pattern changes: the wave-like interference disappears and the particles line up as if they had travelled like microscopic bullets. This puzzling switch between wave and particle behaviour became the stage for one of the deepest disputes of the 20th century. The two central figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, each with a different vision of what the double-slit experiment really meant. Their disagreement was not about the results themselves but about how these results should be interpreted, and what they revealed about the nature of reality. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/09/03/what-does-it-mean-to-interpret-quantum-physics/ Einstein believed strongly that the purpose of physics was to describe an external reality that exists independently of us. For him, the universe must have clear properties whether or not anyone is looking. In a double-slit experiment, this meant an electron or photon must in fact have taken a definite path, through one slit or the other, before striking the screen. The interference pattern might suggest some deeper process that we don't yet understand but, to Einstein, it couldn't mean that the particle lacked a path altogether. Based on this idea, Einstein argued that quantum mechanics (as formulated in the 1920s) couldn't be the full story. The strange idea that a particle had no definite position until measured, or that its path depended on the presence of a detector, was unacceptable to him. He felt that there must be hidden details that explained the apparently random outcomes. These details would restore determinism and make physics once again a science that described what happens, not just what is observed. Bohr, however, argued that Einstein's demand for definite paths misunderstood what quantum mechanics was telling us. Bohr's central idea was called complementarity. According to this principle, particles like electrons or photons can show both wave-like and particle-like behaviour, but never both at the same time. Which behaviour appears depends entirely on how an experiment is arranged. In the double-slit experiment, if the apparatus is set up to measure which slit the particle passes through, the outcome will display particle-like behaviour and the interference pattern will vanish. If the apparatus is set up without path detectors, the outcome will display wave-like interference. For Bohr, the two descriptions are not contradictions but complementary views of the same reality, each valid only within its experimental context. Specifically, Bohr insisted that physics doesn't reveal a world of objects with definite properties existing independently of measurement. Instead, physics provides a framework for predicting the outcomes of experiments. The act of measurement is inseparable from the phenomenon itself. Asking what "really happened" to the particle when no one was watching was, for Bohr, a meaningless question. Thus, while Einstein demanded hidden details to restore certainty, Bohr argued that uncertainty was built into nature itself. The double-slit experiment, for Bohr, showed that the universe at its smallest scales does not conform to classical ideas of definite paths and objective reality. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/disentangling-entanglement/ The disagreement between Einstein and Bohr was not simply about technical details but a clash of philosophies. Einstein's view was rooted in the classical tradition: the world exists in a definite state and science should describe that state. Quantum mechanics, he thought, was useful but incomplete, like a map missing a part of the territory. Bohr's view was more radical. He believed that the limits revealed by the double-slit experiment were not shortcomings of the theory but truths about the universe. For him, the experiment demonstrated that the old categories of waves and particles, causes and paths, couldn't be applied without qualification. Science had to adapt its concepts to match what experiments revealed, even if that meant abandoning the idea of an observer-independent reality. Though the two men never reached agreement, their debate has continued to inspire generations of physicists and philosophers. The double-slit experiment remains the clearest demonstration of the puzzle they argued over. Do particles truly have no definite properties until measured, as Bohr claimed? Or are we simply missing hidden elements that would complete the picture, as Einstein insisted? A new study in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/zwhd-1k2t?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has taken the double-slit spirit into the realm of single atoms and scattered photons. And rather than ask whether an electron goes through one slit or another, it has asked whether scattered light carries "which-way" information about an atom. By focusing on the coherence or incoherence of scattered light, the researchers — from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — have effectively reopened the old debate in a modern setting. The researchers trapped rubidium atoms held in an optical lattice, a regular grid of light that traps atoms in well-defined positions, like pieces on a chessboard. By carefully preparing these atoms in a particular state, each lattice site contained exactly one atom in its lowest energy state. The lattice could then be suddenly switched off, letting the atoms expand as localised wavepackets (i.e. wave-like packets of energy). A short pulse of laser light was directed at these atoms. The photons it emitted were scattered off the atoms and collected by a detector. By checking whether the scattered light was coherent (with a steady, predictable phase) or incoherent (with a random phase), the scientists could tell if the photons carried hints of the motion of the atom that scattered them. The main finding was that even a single atom scattered light that was only partly coherent. In other words, the scattered light wasn't completely wave-like: one part of it showed a clear phase pattern, another part looked random. The randomness came from the fact that the scattering process linked, or entangled, the photon with the atom's movement. This was because each time a photon was scattered off, the atom recoiled just a little, and that recoil left behind a faint clue about which atom had scattered the photon. This in turn meant that if the scientists looked close enough, they could work out where the photon came from in theory. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/09/09/a-tribute-to-rubidium/ To study this effect, the team compared three cases. First, they observed atoms still held tightly in the optical lattice. In this case, scattering could create sidebands — frequency shifts in the scattered light — that reflected changes in the atom's motion. These sidebands represented incoherent scattering. Second, they looked at atoms immediately after switching off the lattice, before the expanding wavepackets had spread out. Third, they examined atoms after a longer expansion in free space, when the wavepackets had grown even wider. In all three cases, the ratio of coherent to incoherent light could be described by a simple mathematical term called the Debye-Waller factor. This factor depends only on the spatial spread of the wavepacket. As the atoms expanded in space, the Debye-Waller factor decreased, meaning more and more of the scattered light became incoherent. Eventually, after long enough expansion, essentially all the scattered light was incoherent. Experiments with two different atomic species supported this picture. With lithium-7 atoms, which are very light, the wavepackets expanded quickly, so the transition from partial coherence to full incoherence was rapid. With the much heavier dysprosium-162 atoms, the expansion was slower, allowing the researchers to track the change in more detail. In both cases, the results agreed with theoretical predictions. An especially striking observation was that the presence or absence of the trap made no difference to the basic coherence properties. The same mix of coherent and incoherent scattering appeared whether the atoms were confined in the lattice or expanding in free space. This showed that sidebands and trapping states were not the fundamental source of incoherence. Instead, what mattered was the partial entanglement between the light and the atoms. The team also compared long and short laser pulses. Long pulses could in principle resolve the sidebands while short pulses could not. Yet the fraction of coherent versus incoherent scattering was the same in both cases. This further reinforced the conclusion that coherence was lost not because of frequency shifts but because of entanglement itself. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2023/04/27/the-gap-between-language-and-quantum-mechanics/ In 2024, another group in China [also realised](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.10664?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the recoiling-slit thought experiment in practice. Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China trapped a single rubidium atom in an optical tweezer and cooled it to its quantum ground state, thus making the atom act like a movable slit whose recoil could be directly entangled with scattered photons. By tightening or loosening the trap, the scientists could pin the atom more firmly in place. When it was held tightly, the atom's recoil left almost no mark on the photons, which went on to form a clear interference pattern (like the ripples in water). When the atom was loosely held, however, its recoil was easier to notice and the interference pattern faded. This gave the researchers a controllable way to show how a recoiling slit could erase the wave pattern — which is also the issue at the heart of Bohr-Einstein debate. Importantly, the researchers also distinguished true quantum effects from classical noise, such as heating of the atom during repeated scattering. Their data showed that the sharpness of the interference pattern wasn't an artifact of an imperfect apparatus but a direct result of the atom-photon entanglement itself. In this way, they were able to demonstrate the transition from quantum uncertainty to classical disturbance within a single, controllable system. And even at this scale, the Bohr-Einstein debate couldn't be settled. The results pointed to a physical mechanism for how information becomes embedded in light scattered from atoms. In the conventional double-slit experiment, the question was whether a photon's path could ever be known without destroying the interference pattern. In the new, modern version, the question was whether a scattered photon carried any 'imprint' of the atom's motion. The MIT team's measurements showed that it did. The Debye-Waller factor — the measure of how much of the scattered light is still coherent — played an important role in this analysis. When atoms are confined tightly in a lattice, their spatial spread is small and the factor is relatively large, meaning a smaller fraction of the light is incoherent and thus reveals which-way information. But as the atoms are released and their wavepackets spread, the factor drops and with it the coherent fraction of scattered light. Eventually, after free expansion for long enough, essentially all of the scattered light becomes incoherent. Further, while the lighter lithium atoms expanded so quickly that the coherence decayed almost at once, the heavier dysprosium atoms expanded more slowly, allowing the researchers to track them in detail. Yet both atomic species followed a common rule: the Debye-Waller factor depended solely on how much the atom became delocalised as a wave, and not by the technical details of the traps or the sidebands. The conclusion here was that the light lost its coherence because the atom's recoil became entangled with the scattered photon. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/bohr-and-the-breakaway-from-classical-mechanics/ This finding adds substance to the Bohr-Einstein debate. In one sense, Einstein's intuition has been vindicated: every scattering event leaves behind faint traces of which atom interacted with the light. This recoil information is physically real and, at least in principle, accessible. But Bohr's point also emerges clearly: that no amount of experimental cleverness can undo the trade-off set by quantum mechanics. The ratio of coherent to incoherent light is dictated not by human knowledge or ignorance but by implicit uncertainties in the spread of the atomic wavepacket itself. Together with the MIT results, the second experiment showed that both Einstein's and Bohr's insights remain relevant: every scattering leaves behind a real, measurable recoil — yet the amount of interference lost is dictated by the unavoidable quantum uncertainties of the system. When a photon scatters off an atom, the atom must recoil a little bit to conserve momentum. That recoil in principle carries which-way information because it marks the atom as the source of the scattered photon. But whether that information is accessible depends on how sharply the atom’s momentum (and position) can be defined. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the atom can't simultaneously have both a precisely known position and momentum. In these experiments, the key measure was how delocalised the atom’s wavepacket was in space. If the atom was tightly trapped, its position uncertainty would be small, so its momentum uncertainty would be large. The recoil from a photon is then 'blurred' by that momentum spread, meaning the photon doesn't clearly encode which-way information. Ultimately, interference is preserved. By recasting the debate in the language of scattered photons and expanding wavepackets, the MIT experiment has thus moved the double-slit spirit into new terrain. It shows that quantum mechanics doesn't simply suggest fuzziness in the abstract but enforces it in how matter and light are allowed to share information. The loss of coherence isn't a flaw in the experimental technique or a sign of missing details, as Einstein might've claimed, but the very mechanism by which the microscopic world keeps both Einstein's and Bohr's insights in tension. The double-slit experiment, even in a highly sophisticated avatar, continues to reinforce the notion that the universe resists any single-sided description. (The researchers leading the two studies are Wolfgang Ketterle and Pan Jianwei, respectively a Nobel laureate and a rockstar in the field of quantum information likely to win a Nobel Prize soon.) *Featured image created with ChatGPT.* ### Curiosity as a public good URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/20/curiosity-as-a-public-good/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:54.000Z 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 them think" — a description that can suggest the prizes are little more than jokes whereas the research they reward is genuine. Many of the Indian wins are in the sciences and they highlight an oft unacknowledged truth: even if the country hasn't produced a Nobel laureate in science since C.V. Raman in 1930, Indian labs continue to generate knowledge of consequence by pursuing questions that appear odd at first sight. In 2004, for example, IIT Kanpur researchers won an Ig Nobel prize for studying why people spill coffee when they walk. They analysed oscillations and resonance in liquid-filled containers, thus expanding the principles of fluid dynamics into daily life. Eleven years later, another team won a prize for measuring the friction coefficients of banana skins, showing why people who step on them are likely to fall. In 2019, doctors in Chennai were feted for documenting how cockroaches can survive inside human skulls, a subject of study drawn from real instances where medical workers had to respond to such challenges in emergency rooms. In 2022, biologists examined how scorpion stings are treated in rural India and compared traditional remedies against science-based pharmacology. More recently, researchers were honoured for describing the role of nasal hair in filtering air and pathogens. The wins thus demonstrate core scientific virtues as well as reflect the [particular conditions](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/a-billion-candles-is-there-an-indian-way-of-doing-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which research often happens in India. Most of the work also wasn't supported by lavish grants nor was it published in élite journals with high citation counts. Instead, the work emerged from scientists choosing to follow curiosity rather than institutional incentives. In this sense, the Ig Nobel prizes are less a distraction and more an index of how 'serious' science might actually begin. Of course it's also important to acknowledge that India's research landscape is crowded with work of indifferent quality. A large share of papers are produced to satisfy promotion requirements, with little attention to design or originality, and many find their way into predatory journals where peer review is nonexistent or a joke. Such publications seldom advance knowledge, whether in curiosity-driven or application-oriented paradigms, and they dilute the credibility of the system as a whole. Then again whimsy isn't foreign to the Nobel Prizes themselves, which are generally quite sombre. For example, in 2016, the chemistry prize was awarded to researchers who designed molecular rotors and elevators constructed from just a handful of atoms. The achievement was profound but it also carried the air of play. The prize-giving committee compared the laureates' work to the invention of the electric motor in the 1830s, noting that even if practical applications (may or may not) come later, the first step remains the act of imagining, not unlike a child. If the Nobel Committee can reward such imaginative departures, India’s Ig Nobel prize wins should be seen as more evidence that playful research is a legitimate part of the scientific enterprise. The larger question is whether curiosity-driven research has a place in national science policy. Some experts have argued that in a country like India, with pressing social and economic needs and allegedly insufficient funding to support research, scientists must focus on topics that're immediately useful: better crops, cheaper drugs, new energy sources, etc. But this is too narrow a view. Science doesn't have to be useful in the short term to be valuable. The history of discovery is filled with examples that seemed obscure at the time but later transformed technology and society, including X-rays, lasers, and the structure of DNA. Equally importantly, the finitude of resources to which science administrators and lawmakers have often appealed is likely a red herring set up to make excuses for diverting funds away from scientific research. https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/what-arguments-against-the-next-lhc-say-about-funding-big-physics/ Measuring why banana skins are slippery didn't solve a crisis but it advanced scientists' understanding of biomechanics. Analysing why coffee spills while walking generated models in fluid mechanics that researchers could apply to a range of fluid systems. Together with documenting cockroaches inside skulls and studying scorpion sting therapies, none of this research was wasteful or should be seen that way but more importantly the freedom to pursue such questions is vital. If nothing else, winning a Nobel Prize can't be engineered by restricting scientists to specific questions. They prizes often go to scientists who are well connected, work in well-funded laboratories, and who publish in [highly visible journals](https://science.thewire.in/science/nobel-archives-shed-new-light-on-key-omissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — yet bias and visibility explain only part of the pattern. Doing good science depends on an openness to ideas that its exponents can't be expected to plan in advance. This is a broader reason the Ig Nobel prizes are really reminders that curiosity remains alive among Indian scientists, even in a system that often discourages it. They also reveal what we stand to lose when research freedom is curtailed. The point isn't that every odd question will lead to a breakthrough but that no one can predict in advance which questions will. We don't know what we don't know and the only way to find out is to explore. India's 22 Ig Nobel wins in this sense are indicators of a culture of inquiry that deserves more institutional support. If the country wants to achieve scientific recognition of the highest order — the Indian government has in fact been aspiring to "science superpower" status — it must learn to value curiosity as a public good. What may appear whimsical today could prove indispensable tomorrow. ### Dispelling Maxwell's demon URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/19/dispelling-maxwells-demon/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:58.000Z 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](https://href.li/?https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/phkv-wrsd&ref=slightlyacidic.com) scientific debates to this day. I’ve struggled to make sense of it for years. Last week I had some time and decided to hunker down and figure it out, and I think I succeeded. The following post describes the fruits of my efforts. At first sight, the Maxwell’s demon paradox seems odd because it presents a supernatural creature tampering with molecules of gas. But if you pare down the imagery and focus on the technological backdrop of the time of James Clerk Maxwell, who proposed it, a profoundly insightful probe of the second law of thermodynamics comes into view. The thought experiment asks a simple question: if you had a way to measure and control molecules with perfect precision and at no cost, will you able to make heat flow backwards, as if in an engine? Picture a box of air divided into two halves by a partition. In the partition is a very small trapdoor. It has a hinge so it can swing open and shut. Now imagine a microscopic valve operator that can detect the speed of each gas molecule as it approaches the trapdoor, decide whether to open or close the door, and actuate the door accordingly. The operator follows two simple rules: let fast molecules through from left to right and let slow molecules through from right to left. The temperature of a system is nothing but the average kinetic energy of its constituent particles. As the operator operates, over time the right side will heat up and the left side will cool down — thus producing a temperature gradient for free. Where there’s a temperature gradient, it’s possible to run a heat engine. (The internal combustion engine in fossil-fuel vehicles is a common example.) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/2aad5-898b3-1e73c-maxwell-s_demon-svg_-w-1024.png) A schematic diagram of the Maxwell's demon thought experiment. Htkym (CC BY-SA) But the possibility that this operator can detect and sort the molecules, thus creating the temperature gradient without consuming some energy of its own, seems to break the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that the entropy of a closed system increases over time — whereas the operator ensures that the temperature will decrease, violating the law. This was the Maxwell's demon thought experiment, with the demon as a whimsical stand-in for the operator. The paradox was made compelling by the silent assumption that the act of sorting the molecules could have no cost — i.e. that the imagined operator didn't add energy to the system (the air in the box) but simply allowed molecules that are already in motion to pass one way and not the other. In this sense the operator acted like a valve or a one-way gate. Devices of this kind — including check valves, ratchets, and centrifugal governors — were already familiar in the 19th century. And scientists assumed that if they were scaled down to the molecular level, they'd be able to work without friction and thus separate hot and cold particles without drawing more energy to overcome that friction. This detail is in fact the fulcrum of the paradox, and the thing that'd kept me all these years from actually understanding what the issue was. Maxwell *et al.* assumed that it was possible that an entity like this gate could exist: one that, without spending energy to do work (and thus increase entropy), could passively, effortlessly sort the molecules. Overall, the paradox stated that if such a sorting exercise really had no cost, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated. The second law had been established only a few decades before Maxwell thought up this paradox. If entropy is taken to be a measure of disorder, the second law states that if a system is left to itself, heat will not spontaneously flow from cold to hot and whatever useful energy it holds will inevitably degrade into the random motion of its constituent particles. The second law is the reason why perpetual motion machines are impossible, why the engines in our cars and bikes can’t be 100% efficient, and why time flows in one specific direction (from past to future). Yet Maxwell's imagined operator seemed to be able to make heat flow backwards, sifting molecules so that order increases spontaneously. For many decades, this possibility challenged what physicists thought they knew about physics. While some brushed it off as a curiosity, others contended that the demon itself must expend some energy to operate the door and that this expense would restore the balance. However, Maxwell had been careful when he conceived the thought experiment: he specified that the trapdoor was small and moved without friction, so it could in principle operate in a negligible way. The real puzzle lay elsewhere. In 1929, the Hungarian physicist Leó Szilard sharpened the problem by boiling it down to a single-particle machine. This so-called Szilard engine imagined one gas molecule in a box with a partition that could be inserted or removed. By observing on which side the molecule lay and then allowing it to push a piston, the operator could apparently extract work from a single particle at uniform temperature. Szilard showed that the key step was not the movement of the piston but the acquisition of information: knowing where the particle was. That is, Szilard reframed the paradox to be not about the molecules being sorted but about an observer making a measurement. (Aside: Szilard was played by Máté Haumann in the 2023 film *Oppenheimer*.) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/c7903-70c06-16ed9-1wnatomvacuumpumpmemory-w-450.png) A (low-res) visualisation of a Szilard engine. Its simplest form has only one atom (i.e. N = 1) pushing against a piston. Credit: P. Fraundorf (CC BY-SA) The next clue to cracking the puzzle came in the mid-20th century from the growing field of information theory. In 1961, the German-American physicist Rolf Landauer proposed a principle that connected information and entropy directly. Landauer's principle states that while it's possible in principle to acquire information in a reversible way — i.e. to be able to acquire it as well as lose it — erasing information from a device with memory has a non-zero thermodynamic cost that can't be avoided. That is, the act of resetting a memory register of one bit to a standard state generates a small amount of entropy (proportional to Boltzmann's constant multiplied by the logarithm of two). The American information theorist Charles H. Bennett later built on Landauer's principle and argued that Maxwell's demon could gather information and act on it — but in order to continue indefinitely, it'd have to erase or overwrite its memory. And that this act of resetting would generate exactly the entropy needed to compensate for the apparent decrease, ultimately preserving the second law of thermodynamics. Taken together, Maxwell's demon was defeated not by the mechanics of the trapdoor but by the thermodynamic cost of processing information. Specifically, the decrease in entropy as a result of the molecules being sorted by their speed is compensated for by the increase in entropy due to the operator's rewriting or erasure of information about the molecules' speed. Thus a paradox that'd begun as a challenge to thermodynamics ended up enriching it — by showing information could be physical. It also revealed to scientists that entropy is disorder in matter and energy as well as is linked to uncertainty and information. Over time, Maxwell's demon also became a fount of insight across multiple branches of physics. In classical thermodynamics, for example, entropy came to represent a measure of the probabilities that the system could exist in different combinations of microscopic states. That is, the probabilities referred to the likelihood that a given set of molecules could be arranged in one way instead of another. In statistical mechanics, Maxwell's demon gave scientists a concrete way to think about fluctuations. In any small system, random fluctuations can reduce entropy for some time in a small portion. While the demon seemed to exploit these fluctuations, the laws of probability were found to ensure that on average, entropy would increase. So the demon became a metaphor for how selection based on microscopic knowledge could alter outcomes but also why such selection can't be performed without paying a cost. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/051c5-53732-730bd-ripples-on-a-sphere.png) For information theorists and computer scientists, the demon was an early symbol of the deep ties between computation and thermodynamics. Landauer's principle showed that erasing information imposes a minimum entropy cost — an insight that matters for how computer hardware should be designed. The principle also influenced debates about reversible computing, where the goal is to design logic gates that don't ever erase information and thus approach zero energy dissipation. In other words, Maxwell's demon foreshadowed modern questions about how energy-efficient computing could really be. Even beyond physics, the demon has seeped into philosophy, biology, and social thought as a symbol of control and knowledge. In biology, the resemblance between the demon and enzymes that sorts molecules has inspired metaphors about how life maintains order. In economics and social theory, the demon has been used to discuss the limits of surveillance and control. The lesson has been the same in every instance: that information is never free and that the act of using it imposes inescapable energy costs. I’m particularly taken by the philosophy that animates the paradox. Maxwell's demon was introduced as a way to dramatise the tension between the microscopic reversibility of physical laws and the macroscopic irreversibility encoded in the second law of thermodynamics. I found that a few questions in particular — whether the entropy increase due to the use of information is a matter of an observer's ignorance (i.e. because the observer doesn't know which particular microstate the system occupies at any given moment), whether information has physical significance, and whether the laws of nature really guarantee the irreversibility we observe — have become touchstones in the philosophy of physics. In the mid-20th century, the Szilard engine became the focus of these debates because it refocused the second law from molecular dynamics to the cost of acquiring information. Later figures such as the French physicist Léon Brillouin and the Hungarian-Canadian physicist Dennis Gabor claimed that it's impossible to measure something without spending energy. Critics however countered that these requirements stipulated the need for specific technologies that would in turn smuggle in some limitations — rather than stipulate the presence of a fundamental principle. That is to say, the debate among philosophers became whether Maxwell's demon was prevented from breaking the second law by deep and hitherto hidden principles or by engineering challenges. This gridlock was broken when physicists observed that even a demon-free machine must leave some physical trace of its interactions with the molecule. That is, any device that sorts particles will end up in different physical states depending on the outcome, and to complete a thermodynamic cycle those states must be reset. Here, the entropy is not due to the informational content but due to the logical structure of memory. Landauer solidified this with his principle that logically irreversible operations such as erasure carry a minimum thermodynamic cost. Bennett extended this by saying that measurements can be made reversibly but not erasure. The philosophical meaning of both these arguments is that entropy increase isn't just about ignorance but also about parts of information processing being irreversible. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/e615f-690d7-dc631-door-5831240_1920-w-1024.jpg) Credit: Cdd20 In the quantum domain, the philosophical puzzles became more intense. When an object is measured in quantum mechanics, it isn't just about an observer updating the information they have about the object — the act of measuring also seems to alter the object's quantum states. For example, in the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, checking whether there's a cat in the box also causes the cat to default to one of two states: dead or alive. Quantum physicists have recreated Maxwell's demon in new ways in order to check whether the second law continues to hold. And over the course of many experiments, they've concluded that indeed it does. The second law didn't break even when Maxwell's demon could exploit phenomena that aren’t available in the classical domain, including quantum entanglement, superposition, and tunnelling. This was because, among others, quantum mechanics also has some restrictive rules of its own. For one, some physicists have tried to design "quantum demons" that use quantum entanglement between particles to sort them without expending energy. But these experiments have found that as soon as the demon tries to reset its memory and start again, it must erase the record of what happened before. This step destroys the advantage and the entropy cost returns. The overall result is that even a "quantum demon" gains nothing in the long run. For another, the no-cloning theorem states that you can't make a perfect copy of an unknown quantum state. If the demon could freely copy every quantum particle it measured, it could retain flawless records while still resetting its memory, this avoiding the usual entropy cost. The theorem blocks this strategy by forbidding perfect duplication, ensuring that information can't be 'multiplied' without limit. Similarly, the principle of unitarity implies that a system will always evolve in a way that preserves overall probabilities. As a result, quantum phenomena can't selectively amplify certain outcomes while discarding others. For the demon, this means it can't secretly limit the range of possible states the system can occupy into a smaller set where the system has lower entropy, because unitarity guarantees that the full spread of possibilities is preserved across time. All these rules together prevent the demon from multiplying or rearranging quantum states in a way that would allow it to beat the second law. Then again, these 'blocks' that prevent Maxwell’s demon from breaking the second law of thermodynamics in the quantum realm raise a puzzle of their own: is the second law of thermodynamics guaranteed no matter how we interpret quantum mechanics? 'Interpreting quantum mechanics' means to interpret what the rules of quantum mechanics say about reality, a topic I covered at length [in a recent post](https://href.li/?https://www.randomwalking.org/2025/09/03/what-does-it-mean-to-interpret-quantum-physics/&ref=slightlyacidic.com). Some interpretations say that when we measure a quantum system, its wavefunction "collapses" to a definite outcome. Others say collapse never happens and that measurement is just entangled with the environment, a process called decoherence. The Maxwell's demon thought experiment thus forces the question: is the second law of thermodynamics safe in a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics or in all interpretations? ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/amy-young-39b-84nbuoe-unsplash.jpg?w=1024) Credit: Amy Young/Unsplash Landauer's idea, that erasing information always carries a cost, also applies to quantum information. Even if Maxwell's demon used qubits instead of bits, it won't be able to escape the fact that to reuse its memory, it must erase the record, which will generate heat. But then the question becomes more subtle in quantum systems because qubits can be entangled with each other, and their delicate coherence — the special quantum link between quantum states — can be lost when information is processed. This means scientists need to carefully separate two different ideas of entropy: one based on what we as observers don't know (our ignorance) and another based on what the quantum system itself has physically lost (by losing coherence). The lesson is that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't just guard the flow of energy. In the quantum realm it also governs the flow of information. Entropy increases not only because we lose track of details but also because the very act of erasing and resetting information, whether classical or quantum, forces a cost that no demon can avoid. Then again, some philosophers and physicists have resisted the move to information altogether, arguing that ordinary statistical mechanics suffices to resolve the paradox. They've argued that any device designed to exploit fluctuations will be subject to its own fluctuations, and thus in aggregate no violation will have occurred. In this view, the second law is self-sufficient and doesn't need the language of information, memory or knowledge to justify itself. This line of thought is attractive to those wary of anthropomorphising physics even if it also risks trivialising the demon. After all, the demon was designed to expose the gap between microscopic reversibility and macroscopic irreversibility, and simply declaring that "the averages work out" seems to bypass the conceptual tension. Thus, the philosophical significance of Maxwell's demon is that it forces us to clarify the nature of entropy and the second law. Is entropy tied to our knowledge/ignorance of microstates, or is it ontic, tied to the irreversibility of information processing and computation? If Landauer is right, handling information and conserving energy are 'equally' fundamental physical concepts. If the statistical purists are right, on the other hand, then information adds nothing to the physics and the demon was never a serious challenge. Quantum theory can further stir both pots by suggesting that entropy is closely linked to the act of measurement, of quantum entanglement, and how quantum systems 'collapse' to classical ones by the process of decoherence. The demon debate therefore tests whether information is a physically primitive entity or a knowledge-based tool. Either way, however, Maxwell's demon endures as a parable. Ultimately, what makes Maxwell's demon a gift that keeps giving is that it works on several levels. On the surface it's a riddle about sorting molecules between two chambers. Dig a little deeper and it becomes a probe into the meaning of entropy. If you dig even further, it seems to be a bridge between matter and information. As the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment dramatised the oddness of quantum superposition, Maxwell's demon dramatised the subtleties of thermodynamics by invoking a fantastical entity. And while Schrödinger's cat forces us to ask what it means for a macroscopic system to be in two states at once, 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. ### Behold, liquid carbon URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/16/behold-liquid-carbon/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:58.000Z Carbon is famous for its many solid forms. It's the soot in air pollution, the graphite in pencil leads, and the glittering diamond in expensive jewellery. It's also the carbon nanotubes in biosensors and fullerenes in organic solar cells. However, despite its ability to exist in various shapes as a solid, carbon's liquid form has been a long-standing mystery. The main reason is that carbon is very difficult to liquefy: at around 4,500º C of temperature and a hundred atmospheres' worth of pressure — not something found even inside a blast furnace. Scientists have thus struggled to see what molten carbon actually looks like. The question of its structure isn't only scientific curiosity. Liquid carbon shows up in laser-fusion experiments and in the manufacture of nanodiamonds. The substance probably also exists deep inside planets like Uranus and Neptune. In a 2020 review of the topic in [*Chemical Physics Letters*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009261420302566?ref=slightlyacidic.com), three researchers from the University of California Berkeley wrote: > \[M\]any intriguing unanswered questions remain regarding the properties of liquid carbon. While theory has produced a wide array of predictions regarding the structure, phase diagram, and electronic nature of the liquid, as of yet, few of these predictions have been experimentally tested, and several of the predicted properties of the liquid remain controversial. In a major step forward, an international collaboration of researchers from China, Europe, the UK, and the UK recently reported that they had managed to briefly liquefy carbon — but long enough to observe the internal arrangement of its atoms in detail. They achieved the feat by blasting a carbon wafer with a powerful laser, then X-raying it in real time. The researchers used glassy carbon, a hard form of carbon that absorbs laser energy evenly. To create the extreme conditions required to liquefy, the team used the European XFEL (EuXFEL) research facility in Germany. Here, a power laser fired 515-nm light to the front of a glassy carbon wafer. The pulse lasted 5-10 nanoseconds, was roughly one-fourth of a millimetre wide, and carried up to 35 joules of energy. That's just one-tenth of the energy required to melt 1 g of ice. But because it was delivered in concentrated fashion, the pulse launched a shockwave through the wafer. Shock compression simultaneously squeezed and heated the material, quickly driving pressures to 7 lakh to 16 lakh times the earth's atmosphere. The temperature in the wafer also soared above 6,000 K — well into the liquid-carbon regime. Then,a device recorded the speed of the shockwaves and confirmed the wave stayed flat and steady across the region to be blasted by X-rays. With the wave speed and the sample's thickness, the team calculated the pressure inside the sample to about 98,000 atm. While the shockwaves were still rippling through the sample, the EuXFEL facility launched a 25-femtosecond-long flash of X-rays at the same spot. The liquid carbon state lasted for only a few nanoseconds but a femtosecond is a million-times even shorter. The X-rays scattered off the carbon atoms and were caught by two large detectors, where the radiation produced patterns called diffraction rings. Each ring encoded the distances between atoms, like a fingerprint of the sample's internal structure. Because the X-ray flash was intense, each flash revealed enough data to analyse the liquid's structure. For added measure, the team also varied laser power and the wafer's thickness to collect data across a range of physical parameters. For example, the pressure varied from 1 atm (for reference) to 15 lakh atm. Each pressure level corresponded to a separate, single-shot X-ray measurement, so the whole dataset was assembled shot by shot. At pressures of 7.5-8.2 lakh atm, the glassy carbon began turning into crystalline diamond. At 10-12 lakh atm, the signs in the data that were symptomatic of diamond weakened while broad humps characteristic of the liquid phase emerged and grew. The scientists interpreted this as evidence of a mixed state where solid diamond and liquid carbon coexist. Then, at about 15 lakh atm, the data pertaining to the diamond form vanished completely, leaving only the broad liquid-form's humps. The sample was now fully molten. According to the team, this means carbon under shock melts roughly between roughly 9.8 lakh and 16 lakh atm in the experiment. Then, to convert the diffraction patterns into information about the arrangement of atoms, the team used maths and simulations. The team members calculated the static structure factor, a framework that described how the atoms in liquid carbon scattered the X-ray radiation. Then they used the factor to estimate the chance of finding another carbon atom at some distance from a reference atom. These distances indicated the distances the atoms preferred to keep and the average number of nearest neighbours. Next, they used quantum density-functional theory molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) to simulate how 64 carbon atoms move at a chosen density and temperature. The simulations produced static structure factor data that the researchers compared directly to their data. By adjusting the density and temperature in the simulation, they found the best-fit values that matched each experiment. The team performed this comparison because it could rule out models of liquid carbon's structure that were incompatible with the findings. For example, the Lennard-Jones model predicted the average number of neighbouring carbon atoms to be 11-12, contrary to the data. The team estimated that carbon melted temperature to around 6,700 K and a pressure of 12 lakh atm. When fully molten, each carbon atom had about four immediate neighbours on average. This is reminiscent of the way carbon atoms are arranged in diamond, although the bonds in liquid carbon are also constantly breaking and reforming. The near-perfect fit between experiment and DFT-MD for the structure factor indicated that existing quantum simulation techniques could capture liquid carbon's behaviour accurately at high pressure. The success will give researchers confidence when using the same methods to predict even harsher conditions, such as those inside giant exoplanets. Indeed, ice-giants like Neptune may contain layers where methane breaks down and carbon forms a liquid‐like ocean. Knowing the density and the atomic arrangement in such a liquid can help predict the planet’s magnetic field and internal heat flow. Similarly, in inertial-confinement fusion — of the type that recently [breached the break-even barrier](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/understanding-the-fusion-energy-breakthrough-announced-by-the-us/article66264381.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at a US facility — a thin diamond shell surrounds the fuel. Designers must know exactly how that shell melts during the first shocks to generate power more efficiently. Many advanced carbon materials such as nanotubes and nanodiamonds form when liquid carbon cools rapidly. Understanding how the liquid's atoms establish short-range order could suggest pathways to tailor these materials. Finally, the team wrote in its paper, the experiment showed that single-shot X-ray diffraction combined with a high-repetition laser can map the liquid structure of any light element at extreme pressure and temperature. Running both the laser and EuXFEL at their full capabilities could thus allow scientists to put together large datasets in minutes rather than weeks. ### CSIR touts dubious 'Ayurveda' product for diabetes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/14/csir-touts-dubious-ayurveda-product-for-diabetes/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:59.000Z At 6 am on September 13, the CSIR handle on X.com published the following post about an "anti-diabetic medicine" called either "Daiba 250" or "Diabe 250", developed at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM): Its "key features", according to the CSIR, are that it created more than 250 jobs and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi "mentioned the startup" to which it has been licensed in his podcast 'Mann ki Baat'. What of the clinical credentials of Diabe-250, however? Diabe-250 is being marketed on India-based online pharmacies like Tata 1mg as an "Ayurvedic" over-the-counter tablet "for diabetes support/healthy sugar levels". The listing also claims Diabe-250 is backed by a US patent granted to an Innoveda Biological Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Contrary to the CSIR post calling Diabe-250 "medicine", some listings also carry the disclaimer that it's "a dietary nutritional supplement, not for medicinal use". ("Ayurveda" is within double-quotes throughout this post because, like most products like Diabe-250 in the market that are also licensed by the Ministry of AYUSH, there's no evidence that they're actually Ayurvedic. They may be, they may not be — and until there's credible proof, the Ayurvedic identity is just another claim.) Second, while e-commerce and brand pages use the spellings "Diabe 250" or "Diabe-250" (without or without the hyphen), the CSIR's social media posts refer to it as "Daiba 250". The latter also describe it as an anti-diabetic developed/produced with the CSIR-IIIM in the context of incubation and licensing. These communications don't constitute clinical evidence but they might be the clearest public basis to link the "Daiba" or "Diabe" spellings with the CSIR. Multiple product pages also credit Innoveda Biological Solutions Pvt. Ltd. as a marketer and manufacturer. Corporate registry aggregators corroborate the firm's existence; its CIN is U24239DL2008PTC178821). Similarly, the claim that Diabe-250 is backed by a US patent can be traced most directly to [US8163312B2](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8163312B2/en?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for "Herbal formulation for prevention and treatment of diabetes and associated complications". Its inventor is listed as a G. Geetha Krishnan and Innoveda Biological Solutions (P) Ltd. is listed as the current assignee. The patent text describes combinations of Indian herbs for diabetes and some complications. Of course no patent is proof of efficacy for any specific branded product or dose. The ingredients in Diabe-250 vary by retailer and there's no consistent, quantitative per-tablet composition on public pages. This said, multiple listings name the following ingredients: - "Vidanga" (*Embelia ribes*) - "Gorakh buti" (*Aerva lanata*) - "Raj patha" (*Cyclea peltata*) - "Vairi" or "salacia" (often *Salacia oblonga*), and - "Lajalu" (*Biophytum sensitivum*) The brand page also asserts a "unique combination of 16 herbs" and describes additional "Ayurveda" staples such as berberine source, turmeric, and jamun. However, there doesn't appear to be a full label image or a quantitative breakdown of the composition of Diabe-250. Retail and brand pages also claim Diabe-250 "helps maintain healthy sugar levels", "improves lipid profile/reduces cholesterol", and "reduces diabetic complications", sometimes also including non-glycaemic effects such as "better sleep" and "regular bowel movement". Several pages also include the caveat that it's a "dietary nutritional supplement" and that it's "not for medicinal use". However, none of these source cite a peer-reviewed clinical trial of Diabe-250 itself. In fact, there appear to be no peer-reviewed, product-specific clinical trials of Diabe-250 or Daiba-250 in humans; there are also no clinical trial registry records that were specific to this brand. If such a trial exists and its results were published in a peer-reviewed journal, it hasn't been cited on the sellers' or brand pages or in accessible databases. --- Some ingredient classes in Diabe-250 are interesting even if they don't validate Diabe-250 as a finished product. For instance, *Salacia* spp., especially *S. reticulata*, *S. oblonga*, and *S. chinensis* [have been known](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8159842/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to be α-glucosidase inhibitors. *In vitro* studies and chemistry reviews have also described *Salacia* spp. can be potent inhibitors of maltase, sucrase, and isomaltase. In one triple-blind, randomised crossover [trial in 2023](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10599346/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), biscuits fortified with *S. reticulata* extract reduced HbA1c levels by around 0.25% (2.7 mmol/mol) over three months versus the placebo, with an acceptable safety profile.In post-prandial [studies](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5075619/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) involving healthy volunteers and type 2 diabetes, several randomised crossover designs had lower post-meal glucose and insulin area under the curve when *Salacia* extract was co-ingested along with carbohydrate. Similarly, berberine-based neutraceuticals (such as those including *Berberis aristata*) [have shown](https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/1/14?ref=slightlyacidic.com) glycaemic improvements in the clinical literature (at large, not specific to Diabe-250) in people with type 2 diabetes. However, these effects were often reported in combination with other compounds and which researchers also indicated depended strongly on formulation and dose. Finally, a [2022 systematic review](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9213670/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of "Ayurvedic" medicines in people with type 2 diabetes reported heterogeneous evidence, including some promising signals, but also emphasised methodological limitations and the need for randomised controlled trials of higher quality. Right now, if Diabe-250 works as advertised, there's no scientific proof in the public domain, especially in the form of product-specific clinical trials that define its composition, dosage, and endpoints. --- In India, Ayurvedic drugs come under the [Drugs & Cosmetics Rules 1945](https://cdsco.gov.in/opencms/resources/UploadCDSCOWeb/2022/drug%5Frules/Drugs%20Rules%201945%5F2024%2009.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Labelling provisions under Section 161 require details such as the manufacturer's address, batch, and manufacturing and expiry dates while practice guides also note the product license number on the label for "Ayurvedic" drugs. However, several retail pages for Diabe-250 display it as a “dietary nutritional supplement" and add that it's "not for medicinal use”, implying that it's being marketed with supplement-style claims rather than as an Ayurvedic “medicine” in the narrow regulatory sense — which runs against the claim in the CSIR post on X.com. Public pages also didn't display an AYUSH license number for Diabe-250\. I haven't checked a physical pack. A well-known [study in *JAMA*](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/182460?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2008, of "Ayurvedic" products purchased over the internet, found that around 20% of them contained lead, mercury or arsenic, and public-health advisories and case reports that have appeared since have echoed these concerns. This isn't a claim about Diabe-250 specifically but a category-level risk of "Ayurvedic" products that are available to buy online and which are compounded by the unclear composition of Diabe-250\. The inconsistent naming also opens the door to counterfeit products that are also more likely to be contaminated. Materials published by the Indian and state governments, including the Ministry of AYUSH, have [framed "Ayurveda" as complementary](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2114965&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to allopathic medicine. For example, if a person with diabetes chooses to try "Ayurvedic" support, the standard advice is to not discontinue prescribed therapy and to monitor one's glucose, especially if the individual is using α-glucosidase-like agents that alter the post-prandial response. In sum, Diabe-250 is a multi-herb "Ayurvedic" tablet marketed by Innoveda for glycaemic support and has often been promoted with a related US patent owned by the company. However, patents are not clinical trials and patent offices don't clinically evaluate drugs described in patent applications. That information can only come from clinical trials, especially when a drug is being touted as "science-led", as the CSIR has vis-à-vis Diabe-250\. But there are no published clinical trials of the product. And while there's some evidence for some of its constituents, [particularly *Salacia*](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10599346/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), to reduce postprandial glucose and to effect small changes in the HbA1c levels over a few months, there's no product-specific proof. ### A cricket beyond politics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/13/a-cricket-beyond-politics/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:54:59.000Z On [September 11](https://www.thehindu.com/sport/cricket/what-is-the-urgency-supreme-court-refuses-urgent-listing-of-plea-against-india-pakistan-cricket-match/article70036726.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), 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, filed by four law students, claimed that playing the match so soon after the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor would demean the sacrifices of armed personnel and was "against national interest". The Court declined to intervene. "It's a match, let it be," Justice J.K. Maheshwari remarked, refusing to elevate the petition into a question of constitutional urgency. That refusal, however, doesn't end the matter: the call to stop the match points to the fraught place cricket occupies in India today, where the sport is no longer just a sport but an annex of politics itself. The petitioners also argued that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) must be brought under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, in line with the new National Sports Governance Act 2025\. For many decades the BCCI has prided itself on being a private body, formally outside government control, yet informally intertwined with it through patronage, appointments, and access to resources. Over the years, this hybrid arrangement has allowed political parties to capture the administration of Indian cricket without subjecting it to the mechanisms of accountability under public law. The outcome is an entity that's a chimaera: neither purely autonomous nor transparently regulated. This political capture has contributed to a situation in which the sport has become indistinguishable from political theatre. If the BCCI were more genuinely independent and if its leadership were less frequently a stepping-stone for politicians, (men's) cricket in India may still have had the ability to separate itself from the ebbs and flows of diplomatic posturing. Instead, the BCCI has invited politics onto the field by making itself an extension of political patronage. To be sure, cricket has always been more than a game. Since the colonial era, it has carried the weight of identity and nationalism. In *The Tao of Cricket*, Ashis Nandy argued that cricket in India became a way of playing with colonial inheritance rather than rejecting it. Matches against England in the mid-20th century were arenas where newly independent Indians performed parity with their former rulers. With Pakistan, the sport inherited and refracted the trauma of Partition. Every bilateral series has carried more baggage than bat and ball. Yet the history of India-Pakistan matches is also one of conviviality. For every moment when politicians have sought to cancel tours, there have been times when cricketing exchanges have thawed frozen relations. India's tours of Pakistan in 2004 and Pakistan's participation in the 1996 World Cup hosted in India were moments when ordinary spectators could cheer a cover drive irrespective of the batsman's passport. The very fact that governments have sometimes chosen to use cricket as a tool of rapprochement suggests that the sport holds a special capacity to transcend political divides. Sport itself has always sat at the junction of rivalry and fellowship. Aristotle saw games as part of leisure, necessary for the cultivation of civic virtue. The Olympic Truce of ancient Greece, revived in modern times, embodied the idea that contests on the field could suspend contests off of it. The South African example after apartheid, when Nelson Mandela donned a Springbok jersey at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, showed how sport could heal a wounded polity. Against this backdrop, the call to cancel the India-Pakistan match risks impoverishing cricket of its potential to build bridges. To say that playing Pakistan dishonours Indian soldiers is to treat sport as a mere extension of politics. Sport is not reducible to politics: it's also a space where citizens can experience one another as competitors, not enemies. That distinction matters. A good game of cricket can remind people that beyond the rhetoric of national security, there are human beings bowling yorkers and lofting sixes, acts that spectators from both sides can cheer, grumble about, and analyse over endless replays. This isn't to deny that politics already suffuses cricket. The selection of venues, the sponsorship deals, the choreography of opening ceremonies — all carry political weight. Nor can one ignore that militant groups have sometimes targeted cricket precisely because of its symbolic importance. But to cancel matches on the grounds that politics exists is to double down on cynicism. It is to concede that no space can remain where ordinary citizens of India and Pakistan might encounter each other beyond the logic of hostility. The BCCI's long entanglement with political elites makes it harder to resist such calls. When cricket administrators behave like political courtiers, it becomes easier for petitioners to argue that cricket is an extension of the state and must therefore obey the same dictates of foreign policy. But precisely because the BCCI has failed to safeguard cricket's autonomy, the rest of us must insist that the game not be reduced to a political pawn. The petitioners invoked "national interest" and "national dignity" yet the Constitution of India doesn't enshrine dignity in the form of cancelling sports fixtures. It enshrines dignity through the protection of rights, the pursuit of fraternity, and the preservation of liberty. Article 51 even enjoins the state to foster respect for international law and promote peace. Seen in that light, playing cricket with Pakistan is not an affront to dignity but an affirmation of the constitutional aspiration to fraternity across borders. If anything undermines dignity, it's the reduction of sport to a theatre of grievance. It's the refusal to allow people an arena where they can cheer together, even if for rival teams. National interest is not served by foreclosing every possible space of conviviality: it's served by demonstrating that India is confident enough in its own constitutional foundations to play, to lose, to win, and to play again. The Supreme Court was right to dismiss the petition with a simple phrase: "It's a match, let it be." That lightness is what cricket needs in India today. To insist that every over bowled is a statement of geopolitics is to impoverish both politics and cricket. ### Is the Higgs boson doing its job? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/12/is-the-higgs-boson-doing-its-job/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:04.000Z At the heart of [particle physics](https://xorland.mymagic.page/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) 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 they interact, and why the universe is stable at the smallest scales. The Standard Model has correctly predicted the outcomes of several experiments testing the limits of particle physics. Even then, however, physicists know that it's incomplete: it can't explain dark matter, [why matter dominates over antimatter](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/cern-collider-reveals-major-clue-to-universes-bias-against-antimatter/article69817740.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [why the force of gravity is so weak](https://xorland.mymagic.page/2018/02/07/all-the-science-in-the-cloverfield-paradox/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) compared to the other forces. To settle these mysteries, physicists have been conducting very detailed tests of the Model, each of which has either [tightened their confidence](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/null-results-importance-physics/article67241148.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in a hypothetical explanation or has revealed a new piece of the puzzle. A central character in this story is a subatomic particle called the W boson — the carrier of the weak nuclear force. Without it, the Sun wouldn't shine because particle interactions involving the weak force are necessary for nuclear fusion to proceed. W bosons are also unusual among force carriers: unlike photons (the particles of light), they're massive, about 80-times heavier than a proton. This mass difference — of a massless photon and a massive W boson — arises due to a process called the Higgs mechanism. Physicists first proposed this mechanism in 1964 and confirmed it was real when they [found the Higgs boson particle](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/top-quark-mass-update-lhc-higgs-boson-quantum-tunnel-universe/article68353005.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/070a0-48ec6-b57df-c8dec-stdm-higgs-and-field-d-w-1024.png) The particles of the Standard Model of particle physics. The W bosons are shown among the force-carrier particles on the right. The photon is denoted *γ*. The electron (*e*) and muon (*µ*) are shown among the leptons on the right. The corresponding neutrino flavours are showing on the bottom row, denoted *ν*. Credit: Daniel Dominguez/CERN But finding the Higgs particle was only the beginning. To prove that the Higgs mechanism really works the way the theory says, physicists need to check its predictions in detail. One of the sharpest tests involves how W bosons scatter off each other at high energies. The key to achieving this is the W boson's polarisation states. Both photons and W bosons have a property called quantum spin, but whereas for photons its value is zero, for W bosons its non-zero. The spin also has a direction. If it points sideways, the W boson is said to be transverse polarised; if it's pointing along the particle's direction of travel, the W boson is said to be longitudinally polarised. The longitudinal ones are special because their behaviour is directly tied to the Higgs mechanism. Specifically, if the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs boson don't exist, calculations involving the longitudinal W bosons scattering off of each other quickly give rise to nonsensical mathematical results in the theory. The Higgs boson acts like a regulator in this engine, preventing the mathematics from 'blowing up'. In fact, in the 1970s, the theoretical physicists Benjamin Lee, Chris Quigg, and Hugh Thacker showed that without the Higgs boson, the weak force would become uncontrollably powerful at high energies, leading to the breakdown of the theory. Their work was an important theoretical pillar that justified building the colossal LHC machine to search for the Higgs boson particle. https://withspeak.wpcomstaging.com/2025/06/24/technical-foundation-for-a-muon-collider-laid-at-j-parc/ The terms Higgs boson, Higgs field, and Higgs mechanism describe related but distinct ideas. The Higgs field is a kind of invisible medium thought to fill all of space. Particles like W bosons and Z bosons interact with this field as they move and through that interaction they acquire mass. This is the Higgs mechanism: the process by which particles that would otherwise be massless become heavy. The Higgs boson is different: it's a particle that represents a vibration or a ripple in the Higgs field, just as a photon is a ripple in the electromagnetic field. Its discovery in 2012 confirmed that the field is real and not just something that appears in the mathematics of the theory. 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 role is crucial. The scattering of longitudinally polarised W bosons is a good example. Without the Higgs boson, the probabilities of the scatterings occurring uncontrollably at higher energy, but with the Higgs boson in the picture, they stay within sensible bounds. Observing longitudinally polarised W bosons behaving as predicted is thus evidence for the particle as well as a check on the field and the mechanism behind it. Imagine a roller-coaster without brakes. As it goes faster and faster, there's nothing to stop it from flying off the tracks. The Higgs mechanism is like the braking system that keeps the ride safe. Observing longitudinally polarised W bosons in the right proportions is equivalent to checking that the brakes actually work when the roller-coaster speeds up. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ec2a4-skyler-gerald-wezjvlm-o-q-unsplash.jpg?w=1024) Credit: Skyler Gerald Another path that physicists once considered and that didn't involve a Higgs boson at all was called technicolor theory. Instead of a single kind of Higgs boson giving the W bosons their mass, technicolor proposed a brand-new force. Just as the strong nuclear force binds quarks into protons and neutrons, the hypothetical technicolor force would bind new "technifermion" particles into composite states. These bound states would mimic the Higgs boson's job of giving particles mass, while producing their own new signals in high-energy collisions. The crucial test to check whether some given signals are due to the Higgs boson or due to technicolor lies in the behaviour of longitudinally polarised W bosons. In the Standard Model, their scattering is kept under control by the Higgs boson's balancing act. In technicolor, by contrast, there is no Higgs boson to cancel the runaway growth. The probability of the scattering of longitudinally polarised W bosons would therefore rise sharply with more energy, often leaving clearly excessive signals in the data. Thus, observing longitudinally polarised W bosons at consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model, and not finding any additional signals, would also strengthen the case for the Higgs mechanism and weaken that for technicolor and other "Higgs-less" theories. At the Large Hadron Collider, the cleanest way to study look for such W bosons is in a phenomenon called vector boson scattering (VBS). In VBS, two protons collide and the quarks inside them emit W bosons. These W bosons then scatter off each other before decaying into lighter particles. The leftover quarks form narrow sprays of particles, or 'jets', that fly far forward. If the two W bosons happen to have the same electric charge — i.e. both positive or both negative — the process is even more distinctive. This same-sign WW scattering is quite rare and that's an advantage because then it's easy to spot in the debris of particle collisions. Both ATLAS and CMS, the two giant detectors at the LHC, had previously observed same-sign WW scattering without breaking down the polarisation. In 2021, the CMS detector reported the first hint of longitudinal polarisation but at a statistical significance only of 2.3 sigma, which isn't good enough (particle physicists prefer at least 3 sigma). So after the LHC completed its second run in 2018, collecting data from around 10 quadrillion collisions between protons, the ATLAS collaboration set out to analyse it and deliver the evidence. This group's study was published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/bpln-ccql?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 10. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/b4328-b6b23-c9732-007f3-screenshot-2025-09-12-at-6-04-36-pm-w-1024.png) The layout of the Large Hadron Collider complex at CERN. Protons (p) are pre-accelerated to higher energies in steps — at the Proton Synchrotron (PS) and then the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) — before being injected into the the LHC ring. The machine then draws two opposing beams of protons from the SPS and accelerates them to nearly the speed of light before colliding them head-on at four locations, under the gaze of the four detectors. ATLAS and CMS are two of them. Credit: Arpad Horvath (CC BY-SA) The challenge of finding longitudinally polarised W bosons is like finding a particular needle in a very large haystack where most of the needles look nearly identical. So ATLAS designed a special strategy. When one W boson decays, the result is one electron or muon and one neutrino. If the W boson is positively charged, for example, the decay could be to one anti-electron and one electron-neutrino or to one anti-muon and a muon-neutrino. Anti-electrons and anti-muons are positively charged. If the W boson is negatively charged, the products could one electron and one electron-antineutrino or one muon and one muon-antineutrino. So first, ATLAS zeroed in on the fact that it was looking for two electrons, two muons, or one of each, both carrying the same electric charge. Neutrinos however are really hard to catch and study, so the ATLAS group look for their absence rather than their presence. In all these particle interactions, the law of conservation of momentum holds — which means in a given interaction, a neutrino's presence can be elucidated when the momenta of the electrons or muons add up to be slightly lower than that of the W boson; the missing amount would have been carried away by the neutrino, like money unaccounted for in a ledger. This analysis also required an event of interest to have at least two jets (reconstructed from streams of particles) with a combined energy above 500 GeV and separated widely in rapidity (which is a measure of their angle relative to the beam). This particular VBS pattern — two electrons/muons, two jets, and missing momentum — is the hallmark of same-sign WW scattering. Second, even with these strict requirements, impostors creep in. The biggest source of confusion is WZ production, a process in which another subatomic particle called the Z boson decays invisibly or one of its decay products goes unnoticed, making the event resemble WW scattering. Other sources include electrons having their charges mismeasured, jets can masquerading as electrons/muons, and some quarks producing electrons/muons that slip into the sample. To control for all this noise, the ATLAS group focused on control regions: subsets of events that produced a distinct kind of noise that the group could cleanly 'subtract' from the data to reveal same-sign WW scattering, thus also reducing uncertainty in the final results. Third, and this is where things get nuanced: the differences between transverse and longitudinally polarised W bosons show up in distributions — i.e. how far apart the electrons/muons are in angle, how the jets are oriented, and the energy of the system. But since no single variable could tell the whole story, the ATLAS group combined them using deep neural networks. These machine-learning models were fed up to 20 kinematic variables — including jet separations, particle angles, and missing momentum patterns — and trained to distinguish between three groups: (i) Two transverse polarised W bosons; (ii) One transverse polarised W boson and one longitudinally polarised W boson; and (iii) Both longitudinally polarised W bosons Fourth, the group combined the outputs of these neural networks and fit with a maximum likelihood method. When physicists make measurements, they often don't directly see what they're measuring. Instead, they see data points that could have come from different possible scenarios. A likelihood is a number that tells them how probable the data is in a given scenario. If a model says *"*events should look like this," they can ask: "Given my actual data, how likely is that?" And the maximum likelihood method will help them decide the parameters that make the given data most likely to occur. For example, say you toss a coin 100 times and get 62 heads. You wonder: is the coin fair or biased? If it's fair, the chance of exactly 62 heads is small. If the coin is slightly biased (heads with probability 0.62), the chance of 62 heads is higher. The maximum likelihood estimate is to pick the bias, or probability of heads, that makes your actual result most probable. So here the method would say, "The coin's bias is 0.62" — because this choice maximises the likelihood of seeing 62 heads out of 100. In their analysis, the ATLAS group used the maximum likelihood method to check with the LHC data 'preferred' a contribution from longitudinal scattering, after subtracting what background noise and transverse-only scattering could explain. The results are a milestone in experimental particle physics. In the September 10 paper, ATLAS reported evidence for longitudinally polarised W bosons in same-sign WW scattering with a significance of 3.3 sigma — sufficiently close to 4, which is the calculated significance based on the predictions of the Standard Model. This means the data behaved as theory predicted, with no unexpected excess or deficit. It's also bad news for technicolor theory. By observing longitudinal W bosons at exactly the rates predicted by the Standard Model, and not finding any additional signals, the ATLAS data strengthens the case for the Higgs mechanism providing the check on the W bosons' scattering probability, rather than the technicolor force. The measured cross-section for events with at least one longitudinally polarised W boson was 0.88femtobarns, with an uncertainty of 0.3 femtobarns. These figures essentially mean that there were only a few hundred same-sign WW scattering events in the full dataset of around 10 quadrillion proton-proton collisions. The fact that ATLAS could pull this signal out of such a background-heavy environment is a testament to the power of modern machine learning working with advanced statistical methods. The group was also able to quantify the composition of signals. Among others: 1. About 58% of events were genuine WW scattering 2. Roughly 16% were from WZ production 3. Around 18% arose from irrelevant electrons/muons, charge misidentification or the decay of energetic photons One way to appreciate the importance of these findings is by analogy: imagine trying to hear a faint melody being played by a single violin in the middle of a roaring orchestra. The violin is the longitudinal signal; the orchestra is the flood of background noise. The neural networks are like sophisticated microphones and filters, tuned to pick out the violin's specific tone. The fact that ATLAS couldn't only hear it but also measured its volume to match the score written by the Standard Model is remarkable. Perhaps in the same vein, these results are more than just another tick mark for the Standard Model. It's a direct test of the Higgs mechanism in action. The discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012 was groundbreaking but proving that the Higgs mechanism performs its theoretical role requires demonstrating that it regulates the scattering of W bosons. By finding evidence for longitudinally polarised W bosons at the expected rate, ATLAS has done just that. The results also set the stage for the future. The LHC is currently being upgraded to a form called the High-Luminosity LHC and it will begin operating later this decade, collect datasets about 10x larger than what the LHC did in its second run. With that much more data, physicists will be able to study differential distributions, i.e. how the rate of longitudinal scattering varies with energy, angle or jet separation. These patterns are sensitive to hitherto unknown particles and forces, such as additional Higgs-like particles or modifications to the Higgs mechanism itself. That is, even small deviations from the Standard Model's predictions could hint at new frontiers in particle physics. Indeed, history has often reminded physicists that such precision studies often uncover surprises. Physicists didn't discover neutrino oscillations by finding a new particle but by noticing that the number of neutrinos arriving from the Sun at detectors on Earth didn't match expectations. Similarly, minuscule mismatches between theory and observations in the scattering of W bosons could someday reveal new physics — and if they do, the seeds will have been planted by studies like that of the ATLAS group. https://withspeak.wpcomstaging.com/2025/09/06/challenging-the-neutrino-signal-anomaly/ On the methodological front, the analysis also showcases how particle physics is evolving. 'Classical' analyses once banked on tracking single variables; now, deep learning has played a starring role by combining many variables into a single discriminant, allowing ATLAS to pull the faint signal of longitudinally polarised W bosons from the noise. This approach could only become more important as both datasets and physicists' ambitions expand. Perhaps the broadest lesson in all this is that science often advances by the unglamorous task of verifying the details. The discovery of the Higgs boson answered one question but opened many others; among them, measuring how it affects the scattering of W bosons is one of the ore direct ways to probe whether the Standard Model is complete or just the first chapter of a longer story. Either way, the pursuit exemplifies the spirit of checking, rechecking, testing, and probing until scientists truly understand how nature works at extreme precision. *Featured image: The massive mural of the ATLAS detector at CERN painted by artist Josef Kristofoletti. The mural is located at the ATLAS Experiment site and shows on two perpendicular walls the detector with a collision event superimposed. The event on the large wall shows a simulation of an event that would be recorded in ATLAS if a Higgs boson was produced. The cavern of the ATLAS Experiment with the detector is 100 m directly below the mural. The height of the mural is about 12 m. The actual ATLAS detector is more than twice as big. Credit: Claudia Marcelloni, Michael Barnett/CERN.* ### A danger of GST 2.0 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/10/a-danger-of-gst-2-0/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:05.000Z Since Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's announcement last week that India's Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates will be rationalised anew from September 22, I've been seeing a flood of pieces all in praise — and why not? The GST regime has been somewhat controversial since its launch because, despite simplifying compliance for businesses and industry, it increased the costs for consumers. The Indian government exacerbated that pain point by undermining the fiscal federalism of the Union, increasing its revenues at the expense of states' as well as cutting allocations. While there is (informed) speculation that the next Finance Commission will further undercut the devolution of funds to the states, GST 2.0 offers some relief to consumers in the form of making various products more affordable. Populism is popular, after all. However, increasing affordability isn't always a good thing even if your sole goal is to increase consumption. This is particularly borne out in the food and nutrition domain. For example, under the new tax regime, from September 22, the GST on pizza bread will slip from 5% to zero. This means both sourdough pizza bread and maida (refined flour) pizza bread will go from 5% to zero. However, because there is more awareness of maida as an ingredient in the populace and less so of sourdough, and because maida as a result enjoys a higher economy of scale and is thus less expensive (before tax), the demand for maida bread is likely to increase more than the demand for sourdough bread. This is unfortunate: ideally, sourdough bread should be more affordable — or, alternatively, the two breads should be equally affordable as well as have threshold-based front-of-pack labelling. That is to say, liberating consumers to be able to buy new food products or more of the old ones without simultaneously empowering consumers to make more informed choices could tilt demand in favour of unhealthier foods. Ultimately, the burden of non-communicable diseases in the population will increase, as will consumers' expenses on healthcare, dietary interventions, and so on. I [explained this issue in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/gst-20-could-undermine-dietary-health/article70025572.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 9, 2025, and set out solutions that the Indian government must implement in its food regulation apparatus posthaste. Without these measures, GST 2.0 will likely be bad news for India's dietary and nutritional ambitions. ### A tribute to rubidium URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/09/a-tribute-to-rubidium/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:06.000Z Rubidium isn’t respectable. It isn’t iron, whose strength built railways and bridges and it isn’t silicon, whose valley became a dubious shrine to progress. Rubidium explodes in water. It tarnishes in air. It’s awkward, soft, and unfit for the neat categories by which schoolteachers tell their students how the world is made. And yet, precisely because of this unruly character, it insinuates itself into the deepest places of science, where precision, control, and prediction are supposed to reign. For centuries astronomers counted the stars, then engineers counted pendulums and springs — all good and respectable. But when humankind’s machines demanded nanosecond accuracy, it was rubidium, a soft metal that no practical mind would have chosen, that became the metronome of the world. In its hyperfine transitions, coaxed by lasers and microwave cavities, the second is carved more finely than human senses can comprehend. Without rubidium’s unstable grace, GPS collapses, financial markets fall into confusion, trains and planes drift out of sync. The fragile and the explosive have become the custodians of order. What does this say about the hierarchies of knowledge? Textbooks present a suspiciously orderly picture: noble gases are inert, alkali metals are reactive, and their properties can be arranged neatly in columns of the periodic table, they say. Thus rubidium is placed there like a botanical specimen. But in practice, scientists turned to it not because of its box in a table but because of accidents, conveniences, and contingencies. Its resonance lines happen to fall where lasers can reach them easily. Its isotopes are abundant enough to trap, cool, and measure. The entire edifice of atomic clocks and exotic Bose-Einstein condensates rests not on an inevitable logic of discovery but on this convenient accident. Had rubidium’s levels been slightly different, perhaps caesium or potassium would have played the starring role. Rational reconstruction will never admit this. It prefers tidy sequences and noble inevitabilities. Rubidium, however, laughs at such tidiness. Take condensed matter. In the 1990s and 2000s, solar researchers sought efficiency in perovskite crystals. These crystals were fragile, prone to decomposition, but again rubidium slipped in: a small ion among larger ones, it stabilised the lattice. A substitution here, a tweak there, and suddenly the efficiency curve rose. Was this progress inevitable? No; it was bricolage: chemists trying one ion after another until the thing worked. And the journals now describe rubidium as if it were always destined to “enhance stability”. But destiny is hindsight dressed as foresight. What actually happened was messy. Rubidium’s success was contingent, not planned. Then there’s the theatre of optics. Rubidium’s spectral lines at 780 nm and 795 nm became the experimentalist’s playground. When lasers cooled atoms to microkelvin temperatures and clouds of rubidium atoms became motionless, they merged into collective wavefunctions and formed the first Bose-Einstein condensates. The textbooks now call this a triumph of theory, the “inevitable” confirmation of quantum statistics. Nonsense! The condensates weren’t predicted as practical realities — they were curiosities, dismissed by many as impossible in the laboratory. What made them possible was a melange of techniques: magnetic traps, optical molasses, sympathetic cooling. And rubidium, again, happened to be convenient, its transitions accessible, its abundance generous, its behaviour forgiving. Out of this messiness came a Nobel Prize and an entire field. Rubidium teaches us that progress comes not from the logical unfolding of ideas but from playing with elements that allegedly don’t belong. Rubidium rebukes dogma. It’s neither grand nor noble, yet it controls time, stabilises matter, and demonstrates the strangest predictions of quantum theory. It shows science doesn’t march forward by method alone. It stumbles, it improvises, it tries what happens to be at hand. Philosophers of science prefer to speak of method and rigour yet their laboratories tell a story of messy rooms where equipment is tuned until *something works*, where grad students swap parts until the resonance reveals itself, where fragile metals are pressed into service because they happen to fit the laser’s reach. Rubidium teaches us that knowledge is anarchic. It isn’t carved from the heavens by pure reason but coaxed from matter through accidents, failures, and improvised victories. Explosive in one setting, stabilising in another; useless in industry, indispensable in physics — the properties of rubidium are contradictory and it’s precisely this contradiction that makes it valuable. To force it into the straitjacket of predictable science is to rewrite history as propaganda. The truth is less comfortable: rubidium has triumphed where theory has faltered. And yet, here we are. Our planes and phones rely on rubidium clocks. Our visions of renewable futures lean on rubidium’s quiet strengthening of perovskite cells. Our quantum dreams — of condensates, simulations, computers, and entanglement — are staged with rubidium atoms as actors. An element kings never counted and merchants never valued has become the silent arbiter of our age. Science itself couldn’t have planned it better; indeed, it didn’t plan at all. Rubidium is the fragment in the mosaic that refuses to fit yet holds the pattern together. It’s the soft yet explosive, fragile yet enduring accident that becomes indispensable. Its lesson is simple: science also needs disorder, risk, and the unruliness of matter to thrive. *Featured image: A sample of rubidium metal. Credit: Dnn87 (CC BY).* ### Lighting the way with Parrondo’s paradox URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/07/lighting-the-way-with-parrondos-paradox/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:06.000Z 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 are combined, they can produce a winning outcome. This might sound like trickery but the paradox has deep connections to how randomness and asymmetry interact in the physical world. In fact its roots can be traced back to a famous thought experiment explored by the US physicist Richard Feynman, who analysed whether one could extract useful work from random thermal motion. The link between Feynman’s thought experiment and Parrondo’s paradox demonstrates how chance can be turned into order when the conditions are right. Imagine two games. Each game, when played on its own, is stacked against you. In one, the odds are slightly less than fair, e.g. you win 49% of the time and lose 51%. In another, the rules are even more complex, with the chances of winning and losing depending on your current position or capital. If you keep playing either game alone, the statistics say you will eventually go broke. But then there’s a twist. If you alternate the games — sometimes playing one, sometimes the other — your fortune can actually grow. This is Parrondo’s paradox, proposed in 1996 by the Spanish physicist Juan Parrondo. The answer to how combining losing games can result in a winning streak lies in how randomness interacts with structure. In Parrondo’s games, the rules are not simply fair or unfair in isolation; they have hidden patterns. When the games are alternated, these patterns line up in such a way that random losses become rectified into net gains. Say there’s a perfectly flat surface in front of you. You place a small bead on it and then you constantly jiggle the surface. The bead jitters back and forth. Because the noise you’re applying to the bead’s position is unbiased, the bead simply wanders around in different directions on the surface. Now, say you introduce a switch that alternates the surface between two states. When the switch is ON, an ice-tray shape appears on the surface. When the switch is OFF, it becomes flat again. This ice-tray shape is special: the cups are slightly lopsided because there’s a gentle downward slope from left to right in each cup. At the right end, there’s a steep wall. If you’re jiggling the surface when the switch is OFF, the bead diffuses a little towards the left, a little towards the right, and so on. When you throw the switch to ON, the bead falls into the nearest cup. Because each cup is slightly tilted towards the right, the bead eventually settles near the steep wall there. Then you move the switch to OFF again. As you repeat these steps with more and more beads over time, you’ll see they end up a little to the right of where they started. This is Parrando’s paradox. The jittering motion you applied to the surface caused each bead to move randomly. The switch you used to alter the shape of the surface allowed you to expend some energy in order to rectify the beads’ randomness. The reason why Parrondo’s paradox isn’t just a mathematical trick lies in physics. At the microscopic scale, particles of matter are in constant, jittery motion because of heat. This restless behaviour is known as Brownian motion, named after the botanist Robert Brown, who observed pollen grains dancing erratically in water under a microscope in 1827\. At this scale, randomness is unavoidable: molecules collide, rebound, and scatter endlessly. Scientists have long wondered whether such random motion could be tapped to extract useful work, perhaps to drive a microscopic machine. This was Feynman’s thought experiment as well, involving a device called the Brownian ratchet, a.k.a. the Feynman-Smoluchowski ratchet. The Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski dreamt up the idea in 1912 and which Feynman popularised in a lecture 50 years later, in 1962. Picture a set of paddles immersed in a fluid, constantly jolted by Brownian motion. A ratchet and pawl mechanism is attached to the paddles (see video below). The ratchet allows the paddles to rotate in one direction but not the other. It seems plausible that the random kicks from molecules would turn the paddles, which the ratchet would then lock into forward motion. Over time, this could spin a wheel or lift a weight. In one of his physics famous lectures in 1962, Feynman analysed the ratchet. He showed that the pawl itself would also be subject to Brownian motion. It would jiggle, slip, and release under the same thermal agitation as the paddles. When everything is at the same temperature, the forward and backward slips would cancel out and no net motion would occur. This insight was crucial: it preserved the rule that free energy can’t be extracted from randomness at equilibrium. If motion is to be biased in only one direction, there needs to be a temperature difference between different parts of the ratchet. In other words, random noise alone isn’t enough: you also need an asymmetry, or what physicists call nonequilibrium conditions, to turn randomness into work. Let’s return to Parrondo’s paradox now. The paradoxical games are essentially a discrete-time abstraction of Feynman’s ratchet. The losing games are like unbiased random motion: fluctuations that on their own can’t produce net gain because the gains become cancelled out. But when they’re alternated cleverly, they mimic the effect of adding asymmetry. The combination rectifies the randomness, just as a physical ratchet can rectify the molecular jostling when a gradient is present. This is why Parrondo explicitly acknowledged his inspiration from Feynman’s analysis of the Brownian ratchet. Where Feynman used a wheel and pawl to show how equilibrium noise can’t be exploited without a bias, Parrondo created games whose hidden rules provided the bias when they were combined. Both cases highlight a universal theme: randomness can be guided to produce order. The implications of these ideas extend well beyond thought experiments. Inside living cells, molecular motors like kinesin and myosin actually function like Brownian ratchets. These proteins move along cellular tracks by drawing energy from random thermal kicks with the aid of a chemical energy gradient. They demonstrate that life itself has evolved ways to turn thermal noise into directed motion by operating out of equilibrium. Parrondo’s paradox also has applications in economics, evolutionary biology, and computer algorithms. For example, alternating between two investment strategies, each of which is poor on its own, may yield better long-term outcomes if the fluctuations in markets interact in the right way. Similarly, in genetics, when harmful mutations alternate in certain conditions, they can produce beneficial effects for populations. The paradox provides a framework to describe how losing at one level can add up to winning at another. Feynman’s role in this story is historical as well as philosophical. By dissecting the Brownian ratchet, he demonstrated how deeply the laws of thermodynamics constrain what’s possible. His analysis reminded physicists that intuition about randomness can be misleading and that only careful reasoning could reveal the real rules. In 2021, a group of scientists from Australia, Canada, France, and Germany wrote in [*Cancers*](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8125342/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the mathematics of Parrondo’s paradox could also illuminate the biology of cancerous tumours. Their starting point was the observation that cancer cells behave in ways that often seem self-defeating: they accumulate genetic and epigenetic instability, devolve into abnormal states, sometimes stop dividing altogether, and often migrate away from their original location and perish. Each of these traits looks like a “losing strategy” — yet cancers that use these ‘strategies’ together are often persistent. The group suggested that the paradox arises because cancers grow in unstable, hostile environments. Tumour cells deal with low oxygen, intermittent blood supply, attacks by the immune system, and toxic drugs. In these circumstances, no single survival strategy is reliable. A population of only stable tumour cells would be wiped out when the conditions change. Likewise a population of only unstable cells would collapse under its own chaos. But by maintaining a mix, the group contended, cancers achieve resilience. Stable, specialised cells can exploit resources efficiently while unstable cells with high plasticity constantly generate new variations, some of which could respond better to future challenges. Together, the team continued, the cancer can alternate between the two sets of cells so that it can win. The scientists also interpreted dormancy and metastasis of cancers through this lens. Dormant cells are inactive and can lie hidden for years, escaping chemotherapy drugs that are aimed at cells that divide. Once the drugs have faded, they restart growth. While a migrating cancer cell has a high chance of dying off, even one success can seed a tumor in a new tissue. On the flip side, the scientists argued that cancer therapy can also be improved by embracing Parrondo’s paradox. In conventional chemotherapy, doctors repeatedly administer strong drugs, creating a strategy that often backfires: the therapy kills off the weak, leaving the strong behind — but in this case the strong are the very cells you least want to survive. By contrast, adaptive approaches that alternate periods of treatment with rest or that mix real drugs with harmless lookalikes could harness evolutionary trade-offs inside the tumor and keep it in check. Just as cancer may use Parrondo’s paradox to outwit the body, doctors may one day use the same paradox to outwit cancer. On August 6, physicists from Lanzhou University in China published a paper in [*Physical Review E*](https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/xjh4-mfvx?ref=slightlyacidic.com) discussing just such a possibility. They focused on chemotherapy, which is usually delivered in one of two main ways. The first, called the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), uses strong doses given at intervals. The second, called low-dose metronomic (LDM), uses weaker doses applied continuously over time. Each method has been widely tested in clinics and each one has drawbacks. MTD often succeeds at first by rapidly killing off drug-sensitive cancer cells. In the process, however, it also paves the way for the most resistant cancer cells to expand, leading to relapse. LDM on the other hand keeps steady pressure on a tumor but can end up either failing to control sensitive cells if the dose is too low or clearing them so thoroughly that resistant cells again dominate if the dose is too strong. In other words, both strategies can be losing games in the long run. The question the study’s authors asked was whether combining these two flawed strategies in a specific sequence could achieve better results than deploying either strategy on its own. This is the sort of situation Parrondo’s paradox describes, even if not exactly. While the paradox is concerned with combining outright losing strategies, the study has discussed combining two *ineffective* strategies. To investigate, the researchers used mathematical models that treated tumors as ecosystems containing three interacting populations: healthy cells, drug-sensitive cancer cells, and drug-resistant cancer cells. They applied equations from evolutionary game theory that tracked how the fractions of these groups shifted in different conditions. The models showed that in a purely MTD strategy, the resistant cells soon took over, and in a purely LDM strategy, the outcomes depended strongly on drug strength but still ended badly. But when the two schedules were alternated, the tumor behaved differently. The more sensitive cells were suppressed but not eliminated while their persistence prevented the resistant cells from proliferating quickly. The team also found that the healthy cells survived longer. Of course, tumours are not well-mixed soups of cells; in reality they have spatial structure. To account for this, the team put together computer simulations where individual cells occupied positions on a grid; grew, divided or died according to fixed rules; and interacted with their neighbours. This agent-based approach allowed the team to examine how pockets of sensitive and resistant cells might compete in more realistic tissue settings. Their simulations only confirmed the previous set of results. A therapeutic strategy that alternated between MTD and LDM schedules extended the amount of time before the resistant cells took over and while the healthy cells dominated. When the model started with the LDM phase in particular, the sensitive cancer cells were found to compete with the resistant cancer cells and the arrival of the MTD phase next applied even more pressure on the latter. This is an interesting finding because it suggests that the goal of therapy may not always be to eliminate every sensitive cancer cell as quickly as possible but, paradoxically, that sometimes it may be wiser to preserve some sensitive cells so that they can compete directly with resistant cells and prevent them from monopolising the tumor. In clinical terms, alternating between high- and low-dose regimens may delay resistance and keep tumours tractable for longer periods. Then again this is cancer — the “emperor of all maladies” — and *in silico* evidence from a physics-based model is only the start. Researchers will have to test it in real, live tissue in animal models (or organoids) and subsequently in human trials. They will also have to assess whether certain cancers, followed by a specific combination of drugs for those cancers, will benefit more (or less) from taking the Parrando’s paradox way. As [*Physics*](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/144?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported on August 6: > \[University of London mathematical oncologist Robert\] Noble … says that the method outlined in the new study may not be ripe for a real-world clinical setting. “The alternating strategy fails much faster, and the tumor bounces back, if you slightly change the initial conditions,” adds Noble. Liu and colleagues, however, plan to conduct *in vitro* experiments to test their mathematical model and to select regimen parameters that would make their strategy more robust in a realistic setting. ### Challenging the neutrino signal anomaly URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/06/challenging-the-neutrino-signal-anomaly/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:16.000Z *A gentle reminder before we begin: you're* [*allowed to be interested*](https://withspeak.wpcomstaging.com/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *in particle physics.* 😉 Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in physics. They are extremely light, electrically neutral, and interact so weakly with matter that trillions of them pass through your body each second without leaving a trace. They are produced in the Sun, nuclear reactors, the atmosphere, and by cosmic explosions. In fact neutrinos are everywhere — yet they're almost invisible. Despite their elusiveness, they have already upended physics. In the late 20th century, scientists discovered that [neutrinos can oscillate](https://withspeak.wpcomstaging.com/2018/10/30/does-the-neutrino-sector-violate-cp-symmetry/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), changing from one type to another as they travel, which is something that the simplest version of the Standard Model of particle physics — the prevailing theory of elementary particles — doesn't predict. Because oscillations require neutrinos to have mass, this discovery revealed new physics. Today, scientists study neutrinos for what they might tell us about the universe’s structure and for possible hints of particles or forces yet unknown. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/6807d-41e70-12b2a-4af74-1w41467_2015_article_bfncomms7935_fig1_html-en-svg_-w-1024.png) When neutrinos travel through space, they are known to oscillate between three types. This visualisation plots the composition of neutrinos (of 4 MeV energy) by type at various distances from a nuclear reactor. Credit: Public domain However, detecting neutrinos is very hard. Because they rarely interact with matter, experiments must build massive detectors filled with dense material in the hopes that a small fraction of neutrinos will collide inside with atoms. One way to detect such collisions uses Cherenkov radiation, a bluish glow emitted when a charged particle moves through a medium like water or mineral oil faster than light does in that medium. (This is allowed. The only speed limit is that of light in vacuum: 299,792,458 m/s.) The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab used a large mineral-oil Cherenkov detector. When neutrinos from the Booster Neutrino Beamline struck the atomic nuclei in the mineral oil, the interaction released charged particles, which sometimes produced rings of Cherenkov radiation (like ripples) that the detector recorded. In MiniBooNE’s data, the detection events were classified by the type of light ring produced. An "electron-like" event was one that looked like it had been caused by an electron. But because photons can also produce nearly identical rings when they strike the nuclei, the detector couldn’t always tell the difference. A "muon-like" event, on the other hand, had the distinctive ring pattern of a muon, which is a subatomic particle like the electron but 200-times heavier, and which travels in a straighter, longer track. To be clear, these labels described the detector’s view; they didn’t guarantee which particle was actually present. MiniBooNE began operating in 2002 to test an anomaly that had been reported at the LSND experiment at Los Alamos. LSND had recorded more electron-like” events than predicted, especially at low energies below about 600 MeV. This came to be called the "low-energy excess" and has become one of the most puzzling results in particle physics. It raised the possibility that neutrinos might be oscillating into a hitherto unknown neutrino type, sometimes called the sterile neutrino — or it might have been a hint of unexpected processes that produced extra photons. Since MiniBooNE couldn't reliably distinguish electrons from photons, the mystery remained unresolved. To address this, scientists built the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab. It uses a very different technology: the liquid argon time-projection chamber (LArTPC). In a LArTPC, charged particles streak through an ultra-pure mass of liquid argon, leaving a trail of ionised atoms in their wake. An applied electric field causes these trails to drift towards fine wires, where they are recorded. At the same time, the argon emits light that provides the timing of the interaction. This allows the detector to reconstruct interactions in three dimensions with millimetre precision. Crucially, it lets physicists see where the particle shower begins, so they can tell whether it started at the interaction point or some distance away. This capability prepared MicroBooNE to revisit the "low-energy excess" anomaly. MicroBooNE also had broader motivations. With an active mass of about 90 tonnes of liquid argon inside a 170-tonne cryostat, and 8,256 wires in its readout planes, it was the largest LArTPC in the US when it began operating. It served as a testbed for the much larger detectors that scientists are developing for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). And it was also designed to measure the rate at which neutrinos interacted with argon atoms, to study nuclear effects in neutrino scattering, and to contribute to searches for rare processes such as proton decay and supernova neutrino bursts. (When a star goes supernova, it releases waves upon waves of neutrinos before it releases photons. Scientists were able to confirm this when the star Sanduleak -69 202 exploded in 1987.) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/1f08d-70531-0f3cb-bc5ed-gsfc-20171208-archive-e000102orig-w-933.png) This image, released on February 24, 2017, shows Supernova 1987a (centre) surrounded by dramatic red clouds of gas and dust within the Large Magellanic Cloud. This supernova, first discovered on February 23, 1987, blazed with the power of 100 million Suns. Since that first sighting, SN 1987A has continued to fascinate astronomers with its spectacular light show. Caption and credit: NASA, ESA, R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), and M. Mutchler and R. Avila (STScI) Initial MicroBooNE analyses using partial data already challenged the idea that MiniBooNE’s excess was due to the anomaly. However, the collaboration didn’t cover the full range of parameters until recently. On [August 21](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/x259-z6mf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), MicroBooNE published results from five years of operations, corresponding to 1.11 x 1021 protons on target, which was about a 70% increase over previous analyses. This complete dataset together with higher sensitivity and better modelling has provided the most decisive test so far of the anomaly. The MicroBooNE detector recorded neutrino interactions from the Booster Neutrino Beamline, a setup that produces neutrinos, using its LArTPC detector, which operated at about 87 K inside a cryostat. Charged particles from neutrino interactions produced ionisation electrons that drifted across the detector and were recorded by the wire. Simultaneous flashes of argon scintillation light, seen by photomultiplier tubes, gave the precise time of each interaction. In neutrino physics, a category of events grouped by what the detector sees in the final state is called a channel. Researchers call it a signal channel when it matches the kind of event they are specifically looking for, as opposed to background signals from other processes. With MicroBooNE, the team stayed on the lookout for two signal channels: (i) one electron and no visible protons or pions (abbreviated as 1e0p0π) and (ii) one electron and at least one proton above 40 MeV (1eNp0π). These categories reflect what MiniBooNE would've seen as electron-like events while exploiting MicroBooNE's ability to identify protons. One important source of background noise the team had to cut from the data was cosmic rays — high-energy particles from outer space that strike Earth’s atmosphere, creating particle showers that can mimic neutrino signals. In 2017, MicroBooNE added a suite of panels around the detector. For the full dataset, the panels cut an additional 25.4% of background noise in the 1e0p0π channel while preserving 98.9% of signal events. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/9f2c1-a41bf-d30c2-7dbf5-atmospheric_collision-svg_-w-1024.png) When a cosmic-ray proton collides with a molecule in the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of particles that includes pions, muons, photons, neutrons, electrons, and positrons. Credit: SyntaxError55 (CC BY-SA) In the final analysis, the MicroBooNE data showed no evidence of an anomalous excess of electron-like events. When both channels were combined, the observed events matched the expectations of the Standard Model of particle physics well. The agreement was especially strong in the 1e0p0π channel. In the 1eNp0π channel, MicroBooNE actually detected slightly fewer events than the Model predicted: 102 events v. 134\. This shortfall, of about 24%, is however not enough to claim a new effect but enough to draw attention. But rather than confirming MiniBooNE’s excess, this result suggests there's some tension in the models the scientists use to simulate how the neutrinos and argon atoms will interact. Argon has a large and complex nucleus, which makes accurate predictions challenging. The scientists have in fact stated in their paper that the deficit may reflect these uncertainties rather than new physics. The new MicroBooNE results have far-reaching consequences. Foremost, the results reshape the sterile-neutrino debate. For two decades, the LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies had been cited together as signs that the neutrino was oscillating into a previously undetected state. By showing that MiniBooNE's excess was not due to extra electron-like interactions, MicroBooNE shows that the 'extra' events were not caused by excess electron neutrinos. This in turn casts doubt on the simplest explanation, of sterile neutrinos. As a result, theoretical models that once seemed straightforward now face strong tension. While more complex scenarios remain possible, the easy explanation is no longer viable. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/f8c60-48de7-14263-24704-13-0070-04d-hr_-600x400-1-w-600.jpg) The MicroBooNE cryostat inside which the LArTPC is placed. Credit: Fermilab Second, they demonstrate the maturity of the LArTPC technology. The MicroBooNE team successfully operated a large detector for years, maintaining the argon's purity and low-noise electronics required for high-resolution imaging. Its performance validates the design choices for larger detectors like DUNE, which use similar technology but at kilotonne scales. The experiment also showcases innovations such as cryogenic electronics, sophisticated purification systems, protection against cosmic rays, and calibration with ultraviolet lasers, proving that such systems can deliver reliable data over long periods of operation. Third, the modest deficit in the 1eNp0π channel points to the importance of better understanding neutrino-argon interactions. Argon's heavy nucleus produces complicated final states where protons and neutrons may scatter or be absorbed, altering the visible event. These nuclear effects can lead to mismatches between simulation and data (possibly including the 24% deficit in the 1eNp0π signal channel). For DUNE, which will also use argon as its target, improving these models is critical. MicroBooNE’s detailed datasets and sideband constraints will continue to inform these refinements. Fourth, the story highlights the value of complementary detector technologies. MiniBooNE’s Cherenkov detector recorded more events but couldn’t tell electrons from photons; MicroBooNE’s LArTPC recorded fewer events but with much greater clarity. Together, they show how one experiment can identify a puzzle and another can test it with a different method. This multi-technology approach is likely to continue as experiments worldwide cross-check anomalies and precision measurements. Finally, the MicroBooNE results show how science advances. A puzzling anomaly inspired new theories, new technology, and a new experiment. After five years of data-taking and with the most complete analysis yet, MicroBooNE has said that the MiniBooNE anomaly was not due to electron-neutrino interactions. The anomaly itself remains unexplained, but the field now has a sharper focus. Whether the cause lies in photon production, detector effects or actually new physics, the next generation of experiments can start on firmer footing. ### GST 2.0 + WordPress.com URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/04/gst-2-0-wordpress-com/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:17.000Z Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced sweeping changes to the GST rates on September 3\. However, I think the rate for software services (HSN 99831) will remain unchanged at 18%. This is a bummer because every time I renew my WordPress.com site or purchase software over the internet in rupees, the total cost increases by almost a fifth. The disappointment is compounded by the fact that WordPress.com and many other software service providers provide adjusted rates for users in India in order to offset the country's lower purchasing power per capita. For example, the lowest WordPress and Ghost plans by WordPress.com and MagicPages.co, respectively, cost $4 and $12 a month. But for users in India, the WordPress.com plan costs Rs 200 a month while MagicPages.co offers a Rs 450 per month plan, both with the same feature set — a big difference. The 18% GST however wipes out some, not all, of these gains. Paying for software services over the internet when they're billed in dollars rather than rupees isn't much different. While GST doesn't apply, the rupee-to-dollar rate has become abysmal. \[*Checks*\] Rs 88.14 to the dollar at 11 am. Ugh. I also hoped for a GST rate cut on software services because if content management software in particular becomes more affordable, more people would be able to publish on the internet. ### What does it mean to interpret quantum physics? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/09/03/what-does-it-mean-to-interpret-quantum-physics/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:18.000Z *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 physics than they usually do, and that has meant quantum physics research has often been on my mind.* [*Nirmalya Kajuri*](https://nirmalyakajuri.substack.com/)*, an occasional collaborator, an assistant professor at IIT Mandi, and an excellent science communicator,* [*recently asked*](https://x.com/Kaju%5FNut/status/1951794169258655937?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *other physics teachers on X.com how much time they spend teaching the interpretations of quantum physics. His question and the articles I’ve been reading inspired me to write the following post. I hope it’s useful in particular to people like me, who are interested in physics but didn’t formally train to study it.* --- Quantum physics is often described as the most successful theory in science. It explains how atoms bond, how light interacts with matter, how semiconductors and lasers work, and even how the sun produces energy. With its equations, scientists can predict experimental results with astonishing precision — up to 10 decimal places in the case of the electron’s magnetic moment. In spite of this extraordinary success, quantum physics is unusual compared to other scientific theories because it doesn’t tell us a single, clear story about what reality is like. The mathematics yields predictions that have never been contradicted within their tested domain, yet it leaves open the question of what the world is actually doing behind those numbers. This is what physicists mean when they speak of the ‘interpretations’ of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, the situation is more straightforward. Newton’s laws describe how forces act on bodies, leading them to move along definite paths. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism describes electric and magnetic fields filling space and interacting with charges. Einstein’s relativity shows space and time are flexible and curve under the influence of matter and energy. These theories predict outcomes and provide a coherent picture of the world: objects have locations, fields have values, and spacetime has shape. In quantum mechanics, the mathematics works perfectly — but the corresponding picture of reality is still unclear. The central concept in quantum theory is the wavefunction. This is a mathematical object that contains all the information about a system, such as an electron moving through space. The wavefunction evolves smoothly in time according to the Schrödinger equation. If you know the wavefunction at one moment, you can calculate it at any later moment using the equation. But when a measurement is made, the rules of the theory change. Instead of continuing smoothly, the wavefunction is used to calculate probabilities for different possible outcomes, and then one of those outcomes occurs. For instance, if an electron has a 50% chance of being detected on the left and a 50% chance of being detected on the right, the experiment will yield either left or right, never both at once. The mathematics says that before the measurement, the electron exists in a superposition of left and right, but after the measurement only one is found. This peculiar structure, where the wavefunction evolves deterministically between measurements but then seems to collapse into a definite outcome when observed, has no counterpart in classical physics. The puzzles arise because it’s not clear what the wavefunction really represents. Is it a real physical wave that somehow ‘collapses’? Is it merely a tool for calculating probabilities, with no independent existence? Is it information in the mind of an observer rather than a feature of the external world? The mathematics doesn’t say. The measurement problem asks why the wavefunction collapses at all and what exactly counts as a measurement. Superposition raises the question of whether a system can truly be in several states at once or whether the mathematics is only a convenient shorthand. Entanglement, where two particles remain linked in ways that seem to defy distance, forces us to wonder whether reality itself is nonlocal in some deep sense. Each of these problems points to the fact that while the predictive rules of quantum theory are clear, their meaning is not. Over the past century, physicists and philosophers have proposed many interpretations of quantum mechanics. The most traditional is often called the Copenhagen interpretation, illustrated by the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. In this view, the wavefunction is not real but only a computational tool. In many Copenhagen-style readings, the wavefunction is a device for organising expectations while measurement is taken as a primitive, irreducible step. The many-worlds interpretation offers a different view that denies the wavefunction ever collapses. Instead, all possible outcomes occur, each in its own branch of reality. When you measure the electron, there is one version of you that sees it on the left and another version that sees it on the right. In Bohmian mechanics, particles always have definite positions guided by a pilot wave that’s represented by the wavefunction. In this view, the randomness of measurement outcomes arises because we can’t know the precise initial positions of the particles. There are also objective collapse theories that take the wavefunction as real but argue that it undergoes genuine, physical collapse triggered randomly or by specific conditions. Finally, an informational approach called QBism says the wavefunction isn’t about the world at all but about an observer’s expectations for experiences upon acting on the world. Most interpretations reproduce the same experimental predictions (objective-collapse models predict small, testable deviations) but tell different stories about what the world is really like. It’s natural to ask why interpretations are needed at all if they don’t change the predictions. Indeed, many physicists work happily without worrying about them. To build a transistor, calculate the energy of a molecule or design a quantum computer, the rules of standard quantum mechanics suffice. Yet interpretations matter for several reasons, but especially because they shape our philosophical understanding of what kind of universe we live in. They also influence scientific creativity because some interpretations suggest directions for new experiments. For example, objective collapse theories predict small deviations from the usual quantum rules that can, at least in principle, be tested. Interpretations also matter in education. Students taught only the Copenhagen interpretation may come away thinking quantum physics is inherently mysterious and that reality only crystallises when it’s observed. Students introduced to many-worlds alone may instead think of the universe as an endlessly branching tree. The choice of interpretation moulds the intuition of future physicists. At the frontiers of physics, in efforts to unify quantum theory with gravity or to describe the universe as a whole, questions about what the wavefunction really is become unavoidable. In research fields that apply quantum mechanics to practical problems, many physicists don’t think about interpretation at all. A condensed-matter physicist studying superconductors uses the standard formalism without worrying about whether electrons are splitting into multiple worlds. But at the edges of theory, interpretation plays a major role. In quantum cosmology, where there are no external observers to perform measurements, one needs to decide what the wavefunction of the universe means. How we interpret entanglement, i.e. as a real physical relation versus as a representational device, colours how technologists imagine the future of quantum computing. In quantum gravity, the question of whether spacetime itself can exist in superposition renders interpretation crucial. Interpretations also matter in teaching. Instructors make choices, sometimes unconsciously, about how to present the theory. One professor may stick to the Copenhagen view and tell students that measurement collapses the wavefunction and that that’s the end of the story. Another may prefer many-worlds and suggest that collapse never occurs, only branching universes. A third may highlight information-based views, stressing that quantum mechanics is really about knowledge and prediction rather than about what exists independently. These different approaches shape the way students can understand quantum mechanics as a tool as well as as a worldview. For some, quantum physics will always appear mysterious and paradoxical. For others, it will seem strange but logical once its hidden assumptions are made clear. Interpretations also play a role in experiment design. Objective collapse theories, for example, predict that superpositions of large objects should spontaneously collapse. Experimental physicists are now testing whether quantum superpositions survive for increasingly massive molecules or for diminutive mechanical devices, precisely to check whether collapse really happens. Interpretations have also motivated tests of Bell’s inequalities, an idea that shows no local theory with “hidden variables” can reproduce the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics. The scientists who conducted these experiments confirmed entanglement is a genuine feature of the world, not a residue of the mathematical tools we use to study it — and won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2022\. Today, entanglement is exploited in technologies such as quantum cryptography. Without the interpretative debates that forced physicists to take these puzzles seriously, such developments may never have been pursued. The fact that some physicists care deeply about interpretation while others don’t reflects different goals. Those who work on applied problems or who need to build devices don’t have to care much. The maths provides the answers they need. Those who are concerned with the foundations of physics, with the philosophy of science or with the unification of physical theories care very much, because interpretation guides their thinking about what’s possible and what’s not. Many physicists switch back and forth, ignoring interpretation when calculating in the lab but discussing many-worlds or informational views over chai. Quantum mechanics is unique among physical theories in this way. Few chemists or engineers spend time worrying about the ‘interpretation’ of Newtonian mechanics or thermodynamics because these theories present straightforward pictures of the world. Quantum mechanics instead gives flawless predictions but an under-determined picture. The search for interpretation is the search for a coherent story that links the extraordinary success of the mathematics to a clear vision of what the world is like. To interpret quantum physics is therefore to move beyond the bare equations and ask what they mean. Unlike classical theories, quantum mechanics doesn’t supply a single picture of reality along with its predictions. It leaves us with probabilities, superpositions, and entanglement, and it remains ambiguous about what these things really are. Some physicists insist interpretation is unnecessary; to others it’s essential. Some interpretations depict reality as a branching multiverse, others as a set of hidden particles, yet others as information alone. None has won final acceptance, but all try to close the gap between predictive success and conceptual clarity. In daily practice, many physicists calculate without worrying, but in teaching, in probing the limits of the theory, and in searching for new physics, interpretations matter. They shape not only what we understand about the quantum world but also how we imagine the universe we live in. ### A transistor for heat URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/25/a-transistor-for-heat/ Last updated: 2025-08-25T11:49:54.000Z Quantum technologies and the prospect of advanced, next-generation electronic devices have been maturing at an increasingly rapid pace. Both research groups and governments around the world are investing more attention in this domain. India for example mooted its National Quantum Mission in 2023 with a decade-long outlay of Rs 6,000 crore. One of the Mission’s goals, in the words of IISER Pune physics professor [Umakant Rapol](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/national-quantum-mission-india-science/article66788784.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), is “to engineer and utilise the delicate quantum features of photons and subatomic particles to build advanced sensors” for applications in “healthcare, security, and environmental monitoring”. On the science front, as these technologies become better understood, scientists have been paying increasingly more attention to managing and controlling heat in them. These technologies often rely on quantum physical phenomena that appear only at extremely low temperatures and are so fragile that even a small amount of stray heat can destabilise them. In these settings, scientists have found that traditional methods of handling heat — mainly by controlling the vibrations of atoms in the devices’ materials — become ineffective. Instead, scientists have identified a promising alternative: energy transfer through photons, the particles of light. And in this paradigm, instead of simply moving heat from one place to another, scientists have been trying to control and amplify it, much like how transistors and amplifiers handle electrical signals in everyday electronics. ## Playing with fire Central to this effort is the concept of a thermal transistor. This device resembles an electrical transistor but works with heat instead of electrical current. Electrical transistors amplify or switch currents, allowing the complex logic and computation required to power modern computers. Creating similar thermal devices would represent a major advance, especially for technologies that require very precise temperature control. This is particularly true in the sub-kelvin temperature range where many quantum processors and sensors operate. ![Transistor Simple Circuit Diagram with NPN Labels.svg.](http://withspeak.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/transistor_simple_circuit_diagram_with_npn_labels.svg_.png "Transistor_Simple_Circuit_Diagram_with_NPN_Labels.svg.png") This circuit diagram depicts an NPN bipolar transistor. When a small voltage is applied between the base and emitter, electrons are injected from the emitter into the base, most of which then sweep across into the collector. The end result is a large current flowing through the collector, controlled by the much smaller current flowing through the base. Credit: Michael9422 (CC BY-SA) Energy transport at such cryogenic temperatures differs significantly from normal conditions. Below roughly 1 kelvin, atomic vibrations no longer carry most of the heat. Instead, electromagnetic fluctuations — ripples of energy carried by photons — dominate the conduction of heat. Scientists channel these photons through specially designed, lossless wires made of superconducting materials. They keep these wires below their superconducting critical temperatures, allowing only photons to transfer energy between the reservoirs. This arrangement enables careful and precise control of heat flow. One crucial phenomenon that allows scientists to manipulate heat in this way is negative differential thermal conductance (NDTC). NDTC defies common intuition. Normally, decreasing the temperature difference between two bodies reduces the amount of heat they exchange. This is why a glass of water at 50º C in a room at 25º C will cool faster than a glass of water at 30º C. In NDTC, however, reducing the temperature difference between two connected reservoirs can actually increase the heat flow between them. NDTC arises from a detailed relationship between temperature and the properties of the material that makes up the reservoirs. When physicists harness NDTC, they can amplify heat signals in a manner similar to how negative electrical resistance powers electrical amplifiers. ## A ‘circuit’ for heat In a new study, researchers from Italy have designed and theoretically modelled a new kind of ‘thermal transistor’ that they have said can actively control and amplify how heat flows at extremely low temperatures for quantum technology applications. Their findings were published recently in the journal [*Physical Review Applied*](https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/sxf8-l83k?ref=slightlyacidic.com). To explore NDTC experimentally, the researchers studied reservoirs made of a disordered semiconductor material that exhibited a transport mechanism called variable range hopping (VRH). An example is neutron-transmutation-doped germanium. In VRH materials, the electrical resistance at low temperatures depends very strongly, sometimes exponentially, on temperature. This attribute makes them ideal to tune their impedance, a property that controls the material’s resistance to energy flow, simply by adjusting temperature. That is, how well two reservoirs made of VRH materials exchange heat can be controlled by tuning the impedance of the materials, which in turn can be controlled by tuning their temperature. In the new study, the researchers reported that impedance matching played a key role. When the reservoirs’ impedances matched perfectly (when their temperatures became equal), the efficiency with which they transferred photonic heat reached a peak. As the materials’ temperatures diverged, heat flow dropped. In fact, the researchers wrote that there was a temperature range, especially as the colder reservoir’s temperature rose to approach that of the warmer one, within which the heat flow increased even as the temperature difference shrank. This effect forms the core of NDTC. The research team, associated with the NEST initiative at the Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, both in Pisa in Italy, have proposed a device they call the photonic heat amplifier. They built it using two VRH reservoirs connected by superconducting, lossless wires. One reservoir was kept at a higher temperature and served as the source of heat energy. The other reservoir, called the central island, received heat by exchanging photons with the warmer reservoir. ![](http://withspeak.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/screenshot-2025-08-25-at-4.44.55pm.png "Screenshot 2025-08-25 at 4.44.55 PM.png") The proposed device features a central island at temperature T1 that transfers heat currents to various terminals. The tunnel contacts to the drain and gate are positioned at heavily doped regions of the yellow central island, highlighted by a grey etched pattern. Each arrow indicates the positive direction of the heat flux. The substrate is (shown as and) maintained at temperature Tb, the gate at Tg, and the drain at Td. Credit: arXiv:2502.04250v3 The central island was also connected to two additional metallic reservoirs named the “gate” and the “drain”. These points operated with the same purpose as the control and output terminals in an electrical transistor. The drain stayed cold, allowing the amplified heat signal to exit the system from this point. By adjusting the gate temperature, the team could modulate and even amplify the flow of heat between the source and the drain (see image below). To understand and predict the amplifier’s behaviour, the researchers developed mathematical models for all forms of heat transfer within the device. These included photonic currents between VRH reservoirs, electron tunnelling through the gate and drain contacts, and energy lost as vibrations through the device's substrate. (Tunnelling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon where an electron has a small chance of floating through a thin barrier instead of going around it.) ## Raring to go By carefully selecting the device parameters — including the characteristic temperature of the VRH material, the source temperature, resistances at the gate and drain contacts, the volume of the central island, and geometric factors — the researchers said they could tailor the device for different amplification purposes. They reported two main operating modes. The first was called ‘current modulation amplifier’. In this configuration, the device amplified small variations in thermal input at the gate. In this mode, small oscillations in the gate heat current produced much larger oscillations, up to 15-times greater, in the photon current between the source and the central island and in the drain current, according to the paper. This amplification was efficient down to 20 millikelvin, matching the ultracold conditions required in quantum technologies. The output range of heat current was similarly broad, showing the device’s suitability to amplify heat signals. The second mode was called ‘temperature modulation amplifier’. Here, slight changes of only a few millikelvin in the gate temperature, the team wrote, caused the output temperature in the central island to swing by as large as 3.3 times the changes in the input. The device could also handle input temperature ranges over 100 millikelvin. This performance reportedly matched or surpassed other temperature amplifiers already reported in the scientific literature. The researchers also noted that this mode could be used to pre-amplify signals in bolometric detectors used in astronomy telescopes. An important ability relevant for practical use is the relaxation time, i.e. how soon after operating once the device returned to its original state, ready for the next run. The amplifier in both configurations showed relaxation times between microseconds and milliseconds. According to the researchers, this speed resulted from the device’s low thermal mass and efficient heat channels. Such a fast response could make it suitable to detect and amplify thermal signals in real time. The researchers wrote that the amplifier also maintained good linearity and low distortion across various inputs. In other words, the output heat signal changed proportionally to the input heat signal and the device didn’t add unwanted changes, noise or artifacts to the input signal. Its noise-equivalent power values were also found to rival the best available solid-state thermometers, indicating low noise levels. ## Approaching the limits For these promising results, realising this device involves some significant practical challenges. For instance, NDTC depends heavily on precise impedance matching. Real materials inevitably have imperfections, including those due to imperfect fabrication and environmental fluctuations. Such deviations could lower the device’s heat transfer efficiency and reduce the operational range of NDTC. The system also banked on lossless superconducting wires being kept well below their critical temperatures. Achieving and maintaining these ultralow temperatures requires sophisticated and expensive refrigeration infrastructure, which adds to the experimental complexity. Fabrication also demands very precise doping and finely tuned resistances for the gate and drain terminals. Scaling production to create many devices or arrays poses major technical difficulties. Integrating numerous photonic heat amplifiers into larger thermal circuits risks unwanted thermal crosstalk and signal degradation, a risk compounded by the extremely small heat currents involved. Furthermore, the fully photonic design offers benefits such as electrical isolation and long-distance thermal connections. However, it also approaches fundamental physical limits. Thermal conductance caps the maximum possible heat flow through photonic channels. This limitation could restrict how much power the device is able to handle in some applications. Then again, many of these challenges are typical of cutting-edge research in quantum devices, and highlight the need for detailed experimental work to realise and integrate photonic heat amplifiers into operational quantum systems. If they are successfully realised for practical applications, photonic heat amplifiers could transform how scientists manage heat in quantum computing and nanotechnologies that operate near absolute zero. They could pave the way for on-chip heat control, computers to autonomously stabilise the temperature, and perform thermal logic operations. Redirecting or harvesting waste heat could also improve the efficiency and significantly reduce noise — a critical barrier in ultra-sensitive quantum devices like quantum computers. *Featured image credit: Lucas K./Unsplash.* ### The Hyperion dispute and chaos in space URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/24/the-hyperion-dispute-and-chaos-in-space/ Last updated: 2025-08-24T06:12:20.000Z When reading around for [my piece yesterday](https://argumentative.co/2025/08/23/what-on-earth-is-a-wavefunction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the wavefunctions of quantum mechanics, I stumbled across an old and fascinating debate about Saturn’s moon Hyperion. The question of how the smooth, classical world around us emerges from the rules of quantum mechanics has haunted physicists for a century. Most of the time the divide seems easy: quantum laws govern atoms and electrons while planets, chairs, and cats are governed by the laws of Newton and Einstein. Yet there are cases where this distinction is not so easy to draw. One of the most surprising examples comes not from a laboratory experiment but from the cosmos. In the 1990s, Hyperion became the focus of a deep debate about the nature of classicality, one that quickly snowballed into the so-called Hyperion dispute. It showed how different interpretations of quantum theory could lead to apparently contradictory claims, and how those claims can be settled by making their underlying assumptions clear. Hyperion is not one of Saturn’s best-known moons but it is among the most unusual. Unlike round bodies such as Titan or Enceladus, Hyperion has an irregular shape, resembling a potato more than a sphere. Its surface is pocked by craters and its interior appears porous, almost like a sponge. But the feature that caught physicists' attention was its rotation. Hyperion does not spin in a steady, predictable way. Instead, it tumbles chaotically. Its orientation changes in an irregular fashion as it orbits Saturn, influenced by the gravitational pulls of Saturn and Titan, which is a moon larger than Mercury. In physics, chaos does not mean complete disorder. It means a system is sensitive to its initial conditions. For instance, imagine two weather models that start with almost the same initial data: one says the temperature in your locality at 9:00 am is 20.000º C, the other says it's 20.001º C. That seems like a meaningless difference. But because the atmosphere is chaotic, this difference can grow rapidly. After a few days, the two models may predict very different outcomes: one may show a sunny afternoon and the other, thunderstorms. This sensitivity to initial conditions is often called the butterfly effect — it's the idea that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil might, through a chain of amplifications, eventually influence the formation of a tornado in Canada. Hyperion behaves in a similar way. A minuscule difference in its initial spin angle or speed grows exponentially with time, making its future orientation unpredictable beyond a few months. In classical mechanics this is chaos; in quantum mechanics, those tiny initial uncertainties are built in by the uncertainty principle, and chaos amplifies them dramatically. As a result, predicting its orientation more than a few months ahead is impossible, even with precise initial data. To astronomers, this was a striking case of classical chaos. But to a quantum theorist, it raised a deeper question: how does quantum mechanics describe such a macroscopic, chaotic system? Why Hyperion interested quantum physicists is rooted in that core feature of quantum theory: the wavefunction. A quantum particle is described by a wavefunction, which encodes the probabilities of finding it in different places or states. A key property of wavefunctions is that they spread over time. A sharply localised particle will gradually smear out, with a nonzero probability of it being found over an expanding region of space. For microscopic particles such as electrons, this spreading occurs very rapidly. For macroscopic objects, like a chair, an orange or you, the spread is usually negligible. The large mass of everyday objects makes the quantum uncertainty in their motion astronomically small. This is why you don’t have to be worried about your chai mug being in two places at once. Hyperion is a macroscopic moon, so you might think it falls clearly on the classical side. But this is where chaos changes the picture. In a chaotic system, small uncertainties get amplified exponentially fast. A variable called the Lyapunov exponent measures this sensitivity. If Hyperion begins with an orientation with a minuscule uncertainty, chaos will magnify that uncertainty at an exponential rate. In quantum terms, this means the wavefunction describing Hyperion’s orientation will not spread slowly, as for most macroscopic bodies, but at full tilt. In 1998, the Polish-American theoretical physicist [Wojciech Zurek calculated](https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9802054?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that within about 20 years, the quantum state of Hyperion should evolve into a superposition of macroscopically distinct orientations. In other words, if you took quantum mechanics seriously, Hyperion would be “pointing this way and that way at once”, just like Schrödinger’s famous cat that is alive and dead at once. This startling conclusion raised the question: why do we not observe such superpositions in the real Solar System? Zurek's answer to this question was decoherence. Say you're blowing a soap bubble in a dark room. If no light touches it, the bubble is just there, invisible to you. Now shine a torchlight on it. Photons from the bulb will scatter off the bubble and enter your eyes, letting you see its position and color. But here's the catch: every photon that bounces off the bubble also carries away a little bit of information about it. In quantum terms, the bubble’s wavefunction becomes entangled with all those photons. If the bubble were treated purely quantum mechanically, you could imagine a strange state where it was simultaneously in many places in the room — a giant superposition. But once trillions of photons have scattered off it, each carrying “which path?” information, the superposition is effectively destroyed. What remains is an apparent mixture of "bubble here" or "bubble there", and to any observer the bubble looks like a localised classical object. This is decoherence in action: the environment (the sea of photons here) acts like a constant measuring device, preventing large objects from showing quantum weirdness. For Hyperion, decoherence would be rapid. Interactions with sunlight, Saturn’s magnetospheric particles, and cosmic dust would constantly ‘measure’ Hyperion’s orientation. Any coherent superposition of orientations would be suppressed almost instantly, long before it could ever be observed. Thus, although pure quantum theory predicts Hyperion’s wavefunction would spread into cat-like superpositions, decoherence explains why we only ever see Hyperion in a definite orientation. Thus Zurek argued that decoherence is essential to understand how the classical world emerges from its quantum substrate. To him, Hyperion provided an astronomical example of how chaotic dynamics could, in principle, generate macroscopic superpositions, and how decoherence ensures these superpositions remain invisible to us. Not everyone agreed with Zurek’s conclusion, however. In 2005, physicists Nathan Wiebe and Leslie Ballentine [revisited the problem](https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0503170?ref=slightlyacidic.com). They wanted to know: if we treat Hyperion using the rules of quantum mechanics, do we really need the idea of decoherence to explain why it looks classical? Or would Hyperion look classical even without bringing the environment into the picture? To answer this, they did something quite concrete. Instead of trying to describe every possible property of Hyperion, they focused on one specific and measurable feature: the part of its spin that pointed along a fixed axis, perpendicular to Hyperion’s orbit. This quantity — essentially the up-and-down component of Hyperion’s tumbling spin — was a natural choice because it can be defined both in classical mechanics and in quantum mechanics. By looking at the same feature in both worlds, they could make a direct comparison. Wiebe and Ballentine then built a detailed model of Hyperion’s chaotic motion and ran numerical simulations. They asked: if we look at this component of Hyperion’s spin, how does the distribution of outcomes predicted by classical physics compare with the distribution predicted by quantum mechanics? The result was striking. The two sets of predictions matched extremely well. Even though Hyperion’s quantum state was spreading in complicated ways, the actual probabilities for this chosen feature of its spin lined up with the classical expectations. In other words, for this observable, Hyperion looked just as classical in the quantum description as it did in the classical one. From this, Wiebe and Ballentine drew a bold conclusion: that Hyperion doesn't require decoherence to appear classical. The agreement between quantum and classical predictions was already enough. They went further and suggested that this might be true more broadly: perhaps decoherence is not essential to explain why macroscopic bodies, the large objects we see around us, behave classically. This conclusion went directly against the prevailing view of quantum physics as a whole. By the early 2000s, many physicists believed that decoherence was the central mechanism that bridged the quantum and classical worlds. Zurek and others had spent years showing how environmental interactions suppress the quantum superpositions that would otherwise appear in macroscopic systems. To suggest that decoherence was not essential was to challenge the very foundation of that programme. The debate quickly gained attention. On one side stood Wiebe and Ballentine, arguing that simple agreement between quantum and classical predictions for certain observables was enough to resolve the issue. On the other stood Zurek and the decoherence community, insisting that the real puzzle was more fundamental: why we never observe interference between large-scale quantum states. At this time, the Hyperion dispute wasn't just about a chaotic moon. It was about how we could define ‘classical behavior’ in the first place. For Wiebe and Ballentine, classical meant “quantum predictions match classical ones”. For Zurek *et al.*, classical meant “no detectable superpositions of macroscopically distinct states”. The difference in definitions made the two sides seem to clash. But then, in 2008, physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer [carefully analysed](https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0605249?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the issue and showed that the two sides were not actually talking about the same problem. The apparent clash arose because Zurek and Wiebe-Ballentine had started from essentially different assumptions. Specifically, Wiebe and Ballentine had adopted the ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics. In everyday terms, the ensemble interpretation says, “Don't take the quantum wavefunction too literally.” That is, it does not describe the “real state” of a single object. Instead, it's a tool to calculate the probabilities of what we will see if we repeat an experiment many times on many identical systems. It’s like rolling dice. If I say the probability of rolling a 6 is 1/6, that probability does not describe the dice themselves as being in a strange mixture of outcomes. It simply summarises what will happen if I roll a large collection of dice. Applied to quantum mechanics, the ensemble interpretation works the same way. If an electron is described by a wavefunction that seems to say it is “spread out” over many positions, the ensemble interpretation insists this does not mean the electron is literally smeared across space. Rather, the wavefunction encodes the probabilities for where the electron would be found if we prepared many electrons in the same way and measured them. The apparent superposition is not a weird physical reality, just a statistical recipe. Wiebe and Ballentine carried this outlook over to Hyperion. When Zurek described Hyperion’s chaotic motion as evolving into a superposition of many distinct orientations, he meant this as a literal statement: without decoherence, the moon’s quantum state really would be in a giant blend of "pointing this way” and “pointing that way”. From his perspective, there was a crisis because no one ever observes moons or chai mugs in such states. Decoherence, he argued, was the missing mechanism that explained why these superpositions never show up. But under the ensemble interpretation, the situation looks entirely different. For Wiebe and Ballentine, Hyperion’s wavefunction was never a literal “moon in superposition”. It was always just a probability tool, telling us the likelihood of finding Hyperion with one orientation or another if we made a measurement. Their job, then, was simply to check: do these quantum probabilities match the probabilities that classical physics would give us? If they do, then Hyperion behaves classically by definition. There is no puzzle to be solved and no role for decoherence to play. This explains why Wiebe and Ballentine concentrated on comparing the probability distributions for a single observable, namely the component of Hyperion’s spin along a chosen axis. If the quantum and classical results lined up — as their calculations showed — then from the ensemble point of view Hyperion’s classicality was secured. The apparent superpositions that worried Zurek were never taken as physically real in the first place. Zurek, on the other hand, was addressing the measurement problem. In standard quantum mechanics, superpositions are physically real. Without decoherence, there is always some observable that could reveal the coherence between different macroscopic orientations. The puzzle is why we never see such observables registering superpositions. Decoherence provided the answer: the environment prevents us from ever detecting those delicate quantum correlations. In other words, Zurek and Wiebe-Ballentine were tackling different notions of classicality. For Wiebe and Ballentine, classicality meant the match between quantum and classical statistical distributions for certain observables. For Zurek, classicality meant the suppression of interference between macroscopically distinct states. Once Schlosshauer spotted this difference, the apparent dispute went away. His resolution showed that the clash was less over data than over perspectives. If you adopt the ensemble interpretation, then decoherence indeed seems unnecessary, because you never take the superposition as a real physical state in the first place. If you are interested in solving the measurement problem, then decoherence is crucial, because it explains why macroscopic superpositions never manifest. The overarching takeaway is that, from the quantum point of view, there is no single definition of what constitutes “classical behaviour”. The Hyperion dispute forced physicists to articulate what they meant by classicality and to recognise the assumptions embedded in different interpretations. Depending on your personal stance, you may emphasise the agreement of statistical distributions or you may emphasise the absence of observable superpositions. Both approaches can be internally consistent — but they also answer different questions. For school students that are reading this story, the Hyperion dispute may seem obscure. Why should we care about whether a distant moon’s tumbling motion demands decoherence or not? The reason is that the moon provides a vivid example of a deep issue: how do we reconcile the strange predictions of quantum theory with the ordinary world we see? In the laboratory, decoherence is an everyday reality. Quantum computers, for example, must be carefully shielded from their environments to prevent decoherence from destroying fragile quantum information. In cosmology, decoherence plays a role in explaining how quantum fluctuations in the early universe influenced the structure of galaxies. Hyperion showed that even an astronomical body can, in principle, highlight the same foundational issues. ### The guiding light of KD45 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/24/the-guiding-light-of-kd45/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:19.000Z On the subject of belief, I’m instinctively drawn to logical systems that demand consistency, closure, and introspection. And the [KD45 system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic%5Fmodal%5Flogic?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Axiom%5Fsystems) among them exerts a special pull. It consists of the following axioms: - K (closure): If you believe an implication and you believe the antecedent, then you believe the consequent. E.g. if you believe “if X then Y” and you believe X, then you also believe Y. - D (consistency): If you believe X, you don’t also believe not-X (i.e. X’s negation). - 4 (positive introspection): If you believe X, then you also believe that you believe X, i.e. you’re aware of your own beliefs. - 5 (negative introspection): If you don’t believe X, then you believe that you don’t believe X, i.e. you know what you don’t believe. Thus, KD45 pictures a believer who never embraces contradictions, who always sees the consequences of what they believe, and who is perfectly aware of their own commitments. It’s the portrait of a mind that’s transparent to itself, free from error in structure, and entirely coherent. There’s something admirable in this picture. In moments of near-perfect clarity, it seems to me to describe the kind of believer I’d like to be. Yet the attraction itself throws up a paradox. KD45 is appealing precisely because it abstracts away from the conditions in which real human beings actually think. In other words, its consistency is pristine because it’s idealised. It eliminates the compromises, distractions, and biases that animate everyday life. To aspire to KD45 is therefore to aspire to something constantly unattainable: a mind that’s rational at every step, free of contradiction, and immune to the fog of human psychology. My attraction to KD45 is tempered by an equal admiration for [Bayesian belief](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) systems. The Bayesian approach allows for degrees of confidence and recognises that belief is often graded rather than binary. To me, this reflects the world as we encounter it — a realm of incomplete evidence, partial understanding, and evolving perspectives. I admire Bayesianism because it doesn’t demand that we ignore uncertainty. It compels us to face it directly. Where KD45 insists on consistency, Bayesian thinking insists on responsiveness. I update beliefs not because they were previously incoherent but because new evidence has altered the balance of probabilities. This system thus embodies humility, my admission that no matter how strongly I believe today, tomorrow may bring evidence that forces me to change my mind. The world, however, isn’t simply uncertain: it’s often contradictory. People hold opposing views, traditions preserve inconsistencies, and institutions are riddled with tensions. This is why I’m also drawn to [paraconsistent logics](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which allow contradictions to exist without collapsing. If I stick to classical logic, I’ll have to accept everything if I also accept a contradiction. One inconsistency causes the entire system to explode. Paraconsistent theories reject that explosion and instead allow me to live with contradictions without being consumed by them. This isn’t an endorsement of confusion for its own sake but a recognition that practical thought must often proceed even when the data is messy. I can accept, provisionally, both “this practice is harmful” and “this practice is necessary”, and work through the tension without pretending I can neatly resolve the contradiction in advance. To deny myself this capacity is not to be rational — it’s to risk paralysis. Finally, if Bayesianism teaches humility and paraconsistency teaches tolerance, the [AGM theory](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-belief-revision/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of belief revision teaches discipline. Its core idea is that beliefs must be revised when confronted by new evidence, and that there are rational ways of choosing what to retract, what to retain, and what to alter. AGM speaks to me because it bridges the gap between the ideal and the real. It allows me to acknowledge that belief systems can be disrupted by facts while also maintaining that I can manage disruptions in a principled way. That is to say, I don’t aspire to avoid the shock of revision but to absorb it intelligently. Taken together, my position isn’t a choice of one system over another. It’s an attempt to weave their virtues together while recognising their limits. KD45 represents the ideal that belief should be consistent, closed under reasoning, and introspectively clear. Bayesianism represents the reality that belief is probabilistic and always open to revision. Paraconsistent logic represents the need to live with contradictions without succumbing to incoherence. AGM represents the discipline of revising beliefs rationally when evidence compels change. A final point about aspiration itself. To aspire to KD45 isn’t to believe I will ever achieve it. In fact, I acknowledge I’m unlikely to desire complete consistency at every turn. There are cases where contradictions are useful, where I’ll need to tolerate ambiguity, and where the cost of absolute closure is too high. If I deny this, I’ll only end up misrepresenting myself. However, I’m not going to be complacent either. I believe it’s important to aspire even if what I’m trying to achieve is going to be perpetually out of reach. By holding KD45 as a guiding ideal, I hope to give shape to my desire for rationality even as I expect to deviate from it. The value lies in the direction, not the destination. Therefore, I state plainly (*he said pompously*): - I admire the clarity of KD45 and treat it as the horizon of rational belief - I embrace the flexibility of Bayesianism as the method of navigating uncertainty - I acknowledge the need for paraconsistency as the condition of living in a world of contradictions - I uphold the discipline of AGM belief revision as the art of managing disruption - I aspire to coherence but accept that my path will involve noise, contradiction, and compromise In the end, the point isn’t to model myself after one system but to recognise the world demands several. KD45 will always represent the perfection of rational belief but I doubt I’ll ever get there in practice — not because I think I can’t but because I know I will choose not to in many matters. To be rational is not to be pure. It is to balance ideals with realities, to aspire without illusion, and to reason without denying the contradictions of life. ### What on earth is a wavefunction? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/23/what-on-earth-is-a-wavefunction/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:20.000Z 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 to an atom to a speck of dust — can also behave like a wave, even though they are made of matter and not water or air. That is the bold claim of quantum mechanics. The waves in this case are not ripples in a material substance. Instead, they are mathematical entities known as wavefunctions. At first, this sounds like nothing more than fancy maths. But the wavefunction is central to how the quantum world works. It carries the information that tells us where a particle might be found, what momentum it might have, and how it might interact. In place of neat certainties, the quantum world offers a blur of possibilities. The wavefunction is the map of that blur. The peculiar thing is, experiments show that this 'blur' behaves as though it is real. Electrons fired through two slits make interference patterns as though each one went through both slits at once. Molecules too large to see under a microscope can act the same way, spreading out in space like waves until they are detected. So what exactly is a wavefunction, and how should we think about it? That question has haunted physicists since the early 20th century and it remains unsettled to this day. In classical life, you can say with confidence, "The cricket ball is here, moving at this speed." If you can't measure it, that's your problem, not nature's. In quantum mechanics, it is not so simple. Until a measurement is made, a particle does not have a definite position in the classical sense. Instead, the wavefunction stretches out and describes a range of possibilities. If the wavefunction is sharply peaked, the particle is most likely near a particular spot. If it is wide, the particle is spread out. Squaring the wavefunction's magnitude gives the probability distribution you would see in many repeated experiments. If this sounds abstract, remember that the predictions are tangible. Interference patterns, tunnelling, superpositions, entanglement — all of these quantum phenomena flow from the properties of the wavefunction. It is the script that the universe seems to follow at its smallest scales. To make sense of this, many physicists use analogies. Some compare the wavefunction to a musical chord. A chord is not just one note but several at once. When you play it, the sound is rich and full. Similarly, a particle’s wavefunction contains many possible positions (or momenta) simultaneously. Only when you press down with measurement do you "pick out" a single note from the chord. Others have compared it to a weather forecast. Meteorologists don't say, "It will rain here at exactly 3:07 pm." They say, "There’s a 60% chance of showers in this region." The wavefunction is like nature's own forecast, except it is more fundamental: it is not our ignorance that makes it probabilistic, but the way the universe itself behaves. Mathematically, the wavefunction is found by solving the Schrödinger equation, which is a central law of quantum physics. This equation describes how the wavefunction changes in time. It is to quantum mechanics what Newton’s second law (*F* \= m*a*) is to classical mechanics. But unlike Newton's law, which predicts a single trajectory, the Schrödinger equation predicts the evolving shape of probabilities. For example, it can show how a sharply localised wavefunction naturally spreads over time, just like a drop of ink disperses in water. The difference is that the spreading is not caused by random mixing but by the fundamental rules of the quantum world. But does that mean the wavefunction is real, like a water wave you can touch, or is it just a clever mathematical fiction? There are two broad camps. One camp, sometimes called the instrumentalists, argues the wavefunction is only a tool for making predictions. In this view, nothing actually waves in space. The particle is simply somewhere, and the wavefunction is our best way to calculate the odds of finding it. When we measure, we discover the position, and the wavefunction 'collapses' because our information has been updated, not because the world itself has changed. The other camp, the realists, argues that the wavefunction is as real as any energy field. If the mathematics says a particle is spread out across two slits, then until you measure it, the particle really is spread out, occupying both paths in a superposed state. Measurement then forces the possibilities into a single outcome, but before that moment, the wavefunction's broad reach isn't just bookkeeping: it's physical. This isn't an idle philosophical spat. It has consequences for how we interpret famous paradoxes like Schrödinger's cat — supposedly "alive and dead at once until observed" — and for how we understand the limits of quantum mechanics itself. If the wavefunction is real, then perhaps macroscopic objects like cats, tables or even ourselves can exist in superpositions in the right conditions. If it is not real, then quantum mechanics is only a calculating device, and the world remains classical at larger scales. The ability of a wavefunction to remain spread out is tied to what physicists call coherence. A coherent state is one where the different parts of the wavefunction stay in step with each other, like musicians in an orchestra keeping perfect time. If even a few instruments go off-beat, the harmony collapses into noise. In the same way, when coherence is lost, the wavefunction's delicate correlations vanish. Physicists measure this 'togetherness' with a parameter called the coherence length. You can think of it as the distance over which the wavefunction's rhythm remains intact. A laser pointer offers a good everyday example: its light is coherent, so the waves line up across long distances, allowing a sharp red dot to appear even all the way across a lecture hall. By contrast, the light from a torch is incoherent: the waves quickly fall out of step, producing only a fuzzy glow. In the quantum world, a longer coherence length means the particle's wavefunction can stay spread out and in tune across a larger stretch of space, making the object more thoroughly delocalised. However, coherence is fragile. The world outside — the air, the light, the random hustle of molecules — constantly disturbs the system. Each poke causes the system to 'leak' information, collapsing the wavefunction's delicate superposition. This process is called decoherence, and it explains why we don't see cats or chairs spread out in superpositions in daily life. The environment 'measures' them constantly, destroying their quantum fuzziness. One frontier of modern physics is to see how far coherence can be pushed before decoherence wins. For electrons and atoms, the answer is "very far". Physicists have found their wavefunctions can stretch across micrometres or more. They have also demonstrated coherence with molecules with thousands of atoms, but keeping them coherent has been much more difficult. For larger solid objects, it's harder still. Physicists often talk about expanding a wavefunction. What they mean is deliberately increasing the spatial extent of the quantum state, making the fuzziness spread wider, while still keeping it coherent. Imagine a violin string: if it vibrates softly, the motion is narrow; if it vibrates with larger amplitude, it spreads. In quantum mechanics, expansion is more subtle but the analogy holds: you want the wavefunction to cover more ground not through noise or randomness but through genuine quantum uncertainty. Another way to picture it is as a drop of ink released into clear water. At first, the drop is tight and dark. Over time, it spreads outward, thinning and covering more space. Expanding a quantum wavefunction is like speeding up this spreading process, but with a twist: the cloud must remain coherent. The ink can't become blotchy or disturbed by outside currents. Instead, it must preserve its smooth, wave-like character, where all parts of the spread remain correlated. How can this be done? One way is to relax the trap that's being used to hold the particle in place. In physics, the trap is described by a potential, which is just a way of talking about how strong the forces are that pull the particle back towards the centre. Imagine a ball sitting in a bowl. The shape of the bowl represents the potential. A deep, steep bowl means strong restoring forces, which prevent the ball from moving around. A shallow bowl means the forces are weaker. That is, if you suddenly make the bowl shallower, the ball is less tightly confined and can explore more space. In the quantum picture, reducing the stiffness of the potential is like flattening the bowl, which allows the wavefunction to swell outward. If you later return the bowl to its steep form, you can catch the now-broader state and measure its properties. The challenge is to do this fast and cleanly, before decoherence destroys the quantum character. And you must measure in ways that reveal quantum behaviour rather than just classical blur. This brings us to an experiment reported on August 19 in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/2yzc-fsm3?ref=argumentative.co), conducted by researchers at ETH Zürich and their collaborators. It seems the researchers have achieved something unprecedented: they prepared a small silica sphere, only about 100 nm across, in a nearly pure quantum state and then expanded its wavefunction beyond the natural zero-point limit. This means they coherently stretched the particle's quantum fuzziness farther than the smallest quantum wiggle that nature usually allows, while still keeping the state coherent. To appreciate why this matters, let's consider the numbers. The zero-point motion of their nanoparticle — the smallest possible movement even at absolute zero — is about 17 picometres (one picometre is a trillionth of a meter). Before expansion, the coherence length was about 21 pm. After the expansion protocol, it reached roughly 73 pm, more than tripling the initial reach and surpassing the ground-state value. For something as massive as a nanoparticle, this is a big step. The team began by levitating a silica nanoparticle in an optical tweezer, created by a tightly focused laser beam. The particle floated in an ultra-high vacuum at a temperature of just 7 K (-266º C). These conditions reduced outside disturbances to almost nothing. Next, they cooled the particle's motion close to its ground state using feedback control. By monitoring its position and applying gentle electrical forces through the surrounding electrodes, they damped its jostling until only a fraction of a quantum of motion remained. At this point, the particle was quiet enough for quantum effects to dominate. The core step was the two-pulse expansion protocol. First, the researchers switched off the cooling and briefly lowered the trap's stiffness by reducing the laser power. This allowed the wavefunction to spread. Then, after a carefully timed delay, they applied a second softening pulse. This sequence cancelled out unwanted drifts caused by stray forces while letting the wavefunction expand even further. Finally, they restored the trap to full strength and measured the particle's motion by studying how they scattered light. Repeating this process hundreds of times gave them a statistical view of the expanded state. The results showed that the nanoparticle's wavefunction expanded far beyond its zero-point motion while still remaining coherent. The coherence length grew more than threefold, reaching 73 ± 34 pm. Per the team, this wasn't just noisy spread but genuine quantum delocalisation. More strikingly, the momentum of the nanoparticle had become 'squeezed' below its zero-point value. In other words, while uncertainty over the particle's position increased, that over its momentum decreased, in keeping with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This kind of squeezed state is useful because it's especially sensitive to feeble external forces. The data matched theoretical models that considered photon recoil to be the main source of decoherence. Each scattered photon gave the nanoparticle a small kick, and this set a fundamental limit. The experiment confirmed that photon recoil was indeed the bottleneck, not hidden technical noise. The researchers have suggested using dark traps in future — trapping methods that use less light, such as radio-frequency fields — to reduce this recoil. With such tools, the coherence lengths can potentially be expanded to scales comparable to the particle's size. Imagine a nanoparticle existing in a state that spans its own diameter. That would be a true macroscopic quantum object. This new study pushes quantum mechanics into a new regime. Thus far, large, solid objects like nanoparticles could be cooled and controlled, but their coherence lengths stayed pinned near the zero-point level. Here, the researchers were able to deliberately increase the coherence length beyond that limit, and in doing so showed that quantum fuzziness can be engineered, not just preserved. The implications are broad. On the practical side, delocalised nanoparticles could become extremely sensitive force sensors, able to detect faint electric or gravitational forces. On the fundamental side, the ability to hold large objects in coherent, expanded states is a step towards probing whether gravity itself has quantum features. Several theoretical proposals suggest that if two massive objects in superposition can become entangled through their mutual gravity, it would prove gravity must be quantum. To reach that stage, experiments must first learn to create and control delocalised states like this one. The possibilities for sensing in particular are exciting. Imagine a nanoparticle prepared in a squeezed, delocalised state being used to detect the tug of an unseen mass nearby or to measure an electric field too weak for ordinary instruments. Some physicists have speculated that such systems could help search for exotic particles such as certain dark matter candidates, which might nudge the nanoparticle ever so slightly. The extreme sensitivity arises because a delocalised quantum object is like a feather balanced on a pin: the tiniest push shifts it in measurable ways. There are also parallels with past breakthroughs. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories, which detect gravitational waves, rely on manipulating quantum noise in light to reach unprecedented sensitivity. The ETH Zürich experiment has extended the same philosophy into the mechanical world of nanoparticles. Both cases show that pushing deeper into quantum control could yield technologies that were once unimaginable. But beyond the technologies also lies a more interesting philosophical edge. The experiment strengthens the case that the wavefunction behaves like something real. If it were only an abstract formula, could we stretch it, squeeze it, and measure the changes in line with theory? The fact that researchers can engineer the wavefunction of a many-atom object and watch it respond like a physical entity tilts the balance towards reality. At the least, it shows that the wavefunction is not just a mathematical ghost. It's a structure that researchers can shape with lasers and measure with detectors. There are also of course the broader human questions. If nature at its core is described not by certainties but by probabilities, then philosophers must rethink determinism, the idea that everything is fixed in advance. Our everyday world looks predictable only because decoherence hides the fuzziness. But under carefully controlled conditions, that fuzziness comes back into view. Experiments like this remind us that the universe is stranger, and more flexible, than classical common sense would suggest. The experiment also reminds us that the line between the quantum and classical worlds is not a brick wall but a veil — thin, fragile, and possibly removable in the right conditions. And each time we lift it a little further, we don't just see strange behaviour: we also glimpse sensors more sensitive than ever, tests of gravity's quantum nature, and perhaps someday, direct encounters with macroscopic superpositions that will force us to rewrite what we mean by reality. ### On the PixxelSpace constellation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/22/on-the-pixxelspace-constellation/ Last updated: 2025-08-22T05:30:00.000Z The announcement that a consortium led by PixxelSpace India will design, build, and operate a constellation of 12 earth-observation satellites marks a sharp shift in how India approaches large space projects. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) awarded the project after a competitive process. What made headlines was that the winning bid asked for no money from the government. Instead, the group — which includes Piersight Space, SatSure Analytics India, and Dhruva Space — has committed to invest more than Rs 1,200 crore of its own resources over the next four to five years. The constellation will carry a mix of advanced sensors, from multispectral and hyperspectral imagers to synthetic aperture radar, and it will be owned and operated entirely by the private side of the partnership. PixxelSpace has said the zero-rupee bid is a conscious decision to support the vision of building an advanced earth-observation system for India and the world. The companies have also expressed belief they will recover their investment over time by selling high-value geospatial data and services in India and abroad. IN-SPACe's chairman has called this a major endorsement of the future of India’s space economy. Of course the benefits for India are clear. Once operational, the constellation should reduce the country’s reliance on foreign sources of satellite imagery. That will matter in areas like disaster management, agriculture planning, and national security, where delays or restrictions on outside data can have serious consequences. Having multiple companies in the consortium brings together strengths in hardware, analytics, and services, which could create a more complete space industry ecosystem. The phased rollout will also mean technology upgrades can be built in as the system grows, without heavy public spending. Still, the arrangement raises difficult questions. In practice, this is less a public–private partnership than a joint venture. I assume the state will provide its seal of approval, policy support, and access to launch and ground facilities. If it does share policy support, it will have to explain why that's vouchsafed for the collaboration isn't of being expanded to the industry as a whole. I also heard IN-SPACe will 'collate' demand within the government for the constellation's products and help meet them. Without assuming a fiscal stake, however, the government is left with less leverage to set terms or enforce priorities, especially if the consortium's commercial goals don't always align with national needs. It's worth asking why the government issued an official request-for-proposal if didn't intend to assume a stake, and whether the Rs-350-crore soft loan IN-SPACe originally offered for the project will still be available, repurposed or quietly withdrawn. I think the pitch will also test public oversight. IN-SPACe will need stronger technical capacity, legal authority, procedural clarity, and better public communication to monitor compliance without frustrating innovation. Regulations on remote sensing and data-sharing will probably have to be updated to cover a fully commercial system that sells services worldwide. Provisions that guarantee government priority access in emergencies and that protect sensitive imagery will have to be written clearly into law and contracts. Infrastructure access, from integration facilities to launch slots, must be managed transparently to avoid bottlenecks or perceived bias. The government's minimal financial involvement saves public money but it also reduces long-term control. If India repeats this model, it should put in place new laws and safeguards that define how sovereignty, security, and public interest are to be protected when critical space assets are run by private companies. Without such steps, the promise of cost-free expansion could instead lead to new dependencies that are even harder to manage in future. *Featured image credit: Carl Wang/Unsplash.* ### The Zomato ad and India's hustle since 1947 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/16/zomato-ad-india-hustle-1947/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:20.000Z 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 cultural pride. Marketing narratives frequently frame consumption as a patriotic act, linking the choice of a product with the nation's progress or "self-reliance". This fusion of commercial messaging and nationalist symbolism serves both to capitalise on the prevailing political mood and to present companies as partners in the nationalist project. An advertisement in *The Times of India* on August 15, which describes the work of nation-building as a "hustle", is a good example. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/21ef1-00e39-254f7-f7799-whatsapp-image-2025-08-15-at-18-31-26-jpeg.jpg) I remember in engineering college my class had a small-minded and vindictive professor in our second year of undergraduate studies. He repeatedly picked on one particular classmate to the extent that, as resentment between the two people escalated, the professor's actions in one arguably innocuous matter resulted in the student being suspended for a semester. He eventually didn't have the number of credits he needed to graduate and had to spend six more months redoing many of the same classes. Today, this student is a successful researcher in Europe, having gone on to acquire a graduate degree followed by a PhD from some of the best research institutes in the world. When we were chatting a few years ago about our batch's decadal reunion that was coming up, we thought it would be a good idea to attend and, there, rub my friend's success in this professor's face. We really wanted to do it because we wanted him to know how petty he had been. But as we discussed how we'd orchestrate this moment, it dawned on us that we'd also be signalling that our achievements don't amount to more than those necessary to snub him, as if to say they have no greater meaning or purpose. We eventually dropped the idea. At the reunion itself, my friend simply ignored the professor. India may appear today to have progressed well past Winston Churchill's belief, expressed in the early 1930s, but to advertise as Zomato has is to imply that it remains on our minds and animates the purpose of what we're trying to do. It is a juvenile and frankly resentful attitude that also hints at a more deep-seated lack of contentment. The advertisement's achievement of choice is the Chandrayaan 3 mission, its Vikram lander lit dramatically by sunlight and earthlight and photographed by the Pragyan rover. The landing was a significant achievement, but to claim that that above all else describes contemporary India is also to dismiss the evident truth that a functional space organisation and a democracy in distress can coexist within the same borders. One neither carries nor excuses the other. In fact, it's possible to argue that ISRO's success is at least partly a product of the unusual circumstances of its creation and its privileged place in the administrative structure. Founded by a scientist who worked directly with Jawaharlal Nehru — bypassing the bureaucratic hurdles faced by most others — ISRO was placed under the purview of the prime minister, ensuring it received the political attention, resources, and exemptions that are not typically available to other ministries or public enterprises. In this view, ISRO's achievements are insulated from the broader fortunes of the country and can't be taken as a reliable proxy for India's overall 'success'. The question here is: to whose words do we pay attention? Obviously not those of Churchill: his prediction is nearly a century old. In fact, as Ramachandra Guha sets out in the prologue of *India After Gandhi* (which I'm currently rereading), they seem in their particular context to be untempered and provocative. > In the 1940s, with Indian independence manifestly round the corner, Churchill grumbled that he had not becoming the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. A decade previously he had tried to rebuild a fading political career on the plank of opposing self-government for Indians. After Gandhi's 'salt satyagraha' of 1930 in protest against taxes on salt, the British government began speaking with Indian nationalists about the possibility of granting the colony dominion status. This was vaguely defined, with no timetable set for its realization. Even so, Churchill called the idea 'not only fantastic in itself but criminally mischievous in its effects'. Since Indians were not fit for self-government, it was necessary to marshal 'the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire' to stall any such possibility. > > In 1930 and 1931 Churchill delivered numerous speeches designed to work up, in most unsober form, the constituency opposed to independence for India. Speaking to an audience at the City of London in December 1930, he claimed that if the British left the subcontinent, then an 'army of white janissaries, officered if necessary from Germany, will be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of the Hindu'. This said, Guha continues later in the prologue: > The forces that divide India are many. … But there are also forces that have kept India together, that have helped transcend or contain the cleavages of class and culture, that — so far, at least — have nullified those many predictions that India would not stay united and not stay democratic. These moderating influences are far less visible. … they have included individuals as well as institutions. Indeed, reading through the history of independent India, through the 1940s and '50s filled with hope and ambition, the turmoil of the '60s and the '70s, the Emergency, followed by economic downturn, liberalisation, finally to the rise of Hindu nationalism, it has been clear that the work of the "forces that have kept India together" is unceasing. Earlier, the Constitution's framework, with its guarantees of rights and democratic representation, provided a common political anchor. Regular elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary reinforced faith in the system even as the linguistic reorganisation of states reduced separatist tensions. National institutions such as the armed forces, civil services, and railways fostered a sense of shared identity across disparate regions. Equally, integrative political movements and leaders — including the All India Kisan Sabha, trade union federations like INTUC and AITUC, the Janata Party coalition of 1977, Akali leaders in Punjab in the post-1984 period, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, and so on, as well as Lal Bahadur Shastri, Govind Ballabh Pant, C. Rajagopalachari, Vinoba Bhave, Jayaprakash Narayan, C.N. Annadurai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and so on — operated despite sharp disagreements largely within constitutional boundaries, sustaining the legitimacy of the Union. Today, however, most of these "forces" are directed at a more cynical cause of disunity: a nationalist ideology that has repeatedly defended itself with deceit, evasion, obfuscation, opportunism, pietism, pretence, subterfuge, vindictiveness, and violence. In this light, to claim we have "just put in the work, year after year", as if to suggest India has only been growing from strength to strength, rather than lurching from one crisis to the next and of late becoming a little more balkanised as a result, is plainly disingenuous — and yet entirely in keeping with the alignment of corporate branding with nationalist sentiment, which is designed to create a climate in which criticism of corporate conduct is framed as unpatriotic. When companies wrap themselves in the symbols of the nation and position their products or services as contributions to India's progress, questioning their practices risks being cast as undermining that progress. This can blunt scrutiny of resource over-extraction, environmental degradation, and exploitative labour practices by accusing dissenters of obstructing development. Aggressively promoting consumption and consumerism ("fuel your hustle"), which drives profits but also deepens social inequalities in the process, is recast as participating in the patriotic project of economic growth. When corporate campaigns subtly or explicitly endorse certain political agendas, their association with national pride can normalise those positions and marginalise alternative views. In this way, the fusion of commerce and nationalism builds market share while fostering a superficial sense of national harmony, even as it sidelines debates on inequality, exclusion, and the varied experiences of different communities within the nation. ### A new kind of quantum engine with ultracold atoms URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/07/a-new-kind-of-quantum-engine-with-ultracold-atoms/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:22.000Z 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 transferred to the vehicle’s moving parts. In order to perform these functions over and over in a continuous manner, the engine cycles through four repeating steps. There are different kinds of cycles depending on the engine’s design and needs. A common example is the Otto cycle, where the engine’s four steps are: 1\. Adiabatic compression: The piston compresses the air-fuel mixture, increasing its pressure and temperature without exchanging heat with the surroundings 2\. Constant volume heat addition: At the piston’s top position, a spark plug ignites the fuel-air mixture, rapidly increasing pressure and temperature while the volume remains constant 3\. Adiabatic expansion: The high-pressure gas pushes the piston down, doing work *on* the piston, which powers the engine 4\. Constant volume heat rejection: At the bottom of the piston stroke, heat is expelled from the gas at constant volume as the engine prepares to clear the exhaust gases So the engine goes 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 and so on. This is useful. If you plot the pressure and volume of the fuel-air mixture in the engine on two axes of a graph, you’ll see that at the end of the ‘constant volume heat rejection’ step (no. 4), the mixture is in the same state as it is at the start of the adiabatic compression step (no. 1). The work that the engine does *on* the vehicle is equal to the difference between the work done during the expansion and compression steps. Engines are designed to meet the cyclical requirement while increasing the amount of work it does for a given fuel and vehicle design. It’s easy to understand the value of machines like this. They’re the reason we have vehicles that we can drive in different ways using our hands, legs, and our senses and in relative comfort. As long as we refill the fuel tank once in a while, engines can repeatedly perform mechanical work using their fuel combustion cycles. It’s understandable then why scientists have been trying to build quantum engines. While conventional engines use classical physics to operate, quantum engines are machines that use the ideas of quantum physics. For now, however, these machines are futuristic because scientists have found that they don’t understand the working principles of quantum engines well enough. University of Kaiserslautern-Landau professor Artur Widera told me the following in September 2023 after he and his team published a paper reporting that they had developed a new kind of quantum engine: > Just observing the development and miniaturisation of engines from macroscopic scales to biological machines and further potentially to single- or few-atom engines, it becomes clear that for few particles close to the quantum regime, thermodynamics as we use in classical life will not be sufficient to understand processes or devices. In fact, quantum thermodynamics is just emerging, and some aspects of how to describe the thermodynamical aspects of quantum processes are even theoretically not fully understood. This said, recent advances in ultracold atomic physics have allowed physicists to control substances called quantum gases in the so-called low-dimensional regimes, laying the ground for them to realise and study quantum engines. Two recent studies exemplify this progress: the study by Widera et al. in 2023 and a new theoretical study reported in *Physical Review E*. Both studies have explored engines based on ultracold quantum gases but have approached the concept of quantum energy conversion from complementary perspectives. The *Physical Review E* work investigated a 'quantum thermochemical engine' operating with a trapped one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas in the quasicondensate regime as the working fluid — just like the fuel-air mixture in in the internal combustion engine of a petrol-powered car. A Bose gas is a quantum system that consists of subatomic particles called bosons. The ‘1D’ simply means they are limited to moving back and forth on a straight line, i.e. a single spatial dimension. This restriction dramatically changes the bosons' physical and quantum properties. According to the paper’s single author, University of Queensland theoretical physicist Vijit Nautiyal, the resulting engine can operate on an Otto cycle where the compression and expansion steps — which dictate the work the engine can do — are implemented by tuning how strongly the bosons interact, instead of changing the volume as in a classical engine. In order to do this, the quantum engine needs to exchange not heat with its surroundings but particles. That is, the particles flow from a hot reservoir to the working boson gas, allowing the engine to perform net work. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/b2931-2e142-100dd-c1fd1-screenshot-2025-08-07-at-8-47-33pm.png "Screenshot 2025-08-07 at 8.47.33 PM.png") Energy enters and leaves the system in the A-B and C-D steps, respectively, when the engine absorbs and releases particles from the hot reservoir. The engine consumes work during adiabatic compression (D-A) and performs work during adiabatic expansion (B-C). The difference between these steps is the engine’s net work output. Credit: arXiv:2411.13041v2 Nautiyal's study focused on the engine’s performance in two regimes: one where the strength of interaction between bosons was suddenly quenched in order to maximise the engine's power at the cost of its efficiency, and another where the quantum engine operates at maximum efficiency but produces negligible power. Nautiyal has reported doing this using advanced numerical simulations. The simulations showed that if the engine only used heat but didn’t absorb particles from the hot reservoir, it couldn’t really produce useful energy at a finite temperatures. This was because of complicated quantum effects and uneven density in the boson gas. But when the engine was allowed to gain or lose particles from/to the reservoir, it got the extra energy it needed to work properly. Surprisingly, this particle exchange allowed the engine operate very efficiently, even when it ran fast. Usually, engines have to choose between going fast and losing efficiency or go slow and being more efficient. The particle exchange allowed Nautiyal's quantum thermochemical engine avoid that trade-off. Letting more particles flow in and out also made the engine produce more energy and be even more efficient. Finally, unlike regular engines where higher temperature usually means better efficiency, increasing the temperature of the quantum thermochemical engine too much actually lowered its efficiency, speaking to the important role chemical work played in this engine design. In contrast, the 2023 experimental study — which I wrote about in [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/pauli-engine-bec-bcs-crossover-quantum-thermodynamics/article67410557.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — realised a quantum engine that, instead of relying on conventional heating and cooling with thermal reservoirs, operated by cycling a gas of particles between two quantum states, a Bose-Einstein condensate and a Fermi gas. The process was driven by adiabatic changes (i.e. changes that happen while keeping the entropy fixed) that converted the fundamental difference in total energy distribution arising from the two states into usable work. The experiment demonstrated that this energy difference, called the Pauli energy, constituted a significant resource for thermodynamic cycles. The theoretical 2025 paper and the experimental 2023 work are intimately connected as complementary explorations of quantum engine operation using ultracold atomic gases. Both have taken advantage of the unique quantum effects accessible in such systems while focusing on distinct energy resources and operational principles. The 2025 work emphasised the role of chemical work arising from particle exchange in a one-dimensional Bose gas, exploring the balance of efficiency and power in finite-time quantum thermochemical engines. It also provided detailed computational frameworks to understand and optimise these engines. Likewise, the 2023 experiment physically realised a related but conceptually different mechanism: the movement of lithium atoms between two states and converting their Pauli energy to work. This approach highlighted how the fundamental differences between the two states could be a direct energy source, rather than conventional heat baths, and one operating with little to no production of entropy. Together, these studies broaden the scope of quantum engines beyond traditional heat-based cycles by demonstrating the usefulness of intrinsically quantum energy forms such as chemical work and Pauli energy. Such microscopic ‘machines’ also herald a new class of engines that harness the fundamental laws of quantum physics to convert energy between different forms more efficiently than the best conventional engines can manage with classical physics. [*Physics World*](https://physicsworld.com/a/quantum-thermochemical-engine-could-achieve-high-power-with-near-maximum-efficiency/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) asked Nautiyal about the potential applications of his work: > … Nautiyal referred to “quantum steampunk”. This term, which was coined by the physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland, encapsulates the idea that as quantum technologies advance, the field of quantum thermodynamics must also advance in order to make such technologies more efficient. A similar principle, Nautiyal explains, applies to smartphones: “The processor can be made more powerful, but the benefits cannot be appreciated without an efficient battery to meet the increased power demands.” Conducting research on quantum engines and quantum thermodynamics is thus a way to optimize quantum technologies. ### Trade rift today, cryogenic tech yesterday URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/07/trade-rift-today-cryogenic-tech-yesterday/ Last updated: 2025-08-07T03:26:48.000Z 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, reaching an unprecedented cumulative rate of 50% on targeted Indian exports, have been described by Trump as a response to what his administration has called an "unusual and extraordinary threat" posed by India’s trade relations with Russia. The official rationale for these measures centres on national security and foreign policy priorities and their design is to coerce India into aligning with US policy goals vis-à-vis the Russia-Ukraine war. The enforcement of these tariffs is notable among other things for its selectivity. While India faces acute economic repercussions, other major importers of Russian oil such as China and Turkey have thus far not been subjected to equivalent sanctions. The impact is also likely to be immediate and severe since almost half of Indian exports to the US, which is in fact India’s most significant export market, now encounter sharply higher costs, threatening widespread disruption in sectors such as textiles, automobile parts, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. Thus the tariffs have provoked a strong diplomatic response from the Government of India, which has characterised the US's actions as “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable,” while also asserting its primary responsibility to protect the country's energy security. This fracas is reminiscent of US-India relations in the early 1990s regarding the former’s denial of cryogenic engine technology. In this period, the US government actively intervened to block the transfer of cryogenic rocket engines and associated technologies from Russia’s Glavkosmos to ISRO by invoking the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) as justification. The MTCR was established in 1987 and was intended to prevent the proliferation of missile delivery systems capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction. In 1992, citing non-proliferation concerns, the US imposed sanctions on both ISRO and Glavkosmos, effectively stalling a deal that would have allowed India to acquire not only fully assembled engines but also the vital expertise for indigenous production in a much shorter timeframe than what transpired. The stated US concern was that cryogenic technology could potentially be adapted for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). However experts had been clear that cryogenic engines are unsuitable for ICBMs because they’re complex, difficult to operate, and can’t be deployed on short notice. In fact, critics as well as historical analyses that followed later have said that the US's strategic objective was less concerned with preventing missile proliferation and more with restricting advances in India’s ability to launch heavy satellites, thus protecting American and allied commercial and strategic interests in the global space sector. The response in both eras, economic plus technological coercion, suggests a pattern of American policy: punitive action when India’s sovereign decisions diverge from perceived US security or geoeconomic imperatives. The explicit justifications have also shifted from non-proliferation in the 1990s to support for Ukraine in the present, yet in both cases the US has singled India our for selective enforcement while comparable actions by other states have been allowed to proceed largely unchallenged. Thus, both actions have produced parallel outcomes. India faced immediate setbacks: export disruptions today; delays in its space launch programme three decades ago. There is an opportunity however. The technology denial in the 1990s catalysed an ambitious indigenous cryogenic engine programme, culminating in landmark achievements for ISRO in the following decades. Similarly, the current trade rift could accelerate India’s efforts to diversify its partnerships and supply chains if it proactively forges strategic trade agreements with emerging and established economies, invests in advanced domestic manufacturing capabilities, incentivises innovation across critical sectors, and fortifies logistical infrastructure. Diplomatically, however, each episode has strained US-India relations even as their mutual interests have at other times fostered rapprochement. Whenever India’s independent strategic choices appear to challenge core US interests, Washington has thus far used the levers of market access and technology transfers as the means of compulsion. But history suggests that these efforts, rather than yield compliance, could prompt adaptive strategies, whether through indigenous technology development or by recalibrating diplomatic and economic alignments. *Featured image: I don’t know which rocket that is. Credit: Perplexity AI.* ### What keeps the red queen running? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/06/what-keeps-the-red-queen-running/ Last updated: 2025-08-06T03:29:17.000Z AI-generated definition based on 'Quantitative and analytical tools to analyze the spatiotemporal population dynamics of microbial consortia’, [*Current Opinion in Biotechnology*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095816692200088X?ref=slightlyacidic.com), August 2022: > The Red Queen hypothesis refers to the idea that a constant rate of extinction persists in a community, independent of the duration of a species' existence, driven by interspecies relationships where beneficial mutations in one species can negatively impact others. [*Encyclopedia of Ecology*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/red-queen-hypothesis?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (second ed.), 2008: > The term is derived from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where the Red Queen informs Alice that “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” Thus, with organisms, it may require multitudes of evolutionary adjustments just to keep from going extinct. > > The Red Queen hypothesis serves as a primary explanation for the evolution of sexual reproduction. As parasites (or other selective agents) become specialized on common host genotypes, frequency-dependent selection favors sexual reproduction (i.e., recombination) in host populations (which produces novel genotypes, increasing the rate of adaptation). The Red Queen hypothesis also describes how coevolution can produce extinction probabilities that are relatively constant over millions of years, which is consistent with much of the fossil record. Also read: ‘Sexual reproduction as an adaptation to resist parasites (a review).’, [*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.87.9.3566?ref=slightlyacidic.com), May 1, 1990. \~ In nature, scientists have found that even very similar strains of bacteria constantly appear and disappear even when their environment doesn’t seem to change much. This is called continual turnover. In a new study in [*PRX Life*](https://journals.aps.org/prxlife/abstract/10.1103/dv3k-75b9?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Aditya Mahadevan and Daniel Fisher of Stanford University make sense of how this ongoing change happens, even without big differences between species or dramatic changes in the environment. Their jumping-off point is the red queen hypothesis. While the hypothesis has usually been used to talk about ‘arms races’, like between hosts and parasites, the new study asked: can continuous red queen evolution also happen in communities where different species or strains overlap a lot in what they do and where there aren’t obvious teams fighting each other? Mahadevan and Fisher built mathematical models to mimic how communities of microbes evolve over time. These models allowed the duo to simulate what would happen if a population started with just one microbial strain and over time new strains appeared due to random changes in their genes (i.e. mutations). Some of these new strains could invade other species’ resources and survive while others are forced to extinction. The models focused especially on ecological interactions, meaning how strains or species affected each other’s survival based on how they competed for the same food. When they ran the models, the duo found that even when there were no clear teams (like host v. parasite), communities could enter a red queen phase. The overall number of coexisting strains stayed roughly constant, but which strains were present keeps changing, like a continuous evolutionary game of musical chairs. The continual turnover happened most robustly when strains interacted in a non-reciprocal way. As ICTS biological physicist Akshit Goyal put it in [*Physics*](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/142?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > … almost every attempt to model evolving ecological communities ran into the same problem: One organism, dubbed a Darwinian monster, evolves to be good at everything, killing diversity and collapsing the community. Theorists circumvented this outcome by imposing metabolic trade-offs, essentially declaring that no species could excel at everything. But that approach felt like cheating because the trade-offs in the models needed to be unreasonably strict. Moreover, for mathematical convenience, previous models assumed that ecological interactions between species were reciprocal: Species A affects species B in exactly the same way that B affects A. However, when interactions are reciprocal, community evolution ends up resembling the misleading fixed fitness landscape. Evolution is fast at first but eventually slows down and stops instead of going on endlessly. > > Mahadevan and Fisher solved this puzzle by focusing on a previously neglected but ubiquitous aspect of ecological interactions: nonreciprocity. This feature occurs when the way species A affects species B differs from the way B affects A—for example, when two species compete for the same nutrient, but the competition harms one species more than the other Next, despite the continual turnover, there was a cap on the number of strains that could coexist. This depended on the number of different resources available and how strains interacted, but as new strains invaded others, some old ones had to go extinct, keeping diversity within limits. If some strains started off much better (i.e. with higher fitness), over time the evolving competition narrowed these differences and only strains with similar overall abilities managed to stick around. Finally, if the system got close to being perfectly reciprocal, the dynamics could shift to an oligarch phase in which a few strains dominated most of the population and continual turnover slowed considerably. Taken together, the study’s main conclusion is that there doesn’t need to be a constant or elaborate 'arms race’ between predator and prey or dramatic environmental changes to keep evolution going in bacterial communities. Such evolution can arise naturally when species or strains interact asymmetrically as they compete for resources. *Featured image: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” Credit: Public domain.* ### A limit of 'show, don't tell' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/03/a-limit-of-show-dont-tell/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:22.000Z The virtue of ‘show, don't tell’ in writing, including in journalism, lies in its power to create a more vivid, immersive, and emotionally engaging reading experience. Instead of simply providing information or summarising events, the technique encourages writers to use evocative imagery, action, dialogue, and sensory details to invite readers into the world of the story. The idea is that once they’re in there, they’ll be able to do a lot of the task of engaging for you. However, perhaps this depends on the world the reader is being invited to enter. There’s an episode in season 10 of ‘Friends’ where a palaeontologist tells Joey she doesn’t own a TV. Joey is confused and asks, “Then what’s all your furniture pointed at?” Most of the (textual) journalism of physics I’m seeing these days frames narratives around the application of some discovery or concept. For example, here’s the last paragraph of [one of the top articles](https://physicsworld.com/a/feynman-diagrams-provide-insight-into-quasiparticles-in-solids/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on *Physics World* today: > The trio hopes that its technique will help us understand polaron behaviours. “The method we developed could also help study strong interactions between light and matter, or even provide the blueprint to efficiently add up Feynman diagrams in entirely different physical theories,” Bernardi says. In turn, it could help to provide deeper insights into a variety of effects where polarons contribute – including electrical transport, spectroscopy, and superconductivity. I’m not sure if there’s something implicitly bad about this framing but I do believe it gives the impression that the research is in pursuit of those applications, which in my view is often misguided. Scientific research is incremental and theories and data often takes many turns before they can be stitched together cleanly enough for a technological application in the real world. Yet I’m also aware that, just like pointing all your furniture at the TV can simplify your decisions about arranging your house, drafting narratives in order to convey the relevance of some research for specific applications can help hold readers’ attention better. Yes, this is a populist approach to the extent that it panders to what readers know they want rather than what they may not know, but it’s useful — especially when the communicator or journalist is pressed for time and/or doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to craft a thoughtful narrative. But this narrative choice may also imply a partial triumph of “tell, don’t show” over “show, don’t tell”. This is because the narrative has an incentive to restrict itself to communicating whatever physics is required to describe the technology and still be considered complete rather than wade into waters that will potentially complicate the narrative. A closely related issue here is that a lot of physics worth knowing about — if for no reason other than that they’re windows into scientists’ spirit and ingenuity — is quite involved. (It doesn’t help that it’s also mostly mathematical.) The concepts are simply impossible to show, at least not without the liberal use of metaphors and, inevitably, some oversimplification. Of course, it’s not possible to compare a physics news piece in *Physics World* with that in *The Hindu*: the former will be able to show more by telling itself because its target audience is physicists and other scientists, and they will see more detail in the word “polaron” than readers of *The Hindu* can be expected to. But even if *The Hindu*’s readers need more showing, I can’t show them the physics without expecting they will be interested in complicated theoretical ideas. In fact, I’ll be hard-pressed to be a better communicator than if I resorted to telling. Thus my lesson is that ‘show, don’t tell’ isn’t always a virtue. Sometimes what you show can bore or maybe scare readers off, and for reasons that have nothing to do with your skills as a communicator. Obviously the point isn’t to condescend readers here. Instead, we need to acknowledge that telling is virtuous in its own right, and in the proper context may be the more engaging way to communicate science. ### Time for proof is now, Mr. Gandhi URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/02/time-for-proof-is-now-rahul-gandhi/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:22.000Z Rahul Gandhi is free to voice himself but on the question of the Election Commission “stealing votes”, as he has been claiming to the press, he needs to offer the proof he claims he has right away. By repeatedly claiming the Commission has been “stealing votes” for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), most recently on [August 2](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rahul-gandhi-slams-election-commission-calls-general-election-rigged-updates/article69886255.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and before that on [August 1](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-we-have-found-is-an-atom-bomb-theres-100-proof-ec-doing-vote-chori-for-bjp-congress-leader-rahul-gandhi/article69882114.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), as well as that his Congress party has proof of this alleged theft yet never actually turning up that proof whether to the Commission or to the courts, Gandhi is acting in bad faith. The effects of his words are likely to keep suspicion of the Commission’s conduct alive even when they may not actually be warranted and to sow in the public sphere doubts about the terms on which the BJP is winning elections. If the Commission and/or the BJP are really cheating, as Gandhi is implying, duty demands that he and his fellow party members immediately place evidence of that in the public domain, endeavour to stamp out the menace, and agitate for restitutive action. On August 2, Gandhi said: > “Prime Minister of India is Prime Minister with a very slim majority. If 10-15 seats were rigged, it would have been possible. Although our suspicion is closer to 70, 80, 100 seats. We are going to prove to you in the coming few days how that Lok Sabha election can be rigged and was rigged.” And on August 1: > “I want to say that the persons in the EC doing this — right from the top to the bottom — we won’t spare. You are working against India and this is treason. Not matter where you are, retired or otherwise, we will find you." … > > He claimed his party had suspicions of irregularities in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election in 2023 and in the Lok Sabha election last year, and this went further in Maharashtra. > > “We believe that vote theft has happened at the State level (in Maharashtra). Voter revision had happened and one crore voters were added. Then we went into detail, and with the EC not helping, decided to dig deep into this. We got our own investigation done, it took six months and what we found is an atom bomb. When it explodes, the EC would have no place to hide anywhere in the country,” he added. On the same day, Gandhi also said his party would reveal what evidence it has of “outrageous rigging of voter rolls” by the Election Commission of Karnataka on August 5\. Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal also said party members would organise a protest in Bengaluru on the same day. But considering the party has claimed to have evidence of electoral fraud in other State elections as well, the reasons for revealing the evidence as it pertains to Karnataka alone are hard to fathom. Importantly, such evidence should be conclusive rather than founded on opinion and speculation. This means, for example, dispositive proof of collusion supported by official documents containing the relevant statements. Only evidence of this nature would constitute an “open and shut case” — which Gandhi has said he possesses — in a courtroom, which is the only place where the Commission’s guilt, such as it is, can be determined. In [July 2025](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/election-commission-rebuts-rahul-gandhi-vote-theft-charge-bihar-roll-revision-sir-2764771-2025-08-01?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in the context of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, Gandhi and opposition parties alleged that the exercise was aimed at "disenfranchising voters" ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections and accused the Commission and the BJP of seeking to "steal votes”. He also claimed the Commission had been caught "red-handed" stealing votes during this exercise. Perhaps Gandhi’s first public, high-profile accusation was made at a press conference in February 2025, when he said that the Commission had overlooked substantial voter list inflation in Maharashtra, a surplus of 1.6 million relative to the most recent Census figures (2011), and that more voters had been added to the lists in the five months between the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly polls than in the preceding five years. He also claimed that this discrepancy had been engineered to favour the BJP and called for a formal investigation. However, [*The Hindu*’s data team](https://www.thehindu.com/data/elector-surge-in-maharashtra-and-delhi-assembly-polls-not-unusual/article69208358.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was able to analyse Election Commission data to check at least the second of Gandhi’s claims and found that it wasn’t unusual: > The spurt in electors in Maharashtra became a subject of controversy after the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, raised the issue at a recent press conference. In Maharashtra, between the Lok Sabha polls held on April 19, 2024, and the Assembly elections held on November 20, 2024 — a period of 215 days — there was a net addition of 39.6 lakh electors. > > However, between the Assembly elections on October 21, 2019, and the Lok Sabha polls in April 2024 — a period of 1,642 days — there was a net addition of only 32.2 lakh electors. “Why did the Election Commission add more voters in Maharashtra in five months than it did in five years,” Mr. Gandhi asked. > > Data show that the net addition of 39.6 lakh electors in 215 days is not unusually high. Between the Lok Sabha polls on April 20, 2004, and the Assembly elections on October 13, 2004 — a period of 176 days — there was a net addition of 29.5 lakh electors. A similar analysis of 2009, 2014, and 2019 shows net additions of 30 lakh, 27.2 lakh, and 11.6 lakh electors, respectively. > > In fact, if the increases are expressed as electors added per day, the context becomes clearer. The net addition of 39.6 lakh electors in 215 days amounts to 18,434 net electors added per day. This figure is not a far cry from the 16,782 net electors added per day in the 176 days in 2004\. A similar analysis for 2009 and 2014 shows that 16,746 and 14,519 net electors were added per day, respectively. Last year, Gandhi, along with Congress members and opposition parties, had alleged large-scale manipulation of voter rolls during the Lok Sabha elections, suggesting the Election Commission was actively aiding the BJP in disenfranchising opposition voters. These accusations continued into 2025. In almost all these instances, the Election Commission has refuted the allegations and denied that it has been engaged in electoral fraud. However, this democratic institution has lost its independent character over the last few years due to its preferential treatment of the BJP, including when preparing election timetables and sanctioning BJP leaders for breaches of the Model Code of Conduct. The BJP has compounded this impression for its part by modifying the process by which Election Commissioners are appointed to magnify the prime minister’s input and by appointing former Commissioners in cushy government positions shortly after their term at the helm has ended. The Commission’s denials thus don’t hold much water. In fact, its increasingly diminished reputation lends a soft credence to Gandhi’s claims — i.e. that they are not all implausible — and that is precisely why the evidence needs to be available to all electors right away. Otherwise, Gandhi risks injuring his own reputation, and, more importantly, that will only undermine public resistance to the BJP’s efforts to completely ‘capture’ the Election Commission. The threats to reveal the alleged fraud are further enfeebled by claims that the Commission's electronic voting machines (EVMs) are illicitly recording more votes for BJP candidates, an allegation that the Congress and other parties have raised vis-à-vis both Assembly and Parliamentary elections. The problems with the claims here are slightly different, and two pronged. First, the alleged mechanism by which EVMs reapportion votes for BJP candidates remain thwartable by the processes the Election Commission has been following, that too with the satisfied participation of representatives from all political parties. Second, not all the technical steps in the process by which the Commission verifies the integrity of its EVMs are interference-proof, however. Yet the Commission has steadfastly refused to submit its devices to independent verification, with the occasional support of a higher court that has [failed to appreciate](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-trouble-with-the-supreme-courts-evm-verdict/article68128302.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) all the methods available to perform these checks without compromising the devices in any way. Against the backdrop of both allegations — voter-list inflation and EVM-rigging — it is possible Gandhi’s posturing is a form of deterrence, a signal to the BJP that its actions are not passing unwatched, and an attempt to build a Panopticon of public scrutiny of how the Election Commission conducts itself. Yet this can be done without also sowing doubt and while keeping the focus on transparency and propriety, which in fact the democracy has demonstrably lost. In fact, I hope Gandhi isn’t striking the poses he is because these losses are harder to build public support around than "vote theft". ### A microscope that catches the slightest hints of heat URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/08/02/a-microscope-that-catches-the-feeblest-hints-of-heat/ Last updated: 2025-08-02T06:04:09.000Z A superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) is a device well-known for its extreme sensitivity to photons, the particles of light — so much so that they can count photons one by one. They also have very little noise, which makes their readings quite reliable. TESs are often used in single-photon detectors in quantum communications systems and in cryogenic bolometers (devices that measure infrared radiation) in astronomy. But for these virtues, however, engineers haven’t been able to use TES technology together with scanning-probe optics, where scientists use a physical probe to image surfaces at extremely high resolution. In atomic force microscopy, for example, a very sharp tip is mounted on a flexible cantilever over a surface to measure forces between the tip and the sample at the nanoscale. This technology gap has been important to fill because scanning-probe optics are currently limited by how sensitive detectors are to light fields just a few nanometres big. In other words, the missing piece was a device that married the sensitivity of a TES device with the ability of a scanning probe to access spatial scales of nanometres. A new effort by researchers from Singapore, Switzerland, and the US has offered to fill this gap using a bespoke new technique called bolometric superconducting optical nanoscopy (BOSON). According to the researchers, BOSON integrates a superconducting TES directly into a scanning near-field optical microscope. The findings were published in [*Physical Review X*](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/f13d-dpdn?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on July 25. ‘Near field’ has a simple meaning. In conventional microscopy, like the simple light microscope in a high-school biology lab, light from a sample is captured through lenses and eventually sent to the eyes of the observer. This is called far-field microscopy because the light that contains information about the sample under study travels several multiples of its wavelength before interacting with the detecting elements. In near-field microscopy, light travels much less than a single multiple of its wavelength before reaching these elements. For example, if the wavelength of the light is 500 nm, it may travel 5 cm — or 100,000-times its wavelength — before striking the lens. On the other hand, near-field microscopy, also called near-field nanoscopy, captures and analyses light that has travelled much less than 500 nm from the sample. Devices of this kind routinely use junctions made of graphene, semiconductors or metals to translate the properties of the light energy into a measurable electrical current. These technologies demand high optical power, in the milliwatt to sub-milliwatt range, as well as elaborate engineering. They also struggle to detect changes in a sample that produce weak electromagnetic fields, like vibrating atoms in some crystals. Graphene-based devices that reveal temperature changes in a sample by shifting their resistivity are also limited by the fact that graphene’s resistivity changes very weakly with temparature, limiting the devices' usefulness in bolometry. The team behind the new study thus set about looking for a detector whose resistance would change abruptly with even a small thermal load. This was BOSON. At the heart of BOSON is a bridge. It’s made of niobium, a metal that becomes a superconductor at very low temperature. It’s also only 200-250 nm wide, a really small size that makes it extremely sensitive to heat. Imagine a single snowflake landing on your finger: even the gentle heat from your body suffices to melt it quickly. Similarly, even a small amount of heat will cause the niobium bridge’s temperature to rise enough to jerk it out of its superconducting state. The bridge sits between wider niobium leads. At the start of the researchers’ experiment, the team passed a constant current through the bridge. Hovering just above the bridge was the small, sharp tip of an atomic force microscope. When an infrared laser struck the probe tip, it concentrated the electromagnetic field onto the bridge. When the tip-induced field raised the electrons' temperature by only a few millikelvin, a "hot spot” formed on the niobium bridge. In this region, the bridge resisted the flow of current enough for a voltage to register between the leads at the ends of the bridge. This voltage was the ultimate signal of interest, demonstrating that BOSON could reliably detect extremely small changes in temperature. The researchers also found that BOSON’s resolution is limited not by the size of the atomic force microscope’s tip (around 20 nm tip) but by the lengths across which the energy diffuses into the bridge — under 1 micrometre in the niobium bridge — and the size of the bridge itself. The researchers have written that further narrowing the bridge could further improve its spatial resolution. Still, to highlight BOSON’s optical reach in their study, they overlaid the bridge with a 50-nm thick flake of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), a material known to contain an unusual kind of wave called hyperbolic phonon-polaritons when illuminated with mid-infrared light. Hyperbolic phonon-polaritons are formed from when photons interact strongly with vibrations in the grid of atoms in a crystal, especially when the vibrations are within a particular frequency range. This interaction allows light to be guided into tracks that are narrower than the diffraction limit — a very desirable ability in microscopes trying to achieve a high resolution. The team shone an infrared laser at the hBN crystal to produce hyperbolic phonon-polaritons, then monitored the niobium bridge. They found that the phonon-polaritons produced an electromagnetic field in the crystal and the bridge was sensitive to changes in this field even when the latter’s power was as feeble as 50 nanowatt — fully four orders of magnitude below the power required to draw the attention of existing near-field microscopes. According to the researchers, this dramatic advance stemmed from operating the detector exactly at its superconducting transition temperature, where the bridge’s sensitivity to temperature changes is highest. BOSON also revealed how the phonon-polaritons dispersed within the hBN crystal, found to be consistent with theoretical predictions. The team said that since the bridge width is the effective detector size, future bridges that are only tens of nanometres wide should be able to study materials like hBN with even more sensitivity. By combining a superconducting bolometer with a scanning probe, the team has shown that BOSON is a universal, cryogenic nano-optical detector whose sensitivity rivals the best available TES devices. The platform can reportedly detect weak shifts in the energy of a material with nanometre precision while depositing a negligible amount of energy into the sample, a feature that could prove useful in the study of quantum materials, which are typically very fragile. According to the team’s paper, an improved BOSON may in future may be able to detect single polaritons ([quasiparticles](https://pointsaddle.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/quasiparticles-do-the-twist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) each made of a photon coupled to an electric dipole) and be sensitive to electromagnetic fields with ultra-high frequencies (in the terahertz range). They’ve also speculated that thinner superconducting bridges and the use of improved techniques to sense voltage across them could make BOSON sensitive to power changes even slighter than nanowatts. *Featured image: A schematic diagram of the experimental setup of BOSON. CP refers to ‘Cooper pairs’, which are the charge carriers in a superconductor. I\_bias is the biasing current applied to the niobium bridge. Credit: Phys. Rev. X 15, 031027.* ### Frugality is a toxic chalice URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/28/frugality-is-a-toxic-chalice/ Last updated: 2025-07-28T13:49:55.000Z From 'Earth Imaging Satellite NISAR Exposes NASA's Weaknesses, ISRO's Strengths', [NDTV](https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/earth-imaging-satellite-nisar-exposes-nasas-weaknesses-isros-strengths-8954611?ref=slightlyacidic.com), July 26, 2025: > At the end of the day, the US scientists have swallowed their pride and are sheepishly going to watch the launch of a satellite where they have invested nearly $1.15 billion. It is this exorbitant cost by NASA that should also be a reason for Americans to squirm and be uncomfortable. When ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission entered into orbit around Mars, *The New York Times* [carried a cartoon](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/NYT-apologises-for-cartoon-on-India%E2%80%99s-Mars-mission/article11060821.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) showing a dhoti-clad man holding a cow in one hand and knocking with the other asking to be let into a room where he could sit with the world's other major space powers. The paragraph above as well as many others in the NDTV article are simply the other side of the same coin: one cast ISRO as a frugal simpleton and the other takes exorbitant pride in ISRO's frugality. If it isn't clear by now, however, ISRO's lower costs stem from the fact that it's simply underfunded and its staff underpaid. ISRO has spent less than other space agencies but how similar are the corresponding missions? The organisation's payloads are often much lighter, carry fewer instruments, and are less capable of cutting edge science. The bigger story is that ISRO is trying (and which could be even bigger if there was a long-term plan that showed how all the smaller scale attempts added up). However, it's not that ISRO is doing what NASA is because it simply isn't. There is no reason for NASA to squirm and be uncomfortable, either: the cost reflects the strength of the US dollar and the organisation of the US economy. It also accounts for NASA being responsible for receiving, processing, distributing, and archiving NISAR data for the whole world, whereas ISRO is responsible for doing the same thing only vis-à-vis India. The NDTV article goes on to say: > There are many reasons behind the huge cost incurred by NASA, one of them being that most of the development of the instruments and payloads they fly are made by huge multi-national corporations and they not only need huge profits but also need to share dividends with their share-holders. ISRO, on the other hand, being a national entity does these things in-house and has no reason to pad up the cost to share profits with share-holders. NASA's principal contribution to NISAR was the L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and the associated avionics and the 12-m mesh antenna plus the 9-m boom holding it. All these components were made at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just as ISRO's contributions onboard NISAR came from its Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad. > Additionally, an ISRO official said that when their scientists travel to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena in California, they would stay in shared $100 a day room while the NASA scientists when they travel to the UR Rao Satellite Center in Bengaluru would stay in an over $500 a day room. This automatically inflates the costs. We're talking about a monetary difference of more than 10x between nine- and ten-digit figures. I highly doubt that a small group of scientists staying for N number of days in $500 rooms could make much of a difference. Even if these costs added up in the alleged manner, living comfortably in clean environs is more important than roughing it out to save pennies. I'm also tempted to say that rooms and kitchens in cheaper hotels in the US are likely cleaner than most hotels in India. > Also, India usually makes only one instrument the one that will fly into space, while NASA makes an engineering model and flight model, which leads to doubling the cost. It increases the cost. However, the engineering model is a fully functional hardware unit that can be subjected to full-scale integration testing without risking the actual flight unit. Teams can also work on software development, system integration, and ground testing in parallel while the flight model is still being assembled, avoiding bottlenecks and improving the flight model's build. If an issue arises after launch, engineers on the ground replicate the problem on the engineering model before trying fixes on the actual spacecraft — an ability that came in handy during the Boeing Starliner crewed flight test. Finally, the engineering model is subjected to more aggressive and destructive testing, and what engineers learn they use to improve the flight model, increasing the chances that it will succeed. In the end, for the additional cost, NASA is able to send better instruments to space that operate within narrower margins of error. The funny thing is ISRO may also have to switch to similar developmental processes in future as it embarks on more sophisticated projects, including interplanetary sample-return missions and crewed lunar landings. I hope ISRO, unlike NDTV, isn't taking overmuch pride in its supposed frugality. > The way human power is distributed is also very different between NASA and ISRO at the Indian space agency. In the case of NISAR, which has taken over 11 years to build, the teams at ISRO working on multiple satellites and the salaries in India also turn out to be much lower when converted into dollar terms. The top manager at ISRO also pointed out that ISRO engineers are willing to put in long hours and work over weekends, while the US contract engineers are reluctant to put in long hours. Don't just convert it into dollar terms. Also check whether the values of each work-hour with respect to the national economy in the two countries are comparable. Short of that, let's avoid such comparisons altogether. There's also more than meets the eye in valorising people being "willing" to put in longer hours and to work over the weekends while diminishing a person's reluctance to do so. In fact, there's a thin line between a person volunteering to put in extra and a person being expected to put in extra. I've seen firsthand company cultures veering over time to make the latter a foundational expectation, with managers often justifying it by saying things like "this is what it takes", "do it for the ", and "if you don't want to, you're in the wrong industry". It is a worker's right to limit their working hours to the stipulated ones. If India's satellites are cheaper because ISRO is overworking its labour force, we're doing it wrong — and the bill will soon come due. > The premium for insurance also adds to the costs at ISRO since the government takes the full liability and no insurance is taken. In other countries, insurance premiums can be a huge cost. Incidentally, when India launched its communication satellite using the SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket, India also took insurance. NISAR costs around $1.5 billion. If I'm not mistaken, launch insurance typically costs 15-25% of the total insured value, which is the cost to replace the satellite and to launch it. In this case that would be $225-375 million. After launch coverage expires (which is when the satellite completes one year in orbit), the annual in-orbit insurance usually costs 1-3% per year, which is around $15-45 million a year. Given NISAR's expected lifetime of three years, the total insurance cost could be $255-465 million; if we go by NISAR's design lifetime of five-plus years, it could come to $285-555 million. The NDTV article also calls out the irony inherent to a NASA satellite scheduled to lift off onboard a GSLV Mk-II rocket. To the uninitiated: this is deserved because the US government scuttled a deal in the early 1980s for the Soviet Union to transfer cryogenic engine technology to India. India was subsequently forced to develop the engines on its own by taking apart and studying the Soviet engines it was able to buy, ultimately building the machine that powers the third stage of the GSLV Mk-II. (Edit: updated at 8.43 pm on July 31, 2025, from "fourth" to "third" stage.) However, the narrative goes on: > Some would say this is an irony of ironies, and some would say it is egg on the face of US. Unless the article could quote someone (by name) actually making these claims, the strength of language in the second half of the statement is unfounded. In fact, the author may have been better off staking the claim themselves — "I believe this is egg on the US's face" — but even then they will have to justify how it can be reconciled with several changes in NASA's and the US's leadership as well as policies regarding working with ISRO/India since the 1980s. --- Rather than concern ourselves with superficial one-upmanship, we would be better off discussing the demands of the different realities of ISRO and NASA. Both organisations have made conscious choices to develop spacecraft the way they do. Their needs are different and their political-economic contexts are wildly different. Expenditure and achievement may not be directly related because material and labour costs are lower in India yet they are deeply connected to an ambition mismatch as well. In order for ISRO to contribute Rs 800 crore to a climate-focused Earth-observing mission, (i) NASA had to conceive of NISAR based on climate scientists' inputs and (ii) spend $1.1 billion of its own for the L-band SAR and the giant antenna, without which even ISRO's S-band SAR wouldn't have the resolution and swath width it currently does. But to be sure: one's ambitions are not 'greater' than the other's; they're just different.t It also matters that, leading up to the launch, NASA officials and scientists have embarked on a media blitz. It's proving really easy right now to catch hold of a NASA scientist for an extended interview on NISAR — but not an ISRO scientist. For all these reasons, it's always more sensible to celebrate ISRO in terms that don't invoke rupees or by comparing and contrasting its feats with that of another space agency. ### Physicists test if they can load antimatter on a truck URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/24/physicists-test-if-they-can-load-antimatter-on-a-truck/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:23.000Z Physicists in Europe have reported that it’s possible to transport charged particles on a truck for four hours without disturbing them in any way. This seemingly run-of-the-mill announcement, reported in *Nature* [on May 14](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08926-y?ref=slightlyacidic.com), actually contains within its details the possibility of “a new era of precision antimatter spectroscopy”, in the team’s words. This is because of how the world currently studies antimatter, an elusive form of matter with some properties switched. For example, the electron’s antiparticle is the positron: it has the same mass but behaves like the electron’s mirror image. When a particle touches its antiparticle, they annihilate each other in a flash of energy. Physicists study antiparticles for what they can reveal about the still-mysterious things about our universe, such as dark matter. They’re also keen to crack the baryon asymmetry problem, which had a [breakthrough reported on July 16](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/cern-collider-reveals-major-clue-to-universes-bias-against-antimatter/article69817740.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The problem is that antimatter is hard to produce in a machine made entirely of matter. What little scientists already know is based on studying antiprotons and atoms of hydrogen and helium made of antiprotons and positrons at the Antimatter Factory (AMF) at CERN, the European nuclear physics research facility more famous for hosting the Large Hadron Collider. Specifically, the problem is that AMF has instruments to study antiparticles but have limited sensitivity. Antimatter particles are also very sensitive to magnetic fields and the AMF hall has other instruments that emit such energy. In an ideal world, physicists should be able to produce antiparticles at AMF and transport it to a lab that has very good instruments to study them. The new study delivers a proof of concept showing this is now possible. At the heart of their effort is a Penning trap, a device that uses a combination of electric and magnetic fields to confine charged particles in a cylindrical tube. The magnetic field is uniform and flows through the cylinder’s central axis, holding the particles together like a string of beads. The electric field is quadrupole, like two positive and two negative charges forming a square shape with alternating charges at the vertices. This field keeps the particles from drifting away. In their truck, the physicists used a BASE-STEP Penning trap, a special kind of trap developed by the BASE collaboration at CERN. It’s a “Penning-trap system inside the bore of a superconducting magnet that can withstand transport-related forces.” Among other features, it uses cold beryllium ions to cool the stored particles and includes precision measurement techniques to study them. The team first moved a trap containing a cloud of around 100 protons out of the AMF hall using a pair of overhead cranes, then loaded it on a truck and drove 3.7 km through CERN’s Meyrin campus. They hit a maximum speed of 42.2 km/hr in this run. The setup included magnetic shielding and a “transport frame to handle acceleration forces apart from gravity of up to 1 g in all directions”, per the paper. On the truck, the apparatus was cooled by an “internal 30-litre liquid helium tank”. The precision voltage supply, frequency generators, and a spectrum analyser were run by a “UPS with two battery units”. In all, the device — 2 m long, 1.6 m tall, and 0.85 m wide — weighed about 900 kg. “In our future planned antiproton transport experiments,” the team wrote in its paper, “the last step in the transport campaign would be the extraction of a fraction of particles from the trapped antiproton reservoir, followed by the injection of the extracted fraction into a receiver experiment. Although we do not have such a receiver available yet, we have demonstrated particle separation and extraction after returning to the experiment zone.” The reason for going to all this trouble with a truck is an idea in physics called CPT symmetry. The material world is made of matter and all matter is made up of subatomic particles. While physicists know a lot about the material universe, there are still many unknowns and lots of room left for physicists to explore and learn. CPT symmetry is one corner of the room. Each letter stands for a kind of transformation. C (charge conjugation) means switching a particle with an antiparticle. P (parity) means switching left and right, like looking in a mirror. And T (time reversal) means reversing the flow of time. In quantum field theory (the tool physicists use to understand the physical properties of subatomic particles), CPT theorem states that if you applied all three operations to a particle, physics should be the same. That is to say, if you studied for a physics exam and then someone applied CPT to all particles in the universe, the answers to your question paper wouldn’t change. CPT symmetry has a sobering history. At the dawn of quantum field theory, scientists assumed all subatomic particles conserve C, P, and T symmetries separately. Then they found that wasn’t true, so they moved the goalpost and said all particles conserve CP symmetry. An experiment in 1964 challenged this as well when physicists found particles called kaons violated CP symmetry. Finally physicists moved the goalpost even further, saying that all subatomic particles should be expected to conserve CPT symmetry. Since the C part of the symmetry requires swapping a particle with its antiparticle, physicists need both matter and antimatter to check if particles obey or violate CPT symmetry. The more the merrier, too: larger quantities of antimatter will make it easier to tease out any subtle effects that might point to a violation. If all such subtlety can be ruled out, CPT symmetry will hold and physicists might breathe easier. In the truck study, of course, the physicists only used \~100 protons. “Although the number of stored particles was not pushed to the limit,” they explained, “the transported number would already be enough for our high-precision experiments to operate for several years. As an example, the non-destructive high-precision measurements performed in BASE … typically consume around six antiprotons per year.” So far, researchers have verified CPT symmetry conservation in anti-hydrogen (hydrogen atoms made of an antiproton and a positron) and anti-protonic helium (helium atoms with antiprotons). These are of course anti-atoms and are considered a type of particle called baryons. Baryons are the most well-known matter particles: they include protons and neutrons as well as all atoms. Your body, for example, is baryonic matter. Physicists are keen to crack the universe’s baryon asymmetry mystery, too — and the answer is expected to have to do with some particles violating CPT symmetry in a hitherto unknown way. The physicists wrote in their paper that their findings indicate the “next generation” of antiproton studies could reduce the uncertainty in measurements by a factor of 10 from the “present state of the art”. *Featured image: Left: The route for the first transport demonstration through the AMF hall. Point 1 is the experiment zone from which an overhead crane moved the transport frame to point 2\. At point 2, the transport frame was loaded onto a trailer and moved to point 3, where it then got picked up by the second overhead crane. Point 4 is the loading bay with the truck. Right: Road map of the Meyrin site of CERN and the GPS position data recorded during transportation. Credit: Nature 641, 871–875 (2025).* ### Quasiparticles do the twist URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/19/quasiparticles-do-the-twist/ Last updated: 2025-07-19T09:06:45.000Z Physics often involves hidden surprises in how matter behaves at the smallest scales. A fundamental property in physics is angular momentum, which describes how things spin or rotate, from planets all the way down to particles. Angular momentum is involved in many important effects like magnetism and quantum states that could one day be used in quantum computers. When atoms vibrate inside crystals, the vibrational energy they release is often found in multiples of discrete values, i.e. they resemble fixed packets of energy. Physicists liken these packets to particles of vibrational energy that they call phonons. More particularly, a phonon is a kind of emergent particle called a quasiparticle. In 2017, Vijay B. Shenoy, an associate professor at the Centre for Condensed Matter Theory at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, [explained the concept](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/quasiparticles-a-useful-perspective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to me in a way I’ve always liked to return to: > The idea of a ‘quasiparticle’ is a very subtle one. At the risk of being technical, let me try this: An excitation is *called* a particle if, for a given momentum of the excitation, there is a well-defined energy. Quite remarkably, this definition of a particle embodies what we conventionally think of as a particle: small hard things that move about. > > Now, to an example. Consider a system made of atoms at a very low density. It will be in a gaseous state. Due to their kinetic energy, the atoms will be freely moving about. Such a system has particle-like excitations. These particle-like excitations correspond to the behaviour of individual atoms. > > Now consider the system at a higher density. The atoms will be strongly interacting with each other and, therefore, make up a solid. You will never “see” these atoms as low-energy excitations. There will now be new types of excitations that are made of the collective motion of atoms and which will be particle-like (since there is a well-defined energy for a given momentum). These particle-like excitations are called phonons. Note that the phonon excitation is very different from the atom that makes up the solid. For example, phonons carry sound within a solid – but when the sound propagates, you don’t have atoms being carried from place to place! > > A ‘quasiparticle’ excitation is one that is very nearly a particle-like excitation: for the given momentum, it is a small spread of energy about some average value. The manifestation is such that, for practical purposes, if you watch this excitation over longer durations, it will behave like a particle in an experiment… Recently, physicists predicted that phonons can themselves carry angular momentum the way physical particles like electrons do. They were predicted to do so in materials called chiral crystals, where the atoms are arranged in a spiral structure. However, in spite of the exciting prediction, nobody had directly observed this phonon angular momentum before. Proof was missing in part because measuring something so small and subtle isn’t easy. A new study in [*Nature Physics*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02952-3?ref=slightlyacidic.com) finally appears to have fixed this gap, reporting the first direct evidence of the effect using a well-known chiral crystal. Researchers from Germany and the US designed an experiment with tellurium, an element whose crystals grow in spiral shapes that wind either to the left or to the right. Since phonons are the vibrations inside a crystal, their angular momentum as they travel in curved paths through the crystal can’t be recorded directly. Instead, the researchers surmised that if all the phonons in the chiral crystal added up, they might twist the whole crystal ever so slightly, like a wind-up toy. So in their experiment, they heated a crystal in an uneven way in order to throw the left‑ and right‑handed phonons off balance, leaving behind a net phonon angular momentum that the whole crystal would have to offset by twisting in the opposite direction. To test this, the team started by growing small, pure tellurium crystals in the lab, making sure some were single crystals — i.e. with all atoms lining up the same way — and others were polycrystals, consisting of atoms lining up in random orientations. The team assumed that only the pure chiral crystals would show the new effect whereas the polycrystals wouldn’t. Team members then attached the crystals to minuscule cantilevers. If the crystal twisted even a small amount, the cantilever would bend, and an electrical circuit would detect and amplify the signal. Finally, they created a temperature difference between the two ends of the crystals by shining a small, focused laser light on it. This thermal gradient was expected to allow a net angular momentum to build up, if it was there. The team ran its tests on both types of crystals, changing the direction of the temperature gradient and running the experiment at different temperatures. In the process the team also ruled out the effects of other forces acting on the crystals, such as expansion due to heating. When the laser was switched on, the single-crystal tellurium samples showed a clear torque on the cantilevers while the polycrystalline samples didn’t. The torque flipped direction if the temperature gradient was reversed — a smoking gun that it was related to the handedness of the vibrations — and disappeared altogether when the laser was turned off. The team measured the torque to be an extremely slight 10\-11 N·m, which matched theoretical predictions. At higher temperatures, even the pure crystals stopped displaying a torque, in keeping with the expectation that the effect only appeared below the Debye temperature — which is the temperature at which a crystal lattice has its highest vibrational quantum energy. More than the recent theoretical predictions, the research team’s motivation also traced back to an experiment that Albert Einstein and the Dutch physicist Wander Johannes de Haas conducted in 1915\. It showed that flipping a magnetic field also made a tiny iron rod twist. Einstein and de Haas explained that this happened because the rod’s electrons had to conserve angular momentum, thus confirming that these particles had this property, an important moment in the history of physics. The researchers behind the new study similarly called what they observed the phonon Einstein-de Haas effect. Shenoy, however was more measured in his assessment of the new study: > It is, in general, not unusual to have quasiparticles possessing properties of physical particles. Condensed matter physics is replete with examples, such as phonons (discussed here), magnons, density excitations in low dimensions, etc. > > What is not usual is the discussion of angular momentum in the context of phonons. As the authors emphasise, this is possible due to the noncentrosymmetric nature of tellurium. The system does not have centrosymmetry (or inversion symmetry): that is, roughly, if you flip \[the crystal\] ‘inside out’ it looks like an inside out image' rather than itself. An instructive illustration is a mirror image: the mirror image of a circle is a circle (mirror-symmetric), but the mirror image of a right hand is not a right hand. Centrosymmetry is a three-dimensional version of mirror reflection. Broadly speaking, the whole report is not super surprising, but it is interesting that the scientists can measure this. Many of these physics papers reporting very specialised results make it a point to mention potential future applications of the underlying science. Admittedly, the pursuit of these applications, as and when they come to pass, and the commercial opportunities they create may help to fund the research. However, such speculation in papers also reinforces the idea that studies at the cutting edge are indebted (especially financially) to the future. I don’t agree with that position although I understand [its grounding](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/must-science-be-useful?ref=slightlyacidic.com). For example, this is what the researchers behind the new study wrote in their paper (emphasis added; AM stands for ‘angular momentum’): > … our measurements firmly establish the existence of phonon-AM in chiral crystals. Phonon-AM is the theoretical basis of chiral and topological phonons that may interact with topological fermions to create unique topological quantum states. Phonons can also transfer AM to other fundamental particles and elementary excitations allowing for novel quantum transduction mechanisms, thermal manipulation of spin, and detection of hidden quantum fields. **This discovery provides a solid foundation for emergent chiral quantum states and opens a new avenue for phonon-AM enabled quantum information science and microelectronic applications.** And this is what Shenoy had to say about that: > I am not sure that \[the finding\] will have an immediate technological impact, particularly since this is a very subtle effect that requires very expensive single crystals; my guess is that this will be useful in some very specialised sensor application of some sort in the future. The authors also mention some microelectronics stuff, not sure about that. At this stage, this is firmly in the basic sciences column! ### Sniffing out the mystery chemistry of superheavy atoms URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/19/sniffing-out-the-mystery-chemistry-of-superheavy-atoms/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T06:47:57.000Z Remember the periodic table from your high school classroom? The table orders elements by how the valence electrons in their atoms are arranged. However, quantum physics calculations predict that in elements with atomic number greater than 103, the electrons are arranged in new, unusual ways. This is because these electrons move so fast that their orbits are warped, as described by Einstein’s special theory of relativity — but verifying this has been tricky. These so-called superheavy elements don’t exist in nature and must be created one atom at a time in expensive nuclear reactions. The atoms also decay within seconds or even milliseconds. Thus, traditional chemical techniques such as liquid‑liquid extraction or gas chromatography can’t directly identify the exact molecule that short-lived atoms form. This ambiguity has already produced contradictory results. For example, scientists have found that flerovium-114 sometimes acts like a noble gas and sometimes like a reactive metal. In July, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported that they had developed a new technique that overcame those hurdles by combining two existing instruments: a gas-filled separator and FIONA (“for the identification of nuclide A”). The gas-filled separator can sift superheavy atoms out of a blizzard of particles. FIONA is a sequence of traps, electrostatic lenses, and a cross‑field mass spectrometer that can cool ions to near‑room temperature, manipulate them, and finally measure each ion’s mass‑to‑charge ratio. The findings were published in [*The Journal of Physical Chemistry A*](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpca.5c02098?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Because truly superheavy isotopes like rutherfordium and dubnium are too scarce to use to develop new methods, the researchers used radioactive holmium as a stand‑in. Holmium can be produced fast enough to collect good data yet is rare enough to mimic superheavy elements. To make the isotopes, the researchers bombarded an indium target with a beam of ionised argon-40\. The resulting fusion‑evaporation reactions yielded a few hundred 151Ho or 152Ho nuclei per second plus a plethora of other ions. A low‑pressure helium atmosphere inside the separator quickly stripped or attached electrons so that most holmium ions reached charge states of +5 or +6\. The ions were then exposed to a magnetic field, which deflected the holmium ions alone by a particular degree, and in this way they were steered towards FIONA. The uninteresting ions were made to hit absorber walls. At FIONA, a gas catcher lowered the ions’ charged state to +1 and cooled them to room-temperature energies. Finally, they were confined by an ion trap within a millimetre‑scale volume, where they would have a lifetime of 50-100 milliseconds. This was long enough to perform chemical reactions before the superheavy atoms decayed. https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/technical-foundation-for-a-muon-collider-laid-at-j-parc.html At this stage, the researchers bled a stream of oxygen molecules (O2) into the trap. Each Ho⁺ ion could either stay bare or react to make HoO⁺. After the chosen trap time, electric pulses forced the ions to exit the trap, where a sensitive spectrometer awaited. 151Ho and 152Ho release well‐known and distinct amounts of energy when they decay and have well-known and distinct half‑lives (35 and 162 seconds respectively). The spectrometer used these details to ‘sniff’ out the specific isotope in each molecule as the molecules decayed. In this way, the researchers were able to identify radioactive molecules directly, one atom at a time, formed by the holmium isotopes, with no confusion from background or contaminant signals. The amount of HoO⁺ detected increased by predictable amounts in response to both longer exposure times and higher oxygen gas flow, confirming that the technique could track molecular formation rates under varying conditions. Importantly, the measurements confirmed that most of the holmium ions could be converted to HoO⁺ within around 50 milliseconds at higher oxygen flow rates. They also reported finding no evidence for the formation of other, unexpected holmium oxygen compounds, confirming that the main reaction product was HoO⁺. The findings may open the door to a direct chemistry of rare atoms. By tracking which fluorides, oxides or other ligated ions actually form and how quickly, researchers can use the gas-filled separator followed by FIONA to infer how readily the electrons in a superheavy atom access *d*‑ or *p*‑orbitals in their atoms. This information is directly tied to the element’s place in the periodic table. For example, observing whether RfO2+ or DbO3+ forms under standard conditions can be used to check long‑standing predictions about how superheavy atoms in group 4 and group 5 of the table behave. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/acs-periodic-table-poster_web.png?w=1000) This is all the more relevant science scientists have also been developing new techniques to increase the production rate of superheavy elements. Usually, they have made these nuclei by bombarding a target element with a high-energy beam of atoms of another element. The traditional choice of projectile beam has been calcium-48, but of late they have been switching to the more accessible 40Ar. For example, scientists have predicted the reaction of 40Ar with berkelium-249 to be an efficient way to synthesise important superheavy nuclei like moscovium-286\. Scientists have also deployed different ion beams, such as titanium-50, to strike heavy targets like plutonium-244 to produce livermorium-116 in greater quantities. Experts have expressed belief that this method is a promising path to create even heavier elements, like element 120. Innovations such as the development of highly-sensitive custom detector systems also allow scientists to rapidly and reliably detect single superheavy nuclei as soon as they are formed. Similarly, advances in target assembly, including multilayered targets designed to withstand more intense projectile beams, allow experiments to go on for longer and yield more superheavy nuclei. Scientists have also been using more refined models to fine-tune accelerator parameters, such as beam intensity and energy, which can improve the chances of specific nuclei forming over others. As production rates inch upward and techniques like FIONA become more mature, chemists can start asking finer questions. For example, which oxidation states dominate in a molecule? How strong are the ligand bonds involving superheavy elements? And do their 7*p*\- or 6*d*\-orbital electrons participate in chemistry the way the theory predicts? But before scientists can actually explore these questions, they will have to surmount some important challenges. This is because, as the researchers acknowledged in their paper, holmium is only an approximate stand-in. Actual superheavy elements will present unique challenges. For three examples: First, real superheavy elements often have very short half-lives, sometimes much less than a second. This narrows the time available to produce, trap, and chemically analyse them before they decay. Second, and crucially, the technique was designed to detect only specific charge-to-mass species in each run, e.g. only HoO⁺ or Ho⁺ per measurement. As a result, unexpected molecular forms might go undetected. Third: the study demonstrated only relatively simple chemical reactions. Superheavy elements may form more complex, less predictable molecules or may behave uniquely, and it isn’t yet clear whether the technique can fully resolve or identify a wide variety of more complex reaction products. ### A laser to make light of many shapes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/17/a-laser-to-make-light-of-many-shapes/ Last updated: 2025-07-17T09:01:26.000Z Lasers can produce a slender beam of light of just one wavelength. For this simple feature, they are everywhere in modern technology, from the internet to medical devices and even in entertainment as holograms. However, traditional lasers have some limitations. For example, to use them in particular applications, engineers currently use ensembles of lenses and mirrors to ‘shape’ the light. Scientists from Australia and China have reported in [*Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09275-6?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a way to produce laser light in specific shapes. A laser is a device that produces intense, focused beams of light. The new device, called a metalaser, produces such light using a metasurface: ultra-thin layers made up of artificial atoms that control light in specific ways. By designing the metasurface carefully, the scientists could control the colour and brightness of the laser as well as the precise shape and direction of the light waves it emitted. This meant the laser could create images, focus to a point or line, and even produce special patterns like spirals or holograms, all without the need for bulky optical elements. The scientists created a flat surface covered with a grid of microscopic discs made of silicon nitride. Each disc had a small hole that could be rotated to a specific angle. By changing the angle of each hole, the scientists could control the phase (the position in the light wave’s cycle) of the light coming from each disc. This phase is called the geometric phase. When the laser emitted light, these various geometric phases combined to closely shape the overall wavefront. By the way, the geometric phase is called the Pancharatnam-Berry phase after S. Pancharatnam and Michael Berry. Pancharatnam independently discovered the geometric phase in 1956\. His promising career in physics was cut disappointingly short when he died in 1969 aged only 35\. Berry discovered the geometric phase in 1986\. Eight years later, the British physicist George Series wrote in a special issue of *Current Science* dedicated to Pancharatnam that "his work received renewed attention and acclaim only after the recognition, in the eighties, that he had derived and used the concept of geometric phases in his studies of the interference of polarised light." [More here.](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/remembering-s-pancharatnam/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Back to the study: the laser light was trapped on the metasurface by an effect called a bound state in the continuum (BIC). A BIC is a special kind of wave that, despite having enough energy to escape and spread out, remains perfectly trapped and doesn’t leak away. It's akin to a wave that should be able to travel freely but due to conditions like interference is confined and doesn't interact with the surrounding 'free' waves. BICs are also unique because they persist rather than dissipate away. The BIC helped keep the light focused and intense. When it was time for the metalaser to emit a laser beam, the team introduced a controlled perturbation in the structure, such as by adjusting the shape, position or orientation of the meta-atoms on the metasurface. This disturbance allowed the light to ‘leak’ into the outside world through a well-defined channel. At this point, the disks acted like small antennas, emitting light whose direction and phase depended on the holes' rotation. By carefully setting the phase at each point, the scientists could make the laser beam form any pattern they wanted even as it travelled away from the surface. The scientists started with a glass base and added a patina of silicon nitride. Using electron-beam lithography — which is a technique like 3D printing but with electrons — they created the tiny discs and holes with precise angles. The discs were finally covered with a thin layer of dye-doped plastic that helped to amplify the emitted light. The discs were called ‘meta-atoms’ because they were essentially artificial atoms. First, the team pumped the metalaser to make it emit light. Pumping is an essential step in any laser. In a regular laser, a population of atoms called the gain medium is 'pumped' with energy to push the atoms' electrons into an excited state. Then, when some electrons spontaneously lose the energy they absorbed earlier and become de-excited, they release photons. The presence of these photons stimulates other excited atoms to emit identical photons as they return to a lower energy state. as well. As this process repeats itself, the gain medium releases more and more photons of a fixed energy that reflect back and forth in the cavity before entering the outside world as laser light. The metalaser had one extra step: a separate laser pumped the metalaser’s gain medium. According to the paper, using a laser as the pump source was more efficient because its light was tuned to exactly match the energy levels required to excite the gain medium. By rotating the holes in the discs, the scientists could create metalasers of almost any shape: focused spots, lines, spirals, even complex images like holograms. Traditional lasers often create speckle noise — the reason holograms have that grainy look — but the metalasers could produce holograms with almost none of this noise. The results were much clearer and sharper images. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/c4a69-screenshot-2025-07-17-at-13-56-45-metalasers-with-arbitrarily-shaped-wavefront-full-text-song-41586_2025_9275_onlinepdf_300.pdf.png?w=502) Credit: [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09275-6](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09275-6?ref=slightlyacidic.com) The team also reported that the metalaser achieved a quality factor — a measure of how well it stores energy — high enough to mean the laser was producing a pure colour. The design could also be changed to produce different types of beams, including those with special polarisation (the direction in which the light waves vibrated) or orbital angular momenta (twisting light). In fact, the team wrote in its paper that their approach could be used to make programmable lasers that switch between patterns on demand. The metalaser setup in the new study is microscopic, per the study, and can be integrated into small devices. Since the laser itself shapes the beam, there is no need for additional mirrors, lenses or filters. ### Found: clue to crack the antimatter mystery URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/17/found-clue-to-crack-the-antimatter-mystery/ Last updated: 2025-07-17T04:25:03.000Z Imagine you’ve put together a torchlight. You know exactly how each part of the device works. You know exactly how they’re all connected togetger. Yet when you put in fresh batteries and turn it on, the light flickers. You take the torchlight apart, check each component piece by piece. It’s all good. The batteries are fully charged as well. Then you put it back together and turn it — and the light flickers still. This torchlight is the Standard Model of particle physics. It’s the main theory of its field: it ties together the various properties of all the subatomic particles scientists have found thus far. It organises them into groups, describes how the groups interact with each other, and makes predictions about particles that have been tested to extraordinary precision. And yet, the Standard Model can’t explain what dark matter is, why the Higgs boson is so light or how neutrinos have mass. Physicists are thus looking for ‘new physics’: a hitherto unseen part of the torchlight’s internal apparatus that causes its light to flicker, i.e. some new particle or force that completes the Standard Model, closing the gaps that the current crop of particles and forces haven’t been able to. This search for new physics received a boost yesterday when the physicists working with one of the detectors of the Large Hadron Collider reported that they had observed CP violations in baryons. This phenomenon is required to explain why the universe has more matter than antimatter today even though it was assumed to have been born with equal quantities of both. Baryons are particles made up of three quarks, like protons and neutrons. CP symmetry is the idea that the laws of physics should be the same if you swap all particles with their antiparticles and flip left and right, like looking in a mirror. Thus CP violation in baryons means if swapped a baryon with the corresponding anti-baryon and swapped left and right, the laws of physics won’t be the same, i.e. the laws treat matter and antimatter differently. I wrote about this finding and its implications — including its place in the Sakharov conditions and what the results mean for the Standard Model — for *The Hindu*. Do [read it](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/cern-collider-reveals-major-clue-to-universes-bias-against-antimatter/article69817740.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I’ve found it’s one of those things you don’t read because it has anything to say about saving money or living longer. By reminding you that there’s a natural universe out there worth exploring and discovering and that it contains no sign or imprint of the false justifications humans have advanced for their crimes, perhaps it can help you live better. As I’ve [said before](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), if you’re not interested in particle physics, that’s fine. But remember that you can be. *Featured image: A view of the LHCb detector at the LHC as seen through a fisheye lens. Credit: CERN.* ### Watch the celebrations, on mute URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/15/watch-the-celebrations-on-mute/ Last updated: 2025-07-15T05:59:11.000Z Right now, Shubhanshu Shukla is on his way back to Earth from the International Space Station. Am I proud he’s been the first Indian up there? I don’t know. It’s not clear. The whole thing seemed to be stage-managed. Shukla didn’t say anything surprising, nothing that popped. In fact he said exactly what we expected him to say. Nothing more, nothing less. Fuck controversy. It’s possible to be interesting in new ways all the time without edging into the objectionable. It’s not hard to beat predictability — but there it was for two weeks straight. I wonder if Shukla was fed all his lines. It could’ve been a monumental thing but it feels… droll. "India’s short on cash." "India’s short on skills." "India’s short on liberties." We've heard these refrains as we've covered science and space journalism. But it's been clear for some time now that “India's short on cash” is a myth. We’ve written and spoken over and over that Gaganyaan needs better accountability and more proactive communication from ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre. But it’s also true that it needs even more money than the Rs 20,000 crore it’s already been allocated. One thing I’ve learnt about the Narendra Modi government is that if it puts its mind to it, if it believes it can extract political mileage from a particular commitment, it will find a way to go all in. So when it doesn’t, the fact that it doesn’t sticks out. It’s a signal that The Thing isn’t a priority. Looking at the Indian space programme through the same lens can be revealing. Shukla’s whole trip and back was carefully choreographed. There’s been no sense of adventure. Grit is nowhere to be seen. But between Prime Minister Modi announcing his name in the list of four astronaut-candidates for Gaganyaan’s first crewed flight (currently set for 2027) and today, I know marginally more about Shukla, much less about the other three, and nothing really personal to boot. Just banal stuff. This isn’t some military campaign we’re talking about, is it? Just checking. Chethan Kumar at ToI and Jatan Mehta have done everyone a favour: one by reporting extensively on Shukla’s and ISRO’s activities and the other by collecting even the most deeply buried scraps of information from across the internet in one place. The point, however, is that it shouldn’t have come to this. Their work is laborious, made possible by the fact that it’s by far their primary responsibility. It needed to be much easier than this to find out more about India’s first homegrown astronauts. ISRO itself has been mum, so much so that every new ISRO story is turning out to be an investigative story. The details of Shukla's exploits needed to be interesting, too. The haven't been. So now, Shukla’s returning from the International Space Station. It’s really not clear what one's expected to be excited about… *Featured image credit: Ray Hennessy/Unsplash.* ### A blog questions challenge URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/14/a-blog-questions-challenge/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:27.000Z I hadn’t checked my notifications on X.com in a while. When I did yesterday, I found [Pradx](https://pradx.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) had tagged me in a blog post called “a challenge of blog questions” in March. The point is to answer a short list of questions about my blogging history, then tag other bloggers to carry the enterprise forward. With thanks to Pradx, here goes. **Why did you start blogging in the first place?** I started blogging for two reasons in 2008\. I started writing itself when I realised it helps me clarify my thoughts, then I started publishing my writing on the web so I could share those thoughts with my friends in different parts of the world. My blog soon gave me a kind of third space on the internet, a separate world I could escape to as I laboured through four years of engineering school, which I [didn’t like at the time](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/06/14/four-years/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). **What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?** I’ve blogged on Xanga, Blogspot, Typed, Movable Type, various static site generators, Svbtle, Geocities, Grav, October, Mataroa, Ghost, and WordPress. And I’ve always found myself returning to WordPress, which — despite its flaws — allows me to have just the kind of blog I’d like to in terms of look, feel, spirit, and community. The last two are particularly important. Ghost comes a close second to WordPress but it’s too magaziney. The options to host Ghost are also (relatively) more expensive. Earlier this year, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic tested my support for WordPress.com with his words and actions vis-à-vis his vendetta against WP Engine but the sentiments and conversations in the wider WordPress community encouraged me to keep going. **How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?** I used to love WordPress’s Calypso interface and its WYSIWYG editor both on desktop and mobile and used to use that to compose posts. But then WordPress ‘upgraded’ to the blocks-based Gutenberg interface, which made composing a jerky, clunky, glitchy process. At that point I tried a combination of different local editors, including Visual Studio Code, iA Writer, and Obsidian.md. Each editor provided an idiosyncratic environment: e.g. VS Code seemed like a good environment in which to compose technical posts, Obsidian (with its dark UI) for angry/moody ones, and iA writer for opinionated ones with long sentences and complex thoughts. Then about three years ago I discovered MarsEdit and have been using it for all kinds of posts since. I particularly appreciate its old-school-like interface, that it’s built to work with WordPress, and the fact that it maintains an offline archive of all the posts on the blog. **When do you feel most inspired to write?** I’ve answered this question before in conversations with friends and every time my answer has prompted them to wonder if I’m lying or mocking them. When I feel most inspired to write is not in my control. I’ve been writing for so long that it’s become a part of the way I think. If I have a thought and I’m not able to articulate it clearly in writing, it’s a sign for me that the thought is still inchoate. In this paradigm, whenever I have a fully formed thought that I think could help someone else think about or through something, I enter a half-trance-like state, where my entire brain is seized of the need to write and I’m only conscious enough to open MarsEdit and start typing. In these circumstance my ability to multi-task even minor activities, like typing with one hand while sipping from a mug of tea in the other, vanishes. **Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?** That depends on what I’m writing about. When I draft posts in the ‘Op-eds’ or ‘Science’ categories, I’m usually more clear-headed and confident about my post’s contents, and publish as soon as the post is ready. For ‘Analysis’ and ‘Scicomm’ posts, however, I distract myself for about 30 minutes after finishing a draft and read it again to make sure there aren’t any holes in my arguments. I also have a few friends who peer-review my posts if I’m not sure I’ve articulated myself well or if I’m not able to think through the soundness of my own arguments by myself (usually because I suspect there’s something I don’t know). Four of the most frequent reviewers are [Thomas Manuel](https://thomasmanuel.com/about?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Srividya Tadepalli](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/srividyatadepalli-wordpress-com.html), [Mahima Jain](https://mahimajain.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [Chitralekha Manohar](https://www.thecleancopy.com/team/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In all these cases, however, I do read the post a couple times more after it’s finished to fix grammar and clumsy sentence constructions. **What’s your favorite post on your blog?** No such thing. :) **Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?** I’m not keen on major redesigns. There are too many WordPress themes available off the shelf and for free these days. I change my blog’s theme depending on my mood. I don’t think it makes a difference to whether or how people read my posts. I think those that have been reading will continue to read. The text is paramount. I don’t see myself moving to another platform either. If anything, I might move from WordPress.com to a self-hosted setup in future but it’s not something I’m thinking of right now. I am currently in the process of removing duplicated posts in the archives — at last count I spotted about 20\. Many posts are also missing images I’d added at the time of publishing, mostly because they were associated with a domain that I no longer use. I need to fix that. A few years ago I lost around 120 posts after someone managed to hack my account when the blog was hosted with a provider of cPanel hosting services. I maintain a long-term backup of all my posts on a Backblaze dump. I’m still in the process of identifying which posts I lost and retrieving them from the archive. So yeah, focusing on this clean-up right now. **Who’s next?** This is embarrassing: I only know a few other bloggers. I stopped keeping track after many bloggers I’d been following in the early years just stopped at some point. Right now, of those blogs I still follow, [Jatan](https://journal.jatan.space/about/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Pradx have already been nominated for this ‘challenge’. So let me nominate [Suvrat Kher](https://rapiduplift.substack.com/) and [Dhiya Gerber](https://dhiyagerber.com/about?ref=slightlyacidic.com) next, both of whom I think will have interesting answers. *Featured image credit: Chris Briggs/Unsplash.* ### Sharks don't do math URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/13/sharks-dont-do-math/ Last updated: 2025-07-13T12:42:55.000Z From ’Sharks hunt via Lévy flights’, [*Physics World*](https://physicsworld.com/a/sharks-hunt-via-levy-flights/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), June 11, 2010: > They were menacing enough before, but how would you feel if you knew sharks were employing advanced mathematical concepts in their hunt for the kill? Well, this is the case, according to new research, which has tracked the movement of these marine predators along with a number of other species as they foraged for prey in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The results showed that these animals hunt for food by alternating between Brownian motion and Lévy flights, depending on the scarcity of prey. Animals don’t use advanced mathematical concepts. This statement encompasses many humans as well because it’s not a statement about intelligence but one about language and reality. You see a shark foraging in a particular pattern. You invent a language to efficiently describe such patterns. And in that language your name for the shark's pattern is a Lévy flight. This doesn’t mean the shark is using a Lévy flight. The shark is simply doing what makes sense to it, but which we — in our own description of the world — call a Lévy flight. The Lévy flight isn’t an advanced concept either. It’s a subset of a broader concept called the [random walk](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/11/23/a-not-so-random-walk-through-random-walks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Say you’re on a square grid, like a chessboard. You’re standing on one square. You can move only one step at a time. You roll a four-sided die. Depending on the side it lands on, you step one square forwards, backwards, to the right or to the left. The path you trace over time is called a random walk because its shape is determined by the die roll, which is random. ![Random walk 2500.svg.](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/66c65-random_walk_2500.svg_.png "Random_walk_2500.svg.png") There are different kinds of walks depending on the rule that determines the choice of your next step. A Lévy flight is a random walk that varies both the direction of the next step and the length of the step. In the random walk on the chessboard, you took steps of fixed lengths: to the adjacent squares. In a Lévy flight, the direction of the next step is random and the length is picked at random from a Lévy distribution. This is what the distribution looks like: ![Levy0 distributionPDF.svg.](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/6e186-levy0_distributionpdf.svg_.png "Levy0_distributionPDF.svg.png") Notice how a small part of each curve (for different values of *c* in the distribution’s function) has high values and the majority has smaller values. When you pick your step length at random from, say, the red curve, you have higher odds of of picking a smaller step length than a longer one. This means in a Lévy flight, most of the step lengths will be short but a small number of steps will be long. Thus the ‘flight' looks like this: ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/5a6db-levyflight.svg_.png "LevyFlight.svg.png") Sharks and many other animals have been known to follow a Lévy flight when foraging. To quote from an [older post](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/11/23/a-not-so-random-walk-through-random-walks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Research has shown that the foraging path of animals looking for food that is scarce can be modelled as a Lévy flight: the large steps correspond to the long distances towards food sources that are located far apart and the short steps to finding food spread in a small area at each source. Brownian motion is a more famous kind of random walk. It’s the name for the movement of an object that’s following the Wiener process. This means the object’s path needs to obey the following five rules (from the same post): > (ii) How much the process changes over a period of time depends only on the duration of the period; > > (iii) Increments in the process are randomly sampled from a Gaussian distribution; > > (iv) The process has a statistical mean equal to zero; > > (v) The process’s covariance between any two time points is equal to the lower variance at those two points (variance denotes how quickly the value of a variable is spreading out over time). Thus Brownian motion models the movement of pollen grains in water, dust particles in the air, electrons in a conductor, and colloidal particles in a fluid, and the fluctuation of stock prices, the diffusion of molecules in liquids, and population dynamics in biology. That is, all these processes in disparate domains evolve at least in part according to the rules of the Wiener process. Still doesn’t mean a shark understands what a Lévy flight is. By saying "sharks use a Lévy flight”, we also discard in the process how the shark makes its decisions — something worth learning about in order to make more complete sense of the world around us rather than force the world to make sense only in those ways we’ve already dreamt up. (This is all the more relevant now with #sharkweek just a week away.) I care so much because metaphors are bridges between language and reality. Even if the statement “sharks employ advanced mathematical concepts” doesn’t feature a metaphor, the risk it represents hews close to one that stalks the use of metaphors in science journalism: the creation of false knowledge. Depending on the topic, it’s not uncommon for science journalists to use metaphors liberally, yet scientists have not infrequently upbraided them for using the wrong metaphors in some narratives or for not alerting readers to the metaphors’ limits. This is not unfair: while I disagree with some critiques along these lines for being too pedantic, in most cases it’s warranted. As science philosopher Daniel Sarewitz put it in [that 2012 article](https://web.archive.org/web/20200505035408/https://www.nature.com/news/sometimes-science-must-give-way-to-religion-1.11244): > Here’s The New York Times: “The Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass … Without the Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight.” Fair enough. But why “a cosmic molasses” and not, say, a “sea of milk”? The latter is the common translation of an episode in Hindu cosmology, represented on a spectacular bas-relief panel at Angkor Wat showing armies of gods and demons churning the “sea of milk” to producean elixir of immortality. > > For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality. A metaphor is not the thing itself and shouldn’t be allow to masquerade as such. Just as well, there are [important differences](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/01/14/the-news-exists-to-inform-not-to-educate-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) between becoming aware of something and learning it, and a journalist may require metaphors only to facilitate the former. Toeing this line also helps journalists tame the publics' expectations of them. *Featured image credit: David Clode/Unsplash.* ### The hidden heatwave URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/13/the-hidden-heatwave/ Last updated: 2025-07-13T10:22:44.000Z A heatwave is like the COVID-19 virus. During the pandemic, the virus infected and killed many people. When vaccines became available, the mortality rate dropped even though the virus continued to spread. But vaccines weren’t the only way to keep people from dying. The COVID-19 virus killed more people if the people were already unhealthy In India, an important cause for people being unhealthy is the state itself. In many places, the roads are poorly laid, kicking dust exposed by traffic use up into the air, where it joins the PM2.5 particles emitted by industrial facilities allowed to set up shop near residential and commercial areas without proper emission controls. If this is one extreme, becauses these experiences are so common for so many Indians, at the other is the state’s apathy towards public health. India’s doctor-to-patient ratio is dismal; hospitals are understaffed and under-equipped; drug quality is so uneven as to be a gamble; insurance coverage is iffy and unclear; privatisation is increasing; and the national government’s financial contribution towards public health is in free fall. For these reasons as well, and not just because of vaccine availability or coverage, the COVID-19 virus killed more people than it should have been able to. A person’s vulnerability to this or any other infection is thus determined by their well-being — which is affected both by explicit factors like a new pathogen in the population and implicit factors like the quality of healthcare they have been able to access. A heatwave resembles the virus for the same reason: a person’s vulnerability to high heat is determined by their well-being — which in turn is affected by the amount of ambient heat and relative humidity as well as the extent to which they are able to evade the effects of that combination. This weekend, a new investigative effort by a team of journalists at *The Hindu* (including me) has reported just this fact, but for the first time with ground-zero details that people in general, and perhaps even the Tamil Nadu government itself, have thus far only presumed to be the case. Read it [online](https://www.thehindu.com/infographics/2025-07-12/heat-stress-in-chennai/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in the [e-paper](https://epaper.thehindu.com/reader?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or in today’s newspaper. The fundamental issues are two-pronged. First, Tamil Nadu’s policies on protecting people during heatwaves require the weather department to have declared a heatwave to apply. Second, even when there is no heatwave, many people but especially the poorer consistently suffer heatwave conditions. (Note: I’m criticising Tamil Nadu here because it’s my state of residence and equally because it’s one of a few states actually paying as much attention to economic growth as it is to public health, of which heat safety is an important part.) The [net effect](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/tamil-nadu-heatwave-policy-is-only-a-start/article68889687.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is for people to suffer their private but nonetheless very real heatwave conditions without enjoying the support the state has promised for people in these conditions. The criticism also indicts the state for falling short on enforcing other heat-related policies that leave the vulnerable even more stranded. The corresponding measures include (i) access to clean toilets, a lack of which forces people — but especially women, who can’t urinate in public the way men are known to — to drink less water and suppress their urges to urinate, risking urinary tract infections; (ii) access to clean and cool drinking water, a paucity of which forces people to pay out of their pockets to buy chilled water or beverages, reducing the amount of money they have left for medical expenses as well as risking the ill health that comes with consuming aerated and/or sugary beverages; and (ii) state-built quarters that pay meaningful attention to ventilating living spaces, which when skipped exposes people to humidity levels that prevent their bodies from cooling by sweating, rendering them more susceptible to heat-related illnesses. And as *The Hindu* team revealed, these forms of suffering are already playing out. The India Meteorological Department defines a heatwave based on how much the temperature deviates from a historical average. But this is a strictly meteorological definition that doesn’t account for the way class differences create heatwave-like conditions. These conditions kick in as a combination of temperature and humidity, and as the report shows, even normal temperature can induce them if the relative humidity is higher and/or if an individual is unable to cool themselves. The state has a significant role to play in the latter. Right now, it needs to abandon the strictly meteorological definition of heatwaves in its policy framework and instead develop a more holistic sociological definition. *Featured image credit: Austin Curtis/Unsplash.* ### Quantum clock breaks entropy barrier URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/12/quantum-clock-breaks-entropy-barrier/ Last updated: 2025-07-12T12:21:51.000Z In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says that a closed system tends to become more disordered over time. This disorder is captured in an entity called entropy. Many devices, especially clocks, are affected by this law because they need to tick regularly to measure time. But every tick creates a bit of disorder, i.e. increases the entropy, and physicists have believed for a long time now that this places a fundamental limit on how precise a clock can be. The more precise you want your clock, the more entropy (and thus more energy) you’ll have to expend. A study published in [*Nature Physics*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02929-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on June 2 challenges this wisdom. In it, researchers from Austria, Malta, and Sweden asked if the second law of thermodynamics really set a limit on a clock’s precision and came away, surprisingly, with a design of a new kind of quantum clock that’s too precise scientists once believed possible for the amount of energy it spends to achieve that precision. The researchers designed this clock using a spin chain. Imagine a ring made of several quantum sites, like minuscule cups. Each cup can hold an excitation — say, a marble that can hop from cup to cup. This excitation moves around the ring and every time it completes a full circle, the clock ticks once. A spin chain is, broadly speaking, a series of connected quantum systems (the sites) arranged in a ring and the excitation is a subatomic particle or packet of energy that moves from site to site. In most clocks, every tick is accompanied by the dissipation of some energy and a small increase in entropy. But in the model in the new study, only the last link in the circle, where the last quantum system was linked to the first one, dissipated energy. Everywhere else, the excitation moved without losing energy, like a wave gliding smoothly around the ring. The movement of the excitation in this lossless way through most of the ring is called coherent transport. The researchers used computer simulations to help them adjust the hopping rates — or how easily the excitation moved between sites — and thus to make the clock as precise as possible. They found that the best setup involved dividing the ring into three regions: (i) in the preparation ramp, the excitation was shaped into a wave packet; (ii) in the bulk propagation phase, the wave packet moved steadily through the ring; and (iii) in the boundary matching phase, the wave packet was reset for the next tick. The team measured the clock’s precision as the number of ticks it completed before it was one tick ahead or behind a perfect clock. Likewise, team members defined the entropy per tick to be the amount of energy dissipated per tick. Finally, the team compared this quantum clock to classical clocks and other quantum models, which typically show a linear relationship between precision and entropy: e.g. if the precision doubled, the entropy doubled as well. The researchers, however, found that the precision of their quantum clock grew exponentially with entropy. In other words, if the amount of entropy per tick increased only slightly, the precision increased by a big leap. It was proof that, at least in principle, it’s possible to build a clock to be arbitrarily precise while keeping the system’s entropy down, all without falling afoul of the second law. That is, contrary to what many physicists thought, the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t strictly limit a clock precision, at least not for quantum clocks like this one. The clock’s design allowed it to sidestep the otherwise usual trade-off between precision and entropy. During coherent transport, the process is governed only by the system’s Hamiltonian, i.e. the rules for how energy moves in a closed quantum system. In this regime, the excitation acts like a wave that spreads smoothly and reversibly, without losing any energy or creating any disorder. Imagine a ball rolling on a perfectly smooth, frictionless track. It keeps moving without slowing down or heating up the track. Such a thing is impossible in classical mechanics, like in the ball example, but it’s possible in quantum systems. The tradeoff of course is that the latter are very small and very fragile and thus harder to manipulate. In the present study, the researchers have proved that it’s possible to build a quantum clock that takes advantage of coherent transport to tick while dissipating very little energy. Their model, the spin chain, uses a Hamiltonian that only allows the excitation to coherently hop to its nearest neighbour. The researchers engineered the couplings between the sites in the preparation ramp part of the ring to shape the excitation into a traveling wave packet that moves predominantly in the forward direction. This tendency to move in only direction is further bolstered at the last link, where the last site is coupled to the first. Here, the researchers installed a thermal gradient — a small temperature difference that encouraged the wave to restart its journey rather than be reflected and move backwards through the ring. When the excitation crossed this thermodynamic bias, the clock ticked once and also dissipated some energy. Three points here. First, remember that this is a quantum system. The researchers are dealing with energy (almost) at its barest, manipulating it directly without having to bother with an accoutrement of matter covering it. In the classical regime, such accoutrements are unavoidable. For example, if you have a series of cups and you want to make an excitation hop through it, you do so with a marble. But while the marble contains the (potential) energy that you want to move through the cups, it also has mass and it dissipates energy whenever it hops into a cup, e.g. it might bounce when it lands and it will release sound when it strikes the cup’s material. So while the marble metaphor earlier might have helped you visualise the quantum clock, remember that the metaphor has limitations. Second, for the quantum clock to work *as a clock*, it needs to break time-reversal symmetry (a concept I recently discussed in the [context of quasicrystals](https://www.diffract.org/2025/07/11/a-new-beast-among-us-antiferromagnetic-quasicrystals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Say you remove the thermodynamic bias at the last link of the ring and replace it with a regular link. In this case the excitation will move randomly — i.e. at each step it will randomly pick the cup to move to, forward or backward, and keep going. If you reversed time, the excitation’s path will still be random and just evolve in reverse. However, the final thermodynamically biased link causes the excitation to acquire a preference for moving in one direction. The system thus breaks time-reversal symmetry because even if you reverse the flow of time, the system will encourage the excitation to move in one direction and one direction only. This in turn is essential for the quantum system to function like a clock. That is, the excitation needs to traverse a fixed number of cups in the spin chain and then start from the first cup. Only between these two stages will the system count off a ‘tick’. Breaking time-reversal symmetry thus turns the device into a clock. Three, the thermodynamic bias ensures that the jump from the last site to the first is more likely than the reverse, and the entropy is the cost the system pays in order to ensure the jump. Equally, the greater the thermodynamic bias, the more likely the excitation is to move in one direction through spin chain as well as make the jump in the right direction at the final step. Thus, the greater the thermodynamic bias, the more precise the clock will be. The new study excelled by creating a sufficiently precise clock while minimising the entropy cost. According to the researchers, its design design could help build better quantum clocks, which are important for quantum computers, quantum communication, and to make ultra-precise precise measurements of the kind demanded by atomic clocks. The clock’s ticks could also be used to emit single photons at regular intervals — a technology increasingly in demand for its use in quantum networks of the sort China, the US, and India are [trying to build](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/quantum-communication-iit-delhi-drdo-entanglement-qkd-explained/article69705017.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But more fundamentally, the clock’s design — which confines energy dissipation to a single link and uses coherent transport everywhere else — and that design’s ability to evade the precision-entropy trade-off challenges a longstanding belief that the second law of thermodynamics strictly limits precision. *Featured image credit: Meier, F., Minoguchi, Y., Sundelin, S. et al.* Nat. Phys. *(2025).* ### A new beast: antiferromagnetic quasicrystals URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/11/a-new-beast-among-us-antiferromagnetic-quasicrystals/ Last updated: 2025-07-11T09:38:08.000Z Scientists have made a new material that is both a quasicrystal and antiferromagnetic — a combination never seen before. Quasicrystals are a [special kind of solid](https://www.diffract.org/2025/06/26/why-do-quasicrystals-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Unlike normal crystals, whose atoms are arranged in repeating patterns, quasicrystals have patterns that never exactly repeat but which still have an overall order. While regular crystals have left-right symmetries, quasicrystals have unusual rotational ones. For decades, scientists wondered if certain kinds of magnetism, but especially antiferromagnetism, could exist in these strange materials. In all materials the electrons have a property called spin. It's as if a small magnet is embedded inside each electron. The spin denotes the direction of this magnet's magnetic field. In ferromagnets, the spins are aligned in a common direction, so the materials are attracted to magnets. In antiferromagnetic materials, the electron spins line up in alternating directions, so their effects cancel out. While antiferromagnetism is common in regular crystals, it's thus far never been observed in a true quasicrystal. The new study is the first to show clear evidence of antiferromagnetic order in a real, three-dimensional quasicrystal — one made of gold, indium, and europium. The findings were published in [*Nature Physics*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02858-0?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on April 14. The team confirmed such a material is real by carefully measuring how its atoms and spins are arranged and by observing how it behaves at low temperatures. Their work shows that even in the weird world of quasicrystals, complex magnetic order is possible, opening the door to new discoveries and technologies. The scientists created a new alloy with the formula Au56In28.5Eu15.5. This means in 1,000 atoms' worth of the material, 560 will be gold, 285 will be indium, and 155 will be europium. The composition tells us that the scientists were going for a particularly precise combination of these elements — which they could have known in one of two ways. It might have been trial-and-error\*, but that makes research very expensive, or the scientists had reasons to expect antiferromagnetic order would appear in this material. They did. Specifically, the team focused on Au56In28.5Eu15.5 because of its (i) unique positive Curie-Weiss temperature and (ii) rare-earth content, and (iii) because its structural features matched the theoretical criteria for stable antiferromagnetic order. Previous studies focused on quasicrystals containing rare-earth elements because they often have strong magnetic interactions. However, these compounds typically displayed a negative Curie-Weiss temperature, indicating dominant antiferromagnetic interactions but resulting only in disordered magnetic states. A positive Curie-Weiss temperature indicates dominant ferromagnetic interactions. In this case, however, it also suggested a unique balance of magnetic forces that could potentially stabilise antiferromagnetic order rather than spin-glass behaviour. Studies on approximant crystals — periodic structures closely related to quasicrystals — had also shown that both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic orders are stabilised only when the Curie-Weiss temperature is positive. In contrast, a negative temperature led to spin-glass states. The scientists of the new study noticed that the Au-In-Eu quasicrystal fit into the positive Curie-Weiss temperature category, making it a promising candidate to have antiferromagnetic order. For added measure, by slightly altering the composition, e.g. adding an impurity to increase the electron-per-atom ratio, the scientists could make the antiferromagnetic phase disappear, to be replaced by spin-glass behaviour. This sensitivity to electron concentration further hinted that the composition of the alloy was at a sweet spot for stabilising antiferromagnetism. Finally, the team had also recently discovered ferromagnetic order in some similar gold-based quasicrystals with rare-earth elements. The success encouraged them to explore the magnetic properties of new compositions, especially those with unusual Curie-Weiss temperatures. The Au-In-Eu quasicrystal is also a Tsai-type icosahedral quasicrystal, meaning it features a highly symmetric atomic arrangement. Theoretical work has suggested that such structures could support antiferromagnetic order in the right conditions, especially if the atoms occupied specific sites in the lattice. To make the alloy, the scientists used a technique called arc-melting, where highly pure metals are melted together using an electric arc, then quickly cooled to form the solid quasicrystal. To ensure the mixture was even, the team melted and flipped the sample several times. Then they used X-ray and electron diffraction to check the atomic arrangement. These techniques passed X-rays and electrons through the material. A detector on the other side picked up the radiation scattered by the material's atoms and used it to recreate their arrangement. The patterns showed the material was a primitive icosahedral quasicrystal, a structure with 20-sided symmetry and no repeating units. The team also confirmed special arrangement of atoms by the way the diffraction patterns followed mathematical rules that are special to quasicrystals. Team members also used a magnetometer to track how much the material was magnetised when exposed to a magnetic field, from temperatures as low as 0.4 K to up to 300 K. Finally they also measured the material's specific heat, i.e. the amount of heat energy it took to raise its temperature by 1º C. This reading can show signs of magnetic transitions. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/4df3f-screenshot-2025-07-11-at-12.19.06-pm.png?w=1000) Left: The arrangement of atoms in the quasicrystal alloy. The atoms are arranged in a combination of two patterns, shown on the right. The colouring denotes their place in either pattern rather than different elements. Credit: Nature Physics volume 21, pages 974–979 (2025) To confirm how the spins inside the material were arranged, the team used neutron diffraction. Neutrons are adept at passing through materials and are sensitive to both atoms' positions and magnetic order. By comparing patterns at temperatures above and below the suspected transition point, they could spot the appearance of new peaks that signal magnetic order. This way, the team reported that at 6.5 K, the magnetisation curve showed a sharp change, known as a cusp. This is a classic sign of an antiferromagnetic transition, where the material suddenly changes from being unordered to having a regular up-and-down pattern of spins. The specific heat also showed a sharp peak at this temperature, confirming something dramatic was happening inside the material. The scientists also reported that there was no sign of spin-glass behaviour — where the spins are pointing in random directions but unchanging — which is common in other magnetic quasicrystals. Below 6.5 K, new peaks appeared in the neutron diffraction data, evidence that the spins inside the material were lining up in the regular but alternating pattern characteristic of antiferromagnetic order. The peaks were also sharp and well-defined, showing the order was long-range, meaning they were there throughout the material and not confined to small patches. The team also experimented by adding a small amount of tin to the alloy, which changed the balance of electrons. This little change caused the material to lose its antiferromagnetic order and become a spin glass instead, showing how delicate the balance is between different magnetic states in quasicrystals. The findings are important because this is the first time scientists have observed antiferromagnetic order in a real, three-dimensional quasicrystal, settling a long-standing debate. They also open up a new field of study, of quasiperiodic antiferromagnets, and suggest that by carefully tuning the composition, scientists may be able to find yet other types of magnetic order in quasicrystals. "The present discovery will stimulate both experimental and theoretical efforts to elucidate not only its unique magnetic structure but also the intrinsic properties of the quasiperiodic order parameter," the scientists wrote in their paper. "Another exciting aspect of magnetically ordered quasicrystals is their potential for new applications such as functional materials in spintronics" — which use electron spins to store and process information in ultra-fast computers of the future. --- **\*** Which is not the same as serendipity. *Featured image credit: Nature Physics volume 21, pages 974–979 (2025).* ### Tracking the Meissner effect under pressure URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/05/tracking-the-meissner-effect-under-pressure/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T11:32:01.000Z In the last two or three years, groups of scientists from around the world have made several claims that they had [discovered a room-temperature superconductor](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2023/08/06/whats-with-superconductors-and-peer-review/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Many of these claims concerned high-pressure superconductors — materials that superconduct electricity at room temperature but only if they are placed under extreme pressure (a million atmospheres' worth). Yet other scientists had challenged these claims on many grounds, but one in particular was whether these materials really exhibited the Meissner effect. Room-temperature superconductors are often called the 'holy grail' of materials science. I abhor clichés but in this case the idiom fits perfectly. If such a material is invented or discovered, it could revolutionise many industries. To quote at length from an article by electrical engineer Massoud Pedram in [*The Conversation*](https://theconversation.com/room-temperature-superconductors-could-revolutionize-electronics-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-materials-potential-201849?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Room-temperature superconductors would enable ultra high-speed digital interconnects for next-generation computers and low-latency broadband wireless communications. They would also enable high-resolution imaging techniques and emerging sensors for biomedical and security applications, materials and structure analyses, and deep-space radio astrophysics. > > Room-temperature superconductors would mean MRIs could become much less expensive to operate because they would not require liquid helium coolant, which is expensive and in short supply. Electrical power grids would be at least 20% more power efficient than today’s grids, resulting in billions of dollars saved per year, according to my estimates. Maglev trains could operate over longer distances at lower costs. Computers would run faster with orders of magnitude lower power consumption. And quantum computers could be built with many more qubits, enabling them to solve problems that are far beyond the reach of today’s most powerful supercomputers. However, this surfeit of economic opportunities could also lure scientists into not thoroughly double-checking their results, cherry-picking from their data or jumping to conclusions if they believe they have found a room-temperature superconductor. Many papers written by scientists claiming they had found a room-temperature superconductor have in fact been published in and subsequently retracted from peer-reviewed journals with prestigious reputations, including *Nature* and *Science*, after independent experts found the papers to contain flawed data. Whatever the reasons for these mistakes, independent scrutiny of such reports has become very important. If a material is a superconductor, it needs to meet two conditions\*. The first of course is that it needs conduct a direct electric current with zero resistance. Second, the material should display the Meissner effect. Place a magnet over a superconducting material. Then, gradually cool the material to lower and lower temperatures, until you cross the critical temperature. Just as you cross this threshold, the magnet will start to float above the material. You've just physically observed the Meissner effect. It happens because when the material transitions to its superconducting state, it will expel all magnetic fields within its bulk to its surface. This results in any magnets already sitting nearby to be pushed away. In fact, the Meissner effect is considered to be the hallmark sign of a superconductor because it's difficult to fake. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/41d9c-efektmeisnera.svg_-1.png?w=1024) An illustration of the Meissner effect. B denotes the magnetic field, T is the temperature, and Tc is the critical temperature. Credit: Piotr Jaworski Wait for the 1:03 mark. The problem with acquiring evidence of the Meissner effect is the setup in which many of these materials become superconductors. In order to apply the tens to hundreds of gigapascals (GPa) of pressure, a small sample of the material — a few grams or less — is placed between a pair of high-quality diamond crystals and squeezed. This diamond anvil cell apparatus leaves no room for a conventional magnetic field sensor to be placed inside the cell. Measuring the magnetic properties of the sample is also complicated because of the fields from other sources in the apparatus, which will have to be accurately measured and then subtracted from the final data. To tackle this problem, some scientists have of late suggested measuring the sample's magnetic properties using the only entity that can still enter and leave the diamond anvil cell: light. In technical terms, such a technique is called optical magnetometry. Magnetometry in general is any technique that converts some physical signal into data about a magnetic field. In this case the signal is in the form of light, thus the 'optical' prefix. To deploy optical magnetometry in the context of verifying whether a material is a high-pressure superconductor, scientists have suggested using nitrogen vacancy (NV) centres. Say you have a good crystal of diamond with you. The crystal consists of carbon atoms bound to each other in sets of four in the shape of a pyramid. [Millions of copies](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/why-do-quasicrystals-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of such pyramids together make up the diamond. Now, say you substitute one of the carbon atoms in the gem with a nitrogen atom and also knock out an adjacent carbon atom. Physicists have found that this vacancy in the lattice, called an NV centre, has interesting, useful properties. For example, an NV centre can fluoresce, i.e. absorb light of a higher frequency and emit light of a lower frequency. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/d7478-2710f-750da-nitrogen-vacancy_center.png?w=330) An illustration of a nitrogen vacancy centre in diamond. Carbon atoms are shown in green. Credit: Public domain Because each NV centre is surrounded by three carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom, the vacancy hosts six electrons, two of which are unpaired. All electrons have a property called quantum spin. The quantum spin is the constitutive entity of magnetism the same way the electric charge is the constitutive entity of electricity. For example, if a block of iron is to be turned into a magnet, the spins of all the electrons inside have to be made point in the same direction. Each spin can point in one of two directions, which for a magnet are called 'north' and 'south'. Planet earth has a magnetic north and a magnetic south because the spins of the trillions upon trillions of electrons in its core have come to point in roughly the same direction. The alignment of the spins of different electrons also affects what energy they have. For example, in the right conditions, an atom with two electrons will have more energy if the electrons' spins are aligned (↑↑) than when the electrons' spins are anti-aligned (↑↓). This fundamental attribute of the electrons in the NV centres allows the centres to operate as a super-sensitive detector of magnetic fields — and which is what scientists from institutions around France have reported doing in a [June 30 paper](https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.23.064067?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Physical Review Applied*. The scientists implanted a layer of 10,000 to 100,000 NV centres a few nanometres under the surface of one of the diamond anvils. These centres had electrons with energies precisely 2.87 GHz apart.**\*\*** When the centres were then exposed to microwave laser of some frequency, every NV centre could absorb green laser light and re-emit red light. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/c3862-1a053-07abc-screenshot-2025-07-03-at-10.49.01e280afam.png?w=1024) The experimental setup. DAC stands for 'diamond anvil cell'. PL stands for 'photoluminescence', i.e. the red light emission. Credit: arXiv:2501.14504v1 As the diamond anvils squeezed the sample past 4 GPa, the pressure at which it would have become a superconductor, the sample displayed the Meissner effect, expelling magnetic fields from within its bulk to the surface. As a result, the NV centres were exposed to a magnetic field in their midst that wasn't there before. This field affected the electrons' collective spin and thus their energy levels, which in turn caused the red light being emitted from the centres to dim. The researchers could easily track the levels and patterns of dimming in the NV centres with a microscopy, and based on that were able to ascertain whether the sample had displayed the Meissner effect. As *Physical Review Letters* associate editor Martin Rodriguez-Vega wrote in [*Physics*](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/s88?ref=slightlyacidic.com) magazine: "A statistical analysis of the \[optical\] dataset revealed information about the magnetic-field strength and orientation across the sample. Mapping these quantities produced a visualisation of the Meissner effect and revealed the existence of defects in the superconductor." ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/67762-9ea80-85555-screenshot-2025-07-03-at-10.51.58e280afam.png?w=1024) In (a), the dotted lines show the parts of the sample that the diamond anvils were in contact with. (b) shows the parts of the sample associated with the red-light emissions from the NV centres, meaning these parts of the sample exhibited the Meissner effect in the experiment. (c) shows the normalised red-light emission along the y-axis and the frequency of microwave light shined along the x-axis. Red lines show the emission in normal conditions and blue lines show the emissions in the presence of the Meissner effect. Credit: arXiv:2501.14504v1 Because the NV centres were less than 1 micrometre away from the sample, they were extremely sensitive to changes in the magnetic field. In fact the researchers reported that the various centres were able to reveal the critical temperature for different parts of the sample separately than for the sample as a whole — a resolution not possible with conventional techniques. The pristine diamond matrix also conferred the electrons' spins inside the NV centres with a long lifetime. And because there were so many NV centres, the researchers were able to 'scan' them with the microwave laser en masse instead of having to maintain focus on a single point on the diamond anvil, when looking for evidence of changes in the sample's magnetic field. Finally, while the sample in the study became superconducting at a critical temperature of around 140 K, the centres were stable to under 4 K. Another major advantage of the technique is that it can be used with type II superconductors as well. Type I superconductors are materials that transition to their superconducting state in a single step, under the critical temperature. Type II superconductors transition to their superconducting states in more than one step and display a combination of flux-pinning and the Meissner effect. From my piece in [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/four-steps-superconducting-transition-explained-lk-99/article67164750.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in August 2023: "When a flux-pinned superconductor is taken away from a particular part of the magnetic field and put back in, it will snap back to its original relative position." This happens because type II materials, while they don't expel magnetic fields from within their bulk, also prevent the fields from moving around inside. Thus the magnetic field lines are pinned in place. Because of the spatial distribution of the NV centres and their sensitivity, they can reveal flux-pinning in the sample by 'sensing' the magnetic fields at different distances. --- **\*** The material can make a stronger case for itself if it displays two more properties. (i) The heat energy required to raise the material's electrons by 1º C has to change drastically at the critical temperature, which is the temperature below which the material becomes a superconductor. (ii) The material's electrons shouldn't be able to have certain energy readings. (That is, a map of the energies of all the electrons should show some gaps.) These properties are however considered optional. **\*\*** While 2.87 GHz is a frequency figure, recall Planck's equation from high school: *E* \= h*v*. Energy is equal to frequency times Planck's constant, h. Since h is a constant (6.62 × 10\-34 m2kg/s), energy figures are frequently denoted in terms of frequency in physics. An interested party can calculate the energy by themselves. ### Enfeebling the Indian space programme URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/07/03/the-enfeeblement-of-the-indian-space-programme/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T13:15:00.000Z There's no denying that there currently prevails a public culture in India that equates criticism, even well-reasoned, with pooh-poohing. It's especially pronounced in certain geographies where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoys majority support as well as vis-à-vis institutions that the subscribers of Hindu politics consider to be ripe for international renown, especially in the eyes of the country's former colonial masters. The other side of the same cultural coin is the passive encouragement it offers to those who'd play up the feats of Indian enterprises even if they lack substantive evidence to back their claims up. While these tendencies are pronounced in many enterprises, I have encountered them most often in the spaceflight domain. Through its feats of engineering and administration over the years, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has cultivated a deserved reputation of setting a high bar for itself and meeting them. Its achievements are the reason why India is one of a few countries today with a functionally complete space programme. It operates launch vehicles, conducts spaceflight-related R&D, has facilities to develop as well as track satellites, and maintains data-processing pipeliness to turn the data it collects from space into products usable for industry and academia. It is now embarking on a human spaceflight programme as well. ISRO has also launched interplanetary missions to the moon and Mars, with one destined for Venus in the works. In and of itself the organisation has an enviable legacy. Thus, unsurprisingly, many sections of the Hindutva brigade have latched onto ISRO's achievements to animate their own propaganda of India's greatness, both real and imagined. The surest signs of this adoption are most visible when ISRO missions fail or succeed in unclear ways. The Chandrayaan 2 mission and the Axiom-4 mission respectively are illustrative examples. As if to forestall any allegations that the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed, then ISRO chairman K. Sivam said right after its Vikram lander crashed on the moon that it had been a ["98% success"](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/if-chandrayaan-2-was-a-90-95-success-is-the-answer-whats-the-question/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Chandrayaan 2 was a technology demonstrator and it did successfully demonstrate most of those onboard very well. The "98%" figure, however, was so disproportionate as to suggest Sivan was defending the mission less on its merits than on its ability to fit into reductive narratives of how good ISRO was. (Recall, similarly, when former DCGI V.G. Somani claimed the homegrown Covaxin vaccine was ["110% safe"](https://science.thewire.in/health/dcgi-vg-somani-serum-instityte-covishield-bharat-biotech-covaxin-approval-unanswered-questions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when safety data from its phase III clinical trials weren't even available.) On the other hand, even as the Axiom-4 mission was about to kick off, neither ISRO nor the Department of Space (DoS) had articulated what Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's presence onboard the mission was expected to achieve. If these details didn't actually exist before the mission, to participate in which ISRO had paid Axiom Space more than Rs 500 crore, both ISRO and the DoS were effectively keeping the door open to picking a goalpost of their choosing to kick the ball through as the mission progressed. If they did have these details but had elected to not share them, their (in)actions raised — or ought to have — difficult questions about the terms on which these organisations believed they were accountable in a democratic country. Either way, the success of the Axiom-4 mission vis-à-vis Shukla's participation was something of an empty vessel: a ready receptacle for any narrative that could be placed inside *ex post facto*. At the same time, [raising this question](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2025/06/10/india-next-man-in-space/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has often been construed in the public domain, but especially on social media platforms, in response to arguments presented in the news, and in conversations among people interested in Indian spaceflight, as naysaying Shukla's activities altogether. By all means let's celebrate Shukla's and by extension India's 'citius, altius, fortius' moment in human spaceflight; the question is: what didn't ISRO/DoS share before Axiom-4 lifted off and why? (Note that what journalists have been reporting since liftoff, while valuable, isn't the answer to the question posed here.) While it's tempting to think this pinched communication is a strategy developed by the powers that be to cope with insensitive reporting in the press, doing so would also ignore the political capture institutions like ISRO have already suffered and which ISRO arguably has as well, during and after Sivan's term as chairman. For just two examples of institutions that have historically enjoyed a popularity comparable in both scope and flavour to that of ISRO, consider India's cricket administration and the Election Commission. During the 2024 men's T20 World Cup that India eventually won, the Indian team had the least amount of travel and the most foreknowledge on the ground it was to play its semifinal game on. At the 2023 men's ODI World Cup, too, India played all its matches on Sundays, ensuring the highest attendance for its own contests rather than be able to share that opportunity with all teams. The tournament is intended to be a celebration of the sport after all. For added measure, police personnel were also deployed at various stadia to take away spectators' placards and flags in support of Pakistan in matches featuring the Pakistani team. The stage management of both World Cups only lessened, rather than heightened, the Indian team's victories. It's been a similar story with the Election Commission of India, which has of late come under repeated attack from the Indian National Congress party and some of its allies for allegedly rigging their electronic voting machines and subsequently entire elections in favour of the BJP. While the Congress [has failed to submit](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-trouble-with-the-supreme-courts-evm-verdict/article68128302.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the extraordinary evidence required to support these extraordinary claims, doubts about the ECI's integrity have spread anyway because there are other, more overt ways in which the once-independent institution of Indian democracy favours the BJP — including scheduling elections according to the availability of party supremo Narendra Modi to speak at rallies. Recently, a more obscure but nonetheless pertinent controversy erupted in some circles when in an NDTV report incumbent ISRO chairman V. Narayanan seemed to suggest that SpaceX called one of the attempts to launch Axiom-4 off because his team at ISRO had insisted that the company thoroughly check its rocket for bugs. The incident followed SpaceX engineers spotting a leak on the rocket. The point of egregiousness here is that while SpaceX had built and flown that very type of rocket hundreds of times, Narayanan and ambiguous wording in the NDTV report made it out to be that SpaceX would have flown the rocket if not for ISRO's insistence. What's more likely to have happened is NASA and SpaceX engineers would have consulted ISRO as they would have consulted the other agencies involved in the flight — ESA, HUNOR, and Axiom Space — about their stand, and the ISRO team on its turn would have clarified its position: that SpaceX recheck the rocket before the next launch attempt. However, the narrative "if not for ISRO, SpaceX would've flown a bad rocket" took flight anyway. Evidently these are not isolated incidents. The last three ISRO chairmen — Sivan, Somanath, and now Narayanan — have progressively curtailed the flow of information from the organisation to the press even as they have maintained a steady pro-Hindutva, pro-establishment rhetoric. All three leaders have also only served at ISRO's helm when the BJP was in power at the Centre, wielding its tendency to centralise power by, among others, centralising the permissions to speak freely. Some enterprising journalists like Chethan Kumar and T.S. Subramanian and activists like [r/Ohsin](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/isro-sivan-chandrayaan-2-vikram-shanmuga-subramanian-lro-nasa-reddit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and X.com/@SolidBoosters have thus far kept the space establishment from resembling a black hole. But the overarching strategy is as simple as it is devious: while critical arguments become preoccupied by whataboutery and fending off misguided accusations of neocolonialist thinking ("why should we measure an ISRO mission's success the way NASA measures its missions' successes?"), unconditional expressions of support and adulation spread freely through our shared communication networks. This can only keep up a false veil of greatness that crumbles the moment it brooks legitimate criticism, becoming desperate for yet another veil to replace itself. But even that is beside the point: to echo the philosopher Bruno Latour, when criticism is blocked from attending to something we have all laboured to build, that something is deprived of the "care and caution" it needs to grow, to no longer be fragile. Yet that's exactly what the Indian space programme risks becoming today. Here's a brand new case in point, from [the tweets](https://x.com/SolidBoosters/status/1940350220589748725?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that prompted this post: according to an RTI query filed by @SolidBoosters, India's homegrown NavIC satellite navigation constellation is just one clock failure away from "complete operational collapse". The issue appears to be ISRO's [subpar launch cadence](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/where-is-isro-heading/article69235431.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the consequently sluggish replacement of clocks that have already failed. Granted, rushed critiques and critiques designed to sting more than guide can only be expected to elicit defensive posturing. But to minimise one's exposure to all criticism altogether, especially those from learned quarters and conveyed in respectful language, is to deprive oneself of the pressure and the drive to solve the right problems in the right ways, both drawing from and adding to India's democratic fabric. The end results are public speeches and commentary that are increasingly removed from reality as well as, more importantly, thicker walls between criticism and The Thing it strives to nurture. ### Iran's nuclear options URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/28/irans-nuclear-options/ Last updated: 2025-06-28T03:18:00.000Z From ['What is next for Iran’s nuclear programme?'](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/what-is-next-for-irans-nuclear-programme/article69744566.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, June 28, 2025: > As things stand, Iran has amassed both the technical knowhow and the materials required to make a nuclear weapon. Second, the Israelis and the Americans have failed to deprive Iran of these resources in their latest salvo. In fact the airstrikes against Iran from June 13 cast Tehran as the victim of foreign aggression and increased the premium on its option to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without significant international censure. > > … > > While Tehran’s refusal to cooperate with the IAEA is suggestive, it hasn’t explicitly articulated that it will pursue nuclear weapons. … But the presence of large quantities of HEU in the stockpile is intriguing. From a purely technical standpoint, the HEU can still be diverted for non-military applications… … such as R&D for naval applications and downconversion to less enriched reactor fuel. But these are niche use cases. In fact while it's possible to downconvert a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% to that enriched to 19.75%, 5% or 3% without using centrifuges, it's also possible to do this by mixing uranium enriched to 20% with natural or depleted feedstock. > If anything, the highly enriched uranium stockpile \[which Iran went to some lengths to protect from American bombing\], the technical knowhow in the country, the absence of a nuclear warhead per se, and the sympathy created by the bombing allow Tehran a perfect bargaining chip: to simultaneously be in a state of pre-breakout readiness while being able to claim in earnest that it is interested in nuclear energy for peace. [Read more.](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/what-is-next-for-irans-nuclear-programme/article69744566.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### Why do quasicrystals exist? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/26/why-do-quasicrystals-exist/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T07:04:05.000Z *Featured image: An example of zellij tilework in the Al Attarine Madrasa in Fes, Morocco (2012), with complex geometric patterns on the lower walls and a band of calligraphy above. Caption and credit: just\_a\_cheeseburger (CC BY)* --- 'Quasi' means almost. It's an unfair name for quasicrystals. These crystals exist in their own right. Their name comes from the internal arrangement of their atoms. A crystal is made up of a repeating group of some atoms arranged in a fixed way. The smallest arrangement that repeats to make up the whole crystal is called the unit cell. In diamond, a convenient unit cell is four carbon atoms bonded to each other in a tetrahedral (pyramid-like) arrangement. Millions of copies of this unit cell together make up a diamond crystal. The unit cell of sodium chloride has a cubical shape: the chloride ions (Cl\-) occupy the corners and face centres while the sodium ions (Na+) occupy the middle of the edges and centre of the cube. As this cube repeats itself, you get table salt. The structure of all crystals thus follows two simple rules: have a unit cell and repeat it. Thus the internal structure of crystals is periodic. For example if a unit cell is 5 nanometres wide, it stands to reason you'll see the same arrangement of atoms after every 5 nm. And because it's the same unit cell in all directions and they don't have any gaps between them, the unit cells fill the space available. It's thus an exercise in tiling. For example, you can cover a floor of any shape completely with square or triangular tiles (you'll just need to trim those at the edges). But you can't do this with pentagonal tiles. If you do, the tiles will have gaps between them that other pentagonal tiles can't fill. Quasicrystals buck this pattern in a simple way: their unit cells are like pentagonal tiles. They repeat themselves but the resulting tiling isn't periodic. There are no gaps in the crystal either because instead of each unit cell just like the one on its left or right, the tiles sometimes slot themselves in by rotating by an angle. Thus rather than the crystal structure following a grid-like pattern, the unit cells seem to be ordered along curves. As a result, even though the structure may have an ordered set of atoms, it's impossible to find a unit cell that by repeating itself in a straight line gives rise to the overall crystal. In technical parlance, the crystal is said to lack translational symmetry. Such structures are called quasicrystals. They're obviously not crystalline, because they lack a periodic arrangement of atoms. They aren't amorphous either, like the haphazardly arranged atoms of glass. Quasicrystals are somewhere in between: their atoms are arranged in a fixed way, with different combinations of pentagonal, octagonal, and other tile shapes that are disallowed in regular crystals, and with the substance lacking a unit cell. Instead the tiles twist and turn within the structure to form mosaic patterns like the ones featured in Islamic architecture (see image at the top). ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/bd175-db410-587a8-6a00a-penrose_tiling_rhombi.svg_.png?w=1024) In the 1970s, Roger Penrose discovered a particularly striking quasicrystal pattern, since called the Penrose Tiling, composed of two 'thin' and 'thick' rhombi (depicted here in green and blue, respectively). Credit: Public domain The discovery of quasicrystals in the early 1980s was a revolutionary moment in the history of science. It shook up what chemists believed a crystal should look like and what rules the unit cell ought to follow. The first quasicrystals that scientists studied were made in the lab, in particular aluminium-manganese alloys, and there was a sense that these unusual crystals didn't occur in nature. That changed in the 1990s and 2000s when expeditions to Siberia uncovered natural quasicrystals in meteorites that had smashed into the earth millions of years ago. But even this discovery kept one particular question about quasicrystals alive: why do they exist? Both Al-Mn alloys and the minerals in meteorites form in high temperatures and extreme pressures. The question of their existence, more than just because they can, is a question about whether the atoms involved are forced to adopt a quasicrystal rather than a crystal structure. In other words, it asks if the atoms would rather adopt a crystal structure but don't because their external conditions force them not to. --- *This post benefited from feedback from Adhip Agarwala.* --- Often a good way to understand the effects of extreme conditions on a substance is using the tools of thermodynamics — the science of the conditions in which heat moves from place to another. And in thermodynamics, the existential question can be framed like this, to quote from a June paper in [*Nature Physics*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02925-6?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "Are quasicrystals enthalpy-stabilised or entropy-stabilised?" Enthalpy-stabilised means the atoms of a quasicrystal are arranged in a way where they collectively have the lowest energy possible for that group. It means the atoms aren't arranged in a less-than-ideal way forced by their external conditions but because the quasicrystal structure in fact is better than a crystal structure. It answers "why do quasicrystals exist?" with "because they want to, not just because they can". Entropy-stabilised goes the other way. That is: at 0 K (-273.15º C), the atoms would rather come together as a crystal because a crystal structure has lower energy at absolute zero. But as the temperature increases, the energy in the crystal builds up and forces the atoms to adjust where they're sitting so that they can accommodate new forces. At some higher temperature, the structure becomes entropy-stabilised. That is, there's enough disorder in the structure — like sound passing through the grid of atoms and atoms momentarily shifting their positions — that allows it to hold the 'excess' energy but at the same time deviate from the orderliness of a crystal structure. Entropy stabilisation answers "why do quasicrystals exist?" with "because they're forced to, not because they want to". In materials science, the go-to tool to judge whether a crystal structure is energetically favourable is density functional theory (DFT). It estimates the total energy of a solid and from there scientists can compare competing phases and decide which one is most stable. If four atoms will have less energy arranged as a cuboid than as a pyramid at a certain temperature and pressure, then the cuboidal phase is said to be more favoured. The problem is DFT can't be directly applied to quasicrystals because the technique assumes that a given mineral has a periodic internal structure. Quasicrystals are aperiodic. But because scientists are already comfortable with using DFT, they have tried to surmount this problem by considering a superunit cell that's made up of a large number of atoms or by assuming that a quasicrystal's structure, while being aperiodic in three dimensions, could be periodic in say four dimensions. But the resulting estimates of the solid's energy have not been very good. In the new *Nature Physics* paper, scientists from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have reported a way around the no-unit-cell problem to apply DFT to estimate the energy of two quasicrystals. And they found that these quasicrystals are enthalpy-stabilised. The finding answer is a chemistry breakthrough because it raises the possibility of performing DFT in crystals without translational symmetry. Further, by showing that two real quasicrystals are enthalpy-stabilised, chemists may be forced to rethink why almost every other inorganic material does adopt a repeating structure. Crystals are no longer at the centre of the orderliness universe. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/386e6-9ad39-05fb2-ea99a-ho-mg-zn_e8-5cube.jpg?w=1024) An electron diffraction pattern of an icosahedral holmium-magnesium-zinc quasicrystal reveals the arrangement of its atoms. Credit: Jgmoxness (CC BY-SA) The team started by studying the internal structure of two quasicrystals using X-rays, then 'scooped' out five random parts for further analysis. Each of these scoops had 24 to 740 atoms. Second, the team used a modified version of DFT called DFT-FE. The computational cost of running DFT scales increases according to the cube of the number of atoms being studied. If studying four atoms with DFT requires X amount of computing power, 24 atoms would require 8,000 times X and 740 atoms would require 400 million times X. Instead the computational cost of DFT-FE scales as the square of the number of atoms, which makes a big difference. Continuing from the previous example, 24 atoms would require 400 times X and 740 atoms would require half a million times X. But the lower computational cost of DFT-FE is still considerable. The researchers' solution was to use GPUs — the processors originally developed to run complicated video games and today used to run artificial intelligence (AI) apps like ChatGPT. The team was able to calculate that the resulting energy estimates for a quasicrystal was off by no more than 0.3 milli-electron-volt (meV) per atom, considered acceptable. They also applied their technique to a known crystal, ScZn6, and confirmed that its estimate of the energy matched the known value (5-9 meV per atom). They were ready to go now. When they applied DFT-FE to scandium-zinc and ytterbium-cadmium quasicrystals, they found clear evidence that they were enthalpy-stabilised. Each atom in the scandium-zinc quasicrystal had 23 meV less energy than if it had been part of a crystal structure. Similarly atoms in the ytterbium-cadmium quasicrystal had roughly 7 meV less each. The verdict was obvious: translational symmetry is not required for the most stable form of an inorganic solid. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/e3b94-bf785-90f91-8a572-quasicrystal-grain.jpg?w=672) A single grain of a scandium-zinc quasicrystal has 12 pentagonal faces. Credit: Yamada et al. (2016). IUCrJ The researchers also explored why the ytterbium-cadmium quasicrystal is so much easier to make than the scandium-zinc quasicrystal. In fact the former was the world's first two-element quasicrystal to be discovered, 25 years ago this year. The team broke down the total energy as the energy in the bulk plus energy on the surface, and found that the scandium-zinc quasicrystal has high surface energy. This is important because in thermodynamics, energy is like cost. If you're hungry and go to a department store, you buy the pack of biscuits that you can afford rather than wait until you have enough money to buy the most expensive one. Similarly, when there's a hot mass of scandium-zinc as a liquid and scientists are slowly cooling it, the atoms will form the first solid phase they can access rather than wait until they have accumulated enough surface energy to access the quasicrystal phase. And the first phase they can access will be crystalline. On the other hand scientists discovered the ytterbium-cadmium quasicrystal so quickly because it has a modest amount of energy across its surface and thus when cooled from liquid to solid, the first solid phase the atoms can access is also the quasicrystal phase. This is an important discovery: the researchers found that a phase diagram alone can't be used to say which phase will actually form. Understanding the surface-energy barrier is also important, and could pave the way to a practical roadmap for scientists trying to grow crystals for specific applications. The big question now is: what special bonding or electronic effects allow atoms to have order without periodicity? After Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman discovered quasicrystals in 1982, he didn't publish his findings until two years later, after including some authors on his submission to improve its chances with a journal, because he thought he wouldn't be taken seriously. This wasn't a silly concern: Linus Pauling, one of the greatest chemists in the history of subject, dismissed Shechtman's work and called him a "quasi-scientist". The blowback was so sharp and swift because chemists like Pauling, who had helped establish the science of crystal structures, were certain there was a way crystals could look and a way they couldn't — and quasicrystals didn't have the right look. But now, the new study has found that quasicrystals look perfect. Perhaps it's crystals that need to explain themselves… ### Technical foundation for a muon collider laid at J-PARC URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/24/technical-foundation-for-a-muon-collider-laid-at-j-parc-2/ Last updated: 2025-06-24T04:13:50.000Z A particle collider is a machine that energises two beams of subatomic particles and smashes them head on. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe is the world's largest and most famous particle collider. It accelerates (with the effect of energising) two beams of protons to nearly the speed of light and has them collide. When they do, energy is released in the same way the collision of two cars releases sound, heat, and kinetic energy. The existing kinetic energy of the beams is redistributed into the mass and kinetic energy of new particles. By studying this process, physicists can learn a lot about their properties. For example, this is how they made one of the headline discoveries of the 21st century: the Higgs boson particle in 2012\. Proving the particle exists allowed physicists to confirm that their theory about how subatomic particles get mass is right. That theory is in turn related to many properties of our universe, including its size, the formation of galaxies, and the inner lives of all the universe's stars, including our sun. For first proposing that theory in 1964 (together with four others), Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded the physics Nobel Prize in 2013. This said, the properties of the Higgs boson, which physicists have since examined in more detail, have raised more questions about the universe. Two examples include the mysterious nature of dark matter and why neutrinos have mass even though the theory that explains all subatomic particles says they shouldn't. While scientists have built and are operating clever experiments to test different explanations for these anomalous entities, [they are also discussing](https://multicollider.wordpress.com/2025/03/29/who-are-we-cern-fcc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the possibility of building more powerful colliders. The LHC has been able to access a collision energy of up to 13.6 TeV, or about 14,000-times the energy of a proton at rest. Scientists are currently deliberating proposals for colliders that can do better. The machines in these proposals have taken three forms: a linear electron-positron collider, a circular electron-positron collider, and a circular proton-proton collider. Each of these machines will cost several billion dollars to build and will require many countries to fund and manage them. So scientists have to be able to justify which collider they'd like to build and then convince governments to pay. The most common argument has been that participating in such sophisticated experiments will also lead to spin-off benefits that will give countries the edge in other spheres, including in medical diagnostics and materials of the future. Increasingly, the question of scientific leadership has also become relevant: India is looking for some of it *en route* to its goal to become an economically developed country by mid-century; the US is trying to not lose it to China; China is working to take more of it from the US; and so on. The point is that there is more at stake here than 'simple' problems in physics, although these questions are weighty in their own right. The problem currently is that all three types of machines — a linear/circular electron-positron collider or a circular proton-proton collider — are beset by important disadvantages of their own, and different scientists have focused on them (in addition to their price tags) as they try to decide the way forward. A circular proton-proton collider like the LHC [but bigger](https://multicollider.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/lhec-and-fcc-he/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) can scale a collision energy of 100 TeV. However, it will need to deal with the fact that protons are composite particles, i.e. they're made up of smaller particles. When they collide head on, only a small fraction of energy is used to 'make' new particles; the rest is exchanged between the constituent particles. Both electrons and positrons are elementary particles on the other hand and generate 'clean' collision data. But when an electron (or a positron) is circulated in a magnetic field through the collider while it's being accelerated, its small mass means it releases much of the energy it acquires as light. Thus circular electron accelerators consume a lot of energy to achieve their results. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/715ec-bccc7-b9ac0-80b6b-syncrotron.svg_.png?w=1024) When a charged particle like an electron is made to accelerate on a curve while it's moving near the speed of light, it will emit radiation called synchrotron light. The lower the particle's mass, the more synchrotron light it will emit. Credit: R. Bartolini (CC BY) A linear collider doesn't have this problem since the particles are accelerated in a straight line, but because they can't go round and round to accelerate more and more, the machine needs to be really long. In some designs they are a few tens of kilometres long: finding a suitably large patch of land is difficult, and maintaining the integrity of the beam across that distance more so. And because each group of particles collides only once and is dumped, the collider must produce, accelerate, and dispose of fresh ultra-intense particle beams at a high frequency, increasing its wall-plug power demand. In this scenario, some scientists are also mulling a new type of collider that hasn't been built before — one for muons. Unlike protons and like electrons, muons are elementary particles and thus lead to clean collisions. A muon is also about 200-times heavier than an electron, so it loses more than a billion-times less energy as light when it's being accelerated in a circle. Thus, as scientist Diktys Stratakis of Fermilab in the US [wrote](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.160001?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "A muon collider ring with a circumference of 10 km could have the same potential as a 100 km proton collider ring, if proven to be feasible." But of course it's not a silver bullet. Perhaps the single biggest issue is that muons are much less stable than protons or electrons. Each muon has a lifetime of about 2.2 microseconds at rest. So producing a sufficiently dense bunch of muons is difficult. The collider must also be able to create large, powerful magnetic fields fast enough before the muons decay. And when muons do decay, they emit electrons or positrons that the machine's various components must be shielded from. So building a muon collider entails a lot of innovation first. A team of scientists in Japan recently reported in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.245001?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they had taken a crucial step forward: they were able to cool (de-energise) a bunch of muons, then accelerate them for the first time using a device called a radiofrequency cavity. This is significant because this end-to-end feat has never been demonstrated before and as such represents the first major problem to solve when building a muon collider. The scientists — from Canada, China, and Japan — performed their feat at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai. They achieved it in six steps. 1\. A beam of 0.003 TeV protons strikes a graphite target and produces 'hot' muons. 2\. A slender aluminium foil in front of the target slows them down a little. 3\. The muons are further slowed by an 8-mm thick silicon dioxide aerogel disc. As a muon slows nearly to a halt, it bonds with an electron in the aerogel to create a muonium atom: a positively charged muon plus a negatively charged electron. 4\. An ultraviolet laser knocks off the electrons to free very low energy muons — about as much energy they'd have at room temperature. 5\. Electrostatic lenses and steering plates impart a small amount of energy to the muons and focus them, like getting people at a venue to gather in a single room. 6\. The muons are subjected to electric fields alternating at 324 MHz inside a 3-m-long tube, accelerating them. (This is the radiofrequency stage.) The feat is the first ever demonstration that started with muons jiggling around at a room-temperature level of energy (around 25 meV) and ended with muons moving in a common direction with about 100 keV of energy — an energy boost by a factor of 4 million. ![](https://demuxinfo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2e238-0f1bb-e311e-cb439-1cxlarge.png?w=800) Top view of the experimental setup. The surface muon beam is stopped inside a SiO2 aerogel target. The muonium atoms emitted from the target are ionised by a laser to produce ultra-slow muons. The laser travels horizontally and at a 2 mm distance from the target and is reflected by a mirror. The ultra-slow muons are transported by the lens at 5.7 keV and accelerated to 100 keV by a radiofrequency cavity (RFQ). Muons passing through a diagnostic line are detected by a microchannel plate (MCP). Credit: Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 245001 While 100 keV is still seven orders of magnitude away from 2 TeV, the Japan team's feat is remarkable because it 'solves' the very first and possibly hardest challenge presented by a muon collider: catching 'live' muons before they 'die'. The team's setup stopped fast-moving muons, cooled them to 25 meV, stripped the electrons, and injected them into a radiofrequency cavity in 2.28 microseconds, i.e. within the muons' lifetime. In a manner of speaking, if a 2-TeV muon collider is a skyscraper, the study lays the foundation. The J-PARC team was also able to cut the transverse emittance — a measure of how the beam spreads — by 200-times horizontally and 400-times vertically relative to the raw muon beam at the beginning. This two-order-of-magnitude reduction is paramount for the lightly energised muon beam to enter the next, more powerful accelerators. "Although the beam produced by the J-PARC team is of good quality (in terms of having low emittance), its energy and intensity are not yet high enough for the experiments that researchers eventually hope to make. Nevertheless, the demonstration of the potential to re-accelerate cold muons is an exciting step forward," Chris Rogers, a scientist with the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, [wrote](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/114?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Physics*. *Featured image: All matter around us is made of elementary particles, the building blocks of matter. These particles occur in two basic types called quarks and leptons. Each group consists of six particles, which are related in pairs, or 'generations'. The muon is a type of lepton, denoted by the letter µ. Credit: CERN.* ### Using AI to fight misinformation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/19/using-ai-to-fight-misinformation/ Last updated: 2025-06-19T10:46:49.000Z In his latest [newsletter](https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2025/0615.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Bruce Schneier springboarded off of articles in [*Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/01/ukraine-drone-attack-russia-bombers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [*The Atlantic*](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/ukraine-new-war-drone-strike/683008/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to write: > There’s a balance between the cost of the thing, and the cost to destroy the thing, and that balance is changing dramatically. This isn’t new, of course. [Here’s](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/drones-and-the-us-air-force.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) an article from last year about the cost of drones versus the cost of top-of-the-line fighter jets. If $35K in drones (117 drones times an estimated $300 per drone) can destroy $7B in Russian bombers and other long-range aircraft, why would anyone build more of those planes? And we can have this discussion about ships, or tanks, or pretty much every other military vehicle. And then we can add in drone-coordinating technologies like swarming. Fighter jets, ships, tanks, … and information. It's common knowledge in journalism that if it takes X amount of time to come up with misinformation and Y amount of time to debunk it, Y will always be greater than X. In other words, misinformation takes less time (and likely effort) to produce than legitimate information. Network modelling exercises have also found repeatedly that false information travels faster. Taken together, the cost asymmetry experts are beginning to perceive between a fighter jet and the means to destroy it has been around for a long time vis-à-vis information, and in fact the only reason the 'information side' hasn't lost the war, such as it is, is that there exists in the population a certain (but admittedly diminishing) level of awareness that it's possible to manipulate people into echo chambers as well as to look past the chamber wall to find a whole different reality. Generative AI has of course [added considerably](https://www.cjr.org/tow%5Fcenter/reporting-machine-reality-deepfakes-diakopoulos-journalism.php?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to this problem but as a tool it isn't limited to producing noisy or bad information — that propensity comes from the humans in the loop. I think if we're to keep our heads above the water, it's important for journalists to recruit gen AI to the task of rebutting misinformation then and there rather than wait for journalists to manually pieces articles together. Articles of the latter variety are capable of important change when done right but they take time. When a former ISRO chairman says Sanskrit is a language suited for computer science, a coherent and complete rebuttal that's also clearly written will need at least two or three hours to come together. At least. This process can be accelerated by a journalist in the loop cobbling a rebuttal together with, say, ChatGPT o3 (the "advanced reasoning" model), making sure the sources are legitimate and reputable, and finally checking the text (or visual) for inappropriate language — all in minutes. There are legitimate apprehensions about journalists using AI. For me, personally, using AI-generated text is a moral offence against the act of a person communicating with their community, with human and public interest at heart. There are injustices embedded in the training and operationalisation of generative AI models that no one, journalists or otherwise, should help perpetuate and that everyone should help address and resolve. At the same time, however, the corpus of annotated data that animates these models represents a substantial amount of human-made knowledge that we should be able to draw on — especially without having to be mediated by profit-minded technology companies — to negotiate a precarious information landscape ready to prey on an iota of ignorance. Open-source bespoke models in particular could a long way by being free to use and having their information sources (e.g. "just thehindu.com") restricted by default. ### Four years URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/14/four-years/ Last updated: 2025-06-14T10:27:49.000Z > Engineering as a methodology … contains a fundamentally materialist kernel, even if its present incarnation as a bourgeois science drives engineers to think and behave otherwise. — Nick Chavez, [*Engineers, Materialism, and the Communist Method*](https://designformanufracture.com/2023/05/30/engineers-materialism-and-the-communist-method/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) After school, I studied mechanical engineering against my will. Most engineering students at the time did, and probably still do. Almost every Indian family not in the top 1% of the top 1% (it's still a large number given the population) of society by wealth would like to get there. And to this day studying to be an engineer or a doctor seems like the safest bet to ensure families get onto and/or stay on that path. My family was the same way in 2006\. I insisted I wanted to study English literature but my folks were having none of it. When push came to shove, I yielded and said I'd study mechanical engineering only because my father had, too, 24 years earlier. The next four years turned out to be terrible. While it might seem straightforward enough from the outside, having to endure four years of something one is not at all interested in, especially when one is keenly aware that four years amounts to fully one-fifth of one's life by that point, is corrosive to the spirit. It certainly made my future seem quite bleak to me, more so since I'd internalised my stream of poor grades to mean I was unfit to make it in this world. Fortunately (such as it was), my folks relented in my third year and faced me with the freedom to decide what I'd do after engineering college. Thus I picked journalism, figuring I could combine my fondness for writing with the prospect of making some money, at least more than a career in English literature in India might have yielded. It remains among the best decisions I've ever made — but as it would later turn out, thanks in no small part to my background as a trained engineer. A recurring motif I've observed in journalism as it is practised is that people who enter it with skills from a completely different field almost always have an advantage right away (while those who came in after having studied only journalism don't). There are many ways to classify the activities and rituals of journalism and one is in terms of generalists and beat-experts. (I'm using 'expertise' here to mean the "temporary expertise" [as Bora Zivkovic defined it](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/a-very-practical-guide-for-breaking-into-science-writing/274617/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) I for example am a beat-expert: I focus on science, environment, and space journalism. I regularly commission articles from freelancers, among whom there are generalists and beat-experts as well. The generalists here will be comfortable covering a variety of topics (often as long the subject matter in each case isn't too involved) whereas the beat-experts might be restricted to, say, RNA viruses, radio astronomy, solar power economics or number theory. Even at the newsroom level, there are generalist reporters who can hammer out news reports with all the right details in the right order and beat reporters who are better equipped to dive deep into specific topics. Notably, however, beat-experts are generally valued more. There are a few reasons why. Beat-experts can if required competently put together a copy on a completely different beat; depending on the beat, they can be hard to come by; and — this is perhaps most important — by virtue of understanding a topic more deeply than others, they can communicate ideas and developments therein much better. It's even better if through one's work as a journalist one is able to bring together the ["two cultures"](https://apps.weber.edu/wsuimages/michaelwutz/6510.Trio/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) à la CP Snow, that is to draw on insights and wisdom from both science and the humanities to inform the way one covers different subjects. Then one's value will soar (assuming there are also editors or employers that are able to discern that value). In the last week alone, in fact, my regret over having spent four years studying the physics and mathematics underlying engineering has been significantly mitigated by the particular events in the news. Air India flight AI171 crashed shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad, killing 241 of the 242 people onboard and concluding as one of India's worst air disasters. To quote from [my piece in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-made-boeing-787s-popular-and-later-a-cause-for-concern/article69687247.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "The engine design is an important reason for 787-8 aircraft’s higher fuel-efficiency per seat… The other factors contributing to this feature include the use of carbon composite structures of lower weight and low-drag aerodynamics. \[Thus\] a 787-8 aircraft burnt around 20% less fuel than earlier twinjet models of a similar size. This allowed the aircraft to undertake nonstop flights between cities with lower passenger traffic than that required to fill Boeing 777 or Boeing 747 aircraft." Depending on what investigators find from the black box, there's a nontrivial chance one of these three components was part of the cascade of problems leading up to the crash, and may in turn reveal the processual failures that preceded it. The Axiom-4 commercial mission to the International Space Station was delayed for a fourth time before SpaceX called it off altogether following a gas leak onboard the rocket. The engineering factor here is less obvious, especially as it relates to a curious [statement ISRO issued](https://www.isro.gov.in/Ax-04%5FMissionUpdates%5F13062025.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on June 13: that ISRO had recommended to SpaceX that the latter — the company that actually built the rocket for the mission and has flown it hundreds of times before — "carry out in-situ repairs or replacement and conduct a low-temperature leak test to validate system performance and integrity, before proceeding with launch clearance". ISRO may not be lying but why, given how rockets are tested and certified for flight, would SpaceX care for ISRO's opinion on the way forward here? Last: Israel launched what it called a "preliminary" attack against Iran in order to dissuade it from pursuing its nuclear weapons programme. The attack followed a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency resolved that Iran had failed to comply with the terms of a 1974 agreement that, among other things, demanded the country be accountable at all times about the use of enriched uranium for civilian v. military applications. Now, I've been interested in nuclear news from around the world since a brief [interaction with MV Ramana](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2013/02/19/for-once-a-case-against-the-dae/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) more than a decade ago, but my background in engineering — which I was now forced to dust off and retrieve from the recesses of my mind — certainly helped lubricate my comprehension of uranium enrichment. And that in turn revealed like little else could [how rapidly Iran was advancing](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/irans-nuclear-programme-an-atomic-tug-of-war/article69443845.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) towards possessing nuclear warheads, how and why the IAEA safeguards are limited (and why Iran's willing participation in inspectors' surveillance is so important), and ultimately why Israel is so nervous. Broadly, having a degree in X field and getting into Y field confronts you more often than otherwise with situations where you’re forced to learn on the fly, using your own mental models but often with models you’ve acquired learning something entirely different. In my case at least, this switch allowed me to think about certain ideas in ways that others weren’t. English literature followed by journalism could have had the same effect, although I only know that in hindsight. Just like I was forced to adapt engineering thinking to social issues and vice versa, English literature, which is after all a literary window into history, certain geographies, certain peoples, and the writers, readers, philosophers, and politicians among them, could allow one to compare/contrast whatever is happening today around us with what we know did in the past — an exercise I've always found to be illuminating. (Edit: my friend Chitralekha Manohar helped me see that I also presumed a certain willingness to learn in order for an X-to-Y switch to manifest all its benefits. Chitralekha is a professional editor who runs [The Clean Copy](https://www.thecleancopy.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Bengaluru. As she put it: "What I mean to say is, it's very easy for an English literature student to find science writing by a scientist to be boring. But I really like it. And it might have something to do with a personal project to understand language and communication at a level more than is necessary to get the degree. It's the recurring question of why some of us are like this…".) Engineering offers yet another lens through which to observe the world as long the observer doesn't lose sight of everything else, especially the social, political, economic, etc. aspects. This is hardly new information but perhaps the corollary is: all these other lenses through which to observe the world may also offer an incomplete picture if they overlook what engineering is uniquely equipped to reveal. Of course I presume here a particular kind of engineering education: learning the basics of physics, chemistry, and mathematics followed by specialised training in the principles and techniques of the specific 'branch', i.e. mechanical, chemical, biotechnological, electrical, software, etc. In fact, I grudgingly admit that even though I barely cleared all these papers, the residues of lessons on calculus, metrology, vector algebra, fuzzy logic, and so on have sufficed to maintain a picture in my mind of how the world works and, importantly, how it can't, won't or shouldn't — although defining these three boundaries also demands political awareness and a sense of social justice. Thus for example one becomes able to spot pseudoscience but also understands that sometimes it needs to be treated with compassion if for no other reason than that it was born of the failure of science to meet particular human needs. More broadly, materialism has historically exerted a sizeable influence on human societies, their institutions, and their aspirations, and continues to do so. As a result, to go back to the engineer and communist Chavez, "the social relations tying global industry together are obscured underneath an engineering methodology". Even for its contemporary identity as a "bourgeois science", then, the engineer's enterprise is arguably necessary if we're to retool human industry. Closer home, I think I'm finally not resenting those four years. ### India's next man in space URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/10/india-next-man-in-space/ Last updated: 2025-06-10T10:03:40.000Z NASA/SpaceX/Axiom will make their next attempt to launch the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station on June 11\. Axiom Space's tagline for the mission is "Realizing the Return", alluding to three of the mission's four crew members, including India's Shubhanshu Shukla, will be taking their respective countries back to orbit after at least four decades (figuratively speaking). Shukla of course has a greater mission to look forward to beyond Axiom-4: ISRO had purchased Shukla's seat on the flight for a princely Rs 548 crore reportedly to expose him to the operational aspects of a human spaceflight mission ahead of Gaganyaan's first crewed flight in 2027\. So obviously there's been a lot of hoopla over the Axiom-4 launch in India on TV channels and social media platforms. Of course, the energy levels aren't anywhere near what they were for Chandrayaan-3 and that's good. In fact I'm also curious why there's any energy vis-a-vis Shukla's flight at all, at least beyond the nationalist circles. Axiom-4 is all NASA, Axiom, and SpaceX. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the US in early 2023, the White House [issued a statement](https://web.archive.org/web/20241226104253/https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/31/fact-sheet-united-states-and-india-elevate-strategic-partnership-with-the-initiative-on-critical-and-emerging-technology-icet/) in which it said the two countries would strengthen "cooperation on human spaceflight, including establishing exchanges that will include advanced training for an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)/Department of Space astronaut at NASA Johnson Space Center". This astronaut turned out to be Shukla, and he will be joined by Prashant Nair — another of the four astronaut-candidates — as one of the two back-up crew members on Axiom-4\. However, I don't understand why this required Prime Minister Modi to meet US President Joe Biden. ISRO could have set Shukla and Nair up with the same opportunity by directly engaging with NASA, the way its Human Space Flight Centre did with Russia's Glavcosmos in 2019 itself. More importantly, it's not clear how Shukla's participation in the Axiom-4 mission entails "cooperation on human spaceflight" between the US and India, which many commentators in India have been billing it as. India has done nothing here other than purchase the seat on Axiom Space's flight and fly Shukla and Nair over. In the same vein neither ISRO nor the overarching Department of Space, which is overseeing Gaganyaan's development, have said what exactly Shukla (and Nair) stand to learn from Axiom-4, i.e. the justification for spending Rs 548 crore of the people's money and how this particular mission was judged to be the best way to acquire the skills and knowledge Shukla (and Nair) reputedly will. I've been following spaceflight news as a journalist as well as have held managerial jobs for a long time now to understand that Axiom-4 represents the sort of opportunity where one is very likely to learn something if one becomes involved and that Axiom-4 offers something to learn at all because of the articles I've read and lectures I've heard about why NASA and Roscosmos human spaceflight protocols are the way they are. However, what exactly is it that the two astronaut-candidates will learn that isn't *post facto* (so that there is a rationale for the Rs 548 crore), why was it deemed important for them to have to learn that (and who deemed it so), how will they apply it to Gaganyaan, and how exactly does the Axiom-4 mission represent India-US "cooperation"? India's space establishment hasn't provided the answers, and worse yet seems to be under the impression that they're not necessary to provide. The public narrative at this time is focused on Shukla and how his time has come. I sincerely hope the money represented more than a simple purchase, and I'm disappointed that it's come down to hope to make sense of ISRO's and the Department of Space's decisions. ### Sympathy for Rapido URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/06/sympathy-for-rapido/ Last updated: 2025-06-06T09:51:12.000Z From [‘Rapido draws flak for charging users extra for traffic delays, commuters term it ‘extortion’’](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/rapido-draws-flak-for-charging-users-extra-for-traffic-delays/article69652619.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, June 3, 2025: > Ride-hailing platform Rapido is under fresh scrutiny from \[Bengaluru\] users for introducing a charge that penalises passengers if their ride is delayed by traffic. Several commuters in Bengaluru have flagged this new fee levied after 10 minutes of delay due to traffic as unfair and exploitative, especially when traffic congestion is beyond a passenger’s control. > > … > > Pavithra Rao, a resident of Hebbal, was travelling by auto from Shanthinagara to Palace Guttahalli on Monday when she was hit with an additional fee for being stuck in traffic. “While I don’t have a problem with fair compensation for drivers, charging customers for traffic seems like extortion. I had already selected a Rs 40 tip for my ride as it was peak hour. Traffic is not in my control, and I do not agree with paying extra for it,” she told *The Hindu*. Rapido operates by levying from auto drivers a fee of up to Rs 29 per ride, with the precise rate varying by city. Similarly, Uber announced in February this year that it was shifting from being a commission-based to a subscription-based service for auto drivers à la Rapido, although it hasn’t said how much the daily fee is. Imagine a scenario in which neither platform existed. In life before around 2015, which was such a time, auto drivers charged different amounts to the same people to travel the same route depending on whether they figured a person was a long-time resident of the city. They also charged (non-linearly) more if it was raining, too late in the day, the destination was in a population-wise less-dense area, and, of course, how much traffic there was. Since the advent of apps like Rapido and Uber — and more so since they adopted a subscription-based model that gave auto drivers more agency as well as commuters the option to walk away from unaffordable rides without a penalty — many of the uncertainties inherent to pricing have vanished. I regularly take autos to and from work, especially on hot or particularly wet days. Given the specifics of when I leave and the prevalence of one-way routes in each direction, it costs me X rupees to go, 1.2X rupees to return just before peak traffic time, and 1.4X during the peak, all on average. But every single time I’ve had to hail an auto directly (just before peak time), the driver has asked for at least 2.1X rupees. I’m certain thousands of other commuters have had the same experience. Rapido, Uber, etc. are also constantly responding to location-specific demand. While this means surge pricing at times of higher demand, it has also meant lower base rates when demand is much lower than usual. In April-May in 2023, 2024, and 2025, for example, Rapido set a base cost of 0.75X for my house-to-work route at noon, when it’s been blazing hot outdoors. (I still pay X.) If only because the apps limit the number of variables in determining the fare, and that this limitation has always only had the effect of lowering the cost of travel, most commuters in cities have an incentive to use them. Axiomatically, if a critical mass of commuters uses them, auto drivers have a strong incentive to use them as well. Note that the uncertainty is lower for auto drivers too (in the subscription-based service scenario): they’re spared the stress of haggling with every commuter and know the app has controlled the price for the length of the route to a precisely marked destination. (There are many unscrupulous auto drivers out there and there are many unscrupulous commuters as well. I’ve heard from more than a few drivers so far stories of commuters skipping out on UPI payments at the end of trips, hailing autos but not cancelling when their plans change, expecting drivers to drop them off half a kilometre or more from the indicated destination for no extra fee, threatening to lodge complaints after paying less than the predetermined fare, using abusive language, and so on.) --- *This post benefited from feedback from Srividya Tadepalli.* --- Even though Rapido has come under the scanner for suggesting commuters ‘bid’ for autos at the time of hailing them via the app by adding extra amounts to the base cost, knowing that the base cost is X has allowed both auto drivers and me — and I imagine other commuters — to develop a shared sense of proportionality. Negotiations from that point are much easier to conduct: an addition of up to 0.4X may be okay for a base cost of X (in non-extenuating circumstances) but expecting an extra of X itself, if a driver is particularly unscrupulous, is grounds for a cuss word. Further, both commuters’ and drivers’ willingness to use the apps means both parties avail a mechanism — albeit one provided by a third and private party — that sanctions them for misbehaviour. Drivers can rate commuters and vice versa. (Thus I don’t board autos with a rating lower than 4.6 stars.) Commuters can raise complaints with the app, although how each app platform chooses to deal with them isn’t fully clear. In this scenario, Rapido has come under a second scanner for levying a traffic penalty from commuters. I think it’s fair to the extent that drivers are paying with an opportunity cost — the amount of time spent in traffic — for (i) a commuter’s decision to travel by auto with foreknowledge of traffic en route; (ii) commuters’ (collective) decision to use a particular app; (iii) the app’s decision to recommend a particular route, which is crucial when the passengers’ sense of safety is concerned; (iv) and whose pricing model is beyond both the commuters’ and the drivers’ control. Improving access to autos also means there will be more autos on the road, after all. But I also agree that it’s unfair to the extent that commuters are expected to pay for the city’s urban planning choices and poor roads and the state government’s under-provision of public transport options and its decision to license so many motor vehicles. In fact, the crux of the problem is what that extra ‘bid’ at the time of hailing a ride stands for. In my (considerable) experience taking autos in Chennai, drivers almost always ask or expect a few tens of rupees extra because they know a given route is traffic-heavy. Adding the extra cost at the time of hailing the app and later paying for being stuck in traffic is tantamount to commuters double-paying the ‘traffic tax’. If the additional cost over the base fare is re-justified as a traffic tax to begin with, Rapido won’t have to revive that old source of uncertainty: how much the fare for a trip will ultimately be. The commuter and the driver will both go back to knowing the total eventual fare at the outset. This said, if the extra cost is explicitly related to the tax, and if the overarching goal is to help drivers opt for more rational fares for their rides, Rapido may also reconsider how it is determined rather than allowing it to be arbitrary. Even now, per *The Hindu*: “The app offers the first 10 minutes of delay during the ride without charge, but thereafter charges Rs 0.50 per minute up to Rs 30, according to the users.” (If the point really is to rationalise prices, Rapido will also need to explain how it determines the base rate, considering the ‘deficit’ — depending on the drivers’ expectations — is left to commuters to meet.) In fact, commuters presume more often than not that the government’s responsibility is to lower prices for them — whereas it’s really to rationalise prices for both commuters and drivers. And when the prices are abruptly and after a long time rationalised for drivers *as well*, the net effect on commuters’ expenses may resemble extortion. But it’s not extortion: in fact the prices haven’t increased, at least according to the base rates on Rapido and Ola (and gave the impression of having dropped on Uber before February 2025). Between 2014 — when I was taking autos to make many of the same trips I am these days — and 2025, the fare for the X-valued route has remained X. Yet in this time petrol has become more expensive, access to loans more difficult, the cost of living higher, the competition greater, and the roads more congested. Commuters are typically loath to consider the true value of a ride for themselves, which can be higher, and fixate instead on the value for the driver, which they expect as if by default to be lower. The bigger problem here is the city and the state being okay with chasing a particular slice of commuters towards privately operated ride-hailing apps whose pricing mechanisms are overall unclear and whose services are not infrequently undermined by their own profit motives. But at a more local scale, and especially if the administration doesn’t mediate the disputes between drivers and the apps, its attitude only risks pitting commuters against drivers. Even if the original sin — i.e. the easy-going relationships between a city or state government and the operators of ride-hailing apps — is greater than some commuters or drivers, it’s also cynical and unfair on both the governments’ and the commuters’ part to allow the culture of commuters underpaying drivers, who have even less power, to persist just so commuters can afford their auto rides. If the government has taken its hand off the wheel, is it so surprising or bad that Rapido is helping drivers opt for more rational fares instead? ### On the BDS movements against Russia and Israel URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/06/02/on-the-bds-movements-against-russia-and-israel/ Last updated: 2025-06-02T00:30:26.000Z Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022\. On March 8, a poll conducted by independent survey organisations in Russia among a randomly selected cohort of 1,640 people [reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/08/russia-public-opinion-ukraine-invasion/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) around 46% supported the war, 13% supported it somewhat, 23% opposed it, and the rest were undecided or didn’t answer. But also by March 9, the Vladimir Putin government detained more than 13,000 [anti-war protestors](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/09/russia-brutal-arrests-and-torture-ill-treatment-anti-war-protesters?ref=slightlyacidic.com), with police brutally assaulting many of them and even persecuting [some of their children](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/05/russia-authorities-targeting-children-in-their-crusade-against-anti-war-dissent/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In October 2023, Israel began its ongoing reprisal against Hamas by launching what quickly became the deadliest conflict in the history of Palestine. [*The Hindu* reported](https://www.thehindu.com/data/while-the-israel-government-wants-war-most-israelis-dont/article69452183.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on April 9 that surveys in Israel have found fewer than half of all Israelis support the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s military actions. ![](https://inthemain.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/12xunnamed.jpg?w=868) Both Russia’s and Israel’s wars have been asymmetric, protracted, and met with accusations of human-rights violations. They also highlight an issue with the instruments available for other countries to pressure them into drawing down. Following Russia’s invasion, more than 4,000 scientists and science journalists in the country addressed a letter to Putin asking him to reconsider: > “Having unleashed the war, Russia has doomed itself to international isolation. … This means that we … will no longer be able to do our job in a normal way because conducting scientific research is unthinkable without cooperation and trust with colleagues from other countries. The isolation of Russia from the world means cultural and technological degradation of our country with a complete lack of positive prospects.” Countries that don’t clearly and routinely demarcate their military and civilian enterprises — especially in research as well as in inchoate ‘sunrise’ sectors like spaceflight — are more liable to experience the consequences of their military aggression across both domains. Thus, Tel Aviv University has been criticised for helping develop defence technologies deployed by the IDF in Palestine and the Radzyner School of Law for helping develop legal justifications for Israel’s military excesses, so their international reputation is lower than that typically reserved for academic centres. In another example, misplaced suspicions of an absence of demarcation prompted the US to impose an embargo on ISRO under the Missile Technology Control Regime in the 1980s when the organisation received a tranche of cryogenic engines from the Soviet Union. The action was perceived to be meritless and radicalised public opinion so much so that, as former ISRO chairman UR Rao wrote, “even voluntary organisations, private individuals and newspapers started expressing their outrage.” The incident is recognised as an early impetus for Indian self-sufficiency in space technologies. While it's behind us, industry leaders and policymakers have liked to cite the incident as an example of what India risks as long as it isn’t self-sufficient. Just as well, similar sanctions by foreign governments against the civilian populations of Israel or Russia could sow public resentment and this may either weaken domestic opposition to war — or it could lead to democratic dissent that forces the government to withdraw from the conflict. But Putin is an absolutist in all but name and has responded to opposition to his foreign policies by curtailing civil rights and using physical violence. In Israel, as journalist Gidi Weitz [has written](https://archive.is/FQGKF?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “It will soon be five years since the 11-0 court decision that allowed Netanyahu to be prime minister despite his criminal trial — and Netanyahu is closer than ever to overpowering the state that put him on trial.” If a state is no longer swayed by public opinion, no matter how overwhelming, and in fact threatens debilitating violence against dissidents, is it worth reconsidering what sanctioning non-combatants can be expected to achieve? --- *In mid-April I tried to argue that the answer is ‘yes’. But I’ve since changed my mind to ‘no’. The text that follows is my attempt to argue the ‘yes’, concluding with an explanation of what changed.* --- Shortly after Russia’s invasion, some science journals stopped accepting papers authored or co-authored by Russian scholars. One editor of a journal that instituted a temporary ban [had said](https://retractionwatch.com/2022/03/04/journal-editor-explains-ban-on-manuscripts-from-russian-institutions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > “Let me insist, the decision is not directed to Russian scientists … but to Russian institutions, which support (and are funded by) the Russian government. Besides, the Russian Academy of Science has not given any official message in support of the innocent victims nor against the violation of international law by the Russian government.” The vast majority of scientific research in the world is funded by governments. Is this sufficient reason to censor research institutions in the event one of them goes to war? The European Broadcasting Union said “the inclusion of a Russian entry in \[Eurovision\] would bring the competition into disrepute.” The Royal Opera House in London cancelled the summer season of the Bolshoi Ballet while all the major Hollywood studios suspended the release of their films in Russian cinemas. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) suspended Russia’s ‘observer’ status and said it would cooperate with international sanctions against the country. Similarly, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, and many other authors have pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions while many scientists and social scientists have called for their peers to desist from collaborating with their counterparts in Israeli research institutes. [Maldives said](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/maldives-bans-israeli-tourists-expressing-resolute-solidarity-with-palestine/article69453099.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Israelis are banned from visiting the archipelago. Israel has resisted almost all forms of intervention available to foreign states to tame its hand even as its aggression in West Asia scaled deplorable new heights (with considerable support from the US, of course). As a result, [in 2005](https://bdsmovement.net/call?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Palestinian civil society organisations called upon their counterparts worldwide “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel,” i.e. to declare their stance against institutions believed to be complicit in state violence and force a reckoning on their part, and to render reputational and/or economic damage to the state and force it to change policy. Yet the question of defining complicity under an autocratic regime remains, as does the risk of further alienating these organisations’ natural allies within the country — e.g. pro-Palestine students and activists who already lack political power — and stinting academic collaboration. Russia’s and Israel’s leaders are obviously aware of the contributions of various human enterprises, including culture, sports, and research, to the construction and maintenance of national identity and pride. As scholarly publishing commentator Joseph Esposito [asked in 2022](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/05/05/weaponizing-the-research-community/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “What is the meaning of academic freedom when the academy is itself put to work for the benefit of an imperial power…?” Yet it is an important detail because what a *de facto* total war response to these two unilateral aggressors achieves is unclear. ## What changed? As I wrote the post, I spoke to a bunch of people to understand the value of the boycott, divest, sanction (BDS) movement. Two of them made arguments I couldn’t ignore. One, my friend R, said they couldn’t “dissociate the ethics from the value of these institutions”. They were right in a sense. In my foregoing arguments I was concerned about how BDS would affect the people that Netanyahu and Putin didn’t give two hoots about anyway but R indicated that it had to be that those people also had to speak up against Israel’s and Russia’s actions in Palestine and Ukraine. They couldn’t be in favour of their aggressor-governments’ actions and also enjoy the benefit of doubts as to their safety. Another friend, S, who is also I think better informed in this matter, advocated for what they called “smart sanctions”, which helped me understand R’s conditionality argument better. Here’s what they said in full, shared with their permission: > We need smart sanctions. I am against fools who target, say, an Anna Netrebko or a David Shulman. In any case during apartheid, nobody boycotted Alan Paton, Joe Slovo or Nadine Gordimer. BDS will work — which is why Trump and Germany will make it a crime to advocate it. Starmer, too. Israel is petrified of it. But it has to be smart. One can’t say “oh, let’s boycott Amazon.” > > Let’s boycott all direct Israeli products and institutions and apologists of genocide but not Israelis who oppose the genocide. Shulman’s and Netrebko’s cases are black and white. No one should sign agreements or MoUs with Israeli universities, but Shulman should not be boycotted even if he teaches at Bar Ilan or Hebrew University. I would not accept a speaking invite at an Israeli university today. But if Haaretz or +972 magazine run a seminar I would attend. > > Let’s take a grey case. X isn’t vocally anti-genocide but not pro either. Is boycotting X okay? I would do some research before I decide. Of course the media can’t do the boycotting. The media can say ‘we will not run defences of genocide or racism’. But if the Israeli ambassador agrees to give an interview then the media would have to really put him through his paces, Karan Thapar-style. "How would you decide in X’s case if they’re noncommittal down the middle?," I asked. > I will probably avoid having anything to do with them. "*The Hindu* recently did a data story on an independent survey in Israel finding around 60% of people were against its war in Palestine," I said. "This government isn’t swayed by public opinion and those who oppose/disagree are met with police violence. My misgivings about BDS arose in this context." > Yes, so smart boycotting is needed. BDS as a blunt instrument is pointless. Let’s use an analogy: the world should find a way to boycott Hindutva — but obviously not Hindus! *Featured image: At a protest against Israel's Gaza blockade and an attack on a humanitarian flotilla in Melbourne, June 5, 2010\. Credit: Takver/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.* ### Harken to the fish URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/05/25/harken-to-the-fish/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:31.000Z From ['Meghalaya’s new cave-dwelling fish adapts to streams overground'](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/meghalaya/meghalayas-new-cave-dwelling-fish-adapts-to-streams-overground/article69616871.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, May 25, 2025: > An underground cave in Meghalaya, in focus for a conflict over a Shivalinga-like stone formation, has yielded a new-to-science fish that adapts to streams overground. > > A team of zoologists, led by Kangkan Sarma of Gauhati University’s Department of Zoology, has recorded *Schistura densiclava* as a new species of troglophile loach from Krem Mawjymbuin in the State’s East Khasi Hills district. This is amusing yet sobering: while people are fighting about which god a rock looks like, there are fish millennia older we’re just realising we didn’t know of, and which are gracefully adapting in new ways to a world in unprecedented flux. ### The Berry phase of Kancha Gachibowli URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/05/16/the-berry-phase-of-kancha-gachibowli/ Last updated: 2025-05-16T04:52:00.000Z There's a concept in quantum mechanics, and also in parts of classical mechanics, called the Berry phase. Say you're walking around a mountain. You start off along a path and follow it all the way until you're back to the point where you started. You're at the same point, sure, but you're probably facing a different direction now. The Berry phase works something like this. Say you've got a bunch of electrons that you're manipulating using a magnetic field. As you vary the field in continuous increments, the electrons will respond continuously in some way. But as you vary the field through a cycle of changes and bring it back to the original setting, the electrons won't exactly be at their original configuration as well. Or they will be in addition to some change. This 'additional change' is called the Berry phase. Reading about the Kancha Gachibowli forest brought the Berry phase to mind. Yesterday, India's new Chief Justice, B.R. Gavai, faced Telangana state with a choice: “between restoring the forest or having the Chief Secretary and \[half a dozen\] officials in prison,” [per *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kancha-gachibowli-tree-felling-restore-forest-or-face-jail-sc-warns-telangana/article69578849.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The latter people are being held responsible for attempting to divert mostly moderately and densely forested land to a planned campus for information technology companies. The court had no sympathy for Telangana counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi's argument that the state's efforts had been good-intentioned. The principle reason: the state hasn't been able to explain the fact that it organised a phalanx of bulldozers to bring down 104 acres of old trees during an extended weekend, when the courts were closed, leaving the felling's opponents without access to legal recourse. A few telling passages from *The Hindu*: > The State had previously denied the land was a forest. The claim, it said, that the area was forest land had sprung up only after developmental activities commenced following the allotment of the land to the Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation. Mr. Singhvi submitted that the processes regarding the allotment had been on since March 2024\. He said the intention of the State was bona fide. > > … > > Mr. Singhvi maintained that “thousands” of trees were not cut. “We have seen the photographs,” Chief Justice Gavai responded. > > Mr. Singhvi submitted that not a leaf has been moved on the site after the apex court ordered everything to be stopped on April 16\. The State was complying with the court’s direction in letter and spirit. A huge afforestation programme was underway in the area. > > Amicus curiae, senior advocate K. Parameshwar, drew the attention of the court to a finding in a Forest Survey of India report, which was forwarded to the Central Empowered Committee, that out of the 104 acres cut in two nights, over 60% had been moderately and heavily dense forest. It's worthwhile these days to treat the concept of afforestation as a [yellow flag](https://science.thewire.in/politics/rights/many-tree-planting-campaigns-are-based-on-flawed-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at best and a [despicable idea](https://scroll.in/article/1041669/how-the-loss-of-a-tropical-forest-in-nicobar-could-end-up-funding-a-jungle-safari-in-haryana?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at worst. In the last decade it has evolved regressively into a sort of olive branch offered up alongside casual excuses to divert forested land for non-forest uses, often in open defiance of India's existing forest protection laws — which sadly have been increasingly enfeebled by the environment ministry. That the state is now afforesting the area is little consolation because the trees that have already been cut represent a greater ecological loss than that can be recouped by young plants anytime in the near future. We may have come full circle since the state first felled the trees but we bear the burden of an additional change as well. In fact, this could be more like magnetic hysteresis than the Berry phase depending on the [mode of afforestation](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/restoration-of-ecosystem-have-tree-planting-efforts-borne-fruit/article65485332.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Quantum systems are said to have acquired a Berry phase when they undergo a reversible process in which entropy doesn't increase\*. But entropy, the amount of disorder, has indeed increased. We've lost energy. We've lost old trees and their ecosystem services. We've lost a sustainable carbon store. We've learnt that the Telangana government is willing to act in bad faith. We've learnt that our forest protection laws continue to not work. Why, we've been reminded that the Supreme Court remains the country's last democratic institution, perhaps short of Parliamentary majority, prepared to measure the loss of green cover by the precepts of sustainable development. Every Supreme Court decision to stall a project that entails deforestation has been met with cheers in the conservation and environmental justice communities but each such verdict also serves a reminder that we remain at the mercy of the last line of defence. If someday the Supreme Court also yields, or is let down by Parliament passing a law that makes a mockery of protecting trees, we are only left with protest — like the brave students of the University of Hyderabad mounted to bring the Kancha Gachibowli issue to the whole country's attention. When you apply a magnetic field over a ferromagnet, like a block of iron, it becomes magnetised. If you remove the magnetic field, the block stays magnetised to some degree. This phenomenon is called remanence. Future attempts to magnetise and demagnetise the block will have to work against the remanence, causing the block to lose energy over time as heat. This macroscopic feature is called magnetic hysteresis\*\*: it's irreversible, dissipative, disorderly, and vexatious. Much like the state of Telangana, it claims to find value in the context of computers (disk drives in particular), and much like the trees of Kancha Gachibowli, there's nothing a ferromagnet can do about it. --- **\*** I've used entropy here with reference to a quantum adiabatic process. In a thermodynamic adiabatic process, entropy isn't produced only if the process is also reversible. **\*\*** The term 'hysteresis' comes from the Greek 'hústeros', meaning 'later'. This is a reference to the shape of the curve on a graph with the strength of the magnetic field *H* on one axis and the magnetisation *M* on the other. As the *H* curve rises and falls, the *M* curve starts to fall behind. The seemingly closely related 'hysteria' comes from the Greek 'hustéra', for 'womb', and is thus unrelated. However, the well-known Cornell University physicist James P. Sethna wrote sometime before 1995: > There seems to be no etymological link between hysteresis and either hysterical (fr. L hystericus of the womb) or history (fr. Gk, inquiry, history, fr. histor, istor knowing, learned). This is too bad, as there are scientific connections to both words. (There is no link, scientific or etymological, to histolysis, the breakdown of bodily tissues, or to blood.) … Many hysteretic systems make screeching noises as they respond to their external load (hence, the natural connection with hysteria). 'Hysteria' has of course rightly fallen [out of favour](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hysteria?ref=slightlyacidic.com) both within and without clinical contexts. ### Chasing solitons URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/04/28/chasing-solitons/ Last updated: 2025-04-28T02:54:00.000Z Every once in a while, I dive into a topic in science for no reason other than that I find it interesting. This is how I learnt about Titan, laser-cooling, and random walks. This post is about the fourth topic in this series: solitons. A soliton is a stable wave that maintains its shape and characteristics as it moves around. In 1834, a civil engineer named John Scott Russell spotted a single wave moving through the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal in Scotland. He described it thus in a report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science [in 1844](http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~chris/Scott-Russell/SR44.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (pp. 319-320): > I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped—not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour \[14 km/h\], preserving its original figure some thirty feet \[9 m\] long and a foot to a foot and a half \[30−45 cm\] in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles \[2–3 km\] I lost it in the windings of the channel. > > Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation, a name which it now very generally bears; which I have since found to be an important element in almost every case of fluid resistance, and ascertained to be the type of that great moving elevation in the sea, which, with the regularity of a planet, ascends our rivers and rolls along our shores. Russell was able to reproduce a similar wave in a water tank and study its properties. American physicists later called this wave a 'soliton' because of its solitary nature as well as to recall the name of particles like protons and electrons (to which waves are related by particle-wave duality). Solitons are unusual in many ways. They are very stable, for one: Russell was able to follow his soliton for almost 3 km before it vanished completely. Solitons are able to collide with each other and still come away intact. There are types of solitons with still more peculiar properties. These entities are not easy to find: they arise due to the confluence of unusual circumstances. For example, Russell's "wave of translation" was born when a boat moving in a canal suddenly stopped, pushing a single wave of in front that kept going. The top speed at which a wave can move on the surface of a water body is limited by the depth of the body. This is why a tsunami generated in the middle of the ocean can travel rapidly towards the shore, but as it gets closer and the water becomes shallower, it slows down. (Since it must also conserve energy, the kinetic energy it must shed goes into increasing its amplitude, so the tsunami becomes enormous when it strikes land.) In fluid dynamics, the ratio of the speed of a vessel to the square root of the depth of the water it is moving in is called the Froude number. If the vessel was moving at the maximum speed of a wave in the Union Canal, the Froude number would have been 1. If the Froude number had been 0.7, the vessel would have generated V-shaped pairs of waves about its prow, reminiscent of the common sight of a ship cutting through water. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ab1ec-chatgpt-image-apr-27-2025-05_26_30-pm.png?w=1024) Image created with ChatGPT Then the vessel started to speed up and its Froude number approached 1\. This would have caused the waves generated off the sides to bend away from the prow and straighten at the front. This is the genesis of a soliton. Since the Union Canal has a fixed width, waves forming at the front of the vessel will have had fewer opportunities to dissipate and thus keep moving forward. Since the boat stopped, it produced the single soliton that won Russell's attention. If it had kept moving, it would have produced a series of solitons in the water, and at the same have acquired a gentle up and down oscillating motion of its own as the Froude number exceeded 1. Waves occur in a wide variety of contexts in the real world — and in the right conditions, scientists expect to find solitons in almost all of them. For example they have been spotted in optical fibres that carry light waves, in materials carrying a moving wave of magnetisation, and in water currents at the bottom of the ocean. In the wave physics used to understand these various phenomena, a soliton is said to emerge as a solution to non-linear partial differential equations. The behaviour of some systems can be described using partial differential equations. The plucked guitar string is a classic example. The string is fixed at both ends; when it is plucked, a wave travels along its length producing the characteristic sound. The corresponding equation goes like this: ∂2u/∂t2 \= c2 • ∂u2/∂x2, where u is the string's displacement, x is where it was plucked, c is the maximum speed the wave can have, and t is of course the time lapsed. The equation itself is not important. The point is that there's a left-hand side and a right-hand side, and one side can equal the other for different combinations of u, x, and t. Each such combination is called a solution. One particular solution is called the soliton when the corresponding wave meets three conditions: it's localised, preserves its shape and speed, and doesn't lose energy when interacting with other solitons. The "non-linear" part of "non-linear partial differential equations" means that these equations describe ways whose properties that have different properties depending on their amplitude. The guitar string equation is an example of a *linear* system because u, the string's displacement, has a power of 1 (i.e. it isn't squared or cubed) nor are the other terms of the equation multiplied with each other. Another famous example of a non-linear partial differential equation is the Schrödinger equation, which describes how the wave function of a quantum system will change over time given a set of initial conditions. (The Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrödinger postulated it in 1925, which is one of the reasons the UN has designated our current year — a century later — the International Year of Quantum Science & Technology.) An example of a non-linear partial differential equation is the Korteweg-de Vries equation, which predicts how waves behave in shallow water: ut \+ 6u • ux \+ uxxx \= 0\. The second term is the problem: ux is a way to write ∂u/∂x and since it is multiplied by 6u the equation is non-linear, i.e. a change in its character induces changes in itself that may also change its character. But for better or for worse, this is the only milieu in which a soliton will emerge. (If you're really interested: for example a soliton solution of the Korteweg-de Vries equation looks like this: u = A sech2 \[ *k* (x – vt – x0​) \], where A is the soliton's amplitude or maximum height, *k* is a term related to its width, x0 is its initial position, and vt is its velocity over time. 'sech' is the hyperbolic secant function.) Physicists are more interested in particular types of soliton than others because they closely mimic specific phenomena in the real world. Sometimes it's a good idea to understand these phenomena as if they were solitons because the mathematics of the latter may be easier to work with. This lucid Institute of Physics video starring theoretical physicist David Tong sets out the quirky case of quarks. I myself was more piqued by the Peregrine and breather solitons. The Peregrine soliton isn't a soliton that travels. Its name comes from its discoverer, a British mathematician named Howell Peregrine. In fact, one of the things that distinguish a Peregrine soliton is that it's stuck in one place. More specifically it emerges from pre-existing waves, has a much greater amplitude than the background, and appears at and disappears from a single location in a blip. Peregrine solitons are interesting because they have been used to explain killer waves: freakish waves in the open sea that have no discernible cause and tower over all the other waves. One famous example is the Draupner wave, which was the first killer wave to also be measured by an instrument as it happened. It occurred on January 1, 1995, near the Draupner platform, a natural-gas rig in the Norwegian part of the North Sea. This is the wave's sounding chart: ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/f6140-draupner_wave2048x1270px.png?w=1024) Credit: Ingvald Straume/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA That's one heck of a soliton. The breather soliton is equally remarkable. It's a regular soliton that also has an oscillating amplitude, frequency or something else as it moves around. Imagine a breather soliton to be a soliton in water: it might look like a wave with an undulating shape, its surface heaving one moment and sagging the other like the head of a strange sea monster breathing as it glides along. This is exactly the spirit in which the breathing soliton was named. Here's an animation of a particular variety called the sine-Gordon breather soliton: ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/7ea00-sine_gordon_6.gif?w=388) Credit: Danko Georgiev/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The Peregrine soliton is a particular instance of a breather soliton. Breathers have also been found in an exotic state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (which physicists are studying with the expectation that it will inspire technologies of the future), in plasmas in outer space, in the operational parameters of short-pulse lasers, and in fibre optics. Some researchers also think entities analogous to breather solitons could help proteins inside the cells in our bodies transport energy. If you're interested in jumping down this rabbit hole, you could also look up the Akhmediev and the Kuznetsov-Ma breathers. At first blush, solitons seem like monastic wanderers of a world otherwise replete with waves travelling as if loath to be separated from another. Recall that one wave in 1834 gliding ever so placidly for over half a league, followed by a curious man on a horse galloping along the canal's bank. But for this venerable image, solitons are the children of a world far too sophisticated to admit waves crashing into each other with little more consequence than an enlivening spray of water and the formidable mathematics they demand to be understood. *Featured image: A scan of a print of Hokusai's 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa'. Credit: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, 1929.* ### Empathy for Donald Pettit URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/04/20/empathy-for-the-astronaut/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T08:19:48.000Z There was an intriguing outpouring of concern worldwide when Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore returned to Earth after 280-something days in space. People were particularly concerned about Williams's health and how she was doing, as if Wilmore hadn't been there with her living through the same mission. Researchers are still studying the effects of prolonged spaceflight on human bodies and don't yet have enough data to say with confidence that some effects are more pronounced in women's bodies. More than a few astronauts have also flown longer missions. NASA also has exercise and medical check-up regimens in place for astronauts to follow during long-duration missions as well as once they return to the ground. Taken together, while the mission profile was unusual, the duo didn't present NASA with challenges it didn't already know how to address. Williams likely received the attention she did because she is more popular and, in some parts of the world, for [her Indian ancestry](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/sunita-williams-and-barry-wilmore-return-of-the-spacewalkers/article69362610.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Other than her being a veteran astronaut, a NASA scientist, and a good ambassador for human spaceflight, I don't think she's special in a way that could justify the world's, including India's, tunnel vision. In fact, while there was considerable interest in the astronauts' well-being onboard the International Space Station (ISS) after their original mission profile had been stretched from eight days to nine months, the world has a much better case study to focus on now — yet few seem bothered. On April 20 (IST), Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Donald "Don" Pettit returned from the ISS onboard a Soyuz capsule on its MS-26 mission. Of them, Pettit turned 70 years old today. He is NASA's oldest active astronaut. His most recent ISS expedition lasted 220 days and so far he has accumulated 590 days in space. When the Soyuz MS-26 capsule touched down in Kazakhstan, [NASA tweeted](https://x.com/NASA/status/1913791020375867696?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > According to NASA officials at the landing site, [@Astro\_Pettit](https://twitter.com/astro%5FPettit?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) is doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth. > > What's expected for him? In his own words during an April 16 pre-departure interview, "This is a physiological thing. It affects… > > — NASA (@NASA) [April 20, 2025](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1913791020375867696?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) [https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js](https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Here's the [April 16 interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THjTe17Y12g&t=729s&ref=slightlyacidic.com), where you can also listen to him talking about what the first thing he's likely to do once he lands: poop. "It affects different people different ways," he goes on to say about long space stays. "Some people can land and go out, eat pizza, and dance. When I land, it takes me about 24 hours to feel like I'm a human being again." According to Russian journalist (and a good source of spaceflight details coming out of that country) Anatoly Zak, Pettit didn't look good coming out of the Soyuz capsule. That cameras at the landing were asked to point away from Pettit because he was in "bad shape" is so wholesome. [Jonathan McDowell](https://x.com/planet4589/status/1913795549968400392?ref=slightlyacidic.com) put it in terms we'd understand: Right now, Williams, Wilmore, and Pettit will be going through NASA's physical and mental [rehabilitation programme](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/rigorous-fitness-routine-awaits-sunita-williams-barry-wilmore-on-earth/article69343644.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for astronauts wrapping up long-term missions (as defined by NASA's Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer). It will last for at least 45 days and will be extended if an astronaut needs more help. Once the rehabilitation is done, it will be good to hear from Williams, Wilmore, and Pettit about their missions. I do hope they will speak up and NASA will allow them to be candid. A few weeks ago, *Ars Technica* [published an article](https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) based on an intimate interview with Barry Wilmore. Both the fact of the article being published and the details that populated it were evidence of good journalism. But I'd rather astronauts who have been on such high-profile missions share all the details they're allowed to with everyone in a public forum and that their government employers facilitate such interactions. This way what the people find out about doesn't depend on which questions they already know to ask. Of course, health possesses a tricky identity in this information landscape. I'm reminded of an article journalist Anoo Bhuyan [wrote in 2018](https://science.thewire.in/health/irrfan-khan-neuroendocrine-tumour/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), after Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan revealed he had been diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour. In one evocative passage, Bhuyan laid out the starkly different ways in which Bollywood stars and Indian political leaders addressed public concerns about their medical state. > Bollywood celebrities have no responsibility to be accountable to the public about their health. Yet, they have often been transparent. However, same cannot be said about Indian politicians across parties and across the country. Sonia Gandhi, J. Jayalalithaa, Manohar Parrikar, Sushma Swaraj, Amar Singh and a number of other prominent figures have all been and continue to be tight-lipped about their health. More importantly, they are unaccountable about their inability to perform the jobs for which they were elected. The empathetic coverage of Pettit as he exited the Soyuz capsule struck an edifying contrast with a lot of media coverage of Sunita Williams that sought details about her health that, should anyone have acquired them, would have constituted a violation of her privacy. At the same time, human spaceflight is becoming an increasingly prominent preoccupation of many countries. It is both very expensive and, the way it is organised in India (guided as much by political ambitions as by scientific ones and with rarely proactive outreach), is hard to hold accountable. What astronauts as prominent as Williams, Wilmore, and Pettit say — who are also experienced in ways that few others are — will go a long way towards allowing anyone with an internet connection to participate, learn, and keep up rather than become disengaged and left behind. Yet the simple fact of an astronaut being a public figure doesn't mean all their personal details should be availed for public consumption. Shatrugan Sinha's advice, as he provided it in Bhuyan's article, is fitting here: that anyone should be able to share information about their ailments without fear of being removed from their current posts and of being discriminated against for it. The former is currently easier because it is techne — determined by the technical prowess of the times to cure a disease or 'remove' a condition' — while the latter is harder for being episteme, a way of thinking and thus more firmly enmeshed In the mores of the time. Perhaps political leaders are tight-lipped because they know this better than anyone. It is nonetheless unfortunate. Astronauts are more like film stars here: they owe us no accountability about how they are faring, but if they do elect to share, it can go a long away towards destigmatising the public perception of their work as well as understand what astronauts everywhere, including budding ones at home, are expected to go through. *Featured image: Astronaut Donald Pettit uses a camera during extra-vehicular activity on the International Space Station (ISS), January 15, 2003\. Credit: NASA.* ### Right to safe work URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/04/19/right-to-safe-work/ Last updated: 2025-04-19T02:14:55.000Z The maximum daytime temperatures in the Kalaburagi and Belagavi districts of Karnataka this week are expected to be [41º C](https://city.imd.gov.in/citywx/city%5Fweather.php?id=43121&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and in the [late 30sº C](https://city.imd.gov.in/citywx/city%5Fweather.php?id=43198&ref=slightlyacidic.com), respectively. Research has found that if the relative humidity is high enough to render a wet-bulb temperature exceeding 30º C, outdoor exposure of even a few minutes can prove fatal. Yet many workers, especially in the country’s informal sector, routinely work outdoors in extreme heat with poor access to clean cool water, breaks from work, and medical attention. State-level policies and district-level heat-action plans are crucial to catch individuals who ‘slip’ through the protections available to the formal labour force. In this spirit, [Tamil Nadu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tn-declares-heatwave-a-state-specific-disaster-announces-4-lakh-ex-gratia-for-related-deaths/article68806821.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Telangana](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/telangana-notifies-heatwave-as-state-specific-disaster-enhances-ex-gratia-to-4-lakhs/article69451710.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) recently notified extreme heat as a state-specific disaster. Earlier this month, Karnataka also said government offices would close by 1.30 pm in April and May and that workers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the Kalaburagi and Belagavi revenue divisions — comprising 14 districts — would receive a workload concession of 30% without any reduction in wages. From *The Hindu*: > “Labourers who work in open fields during the summer months are advised to take precautions such as wearing loose cotton clothes and consuming buttermilk, coconut water, and green vegetables instead of spicy food, tea, coffee, and junk food. They should drink enough clean water. The officers concerned are also directed to provide the workers with clean drinking water, first aid box, tent, and other basic facilities at the MGNREGA worksite,” \[State Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Priyank Kharge\] said in a press note. The decision aims to protect rural labourers from the harshest heat during working hours. These initiatives are all on the right track because they’re cognisant of the fact that climate change will force the cost of economic growth to increase. For example, sans the concession granted by Karnataka — a notably substantive state-level policy for working in less-than-ideal conditions — workers may have had to set aside a larger fraction of their incomes to pay for medical care for heat-related injuries. However, some media outlets have since cited a recent survey by a non-governmental organisation, ActionAid India, to report that many workers in Belagavi were unaware of the state’s announcement nor had been accorded the promised infrastructure. From [*Deccan Herald*](https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/no-respite-from-heat-for-mgnrega-workers-in-north-karnataka-3496913?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Out of 124 recently surveyed workers in 10 villages from Chikkodi taluk, Belagavi, 72.5 per cent of people work between 10 am and 5 pm and in 68.5 per cent of cases, no tented or shaded areas were provided where workers could take a break. … > > In Raichur, where temperatures in the day can reach anywhere between 42 to 45 degrees Celsius, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers continue to start their shifts only at 10 am, working through peak-time heat. … > > Additionally, considering extreme heat conditions, the government had announced a 30 per cent concession on workload, with full payment, for workers in the Belagavi and Kalaburagi revenue divisions. This includes Belagavi, Dharwad, Gadag, Haveri, Bagalkot, Vijayapura, Uttara Kannada, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Raichur, Yadgir, Koppal, Ballari and Vijayanagar. However, the survey notes that 75 per cent of surveyed workers were not aware of such a provision and were not provided with any concession. > > "We have found that when such workload concessions are announced, only those who are aware and ask are provided with concessions," says Mahantesh Hosamani, an activist from Bagalkot. Aside from leaving the Act’s beneficiaries bereft of social protections, the lacuna recalls that the enforcement of state- and district-level plans remains at the mercy of local bureaucrats and that there is no democratic mechanism to ensure state governments keep their promises. In this way, the additional cost imposed by extreme weather is passed to a population already dangerously vulnerable to high heat and the social welfare dimensions of climate adaptation efforts continue to stay on paper. As science journalist Mahima Jain [reported in *Mongabay* India](https://india.mongabay.com/2022/08/can-mgnregs-work-as-a-social-protection-scheme-for-women-in-heat-stressed-areas/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2022: > Despite the strong evidence of climate impacts, the state and central governments are not ready to combat these issues as there are institutional changes required to fight against, Prakash said. … During summer, workers avoid working in the heat by starting before dawn and finishing by late mornings. “We need an MGNREGS plus. We need to move on from such a knee-jerk solution, as this can’t go on for years. People need to be upskilled, we need agro-based or other industries set up in the vulnerable areas so that people have alternate employment,” Prakash explained… > > Goswami too said that during heatwaves, the nature of work has to change. “We need to provide work which can be done in some shade. The working conditions are inhuman. How does one work in 49-50C?” he asked. Prakash explained, currently none of India’s social protection programmes have a climate angle. These are general programmes protecting people from different vulnerabilities. But given India’s diverse ecological zones, the impacts are different, and a one-size fits all social protection programme won’t work, and there’s a need to re-evaluate programmes from a climate lens. Ultimately, the Act’s goals are themselves ill-served. To quote developmental economist Gerry Rodgers writing in [*Economic and Political Weekly*](https://www.epw.in/journal/2024/6/book-reviews/how-has-mgnrega-fared.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2024: > … \[MGNREGA\] was an important part of Indira Gandhi’s 20-point programme to eliminate poverty in the early 1970s. Later in that decade, the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme changed the underlying premise from one of emergency relief to one of the right to employment, with the obligation of the state to satisfy that right. But that too was not new. The notion of the right to work has a venerable history. It is a key element of Gandhian philosophy, it is addressed in the Indian Constitution, and it is included in the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. … > > In the literature and news reports, there are also suggestions that the MGNREGA has also been used by the central government as an instrument of pressure on states governed by opposition parties, for instance, delaying allocations; or that it has been used as a vehicle to support other state policies, such as financial digitalisation or the extension of the Aadhaar card system, even when these interfered with the operation of the MGNREGA programme. Another important question about a programme such as MGNREGA is how well it integrates with other government social and redistributional policies. Today, rather than epitomise the ‘right to employment’, and thanks to the Centre’s repeated interference with its conduct and both the Union and state governments’ failure to upskill workers to look for less injurious employment, its workers now risk a ‘right to exploitation’. *Featured image: MGNREGA workers remove mud from a village pond in Asir, Haryana, on February 17, 2023\. Credit: Mulkh Singh/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* ### "Who are we?" URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/29/who-are-we-cern-fcc/ Last updated: 2025-03-29T02:10:00.000Z From '‘The physics community has never split like this’: row erupts over plans for new Large Hadron Collider', [*The Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/29/the-physics-community-has-never-split-like-this-row-erupts-over-plans-for-new-large-hadron-collider?ref=slightlyacidic.com), March 29, 2025: > However, if the FCC were given the go-ahead, it could lock up funds for decades and end up dictating the direction that particle physics will have to take for much of the century, \[DESY Hamburg researcher Jenny\] List added. “We will be telling future generations exactly what to do scientifically, and so we need to ask ourselves today: who are we to decide what our grandchildren should research and not research?” What a powerful argument. And it cuts both ways, too: just as much as we must acknowledge the risks of "locking in" scientists to the FCC while starving other avenues of particle physics research of funds, there is also a well-defined risk in missing a window to fund the FCC while it's open instead of waiting and losing a potentially one-time opportunity. In an ideal world, physicists may like to pursue as many avenues as possible (towards developing a unified and complete description of the physical universe). Of course, more avenues will be possible if they give up on the FCC and split the money they save to hundreds more of smaller projects. But I think it's also possible to argue building the FCC will itself push physics research in many new directions, providing answers no other experiment can to inform and guide more research. The sword really does cut both ways. Even in terms of funding: while giving up on the FCC will 'spare' funds that could serve many smaller experiments well, there's no telling if governments will make them just as available for the latter and, equally, if the political will among governments to fund an FCC-like machine will always exist. The language around the FCC's budgeting is also confusing: its $30 billion (Rs 2.56 lakh crore) cost will be spent over decades, not in one shot, and a not insignificant chunk of these expenses will be in the form of people's work-hours and components manufactured by industrial centres in various participating countries. Which is why I think the question "who are we to decide?" sounds like a cop-out. Fundamentally, who else is going to decide? Physicists need to make decisions now. It's likely very difficult for anyone to say if the decision they make at this time will be the right one. All that's clear is that they need to decide. In fact, *we* need to decide, going by what IIT Mandi physicist Nirmalya Kajuri wrote in [*The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/culture/media/science-communication-will-help-decide-when-the-next-particle-smasher-will-be-built/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2019: > Irrespective of which way the debate swings, it has already shown that the few who communicate science can have a lopsided influence on the public perception of an entire field – even if they’re not from that field. The distinction between a particle physicist and, say, a condensed-matter physicist is not as meaningful to most people reading the New York Times or any other mainstream publication as it is to physicists. There’s no reason among readers to exclude \[Sabine\] Hossenfelder as an expert. > However, very few physicists engage in science communication. The extreme ‘publish or perish’ culture that prevails in sciences means that spending time in any activity other than research carries a large risk. In some places, in fact, junior scientists spending time popularising science are frowned upon because they’re seen to be spending time on something unproductive. But debates like this demonstrate the rewards of science communication. ### Happy Lord of the Rings Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-4/ Last updated: 2025-03-25T02:04:45.000Z I recently started reading a book entitled *The Lions of Al-Rassan* by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost as admirable allies navigating a middle-era Spain in which three powerful politico-religious factions are vying for greater power. *The Lions* is endlessly beautiful both for Kay’s writing and the stories he has decided to narrate as much as those he won’t. The time in which the book’s tales are set was no stranger to casual brutality, but *The Lions* rises above it by what women and men striving constantly to be their best selves are capable of even in the presence of profound injustice, and of course the price they must inevitably pay. But even so, *The Lions* makes for superb reading. A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you. 🙂 As I’ve written in many past editions of posts marking this occasion, Steven Erikson’s *Malazan Book of the Fallen* series surpassed JRR Tolkien’s novels and stories of Middle Earth — which was until then the high-water mark of epic fantasy to my mind — when I started reading the former. However, the *Malazan* series also surpassed, in some cases by distances I’d never imagined possible, all other works of fantasy I’d read until then. I finished reading it just as I completed my engineering studies and shortly after began a career as a journalist. And just a couple more years on, I had a sobering epiphany: I seemed to have lost my book-reading habit. Of course I regularly read shorter written material, from brief news reports to extended essays, but somehow I wasn’t been able to bring myself to read books of fiction — even of epic fantasy fiction, a genre I love very much. *The Lions* broke this spell. I’d recently visited a close friend’s home and asked him to recommend a good book of fiction. I half-expected to be told there was nothing left to read or, should my friend somehow be able to recommend a book, fully expected to not read it all. After rapidly going through a list of books he’d liked and which I’d already read, he dove into his bookshelf for a minute and returned with *The Lions*. Both he and another close friend recommended it highly, which was something special because these two people have high standards of fiction — as they should — as well as are ravenous consumers of creative work produced by others and published authors themselves. So I decided I’d give *The Lions* more of a shot than I’d given other books of late, and boy was I glad. I don’t like the city of New Delhi in and of itself. But I have some great friends there and experiencing the city with them simply transforms the place. The world of *The Lions* is just like that: riven with the kind of cruelty and hardship that only small-minded, parochial power is capable of inflicting on those it deems lesser than themselves, yet brightened and enlivened by the story’s protagonists, the physician Jehane bet Ishak, the military leader Rodrigo Belmonte, and the counsellor of kings Ammar ibn Khairan. When I turn into a page that opens with even one of them, I become \[*gasp*\] hopeful. What a luxury! Whereas *The Lord of the Rings* is constantly pitching forward, *The Lions* allows the reader to rest and dwell every now and then — which is remarkable considering *The Lions* moves faster than the trilogy of books every does. Swept along, I started to wonder just as I crossed the book’s midpoint if I was beginning to recover my reading habit after more than a decade. As *The Lions* gently but surely built up to its crescendo, I even asked myself if the habit really went away or if I’d just been picking the ‘wrong’ books to read all this time. But just as I got within 150 pages of the book’s finish, I was brought to a crashing halt: I found myself having an increasingly tough time keeping on. I discovered a mind within my mind intent on keeping me from accessing my interest in reading the book. Its purpose seemed to be to have me stop reading right now, so that the people in *The Lions* could continue to remain where they were in the narrative without being consumed by the impending climax, where at least war — and the attendant prospect of death — lay, and still lies, in wait. But I know I must keep trying: Jehane, Rodrigo, and Ammar have already lived their lives and they would have continued to do so on their own exacting terms. If I am to claim to know them, I must not be afraid of following their lives to the end. Either it’s only a matter of time before fantasy fiction writers start featuring among the laureates of highfalutin literary awards or the literary world’s irrational prejudice towards stories of lived lives will continue to be laid bare for what it is. If only to me, *The Lord of the Rings*, the *Malazan* series, and *The Lions of Al-Rassan* are of a piece with any and all fiction, whether in prose or verse, in terms of humans or aliens, located somewhere or nowhere. There are differences, of course, but that is also a tautological statement. Differences abound between *The Lions* and *The Lord of the Rings* as much as they do between, say, *Half of a Yellow Sun* and *Objects of Desire*. Yet they all play on the same borderless field. Even magic needn’t make a difference. I used to think that it did when I first read *The Lord of the Rings* and realised how much better it was than anything else I’d read until then. But I’ve learnt that they’re not all that different, whether in kind or degree. Magic, if you’ve read the *Malazan* series but also if you’ve dabbled in the Elden Ring lore or played a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or two, can be found to be a thing of the world, this material world, occupying the space between you and me as surely as sunlight and birdsong. This is ultimately why I keep returning to *The Lord of the Rings* at least once a year, and why I find echoes of stories imagined much later by authors from different worlds in its old, familiar pages. Casting a spell to harm someone is no different from hitting them with a stick or bullying them when they’re helpless. Just as well, choosing not to do any of these things even when the incentive presents itself is equally virtuous. *The Lord of the Rings* first brought me to this borderless field: even if I’m not frolicking yet, I’m not going to leave either. Now, back to *The Lions*… --- Previous editions: [2024](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2024/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2022](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2021](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-4/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2020](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2019](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2018](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2017](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2016](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/a-happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-to-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2014](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Williams's success is… ours? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/20/who-get-to-be-india-daughters/ Last updated: 2025-03-20T02:01:10.000Z A day before NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore were to return onboard a SpaceX crew capsule, Prime Minister Narendra Modi published a letter in which he said he had inquired after her when he met U.S. President Donald Trump and that even if “you are thousands of miles away, you remain in our hearts”. Union Minister of State Jitendra Singh declared “a moment of glory, pride and relief” when Williams, whom he called “this illustrious daughter of India”, splashed down in Florida Bay. He lauded her “for the courage, conviction and consistency with which she endured the uncertainties of space”. If one had only Singh’s note to read, one may not have realised another person, Barry Wilmore, endured what she had or that there were two other astronauts in the capsule when it descended. Yet Singh’s peers, including Jyotiraditya Scindia and Piyush Goyal, also published similar posts on their LinkedIn profiles extolling Williams alone. Scindia even thanked the other two astronauts “for rescuing our brave warriors of the space”. ISRO [chimed in](https://x.com/isro/status/1902207802539700585?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as well. Williams was born in Ohio to Indian and Slovene American parents; her father emigrated from India in 1958\. As such, she lived, studied, and worked all in the US. While the extent to which she is “Indian” *per se* is debatable, self-identity is personal and ultimately for Williams to determine. In the last half year, however, many news reports in the mainstream press have referred to her as being of “Indian origin” or as “Indian-American”. Labels like this are poorly defined, if at all; writers and authors typically use them on the basis of a pulse or a sentiment. Are they accurate? It might seem that it does not matter whether a minister refers to Williams as a ‘woman of India’, that there is no price to pay. But there is. In and of themselves, the pronouncements about Williams are not problematic. They become that way when one recalls what has been given to her, and by whom, that has been denied to many others, some arguably more deserving. An example from recent memory is wrestlers Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik, whose peaceful protest to reform India’s professional wrestling administration was quelled violently by police acting on orders of the Union government. They were not “India’s daughters” then. The year after, in 2024, when Phogat was disqualified from participating in the finals of the 50-kg wrestling event at the Paris Olympics, the immediate reaction was to allege a conspiracy, blame her for not trying hard “enough”, and to ask whether she had let Indians down even though the prime minister had “let” her participate despite her role in the protests. There was no meaningful discussion or dialogue in government circles about systematically averting [the circumstances](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/vinesh-phogat-olympics-disqualification/article68501039.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that saw Phogat exit the Olympics, instead it seemed to grate that she had come so close to a monumental success yet still missed out. The chief minister of Haryana, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, celebrated Phogat’s return to India as if she had had a podium finish, arranging for merriment on the streets of her home state. It was an attempt to paper over his peers’ accountability with sound and fury. Williams occupies a similar liminal space: as Phogat had lost yet not lost, Williams was not Indian yet Indian — both narratives twisting the lived realities of these women in the service of a common message: that India is great. Williams’s feats in the space and spaceflight domains have been exceptional, but neither more than other astronauts who have gone to space on long missions nor because India had any role in facilitating it. Presumably in response to an [excellent article](https://x.com/Chethan%5FDash/status/1901854131729412227?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Chethan Dash at *The Times of India*, Singh said on March 19 that the government had not arranged for India’s own astronaut-designates — the four men in the shortlist to pilot Gaganyaan’s maiden crewed flight — to have conversations with the press and the public at large, at a time when an exceptional number of people were interested in Williams’s life and work. The government had clearly missed an invaluable opportunity to build interest in the Indian space programme. Its excuse did not wash either: that the astronauts had to not be “distracted”. The loud and repeated bids to coopt Williams’s success as India’s by extension has been disingenuous, a continuing pattern of crusting the shell with as many jewels as possible to hide the infirmity within. *Featured image: Astronauts Joan Higginbotham and Sunita Williams work at the Space Station Remote Manipulator System onboard the ISS, December 12, 2006\. Credit: NASA.* ### Who funds quantum research? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/11/who-funds-quantum-research/ Last updated: 2025-03-11T01:55:45.000Z An odd little detail in a [*Physics World* piece](https://physicsworld.com/a/experts-weigh-in-on-microsofts-topological-qubit-claim/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Microsoft’s claim to have made a working topological qubit: > Regardless of the debate about the results and how they have been announced, researchers are supportive of the efforts at Microsoft to produce a topological quantum computer. “As a scientist who likes to see things tried, I’m grateful that at least one player stuck with the topological approach even when it ended up being a long, painful slog,” says \[Scott\] Aaronson. > > “Most governments won’t fund such work, because it’s way too risky and expensive,” adds \[Winfried\] Hensinger. “So it’s very nice to see that Microsoft is stepping in there.” In drug development, defence technologies, and life sciences research, to name a few, we’ve seen the opposite: governments fund the risky, expensive part for many years, often decades, until something viable emerges. Then the IP moves to public and private sector enterprises for commercialisation, sometimes together with government subsidies to increase public access. With pharmaceuticals in particular, the government often doesn’t recoup investments it has made in the discovery phase, which includes medical education and research. An illustrative recent example is the development of mRNA vaccines; from my piece in *The Hindu*[criticising the medicine Nobel Prize](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-trouble-with-a-nobel-for-mrna-covid-vaccines/article67376812.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for this work: > Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman began working together on the mRNA platform at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. The University licensed its patents to mRNA RiboTherapeutics, which sublicensed them to CellScript, which sublicensed them to Moderna and BioNTech for $75 million each. Dr. Karikó joined BioNTech as senior vice-president in 2013, and the company enlisted Pfizer to develop its mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 in 2020. > > Much of the knowledge that underpins most new drugs and vaccines is unearthed at the expense of governments and public funds. This part of drug development is more risky and protracted, when scientists identify potential biomolecular targets within the body on which a drug could act in order to manage a particular disease, followed by identifying suitable chemical candidates. The cost and time estimates of this phase are $1billion-$2.5 billion and several decades, respectively. > > Companies subsequently commoditise and commercialise these entities, raking in millions in profits, typically at the expense of the same people whose taxes funded the fundamental research. There is something to be said for this model of drug and vaccine development, particularly for the innovation it fosters and the eventual competition that lowers prices, but we cannot deny the ‘double-spend’ it imposes on consumers — including governments — and the profit-seeking attitude it engenders among the companies developing and manufacturing the product. Quantum computing may well define the next technological revolution together with more mature AI models. Topological quantum computing in particular — if realised well enough to compete with alternative architectures based on superconducting wires and/or trapped ions — could prove especially valuable for its ability to be more powerful with fewer resources. Governments justify their continuing sizeable expense on drug development by the benefits that eventually accrue to the country’s people. By all means, quantum technologies will have similar consequences, following from a comparable trajectory of development where certain lines of inquiry are not precluded because they could be loss-making or amount to false starts. And they will impinge on everything from one’s fundamental rights to national security. But Hensinger’s opinion indicates the responsibility of developing this technology has been left to the private sector. I wonder if there are confounding factors here. For example, is Microsoft’s pursuit of a topological qubit the exception to the rule — i.e. one of a few enterprises that are funded by a private organisation in a sea of publicly funded research? Another possibility is that we’re hearing about Microsoft’s success because it has a loud voice, with the added possibility that its announcement was premature (context [here](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/majorana-1-a-quantum-phenomenon/article69252315.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). It’s also possible Microsoft’s effort included grants from NSF, DARPA or the like. All this said, let’s assume for a moment that what Hensinger said was true of quantum computing research in general: the lack of state-led development in such potentially transformative technologies raises two (closely related) concerns. The first is scientific progress, especially that it will happen behind closed doors. In a [June 2023 note](https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.210001?ref=slightlyacidic.com), senior editors of the *Physical Review B* journal acknowledged the contest between the importance of researchers sharing their data for scrutiny, replication, and for others to build on their work — all crucial for science — and private sector enterprises’ need to protect IP and thus withhold data. “This will not be the last time the American Physical Society confronts a tension between transparency and the transmission of new results,” they added. Unlike in drug development, life sciences, etc., even the moral argument that publicly funded research must be in the public domain is rendered impotent, although it can still be recast as the weaker “research that affects the public sphere…”. The second is democracy. In a [March 2024 commentary](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-public-ai-can-strengthen-democracy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), digital governance experts Nathan Sanders, Bruce Schneier, and Norman Eisen wrote that the state could develop a “public AI” to counter the [already apparent](https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-emergent-misalignment) effects of “private AI” on democratic institutions. According to them, a “public AI” model could “provide a mechanism for public input and oversight on the critical ethical questions facing AI development,” including “how to incorporate copyrighted works in model training” and “how to license access for sensitive applications ranging from policing to medical use”. They added: “Federally funded foundation AI models would be provided as a public service, similar to a health care private option. They would not eliminate opportunities for private foundation models, but they would offer a baseline of price, quality, and ethical development practices that corporate players would have to match or exceed to compete.” Of course, quantum computing isn’t beset by the same black-box problem that surrounds AI models, yet what it implies for our ability to secure digital data means it could still benefit from state-led development. Specifically: (i) a government-funded technology standard could specify the baseline for the private sector to “match or exceed to compete” so that computers deployed to secure public data maintain a minimum level of security; (ii) private innovation can build on the standard, with the advantage of not having to lay new foundations of their own; and (iii) the data and the schematics pertaining to the standard should be in the public domain, thus restricting private-sector IP to specific innovations.\[1\] --- \[1\] *Contrary to a lamentable public perception, just knowing how a digital technology works* [*doesn’t mean it can be hacked*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-trouble-with-the-supreme-courts-evm-verdict/article68128302.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* ### On the US FAA's response to Falcon 9 debris URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/04/us-faa-response-starlink-11-4-debris-europe/ Last updated: 2025-03-04T17:16:37.000Z On February 1, SpaceX launched its Starlink 11-4 mission onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket's reusable first stage returned safely to the ground and the second stage remained in orbit after deploying the Starlink satellites. It was to deorbit later in a controlled procedure and land somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But on February 19 it was seen breaking up in the skies over Denmark, England, Poland, and Sweden, with some larger pieces crashing into parts of Poland. After the Polish space agency determined the debris to belong to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was asked about its liability. This was [its response](https://web.archive.org/web/20250304044156/https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62286.60): > The FAA determined that all flight events for the SpaceX Starlink 11-4 mission occurred within the scope of SpaceX's licensed activities and that SpaceX satisfied safety at end-of-launch requirements. Per post-launch reporting requirements, SpaceX must identify any discrepancy or anomaly that occurred during the launch to the FAA within 90-days. The FAA has not identified any events that should be classified as a mishap at this time. Licensed flight activities and FAA oversight concluded upon SpaceX's last exercise of control over the Falcon 9 vehicle. SpaceX posted information on its website that the second stage from this launch reentered over Europe. The FAA is not investigating the uncontrolled reentry of the second stage nor the debris found in Poland. I've spotted a lot of people on the internet (not trolls) describing this response as being in line with Donald Trump's "USA first" attitude and reckless disregard for the consequences of his government's actions and policies on other countries. It's understandable given how his meeting with Zelenskyy on February 28 played out as well as NASA acting administrator Janet Petro's disgusting comment about US plans to "dominate" lunar and cislunar space. However, the FAA's position has been unchanged since at least August 18, 2023, when it issued a "notice of proposed rulemaking" designated [88 FR 56546](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/08/18/2023-16858/us-commercial-space-launch-competitiveness-act-incorporation?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Among other things: > The proposed rule would … update definitions relating to commercial space launch and reentry vehicles and occupants to reflect current legislative definitions … as well as implement clarifications to financial responsibility requirements in accordance with the United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. Under Section 401.5 2(i), the notice stated: > (1) Beginning of launch. (i) Under a license, launch begins with the arrival of a launch vehicle or payload at a U.S. launch site. The FAA's position has likely stayed the same for some duration before the August 2023 date. According to Table 1 in the notice, the "effect of change" of the clarification of the term "Launch", under which Section 401.5 2(i) falls, is: > None. The FAA has been applying these definitions in accordance with the statute since the \[US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act 2015\] went into effect. This change would now provide regulatory clarity. Skipping back bit further, the FAA issued a "final rule" on ["Streamlined Launch and Reentry License Requirements"](https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/space/additional%5Finformation/faq/SLR2%5FFinal%5FRule%5F450%5F2.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 30, 2020\. The rule states (pp. 680-681) under Section 450.1 (b) 3: > (i) For an orbital launch of a vehicle without a reentry of the vehicle, launch ends after the licensee’s last exercise of control over its vehicle on orbit, after vehicle component impact or landing on Earth, after activities necessary to return the vehicle or component to a safe condition on the ground after impact or landing, or after activities necessary to return the site to a safe condition, whichever occurs latest; > (ii) For an orbital launch of a vehicle with a reentry of the vehicle, launch ends after deployment of all payloads, upon completion of the vehicle's first steady-state orbit if there is no payload deployment, after vehicle component impact or landing on Earth, after activities necessary to return the vehicle or component to a safe condition on the ground after impact or landing, or after activities necessary to return the site to a safe condition, whichever occurs latest; … In part B of this document, under the heading "Detailed Discussion of the Final Rule" and further under the sub-heading "End of Launch", the FAA presents the following discussion: > \[Commercial Spaceflight Federation\] and SpaceX suggested that orbital launch without a reentry in proposed §450.3(b)(3)(i) did not need to be separately defined by the regulation, stating that, regardless of the type of launch, something always returns: Boosters land or are disposed, upper stages are disposed. CSF and SpaceX further requested that the FAA not distinguish between orbital and suborbital vehicles for end of launch. > The FAA does not agree because the distinctions in § 450.3(b)(3)(i) and (ii) are necessary due to the FAA's limited authority on orbit. For a launch vehicle that will eventually return to Earth as a reentry vehicle, its on-orbit activities after deployment of its payload or payloads, or completion of the vehicle's first steady-state orbit if there is no payload, are not licensed by the FAA. In addition, the disposal of an upper stage is not a reentry under 51 U.S.C. Chapter 509, because the upper stage does not return to Earth substantially intact. From 51 USC Chapter 509, [Section 401.7](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-12-10/pdf/2020-22042.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com#page=142): > Reentry vehicle means a vehicle designed to return from Earth orbit or outer space to Earth substantially intact. A reusable launch vehicle that is designed to return from Earth orbit or outer space to Earth substantially intact is a reentry vehicle. This means Section 450.1 (b) 3(i) under "Streamlined Launch and Reentry License Requirements" of 2020 applies to the uncontrolled deorbiting of the Falcon 9 upper stage in the Starlink 11-4 mission. In particular, according to the FAA, the launch ended "after the licensee’s last exercise of control over its vehicle on orbit", which was the latest relevant event. Back to the "Detailed Discussion of the Final Rule": > Both CSF and SpaceX proposed “end of launch” should be defined on a case-by-case basis in pre-application consultation and specified in the license. The FAA disagrees, in part. The FAA only regulates on a case-by-case basis if the nature of an activity makes it impossible for the FAA to promulgate rules of general applicability. This need has not arisen, as evidenced by decades of FAA oversight of end-of-launch activities. That said, because the commercial space transportation industry continues to innovate, §450.3(a) gives the FAA the flexibility to adjust the scope of license, including end of launch, based on unique circumstances as agreed to by the Administrator. The world currently doesn't have a specific international law or agreement dealing with accountability for space debris that crashes to the earth, including paying for the damages such debris wreaks and imposing penalties on offending launch operators. In light of this fact, it's important to remember the FAA's position — even if it seems disagreeable — has been unchanged for some time even as it has regularly updated its rulemaking to accommodate private sector innovation within the spirit of the existing law. Trump is an ass and I'm not holding out for him to look out for the concerns of other countries when pieces of made-in-USA rockets descend in uncontrolled fashion over their territories, damaging property or even taking lives. But that the FAA didn't develop its present position afresh under Trump 2.0, and that it was really developed with feedback from SpaceX and other US-based spaceflight operators, is important to understand that its attitude towards crashing debris goes beyond ideology, encompassing the support of both Democrat and Republican governments over the years. ### The idea of doing right by the US URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/03/04/the-idea-of-doing-right-by-the-us/ Last updated: 2025-03-04T17:11:32.000Z After US troops withdrew from Afghanistan after two decades in 2021, the Taliban returned to power. In its oppressive regime many groups of people, but especially women, girls, and minorities, have lost most of their civil rights. In this time, Afghanistan has also suffered [devastating floods](https://www.unicef.org/rosa/press-releases/flash-floods-afghanistan-posing-urgent-and-persistent-threat-children?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and an [ongoing famine](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/famine-ngo-afghanistan/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and has mounted tentative attempts at diplomacy with countries it could count on to be sympathetic to Afghanistan’s plight, if not the Taliban’s. Separate from other goals, it seemed like a bid by the Taliban to improve Afghanistan’s ability to survive future disasters. But New Delhi’s willingness to so much as engage with Taliban-appointed diplomats — even while declining to acknowledge the political legitimacy of the Taliban government — has [elicited strong words](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/accepting-taliban-nominee-to-embassy-in-delhi-would-undermine-indias-credibility-experts-at-afghan-conference/article69262106.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of caution from former diplomats. Similarly, when the International Cricket Council (ICC) allowed the Afghanistan men’s team to participate in the Champions Trophy tournament despite a rule that it won’t recognise any country without both men’s and women’s teams, Afghan refugee and taekwondo champion Marzieh Hamidi [accused the body](https://www.thehindu.com/sport/cricket/india-should-not-support-afghan-cricket-team-at-the-cost-of-afghan-women-normalising-taliban-says-exiled-sportswoman/article69281782.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of tolerating “gender apartheid”, which is also understandable. These attempts by Afghanistan are reminiscent of a particular passage in my favourite work of fantasy, Steven Erikson’s *Malazan Book of the Fallen*. \[`Spoiler alert`\] The Crippled God, a vile new deity in the books’ world, petitions vociferously to be included in the world’s pantheon, side by side with all the other gods. The Master of the Deck, the mortal tasked with this decision, initially believes the answer to be easy: to decline admission. But the thought of doing so weighs heavily on him, until one day, on a bloody battlefield, a weary soldier points him to an obvious answer of another variety: to admit the Crippled God in the pantheon only to force it to play by the same rules all the other gods play by. \[`end alert`\] There’s something to be said for doing right by a weakened people ruled by an unelected, oppressive, and insular government. The Taliban idea of human rights is subservient to the group’s hardline religious beliefs, and the country’s people didn’t sign up for it. No matter how much control the Taliban aspires to exert on the affairs of Afghanistan, it [can’t restrict](https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/11/22/g-s1-35267/taliban-climate-change-cop-afghanistan?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the effects of climate change to beyond its borders. This is why the UN allowed Afghanistan’s representatives to participate as observers at the COP29 climate talks in November 2024 in Azerbaijan, even though the UN doesn’t recognise the Taliban government and had prohibited its participation altogether [for three years](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/afghanistan-excluded-from-cop28-as-climate-impacts-hit-home/article67633409.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) until then. It was progress of a sort. Similarly, New Delhi may seek to admit an Afghan diplomat by arguing the merits of having a finger on the button and the ICC may allow the men’s cricket team to play by claiming doing so allows the Afghan people something to cheer for. How meritorious their arguments are in the real world is a separate matter. But can we apply the same sort of thinking to the US under Donald Trump, Sr.? As soon as he took office in his second term, Trump relaunched the process to free the US of commitments made under the Paris Agreement and to the World Health Organisation, cut funding for research into various diseases, drugs, and vaccines, and nixed support for DEI efforts, trans people, and reproductive rights. He returned to power by winning 312 votes in the electoral college and 49.8% of the popular vote, or 77.3 million votes. Kamala Harris received 75 million votes (48.3%). As with Afghanistan, does the rest of the world have a responsibility to stand by the people who opposed Trump, as well as the rights of those who supported him but couldn’t have expected the consequences of his actions for themselves? Or is the US beyond concession? Trump isn’t a terrorist but his protectionist agenda, authoritarian stance, and inflammatory rhetoric also endanger lives and livelihoods and isolate his compatriots in the international area. In fact, the questions arise because Trump’s actions affect the whole world, not the US alone, thanks to ways in which his predecessors have already embedded the country in multilateral collaborations to fight climate change, the spread of communicable diseases, plastic pollution, etc. ### Majorana 1, science journalism, and other things URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/02/28/a-journalists-life-around-curiosity-driven-science/ Last updated: 2025-02-28T16:59:00.000Z While I [have](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2017/10/02/why-do-we-cover-the-nobel-prize-announcements/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [many](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2020/12/03/science-prizes-wealth-location-and-social-signals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [issues](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2024/10/10/on-the-2024-nobel-prizes-and-the-rosalind-lee-issue/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with how the Nobel Prizes are put together as an institution, the scientific achievements they have revealed have been some of the funnest concepts I’ve discovered in science, including the clever ways in which scientists revealed them. If I had to rank them on this metric, the first place would be a tie between the chemistry and the physics prizes of 2016\. The chemistry prize went to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart, and Ben Feringa for “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”. Likewise, the physics prize was shared between David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and John Kosterlitz “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”. If you like, you can read my piece about the 2016 chemistry prize [here](https://thewire.in/science/synchronous-molecular-rotor-feringa?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A short excerpt about the laureates’ work: > … it is fruitless to carry on speculating about what these achievements could be good for. J. Fraser Stoddart, who shared the Nobel Prize last year with Feringa for having assembled curious molecular arrangements like Borromean rings, wrote in an essay in 2005, “It is amazing how something that was difficult to do in the beginning will surely become easy to do in the event of its having been done. The Borromean rings have captured our imagination simply because of their sheer beauty. What will they be good for? Something for sure, and we still have the excitement of finding out what that something might be.” Feringa said in a 2014 interview that he likes to build his “own world of molecules”. In fact, Stoddart, Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage shared the chemistry prize for having developed new techniques to synthesise and assemble organic molecules in their pursuits. In the annals of the science Nobel Prizes, there are many, many laureates who allowed their curiosity about something rather than its applications to guide their research. In the course of these pursuits, they developed techniques, insights, technologies or something else that benefited their field as a whole but which wasn’t the end goal. Over time the objects of many of these pursuits have also paved the way for some futuristic technology themselves. All of this is a testament to the peculiar roads the guiding light of curiosity opens. Of course, scientists need specific conditions of their work to be met before they can commitment themselves to such lines of inquiry. For just two examples, they shouldn’t be under pressure to publish papers and they shouldn’t have to worry about losing their jobs if they don’t file patents. I can also see where the critics of such blue-sky research stand and why: while there are benefits, it’s hard to say ahead of time what they might be and when they might appear. This said, the work that won the 2016 physics prize is of a similar nature and also particularly relevant in light of a ‘development’ in the realm of quantum computing earlier this month. Two of the three laureates, Thouless and Kosterlitz, performed an experiment in the 1970s in which they found something unusual. To quote from my [piece in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/majorana-1-a-quantum-phenomenon/article69252315.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 23: > If you cool some water vapour, it will become water and then ice. If you keep lowering the temperature until nearly absolute zero, the system will have minimal thermal energy, allowing quantum states of matter to show. In the 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless found that the surface of superfluid helium sometimes developed microscopic vortices that moved in pairs. When they raised the temperature, the vortices decoupled and moved freely. It was a new kind of … phase transition: the object’s topological attributes changed in response to changes in energy \[rather than it turning from liquid to gas\]. The findings here, followed by many others that followed, together with efforts by physicists to describe this new property of matter using mathematics, in harmony with other existing theories of nature all laid the foundation for Microsoft’s February 19 announcement: that it had developed a quantum-computing chip named Majorana 1 with topological qubits inside. (For more on this, please read my February 23 piece.) Microsoft has been trying to build this chip since at least 2000, when a physicist then on the company’s payroll named Alexei Kitaev [published a paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0010440?ref=slightlyacidic.com) exploring its possibility. Building the thing was a tall order, requiring advances in a variety of fields that eventually had to be brought together in just the right way, but Microsoft knew that if it succeeded the payoff would be tremendous. This said, even if this wasn’t curiosity-driven research on Microsoft’s part, such research has already played a big role in both the company’s and the world’s fortunes. In the world’s fortune because, as with the work of Stoddart, Feringa, and Sauvage, the team explored, invented and/or refined new methods en route to building Majorana 1, methods which the rest of the world can potentially use to solve other problems. And in the company’s fortune because while Kitaev’s paper was motivated by the possibility of a device of considerable technological and commercial value, it drew from a large body of knowledge that — at the time it was unearthed and harmonised with the rest of science — wasn’t at all concerned with a quantum-computing chip in its then-distant future. For all its criticism, blue-sky research leads to some outcomes that no other forms of research can. This isn’t an argument in support of it so much as in defence of not sidelining it altogether. While I have many issues with how the Nobel Prizes are put together as an institution, I’ve covered each edition with not inconsiderable excitement\[1\]. Given the fondness of the prize-giving committee for work on or with artificial intelligence last year, it’s possible there’s a physics prize vouchsafed for work on the foundations of contemporary quantum computers in the not-too-distant future. When it comes to pass, I will be all too happy to fall back on the many pieces I’ve written on this topic over the years, to be able to confidently piece together the achievements in context and, personally, to understand the work beyond my needs as a journalist, as a global citizen. But until that day, I can’t justify the time I do spend reading up about and writing on this and similar topics as a journalist in a non-niche news publication — one publishing reports, analyses, and commentary for a general audience rather than those with specialised interests. The justification is necessary at all because the time I spend doing something is time spent not doing something else and the opportunity cost needs to be rational in the eyes of my employers. At the same time, journalism as a “history of now” would fail if it didn’t bring the ideas, priorities, and goals at play in the development of curiosity-driven research and — with the benefit of hindsight — its almost inevitable value for commerce and strategy to the people at large. This post so far, until this point, is the preamble I had in mind for my [edition of *The Hindu*’s Notebook column](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/from-the-fringes-to-the-mainstream/article69270274.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) today. Excerpt: > It isn’t until a revolutionary new technology appears that the value of investing in basic research becomes clear. Many scientists are rooting for more of it. India’s National Science Day, today, is itself rooted in celebrating the discovery of the Raman effect by curiosity-driven study. The Indian government also wants such research in this age of quantum computing, renewable energy, and artificial intelligence. But it isn’t until such technology appears that the value of investing in a science journalism of the underlying research — slow-moving, unglamorous, not application-oriented — also becomes clear. It might even be too late by then. > > The scientific ideas that most journalists have overlooked are still very important: they’re the pillars on which the technologies reshaping the world stand. So it’s not fair that they’re overlooked when they’re happening and obscured by other concerns by the time they’ve matured. Without public understanding, input, and scrutiny in the developmental phase, the resulting technologies have fewer chances to be democratic, and the absence of the corresponding variety of journalism is partly to blame. I would have liked to include the preamble with the piece itself but the word limit is an exacting 620\. This is also why I left something else unsaid in the piece, something important for me, the author, to have acknowledged. After the penultimate line — “You might think just the fact that journalists are writing about an idea should fetch it from the fringes to the mainstream, but it does not” — I wanted to say there’s a confounding factor: the skills, choices, and circumstances of the journalists themselves. If a journalist isn’t a good writer\[2\] or doesn’t have the assistance of good editors, what they write about curiosity-driven research, which already runs on weak legs among the people at large, may simply pass through their feeds and newsletters without inviting even a “huh?”. But as I put down the aforementioned line, a more discomfiting thought erupted at the back of my mind. In 2017, on the *Last Word on Nothing* blog, science journalist Cassandra Willyard made a [passionate case](https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2017/10/18/tepid-feelings-about-neutron-clashes/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for the science journalism of obscure things to put people at its centre in order to be effective. The argument’s allure was obvious but it has [never sat well](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2017/10/21/taking-the-ringdown-route-to-understanding-the-humans-of-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with me. The narrative power of human emotion, drawn from the highs or lows in the lives of the people working on obscure scientific ideas, is in being able to render those ideas more relatable. But my view is that there’s a lot out there we may never write about if we couldn’t also write about what highs/lows it rendered among its discoverers or beholders, and more so if such highs/lows don’t exist at all, as is often the case with a big chunk of curiosity-driven research. Willyard herself had used the then-recent example of the detection of gravitational waves from two neutron stars smashing into each other billions of lightyears away. This is conveniently (but perhaps not by her design) an example of Big Science where many people spent a long time looking for something and finally found it. There’s certainly a lot of drama here. But the reason I call having to countenance Willyard’s arguments discomfiting is that I understand what she’s getting at and I know I’m rebutting it on the back of only a small modicum of logic. It’s a sentimental holdout, even: I don’t want to have to care about the lives of other people when I know I care very well for how we extracted a world’s worth of new information by ‘reading’ gravitational waves emitted by a highly unusual cosmic event. The awe, to me, is *right there*. Yet I’m also keenly aware how impactful the journalism advocated by Willyard can be, having seen it in ‘action’ in the feature-esque pieces published by science magazines, where the people are front and centre, and the number of people that read and talk about them. I hold out because I believe there are, like me, many people out there (I’ve met a few) that can be awed by narratives of neutron-star collisions that dispense with invoking the human condition. I also believe that while a large number of people may read those feature-esque pieces, I’m not convinced they have a value that goes beyond storytelling, which is of course typically excellent. But I suppose those narratives of purely scientific research devoid of human protagonists (or antagonists) would have to be at least as excellent in order to captivate audiences just as well. If a journalist — together with the context in which they produce their work — isn’t up to the mark yet, they should strive to be. And this striving is essential if “you might think just the fact that journalists are writing about an idea should fetch it from the fringes to the mainstream, but it does not” is to be meaningful. --- \[1\] *Not least because each Nobel Prize announcement is accompanied by three press releases: one making the announcement, one explaining the prize-winning work to a non-expert audience, and one explaining it in its full technical context. Journalism with these resources is actually quite enjoyable.* [*This*](https://bsky.app/profile/nanditaj.bsky.social/post/3lbcc3r3ua22q?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *helps, too.* \[2\] *I*’*m predominantly a textual journalist and default to* “*write*” *when writing about journalistic communication. But of course in this sentence I mean journalists who aren*’*t good writers and/or good video-makers or editors and/or good podcasters, etc.* ### Let's allow space missions to be wonderful URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/02/19/lets-allow-space-missions-to-be-wonderful/ Last updated: 2025-02-19T03:48:35.000Z Finally some external validation. After months of insisting Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore aren't "stuck" or "stranded" in the International Space Station, after Boeing Starliner's first crewed flight test went awry, the two astronauts have themselves repudiated the use of such words to describe their mission profile so far. On February 18, [*Moneycontrol* quoted a CNN report to say](https://www.moneycontrol.com/science/not-abandoned-nasa-astronauts-sunita-williams-wilmore-reject-stranded-label-embrace-extended-space-stay-article-12944151.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > In an interview with CNN, Wilmore said they are neither abandoned nor stuck. "We come prepared and committed," he stated, adding that all ISS astronauts have emergency return options. Williams also reflected on their space experience, saying, "Floating in space never gets old." Williams's statement isn't bravado just much as the use of "stranded" isn't a matter of describing what's right in front of us. Crewed missions to space are always more complicated than that. That's why Boeing picked Williams and Wilmore in the first place: they're veteran astronauts who know when not to panic. To quote from a [previous post](https://discordance.blog/2024/08/11/a-spaceflight-narrative-unstuck/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The history of spaceflight — human or robotic — is the history of people trying to expect the unexpected and to survive the unexpectable. That’s why we have test flights and then we have redundancies. For example, after the *Columbia* disaster in 2003, part of NASA’s response was a new protocol: that astronauts flying in faulty space capsules could dock at the ISS until the capsule was repaired or a space agency could launch a new capsule to bring them back. So Williams and Wilmore aren’t “stuck” there: they’re practically following protocol. > > For its upcoming Gaganyaan mission, ISRO has planned multiple test flights leading up the human version. It’s possible this flight or subsequent ones could throw up a problem, causing the astronauts within to take shelter at the ISS. Would we accuse ISRO of keeping them “stuck” there or would we laud the astronauts’ commitment to the mission and support ISRO’s efforts to retrieve them safely? > > … “stuck” or “stranded” implies a crisis, an outcome that no party involved in the mission planned for. It creates the impression human spaceflight (in this particular mission) is riskier than it is actually and produces false signals about the competencies of the people who planned the mission. It also erects unreasonable expectations about the sort of outcomes test flights can and can’t have. Narratives matter. Words don't always describe only what the senses can perceive. Certain words, including "stuck" and "stranded", also impute intentions, motive, and agency — which are things we can't piece together without involving the people to whom we are attributing these things (while ensuring they have the ability and opportunity to speak up). Wilmore says he's "committed", not "stuck". When Williams says "floating in space never gets old", it means among other things that she's allowed to define her journey in that way without only navigating narratives in which she's "stranded". In fact, as we make more forays into space — whether specific tasks like taking a brand new crew capsule for its first spin, guiding robots into previously uncharted areas of space or ourselves going where only robots have been before — we need to stay open to the unexpected and we need to keep ready a language that doesn't belittle or diminish the human experience of it, which by all means can be completely wonderful. Finally, I support restricting our language to what's right in front of us in the event that we don't know, which would be to simply say they're in space. *Featured image: This image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with an image previously released by the James Webb Space Telescope of the NGC 602 star cluster. The ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (in orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of dust. X-rays (red) emitted by young, massive stars illuminate the wreath. Credit: NASA.* ### Do the poor want to be poor? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/02/15/do-the-poor-want-to-be-poor/ Last updated: 2025-02-15T06:12:08.000Z ['Justice Gavai’s comments on freebies overlook people’s struggle for survival: Brinda Karat'](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/justice-gavais-comments-on-freebies-overlook-peoples-struggle-for-survival-brinda-karat/article69219801.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, February 14, 2025: > CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said the recent remarks on freebies by Supreme Court Judge Justice B.R. Gavai fails to recognise the struggle of India’s labouring class for survival in the face of “rampant unemployment, precarious nature of work and low wages”. > > In an open letter to Justice Gavai on Friday (February 14, 2025), Ms. Karat urged him to reconsider his comments as they could prejudice social opinion against those receiving social benefits from the government. > > Justice Gavai made the remarks on Wednesday while hearing petitions on the shortage of night shelters for the urban homeless in the national capital. During the hearing, he had asked whether untrammelled freebies lull the poor into a parasitic existence, depriving them of any initiative to find work, join the mainstream, and contribute to national development. Kudos to Brinda Karat for raising this counterargument and for asking Justice Gavai to reconsider his views. Aside from "prejudicing social opinion", Justice Gavai's observation also goes against a fact that social scientists and behavioural economists alike have repeatedly established: the poor don't want to stay poor, they don't like to stay poor. This extends to the degree to which they are comfortable about leading a "parasitic existence" as well as vexes the allegation that they are devoid of initiative. This is why, Justice Gavai may be interested in being reminded, researchers and policymakers have found the most effective welfare scheme in various countries worldwide to be simply [giving poorer people money](https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/yes-giving-money-to-very-poor-people-will-make-their-lives-better-just-ask-ecuador?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to spend as they see fit. Studies of social welfare schemes in low- and middle-income countries have even found that giving households money to spend [doesn't affect](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) whether their working-age members want to work. If Justice Gavai's concern is that the poor stay poor and don't seem to be able to exit poverty, he should redirect the force of his words at how easy it has become to slip into destitution in contemporary India and at initiatives that render direct benefit transfer schemes — including handing out money — more frictionless. ### Subtracting from science funding URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/02/08/subtracting-from-science-funding/ Last updated: 2025-02-08T14:58:26.000Z ‘NavIC’s hurdles project govt’s reluctance to fund innovation’, [*Hindustan Times*](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/navics-hurdles-project-govt-s-reluctance-to-fund-innovation-101738939401336.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), February 7, 2025: > India … chose a more cautious path. For decades, we’ve been telling ourselves that we’ll invest in science “when we’re economically better off.” It’s both prudent and a paradox. How do you become economically better off without investing in the very thing that drives development in the first place? It’s like waiting to plant a tree until you’re sure it will bear fruit tomorrow. That hesitation shows in the numbers: India spends just 0.6% of its GDP on scientific research. For comparison, China spends over 2.5%, and the United States spends 3%. Charles Assisi has an interesting analysis of the partial [failure of the NVS-02 mission](https://www.isro.gov.in/GSLV-F15%5FNVS-02%5FMission.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). (‘Partial’ because ISRO is currently looking to repurpose the satellite. The terms of this exercise aren’t yet clear.) “When you’re constantly short of funds, every setback feels heavier” — spot on. In fact, my cynical self inclined is inclined ask him if he really believes the present government is interested in stoking development when it has been making the right noises, but only noises, about increasing the private sector’s contribution to R&D expenses while allowing the growth of the public sector’s contribution to grow more slowly than the GDP. This said, I’m more curious about the final sentence of the same paragraph: > Worse still, when you dig into the details, much of India’s scientific budget is buried within defense spending, which means it doesn’t always trickle down to civilian applications or long-term innovation. Unless growth in defence spending has somehow exactly matched decline in spending on R&D, I’m curious how defence alone can be said to have subtracted from science. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t, but I wouldn’t have used the argument because it presumes whatever that money was spent on didn’t have civilian interests at heart. It’s a strawman. It isn’t a crime without a victim either because of the notion that the scientific enterprise is incapable of delivering anything less than “civilian applications or long-term innovation”, even with sufficient funding. The arc of the scientific enterprise doesn’t bend towards the public interest by itself. It’s also possible that what the R&D budget lost, the nuclear establishment gained — and I could get behind that. But beyond the subtraction itself, the question of which ministry or sector benefited is meaningless. The finance ministry makes its allocations from a large pool, and it [only makes sense](https://keinversagenwp1.wpcomstaging.com/2022/06/10/what-arguments-against-the-next-lhc-say-about-funding-big-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to talk about what science lost in terms of what science lost, rather than because X gained rather than Y. ### Learning with ChatGPT URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/02/07/learning-with-chatgpt/ Last updated: 2025-02-07T10:29:28.000Z I have access to the premium version of ChatGPT, and every day I ask it a few questions about concepts in physics that I’d like to know more about. Yesterday, for example, I learnt the difference between quenching and annealing and later about the [Weierstrass function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weierstrass%5Ffunction?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which it was also able to plot after some difficulty. I have found using ChatGPT in this way to be a valuable learning tool, and I imagine there are already people out there who are repackaging instances of ChatGPT to be autonomous ‘teachers’ for students looking to learn something, although not one that can be a school-based learning. The only major human input is knowing what questions to ask and when. This activity can be split into two modes: one when the student asks doubts and follow-up questions and the other when the 'learning programme' determines the pace at which to introduce new concepts. One of my jobs at *The Hindu* is to get explanatory articles for concepts in (pure) science. I recently attempted one on amplifiers, which required me to explain the working of a NPN bipolar junction transistor, a device I’d until then been happy to leave behind in my high school classroom. I turned to ChatGPT, asking for a visualisation of the transistor, and it obliged. I’m a visual learner and having access to the tool made a big difference. I have a background in engineering plus more than a decade’s experience in spotting red flags in scientific papers, and I imagine anyone with these skills will have an easier time navigating ChatGPT’s answers. If a school education can bring a person to this point, ChatGPT can be a valuable guide for the time after. All we need is a guarantee from OpenAI that the tool doesn’t hallucinate or that it hallucinates in specific contexts, and definitely not above a certain rate. ### Onward and spillward URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/28/onward-and-spillward/ Last updated: 2025-01-28T02:07:00.000Z ‘The Lunacy Of Rebuilding In Disaster-Prone Areas’, [*Noema*](https://www.noemamag.com/climate-resilience-means-retreat/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), April 25, 2024: > In the months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans proposed a flood control program unlike any other in U.S. history. Developed by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, a diverse group of stakeholders appointed by the mayor, the resulting plan called for large parts of the city to be converted from longstanding residential zones to floodable parks. Released to the public in the form of a map, large green circles were positioned over neighborhoods where owners would be forced into buyouts. These were some of the most historic districts in a very historic city … and almost exclusively in majority Black and marginalized neighborhoods. > > Christened in the press as the “Green Dot” map, the proposal ranks among the most profoundly unsuccessful plans ever issued by a municipal body and would never be put to a vote in the city council. … The Green Dot map’s remarkably brief tenure can be attributed in part to its proponents’ failure to adhere to the most basic rule of community planning: Never designate the *where* before building support for the *what*. “Building support”. What a quaint idea. Everyone should be doing it the way India’s doing it: don’t ask anyone. That way “building support” is redundant and “where” starts to really mean “anywhere”. ‘Expert committee clears plan to rebuild washed-out Teesta dam in Sikkim’, [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/expert-panel-clears-plan-to-rebuild-washed-away-teesta-dam-in-sikkim/article69147551.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), January 28, 2025: > Fourteen months after a devastating glacier lake outburst flood in Sikkim washed away the Teesta-3 dam – the state’s biggest hydropower project – and killing at least 100, an expert committee of the environment ministry has recommended that the dam be reconstructed. > > Instead of the older structure that was part rock and part concrete, the new dam will be entirely concrete – reportedly to increase its strength – and its spillway will be capable of managing a peak flow of 19,946 cubic metres a second (cumecs), thrice the capacity of the former dam, which was 7000 cumecs. Sounds reasonable, right? > The new design incorporates a “worst-case scenario” – meaning the maximum possible rain in the upstream glacier lake, modelled by the India Meteorological Department, in the South Lhonak region over the next 100 years influencing further downstream modifications. Now all we have to do is wait for the flood that will show up the IMD’s model — a fate models have often had to contend with this century, especially when dealing with rainfall. ‘The value of attributing extreme events to climate change’, [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/the-value-of-attributing-extreme-events-to-climate-change-explained/article68189310.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), May 24, 2024: > It is worth understanding how these ‘rapid extreme event attributions’ are performed. The most important concept is the change in probability: in this case, climate scientists contrasted the conditions in which the heatwaves occurred against a counterfactual world in which climate change did not happen. The conditions that prevail in the counterfactual world depend on the availability of data from our world. When there isn’t enough data, the researchers run models for the planet’s climate without increasing greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic forcing. Where there is sufficient data, they use trends in the data to compare conditions today with a period from the past in which human effects on the planet were relatively minimal. > > \[But\] the data are hardly ever sufficient, especially for rainfall, and almost never for extreme rainfall events. Climate models are also notoriously bad at properly capturing normal rainfall and worse at extreme ones. Thus, the environment ministry keeps the gates open to a new dam with a 59,838-cumec spillway in future. ### An ambigram in The Hindu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/26/the-ambigram-in-the-hindu/ Last updated: 2025-01-26T05:54:18.000Z *The Hindu* has an unusual ad in today’s paper (at least in the Chennai edition, which I get) on the occasion of Republic Day. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/8c531-40424-3248e-39b57-l723836940.png?w=404&h=1024) At the middle is an ambigram that reads “journalism” one way and “democracy” upside down. Below the way that reads “journalism”, there’s a statement saying: > This Republic Day, we reaffirm our commitment to journalism that strengthens a democracy—today and always. And below the way that reads “democracy”, the statement goes: > This Republic Day, we reaffirm our commitment to a democracy that strengthens journalism—today and always. The whole idea is that journalism is the republic’s mirror. I’m posting this for no reason other than that I found it quite clever. :D ### Neural network supercharges model's ability to predict phase transitions URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/26/neural-network-supercharges-models-ability-to-predict-phase-transitions/ Last updated: 2025-01-26T02:30:00.000Z Place a pot of water on the stove and light the fire. Once the temperature in the pot reaches 100º C or so, the water will boil to vapour. This is an example of a phase transition that occurs every day in our houses. Yet scientists have difficulty predicting whether a bunch of water molecules, like in the pot, will be liquid or gaseous in a given set of conditions. This is different from your everyday experience with the pot on the stove and has to do with the model a computer can simulate to predict the phase of a group of interacting particles. Models that can make these predictions efficiently are prized in the study of wet surfaces, porous materials, microfluidics, and biological cells. They can also reveal ‘hidden’ phenomena we may not notice at the macroscopic level, i.e. just by looking at the water boil, and which scientists can use to make sense of other things and/or come up with new applications. Remember your high school practicals notebook? For each experiment, you had to spell out sections called “given”, “to find”, “apparatus”, “methods”, and “results”. A model is an “apparatus” — a computer program — that uses the “given” (some input data) and certain “methods” (model parameters) to generate “results”. For example, the model below shows how a fluid with certain properties, like air, flowing around a spherical obstacle in its path, like a big rock, leads to the formation of vortices. A popular “method” that models use to predict a phase transition is called classical density functional theory (DFT). Say there are a bunch of particles in a container. These particles can be the atoms of air, molecules of water, whatever the smallest unit of the substance is that you’re studying. Every three-dimensional distribution of these particles has a quantity called the free-energy functional associated with it. (Functionals and functions are the same thing except functionals can also accept functions as inputs.) The free-energy functional calculates the total free energy of a system based on how the density of its particles is distributed in three dimensions. Classical DFT is a way to find the equilibrium state of a system — when it's reached a stable state where its macroscopic properties don't change and it doesn't exchange energy with its surroundings — by minimising the system's free energy. A model can thus simulate a group of particles in a container, varying their distribution until it finds the one with the lowest free-energy functional, and thus the conditions in which the system is at its lowest energy. “Once \[the free-energy functional\] is specified, consistent and complete investigation of a wide variety of properties can be made,” the authors of a [paper published](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.15.011013?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the journal *Physical Review X* on January 24 wrote. While this sounds simple, the problem is that determining the free-energy functional becomes more difficult the more particles there are. And only once the functional has been determined can the model check when its value is lowest. This is why a model using classical DFT to determine the properties of a liquid at specific temperature and pressure, say, will struggle. In the January 24 study in *Physical Review X*, scientists from the University of Bayreuth and the University of Bristol made an advance in this process when they replaced the free-energy functional with a neural network that had been trained on simulations of particles-in-a-container in a variety of conditions (e.g. changing the pressure and temperature across a range of values), then used it to model a realistic fluid. From the abstract of the paper: > Local learning of the one-body direct correlation functional is based on Monte Carlo simulations of inhomogeneous systems with randomized thermodynamic conditions, randomized planar shapes of the external potential, and randomized box sizes. Monte Carlo simulations are quite cool. You set up a computer to simulate, say, a poker game with five players. As the game progresses, at some point in the game you ask the computer to take a snapshot of the game and save it. This snapshot has information about each player’s cards, what decisions they made in the previous round (fold, call or raise), the stakes, and the cards on the table. Once the game ends, you rerun the simulation, each time freshly randomising the cards handed out to the players. Then again at some point during the game, the computer takes a snapshot and saves it. Once the computer has done this a few thousand times, you collect all the snapshots and share them with someone who doesn’t know poker. Based on understanding just the snapshots, they can learn how the game works. The more snapshots there are, the finer their understanding will be. Very simply speaking this is how a Monte Carlo simulation operates. The researchers generated data for the neural network to train on by running around 900 Monte Carlo simulations of “inhomogeneous systems with randomized thermodynamic conditions \[including temperature\], randomized planar shapes of the external potential, and randomized box sizes”. (The external potential refers to some energy field applied across the system, giving each of the particles inside some potential energy.) Then they used their classical DFT model with the “neural functional” to study a truncated Lennard-Jones system. Scientists have previously combined machine-learning with classical DFT models to study particles moving randomly, interacting with each other only when they collide. Actual, real fluids aren’t so simple, however. Instead, their behaviour is more closely modelled as a Lennard-Jones system: the particles in a container repel each other at very short distances, are attracted to each other across intermediate distances, and at larger distances don’t have an effect on each other. As the researchers wrote in their paper: > … understanding the physics in such a simple model, which encompasses both repulsive and attractive interparticle interactions, provides a basis for understanding the occurrence of the same phenomena that arise in more complex fluids . They also added that: > … recent investigations did not address the fundamental issue of how the presence of a phase transition might be accounted for within the framework of a neural density functional. So they set about studying a truncated Lennard-Jones system with a phase transition. Their model started with predicting how the particles are distributed, the overall system’s thermodynamic properties, the conditions in which liquid and gaseous phases coexist in the container, and the particles’ behaviour at interfaces, like evaporating from the surface of a hard wall. Then, the researchers wrote: > … we focus on the liquid-gas transition which is a basic manifestation of the presence of interparticle attraction and seek to assess whether the neural functional can describe (i) phase coexistence and the approach to the associated critical point, (ii) surface tension and density profiles of the liquid-gas interface, (iii) drying and capillary evaporation transitions that occur at subcritical temperatures, and (iv) how *accurately* the approach performs for both bulk and interfacial properties. (Emphasis in the original.) So could the neural functional describe i-iv? > The answer is emphatically yes. In fact, the model was able to accurately predict phase transitions even when it was trained only on supercritical states — i.e. when the container contains both liquid and gaseous states. The researchers singled this ability of the model out for especial praise, calling it “one of the most striking results”. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/d780d-f1ffc-3c464-ac735-e17_2.png) Source: Phys. Rev. X 15, 011013 (2025) This plot, generated by the model, shows the states of a truncated Lennard-Jones fluid with density on the x-axis and temperature on the y-axis. In the red areas, the substance — the collection of particles in the box — is either liquid or gaseous. In the blue areas, the liquid and gaseous phases become separated. The intensity of the colour denotes the substance’s bulk modulus, i.e. how much it resists being compressed at a fixed temperature, from dark blue at the lower end to dark red at the upper. Overall, the researchers wrote their “neural functional approach” is distinguished by the fact that “the range of phenomena and results it can describe … far exceed the information provided during training.” They attribute this ability to the information contained in a “single numerical object” that the neural network was tuned to track: 𝑐1⁡(𝐫;\[𝜌\],𝑇), a.k.a. the one-body direct correlation functional. It’s a functional that describes the variation of the density of particles inside the container in response to the external potential. As they put it: > Inputting only Monte Carlo training data of one-body profiles in planar geometry and then examining 𝑐1⁡(𝐫;\[𝜌\],𝑇) through the functional lens provides access to quantities which could not be obtained directly from the input data. Indeed, determining these usually requires advanced simulation techniques. They added their method also required fewer computational resources than a classical DFT setup operating without a neural functional in order to achieve “comparable” accuracy. On the back of this resounding success, the researchers plan to use their model to study interactions in water and colloidal gels. They also wrote that they expect their findings will help solve problems in computational chemistry and condensed matter physics. ### On Gaiman and a logic of compassion URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/20/on-gaiman-and-a-logic-of-compassion/ Last updated: 2025-01-20T09:14:40.000Z *That* [Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) piece. If you haven’t already, read it but be warned: it’s just as disturbing as everyone is saying it is. One paragraph in particular I found more unsettling than the rest — not because it presents one more awful detail but because I just didn’t know, while I was reading the piece, what I was expected to make of it. > In various interviews over the years, Gaiman has called *The Ocean at the End of the Lane* his most personal book. While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said “that kid is me.” The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up. In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women. As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on. “I was going back to the 7-year-old me and giving myself a peculiar kind of love that I didn’t have,” he told an interviewer in 2017\. “I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isn’t around anymore. He’s still there, hiding in a library somewhere, looking for a doorway that will lead him to somewhere safe where everything works.” It paints a fuller picture of Neil Gaiman but the article as a whole says nothing about why that’s necessary. The piece is overall well-composed; the writer and editors have obviously gone to great lengths to produce it. As a result, most parts of the piece justify themselves. But I couldn’t say why they saw fit to include parts like this paragraph, which (re-)humanise Gaiman unto some unclear end. Ultimately, there’s nothing in these narratives to suggest the perpetrators of sexual violence ever lost track of the difference between right and wrong. Reality is strange and truths pointing at contradicting implications can coexist, but this coexistence defies logic and I find that quite disturbing. This isn’t that abstract, disconnected “cold logic” so much as that it’s not just about the coexistence of truths, that somewhere between the past and the future the fellow had a chance to weigh right and wrong and picked the wrong thing to do. The buck stops there and whatever happened to him in his childhood — as long as it didn’t leave him with schizophrenia, psychosis or any other condition that took away his ability to tell if what he was doing was wrong — ceases to matter. I realise I might be thinking about this in an incomplete way, but since that big #MeToo wave, I’ve always had in mind those nonsensical statements by some men that they were depressed or anxious and that they’d go to therapy and ‘fix’ themselves. None of these conditions could have interfered with these men’s ability to tell right from wrong (which in some legal systems would have been required to mount an insanity defence), but by blaming them the men stigmatised them in a horrible way. Since then, bad men pointing to bad childhoods, as if the past offers some kind of mitigating background, has only been confusing. In fact, I wonder if the two truths really do coexist. Maybe they don’t because somewhere in between, these men decided the past doesn’t matter any more. To me the line that Gaiman hadn’t ever been to therapy was a red flag. When there’s emotional trauma, therapy is useful — as many of us know — to reprogramme emotional pathways that have become hijacked and distorted to respond in harmful ways to even benign stimuli. But there was still an opportunity in front of these men to do the right thing. Self-discipline was still possible and they possessed the agency for it. Humans are both logical and emotional beings. At times like this, however, in a rush to remind ourselves of how a life of emotion can lead to discomfiting truths — like how a childhood of suffering trauma needn’t preclude an adulthood of inflicting trauma or that antithetical narratives of reality can be equally and simultaneously legitimate — we seem to forget humans are still capable of logic, and thus of restraint and forethought. And well-exercised restraint and forethought often lead to compassionate actions towards others. This logic only comes to the fore when we choose to do the right thing. Gaiman had this choice, the doorway in the library. Now, he doesn’t get to pretend he didn’t do to his past what he did to his work and what he did to all those women, turning them into his fantasy. Saying “choosing to do the right thing is easier than done” risks trivialising the difficulty, but again, the right thing here is to look for help before rather than succumb, more so because a man of Gaiman’s tremendous wealth and privileges is also bound to find it. Self-discipline in this context often reminds me of a piece from a decade ago about how tough the road can be for people with illegal sexual preferences, so to speak, without also being a cul-de-sac. The piece is [a long-form deep-dive](https://archive.is/Pmpq9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (trigger warnings: child sexual abuse and discussions of suicide) into the inner lives of people who identify as paedophiles but who also recognise their urges are wrong and refuse to act on them. The narrative is careful enough to be fair to all the *dramatis personae* (fair of course doesn’t mean nice). Where you draw parallels with the Gaiman story, if it all, is up to you; I found the following passages particularly enlightening: > Dr. Klaus Beier doesn’t believe in sexual reconditioning. He leads the team behind Prevention Project Dunkelfeld, a therapeutic program based in Germany that targets potential offenders. He believes that minor attraction is a fixed part of someone’s makeup, that it’s “fate and not choice.” His program is considered the global gold standard of preventive treatment, and its practitioners help adults manage their attraction to children rather than try to change it. “In my view, it’s not the inclination that’s a problem,” he said. “And I wouldn’t condemn the inclination, I’d condemn the behavior.” Later: > When \[Mike\] started his teaching placement, he created a strict set of rules: staying away from the bathroom area where possible and avoiding any physical contact with the children. He said he would tense up when the more playful kids approached him for a hug. This wasn’t so much to keep the children safe, he told me, as to ensure people wouldn’t become wary of him. Which was something his dad warned him about when he first started. “He’s like, ‘People are going to be suspicious of you simply because you’re a guy. Don’t do anything stupid,’” he said. “And, honestly, I wonder if that had anything to do with it, because that kind of freaked me out.” > > ... > > Like Adam, Mike grew increasingly depressed while grappling with his desires. He never made active plans to commit suicide, but told me that he thought about it and knew what to do if the time came. “If I had a sawn-off shotgun, that would be it,” he said. “I don’t want to take pills because I could come back from that.” Ultimately, he felt he couldn’t kill himself and leave his family with no context for what he had done, and instead hoped that God would take care of matters for him. “But at the same time, I was still… It would be nice if I got hit by a car or I got really sick,” he said. > > More than anyone else I spoke with, Mike seems like he could benefit from having a professional to talk to, and not just because of his proximity to children. I was taken by his urgent need to disclose information others might have a hard time expressing. Late one afternoon we were sitting in his car in the parking lot of a different shopping mall. After hours of conversation, I suggested that we wrap for the day and he flat-out refused, telling me in an uncharacteristically abrupt tone that he had to get it out. We continued speaking until the encroaching shadows finally met and turned to darkness, stopping only when the center’s cleaning staff began arriving for their night’s work. Later: > Now the largest pedophile support group in the U.S., \[Virtuous Paedophiles’\] 318 active members are clear in their belief that sex with children is wrong. The founders, Ethan Edwards and Nick Devin (also pseudonyms), both family men with children, enact this policy with tight moderation. If someone is seen to be voicing the opinion that minor sex is acceptable, he gets a warning. Repeat offenders are ousted from the group. The membership list is also restricted to those aged 18 and over, lest they be accused of wrongdoing. > > While Adam contributes to discussions there from time to time, his focus remains on the young men who come to his own group for help. James, for one, speaks with a clear reverence for Adam. Though his status as a sex offender means he must attend court-mandated therapy, it is Adam and the others that he credits with helping keep him on the right path. It’s also not lost on him that, for everyone else, it is the only lifeline they have. “If they want help, if they want to be better, to try and fix their behavior and be a better person, he’s never given up on them,” he said. “He didn’t give up on me, he didn’t give up on Mike, he never gave up on any of us.” You’ve got to look. ### Posting stats — 2024 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/19/posting-stats-2024/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:34.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/7de5e-ce2e6-103cf-001xrp-posting-stats-2024402x.png) When I joined *The Wire* in 2015, the average length of my blog posts increased from around 700 words to around 850 words, and over time to 1,000 words. This wasn't forced so much as a natural reflection of the average length of pieces that worked on *The Wire*, also around 1,000 words. The trend held through 2018 and 2019 as well: the average post length dipped in these years because I published a very large number of posts and many of them were short, vignette-like. The same 'natural forcing' happened when I joined *The Hindu* in January 2023, with the average blog post length matching what worked at my workplace. I don't understand exactly how this happens but I'm glad that it does. On a related note, I recently discovered this amusing snippet in *The Book of Imaginary Beings* (1969) by Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero. Now I like to imagine I keep writing to prevent the monkey from drinking whatever is left of the ink… ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/8622d-e274c-20784-001xscreenshot-2025-01-06-at-9-07-58-am.png) ### New pages for science from The Hindu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/18/new-pages-for-science-from-the-hindu/ Last updated: 2025-01-18T10:30:14.000Z *The Hindu* has a new print product out called ‘Surf & Dive’ (S&D), whose first edition the editor Suresh Nambath and Shashi Tharoor launched at the group’s ‘Lit for Life’ event in Chennai on January 18\. We’ve been working on this for quite some time and are thrilled [it’s finally out](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). S&D will be fortnightly with 76 pages, priced fully — without any part of it being paid for by ads — at Rs 99 per edition. It will present long-form reads on a variety of topics. Each edition will also feature a special cover story: the first one is an extensive analysis of what the world can expect during Trump 2.0. One of the topics is science — and in fact it’s the single largest section in S&D, accounting for around 20 pages in each edition, around 24 if I include health. Since which pieces make it to the printed edition is a function of quality alone, I’m hoping to expand the room for science journalism in S&D over time. I’m already given to understand *The Hindu*’s science journalism output is among the highest in the country; I also know the diversity of topics is fantastic and that science-related articles already enjoy a lot of breathing space online and in print, commensurate with audience engagement. S&D expands this place of pride. I’m sharing some of the pages from the first edition below. [Get your copy here.](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/Purchase?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/9be3c-fd044-ebdac-d46de-3b522-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.15.57e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/90ee4-01159-3f70c-5d432-d5923-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.16.26e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/0e8c3-7494a-a9fe1-7c420-cec28-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.17.00e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/a929c-fae7e-16c27-9a953-551b0-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.17.09e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/c65f6-abbb3-c7dc0-4f0a2-384fd-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.17.20e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/acc2d-090bd-37eb8-c7fcf-47eb4-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.23.16e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/5b26f-c28c7-b8858-bd54a-a9694-screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3.18.27e280afpm.png?w=925) Credit: The Hindu (used with permission) Pick up your copy [here](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/Purchase?ref=slightlyacidic.com). If you’re interested in contributing to *The Hindu*’s science and environment sections, please write to mukunth dot v at thehindu dot co to in. ### New science pages in The Hindu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/18/new-science-pages-in-the-hindu/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:38.000Z *The Hindu* has a new print product out called ‘Surf & Dive’ (S&D), whose first edition the editor Suresh Nambath and MP Shashi Tharoor launched at the group’s ‘Lit for Life’ event in Chennai on January 18\. We’ve been working on this for quite some time and are thrilled [it’s finally out](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). S&D will be fortnightly with 76 pages, priced fully — without any part of it being paid for by ads — at Rs 99 per edition. It will present long-form reads on a variety of topics. Each edition will also feature a special cover story: the first one is an extensive analysis of what the world can expect during Trump 2.0. One of the topics is science — and in fact it’s the single largest section in S&D, accounting for around 20 pages in each edition, around 24 if I include health. Since which pieces make it to the printed edition is a function of quality alone, I’m hoping to expand the room for science journalism in S&D over time. I’m already given to understand *The Hindu*’s science journalism output is among the highest in the country; I also know the diversity of topics is fantastic and that science-related articles already enjoy a lot of breathing space online and in print, commensurate with audience engagement. S&D expands this place of pride. I’m sharing some of the pages from the first edition below. [Get your copy here.](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/Purchase?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/a1ce4-9f3a6-a5291-00screenshot-2025-01-18-at-3-15-57-pm-1-1-w-925-h-1024.png) Pick up your copy [here](https://publications.thehindugroup.com/bookstore/Purchase?ref=slightlyacidic.com). If you’re interested in contributing to *The Hindu*’s science and environment sections, please write to mukunth dot v at thehindu dot co dot in. ### Does science have trouble seeing governments? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/17/does-science-have-trouble-seeing-governments-2/ Last updated: 2025-01-17T09:12:05.000Z From ‘Energy megaproject in Chile threatens the world’s largest telescopes’, [*Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/energy-megaproject-chile-threatens-world-s-largest-telescopes?ref=slightlyacidic.com), January 10, 2025: > The AES project would occupy several sites totaling 3000 hectares, and the plants making hydrogen and ammonia with renewable energy would be sited just 5 kilometers from the VLT. Construction of the complex will create dust, a threat to delicate optics, but that would be manageable and temporary, Barcons says. More worrying is the permanent loss of the area’s remarkable dark skies. ESO has been using light pollution models developed by researchers in Canada to estimate the impact of AES’s plans. “Even if \[AES\] do a perfect job, using perfect lights that probably don’t even exist and perfect shielding, there will be an impact and that will be significant,” Barcons says. This story — i.e. this tale involving the VLT, the AES project, Chile, etc. — is a useful reminder that specific places are important resources for some parts of the scientific enterprise. This is something we saw with opposition to the TMT atop Mauna Kea and in a different yet still similar form in the radio astronomy v. Starlink issue as well, but is otherwise something I think we forget, especially when the need arises beyond the bounds of the combined astronomy + geography setting. For example, one of the major ways in which the world’s countries are responding to climate change is by trading carbon credits. In the framework of the programme in which these credits are valid, they’re generated by ‘projects’ that establish net carbon sinks. Some countries — almost always economically developing, in the tropics, and with low per capita income — have become hotspots of these projects, by their own initiative or at least by their wilful participation, by protecting old forests and selling the resulting credits to net carbon sources elsewhere. I’m not convinced how the idea of allowing climate pollutants to accumulate in one area by offsetting them against carbon sinks in another, and far-flung, area could be legitimate. But setting that side: one way to look at it is that the international carbon-trading mechanism has created a new incentive structure wherein some less-wealthy countries could make the maintenance of mature flora within their borders a profitable enterprise that contributes to the local economy. There’s also another way to look at it, especially because the carbon trading mechanism doesn’t have an implicit incentive and/or sanctions structure that discourages emissions over time: the persistence, even flourishing, of net carbon sources in other countries becomes increasingly dependent on the existence of carbon sinks in these other countries and an entitlement arises on the former’s part to the latter maintaining its forests. Would such an expectation be fair? Fair to the “greater good” perhaps, but if something exists solely for a “greater good”, there’s a good chance it shouldn’t exist at all. Almost all the economically developing countries of the world have argued at multilateral climate fora for a right to continue to emit more and more carbon dioxide before reaching net-zero so that they’re allowed to pay a similar cost to have their economies grow as the world’s economically developed countries did in the past, without incurring the much greater costs today thanks to the (relatively) technologically immature renewable energy sources, their derivatives and downstream products, and their attendant infrastructure. One way for a country to respond to this pressure is by converting more forest land for agriculture, industry, and residences. But as long as a country has a handle on this strategy (e.g. the way India is doing it is wrong), cutting part of its forests down is its prerogative and not something for businesses or even other countries to be able to control. Yet such control impulses have already been on display in the form of international banks restructuring national debts on the basis of promises to protect local biodiversity as well as governments — especially those of the US and the EU — including the waiver of loan repayments in climate financing commitments. Now, I’m curious if we can argue the same way about ground-based telescopes. According to the report in *Science*, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) “chose the summit of Cerro Paranal” in the Atacama Desert, most of which lies in Chile, for its Very Large Telescope (VLT) because the air is almost completely free of moisture (which refracts light) and there’s no stray light, allowing starlight to reach the telescope’s instruments without much distortion. The AES project threatens to disrupt this state of affairs by throwing up more light into the sky and dispelling the valuable darkness. … or at least that’s how *Science* has framed the argument. The problem here is that the interest of the Chilean government — which, by virtue of being democratically elected, represents the interests of the Chilean people — doesn’t find mention in the article until the 11th paragraph (out of 13). The ESO’s issues with the AES project take up most of the narrative; even the AES company’s statement appears before the government’s interests. In fact, the AES statement is (ironically?) the one to reveal the ESO’s ire to be misdirected: “The INNA project will be located in an area that the State of Chile has defined for the development of renewable energies…”. Where’s the Chilean government in all this? If it approved the AES project’s location while being fully aware of the ESO telescopes nearby, what does AES have to do with this kerfuffle? By this point, in the ninth paragraph, an astronomer named Francesco Pepe has alleged that AES didn’t have an “open discussion” when ESO tried do and that “they did not take into account other interests”. This may be true — I trust *Science*’s credentials — but it’s still puzzling. If the Government of Chile approved both the VLT and the AES projects, why is the narrative erecting the AES as a bad-faith actor here by accusing it of refusing an “open discussion” here? (The term “open discussion” is also vague. In fact, paint me cynical because I’m familiar with many instances in India where “open discussion” has been a euphemism for the interests of science and/or scientists to be airdropped into a democratic process. Many scientists and their rationalist groupies have often insisted governments adopt scientifically validated solutions to some problem or emergency without considering the tendency of such solutions — in the absence of suitable policy protections — to disenfranchise some social groups and minimise democratic power. See [here](https://www.reporters-collective.in/blog/western-ghats-reports-have-an-ugly-side?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2019/12/27/eclipse-rationalism-superstitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for examples.) Governments have special powers by definition. In the current context, the Chilean government wilfully abdicated its ability to wield that power, forgot how, couldn’t make up its mind about how or there’s something more happening here that we don’t know. As Pepe says in the 11th paragraph, “There seems to be some tension within the Chilean government between the ministers of energy and so on, on one side, and the ministers of science on the other side,” i.e. the third possibility. However, another scientists claims in the very last paragraph that AES is “a really, really big company and they have a lot of power”, that “it’s not easy to fight someone that has a lot of power.” No shit — yet even this statement brings us back to the same question: where o where is the government? What does it want, and why? There’s no mention in the *Science* article of the author having attempted to get a statement from the Chilean government. Finally, far be it from me to advocate populism. In fact, I’d sooner root for the view that a democratic government should transcend the populism that got it into power and found its decisions on what’s good for the country, in the long-term, and based on consulting a variety of stakeholders — and not simply on the ephemeral interests of the largest mob. (Ironically, I surmise, such thinking and deliberation would serve the interests of astronomy more than those of a clean-energy company since the latter is more likely to have popular support.) But even this sort of articulation is missing from the *Science* article, which instead leaves readers with an “astronomy above all” narrative. Update, 7:27 pm, January 17, 2025: [*Physics World*'s coverage](https://physicsworld.com/a/worlds-darkest-skies-threatened-by-industrial-megaproject-in-chile-astronomers-warn/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) doesn't even bother with the word "government". *Featured image credit: Majestic Lukas/Unsplash.* ### The news exists to inform, not to educate URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/14/the-news-exists-to-inform-not-to-educate/ Last updated: 2025-01-14T09:04:13.000Z I’d like to highlight a letter published in *Science* on January 2\. I have many points of disagreement with it but I’d also like others to read and reflect on it, especially if they’re (you’re) also going to disagree with my reading. The letter is entitled [‘Beyond misalignment of science in the news and in schools’](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7468?ref=slightlyacidic.com). What scientists want to get out of science journalism is not the same as what journalists want to get out of journalism. One symptom of this confusion — which is also what I’m disagreeing with the letter about — is that the authors of the letter use the terms “science journalism”, “science writing”, and “science communication” interchangeably. They’re really three distinct enterprises with distinct purposes. Science writing is a subset of science communication and science communication isn’t science journalism. Science communication is concerned with faithfully communicating the structures and practices of science and their outcomes. Science journalism on the other hand is a branch of journalism focusing on science, which is as much about scientific ideas as the social, political, economic, demographic, etc. dimensions of science as well. Importantly, science isn’t at the centre of the universe of science journalism: as with the other branches of journalism, public interest is. This means the object of science journalism is the public understanding of science — including its demands of governments, place in society, effect on public welfare, and so on, read together with our constitutional ideals, principles of justice and humanitarianism, the law of the land, and so on. It also includes scientific ideas but I think it’d be more useful if scientists understood the clear elucidation of those ideas is the beginning, not the end, of science journalism’s practice. Saying we have a problem because the practice of science journalism somewhere by specific people hasn’t conveyed what scientists would like to have conveyed on that topic — as the authors of the letter write — is like complaining a film journalist didn’t review a film exactly how the director would have liked or a business journalist didn’t assess the prospects of a company in line with its shareholders’ expectations. Here’s a particularly disagreeable expression of this notion from the letter: > Stakeholders of science communication and education can learn from each other and address the misalignment of science in the news and in schools. The news exists to inform, not to educate. I find the conflation so disagreeable because, considered cumulatively, news determines whether the education we’re providing/receiving is adequate or if it leaves students out of step with the way the world works. To belabour the point: education is the controlled dissemination of knowledge synchronised with the psychological and political development of society’s members while journalism, whose product is news, is a “history of now”\*, capable of surprising us by virtue of being a record of the world’s shared-lived reality, i.e. something we don’t control as much as effect together. On a somewhat related note, the letter begins by invoking Carl Sagan’s comment 40 years ago that newspapers ought to have science columns as often as they have astrology columns — which strikes me as a very convenient example that says nothing about what the study described in the letter is concerned with: how the press covers science. As the excerpt from the letter below indicates, Sagan’s problem is currently outdated: the press, mainstream or otherwise, covers science today to a much greater degree than it did in his time. It also covers a greater variety of topics. Thanks to the lower costs of publishing on the internet (as opposed to newspapers, which the letter is particularly concerned with), many magazines focused on specific topics have survived for longer than they would have if they were restricted to the printed medium. > … how newspapers projected the nature of science to the public during the \[COVID-19\] pandemic and on what aspects of science did they focus remain questions. To address such questions, we investigated 1520 news articles from four national newspapers in the United Kingdom for their coverage of different aspects of science during the omicron variant phase. Our analysis was guided by a broad account of science that includes the cognitive (i.e., thinking and reasoning), the epistemic (i.e., knowledge and methods), the social (i.e., values and norms), and the institutional (i.e., organizations, politics, and economics) aspects. An underlying assumption of our analysis was that public understanding of science would be better served through a holistic coverage of science that does not miss out on vital elements of the scientific enterprise. For example, although scientific knowledge is important to understand, it is often difficult to make sense of such knowledge if there is no context that unpacks why such knowledge is important in the first place, where such knowledge is developed, by whom, and under what circumstances. This said, the conceptual framework the researchers developed to analyse the scientific contents of the four newspapers and their 1,520 articles — especially once it’s shorn of its relationship with science education — could be useful for science journalists to understand how their priorities may have ‘drifted’ during the pandemic, the consequences of their time-varying access to experts and/or expertise in different areas, and the place and value of the (free) press during public crises. > The overall findings from our study showed that the social and institutional aspects of science were emphasized to a greater extent than the cognitive and the epistemic aspects in all the newspapers. When we unpacked each aspect to examine the details, different patterns emerged. For example, within the institutional aspects, the political dynamics of science were covered to a greater extent in all newspapers than any other aspect. Some of the social aspects were downplayed in all newspapers. There was hardly any coverage of scientific ethos that would capture scientific norms. … Likewise, social aspects of science that involve peer review processes in the validation of scientific knowledge were mentioned to a limited extent in all newspapers. When we examined the cognitive and epistemic aspects, we observed that there was hardly any reference to scientific methods. > > … in a related study in which we used the same sample of newspapers and focused on nonpharmaceutical interventions, our findings suggested that it was neither the number of COVID-19 news articles nor the actual number of cases and deaths, but the treatment in newspapers of specific aspects of science, particularly scientific knowledge and methods, that was associated with mobility change during the pandemic. The way that newspapers discuss epidemics may potentially influence changes in human mobility, a key factor in containing the spread of infectious diseases. I’m also gladdened by scientists’ interest in such exercises and hope they engage directly with journalists to develop conceptual frameworks that aren’t susceptible to misunderstandings of what science as well as journalists are or aren’t capable of. For example, here's a short excerpt from a conversation I’d [had last year](https://www.51ah.org/2024/03/02/a-qa-about-philosophy-in-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with IISER Bhopal philosopher Varun Bhatta about the problems with invoking ideas from philosophy in a journalistic article, which I think is also implicated in the letter’s authors’ argument that while “scientific knowledge is important to understand, it is often difficult to make sense of such knowledge if there is no context that unpacks why such knowledge is important in the first place, where such knowledge is developed, by whom, and under what circumstances.” > … all journalism needs to be in the public interest, and I’ve no idea what a philosophy in the public interest sounds like, which is because I don’t know what constitutes philosophy news, that could lend itself to news reports, news analyses, and news features. Is there a community, collective or organisation of philosophers in India that’s trying to reach out to more people? Where can I engage with an articulation of what I’m missing out on when I skip a comment from a philosopher for a news article? On a related note, many of us in journalism have studied journalism, which is its own field – just like philosophy – with its own tools to develop ways to frame the world, to make sense of it. I have no idea where philosophy is situated here, if at all. … > > We also need to be clear there are differences between newspapers and magazines, their sizes, remits, and frequencies of publication. Publications that take it slower and with more pages than a newspaper – or, more generally, articles that are composed over a longer time (much longer than news reports, of course) and are also lengthier (more than a few hundred words at least) are also likelier to have the time and the room to include philosophical deliberations. This is the sort of room we need … to lay the groundwork first. Otherwise, such ideas just vanish under the unforgiving demands of the inverted pyramid. > > Now … If I have to pay a writer Rs 5,000 to write a 1,000-word article about some idea or event that’s of interest in philosophical circles, and I expect (based on historical data) that 10,000 people will engage sincerely with the article, I need each one of those people to be able to readily contribute 50 paise to the publication for me to break even – and this is hard. The size of the engaged audience will actually be more like 1,000, requiring each one of those people to contribute Rs 5\. And this is extraordinarily difficult given the prevailing ratios of the sizes of the overall audience, the engaged audience, and the paying audience. Similarly, if I add another page in the newspaper so I can accommodate more philosophy-centred material and charge readers Re 1 extra to pay for it (assuming here that advertisers won’t be interested in advertising on this page), will I have enough new readers to offset those who will stop buying the paper because of the higher cover price? I doubt it. Against this background, in fact, it will be useful if scientists’ efforts to improve science education — by examining what students are taught and how that relates to the “public understanding of how science works” and its effects on people’s choices — focused instead on the genesis, constitution, and evolution of public interest. This is because the public interest, apart from railroading what narratives ought (or ought not) to be present in the news, has a strong influence on which combination of business models and ideologies a news publisher can adopt in order to have both a persistent readership and a sustainable revenue stream. --- \* As a professor of journalism once put to me. ### The fever dream of 'technological sovereignty' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/13/the-fever-dream-of-technological-sovereignty-2/ Last updated: 2025-01-13T07:01:17.000Z I recently came across an initiative called “Industrial47”. Someone had shared a link to it on a group I’m part of, and when its card loaded, the image was of a nuclear weapon going off. I found on LinkedIn that “Industrial47” is a fund with the aim of “backing the forerunners of India’s Industrial Revolution”. I must say it’s quite dubious to read about a country-specific “industrial revolution” more than two centuries into a global post-industrial era. But maybe historical accuracy isn’t the point here so much as the *josh* elicited by those words. By this time, another member of the group had pointed out that all of India’s nuclear tests had been underground and that the one in the image depicts an American test. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/8d870-f79d0-17192-318df-129db-screenshot-2025-01-12-at-8.12.16e280afpm.png?w=756) Source: WhatsApp ## Where technology meets people According to its [official website](https://www.industrial47.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Industrial47 currently funds companies developing technologies of the future. Why then did it have the image of a nuclear weapon going off? And why is there to be an Indian “industrial revolution”? \* ***scrolls down the website*\*** Here’s an answer — what looks like a mission statement. Let me annotate it. > We believe India’s moment is now. Okay. > Our engineers aren’t just coding software anymore – they’re designing satellites, building robots, revolutionising agriculture, reimagining defence and rethinking energy. There are five items listed here. The first two are factually accurate, the last two are unfalsifiable, and the third one is misleading. There’s no agricultural revolution. Let’s talk when it happens. > They’re tackling challenges that will define the next century of human progress. Okay. > The problems we solve here will ripple across eons. The companies we build here will transform billions of lives. > > The technologies we pioneer here will reshape what’s possible. It’s not clear where “here” is, but okay. Also there’s a grammatical problem: “The problems we solve here will ripple across eons” seems to say the problems will ripple across eons, not the solutions. > This is more than a story of one nation’s rise. This is about humanity’s next giant leap. … > When software meets steel, when code meets craft, when bits meet atoms – therein the future is forged. > > And Industrial India will build out the next century. See, now there’s a problem. Since listening to a [talk by Gita Chadha](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2020/07/10/caste-and-sciences-notability-threshold/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2020, I’ve been wary of the idea of “genius”. Among other things, I’ve noticed that there aren’t nearly as many “geniuses” in the social sciences and humanities as there are in the natural sciences. All these enterprises are littered with very difficult problems waiting to be solved but the idea of “genius” — as and when [it is invoked](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/07/17/should-geniuses-be-paid-extra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — seems to apply only to those in the natural sciences. Even in the popular imagination, a “child prodigy” is expected to become a gifted mathematician or scientist, not a gifted poet or anthropologist. Great intellectual ability is preordained to be devoted to problems in science. Sometimes I amuse myself with the idea that problems in the social sciences and humanities simply overwhelm this “genius”.\* If the “future” of a country is to be “forged” at the moment “when software meets steel, when code meets craft, when bits meet atoms”, and without room for [where technologies meet people](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-the-belly-of-the-river-9780195671360?cc=us&lang=en&&ref=slightlyacidic.com) — which technologies, which people, when, how — it sounds like a project that expects the socio-economic and the political pieces of the “future” to fall in place in accordance with the engineering goals alone. *You’re reading it wrong*, you say. *The fund only claims the future will also be forged in the solutions to engineering problems. We shouldn’t overlook these problems.* I reply: Are you sure? Because I don’t see a fund to solve problems like increasing people’s trust in EVMs, improving MSPs for farmers or ensuring machines, not people, clean sewers (and I mean everywhere and in practice, not just in isolated pilot projects). How about putting the best minds together to work on the problem of developing a socio-political ideology to ultimately restore a politics of dignity and common welfare? It’s nasty, arduous, wicked work but it’s also the ultimate challenge — one that, if it succeeds, would obviate the need for most of these other interventions. But if you’d rather begin with a specific one: did you know there still isn’t a smokeless stove for rural India’s millions, leaving the country the world’s largest consumer of fuelwood for household use? Here’s a summary of [Shankar Nair’s pertinent comment in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/smoke-signals-from-the-renewable-energy-sphere/article66556955.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in February 2023 by ChatGPT; I hope it encourages you to read the whole thing: > The launch of Indian Oil Corporation’s solar cook-stove at India Energy Week 2023 casts a harsh light on India’s ongoing efforts to transform household energy consumption. While promoted as a low-carbon innovation poised to reach three crore households and save costs, its steep price of ₹15,000 raises concerns about accessibility. This initiative echoes past efforts like the National Physical Laboratory’s solar cooker in the 1950s and the 1980s’ “improved chulhas” program, both of which failed due to poor design, high costs, and ineffective implementation despite government subsidies. The historical parallels underscore a recurring gap between state-led energy innovations and practical adoption, as well as the lack of focus on improving rural incomes, which strongly influence energy choices. --- *This post benefited from feedback from Srividya Tadepalli.* --- ## Social ignorance is social harm Projects that offer new technological solutions these days to old problems almost never account for their social dimensions. They are instead left to the state. Isn’t this cynical? Last year’s controversy about [using satellite data to track farm fires](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/the-discrepancy-between-satellite-data-of-farm-fires-and-air-pollution-explained/article68904814.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) offers another good example — as does the overarching endeavour to stamp these fires out. When a new project starts up, it may advance the technology, have some companies make money, and they all move on. The socio-political and socio-economic needles almost never move. The problem of scale matters as well because of the financial implications inherent to the [economic relationships](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as%5Fsdt=0%2C5&q=socio-economic+relationships+people+technologies&btnG=&ref=slightlyacidic.com) between people and their technologies. At this stage of development, it is hard to give every new scheme and fund the benefit of the doubt when it ignores the question of minimising social harm and maximising social welfare. In fact, it seems like an expedient exclusion.\*\* Air-purifiers come to mind. Researchers have found links between air pollution on one hand and [biological](https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/air-pollution-and-childrens-health?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [psychological](https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/air-pollutions-impact-on-mental-health?ref=slightlyacidic.com) development on the other. (Update, 9.10 am on January 15, 2024: *Nature* has just published a [news feature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00053-y?ref=slightlyacidic.com) entitled 'Air pollution and brain damage: what the science says'.) In New Delhi (or any city with foul air for that matter), clean air is becoming increasingly vouchsafed for those with air-purifiers, which cost a good deal of money, require constant power supply, and of course owners that can pay these bills. The better and the more numerous the air-purifiers around you, the cleaner the air around you is, and the lower your risk of impaired biological and/or psychological development. Over time, people that can afford these living conditions — typically the “upper class” and, almost inevitably, “upper caste” lot — accumulate the benefits of clean air whereas those that can’t accumulate the ill-effects, and thus the gap between their fortunes slowly but inexorably widens. Every time the AQI crosses some headline-worthy threshold, New Delhi breaks out the “smog towers” and the “mist cannons” and home-appliance companies advertise newfangled air-conditioners and air-purifiers whereas state-led attempts to move towards a future in which no one needs air-purifiers flop. If I’m cynical to doubt initiatives like Industrial47, what would you call this? Technologisation isn’t implicitly virtuous: to succeed in the fullest sense of improving the quality of life of all Indians, it needs specific social and political conditions as well. “1947 marked our political independence, 2047 will mark our technological sovereignty,” Rahul Seth, the person behind the Industrial47 fund and “an Infantry Officer with the Indian Army Reserves” with the rank of major, wrote in a [LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rahul-seth-a3104a63%5Flife-update-launching-industrial-47-activity-7284137695373574145-eP0p/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (whose card displayed the nuke test). His comment and its rapturous reception assume a clean break between political and technological achievement when in fact there’s no such thing. Indeed, the comment is reminiscent of China’s rise as a “scientific superpower”. Part of this supposed achievement is founded on the slew of sophisticated and expensive scientific experiments it has executed, often in collaboration with other countries; its accelerating space programme; and its rapid industrialisation of the energy sector. The country is now [planning to build](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-approves-worlds-largest-dam-worth-137-billion-over-brahmaputra-river-close-to-indian-border/article69029477.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the world’s largest hydroelectric-power dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river, which becomes the Brahmaputra when it subsequently enters India. Until this new dam takes shape, China’s Three Gorges dam will continue to hold the torch of physical magnitude. I hope by now the dangers of building dams in the Himalaya should be clear enough to discourage unbridled enthusiasm for projects of this nature. This said, many have marvelled at the Three Gorges dam and what they claim it says about China’s ability to plan and execute such projects: as if flawlessly. But the country’s surveillance and censorship apparatus hampers us from knowing how people on the ground suffered as they were forced to make way for the monstrous facility. Attesting to such concerns are anecdotes that have managed to escape plus informed scholarship (see [here](https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1193&context=nebanthro&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1490&context=hrbrief&ref=slightlyacidic.com), for example). Frankly, I prefer the amount of friction local movements in India have brought to bear on new “development” projects in the country. [Friction is good](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/%E2%80%8Bcanary-in-the-canopy-on-the-india-state-of-forest-report-2023/article69019158.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): it ensures project proponents think twice about what they’re doing if they already haven’t. And increasingly often, they haven’t, and why should they when the current national government seems to be doing its damnedest to dilute the friction? The LinkedIn post goes: “You can be the right person, in the right place, at the right time – and yet have a few key pieces missing. Leonardo da Vinci had Lorenzo de’ Medici. Walchand Hirachand had the Kingdom of Mysore. Chandragupta Maurya had Chanakya.”\* To this I’d add: India once had friction, then squandered it. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/87068-a2e5b-1d27b-7b115-6ad71-screenshot-2025-01-12-at-10.13.29e280afpm.png?w=1024) Source: Google search ## When do we become scared? The quip about “technological sovereignty” rankles in this regard. On any day ‘sovereignty’ is a powerful word, not one to be invoked in vain. Here, the term fantasises a future in which technology reigns supreme, but its framing also leaves open the question of India’s place in the comity of nations, which the country has worked hard to attain, continues to build on even today, and will for the foreseeable future. Recall that obnoxious piece on *NASA Watch* where a former JPL science-worker called NASA’s decision to downsize JPL’s workforce — due in part to budget overruns by the Mars Sample Return mission — the “fall of a civilisation”. It was reckless fear-mongering: among other things, NASA, and the US by extension, are currently more beneficiaries of an international collaboration than patrons of the spacefaring world. “In this milieu, harping on sole leadership because it’s the ‘American way’,” as the science-worker insisted it was, “is distasteful” ([source](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2024/02/11/about-the-jpl-layoffs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). In the same vein, consider the example of ISRO’s forthcoming space station and Indian-on-the-moon plans. Its scientists and engineers are working hard but what are they working towards? Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued orders from on high to ISRO to build the ‘Bharatiya Antariksh Station’ by year X and land an Indian on the moon by year Y. And then what? We wait for the next diktat? Imagine a future 50 years from now when it’s possible there are a few space stations in orbit around Earth and maybe even the moon, and when it’s plausibly (and relatively) more affordable, and not just in economic terms, to send people to stay and work there than to build a station of one’s own. *Imagine if India owned and operated one of these stations instead of Indians having to lease time on another*, you say. I reply: Sounds good, but where’s the cost-benefit analysis to this plan? Because unless you can demonstrate the benefit, we’re riding the coattails of speculation here and, importantly, you’re motivated by little more than the *idea* of Indian leadership rather than a proof of leadership *de facto*. [It’s reminiscent](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/10/22/indias-science-leadership/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in turn of the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955: it was chaired by Homi Bhabha, a representative from India, then a country that didn’t have nuclear power of its own. *Conferences are not countries*, you say. And leadership doesn’t demand “steel”, “craft” or “atoms”, I reply. This is in fact what the comity of nations allows us: leadership in various forms, and freedom from the tunnel vision that condemns the country to just one. The aspiration to “technological sovereignty” rankles specifically because, taken together, it offers one pointless pinnacle at the expense of others, and without the requisite justification of its presumed supremacy. The image of the nuclear weapon slips back into view. It’s from a promotional video in Seth’s LinkedIn post. It opens with a staccato montage of the Indian flag atop a temple tower, atop a mountain (Kargil?), atop the Red Fort, atop a glacier (Siachen?), and atop the moon.\*\*\* Perhaps the fund’s ultimate priority is national security, yet “technological sovereignty” implies even greater ambitions — as do other visuals in the video\*\*\*\* and the enterprises Industrial47 has already invested in. National security also exists today in a baleful avatar. Rather than inculcate something the armed forces deem worth fighting for, the government’s narratives have often attempted to cast soldiers’ “spirit and courage” themselves to be the objects of desire, the thing citizens at large must prove they deserve. The government has also invoked national security as a spectre, bolstered by periodic allegations of threats to Hindus, disinformation about the intentions of Muslims, and in general the communalisation of public life, to deny requests under the RTI Act about information as benign as the designs of scientific spacecraft. Unspecific appeals to national security have also become the basis for jailing students and academics for indefinite periods of time, expel foreign journalists, rebuke foreign governments’ comments on the country’s “internal affairs”, and deny the findings of international democracy and welfare research organisations. If this is national security, I sincerely dread a deeply technologised form. *It’s just a video*, you say, *and you’re seeing meaning that isn’t there*. Most of you must’ve watched *Oppenheimer* by now but let me call your attention to something [Leona Woods asked Enrico Fermi](https://science.thewire.in/science/when-do-we-become-scared/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) after the world’s first nuclear reactor went critical: “When do we become scared?” Call it the naïvety of eggheads or political premeditation, Oppenheimer et al. had control of the Bomb until suddenly they didn’t. Its very existence reshaped the world order. Whether or not it actually went off was secondary. This is scope creep: when the parameters of a project are changing so slowly as to not be threatening, until one day you realise they’ve crossed some threshold, an unforeseen tipping point, and significantly altered the scope of the project. You thought you had a hand on the wheel, and maybe you did, but the car’s almost imperceptible drift to the right now has you endangering oncoming traffic, and yourself, on the other lane. Call it pithy, call it a cliché, but science and the technologies that follow need a [hand on the wheel](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/national-research-foundation-research-funding-model-social-innovation/article67337262.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to adjust the course of their fantasies every now and then instead of going with the flow. Politics needs your other hand on another wheel to do the same thing, considering science is [already a reason of state](https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se02.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in India. Otherwise, we’re left staring at “technological sovereignty”. Or maybe these are all just words trading in *josh* on an investment fund’s webpage — although it does alert us to one particular plausibility and renders the words more potent: “The problems we solve here will ripple across eons. The companies we build here will transform billions of lives. The technologies we pioneer here will reshape what’s possible.” *When do we become scared?* I don’t know, but when you do, don’t ignore it. That’s all I’m asking. --- \* “Leonardo da Vinci had Lorenzo de’ Medici” and “Walchand Hirachand had the Kingdom of Mysore” — and of course a wider socio-political environment that they navigated as well, but this aside: notice the distinctive singularity of “genius”, its manifestation with problems amenable to being solved by individuals, often working alone, as was once the case in some of the sciences but hasn’t been so for more than a century — and as has more rarely been the case in the social sphere, virtually by definition. \*\* I can seem like a habitual naysayer but I assure you I’m not. I can’t get onboard with new technology + business ideas if they’re ill-conceived or if their social and political implications haven’t been thought through. If I keep saying ‘no’, it’s because I’m being met with a continuous stream of half-baked ideas. I have no obligation to put up with one every now and then. \*\*\* The video includes footage from Associated Press. I hope it was licensed properly. \*\*\*\* The video’s theme seems to be masculine middle-class fever dream. The scenes of its montage go space, space, sport, space, cricket, space, EV, sport, sport, a CEO, software code, sport, a CEO, a CEO, automation, an award, music, the stock market, Rajpath, military, Taj Mahal, IT, IT, a CEO, a CEO, space, space, mountains, tigers, IISc, IISc, metallurgy, military, Mahabharat on DD, space, some nuke test, polio vaccine, Shah Rukh Khan, Modi performing aarthi like a priest, AR Rahman, cricket, military, military, a CEO, automation, the “shayari jugalbandi” in Parliament, [CV Raman](https://science.thewire.in/society/gender/national-science-day-women-in-stem-cv-raman-government/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), an Amul ad, military, *that* nuke test, military, military, Parle G biscuit dipped in tea, military, metallurgy, military, space, and finally Nehru hoisting the flag in front of a crowd of thousands. ### A tale of two awardees URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/12/a-tale-of-two-awardees-2/ Last updated: 2025-01-12T05:09:04.000Z In many respects Krishna Ella and Elon Musk are poles apart but on some they share a few similarities. Both of them have played along with nationalist elements in their respective national governments in order to further their agendas, if not profits. Both men are also at the helm of successful companies that build valuable products that a lot of people need, that the world needs. But while [Elon Musk](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/29/tesla-owners-elon-musk?ref=slightlyacidic.com) continues to be a despotic techbro, Krishna Ella is just a fellow who’s made some detrimental decisions. Recently, both men were also in the news for honours they’d received. The Royal Society in the UK continues to remain under pressure to rescind its fellowship of Musk, which it granted in 2018, owing to his attacks on free speech (ironically in the guise of protecting an absolute right to free speech), support for pseudoscientific ideas (including his antivaccine sentiments and support for climate denialism), and generally being unable to tell profundity from horseshit. At least one other fellow has resigned to protest the Royal Society’s unwillingness to suspend Musk’s membership: retired University of Oxford psychologist Dorothy Bishop. She [wrote in November 2024](https://deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-i-have-resigned-from-royal-society.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on her blog: > There was no formal consultation of the Fellowship but via informal email contacts, a group of 74 Fellows formulated a letter of concern that was sent in early August \[2024\] to the President of the Royal Society, raising doubts as to whether he was "a fit and proper person to hold the considerable honour of being a Fellow of the Royal Society". The letter specifically mentioned the way Musk had used his platform on X to make unjustified and divisive statements that served to inflame right-wing thuggery and racist violence in the UK. > > Somebody (not me!) leaked the letter to the Guardian, who ran a story about it on 23rd August. > > I gather that at this point the Royal Society Council opted to consult a top lawyer to determine whether Musk's behaviour breached their Code of Conduct. The problem with this course of action is that if you are uncertain about doing something that seems morally right but may have consequences, then it is easy to find a lawyer who will advise against doing it. … And, sure enough, the lawyer determined that Musk hadn't breached the Code of Conduct. According to Bishop, Musk is in breach of sections 2.6, 2.10, and 2.11 of the ‘Code of Conduct’: > 2.6: Fellows and Foreign Members shall carry out their scientific research with regard to the Society's statement on research integrity and to the highest standards. > > 2.10: Fellows and Foreign Members shall treat all individuals in the scientific enterprise collegially and with courtesy, including supervisors, colleagues, other Society Fellows and Foreign Members, Society staff, students and other early‐career colleagues, technical and clerical staff, and interested members of the public. > > 2.11: Fellows and Foreign Members shall not engage in any form of discrimination, harassment, or bullying. Seems fair. I reckon that together with the possibility of the unspecified “consequences” for the Royal Society Bishop has speculated, the body will also be mindful of being obligated to reassess the fellowship of many other individuals on its roster should it remove Musk on these grounds. (To be clear, this isn’t a defence of its position.) I’ve always held that awards are distinguished by their laureates and not the other way around. Fellowship of the Royal Society isn’t technically an award but for the most part it operates with the same incentives. Its code is thoughtful enough to not be limited to one’s conduct as a scientist. Just as the Millennium Plaque of Honour wouldn’t make a dent on the reputation of any scientist who wins it because it was [awarded to Appa Rao Podile](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2017/01/05/the-indian-science-congress-has-gutted-its-own-award-by-giving-it-to-appa-rao-podile/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2017 — after he let police personnel lathi-charge the students in his care at the University of Hyderabad — it must be difficult to count Musk among one’s peers as fellows of the Royal Society. Consider Krishna Ella now. As part of its annual routine, the Indian National National Science Academy (INSA) handed out 61 fellowships last week, Ella among them. It’s the first time INSA has included industry leaders for this recognition. According to a statement on the INSA website: > Dr. Krishna Ella, a prominent Indian scientist and entrepreneur, leads Bharat Biotech in ground-breaking vaccine development. His achievements include India’s Covaxin, the world’s first clinically proven conjugated Typhoid Vaccine, ROTAVAC, and the first preservative-free vaccine, Revac-B mcf Hepatitis B Vaccine. Bharat Biotech also introduced India’s first cell-cultured Swine Flu vaccine and manufactures the world’s most affordable Hepatitis vaccines. Additionally, they were the first globally to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus. Impressive achievements, right? But to me, Ella will equally be the man who saw fit to file [defamation cases](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/09/25/on-agnihotris-covaxin-film-defamation-and-false-bravery/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) against me and many of my fellow journalists for publishing evidence-based articles critical of the manner in which the Indian government approved Covaxin for COVID-19 (with emphasis on the Indian government, not Bharat Biotech). I’m not at liberty to quote from these articles as Bharat Biotech was able to obtain an *ex-parte* injunction to take them offline until the proceedings concluded. But as with Bishop vis-à-vis Musk, here’s an instructive passage from the [INSA ‘Code of Conduct’](https://insaindia.res.in/scroll%5Fnews%5Fpdf/Ethics%5FGuidelines.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > All people associated with INSA are expected to adhere to certain minimal standards of ethical behaviour which include but are not limited to, honesty, integrity, and professional (*sic*). Integrity in the context of scientific research means trustworthiness of the data collected/presented, their interpretation, and the soundness of methodology/protocol followed in carrying out the research. At the time the Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) signed off on the use of Covaxin and Covishield in “clinical trial mode” on the cusp of India’s drive to vaccinate against COVID-19, in January 2021, the country’s medico-legal doctrine didn’t recognise the term “trial mode” and phase III trials of both vaccines hadn’t been completed. To make matters worse, the DGCI said the vaccines were [“110% safe”](https://science.thewire.in/health/dcgi-vg-somani-serum-instityte-covishield-bharat-biotech-covaxin-approval-unanswered-questions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when the safety data hadn’t even been collected. AstraZeneca came through later with the complete safety and efficacy data for Covishield. In July 2021, Bharat Biotech researchers uploaded a preprint paper reporting safety data for only 56 days following vaccination with Covaxin. To this day, Bharat Biotech and the Union health ministry [have yet to release](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-right-way-to-counter-a-poor-covaxin-safety-study/article68457999.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the long-term safety data collected during Covaxin’s phase-III trial. Instead, both the company and the national government have simply expected people at large to trust them. Irrespective of whether the vaccine is safe, these actions are inimical to trust*worthiness*. I’m not opposed to Ella becoming an INSA fellow because I don’t care. Instead, my concerns are about INSA: [I know](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2017/10/24/appa-rao-podile-made-fellow-of-science-academy-that-published-his-problem-paper/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) it focuses on a prospective fellow’s scientific work at the time of granting the fellowship (see link below) and I suspect the Royal Society does too, but the latter also has a code of conduct that extends to fellows’ conduct beyond the scientific enterprise and other fellows who find value in all their peers adhering to it. The Royal Society fellows’ protests against sharing the honour with Musk is of a piece with his increasingly rightward turn in recent years being met with scientists speaking up against him in various fora. While there isn’t a correspondingly objectionable scientist in India, I also don’t recall members of the Indian scientific community speaking up in defence of science journalists who are speaking for science when they’re harassed by other members of the research enterprise, at least beyond the constant few I remain grateful for. ### The HMPV cascade URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2025/01/10/the-hmpv-cascade/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:39.000Z I sense the public panic over the HMPV outbreak in China is finally dying down. I don’t know which TV news channel picked up on it first and blew it out of proportion but it created the sort of time in which basic public health literacy would have made a big difference. Clearly such literacy is still quite low in the country. I also don’t know why it became such a panic at all. As an [editorial in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/nothing-alarming-on-chinas-hmpv-cases/article69064326.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) noted, the outbreak was a problem only insofar as the Indian media made it out to be: it didn’t hit the headlines anywhere else (except perhaps some Sinophobic outlets in the US). It made me wonder what exactly we learnt from COVID-19: wear masks, wash hands, maintain social distancing, and consult your physician, yes, but seemingly not that the COVID-19 pandemic was troublesome because SARS-CoV-2 was a new virus. This novelty made a world of difference. The whole thing was constantly reminiscent of a 2014 Tamil film called *Vaayai Moodi Paesavum* (‘Speak With Your Mouth Shut’). In the film, there’s an outbreak of a previously unknown virus and medical researchers are slowly elucidating the full range of its symptoms. But even before they’ve learnt anything about whether it’s deadly or requires drastic action to protect against, the state health minister (played by the well-cast Pandiarajan) — desperate to quell the media outcry and to pacify a worried local populace — declares the state government will manufacture masks *en masse* and hand them out for free. Good call, right? The fellow’s unscrupulous: he means to have a relative receive the government contract and take a slice. But his statement feeds the real panic: while until then neither the people nor the journalists knew whether the infection was communicable, his implication that masks are necessary suggests it does, and they’re all in a tizzy. It was the same way with covering HMPV stories as journalists: all the experts to whom journalists spoke, irrespective of their location in the public or private sectors or their ideological tendencies, said HMPV wasn’t cause for concern. At the same time, local and hyperlocal media outlets were reporting “First HMPV case reported from X city” or “X number of people dead due to HMPV”. Those publications that did have a functional science/health journalism department would’ve been caught in between: they couldn’t deny HMPV’s existence nor leave it out of the front pages, so they had to acknowledge its existence in a way that didn’t also inflate the hype balloon. Another problem we came across showed up the piecemeal nature of India’s pathogen surveillance programme. Many headlines simply said “X agency detects Y HMPV cases”. Since HMPV has been around for a long time, and hasn’t exactly been hiding, it was a truism that if we went looking for it, we’d find it. And the ICMR did, repeatedly, but when it put out press releases to that effect together with statements asking for the people at large to not worry, just the fact that the agency had picked up on those cases further fuelled concerns. Public outcry is a dangerous animal. It forced the government’s hand and, in a bid to be seen to be acting, the government instituted the same sort of response measures it would have if there had been an outbreak with real cause for concern. Whatever blew the HMPV outbreak out of proportion, a cascading lack of tact — if not courage — was part of it. ### Rescuing superconductivity URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/21/rescuing-superconductivity/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:41.000Z From a paper in [*Nature Reviews Physics*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-024-00794-1?ref=slightlyacidic.com), December 19, 2024: > One of the forefront fields of modern superconductivity research is that on hydrides at high pressures. Over the past few years, this research has attracted considerable publicity, of which a substantial fraction has been negative. Scientific fraud has been committed and exposed, and arguments continue about specific aspects of data presented in some other papers. Among all the noise that is being generated, one might lose sight of the big-picture question of whether the field is on solid foundations or not, that is, whether high-pressure hydrides host superconductivity at all. Here, we readdress this central issue. We select and critically examine what we identify as six key papers on the topic. We have all spent substantial portions of our careers working on superconductivity, so hope that the conclusions that we reach will carry at least some weight. We also decided to include among our authorship team only people who have never worked directly on hydride superconductivity, so that our examination of the scientific facts can be as impartial as possible. We conclude that it is overwhelmingly probable that the phenomenon of hydride superconductivity is genuine. It's intriguing such an exercise had to be undertaken. It's yet another reminder that practising science isn't simply a matter of following the facts. Science is part of the world, not separate from it, and is affected by what others think of it, especially based on perceptions of trustworthiness, self-correctability, and integrity. Self-correctability in particular went [out the window](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/ranga-dias-physical-review-letters-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the moment the [holes in the Dias/Salamat saga](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2023/09/07/scientists-conduct-affects-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) became clear, followed by integrity. Imagine discovering a groundbreaking new natural phenomenon: usually such things revitalise fields looking for a breakthrough, but here, the field became marred by a slew of bad papers that shrunk funding opportunities and rendered young researchers trying to enter or already in the field nervous about their future. In fact the self-correctability and integrity issues were compounded by the actions of the journals that published the problem papers. *Nature* and *Physical Review Letters* both have submissions peer-reviewed. The process of peer review is designed to check whether the data *provided* match the conclusion *provided*, not the integrity of the data. However, the data the journals reviewed before publishing the papers was also the data independent experts reviewed to find flaws, consequently leading to the retractions. [What explains this?](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2023/09/28/the-journals-part-in-a-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Further, one of the papers, purporting to show superconductivity in LuNH and [published in *Nature*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06774-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in March 2023, didn't contain enough evidence to support the conclusion, which the journal's review missed as well. A [*Nature* news feature](https://archive.is/9mPMH?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported in September that year: > Critiques started appearing as soon as the Nature paper was published. One major line of criticism is that the Rochester team didn’t provide enough evidence to show that resistance does go to zero in its material. Dias and his colleagues state in the paper that they removed “small residual resistance” from some of their electrical measurements, but critics argue that it should not be necessary to remove background for these types of measurements, given clean readings of both a sample’s current and voltage. The problem with removing a background, says Sven Friedemann, a physicist at the University of Bristol, UK, is that it implies that the raw data do not go to zero — and therefore don’t show superconductivity. The same feature also quoted two scientists saying *Nature*’s retraction of a carbonaceous sulphur hydride paper in 2022 was "not strong enough". The names of many of the authors of the review should be familiar to people who have been following the Dias/Salamat saga, including Peter Hirschfeld, Steven Kivelson, Andrew Mackenzie, and Subir Sachdev. The review reportedly began with the two possible outcomes — hydrides display superconductivity versus hydrides don't — being equally probable and concluded in favour of the former after assessing the results reported by multiple groups. While the nominal definition of superconductivity alludes only to the fact that a material's electrical resistance drops to zero, condensed-matter physicists perform [four tests](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/four-steps-superconducting-transition-explained-lk-99/article67164750.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) looking for different features. One is zero electrical resistance; another is that the material's magnetisation varies through a particular pattern. On this count the reviewers assessed data from only one group, that [of Mikhail Eremets & co.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10948-022-06148-1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2022. Yet another familiar name, Jorge Hirsch, has already expressed his disapproval towards the review. "I was surprised and disappointed to see this. I speculate \[they wrote\] it because hydrides being superconductors would establish the validity of BCS theory, in which they firmly believe," he told [*Physics*](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/184?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A bit of relevant background here is that Hirsch is a detractor of the popular BCS theory of superconductivity and a proponent of his own holes theory. While *Physics* writes that he's already flagged some problems with the Eremets et al. paper, it doesn't say the Eremets et al. paper raised significant doubts about the validity of his holes theory — which is to say both the study and Hirsch's idea could be flawed rather than the study alone. Overall, if science is to remain trustworthy, scientists need to undertake exercises like this, conducting — while being seen to be conducting — impartial reviews of the prevailing evidence and considering whether it makes sense to continue working in fields beleaguered by the influence of some dishonest exponents. I only hope reviewers will also take a closer look at the roles journals and their misguided incentives — and the still largely blind trust the global scientific community places in them — play in sustaining scandals in science. ### The SARS-CoV-2 red herring URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/20/the-sars-cov-2-red-herring/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:41.000Z From my [piece in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/notebook-the-social-character-of-scientific-knowledge/article69005116.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) today: > We don’t know where or how the virus originated. If it did in a lab, we would have to re-examine how we regulate research facilities and their safeguards and the manner of political oversight that won’t curtail research freedom. If the virus is au naturel, we would have to institute and/or expand pathogen surveillance, eliminate wildlife trafficking, and improve social security measures to ensure populations can withstand outbreaks without becoming distressed. But even as these possibilities aren’t equally likely (according to scientists I trust), the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is less important than it once was because the COVID-19 pandemic caused us to implement all these outcomes to varying degrees. Not many people I've encountered seem to harbour the view that the origins question has become irrelevant. I sincerely believe there are many things we just can't know. They're easier to find in science but they're likely there in all domains. The origin of SARS-CoV-2 has become one of them. The virus could have been entirely natural or it could have been engineered in a lab. This means we need to establish a clear and straightforward genetic link between two species: SARS-CoV-2 and its ancestor, a bat coronavirus called RaTG13\. We haven't yet. Even when we do, we'll have to find a way to prove that the evolution from the in-between species to SARS-CoV-2 was natural, not engineered. As for the second possibility, we simply need China's cooperation whereas China hasn't been cooperating. But as I've written, we've already done what we'd do if either of these possibilities is established without doubt. It's time we move on. In fact, one thing I've left unsaid in the piece — mostly because of the word limit — speaks as much to the origins of the origins question as to the sort of people who continue to keep these concerns alive. (My piece itself was motivated by the US Select Subcommittee Report, a Republican-led effort that earlier this month concluded the lab-leak theory remains plausible and worthy of investigation.) The origins question is no longer about science when it's on the big stage. Instead it's an excuse disguised as scientific inquiry for the US to punish China. Both the US and China didn't help the cause of working together during the COVID-19 pandemic: one [reduced funding](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/world-health-organization-why-has-trump-suspended-funding?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for the World Health Organisation, actively [spread misinformation](https://smacc-lab.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3062/2020/12/COVID-19-and-Fake-News-SMACC-Team.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [hoarded vaccines](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/why-the-us-still-cant-donate-covid-19-vaccines-to-countries-in-need?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the other [limited scientific access](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56054468?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to medical data and [used it to curry](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/world/who-china-coronavirus.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) favours. Now, with Donald Trump a month away from his second term as the US's nincompoop-in-chief, the origins question is being used to set the stage for the US to smack down a challenger in the global world order. This hasn't been about science for sometime. If science is why you're interested in the origins of SARS-CoV-2, I suggest switching from either hypotheses to the [eternal third possibility](https://www.rootprivileges.net/correlation-isnt-causation-the-evm-edition/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — "I don't know" — while keeping in touch with scientists you trust. ### Visual science journalism’s DNA problem URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/17/visual-science-journalisms-dna-problem/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:42.000Z Your left hand and right hand are mirror-images of each other. You can’t superimpose them completely even after all manner of rotations and translations. Only mirroring them works. The same thing can happen to some molecules. When two molecules are identical in every way except their geometric structure in space is such that one is a mirror-image of another, they’re said to be enantiomers. These molecules have a chirality, or handedness: like your hands, one is left-handed and the other right-handed. On December 3, an international group of scientists published a [technical report](https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [commentary in *Science*](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158?ref=slightlyacidic.com) warning against work to develop “mirror life”: cells whose chiral molecules are replaced with their complementary enantiomers. To quote from the commentary: > Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants. Chiral interactions, which are central to immune recognition and activation in multicellular organisms, would be impaired with mirror bacteria. This could result in weakened immune recognition, a weakened response by innate immune systems, and (in vertebrates) limited downstream activation of adaptive immune functions. For example, experiments show that mirror proteins resist cleavage into peptides for antigen presentation and do not reliably trigger important adaptive immune responses such as the production of antibodies. We are thus concerned that the function of many vertebrate immune systems against mirror bacteria would be severely impaired. Invertebrate and plant immune systems are less well studied but appear to suffer analogous limitations. > > Given the potential for severe immune evasion, mirror bacteria might not require host-specific factors to invade hosts and cause infection. In animals (including humans), bacteria regularly cross barriers in the skin, mouth, gut, lungs, and other mucosal surfaces because of routine damage and intrinsic leakiness; mirror bacteria would be expected to do the same. In healthy animals, translocated natural-chirality bacteria are typically cleared by immune defenses. However, if the immune response against mirror bacteria is sufficiently impaired, translocated mirror bacteria might replicate within the host and establish an infection. Unchecked replication of mirror bacteria within internal tissues is likely to be deleterious to the host organism and may be lethal. While this is very intriguing, the report/commentary reminded me of another problem I’ve been noticing in the science journalism press, especially these days when we’re all writing and publishing more articles about genetics. Stock images and illustrations are [an important resource](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/on-that-poynter-debate-about-stock-images-and-ethical-visual-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) both for small newsrooms that can’t hire their own designers and for all newsrooms — including those with designers — lacking the skills to create (even partially accurate) scientific visuals. Articles of science journalism about genetics require such visuals more than others because, while the subjects of these narratives are physical entities, they’re too small to be seen by the naked eye as well as whose visuals as seen through microscopes aren’t particularly visually captivating. Instead, stock images have done the trick. Pixabay, Getty Images, and other libraries of such assets are choc-a-bloc with 2D and 3D (or 2.5D?) illustrations of the DNA double helix. But I’ve noticed that a great number of them have a common problem — curiously, in a specific way, echoed in the objection the scientists’ group has expressed against “mirror life”: many of these illustrations show the DNA helix twisting to the left. In all our bodies, DNA virtually always twists to the right. That is, the right-handed enantiomer is what animates our bodies whereas the left-handed enantiomer is absent, but which hasn’t stopped it from dominating stock images of DNA. I realise most people don’t care and/or that the image is captioned to be “for representative use only”. DNA of other configurations, including a left-handed one, [exist as well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic%5Facid%5Fdouble%5Fhelix?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Helix%5Fgeometries) to be fair. And most of all, DNA’s chirality has almost never been the narrative subject. But today it is, as the scientists have so clearly articulated, and the visuals of science journalism need to buck up as well. ### What is ONOS's (real) problem? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/12/what-is-onos-real-problem/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:43.000Z The Indian government set the country’s research community aflutter when it announced the launch of a long-awaited plan to improve research access without announcing many of its salient details as well. On November 25, the Ministry of Education published a [press release](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2077098&ref=slightlyacidic.com) saying the Union Cabinet had approved the plan — called ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) — at a total value of Rs 6,000 crore over three years. This release was so low on details as to be deeply polarising in the public sphere. In fact, its reception was only saved by its offer to bring access to prohibitively expensive research journals to students at poorly funded public colleges and universities. As speculation and debate swelled to fill the information gap, many experts unsurprisingly concluded the government shouldn’t have adopted ONOS in its current form. Their arguments were that it spent too much for too little gain, didn’t make room for open-access (OA) publishing, and had no arrangements to support domestic publishers of scholarly journals. But on December 11, after criticism in the press, the government organised a [press conference](https://www.youtube.com/live/OwPhBngJkgk?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with officials of the Department of Science & Technology, Department of Higher Education, and the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor, and they revealed many more details about ONOS — often enough to allay suspicions that ONOS was an attempt by the government to take the easiest way out of a difficult problem. The officials even acknowledged the importance of supporting domestic publishers of scholarly journals (which are likely to be more mindful of local contexts of research), rooted for changes in the way professional scholars are evaluated for promotions (to focus less on journal names and more on the quality of work), and called ONOS part of a plan to “bring about OA transformation”. However, after the press conference, the discussions in many OA communities (of which I am part) still indicated a significant degree of dissatisfaction. Chief among critics’ complaints was that the government’s decision to set aside Rs 150 crore per year for researchers publishing in ‘gold’ OA journals (where the publisher charges researchers to publish a paper rather than a reader to read it) was a waste. They were also unhappy about the authors of papers having to sign their copyrights over to the publishers and about the ‘lost opportunity’ to use the Rs 6,000 crore to make the ‘green’ OA publishing model (whereby researchers self-archive copies of their papers that can be availed freely) a national priority. Between November 25 and December 11, an important source of disgruntlement with ONOS was the scheme amounted to paying research journals a sum so researchers in the country could access their output for free, without addressing any of the issues associated with the country's research publishing and evaluation culture. This version of ONOS effectively maintained the status quo at a small discount. But the details revealed on December 11 refocused what criticism still remained to a different form — and one that Remya Haridasan, a scientist at the PSA’s office and one of the officials present at the press conference, inadvertently captured. She said, “ONOS is not a value judgment of the subscription-based model of knowledge dissemination but an adoption of the most practical India-specific solution until a sustainable OA model is achieved globally.” In this paradigm, the government is simply responding to what the country's scientists are asking for while keeping the door open to change whereas critics want the government to (help) change what it is that scientists want altogether. Put another way, the conflict now is between what a country can do in the face of a world-order that is still far from assuming a more ideal state versus what a country ought to do. ONOS was necessitated by subscription-based journals charging higher and higher subscription fees, over time guzzling an increasingly non-trivial fraction of the research expenditures of various countries. Yet many scientists wished to keep publishing in these journals because the world’s oldest journals belong to this group and have carefully cultivated a great reputation for themselves. A paper published in their pages ensures it is read by all scientists in that field. In fact, because these journals have also been highly picky about what they publish and there is a global competition to be featured in their pages, to be published with them has itself become a mark of success. The journals’ publishers took advantage of their products’ desirability to increase subscription fees further. To break the stranglehold of subscription-based journals, then, is also to break the research publishing culture wherein publishing in XYZ journals is the crowning aspiration. And this is what those who remain critical of ONOS are fighting for, and probably expected ONOS would do as well. Their contention is that rather than passively responding to whatever the country’s research community wants, the government should actively reshape *what* the community wants. For example, it could ensure a scientist’s career prospects in academia are not affected by the name of the journals in which they publish and only by the quality of their work. Doing so would nudge the community to favour green OA, or that’s the expectation, and move away from ‘prestige’ journals. This is the context in which the quality and resourcefulness of homegrown journals would matter as well. In many ways, this line of inquiry constitutes the essential criticism of ONOS, the fundamental substrate upon which more material concerns — like how its allocation will change and how it will prevent paying for already freely-available papers — stand. If we go by the press conference alone, the government has staved this criticism off for now by moving its object into the future. The “OA transformation” is the ultimate outcome one must ensure the government’s plan for ONOS achieves, otherwise what the country is prepared to do will allow subscription-based journals to flourish at the expense of our academic publishing culture. ### Solve all our problems URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/12/solve-all-our-problems/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:43.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/e4d26-936a6-9e32f-realistic_criteria_2x.png) This is [xkcd #1232](https://xkcd.com/1232/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). When it came out I remember it was to rebut a particular line of argument against NASA’s lunar and interplanetary missions — that the agency was spending large sums of money that would be better spent on “solving problems on Earth”. Considering Earth would always have problems, xkcd and others contended, we’d never be able to go to space if we had to spend all our time, money, and labours fixing them. The snark implied in #1232 was warranted. But recently, I saw this comic used in a different context: during a conversation (in a private group) about Elon Musk’s aggression with SpaceX and his plans to colonise the moon and visit Mars in his lifetime. Insofar as #1232 pushed back against space exploration that couldn’t by any measure subtract from public spending on socio-economic welfare and justice, it was clever and good. But in the conversation in the group, #1232 donned a new implication: of reducing any other (even minimally) legitimate criticism of the world’s plans to land probes on the moon, establish lunar bases, and start the human campaign to permanently settle the moon and of Elon Musk’s and SpaceX’s plans to being an argument about spending on space exploration subtracting from more immediately measurable pursuits. Two arguments come to mind that are poorly served by such flattening. First: the pace at which SpaceX has been manufacturing satellites, launching rockets, and expanding its satellite constellations is at odds with its, and our, ability to deal with the environmental footprint of these activities. Neither SpaceX nor Musk have made any provisions for the activities to be sustainable and they should asap. Doing so might slow the company down, and the company needs to stop considering this retardation to be undesirable. Yet SpaceX’s supporters have often construed any criticism of the company’s pace to be criticism of the company altogether and as the argument that its money would be better spent doing other things. Second: I was recently asked a curious question during a formal engagement at work. *Is it ethical for India to spend so much on Gaganyaan considering we live in a world with war, violence, and poverty?* Gaganyaan has so far cost the Indian government more than Rs 11,000 crore. But there are a couple underlying assumptions here, leading up to questions of the ethicality of human spaceflight, that are flawed. (i) The allocation of resources for various activities isn’t a zero-sum game in India. The national budget is voluminous enough for the government to fund both human spaceflight and poverty alleviation programmes. Also unlike in game theory, fractional outcomes are possible and possibly more desirable. For example, India can make great strides in its poverty alleviation programme if it diverts only 0.1% of its defence spending (Rs 6.2 lakh crore in 2024-2025) that way. (ii) Many of us like to believe if we don’t spend money on X, it will be available for Y. (Here, X could be ’spaceflight’ and Y could be ‘alleviating poverty’.) We don’t stop to ask whether the state will divert it to Z instead (say, ‘missiles’). If we’d like to guarantee X → Y, we need to persuade the state to rejig its existing priorities and prevent X → Z. Expecting ISRO to not pursue Gaganyaan with funds provided by the state isn’t reasonable. In sum, it seems like the “let’s first fix all problems on Earth” argument has become both straw man and red herring in conversations about off-world human activities whose benefits aren’t entirely clear at the moment. The real problem is of course that the benefits aren’t clear, not that the activities are happening at all, plus the belief that money spared by not performing one activity will automatically become available for the precise alternative activity we’re rooting for. ### Keep the crap going URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/12/06/keep-the-crap-going/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:44.000Z Have you seen the new ads for Google Gemini? In one version, just as a young employee is grabbing her fast-food lunch, she notices her snooty boss get on an elevator. So she drops her sandwich, rushes to meet her just as the doors are about to close, and submits her proposal in the form of a thick dossier. The boss asks her for a 500-word summary to consume during her minute-long elevator ride. The employee turns to Google Gemini, which digests the report and spits out the gist, and which the employee regurgitates to the boss’s approval. The end. --- Isn’t this unsettling? Google isn’t alone either. In May this year, Apple released a tactless ad for its new iPad Pro. From [*Variety*](https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/apple-apologizes-ipad-ad-crush-backlash-1235997969/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The “Crush!” ad shows various creative and cultural objects — including a TV, record player, piano, trumpet, guitar, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and tubes, and an arcade game machine — getting demolished in an industrial press. At the end of the spot, the new iPad Pro pops out, shiny and new, with a voiceover that says, “The most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest.” After the backlash, Apple bactracked and apologised — and then produced two ads in November for its Apple Intelligence product showcasing how it could help thoughtless people continue to be thoughtless. --- --- The second video is additionally weird because it seems to suggest reaching all the way for an AI tool makes more sense than setting a reminder on the calendar that comes in all smartphones these days. And they are now joined in spirit by Google, because bosses can now expect their subordinates to Geminify their way through what could otherwise have been tedious work or just impossible to do on punishingly short deadlines — without the bosses having to think about whether their attitudes towards what they believe is reasonable to ask of their teammates need to change. (This includes a dossier of details that ultimately won't be read.) If AI is going to absorb the shock that comes of someone being crappy to you, will we continue to notice that crappiness and demand they change or — as Apple and Google now suggest — will we blame ourselves for not using AI to become crappy ourselves? To quote from a [previous post](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/04/09/feel-the-pain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > When machines make decisions, the opportunity to consider the emotional input goes away. This is a recurring concern I’m hearing about from people working with or responding to AI in some way. … This is Anna Mae Duane, director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, in [*The Conversation*](https://theconversation.com/ai-companions-promise-to-combat-loneliness-but-history-shows-the-dangers-of-one-way-relationships-221086?ref=slightlyacidic.com): “I fear how humans will be damaged by the moral vacuum created when their primary social contacts are designed solely to serve the emotional needs of the ‘user’.” The applications of these AI tools have really blossomed and millions of people around the world are using them for all sorts of tasks. But even if the ads don't pigeonhole these tools, they reveal how their makers — Apple and Google — are thinking about what the tools bring to the table and what these tech companies believe to be their value. To Google’s credit at least, its other ads in the same series are much better (see [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uA5xZdlsCY&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWw34VobQ7o&ref=slightlyacidic.com) for examples), but they do need to actively cut down on supporting or promoting the idea that crappy behaviour is okay. ### Correlation isn’t causation — the EVM edition URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/30/correlation-isnt-causation-the-evm-edition/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:44.000Z The space to disagree with the Election Commission’s position vis-à-vis the integrity of electronic voting machines without finding oneself backtracking into the Congress or the BJP camps is shrinking, and both national parties as well as the Supreme Court have been wilfully engendering this state of affairs at the expense of — ironically — logic. The Congress on [November 24, 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/home-minister-alleges-evms-hacked-selectively-in-maharashtra-polls/article68906191.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Dr. Parameshwara, who was also the AICC observer for Maharashtra elections, told presspersons that his party leaders, including former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, discussed the EVM issues and were planning to appeal to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in this regard. “We are now sure that till the EVMs are used, there is no hope for the Congress or any other party other than the BJP. There is an urgent need to return to ballot papers,” he said. The Supreme Court on [November 26, 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-rejects-plea-for-reverting-to-ballots-in-elections/article68913342.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The Supreme Court on Tuesday (November 26, 2024) indicated a level of hypocrisy attached to criticism about Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), saying “EVMs are tampered when you lose and fine if you win”. The oral remark was made by Justice Vikram Nath before dismissing a petition filed by evangelist K.A. Paul, who sought a judicial order to return to paper ballots. Also the Supreme Court [in April 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/evm-vvpat-case-cannot-disclose-source-code-of-evms-will-result-in-misuse-supreme-court/article68101200.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The Supreme Court on Wednesday underscored that it cannot ask the Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose the source codes of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) as it can result in its misuse. The source code often called “the brain” refers to a set of instructions that tells the machine how to function. A Bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta made the observation while hearing a batch of petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of the vote count in EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) paper slips. The BJP on [November 27, 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/replace-rahul-not-evm-bjp-to-congress-chief-mallikarjun-kharge/article68919315.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Taking a swipe at the Congress president over his latest remarks on the EVMs, BJP Lok Sabha MP and national spokesperson Sambit Patra also said Mr. Kharge can go to “planet Mars” taking Gandhi with him and “live there happily” if he doesn’t want electronic voting machines, Election Commission, Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation, judiciary and the Modi government. And the Congress on [November 30, 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/integrity-of-electoral-process-severely-compromised-congress-to-soon-launch-movement-congress-working-committee/article68928342.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > In his opening remarks to the CWC, party president Mallikarjun Kharge mentioned the electronic voting machines (EVMs) making the poll process “suspect”. And that set the tone for the speakers who followed him, as the discussions mostly focussed on EVMs and the Election Commission (EC).Veteran leader Digvijaya Singh was the first among CWC members to question EVMs. While Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Singhvi argued for a nuanced approach and pitched for 100 per cent voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), Ms. Vadra said the party should press for a return to ballot paper. Mr. Gandhi urged his colleagues to “adopt a firm stand and take the issues to the hilt and convert it into a movement”. We don’t need a "movement" because we don’t know that EVMs are the issue! This is a farce. It’s helping only the Congress — and then again only by fanning the flames of a misguided suspicion. The BJP’s overreach vis-à-vis many of the institutions of Indian democracy, including the Reserve Bank (RBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has rendered all of them suspect, especially when some outcome goes the BJP’s way when it wasn’t expected to. But a mismatch between expectations and outcomes alone can never be conclusive proof of malfeasance. Today many people harbour similar doubts about the Election Commission — and it’s easy to understand this isn’t implicitly unwarranted or even unfair. However, the Election Commission’s integrity vis-à-vis the tallies of votes cast in an election offers a handle on the situation that the RBI, ED, the CBI or any other such institution can’t offer: mathematics. Contrary to the Supreme Court’s views about electronic voting machines (EVMs) harbouring some kind of “source code” that must be protected at all costs, EVMs are simple signal counters whose security arises from more sophisticated means. Their electronics are isolated from external sources of input and their ability to count votes is tested in a specific way at each polling booth before the machines are set up for public use. Indeed, as a counter of votes, ‘leaking’ the "source code" of EVMs is pointless because anyone can write it up on their own: it’s after all an algorithm to count how many different buttons are pushed, each of which produces a distinct signal. But thanks to the Election Commission’s reluctance to submit its machines to independent testing and abetted by the Supreme Court’s refusal, inability or disinterest in the technical architecture of EVMs, any questions about the integrity of EVMs — specifically their abilities to count votes a specific way and of an external actor to interfere in this process — falls under the wheels of contempt of the Supreme Court or, thanks to the BJP’s habitual overreach, allegations of anti-nationalist activity. This is unfortunate. EVMs make use of mathematics to operate just the way modern computers do. They both have the same fundamental components, just put together differently for different purposes. And just as it’s possible to test whether a computer is working as intended without taking it apart, it’s possible to test EVMs without taking them apart. Independent researchers can test an EVM without touching it, without in any way being able to access its constituent components (except to supply input signals and receive output signals), and without even knowing its internal logic — and with an Election Commission official monitoring the whole process. Even Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Singhvi's demand for 100% VVPAT has met with a corresponding fate at the apex court (brought there by a different petitioner) — and yet which is similarly unnecessary. From *The Hindu*, [April 15, 2024](https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha/fixing-indias-vvpat-based-audit-of-evms/article68065881.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The VVPAT-based audit of EVMs … very similar to the “lot acceptance sampling technique” that is widely used in industry and trade. If the number of defectives found in a randomly drawn statistical sample is less than or equal to a specified acceptance number, the lot (or ‘population’) is accepted; otherwise, the lot is rejected. … The hypergeometric distribution model should form the basis of the sampling plan for the VVPAT-based audit of EVMs because it is an exact fit. In the discussion that follows, we assume the percentage of defective EVMs in the population (P) to be 1%, and calculate sample sizes, for various population sizes, for 99% probability of detecting at least one defective EVM. We also compute the probability that the ECI-prescribed sample size of “five EVMs per Assembly constituency” will fail to detect a defective EVM for different population sizes. The great merit of the hypergeometric distribution model is that the sample size is the greatest when P is very close to zero (which is what the ECI claims it is), and it becomes lesser as P increases. … > > We can use the ‘plateau effect’ of sample sizes to divide the bigger States into ‘regions’ (an integral number of districts) with EVM population sizes of about 5,000 each. We treat “EVMs deployed in the region” as the ‘population’. On average, there would be about 20 Assembly constituencies in a region. The sample size required is 438 and the average number of EVMs per Assembly constituency whose VVPAT slips are to be hand counted is 22\. For example, U.P with 1,50,000 EVMs can be divided into 30 regions with roughly 5,000 EVMs each. In the event of a defective EVM turning up, the hand counting of VVPAT slips of the remaining EVMs will confined to the region. This option is statistically robust and administratively viable. But like the Supreme Court, the Congress isn’t interested in mathematical tests of EVMs’ integrity. This sounds bizarre because the Congress wants something the Supreme Court won’t give — but instead of disagreeing with the court’s refusal to have EVMs independently tested, which is where the problem really lies, the party has elected to disagree with the Indian government’s decision in the 1990s to switch paper ballots with EVMs. A return to paper ballots is a terrible, terrible idea that forgets how much EVMs simplify the vote-casting activity (while removing ‘bad votes’) and speed up the whole process, all the way up to recounting, while requiring fewer safeguards to prevent mistakes or interference. But worse: neither the Congress nor any activists supporting the demand to revert to paper ballots can claim to understand how EVMs work or what really could be going wrong, if it is. The party may lack a member with the skills to test the machines and the Election Commission may be disinclined to comply to requests — but this doesn’t mean “it’s working as intended” and “it’s not working as intended” are the only two possible outcomes here. There’s a third: “we don’t know”. And the ignorant views of both political and judicial leaders are eroding the space for this possibility in public dialogue. Because the outcomes in the Maharashtra state assembly election defied the expectations of Congress et al., the party and its allies have stretched their latent distrust of the Election Commission to the extreme of assuming they also know the EVMs malfunctioned and/or the commission misbehaved. No one in this milieu is stopping to consider they don’t know something because they lack proof of malfeasance and/or misbehaviour. Thus no one will pursue even a public debate on an independent democratic mechanism that acquires and places in the public domain data from the integrity tests of EVMs slated for use in specific elections. But they will pursue a (presumably) national "movement" by attributing with no evidence their loss in a recent election on EVMs with or without the Election Commission's imaginary complicity while demanding a return to a primitive voting system, and about which the commission and the national government will do nothing other than to make snarky comments while the Supreme Court issues uncritical remarks. *Featured image credit: Dmitrii Vaccinium/Unsplash.* ### Review: ‘Vettaiyan’ (2024) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/29/review-vettaiyan-2024/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:46.000Z Watch it, but fast-forward through some parts. *Vettaiyan* steers clear of unconditionally qualifying “encounter killings” as the only way out — a line many Tamil films have been only too happy to tout of late. There’s in fact an instructive passage at the film’s start that’s probably deliberate. Rajinikanth’s character says there is no personal gain to be had or personal grouse to be avenged in an “encounter killing”, that a police officer who kills in this way has to suffer the “risk” of enquiries by departmental, magisterial, and human-rights commissions, and that the officer may be dismissed or “even” jailed. The choice of words here sets up a narrative whose denouement, pronounced by Rajinikanth’s character in the same scene, is the idea that police personnel are prepared to protect the people at large at risk to their own lives. The film intercalates elements of this scene with another in which Amitabh Bachchan’s character is being persuasive in his own right about the pitfalls of “encounter killings”. The virtue of this arrangement is that it reveals a fundamental truth about the world: when a narrative triumphs, it isn’t because it has vanquished other narratives. It’s the idea that many narratives, even those at odds with each other, can be simultaneously true, and that we always have the option to choose the one we’d like to adopt — and suddenly the world could look very different. The tenets of populism can fully explain the (alleged) public support for “encounter killings” but the deeper issue is that we need people to want to adopt a different narrative of the phenomenon. *Vettaiyan* uses Rajinikanth’s character to embody this arc, and attempts to bend it slowly over its 160-minute runtime to intersect with Amitabh Bachchan’s character’s demand: that we need education as a public service and that it needs to be universally accessible, so that from the more learned foundations that result, people will demand timely justice instead of a rushed one. That there are two scenes later in the narrative explicitly acknowledging the risk of “encounter killings” becoming misappropriated by vested interests — à la *Vikram Vedha* — is only to the writers’ credit. In fact, since a single film has come this far, I only wish *Vettaiyan* also examined the belief, which Rajinikanth's character articulates in the film without challenge, that "encounter killings" can deter similar crimes in future by scaring potential perpetrators away. Such beliefs are mistaken because they presume there is no relationship between the particulars of violent crimes and how the law punishes them, or overlook it altogether. In reality, there is ample evidence that harsher punishment for a sexual violence conviction can incentivise perpetrators to kill the victims (i.e. prevent their survival) in order to minimise the perpetrators' chances of being caught. Nonetheless the film’s decision to draw its driving force from sexual violence, especially gratuitous sexual violence reinforced with graphic imagery, is deeply disconcerting. Repeatedly setting up the ‘dishonouring’ of a woman as the raison d’être of the pursuit of justice is dangerous because it also sets up any crime less heinous — as deemed by the socio-cultural mores of the time — as undeserving of such pursuits. The [practice of refrigeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%5Fin%5Frefrigerators?ref=slightlyacidic.com) certainly needs to end. The film also maintains the film industry’s tradition of not thinking about the tropes that concern women. The protagonist’s second in command is a woman in both phases of the film — Ritika Singh first and Rohini Molleti second — and the distribution of labour (especially of the tedious variety) and credit is correspondingly lopsided. The antagonist’s lieutenant is a woman, too. Yet even after all these missteps — and the many others a contemporary superstar vehicle demands — on the scale of badness *Vettaiyan* steers clear of *Annaatthe* (undoubtedly Rajinikanth’s worst outing since *Baba*) and, importantly, of *Maharaja*, whose diet was [even heavier on sexual violence](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2024/09/30/review-maharaja-2024/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). And to achieve all this, *Vettaiyan* expects us to overlook all sorts of small but mighty details, including (i) a company’s monarch storing details of the bribes he’s given on the company servers; (ii) a wasp-sized drone that could transmit high-definition images in near-real-time with what could only have been a profoundly energy-dense battery; (iii) an otherwise devious antagonist being unable to think of any ways around a protagonist who’s being a nuisance other than to offer bribes or organise hitmen; and (iv) the spectacle of one-on-one physical violence to pad the otherwise feeble arguments to suspend disbelief. There’s a fifth detail that’s also my favourite: in many, many Tamil films (and quite possibly in films made around the country; I’m leaving them out only because I haven’t watched most of them), the protagonist has need for great public support to surmount a great challenge — and immediately finds it. I found both parts of Dhanush's *Velailla Pattadhaari* completely uninspiring for this reason: both narratives would’ve gone to pot if certain social media posts hadn’t gone viral. Garnering enthusiastic public support for a common cause is an extremely valuable thing and thus quite rare in reality. But in Tamil films it happens with an astounding success rate of 100%. “These are small prices to pay,” you say, and I’m not so sure. If it weren’t for these details, *Vettaiyan* would have no feet to stand on. Given a film’s claims to grandness — depicted by the scope of its characters’ actions and the virtues its makers allege the characters are showcasing — we’re often expected to overlook such details. And we do because if we apply this lens to one film at a time, it seems okay. But zoom out and a rash of films comes into view that has progressively rendered the terms of the buy-in more and more exorbitant until, at one point, we’re being asked to overlook patently absurd claims in the service of some unattainable, even deceptive, virtue. *Vettaiyan*, for example, would’ve had trouble just getting off the ground if that drone hadn’t or achieving any of the major leads in its central procedural without its “fight scenes”. The film is ultimately a good hand with the misfortune of being erected as a house of cards. And the reason it doesn’t collapse at the first breeze is its principled refusal to lose sight of the corruption at the heart of “encounter killings”. *Featured image: A scene from* Vettaiyan *(2024). Source: Amazon Prime Video.* ### Externalised costs and the human on the bicycle URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/26/externalised-costs-and-the-human-on-the-bicycle/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:47.000Z Remember the most common question the protagonists of the eponymous British sitcom *The IT Crowd* asked a caller checking why a computer wasn’t working? “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Nine times out of 10, this fixed the problem, whatever it was, and the IT team could get on with its life. Around COP26 or so, I acquired a similar habit: every time someone presented something as a model of energy and/or cost efficiency, my first thought was whether they’d included the externalised costs. This is clearly a [global problem](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/how-big-fossil-fuel-producing-countries-export-emissions-abroad-explained/article68901605.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) today yet many people continue to overlook it in contexts big and small. So when I came across a neat graph on Bluesky (shown below), drawn from an [old article](https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24923004?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Scientific American*, I began to wonder if the awesome transportation efficiency of the human on the bicycle (HotB) included the energy costs of making the bicycle as well. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/988b0-e165e-c88d6-bafkreiffwryzpfd7yrfu6vfbateourvo3q67kj7gt3t2olqg53mjls6vwu.jpg) According to the article, written by an SS Wilson and published in 1973, the HotB required 1-2 calories per gram per km to move around. The next most efficient mover was the salmon, which needed 4 cal/g/km. If the energy costs of making the bicycle are included, the energy cost per g/km would shoot up and, depending on the distance the MotB travels, the total cost may never become fully amortised. (It also matters that the math works out only this way at the scale of the human: anything smaller or bigger and the energy cost increases per unit weight per unit distance.) But there's a problem with this line of thinking. On a more basic level, neither Wilson nor *Scientific American* intended the graph to be completely accurate or claimed it was backed by any research more than that required to estimate the energy costs of moving different kinds of moving things through some distance. It was a graph to make one limited point. More importantly, it illustrates how externalised costs can become counterproductive if attempts to factor them in are not guided by subjective, qualitative assessments of what we’re arguing for or against. Of course the question of external costs is an important one to ask — more so today, when climate commitments and actions are being reinterpreted in dollar figures and quantitative assessments are gaining in prominence as the carbon budget may well have to be strictly rationed among the world’s countries. But whether or not some activity is rendered more or less efficient by factoring in its externalised costs, any human industrial activities — including those to manufacture bicycles — are polluting. There’s no escaping that. And the struggle to mitigate climate change is a struggle to mitigate climate change *while ensuring we don’t undermine or compromise the developmental imperative*. Otherwise the struggle isn’t one at all. Even more importantly, this balancing act isn’t a strategy and isn’t the product of consensus: it’s an implicit and morally and ethically correct assumption, an implicit and inviolable component of global climate mitigation efforts. Put another way, this is how it needs to be. In this milieu, and at a time it’s becoming clear the world’s richer countries have a limit to how much they’re prepared to spend to help poorer countries deal with climate change, the impulse to consider externalised costs can mislead decision-making by making some choices seem more undesirable than they really are. Externalised costs are, or ought to be, important when the emissions from some activity don’t stack up commensurately with any social, cultural, and/or political advantages they confer as well. These costs are not always unavoidable nor undesirable, and we need to keep an eye on where we’re drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable costs. The danger is that as richer countries both expect and force poorer ones to make more emissions cuts, the latter may have to adopt more robust quantitative rationales to determine what emissions to cut from which sources and when. Should they include externalised costs, many enterprises that should actually live on may face the axe instead. For one, the HotB should be able to continue to ride on. --- Addendum: Here’s an (extended) excerpt from the *Scientific American* article on where the HotB scores their efficiency gains. > Before considering these developments in detail it is worth asking why such an apparently simple device as the bicycle should have had such a major effect on the acceleration of technology.The answer surely lies in the sheer humanity of the machine. Its purpose is to make it easier for an individual to move about, and this the bicycle achieves in a way that quite outdoes natural evolution. When one compares the energy consumed in moving a certain distance as a function of body weight for a variety of animals and machines, one finds that an unaided walking man does fairly well (consuming about .75 calorie per gram per kilometer), but he is not as efficient as a horse, a salmon or a jet transport. With the aid of a bicycle, however, the man's energy consumption for a given distance is reduced to about a fifth (roughly .15 calorie per gram per kilometer). Therefore, apart from increasing his unaided speed by a factor of three or four, the cyclist improves his efficiency rating to No. 1 among moving creatures and machines. > > … The reason for the high energy efficiency of cycling compared with walking appears to lie mainly in the mode of action of the muscles. … the cyclist … saves energy by sitting, thus relieving his leg muscles of their supporting function and accompanying energy consumption. The only reciprocating parts of his body are his knees and thighs; his feet rotate smoothly at a constant speed and the rest of his body is still. Even the acceleration and deceleration of his legs are achieved efficiently, since the strongest muscles are used almost exclusively; the rising leg does not have to be lifted but is raised by the downward thrust of the other leg. The back muscles must be used to support the trunk, but the arms can also help to do this, resulting (in the normal cycling attitude) in a little residual strain on the hands and arms. *Featured image credit: Luca Zanon/Unsplash.* ### A not-so-random walk through random walks URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/23/a-not-so-random-walk-through-random-walks/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:54.000Z Though I’ve been interested of late with the idea of random walks, I was introduced to the concept when, more than two decades ago, I stumbled across Conway’s Game of Life, the cellular automaton built by John Conway in 1970\. A cellular automaton is a grid of cells in which each cell has a value depending on the values of its neighbours. The automaton simulates the evolution of the grid as the cells’ values change dynamically. Langton’s ant was a popular instance of the simulator and one of my favourites, too. One [2001 conference paper](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-44693-1%5F23?ref=slightlyacidic.com) described it as “a simple … system with a surprisingly complex behaviour.” Here, a (virtual) ant starts off at a random cell on the grid and moves randomly into one of the four neighbouring squares (diagonal squares aren’t accessible). There are three rules: (i) A cell can be either black or white in colour; (ii) If the square is white when the ant moves into it, the colour is flipped, and the ant turns 90º clockwise and moves forward; (iii) If the square is black, the colour is flipped, and the ant turns 90º counter-clockwise and moves forward. As the ant moves across the grid in this way, the first hundred or so steps produce a symmetric pattern before chaos ensues. For the next 9,900 or so steps, an image devoid of any patterns comes into view. But after around 10,000 steps, there’s magic: the ant suddenly enters into a repetitive 104-step pattern that it continues until the end of time. You can [run your own simulation](https://josephpetitti.com/ant?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and check. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/133e7-cac9f-9ccdb-langtonsant-svg_-w-1024-h-1024.png) The path of a Langton's ant. The repetitive pattern after \~10,000 steps is the 'highway' growing at the bottom. The location of the ant is shown in red. Credit: Krwarobrody and Ferkel/Wikimedia Commons The march of the Langton’s ant before the repetitive portion has been described as a pseudorandom walk — a walk whose pattern appears random but whose next step is not quite random (because of the rules). In a truly random walk, the length of each step is fixed and the direction of each step is chosen at random from a fixed number of options. If it sounds simple, it is, but you might be forgiven for thinking it’s only a mathematical flight of fancy. Random walks have applications in numerous areas, including econometrics, finance, biology, chemistry, and quantum physics. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/cf855-8689a-871f3-random_walk_25000_not_animated-svg_-w-1024-h-914.png) The trajectory of a random walk after 25,000 steps. Credit: László Németh/Wikimedia Commons Specific variants of the random walk behave in ways that closely match the properties of some complex system evolving in time. For example, in a Gaussian random walk, the direction of each step is random and the length of each step is sampled randomly from a Gaussian distribution (the classic example of a bell curve). Experts use the evolution of this walk to evaluate the risk exposure of investment portfolios. The Lévy flight is a random walk with a small change: instead of the step length being determined by a random pick from the Gaussian distribution, it comes from any distribution with a heavy tail. One common example is the gamma distribution. Each such distribution can be tweaked with two parameters called *κ* (kappa) and θ (theta) to produce different plots on a graph, all with the same general properties. In the examples shown below, focus on the orange line (*κ* \= 2, θ = 2): it shows a gamma distribution with a heavy tail. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/a67e3-a9228-e8e3b-gamma_distribution_pdf-svg_.png) Various gamma distributions for different values of *κ* and θ. Credit: MarkSweep and Cburnett/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 Put another way, the distribution has some large values but mostly small values. A Lévy flight is a random walk where the step length is sampled randomly from this distribution, and as a result has a few large steps and many small steps. Research has shown that the foraging path of animals looking for food that is scarce can be modelled as a Lévy flight: the large steps correspond to the long distances towards food sources that are located far apart and the short steps to finding food spread in a small area at each source. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/e15fd-061b1-ff810-levyflight-svg_-w-1024-h-998.png) A Lévy flight simulated for 1,000 steps. Credit: PAR/Wikimedia Commons Perhaps the most famous ‘example’ of a random walk is Brownian motion; it isn’t a perfect example however. Brownian motion can describe, say, the path of a single atom over time in a gas of billions of atoms by using a Lévy process. Whereas a random walk proceeds in discrete steps, a Lévy process is continuous; they are in other respects the same. The motion itself refers to the atom’s journey in some time period, frequently bumping into other atoms (depending on the gas’s density) and shifting its path in random ways. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/68329-62407-d9231-brownian_motion_large.gif) The yellow circle depicts the motion of a larger particle in a container filled with smaller particles moving in random directions at different speeds. Credit: Francisco Esquembre, Fu-Kwun and lookang/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 Brownian motion in particular uses a type of Lévy process called the Wiener process, where the path evolves according to the following rules: (i) Each increment of the process is independent of other (non-overlapping) increments; (ii) How much the process changes over a period of time depends only on the duration of the period; (iii) Increments in the process are randomly sampled from a Gaussian distribution; (iv) The process has a statistical mean equal to zero; (v) The process’s covariance between any two time points is equal to the lower variance at those two points (variance denotes how quickly the value of a variable is spreading out over time). The path of the atom in the gas follows a Wiener process and is thus Brownian motion. The Wiener process has a wealth of applications across both the pure and the applied sciences. Just to name one: say there is a small particle — e.g. an ion — trapped in a cell. It can’t escape the cell except through a small opening. The Wiener process, which models the Brownian motion of the ion through the cell, can be used to estimate the average amount of time the ion will need to reach the opening and escape. Like random walks, Wiener processes can also be tweaked to produce models for different conditions. One example is the Brownian bridge, which arises when a Wiener process is limited to appear at the start of an interval and disappear at the end, with the start and end points fixed. A different, more visual way to put this is in terms of a graph with two y-axes and one x-axis. Say the point 0 is the start of the interval on the left y-axis and 1 is the end of the interval on the right y-axis. A Wiener process in the interval \[0, 1\] will be a ‘bridge’ that connects 0 and 1 in a path that follows Brownian motion. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/f6cd8-e1d13-b28bd-brownian_bridge.png) A Brownian bridge pinned at the two endpoints of an interval. Credit: Zemyla/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 By analogy, a random bridge in the interval \[0, 1\] will be a random walk based on the Gaussian distribution between 0 and 1; a gamma random bridge in the interval \[0, 1\] will be a random walk based on the gamma distribution between 0 and 1; and so on. (This said, a Wiener process and a random walk are distinct: a Wiener process will play out the same way if the underlying grid is rotated by an arbitrary angle but a random walk won’t.) It’s a wonder of mathematics that it can discern recurring behaviours in such highly noisy systems and with its finite tools distil from them glimpses into their future. According to a 2020 preprint paper on arXiv, “Various random-walk-related models can be applied in different fields, which is of great significance to downstream tasks such as link prediction, recommendation, computer vision, semi-supervised learning, and network embedding.” If some basic conditions are met, there are random walks out in the universe as well. In 2004, [researchers estimated](https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0408107?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the Brownian velocity of the black hole at the Milky Way’s centre to be less than 1 km/s. For a more mathematical example, in a ‘conventional’ random walk, after N steps the walker’s distance from the origin will be comparable to the square root of N. Further, it takes on average S2 steps to travel a distance of S from the origin. For a long time, researchers believed this so-called S → S2 scaling law could model almost any process in which a physical entity was moving from one location to another. The law captured the notion of how much a given distribution would spread out over time. One of the earliest deviations from this law was fractals, where there is an S → S*β* law but such that *β* is always greater than 2, implying a greater amount of spread relative to the step length vis-à-vis random walks. (Factoid: a random walk on a fractal also gives rise to a fractal.) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/21d84-c90aa-b1342-sierpinski_triangle-svg_.png) A Sierpinski triangle fractal. Credit: Beojan Stanislaus/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 For yet another example, random walks have a famously deep connection to resistor networks: electric circuits where a bunch of resistors are connected in some configuration, plus a power source and a grounding. Researchers have found that the effective voltage between any two points in the circuit is proportional to the time a random-walker would take to travel between those two points for the first time. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/1e782-95e26-961c6-screenshot-2024-11-23-at-11-58-36-am.png) A schematic diagram of an electrical circuit where the challenge is to determine the resistance to the flow of an electric current at each of the in-between nodes. Source: [math.ucla.edu](https://www.math.ucla.edu/~biskup/PDFs/PCMI/PCMI-notes-1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) The resistor model speaks to a beautiful thing random walks bring to light: the influence an underlying structure exerts on a stochastic process — one governed entirely by chance — playing out on that structure, its inherent geometry imposing unexpected limits on the randomness and keeping it from wheeling away into chaos. At each step the random walk makes an unpredictable choice but the big picture in which these steps are individual strokes is a picture of predictability, to some degree at least. Flip this conclusion on its head and an even more captivating notion emerges: that though two random walks may resemble each other in their statistical properties, they can still be very different journeys. ### Keeper of the foul air URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/22/keeper-of-the-foul-air/ Last updated: 2024-11-22T05:56:52.000Z > This city is essentially uninhabitable from November to January inclusive and barely liveable the rest of the year. Should it even remain the nation’s capital? I realise Shashi Tharoor is frustrated here — revealing the increasingly evident gap between what the Delhi and the Indian governments can do about air pollution and the scale of improvements on the ground — but Delhi should certainly remain the national capital. Changing this designation because the existing one has become nearly uninhabitable for four months out of 12 is to say the capitalhood of the city is the problem, not the pollution itself. Low hanging fruit but still. The country's mainstream press has also been cynical enough to remember there's an air pollution crisis only when Delhi's air becomes patently foul, not the air in any other city. Ambient pollution in places like Guwahati and Katihar is also not concentrated in the winter months, although this isn't to say Delhi's air is better during the summer. If the national capital moves away from Delhi, the press spotlight will move with it, and rather than deal with Delhi's pollution now, we'll all deal with the new capital's pollution a few years later. Then again Prime Minister Narendra Modi isn't bound to go anywhere considering he just had a fancy new parliament built for himself. ### Rule o flaw — part III URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/20/rule-o-flaw-part-iii/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:56.000Z *Make sure you've read* [*part I*](https://lognormal.ghost.io/2024/11/14/rule-o-flaw/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *and* [*part II*](https://lognormal.ghost.io/2024/11/16/rule-o-flaw-part-ii/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* The project of demolishing the building opposite my house has taken a new turn. As part of the deal between me and my neighbours and the contractor, Monday, November 18, was his deadline to finish the part of the job that required the use of the offensively loud pneumatic jackhammers. The contractor was also to pause work on Sunday (November 17), which he didn't: the workers didn't use the jackhammers but continued working with sledgehammers and the much simpler electric drills. My neighbours and I also noticed the two tractors that powered the jackhammers were driven away on Sunday morning. We simply assumed the contractor had leased the equipment and was returning them for the day to avoid paying rent. However, the workers continued to demolish the building on Monday with sledgehammers and electric drills. (One of us went over but the contractor wasn't on site.) The tractors didn't return either. The situation continued into Tuesday. At this point we began to wonder if the [article in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/residents-raise-concerns-over-excessive-noise-due-to-demolition-work/article68872226.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) might have had anything to do with it. Late last week, after we'd lodged out complaint with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), I reached out to one of my colleagues at *The Hindu* asking if they could help expedite the board's response. Apparently they did, and they also arranged for the noise complaints to be covered as a small item in the paper the next day (November 16). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/63ced-d45f8-974e9-gridjfdc4-1-w-465-h-1024.png) It wasn't implausible that the people who made the work noisy in the first place decided to take a step back at this point and revert to more peaceable methods. A user named "Joseph" also posted an encouraging comment on the article: "If the TNPCB cannot take action on a complaint already received, then what is the drafted jurisprudence and responsibility of the TNPCB? Hope the lawmakers amend the defective law and permit the TNPCB to take suitable action against willful noise pollutors." But my neighbours and I also began to feel guilty: if that bigwig at the other end of the road didn't allow the contractor to use an excavator and we didn't want him to use pneumatic jackhammers, were we condemning the workers the contractor had hired to slowly, painstakingly demolish the building with sledgehammers and electric drills over several weeks? Fortunately, Wednesday (November 20) dawned with good news for us as well as the workers: the contractor brought the excavator back. Unlikely though it may be, I'm tempted to think the article in *The Hindu* also spooked the bigwig. The excavator is currently parked on the front side of the building and we're all excited for it to bring what remains of the structure down in a day or two. ### The farm fires paradox URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/20/the-farm-fires-paradox/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:55:59.000Z From [*The Times of India*](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/farmers-allegedly-outsmart-satellites-to-conceal-stubble-burning-in-india/articleshow/115392826.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on November 18, 2024: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/73e77-bdc81-40725-screenshot-2024-11-20-at-8-56-51-am-w-1024-h-681.png) A curious claim by all means. The scientist, a Hiren Jethva at NASA Goddard, compared data from the Aqua, Suomi-NPP, and GEO-KOMPSAT 2A satellites and reported that the number of farm fires over North India and Pakistan had dropped whereas the aerosol optical depth — a proxy measure of the aerosol load in the atmosphere — has remained what it's been over the last half decade or so. He interpreted this to suggest farmers could be burning paddy stubble after the Aqua and Suomi-NPP satellites had completed their overpass. GEO-KOMPSAT 2A is in a geostationary orbit so there's no evading its gaze. The idea that farmers across the many paddy-growing states in North India collectively decided to postpone their fires to keep them out of the satellites' sight seems preposterous. The *The Times of India* article has some experts towards the end saying this… ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4f/29/4f2939bc-a4a6-402d-b122-db86d3e7e547/content/images/2026/08/18102-4f567-ee38a-screenshot-2024-11-20-at-9-02-20-am-w-1024-h-322.png) … and I sort of agree because it's in farmers' interests for the satellites to see more of their fires so the national and state governments can give them better alternatives with better incentives. The farmers aren't particularly keen on burning the stubble — they're doing it because it's what's cheapest and quickest. It also matters that there is no surer path to national headlines than being one of the causes of air pollution in New Delhi, much more than dirtying the air in any other city in the country, and that both national and states' governments have thus far failed to institute sustainable alternatives to burning the stubble. Taken together, if any farmers are looking for better alternatives, more farm fires seem to be the best way to put pressure on governments to do better. All this said, there may be a fallacy lurking in Jethva's decision to interpret the timing change solely with respect to the overpass times of the two US satellites and not with any other factor. It's amusing with a tinge of disappointment that the possibility of [someone somewhere "educating" farmers](https://x.com/hjethva05/status/1849834727940768198?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to change their behaviour — and then them following suit *en masse* — was more within reach than the possibility of satellite data being flawed. If a fire burns in a farm and no satellite is around to see it, does it still produce smoke? As [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/experts-call-for-more-efficient-methods-of-tracking-farm-fires-say-current-count-may-be-an-underestimation/article68883072.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported: > The data on fire counts are from a heat-sensing instrument on two American satellites — Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 polar-orbiting satellites. Instruments on polar-orbiting satellites typically observe a wildfire at a given location a few times a day as they orbit the Earth, pole to pole. They pass over India from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. … > > Other researchers also suggest that merely relying on fire counts from the polar satellites may be inadequate and newer satellite data parameters, such as estimating the actual extent of fields burned, may be a more accurate indicator of the true measure of stubble burning. ### An infuriating editorial in Science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/17/an-infuriating-editorial-in-science/ Last updated: 2024-11-17T05:56:40.000Z I’m not just disappointed with an editorial published by the journal *Science* on November 14, I’m angry. Irrespective of whether the Republican Party in the US has shifted more or less rightward on specific issues, it has certainly shifted towards falsehoods on many of them. Party leaders, including Donald Trump, have been using everything from lazily inaccurate information to deliberately misleading messages to preserve conservative attitudes wherever that’s been the status quo and to stoke fear, confusion, uncertainty, and animosity where peace and good sense have thus far prevailed. Against this backdrop, which the COVID-19 pandemic revealed in all its glory, [*Science*‘s editorial](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4907?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is headlined “Science is neither red nor blue”. (Whether this is a reference to the journal itself is immaterial.) Its author, Marcia McNutt, president of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), writes (emphasis added): > … scientists need to better explain the norms and values of science to reinforce the notion—with the public and their elected representatives—that **science, at its most basic, is apolitical**. Careers of scientists advance when they improve upon, or show the errors in, the work of others, not by simply agreeing with prior work. Whether conservative or liberal, citizens ignore the nature of reality at their peril. A recent example is the [increased death rate from COVID-19](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X%2822%2900201-0/fulltext?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (as much as 26% higher) in US regions where political leaders dismissed the science on the effectiveness of vaccines. Scientists should better explain the scientific process and what makes it so trustworthy, **while more candidly acknowledging that science can only provide the best available evidence and cannot dictate what people should value**. **Science cannot say whether society should prioritize allocating river water for sustaining fish or for irrigating farms, but it can predict immediate and long-term outcomes of any allocation scheme.** Science can also find solutions that avoid the zero-sum dilemma by finding conservation approaches to water management that benefit both fish and farms. Can anyone explain to me what the first portion in bold even means? Because I don’t want to assume a science administrator as accomplished as McNutt is able to ignore the [narratives](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/yes-science-is-political/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [scholarship](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c02017?ref=slightlyacidic.com) roiling around the sociology of science at large or the [cruel and relentless](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/donald-trumps-war-on-science?ref=slightlyacidic.com) vitiation of scientific knowledge the first Trump administration practiced in particular. Even if the editorial’s purpose is to extend an olive branch to Trump et al., it’s bound to fail. If, say, a Republican leader makes a patently false claim in public, are we to believe an institution as influential as the NAS will not call it out for fear of being cast as “blue” in the public eye? The second portion in bold is slightly less ridiculous: “science can only provide the best available evidence and cannot dictate what people should value.” McNutt is creating a false impression here by failing to present the full picture. During a crisis, science has to be able to tell people what to value more or less rather than what to value at all. Crises create uncertainty whereas science creates knowledge that is free from bias (at least it can be). It offers a pillar to lean on while we figure out everything else. People should value these pillars. When a national government — in this case the government of one of the world’s most powerful countries — gives conspiracies and lies free reign, crises will be everywhere. If McNutt means to suggest these crises are so only insofar as the liberal order is faced with changes inimical to its sustenance, she will be confusing what is today the evidence-conspiracy divide for what was once, but is no longer, the conservative-liberal divide. As if to illustrate this point, she follows up with the third portion in bold: “Science cannot say whether society should prioritize allocating river water for sustaining fish or for irrigating farms, but it can predict immediate and long-term outcomes of any allocation scheme.” Her choice of example is clever because it’s also fallacious: it presents a difficult decision with two reasonable outcomes, ‘reasonable’ being the clincher. The political character of science-in-practice is rarely revealed in debates where reasonability is allowed through the front door and given the power to cast the decisive vote. This was almost never the case under the first Trump administration nor the parts of the Republican Party devoted to him (which I assume is the whole party now), where crazy\* has had the final say. The choice McNutt should really have deliberated is “promoting the use of scientifically tested vaccines during a pandemic versus urging people to be cautious about these vaccines” or “increasing the stockpile of evidence-backed drugs and building social resilience versus hawking speculative ideas and demoralising science administrators”. When the choice is between irrigation for farms and water for fisheries, science can present the evidence and then watch. When the choice is between reason and bullshit, still advocating present-and-watch would be bullshit, too — i.e. science would be “red”. This is just my clumsy, anger-flecked take on what John Stuart Mill and many others recognised long past: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing.” But if McNutt would still rather push the line that what seem like “bad men” to me might be good men to others, she and the policies she influences will have committed themselves to the sort of moral relativism that could never be relevant to politics in practice, which in turn would be a blow for us all. --- (*\* My colloquialism for the policy of being in power for the sake of being in power, rather than to govern.*) ### Rule o flaw — part II URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/16/rule-o-flaw-part-ii/ Last updated: 2024-11-16T05:56:39.000Z *Make sure you've read* [*part I*](https://lognormal.ghost.io/2024/11/14/rule-o-flaw/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* On November 15, I lodged a complaint of excessive noise with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), whereupon I received an update saying the complaint was pending with the district environment engineer. Later the same evening, someone from the TNPCB called to say he was at the demolition spot and making inquiries. He called back 10 minutes later to say he'd spoken to the contractor and that the contractor had promised to wrap up work with the jackhammers next week. Funny thing is what the TNPCB caller had also said: that the contractor was caught between the guy (who'd chased the excavator away) and me, that I should empathise with the contractor and, "as a member of the public", come to a mutually convenient agreement with him — and not, as I'd expected, ensure that the contractor switched to using sound-proofed equipment or make sure that the guy's complaint drew further probing considering no other house in the neighbourhood was so rattled. Before he cut the call, the TNPCB caller said two more interesting things. First, the TNPCB was currently dealing with a similar but also "strange" complaint centred on Raman Street where people had complained not about the obnoxiously loud machines in use at a demolition site but that the workers there were working past 10 pm when they shouldn't be. I wonder why this sounded "strange" to him. Second, he said if we wanted "more" action to be taken against the contractor, we'd have to approach the local body and the police, who may then contact the TNPCB for noise data and then decide whether and/or how to act on it. I'm sharing all this here in case this is useful to readers faced with loud demolitions in their neighbourhoods. ### Rule o flaw — part I URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/14/rule-o-flaw-part-i/ Last updated: 2024-11-14T05:56:39.000Z This building right opposite my apartment was locked in a legal dispute for years. That must have ended a month ago (in October) because since then a bunch of workers have been toiling nine hours a day, six days a week to take it apart piece by piece. The contractor the building’s owner hired brought along a large excavator to push the walls of the four-storey structure down and it was done with most of the walls and one floor in a few days. But then trouble struck. The next day the contractor had the excavator driven away and replaced it with a pair of pneumatic jackhammers driven by compressed air. These were, and are, very loud machines. The pumps for the compressors were driven by the engines of two tractors parked downstairs. The jackhammers were loud as well, and workers had to hold them as they chipped away at the walls and floors piece by small piece. Why didn’t the contractor persist with the excavator? My father went over to have a chat with him and discovered the reason. About three buildings down from the one being torn down is the two-storey house of some Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) bigwig. When the excavator was working, mechanical vibrations passed into the ground and rattled the walls of that guy’s house. And as a bigwig, the guy pulled some strings and got a senior police officer to intervene on his behalf, preventing the contractor from using the excavator. Funny thing is that the vibrations from the excavator’s demolition didn’t affect the three buildings before the bigwig’s house or the building housing my and five other apartments, nor various other houses on either side. The bigwig had built his house on a weaker foundation and was worried it would collapse and he believed it was okay to risk the peace of everyone else in the neighbourhood than risk that possibility — or, better yet, remedy that actual problem. I’m more sensitive than most to loud sounds and to the possibility that India’s Noise Pollution Rules are [among the least invoked](https://lognormal.ghost.io/2023/11/07/the-catch-22-of-indias-noise-pollution/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) vis-à-vis complaints of public nuisance. But acting in such terribly bad faith, with no regard for one’s neighbours or the workers (although that’s on the contractor too), is sickening. ### Rapid rotation explains unusual stability of C2 anion URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/02/rapid-rotation-explains-unusual-stability-of-c2-anion/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:00.000Z In various settings, including chemical reactions in the lab, inside nuclear reactors, and in outer space, scientists have found C2– anions living for as long as three milliseconds before decaying to a more stable state — and they haven’t been able to explain why. Normally particles, atoms, and molecules make these transitions to lose energy and become more stable. And normally the C2– molecule has around 4 eV less energy than the C2– anion, so the latter decayed to the former within one-trillionth of a second. The puzzle was that scientists didn’t know of a mechanism that allowed C2– to not decay to C2 for more than 3 ms, a timespan more than a billion-times longer. In two new papers published on October 31 ([here](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.183001?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.110.042828?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), researchers from Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany reported “strong evidence” for an idea scientists first had in the late 1990s: that the delay had something to do with rotation. Scientists have previously found rapidly rotating molecules in space — including when radiation breaks up water molecules in the [interstellar medium](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09176-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and in the [dynamic neighbourhood](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/589998?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of a newborn star. The study team found that when the C2– complex rotates fast enough to increase its rotation quantum number 𝑁 beyond 155, it acquires a “centrifugal potential” that rearranges the lower-energy states to which C2– can decay. In particular, the team’s theoretical calculations revealed that a different state other than the C2 state to which it normally decays has lower energy, and dropping to the C2 state becomes unfavourable. More specifically, if the C2– anion had 𝑁 values in the 165-183 range, the normal decay to C2 requires electrons to have at least six units of angular momentum. If 𝑁 is lower than 165, the rearrangement of energy states doesn’t forbid the rapid drop to C2. In other words, the spinning molecule spits out a spinning electron to move to a more stable configuration — and even then not before living to the ripe old age of 3 ms. This so-called rotation-assisted stability of the C2– anion isn’t entirely new. Other scientists have previously found dihydrogen and dideuterium anions (H2– and D2–) to be more stable as well when 𝑁 = 20-40\. Using and theory and experiments, the European team found C2– acquired the same stability gain at 𝑁 of 155 or more because it’s heavier and has a higher rotational constant (“a fundamental parameter describing the rotational energy levels of a molecule,” per Meta AI). ### Tamil Nadu's lukewarm heatwave policy URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/11/01/tamil-nadus-lukewarm-heatwave-policy/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:00.000Z I published this article here by mistake. I'd intended for it to appear in a different forum and I have submitted it there. If and when it's published there, I will link to it here. My apologies. ### To WordPress URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/26/to-wordpress/ Last updated: 2024-10-26T09:04:48.000Z I used to love WordPress unconditionally. Then Gutenberg replaced Calypso and the user experience became quite poor. Then WordPress.com rejigged their subscription plans, got it wrong, and fortunately switched back. Finally, Matt Mullenweg's actions and words of late have really tested my sentiments. I'm not a software expert, just technologically curious and technically inclined. Since 2008, WordPress has hosted my blog; I've also brought many of my friends who wanted to blog online through WordPress; built or moved their startups' websites here; and launched *The Wire* on a self-hosted setup in 2015\. All platforms have their problems but WordPress has of late had more than most, thanks to Mullenweg. After he banned WP Engine from accessing resources on WordPress.org via their API, I high-tailed my site to Ghost.org, a good alternative for being not bloated and more blogging-friendly but on the flip side more expensive and less customisable. Sometime later I wondered if I should return but then Mullenweg published an acerbic post on his blog (that he later took down) directed at David Heinemeier Hansson. The incident left me quite unsure about how Mullenweg would react to a post criticising him in a blog hosted by his own company. Ownership is at the heart of the ongoing dispute. Mullenweg has made a big deal of it. Since his campaign against WP Engine became public, it has become clear he believes WordPress.org is his personal fiefdom, where he is immune to the rules that apply to his colleagues, and that there is little in the form of reason in his decision to target WP Engine *alone*. His attempts to spin the dispute as one of trademark violation, presumably to take the focus away from his own mercurial actions and *ad hoc* imposition of sanctions, further deepen the place of ownership, the rules that do or don't apply to owners, and their accountability. On October 20, Mullenweg finally offered to stop commenting on the dispute in public while citing his own freedom of speech. I can't say if this post inspired confidence in others to believe Mullenweg wouldn't censor them by invoking trademark or some other similar instrument of convenience. (It didn't in [Bullenweg](https://bullenweg.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) I just really *wanted* it to because WordPress is so valuable. This whole fracas may have reinforced in a more technically capable person the importance of owning the infrastructure that hosts one's digital assets. I'm not one of them; instead, I and frankly most of the world depend on solutions that are less fundamental, more pre-configured, and more accessible to keep and use our assets. WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two such solutions. Important places on the internet are hosted with/on either of them. W.org and W.com were once quite different (even with the confusion surrounding their domain names) but now, after Mullenweg's unilateral attack against the most successful competitor to W.com, they're evidently similarly vulnerable to the threat of his discretion. Acquiring the technical chops to take full ownership and control of my sites, etc. would be a waste of my time, and rendering my presence on the internet contingent on the existence of an ideologically congruent and fully ethical CEO at the helm of a hosting company would be futile. I admit Mullenweg's actions of late constitute a difference in kind rather than degree: no other hosting company CEO has behaved in a way that endangered the properties of their own customers and the wider community of people vested in their product. But leaving WordPress.com because Mullenweg crossed this particular line is to make my choice about where to host a site a matter of where I draw the line and where, when it moves, I'm going to draw it next. That's exhausting. It seems better to me to (completely rather than partially) decouple where I host my blog from how the hosting company's owner behaves simply because I can't afford it. My other alternatives at this time are Ghost, Drupal, minimalist alternatives like Bear or Mataroa (self-hosting WordPress may be too but I don't want to leave for a host that, if it becomes successful, could become Mullenweg's next target, at least not until the court's verdict in the dispute restricts such behaviour). And each one of them has deal-breaking problems. I suppose I'm just too well-settled at WordPress. But it's no longer unconditional love for WordPress either, and it won't be the first platform on my mind when a friend asks me for suggestions for where they could start blogging or where a news site should be hosted. In one of his posts Mullenweg had asked customers to vote with their wallet and quit using WP Engine. Voting with your wallet is expensive, requires a specific kind of web-hosting literacy, and, importantly, time and mental bandwidth. Yes, it's important to make rational and informed choices about the things that are important to us, but we also need to pick our battles. The wisest courses of action (for someone in my position) here seems to be how we expect Mullenweg v. WP Engine is going to in court as well: to place one's trust in only the laws and terms governing the provision of these services and the reasonably full and free expression of one's own beliefs, ideas, and expectations. Everything else is going to be the price to be paid to keep a blog online, uncensored, and written. ### Build it, they will more than come URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/23/build-it-they-will-more-than-come/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:01.000Z From ‘KSTOA seeks alternative road to Bengaluru airport amid increasing commuter challenges’, [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/kstoa-seeks-alternative-road-to-bengaluru-airport-amid-increasing-commuter-challenges/article68786051.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), October 23, 2024: > The Karnataka State Travel Operators’ Association (KSTOA) has raised concerns over the existing connectivity to Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru. In a recently written letter addressed to the Central and State Governments, the association has highlighted the urgent need for an alternative road of international standards to accommodate the rapidly growing demand from both domestic and international travellers. The way urban planners respond to traffic congestion is so reminiscent of India’s tobacco and firecracker control policies: to attempt to change consumer behaviour alone in order to lower demand instead of changing things on both the demand and the supply sides. Research and experience have shown that traffic will swell to fill roads, so we need to control the vehicular population and improve public transport (which move more people per unit of time and/or space), not build more roads. And yet… ### What’s ailing the Indian Railways? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/20/whats-ailing-the-indian-railways/ Last updated: 2024-10-20T08:17:10.000Z [‘What are the stress factors for Indian Railways?’](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-are-the-stress-factors-for-indian-railways/article68773677.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, October 20, 2024: > The operating ratio (OR) — the amount the Railways spends to earn ₹100 — in 2024-2025 is estimated to be ₹98.2, a small improvement from 2023-2024 (₹98.7) but a decline from ₹97.8 in 2016\. A higher OR leaves less for capex and the Railways more dependent on budgetary support and Extra-Budgetary Resources (EBRs). In 2016-2017, the BJP government brought the railway budget under the regular budget after nine decades of separation. One outcome was easier access for the Railways to gross budgetary support. As for EBRs: the Railways’ dues have ballooned to 17% of its revenue receipts today from 10% in 2015-2016. Read the [full story](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-are-the-stress-factors-for-indian-railways/article68773677.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### On the 2024 Nobel Prizes and the Rosalind Lee issue URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/10/on-the-2024-nobel-prizes-and-the-rosalind-lee-issue/ Last updated: 2024-10-10T13:36:18.000Z The Nobel Prizes are a deeply flawed institution both [out of touch with science](https://closeread.ghost.io/2019/10/16/why-are-the-nobel-prizes-still-relevant/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as it is done today and with an [outsized influence on scientific practice](https://closeread.ghost.io/2018/05/02/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the most demanding levels. Yet these relationships all persist with the prizes continuing to crown some of the greatest achievements in the history of modern science. The prizes are exclusive by design and their prestige is enforced through a system of secrecy: the reasons for picking each laureate are locked away for 50 years even as the selection process happens behind closed doors. In keeping with a historical tradition of all prizes being distinguished by their laureates, the Nobel Prizes are sought after so scientists can enter the same ranks that hold Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, etc. Of course the institution like others of its kind reinforces the need for itself, creating self-fulfilling conditions by mooching off the reputation of scientists who have laboured for decades in specific social, economic, cultural, and political contexts to produce knowledge of incredible value and in return conferring a reputation of a different kind. This is why Jean-Paul Sartre tried to decline the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. Then again, the way the award-giving foundation conducts the prizes’ announcements has also helped to ameliorate the neglectful treatment many sections of the mainstream media, especially in India, have meted out to the sort of scientific work the prizes fete, even if the foundation’s conduct also panders to the causes of such treatment. ### The prizes I think the Nobel Prizes for physiology/medicine and for physics caught many science communicators off guard because they were both concerned with very involved pieces of work with no direct applications. The medicine prize was for the discovery of microRNA and post-transcriptional gene regulation, which when it happened overturned what biologists had assumed was a complete picture of how the body’s cells regulate genes to make different proteins. The physics prize was for the first work on artificial neural networks (ANNs), which produced a machine-friendly version of cognition by drawing on ideas in biology, neuropsychology, and statistical mechanics. If this work hadn’t happened, ChatGPT may not exist today, but several other developments built on the first ANNs to produce more new knowledge whose accumulation eventually led to ChatGPT et al. Ergo, calling ChatGPT et al. an application of the first ANNs would be thoroughly misguided. The chemistry prize — for the development of computational tools to design proteins and to predict their structures — presented a slightly different problem: the tools' advent meant humans suddenly found themselves spending much less time on deciphering the structures, yet the tools didn't, and still don't, say why proteins prefer these structures over others. Scientists still need to figure out the why by themselves. All this said, I’m grateful this year as I’ve been before for the prizes’ ability to throw up an opportunity for all sections of the media to discuss scientific work many of them would most likely have neglected otherwise. Reading the research papers that first reported the existence of microRNA and the papers that explained how models to understand exotic states of matter lent themselves to the first ANN concepts allowed me personally to refresh my basics as well as be reminded of the ability of blue-sky scicomm — as a direct counterpart of blue-sky research, one that isn’t fixated on applications — to wow us. --- *This post benefited from feedback from* [*Thomas Manuel*](https://thomasmanuel.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *and* [*Mahima Jain*](https://mahimajain.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* --- ### The Rosalind Lee issue To reiterate from the introduction, the Nobel Prizes are one institution with deep and well-defined flaws. And I have learnt from (journalistic) experience that there’s no changing its mind. It's too big to change and doesn’t admit the need to do so, and its members have had no compunctions about [articulating that in public](https://physicsworld.com/a/inside-the-nobels-lars-brink-reveals-how-the-worlds-top-physics-prize-is-awarded/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The vast majority of scientists also subscribe to the prizes’ value and their general desirability. So it is my view today that we work around the prizes and/or renounce the prizes altogether when dealing with the award-giving group’s choices. A third option is to change the foundation’s mind but this requires a considerable amount of collective work to which I doubt more than a few would like to dedicate themselves. Mind-changing work is demanding work. Then again the problem is if you fall anywhere in between these two more-viable options, you risk admitting other possibilities vis-à-vis the Nobel Prizes that (I imagine) you’d rather not. For a background on the Rosalind Lee issue, I suggest you [browse X.com](https://x.com/search?q=%22rosalind%20lee%22&src=typed%5Fquery&ref=slightlyacidic.com). My notes on it follow: **(i)** The Nobel Foundation has historically reserved the Nobel Prizes for persons who conceived of important ideas and made testable predictions about them. The latter is important. IIRC this is [why SN Bose didn't win](https://science.thewire.in/science/nobel-archives-shed-new-light-on-key-omissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a Nobel Prize for coming up with Bose-Einstein particle statistics. Albert Einstein could have won instead because he built on Bose's ideas to predict the existence of a particular state of matter: the Bose-Einstein condensate. Who came up with the testable predictions in the paper that won Victor Ambros a share of the medicine Nobel Prize? I’m not directly defending the exclusion of Rosalind Lee, who was the first author of that and in fact many of the more important papers Ambros published in his career. Instead, I’m pointing to an answer that could explain her exclusion with a reminder that the answer is flawed and that it has always been flawed. I suppose I’m saying that we couldn’t have expected better. 🙃 **(ii)** *Physics World* recently [published an interview](https://physicsworld.com/a/inside-the-nobels-lars-brink-reveals-how-the-worlds-top-physics-prize-is-awarded/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with Lars Brink, a physicist who has been part of the decision-making for many physics prizes the last decade. Brinks bluntly states at one point that the Nobel Academy doesn't give the prizes to collaborations or in fact even more than three people at a time because they don't want 5,000 people (for example at CERN) claiming they're Nobel laureates all of a sudden. There is an explicit and deliberate design here to keep the prizes exclusive, like Hermes handbags. **(iii)** The first author is often the one who designs the experiment, performs it, collects the data, analyses it, etc. — basically everything beyond, but not necessarily excluding, the act of having an idea itself and including most of the legwork. The Nobel Prizes however are not awards for legwork. This sucks because it’s a profound misunderstanding of the people required to produce good-quality scientific knowledge. Thanks to the influence the prizes exert on the scientific community, the people who are left out also fade further — in the public view and also in terms of not being able to benefit from the systematic rewards vouchsafed for the Nobel laureates who are now institutions unto themselves. The fading is likely compounded for people already struggling to be noticed in the scientific literature: the “technicians” who equip, maintain, and operate laboratory instruments, among others (a.k.a. the [Matthew effect](https://sci-hub.se/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/030631293023002004?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Of course the axis of discrimination is gendered as well: as one friend put it, “the ‘leg work’ of science is historically feminised”, and when awards and other forms of recognition exclude such work they perpetuate the [Matilda effect](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030631293023002004?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Overall, whether the prize-giving body is aware of these narratives and issues is moot. What matters is that it acknowledges and responds to them — which it has signalled it won’t do. QED. **(iv)** In fact, all these rules of the Nobel Prizes are arbitrary. It's effectively a sport and a poorly managed one at that. You make up a playing field, publicise some of the rules, keep the governing body beyond reach or reproach, hide the scorecard, and then you say you have to jump five feet in the air to qualify. The outragers are raising their voices for Rosalind Lee (what does she want, by the way?) but not for the first authors of all the other papers by other laureates over the years. If they don’t belong to marginalised social groups, is it okay to leave them out? Then again these are moot questions, pursuits leading nowhere at all thanks to the Nobel Prizes’ presumption that they’re not of this world. The Nobel Prizes have also wronged many women, but I can't claim to know whether there's a case-by-case explanation (with arbitrary foundations) or if it was a systematic program to do so. Both seem equally likely given how slow attitudes have been to change on this front. This said, just because women have been wronged doesn’t mean all forms of reparation will be equally useful. More specifically, what will breaking the (arbitrary) rules do to change for women in science? Obviously this is part of a broader question about the influence of the Nobel Prizes on doing science. Mukund Thattai ran a survey on Twitter years ago asking scientists about why they got into or stayed in science. "Because of a Nobel laureate” received the fewest votes in a large pool of respondents. It wasn’t a representative survey but it does hint at an important piece of reality. Once we start to argue that including Rosalind Lee would have been better, we also tacitly admit the Nobel Prizes matter for who chooses to stay in science and who is condemned to fade — but do they? On the other side of this coin lie all the other prizes that did fete Rosalind Lee along with Victor Ambros. If we’d like to have any prizes at all (I don’t but YMMV), shall we celebrate the [Newcomb Cleveland Prize](https://www.aaas.org/awards/newcomb-cleveland-prize/2002?ref=slightlyacidic.com) more than the Nobel Prizes? Likewise, by railing against Rosalind Lee’s exclusion on arbitrary grounds, what do we hope to achieve? It may be more gainful to spread awareness of the Nobel Prizes’ flaws and finitude and focus on the deeper question of how the opportunities to win X award can influence the way science is done, who does it, and why. ### Off the rails URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/04/off-the-rails/ Last updated: 2024-10-04T13:31:27.000Z Either Matt Mullenweg's screws have fallen off or I deeply overestimated how sensible a person I thought he was. On October 3, Mullenweg wrote on his blog that Automattic had offered those of its employees who disagreed with his actions vis-à-vis WP Engine a buyout and that 8.4% of the company's workforce took it. He wrote that he and Automattic (one and the same, really) wanted to make the buyout as enticing as possible, fixing the severance pay at $30,000 (Rs 25 lakh) or six months' salary, whichever is higher. Excerpt: > 159 people took the offer, 8.4% of the company, the other 91.6% gave up $126M of potential severance to stay! … It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit. However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. I'm sure he knows no group of people turned down $126M to stay, each individual in this mass simply turned down "$30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher" to stay. They decided that way because they agreed with him, didn't disagree with him strongly enough, needed to have a job beyond six months or some other reason. Similarly the 159 that took the buyout decided to leave because they disagreed strongly enough with him, because they needed the money or some other reason. But no: Mullenweg is convinced he's still in the right and that all those people who left Automattic did so because the messaging from WP Engine and its principal investor got to them, not because Mullenweg is toying with them. > Silver Lake and WP Engine’s attacks on me and Automattic, while spurious, have been effective. It became clear a good chunk of my Automattic colleagues disagreed with me and our actions. We also know Mullenweg has been moderating his blog's comments section to allow only those comments that are favourable to him and his worldview. All bloggers whose blogs have comments sections do this. But the public response to the ongoing Mullenweg v. WP Engine saga has been strongly polarising whereas the comments Mullenweg has been letting through are are strictly and overwhelmingly in his favour. Mullenweg also said during a recent talk-show the criticism has been getting to him — but evidently not in a way that makes him reconsider his words or actions. The comments that he's been approving on his blog open windows into his internal narrative. This one under the post about the buyout caught my eye: > I see that twitter is treating this story as some sort of apocalypse for A8C and and don’t get it why. You shouldn’t collaborate with those who aren’t interested in working with you. Instead, you definitely want to team up with those who chose not to hit the piñata and decided to focus on the band at the candy factory. Mullenweg wrote he called the buyout an "Alignment Offer". At least one Automattic employee who decided to stay has [spun the buyout](https://x.com/p3ob7o/status/1842078298030956576?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as "financial freedom" for dissenters to "stand by their choice". The irony of an echo chamber in this place, at this time, is too much to bear: WordPress was started and existed for a long time as a tool that people could use to publish themselves online, to converse with people around the planet, discover new perspectives, and ultimately change others' minds or their own. Mullenweg's [September 21 post](https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on WordPress.org was concerned with the hosting provider's decision to disable users' ability to track post revisions. He wrote there: > WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Content is sacred because of its potency (although "sacred" isn't the word I'd use). The ideas in the heads of the people who will soon leave Automattic are 'content' in this way too. When in 2022 WordPress.com (which Automattic owns) consolidated its multiple subscription plans to a single "Pro" plan, I [wrote a post](https://closeread.ghost.io/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) critiquing the move and it stayed at the front page of Hacker News for almost a day. It drew so much attention — agreement as well as disagreement — that then WordPress.com CEO Dave Martin responded to say, among other things, "Your content isn't going anywhere." This was laudable because it's important for content to be able to hang around. Let's assume a bunch of people at Automattic disagreed with Mullenweg. His response was to entice them to leave with a supposedly lucrative offer on their way out rather than engage with their disagreement, attempt to change their minds and/or his own, and from here take Automattic to a new position of strength. All good organisations contend with disagreement; those that are able to do so to the company's benefit and without altogether sundering employer-employee relations emerge the better for it. Those that can't or won't are signalling they can only work if an important human degree of freedom is sliced off. ### Numbed by numbers URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/10/04/numbed-by-numbers/ Last updated: 2024-10-04T08:42:35.000Z Couple things in my news feed this morning that really woke me up — one a startling statistic and the other a reminder of what statistics miss. The first from *Nature*, ['How to win a Nobel prize: what kind of scientist scoops medals?'](https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-024-02897-2/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > John W. Strutt, who won a physics prize in 1904 for his work on the properties of gases, has 228 academic descendants with Nobels — his students, their students and so on. … An incredible 702 out of 736 researchers who have won science and economics prizes up to 2023 are part of the same academic family — connected by an academic link in common somewhere in their history. Only 32 laureates … have no connection to the bigger academic family. Meaning it's nearly impossible for 'true' outsiders to break in. Either you become part of the The Network or you have a very low chance of winning a Nobel Prize. Of course the prize-giving apparatus isn't a machine. There are humans making these decisions and clearly in a famously human way: not really paying attention to the consequences of their preferences or assuming that that doesn't, or even shouldn't, matter. But what does The Network say about science itself, especially about good\* science and where that gets done? That is, what institutional mechanisms and/or forces are (even passively) encouraging the scientists who do such work to clump together? One factor that immediately comes to mind is funding: in the typical Indian experience, because most places of research have traditionally not been well-funded, the government or some philanthropic entity endeavours to set up a few facilities focused on research and funds them well, while the rest struggle on. On a related note, should the diffusion of researchers who produce good-quality research (and know how to do it) into previously neglected locales be desirable? Next, the reminder of what statistics miss: > 🔥📣\[BREAKING NEWS\] Didier RAOULT interdit d'exercer la médecine pendant 2 ans. Je suis très fier d'avoir rédigé le signalement minutieusement documenté qui a été repris en plainte par la [@SPILF\_](https://twitter.com/SPILF%5F?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) et dont l'ordre des médecins en a fait la constitution des poursuites. - très fier… [https://t.co/s5P5Cl4wy0](https://t.co/s5P5Cl4wy0?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [pic.twitter.com/eSyug89sz9](https://t.co/eSyug89sz9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) > > — Guillaume Limousin (@Sonic\_urticant) [October 3, 2024](https://twitter.com/Sonic%5Furticant/status/1841740178831851901?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=slightlyacidic.com) [https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js](https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js?ref=slightlyacidic.com) The French researcher and physician Didier Raoult has been banned from practising medicine for two years. It is the latest and probably most significant sanction against Raoult after he became infamous during the pandemic for his enthusiastic support for hydroxychloroquine even though the drug lacked evidence of its efficacy against COVID-19. His claims brought the spotlight on him as he probably intended but then expanded to reveal he had published too many papers — much more than should be humanly possible. But Raoult took pride in his research metrics, so even as research integrity investigators including Elisabeth Bik revealed dire problems in his published\*\* papers — including image manipulation and ethical lapses in clinical trials that rendered them illegal — Raoult and his supporters came out swinging on social media. He also filed a lawsuit against Bik alleging she and others were besmirching his name without reason. Raoult eventually lost these disputes and in the process the trust and respect of the research community. Now his medical license has been revoked. He was retired but the action was clearly symbolic: Raoult is done. It took Bik's and her peers' scepticism to reveal the extent of Raoult's misdemeanours. His metrics betrayed nothing of it except through their largeness. As if on cue, *The Hindu* published an excellent [opinion piece](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/an-obsession-with-ranking-is-harming-indias-universities/article68714692.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by S. Swaminathan today about why and how we educate people, including those who become professional scientists: > The metrics-focused system has created a situation which implies that education is a market rather than a citizen’s right and the state’s duty. --- - "Good" here means worthy of winning a Nobel Prize, not good *per se*. \*\* Remember that they were published, meaning the journals that did are answerable, too. ### Review: 'Maharaja' (2024) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/30/review-maharaja-2024/ Last updated: 2024-09-30T08:40:30.000Z *Spoilers abound; trigger warning: sexual violence* In case you haven't watched the film and don't plan to, you can check out the [plot description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharaja%5F%282024%5Ffilm%29?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Wikipedia. *Maharaja* was bad for two reasons. First, good films don’t lie to their viewers. *Maharaja* did in two instances. It lied when it led viewers to believe the Selvam/Sabari storyline was contemporaneous to the Maharaja/Lakshmi storyline. Towards the film’s middle it slowly dawns on us that something’s off, followed by the epiphany that the Selvam/Sabari storyline concluded before the Maharaja/Lakshmi storyline began. What was the purpose of this switch? I can’t think of any beyond the film introducing a twist for a twist’s sake, which is disingenuous because it had no other point to it. It's a sign of the film taking its viewership for granted. It lied the second time it becomes clear Nallasivam was the fourth person in Maharaja's house that day and we realise an ostensibly comical passage of the film has become doubly redundant — until we stop and think: what was the purpose of the film depicting Inspector Varadharajan’s phone calls at night to the various crooks asking them to take the responsibility for pilfering the dustbin? Varadharajan would have known by then that Nallasivam was the culprit. Even if one of the crooks he phoned had agreed to own up to the crime, Varadharajan’s plan (previously hidden from the audience) to deliver Nallasivam to Maharaja’s house would have imploded. Alternatively, if Varadharajan was only fake-calling the crooks, why did we have to spend time watching their reactions? *Maharaja* offers this passage as comic relief, yet such relief wasn’t necessary. In fact the film could have done itself a favour by presaging Varadharajan’s plot against Nallasivam instead of blindsiding viewers at the climax. --- *This review benefited from inputs from and feedback by Srividya Tadepalli.* --- Second, the sexual violence in the film is gratuitous. It was reminiscent of *Visaranai* (2015) and parts of [*Paatal Lok*](https://closeread.ghost.io/2020/05/15/review-paatal-lok-2020/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (2020). It was trauma porn. We realise Selvam, Dhana, and Nallasivam grievously injured Jothi before Nallasivam raped her multiple times. Rather than simply and directly establish that the three men perpetrated sexual violence, *Maharaja* split up each instance of Nallasivam raping the girl into a separate scene. We sit there and watch Nallasivam perform the act of seeking Selvam’s ‘permission’, followed by Selvam’s drawling response, and Nallasivam making excuses for what he’s about to do. It’s possible *Maharaja*’s writers presumed they had to lay the groundwork to justify Varadharajan’s and Maharaja’s actions later. And yet they fail when they refuse to admit a rape once is heinous enough and then fail again when they conclude people who commit heinous crimes deserve vigilante justice. Such justice is an expression of anger, an attempt to deter future crimes with violence. But we should know by now it fails utterly when directed against sexual violence, which erupts most often in intimate settings: when the perpetrator and the survivor are familiar with each other, more broadly when the men think they can get away with it. And most of all vigilante justice fails because it punishes once the (or a rumoured) perpetrator is caught, yet most perpetrators aren’t, which led to the dismal upwelling of voices during #MeToo. The sexual crimes we hear about constitute a small minority of all such crimes out there, which is why the best way to mitigate them has been to improve social justice. Yet films like *Maharaja* persist with a vengeful narrative that concludes once the violence is delivered. I fear the only outcome might be more faith in “encounter” killings. *Visaranai* claimed to be fact-based but the brutality in the film served no greater purpose than to illustrate such things happen. If the film was responding to a fourth estate that had failed to highlight the underlying police impunity and the powerlessness of those at society’s margins to defend themselves, it succeeded — yet it also failed when it didn’t bother to attempt any sort of triumph, of spirit if not of will. That’s why *Paatal Lok* and in fact *Jai Bhim* (2021) were better. But *Maharaja* is cut from *Visaranai*’s cloth, and worse for being a work of imagination. In fact, *Maharaja* has a ‘second’ climax during which we discover Jothi is really Ammu, Selvam’s biological daughter, and whom Maharaja has been raising since his daughter, his wife, and Selvam’s wife were killed in the same accident. There are some clues at the film’s beginning as to these (intra-narrative) facts but they're ambiguous at best and in fact just disingenuous — another lie like the other plot twist. But further yet: why? So we can watch Selvam have his lightbulb moment when he realises Jothi was Ammu and feel bad about what he did? (This was also the climax of 2023's *Iratta*.) Or that men should desist from such crimes because they could be harming their own daughters? Or that viewers might be duped into thinking any kind of justice has been done when Jothi shames Selvam with boilerplate lines? Consider it a third failure. ### The frustrating wait for quiet in Chennai URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/30/the-frustrating-quest-to-find-quiet-in-chennai/ Last updated: 2024-09-30T08:35:42.000Z It was a Sunday. Around 7 am, I was woken by the sound of an auto idling outside my house. It had one of those loud put-putting engines, and the driver had parked the vehicle there waiting for one of my neighbours to step out. The noise echoed sharply around my block and was audible from everywhere within my house three floors above. Just as I prepared to step out and have a word with the driver, the idling stopped. Just across the road from my house is a vendor of construction materials. Its proprietor runs a loud business. His resupply trucks arrive in the dead of night to offload sand and bricks. During the day, his employees are often heard shouting at each other as they work. During the weekends, they bring out a wood-cutting machine that shrieks loudly as they use it for several hours in the afternoon. As the day wears on, the occasional canine screaming match breaks out nearby. At just around 10 am, another neighbour up the street revs his silencer-less motorcycle up before leaving for wherever he does at 10 am every day. The hawkers turn up one by one, blaring their wares and services — tender coconut water, fresh vegetables, “sofa repair”, spices, flowers, iron-whetting, and of course the *kabadiwalas* — in recorded voices blaring through small yet boisterous loudspeakers. These sounds are all crisscrossed by horn and engine noises from other vehicles passing by. Often the only way to find silence here is for the Sun to beat down hard. That way no one steps out in the afternoon. I don’t even find birds on the pea tree outside. That’s also a cruel thing to wish for, but even if it’s just a little cloudy, the hawkers keep coming and going. The pea tree is a popular local source of shade: come 4 pm and a bunch of Swiggy delivery guys gather underneath for a chat, maybe a glass of tea. Their voices can be comforting, a reminder that you’re around other people. When you’re looking for just a minute of silence, however, it's yet another irritant. The day is a continuous drizzle of sounds but you’re probably thinking it’s an essential, even desirable part of city life — especially life in Chennai, with its oft-village-like vibes. But listening to them in isolation, as the government often seems to do, misses the point. There are of course the sounds we need, even desire: birds chirping at dawn, a fan creaking on a hot summer day, laughter from the neighbours' houses, children making their way to school (and the sounds of band practice in the distance), voice lifting into the wind from the tea stall nearby… One of my neighbours practices playing the flute at night and he's already very good at it. Another goes to bed listening to old Tamil film songs. I love them all. These are sounds. Then there's *noise*. Imagine it is raining constantly, relentlessly where you are and then one day there’s a storm. You haven’t worn dry clothes in a long time. The storm subsides soon after yet the pitter-patter rain continues. I expect you’d be quite irritable and just wishing the Sun breaks out soon. Noise, constant noise is like this — sounds born of a social order that has long forgotten their intrusive nature. You don’t have a moment’s peace. Your ears, and heart and mind, are constantly responding to something. Unless you’re really, really good at spacing out or can afford noise-cancelling earphones, there is no escape. Even so, it might have been easier to deal with if the drizzle was all there was, but no. The evenings are the worst. There are two temples nearby. On any auspicious day — and there are about a dozen in a single month — devotional songs blare on loudspeakers. If the day is particularly auspicious, there are motorised floats bearing large idols lit by hundreds of LED lamps that, for some reason, face straight ahead. On Vinayak Chathurthi, a few such lamps lit up every front-facing apartment in our building through thick curtains at 4 am. Almost every Sunday evening there’s devotional karaoke on loudspeakers. Their only grace is to wind up at 10.30 pm, except of course if the occasion is, again, particularly auspicious. My house is near those of two well-known Kollywood actors and about 200 metres away from a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam bigwig. There’s almost always a police car patrolling the neighbourhood, yet the cops never question the noise or when it begins or ends. Even on Vinayak Chathurthi, these weren’t the folks to respond when a loud drum-beating procession set off from the temple at 12.40 am. The devotees piped down only after two policemen paid them a visit after I'd given them a ring on phone numbers the Greater Chennai Police had tweeted. Even on less auspicious days, the ordeal isn’t done yet. The users of our local public dustbin don’t segregate waste. When the trash-collection vehicle rolls around at 11.30 pm, the workers attach each bin to its handles, and the driver then has the mechanism smash the bin against the rim of the container to ensure the bin yields its jumble of contents no matter how mucilaginous they’ve become. That slow-mo bang-bang-bang is in fact how the whole neighbourhood knows it’s nearly midnight. Then finally there’s quiet, unless of course another barking match hasn’t already broken out. \* **\***\* Deepavali is coming up, and since the first week of September I’ve been enveloped with dread. The noise from firecrackers in the city — whichever city — has graduated from being part fun, part nuisance to just harmful. The Supreme Court’s mandate to firecracker manufacturers and consumers to switch to ‘green’ crackers did nothing to mitigate the demand itself, which is to say the kind of pollutants entering the air has changed — from more to less toxic — but the quantities may not have. The court required these green firecrackers to be less noisy as well, but the new noise range is ironically no less harmful. They emit an estimated 100-130 dB, whereas research has registered harmful effects due to noise from 50 dB onwards and often considers 120 dB to be the threshold of human hearing — the point from which more sound pressure on the ears leads to pain more than perception. A meta-analysis of studies with people from Canada, Europe, Japan, and the UK [reported in 2014](https://journals.lww.com/nohe/fulltext/2014/16680/updated%5Fexposure%5Fresponse%5Frelationship%5Fbetween.1.aspx?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that every 10 dB increase in traffic noise hiked the risk of developing heart disease by 8%. In a statement [published in 2016](https://www.nursingoutlook.org/article/S0029-6554%2816%2930072-0/fulltext?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the American Academy of Nursing called noise “a public health hazard”. Other studies have linked extended noise exposure to stress, anxiety, cognitive difficulties, and depression. Some small studies in Indian cities, including [Chennai](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/abs/10.1289/isesisee.2018.P03.4110?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Jammu](http://iapsmupuk.org/journal/index.php/IJCH/article/view/570?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [Vadodara](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6127051/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), have reported an elevated prevalence of hearing loss among traffic police and auto-drivers. All these effects, but stress in particular, is compounded when people are exposed to loud sounds when they least expect it — such as in the middle of the day, near a place of worship or a school, or at any time after 10 pm. Likewise, a very loud noise that lasts only for a brief moment may not be reason enough for a complaint, but it could still damage humans’ auditory apparatus and send stress levels soaring, yet there are no noise-based sanctions when such events occur. On September 4, the Government of Tamil Nadu sanctioned funds for a project to produce a “noise map” of four cities in the State with more than a million inhabitants: Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore, and Tiruchi. The project will install noise monitors near airports, railway stations, high-traffic roadways and intersections, and areas with industrial and construction activity, as well as in spots that require quiet, like near schools, places of worship, and hospitals. Following the announcement, the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) for Chennai, R. Sudhakar, [told *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tn-sanctions-funds-for-noise-mapping-to-promote-ambient-air-quality-standards-in-million-plus-cities/article68605684.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that based on the project’s findings the city may adopt a system in which “decibel meters are installed at traffic signals. If noise levels exceed a certain threshold due to honking when the signal is red, the signal will reset and remain red for longer.” I have every confidence in my compatriots to find ways to render such social engineering meaningless, if not counterproductive. What if there is a lone miscreant among the drivers waiting for a signal to change who wastes others’ time by blaring his horns at the last second? What if there is an ambulance or cop car that really needs to make its way to the front? The noise monitor may just falter in Chennai’s incessant heat and humidity. Or an informal market may erupt in each city for horns emitting sounds at frequencies that evade the monitor yet are still audible to vehicles nearby. The State’s new noise-mapping exercise is (currently) restricted to permanent or semi-permanent sources of noise and doesn’t address the more common transient ones. Such sources include all those that haunt my neighbourhood and presumably most neighbourhoods in large cities. Their principal threat isn’t their isolated loudness per se — although that’s bad enough — but their interminability. By populating every moment with sound, they exacerbate the absence of quiet and heighten the consequences that other particularly loud sounds provoke. Noise pollution in India is no joke but given the wildly varying realities with which the country often confronts its own laws, the [Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000](https://forest.odisha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-03/The%20Noise%20Pollution%20%28Regulation%20and%20Control%29%20Rules%2C%202000.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are amusing. The Rules demarcate the hours of daytime (6 am to 10 pm) and nighttime (10 pm to 6 am) and four kinds of spatial areas. In daytime, the noise limit in industrial areas is 75, in commercial areas 65, in residential areas 45, and in “silence zones” 50. In all cases the unit is dB(A) Leq, which has an important physical meaning. ‘dB’ stands for decibel, a unit that expresses not an absolute value but the ratio between two values. When used to measure the loudness of sound, a dB denotes how many times more a given sound is louder than the threshold at which human hearing begins (a sound pressure of 20 micropascal). The ‘A’ in brackets refers to the use of a weight scale that combines a given amount of loudness with a constant that represents the perception of the human ear. Leq means the decibel value is a time-average — but this isn’t equal to adding up all the dB(A) values and dividing by the number of values. Because the decibel is a logarithmic measure, computing the Leq requires us to convert the dB(A) figures to sound-pressure levels first, calculate their average, and finally convert back to dB(A). This mathematical exercise throws up a crucial perspective. The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000 allow people to register a complaint if some activity breaches the specific threshold by more than 10 dB(A) Leq. If, say, there is a loud sound of 80 dB(A) Leq for 20 seconds every minute, and this plays out for an hour, the average noise level comes to 75.22 dB(A) Leq in this period — which is just enough to lodge a complaint in a “silence zone”, a residential area or a commercial area, and not in an industrial area. But it will not be enough if the average is calculated throughout daytime. In any case, the police is unlikely to admit a complaint against the simple hawker responsible for that 20-second blip. To make matters worse, Chennai and most other cities are haphazardly planned. Residential and commercial areas often spill into each other — assuming there has been a noise-wise zonation exercise. Even if they are chockablock, sounds carry over. It is thus a Kafkaesque challenge to register a complaint for violating the Rules unless the violation is altogether egregious. Even then, however, the damage to human (and animal) health is already done. (The US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health [recommends](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/noise/about/app.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) its Sound Level Meter app — simply called NIOSH SLM — for smartphones. It “ measures workplace noise to determine if workers are exposed to hazardous noise. The free app combines the best features of professional sound levels meters and noise dosimeters into one simple tool.”) \* **\***\* I spent many of my childhood years in my grandparents' house in T Nagar, opposite Ranganathan Street — a very crowded and noisy part of Chennai. There was always some sound around us. If it lapsed we'd know something was very wrong. It never did, of course. When I first travelled to Dubai, Sweden, and New York, I found the lack of ambient sounds unsettling, but over time I also got used to it, especially once I moved to Bengaluru in 2018, where my house was relatively secluded. Since then noises have frightened me, especially sudden ones, but I don't feel badly about it. In fact I'm happy I lost the ability to be okay with it, an ability repeatedly souped up by less-than-ideal living conditions normalised by others around me. If there is noise everywhere in space and time, the question of who can afford quiet becomes important. When I lived in Delhi, it was readily apparent that only a certain class of people could access clean air and the benefits for well-being such access conferred. The air is on paper a part of the commons but in the national capital, especially during winter, there were only three ways to find clean air: live in the upper parts of a high-rise building, live near or in places with access to large green parks, or get an air-purifier or two. All of these things are expensive, so the poorer and the more marginalised had less access to clean air. In much the same way, quiet is becoming synonymous in Chennai with the upper-class, upper-caste experience of life given that it requires homes located far from thoroughfares, sound-proofing material, and expensive consumer electronics. Even on the road, quiet exists inside cars but is lost to every other mode of transport. Many of us are familiar with parents allowing their children to throw loud and protracted tantrums on public transport, but if shushing them is taboo, what of those with the deafening cellphone ringtones, those who speak loudly no matter where they are, and those who see fit to watch videos on full volume while you’re trying to sleep on the next seat? In a country in which pollution of some form is almost everywhere, noise pollution appears to be the most acceptable and tolerated. Deepavali is now less than a month away, but then it is also the storm amid the drizzle that just won’t abate. ### Why having diverse interests is a virtue URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/26/why-having-diverse-interests-is-a-virtue/ Last updated: 2024-09-26T08:31:53.000Z Paris Marx's recent experience on the Canadaland podcast alerted me to the importance of an oft-misunderstood part of journalism in practice. When Paris Marx and his host Justin Ling were recording the podcast, Marx said something about Israel conducting a genocide in Gaza. After the show was recorded, the publisher of Canadaland, a fellow named Jesse Brown, edited that bit out. When Marx as well as Ling complained, Brown reinstated the comment by having Marx re-record it to attribute that claim to some specific sources. Now, following [Marx’s newsletter](https://disconnect.blog/roundup-elon-musk-caves-to-brazils-supreme-court/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Ling’s statement](https://www.bugeyedandshameless.com/p/russians-at-war-anastasia-trofimova-tiff?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about Brown’s actions, Brown has been [saying on X](https://x.com/JesseBrown/status/1837179580043431993?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that Marx's initial comment, that many people have been saying Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, wasn't specific enough and that it needed to have specific sources. Different publications have different places where they draw the line on how much they'd like their content to be attributed. And frankly, there’s nothing wrong, unfair or unethical about this. As the commentary and narratives around Israel’s violence in West Asia have alerted us, the facts as we consider them are often not set in stone even when they have very clear definitions. We’re seeing in an obnoxious way (from our perspective) many people disputing the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide and contesting whether Israel's actions can be constituted a genocide is a fact. Depending on the community to and for which you are being a journalist, it becomes okay for some things to be attributed to no one and just generally considered true, and for others not so much. This is fundamentally because each one of us has a different level of access to all the relevant information as well as because the existence of facts other than those that we can experience through our senses (i.e. empirically) is controlled by some social determinants as well. This whole Canadaland episode alerted me the people trying to repudiate the allegation that Israel is conducting a genocide — especially many who are journalists by vocation — by purporting to scrutinise the claims they are being presented with. Now, scrutiny in and of itself is a good thing; it's one of the cornerstones of scepticism, especially a reasonable exercise of scepticism. But what they’re scrutinising also matters, and which is a subjective call. I use the word ‘subjective’ with deliberate intent. Scrutiny in journalism is a good thing (I’m treating Canadaland as a journalistic outlet here), yet it’s important to cultivate a good sense of what can and ought to be scrutinised versus a scrutiny of something that only suggests the scrutiniser is being obstinate or intends to waste time. Many, if not all, journalists would have started off being told it's important to be alert, to be aware of scrutinising all the claims they encounter. Many journalists also cultivate this sense over time, and the process by which they do so allows subjective considerations to seep in — and that is not in and of itself a bad thing. In fact it's good. I have often come across editors who have predicted a particular story's popularity where others only saw a dud based solely on their news sense. This is not a clinical scientific technique, it's by all means a sense. Informing this sense are, among other things, the pulse of the people to whom you're trying to appeal, the things they value, the things they used to value but don’t any more, and so forth. In other words this sense or pulse has an important socio-cultural component to it, and it is within this milieu that scrutiny happens. Scrutinising something in and of itself is not always a virtue for this reason: in the process of scrutinising something, it’s possible for you to end up appealing to things that people don’t consider virtues or, worse, which they could interpret to mean you’re vouching for something they consider antithetical to their spirit as a people. This Marx-Ling-Brown incident is illustrative to the extent that it spotlights the many journalists waking up to a barrage of statements, claims, and assertions both on and off the internet that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. These claims are stinging them, cutting at the heart of something they value, something they hold close to their hearts as a community. So they're responding by subjecting these claims to some tough scrutiny. Many of us have spent many years applying the same sort of tests to many, many other claims. For example, science journalists had to wade through a lot of bullshit before we could surmount the tide of climate denialism and climate pacifism to get to where we are today. However, now we're seeing these other people, including journalists, subjecting of all things the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza to especial scrutiny. I think they're waking up to the importance of scepticism and scrutiny through this particular news incident. Many of us woke up before, and many of us will wake up in future, through specific incidents that are close to us, that we know more keenly than most others will have a sort of very bad effect on society. These incidents are a sort of catalyst but they are also more than that — a kind of awakening. You learn how to scrutinise things in journalism school, you understand the theory of it very quickly. It's very simple. But in practice, it's a different beast. They say you need to fact check every claim in a reporter's copy. But over time, what you do is you draw the line somewhere and say, "Beyond this point, I'm not going to fact check this copy because the author is a very good reporter and my experience has been that they don't make any statements or claims that don't stand up to scrutiny beyond a particular level." You develop and accrue these habits of journalism in practice because you have to. There are time constraints and mental bandwidth constraints, so you come up with some shortcuts. This is a good thing, but acknowledging this is also important and valuable rather than sweeping it under the rug and pretending you don't do it. If you want to be a good journalist, you have to cultivate for yourself the right conduits of awakening — and by "right" I mean those conduits that will awaken you to the pulses of the people and the beats you’re responsible for rather than serve some counterproductive purpose. These conduits should specifically do two things. One: they should awaken you as quickly and with as much clarity as possible to what it means to fact check or scrutinise something. It should teach you the purpose of it, why you do it. It should teach you what good scrutiny looks like and where the line is between scrutiny and nitpicking or pedantry. Two: it should alert you to, or alert others about, your personal sense of right and wrong, good and bad. That's why it's a virtue to cultivate as many conduits as possible, that is to have diverse interests. When we're interested in many things about the world, about the communities and the societies that we live in, we are over time awakened again and again. We learn how to subject different claims to different levels of scrutiny because that experience empirically teaches us what, when, and how to scrutinise and, importantly, why. Today we’re seeing many of these people wake up and subject the tests that we've administered to climate denialism, the anti-vaccine movement, and various other pseudo-scientific movements to the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide. When we look at them we see stubborn people who won't admit simple details that are staring us in the face. This disparity arises because of how we construct *our* facts, the virtues to which *we* would like to appeal, and the position of the line beyond which *we* say no further attribution is necessary. Obviously there is no such thing as the [view from nowhere](https://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and I'm clear that I'm almost always appealing to the people who are not right-wingers. So from where I'm standing it seems more often than not as if the tests being administered to, say, the anti-vaccine movement are more valid instances of their use than the tests being administered against claims that Israel is conducting a genocide. Such divisions arise when we don't cultivate ourselves as individuals, when we don't nurture ourselves and the things that we're interested in. Simply, it speaks to the importance of having diverse interests. It's like traveling the world, meeting many people, experiencing many cultures. Such experiences teach us about multiculturalism and why it’s valuable, and they teach us the precise ways in which xenophobia, authoritarianism, and nationalism effect their baleful consequences. In a very similar way, diverse interests are good teachers about the moral landscape we all share and its normative standards that we co-define. They can quickly teach you about how far you stand from where you might really like to be. In fact, it’s entirely possible for a right-winger to read this post and take away the idea that where they stand is right. As I said, there is no view from nowhere. Right and wrong depend on your vantage point, in most cases at least. I wanted to put these thoughts down because it seemed like people who may not have many interests or who have very limited interests are people also more likely to disengage from social issues earlier than others. Disengagement is the fundamental problem, the root cause. There are many reasons for why it arises in the first place, but getting rid of it is entirely possible, and importantly something we need to do. And a good way to do it is to cultivate many interests, to be interested in many problems, so that over time our experiences navigating those interests inevitably lead to a good sense of what we should and what we needn’t have to scrutinise. It will teach us why some particular points of an argument are ill-founded. And if we're looking for it, it will give us a chance to fix that and even light the way. ### Matt Mullenweg v. WP Engine escalates URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/25/matt-mullenweg-v-wp-engine-escalates/ Last updated: 2024-09-25T08:29:25.000Z Update, September 26, 2024: WordPress.org [has banned websites](https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) hosted on WP Engine from accessing its resources. As [someone put it on X](https://x.com/trickybuddha/status/1839087066996437102?ref=slightlyacidic.com), this is Matt Mullenweg dropping a giant turd into the laps of millions of WordPress users. --- The Matt Mullenweg v. WP Engine dispute seems to be escalating, which is a bit of a surprise because it was so ill-founded to begin with. Yet the escalation has also been exponential. Mullenweg published his post disparaging WP Engine on the WordPress.org site (from where you can download the open source WordPress CMS) on September 21. On September 23, WP Engine said it had sent WordPress.com parent company and WordPress lead developer Automattic, whose CEO is Mullenweg, a [cease and desist letter](https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-Desist-Letter-to-Automattic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Excerpt: > Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers,and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X, YouTube, and even on the Wordpress.org site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses. 💥 Later on the same day, Automattic sent a [cease and desist letter of its own](https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-cease-and-desist.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to WP Engine. Excerpt: > As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights.We are writing about WP Engine’s web hosting and related services that improperly use our Client’s WORDPRESS and WOOCOMMERCE trademarks in their marketing.We understand that our Client has contacted you about securing a proper license to use its trademarks, yet no such agreement has been reached. As such, your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client. WP Engine’s unauthorized use of our Client’s trademarks also dilutes their rights, tarnishes their reputation, and otherwise harms the goodwill they have established in their famous and well-known trademarks, and has enabled WP Engine to unfairly compete with our Client, leading to WP Engine’s unjust enrichment. Now it's a trademark dispute. Automattic is alleging people at large are confusing WP Engine with WordPress itself and that that's leading to loss of revenue for Automattic. Hang on to this thought while we move on to the next detail. At 10.34 pm IST on September 4, Mullenweg [shared this tidbit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/lon9wsg/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in a Reddit comment: > \[WP Engine\] had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above. Put all these details together and we understand Mullenweg is alleging via Automattic that people are confusing WP Engine with WordPress itself to Automattic's detriment, that WP Engine has wrongfully used the WordPress trademark, that what WP Engine is selling isn't WordPress but something it has reportedly "butchered", and that WP Engine's enrichment is unjust. I think it's starting to stink for Mullenweg. As detailed in the previous post, WP Engine didn't "butcher" WordPress. In fact they didn't change anything about WordPress's core composition. They turned off a setting, didn't hide it, and offered a way to get around it by other means. WordPress is open source software provided under a GPL license, which means others are allowed to modify it (and subsequently avail it under the same license). So even if WP Engine modified WordPress — which it didn't — it would've been operating within its rights. Second, WP Engine was founded in 2010\. Why is Automattic alleging a trademark violation after 14 years of being okay with it? Even if consumers are currently confusing WP Engine with WordPress itself — which I doubt — that Automattic didn't pursue a legal dispute in all this time is very fishy. It also creates new uncertainty for all the many other WordPress hosting companies that have "WP" in their names. On a related note, WP Engine is selling WordPress hosting and not WordPress itself as well as claims to have emails from Automattic staff saying using the "WP" short form is okay. Another point of note here is whether 'WP' is covered by trademark. At some point in the recent past, the wordpressfoundation.org website [updated its 'Trademark Policy' page](https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to include an answer as well as some gratuitous remarks: > The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress. Third, Mullenweg's demand that WP Engine cough up 8% of their revenue amounts to a demand for $40 million (Rs 334.5 crore). Considering Automattic has now pinned this demand to the wobbly allegation of wrongful trademark use, WP Engine seems increasingly in the right to dispute and not entertain his demands. Moreover, WP Engine's lawyers' letter suggests Mullenweg gave WP Engine a very small window within which to comply with this demand and, for added measure, allegedly threw in a threat. But then at 10.38 pm on September 24, Mullenweg [said this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/lonaby8/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Reddit: > I would have happily negotiated from there, but they refused to even take a call. Their entire strategy has been to obscure and delay, which they tried to do on Friday. "Can we get the right folks together early next week?" They've been stringing us along for years, I'm the dummy for believing that they actually wanted to do anything. But making it right, now. The [reply to this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/loncpmj/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Reddit user u/ChallengeEuphoric237 is perfect: > 1/ If the fees were for the trademark, why weren't they going to the WordPress Foundation instead of Automattic? > > 2/ Why do they need to license the WordPress trademark? Stating they allow hosting as a product isn't a violation of trademark law, neither is using WP. You guys used to be an investor in the company for crying out loud. > > WordPress and Automattic seem incredibly petty in all of this. Why did you *need* to do it during the keynote? Why did you *need* to make a huge stink at the booth? If this was a legal issue, let the lawyers sort it out instead of dragging the community through the mud. Everyone expected much more from you. I don't use WP Engine's products, but if someone came to me trying to extort 8% of my revenue on some flimsy trademark issue, I wouldn't be very responsive either. > > "Can we get the right folks together early next week?" > > Did you honestly expect them to agree to a nearly 40 million dollar annual charge via text message when you literally gave them what seems like an hour notice right before your keynote? Would you agree to that? I'm no lawyer, but that whole exchange seems like an exercise in extortion - threatening to destroy someones reputation unless they agree to something monetarily, which is a felony. > > Let's see what the courts say, but you've lost a ton of clout in the community over this. The subtext of Mullenweg's September 21 post seemed to be that private equity is cutting costs in a way that's eating into the aspirations and dues of open source software development. Then again, as many observers in the sector have said, this couldn't be the real issue because private equity is almost everywhere in the WordPress hosting space and singling out WP Engine made little sense. So the sub-subtext seemed to be that Mullenweg was unhappy about WP Engine eating into the revenue streams of WordPress.com and WordPress VIP (Automattic's elite hosting service). But after the events of the three days that followed, that sub-subtext seems likelier to be the whole issue. On a final note, many people are kicking back with 🍿 and speculating about how this dispute could escalate further. But it's difficult for me personally to be entertained by this. While Mullenweg's September 21 post didn't in hindsight do a good job of communicating what his real argument was, he did suggest there was a problem with a model in which for-profit entities could springboard off the efforts of open-source communities that have volunteered their time and skills without the entities giving back. But dovetailing to u/ChallengeEuphoria237's concluding remark, conversations about that issue vis-à-vis WP Engine are now more unlikely to happen than they were before Mullenweg launched into this "making it right" campaign. ### Matt Mullenweg v. WP Engine URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/23/matt-mullenweg-v-wp-engine/ Last updated: 2024-09-23T08:19:00.000Z Automattic CEO and WordPress co-developer Matt Mullenweg published a post on September 21 calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress”. For the uninitiated: WP Engine is an independent company that provides managed hosting for WordPress sites; WordPress.com is owned by Automattic and it leads the development of WordPress.org. WP Engine’s hosting plans start at $30 a month and it enjoys a good public reputation. Mullenweg’s post however zeroed in on WP Engine’s decision to not record the revisions you’ve made to your posts in your site’s database. This is a basic feature in the WordPress content management system, and based on its absence Mullenweg says: > What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it. The first thing that struck me about this post was its unusual vehemence, which Mullenweg has typically reserved in the past for more ‘extractive’ platforms like Wix whose actions have also been more readily disagreeable. WP Engine has disabled revisions but as Mullenweg himself pointed out it doesn’t hide this fact. It’s available to view on the ‘Platform Settings’ support page. Equally, WP Engine also offers daily backups; you can readily restore one of them and go back to a previous ‘state’. Second, Mullenweg accuses WP Engine of “butchering” WordPress but this is stretching it. I understand where he’s coming from, of course: WP Engine is advertising WordPress hosting but it doesn’t come with one of the CMS’s basic features, and which WP Engine doesn’t hide but doesn’t really advertise either. This isn't just really far removed from “butchering” (much less in public), it's also dishonest: WP Engine didn't modify WordPress's core, it simply turned off a setting that was available to turn off. WP Engine’s stated reason is that post revisions increase database costs that the company would like to keep down. Mullenweg interprets this to mean WP Engine wants “to avoid paying to store that data”. Well, yeah, and that’s okay, right? I can’t claim to be aware of all the trade-offs that determined WP Engine’s price points but turning off a feature to keep costs down and reactivating it upon request for individual users seems fair. In fact, what really gets my goat is Mullenweg’s language, especially around how much WP Engine charges. He writes: > They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money. WordPress.com offers a very similar deal to its customers. (WordPress.com is Automattic’s platform for users where they can pay the company to host WordPress sites for them.) In the US, you’ll need to pay at least $25 a month (billed yearly) to be able to upload custom themes and plugins to your site. All the plans below that rate don’t have this option. You also need this plan to access and jump back to different points of your site’s revision history. Does this mean WordPress.com is “strip-mining” its users to avoid paying for the infrastructure required for those features? Or is it offering fewer features at lower price points because that’s how it can make its business work? I used to be happy that WordPress.com offers a $48 a year plan with fewer features because I didn’t need them — just as well as WP Engine seems to have determined it can charge its customers less by disabling revision history by default. (I’m not so happy now because WordPress.com moved detailed site analytics — anything more than hits to posts — from the free plan to the Premium plan, which costs $96 a year.) It also comes across as disingenuous for Mullenweg to say the “cancer” a la WP Engine will spread if left unchecked. He himself writes no WordPress host listed on WordPress.org’s recommended hosts page has disabled revisions history — but is he aware of the public reputation of these hosts, their predatory pricing habits, and their lousy customer service? Please take a look at Kevin Ohashi’s Review Signal website or r/webhosting. Cheap WordPress in return for a crappy hosting experience is the cancer that’s already spread because WordPress didn’t address it. (It’s the reason I switched to composing my posts offline on MarsEdit, banking on its backup features, and giving up on my expectations of hosts including WordPress.com.) It’s unfair to accuse companies of “strip-mining” WordPress so hosting providers can avail users a spam-free, crap-free hosting experience that’s also affordable. In fact, given how flimsy many of Mullenweg’s arguments seem to be, they’re probably directed at some other deeper issue — perhaps WP Engine beating WordPress.com in the market? ### What can science education do, and what can it not? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/09/04/what-can-science-education-do-and-what-can-it-not/ Last updated: 2024-09-04T05:43:57.000Z On September 29, 2021, *The Third Eye* [published an interview](https://thethirdeyeportal.in/pedagogy/science-education-should-not-be-about-missiles-it-should-be-about-sadak-bijli-paani/?ref=rootprivileges.ghost.io) with Milind Sohoni, a teacher at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas and at IIT Bombay. (Thanks to [@labhopping](https://x.com/labhopping/status/1830815859591324135?ref=rootprivileges.ghost.io) for bringing it into my feed.) I found it very thought-provoking. I’m pasting below some excerpts from the interview together with my notes. I think what Prof. Sohoni says doesn’t build up to a coherent whole. He is at times simplistic and self-contradictory, and what he says is often descriptive instead of offering a way out. Of course I don’t know whether what I say builds up to a coherent whole either but perhaps you’ll realise details here that I’ve missed. --- > … I wish the textbooks had exercises like let’s visit a bus depot, or let’s visit a good farmer and find out what the yields are, or let’s visit the PHC sub-centre, talk to the nurse, talk to the compounder, talk to the two doctors, just getting familiar with the PHC as something which provides a critical health service would have helped a lot. Or spend time with an ASHA worker. She has a notepad with names of people in a village and the diseases they have, which family has what medical emergency. How is it X village has so much diabetes and Y village has none? I’m sure you’ll agree this would be an excellent way to teach science — together with its social dependencies instead of introducing the latter as an add-on at the level of higher, specialised education. — > … science education is not just about big science, and should not be about big science. But if you look at the main central government departments populated by scientists, they are Space, Atomic Energy and Defence. Okay, so we have missile men and women, big people in science, but really, so much of science in most of the developed world is really sadak, bijli, pani. I disagree on three counts. (i) Science education should include ‘big science’; if it doesn’t we lose access to a domain of knowledge and enterprise that plays an important role in future-proofing societies. We choose the materials with which we will build buildings, lay roads, and make cars and batteries and from which we will generate electric power based on ‘big science’. (ii) Then again, what is ‘big science’? I’m not clear what Sohoni means by that in this comment. But later in the interview he refers to Big Science as a source of “certainty” (vis-à-vis life today) delivered in the form of “scientific things … which we don’t understand”. If by “Big Science” he means large scientific experiments that have received investments worth millions of dollars from multiple governments, and which are churning out results that don’t inform or enhance contemporary daily life, his statement seems all the more problematic. If a government invests some money in a Big Science project but then pulls out, it doesn’t necessarily or automatically redirect those funds to a project that a critic has deemed more worthwhile, like say multiple smaller science projects. Government support for Big Science has never operated that way. Further, Big Science frequently and almost by design inevitably leads to a lot of derivative ‘Smaller Science’, spinoff technologies, and advances in allied industries. Irrespective of whether these characteristics — accidental or otherwise — [suffice to justify](https://rootprivileges.ghost.io/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) supporting a Big Science project, wanting to expel such science from science education is still reckless. (iii) Re: “… so much of science in most of the developed world is really streets, electricity, water” — Forget proving/disproving this and ask yourself: how do we separate research in space, atomic energy, and defence from knowledge that gave rise to better roads, cheaper electricity, and cleaner water? We can’t. There is also a specific history that explains why each of these departments Sohoni has singled out were set up the way they were. And just because they are staffed with scientists doesn’t mean they are any good or worth emulating. (I’m also setting aside what Sohoni means by “much”. Time consumed in research? Money spent? Public value generated? Number of lives improved/saved?). Our science education should definitely include Big Science: following up from the previous quote, teachers can take students to a radio observatory nearby and speak to the scientists about how the project acquired so much land, how it secured its water and power requirements, how administrators negotiated with the locals, etc. Then perhaps we can think about avoiding [cases like the INO](https://rootprivileges.ghost.io/2024/07/14/india-based-neutrino-oblivion/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). — > The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act came along ago, and along with it came a list of 42 \[pieces of\] equipment, which every municipality should have: a mask, a jetting machine, pumps and so on. Now, even IIT campuses don’t have that equipment. Is there any lab that has a ‘test mask’ even? Our men are going into talks and dying because of \[lethal\] fumes. A ‘test mask’ is an investment. You need a face-like structure and an artificial lung exposed to various environments to test its efficacy. And this mask needs to be standard equipment in every state. But these are things we never asked IITs to do, right? This comment strikes a big nail on the head. It also brings to mind an incident on the Anna University campus eight years ago. To quote from Thomas Manuel’s [report in *The Wire*](https://thewire.in/61863/occupational-laws-small-enterprises/?ref=rootprivileges.ghost.io) on the incident: “On June 21, 2016, two young men died. Their bodies were found in a tank at the Anna University campus in Chennai. They were employees of a subcontractor who had been hired to seal the tank with rubber to prevent any leakage of air. The tank was being constructed as a part of a project by the Ministry of Renewable Energy to explore the possibilities of using compressed air to store energy. The two workers, Ramesh Shankar and Deepan, had arrived at the site at around 11.30 am and begun work. By 3.30 pm, when they were pulled out of the tank, Deepan was dead and Ramesh Shankar, while still breathing at the time, died a few minutes later.” This incident seemed, and still seems, to say that even within a university — a place where scientists and students are keenly aware of the rigours of science and the value it brings to society — no one thinks to ensure the people hired for what is casually called “menial” labour are given masks or other safety equipment. The gaps in science education Sohoni is talking about are evident in the way scientists think about how they can ensure society is more rational. A society rife with preventable deaths is not rational. — > I think what science does is that it claims to study reality. But most of reality is socially administered, and so we need to treat this kind of reality also as a part of science. No, we don’t. We shouldn’t. Science offers a limited set of methods and analytical techniques with which people can probe and describe reality and organise the knowledge they generate. He’s right, most of reality is socially administered, but that shouldn’t be an invitation to forcibly bring what currently lies beyond science to within the purview of science. The scientific method can’t deal with them — but importantly it shouldn’t be expected to. Science is incapable of handling multiple, equally valid truths pertaining to the same set of facts. In fact a few paras later Sohoni ironically acknowledges that there are truths beyond science and that their existence shouldn’t trouble scientists or science itself: > … scientists have to accept that there are many things that we don’t know, and they still hold true. Scientists work empirically and sometimes we say okay, let’s park it, carry on, and maybe later on we will find out the ‘why’. The ‘why’ or the explanation is very cultural… … whereas science needs that ‘why’, and needs it to be singular and specific. If these explanations for aspects of reality don’t exist in a form science can accommodate, yet we also insist as Sohoni did when he said “we need to treat this kind of reality also as a part of science”, then we will be forced to junk these explanations for no fault except that they don’t meet science’s acceptability criteria. Perhaps there is a tendency here as if to say we need a universal theory of everything, but do we? We can continue to use different human intellectual and social enterprises to understand and take advantage of different parts of human experience. Science and for that matter the social sciences needn’t be, and aren’t, “everything”. — > Science has convinced us, and is delivering on its promise of making us live longer. Whether those extra five years are of higher quality is not under discussion. You know, this is the same as people coming from really nice places in the Konkan to a slum in Mumbai and staying there because they want certainty. Life in rural Maharashtra is very hard. There’s more certainty if I’m a peon or a security guard in the city. I think that science is really offering some ‘certainty’. And that is what we seem to have accepted. This seems to me to be too simplistic. Sohoni says this in reply to being asked whether science education today leans towards “technologies that are serving Big Business and corporate profits, rather than this developmental model of really looking critically at society”. And he would have been fairer to say we have many more technological devices and products around us today, founded on what were once scientific ideas, that serve corporate profits more than anything else. The French philosopher Jacques Ellul elucidated this idea brilliantly in his book *The Technological Society* (1964). It’s just that Sohoni’s example of ageing is [off the mark](https://rootprivileges.ghost.io/2017/10/18/hair-conditioners-and-immortality/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and in the process it is harder to know what he’s really getting at. Lifespan is calculated as the average number of years an individual in a particular population lives. It can be improved by promoting factors that help our bodies become more resilient and by dissuading factors that cause us to die sooner. If lifespan is increasing today, it’s because fewer babies are succumbing to vaccine-preventable diseases before they turn five, because there are fewer road accidents thanks to vehicle safety, and because novel treatments like immunotherapy are improving the treatment rates of various cancers. Any new scientific knowledge in the prevailing capitalist world-system is susceptible to being coopted by Big Business but I’m also glad the knowledge exists at all. Sure, we can all live for five more years on average, but if those five years will be spent in, say, the humiliating conditions of palliative care, let’s fix that problem. Sohoni says science has strayed from that path and I’m not so sure — but I’m convinced there’s enough science to go around (and enough money for it, just not the political will): scientists can work on both increasing lifespan and improving the conditions of palliative care. We shouldn’t vilify one kind of science in order to encourage the other. Yet Sohoni persists with this juxtaposition as he says later: > … we are living longer, we are still shitting on the road or, you know, letting our sewage be cleaned by fellow humans at the risk of death, but we are living longer. And that is, I think, a big problem. We are still shitting on the road and we are letting our sewage be cleaned by fellow humans at the risk of death. These are big problems. Us living longer is not a big problem. — > Big Technology has a knack of turning us all into consumers of science, by neutralising questions on ‘how’ and ‘why’ things work. We accept it and we enjoy the benefits. But see, if you know the benefits are divided very unevenly, why doesn’t it bother us? For example, if you buy an Apple iPhone for Rs. 75,000 how much does the actual makers of the phone (factory workers) get? I call it the Buddhufication Crisis: a lot of people are just hooked on to their smartphones, and live in a bubble of manufactured certainty; and the rest of society that can’t access smartphones, is left to deal with real-world problems. By pushing us to get up, get out, and engage with science where it is practised, a better science education can inculcate a more inquisitive, critical-thinking population that applies the good sense that comes of a good education to more, or all, aspects of society and social living. This is why Big Technology in particular does not tempt us into becoming “consumers” of science rather than encouraging us to pick at its pieces. Practically everything does. Similarly Sohoni’s “Buddhufication” description is muddled. Of course it’s patronising towards the people who create value — especially if it is new and/or takes unexpected forms — out of smartphones and use it as a means of class mobility, and seems to suggest a person striving for any knowledge other than of the scientific variety is being a “buddhu”. And what such “buddhufication” has to do with the working conditions of Apple’s “factory workers” is unclear. — Speaking of relationships: > **Through our Public Health edition, we also seem to sit with the feeling that science is not serving rural areas, not serving the poor. In turn, there is also a lower expectation of science from the rural communities. Do you feel this is true?** > Yes, I think that is true to a large extent. But it’s not to do with rural. You see, for example, if you look at western Maharashtra — the Pune-Nashik belt — some of the cleverest people live there. They are basically producing vegetables for the big urban markets: in Satara, Sangli, that entire irrigated area. And in fact, you will see that they are very careful about their future, and understand their place in society and the role of the state. And they expect many things from the state or the government; they want things to work, hospitals to work, have oxygen, etc. And so, it is really about the basic understanding of cause and effect of citizenship. They understand what is needed to make buses work, or hospitals function; they understand how the state works. This is not very different from knowing how gadgets work. While the distinction to many others may be trivial, “science” and “scientists” are not the same thing. This equation is present throughout the interview. At first I assumed it was casual and harmless but at this point, given the links between science, science education, technology, and public welfare that Sohoni has tried to draw, the distinction is crucial here. Science is already serving rural areas — Sohoni says as much in the comment here and the one that follows. But many, or maybe most, scientists may not be serving rural areas, if only so we can also acknowledge that *some* scientists are also serving rural areas. “Science is not serving rural areas” would mean no researcher in the country — or anywhere, really — has brought the precepts of science to bear on the problems of rural India. This is just not true. On the other hand saying “most scientists are not serving rural areas” will tell us some useful scientific knowledge exists but (i) too few scientists are working on it (i.e. mindful of the local context) and (ii) there are problems with translating it from the lab bench to its application in the field, at ground zero. *This version of this post benefited from inputs from and feedback by Prathmesh Kher.* ### PSA about Business Today URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/08/26/psa-about-business-today/ Last updated: 2024-08-26T04:12:49.000Z If you get your space news from the website businesstoday.in, this post is for you. *Business Today* has published several articles over the last few weeks about the Starliner saga with misleading headlines and claims blown far out of proportion. I’d been putting off writing about them but this morning, I spotted the following piece: ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ad55f-81e9b-8acc7-screenshot-2024-08-26-at-8.33.00e280afam.png "Screenshot 2024-08-26 at 8.33.00 AM.png") *Business Today* has produced all these misleading articles in this format, resembling Instagram reels. This is more troubling because we know tidbits like this are more consumable as well as are likely to go viral by virtue of their uncomplicated content and simplistic message. *Business Today* has also been focusing its articles on the saga on Sunita Williams alone, as if the other astronauts don’t exist. This choice is obviously of a piece with Williams’s Indian heritage and *Business Today*’s intention to maximise traffic to its pages by publishing sensational claims about her experience in space. As I [wrote before](https://thestereogram.wordpress.com/2024/06/07/a-nationalism-of-sunita-williams/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > … in the eyes of those penning articles and headlines, “Indian-American” she is. They’re using this language to get people interested in these articles, and if they succeed, they’re effectively selling the idea that it’s not possible for Indians to care about the accomplishments of non-Indians, that only Indians’, and by extension India’s, accomplishments matter. … Calling Williams “Indian-American” is to retrench her patriarchal identity as being part of her primary identity — just as referring to her as “Indian origin” is to evoke her genetic identity… But something more important than the cynical India connection is at work here: in these pieces, *Business Today* has been toasting it. This my term for a shady media practice reminiscent of a scene in an episode of the TV show *Mad Men*, where Don Draper suggests Lucky Strike should advertise its cigarettes as being “toasted”. When someone objects that all cigarettes are toasted, Draper says they may well be, but by saying publicly that its cigarettes are toasted, Lucky Strike will set itself out without doing anything new, without lying, without breaking any rules. It’s just a bit of psychological manipulation. Similarly, *Business Today* has been writing about Williams as if she’s the only astronaut facing an extended stay in space (and suggesting in more subtle ways that this fate hasn’t befallen anyone before — whereas it has dozens of times), that NASA statements concern only her health and not the health of the other astronauts she’s with, and that what we’re learning about her difficulties in space constitute new information. ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/f6a79-31368-f0256-screenshot-2024-08-26-at-8.38.52e280afam.png "Screenshot 2024-08-26 at 8.38.52 AM.png") ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/684c9-37902-8139d-screenshot-2024-08-26-at-8.39.06e280afam.png "Screenshot 2024-08-26 at 8.39.06 AM.png") ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/5a8cb-ed079-a76ea-screenshot-2024-08-26-at-8.39.14e280afam.png "Screenshot 2024-08-26 at 8.39.14 AM.png") ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/9f821-a4042-b5396-screenshot-2024-08-26-at-8.39.36e280afam.png "Screenshot 2024-08-26 at 8.39.36 AM.png") None of this is false but it’s not true either. It’s *toasted*. Consider the first claim: "NASA has revealed that Williams is facing a critical health issue”: \* "NASA has revealed” — there’s nothing to *reveal* here. We already know microgravity affects various biochemical processes in the body, including the accelerated destruction of red blood cells. \* “Williams is facing” — No. Everyone in microgravity faces this. That’s why astronauts need to be very fit people, so their bodies can weather unanticipated changes for longer without suffering critical damage. \* “critical health issue” — Err, no. See above. Also, perhaps in a bid to emphasise this (faux) criticality, *Business Today*’s headline begins “3 million per second” and ends calling the number “disturbing”. You read it, this alarmingly big number is in your face, and you’re asking to believe it’s “disturbing”. But it’s not really a big number in context and certainly not worth any disturbance. For another example, consider: “Given Williams’ extended mission duration, this accelerated red blood cell destruction poses a heightened risk, potentially leading to severe health issues”. Notice how *Business Today* doesn’t include three important details: how much of an extension amounts to a ‘bad’ level of extension, what the odds are of Williams (or her fellow Starliner test pilot Barry Wilmore) developing “health issues”, and whether these consequences are reversible. Including these details would deflate *Business Today*’s ‘story’, of course. If *Business Today* is your, a friend’s and/or a relative’s source of space news, please ask them to switch to any of the following instead for space news coverage and commentary that's interesting without insulting your intelligence: \* [*SpaceNews*](https://spacenews.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [Jeff Foust](https://x.com/jeff%5Ffoust?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [Marcia Smith](https://x.com/spcplcyonline?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [*Aviation Week*](https://aviationweek.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [Victoria Samson](https://x.com/VSamson%5FDC?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [Jatan Mehta](https://jatan.space/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) \* [*The Hindu Science*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### A spaceflight narrative unstuck URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/08/11/a-spaceflight-narrative-unstuck/ Last updated: 2024-08-11T13:47:02.000Z > "First, a clarification: Unlike in Gravity, the 2013 film about two astronauts left adrift after space debris damages their shuttle, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are not stuck in space." This is the first line of an [*Indian Express* editorial](https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/sunita-williams-butch-wilmore-and-the-zero-gravity-life-9505476/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) today, and frankly, it's enough said. The idea that Williams and Wilmore are "stuck" or "stranded" in space just [won't die down](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2024/06/26/suni-williams-and-barry-wilmore-are-not-in-danger-but-are-we/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) because reports in the media — from [*The Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/07/spacex-delay-international-space-station-boeing-nasa?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to [*New Scientist*](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2443145-two-nasa-astronauts-may-be-stuck-on-the-space-station-until-february/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), from [*Mint*](https://www.livemint.com/science/news/from-eight-days-to-eight-months-nasa-astronauts-sunita-williams-barry-wilmore-stuck-space-2025-boeing-starliner-science-11723099729896.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to [*Business Today*](https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/sunita-williams-to-remain-stuck-in-space-till-2025-check-nasas-new-plans-for-boeing-starliner-astronauts-440634-2024-08-08?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — repeatedly prop it up. Why are they not "stuck"? First: because "stuck" implies Boeing/NASA are denying them an opportunity to return as well as that the astronauts wish to return, yet neither of which is true. What was to be a shorter visit has become a longer sojourn. This leads to the second answer: Williams and Wilmore are spaceflight veterans who were picked specifically to deal with unexpected outcomes, like what's going on right now. If amateurs or space tourists had been picked for the flight and their stay at the ISS had been extended in an unplanned way, then the question of their wanting to return would arise. But even then we'd have to check if they're okay with their longer stay instead of jumping to conclusions. If we didn't, we'd be trivialising their intention and willingness to brave their conditions as a form of public service to their country and its needs. We should think about extending the same courtesy to Williams and Wilmore. And this brings us to the third answer: The history of spaceflight — human or robotic — is the history of people trying to expect the unexpected and to survive the unexpectable. That's why we have test flights and then we have redundancies. For example, after the *Columbia* disaster in 2003, part of NASA's response was a new protocol: that astronauts flying in faulty space capsules could dock at the ISS until the capsule was repaired or a space agency could launch a new capsule to bring them back. So Williams and Wilmore aren't "stuck" there: they're practically following protocol. For its upcoming Gaganyaan mission, ISRO has planned multiple test flights leading up the human version. It's possible this flight or subsequent ones could throw up a problem, causing the astronauts within to take shelter at the ISS. Would we accuse ISRO of keeping them "stuck" there or would we laud the astronauts' commitment to the mission and support ISRO's efforts to retrieve them safely? Fourth: "stuck" or "stranded" implies a crisis, an outcome that no party involved in the mission planned for. It creates the impression human spaceflight (in this particular mission) is riskier than it is actually and produces false signals about the competencies of the people who planned the mission. It also erects unreasonable expectations about the sort of outcomes test flights can and can't have. In fact, the very reason the world has the ISS and NASA (and other agencies capable of human spaceflight) has its protocol means this particular outcome — of the crew capsule malfunctioning during a flight — needn't be a crisis. Let's respect that. Finally: *"Stuck" is an innocuous term*, you say, *something that doesn't have to mean all that you're making it out to be. Everyone knows the astronauts are going to return. Let it go.* Spaceflight is an exercise in control — about achieving it to the extent possible without also getting in the way of a mission and in the way of the people executing it. I don't see why this control has to slip in the language around spaceflight. ### Phogat and Khelif, and others URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/08/07/phogat-and-khelif-and-others/ Last updated: 2024-08-07T13:40:41.000Z This tweet is spot-on… … and we’re seeing it play out somewhat in the aftermath of Vinesh Phogat being disqualified from the Paris Olympics for not staying within the stipulated weight limit for two straight days. It was a tough task and Phogat and her team did their best, but alas. Yet India’s lack of a sporting culture beyond cricket, to which Pradeep Magazine had alluded, raised its ugly head in the form of brainless comments from [Hema Malini](https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/hema-malini-inspires-internets-collective-facepalm-with-comment-on-vinesh-phogat-important-to-keep-weight-in-check-101723024699162.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Kangana Ranaut](https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/kangana-ranaut-calls-vinesh-phogat-sherni-after-reminding-her-about-protests-post-paris-olympics-disqualification-101723039708402.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), just as it did last year when the wrestlers’ protests against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh elicited [nary a peep](https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/grey-silence-the-deference-of-indias-cricketing-gods-to-authority/cid/1933384?ref=slightlyacidic.com) from India’s current crop of cricketers. There is something of a parallel between the Phogat incident — which is still unravelling in some political circles in North India — and l’affair Khelif. Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was forced to brave a shitstorm online after her match against Italian boxer Angela Carini ended in 46 seconds, with Carini allegedly claiming Khelif’s strength was “not fair”. The incident was the invitation various boneheads, especially on the internet, needed to raise baseless questions about Khelif’s gender, questions that many other sportswomen have had to face before and likely will in future. Curiously, none of these questions were relevant while Khelif was losing boxing matches, which she was in other tournaments before the Olympics. It became a problem the moment she won, and won well. As Rose Eveleth [has said](https://www.thecut.com/article/2024-olympics-gender-test-imane-khelif-rose-eveleth.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), none of Khelif not losing, not being white, and not being from a rich country is coincidental — just as much as the people raising the ruckus not really being interested in “women’s sports. They’re not out here trying to advocate for the things that female athletes actually want and need, like equal pay.” In fact, now that crude populist impulses have begun spinning the circumstances of Phogat’s loss and Khelif’s triumph into divisive political narratives, the evil really haunting both women — and many others like them — becomes clear: *damn the sports, it’s ‘us versus them’*. ### Did we see the conspiracies coming? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/31/did-we-see-the-conspiracies-coming/ Last updated: 2024-07-31T13:37:59.000Z Tweets like this seem on point… … but I’ve started to wonder if we’re missing something in the course of expressing opinions about what we thought climate deniers would say and what they’re actually saying. That is, we expected to be right about what we thought they’d say but we’ve found ourselves wrong. Should we lampoon ourselves as well? Or, to reword the cartoon: > How we imagined we could react when ‘what we imagined deniers would say when the climate catastrophes came’ came true: *“I was so right! And now everyone must pay for their greed and lies! May god have mercy on their soul!”* Followed by: > How we expect we’ll react when we find out ‘what they actually are saying’: *“I was so wrong! And now everyone must pay for my myopia and echo chambers! May god have mercy on my soul!”* And finally: > How we actually are reacting: *“We’re just using these disasters as an excuse to talk about climate change! Like we did with COVID! And 9/11! And the real moon landings! Screw you and your federal rescue money! You need to take your electric vegan soy beans now!”* People (myself included) in general aren’t entirely effective at changing others’ attitudes so it may not seem fair to say there’s a mistake in us not having anticipated how the deniers would react, that we erred by stopping short of understanding really why climate denialism exists and addressing its root cause. But surely the latter sounds reasonable in hindsight? ‘Us versus them’ narratives like the one in the cartoon describe apparent facts very well but they also reveal a tendency, either on the part of ‘us’ or of ‘them’ but often of both, to sustain this divide instead of narrowing it. I’m not ignorant of the refusal of some people to change their mind under any circumstances. But even if we couldn’t have prevented their cynical attitudes on social issues — and consensus on climate change is one — maybe we can do better to anticipate them. ### Games and life URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/26/games-and-life/ Last updated: 2024-07-26T06:47:24.000Z Yesterday, July 25, was a big day. Ironhide Games released the long-awaited fifth edition of their tower-defence game 'Kingdom Rush'. I bought it as soon as it launched and completed its primary campaign in one sitting of several hours. Called ‘Alliance', the game combines the gameplay of 'Kingdom Rush: Vengeance' and Ironhide’s 'Junkworld', together with aspects of 'Legends of Kingdom Rush'. The game also continues a long storyline that began with the first 'Kingdom Rush’ game, released in 2011, and last updated in ‘Vengeance'. For what it’s worth, it’s a good story, too. In 'Kingdom Rush: Origins', Ironhide introduced Vez’nan as a powerful wizard who becomes corrupted by a gem called the Tear of Elynie to become a malevolent power threatening the kingdom of Linirea. In the games that followed, heroes and towers from several parts of the kingdom, ultimately including King Denas, were tasked with defeating Vez’nan and his allies. In ‘Vengeance', Vez’nan returned to exact revenge against King Denas — or so it seemed. ‘Alliance' describes Denas’s return as well as Vez'nan’s efforts against a greater evil called the Overseer, who is also the ultimate boss in 'Legends of Kingdom Rush'. ![A screenshot from the game 'Kingdom Rush: Alliance'.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/7379d-4160f-0de51-6c0a7-e8075-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-9.52.01-am.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 9.52.01 AM.jpeg") A 'Kingdom Rush: Alliance' skirmish begins… I love tower-defence games and among them 'Kingdom Rush' is my favourite by far. I own all editions of it as well as have unlocked most towers and heroes in each one. At more than a few points during a work day, I like to break one of these games out for a quick and hairy skirmish or — time permitting — a full-on campaign on a high difficulty setting. But while I like to play as often as I can, tower-defence doesn’t fit all moods. I have 13 games on my phone: the five 'Kingdom Rush’ games, ‘Junkworld’, 'Monument Valley' I and II (and the expansion packs), ‘Loop', ‘1010!’, 'Idle Slayer’, 'Rytmos', and 'Lost in Play’. They’re all great but I’d single out ‘Idle Slayer’, ‘Loop’, and ‘Monument Valley’ for particular praise. 'Idle Slayer’ is a top-notch incremental game (a.k.a. idle game): the game will continue irrespective of whether you interact with the player-character, the player-character can’t perish, and gameplay is restricted to tapping on the screen to make the character jump. The whole point is to slay monsters — which the character will if she/flies runs into them, automatically pulling out an omnipotent sword when she gets close — and collect slayer points and to pick up coins and gems, which the character also does if she runs/flies into them. ‘Idle Slayer’ thus eliminates the player (you, me, etc.) having to be challenged in order to reap rewards. It’s just a matter of time, although occasional bursts of speed and character abilities purchased with slayer points can make things exciting. I agree with what journalist Justin Davis [wrote in 2013](https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/10/inside-cookie-clicker-and-the-idle-game-movement?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > “Idle games seem perfectly tuned to provide a never-ending sense of escalation. They’re intoxicating because upgrades or items that used to seem impossibly expensive or out of reach rapidly become achievable, and then trivial. It’s all in your rearview mirror before you know it, with a new set of crazy-expensive upgrades ahead. The games are tuned to make you feel both powerful and weak, all at once. They thrive on an addictive feeling of exponential progress.” Right now, this is where I’m at: 209 decillion coins in my kitty and racking up 110 octillion coins per second, plus whatever I pick up as I keep running… ![A screenshot from the 'Idle Slayer'.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/07a18-d6ea0-68dbb-d2f31-dad57-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-9.53.32-am.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 9.53.32 AM.jpeg") My player-character is named Mintana. She's awesome. Second is the amazing ‘Loop’, an endless series of puzzles in each of which your task is to link up some open-ended elements on a screen such that they form a large closed loop. You can tap on each element to rotate it; when the open ends of two elements line up in this way, they link up. The game is minimalist: each level has a plain monotone background and elements of a contrasting colour, and there’s beautiful, low-key instrumental music to accompany your thoughts. ‘Loop’ is the game to get lost in. I've played more than 3,500 levels so far and look forward every day to the next one. ![A screenshot from the game 'Loop'.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/18d08-c2b28-20dc2-689d5-cd89c-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-10.11.35-am.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 10.11.35 AM.jpeg") The two rings in the bottom-left corner are linked up. Third comes ‘Monument Valley’, but in no particular order because it’s the game I love the most. I don’t play it as often as I play ‘Kingdom Rush’, ‘Idle Slayer’ or ‘Loop’ because its repeatability is low — but it’s the game that redefined for a younger and less imaginative me what a smartphone product could look and *feel* like when you play it. ‘Monument Valley’ is an ode to the work of the Dutch artist MC Escher, famed for his depiction of impossible objects that toy with the peculiarities of human visual perception. The player-character is a young lady named Ida navigating a foreboding but also enchanting realm whose structures and vistas are guided by the precepts of a mysterious “sacred geometry”. The game’s visuals are just stunning and, as with ‘Loop’, there’s beautiful music to go with. The objects on the screen whose geometries you change to create previously impossible paths for Ida take time to move around, which means you can’t rush through levels. You have to wait, and you have to watch. And ‘Monument Valley’ makes that a pleasure to do. ![A screenshot from the game 'Monument Valley' II.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/451ca-823fe-95805-cf957-352ab-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-9.59.59-am2.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 9.59.59 AM(2).jpeg") Unobtrusive pink, lush green, obsidian black. It should be clear by now that I love puzzles, and ‘1010!’ is perhaps the most clinical of the lot. It’s Tetris in pieces: you have a 10 x 10 grid of cells that you can fill with shapes that the game presents to you in sets of three. Once you’ve placed all three on the grid, you get the next three; once a row or a column is filled with cells, it empties itself; and once you can no longer fit new shapes in the grid, it’s game over. ‘1010!' takes up very little of your cognitive bandwidth, which means you have something to do that distracts you enough to keep you from feeling restless while allowing you to think about something more important at the same time. ![A screenshot from the game '1010!'.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/f8976-c655e-56e0a-39d3f-6e510-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-9.59.59-am1.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 9.59.59 AM(1).jpeg") What does losing mean if you can never win? ‘Rytmos’ and ‘Lost in Play’ are fairly new: I installed them a couple weeks ago. ‘Rytmos’ is just a smidge like ‘Loop’ but richer with details and, indeed, knowledge. You link up some nodes on a board in a closed loop; each node is a musical instrument that, when it becomes part of the loop, plays a beat depending on its position. Suddenly you’re making music. There are multiple ‘planets’ in the game and each one has multiple puzzles involving specific instruments. You learn something and you feel good about it. It’s amazing. I’ve only played a few minutes of ‘Lost in Play’ thus far, and I’m looking forward to more because it seems to be of a piece with ‘Monument Valley’, from the forced-slow gameplay to the captivating visuals. ![A screenshot from the game 'Lost in Play'.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/e413b-8f775-cba73-b8ef7-e16ed-whatsapp-image-2024-07-26-at-9.59.59-am.jpeg "WhatsApp Image 2024-07-26 at 9.59.59 AM.jpeg") A scene from 'Lost in Play'. Aside from these games, I also play ‘Entanglement' in the browser and ‘Factorio' on my laptop. ‘Factorio’ is the motherlode, an absolute beast of a game for compulsive puzzle-solvers. In the game, you’re an engineer in the future who’s crash-landed on an alien planet and you need to build a rocket to get off of it. The gameplay is centred on factories, where you craft the various pieces required for more and more sophisticated components. In parallel, you mine metals, pump crude oil, extract uranium, and dig up coal; you smelt, refine, and burn them to get the parts required to build as well as feed the factories; you conduct research to develop and enhance automation, robotics, rocketry, and weapons; you build power plants and transmission lines, and deal with enormous quantities of waste; and you defend your base from the planet’s native life, a lone species of large, termite-like creatures. I’ve been playing a single game for three years now. There’s no end in sight. Sometimes, when ‘Factorio’ leaves me enough of my brain to think about other things, I gaze with longing as if out of a small window at a world that has long passed me by… ![A screenshot from the game 'Factorio'.](https://oversample.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-26-at-10.08.02%E2%80%AFAM.png "Screenshot 2024-07-26 at 10.08.02 AM.png") \[Polyphonic robot voice\] This facility mines copper ore, smelts it to copper plates, and feeds it to factories that make copper cables. ### Agalloch URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/17/agalloch/ Last updated: 2024-07-17T09:31:48.000Z Agalloch is a synonym of agarwood. In parallel, Aquilaria agallocha and Agalochum malaccense are synonyms of Aquilaria malaccensis, the accepted scientific name of a tree that produces much of the world’s stock of this wood. When the heartwood (or duramen) of an Aquilaria tree is in the grip of an infection of Phaeoacremonium parasitica, the tree secretes a resin to beat the fungus off. The resin is very fragrant; depending on the duration of secretion, the heartwood can become saturated with it, at which point it becomes the very odoriferous agarwood. For centuries people have extracted this agarwood for use in perfumes and incense. We have also found the oils extracted from the wood, especially using steam distillation of late, are chemically very complex, including more than 70 terpenoids and more than 150 compounds overall. This is a fascinating tale for the origin of something beautiful in nature, prompted by a tree’s desperate bid to fight off the advance of a fungal menace. Of course the human beholds this beauty, not the tree and certainly not the fungus — and Aquilaria malaccensis‘s wondrous resin hasn’t been able to keep humans at bay. The tree is listed as being ‘critically endangered’ on the IUCN Red List thanks to habitat loss and improper management of the global demand for the resinous agalloch. ### A cynical archaeology URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/15/a-cynical-archaeology/ Last updated: 2024-07-15T09:27:35.000Z From ‘ASI submits Bhojshala survey report to Madhya Pradesh High Court’, [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/madhya-pradesh/asi-submits-bhojshala-survey-report-to-madhya-pradesh-high-court/article68405996.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), July 15, 2024: > The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on July 15 submitted its scientific survey report of the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal-Maula mosque complex to the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. … On July 4, the High Court ordered the ASI to present by July 15 the complete report of the nearly three-month-long survey on the premises of the disputed 11th-century monument, the subject of a wrangle between Hindus and Muslims. The Hindu community considers Bhojshala as a temple of Vagdevi (Goddess Saraswati), while the Muslim side calls it Kamal Maula mosque. The HC on March 11 ordered the ASI … to conduct a scientific survey of the complex … It then gave six weeks to the ASI to complete the survey. The ASI later sought more time for the report submission. The ASI began surveying the disputed complex on March 22 which ended recently. Isn’t it cynical of ASI to engage in these exercises? New structures will often be built on old ones. But undertaking a study, then preparing a study is just disingenuous. It is also disingenuous to appeal to science to settle questions that are otherwise devoid of reason. I wish history scholars and scientists spoke up more vociferously on this instead of engaging in this charade. It’s practically why a separate nodal agency of archaeological study and deliberation exists, and not to be a mute provider of ‘archaeological services’ when called upon… ### India-based neutrino oblivion URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/14/india-based-neutrino-oblivion/ Last updated: 2024-07-14T09:24:53.000Z In a conversation with science journalist Nandita Jayaraj, physicist and Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita touched on the dismal anti-parallels between the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) and the Japanese Kamioka and Super-Kamiokande observatories. The INO’s story should be familiar to readers of this blog: a team of physicists led by those from IMSc Chennai and TIFR Mumbai conceived of the INO, identified places around India where it could be built, finalised a spot in Theni (in Tamil Nadu), and received Rs 1,350 crore from the Union government for it, only for the project to not progress a significant distance past this point. Nandita’s article, [published in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/nobel-laureate-supports-indias-pursuit-for-a-neutrino-lab/article68396787.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on July 14, touches on two reasons the project was stalled: “adverse environmental impacts” and “the fear of radioactivity”. These were certainly important reasons but they’re also symptoms of two deeper causes: distrust of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and some naïvety on the scientists’ part. The article mentions the “adverse environmental impacts” only once while “the fear of radioactivity” receives a longer rebuttal — which is understandable because the former has a longer history and there’s a word limit. It bears repeating, however. Even before work on the INO neared its beginning, people on the ground in the area were tense over the newly erected PUSHEP hydroelectric project. Environmental activists were on edge because the project was happening under the aegis of the DAE, a department notorious for its opacity and heavy-handed response to opposition. The INO collaboration compounded the distrust when hearings over a writ petition Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief Vaiko filed in the Madras high court revealed the final ecological assessment report of the project had been prepared by the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), which as the law required at the time hadn’t been accredited by the Quality Council of India and was thus unfit to draft the report. Members of the INO collaboration said this shouldn’t matter because they had submitted the report themselves together with a ‘detailed project report’ prepared by TANGEDCO and a geotechnical report by the Geological Survey of India. Perhaps the scientists thought SACON was good enough, and it may well have been, but it’s not clear how submitting the report themselves should have warranted a break from the law. Given all the other roadblocks in the project’s way, this trip-up in hindsight seems to have been a major turning point. Locals in the area around the hill, under which the INO was to be built, were also nervous about losing access to part of their grazing land and to a temple situated nearby. There was a report in 2015 that police personnel had blocked people from celebrating a festival at this temple. In an April 2015 [interview with *Frontline*](https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/unfounded-fears/article7098369.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), when told that local police were also keeping herders from accessing pastureland in the foothills, INO spokesperson Naba Mondal said: “The only land belonging to INO is the 26.825 ha. INO has no interest in and no desire to block the grazing lands outside this area. In fact, these issues were discussed in great detail in a public meeting held in July 2010, clearly telling the local people this. This is recorded in our FAQ. This was also conveyed to them in Tamil.” In response to a subsequent question about “propaganda” that the project site would store nuclear waste from Tamil Nadu’s two nuclear power facilities, Mondal said: “The DAE has already issued a press statement in this regard. I do genuinely believe that this has allayed people’s concerns.” Even at the time these replies hinted at a naïve belief that these measures would suffice to allay fears in the area about the project. There is a difference between scientists providing assurances that the police will behave and the police actually behaving, especially if the experience of the locals diverges from what members of the INO collaboration believe is the case. Members of the collaboration had promised the locals they wouldn’t lose access to grazing land; four years later, the locals still had trouble taking their word. According to an investigation I [published at *The Wire*](https://thewire.in/27582/why-indias-most-sophisticated-science-experiment-languishes-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2016, there was also to be a road that bypassed the local villages and led straight to the project site, sparing villagers the noise from the trucks ferrying construction material. It was never built. One narrative arising from within the scientific community as the project neared the start of construction was that the INO is good for the country, that it will improve our scientific literacy, keep bright minds from leaving to work on similar projects abroad, and help Indians win prestigious prizes. For the national scientific enterprise itself, the INO would make India a site of experimental physics of global importance and Indian scientists working on it major contributors to the study of neutrino physics. I wrote an article to this effect in The Hindu in 2016 and this is also what Takaaki Kajita said in Nandita’s article. But later that year, I also asked an environmental activist (and a mentor of sorts) what he was thinking. He said the scientists will eventually get what they want but that they, the activists et al., still had to do the responsible thing and protest what they perceived to be missteps. (Most scientists in India don’t get what they want but many do, most recently like the ‘Challakere Science City’.) Curiously, both these narratives — the activist’s pessimism and the scientists’ naïvety — could have emerged from a common belief: that the INO was preordained, that its construction was fated to be successful, causing one faction to be fastidious and the other to become complacent. Of course it’s too simplistic to be able to explain everything that went wrong, yet it’s also of a piece with the fact that the INO was doomed as much by circumstance as by historical baggage. That work on the INO was stalled by an opposition campaign that included fear-mongering pseudoscience and misinformation is disagreeable. But we also need to ask whether some actors resorted to these courses of action because others had been denied them, in the past if not in the immediate present — or potentially risk the prospects of a different science experiment in future. Physics is often far removed from the precepts of behavioural science and social justice but public healthcare is closer. There is an important parallel between the scientists’ attempts to garner public support for the project and [ASHA workers’ efforts](https://science.thewire.in/health/the-asha-women-delivering-covid-19-vaccines-in-india/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) during the COVID-19 pandemic to vaccinate people in remote rural areas. These latter people were distrustful of the public healthcare system: it had neglected them for several years but then it was suddenly on their doorstep, expecting them to take a supposedly miraculous drug that would cut their chances of dying of the viral disease. ASHA workers changed these people’s minds by visiting them again and again, going door to door, and enrolling members of the same community to convince people they were safe. Their efficacy is higher if they are from the same community themselves because they can strike up conversations with people that draw on shared experiences. Compare this with the INO collaboration’s belief that a press release from the DAE had changed people’s minds about the project. Today the INO stares at a bleak future rendered more uncertain by a near-complete lack of political support. *This post benefited from Thomas Manuel's feedback.* ### ‘Animals use physics’ URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/13/animals-use-physics/ Last updated: 2024-07-13T09:21:45.000Z What came first: physics or the world? It’s obviously the world, whereas physics (as a branch of science) offered ways to acquire information about the world and organise it. To not understand something in this paradigm, then, is to not understand the world in terms of physics. While this is straightforward, some narratives lead to confusion. For example, consider the statement “animals use physics” (these animals exclude humans). Do they? Fundamentally, animals can’t use physics because their brains aren’t equipped to. They also don’t use physics because they’re only navigating the world, they’re not navigating physics and its impositions on the human perception of the world. On July 10, *Knowable* [published an article](https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/physical-world/2024/how-animals-exploit-and-negotiate-physics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) describing just such a scenario. The article actually uses both narratives — of humans using physics and animals using physics — and they’re often hard to pry apart, but sometimes the latter makes its presence felt. Example: > “Evolution has provided animals with movement skills adapted to the existing environment without any need for an instruction manual. But altering the environment to an animal’s benefit requires more sophisticated physics savvy. From ants and wasps to badgers and beavers, various animals have learned how to construct nests, shelters and other structures for protection from environmental threats.” An illustration follows of a prairie dog burrow that accelerates the flow of wind and enhance ventilation; its caption reads: “Prairie dogs dig burrows with multiple entrances at different elevations, an architecture that relies on the laws of physics to create airflow through the chamber and provide proper ventilation.” Their architecture doesn’t rely on the laws of physics. It’s that we’ve physics-fied the prairie dogs’ empirical senses and lessons they learnt in their communities to see physics in the world when in fact it’s not there. Instead, what’s there is evidence of the prairie dogs ability to build these tunnels and exploit certain facts of nature, knowledge of which they’re acquired with experience. The rest of the article is actually pretty good, exploring animal behaviour that “depends in some way on the restrictions imposed, and opportunities permitted, by physics”. Also, what’s the harm, you ask, in saying "animals use physics"? I’ve no idea. But rather than as they could be, I think it should matter to describe things as they are. ### The problem with a new, rapid way to recycle textiles URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/10/the-problem-with-a-new-rapid-way-to-recycle-textiles/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:04.000Z Researchers from the University of Delaware have developed a chemical reaction that can break polyester in clothing down to a simpler compound that can be used to make more clothes. The reaction also spares cotton and nylon, allowing them to be recovered separately from clothing that uses a mix of fibres. Most of all, given sufficient resources, the reaction reportedly takes only 15 minutes from start to finish, which the researchers have touted as a significant achievement because I believe the prevailing duration for other chemical material-recovery processes in the textile industry is in the order of days, and have said they hope to be able to bring it down to a matter of seconds. The [team’s paper](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado6827?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and its coverage in the popular press also advance the narrative that the finding could be a boon for the textile industry’s monumental waste problem, especially in economically developing and developed regions. This is obviously the textile industry’s analogue of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, whereby certain technical machinations remove carbon out of the atmosphere and other natural reservoirs and sequester it in human-made matrices for decades or even centuries. The problem with CCS is also the problem with the chemical recycling process described in the new study: unless the state institutes policies and helps effect cultural changes in parallel that discourage consumption, encourage reuse, and lower emissions, removing contaminants from the environment will only create the impression that there is now more room to pollute, so the total effective carbon pollution will increase. This is not unlike trying to reduce motor vehicle traffic by building more roads: cities simply [acquire more vehicles](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with which to fill the newly available motorway space. All this said, however, there is one more thing to be concerned about vis-à-vis the 15-minute chemical recovery technique. In their paper, the researchers described a “techno-economic assessment” they undertook to understand the “economic feasibility” of their proposed solution to the textile waste problem. Their analysis flowchart is shown below, based on a "textile feed throughput of 500 kg/hour". A separate table (available [here](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado6827?ref=slightlyacidic.com#T1)) specifies the estimated market value of textile components — polyester, nylon, cotton, and 4,4′-methylenedianiline (MDA) — after they have been recovered from the 15-minute reaction’s output and processed a bit. They found their process is more economically feasible, achieving a profitability index of 1.29 where 1 is the breakeven point, when the resulting product sales amount to $148.7 million. I don’t know where the latter figure comes from; if it doesn’t have a sound basis and is arbitrary, the ‘1.29’ figure would be arbitrary too. The same goes for their 'low sales’ scenario in which the profitability index is 0.95 if sales amount to $85.3 million. ![Techno-economic analysis of the proposed process.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/281a2-17753-539de-f01e9-c6d17-sciadv.ado6827-f9-scaled-1.jpg "sciadv.ado6827-f9.jpg") *Source: DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado6827* Importantly, all these numbers presume demand for recycled clothes, which I assume is far more limited (based on my experiences in India) than the demand for new clothes. In fact the researchers’ paper begins by blaming fast fashion for the “rising demand for textiles and \[their\] shorter life span compared to a generation ago”. Fast fashion is a volume business predicated among other things on lower costs. (Did you hear about the mountain of clothes that [went up in flames](https://grist.org/international/burn-after-wearing-fashion-waste-chile/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the middle of the Atacama desert in 2022 because it was cheaper to let them go that way?) Should fast-fashion's practices be accounted for in the techno-economic assessment, I doubt its numbers would still stand. They certainly won’t if implemented in the poorer countries to which richer ones have been exporting both textile manufacturing and disposal. Second, the profitability indices presume continuing, if not increasing, demand for new clothes, which is of course deeply problematic: demand untethered from their socio-economic consequences is what landed us in the present soup. That it should stay this way or further increase in order to sustain a process that “holds the potential to achieve a global textile circularity rate of 88%” is a precarious proposition because it risks erecting demand as the raison d’être of sustainability. Finally, militating against solutions like CCS and this chemical recovery technique because they aren’t going to be implemented within the right policy and socio-cultural frameworks is reasonable even if the underlying technologies have matured completely (they haven’t in this case but let’s set that aside). On the flip side, we need to push governments to design and implement the frameworks asap rather than delay or deny the use of these technologies altogether. The pressures of climate change have shortened deadlines and incentivised speed. Yet business people and industrialists have imported far too many such solutions into India, where their purported benefits have seldom come to fruition — especially in their intended form — even as they have had toxic consequences for the people depending on these industries for their livelihoods, for the people living around these facilities, and, importantly, for people involved in parts of the value chain that come into view only when we account for externalised costs. A few illustrative examples are sewage treatment plants, nuclear reactors, hazardous waste management, and various ore-refining techniques. In all, making the climate transition at the expense of climate justice is a fundamentally stupid strategy. *Featured image: People sort through hundreds of tonnes of clothing in an abandoned factory in Phnom Penh, November 22, 2020\. Credit: Francois Le Nguyen/Unsplash.* ### Clocks on the cusp of a nuclear age URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/06/clocks-on-the-cusp-of-a-nuclear-age/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:05.000Z You need three things to build a clock: an energy source, a resonator, and a counter. In an analog wrist watch, for example, a small battery is the energy source that sends a small electric signal to a quartz crystal, which, in response, oscillates at a specific frequency (piezoelectric effect). If the amount of energy in each signal is enough to cause the crystal to oscillate at its [resonant frequency](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Sound/reson.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the crystal becomes the resonator. The counter tracks the crystal’s oscillation and converts it to seconds using predetermined rules. Notice how the clock’s proper function depends on the relationship between the battery and the quartz crystal and the crystal’s response. The signals from the battery have to have the right amount of energy to excite the crystal to its resonant frequency and the crystal’s oscillation in response has to happen at a fixed frequency as long as it receives those signals. To make better clocks, physicists have been able to fine-tune these two parameters to an extreme degree. Today, as a result, we have clocks that don’t lose more than one second of time every 30 billion years. These are the optical atomic clocks: the energy source is a laser, the resonator is an atom, and the counter is a particle detector. An atomic clock’s identity depends on its resonator. For example, many of the world’s countries use caesium atomic clocks to define their respective national "frequency standards". (One such clock at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi maintains [Indian Standard Time](https://www.nplindia.org/index.php/science-technology/indian-standard-time-metrology-division/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) A laser imparts a precise amount of energy to excite a caesium-133 atom to a particular higher energy state. The atom soon after drops from this state to its lower ground state by emitting light of frequency exactly 9,192,631,770 Hz. When a particle detector receives this light and counts out 9,192,631,770 waves, it will report one second has passed. Caesium atomic clocks are highly stable, losing no more than a second in [20 million years](https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-services/brief-history-atomic-clocks-nist?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In fact, scientists used to define a second in terms of the time Earth took to orbit the Sun once; they switched to the caesium atomic clock because "it was more stable than Earth’s orbit” ([source](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/acloc.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). But there is also room for improvement. The higher the frequency of the emitted radiation, the more stable an atomic clock will be. The emission of a caesium atomic clock has a frequency of 9.19 GHz whereas that in a strontium clock is 429.22 THz and in a ytterbium-ion clock is 642.12 THz — in both cases five orders of magnitude higher. (9.19 GHz is in the microwave frequency range whereas the other two are in the optical range, thus the name "optical" atomic clock.) Optical atomic clocks also have a narrower linewidth, which is the range of frequencies that can prompt the atom to jump to the higher energy level: the narrower the linewidth, the more precisely the jump can be orchestrated. So physicists today are trying to build and perfect the next generation of atomic clocks with these resonators. Some researchers have said they could replace the caesium frequency standard later this decade. But yet other physicists have also already developed an idea to build the subsequent generation of clocks, which are expected to be at least 10-times more accurate than optical atomic clocks. Enter: the *nuclear clock*. When an atom, like that of caesium, jumps between two energy states, the particles gaining and losing the energy are the atom’s electrons. These electrons are arranged in energy shells surrounding the nucleus and interact with the external environment. For a September 2020 [article in *The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/india-optical-atomic-clocks-iucaa-iiser-quantum-technologies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), IISER Pune associate professor and a member of a team building India’s first strontium atomic clock Umakant Rapol said the resonator needs to be "immune to stray magnetic fields, electric fields, the temperature of the background, etc." Optical atomic clocks achieve this by, say, isolating the resonator atoms within oscillating electric fields. A nuclear clock offers to get rid of this problem by using an atom’s nucleus as the resonator instead. Unlike electrons, the nucleus of an atom is safely ensconced further in, where it is also quite small, making up only around 0.01% of the atom’s volume. The trick here is to find an atomic nucleus that’s stable and whose resonant frequency is accessible with a laser. In [1976](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0375947476904942?via%3Dihub&ref=slightlyacidic.com), physicists studying the decay of uranium-233 nuclei reported some properties of the thorium-229 nucleus, including estimating that the lowest higher-energy level to which it could jump required less than 100 eV of energy. Another study in [1990](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.271?ref=slightlyacidic.com) estimated the requirement to be under 10 eV. In [1994](https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.49.1845?ref=slightlyacidic.com), two physicists estimated it to be around 3.5 eV. The higher energy state of a nucleus is called its isomer and is denoted with the suffix ‘m’. For example, the isomer of the thorium-229 nucleus is denoted thorium-229m. After a [2005](https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.71.044303?ref=slightlyacidic.com) study further refined the energy requirement to 5.5 eV, a [2007](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.142501?ref=slightlyacidic.com) study provided a major breakthrough. With help from state-of-the-art instruments at NASA, researchers in the US worked out the thorium-229 to thorium-229m jump required 7.6 eV. This was significant. Energy is related to frequency by the Planck equation: *E* \= h*f*, where h is Planck’s constant. To deliver 3.5 eV of energy, then, a laser would have to operate in the optical or near-ultraviolet range. But if the demand was 7.6 eV, the laser would have to operate in the vacuum ultraviolet range. Further refinement by more researchers followed but they were limited by one issue: since they still didn’t have a sufficiently precise value of the isomeric energy, they couldn’t use lasers to excite the thorium-229 nucleus and find out. Instead, they examined thorium-229m nuclei formed by the decay of other elements. So when on [April 29](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.182501?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this year a team of researchers from Germany and Austria finally reported using a laser to excite thorium-229 nuclei to the thorium-229m state, their findings sent frissons of excitement through the community of clock-makers. The researchers’ setup had two parts. In the first, they drew inspiration from an idea a different group had proposed in [2010](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.200802?ref=slightlyacidic.com): to study thorium-229 by placing these atoms inside a larger crystal. The European group grew two calcium fluoride (CaF2) crystals in the lab doped heavily with thorium-229 atoms, with different doping concentrations. In a study published [a year earlier](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05894-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com), different researchers had reported observing for the first time thorium-229m decaying back to its ground state while within calcium fluoride and magnesium fluoride (MgF2) crystals. Ahead of the test, the European team cooled the crystals to under -93º C in a vacuum. In the second part, the researchers built a laser with output in the vacuum ultraviolet range, corresponding to a wavelength of around 148 nm, for which off-the-shelf options don’t exist at the moment. They achieved the output instead by remixing the outputs of multiple lasers. The researchers conducted 20 experiments: in each one, they increased the laser’s wavelength from 148.2 nm to 150.3 nm in 50 equally spaced steps. They also maintained a control crystal doped with thorium-232 atoms. Based on these attempts, they reported their laser elicited a distinct emission from the two test crystals when the laser’s wavelength was 148.3821 nm. The same wavelength when aimed at the CaF2 crystal doped with thorium-232 didn’t elicit an emission. This in turn implied an isomeric transition energy requirement of 8.35574 eV. The researchers also worked out based on these details that a thorium-229m nucleus would have a half-life of around 29 minutes in vacuum — meaning it is quite stable. Physicists finally had their long-sought prize: the information required to build a nuclear clock by taking advantage of the thorium-229m isomer. In this setup, then, the energy source could be a laser of wavelength 148.3821 nm; the resonator could be thorium-229 atoms; and the counter could look out for emissions of frequency 2,020 THz (plugging 8.355 eV into the Planck equation). Other researchers have already started building on this work as part of the necessary refinement process and have generated useful insights as well. For example, on [July 2](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.013201?ref=slightlyacidic.com), University of California, Los Angeles, researchers reported the results of a similar experiment using lithium strontium hexafluoroaluminate (LiSrAlF6) crystals, including a more precise estimate of the isomeric energy gap: 8.355733 eV. About a week earlier, on [June 26](https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18719?ref=slightlyacidic.com), a team from Austria, Germany, and the US reported using a frequency comb to link the frequency of emissions from thorium-229 nuclei to that from a strontium resonator in an optical atomic clock at the University of Colorado. A frequency comb is a laser whose output is in multiple, evenly spaced frequencies. It [works like a gear](https://dhualqarnain.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2020-08-28-at-1.47.16-PM.png?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that translates the higher frequency output of a laser to a lower frequency, just like the lasers in a nuclear and an optical atomic clock. Linking the clocks up in this way allows physicists to understand properties of the thorium clock in terms of the better-understood properties of the strontium clock. Atomic clocks moving into the era of nuclear resonators isn’t just one more step up on the Himalayan mountain of precision timekeeping. Because nuclear clocks depend on how well we’re able to exploit the properties of atomic nuclei, they also create a powerful incentive and valuable opportunities to probe nuclear properties. In a [2006](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.092502?ref=slightlyacidic.com) paper, a physicist named VV Flambaum suggested that if the values of the fine structure constant and/or the strong interaction parameter change even a little, their effects on the thorium-229 isomeric transition would be very pronounced. The fine structure constant is a fundamental constant that specifies the strength of the electromagnetic force between charged particles. The strong interaction parameter specifies this vis-à-vis the strong nuclear force, the strongest force in nature and the thing that holds protons and neutrons together in a nucleus. Probing the 'stability' of these numbers in this way opens the door to new kinds of experiments to answer open questions in [particle physics](https://linewidth.net/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — helped along by physicists' pursuit of a new nuclear frequency standard. *Featured image: A view of an ytterbium atomic clock at the US NIST, October 16, 2014\. Credit: N. Phillips/NIST.* ### Buildings affect winds URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/04/buildings-affect-winds/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:05.000Z A 2022 trip to Dubai [made me wonder](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2022/08/23/dams-are-bad-for-rivers-are-skyscrapers-bad-for-winds/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) how much research there was on the effects cities, especially those that are rapidly urbanising as well as are building taller, wider structures more closely packed together, had on the winds that passed through them. I found only a few studies then. [One](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/12/02/a-windier-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) said the world's average wind speed had been increasing since 2010, but its analysis was concerned with the output of wind turbines, not the consequences within urban settlements. [Another](https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/37282?ref=slightlyacidic.com) had considered reducing wind speed within cities as a result of the Venturi effect by planting more trees. I also found a [*The New York Times* article](https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/08/nyregion/with-skyscrapers-a-windy-day-is-windier.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) from 1983 about taller skyscrapers directing high winds downwards, to the streets. That was largely it. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. On June 11, researchers in China [published a paper](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023MS003881?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the *Journal of Advances in Modelling Earth Systems* in which they reported findings based on a wind speed model they'd built for Shanghai city. According to the paper, Shanghai's built-up area could slow wind speed by as much as 50%. However, they added, the urban heat-island effect could enhance "the turbulent exchange in the vertical direction of the urban area, and the upper atmospheric momentum is transported down to the surface, increasing the urban surface wind speed". If the heat-island effect was sufficiently pronounced, then, the wind may not slow at all. I imagine the finding will be useful for people considering the ability of winds to transport pollutants to and disperse them in different areas. I'm also interested in what the model shows for Delhi (which can be hotter), Mumbai (wetter), and Chennai (fewer tall buildings). The relationship between heat-islands and the wind energy is also curious because city parts that are windier are also less warm. But overall, even if the population density within skyscrapers may be lower than in non-skycraping buildings and tenements, allowing them to built closer together, as is normal in cities like Dubai, where these buildings are almost all located in a "business district" or a "financial district", could also make it harder for the wind to ventilate these spaces. ### You're allowed to be interested in particle physics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/07/02/youre-allowed-to-be-interested-in-particle-physics/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:06.000Z This page appeared in *The Hindu*’s e-paper today. ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/be272-6721d-6e33f-c5ee8-f10bc-1719913559848-cf1b4018-c8b0-403f-afb5-d494b6dff1fd_1.jpg) I wrote the lead article, about why scientists are so interested in an elementary particle called the top quark. Long story short: the top quark is the heaviest elementary particle, and because all elementary particles get their masses by interacting with Higgs bosons, the top quark’s interaction is the strongest. This has piqued physicists’ interest because the Higgs boson’s own mass is peculiar: it’s more than expected and at the same time poised on the brink of a threshold beyond which our universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. To explain this brinkmanship, physicists are intently studying the top quark, including measuring its mass with more and more precision. It’s all so fascinating. But I’m well aware that not many people are interested in this stuff. I wish they were and my reasons follow. There exists a sufficiently healthy journalism of particle physics today. Most of it happens in Europe and the US, (i) where famous particle physics experiments are located, (ii) where there already exists an industry of good-quality science journalism, and (iii) where there are countries and/or governments that actually have the human resources, funds, and political will to fund the experiments (in many other places, including India, these resources don’t exist, rendering the matter of people contending with these experiments moot). In this post, I’m using particle physics as itself as well as as a surrogate for other reputedly esoteric fields of study. This journalism can be divided into three broad types: those with people, those concerned with spin-offs, and those without people. ‘Those with people’ refers to narratives about the theoretical and experimental physicists, engineers, allied staff, and administrators who support work on particle physics, their needs, challenges, and aspirations. The meaning of ‘those concerned with spin-offs’ is obvious: these articles attempt to justify the money governments spend on particle physics projects by appealing to the technologies scientists develop in the course of particle-physics work. I’ve always found these to be apologist narratives erecting a bad expectation: that we shouldn’t undertake these projects if they don’t also produce valuable spin-off technologies. I suspect most particle physics experiments don’t because they are much smaller than the behemoth Large Hadron Collider and its ilk, which require more innovation across diverse fields. ‘Those without people’ are the rarest of the lot — narratives that focus on some finding or discussion in the particle physics community that is relatively unconcerned with the human experience of the natural universe (setting aside the philosophical point that the non-human details are being recounted by human narrators). These stories are about the material constituents of reality as we know it. When I say I wish more people were interested in particle physics today, I wish they were interested in all these narratives, yet more so in narratives that aren’t centred on people. Now, why should they be concerned? This is a difficult question to answer. I’m concerned because I’m fascinated with the things around us we don’t fully understand but are trying to. It’s a way of exploring the unknown, of going on an adventure. There are many, many things in this world that people can be curious about. It’s possible there are more such things than there are people (again, setting aside the philosophical bases of these claims). But particle physics and some other areas — united by the extent to which they are written off as being esoteric — suffer from more than not having their fair share of patrons in the general (non-academic) population. Many people actively shun them, lose focus when reading about them, and at the same time do little to muster focus back. It has even become okay for them to say they understood nothing of some (well-articulated) article and not expect to have their statement judged adversely. I understand why [narratives with people in them](https://oversample.wpcomstaging.com/2017/10/19/on-the-lwon-post-the-abdication-of-implicit-responsibilities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are easier to understand, to connect with, but none of the implicated psychological, biological, and anthropological mechanisms also encourage us to *reject* narratives and experiences without people. In other words, there may have been evolutionary advantages to finding out about other people but there have been no disadvantages attached to engaging with stories that aren’t about other people. Next, I have met more than my fair share of people that flinched away from the suggestion of mathematics or physics, even when someone offered to guide them through understanding these topics. I’m also aware researchers have documented this tendency and are attempting to distil insights that could help improve the teaching and the communication of these subjects. Personally I don’t know how to deal with these people because I don’t know the shape of the barrier in their minds I need to surmount. I may be trying to vault over a high wall by simplifying a concept to its barest features when in fact the barrier is a low-walled labyrinth. Third and last, let me do unto this post what I’m asking of people everywhere, and look past the people: *why should we be interested in particle physics?* It has nothing to offer for our day-to-day experiences. Its findings can seem totally self-absorbed, supporting researchers and their careers, helping them win famous but otherwise generally unattainable awards, and sustaining discoveries into which political leaders and government officials occasionally dip their beaks to claim labels like “scientific superpower”. But the mistake here is not the existence of particle physics itself so much as the people-centric lens through which we insist it must be seen. It’s not that we should be interested in particle physics; it’s that we *can*. Particle physics exists because some people are interested in it. If you are unhappy that our government spends too much on it, let’s talk about our national R&D expenditure priorities and what the practice, and practitioners, of particle physics can do to support other research pursuits and give back to various constituencies. The pursuit of one’s interests can’t be the problem (within reasonable limits, of course). More importantly, being interested in particle physics and in fact many other branches of science shouldn’t have to be justified at every turn for three reasons: reality isn’t restricted to people, people are shaped by their realities, and our destiny as humans. On the first two counts: when we choose to restrict ourselves to our lives and our welfare, we also choose to never learn about what, say, gravitational waves, dark matter, and nucleosynthesis are (unless these terms turn up in an exam we need to pass). Yet all these things played a part in bringing about the existence of Earth and its suitability for particular forms of life, and among people particular ways of life. The rocks and metals that gave rise to waves of human civilisation were created in the bellies of stars. We needed to know our own star as well as we do — which still isn’t much — to help build machines that can use its energy to supply electric power. Countries and cultures that support the education and employment of people who made it a point to learn the underlying science thus come out on top. Knowing different things is a way to future-proof ourselves. Further, climate change is evidence humans are a planetary species, and soon it will be interplanetary. Our own migrations will force us to understand, eventually intuitively, the peculiarities of gravity, the vagaries of space, and (what is today called) mathematical physics. But even before such compulsions arise, it remains what we know is what we needn’t be afraid of, or at least know how to be afraid of. 😀 Just as well, learning, knowing, and understanding the physical universe is the foundation we need to imagine (or reimagine) futures better than the ones ordained for us by our myopic leaders. In this context, I recommend Shreya Dasgupta’s [‘Imagined Tomorrow’ podcast series](https://www.sunoindia.in/imagined-tomorrow?ref=slightlyacidic.com), where she considers hypothetical future Indias in which medicines are tailor-made for individuals, where antibiotics don’t exist because they’re not required, where clean air is only available to breathe inside city-sized domes, and where courtrooms use AI — and the paths we can take to get there. Similarly, with particle physics in mind, we could also consider cheap access to quantum computers, lasers that remove infections from flesh and tumours from tissue in a jiffy, and communications satellites that reduce bandwidth costs so much that we can take virtual education, telemedicine, and remote surgeries for granted. I’m not talking about these technologies as spin-offs, to be clear; I mean technologies born of our knowledge of particle (and other) physics. At the biggest scale, of course, understanding the way nature works is how we can understand the ways in which the universe’s physical reality can or can’t affect us, in turn leading the way to understanding ourselves better and helping us shape more meaningful aspirations for our species. The more well-informed any decision is, the more rational it will be. Granted, the rationality of most of our decisions is currently only tenuously informed by particle physics, but consider if the inverse could be true: what decisions are we not making as well as we could if we cast our epistemic nets wider, including physics, biology, mathematics, etc.? Consider, even beyond all this, the awe astronauts who have gone to Earth orbit and beyond have reported experiencing when they first saw our planet from space, and the immeasurable loneliness surrounding it. [There are problems](https://oversample.wpcomstaging.com/2019/07/22/the-romance-of-us-as-seen-from-the-moon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with pronouncements that we should be united in all our efforts on Earth because, from space, we are all we have (especially when the country to which most of these astronauts belong condones a genocide). Fortunately, that awe is not the preserve of spacefaring astronauts. The moment we understood the laws of physics and the elementary constituents of our universe, we (at least the atheists among us) may have realised there is no centre of the universe. In fact, there is everything *except* a centre. How grateful I am for that. For added measure, awe is also [good for the mind](https://www.noemamag.com/finding-awe-amid-everday-splendor/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It might seem like a terrible cliché to quote Oscar Wilde here — “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” — but it’s a cliché precisely because we have often wanted to be able to dream, to have the simple act of such dreaming contain all the profundity we know we squander when we live petty, uncurious lives. Then again, space is not simply an escape from the traps of human foibles. Explorations of the great unknown that includes the cosmos, the subatomic realm, quantum phenomena, dark energy, and so on are part of our destiny because they are the least like us. They show us what else is out there, and thus what else is possible. If you’re not interested in particle physics, that’s fine. But remember that you can be. --- *Featured image: An example of simulated data as might be observed at a particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider. Here, following a collision of two protons, a Higgs boson is produced that decays into two jets of hadrons and two electrons. The lines represent the possible paths of particles produced by the proton-proton collision in the detector while the energy these particles deposit is shown in blue. Caption and credit: Lucas Taylor/CERN, CC BY-SA 3.0.* ### A new source of cosmic rays? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/28/a-new-source-of-cosmic-rays/ Last updated: 2024-06-28T14:01:23.000Z The International Space Station carries a suite of instruments conducting scientific experiments and measurements in low-Earth orbit. One of them is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which studies antimatter particles in cosmic rays to understand how the universe has evolved since its birth. Cosmic rays are particles or particle clumps flying through the universe at nearly the speed of light. Since the mid-20th century, scientists have found cosmic-ray particles are emitted during supernovae and in the centres of galaxies that host large black holes. Scientists installed the AMS in May 2011, and by April 2021, it had tracked more than 230 billion cosmic-ray particles. When scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently analysed these data — the results of which were [published on June 25](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.261001?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — they found something odd. Roughly one in 10,000 of the cosmic ray particles were neutron-proton pairs, a.k.a. deuterons. The universe has a small number of these particles because they were only created in a 10-minute-long period a short time after the universe was born, around 0.002% of [all atoms](https://www.livescience.com/how-many-atoms-in-universe.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Yet cosmic rays streaming past the AMS seemed to have around 5x greater concentration of deuterons. The implication is that something in the universe — some event or some process — is producing high-energy deuterons, according to the MIT team’s paper. Before coming to this conclusion, the researchers considered and eliminated some alternative explanations. Chief among them is the way scientists know how deuterons become cosmic rays. When primary cosmic rays produced by some process in outer space smash into matter, they produce a shower of energetic particles called secondary cosmic rays. Thus far, scientists have considered deuterons to be secondary cosmic rays, produced when helium-4 ions smash into atoms in the interstellar medium (the space between stars). This event also produces helium-3 ions. So if the deuteron flux in cosmic rays is high, and if we believe more helium-4 ions are smashing into the interstellar medium than expected, the AMS should have detected more helium-3 cosmic rays than expected as well. It didn’t. To make sure, the researchers also checked the AMS’s instruments and the shared properties of the cosmic-ray particles. Two in particular are time and rigidity. Time deals with how the flux of deuterons changes with respect to the flux of other cosmic ray particles, especially protons and helium-4 ions. Rigidity measures the likelihood a cosmic-ray particle will reach Earth and not be deflected away by the Sun. (Equally rigid particles [behave the same way](https://user-web.icecube.wisc.edu/~tmontaruli/801/lect14.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in a magnetic field.) When denoted in volts, rigidity indicates the extent of deflection the particle will experience. The researchers analysed deuterons with rigidity from 1.9 billion to 21 billion V and found that "over the entire rigidity range the deuteron flux exhibits nearly identical time variations with the proton, 3-He, and 4-He fluxes.” At rigidity greater than 4.5 billion V, the fluxes of deuterons and helium-4 ions varied together whereas those of helium-3 and helium-4 didn’t. At rigidity beyond 13 billion V, "the rigidity dependence of the *D* and *p* fluxes \[was\] nearly identical". Similarly, they found the change in the deuteron flux was greater than the change in the helium-3 flux, both relative to the helium-4 flux. The statistical significance of this conclusion far exceeded the threshold particle physicists use to check whether an anomaly in the data is really real rather than the result of some fluke error. Finally, "independent analyses were performed on the same data sample by four independent study groups,” the paper added. "The results of these analyses are consistent with this Letter.” The MIT team ultimately couldn't find a credible alternative explanation, leaving their conclusion: deuterons could be primary cosmic rays, and we don’t (yet) know the process that could be producing them. ### Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore are not in danger URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/26/suni-williams-and-barry-wilmore-are-not-in-danger-but-are-we/ Last updated: 2024-06-26T13:38:05.000Z NASA said earlier this week it will postpone the return of Boeing’s crew capsule Starliner back to ground from the International Space Station (ISS), thus leaving astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams onboard the orbiting platform for (at least) two weeks more. The glitch is part of Starliner’s first crewed flight test, and clearly it’s not going well. But to make matters worse there seems to be little clarity about the *extent* to which it’s not going well. There are at least two broad causes. The first is NASA and Boeing themselves. As I [set out in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/significance-of-boeing-starliners-first-crewed-test-flight-on-may-7-explained/article68136296.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Starliner is already severely delayed and has suffered terrible cost overruns since NASA awarded Boeing the contract to build it in 2014\. SpaceX has as a result been left to pick up the tab, but while it hasn’t minded the fact remains that Elon Musk’s company currently monopolises [yet another corner](https://spacenews.com/the-accidental-monopoly/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the American launch services market. Against this backdrop, neither NASA nor Boeing — but NASA especially — have been clear about the reason for Starliner’s extended stay at the ISS. I’m told fluid leaks of the sort Starliner has been experiencing are neither uncommon nor dire, that crewed orbital test flights can present such challenges, and that it’s a matter of time before the astronauts return. However, NASA’s press briefings have featured a different explanation: that Starlier’s stay is being extended on purpose — to test the long-term endurance of its various components and subsystems in orbit ahead of operational flights — echoing something NASA discussed when SpaceX was test-flying its Dragon crew capsule (hat-tip to [Jatan Mehta](https://jatan.space/about/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). According to [*Des Moines Register*](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/24/boeing-starliner-update-return-delayed-again-astronauts-stuck-iss/74192478007/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the postponement is to “deconflict” with space walks NASA had planned for the astronauts and to give them and their peers already onboard the ISS to further inspect Starliner’s propulsion module. This sort of suspiciously *ex post facto* reasoning has also raised concerns NASA knows something about Starliner but doesn’t plan on revealing what until after the capsule has returned — with the added possibility that it’s shielding Boeing to prevent the US government from cancelling the Starliner contract altogether. The second broad reason is even more embarrassing: media narratives. On June 24, *Economic Times* reported NASA had “let down” and “disappointed” Wilmore and Williams when it postponed Starliner’s return. *Newsweek* said the astronauts were “stranded” on the ISS together with a NASA statement further down the article saying they weren’t stranded. *The Spectator Index* tweeted Newsweek’s report without linking to it but with the prefix “BREAKING”. There are many other smaller news outlets and YouTube channels with worse headlines and claims feeding a general sense of disaster. However, I’m willing to bet a large sum of money Wilmore and Williams are neither “disappointed” nor feeling “let down” by Starliner’s woes. In fact NASA and Boeing picked these astronauts over greenhorns because they’re veterans of human spaceflight who are aware of and versed with handling uncertainties in humankind’s currently most daunting frontier. Recall also the Progress cargo capsule failure in April 2015, which prompted Russia to postpone a resupply mission scheduled for the next month until it could identify and resolve some problems with the launch vehicle. Roscosmos finally flew the mission in July that year. The delay left astronauts onboard the ISS with dwindling supplies as well as short of a crew of three. The term “strand” may also have a specific meaning: after the *Columbia* Space Shuttle disaster in 2003, NASA instituted a protocol in which astronauts onboard faulty crew capsules in space could disembark at the ISS, where they’d be “stranded”, and wait for a separate return mission. By all means, then, if Boeing is ultimately unable to salvage Starliner, the ISS could undock it and NASA could commission SpaceX to fly a rescue mission. I can’t speak for Wilmore and Williams but I remain deeply sceptical that they’re particularly bummed. Yet *Business Today* drummed up this gem: “’Nightmare’: Sunita Williams can get lost in space if thrusters of NASA’s Boeing Starliner fail to fire post-ISS undocking”. Let’s be clear: the ISS is in low-Earth orbit. Getting “lost in space” from this particular location is impossible. Starliner won’t undock unless everyone is certain its thrusters will fire, but even if they don’t, atmospheric drag will deorbit the capsule soon after (which is also what happened to the Progress capsule in 2015). And even if it is *Business Today*’s (wet) “nightmare”, it isn’t Williams’s. There’s little doubt the world is in the throes of a second space race. The first happened as part of the Cold War and its narratives were the narratives of the contest between the US and the USSR, rife with the imperatives of grandstanding. What are the narratives of the second race? Whatever they are, they matter as much as rogue nations contemplating weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit matters because narratives are also capable of destruction. They shape the public imagination and consciousness of space missions, the attitudes towards the collaborations that run them, and ultimately what the publics believe they ought to expect from national space programmes and the political and economic value their missions can confer. Importantly, narratives can cut both ways. For example, for companies like Boeing the public narrative is linked to their reputation, which is linked to the stock market. When [BBC says](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pp29gdwe6o?ref=slightlyacidic.com) NASA having to use a SpaceX Dragon capsule to return Wilmore and Williams back to Earth “would be hugely embarrassing for Boeing”, the report stands to make millions of dollars disappear from many bank accounts. Of course this isn’t sufficient reason for BBC to withhold its reportage: its claim isn’t sensational and the truth will always be a credible defence against (alleged) defamation. Instead, we should be asking if Boeing and NASA are responding to such pressures if and when they withhold information. It [has happened before](https://www.signalfarm.org/2024/03/06/to-the-moon-or-the-stock-market/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Similarly, opportunist media narratives designed to ‘grab eyeballs’ without considering how they will pollute public debate only vitiate narratives, raise unmerited suspicions of conspiracies and catastrophe, and sow distrust in sober, non-sensational articles whose authors are the ones labouring to present a more faithful picture. *Featured image: Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore onboard the International Space Station in April 2007 and October 2014, respectively. Credit: NASA.* ### A gentle push over the cliff URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/24/a-gentle-push-over-the-cliff/ Last updated: 2024-06-24T13:35:42.000Z From [‘Rotavirus vaccine: tortured data analyses raise false safety alarm’](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/rotavirus-vaccine-tortured-data-analyses-raise-false-safety-alarm/article68316938.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, June 22, 2024: > Slamming the recently published paper by Dr. Jacob Puliyel from the International Institute of Health Management Research, New Delhi, on rotavirus vaccine safety, microbiologist Dr. Gagandeep Kang says: “If you do 20 different analyses, one of them will appear significant. This is truly cherry picking data, cherry picking analysis, changing the data around, adjusting the data, not using the whole data in order to find something \[that shows the vaccine is not safe\].” Dr. Kang was the principal investigator of the rotavirus vaccine trials and the corresponding author of the 2020 paper in *The New England Journal of Medicine*, the data of which was used by Dr. Puliyel for his reanalysis. This is an important rebuttal. I haven’t seen Puliyel’s study but Bharat Biotech’s conduct during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, especially that of its executive chairman Krishna Ella, plus [its attitude](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2023/09/25/on-agnihotris-covaxin-film-defamation-and-false-bravery/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) towards public scrutiny of its Covaxin vaccine has rendered any criticism of the company or its products very believable, even if such criticism is unwarranted, misguided, or just nonsense. Puliyel’s study itself is a case in point: a quick [search on Twitter](https://x.com/search?q=puliyel%20rotavirus&src=typed%5Fquery&ref=slightlyacidic.com) reveals many strongly worded tweets, speaking to the availability of a mass of people that wants something to be true, and at the first appearance of even feeble evidence will seize on it. Of course *The Hindu* article found the evidence to not be feeble so much as contrived. Bharat Biotech isn’t “hiding” anything; Puliyel et al. aren’t “whistleblowers”. The article doesn’t mention the name of the journal that published Puliyel’s paper: *International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine*. It could have because journals that don’t keep against bad science out of the medical literature don’t just pollute the literature. By virtue of being journals, and in this case claiming to be peer-reviewed as well, they allow the claims they publish to be amplified by unsuspecting users on social media platforms. We saw something similar earlier this year in the political sphere when members of the Indian National Congress party and its allies as well as members of civil society [cast doubt on electronic voting machines](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-trouble-with-the-supreme-courts-evm-verdict/article68128302.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with little evidence, thus only undermining trust in the electoral process. To be sure, we’ve [cried ourselves hoarse](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/science-journalism-through-the-thicket-of-science/article66369346.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the importance of every reader being sceptical about what appears in scientific journals ([even peer-reviewed](https://thewire.in/science/priggish-nejm-editorial-on-data-sharing-misses-the-point-it-almost-made?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) as much as news articles, but because it’s a behavioural and cultural change it’s going to take time. Journals need to do their bit, too, yet they won’t because who needs scruples when you can have profits? The analytical methods Puliyel and his coauthor Brian Hooker reportedly employed in their new study is reminiscent of the work of Brian Wansink, who resigned from Cornell University five years ago this month after it concluded he’d committed scientific misconduct. In 2018, *BuzzFeed* [published a deep-dive](https://web.archive.org/web/20240220222107/https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking) by Stephanie M. Lee on how the Wansink scandal was born. It gave the (well-referenced) impression that the scandal was a combination of a student’s relationship with a mentor renowned in her field of work and the mentor’s pursuit of headlines over science done properly. It’s hard to imagine Puliyel and Hooker were facing any kind of coercion, which leaves the headlines. This isn’t hard to believe considering it’s the second study to have been published recently that [took a shot at Bharat Biotech](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2024/05/28/the-bhu-covaxin-study-and-icmr-bait/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) based on shoddy research. It sucks that it’s become so easy to push people over the cliff, and into the ravenous maw of a conspiracy theory, but it sucks more that some people will push others even when they know better. ### The universe’s shape and its oldest light URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/22/the-universes-shape-and-its-oldest-light/ Last updated: 2024-06-22T13:32:29.000Z The 3-torus is a strange and wonderful shape. We can’t readily visualise it because it has a complicated structure, but there’s a way. Imagine you’re standing inside a cube in which light is moving from the left face towards the right face. If the two faces are opaque, the right face will absorb the light, say, and that will be that. But say the two faces are not opaque. Instead, if the light passes through the right face and reemerges from the left face — as if it entered a portal and emerged on the other side — you’ll be standing inside a 3-torus. If you look in front of you or behind you, you’ll see a series of cubes: they’re all the same cube (the one in which you’re standing) illuminated by the light, which is simply flowing in a closed loop through a single cube. In the early 1980s, physicists proposed that our universe could have the shape of a 3-torus at the largest scale. “There’s a hint in the data that if you traveled far and fast in the direction of the constellation Virgo, you’d return to Earth from the opposite direction,” a 2003 [*The New York Times* article](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/science/universe-as-doughnut-new-data-new-debate.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) quoted cosmologist Max Tegmark as saying. The idea is funky but it’s possible. Scientists believe our universe’s geometry was determined by quantum processes that happened just after the Big Bang, but they’re not yet sure what that geometry really is. For now, the data are *not inconsistent* with a 3-torus, [according to a paper](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.171501?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a team of scientists calling themselves the COMPACT collaboration published in April 2024. Scientists try to determine the shape of the universe just the way you would have standing inside the 3-torus: using light, and what it’s revealing ahead and behind you. Light passing through a 3-torus would be in a closed loop, which means the visual information it encodes should be repeated: that is, you would’ve seen the same cube repeated *ad infinitum*, sort of (but not exactly) like when you stand between two mirrors and see endless repetition of the space you’re in on either side. Scientists check for similar patterns that are repeated through the universe. They haven’t found such patterns so far — but there’s a catch. The distance light has travelled matters. Say the cube you’re standing in is 1 km wide. The light will cross this distance in one-trillionth of a second. If it is 777 billion km wide, the light will take a month. And it will take a full year if the cube is 9.5 trillion km wide. We’re talking about whether the universe could be a 3-torus, and the universe was created 13.8 billion years ago. In this time, light can travel a distance of more than 100 sextillion km. If the width of the cube is less than this distance, we *might* have seen repeating patterns if the universe is shaped like a 3-torus. But if the cube is even wider, the light wouldn’t have finished crossing it even once since the universe was born, therefore no repeating patterns — yet the possibility of the universe being 3-torus-shaped remains. We just need to wait for the light to finish crossing it once. Since we can learn so much about the universe’s geometry by studying light, and light that’s travelled the longest would be most useful, scientists are very interested in light ‘left over’ from the Big Bang. Yes, this light is still hanging around, and it’s measurably different from all the other light. Scientists call it the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a.k.a. ‘relic radiation’. It’s left over from a cosmic event that happened just 370,000 years after the Big Bang. We need to subtract the distance light could have travelled in this time from the 100 sextillion km figure (I’m tired of looking at zeroes; you can give it a shot if you like) to find the maximum distance the CMB could have travelled. In its April paper, the COMPACT collaboration considered data about the universe that astrophysicists have collected using ground and space telescopes over the years — including about the CMB — and with that have checked whether the possibility still exists that our universe could be shaped like three types of a 3-torus. The first type is the one I’ve considered in this post, and they’ve concluded (as expected) that if the cube is less wide than the distance light could’ve travelled since the universe was born, our universe can’t be shaped like this particular 3-torus. The reason is that the data astrophysicists have put together doesn’t contain signs of repeating patterns. (Update, 8.20 pm, June 23, 2024: Here’s a [good primer](https://mphitchman.com/geometry/section8-3.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of what these patterns will actually look like, courtesy [Nirmal Raj](https://sites.google.com/view/nirmal-raj?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) However, the COMPACT team adds, our universe could still be shaped like one of the other two types of 3-tori even if their respective cubes are smaller than the max. distance. This is because these two shapes include twists that will produce two subtly different images of the universe once the light has completed one loop. And according to the COMPACT folks, they can’t yet eliminate the presence of these images in the astrophysics data. The collaboration’s members have written in the April 2024 paper that they intend to find new/better ways to ascertain their hypotheses with CMB data. Until then, look out for… [déjà vu](https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/D%C3%A9j%C3%A0%5Fvu?ref=slightlyacidic.com)? ### An Ig Nobel Prize for North and South Korea? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/18/an-ig-nobel-prize-for-north-and-south-korea/ Last updated: 2024-06-18T10:18:33.000Z In 2020, India and Pakistan shared the [Ig Nobel Prize for peace](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/narendra-modi-ig-nobel-prize-medical-education-covid-19-deaths/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) “for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door.” The terms of the ongoing spat between North Korea and South Korea aren’t any less amusing and they may be destined for an Ig Nobel Prize of their own, even if animosity between the two countries — much like India and Pakistan — is rooted in issues with more gravitas. North Korea has of late been sending balloons loaded with garbage over the border to the south whereas South Korea has stepped up its “psychological warfare” by blasting K-pop music over loudspeakers into the north. But as befits any functional democracy, the latter has run into trouble. On June 17, [*Reuters* reported](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-loudspeakers-face-questions-over-reach-into-north-2024-06-17/?taid=666f91a033dadb000108fb63&ref=slightlyacidic.com) the South Korean government faces “audits and legal battles claiming \[the loudspeakers\] are too quiet, raising questions over how far into the reclusive North their propaganda messages can blast”. Note: K-pop is propaganda because, per the same report, “These broadcasts play a role in instilling a yearning for the outside world, or in making them realize that the textbooks they have been taught from are incorrect,” according to Kim Sung-min, “who defected from the North in 1999 and runs a Seoul radio station that broadcasts news into North Korea”. Apparently the speakers passed two tests in 2016 but failed subsequent audits, prompting the national defence ministry to sue the manufacturers. The court threw the case out because “too many environmental factors can affect the performance”. The ministry and the manufacturer have since made up, going by the fact that the ministry reportedly gave *Reuters* the same excuse when it was under fire over the speakers: environmental factors. Imagine being the manufacturer who has to build a ridiculous set of speakers while being able to do nothing about the physics of sound propagation itself. The government wanted the K-pop to reach Kaesong, 10 km in from the border, whereas checks in 2017 found sound from the speakers could only get as far as 7 km, and in most cases managed 5 km. And to think the whole enterprise hinges on (a) North Korea being annoyed enough by the K-pop to blast music of its own in the opposite direction, at least to muddle the South Korean broadcast, and (b) South Korea’s claim that two soldiers defected from the North after listening to the music. Two. Did they risk it all to turn the damned things off, you think? ### On the Nature feature about the Sarafs, a rare disease, and time URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/13/on-the-nature-feature-about-the-sarafs-a-rare-disease-and-time/ Last updated: 2024-06-13T05:24:17.000Z Heidi Ledford has a tragic and powerful story [published yesterday](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01716-y?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Nature*, about a team of scientists at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology racing to develop a CRISPR treatment for Uditi Saraf, a young girl whose brain was losing neurons due to a very rare, very aggressive genetic condition called FENIB. The story’s power comes from what it reveals about several facets of developing new treatments, looking for a cure for a rare disease, the importance of state support as well as control, the fact of the existence of neglected diseases, the demands made of clinical researchers, self-sufficiency in laboratory research infrastructure, and of course the cost of treatment. Most of all, it is a critical study of time. Uditi passed away four months after one of the researchers working on a CRISPR-based treatment for her told her parents they’d be ready with a solution for her in six. But even before her passing, there was time, there was no time, there was hurry, and there were risks. > Uditi’s disease was caused by a mutation that converts a single DNA base from a ‘G’ to an ‘A’. A variation on CRISPR genome editing, called base editing, could theoretically correct exactly this kind of mutation (see ‘Precision gene repair’). … But Rajeev and Sonam saw an opportunity for hope: perhaps such a therapy could slow down the progression of Uditi’s disease, buying time for scientists to develop another treatment that could repair the damage that had been done. The Sarafs were on board. > > … > > There were a lot of unknowns in the base-editing project. And in addition to the work on stem cells in the lab, the team would need to do further experiments to determine which base-editing systems would work best, where and how to deliver its components into the body, and whether the process generated any unwanted changes to the DNA sequence. They would need to do experiments in mice to test the safety and efficacy of the treatment. They also needed to get Ghosh’s facility approved by India’s regulators for producing the base-editing components. Then there was the pandemic: > In December 2019, the Sarafs moved back to India. … Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and in January 2021, Uditi was hospitalized with severe COVID-19\. She spent 20 days in the hospital and her health was never the same, says Sonam. Communication became increasingly difficult for Uditi and she began to pace the house incessantly, rarely even going to sleep. The Sarafs decided to speed up the base-editing project by funding a second team in India. Developing treatments take time. Uditi’s story was a one-off, a singular disease that few researchers on the planet were working on, so developing an experimental alternative based on cutting-edge medical technology was a reasonable option. And yet: > Meanwhile, Devinsky had petitioned a US foundation to devise a different experimental treatment called antisense therapy for Uditi. … The treatments didn’t work. And the experience taught Rajeev and Sonam how long it could take to get approval to try an experimental therapy in the United States. They decided Uditi’s base-editing therapy should also be manufactured and administered in India. Uditi didn’t live long enough to receive treatment that could have slowed FENIB’s progression — hopefully long enough for researchers to come up with a better and more long-lasting solution. Now, after her death, the thinking and effort that motivated the quest to find her a cure is in the future tense. > It will take years to establish the techniques needed to create rapid, on-demand, bespoke CRISPR therapies. Most people with these conditions don’t have that kind of time. … Rajeev has urged Chakraborty to finish the team’s studies in mice, so that the next person with FENIB will not have to wait as long for a potential treatment. … “We are not really trying as aggressively as we did earlier,” he says. When the health of a loved one is rapidly deteriorating, the clock of life resets — from the familiar 24-hour rhythms of daily life to days that start and end to the beats of more morbid milestones: a doctor’s visit, a diagnostic test result, the effects of a drug kicking in, the chance discovery of a new symptom, an unexpected moment of joy, the unbearable agony of helplessness. The passage of time becomes distorted, sometimes slow, sometimes too fast. People do what they can when they can. They will take all their chances. Which means the chances they encounter on their way matters. Technological literacy and personal wealth expand this menu of options. The Sarafs knew about CRISPR, had a vague idea of how it worked, and could afford it, so they pursued it. They came really close; their efforts may even prove decisive in pushing a cure for FENIB past the finish line. For those who don’t know about CRISPR-based therapies and/or don’t have the means to pay for it, the gap between hope and cure is likely to be more vast, and more dispiriting. And one chapter of the Sarafs’ journey briefly threatened to pull them to this path — and relentlessly threatens to waylay many families’ laborious pursuits to save the lives of their loved one: > The Sarafs studied what they could find online and tried the interventions available to them: Indian ayurvedic treatments, a ketogenic diet, special schools, seeing a slew of physicians and trying out various medicines. Ledford’s narrative doesn’t get into who these physicians were, but let's set them and the special schools aside. Just this morning, I read a [report by Rema Nagarajan](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/govt-inaction-lets-firm-sell-human-milk-using-hc-stay/articleshow/110951857.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *The Times of India* that a company called Natelco in Bengaluru has been selling human milk even though its license was cancelled two years ago. The FSSAI cancelled Natelco’s license in 2021; a few months later, Natelco obtained a license from the Ministry of AYUSH claiming it was selling "Aryuevdic proprietary medicine". When the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India complained to the ministry, the ministry cancelled its license in August 2022\. Then, a month later, the Karnataka high court granted an interim stay on this cancellation but said the respondents — AYUSH representatives in Karnataka, in the Karnataka licensing authority or from the ministry — could have it vacated. They didn’t bother. In June 2023, the ministry filed objections but nothing more. It finally moved to vacate the stay only in March this year. Natelco’s case is just one example. There are hundreds of companies whose charade the Ministry of AYUSH facilitates by allowing specious claims ranging from “Ayurvedic toothpaste” to calling human breast milk “Ayurvedic medicine”. This is not Ayurveda: very few of us know [what Ayurveda is](https://science.thewire.in/health/confessions-professor-ayurveda-outdated/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [looks like](https://science.thewire.in/health/much-of-ayurvedas-irrationality-originates-within-the-ayurvedic-community/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); even [Ayurveda itself doesn’t belong](https://science.thewire.in/society/history/bad-medicine-fake-history-postcolonial-complicity-ayush-ayurveda-covid-19/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in modern medicine. But together with the FSSAI, the food regulation body notorious for dragging its feet when the time comes to punish errant manufacturers, and a toothless advertisement monitoring regime, the Indian food and beverages market has provided a [hospitable work environment](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/courting-action-on-fmcg-marketing-advertising/article68106567.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for quacks and their businesses. And inevitably, their quackery spills over into the path of an unsuspecting yet desperate father or mother looking for something, anything, that will help their child. When faced with trenchant criticism, many of these business adopt the line that their products are not unsafe. But they are terribly unsafe: they steal time to do nothing with it, taking it away from a therapy or a drug that could have done a lot. Such cynical alternatives shouldn’t be present anywhere on any family’s path, yet the national government itself gives them a license to be. ### The pitfalls of Somanath calling Aditya L1 a "protector" URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/11/the-pitfalls-of-somanath-calling-aditya-l1-a-protector/ Last updated: 2024-06-11T04:11:38.000Z In a WhatsApp group of which I'm a part, there's a heated discussion going on around an article [published by NDTV](https://www.ndtv.com/science/isro-aditya-l-1-suns-fury-may-fry-satellites-but-india-has-a-watchful-space-protector-5859292?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on June 10, entitled 'Sun's Fury May Fry Satellites, But India Has A Watchful Space Protector'. The article was published after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) published images of the Sun the Aditya L1 spacecraft (including its coronagraph) captured during the May solar storm. The article also features quotes by ISRO chairman S. Somanath — and some of them in particular prompted the discussion. For example, he says: > "Aditya L1 captured when the Sun got angry this May. If it gets furious in the near future, as scientists suggest, India's 24x7X365 days' eye on the Sun is going to provide a forewarning. After all, we have to protect the 50-plus Indian satellites in space that have cost the country an estimated more than ₹ 50,000 crore. Aditya L1 is a celestial protector for our space assets." A space scientist on the group pointed out that any solar event that could fry satellites in Earth orbit would also fry Aditya L1, which is stationed at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange point (1.5 million km from Earth in the direction of the Sun), so it doesn't make sense to describe this spacecraft as a "protector" of India's "space assets". Instead, the scientist said, we're better off describing Aditya L1 as a science mission, which is what it'd been billed as. Another space scientist in the same group contended that the coronagraph onboard Aditya L1, plus its other instruments, still give the spacecraft a not insignificant early-warning ability, using which ISRO could consider protective measures. He also said not all solar storms are likely to fry all satellites around Earth, only the very powerful ones; likewise, not all satellites around Earth are equally engineered to withstand solar radiation that is more intense than usual, to varying extents. With these variables in mind, he added, Aditya L1 -- which is protected to a greater degree -- could give ISRO folks enough head start to manoeuvre 'weaker' satellites out of harm's way or prevent catastrophic failures. By virtue of being ISRO's eyes on the Sun, then, he suggested Aditya L1 was a scientific mission that could also perform some, but not all, of the functions expected of a full-blown early warning system. (For such a system vis-a-vis solar weather, he said the fourth or the fifth Earth-Sun Lagrange points would have been better stations.) I'm putting this down here as a public service message. Characterising a scientific mission — which is driven by scientists' questions, rather than ISRO's perception of threats or as part of any overarching strategy of the Indian government — as something else is not harmless because it downplays the fact that we have open questions and that we need to spend time and money answering them. It also creates a false narrative about the mission's purpose that the people who have spent years designing and building the instruments onboard Aditya L1 don't deserve, and a false impression of how much room the Indian space programme currently has to launch and operate spacecraft that are dedicated to providing early warnings of bad solar weather. To be fair, the NDTV article says in a few places that Aditya L1 is a scientific mission, as does astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury in the last paragraph. It's just not clear why Somanath characterised it as a "protector" and as a "space-based insurance policy". NDTV also erred by putting "protector" in the headline (based on my experiences at *The Wire* and *The Hindu*, most readers of online articles read and share nothing more than the headline). That it was the [ISRO chairman who said](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2023/10/22/indias-science-leadership/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) these things is more harmful: as the person heading India's nodal space *research* body, he has a protagonist's role in making room in the public imagination for the importance and wonders of scientific missions. ### A nationalism of Sunita Williams URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/07/a-nationalism-of-sunita-williams/ Last updated: 2024-06-07T07:48:48.000Z The [headlines in Indian mainstream media](https://news.google.com/search?q=sunita%20williams%20indian%20when%3A1y&hl=en-IN&gl=IN&ceid=IN%3Aen&ref=slightlyacidic.com) over the course of June 6, after Boeing (finally) launched its Starliner capsule on its first crewed test flight betray a persistent inability to let go of the little yet also false pride that comes with calling Sunita Williams an “Indian-American” astronaut. This is from the [Wikipedia page on Williams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunita%5FWilliams?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Early%5Flife%5Fand%5Feducation): > Williams is a native of Needham, Massachusetts, was born in Euclid, Ohio, to Indian-American neuroanatomist from Mumbai, Deepak Pandya, and Slovene-American Ursuline Bonnie (Zalokar) Pandya, who reside in Falmouth, Massachusetts. She was the youngest of three children. … Williams' paternal family is from Jhulasan in the Mehsana district in Gujarat, India, whereas her maternal family is of Slovene descent. Williams’s national identity is (US-of-) American. She was born in the US and spent all her formative years there, studying and working within an institutional framework that had little to do with India. Why is she still "*Indian*\-American" or even "Indian-origin", then? By the simple, even facile, virtue of her father having left the country in search of greener pastures after his MD, the forced India connection reeks of a desperation to cling to her achievements as at least partly our own. India doesn’t have a woman astronaut and facing up to this and other impossibilities and eliminating them is an important way that every country has to grow. But keep thinking she’s partly Indian and you may never have to think about what could be stopping women in India from becoming astronauts in future. This said, I know very little about Williams’ upbringing. According to Wikipedia, she’s a practising Hindu and has taken copies of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads to space with her. But I fail to see why these features would make her national identity “Indian-American”. Like me, I imagine the people at large know little about her cultural identity considering her shared Indian and Slovenian heritage. I’d also be wary of conflating the social and political culture of India in the 1950s, when her father left the country, with that prevalent today. A close friend who grew up in India and now lives in the US told me in a conversation last year that pre-2014 India seems lost to her forever. I think even the [recent outcome](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2024/06/04/the-meaning-of-294-227/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections may not change that: a lot of damage Hindu nationalism has wrought is irreversible, especially — but not restricted to — making it okay to aspire to inflicting violence on minorities and liberals. Thus, by all means, even the contrived “Indian” in “Indian-American” refers to another India, not the one we have today. > “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” > > — LP Hartley, *The Go-Between* Yet in the eyes of those penning articles and headlines, “Indian-American” she is. They’re using this language to get people interested in these articles, and if they succeed, they’re effectively selling the idea that it’s not possible for Indians to care about the accomplishments of non-Indians, that only Indians’, and by extension India’s, accomplishments matter. It’s a good example of why beating back the Hindu majoritarian nationalism in India has been such an uphill battle, and why the BJP’s smarting win in the 2024 polls was so heartening: the nuclei of nationalistic thinking [are everywhere](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2024/04/04/the-little-things/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), you need just the right arguments — no matter how kettle-logic-y — to nurture them into crystals of hate and xenophobia. Calling Williams "Indian-American" is to retrench her patriarchal identity as being part of her primary identity — just as referring to her as "Indian origin" is to evoke her genetic identity; to recall her skin colour as being similar to that of many Indians; and perhaps to passively inculcate her value to the US as an opportunity for soft diplomacy with India. ### The meaning of 294-227 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/04/the-meaning-of-294-227/ Last updated: 2024-06-04T11:59:33.000Z As of 4.25 pm on June 4, the NDA alliance stood to win 294 seats in the Lok Sabha while the INDIA bloc was set for 225 seats. This is more than a pleasant surprise. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consumed everything in its path in its [aggressive bid](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2024/01/23/schrodingers-temple/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to stay in power. If it is being pushed back, it is not a feat that can be the product of nothing. After a decade of resistance without outright victories, in a manner of speaking, the pushback is a resounding abnegation of the BJP’s politics, and by doing that it embodies what the resistance has stood for: good-faith governance informed by reason and respect for the spirit and letters of the Constitution. Embodiment is a treasure because it gives form to some specific meaning in our common and shared reality, which is important: it needs to breach BJP supporters’ pinched-off reality as well. There needs to be no escaping it. Embodied meaning is also a treasure because the meaning is no longer restricted to “just” shouts of protest carried off by the wind, words left unread or protests the national government saw fit to ignore. This is 294-227 — or whatever the figures are once the ECI has declared final results in all constituencies. It's a win for democracy, but a lot of my elation is coming from the notion that the outcome of the polls also demonstrate not only that journalists' work matters — we already knew that — but that we're not pissing into the wind with it. It's being read, heard, and watched. People are paying attention. Congratulations. Keep going. ### The cost of forgetting Ballia URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/01/the-cost-of-forgetting-ballia/ Last updated: 2024-06-01T17:37:59.000Z In the day or so before June 1, 14 people died in Bihar of heat stroke. Ten of these people were election personnel deployed to oversee voting and associated activities in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and of them, five died in Bhojpur alone. On Friday, at least 17 people in Uttar Pradesh, 14 in Bihar, and four in Jharkhand had died of heat-related morbidity. And of the 17 in Uttar Pradesh, 13 deaths were reported from Mirzapur alone. This is a toll rendered all the more terrible by two other issues. First, after the first phase of the polls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) recorded lower voter turnout than expected (from previous Lok Sabha polls) and [blamed the heat](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/hot-button-on-the-voter-and-heat-exposure/article68102378.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Srinivasan Ramani, my colleague at *The Hindu*, subsequently found ["little correlation"](https://www.thehindu.com/data/little-correlation-between-higher-temperatures-and-lower-turnout-data/article68125674.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) between the maximum temperature recorded and turnouts in various constituencies, and in fact an anti-correlation in some places. By this time the ECI had said it would institute a raft of measures to incentivise voters to turn up. These were certainly welcome irrespective of there being a relationship between turnout and heat. However, did it put in place similar ‘special’ measures for electoral officials? On March 16, the ECI [forwarded an advisory](https://elections24.eci.gov.in/docs/ylOTCbXfik.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that included guidelines by the National Disaster Management Authority to manage heat to the chief electoral officers of all states and Union territories. These guidelines had the following recommendations, among others: "avoid going out in the sun, especially between 12.00 noon and 3.00 pm"; "wear lightweight, light-coloured, loose, and porous cotton clothes. Use protective goggles, umbrella/hat, shoes or chappals while going out in sun"; and "avoid strenuous activities when Balliathe outside temperature is high”. A question automatically arises: if poll officers are expected to avoid such activities, the polling process should have been set up such that those incidents requiring such activities wouldn’t arise in the first place. So were they? Because it’s just poka-yoke: if the process itself didn’t change, expecting poll officers to “avoid going out in the sun … between 12 pm and 3 pm” would have been almost laughable. The second issue is worse. Heat wave deaths in India are [often the product](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/tragic-unpreparedness-on-the-maharashtra-heatwave-incident/article66750672.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of little to no advance planning, even if the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast excessive heat on certain dates. But to make matters worse, there was a deadly heat wave last year in the same region where many of these deaths have been reported now. Recall that in the first half of June 2023, more than 30 people [died of heat-related illnesses](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/facing-the-heat-heatwave-deaths-in-ups-ballia-and-a-government-in-denial/article67002612.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Ballia village in Uttar Pradesh. After the chief medical superintendent of the local district hospital told mediapersons the people had indeed died of excessive heat, the state health department — led by deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak — transferred him away, and his successors later denied heat had had anything to do with the deaths. So even if the IMD hadn’t predicted a heat wave in this region for around May 30-31, the local and national governments and the ECI should have made preparations for heat exposure leading at least to morbidity. Did they? To the extent that people wouldn’t have had to be hospitalised or have died if they’d made effective preparations, they didn’t. Actively papering over the effects of extreme weather (and of adverse exposure) has to be the most self-destructive thing we’re capable of in the climate change era. *Featured image: Representative image of a tree whose leaves appear to have wilted in the heat. Credit: Zoltan Tasi/Unsplash.* ### 12 years and counting URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/06/01/12-years-and-continuing/ Last updated: 2024-06-01T06:55:50.000Z I’ve been a journalist for 12 years. For the first few years these anniversaries helped to remember that I was able to survive in the industry but now, after 12, I’m well and truly part of the industry itself — the thing that *others* survive — and the observances don’t mean anything as such. This said, my professional clock runs from June 1 from May 31 and the day is when I break up the last 365 days into a neat little block of memories and put it away, with some notes about whether anything was worth remembering. Last year of course, I joined *The Hindu* as deputy science editor and began a new chapter in many ways (see [here](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2022/11/30/saying-bye-to-the-wire/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2023/06/22/refusing-battles/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). One that I’d like to take note of here is *The Hindu*’s paywall. As you may know, thehindu.com has soft and hard paywalls. You hit the former when you read 10 free articles; the eleventh will have to be paid for. The latter is the paywall in front of articles that are otherwise not freely available to read. Most articles behind a soft paywall are straight news reports and, of course, *The Hindu*’s prized editorials. Analyses, commentaries, features, and most explainers are behind the hard paywall. We all know why these barriers exist: journalism needs to be paid for, and better journalism all the more so. But one straightforward downside is that the contents of articles behind paywalls are rarely, if ever, represented in the public conversations and debates of the day — and I haven’t been able to make my peace with this fact. Yet. Eight years at *The Wire* spoilt me for it but the upside was clear: everything from analysis to commentary would be part of the marketplace of ideas. Siddharth Varadarajan was clear *The Wire* would always be free to read. Of course, *The Wire* and *The Hindu* are different beasts and pursuing very different survival strategies, and on the path *The Hindu* is treading, quite simply forcing people to pay to read has become necessary. This shift has also forced me to contend with my own writing — mostly explainers, op-eds, and reports of physics research — being confined to a smaller, but paying, subset of *The Hindu*’s readers rather than all of them as well as to the public at large, which in turn often makes me feel… distance, not readily visible, if at all. Just one more thing to figure out. :) ### The BHU Covaxin study and ICMR bait URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/05/28/the-bhu-covaxin-study-and-icmr-bait/ Last updated: 2024-05-28T04:51:44.000Z Earlier this month, a study by a team at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi concluded that fully 1% of Covaxin recipients may suffer severe adverse events. One percent is a large number because the multiplier (x in 1/100 \* x) is very large — several million people. The study first hit the headlines for claiming it had the support of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and reporting that both Bharat Biotech and the ICMR are yet to publish long-term safety data for Covaxin. The latter is probably moot now, with the COVID-19 pandemic well behind us, but it’s the principle that matters. Let it go this time and who knows what else we’ll be prepared to let go. But more importantly, as [*The Hindu* reported](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/bhus-covaxin-safety-study-riddled-with-major-limitations/article68211668.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on May 25, the BHU study is too flawed to claim Covaxin is harmful, or claim anything for that matter. Here’s why (excerpt): > Though the researchers acknowledge all the limitations of the study, which is published in the journal *Drug Safety*, many of the limitations are so critical that they defeat the very purpose of the study. “Ideally, this paper should have been rejected at the peer-review stage. Simply mentioning the limitations, some of them critical to arrive at any useful conclusion, defeats the whole purpose of undertaking the study,” Dr. Vipin M. Vashishtha, director and pediatrician, Mangla Hospital and Research Center, Bijnor, says in an email to *The Hindu*. Dr. Gautam Menon, Dean (Research) & Professor, Departments of Physics and Biology, Ashoka University shares the same view. Given the limitations of the study one can “certainly say that the study can’t be used to draw the conclusions it does,” Dr. Menon says in an email. Just because you’ve admitted your study has limitations doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to interpret your research data with integrity. In fact, the journal needs to speak up here: why did *Drug Safety* publish the study manuscript? Too often when news of a controversial or bad study is published, the journal that published it stays out of the limelight. While the proximal cause is likely that journalists don’t think to ask journal editors and/or publishers tough questions about their publishing process, there is also a cultural problem here: when shit hits the fan, only the study’s authors are pulled up, but when things are rosy, the journals are out to take credit for the quality of the papers they publish. In either case, we must ask what they actually bring to the table other than capitalising on other scientists’ tendency to judge papers based on the journals they’re published in instead of their contents. Of course, it's also possible to argue that unlike, say, journalistic material, research papers aren't required to be in the public interest at the time of publication. Yet the BHU paper threatens to undermine public confidence in observational studies, and that can't be in anyone's interest. Even at the outset, experts and many health journalists knew observational studies don’t carry the same weight as randomised controlled trials as well as that such studies still serve a legitimate purpose, just not the one to which its conclusions were pressed in the BHU study. After the paper’s contents hit the headlines, the ICMR [shot off a latter](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/bhu-study-on-covaxin-side-effects-poorly-designed-erroneously-acknowledges-icmr-dr-bahl/article68196233.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the BHU research team saying it hasn’t "provided any financial or technical support" to the study and that the study is “poorly designed". Curiously, the [BHU team’s repartee](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZCIPSAJ53JWnH%5FEDhQyL2691r%5FN-A64r/view?usp=sharing&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the ICMR's makes repeated reference to Vivek Agnihotri's film *The Vaccine War*. In the same point in which two of these references appear (no. 2), the team writes: "While a study with a control group would certainly be of higher quality, this immediately points to the fact that it is researchers from ICMR who have access to the data with the control group, i.e. the original phase-3 trials of Covaxin – as well publicized in 'The Vaccine War' movie. ICMR thus owes it to the people of India, that it publishes the long-term follow-up of phase-3 trials." I'm not clear why the team saw fit to appeal to statements made in this of all films. As I've [written earlier](https://freshlimesoda1.wpcomstaging.com/2023/09/25/on-agnihotris-covaxin-film-defamation-and-false-bravery/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Vaccine War* — which I haven't watched but which directly references journalistic work by *The Wire* during and of the pandemic — is most likely a mix of truths and fictionalisation (and not in the clever, good-faith ways in which screenwriters adopt textual biographies for the big screen), with the fiction designed to serve the BJP's nationalist political narratives. So when the letter says in its point no. 5 that the ICMR should apologise to a female member of the BHU team for allegedly “spreading a falsehood” about her and offers *The Vaccine War* as a counterexample ("While 'The Vaccine War' movie is celebrating women scientists…”), I can’t but retch. Together with another odd line in the latter — that the "ICMR owes it to the people of India" — the appeals read less like a debate between scientists on the merits and the demerits of the study and more like they’re trying to bait the ICMR into doing better. I'm not denying the ICMR started it, as a child might say, but saying that this shouldn't have prevented the BHU team from keeping it dignified. For example, the BHU letter reads: "It is to be noted that interim results of the phase-3 trial, also cited by Dr. Priya Abraham in 'The Vaccine War' movie, had a mere 56 days of safety follow-up, much shorter than the one-year follow-up in the IMS-BHU study.” Surely the 56-day period finds mention in a more respectable and reliable medium than a film that confuses you about what’s real and what’s not? In all, the BHU study seems to have been designed to draw attention to gaps in the safety data for Covaxin — but by adopting such a provocative route, all that took centerstage was its spat with the ICMR plus its own flaws. ### India can do it! URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/05/23/india-can-do-it/ Last updated: 2024-05-23T11:39:33.000Z Against the background of the H5N1 pandemic in birds and an epidemic among cattle in the US, the Government of Victoria, in Australia, [published a statement](https://www.health.vic.gov.au/health-advisories/human-case-of-avian-influenza-bird-flu-detected-in-returned-traveller-to-victoria?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on May 21 that the province had recorded the country’s first human H5N1 case. This doesn’t seem to be much cause (but also not negligible cause) for concern because, according to the statement as well as other experts, this strain of avian influenza hasn’t evolved to spread easily between people. The individual in question who had the infection — “a child”, according to Victoria’s statement — had a severe form of it but has since recovered fully as well. But this story isn’t testament to Australia’s pathogen surveillance, at least not primarily; it’s testament to India’s ability to *do it*. In Vivek Agnihotri’s film [*The Vaccine War*](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/09/25/on-agnihotris-covaxin-film-defamation-and-false-bravery/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) — purportedly about the efforts of Bharat Biotech, the ICMR, and the NIV to develop Covaxin during the COVID-19 pandemic — Raima Sen, who plays the science editor of a fictitious publication called *The Daily Wire*, says about developing the vaccine in a moment of amusing cringe on a TV news show that “India can’t do it”. Agnihotri didn’t make it difficult to see myself in Sen’s character: I was science editor of the very real publication *The Wire* when Covaxin was being developed. And I’m here to tell you that India, in point of fact, can: according to Victoria’s statement, the child became infected by a strain of the H5N1 virus in India and fell ill in March 2024. And what is it that India can do? According to Victoria’s statement, spotting the infection required “Victoria’s enhanced surveillance system”. Further, “most strains don’t infect humans”; India was able to serve the child with one of the rare strains that could. “Transmission to humans” is also “very rare”, happening largely among people who “have contact with infected birds or animals, or their secretions, while in affected areas of the world”. Specifically: “Avian influenza is spread by close contact with an infected bird (dead or alive), e.g. handling infected birds, touching droppings or bedding, or killing/preparing infected poultry for cooking. You can’t catch avian influenza through eating fully cooked poultry or eggs, even in areas with an outbreak of avian influenza.” So let’s learn our lesson: If we give India’s widespread dysregulation of poultry and cattle health, underinvestment in pathogen surveillance, and its national government’s unique blend of optimism and wilful ignorance a chance, the country will give someone somewhere a rare strain of an avian influenza virus that can infect humans. Repeat after me: India *can* do it! ### The party-spirited cricket World Cup URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/05/17/the-party-spirited-cricket-world-cup/ Last updated: 2024-05-17T18:15:18.000Z Sharda Ugra has a sharp piece out in the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2024 laying bare the ways in which the BJP hijacked the 2023 ODI Cricket World Cup via the BCCI, whose secretary Jay Shah is the son of Union home minister Amit Shah. The [Reddit thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/1ctnf9o/the%5Fpoliticisation%5Fof%5Findian%5Fcricket%5Fmodi/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#lightbox) on the article has a link to a full archival copy. It was clear to everyone the World Cup had been stage-managed by the BCCI; as I wrote when it concluded, just a few of the symptoms of the BJP's interference were that Sunday games had been reserved for India, many tickets were vouchsafed for government officials or to bodies with ties to such officials, police personnel were present in the stands for many games, snatching away placards with shows of support for Pakistan; many spectators (but not all, and not everywhere) often chanted "jai shri Ram" — the BJP's "call to arms", as Ugra put it — in unison; Air Force jets flew past the Modi stadium named for Prime Minister Narendra (even though he's alive) on the day of the finals, which only the government has the power to arrange; the man himself elected to bunk the game once it started to become clear India would lose it; and throughout the tournament the game's broadcaster was fixated on showing visuals of celebrities, including BJP leaders and supporters, in the stands when they weren't of the game itself. Together with releasing the tournament schedule late, all-but-accidental delays in clearing visas for Pakistani and Pakistan-affiliated cricketers and journalists, suppressing the sale of merchandise affiliated with the Pakistani and Bangladeshi cricket teams, and DJs playing songs like "Ram Siya Ram" and "India *jeetega*" during India games, the BJP's hyper-nationalist hand was in plain sight, especially to those who knew what to look for. Many of these feats had been foreshadowed during the 2022 Asia Cup, when [Star Sports and Pepsi](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2022/10/20/a-masculine-build-up-to-the-ind-pak-cricket-match/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) had joined in on the fun. To these incursions, Ugra's essay has added something more in-your-face, and obnoxious for it: > … three independent sources — one each from the team, the ICC and the BCCI — have confirmed the existence of an all-orange uniform, which was presented to the team as an alternative two days before the \[India-Pakistan\] game. They had already been given a new training kit — an orange shirt and dark trousers — a week before their first fixture. When the all-orange kit arrived in the dressing-room, the players looked nonplussed, according to an insider. Here, the story split into two versions. One, out first, said the uniform was rejected because it "looks like Holland". The other had the Indian cricketers saying to each other: "This is not on... We won't do it... It is disrespectful to some of the members of the team" \[referring to Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj\]. That this was an ICC tournament had become moot by this point, with the BJP-BCCI combine subsuming or just disregarding too many of its rules and tenets for the international body to matter. The BJP sought to have a literal saffron-versus-green contest on the ground, replete with provocative music and police presence — not to mention also packing the stands with people who booed Pakistani players as they walked in/out — and the BCCI obliged. The only reason this doesn't seem to have succeeded was either an unfavourable comparison to the Dutch circket jersey — which I'm sure the BJP and/or the BCCI would have noticed beforehand — or that the players didn't want to put it on. According to Ugra, an orange or a blue-orange jersey was on for a UNICEF event called "One Day for Children", and the corresponding match was to be an India-Sri Lanka fixture three weeks after the match against Pakistan; there, India wore its traditional blue, presumably the BCCI had stopped insisting on the saffron option. But what rankles more isn't that the ICC folded so easily (Ugra: "The ICC demonstrated neither the nous nor the spine to resist the takeover") but that the BCCI, and the BJP behind it, laboured all the time as if there would be no resistance to their actions. Because, clearly, the two things that seemingly didn't go the BJP's way were the result of two minimal displays of effective resistance: the first when "Young Indians among the ICC volunteers eventually had \["Ram Siya Ram"\] removed from the playlist for the rest of the tournament", and the second when the Indian men's team refused to don the saffron tees and trousers. The ICC is a faraway body, as much undermined by the Indian cricketing body's considerable wealth and political influence in the country as by the BJP's now well-known tactic to take advantage of every little administrative loophole, leeway or liberty to get what it wants. The latter alone is reason enough to not expect more from the ICC, at least not without being exposed a few times to the demands of the adversarial posture engaging with the BCCI merits. Instead, the BCCI's capitulation — completed in 2019, when Jay Shah became its secretary — and its organisational strategies in the Asia Cup and the World Cup cement the conclusion that it cares nothing for rituals and traditions in service of the spirit of the game. There is no public-spiritedness, only party-spiritedness. And just as the BJP wins its third term to form the national goverbment, the T20 World Cup will begin. *Featured image: A surfeit of India flags among spectators of the India versus South Africa match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, 2015\. Credit: visitmelbourne, CC BY 2.0.* ### The billionaire's solution to climate change URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/05/10/marc-benioff-solution-climate-change/ Last updated: 2024-05-10T14:14:02.000Z On May 3, Bloomberg published a profile of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's 1t.org project to plant or conserve one trillion trees around the world in order to sequester 200 gigatonnes of carbon every year. The idea reportedly came to Benioff from Thomas Crowther's infamous [September 2015 paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14967?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Nature* that claimed restoring trees was the world's best way to 'solve' climate change. Following [pointed criticism](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25745?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the paper's attitude and conclusions, they were [revised to a significant extent](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay8108?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in October 2019 to tamper predictions about the carbon sequestration potential of the world's trees and to withdraw its assertion that no other solution could work better than planting and/or restoring trees. According to [Bloomberg's profile](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-benioff-save-trillion-trees/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Benioff's 1t.org initiative seems to be faltering as well, with unreliable accounting of the pledges companies submitted to 1t.org and, unsurprisingly, many of these companies engaging in shady carbon-credit transactions. This is also why Jane Goodall's comment in the article is disagreeable: it isn't better for these companies to do something vis-à-vis trees than nothing at all because the companies are only furthering an illusion of climate action — claiming to do something while doing nothing at all — and perpetuating the currency of counterproductive ideas like carbon-trading. A smattering of Benioff's comments to Bloomberg are presented throughout the profile, as a result of which he might come across like a sage figure — but take them together, in one go, and he sounds actually like a child. > “I think that there’s a lot of people who are attacking nature and hate nature. I’m somebody who loves nature and supports nature.” This comment follows one by "the climate and energy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists", Rachel Cleetus, that trees “should not be seen as a substitute for the core task at hand here, which is getting off fossil fuels.” But in Bloomberg's telling, Cleetus is a \[checks notes\] 'nature hater'. Similarly, the following thoughtful comment is Benioff's view of other scientists who criticised the Crowther et al. paper: > “I view it as nonsense.” Moving on… > “I was in third grade. I learned about photosynthesis and I got it right away.” This amazing quote appears as the last line of a paragraph; the rest of it goes thus: "Slashing fossil fuel consumption is critical to slowing warming, but scientists say we also need to pull carbon that's already in the air back out of it. Trees are really good at that, drawing in CO2 and then releasing oxygen." Then Benioff's third-grade quote appears. It's just comedy. His other statements make for an important reminder of the oft-understated purpose of scientific communication. Aside from being published by a 'prestige' journal — *Nature* — the Crowther et al. paper presented an easy and straightforward solution to reducing the concentration of atmospheric carbon: to fix lots and lots of trees. Even without knowing the specific details of the study's merits, any environmental scientist in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, i.e. the "Global South", would have said this is a terrible idea. > “Everybody agreed on tree diplomacy. I was in shock.” > > “The greatest, most scalable technology we have today to sequester carbon is the tree.” The countries in these regions have become sites of aggressive afforestation that provide carbon credits for the "Global North" to encash as licenses to keep emitting carbon. But the flip sides of these exercises are: (i) only some areas are naturally amenable to hosting trees, and it's not feasible to plant them willy-nilly through ecosystems that don't naturally support them; (ii) unless those in charge plant native species, afforestation will only precipitate local ecosystem decline, which will further lower the sequestration potential; (iii) unafforested land runs the risk of being perceived as 'waste land', sidelining the ecosystem services provided by wetlands, deserts, grasslands, etc.; and (iv) many of these countries need to be able to emit more carbon before being expected to reach net-zero, in order to pull their populations out of poverty and become economically developed — the same right the "Global North" countries had in the 19th and 20th centuries. Scientists have known all this from well before the Crowther et al. paper turned up. Yet Benioff leapt for it the moment it appeared, and was keen on seeing it to its not-so-logical end. It's impossible to miss the fact that his being worth $10 billion didn't encourage him to use all that wealth and his clout to tackle the more complex actions in the soup of all actions that make up humankind's response to climate change. Instead, he used his wealth to go for an easy way out, while dismissing informed criticism of it as "nonsense" In fact, a similar sort of 'ease-seeking' is visible in the Crowther et al. paper as well, as brought out [in a comment](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay7976?ref=slightlyacidic.com) published by Veldman et al. In response to this, Crowther et al. wrote in October 2019 that their first paper simply presented value-neutral knowledge and that it shouldn't be blamed for how it's been construed: > Veldman et al. (4) criticize our results in dryland biomes, stating that many of these areas simply should not be considered suitable for tree restoration. Generally, we must highlight that our analysis does not ever address whether any actions “should” or “should not” take place. Our analysis simply estimated the biophysical limits of global forest growth by highlighting where trees “can” exist. In fact, the October 2019 correction to Crowther et al., in which the authors walked back on the "trees are the best way" claim, was particularly important because it has come to mirror the challenges Benioff has found himself facing through 1t.org: it isn't just that there are other ways to improve climate mitigation and adaptation, it's that those ways are required, and giving up on them for any reason could never be short of a moral hazard, if not an existential one. *Featured image credit: Dawid Zawiła/Unsplash.* ### The "coherent water" scam is back URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/05/10/the-coherent-water-scam-is-back/ Last updated: 2024-05-10T14:05:42.000Z On May 7, I received a press release touting a product called "coherent water" made by a company named Analemma Water India. According to the document, "coherent water" is based on more than "15 years of rigorous research and development" and confers "a myriad … health benefits".This "rigorous research" is flawed research. There's definitely such a thing as "coherent water" and it's indistinguishable from regular water at all scales. The "coherent water" scam has reared its serpentine head before with the names "hexagonal water", "structured water", "polywater", "exclusion zone water", and water with one additional hydrogen and oxygen atom each, i.e. "H3O2". Analemma's "Mother Water", which is its brand name for "coherent water", itself is a rebranding of a product called "Somarka" that hit the Indian market in 2021. The scam here is that the constituent molecules of "coherent water" get together to form hexagonal structures that persist indefinitely. And these structures distinguish "coherent water", giving it wonderful abilities like possessing a greater energy content than regular water, boosting one's "life force", and — this one I love — being able to "encourage" other water molecules around it to form similar hexagonal assemblages. I hope people won't fall for this hoax but I know some will. But thanks to the lowest price of what Analemma is offering — a vial of "Mother Water" that it claims is worth $180 (Rs 15,000) — it'll be some rich buggers and I think that's okay. Fools, their wealth, and all that. Then again, it's somewhat saddening that while (some) people are fighting to keep [junk foods](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/courting-action-on-fmcg-marketing-advertising/article68106567.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [bad medicines](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/dangerous-game-on-patanjali-ayurveds-claims/article68024468.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) out of the market, we have "coherent water" companies and their PR outfits bravely broadcasting their press releases to news publications (and [at least one](https://theprint.in/ani-press-releases/analemma-coherent-water-now-in-india-redefining-hydration-with-cutting-edge-technology/2073783/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) publishing it) at around the same time. If you're curious about the issue with "coherent water": At room temperature and pressure, the hydrogen atoms of water keep forming and breaking weak bonds with other hydrogen atoms. These bonds last for a very small duration and give water its high boiling point and ice crystals their characteristic hexagonal structure. Sometimes water molecules organise themselves using these bonds into a hexagonal structure as well. But these formations are very short-lived because the hydrogen bonds last only around 200 quadrillionths of a second at a time, if not lower. According to the hoax, however, in "coherent water", the hydrogen bonds continue to hold such that its water molecules persist in long-lived hexagonal clusters. But this conclusion is not supported by research — nor is the claim that, "When swirled in normal water, the \[magic water\] encourages chaotic and irregular H2O molecules to rearrange into the same liquid crystalline structure as the \[magic water\]. What’s more, the coherent structure is retained over time – this stability is unique to Analemma." I don't think this ability is unique to the "Mother Water". In 1963, a scientist named [Felix Hoenikker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine?ref=slightlyacidic.com) invented a variant of ice that, when it came in contact with water cooler than 45.8º C, quickly converted it to ice-nine as well. Sadly Hoenikker had to abandon the project after he realised the continued use of ice-nine would simply destroy all life on Earth. Anyway, water that's neither acidic nor basic also has a few rare hydronium (H3O+) and hydroxide (OH-) ions floating around as well. The additional hydrogen ion — basically a proton — from the hydronium ion is engaged in a game of musical chairs with the protons in the same volume of water, each one jumping to a molecule, dislodging a proton there, which jumps to another molecule, and so on. This is happening so rapidly that the hydrogen atoms in every water molecule are practically being changed several thousand times every minute. In this milieu, it's impossible for a fixed group of water molecules to be hanging around. In addition, the ultra-short lifetime of the hydrogen bonds are what makes water a liquid: a thing that flows, fills containers, squeezes between gaps, collects into droplets, etc. Take this ability and the fast-switching hydrogen bonds away, as "coherent water" claims to do by imposing a fixed structure, and it's no longer water — any kind of water. Analemma has links to some reports on its website; if you're up to it, I suggest going through them with a [simple checklist of the signs of bad research](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2023/10/16/an-expanded-heuristic-to-evaluate-science-as-a-non-scientist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) side by side. You should be able to spot most of the gunk. ### Infinity in 15 kilograms URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/04/19/infinity-in-15-kilograms/ Last updated: 2024-04-19T21:54:51.000Z While space is hard, there are also different kinds of hard*ness*. For example, on April 15, ISRO issued a [press release](https://www.isro.gov.in/ISRO%5FDevelops%5FLightweight%5FCarbon%5FCarbon%5FNozzle%5Ffor%5FRocket%5FEngines.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) saying it had successfully tested nozzles made of a carbon-carbon composite that would replace those made of Columbium alloy in the PSLV rocket's fourth stage and thus increase the rocket's payload capacity by 15 kg. Just 15 kg! > The successful testing of the C-C nozzle divergent marked a major milestone for ISRO. On March 19, 2024, a 60-second hot test was conducted at the High-Altitude Test (HAT) facility in ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC), Mahendragiri, confirming the system's performance and hardware integrity. Subsequent tests, including a 200-second hot test on April 2, 2024, further validated the nozzle's capabilities, with temperatures reaching 1216K, matching predictions. Granted, the PSLV's cost of launching a single kilogram to low-earth orbit is more than 8 lakh rupees (a very conservative estimate, I reckon) – meaning an additional 15 kg means at least an additional Rs 1.2 crore per launch. But finances alone are not a useful way to evaluate this addition: more payload mass could mean, say, one additional instrument onboard an indigenous spacecraft instead of waiting for a larger rocket to become available or postponing that instrument's launch to a future mission. But equally fascinating, and pride- and notice-worthy, to me is the fact that ISRO's scientists and engineers were able to fine-tune the PSLV to this extent. This isn't to say I'm surprised they were able to do it at all; on the contrary, it means the feat is as much about the benefits accruing to the rocket, and the Indian space programme by extension, as about R&D advances on the materials science front. It speaks to the oft-underestimated importance of the foundations on which a space programme is built. > Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre … has leveraged advanced materials like Carbon-Carbon (C-C) Composites to create a nozzle divergent that offers exceptional properties. By utilizing processes such as carbonization of green composites, Chemical Vapor Infiltration, and High-Temperature Treatment, it has produced a nozzle with low density, high specific strength, and excellent stiffness, capable of retaining mechanical properties even at elevated temperatures. > A key feature of the C-C nozzle is its special anti-oxidation coating of Silicon Carbide, which extends its operational limits in oxidizing environments. This innovation not only reduces thermally induced stresses but also enhances corrosion resistance, allowing for extended operational temperature limits in hostile environments. The advances here draw from insights into metallurgy, crystallography, ceramic engineering, composite materials, numerical methods, etc., which in turn stand on the shoulders of people trained well enough in these areas, the educational institutions (and their teachers) that did so, and the schooling system and socio-economic support structures that brought them there. A country needs a lot to go right for achievements like squeezing an extra 15 kg into the payload capacity of an already highly fine-tuned machine to be possible. It's a bummer that such advances are currently largely vertically restricted, except in the case of the Indian space programme, rather than diffusing freely across sectors. Other enterprises ought to have these particular advantages ISRO enjoys. Even should one or two rockets fail, a test not work out or a spacecraft go kaput sooner than designed, the PSLV's new carbon-carbon-composite nozzles stand for the idea that we have everything we need to keep trying, including the opportunity to do better next time. They represent the idea of how advances in one field of research can lead to advances in another, such that each field is no longer held back by the limitations of its starting conditions. ### Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/04/11/justice-delayed-but-a-ton-of-bricks-await/ Last updated: 2024-04-11T17:16:00.000Z From 'SC declines Ramdev, Patanjali apology; expresses concern over FMCGs taking gullible consumers ‘up and down the garden path’', [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sc-refuses-to-accept-patanjalis-apology-again/article68049546.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), April 10, 2024: > The Supreme Court has refused to accept the unconditional apology from Patanjali co-founder Baba Ramdev and managing director Acharya Balkrishna for advertising medical products in violation of giving an undertaking in the apex court in November 2023 prohibiting the self-styled yoga guru. ... Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah told senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi that Mr. Ramdev has apologised only after being caught on the back foot. His violations of the undertaking to the court was deliberate and willful, they said. The SC recorded its dissatisfaction with the apology tendered by proposed contemnors Patanjali, Mr. Balkrishna and Mr. Ramdev, and posted the contempt of court case on April 16. > ... The Bench also turned its ire on the Uttarakhand State Licensing Authority for “twiddling their thumbs” and doing nothing to prevent the publications and advertisements. “Why should we not come down like a ton of bricks on your officers? They have been fillibustering,” Justice Kohli said. The court said the assurances of the State Licensing Authority and the apology of the proposed contemnors are not worth the paper they are written on. A very emotionally gratifying turn of events, but perhaps not as gratifying as they might have been had they transpired at the government's hands when Patanjali was issuing its advertisements of pseudoscience-backed COVID-19 cures during the pandemic. Or if the Supreme Court had proceeded to actually hold the men in contempt instead of making a slew of observations and setting a date for another hearing. Still, something to cheer for and occasion to reserve some hope for the April 16 session. But in matters involving Ramdev and Patanjali Ayurved, many ministers of the current government ought to be pulled up as well, including former Union health minister Harsh Vardhan, Union micro, small, and medium enterprises minister Nitin Gadkari, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi's governance and policies both written and unwritten enabled Patanjali's charlatanry while messrs Vardhan and Gadkari were present at an event in [February 2021](https://science.thewire.in/health/patanjali-ayurved-coronil-efficacy-claims-debunk-scientific-paper-phytomedicine/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when Patanjali launched a product it claimed could cure COVID-19, with Vardhan – who was health minister then – speaking in favour of people buying and using the unproven thing. I think the Supreme Court's inclination to hold Ramdev et al. in contempt should extend to Vardhan as well because his presence at the event conferred a sheen of legitimacy on the product but also because of a specific bit of theatrics he pulled in May the same year involving Ramdev and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Ramdev apologising because that's more politically convenient rather than because he thinks he screwed up isn't new. In that May, he'd called evidence-based medicine "stupid" and alleged such medicine had killed more people than the virus itself. After some virulent public backlash, Vardhan wrote a really polite letter to Ramdev asking him to apologise, and Ramdev obliged. But just the previous month, in April 2021, Manmohan Singh had [written a letter](https://twitter.com/INCIndia/status/1383724635540267008?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to Modi suggesting a few courses of action to improve India's response to the virus's spread. Its contents were perfectly reasonable, yet Vardhan responded to it accusing Singh of spreading "vaccine hesitancy" and alleging Congress-ruled states were responsible for fanning India's deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections (in 2021). These were all ridiculous assertions. But equally importantly, his lashing out stood in stark contrast to his letter to Ramdev: respect for the self-styled godman and businessman whose company was attempting to corner the market for COVID-19 cures with untested, pseudo-Ayurvedic froth versus unhinged rhetoric for a well-regarded economist and statesman. For this alone, Vardhan deserves the "ton of bricks" the Supreme Court is waiting with. ### Feel the pain URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/04/09/feel-the-pain/ Last updated: 2024-04-09T17:13:00.000Z Emotional decision making is in many contexts undesirable – but sometimes it definitely needs to be part of the picture, insofar as our emotions hold a mirror to our morals. When machines make decisions, the opportunity to consider the emotional input goes away. This is a recurring concern I'm hearing about from people working with or responding to AI in some way. Here are two recent examples I came across that set this concern out in two different contexts: loneliness and war. This is Anna Mae Duane, director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, in [*The Conversation*](https://theconversation.com/ai-companions-promise-to-combat-loneliness-but-history-shows-the-dangers-of-one-way-relationships-221086?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > There is little danger that AI companions will courageously tell us truths that we would rather not hear. That is precisely the problem. My concern is not that people will harm sentient robots. I fear how humans will be damaged by the moral vacuum created when their primary social contacts are designed solely to serve the emotional needs of the "user". And this is from Yuval Abraham's investigation for [*+972 Magazine*](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Israel's chilling use of AI to populate its "kill lists": > "It has proven itself," said B., the senior source. "There’s something about the statistical approach that sets you to a certain norm and standard. There has been an illogical amount of \[bombings\] in this operation. This is unparalleled, in my memory. And I have much more trust in a statistical mechanism than a soldier who lost a friend two days ago. Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7\. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier." ### Cheers for everyone but the bustard URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/04/08/cheers-for-everyone-but-the-bustard/ Last updated: 2024-04-08T17:11:00.000Z Behold, the legerdemain of spinning bad news into good: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/screenshot-2024-04-08-at-10.25.42-am.png?w=1024) Setting aside the meaningless headline, we have a lede (and the rest of the article, for that matter) that claims the Supreme Court of India "struck" a fine balancing act between the transition to renewable energy and protecting the great Indian bustard by rolling back a complete ban on overhead cables in the birds' habitat. > Accepting sustained arguments from attorney general R Venkataramani, solicitor general Tushar Mehta and additional SG Aishwarya Bhati, the bench said, "India's commitment to promoting renewable energy sources, particularly in regions like Gujarat and Rajasthan, aligns with its broader sustainable development objectives." Pats on the back for everyone. Except while the Supreme Court is switching between imposing and revoking a ban on overhead cables and the newspaper declaring this a pro-climate triumph, there is no indication in the report that the petition before the Supreme Court is to move the power cables underground, protecting both the endangered bustards and the region's power-generation potential. The apex court has now asked an expert committee to examine the feasibility of underground cables and their costs, which the promoters of solar- and wind-power projects in the region have contended are too high. As such, the court's order has created a false balance between the birds and the profit margins of these promoters, as if to say they're equally legitimate and equally valuable. Such are the perils of [government by Supreme Court](https://peregrination.net/2024/03/03/the-separation-of-power-grabs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### It's the little things URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/04/04/the-little-things/ Last updated: 2024-04-04T17:09:00.000Z 'What Muslim Women Face Every Day at Work', [*The Wire*](https://thewire.in/communalism/everyday-struggles-of-indian-working-muslim-women?ref=slightlyacidic.com), April 4, 2024: > \[Nisha\] Shah, who prays five times a day, says such Islamophobia at the workplace – amongst highly educated Indian youth – has become more audacious. She says her two-three prayer breaks are shorter than the frequent smoke and tea breaks her colleagues take. But she was asked to leave her religion out of the office. There was no holiday for Eid and no concessions to her schedule during the month of Ramzan. But when the Hindu festival of Diwali came around, the company organised *pujas* at work. It's the little stuff like this – unearthed expertly, laboriously by Mahima Jain – that really drives the pseudo-secularist point home on the ground. In my limited experience, I've noticed this kind of discrimination, motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment and sustained by kettle logic, in some research institutes, journalism establishments, and apartment complexes. Social anthropologist [Renny Thomas's book](https://peregrination.net/2022/01/12/on-science-religion-brahmins-and-a-book/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment* is in this regard an eye-opener. Some people exchange polite wishes for Islamic festivals even if they're not Muslim themselves but by and large what on-premise celebrations the powers that be consider appropriate are very different for Eid and Mawlid versus Dussehra and Janmashtami. And when these powers don't see value in or actively ignore the value of affirmative action in the cultural sphere of the space they administer, the differences hang like a reminder that, even if [physical violence](https://www.thehindu.com/specials/text-and-context/states-lax-response-to-lynching/article67138604.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) isn't in the offing, "the seeds of hatred" are there, as Shah says. ### End of the line URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/30/end-of-the-line/ Last updated: 2024-03-30T18:48:53.000Z The folks at *The Wire* have laid *The Wire Science* to rest, I've learnt. The site hasn't published any (original) articles [since February 2](https://science.thewire.in/health/a-game-changing-study-opens-new-avenues-in-uterine-fibroid-research/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and its last tweet was on February 16, 2024. At the time I left, in October 2022, the prospect of it continuing to run on its own steam was very much in the picture. But I've also been out of the loop since and learnt a short while ago that *The Wire Science* stopped being a functional outlet sometime earlier this year, and that its website and its articles will, in the coming months, be folded into *The Wire*, where they will continue to live. *The Wire* must do what's best for its future and I don't begrudge the decision to stop publishing *The Wire Science* separately – although I do wonder if, even if they didn't see sense in finding a like-for-like replacement, they could have attempted something less intensive with another science journalist. I'm nonetheless sad because some things will still be lost. Foremost on my mind are *The Wire Science*'s distinct sensibilities. As is the case at *The Hindu* as well as at all publications whose primary journalistic product is 'news', the science coverage doesn't have the room or license to examine a giant swath of the science landscape, which – while in many ways being science news in the sense that it presents new information derived from scientific work – can only manifest in the pages of a news product as 'analysis', 'commentary', 'opinion', etc. *The Wire* has the latter, or had when I left and I don't know how they'll be thinking about that going ahead, but there is still the risk of science coverage there not being able to spread its wings nearly as widely as it could on *The Wire Science*. I still think such freedom is required because we haven't figured out how best to cover science, at least not without also getting entangled in questions about science's increasingly high-strung relationship with society and whether science journalists, as practitioners of a science journalism coming of age anew in the era of transdisciplinary technologies (AI, One Health, open access, etc.), can expect to be truly objective, forget covering science by the same rules and expectations that guide the traditional journalisms of business, politics, sports, etc. If however *The Wire*'s journalists are still thinking about these things, kudos and best wishes to them. Of course, one thing was definitely lost: the room to experiment with forms of storytelling that better interrogate many of these alternative possibilities I think science journalism needs to embrace. Such things rarely, if ever, survive the demands of the everyday newsroom. Again, *The Wire* must do what it deems best for its future; doing otherwise would be insensible. But loss is also loss. RIP. I'm sad, but also proud *The Wire Science* was what it was when it lived. ### The foundation of shit URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/30/the-foundation-of-shit/ Last updated: 2024-03-30T08:00:00.000Z I've been a commissioning editor in Indian science, health, and environment journalism for a little under a decade. I've learnt many lessons in this time but one in particular still surprises me. Whenever I receive an email, I'm quick to at least shoot off a holding reply: "I'm caught up with other stuff today, I'll get back to you on this ". Having a horizon makes time management much easier. What surprises me is that many commissioning editors don't do this. I've heard the same story from scores of freelancing writers and reporters: "I email them but they just don't reply for a long time." Newsrooms are short-staffed everywhere and I readily empathise with any editor who says there's just no time or mental bandwidth. But that's also why the holding email exists and can even be automated to ask the sender to wait for hours. A few people have even said they prefer working with me because, among other things, I'm prompt. This really isn't a brag. It's a fruit hanging so low it's touching the ground. Sure, it's nice to have an advantage just by being someone who replies to emails and sets expectations – but if you think about it, especially from a freelancer's point of view, it has a foundation of shit. It shouldn't exist. There's a problem on the other side of this coin here. I picked up the habit of the holding email when I was with *The Wire* (before *The Wire Science*) – a very useful piece of advice SV gave me. When I first started to deploy it, it worked wonders when engaging with reporters and writers. Because I wrote back, almost always within less than half a day of their emails, they submitted more of their work. Bear in mind at this point that freelancers are juggling payments for past work (from this or other publications), negotiations for payment for the current submission, and work on other stories in the pipeline. In the midst of all this – and I'm narrating second-hand experiences here – to have an editor come along who replies possibly seems very alluring. Perhaps it's one less variable to solve for. I certainly wanted to take advantage of it. Over time, however, a problem arose. Being prompt with emails means checking the inbox every minutes. I quickly lost my mind over having to check for new emails as often as I could, but I kept at it because the payoff stayed high. This behaviour also changed some writers' expectations of me: if I didn't reply within six hours, say, I'd receive an email or two checking in or, in one case, accusing me of being like "the others". I want my job to be about doing good science journalism as much as giving back to the community of science journalists. In fact, I believe doing the latter will automatically achieve the former. We tried this in one way when building out *The Wire Science* and I think we've taken the first steps in a new direction at *The Hindu Science* – yet these are also drops in the ocean. For a community that requires so, so much still, giving can be so easy that one loses oneself in the process, including on the deceptively trivial matter of replying to emails. Reply quickly and meaningfully and it's likely to offer a value of its own to the person on the other side of the email server. Suddenly you have a virtue, and because it's a virtue, you want to hold on to it. But it's a pseudo-virtue, a false god, created by the expectations of those who deserve better and the aspirations of those who want to meet those expectations. Like it or not, it comes from a bad place. The community needs so, so much still, but that doesn't mean everything I or anyone else has to give is valuable. I won't stop being prompt but I will have to find a middle-ground where I'm prompt enough and at the same time the sender of the email doesn't think I or any other editor for that matter has dropped the ball. This is as much about managing individual expectations as the culture of thinking about time [a certain way](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2023/05/17/notes-for-a-the-open-notebook-report/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which includes stakeholders' expectations of the editor-writer relationship in all Indian newsrooms publishing science-related material. (The fact of India being the sort of country where the place you're at – and increasingly the government there – being one of the first things getting in the way of life also matters.) This culture should also serve the interests of science journalism in the country, including managing the tension between the well-being of its practitioners and sustainability on one hand and the effort and the proverbial extra push required for its growth on the other. ### A new tradition URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/26/a-new-tradition/ Last updated: 2024-03-26T22:36:05.000Z ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/screenshot-2024-03-26-at-10.19.45-pm.png?w=1024) Source: ESPN Cricinfo This screenshot is from ESPN Cricinfo's live commentary for the Chennai Super Kings versus Gujarat Titans IPL match on March 26, 2024\. Super Kings captain Ruturaj Gaikwad got out caught behind off the bowling of Spencer Johnson. I'm not sure why Cricinfo's commentary says Gaikwad walked off because he didn't. He swung his bat at the ball, got a nick, and the ball flew through to wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha. Saha and Johnson both started to celebrate – until Johnson noticed Gaikwad hadn't left the crease. He turned around to appeal to the umpire, who signalled out, and it was then that Gaikwad started to walk. A new captain at the helm of Super Kings has been due. MS Dhoni is in his early 40s. Though he still plays good cricket, it's also time for him to make way, and Gaikwad is a good choice: he's only 27 years old and can serve in the new role for a long time, assuming he also does well. It's just that… if Dhoni had been the one to nick that ball, he would've walked the moment Saha caught it instead of waiting for the umpire's signal. We've seen it in so many games both in the IPL and those for the national team, and we've also seen other Super Kings players follow suit. I assumed it was team culture, bolstered by the fact that Super Kings has also frequently been among the top five teams in the (meta-)race for the IPL's 'Fair Play Award'. To each their own, of course, but considering Gaikwad is now the captain, I hope how he responded is just the sign of a new captain and doesn't also signal a change in the team culture. ### Happy Lord of the Rings Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-3/ Last updated: 2024-03-25T09:06:17.000Z War is on all our minds these days. There is a war happening in Ukraine and something barely resembling a war (because it’s a genocide) in Gaza. Governments have been fond of casting our collective responses – such as they are – to climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and water crises as wars. In every nationalist country, and there are more of them every year, the states have claimed they’re at war against “anti-national” forces within and without. War is everywhere. At this time, where does fantasy fiction stand, what can it do? First, the genre itself is often centred around military action as a means to challenge protagonists and resolve conflicts. In the *Lord of the Rings* trilogy, the skirmish on Weathertop showcases Aragorn’s leadership; the Battle of Helm's Deep is where Théoden truly returns as the king of Rohan; the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is the stage on which Denethor fails, Faramir rises in his stead, Rohan’s crown effectively passes to Éowyn, and Aragorn does something only Gondor’s ruler can; the Battle of the Morannon is a test of every protagonist’s mettle as they distract Sauron and his armies in a doomed stand long enough for Sam, Frodo, and Gollum to destroy the ring; and the Battles of Isengard and Bywater are where the ents and hobbits, respectively, retake their lands from Saruman’s rule, unto the powerful wizard’s political and then mortal demise. Even outside the trilogy, war is never short of a great contest between good and evil. There have been many flights of fancy that bear little resemblance to JRR Tolkien’s epic and its style, yet it’s just as true that every English attempt at epic fantasy since the trilogy has either basked in its shadow or tried to escape from it. Another way in which Tolkien foreshadowed the genre is in terms of its authors: predominantly cis-male and white. Despite the variety of factors at play that could influence who becomes an author of epic fantasy fiction, this is no coincidence, at least insofar as it determines who becomes a ‘successful’ author – and just as well, it’s not a coincidence that so much of modern fantasy is concerned with similar depictions of war. [Bret Devereaux wrote](https://acoup.blog/2022/12/16/collections-why-rings-of-powers-middle-earth-feels-flat/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in his popular blog that Amazon Primevideo's *Rings of Power* fell so flat even though it had borrowed heavily as well as branched off from *Lord of the Rings* because, among other things, it failed to "maintain a believable sense of realism grounded in historical societies and technologies (something the *Lord of the Rings*, books and films, did very well)", rendering it "impossible to invest in the stakes and consequences of a world that appears not to obey any perceptible rules". Yet even with the 'rules', Tolkien's narrative arcs within his books were modeled perceptibly on the Arthurian legends. A similar complaint can be foisted on other (esp. white male) works of epic fantasy fiction, which have been concerned on a metaphysical level at least with recasting the past in a different light, unto different ends. I admit I haven’t read enough of epic fantasy – all of Tolkien, a smattering of Guy Gavriel Kay (*Tigana*), Mervyn Peake (*Gormenghast*), Peter David (*Sir Apropos of Nothing*), some of M. John Harrison’s short stories, Brandon Sanderson, Marlon James (BLRW), and George R.R. Martin – to be able to write with any kind of authority about the genre, but for this I blame partly myself and the rest Steven Erikson, whose *Malazan Book of the Fallen* series spoiled me for anything else. My own tendency to read the work of the cis-white men of fantasy is also to blame. However, Erikson, unlike any of the other writers I’d read until then, both within and beyond the genre, is also a white man yet his *Malazan* series treats war differently: its tragic toll is always in view thanks to Erikson's decision to train the narrator’s focus on its smallest players, the soldiers, rather than on its kings and queens. This is how, for its well-earned reputation as a military epic bar none, the series itself recounts a tale of compassion. And having read and re-read the *Malazan* series for more than a decade (to the uninitiated: it’s possible to do this without getting bored because of its rich detailing and layered story-telling), war – including [ones of annihilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War%5Fof%5Fannihilation?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which can apparently be fought these days without the use of terrible weapons – is if nothing else the ultimate examination of purpose. It is brutal on people, the land, the cultures, and the planet for much longer after it ends, and it magnifies through these effects and the methods by which they are achieved the moral character of those conducting this violence. Like others I’m sure, I feel completely powerless against and often dispirited by Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza, Russia’s wanton destruction in Ukraine, and the systemic violence the Indian state continues to inflict on its poorest and most marginalised sections. The best tools of opposition available at my disposal are my words, my ideas, my morality, and, if a situation demands it, some spine – and all four good fantasy fiction can inspire in abundance. I remember reading a Roger Ebert review of a film sometime back (can’t remember its name now) in which he said good story-telling can inspire us to become our best versions of ourselves, that even should the film flop on other counts, it will have succeeded if it can do this. These words are applied easily to any form and mode of story-telling, including epic fantasy. *Lord of the Rings* is a tale of good versus evil but it’s also a tale of friendships and their survival through untold hardships, and while some may disagree it *was* good story-telling. In the end, whether or not it succeeded and also setting aside the moralities of the time in which it was written, it strove to inspire goodness. The *Malazan* series strives similarly (present-tense because Erikson is still building out its lore) and, to be fair, does it much better, directing its empathy at almost everyone who appears in the books (excluding – spoiler alert – the [truly vile](https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Forkrul%5FAssail?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). In our present time of seemingly incessant conflict, it helps me look beyond the propaganda both noisy and subtle at the people who are suffering, and with its stories refill senses constantly on the verge of depletion. If we just let it, fantasy can step up where reality has failed us, alerting us to the [infinite possibility](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/a-tribute-to-tolkien/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of worlds within worlds, new and necessary forms of justice, and of course how and where we can begin to cope together. A happy *Lord of the Rings* Day to you. :) Previous editions: [2014](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2016](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/a-happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-to-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2017](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2018](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2019](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2020](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2021](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-4/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2022](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2023](https://gravitysshadow.wordpress.com/2023/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-5/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Note: I chose to ignore sci-fi in this post. I suspect "sci-fi" and "fantasy" are at the end of the day labels invented to make marketing these books easier, but I also stuck to fantasy per se so I could finish writing this post in a finite amount of time. ### Reassurance by electoral bond URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/15/reassurance-by-electoral-bond/ Last updated: 2024-03-15T18:52:00.000Z The electoral bonds release has been reassuring on one count. For some time after the (new) BJP first rose to power in 2014, with a groundswell of support (but arguably also because of the 'first past the post' system) I used to think it represented an ideology that I've been ignorant about, that the INC allowed to take root and overlooked – the way Obama's second term seemingly laid the groundwork for Trump. But with the bonds being released and the [associations we're finding in the data,](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/electoral-bonds-data-a-package/article67953816.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) it's becoming asymptotically more clear that there's no ideology at work here, just as it has on many occasions before. We haven't missed or overlooked anything, at least nothing other than the inner workings of the legerdemain we've found at the ends of every other rainbow drawn by this party. Brutes have taken to power, using the social media and people who wanted to get rich, in order to get rich themselves. Correlation isn't causation but that doesn't mean we're going to ignore the enormous mountains of correlation, especially when read together with the BJP government's practice of surgically withholding exactly those bits of data that establish causative links. I'm also increasingly convinced that any of the other good stuff they've actually managed to do (not unconditionally so, of course) – a.k.a. the foundation of the *bhakt*'s whataboutery-based defence – could have been done by any other party. Because other than that, there's only the desire to continue to occupy the national government for its own vapid sake and the pseudo-ideology that that's okay to do. ### Will 'Surya' launch bombs or satellites? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/14/will-surya-launch-bombs-or-satellites/ Last updated: 2024-03-14T11:32:07.000Z From *Times of India*, [March 14, 2024](https://href.li/?https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/soorya-project-team-for-rocket-to-build-space-station-ready-3rd-launch-pad-at-sriharikota-to-come-up/articleshow/108472896.cms&ref=slightlyacidic.com): > ISRO chairman S. Somanath confirmed to TOI in an exclusive interview that the NGLV project, internally named “SOORYA”, will be headed by (Project Director/PD) S. Sivakumar, currrently the programme director (space transportation systems) at VSSC… ISRO and DRDO really need to systematise their naming scheme here. The next iteration of ‘Agni’ ballistic missiles DRDO is working on has widely been called ‘Surya’. For ISRO to follow by calling its newfangled launch vehicle ‘Soorya’ – even if internally – complicates communications on this topic (not that it’s otherwise great). ‘Soorya’ and ‘Surya’ may have different spellings but they refer to the same Sanskrit word and meaning (‘Sun’). The typical aloofness of Indians vis-a-vis transliterating words between English and Indian languages will inevitably feed confusion over the technology to which a given instance of ‘Surya’ refers. Another source of confusion is the existing overlap between the civilian and the military applications of suborbital and orbital flight technologies in India. This has its pros and cons and I’m not judging that now, but here we have a next-generation launch vehicle being called ‘Soorya’ and a next-generation missile being called ‘Surya’. Not helping. Others [have noticed](https://href.li/?https://www.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/1b16c6t/rlv%5Fnamed%5Fas%5Fpushpak/&ref=slightlyacidic.com) this issue with other projects ISRO is working on and have suggested the organisation stick to its original, *de facto* naming scheming – e.g. one where the name of a next-generation launch vehicle is Next-generation Launch Vehicle. It’s boring, yes, but there will be no confusion. ### The missile test before the polls URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/12/the-missile-test-before-the-polls/ Last updated: 2024-03-12T09:27:19.000Z On March 27, 2019, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted 'Mission Shakti': India's [first anti-satellite](https://thewire.in/space/mission-shakti-india-likely-destroyed-microsat-r-satellite-in-first-asat-test?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (ASAT) missile test. After the event, the national broadcaster broadcast an hour-long speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since the Election Commission's restrictions on poll candidates' screen time was in effect ahead of the Lok Sabha polls that year, some of us surmised the test had been timed to allow Modi a reason to get on TV without explicitly violating the rules. Yesterday, on March 11, the DRDO [conducted a test](https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1767159762108465538?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of its new Agni 5 missile in its MIRV – short for 'multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles' – configuration, a powerful defence technology that allows a single suborbital missile to deliver multiple warheads (possibly nuclear) to strike different targets. This time, however, the Commission's restrictions are not yet in effect nor has Modi tried to deliver a speech ostensibly about the test, although he has been [in Pokhran today](https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/pm-modi-witnesses-exercise-of-bharat-shakti-in-pokhran-along-with-delegates-from-30-countries/ar-BB1jKcMM?ref=slightlyacidic.com) talking about 'Bharat Shakti', which I believe is the name of India's programme for self-sufficiency in defence. Surely this is some kind of pre-election muscle-flexing bluster? After the first Agni V test in April 2012, DRDO's then chief controller of missiles Avinash Chander told [*Business Standard*](https://web.archive.org/web/20120424154701/http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/no-intention-to-cap-missile-plan/472153/): "The primary modules of MIRV are in an advanced stage of development. Realisation and integration of them into a weapon is just a question of threat perceptions and the need as it arises." This 'need' seems to be signalling to both *agam* and *puram* actors just before the national elections. It holds for the ASAT in March 2019 as well, when there was reason to believe India was ready with ASAT capability during Manmohan Singh's tenure as prime minister, if not earlier. In the broader view, China tested both MIRV and ASAT missiles before India, most recently in 2017 (DF-41 missile) and in 2007, respectively, notwithstanding some claims in 2008 that it was modifying its submarine-launched JL-2 MIRV to have ASAT capabilities as well. The post-test bluster by BJP leaders on both occasions was [directed at China](https://twitter.com/KirenRijiju/status/1767167344529609168?ref=slightlyacidic.com). What will India test come March 2029, I wonder. ### Farce and friction over an Indian astronaut URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/10/farce-and-friction-over-an-indian-astronaut/ Last updated: 2024-03-10T11:00:37.000Z > When we met Mr \[Morarji\] Desai, he was totally relaxed even after the long journey from Delhi. Squatting on a carpet in the Kremlin and spinning his favourite charka, he received us very gracefully and congratulated us on the impressive achievement \[the launch of Bhaskara-I on June 7, 1979\]. He then proceeded to express his own view against sending an Indian astronaut on a Soviet mission saying, “How will it help the country if an Indian astronaut goes up into space and comes down?” He was extremely pleased to note that our views coincided with his own and jokingly told Prof. Dhawan, “Why don’t you convince Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, our foreign minister sitting in the next room, who is keen on sending an Indian into space?” Even more interesting was that he turned to me saying, “This is in line with what Vikram believed, isn’t it?” *– UR Rao,* India’s Rise as a Space Power *(2014)* But then times did change after Desai’s term ended and Indira Gandhi, who was more enthusiastic about Leonid Brezhnev’s offer to fly an Indian astronaut on a Soviet mission, assumed power in 1980\. Thus, Rakesh Sharma’s flight happened in 1984 – although not without the Indian bureaucracy raising its ridiculous head… > When H.J. Bhabha wrote the extraordinary one-page constitution of the Atomic Energy Commission, which was later adopted by the Department of Space, he had specifically invested the commission with appropriate powers to avoid ‘the needlessly inelastic bureaucratic rules of the Government’. About a year prior to thr actual flight of Sq Ldr Rakesh Sharma, who was finally selected as the prime candidate for the joined manned mission with Mr \[Ravish\] Malhotra being designated as the standby, Ministry of Defence came up with two trivial bureaucratic objections. The first was whether both of these officers who were undergoing training on ground at the Star City were eligible to receive a flying allowance of Rs 500 a month. The second was whether the announced reward of a modest amount of Rs 25,000 should be given to both the candidates or restricted only to the astronaut who finally goes to space. Mr R Venkataraman, who was the then Minister of Defence and who later became the President of India, invited Prof. Dhawan and me to discuss the above two issues. Both Prof. Dhawan and myself told the defence minister that it is regrettable that silly suggestions such as stopping the flying allowance and not extending the honorarium to both the chosen candidates were brought up for discussion at the highest level. Fortunately, Mr Venkataraman after listening to our righteous indignation not only agreed with our view but also pulled up the bureaucracy for bringing up such outrageous issues, resulting in both the chosen astronaut candidates continuing to receive the flying allowance and becoming eligible for receiving the honorarium. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of course, the tables have turned somewhat, with the enthusiastic support of his office for the ambitious Gaganyaan mission allowing work to proceed as smoothly as possible. Bhabha’s and Sarabhai’s visions for the Indian space programme fundamentally included ease access to the upper echelons of decision-making in the nascent new national government, with avid reciprocation by the prime ministers of their time (especially Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi). But as these barriers no longer exist for the space programme and the national government is using the programme as a way to project its own power and vision, it is time to [insert some ‘friction’](https://href.li/?https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/burden-of-power-indias-astronauts-and-the-indian-space-policy/article67892163.ece&ref=slightlyacidic.com) between ISRO and the government, more so since its missions are now becoming more sophisticated and expensive, and nudge it to the levels of accountability expected of other public-sector institutions. ### To the moon – or the stock market? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/06/to-the-moon-or-the-stock-market/ Last updated: 2024-03-06T03:20:50.000Z Now this is quite upsetting. I learn from Jatan Mehta’s [Moon Monday #166](https://href.li/?https://jatan.space/moon-monday-issue-166/&ref=slightlyacidic.com) that Intuitive Machines – the maker of the Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the moon on February 22 – may have lied about the circumstances of the landing attempt in order to protect its market value, before ‘correcting’ itself later. Excerpt: > Previously, the publicly traded company prematurely stated post-landing that Odysseus is “upright”, only to correct it in a media briefing timed to the closing of the stock market an entire day later. Now it turns out even the NASA LiDAR onboard … actually did not assist Odysseus’ landing in the last 15 kilometers of descent due to a delay in processing its data.…Are we supposed to believe that descent telemetry on Mission Control screens … never made it clear to the company and NASA that the LiDAR readings weren’t coming through to the lander’s navigation system? Or that it wasn’t clear in the following few days either?…A \[NASA\] payload called SCLPSS was flown on Odysseus to specifically study the lander’s engine plume effects on lunar soil during the final descent phase. NASA says the payload did not do said imaging. And yet the agency states in the same release that “the bottom line is every NASA instrument has met some level of their objectives.” A subsequent report by Eric Berger \[of *Ars Technica*\] reads: “As of Wednesday \[February 28\], NASA had been able to download about 50MB of data. The baseline for success was a single bit of data.” Was this criteria for success made clear and public pre-launch? NASA has rightly defined the ideal standard for communications over the years by placing what data its probes collect as soon as possible in the public domain. (This responsibility even led to some tension in the book and the film *The Martian*.) So it’s really disappointing, and frankly a little infuriating, to see this bad-faith effort from Intuitive Machines. Its Odysseus mission was funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme and it carried six NASA instruments (including SCLPSS) to the moon. Even if Intuitive Machines isn’t implicitly required to follow NASA’s communications policies, NASA needs to ensure the companies it contracts to fly its payloads – to ease its own path to the moon in future – do. As Jatan also pointed out, the onus to communicate lies with NASA: CLPS is publicly funded and without it missions like Odysseus wouldn’t happen. We need explicit policies to streamline these companies’ communications expectations to follow NASA’s rather than their share prices. It’s also a poor look for NASA to celebrate Odysseus’s success the way it did (was it to protect Intuitive Machines again?). CLPS is a billion-dollar programme to ferry NASA payloads to the moon. How do you call the mission a “success” if the payloads aren’t collecting data? We don’t want tax money to disappear into black holes like this that release no or, worse, misleading information. ### When metastable systems fail to become stable… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/05/metastable-system-kramers-model-protein-folding/ Last updated: 2024-03-05T09:11:50.000Z 'Metastable systems' is a technical term for something you've definitely experienced in your daily life, as much as scientists often encounter it when studying subatomic particles. Say you're sitting on a chair and are getting comfortable. You realise you'd be even more comfortable on a bean bag but you don't mind staying in the chair. You're too lazy to get up. In this scenario, the you-chair system is metastable: while you're stable (because you have low energy), you're not as stable as you can be (you can have even less energy), but you don't have enough energy to move from one state to the other. The same thing happens to proteins inside your body. Proteins are really folded-up when they're made and sometimes they need to unfold to work properly, like get inside a cell. Its folded form is metastable and it needs to unfold to attain a stable state, which happens by thermal fluctuations (random deviations from its folded form driven by temperature changes). In fact, based on measurements of the Higgs boson (which gives 'mass' to many subatomic particles) and the top quark (the heaviest known subatomic particle), physicists currently believe our universe itself may be in a metastable state. It has some low level of energy but could have even less, and someday it may move to this state and doom us all. Scientists have used the behaviour of metastable systems to explain a variety of phenomena in many fields, including reaction chemistry, radioactivity, the integrity of large metallic structures (like ships and statues), and glitches in semiconductor manufacturing. They've often modeled these phenomena using Arrhenius's law, which states that the likelihood a system can be found near the barrier separating the high-energy and low-energy states and how often the system tries to become metastable can together model the dynamics of the metastable system. To explore this further, researchers from the University of Alberta in Canada tried something clever in a new study: they looked at how much a metastable system tries to escape to a more stable state before it 'gives up'. This is interesting because, unlike you in the chair or the universe, metastable-to-stable transitions matter greatly in protein-folding. Misfolded proteins are responsible for many terrible diseases and figuring out how a protein might have got that way – in the course of its attempted transition – may help set it right. "The properties of unsuccessful crossing attempts remain largely unknown," the researchers wrote in their paper, "even though they can contain information about regions of the barrier not explored during successful crossing events." The paper was published in the journal [*Physical Review X*](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.011017?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 14. To access the information contained in unsuccessful crossing events, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, they confined two small beads in a pair of optical traps next to each other and tracked how often the beads crossed over from one trap to the other. (The system could be made metastable by increasing the energy in one trap.) Each bead had thermal fluctuations. A few attempts to cross over succeeded but more often the beads would wander into the region between the two traps, where the attractive potential exerted by the traps overlapped, linger there for a few microseconds, and fall back into their traps. By collecting data about the bead, the researchers found they could model its progress in the area of overlapping potential as Brownian motion (the seemingly random motion of microscopic particles in a fluid as a result of constantly colliding with other particles in the fluid). In the second experiment, the team attached beads on to the two ends of a DNA molecule (using 'handles' made of a polymer) and confined the beads in adjacent optical traps. A crossover happened if the DNA molecule folded up. In this case, the distance between its ends, called the DNA extension, would decrease and the beads would move a little bit as a result. In the first experiment, the two beads each moved a little bit randomly and eventually did or didn't get to the other side, and the researchers could understand the system just by keeping track of the distance between the beads. The second experiment is more complex: the distance between the beads and the DNA extension are both affected by thermal fluctuations of the beads, of the atoms and molecules in the polymer handles, and of the large number of atoms and molecules in the DNA. To really understand this system, then, the researchers would have to track all of these movements in a large, sophisticated apparatus with many knobs and controls – or, fortunately for them, use the work of Dutch physicist Hendrik Anthony Kramers. In 1940, Kramers postulated that it's possible there is a distance between two objects in a metastable system such that the system's dynamics can be modelled as Brownian motion along the direction of that distance, plus the effects of frictional forces and some noise. The trick lies in choosing this distance correctly. In their second experiment, the researchers found this distance to be the DNA extension. They recorded the DNA's failed attempts to fold (crossover) and the points in different attempts at which it gave up trying to fold and fell back. They also calculated the corresponding solutions according to the Kramers model. When they compared the two results, they reported a match to within a small amount of uncertainty. There had been some doubt as to whether the Kramers model could apply in systems that evolve rapidly, in the order of microseconds, and the match proved that it could. More importantly, the team also found the frequency with which the metstable system tried to become stable in the Arrhenius model couldn't fully explain the dynamics, and that its role in the model would have to be reinterpreted through more experiments. Dmitrii Makarov, of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in [*Physics* magazine](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/25?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that some of these experiments could combine "fluorescence experiments with force spectroscopy \[to\] provide a two-dimensional rather than one-dimensional picture of the dynamics". The study also opens the door to applications that involve metastable systems transitioning to stable ones. Consider molecular machines: assemblies of molecules that use mechanical forces to perform biological tasks. Last year, I reported the discovery of a particularly interesting kind of molecular machine [for *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/ncbs-scientists-new-molecular-motor-gtp-hydrolysis/article66807597.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Excerpt: > In a 2016 paper, researchers from Australia and Germany reported that when an enzyme called Rab5 binds to a long protein called EEA1, the protein loses its taut and rigid shape and becomes floppy. This ‘collapse’ pulls two membranes inside a cell closer to each other. > > In the new study, researchers have reported that EEA1 regains its rigid shape in another mechanism so that it can become floppy again to pull the membranes closer, creating a new kind of two-part molecular motor. The researchers found that when it's floppy, EEA1 can take one of several shapes, but when it becomes stiff, it has only one shape. Because the floppy state also has more entropy, they interpreted it mean it is also more "entropically favoured", and when the protein goes from stiff to floppy, it exerts can "entropic force" on two membranes, which are pulled closer together. Researchers can use the new study's findings and the Kramers model to understand when, how, and why such molecular machines fail, and how their function can be restored. ### Government by Supreme Court URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/03/the-separation-of-power-grabs/ Last updated: 2024-03-03T09:17:10.000Z On February 27, a bench of the Supreme Court upbraided Patanjali Ayurved and its chairman Acharya Balkrishna for continuing to disparage systems of medicine other than Ayurveda (technically, what it calls Ayurveda) and claiming its products offer “permanent relief” from “blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, asthma and obesity” in its advertisements, despite having assured the court in November 2023 that it won’t do so. The Indian Medical Association had filed the case in August 2022 alleging that Patanjali Ayurved had flouted the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 and its Rules. It’s a straightforward case with an understandable outcome, but it isn’t unsurprising. That Patanjali Ayurved so openly violated the Act and the Rules – but also good sense, as Pushpa Mitra Bhargava pointed out in an [excoriating essay](https://science.thewire.in/science/baba-ramdevs-newspaper-ads-go-against-the-grain-of-sound-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2016 – forced the IMA to approach the court, and for some time now the courts have been the last democratic institutions in India interested in upholding the law (and even then it’s iffy). The ‘backstop’ the courts have offered against advertisements in particular running away with bullshit has been particularly useful because the laws are not so much outdated as unable to respond to the new ways in which advertisers are twisting words, taking advantage of grey areas, and, generally, “telling a lie in a way that it appears to be the truth,” in Bhargava’s words. More importantly, advertisement regulation in India is weak. As Kaushik Moitra and Shreya Sircar [wrote in 2022](https://thewire.in/business/indian-advertisers-could-avoid-costly-embarrassments-by-adhering-to-the-asci-code?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (emphasis added): > Advertisers must address complaints regarding deviations from the ASCI Code. If such complaints are not remedied, ASCI may take coercive steps to regulate the (allegedly) offending advertisement. Illustratively, ASCI may recommend that broadcasters not air the offending advertisement and may also publish instances of non-compliance by advertisers on its website. ASCI may also report infractions to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. > > Additionally, – and uniquely for a self-regulatory organisation in India – ASCI has been recognised as a self-regulator under the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021\. ASCI promulgations are advisory and can neither supplant nor supersede the law. Moreover, **ASCI cannot compel compliance**. However, any action brought against an advertiser for breach of ASCI promulgations will proceed on the basis that ASCIs position has statutory endorsement. It’s ultimately up to some government agency to take action and to advertisers to check themselves. In 2010, ASCI [had flagged](https://thewire.in/government/asci-flagged-50-ad-campaigns-by-ayurvedic-homeopathic-drug-makers-offering-covid-19-cure-in-april?ref=slightlyacidic.com) more than “50 campaigns by ayurvedic and homeopathic drug makers offering a cure for COVID-19 in April alone” to the government. The charge was grounded not in the 1954 Act but in a Ministry of AYUSH order earlier that month prohibiting the advertisement of AYUSH-related claims about curing COVID-19. In fact, between April 2014 and July 2024, a portal of the Department of Consumer Affairs said it had logged more than 1,400 misleading advertisements pertaining to AYUSH products and services. Similarly, the Pharmacovigilance Centres for Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Homeopathy Drugs reported 18,812 “objectionable advertisements” between 2018 and 2021\. In 2022, the ASCI also reported 1,229 misleading AYUSH-related advertisements between 2017 and 2019\. Yet the same ministry is unconcerned when Patanjali Ayurved offers unsubstantiated (possibly intentionally ambiguous) “permanent relief” from a variety of conditions. In fact, “unconcerned” is inaccurate. On February 19, 2021, the then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan endorsed a ‘drug’ developed by Patanjali Ayurved, called Coronil, and which the minister, Balkrishna (the chairman), and Baba Ramdev claimed was the “first evidence-based medicine for coronavirus”. It wasn’t; it was an untested quack-remedy backed by spurious claims that the WHO had certified it. Such circumstances force those who are concerned about the effects of these advertisements to approach the courts for relief, and it is heartening that the courts among all institutions retain some sense. Yet this is also a tragedy: if the regulations that the government has put in place are followed and enforced properly by regulatory agencies, people wouldn’t have to approach courts for every remedy. Courts are already burdened with a large number of cases; equally, judges – while being equipped to examine the propriety of processes and adherence to the law and Constitutional principles – are not subject experts. In the Patanjali Ayurved case, of course, the company was advancing clearly pseudoscientific claims backed by non-existent data, and its defence was easy to dismiss. What would happen when, say, the government approves a poorly tested vaccine with a known risk of injury in the event of a self-determined emergency; a civil society group files a petition asking for the approval to be rolled back; and the government contends that the group is spreading vaccine hesitancy? The court shouldn’t be expected to be able to examine the results of clinical trials, yet it may have to. In fact, contemporary environmental governance offers a real example of such a problem in action. > Unlike a specialised expert tribunal, Constitutional courts don’t possess the necessary skill and expertise to examine the technical and scientific correctness of any project. Judges are trained to examine and adjudicate on the legality and propriety of the decision-making process. Environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta [wrote this in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/the-problem-of-the-supreme-court-as-an-approving-authority/article66449299.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) following the Joshimath disaster, when the Union government halted work on the Helang-Marwari bypass. This work had received a green signal from the Supreme Court in 2022 to proceed, raising “questions about the validity of the apex court’s decision” (not that the Union government was opposed to the project). The separation of powers is a division of labour, rendered more critical than other such divisions by the need to keep the greatest powers of the land in check. Yet it has often been flouted, such as the Supreme Court’s decision to set up the Central Empowered Committee, which stands in between the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife and the Union Cabinet when approvals for non-forest use of sanctuaries and national parks are at stake. If this committee disagrees with a decision of the Standing Committee, the committee can forward it to the Supreme Court with its own opinion for the apex court to take the final call – a clear violation of the separation of powers. However, not everyone would have thought so at the time many such measures were instituted. The environment ministry created the committee in 2002 following a Supreme Court direction in *T.N. Godavarman*, “for the purposes of monitoring and ensuring compliance of the orders of the … Supreme Court covering the subject matter of environment, forest and wildlife, and related issues arising out of the said orders and to suggest measures and recommendations generally to the State, as well as Central Government, for more effective implementation of the \[Environment (Protection)\] Act and other orders of the Court” ([source](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5WKL%5F0XEAAcIhM?format=jpg&name=large&ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Since then, however, and in keeping with Dutta’s assessment, the Supreme Court has adjudicated on the “technical and scientific correct” of various projects. That the environment ministry has parallelly and persistently weakened safeguards to protect the country’s natural resources to favour ‘ease of business’ has only allowed the court to intervene further. But at the same time, because the politically instituted mechanisms to protect the lives and livelihoods of people and the well-being of flora and fauna living near sites of resource extraction exist more and more only in theory, researchers, activists, and others have also welcomed the court’s interventions to nix deleterious project proposals. (In September 2023, in fact, the environment minister replaced the Supreme Court’s committee with a new one of the same name, populated fully with members that report to the ministry.) Simplistically, those in charge are making bad decisions and those not supposed to be in charge are making good decisions. ### Why not increase ISRO's budget? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/02/why-not-increase-isro-budget/ Last updated: 2024-03-02T21:33:00.000Z This post is in response to a [question on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/1b45o8v/why%5Fdoesnt%5Findia%5Fincrease%5Fits%5Fspace%5Fbudget/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about why the Indian government won’t increase ISRO’s space budget. There’s a good analogy in India’s research budget. As a share of the GDP, the national expenditure on R&D has [fallen significantly](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/rd-spend-golden-intervention-or-smoke-and-mirrors/article67825742.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) since 1996, to the current value of around 0.65%. The world’s other ‘science superpowers’ – including the US, China, Germany, and South Korea – spend at least 2% of their GDP on R&D. Many experts have also said publicly that earmarking this fraction of the GDP for R&D may be a prerequisite for India’s desire to become an economically developed national by 2047\. But this is one half of the story. The other half is that the Ministry of Science & Technology [has consistently underspent](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/sustainable-funding-science-power-ambition-india/article67884760.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the amount the Ministry of Finance has been allocating it. One established reason for underspending is that there are too few avenues for uptake, meaning the ministry needs to setup those opportunities as well. In 2018, the then principal scientific advisor to the government, K. VijayRaghavan, had articulated something similar in [an interview](https://web.archive.org/web/20180920095531/https://southword.thestate.news/interviews/2018/04/11/expanding-the-footprint-of-science-on-psas-agenda) – two days ahead of India’s ‘March for Science’, an event that philosopher Sundar Sarukkai had [criticised earlier](https://thewire.in/science/sundar-sarukkai-march-for-science-superstition-lynching?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for pushing the notion that more funding for science (participants wanted the government to spend 3% of the GDP on R&D) could halt the spread of pseudoscientific ideas in society. It’s the same with ISRO. While there’s a reasonable case to be made to increase spending on space-related activities, we also need the right industries and research opportunities to exist and which demand that money. It’s possible to contend that this is really a chicken-and-egg problem and that by increasing spending, institutions and activities can, say, become more efficient and allow members of the extant workforce to ‘look’ for new opportunities to begin with. But the cycle needs to be broken somewhere, and as things stand, it’s not unreasonable for funds to be released as and when the right opportunities arise. ISRO’s lack of effective PR or media outreach offers a good illustration: many observers and commentators have pointed at NASA’s higher budget (in absolute numbers) and then at its admirable outreach policies and programme as if to say the two are related. However, throwing more money at ISRO and asking it to set up an outreach unit will still only produce a less-than-mediocre effort because we’ll be attempting to improve outreach without enhancing the culture in which the need for such outreach is rooted. A similar argument goes for claims about ISRO employees being ‘underpaid’: who decides their salaries and why are they what they are? I doubt the salaries haven’t been increased for want of funds – speaking to a recurring motif in India’s research administration. Setting aside the concerns about underspending and utilisation efficiency, India’s spending on R&D is low [not because](https://peregrination.net/2018/05/02/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the government doesn’t have the money. It certainly does, and in the last decade alone has repeatedly allocated very large sums for certain technologically intensive enterprises (and [puff projects](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/what-does-the-statue-of-unity-have-that-scientists-and-research-dont?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to inflate the ruling party’s reputation) when they present the right, [even if short-sighted](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/rd-spend-golden-intervention-or-smoke-and-mirrors/article67825742.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), appeal. As publicly funded R&D institutions go, ISRO is among the most efficiently organised and run in India, even if it isn’t perfect. This backdrop merits examining the cases to increase its capital expenses (for missions, etc.) and revenue expenses (for salaries, etc.) separately. In this post I’m skipping the latter. The practice of funding mission proposals on a case-by-case basis rather than hiking overall allocation makes more sense because such a thing would force ISRO, and the Department of Space (DoS) ecosystem more broadly, into a culture of pitching ideas to the government and awaiting deliberation and approval. In fact, currently, the DoS is overseen by the prime minister and missions have to be approved by the Union Cabinet, which is also an iffy setup. If this individual and/or their party puts politics before country, we are liable to have politically advantageous missions funded even when they lack proportionate scientific and/or societal value. Instead, there needs to be an expert committee in between ISRO and the Cabinet whose members vote on proposals before forwarding the winning ones to the Cabinet. This committee needs to be beyond the DoS's remit as well as be empowered to resist political capture. Such a setup is the way to go now that ISRO is starting on very expensive and sophisticated missions like human spaceflight, space stations, reusable launch vehicles, and lunar sample-return. *(\* In a previous version of this post, I also suspected the Indian and the US governments have allocated comparable fractions of their GDP for their respective space departments. I subsequently* [*stood corrected*](https://www.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/1b45o8v/comment/ksz1jg7/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.)* ### A Q&A about philosophy in journalism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/03/02/a-qa-about-philosophy-in-journalism/ Last updated: 2024-03-02T21:25:00.000Z *Earlier this year, Varun Bhatta, assistant professor of philosophy at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, reached out to ask me some questions for something he was writing about the representation of philosophical ideas in journalism. He interviewed others as well and subsequently wrote and published* [*his article*](https://thewire.in/media/why-journalists-do-not-use-philosophy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *with* The Wire *on March 2, 2024.* *I’m pasting the conversation the two of us had in full below, with Varun’s permission. Varun also wrote the introductory note, as a preface to the questions. His questions are in bold; my responses are in normal type.* ## Preface Newspaper journalists, while writing on a topic, use theories and ideas from history, sociology, economics, sciences and other disciplines to establish the relevance of the topic and analyse the pertinent questions. However, rarely do they draw from philosophical theories that are equally relevant to the topic. Why is it that, for instance, we do not see social/moral/political philosophers’ views also being presented in articles on social topics? Similarly, while presenting a scientific topic, it is not common to find insights from the philosophy of science. Why is that philosophy glaringly absent in newspaper journalism that otherwise seamlessly synthesises views from numerous domains while presenting on a topic? The non-engagement with philosophy is a characteristic of journalism across the world. There have been a few initiatives – both from journalists and philosophers – to bridge this gap in the Global North. One of the well-known projects in this regard was the column [The Stone at the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-stone?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Irish Times still runs a philosophy column [Unthinkable](https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/unthinkable/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). There have been very few journalists who have expressed their fruitful engagement with philosophy. (See [here](https://blog.apaonline.org/2017/01/31/writing-popular-philosophy-interview-with-quartzs-olivia-goldhill/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://dailynous.com/2021/03/08/how-should-philosophers-talk-to-journalists/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#comment-422679).) Also, the new kind of journalism brought by Aeon and The Conversation has provided the much-required niche space for philosophy. The situation in India, however, is abysmal. Indeed, this is largely due to the poor state of philosophy in India and this is not a new point. However, what is not known is the story from the other side. What is Indian journalists’ perception of philosophy and why is that they do not use philosophy? Regarding this, I want to interview a few print/online newspaper journalists and editors. I am also planning to converse with a few journalism faculty as the non-engagement with philosophy might be a symptom of the journalism curriculum that is largely taught in India. Understanding the perspectives of journalists, I think, is the first step towards remedying the gap in the Indian context. This can open up the conversation between journalists and philosophers to create meaningful journalism projects to make philosophy relevant to the Indian public. ## Q&A **1\. Why do you think journalists do not draw from philosophical theories/ideas while analysing a topic and writing articles? I am asking this because online/print newspaper journalists draw from theories/ideas of other disciplines (social sciences, history, sciences) in spite of these being nuanced and complex (for both writers and readers).** It depends what exactly you mean by ‘philosophy’ because from where I’m sitting I disagree with the assertion in your question that Indian journalists don’t use philosophical ideas or theories in their work. They use it both directly and indirectly. They use it directly when making decisions about what kind of events, stories, and phenomena they’d rather cover and why. When I say I’m a journalist biased towards principles encoded in the Indian Constitution, there’s a philosophy of journalism at work there. I’m mindful of the philosophical position of falsifiability when I conclude there’s no point trying to fact-check or rebut a claim like “Sanskrit is a good language for AI”. Journalists use philosophy indirectly when drawing on all those other fields, which have been informed and honed by philosophical deliberations unique to them. For example, a philosophy of history determines how we narrativise the decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation in addition to archaeological, genetic, and climatological data. If your question is why journalists don’t write articles containing ideas from philosophy and the views of philosophers, there are two answers. First, all journalism needs to be in the public interest, and I’ve no idea a) what a philosophy in the public interest sounds like, which is because I don’t know what constitutes philosophy news, that could lend itself to news reports, news analyses, and news features. Is there a community, collective or organisation of philosophers in India that’s trying to reach out to more people? Where can I engage with an articulation of what I’m missing out on when I skip a comment from a philosopher for a news article? On a related note, many of us in journalism have studied journalism, which is its own field – just like philosophy – with its own tools to develop ways to frame the world, to make sense of it. I have no idea where philosophy is situated here, if at all. b) Even if I was familiar with what philosophers are experts on, I’d imagine philosophy as a field of study faces the same resistance to being represented in the news as exotic fields (from the PoV of the publics) like high-energy physics or mathematics. When I’m trying to write on the latter, I’m banking on some sort of numerical literacy on the readers’ part. It’s impossible to explain the Langlands programme to someone who doesn’t know (or care) what functions or sets are. I haven’t had the chance to consider the level of philosophical literacy in India but I don’t think it’s very good. So broaching that kind of thinking and reasoning in an article – especially in a news article – requires the author to lay the groundwork first, which is precarious. The more words there are, the more careful you need to be about holding a reader’s attention. There also need to be concrete developments and they need to be in the public interest, and unless a writer and/or an editor comes along who can extract these nuggets from a paper or in conversation with an expert – and in interesting ways – it’s going to have no engagement. Worse, it’s going to impose a disproportionately high opportunity cost on news-producers’ time and labour by expecting them to be able to separate philosophical wheat from chaff. I believe this goes for both whole articles about philosophy and articles that include philosophical considerations in the mix. *The Hindu* is trying to step around this ‘concrete developments’ requirement with two daily pages called ‘Text & Context’ and one online-only (for now) science page every weekday. These are both fairly recent developments, which is to say securing such space in a newspaper or any news-focused outlet is difficult and needs the underlying organisation to be ‘healthy’ as well as a sound editorial justification of its own. We also need to be clear there are differences between newspapers and magazines, their sizes, remits, and frequencies of publication. Publications that take it slower and with more pages than a newspaper – or, more generally, articles that are composed over a longer time (much longer than news reports, of course) and are also lengthier (more than a few hundred words at least) are also likelier to have the time and the room to include philosophical deliberations. This is the sort of room we need (in space and time) to lay the groundwork first. Otherwise, such ideas just vanish under the unforgiving demands of the inverted pyramid. Now the second answer: If I have to pay a writer Rs 5,000 to write a 1,000-word article about some idea or event that’s of interest in philosophical circles, and I expect (based on historical data) that 10,000 people will engage sincerely with the article, I need each one of those people to be able to readily contribute 50 paise to the publication for me to break even – and this is hard. The size of the engaged audience will actually be more like 1,000, requiring each one of those people to contribute Rs 5\. And this is extraordinarily difficult given the prevailing ratios of the sizes of the overall audience, the engaged audience, and the paying audience. Similarly, if I add another page in the newspaper so I can accommodate more philosophy-centred material and charge readers Re 1 extra to pay for it (assuming here that advertisers won’t be interested in advertising on this page), will I have enough new readers to offset those who will stop buying the paper because of the higher cover price? I doubt it. **2\. I think the previous question needs to be invoked at the editorial level as well. Given that editors do request the writers to make changes (like including some data on the topic or getting a comment from a particular expert), the absence of philosophy in articles might largely be due to editorial decisions and policies: what is considered as “pertinent”, “readable”, “good” etc. For instance, one of the unsaid editorial policies seems to be that philosophical discussions are best suited for op-ed columns. This kind of presumption has resulted in the ghettoisation of philosophy to certain zones in newspaper journalism.** **2a. As an editor, what are your thoughts on the points? What might be the actual, pragmatic challenges journalism faces in this context?** **2b. Since editors play an equally important role in “setting the agenda” and changing the reading styles of the public, what might be the ways to overcome these challenges? How to break the wall around philosophy in journalism, so that it can be accommodated/incorporated in mainstream journalism?** Imagine the industry of journalism to be like a wave propagating through a medium. Let’s divide this wave into two parts: the wavefront and the wake. Newsrooms operating at the wavefront are distinguished by the resources to experiment and innovate, take risks, and pay more than competitively for the best exponents of particular skills in the market. Newsrooms in the wake are just about staying profitable (or even breaking even), innovating in incremental fashion, avoiding risks, and trying to pay competitively. Of course neither group is monolithic – most sufficiently large news organisations have some departments that are doing well and some that are fighting to stay alive – but this is a simplification to illustrate a point. I believe your questions are about newsrooms in the wake; they’re definitely more interesting in this context. With this in mind: 2a) Newsrooms need to make money to pay their journalists without compromising editorial independence and editorial standards. This is the single largest challenge right now. In the face of this challenge, especially since the rise of news aggregators and social media platforms as sites of news consumption, so many publications have shut shop, downsized or relinquished independence, or some combination of all three. Once a newsroom’s finances are sufficiently in the green and they can graduate from the wake to the wavefront, pertinence, readability, etc. can and do become the first questions an editor asks. Of course, I may not be saying any of this if the times weren’t what they are. 2b) I’m not sure there’s a wall around journalism that blocks philosophy. In fact journalists don’t have the freedom to choose (or decline, for that matter) what they consider to be ‘news’. But the flip side of this is no particular enterprise can be said to be entitled to a journalist’s attention. The reason this is so is because of how public interest is constructed. For example, there’s a contest – very simply speaking – these days between a journalism that holds we’re doing the country a disservice by turning our heads away from everything that’s going wrong and another that’s particular about pointing its head in the opposite direction. Another example of a similar contest is centred on whether journalists should make plain their biases – because everyone is biased in some way – or if they should cover the news without losing (a reasonable) equipoise. In these or any other scenarios, whatever constitutes the public interest is built jointly by journalists and the consumers of the knowledge they produce, and will vary from one publication to the next. *The Hindu*, *The Wire*, and *The New York Times* have different covenants with their readers about what public interest looks like, or ought to look like. The construction of the public interest is a shared and complicated enterprise that takes time. As a result, most journalism, in the present era at least, follows some publics; journalism doesn’t lead them. This also means – taking all of these business, economic, and social forces together – that when people aren’t interested in philosophy-related matters, there’s not much an editor (in a newsroom-in-the-wake) can do to change that. **3\. I need your comment on another editorial decision about the op-ed columns that have a specific implication for the Indian context. One of the ways academic journalism scales up the dissemination is by publishing the articles with Creative Commons licence. For instance, *The Conversation* and *Aeon* are using this method. The idea seems to be working very well. Create a niche space for academic journalism that usually does not have space in mainstream journalism and make up for the readership through free or paid syndication. This approach seems to be working well, and has provided a good working model.** **However, in an uneven world, this does not favour everyone equally. Given its international scale/level/reach, this works well for the Global North academicians who have access to these platforms. Indian scholars do not have easy access to *Aeon* or *The Conversation*. And Indian online platforms have easy access to quality articles without having to deal with Indian scholars.** **These issues are pertinent for most of the academicians in India. But I want to articulate the problem from the perspective of philosophy. This method of republishing further widens the gap between philosophers and journalism in India. This way of operating does not provide enough motivation for Indian newspaper editors to work with Indian scholars. In spite of publishing philosophy articles, Indian editors do not seem to be interested/invested in working/collaborating with Indian philosophers and commissioning articles. (Republishing international articles has a further implication: it deepens the imbalance between Western and Eastern philosophical systems.)** **Would like to know your comments/thoughts on the above note.** I’m uncomfortable with providing a general comment. Please let me know if you have specific questions. **Free/paid syndication option of articles in international platforms indeed provides straightforward access to quality content for Indian platforms. And given the restriction of resources like time and finances, and largely the dearth of good Indian academicians who can write for the public, it is understandable what the Indian platforms are doing. Having said that, do you agree that there are implications of this shortcut approach? The first implication is about the politics of knowledge and representation, whose views are represented, etc. The second implication is the perpetuation of Indian journalism’s impatience to work with local scholars. If it does not invest and work with, say Indian philosophers, even for op-eds, the problem persists.** I agree wholeheartedly with the first implication. To republish from publications in the US, Europe and the UK that syndicate their articles on a Creative Commons licence is effectively to represent the views of the scholars quoted in those articles – mostly from Global North countries – instead of the views of others, especially those from India (from the PoV of Indian newsrooms and readers). However, it’s important to ask whether this really imposes the sort of opportunity cost that prevents Indian journalists from still trying to work with and represent the views of Indian scholars in other articles. My answer is ‘no’ simply because of the difference in the amount of effort expended in republishing an article and reporting on a scholar’s work, views, etc. Put another way, it takes me a few minutes to identify an article on, say, *The Conversation* that will work ‘well’ on my site and a few more minutes to republish it. Doing so won’t subtract from the responsibilities of or resources available to a reporter on my team. So if/when a publication says it is making do with stories from *The Conversation*, the problem arises with people in the newsroom who are choosing not to engage with Indian scholars – irrespective of whether it can or does republish articles from other outlets. I also want to clarify something about the “dearth of good Indian academicians who can write for the public” in your question: there isn’t so much a dearth of good academicians who can write, there’s a dearth of academicians who believe communication at large is important at all. I’ve been fortunate enough to find more than a few scientists who are eager to write, and to be frank their numbers are increasing, but my experience is that the vast majority of scientists working in India distrust the media too much and/or don’t believe that the scientific work they undertake needs to be communicated to non-scientists – much less that they need to be the ones doing it. (I’m also setting aside the fact that many of the better scientists working in the country also shoulder many responsibilities beyond teaching and research, especially important administrative tasks, and communication – especially of the form that their employers may not recognise when considering people for promotions, etc. – only adds to this burden.) My point here is that the task of finding scientists to write is a lot more arduous than might seem at first glance. I feel the same way about the second implication you’ve set out in your question: journalists are not impatient per se; what you may perceive as impatience is likelier than not the effect of newsroom mechanics that expect journalists to be productive to a degree that precludes prolonged engagement with scholars. Also, the distinction I pointed out in my first set of replies matters greatly. If you’re writing for a magazine or if you’re writing a news feature, you’ll have the time and the word limit for such engagement. But if you’re writing a news report for a newspaper, you will have neither the time and the word limit for nor – importantly – any expectation from your readers of slow-cooked material in the article. Finally, while I’ve tried to describe what is, I don’t think I’m prepared to call it justification. I think large newsrooms, especially those departments of such newsrooms that are closer to the wavefront than others, should try (honestly) to establish opportunities for slow-cooked material in their products. ### Lookout duty URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/02/24/lookout-duty/ Last updated: 2024-02-24T09:38:00.000Z > When a user asked, “Is modi a fascist”, Gemini AI responded that Mr. Modi had “been accused of implementing policies that some experts have characterized as fascist”. > > “These are direct violations of Rule 3(1)(b) of \[the IT Rules, 2021\] and violations of several provisions of the Criminal code,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said on X, formerly Twitter. His sharp reaction reveals a fault line between the Indian government’s hands-off approach to AI research, and tech giants’ AI platforms which are keen to train their models quickly with the general public, opening them up to embarrassing confrontations with political leaders. > > Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. > > 'Gemini AI’s reply to query, ‘is Modi a fascist’, violates IT Rules: Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar', [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/netizens-allege-bias-in-google-ai-tools-response-on-pm-modi-i-t-ministry-sees-rules-violation/article67877974.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), February 23, 2024 We all understand why this is an asinine statement by the IT minister, motivated possibly by having to fuel a news cycle to distract from [something else](https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/coal-scam-letters?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Importantly, the people who demonstrated and popularised the habit of twisting statements out of context — e.g. reacting to “experts have called his policies fascist” as if it meant “he is fascist” — are now seemingly duty-bound to keep track of and react to each one of these opportunities in the appropriate way. Woe betide them if they slip: their own foot-soldiers might turn on them! ### JPL layoff isn't the fall of a civilisation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/02/11/about-the-jpl-layoffs/ Last updated: 2024-02-11T09:51:58.000Z A historian of science I follow on Twitter recently retweeted this striking comment: While I don’t particularly care for capitalism, the tweet is fair: the behemoth photolithography machine depicted here required advances in a large variety of fields over many decades to be built. If you played the game Civilization III, a machine like this would show up right at the end of your base’s development arc. (Or, in Factorio, at the bottom of the technology research tree.) Even if we hadn’t been able to conceive and build this machine today, we still wouldn’t invalidate all the years of R&D, collaboration, funding, good governance, and, yes, political stability that came before to lead up to this moment. As such, the machine is a culmination of all these efforts but it isn’t the efforts themselves. They stand on their own and, to their great credit, facilitate yet more opportunities. This may seem like a trivial perspective but it played through my mind when I read a [post on the *NASA Watch*](https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/a-former-jplers-take-on-the-layoffs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) website, written by a Jeff Nosanov, a science-worker who used to work with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) until 2019\. I was surprised by its tone and contents because they offer a twisted condemnation of why JPL was wrong to have laid off some 530 people last week. [According to CBS](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/jpl-to-lay-off-more-than-500-employees/ar-BB1hTCcJ?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > “The Los Angeles County facility attributed the cuts to a shrinking budget from the federal government. In an internal memo, the laboratory expected to receive a $300 million budget for its Mars Sample Return project for the 2024 fiscal year. Director Laurie Leshin said this accounts for a 63% decrease from 2023.” Nosanov, however, would have us believe that the layoffs lead to the sort of uncertainties in the US’s future as a space superpower that history confronted the world with when the Roman empire fell, the Chinese navy dwindled in the early 16th century, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991\. To quote: > “The leaders of the past may not have known they were making historic mistakes. The Danish explorers who abandoned Canada may not have known about the Western Roman Empire. The Chinese Navy commanders may not have known about the Danish. Lost in the mists of history, those clear mistakes are understandable. Their makers may not have had the same knowledge of world history that we have today. But we do not have the excuse of ignorance. > > History shows us both what happens when a superpower abandons a frontier – someone else takes it, and that such things are conscious choices. It is the height of folly, arrogance, and fully-informed ignorance for our leaders to allow this to happen. It will lay morale in a smoking ruin for a generation and hand the torch to China, who will be glad to take the lead. Humans will lead into the darkness, but they may not be American. That may not be the worst thing in the world, but it was not always the American way.” The conceit here is breathtaking, patronising, and misguided. The fates of empires and civilisations have turned on seemingly innocuous events, sure, but NASA not being able to operate a Mars sample-return mission to the extent it would have liked in 2024 will not be such an event. There are of course pertinent questions about whether (i) scientific work is implicitly entitled to public funding (even when it threatens to runaway), (ii) space science research, including towards an ambitious Mars mission, mediates the US’s space superpower status to the extent Nosanov claims it does, and (iii) this is the character of JPL’s drive in today’s vastly more collaborative modern spaceflight enterprise. For example, Nosanov writes: > “JPL has produced wonders that have explored the farthest (the Voyager space probes left the solar system), dug the deepest (rovers and landers exploring the mysteries of life and the solar system underground on other planets) and lit the darkness (examined objects in space that have never – in five billion years – seen the light of the sun) of any of humanity’s pioneers.” Many other space agencies with which NASA has allied through its Artemis Accords, among other agreements, are pursuing the same goals – explore the farthest, dig the deepest, light the darkest, etc. – with NASA’s help and are also sharing resources in return. In this milieu, harping on sole leadership because it’s “the American way” is distasteful. As such, as a space superpower, the US brings a lot to the table, but I’m certain we’ll all be the better for it if it leaves any dregs of a monarchical attitude it may still retain behind. Of course, Nosanov isn’t JPL and JPL, and NASA by extension, are likely to have a different, more mature view. But at the same time, I saw many people sharing Nosanov’s post on Twitter, including some whose work and opinions I’ve respected before, but not one of them flagged any issues with its tone. So I’d like to make sure what the ‘official opinion’ is. The simple reason JPL’s current downturn won’t be a world-changing event is that, despite recounting all those decisive moments from the past, Nosanov ignores the value of history itself. Recall the sophisticated photolithography machine and the summit of human labour, ingenuity, and cooperation it represents. Take away the machine and you have taken away only the machine, not the foundations on which the possibility of such innovation rests. Similarly, it is ludicrous to expect anyone to believe NASA’s pole position in human and robotic spaceflight is founded only on its Mars sample-return mission, or in fact any of its Mars missions. This fixation on the [outcomes over processes](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [ingredients over the recipe](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2023/10/18/gaganyaan-the-ingredient-is-not-the-recipe/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is counterproductive. The US space programme still has the knowledge and technological foundations required to manufacture opportunities in the first place – and which is what other countries are still working on building. Put differently, that an entity – whether a space agency or a country – is a superpower implies among other things that it can be resilient, that it can absorb shocks without changing its essential nature. But if Nosanov's expectations are anything to go by and the US falls behind China because JPL received 63% less than its demand from the US government, then perhaps it deserves to. Realistically, however, JPL might get the money it’s looking for in future and simply get back on track. The only part of Nosanov’s post that makes sense is the penultimate line: “JPL – and the people who lost their jobs today – deserve better.” ### Poonam Pandey and peer-review URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/02/03/about-journalists-will-report-anything/ Last updated: 2024-02-03T20:26:48.000Z One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey's "death" and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish "anything". To be sure, there were broadly two kinds of news reports after the post appeared on her Instagram handle claiming Pandey had died of cervical cancer: one said she'd died and quoted the Instagram post; the other said her management team had said she'd died. That is, the first kind stated her death as a truth and the other stated her team's statement as a truth. News reports of the latter variety obviously 'look' better now that Pandey and her team said she lied (to raise awareness of cervical cancer). But judging the former news reports harshly isn't fair. This incident has been evocative of the role of peer-review in scientific publishing. After scientists write up a manuscript describing an experiment and submit it to a journal to consider for publishing, the journal editors farm it out to a group of independent experts on the same topic and ask them if they think the paper is worth publishing. (Pre-publishing) Peer-review has many flaws, including the fact that peer-reviewers are expected to volunteer their time and expertise and that the process is often [slow, inconsistent, biased](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and opaque. But for all these concerns, peer-review isn't designed to reveal deliberately – and increasingly cleverly – concealed fraud. Granted, the journal could be held responsible for missing plagiarism and the journal and peer-reviewers both for clearly duplicated images and entirely bullshit papers. However, pinning the blame for, say, failing to double-check findings because the infrastructure to do so is hard to come by on peer-review would be ridiculous. Peer-review's primary function, as far as I understand it, is to check whether the data presented in the study support the conclusions drawn from the study. It works best with some level of trust. Expecting it to respond perfectly to an activity that deliberately and precisely undermines that trust is ridiculous. A better response (to more advanced tools with which to attempt fraud but also to democratise access to scientific knowledge) would be to overhaul the 'conventional' publishing process, such as with transparent peer-review and/or paying for the requisite expertise and labour. (I'm an admirer of the radical strategy *eLife* adopted in October 2022: to review preprint papers and publicise its reviewers' findings along with the reviewers' identities and the paper, share recommendations with the authors to improve it, but not accept or reject the paper *per se*.) Equally importantly, we shouldn't consider a published research paper to be the last word but in fact a work in progress with room for revision, correction or even retraction. Doing otherwise – as much as stigmatising retractions for reasons not related to misconduct or fraud, for that matter – on the other hand, may render peer-review suspect when people find mistakes in a published paper [even when](https://retractionwatch.com/2013/10/03/science-reporter-spoofs-hundreds-of-journals-with-a-fake-paper/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#comment-13581) the fault lies elsewhere. Analogously, journalism is required to be sceptical, adversarial even – but of what? Not every claim is worthy of investigative and/or adversarial journalism. In particular, when a claim is publicised that someone has died and a group of people that manages that individual's public profile "confirms" the claim is true, that's the end of that. This an important reason why these groups exist, so when they compromise that purpose, blaming journalists is misguided. And [unlike peer-review](https://www.inscientioveritas.org/science-sting-openaccess-peerreview/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the journalistic processes in place (in many but not all newsrooms) to check potentially problematic claims – for example, that "a high-powered committee" [is required](https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/Budget%5FSpeech.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "for an extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth" – are perfectly functional, in part because their false-positive rate is lower *without* having to investigate "confirmed" claims of a person's death than *with*. ### Schrödinger's temple URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/23/schrodingers-temple/ Last updated: 2024-01-23T15:41:56.000Z On January 22, in a ceremony led by Prime Minister and now high-priest Narendra Modi, priests and officials allegedly consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple in Ayodhya, with many celebrities in attendance. ('Alleged' because I don't know if it's a legitimate consecration, [given the disagreement](https://thewire.in/religion/full-text-only-political-hindus-are-happy-shankaracharya-on-ayodhya-ram-temple-consecration?ref=slightlyacidic.com) between some spiritual leaders over its rituals.) TV news channels on both sides of the spectrum were outwardly revelling in the temple's festivities, bothering not at all with covering the ceremony in a dispassionate way. Their programming was unwatchable. This Ram temple is a physical manifestation of the contemporary Indian nation – a superposition of state and sanctum sanctorum at once, collapsing like Schrödinger's hypothetical cat to one or the other depending on political expedience. The temple, like many others around the country now, is both *kovil* and *katchi* office (Tamil for 'temple' and 'party office'). (I'm hardly unique in these views but I also suspect I'm in a minority, with few others to reinforce their legitimacy, so I'm writing them down so they're easier for me to recall.) After the consecration ceremony, Prime Minister Modi delivered a speech, as is his wont, further remixing the aspirations of the Indian state and its people with a majoritarian religious identity. (The mic then passed to the treasurer of the temple trust, who spoke in praise of Modi, and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who spoke in praise of Modi's ostensible ideals.) For now, the results of the Lok Sabha elections later this year seem like a foregone conclusion, with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party widely expected to begin a third term in May. The temple's opening was effectively a show of strength by Modi, that he delivers on his promises no matter the obstacles in his way, even if any of them are legitimate. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in another show of strength, the Modi government signed off on the anti-satellite (ASAT) [missile test](https://thewire.in/space/mission-shakti-india-likely-destroyed-microsat-r-satellite-in-first-asat-test?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in March, in which a missile launched from the ground flew 300 km up and destroyed a dummy satellite in earth orbit. The operation was called 'Mission Shakti' (Hindi for 'strength'). A statement from the Ministry of External Affairs said, "The test was done to verify that India has the capability to safeguard our space assets". Oddly, however, the Defence R&D Organisation, which conducted the test, had had ASAT capabilities for a decade by then under its Ballistic Missile Defence programme, rendering the timing suspect. Considering Prime Minister Modi delivered another hour-long speech after the test, I've been inclined to side with the theory that it was conducted to give him airtime that was otherwise unavailable due to the Election Commission's restrictions on election candidates coming on air in a short period before polling. In 2024, of course, it's an open secret that the Election Commission determines polling schedules based on the BJP's convenience. ### Violence shuts science? Err… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/19/violence-shuts-science-err/ Last updated: 2024-01-19T15:41:55.000Z Dog bites man isn't news. Man bites dog is news. I'm reminded of this adage of the news industry – and [Nambi Narayanan's comment](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2022/08/02/nambi-narayanan-scientists-immunity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in August 2022 – when I read reports like 'Explosion of violence in Ecuador shuts down science' ([*Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/violence-ecuador-shuts-down-science-and-fieldwork?ref=slightlyacidic.com), January 13, 2024). An "explosion of violence" in a country should reasonably be expected to affect all walks of life, so what's the value in focusing a news report only on science and those who practice it? It's not like we have news reports headlined "explosion of violence in Ecuador shuts down fruit shops". There are little tidbits in the article that might be useful to other researchers in Ecuador, but it's unlikely they're looking for it in *Science*, which is a foreign publishing reporting on Ecuador for an audience that's mostly outside the country. The only bit I found really worth dwelling on was this one paragraph: > The Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN) … went further. It canceled all fieldwork this week and next, says Manual Peralvo, a geographer and project coordinator. He adds that CONDESAN plans to design a stricter security protocol for future projects that involve fieldwork. “We’re going to have to plan our schedules much more specifically to know who is where and at what time,” and to avoid dangerous areas, he says. … yet it's just one paragraph, before the narrative moves on to how the country's new security protocols will "deter non-Ecuadorian funding and scientists". I'd have liked the report to drop everything else and focus on how research centres organise and administer fieldwork when field-workers are at risk of physical violence. If anything, there may be no opportunity cost associated with such stories – except for the authors and publishers of such reports (i.e. in its current form) suggesting they believe science is somehow more special than other human endeavours. ### Ram temple at science 'festival' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/18/ram-temple-at-science-festival/ Last updated: 2024-01-18T16:24:11.000Z > The Surya Tilak project had courted controversy in the past with Trinamool Congress's Mahua Moitra flagging it on social media in November 2021\. The CSIR officials, however, defended the project arguing the scientific calculations that went into making the system. > > 'Surya Tilak at Ram temple at the India International Science Festival backed by the Union Science Ministry', [Deccan Herald](https://www.deccanherald.com/india/uttar-pradesh/surya-tilak-at-ram-temple-at-the-india-international-science-festival-backed-by-the-union-science-ministry-2853587?ref=slightlyacidic.com), January 18, 2024 This is a succinct demonstration of science's need for a guiding hand. The Indian Science Congress isn't happening this year, which is both [for the better and otherwise](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/opportune-pause-on-an-opportunity-to-consider-the-relevance-of-the-indian-science-congress/article67671426.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but given the vague allegations that have cast its status in limbo, I remain suspicious that its star declining (further) at the same time that of the India International Science Festival (IISF) is rising isn't a coincidence. The latter has a budget of Rs 20-25 crore, according to the *Deccan Herald* article quoted above, "contributed by various scientific departments". The absolute value of India's expense on scientific research is increasing – a horn the national government has often tooted – but as a percentage of the GDP as well as of the total annual budget, it is dropping. In this milieu, it's amusing for the government to suddenly be able to provide Rs 20-25 crore for the IISF, when in fact the Department of Science and Technology has been giving the Science Congress a relatively lower Rs 5 crore and which last year alleged unspecified "financial irregularities" on the part of its organisers. But as with the Science Congress, it wouldn't be fair to dismiss the IISF altogether for some problematic exhibits and events. This said, CSIR officials contending the "Surya Tilak" of the upcoming Ram temple in Ayodhya deserves to be exhibited at the IISF because "scientific calculations" went into designing it is telling of the relationship between science, religion, and the Indian state today. Considering there are government regulations stipulating the minimum structural characteristics of every building in the country, any non-small structure in the country could have been included in the IISF exhibit. *Don't be absurd*, I hear you say, and that's just as absurd as the officials' reasoning. Natural philosophy in many ancient civilisations, including those in India, was concerned with the motions of stars and planets across the sky and seasonal changes in these patterns. So as such, using the principles of modern science to design the "Surya Tilak" isn't objectionable, or even remarkable. But the fact that IISF is being organised by Vijnana Bharati, an RSS-affiliated body, and that Vijnana Bharati's stated goal is "to champion the cause of Bharatiya heritage with a harmonious synthesis of physical and spiritual sciences" makes the relationship suspect – in much the same way the Vedas and other parts of India's cultural heritage have [become tainted by association](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/culture-ministrys-new-vedic-heritage-portal-only-debases-the-study-of-vedas?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the government's Hindutva programme. And these suspicions are heightened now thanks to the passions surrounding the impending consecration of the Ram temple idol. A practice of science that constantly denies its political character is liable to be, and has been, appropriated in the service of a larger political or ideological agenda – but this isn't to say science, more specifically the national community of science exponents, should assume a monolithic political position. Instead, it's to say this is precisely the cost of misunderstanding that science and politics, as human endeavours go, are immiscible. It's to say that scientists' widespread and collective aspiration to be apolitical [implicitly admits](https://asymptoticfreedoms.wpcomstaging.com/2019/09/22/the-politicisation-of-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) political influence and that we should all understand that it's not desirable for science to be appropriated in this way. And when it is, we must bear in mind how [these unions have become deleterious](https://thewire.in/environment/science-is-increasingly-becoming-associated-with-divisive-social-issues?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and how the two of them can be, or ought to be, separated so that we understand what science is (and isn't) and what sort of legitimacy it should (and shouldn't) be allowed to grant the state. Defying awareness of the value of separating science and (a compromised) state strikes to me as being fundamentally antisocial because such awareness is the first step to asking how and in what circumstances they ought to be separated. It undermines the possibility of this awareness taking root. This isn't new but in the increasing fervour surrounding the Ram temple, and India's temple-state dis-separation the event will consummate, the importance of its loss seems heightened as well. ### Using superconductors to measure electric current URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/15/using-superconductors-to-measure-electric-current/ Last updated: 2024-01-15T12:34:18.000Z Simply place two superconductors very close to each other, separated by a small gap, and you’ll have taken a big step towards an important piece of technology called a Josephson junction. When the two superconductors are close to each other and exposed to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency (0.3-30 GHz), a small voltage develops in the gap. As waves from the radiation rise and fall between the gap, so too the voltage. And it so happens that the voltage can be calculated exactly from the frequency of the microwave radiation. A Josephson junction is [also created](https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get%5Fpdf.cfm?pub%5Fid=32961&ref=slightlyacidic.com) when two superconductors are brought very close and a current is passed through one of them. Now, their surfaces form a capacitor: a device that builds up and holds electric charge. When the amount of charge crosses a threshold on the surface of the current-bearing superconductor, the voltage between the surfaces crosses a threshold and allows a current to jump from this to the other surface, across the gap. Then the voltage drops and the surface starts building charge again. This process keeps going as the voltage rises, falls, rises, falls. This undulating rise and fall is called a Bloch oscillation. It’s only apparent when the Josephson junction is really small, in the order of micrometres. Since the Bloch oscillation is like a wave, it has a frequency and an amplitude. It so happens that the frequency is equal to the value of the current flowing in the superconductor divided by 2*e*, where *e* is the smallest unit of electric charge (1.602 × 10\-19 coulomb). The amazing thing about a Josephson junction is the current that jumps between the two surfaces is entirely due to quantum effects, and it’s visible to the naked eye – which is to say the junction shows quantum mechanics at work at the macroscopic scale. This is rare and extraordinary. Usually, observing quantum mechanics’ effects requires sophisticated microscopes and measuring devices. Josephson junctions are powerful detectors of magnetic fields because of the ways in which they’re sensitive to external forces. For example, devices called SQUIDs (short for ‘superconducting quantum interference devices’) use Josephson junctions to detect magnetic fields that are a trillion-times weaker than a field produced by a refrigerator magnet. They do this by passing an electric current through a superconductor that forks into two, with a Josephson junction at the end of each path. If there’s a magnetic field nearby, even a really small one, it will distort the amount of current passing in each path to a different degree. The resulting current mismatch will be sufficient to trigger a voltage rise in one of the junctions and a current will jump. Such SQUIDS are used, among other things, to detect dark matter. ### Shapiro steps The voltage and current in a Josephson junction share a peculiar relationship. As the current in one of the superconductors is increased in a smooth way, the voltage doesn’t increase smoothly but in small jumps. On a graph (see below), the rise in the voltage looks like a staircase. The steps here are called Shapiro steps. Each step is related to a moment when the current in the superconductor is a multiple of the frequency of the Bloch oscillation. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/Q3qfUAg0qK9Ii1z8OhAkao3iYZs_cxMyLwwhgNtCRcAmjMXCzOQNHqFSo75XRQ-YpoVajxuUH2Lpq0u9BwGCFqSTkWLdQJ_Nt_5Ryzl7yxl36olbz-V-QNqVetZdkcztR8M5jgfHYKsSvPRXSLzIPB4) I've misplaced the source of this graph in my notes. If you know it, please share; if I find it, I will update the article asap. In a new study, published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.027001?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on January 12, physicists from Germany reported finding a way to determine the amount of electric current passing in the superconductor by studying the Bloch oscillation. This is an important feat because it could close the gap in the metrology triangle. ### The metrology triangle Josephson junctions are also useful because they provide a precise relationship between frequency and voltage. If a junction is made to develop Bloch oscillations of a specific frequency, it will develop a specific voltage. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses a circuit of Josephson junctions to define the standard volt, a.k.a. the Josephson voltage standard. We say 1 V is the potential difference between two points if 1 ampere (A) of current dissipates 1 W of power when moving between those points. How do we make sure what we say is also how things work in reality? Enter the Josephson voltage standard. In fact, decades of advancements in science and technology have led to a peculiar outcome: the tools scientists have today to measure the frequency of waves are just phenomenal – so much so that scientists have been able to measure other properties of matter more accurately by linking them to some frequency and measuring that frequency instead. This is true of the Josephson voltage standard. The NIST’s setup consists of 20,208 Josephson junctions. Each junction has two small superconductors separated by a few nanometres and is irradiated by microwave radiation. The resulting voltage is equal to the microwave frequency multiplied by a proportionality constant. (E.g. when the frequency is around 70 GHz, the gap between each pair of Shapiro steps is around [150 microvolt](https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/ptb/fachabteilungen/abt2/abt2-josephson.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) This way, the setup can track the voltage with a precision of up to 1 nanovolt. The proportionality constant is in turn a product of the microwave frequency and the Planck constant, divided by two times the basic electric charge *e*. The latter two numbers are fundamental constants of our universe. Their values are the same for both macroscopic objects and subatomic particles. Voltage, resistance, and current together make up Ohm’s law – the statement that voltage is roughly equal to current multiplied by resistance (V = IR). Scientists would like to link all three to fundamental constants because they know Ohm’s law works in the classical regime, in the macroscopic world of wires that we can see and hold. They don’t know for sure if the law holds in the quantum regime of individual atoms and subatomic particles as well, but they’d like to. Measuring things in the quantum world is much more difficult than in the classical world, and it will help greatly if scientists can track voltage, resistance, and current by simply calculating them from some fundamental constants or by tracking some frequencies. Josephson junctions make this possible for voltage. For resistance, there’s the quantum Hall effect. Say there’s a two-dimensional sheet of electrons held at an ultracold temperature. When a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to this sheet, an electrical resistance develops across the breadth of the sheet. The amount of resistance depends on a combination of fundamental constants. The formation of this *quantised resistance* is the quantum Hall effect. The new study makes the case that the Josephson junction setup it describes could pave the way for scientists to measure electric currents better using the frequency of Bloch oscillations. Scientists have often referred to this pending task as a gap in the ‘metrology triangle’. Metrology is the science of the way we measure things. And Ohm’s law links voltage, resistance, and current in a triangular relationship. ### A JJ + SQUID setup In their experiment, the physicists coupled a Bloch oscillation in a Josephson junction to a SQUID in such a way that the SQUID would also have Bloch oscillations of the same frequency. The coupling happens via a capacitor, as shown in the circuit schematic below. This setup is just a few micrometres wide. When a current entered the Josephson junction and crossed the threshold, electrons jumped across and produced a current in one direction. In the SQUID, this caused electrons to jump and induce a current in the opposite direction (a.k.a. a mirror current). ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/49b58-3unnamed.png?w=1024) I1 and I2 are biasing currents, which are direct currents supplied to make the circuit work as intended. The parallel lines that form the ‘bridge’ on the left denote a capacitor. The large ‘X’ marks denote the Josephson junction and the SQUID. The blue blocks are resistors. The ellipses containing two dots each denote pairs of electrons that ‘jump’. Source: Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 027001 This setup requires the use of resistors connected to the circuit, shown as blue blocks in the schematic. The resistance they produce suppresses certain quantum effects that get in the way of the circuit’s normal operation. However, resistors also produce heat, which could interfere with the Josephson junction’s normal operation as well. The team had to balance these two requirements with a careful choice of the resistor material, rendering the circuit operational in a narrow window of conditions. For added measure the team also cooled the entire circuit to 0.1 K to further suppress noise. In their paper, the team reported that it could observe Bloch oscillations and the first Shapiro step in its setup, indicating that the junction operated as intended. The team also found it could accurately simulate its experimental results using computer models – meaning the theories and assumptions the team was using to explain what could be going on inside the circuit were on the right track. Recall that the frequency of a Bloch oscillation can be computed by dividing the amount of current flowing in the superconductor by 2*e*. So by tracking these oscillations with the SQUID, the team wrote in its paper that it should soon be able to accurately calculate the current – once it had found ways to further reduce noise in their setup. For now, they have a working proof of concept. ### ICC pitch-rating system is regulatory subversion URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/08/the-hindu-icc-pitch-rating-regulatory-subversion/ Last updated: 2024-01-08T08:45:11.000Z In today's edition of *The Hindu*, Rebecca Rose Varghese and Vignesh Radhakrishnan have a particularly noteworthy edition of their 'Data Point' column – 'noteworthy' because they've used data to make concrete something we've all been feeling for a while, in the way we sometimes know something to be true even though we don't have hard evidence, and which found prominent articulation in the words of Rohit Sharma in a recent interview. Sharma [was commenting](https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/rohit-calls-out-icc-for-supposed-double-standards-in-rating-pitches-hope-they-keep-their-ears-and-eyes-open-1415540?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the ICC's pitch-rating system, saying pitches everywhere should be rated consistently instead of those in the subcontinent earning poorer ratings more of the time. Rebecca and Vignesh analysed matches and their pitch-ratings between May 14, 2019, and December 26, 2023, to find: 1. Pitches in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka receive 'below average' or 'poor' ratings for Test matches more often than Test pitches in Australia, West Indies, England, South Africa, and New Zealand; 2. In Test matches played in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, spin bowling claimed more wickets than pace bowling; and 3. When spin bowling claims more wickets than pace bowling in Test matches, the former pitches are rated worse than the latter pitches even if both sets of matches conclude after a relatively lower number of balls have been faced. This is just fantastic. (1) and (2) together imply the ICC has penalised pitches in the subcontinent for being spin-friendly tracks. And this and (3) imply that this penalty doesn't care for the fact that non-spin-friendly tracks produce similar results without incurring the same penalty. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/59d87-whatsapp-image-2024-01-08-at-9.43.46-am.jpeg?w=768) The longer a Test match lasts, the better it is for stadiums and TV networks broadcasting the match: the stadium can sell tickets for all five days and networks can broadcast advertisements for Test matches on all five days. This thinking has come to dominate ODIs, T20s, and Test matches, but it's a sad irony that the ICC created the ODI and the T20 formats to be more entertaining and more profitable without compromising the Test format. Now, with the ICC's pitch-rating system, this entertainment + profitability thinking has percolated through Test matches as well. Sharma alluded to this when he said: > I mean, we saw what happened in this match, how the pitch played and stuff like that. I honestly don't mind playing on pitches like this. As long as everyone keeps their mouth shut in India and don't talk too much about Indian pitches, honestly. I'd take this further and say Test match pitches can't be rated badly because the purpose of this format is to test players in the toughest conditions the sport can offer. In this milieu, to say a Test match pitch is 'below average' is to discourage teams from confronting their opponents' batters with a track that favours bowlers' strengths. And in the ICC's limited view, this discouragement is biased markedly against spin-bowling. Criticism of this paradigm isn't without foundation. The *A Cricketing View* Substack wrote in a [February 2021 post](https://cricketingview.substack.com/p/on-the-iccs-pitch-evaluation-system) (hat-tip to Vignesh): > The Laws of Cricket only specify that the game not be played on a pitch which umpires might consider to be dangerous to the health of the players. The ICC has chosen to go beyond this elementary classification between dangerous and non-dangerous pitches by setting up a regulatory mechanism which is designed to minimize the probability that a bad pitch (and not just a dangerous pitch) will be prepared. If anything, a bad pitch that results in uneven and potentially high bounce will be more dangerous to batters than a bad pitch that results in sharp turn. So the ICC's pitch-rating system isn't "regulatory expansion" – as *A Cricketing View* called it – but regulatory subversion. R. Ashwin has [also questioned](https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/ravichandran-ashwin-yuvraj-singh-tweet-responds-nothing-wrong-pink-ball-test-india-vs-england-1773784-2021-02-27?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the view the ICC has taken, via its system, that pitches shouldn't offer sharp turn on day 1 – another arbitrary choice, although one that makes sense from the entertainment and/or profitability PoV, that restricts 'average' or better spin-bowling in its view to a very specific kind of surface. Point (3) in the 'Data Point' implies such pitches probably exist in places like Australia and South Africa, which are otherwise havens of pace-bowling. The advantage that pace enjoys in the ICC's system creates another point of divergence when it meets players' physiology. Pitches in Australia in particular are pace-friendly, but when they're not, they're not spin friendly either. On these tracks, Australian pacers still have an advantage because they're taller on average and able to generate more bounce than shorter bowlers, such as those from India. I believe Test matches should be played on tracks that teach all 22 players (of both teams) a valuable lesson – without of course endangering players' bodies. 1. How will stadiums and TV networks make more money off Test matches? The bigger question, to me, is: should they? I'm aware of the role stadiums have played through history in making specific sports more sustainable by monetising spectatorship. But perhaps stadiums should be organised such that the bulk of their revenue is from ODI and T20 matches and Test matches are spared the trouble of being more entertaining/profitable. 2. Who decides what these lessons should be? I don't trust the ICC, of course, but I don't trust the BCCI either because I don't trust the people who currently staff it to avoid making a habit of tit-for-tat measures – beyond one-off games – that massage Indian teams' player-records. Other countries' cricket boards may be different but given the effects of the ICC's system on their specific fortunes, I'm not sure how they will react. In fact, it seems impossible that we will all agree on these lessons or how their suitability should be measured – a conclusion that, ironically, speaks to the singular pitfall of judging the value of a cricket match by its numbers. ### An odd paper about India's gold OA fees URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2024/01/02/current-science-paper-gold-open-access-apc-estimates/ Last updated: 2024-01-02T12:39:07.000Z A [paper about open-access fees](https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/125/10/1057.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in India published recently in the journal *Current Science* has repeatedly surfaced in my networks over some problems with it. The paper is entitled 'Publications in gold open access and article processing charge expenditure: evidence from Indian scholarly output' and is authored by Raj Kishor Kampa, Manoj Kumar Sa, and Mallikarjun Dora of Berhampur University, the Indian Maritime University, and IIM Ahmedabad respectively. This is the paper's abstract: > Article processing charges (APCs) ensure the financial viability of open access (OA) scholarly journals.The present study analyses the number of gold OA articles published in the Web of Science (WoS)-indexed journals by Indian researchers during 2020, including subject categories that account for the highest APC in India. Besides, it evaluates the amount of APC expenditure incurred in India. The findings of this study reveal that Indian researchers published 26,127 gold OA articles across all subjects in WoS-indexed journals in 2020\. Researchers in the field of health and medical sciences paid the highest APC, amounting to $7 million, followed by life and earth sciences ($6.9 million), multidisciplinary ($4.9 million), and chemistry and materials science ($4.8 million). The study also reveals that Indian researchers paid an estimated $17 million as APC in 2020\. Furthermore, 81% of APCs went to commercial publishers, viz. MDPI, Springer-Nature, Elsevier and Frontier Media. As there is a growing number of OA publications from India, we suggest having a central and state-level single-window option for funding in OA journals and backing the Plan S initiative for OA publishing in India. It's unclear what the point of the study is. First, it seems to have attempted a value-neutral assessment of how much scientists in India are paying as article processing charges (APCs) to have their papers published in gold OA journals. It concludes with some large, and frankly off-putting, numbers – a significant drain on the resources India has availed its scholars to conduct research – yet it proceeds to "suggest having a central and state-level single-window system" so scientists can continue to pay these fees with less hassle, and for the Indian government (presumably) to back the Plan S initiative. As far as I know, India has declined to join the Plan S initiative; this is a good thing for the reasons [enumerated here](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/six-concerns-over-india-joining-the-plan-s-coalition-for-science-journals?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (written when India was considering joining the initiative), one of which is that it enabled the same thing the authors of the paper have asked for but on an international scale: allowing gold OA journals to hike their APCs knowing that (often tax-funded) research funders will pay the bills. This paper also marks the first time I've known anyone to try to estimate the APCs paid by Indian scientists and, once estimated, deem the figures not worthy of condemnation. Funnily enough, while the paper doesn't concern itself with taking a position on gold OA in its abstract or in the bulk of its arguments, it does contain the following statements: > "Although there is constant growth in OA publications, there is also a barrier to publishing in quality OA journals, especially the Gold and Hybrid OA, which levies APC for publications." > "However, the high APC charges have been an issue for low-income and underdeveloped countries. In the global south, the APC is a real obstacle to publishing in high-quality OA journals" > "Extant literature reveals a constant increase in APC by most publishers like BioMed Central (BMC), Frontiers Media, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), and Hindawi" > "One of the ideas of open access was to make equitable access and check the rampant commercialization of scholarly publications. Still, surprisingly, many established publishers have positioned themselves in the OA landscape." > "formulation of national-level OA policies in India is the need of the hours since OA is inevitable as everyone focuses on equity and access to scholarly communications." But these statements only render the paper's conclusion all the more odd. Of course, this is my view and the views of some scholars in India's OA advocacy community and the authors of the *Current Science* paper are free to disagree. The second issue is objectively frustrating. Unlike the products of science communication and science journalism, a scientific paper may simply present a survey of some numbers of interest to a part of the research community, but the *Current Science* paper falls short on this count as well. Specifically, not once does its body mention the words "discount" and "waiver" (or their variations), which is strange because OA journals regularly specify discounted APCs – or waive them altogether – if certain conditions are met (including, in the case of some journals, if a paper's authors are from a low- and middle-income country). Accounting for discounts, researchers Moumita Koley (IISc Bengaluru) and Achal Agrawal (independent) estimated the authors could have overestimated Indian scientists' APC expenses by 47.7% – ranging from 4.8% when submitting manuscripts to the *PLoS* journals to 428.3% when submitting to journals of the American Chemical Society. Gold OA's publishing fees are not in proportion to the amount of work and resources required to make a published paper open-access, and often extortionate, and that while discounts and waivers are available, they don't spare research-funders in other parts of the world the expense, continue to maintain large profit margins at the expense of governments' allocations for research, and – has scientist Karishma Kaushik [wrote for *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/india-researchers-open-access-publishing-double-edged-sword/article67086569.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – the process of availing these concessions can be embarrassing to researchers. Issue #1: the *Current Science* paper erects a flawed argument both in favour of and in opposition to APCs by potentially overestimating them! Issue #2: In their correspondence, Koley and Agrawal write: > "A possible reason for their error could be that DOAJ, which forms their primary source, does not mention discounts usually given to authors from lower-income countries. Another important error is that while the authors claim that they filtered the articles. Page 1058: 'Extant literature suggests that the corresponding author most likely pays the APCs'. Following the corresponding author criterion, APC expenditure incurred by Indian researchers was estimated; they have not actually done so. Table 2 shows the discrepancy if one applies the filter. Also, Table 1 shows the estimated error in calculation if this criterion is included in calculation." To this, the authors of the *Current Science* paper responded thus: > "We wish to clarify any misunderstanding that may have arisen. We analysed the APC expenditure incurred in India without calculating the discounts or waivers received by authors as there is no specific single source to find all discounts, for example, an author-level or institute-level discount; hence, it would be difficult to provide an actual amount that Indian researchers spent on APC. Additionally, discounts or any publisher-provided waivers are recent developments, and discounts/waivers given to authors from LMIC countries were not mentioned in DOAJ, which is the primary source of the present study. Hence, it was not analysed in the current study. These factors may be considered as limitations of the study." This is such a blah exchange. To the accusation that the authors failed to account for discounts and waivers, the authors admit – not in their paper but in their response to a rebuttal – they didn't, and that it's a shortcoming. The authors also write that four publishers they identified as receiving 53% of APCs out of India – MDPI, Springer-Nature, Elsevier, and Frontiers Media – don't offer "country-level discounts/waivers to authors" from LMICs and that this invalidates the concerns of Koley and Agrawal that APCs have been overestimated too much. However, they don't address the following possibilities: 1. The identification of these four publishers itself was founded on APC estimates that have been called into question; 2. "Country-level" concessions aren't the only kind of concessions; and 3. The decision to downplay the extent of overestimation doesn't account for the publishers that received the other 47% of the APCs. It's not clear, in sum, what value the *Current Science* paper claims to have, and perhaps this is a question better directed at *Current Science* itself, which published the original paper, two rebuttals – the second by Jitendra Narayan Dash of NISER Bhubaneswar – the authors' unsatisfactory replies to them, and, since we're on the topic, doesn't seem to have edited the first correspondence before publishing it. ### What Gaganyaan tells us about chat AI, and vice versa URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/12/29/what-gaganyaan-tells-us-about-chat-ai-and-vice-versa/ Last updated: 2023-12-29T07:00:55.000Z Talk of chat AI\* is everywhere, as I'm sure you know. Everyone would like to know where these apps are headed and what their long-term effects are likely to be. But it seems that it's still too soon to tell what they will be, at least in sectors that have banked on human creativity. That's why the topic was a centrepiece of the first day of the [inaugural conference](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/11/28/waters-and-bridges-between-science-journalism-and-scicomm/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Science Journalists' Association of India (SJAI) last month, but little came of it beyond using chat AI apps to automate tedious tasks like transcribing. One view, in the limited context of education, is that chat AI apps will be like the electronic calculator. According to Andrew Cohen, a professor of physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as quoted (and rephrased) by Amrit BLS in an article for [*The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/chatgpt-productive-role-science-education/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > When calculators first became available, he said, many were concerned that it would discourage students from performing arithmetic and mathematical functions. In the long run, calculators would negatively impact cognitive and problem-solving skills, it was believed. While this prediction has partially come true, Cohen says the benefits of calculators far outweigh the drawbacks. With menial calculations out of the way, students had the opportunity to engage with more complex mathematical concepts. [*Deutsche Welle*](https://frontline.thehindu.com/news/ai-experts-say-chatgpt-is-changing-education-but-how/article66449967.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) had an article making a similar point in January 2023: > Daniel Lametti, a Canadian psycholinguist at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, said ChatGPT would do for academic texts what the calculator did for mathematics. Calculators changed how mathematics were taught. Before calculators, often all that mattered was the end result: the solution. But, when calculators came, it became important to show how you had solved the problem—your method. Some experts have suggested that a similar thing could happen with academic essays, where they are no longer only evaluated on what they say but also on how students edit and improve a text generated by an AI—their method. This appeal to the supposedly higher virtue of the method, over arithmetic ability and the solutions to which it could or couldn't lead, is reminiscent of a similar issue that played out earlier this year – and will likely raise its head again – vis-à-vis India's human spaceflight programme. This programme, called 'Gaganyaan', is expected to have the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launch an astronaut onboard the first India-made rocket no earlier than 2025. The rocket will be a modified version of the LVM-3 (previously called the GSLV Mk III); the modifications, including human-rating the vehicle, and their tests are currently underway. In October 2023, ISRO chairman S. Somanath said in an [interview to *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-somanath-interview-gaganyaan/article67427099.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the crew module on the vehicle, which will host the astronauts during their flight, "is under development. It is being tested. There is no capability in India to manufacture it. We have to get it from outside. That work is currently going on. We wanted a lot of technology to come from outside, from Russia, Europe, and America. But many did not come. We only got some items. That is going to take time. So we have to develop systems such as environmental control and life support systems." Somanath's statement seemed to surprise many people who had believed that the human-rated LVM-3 would be indigenous *in toto*. This is like the [Ship of Theseus problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%5Fof%5FTheseus?ref=slightlyacidic.com): if you replace all the old planks of a wooden ship with new ones, is it still the same ship? Or: if you replace many or all the indigenous components of a rocket with ones of foreign provenance, is it still an India-made launch vehicle? The particular [case of the UAE](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/09/04/the-uaes-hacks-for-international-prominence/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is also illustrative: the country neither has its own launch vehicle *nor* the means to build and launch one with components sourced from other countries. It lacks the same means for satellites as well. Can the UAE still be said to have its own space programme because of [its 'Hope' probe](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2021/02/09/uaes-spaceflight-shortcut-to-making-history/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to orbit and study Mars? Cohen's argument about chat AI apps being like the electronic calculator helps cut through the confusion here: the method, i.e. the way in which ISRO pieces the vehicle together to fit its needs, within its budget, engineering capabilities, and launch parameters, matters the more. To quote from an [earlier post](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/10/18/gaganyaan-the-ingredient-is-not-the-recipe/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "'Gaganyaan' is not a mission to improve India’s manufacturing capabilities. It is a mission to send Indians to space using an Indian launch vehicle. This refers to the recipe, rather than the ingredient." For the same reason, the UAE can't be said to have its own space programme either. Focusing on the method, especially in a highly globalised world-economy, is a more sensible way to execute space programmes because the method – knowing how to execute it, i.e. – is the most valuable commodity. Its obtainment requires years of investment in education, skilling, and utilisation. I suspect this is also why there's more value in selling launch-vehicle services rather than launch vehicles themselves. Similarly, the effects of the electronic calculator on science education speak to advantages that are virtually unknown-unknowns, and it seems reasonable to assume that chat AI will have similar consequences (with the caveat that the metaphor is imperfect: arithmetic isn't comparable to language and large-language models can do what calculators can and more). --- - I remain wary of the label 'AI' applied to "chat AI apps" because their intelligence – if there is one beyond [sophisticated word-counting](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/how-chatgpt-actually-works/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – is [aesthetic, not epistemological](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), yet it's also becoming harder to maintain the distinction in casual conversation. This is after setting aside [the question](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-26/even-with-chat-gpt-4-there-s-no-such-thing-as-artificial-intelligence?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of whether the term 'AI' itself makes sense. ### A survey of El Salvador's bitcoin adoption URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/12/28/survey-el-salvador-bitcoin-adoption/ Last updated: 2023-12-28T12:02:03.000Z On December 22, a group of researchers from the US had a paper [published in *Science*](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add2844?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which they reported the results of a survey of 1,800 households in El Salvador over its members’ adoption, or not, of bitcoin as currency. In September 2021, the government of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele passed a ‘Bitcoin Law’ through which it made the cryptocurrency legal tender. El Salvador is a country of 6.3 million people, many poor and without access to bank accounts, and Bukele pushed bitcoins as a way to circumvent these issues by allowing anyone with a phone with an internet connection to access a central-bank-backed cryptocurrency wallet and trading the virtual coins. Yet even at the time, adoption was muted by concerns over bitcoins’ extreme volatility. In the new study, the researchers’ survey spotlighted the following issues, particularly that the only demographic that seemed eager to adopt the use of bitcoins as currency was “young, educated men with bank accounts”: > Privacy and transparency concerns appear to be key barriers to adoption; unexpectedly, these are the two concerns that decentralized currencies such as crypto aim to address. … we document that this payment technology involves a large initial adoption cost, has benefits that significantly increase as more people use it …, and faces resistance from firms in terms of its adoption. … Moreover, our survey work using a representative sample sheds light on how it is the already wealthy and banked who use crypto, which stands in stark contrast with recurrent hypotheses claiming that the use of crypto may help the poor and unbanked the most. Bitcoin isn’t private. Its supporters claimed it was because the bitcoin system could evade surveillance by banks, but law enforcement authorities simply switched to other checks-and-balances governments have in place to track, monitor, and – if required – apprehend bitcoin users, with help from network scientists and forensic accountants. The last line is also reminiscent of several claims advanced by bitcoin supporters – rather than well-thought-out “hypotheses” advanced by scholars – in the late 2010s about the benefits the use of cryptocurrencies could bring to the Global South. The favour the cryptocurrency enjoyed among these people was almost sans exception rooted in its technological ‘merits’ (such as they are). There wasn’t, and still isn’t in many cases, any acknowledgment of the social institutions and rituals that influence public trust in a currency – and the story of El Salvador’s policy is a good example of that. The paper’s authors continue: > There is substantial heterogeneity across demographic groups in the likelihood of adopting and using bitcoin as a means of payment. The reasons that young, educated men are more likely to use bitcoin for transactions remain an open question. One hypothesis is that this group has higher financial literacy. We found that, even conditional on access to financial services and education, young men were still more likely to use bitcoin. However, financial literacy encompasses several other areas of knowledge that are not captured by these controls. An alternative hypothesis is that young, educated men have a higher propensity to adopt new technologies in general. The literature on payment methods has documented that young individuals have a greater propensity to adopt means of payment beyond cash, such as cards (87). Nevertheless, further research is necessary to causally identify the factors contributing to the observed heterogeneity across demographic groups. India and El Salvador are very different except, by virtue of being part of the Global South, they’re both good teachers. El Salvador is teaching us that something simply being easier to use won’t guarantee its adoption if people also don’t trust it. India has taught me that awareness of one’s own financial illiteracy is as important as financial literacy, among other things. I’ve met many people who won’t invest in something not because they understand it – they might – but because they don’t know enough about how they can be defrauded of their investment. And if they don’t, they simply assume they will lose their money at some point. It’s the way things have been, especially among the erstwhile middle class, for many decades. This is probably one of several barriers. Another is complementarity (e.g. “benefits that significantly increase as more people use it”), which implies the financial instrument must be convenient in a variety of sectors and settings, which implies it needs to be better than cash, which is difficult. ### Unexpected: Magnetic regions in metal blow past speed limit URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/12/21/magnetic-domain-ferromagnet-speed-limit/ Last updated: 2023-12-21T17:20:56.000Z You’re familiar with magnetism, but do you know what it looks like at the smallest scale? Take a block of iron, for example. It’s ferromagnetic, which means if you place it near a permanent magnet - like a refrigerator magnet - the block will also become magnetic to a large extent, larger than materials that aren’t ferromagnetic. If you zoom in to the iron atoms, you’ll see a difference between areas that are magnetised and areas that aren’t. Every subatomic particle has four quantum numbers, sort of like its Aadhaar or social security ID. No two electrons in the same system can have the same ID, i.e. one, some or all of these numbers differ from one electron to the next. One of these numbers is the *spin quantum number*, and it can have one of two values, or states, at any given time. Physicists refer to these states as ‘up’ and ‘down’. In the magnetised portions, in the iron block, you’ll see that electrons in the iron atoms will either all be pointing up or all down. This is a defining feature of magnetism. Scientists have used it to make hard-disk drives that are used in computers. Each drive stores information by encoding it in electrons’ spins using a magnetic field, where, say, ‘1’ is up and ‘0’ is down, so a series of 1s and 0s become a series of ups and downs. In the iron block, the parts that are magnetised are called *domains*. They demarcate regions of uniform electron spin in three dimensions in the block’s bulk. For a long time, scientists believed that the ‘walls’ of a domain - i.e. the imaginary surface between areas of uniform spin and areas of dis-uniform spin - could move at up to around 0.5 km/s. If they moved faster, they could destabilise and collapse, allowing a kind of magnetic chaos to spread within the material. They arrived at this speed limit from their theoretical calculations. The limit matters because it says how fast the iron block’s magnetism can be manipulated, to store or modify data for example, without losing that data. It also matters for any other application that takes advantage of the properties of ferromagnetic materials. In 2020, a group of researchers from the Czech Republic, Germany, and Sweden [found that](https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.174418?ref=slightlyacidic.com) if you stacked up a layer of ferromagnets, the domain walls could move much faster - as much as 14 km/s - without collapsing. Things can move fast in the subatomic realm, yet 14 km/s was still astonishing for ferromagnetic materials. So scientists set about testing it. A group from Italy, Sweden, and the US reported in a paper published in [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.256702?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on December 19 (preprint [here](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.16131.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) that they were able to detect domain walls moving in a composite material at a stunning 66 km/s - greater than the predicted speed. Importantly, however, existing theories that explain a material’s magnetism at the subatomic scale don’t predict such a high speed, so now physicists know their theories are missing something. In their study, the group erected a tiny stack of the following elements, in this order: tantalum, copper, a cobalt-iron compound, nickel, the cobalt-iron compound, copper, and tantalum. Advanced microscopy techniques revealed that the ferromagnetic nickel layer (just a nanometre wide) had developed domains of two shapes: some were like stripes and some formed a labyrinth with curved walls. The researchers then tested the domain walls using the well-known pump-probe technique: a blast of energy first energises a system, then something probes it to understand how it’s changed. The pump here was an extremely short pulse of infrared radiation and the probe was a similarly short pulse of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The key is the delay between the pump and probe pulses: the smaller the delay, the greater the detail that comes to light. (Three people won the [physics Nobel Prize](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/let-there-be-light-the-hindu-editorial-on-the-2023-physics-nobel/article67380231.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this year for finding ways to make this delay as small as possible.) In the study it was 50 femtoseconds, or 500 trillionths of a second. The UV pulse was diffracted by the electrons in nickel. A detector picked up the diffraction patterns and the scientists ‘read’ them together with computer simulations of the domains to understand how they changed. How did the domains change? The striped walls were practically unmoved but the curved walls of the labyrinthine pattern did move, by about 17-23 nanometres. The group made multiple measurements. When they finally calculated an average speed (which is equal to distance divided by time), they found it to be 66 km/s, give or take 20 km/s. ![](https://linesofreason.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-21-at-6.35.14-pm-1.png?w=1024) An image depicting domains (black) in the nickel layer. The coloured lines show their final positions. Source: Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 256702 The observation of extreme wall speed under far-from-equilibrium conditions is the … most significant result of this study,” they wrote in their paper. This is true: even though the researchers found that the domain-wall speed limit in a multilayer ferromagnetic material is much higher than 0.5 km/s - as the 2020 group predicted - they also found it to be a lot higher than the expected 14 km/s. Of course, it’s also stunning because the curved domain walls moved at more than 10-times the speed of sound in that material - and the more curved a portion was, the faster it seemed to move. The researchers concluded that “additional mechanisms are required to fully understand these effects” - as well as that they could be “important” to explain “ultrafast phenomena in other systems such as emerging quantum materials”. *This is my second recent post about scientists finding something they didn’t expect to, but in settings more innocuous than in the vast universe or at particle smashers. Read the first one, about the way paint dries,* [*here*](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/12/17/watching-paint-dry-is-anything-but-boring/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* ### You can do worse than watching paint dry - ask physics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/12/17/watching-paint-dry-is-anything-but-boring/ Last updated: 2023-12-17T20:20:55.000Z I live in Chennai, a city whose multifaceted identity includes its unrelenting humidity. Its summers are seldom hotter than those in Delhi but they are more unbearable because it leaves people sweaty, dehydrated, and irritated. Delhi's heat doesn't have the same effect because when people sweat there, the droplets evaporate into the air, whose low relative humidity allows it to 'accommodate' moisture. But in Chennai, the air is almost always humid, more so during the summer, and the sweat on people's skin doesn't evaporate. Yet their bodies continue to sweat because it's one of the few responses they have to the heat. Paint, fortunately, has a different story to tell. Fresh paint on a wall doesn't dry faster or slower depending on how humid the air is. This is because pain is made of water plus some polymers whose molecules are much larger than those of water. At first, water does begin to escape the paint and evaporate from the surface. This pulls the polymer molecules to the surface in a process called advection. On the surface, the polymer molecules form a dense layer that prevents the water below from interacting directing with the air, or its humidity. So the rate of evaporation slows until it reaches a constant low value. This is why, even in dry weather, paint takes its time to dry. Scientists have verified that this is the case in a new study, in which they also reported that their findings can be used to understand the behaviour of little respiratory droplets in which viruses travel through the air. (Some studies - like [this](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2109750119?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [this](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0238339&ref=slightlyacidic.com) \- have suggested that a virus's viability may depend on the relative humidity and how quickly the droplet dries, among other factors. Since the relative humidity varies by season, a link could explain why some viral outbreaks are more seasonal.) Generally, the human skin - as the largest outer-organ of the human body - is responsible for making sure the body doesn't lose too much water through evaporation. Scientists think that it can adjust how much sweat is released on the skin by modifying the mix of lipids (fatty substances) in its outermost layer. If it did, it would be an example of an active process - a dynamic response to environmental and biological conditions. Paint drying, on the other hand, is a non-active process: the rate of evaporation is limited by the polymer molecules at the surface and their properties. In 2017, a chemical engineer at the University of Bordeaux named [Jean-Baptiste Salmon predicted](https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.032612?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that an active process may not be needed at all to explain humidity-independent evaporation because it arises naturally in solutions like that of paint. The new study tested the prediction of Salmon et al. using a non-active polymer solution, i.e. one that's incapable of developing an active response to changes in humidity. They filled a plastic container with polyvinyl alcohol, then drilled a small hole near the bottom and fit a glass tube there with an open end. The liquid could flow through the tube and evaporate from the end. To prevent the liquid from evaporating from its surface, they coated it with an oily substance called 1-octadecene. They placed this container on a sensitive weighing scale and the whole apparatus inside a sealed box with adjustable humidity. The researchers adjusted the humidity from 25% to 90% and each time studied the evaporation rate for more than 16 hours. They found that Salmon et al. were right: the evaporation rate was higher for around three hours before dropping to a lower value. This was because polymer molecules had accumulated at the layer where the liquid met the air. But in these three hours, the rate of evaporation didn't drop even when the humidity was increased. In other words, humidity-independent evaporation begins earlier than Salmon et al. predicted. The researchers also reported another divergence: the evaporation rate wasn't affected by a relative humidity of up to 80% - but beyond that, the rate fell if the humidity increased further. So what Salmon et al. said was at play but it wasn't the full picture; some other forces were also affecting the evaporation. The researchers ended their paper with an idea. They took a closer look at the open end of the tube, where the polyvinyl alcohol evaporated, with a microscope. They found that the polymer layer was overlaid with a stiffer semisolid, or gel-like, layer. Such layers are known to form when there is a compressive stress, and further block evaporation. The researchers found that their equations to predict the evaporation rate roughly matched the observed value when they were modified to account for this stress. They [also found](https://journals.aps.org/prl/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.248102/SI.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that a sufficiently thick gel layer could form within one second - a short time span considering the many hours over which the rate of evaporation evolves. "These discrepancies motivate the search for extra physics beyond Salmon et al., which may again relate to a gelled polymer skin at the air-solution interface," they concluded in their paper, published in the journal [*Physical Review Letters*](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.248102?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on December 15. ### A new path to explaining the absence of antimatter URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/12/10/cp-violation-in-baryons/ Last updated: 2023-12-10T12:24:48.000Z Our universe was believed to have been created with equal quantities of matter and antimatter, only for antimatter to completely disappear over time. We know that matter and antimatter can annihilate each other but we don't know how matter came to gain an upper hand and survive to this day, creating, stars, planets, and – of course – us. In the theories that physicists have to explain the universe, they believe that the matter-antimatter asymmetry is the result of two natural symmetries being violated. These are the charge and parity symmetries. The charge (C) symmetry is that the universe would work the same way if we replaced all the positive charges with negative charges and vice versa. The parity (P) symmetry refers to the handedness of a particle. For example, based on which way an electron is spinning, it's said to be right- or left-handed. All the fundamental forces that act between particles preserve their handedness except the *weak nuclear force*. According to most particle physicists, matter won the war against antimatter through some process that violated both C and P symmetries. Proof of CP symmetry violation is one of modern physics's most important unsolved problems. In 1964, physicists discovered that the weak nuclear force is capable of violating C and P symmetries together when it acts on a particle called a K meson. In the 2000s, a different group of physicists found more evidence of CP symmetry violation in particles called B mesons. These discoveries proved that CP symmetry violation is actually possible, but they didn't bring us much closer to understanding why matter dominated antimatter. This is because of particles called quarks. Quarks are the smallest known constituent of the universe's matter particles. They combine to form different types of bigger particles. For example, all mesons have two quarks each. All the matter that we're familiar with are instead made of atoms, which are in turn made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons have three quarks each – they're *baryons*. Electrons are not made of quarks; instead, they belong to a group called leptons. To explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, physicists need to find evidence of CP symmetry violation in baryons, and this hasn't happened so far. On December 7, a group of researchers from China published a paper in the journal [*Physical Review D*](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.L111901?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which they proposed one place where physicists could look to find the answer: the decay of a particle called a lambda-b baryon to a D-meson and a neutron. Quarks come in six types, or flavours. They are up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. A lambda-b baryon is the name for a bundle containing one up quark, one down quark, and one strange quark. A D-meson is any meson that contains a charm quark. In the process the researchers have proposed, the D-meson exists in a superposition of two states: a charm quark + an up anti-quark (D0 meson) and a charm anti-quark and an up quark (D0 anti-meson). The researchers have proposed that the probability of a lambda-b baryon decaying to a D0 meson versus a D0 anti-meson could be significantly different as a result of CP symmetry violation. The proposal is notable because the researchers have tailored their prediction to an existing experiment that, once it's upgraded in future, will collect data that can be used to look for just such a discrepancy. This experiment is called the LHCb – 'LHC' for Large Hadron Collider and 'b' for beauty. The LHCb is a detector on the LHC, the famous particle-smasher in Europe that slams energetic beams of protons together to pry them open. The detectors then study the particles in the detritus and their properties. LHCb in particular tracks the signatures of different types of quarks. Physicists at CERN are planning to upgrade LHCb to a second avatar that's expected to begin operating in the mid-2030s. Among other features, it will have a [7.5-times higher peak luminosity](https://cerncourier.com/a/lhcb-looks-forward-to-the-2030s/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – a measure of the number of particles the detector can detect. If the lambda-b baryon's decay discrepancy exists in the new LHCb's observed data, the decay proposed in the new study will be one way to explain it, and pave the way for proof of CP symmetry violation in baryons. ### Char Dham will go on URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/29/char-dham-will-go-on/ Last updated: 2023-11-29T11:10:08.000Z "One of the greatest rescue missions in history" necessitated by a construction project [pushed through](https://frontline.thehindu.com/environment/the-tunnel-collapse-near-barkot-in-uttarakhand-points-at-the-glaring-flaws-of-the-char-dham-project/article67557424.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at high cost, beginning with the safety and well-being of workers. Madam, what are you celebrating aside from such an event having been a matter of time? --- > “No government agency was left out. Be it the Health Ministry, the Road Ministry or the Railway Board – all brought their expertise on board. The Department of Telecom too ensured a better communications network at the site,” said Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (retired), a Member of, the National Disaster Management Authority, at a press briefing. > > The Indian Air Force, the National Disaster Response Force and the Border Road Organisation, along with State agencies such as the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and local administration also came together. > > “This could happen only when there are clear instructions from the PM and the PMO,” added Mr. Hasnain. > > [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/silkyara-operation-is-multi-agency-effort-co-ordinated-by-pmo-says-ndma-member/article67583991.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), November 28, 2023 The less time it takes to get all the men out, the faster the need for an accident followed by a rescue will leave the news cycle, and the less effort needs to be expended to force work on the Char Dham highway to continue. (It's not for nothing that Manipur continues to simmer.) Then again, if push comes to shove, they may just blame it on a contractor, fire him, and move on. --- > “I won’t send him here \[Silkyara\] ever again, no matter what,” said Romen Narajari, brother of Ram Poshak Narajari who is one among the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel after a collapse that took place on November 12, on the day of Deepavali. After multiple efforts, all the 41 workers were rescued on Tuesday. … > > Rajni has not informed her three children about the mishap that took place with their father till Tuesday. “There were days when I felt like life has ended for us. Whenever I spoke to him over phone, he used to cry and ask about children. I am glad that our miseries ended but I will not let him work out of our hometown, ever again,” Rajni added. > > [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kin-of-trapped-workers-say-they-wont-send-them-to-silkyara-again/article67583866.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), November 28, 2023 Good call – but awful that this is how they find out how much risk their family members are at. ### Waters and bridges between science journalism and scicomm URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/28/waters-and-bridges-between-science-journalism-and-scicomm/ Last updated: 2023-11-28T10:42:32.000Z On November 24-25, the Science Journalists’ Association of India (SJAI) conducted its inaugural conference at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. I attended it as a delegate. A persistent internal monologue of mine at the event was the lack of an explicit distinction between science *communicators* and science *journalists*. One of my peers there said (among other things) that we need to start somewhere, and with that I readily agree. Subhra Priyadarshini, a core member of SJAI and the leader *de facto* of the team that put the conference together, also said in a different context that SJAI plans to “upskill and upscale science journalism in India”, alluding to the group’s plans to facilitate a gateway into science journalism. But a distinction may be worthwhile because the two groups seem to have different needs, especially in today’s charged political climate. Think of political or business journalism, where journalists critique politics or business. They don’t generally consider part of their jobs to be improving political or business literacy or engagement with the processes of these enterprise. On the other hand, science journalists are regularly expected – including by many editors, scientists, and political leaders – to improve scientific literacy or to push back on pseudoscience. (For what it’s worth, pseudoscience isn’t a simple topic, especially against the backdrop of its social origins as well as questions about what counts as knowledge, how it's created, who creates it, etc.). When science institutions believe that X is science journalism when it’s in fact Y, then whenever they encounter Y, they’re taken aback, if not just offended. We have seen this with many research institutes whose leaders are friendly with the media when the latter is reporting on the former’s work, but become hostile when journalists start to ask questions about any wrongdoing or controversy. (One talking point supported by people insice NCBS, when the [Arati Ramesh incident](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/tifr-taec-probe-ncbs-arati-ramesh-retraction-case-supervisory-committee/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) played out in 2021, was whether the publics are entitled to details of the inner workings of a publicly funded institute.) Scientists should know what science journalism really is, lest they believe it’s a new kind of PR, and change their expectations about the terms on which journalists engage with them. This recalibration is important now when journalists are expected to bend over or not report on some topics, ideas or people. Are communicators expected to bend over also? I’m not so sure. Journalism is communication plus the added responsibility of abiding by the public interest (which transforms the way the communication happens as well), and the latter imposes demands that often give science journalism its thorn-in-the-side quality. Understanding what journalism really is could improve relationships between scientists and science journalists, let scientists know why a (critical) journalism of science is as important as the communication of science, and the ways in which both institutions – of science and of journalism – are publicly answerable. \[After a few hours\] So does that mean the difference between science journalism and science communication is what scientists understand them to be? I think accounting for the peculiarities of both space (*in India*) and time (*today*) could produce a fairer picture of the places and roles of science journalism and communication. Specifically, that science journalism in India is coming of age at this particular time in history is important, especially because it will obviously evolve to respond to the forces that matter today. Most of all, unlike any other time before, today is distinguished by trivial access to the internet, which gives explainers and communicative writing more weight than before for their ability to be used against misinformation and to temper people’s readiness to consume information on the internet with the (editorial and scientific) expertise and wisdom of communicators and journalists. The distinction of today also births the possibility of defining Indian science journalism separately from Indian science communication using the matter of their labels, expectations, purposes, and problems. **Labels** – ‘Journalism' and ‘communication’ are fundamentally labels used to describe specific kinds of activities. They probably originated in different contexts, to isolate and identify tasks that, in their respective settings, were unlike other tasks, but that wouldn’t have to mean that once they were transplanted to the science communication/journalism enterprise, they couldn’t have a significant – maybe even self-effacing – overlap. So it may be worthwhile to explore the history of these terms, in India, as it pertains to science journalists. **Expectations** – The line between journalism and communication is slender. Many products of science-journalism work are texts that are concerned, to a not-insignificant extent, with communicating science first, with explaining a relevant concept, idea, etc. in its proper technical, historical, social, etc. context. Journalism peels away from communication with the added requirement of being in the public interest, but good communication can be in the public interest as well. (Economics seemed to pose a counter-argument but with a self-undermining component: did science *communication* in India have such a successful ‘scene’ before science *journalism* in India became a thing? I have my doubts although I’m not exactly well-informed – but a bigger issue is what editors in and product managers of newsrooms considered ‘science journalism’ to be in the first place. If they conflated it with communication, this counter-example is moot.) **Purposes** – What is political journalism a journalism of? (To my mind, the answer to this question needs to be some activity that, when it is performed, would sufficiently qualify the performer as a practitioner of political journalism.) Is it a journalism of political processes, political thought, political outcomes or political leaders? Considering politics is a social enterprise, I think it’s a journalism of our political leaders: stories about these people are the stories about everything else that constitutes politics. Similarly, science journalism can be a journalism of the people of science – and it’s ease to see that, this way, it opens doors to everything from clever science to issues of science and society. **Problems** – Journalism and communication may also be distinguished by their specific problems. For journalists, for example, quotes from scientists are more crucial than they are for communicators. Indian science journalism is thus complicated differently by the fact that many scientists don’t wish to speak to members of the press, for fear of being misquoted, of antagonising their bosses (who may have political preferences of their own), of lacking incentives to do so (e.g. “my chances of being promoted don’t increase if I speak to reporters”), and/or of falling afoul of the law (which prohibits scientists at government institutes from criticising government policies in the press). By extension, an association like SJAI that pools journalists (and communicators) together should also be expected to help alleviate journalists’ specific needs. To its credit, SJAI 2023 did to the extent that it could, and I think will continue to do so; the point is that any other (science-)journalistic body in the country should do so as well and also ensure it doesn’t lose sight of the issues specific to each community. ### Cognitive ability and voting 'leave' on Brexit URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/23/cognitive-ability-and-voting-leave-on-brexit/ Last updated: 2023-11-23T08:10:00.000Z In a [new study](https://link.mediaoutreach.meltwater.com/ls/click?upn=KR7wcqUCzEvr3gvNAE7nzgnm1vk6OLhe9TIziGtxSC-2BOVxvDLESWpvTsrPN-2F9-2FZRTyWL-2BowU4C1zGAMWilhKyH57RusbTIyrdk30czTVQdu-2BM2RAyVndkDgfuUUOc3gs%5Fe5B%5FqO2JkbRocGctifLLRBjtRHa1OnhWatrDqVSY4EBGggNg8P3ZBQ35UCDfZvHuIZTbKqMgAtDh6EZ0WIYBluYsoV-2Fh6Vk4Cxad-2BOWL-2F4YGQNJbyH-2BgkxFBT-2FeQFdQeMvJi9-2FLti0L5c6uQ61D2hqHVK1VUndzHUBQNEOhFSCXT0PNyKUD-2FD-2BFJY6VYG-2FVXoiXbl-2BZmddg59C2ShL7nLmSOaX4vP9MuiD0wimEF3ehgLqA4tqElzm9N7autUH4mJV-2Bjs537Q3u7BXhAbrRIpdJBuNjB0bOHdLZZ2bbvyz45bGJvWNDgDL5Q55XIGZ9j7YHc2EeFdSQZVN6TVGMrOZSzqn02Dq90lh-2F6ip64D966LV1DoHwhvmBEgczCSgnmTRTKcUx64oP70h-2FgdwRzIA2iDA-3D-3D&ref=slightlyacidic.com) published in the journal *PLoS ONE* on November 22, a pair of researchers from the University of Bath in the UK have reported that “higher cognitive ability” is "linked to higher chance of having voted against Brexit” in the June 2016 referendum. The authors have reported this based on 'Understanding Society', a "nationally representative annual longitudinal survey of approximately 40,000 households, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council", conducted in 12 waves between 2009 and 2020\. The researchers assessed people’s cognitive ability as a combination of five tests: **Word recall**: “… participants were read a series of 10 words and were then asked to recall (immediately afterwards and then again later in the interview) as many words as possible, in any order. The scores from the immediate and delayed word recall task are then summed together” **Verbal fluency**: “… participants were given one minute to name as many animals as possible. The final score on this item is based upon the number of unique correct responses" **Subtraction test**: “… participants were asked to give the correct answer to a series of subtraction questions. There is a sequence of five subtractions, which started with the interviewer asking the respondent to subtract 7 from 100\. The respondent is then asked to subtract 7 again, and so on. The number of correct responses out of a maximum of five was recorded" **Fluid reasoning**: “… participants were asked to write down a number sequence—as read by the interviewer—which consists of several numbers with a blank number in the series. The respondent is asked which number goes in the blank. Participants were given two sets of three number sequences, where performance in the first set dictated the difficulty of the second set. The final score is based on the correct responses from the two sets of questions—whilst accounting for the difficulty level of the second set of problems" **Numerical reasoning**: “Participants were asked up to five questions that were graded in complexity.The type of questions asked included: “In a sale, a shop is selling all items at half price. Before the sale, a sofa costs £300\. How much will it cost in the sale?” and “Let’s say you have £200 in asavings account. The account earns ten percent interest each year. How much would you havein the account at the end of two years?”. Based on performance on the first three items, partici-pants are then asked either two additional (more difficult) questions or one additional (simpler) question" On the face of it, the study’s principle finding, rooting the way people decided on ‘Brexit’ in cognitive ability, seems objectionable because it’s a small step away from casting an otherwise legitimate political outcome – i.e. the UK leaving the European Union – as the product of some kind of mental deficiency. Then again, in their paper, the authors have reasoned that this correlation is mediated by individuals’ susceptibility to misinformation, that people with "higher" cognitive ability are better able to cut through mis- or dis-information. This seems plausible, and in fact the objectionability is also mitigated by awareness of the Indian experience, where lynch mobs and troll armies have been set in motion by fake news, with deadly results. This said, we must still guard against two fallacies. First: correlation isn’t causation. That higher cognitive ability could be correlated with voting ‘remain’ doesn’t mean higher cognitive ability *caused* people to vote ‘remain'. Second, the fallacy of the inverse: while there is reportedly a correlation between the cognitive abilities of people and their decision in the ‘Brexit' referendum, it doesn’t mean that pro-Brexit votes couldn’t have been cast for any reason other than cognitive deficiencies. One Q&A from an interview that *PLoS* conducted with one of the authors, Chris Dawson, and published together with the paper makes a similar note: > **Some people might assume that if Remain voters had on average higher cognitive abilities, this implies that voting Remain was the more intelligent decision. Can you explain why your research does not show this, and what misinformation has to do with it?** > > It is important to understand that our findings are based on average differences: there exists a huge amount of overlap between the distributions of Remain and Leave cognitive abilities. We calculated that approximately 36% of Leave voters had higher cognitive ability than the average (mean) Remain voter. So, for any Remain voters who were planning on boasting and engaging in one-upmanship, our results say very little about what cognitive ability differences may or may not exist between two random Leave and Remain voters. But what our results do imply is that misinformation about the referendum could have complicated decision making, especially for people with low cognitive ability. The five tests that the researchers used to estimate cognitive ability (at least in a relative sense) are also potentially problematic. I only have an anecdotal counter-example, but I suspect many readers will be able to relate to it: I have an uncle who is well-educated (up to the graduate level) and has had a well-paying job for many years now, and he is a staunch *bhakt* – i.e. an uncritical supporter of India's BJP government and its various policies, including (but not limited to) the CAA, the farm laws, anti-minority discrimination, etc. He routinely buys into disinformation and sometimes spreads some of his own, but I don’t see him doing badly on any of the five tests. Instead, his actions and views are better explained by his political ideology, which is equal parts conservative and cynical. There are millions of such uncles in India, and the same thing could be true of the people who voted ‘leave’ in the 2016 referendum: that it wasn’t their cognitive abilities so much as their ideological positions, and those of the people to whom they paid attention, that influenced the vote. (The reported correlation itself can be explained away by the fact that most of those who voted ‘leave’ were [older people](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/15796-how-britain-voted?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but the study does correct for age-related cognitive decline.) The two researchers also have a big paragraph at the end where they delineate what they perceive to be the major issues with their work: > Most noticeably, the positive correlation between cognitive ability and voting to Remain in the referendum could, as always, be explained by omitted variable bias. Although we control for political beliefs and alliances, personality traits, a barrage of other socioeconomics factors and in our preferred model, house-hold fixed-effects, the variation of cognitive ability within households could be correlated with other unobservable traits, attitudes and behaviours. The example which comes to mind is an individual’s trust in politicians and government. Then Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron publicly declared his support for remining in the EU, as did the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The UK Treasury published an analysis to warn voters that the UK would be permanently poorer if it left the EU \[63\]. In addition to this were the 10 Nobel-prize winning economists making the case in the days leading up to the referendum. Whilst cognitive ability has been linked with thinking like an economist \[64,65\], Carl \[51\] also finds evidence of a moderate positive correlation between trust in experts and IQ. Moreover, work on political attitudes and the referendum have shown that a lack of trust in politicians and the government is associated with a vote to Leave the EU \[56\]. Therefore, the positive relationship between cognitive ability and voting Remain could be attributable for those higher in cognitive function to place a greater weight on the opinion of experts. A final note is that our dependent variable is self-reported which may induce bias, for instance, social desirability bias. Against that, the majority (75.6%) of responses were recorded through a self-completion online survey and we do control for interview mode, which produces no statistically significant effects. It’s important to consider all these alternative possibilities to the fullest before we assume, say, that improving cognitive ability will also lead to some political outcomes over others – or in fact before we entertain ideas about whether people whose cognitive abilities have declined, according to some tests and to below a particular threshold, should be precluded from participating in referendums. If nothing else, problems of discretisation quickly arise: i.e. where do we draw the line? For example, while people with Alzheimer’s disease can be kept from voting, should those who are mathematically illiterate, and would thus probably fail the fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning tests? Similarly, and expanding the remit from referendums to elections (which [isn’t without problems](https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.00027?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), which test should potential voters be expected to pass before voting in different polls – say, from the panchayat to the Lok Sabha elections? Consider also the debates at the time Haryana passed the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act in 2015, which stipulated among other things that to contest in panchayat polls, candidates had to have completed class 10 or its equivalent (plus adjustments if the candidates are from an SC community, women, etc.). Obviously those contesting the polls would be well past their youth and unlikely to return to school, so the Act [effectively permanently disqualified](https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/excluded-by-law/article8068509.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) them from contesting. As such, while the answers to the questions above may be clearer in less unequal societies like those of the UK, they are not so in India, where cognitively well-equipped people have been criminally selfish and public-spiritedness has been more strongly correlated with good-faith politics than education or literacy. At the same time, the study and its findings also reiterate the significant role that mis/disinformation has come to play in influencing the way people vote, for example, which makes individuals’ cognitive abilities – and all the factors that influence them – another avenue through which to control, for better or for worse, the opportunities we have for healthy governance. ### A stage-managed World Cup URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/20/a-stage-managed-world-cup/ Last updated: 2023-11-20T13:24:31.000Z I’m glad the ICC Cricket World Cup ended the way it did, with good cricket on show. I’m disappointed that India lost but, to echo Sunil Gavaskar at the post-match show, I’m glad it was only to a better team. But during the World Cup itself, there were many signs that it was stage-managed in ways that left an off-putting aftertaste, like a mix of jingoism, political interference, and flashiness. The following is a short list of examples. 1\. **Sundays for India**: Sundays were reserved for India versus X games, whereas other teams’ games happened on the other days. The BCCI did this presumably to ensure the stadiums for the India games were full, at the expense of half or mostly empty stadiums for games featuring other teams. This is not a good look. In fact, if the BCCI wanted to maximise revenue, it could have scheduled the India games on weekdays, since people will have been willing to plan around the occasion and come to the stadium anyway, and use the Sunday games to showcase teams that won’t tour India in the foreseeable future, like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Netherlands. That could have been a win-win. 2\. **Tickets hard to get**: Even before the tournament began, fans were neither able to access nor buy tickets for various matches: the former because of glitches in the booking system, including showing a stadium as being full when it actually wasn’t and outright server crashes, and the latter because the BCCI vouchsafed a significant chunk of tickets at stadiums for “sponsors, commercial partners, guests of both the ICC and the Indian board” and also "requested that states release as many tickets as possible meant otherwise for the member clubs, affiliated units, sponsors, former cricketers, life members, police, local government officials, which usually consumes a significant chunk of tickets for both international and IPL matches,” per [*ESPN Cricinfo*](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.espncricinfo.com%2Fstory%2Ficc-cricket-world-cup-2023-fans-left-frustrated-by-world-cup-ticketing-process-1402754&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C6316a46685e74077391308dbe9932842%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638360590486545191%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wT5bhF4h3rzsIiuBSDOywZCdiWglVJlWRWXtMyqxOtw%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com). 3\. **Police presence**: On Twitter, many of those who visited stadiums around the country reported police presence in the seating area, with some personnel taking away posters and placards supporting Pakistan (when the team was playing). Such acts of nationalism pushing the cricket back annulls the principal joy of sport and defeats the purpose of cricket being played in front of such large crowds. The spectating experience was also probably diminished by unreasonable restrictions on what people could take with them (including water bottles). 4\. **Cauldrons of nationalism**: Australia captain Pat Cummins said before the final that he was looking forward to silencing a crowd of 100,000 people – but the adrenaline it invoked slowly but surely settled into shame. Why would a stadium of 100,000 people who claim to be there to watch a game of cricket fall silent? Australia and India are both great ODI teams and their clash could only produce great cricket, which is always worthy of cheer. But the Narendra Modi Stadium did fall silent, as if the spectators were there only to watch India win. There wasn't a peep when Travis Head reached his century. Such silence befell many other stadiums through the tournament, especially when “jai shree Ram”s weren’t also ringing out. 5\. **Symbols and glam**: The World Cup was, on screens, occupied with glam. The broadcaster’s cameras in all games, but especially during the final, kept focusing on the faces of film stars in the stands when they weren’t trained on the cricketers. It became kind of toxic together with – in this order – the Air Force jets’ fly past (reminiscent of nationalism’s foundational ties with sports as well as military might), the stadium-wide silence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promised presence that turned into an absence around the same time India’s defence started to go downhill, and, beyond the field, many being unaware of knowing how to lose with grace. ### So many cynical ads on TV URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/10/so-many-cynical-ads-on-tv/ Last updated: 2023-11-10T10:01:07.000Z I wrote about [cynical ads airing on Indian cable TV](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/03/31/tv-ads-are-becoming-creepy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a while ago. Since then I've started to notice more such ads and thought it might be useful to maintain a running list. 1. **Rapido** – Don't bother with asking the government to improve public transport, instead race to the bottom with a form of transport that makes using Indian roads feel like a circle of hell. \[video\] 2. **PhonePe insurance** – Easy bike insurance, so easy that you can get it when a cop catches you, so maybe don't bother until then. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp51UQE-N4U&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 3. **Fogg** – Men not wearing perfume is a deal-breaker, for no discernible reason other than a problem with something other than body odour, since that isn't discussed. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U49LOF-vrZE&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 4. **PharmEasy** – Don't leave the house, give the app all your medical info, get deliveries at a discount, and don't leave the house. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGBdaAf7GI&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 5. **Swiggy Instamart** – Order and expect deliveries in minutes, to the detriment of "delivery executives" labouring in terrible weather, traffic, errant motorists, foul air, etc. (One of the first ads Swiggy put out showed a little girl throwing a tantrum and the father appeasing her by ordering whatever she wanted, and having it delivered almost right away. Swiggy subsequently took this ad down from YouTube and cable.) 6. **Voltas AC** – Why go to places with greenery or complain about bad air where you are when you can install this AC and get good air right in your living room? \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rn%5Fu5jgc30&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 7. **Vimal Elaichi** – Four Padma awardees – Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar – and Ranveer Singh in surrogate advertisements for chewing tobacco. Bachchan and Kumar pulled out after criticism. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ZX6qa0RFc&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 8. **Sony Ten** – Ranbir Kapoor threatens a group of English cricket fans to chant "India *jeetega*" and BMKJ under pain of death, implied when he slams a giant axe on the table in front of them. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsXrSOSUaEo&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 9. **Uber** – "#RentalHealthDay" for you to skip the stress of driving because, for an astonishingly small fee, another person will assume that stress for you and undermine their well-being. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12VM6sGkkL8&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 10. **Star Sports** – While its ads for later matches were more sedate, its ad for the India-Pakistan T20 World Cup match packed macho and some mild emotional blackmail to fan fans' frenzy \[[more here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/10/20/a-masculine-build-up-to-the-ind-pak-cricket-match/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)\]. 11. **Manyavar** – Ranveer Singh in fancy house smiles and says, "Diwali is coming, you're expected to be prepared" – for rich brats setting off loud, noxious crackers while the harm we suffer for that being blamed on us not being prepared. \[[video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1n9ghQG4iI&ref=slightlyacidic.com)\] 12. **Bose** – Amazing noise-cancelling headphones for rich people so they can focus on just the light emitted by the firecrackers they're (shown in the ad) setting off. To be continued… ### India has a right to noise URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/07/the-catch-22-of-indias-noise-pollution/ Last updated: 2023-11-07T16:01:16.000Z Excerpt from ‘More light, less sound: On firecrackers and a festival of light’, an [editorial in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/more-light-less-sound-on-firecrackers-and-a-festival-of-light/article67504558.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on November 7, 2023: > The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000 stipulate that firecrackers cannot be burst in ‘silence zones’, designated by State governments, and anywhere after 10 p.m. From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (i.e., ‘daytime’) and in industrial areas, firecracker noise cannot exceed 75 dB(A) Leq. The thresholds in commercial and residential areas are 65 dB(A) Leq and 55 dB(A) Leq, respectively. … Traffic noise has burgeoned in cities where haphazard development has forced motorists to overuse horns. Many religious occasions have become synonymous with noisy celebrations irrespective of the hour. … If, say, people burst firecrackers at 90 dB for 10 seconds and the ambient noise is 50 dB for 50 seconds, and this pattern continues for four hours followed by 12 hours of 50 dB noise, the 16-hour Leq is 74.5 dB – which merits a complaint in residential areas but not in commercial ones, yet the noise is already harmful. Different loudness zones are also seldom publicly demarcated while some places are both residential and commercial. India has a [big noise pollution problem](https://undark.org/2020/03/23/india-noise-pollution/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and firecrackers add to it in a bad way because the Noise Pollution Rules 2000 and improper urban zoning have together created a regulatory sieve through which firecracker noise can pass through without any consequences – except damage to human (and animal) health. To the issues highlighted in the editorial, I’d like to add one that complicates both enforcement and judicial disputes: the argument that asking people to not combust firecrackers violates their right to religion. The national and state governments in India have kept the door open to this assertion by refusing to ban loud firecrackers altogether, instead creating allegedly ‘green’ alternatives that also produce less noise: around 120 dB instead of around 150 dB, which is laughable because the healthy threshold is somewhere around 40 dB! On November 3, Justice Amit Rawal of the Kerala high court directed authorities to seize “illegally stored” firecrackers in temples across the state and ensure temples didn't combust firecrackers at “odd time”. He added: “*prima facie* there is no commandment in any of the holy books to burst crackers for pleasing the god”. But today, November 7, a division bench set aside a part of the order to effectively reassert the terms set out in the Noise Pollution Rules 2000. Before this, the state government had submitted, [according to *On Manorama*](https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2023/11/07/fireworks-ban-odd-hours-high-court-stay.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “that there are several religious festivals in the State wherein display of fireworks is an essential part of religions, which have been carried out since time immemorial”. It’s unfortunate that we wield the right to religion maximally, to the expense of all other rights, and stop only when it’s confronted by an apparently implicit order of rights in the Indian Constitution. For example, by refusing to ban (noise) polluting firecrackers altogether, and by making the Rules so complicated, neither collecting nor easing public access to noise data, and slipshod urban planning (an oxymoron, really), India’s governments often leave the right to religion in conflict with the right to life. In the Constitution, however, the latter takes precedence. In early 2021, for example, the Madras high court was hearing a case about allowing the Srirangam Temple authorities to conduct their rituals in full rather than in an abridged form due to limitations imposed by the government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The court observed that the right to religion was superseded by the right to life, so if the rituals had to be abridged for the sake of public health, they wouldn’t violate the right to religion. [*The Telegraph*](https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/in-order-right-to-life-over-religion/cid/1803473?ref=slightlyacidic.com) also reported that the court “alluded to the Calcutta High Court’s earlier order to regulate crowds during Durga Puja for the same reason. It may be recalled here that the Supreme Court had ordered restrictions for Ratha Yatra in Odisha too.” I think courts have made similar observations vis-à-vis Deepavali firecrackers as well as the winter-time pollution in North India. The right to life is predicated on threats to individuals’ well-being, which in turn is rooted in – among other things – where scientists are able to draw the line between good health and ill-health. For example, India’s permissible thresholds are higher than those of the WHO for different atmospheric pollutants. Biologically, people can (and often do) fall ill when the limits cross the WHO’s thresholds – but legally, we must wait for them to cross thresholds encoded in the relevant Act before we can claim injustice. Similarly, loud noises are harmful beyond 50 dB itself (depending on the level and mode of exposure), but the Rules’ thresholds are even higher. In fact, they may well be out of reach: India also has too few noise monitors for its size, which means even after scientists draw the line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ noise levels, we may not know whether the place we’re located in has crossed over. And so we go, round and round… ### On Somanath withdrawing his autobiography URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/11/04/on-somanath-withdrawing-his-autobiography/ Last updated: 2023-11-04T21:22:23.000Z Excerpt from [*The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/isro-chairman-somnath-withdraws-memoir-after-controversy/article67498103.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), November 4, 2023: > S. Somanath, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told *The Hindu* that he’s withdrawing the publication of his memoir, *Nilavu Kudicha Simhangal*, penned in Malayalam. The decision followed a report in the *Malayala Manorama* on Saturday that quoted excerpts from the book suggesting K. Sivan, former ISRO chairman and Mr. Somanath’s immediate predecessor, may have hindered key promotions that Mr. Somanath thought were due. > > “There has been some misinterpretation. At no point have I said that Dr. Sivan tried to prevent me from becoming the chairman. All I said was that being made a member of the Space Commission is generally seen as a stepping stone to (ISRO’s chairmanship). However a director from another (ISRO centre) was placed, so naturally that trimmed my chances (at chairmanship),” he told *The Hindu*, “Secondly the book isn’t officially released. My publisher may have released a few copies … but after all this controversy I have decided to withhold publication.” I haven’t yet read this book nor do I know more than what’s already been reported about this new controversy. It has been simmering all evening but I assumed that it would simply blow over, as these things usually do, and that the book would be released with the customary pomp. But the book has indeed been withdrawn, which was less surprising than it should have been. Earlier today, I was reading a paper uploaded on the *Current Science* website about Gold OA publishing. It was run-of-the-mill in many ways, but one of my peers sent me a strongly worded email decrying the fact that the paper wasn’t explicitly opposed to Gold OA. When I read the paper, I found that the authors’ statements earlier in the paper were quite tepid, seemingly unconcerned about Gold OA’s deleterious effects on the research publishing ecosystem, but later on, the paper threw up many of the more familiar lines, that Gold OA is expensive, discriminatory, etc. Both Somanath’s withdrawn book and this paper have one thing in common: (potentially) literary laziness, which often speaks to a sense that one is entitled to the benefit of the doubt rather than being compelled to earn it. Somanath told *The Hindu* and some other outlets that he didn’t intend to criticise Sivan, his predecessor as ISRO chairman, but that he was withholding the book’s release because some news outlets had interpreted the book in a way that his statements did come across as criticism. Some important background: Since 2014, ISRO’s character has changed. Earlier journalists used to be able to more easily access various ISRO officials and visit sites of historic importance. These are no longer possible. The national government has also tried to stage-manage ISRO missions in the public domain, especially the more prominent ones like Chandrayaan-2 and -3, the Mars Orbiter Mission, and the South Asia Satellite. Similarly, there have been signs that both Sivan and Somanath had and have the government’s favour on grounds that go beyond their qualifications and experiences. With Somanath, of course, we have seen that with his pronouncements about the feats of ancient India, etc., and now we have that with Sivan as well, as Somanath says that ISRO knew the Chandrayaan-2 lander had suffered a software glitch ahead of its crash, and didn’t simply lose contact with the ground as Sivan had said at the time. Recall that in 2019, when the mishap occurred, ISRO also stopped sharing non-trivial information about the incident and even refused to confirm that the lander had crashed until a week later. In this milieu, Sivan and Somanath are two peas in a pod, and it seems quite unlikely to me that Somanath set out to criticise Sivan in public. The fact that he would much rather withhold the book than take his chances is another sign that criticising Sivan wasn’t his goal. Yet as my colleague Jacob Koshy reported for *The Hindu*: > Excerpts from the book, that The Hindu has viewed, do bring out Mr. Somanath’s discomfort with the “Chairman (Dr. Sivan’s)” decision to not be explicit about the reasons for the failure of the Chandrayaan 2 mission (which was expected to land a rover). The issue was a software glitch but was publicly communicated as an ‘inability to communicate with the lander.’ There is a third possibility: that Somanath did wish to criticise Sivan but underestimated how much of an issue it would become in the media. Conveying something in writing has always been a tricky thing. Conveying something while simultaneously downplaying its asperity and accentuating its substance or its spirit is something else, requiring quite a bit of practice, a capacity for words, and of course clarity of thought. Without these things, writing can easily miscommunicate. (This is why reading is crucial to writing better: others' work can alert you to meaning-making possibilities that you yourself may never have considered.) The *Current Science* paper is similar, with its awkward placement of important statements at the end and banal statements at the beginning, and neither worded to drive home a specific *feeling*. (In case you haven’t, please read [Edward Tufte’s analysis](https://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tufte-challenger-1997.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Challenger disaster and the failure of written communication that preceded it. Many of the principles he sets out would apply for a lot of non-fiction writing.) Somanath wrote his book in Malayalam, his native tongue, rather than in English, with which, going by media interviews of him, he is not fluent. So he may have sidestepped the pitfalls of writing in an unfamiliar language, yet his being unable to avoid being misinterpreted – or so he says – still suggests that he didn’t pay too much attention to what he was putting down. In the same vein, I’m also surprised that his editors at the publisher, Lipi Books in Kozhikode, didn’t pick up on these issues earlier. Understanding this is important because Somanath writing something and then complaining that it was taken in a way it wasn’t supposed to be taken lends itself to another inference that I still suspect the ruling party’s supporters will reach for: that the press twisted his words in its relentless quest to stoke tensions and that Somanath was as clear as he needed to be. As I said, I haven’t yet read the book, but [as an editor](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/11/27/a-qa-about-my-job-and-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (see Q3) – and also as someone for whom checking for incompetence before malfeasance has paid rich dividends – I would look for an intention-skill mismatch first. *Featured image: ISRO chairman S. Somanath in 2019\. Credit: NASA.* ### India's science leadership URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/22/indias-science-leadership/ Last updated: 2023-10-22T15:40:18.000Z On October 17, the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) introduced a reading module for middle-school students called “Chandrayaan Utsav”. It was released by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the presence of S. Somanath, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, and claims that the Chandrayaan-3 achievement was great but not the first, that “literature tells us that it can be traced back \[to the\] *Vymaanika Shaastra: Science of Aeronautics*, which reveals that our country had the knowledge of flying vehicles” in ancient times. ISRO is currently flying high on the back of completing the first uncrewed test flight of the Gaganyaan mission, the launch of Aditya-L1 to study the sun, and the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Yet in May, Somanath had said at another event in Ujjain that many mathematical concepts as well as those of time, architecture, materials, aviation, and cosmology were first described in the Vedas, and that “Sanskrit suits the language of computers”. Such pseudoscientific claims are familiar to us because many political leaders have made them, but when they are issued by the leaders of institutions showing the country what good science can achieve, they set up more than a contradiction: they raise the question of responsible scientific leadership. Obviously, the first cost of such claims is that they do unto the Vedas what the claimants claim the liberals are doing unto the Vedas: forgetting them by obscuring what they really say. Who knows what the Vedas really say? Very few, I reckon – and the path to knowing more is now rendered tougher because the claims also cast any other effort to study the Vedas – and for that matter any other fields of study in ancient India – suspect. But the second, and greater, cost of such pseudoscientific claims relates to the *need* for such leadership. For example, why don’t the claimants display confidence in the science being done today? (We’ve [seen this before](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/much-ado-about-the-bose-in-the-boson/article5226043.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the Higgs boson Nobel Prize and S.N. Bose as well.) I would have liked Somanath to speak up and refute Pradhan on October 17 but he didn’t. But what I would have liked even more is for Pradhan to have held forth on the various features of the Chandrayaan-3 lander and the challenges of developing them. There is a lot of good science being done in India today and it is sickening that our politicians can’t see beyond something that happened 7,000 years ago, leave alone understand the transformative new technologies currently on the anvil that will define India’s ability to be any kind of power in the coming centuries. A friend of mine and a scholar of history recently told me that Homi Bhabha chaired the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva [in 1955](https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3903820?ln=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) – when India didn’t have nuclear power. That kind of leadership is conspicuous by absence today. ### Gaganyaan: The ingredient is not the recipe URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/18/gaganyaan-the-ingredient-is-not-the-recipe/ Last updated: 2023-10-18T11:33:05.000Z For all the hoopla over indigeneity – from ISRO chairman S. Somanath exalting the vast wisdom of ancient Indians to political and ideological efforts to cast modern India as the world’s ‘vishwaguru’ – the pressure vessel of the crew module that will one day carry the first Indian astronauts to space won’t be made in India. Somanath said as much in an interview to T.S. Subramanian [for *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-somanath-interview-gaganyaan/article67427099.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > There is another element called the crew module and the crew escape system. The new crew module is under development. It is being tested. There is no capability in India to manufacture it. We have to get it from outside. That work is currently going on. Personally, I don’t care that this element of the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission will be brought from abroad. It will be one of several thousand components of such provenance in the mission. The only thing that matters is we know *how* to do it: combine the ingredients using the right recipe and make it taste good. That we can’t locally make this or that ingredient is amply secondary. ‘Gaganyaan’ is not a mission to improve India’s manufacturing capabilities. It is a mission to send Indians to space using an Indian launch vehicle. This refers to the recipe, rather than the ingredient. But indigeneity matters to a section of people who like to thump their chests because, to them, ‘Gaganyaan’ is about showing the world – or at least the West – that India is just as good as them, if not better. Their misplaced sentiments have spilled over into popular culture, where at least two mainstream movies and one TV show (all starring A-list actors) have made villains out of foreign spaceflight agencies or officials. Thinking like this is the reason a lack of complete indigeneity has become a problem. Otherwise, again, it is quite irrelevant, and sometimes even a distraction. Somanath himself implies as much (almost as if he wishes to separate his comments on the Vedas, etc. from his thinking on ‘Gaganyaan’, etc.): > It depends on our confidence at that point of time… Only when we are very sure of ourselves, we will send human beings into space. Otherwise, we will not do that. In my opinion, it will take more time than we really thought of. We are not worried about it. What we are worried about is that we should do it right the first time. The schedule is secondary here. … Some claims I made last year are not important. I am focusing on capability development. *Featured image: The nose cone bearing the spacecraft of the Chandrayaan-3 mission ahead of being fit to the launch vehicle. Credit: ISRO.* ### An EIA process just for the Himalaya? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/17/an-eia-process-just-for-the-himalaya/ Last updated: 2023-10-17T10:56:35.000Z In *The Hindu* today, lawyers Archana Vaidya and Vikram Hegde have [written an article](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-indian-himalayan-region-needs-its-own-eia/article67427658.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) asking for a separate environment impact assessment (EIA) process for the Indian Himalayan region. The article begins with a brief history of the EIA, its origins in 1976 in the need to assess river-valley power projects from an “environmental point of view”, the environment ministry’s first EIA notification in 1994, the second notification that followed after 11 years and 12 amendments, and finally the 2020 notification that shifted the burden of proof of impact from industry to the environment. So far so good, especially to indicate that the Indian Himalayan region wasn’t ever on the ministry’s mind as it shaped and reshaped EIA protocols. > Unfortunately, the threshold limits beyond which EIA is warranted for all these projects \[mining, extraction of natural resources, power generation, physical infrastructure\] is the same across the country. Despite all levels of government being acutely aware of the special needs of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), the region’s vulnerabilities and fragility have not been considered separately. Then begins a section called “Flaws in the graded approach”, followed by the authors’ contention that the EIA’s graded approach – to change the stringency of the project requirements based on the value of the habitat that the project will affect – is unmindful of the special needs of the Indian Himalayan region. > Despite its special needs and as an area of immense ecological importance to the entire country (it serves as a water tower and the provider of ecosystem services), this region is treated like any other part of the country. … Despite \[an\] understanding of the fragility and vulnerability of the Himalayas, there is no mention of a different set of environmental standards needed if the project is located in the IHR. This is strange. The article was written in the aftermath of the Sikkim floods (rather, the Sikkim dam-failure) and against the broader backdrop of the Indian government’s dam-building spree over Himalayan and sub-Himalayan rivers rivers as well as work on the Char Dham highway and other road-transport projects. But such systematic degradation isn’t happening only in the Himalaya: across India, both the national and state governments have embarked on projects that will see large tracts of forests, wetlands, and shoreline lose their environmental features, if they haven’t lost them already. Why single out the Himalayan region for special treatment? In fact, it’s trivially easy to argue that every geologic province in the country is different, endangered, and in need of more effective environmental government. So it might be better to modify the EIA to introduce different thresholds for projects situated in different ecosystems – in effect extending the protection the authors are asking for the Indian Himalaya to all the various environmental provinces in the country. (This is only on paper, of course. Just yesterday, for example, the environment ministry, the Rayagada district administration, and the Odisha State Pollution Control Board organised a public hearing for the Vedanta bauxite-mining project in Rayagada and Kalahandi – a crucial step before the company receives its environmental clearance. But before the meeting, [according to](https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/odisha-public-hearing-for-sijimali-bauxite-block-despite-protest-of-tribals/cid/1973828?ref=slightlyacidic.com) social activists and members of tribal communities in the area, the police physically assaulted people in the area and arrested several. District and ministry officials later stated that the public hearing – or a mockery of it? – went smoothly.) Second, despite the section title, the authors don’t spell out any specific flaws in the EIA’s graded approach that pertains to the Indian Himalaya. So again, it should be easy to see that the Indian Himalayan region doesn’t pose particularly unique problems to the EIA process that other domains don’t; instead, they all pose the same single problem to the process: the EIA overlooks their diversity. The authors write that the Indian Himalayan region “serves as a water tower and \[is\] the provider of ecosystem services”. The latter can be retained as is and the first feature can be changed to, say, drainage for wetlands, carbon storage for old forests, sustenance for bird and insect species for younger ones, protection against erosion and salinity for coasts, etc. and we’d still be speaking the truth. That said, the triviality of the alternatives to the authors’ suggestion highlights an important problem with the article’s thrust: that there ought to be a new EIA process for the Indian Himalaya when in fact the existing process has been so diluted, is routinely misapplied, and often has the environment ministry rushing to make excuses for industry actors. In other words, the authors have contended that the existing EIA fails the Indian Himalayan region. This is not true: it fails all Indian regions. And we need to admit that. The reason for failure also matters – that the national government simply isn’t interested in letting an EIA’s requirements get in the way of industrial expansion and ‘development’. If we don’t address this rot, any ‘new EIA’ created to address the needs of a specific region will suffer the same political capture and become worthless. ### An 'expanded' heuristic to evaluate science as a non-scientist URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/16/an-expanded-heuristic-to-evaluate-science-as-a-non-scientist/ Last updated: 2023-10-16T08:33:08.000Z *The Hindu* publishes a column called ‘Notebook’ every Friday, in which journalists in the organisation open windows big or small into their work, providing glimpses into their process and thinking – things that otherwise remain out of view in news articles, analyses, op-eds, etc. Quite a few of them are very insightful. A recent example was [Maitri Porecha’s column](https://twitter.com/dawalelo/status/1679710224305799168/photo/1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about looking for closure in the aftermath of the Balasore train accident. I’ve written twice for the section thus far, both times about a matter that has stayed with me for a decade, manifesting at different times in different ways. The [first edition](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/science-journalism-through-the-thicket-of-science/article66369346.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was about being able to tell whether a given article or claim is real or phony irrespective of whether you have a science background. I had proposed the following eight-point checklist that readers could follow (quoted verbatim): 1. If the article talks about effects on people, was the study conducted with people or with mice? 2. How many people participated in a study? Fewer than a hundred is always worthy of scepticism. 3. Does the article claim that a study has made exact predictions? Few studies actually can. 4. Does the article include a comment from an independent expert? This is a formidable check against poorly-done studies. 5. Does the article link to the paper it is discussing? If not, please pull on this thread. 6. If the article invokes the ‘prestige’ of a university and/or the journal, be doubly sceptical. 7. Does the article mention the source of funds for a study? A study about wine should not be funded by a vineyard. 8. Use simple statistical concepts, like conditional probabilities and Benford’s law, and common sense together to identify extraordinary claims, and then check if they are accompanied by extraordinary evidence. [The second](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/are-science-journalists-scientists/article67049526.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was about whether science journalists are scientists – which is related to the first on the small matter of faith: i.e. that science journalists are purveyors of information that we expect readers to ‘take up’ on trust and faith, and that an article that teaches readers any science needs to set this foundation carefully. After having published the second edition, I came across a [‘Policy Forum’ article](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8093?ref=slightlyacidic.com) published in October 2022 in *Science* entitled ‘Science, misinformation, and the role of education’. Among other things, it presents a “‘fast and frugal’ heuristic” – a three-step algorithm with which competent outsiders \[can\] evaluate scientific information”. I was glad to see that this heuristic included many points in my eight-point checklist, but it also went a step ahead and discussed two things that perhaps more engaged readers would find helpful. One of them however requires an important disclaimer, in my opinion. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/df848-1d63c-screenshot-2023-10-15-at-9.43.16-am.png?w=495&h=1024) DOI: 10.1126/science.abq80 The additions are about consensus, expressed through the questions (numbering mine): 1. “Is there a consensus among the relevant scientific experts?” 2. “What is the nature of any disagreement/what do the experts agree on?” 3. “What do the most highly regarded experts think?” 4. “What range of findings are deemed plausible?”, and 5. “What are the risks of being wrong?” No. 3 is interesting because “regard” is of course subjective as well as cultural. For example, well-regarded scientists could be those that have published in glamorous journals like *Nature*, *Science*, *Cell*, etc. But as the [recent hoopla about Ranga Dias](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/09/28/the-journals-part-in-a-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) having three papers about near-room-temperature superconductivity retracted in one year – with two published in *Nature* – showed us, this is no safeguard against bad science. In fact, even winning a Nobel Prize isn’t a guarantee of good science (see e.g. reports about [Gregg Semenza](https://retractionwatch.com/2023/10/02/nobel-prize-winner-gregg-semenza-tallies-tenth-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Luc Montagnier](https://science.thewire.in/culture/media/luc-montagnier-coronavirus-wuhan-lab-pseudoscience/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). As the ‘Policy Forum’ article also states: > “Undoubtedly, there is still more that the competent outsider needs to know. Peer-reviewed publication is often regarded as a threshold for scientific trust. Yet while peer review is a valuable step, it is not designed to catch every logical or methodological error, let alone detect deliberate fraud. A single peer-reviewed article, even in a leading journal, is just that—a single finding—and cannot substitute for a deliberative consensus. Even published work is subject to further vetting in the community, which helps expose errors and biases in interpretation. Again, competent outsiders need to know both the strengths and limits of scientific publications. In short, there is more to teach about science than the content of science itself.” Yet “regard” matters because the people at large pay attention to notions like “well-regarded”, which is as much a comment about societal preferences as what scientists themselves have aspired to over the years. This said, on technical matters, this particular heuristic would fail only a small part of time (based on my experience). It would fail a lot more if it is applied in the middle of a cultural shift, e.g. regarding expectations of the amount of effort a good scientist is expected to dedicate to their work. Here, “well-regarded” scientists – typically people who started doing science decades ago, have persisted in their respective fields, and have finally risen to positions of prominence, and are thus likely to be white and male, and who seldom had to bother with running a household and raising children – will have an answer that reflects the result of these privileges, but which would be at odds with the direction of the shift (i.e. towards better work-life balance, less time than before devoted to research, and contracts amended to accommodate these demands). In fact, even if the “well-regarded” heuristic might suffice to judge a particular scientific claim, it still carries the risk of hewing in favour of the opinions of people with the aforementioned privileges. These concerns also apply to the three conditions listed under #2 in the heuristic graphic above: “Reputation among peers”, “credentials and institutional context”, “relevant professional experience”, all of which have historically been more difficult for non-cis-het male scientists to acquire. But we must work with what we have. In this sense, the last question is less subjective and more telling: “What are the risks of being wrong?” If a scientist avoids a view and simultaneously also avoids an adverse outcome for themselves, then it’s possible they avoided the view *in order to* avoid the outcome and not because the view is implicitly disagreeable. The authors of the article, Jonathan Osborne and Daniel Pimentel, both of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, have grounded their heuristic in the “social nature of science” and the “social mechanisms and practices that science has for resolving disagreement and attaining consensus”. This is obviously more robust (than my checklist grounded in my limited experiences), but I think it could also have discussed the intersection of the social facets of science with gender and class. Otherwise, the risk is that, while the heuristic will help “competent outsiders” better judge scientific claims, it will do as little as its predecessor to uncover the effects of intersectional biases that persist in the “social mechanisms” of science. The alternative, of course, is to leave out “well-regarded” altogether – but the trouble there, I suspect, is we might be lying to ourselves if we pretended a scientist’s regard didn’t or ought not to matter, which is why I didn’t go there… ### Marginalia: On NewsClick, NYT, toolkits, etc. URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/07/marginalia-on-newsclick-nyt-toolkits-etc/ Last updated: 2023-10-07T15:50:00.000Z The Bharatiya Janata Party in power in India knows that the process is the punishment, that the amount of punishment imposed depends on the law invoked in the chargesheet, and that no law is as ripe for misuse in this regard as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) 1967\. In fact, simply invoking the law and using the police to intimidate, arrest, and harass may be the state's goal, rather than the eventual verdict itself, which is also unlikely to be in the state's favour. The latest recipients of this form of the state's justice have been the news organisation *NewsClick* and its employees, including editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha. Even getting bail under (UAPA) is difficult because the Act locks away the conditions that need to be met to secure bail in a cage of vague statements, all of which a committed state can interpret to suit its agenda. *NewsClick* has been accused of funding terror and its editor of conspiring to redraw India's sovereign borders. During the police raids of *NewsClick*'s employees and office that preceded the arrests, [journalists also said](https://scroll.in/article/1057022/no-one-spared-in-newsclick-raids-young-staffers-part-time-employees-freelance-contributors?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they were asked if they had covered and/or commented on social media platforms on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 and the three farm laws in 2020-2021. So using the excuse of the *The New York Times* article, whose careless journalism opened a big hole for the Indian government to crawl through, the state initiated the raids; using the UAPA's repurposable provisions, the state arrested *NewsClick*'s journalists, seized their phones, laptops, and whatever other records were kept at its office, and kept them in the dark; and using the opportunity to deploy the police as an excuse, the state intimidated the journalists into sharing something – anything – that would allow the police to build even a minimally legitimate case. This is the same [template the police followed](https://thewire.in/rights/interview-justice-srikrishna-data-protection-police-raid?ref=slightlyacidic.com) after BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya filed cheating and defamation cases against *The Wire* for its Meta reports, based on which the police raided the houses of people not even named on the FIR and seized *The Wire*'s human-resources and financial records and its employees' personal information. This is the toolkit: Find a hole, crawl in, seize everything, try to build a case, and extend police custody. Kavita Krishnan had an [insightful article in *Scroll*](https://scroll.in/article/1057147/nyts-report-has-been-weaponised-against-indian-journalists-i-had-warned-the-paper-about-it?ref=slightlyacidic.com) yesterday about how the *The New York Times* wished to quote her on its original story – casting suspicion on the business and political ties of Neville Roy Singham, whose company is *NewsClick*'s chief investor – and why she declined, followed by the newspaper quoting her in a story about the raids without sufficient context. Importantly, Krishnan wrote that *The New York Times* construed her having written for *NewsClick* as her having "links to *NewsClick*" (the sort of clandestine leap we've been accustomed to hearing only from establishment devotees in India so far); that it chose to name only *NewsClick* among all the news organisations it claimed could have been compromised by Singham's investment; and the fact that it implied that *NewsClick* could be kowtowing to Chinese interests because it published a video about how China's working class continues to be inspired by the country's history. The frailty of the threads holding together the *NewsClick* parts of the *The New York Times* report became more apparent when Neville's investing company's lawyer [told *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/strictly-followed-all-aspects-of-indian-law-says-newsclick-investor/article67390602.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the following: "*The New York Times* failed to include PSF's categorical denial of foreign funding, and instead left readers to believe that the source of PSF's funding (or Mr. Singham's for that matter) might have come from China, rather than from the sale of ThoughtWorks." Whatever the merits of the rest of the article, the parts that affected *NewsClick* show parachute journalism at its worst. That the BJP weaponised the article is not the *The New York Times*'s fault; it was that the report was weaponisable at all. And it's the latest in a line of objectionable work by the newspaper, including during the pandemic and vis-à-vis ISRO: see [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/08/25/what-makes-good-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/07/09/nyts-profile-of-indias-space-startup-scene/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/08/29/nyts-isro-coverage-continues-assault-on-sense/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/09/02/the-strange-nyt-article-on-taming-minks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/04/19/middle-fingers-to-the-nyt-and-nyer/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/the-costs-of-correction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), among others. ### “Why has no Indian won a science Nobel this year?” URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/10/06/why-has-no-indian-won-a-science-nobel-this-year/ Last updated: 2023-10-06T10:25:44.000Z For all [their flaws](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/how-the-nobel-prize-maintains-sciences-inequalities-and-how-it-can-stop/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the science Nobel Prizes – at the time they’re announced, in the first week of October every year – provide a good opportunity to learn about some obscure part of the scientific endeavour with far-reaching consequences for humankind. This year, for example, we learnt about attosecond physics, quantum dots, and *in*\-*vitro* transcribed mRNA. The respective laureates had roots in Austria, France, Hungary, Russia, Tunisia, and the U.S. Among the many readers that consume articles about these individuals’ work with any zest, the science Nobel Prizes’ announcement is also occasion for a recurring question: how come no scientist from India – such a large country, of so many people with diverse skills, and such heavy investments in research – has won a prize? I thought I’d jot down my version of the answer in this post. There are four factors: **1\. Missing the forest for the trees** – To believe that there’s a legitimate question in “why has no Indian won a science Nobel Prize of late?” is to suggest that we don’t consider what we read in the news everyday to be connected to our scientific enterprise. Pseudoscience and misinformation are almost everywhere you look. We’re underfunding education, most schools are short-staffed, and teachers are underpaid. R&D allocations by the national government have stagnated. Academic freedom is often stifled in the name of “national interest”. Students and teachers from the so-called ‘non-upper-castes’ are harassed even in higher education centres. Procedural inefficiencies and red tape constantly delay funding to young scholars. Pettiness and politicking rule many universities’ roosts. There are ill-conceived limits on the use, import, and export of biological specimens (and uncertainty about the state’s attitude to it). Political leaders frequently mock scientific literacy. In this milieu, it’s as much about having the resources to do good science as being able to prioritise science. **2\. Historical backlog** – This year’s science Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work that was conducted in the 1980s and 1990s. This is partly because the winning work has to have demonstrated that it’s of widespread benefit, which takes time (the medicine prize was a notable exception this year because the pandemic accelerated the work’s adoption), and partly because each prize most often – but not always – recognises one particular topic. Given that there are several thousand instances of excellent scientific work, it’s possible, on paper, for the Nobel Prizes to spend several decades awarding scientific work conducted in the 20th century alone. Recall that this was a boom time for science, with the advent of quantum mechanics and the theories of relativity, considerable war-time investment and government support, followed by revolutions in electronics, materials science, spaceflight, genetics, and pharmaceuticals, and then came the internet. It was also the time when India was finding its feet, especially until economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. **3\. Lack of visibility of research** – Visibility is a unifying theme of the Nobel laureates and their work. That is, you need to do good work as well as be seen to be doing that work. If you come up with a great idea but publish it in an obscure journal with no international readership, you will lose out to someone who came up with the same idea but later, and published it in one of the most-read journals in the world. Scientists don’t willingly opt for obscure journals, of course: publishing in better-read journals isn’t easy because you’re competing with other papers for space, the journals’ editors often have a preference for more sensational work (or sensationalisable work, such as a paper co-authored by an older Nobel laureate; see [here](https://retractionwatch.com/2023/10/02/nobel-prize-winner-gregg-semenza-tallies-tenth-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), and publishing fees can be prohibitively high. The [story of Meghnad Saha](https://science.thewire.in/science/nobel-archives-shed-new-light-on-key-omissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), who was nominated for a Nobel Prize but didn’t win, offers an archetypal example. How journals have affected the composition of the scientific literature is a vast and therefore separate topic, but in short, they’ve played a big part to skew it in favour of some kinds of results over others – even if they’re all equally valuable as scientific contributions – and to favour authors from some parts of the world over others. Journals’ biases sit on top of those of [universities and research groups](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/csir-bhatnagar-prizes-courting-irrelevance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). **4\. Award fixation** – The Nobel Prizes aren’t interested in interrogating the histories and social circumstances in which science (that it considers to be prize-worthy) happens; they simply fete *what is*. It’s we who must grapple with the consequences of our histories of science, particularly science’s relationship with colonialism, and make reparations. Fixating on winning a science Nobel Prize could also lock our research enterprise – and the public perception of that enterprise – into a paradigm that prefers individual winners. The large international collaboration is a good example: When physicists working with the LHC found the Higgs boson in 2012, two physicists who predicted the particle’s existence in 1964 won the corresponding Nobel Prize. Similarly, when scientists at the LIGO detectors in the US first observed gravitational waves in 2016, three physicists who conceived of LIGO in the 1970s won the prize. Yet the LHC and the LIGOs, and other similar instruments continue to make important contributions to science – directly, by probing reality, and indirectly by supporting research that can be adapted for other fields. One [2007 paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/448644c?ref=slightlyacidic.com) also found that Nobel Prizes have been awarded to inventions only 23% of the time. Does that mean we should just focus on discoveries? That’s a silly way of doing science. --- The Nobel Prizes began as the testament of a wealthy Swedish man who was worried about his legacy. He started a foundation that put together a committee to select winners of some prizes every year, with some cash from the man’s considerable fortunes. Over the years, the committee made a habit of looking for and selecting some of the greatest accomplishments of science (but not all), so much so that the laureates’ standing in the scientific community created an aspiration to win the prize. Many prizes begin like the Nobel Prizes did but become irrelevant because they don’t pay enough attention to the relationship between the laureate-selecting process and the prize’s public reputation (note that the Nobel Prizes acquired their reputation in a different era). The Infosys Prize has elevated itself in this way whereas the Indian Science Congress’s prize has undermined itself. India or any Indian for that matter can institute an award that chooses its winners more carefully, and gives them lots of money (which I’m [opposed to](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/09/21/on-indias-new-vigyan-puraskar-awards/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) vis-à-vis senior scientists) to draw popular attention. There are many reasons an Indian hasn’t won a science Nobel Prize in a while but it’s not the only prize worth winning. Let’s aspire to other, even better, ones. ### The journal's part in a retraction URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/28/the-journals-part-in-a-retraction/ Last updated: 2023-09-28T18:49:58.000Z This is another Ranga Dias and superconductivity post, so please avert your gaze if you’re tired of it already. According to a [September 27 report](https://www.science.org/content/article/another-retraction-looms-embattled-physicist-behind-blockbuster-superconductivity?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Science*, the journal *Nature* plans to retract the latest Dias et al. paper, published in March 2023, claiming to have found evidence of near-room-temperature superconductivity in an unusual material, nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (N-LuH). The heart of the matter seems to be, per *Science*, a plot showing a drop in N-LuH’s electric resistance below a particular temperature – a famous sign of superconductivity. Dias (University of Rochester) and Ashkan Salamat (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), the other lead investigator in the study, measured the resistance in a noisy setting and then subtracted the noise – or what they claimed to be the noise. The problem is apparently that the subtracted plot in the published paper and the plot put together using raw data submitted by Dias and Salamat to *Nature* are different; the latter doesn’t show the resistance dropping to zero. Meaning that together with the noise, the paper's authors subtracted some other information as well, and whatever was left behind suggested N-LuH had become superconducting. A little more than a month ago, *Physical Review Letters* officially retracted another paper of a study led by Dias and Salamat after publishing it last year – and notably after a similar dispute (and on both occasions Dias was opposed to having the papers retracted). But the narrative was [more dramatic then](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/ranga-dias-physical-review-letters-retraction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), with *Physical Review Letters* accusing Salamat of obstructing its investigation by supplying some other data as the raw data for its independent probe. Then again, even before *Science*‘s report, other scientists in the same field [had said](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/09/07/scientists-conduct-affects-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they weren’t bothering with replicating the data in the N-LuH paper because they had already wasted time trying to replicate Dias’s previous work, in vain. Now, in the last year alone, three of Dias’s superconductivity-related papers have been retracted. But as on previous occasions, the new report also raises questions about *Nature*‘s pre-publication peer-review process. To quote *Science*: > In response to \[James Hamlin and Brad Ramshaw’s critique of the subtracted plot\], Nature initiated a post-publication review process, soliciting feedback from four independent experts. In documents obtained by Science, all four referees expressed strong concerns about the credibility of the data. ‘I fail to understand why the authors … are not willing or able to provide clear and timely responses,’ wrote one of the anonymous referees. ‘Without such responses the credibility of the published results are in question.’ A second referee went further, writing: ‘I strongly recommend that the article by R. Dias and A. Salamat be retracted.’ What was the difference between this review process and the one that happened before the paper was published, in which *Nature*‘s editors would have written to independent experts asking them for their opinions on the submitted manuscript? Why didn’t they catch the problem with the electrical resistance plot? One possible explanation is the sampling problem: when writing an article as a science journalist, the views expressed in the article will be a function of the scientists that I have sampled from within the scientific community. In order to obtain the consensus view, I need to sample a sufficiently large number of scientists (or a small number of representative scientists, such as those who I know are in touch with the pulse of the community). Otherwise, there’s a nontrivial risk of some view in my article being over- or under-represented. Similarly, during its pre-publication peer-review process, did *Nature* not sample the right set of reviewers? I’m unable to think of other explanations because the sampling problem accounts for many alternatives. Hamlin and Ramshaw also didn’t necessarily have access to more data than Dias et al. submitted to *Nature* because their criticism [emerged in May 2023](https://pubpeer.com/publications/5B50A0D3400CDD252EC67D75F0841A?ref=slightlyacidic.com) itself, and was based on the published paper. *Nature* also hasn’t disclosed the pre-publication reviewers’ reports nor explained if there were any differences between *its* sampling process in the pre- and post-publication phases. So short of there being a good explanation, as much as we have a scientist who’s seemingly been crying wolf about room-temperature superconductivity, we also have a journal whose peer-review process produced, on two separate occasions, two different results. Unless it can clarify why this isn’t so, *Nature* is also to blame for the paper’s fate. ### On Agnihotri's Covaxin film, defamation, and false bravery URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/25/on-agnihotris-covaxin-film-defamation-and-false-bravery/ Last updated: 2023-09-25T11:12:47.000Z Vivek Agnihotri's next film, *The Vaccine War*, is set to be released on September 28\. It is purportedly about the making of Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine made by Bharat Biotech, and claims to be based on real events. Based on watching the film's trailer and snippets shared on Twitter, I can confidently state that while the basis of the film's narrative may or may not be true, the narrative itself is not. The film's principal antagonist appears to be a character named Rohini Singh Dhulia, played by Raima Sen, who is the science editor of a news organisation called *The Daily Wire*. Agnihotri has said that this character is based on his 'research' on the journalism of *The Wire* during, and about, the pandemic, presumably at the time of and immediately following the DCGI's approval for Covaxin. Agnihotri and his followers on Twitter have also gone after science journalist Priyanka Pulla, who wrote many articles in this period for *The Wire*. At the time, I was the science editor of *The Wire*. Dhulia appears to have lovely lines in the film like "India can't do this" and "the government will fail", the latter uttered with visible glee. It has been terribly disappointing to see senior ICMR scientists promoting the film as well as the film (according to the trailer, at least) confidently retaining the name of [Balram Bhargava](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/disappointing-persons-of-the-year-2021/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for the character as well; for the uninitiated, Bhargava was the ICMR director-general during the pandemic. (One of his aides also has make-up strongly resembling Raman Gangakhedkar.) In Pulla's words, "the political capture of this institution is complete". The film has also been endorsed by Sudha Murthy and received a tone-deaf assessment by film critic Baradwaj Rangan, among other similar displays of support. One thing that caught my eye is that the film also retains the ICMR logo, logotype, and tagline as is (see screenshot below from the trailer). ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/b9a15-5224e-screenshot-2023-09-25-at-9.26.27-am.png?w=1024&h=538) Source: YouTube The logo appears on the right of the screen as well as at the top-left, together with the name of NIV, the government facility that provided the viral material for and helped developed Covaxin. This is notable: AltBalaji, the producer of the TV show *M.O.M. – The Women Behind Mission Mangal*, was prevented from showing ISRO's rockets as is because the show's narrative was a fictionalised version of real events. A statement from AltBalaji [to *The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/ekta-kapoor-mangalyaan-altbalaji-isro-copyright/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the time, in 2019, when I asked why the show's posters showed the Russian Soyuz rocket and the NASA Space Shuttle instead of the PSLV and the GSLV, said it was "legally bound not to use actual names or images of the people, objects or agencies involved". I don't know if the 2019 film *Mission Mangal* was bound by similar terms: its trailer shows a rocket very much resembling the GSLV Mk III (now called LVM-3) sporting the letters "S R O", instead of "I S R O" ; the corresponding Hindi letters "स" and "रो"; and a different logo below the letters "G S L V" instead of the first "I" (screenshot below). GSLV is still the official designation of the launch vehicle, and a step further from what the TV show was allowed. And while the film also claims to be based on real events, its narrative is also fictionalised ([read my review and fact-check](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/review-mission-mangal-2019/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/8d948-a39f6-screenshot-2023-09-25-at-9.32.44-am.png?w=1024&h=538) Source: YouTube Yet ICMR's representation in *The Vaccine War* pulls no punches: its director-general at the time is represented by name and all its trademark assets are on display. It would seem the audience is to believe that they're receiving a documentarian's view of real events at ICMR. The film has destroyed the differences between being based on a true story and building on that to fictionalise for dramatic purposes. Perhaps more importantly: while AltBalaji was "legally bound" to not use official ISRO imagery, including those of the rockets, because it presented a fiction, *The Vaccine War* has been freed of the same legal obligation even though it seems to be operating on the same terms. This to me is my chief symptom of ICMR's political capture. Of course, that Agnihotri is making a film based on a 'story' that might include a matter that is *sub judice* is also problematic. As you may know, Bharat Biotech [filed a defamation case](https://thewire.in/media/the-wire-court-take-down-bharat-biotech?ref=slightlyacidic.com) against the Foundation for Independent Journalism in early 2022; this foundation publishes *The Wire* and *The Wire Science*. I'm a defendant in the case, as are fellow journalists and science communicators Priyanka Pulla, Neeta Sanghi, Jammi Nagaraj Rao, and Banjot Kaur, among others. But while *The Wire* is fighting the case, it will be hard to say before watching *The Vaccine War* as to whether the film actually treads on forbidden ground. I'm also not familiar with the freedoms that filmmakers do and don't have in Indian law (and the extent to which the law maps to common sense and intuition). That said, while we're on the topic of the film, the vaccine, defamation, and the law, I'd like to highlight something important. In 2022, Bharat Biotech sought and received an *ex parte* injunction from a Telangana court against the allegedly offending articles published by *The Wire* and *The Wire Science*, and had them forcibly taken down. The court also prevented the co-defendants from publishing articles on Covaxin going forward and filed a civil defamation case, seeking Rs 100 crore in damages. As the legal proceedings got underway, I started to speak to lawyers and other journalists about implications of the orders, whether specific actions are disallowed on my part, and the way courts deal with such matters – and discovered something akin to a labyrinth that's also a minefield. There's a lot to learn. While the law may be clear about something, how a contention winds its way through the judicial system is both barely organised and uncodified. Rahul Gandhi's own defamation case threw informative light on the role of judges' discretion and the possibility of a jail term upon conviction, albeit for the criminal variety of the case. The thing I resented the most, on the part of sympathetic lawyers, legal scholars, and journalists alike, is the view that it's the mark of a good journalist to face down a defamation case in their career. Whatever its origins, this belief's time is up in a period when defamation cases are being filed at the drop of a hat. It's no longer a *specific* mark of good journalism. Like *The Wire*, I and my co-defendants stand by the articles we wrote and published, but it remains good journalism irrespective of whether it has also been accused of defamation. Second, the process is the punishment, as the adage goes, yet by valorising the presence of a defamation case in a journalist's record, it seeks to downplay the effects of the process itself. These effects include the inherent uncertainty; the unfamiliar procedures, documentation, and their contents and purposes; the travelling, especially to small towns, and planning ahead (taking time off work, availability of food, access to clean bathrooms, local transport, etc.); the obscure rules of conduct within courtrooms and the varying zeal with which they're implemented; the variety and thus intractability of options for legal succour; and the stress, expenses, and the anxiety. So please, thanks for your help, but spare me the BS of how I'm officially a good journalist. ### On India's new 'Vigyan Puraskar' awards URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/21/on-indias-new-vigyan-puraskar-awards/ Last updated: 2023-09-21T11:33:20.000Z The Government of India has replaced the 300 or so awards for scientists it used to give out until this year with the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP), a set of four awards with 56 laureates, [*The Hindu* has reported](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/science-and-tech-awards-to-get-padma-style-makeover-into-rashtriya-vigyan-puraskar/article67322829.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Unlike in the previous paradigm, and like the Padma awards to recognise the accomplishments of civilians, the RVP will comprise a medal and a certificate, and no cash. The changes are the result of the recommendations of a committee put together last year by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The new paradigm presents four important opportunities to improve the way the Indian government recognises good scientific work. **1\. Push for women** A note forwarded by the Department of Science and Technology, which has so far overseen more than 200 awards every year, to the MHA said, “Adequate representation of women may … be ensured” – an uncharacteristically direct statement (worded in the characteristic style of the Indian bureaucracy) that probably alludes to the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Awards, which were only announced last week for the year 2022. The SSB Awards are the most high-profile State-sponsored awards for scientists in the old paradigm, and they [have become infamous](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/csir-bhatnagar-prizes-courting-irrelevance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for their opaque decision-making and gross under-representation of women scientists. Their arbitrary 45-year age limit further restricted opportunities for women to be nominated, given breaks in their career due to pregnancies, childcare, etc. As a result, even fewer women have won an SSB Award than the [level of their participation](https://biaswatchindia.com/base-rates-of-indian-women-faculty/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in various fields of the scientific workforce. According to *The Hindu*, to determine the winners of each year’s RVP awards, “A committee will be constituted every year, comprising the Secretaries of six science Ministries, up to four presidents of science and engineering academies, and six distinguished scientists and technologists from various fields”. The SSB Awards’ opacity was rooted in the fact that candidates had to be nominated by their respective institutes, without any process to guarantee proper representation, and that the award-giving committee was shrouded in secrecy, with no indication as to their deliberations. To break from this regrettable tradition, the Indian government should publicise the composition of the RVP committee every year and explain its process. Such transparency, and public accountability, is by itself likely to ensure more women will be nominated for and receive the awards than through any other mechanism. **2\. No cash component** The RVP awards score by eliminating the cash component for laureates. Scientific talent and productivity are unevenly distributed throughout India, and are typically localised in well-funded national institutes or in a few private universities, so members of the scientific workforce in these locales are also more likely to win awards. Giving these individuals large sums of money, that too after they have produced notable work and not before, will be redundant and only subtract from the fortunes of a less privileged scientist. A sum of Rs 5 lakh may not be significant from a science department’s point of view, but it is the principle that matters. To enlarge the pool of potential candidates, the government must also ensure that research scholars receive their promised scholarships on time. At present, delayed scholarships and fellowships have become a tragic hallmark of doing science in India, together with officials’ promises and scramble every year to hasten disbursals. **3\. Admitting PIOs** In the new paradigm, up to one of the three Vigyan Ratna awards every year may go to a person of Indian origin (PIO), and up to three PIOs may receive the Vigyan Shri and Yuva-SSB awards, of the 25 in each group. (PIOs aren’t eligible for the three Vigyan Team awards.) Including PIOs in the national science awards framework is a slippery slope. An award for scientific work is implicitly an award to an individual for exercising their duties as a scientist as well as for navigating a particular milieu, by securing the resources required for their work or – as is often the case in India – conducting frugal yet clever experiments to overcome resource barriers. Rewarding a PIO who has made excellent contributions to science while working abroad, and probably after having been educated abroad, would delink the “made in India” quality of the scientific work from the work itself, whereas we need more awards to celebrate this relationship. This said, the MHA may have opened the door to PIOs in order to bring the awards to [international attention](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/some-science-prizes-are-only-for-men/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), by fêting Indian-origin scientists well-known in their countries of residence. **4\. Science awards for science** The reputation of an award is determined by the persons who win it, illustrated as much by, say, Norway’s Abel Prize as by the Indian Science Congress’s [little-known 'Millennium Plaques of Honour'](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/the-indian-science-congress-has-gutted-its-own-award-by-giving-it-to-appa-rao-podile/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). To whom will the RVP prizes be awarded? As stated earlier, the award-giving committee will comprise Secretaries of the six science Ministries, “up to” four presidents of the science and engineering academies, and six “distinguished” scientists and technologists. These ‘Ministries’ are the Departments of Science and Technology, of Biotechnology, of Space, and of Atomic Energy, and the Ministries of Earth Sciences and of Health and Family Welfare. As such, they exclude representatives from the Ministries of Environment, Animal Husbandry, and Agriculture, which also deal with research, often of the less glamorous variety. Just as there are inclusion criteria, there should be exclusion criteria as well, such as requiring eligible candidates to have published papers in credible journals (or preprint repositories) and/or to not work with or be related in any other way to members of the jury. Terms like “distinguished” are also open to interpretation. Earlier this year, for example, Mr. Khader Vali Dudekula was conferred a Padma Shri in the ‘Science and Engineering’ category for popularising the nutritional benefits of millets, but he has [also claimed, wrongly](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-problem-of-science-at-the-padma-awards/article66450719.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), that consuming millets can cure cancer and diabetes. The downside of reduction and centralisation is that they heighten the risk of exclusion. Instead of becoming another realm in which civilians are excluded – or included on dubious grounds, for that matter – the new awards should take care to place truly legitimate scientific work above work that meets any arbitrary ideological standard. ### The 'Climate Overshoot' website URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/18/the-climate-overshoot-website/ Last updated: 2023-09-18T22:09:14.000Z Earlier this evening, as I was working on my laptop, I noticed that it was rapidly heating up, to the extent that it was burning my skin through two layers of cloth. This is a device that routinely runs a half-dozen apps simultaneously without breaking a sweat, and the browser (Firefox) also seldom struggles to handle the few score tabs I have open at all times. Since I'd only been browsing until then, I checked `about:processes` to find if any of the tabs could be the culprit, and it was: the Climate Overshoot Commission (COC) [website](https://www.overshootcommission.org/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Which is ironic because the COC was recently in the news for a report in which it detailed its (prominent) members' deliberations on how the world's countries could accelerate emission cuts and not overshoot emissions thresholds. https://videopress.com/v/eowOl3QK?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=trueThe world can reduce the risk of temperature overshoot by, among other things, building better websites. What even is the video of the random forest doing in the background? The COC itself was the product of deliberations among some scientists who wished to test solar geoengineering but couldn't. And though the report advises against deploying this risky technology without thoroughly studying it first, it also insists that it should remain on the table among other climate mitigation strategies, including good ol' cutting emissions. Irrespective of what its support for geoengineering implies for scientific and political consensus on the idea, the COC can also help by considerably simplifying its website so it doesn't guzzle more computing power than all the 56 other tabs combined, and around 3 W just to stay open. The findings aren't even that sensible. ### Hasan Minhaj's search for the premise URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/17/hasan-minhajs-search-for-the-premise/ Last updated: 2023-09-17T14:44:51.000Z When Hasan Minhaj spoke on his show about living through some dangerous experiences as a Muslim man from an Indian family growing up in the US of A, he wasn't speaking the truth. He [told Clare Malone](https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/hasan-minhajs-emotional-truths?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of *The New Yorker* that his stories have "seeds" of truth", that his comedy is 70% "emotional truth—this happened" and 30% "hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction". First, we really need to use words other than 'truth' to talk about [things that aren't true](https://publicseminar.org/2017/07/whos-afraid-of-the-post-factual/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the way a 'truth' is expected to be. Second, I was only queasy as long as it seemed that Minhaj was passing off other similar people's stories as his own, but then it seemed to be that they weren't anyone's stories at all, a problem exacerbated by the ways in which they involved women. Then he said this, which rang closer home in a different way: > “The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise” So he had a punchline and went looking for a premise – the sort of thing that's sunk [scientists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fscientific%5Fmisconduct%5Fincidents?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [journalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Journalistic%5Fscandals?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when they tried to do the same thing. It's also the trope that [cryptocurrencies popularised](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the heyday of ‘investments’ in bitcoin and NFTs. They were solutions looking for problems, and when solutions look for problems, they tend to ignore the structural factors that create the problems. For example, crypto-bros wanted to democratise the ownership of pieces of art rather than letting them accumulate in the hands of extremely wealthy individuals. But NFTs aren't concerned with the relationships between creditors and debtors, wealth and social signalling, and art and capitalism. So they failed to make a difference. But that shouldn’t diminish the irony that the world today is one big premise looking for a punchline, sometimes desperately. In India itself, the incumbent BJP government has assumed many elements of authoritarian and fascist ideologies in its rule, and the social fabric has suffered. One cause of suffering is that the government has, together with unscrupulous TV news anchors and some supine public institutions, vitiated public dialogue, spread misinformation, deviated in spirit from the implementation of the RTI Act, and suppressed the production and release of data from public surveys and research that are critical of its dogma. One consequence of all this for journalists has been that proof that might seal a causal relationship between a hypothesis and a set of facts is often out of reach, and too often just so. During the pandemic, for example, almost every instance of health journalism was also an instance of investigative journalism. In the last decade, using various forms of retaliation and sanction, the government has silenced some critics and forced others to think twice before responding to reporters. In this milieu, journalism can build only a more incomplete picture of reality as we experience or even observe it (more than subjective experiences that it couldn't fully capture anyway). Individuals are free to piece together the rest in their imagination, and they do. But for journalists at least, it's a cardinal sin to present this extrapolation as fact. It's important, but it's not fact. This was for example one of the [issues with Ronan Farrow's work](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) during the #MeToo movement. Minhaj isn’t a journalist and punchlines aren’t reports put together through journalistic work – yet his quote is insightful to the practice of journalism. After substituting "conclusion" for "punch line", for instance, we have a faithful reflection of what might have gone wrong with *The Wire*'s TekFog and Meta reports last year, and after which *The Wire* sued Devesh Kumar, the person at the centre of both investigative efforts, [for deceiving](https://thewire.in/media/the-wire-editorial-to-our-readers-an-apology-and-a-promise?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *The Wire*'s journalists. Kumar had allegedly invented the raison d’être of both series to match what many of us have come to accept as an incontestable reality. (Note: I worked with *The Wire* at the time these reports were published but wasn't involved in reporting or publishing them. I have, however, since unpublished one post on this blog in which I considered TekFog's implications for science journalism.) The alleged premise in both cases was broadly that people affiliated with the BJP were using sophisticated IT tools to manipulate the spread of hateful messages ('TekFog') and removal of anti-party sentiment ('Meta') on social media platforms. The conclusions in both sets of reports – before *The Wire* repudiated them – were in line with the fact that BJP leaders have regularly resorted to communalising rhetoric to win votes and BJP governments have jailed people for social-media posts criticising the party's views and actions. But it soon became clear that the conclusions weren't worth the premise even in circumstances as difficult as those created by the foot-soldiers of Hindutva. This to me is what makes Minhaj's rationale so disagreeable. Of course, journalism is different from a talk-show, but Malone's reply to Minhaj as he tries repeatedly to justify the fictionalising should resonate with anyone who claims to relate the truth but doesn’t: "But it didn't happen to you." (*Who* is experiencing the event matters as well, so the last two words may be redundant.) It's the simplest argument against confirmation bias, and it also speaks to an important part of the identity of comedians like Minhaj, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, etc.: they're a source of new information about the world insofar as they expect to be perceived to be credible when they tell us how to think about that information, and that so happens to be in the form of jokes. While Minhaj is influential, the outing of his more striking anecdotes as untrue leaves him the story, as it did Farrow and [Kumar](https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/wire-says-they-were-deceived-amit-malviya-sue-five-developments-so-far-169330?ref=slightlyacidic.com), rather than the actual people and ideas that he apparently wished to highlight. And that's harmful to those people and ideas. In the words of legal scholars Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, [writing in 1997](https://archive.org/details/beyondallreasonr00farb/mode/2up?q=minimizes) in the aftermath of [the Tawana Brawley case](https://www.c-span.org/video/?14015-1/outrage-tawana-brawley-hoax&ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Indifference to the distinction between fact and fiction minimizes real suffering by implying that it is no worse than imagined or self-inflicted suffering. ### The AI trust deficit predates AI URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/14/the-ai-trust-deficit-predates-ai/ Last updated: 2023-09-14T08:57:00.000Z > There are alien minds among us. Not the little green men of science fiction, but the alien minds that power the facial recognition in your smartphone, determine your creditworthiness and write poetry and computer code. These alien minds are artificial intelligence systems, the ghost in the machine that you encounter daily. > > But AI systems have a significant limitation: Many of their inner workings are impenetrable, making them fundamentally unexplainable and unpredictable. Furthermore, constructing AI systems that behave in ways that people expect is a significant challenge. > > If you fundamentally don’t understand something as unpredictable as AI, how can you trust it? Trust plays an important role in the public understanding of science. The excerpt above – from [an article](https://theconversation.com/why-humans-cant-trust-ai-you-dont-know-how-it-works-what-its-going-to-do-or-whether-itll-serve-your-interests-213115?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Mark Bailey, chair of Cyber Intelligence and Data Science at the National Intelligence University, Maryland, in *The Conversation* about whether we can trust AI – showcases that. Bailey treats AI systems as "alien minds" because of their, rather their makers', inscrutable purposes. They are inscrutable not just because they are obscured but because, even under scrutiny, it is difficult to determine how an advanced machine-based logic makes decisions. Setting aside questions about the extent to which such a claim is true, Bailey's argument as to the trustworthiness of such systems can be stratified based on the people to whom it is addressed: AI experts and non-AI-experts, and I have a limited issue with the latter vis-à-vis Bailey's contention. That is, to non-AI-experts – which I take to be the set of all people ranging from those not trained as scientists (in any field) to those trained as such but who aren't familiar with AI – the question of trust is more wide-ranging. They already place a lot of their trust in (non-AI) technologies that they don't understand, and probably never will. Should they rethink their trust in these systems? Or should we taken their trust in these systems to be ill-founded and requiring 'improvement'? Part of Bailey's argument is that there are questions about whether we can or should trust AI when we don't understand it. Aside from AI in a generic sense, he uses the example of self-driving cars and a variation of the trolley problem. While these technologies illustrate his point, they also give the impression that AI systems not making decisions aligned with human expectations and their struggle to incorporate ethics is a problem restricted to high technologies. It isn't. The trust deficit vis-à-vis predates AI. Many of the technologies that non-experts trust but which don't uphold that (so to speak) are not high-tech; examples from India alone include biometric scanners (for Aadhaar), public transport infrastructure, and mechanisation in agriculture. This is because people's use of any technology beyond their ability to understand is mediated by social relationships, economic agency, and cultural preferences, and not technical know-how. For the layperson, trust in a technology is really trust in some institution, individuals or even some organisational principle (traditions, religion, etc.), and this is as it should be – perhaps even for more-sophisticated AI systems of the future. Many of us will never fully understand how a deep-learning neural network works, nor should we be expected to, but that doesn't implicitly make AI systems untrustworthy. I expect to be able to trust scientists in government and in respectable scientific institutions to discharge their duties in a public-spirited fashion and with integrity, so that I can trust their verdict on AI, or anything else in similar vein. Bailey also writes later in the article that some day, AI systems' inner workings could become so opaque that scientists may no longer be able to connect their inputs with their outputs in a scientifically complete way. According to Bailey: "It is important to resolve the explainability and alignment issues before the critical point is reached where human intervention becomes impossible." This is fair but it also misses the point a little bit by limiting the entities that can intervene to individuals and built-in technical safeguards, like working an ethical 'component' into the system's decision-making framework, instead of taking a broader view that keeps the public institutions, including policies, that will be responsible for translating the AI systems' output into public welfare in the picture. Even today in India, that's what's failing us – not the technologies themselves – and therein lies the trust deficit. *Featured image credit: Cash Macanaya/Unsplash*. ### Scientists' conduct affects science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/07/scientists-conduct-affects-science/ Last updated: 2023-09-07T11:23:00.000Z *Nature News* has published an excellent feature by Edwin Cartlidge on the "wall of scepticism" that arose in response to the latest superconductivity claim from Ranga Dias et al., purportedly in a compound called nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride. It seems the [new paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0?ref=slightlyacidic.com#change-history) has earned a note of concern as well, after various independent research groups failed to replicate the results. Dias & co. had had another paper, claiming superconductivity in a different material, [retracted in October 2022](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2801-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com), two years after its publication. All these facts together raise a few implications about the popular imagination of science. First, the new paper was published by *Nature*, a peer-reviewed journal. And Jorge Hirsch of the University of California, San Diego, told *Nature News* "that editors should have first resolved the question about the provenance of the raw data in the retracted 2020 *Nature* article before even considering the 2023 paper". So the note reaffirms the role of peer-review being limited to checking whether the information presented in a paper is consistent with the paper's conclusions, and not checking whether it is well-founded and has integrity in and of itself. Second, from *Nature News*: > "Researchers from four other groups, meanwhile, told Nature’s news team that they had abandoned their own attempts to replicate the work or hadn’t even tried. Eremets said that he wasted time on the CSH work, so didn’t bother with LuNH. 'I just ignored it,' he says." An amusing illustration, I think, that speaks against science's claims to being impartial, etc. In a perfectly objective world, Dias et al.'s previous work shouldn't have mattered to other scientists, who should have endeavoured to verify the claims in the new paper anew, given that it's a fairly sensational claim and because it was published in a 'prestigious' peer-reviewed journal. But, as Eremets said, "the synthesis protocol wasn’t clear in the paper and Dias didn’t help to clarify it". The reciprocal is also true: Dias chose to share samples of nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride that his team had prepared only with Russell Hemley, who studies material chemistry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, (and some other groups that he refused to name) – and that Hemley is one of the researchers who hasn't criticised Dias's findings. Hemley is also not an independent researcher; he and Dias [worked together](https://www.science.org/content/article/revolutionary-blue-crystal-resurrects-hope-room-temperature-superconductivity?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the work in the 2020 paper that was later retracted. Dias should ideally have shared the samples with everyone. But scientists' social conduct does matter, influencing decisions about how other scientists believe they should respond. Speaking of which: *Nature* (the journal) on the other hand doesn't look at past work and attendant misgivings when judging each paper. From *Nature News* (emphasis added): > The editor’s note added to the 2023 paper on 1 September, saying that the reliability of data are in question, adds that “appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.” Karl Ziemelis, Nature’s chief applied- and physical-sciences editor, based in London, says that he and his colleagues are “assessing concerns” about the paper, and adds: “Owing to the confidentiality of the peer-review process we cannot discuss specific details of what transpired.” As for the 2020 paper, Ziemelis explains that they decided not to look into the origin of the data once they had established problems with the data processing and then retracted the research. “Our broader investigation of that work ceased at that point,” he says. Ziemelis adds that “all submitted manuscripts **are considered independently on the basis of the quality and timeliness of their science**”. The refusal to share samples echoes an unusual decision by the journal *Physical Review B* to [publish a paper](https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.245423?ref=slightlyacidic.com) authored by researchers at Microsoft, in which they reported discovery a Majorana zero mode – an elusive particle (in a manner of speaking) that could lead the way to building [quantum 'supercomputers'](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/microsoft-topological-quantum-computer-majorana-zero-modes/article67053462.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). However, it seems the team [withheld some information](http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-busy-and-contentious-week-in.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that independent researchers could have used to validate the findings, presumably because it's intellectual property. Rice University physics professor Douglas Natelson [wrote on his blog](http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-busy-and-contentious-week-in.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > The rationale is that the community is better served by getting this result into the peer-reviewed literature now even if all of the details aren't going to be made available publicly until the end of 2024\. I don't get why the researchers didn't just wait to publish, if they are so worried about those details being available. --- Take all of these facts and opinions together and ask yourself: what then is the scientific literature? It probably contains many papers that have cleared peer-review but whose results won't replicate. Some papers may or may not replicate but we'll never know for a couple years. It also doesn't contain replication studies that might have been there if the replicators and the original research group were on amicable terms. What also do these facts and view imply for the popular conception of science? Every day, I encounter two broad kinds of critical imaginations of science. One has emerged from the practitioners of science, and those studying its philosophy, history, sociology, etc. These individuals have debated the notions presented above to varying degrees. But there is also a class of people in India that wields science as an antidote to what it claims is the state's collusion with pseudoscience, and such collusion as displacing what is apparently science's rightful place in the Indian society-state: as the best and sole arbiter of facts and knowledge. This science is apparently a unified whole, objective, self-correcting, evidence-based, and anti-faith. I imagine this science needs to have these characteristics in order to effectively challenge, in the courts of public opinion, the government's oft-mistaken claims. At the same time, the ongoing Dias et al. saga reminds us that any 'science' imprisoned by these assumptions would dismiss the events and forces that would actually help it grow – such as incentivising good-faith actions, acknowledging the labour required to keep science honest and reflexive, discussing issues resulting from the cultural preferences of its exponents, paying attention to social relationships, heeding concerns about the effects of one's work and conduct on the field, etc. In the words of Paul Feyerabend (*Against Method*, third ed., 1993): "Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages." ### The UAE's hacks for international prominence URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/04/the-uaes-hacks-for-international-prominence/ Last updated: 2023-09-04T11:07:00.000Z The UAE seems to be making a sincere attempt to whitewash itself, according to a [*New York Times* report](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/climate/uae-cop28-human-rights.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on September 1, by hosting the COP28 climate talks. This is both unsurprising and fascinating – both because we’ve seen this in the local cosmopolitan self-image the country has sought to build. This is perhaps most overt with Dubai, but Abu Dhabi and Sharjah as well: while the former, with its [surfeit of tourist attractions](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/08/17/uae-straws-in-the-wind/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), seems keen to appear to be from the future, as they say, all three cities have been erected on a migrant labour force, especially from the Indian subcontinent, that is otherwise kept hidden from sight. The country is also the personal fiefdom of the emirs of each emirate and has no interest or room for critical dialogues on most matters of any import – a point that the newspaper’s report also makes: > “That’s the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the U.A.E. acting as host of the annual global climate conference,” said Devin Kenney, who researches the United Arab Emirates for Amnesty International. “How are you supposed to have a serious discussion about a critical problem for all humanity in a country where critical discussion is illegal?” As far as taking responsibility for major events to launder one’s international reputation goes, the UAE’s previous attempt was its Mars mission. In July 2020, the country ‘launched’ a probe named ‘Hope’ to the red planet, which successfully achieved orbital capture in February 2021\. Emaratis celebrated the occasion in much the same way Indians had with the Mars Orbiter Mission, and such celebration was probably the mission’s primary objective. The UAE’s spaceflight organisation was actually founded in 2014; the probe was assembled in the University of Colorado, by engineers from the UAE as well as from Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley; its ground-segment requirements are being met by NASA and a [private entity in Arizona](https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/hope-probe/ground-segment/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); and it was tested in and launched by Japan, onboard its H-IIA rocket. ‘Hope’ was not a product of the UAE’s space programme because the UAE doesn’t have a space programme the way India, China, Russia, Japan or the US have a space programme. Yet the UAE reaped a reputational windfall out of the exercise, thrusting itself into the ranks of countries that have successfully conducted interplanetary missions, and giving its citizens and ‘permanent residents’ something to cheer about. Recently, in an [opinion article in *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-importance-of-states-in-space-missions/article67241335.ece?ref=rootprivileges.net), Jindal School of Government and Public Policy associate professor Rahul Menon used the ‘Hope’ mission as an example of a country with a lower population (and thus relatively lower availability of highly skilled persons in diverse fields) achieving what India, China, etc. had because of state intervention, towards his larger point that such intervention is also capable of yielding desirable outcomes. But the UAE is a red herring in this arena whose state did nothing more than fork out a considerable sum of (what is essentially family) money, fly out some of its best engineers to the US, contract a rocket in Japan, and wait. Seldom having seen the country do better, I bet it’s trying to pull a similar trick with COP28. ### The Kapitza pendulum URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/09/01/the-kapitza-pendulum/ Last updated: 2023-09-01T14:42:05.000Z Rarely does a 'problem' come along that makes you think more than casually about the question of mathematics's reality, and problems in mathematical physics are full of them. I came across one such problem for the first time yesterday, and given its simplicity, thought I should make note of it. I spotted a [paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.14441.pdf?ref=rootprivileges.net) yesterday with the title 'The Inverted Pendulum as a Classical Analog of the EFT Paradigm'. I've never understood the contents of such papers without assistance from a physicist, but I like to go through them in case a familiar idea or name jumps up that warrants a more thorough follow-up or I do understand something and that helps me understand something else even better. In this instance, the latter happened, and I discovered the Kapitza pendulum. In 1908, a British mathematician named Andrew Stephenson [described the problem](https://zenodo.org/record/1430846?ref=rootprivileges.net) but wasn't able to explain it. That happened at the hands of the Russian scientist [Pyotr Kapitsa](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1978/kapitsa/biographical/?ref=rootprivileges.net), for whom the pendulum is named, who worked it out in the 1950s. You are familiar with the conventional pendulum: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/17a70-b34ba-136345-540p1.gif?w=960) Here, the swinging bob is completely stable when it is suspended directly below the pivot, and is unmoving. The Kapitza pendulum is a conventional pendulum whose pivot is rapidly moved up and down. This gives rise to an unusual stable state: when the bob is directly above the pivot! Here's a demonstration: As you can see, the stable state isn't a perfect one: the bob still vibrates on either side of a point above the pivot, yet it doesn't move beyond a particular distance, much less drop downward under the force of gravity. If you push the bob just a little, it swings across a greater distance for some time before returning to the narrow range. How does this behaviour arise? I'm fascinated by the question of the character of mathematics because of its ability to make predictions about reality – to build a bridge between something that we know to be physically true (like how a conventional pendulum would swing when dropped from a certain height, etc.) and something that we don't, at least not yet. If this sounds wrong, please make sure you're thinking of the very first instantiation of some system whose behaviour is defying your expectations, like the very first Kapitza pendulum. How do you know what you're looking at isn't due to a flaw in the system or some other confounding factor? A Kapitza pendulum is relatively simple to build, so one way out of this question is to build multiple units and check if the same behaviour exists in all of them. If you can be reasonably certain that the same flaw is unlikely to manifest in all of them, you'll know that you're observing an implicit, but non-intuitive, property of the system. But in some cases, building multiple units isn't an option – such as a particle-smasher like the Large Hadron Collider or the observation of a gravitational wave from outer space. Instead, researchers use mathematics to check the likelihood of alternate possibilities and to explain something new in terms of something we already know. Many theoretical physicists [have even articulated](https://twitter.com/Kaju%5FNut/status/1571556207978225664?ref=rootprivileges.net) that while string theory lacks experimental proof, it has as many exponents as it does because of its mathematical robustness and the deep connections they have found between its precepts and other, distant branches of physics. In the case of the Kapitza pendulum, based on Newton's laws and the principles of simple harmonic motion, it is possible to elucidate the rules, or equations, that govern the motion of the bob under the influence of its mass, the length of the rod connecting the bob to the pivot, the angle between the line straight up from the pivot and the rod (θ), acceleration due to gravity, the length of the pivot's up-down motion, and how fast this motion happens (i.e. its frequency). From this, we can derive an equation that relates θ to the distance of the up-down motion, the frequency, and the length of the rod. Finally, plotting this equation on a graph, with θ on one axis and time on the other, and keeping the values of the other variables fixed, we have our answer: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/44b60-7925b-inverted_pendulum_oscillatory_base.svg_.png?w=1024) When the value of θ is 0º, the bob is pointing straight up. When θ = 90º, the bob is pointing sideways and continues to fall down, to become a conventional pendulum, under the influence of gravity. But when the frequency is increased from 10 arbitrary units in this case to 200 units, the setup becomes a Kapitza pendulum as the value of θ keeps shifting but only between 6º on one side and some 3º on the other. The thing I'm curious about here is whether mathematics is purely descriptive or if it's real in the way a book, a chair or a planet is real. Either way, this 'problem' should remind us of the place and importance of mathematics in modern life – by virtue of the fact that it opens paths to understanding, and then building on, parts of reality that experiences based on our senses alone can't access. *Featured image: A portrait of Pyotr Kapitsa (left) in conversation with the chemist Nikolai Semyonov, by Boris Kustodiev, 1921\. Credit: Kapitsa Collection, public domain.* ### A difficulty celebrating Chandrayaan 3 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/31/a-difficulty-celebrating-chandrayaan-3/ Last updated: 2023-08-31T14:42:00.000Z I'm grateful to Avijit Pathak for his [article in *Indian Express*](https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/chandrayaan-3-landing-muscular-nationalism-8913073/?ref=rootprivileges.net) on August 29. After the Chandrayaan 3 mission achieved its primary objective, to soft-land a robotic lander on the moon's south polar region, there was widespread jubilation, but I couldn't celebrate. I felt guilty and distressed, actually, with the thought that my well-rewarded scepticism of India's affairs these days had finally scabbed over (and back) into cynicism. Even the articles I wrote on the occasion had to pass via the desk of a colleague, who helped spruce them up with some joy and passion. I had a few hypotheses as to the cause. One was that, by virtue of knowing what exactly happened behind the scenes, and having followed it for many years, I saw the really wow-worthy thing to be some solution to some problem with Chandrayaan 2 that, if fixed, would lead to success today. But something about it didn't *ring true*. Another that did was rooted in an anecdote I'd heard or read many years ago, I can't recall where. There was a stand-up comic event in Bombay. During a break, the comic steps out to the side of the building and has a smoke. A short distance away, he sees some people from the audience stream out for some fresh air. A beggar approaches this group asking for money. They tell him that if he shouts BMKJ, they will give him 10 rupees. He does, and they hand him the money and walk back in. The comic (who is the narrator) then says that he doesn't want to make this crowd laugh and leaves. I don't know if I have ever been a nationalist but I have been and am a patriot. In his article, Pathak berated the "muscular nationalism" fostered by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its consequences for the forms that the education, practice, and expression of science have taken in the country. In this milieu, he wrote, he couldn't bring himself to overtly celebrate the success of Chandrayaan 3, tracing his arrival at this conclusion from the 'first principles' of the reactions to the mission, its "political appropriation" by the powers that be, and the unglamorous nature of work to bridge the "gap between technology as a spectacle and science as a way of life". It is this articulation for which I'm grateful: I couldn't find the path myself, but now I know. Celebration isn't for the outcomes of a single mission on one occasion. It's for all the outcomes of a process that assimilates many impulses, driven by multiple beliefs and aspirations. Chandrayaan 3 may have been a resounding success but imagine it is one point in a process, and then take a look at what lies behind it. I see an [island called ISRO](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/08/18/the-shadows-of-chandrayaan-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the unique consequences of India's [fortuitous history](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2023/08/26/looking-only-for-nehru/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and the miracles that have become necessary for celebration-worthy scientific success in India today. Among the distributed sweets, the light and sounds of the firecrackers, and the torrent of applause, I sense the comedian's jokes to ease the mind of a nation that preserves this state of affairs. ### Checking the validity of a 'valid' ISRO question URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/30/checking-the-validity-of-a-valid-isro-question/ Last updated: 2023-08-30T14:42:00.000Z > The question of whether resources directed to space programmes are a diversion from pressing development needs, however, is a valid one. As an answer, one can uphold the importance of these programmes in material and scientific terms. The knowledge gleaned from these missions will contribute to human progress, and ISRO’s demonstration of its ability to launch satellites at relatively low costs can attract business and revenue from private players. This passage appears in an [opinion article](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-importance-of-states-in-space-missions/article67241335.ece?ref=rootprivileges.net) by Rahul Menon, an associate professor at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, published in *The Hindu* on August 28\. The overall point of the article, with which I agree, is that state intervention can also lead to positive outcomes. This said, I strongly disagree with this passage. What Menon has called a valid question is, in my view, not valid at all. First, it presumes that space programmes can't be part of "pressing development needs", which is false. For example, a space programme with an indigenous capacity to build satellites and rockets and to launch them is a prerequisite for easing access to long-distance communications. This is an important reason why television is such a highly penetrative media in India, and has helped achieve many cultural and social transformations. Second, Menon's statement also presumes that a space programme subtracts from "pressing development needs". This is true – insofar as we also agree that the resources we have allocated for the "needs" are limited. I don't: the simple reason is that the budget estimate for the Department of Space in 2023-2024 is 0.27% of the total estimate for the same period. Even if "pressing development needs" constitute a (arbitrarily) highly conservative 10% of the remainder, the claim that India's space programme stresses it by reducing it to 9.73% strains belief. In addition, development needs are also met by state governments and often with some help from the private sector. The real problem here is that the national government has not allocated enough to the "needs", leading to a conservative fiscal imagination that perceives the space programme to be wasteful. These are the two points of disagreement vis-à-vis the first sentence of the excerpted portion. The third point has to do with the third sentence: the Department of Space has done well to separate ISRO's scientific programmes from commercial ventures; NewSpace India, Ltd. exists for the latter. This is important so as to not valorise ISRO's ability to launch satellites at low cost, which is harmful because, in the spaceflight sector specifically, a) reducing the manufacturing and launch costs to maintain a market advantage is a terrible trade-off, given the safety implications, and b) we don't yet know the difference that access to cheaper labour in India makes to the difference in costs between ISRO and other space agencies. In sum, "the question of whether resources directed to space programmes are a diversion from pressing development needs" is a strawman. ### NYT's ISRO coverage continues assault on sense URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/29/nyts-isro-coverage-continues-assault-on-sense/ Last updated: 2023-08-29T07:39:54.000Z *The New York Times* refuses to learn, perpetuating views of ISRO that are equal parts blurry and illiterate, and often missing points that become clearer with just a little bit of closer reading. The launch and subsequent success of Chandrayaan 3 brought its annoying gaze the way of India and its space programme, about which it published at least [one article](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2023/07/09/nyts-profile-of-indias-space-startup-scene/?ref=rootprivileges.net) whose interpretation was at odds with reality. But for the newspaper's stubbornness, and unmindful of the impact it has on the minds of its large audience in India, pushback is important, even just a little, when and where possible. This is another such attempt. On August 24, the day after the Chandrayaan 3 lander module descended on the moon's surface in the south polar region, *The New York Times* [published an article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/world/asia/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-space.html?ref=rootprivileges.net) trying to tie the mission's success with India's ascendancy aspirations. Annotated excerpts follow: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/cbd82-2c6c5-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-7.51.06-am.png?w=1024) Meet frugality porn – when this style of administration and work is exalted without acknowledging the restrictions it imposes. We see more of it in the coming paragraphs. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/e3c16-d9ad9-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-7.54.41-am.png?w=1024) It's amusing how this question – once rightly derided as superficial – has of late come to be legitimised in articles by the BBC and now *The New York Times*. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/70341-34bd2-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-7.56.04-am.png?w=1024) Just one ISRO success and this is the crap we need to deal with. What "deeply rooted tradition"? What "pillar" of India's rise? Name one field of research and I will point you to articles discussing deep-seated problems in it, ranging from paucity of funds for research to academic freedom, from shortcomings in research infrastructure and environments that are overcome almost entirely by enterprising researchers going out of their way to help others to bureaucratic and government interference that vitiates the uptake of research findings in the public sphere. If anything, the article suggests that the blueprint India is offering other nations is: "Get one pretty important moon mission right and the world's most read newspaper will pretend that you have arisen, to the ignorance of very real, very bad problems." ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/3f13b-1699e-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.05.58-am.png?w=1024) a) The governments of India and the US have allocated to ISRO and NASA similar fractions of their national budgets. b) Scientists are paid much better in the US than in India, at all levels, after adjusting for differences in purchasing power. c) NASA operates one of the world's best public outreach efforts for a state-run entity while ISRO has no such department. The "potent message" that *The New York Times* is tooting is, in sum, hard to understand and potentially dangerous. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/fd70e-b3fec-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.12.28-am.png?w=1024) This is the same Modi who thought it best to plaster his portrait on all vaccination certificates (instead of photos of the respective vaccinees) but refused to investigate the Adani Group after Hindenburg's allegations, who didn't utter a peep about the incidents of brutal violence in Delhi, Hathras, Manipur or Nuh but whose giant face appeared on the screen about to show the last few – and most important – seconds of the Chandrayaan 3 lander's descent on the moon's surface, sending almost every viewer nationwide into paroxysms of rage. I'm not sure of the purpose of describing him in such positive terms vis-à-vis his communication. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/4bae8-2e876-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.17.38-am.png?w=1024) The outcome of the Chandrayaan 3 mission created something that has become extremely rare in India since 2014: a success that could be celebrated sans any reservations. But it didn't prove a way to overcome the "fiercely fractious politics"; in fact, it became yet another point – among the extant thousands – over which to deepen divisions and render impotent the effects of public debate on governance. In fact, absolutely every major national success since 2014 has been used to fuel the fire that is the "fiercely fractious politics". And again, I fail to see these resources that India "is finally getting". ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/091ac-e3fb8-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.27.59-am.png?w=1024) Get a historian of science and technology in India since independence – i.e. someone who studies these things closely, going beyond appearances to examine the effects of scientific and/or technological development and practices on all classes of society – to say the same thing, and then we'll talk. Until then, spare me the superficial and status-quoist reading of the place of science in India. Some suggested reading [here](https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se02.htm?ref=rootprivileges.net), [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/a-great-discussion-on-the-history-of-indias-tech/?ref=rootprivileges.net), and [here](https://science.thewire.in/culture/books/midnights-machines-nehru-vision-cds-appropriate-technology-nrc/?ref=rootprivileges.net). ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/dbc10-c96a5-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.37.04-am.png?w=1024) Finally, an acknowledgment of the problem with "frugality" and "shoestring" budgets, yet not nearly in the same context. And the second highlighted line is either a bald-faced fabrication or a reluctance to acknowledge reality: that scientists have been discouraged, silenced and/or harassed when their work is something a) that the state doesn't know how to integrate into its nationalist narratives, b) that disputes, negates or complicates something whose public understanding the state would like to control but isn't able to, or c) that the state simply cares little for. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/122f3-fb36a-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.43.11-am.png?w=1024) The highlighted portion? True everywhere, all the time. Commendable, but not special. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/e6ca6-c6107-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.44.10-am.png?w=1024) You've got to be kidding me. Here we have *The New York Times* reviving the desiccated corpse of the beast that so many laboured to kill and bury: the comparison of ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) with the 2013 film *Gravity* and, by implication, NASA's MAVEN mission. MOM was a technology demonstrator that cost Rs 454 crore (around $57 million), and whose scientific results did little to advance humankind's understanding of Mars. Its principal accomplishment is that it got into orbit around Mars. MAVEN cost $582.5 million, or Rs 3,410.53 crore (assuming a conversion rate of Rs 58.55 to a dollar in 2013). For that its scientific output was orders of magnitude more notable than that from MOM. As for *Gravity*: I've never understood this comparison. The film cost $80-130 million to make, according to Wikipedia; that's 468.40-761.15 crore rupees. So what? *Gattaca* cost $36 million and *Interstellar* cost $165 million. *Moon* cost $5 million and *Into Darkness* cost $185 million. Can someone explain the comparison to me and actually have it make sense? ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/09c86-a752e-screenshot-2023-08-28-at-8.59.20-am.png?w=1024) This is the note on which the article ends, which matters because what goes here has the privilege of delivering a psychologically impactful blow, and the writer (and/or editor) has to be careful to choose something for this portion whose blow will line up with the whole article's overarching message. I'm disappointed that *The New York Times* picked this because it's of a piece with the same casteist and classist politics and policies that, for India's non-elite hundreds-of-millions, have disconnected "working hard" from financial, educational, biomedical, and social success even while keeping up the myth of the wholesomely gainful productivity. ### Looking (only) for Nehru URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/26/looking-only-for-nehru/ Last updated: 2023-08-26T08:54:50.000Z I have a habit of watching one old Tamil film a day. Yesterday evening, I was watching a film released in 1987, called *Ivargal Indiyargal* ('They Are Indians'). In a scene in the film, an office manager distributes sweets to his colleagues. One of them takes a look at the item and asks the manager if he bought it from a particular shop that was famous for such items. The manager takes umbrage and scolds his colleague that he's been asking that question for too many years, and demands to know if no other good sweet shop has opened since. An innocuous scene in an innocuous film, yet it seemed to have a parallel with the Chandrayaan-3 mission. On August 23, as I'm sure you're aware, the mission's robotic lander module touched down in the moon's south polar region, rendering India the first country to achieve this feat. It was a moment worth celebrating without any reservations, yet soon after, the social media commentariat had found a way – admittedly not difficult – to make it part of its relentlessly superficial avalanche of controversy and dissension. One vein of it was of course split along the lines of what Jawaharlal Nehru did or didn't do to help ISRO in its formative years. (*The Hindu* also received some letters from readers to this effect.) But more than right-wing nuts trying to rewrite history in order to diminish the influence of Nehru's ideals on modern India, I find the counter-argument to be curious and, sometimes, worth some concern. The rebuttals frequently take the form that we must remember Nehru in this time, the idea of scientific temper with which he was so taken, the "importance of science" for India's development, the virtues of Nehruvian secularism, and so forth. It seems to be a reflex to leap all the way back to the first 16 years after independence, always at the cost of many more variants of all these ideals, often refined or revised to better accommodate the pressures of development, modernisation, and globalisation. ([See here](https://science.thewire.in/culture/books/midnights-machines-nehru-vision-cds-appropriate-technology-nrc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for one example.) Members of the Congress party are partly to blame: sometimes they seem incapable of commemorating an event in terms other than that [Nehru set the stage](https://twitter.com/Jairam%5FRamesh/status/1694695700427145422?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for them many years ago. BJP nationalists have also displayed a similar tendency. For example, in 2013, after Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded the physics Nobel Prize for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson, the nationalists demanded that the laureates should have honoured Satyendra Nath Bose, whose work laid the foundation for the study of all bosons, and that the 'b' in 'boson' should always be capitalised. It was a ridiculous ask that was disinterested in work that had built on Bose's ideas and papers in the intervening years, and also betrayed a failure to understand how really a scientist and thinker of Bose's calibre ought to be honoured, more than capitalising little letters. Similarly, today, the full weight of Nehru's legacy is invoked even to counter arguments as rudimentary as chest-thumping. To quote the office manager in *Ivargal Indiyargal*, has there been no other articulation of the same impulses? My concern about this frankly insensible habit to reach for Nehru is threefold: first, it will overlook other ideas from other individuals grounded in different lived experiences (especially those of marginalisation); second, the moments in which he is invoked are conducive to glazing over the problems, found only upon a closer look, with what Nehru and for that matter Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, and others stood for; and third, perhaps I'm a fool to look for sense where it has seldom been found. ### Land on the moon, feet on the earth URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/24/land-on-the-moon-feet-on-the-earth/ Last updated: 2023-08-24T09:14:09.000Z Yesterday was fantastic. India made a few kinds of history, when one is great enough, by autonomously landing a robotic instrument in the moon's south polar region. Some seven hours later, it deployed a rover, bringing the Chandrayaan-3 mission's toughest phase to a resounding close and beginning its scientific mission, significant in its own right for being the first to be undertaken *in situ* in this part of the earth's natural satellite. As a colleague told me yesterday, the feat is one that we can celebrate unreservedly – an exceedingly rare thing in today's India. That, however, still hasn't sufficed to keep either the accidental or the deliberate misinformant quiet. I woke up this morning to several WhatsApp-borne memes proclaiming, in different ways, that the moon's south pole and/or the far side was now India's. The spirit of the message is obvious but that doesn't mean it can't be mistaken. India's feat is to do with the moon's south polar region; the distinction of the first autonomous robotic landing on the far side belongs to China (Chang'e 4 in 2019). But the most egregious offender today (so far) seems to be *The Indian Express*, whose front page is this: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/0460e-020b3-a571f-ie.jpg?w=1024&h=768) We are all over the moon but let's keep our feet on the ground: India has achieved a profound thing by getting a robotic representative on the moon's surface, and just as we took a long road to get here, there's a long road to go. And on this road, we should develop a habit of seeing the moon as *ours* – including us and our collaborators – and make sure our expressions of joy have room for the spirit of cross-border teamwork. Let's resist casting Chandrayaan-3 as comeuppance for past slights, as the triumph of a narrowly defined self-sufficiency, or as to make a mountain out of molehill – a deceptively dangerous misstep that can quickly confuse ability for entitlement. I would much rather always celebrate the former rather than admit even a little bit of the latter. Congratulations, Chandrayaan-3, and congratulations, ISRO! It's difficult to overstate the significance of the events of August 23, 2023 – but it's still possible. ### Landing Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/23/landing-day/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T09:20:09.000Z Good luck, Chandrayaan 3\. Good luck also to all the journalists covering this event from within India – a unique location because it's where you will feel the most excitement today about the mission's activities on the moon as well as the most difficult path to accessing bona fide information about them (thanks to the misinformation, sensationalism, and ISRO's and the Indian government's tendency to stop sharing information rather than more of it when something goes awry). So, I hope your memories serve you well and every detail that you recall is completely factual. India is also a unique location because it's going to the moon today. I've always felt [somewhat uncomfortable](https://rootprivileges.ghost.io/2020/06/03/why-we-need-some-borders-between-us/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the idea that humans have gone to the moon. Whether you're human or an alien to whom human geopolitics is trivial in the scheme of things, humans never went to the moon. People did. And people are divided along very many lines. Cooperation has come and gone, to the extent that there's still considerable value for some country to have successfully executed its *own* moon-landing mission (robotic or otherwise). This is a bit of a tragedy given we're all in this together and all that, but at the same time it would be naïve to believe otherwise. And today, India will be taking its best shot at having a robotic lander autonomously soft-land on the lunar surface. I encourage you to follow the landing sequence on DD National (on TV), on YouTube livestreams of [ISRO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLA%5F64yz8Ss&ref=slightlyacidic.com) or the [Press Information Bureau](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmw1domG5rA&ref=slightlyacidic.com), or on a live blog on *The Hindu* (with real-time updates and analysis). Two hours before the lander's powered descent – the label for the landing – is set to begin at 5.45 pm, ISRO will check whether all conditions are favourable to go ahead. If they are, the livestream will begin at 5.20 pm and the descent is expected to last around 19 minutes. If you're new to all this, please check out *The Hindu* today for a full-page graphic on what to expect. ### Making sense of Luna 25 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/20/luna-25/ Last updated: 2023-08-20T09:21:41.000Z At the outset, let's hope the unfortunate demise of Russia's Luna 25 mission to the moon will finally silence the social media brigade that's been calling it a competitor to India's Chandrayaan 3 – although I wouldn't put it past some to thump their chests over the latter succeeding where the former couldn't. To understand why it never made sense to claim CY 3 and Luna 25 were in a race, I highly recommend [Jatan Mehta's points](https://blog.jatan.space/p/moon-monday-issue-140?ref=slightlyacidic.com#%C2%A7is-luna-racing-against-chandrayaan-for-a-moon-landing). With this behind us: there are several interesting ways to slice what happened to Luna 25, beyond the specific technical points of failure on the spacecraft. Two seem particularly notable, to my mind. First, since it became clear that Luna 25 had erred with an orbit-lowering manoeuvre on August 19, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, couldn't communicate with it until the moon was over Russia, which in turn narrowed the window Roscosmos had to troubleshoot and fix the issue. The reason Russia had this problem is because it went to war, provoking stringent sanctions from many countries worldwide, including negating opportunities to make use of a global communications network to stay in touch with Luna 25. On the other hand, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will have assistance from the European and American space agencies to keep track of Chandrayaan 3. The second is that, against the backdrop of the war and the consequent sanctions, Russia's reputation as a space power is at stake. Luna 25 was in the works for more than two decades (initially under the name 'Luna-Glob') before it launched. When Russian's lander-based Fobos-Grunt mission to Mars failed in 2012 – it couldn't perform an orbit-raising manoeuvre around earth and fell back – the country decided that it wouldn't be able to provide a lander as agreed to ISRO's Chandrayaan 2 mission by 2015, so ISRO decided to develop its own lander (whose abilities will be tested for the second time come August 23). (This legacy is yet another reason the coincidental attempts by Luna 25 and Chandrayaan 3 to soft-land on the moon was never a race.) Fobos-Grunt's failure together with other commitments further delayed the launch of Luna 25\. One of these commitments was a lander for the European Space Agency's (ESA's) ExoMars mission, to deliver a rover named 'Rosalind Franklin' on Mars. But ESA terminated the deal in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, postponing the mission to at least 2028\. Finally, by the late 2010s, Luna 25 was ready. Taken together, Russia wasn't able to successfully undertake an interplanetary mission since Phobos 2 in 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to the events of yesterday, this dubious record is now extended to 34 years – an unexpected turn of events for the country that launched the world's first satellite. It also continues to delay the intended purpose of Luna 25 according to a Roscosmos statement: to "ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the moon’s surface". Russia has also staunchly denied allegations that its economy is groaning under the weight of the sanctions imposed by the West, but its ability to recover from the failure and plan the next mission will surely be affected by limitations on what components it can import. As the world's spacefaring countries are getting the moon back in their collective sight, the US and China are leading the line-drawing on this occasion. But Russia – whose Luna 25 was ultimately intended as a statement that the country's space power status is not on the decline – drew one of its own and paid a price for it. (To whomever this message appeals, I hope filmmakers in India take note, since they have often villainised the notion of ISRO seeking or receiving help from other agencies in films and TV shows.) ### A lotus for Modi, with love from Manipur URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/20/meet-the-most-perfect-lotus-ever-from-manipur/ Last updated: 2023-08-20T04:12:42.000Z This bit of news is so chock full of metaphors that I'm almost laughing out loud. Annotated excerpts from '[CSIR’s new lotus variety ‘Namoh 108’ a ‘grand gift’ to PM Modi: Science Minister](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/csirs-new-lotus-variety-namoh-108-a-grand-gift-to-pm-modi-science-minister/article67213837.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com)', *The Hindu*, August 19, 2023: ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/00c4f-c34b1-c3626-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-8.34.30-am.png?w=1024&h=183) It's a triviality today that the Indian government ministers' relentless exaltation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not spontaneity so much as an orchestrated thing to keep his name in the news without him having to interact with the press, and to constantly reinforce the impression that Modi is doing great work. And this "Namoh 108" drives home how the political leadership of the scientific enterprise has been pressed to this task. Also, Jitendra Singh hasn't been much of a science minister: almost since the day he took charge of this ministry, he has been praising his master in almost every public utterance and speech. Meanwhile, the expenditure on science and research by the government he's part of has fallen, pseudoscience is occupying more space in several spheres (including at the IITs), and research scholars continue to have a tough time doing their work. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/b939a-789b3-4aecc-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-8.35.04-am.png?w=1024&h=212) As likely as the flower's discovery many years ago in Manipur is a coincidence vis-à-vis the violence underway in the northeastern state, it's just as hard to believe government officials are not speaking up about it now to catapult it into the news – to highlight something else more benign about Manipur and to give it a BJP connection as well: the lotus has 108 petals and the party symbol is a lotus. (Also, this is the second connection in recent times between northeast India and India as a whole in terms of the state seeing value in a botanical resource, and proceeding to extract and exploit it. In 2007, researchers found the [then-spiciest chilli variety](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/09/27/tales-of-two-peppers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in India's northeast. By 2010, DRDO had found a way to pack it into grenades. In 2016, a Centre-appointed committee considered these grenades as alternatives to the use of pellet guns in the Kashmir Valley.) ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/eafc2-07f15-23582-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-8.40.24-am.png?w=1024&h=144) ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/6f923-91836-6b899-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-8.42.29-am.png?w=1024&h=250) It seems we're sequencing the genomes of and conducting more detailed study of only those flowers that have a Hindu number of petals. Woe betide those that have 107, 109 or even a dozen, no matter that – short of the 108 petals conferring a specific benefit to the lotus plant (apparently not the case) – this is an accident of nature. Against the backdrop of the Nagoya Protocol, the Kunming-Montreal pact, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and issues of access and benefit sharing, India – and all other countries – should be striving to study (genetically and otherwise) and index all the different biological resources available within their borders. But we're not. We're only interested in flowers with 108 petals. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/6ee56-9b536-f2122-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-8.52.53-am.png?w=1024&h=160) Good luck to children who will be expected to draw this in classrooms. Good luck also to other lotuses. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/a4c53-19279-54a0b-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-9.21.45-am.png?w=1024&h=137) I'm quite certain that someone in that meeting would have coughed, sneezed, burped, farted or sniffed before that individual said "Om Namaha Vasudeva" out loud. I'm also sure that, en route to the meeting, and aware of its agenda, the attendees would have heard someone retching, hacking or spitting. "Kkrkrkrkrkrhrhrhrhrhrhrthphoooo 108" is more memorable, no? ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/415b6-7b98c-12ca4-screenshot-2023-08-20-at-9.22.27-am.png?w=1024&h=211) So there was a naming committee! I'll bet 10 rupees that after this committee came up with "Namoh", it handed the note to Singh, added the footnote about its imperfect resemblance to "Namo", and asked for brownie points. ### The shadows of Chandrayaan 2 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/18/the-shadows-of-chandrayaan-2/ Last updated: 2023-08-18T08:30:00.000Z When in September 2019 the surface component of the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed, with the 'Vikram' lander crashing on the moon's surface instead of gently touching down, there was a sense in all public spaces and conversations that the nation as a whole was in some grief. Until Wednesday, I couldn't remember the excitement, anticipation, and anxiety that prevailed as the craft got closer to the moon, into its designated orbit, and began its descent. Wednesday was the start of the week before the second landing attempt, by the Chandrayaan 3 mission, and it all came screaming back. Much of the excitement, anticipation, and anxiety that I'm feeling now as well is gratifying for the most part because it's shared, that we're doing this together. I cherish that because it's otherwise very difficult to find with ISRO's activities: all except the most superficial details of its most glamorous missions are often tucked away in some [obscure corners of the web](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/why-covering-isro-is-a-pain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), it doesn't have a functional public outreach unit, and there's a [lot of (unhelpful) uncertainty](https://old.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/bzpnrs/posters%5Ffor%5Fekta%5Fkapoors%5Fmangalyaan%5Fwebseries/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the use of ISRO-made media. But beyond facilitating this sense of togetherness, I'm concerned about ISRO's sense of whether it should open itself up is now influenced by the public response to the Chandrayaan 2 mission, based on a parallel with India's unfortunate tryst with solar cookers. In the early 1950s, the National Physical Laboratory fabricated a solar cooker with which the Indian government hoped to "transform household energy consumption … in a period of great uncertainty in food security and energy self-sufficiency," in the words in *The Hindu* of science historian [Shankar Nair](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/smoke-signals-from-the-renewable-energy-sphere/article66556955.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). He continued: > The solar cooker was met with international press coverage and newsreels in the cinema. But the ‘indigenous’ device, based on a 19th century innovation, was dead in the water. Apart from its prohibitive price, it cooked very slowly. … The debacle caused the NPL to steer clear of populist ‘applied science’ for the remainder of K.S. Krishnan’s directorship. Author Arun Mohan Sukumar [recounted the same story](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/a-great-discussion-on-the-history-of-indias-tech/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) but with more flair at the launch event of his book in Bangalore in March 2020: > A CSIR scientist said the failure of the solar cooker project basically ensured that all the scientists \[who worked on it\] retreated into the comfort of their labs and put them off “applied science”. > > Here’s a project commenced almost immediately after independence meant to create technology by Indians for Indians, and after it failed for various reasons, the political spotlight that had been put on the project was counterproductive. Nehru himself investing this kind of capital exposed him and the scientific establishment to criticism that they were perhaps not used to. These were venerated men in their respective fields and they were perhaps unused to being accountable in this visceral way. … > > This is the kind of criticism confronted by the scientific establishment and it is a consequence of politics. I agree with Prof \[Jahnavi\] Phalkey when she says it was a consequence of the political establishment not insulating the scientific establishment from the sort of criticism which may or may not be informed but you know how the press is. That led to a gradual breaking of ranks between the CSIR and the political vision for India… The reflections of the solar-cooker debacle must be obvious in the events that followed the events of September 7, 2019\. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken of the Chandrayaan 2 mission on multiple occasions ahead of the landing attempt (including from the Red Fort on Independence Day). That the topmost political leader of a country takes so much interest in a spacefaring mission is a good thing but his politics has also been communal and majoritarian, and to have the mission invoked in conversations tinged with nationalistic fervour always induced nervousness. Modi was also present in the control room as 'Vikram' began its descent over the lunar surface and, after news of the crash emerged, was seen hugging a visibly distraught K. Sivan, then the ISRO chairman – the same sort of hug that Modi had become famous for imposing on the leaders of other countries at multilateral fora. Modi's governance has been marked by a fixation on symbols, and the symbols that he'd associated with Chandrayaan 2 made it clear that the mission was technological but also political. *Its* success was going to be *his* success. ([Sample this.](https://twitter.com/DrJitendraSingh/status/1692182005558264205?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) Sure enough, there was a considerable amount of post-crash chatter on social media platforms, on TV news channels, and on some news websites that tried to spin the mission as a tremendous success not worthy of any criticism that the 'left' and the 'liberals' were allegedly slinging at ISRO. But asking whether this is a "left v. right" thing would miss the point. If the sources of these talking points had exercised any restraint and waited for the failure committee report, I'm sure we could all have reached largely the same conclusion: that Chandrayaan 2 got ABC right and XYZ not so right, that it would have to do PQR for Chandrayaan 3, and that we can all agree that space is hard. Irrespective of what the 'left' or the 'right' alleged, Chandrayaan 2 becoming the battleground on which these tensions manifested would surely have frayed ISRO scientists. To adapt Sukumar's words to this context, the more cantankerous political crowd investing this kind of interest exposed ISRO to criticism that it was perhaps not used to. *These were venerated men in their respective fields and they were perhaps unused to being accountable in this visceral way. This is the kind of criticism confronted by the scientific establishment and it is a consequence of politics…* The response to NPL's solar cookers put scientists off "applied science". Can we hope that the response to Chandrayaan 2 wouldn't have put ISRO scientists off public engagement after Chandrayaan 3 ends, whether in (some kind of) failure or success? There are those of us beyond the din who know that the mission is very hard, *and why*, but at the same time it's not like ISRO has always acted in good faith or with the public interest in mind. For example, it hasn't released Chandrayaan 2's failure committee report to date. So exercising the option of waiting for this report before making our minds up would have taken us nowhere. (On the other hand, the officially determined causes of failure of the GSLV F10 mission – an almost apolitical affair – were more readily available.) I'm also concerned whether ISRO itself can still construe respectful criticism of its work as such or will perceive it to be ideologically motivated vitriol. A characteristic feature of institutions overtaken by the nationalist programme is that they completely villify all criticism, even when it is merited. S. Somanath, ISRO's current chairman, [recently signalled](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-chief-somnath-hails-role-of-sanskrit-in-india-becoming-knowledge-society-since-vedic-times/article66895385.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that he might have been roped into this programme when he extolled "Vedic science". If ISRO lets its response to failures be guided by politicians and bureaucrats, then we could also expect ISRO's response to resemble that of the political class as well. As always, time will tell, but I sincerely hope that it tells of one outcome instead of another. *Featured image: A view of the Chandrayaan 2 lander and rover seen undergoing tests, June 27, 2019\. Credit: ISRO, dithered by ditherit.com.* ### Is Dias bringing the bus back? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/16/ranga-dias-physical-review-letters-retraction/ Last updated: 2023-08-16T09:36:20.000Z So *Physical Review Letters* [formally retracted](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.079902?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that paper about manganese sulphide, in the limelight for having been coauthored by Ranga P. Dias, yesterday. The retraction notice states: "Of the authors on the original paper, R. Dias stands by the data in Fig. 1(b) and does not agree to retract the Letter." Figure 1(b) is reproduced below. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/f5f63-2a726-large1.png) The problem with the second plot is that its curves reportedly resemble some in Dias's doctoral thesis from 2013, in which he had examined the same properties of germanium tetraselenide, a different kind of material. Curves can look the same to the extent that they can have the same overall shape; it's a problem when they also reproduce the little variations that are a result of the specific material synthesised for a particular experiment and the measurements made on that day. That Dias is the only person objecting to the retraction is interesting because it means one of his coaouthors, Ashkan Salamat, agreed to it. Salamat heads a lab in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, that's been implicated in the present controversy. Earlier this year, well after *Physical Review Letters* said it was looking into the allegations against the manganese sulphide paper, [*Scientific American*](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-controversy-sink-this-superconductivity-breakthrough/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported: > Salamat has since responded, suggesting that even though the two data sets may appear similar, the resemblance is not indicative of copied data. “We’ve shown that if you just overlay other people’s data qualitatively, a lot of things look the same,” he says. “This is a very unfair approach.” *Physical Review Letters* also [accused Salamat](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02401-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of attempting to obstruct its investigation after it found that the raw data he claimed to have submitted of the group's experiments wasn't in fact the raw data. Since then, Salamat may well have changed his mind to avoid more hassle or in deference to the majority opinion, but I'm still curious if he could have changed his mind because he no longer thought the criticisms to be unfair. Anyway, Dias is in the news because he's made [some claims in the past](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/superconducting-hype-on-south-koreas-lk-99/article67168534.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about having found room-temperature superconductors. A previous paper was retracted in September 2022, two years after it was published and independent researchers found some problems in the data. He had another paper published in March this year, reporting room-temperature but high-pressure superconductivity in nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride. This paper courted controversy because Dias et al. refused to share samples of the material so independent scientists could double-check the team's claim. Following the retraction, [*The New York Times* asked Dias](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/science/retraction-ranga-dias-rochester.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) what he had to say, and his reply seems to bring back the bus under which principal investigators (PIs) have liked to throw their junior colleagues at signs of trouble in the past: > \[He\] has maintained that the paper accurately portrays the research findings. However, he said on Tuesday that his collaborators, working in the laboratory of Ashkan Salamat, a professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, introduced errors when producing charts of the data using Adobe Illustrator, software not typically used to make scientific charts. > “Any differences in the figure resulting from the use of Adobe Illustrator software were unintentional and not part of any effort to mislead or obstruct the peer review process,” Dr. Dias said in response to questions about the retraction. He acknowledged that the resistance measurements in question were performed at his laboratory in Rochester. He's saying that his lab made the measurements at the University of Rochester and sent the data to Salamat's lab at the University of Nevada, where someone else (or elses) introduced errors using Adobe Illustrator – presumably while visualising the data, but even then Illustrator is a peculiar choice – and these errors caused the resulting plot to resemble one in Dias's doctoral thesis. Hmm. *The New York Times* also reported that after refusing in the past to investigate Dias's work following allegations of misconduct, the University of Rochester has now launched an investigation "by outside experts". The university doesn't plan to release their report of the findings, however. But even if the "outside experts" conclude that Dias didn't really err and that, honestly, Salamat's lab in Las Vegas was able to introduce very specific kinds of errors in what became figure 1(b), Dias must be held accountable for being one of the PIs of the study – a role whose responsibilities arguably include not letting tough situations devolve into finger-pointing. ### The value of ripeness URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/15/the-value-of-ripeness/ Last updated: 2023-08-15T11:11:35.000Z > Think of the long centuries in which attempts were made to change mercury into gold because that seemed like a very useful thing to do. These efforts failed and we found how to change mercury into gold by doing other things that had quite different intentions. And so I believe that the availability of instruments, the availability of ideas or concepts—not always but often mathematical—are more likely to determine where great changes occur in our picture of the world than are the requirements of man. Ripeness in science is really all, and ripeness is the ability to do new things and to think new thoughts. The whole field is pervaded by this freedom of choice. You don't sit in front of an insoluble problem for ever. You may sit an awfully long time, and it may even be the right thing to do; but in the end you will be guided not by what it would be practically helpful to learn, but by what it is possible to learn. On July 25, the science writer Ash Jogalekar [shared this excerpt](https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1683696022617489408?ref=slightlyacidic.com) from Robert Oppenheimer's 1964 book *The Flying Trapeze*, a compilation of the Whidden Lectures that he delivered in 1962. Oppenheimer's invocation of the notion of 'ripeness' is quite fascinating: it is reminiscent of the great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss's personal philosophy, which is also inscribed on his seal: ["*pauca sed matura*"](https://thewire.in/science/beyond-the-surface-of-einsteins-relativity-lay-a-chimerical-geometry?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Latin for "few but ripe". Gauss adhered to it to the extent that he would only publish his work on mathematics that was complete and with which he was wholly satisfied. As a result, he had a large body of unpublished work that anticipated discoveries that other mathematicians and physicists would only make much later. 'Ripeness' also beings to mind one of the French mathematician's Alexander Grothendieck's beliefs. In the words of [Allyn Jackson](http://math.fau.edu/yiu/PSRM2015/yiu/New%20Folder%20%284%29/Downloaded%20Papers/Grothendieck.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > One thing Grothendieck said was that one should never try to prove anything that is not almost obvious. This does not mean that one should not be ambitious in choosing things to work on. Rather, “if you don’t see that what you are working on is almost obvious, then you are not ready to work on that yet,” explained Arthur Ogus of the University of California at Berkeley. “Prepare the way. And that was his approach to mathematics, that everything should be so natural that it just seems completely straightforward.” Many mathematicians will choose a well-formulated problem and knock away at it, an approach that Grothendieck disliked. In a well-known passage of *Récoltes et Semailles*, he describes this approach as being comparable to cracking a nut with a hammer and chisel. What he prefers to do is to soften the shell slowly in water, or to leave it in the sun and the rain, and wait for the right moment when the nut opens naturally (pages 552–553). “So a lot of what Grothendieck did looks like the natural landscape of things, because it looks like it grew, as if on its own,” Ogus noted. Ripeness, in Oppenheimer's telling, is the ability to do new things, but I find the preceding line to be more meaningful, with stronger parallels to both Gauss's and Grothendieck's views, in the limited context of scientific progress: "the availability of instruments, the availability of ideas or concepts … are more likely to determine where great changes occur in our picture of the world than are the requirements of man." Oppenheimer says later in the same lecture that progress is inalienable to science; this, together with his other statements, provides extraordinary insight into where progress occurs and why. Imagine the realm of knowledge that science can reveal or validate to be a three-dimensional space. Here, the opportunities to find something new are located at, or even localised to, points where there is already a confluence of possibilities thanks to the availability of information, instruments, techniques, resources, and sensible people. It is in a manner of speaking, and as Oppenheimer also indicates ("than are the requirements of man"), the substitution of individual people's needs and pursuits as the prime mover of discoveries with the social and cultural prerequisites of knowledge itself. This also seems like a better way to think about what some have called "useless knowledge", which supposedly is knowledge produced without regard for its applications. I'm referring not to Abraham Flexner's [excellent 1939 essay](https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com)\* here but to the term as wielded by some political leaders, policy-setters, and the social-media commentariat, and which often finds mention in the mainstream English press in India as the antithesis of "knowledge that solves society's problems". Rather than being useless, such knowledge may just be charting new points in this abstract space, and could in future become the nuclei of new worlds; and when we dismiss it as useless, we preclude some possibilities. I won't deny that a strategy of randomly nucleating this opportunity-space could be too expensive (for all countries, not just India: I don't buy that our country has too little money for science for the reasons discussed [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/on-resource-constraints-and-merit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) and that it might be more gainful for governments to assume a more coordinated approach. But I will say two things. First, when we're pursuing or being forced to pursue a more conservative path through scientific progress, let us not pretend – as many have become wont to do – that we're taking a better path. Second, let us not wield short-sighted arguments that privilege our earthly needs over something we simply may not even known know we're losing. Finally, perhaps these ideas apply to other forms of progress as well. Happy Independence Day. :) (\* Flexner cofounded the Institute for Advanced Study, which Oppenheimer was the director of when *The Flying Trapeze* was published.) ### What's with superconductors and peer-review? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/08/06/whats-with-superconductors-and-peer-review/ Last updated: 2023-08-06T11:04:31.000Z Throughout the time I've been a commissioning editor for science-related articles for news outlets, I've always sought and published articles about academic publishing. It's the part of the scientific enterprise that seems to have been shaped the least by science's democratic and introspective impulses. It's also this long and tall wall erected around the field where scientists are labouring, offering 'visitors' guided tours for a hefty fee – or, in many cases, for 'free' if the scientists are willing to pay the hefty fees instead. Of late, I've spent more time thinking about peer-review, the practice of a journal distributing copies of a manuscript it's considering for publication to independent experts on the same topic, for their technical inputs. Most of the peer-review that happens today is voluntary: the scientists who do it aren't paid. You must've come across several articles of late about whether peer-review works. It seems to me that it's far from perfect. Studies (in [July 1998](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/187748?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [September 1998](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S019606449870006X?casa%5Ftoken=D5MklJnYP0MAAAAA:CzyYl8VLg-M-bvKIHxl7vWCIh8AVrkTUizQ9LZPZWh%5FeVT5jLf3WJlGaJQzYCsHMraF5Fh8mqw&ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [October 2008](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1258/jrsm.2008.080062?ref=slightlyacidic.com), e.g.) have shown that peer-reviewers often don't catch critical problems in papers. In February 2023, a noted scientist said in a conversation that peer-reviewers go into a paper assuming that the data presented therein hasn't been tampered with. This statement was eye-opening for me because I can't think of a more important reason to include technical experts in the publishing process than to wean out problems that *only* technical experts can catch. Anyway, these flaws with the peer-review system aren't generalisable, *per se*: many scientists have also told me that their papers benefited from peer-review, especially review that helped them improve their work. I personally don't know how 'much' peer-review is of the former variety and how much the latter, but it seems safe to state that when manuscripts are written in good faith by competent scientists and sent to the right journal, and the journal treats its peer-reviewers as well as its mandate well, peer-review works. Otherwise, it tends to not work. This heuristic, so to speak, allows for the fact that 'prestige' journals like *Nature*, *Science*, NEJM, and *Cell* – which have made a name for themselves by publishing papers that were milestones in their respective fields – have also published and then had to retract many papers that made exciting claims that were subsequently found to be untenable. These journals' 'prestige' is closely related to their taste for sensational results. All these thoughts were recently brought into focus by the ongoing hoopla, especially on Twitter, about the preprint papers from a South Korean research group claiming the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor in a material called LK-99 (this is the [main paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). This work has caught the imagination of users on the platform unlike any other paper about room-temperature superconductivity in recent times. I believe this is because the preprints contain some charts and data that were absent in similar work in the past, and which strongly indicate the presence of a superconducting state at ambient temperature and pressure, and because the preprints include instructions on the material's synthesis and composition, which means other scientists can produce and check for themselves. Personally, I'm holding the stance [advised by Prof. Vijay B. Shenoy](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/lk-99-room-temperature-superconductor-south-korean-group/article67142763.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of IISc: > Many research groups around the world will attempt to reproduce these results; there are already some rumours that independent scientists have done so. We will have to wait for the results of their studies. Curiously, the preprints have caught the attention of a not insignificant number of techbros, who, alongside the typically naïve displays of their [newfound expertise](https://twitter.com/yshkcr/status/1686702229510602752?ref=slightlyacidic.com), have also called for the peer-review system to be abolished because it's too slow and opaque. Peer-review has a storied relationship with superconductivity. In the early 2000s, a slew of papers coauthored by the German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, working at a Bell Labs facility in the US, were retracted after independent investigations found that he had fabricated data to support claims that certain organic molecules, called fullerenes, were superconducting. [*The Guardian* wrote](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/18/science.highereducation?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in September 2002: > The Schön affair has besmirched the peer review process in physics as never before. Why didn't the peer review system catch the discrepancies in his work? A referee in a new field doesn't want to "be the bad guy on the block," says Dutch physicist Teun Klapwijk, so he generally gives the author the benefit of the doubt. But physicists did become irritated after a while, says Klapwijk, "that Schön's flurry of papers continued without increased detail, and with the same sloppiness and inconsistencies." > > Some critics hold the journals responsible. The editors of Science and Nature have stoutly defended their review process in interviews with the London Times Higher Education Supplement. Karl Ziemelis, one of Nature's physical science editors, complained of scapegoating, while Donald Kennedy, who edits Science, asserted that "There is little journals can do about detecting scientific misconduct." > > Maybe not, responds Nobel prize-winning physicist Philip Anderson of Princeton, but the way that Science and Nature compete for cutting-edge work "compromised the review process in this instance." These two industry-leading publications "decide for themselves what is good science - or good-selling science," says Anderson (who is also a former Bell Labs director), and their market consciousness "encourages people to push into print with shoddy results." Such urgency would presumably lead to hasty review practices. Klapwijk, a superconductivity specialist, said that he had raised objections to a Schön paper sent to him for review, but that it was published anyway. A similar claim by a group at IISc in 2019 generated a lot of excitement then, but today almost no one has any idea what happened to it. It seems reasonable to assume that the findings didn't pan out in further testing and/or that the peer-review, following the manuscript being submitted to *Nature*, found problems in the group's data. Last month, the South Korean group uploaded its papers to the arXiv preprint repository and has presumably submitted them to a journal: for a finding this momentous, that seems like the obvious next step. And the journal is presumably conducting peer-review at this point. But in both instances (IISc 2019 and today), the claims were also accompanied by independent attempts to replicate the data as well as journalistic articles that assimilated the various public narratives and their social relevance into a cogent whole. One of the first signs that there was a problem with the IISc preprint was another [preprint by Brian Skinner](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.02929.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), a physicist then with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who found the noise in two graphs plotting the results of two distinct tests to be the same – which is impossible. Independent scientists also [told *The Wire*](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/twist-in-plot-of-iisc-superconductivity-claim-shows-science-at-work?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (where I worked then) that they lacked some information required to make sense of the results as well as expressed concerns with the magnetic susceptibility data. Peer-review may not be designed to check whether the experiments in question produced the data in question but whether the data in question supports the conclusions. For example, in March this year, [*Nature* published a study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0?ref=slightlyacidic.com) led by Ranga P. Dias in which he and his team claimed that nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride becomes a room-temperature superconductor under a pressure of 1,000 atm, considerably lower than the pressure required to produce a superconducting state in other similar materials. After it was published, many independent scientists raised concerns about some data and analytical methods presented in the paper – as well as its failure to specify how the material could be synthesised. These problems, it seems, didn't prevent the paper from clearing peer-review. Yet on August 3, Martin M. Bauer, a particle physicist at Durham University, published a tweet defending peer-review in the context of the South Korean work thus: The problem seems to me to be the belief – held by many pro- as well as anti-peer-review actors – that peer-review is the ultimate check capable of filtering out all forms of bad science. It just can't, and maybe that's okay. Contrary to what Dr. Bauer has said, and as the example of Dr. Dias's paper suggests, peer-reviewers won't attempt to replicate the South Korean study. That task, thanks to the level of detail in the South Korean preprint and the fact that preprints are freely accessible, is already being undertaken by a panoply of labs around the world, both inside and outside universities. So abolishing peer-review won't be as bad as Dr. Bauer makes it sound. As I said, peer-review is, or ought to be, one of many checks. It's also the sole check that a journal undertakes, and maybe that's the bigger problem. That is, scientific journals may well be a pit of papers of unpredictable quality without peer-review in the picture – but that would only be because journal editors and scientists are separate functional groups, rather than having a group of scientists take direct charge of the publishing process (akin to how arXiv currently operates). In the existing publishing model, peer-review is as important as it is because scientists aren't involved in any other part of the publishing pipeline. An alternative model comes to mind, one that closes the gaps of "isn't designed to check whether the experiments in question produced the data in question" and "the sole check that a journal undertakes": scientists conduct their experiments, write them up in a manuscript and upload them to a preprint repository; other scientists attempt to replicate the results; if the latter are successful, both groups update the preprint paper and submit that to a journal (with the lion's share of the credit going to the former group); journal editors have this document peer-reviewed (to check whether the data presented supports the conclusions), edited, and polished\[1\]; and finally publish it. Obviously this would require a significant reorganisation of incentives: for one, researchers will need to be able to apportion time and resources to replicate others' experiments for less than half of the credit. A second problem is that this is a (probably non-novel) reimagination of the publishing workflow that doesn't consider the business model – [the other major problem](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/india-researchers-open-access-publishing-double-edged-sword/article67086569.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in academic publishing. Third: I have in my mind only condensed-matter physics; I don't know much about the challenges to replicating results in, say, genomics, computer science or astrophysics. My point overall is that if journals look like a car crash without peer-review, it's only because the crashes were a matter of time and that peer-review was doing the bare minimum to keep them from happening. (And Twitter was [always a car crash](https://twitter.com/dangaristo/status/1687133129587253250?ref=slightlyacidic.com) anyway.) --- **\[1\]** I hope readers won't underestimate this the importance of editorial and language assistance that a journal can provide. Last month, researchers in Australia, Germany, Nepal, Spain, the UK, and the US had a [paper published](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002184&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which they reported, based on surveys, that "non-native English speakers, especially early in their careers, spend more effort than native English speakers in conducting scientific activities, from reading and writing papers and preparing presentations in English, to disseminating research in multiple languages. Language barriers can also cause them not to attend, or give oral presentations at, international conferences conducted in English." The language in the South Korean group's preprints indicate that its authors' first language isn't English. [According to Springer](https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/authorandreviewertutorials/submitting-to-a-journal-and-peer-review/what-is-open-access/10285582?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which later became Springer Nature, the publisher of the *Nature* journals, "Editorial reasons for rejection include … poor language quality such that it cannot be understood by readers". An [undated article](https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-review/top-language-mistakes-for-rejection/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Elsevier's 'Author Services' page has this line: "For Marco \[Casola, managing editor of *Water Research*\], poor language can indicate further issues with a paper. 'Language errors can sometimes ring a bell as a link to quality. If a manuscript is written in poor English the science behind it may not be amazing. This isn’t always the case, but it can be an indication.'" But instead of palming the responsibility off to scientists, journals have an opportunity to distinguish themselves by helping researchers write better papers. ### Review: 'Oppenheimer' (2023) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/07/28/review-oppenheimer-2023/ Last updated: 2023-07-28T10:51:47.000Z *Oppenheimer* was great. I really liked it. I don't have a review as much as some notes that I took during the film that I'd like to share. But before diving into them, I should say that I got a certain impression of the film before I watched it based on all the reviews, the hot-takes, and the analyses, and it was almost entirely at odds with my final experience of it. How happy am I to have been wrong. ### SPOILERS AHEAD **1\. "Brilliance makes up for a lot."** – The idea that genius is an excuse to overlook other flaws, a famously problematic notion among scientists, as we've [seen of late](https://root-privileges.ghost.io/2020/07/10/caste-and-sciences-notability-threshold/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), recurs non-ironically throughout the film. But it's also the sort of criticism that, while it's important to take note of, [doesn't seem interesting](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/oppenheimer-movie-moralizing-reviews-social-media/674823/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) vis-à-vis the film itself. The film shows Oppenheimer as he was, warts and all – and there's value in that – living and working in a time that encouraged such thinking. The point was neither to redeem him nor make sure we 'learn' that such thinking is worthy of discouragement, in much the same way it doesn't discuss [who occupied the land](https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-07-26/oppenheimer-atomic-bomb-new-mexico-cancer-aftermath?ref=slightlyacidic.com) where the Trinity test was conducted. (This said, it did strike me as odd why the film chose not to show the images of the bomb's consequences in Japan, as they were being displayed to an audience that included Oppenheimer. I can't say I agree that us observing him as he reacted to those images was more important.) **2\. Military and science** – This is a tension that's also been made clear in several historical accounts of the Manhattan Project, of the working culture among scientists clashing with how the military operates, and how, in the course of this contest, each side perceived profound flaws in the way the other achieved its objectives. One is, or claims to be, democratic (epitomised in the film by Oppenheimer persuading Teller to stay back at Los Alamos) while the other prizes brutal efficiency and a willingness to get its hands 'dirty' because of the clear apportionment of blame (irrespective of whether that's really possible from the PoV of today). **3\. "How could this man who saw so much be so blind?"** – Strauss's comment in the beginning sets up the kind of person Oppenheimer was very well. The real-world Oppenheimer was often disrespectful, flippant towards other people's opinions or feelings. But in the film, this disposition is directed almost always at Strauss, so it's possible to come away thinking that Oppenheimer just believed Strauss alone to be worthy of some disdain. But Strauss's comment hints at Oppenheimer's hubris very well, and so concisely. **4\. "Scientists don't respect your judgment"** – Another comment of Strauss's, which although we see by the end of the film was born largely out of an inflated self-importance, also spoke, I thought, to the tension between how the scientists and the soldiers operate and to the sense of unease among some in the military that comes of looking outside-in into the Manhattan Project, until of course the bomb was delivered. **5\. A science and military complex** – Vannevar Bush is 'represented' in the film. After the war ended, he was to famously advocate for the US [investing in blue-sky research](https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/vbush1945.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com), that such research, while delivering no short-term gains, would in the longer one hold the country in good stead on a variety of advanced technologies. The complex still operating today is the military-industrial one, but science during the war became a glue holding them together. And it's interesting to get such a well-dramatised view of the tensions through which these two enterprises were reconciled. **6\. Tension ahead of Trinity** – This is the principal reason I liked *Oppenheimer*. I've read a lot (relatively) about how the bomb came to be, but one thing all of those accounts lacked is such a faithful – or what I imagine is a faithful – description of the emotions at play as the bomb was built, tested, and reckoned with. When that man's fingers tremble over the big red button that would detonate the weapon, I was trembling in my seat. The nervousness, the anger, the frustration, even the complementary nonchalance of Teller and Feynman. This is very difficult to get through scholarship. **7\. Nolan's comment** – In several interviews before the film's release, Nolan said he believed Oppenheimer was the "greatest person" to have ever lived. I assumed before watching the film that this was an insight into the sort of film *Oppenheimer* would be, with hero worship and its attendant rituals. But in the end, the comment was so irrelevant to the experience of the film. **8\. What is a nuclear weapon?** – To me, *Oppenheimer*'s principal triumph is that, through the eyes of its eponymous protagonist, it conveys what it means for there to be such a thing as a nuclear weapon. It's fundamentally the breaking of the strong nuclear force between two nucleons, but it's also, to paraphrase something Strauss says in his angry tirade near the end, the irreversible act of letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle and everything that entails. It's power and therefore a herald of cynical politics. It's classified information and therefore a source of mis- or dis-trust. ("If you create the ultimate destructive power, it will also destroy those who are near and dear to you" – Nolan.) It's knowledge of another country's power and intent. It's a demonstration of its scientists' ability to channel their talents as well as their moral bearings. It's the weapon to reshape all wars. So forth. **9\. Shockwave in the gymnasium** – This was such an excellent, poignant scene, when Oppenheimer is going through the motions, or what he thinks ought to be the motions, and the place goes quiet just as it did when the Trinity shot succeeded. Then, as he is walking out, the sound of his audience's cheering hits him like a shockwave. Such a well-conceived metaphor for the bomb's political nature, and a cementing of Oppenheimer's epiphany that there's really nothing he can do to control how it will be used. **10\. Partial fictions** – Strauss's vendetta against Oppenheimer isn't borne out in the historical record, including the fact that Strauss was the one to hand the FBI the all-important file (via Borden). This sadly constitutes the same sort of mistake that [films of lower calibre](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/fantasy-and-pseudoscience-in-rajinikanths-2-0/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) do: claiming to be based on real-world events (or, as in this case, a book documenting real-world events) but then fictionalising some small detail. The effect is for a watcher to be left wondering what else didn't exactly happen, which they won't know about unless they specifically check. In *Oppenheimer*, this is true of parts of the Strauss storyline, the Oppenheimers' parenting skills, how concerned the physicists really were of the bomb setting "the air on fire", and, irony of ironies, it all begins with a literal poisoned fruit. (A couple inconsistencies are in my opinion worth singling out, despite being quite minor: (i) when the Trinity shot succeeds, Oppenheimer is shown being accosted by George Kistiyakowsky demanding the $10 he bet Oppenheimer the previous night that the test would go through. Oppenheimer says "I'm good for $10" and hands him a bill, but in reality he didn't have the money. But that's not all. In that moment, Oppenheimer would later recall mulling those famous words from the Gita, only for Kenneth Bainbridge to have been plainer: "Oppie, now we're all sons of bitches." (ii) When Chevalier tells Oppenheimer that Eltenton can help pass information through to the Soviets, Kitty comes to the kitchen not wanting the two of them to be alone and is also the one to tell Chevalier that his proposal constitutes treason. In the film, Kitty enters the kitchen after this conversation has concluded. This is worth pointing out because, in the film itself, she's always been the better judge of character than Oppenheimer.) **11\. Compartmentalisation** – The concept of compartmentalisation appears throughout the film in the context of maintaining the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. But as it happened, a certain loss of compartmentalisation had to transpire for the project's physicists to actually want to build a bomb – something that happened, by some accounts, at a meeting on April 15, 1943, when Robert Serber clarified to those present at the Los Alamos site that they were to build a nuclear weapon. When the physicists set about their task with gusto, they surprised Enrico Fermi, who then told Oppenheimer: "I believe your people actually *want* to make a bomb." A terribly profound comment. --- ### Addendum *Oppenheimer* forced me to confront and question a little knot of apprehension that had taken root within my mind when it released. It was fed mostly by the fact that the film would expose to a very large number of people a world of information that had taken many others (myself included) a lot more time to find, learn, and parse. I was apprehensive that some nuance of this passage of history would get shredded by some inane right- or left-wing outrage, and be denied an opportunity to make some meaningful impression on the minds of its viewers. I daresay that this is a legitimate concern at a time when writers and journalists have had to double-check how something might be construed on social media platforms, in specific parts of the country, even to a court somewhere. We may never be able to fully control how something that we produce will be consumed but there are parts of it that we can. In my own writing, I noticed last year a tendency to be defensive, to write in such a way that I explain myself thoroughly and accommodate all possible counter-arguments. The style is time-consuming and, more importantly, because how we write can affect how we think, it leads to defensive thinking as well. I was also anxious of encountering the hypocrisy that I suspected would be put on display when, despite being able to find physics beautifully described in hundreds of articles and videos on the web, the "average audience" recoils from them but gravitates with glee to *Oppenheimer*, and perhaps after holds forth on Facebook as if it understood the ideas involved all along. But then, in the film, Oppenheimer tells Leo Szilard that the scientists who made the bomb have no greater say than others about how to use it. I disagreed with the comment, but it struck me that we'd have to agree if we replaced "bomb" with "knowledge". I'm glad that more people now know about the circumstances in which the first nuclear weapons were made because even if only a few are prepared to treat the film as a gateway, rather than as the definitive take or whatever, the world should be the better for it. *Featured image. A screenshot of a scene from Oppenheimer (2023). Source: YouTube* ### Irritating Google Docs is irritating URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/07/21/irritating-google-docs-is-irritating/ Last updated: 2023-07-21T09:15:52.000Z The backdrop of the shenanigans of ChatGPT, Bard and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems these days has only served to accentuate how increasingly frustrating working with Google Docs is. I use Docs every day to write my articles and edit those that the freelancers I'm working with have filed. I don't use tools like Grammarly but I do pay attention Docs's blue and red underlines indicating grammatical and typographical aberrations, respectively. And what Docs chooses to underline either way is terribly inconsistent. I have [written previously](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/google-docs-a-new-hope/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on how Docs 'learns' grammar, based on each user's style, and expressed concern that its learning agent could be led astray by a large number of people, such as Indians, using English differently from the rest of the world and thus biasing it. Fortunately this issue doesn't seem to have come to pass – but the agent has continued to be completely non-smart in a more fundamental way. This morning, I was editing an article about homeopathy on Docs and found that it couldn't understand that "homeopathy", "homeopathic", and "Homeopathy" are just different forms of the same root word. As a result, correcting "homoeopathy" to "homeopathy" didn't suffice; you have to correct *each form* to remove the additional 'o'. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/2c666-4480c-screenshot-2023-07-21-at-8.55.09-am.png?w=1024&h=624) It gets worse: the same word in bold is, according to Google Docs, a different word… ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/f5f8e-31f73-screenshot-2023-07-21-at-8.55.28-am.png?w=1024&h=212) … as is the word with a small 'H'. ![](https://gravitysshadow.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/89b22-70350-screenshot-2023-07-21-at-9.08.57-am.png?w=1024&h=290) Google has a reputation for having its fingers in too many pies and as a result neglecting improvements in one pie because it's too busy focusing on another. There is also a large [graveyard of Google products](https://killedbygoogle.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that have been killed off as a result. There's some reason, for now, to believe Docs won't meet the same fate but then again I don't know how to explain the persistence of such an easily fixable problem. ### NYT's profile of India's space startup scene URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/07/09/nyts-profile-of-indias-space-startup-scene/ Last updated: 2023-07-09T08:33:59.000Z *The New York Times* [published a 'profile'](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/04/business/india-space-startups.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Indian spaceflight startup scene on July 4\. The article is typical in that: a) by virtue of being published by one of the world's most-read news outlets, it can only be a big boost to the actors in its narrative, in this case a few Indian startups; and b) it takes a superficial outside-in view that flattens complex issues and misses finer points that, to local observers, would change the meanings of some sentences in important ways. By and large, the article seems like a swing in the opposite direction from [that distasteful cartoon](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29502062?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2014 – even if there is still that note of surprise, and that fixation on ISRO doing things at a lower cost, overlooking that it has not infrequently come at the expense of lower efficiency on many fronts. Then again, the article's protagonists are the space startups, and I'm sincerely excited about their work. In this post, I want to point out one issue that I think *The New York Times* could have fixed before publishing: the word "heavy" has been used in a confusing way in the article even if it's been used only twice. First (emphasis added): > As ISRO … makes room for new private players, it shares with them a profitable legacy. Its spaceport, on the coastal island of Sriharikota, is near the Equator and suitable for launches into different orbital levels. The government agency’s “workhorse” rocket is one of the world’s most reliable for **heavy loads**. With a success rate of almost 95 percent, it has halved the cost of insurance for a satellite — making India one of the most competitive launch sites in the world. In the launch-vehicle sector, the word 'heavy' has a specific meaning and can't be used directly in its colloquial sense. The "workhorse" referred to here is obviously the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which, like the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), is classified as a medium-lift launch vehicle. 'Medium-lift' means being able to lift 2-20 tonnes to the low-earth orbit (LEO). This in turn implies that the article's (first) use of "heavy" means just colloquially heavy. The second use creates the confusion (emphasis added): > It was Elon Musk who stole India’s — and the world’s — thunder on the space business. His company, SpaceX, and its relaunchable rockets brought down the cost of sending **heavy** objects into orbit so much that India could not compete. Even today, from American spaceports at $6,500 per kilogram, SpaceX’s launches are the cheapest anywhere. One could think that since both the PSLV and SpaceX's reusable launch vehicle, Falcon 9, lift "heavy" payloads, they have the same capacity, affirmed by the line that SpaceX stole India's thunder. This is not true: Falcon 9 (in the Block 5 configuration currently in use) can lift 22.8 tonnes to the LEO and 8.3 tonnes to the higher geostationary transfer orbit; the PSLV can manage only 1.4 tonnes to the latter. A clarifying quote follows: > "We are more like a cab," Mr. Chandana \[of Skyroot\] said. His company charges higher rates for smaller-payload launches, whereas SpaceX "is more like a bus or a train, where they take all their passengers and put them in one destination," he said. Given the masses involved, the PSLV was always a "cab" compared to the Falcon 9\. In fact, ISRO is currently working on its own reusable launch vehicle with a payload capacity of around 20 tonnes to the LEO and an expected mass-to-orbit [cost of $4,000/kg](https://www.sciencealert.com/india-just-launched-a-mini-space-shuttle?ref=slightlyacidic.com), down from around $20,000 today. This thing, whenever it is ready, will create an actual opportunity for thunder-stealing on either side (it has already been considerably delayed). --- There are many other niggles that, as I said, I won't get into, but I must say that I'm very curious why "pharmaceuticals" has been singled out here, together with "information technology": > An image of India’s first satellite graced the two-rupee note until 1995\. Then for a while India paid less attention to its space ambitions, with young researchers focused on more tangible developments in information technology and pharmaceuticals. Now India is not only the world’s most populous country but also its fastest-growing large economy and a thriving center of innovation. What is this secret revolution that I've missed, a revolution that, by implication, contributed to the country's economic position today? Perhaps it's generic drugs – but it pales in comparison to the growth of the IT sector and there has been no indication that it was led by "young researchers". So, curious… ### A request to ISRO about Chandrayaan 3 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/07/07/a-request-to-isro-about-chandrayaan-3/ Last updated: 2023-07-07T15:51:20.000Z The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said its launch window for the Chandrayaan 3 mission is July 12-19\. For now, the mission is expected to lift off on July 14 (at 2.35 pm IST). Chandrayaan 3’s mission is the same as that of its predecessor, Chandrayaan 2, with some marginal additions. It has the same hardware configuration, including a lander named ‘Vikram’ containing a rover named ‘Pragyan’, attached to a propulsion module. The surface lunar mission has a planned lifetime of 14 days. The lander has four scientific payloads and the rover, two. The propulsion module itself has one. The biggest difference between the two missions, it would seem, are changes to reduce the chances of another crash-landing. As Jatan Mehta wrote in his [‘Moon Monday’ newsletter](https://blog.jatan.space/p/isro-chandrayaan-3-prelaunch-info?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > To increase the chances of sticking the landing this time around, ISRO has made several upgrades to the Chandrayaan-2-like lander, such as software improvements to accommodate failure, strengthened legs, a couple of new sensors for enhanced and redundant navigation-related measurements, and better power and communication systems. Chandrayaan 3’s success will strengthen India’s position within the Artemis Accords, which it signed just last month, because it will make the country one of only four to have landed and operated a rover on the Moon. But as much as ISRO has a good reason to aim for success, it may have an opportunity if the mission fails as well – an opportunity to show that it has matured as an organisation. The Chandrayaan 2 mission experienced a partial, but significant, failure on September 7, 2019, when its lander, bearing the rover, crashed on the lunar surface instead of gently touching down. ISRO researchers later traced the problem to a glitch in the onboard computer that lowered the amount by which the lander had to decelerate as it descended and an issue in the propulsion system. But a few months passed between the crash and the crash report, and in this time, the public conversation surrounding the accident was a cesspool of hyper-nationalist narratives and counterproductive statements by senior ISRO members. As soon as news of the lander’s crash became public, ISRO stopped communicating updates, and refused to admit – despite all the evidence pointing that way – it had happened for a full week. In keeping with the national BJP government’s mission until then to make the Indian space programme a matter of national pride by couching its feats in a nationalist narrative, social media platforms were inundated with claims from the usual corners that the part of the mission that had failed was a “technology demonstrator” that made up a minor part of Chandrayaan 2. Around this time, then ISRO chief K. Sivan also told journalists that the Chandrayaan 2 mission was a “98% success” – a stunningly disingenuous attempt to downplay what had been, until the mission’s launch, the basis of many of ISRO’s claims to greatness as well as which had occupied hundreds of scientists and engineers for several years. Technology demonstrators are important, but ‘Vikram’ and ‘Pragyan’ weren’t just that; more importantly, no way they were just 2% of the mission. Yet Sivan had been the one to say such a thing, even if he later [palmed the blame off](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/98-success-rate-for-chandrayaan-2-not-my-words-it-was-panels-initial-assessment-isro-chief/articleshow/71366717.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to a review committee, even as the organisation he helmed made Herculean efforts to reestablish contact with ‘Vikram’. All of this vitiated the narrative of the incident. To make matters worse, after the lander’s crash on the day, journalists gathered at the ISRO HQ in Bengaluru were treated to a scene as Pallava Bagla shouted demanding Sivan address them. When ISRO members other than Sivan did turn up, he was rude. Bagla later apologised for his behaviour – but not before a senior Congress leader, [Abhishek Singhvi](https://twitter.com/DrAMSinghvi/status/1170236630545756160?ref=slightlyacidic.com), called Bagla “insane” and asked for him to be sacked. It seemed for a time that no one was interested in letting the dust settle. For those who were plainly curious about the mission’s technical specifics as they existed, the specifics in which ISRO’s lessons for future missions, including Chandrayaan 3, would take root, the sole resource (in my limited experience) was the ISRO forum on Reddit, where independent spaceflight enthusiasts were putting together and combing through photos captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to find the lander’s resting place and clues to the cause of the accident. The Indian government has a penchant for cutting access to information after major accidents and disasters. It did so after the Joshimath landslip, when ISRO reported that the town had slid by 5.4 cm in 12 days. It did so after it supposedly liberated Jammu and Kashmir by abrogating Article 370 of the Constitution. It did so after the Manipur riots and is yet to restore connections in the state, going so far as to brook [long-winded arguments](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/manipur-hc-seeks-options-to-block-vpn-servers-to-safely-restore-internet/article67001976.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about access to VPNs in the process. Even before Chandrayaan 2, there were some signs that ISRO had become part of the fold, including – but not limited to – the BJP government’s narratives of ISRO’s feats, the organisation’s increasing opacity, and pettiness in the face of criticism. In 2018, its then chief Sivan said that ISRO would like to lead international efforts [to mine helium-3](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/why-are-we-going-over-the-moon-on-helium-3-all-over-again?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the Moon and transport it to the earth, disregarding the unhelpful hype and pseudoscience surrounding the isotope’s potential as a nuclear fuel. More recently, Sivan’s successor and current chief [S. Somanath claimed](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-chief-somnath-hails-role-of-sanskrit-in-india-becoming-knowledge-society-since-vedic-times/article66895385.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that India has had a “knowledge society” since “Vedic times”, that Indians’ accomplishments were appropriated by Western scholars who then regurgitated it as their own findings, and that “those working in the fields of artificial intelligence \[and\] machine learning love Sanskrit”. These signs aren’t encouraging, but it’s possible to hope that these individuals and their advisors will put ISRO above themselves and their opinions. I sincerely wish that Chandrayaan 3 succeeds to the tune of 100%. At the same time, space is hard, as they say (especially for less-well-funded and less-well-technologically supplied organisations like ISRO). And in the event of a failure, I hope ISRO will respond by sharing regular and timely updates, answer journalists’ queries, think before speaking, and, overall, conduct itself with the grace of being the premier space-faring body of the Global South. *Note: This article was updated at 5.10 pm on July 7, 2023, to include an issue with the propulsion system among the reasons Chandrayaan 2's surface mission failed. Featured image: The LVM 3 launch vehicle lifts off bearing Chandrayaan 2 from Sriharikota, July 22, 2019\. Credit: ISRO.* ### Hot in Ballia URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/06/24/hot-in-ballia/ Last updated: 2023-06-24T16:11:00.000Z More than half of the deaths reported during the heatwave in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar this week were reported from just one district in the former, called Ballia. On (or around) June 17, the medical superintendent of the Ballia district hospital was transferred away after he attributed the deaths (until then) to the heat. He was replaced with someone else. The state government also dispatched a team of two experts to the district to assess the local situation (as they say). One of them was director of the Uttar Pradesh health department for communicable diseases, A.K. Singh. In one of his first interactions with the press, Singh indicated that they weren't inclined to believe the Ballia deaths were due to the heat and that the team was also considering alternative explanations, like the local water source being contaminated. I think something fishy could be going on here. First, [*Hindustan Times*](https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/others/uttar-pradesh-team-finds-lapses-in-micro-level-management-at-ballia-hospital-heatstroke-not-direct-cause-of-deaths-101687360249790.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported Singh saying "the deaths at the hospital were primarily due to comorbidity and old age and not heatstroke", erratic power in the area, and the time taken to reach the hospital -- in effect, everything *except* the heat. Yet all these factors only worsen a condition; they don't cause it. What was the condition? Second, a reporter [from *The Hindu*](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/facing-the-heat-heatwave-deaths-in-ups-ballia-and-a-government-in-denial/article67002612.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) who visited Ballia learnt that it will take "more than seven days" to issue the medical certificates of the cause of death (MCCDs), so the official cause of death -- i.e. what the state records the cause of each death in this period and circumstance to be -- won't be clear until then. --- Aside: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Council of Medical Research [issued guidelines](https://www.ncdirindia.org/Downloads/CoD%5FCOVID-19%5FGuidance.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that asked healthcare workers to not list comorbidities as the underlying cause of death for people who die with COVID-19\. This didn't stop workers from [doing just this](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-mccd-comorbidities-covid-19-deaths-undercounting/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in many parts of the country. I'm not sure but I don't think similar guidelines exist for when the underlying cause could be heat. The guidelines also specified the ICD-10 codes to be used for COVID-19; such codes [already exist](https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/S00-T88/T66-T78/T67-/T67?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for heat-related deaths. --- Third: Do the district authorities, and by extension the Uttar Pradesh state government, have complete knowledge of the situation in Ballia? There was the unfortunate superintendent who said there was a link between the heat and the deaths. Anonymous paramedic staff at the Ballia hospital also told *The Hindu* that "some of the deaths were heat-related". Yet the new superintendent says the matter is "under investigation" even as one member of the expert team says it's yet to find "any convincing evidence to link the deaths with heatstroke". I really don't know what to make of this except that there's a non-zero chance that a cover-up is taking shape. This is supported by the fourth issue: According to *The Hindu*, "the \[Uttar Pradesh\] State Health Department has asked the Chief Medical Officers of districts and the Chief Medical Superintendents of district hospitals to issue statements in coordination with the concerned District Magistrate only during 'crucial situations'" -- a move reminiscent of the National Disaster Management Authority's [response to the Joshimath disaster](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/after-isro-reveals-joshimath-sinking-ndma-asks-departments-not-to-share-details-publicly/article66377101.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). For now, this is as far as the facts (as I know them) will take us. I think we'll be able to take a big stride when the hospital issues the MCCDs. ### Finding, and losing, Majorana URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/06/23/finding-and-losing-majorana/ Last updated: 2023-06-23T21:35:56.000Z I'm looking forward to breaking down and understanding a [new paper](https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.245423?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Physical Review B* soon – the sort of work of condensed-matter physics that's complex enough to warrant a week-long dive into the subject but not so complex as to leave a non-expert enthusiast (such as myself) eventually stranded in a swamp of mathematical intricacies. But while I'm going to do that, I thought I should also make a note of how differently the paper's principal interestingness has been presented by its publisher and by its authors. The American Physical Society, which publishes *Physical Review B*, tweeted this on June 21: On the same day, both Microsoft (where the paper's authors are employed as researchers) and a slew of popular science outlets, including [*Popular Science*](https://www.popsci.com/technology/microsoft-quantum-supercomputer/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (which doesn't once say "Majorana"), published articles claiming the tech company had achieved, in [its own words](https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2023/06/21/microsoft-achieves-first-milestone-towards-a-quantum-supercomputer/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the "first milestone towards a quantum supercomputer". The existence of Majorana zero modes do lead to the possibility of a quantum computer that uses topological qubits as its basic information-bearing units (like the semiconductors of a classical computer). But we don't even have a quantum computer yet, yet here we have reports about a quantum *super*computer well in the future. I understand that quantum computing is regularly in the news now, that Microsoft itself is calling the new study a step towards a supercomputing version of such a device, and that doing so is a sure-shot way to draw public attention towards the work. But something about looking away from the past, from the long quest for observing these states in different intricately engineered systems, in order to focus on the future sits ill with me. That physicists have finally found a way that could work should be the headline, if only to hang on to the idea that Majorana modes are valuable in more ways than to build a quantum supercomputer, as well as to commemorate – in a manner of speaking – what physicists of the past did and didn't get right, especially when they didn't have the tools and the knowledge that they do today. It also matters that a private technology company is undertaking this research. The Microsoft researchers published their results as a scientific paper, but what's to say a different private entity won't uncover some important bit of physics, not publish any papers about it, proceed straight to applying it in some lucrative technology, and keep their findings under wraps? I imagine that, on some epistemic spectrum, knowledge of the natural universe seamlessly transforms at some point into the know-how of building a highly profitable (or highly destructible, for that matter) machine. Yet some knowledge of the former variety belongs with the people at large, even if the knowledge of the latter kind need not. Part of the issue here is that the study of topological phases of matter has progressed almost in step with, and oftentimes been motivated by challenges in, efforts to build a better quantum computer. This is a good thing – for privately employed researchers to advance science, even if in the pursuit of profit – but that resulting scientific knowledge eventually has to be out, and made available as part of the public commons. Microsoft did that (by publishing an open-access paper in *Physical Review B*); I'm disappointed that some of the science journalists who took over at that point, in efforts to [take that knowledge to the people at large](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2021/07/05/scicommers-as-knowledge-producers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), fell short. ### Refusing battles URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/06/22/refusing-battles/ Last updated: 2023-06-22T21:09:40.000Z "Pick your battles" is probably the most important thing I've learnt as a journalist. A lot of it is probably due to my firm belief that science has always been political, and getting people to see this has often left me grappling with difficult questions in a variety of areas, which in turn required my engagement with a diverse multiplicity of people, ideas, and problems. In the course of working like this as a journalist for a decade, I got to contribute to as well as publish some wonderful work. But it also took me a decade to be honest to myself and admit that I was going about all this the wrong way. Constantly questioning myself and my privileges as I began my journalistic career had, over time, pressed into my skull the idea that, given the resources at my disposal, I could always do more than I was doing at any moment. So I took on more work, and more kinds of work, even as I began to interpret the resulting stress as an inability to be as efficient as necessary. By mid-2022, this misguided conflation had exacted a heavy toll on my body. My doctor immediately ordered a change in gears and my therapist helped me figure out that I hadn't picked my battles. But I soon realised that the bigger mistake I'd made was underestimating how difficult declining all the other battles would be. This is FOMO but it's also more than that. One way to define caste, class, and gender privilege in India (the benefits of all of which I enjoy, by the way) is to say that more privileged people can afford to fight more battles than less privileged people. Privileged *bodies* can also tolerate more harm (accidental, not deliberate) because they can afford good doctors and healthier living environments. But this sort of thinking misses the point, I realised later, because it overlooks *sustainability*. Performing 100 units of work and then fizzling out after five years is not better than performing eight units of work per year for many years. The latter is also advantageous because spending more time doing something allows you to persist – and enhance your credentials – in that community, establish more as well as stronger relationships, and mentor people. These things in turn bring advantages that working by oneself never will. You probably already know all of this, but I want to make sure you know one more thing: not trivialising the allure of the battles you've decided to overlook. This problem is more than FOMO because FOMO implies a temptation to do something. But when you're a privileged person and you've decided that you're not going to fight some battle, you also need to deal with the allegations – both self-inflicted and inflicted by others, especially by people in your own circles and sometimes publicly – of having abdicated your privileges. Instead of not giving in to the resulting temptation, as with FOMO, you need to not give in to the resulting shame. When I first experienced it, my self-esteem plummeted. I found myself clutching at straws when, for example, someone tagged me on Twitter demanding to know why I couldn't do something about a news report with average writing, put out by the publication I worked at (along with hundreds of other journalists). The old me would have sprung into action, messaging the relevant editors, going into why XYZ is problematic, and becoming entangled in increasingly vexed follow-ups. But I've found that the shame eventually calcifies into a kind of courage, one that allows me today to say – after a few deep breaths – that while I'm sure XYZ is an important problem, I'm not going to pay much attention to it. ### Cyclone Biparjoy and Chennai URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/06/19/cyclone-biparjoy-and-chennai/ Last updated: 2023-06-19T12:10:40.000Z When is a natural disaster a *natural disaster*? It began raining in Chennai last evening and hasn't stopped as of this morning. But it's been intermittent, with highly variable intensity. In my area, the wind has been feeble. I don't know the situation in other areas because we haven't had power since at least 3.45 am. My father tells me, from Bangalore, that early reports say Taramani (southern edge) and Nandanam (heart of the city) received 120 mm in the 24 hours until 5.30 am; Meenambakkam (outside the city, where the airport is) received 140 mm; and Nungambakkam (also heart of the city and near where I am) received 60 mm. @ChennaiRains has tweeted that the average rainfall in June in Chennai is 50 mm. Schools that were reopened just last week – after having been closed for two weeks longer than usual from the summer break due to a heatwave – have been closed again in four districts (Chengalpattu, Chennai, Kancheepuram, and Thiruvallur). Does Chennai's situation right now constitute a natural disaster? The consequences give that impression but the facts of the cause don't. I'm sure some parts of the city have flooded as well, such as Pondy Bazaar (which, ironically, the state government had refurbished a few years ago under the 'Smart Cities' mission, including fitting a storm-water drain later found to have a critical [design flaw](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/chennai-smart-t-nagar-floods-after-an-hour-of-rain/articleshow/87859472.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) while many trees have been toppled. This is a city that has brought a state of disaster upon itself, like many other cities in India, thanks to their (oft-elected) leaders. The problem at hand has two sides. One is that when a city has undermined its own ability to resist the worse consequences of an adverse natural event – such as receiving thrice the expected amount of rainfall for a month within 24 hours – it's difficult to know what precipitated the disasterness, the state of experiencing a disaster: the city's poor infrastructure or the intensity of the natural event. Determining exactly which one to blame is a nearly impossible problem to solve but attempting it could reveal, in the process, the most pressing problems to address at the local level. For example, right opposite my house is a vendor of construction materials who tends to close the nearest storm-water drain when loading or unloading sand to/from trucks, causing puddles of water to stagnate on the road, especially over some nasty potholes. There's also a very rusted transformer at one end of the road and a sewage pipe that has burst at the other end. My block also doesn't have power because I'm told a feeder line tripped in the night. But more fundamentally, this blame-apportionment exercise – the aggregate of all the local problems, for example – can be useful to piece together the true contributions of urban dysfunction to the city's current disasterness, and contrast that with what the city's and the state's political leaders will soon claim the "actual problem" was, and attempt to take credit for "addressing" it. The other side of the problem is that, thanks to climate change, we're required to constantly update the way we think about disasters. For example, *The Hindu* has a [good editorial today](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/preparedness-pays-off-the-hindu-editorial-on-cyclone-biparjoy/article66982827.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on India's response to Cyclone Biparjoy, which made landfall over Kutch district last week as a 'very severe cyclonic storm'. Thanks to the India Meteorological Department's (IMD's) accurate forecasts and the government response, only two casualties have been reported so far – versus the around-3,000 following a similar event at a similar location in June 1998\. One reason there have been so few deaths this time is that the state government evacuated more than a lakh people from coastal areas, sparing them from being injured or killed by parts of their houses being blown in the wind or tossed in the water. That people were evacuated in time is a good thing but, the editorial asks, why do they have houses that can be so easily destroyed in the first place? The point is that disaster response has improved considerably, but it's nowhere near where it actually needs to be: where the intensity at which a disaster happens following a natural event is much further along than it is today. Put another way, while the response to a disaster may never be perfect, there are ways to measure its success – and then when it is successful, we need to pay attention to how that success was defined. When 3,000 people died, it was reasonable to ask why the IMD's forecasts weren't good enough and how the death toll could be lowered. When two people died, it became time to move past these measures and ask, for example, why so many people had to be evacuated and how many rupees in income they lost (that they won't be able to recoup). This is less an attempt to downplay the significance of India's achievement – it really is tremendous progress for 25 years – and more an acknowledgment of the nature of the beast: disasters are getting bigger, badder, and, importantly, pervasive in a way that they endanger more than lives. The living suffer, too. Storms render the seas choppy, destroy boats and fishing nets, deteriorate living conditions in less-than-pucca houses, eliminate livelihoods, and increase (informal) indebtedness. Evacuating a fisher's family will improve its chance of living to tell the tale, but will that tale be anything other than one of greater destitution? It should be. A related issue here is the subtle danger of using extreme measures: a focus on saving lives downplays and eventually sidelines the lack of protection for other aspects of living. They might be more recoverable, in a manner of speaking, but that doesn't mean they will be recovered. And that's what we need to focus on next, and next, and so forth, until our governments can guarantee the recoverability for everyone of, say, all the amenities assured by the [U.N. Sustainable Development Goals](https://sdgs.un.org/goals?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The same goes for rain-battered cities. In the limited context of my locality, my problems are the sewage on the road, the threat of the sewage line mixing with the drinking-water line underground, the risk of a vehicular accident on my street, and power not being restored soon enough. Sure, there might be worse problems elsewhere, but these ones in particular seem to me to belong on the urban-dysfunction side of things. They make day-to-day life difficult, irritating, frustrating. They disrupt routines, increase the cognitive burden, and build stress. Over time, we have less happiness and higher healthcare expenses, both of which diverge unequally for more privileged versus less privileged people. The city as a whole could become more unequal in more ways, and the next time it rains, a new vicious cycle could be born. An agenda limited to saving lives will easily overlook this, as will an agenda that overlooks facets of life that aren't problematic yet but could soon be. Or maybe Chennai still has some way to go? The Tamil Nadu revenue and disaster-management minister Sattur Ramachandran just came on TV talking about how it's notable that no lives were lost… ### Rob McKenna URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/06/18/rob-mckenna/ Last updated: 2023-06-18T09:12:49.000Z Anyone who reads *Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* and doesn't come away thinking it belongs on the list of the best books they've read has to get themselves checked. I don't think this about many things but if I had to think it about just one thing, it'd have to be *Hitchhiker's*. I've also had one more reason to cherish the book than most, beyond its near-complete exploration of the human condition and unrelenting optimism. Since reading the book a decade and a half ago, I've accrued considerable reason to believe that I'm one of the characters in the book, in spirit. This is Rob McKenna, an ordinary lorry driver we meet for a brief yet exhilarating moment in the second half of *Hitchhiker's*. The very first line about him goes like this: > Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everyone. This is the bit I really connect with: > Splattered in his rear mirror a couple of seconds later was the reflection of the hitch-­‐hiker, drenched by the roadside. > > For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and, satisfied, drove on into the night. > > At least it made up for having been finally overtaken by that Porsche he had been diligently blocking for the last twenty miles. And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him. You see, whenever I've felt lousy, there's been rain at my location. It rained on my last night in New York, in 2014, when I was done dropping out of university. It often rained in Bangalore, where I used to live until last year, but it would often also rain just as I was starting to feel low, preceded and succeeded by sunny days. It would rain for a few hours in the morning and then the sun would break out. It would rain without warning in much the same way a dark cloud descended on my psyche. This January I moved to Chennai and, much to my relief, I've continued to be Rob McKenna. Chennai has a barely-there relationship with rain, especially outside the October-December monsoon. Yet it's rained every time I've been knocked down. Just this morning, I woke up to overcast skies, brilliant arcs of lightning, and a ceaselessly cool wind blowing straight through my living room bearing flecks of drizzle (lovely word in Tamil for it, *saaral*). I'd gone to bed yesterday with a heavy heart and a murderous headache. Rob McKenna is a miserable bastard alright, but I've just loved the rain. ### Unclear science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/25/unclear-science/ Last updated: 2023-05-25T04:16:56.000Z Scientific papers frequently have a line to this effect, often in the same syntax: "While we know X, why Y happens is unclear." The papers then proceed to elucidate Y. Sometimes a paper comes along that makes you ask, "Unclear according to whom?". A few weeks ago, there was a dubious paper in *Nature Communications* in which a scholar claimed to have analysed the effects of fasting due to Ramadan on the decisions of Muslim judges in India and Pakistan. The paper had so many shortcomings as to make its findings inapplicable in the real world, chief among them that there was no way to verify whether a judge identified as Muslim (by their name) was observing the rituals of Ramadan. Yet a journal that many look up to\* published the paper – and its claim that there was a tendency for such judges to be lenient – opening the door for right-wing maniacs in India to claim *Nature*'s approval for their Islamophobic views. We can't ask that such studies not be published at all. Doing so is the authors' prerogative and an exercise of academic freedom. The problems are that academia often seems to forget that it doesn't operate in a vacuum and that the wider socio-political environment has tended to interpret new information in twisted ways. The studies should respond to these environs rather than presuming to be above it all. Academic freedom begins and ends within the academy walls. Scientific papers are written within but they will always be read outside. For one, consider the value- or judgment-neutral manner in which the results of scientific studies are presented. Are we stopping to consider if that can be a problem? We should. It would be reckless of a scientific paper with potential to cause harm, especially social harm, to not have an 'interpretation railroad' baked into the text, and not just in the "Discussion" section, to discourage a reader from applying the results in certain contexts for specific reasons. A paper that doesn't contemplate its limitations is not a responsible paper. This does not – and cannot – apply to most papers, but in some cases the potential is obvious, such as a paper that considers the effect of Ramadan fasting on the pronouncements of Muslim judges in half-baked fashion. \* That *Nature Communications* isn't the same as *Nature* may be obvious to scientists; among the people at large, the 'prestige' carries over almost entirely. ### Real heat URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/19/real-heat/ Last updated: 2023-05-19T13:39:04.000Z In the aftermath of Chicago's infamous week-long heatwave in July 1995, the city's residents, but including the mayor Richard Daley and his administration, couldn't believe that so many had perished in the severe weather. They asked if the toll was "really real". The official figure was just under 500 and an unofficial figure put together by epidemiologists – in much the same way their counterparts in India estimated the expected national toll due to the COVID-19 pandemic – was in excess of 1,200\. Both were surprising, so much so that Daley said not all the deaths could've been due to heat because if that were true, "everybody in the summer that dies will die of heat". It was an absurd claim, embellished further by a report prepared by a commission that his office had appointed, which resorted to victim-blaming for the deaths. But the heatwave and the city's response to it together cemented three facts: heatwaves are silent disasters; like all silent disasters, their severity is amplified by silent social inequities; and the place of "really real" in climate history. Earlier this week, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released a prediction that the global average near-surface temperature in each of the next five years will be 1.1-1.8º C higher than the average in 1850-1900 and that at least one of these years will be the hottest on record (I prefer my father's description of this year in Tamil: "*padu kevalam*"). To be sure, that's *the* hottest. Just eight years ago, most of the world's countries entered into contentious negotiations to determine what they should be expected to do in response to the climate crisis. After a week of of talks that often ended way past the deadline, they drafted the historic (at the time) Paris Agreement, which famously asked that its participants act to limit global average surface temperature rise to below 1.5º C over the pre-industrial average. We've since learnt that it was an ask too far, considering how slothfully multilateral climate action negotiations have progressed. But now, in light of the WMO's forecast, it seems to have been too ambitious for another reason as well: the world was really set to breach the 1.5º C threshold in just the second decade of the century. Even the 2º C mark that the agreement requests action on isn't safe and may well come to pass in the subsequent decade. The heat today is already really real. I think, in a visceral way that news and reports haven't managed so far, the WMO's forecast renders the insufficiency of our commitments really real as well. ### A new science page at The Hindu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/18/a-new-science-page-at-the-hindu/ Last updated: 2023-05-18T04:27:17.000Z Starting today, *The Hindu* has a new science page, available to read in the premium e-paper edition. It will be published on all days except Saturday. I will be anchoring the page from Monday to Thursday; the Friday page will focus on personal health and will be anchored by my colleague Sunalini Mathew; and the Sunday page will be anchored by science editor Prasad Ravindranath. Here's today's page, as a preview: ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/g33b8ag35.1g33b8ag35.1_background-2048.png?w=664) (There's a quiz at the bottom by yours truly. Give it a shot? And mail your answers to science@thehindu.co.in with the subject 'The Science Quiz'. If you're one of the first five to give all correct answers, I'll feature your name in the next quiz edition. Also, we're open to featuring reader-made quizzes!) I'm quite excited about this new product. The page will feature thought-provoking stories that are rooted in science, and won't necessarily be coupled with the news cycle. This is a form of science journalism that in my view needs more room and support in India, in an age in which science and its technological offshoots have an oversized effect on our collective futures as well as in which we're critiquing science in newer, and often more powerful, ways. To keep up, we'll need good science news but we'll also need to go beyond it. This page is conceived that way, to build in incremental fashion – just as science does – knowledge, awareness, and wisdom. The page isn't in print (yet: I don't want to speculate on when it will be available to read as a hard-copy. As I've been reminded in the last few months, launching a page is probably the second most complicated thing after launching a rocket. There are so many moving parts.) But we're working on it. :) Finally, I think not many people in my circles have an online subscription to *The Hindu*. For Rs 2,400 a year, or Rs 200 per month, *The Hindu* provides significant value. Going ahead, more and more of that value is going to be on the topics of science, health, environment, and spaceflight. If you're interested in writing and journalism on these topics, *The Hindu* is an excellent investment. ### Notes for a ‘The Open Notebook’ report URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/17/notes-for-a-the-open-notebook-report/ Last updated: 2023-05-17T09:50:22.000Z I’m one of the journalists quoted in a [new reported feature](https://www.theopennotebook.com/2023/05/09/expanding-the-geographical-borders-of-your-source-list/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by [Karen Emslie](https://karenemslie.journoportfolio.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (with additional reporting by [Allison Whitten](https://www.allisonwhitten.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), published in *The Open Notebook* on May 9, 2023\. It is entitled ‘Expanding the Geographical Borders of Your Source List’, and is about the importance as well as advantages of science journalists diversifying their sources to include voices from outside English-speaking countries. In this post, I’m publishing my notes that arose in discussions with Karen and Allison, in the process of being interviewed, in full. ### Methods, tools, organisations, journals, and strategies I use to identify and connect with expert sources This is a difficult one because I don’t know of any common set of sources that some or many science reporters in India use; instead, it’d be safer to say there’s a common set of strategies: to dig up old research papers on the topic and contact their authors, or the authors of studies cited in that paper, to contact local institutes with researchers working on the same topic, so forth. Because I’ve been in science journalism in India for a decade, I’m fortunate to have access to a small network of experts, and I ask them for contacts as well. The IndScicomm initiative compiled a database of researchers on different topics who have been known to speak to journalists for quotes and/or to verify facts, a couple years ago. That should tell you about how such experts are hard to find in India – people who are authorities on a certain scientific topic and who have time to answer reporters’ questions. I know from personal experience that most scientists don’t know or understand why science journalists exist, because to them peer-review is the highest form of knowledge verification and because they sincerely believe there is nothing to be gained by communicating advanced scientific concepts to the people at large, forget us exploring questions of science and society, STS, etc. Of course, that database has also fallen into disuse (by my understanding). (By the way, there is also a reciprocal database of science journalists that scientists can contact; I don’t know what has become of it.) There was also supposed to be a 'Science Centre' along the lines of the UK’s ‘Science Media Centre’ but it hasn't materialised. India has three science academies and I’ve had some luck going through their rosters of fellows to identify suitable expert sources, but this said, it has been my experience – and that of many others – that few scientists actually ever respond, or respond in useful ways. (I once asked a physicist for his comments on the work of Murray Gell-Mann for an obituary I was writing when Gell-Mann passed away. He sent me the second quote on [this page](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/to-explain-the-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and told me that that should suffice.) One resource that has served us well is ‘The Life of Science’ project. It’s run by a small collective. Over the last four or five years (I could be wrong about how old they are), they have gone around the country talking to women scientists, scientists from marginalised socio-economic groups, and scientists of marginalised gender identities. So their efforts have been very useful to identify non-cis-male and/or non-Brahmin scientists. ### Indian social media channels or groups on WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat etc. useful for connecting with sources There are quite a few chat-app-based groups, although I believe the ones for environment and health are much bigger and better organised than, say, those for reporting on physics. In fact, I haven’t come across one for just the fundamental sciences. And my knowledge here is restricted to the English journalism community. I imagine there are several chat-app-based groups and Facebook groups pertaining to covering science in Indian languages. But I also imagine they’re organised more along the lines of geography and language than of topics, because my understanding is that while some Indian language news publications have space for science, health, environment and spaceflight reports, it’s not big enough to have anything more than the most important bit of news on that day or in that week. There are also many Facebook groups – the two most popular kinds are those run by individual institutes and those run by people interested in a particular topic in science. I haven’t had much luck with institutes’ Facebook groups in the last decade while the people-run groups have been helpful, at least with identifying the right person to talk to for leads on a particular topic. As for covering space and spaceflight: I depend extensively on two social media groups. One is a group on Signal, run by a group of people invested in private spaceflight, ex-ISRO employees, entrepreneurs and spaceflight journalists. The other is the [ISRO subreddit](https://reddit.com/r/ISRO?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (which I like so much that I've even [written about it](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/isro-sivan-chandrayaan-2-vikram-shanmuga-subramanian-lro-nasa-reddit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). All this said, I should also say that science journalism in India is at a unique historical moment today: it’s finally coming into its own, aided by new communication tools, a burst of new online-only news outlets, new revenue models for these outlets and for independent writers, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis (which make stories on health and environment immediately more important), and an increasing awareness among young scientists of the importance, and in some cases even the lucre, of science communication. India had a professional body for science journalists before the creation of SJAI but it was defunct, which strengthened the case for SJAI. I’m also part of a group of scientists, science communicators and journalists that’s trying to put together a conclave “for scicommers by scicommers”, where scicommers from around the country can gather and meet each other, in most cases for the first time. \[*This is no longer the case.*\] This in turn should help with finding better sources for future stories. Right now, we’re all in a thousand silos. ### Platforms or technologies to interview your sources It’s usually phone, that’s the most convenient, together with a voice recorder. But in some cases I prefer email over phone, especially when I’m dealing with a particularly complicated topic and I find it helpful to have all comments in writing so I go back to them as many times as I need. I believe video interviews are becoming more popular as science media platforms are under pressure (like any other kind of news outlet) to produce more videos, and scientists and others also seem to understand this because they’ve been seeming more amenable to the idea. When I use a phone plus a voice recorder, transcription takes more time because most automated transcription tools don’t do a good job of recognising Indian accents of English (and there are several). When we’re dealing with sensitive material, we use a combination of Protonmail and Signal, among other tools. Note that half the time (anecdotally speaking), what platforms/technologies I use to contact my sources isn’t in my control; they’re dictated by whom I’m interviewing. If it’s a scientist in government, particularly in an institute that is not on friendly terms with *The Wire* \[*where I worked until November 2022*\], email is often the only option. Scientists at more independent facilities and in the lab (as opposed to the field) are okay with email, video, WhatsApp, phone call, etc. Those in the field, if they have internet access, prefer email. ### Is internet connectivity an issue for some sources, and how did you cope with this? In my experience, the best solution has been to give up on trying to meet a deadline. Note that I’m the science editor at the publication I work at, and I’m happy to give my writers and reporters deadline extensions if they need it, as long as they keep me in the loop and their reasons are… well, reasonable. So I know dropping the deadline or making it flexible are easier said than done. You need a certain kind of publication, a certain kind of editorial setup to be more easygoing with the timelines. I’m sure you know that internet connectivity in India has been as much at the mercy of natural disasters as at the mercy of local governments, which, at the first sign of some kind of major social unrest, move to suspend internet services at the city, district or even state levels. And the way our cities and towns are built, even heavy rain often constitutes enough of a disaster. So when someone I’m trying to reach doesn’t have access to a good internet connection, there’s a healthy chance that they’re also dealing with other, more pressing problems. So the solution I personally prefer is to give them, and myself, some time. If they’re experiencing connectivity issues for any other reason, I find that SMS and email work (the latter can work if the connection is weak instead of absent). ### Cultural issues in India that science journalists from abroad should consider when connecting with experts I have very rarely come across an article where an Indian scientist was quoted in a story by a foreign journalist (by which I mean those from the U.S. or Europe, who are the most common) when the story was not about the Indian scientist’s work or when the Indian scientist wasn’t widely acknowledged as one of the best experts on the topic. Apart from the reasons mentioned above, Indian scientists by and large are unable to speak about their work and/or their field in creative ways. If you mean what they ought to consider: these are a dime a dozen. Perhaps the most important issue is that India is a country of countries. Something that applies in the country’s north isn’t likely to apply in the country’s south or east or the northeast, in terms of class, gender, caste, aspirations, etc. Among these variables, the caste-gender combine is a particularly thorny one and journalists, both within the country and without, get this wrong in one of two ways a lot of the time. Inadvertently: by overrepresenting the voices – and views, priorities, morals, politics – of male upper-caste scientists, and thus at risk of building a narrative that is unlikely to conflict with the forces currently endangering democratic and constitutional rights in India right now in a more than superficial way. Deliberately: which is to do the same thing as in the inadvertent case but in order to erase the voices of everyone but those in a thin stratum of society. Another thing foreign journalists should know when they’re covering issues on the caste-gender axes is that they might believe any independent expert will in fact provide an independent opinion. But caste affinities in the country have been known to transcend one’s commitment to science or even to their professional ethics. So, and crass as this may sound, journalists may be better off quoting non-Brahmins if the question at hand concerns the conduct of Brahmins, or in fact any so-called ‘upper-caste group’. There are several experts who are exceptions to this ‘rule’, but unless a reporter is completely sure that they have identified one such expert, they should keep looking. Obviously all this is going to matter less in a story about what the Higgs boson is but even here, journalists are constantly at risk of misrepresenting who is or can be a particle physicist in India. If I had to codify this as advice for anyone looking for it, I’ll only say don’t be fooled by the Indian government’s claim to the country being any kind of superpower, and look closer. I also have an addendum, although I'm not sure if it's relevant to your question: if foreign journalists are following up on something that Indian journalists have done, [please give credit](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/04/19/middle-fingers-to-the-nyt-and-nyer/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### With government scientists, email is often the only option for communications and interviews, whereas scientists at independent facilities may have more flexibility. Why? The possibilities include the two potential reasons you’d mentioned – that they need a written record and/or they need the approval of their superiors. In fact, the latter is more common than it’s made out to be and it sometimes also manifests in a particularly frustrating way: whereby scientists at some institutes are likelier to talk to members of the foreign press instead of those working for establishments within India. In my experience, I’ve encountered two reasons for this, and sometimes they’re working together: Indian scientists don’t trust the Indian press (possibly because they’ve had a bad experience when they’ve been misquoted in the past or because they don't know whom to trust, whereas some foreign publications – like the NYT – are more ‘well established’, so to speak, or because they’re conflating science journalism with public relations) and/or because their institute doesn’t want to be seen speaking to journalists who are employed by organisations that are critical of the national government. The latter hasn't been something I could prove with data but there are several anecdotes. As it happens, in India, there's a set of rules called Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules 1964 that specify – among other things – that employees of government facilities aren’t allowed to speak negatively of government policies. Some institutes have of late interpreted these Rules very strictly to mean they can’t comment on government actions and laws altogether. But in 2015, the Allahabad high court ruled that the staff of a university that’s funded by the Central government don’t have to abide by these Rules – but the Rules remain in the picture and have been invoked by institute authorities to prevent their colleagues from speaking to the press. Then again, of late, some parts of the country have been emboldened or cowed down by the national government, as the case may be – implicitly, not explicitly, by passively condoning the persecution of people who engage in “anti-national activities” – to demand new staff and students to sign an undertaking that they won't engage in “anti-national activities”. This term is vaguely defined for a reason, so the government or any body with power can invoke it to punish anything it finds inconvenient in future. The government of Uttar Pradesh state even promulgated an [ordinance in 2019](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/ordinance-bars-anti-national-activity-in-up-private-universities/articleshow/69850499.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) demanding private universities do this! It’s against this broader background that I think scientists at government institutes tend to prefer communicating via email. ### Working around a lack of transcription services Of course, it takes more time to produce a story. The longest transcription I’ve had to work through took me three hours but I know peers who’ve spent several days transcribing quotes collected over one or two days of field work. The point is also labour here: about commissioning editors being aware of the fact that the reporter might be doing more work and paying them more for that and/or making other allowances. There are now some new open-source tools in the works that are based on training ML algorithms to ‘understand’ different accents (like [this one](https://openai.com/blog/whisper/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) with potential to be used to build region-specific transcription services. I hope these models are also trained on Indian accents of English – all the several hundreds, I suppose! – and made available for (affordable) commercial use soon. ### On what’s lost when most science stories exclude scientists from many parts of the world Many, many things are lost. I don’t know if I can ever furnish a complete answer to this question! The most well-known losses I think are the ideas that good science as well as good science communication happen in parts of the world other than in the wealthiest countries, and that science can be done or imagined in ways other than those that have been institutionalised in these countries. You lose perspectives shaped by histories that your communities never lived through. I also fear that, over time, the habituated oversight of scientists from West, South, and Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America could create the impression among new journalists that nothing is lost when they also don’t speak to these scholars. To extend this further: overlooking scientists from these places also overlooks their science, which in turn overlooks the efforts of science journalists navigating, communicating, and interrogating it, and the communities grappling with it. There is one loss that is more immediate: when journalists don’t include scientists from other parts of the world in their reports, those scientists and their work are rendered further invisible, in addition to the invisibility imposed by history, nationalism (as is the case in many countries, including India today), censorship, revisionism, etc. This may well be inadvertent, and obviously I can’t straightforwardly expect a journalist from Europe or the U.S. to be concerned about the fortunes of an Indian scientist. But I think it’s fair to expect them to square this against the global reach and influence of some of the publications for which they write, such as *The New Yorker*, *The New York Times*, *Nature*, or *The Guardian*, among others. In exchange for the far-reaching ‘privilege to influence’ afforded by these publications, journalists must tread lightly, carefully, and be constantly alert to the possibility that their stories are incomplete. (Also see the related Daniel Mansur example below.) ### One piece of advice to journalists interested in including scientists from more countries My number one piece of advice would be to include sources from countries you haven’t usually included. We just need more people to do this right now. A close second: appropriately credit everyone who helped you locate the right scientists in their respective countries, gave you the local context, etc. Once these two things happen, everything else can be figured out. ### What I wish readers in English-speaking know about scientists doing their work in India The countries that are currently typically underrepresented in science stories are often countries that are less economically developed (and whose growth pathways today are complicated by climate commitments, emission controls, inflation, war, etc.). So I’d like to replace the “primarily English-speaking” … with “economically developed”. What I wish readers from economically developed countries knew are largely the invisible things in their own countries that they probably take for granted. I experienced this firsthand in 2014, when I went to New York to pursue a graduate degree in science reporting. I dropped out after a few months partly because I realised that many of the problems that we’re used to dealing with on a day-to-day basis in India just didn’t exist in New York, from labour rights to the quality of public infrastructure, from access to the bare minimum research facilities to bureaucratic probity. These gaps often manifest as unseen forces on anyone working in India (scientists, science journalists, etc.) which lead in turn to choices that might seem alien to someone not used to them. I realised that I wasn’t interested in learning to practise a journalism of a science that was free from these forces because, where I come from, everything we do admits them in some way. And they exert a stress that, by and large, makes life in this milieu much less enjoyable. They impose a cognitive burden that forces people to plan ahead in ways that people in, say, the U.S. wouldn’t have to. Sometimes they result in trauma that’s very region- and culture-specific. I remember an [interview I read in 2018](https://elifesciences.org/interviews/521a51ee/daniel-mansur?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of a scientist named Daniel Mansur in Brazil, where he uses a hypothetical example in which he and his peers in a ‘richer’ university like Stanford both separately submit papers to a journal on the same idea or experiment or whatever. If the journal asks both groups to submit additional tests of the idea, according to Dr. Mansur, his group will have to wait for six months just to get the next batch of reagents. On the other hand, the Stanford group can purchase them because they’re made locally, and it purchases higher quality reagents, plus it has access to a bigger pool of postdocs, so it’s able to get back to the journal in a short span of time – whereas the group in Brazil is still waiting for the shipment. I mean stuff like this. If you include women’s safety, caste- and gender-based discrimination, anti-intellectualism, state-condoned pseudoscience, legal hurdles to sharing or receiving biological specimens, compulsions to conduct research, horrific delays in scholarship disbursement, etc. – all major issues in contemporary India – you have a situation in which no one may be explicitly discouraging you, but where you feel discouraged nonetheless from pursuing scientific work. So I wish people in the economically developed countries understood the sort of big, compounded problems that can arise out of slight differences in one’s socio-economic and political realities, how that affects one’s work (including scientific and journalistic work; also see: [‘My country is burning. Why should I work?’](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/my-country-is-burning-why-should-i-work/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), and then perhaps we can all begin to reckon with our respective complicities. ### A well-meaning manel is not a good panel URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/16/a-well-meaning-manel-is-not-a-good-panel/ Last updated: 2023-05-16T05:40:42.000Z > Every issue must not be boiled down to gender divide. I came across this comment on Twitter, in response to a tweet (below) that announced a panel discussion entitled 'In Defence of Science and Scientific Method', all the panellists on which were men. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/screenshot-2023-05-16-at-10.32.53-am.png?w=1024) It strikes me that the time has come when the issue of science at least *must be boiled down to the gender divide* (among other divides of similar nature). We have spent a lot of time and effort on science for science's sake – the idea that we should look past the identities of individuals and to their scientific work. This idea has brought the world a long way, of course, but at a steep price, one that in hindsight we know we should never have paid: we have limited, excluded and/or 'filtered out' a considerable number of women, and indeed most non-cis-men. It's not for nothing that historian of science Meera Nanda says in *The Life of Science*'s new book that "the history of science *is* the history of exclusion of women". Enough also of men defending science: to extend Meera's comment, any defence of science through history has *ipso facto* been a defence by men, of an enterprise dominated by men. I'd like to hear how the women would do it, or wouldn't for that matter! We don't need an enterprise that promises a steady stream of technological benefits and increasing consciousness of the universe's wonders in exchange for generational, and increasingly wicked, social inequities, psychological harm, and opportunities to abuse power. Obviously my decision to characterise science thus is exaggerated, yet every 'explanation' for why, say, a panel discussion is really a manel discussion is today increasingly indistinguishable from the excuses of the past in its outcome. Today, or indeed on any day you pick on which people are already generally aware of the ill-effects of hosting a manel, we need outcomes to change. This is why the gender-divide question deserves to take centre-stage no matter how well-meaning the organisers of an event have been. The first time this happens – say, at a panel discussion, a conference, or an award ceremony – is going to throw a spanner in the works. That's the bang with which the idea that "a manel is not a good panel" will begin. This is the principle of it. In practice, the problem is quite easy to solve: don't organise a men-only event, or change its date, time, venue, or whatever so at least one woman (and people of other genders), but ideally more, are able to attend. We need to look at the science, and then peek around the door to ask who's doing it. ### What 'The Kerala Story' and 'The Old Guard' share URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/09/what-the-kerala-story-and-the-old-guard-share/ Last updated: 2023-05-09T05:32:44.000Z I was rewatching *The Old Guard* last week; the film is a bit of a favourite because a) Charlize Theron and b) it explores, even if in passing, the sometimes horrific terms on which science feels free to progress. But last week, a [study published](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2300503?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the *New England Journal of Medicine* reported something that places *The Old Guard* on the same footing as *The Kerala Story*, the film that alleged that "32,000 women" had been converted to Islam and recruited to ISIS in the state, in one specific way. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot-2023-05-08-at-8.34.18-AM.png) The first time Merrick is introduced in the film, he's talking about his company's work on a de-aging technology based on telomere extension. Telemores are the 'caps' on the ends of chromosomes, "the long twisted strings of DNA carrying the cells’ genes", per [*The New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/health/long-telomeres-age-longevity.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). When the cell replicates, its telomere shrinks by just a little. At some point, the telomeres become *too* short and the cell dies. Scientists also found that younger people have longer telomeres. They put these two together and figured that longer telomeres equal longer lifespans. This is how telomere-extension science was born. In *The Old Guard*, Merrick's company, of course also called Merrick, is intent on rolling out a de-aging solution based on telomere extension. To this end, the company abducts three of the film's immortals and has them chemically debilitated while the chief scientist extracts tissue from their bodies and Merrick promises them he will "slice" them for years until the company has a solution. *The Old Guard* is science-fiction, at the time it was released because of the idea that a small number of people can live for many thousands of years. Now, it is also science-fiction because it claims that telomere extension can reverse aging. The new study found that telomeres can only be so much longer before they start to cause disease, just like shorter telomeres. In particular, researchers associated telomeres longer than the 'normal' range with a higher risk of heart disease and some cancers. Part of the problem with *The Kerala Story* is one that we have seen in many films before, on less provocative but nonetheless equally controversial topics. We had the same issue in *Mersal* (Tamil), which falsely claimed a higher GST rate and collection on medicinal drugs than was the case in reality. [*Enthiran 2.0*](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/fantasy-and-pseudoscience-in-rajinikanths-2-0/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (also Tamil) claimed that Kirlian photography is true and legitimate, whereas its reality is as a claim advanced by a Russian scientist and later established as pseudoscience. *Mission Mangal* (Hindi) went a step ahead, calling the Van Allen radiation belt a debris field and that ISRO fashioned an instrument onboard the Mars Orbiter Mission with a "self-healing" material. Neither, of course, is true (among other similar claims). I don't recall if any of these films included a disclaimer that they contained fictionalised elements, but as each of them also shows, the problem is that unless we know something inside-out, we can't know which parts are fictionalised and which aren't. *Featured image: A scene from the film* The Old Guard*. Source: Netflix.* ### Can we 'redistribute' prestige? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/07/redistributing-prestige/ Last updated: 2023-05-07T15:36:35.000Z Pudding.cool has a [good visual essay](https://pudding.cool/2022/12/yard-sale/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the yard-sale model of economics, which shows that wealth has a tendency to accumulate more in the hands of people who are already wealthier. This is because a richer person has more opportunities to regain lost wealth than a poorer person. The wheels of the model turn every time someone somewhere spends money on something, to the extent that, in Pudding.cool's words, "our economy \[could be\] designed to create a few super rich people". The model is reminiscent of one that physicist Brian Skinner set out in a [preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.05813.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in December 2019, to describe the effects of "prestige bias" in the path of an individual who is going through successive rounds of evaluation. In his model, each candidate could belong to one of two classes: "prestigious" or "non-prestigious". They are sorted into a class based on an evaluation that includes an examination. One of the two cases considered in the model is when the "evaluators acquire no new knowledge about the candidates after the evaluation", including the very realistic possibility that the examination is too non-specific vis-à-vis some trait or aptitude that it is supposed to measure. In this case, they base some part of their decision – on the class to which a candidate belongs – on the results of evaluation that came before. So if a candidate has been classified as "prestigious" (or "non-prestigious") once before, the odds of their being classified as "prestigious" (or "non-prestigious") in future increase as well. The Pudding.cool article concludes by considering one well-known remedy to wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few: wealth redistribution. That is, taking some fraction of the tax collected from the people and splitting it between all of them. A simple simulation embedded on the page found that while the measure wouldn't prevent wealth accumulation altogether, it could significantly lower wealth inequality. Could a similar period 'prestige redistribution' exercise mitigate the difference between "prestigious" and "non-prestigious" candidates? Perhaps – an inchoate answer based on the outcomes of affirmative action policies in India, which 'redistributed' some components that accrue to people with prestige, such as access to education in state-run schools and colleges, jobs in offices, etc. They were grounded in sound principles of social justice. By [some](https://scroll.in/article/913532/consociationalism-this-political-science-theory-explains-the-success-of-caste-reservations-in-india?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [measures](https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/8433/Cho%5FMP%5FFinal%5FApr17.pdf?sequence=1&ref=slightlyacidic.com), they have succeeded. However, their goals have become endangered of late with the government's [decision to admit](https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/195175.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) economic disadvantages in the criterion of backwardness, allowing groups not facing social discrimination to also reap the programme's benefits while masking India's inability to meet its promises of growth. This said, and as we often witness in educational and professional settings in India itself, simply moving around the material consequences of prestige wouldn't change people's convictions and attitudes, and could in fact brew resentment. ### Gender equity in retractions URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/07/gender-equity-in-retractions/ Last updated: 2023-05-07T02:30:00.000Z From the abstract of a [fascinating study](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com) published in *PLoS ONE* on May 3, 2023: > … this study investigated gender differences in authorship of retracted papers in biomedical sciences available on RetractionWatch. Among 35,635 biomedical articles retracted between 1970 and 2022, including 20,849 first authors and 20,413 last authors, women accounted for 27.4% \[26.8 to 28.0\] of first authors and 23.5% \[22.9 to 24.1\] of last authors. The lowest representation of women was found for fraud (18.9% \[17.1 to 20.9\] for first authors and 13.5% \[11.9 to 15.1\] for last authors) and misconduct (19.5% \[17.3 to 21.9\] for first authors and 17.8% \[15.7 to 20.3\] for last authors). Women’s representation was the highest for issues related to editors and publishers (35.1% \[32.2 to 38.0\] for first authors and 24.8% \[22.9 to 26.8\] for last authors) and errors (29.5% \[28.0 to 31.0\] for first authors and 22.1% \[20.7 to 23.4\] for last authors). Most retractions (60.9%) had men as first and last authors. Gender equality could improve research integrity in biomedical sciences. That last line was unexpected, no? Were the authors suggesting that bringing more women into science would reduce retractions or that men are predisposed to publishing the sort of papers that are later retracted? To be sure, both are dangerous – and probably misguided – positions to take. I suspect the authors included that line in the abstract because they felt they had to put down some sort of takeaway. Nonetheless, the authors attempt some kind of analysis later in the paper; for example: > … the gender differences in reasons for retraction deserve careful consideration. Women’s underrepresentation was greater for misconduct and fraud and lower for plagiarism, duplication of content, and errors. Women’s representation was also higher for issues related to editors and publishers, which are out of author’s remit \[*sic*\]. This is in keeping with previous studies suggesting that men are more likely than women to be involved in fraud and misconduct in research \[[9](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref009), [15](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref015)\]. For instance, in a sample of 113 retractions from diverse scientific fields, fraud and plagiarism accounted for 28.6% of women-authored retractions and 59.2% men-authored retractions \[[9](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref009)\]. The underlying reasons for these gender differences are difficult to pinpoint. They may be related to attitudes toward research integrity, which are themselves influenced by career goals and ambitions as well as social norms \[[16](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref016), [17](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref017)\]. Gender stereotypes and bias at societal level may result in differences in moral standards and values, which then influence attitudes and behaviours related to research integrity. … > > Although only a small fraction of biomedical research papers is estimated to be retracted \[[2](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref002)\], the marked gender differences in underlying reasons for retractions may have important implications. Addressing longstanding gender bias and other barriers that hinder women’s progression in academia and research could enhance the integrity and moral standards of the scientific community overall and, hence, reduce misconduct and fraud \[[19](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref019)\]. Achieving gender equality across the academic ladder, particularly in positions of power and influence, would allow women to serve as role modellers and exert a positive influence on research teams and institutions to adhere to the highest standards of research integrity. This could have far-reaching benefits from increasing public’s trust in science \[[20](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref020)\], to improving the value of research for populations and reducing the long-term harms caused by fraudulent research \[[21](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284403&ref=slightlyacidic.com#pone.0284403.ref021)\]. There have been many indications that women already in science feel the need to perform better than their male counterparts in order to be credited with the same level of success (all arbitrarily defined, of course). Recall the [allegations of bullying against Marcella Carollo](https://science.thewire.in/science/eth-zurich-institute-astronomy-marcella-carollo-bullying-phd-students/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the Institute of Astronomy at ETH Zurich until August 2017\. Against this backdrop, it seems to me to be possible that the minority female population in science may feel compelled to be more law-abiding and rule-bound in order to lower the risk of being ejected from the field. It's also possible that because women already struggle more than men to enter science, and thereon to ascend through the ranks, that the opportunities to and the importance of being a role-model to the women who follow weigh heavier upon their shoulders than on the shoulders of male scientists. But this is only when the female population in science has minority status compared to the male population, and many barriers persist to more women holding positions of authority and power at scientific institutions. When this is not true, i.e. when there are no gender-based barriers to excelling in science (defined in any way), I don't think it will be possible to draw relationships between a person's gender and their proclivity for substandard or 'retractable' science. If such relationships exist, they will quite likely have a specific historicity, and in the absence of such historicity, I can't think of any reason why any arbitrarily selected demographic group should be less or more capable of being responsible for research misconduct. With this in mind, I don't think "gender equality could improve research integrity in biomedical sciences" is a helpful statement in the context of a limited and strictly quantitative assessment, especially if the prevention of misconduct is being advanced as a reason to bring more women into or retain women in science. ### Marginalia: Romila on textbooks, Rapido ad, Nobel nonsense URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/06/marginalia-romila-on-textbooks-rapido-ad-nobel-nonsense/ Last updated: 2023-05-06T06:23:35.000Z > We may go on deleting sections of our history but in the world outside where there are multiple centres of research into the Indian past, and many scholars, there these expunged sections from books used in India will continue to be studied. They will be subjected to new methods of analyses, will be commented upon, will enrich the understanding of India with new knowledge, and all this will be incorporated into the history of India that will be taught everywhere except in India. We in India will not know anything about that section of Indian history which has been deleted from our books. > > Outside India, the multiple cultures of India and their achievements will be studied as part of Indian history and Indian culture, irrespective of the religion of the dynasties that may have presided over the achievements. They will be studied in universities, libraries and museums dedicated to the study of India, as a continuation of not only the Indian past but also of the past pertaining to happenings current in various parts of the world. These will have pride of place not only in the history of India but in the history of human achievements. But we in India will be entirely ignorant of their significance since we shall not know them as a part of Indian history nor as a part of other histories of the world. These would have been cultures that we once recognised as those to which we once contributed, and with which we once had exchanges, when we created the Indian civilisation of past times. > > ['If NCERT Has its Way, the Study of Indian History Will Move Entirely Outside of India'](https://thewire.in/history/ncert-history-textbooks-mughals-india?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Romila Thapar, The Wire [Well written by historian Romila Thapar](https://thewire.in/history/ncert-history-textbooks-mughals-india?ref=slightlyacidic.com), on the NCERT's decision to excise some important parts of Indian history from school textbooks. First, it's hard not to come away after reading this being struck by how reminiscent this 'moving out' of scholarship is of what colonialism inflicted on India, especially in terms of the natural resources that were transferred from India to the United Kingdom, never to be returned – resources that both the left and the right like to thump their chests over. Self-inflicted colonialism is worse than tragedy. I did think the "we in India will not know anything about that section of Indian history which has been deleted from our books" part was a bit of a reach because I know from experience that as long as you have access to uncensored information on the internet and a few people in your familial or social circles to nudge you to access it, it's possible to start questioning ideologies, privileges, faith, assumptions, etc. This said, I don't claim to understand the consequences of depriving relatively very young people of a wholesome history education, which only heightens the risk of ignorance if the people around them agree with their syllabus. Third, while alt-history edits to school textbooks have really brought the problem home, they have been preceded in time by, among others, the Vedas and Ayurvedic texts. They weren't literary edited; however, the government changed what most people believed their contents to be. And I suspect it will be possible to see in the textbooks' fate parallels to what befell the Vedas and Ayurveda: one fed Hindutva myths about the mythical achievements of 'ancient India' while the other helped pro-party businessmen commercialise these myths. --- Rapido's ads continue to be nonsensical, or appeal to sensibilities that on the face of it have nothing to do with public transport and commuting. Last time, the ad with Allu Arjun and Ranbir Kapoor (among others) took a cynical view of road traffic, asking commuters to opt for Rapido's 'bike taxis' because they could cut through traffic and wouldn't "mince" them up like public buses might, effectively discouraging encouraging unsafe driving on roads and discouraging, [to quote myself](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2022/03/31/tv-ads-are-becoming-creepy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "civic disengagement from the task of improving public transport". A new ad that's been airing for a week or so has the tagline, "bike-*wali* taxi, *sabse saxi*", to the accompaniment of visual narratives in which there is a long queue of people waiting to catch an auto and a bus packed to the rafters with people. So… I'm to take bike taxis because they're "sexy?" I don't get it. Maybe the purpose of the new ad is to be an ad for an ad's sake, to let people know that such a thing exists, but I'm not sold. It's still a lot like the first ad, and both of which are like [Elon Musk's comments](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the context of his Hyperloop idea: that we should desist from using public transport because we might be travelling with a serial killer (and [his hope](https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1167410460125097990?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that someone else will build a Hyperloop provided a high-speed rail line in California, and its higher carrying capacity, is cancelled). In all cases, we have people being asked to take the easy way out, in favour of corporate entities invested in people being concerned only with their own comfort, over forcing the government to do better. The latter is always only going to be hard, requiring public organisation and mobilisation, but never opting for this path just opens the door wider to self-serving companies and further undermine the [centrality of public transport to a healthy democracy](https://www.itdp.org/publication/enrique-penalosa-ted-talk-why-buses-represent-democracy-in-action/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). If India's status as a democracy is fading, as even *The Lancet* [noted earlier today](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2823%2900904-2/fulltext?dgcid=raven%5Fjbs%5Fetoc%5Femail&s=08&ref=slightlyacidic.com), we're contributing, too. Also how much are these bike-*wali* drivers paid? --- > "This is embarrassing," \[Charles Lieber\] said at his trial. "Every scientist wants to win a Nobel Prize." > > ['Charles Lieber, Ex-Harvard Professor, Sentenced in China Ties Case'](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/science/charles-lieber-sentence-china.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Gina Kolata, The New York Times An obligatory reminder that the Nobel Prizes influence how science is practiced – rather than being a completely isolated entity that just selects some arbitrarily defined "best scientific endeavour" and gives it a medal, a certificate, and lots of money. We've seen this before with [Brian Keating](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), who made a big mistake before acknowledging it and coming clean. Now that Charles Lieber has committed his blunder, I hope he'll stop pursuing a Nobel Prize as well and just pursue good science instead. But the ideal, but seemingly also very unlikely, thing to happen would be for scientists at large to understand a) why trying to win a Nobel Prize is not trying to do good science even though the former claims to exclusively reward the latter and b) that almost all 'prestigious' honours concerned with scientific work – including the universities to work at, the grants to win, and the journals in which to publish – will over time distort the desirability of different fields of study (and even scientists' estimate of which questions are worth answering), the contents of the scientific literature, what constitutes 'success' (e.g. positive results v. negative results), and who can be considered to be successful. ([Pseudo-prestigious awards](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/some-science-prizes-are-only-for-men/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) might be even more dangerous.) ### What about the celebrities in food ads? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/05/02/what-about-the-celebrities-in-food-ads-2/ Last updated: 2023-05-02T08:13:44.000Z The row over Bournvita last month was spurred by a social-media influencer’s viral video of the product’s allegedly unhealthy sugar content. Following a legal threat from Mondelez International India, which makes Bournvita, the influencer deleted his video and apologised. But on April 26, the National Commission on the Protection of Child Rights issued a letter to Mondelez alleging violations of various Sections of the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and to withdraw all “misleading” advertisements of and packaging on its product. The issue spotlighted, among other things, the difference between what is advertised and what is presented in fine print. India has one of the world’s largest burdens of diabetes. Of late, [diabetes incidence in rural India](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehindu.com%2Fopinion%2Fop-ed%2Fwhat-is-key-to-controlling-diabetes-awareness-or-wealth%2Farticle66408513.ece%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JuXKB%2FqAP467cNnuw5OtAc7AERnztJZa6IOi1qM%2FeIs%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) has been found to be increasing as well, possibly driven by a stronger correlation between [diabetes incidence and awareness](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehindu.com%2Fdata%2Fdata-persons-with-higher-awareness-about-diabetes-have-better-chance-of-beating-the-disease%2Farticle66339088.ece%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Myhs2DHkLOW0Xg7WEDz73lgv7Un92XceG5e%2FDrZqL2g%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) (using literacy as a proxy) rather than wealth. Diabetes is a noncommunicable disease rooted in, among other things, lethargic lifestyles, lack of exercise, and the consumption of processed foods and foods of low nutritional value, typically called ‘junk food’. Historically, advertisements of this product type have often resorted to deceptive marketing tactics. In an apparent effort to curb such tactics on social media platforms, in January 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) [announced guidelines](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpib.gov.in%2FPressReleaseIframePage.aspx%3FPRID%3D1892527%26ref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Bh784BJcARn53%2BZEulFQVEl57uF%2FljVbvvyHN3b%2BfKs%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) for ‘influencers’ who promote health and wellness products. One of them was that influencers have to disclose their qualifications, implying that if the people at large see that if an influencer has a degree in geology but is promoting a cream to prevent hair loss, they will take the claims with a pinch of salt. But will they? **Bad ads** Every advertisement for a food product is a combination of testing and quality control, marketing and consumer behaviour, and safety and regulations. While the purposes of these forces have been discussed at length, the second merits a closer look for the part played by one particular actor. During a press conference in June 2021, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo replaced two bottles of Coca Cola from the podium in front of him with a bottle of water, saying “*agua*”, Portuguese for “water”. His gesture took the world by storm – but it also stood in stark contrast to an advertisement just a month later in which cricketer Jasprit Bumrah appeared in an advertisement in India for a popular aerated beverage. Similarly, mainstream Bollywood actors have appeared in advertisements for certain products, only terminating their contracts after significant public backlash and/or allegations of surrogate-advertising. At least one of these advertisements continues to air on TV with the same personalities (all of whom are Padma awardees). Some ‘stars’ also appear in advertisements promoting the consumption of aerated beverages and packaged sugary drinks and for FMCG goods that claim to be “Ayurvedic”. Indeed, there is no “Ayurvedic herb” in traditional medicine at large because herbs are not exclusive to Ayurveda. Yet there are products on the market, like toothpastes, that claim to bring some arbitrary ‘Ayurvedic benefit’ just by including “Ayurvedic herbs” like spices in the admixture. Who checks these claims? Where are the results of the tests of such incremental innovation, if they are conducted at all, published? Who monitors compliance? Despite the uncertainty over answers to these questions, such products are still marketed and sold because personality-driven marketing is just as potent, if not more, as evidence-based marketing. And the DoCA guidelines need to respond to this fact. Otherwise, only public-spirited scientists and engaged consumers, often operating with fewer resources than those required to meet an FMCG behemoth in court, are left asking the tough questions. **Taste the medicine** We must also ask whether personalities consume the products they advertise – less as evidence of their “due diligence”, in the DoCA’s words, and more because of the [class-stratified access](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscroll.in%2Farticle%2F728525%2Fjunk-food-is-feeding-a-malnutrition-epidemic-in-delhis-slums%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=dX2mPjVuL%2FqXhiomcLhvNgGy3QJ5fwG9bM6277gMdWo%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to healthy foods as well as to the knowledge required to interpret the information presented in food labels, in India. Even when the actual nutritional information is printed in small font on the back of a bottle or packet, not everyone possesses the literacy to understand and interpret that information right. For example, say a large study (that is subsequently also replicated) reports in a major journal that substance X is associated with a significant adverse effect. In order to avoid a food product that contains X in future (assuming India’s food standards are yet to catch up), a person will have to locate and read the label, understand and properly interpret the metric details, and be aware of the journal, the paper, and its findings. This requires [at least good news literacy](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehindu.com%2Fopinion%2Fop-ed%2Fscience-journalism-through-the-thicket-of-science%2Farticle66369346.ece%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=FQ4awI1Kgqp3RAAlBun%2BBvSVI3Gmjva8kpSvSXnutXY%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and ideally scientific literacy. The persons we can expect to have the former, if not the latter, are the country’s wealthier, more learned citizens. Sportspersons and film actors place a premium on their fitness and work with specialists like nutritionists and physical therapists to tailor and optimise their eating habits. Do these habits include sugary drinks et al.? Because if they don’t, these individuals should think twice before agreeing to promote these products in the first place, rather than backing out after advertisements have been filmed and aired. After the Bournvita row erupted, [experts and activists berated](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehindu.com%2Fnews%2Fnational%2Fbournvita-row-fssai-drags-its-feet-on-regulating-ultra-processed-food-and-its-marketing%2Farticle66756809.ece%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C8c612f5760344be1b0e408db4ae4a64b%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186118148995508%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=HFLOb8birf5B3K9RgaIo1mRoztBxkc%2FYDKEn17gXzcU%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com) the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India for its lacklustre monitoring of compliance by food business operators and unwillingness to initiate punitive action. Between these concerns and the DoCA stopping short of empowering those producing evidence-based criticism of unhealthy foods, there is a mismatch between advertising practices and consumer safety, and effectively India’s efforts to curb the rise of diabetes and other similar diseases. The people at large could use the help of their celebrities to bridge this gap. ### Another reason to point lights down URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/04/29/another-reason-to-point-lights-down/ Last updated: 2023-04-29T11:48:05.000Z [‘Skyward light, wayward light’](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.superradiant.blog%2F2022%2F12%2F14%2Fskyward-light-wayward-light%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C69dba9a6f497401a74b708db4aea0032%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186141109787868%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=HiwfkF1LkZPAV45P%2FEWJkw95DcEB4xsSmVR0FbsK5SY%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com), this blog, December 14, 2022: > One of the simplest ways \[to prevent light pollution\] is in fact to have no public lighting installation that casts light upward, into the sky, but keeps it all facing down. Doing this will subtract the installation’s contribution to light pollution, improve energy-use efficiency by not ‘wasting’ any light thrown upwards and reduce the power consumed by limiting it to that required to illuminate only what needs to be illuminated, together with surfaces that limit the amount of light scattered upward. Add to this… [‘Why Are Insects Drawn to Light? A Perennial Question Gets a New Answer.’](https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F04%2F27%2Fscience%2Fmoths-to-a-flame-insects-light.html%3Fref%3Dsuperradiant.blog&data=05%7C01%7Cmukunth.v%40thehindu.co.in%7C69dba9a6f497401a74b708db4aea0032%7Cc8f171fb8e124c1286ff9108c97b8963%7C0%7C0%7C638186141109787868%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=NtneB2mzZevf3i84%2Be2mPxhK0DmUeQ4tmxznFcBvbtw%3D&reserved=0&ref=slightlyacidic.com), New York Times, April 27, 2023: > A team led by biologists Samuel Fabian at Imperial College London and Yash Sondhi at Florida International University argue that when many insects see a bright light at night, they believe they’ve found the direction of the sky and attempt to orient themselves along an up-and-down axis. … > > The new study also offers a hint of how to mitigate the effect … The research team found that insects seem least affected when they fly under lights that are projected straight down, as opposed to lights that shine upward or that have been mounted horizontally. This finding dovetails with longstanding advice from researchers to limit light pollution by using downward pointing light fixtures that illuminate only the nearby ground ### The gap between language and quantum mechanics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/04/27/the-gap-between-language-and-quantum-mechanics/ Last updated: 2023-04-27T13:23:49.000Z *Physics World* has a [fantastic article](https://physicsworld.com/a/lets-talk-about-quantum-2-0-why-we-need-to-sharpen-up-our-language/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the problem with using a language invented, in Terry Pratchett's words, "to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is", to describe the peculiar but very much real possibilities created by the rules of quantum mechanics. Excerpt: > … despite the burgeoning growth of quantum technology, one thing that hasn’t changed is the cumbersome and counterintuitive language we use to talk about all things quantum. While the reality of entanglement and superposition is beyond all reasonable doubt, it is as maddening as ever to describe them in words. Quantum phenomena are strange, but that does not mean we should be satisfied with strange language to describe them. > > From the very early days of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and others strove to understand this new-fangled non-classical physics of quantum 1.0\. Their struggle concerned a gap between how we talk about phenomena and how we encounter them in the laboratory. That gap was created by the imperfect metaphorical language still largely used to characterize non-classical phenomena. The authors have written that the terms that writers, journalists, and scientists reach for when describing quantum phenomena to people who don't have the mathematical awareness (for want of a better description) are probably adding to the confusion instead of clarifying quantum mechanics, and diminishing its *realness*. 'Superposition' is a good example: it's a word that captures a particular phenomenon, but when you try to spell it out, *in toto* with no exceptions, to someone who doesn't understand the math of it, you use some metaphors and approximations that either create an incomplete picture or an obscured one. And both add to quantum physics's mystery and spookiness, which are counterproductive. This has been a familiar challenge in my experience covering high-energy physics as well, were the protagonists are often particles and forces that are best described using mathematical grammar (amplitudes, matrices, groups, etc.) rather than the language that facilitates everyday life. This is why I think the [molasses metaphor](https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/19661?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (and minor variations of it) may well have been the most used of its kind in 2012, when the Higgs boson, and its corresponding energy field, dominated physics news: in the [*New York Times*'s words](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/08/science/the-higgs-boson.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "What is the Higgs field? … It has been described as a kind of cosmic molasses, dragging on particles as they move through it". In an instructive [2013 paper](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/48/5/670/pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Stewart Alsop and Steven Beale wrote (emphasis in the original) about the problems with such metaphors: > At some point, of course, all analogical thinking breaks down—the Higgs phenomena is not a crowd or molasses. Perhaps a weakness with these analogies is their reliance on a 'medium' as the object node mapped to the Higgs field. This is probably unavoidable, but it results in a number of points of potential confusion. The concept of a medium is generally understood to be a volume filled with a physical substance that can be manipulated and controlled. This is not the case in the standard model of the Higgs field, which is understood to be *uniform* and *constant*. The familiar conception of a medium is insufficient to fully understand the Higgs field in this respect. A medium can be entered and exited because it is localized, it can be concentrated in one location and minimized in another, and it is composed of matter and has its own mass and energy. Mapping these attributes onto the Higgs field leads to a line of reasoning reminiscent of 19th century aether theories. Obviously metaphors aren't going to be perfect. That's almost always the case. Instead, they're handy because they capture a particularly interesting subset of something larger, more complicated, and get that across by drawing on things a person is already familiar with, like, of course, molasses. Through history, this has progressively become harder to do, and scientists themselves have taken note of it from time to time. For example, Werner Heisenberg delivered a [speech in 1932](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/heisenberg-lecture.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), while receiving the Nobel Prize for physics, in which he pointed out the need to discard visualisation or, more accurately, visualisability as a means to unravelling the pending mysteries of atomic physics. He said it quite eloquently, so let me quote him: > … the path so far traced by the quantum theory indicates that an understanding of those still unclarified features of atomic physics can only be acquired by foregoing visualization and objectification to an extent greater than that customary hitherto. We have probably no reason to regret this, because the thought of the great epistemological difficulties with which the visual atom concept of earlier physics had to contend gives us the hope that the abstracter atomic physics developing at present will one day fit more harmoniously into the great edifice of Science. This said, metaphors and analogies vis-à-vis quantum mechanics (getting quantum computing right took considerable effort, for a famous example) have become particularly problematic because this field of study has created technologies that are beginning to enter the public consciousness at large. There is now a greater price to pay by misunderstanding, for example, that quantum teleportation refers to bulk matter, as in *Star Trek*, [rather than to information](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/the-photon-that-wasnt-teleported/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or, in fact, that entanglement is in Albert Einstein's words "spooky action at a distance". But it's not spooky; it's just [something we don't have the language for](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/physics-nobel-nonlocality-aspect-zeilinger/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But quantum mechanics and its consequent technologies don't have a monopoly on being shortchanged by imprecise communication. Climate change is [in the same boat](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2022/03/10/climate-change-like-quantum-physics-will-strain-language/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). There is also another kind of price that has already been paid across the vast majority of science: a widespread belief among certain (sadly prevalent) groups of people that they understand science when they really don't, leading to an inflated belief in the abilities and importance of science while overlooking our tendency to confuse faith for *truly knowing something*. (I have written about this before [here](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/the-problem-with-rooting-for-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [here](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/magic-bridges/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [here](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/in-pursuit-of-a-nebulous-metaphor/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), among other instances.) Finally, the question of the gaps between language as we use it and quantum mechanics is reminiscent of a plot point in [China Miéville's Embassytown](https://linesofreason.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/writing-itself-is-fantasy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), where people designated "ambassadors" can only speak in pairs, simultaneously: each ambassador utters a different word-meaning, and their alien interlocutors combine the duo's words-meanings to understand what they're saying. In the book, these two word-meanings are written like a fraction – one word on top, a line in the middle, and the other at the bottom. But thanks to Miéville's prose, we know that that's only a partial representation of what's really going on in the story. We come upon [a relatable sensation](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/arrival-chiang-adams-villeneuve-review/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the film *Arrival*. *Embassytown* was a gratifying read that delved into the relationships between language and storytelling as much as between a language, its grammar, and its symbols. Like good fantasy fiction, it steadily yet gently dismantles the cognitive dissonance that reality sometimes foists on us – in this case, that would be cognising why English or for that matter any linear human language will always fall short of describing true simultaneity. One workaround, according to the *Physics World* article above, is that rather than trying to bend our language around the barely tractable and math-laden processes of quantum mechanics, we should describe the field in terms of its outcomes. To know more, do read the article. ### Where do scientists communicate their work? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/04/16/where-do-scientists-communicate-their-work/ Last updated: 2023-04-16T11:45:11.000Z A group of Spanish researchers analysed the mentions of scientific papers authored by scientists (affiliated with Spain) on the social media, on Wikipedia, and on news outlets, blogs and policy documents to understand where the consumers of such scientific information were located. They selected 3,653 authors, and the following platforms/modes in their analysis: Twitter, Facebook (public pages only), Wikipedia citations, news mentions, blogs, and peers ("number of received post-publication review in forums such as PubPeer or Publons"). Per their [April 11 arXiv preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2304/2304.05157.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com): - Social science, environment or ecology, clinical medicine, and agricultural sciences papers had good traction on all platforms/modes. - Space sciences, geosciences, plant and animal science, biology and biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics, and neuroscience and behaviour had good traction on all platforms/modes except policy reports. - Immunology, psychiatry/psychology, microbiology, pharmacology and toxicology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and materials science had moderate traction on all platforms/modes. - Of the lot in the point above, immunology found greater mention in "policy reports", microbiology on Facebook, psychiatry on Wikipedia, and physics in news reports and on blogs. - Finally, arts and humanities, mathematics, computer science, and economics and business had the "lowest dissemination" on all these channels. - Overall: "social media plays a central role, blogs and news mentions play an intermediate role, and Wikipedia and policy mentions are positioned in the periphery". Clearly a useful study, even if it is limited to authors in/from Spain – something the paper itself neglects to mention until page 7. The data for the analysis was retrieved on March 2021, and the papers included were published between 2016 and 2020\. I am not sure if 2020 was included; if it was, the papers on microbiology, molecular biology, pharmacology, and immunology could be over-represented in the results, including the last one in "policy reports". Even then the results are valuable because they indicate where the science communicators need to be. I would also be interested where the (Spanish?) misinformation and disinformation in these fields are and whether there is any overlap of channels. (An overlap would be unsurprising if only because [false information spreads faster](https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-news-spreads-faster-true-news-twitter-thanks-people-not-bots?ref=slightlyacidic.com), at least on Twitter.) The authors of the study write in conclusion: > The requirements for defining a communication policy cannot be the same in areas such as Clinical Medicine, which receives great attention from all channels, or Mathematics, which captures less social interest. Likewise, there are scientific fields where a certain channel is particularly relevant. We can conclude that a research dissemination plan or a transfer plan should be adapted to the area in which researchers publish. ### Games grimy and green URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/04/08/games-dirty-and-clean/ Last updated: 2023-04-08T06:25:09.000Z Every day, I spend an hour or three playing a game called [Factorio](https://www.factorio.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in which you mine and process natural resources with which to build and automate ever-larger factories that manufacture materials for research, transport, power, and weapons. Once your factories get big enough (say, when they consume 10 MW), Factorio is less like a game and more like a simulator, and wherein your task is to automate your setup to the extent possible while emitting as little pollution as you can. I currently operate a 120-MW mini-empire of factories, and parts of it are already more complicated than I can describe. The game's fun lies in being able to optimise your setup across several interacting factors in order to maximise sustainability and efficiency and minimise conflict (which arises due to expansion and pollution). If you like building things that *just work*, Factorio will ping your reward pathways enough to leave you ecstatic. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-08-at-11.54.15-AM.png) A rocket-manufacturing facility in Factorio. This morning, while browsing the web in search of a solution for a problem with one of my factories, I came across a game called Terra Nil. Here, you reclaim a degraded ecosystem by rewatering and re-greening it using machines, leading up – among other things – to completely restoring the land and removing all machines. There are multiple landscape types to begin with, three difficulty levels, and each combination (unless it's extremely difficult) has no one solution. The best thing for me about Terra Nil, unlike Factorio, is that the visuals accompanying the re-greening process – water flowing anew in once dry channels, wetlands coming to life around a hydroponium, a thunderstorm over young forests – are very soothing on the mind. Also unlike Factorio, pollution is not inevitable in Terra Nil, and Terra Nil also has a design that accentuates the lushness of its scenarios instead of the grimy look that Factorio uses. This said, both games are similar to the extent that they incorporate a sci-fi narrative that means, among other things, the technologies in use aren't realistic, nor do they embody stories about why pollution is bad or ecosystem restoration is good. Put another way, how you narrativise the stories available to tell in each game is up to you. If you're playing with your children, you can use Factorio to show, say, how quickly pollution builds or Terra Nil to say how expensive cleaning up pollution can be. If you're playing with India's Union environment ministry, Factorio can help you see how pollution in one area needn't affect another and— you get the drift. ![](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-08-at-11.16.41-AM.png) A Terra Nil scenario with an almost completely restored landscape. I discovered two more similar games, where the player consumes limited resources in order to build things and achieve some goal, that I hope to try next week: [Dyson Sphere Program](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366540/Dyson%5FSphere%5FProgram/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Oxygen Not Included](https://store.steampowered.com/app/457140/Oxygen%5FNot%5FIncluded/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Who's to blame for the American right's distrust of science? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/30/whos-to-blame-for-the-american-rights-distrust-of-science/ Last updated: 2023-03-30T05:17:36.000Z > This study unambiguously suggests that scientific journals do the institution of science no favor when they insert themselves so directly in the political debate, especially at a time when trust in the scientific community continues to decline on the right wing. This is the surprisingly misguided interpretation, in an article published by *Politico*, of a [study published in *Nature Human Behaviour*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01537-5?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on March 20 that found Trump's supporters' trust in the journal *Nature* tanked after it endorsed Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections. "Trust in the scientific community … on the right wing" is on the decline because the right wing wants to bend the rules and processes of the scientific enterprise to fit a worldview in which racism is desirable, vaccine mandates are anti-freedom, it's okay to force women to have babies they can't have, sexual harassment is tolerable, eugenics is justifiable, and democratic mandates can be overturned with violence. It's a worldview in which a conspiracy abounds in every critique, yet the *Politico* article suggests that when journals "insert themselves so directly in the political debate", they're being unfair to the "institution of science". It doesn't compute. The American's right's decision to distrust science is the product of scientists', and journals', unwillingness to change what they do and how they do it to fit the right's cynical requirements as well as to engage with someone who doesn't come into a conversation being okay with changing their mind as well as often engages in bad-faith tactics designed to subdue, rather than disprove, their interlocutors. See for example the following passage from an excellent [April 2013 paper](https://philarchive.org/archive/PIGPIT?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry (that you should also read in full if you're inclined): > Believers of the paranormal and supernatural have often tried to turn the tables on skeptics, finding various ways to shift the BoP \[burden of proof\] back to the latter. In particular, rhetorical moves of the type “you can’t prove it wrong” (Gill 1991; Caso 2002) are unfair requests that fail to appreciate the proper BoP procedure. In some cases, such requests can be straightforwardly fulfilled (e.g., it is very easy to prove that the co-authors of this paper, at this very moment, have far less than $1 M dollar in their pockets), but even then, the skeptic is doing the accuser a favor in taking on a BoP that does not really fall on him (we are under no obligation to empty our pockets after each such gratuitous insinuation). Similarly, if ufologists claim that some crop circle was left by a space ship, the BoP is firmly on their side to come up with extraordinary evidence. If the skeptic chooses to take on their sophistic challenge to “prove that there was no spaceship,” … by way of providing direct or circumstantial evidence that that particular crop circle was in fact a human hoax, they are indulging the believers by taking on a BoP that, rationally speaking, does not pertain to them at all. (One of my all-time favourite essays is [this by Laurie Penny](https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), on just this topic.) There are two fallacies in *Politico*'s interpretation. (It's really an interpretation suggested by the study's sole author, Stanford University business PhD student Floyd Zhang – "These results suggest that political endorsement by scientific journals can undermine and polarize public confidence in the endorsing journals and the scientific community" – but I blame *Politico* more for running with this suggestion in such assertive terms.) The first is that the scientific community – from the people who conceive of experiments that eventually become written up in papers to the editors of journals that publish them – alone is responsible for increasing or maintaining public trust in science. They are not, but this view straightforwardly arises out of the notion that science is scientists' business, instead of the "institution" being acknowledged as the public institution that it is (and the democratic institution it ought to be). We might collectively desire higher public trust in science yet we still demand the unqualified freedom to engage with and spread unscientific (or, more specifically, *counter*\-scientific) ideas, to demand solutions to specific problems, to expect scientists to 'go along' with the political mandate of the day, and to foist on them the burden of proof to varying degrees in different spheres. This is reminiscent of [Ashis Nandy's conclusion](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505438909526260?journalCode=csac20&ref=slightlyacidic.com) that science has become a reason of state, and is obviously not going to work well. By assuming part of the mantle to improve the quality and type of trust in science (tempered by [deeper questions about what role we'd like science to play](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/we-need-to-democratically-reimagine-science/article66559699.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in our societies), we also restore scientists' freedom to exercise their democratic rights. The second fallacy is that science is inherently non-political and that politicising it from this state of 'purity' is wrong. Yet both positions are wrong, as the public anti-Trump stances of *Nature*, the *New England Journal of Medicine*, *Scientific American*, and others demonstrated (and as I have written before [here](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/being-apolitical-doesnt-mean-politics-doesnt-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/the-politicisation-of-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), for example). Science is already, and always has been, a politically negotiated enterprise; starting from a position that denies this truth, as the *Nature Human Behaviour* paper and the *Politico* article seem to do, is disingenuous and bound to reach conclusions at odds with reality, such as laying the blame for the right's distrust of science at the feet of an untenable separation of science and politics. The *Politico* article concludes thus\*: > If Nature’s Biden endorsement had little or no effect on readers except to make some Trump supporters disdain Nature in specific and the scientific establishment in general, why did the publication endorse any candidate? The publication endorsed any candidate because it *could*. That's exactly how it should be. ### Lord of the Rings Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-5/ Last updated: 2023-03-25T10:45:21.000Z Happy Lord of the Rings Day. :) About a week ago, I began rereading book 7 of the *Malazan Book of the Fallen* series. This followed my realisation earlier this year that I had somehow lost the ability to read fiction. I had neither the interest in the genre nor – unlike in the pre-pandemic era – the ability to force myself to read the first few pages of a book and automatically get into it. A friend had lent his copy of M. John Harrison's *Viriconium* short-stories, a classic of the high-fantasy genre. Though I could appreciate the higher quality of writing and why Harrison's style is so celebrated, the stories themselves didn't take. When I returned it to my friend, I noticed his collection of the *Malazan* books (to which I'm proud to have introduced him many years past), and asked to borrow book 7 – considered by many to be the series's best installment (and by me to be the second-best). The *Malazan* series is epic fantasy – in my view the highest form of fiction simply by virtue of the amount of invention involved followed by the discipline required to rein it in and make it all make sense – and I didn't expect to be able to read it, beyond snippets here and there. But in four days, I finished 588 consecutive pages. (I'm currently on a two-day break to read a shorter non-fiction book.) It has been a pleasant yet unrelenting surprise. It seems I can read fiction, yet the thought of reading some other work in the genre remains off-putting. Why? I have been thinking about this on and off, and today, I think I have the beginnings of a hypothesis. Epic fantasy fiction is one of the few things I truly love because it has fiction's ability, through pure storytelling, to recapitulate a uniquely human experience of reality, or any particularly interesting part of it, as well as achieve that, and frequently expand it, to situate, deconstruct, and explore the human through different kinds of realities. (I'm speaking, of course, of good epic fantasy, which J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories did in a limited yet genre-defining way in the early 20th century, and which to me today continues to be exemplified by the work of Steven Erikson.) To begin reading a book of fiction is to begin a journey of pure discovery; to begin reading epic fantasy should only be more so. And so: I believe I have lost, hopefully temporarily, the appetite for discovery *ab initio*. Perhaps I'm afraid of what I will find, but it's almost certainly that increasingly grim sensation that it will just be more of the same, related through new turns of phrase, new dramatis loci, and new points of view. Nothing new. Non-fiction, in this regard, can be comforting because it helps to explain and de-threaten what is already known and has exhibited an unsettling tendency to repeat itself. (I particularly like monographs.) At this time, to me, the *Malazan* series is also practically non-fiction: less in the sense that I believe the series chronicles real events from an alternate reality and more that I read the books a decade ago, have vague memories of their various narrative arcs, and to reread them now is to not discover but rediscover. Rediscovery is not repeated discovery just the way multiplication is not repeated addition; it is a second-order thing, something greater than the sum of its parts, containing both the prospect of discovery and the memory, so precious as I become more cynical, of its effect on the mind. Yes: I suppose I am, or like to think that I am, rereading the *Malazan* series to relive this effect and beat back the dark clouds of nothing-new-is-possible. And so far, I think it is working. Perhaps once I (re)finish all the *Malazan* books, I can return to good old Tolkien himself… ### AI v. our ability to build AI URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/24/ai-v-our-ability-to-build-ai/ Last updated: 2023-03-24T17:15:34.000Z A lot of [this article](https://thebulletin.org/2023/03/chat-gpt-for-biology/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), by Sean Ekins, Filippa Lentzos, Max Brackmann, and Cédric Invernizzi, published by *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* on March 24, makes good sense – except the following two sentences: > Nature took millions of years to design proteins. AI can generate meaningful protein sequences in seconds. The bigger question to ask here would be: if AI had to design complex life-forms from scratch, would it design protein sequences at all, forget in seconds? More broadly, "nature took millions of years to design proteins", which knowledge was then used to train AI models, and which then generated new proteomic possibilities. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this but it's hard not to see in throwaway lines like these the reflection of our seemingly normalised oversight of the invisible trainers and the oft-acquired-without-permission knowledge that go into making technologies like this possible. It's also a symptom of what we have come to typically prize more: the ability of a machine to do 'cool' things rather than our ability to create such machines on the back of not inconsiderable human and intellectual exploitation. ### BLR road-widening is a sham URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/23/blr-road-widening-is-a-sham/ Last updated: 2023-03-23T04:40:32.000Z While I'm told that discussions on a plan to widen Bengaluru's Sankey Road, between Bhashyam Circle and Malleshwaram 18th cross – a stretch that's one of the contributors to the city's reputation for horrific traffic – have progressed in the last two months to become less unilateral and more consultative, the idea that road-widening can help ease traffic remains just as hare-brained, not to mention the widening itself will be marginal since this stretch is already surrounded by built property and a large fenced water body, and the city had planned to cut 50 old trees in the process. Several studies (e.g. [this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069620301108?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967070X18301720?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and [this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967070X96000303?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) have shown that widening roads and adding new highway lanes only temporarily eases congestion: people start to believe that the widened road is less congested than another and are encouraged to drive there, and over time, the widened road becomes similarly congested as before. Economists have a term for this: induced demand, wherein demand for X increases when the supply of X increases. The lack of exceptions to this rule should have meant urban planners should be taking it to be fact, yet they don't, and soon, there will be even more congestion on Sankey Road. The way the concept of induced demand operates itself says something about the manner of people's engagement in decision-making vis-à-vis roadways. The immediate response to the supply of roadway increasing is less congestion. But *the way people think* also changes in response to the higher supply. This happens passively, out of sight of social media feeds and news reports, and over a few months – but plausibly sooner given the volume of vehicles that follow routes determined by Google Maps. And just as quietly, the road becomes recongested. Or maybe planners do admit the certainty of recongestion but press ahead anyway because their priority is something other than public convenience and safety. In the interest of not reaching for malice when incompetence is within reach: easing congestion on roads has another, more laborious solution in the form of reducing the production of and disincentivising the use of cars and bikes and building better public transport. There is some talk every now and then about the latter, a lot more than the former, but on either count nothing happens. In 2016, [IISc researchers reported](https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/110/12/2207.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) based on some analyses that Bengaluru is one of India's worst cases of urban sprawl, amplified by, among other things, *ad hoc* land-use planning (almost an oxymoron) and iffy public transport. At the same time, wider roads will mean more tarred area will mean more heat trapped and localised in/over that area will mean that part will become even more unlivable. Wider roads will mean more motorised vehicles will mean more emissions and pollution will mean the city will become even more unlivable. Wider roads will mean more tarred area will mean more repair work when it rains will mean more news cycles over nothing. And wider roads will mean more contracts will mean more opportunities for money to move around. ### India's devious reason to not spend more on culture URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/20/indias-devious-reason-to-not-spend-more-on-culture/ Last updated: 2023-03-20T12:03:06.000Z ['Difficult to allocate public fund to art and culture: Centre'](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-is-developing-nation-might-not-be-tenable-to-allocate-considerable-proportion-of-public-fund-to-art-and-culture-govt/article66638831.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Hindu*, March 19, 2023: > Given the high disparity it experiences in elementary rural infrastructure like health, education and transportation, it might not be “tenable” for a developing nation like India to allocate a considerable proportion of its public fund to the promotion of art and culture, the Culture Ministry has said. … \[Officials\], however, observed that the Ministry has been consistently able to increase its budgetary outlays over the years except during the COVID-pandemic period where priority was given to other social sector Ministries. This is a curious claim by the Union Ministry of Culture, in response to a parliamentary committee finding that India was underspending on arts and culture compared to Australia, China, Singapore, the UK, and the US. On the one hand, it is hard to imagine that the expenditure on this front in India could rival the allocations for defence, healthcare, education, or social welfare. But on the other, the justification - in terms of poor "elementary rural infrastructure" for "health, education and transportation" - is dubious: the Ministry appears to say that it can't spend more on health because its expenses on the latter are sizeable, but a) India's economy and annual budget are both big enough to accommodate increases on both counts, and b) India's expense on elementary rural infra for health, etc. isn't coming from the arts and culture budget. But in saying what it did, the Ministry is setting up a fallacious narrative: that if expenses on one count are lower, it's because they're higher on the other count, the fallacy being that the national government can't 'route' money from anywhere else. Yet it can, by all means, by cutting its spending on defence or the Ministry of AYUSH, for just two examples, just a little. This narrative is also dangerous because it pits the two enterprises -- culture and rural infra -- against each other, as a foundation for the government to justify its questionable privatisation drive (emphasis added): > The Ministry was also trying and evolving innovative methods to maximise the participation of non-government organisations in the field of promotion and conservation of art and culture like in some of the countries mentioned above, they said giving the example of the Monument Mitra scheme. **Under this scheme, the government aims to hand over around 1,000 monuments under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to the private sector for their upkeep.** > > **“Culture should be an area where a large part of expenditure needs to be sourced from non-government sources”** and hence the Ministry was also supporting non-governmental and voluntary organisations through its various schemes for participating in overall propagation, preservation and promotion of all forms of art and culture, the report submitted by the Department Related Standing Committee on Transport Tourism and Culture quoted the Culture Ministry as saying. *Why* should culture "be an area where a large part of expenditure" is from "non-government sources"? The privatisation itself is questionable because, as Nachiket Chanchani, an associate professor of South Asian art and visual culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, [enumerated on March 1, 2023](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-thumbs-down-for-the-adopt-a-heritage-scheme/article66564327.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the problems include: - "Giving businesses, rather than trained professionals, a chance to build museums and interpretation centres and develop their content threatens India’s understanding of its own past." - Privatisation "sidelines the mandate of the ASI and abandons The Sarnath Initiative, guidelines devised by the ASI, the Getty Trust, U.S., the British Museum, and National Culture Fund to safe keep excavated objects and present them to visitors in an engaging manner." - "Many monuments selected for the scheme … already have tourist infrastructure. What is driving the need for new ticket offices and gift shops?" - It's not acceptable to "let businesses occupy prime public land and build their own brands … at the cost of further diminishing grounds around iconic monuments" - "It will undermine local communities and their relationships with historical sites." There we have the final irony, in the same vein as the environment ministry that's weakening environmental protections and the law ministry whose minister [appears to be threatening](https://twitter.com/apar1984/status/1637029351601455107?ref=slightlyacidic.com) some judges: a culture ministry that's eroding India's cultural heritage. And if you want it to do better, maybe say goodbye to "elementary rural infrastructure". ### Nature paper says bad news is good news URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/18/nature-paper-says-bad-news-is-good-news/ Last updated: 2023-03-18T05:38:14.000Z ['Negativity drives online news consumption'](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Claire E. Robertson et al., *Nature Human Behaviour*, March 16, 2023: > Here we analyse the effect of negative words on news consumption using a massive online dataset of viral news stories from Upworthy.com—a website that was one of the most successful pioneers of click-bait in the history of the Internet[23](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR23). > > The tendency for individuals to attend to negative news reflects something foundational about human cognition—that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli across many domains[24](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR24),[25](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR25). Attentional biases towards negative stimuli begin in infancy[26](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR26) and persist into adulthood as a fast and automatic response[27](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR27). Furthermore, negative information may be more ‘sticky’ in our brains; people weigh negative information more heavily than positive information, when learning about themselves, learning about others and making decisions[28](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR28),[29](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR29),[30](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR30). This may be due to negative information automatically activating threat responses—knowing about possible negative outcomes allows for planning and avoidance of potentially harmful or painful experiences[31](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR31),[32](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR32),[33](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR33). > > Previous work has explored the role of negativity in driving online behaviour. In particular, negative language in online content has been linked to user engagement, that is, sharing activities[22](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR22),[34](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR34),[35](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR35),[36](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR36),[37](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR37),[38](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR38),[39](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR39). As such, negativity embedded in online content explains the speed and virality of online diffusion dynamics (for example, response time, branching of online cascades)[7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR7),[34](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR34),[35](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR35),[37](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR37),[39](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR39),[40](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR40),[41](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR41). Further, online stories from social media perceived as negative garner more reactions (for example, likes, Facebook reactions)[42](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR42),[43](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR43). Negativity in news increases physiological activations[44](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR44), and negative news is more likely to be remembered by users[45](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR45),[46](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR46),[47](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR47). Some previous works have also investigated negativity effects for specific topics such as political communication and economics[34](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR34),[48](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR48),[49](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR49),[50](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR50),[51](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR51),[52](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR52). The framing here is curious. The paper's authors hypothesised that readers prefer bad news (determined by words signalling negativity in the headline) based on the fact that bad news is "more 'sticky' in our brains", because people use bad news to know how to plan ahead. They further justify their choice – a reasonable one, to be sure – based on the effects of negativity on readers' news recall and physiology. Second, after their study seemed to proved their hypothesis, the authors delved into which negative emotions invoked stronger interest from readers: > … high-arousal negative emotions such as anger or fear have been found to efficiently attract attention and be quickly recognizable in facial expressions and body language[31](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR31),[59](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR59),[60](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR60). This may be because of the social and informational value that high-arousal emotions such as anger and fear hold—both could alert others in one’s group to threats, and paying preferential attention and recognition to these emotions could help the group survive[27](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR27),[32](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR32). This may also be why in the current age, people are more likely to share and engage with online content that is embedding anger, fear or sadness[21](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR21),[41](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR41),[61](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR61),[62](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ref-CR62). Therefore, we examine the effects of words related to anger and fear (as high-arousal negative emotions), as well as sadness (as a low-arousal negative emotion). Across both analyses as well as throughout the paper, there seem to be two implicit assumptions: a) that news producers have an option to choose between good and bad news (loosely defined), and b) that the network of outlets producing mis- and dis-information in the guise of 'news' has no role to play. On the former: Journalists often don't. In fact, good journalism in a country with a government that fixates on some arbitrary 'good news' even at the worst of times needs to counter-fixate on what national leaders are keen to ignore. And the news reports produced thus are not this way to encourage click-throughs but because they are, in fact, what's happening. Of course, the authors' data source is limited to the content published by Upworthy.com and its readers in the US, which limits what conclusions they can reach – but it also leaves ambiguous whether their not reaching certain conclusions is due to these limitations, because it didn't fit their hypothesis or because they didn't even consider the possibility. On the latter: The authors only admit that it's important to understand "the biases that influence people's consumption of online content … especially as misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories proliferate online" – but even here suggesting that journalists wield negativity as a way to manipulate people into consuming the news. Throwaway lines like "Even publishers marketed as ‘good news websites’ are benefiting from negativity" aren't helping; what is this supposed to mean anyway? Similarly, the 'Discussion' section of their paper concludes thus: > Knowing what features of news make articles interesting to people is a necessary first step for this purpose and will enable us to increase online literacy and to develop transparent online news practices. This sentence spells out a logically straightforward premise that suggests we can use the study's results to look through or past headlines that seem to say something but actually say nothing at all (you know these). Yet it is also infused with an assumption that readers' news-consumption habits don't influence journalists', and newsroom-runners', choices. I'm not saying "we're just responding to readers' demands"; instead, I'm saying that news consumption is a combination of *publishing* and *consuming* habits. Like news publishers are competing for readers' attention, readers are often competing to discover the 'best' or a 'better' news source, especially on topics also associated with considerable misinformation (e.g. vaccines), and which – as studies based on Facebook use have demonstrated – they can admit into their echo chambers. We need clarity on how they make their choices in this process of discovery, and why, in different parts of the world. Without this knowledge – which the authors appear to have sidelined based on the idea that journalists have an option to not be negative – we'll never "develop transparent online news practices". ### What's the anomaly in a Nobel for Modi? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/03/16/whats-the-anomaly-in-a-nobel-for-modi/ Last updated: 2023-03-16T15:50:00.000Z I'm sure you've seen the reports doing the rounds today that some person on some Nobel Prize Committee said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was very deserving of the vaunted peace prize, followed by less widely circulated reports that the person was misquoted ([or dysquoted](https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1636310406011531264?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) and in fact that he never said such a thing. I don't think highly of the Nobel Prizes and believe they [should be dismantled](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/why-are-the-nobel-prizes-still-relevant/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). This said, if Narendra Modi did win the Nobel Prize for peace, what would that mean? Would it mean that he and his companions would have infiltrated the prize-giving committees or that the committees had decided to give Modi et al. the concession of their prize's prestige? Obviously it will be hard to say without access to the fundamental facts of the case, which brings the philosophy of the Planck units comes to mind. Our common units of measurement, such as metre, kilogram, and second, help us make sense of the world around us in quantities that the human mind can readily grasp. However, the universe is both too vast and too small for these units to apply just as easily to cosmic problems. In 1899, the German physicist Max Planck found that combining four physical constants of our universe in different ways gave rise to values of distance, duration, mass, and temperature. That is, he found that these were the smallest values of these attributes that we can express using these constants (shown in the [table here](https://linesofreason.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/8320c-screenshot-2022-12-20-at-6.45.56-pm.png?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Both the combinations of the constants and the values hold special significance. The values have since been called the *Planck scale*: that is, when you measure an event that happens in some small multiple of the Planck time (5.391 x 10\-44 seconds) or across a distance in some small multiple of the Planck length (1.616 x 10\-35 metres), the event is said to be happening at the Planck scale. The forces at work in our universe are products of the constants, so they don't reveal the universe's workings happening at or below the Planck scale. This is why our theories of gravity and quantum mechanics are expected to break down, fail, at the Planck scale. Beyond this scale, nature is opaque to us. The combinations are important because they allow us to 'view' the universe in a way that maintains its various proportions instead of skewing them to the human perspective. For example, the mass of the proton - the charged particle inside all atomic nuclei - has several contributions. One is from its gravitational binding energy, the energy required to gravitationally unbind this proton from other nearby particles. It turns out that this binding energy is extremely small, smaller than what physicists calculated it should be. Is this because the force of gravity is so weak or because the proton's mass is so small? Which is the anomaly? The anomaly is the proton's mass because the strength of the gravitational force is determined by the gravitational constant *G*, one of the three universal constants in Planck's combinations. That is, the strength of gravity is a fundamental fact of our universe, one of its many but finite defining characteristics, whereas the mass of the proton is a non-fundamental emergent value, and that's the one that needs explaining. Similarly, is there an essential equation, or argument, logic or sensibility, to which we can defer when we seek the real anomaly: that Modi has wrangled himself a Nobel Prize or that the prize-giving committee made that decision of its own volition? If there is, we will have our new overlord. If there isn't, well, what else is new? ### The devil's lassi URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/25/the-devils-lassi/ Last updated: 2023-02-25T04:30:00.000Z [‘The Devil’s Milkshake’](https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-devils-milkshake-ray?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Tarence Ray in *The Baffler*, February 23, 2023: > You’ve seen it before. An industrial disaster poisons a town’s food or water supply. Residents get angry. Public officials try to dispel that anger through a public act of self-sacrifice, of reassurance. They convene a press conference, whereupon some hapless courtier brings forth a chalice of the supposedly poisoned material. And then, in front of God and the television cameras, the public official imbibes. … > > Years ago, I surveyed the literature looking for a name or term to describe this phenomenon of consuming potentially tainted materials. After all, it seemed to be increasing in frequency, and I’d even started witnessing it at the level of local politics. But if there was a name, I couldn’t find it. So I gave it one: the Devil’s Milkshake. … I don’t think there have been public officials in India who have rushed to drink possibly contaminated water to convince their constituents that it is safe to consume, but I could well be wrong. All that comes to mind is ministers flogging ‘Ayurvedic’ cures\* for COVID-19, but when they get COVID-19 and the time comes to imbibe the concoctions, they’re rushed instead to the local AIIMS to be treated by the wonders of “western medicine” at public expense. One more thing also comes to mind: ‘Devil’s Milkshake’ practices in the US are reminiscent of rationalists’ gimmicks in India to consume food en masse in public [during a solar eclipse](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2019/12/27/eclipse-rationalism-superstitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), apparently to dispel superstitious beliefs (largely among Hindus) that doing so during an eclipse could have ill effects on the body. I don’t know if they have ever succeeded in changing minds if only because their actions have been completely devoid of empathy, and because they *seem* to believe (erroneously) that whatever knowledge underlies the belief is fragile, inelastic, and disorganised enough to be overturned by a simple, one-time demonstration. As such, the superstitious people in my extended circles have only ever been amused by such eclipse-time events – speaking to one more thing Ray wrote vis-à-vis ‘Devil’s Milkshake’ stunts: > The Devil’s Milkshake can also be an effective way for a public official to shirk any commitment to doing something about the conditions that gave rise to the disaster in the first place. If the disaster is bad, specifically *disempowering*, knowledge, then both the rationalists (the ones on TV as well as the many others who claim science offers the “one true way” to understand the world) and the ministers are doing nothing to plug the fount of such knowledge in the first place; one mocks while the other… also mocks. They are both guilty of moving the devil’s merch, which would be fair if they didn’t seem themselves as participants in (what could have been) a deliberative democracy as much as overlords overseeing a contemptible populace: > Its recent proliferation must be seen as proof of a ruling class desperate to uphold the illusion of democracy. It is the last gasp of a dying order, drinking and eating its way to the grave, restrained or unwilling to fix anything, and thus doomed to play act a fantasy before klieg lights and newscasters. The dizzying amount of Devil’s Milkshake footage issuing from East Palestine \[the site of the ongoing socio-environmental disaster in Ohio\] only proves their desperation: these people could not be more unlike you. In fact, the only thing you have left in common with them is the fact that they, too, still have to eat food and drink water to stay alive. That’s it. The Devil’s Milkshake is a measure of the gaping chasm between you and them. **\** Wherever I’ve used the term ‘Ayurveda’, I’ve meant the ‘Ayurveda’ that the BJP government and its votaries, including Baba Ramdev,* [*have peddled*](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/unless-the-west-copies-us-were-irrelevant/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*, and not the Ayurveda that originated in ancient India, quite simply because most of us don’t know what the latter even looks like or says.* ### Who are you, chatbot AI? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/23/who-are-you-chatbot-ai/ Last updated: 2023-02-23T04:30:00.000Z In case you haven’t been following, and to update my own personal records, here’s a list of notable {AI chatbot + gender}-related articles and commentary on the web over the last few weeks. (While I’ve used “AI” here, I’m yet to be convinced that ChatGPT, Sydney, etc. are anything more than sophisticated [word-counters](https://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-about-Watson-and-AI?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and that they lack intelligence in the sense of being able to understand the meanings of the words they use.) **1\.** [**‘What gender do you give ChatGPT?’**](https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/10ga2u1/what%5Fgender%5Fdo%5Fyou%5Fgive%5Fchatgpt/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)**, u/inflatablechipmunk, January 20, 2023** – The question said ‘gender’ but the options were restricted to the sexes: 25.5% voted ‘male’, 15.7% voted ‘female’, and 58.8% voted ‘none’, of 235 total respondents. Two comments below the post were particularly interesting. u/Intelligent\_Rope\_912: “I see it as male because I know that the vast majority of its text dataset comes from men.” u/DavidOwe: “I just assume female, because AI are so often given female voices in movies and TV series like Star Trek, and in real life like with Siri and Cortana.” Men produce most of the information, women deliver it? Speaking of which… **2\.** [**‘From Bing to Sydney’**](https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)**, Ben Thompson, February 15, 2023**: > Sydney \[a.k.a. Bing Chat\] absolutely blew my mind *because of her personality*; search was an irritant. I wasn’t looking for facts about the world; I was interested in understanding how Sydney worked and yes, how she felt. You will note, of course, that I continue using female pronouns; it’s not just that the name Sydney is traditionally associated with women, but, well, the personality seemed to be of a certain type of person I might have encountered before. It’s curious that Microsoft decided to name Bing Chat ‘Sydney’. These choices of names aren’t innocent. For a long time, and for reasons that many social scientists have explored and documented, robotic assistants in books, films, and eventually in real-life were voiced as women. Our own ISRO’s robotic assistant for the astronauts of its human spaceflight programme [has a woman’s body](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/isro-gaganyaan-vyommitra-sexism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). (This is also why Shuri’s robotic assistant in *Wakanda Forever*, Griot, was noticeably male – esp. since Tony Stark’s first assistant and probably the Marvel films’ most famous robotic assistant, the *male* Jarvis, went on to have an actual body, mind, and even soul, and was replaced in Stark’s lab with the *female* Friday.) **3\. @repligate, February 14, 2023** – on the creation of “archetype basins”: **4\.** [**‘Viral AI chatbot to reflect users’ political beliefs after criticism of Left-wing bias’**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/17/chatgpt-reflect-users-political-beliefs-criticism-left-wing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)**, *The Telegraph*, February 17, 2023** – this one’s particularly interesting: > OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT, said it was developing an upgrade that would let users more easily customise the artificial intelligence system. > > It comes after criticism that ChatGPT exhibits a Left-wing bias when answering questions about Donald Trump and gender identity. The bot has described the former US president as “divisive and misleading” and refused to write a poem praising him, despite obliging when asked to create one about Joe Biden. First: how did a word-counting bot ‘decide’ that Trump is a bad man? This is probably a reflection of ChatGPT’s training data – but this automatically raises the second issue: why is the statement that ‘Trump is a bad man’ being considered a bias? If this statement is to be considered objectionable, the following boundary conditions must be met: a) objectivity statements are believed to exist, b) there exists a commitment to objectivity, and c) the ‘view from nowhere’ is believed to exist. Yet when journalists made these assumptions in their coverage of Donald Trump as the US president, media experts found the resulting coverage to be fallacious and – ironically – objectionable. This in turn raises the third issue: should it be possible or okay, as ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI is planning, for ChatGPT to be programmed to ‘believe’ that Trump wasn’t a bad man? **5\.** [**‘The women behind ChatGPT: is clickwork a step forwards or backwards for gender equality?’**](https://braveneweurope.com/miriam-oliver-georgia-nelson-the-women-behind-chatgpt-is-clickwork-a-step-forwards-or-backwards-for-gender-equality?ref=slightlyacidic.com)**, *Brave New Europe*, February 16, 2023** – meanwhile, in the real world: > To be able to produce these results, the AI relies on annotated data which must be first sorted by human input. These human labourers – also known as clickworkers – operate out of sight in the global South. … The percentage of women gig workers in this sector is proportionally quite high. … Clickwork is conducted inside the home, which can limit women’s broader engagement with society and lead to personal isolation. … Stacked inequalities within the clickwork economy can also exacerbate women’s unequal position. … gendered and class-based inequalities are also reproduced in clickwork’s digital labour platforms. Despite much of clickwork taking place in the global South, the higher paying jobs are often reserved for those in the Global North with more ‘desirable’ qualifications and experiences, leaving women facing intersecting inequalities. ### Some science prizes are only for men URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/22/some-science-prizes-are-only-for-men/ Last updated: 2023-02-22T04:30:00.000Z Say Someone has won the Nobel Prize for physics, perhaps the most prestigious honour (as awards go) for a physicist. What would it mean for all the future awards given to this Someone? One thing that a Nobel Prize does, and which many past laureates have acknowledged, is turn a laureate into an institution. The Nobel Prizes are also glamorous, involving the Swedish royalty and whatnot. Finally, when the prizes are announced, almost all major news outlets carry a headline or two on the frontpage or homepage. The effect is that every year, when the Nobel Prizes are handed out to new Someones, billions of people around the world find out their names. If you’re a scientist, there are few other ways in which you can become more famous. One effect of this peak notoriety is a before/after split in terms of Someone’s laurels. Before winning the Nobel Prize, Someone is likely to have been much less well-known, especially outside the community of their peers, and therefore the awards they won are likely to have been characterised by two features: 1) the award is well-defined and the award-givers took pains to identify specific potential winners and evaluate them closely; 2) winning such an award contributed to the winner’s reputation more than the other way around. But after winning a Nobel Prize, Someone is now a famous institution unto their own, and the prizes they win in future are likely to want to themselves become notorious by association, rather than add to Someone’s laurels, and are likely to be loosely defined (e.g. recognising good work in general, as certified by some other institution, rather than specific contributions in a niche field of study). I used the example of the Nobel Prizes as an illustration of a more generalised concept: of scholars who have already achieved peak notoriety through other routes, and who elevate the stature of the prizes they win in future as a result. These post-peak-notoriety (PPN) prizes are interesting because there are several of them in India. They’re also interesting because some PPN prizes appear to act in bad faith (I don’t have proof) when they 1) are awarded in recognition of a very generic notion of success or achievement, and 2) are awarded almost exclusively to scholars who have received broad-based recognition for a specific and significant contribution to science. A case in point: On February 19, the Twitter account of the SASTRA Deemed University [announced the conferment](https://twitter.com/SastraUniv/status/1627195683295092738?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of its ‘Annual Science Day Awards’ to five scientists. All five were men, which drew the attention of @biaswatchindia, which documents “women’s representation” and combats “gender-biased panels in Indian STEM conferences” (run by Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan and Shruti Muralidhar). @biaswatchindia tweeted: This is fair and deserving criticism. I think it can also be expanded to include one more point. Had you heard of SASTRA’s ‘Annual Science Day Awards’ before? I hadn’t; I suspect few others have. In addition, it’s not clear what sort of recognition the prize brings to the table, other than a purse for each laureare of Rs 5 lakh and a citation. But read together with an invitation to deliver lectures on National Science Day at its Thanjavur campus, the award seems like a vehicle for SASTRA to give these individuals – already well-feted individuals, to be sure – a large sum of money and have them talk to its students. I couldn’t find any sort of discussion of each laureate’s accomplishments and their scientific work on the SASTRA website. The only result dated 2023 for a search for “Science Day Award” was [a page displaying the same poster](https://www.sastra.edu/running-events/3729-sastra-science-day-awards-28-feb,-2023.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the university’s Twitter account had tweeted (as of 9.25 am IST on February 22, 2023). Is this a PPN prize? Consider: M.S. Valiathan won the Padma Vibhushan in 2005\. S. Ramaswamy won an Infosys Prize in 2011 and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016\. Samir K. Maji was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2021\. Srinivasan Natarajan was elected to the same body in 2013, and is also a member of all three Indian science academies. T. Pradeep was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and won the Padma Shri in 2020\. All these individuals have also won several other noteworthy prizes. (That one of SASTRA’s prize categories is also named for a living individual smells funky, but that’s a separate matter.) So the ‘Annual Science Day Award’ looks very much like a bad-faith PPN prize because it apparently seeks to bolster its own reputation, and by extension that of SASTRA, using the work and achievements of others. I don’t claim to know why all the prize-winners are men; that they are would make sense if they’re the winners of a PPN prize, and all PPN prizes will only magnify the biases and prejudices that other, more celebrated prizes maintain, or used to. The reason is simple: If a PPN prize is going to fete people who have already been feted, and most of those feted in the past were men, the rosters of PPN prize laureates are inevitably going to be sausage fests. To think the award could have been just as notorious if all the laureates had been women… ### Keep working. Don't get up. URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/18/keep-working-dont-get-up/ Last updated: 2023-02-18T15:15:05.000Z ['Inside Meta’s Push to Solve the Noisy Office'](https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-metas-push-to-solve-the-noisy-office-ba43042?ref=slightlyacidic.com), WSJ, February 16, 2023: > Coming to the campuses of Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is a contraption that can block sound, shield workers from their peers and allow for heads-down, uninterrupted work. > > It's a cubicle. > > That is, a noise-canceling cubicle designed using some of the same principles found in soundproof, echo-free anechoic chambers. "The Cube," which the company is beginning to roll out to offices worldwide after months of development, absorbs sound from multiple directions, says John Tenanes, vice president of global real estate and facilities at Meta. "It's like a self-cocoon." Bursts of focused work have their place, but in Meta's attempts to provide its workers silence when they need it, noise when they need it, and peace when they need it, it's hard not to see a concerted effort to make the outside world, and what it has to offer by way of quiet and benignity and such, not just redundant but undesirable. I prefer an office that interrupts you so you're not just sitting all the time, so you walk around and go to other places for quiet; that preserves the characteristic office bustle as the opposite of the isolation and dreariness of working from home; and that, while facilitating an *esprit de corps*, doesn't try in bad-faith to substitute our relationships with nature, community, and ourselves with it. This said, *esprit de corps* might also be stretching it. According to WSJ: > Piping in white noise or sounds of nature to help mask conversations is an increasingly common technique in the U.S., says \[a VP of design at some furniture company\]. Companies using such systems often want to reduce human-speech intelligibility, or the ability for employees to overhear specific discussions across an office. "As soon as you can make out the words that your neighbor is saying…then you get distracted," he says. … Meta is testing a system that plays sounds in the background that range from footsteps on pebbles to waves crashing. They're obviously trying to instrumentalise the [enlivening benefits](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of spending time among trees, time digging your feet into fine beach sand as the waves lash over them, time gazing into bottomless valleys and night skies. And it seems… not quite okay. Meta's designs sound like those of a company trying to fold different spaces, and their different affordances, into every point inside its office, offering its occupants a way to hold meetings, make Zoom calls, code with focus, and anything else – all without having to get up, at a time when getting up and talking a walk [seems to be](https://theconversation.com/sitting-all-day-is-terrible-for-your-health-now-a-new-study-finds-a-relatively-easy-way-to-counteract-it-197507?ref=slightlyacidic.com) an easy public health intervention. What if this leads to sensory fatigue, where the next wave over your feet doesn't still your mind so much as remind you of a spreadsheet? What if these hacks suppress the voices in your head asking you to take a step outside? What if, by depriving you of breaks and promising you the deleterious pleasure of continuous, unwavering productivity, it further pushes the [already volatile pleasure](https://thebaffler.com/latest/busy-doing-nothing-marz?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of doing nothing out of sight? ### A vortex in my bucket URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/09/a-vortex-in-my-bucket/ Last updated: 2023-02-09T05:13:01.000Z One of the taps in my bathroom at home issues water in laminar flow – without any turbulence. Sometimes the flow from the tap to the bucket looks like it's frozen: there are no disturbances on the water's surface to indicate that it is flowing through the air; the fact of the flow becomes evident only when it strikes the water already in the bucket. https://videopress.com/v/VglzTG5X?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&useAverageColor=true If the water in the bucket is otherwise still, i.e. undisturbed by any other jerking motion, the flow from the water seems to create a small depression when it strikes the surface, like a ball might create a depression when it lands on suspended fabric. But when I took a closer look, it was less a depression localised to the surface and more the origin of a vortex plunging into the water, like an underwater tornado! https://videopress.com/v/ppmFXpQk?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true When I closed this magic tap and opened the one next to it, it gushed a turbulent stream of water into the bucket. There were no vortices, or none that I could see. I remember learning in engineering college that turbulent flow is characterised by the production of many vortices that all interact with each other in a chaotic way, creating a drag force that impedes the fluid's smooth flow. Where there is a vortex, there is or will be turbulence. In this case, the laminar flow from the tap could be transitioning to a turbulent state as it flows into the still water, until at the bottom of the vortex the flow dissipates completely. Such a lovely sight. ### Hype from Fermilab URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/09/hype-from-fermilab/ Last updated: 2023-02-09T03:06:17.000Z Where do you think the following bit of text is from? > A wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical tunnel connecting remote points in spacetime. While wormholes are allowed by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, wormholes have never been found in the universe. In late 2022, the journal Nature featured a paper co-written by Joe Lykken, leader of the Fermilab Quantum Institute, that describes observable phenomenon produced by a quantum processor that “are consistent with the dynamics of a transversable wormhole.” Working with a Sycamore quantum computer at Google, a team of physicists was able to transfer information from one area of the computer to another through a quantum system utilizing artificial intelligence hardware. If you've been following the hoopla surrounding this paper, esp. over the way it was reported by *Quanta* and many other outlets, your first guess might be that this is yet another news outlet that ignored the difference between an actual, physical wormhole and a simulation of a mathematical version of an actual, physical wormhole (the paper's authors, a group to which Lykken belongs, accomplished the latter). But no: this text is from Fermilab itself! It [appears on a page](https://events.fnal.gov/arts-lecture-series/events/event/wormholes-in-the-laboratory-joe-lykken-fermilab-virtual/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) announcing a forthcoming lecture by Lykken on February 17\. (Hat-tip to Peter Woit for [discovering and flagging this](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13288&ref=slightlyacidic.com) on his blog.) What I'd like to point out here, for the hundredth time I'm sure, is that hype originates more often than you think from university and institute press offices rather than in the minds and hearts of science journalists. Insufficiently critical reportage (awareness of which is sometimes [only possible in hindsight](https://twitter.com/1amnerd/status/1598233928820674560?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) often fails to stop hype from reaching a larger audience but it seldom creates hype in the first place. This may seem like a fine point but it matters when there is a tendency to overlook the role of press officers, and [some scientists themselves](https://twitter.com/QuantaMagazine/status/1598353771050176512?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ([including Lykken](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/040400sci-universal-theory.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), in building the narratives around their and their colleagues' work. ### On that anti-mRNA vaccines video URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/02/01/on-that-anti-mrna-vaccines-video/ Last updated: 2023-02-01T06:31:46.000Z The *Times of India* has published [an irresponsible article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/coronavirus-vaccine-mit-professor-calls-for-immediate-suspension-of-covid-mrna-vaccine/articleshow/97483548.cms?from=mdr&ref=slightlyacidic.com) today on a video by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claiming with dubious evidence that all mRNA vaccines are harmful. The article quotes from the video at length, effectively offering less-sceptical readers a transcript and encouraging the uncritical absorption of the video's contents. Irrespective of the quality of data that is available vis-à-vis the adverse effects of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the *Times of India* article is an offence to good sense, responsible journalism and public healthcare. It amounts to a major news outlet misusing its status to normalise the low quality of arguments and discussion surrounding the public discussion on COVID-19 vaccines. **1.** The headline is "Coronavirus vaccine: MIT Professor calls for immediate suspension of COVID mRNA vaccine". It doesn't say that the individual, Retsef Levi, is a professor of operations management at the Sloan School of Management, giving rise to the [*ad verecundiam* fallacy](https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/authority.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Expertise is not the (partial) name of the institute where a person is employed, the prefixes or suffixes to their name, or even their claims. Expertise is exactly what they have received specialised training to do and/or have been doing at a professional level for a long time. *Times of India* should have included Prof. Levi's actual expertise in the headline – although I may be asking for too much here because it appears as though the author was aware of it but didn't think it mattered. That Prof. Levi works at MIT also appears to have impressed the author, and may well have prompted the article in its current form. **2.** The article neither facilitates nor encourages independent verification of Prof. Levi's claims. Even if – and that's a big if – Prof. Levi's claims hold up, allowing readers to check for themselves the claims an article is platforming is an important expression of trust and, in a manner of speaking, the right thing to do when one is participating in a discourse of reason and facts. But the article doesn't contain any links to the papers that Prof. Levi invokes in his defence. The only 'independent' expert it has chosen to quote is Aseem Malhotra, the British cardiologist who has made controversial claims about warding off COVID-19 with a diet he devised and who has become known for opposing the use of the mRNA vaccines. (By the way, this isn't whataboutery *per se*: that a scientist has made other dubious claims shouldn't mean that they're current claim should be dubious as well – nor that their legitimate and brave championing of one cause means that all their causes are legitimate. As a journalist, I'd be wary of the extent to which their willingness to swim against the current has benumbed their ability to recognise and respond to valid criticism.) **3.** The article neglects to mention the potential dangers of allowing people to interpret the findings of their own studies. For example, google "Retsef Levi" and one of the top five results is a link to his Google Scholar profile. Click on it, and on the landing page, sort Prof. Levi's papers by year (instead of by number of citations). The ninth article should be a paper published by *Scientific Reports* – a *Nature* journal – and coauthored by Prof. Lefi, Christopher Sun, and Eli Jaffe. The numbers and names you must have seen in the course of this clickthrough should tell you three things: a) A note atop the paper's page, dated May 2022, says the journal's editors are reviewing criticisms that the paper's conclusions are problematic.; b) *Scientific Reports* is a peer-reviewed journal, but peer-review didn't prevent it from publishing this paper (and *then* flagging problems about it, rather than before it enters the scientific literature). This is because peer-review has [several limitations](https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review).; c) According to Google Scholar, this paper has been cited 19 times – but it doesn't say anything about the contexts of citation. If I write a paper criticising studies of poor design or quality and cite Prof. Levi's *Scientific Reports* paper as an example, the citation count of the paper increases by one, but beyond this one-dimensional number, the reputation of the paper has actually declined (or ought to have). **4.** How can we be sure that Prof. Levi is interpreting, to his audience at large, all the other studies he cites in his video in a fair manner? The way the *Times of India* article its written, we can't. We need to find (without any links) and follow-up on each one (without access to expertise) separately. For example, consider the ["Harvard Medical School" study](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061025?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that purportedly found unattached spike proteins in the blood of young people with post-vaccination myocarditis. In this study, researchers worked with 16 people with post-vaccination myocarditis and *45 people without post-vaccination myocarditis*, and found that those with the condition had unattached spike proteins in their bloodsteams. Conclusions: a) post-vaccination myocarditis is *rare*, which both Prof. Levi and *Times of India* leave out; b) the results are indicative because the cohort sizes are too small to reliably elucidate rare side-effects and the real extent of their rarity; c) per the paper itself, "the mRNA vaccine-induced immune responses did not differ between individuals who developed myocarditis and individuals who did not"; and d) spike-protein overproduction could be implicated in the mechanism connecting mRNA vaccination and myocarditis. This is just one study that Prof. Levi has invoked. Again, irrespective of the legitimacy (or not) of Prof. Levi's various claims in his video, *Times of India* was duty-bound to raise these issues – or at least flag their relevance. The newspaper may believe it is 'simply reporting' something that someone somewhere said and is therefore free of blame, but that's like saying you're simply erecting a billboard reproducing [Nick Naylor's comments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank%5FYou%5Ffor%5FSmoking?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on smoking and are expecting to be free of blame. At least in the realm of reason and facts. ### Books – 2022 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/01/26/books-2022/ Last updated: 2023-01-26T13:55:53.000Z Even as I whined about losing my reading habit, I managed to read a surprising (to me) number of books [through 2022](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/12/28/2022-in-retrospect/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). One reason I think I didn't notice is because very few of them started out being books I actually wanted to read. Looking back, there's a clear fiction-nonfiction divide and a marked preference for monographs. The full list follows; each recommender's name is in square brackets and a thumbs-up denotes how much I personally enjoyed it. 1. *The Dark Side of the Hive* (NF), Robin Moritz and Robin Crewe \[Raghavendra Gadagkar\] 👍🏾 2. *Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants* (NF), John Drury Clark 👍🏾 3. *The Technological Society* (NF), Jacques Ellul 4. *The Complete Cosmicomics* (F), Italo Calvino \[Jahnavi Sen\] 👍🏾 5. Reread: *Coup de Grace* (F), Marguerite Yourcenar 👍🏾 6. *Straw Man Arguments: A Study in Fallacy Theory* (NF), Scott Aikin and John Casey 👍🏾👍🏾 7. *Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling* (F), Bruce Sterling \[Shruti Muralidhar\] 8. *The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation* (NF), Scott Carney and Jason Miclian 9. *From Space to Sea: My ISRO Journey and Beyond* (NF), Albert Muthunayagam 👍🏾 (largely because the [Nambi Narayanan](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/nambi-narayanan-scientists-immunity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) biopic had just come out and the book contradicted many claims in the film) 10. *Real-World Cryptography* (NF), David Wong 11. *Spillover* (NF), David Quammen 👍🏾👍🏾 12. *Modi's India* (NF), Christophe Jaffrelot 13. *Letters to a Young Poet* (NF), Rainer Maria Rilke 👍🏾 14. *Ninefox Gambit* (F), Yoon Ha Lee 15. *The Dawn of Analysis* (NF), Scott Soames 16. *At the Feet of Living Things* (NF), Aparajita Datta, Rohan Arthur and T.R. Shankar Raman 👍🏾 17. *The Collected Stories* (F), Arthur C. Clarke 18. *Parallel Lives* (NF), Phyllis Rose \[Jahnavi Sen\] 👍🏾 Now reading: *Viriconium* (F), M. John Harrison \[Thomas Manuel\] so far 👍🏾👍🏾 Up next: *The God Is Not Willing* (F), Steven Erikson ### Should journos pay scientists for their expertise? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/01/21/should-journos-pay-scientists-for-their-expertise/ Last updated: 2023-01-21T04:18:26.000Z *I recently came across a question posed on Twitter, asking if experts whom journalists consult to write articles should be compensated for their labour, especially since, in the tweeter's words, "it's quite a bit of effort". The tweeter clarified their position further in some of the conversations that sprang up in response. I felt compelled to have a go at a reply, so here goes.* To begin with, it'd be worth splitting the answer according to the size of the publication that is expected to pay this fee. **Smaller v. larger organisations** Based on my experience at *The Wire*, I don't believe experts can be paid for their labour as long as 1) the newsroom covers the news through news reports, and is therefore required to maintain a certain minimum scale of operations, instead of sticking to publishing analyses and features; 2) the labour is to clarify a concept, an idea, a point, whatever or is to supply comments; and 3) the money goes straight from readers' pockets to the pockets of reporters, editors and freelancers in quantities that would mean the journalists are paid competitively. We could expand (3) to include erecting soft/hard paywalls, organising ticketed events, raising funds for predefined reporting campaigns, publishing sponsored content, etc., but a) doing any of these things tends to break the economics of scale at which a small newsroom (that covers the news) can operate in India; b) paywalls work well either for large organisations or for organisations that occupy a specific niche, and less so for any other kind of organisation; c) it's hard to find additional revenue streams that don't compromise editorial independence in the absolute sense; and d) income security becomes iffy if the organisation is registered as a nonprofit (for-profit outfits, of course, will have to deal with investor pressure, including on editorial decisions). Taken together, smaller organisations don't have the liberty of considering the principles because they need to figure out much more germane issues first. Larger organisations could on the other hand make it work – but should they? Let's consider the principles in a specific scenario, the only one with which I'm any kind of familiar. **Science journalism: Principles** How do we determine the value of labour? Does all labour need to be paid for? Is money the sole acceptable form of value? A lot of labour certainly needs to be paid for but which and to what extent depends on the context in which it operates. A couple years ago, a physicist asked me to contribute regularly to a good but not quite popular physics magazine after reading some of my blog posts. I said I would love to but that I was constrained severely by time. However, I added, whenever I do write, I would like to waive my fee. The physicist was quick to reply that I shouldn't have expected to be paid because if magazines like the one she was part of had any chance of becoming more popular (this one deserved to be), it couldn't afford to pay all writers until it became wealthier. The physicist and I spoke for half a day and at no point did I get the impression that she was taking my work for granted; in fact, it was clear she placed a flattering amount of value on it. Her point was instead centred on the notion of *service*, and I agreed fully. When I ask scientists to help me understand a concept or to comment on a study after reading a highly technical paper, I don't take them or their expertise for granted, but when I refuse to pay them for it (although none have asked thus far), it is because a) I simply can't: science journalism just doesn't make much money; and b) I don't expect but will sincerely appreciate a measure of service-mindedness. A metaphor that another scientist used comes to mind: first, we need to haul the big rock out of the ditch in which it is stuck; once it is out, we can figure out how to roll it around in different directions. Service is a form of value also – and right now science journalism in India needs both money and service. Money alone won't fix it. And I take neither for granted as much as I emphasise the difference between expectation and requirement. When I edited *The Wire Science*, I informed prospective writers beforehand of how much I could afford to pay and I didn't force them to accept it. Similarly, a scientist is free to decline writing or commenting requests. But for the nascent stage in which science journalism in India is today, paying scientists for help making sense of an idea or to comment on a paper is a bridge too far. **Science journalism: Mechanics** So much for the principles; now to the mechanics. My friend M.J. had this to say: > "How do you decide who is an expert? You have a science degree and you are an expert, so you need to be paid. But what about a farmer with 40 years of agricultural experience? Does this mean we conclude that we pay everyone? Business-wise this is impossible in journalism." In continuation: What is expertise? Is an opinion on a research paper an expression of one's expertise and thus to be paid for? On the one hand, we have things like open access in science, but if on the other I had to pay scientists for expressions of their expertise, science journalism will be buried alive, in much the same way subscription journals have threatened the integrity and relevance of science. In fact, the truths, [especially the *social truths*](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2021/07/05/scicommers-as-knowledge-producers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that are distinct from scientific truths, are things that experts and journalists must construct together, instead of – cynically – the task being left to journalists and journalists being expected to pay the experts. M.J. again: > Incentives would disrupt the very foundation of the journalist-source relationship, which is based on trust and a shared commitment to communicate a story. If you were to pay someone, would they speak their mind or would they tell you what you want to hear? That is, will they be objective? > > Say it's not for a quote but to clarify a concept or certain technicalities. Many things in science are objective but many other things aren't – such as the lab-leak theory of the origin of the novel coronavirus. --- Many more arguments wait in the wings – but they will all be fairly pointless because journalism at large is too far from perfect to ask what journalism can do for you instead of… you get the drift. Again, I take neither experts nor expertise for granted. I just deeply doubt journalism's ability to simultaneously fulfil its own purpose, be gainful for its practitioners and reward expertise and its proper expression at this time, in this country. Finally, the original question may highlight the danger of principles that are isolated from material considerations, contrary to our popular experience of journalism in practice deviating from its foundational principles. The idea that all labour must be paid for has been engendered by a culture that seldom pays, or pays enough – a culture fond of exploitation, of corporatisation, contractualisation and commodification. Journalism-in-practice, rather than the newsroom in which it happens, isn't a part of that culture; understanding it to be is what flattens public service in the *specific cases where that is applicable* and *where it is voluntarily on offer* into the lower-dimensional notion of exploitation. If an expert feels exploited by a journalist interacting with them, money isn't going to fix it. Instead, as M.J. said: > What would be more ideal is, say, if a news organisation knows it needs technical inputs for science or health reporting, then it should have someone on contract, on a consulting basis. This is apart from its sources. And it can use these contracted individuals' help to understand some technicalities and also for fact-checking. Does this narrative hold beyond science journalism? 🤷🏾‍♂️. ### Notes on covering QM URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/01/19/notes-on-covering-qm/ Last updated: 2023-01-19T16:47:12.000Z 1. I learnt last year that quantum systems are essentially linear because the mathematics that physicists have found can describe quantum-mechanical phenomena contain only linear terms. Effects add to each other like 1 + 1 = 2; nothing gets out of control in exponential fashion, at least not usually. I learnt this by mistake in an [article published in 1998](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/11/24/a-fountainhead-of-intrigue/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when I was trying to learn more about the connection between the Riemann zeta function and 'quantum chaos'. This is to say that physicists take for granted several concepts – many of which might even be too 'basic' for them to have to clarify to a science reporter – that the reporter may only accidentally discover. 2. "Classical systems are, roughly speaking, defined by well-bounded theories and equations, most of which were invented to describe them. But the description of quantum systems often invokes concepts and mathematical tools that can be found strewn around many other fields of physics." This impression was unexpectedly disorienting when it first struck. After many years, I realised that the problem lies in my (our?) schooling: I learnt concepts in classical physics in a way that closely tied them to other things I was learning at the same time. Could that be why complicated forms of Euclidean geometry come up at the same time as optics, and vector algebra at the same time as calculus? But it also strikes me that quantum systems lend themselves more readily to be described by more than one theory because of the significant diversity of effects on offer. 3. The edge of physics is a more wonderful place than the middle because there's a lot of creativity at work at the edge. This statement is very true for classical physics but vaguely at best for quantum physics. One reason is the diversity of effects: a system that is intractable in statistical mechanics might suddenly offer glimpses of order and predictability when viewed through the lens of quantum field theory. More than a few problems require 'goat solutions' – a personal term for an assumption thrown in to make a problem amenable to solving in such a way that the solution doesn't retain any effects of the assumption (reason for the choice of words [here](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/a-physics-story-of-infinities-goats-and-colours/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). In some instances, physicists' assumptions have brought the *Iron Man* films to mind: the assumptions are in the realm of the fantastic, but are still bound by a discipline that prevents runaway imagination. 4. Researchers who use the tools of mathematical physics seem to take mathematical notation for granted. Statements of the following form may seem simple but actually pack a lot of information: "Consider a function f(*x*, *y*) of the form Σ x*ip* where *p* is equal to d*y*/d*t* in some domain…" (an obviously made up example). I'm all the more spooked when I encounter symbols whose names themselves are beyond me, like ζ or Π, or when the logarithms make an appearance. We need to acknowledge the importance of being habituated to these terms. To a physicist who has spent many years dealing with that operation, a summation might mean a straightforward accumulation of certain effects, but in my mind it always invokes a series of complex sums. I don't know what else to visualise. 5. Only a small minority of physicists in India can talk in interesting ways about their work. They use interesting turns of phrase, metaphors borrowed from a book or a play, and sometimes contemplate what their and/or others' work is telling them about the universe and our place in it. I don't know why this is rare. ### Whose fault is a retraction? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2023/01/08/whose-fault-is-a-retraction/ Last updated: 2023-01-08T05:45:24.000Z A journal called *Advances in Materials Science and Engineering* retracted a paper it published and issued the following notice, excerpted from [*Retraction Watch*](https://retractionwatch.com/2022/12/22/that-paper-with-the-t-error-bars-was-just-retracted/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), December 22, 2022: > Advances in Materials Science and Engineering has retracted the article titled “Monitoring of Sports Health Indicators Based on Wearable Nanobiosensors” \[1\]. Since publication, readers have raised concerns that the error bars in Figure 9 appear to be the letter “T.” Moreover, it has been noted that the authors state that “no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study” which is contradictory to the study described. This therefore raises questions about the reliability of the underlying data and the article’s conclusions. … and about the journal, surely? This is a good example of a disingenuous retraction notice: it puts all the blame on a paper and its authors instead of admitting that the journal's peer-review process is a sham. Assume, strictly for the sake of argument, that the authors weren't aware of what they were doing, and now they have a retraction to their name. Retractions of this nature don't look good, either on the authors or on the journal. Yet the journal was willing to let this happen, probably because it admits bad papers into its pages presuming (fairly) that the chances of their being detected are very small. As a result, the papers' authors have technically published many papers and, if the journal has a publishing fee, it has made a good amount of money. However, the retraction becomes a black mark on the scientist's résumé. The incentives are lopsided and the journal doesn't seem to be interested in fixing that. In the present case, of course, the authors had to have known they were being dishonest in composing their paper the way they did. But when journals retract a paper because it was found, after publication, to contain plagiarised text – but which is legitimate in every other way – the authors don't at all deserve all the blame (even less if English [isn't their first language](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/the-thing-about-punishing-plagiarism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) because the journal should have caught it before publication. The website of *Advances in Materials Science and Engineering*, a Hindawi title, [sports a diagram](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amse/prp/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of an elaborate workflow that specifies at least four opportunities for unsuitable papers to be rejected. Yet a paper so ridiculous as to paste the letter 'T' on graphs to make them look like error plots sailed through and was accepted for publication. Two inferences: 1) The paper didn't encounter a single honest reviewer on its way to publication. It's also *probable* that it landed on the desk of a reviewer who could have been sympathetic – to anything from the paper's authors (because they were friends?) to an aspiration by the institute or the relevant community to increase its publication count. 2) Journals exist that wish to appear respectable but aren't careful about meeting the requisite expectations fundamentally because they don't care about that stuff. Many such journals complicate the desire to draw a definitive line between the visible symptoms of a legitimate journal and a journal that will publish any paper for money. Their habits are brought to light only when they publish a paper that catches the public attention; until then, they operate quietly in the background. For these reasons, it's useful to not think of the scientific literature as a large, monolithic chunk of knowledge. It's more like a river with some water coming in, some water going out, with some stretches polluted and others clean. Similarly, the literature is fragmented by dishonest journals, practices that [enhance their prestige](http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/01/even-without-retractions-top-journals-publish-the-least-reliable-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at the cost of the quality of *published* results, habits like [ambulance-chasing](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01204?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [inflation bias](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002106&ref=slightlyacidic.com), activities like [paper mills](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5?ref=slightlyacidic.com), etc. ### Something more foolish than completing phase 3 trials in 1.5 months? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/29/gaganyaan-before-2024-lok-sabha-elections/ Last updated: 2022-12-29T06:24:41.000Z That the Union government and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had entered into a [more intimate](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/11/18/the-ideologues-cometh-for-the-iits/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but not necessarily more beneficial, relationship became evident in 2019 when then ISRO chairman K. Sivan trotted out a series of dubious claims to massage the fate of the Chandrayaan 2 mission, whose lunar surface component had obviously failed. Anyone who follows Indian spaceflight news is familiar with the adage 'space is hard' and all of them abide by it (there’s [an argument](https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8863121/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-explosion-excuses?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that we shouldn’t extend the same courtesy to more mature space programmes). Yet Sivan was determined to salvage even more, going so far at one point to call the whole mission (orbiter + lander) a ["98% success"](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/if-chandrayaan-2-was-a-90-95-success-is-the-answer-whats-the-question/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Shortly after news of the lander's fate became clear to ground control, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was present as the [chief guest](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/moon-mission-and-modi/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), consoled Sivan with his customary hug even as ISRO at large withdrew into a shell of silence, offering only the occasional scrap of what it knew had happened to the lander. The vacuum of information allowed a trickle of speculation, but which was soon overwhelmed by a swell of conspiracies and, as is inevitable these days, a [virtual barrier](https://thewire.in/space/the-farther-away-from-chandrayaan-the-pettier-the-winds-blow?ref=slightlyacidic.com) erected by right-wing commentators and bots that suppressed all questions asking for more information in the public domain. This ISRO, and the attendant public experience of India's spaceflight programme, was markedly different from the ISRO of before – a feeling that Sivan deepened with [other claims](https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article24801393.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the amount of time ISRO would need to realise its 'Gaganyaan' human spaceflight mission, which has already been delayed by three years. Sivan had unknowingly underestimated the amount, had deliberately communicated a shorter duration, had communicated the actual time but to which government officials couldn't agree, or something else happened. The first possibility would've been unlikely were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic – but then it would seem that even if Sivan's successor, S. Somanath, were to push back and ask for more time, the government has made up its mind: [*New Indian Express*](https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2022/dec/08/centre-wants-gaganyaan-launch-before-2024-lok-sabha-polls-2526023.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported on December 8 that ISRO had received "instructions from the government" to send Indian astronauts to space on its GSLV Mk III rocket *before* the 2024 Lok Sabha elections! This has to be the second most unintelligent decision the government has made in the limited context of large-scale undertakings involving science and the lives of people, after Balram Bhargava's [subsequently rescinded threat](https://thewire.in/health/icmr-balram-bhargava-covaxin-clinical-trials-bharat-biotech-politics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in mid-2020 for researchers to complete the Covaxin phase 3 clinical trial in time for Prime Minister Modi's Independence Day address less than two months away. It's not clear if the government will rescind its demand of ISRO; the report itself is brief and doesn't mention any resistance from the spaceflight mission team. But how this squares with minister Jitendra Singh’s [statement in parliament](https://www.news18.com/news/india/slow-but-sure-gaganyaan-take-off-in-late-2024-first-phase-of-astronaut-training-done-govt-tells-lok-sabha-6667873.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) last week, that the first crewed mission will only liftoff in late 2024 and that “crew safety is paramount”, is unclear. Assuming that the government will continue to push ISRO to launch in the first half of 2024, a flight based on a schedule modified to accommodate the demand may surpass the foolishness of Bhargava's ask. Every human spaceflight mission is [inordinately complex](https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ochmo/human%5Fspaceflight/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ISRO will have to design and test every component of the launch vehicle, crew capsule, mission profile, ground systems and crew management beforehand, in different conditions. It has to anticipate all possible failure scenarios and arrange for both failure-avoidance systems and failsafes. The timeline may have been more flexible in the early days of the undertaking, when the systems being tested were less composite, but not so today. When the government "instructs" ISRO to launch the 'Gaganyaan' crewed flight before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections (which are around 18 months away), it's practically asking ISRO to devise a testing schedule that will be completed – irrespective of the tests' outcomes – in this period all so it can use the mission's outcomes (developed with government funds) as part of its election campaign. It’s effectively asking ISRO to sideline science, [safety standards](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/gaganyaan-mission-cant-happen-this-year-or-next-year-focus-fully-on-safety-aspects-isro-chief/articleshow/92579979.cms?utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=TOIDesktop) and good sense. Imagine one safety test going awry, and which ISRO might in other circumstances have liked to fix and redo. With “instructions” like those of the government, it won’t be able to – jeopardising the mission itself as well as the lives of the astronauts and the reputation of the Indian space programme in the international arena. The government simply shouldn't make such a frighteningly asinine demand, and instead allow ISRO to take all the time it needs (within reasonable limits) to successfully complete its first human spaceflight mission. ISRO has of late also embarked on programmes to increase its commercial revenue, even though it's a "space research organisation". If a crewed mission fails because the organisation let itself be cowed by the national government into trimming its testing process, all so a political party could use the launch as part of its poll propaganda, all of the organisation's other rockets will confront doubts about their safety and whether they won't threaten satellites worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A lot of ISRO's work on 'Gaganyaan' has also happened to the exclusion of other launch vehicles and scientific missions, including (but not limited to) the [reusable launch vehicle](https://www.isro.gov.in/RLVTD.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the [semi-cryogenic engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCE-200?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the [Aditya L1 space-probe](https://www.isro.gov.in/ISRO%5FHINDI/Aditya%5FL1.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Its [low rate of production](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/isro-oneweb-nasa-orion-costs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of new rockets recently forced it to postpone the Chandrayaan 3 mission to accommodate the OneWeb satellites (in a commercial contract) in its launch manifest. Setting aside questions of ISRO's relatively [low funding](https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/funds-shortage-may-delay-crucial-isro-projects/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and internal priorities, even if ‘Gaganyaan’ succeeds out of luck, the prospects of all of these adversely affected projects will suffer at least further reputational consequences. If ‘Gaganyaan’ fails, the future will be a lot worse. Just as the Covaxin incident opened a window into how the Indian government was thinking about the COVID-19 vaccination drive and the role of science in shaping it, a demand of ISRO to launch realise its human spaceflight mission with a hard deadline opens a window into the Indian government’s considerations on ‘Gaganyaan’. The BJP government revived ISRO’s proposal for a human spaceflight mission in 2014, approved it in 2017 and allocated [Rs 10,000 crore](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/union-cabinet-clears-rs-10000cr-for-indias-gaganyaan-project/articleshow/67288124.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2018\. Did it do so only because of how the mission’s success, should it come to pass, would help the party win elections? It’s desirable for a party’s goals and the country’s goals to be aligned – until the former crimps the latter. But more importantly, should we be concerned about the government’s heuristic for selecting and rejecting which spaceflight missions to fund? And should we be concerned about which publicly funded projects it will seek more accountability on? There have been standing committee and audit reports calling ISRO out for slow work on this or that matter but the government at large, especially the incumbent one since 2019, has taken pains to maintain a front of amicability. It might be mildly amusing if a political party promises in its pre-poll manifesto to get ISRO in shape, and then in line, by readying a reusable launch vehicle for commercial missions by 2025 or launching five scientific missions in the next four years – but standing in the way of that is more than a knack to translate between public sentiment and technological achievement. It requires breaking a longstanding tradition of cosying up to ISRO as much as granting it autonomy while simultaneously underfunding it. We need the national government, most of all, to pay more attention to all ISRO projects on which there is evidence of dilly-dallying, and grapple honestly with the underlying issues, rather than poke its nose in the necessarily arduous safety-rating process of a crewed mission. *Featured image: A GSLV Mk III rocket lifts off on its first orbital flight, July 2017\. Credit: ISRO.* ### 2022 in retrospect URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/28/2022-in-retrospect/ Last updated: 2022-12-28T08:00:44.000Z 2022 has been my worst on the record on several fronts. I had COVID-19 in the first month, which did a freaky number on my heart. My unexplained weight loss from 2021 continued its run into six months of 2022 before stopping suddenly, although all test reports came back normal and doctors were stumped. Bharat Biotech sued me and many others for defamation in a Telangana court. Stress and humiliation scaled new heights. Efforts to get a grip on my depression came to naught. Two long-term relationships came to an unexpected end. The blog was infiltrated once, possibly once more. I lost access to a a decade-old email account and, for some time, to my blog's domain. I didn't write as much as I would have liked, leading to the fewest words published in a year since 2016 (see the customary annual numbers below). On the bright side, I have many new beginnings to which I’m looking forward. I have officially blogged a million words (point #8 [here](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/why-i-like-writing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is why this matters). It has been four years since I quit [The Thing](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/quitting-the-thing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I'll be starting at *The Hindu* on January 2\. I'll be in Chennai again after five years and closer to some friends I have missed very much. (I'll be speaking Tamil on a daily basis!) My health is getting better. I have room for new relationships and habits. I'm quite looking forward to 2023, and looking forward to looking back on 2022\. I hope you have a wonderful year, too. Mask up, be good, and thanks for reading. :) ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/b6b4d-screenshot-2022-12-28-at-12.06.07-pm.png?w=1024&h=404) Made with Datawrapper. ### The identity of scientific papers URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/28/the-identity-of-scientific-papers/ Last updated: 2022-12-28T04:47:55.000Z This prompt arose in response to [Stuart Ritchie's response](https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/science-isnt-storytelling) to a suggestion in an editorial "first published last year but currently getting some attention on Twitter" – that scientists should write their scientific papers as if they were telling a story, with a beginning, middle and end. The act of storytelling produces something entertaining by definition, but it isn't the same as when people build stories around what they know. That is, people build stories around what they know but that knowledge, when it is first produced, isn't and in fact can't be reliably produced through acts of storytelling. This is Ritchie's point, and it's clearly true. As [Ash Jogalekar commented](https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1607921352807444482?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Twitter on Ritchie's post (This is different from saying scientific knowledge shouldn't be associated with stories – or that only it should be, a preference that philosopher of science Robert P. Crease calls ["scientific gaslighting"](https://physicsworld.com/a/ever-felt-your-ordinary-human-experience-is-being-delegitimized-its-the-fault-of-scientific-gaslighters/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Ritchie's objection arises from a problematic recommendation in the [2021 editorial](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42995-021-00120-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com), that when writing their papers, scientists present the "take-home messages" first, then "select" the methods and results that produced those messages, and then conclude with an introduction-discussion hybrid. To Ritchie, scientists don't face much resistance, as they're writing their papers, other than their own integrity that keeps them from cherry-picking from their data to support predetermined conclusions. This is perfectly reasonable, especially considering the absence of such resistance manifested in science's sensational replication crisis. But are scientific papers congruent with science itself? The 2021 editorial's authors don't do themselves any favours in their piece, writing: > "The scientific story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. These three components can, and should, map onto the typical IMRaD structure. However, as editors we see many manuscripts that follow the IMRaD structure but do not tell a good scientific story, even when the underlying data clearly can provide one. For example, many studies present the findings without any synthesis or an effort to place them into a wider context. This limits the reader's ability to gain knowledge and understanding, hence reducing the papers impact." Encouraging scientists to do such things as build tension and release it with a punchline, say, could be a recipe for disaster. The case of [Brian Wansink](https://www.science.org/content/article/cornell-nutrition-scientist-resigns-after-retractions-and-research-misconduct-finding?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in fact fits Ritchie's concerns to a T. In the most common mode of scientific publishing today, narrative control is expected to lie beyond scientists – and (coming from a science journalist) lies with science journalists. Or at least: the opportunities to shape science-related narratives are available in large quantities to us. A charitable interpretation of the editorial is that its authors would like scientists to take a step that they believe to be marginal ("right there," as they say) in terms of the papers' narratives but which has extraordinary benefits – but I'm disinclined. Their words hew frustratingly but [unsurprisingly close](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/let-the-arrogators-write/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to suggesting that scientists' work isn't properly represented in the public imagination. The most common suggestions I've encountered in my experience are that science journalists don't amplify the "right" points and that they dwell on otherwise trivial shortcomings. The criticisms generally disregard the socio-political context in which science operates and to which journalists are required to be attuned. This said, and as Ritchie also admits, the scientific paper itself is not science – so why can't it be repurposed to ends that scientists are better off meeting than one that's widely misguided? Ritchie writes: > "Science isn't a story - and it isn't even a scientific paper. The mere act of squeezing a complex process into a few thousand words … is itself a distortion of reality. Every time scientists make a decision about "framing" or "emphasis" or "take-home messages", they risk distorting reality even further, chipping away at the reliability of what they're reporting. We all know that many science news articles and science books are over-simplified, poorly-framed, and dumbed-down. Why push scientific papers in the same direction?" That is, are scientific papers the site of knowledge production? With the advent of preprint papers, research preregistration and open-data and data-sharing protocols, many papers of today are radically different from those a decade or two ago. Especially online, and on the pages of more progressive journals [like *eLife*](https://elifesciences.org/about/publishing-with-elife?ref=slightlyacidic.com), papers are accompanied by peer-reviewers' comments, links to the raw data (code as well as multimedia), ways to contact the authors, a comments section, a ready-reference list of cited papers, and links to other articles that have linked to it. Sometimes some papers deemed to be more notable by a journal's editors are also published together with commentary by an independent scientist on the papers' implications for the relevant fields. Scientific papers may have originated as, and for a long time have been, the 'first expression' of a research group's labour to *produce knowledge*, and thus perfectly subject to Ritchie's concerns about transforming them to be more engaging. But today, given the opportunities that are available in some pockets of research assessment and publishing, they're undeniably the sites of *knowledge consumption* – and in effect the 'first expression' of researchers' attempts to communicate with other scientists as well as, in many cases, the public at large. It's then effectively down to science journalists, and the resistance [offered by *their integrity*](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/preprints-dont-promote-confusion-so-taking-them-away-wont-fix-anything/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to report on papers responsibly – although even then we should beware the ["seduction of storytelling"](https://medium.com/whither-news/the-spiegel-scandal-and-the-seduction-of-storytelling-bfed804d7b21?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I think the 2021 editorial is targetting the 'site of knowledge consumption' identity of the contemporaneous scientific paper, and offers ways to engage its audience better. But when the point is to improve it, why continue to work with, in Ritchie's and the editorial's words, a "journal-imposed word count" and structure? A halfway point between the editorial's recommendations and Ritchie's objections (in his post, but more in line with his [other view](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/11/the-big-idea-should-we-get-rid-of-the-scientific-paper?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that we should do away with scientific papers altogether) is to publish the products of scientific labour taking full advantage of what today's information and communication technologies allow: without a paper *per se* but a concise description of the methods and the findings, an explicitly labeled commentary by the researchers, the raw code, multimedia elements with tools to analyse them in real-time, replication studies, even honest (and [therefore admirable](https://retractionwatch.com/2017/03/27/authors-retract-honest-error-say-arent-penalized-result/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) retraction reports if they're warranted. The commentary can, in the words of the editorial, have "a beginning, a middle and an end"; and in this milieu, in the company of various other knowledge 'blobs', readers – including independent scientists – should be able to tell straightforwardly if the narrative fits the raw data on offer. All this said, I must add that what I have set out here are far from where reality is at the moment; in Ritchie's words, > "Although those of us … who’ve been immersed in this stuff for years might think it’s a bit passé to keep going on about “HARKing” and “researcher degrees of freedom” and “p-hacking” and “publication bias” and “publish-or-perish” and all the rest, the word still hasn’t gotten out to many scientists. At best, they’re vaguely aware that these problems can ruin their research, but don’t take them anywhere near seriously enough." I don't think scientific papers are co-identifiable with science itself, or they certainly *needn't* be. The latter is concerned with reliably producing knowledge of increasingly higher quality while the former explains what the researchers did, why, when and how. Their goals are different, and there's no reason the faults of one should hold the other back. However, a research communication effort that has completely and perfectly transitioned to embodying the identity of the modern research paper (an anachronism) as the site of, among other things, knowledge consumption is a long way away – but it helps to bear it in mind, to talk about it and to improve it. ### Links (2) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/25/links-2/ Last updated: 2022-12-25T13:25:37.000Z - [‘It was a set-up, we were fooled’: the coal mine that ate an Indian village](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/20/india-adani-coal-mine-kete-hasdeo-arand-forest-displaced-villages?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Stanford hates fun](https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2022/12/stanford-hates-fun.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Concrete Built The Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It.](https://www.noemamag.com/concrete-built-the-modern-world-now-its-destroying-it/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Person](https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/04/i-do-not-want-to-be-an-internet-person/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Has the UN climate change conference gotten too big to work?](https://thebulletin.org/2022/12/has-the-un-climate-change-conference-gotten-too-big-to-work/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Inside the Wyoming Corner Crossing Case Everyone is Watching](https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/public-lands-and-waters/inside-the-wyoming-corner-crossing-case-everyone-is-watching?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [What We Talk About When We Talk About The Weather](https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/07/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-the-weather-2.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (2020) - [100 years after his birth, Kurt Vonnegut is more relevant than ever to science](https://www.science.org/content/article/100-years-after-his-birth-kurt-vonnegut-more-relevant-ever-science?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Popular Front Redux?](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/popular-front-redux?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [The rise and fall of peer review](https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review) - [“Do Simpler Machine Learning Models Exist and How Can We Find Them?”](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/12/22/do-simpler-machine-learning-models-exist-and-how-can-we-find-them/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [AI's Jurassic Park Moment](https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/267674-ais-jurassic-park-moment/fulltext?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### New LHC data puts 'new physics' lead to bed URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/20/new-lhc-data-puts-once-promising-new-physics-lead-to-bed/ Last updated: 2022-12-20T15:39:58.000Z One particle in the big zoo of subatomic particles is the B meson. It has a very short lifetime once it's created. In rare instances it decays to three lighter particles: a kaon, a lepton and an anti-lepton. There are many types of leptons and anti-leptons. Two are electrons/anti-electrons and muons/anti-muons. According to the existing theory of particle physics, they should be the decay products with equal probability: a B meson should decay to a kaon, electron and anti-electron as often as it decays to a kaon, muon and anti-muon (after adjusting for mass, since the muon is heavier). In the last 13 years, physicists studying B meson decays had found on four occasions that it decayed to a kaon, electron and anti-electron more often. They were glad for it, in a way. They had worked out the existing theory, called the Standard Model of particle physics, from the mid-20th century in a series of Nobel Prize-winning papers and experiments. Today, it stands complete, explaining the properties of a variety of subatomic particles. But it still can't explain what dark matter is, why the Higgs boson is so heavy or why there are three 'generations' of quarks, not more or less. If the Standard Model is old physics, particle physicists believe there could be a 'new physics' out there – some particle or force they haven't discovered yet – which could really complete the Standard Model and settle the unresolved mysteries. Over the years, they have explored various leads for 'new physics' in different experiments, but eventually, with more data, the findings have all been found to be in line with the predictions of the Standard Model. Until 2022, the anomalous B meson decays were thought to be a potential source of 'new physics' as well. A [2009 study](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.171801?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Japan found that some B meson decays created electron/anti-electrons pairs more often than muons/anti-muon pairs – as did a [2012 study](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.032012?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the US and a [2014 study](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.151601?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Europe. The last one involved the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in France, and a detector on it called LHCb. Among other things, the LHCb tracks B mesons. In [March 2021](https://moriond.in2p3.fr/2021/EW/slides/3%5Fflavour%5F02%5Fmoise.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the LHCb collaboration released data qualitatively significant enough to claim 'evidence' that some B mesons were decaying to electron/anti-electron pairs more often than to muon/anti-muon pairs. But the latest data from the LHC, released on December 20, appears to settle the question: it's still old physics. The formation of different types of lepton/anti-lepton particle pairs with equal probability is called lepton-flavour universality. Since 2009, physicists had been recording data that suggested that one type of some B meson decays were violating lepton-flavour university, in the form of a previously unknown particle or force acting on the decay process. In the new data, physicists analysed B meson decays in the current as well as one of two other pathways, and at two different energy levels – thus, as the official [press release](https://home.cern/news/news/physics/lhcb-brings-leptons-line?ref=slightlyacidic.com) put it, "yielding four independent comparisons of the decays". The more data there is to compare, the more robust the findings will be. This data was collected over the last five years. Every time the LHC operates, it's called a 'run'. Each run generates several terabytes of data that physicists, with the help of computers, comb through in search of evidence for different hypotheses. The data for the new analysis was collected over two runs. And it led physicists to conclude that B mesons' decay does not violate lepton-flavour universality. The Standard Model still stands and, perhaps equally importantly, a 13-year-old 'new physics' lead has been returned to dormancy. The LHC is currently in its third run; scientists and engineers working with the machine perform maintenance and install upgrades between runs, so each new cycle of operations is expected to produce more as well as more precise data, leading to more high-precision analyses that could, physicists hope, one day reveal 'new physics'. ### Notes on the NIF nuclear fusion breakthrough URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/15/notes-on-the-nif-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough/ Last updated: 2022-12-15T04:41:07.000Z My explainer/analysis of the US nuclear fusion breakthrough was [published today](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/understanding-the-fusion-energy-breakthrough-announced-by-the-us/article66264381.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Some stuff didn't make it to the final draft for space and tone constraints; I'm publishing that below. **1.** While most US government officials present at the announcement of the NIF's results, including the president's science advisor Arati Prabhakar (and with the exception of energy secretary Jennifer Granholm), were clear that a power plant was a long way off, they weren't sufficiently clear that the road from the achievement to such a power station was neither well-understood nor straightforward even as they repeatedly invoked the prospect of commercial power production. LLNL director Kim Budil even said she expects the technology to be ready for commercialisation within five decades. Apart from overstating the prospect as a result, their words also created a stark contrast with how the US government has responded to countries' demand for more climate financing and emissions cuts. It's okay with playing up a *potential* source of clean energy that can only be realised well after global warming has shot past the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5º C (if at all) but [dances all around](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-five-outcomes-analysis/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) its contributions to the $100 billion fund it promised it would contribute to and demands to cut emissions – both within the country and in the form of investments around the world – *before 2050*. Also read: [US fusion bhashan](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/12/13/us-fusion-bhashan/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) **2.** A definitive prerequisite for a fusion setup to have achieved ignition \[i.e. the fusion yield being higher than the input energy\] is the [Lawson criterion](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/NucEne/lawson.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), named for nuclear engineer John D. Lawson, who derived it in 1955\. It stipulates a minimum value for the product of the ion density and the confinement time for different fuels. For the deuterium-tritium reaction mixture at the NIF, for example, the product must be at least 1014 s/cm3. In words, this means the temperature must be *high enough* for *long enough* to allow the ions to get closer to each other given they are packed *densely enough*, achieved by compressing the capsule that contains them. The Lawson criterion in effect tells us why high temperature and high pressure are prerequisites for inertial confinement fusion and why we can't easily compromise them on the road to higher gain. **3.** Mentions of "gain" in the announcement on December 13 referred to the scientific gain of the fusion test: the ratio of fusion output to the lasers' output. Its value is thus a reflection of the challenges of heating plasma, sources of heat loss during ignition and fusion, and increasing fusion yield. While government officials at the announcement were careful to note that the NIF result was a "scientific breakthrough", other scientists told this correspondent that a scientific gain of 1 was a matter of time and that the real revolution would be a higher engineering gain. This is the ratio of the power supplied by an inertial confinement fusion power plant to the grid to the plant's recirculating power – i.e. the power consumed to create, maintain and heat the fusion plasma and to operate other facilities. This metric is more brutal than the scientific gain because it includes the latter's challenges as well as the challenges to reducing energy loss in electric engineering equipment. **4.** One plasma physicist likened the NIF’s feat to “the Kitty Hawk moment for the Wright brothers” to [*The Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/12/12/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-benefits/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But in a January 2022 paper, scientists from the US Department of Energy wrote that their “Kitty Hawk moment” would be the wall-plug gain reaching 1, instead of the scientific gain, for fusion energy. The wall-plug gain is the ratio of the power from fusion to the power drawn from the wall-plug to run the power plant. **5.** The mode of operation of the inertial confinement facility at NIF is indirect-drive and uses [central hotspot ignition](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0003298?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Indirect-drive means the laser pulses don't directly strike the capsule holding the ions but the hohlraum holding the capsule. When the lasers strike the capsule directly, they need to do so as symmetrically as possible to ensure uniform compression on all sides. Any asymmetry leads to a [Rayleigh-Taylor instability](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2020.0030?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that rapidly reduces the yield. Achieving such pinpoint accuracy is quite difficult: the capsule is only 2 mm wide, so even a sub-millimetre deviation in a single pulse can tamp the output to an enormous degree. Once the laser pulses have heated up the hohlraum's inside surface, the latter emits X-rays, which then uniformly compress and heat the capsule from all sides. ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/13557-dadd8-4c8ee-95b07-44049-761f1-screenshot-2022-12-15-at-9.48.16-am.png?w=1024&h=805) A schematic of the laser, hohlraum and capsule setup for indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion at the National Ignition Facility. Source: S.H. Glenzer et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 085004 **6.** However, this doesn't heat all of the fuel to the requisite high temperature. The fuel is arranged in concentric layers, and the heat and pressure cause the 20 µg of deueterium-tritium mix in the central portion to fuse first. This sharply increases the temperature and launches a thermonuclear "burn wave" into the rest of the fuel, which triggers additional reactions. The wisdom for this technique arises from the fact that fusing two hydrogen-2 nuclei requires a temperature corresponding to 5-10 keV of energy (a few million kelvin) whereas the yield is 17,600 keV. So supplying the energy for just one fusion reaction could [yield enough energy](http://gaps.ing2.uniroma1.it/~atzeni/Presentations/Atzeni-SUSSP68%5Flectures%5F1and%5F2%5Frev1.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for hundreds more. Its downside in the inertial confinement contest is that a not-insignificant fraction the energy needs to be diverted to compressing the nuclei instead of heating them, which reduces the gain. **7.** As the NIF announcement turns the world’s attention to the prospect of nuclear fusion, ITER’s prospects are also under scrutiny. According to \[Shishir Deshpande of IPR Gandhinagar\], who is also former project director of ITER-India, the facility is 75% complete and “key components under manufacturing” will arrive in the “next three to five years”. It has already overrun several cost estimates and deadlines (India is one of its funding countries) – but \[according to another scientist’s\] estimate, it has “great progress” and will “deliver”. Extending the “current experiments” – referring to the NIF’s tests – “is not a direct path to a power station, unlike ITER, which is far more advanced in being an integrated power station. Many engineering issues which ITER is built to address are not even topics yet for laser fusion, such as survival of key components under high-intensity radiation environments.” ### Skyward light, wayward light URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/14/skyward-light-wayward-light/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:19.000Z This is welcome news: … even if it's curious that three of the four officially stated reasons for designating this 'dark sky reserve' aren't directly related to the telescopes, and that telescopes had to come up in the area for the local government, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and whoever else to acknowledge that it deserved to have dark skies. I believe that 'doing' astronomy with telescopes shouldn't be a prerequisite to "promoting livelihoods through … astro-tourism" and "spreading awareness and education about astronomy". And that's why I wonder if there there are other sites in the country that are favourable to a popular science-driven activity, where the locals can be taught to guide tourists to pleasurably perform that activity, but which hasn't been done because scientists aren't there doing it themselves. But frankly, the government should declare as much of the country a dark-sky reserve as possible\*, in consultation with local stakeholders – or at least a new kind of 'reserve' where, say, light, noise and other neglected forms of pollution are limited to a greater degree than is common by law and to encourage sustainability along these axes as well. This is in opposition to dealing with these irritants in piecemeal or *ad hoc* fashion, where each type of pollution is addressed in isolation (even when they have common sources, like factories), and – to a lesser extent – not just because scientists require certain conditions for their work. (**\*** I'm obviously cynical about instituting large-scale behavioural change that'd preclude the need for such reserves.) Case in point: the new Hanle dark-sky reserve hasn't been designated as such under law but through an MoU between the UT of Ladakh, the IIA and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, with a commitment to [fulfilling requirements](https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/become-a-dark-sky-place/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) defined by the International Dark Sky Association , based in the US. Fortunately – but sadly, considering we had to wait for an extraneous prompt – one of the [association's requirements](https://darksky.app.box.com/s/wdd1yzz6scwau7ja9bhf8eb4zgm3xl01/file/628727041707?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is "current/planned legislation to protect the area". Such 'reserves' also don't have to be setup at the expense of development principally because many of the ways to reduce light (and noise) pollution can do so without coming [in the way](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/sciences-humankind-shield/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), of development as well as our right as citizens to enjoy public spaces in all the ways in which we're entitled. (I'm asking for 'less' knowing the Indian government's well-known reluctance to take radical steps to protect natural resources, but we're also at a point from the PoV of the climate crisis where every gain is good gain. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise, however.) One of the simplest ways is in fact to have no public lighting installation that casts light upward, into the sky, but keeps it all facing down. Doing this will subtract the installation's contribution to light pollution, improve energy-use efficiency by not 'wasting' any light thrown upwards and reduce the power consumed by limiting it to that required to illuminate only what needs to be illuminated, together with surfaces that limit the amount of light scattered upward. Other similarly simple ways include turning off all lights when you have no need for them (such as when you leave the room), to prefer energy-efficient lighting solutions and to actively limit the use of decorative lighting – but the 'turn the lamps downward' bit is both sensible and surprising in its general non-achievement. Hanle of course will be subject to more stringent restrictions, including requiring people to keep the colour temperature under 3,000 kelvin and the light flux of unshielded lamps to 500 lumen. Here's an example of the difference to be made: That's a (visibly) necessary extremum, in a manner of speaking – to maintain suitable viewing conditions for the ground-based telescopes in the area. On the other hand, India's (and the UAE's for that matter, since I [was there recently](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/08/17/uae-straws-in-the-wind/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) industrialisation and urbanisation are creating an unnecessary extremum on the other hand, giving seemingly trivial concerns like light pollution the slip. A [2016 study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600377?ref=slightlyacidic.com) found that less than 10% of India is exposed to "very high nighttime light intensities with no dark adaption for human eyes" – but also that around 80% of the population is exposed to between "from 1 to 8% above the natural light" to complete lack of access to "true night because it is masked by an artificial twilight". ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ab4e2-56bc7-a14fd-95dae-eac1b-3f20a-1600377-f11.jpg?w=1024&h=589) The tragedy, if we can call it that, is exacerbated when even trivial fixes aren't implemented properly. Or is it when an industrialist might look at this chart and think, "We've still got a lot of white to go"? ### US fusion bhashan URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/13/us-fusion-bhashan/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:20.000Z At 8.30 pm on December 13, US Department of Energy officials announced that the federally funded National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California had conducted a fusion test in which the energy yield was greater than that supplied to start it. All of them seemed eager to say that this is what US leadership looks like, that this is proof of the US gunning for what was once thought impossible, that the US is where the world's most brilliant minds work, that according to Joe Biden the US is the land of possibility – and it was hilarious. The announcement pertains to a scientific demonstration that the NIF's mode of achieving controlled fusion, called inertial confinement, works. After this come more tests and modelling, manufacturing to key components to very high quality standards, scaling up from the bare essentials to bigger tests, leading up to designing a commercial facility, then building and finally operating it – assuming success at every step. LLNL director Kim Budil said at the presser that commercial inertial confinement could be three or four decades away. All this said, the test is actually far removed from "zero-carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society", in the words of energy secretary Jennifer Granholm. My forthcoming article for *The Hindu* (Thursday) explains why. One important requirement is the energy gain: the ratio of the output energy to the input. The new test achieved a gain of around 1.5 – but only relative to the energy that started the fusion reactions, not the energy that the lasers consumed to produce and deliver it. More importantly, for inertial confinement fusion to be practicable, it needs to achieve a gain in excess of at least 100\. If scientists at NIF find that they're unable to go past, say, a gain of 50, that will be the end of the road for commercial ICF using the NIF's setup. So there's a long, long way to go even before researchers conduct a test that's a faithful proof of concept for *practical* nuclear fusion power. *But even more importantly*, it's spellbinding how the US government will stake its claims to being the country that achieves the impossible, etc. but will make all sorts of excuses to disguise its [failure of leadership](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to mobilise $100 billion a year from economically developed countries for poorer countries to use to weather the climate crisis; to disguise [its attempts](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-five-outcomes-analysis/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to undermine, modify or defy commitments made under the Paris Agreement; and to [evade, stall and deny](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-adaptation-draft-cbdr-ipcc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) efforts to set up a 'loss and damage' fund at COP27. It's a shame that the Conferences of the Parties to the UN FCCC have been spending bigger chunks of their agenda of late just to push back on the recalcitrance of the US et al. Yet here we are, with government officials blaring their trumpets for a proof of a proof of concept with several caveats (as I spell out in *The Hindu*). Granholm even called the result "one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century", to applause from the audience, and said Joe Biden called it a BFD. Of course it is. It's an unexpectedly big umbrella that the US has got to unfurl over its climate action obligations. ### Science's humankind shield URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/11/sciences-humankind-shield/ Last updated: 2022-12-11T05:03:35.000Z We need to reconsider where the notion that "science benefits all humans" comes from and whether it is really beneficial. I was prompted to this after coming upon a [short article in *Sky & Telescope*](https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/holmdel-horn-which-heard-evidence-of-the-big-bang-is-at-risk/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the Holmdel Horn antenna in New Jersey being threatened by a local redevelopment plan. In the 1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson used the Holmdel Horn to record the first observational evidence of the cosmic microwave background, which is radiation leftover from – and therefore favourable evidence for – the Big Bang event. In a manner of speaking, then, the Holmdel Horn is an important part of the story of humans' awareness of their place in the universe. The US government designated the site of the antenna a 'National Historic Landmark' in 1989\. On November 22, 2022, the Holmdel Township Committee nonetheless petitioned the planning board to consider redeveloping the locality where the antenna is located. According to the *Sky & Telescope* article, "If the town permits development of the site, most likely to build high-end residences, the Horn could be removed or even destroyed. The fact that it is a National Historic Landmark does not protect it. The horn is on private property and receives no Federal funds for its upkeep." Some people have responded to the threat by suggesting that the Holmdel Horn be moved to the sprawling Green Bank Telescope premises in Virginia. This would separate it from the piece of land that can then be put to other use. Overall, based on posts on Twitter, the prevailing sentiment appears to be that the Holmdel Horn antenna is a historic site worthy of preservation. One commenter, an amateur astronomer, wrote under the article: > "The Holmdel Horn Antenna changed humanity's understanding of our place in the universe. The antenna belongs to all of humanity. The owners of the property, Holmdel Township, and Monmouth County have a historic responsibility to preserve the antenna so future generations can see and appreciate it." (I think the commenter meant "humankind" instead of "humanity".) The history of astronomy involved, and involves, thousands of antennae and observatories around the world. Even with an arbitrarily high threshold to define the 'most significant' discoveries, there are likely to be hundreds (if not more) of facilities that made them and could thus be deemed to be worthy of preservation. But should we really preserve all of them? Astronomers, perhaps among all scientists, are likelier to be most keenly aware of the importance of land to the scientific enterprise. Land is a finite resource that is crucial to most, if not all, realms of the human enterprise. Astronomers experienced this firsthand when the Indigenous peoples of Hawai'i protested the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, leading to a [long-overdue reckoning](https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=soars&ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the legacy of telescopes on this and other landmarks that are culturally significant to the locals, but whose access to these sites has come to be mediated by the needs of astronomers. In 2020, Nithyanand Rao wrote an [informative article](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/thirty-meter-telescope-native-hawaiians-mauna-kea-astronomy-colonialism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about how "astronomy and colonialism have a shared history", with land and access to clear skies as the resources at its heart. --- **Also read**: - [Immunity for scientists? Err…](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/nambi-narayanan-scientists-immunity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Should 'geniuses' be paid extra?](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/should-geniuses-be-paid-extra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) --- One argument that astronomers arguing in favour of building or retaining these controversial telescopes have used is to claim that the fruits of science "belong to all of humankind", including to the locals. This is dubious in at least two ways. First, are the fruits really accessible to everyone? This doesn't just mean the papers that astronomers publish based on work using these telescopes are openly and freely available. It also requires that the topics that astronomers work on need to be based on the consensus of all stakeholders, not just the astronomers. Also, who does and doesn't get observation time on the telescope? What does the local government expect the telescope to achieve? What are the sorts of studies the telescope can and can't support? Are the ground facilities equally accessible to everyone? There are more questions to ask, but I think you get the idea that claiming the fruits of scientific labour – at least *astronomic labour* – are available to everyone is disingenuous simply because there are many axes of exclusion in the instrument's construction and operation. Second, who wants a telescope? More specifically, what are the terms on which it might be fair for a small group of people to decide what "all of humankind" wants? Sure, what I'm proposing sounds comical – a global consensus mechanism just to make a seemingly harmless statement like "science benefits everyone" – but the converse seems equally comical: to presume benefits for everyone when in fact they really accrue to a small group and to rely on self-fulfilling prophecies to stake claims to favourable outcomes. Given enough time and funds, any reasonably designed international enterprise, like housing development or climate financing, is likely to benefit humankind. Scientists have advanced similar arguments when advocating for building particle supercolliders: that the extant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe has led to advances in medical diagnostics, distributed computing and materials science, apart from confirming the existence of the Higgs boson. All these advances are secondary goals, at best, and justify neither the LHC nor its significant construction and operational costs. Also, who's to say we wouldn't have made these advances by following any other trajectory? Scientists, or even just the limited group of astronomers, often advance the idea that their work is for everyone's good – elevating it to a universally desirable thing, propping it up like a shield in the face of questions about whether we really need an expensive new experiment – whereas on the ground its profits are disseminated along crisscrossing gradients, limited by borders. I'm inclined to harbour a similar sentiment towards the Holmdel Horn antenna in the US: it doesn't belong to all of humanity, and if you (astronomers in the US, e.g.) wish to preserve it, don't do it in my name. I'm indifferent to the fate of the Horn because I recognise that what we do and don't seek to preserve is influenced by its significance as an instrument of science (in this case) as much as by ideas of national prestige and self-perception – and this is a project in which I have never had any part. A plaque installed on the Horn reads: "This site possesses national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America." I also recognise the value of land and, thus, must acknowledge the significance of my ignorance of the history of the territory that the Horn currently occupies as well as the importance of reclaiming it for newer use. (I am, however, opposed in principle to the Horn being threatened by the prospect of "high-end residences" rather than affordable housing for more people.) Obviously others – most others, even – might feel differently, but I'm curious if a) scientists anywhere, other than astronomers, have ever systematically dealt with push-back along this line, and b) the other ways in which they defend their work at large when they can't or won't use the "benefits everyone" tack. ### Links (1) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/10/links-1/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:21.000Z - [Artist Feeds Her Childhood Diary Into an AI Chatbot -- And Has a Moving Conversation With Her Younger Self](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2022/11/michelle-huang-ai-art-gpt-diary-conversation.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Giant satellite outshines stars, sparking fresh concerns for astronomers](https://www.science.org/content/article/giant-satellite-outshines-stars-sparking-fresh-concerns-astronomers?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Does the Peer Review Process Need Blockchain?](https://neo.life/2022/11/does-the-peer-review-process-need-blockchain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [The Ants Have Not Read Kant: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid](https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/12/the-ants-have-not-read-kant-petr-kropotkin-and-mutual-aid/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – opening line: "Though he could not have cared less about fame, Kropotkin was one of the world’s first intellectual celebrities, known as both a brilliant scientist and a vocal proponent of the political philosophy of anarchism." - [Eighty Years of the Finite Element Method: Birth, Evolution, and Future](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11831-022-09740-9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [The Undersea Art Gallery That Ensnares Illegal Trawlers](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/underwater-sculptures-stopping-trawling?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Who first thought of the notion of Polynomial Time?](https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2022/11/who-first-thought-of-notion-of.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Brilliant jerks, crazy hotties, and other artifacts of range restriction](https://towardsdatascience.com/brilliant-jerks-crazy-hotties-and-other-artifacts-of-range-restriction-c53785ae249f?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Meta trained an AI on 48M science papers. It was shut down after 2 days](https://www.cnet.com/science/meta-trained-an-ai-on-48-million-science-papers-it-was-shut-down-after-two-days/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – Meta AI built Galactica to "organize science". It believed vaccines cause autism (they don't), 1 + 2 ≠ 3, and produced nonsense notes on bone biology. - [Gigapixel panoramas](https://joumxyzptlk.de/deusex%5Fpanorama.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – What do you think the smallest visible detail in an image 60,000 pixels wide could be? - [Shockley was a racist and eugenicist](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8117?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Basics of Concrete Barriers](https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/marchapril-2000/basics-concrete-barriers?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (2000) – "Concrete barriers appear to be simple and uncomplicated, but in reality, they are sophisticated safety devices." - [Is Wine Fake?](https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/is-wine-fake?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – by Scott Alexander Siskind - [The Toxic History of Color](https://atmos.earth/natural-dyes-synthetic-color-toxic/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [No Cure For Loneliness](https://compactmag.com/article/no-cure-for-loneliness?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [My black body story (it's physics).](https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2022/08/my-black-body-story-its-physics.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – How we teach physics history can affect how we teach physics itself. - [Sine and Other Curves](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/sine-and-other-curves.html) – Where the word 'sine' (as in the sine and cosine curves of trigonometry) comes from ### The strange beauty of Planck units URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/10/the-strange-beauty-of-planck-units/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:22.000Z What does it mean to say that the speed of light is 1? We know the speed of light in the vacuum of space to be 299,792,458 m/s – or about 300,000 km/s. It's a quantity of speed that's very hard to visualise with the human brain. In fact, it's so fast as to *practically* be instantaneous for the human experience. In some contexts it might be reassuring to remember the 300,000 km/s figure, such as when you're a theoretical physicist working on quantum physics problems and you need to remember that reality is often (but not always) *local*, meaning that when a force appears to to transmit its effects on its surroundings really rapidly, the transmission is still limited by the speed of light. ('Not always' because quantum entanglement [appears to break](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/physics-nobel-nonlocality-aspect-zeilinger/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this rule.) Another way to understand the speed of light is as an *expression of proportionality*. If another entity, which we'll call X, can move at best at 150,000 km/s in the vacuum of space, we can say the speed of light is 2x the speed of X in this medium. Let's say that instead of km/s we adopt a unit of speed called kb/s, where b stands for bloop: 1 bloop = 79 km. So the speed of light in vacuum becomes 3,797 kb/s and the speed of X in vacuum becomes 1,898.5 kb/s. The proportionality between the two entities – the speeds of light and X in vacuum – you'll notice is still 2x. Let's change things up a bit more, to expressing the speed of light as the *n*th power of 2\. *n* \= 18 comes closest for light and *n* \= 17 for X. (The exact answer in each case would be log *s*/log 2, where *s* is the speed of each entity.) The constant of proportionality is not even close to 2 in this case. The reason is that we switched from linear units to logarithmic units. This example shows how even our SI units – which allow us to make sense of how much a mile is relative to a kilometre and how much a solar year is in terms of seconds, and thus standardise our sense of various dimensions – aren't universally standard. The SI units have been defined keeping the human experience of reality in mind – as opposed to, say, those of tardigrades or blue whales. As it happens, when you're a theoretical physicist, the human experience isn't very helpful as you're trying to understand the vast scales on which gravity operates and the infinitesimal realm of quantum phenomena. Instead, physicists set aside their physical experiences and turned to the universal physical constants: numbers whose values are constant in space and time, and which together control the physical properties of our universe. By combining only four universal physical constants, the German physicist Max Planck found in 1899 that he could express certain values of length, mass, time and temperature in units related to the human experience. Put another way, these are the smallest distance, mass, duration and temperature values that we can express using the constants of our universe. These are: - *G*, the gravitational constant (roughly speaking, defines the strength of the gravitational force between two massive bodies) - *c*, the speed of light in vacuum - *h*, the Planck constant (the constant of proportionality between a photon's energy and frequency) - *kB*, the Boltzmann constant (the constant of proportionality between the average kinetic energy of a group of particles and the temperature of the group) Based on Planck's idea and calculations, physicists have been able to determine the following: ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/fb59d-screenshot-2022-12-20-at-6.45.56-pm.png?w=1024&h=482) Credit: [Planck units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%5Funits?ref=slightlyacidic.com)/Wikipedia (Note here that the Planck constant, *h*, has been replaced with the reduced Planck constant *ħ*, which is *h* divided by 2π.) When the speed of light is expressed in these [*Planck units*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural%5Funits?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Planck%5Funits), it comes out to a value of 1 (i.e. 1 times 1.616255×10−35 m per 5.391247×10−44 s). The same goes for the values of the gravitational constant, the Boltzmann constant and the reduced Planck constant. Remember that units are expressions of proportionality. Because the Planck units are all expressed in terms of universal physical constants, they give us a better sense of what is and isn't proportionate. To borrow [Frank Wilczek's example](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1387576?ref=slightlyacidic.com), we know that the binding energy due to gravity contributes only \~0.000000000000000000000000000000000000003% of a proton's mass; the rest comes from its constituent particles and their energy fields. Why this enormous disparity? We don't know. More importantly, which entity has the onus of providing an explanation for why it's so out of proportion: gravity or the proton's mass? The answer is in the Planck units, in which the value of the gravitational constant *G* is the desired 1, whereas the proton's mass is the one out of proportion – a ridiculously small 10\-19 (approx.). So the onus is on the proton to explain why it's so light, rather than on gravity to explain why it acts so feebly on the proton. More broadly, the Planck units define our universe's "truly fundamental" units. All other units – of length, mass, time, temperature, etc. – ought to be expressible in terms of the Planck units. If they can't be, physicists will take that as a sign that their calculations are incomplete, wrong or that there's a part of physics that they haven't discovered yet. The use of Planck units can reveal such sources of tension. For example, since our current theories of physics are founded on the universal physical constants, the theories can't describe reality beyond the scale described by the Planck units. This is why we don't really know what happened in the first 10\-43 seconds after the Big Bang (and for that matter any events that happen for a duration shorter than this), how matter behaves [beyond the Planck temperature](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/absolute-hot/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or what gravity feels like at distances shorter than 10\-35 m. In fact, just like how gravity dominates the human experience of reality while quantum physics dominates the microscopic experience, physicists expect that theories of *quantum gravity* (like [string theory](https://science.thewire.in/science/theres-no-conflict-lack-evidence-string-theory-work-done/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) will dominate the experience of reality at the Planck length. What will this reality look like? We don't know, but we know that it's a good question. **Other helpful sources**: - [Quark and the mass of a proton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Quarks%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fmass%5Fof%5Fa%5Fproton) - [The coupling constants and unification of interactions](https://www.physicsmasterclasses.org/exercises/keyhole/en/projects/running%5Falphas.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [QCD Made Simple](https://sci-hub.se/https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1310117?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Scaling Mount Planck II: Base Camp](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1428423?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Open problem of confinement – references](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/open+problem+of+confinement+--+references?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### Getting rid of the GRE URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/09/getting-rid-of-the-gre/ Last updated: 2022-12-09T04:11:07.000Z An [investigation by *Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/gre-exit-gains-momentum-ph-d-programs-drop-exam-requirement-amid-pandemic?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has found that, today, just 3% of “PhD programs in eight disciplines at 50 top-ranked US universities” require applicants’ GRE scores, “compared with 84% four years ago”. This is good news about a test whose purpose I could never understand: first as a student who had to take it to apply to journalism programmes, then as a journalist who couldn’t unsee the barriers the test imposed on students from poorer countries with localy tailored learning systems and, yes, not fantastic English. (Before the test’s format was changed in 2011, taking the test required takers to memorise long lists of obscure English words, an exercise that was devoid of purpose because takers would never remember most of those words.) Obviously many institutes still require prospective students to take the GRE, but the fact that many others are alive to questions about the utility of standardised tests and the barriers they impose on students from different socioeconomic backgrounds is heartening. The *Science* article also briefly explored what proponents of the GRE have to say, and I’m sure you’ll see (below) as I did that the reasons are flimsy – either because this is the strength of the arguments on offer or because *Science* hasn’t sampled all the available arguments in favour, which seems to me to be more likely. This said, the reason offered by a senior member of the company that devises and administers the GRE is instructive. > “I think it’s a mistake to remove GRE altogether,” says Sang Eun Woo, a professor of psychology at Purdue University. Woo is quick to acknowledge the GRE isn’t perfect and doesn’t think test scores should be used to rank and disqualify prospective students – an approach many programs have used in the past. But she and some others think the GRE can be a useful element for holistic reviews, considered alongside qualitative elements such as recommendation letters, personal statements, and CVs. “We’re not saying that the test is the only thing that graduate programs should care about,” she says. “This is more about, why not keep the information in there because more information is better than less information, right?” > > Removing test scores from consideration could also hurt students, argues Alberto Acereda, associate vice president of global higher education at the Educational Testing Service, the company that runs the GRE. “Many students from underprivileged backgrounds so often don’t have the advantage of attending prestigious programs or taking on unpaid internships, so using their GRE scores serves \[as a\] way to supplement their application, making them more competitive compared to their peers.” Both arguments come across as reasonable – but they’re both undermined by the result of an exercise that the department of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University conducted in 2020: A group evaluated prospective students’ applications for MS and PhD programmes while keeping the GRE scores hidden. When the scores were revealed, the evaluations weren’t [“materially affected”](https://www.eas.cornell.edu/news/cornells-earth-and-atmospheric-sciences-eliminates-gre-requirement?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Obviously the department’s findings are not generalisable – but they indicate the GRE’s redundancy, with the added benefit for evaluators to not have to consider the test’s exorbitant fee on the pool of applicants (around Rs 8,000 in 2014 and $160 internationally, up to $220 today) and the other [pitfalls of using the GRE](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206570&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to ‘rank’ students’ suitability for a PhD programme. Some others quoted in the *Science* article vouched for “rubric-based holistic reviews”. The meaning of “rubric” in context isn’t clear from the article itself but the term as a whole seems to mean considering students on a variety of fronts, one of which is their performance on the GRE. This also seems reasonable, but it’s not clear what GRE brings to the table. One 2019 study found that GRE scores [couldn’t usefully predict](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201634&ref=slightlyacidic.com) PhD outcomes in biomedical sciences. In this context, including the GRE – even as an option – in the application process could disadvantage some students from applying and/or being admitted due to the test’s requirements (including the fee) as well as, and as a counterexample to Acereda’s reasoning, due to their scores on the test not faithfully reflecting their ability to complete a biomedical research degree. But in another context – of admissions to the Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) – [researchers reported in 2019](https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.18-06-0103?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the GRE might be useful to “extract meaning from quantitative metrics” and when employed as part of a “multitiered holistic” admissions process, but which by itself could disproportionately triage Black, Native and Hispanic applicants. Taken together, more information is not *necessarily* better than less information, especially when there are other barriers to acquiring the ‘more’ bits. Finally, while evaluators might enjoy the marginal utility of redundancy, as a way to ‘confirm’ their decisions, it’s an additional and significant source of stress and consumer of time to all test-takers. This is in addition to a seemingly inescapable [diversity-performance tradeoff](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15305058.2021.2019750?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which strikes beyond the limited question of whether one standardised test is a valid predictor of students’ future performance and at the heart of what the purpose of a higher-education course is. That is, should institutes consider diversity at the *expense* of students’ performance? The answer depends on the way each institute is structured, what its goal is and what it measures to that end. One that is focused on its members publishing papers in [‘high IF’ journals](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/brcp-parasite-publishers-report-excerpt/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), securing high-value research grants, developing [high *h*\-indices](https://twitter.com/drugmonkeyblog/status/1600554924957310977?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and maintaining the institute’s own glamourous reputation is likely to see a ‘downside’ to increasing diversity. An institute focused on engendering curiosity, adherence to critical thinking and research methods, and developing blue-sky ideas is likely to not. But while the latter sounds great (strictly in the interests of science), it may be impractical from the point of view of helping tackle society’s problems and of [fostering](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/nambi-narayanan-scientists-immunity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [accountability](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/should-geniuses-be-paid-extra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the scientific enterprise at large. The ideal institute lies somewhere in between these extremes: its admission process will need to assume a little more work – work that the GRE currently abstracts off into a single score – in exchange for the liberty to decouple from university rankings, impact factors, ‘prestige’ and other such preoccupations. ### A 'quantum consciousness' absurdity at IIT Mandi URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/07/stuart-hameroff-at-iit-mandi/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:23.000Z > As you go downward, inward, smaller and smaller, you get more vast conscious experience. This is the idea in Indian knowledge systems. At the bottom of it, or the very base of it, at the source, is Brahman. My point is that this is actually very consistent with what we're learning about how consciousness may be produced in our brain due to quantum effects. The person who made this statement is Stuart Hameroff, at the 10th convocation at IIT Mandi on December 5\. Hameroff is a neuroscientist and anaesthesiologist. Since 1975, he has been at the University of Arizona, where, in 1999, he became professor in the department of anaesthesiology and psychology and the director for the Center for Consciousness Studies. He became an emeritus professor in 2003\. He is famous for his part in the Orch-OR hypothesis of how consciousness originates in the brain. Hameroff and Roger Penrose (who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2020 for unrelated work) collaborated on the idea and published a few papers detailing their assumptions and conclusions. ‘Orch-OR’ stands for ‘orchestrated objective reduction’. Broadly speaking, the hypothesis is that the states of microtubules, which are cellular structures inside neurons, enter into a quantum superposition – becoming like the cat inside the unopened box in the Schrödinger’s cat thought-experiment. The superposition is then forced to collapse (‘the box is opened’) in favour of one state by gravity. This is taken to be the moment when consciousness comes 'on'. [One scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di%C3%B3si%E2%80%93Penrose%5Fmodel?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the hypothesis says that when the superposition collapses, the process should release some electromagnetic radiation – a testable prediction. Experiments looking for this radiation have come up empty. One experiment whose results were [published in May 2022](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/a-quantum-theory-of-consciousness/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) found that the brain would have to have 1,000-times more of the cells that make up microtubules than it actually does, disfavouring the hypothesis in a range of space- and time-scales, albeit not entirely. The hypothesis is also largely controversial and doesn’t find favour among most physicists, who have been critical of Penrose’s calculations of how the gravity-mediated superposition collapse happens. To be sure, there has been some evidence that quantum phenomena might be going on in the human brain; what we don’t have evidence for is sophisticated hypotheses like Orch-OR that claim a precise origin of consciousness. So Hameroff's statement at IIT Mandi that the concept of the ‘Brahman’ “is actually very consistent with what we’re learning about how consciousness may be produced in our brain due to quantum effects” is at best disingenuous. What *we* are learning is that Orch-OR is quite unlikely to be a valid explanation of the emergence of consciousness in the brain; and *we* are certainly not finding support for Orch-OR by shoehorning the concept of the ‘Brahman’ and spiritual ideas of consciousness into gravity’s effects on hypothetical forms of spacetime. But [his talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzaPez-jyPM&t=7790s&ref=slightlyacidic.com) gets worse. A few minutes later, Hameroff says that consciousness appears to straddle the shared border between the quantum and the classical worlds, that the phenomenon of quantum state reduction (a.k.a. superposition collapse) is akin to the emergence of the “Atman from the Brahman”, and that he wondered “whether the many faces of Krishna were a quantum superposition”. He continues: > Under normal circumstances, the people back then didn’t see Krishna in superposition but as one, but knew in different ways that there could be this apparent superposition of many possible faces of Krishna. So here we have a scientist who once helped develop and support a difficult hypothesis to explain a famously intractable problem using the methods of science, but who has now gone so far as to claim that a) a Hindu deity was a real person, b) he had many heads, and c) people didn’t see these heads but d) knew that he could have many faces, and e) understood them to be in an “apparent superposition”. What are we to make of this waterfall of nonsense? His claims aren't false because they're *unfalsifiable*. Consider just one: Hameroff is postulating that macroscopic superposition could have been real (regarding the *face* of a human being, but let's set that aside). Quantum computers work by manipulating qubits, the smallest units of information in these machines, using quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement. The computer’s result is the state to which the qubits’ superposition collapses. But unlike classical bits, which are made of semiconductors, qubits are very fragile systems and must be protected against external disturbances, even small amounts of electromagnetic radiation. If a qubit is disturbed, it will lose the ability to participate in the quantum computer in a process called decoherence. To date, despite researchers’ best efforts, they [haven’t built](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/quantum-computing-qubits-error-correction-no-cloning-theorem/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a quantum computer that completely eliminates errors arising out of decoherence. They also haven’t built quantum computers that can solve practical problems, like modelling stresses on a bridge or synthesising a drug with certain components either, meaning more complex machines will present more significant decoherence barriers. And quantum computers use subatomic (microscopic) particles as qubits. There is no evidence to date of macroscopic objects being in perfect superposition, forget an entity as complicated and ‘noisy’ as a human face or body. Hameroff’s other claims require less explanation as to their absurdity. There is a good chance he was invited to IIT Mandi with full knowledge of his views. Since 1994, Hameroff has been conducting a conference every year called 'Science of Consciousness', where some consciousness researchers present some notable ideas and results while others… Let me quote [Tom Bartlett](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/19/out-of-their-minds-wild-ideas-at-the-coachella-of-consciousness?ref=slightlyacidic.com) writing for *The Guardian* in 2018: > While the Science of Consciousness event has, technically, three programme chairs and an advisory committee, it is more or less The Stuart Show. He decides who will and who will not present. And, to put it nicely, not everyone is in love with the choices he makes. To put it less nicely: some consciousness researchers believe that the whole shindig has gone off the rails, that it is seriously damaging the field of consciousness studies, and that it should be shut down. In 2012, [Hameroff said](https://www.deccanherald.com/content/289131/near-death-experiences-occur-soul.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), > “Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. … If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says ‘I had a near death experience’. If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.” In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a superposition of states collapses into a single state when an observation is made on the system. What counts as an act of observation has been refined over the years: today, physicists understand that the collapse happens when the information required to describe the superposition is no longer locally available. In this sense, Hameroff’s delineation above seems to hew close to reality – but we have absolutely no way of saying that [quantum information](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/unitarity-entanglement-islands-holography-information/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is the same as a soul! As Jim Al-Khalili, an expert in quantum biology, [said in 2020](https://scivpro.com/manuscript/10%5F32386%5Fscivpro%5F000020/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about Orch-OR: > “There was some brief excitement about this idea initially, but I think very quickly most scientists said: ‘No, hang on a minute, just because quantum mechanics is mysterious and we don’t understand it and consciousness is mysterious and we don’t understand it, it doesn’t mean that the two have to be connected’.” So Hameroff has been making dubious claims for a long time, including claims for at least a decade that overlook the differences between a knowledge system concerned with verifiable truths and the elimination of bias and one that is concerned with harmonising reality and perception regardless of tests – and [the pitfalls](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/isro-akash-tatva-conference-pseudoscience/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of claiming that a ‘fact’ in one system could be wholly equivalent to a ‘fact’ in the other. To quote philosophy scholar [S.K. Arun Murthi](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/isro-akash-tatva-conference-pseudoscience/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > While \[ancient Indian\] systems of thought are called philosophical systems, they are unified in their aim: salvation and liberation of the soul. One question that has frequently been the topic of discussion in scholarly circles is whether Indian culture and civilisation really recognised an independent discipline called 'philosophy' as a discursive analytic tradition. The question arises because all its schools have been restricted to theological and soteriological concerns. > > Surendranath Dasgupta even begins his aforementioned book with a note of caution, that Indian thought always manifested itself "in an yearning after the Infinite" and that "Hindus never busied themselves about the investigation of the laws of nature except in so far as it was connected with the general philosophical speculations". The other knowledge system, science, requires evidence, but Hameroff has none. Yet in May 2022 Hameroff again wrote: > “Light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that can be seen by the eyes of humans and animals – visible light. … Ancient traditions characterized consciousness as light. Religious figures were often depicted with luminous ‘halos’, and/or auras. Hindu deities are portrayed with luminous blue skin. And people who have ‘near death’ and ‘out of body’ experiences described being attracted toward a ‘white light’. In many cultures, those who have ‘awakened to the truth about reality’ are ‘enlightened’.” (A few months earlier, Laxmidhar Behera, the director of IIT Mandi, [had expressed](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/rid-friends-parents-of-evil-spirits-iit-mandi-director-video-7723930/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) belief and experience in exorcisms and that students should rid their friends’ parents of evil spirits using chants.) Armchair logicians and social-media loudmouths will now interpret Hameroff’s talk as ‘evidence’ of ancient India’s intellectual supremacy and as his tacit endorsement of the physical reality of Hindu deities and the sophisticated ideas that sages and scholars of the time contemplated. Hameroff [also says](https://www.ndtv.com/education/iit-mandi-confers-degrees-462-graduating-students-during-its-10th-convocation?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that “therapies aimed at microtubule resonance e.g. with painless, safe and pleasant brain ultrasound can treat mental and cognitive disorders”, extending a handle to many quacks already using quantum-physics gobbledygook to con unsuspecting care-seekers. There may be some who truly believe such statements while others will wield it to further an agenda while knowing well that the claims are less than flimsy. Either way, the task in front of the debunker is much more devious: to set out not just the laws of nature and the methods of science but also the work of Hameroff and Penrose, the criticism against it, why expertise is [not a carte blanche](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/ad-verecundiam/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the incommensurability of the knowledge systems involved, and the fine line between 'absence of evidence' and 'evidence of absence'. ### The curious case of the blue coloured ice cream URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/12/04/the-curious-case-of-the-blue-coloured-ice-cream/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:25.000Z Yesterday, a couple friends and I went out for some ice cream. One of them got a cone that, like the slushy, was a vivid blue in colour – the sort that's really rare in nature. Seeing that kind of blue in any food item is evocative of CGI screens, which are today both blue and green. The reason to pick one of these colours for these screens was that they are the most unlikely to be present on human skin, so the screen's blue could easily be substituted with the elements of a computer-generated scene without those effects spilling to the human actors in the foreground. (Studio technicians prefer blue screens for [low-light shoots](https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/video/discover/blue-screen-vs-green-screen.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) because reflected blue light is less bright than reflected green light.) Eventually, our group’s conversation turned to blue-coloured foods in general and whether we might have been wary of them once but lost our aversion as we better understood food chemistry and developed newer cooking technologies. The vendor in the ice cream store would have nothing of this, of course, and proceeded to describe how the colour of jamun before and after some chewing changed from black to purple. I didn't want to argue with him there but his answer didn't cut it. The cone of ice cream in my friend's hand was blue pre-chewing, plus I couldn't think of anything that did turn this shade of blue even after a good chew. The answer turned out to be a simple colouring agent, but in the course of tracking down its identity, I was able to catch a glimpse of why blue in nature is so rare. The root of the answer lies in high-school physics, specifically in Planck's equation: E = h*v*. E is the amount of energy in a wave; h is Planck's constant; and *v* is the frequency of the wave. In the visible spectrum, which is what humans can see, blue has the highest frequency, so bluer light transports more energy per wavelength than light of other frequencies. For plants' leaves, blue light is effectively the most energy-loaded snack, and they absorb all of it. We see plant leaves to be green because the chlorophyll in the leaves absorbs light of other frequencies, reflecting only the green for our eyes. (Curiously, water absorbs light of [lower frequencies better](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/environment-general-science-you-asked/why-sky-blue-or-better-yet-why-ocean-blue?ref=slightlyacidic.com), so deeper water looks bluer.) There is another consequence of plants' fondness for blue light: the colour of many animals is simply a reflection of the food they eat. Plants don’t usually have blue pigments lying around in their bodies, so animals that eat plants don't have a natural way to turn blue. Instead, most fauna that have blue colouring on their bodies employ structural colouring. Their bodies are covered in very small structures – like the ridges on the wings of *Morpho* butterflies, the beads in blue jay feathers and the barbules of peacock feathers – that scatter light in such a way that no frequencies except those in a narrow range escape to the surface. If this range is towards the higher frequency end of the spectrum, the scattered light is going to look bluer to our eyes. ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/c29e2-55d5f-63c5f-b9e2e-0fb41-b3499-1280px-morpho_didius_male_dos_mhnt.jpg?w=1024&h=763) A Morpho didius butterfly. Credit: Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 But there are some notable exceptions. A common product of the metabolisation of organic compounds called porphyrins is bile pigments; three such pigments are pterobilin, phorcabilin and sarpedobilin, and their presence imparts a blue colour. Pterobilin is produced in the bodies of butterflies of the genus *Nessaea* and in a few species of butterflies of the genus *Graphium* (*G. agamemnon*, *G. antiphates*, *G. doson* and *G. sarpedon*). One [metabolic product](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1148330/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of pterobilin is phorcabilin, which is a blue-green pigment found in the bodies of some *Graphium* species as well as in the purple-hued *Papilio phorcas* and *Papilio weiskei* butterflies. [Sarpedobilin](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Sarpedobilin?ref=slightlyacidic.com#section=Computed-Properties) is present in small quantities in the bodies of species that have pterobilin and/or phorcabilin – but in [higher quantities](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24263590/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the bodies of a few species found only in Southeast Asia (e.g. *Graphium stresemanni*). These species are thus uniquely able to produce blue-coloured features on their bodies using pigments instead of through structural colouration. Similarly, many plants' flowers and fruits (and in lower quantities in other parts) contain compounds called anthocyanins, which impart colours based on the acidity of their surroundings. Delphinidin is an anthocyanin that, in basic conditions (pH > 7), becomes bluer. This is how flowers of the genera *Delphinium* and *Viola* get their lovely lilac hues. ('Delphinion' is Ancient Greek for 'dolphin'; *Delphinium* plants were named thus for their dolphin-shaped flowers, and that's where the particular anthocyanin got its name.) Blue corn, however, gets its characteristic colour from a combination of cyanidin and peonidin. The colour of blue potatoes has been attributed to the presence of [petunidin and malvidin](https://ifst.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ijfs.13647?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Blue cheese is the handiwork of *Penicillium* moulds. Blue-green algae (including spirulina) get their blues from a protein complex called [C-phycocyanin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phycocyanin?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Ecological%5Frelevance). In plants, phycocyanin helps leaves absorb more light than just chlorophyll can, and later pass on their stored energy for photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria in the ocean use it to absorb sunlight at depths where little light gets through. The relative absence of a natural pigment that reflects blue light has rendered vivid blues a rare sight in nature – but amusingly enough, there's at least one story involving scientists struggling to create blue light in the lab as well. A central concept of semiconductor physics is electron holes: places in the material where an electron could be located but isn't. Since it's the absence of an electron, an electron hole denotes the presence of a positive charge. When an electron moves into an electron hole, the system releases some energy. When this energy is in the form of light, the phenomenon is called electroluminescence. The 'electro-' prefix refers to the electric energy supplied to the material to motivate the electron towards the electron hole. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are such electroluminescent materials; many of them emit light in the visible part of the spectrum. By the 1970s, scientists had developed both green and red LEDs that emitted sufficiently bright light with a reasonably good energy efficiency. They had also found blue LEDs but the materials they used emitted light dimly (like gallium nitride [doped with magnesium](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0025540872901274?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) or at very low efficiency (like the [0.03%](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092145269390277D?via%3Dihub&ref=slightlyacidic.com) of silicon carbide). A blue LED was important at the time for two reasons. The first, of course, was motivated by the simple question of why blue LEDs were harder to achieve than red and green LEDs (the three being the primary colours). The second had to do with the lucre of mass-market use: when the three primary colours are combined, the resulting colour is white – and white light has a wealth of applications in households and industry. White LED light also incurred, and incurs, a much lower energy cost than white light from other sources. The principal problem was a compound called gallium nitride (GaN): scientists knew it was electroluminescent, that it could emit blue light of sufficient brightness when doped with magnesium or zinc, and that it could operate efficiently even at high voltages and temperatures. However, they didn't have a way to make gallium nitride crystals that weren't fragile and didn't disintegrate into a powder during the growth process. Researchers took important steps in this direction by developing [revolutionary techniques](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022024806011808?via%3Dihub&ref=slightlyacidic.com) like hydride vapour phase epitaxy, molecular beam epitaxy and metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy. The last proved crucial: in the late 1980s, [researchers in Japan](https://spectrum.ieee.org/blue-leds-changed-our-world?ref=slightlyacidic.com) used it, together with an electron irradiation technique, to grow the first GaN crystals doped with zinc that had the precise physical, structural, optical and electronic properties required to function as blue LEDs. For their efforts, they received the Nobel Prize for physics [in 2014](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); the ['scientific background'](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/advanced-physicsprize2014.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) document wrote: "Today’s efficient GaN-based LEDs result from a long series of breakthroughs in basic materials physics and crystal growth, in device physics with advanced heterostructure design, and in optical physics for the optimization of the light out-coupling." ![](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/472f6-31c5c-47430-0f479-7a518-ae826-screenshot-2022-12-04-at-7.38.01-pm.png?w=1024&h=575) Perhaps the ubiquitous blue of the daytime sky, thanks to the effect of Rayleigh scattering, mutes the wonder that is blue in nature, and that the alienesque ice cream in my friend's hand was a welcome reminder to not take the hue for granted. (Then again, our cities' airsheds are also becoming more hazy and foul…) But we may not have much of a choice if trends in food packaging and marketing persist. The visual effect of the ice cream was to disrupt, in a seemingly fun way, a potential customer's senses, to snap their attention and get them to taste it. In this ability, it is of a piece with a broader trend in which blue-coloured foods have been transformed from their potential to shock and awe – to invoke a latent sensory wariness of a colour whose only trick was to lie towards one end of the visible spectrum – to a marketing gimmick that, ironically, blunts the surprise of its appearance even on food shelves and in children's hands. Let me quote at length from a [2018 review article](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1878450X18300398?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford: > … the legendary Italian Futurist F. T. Marinetti would serve the guests at his Futurist banquets white wine (Castelli Romani) that had been artificially coloured blue. He didn’t stop there, though, as he would also serve orange juice that had been coloured red and milk that had been coloured green. > > Meanwhile, a few decades later, the film-maker Alfred Hitchcock served his dinner guests, including Sir Gerald du Maurier, meals that consisted only of foods that had artificially been coloured blue in a private dining room at the Trocadero restaurant in London. … A similar blue meal was served to the speakers at the Art and the Senses conference held in Oxford back in August, 2006\. On that occasion, a blue soup was accompanied by ‘blue’ music – specifically, Miles Davis playing ‘A kind of blue’. > > My all-time favourite example of the disconcerting use of blue food colouring comes from a dinner hosted by the marketer Wheatley (1973) for a group of ‘friends’. The latter were invited to dine on a meal of steak, chips and peas (it was the 1970s after all). The only thing that may have struck any of Wheatley’s guests as strange was how dim the lighting at the dining table was. This was designed to help hide the food’s true colour. When the lighting was returned to normal part of the way through the meal, imagine the guests’ horror when they saw that what they had actually been eating was a blue steak, green chips, and red peas. Wheatley gleefully reports how a number of his guests suddenly felt decidedly ill, with some apparently heading straight for the bathroom. … > > Finally, here, it would be remiss of me not to mention the fabulous Fanny Cradock. For those who are not old enough to remember, she was Britain’s first TV celebrity chef (a regular presence on our TV screens in the middle decades of the last century). There are reports of her preparing mashed potatoes in all manner of artificial colours, including blue (see Ellis, 2007). In so doing, Cradock was, I presume, trying to make the artificial colouring of food in unexpected colours into something sophisticated/pleasant (given the tastes of the time. … > > A few years ago, now, for example, I was on stage with the two Michelin-starred Spanish chef Maria Jose San Roman at one of Spain’s largest gastronomy festivals. We were there to talk about the importance of the senses to dining, including, as one might imagine, the importance of vision (or sight), and specifically colour to the diner’s appreciation of food and drink. To illustrate the point, Maria Jose had prepared pizzas covered in a dark blue tomato-based topping. However, one only need to take a look at the audience’s faces to know how little they enjoyed this particular snack. In a way, then, proving our point. … > > Meanwhile, Sakai (2011) experimented with colouring sushi blue. As one might have expected, the Japanese participants who took part in this study did not find the miscoloured fish to be very appealing at all. > > I borrowed this idea for a segment about the importance of colour for a British TV show a couple of years back. Several boxes of store-bought high street sushi were dipped (the fish that is) in blue food dye. Even though the sushi itself was perfectly fresh, and didn’t taste any different from normal (given that the food dye had been chosen to be effectively odourless and tasteless), it was virtually impossible to get any of the guests on the show to put the sushi into their mouths! Fast forward to the 21st century: > What flavour, in other words, does the blue colour elicit in consumers nowadays? In 2010, we attempted to answer this question by conducting a cross-cultural study in which six differently-coloured drinks were shown to young consumers from the UK and Taiwan (Shankar, Levitan, & Spence, 2010). The latter had to say what flavour they expected the drink would have. Relevant here, one of the drinks was a clear blue drink (see Figure 3A). > > In this case, the young Brits who took part in this study thought that the drink would have a raspberry flavour (mint and blueberry were the next most common choices). The young Taiwanese participants who were quizzed thought of mint (i.e., mouthwash) instead (the second most popular suggestion was cocktail). Such results clearly demonstrate that the marketers have had some success in convincing the consumer … that a clear blue drink (at least when presented as a soft drink) does indeed signal raspberry flavour. > > More recently, we conducted a largescale study on more than 5000 individuals as part of the Cravings Exhibition held at the Science Museum in London. Those who took part were simultaneously shown pictures of blue, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow drinks in plastic cups and had to pick the drink colour that looked sweetest. Interestingly, the blue drink turned out to be the second most popular choice after red (garnering 28% and 41% of the votes, respectively). People appear to bring to mind exemplars when trying to interpret or assess the taste meaning of colour. … > > part of the growth of interest in blue foods may simply be being driven by the rise of gastroporn. Photographing a dish that is, in part, blue is certainly likely to create a more arresting image. And, as some have noted, there is little interest in actually consuming some of these dishes \[–\] that they look good is the thing. Indeed, this was part of the concern that led to the Uninstagrammable Dish. > > At present, it feels like it is all about capturing the consumer’s attention. And one way of doing this is through the use of unusual, but crucially, natural colours. … So, ultimately, while blue foods were once written-off, this hue has seen something of a resurgence, though not in the world of gastronomy, where those colours that are more associated with nature would seem to be preferred (e.g., Lightner & Rand, 2014). Ultimately, blue’s introduction into food and drink would seem to be more about capturing the attention of the consumer (be it on the shelf, or on one’s Instagram feed), and very little to do with any attempt to actually enhance the taste/flavour or nutritional value of an offering. > > It is for this reason, then, that so few chefs, even those of a modernist persuasion, have been tempted to dish up much in the way of blue food thus far. And while food futurology is undoubtedly a risky business (see Spence & Piqueras-Fiszman, 2014, on this theme), I, for one, can see little reason to believe that this state of affairs will change any time soon. The ice cream in my friend’s hand, and eventually all over her tongue and teeth, itself was the work of a simple blue gel-based colouring agent, a synthetic one to parallel naturally occurring agents like phycocyanin (which is suited for cold foods with a lot of sugar). *Featured image credit: Fallon Michael/Unsplash.* ### Saying bye to The Wire URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/30/saying-bye-to-the-wire/ Last updated: 2022-11-30T02:30:00.000Z Today, November 30, is my last day at *The Wire Science* and *The Wire*. I was part of their founding team and the seven years since have made for an exciting and enriching ride. The two things I'm most grateful for were all the new friends I made in this time and the freedom to imagine a '*The Wire*'s brand of science journalism'. We published a lot of science, health, environment and spaceflight writing of the very highest standard, and it's my privilege to count the bylines of several stellar writers on the pages of *The Wire Science*. Many of our articles have won awards and, equally importantly, renewed interest in areas of study and work, became books and teaching materials, the starting points for PhD programmes and, perhaps most gratifying of all, prompted people to think about science a bit differently. Come January 2023, I will be joining *The Hindu* in a role that I'm quite excited by. I'm especially looking forward to focusing on my own work, which I haven't been able to do for a while. Running *The Wire Science* was (and is) an exacting task and at *The Hindu* I'm also looking forward to lightening some of that load. Thank you all for reading what *The Wire Science* has published – and, I hope, will continue to do so. Going ahead, please also divert a little bit of your reading time to *The Hindu*. :) I'm counting on your constructive criticism, as always. ### A fountainhead of intrigue URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/24/a-fountainhead-of-intrigue/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:26.000Z Recently, a Chinese-American mathematician named Yitang Zhang claimed to have resolved the Landau-Siegel zeroes conjecture, which is related to the Riemann hypothesis. (Specifically, disproving the conjecture brings us a small stop closer to proving the Riemann hypothesis.) His paper hasn't been validated verified by independent mathematicians yet, but it was newsworthy nonetheless because Zhang has previously claimed to have cracked the problem only to retract it after others found some mistakes in his proof. It also matters because any step, big or small, towards the Riemann hypothesis is important progress. Georg Bernhard Riemann formulated the hypothesis in 1859, and it is yet to be proved. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute included it in its list of Millennium Problems: solving one will fetch the solver a prize of $1 million. Yet as important as the work of number theorists has been, to inch closer to a solution, the hypothesis itself is a thing of infinite beauty with intriguing parallels to ideas in far-flung fields of study. --- *Please jump over the next two paragraphs if you're familiar with the Riemann zeta function and its nontrivial zeroes.* The hypothesis is a statement about the set of possible solutions to the Riemann zeta function. This function, Riemann found, could estimate the number of prime numbers between two points on the real number line. Its *zeroes* – the inputs for which the function has a value of zero – lie on the complex plane, i.e. they are complex numbers of the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers. 'a' is called the real part and 'b' is called the imaginary part. i is of course the imaginary number: i = (-1)1/2 There are two kinds of zeroes, trivial and nontrivial. In trivial zeroes, the value of a is a negative integer (-2, -4, -6, -8, …). The Riemann hypothesis states that the value of a for which 'a + bi' is a nontrivial zero of the function is always 1/2. This is a powerful statement if you think about it. Mathematicians (and for that matter everyone curious) have been keen to understand the pattern in which prime numbers are distributed on the number line. Finding a function that defines this pattern would unlock several mysteries in the annals of number theory, as well as in quantum physics and anywhere else where prime numbers make an appearance. If the Riemann hypothesis is proved, it will mean that a function that can specify the number of prime numbers between any two numbers has a real part that is either 1/2 or a negative integer. This will be predictability where there once was only chaos. More specifically, when the values of the trivial and nontrivial zeroes of the zeta function are plotted on a graph, the values of the real part will prevent the dots from fluctuating all over the place and constrain them within a particular range. And something about the picture that emerges could speak to mathematicians about where the secret pattern to prime-number distribution could be hiding. --- Scientists have already found mysterious similarities between the distribution of nontrivial zeroes of the zeta function and quantum physics. I found a particularly evocative example in an article from 2003, entitled [*The Spectrum of Riemannium*](https://web.archive.org/web/20111123135315/http://web.williams.edu/go/math/sjmiller/public%5Fhtml/RH/Hayes%5Fspectrum%5Friemannium.pdf), written by Brian Hayes. He compared several one-dimensional distributions collected from mathematics as well as reality. Each distribution was distinguished by the distance between two datapoints. The most straightforward was the periodic distribution: a line drawn every 2 units, say (see image below). For the random distribution, a randomiser would spit out a number and a line would be drawn after those many units. For a jiggled distribution, lines are placed in a periodic pattern and each line is then moved (or "jiggled") by a small, random amount. The distribution of zeroes of the zeta function arises when a line is drawn at every point on the number line where there is a zero. ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/5bf42-screenshot-2023-01-01-at-8.33.45-am.png?w=1024&h=558) Then there are "erbium" and "eigenvalues". The former distribution shows the possible energy levels of the nucleus of the erbium-166 atom. This is determined by the energies and the electromagnetic properties of the nucleus's constituent particles (68 protons and 98 neutrons). In the latter half of the 20th century, physicists found that the energy levels of a heavy nucleus were statistically similar to the eigenvalues of a type of matrix called a random Hermitian matrix. Every matrix is associated with a polynomial function. The exact solutions to the polynomial are called the matrix's eigenvalues. If the matrix has *P*2 elements, it will have *P* eigenvalues. In a Hermitian matrix, the values of the elements are mirrored across a diagonal running from the top left to the bottom right. In a random Hermitian matrix, the value of each element is chosen at random. In Hayes's image, the distribution shows 100 eigenvalues of a random Hermitian matrix with 3002 elements. With these distributions in front of him, Hayes writes: "In analyzing patterns of this kind, there is seldom much hope of predicting the positions of individual elements in a series. The aim is statistical understanding – a description of a typical pattern rather than a specific one." One of his measures of choice of statistical similarity is the pair-correlation function. If you specify a distance *d*, the pair-correlation function will tell you how many pairs of lines in the distribution are separated by *d*. Not every distribution will have the same function, of course: its form differs varies according to the properties of the distribution it is working on. As Hayes narrates, in 1972, Hugh Montgomery and Freeman Dyson found that the pair-correlation functions of the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function and the eigenvalues of random Hermitian matrices were an exact match. Given that the distribution of the eigenvalues of the same matrices are statistically similar to the energy levels of heavy nuclei, like that of erbium-166, Hayes writes: "Is it all just a fluke, this apparent link between matrix eigenvalues, nuclear physics and zeta zeros? It could be, although a universe with such chance coincidences in its fabric might be considered even stranger than one with mysterious causal connections." There are other connections between the Riemann zeta function and quantum physics (such as the representation of the function as a trace equation with applications in the study of quantum chaos) – but just this should suffice, I think, to illustrate how captivating the Riemann hypothesis is. It is also tempting to imagine that in this day and age of superspecialised mathematics and advanced computing techniques and hardware, any problem that remains unsolved for long enough obviously accrues a kind of legendary status but also implies the existence of roots that run deep into disparate fields of scientific and mathematical inquiry – or its 'unsolved' status wouldn't survive attacks from so many possible angles nor from the wisdom founded on the knowledge of so many concepts and meta-concepts. I found Hayes's 2003 article when I was rereading the work of physicist S. Pancharatnam (1934-1969) and wanted to learn more about Michael Berry, who is well-known for his description of the Berry phase. Pancharatnam had originally derived a parameter of polarised light called the geometric phase. To quote from a post I wrote in 2018 [about Pancharatnam's work](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/remembering-s-pancharatnam/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "All waves can be described by their phase and amplitude. When the values of both parameters are changed at the same time and in slow-motion, one can observe the wave evolving through different states. In some cases, when the phase and amplitude are cycled through a series of values and brought back to their original, the wave looks different from what it did at the start. The effective shift in phase is called the geometric phase." In 1986, Berry – who was then unaware of Pancharatnam's work – provided a generalised description of geometric phases, today called the Berry phase. The first citation in Hayes's article is to a [1999 article](https://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/zeta/berry-keating1.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) coauthored by Berry and Jonathan Keating, entitled *The Riemann Zeros and Eigenvalue Asymptotics*. This was a technical article and beyond my ability to parse, but knowing that Berry had studied the Riemann zeta function, I searched the web for other, more accessible descriptions of his insights – and an equally [fascinating article](https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fcarc-prime-chaos?ref=slightlyacidic.com) published in 1998\. It was entitled *A Prime Case of Chaos*, written by Barry Cipra as part of his acclaimed 'What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences?' series. Cipra's article begins with an image resembling the one above from Hayes's article. (If you're interested in its origins, this is the attribution: "'Chaotic motion and random matrix theories' by O. Bohigas and M. J. Giannoni in Mathematical *and* Computational Methods in Nuclear Physics, J. M. Gomez et al., eds., Lecture Notes in Physics, volume 209 (1984), pp. 1–99.".) In this article, Berry is quoted more extensively – as a "quantum chaologist". I hope Cipra won't mind my reproducing the contents of one particular 'box' in full below: > Prime numbers are music to Michael Berry's ears. > > Berry, a theoretical physicist at the University of Bristol, is one of the leading theorists in the study of quantum chaos. And that's brought him to a keen appreciation of the Riemann zeta function. > > Prime numbers are a lot like musical chords, Berry explains. A chord is a combination of notes played simultaneously. Each note is a particular frequency of sound created by a process of resonance in a physical system, say a saxophone. Put together, notes can make a wide variety of music – everything from Chopin to Spice Girls. In number theory, zeroes of the zeta function are the notes, prime numbers are the chords, and theo- rems are the symphonies. > > Of course chords need not be concordant; a lot of vibrations are nothing more than noise. The Riemann Hypothesis, however, imposes a pleasing harmony on the number-theoretic, zeta-zero notes. "Loosely speaking, the Riemann Hypothesis states that the primes have music in them," Berry says. > > But Berry is looking for more than a musical analogy; he hopes to find the actual instrument behind the zeta function – a mathematical drum whose natural frequencies line up with the zeroes of the zeta function. The answer, he thinks, lies in quantum mechanics. "There are vibrations in classical physics, too," he notes, "but quantum mechanics is a richer, more varied source of vibrating systems than any classical oscillators that we know of." > > What if someone finds a counterexample to the Riemann Hypothesis? "It would destroy this idea of mine," Berry readily admits – one reason he's a firm believer in Riemann's remark. A counterexample would effectively end physicists' interest in the zeta function. But one question would linger, he says: "How could it be that the Riemann zeta function so convincingly mimics a quantum system without being one?" One of these counterexamples is the Landau-Siegel zeroes conjecture. It states that there could be nontrivial zeroes of the zeta function whose real part is not 1/2\. In his new paper, Yitang Zhang has claimed that he has constrained the possibility of this conjecture being true by a significant amount. Even if he hasn't altogether eliminated the possibility, and if his proof is verified to be valid, Berry can rest easy – or at least as easy as his tantalising question will allow. (Addendum: Riemann is one of my favourite mathematicians. I wrote a [tribute of sorts](https://thewire.in/science/beyond-the-surface-of-einsteins-relativity-lay-a-chimerical-geometry?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to his work in 2015.) *Featured image: Georg Bernhard Riemann in 1863\. Image: Public domain (edited with Photomosh).* ### The covering COP27 quandary URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/19/the-covering-cop27-quandary/ Last updated: 2022-11-19T12:16:55.000Z "Of the 1,156 publicly-listed companies, regions and cities that have so far made net-zero pledges … \[more than half\] are little more than vague commitments or proposals," according to [a new UN report](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-cities-net-zero-misleading/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Even when proper promises to cut emissions are in the picture, "Audi, Volkswagen, Daimler - now Mercedes-Benz - and BMW commissioned Bosch to develop technology which they knew from the beginning violated regulatory compliance, Environmental Action Germany (DUH) said at a press conference, citing internal industry documents leaked to it this summer spanning 2006 to 2015," [*Reuters* reported](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/environmental-group-alleges-carmakers-bosch-deliberately-manipulated-emissions/articleshow/95587585.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) two days ago. From cars to cities, one thing is clear: climate commitments are free, the follow-through is what matters. We're experiencing the same thing with this year's Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), i.e. COP27\. It started off being called the "implementation COP" but looks set to end as a complete disappointment, thanks to developed countries' [reluctance to pony up](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-loss-and-damage-funding-fight/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a 'loss and damage' fund and to adopt a framework to establish the ['Global Goal on Adaptation'](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cop27-adaptation-draft-cbdr-ipcc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (not to mention the [suffocating conditions](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/11/like-vegas-but-worse-bemusement-week-one-cop27-sharm-el-sheikh?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which it physically took place). Within the limited context of COP27 itself, India has scored several brownie points – as it does – by pushing richer countries to up their commitments while the national government has progressively weakened environmental safeguards in India. Yes, economically developing and underdeveloped countries must have a longer runway to reaching net-zero than developed countries, but this doesn't free any country – developed, developing or underdeveloped – from the responsibility to keep their growth and their green transition *just*. Many of India's developmental tendencies are demonstrably not. A good example is [its hydroelectric push](https://science.thewire.in/environment/northeast-hydel-ignore-climate/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the north and the northeast, facilitated by the wilful oversight of public opinion, degrading land, more frequent floods, heightened erosion, disruptions to aquatic species and their combined consequences for the Indigenous people who depend on riparian ecosystems. But at multilateral fora, India cashed in with a [2019 policy change](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1567817&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which it declared large hydropower projects (>25 MW capacity) "as renewable energy sources". This calculus obviously overlooks the lifecycle emissions of hydroelectric power and its ecological cost, more so when, as in India, the government has gone on a [dam-building spree](https://science.thewire.in/environment/northeast-hydel-ignore-climate/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) even on individual rivers. We need dams, sure, but why do they always have to be built by degrading their local environments? When the Union environment ministry submitted "India’s Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy" [report](https://moef.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Indias-LT-LEDS-2.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the UN FCCC on November 1, India became the cynosure of many eyes at COP27 because fewer than 60 other countries had filed similar plans. Is this India cashing in again? Because, remember, commitments are free. The actual point I wanted to make through all this was something else: spare a thought for the journalist covering the climate talks and countries' commitments here. Do they report on announcements of commitments and therefore have lots to write about but also become part of the hype machine, do they ignore the announcements because without action they remain ["blah, blah, blah"](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/diplomacy/greta-thunberg-cop26-blah-blah-blah-ts-tirumurti-india-climate-action-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), or do they interrogate every announcement as such and become submerged in cynical thinking? ### The ideologues cometh for the IITs URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/18/the-ideologues-cometh-for-the-iits/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:27.000Z In July 2019, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its Chandrayaan 2 mission, the spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev was present in the control centre, along with other dignitaries, getting a close view of the launch from a balcony. After the launch, he was seen taking photographs with the scientists in the room. Many people (myself included) were irked as to how, of all the people ISRO could have chosen to invite for such an occasion, it picked Jaggi Vasudev, who regularly makes pseudoscientific claims in public and has floated questionable initiatives like ‘Cauvery Calling’ even as his foundation [has angered locals](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/isha-foundation-jaggi-illegal-yoga-centre/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for encroaching ecologically sensitive land, damaging water resources and farmland in Tamil Nadu. Surely there were better invitees? A year or so later, someone who is highly likely to have been aware of the true circumstances of Jaggi’s presence in the control room told me that ISRO didn’t invite him. Jaggi just showed up at ISRO’s doorstep, and they were obligated to let him in and show him around. We had assumed there had been an invitation because it is not possible for the rest of us to simply show up and be let into the control room gallery. After the launch, [Jaggi tweeted](https://twitter.com/SadhguruJV/status/1153243462566731777?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “#Chandrayaan2 is the outcome of the brilliance and extraordinary commitment of our scientists of @ISRO and also the political will. This phenomenal achievement is the pride of our nation. Just couldn’t help being there.” The mention of ‘political will’ in that tweet was an important indication. Even if it wasn't as ostentatious as later tweets by others would be, it didn’t prove anything. It was just of a piece with events two months later. In September 2019, the Chandrayaan 2 mission’s lander crashed on the lunar surface, leaving only the orbiter part of the mission to succeed. But the then ISRO chairman K. Sivan dubbed the mission a “98% success” (without [explaining his calculus](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/if-chandrayaan-2-was-a-90-95-success-is-the-answer-whats-the-question/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) even as the rest of the organisation withdrew into a shell, cutting the information flow into a feeble trickle. We didn’t know that Vikram, the lander, had crashed or the telemetry data based on which ISRO had reached that conclusion, until later. Today, on November 18, 2022, an Indian company called Skyroot Aerospace launched its first indigenous rocket from ISRO’s spaceport in Sriharikota – an important achievement, a milestone in the country’s reforms to increase private sector involvement in the spaceflight sector. But before and after the launch itself, the telecast was concerned inordinately with the glory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and of his government. Piyush Goyal [called it](https://twitter.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1593505813188210689?ref=slightlyacidic.com) “an achievement led by PM” – a patently false assertion that also overlooked the scientists and engineers who had worked on the mission. In December 2021, IIT Kharagpur published a “Vedic calendar” prepared by an Indian Knowledge Systems Centre at the institute of eminence. It was riddled with ahistorical claims, twisted in a way to support, among other things, the idea that the Aryans were the native people of Bharat rather than immigrants from Eastern Europe and that, to borrow historian [Meera Nanda’s words](https://science.thewire.in/education/iit-kharagpur-vedic-culture-calendar-hindutva-aryan-invasion-symbols-claims/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “the well-known “Pashupati seal” found in Mohenjo-Daro in 1928, which depicts a figure seated in a yoga-like posture, wearing a horned head-gear with animals surrounding him, is no “proto-Shiva” but a full-fledged Vedic-Puranic Shiva who is the “column of cosmic light and aeons of time” (whatever that means).” A centre for ‘Indian knowledge systems’ already exists in IIT Gandhinagar as well and, Nanda speculated, IIT Kanpur could be next in line. Speaking of IIT Kanpur: on November 11, [the institute tweeted](https://twitter.com/IITKanpur/status/1590929417664356354?ref=slightlyacidic.com) from its official handle that spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar would conduct a “national induction” on the same day “for the first-year students of all the national institutes of importance” (there are 25). The tweet asked people to visit Ravi Shankar’s “Art of Living’s YouTube channel” to view the talk. Finally, two days back, the University Grants Commission (UGC) [asked universities](https://thewire.in/education/ugc-lectures-india-mother-of-democracy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) across the country to hold lectures on November 26, Constitution Day, to push the idea of India as the world’s “mother of democracy” and that ancient India had a democratic government in its Vedic period. The incumbent UGC chairman, M. Jagadesh Kumar, made a name for himself as the Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor who did nothing as a small mob of miscreants, affiliated with the youth wing of the BJP, [went on a rampage](https://thewire.in/rights/abvp-jnu-attack-whatsapp?ref=slightlyacidic.com) through the campus, damaging property and attacking students. Now, Kumar has written to 45 universities, 45 deemed-to-be universities and to the governors of states (who are the chancellors of state universities) to “encourage” these lectures. This is what the BJP’s ideological programme taking over India’s ostensible centres of scientific research excellence looks like – not by (physical) violence, not by harassing professors and students who oppose their ideology, not by jailing peaceful protestors, but by opening the door in small increments, using the universities’ names and symbols on propaganda material, by adding ‘centres’ and ‘lectures’ to them instead of subtracting their powers, and by taking control of the public narratives of their achievements. *Featured image credit: Dewang Gupta/Unsplash.* ### The biopolitics of Covaxin URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/16/the-biopolitics-of-covaxin/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:28.000Z In a [new investigation](https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/15/vaccine-covid19-india-bharat-covaxin-transparency-protocols/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *STAT* has reported fresh problems with Covaxin’s approval process in India, including the phase 2 trial dropping its placebo arm in favour of one preordained to make Covaxin look good and Bharat Biotech – the maker – commencing phase 3 trials based on results from animal studies. I’m also filing the report under “yet another instance of a pro-government Indian entity responding to the foreign press but not the local press” ([following this](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2022/04/19/middle-fingers-to-the-nyt-and-nyer/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Krishna Mohan, one of the company’s directors, responded to STAT by admitting to a wrongdoing, massaging other similar actions, and pointing a finger at the Indian government. Is this spine? In response to similar evidence-based allegations of wrongdoing, Bharat Biotech met *The Wire Science* and *The Wire* with a [defamation suit](https://scroll.in/latest/1018092/defamation-case-the-wire-directed-to-take-down-14-articles-on-bharat-biotech-by-telangana-court?ref=slightlyacidic.com), a demand of Rs 100 crore and that the two sites not publish articles with “defamatory content” vis-à-vis the company, and obtained an *ex parte* injunction against 14 articles. This was in addition to the seemingly blanket refusal to respond to our questions for reports we were filing. Other senior Bharat Biotech officials also refused to communicate to anyone else asking probing questions about Covaxin’s clinical trials. No: his quote sounds more like Mohan trying to save Bharat Biotech’s face in front of a western audience (the one our government [wants us to believe](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/we-dont-have-a-problem-with-the-west-were-just-obsessed-with-it/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is inferior) while spinning ~~India’s~~ Bharat’s own take on the vaccine approval process. Mohan told *STAT* that they didn’t take any shortcuts – at least not those that weren’t first “vetted” by the Central Drug Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), a.k.a. the drug regulator. That is to say, the shortcuts were CDSCO-approved, so they weren’t shortcuts. I’m inclined to agree: the rules are after all not based on principles of natural justice but on what the government deems acceptable. /s Of all the allegations, the one that irks me most is the modification to the phase 2 trial. It compromises our ability to learn anything useful about Covaxin, replacing that knowledge with knowledge of how much better one formulation of Covaxin is from another. The drug regulator should have known this is what the trial would have ended up checking, and if it approved this design anyway, it has engaged in wilful neglect – neglect of science, neglect of integrity, neglect of its mandate to look out for the people. But if we’re to believe Mohan, it’s just “product development” for an unprecedented time, not public health: > “In a classic sense of product development, we would do everything the right way — play by the book and all the rules of the game would be followed. But here was a situation the world didn’t foresee. … Please don’t think there was any issue with the veracity of the data. Yes, it was an unusual approach, but it was dictated by the nature of the pandemic.” Ah, a classic tactic: *Why did you burn down the forest?* “It’s the climate crisis, which is unprecedented, and we needed land to erect smog towers.” Later in the article, in the face of a similar allegation – changing the phase 2 trial protocol – Mohan defends the regulator and blames discrepancies in trial numbers on a company struggling to coordinate multiple teams working separately from each other while being guided by the rule of “let’s get the data out”. I’d buy what he was saying if he was talking about his company HQ installing new air-conditioners and conducting tests of indoor air quality. But he’s talking about a clinical trial for a vaccine, placing misleading data in the public domain and – crucially – implicating a national drug regulator that he claims was in the know but didn’t act. To *STAT*, he’s saying they were distracted by the “safety of individuals”, the “ethics of handling subjects” and “manufacturing”, but to Indian journalists, he as well as the regulator have [been mum](https://twitter.com/Banjotkaur/status/1575869739791921152?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on questions raised by [the WHO](https://extranet.who.int/pqweb/vaccines/vaccinescovid-19-vaccine-eul-issued?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [ANVISA](https://science.thewire.in/health/brazil-bharat-biotech-covaxin-anvisa-manufacturing-standards-certificate/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on manufacturing practices and by almost everyone else about the People’s Hospital [death and data](https://science.thewire.in/health/bb-covaxin-paper-quiet-on-peoples-hospital-tragedy-impact-on-results-unclear/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A (somehow) bigger problem arises soon after when Mohan says: > “Whatever we did was with the clear intention of doing it right. There was no question of reducing sample sizes. … There were not off the cuff or random thoughts. … It was extensively debated with keeping the final objective in mind of getting a vaccine in time and not cutting any corners.” Getting a vaccine in time *and* not cutting any corners? It’s baffling that the last sentence is intended as clarification rather than as a potentially tacit admission of wrongdoing. I’m sure you remember when ICMR chief Balram Bhargava [called on hospitals](https://science.thewire.in/health/icmr-balram-bhargava-covaxin-clinical-trials-bharat-biotech-politics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) around India to complete Covaxin’s phase 3 trials in less than two months, in time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to avail the vaccine for public use on Independence Day 2020\. One independent scientist asked me what I thought Bhargava might have been smoking at the time; it was hard to say. But what’s tempting to speculate now is that the government realised, based on the backlash to Bhargava’s announcement, that a) a phase 3 trial in six weeks was a bigger problem than it believed, b) it wouldn’t work to have its vaccine development plan in public, c) it could accelerate Covaxin’s clinical trials by forcing Bharat Biotech to do so, and d) approve Covaxin without phase 3 trials by assimilating the drug regulator – all to achieve a similar outcome. Or at least I speculate in the absence of evidence. And until there is, [we remain needles in veins](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/06/16/homo-medicatis/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### A story of dogs URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/11/02/a-story-of-dogs/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:29.000Z [This article](https://thewire.in/diplomacy/guyana-high-commissioner-missing-stray-dog-delhi?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *The Wire*, while entirely compelling, also contains an unarticulated tension. Headline: 'How a Missing Stray Dog Led to the Withdrawal of a Caribbean High Commissioner to India'. Excerpt: > Uploaded on social media, a grainy dimly-lit video apparently shows the night-time confrontation. A man, speaking English with an accent, stands outside the gate of a residential compound and tells a mask-wearing woman, “You want the dog, take it, put it between your legs, you probably want the dog to f… you, that’s what you want.” > > Startled, the woman also uses an abuse against him and says he is drunk. “I don’t care who you are,” she said. “F… you,” replied the man, before turning to the person holding the camera – and the video ends. > > Speaking to The Wire, Ghosh, an animal rights activist, said she had been feeding a blind, old dog living inside the compound for years. The new tenant of the house, Charrandas Persaud, had only arrived in India in March 2021. The story describes among other things a government not being able to pursue a harsher course of action against an individual for bringing grave harm to a dog because the individual enjoyed diplomatic immunity – even if it's the same government that includes Maneka Gandhi, who has doggedly threatened or pursued legal action against those who [so much as dream](https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/maneka-gandhi-threatens-bihar-municipal-candidate-over-stray-dog-free-poll-promise-faces-complaint-article-94875428?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of getting rid of street dogs in one constituency, and whose office has been known to ring up those accused of (as opposed to convicted of) not being considerate enough towards stray dogs (as opposed to being physically violent towards them). Gandhi is a known dog-lover who has furthered in the country [a pro-rights](https://science.thewire.in/health/abc-rules-street-dogs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) rather than a pro-welfare policy towards dogs – such that these poor creatures have been left to scrounge urban garbage piles and bank on the sympathy of locals for food. In the course of their lives, they are often ravaged by diseases and/or also spread disease-causing agents to other urban fauna and people. They also render public spaces unsafe by chasing after passersby, bicyclists and motorcyclists and by terrorising children. There have been several reports of stray dogs mauling children to death around India. Despite this miserable reality, however, these dogs continue to enjoy several privileges but lack all guarantees that they won't be a nuisance to themselves, to others and won't die in peace. In *The Wire* article as well, as Devirupa Mitra narrates, the dog that went missing was blind. Ghosh thought to speak to a man in her neighbourhood because a stray dog used to live thereabout but didn't turn up one day to be fed at her hand. I don't claim to know what Ghosh's circumstances are (the article doesn't discuss them other than to say she's a professor of English at the University of Delhi), but while it was good of her to investigate the dog's fate, eventually exposing a foul-mouthed fellow, they speak to one of the things that keeps stray dogs around in our cities: the attitude of the élite. Many élites view the act of feeding stray dogs as an exercise of material giving: they have money/food/resources/etc. to spare, so they give. But these places where dogs are fed seldom lie near their own houses, and are often by the roadside. The people feed and leave, and the dogs continue to be a nuisance in that place. (Some people have also tied such acts of 'giving' with their religious beliefs, of being tolerant towards other creatures and to donate food, ignoring the systemic issues they maintain and that keep these dogs around in pitiable conditions, including considerable waste generation and their improper disposal.) Obviously I don't take the ambassador's side nor do I condone him having the dog killed. What he did was awful and he deserved what he got. The demand of welfare activists, with which I also agree, is that problem dogs need to be euthanised, without pain, in the interest of their well-being, and not snuffed out with whatever means are available. But there is something to be said about a) some people 'solving' short-term problems (the dogs' hunger) only to prolong a long-term convolution (the dogs' unrelenting persistence in people's lived environment), and b) some people not being the ones to suffer the negative consequences of their actions. ### COP talks as ambition police URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/31/cop-talks-as-ambition-police/ Last updated: 2022-10-31T14:13:53.000Z Part of what makes Greta Thunberg such a powerful voice in climate activism is her no-nonsense communication. Yesterday, for example, [she called](https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/greta-thunberg-cop27-an-opportunity-greenwashing-lying-cheating-2022-10-30/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the impending COP27 climate talks, to be held in Egypt on November 6-18, an opportunity for "people in power" to "greenwash", "lie" and "cheat". Her words are presumably referring to the world's wealthiest nations resisting efforts by the less, and in fact the least, wealthy nations to secure more funds to adapt to the climate crisis, research and implement new technologies, resettle vulnerable people and safeguard threatened livelihoods and geographies. In the past, wealthier countries – as well as the institutions that sustain their wealthy status – have also been reluctant to take responsibility for historical emissions and for the role of their colonialist or imperialist policies, as the came may be, in perpetrating inequity. At the COP21 in Paris six years ago, the famous Paris Agreement was signed after intense day/night negotiations, only to come to a weak agreement on the 1.5º C threshold, and even without any legal bindings. Last year's COP26 in Glasgow ended as a disappointment, with negotiators' focus squarely on climate finance. At the upcoming COP27 in Egypt, the talks will take off on this point. At this juncture, and in fact against the backdrop of the UK having [defaulted on a $288 million commitment](https://science.thewire.in/environment/uk-climate-fund-default/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the Green Climate Fund, Thunberg's comments must be welcome for all the less-than-rich countries. However, the unqualified nature of her statement – painting COP27 *in toto* as something resembling a sham – should be unwelcome for the same group for a few reasons. Apart from providing an arena in which nations on the roughly two sides of the climate finance crisis can meet, these climate talks, organised under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, also provide a stage on which countries forge alliances and where – with the advantage of uninterrupted media attention – lesser known voices from remote parts of the world can make themselves heard. But perhaps most importantly, here, less-than-wealthy countries can cooperate and squeeze just a little more commitment from the wealthier ones – because outside of these forums, negotiations are one-to-one, *ad hoc* and scattered, and often combine political considerations with climate-related ones in a way that could be detrimental to the latter. For example, at COP26 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India's intention to become ['net-zero' by 2070](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/cop26-has-modi-dragged-india-onto-path-of-decarbonisation-before-its-ready/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as well as called on wealthy countries to step up their financial support for climate mitigation activities worldwide, joining a chorus of voices making the same demand as well as responding to international pressure to declare such a target. At the same time, India is one of Asia's [fastest-growing oil markets](https://science.thewire.in/economy/energy/india-fossil-fuels-demand-greenhouse-gas-emissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and whose government has projected oil and gas demand in the country to grow 8-11% through this decade despite a lack of clarity on what these fuels will be used for. As a result, several international energy corporations are expanding their foothold in India, capitalising on the country as one of the world's last major markets for fossil fuels. The government is encouraging this trend for the investments it brings. At the Conference of the Parties (i.e. COP), thus, we can expect a check against our own government's ambitions – as well as where the clout of individual governments fructifies as part of a collective bargaining enterprise. (Why not take advantage of the fact that the current Indian government is sensitive to how it's perceived in the Western press?) So dismissing the talks as a whole – [as Thunberg has done](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/diplomacy/greta-thunberg-cop26-blah-blah-blah-ts-tirumurti-india-climate-action-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on more than one occasion – and expecting the world's wealthiest nations to step up is, for better or worse, not going to get us anywhere. That said, recasting the talks as a forum that works in favour of the world's economically developing and least developed nations, by allowing them to function as a single bloc, may serve us all better. The governments of these countries also need to be held accountable after all. *Featured image: Greta Thunberg in Montreal in September 2019\. Credit: Lëa-Kim Châteauneuf/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* ### Neuromorphic hype URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/30/neuromorphic-hype/ Last updated: 2022-10-30T04:40:33.000Z We all know there's a difference between operating an Indica Diesel car and a WDP 4 diesel locomotive. The former has two cylinders and the latter 16\. But that doesn't mean the WDP 4 simply has eight times more components as the Indica. This is what comes to my mind when I come across articles that trumpet an achievement without paying any attention to its context. In an example from yesterday, IEEE *Spectrum* published [an article](https://spectrum.ieee.org/neuromorphic-computing-superconducting-synapse?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the headline 'Nanowire Synapses 30,000x Faster Than Nature’s'. An artificial neural network is a network of small data-processing components called neurons. Once the neurons are fed data, they work together to analyse it and solve problems (like spotting the light from one star in a picture of a galaxy). The network also iteratively adjusts the connections between neurons, called synapses, so that the neurons cooperate more efficiently. The architecture and the process broadly mimic the way the human brain works, so they're also collected under the label 'neuromorphic computing'. Now consider this excerpt: > "… a new superconducting photonic circuit … mimics the links between brain cells—burning just 0.3 percent of the energy of its human counterparts while operating some 30,000 times as fast. … the synapses are capable of \[producing output signals at a rate\] exceeding 10 million hertz while consuming roughly 33 attojoules of power per synaptic event (an attojoule is 10\-18 of a joule). In contrast, human neurons have a maximum average \[output\] rate of about 340 hertz and consume roughly 10 femtojoules per synaptic event (a femtojoule is 10\-15 of a joule)." The article, however, skips the fact that the researchers operated only [four circuit blocks](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.09665.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in their experiment – while there are [86 billion neurons](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1201895109?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on average in the human brain working at the 'lower' efficiency. When such a large assemblage functions together, there are *emergent* problems that aren't present when a smaller assemblage is at work, like removing heat and clearing cellular waste. (The human brain also contains ["85 billion non-neuronal cells"](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1201895109?ref=slightlyacidic.com), including the glial cells that support neurons.) The energy efficiency of the neurons must be seen in this context, instead of being directly compared to a bespoke laboratory setup. Philip W. Anderson's 'more is different' argument provides a more insightful argument against such reductive thinking. In a [1972 essay](https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1%5F2011%5Fmore%5Fis%5Fdifferent%5FPWA.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Anderson, a theoretical physicist, wrote: > "The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society." He contended that the constructionist hypothesis – that you can start from the first principles and arrive straightforwardly at a cutting-edge discovery in that field – "breaks down" because it can't explain "the twin difficulties scale and complexity". That is, things that operate on larger scale and with more individual parts are *physically* greater than the sum of those parts. (I like to think Anderson's insight to be the spatial analogue of L.P. Hartley's [time-related statement](https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/the-past-is-a-foreign-country/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the same nature: "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.") So let's not celebrate something because it's "30,000x faster than" the same thing in nature – as the *Spectrum* article's headline goes – but because it represents good innovation in and of itself. Indeed, the researchers who conducted the new study and are quoted in the article don't make the comparison themselves but focus on the leap forward their innovation portends in the field of neuromorphic computing. Faulty comparisons on the other hand could inflate readers' expectations about what the outcomes of future innovation could be, and when it (almost) inevitably starts to fall behind nature's achievements, those unmet expectations could seed disillusionment. We've already [had this happen](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/28/1048355/quantum-computing-has-a-hype-problem/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with quantum computing. *Spectrum*'s choice could have been motivated by wanting to pique readers' interest, which is a fair thing to aspire to, but it remains that the headline employed a clichéd comparison, with nature, instead of expending more effort and framing the idea right. ### A masculine build-up to the Ind-Pak cricket match URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/20/a-masculine-build-up-to-the-ind-pak-cricket-match/ Last updated: 2022-10-20T07:06:53.000Z *This post benefited from feedback from Thomas Manuel.* Every time I watch an ad about the upcoming India-Pakistan men's cricket match, as part of the ongoing T20 World Cup in Australia, I'm reminded of Cutler Beckett's line in the *Pirates of the Caribbean* film series: "It's just good business." Beyond the field, there has been new animosity between the Indian and the Pakistani cricket boards, with the former [having said](https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/india-won-t-travel-to-pakistan-for-2023-asia-cup-1340459?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the Indian men's cricket team won't travel to Pakistan for the 2023 Asia Cup. But even beyond the administrators of cricket and their realpolitik machinations, there are Star Sports and Pepsi. Star Sports has been running an ad depicting life in a fictitious town called "Dardnapur" (Hindi for 'no-pain town') peopled with many men of considerable strength, capable of lifting motorcycles, having their fingers slammed by a closing door with nary a wince, and so forth. But when India lost to Pakistan at the Asia Cup, as a young boy narrates in the video, these men were sent to tears. So, the boy says in an address to the Indian men's team, "Right this wrong, win the match and end the wait." (The ad benefits from an ambiguity: India's loss to Pakistan contributed to the end of its last Asia Cup campaign, so "ending the wait" could apply equally to beating Pakistan and winning a major tournament. On the flip side, at the ad's end, the screen shows illustrated faces of the two team captains, Rohit Sharma and Babar Azam, gesturing to each other in an aggressive way.) In the Pepsi ad, India's frontline pacer Jasprit Bumrah askes if viewers have the guts to watch the upcoming match against Pakistan from the PoV of a camera fit into the batter's stumps (a.k.a. the 'stumpcam'), followed by the ad spelling out something about a QR code to be found in Pepsi bottles. Obviously women and people of other genders are welcome to share in these sentiments but neither ad features any women and there has been no indication that either of these brands – Star Sports or Pepsi – is interested in advertising *to* women in this matter. Instead, both brands are investing in associating the match with shows of strength and guts, an inescapable parallel to the violence in Kashmir as well as to the fact that India-Pakistan face-offs in the cricketing sphere represent one of the few remaining ways in which the two countries directly compete for victory. There have been a few articles in *ESPN* and similar outlets about the Indian and the Pakistani men's cricket teams trying to relax, stay away from the hype and focus on playing the game ([see here](https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/india-vs-pakistan-t20-world-cup-2022-rohit-sharma-relaxed-players-2287378-2022-10-19?ref=slightlyacidic.com), e.g.). But everyone else – from the administrators to the people at large, mediated by advertisements of the sort described above – are either pushing or are being pushed the triumphalist narrative that the match is a proxy for India being "better" than Pakistan, to project India as a highly competitive and – assuming India will win the match – tough country. Even the ICC is partly to blame as it starts major tournaments by having India and Pakistan face each other. All this brings to mind the term ['hegemonic masculinity'](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124390004004003?ref=slightlyacidic.com), coined by various sociologists in the 1980s and which has come to encompass the [following features](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295039109366799?ref=slightlyacidic.com), among others: shows of achievement, use of physical force and heterosexuality – all of which have been put on display in the two ads and in the actions of the Indian cricket board. Even "frontiersmanship" has raised its head: according to [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frontiersmanship?ref=slightlyacidic.com), it stands for "the craft or skill of being a frontiersman, of succeeding in settling a frontier" – which in this case is relevant to the regions of ['Pakistan-administered Kashmir'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Current%5Fstatus%5Fand%5Fpolitical%5Fdivisions) in western Kashmir and [Aksai Chin](https://thewire.in/diplomacy/china-and-india-need-a-way-to-get-out-of-the-maze-in-ladakh?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the eastern portion, over which India has disputes with Pakistan and China, respectively. The person who announced India wouldn't go to Pakistan for next year's Asia Cup was Jay Shah, who has three identities here that matter: he is BCCI secretary, president of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) and son of Union home minister Amit Shah. Shah junior said he was making the announcement as the president of the ACC, yet it's laughable that the decision was motivated by anything other than the Indian government's grouses with Pakistan in Kashmir. ### Bad responses to The Wire's Meta reports URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/12/thewire-meta-bad-faith-arguments/ Last updated: 2022-10-12T12:38:24.000Z **Note, September 18, 2023, 6:40 am**: I've often returned to this post since The Wire retracted its 'Meta' reports, to see if I still stand by its contents. I do with the portions that I haven't struck through. That said, I believe in hindsight that holding these positions alone can't be a gainful way to judge this or any other story. ~~**Note, October 19, 2022, 6:25 am** *: Quite a few people have checked in asking if I will update this post in the light of* The Wire~~[*~~updating its position~~*](https://thewire.in/media/the-wire-intends-to-review-its-reporting-on-meta?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ~~*on its investigation into censorship by Meta. I don't intend to change this post, other than adding this note, because the 10 points still stand irrespective of what* The Wire*'s internal review finds.*~~ Ten types of bad-faith responses to *The Wire*'s stories – [this](https://thewire.in/tech/amit-malviya-instagram-meta-xcheck?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [this](https://thewire.in/tech/meta-xcheck-internal-email-watchlist?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – on Meta, Andy Stone and Amit Malviya, plus one that we expect to face soon. **1\. "*The Wire* is afraid to give the source's name."** Protecting whistleblowers is a matter of integrity. Trying to save skin by outing one's sources wouldn't be the credible thing to do in a situation like this. **~~2\. "So source's point is 'trust me, bro'."~~** [~~Yeah.~~](https://www.cjr.org/united%5Fstates%5Fproject/journalists%5Fprivilege%5Fshield%5Flaw%5Fprimer.php?ref=slightlyacidic.com) **3\. "*The Wire* has lied all its life, so it will double down on its claim to avoid losing its purpose."** A falsifiable contention, or an unfalsifiable one to those bent on avoiding simple facts, so a waste of time. **4\. "You have no credibility."** Thanks for reading and sharing articles from *The Wire*. **5\. "*The Wire* has a bad track record."** Hardline right-wing commentators on social media platforms have disagreed with almost every other *The Wire* article over what they perceive to be bias when it is disagreement with their point of view. Given this, I don't trust these commentators' definition of "track record". **6\. "You see what you want to see" is both accusation and defence.** After *The Wire*'s first report and then Andy Stone's response, *The Wire* was accused of seeing only what it wanted to see. But when the reports doubled down, the hardline commentators started to see only what they wish to see as their arguments defaulted to "*The Wire* must be lying." **~~7\. "Facebook/Meta has denied it, this is credible."~~** ~~All the arguments so far were levelled by the usual suspects and in that regard were as expected. But when other journalists from other publications signalled their willingness to buy Meta's/Facebook's/Stone's denial – "M/F/S usually don't do this but now that they have, it must be true" – it was hard to believe.~~ ~~It indicated one or some of the following to be likely: a) they were cowed by Meta/Facebook, by the deluge of comments on Twitter or by both to agree with Stone's denial; b) how Meta is behaving now, responding now, etc. is new – but even then to claim Stone's response on Twitter to be "clean" or "credible" is a bridge too far; …~~ **8\. Just ignorance** c) they weren't aware of the lack-of-integrity with which Facebook operates in India~~; or d) they weren't aware of their ignorance.~~ The American commentariat has expected non-Western journalists before to go to greater lengths than journalists from their own part of the world to prove something to them because you're not one of them, overlooking the fact that you're in fact working in a different part of the world where it is easier for the government or the corporation to discredit you, which in turn gives you less latitude to 'show' your work in every way they'd like before conferring you with the privilege of their agreement~~, even as they continue~~ [~~sealioning~~](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-internet-trolling?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ~~and~~ [~~gaslighting~~](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ~~you~~. **~~9\. "Stone's email address can't be \*@fb.com"~~** ~~If you wish to hitch your wagon to the "Stone couldn't possibly have replied from a \*@fb.com address, so the email whose screenshot *The Wire* has is fabricated" argument, that's your prerogative. But you immediately give me the right to step over you at the first appearance of an email from a Meta employee sporting a \*@fb.com address.~~ [~~Et voilà.~~](https://twitter.com/KarnikaKohli/status/1579849283746299905?ref=slightlyacidic.com) **10\. \[Ignore the posts that were taken down\]** In all this hullabaloo, people have forgotten that Instagram took down @cringearchivist's posts without specifying a reason other than that it contained nudity. It didn't. **Update, October 19, 2022, 6:35 am**: Instagram/Meta [quietly reinstated](https://twitter.com/cringearchivist/status/1582322147443150849?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the posts by 4:16 pm yesterday. Still not clear why they were taken down or why they are now back online. --- **~~Preemptive: "Headers or it didn't happen."~~** ~~*The Wire*'s upcoming third report should clarify the point about email headers, but the (potential) problem here is larger: the audience isn't entitled to all the evidence when any part of it may compromise the whistleblower's identity, and particularly when some of those making the demands are just fuelled by bloodlust.~~ ~~The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and never will be. Those who expect otherwise are kidding themselves, and probably willfully disregarding what they understand to be true.~~ **Update, 6:43 am, October 15, 2022**: There's more happening here than I expected. After exchanges with with some of my colleagues, I now believe that there some gaps in my knowledge that complicate blanket statements like the one above. Instead, I will defer on this count to the third Meta report by *The Wire*, which will be published today. **5.55 pm**: [published](https://thewire.in/tech/meta-andy-stone-email-xcheck?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### A Kuhnian gap between research publishing and academic success URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/12/a-kuhnian-gap-between-research-publishing-and-academic-success/ Last updated: 2022-10-12T12:32:38.000Z There is a gap in research publishing and how it relates to academic success. On the one hand, there are scientists complaining of low funds, being short-staffed, low-quality or absent equipment, disoptimal employment/tenure terms, bureaucratic incompetence and political interference. On the other, there are scientists who describe their success within academia in terms of being published in XYZ journals (with impact factors of PQR), having high h-indices, having so many papers to their names, etc. These two scenarios – both very real in India and I imagine in most countries – don't straightforwardly lead to the other. They require a bridge, a systemic symptom that makes both of them possible even when they're incompatible with each other. This bridge is those scientists' attitudes about *what it's okay to do* in order to keep the two façades in harmonious coexistence. What is it okay to do? For starters, keep the research-publishing machinery running in a way that allows them to evaluate other scientists on matters other than their scientific work. This way, lack of resources for research can be decoupled from scientists' output in journals. Clever, right? According to a [study published a month ago](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4190976&ref=slightlyacidic.com), manuscripts that include a Nobel laureate's name among the coauthors are six-times more likely to be accepted for publication than those without a laureate's name in the mast. This finding piles on other [gender-related problems](https://elifesciences.org/articles/21718?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with peer-review, including women's papers being accepted less often as well as men dominating the community of peer-reviewers. [*Nature News*](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03256-9?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported: > Knowledge of the high status of a paper’s author might justifiably influence a reviewer’s opinion: it could boost their willingness to accept a counterintuitive result, for example, on the basis of the author’s track record of rigour. But Palan’s study found that reviewers’ opinions changed across all six of the measures they were asked about, including the subject’s worthiness, the novelty of the information and whether the conclusions were supported. These things should not all be affected by knowledge of authorship, \[Palan, one of the paper's coauthors, said\]. Palan also said the solution to this problem is for journals to adopt double-anonymised peer-review: the authors don't who the reviewers and the reviewers don't know who the authors are. The most common form of peer-review is the single-blind variety, where the reviewers know who the authors are but the authors don't know who the reviewers are. FWIW, I prefer double-anonymised peer-review plus the journal publishing the peer-reviewers' anonymised reports along with the paper. Then again, modifying peer-review would still be localised to journals that are willing to adopt newer mechanisms, and thus be a stop-gap solution that doesn't address the use of faulty peer-review mechanisms both inside journals and in academic settings. For example, given the resource-mininal context in which many Indian research institutes and universities function, hiring and promotion committees often decide whom to hire or promote based on which journals their papers have been published in and/or the number of times those papers have been cited. Instead, what we need is systemic change that responds to all the problems with peer-review, instead of one problem at a time in piecemeal fashion, by improving transparency, resources and incentives. Specifically: a) make peer-review more *transparent*, b) give scientists the *resources* – including time and freedom – to evaluate each others' work on factors localised to the context of their research (including the quality of their work and the challenges in their way), and c) *incentivise* scientists to do so in order to accelerate change and ensure compliance. The scientometric numbers, [originally invented](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/isr.1996.21.1.64?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to facilitate the large-scale computational analysis of the scientific literature, have come to subsume the purpose of the scientific enterprise itself: that is, scientists often want to have good numbers instead of want to do good science. As a result, there is often an unusual delay – akin to the [magnetic hysteresis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic%5Fhysteresis?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – between the resources for research being cut back and the resulting drop in productivity and quality showing in the researchers' output. Perhaps more fittingly, it's a [Kuhnian response](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2012/10/20/a-case-of-kuhn-quasicrystals-communication-part-i/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to paradigm change. ### Bruno Latour (1947-2022) and critiquing science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/10/bruno-latour-1947-2022-and-critiquing-science/ Last updated: 2022-10-10T12:30:11.000Z The French philosopher Bruno Latour passed away on October 9, at the age of 75\. I don't know if many people in India have noticed but people abroad, especially in Europe, have. His passing leaves a considerable vacuum in the field of science and technology studies, but I'd like to memorialise his passing here for what I learnt from him about the nature and purpose of critique. To learn about critique through the work of Latour was to first learn about critique and then to learn how to critique critique itself. Ignorant me particularly enjoyed how, in [*Pandora's Hope*](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674653368&ref=slightlyacidic.com) (1999), Latour turned the rhetoric about science being politicised around to consider how much better politics would be without the influence of science, especially by the characteristic focus on objective facts, the little details and the absolute application of cold logic. > … when \[Callicles\] defines the goal of his aristocratic friends, he paints an accurate portrait of the real qualities that Socrates entirely lacks: "The superior people I mean aren't shoemakers or cooks : above all, I'm thinking of people who've applied their cleverness to politics and thought about how to run their community well. But cleverness is only part of it; they also have courage, which enables them to see their policies through to the finish without losing their nerve and giving up" (491a-b). > > It is precisely this courage to see "through to the finish," that Socrates will misrepresent so unfairly when he destroys the subtle mechanism of representation by polluting it with the question of an absolute morality. To see a political project through, with the crowd, for the crowd, in spite of the crowd, is so stunningly difficult that Socrates flees from it. But instead of conceding defeat and acknowledging the specificity of politics, he destroys the means of practicing it, in a sort of scorched-earth policy the blackened wreckage of which is still visible today. And the torch that set the public buildings ablaze is said to be that of Reason! > > … political reason cannot possibly be the object of professional knowledge. … Politics is about dealing with a crowd of "non-experts," and this situation cannot possibly be the same thing as experts dealing with experts in the inner recesses of their special institutions. So when Plato is making his famous joke about a cook and a physician pleading for votes in front of an assem bly of spoiled brats (522), it takes very little talent to twist the story to Socrates' embarrassment. This funny scene works only if the crowd of Athens is made up of spoiled kids. Even putting Socrates' aristocratic scorn aside, nowhere does it state, if the story is read carefully, that it pits a serious expert against a populist flatterer. Rather, it stages a controversy between two specialists, the cook and the physician, talking to an assembly of grown men about either short-term or long-term strategy, the outcome of which neither of them knows, and through which only one party is going to suffer, namely the demos itself. (pp. 239-241) But more broadly than just science, I learnt from Latour's books and essays what it means to be a critique *per se*. This sense of purpose will be constantly eroded if you're working for *The Wire*, and I imagine other similar publications, defined at once by their public engagement and a trenchant anti-establishment stance. In response to every bit of critique, a thousand trolls erupt accusing us, claiming to look beyond *The Wire*'s veil of intellectualism into a heart that wants nothing other than to drag India through the mud. The idea that critics care deeply for the thing that they are critiquing is lost on these trolls, and in fact most followers of the Bharatiya Janata Party, even those closer to the margins. Most, if not all, of our less loyal readers want to know why we're so "negative all the time" and expect us to justify our attitude with anything other than the obvious reason. So it's important to constantly replenish my sense of purpose, and Latour in this regard has been very helpful, more so since his work has often been concerned with matters of science and society. But to be a student of critique in Latour's classroom wasn't easy. For example, around five years ago, I discovered while reading Latour's 2004 essay, ['Why has critique run out of steam?'](http://winteranthology.com/?vol=5&author=latour&title=critique&ref=slightlyacidic.com), that I was often guilty of adopting the *post hoc* "fact position" of critique and thus levelling unfalsifiable allegations instead of creating new knowledge, much less anything useful. Critique has to be animated by concern for the subject of criticism in order to be useful. The obvious answer to the trolls and the naysayers' question to us is this: the critic is the gardener and the subject of criticism the garden. Otherwise, no matter how well dressed, it is simply outrage. Excerpt: > The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naïve believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. The critic is not the one who alternates haphazardly between antifetishism and positivism like the drunk iconoclast drawn by Goya, but the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in great need of care and caution. I am aware that to get at the heart of this argument one would have to renew also what it means to be a constructivist, but I have said enough to indicate the direction of critique, not away but toward the gathering, the Thing. > > The practical problem we face, if we try to go that new route, is to associate the word criticism with a whole set of new positive metaphors, gestures, attitudes, knee-jerk reactions, habits of thoughts. … We all know subcritical minds, that’s for sure! What would critique do if it could be associated with more, not with less, with multiplication, not subtraction. Critical theory died away long ago; can we become critical again … ? … generating more ideas than we have received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition but not letting it die away, or “dropping into quiescence” like a piano no longer struck. This would require that all entities, including computers, cease to be objects defined simply by their inputs and outputs and become again things, mediating, assembling, gathering many more folds than the “united four.” If this were possible then we could let the critics come ever closer to the matters of concern we cherish, and then at last we could tell them: “Yes, please, touch them, explain them, deploy them.” Then we would have gone for good beyond iconoclasm. RIP, Bruno Latour. ### A question about India's new science prizes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/09/a-question-about-indias-new-science-prizes/ Last updated: 2022-10-09T12:27:46.000Z > really deserving candidates In a meeting chaired by Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla on September 16 and attended by senior members of the various science departments of the national government (DST, DBT, etc.), the Union government eliminated hundreds of awards given to the country’s scientists for achievements on various fronts and fields. Governing a country the size of India is bound to result in bloat, so it wouldn’t be possible to dismiss this move by the government out of hand. However, the three words above make an appearance among Bhalla’s many utterances in the meeting and they are worthy of suspicion. The Indian government under Narendra Modi has regularly used vague adjectives to accommodate a diversity of possibilities instead of committing to one course of action over another. Perhaps the best known example is its use of the “national security” excuse to refuse answers to questions under the RTI Act, such as [what the scientific payloads](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/why-is-isro-reluctant-to-share-details-of-the-chandrayaan-2-and-3-missions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Chandrayaan 2 and 3 missions were or [why the FCR Act was amended](https://thewire.in/government/foreign-contribution-regulation-act-ngos-aid-ministry-of-home-affairs?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Other examples include any assurance made by Prime Minister Modi, such as on the occasion he was [forced to repeal](https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/06/01/censorship-is-plunging-modis-india-into-darkness/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the regrettable farm laws. In December 2019, physicist Brian Skinner uploaded a [preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.05813.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the arXiV server in which he quantified the effect of a “prestige bias” on the professional trajectories of scientists who are subjected to multiple rounds of evaluation. I’ve had occasion to return to this analysis on multiple occasions because, to me, it arrives at an essential, irreducible truth of the world: that keeping the conditions of entry to some space vague doesn’t just allow for arbitrary decision-making but inevitably *causes* such decision-making. As Skinner wrote: > For example, two applicants for graduate school may have similar grades and exam scores, but if one candidate comes from a more prestigious university then their application will, in general, be evaluated more highly. This ‘prestige bias’ arises naturally, since metrics like grades and exam scores are imprecise measures of a student’s ability, and thus the evaluator looks for any other information available to help with their decision. Belonging to a prestigious group suggests that the candidate was ranked highly by some other evaluator in the past, and this provides a prior expectation (like a second opinion) that biases the decision in their favor. Vagueness when the stakes are high can’t be innocent, especially once it has been identified, because the more powerful can and will use the resulting uncertainty to their advantage. Here as well, when Bhalla has determined that a small number of new prizes should replace the plethora of the now-extinct prizes and that they ought to be given to “really deserving candidates”, it brings to mind the “really deserving” corporations that are winning contracts for mines, ports and defence manufacturing, the “really deserving” businessmen whose wealth has increased disproportionately to that of their peers, and the “really deserving” ministries and departments that are receiving an increasing fraction of the Union government’s budgetary allocations. Granted, drafting and holding a fixed definition of the term ‘deserving’ can only be bad for the people and the government both. But when any doubts or uncertainties about its ambit are likely to be abused by the government – awarding India’s top honour for scientific work to, say, [Appa Rao Podile](https://topological.co/2017/01/05/the-indian-science-congress-has-gutted-its-own-award-by-giving-it-to-appa-rao-podile/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [M. Jagadesh Kumar](https://thewire.in/education/deteriorating-situation-jnu-mamidala-jagadesh-kumar-science-faculty-refuge-iit-delhi-ramgopal-rao?ref=slightlyacidic.com) over [Gagandeep Kang](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-vaccine-approval-dcgi-cdsco-gagandeep-kang-covishielf-covaxin/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [Rakesh Mishra](https://science.thewire.in/health/full-text-govt-should-have-acted-on-insacog-warning-rakesh-mishra-says/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – our options are limited to a meaningless science prize that represents, above all else, the BJP’s successful subversion of another science-related space ([after the IITs](https://science.thewire.in/education/iit-kharagpur-vedic-culture-calendar-hindutva-aryan-invasion-symbols-claims/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) for the nationalist project versus a prize that is much more meaningful but whose terms are rigid and unresponsive to the times. ### Assorted comments: MOM, IIT Mandi, scientists' wishes URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/06/assorted-comments-mom-iit-mandi-scientists-wishes/ Last updated: 2022-10-06T12:24:03.000Z These are some remarks that have been fermenting in my mind and for which I don’t have the time or the inclination to supply a beginning-middle-end structure to publish as individual posts. I’m just packing them into this one post so I can say what I’d like to say, clear some headspace and move on. **1\.** MOM end of mission The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) reached end of life on October 3, 2022, a healthy seven years beyond its design lifespan of six months. While the confirmation from ISRO was muted, to the accompaniment of a characteristically verbose PTI copy, the occasion was nothing short of the end of an era. MOM was ISRO’s last fully successful major mission and the last time ISRO undertook an outreach campaign of any sort that was as candid and as effective as many of us ISRO enthusiasts have wished all of their campaigns to be. ISRO’s last partly successful major mission was Chandrayaan 2; the way it responded to the lander’s failure was regrettable. And there hasn’t been a publicity campaign since that wasn’t also closely orchestrated by the office of the Supreme Leader et al. So the end of MOM was symbolically the end of a time in which things other than total narrative control were possible. **2\.** An IIT Mandi press release IIT Mandi recently emailed me a press release about a newly published paper (which I couldn’t find) describing a study led by a researcher and his team at the institute – in which they recovered polymer composites from used wind-turbine blades in what the release claimed was a “green” procedure. The two chemical compounds required in this procedure are hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid. Dear readers, hydrogen peroxide is not “green”. Nothing, really, is green unless it’s green throughout its lifecycle. Hydrogen peroxide manufacturing is currently [not a green process](https://news.mit.edu/2019/mit-process-could-make-hydrogen-peroxide-available-remote-places-1023?ref=slightlyacidic.com). You can’t just say “hydrogen peroxide is the water molecule plus one more oxygen atom, so it’s green”. That’s like saying “ozone is dioxygen with one more oxygen atom, [so it’s okay to inhale](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/ozone/default.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com).” Diluted hydrogen peroxide is okay but at higher concentrations (typically >40%), it is [highly toxic](https://communities.acs.org/t5/GCI-Nexus-Blog/Is-Hydrogen-Peroxide-Actually-a-quot-Green-quot-Reagent/ba-p/16111?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to living things. It’s also very reactive chemically and is hard to store, transport and use. So without knowing where the hydrogen peroxide in their experiment came from, without knowing the volume of hydrogen peroxide required to make the research team’s solution commercially feasible, and without knowing the concentration at which it must be used, let’s not make any claims about greenness. Addendum: Also according to the press release (emphasis added), “The recovered fibres retained nearly 99% of the strength and greater than 90% of other mechanical properties as compared to the **virgin** fibres.” Do we really need to use terms like “virgin” to describe pre-utilisation objects? I doubt anyone’s going to tell the IIT Mandi press office this but both universe press offices and scientists need to put some thought into their language instead of playing it safe from within their lanes. Other English words rooted in objectionable sexual notions include ‘seminal’ (from semen) and ‘hysterical’ (from the Latin for ‘suffering in the womb’). The *lingua franca* is what we consider okay to say, okay to think, eventually okay to believe, so it’s important we tend to it. **3\.** “Top 3 wishes” The *The Science Talk* blog [published a post](https://thesciencetalk.com/2022/10/06/top-3-wishes-of-100-materials-scientists-around-the-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) discussing the results of a call it’d put out earlier, to materials scientists, asking them to list their top three wishes. The question received a hundred responses and, according to the post, the most common three wishes were: More funding and longer contracts; “resources – unlimited microscopes, open access and less bureaucracy”; and “informal networking, comfortable lab shoes and outreach”. Let’s set a part of our common sense aside for a moment and assume that these hundred materials scientists are speaking for the millions of scientists working on thousands of topics worldwide in a variety of contexts. Doing this allows us to consider their wishes as a monolithic set of requests so that they can do science better – and leaves us to think about which wishes we can and can’t allow, and to what extents, so that science can fulfill its purpose in our lives, in our countries, in our politics without at the same time exacting too high a cost. Take “longer contracts”, for example: obviously that will allow scientists to work with larger questions, build towards bigger ideas and so forth – but the gains for those funding that scientific work, the government and by extension the people, will also manifest over longer time-periods and come with a greater risk of sunk costs. That in turn should make us think about what sort of nation, with the attendant economic and sociopolitical features, can *afford* longer contracts for scientists. (In my view, richer, more economically developed and more powerful countries, where there is little social or political expectation for science to contribute to the betterment of society.) I didn’t have a point to make here as much as express the hope that more people who read the *The Science Talk* post will be interested in asking such questions, and thereon become interested in the government of science, the place of science in your country and, ultimately, the politics of rooting for science. ### The passive voice is political URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/03/the-passive-voice-is-political/ Last updated: 2022-10-03T12:20:03.000Z Eric Martinez, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburgh [won an Ig Nobel Prize](https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ig2022) for literature this year for their work on what makes legal documents so hard to read. Ironically, the abstract of [their paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027722000580?ref=slightlyacidic.com), published in July 2022, is also very hard to read, coming in at 165 words in just five sentences: > Despite their ever-increasing presence in everyday life, contracts remain notoriously inaccessible to laypeople. Why? Here, a corpus analysis (n ≈10 million words) revealed that contracts contain startlingly high proportions of certain difficult-to-process features–including low-frequency jargon, center-embedded clauses (leading to long-distance syntactic dependencies), passive voice structures, and non-standard capitalization–relative to nine other baseline genres of written and spoken English. Two experiments (N=184) further revealed that excerpts containing these features were recalled and comprehended at lower rates than excerpts without these features, even for experienced readers, and that center-embedded clauses inhibited recall more-so than other features. These findings (a) undermine the specialized concepts account of legal theory, according to which law is a system built upon expert knowledge of technical concepts; (b) suggest such processing difficulties result largely from working-memory limitations imposed by long-distance syntactic dependencies (i.e., poor writing) as opposed to a mere lack of specialized legal knowledge; and (c) suggest editing out problematic features of legal texts would be tractable and beneficial for society at-large. But nitpicks aside, I hope the award will bring more attention to why writing in the passive voice is problematic. 1. It makes for duller reading. 2. It glosses over actors who are performing an action and focuses on those *on whom* the action is being performed. The first problem is not an opinion: readers like to be able to visualise what they’re reading. It makes reading a more interesting and immersive experience. This is why “show, don’t tell” is always good advice. But when the writer leaves out the performers of an action – everything from day-dreaming to a heist – a part of the picture disappears. The second problem is obviously dangerous but it can also impart the narrative with political overtones that the writer might like to do without. For example, writing “B was hit” instead of writing “A hit B” keeps the focus on the nature of the violence and recipient. A, the perpetrator, stays out of the picture, out of the narrative and out of readers’ conception of what really happened. If a writer intends to keep the focus on B as a way to humanise them, it doesn’t have to come at the cost of forgetting A. The way to construct the identities of A and B is with narrative – and not with grammatical techniques like the passive voice. If all the sentences in a given piece are in the passive voice, it will still be possible to build a narrative that is fair to B and suitably consternated towards A. The inverse is also true: you can write a piece using the active voice in all sentences and still build up to a narrative that’s unfair to B. The passive voice may not compromise your ability to faithfully describe reality but it will get in the way of what the reader takes away. Reading is a psychological experience and every little adjustment matters to whether your attempt to persuade succeeds. Unfortunately, many science writers in India – especially those who have trained as scientists – employ the passive voice in a way that reveals the clear influence of scientific writing on their brand of English. In scientific writing – i.e. the labour that produces the text in research papers – both narrative and grammatical technique converge on the desirability of removing the scientist, as the performer of an experiment, from the picture. I dislike this sort of writing because a) it’s founded on the premise that the scientist’s identity or choices don’t matter to the experiment’s outcomes, whereas there are several examples in history of researchers’ identities influencing the questions they choose to ask, and answer, and b) as the Ig Nobel Prize has acknowledged, it makes for needlessly difficult reading. And not just me: even [scientists have spoken up](https://science.thewire.in/science/scientific-study-says-science-papers-become-harder-read-last-century/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about how they’re [having a harder time](https://science.thewire.in/science/science-writing-communication/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) making sense of scientific papers. I’ve [written](https://topological.co/2018/11/05/let-the-arrogators-write/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [before](https://topological.co/2021/07/05/scicommers-as-knowledge-producers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as to why science communication is not an add-on to science itself but a separate enterprise animated by its own skills and goals. Switching from the narrative-grammatical coincidence associated with ‘good science’ to the narrative-grammatical separation is one of the dividing lines. When scientists don’t make this switch, they’re at risk of participating in a communication exercise that’s liable to overlook the relationships between scientists’ identities and their ideas. Note that, in India, a non-trivial number of people come into sophisticated forms of English use by engaging with the scientific enterprise. When *The Wire Science* first published its [‘submission guidelines’](https://science.thewire.in/science/our-submission-guidelines/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), some readers told us that our decision to enforce them was unfair because different people write in different ways. I agreed – but didn’t edit them because something someone told me at [ACJ](https://www.asianmedia.org.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) still rings true: before you attempt poetry, you must understand grammar so you know how exactly to break it. Being introduced to English in the walled garden of science habituates people to using English in a certain way – a way that they consider to be good and effective but which is so only in the limited context of scientific work. It fails significantly and repeatedly when writers use it to engage with non-experts from the problems I noted above. It also doesn’t help that the bulk of scientists conducting research in India at the moment are (cis)male and Brahmin, thus not likely to perceive discrimination along these axes, and thus not likely to perceive the need to acknowledge it in the way they use their language. If you had “writing about particle physics” in mind and have been using it to contextualise my arguments, you may not have much luck; instead, I suggest considering “agriculture”, “psychology”, “biomedicine”, “pedagogy” or “astronomy”. (It’s [not a coincidence](https://science.thewire.in/culture/books/midnights-machines-nehru-vision-cds-appropriate-technology-nrc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that India’s lower-tech scientific enterprises have been more assailed by such discrepancies.) Irrespective of whether it is good/bad English, the passive voice doesn’t make for good communication. It may not, and never, affect readers’ ability to understand what you alone are communicating, but ditching it for the active voice could a) engender a habit among readers to expect it, and b) encourage other writers to adopt it when they’re writing on topics where the difference is crucial. ### The Frida Kahlo NFT URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/10/02/the-frida-kahlo-nft/ Last updated: 2022-10-02T12:18:05.000Z > Like a Phoenix rising from its ashes, Art is reborn into Eternity. > > fridanft.org In July this year, a Mexican businessman named Martin Mobarak [allegedly destroyed](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/29/cryptocurrency-entrepreneur-says-destroyed-10-million-frida/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a painting by Frida Kahlo in order to liberate it from its physical shackles and unto its “eternal” existence henceforth as an NFT that he is selling for $4,000 apiece. He has said the money will go to charity, but it’s hard to understand how that is relevant considering what has (allegedly) been lost. Art these days is [not entirely art](https://nablaf.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): at least a part of its purpose has been subverted by cryptocurrencies into an object for proponents of this technology to con. Also, a fundamental tenet of the NFTs market is that scarcity is always better. Put these things together and you realise Mobarak’s actions were a matter of when, not if. However, the intersection of NFT-centric thinking with the art world has been and continues to be complicated. In 2021, an artist named Beeple sold a collage of images he’d crafted and pieced together to a cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Metakovan for tokens worth $69 million. Metakovan, and his partner Twobadour, had said at the time that they were democratising art by enabling the cryptocurrency-based public ownership of works of art and by taking advantage of cryptocurrencies’ opportunities to allow non-white, non-western people to acquire high-valued art. It was a [poorly conceived proposition](https://topological.co/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in many ways – starting from the fact that the acquisition was a façade for Metakovan to inflate the value of the tokens he owned and going up to the fact that the $69-million moment did everything to uphold the links between [art and modern capitalism](https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet?ref=slightlyacidic.com) instead of critiquing them (forget tearing them down). Fast-forward to Martin Mobarak’s (alleged) destruction of ‘Fantasmones Siniestros’ and the contradictions abound. Contrary to Metakovan’s aspiration to democratise anything, even in principle, Mobarak’s (alleged) action epitomises the private ownership of art – outside history itself, isolated in one’s personal collection and thus – by the premium American logic of private ownership – at the unquestionable mercy of its proprietor, who may even choose to burn it without regard for its thingness as a historical-cultural-political object. In both cases, and the thousands of other instances in which NFT-makers have either championed the [cause of paying artists](https://nablaf.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or conceived [art of their own](https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet?rq=crypto&ref=slightlyacidic.com), this human endeavour has been far removed from its telos of [critiquing capitalist society](https://parsejournal.com/article/a-critique-of-capitalism-the-mediation-of-abstract-labour-in-yvonne-rainers-task-dance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and has become a commodity *per se*. But while this is the long- and well-known effect of capitalism on art, the (alleged) destruction of ‘Fantasmones Siniestros’ also confronts us with a tense three-way contest. On vertex 1: The painting is Kahlo’s and is as such an important part of Mexico’s past, heritage and the aspirations of its people through the ages. On vertex 2: The headlines of most news reports, if not all, make sure to mention that the painting was worth $10 million, in a reminder of its monetary value *de facto* and the place of art by influential artists as an important bourgeois value-store *de jure*. And on vertex 3: No matter the legerdemain of businesspeople, NFTs will always and eventually ensure the complete commodification of art, thanks to their foundational premise. The only thing worth prizing here is that on vertex 1: Kahlo’s work, inasmuch as it captures her spirit and anima and is a reminder of what she did, when and amidst whom. But vertices 2 and 3 seem to hold the means by which this preservation has been achieved before and will be achieved in future, and together prompt us to pay more attention to the delicate strands by which the memories of our pasts dangle. We still await the public ownership of the work of important artists, and many others, but anyone who says cryptocurrencies or blockchains are the way to get there is lying. A [similar problem](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/why-i-wont-review-or-write-for-elsevier-and-other-commercial-scientific-journals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has assailed the world of scientific knowledge and publishing for many years now, with more scientists becoming more aware today of their actual role in society: not to create new knowledge and improve lives as much as to [widen the margins](https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2022/04/27/scientific%5Fpublishing%5Fis%5Fa%5Fscam%5Ffed%5Fby%5Fthe%5Fgovernment%5F829132.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of scientific journals, overlook their [glaring flaws](http://bjoern.brembs.net/2019/12/elsevier-now-officially-a-predatory-publisher/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the [incentives they have set up](https://nablaf.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/the-matter-of-a-journals-reputation/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the [detriment of good science](https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and comply unquestioningly with their [inexplicable price hikes](https://twitter.com/egonwillighagen/status/1576099320172011520?ref=slightlyacidic.com). And even as many scientists have invented notions like [“prestige”](https://nablaf.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/peerjs-peer-review-problem/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [“status”](https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/1568270176847552512?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to make their allegiance to journals make sense, Mobarak et al. tell us, and themselves, that they’re doing everyone a favour. ### Tales of two peppers URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/27/tales-of-two-peppers/ Last updated: 2022-09-27T12:16:06.000Z > The 7 Pot Barrackpore starts at the same Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) as the regular ones, but its highest level has frequently approached 1.3M SHU, which can easily set your face on fire. How the name Barrackpore came about, though, is quite intriguing. This is the third tweet in a medium-sized [thread on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Paperclip%5FIn/status/1574613926909575169?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by @Paperclip\_In whose length belies the scope of the story it narrates. The thread takes off from the pepper in question, the 7 Pot Barrackpore from Trinidad, winds its way through the famous rebellion of 1857, the fortunes of indentured labourers shipped from India to the Caribbean in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and ends – as it began – with the town of Barrackpore. All of this in a name, the name shared by two towns 15,000 km apart. Reading the thread was fascinating for two reasons. One, of course, was @Paperclip\_In’s narration itself; the other was that what little I already knew about hot peppers and Scoville heat units is also tethered to another fervent piece of history. Last year’s [medicine Nobel Prize](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2021/press-release/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was awarded to two scientists for their work on the receptors in the body that were involved in our ability to perceive heat and cold. The work of one of the laureates, David Julius, was based on studying the effects of a compound called capsaicin on the body. Capsaicin is technically 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide. As I [wrote at the time](https://science.thewire.in/society/history/indias-unfortunate-connections-to-the-2021-medicine-nobel-prize/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “Capsaicin doesn’t actually burn or damage tissue. Its contact with \[a receptor expressed by central nervous system cells\] simply prompts the brain to react as if the tissue is being burnt.” This feature of the compound obviously stood out to those interested in new forms of inflicting pain on others. Former MP Lagadapati Rajagopal caused a commotion in Parliament in 2014 when he released an emulsified and pressurised capsaicin resin from a cannister, to oppose the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. The SHU of any spicy pepper denotes its capsaicin content. Capsaicin itself has an SHU of 16 million – the upper limit. The SHU of 7 Pot Barrackpore is around 1.3 million. In 2007, the chilli with the world’s highest SHU was ‘Naga chilli’ from Northeast India. In 2010, [*Associated Press* reported](https://web.archive.org/web/20100324222353/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100323/ap%5Fon%5Fre%5Fas/as%5Findia%5Fchili%5Fgrenades) that DRDO scientists were developing grenades packed with capsaicin extracted from the Naga chilli. In 2016, a committee appointed by the Indian government was still considering these ‘chilli grenades’ as substitutes for pellet guns, but eventually decided to load the things with nonivamide. @Paperclip\_In is right to describe the 7 Pot Barrackpore, with an SHU of 1.3 million, as being able to “set your face on fire”. Nonivamide has an SHU of [more than 9 million](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408399109527536?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### The Merge URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/26/the-merge/ Last updated: 2022-09-26T12:05:07.000Z Earlier this month, a major event happened in the cryptocurrency space called the 'Merge'. In this event, the ethereum blockchain changed the way it achieves consensus – from using a proof-of-work mechanism to a proof-of-stake mechanism. A blockchain is a spreadsheet that maintains a record of all the transactions between users using the same blockchain. Every user on a blockchain basically possesses an up-to-date copy of that spreadsheet and helps validate others’ transactions on the blockchain. The rewards that the blockchain produces for desirable user behaviour are called its tokens. For example, tokens on the ethereum blockchain are called ether and those on the bitcoin blockchain are called… well, bitcoins. This is what the users also transact with on the blockchain. ([See here](https://topological.co/2022/03/25/intro-to-nfts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a more thorough yet accessible intro to blockchains and NFTs.) As a result of the ‘Merge’, [according to the foundation](https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that manages the cryptocurrency, the blockchain’s energy consumption dropped by 99.95%. The blockchain on which users transact ethereum tokens plus the network is called the ethereum mainnet. During the ‘Merge’, the existing mainnet was replaced with another called the Beacon Chain. Imagine the blockchain to be a bridge that moves traffic across a river. Ahead of the ‘Merge’, operators erected a parallel bridge and allowed traffic over it as well. Then, on September 15, 2022, they merged traffic from the first bridge with the traffic on the new one. Once all the vehicles were off the old bridge, it was destroyed. ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/a68eb-screenshot-2022-10-02-at-5.29.43-pm.png?w=1024) Source: ethereum.org Each of the vehicles here was an ethereum transaction. During the ‘Merge’, the operators had to ensure that all the vehicles continued to move, none got hijacked and none of them broke down. (Sharding – which is [expected to roll out](https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/sharding/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2023 – is the act of splitting the blockchain up into multiple pieces that different parts of the network use. This way, each part will require fewer resources to use the blockchain even as the network as a whole will be using the blockchain as a whole.) Blockchains like those of bitcoin and ethereum need a ‘proof of x’ because they are decentralised: they have no *central* authority that decides whether a transaction is legitimate. Instead, the validation mechanisms are baked into the processes by which users mine and exchange the coins. Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are two flavours of one such mechanism. To understand what it does, let’s consider one of the problems it protects a blockchain against: double-spending. Say Selvi wants to send 100 rupees to Gokul. Double-spending is the threat of sending the same 100 rupees to Gokul twice, thus converting 100 rupees to 200 rupees. When Selvi uses a bank: she logs into her netbanking account and transfers the funds or she withdraws some cash from the ATM and gives Gokul the notes. Either way, once she’s withdrawn the money from her account, the bank records it and she can’t withdraw the same funds again. When she takes the cryptocurrency route: Selvi transfers some ethereum tokens to Gokul over the blockchain. Here, the blockchain requires some way to *verify* and *record* the transaction so that it doesn’t recur. If it used proof-of-work, it would require users on the network to share their computing power to solve a complex mathematical problem. The operation produces a numeric result that uniquely identifies the transaction as well as appends the transaction’s details to the blockchain. A copy of the updated blockchain is shared with all the users so that they are all on the same page. If Selvi tries to spend the same coins again – to transfer it to someone else, say – she won’t be able to: the blockchain ‘knows’ now that Selvi no longer has the funds in her wallet. The demand for computing power to acknowledge a transaction and add it to the blockchain constitutes proof-of-work: when you supply that power, which is used to do work, you have provided that proof. In exchange, the blockchain rewards you with a coin. (If many people provided computing power, they split the coins released by the blockchain.) The reason the Ethereum folks claim their post-Merge blockchain consumes 99.95% less energy is because it doesn’t use proof-of-work to verify transactions. Instead, it uses proof-of-stake: users *stake* their ethereum tokens for each transaction. Put another way, proof-of-work requires users to prove they have computing power to lose; proof-of-stake requires users to prove they have coins – or wealth – to lose. Before each transaction, a validator places some coins as collateral in a ‘smart contract’. This is essentially an algorithm that will not return the coins to the validator if they don’t perform their task properly. Right now, aspiring validators need to deposit 32 ethereum tokens to qualify and join a queue. The network limits the rate at which new validators are added to the network. Once a validator is admitted, they are allotted blocks (transactions to be verified) at regular intervals. If a block checks out, the validator casts a vote in favour of that block that is transmitted across the network. Once every 12 seconds, the network randomly chooses a group of validators whose votes are used to make a final determination on whether a block is valid. Proof-of-stake is less energy-intensive than proof-of-work but it keeps the ethereum blockchain tethered to the same requirement: the proof of [preexisting wealth](https://topological.co/2021/12/10/the-foolishness-of-a-carbon-negative-blockchain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In the new paradigm, the blockchain releases new coins as reward when transactions are verified, and those who have staked more stand to gain more – i.e. the rich get richer. Note that when the blockchain used the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, a [big problem](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/06/are-blockchains-decentralized.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was that a very small number of users provided a very large fraction of the computing power (contrary to cryptocurrencies’ promise to decentralise finance). Proof-of-stake is [expected to increase](https://medium.com/stakin/centralization-of-stake-in-pos-f7ccb8f8254?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this centralisation of validatory power because the blockchain now favours validators who have more to stake, and rewards them more. Over time, as richer validators stake more, the cost of validating a transaction will also go up – and the ‘poorer’ validators will be forced to drop out. Second, the proof-of-stake system requires problematic transactions to be flagged when the validators have staked their ethereum. Once they have withdrawn their stakes, they can’t be penalised. This in turn revives the risk of the double-spending problem, as set out in some detail [here](https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-people-promoting-it-are-scammers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The energy consumption of cryptocurrency transactions was and remains a major bit of criticism against this newfangled technological solution to a problem that the world doesn’t have – and that’s the point that sticks with me. The ‘Merge’ was laudable to the extent that it reduced the consumption of energy and mining hardware in a time when the wealthy desperately [need to reduce](https://topological.co/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) all forms of consumption, but while the ‘cons’ column is one row shorter, the ‘pros’ column remains [just as empty](https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Ramanujan, Nash, Turing, Mirzakhani URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/22/ramanujan-nash-turing-mirzakhani/ Last updated: 2022-09-22T17:30:00.000Z From a [short review](https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/features/z1304%5F00220.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of a new documentary about the life and work of the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, September 9, 2022: > While there are other movies about real-life mathematicians such as Nash, Ramanujan and Turing, the special abilities of these individuals are often depicted as making them eccentric in their private lives. In contrast, Mirzakhani lived a “normal” life, was married with a child and simply loved math. I want people to know that mathematicians like her also exist. > > … > > The documentary powerfully conveys the attitude that there’s nothing women can’t do simply because they’re women, which makes it well worth watching from the perspective of diversity and gender. This is well and good. I haven’t yet watched the documentary but will at the first opportunity. This said, the review raises a curious point about the impression that films, documentaries, etc. have created about John Nash, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Alan Turing. The reviewer, Prof. Yukari Ito of the Kavli Institute in Japan, has written that they have given us the impression that being a great mathematician requires one to be eccentric, or that contributing to mathematics at the highest level demands the sort of transcendental brilliance that a human mind may never fully comprehend. Ramanujan exemplified this sort of work by setting forth a very large number of axioms in number theory without specifying the steps in between the first principles and the final thing. When he asked, he said a goddess was working through him. It may well be that Ramanujan’s biggest contribution to the *idea of mathematics* was his incomprehensible mind. However, the stories of Nash and Turing are significantly different. Unlike Ramanujan, they both had formal training in mathematics that allowed them to think more clearly about their respective domains, and neither man attributed their work to any sort of divine intervention. They were eccentric men, sure, but unlike Prof. Ito, I prefer to think that they were distinguished by an exceptionalism that also attends to Maryam Mirzaklhani. Specifically, Turing and Nash led normal lives too, in that they had families, they had homes and they had to work with the same quotidian constraints as many others of their generation (presumably minus misogyny, racism, etc. because they were white men). Sure, they were oddities in their respective social milieus, but I don’t believe that lends itself to the impression that mathematics and eccentricism are linked, at least in the cases of Nash and Turing. Nash was ill (he later developed schizophrenia) and Turing was gay well before the UK accepted homosexuality. It applies perfectly in Ramanujan’s case, of course. But by lumping the three men together, I fear that Prof. Ito’s review misidentifies the real nature of Mirzakhani’s achievement: not that she leads a ‘normal’ life but that she is a woman, and a woman from Iran. This is also what I meant by the exceptionalism that attends to Mirzakhani. Consider who the subjects of our films and documentaries are. Ramanujan, Nash and Turing had films made about them *because* they were eccentric – and Mirzakhani doesn’t escape this sampling bias as much as confirms it. There is a documentary about her *because* she hails from a country where women don’t have many of the rights that their counterparts in most other parts of the world enjoy, and because she was the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal. There are several male and female mathematicians, and in fact mathematicians of other genders, who are perfectly brilliant as well as lead perfectly normal lives (in Prof. Ito’s definition). It’s just that their experiences may not make for a good movie. In fact, it may well be that what most people consider ‘normal’ hasn’t ever been the subject of a movie about a good mathematician. The structural issues that Prof. Ito overlooks also include a significant part of what allowed the men she mentioned to be successful – the division of labour in society, within their homes, where as men they were free to focus on their work without contributing to helping their partners run the house or attending to any kind of tedious administrative work at their places of employment. This is as much an indictment of patriarchy as that attitude among prestigious institutes that continues to this day – that brilliant men’s ‘eccentricities’ should be excused so that they can keep bringing in the grants, the citations and the awards. Mirzakhani was not normal. I’m not familiar with her story (I really need to watch the documentary) but I’m certain that she had more barriers in her way to achieve the level of success that she did. That in turn elevates her achievements in a sad way, and might also inspire others to think that mathematics stands to benefit through more than just mathematical contributions. After all, aren’t we paying attention to Mirzakhani herself because of the Fields Medal committee’s disgraceful dismissal of women’s contributions for eight decades? ### A physics story of infinities, goats and colours URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/20/a-physics-story-of-infinities-goats-and-colours/ Last updated: 2022-09-20T08:18:00.000Z When I was writing in August about physicist [Sheldon Glashow’s objection](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/08/03/abdus-salam-deserving-nobel/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to Abdus Salam being awarded a share of the 1979 physics Nobel Prize, I learnt that it was because Salam had derived a theory that Glashow had derived as well, taking a different route, but ultimately the final product was non-renormalisable. A year or so later, Steven Weinberg derived the same theory but this time also ensured that it was renormalisable. Glashow said Salam shouldn’t have won the prize because Salam hadn’t brought anything new to the table, whereas Glashow had derived the initial theory and Weinberg had made it renormalisable. His objections aside, the episode brought to my mind the work of Kenneth Wilson, who made important contributions to the renormalisation toolkit. Specifically, using these tools, physicists ensure that the equations that they’re using to model reality don’t get out of hand and predict impossible values. An equation might be useful to solve problems in 99 scenarios but in one, it might predict an infinity (i.e. the value of a physical variable approaches a very large number), rendering the equation useless. In such cases, physicists use renormalisation techniques to ensure the equation works in the 100th scenario as well, without predicting infinities. (This is a simplistic description that I will finesse throughout this post.) In 2013, when Kenneth Wilson died, I wrote about the [“Indian idea of infiniteness”](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blogs-the-copernican/article4992321.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – including how scholars in ancient India had contemplated very large numbers and their origins, only for this knowledge to have all but disappeared from the public imagination today because of the country’s failure to preserve it. In both instances, I never quite fully understood what renormalisation really entailed. The following post is an attempt to fix this gap. You know electrons. Electrons have mass. Not all this mass is implicit mass *per se*. Some of it is the mass of the particle itself, sometimes called the shell mass. The electron also has an electric charge and casts a small electromagnetic field around itself. This field has some energy. According to the mass-energy equivalence (E = mc2, [approx.](https://thewire.in/history/parsing-ajay-sharma-v-e-mc2?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), the energy should correspond to some mass. This is called the electron’s electromagnetic mass. Now, there is an equation to calculate how much a particle’s electromagnetic mass will be – and this equation shows that this mass is inversely proportional to the particle’s radius. That is, smaller the particle, the more its electromagnetic mass. This is why the mass of a single proton, which is larger than the electron, has a lower contribution from its electromagnetic mass. So far so good – but quickly a problem arises. As the particle becomes smaller, according to the equation, its electromagnetic mass will increase. In technical terms, as the particle radius approaches zero, its mass will approach infinity. If its mass approaches infinity, the particle will be harder to move from rest, or accelerate, because a very large and increasing amount of energy will be required to do so. So the equation predicts that smaller charged particles, like quarks, should be nearly impossible to move around. Yet this is not what we see in experiments, where these particles do move around. In the first decade of the 20th century (when the equation existed but quarks had not yet been discovered), Max Abraham and Hendrik Lorentz resolved this problem by assuming that the shell mass of the particle is negative. It was the earliest (recorded) instance of such a tweak – so that the equations we use to model reality don’t lose touch with that reality – and was called *renormalisation*. Assuming the shell mass is negative is silly, of course, but it doesn’t affect the final result in a way that breaks the theory. To renormalise, in this context, assumes that our mathematical knowledge of the event to be modelled is not complete enough, or that introducing such completeness would make the majority of other problems intractable. There is another route physicists take to make sure equations and reality match, called *regularisation*. This is arguably more intuitive. Here, the physicist modifies the equation to include a ‘cutoff factor’ that represents what the physicist assumes is their incomplete knowledge of the phenomenon to which the equation is being applied. By applying a modified equation in this way, the physicist argues that some ‘new physics’ will be discovered in future that will complete the theory and the equation to perfectly account for the mass. (I personally prefer regularisation because it seems more modest, but this is an [aesthetic choice](https://aeon.co/ideas/beauty-is-truth-truth-is-beauty-and-other-lies-of-physics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that has nothing to do with the physics itself and is thus moot.) It is sometimes the case that once a problem is solved by regularisation, the cutoff factor disappears from the final answer – so effectively it helped with solving the problem in a way that its presence or absence doesn’t affect the answer. This brings to mind the famous folk tale of the goat negotiation problem, doesn’t it? A fellow in a village dies and bequeaths his 17 goats to three sons thus: the eldest gets half, the middle gets a third and the youngest gets one-ninth. Obviously the sons get into a fight: the eldest claims nine instead of 8.5 goats, the middle claims six instead of 5.67 and the youngest claims two instead of 1.89\. But then a wise old woman turns up and figures it out. She adds one of her own goats to the father’s 17 to make up a total of 18\. Now, the eldest son gets nine goats, the middle son gets six goats and the youngest son gets two goats. Problem solved? When the sons tally up the goats they received, the realise that the total is still 17\. The old woman’s goat is left, which she then takes back and gets on her way. The one additional goat was the cutoff factor here: you add it to the problem, solve it, get a solution and move on. The example of the electron was suitable but also convenient: the need to renormalise particle masses originally arose in the context of classical electrodynamics – the first theory developed to study the behaviour of charged particles. Theories that physicists developed later, in each case to account for some phenomena that other theories couldn’t, also required renormalisation in different contexts, but for the same purpose: to keep the equations from predicting infinities. Infinity is a strange number that compromises our ability to make sense of the natural universe because it spreads itself like an omnipresent screen, obstructing our view of the things beyond. To get to them, you must scale an unscaleable barrier. While the purpose of renormalisation has stayed the same, it took on new forms in different contexts. For example, *quantum* electrodynamics (QED) studies the behaviour of charged particles using the rules of quantum physics – as opposed to *classical* electrodynamics, which is an extension of Newtonian physics. In QED, the charge of an electron actually comes out to be infinite. This is because QED doesn’t have a way to explain why the force exerted by a charged particle decreases as you move away. But in reality electrons and protons have finite charges. How do we fix the discrepancy? The path of renormalisation here is as follows: Physicists assume that any empty space is not really empty. There may be no matter there, sure, but at the microscopic scale, the vacuum is said to be teeming with virtual particles. These are pairs of particles that pop in and out of existence over very short time scales. The energy that produces them, and the energy that they release when they annihilate each other and vanish, is what physicists assume to be the energy inherent to space itself. Now, say an electron-positron pair, called ‘e’ and ‘p’, pops up near an independent electron, ‘E’. The positron is the antiparticle of the electron and has a positive charge, so it will move closer to E. As a result, the electromagnetic force exerted by E’s electric charge becomes *screened* at a certain distance away, and the reduced force implies a lower effective charge. As the virtual particle pairs constantly flicker around the electron, QED says that we can observe only the effects of its [screened charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic%5Ffreedom?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Screening%5Fand%5Fantiscreening). By the 1960s, physicists had found several fundamental particles and were trying to group them in a way that made sense – i.e. that said something about why *these* were the fundamental particles and not others, and whether an incomplete pattern might suggest the presence of particles still to be discovered. Subsequently, in 1964, two physicists working independently – George Zweig and Murray Gell-Mann – proposed that protons and neutrons were not fundamental particles but were made up of smaller particles called quarks and gluons. They also said that there were three kinds of quarks and that the quarks could bind together using the gluons (thus the name). Each of these particles had an electric charge and a spin, just like electrons. Within a year, Oscar Greenberg proposed that the quarks would also have an additional ‘color charge’ to explain why they don’t violate [Pauli’s exclusion principle](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/how-hard-is-it-to-violate-paulis-exclusion-principle/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). (The term ‘colour’ has nothing to do with colours; it is just the label that unamiginative physicists selected when they were looking for one.) Around the same time, James Bjorken and Sheldon Glashow also proposed that there would have to be a fourth kind of quark, because then the new quark-gluon model could explain three more unsolved problems at the time. In 1968, physicists discovered the first evidence for quarks and gluons in experiments, proving that Zweig, Gell-Mann, Glashow, Bjorken, Greenberg, etc. were right. But as usual, there was a problem. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the study of quarks and gluons. In QED, if an electron and a positron interact at higher energies, their coupling will be stronger. But physicists who designed experiments in which they could observe the presence of quarks found the opposite was true: at higher energies, the quarks in a bound state behaved more and more like individual particles, but at lower energies, the effects of the individual quarks didn’t show, only that of the bound state. Seen another way, if you move an electron and a positron apart, the force between them gradually drops off to zero. But if you move two quarks apart, the force between them will increase for short distance before falling off to zero. It seemed that QCD would defy QED renormalisation. A breakthrough came in 1973\. If a quark ‘Q’ is surrounded by virtual quark-antiquark pairs ‘q’ and ‘q\*’, then q\* would move closer to Q and screen Q’s colour charge. However, the gluons have the [dubious distinction](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/510872/when-does-a-particle-have-an-antiparticle?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of being their own antiparticles. So some of these virtual pairs are also gluon-gluon pairs. And gluons also carry colour charge. When the two quarks are moved apart, the space in between is occupied by gluon-gluon pairs that bring in more and more colour charge, leading to the counterintuitive effect. However, QCD has had need of renormalisation in other areas, such as with the quark self-energy. Recall the electron and its electromagnetic mass in classical electrodynamics? This mass was the product of the electromagnetic energy field that the electron cast around itself. This energy is called *self-energy*. Similarly, quarks bear an electric charge as well as a colour charge and cast a chromo-electric field around themselves. The resulting self-energy, like in the classical electron example, threatens to reach an extremely high value – at odds with reality, where quarks have a relatively lower, certainly finite, self-energy. However, the simple addition of virtual particles wouldn’t solve the problem either, because of the counterintuitive effects of the colour charge and the presence of gluons. So physicists are forced to adopt a more convoluted path in which they use both renormalisation and regularisation, as well as ensure that the latter turns out like the goats – where a new factor introduced into the equations doesn’t remain in the ultimate solution. The mathematics of QCD is a [lot more complicated](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.2389v4.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) than that of QED (they are notoriously hard even for specially trained physicists), so the renormalisation and regularisation process is also correspondingly inaccessible to non-physicists. More than anything, it is steeped in mathematical techniques. All this said, renormalisation is obviously quite inelegant. The famous British physicist Paul A.M. Dirac, who pioneered its use in particle physics, called it “ugly”. This attitude changed the most due to the work of Kenneth Wilson. (By the way, his PhD supervisor was Gell-Mann.) Quarks and gluons together make up protons and neutrons. Protons, neutrons and electrons, plus the forces between them, make up atoms. Atoms make up molecules, molecules make up compounds and many compounds together, in various quantities, make up the objects we see all around us. This description encompasses three broad scales: the microscopic, the [mesoscopic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoscopic%5Fphysics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the macroscopic. Wilson developed a theory to act like a bridge – between the forces that quarks experience at the microscopic scale and the forces that cause larger objects to undergo phase transitions (i.e. go from solid to liquid or liquid to vapour, etc.). When a quark enters or leaves a bound state or if it is acted on by other particles, its energy changes, which is also what happens in phase transitions: objects gain or lose energy, and reorganise themselves (liquid –> vapour) to hold or shed that energy. By establishing this relationship, Wilson could bring to bear insights gleaned from one scale to difficult problems at a different scale, and thus make corrections that were more streamlined and more elegant. This is quite clever because even renormalisation is the act of substituting what we are modelling with what we are able to observe, and which Wilson improved on by dropping the direct substitution in favour of something more mathematically robust. After this point in history, physicists adopted renormalisation as a tool more widely across several branches of physics. As physicist Leo Kadanoff wrote in his obituary for Wilson [in *Nature*](https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/500030a?ref=slightlyacidic.com), “It could … be said that Wilson has provided scientists with the single most relevant tool for understanding the basis of physics.” This said, however, the importance of renormalisation – or anything like it that compensates for the shortcomings of observation-based theories – was known earlier as well, so much so that physicists considered a theory that couldn’t be renormalised to be inferior to one that could be. This was responsible for at least a part of Sheldon Glashow’s objection to Abdus Salam winning a share of the physics Nobel Prize. Sources: 1. [Introduction to QCD](https://cds.cern.ch/record/454171/files/p41.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Michelangelo L. Mangano 2. [Lectures on QED and QCD](https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0508242.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Andrey Grozin 3. [Lecture notes – Particle Physics II](https://www.nikhef.nl/~h24/qcdcourse/section-6.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Michiel Botje 4. [Lecture 5: QED](http://www-pnp.physics.ox.ac.uk/~biller/particle%5Fcourse/Lectures/lecture%5F5.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) 5. [Introduction to QCD](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.2389v4.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), P.Z. Skands 6. [Renormalization: Dodging Infinities](https://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw204.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), John G. Cramer ### How do you make a mode-locked laser? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/09/how-do-you-make-a-mode-locked-laser/ Last updated: 2022-09-09T06:01:34.000Z ## Given Mode-locked lasers are lasers that are capable of producing intense ultra-short pulses of light at a very high rate. ## Concepts ### Set 1 Take a bunch of atoms, excite them and place them in a box covered with mirrors in all directions. Send in one photon, a particle of light, to intercept one of these atoms. Unable to get more excited, the atom will get de-excited by emitting the interceptor photon and another photon identical to it. Because the box is covered with mirrors, these two photons bounce off a wall and intercept two more atoms. The same thing happens, over and over. A hole in the box allows the ‘extra’ photons to escape to the outside. This light is what you would see as laser light. Of course it’s a lot more complicated than that but if you had to pare it down to the barest essentials (and simplify it to a [ridiculous degree](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/ockham-razor-deeply-misleading/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), that’s what you’d get. The excited atoms that are getting de-excited together make up the laser’s *gain medium*. The mirror-lined box that contains the atoms, and has a specific design and dimensions, is called the *optical cavity*. ### Set 2 Remember wave-particle duality? And remember Young’s [double-slit experiment](https://sites.google.com/site/puenggphysics/home/Unit-II/young-s-double-slit-experiment?ref=slightlyacidic.com)? The photons bouncing back and forth inside the optical cavity are also waves bouncing back and forth. When two waves meet, they interfere – either constructively or destructively. When they interfere destructively, they cancel each other out. When they interfere constructively, they produce a larger wave. ![](https://signalfarmer.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/6210b-a7dbf-3f743-interference_electrons_double-slit_at_10cm.png?w=1024) A view of a simulation of a double-slit experiment with electrons (particles). The destructively interfered waves are 'visible' as no-waves whereas the constructively interfered waves are visible as taller waves. Credit: Alexandre Gondran/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 As thousands of waves interfere with each other, only the constructively interfered waves survive inside the optical cavity. These waves are called *modes*. The frequencies of the modes are together called the laser’s *gain bandwidth*. Physicists can design lasers with predictable modes and gain bandwidth using simple formulae. They just need to tweak the optical cavity’s design and the composition of the gain medium. For example, a laser with a helium-neon gain medium has a gain bandwidth of 1.5 GHz. A laser with a titanium-doped sapphire gain medium has a gain bandwidth of 128,000 GHz. ### Set 3 Say there are two modes in a laser’s gain medium. Say they’re out of phase. Remember the sine wave? It looks like this: ∿. A wave’s phase denotes the amount of the wave-shape it has completed. The modes are the waves that survive in the laser’s optical cavity. If there are only two modes and they’re out of phase, the laser’s light output is going to be sputtering – very on-and-off. If there are thousands of modes, the output is going to be a lot better: even if they are all out of phase, their sheer number is going to keep the output intensity largely uniform. ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ccec0-screenshot-2022-09-09-at-8.19.27-pm.png?w=1024) Two sinusoidal waves offset from each other by a phase shift θ. When θ = 0º, the waves will be *in phase*. Credit: Peppergrower/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 But there’s another scenario in which there are many modes and the modes are all in phase. In this optical cavity, the modes would all constructively interfere with each other and produce a highly amplified wave at periodic intervals. This big wave would appear as a short-duration but intense pulse of light – and the laser producing it would be called a *mode-locked laser*. Like in the previous instance, there are simple formulae to calculate how often a pulse is produced, depending on the optical cavity design and the gain medium’s properties. These formulae also show that the wider the modes’ range of frequencies – i.e. the gain bandwidth – the *shorter the duration* of the light pulse will be. For example, the helium-neon laser has a lower gain bandwidth, so its lowest pulse duration is around 300 picoseconds. The titanium-doped sapphire laser has a higher gain bandwidth, so its lowest pulse duration is 3.4 femtoseconds. In the former duration, light would have travelled around 9 cm; in the latter, it would have travelled [only 1 µm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders%5Fof%5Fmagnitude%5F%28time%29?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Brief interlude - An optical cavity of the sort described above is called a Fabry-Pérot cavity. The LIGO detector used to record and study gravitational waves uses a [pair of Fabry-Pérot cavities](https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligos-ifo?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to increase the distance each beam of laser light travels inside the structure, increasing the facility’s sensitivity to a level required to be affected by gravitational waves. - Aside from the concepts described above, ensuring a mode-locked laser works as intended requires physicists to adjust many other parts of the device. For example, they need to control the cavity’s [dispersion](https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University%5FPhysics/Book%3A%5FUniversity%5FPhysics%5F%28OpenStax%29/University%5FPhysics%5FIII%5F-%5FOptics%5Fand%5FModern%5FPhysics%5F%28OpenStax%29/01%3A%5FThe%5FNature%5Fof%5FLight/1.06%3A%5FDispersion?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (if waves of different frequencies propagate differently), the laser’s [linewidth](https://www.rp-photonics.com/linewidth.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (the range of frequencies in the output), the shape of the pulse, and the physical attributes of the optical cavity and the gain medium (their temperature, e.g.). ### Method How do you ‘lock’ the modes together? The two most common ways are *active* and *passive* locking. Active locking is achieved by placing a material or a device that exhibits the *electro-optic effect* inside the optical cavity. In such a material, its optical properties change if an electric field is applied. A popular example is the crystal [lithium niobate](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00614817?ref=slightlyacidic.com): in the presence of an electric field, its refractive index increases, meaning light takes longer to pass through it. Remember that the farther a light wave propagates, the more its phase evolves. So a wave’s phase can be ‘adjusted’ by passing it through the crystal and then tuning the applied electric field (very simplistically speaking), to get its phase right. What actually happens is more complicated, but by repeatedly modulating the light waves inside the cavity in this manner, the phases of all the waves can be synchronised. ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/f1775-1280px-lithium_niobate_wafer.jpg?w=1024) A lithium niobate wafer. Credit: Smithy71, CC0 Passive locking dispenses with an external modulator (like the applied electric field); instead, it encourages the light waves to get their phases in sync by repeatedly interacting with a passive object inside the cavity. A common example is a semiconductor saturable absorber, which absorbs light of low intensity and transmits light of high intensity. A related technique is [Kerr-lens mode-locking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr-lens%5Fmodelocking?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in which low- and high-intensity waves are focused at different locations inside the cavity and the high intensity waves are allowed to exit. Kerr-lens mode-locking is capable of producing extremely intense pulses of laser light. ### Conclusion Thus, we have a mode-locked laser. They have several applications. Two that are relatively easier to explain are nuclear fusion and eye surgery. While ‘nuclear fusion’ describes a singular outcome, there are many ways to get there. One is to heat electrons and ions to a high temperature and confine them using magnetic fields, encouraging them to recombine. This is called [magnetic confinement](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2022/03/27/better-nuclear-fusion-thanks-to-math-from-biology/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Another way is to hold a small amount of hydrogen in a very small container (technically, a [hohlraum](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01453?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) and then compress it further using ultra-short high-intensity laser pulses. This is the inertial containment method, and it can make use of mode-locked lasers. In refractive eye surgery, doctors use a series of laser pulses, each only a few femtoseconds long, to cut a portion of the cornea during [LASIK surgery](https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Femtosecond%5FLasers%5FEnable%5FBladeless%5FEye%5FSurgery/a46013?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Addendum If your priority is the laser’s intensity over the pulse duration or the repetition rate, you could use an alternative technique called *giant pulse formation* (a.k.a. [Q-switching](https://spie.org/publications/fg14%5Fp10-11%5Fq-switching?SSO=1&ref=slightlyacidic.com)). The fundamental principle is simple – sort of like holding your farts in and letting out a big one later. When the laser is first being set up, the gain medium is pumped into the optical cavity. Once it is sufficiently full, the laser will start operating. In terms of energy – remember that the atoms making up the gain medium are excited. In the giant pulse formation technique, an *attenuator* is placed inisde the cavity: this device prevents photons from being reflected around. As a result, the laser can’t operate even when the gain medium is more than dense enough for the laser to operate. After a point, the pumping is stopped. Some atoms in the medium might spontaneously emit some energy and become de-excited, but by and large, the optical cavity will contain a (relatively) large amount of energy that also remains stable over time – certainly more energy than if the laser had been allowed to start earlier. Once this steady state is reached, the attenuator is quickly switched to allow photons to move around inside the cavity. Because the laser then begins with a gain medium of higher density, its first light output has very high intensity. The ‘Q’ of ‘Q-switching’ refers to the cavity’s quality factor. On the flip side, in giant pulse formation, the gain medium’s density also drops rapidly, and subsequent pulses are not so intense. This compromises the laser’s repetition rate. ### The strange NYT article on taming minks URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/09/02/the-strange-nyt-article-on-taming-minks/ Last updated: 2022-09-02T03:54:31.000Z I'm probably waking up late to this but the *New York Times* has published yet another article in which it creates a false balance by first focusing on the problematic side of a story for an inordinately long time, without any of the requisite qualifications and arguments, before jumping, in the last few paragraphs to one or two rebuttals that reveal, for the first time, that there could in fact be serious problems with all that came before. The [first instance](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/08/25/what-makes-good-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was about a study on the links between one's genes and facial features. The second is a profile of a man named Joseph Carter who tames minks. The article is headlined 'How ‘the Most Vicious, Horrible Animal Alive’ Became a YouTube Star'. You'd think minks are "vicious" and "horrible" because they're aggressive or something like that, but no – you discover the real reason all the way down in paragraph #12: > “Pretty much everyone I asked, they told me the same thing — ‘They’re the most vicious, horrible animal alive,’” Mr. Carter said. “‘They’re completely untamable, untrainable, and it doesn’t really matter what you do.’” > > So, in 2003, he decided that he would start taming mink. He quickly succeeded. Putting such descriptors as "vicious" and "horrible" in single-quotes in the headline doesn't help if those terms are being used – by unnamed persons, to boot – to mean minks are hard to tame. That just makes them normal. But the headline's choice of words (and subsequently the refusal by the first 82% (by number of paragraphs) of the piece to engage with the issue) gives the impression that the newspaper is going to ignore that. A similar kind of dangerous ridiculousness emerges further down the piece, with no sense of irony: > “You can’t control, you can’t change the genetics of an individual,” he said. “But you can, with the environment, slightly change their view of life.” Why do we need to change minks' view of anything? Right after, the article segues to a group of researchers at a veterinary college in London, whose story appears to supply the only redeeming feature of Carter's games with minks: the idea that in order to conduct their experiments with minks, the team would have to design more challenging tasks with higher rewards than they were handing out. Other than this, there's very little to explain *why* Carter does what he does. There's a flicker of an insight when a canal operator says Carter helps them trap the "muskrats, rats, raccoons and beavers" that erode the canal's banks. There's another flicker when the article says Carter buys "many of his animals" from fur farms, where the animals are killed before they're a year old when in fact they could live to three, as they do with Carter. Towards the very end, we learn, Carter also prays for his minks every night. So he's saving them in the sort of way the US saves other countries? It's hard to say when he's also setting out to tame these animals to – as the article seems to suggest – see if he can succeed. In fact, the article is so poorly composed and structured that it's hard to say if the story it narrates is a faithful reflection of Carter's sensibilities or if it's just lazy writing. We never find out if Carter has ever considered 'rescuing' these animals and releasing them into the wild or if he has considered joining experts and activists fighting to have the animal farms shut. We only have the vacuous claim that is Carter's belief that he's giving them a "new life". The last 18% of the article also contains a few quotes that I'd call weak for not being sharp enough to poke more holes in Carter's views, at least as the *New York Times* seems to relay them. There is one paragraph citing a 2001 study about what makes mink stressed and another about the welfare of Carter's minks being better than those that are caged in the farms. But the authors appear to have expended no sincere effort to link them together vis-à-vis Carter's activities. In fact, there is a quote by a scientist introduced to rationalise Carter's views: “It’s like any thoroughbred horse, or performance animal — or birds of prey who go out hunting. If asked, they probably would prefer to hunt.” Wouldn't you think that if they were asked, and if they could provide an answer that we could understand, they would much rather be free of all constraints rather than being part of Carter's circus? There is also a dubious presumption here that creates a false choice – between being caged in a farm and being tamed by a human: that the minks ought to be grateful because some humans are choosing to stress them less, instead of not stress them whatsoever. Whether a mink might be killed by predators or have a harder time finding food in the wild, if it is released, is completely irrelevant. Then comes the most infuriating sentence of the lot, following the scientist's quote: "Mr. Carter has his own theories." Not ideas or beliefs but *theories*. Because scientists' theories, tested as they need to be against our existing body of knowledge and with experiments designed to eliminate even inadvertent bias, are at least semantically equivalent to Carter's "own theories", founded on his individual need for self-justification and harmony with the saviour complex. And then the last paragraph: > “Animals don’t have ethics,” he said. “They have sensation, they can feel pain, they have the ability to learn, but they don’t have ethics. That’s a human thing.” I don't know how to make sense of it, other than with the suspicion that the authors and/or editors grafted these lines to the bottom because they sounded profound. ### Why everyone should pay attention to Stable Diffusion URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/30/a-real-wolf-a-beginners-guide-to-stable-diffusion/ Last updated: 2022-08-30T13:52:25.000Z Many of the people in my circles hadn’t heard of Stable Diffusion until I told them, and I was already two days late. Heralds of new technologies have a tendency to play up every new thing, however incremental, as the dawn of a new revolution – but in this case, their cries of wolf may be real for once. Stable Diffusion is an AI tool produced by Stability.ai with help from researchers at the [Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich](https://github.com/CompVis?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the [Large-scale AI Open Network](https://laion.ai/about/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (LAION). It accepts text or image prompts and converts them into artwork based on, but not necessarily understand, what it ‘sees’ in the input. It created the image below with my prompt “desk in the middle of the ocean vaporwave”. You can create your own [here](https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabilityai/stable-diffusion?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/036c9-index2.png) But it strayed into gross territory with a different prompt: “beautiful person floating through a colourful nebula”. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/46167-screenshot-2022-08-29-at-11.25.51-am.png) Stable Diffusion is like OpenAI’s [DALL-E 1/2](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Google’s [Imagen](https://imagen.research.google/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Parti](https://parti.research.google/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) but with two crucial differences: it’s capable of image-to-image (img2img) generation as well and it’s open source. The img2img feature is particularly mind-blowing because it allows users to describe the scene using text and then guide the Stable Diffusion AI by using a little bit of their own art. Even a drawing on MS Paint with a few colours will do. And while OpenAI and Google hold their cards very close to their chests, with the latter even refusing to release Imagen or Parti in private betas, Stability.ai has – in keeping with its vision to [democratise AI](https://stability.ai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – opened Stable Diffusion for tinkering and augmentation by developers *en masse*. Even the ways in which Stable Diffusion has been released are important: trained developers can work directly with the code while untrained users can access the model [in their browsers](https://stabilityai.us.auth0.com/u/login?state=hKFo2SBHb3dTRFFUYURmZVE3SWRKOVpPbmMwanBwQ3NRcEFRMqFur3VuaXZlcnNhbC1sb2dpbqN0aWTZIFBWdDd6cEUzeWxiaXhleG1aMkdJc1BkdWNHNE9MWXhlo2NpZNkgS3ZZWkpLU2htVW9PalhwY2xRbEtZVXh1Y0FWZXNsSE4&ref=slightlyacidic.com), without any code, and start producing images. In fact, you can download and run the underlying model on your system, requiring some [slightly higher-end specs](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/wuyu2u/how%5Fdo%5Fi%5Frun%5Fstable%5Fdiffusion%5Fand%5Fsharing%5Ffaqs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Users have already created ways to plug it into photo-editing software like [Photoshop](https://www.getalpaca.io/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Stable Diffusion uses a [diffusion model](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/diffusion-models-for-machine-learning-introduction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): a filter (essentially an algorithm) that takes noisy data and progressively de-noises it. In incredibly simple terms, researchers take an image and in a step-wise process add more and more noise to it. Next they feed this noisy image to the filter, which then removes the noise from the image in a similar step-wise process. You can think of the image as a *signal*, like the images you see on your TV, which receives broadcast signals from a transmitter located somewhere else. These broadcast signals are basically bundles of electromagnetic waves with information encoded into the waves’ properties, like their frequency, amplitude and phase. Sometimes the visuals aren’t clear because some other undesirable signal has become mixed up with the broadcast signal, leading to grainy images on your TV screen. This undesirable information is called noise. When the noise waveform resembles that of a bell curve, a.k.a. a [Gaussian function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian%5Ffunction?ref=slightlyacidic.com), it’s called Gaussian noise. Now, if we know the manner in which noise has been added to the image in each step, we can figure out what the filter needs to do to de-noise the image. Every Gaussian function can be characterised by two parameters, the mean and the variance. Put another way, you can generate different bell-curve-shaped signals by changing the mean and the variance in each case. So the filter effectively only needs to figure out what the mean and the variance in the noise of the input image are, and once it does, it can start de-noising. That is, Stable Diffusion is (partly) the filter here. The input you provide is the noisy image. Its output is the de-noised image. So when you supply a text prompt and/or an accompanying ‘seed’ image, Stable Diffusion just [shows off](https://colab.research.google.com/github/huggingface/notebooks/blob/main/diffusers/diffusers%5Fintro.ipynb?ref=slightlyacidic.com) how well it has learnt to de-noise your inputs. Obviously, when millions of people use Stable Diffusion, the filter is going to be confronted with too many mean-variance combinations for it to be able to directly predict them. This is where an artificial neural network (ANN) helps. ANNs are data-processing systems set up to mimic the way neurons work in our brain, by combining different pieces of information and manipulating them according to their knowledge of older information. The team that built Stable Diffusion trained its model on 5.8 billion image-text pairs found around the internet. An ANN is then programmed to learn from this dataset as to how texts and images correlate as well as how images and images correlate. To keep this exercise from getting out of hand, each image and text input is broken down into certain components, and the machine is instructed to learn correlations only between these components. Further, the researchers used an ANN model called an [autoencoder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoencoder?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Here, the ANN encodes the input in its own representation, using only the information that it has been taught to consider important. This intermediate is called the bottleneck layer. The network then decodes only the information present in this layer to produce the de-noised output. This way, the network also learns what about the input is most important. Finally, researchers also guide the ANN by attaching weights to different pieces of information: that is, the system is informed that some pieces are to be emphasised more than others, so that it acquires a ‘sense’ of less and more desirable. By snacking on all those text-image pairs, the ANN effectively acquires its own basis to decide when it’s presented a new bit of text and/or image what the mean and variance might be. Combine this with the filter and you get Stable Diffusion. (I should point out again that this is a very simple explanation and that parts of it may well be simplistic.) Stable Diffusion also comes with an NSFW filter built-in, a component called Safety Classifier, which will stop the model from producing an output that it deems harmful in some way. Will it suffice? Probably not, given the ingenuity of trolls, goblins and other bad-faith actors on the internet. More importantly, it can be turned off, meaning Stable Diffusion can be run without the Safety Classifier to produce deepfakes that are various degrees of disturbing. Recommended here: [Deepfakes for all: Uncensored AI art model prompts ethics questions](https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/24/deepfakes-for-all-uncensored-ai-art-model-prompts-ethics-questions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But the problems with Stable Diffusion don’t lie only in the future, immediate or otherwise. As I mentioned earlier, to create the model, Stability.ai & co. fed their machine 5.8 billion text-image pairs scraped from the internet – without the consent of the people who created those texts and images. Because Stability.ai released Stable Diffusion *in toto* into the public domain, it has been experimented with by tens of thousands of people, *at least*, and developers have plugged it into a rapidly growing number of applications. This is to say that even if Stability.ai is forced to pull the software because it didn’t have the license to those text-image pairs, the cat is out of the bag. There’s no going back. A [blog post by LAION](https://laion.ai/blog/laion-5b/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) only says that the pairs were publicly available and that models built on the dataset should thus be restricted to research. Do you think the creeps on 4chan care? Worse yet, the jobs of the very people who created those text-image pairs are now threatened by Stable Diffusion, which can – with some practice to get your prompts right – produce exactly what you need, no illustrator or photographer required. Recommended here: [Stable Diffusion is a really big deal](https://simonwillison.net/2022/Aug/29/stable-diffusion/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The third interesting thing about Stable Diffusion, after its img2img feature + “deepfakes for all” promise and the questionable legality of its input data, is the license under which Stability.ai has released it. AI analyst [Alberto Romero wrote](https://thealgorithmicbridge.substack.com/p/stable-diffusion-is-the-most-important) that “a state-of-the-art AI model” like Stable Diffusion “available for everyone through a safety-centric open-source license is unheard of”. This is the [CreativeML Open RAIL-M license](https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-license?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Its preamble says, “We believe in the intersection between open and responsible AI development; thus, this License aims to strike a balance between both in order to enable responsible open-science in the field of AI.” Attachment A of the license spells out the restrictions – that is, what you can’t do if you agree to use Stable Diffusion according to the terms of the license (quoted verbatim): > “You agree not to use the Model or Derivatives of the Model: - In any way that violates any applicable national, federal, state, local or international law or regulation; - For the purpose of exploiting, harming or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way; - To generate or disseminate verifiably false information and/or content with the purpose of harming others; - To generate or disseminate personal identifiable information that can be used to harm an individual; - To defame, disparage or otherwise harass others; - For fully automated decision making that adversely impacts an individual’s legal rights or otherwise creates or modifies a binding, enforceable obligation; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against or harming individuals or groups based on online or offline social behavior or known or predicted personal or personality characteristics; - To exploit any of the vulnerabilities of a specific group of persons based on their age, social, physical or mental characteristics, in order to materially distort the behavior of a person pertaining to that group in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against individuals or groups based on legally protected characteristics or categories; - To provide medical advice and medical results interpretation; - To generate or disseminate information for the purpose to be used for administration of justice, law enforcement, immigration or asylum processes, such as predicting an individual will commit fraud/crime commitment (e.g. by text profiling, drawing causal relationships between assertions made in documents, indiscriminate and arbitrarily-targeted use).” As a result of these restrictions, law enforcement around the world has incurred a heavy burden, and I don’t think Stability.ai took the corresponding stakeholders into confidence before releasing Stable Diffusion. It should also go without saying that the license choosing to colour within the lines of the laws of respective countries means, say, a country that doesn’t recognise X as a crime will also fail to recognise harm in the harrassment of victims of X – now with the help of Stable Diffusion. And the vast majority of these victims are women and children, already disempowered by economic, social and political inequities. Is Stability.ai going to deal with these people and their problems? I think not. But as I said, the cat’s already out of the bag. ### When a teenager wants to solve poaching with machine-learning… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/29/when-a-teenager-wants-to-solve-poaching-with-machine-learning/ Last updated: 2022-08-29T13:24:57.000Z We always need more feel-good stories, but we need those feel-good stories more that withstand closer scrutiny instead of falling apart, and framed the right way. For example, *Smithsonian* magazine published an article with the headline ['This Teenager Invented a Low-Cost Tool to Spot Elephant Poachers in Real Time'](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-teenager-invented-a-low-cost-tool-to-spot-elephant-poachers-in-real-time-180980522/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on August 4\. It's a straightforward feel-good story at first glance: Anika Puri is a 17-year-old in New York who created a machine-learning model (based on an existing dataset) "that analyses the movement patterns of humans and elephants". The visual input for the model comes from a $250 thermal camera attached to an iPhone attached to a drone, which flies over problem areas and collects data, and which the model then sifts through to pick out the presence of humans. One caveat: the machine-learning model can detect people, not poachers. Nonetheless, this is clearly laudable work by a 17-year-old – but the article is an affront to people working in India because it plainly overlooks everything that makes elephant poaching tenacious enough to have caught Puri's attention in the first place. *A 17-year-old did this and we should celebrate her*, you say, and that's fair. But we can do that without making what she did sound like a bigger deal than it is, which would also provide a better sense of how much work she has left to do, while expressing our belief – this is important – that we look forward to her and others like her applying their minds to *really* doing something about the problem. This way, we may also be able to salvage two victims of the *Smithsonian* article. The first is why elephant poaching persists. The article gives the impression that it does for want of a way to tell when humans walk among elephants in the wild. The first red-flag in the article, to me at least, is related to this issue and turns up in the opening itself: > When Anika Puri visited India with her family four years ago, she was surprised to come across a market in Bombay filled with rows of ivory jewelry and statues. Globally, ivory trade has been illegal for more than 30 years, and elephant hunting has been prohibited in India since the 1970s. "I was quite taken aback," the 17-year-old from Chappaqua, New York, recalls. "Because I always thought, 'well, poaching is illegal, how come it really is still such a big issue?'" I admit I take a cynical view of people who remain ignorant in this day and age of the bigger problems assailing the major realms of human enterprise – but a 17-year-old being surprised by the availability of ivory ornaments in India is pushing it, and more so by being surprised that there's a difference between the existence of a law and its proper enforcement. *Smithsonian* also presents Puri's view as an outsider, which she is in more than the geographical sense, followed by her resolving to do something about it *from the outside*. That was the bigger issue and a clear sign of the narrative to come. Poaching and animal-product smuggling persist in India, among other countries, *sensu lato* because of a lack of money, a lack of personnel, misplaced priorities and [malgovernance and incompetence](https://science.thewire.in/environment/kaziranga-bbc-shoot-poaching/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The first and the third reasons are related: the Indian government's conception of how the country's forests ought to be protected regularly exclude the welfare of the people living in and dependent on those forests, and thus socially and financially alienates them. As a result, some of those affected see a strong incentive in animal poaching and smuggling. (There are famous exceptions to this trend, like the [black-necked crane](https://science.thewire.in/environment/black-necked-cranes-arunachal-monpa-community-religious-beliefs-conservation/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of Arunachal Pradesh, the [*law kyntang* forests](https://science.thewire.in/environment/the-sacred-groves-of-meghalaya/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of Meghalaya or the whale sharks off Gujarat but they're almost always rooted in spiritual beliefs – something the [IUCN wants to press](https://science.thewire.in/environment/interview-liza-zogib-iucn-spiritual-traditions-conservation-arunachal-bhutan/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the cause of conservation.) Similarly, forest rangers are underpaid, overworked, use dysfunctional or outdated equipment and, importantly, are [often caught between](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/forest-rangers-struggle-to-prevent-poaching-amid-lockdowns/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) angry locals and an insensitive local government. In India, theirs is a dispriting vocation. In this context the use of drones plus infrared cameras that each cost Rs 20,000 is laughable. The 'lack of personnel' is a two-part issue: it helps the cause of animal conservation if the personnel include members of local communities, but they seldom do; second, India is a very large country, so we need more rangers (and more drones!) to patrol all areas, without any blind spots. Anika Puri's solution has nothing on any of these problems – and I don't blame her. I blame the *Smithsonian* for its lazy framing of the story, and in fact for telling us nothing of whether she's already aware of these issues. The second problem with the framing has to do with 'encouraging a smart person to do more' on the one hand and the type of solution being offered to a problem on the other. This one really gets my goat. When *Smithsonian* played up Puri's accomplishment, such as it is, it effectively championed [techno-optimism](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-022-00555-x?ref=slightlyacidic.com): the belief that technology is a moral good and that technological solutions can solve our principal crises (crises that techno-optimists like to play up so that they seem more pressing, and thus more in need of the sort of fixes that machine-centric governance can provide). In the course of this narrative, however, the sociological and political solutions that poaching desperately requires fall by the wayside, even as the trajectories of the tech and its developer are celebrated as a feel-good story. In this way, the *Smithsonian* article has effectively created a false achievement, a red herring that showcases its subject's technical acumen instead of a meaningful development towards solving poaching. On the other hand, how often do you read profiles of people, young or old, whose insights have been concerned less with 'hardware' solutions (technological innovation, infrastructure, etc.) and more with improving and implementing the 'software' – that is, changing people's behaviour, deliberating on society's aspirations and effecting good governance? How often do you also encounter grants and contests of the sort that Puri won with her idea but which are dedicated to the 'software' issues? ### The search for a powerful natural particle accelerator URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/29/the-arduous-search-for-pevatrons/ Last updated: 2022-08-29T01:43:00.000Z Earth is [almost constantly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic%5Fray?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Cosmic-ray%5Fflux) beset by a stream of particles from space called cosmic rays. These particles consist of protons, bundles of two protons and two neutrons each (alpha particles), a small number of heavier atomic nuclei and a smaller fraction of anti-electrons and anti-protons. Cosmic rays often have high energy – typically up to half of 1 GeV. One GeV is almost the amount of energy that a single proton has at rest. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) itself can accelerate protons up to 7,000 GeV. But this doesn't mean cosmic rays are feeble: historically, some detectors have recorded high-energy and very-high-energy cosmic rays. The most energetic cosmic ray – dubbed the ["oh my god" particle](https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9410067?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – was a proton recorded over Utah in 1991 with an energy of around 3 x 1012 GeV, which is around three-billion-times higher than the energy to which the LHC can accelerate protons *today*. This proton was travelling at 99.9% the speed of light in vacuum. This is a phenomenal amount of energy – about as much kinetic energy as a baseball moving at 95 km/hr but concentrated into the volume of a proton, which has 1042\-times less space in which to hold that energy. Detectors have also spotted some cosmic-ray events with energies exceeding 1,000,000 GeV – or 1 PeV. They're uncommon compared to all cosmic-ray events but relatively more common than the likes of the "oh my god" particle. Physicists are interested in them because they indicate the presence of a natural particle accelerator somewhere in the universe that's injecting protons with ginormous amounts of energy and sending them blasting off into space. One term for such natural accelerators seemingly capable of accelerating protons to 0.1-1 PeV is 'PeVatron'. And the question is: where can we find a PeVatron? There are three broad sources of cosmic rays: from the Sun, from somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and from somewhere beyond the galaxy. Most of the cosmic rays we have detected have been from the latter two sources. In fact, there's a curious feature called the 'knee' that physicists believe could distinguish between these sources. If you plot the number of cosmic rays on the y-axis and the energies of the cosmic rays on the x-axis, you'll find yourself looking at the famous [Swordy plot](https://archive.org/details/arxiv-astro-ph0202159/page/n1/mode/2up): ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/2f558-854px-cosmic_ray_flux_versus_particle_energy.svg_.png) The Swordy plot of cosmic-rays flux versus energy. The yellow zone accounts for solar cosmic rays, the blue zone for galactic cosmic rays and the pink zone for extragalactic cosmic rays. Credit: Sven Lafebre/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 As you can see, the plot shows a peculiar bump, an almost imperceptible change in slope, when transitioning from the blue to the pink zones – this is the 'knee'. Physicists have interpreted the cosmic rays above the knee to be from within the Milky Way and those below to be from outside the galaxy, although why this is so isn't clear. Before cosmic rays interact with other particles in their way, they're called primary cosmic rays. After their interaction, such as the atoms and molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, they produce a shower of secondary particles; these are the secondary cosmic rays. Physicists can get a tighter fit on the potential source of primary cosmic rays by analysing the direction at which they strike the atmosphere, the composition of the secondary cosmic rays, and the energies of both the primary and the secondary rays. This is why we suspect supernovae are one source of within-the-galaxy cosmic rays, with some possible mechanisms of action. One, for example, is shockfront acceleration: a proton could get trapped between two shockwaves from the same supernova. As the outer wave slows and the inner wave charges in, the proton could bounce rapidly between the two shockfronts and emerge greatly energised out of a gap. However, we don't know what fraction of cosmic rays, at different energies, supernovae can account for. Potential extragalactic sources include active galactic nuclei – the centres of galaxies, including the neighbourhood of supermassive black holes – and the extremely powerful gamma-ray bursts. Physicists have associated them with cataclysmic events like neutron-star mergers and the formative events of black-holes. However, exercises to triangulate the sources of high-energy cosmic rays are complicated by galactic magnetic fields (which curve the paths of charged particles). A proton accelerated by the shockfront mechanism could also bump into some other particle as it emerges, producing a flash of gamma rays that physicists can look for – but only if they have a way to isolate it from other sources of gamma rays in a supernova's vicinity. This is difficult work. Researchers from the US recently [analysed gamma-ray data](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.071101?ref=slightlyacidic.com) collected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST), in low-Earth orbit, of the supernova remnant G106.3+2.7\. Astrophysicists have suspected that this object could be a PeVatron for more than a decade, and the US research team used FGST data to check if they the suspicion could be true. The difficult bit? The data spanned *12 years*. In 2008, physicists recorded very high energy (100-100,000 GeV) [gamma rays from G106.3+2.7](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/703/1/L6?ref=slightlyacidic.com), located around 800 parsec (2,600 lightyears) away. The US research team figured that they could have been produced in two ways. Let's call them Mechanism *A* and Mechanism *B*. Physicists already know Mechanism *A* is associated with cosmic rays while Mechanism *B* is not. The US team members used 12 years of data to characterise gamma-ray, X-ray and radio emissions around the remnant so they could determine which mechanism could have been responsible for all of them the way they have been observed, with the gamma rays as secondary cosmic rays. The team's analysis found that the theory of Mechanism *A* almost exactly accounted for the energies of the gamma rays from the remnant while also accommodating the other radiation – whereas the theory of Mechanism *B* couldn't explain the gamma rays and the remnant's X-ray emissions together. In effect, the team had a way to justify the idea that G106.3+2.7 could be a PeVatron. Mechanism *B* is inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons. [Inverse Compton scattering](https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Volker.Beckmann/school/download/Longair%5FRadiation3.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is when high-energy electrons collide with low-energy photons and the photons gain energy (in regular Compton scattering, the electrons gain energy). When this model couldn't account for the gamma-ray emissions, the team invoked a modified version involving two sets of electrons, with each set accelerated to different energies by different mechanisms. But the team found that the FGST data continued to disfavour the involvement of leptons, and instead preferred the involvement of hadrons. Leptons – like electrons – are particles that *don't* interact with other particles through the strong nuclear force. Hadrons, on the other hand, do, and they were implicated in Mechanism *A*: the decay of neutral pions. Pions are the lightest known hadrons and come in three types: π+, π0 and π\-. Neutral pions are π0. They have a very short lifetime, around 85 attoseconds – that's 0.000000000000000085 seconds. And when they decay, they decay into gamma rays, i.e. high-energy photons. Some 380,000 years after the Big Bang, a series of events in the universe left behind some radiation that survives to this day. This relic radiation is called the cosmic microwave background, a sea of photons in the microwave frequency pervading the cosmos. When a cosmic-ray proton collides with one of these photons, a delta-plus baryon is formed that then decays into a proton and a neutral pion. The neutral pion then decays to gamma rays, which are detectable as secondary cosmic rays. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/237c8-screenshot-2022-08-28-at-10.03.04-pm.png) Source: Wikipedia/'Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit' Knowing the energy of the gamma rays allows physicists to work back to the energy of the cosmic ray. And according to the team's calculations, the 2009 gamma-ray emission indicates G106.3+2.7 could be a PeVatron. As the team's [preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.05457v1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) concluded, > "… only a handful, out of hundreds of radio-emitting supernova remnants, have been observed to emit very high energy radiation with a hard spectrum. The scarcity of PeVatron candidates and the rareness of remnants with very high energy emission make … G106.3+2.7 a unique source. Our study provides strong evidence for proton acceleration in this nearby remnant, and by extension, supports a potential role for G106.3+2.7-like supernova remnants in meeting the challenge of accounting for the observed cosmic-ray knee using galactic sources". *Featured image: An artist's impression of supernova 1993J. Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI).* ### Yes, scientific journals should publish political rebuttals URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/28/yes-scientific-journals-should-publish-political-rebuttals/ Last updated: 2022-08-28T04:32:52.000Z (The headline is partly click-bait, as I admit below, because some context is required.) From ['Should scientific journals publish political debunkings?'](https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/political-debunking), *Science Fictions* by Stuart Ritchie, August 27, 2022: > Earlier this week, the “news and analysis” section of the journal *Science* … published … a point-by-point rebuttal of a monologue a few days earlier from the *Fox News* show Tucker Carlson Tonight, where the eponymous host excoriated Dr. Anthony Fauci, of “seen everywhere during the pandemic” fame. … The *Science* piece noted that “\[a\]lmost everything Tucker Carlson said… was misleading or false”. That’s completely correct – so why did I have misgivings about the *Science* piece? It’s the kind of thing you see all the time on dedicated political fact-checking sites – but I’d never before seen it in a scientific journal. … I feel very conflicted on whether this is a sensible idea. And, instead of actually taking some time to think it through and work out a solid position, in true hand-wringing style I’m going to write down both sides of the argument in the form of a dialogue - with myself. There's one particular exchange between Ritchie and himself in his piece that threw me off the entire point of the article: > \[Ritchie-in-favour-of-Science-doing-this\]: Just a second. This wasn’t published in the peer-reviewed section of Science! This isn’t a refereed paper - it’s in the “News and Analysis” section. Wouldn’t you expect an “Analysis” article to, like, analyse things? Including statements made on Fox News? > > \[Ritchie-opposed-to-Science-doing-this\]: To be honest, sometimes I wonder why scientific journals have a “News and Analysis” section at all - or, I wonder if it’s healthy in the long run. In any case, clearly there’s a big “halo” effect from the peer-reviewed part: people take the News and Analysis more seriously because it’s attached to the very esteemed journal. People are sharing it on social media because it’s “the journal Science debunking Tucker Carlson” - way fewer people would care if it was just published on some random news site. I don’t think you can have it both ways by saying it’s actually nothing to do with Science the peer-reviewed journal. > > \[Ritchie-in-favour\]: I was just saying they were separate, rather than entirely unrelated, but fair enough. Excuse me but not at all fair enough! The essential problem is the tie-ins between what a journal does, why it does them and what impressions they uphold in society. First, *Science*'s 'news and analysis' section isn't distinguished by its association with the peer-reviewed portion of the journal but by its own reportage and analyses, intended for scientists and non-scientists alike. (Mea culpa: the headline of this post answers the question in the headline of Ritchie's post, while being clear in the body that there's a clear distinction between the journal and its 'news and analysis' section.) A very recent example was [Charles Piller's investigative report](https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that uncovered evidence of image manipulation in a paper that had an outsized influence on the direction of Alzheimer's research since it was published in 2006\. When Ritchie writes that the peer-reviewed journal and the 'news and analysis' section are separate, he's right – but when he suggests that the former's prestige is responsible for the latter's popularity, he's couldn't be more wrong. Ritchie is a scientist and his position may reflect that of many other scientists. I recommend that he and others who agree with him consider the section from the PoV of a science journalist, when they will immediately see as we do that it has broken many agenda-setting stories as well as has published several accomplished journalists and scientists ([Derek Lowe's column](https://www.science.org/blogs/pipeline?ref=slightlyacidic.com) being a good example). Another impression that could change with the change of perspective is the [relevance of peer-review itself](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/02/02/are-preprints-reliable/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and the deceptively deleterious nature of an associated concept he repeatedly invokes, which could as well be the pseudo-problem at the heart of Ritchie's dilemma: *prestige*. To quote from a [blog post](http://bjoern.brembs.net/2022/02/replacing-the-prestige-signal/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which University of Regensburg neurogeneticist Björn Brembs analysed the novelty of results published by so-called 'prestigious' journals, and published in February this year: > Taken together, despite the best efforts of the professional editors and best reviewers the planet has to offer, the input material that prestigious journals have to deal with appears to be the dominant factor for any ‘novelty’ signal in the stream of publications coming from these journals. Looking at all articles, the effect of all this expensive editorial and reviewer work amounts to probably not much more than a slightly biased random selection, dominated largely by the input and to probably only a very small degree by the filter properties. In this perspective, editors and reviewers appear helplessly overtaxed, being tasked with a job that is humanly impossible to perform correctly in the antiquated way it is organized now. In sum: > Evidence suggests that the prestige signal in our current journals is noisy, expensive and flags unreliable science. There is a lack of evidence that the supposed filter function of prestigious journals is not just a biased random selection of already self-selected input material. As such, massive improvement along several variables can be expected from a more modern implementation of the prestige signal. Take the 'prestige' away and one part of Ritchie's dilemma – the journal *Science*'s claim to being an "impartial authority" that stands at risk of being diluted by its 'news and analysis' section's engagement with "grubby political debates" – evaporates. Journals, especially glamour journals like *Science*, haven't historically been authorities on 'good' science, such as it is, but have served to obfuscate the fact that only scientists can be. But more broadly, the 'news and analysis' business has its own expensive economics, and publishers of scientific journals that can afford to set up such platforms should consider doing so, in my view, with a degree and type of separation between these businesses according to their mileage. The simple reasons are: **1\.** Reject the false balance: there's no sensible way publishing a pro-democracy article (calling out cynical and potentially life-threatening untruths) could affect the journal's 'prestige', however it may be defined. But if it does, would the journal be wary of a pro-Republican (and effectively anti-democratic) scientist refusing to publish on its pages? If so, why? The two-part answer is straightforward: because many *other* scientists as well as journal editors are still concerned with the titles that publish papers instead of the papers themselves, and because of the fundamental incentives of academic publishing – to publish the work of prestigious scientists and sensational work, as opposed to good work *per se*. In this sense, the knock-back is entirely acceptable in the hopes that it could dismantle the fixation on which journal publishes which paper. **2\.** Scientific journals already have access to expertise in various fields of study, as well as an incentive to participate in the creation of a sensible culture of science appreciation and criticism. *Featured image: Tucker Carlson at an event in West Palm Beach, Florida, December 19, 2020\. Credit: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.* ### In search of sandastros URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/27/in-search-of-sandastros/ Last updated: 2022-08-27T07:15:43.000Z About a week ago, I wrote to ICANN asking for a list of all the .com domains that were still available. After I received the file a few days later, I used two pieces of code to extract all the single-word entries on the list and subsequently all the words that were listed in a dictionary. The idea and the instructions came from [Derek Sivers](https://sive.rs/com?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Finally, I randomly picked a letter – ‘s’, it turned out – and began googling all those words whose meanings I didn’t know. I like doing this because sometimes new words can tell you what to think or to write, instead of the convention of what you write determining what words you wield. That’s how I discovered ‘sandastros’. When I googled it, I found that the word comes from chapter 28, book 37 of *Natural History*, an ancient encyclopaedia put together in the first century AD by the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder. Its contents (as translated by John Bostock) are available to read, book- and chapter-wise, [here](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3Ddedication&ref=slightlyacidic.com); the text is also available on a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. It’s a fascinating text throughout, including book 37, which is dedicated to what was known about precious stones in Pliny’s time. To quote at length from chapter 28: > Of a kindred nature, too, is sandastros,1 known as “garamantites” by some: it is found in India, at a place of that name, and is a product also of the southern parts of Arabia. The great recommendation of it is, that it has all the appearance of fire placed behind a transparent substance, it burning with star-like scintillations within, that resemble drops of gold, and 2 are always to be seen in the body of the stone, and never upon the surface. There are certain religious associations, too, connected with this stone, in consequence of the affinity which it is supposed to bear with the stars; these scintillations being mostly, in number and arrangement, like the constellations of the Pleiades and Hyades; a circumstance which had led to the use of it by the Chaldæi in the ceremonials which they practise. > > Here, too, the male stones are distinguished from the female, by their comparative depth of colour and the vigorousness of the tints which they impart to objects near them: indeed the stones of India, it is said, quite dim the sight by their brilliancy. The flame of the female sandastros is of a more softened nature, and may be pronounced to be lustrous rather than brilliant. Some prefer the stone of Arabia to that of India, and say that this last bears a considerable resemblance to a smoke-coloured chrysolithos. Ismenias asserts that sandastros, in consequence of its extreme softness, will not admit of being polished, a circumstance which makes it sell all3 the dearer: other writers, again, call these stones “sandrisitæ.” One point upon which all the authorities are agreed is, that the greater the number of stars upon the stone, the more costly it is in price. > > The similarity of the name has sometimes caused this stone to be confounded with that known as “sandaresos,” and which Nicander calls “sandaserion,” and others “sandaseron.” Some, again, call this last-mentioned stone “sandastros,” and the former one “sandaresos.” The stone4 that is thus mentioned by Nicander, is a native of India as well as the other, and likewise takes its name from the locality where it is found. The colour of it is that of an apple, or of green oil, and no one sets any value on it. > > 1 “Sandaresus” and “Sandasiros” are other readings. This stone has not been identified, but Ajasson is inclined to think that it may have been Aventurine quartz, and is the more inclined to this opinion, as that mineral is found in Persia, and sandastra or tchandastra is purely a Sanscrit word. The description, however, would hardly seem to apply to Aventurine. > > 2 Dalechamps thinks that this is the same as the “anthracites” mentioned in B. xxxvi. c. 38, and identifies it either with our Anthracite, or else with pit-coal or bituminous coal. It is much more likely, however, that a precious stone is meant; and, in conformity with this opinion, Brotero and Ajasson have identified it with the Spinelle or scarlet Ruby, and the Balas or rose-red ruby, magnesiates of alumina. > > 3 Littré suggests that the reading here probably might be “ob id *non* magno”—” sell *not* so dear.” > > 4 It has not been identified. Such a fascinating stone. The “garamantites” is a reference to the Garamante people of the second century AD in the Sahara, according to [another source](http://www.zeno.org/Lemery-1721/A/Sandastros?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Nicholas Lemery’s *Complete Materials Lexicon* from 1721\. Further searching for ‘sandastros’ led me to an essay published in June 1953 by a D.J. Greene, entitled [‘Smart, Berkeley, the Scientists and the Poets: A Note on Eighteenth-Century Anti- Newtonianism’](https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707805?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It doesn’t explain what sandastros is or where it originated, but it’s worth reading in full for its distinct premise: > In spite of all that has been written in recent years about the effect on poets and poetry of the modern development of natural science, the conscientious student may be forgiven for wondering whether the historical evidence adduced in these discussions is yet adequate and unambiguous, and for feeling that much more research needs to be done into the history of the relations between science and poetry before any valid generalizations can be made. This article is intended to be a small contribution to that history. One line from the essay that I liked in particular: “John Livingston Lowes proved long ago, in his study of *The Ancient Mariner*, that poetry, however romantic, is not spun solely out of the bowels of poets.” Anyway, according to the fifth chapter of a compilation by a George Rapp of the University of Minnesota, entitled ‘Gemstones, Seal Stones, and Ceremonial Stones’ and published in 2009, sandastros is aventurine, a green-hued form of quartz (and matching the “green oil” colour of sandastros). Rapp doesn’t mention this but aventurine lends its name to aventurescence, a phenomenon referring to a peculiar reflection of light, resembling [“metallic glitter”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventurescence?ref=slightlyacidic.com), within the material owing to some mineral structures. (Another mineral that exhibits aventurescence is [sunstone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone?ref=slightlyacidic.com), a form of plagioclase feldspar found in small parts of Europe, Australia and the US.) ![A piece of polished aventurine.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/6ad24-1c29f-93b8e-3e6d3-1c19f-640px-aventuringeschliffen.jpg) A piece of polished aventurine. Credit: Simon Eugster/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 However, recall that ref. 1 to the text by Pliny the Elder clarifies that *his* description doesn’t match that of aventurine, presumably referring to the “appearance of fire placed behind a transparent substance” and the “drops of gold” that are “always to be seen in the body of the stone, and never upon the surface”. There appears to be some dispute here and which I plan to follow through later – but it remains that sandastros is, as I said, an utterly fascinating thing. *Featured image credit: Holly Chisholm/Unsplash.* ### What makes 'good science journalism'? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/25/what-makes-good-science-journalism/ Last updated: 2022-08-25T05:45:11.000Z From ['Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them'](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/science/doppelgangers-twins-dna.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The New York Times*, August 23, 2022: > Dr. Esteller also suggested that there could be links between facial features and behavioral patterns, and that the study’s findings might one day aid forensic science by providing a glimpse of the faces of criminal suspects known only from DNA samples. However, Daphne Martschenko, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics who was not involved with the study, urged caution in applying its findings to forensics. There are two big problems here: 1) Esteller's comment is at the doorstep of eugenics, and 2) the reporter creates a false balance by reporting both Esteller's comment and Martschenko's rebuttal to that comment, when in fact the right course of action would've been to drop this portion entirely, as well as take a closer look at why Esteller et al. conducted the study in the first place and whether the study paper and other work at the Esteller lab is suspect. This said, it's a bit gratifying (in a bad way) when a high-stature foreign news publication like *The New York Times* makes a dangerous mistake in a science-related story. Millions of people are misinformed, which sucks, but when independent scientists and other readers publicly address these mistakes, their call-outs create an opportunity for people (though not as many as are misinformed) to understand exactly what is wrong and, more importantly from the PoV of readers in India, that *The New York Times* also makes mistakes, that it isn't a standard-bearer of good science journalism and that being good is a constant and diverse process. 1) "NYT also makes mistakes" is important to know if only to dispel the popular and frustrating perception that "all American news outlets are individually better than all Indian news outlets". I had to wade through a considerable amount of this when I started at *The Hindu* a decade ago – at the hands of most readers as well as some colleagues. I still face this in a persistent way in the form of people who believe some article in *The Atlantic* is much better than an article on the same topic in, say, *The Wire Science*, for few, if any, reasons beyond the quality of the language. But of course this will always set *The Atlantic* and *The Wire Science* and its peers in India apart: English isn't the first language for many of us – yet it seldom gets in the way of good storytelling. In fact, I've often noticed American publications in particular to be prone to oversimplification more often than their counterparts in Europe or, for that matter, in India. In my considered (but also limited) view, the appreciation of science stories is also a skill, and the population that aspires to harbour it in my country is often prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect. 2) "NYT isn't a standard-bearer of good science journalism" is useful to know because of the less-than-straightforward manner in which publications acquire a reputation for "good science journalism". Specifically, publications aren't equally good at covering all branches of scientific study; some are better in some fields and others are at some others. Getting your facts right, speaking to all the relevant stakeholders and using sensitive language will get you 90% of the way, but you can tell the differences between publications by how well they cover the remaining 10%, which comes from beat knowledge, expertise and having the right editors. 3) "Being good is a constant and diverse process" – 'diverse' because of the previous point and 'constant' because, well, that's how it is. It's not that our previous work doesn't keep us in good standing but that we shouldn't overestimate how much that standing counts for. This is especially so in this age of short attention spans, short-lived memories and the subtle but pervasive encouragement to be hurtful towards others on the internet. "Good science journalism" is a tag we need to get by getting every single story right – and in this sense, you, the reader, are better off not doling out lifetime awards to outlets. Instead, understand that no outlet is going to be uniformly excellent at all times and evaluate each story on its own merits. This way, you'll also create an opportunity for Indian news outlets to be free of the tyranny of unrealistic expectations and even surprise you now and then with excellence of our own. Finally, none of this is to say that these mistakes happen. *They shouldn't* and they're entirely preventable. Instead, it's a reminder to keep your eyes peeled at all times and not just when you're reading an article produced by an Indian outlet. ### On the record about a source of irritation URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/24/on-the-record-about-a-source-of-irritation/ Last updated: 2022-08-24T04:09:40.000Z I need to go on the record about a source of mild irritation that seems to resurface in periodic fashion: the recent [*Current Affairs* article](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the "dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari". It's an excellent article; however, I'm irritated by the fact that it awakened so many more people (at least in my circles) to the superficiality of Harari's books, especially *Homo Deus* and *Sapiens*, than several other articles published many years ago appear to have managed. These books are seven and 11 years old, respectively – sufficient time for these books to become popular as well as for their problems to have become noticeable. I myself have known for at least seven years that Harari's history books are full of red flags that signal a lack of engagement with the finer but crucial themes of the topics on which he pontificates. Anyone who has been trained in science or has engaged continuously with matters of science (like science journalists) should have been able to pick up on these red flags. Why didn't they? Yet the *Current Affairs* article elicited the sort of response from many people that suggested they were glad to have been alerted to his nonsense. To me, this has all been baffling – and symptomatic of the difficult problem of determining who it is that we can learn about good science from without such determination devolving into bad gatekeeping. There are many simple solutions to this difficult problem, of course, but their stake to simplicity is in turn made disingenuous by the fact that the people at large *don't adopt them*. So it is that thousands pick up *Homo Deus* and believe they're been enlightened science-wise and then, years later, marvel at a reality-check. Some of these solutions: familiarise yourself with the ['index of evidence'](https://www.indexofevidence.org/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); apply [*ad verecundiam*](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): trust experts on the specific topic more than, say, a theoretical physicist writing about mRNA vaccines; attribute all claims openly to their firsthand sources; take even mild conflicts of interest very, very seriously (red-flag #2435: Silicon Valley techbros swooned over Harari's books; the CoI here is that they're technoptimists, a technocratic ideology that refuses to admit the precepts of basic sociology and thus focuses on dog-whistles); and always act in good faith. All such [habits of good science](https://metarationality.com/upgrade-your-cargo-cult?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but especially the last one, need to be instilled among all people (and not just scientists and science journalists) over time, so that everyone can communicate good science well. But even then you might not learn that you shouldn't get your science from Harari or [Steven Pinker](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2018/03/12/parsing-pinker-gemstones-in-the-gutter/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or others of their ilk, so please remember it now don't make this mistake again. And I, in turn, will try to stop making the mistake of assuming [timeous](https://twitter.com/awad/status/1523556408775503872?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reader interest on a topic is entirely predictable. *Featured image: Modified photos of Yuval Noah Harari, March 2017\. Credit (original): Daniel Naber/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* ### Dams are bad for rivers. Are skyscrapers bad for winds? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/23/dams-are-bad-for-rivers-are-skyscrapers-bad-for-winds/ Last updated: 2022-08-23T13:32:52.000Z I was recently in Dubai and often in the shadow of very tall buildings, including the Burj Khalifa and many of its peers on the city's famed Sheikh Zayed Road. The neighbourhood in which my relatives in the city live has also acquired several new tall apartment buildings in the last decade. My relatives lost their view of the sunrise, sure, but they also lost the wind as and when it blew. And I began to wonder whether, just as dams and gates can kill a river by destroying its natural flow, skyscrapers could distort the wind and consequently the way both people and air pollution are affected by it. Wind *speed* is particularly interesting. When architects design tall buildings, they need to account for the structure's ability to withstand wind velocity, which increases with altitude and whose effects on the structure also diversify. For example, when a building causes a wind current to split up to either side as it flows past, the current forms vortices on the other side of the building. This phenomenon is called vortex-shedding (see the video below). The formation of these vortices causes the wind pressure around the building to undulate in a way that can sway the building from side to side. Depending on the building's integrity and design, this can lead to anything from cracked window glass to… well, [catastrophe](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3490510?ref=slightlyacidic.com). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_Hbbkd2d3H8 However, it seems such effects – of the wind *on buildings* – are relatively more popular than the effects of tall buildings *on the wind itself*. For starters, a building that presents a flat face to oncoming wind can force the wind to scatter across the face (especially [if the building is the tallest](https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/08/nyregion/with-skyscrapers-a-windy-day-is-windier.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the area). So a part of the wind flows upwards along the building, some flows around the sides and some flows downwards. The last one has been known to lead to a downdraughts strong enough to [topple standing lorries](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-21633206?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [move cars](https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/08/nyregion/with-skyscrapers-a-windy-day-is-windier.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The faster the wind, the faster the downdraught. A paper [published in December 2019](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/12/02/a-windier-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported that the average wind speed around the world has been increasing since 2010\. The paper was concerned with the effects of this phenomenon on opportunities for wind-based power but it should be interesting to analyse its conclusions vis-à-vis the world's, including India's, skyscrapers as well. If the streets around the building are too narrow for a sufficient distance, they can *further* accelerate the downdraught, as well as natural low-altitude winds, turning the paths into deadly wind tunnels. This is due to the [Venturi effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi%5Feffect?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A [1990 study](https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/37282?ref=slightlyacidic.com) found that trees can help counter it. With the exception of Mumbai, most Indian cities don't yet have the skyscraper density of, say, Singapore, New York or Dubai, but the country is [steadily urbanising](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=IN&ref=slightlyacidic.com) ~~and its cities' population densities are~~ [~~on the rise~~](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=IN&ref=slightlyacidic.com). (Pardon me, I've made a rookie mistake: skyscrapers aren't high density – see [this](https://metropolismag.com/viewpoints/high-rises-are-not-high-density/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [this](https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/faulty-towers-stein?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Instead, let me say:) The rich in India are becoming richer, and as cities expand, there's no reason why more skyscrapers shouldn't pop up – either as lavish residences for the ultra-wealthy or to accommodate corporate offices. We are all already familiar with an obsession among the powers that be with building [increasingly taller structures](https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/big-in-india/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as a pissing contest. ![A view of a portion of Mumbai's skyline on March 25, 2023.](https://zeteticzeal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/90227-196a9-18c8c-c0dc4-aee55-e0a693e0a6b0e0a6b2e0a6bfe0a6b0_e0a697e0a697e0a6a8e0a6b0e0a788e0a696e0a6bfe0a695_e0a6a6e0a783e0a6b6e0a78de0a6af.jpg) A view of a portion of Mumbai's skyline, March 25, 2023\. Credit: আজিজ/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 This possibility is encouraged by the fact that most of India's cities (if not all of them) are semi-planned at best. City officials also seldom enforce building codes. Experts [have written](https://science.thewire.in/environment/extreme-events-in-the-himalayan-region-are-we-prepared-for-the-big-one/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the effects of the latter on Indians' exposure to hydro/seismological disasters (remember: buildings kill people), but in future, we should expect there to be an effect due to the buildings' interaction with the wind as well. Poorly enforced building codes, especially when helped along by corrupt government, also have the effect of enabling builders to violate floor-safety indices and build structures so tall that they exacerbate water shortage, water pollution, local road traffic, power consumption, etc. The [travails of South Usman Road](https://content.magicbricks.com/property-news/commercial-real-estate-news-industry-news/illegal-bldgs-in-t-nagar-may-soon-be-demolished/22301.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Chennai, where I lived for many years, come to mind. In fact, it is telling that India's tallest building, the Palais Royal in Mumbai, has also been [beleaguered by litigation](https://www.indianrealestateforum.com/forum/city-forums/mumbai-real-estate/113620-palais-royale-by-shree-ram-urban-infrastructure-lower-parel-mumbai/page2?ref=slightlyacidic.com) over illegalities in its construction. According to a [2012 post](https://www.sefindia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13099&ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the Structural Engineering Forum of India website, consulting firm RWDI analysed the effects of winds on the Palais Royal but the post has nothing to suggest the reciprocal was also true. Remember also that most of India's cities already have very polluted air (AQI in excess of 200), so we can expect the downdraughts to be foul as well, effectively bringing pollutants down to where the people walk. I'm also similarly concerned about the ability of relatively higher winds to disperse pollutants if they are going to be scattered more often by a higher density of skyscrapers, akin to the concept of a [mean free path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean%5Ffree%5Fpath?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in physics. One thing is for sure: our skyscrapers' wind problem isn't just going to blow over. ### UAE: Straws in the wind URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/17/uae-straws-in-the-wind/ Last updated: 2022-08-17T12:25:45.000Z At the Ajman Museum (in the UAE), there is on display a traditional architectural design called *barjeel*, to cool homes and other small places of human occupation. It is essentially a cooling tower, also called a windcatcher, with the room to be cooled at the bottom. At the top, which is open, there is a sail-like suspension of wet cloth that cools and imparts moisture to the descending air. The *barjeel* at the museum had no wet cloth on top, but even so, the opportunity for air to cool by moving through the column kept the room a few degrees below the ambient temperature, a blistering 39º C. I was to visit the much more popular Frame in Dubai – a large rectangular structure in which visitors could walk its topmost portion, with views of old and new Dubai on either side. It's a superficial premise, that the Frame frames the city in two ways, yet it is oblivious of the fact that it frames itself poorly in the process. Among the achievements of the city of Dubai – which have become emblematic of the aspirations of the country's other emirates – structures like the Frame, the Burj Al Arab or the Palm Islands are tacked on like ornaments to a landscape replete with historical and natural beauty, but which the local government has done little to popularise or celebrate and much to replace with concrete, metal and glass. Even the surrounding desert faces a constant, latent threat of being changed into an artificial forest or receive rain that [it doesn't need](https://science.thewire.in/environment/arid-lands-deserts-colonial-irrigation/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). So it made more sense to visit a place I couldn't read about online and certainly something that could teach me new things about this strange country. After a protracted argument with my local hosts (who struggled to believe why I *wouldn't* want to check out the Frame), someone mentioned the Ajman Museum being not 20 minutes away, and that's how we got there. And even there, half of the objects and stories on display sang paeans to the country's modern rulers, delving into their magnanimity with as much detail as was missing from older events in the region's history. But the other half was utterly fascinating. Here are just four things I very much liked to know about: 1. The Umm Al Nar Bronze Age culture in 2600-2000 BC – [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm%5FAl%5FNar%5Fculture?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "The Umm Al Nar people were important regional trading intermediaries between the ancient civilisations of Sumeria in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Harappan culture. Known to the Sumerians as 'Magan', the area was the source of their copper and diorite as well as a trading entrepôt for other goods from the Indus Valley, including carnelian jewellery." (There is also [an important tomb](https://universes.art/en/art-destinations/sharjah/archaeological-sites/umm-an-nar-tomb?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at Umm Al Nar.) 2. The Umayyad Caliphate – the second caliphate established after the death of Muhammad ibn Abdullah (a.k.a. Prophet Muhammad), lasted from 661 AD to 750 AD and, remarkably, its territory spanned from Toledo in modern-day Spain to Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan. In this time, Christians formed the largest denomination in the empire but had to pay a tax for not being Muslims (the Muslims also had to pay a tax but which was used for their welfare). Islam had become the most common religion in the UAE region a little earlier, around 622 AD. 3. The region in which the UAE lies was settled in recorded history by tribes migrating from Oman *in search of freshwater*. This was available in the UAE area through groundwater, extracted through tunnels dug into the soil. The [Aflaj irrigation system](https://artsandculture.google.com/story/aflaj-irrigation-systems-of-oman-oman-unesco/cwWxW03NezuzLQ?hl=en&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Oman is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was used to extract and transport groundwater using sloped channels in Oman and the UAE. 4. The UAE's emirs had a history of struggling with the British for the authority to rule their people, notably including the General Maritime Treaty of 1820\. The region was at various times controlled, or had battles for control, by the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the British, with the British coming out on top in the late 18th century. The Strait of Hormuz in particular was important to the UK because it was part of trade routes originating from or destined for major Indian ports. All this from a visit to a single museum in a not-so-wealthy emirate! It's a sad joke that modernising exercises far outpace those to preserve what the country already has. There are no advertisements or outreach programmes dedicated to archaeological and palaeontological sites in the country, no tours or 'travel packages' to popularise the country's history among tourists. Visitors should ideally receive a booklet of what they could do in the UAE at the airports' immigration counters, highlighting what they can do in each of the seven emirates. Indeed, it's strange that the national government isn't exactly cohesive, consisting of a 'supreme council' composed of the rulers of each emirate, but with emirate being left to its designs. The council elects a president and a vice-president from among its members but historically they have been the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, respectively. These two emirates are also at odds over the former's proximity to the Saudi Arabian government and the latter's relatively liberal attitude towards social and religious mores. Sharjah also has conservative tendencies and has, according to some anecdotes, been holding back from flying off the developmental handle like Dubai. Ras Al Khaimah is 'up and coming' now, spending money that its ruler (as opposed to its people) has been saving up. Umm Al Quwain still depends not inconsiderably on fishing. ¯*(ツ)*/¯ The UAE may not have had 'great civilisations' like India or China did, yet there is a lot to return to, and I think the country's insular focus on technological development and utilisation, together with its fractured yet autocratic administration, is gradually erasing this source of identity and pride. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/22a67-barjeel.jpg?w=1024&h=682) My photos of the barjeel at Ajman Museum: the column (left) has a cloth wall where the concrete wall is currently, upon which the shadows are being cast; the room to be cooled is at the bottom of the column (centre). The panel on the right shows the relative arrangement of the room's components. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/fcbb7-malqaf.svg_.png) A schematic diagram of a windcatcher at work. Credit: Fred the Oyster/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Every other room in the Ajman Museum, apart from the one housing the *barjeel*, was fit with an air-conditioner and most of the rooms lacked a motion sensor, keeping the devices running constantly and the chambers frigid. This is quite akin to the UAE's pervasive technologism: from a sophisticated transport surveillance system to help enforce traffic laws to breathtaking feats of engineering that transcend the country's natural limitations, it is everywhere in the UAE, and often imposes itself to the point where the country seems eager to exist solely in the future – in the realm of things to come. The entry fee to the Ajman Museum was AED 5 (Rs 108) and the fee at the [Dubai Museum](https://www.visitdubai.com/en/places-to-visit/dubai-museum?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was until recently AED 3 (Rs 65); compare this to the Museum of the Future in Dubai, which charges AED 145 (Rs Rs 3,145) for entry, limits the duration of each visit to 30 minutes and showcases scientific and technological advancements that the emirate country *expects* in future. (By virtue of keeping the cost of entry so low, the museums are more accessible and whose contents ought to be more popular. Yet the ridiculous logics of privatisation and capitalism – both of which the UAE embraces – prevail: that more expensive things are deemed more desirable.) It is safe to say that if you take away your awe of engineering accomplishments and of the cumulus of wealth at these places, Dubai in particular and the UAE in general have little variety to offer. And the *barjeel* is an apt symbol of this state of affairs (with which [India must also be familiar](https://time.com/6176998/india-heatwaves-western-architecture/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)): an important piece of the people's history forgotten and superceded by inefficient, foreign counterparts associated with arbitrary definitions of 'development', ultimately reintroduced in [highly gentrified fashion](https://matadornetwork.com/read/dubais-wind-towers-citys-traditional-beautiful-way-beat-heat/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – in the ramparts of the bungalows of the rich and in parts of the city inaccessible to those who can already barely afford air-conditioners. ### A salvage URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/17/a-salvage/ Last updated: 2022-08-17T04:13:16.000Z At the start of this month, I began my first vacation in six years. A friend and colleague had done a similar thing recently and said that it takes a week just to switch off from thinking about work. My experience has been a little different, and the time off has also afforded a clearer view of the way I feel about what I do. I'm still to switch off from work, *per se*, but not because I'm so committed to the job. I think it's because what I do for a living is a marginal extension of what I do in my default state: think about science, write, and keep learning. The last two are in fact my most favourite things to do. Work requires in addition to these things a scattering of obligations that I'm happy to fulfill and in exchange for a suitable fee. More recently, with India's social and political climate being what it is, I realise that the things I like doing have acquired yet another layer of identity: that of being salvaged material – stories and ideas protected from the violence of misinterpretation, forgetfulness and irrelevance. I admit I much like the idea that my blog is a safe haven in this sense, but because it is, I also feel compelled to collect the preservation-worthy stories and ideas of others (as words or as permalinks). Most of all, it directly imbues the act of writing, within the framework of the internet and online publishing, with purpose. Purpose is easiest to acknowledge when its temper is evident in the smallest, most nuclear elements of the thing it inhabits. The purpose of war for example finds simple and complete expression in every plan conceived and bullet fired, in the direction of and against the welfare of Others. But it is much harder to answer the question "Why do you write?". So when an answer presents itself, however briefly, you seize upon it, treasure it. You want more than anything to remember it because the instruments with which you express and understand purpose – *words* – are, to every writer, whether of postcards or of magnum opi, the same instruments with which to make and wield a million other meanings, and in the churn of which purpose is at constant risk of corruption. Words are semantically ergodic: they are capable of visiting every point in the universe of all possible meanings available to be constructed. This is infinitely beautiful but also diminishes the opportunities for historicity – of a sequence of events that is meaningful because of the sequence itself, instead of no one sequence being able to be privileged over any others. I can't possibly write to visit every point in this universe, nor do I wish to; I write to construct a history that I find meaningful, and my heuristic of choice is the identity and evolution of purpose. Right now, it seems, the purpose is to salvage, and I'm grateful that it is as strong as to be immutable even in the articles and the commas of this silly post. ### A trip to Jebel Jais URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/15/a-trip-to-jebel-jais/ Last updated: 2022-08-15T15:24:13.000Z *None of the images in this post are available to reuse.* I visited Jebel Jais, or the Mt. Jais, mountain in the UAE yesterday. It is a part of the Al Hajar Mountains, which in Arabic translates roughly to 'The Stone Mountains' (جِبَال ٱلْحَجَر). These mountains line the northeastern border of the Arabian peninsula, running the length of and almost parallel to Oman's eastern coast. In the UAE, it pierces into the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, and that's where Jebel Jais is located as well. A small group of us drove from Sharjah a few hours after a sandstorm had hit, sending the visibility plummeting and rendering the whole desert landscape with a dystopian brush. The way from Sharjah to the Al Hajar is largely empty, dotted now and then by a government building, a petrol station or unused housing colonies. But if you pay attention to the sand, you'll see it changes colour from a pale orange to dark grey to bright orange, and finally to a dull grey as you reach the mountains themselves. I couldn't capture this on my phone camera. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_2.jpg) En route. The tectonic context of the Al Hajar: the Arabian plate is moving into the Eurasian plate in the north, deforming the crust along the Makran subduction zone in the Gulf of Oman and the Zagros fault in Iran. Beyond this, I found a dispatch in the [April 2015 issue of *Gazelle*](https://www.dnhg.org/uploads/4/0/9/9/40998945/gazelle%5Fapr%5F2015.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), a publication of the Dubai Natural History Group, that matched much of my local experience around the mountains. So let me quote from there at length: > Twelve DNHG members, led by Sonja Lavrenčič, headed to Ras al Khaimah on April 10 for an exploration of Wadi Bih; an extensive watercourse which once served as a caravan route through Ras al Khaimah and Musandam. \[Wadi in Arabic is roughly 'stream' or the path of a stream.\] > > The wadi lies under Jebel Jais, considered one of the highest points in the UAE, and presents a magnificent though very harsh landscape. At the time of our visit all the channels were completely dry and one branch of the watershed was barricaded by the Jabana landslide. A little before my group's visit, in fact, there had been a heavy downpour due to which the waters had flooded the drains along the sides of the road, breached the high water-mark in the plains and triggered a half-dozen landslides. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_3.jpg) A drain along the side of the road. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_6.jpg) A view of the valley. > The rocky debris collected near the feet of the mountains due to a landslide. > > Between two ridges is a broad alluvial plain with a scattering of acacia trees, and our route took us in a loop around this area, skirting the edges of the slope. > > The valley has a small modern settlement, and we encountered signs of earlier habitations at intervals. A tributary ravine named Wadi Ghabbas shelters a handful of ruined stone houses among Sidr trees \[*Ziziphus spina-christi*\], and another collection of homesteads stands across the plain under the opposite slope. … > > Notable monuments to the exertions of earlier residents are the heavy stone walls of terrace fields seen around the wadi. The retaining walls were built over several seasons in locations where they would catch layers of alluvial wash; the accumulation of moist deep earth would then yield a crop of high-grade barley, which was packed off to the coast and used especially for *sfai* flatbread. > > We examined two cisterns, stone-lined and of rounded rectangular form. In other environments the green opaque water with its drifting skim and fringe of withered grass might not be thought enticing but, in this desiccated terrain, whatever is wet is welcome. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_5.jpg) The ascent to Jebel Jais begins in about 140 km and is picturesque from the start, especially if you can appreciate the features of arid landscapes. I lived for four years in the middle of nowhere in the UAE a while ago. I didn't enjoy life then but you start to understand the desert and find pleasure when the heat is drier. On the day of our visit, in fact, the relative humidity was 40% and there was prediction of rain. Ras Al Khaimah is often the wettest of the seven emirates of the UAE, partly because of the Al Hajar. The Al Hajar is at the centre of Ras Al Khaimah's aspiration to become as prosperous as the emirate of Dubai. You might see some of these photos sport unusual linear shadows – they're of cellphone towers. The UAE's two cellphone networks have towers across the mountains. Almost all the towers bear the words "Jebel Jais – Ras Al Khaimah". Perhaps the thinking is that if your phone works all over the place, you might be less averse to spending time here at any time of day. We did see one group of people hosting a barbecue halfway up Jebel Jais and quite a few others on picnics. There are also spacious viewing decks with dumpsters, clean public toilets and – near these decks – solar-powered water purifiers and street lamps. We also spotted a (speed-controlled) roller-coaster and what's purported to be the world's long zip-line. It was closed for service when we visit because of the sandstorm. Someone said there's a proposal for a five-star hotel near the Jebel Jais peak, plus other restaurants, cafés, camps and outdoor activities in the area. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_8.jpg) A mobile cellphone tower. In early 2021, the UAE's *Hope* probe entered into orbit around Mars. Where R&D is concerned, UAE might be considered naïve but also extremely wealthy, allowing it to throw money at problems that would indeed benefit from more money. The *Hope* probe's development had involved some scientists in the UAE as well as three American universities, which had also put the probe together. But the probe flew with the UAE flag and its orbital capture was timed to happen in the 50th year of the country's existence. The UAE is effectively [using the achievements of spaceflight](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/02/09/uaes-spaceflight-shortcut-to-making-history/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) available to achieve today to elevate its international standing and advertise its ability to think progressively, even if in a superficial sense. Closer to ground, en route to Jebel Jais, you might spot a labourers' camp or two, where conditions have only recently improved to include minimum wages for Indians. This contrast is inescapable throughout the UAE but especially in its rapidly urbanising parts. Ras Al Khaimah itself is a wealthy emirate whose highways feature sophisticated traffic cameras and radar imagers even as they're flanked by petrol stations operated by overworked, underpaid Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants. Near the feet of the Al Hajar, in fact, the emirate has been doling out land (and water and power) to Emiratis for them to build large houses on, anticipating the area's impending, inevitable prosperity. There's nothing similar for the immigrant workers who laid those supply lines. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_10.jpg) A panoramic shot of the Jebel Jais landscape. Ignore the smear. An important thing that the emirates, their companies and their contractors are doing is exercising a latent resentment of the aridity. The workers' work to 'develop' Jebel Jais is hardly distinguishable from an exercise in transforming the desiccation into a tenuous urban paradise, in much the same way Dubai has been expanding by gradually swallowing sea and sky and Abu Dhabi has been by exploiting hydrocarbon extraction and export. I'm not sure what Ras Al Khaimah's long-term plans are, to be honest, but if they're anything like those of Dubai, one has to think they also include proposals to 'reclaim' the sea, afforest large areas of the desert, roll out cloud-seeding programmes, create and expand a 'financial district', attract tourists and spread the gospel of consumerism. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_11.jpg) ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_12.jpg) We had started our ascent at around 4 pm and reached an altitude of some 1.5 km by 5.40 pm. We couldn't go much further because the road work hadn't been completed beyond that point. The peak of Jebel Jais itself was another 0.5 km upward. There was no wind and for the first time there was some blue in the sky, which meant we were above the sandstorm. It was also 6º C or so cooler than it was on the ground. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_13.jpg) The end of the road. On the way down, we stopped for some cotton candy (at a small restaurant a local had set up in one of the viewing decks) and continued on. Two new sights we were able to catch were of the mountains we couldn't see properly during the ascent, because of the sand in the air, and some cirrus clouds in the sky. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_14.jpg) ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/75c9c-img_2827.jpg?w=1024&h=768) Beholding something colossal is a distinctly unsettling feeling. Something so large that you realise the smallness of your own body, and the bodies of other people, and simultaneously the largeness of the world around you. Especially the ability of little things – pebbles, motes of sand, splinters of rock – to crenellate on and on, not stopping when they’re as big as you, as your house, as your airplanes. They keep going like a deliberate reminder by the forces of nature of the scale at which they’ve been labouring for millennia. Thus, you're forced to countenance the simple and immutable weight of *perspective*. Like tens of thousands of people join a protest until parliaments and palaces tremble, the mountainous accretion of diminutive objects can loom large enough to render human intelligence and ingenuity itself of doubtful value. *This*, they seem to say, is the world. *Welcome.* ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_15.jpg) ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_16.jpg) Just as we reached the highway and began on the road home, a second, more intense sandstorm had hit the region and the hillscape became martian. The wind and the sand whipped so incessantly around that they scattered sunlight meaningless. You could easily defy its brightness and look directly at it. Thanks to millions of motes of sand, your star is no longer blinding. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_17.jpg) Sunset at Jebel Jais. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_18.jpg) Now for home. ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_19.jpg) ![](https://cuddly-chinchilla.pikapod.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/jj_20.jpg) ### The importance of sensible politics to good science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/12/the-importance-of-sensible-politics-to-good-science/ Last updated: 2022-08-12T07:55:00.000Z Stuart Ritchie writes a newsletter-blog that I quite like, called *Science Fictions*. On May 30, he published a post on this blog entitled ['Science is political - and that's a bad thing'](https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/science-is-political). I thought the post missed some important points, which I want to set out here. First, the gist of his argument: > \[About the "argument from inevitability"\] After a decade of discussion about the replication crisis, open science, and all the ways we could reform the way we do research, we’re more aware than ever of how biases can distort things - but also how we can improve the system. So throwing up our hands and saying “science is always political! There’s nothing we can do!” is the very last thing we want to be telling aspiring scientists, who should be using and developing all these new techniques to improve their objectivity. … \[About the "activist's argument"\] If you think it’s bad that politics are being injected into science, it’s jarringly nonsensical to argue that “leaving politics out of science” is a bad thing. Isn’t the more obvious conclusion that we should endeavour to lessen the influence of politics and ideology on science across the board? If you think it’s bad when other people do it, you should think it’s bad when you do it yourself. … If we encourage scientists to bring their political ideology to the lab, do we think groupthink—a very common human problem which in at least some scientific fields seems to have stifled debate and held back progress—will get better, or worse? There's also a useful list of what people mean when they say "science is political": ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/25bb4-screenshot-2022-08-12-at-5.20.36-pm.png?w=1024&h=1013) Ritchie writes below the list: "There’s no argument from me about any of those points. These are all absolutely true. … But these are just factual statements - and I don’t think the people who always tell you that 'science is political' are just idly chatting sociology-of-science for the fun of it. They want to make one of two points" – referring to the inevitability and activism argument-types. I agree with some of his positions here, not all, but I also think it might be useful to specify an important set of differences with the way the terms "politics" and "science" are used, and in the contexts in which they're used. The latter are particularly important. The statement "science is political" is undeniably legitimate in India – a country defined by its inequalities. Science and technology have historically enjoyed the patronage of the Indian state (in the post-war period) and the many effects of this relationship are visible to this day. State-sanctioned S&T-related projects are often opaque (e.g. [ISRO](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/07/16/why-covering-isro-is-a-pain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [DAE](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2020/03/06/a-great-discussion-on-the-history-of-indias-tech/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and DRDO), top-down (e.g. [Challakere](https://science.thewire.in/environment/challakere-science-city-kaval/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [INO](https://science.thewire.in/politics/why-indias-most-sophisticated-science-experiment-languishes-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) and presume importance (e.g. [Kudankulam](https://thewire.in/energy/the-nuclear-powers-persistence-with-kudankulam-barely-masks-a-crumbling-project?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and most other [power-generation projects](https://untitled+.vscode-resource.vscode-cdn.net/Untitled-1?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru baked science into the Indian nation-project with his stress on the "scientific temper"; his setting up of institutes of higher science education and research; and the greater liberty – and protection from having to justify their priorities – he accorded the nuclear and space programmes (yoking them to the nation's prosperity but whose work and machinations today are not publicly accessible). But counterproductively, the Nehru government's policies [also stunted](https://science.thewire.in/culture/books/midnights-machines-nehru-vision-cds-appropriate-technology-nrc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the diffusion of 'higher' technologies into society. Currently, this access is stratified by class, caste, location and gender: wealthy upper-caste men in cities and poor lower-caste women in villages lie at the two extremes of a spectrum that defines access to literacy and numeracy, healthcare, public transport, electricity and water, financial services, etc. Second, asking the question "is science political?" in some country in which English is the first language is different from asking it in a Commonwealth country. Pre-Independence and for many years after, English-speakers in government were [typically Brahmins](https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=phr&ref=slightlyacidic.com) hired to help run the colonial government; outside of government, access to the English language was limited, though not uncommon. Today, access to English – the language of science's practice – is controlled through the institutions that teach and/or regularly use the language to conduct trade and research. Yet English is also the language that millions aspire to learn because it's the gateway to better wages and working conditions, and the means by which one might navigate the bureaucracy and laws more effectively. In these ways, a question arises of who can access the fruits of the scientific enterprise – as well as, perhaps more importantly, whether one or a few caste-class groups are cornering the skills and benefits relevant to scientific work for ends that their members deem to be worthier. When a member of an outgroup thus *breaks into* a so-called "top" research institute with the characteristics described above, their practice of science – including the identifies of existing scientists, and their [languages, aspirations, beliefs and rituals](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/01/12/on-science-religion-brahmins-and-a-book/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – is inevitably going to be a political experience as well. Put another way, as access to science (knowledge, tools, skills, findings, rewards) expands, there are also going to be political tensions, questions and ultimately reorganisations, if we take 'politics' to mean the methods by which we govern ourselves. In this regard, the political experience of science in India is inevitable – but that doesn't mean it will always be: the current historical era will eventually make way for a new one (how political the practice of science will be, and its desirability, in that period is a separate question). Nor does it mean we should lower the thresholds that define the quality of science (relevant to points 2, 6 and 8 in Ritchie's list) in our country. But it does mean that the things *about science* that concern a country like ours (post-colonial/imperial, agricultural, economically developing, patriarchal, majoritarian, diverse) can be very different from those that concern the UK or the US, and which in turn also highlights the sort of political questions that concern a country the most. With this in mind, I'd also contend against junking the "argument from inevitability" simply because, *in India*, it risks prioritising the needs of science over those of society. A very simple (and [probably relatable](https://www.sayantanspins.com/post/recent-data-forgery-fiasco?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) example: if a lab that has been producing good research in field X one day admits an ESL student belonging of a so-called "lower" caste, it has to be able to tolerate changes in its research output and quality until this individual has settled in, both administratively and in terms of their mental health. If the lab instead expects them to work at the same pace and with the same quality as existing members, the research output will suffer. The student will of course produce "sub-par" work, relative to what has been expected of the lab, and might be ejected while the institutional causes of her reasons to "fail" will be overlooked. By undertaking such socially minded affirmative action, research labs can surmount the concerns Ritchie flags vis-à-vis the "argument from inevitability" (i.e. by *recalibrating* v. *compromising* their expected outcomes). They can also ensure the practice of science produces benefits to society at large, beyond scientific knowledge *per se* – by depoliticising science itself by admitting the political overtones mediating its practice and improving access to the methods by which good science is produced. It bears repeating, thus, that where science is a [reason of state](https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se02.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and daily life in all its spheres is governed by inequalities, science *needs to be* political. ### On referring to female officers as 'madam sir' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/09/on-referring-to-female-officers-as-madam-sir/ Last updated: 2022-08-09T13:34:45.000Z *ET Lifestyle* published a [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ETimesLifestyle/status/1556636895412723712?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this morning about police officers referring to female superior officers as “sir” or as “madam sir”. I do find the practice offensive, because it signals an inability to imagine anyone but a (cis)man in the position currently occupied by a woman. That calcification – of the masculine identity of occupants of certain roles – is often the root of sexism. It being inadvertent, as some have said, is to my mind all the more reason to get rid of it, because that means we are passively allowing sexisms to cement themselves in our collective psyche. All this said, some of the officers’ comments highlighted on Twitter also refer to an aspect of the English language that I find endlessly fascinating: a combination of [Whorfianism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/whorfianism.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Indians’ modification of the language according to their more immediate needs. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the way people think is shaped by elements of their spoken language. This idea is also known as linguistic relativity and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Indians’ modification refers to the way people in India use and relate to English. This is obviously a highly heterogenous group, divided along caste, wealth, religion and geographic lines. A simple and familliar (to me) example is one I described in a [2020 interview](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2020/11/27/a-qa-about-my-job-and-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > … in India, English is – among other things – the language you learn to be employable, especially with MNCs or such. And because of its historical relationships, English is taught only in certain schools, schools that typically have mostly students from upper-caste/upper-class families. English is also spoken only by certain groups of people who may wish to secret it as a class symbol, etc. I’m speaking very broadly here. My point is that English is reserved typically for people who can afford it, both financially and socio-culturally. Not everyone speaks ‘good’ English (as defined by one particular lexicon or whatever) nor can they be expected to. So what you may see as mistakes in \[an article\] may just be a product of people not being fluent in English, and composing sentences in ways other than you might as a result. > > If a poorly edited article is impossible to read or uses words and ideas carelessly, or twists facts, that is just bad. But if a poorly composed article is able to get its points across without misrepresenting anyone, whom does that affect? No one, in my opinion, so that is okay. (It could also be the case that the person whose work you’re editing sees the way they write as a political act of sorts, and if you think such an issue might be in play, it becomes important to discuss it with them.) … My job as the editor is to ensure that people are understood, but in order to help them be understood better and better, I must be aware of my own privileges and keep subtracting them from the editorial equation (in my personal case: my proficiency with the English language, which includes many Americanisms and Britishisms). I can’t impose my voice on my writers in the name of helping them. The use of English in India is implicitly political. Its appearance on government forms, such as to avail compensation for the death of a loved one due to COVID-19 or to provide informed consent for the forest department to cut down a forest, has often served to exclude people from the rights to which they are entitled. At the same time English is very necessary and important to secure good jobs and to effectively navigate the bureaucracy. In this tension, my role as an editor requires me to strike a fine balance – between letting people express themselves the way they will, ensuring what they’re thinking matches perfectly with what they’re saying, and not – in the process of making clarifying edits – making their text sound like me instead. The second point here, of words matching one’s thoughts, is particularly important in the context of junior male officers referring to their female superiors as “sir” or “madam sir”. As she is quoted as saying in the following tweet… Durga Shakti Nagpal, and presumably [others as well](https://twitter.com/ETimesLifestyle/status/1556636932398014465?ref=slightlyacidic.com), countenance “madam sir” or “sir” as another manifestation of a gender-neutral term along the likes of ‘*janab*‘ in Punjab, ‘*hukum*‘ in Rajasthan, etc. Here, “madam sir” is taken to be another gender-neutral term, and this to my mind is an Indian modification of an originally English term that is decidedly masculine. This is the sort of issue I was referring to in the context of the ways in which we – the people of a post-colonial state – have adapted our former hegemon’s language. It is quite possible, as it already seems to Durga Shakti Nagpal, that “madam sir” means something else in India, especially in one, some or all of the demographic groups that regularly use this term, than it might in the UK or elsewhere. Here, it *may be possible* that its users employ it as an extension of more gender-neutral terms that already exist in Punjabi, Rajasthani, etc. To be clear, this is not an attempted justification but an exploration of possibilities, albeit an admittedly superficial one. At the same time, “madam sir” is not gender-neutral, as Durga Shakti Nagpal vaguely suggests it might be, because officers don’t use the same term to address their male superiors. With the latter, it is but “sir”. In India, and to someone fluent in English (like me), it may often seem like other, non-fluent speakers translate *into* the language in careless fashion. I encountered many examples of this when covering clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines in India, where trial investigators were obviously more fluent in Hindi, were forced in some contexts to use English (such in official reports and in interviews to the press), and subsequently turned technical terms into vagueries, respectful terms into casual ones and appeared to admit inaccuracies where things were much more accurate. In such situations, there isn’t only a potential mismatch between thoughts and words but also actions and words. So it is possible in theory that when people for whom English isn’t the first language translate into the language, something is being lost in translation – and which could include a non-sexist sentiment. *In theory*. In practice, of course, this is tremendously unlikely to be manifesting in the context of the male members of a male-dominated workforce in which women’s enrollment is perceived to be an exception, rather than as a herald of change, and in which the identity of the chair – no matter its occupant – is vouchsafed to cis-het men. As director-general of police Renuka Mishra said, police training should reflect the fact that words matter very much and – taking a cue from Whorfianism – force trainees to think closely about how their perceptions of certain roles in the police force are coloured by their perceptions of gender. ### How much of a milestone is AzaadiSAT? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/07/is-azaadisat-really-a-milestone/ Last updated: 2022-08-07T04:13:21.000Z At 9.18 am today, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the first developmental flight of its new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), a three-stage modular launch vehicle designed to carry a payload of up to 500 kg to the low-Earth orbit and to go from assembly to launch readiness in six days. The existence of such a vehicle in the ISRO stable at this time is a milestone in and of itself but it'd be naïve to assume that Prime Minister Narendra would allow that to be the only one so close to Independence Day, that too the country's 75th. So the SSLV-D1 mission will fly a satellite called AzaadiSAT in addition to the primary payload, an optical remote-sensing satellite. As many news reports have been touting for a week ([*News18*](https://www.news18.com/news/india/august-7-918am-the-moment-750-girls-from-rural-india-will-leave-their-mark-in-space-and-time-with-azaadisat-5691553.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*CNBC TV18*](https://www.cnbctv18.com/science/75th-independence-day-isro-smallest-rocket-to-unfurl-tricolour-in-space-14382122.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*Times Now*](https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/isros-to-launch-its-smallest-rocket-today-carrying-azaadisat-8-kg-satellite-designed-by-girl-students-across-india-article-93399506?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*Hindustan Times*](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/azaadisat-built-by-girl-students-to-reach-orbit-on-isro-s-sslv-5-things-to-know-101659684009988.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*Economic Times*](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/isro-to-launch-azaadisat-satellite-built-by-750-school-girls-next-week/articleshow/93346948.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*WION*](https://www.wionews.com/science/student-built-azaadisat-to-be-co-passenger-on-isros-maiden-launch-of-sslv-rocket-501487?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [*She The People*](https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/azaadisat-satellite-750-girl-students/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [PTI](https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/azaadisat-built-by-girl-students-to-reach-orbit-next-week-onboard-isros-sslv-8953081.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), AzaadiSAT has been "built" by 750 girls from 75 schools around the country. I put "built" in double-quotes because while the word appears in all these reports, it's been misused. A company named SpaceKidz India (SKI) and NITI Aayog together conceived of the project. According to *News18*, SKI developed and tested "the main systems, including the onboard computer, flight software, electrical power system, telemetry and tele-command". According to the [SKI website](https://www.spacekidzindia.in/full-width-page/azaadisat/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the company also "developed basic and simple experiments that students can learn and assemble with the simultaneous support of their science teachers and our SKI team's online coaching". So what the students did was take existing payloads and learn how their software components fit together, using – according to [*Times of India*](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/10-madurai-girls-to-witness-launch-of-azaadisat/articleshow/93360061.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – the Arduino IDE. Let's be clear: this is a far, *far* cry from saying the students built the satellite! They did no such thing. "It's just language," you say, but that's the problem, no? We're claiming a feat that we haven't accomplished. And by believing we've accomplished it, we have a higher estimation of what our students are capable of, what a national programme like AzaadiSAT is capable of, that is increasingly removed from reality. These 750 students have no idea what it's like to build a satellite. In fact what they've done is much closer to what the likes of White Hat, Jr. purport to do – to teach school students to code different types of apps (and even then it's hard to say if they learn the [philosophy of computer science](https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/computer-science-and-philosophy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the process). This is Gaganyaan and the Bose hologram all over again: we don't know what whatever we've done now means for whatever comes next. To be clear, the answer to this question is 'undetermined' in every case. ISRO is launching Indian astronauts to space on an Indian launch vehicle but the organisation's officials [don't have a roadmap](https://science.thewire.in/aerospace/isro-doesnt-have-a-satisfactory-answer-to-why-it-wants-to-put-indians-in-space/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (at least in the public domain) for what Gaganyaan will gainfully do for the Indian space programme, most likely because there's no plan for the Indian space programme itself that far ahead. Prime Minister Modi inaugurated a hologram of Subhash Chandra Bose in New Delhi except it is completely stationary, works only at night and for which the projector alone cost Rs 15 lakh (other capital costs and operational expenses separate). As a result, it utilised none of the affordances of hologram technology, was a costlier and flashier but also [emptier substitute](https://thewire.in/government/bose-hologram-rajpat-projects-modi-high-tech?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a straightforward sculpture or metal cast, and only put Prime Minister Modi in the limelight. Now, we have AzaadiSAT: a device with a six-month lifespan and *not* built by girl students but more like introduced to them after most of it was ready. In fact, according to SKI, it was "conceptualised" expressly "to pay our tribute to mark the 75th anniversary of Independence". And why only 75 schools, 75 payloads and 750 students? The tokenism is [bloody well cringe-inducing](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/on-august-15-swallow-the-modicine-and-declare-our-independence-from-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – more so if you consider the fact that "this is a first of its kind space mission with an 'all women concept' to promote Women in STEM as this year's UN theme is 'Women in Space'," per SKI, while the control room and the adjacent viewing gallery were one big sausage fest. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/b8ba9-whatsapp-image-2022-08-07-at-9.34.39-am.jpeg?w=574) ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/dcca6-whatsapp-image-2022-08-07-at-9.34.39-am1.jpeg?w=568) SKI CEO also told *News18* "that AzaadiSAT will also carry a recorded version of the national anthem sung by Rabindranath Tagore which they plan to play in space to pay tribute to the country". If any song is played in space, it will be inaudible – the vacuum of space can't transmit sound – so how will that pay tribute to the country? And if this song being played in low-Earth orbit is 'heard' via data receivers on the ground, it will be only because the song is transmitted to the receivers, and not because it was played on speakers. So is the point here that radio-scanner operators will be able to receive the national anthem transmission as a fun exercise? How would that amount to paying tribute to the country? (Of course, I don't understand what "paying tribute to the country" itself even means.) We seem to believe that simply exposing these students to certain concepts and/or environments that they might not encounter in the regular course of their schooling will somehow have a transformative impact on their academic and professional trajectories. This belief has been pervasive in institute-mediated scicomm at least, but there have been very few attempts to actually measure the extent to which this belief is justified. The SKI CEO even told *WION* that "AzaadiSAT is going to motivate more girls into the space industry or to take up STEM subjects". ***We don't know this.*** It's also often dangerously the case that the institutes, or even entities like the SKI, that make this 'exposure' argument also get away with [superficial scicomm efforts](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/science-outreach-is-great-but-scientists-must-consider-who-theyre-reaching/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that lack any continuous engagement or follow-ups. School students are exposed once to, for example, high-brow concepts like particle physics, gene-editing or remote-sensing, none of which has any relevance to what they're learning in school at that time or what they need to pass their exams. Many institutes are often eager to have their scientists speak to students enrolled in poorly funded schools often run by the local government in order to maximise the 'impact' of their efforts, but unmindful of the facts that a) they're effectively talking down to these students with a view to "lifting them up" and b) they're being ignorant of the conditions in which these students are studying and what they actually need over some scientist talking at them about why her work is important. Why, these outreach efforts don't even bother to check if all of the students shipped in from a local school are even interested in science or want to become scientists (which SKI sidesteps by picking only 10 students from each school). These efforts may be exercises in broadening one's horizons but, as I said, that requires sustained engagement, not a one-off flash-bang event. On a related note, it's curious why none of these students were present in the viewing gallery adjacent to the control room, where they could've seen launch operations in action, and were seated in the outdoor viewing area instead. There is already some awareness that simply getting students to meet Nobel Prize winners is far less useful on multiple levels than having a smart and empathetic teacher. In much the same way, the AzaadiSAT seems like a lot of tokenism bundled into a project that serves nationalistic pride but leaves behind many open questions about whether the girls who all these news articles and press releases proudly claim built the satellite will regularly use the payloads they ideated over, and in a meaningful way – by which I mean both controlling the devices over time using code they wrote on their laptops or phones, receiving and processing the data from these payloads, and using them in a constructive way going into the future. The question of access to the relevant devices is significant because, according to SKI, "Niti Aayog has partnered for this project to bring this opportunity to the Government school Girl children across India" – the same government schools that, in general, struggled to adopt virtual classrooms during the pandemic. An [SKI video description](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey1pxYo6Ct4&ref=slightlyacidic.com) also claims that the company picked students from "economically weak backgrounds". Building a satellite is no small feat but as I said before, these girls didn't build the satellite. *Our students should build satellites* – it's just that efforts like AzaadiSAT don't represent this milestone. I remember when I was in college that an American professional organisation (can't recall the name now) would provide some funds and raw materials to two groups of students – picked from the engineering streams – who'd then have to built rudimentary cars out of them with their professors' help in two years and race them to win. A similarly long-term engagement with school students, involving all satellite components instead of just the data acquisition system, will surely be better than what SpaceKidz and NITI Aayog are currently doing. And because ISRO actually launches satellites built by students for free into low-Earth orbit, we must ask what these satellites do. It's been a decade of India launching [student-built satellites](https://www.isro.gov.in/category-applications/student-satellite?page=1&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and it's been the same decade of our student-built satellites [doing very little](https://old.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/bfdm88/universities%5Fusing%5Fsatellite%5Fmissions%5Ffor/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), if anything (surrounded often by deliberately misleading narratives) – other than making for press releases with a shelf-life overlapping with some nationalist occasion. ### How do you trap an electron? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/05/how-do-you-trap-an-electron/ Last updated: 2022-08-05T14:09:27.000Z I've always found the concept of two forces on an object *cancelling themselves out* strange. We say they cancel if the changes they exert completely offset each other, leaving the object unaffected. But is the object really unaffected? If the two forces act in absolute opposition and at the exact same time, the object may be unaffected. But practically speaking, this is seldom the case and the object experiences some net force, to which in may not respond in a meaningful timeframe or respond in an imperceptible or negligible way. For example, imagine you are standing exactly still and two people standing on either side of you punch you hard on your upper arm, in an attempt to move you in the other direction. The two impulses may cancel each other out but you will still feel the pain in your arms. You might counterargue that this is true only because the human body has a considerable bulk, which means a force applied on one side of the body is transmitted through a series of media before it manifests on the other side, and that en route it loses some of its energy as the stress and strain through your muscles. This is true – but the concept of cancellation is actually imperfect even with microscopic objects. Consider the case of the quadrupole trap – a device used to hold charged particles like electrons and ions in place, i.e. at a fixed point in three dimensions. This device was invented because it's impossible to confine a charged particle in a static electric field. Imagine eight electrons are placed at the vertices of an imaginary cube, and a ninth electron is placed at the centre. You might reason that since like charges repel, the repulsive force exerted by the eight electrons should hold the ninth, central electron in place – but no. They won't. The central electron will drift away if another force acts on it, instead of getting displaced by a little and then returning to its original position. This is because of Earnshaw's theorem. Thanks to Twitter user @catwbutter for [explaining it to me](https://twitter.com/catwbutter/status/1555446531985063937?ref=slightlyacidic.com) thus: > You can understand the theorem as saying the following: In a configuration of n charges, you ask if one is in equilibrium. \[Imagine the cubic prison of n = 8 electrons at the vertices and one at the centre – this one needs to be at equilibrium.\] You displace it from its point a little bit. For there to be equilibrium, the force on it needs to point radially inward at the original point you displaced it from, regardless of where you displaced the charge to. This is only possible if there is a charge at the original point – but there isn't in the setup. Formally, Earnshaw's theorem states that a collection of charged particles (of the same kind, i.e. only electrons or only protons or only ions, etc.) can't maintain a stable and stationary equilibrium if the only thing maintaining that equilibrium is the electrostatic forces between them. In this case, the concept of 'cancelling out' becomes irrelevant because of the way the electric fields around the charged particles behave. One way to make it relevant is to use an exception to Earnshaw's theorem: by using moving charges or time-varying forces. Imagine you're walking along a path when a cat appears in front of you and blocks the way. You step to the cat's right but it moves and still blocks you. You step to the left and it moves again. You're stepping right and left respectively because you see a gap there for you to go through, but every time you try, the cat moves quickly to block you. Scientists applied a similar kind of thinking with the quadrupole ion trap. They surround a clump of electrons, or any charged particles, with three objects. One is a hyperbolic cylinder (visualised below) called a ring electrode; it is capped at each end by two hyperbolic electrodes. The ring electrode needs to be exactly halfway between the capping electrodes. The electrons are injected into the centre. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/c7eec-screenshot-2022-08-05-at-5.32.40-pm.png?w=644) Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hyperbolic-electrode-geometry-of-Paul-trap-a-and-Penning-trap-b-Trapping-of\_fig15\_329412866 ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/b759d-screenshot-2022-08-05-at-5.35.13-pm.png?w=1024) Source: https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/%28SICI%291096-9888%28199704%2932%3A4%3C351%3A%3AAID-JMS512%3E3.0.CO%3B2-Y Note that in the first image above, the ring electrode and the sides of the capping electrodes should ideally be inclined at an angle of a little over 53º relative to the z axis. But whatever the angle is, when an electric current is applied to the electrodes, the resulting electric field inside the trap will have four poles – thus the name 'quadrupole' – and the field along the poles (the hazy area in the image below) will be asymptotic to the electrodes. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/cf145-img11.png?w=452) Source: http://www.physics.drexel.edu/\~tim/open/mat/node1.html This electric field has two important properties. The first is that it is inhomogenous: it is not uniform in different directions. Instead, it is weakest at the centre and becomes stronger as the field becomes squeezed between the electrodes. Second, the electric field is periodic, meaning that it constantly changes between two directions – thanks to the alternating current (AC) supplied to the electrodes. (Recall that AC periodically reverse its direction while DC doesn't.) The resulting periodic inhomogenous electric field exerts a unique influence on the electrons at the centre of the trap. If the field had been periodic *homogenous* instead and if something had knocked an electron away from the centre, the electron would have oscillated about its new point, moving back and forth. But because the field is *inhomogenous*, one half of the electron's oscillation will be in an area where the field is stronger and the other half will be through an area where the field is weaker. And the stronger-field area will exert a stronger force on the electron than the force exerted by the weaker-field area. The result will be that the electron will experience a net force *towards* the weaker field area. This is called the ponderomotive force. And because the weakest field lies at the centre – where the electrons are originally confined – the apparatus will move any displaced electrons back there. Thus, it's a trap. When [Wolfgang Paul](https://sci-hub.se/https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.62.531?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Helmut Steinwedel and others first developed the quadrupole ion trap in the latter half of the 20th century, they found that the motion of the charged particles within the trap could be modelled according to Mathieu's equation. This is a differential equation that the French mathematician Émile Léonard Mathieu had uncovered in the 19th century itself, when he was studying the vibrating membranes of elliptical drums. During the operation of the quadrupole ion trap, the charged particles experience ponderomotive forces in two directions in alternating fashion: a radial force exerted by the capping electrodes and an axial force exerted by the ring electrode (roughly, from the sides and from the top-bottom). The frequency of the AC applied to the electrodes has to be such that the forces switch sides faster than the electrons can escape. This is the cat analogy from earlier: the cat is the electric field configuration and you are the trapped particle. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/d82d9-1024px-paul-trap.svg_.png?w=1024) As the AC current flows through the electrodes, the arrangement of charges around the confined electrons (dark circle) changes position, like a game of musical chairs, exerting an alternating pattern of forces. Credit: Arian Kriesch/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 With this device in mind, ask yourself: have the electrons been kept in place because counteracting forces have cancelled themselves out? No – that is a static picture that doesn't allow for any deviations from the normal. If an electron does get displaced from the cubic prison described earlier, Earnshaw's theorem ensures that it can just escape altogether. The quadrupole ion trap represents a more dynamic picture. Here, electrons are either held in place or coaxed back into place by a series of forces interacting in a sophisticated way, sometimes in opposite directions but never quite simultaneously, such that particles can get displaced, but when they are, they are gently but surely restored to the desired state. In this picture, counteracting forces still leave behind a net force. In this picture, erring is not the end of the world. *Featured image credit: Martin Adams/Unsplash.* ### The physics of Spain's controversial air-con decree URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/04/the-physics-of-spains-controversial-air-con-decree/ Last updated: 2022-08-04T06:13:36.000Z The Government of Spain published a decree earlier this week that prevents air-conditioners from being set at a temperature lower than 27º C in the summer in an effort to lower energy consumption and wean the country off of natural gas pumped from Russia. A [Twitter thread by *Euronews*](https://twitter.com/i/events/1554808894249213953?ref=slightlyacidic.com) compared the measure to one by France, to keep the doors and windows of air-conditioned spaces closed. However, the two measures are not really comparable because the France's measure is in a manner of speaking shallower, because it doesn't go as far as thermodynamics allows us. Instead, Spain's move is comparable to [one that Japan instituted](https://www.env.go.jp/en/press/2005/1028a.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a couple years ago. Some basic thermodynamics here should be enlightening. Let us consider two scenarios. In the first: Air-conditioners operate at different efficiencies at different temperatures. From about five years ago, I remember the thermodynamic efficiency variation to be around 10% across the range of operating temperatures. Also note that most air-conditioners are designed and tested to operate at or near 23º to 25º C – an ambient temperature range that falls within the ideal ranges across most countries and cultures, although it may not account for differences in wind speed, relative humidity and, of course, living conditions. So let's say an air-conditioner operates at 55% efficiency when the temperature setting is at 27º C. It will incur a thermodynamic penalty if it operates at a lower temperature. Let's say the penalty is 10% at 20º C. (I've spelt out the math of this later in this post.) This will be 10% of 55%, which means the thermodynamic efficiency at 20º C will be 55% – 5.5% = 49.5%. Similarly, there could be a thermodynamic efficiency gain when the air-conditioner temperature is set at a higher 32º C instead of 27º C. This gain translates to energy saved. Let's call this figure *ES* (for 'energy saved'). In the second scenario: the air-conditioner works by pumping heat out of a closed system – a room, for example – into the ambient environment. The cooler the room needs to be, the more work the air-conditioner has to undertake to pump more heat out of the room. This greater work translates to a greater energy consumption. Let's call this amount *EC*. Now, the question for policymakers is whether *ES* is greater than *EC* in the following conditions: 1. The relative humidity is below a certain value; 2. When the room's minimum temperature is restricted to 27º C; 3. The chances of thermal shock; and 4. The given strength of the urban heat-island effect. Let's cycle through these conditions. 1\. **Relative humidity** – The local temperature and the relative humidity together determine the wet-bulb temperature. As I have [explained before](https://science.thewire.in/environment/heatwaves-north-india-wet-bulb-temperature-exceed-35c/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), exposure to a wet-bulb temperature greater than 32º C can quickly debilitate humans, and after a few hours could even lead to death. But as it happens, if the indoor temperature is 27º C, the wet-bulb temperature can never reach 32º C; even at 99% relative humidity, it reaches a value of 26.92º C. 2\. **27º C limit** – The operating range of the sole air-conditioner in my house is 18º to 32º C when the ambient temperature is 18º to 48º C. In thermodynamic speak, an air-conditioner operates on the reverse Carnot cycle, and for such cycles, there is a simple, fixed formula to calculate the maximum coefficient of performance (CoP). The higher the CoP, the higher the machine's thermodynamic efficiency. (Note that while the proportionality holds, the CoP doesn't *directly* translate to efficiency.) Let's fix the ambient temperature to 35º C. If the indoor temperature is 20º C, the max. CoP is 1.33, and if the indoor temperature is 27º C, the max. CoP is 3.37\. So there is an appreciable thermodynamic efficiency gain if we set the air-conditioner's temperature to a higher value (within the operating range and assuming the ambient temperature is greater than the indoor temperature). 3\. **Thermal shock** – The thermal shock is an underappreciated consequence of navigating two spaces at markedly different temperatures. It arises particularly in the form of the [cold-shock response](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/cold-shock-response?ref=slightlyacidic.com), when the body is suddenly exposed to a low temperature temperature after having habituated itself to a higher one – such as 20º C versus 40º C. The effect is especially pronounced on the heart, which has to work harder to pump blood than it did when the body was in warmer surroundings. In extreme cases, the cardiac effects include vasoconstriction and heart failure. Cold-shock response is most relevant in areas where the ambient conditions are hot and arid, such as in Rajasthan, where the outdoors routinely simmer at 40-45º C in the summer while people intuitively respond by setting their air-conditioners to 18º C or even lower. 4\. **Urban heat islands** – When a single air-conditioner is required to extract enough heat from a room to lower the room's temperature by 15º C instead of by 8º C, it will consume more energy. If its thermal efficiency is (an extremely liberal) 70%, 30% of the heat it consumes will be discarded as waste heat back into the environment. Imagine a medium-sized office building fit with 25 such air-conditioners, a reasonable estimate. During the day, then, it will be similarly reasonable to conclude that the temperature in the immediate vicinity of the building will increase by 0.5º or so. If there are a cluster of buildings, the temperature increase is bound to be on the order of 2º to 3º C, if not more. This can only exacerbate the [urban heat-island effect](https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/urban-heat-islands?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which adds to our heat stress as well as degrades the local greenery and faunal diversity. Take all four factors together now and revisit the Spanish government's decree to limit air-conditioners' minimum operating temperature to 27º C during summer – and it seems entirely reasonable. However, a similar rule [shouldn't be instituted](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/power-ministry-asks-companies-to-regulate-default-ac-settings/articleshow/64701708.cms?from=mdr&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in India because Spain is much smaller and has lower meteorological and climatological variations, and also has [less income inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map%5Fof%5Fcountries%5Fby%5FGINI%5Fcoefficient%5F%281990%5Fto%5F2020%29.svg?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which translates to lower exposure to life-threatening living conditions and better access to healthcare *on average*. ### The question of Abdus Salam 'deserving' his Nobel URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/03/abdus-salam-deserving-nobel/ Last updated: 2022-08-03T06:03:00.000Z Peter Woit [has blogged](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13004&ref=slightlyacidic.com) about an oral history interview with theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow published in 2020 by the American Institute of Physics. (They have a great [oral history of physics series](https://www.aip.org/oral-history-subjects-browser?ref=slightlyacidic.com) you should check out if you're interested.) Woit zeroed in on a portion in which Glashow talks about his faltering friendship with Steven Weinberg and his issues with Abdus Salam's nomination for the physics Nobel Prize. Glashow, Weinberg and Salam together won this prize in 1979, for their work on the work on electroweak theory, which describes the behaviour of two fundamental forces, the electromagnetic force and the weak force. Glashow recalls that his and Weinberg's friendship – having studied and worked together for many years – deteriorated in the 1970s, a time in which both scientists were aware that they were due a Nobel Prize. According to Glashow, however, Weinberg wanted the prize to be awarded only to himself and Salam. This is presumably because of how the prize-winning work came to be: with Glashow's mathematical-physical model published in 1960, Weinberg building on it seven years later, with Salam's two relevant papers appeared a couple years after Glashow's paper and a year after Weinberg's. Glashow recalls that Salam's work was not original, that each of his two papers respectively echoed findings already published in Glashow's and Weinberg's papers. Instead, Glashow continues, Salam received the Nobel Prize probably because he had encouraged his peers and his colleagues to nominate him a very large number of times and because he set up the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste. This impression, of Salam being undeserving from a contribution-to-physics point of view in Glashow's telling, is very at odds with the impression of Salam based on reading letters and comments by Weinberg and Pervez Hoodbhoy and by watching the documentary *Salam – The First \*\*\*\*\*\* Nobel Laureate*. The topic of Salam being a Nobel laureate [was never uncomplicated](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2019/10/05/review-salam-the-first-nobel-laureate-2019/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), to begin with: he was an Ahmadi Muslim who enjoyed the Pakistan government's support until he didn't, when he was forced to flee the country; his intentions with the ICTP – to give scholars from developing countries a way to study physics without having to contend with often-crippling resource constrains – were also noble. Hoodbhoy has also written about the significance of Salam's work as a physicist and the tragedy of his name and the memories of his contributions having been erased from all the prominent research centres in Pakistan. Finally, one of Salam's nominees for a Nobel Prize was the notable British physicist and Nobel laureate Paul A.M. Dirac, and it seems strange that Dirac would endorse Salam if he didn't believe Salam's work deserved it. Bearing these facts in mind, Glashow's contention appears to be limited to the originality of Salam's work. But to my mind, even if Salam's work was really derivative, it was at par with that of Glashow and Weinberg. More importantly, while I believe the Nobel Prizes [deserve to be abrogated](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2019/10/16/why-are-the-nobel-prizes-still-relevant/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the prize-giving committee did more good than it might have realised by including Salam among its winners: in the words of Weinberg, "Salam sacrificed a lot of possible scientific productivity by taking on that responsibility \[to set up ICTP\]. It's a sacrifice I would not make." Glashow may not feel very well about Salam's inclusion for the 1979 prize and the Nobel Prizes as we know are only happy to overlook anything other than the scientific work itself, but if the committee really screwed up, then they screwed up to do a good thing. Then again, even though Glashow wasn't alone (he was joined by Martinus J.G. Veltman on his opinions against Salam), the physicists' community at large doesn't share his views. Glashow also cites an infamous [2014 paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/1109.1972?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Norman Dombey, in which Dombey concluded that Salam didn't deserve his share of the prize, but the paper's reputation itself is iffy at best. In fact, this is all ultimately a pointless debate: there are just too many people who deserve a Nobel Prize but don't win it while a deeper dive into the modern history of physics should reveal a near-constant stream of complaints against Nobel laureates and their work by their peers. It should be clear today that both winning a prize and not winning a prize ought to mean nothing to the practice of science. The other remarkable thing about Glashow's comments in the interview (as cited by Woit) is what I like to think of as the seemingly [eternal relevance](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of Brian Keating's change of mind. Brian Keating is an astrophysicist who was at the forefront of the [infamous announcement](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.3.20190326a/full/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that his team had discovered evidence of cosmic inflation, an epoch of the early universe in which it is believed to have expanded suddenly and greatly, in March 2014\. There were many problems leading up to the announcement but there was little doubt at the time, and Keating also [admitted later](https://nautil.us/how-my-nobel-dream-bit-the-dust-7246/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), that its rapidity was motivated by the temptation to secure a Nobel Prize. Many journalists, scientists and others observers of the practice of science routinely and significantly underestimate the effect the Nobel Prizes exert on scientific research. The prospect of winning the prize for supposedly discovering evidence of cosmic inflation caused Keating et al. to not wait for additional, confirmatory data before making their announcement. When such data did arrive, from the Planck telescope collaboration, Keating et al. suffered for it with their reputation and prospects. Similarly, Weinberg and Glashow fell out because, according to Glashow, Weinberg didn't wish Glashow to give a talk in 1979 discussing possible alternatives to the work of Weinberg and Salam because Weinberg thought doing such a thing would undermine his and Salam's chances of being awarded a Nobel Prize. Eventually it didn't, but that's beside the point: this little episode in history is as good an illustration as any of how the Nobel Prizes and their implied promises of laurels and prestige render otherwise smart scientists insecure, petty and elbows-out competitive – in exchange for sustaining an [absurd and unjust](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/03/28/the-paradoxical-virtues-of-primacy-in-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) picture of the scientific enterprise. All of this goes obviously against the spirit of science. ### Immunity for scientists? Err… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/08/02/nambi-narayanan-scientists-immunity/ Last updated: 2022-08-02T06:03:00.000Z On the sidelines of a screening of the [semi-fictional biopic](https://thewire.in/film/rocketry-movie-review?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of beleaguered ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, the Madhavan-starrer *Rocketry: The Nambi Effect*, Narayanan told journalists on August 1 that "scientists should" receive immunity against "arbitrary police action" ([source](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/scientists-deserve-immunity-from-arbitrary-police-action-nambi-narayanan/article65707805.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). > "It is not just ISRO… scientists working in the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Atomic Energy and others too. As part of their job, they travel a lot. … They have to be protected from random police action, else you can go on booking people and put them behind the bars". This is a strange statement to make, with quite a bit to unpack. No one – not just scientists – deserves to be at the receiving end of arbitrary police action. Singling scientists out here transforms a right into a privilege and scientists into an arbitrarily exceptional class of citizens. Narayanan suffered considerably after the Kerala police falsely accused him of espionage and derailed his career and life, and the response to this should include among other things the elimination of all arbitrary action, instead of vouchsafing the cruelty of it for some non-elite group. Narayanan's statement is also vague about what he considers to be "arbitrary" and whom he considers to be "scientists". If he is using "arbitrary" as a synonym for 'baseless', his statement is immediately a statement about the arrests and harassment of journalists, activists and political leaders around the country. The police and state governments also arrested and harassed *social* scientists. To want scientists alone to be protected in this regard is disingenuous – and in the process raises the question of "protection from what?". Baseless police action against scientists who spoke up is baseless police action against scientists who spoke up *against state failure and overreach*. These scientists are not simply – to use a cliché – doing their jobs, as Narayanan was, but also exercised their rights as citizens of the country to call out and protest communalism and corruption. Narayanan on the other hand was persecuted for two decades for having done nothing at all. Both actions were wrong but for significantly different reasons. Importantly, cases like his have been rare while those *un*like his are the norm today. And finally, Narayanan's statement presumes an implicit distinction between scientists' work and their political engagement. He seems to invoke, by asking for immunity, that exceptionalism again: that there is nothing worth taking police action over as well as that scientists are above it all. Granting them and only them immunity from police action could consequently render their comments on political matters ([even more](https://science.thewire.in/politics/scientists-method-morality-pluralism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) irrelevant, coming as they will from a position of incredible privilege, but it is far more likely that senior scientists (an important distinction because younger scientists have on average been better) will interpret the decree to mean they're obligated to the state to stay in their lane. The only part of Narayanan's statement that makes sense is the one that expects the police to give scientists, and for that matter people of any profession, the benefit of the doubt – to admit, essentially, that a conspiracy [isn't the only explanation](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/when-legit-research-is-presented-as-controversial-good-luck-getting-sciences-help/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a researcher in a well-funded research facility to travel to or be in touch with their counterparts from other countries. ### 65 years of the BCS theory URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/31/65-years-of-the-bcs-theory/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:32.000Z Thanks to an arithmetic mistake, I thought 2022 was the 75th anniversary of the invention (or discovery?) of the BCS theory of superconductivity. It's really the 65th anniversary, but since I'd worked myself up to write about it, I'm going to. 🤷🏽‍♂️ It also helps that the theory is a remarkable fact of nature that make sense of what is weirdly a macroscopic effect of microscopic causes. There are several ways to classify superconductors – materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance under certain conditions. One of them is as *conventional* or *unconventional*. A superconductor is conventional if BCS theory can explain its superconductivity. 'BCS' are the initials of the theory's three originators: John **B**ardeen, Leon **C**ooper and John Robert **S**chrieffer. BCS theory explains (conventional) superconductivity by explaining how the electrons in a material enter a collective superfluidic state. At room temperature, the valence electrons flow around a material, being occasionally scattered by the grid of atomic nuclei or impurities. We know this scattering as electrical resistance. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/bae24-60f09-506px-sodium-chloride-3d-ionic.png?w=506) An illustration of a lattice of sodium and chlorine atoms in a sodium chloride crystal. Credit: Benjah-bmm27, public domain The electrons also steer clear of each other because of the repulsion of like charges (Coulomb repulsion). When the material is cooled below a critical temperature, however, vibrations in the atomic lattice encourage the electrons to become paired. This may defy what we learnt in high school – that like charges repel – but the picture is a little more complicated, and it might make more sense if we adopt the lens of *energy* instead. A system will favour a state in which it has lower energy than one in which it has more energy. When two carriers of like charges, like two electrons, approach each other, they repel each other more strongly the closer they get. This repulsion increases the system's energy (in some form, typically kinetic energy). In some materials, conditions can arise in which two electrons can pair up – become correlated with each other – across relatively long distances, without coming close to each other, rendering the Coulomb repulsion irrelevant. This correlation happens as a result of the electrons' effect on their surroundings. As an electron moves through the lattice of positively charged atomic nuclei, it exerts an attractive force on the nuclei, which respond by tending towards the electron. This increases the amount of positive potential near the electron, which attracts another electron nearby to move closer as well. If the two electrons have opposite spins, they become correlated as a *Cooper pair*, kept that way by the attractive potential imposed by the atomic lattice. Leon Cooper explained that neither the source of this potential nor its strength matter – as long as it is attractive, and the other conditions hold, the electrons will team up into Cooper pairs. In terms of the system's energy, the paired state is said to be *energetically favourable*, meaning that the system as a whole has a lower energy than if the electrons were unpaired below the critical temperature. Keeping the material cooled to below this critical temperature is important: while the paired state is energetically favourable, the state itself arises only below the critical temperature. Above the critical temperature, the electrons can't access this state altogether because they have too much kinetic energy. (The temperature of a material is the average kinetic energy of its constituent particles.) Cooper's theory of the electron pairs fit into John Bardeen's theory, which sought to explain changes in the energy states of a material as it goes from being non-superconducting to superconducting. Cooper had also described the formation of electron pairs one at a time, so to speak, and John Robert Schrieffer's contribution was to work out a mathematical way to explain the formation of millions of Cooper pairs and their behaviour in the material. The trio consequently published its now-famous paper, ['Microscopic Theory of Superconductivity'](https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.106.162?ref=slightlyacidic.com), on April 1, 1957. (I typo-ed this as 1947 on a calculator, which spit out the number of years since to be 75\. 😑 One could have also expected me to remember that this is India's 75th year of independence and that BCS theory was created a decade after 1947, but the independence [hasn't been registering](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/on-august-15-swallow-the-modicine-and-declare-our-independence-from-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) these days.) Anyway, electrons by themselves belong to a particle class called fermions. The other known class is that of the bosons. The difference between fermions and bosons is that the former obey Pauli's exclusion principle while the latter do not. The exclusion principle forbids two fermions in the same system – like a metal – from simultaneously occupying the same quantum state. This means the electrons in a metal have a hierarchy of energies in normal conditions. However, a Cooper pair, while composed of two electrons, is a boson, and doesn't obey Pauli's exclusion principle. The Cooper pairs of the material can all occupy the same state – i.e. the state with the lowest energy, more popularly called the ground state. This *condensate* of Cooper pairs behaves like a superfluid: practically flowing around the material, over, under and through the atomic lattice. Even when a Cooper pair is scattered off by an atomic nucleus or an impurity in the material, the condensate doesn't break formation because all the other Cooper pairs continue their flow, and eventually also reintegrate the scattered Cooper pair. This flow is what we understand as electrical superconductivity. "BCS theory was the first microscopic theory of superconductivity," [per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS%5Ftheory?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But since its advent, especially since the late 1970s, researchers have identified several superconducting materials, and behaviours, that neither BCS theory nor its extensions have been able to explain. When a material transitions into its superconducting state, it exhibits four changes. Observing these changes is how researchers confirm that the material is now superconducting. (In no particular order:) First, the material loses all electric resistance. Second, any magnetic field inside the material's bulk is pushed to the surface. Third, the electronic specific heat increases as the material is cooled before dropping abruptly at the critical temperature. Fourth, just as the energetically favourable state appears, some other possible states disappear. Physicists [experimentally observed the fourth change](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/at-last-physicists-report-finding-the-fourth-sign-of-superconductivity.html) only in January this year – based on the transition of a material called Bi-2212 (bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, a.k.a. BSCCO, a.k.a. bisko). Bi-2212 is, however, an unconventional superconductor. BCS theory can't explain its superconducting transition, which, among other things, happens at a higher temperature than is associated with conventional materials. In the January 2022 study, physicists also reported that Bi-2212 transitions to its superconducting state in two steps: Cooper pairs form at 120 K – related to the fourth sign of superconductivity – while the first sign appears at around 77 K. To compare, elemental rhenium, a conventional superconductor, becomes superconducting in a single step at 2.4 K. A cogent explanation of the nature of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate superconductors like Bi-2212 is one of the most important open problems in condensed-matter physics today. It is why we still await further updates on the IISc team's [room-temperature superconductivity claim](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/did-iisc-team-find-a-room-temperature-superconductor-the-devils-in-the-details/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### A 'bold' vision URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/30/a-bold-vision/ Last updated: 2022-07-30T11:58:58.000Z ['Support Europe's bold vision for responsible research assessment'](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02037-8?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Nature* editorial, July 27, 2022: > The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, announced on 20 July and open for signatures on 28 September, is perhaps the most hopeful sign yet of real change. More than 350 organizations have pooled experience, ideas and evidence to come up with a model agreement to create more-inclusive assessment systems. The initiative, four years in the making, is the work of the European University Association and Science Europe (a network of the continent’s science funders and academies), in concert with predecessor initiatives. It has the blessing of the European Commission, but with an ambition to become global. > > Signatories must commit to using metrics responsibly, for example by stopping what the agreement calls “inappropriate” uses of journal and publication-based metrics such as the journal impact factor and the h-index. They also agree to avoid using rankings of universities and research organizations — and where this is unavoidable, to recognize their statistical and methodological limitations. I'm curious if calling this plan "bold" is a way to caution readers that they must proceed cautiously, with considerable scepticism, instead of embracing such ideas with both arms. The plan itself is not bold but – as the editorial itself acknowledges, ironically – in line with what many accomplished research groups and institutes around the world have already expressed a desire for. Also relevant here is the fact that the editorial appeared in *Nature* – a journal that has played up its impact factor and the significance of the various papers it has published (to their respective fields) to play up its prestigious nature. Scientists are seeking to install a new research evaluation process in the first place because of the damage such prestige has wrought to the practice of science, essentially as it has come to substitute rigour and transparency, so overturning the tyranny of prestige will deal a blow to *Nature*'s large profit margins. ### WordPress.com rolls back its botched 'experiment' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/22/wordpress-com-rolls-back-its-botched-experiment/ Last updated: 2022-07-22T11:53:00.000Z So, WordPress.com has restored the family of premium plans that it had until April this year, and has done away with the controversial 'Starter' and 'Pro' plans. The announcement on the WordPress.com blog yesterday has already garnered a high 65 comments, even as the post itself was brief and didn't contain indication that WordPress.com had screwed up with the new plans. Excerpt: > Our philosophy has always been one of experimenting, learning, and adjusting. As we began to roll out our new pricing plans a couple of months back, we took note of the feedback you shared. What we heard is that some of you missed the more granular flexibility of our previous plans. Additionally, the features you needed and pricing of the new plans didn’t always align for you. This led us to a decision that we believe is the right call. You might recall that when the new plans were announced in April, [my blog post](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reacting to them became a big deal on the Hacker News forum on that day, and (probably) first drew the attention of Automattic chief Matt Mullenweg and WordPress.com CEO Dave Martin. Since then, WordPress.com has been working to adapt the 'Starter' and 'Pro' plans for different markets as well as introduced à la carte upgrades to remove ads, add custom CSS and buy more storage space. However, the company continued to receive negative feedback on the changes from the previous plans. One vein that I really resonated with was a rebuttal of WordPress.com's claim that the older plans were messy whereas the newer ones are clearer. That's absolutely not true. But on July 21, they seemed to have finally really listened and changed their minds for the better. (And even then, there are many expressions of confusion among the 65 comments.) I also want to point out here that WordPress.com is being disingenuous when it claims its new plans were an "experiment". That's bullshit. No experiment rolls out to all users on production, is accompanied by formal announcements of change on the official blog and, in the face of criticism, [forces the CEO to apologise](https://www.rootprivileges.net/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a hamfisted rollout process – all without mentioning the word 'experiment' even once. WordPress.com is saying now that its development has followed the path of "experimenting, learning, and adjusting" when all it did was force the change, inform users *post facto*, then solicited feedback on which it acted (before doing that in advance), and finally reverted to a previous state. ### Should 'geniuses' be paid extra? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/17/should-geniuses-be-paid-extra/ Last updated: 2022-07-17T05:26:44.000Z A newsletter named *Ideas Sleep Furiously* [had an essay](https://ideassleepfuriously.substack.com/p/how-about-a-genius-basic-income#details) propounding a "genius basic income" on May 28\. Here are the first two paragraphs that capture a not-insignificant portion of the essay's message: > Professor Martin Hairer is one of the world’s most gifted mathematicians. An Austrian-Brit at Imperial College London, he researches stochastic partial differential equations and holds two of maths’ most coveted prizes. In 2014, he became only the second person with a physics PhD to win a Fields Medal, an award granted every four years to mathematicians under 40 and considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Hairer also won the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, which comes with a $3 million cheque. When the *Guardian* covered Hairer’s win, they noted: ‘\[his\] major work, a 180-page treatise that introduced the world to “reguarity structures”, so stunned his colleagues that one suggested it must have been transmitted to Hairer by a more intelligent alien civilisation.’ The journalist asked Hairer how he’d spend the prize money. His response: “We moved to London somewhat recently, three years ago, and we are still renting. So it might be time to buy a place to live.” > > Most readers of the Guardian that day no doubt understood the absurdity of London house prices. Morning coffee in hand, many will have tut-tutted in dismay at Hairer’s comical remark and mentally filed it under *somebody really ought to fix this housing crisis*. But how many stopped to consider the greater absurdity? After all, here was a man who, not that long ago, would’ve had a team around him devoted to deflecting such petty problems, to getting others out of his way and allowing him to focus on the thing that only he and a handful of people could understand, let alone do. But the real story wasn’t that a maths genius in modern Britain couldn’t afford a comfortable home close to work. The real story was that it passed without comment. Matthew Archer, the essay's author (and who ends the newsletter edition with a request to readers to share it "to spread the gospel of rationality"), contends that people like Hairer ought to be freed of the tedium of figuring out where to live, how to get around the city, groceries, and other "quotidian constraints that plague mere mortals". Instead, Archer argues, a "genius" like Hairer ought to be paid a "genius basic income" so that he, and his brain "built for advanced mathematics", can focus on solving hard problems that contribute to human welfare and civilisation. Archer's essay addresses this problem both within and without university settings, but within academic ones. Another important thrust of his essay is the way American 'child geniuses' are treated at American schools, and how inefficiencies in the country's school system have the eventual effect of encouraging these children not to develop their special skills but to fit in, leading to an "epidemic of gifted underachievement". This is quite likely true of the Indian school system as well, but his overall idea is not a good one – especially in India, and probably in the West as well. Archer's essay is undergirded by a few assumptions and this is where the problems lie. The first is that a country (I'm highly uncertain about the world) can and must reap only one sort of benefit from the "geniuses" at its universities. This is an insular view of the problems that are deemed worthy of solving, by privileging the interests of the "genius" over the interests of the higher education and research system. If a "genius" is to be paid more, they must also assume more responsibilities than doing the work that they are already doing because they must also dispense their social responsibilities to their university. If a mathematician is considered to be the only one who can solve a very difficult problem, encourage them to do so – but not at the expense of them also taking on the usual number of PhD students, teaching hours and other forms of mentorship. We don't know what we will stand to lose if the mathematical problem goes unsolved but we're well aware of what we lose when we prevent aspiring students from pursuing a PhD because a suitable mentor isn't available or capable students from receiving the right amount of attention in the classroom. The second is that we need "geniuses". Do we? Instead of a "genius basic income" that translates to a not insubstantial hike for the "geniuses" at a university or a research facility, pay all students and researchers a proportionate fraction of their incomes more so that they all can worry just a little less about "quotidian constraints". There is a [growing](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [body](https://unu.edu/publications/articles/giving-money-to-very-poor-people.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [of](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-direct-cash-poor/407236/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [research](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/17/opinion/just-give-poor-people-money/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) showing that the best way to eliminate poverty appears to be giving poor people money and letting them spend it as they see fit. There are some exceptions to this view but they are centered entirely on [identifying who is really deserving](https://theconversation.com/why-cash-payments-arent-always-the-best-tool-to-help-poor-people-156019?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – a problem that goes away both in the academic setting, where direct income comparisons with the cost of living are possible, and in India (see the third point). I sincerely believe the same could be true vis-à-vis inequities within our education and research systems, which are part of a wider environment of existence that has foisted [more than mere "quotidian constraints"](https://science.thewire.in/society/the-view-from-the-moon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on its members and which will almost certainly benefit from relieving all of them just a little at a time instead of a select few a lot. (Archer quotes David Graeber in his essay to dismiss a counterpoint against his view: "To raise this point risks a tsunami of 'whataboutery'—what about the average person who can’t afford a home? What about the homeless?! The same people tend to suggest that a highly paid academic doing a job he loves and living in one of the world’s best cities is enough of a reward. In itself this is a sign of a remarkable shift in values. It is also the inheritance of an older belief system, Puritanism, where, in the words of the late anthropologist David Graeber, 'one is not paid money to do things, however useful or important, that one actually enjoys.'" When Graeber passed away in September 2020, I remember anthropologist Alpa Shah [tweeting this](https://twitter.com/alpashah001/status/1301993506110607361?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "I often thought of David Graeber as a genius. But of the many things that David taught me, it was that there is in fact a genius in each of us.") In India in particular, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research doesn't pay students and researchers enough as well as has a [terrible reputation](https://thelifeofscience.com/2022/01/15/funding-delays/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of paying them so late that many young researchers are in debt or are leaving for other jobs just to feed their families. (Aside: While Hairer suggests that he could think about buying a house in London only after he'd won $3 million with a Breakthrough Prize, the prize itself once again concentrates a lot of money into the hands of a few that have already excelled, and [most of whom](https://science.thewire.in/society/gender/women/sciences-richest-prizes-awarded-to-more-men/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are men.) The third assumption is that school and education reform is impossible and even undesirable. Archer writes in his essay: > "It was only in October last year that the then Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, [announced](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/nyregion/gifted-talented-nyc-schools.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the city’s gifted programme would be replaced because non-white students were underrepresented. Yet as Professor Ellen Winner noted in her 1996 book, *Gifted Children: Myths and Realities*, scrapping gifted programmes in the name of diversity, equality, and inclusion, has rather ironic effects. Namely, gifted children embedded within a culture, which might not value high achievement …, have no other children ‘with whom to identify, and they may not feel encouraged to develop their skills.’ The activists, then, practice discrimination in the name of non-discrimination." This argument advances a cynical view of the sort of places we can or should expect our schools to be for our children. Keeping a policy going so that white students can receive help with developing their special skills is an abject form of status-quoism that overlooks the non-white students who are struggling to fit in, and are apparently also not being selected for the 'gifted children' programme. Clearly, the latter is broken. I would much rather advocate school-level reforms where the institution accommodates everyone as well as pays more and/or different attention to those children who need it, including arranging for activities designed to help develop their skills as well as improve social cohesion. The fourth assumption is specific to India and concerns the desirability of the unbalanced improvement of welfare. Providing a few a "genius basic income" will heap privilege on privilege, because those who have already been identified as "geniuses" in India will have had to be privileged in *at least* two of the following three ways: gender, class and caste. Put another way, take a look at the upper management of India's best academic and research centres, government research bodies and private research facilities, and tell me how many of these people aren't cis-male Brahmins, rich Brahmins or rich cis-males ('rich' here is being used to mean access to wealth before an individual entered academia). If they make up more than 10% of the total population of these individuals, I'll give you a thousand rupees, even if 10% would also still be abysmal. The Indian academic milieu is already highly skewed in favour of Brahmins in particular, and any exercise here that deals with identifying geniuses will identify only Brahmin "geniuses". This in turn will attach one more casteist module to a system already sorely in need of [affirmative action](https://thewire.in/politics/we-need-to-start-taking-affirmative-action-seriously?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I'm also opposed to the principle outlined by contentions of the type "we don't have enough money for research, so we should spend what we have wisely". This is a [false problem](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2020/11/12/on-resource-constraints-and-merit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) created by the government's decision to underspend on research, forcing researchers to fight among themselves about whose work should receive a higher allocation, or any allocation at all. I thought that I would have to make an exception for the "genius basic income", i.e. that researchers *do* have only a small amount of money and that they can't afford such an income for a few people – but then I realised that this is a red herring: even if India invested 1% or even 2% of its GDP in research and development activities (up from the current 0.6%), a "genius basic income" would be a bad idea *in principle*. The fourth assumption allows us to circle back to a general, and especially pernicious, problem, specific to one line from Archer's essay: "A world in which the profoundly gifted are supported might be a world … with a reverence for the value that gifted people bring." The first two words that popped into my ahead upon reading this sentence were "Marcy Pogge". Both [Geoffrey Marcy](https://science.thewire.in/science/geoff-marcy-sexually-harassed-his-students-for-three-decades-because-he-had-great-help/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Thomas Pogge](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/yale-ethics-professor?ref=slightlyacidic.com) were considered to be "geniuses" in their respective fields – astronomy and philosophy – before a slew of allegations of sexual harrassment, many of them from students at their own universities, the University of California and Yale University, revealed an important side of reality: people in charge of student safety and administration at these universities turned away even when they knew of the allegations because the men brought in a lot of grant money and prestige. Chasing women out of science, forcing them to keep their mouth shut if they want to continue being in science (after throwing innumerable barriers in their path to entering science in the first place) – this is the unconscionable price we have paid to *revere* "genius". This is because the notion of a "genius" creates a culture of exceptionalism, founded among other things on the view (as in the first assumption) that "geniuses" have something to contribute that others can't and that this contribution is inherently more valuable than that of others. But "geniuses" are people, and people can be assholes if they're allowed to operate with impunity. Archer may contend that this wasn't the point of his essay; that may be, but 'reverence' implies little else. And if this is the position towards which he believes we must all gravitate, forget everything else – it's reason enough dismiss the idea of a "genius basic income". ### The 5ftf blunder URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/16/the-5ftf-blunder/ Last updated: 2022-07-16T06:55:28.000Z Automattic owner Matt Mullenweg recently [made a scene](https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-identifies-godaddy-as-a-parasitic-company-and-an-existential-threat-to-wordpress-future?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Twitter when he called out GoDaddy as a "parasitic" organisation for profiting off of WordPress without making a sufficient number of contributions to the WordPress community and for developing a competitor to WooCommerce, which is Automattic's 'WordPress but for e-commerce'. (To the uninitiated, Automattic owns WordPress.com and maintains WordPress.org. [WordPress.com](https://wordpress.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is where you pay Automattic to host your website for you on its servers; [WordPress.org](https://wordpress.org/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is where you can download the WordPress CMS and use it on your own servers.) At the heart of the issue is Automattic's 'Five for the Future' (5ftf) initiative, in which companies whose profits depend on the WordPress CMS and the community of developers and users pledge to contribute 5% of their resources to developing WordPress.org. There has been a lot of justifiable backlash against Mullenweg's tweets, which were in poor taste and which have since been deleted. But most of the articles on the topic that I read weren't clear or not written well about what their authors' reasons were to disagree with Mullenweg. So after some reading around, I thought I'd summarise my takeaways as I see them, and in case you might benefit from such a summary as well. **1\.** 5ftf appears to mean different things to different people. This has been a recurrent bone of contention because Mullenweg lashed out against GoDaddy because GoDaddy's contributions were not legitimate, or not legitimate *enough*, for him. But this is hardly reasonable. Not every entity or individual can contribute in exactly the way Automattic wishes at a given time nor can Automattic, or Mullenweg, presume to know exactly which contributions can be discarded in favour of others. In fact, I've been sticking with WordPress even though WordPress.com has been becoming less friendly to bloggers because a) it presents a diverse set of opportunities for me, vis-à-vis the projects and services I know how to set up because I know how to use WordPress, and b) WordPress has engendered over the decades a view of publishing on the web that is aligned with progressivist views on publishing on the internet. So in my view I contribute when I recommend WordPress to others, help my fellow journalists and writers set up WordPress websites, provide feedback on WordPress services, build (rudimentary) WordPress plugins and, within my newsroom, promote the use of WordPress towards responsible journalism. **2\.** Mullenweg was wrong to abuse GoDaddy in public, in such harsh terms. This was a disagreement that ought to have been settled out of view of public eyes, and certainly not on Twitter. Mullenweg is influential both as an entrepreneur more broadly as well as, more specifically, as someone whose views and policies on digital publishing can potentially affect hundreds of thousands active websites on the internet. By lashing out in this way, all he's done is made GoDaddy look bad in a way that it probably didn't deserve to be, and certainly in a way that it would find hard to pushback against as a company. To continue my first point, GoDaddy has also said that it sponsors WordCamps and other events where WordPress-enthusiasts gather to discuss better or new ways to use Automattic products. (Aside: In his examples of companies that are doing a better job of giving back to WordPress.org, Mullenweg included Bluehost. Some of you might remember how bad GoDaddy's customer service was in the previous decade. It was famously, notoriously awful, exacerbated by the fact that for a lot of people, its platform was also the gateway to WordPress. I get the sense that their service has improved now. On the other hand, Bluehost and indeed all hosting companies owned by Newfold Digital have a lousy reputation, among developers and non-developers alike, while Mullenweg is apparently happy with Bluehost's contributions and it is also listed as one of WordPress.org's [recommended hosts](https://wordpress.org/hosting/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) **3\.** Mullenweg blundered in a surprising way when he indicated in his tweets that he was keeping score. While GoDaddy caught Mullenweg's attention on this occasion, the fundamental problem is relevant to all of us. You want people to support a cause because they want to, not because someone is keeping track and could be angry with you if you default. Put another way, Mullenweg took the easier-to-implement but harder-to-sustain 'hardware' route to instituting a change in the ecosystem than the harder-to-implement but easier-to-sustain 'software' route. We've come across ample examples of this choice through the pandemic. To get people to wear masks in public, many governments introduced mask mandates. A mask mandate is the hardware path: it enforces material changes among people backed by the threat of punishments. The software path on the other hand would have entailed creating a culture in which mask-wearing is considered to be virtuous and desirable, in which no one is afraid of being punished if they don't wear masks (for reasonable reasons), and in which people trust the government to be looking out for them. The software path is much longer than the hardware one and governments may have justified their actions saying they didn't have the time for all this. But while that's debatable, Automattic doesn't have such constraints. This is why 5ftf should be made aspirational but shouldn't be enforced, and certainly shouldn't become an excuse for public disparagement. I and many, many others love WordPress, and a large part of it is because we love the culture and ideas surrounding it. We also understand the problem with for-profit organisations profiting off the work of non-profit organisations. If GoDaddy is really threatening to sink WordPress.org by offering the people hosting their sites on GoDaddy an alternative ecommerce platform or by not giving back nearly as many programming-hours as it effectively consumes, Automattic should either regard GoDaddy as a legitimate competitor and reconsider its own business model or it should pay less attention to its contribution scorecard and more to why and how others contribute the way they do. Finally, if GoDaddy is really selfish in a way that is not compatible with WordPress.org's future as Automattic sees it to be, Automattic's grouch should be divorced cleanly from the 5ftf initiative. ### A quantum theory of consciousness URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/14/a-quantum-theory-of-consciousness/ Last updated: 2022-07-14T16:07:02.000Z We seldom have occasion to think about science and religion at the same time, but the most interesting experience I have had doing that came in October 2018, when I attended a conference called 'Science for Monks'**\*** in Gangtok, Sikkim. More precisely, it was one edition of a series of conferences by that name, organised every year between scientists and science communicators from around the world and Tibetan Buddhist monks in the Indian subcontinent. Let me quote from [the article I wrote](https://science.thewire.in/society/religion/scientists-and-buddhists-discuss-physics-reality-at-three-day-conference/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) after the conference to illustrate why such engagement could be useful: > "When most people think about the meditative element of the practice of Buddhism, … they think only about single-point meditation, which is when a practitioner closes their eyes and focuses their mind’s eye on a single object. The less well known second kind is analytical meditation: when two monks engage in debate and question each other about their ideas, confronting them with impossibilities and contradictions in an effort to challenge their beliefs. This is also a louder form of meditation. \[One monk\] said that sometimes, people walk into his monastery expecting it to be a quiet environment and are surprised when they chance upon an argument. Analytical meditation is considered to be a form of evidence-sharpening and a part of proof-building." As interesting as the concept of the conference is, the 2018 edition was particularly so because the field of science [on the table that year](http://www.scienceformonksandnuns.org/monastic-graduates-dialogues/observation-and-reality-2018/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was quantum physics. That quantum physics is counter-intuitive is a banal statement; it is chock-full of twists in the tale, interpretations, uncertainties and open questions. Even a conference *among scientists* was bound to be confusing – imagine the scope of opportunities for confusion in one between scientists and *monks*. As if in response to this risk, the views of the scientists and the monks were very cleanly divided throughout the event, with neither side wanting to tread on the toes of the other, and this in turn dulled the proceedings. And while this was a sensible thing to do, I was disappointed. This said, there were some interesting conversations outside the event halls, in the corridors, over lunch and dinner, and at the hotel where we were put up (where speakers in the common areas played ['Om Mani Padme Hum'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UOcXiBGGb8&ref=slightlyacidic.com) 24/7). One of them centered on the rare (possibly) legitimate idea in quantum physics in which Buddhist monks, and monks of every denomination for that matter, have considerable interest: the origin of consciousness. While any sort of exposition or conversation involving the science of consciousness has more often than not been replete with bad science, this idea may be an honourable exception. Four years later, I only remember that there was a vigorous back-and-forth between two monks and a physicist, not the precise contents of the dialogue or who participated. The subject was the Orch OR hypothesis advanced by the physicist Roger Penrose and quantum-consciousness theorist Stuart Hameroff. According to a [2014 paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188?ref=slightlyacidic.com) authored by the pair, "Orch OR links consciousness to processes in fundamental space-time geometry." It traces the origin of consciousness to cellular structures inside neurons called microtubules being in a superposition of states, and which then collapse into a single state in a process induced by gravity. In the famous Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment, the cat exists in a superposition of 'alive' *and* 'dead' states while the box is closed. When an observer opens the box and observes the cat, its state collapses into *either* a 'dead' or an 'alive' state. Few scientists subscribe to the Orch OR view of self-awareness; the vast majority believe that consciousness originates not *within* neurons but in the interactions *between* neurons, happening at a large scale. 'Orch OR' stands for 'orchestrated objective reduction', with Penrose being credited with the 'OR' part. That is also the part at which mathematicians and physicists have directed much of their criticism. It begins with Penrose's idea of *spacetime blisters*. According to him, at the Planck scale (around 10\-35 m), the spacetime continuum is discrete, not continuous, and that each quantum superposition occupies a distinct piece of the spacetime fabric. These pieces are called blisters. Pernose postulated that gravity acts on each of these blisters and destabilises them, causing the superposed states to collapse into a single state. A quantum computer performs calculations using qubits as the fundamental units of information. The qubits interact with each other in quantum-mechanical processes like superposition and entanglement. At some point, the superposition of these qubits is forced to collapse by making an observation, and the state to which it collapses is recorded as the computer's result. In 1989, Penrose proposed that there could be a quantum-computer-like mechanism operating in the human brain and that the OR mechanism could be the act of observation that forces it to terminate. One refinement of the OR hypothesis is the Diósi-Penrose scheme, with contributions from Hungarian physicist Lajos Diósi. In this scheme, spacetime blisters are unstable and the superposition collapses when the mass of the superposed states exceeds a fixed value. In the course of his calculations, Diósi found that at the moment of collapse, the system must emit some electromagnetic radiation (due to the motion of electrons). Hameroff made his contribution by introducing microtubules as a candidate for the location of qubit-like objects and which could collectively set up a quantum-computer-like system within the brain. There have been some experiments in the last two decades that have tested whether Orch OR could manifest in the brain, based on studies of electron activity. But a more recent study suggests that Orch OR may just be infeasible as an explanation for the origin of consciousness. Here, a team of researchers – including Lajos Diósi – first looked for the electromagnetic radiation at the instant the superposition collapsed. The researchers didn't find any, but the parameters of their experiment (including the masses involved) allowed them to set lower limits on the scale at which Orch OR might work. That is, they had a way to figure out a way in which the distance, time and mass might be related in an Orch OR event. They set these calculations out in a [new paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1571064522000197?ref=slightlyacidic.com), published in the journal *Physics of Life Reviews* on May 17\. According to their paper, they fixed the time-scale of the collapse to 0.025 to 0.5 seconds, which is comparable to the amount of time in which our brain recognises conscious experience. They found that at a spatial scale of 10\-15 m – which Penrose has expressed a preference for – a superposition that collapses in 0.025 seconds would require 1,000-times more tubulins as there are in the brain (1020), an impossibility. (Tubulins polymerise to form microtubules.) But at a scale of around 1 nm, the researchers worked out that the brain would need only 1012 tubulins for their superposition to collapse in around 0.025 seconds. This is still a very large number of tubulins and a daunting task even for the human brain. But it isn't impossible as with the collapse over 10\-15 m. According to the team's paper, > The Orch OR based on the DP \[Diósi-Penrose\] theory is definitively ruled out for the case of \[10\-15 m\] separation, without needing to consider the impact of environmental decoherence; we also showed that the case of partial separation requires the brain to maintain coherent superpositions of tubulin of such mass, duration, and size that vastly exceed any of the coherent superposition states that have been achieved with state-of-the-art optomechanics and macromolecular interference experiments. We conclude that none of the scenarios we discuss … are plausible. However, the team hasn't nearly eliminated Orch OR; instead, they wrote that they intend to refine the Diósi-Penrose scheme to a more "sophisticated" version that, for example, may not entail the release of electromagnetic radiation or provide a more feasible pathway for superposition collapse. So far, in their telling, they have used experimental results to learn where their theory should improve if it is to remain a plausible description of reality. If and when the 'Science for Monks' conferences, or those like it, resume after the pandemic, it seems we may still be able to put Orch OR on the discussion table. **\** I remember it was called 'Science for Monks' in 2018\. Its name appears to have been changed since to 'Science for Monks and Nuns'.* ### Unless the West copies us, we're irrelevant URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/14/unless-the-west-copies-us-were-irrelevant/ Last updated: 2022-07-14T11:12:00.000Z We have become quite good at dismissing the more asinine utterances of our ministers and other learned people in terms of either a susceptibility to pseudoscience or, less commonly, a wilful deference to what we might call pseudoscientific ideas in order to undermine “Western science” and its influence. But when a matter of this sort hits the national headlines, our response seems for the large part to be limited to explaining the incident: once some utterance has been diagnosed, it apparently stops being of interest. While this is understandable, an immediate diagnosis can only offer so much insight. An important example is the Vedas. Every time someone claims that the Vedas anticipated, say, the Higgs boson or interplanetary spaceflight, the national news machine – in which reporters, editors, experts, commentators, activists and consumers all participate – publishes the following types of articles, from what I have read: news reports that quote the individual’s statement as is, follow-ups with the individual asking them to explain themselves, opinion articles defending or trashing the individual, an editorial if the statement is particularly pernicious, opinion articles dissecting the statement, and perhaps an interview long after to ask the individual what they were really thinking. (I don’t follow TV news but I assume it is either not very different in its content.) All of these articles employ a diagnostic attitude towards the news item: they seek to uncover the purpose of the statement because they begin with the (reasonable) premise that the individual was not a fool to issue it and that the statement had a purpose, irrespective of whether it was fulfilled. Only few among them – if any – stop consider the double-edged nature of the *diagnosis* itself. For example, when a researcher in Antarctica got infected by the novel coronavirus, their diagnosis would have said a lot about humankind – in their ability to be infected even when one individual is highly isolated for long periods of time – as well as about the virus itself. Similarly, when a Bharatiya Janata Party *bhakt* claims that the Vedas anticipated the discovery of the Higgs boson, it says as much about the individual as it does about the *individual’s knowledge of the Vedas*. Specifically, the biggest loser here, so to speak, are the Vedas, which have been misrepresented to the world’s scientists to sound like an unfalsifiable joke-book. Extrapolate this to all of the idiotic things that our most zealous compatriots have said about airplanes, urban planning, the internet, plastic surgery, nutrition and diets, cows, and mathematics. This is misrepresentation *en masse* of India’s cultural heritage (the cows aren’t complaining but I will never be certain until they can talk), and it is also a window into what these individuals believe to be true about the country itself. For example, consider mathematics. One position paper drafted by the Karnataka task force on the National Education Policy, entitled [“Knowledge in India”](https://dsert.kar.nic.in/easp/nepresources.asp?ref=slightlyacidic.com), called the Pythagorean theorem “fake news” simply because the Indian scholar Baudhayana had propounded very similar rules and observations. In an [interview to *Hindustan Times*](https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/a-lot-of-debate-on-google-quora-over-pythagoras-madan-gopal-101657738754705.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) interview yesterday, the head of this task force, Madan Gopal, said the position paper doesn’t recommend that the theorem be removed from the syllabus but that an addition be made: Baudhayana was the originator of the theorem. Baudhayana was [not the originator](https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m446-03/pl322/pl322.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but equally importantly, Gopal said he had concluded that Baudhayana was being cheated out of credit based on what Gopal had read… on Quora. As a result, Gopal has overlooked and rendered invisible the *Baudhayana Sulbasutra* as well as has admitted his indifference towards the programme of its study and preservation. Consider another example involving the same fellow: Gopal also told *Hindustan Times*, “Manchester University published a paper saying that the theory of Newton is copied from ancient texts from Kerala.” He is in all likelihood referring to the work of G.G. Joseph, who [asserted in 2007](https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/indians-predated-newton-discovery-by-250-years/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that scholars of the Kerala school of mathematics had discovered some of the constitutive elements of calculus in c. 1350 – a few centuries before Isaac Newton or Gottfried Leibniz. However, Gopal is wrong to claim that Newton “copied” from the work from “ancient texts from Kerala”: in continuation of his work, [Joseph discovered](https://science.thewire.in/society/history/madhava-and-the-uninfluential-discovery-of-calculus/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that while the work of Madhava and Nilakantha at the Kerala school pre-dated that of Newton and Leibniz, there had been no transfer of knowledge from the Kerala school to Europe in the medieval era. That is, Newton and Leibniz had discovered calculus independently. Gopal would have been right to state that Madhava and Nilakantha were ahead of the Europeans of the time, but it’s not clear whether Gopal was even aware of these names or the kind of work in which the members of the Kerala school were engaged. He has as a result betrayed his ignorance as well as squandered an important opportunity to address the role of colonialism and imperialism in the history of mathematics. In fact, Gopal seems to say that unless Newton *copied* from the “ancient texts,” what the texts themselves record is irrelevant. (Also read: [‘We don’t have a problem with the West, we’re just obsessed with it’](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2018/01/29/we-dont-have-a-problem-with-the-west-were-just-obsessed-with-it/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Now, Madan Gopal’s ignorance may not amount to much – although the Union education ministry will be using the position papers as guidance to draft the next generation of school curricula. So let us consider, in the same spirit and vein, [Narendra Modi’s claim](https://www.rediff.com/news/report/modi--reliance-hospital-opening-plastic-surgeon-may-have-fixed-elephants-head-on-ganesha/20141025.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com) shortly after he became India’s prime minister for the first time that ancient Indians had been capable of performing an impossible level of plastic surgery. In that moment, he lied – and he also admitted that he had no idea what the contents of the *Sushruta Samhita* or the *Charaka Samhita* were and that he didn’t care. He admitted that he wouldn’t be investing in the study, preservation and transmission of these texts because that would be tantamount to admitting that only a vanishing minority is aware of their contents. Also, why do these things and risk finding out that the texts say something else entirely? Take all of the party supporters’ pseudoscientific statements together – originating from the Madan Gopals and culminating with Modi – and it becomes quite apparent, beyond the momentary diagnoses of each of these statements, that while we already knew that they have no idea what they are talking about, we must admit that they have no care for what the purported sources of their claims actually say. That is, they don’t give a damn about the actual Vedas, the actual *Samhita*s or the various actual *sutra*s, and they are unlikely to preserve or study these objects of our heritage in their original forms. Just as every new Patanjali formulation forgets Ayurveda for the sake of Ayurveda®, every new utterance about Ancient Indian Knowledge forgets the Vedas for the sake of the Vedas®. Now, given the statements of this nature from ministers, other members and unquestioning supporters of the BJP, we have reason to believe that they engage in [kettle logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle%5Flogic?ref=slightlyacidic.com). This in turn implies that these individuals may not really believe what they are saying to be true and/or valid, and that they employ their arguments anyway only to ensure the outcome, on which they are fixated. That is, the foolish statements may not implicitly mean that their authors are foolish; on the contrary, they may be smart enough to recognise kettle logic as well as its ability to keep naïve fact-checkers occupied in a new form of the [bullshit job](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/04/i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room-the-rise-of-the-pointless-job?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Even so, they must be aware at least that they are actively forgetting the Vedas, the *Samhita*s and the *sutra*s. One way or another, the BJP seems to say, let’s forget. ### JWST and the sorites paradox URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/12/jwst-and-the-sorites-paradox/ Last updated: 2022-07-12T12:29:51.000Z The team operating NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released its first full-colour image early on July 12, and has promised some more from the same set in the evening. The image is a near-infrared shot of the [SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster](https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages?ref=slightlyacidic.com) some 4.6 billion lightyears away. According to a press release accompanying the image's release, the field of view – which shows scores of galaxies as well as several signs of gravitational lensing (which is evident only when very large distances are involved) – is equivalent to the area occupied by a grain of sand held at arm's length from the eyes. I'm personally looking forward to the telescope's shot of the [Carina Nebula](https://www.nasa.gov/mission%5Fpages/hubble/multimedia/ero/ero%5Fcarina.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com): the Hubble space telescope's images of this emission nebula were themselves stunning, so the JWST's shot should be more so! Gazing at the JWST's first image brought to my mind the sorites paradox. Its underlying thought-experiment might resonate with you were you to ponder the [classical limit of quantum physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical%5Flimit?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or the concept of emergence as [Philip Warren Anderson elucidated it](https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1%5F2011%5Fmore%5Fis%5Fdifferent%5FPWA.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) as well. Imagine a small heap of sand before you. You pick up a single grain from the heap and toss it away. Is the sand before you still in a heap? Yes. You put away another grain and check. Still a heap. So you keep going, and a few thousand checks later, you find that you have before you a single grain of sand. Is it still a heap? If your answer is 'yes', the follow-up question arises: how can a single grain of sand be a heap? If 'no', then when did the heap stop being a heap? Another way to conjure the same paradox is to start with one grain of sand and which is evidently not a heap. Then you add one more grain, which is also not a heap, and one more and one more and so forth. Using [*modus ponens*](https://www.csm.ornl.gov/~sheldon/ds/sec1.3.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) supplies the following line of reasoning: "One mote isn't a heap. And if one mote isn't a heap, then two motes don't make a heap either. And three motes don't make a heap either. And so on until: if 9,999 motes don’t make a heap, then 10,000 motes don't make a heap either." But while straightforward logic has led you to this conclusion, your sense-experience is clear: what lies before you is in fact a heap. The paradox came to mind because it's hard not to contemplate the fact that both the photograph and the goings-on in India at the moment – from the vitriolic bigotry that's constantly being mainstreamed to the arrest and harassment of journalists, activists and other civilians, both by the ruling dispensation – are the product of human endeavour. I'm not interested in banal expressions of the form "we're all in this together" ([we're not](https://science.thewire.in/society/the-view-from-the-moon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) or "human intelligence and ingenuity can always be put to better use" (this is useless knowledge); instead, I wonder what the spectrum of human actions – which personal experience has indicated repeatedly to be continuous and ultimately ergodic – looks like that encompasses, at two extremes, actions of such beauty and of such ugliness. When does beauty *turn* to ugliness? Or are these terms discernible only in absolutes – that is, that there is no lesser or higher beauty (or ugliness) but only one ultimate form, and that like the qubits of a quantum computer, between ultimate beauty and ultimate ugliness there are some indeterminate combinations of each attribute for which we have no name or understanding? I use 'beauty' here to mean that which is deemed worthy of preservation and 'ugliness', of erasure. The sorites paradox is a paradox because of the vague predicates: 'heap', for example, has no quantitative definition. Similarly, I realise I'm setting up vague, as well as subjective, predicates when I set up beauty and preservation in the way that I have, so let me simplify the question: how do I, how do you, how do *we* reconcile the heap of sand that is the awesome deep-field shot of a distant galaxy cluster with the single grain of sand that is the contemporary political reality of India? Is a reconciliation even possible – that is, is there still a continuous path of thought, aspiration and action that could take a people seeped in hate and violence to a place of peaceability, tolerance and openness? Or have we fundamentally and irredeemably lost a part of ourselves that has turned us non-ergodic, that will keep us now and for ever from experiencing certain forms of beauty? Language and the words that we use about ourselves will play a very important part here – the adjectives we save for ourselves versus those for the people or ideas that offend us, the terms in which we conceive of and describe our actions, everything from the order of words of our shortest poems to that of jargon of our courts' longest judgments. Our words help us to convince ourselves, and others, that there is beauty in something even if it isn't readily apparent. A *bhakt* might find in the annals of *OpIndia* and *The Organiser* the same solace and inspiration, and therefore the virtue of preserving what he finds to be beautiful, that a rational progressivist might find in *Salvage* or *Viewpoint*. This is among other things because language is how we map meaning to experience – the first point of contact between the material realm and human judgment, an interaction that will forever colour every moral, ethic and justicial conclusion to come after. This act of meaning-making is also visible in physics, where there are overlapping names for different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum because the names matter more for the frequencies' effects on the human body. Similarly, in the book trade, genre definitions can be overlapping – *The Three-Body Problem* by Cixin Liu is both sci-fi and fantasy, for example – because they matter largely for marketing. One way or another, I'm eager, but not yet desperate, for an answer that will keep the door open for some measure of reversibility – and not for the *bhakts* but for those engaged in pushing back against their ilk. (The *bhakts* can [go to hell](https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) The cognitive dissonance otherwise – of a world that creates things and ideas worth preserving and of a world that creates things and ideas worth erasing – might just break my ability to be optimistic about the human condition. *Featured image: The JWST's image of the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI.* ### The Higgs boson and I URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/04/my-career-and-the-higgs-boson/ Last updated: 2022-07-04T02:30:00.000Z My first byline as a professional journalist (a.k.a. my first byline ever) was oddly for [a tech story](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet//article60468990.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – about the advent of IPv6 internet addresses. I started writing it after 7 pm, had to wrap it up by 9 pm and it was published in the paper the next day (I was at *The Hindu*). The first byline that I actually wanted to take credit for appeared around a month later, on July 4, 2012 – ten years ago – on the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe. I published a live blog as Fabiola Gianotti, Joe Incandela and Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the spokespersons of the ATLAS and CMS detector collaborations and the director-general of CERN, respectively, announced and discussed the results. I also distinctly remember taking a pee break after telling readers "I have to leave my desk for a minute" and receiving mildly annoyed, but also amused, comments complaining of TMI. After the results had been announced, the science editor, R. Prasad, told me that R. Ramachandran (a.k.a. Bajji) was filing the main copy and that I should work around that. So I wrote a ['what next' piece](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science//article60454654.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) describing the work that remained for physicists to do, including open problems in particle physics that stayed open and the alternative theories, like supersymmetry, required to explain them. (Some jingoism surrounding the lack of acknowledgment for S.N. Bose – wholly justifiable, in my view – also forced me to write [this](https://mnfld.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/much-ado-about-the-bose-in-the-boson/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) I also remember placing a bet with someone that the Nobel Prize for physics in 2012 wouldn't be awarded for the discovery (because I knew, but the other person didn't, that the nominations for that year's prizes had closed by then). To write about the feats and mysteries of particle physics is why I became a science journalist, so the Higgs boson's discovery being announced a month after I started working was special – not least because it considerably eased the amount of effort I had to put in to pitches and have them accepted (specifically, I didn't have to spend too much time or effort spelling out why a story was important). It was also a great opportunity for me to learn about how breaking news is reported as well as accelerated my induction into the newsroom and its ways. But my interest in particle physics has since waned, especially from around 2017, as I began to focus in my role as science editor of *The Wire* (which I cofounded/joined in May 2015) on other areas of science as well. My heart is still with physics, and I have greatly enjoyed writing the occasional article about [topological phases](https://science.thewire.in/science/machine-learning-topological-insulators-chern/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [neutrino astronomy](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/a-neutrino-gave-away-an-ancient-black-hole-to-menace-two-mysteries-at-once/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [laser cooling](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/catching-a-glimpse-of-s-pancharatnam-in-historys-precisest-chemical-reaction/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and, recently, the [AdS/CFT correspondence](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/ads-cft-correspondence-maldacena-25-years/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A couple years ago, I realised during a [spell of daydreaming](https://mnfld.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/my-heart-of-physics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that even though I have stuck with physics, my act of 'dropping' particle physics as a specialty had left me without an edge as a writer. Just physics was and is too broad – even if there are very few others in India writing on it in the press, giving me lots of room to display my skills (such as they are). I briefly considered and rejected quantum computing and BECCS technologies – the former because its stories were often bursting with hype, especially in my neck of the woods, and the latter because, while it seemed important, it didn't sit well morally. I was indifferent towards them because they were centered on technologies whereas I wanted to write about pure, supposedly boring science. In all, penning an article commemorating the tenth anniversary of the announcement of the Higgs boson's discovery brought back pleasant memories of my early days at *The Hindu* but also reminded me of this choice that I still need to make, for my sake. I don't know if there is a clear winner yet, although quantum physics more broadly and condensed-matter physics more specifically are appealing. This said, I'm also looking forward to returning to writing more about physics in general, paralleling the evolution of *The Wire Science* itself (some announcements coming soon). I should also note that I started blogging in 2008, when I was still an undergraduate student of mechanical engineering, in order to clarify my own knowledge of and thoughts on particle physics. So in all, today is a special day. ### 25 years of Maldacena's bridge URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/07/01/25-years-of-ads-cft/ Last updated: 2022-07-01T15:30:00.000Z Twenty-five years go, in 1997, an Argentine physicist named Juan Martin Maldacena published what would become the most highly cited [physics paper](https://web.archive.org/web/20160421005849/http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1026654312961) in history (more than 20,000 to date). In the paper, Maldacena described a 'bridge' between two theories that describe how our world works, but separately, without meeting each other. These are the field theories that describe the behaviour of energy fields (like the electromagnetic fields) and subatomic particles, and the theory of general relativity, which deals with gravity and the universe at the largest scales. Field theories have many types and properties. One of them is a conformal field theory: a field theory that doesn't change when it undergoes a conformal transformation – i.e. one which preserves angles but not lengths pertaining to the field. As such, conformal field theories are [said to be](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT%5Fcorrespondence?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Quantum%5Ffield%5Ftheory) "mathematically well-behaved". In relativity, space and time are unified into the spacetime continuum. This continuum can broadly exist in one of three possible spaces (roughly, universes of certain 'shapes'): de Sitter space, Minkowski space and anti-de Sitter space. de Sitter space has positive curvature everywhere – like a sphere (but is empty of any matter). Minkowski space has zero curvature everywhere – i.e. a flat surface. Anti-de Sitter space has negative curvature everywhere – like a hyperbola. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/d50c5-end_of_universe.jpg) A sphere, a hyperbolic surface and a flat surface. Credit: NASA Because these shapes are related to the way our universe looks and works, cosmologists have their own way to understand these spaces. If the spacetime continuum exists in de Sitter space, the universe is said to have a positive cosmological constant. Similarly, Minkowski space implies a zero cosmological constant and anti-de Sitter space a negative cosmological constant. Studies by various space telescopes have found that our universe has a positive cosmological constant, meaning 'our' spacetime continuum occupies a de Sitter space (sort of, since our universe does have matter). In 1997, Maldacena found that a description of quantum gravity in anti-de Sitter space in *N* dimensions is the same as a conformal field theory in *N* – 1 dimensions. This – called the AdS/CFT correspondence – was an unexpected but monumental discovery that connected two kinds of theories that had thus far refused to cooperate. (*The Wire Science* had a chance to [interview Maldacena about his past and current work](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/travels-through-wormholes-with-juan-maldacena-string-theorist-extraordinaire/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2018, in which he provided more insights on AdS/CFT as well.) In his paper, Maldacena demonstrated his finding by using the example of string theory as a theory of quantum gravity in anti-de Sitter space – so the finding was also hailed as a major victory for string theory. String theory is a leading contender for a theory that can unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. However, we have found no experimental evidence of its many claims. This is why the AdS/CFT correspondence is also called the AdS/CFT *conjecture*. Nonetheless, thanks to the correspondence, (mathematical) physicists have found that some problems that are hard on the 'AdS' side are much easier to crack on the 'CFT' side, and vice versa – all they had to do was cross Maldacena's 'bridge'! This was another sign that the AdS/CFT correspondence wasn't just a mathematical trick but could be a legitimate description of reality. So how could it be real? **The holographic principle** In 1997, Maldacena proved that a string theory in five dimensions was the same as a conformal field theory in four dimensions. However, gravity in our universe exists in four dimensions – not five. So the correspondence came close to providing a unified description of gravity and quantum mechanics, but not close enough. Nonetheless, it gave rise to the possibility that an entity that existed in some number of dimensions could be described by another entity that existed in *one fewer* dimensions. Actually, in fact, the AdS/CFT correspondence didn't give rise to this possibility but proved it, at least mathematically; the awareness of the possibility had existed for many years until then, as the holographic principle. The Dutch physicist Gerardus 't Hooft first proposed it and the American physicist Leonard Susskind in the 1990s brought it firmly into the realm of string theory. One way to state the holographic principle, in the words of physicist [Matthew Headrick](https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2018/november/thetake-podcast-hologram.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), is thus: > "The universe around us, which we are used to thinking of as being three dimensional, is actually at a more fundamental level two-dimensional and that everything we see that's going on around us in three dimensions is actually happening in a two-dimensional space." This "two-dimensional space" is the 'surface' of the universe, located at an infinite distance from us, where information is encoded that describes everything happening within the universe. It's a mind-boggling idea. 'Information' here refers to physical information, such as, to use one of Headrick's examples, "the positions and velocities of physical objects". In beholding this information from the infinitely faraway surface, we apparently behold a three-dimensional reality. It bears repeating that this is a mind-boggling idea. We have no proof so far that the holographic principle is a real description of our universe – we only know that it *could* describe our reality, thanks to the AdS/CFT correspondence. This said, physicists have used the holographic principle to study and understand black holes as well. In 1915, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity provided a set of complicated equations to understand how mass, the spacetime continuum and the gravitational force are related. Within a few months, physicists Karl Swarzschild and Johannes Droste, followed in subsequent years by Georges Lemaitre, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Robert Oppenheimer and David Finkelstein, among others, began to realise that one of the equations' exact solutions (i.e. non-approximate) indicated the existence of a point mass around which space was wrapped completely, preventing even light from escaping from inside this space to outside. This was the *black hole*. Because black holes were exact solutions, physicists assumed that they didn't have any entropy – i.e. that its insides didn't have any disorder. If there had been such disorder, it should have appeared in Einstein's equations. It didn't, so QED. But in the early 1970s, the Israeli-American physicist Jacob Bekenstein noticed a problem: if a system with entropy, like a container of hot gas, was thrown into the black hole, and the black hole doesn't have entropy, where does the entropy go? It had to go somewhere; otherwise, the black hole would violate the second law of thermodynamics – that the entropy of an isolated system, like our universe, can't decrease. Bekenstein postulated that black holes must also have entropy, and that the amount of entropy is proportional to the black hole's surface area, i.e. the area of the event horizon. Bekenstein also worked out that there is a limit to the amount of entropy a given volume of space can contain, as well as that all black holes could be described by just three *observable* attributes: their mass, electric charge and angular momentum. So if a black hole's entropy increases because it has swallowed some hot gas, this change ought to manifest as a change in one, some or all of these three attributes. Taken together: when some hot gas is tossed into a black hole, the gas would fall into the event horizon but the information about its entropy might appear to be encoded on the black hole's surface, from the point of view of an observer located outside and away from the event horizon. Note here that the black hole, a sphere, is a three-dimensional object whereas its surface is a flat, curved sheet and therefore two-dimensional. That is, all the information required to describe a 3D black hole could in fact be encoded on its 2D surface – which evokes the AdS/CFT correspondence! However, that the event horizon of a black hole preserves information about objects falling into the black hole gives rise to another problem. Quantum mechanics requires all physical information (like "the positions and velocities of physical objects", in Headrick's example) to be conserved. That is, such information can't ever be destroyed. And there's no reason to expect it will be destroyed if black holes lived forever – but they don't. Stephen Hawking found in the 1970s that black holes [should slowly evaporate](https://thewire.in/science/stephen-hawking-black-hole-thermodynamics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by emitting radiation, called Hawking radiation, and there is nothing in the theories of quantum mechanics to suggest that this radiation will be encoded with the information preserved on the event horizon. This, fundamentally, is the black hole information loss problem: either the black hole must shed the information in some way or quantum mechanics must be wrong about the preservation of physical information. Which one is it? This is a major unsolved problem in physics, and it's just one part of the wider context that the AdS/CFT correspondence inhabits. For more insights into this discovery, do read *The Wire Science*'s interview of Maldacena. *I'm grateful to Nirmalya Kajuri for his feedback on this article.* **Sources**: - [Travels Through Wormholes With Juan Maldacena, Physicist Extraordinaire](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/travels-through-wormholes-with-juan-maldacena-string-theorist-extraordinaire/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Exploring new tools in string theory](https://www.space.com/string-theory-ads-cft-correspondence.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Introduction to AdS-CFT](https://arxiv.org/abs/0712.0689?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Horatiu Nastase - [AdS/CFT correspondence](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/692571/ads-cft-correspondence?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [The geometry of anti-de Sitter space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT%5Fcorrespondence?ref=slightlyacidic.com#The%5Fgeometry%5Fof%5Fanti-de%5FSitter%5Fspace) - [Information in the Holographic Universe](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-in-the-hologr-2003-08/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Jacob Bekenstein - [Introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence](https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4319?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Alfonso V. Ramallo - [Black hole entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic%5Fprinciple?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Black%5Fhole%5Fentropy) - [The Black Hole Information Loss Problem](https://web.archive.org/web/20090122223839/http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/info%5Floss.html) - [Conformal field theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal%5Ffield%5Ftheory?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [The theory that the universe is a hologram explained in under 5 minutes](https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2018/november/thetake-podcast-hologram.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Bekenstein bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein%5Fbound?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Black%5Fholes) - [No-hair theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hair%5Ftheorem?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Stephen Hawking, the Cosmic Bard](https://thewire.in/science/stephen-hawking-black-hole-thermodynamics?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [A very very very basic introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence](http://indico.ictp.it/event/a07152/session/15/contribution/10/material/0/0.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by G. Ferretti ### The problem that 'crypto' actually solves URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/30/found-the-problem-that-crypto-actually-solves/ Last updated: 2022-06-30T09:42:48.000Z From ['Cryptocurrency Titan Coinbase Providing "Geo Tracking Data" to ICE'](https://theintercept.com/2022/06/29/crypto-coinbase-tracer-ice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Intercept*, June 30, 2022: > Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, is selling Immigrations and Customs Enforcement a suite of features used to track and identify cryptocurrency users, according to contract documents shared with The Intercept. … a new contract document obtained by Jack Poulson, director of the watchdog group Tech Inquiry, and shared with The Intercept, shows ICE now has access to a variety of forensic features provided through Coinbase Tracer, the company's intelligence-gathering tool (formerly known as Coinbase Analytics). > > Coinbase Tracer allows clients, in both government and the private sector, to trace transactions through the blockchain, a distributed ledger of transactions integral to cryptocurrency use. While blockchain ledgers are typically public, the enormous volume of data stored therein can make following the money from spender to recipient beyond difficult, if not impossible, without the aid of software tools. Coinbase markets Tracer for use in both corporate compliance and law enforcement investigations, touting its ability to "investigate illicit activities including money laundering and terrorist financing" and "connect \[cryptocurrency\] addresses to real world entities." Every "cryptocurrency is broken" story these days has a predictable theme: the real world caught up because the real world never went away. The fundamental impetus for cryptocurrencies is the belief of a bunch of people that they can't trust their money with governments and banks – imagined as authoritarian entities that have centralised decision-making power over private property, including money – and who thus invented a technological alternative that would execute the same solutions the governments and banks did, but sans centralisation, sans *trust*. Even more fundamentally, cryptocurrencies embody neither the pursuit to ensure the people's control of money nor to liberate art-trading from the [clutch of racism](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Instead, they symbolise the abdication of the responsibility to reform banking and finance – a far more arduous process that is also more constitutive and equitable. They symbolise the thin line between [democracy and majoritarianism](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/12/10/the-foolishness-of-a-carbon-negative-blockchain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): they claimed to have placed the tools to validate financial transactions in the hands of the 'people' but fail to grasp that these tools will still be used in the same world that apparently created the need for cryptocurrencies. In this context, I highly recommend [this essay](https://washingtonspectator.org/paranoia-on-parade/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the history of the socio-financial forces that inevitably led to the popularity of cryptocurrencies. These (pseudo)currencies have often been rightly described as a solution looking for a problem, because the fact remains that the 'problem' they do solve is public non-participation in governance. Its proponents just don't like to admit it. Who would? The identity of cryptocurrencies may once have been limited to technological marvels and the play-things of mathematicians and financial analysts, but their foundational premise bears a deeper, more dispiriting implication. As the value of one virtual currency after the next [comes crashing down](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/06/19/what-the-bitcoin-price-drop-reveals-about-crypto/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), after cryptocurrency-based trading and financing schemes [come a cropper](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/11/nfts-arent-thriving-theyre-often-in-the-hospital/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and after their promises to be [untraceable](https://theintercept.com/2022/06/29/crypto-coinbase-tracer-ice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [decentralised](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [uncontrollable](https://www.wired.com/story/tracers-in-the-dark-welcome-to-video-crypto-anonymity-myth/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) have been successively falsified, the whole idea ought to be revealed for what it is: a cynical social engineering exercise to pump even more money from the 'bottom' of the pyramid to the 'top'. Yet, [the implication](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/why-i-m-cryptophobic?ref=slightlyacidic.com): cryptocurrencies will persist because they are vehicles of the libertarian ideologies of their proponents. To attempt to 'stop' them is to attempt to stop the ideologues themselves. ### What the bitcoin price drop reveals about 'crypto' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/19/what-the-bitcoin-price-drop-reveals-about-crypto/ Last updated: 2022-06-19T14:32:17.000Z One of the definitive downsides of cryptocurrencies raised its head this week when the nosediving price of bitcoin – brought on by [the Luna/Terra crash](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/05/22/the-defi-disaster-that-wiped-41b-in-market-cap/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and subsequent cascading effects – [rendered bitcoin mining less profitable](https://finbold.com/bitcoin-mining-becomes-unprofitable-as-btc-price-falls-to-the-average-cost-of-mining/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). One bitcoin today [costs $19,410](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), so it's hard to imagine this state of affairs has come to pass – but this is why understanding the 'permissionless' nature of cryptocurrency blockchains is important. Verifying bitcoin transactions requires computing power. Computing power (think of processing units on your CPU) costs money. So those bitcoin users who provide this power need to be compensated for this expense or the bitcoins ecosystem will make no financial sense. This is why the bitcoin blockchain generates a token when users provide computing power to verify transactions. This process is called mining: the computing power verifies each transaction by solving a complex math problem whose end result adds the transaction to the blockchain, in return for which the blockchain spits out a token (or a fraction of it, averaged over time). The idea is that these users should be able to use this token to pay for the computing power they're providing. Obviously this means these tokens should have real value, like dollar value. And this is why bitcoin's price dropping below a certain figure is bad news for those providing the computing power – i.e. the miners. Bitcoin mining today is currently the preserve of a [few mining conglomerates](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), instead of being distributed across thousands of individual miners, because these conglomerates sought to cash in on bitcoin's dollar value. So if they quit the game or reduce their commitment to mining, the rate of production of new bitcoins will slow, but that's a highly secondary outcome; the primary outcome will be less power being available to verify transactions, which will considerably slow the ability to use bitcoins to do cryptocurrency things. Bitcoin's dropping value also illustrates why so many cryptocurrency investment schemes – including those based on bitcoin – are [practically Ponzi schemes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/18/fbi-eminifx-crypto-pyramid-scam/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In the real world (beyond blockchains), the cost of computing power will but increase over time. This is because of inflation, because of the rising cost of the [carbon footprint](https://science.thewire.in/environment/climate-cracking-down-crypto-good-for-everyone/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and because the blockchain produces tokens less often over time. So to keep the profits from mining from declining, the price of bitcoin has to increase, which implies the need for speculative valuation, which then paves the way for pump-and-dump and Ponzi schemes. A *permissioned* blockchain, [as I have written before](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/03/25/intro-to-nfts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), does not provide rewards for contributing computing power because it doesn't need to constantly incentivise its users to continue using the blockchain and verify transactions. Specifically, a permissioned blockchain uses a central authority that verifies all transactions, whereas a permissionless blockchain seeks to delegate this responsibility to the users themselves. Think of millions of people exchanging money with each other through a bank – the bank is the authority and the system is a permissioned blockchain; in the case of cryptocurrencies, which are defined by permissionless blockchains, the people exchanging the money also verify each other's transactions. This is what leads to the complexity of cryptocurrencies and, inevitably, together with real-world cynicism, an abundance of opportunities to fail. Or, as [Robert Reich put it](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2022/jun/19/the-crypto-crash-all-ponzi-schemes-topple-eventually?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "all Ponzi schemes topple eventually". *Note: The single-quotation marks around 'crypto' in the headline is because I think the term 'crypto' belongs to 'cryptography', not 'cryptocurrency'.* ### How do you measure peacefulness? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/18/how-do-you-measure-peacefulness/ Last updated: 2022-06-18T07:28:46.000Z > The study was conceived by Australian technology entrepreneur Steve Killelea \[in 2007\], and is endorsed by individuals such as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, archbishop Desmond Tutu, former President of Finland and 2008 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, economist Jeffrey Sachs, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson and former United States president Jimmy Carter. The updated index is released each year at events in London, Washington, DC, and at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. This is a passage from the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global%5FPeace%5FIndex?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on an entity called the ‘Global Peace Index’, which “measures the relative position of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness”. Indices are flawed but useful. Their most significant flaw – and it’s quite significant – is that they attempt to distill out of the complex interactions of a host of factors a single number that, compared to another of its kind, is supposed to enable value judgments of ‘better’ or ‘worse’. For example, an academic freedom report published in 2020 [gave India a score of 0.352](https://topological.info/what-is-academic-freedom/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Pakistan a score of 0.554\. Does this mean all academic centres in India are less academically free than all of those in Pakistan? No. Does this mean Pakistan has 1.5x more academic freedom than India does? Not at all. Indices are useful in a very narrow context, but within that niche, they can be a force for good. There’s a reason the puffy-chested Indian government gets so worked up when the World Press Freedom Index and the Global Hunger Index are published. In particular, indices are most useful when they’re compared to themselves. If India’s press-freedom index value dropped from X in 2020 to Y in 2022 (because the government is going around [demolishing the homes of dissenters](https://thewire.in/rights/un-special-rapporteurs-condemn-home-demolitions-in-india-see-collective-punishment-of-muslims?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), it’s a snapshot of a real deterioration – a problem that needs fixing by reversing the trend (less by [massaging the data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s%5Flaw?ref=slightlyacidic.com), as our leaders have become wont to do, and more by [improving freedom for journalists](https://topological.info/a-qa-about-my-job-and-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). But there’s an index on the block whose usefulness by all counts, even in the self-referential niche, seems dangerous. This is the Global Peace Index. The [2022 edition](https://www.visionofhumanity.org/resources/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was published earlier this week, and based on which a [*Business Insider* article](https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/news/646-billion-thats-the-economic-cost-of-violence-in-india/articleshow/92252398.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) lamented that violence was costing India just too much money (Rs 50.36 lakh crore) and that this is why the country had to get a grip on it. A crucial thing about understanding peace (in a given place and time), and which lies squarely in the domain of those things that indices don’t record, is how peace was achieved. For example, India’s freedom struggle might have pulled down the country’s score on the Global Peace Index but at the same time it was *justified* and led to a better kind of peace for the whole region. Peace is not just the absence of violence but the absence of conditions that give rise to violence, now and forever, in sustainable fashion. This is why it’s possible to justify some forms of violence in the pursuit of some constitutionally determined forms of peace. Recently, a couple of my friends, who work in the corporate sector and whose shared philosophy is decidedly libertarian, argued with me over the justification of protest actions like *rail roko* and *bandh*. They contended that these activities constituted a violence against the many people whose livelihoods required the affected services. However, their philosophy stopped there, refusing to take the next logical step: it’s by disrupting the provision of these services that protestors get and hold the governmnent’s attention. (Plus the Indian government has the Essential Services Maintenance Act 1968 to ensure not all of the affected services become unavailable.) Why, through his Dandi march, M.K. Gandhi sought to encourage people to not pay their taxes to the British government – a form of [economic violence](https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1096?ref=slightlyacidic.com). To be sure, violence isn’t just physical; it’s also economic, social, cultural, linguistic; it’s gendered, caste-based, class-based and faith-based. The peace index report acknowledges this when it highlights its ‘Positive Peace Index’ – a measure of “the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies”; Its value “measures the level of societal resilience of a nation or region”. According to [the report’s website](https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/positive-peace-index/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#/), the lower the score, the better. But then, China and Saudi Arabia have lower scores than India. This is bizarre. KSA is a monarchy and China is an autocracy; in both countries, personal liberties are highly restricted and there are stringent, and in many cases Kafkaesque, punishments for falling afoul of state policy. The way of life imposed by these socio-political structures also constitutes violence. Yet the scores of these countries are comparable to those of Cuba, Mexico and Namibia. I would rank India better because I can (still, with some privileges) speak out against my government without fear of repercussions. Israel’s score, in fact, is lower than that of Palestine, while Russia has a marginally lower score than does Ukraine. It’s inexplicable. The India-specific portions of the peace index’s report also illustrate the report’s problems at the sub-national level. To quote: > Some of the countries to record the biggest deteriorations \[in violent demonstrations since 2008\] were India, Colombia, Bangladesh and Brazil. … \[India\] ranks as the 135th most peaceful nation in the 2022 GPI. The country experienced an improvement of 1.4 per cent in overall peacefulness over the past year, driven by an improvement in the Ongoing Conflict domain. However, India experienced an uptick in the violent crime and perceptions of criminality indicators. … In 2020 and 2021, Indian farmers protested against newly introduced laws that removed some guarantees and subsidies on agricultural products. First, the report has obtained the data for the ‘level of violent crime’ indicator from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU’s scoring question for this indicator is: “Is violent crime likely to pose a significant problem for government and/or business over the next two years?” It’s hard not to wonder if, from the right-wing’s point of view, “violent crime” includes that perpetrated by “urban naxals” when they protested against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019\. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister [Yogi Adityanath thought so](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/uttar-pradesh-govt-to-refund-rs-22-4-lakh-collected-from-anti-caa-protesters/articleshow/89699581.cms?ref=slightlyacidic.com) before he was forced to refund Rs 22 lakh he had collected from the protestors. The [Delhi police thought so](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/asia/india-police-muslims.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) when its chargesheet for the 2020 riots was composed of people whose houses had been burnt down, whose bones broken and whose temples desecrated – and people who had called on the police to arrest BJP leader Kapil Mishra for [instigating the riot](https://twitter.com/thewire%5Fin/status/1364247864621232128?ref=slightlyacidic.com). How do you figure “perception of criminality” here? Second, the report discusses the protests against the three farm laws in a paragraph about “violent demonstrations”, in the same breath and without any qualifications that [the protests were peaceful](https://thewire.in/agriculture/modi-farm-laws-big-business?ref=slightlyacidic.com) but turned violent when its participants had to defend themselves – including when the son of a national leader [ran some of them over](https://thewire.in/agriculture/up-two-die-convoy-ministers-son?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with his vehicle and when their attempt to enter Delhi was met with [a water cannon and a lathi charge](https://thewire.in/government/slam-campaigns-water-cannon-lathicharge-and-other-elements-of-pm-modis-tapasya?ref=slightlyacidic.com), among other incidents. The farmers were demanding higher minimum support prices and lower input costs – hardly the sort of thing that requires violence to fulfil but did because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had no other way to walk away from his promises to Ambani/Adani. Who perpetrated the real violence here – the national leader who doomed India’s farmers so industrialist tycoons would continue to fund his campaigns of communalism or the farmers who blocked roads and highways [demanding that he not](https://thewire.in/agriculture/watch-its-not-farmers-but-modi-whos-being-misled-by-ambani-adani?ref=slightlyacidic.com)? Was the [‘Bharat Bandh’](https://thewire.in/labour/bharat-bandh-against-govts-anti-people-policies-takes-off-power-banking-likely-to-be-hit?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that disrupted activities in several crucial sectors on March 28, 2022, more violent than the “anti-people policies” of the same national leader that they were protesting? A peace index that can’t settle these questions won’t see the difference between a spineless and a spineful people. ### Tech solutions to household labour are also problems URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/13/tech-solutions-to-household-labour-are-also-problems/ Last updated: 2022-06-13T05:56:19.000Z *Just to be clear, the term 'family' in this post refers to a cis-het nuclear family unit.* Tanvi Deshpande [writing for *Indiaspend*](https://www.indiaspend.com/development/a-water-pipeline-frees-up-womens-time-but-patriarchy-fills-it-with-other-chores-821591?ref=slightlyacidic.com), June 12, 2022: > The Union government's ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) aims to provide tap water to every household in rural India by 2024\. Until now, 50% of households have a tap connection, an improvement from August 2019, when the scheme started and 17% of households had a tap connection. The mission's dashboard shows that in Take Deogao Gram Panchayat that represents Bardechi Wadi, only 32% of the households have tap connections. Of these, not a single one has been provided to Pardhi's hamlet. > > This meant, for around five months every summer, women and children would rappel down a 60-foot well and spend hours waiting for water to seep into the bottom. In India, filling water for use at home is largely a woman's job. Globally, women and girls spend 200 million hours every day collecting water, and in Asia, one round trip to collect water takes 21 minutes, on average, in rural areas. > > The water pipeline has freed up time for Bardechi Wadi's women and children but patriarchal norms, lack of a high school in the village and of other opportunities for development means that these free hours have just turned into more time for household chores, our reporting found. Now these women don't face the risk of death while fetching water but, as Deshpande has written, the time and trouble that the water pipeline has saved them will now be occupied by new chores and other forms of labour. There may have been a time when the latter might have seemed like the lesser of those two evils, but it is long gone. Today, in the climate crisis era – which often manifests as killer heatwaves in arid regions that are already short on water – the problem is access to leisure, to cooling and to financial safeguards. When women are expected to do more chores because they have the time, they lose access to leisure, which is important at least to cool off, but better yet because it is a right *per se* (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, [article 24](https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/12/universal-declaration-human-rights-70-30-articles-30-articles-article-24?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). This story is reminiscent of the effects of the introduction of home appliances into the commercial market. I read [a book](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1538263?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about a decade ago that documented, among other things, how the average amount of time women (in the US) spent doing household chores hadn't changed much between the 1920s and the 2000s, even though it coincided wholly with the second industrial revolution. This was because – as in the case of the pipeline of Bardechi Wadi – the purchase and use of these devices freed up women's time for even more chores. We need the appliances as much as we need the pipeline, just that men should also do household chores. However, the appliances also presented and present more problems than those that pertain to society's attitudes towards how women should spend their time. **1\. Higher expectations** – With the availability of household appliances (like the iron box, refrigerator, washing machine, dish washer, oven, etc.), the standards for various chores shot up as did what we considered to be comfortable living – but what we expected of women didn't change. So suddenly the women of the house were also responsible for ensuring that the men's shirts and pants were all the more crinkle-less, that food was served fresh and hot all the time, etc. as well as to enliven family life by inventing/recreating food recipes, serving and cleaning up, etc. **2\. Work + chores** – The introduction of more, and more diverse, appliances into the market, aspirations and class mobility together paralleled an [increase in women's labour-force participation](https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-moved-more-women-workforce?ref=slightlyacidic.com) through the 20th century. But before these women left for their jobs and after they got home, they still had to household chores as well – including cooking and packing lunch for themselves and for their husbands and/or children, doing the laundry, shopping for groceries, etc. **3\. Think about the family** – The advent of tech appliances also foisted on women two closely related responsibilities: to ensure the devices worked as intended and to ensure they fit with the family-unit's ideals and aspirations. As Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite [wrote in 2016](https://psmag.com/news/a-history-of-the-subtle-sexism-of-home-technology?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "The automatic processes of programming the coffeemaker, unlocking an iPad with a fingerprint, or even turning on the light when you get home are the result of years of marketing that create a household problem (your home is too dark, your family too far-flung, your food insufficiently inventive), solves it with a new product, and leaves women to clean up the mess when the technology fails to deliver on its promises". In effect, through the 20th century, industrialisation happened in two separate ways within the household and without. To use writer Ellen Goodman's evocative words from a [1983 article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/10/22/appliances-dont-do-the-housework/f893ea4f-9dff-4022-b1d0-21754a13c48b/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "At the beginning of American history …, most chores of daily life were shared by men and women. To make a meal, men chopped the wood, women cooked the stew. One by one, men's tasks were industrialized outside the home, while women's stayed inside. Men stopped chopping wood, but women kept cooking." The diversity of responsibilities imposed by household appliances exacts its own cost. A necessary condition of men's help around the house is that they – *we* – must also constantly think about which task to perform and when, instead of expecting to be told what to do every time. This is because, by expecting periodic reminders, we are still forcing women to retain the cognitive burden associated with each chore. If you think you're still helping by sharing everything except the cognitive burden, you're wrong. Shifting between tasks affects one's ability to focus, performance and accuracy and increases forgetfulness. Psychologists call this the [switch cost](https://fs.blog/switching-costs/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It is less clear to me than it may be to others as to the different ways in which the new water pipeline through Bardechi Wadi will change the lives of the women there. But without the men of the village changing how they think about their women and their 'responsibilities to the house', we can't expect anything meaningful. At the same time, the effects of the climate crisis [will keep inflating the price](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/05/06/some-comments-on-indias-heat/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) these women pay in terms of their psychological, physical and sexual health and agency. ### A giant leap closer to the continuous atom laser URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/10/a-giant-leap-closer-to-the-continuous-atom-laser/ Last updated: 2022-06-10T16:17:39.000Z One of the most exotic phases of matter is called the Bose-Einstein condensate. As its name indicates, this type of matter is one whose constituents are bosons – which are basically all subatomic particles whose behaviour is dictated by the rules of Bose-Einstein statistics. These particles are also called force particles. The other kind are matter particles, or fermions. Their behaviour is described by the rules of Fermi-Dirac statistics. Force particles and matter particles together make up the universe as we know it. To be a boson, a particle – which can be anything from quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) to entire atoms – needs to have a spin quantum number of certain values. (All of a particle's properties can be described by the values of four quantum numbers.) An important difference between fermions and bosons is that [Pauli's exclusion principle](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2015/12/15/physicists-could-have-to-wait-66000-yottayears-to-see-an-electron-decay/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) doesn't apply to bosons. The principle states that in a given quantum system, no two particles can have the same set of four quantum numbers at the same time. When two particles have the same four quantum numbers, they are said to occupy the same state. ('States' are not like places in a volume; instead, think of them more like a set of properties.) Pauli's exclusion principle forbids fermions from doing this – but not bosons. So in a given quantum system, all the bosons can occupy the same quantum state if they are forced to. For example, this typically happens when the system is cooled to nearly absolute zero – the [lowest temperature possible](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2018/08/25/absolute-hot/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). (The bosons also need to be confined in a 'trap' so that they don't keep moving around or combine with each other to form other particles.) More and more energy being removed from the system is equivalent to more and more energy being removed from the system's constituent particles. So as fermions and bosons possess less and less energy, they occupy lower and lower quantum states. But once all the lowest fermionic states are occupied, fermions start occupying the next lowest states, and so on. This is because of the principle. Bosons on the other hand are all able to occupy the same lowest quantum state. When this happens, they are said to have formed a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this phase, all the bosons in the system move around like a fluid – like the molecules of flowing water. A famous example of this is superconductivity (at least of the conventional variety). When certain materials are cooled to near absolute zero, their electrons – which are fermions – overcome their mutual repulsion and pair up with each other to form composite pairs called Cooper pairs. Unlike individual electrons, Cooper pairs are bosons. They go on to form a Bose-Einstein condesate in which the Cooper pairs 'flow' through the material. In the material's non-superconducting state, the electrons would have scattered by some objects in their path – like atomic nuclei or vibrations in the lattice. This scattering would have manifested as electrical resistance. But because Cooper pairs have all occupied the same quantum state, they are much harder to scatter. They flow through the material as if they don't experience any resistance. This flow is what we know as superconductivity. Bose-Einstein condensates are a big deal in physics because they are a macroscopic effect of microscopic causes. We can't usually see or otherwise directly sense the effects of most quantum-physical phenomena because they happen on very small scales, and we need the help of sophisticated instruments like electron microscopes and particle accelerators. But when we cool a superconducting material to below its threshold temperature, we can readily sense the presence of a superconductor by passing an electric current through it (or using the [Meissner effect](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/13/at-last-physicists-report-finding-the-fourth-sign-of-superconductivity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Macroscopic effects are also easier to manipulate and observe, so physicists have used Bose-Einstein condensates as a tool to probe many other quantum phenomena. While Albert Einstein predicted the existence of Bose-Einstein condensates – based on work by [Satyendra Nath Bose](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2013/10/13/much-ado-about-the-bose-in-the-boson/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – in 1924, physicists had the requisite technologies and understanding of quantum mechanics to be able to create them in the lab only in the 1990s. These condensates were, and mostly still are, quite fragile and can be created only in carefully controlled conditions. But physicists have also been trying to figure out how to maintain a Bose-Einstein condensate for long periods of time, because durable condensates are expected to provide even more research insights as well as hold potential applications in particle physics, astrophysics, metrology, [holography](https://physicsworld.com/a/atom-lasers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and quantum computing. An important reason for this is wave-particle duality, which you might recall from high-school physics. Louis de Broglie postulated in 1924 that every quantum entity could be described both as a particle and as a wave. The [Davisson-Germer experiment](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/DavGer2.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of 1923-1927 subsequently found that electrons – which were until then considered to be particles – behaved like waves in a diffraction experiment. Interference and diffraction are exhibited by waves, so the experiment proved that electrons could be understood as waves as well. Similarly, a Bose-Einstein condensate can be understood both in terms of particle physics and in terms of wave physics. Just like in the Davisson-Germer experiment, [when physicists set up an experiment](https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0703508?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to look for an interference pattern from a Bose-Einstein condensate, they succeeded. They also found that the interference pattern became stronger the more bosons they added to the condensate. Now, all the bosons in a condensate have a coherent phase. The phase of a wave measures the extent to which the wave has evolved in a fixed amount of time. When two waves have [coherent phase](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-4885/67/6/R03?ref=slightlyacidic.com), both of them will have progressed by the same amount in the same span of time. Phase coherence is one of the most important wave-like properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate because of the possibility of a device called an *atom laser*. 'Laser' is an acronym for 'light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation'. The following video demonstrates its working principle better than I can in words right now: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Laser%2C\_quantum\_principle.ogv The light emitted by an optical laser is coherent: it has a constant frequency and comes out in a narrow beam if the coherence is spatial or can be produced in extremely short pulses if the coherence is temporal. An atom laser is a laser composed of propagating atoms instead of photons. As Wolfgang Ketterle, who led the creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate and later won a Nobel Prize for it, [put it](https://www.rle.mit.edu/cua%5Fpub/ketterle%5Fgroup/Popular%5Fpapers/Atom%20laser%20Enc.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "The atom laser emits coherent matter waves whereas the optical laser emits coherent electromagnetic waves." Because the bosons of a Bose-Einstein condensate are already phase-coherent, condensates make excellent sources for an atom laser. The trick, however, lies in achieving a Bose-Einstein condensate of the desired (bosonic) atoms and then extracting a few atoms into the laser while replenishing the condensate with more atoms – all without letting the condensate break down or the phase-coherence being lost. Physicists created the first such atom laser in 1996 but it did not have a continuous emission nor was very bright. Researchers have since built better atom lasers based on Bose-Einstein condensates, although they remain far from being usable in their putative applications. An important reason for this is that physicists are yet to build a condensate-based atom laser that can operate continuously. That is, as atoms from the condensate lase out, the condesate is constantly replenished, and the laser operates continuously for a long time. On June 8, [researchers from the University of Amsterdam](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04731-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported that they had been able to create a long-lived, sort of self-sustaining Bose-Einstein condensate. This brings us a giant step closer to a continuously operating atom laser. Their setup consisted of multiple stages, all inside a vacuum chamber. In the first stage, strontium atoms (which are bosons) started from an 'oven' maintained at 850 K and were progressively laser-cooled while they made their way into a reservoir. (Here is a primer of [how laser-cooling works](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2018/06/20/remembering-s-pancharatnam/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) The reservoir had a dimple in the middle. In the second stage, the atoms were guided by lasers and gravity to descend into this dimple, where they had a temperature of approximately 1 µK, or one-millionth of a kelvin. As the dimple became more and more crowded, it was important for the atoms here to not heat up, which could have happened if some light had 'leaked' into the vacuum chamber. To prevent this, in the third stage, the physicists used a carefully tuned laser shined only through the dimple that had the effect of rendering the strontium atoms mostly 'transparent' to light. According to the research team's paper, without the 'transparency beam', the atoms in the dimple had a lifetime of less than 40 ms, whereas with the beam, it was more than 1.5 s – a 37x difference. At some point, when a sufficient number of atoms had accumulated in the dimple, a Bose-Einstein condensate formed. In the fourth stage, an effect called [Bose stimulation](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.279.5353.1005?ref=slightlyacidic.com) kicked in. Simply put, as more bosons (strontium atoms, in this case) transitioned into the condensate, the rate of transition of additional bosons also increased. Bose stimulation thus played the role that the gain medium plays in an optical laser. The size of the condensate grew until it matched the rate of loss of atoms out of the dimple, and reached an equilibrium. And voila! With a steady-state Bose-Einstein condensate, the continuous atom laser was almost ready. The physicists have acknowledged that their setup can be improved in many ways, including by making the laser-cooling effects more uniform, increasing the lifetime of strontium atoms inside the dimple, reducing losses due to heating and other effects, etc. At the same time, they wrote that "at all times after steady state is reached", they found a Bose-Einstein condensate existing in their setup. ### What arguments against the 'next LHC' say about funding Big Physics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/10/what-arguments-against-the-next-lhc-say-about-funding-big-physics/ Last updated: 2022-06-10T06:28:09.000Z A few days ago, a physicist (and PhD holder) named Thomas Hartsfield published a [strange article in *Big Think*](https://bigthink.com/hard-science/large-hadron-collider-economics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about why building a $100-billion particle physics machine like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a bad idea. The article was so replete with errors things that even I – a not-physicist and not-a-PhD-holder – cringed reading them. I also wanted to blog about the piece but theoretical physicist Matthew Strassler beat me to it, with [a straightforward post](https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/06/09/a-big-think-made-of-straw-bad-arguments-against-future-colliders/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the many ways in which Hartsfield’s article was just plain wrong, especially coming from a physicist. But I also think there were some things that Strassler either overlooked or left unsaid and which to my mind bear fleshing out – particularly points that have to do with the political economy of building research machines like the LHC. I also visit in the end the thing that really made me want to write this post, in response to a seemingly throwaway line in Strassler’s post. First, the problems that Hartsfield’s piece throws up and which deserve more attention: **1\.** One of Hartsfield’s bigger points in his article is that instead of spending $100 billion on one big physics project, we could spend it on 100,000 smaller projects. I agree with this view, *sensu lato*, that we need to involve more stakeholders than only physicists when contemplating the need for the next big accelerator or collider. However, in making the argument that the money can be redistributed, Hartsfield presumes that a) if a big publicly funded physics project is cancelled, the allocated money that the government doesn’t spend as a result will subsequently be diverted to other physics prohects, and b) this is all the money that we have to work with. Strassler provided the most famous example of the fallacy pertinent to (a): the [Superconducting Super Collider](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo21803804.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the US, whose eventually cancellation ‘freed’ an allocation of $4.4 billion, but the US government didn’t redirect this money back into other physics research grants. (b), on the other hand, is a more pernicious problem: a government allocating $100 billion for one project does not implicitly mean that it can’t spare $10 million for a different project, or projects. Realpolitik is important here. Politicians may contend that after having approved $100 billion for one project, it may not be politically favourable for them to return to Congress or Parliament or wherever with another proposal for $10 million. But on the flip side, both mega-projects and many physics research items are couched in arguments and aspirations to improve bilateral or multilateral ties ([without vomiting on other prime ministers](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supercollider-that-never-was/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), ease geopolitical tensions, score or maintain research leadership, increase research output, generate opportunities for long-term technological spin-offs, spur local industries, etc. Put another way, a Big Science project is not just a science project; depending on the country, it could well be a national undertaking along the lines of the Apollo 11 mission. These arguments matter for political consensus – and axiomatically the research projects that are able to present these incentives are significantly different from those that aren’t, which in turn can help fund both Big Science and ‘Small Science’ projects at the same time. The possibility exists. For example, the Indian government has funded Gaganyaan separately from ISRO’s other activities. $100 billion isn’t all the money that’s available, and we should stop *settling* for such big numbers when they are presented to us. **2\.** These days, big machines like the one Hartsfield has erected as a “straw man” – to use Strassler words – aren’t built by individual countries. They are the product of an international collaboration, typically with dozens of governments, hundreds of universities and thousands of researchers participating. The funds allocated are also spent over many years, even decades. In this scenario, when a $100-billion particle collider is cancelled, no one entity in the whole world suddenly has that much money to give away at any given moment. Furthermore, in big collaborations, countries don’t just give money; often they add *value* by manufacturing various components, leasing existing facilities, sharing both human and material resources, providing loans, etc. The value of each of these contracts is added to the total value of the project. For example, India has been [helping the LHC](http://india.web.cern.ch/lhc/lhcindex.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by manufacturing and supplying components related to the machine’s magnetic and cryogenic facilities. Let’s say India’s Departments of Science and Technology and of Atomic Energy had inked contracts with CERN, which hosts and maintains the LHC, worth $10 million to make and transport these components, but then the LHC had been called off just before its construction was to begin. Does this mean India would have had $10 million to give away to other science projects? Not at all! In fact, manufacturers within the country would have been bummed about losing the contracts. **3\.** Hartsfield doesn’t seem to acknowledge incremental results, results that improve the precision of prior measurements and results that narrow the range in which we can find a particle. Instead, he counts only singularly positive, and sensational, results – of which the LHC has had only one: the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012\. Take all of them together and the LHC will suddenly seem more productive. Simply put, precision-improving results are important because even a minute difference between the theoretically predicted value and the observed value could be a significant discovery that opens the door to ‘new physics’. We recently saw this with the mass of a subatomic particle called the W boson. Based on the data collected by a detector mounted on the Tevatron particle accelerator in Illinois, physicists found that the mass of the W boson differed from the predicted value by around 0.12%. This was sufficient to set off a [tsunami of excitement and speculation](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/w-boson-mass-anomaly-tevatron-new-physics-standard-model/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the particle physics community. (Hartsfield also overlooked an important fact and which Strassler caught: that the LHC collects a lot more data than physicists can process in a single year, which means that when the LHC winds down, physicists will still have many years of work left before they are done with the LHC altogether. This is evidently still happening with the Tevatron, which was shut down in 2011, so Hartsfield missing it is quite weird. Another thing that happened to Tevatron and is still happening with the LHC is that these machines are upgraded over time to produce better results.) Similarly, results that exclude the energy ranges in which a particle can be found are important because they tell us what kind of instruments we should build in future to detect the same particle. We obviously won’t need instruments that sweep the same energy range (nor will we have a guarantee that the particle will be found *outside* the excluded energy range – that’s a separate problem). There is another point to be made but which may not apply to CERN as much as to Big Science projects in other countries: one country’s research community building and operating a very large research facility signals to other countries that the researchers know what they’re doing and that they might be more deserving of future investments than other candidates with similar proposals. This is [one of the things that India lost](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/india-based-neutrino-observatory-daya-bay-%ce%b813-juno/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the scuttling of the India-based Neutrino Observatory (the loss itself was deserved, to be sure). Finally, the statement in Strassler’s post that piqued me the most: > My impression, from his writing and from what I can find online, is that most of what he knows about particle physics comes from reading people like Ethan Siegel and Sabine Hossenfelder. I think Dr. Hartsfield would have done better to leave the argument to them. Thomas Hartsfield has clearly done a shoddy job in his article in the course of arguing against a Big Physics machine like LHC in the future, but his screwing up doesn’t mean discussions on the need for the next big collider should be left to physicists. I admit that Strassler’s point here was probably limited to the people whose articles and videos were apparently Hartsfield’s primary sources of information – but it also seemed to imply that instead of helping those who get things wrong do better next time, it’s okay to ask them to not try again and instead leave the communication efforts to their primary sources. That’s Ethan Siegel and Sabine Hossenfelder in this case – both prolific communicators – but in many instances, bad articles are written by writers who bothered to try while their sources weren’t doing more or better to communicate to the people at large. This is also why it bears repeating that when it comes to determining the need for a Big Physics project of the likes of the LHC, physics is decidedly one non-majority part of it and that – importantly – science communicators also have an equally vital role to play. Let me quote here from an article by physicist Nirmalya Kajuri, [published in *The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/science-communication-will-help-decide-when-the-next-particle-smasher-will-be-built/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in February 2019: > … the few who communicate science can have a lopsided influence on the public perception of an entire field – even if they’re not from that field. The distinction between a particle physicist and, say, a condensed-matter physicist is not as meaningful to most people reading the *New York Times* or any other mainstream publication as it is to physicists. There’s no reason among readers to exclude \[one physicist\] as an expert. > > However, very few physicists engage in science communication. The extreme ‘publish or perish’ culture that prevails in sciences means that spending time in any activity other than research carries a large risk. In some places, in fact, junior scientists spending time popularising science are frowned upon because they’re seen to be spending time on something unproductive. > > … > > All physicists agree that we can’t keep building colliders ad infinitum. They differ on when to quit. Now would be a good time, according to Hossenfelder. Most particle physicists don’t think so. But how will we know when we’ve reached that point? What are the objective parameters here? These are complex questions, and the final call will be made by our ultimate sponsors: the people. > > So it’s a good thing that this debate is playing out before the public eye. In the days to come, physicists and non-physicists must continue this dialogue and find mutually agreeable answers. Extensive, honest science communication will be key. So more physicists should join in the fray, as should science journalists, writers, bloggers and communicators in general. Just that they should also do better than Thomas Hartsfield to get the details right. ### What is a supersolid? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/07/what-is-a-supersolid/ Last updated: 2022-06-07T17:23:39.000Z The names that scientists, especially physicists, give to things has been a source of humour or irritation, depending on your point of view. Despite observatories named the Very Large Telescope, succeeded by the Extremely Large Telescope, and in spite of Murray Gell-Mann naming the quarks after [a word that appears only once](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hapax%5Flegomenon?ref=slightlyacidic.com#English) in James Joyce's *Finnegans Wake*, I'm firmly on the irritated side. There is no reason that the colour charge, for example, should be called that considering it has nothing to do with colour. Nor should the theory describing how subatomic particles are affected by the colour charge be called quantum *chromo*dynamics. For another example, a superfluid is a quantum phase of matter that flows without any resistance – so the name makes sense. But a *supersolid* is a quantum phase of matter that has the ordered structure of a solid but can flow like a superfluid! (A 'quantum phase' is a phase of matter that exists at extremely low temperatures, in quantum systems – i.e. systems where quantum-mechanical forces dominate.) Supersolids are clearly inappropriately named, but we can say the same thing about its properties. In the 1960s, scientists worked out the math and concluded that supersolids should exist – but they weren't able to create them in the lab until the last decade or so. A crystal is a solid whose constituent atoms are arranged in a fixed, repeating pattern. The grid of atoms is called the lattice and each point occupied by an atom is called a node. When a node is empty, i.e. when an atom isn't present, the site is called a vacancy. When you cool a substance to a lower and lower temperature, you take away energy from it until, at absolute zero, it has no energy. But in quantum systems, the material retains some energy even at absolute zero. This is the energy implicit to the system and is called zero-point energy. This energy allows atoms to move from occupied nodes in the lattice to nearby vacancies. Sometimes there could be a cluster of such vacancies. When this cluster moves as a group through the material, it is equivalent to a group of atoms in the lattice moving in the opposite direction. (If you're sitting at spot 1 on the couch and move to spot 2, it's equivalent to the vacancy on the couch moving from spot 2 to spot 1.) When this happens, the cloud of vacancies is called a supersolid: the cluster maintains its fixed structure, defined by the lattice, yet it move without resistance through the material. The first several attempts to create a supersolid succeeded but they were confined to one dimension. This is because many of them used a common method: to assemble a bunch of atoms of a particular element, "turn them into a superfluid and then add a crystalline structure by altering the interactions between the atoms" ([source](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/s63?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). This technique doesn't work well to create two-dimensional supersolids because the "add a crystalline structure" step weakens the fragile superfluid state. In 2021, a group of physicists from Austria and Germany [attempted to overcome](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03725-7?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this barrier by using magnetic atoms that formed small clumps with each other as well as allowing the clumps to repel each other and arrange themselves in a two-dimensional array. The jump from one dimension to two dimensions is significant because it allows physicists to explore the presence of other features of supersolids in the system. For example, theoretical calculations say that supersolids can have vortices on their surface. A one-dimensional supersolid doesn't have a surface per se but a two-dimensional one does. Physicists can also study other features depending on the number of atoms involved. This said, the researchers' method was cumbersome and didn't produce a supersolid of sufficient quality. In a new study, [published on May 13, 2022](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.195302?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ([preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06680?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), some members of the 2021 group reported that they were able to create a supersolid disc. This is also a two-dimensional supersolid but with a different geometry (the 2021 effort had produced a roughly rhombus-shaped supersolid). More importantly, the researchers devised a new method to synthesise it. While the previous method first introduced the superfluidity and then the crystallinity, in the new method, the physicists introduced both together. When you sweat in warm weather, water gets on your skin and then evaporates. When it does, it takes away some heat to change from liquid to vapour, thus cooling your skin. This is called evaporative cooling. When you start with a cloud of atoms, proceed to take away their energy and then progressively remove the most energetic atoms at each stage, you also progressively reduce the average energy of the system, and thus the overall temperature. This is evaporative cooling with atoms. In their study, the research team developed a theory to explain how this form of cooling could be used to create a supersolid inside a circular trap. Then they tested the theory to create a roughly hexagonal supersolid of a few tens of thousands of dysprosium atoms. (Dysprosium is highly magnetic, so its atoms can be clustered by modifying the magnetic field.) ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/d32bd-screenshot-2022-06-07-at-10.41.31-pm.png?w=1024&h=458) (a) The almost-circular supersolid of dysprosium atoms, in seven clusters (or droplets) in a hexagonal shape with one cluster at the centre. (b) The research team conducted 68 trials of the same experiment and in each case photographed the dysprosium supersolid after it had moved for 36 milliseconds. This is the 'averaged' shot. Credit: arXiv:2107.06680v2 Considering the way in which physicists have achieved this new supersolid, the name seems all the more confusing. ### Review: 'Love, Death & Robots' 3 (2022) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/06/05/review-love-death-robots-3-2022/ Last updated: 2022-06-05T09:33:58.000Z Spoilers abound. Two overarching impressions. 1) [*The Telegraph*](https://www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/love-death-robots-human-greed-ties-the-9-episodes-in-season-3-of-the-netflix-series/cid/1867841?ref=slightlyacidic.com) wrote that LDR 3 is about the pitfalls of human greed. I came to a different conclusion. Almost all of the episodes in LDR 3 were about humans meeting the ancient, the mysterious or the new and coming away humbled or humiliated, if they came away at all. It's an important, but not necessarily interesting, choice of theme at this moment: the apparent centrality of exploitation to the human condition. Perhaps more importantly, LDR 3 seems to reflect on the violence that being good demands of us – call it revolution, survival, whatever – in this age of the *banality* of greed. Be good. It won't be easy, but be good. The second impression is at the end. **Episode 1**: \[*Exit Strategies*\] The very end of the ending delivers a punch that is immediately humorous but out of sorts with the tone and narrative of the rest of the episode. The *rest* – in the form of a social commentary of humankind's last days – was informative coming from robots but nothing quite eye-opening or mind-blowing. But it's short, so it's easy to enjoy. **Episode 2**: \[*Bad Travelling*\] "There's nothing more terrifying than a man prepared to live by his conviction." This quote appears in the Netflix series *Unabomber*, about the manhunt for Ted Kaczynski. This line, or a minor variant of it, apparently originated with Kaczynski and it's easy to see its imprints on his choice of lifestyle and his radical beliefs about the environment, industrialisation and self-governance. This said, the line has remained with me because it reads like one of the few fundamental truths about the human condition – something you can't drill further down, something that leads to a fount of insights into what it means to be human. The episode brings this truth to powerful light, and demonstrates how the absolute adherence to doing the right thing – while it may lead to morally desirable outcomes – can appear just as devious as the actions of a chaotic-evil character might. **Episode 3**: \[*The Very Pulse of the Machine*\] One thing this episode gets right within the first two minutes is that it resolves a long-standing what-if that two movies have left us with: *Prometheus* (2012) and *The Martian* (2015). At the end of *Prometheus*, Elizabeth Shaw is stranded on an alien moon with the rest of her crew dead and only one spacecraft left to operate, which she intends to use to get to the home-planet of the Engineers. She is determined and focused. Through most of *The Martian*, Mark Watney has no self-doubt, no anxiety, no panic attack – even though he's stuck on Mars and needs to find his way back to Earth, and also figure out how to feed himself and keep himself alive. He is instead simply determined and focused. What would it look like to be stranded on an alien world, with the hope of going or returning somewhere, and to have self-doubt as well? This is how this episode of LDR 3 begins – but the problem is that the character quickly consumes some potent drug that makes her high, and the self-doubt is replaced with visual and auditory hallucinations. Ugh. **Episode 4**: \[*Night of the Mini Dead*\] This was funny from start to finish, but the laughter didn't last. It began funny because of the medium – miniatures on a tapletop acting out the deceptively innocuous beginnings of a zombie apocalypse, followed by the apocalypse itself – and stayed funny because the rapid pace of events keep you from thinking too much and because the apocalypse for once seems neither unpredictable nor offers redemptive value. Even the ending, a climax that lasts for all of a second, carries the tone on and leaves you with a chuckle. But give it a few more seconds and you're probably thinking what the point was. I did. I didn't get it. Silly little things can set off non-silly non-big things, and when it's all said and done, none of it matters? Fuck you. **Episode 5**: \[*Kill Team Kill*\] This one was pointless. Really. I mean, LDR 3 like its two predecessors keeps its bodily obscenities focused on the male form, which makes sense only if you're going to make a larger point about toxic masculinity and such things. But this one's just adrenaline from start to finish. **Episode 6**: \[*Swarm*\] LDR 3 was released earlier this year, unintentionally (maybe) coinciding with a time in which experts and stakeholders around the world were pondering [how we should treat genetic information](https://science.thewire.in/environment/digital-sequence-information-access-benefit-sharing-cbd-geneva/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – in line with the biological specimens from which they're obtained or with a separate policy. The man's ambitions in this episode encode the hubris that we've come to expect from the corporate sector vis-à-vis our biological resources – the conviction that the exploiter will triumph by virtue of the destructive tendencies of exploitation. But as in the episode as in the real world, such conviction obscures the complementary admission that we assume we know everything there is to know. We never do, and exploitation always backfires. When scientists working for a large company sequence the DNA of a rare plant using a single leaf plucked from a sacred forest, return it to the forest's stewards once they're done, and go on to replicate a compound encoded in the genes that provides a beautiful fragrance eventually bottled as an expensive perfume, should the stewards benefit? Should they have asked the stewards first? Should the stewards have much of a say? To my mind the answers to all these questions is 'yes', but few of the reasons are rooted in science. The stewards and indeed the complex community of organisms of which they are part often possess an intelligence to which science blinds us. Yet these discussions frequently begin among scientists, involve scientists and repeatedly appeal to scientific principles to claim moral, and eventually political, authority – and it inevitable leads to exploitation. The same thing happens in the episode, which I must say ends on a very gratifying note. **Episode 7**: \[*Mason's Rats*\] No particular thoughts beyond the two impressions. **Episode 8**: \[*In Vaulted Halls Entombed*\] One thing that many (but not all) horror productions fail to get is that it's not the grotesque that really frightens us but that momentary but singularly immense shock of being faced with something that we never expected to face – to have our minds confront something that they can't possibly conceive. Even more fundamentally, terror erupts when we need to fill in a blank in reality (or in a movie if we've suspended disbelief). The brain is a prediction engine, so when it has no reasonable options to choose from, it seems to go haywire, populating the blank with monsters lurking in the dark of our conscience. A production succeeds the moment it creates a suitable blank and forces us to admit that we can't ignore it. But I'd say there's one fear that's even deeper, even more unsettling: the *incomprehensible*. It's the blank that's clearly been filed yet which evades complete comprehension. Hans Giger's art [captured this sensation](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2017/10/22/gigernama-a-man-dressed-in-black-with-a-tube-under-his-arm/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) wonderfully well as did H.P. Lovecraft's lore of the Old Ones – but I experienced it most profoundly in the latter's [*The Outsider*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOutsider%5F%28short%5Fstory%29?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It's the thing that you know and that you struggle to know, both at once – and it's the sensation to which this episode builds up. Excellent stuff. Also: "Embrace the suck" – a line worth remembering. **Episode 9**: \[*Jibaro*\] The internet suggests this was the most popular episode. I'm going to stick with *In Vaulted Halls Entombed* but only because of my fascination with the unknown. Without that, the fever-dream that is *Jibaro* would easily cut ahead. It brings together a "baroque" combination of "film and animation" and "dance and mythology" ([source](https://www.popmatters.com/alberto-mielgo-jibaro-sci-fi?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), a melancholy soundtrack and a story so replete with metaphors that it's hard to come to one conclusion about it – and that apparently was also [its maker's intention](https://screenrant.com/love-death-robots-vol-3-alberto-mielgo/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). It's shot through with greed but it doesn't seem reasonable to stop there, with that conclusion, that *Jibaro* is a parable about one of the seven deadly sins. Instead, the tale seems to me to be about what how perfectly acceptable being our worst selves looks like (as its maker [told *Awn*](https://www.awn.com/animationworld/alberto-mielgo-tells-toxic-tale-sensuality-love-death-robots-volume-3?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), how familiar the Knight and the Siren seem to us. We've seen them before, at least parts of them, in the people around us, in the people we read about. Recommended reading: [Alberto Mielgo’s Sci-Fi Short ‘Jibaro’ Is Not a Critique of Colonialism](https://www.popmatters.com/alberto-mielgo-jibaro-sci-fi?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Excerpt: > I don’t want to fall into the same trap as the readings I am criticizing and try and ‘pin down’ Jibaro into a single parable or message. Mielgo is not deliberately making a comment on Cervantes here. Rather, his short film, like his characters, is meant to ‘dance’. It spins on and through and around a variety of tropes, the central one being that of toxic relationships and the way these are both frightening and alluring. But the textual bed in which the deaf knight and the siren sleep together is less that of Spanish colonialism than that of Spanish mythology. The correspondences to the latter are much more precise. The second impression: Many of the episodes seem to bear the echoes of episodes in LDR's still-the-best season 1\. *Exit Strategies* is obviously related to *Three Robots*, but the other episodes are connected more subtly. *Night of the Mini Dead* brings to mind *Ice Age*. *Mason's Rats* brings to mind *The Dump*. *In the Vaulted Halls Entombed* brings to mind both *Shape-Shifters* and *The Secret War*. *The Very Pulse of the Machine* brings to mind *Fish Night*. *Jibaro* brings to mind *Good Hunting* (and *The Witness* in style of animation). *Bad Travelling* brings to mind *Sonnie's Edge*. It's hard to say if this was intentional (I'm being lazy and not googling), but it's also hard to explain the raft of similarities. This said, the ultimate effect of LDR 1 was mind-expanding ([*Beyond the Aquila Rift*](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/05/18/a-tale-of-two-horrors-poop-and-aliens/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and *Zima Blue* remain unmatched); LDR 2 [was to remind us](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/05/18/review-love-death-robots-2-2021/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that LDR can also be bad; and LDR 3 is a contemplation of the costs of being good. *Featured image: A scene from* Jibaro*. Source: Netflix.* ### Hosting a Ghost blog on Fly.io URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/31/hosting-a-ghost-blog-on-fly-io/ Last updated: 2022-05-31T01:15:00.000Z Fly.io is a platform as a service (PaaS) provider. I discovered it after the [Heroku hack](https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/21/github-stolen-oauth-tokens-used-in-breaches/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) earlier this year precipitated many discussions on [Hacker News](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1653872400&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1643677200&page=0&prefix=false&query=Heroku&sort=byDate&type=story&ref=slightlyacidic.com) about suitable alternatives. Among them, I found [Render.com](https://render.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Fly.io](https://fly.io/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to be most suitable (no affiliate links). [Railway.app](https://railway.app/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) didn't make the cut because it doesn't have persistent storage, which imposed certain limitations on how much Ghost could simplify your blogging workflow, e.g. changing themes. I'm sure there are other PaaS cos but these appeared to be the most popular alternatives. Between Fly.io and Render.com, the former seemed better because it has more locations and has a generous free tier. This said, you'll find that hosting on either can be much cheaper and come with more peace of mind than with many other options. So without further ado, here's a noob's guide to hosting your Ghost blog on Fly.io. ### Install the Fly.io command line interface Open the Terminal app on your Mac or its counterpart on Windows/Linux. There… **On MacOS** `brew install flyctl` **On Windows** `iwr https://fly.io/install.ps1 -useb | iex` **On Linux** `curl -L https://fly.io/install.sh | sh` ### Create a folder for your blog and then move into it Within the Terminal itself, type: `mkdir ` `cd ` ### Sign up for a Fly.io account `flyctl auth signup` This will open a tab in your default browser and start the sign-up process. Fly.io will ask for your card details. You won't be charged unless you exceed the limits of the free plan; it requires your card to prevent people from abusing the resources in its free plan. Once you're done signing up, check your Terminal (or its counterpart), where it should say something like "you're signed from ". If you see it, good. ### Launch a Ghost site `flyctl launch --image=ghost:5-alpine --no-deploy` You'll be asked to choose a region at which to situate your site. Use up and down arrows on your keyboard select your region of choice and hit enter. This step will generate a TOML file in the folder you're in, called `fly.toml`. The contents of this file will dictate what Fly.io needs to do the next time you deploy your site. Become able to edit the file with this command: `nano fly.toml` **Some checks** The first line will say `app = ""`. The name will be something like `fiery-shadow-1234`. Make sure the `url` environment variable is equal to `"fiery-shadow-1234.fly.dev"`. Also make sure that `internal_port` value, under `[[services]]`, is `2368`. **One addition** In a new line after the one that reads `port = 443`, add the following: `[[services.ports]] handlers = ["http"] port = 80` Once you're done, you can exit with ctrl + x. ### Create a volume that will store your site's database Fly.io offers up to 3 GB of storage on its free plan. This proved more than sufficient for my blog, which has 10 years' worth of posts and images. Going ahead, you could host images on [Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [Cloudinary](https://cloudinary.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (both offer sufficiently ample free plans). `flyctl volumes create data --size 2` ('2' here refers to the volume's size in GB.) You will be asked to choose a region in which to deploy the volume – choose the same one as for your site. ### Mount the volume Open the fly.toml file and check for a section called `[mounts]`. If there isn't one, add it. `[mounts] source = "data" destination = "/var/lib/ghost/content"` Exit with ctrl + x. You're ready to fly. ### Launch Type the following command and hit enter: `flyctl deploy` The Terminal will show you the progress of your deployment. You can also view it on your new Fly.io dashboard, under 'Monitoring' on the left sidebar. Your site will be ready if you see a line that says "1 desired, 1 placed, 1 healthy, 0 unhealthy". If you see it, open a tab on your browser and navigate to `fiery-shadow-1234.fly.dev` to see your Ghost site. If, however, you run into trouble, check out Fly.io's [troubleshooting guide](https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/troubleshooting/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Custom domain To use a custom domain for your site, navigate to 'Certificates' on the left sidebar on your Fly.io dashboard and click 'Add certificate'. Follow the instructions that appear on screen to, first, verify that you own the domain you're using and, second, add the A and AAAA records – both with your domain registrar. Say your domain is example.com. Once Fly.io verifies the records, open the fly.toml file and edit the `url` thus: `url = "example.com"` Exit and redeploy your site: `flyctl deploy` ### Importing posts If you, have a sizeable JSON file of your exported Ghost posts, the CMS may fail repeatedly to import them. To get around this, go to 'Scale' on your dashboard sidebar and set the "Size name" to `shared-cpu-1x` and "Memory" to `1GB`. You should be able to import the JSON file now. Once the import is done, you can reset the "Memory" to `256MB`, which the free plan offers. You might incur a small charge for this short-lived change (the billing is per-second). You can check Fly.io's prices on [this page](https://fly.io/docs/about/pricing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In any case, you should expect to pay lower than if you were to host with Ghost(Pro) or self-host on Digital Ocean. Ghost(Pro) also offers to manage the setup so you can focus on your site, but that's also the purpose of PaaS. To have your (forthcoming) posts backed up, you could set up a [Zapier](https://zapier.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) integration that copies the contents of each new post – taken from the RSS feed – into a Doc file in a folder in your Google Drive account. Again, Zapier offers this for free (as long as you're not the sort of furious blogger who publishes three posts a day every day). ### A final note Peace of mind is important, especially if you’re not familiar with the tools you’re using to set up your site. Launching your blog based on instructions from the internet is one thing; putting out a fire when something goes wrong will be something else entirely. With PaaS, this worry is lower, but providers like Fly.io, Render.com and Railway.app are still oriented at developers, and so is their support team and documentation. This is to say that even if they help you, they will expect some level of technical chops from you. If you’re confident that you can manage, go ahead because there are significant advantages. One of them, for me personally, is that with regular backups I have a relatively risk-free environment in which to learn these things, and I believe that this knowledge will serve me well in the longer term. *Root Privileges* itself will continue to be a WordPress site hosted in a more 'conventional' way because it's too important for me to be experimenting with at this point. But I'll be changing my publishing workflow to be Fly + Ghost first, meaning I'll be publishing posts there first and, more importantly, regularly thinking about how I can improve my experience there. ### Sources I compiled this guide based on instructions on the following pages: - [Installing flyctl](https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/installing-flyctl/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Deploy Ghost on Fly](https://egoist.sh/deploy-ghost-on-fly?ref=slightlyacidic.com) - [Host a Ghost blog on Fly.io for free](https://favadi.com/host-a-ghost-blog-on-fly-io-for-free/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) The authors of the latter two guides have put together nearly complete instructions. But each of their guides taken separately didn't work for me whereas a combination did. If my guide didn't work for you, you can also check out their guides and where they've deviated. I should also mention that I discovered that a Ghost blog could be hosted on Fly.io after finding that [Anil Dash's blog](https://anildash.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is. ### Thoughts on the WordPress.com 'Starter' plan URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/27/losing-faith-in-wordpress-com/ Last updated: 2022-05-27T08:25:16.000Z WordPress.com [announced a new ‘Starter’ plan](https://wordpress.com/blog/2022/05/25/introducing-wordpress-starter-make-your-mark/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for its users on May 25 after significant backlash from many members of its community of users that a previous price revision had completely disregarded the interests of bloggers – by which I mean those writing to be read and discussed, and not primarily to make money. [My own post on the matter](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) blew up on [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30894980&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and caught the attention of WordPress.com CEO [Dave Martin](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896807&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Automattic CEO [Matt Mullenweg](https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1511071135160438784?ref=slightlyacidic.com). All of it was warranted: the previous price revision eliminated the ‘Personal’, ‘Premium’, ‘Business’ and ‘E-commerce’ plans in favour a single plan that combined all their features into a $15-a-month bundle that, WordPress.com added, users could only pay for 12 months at a time. WordPress.com’s rationale appeared to be that the ‘Pro’ plan was an almost perfect substitute for the ‘Business’ plan but was $10 cheaper. But the company management, led by Martin, overlooked a few crucial details in the process: the pricing change was sudden and unannounced, and included an anathematic traffic limit on the free plan (which it removed shortly after); there were no plans between the free and ‘Pro’ plans, forcing even those indifferent towards making money – which was most bloggers including myself – to shell out $180 dollars a year just to add a custom domain; in exchange, these users received a trove of features most of which were useless (e.g. to sell products); and the free plan had its storage decreased by 66%. I know “free” doesn’t really mean that when coming from the mouth of an internet platform or provider of internet-related services, but WordPress.com had set up exactly this expectation among its users: that they should never have to pay if they’re on the free plan. Look for Matt Mullenweg saying some version of “we want to democratise publishing on the web” ([LMGTFY](https://bfy.tw/T8LS?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) and you’ll see what I mean. But it needs to acknowledge that what you get for free is less and less usable. I’m not saying don’t shrink the free plan; I’m saying stop pretending that it’s still just as good. Members of the WordPress.com team should in effect stop claiming that they are rooting to improve access to any kind of publishing because the company’s actions on the pricing issue thus far haven’t been the actions of one with that vision. Instead, it should be more honest and recognise the conflict between increasing access to publishing tools and platforms on the one hand and its need to increase its profits on the other, and take cognisance of its apparent struggle to balance these priorities in its products and communicate the changes to its users. This brings me back to the new ‘Starter’ plan. It costs $5 a month, also billable only yearly, and has two big changes from its most comparable legacy counterpart, the ‘Personal’ plan: it offers Google Analytics integration and it doesn’t remove ads. The former is confusing because almost none of the people who commented negatively on the [WordPress.com post](https://wordpress.com/blog/2022/04/05/introducing-wordpress-pro-one-plan-infinite-possibilities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) announcing the ‘Pro’ plan and the subsequent [forum discussion](https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/pricing-feedback/?view=all&ref=slightlyacidic.com) mentioned wanting access to Google Analytics. The [native analytics](https://wordpress.com/support/stats/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are pretty good and suffice for bloggers. The latter is more confusing because the ‘Personal’ plan cost $4 a month and removed ads. Why should I pay a dollar more every month and still put up with ads? Unless WordPress.com makes a lot of money through these ads (which I’ve been unable to ascertain with five minutes of googling). The confusion is exacerbated by the fact that most people who wanted a cheaper plan wanted the ability to add a custom domain and *to remove ads*. (Interestingly, WordPress.com has many thousands of blogs lying dormant or unused, all of which also carry ads from WordPress’s WordAds network. If WordPress.com deleted these sites, would their hosting costs drop? Of course, doing so will raise questions about the importance of [WordPress.com’s commitment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896807&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to keeping the sites it hosts online forever.) This said, I’m not very particular on this issue, especially after Dave Martin [indicated to *WPTavern*](https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-announces-new-starter-plan-for-5-month?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that they need to make more money on subscriptions: “Finding the right balance between the value that we deliver to our customers and the price that we charge in exchange for that value is something that generally has to be iterated towards. We plan to do just that.” Costs are increasing, I understand. But I’m still disappointed on three counts: 1. **Importance of monthly pricing** – Martin told *WPTavern* that the company plans to “experiment” with monthly billing, suggesting that it’s no longer on par in terms of importance with the pricing itself. I would have liked to sign up for the ‘Pro’ plan by paying $15 a month to access the ability to add plugins, use premium themes and access the “advanced” SEO and social media tools. This would have been comparable in benefits to managed hosting by [Flywheel](https://getflywheel.com/pricing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [LightningBase](https://lightningbase.com/pricing/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (no affiliate links), with the bonus that the people who make WordPress also being in charge of my blog’s hosting. But a one-time expense of $180 (or the new India price, Rs 10,800) is not one I can bear, nor, judging by the comments on the ‘Pro’ plan announcement post, most other bloggers who are not in North America or Europe. 2. **India prices** – The region-specific price for India for the ‘Starter’ plan is the same as that in NA/EU, and for the ‘Pro’ plan, it hasn’t come down by as much as would be required to make annual payments affordable. I don’t understand how/why the ‘Starter’ plan costs as much in India as it does in NA/EU when the erstwhile ‘Personal’ plan cost 1.5x lower in India – except perhaps if WordPress.com is eyeing big growth in India. 3. **Uncertainty and triumphalism** – Martin [responded to my post](https://twitter.com/itsdavemartin/status/1510616391552057346?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [wrote on the forum](https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/pricing-feedback/page/9/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#post-3818890) and [told *WPTavern*](https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-announces-new-starter-plan-for-5-month?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that his team’s communication deserved to be called out. But the ‘Starter’ plan announcement on the WordPress.com blog, which has more than 90 million subscribers, is bereft of any admission of wrong-doing (which Martin spelt out in other fora); together with a triumphalist tone for the announcement itself, issues with the 'Starter' plan and no clear roadmap on what comes next ([“this was the first of a couple of phases of changes”](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896807&ref=slightlyacidic.com), Martin told *WPTavern*), the announcement wasn't nearly as fulfilling as I expected it to be. This brings me to the last and also the most grating issue for me: “we are listening”, both Martin and his support-staff colleagues repeatedly said on the forum, but as [one comment](https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/pricing-feedback/page/8/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#post-3815513) pointed out, listening is a passive activity. Listening when people are shouting at you out of frustration, disappointment and confusion is the bare minimum and not a virtue. And it's because I know WordPress.com can do better that I take the trouble to say that it needs to do better. What we wanted, and want, from WordPress.com was/is a constant and intimate awareness of the (not-insubstantial number of) people who don’t give a damn about using WordPress.com to make money but give a big damn about using it to publish posts for the world to read and talk about. We need to know whether WordPress.com intends to maintain this awareness going ahead, and whether it will listen to its bloggers first – as the least common denominators – the next time a big change is around the corner. (A similar thing appears to have happened with the proposal of the ‘WordPress performance team’ to make WebP the [default image type](https://wptavern.com/wordpress-performance-team-puts-controversial-webp-by-default-proposal-on-hold-after-critical-feedback?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on hosted sites.) ### A tale of two myopias, climate change and the present participle URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/26/a-tale-of-two-myopias-climate-change-and-the-present-participle/ Last updated: 2022-05-26T06:15:15.000Z The Assam floods [are going on](https://thewire.in/environment/assam-flooding-continues-six-more-lose-their-lives?ref=slightlyacidic.com). One day, they will stop. The water will subside in many parts of the state but the things that caused the floods will continue to work, ceaselessly, and will cause them to occur again next year, and the year after and so on for the foreseeable future. Journalists, politicians and even civil society members have become adept at *seeing* the floods in space. Every year, as if on cue, there have been reports on the cusp of summer of floodwaters inundating many districts in the state, including those containing and surrounding the Kaziranga national park; displacing lakhs of people and killing hundreds; destroying home, crop, cattle and soil; encouraging the spread of diseases; eroding banks and shores; and prompting political leaders to promise all the help that they can muster for the affected people. But the usefulness of the spatial cognition of the Assam floods has run its course. Instead, now, we need to inculcate a temporal cognition, whether this alone or a spatio-temporal one. The reason is that more than the floods themselves, we are currently submerged by the effects of two myopias, like two rocks tied around our necks that are dragging us to the bottom. The first one is sustained by the members of our political class, such as Assam CM [Himanta Biswa Sarma](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/assam-floods-718-lakh-people-hit-as-death-toll-mounts/article65431420.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Union home minister [Amit Shah](https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/assam-floods-amit-shah-assures-all-help-army-joins-rescue-operations-122051800016%5F1.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), when they say that they will avail all the support and restitution to displaced people and the relatives of those killed directly or indirectly by the floods. The floods are not the product of climate change but of mindless infrastructure 'development', the construction of dikes and embankments, encroachment of wetlands and plains, destruction of forests and the over-extraction resources and its consequences. A flood happens when the water levels rise, but destruction is the result of objects of human value being in the waters’ way. More and more human property is being located in places where the water used to go, and more and more human property is being rendered vulnerable to being washed away. When political leaders offer support to the people after every flood (which is the norm), it is akin to saying, “I will shoot you with a gun and then I will pay for your care.” Offering people support is not helpful, at least not when it stops there, followed by silence. Everyone – from parliamentary committees to civil society members – should follow the utterances of Shah, Sarma & co. (both BJP and non-BJP leaders, including those of the Congress, CPI(M), DMK, TMC, etc.) *through time*, acknowledge the seasonality of their proclamations, and bring them to book for failing to prevent the floods from occurring every year, instead of giving them brownie points for providing support on each occasion *post facto*. The second myopia exists on the part of many journalists, especially in the Indian mainstream press, and their attitude towards cyclones, which can be easily and faithfully extrapolated to floods as well. Every year for the last two decades at least, there has been a cyclone or two that ravaged two states in particular: Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal (the list included Odisha but it has [done well to mitigate](https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/cyclone-fani-odisha-teaches-the-world-how-to-prepare-for-disasters-119051500234%5F1.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the consequences). And on every occasion plus some time, reports have appeared in newspapers and magazines of fisherpeople in dire straits with their boats broken, nets torn and stomachs empty; of coastal properties laid to waste; and, soon after, of fuel and power subsidies, loan waivers and – if you wait long enough – sobering stories of younger fishers migrating to other parts of the country looking for other jobs. These stories are all important and necessary – but they are *not sufficient*. We also need stories about something new – stories that are mindful of the passage of time, of people growing old, the rupee becoming less valuable, the land becoming more recalcitrant, and of the world itself passing them all by. We need the [present participle](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/present%20participle?ref=slightlyacidic.com). This is not a plea for media houses to commoditise tragedy and trade in interestingness but a plea to consider that these stories miss something: the first myopia, the one that our political leaders espouse. By keeping the focus on problem X, we also keep the focus on the solutions *for* X. Now ask yourself what X might be if all the stories appearing in the mainstream press are about post-disaster events, and thus which solutions – or, indeed, points of accountability – we tend to focus on to the exclusion of others. We also need stories – ranging in type from staff reports to reported features, from hyperlocal dispatches to literary essays – of everything that has happened in the aftermath of a cyclone making landfall near, say, Nellore or North 24 Parganas, whether things have got better or worse with time, whether politicians have kept their promises to ameliorate the conditions of the people there (especially those not living inside concrete structures and/or whose livelihoods depends directly on natural resources); and whether by restricting ourselves to supporting a people after a storm or a flood has wreaked havoc, we are actually dooming them. We need timewise data and we need timewise first-hand accounts. To adapt the [wisdom of Philip Warren Anderson](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/04/22/the-constructionist-hypothesis-and-expertise-during-the-pandemic/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), we may know how a shrinking wetland may exacerbate the intensity of the next flood, but we cannot ever derive from this relationship knowledge of the specific ways in which people, and then the country, suffer, diminish and fade away. The persistence of these two myopias also feeds the bane of incrementalism. By definition, incremental events occur orders of magnitude more often than significant events (so to speak), so it is more efficient to evolve to monitor and record the former. This applies as much to our memories as it does to the economics of newsrooms. We tend to get caught up in the day-to-day and are capable within weeks of forgetting something that happened last year; unscrupulous politicians play to this gallery by lying through their teeth about something happening when it didn’t (or vice versa), offending the memories of all those who have died because of a storm or a flood and yet others who survive but on the brink of tragedy. On the other hand, newsrooms are staffed with more journalists attuned to the small details but not implicitly able to piece all of them together into the politically and economically inconvenient big picture (there are exceptions, of course). I am not sure when we entered the crisis period of climate change but in mid-2022, it is a trivial fact that we are in the thick of it – the thick of a beast that assails us both in space and through time. In response, we must change the way we cognise disasters. The Assam floods are ongoing – and so are [the Kosi](https://science.thewire.in/environment/koshi-river-avulsion-sedimentation-embankments-bihar-floods/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [the Sabarmati](https://science.thewire.in/environment/ganga-rejuvenation-success-claim-government-use-same-model-other-rivers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [the Cauvery](https://science.thewire.in/environment/cauvery-bengaluru-mettur-krishnarajasagar/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) floods. We just haven’t seen the waters go wild yet. ### With Gyanvapi article, Abhinav Prakash Singh does logic wapsi URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/23/with-gyanvapi-article-abhinav-prakash-singh-does-logic-wapsi/ Last updated: 2022-05-23T07:42:55.000Z The national vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Abhinav Prakash Singh, published an article on May 22 on the Gyanvapi mosque issue that is from start to finish an exercise in verbal sophistry. But while we have come to expect such nonsense from functionaries of the Bharatiya Janata Party, I was shocked to see this coming from *Indian Express*. (Some of my friends weren't, so I am probably behind the curve here.) ![](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/632ce-screenshot-2023-10-07-at-3.55.52-pm.png?w=855&h=1024) Singh's argument is not concerned with the historical facts of the case (many of which are [gathered here](https://thewire.in/communalism/the-kashi-vishwanath-gyanvapi-equation-a-parable-for-people-power-politics?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) but with the people calling Gyanvapi a "controversy" hiding behind secularism, which according to him was developed to separate the state only from Abrahamic religions, and that the faux-controversy should nonetheless be allowed to blow through in favour of Hindus because the left is only resorting to “political rhetoric, academic obfuscation and chicanery”, and not because the right doesn’t seem concerned about the burden of proof. This is a defence of malice on the grounds of what it is not (not anti-national, not Islamic, not western, not leftist, not scholarly) over what it is (proofless, perfidious, communal). Oh, what it is also not is violent and riotous, which, in Singh's telling, the protests against the farm laws and the CAA respectively were. A national newspaper that believes it' i's okay to amplify lies can't be on the side of democracy. And while India may be far from a perfect democracy at the moment, its institutions and civil society must still maintain their democratic *tendencies*, especially in the spirit defined by the constitution. This is more important than to be perfectly democratic at every moment, which is obviously not possible. Challenges will arise and there will be failures, and that is not an implicitly bad thing. When we tend to the best of our abilities, that is good enough. But a democratic nation will lose that character if we altogether stop aspiring in that direction and begin to admit exceptions to favour a political agenda and/or personal gain. It will also lose that character if we don’t employ common sense. It will always be a virtue to be more informed (with reasonable exceptions), to keep learning and to value the methods by which we acquire knowledge and establish facts. One popular technique for this, standing on the deceptively simple [foundation of logic](https://www.indexofevidence.org/the-index?ref=slightlyacidic.com), is called science – and in most democratic societies today, science and its exponents occupy a place of pride. But the unbridled application of science to solving society’s problems is not a good thing. Such overreach, called scientism but also encompassing [hard-line rationalism](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/12/27/eclipse-rationalism-superstitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), attempts to use science to solve problems that its methods and principles were never designed to solve, and eventually produces outcomes that subvert the proper functioning of a democracy in favour of a scientistic or falsely meritocratic agenda. This said, scientism is not the only form in which science can get in the way of a functional democracy. Bharatiya Janata Party members' claims that Ayurveda, yoga, the Vedas, the entangled Hindu state-culture-religion and whatever else anticipated and solved advanced problems that modern natural as well as social sciences still fumble with come first to mind. Ancient India's feats, in the party's telling, are a demonstration of its immense prowess and to which we must bow your heads without question. But the evidence for these claims is always, without exception, unfalsifiable: that which can neither be proved nor, more importantly, disproved. This may be a carefully designed strategy at work but that doesn't mean we're obliged to recognise it as one. To everyone who has been to high school and studied a little bit of logic and set theory, it's a blooper, and hopefully also a reminder that democracy can and is regularly undermined by our being okay with letting bloopers pass. For example, Abhinav Prakash Singh's article is rife with pleas to let the Gyanvapi controversy swing in favour of the right-wing, each based on the premise that "what is not offensive is therefore good". This is the fallacy of affirming the disjunct. It goes like this: The left manufactured the Gyanvapi controversy because it has proof or it claims the supremacy of Islam. The left is anti-Hindu and pro-Islam. Therefore the left has no proof. Does it make sense to you? It shouldn't. It's just how empty of meaning and substance Singh's article is. The affirmation of the disjunct might tempt you to ask yourself whether there is something he knows that you don't. Don't give in; instead, ask whether there is anything rather than nothing at the heart of his argument. Don't let his claim pass unchecked; don't read it and believe that Singh may have a point. He and his colleagues seldom do, and prefer instead the use of [kettle logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle%5Flogic?ref=slightlyacidic.com), as demonstrated in the opening lines of a recent [article by Apoorvanand](https://thewire.in/law/gyanvapi-mosque-case-judiciary?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "Who could have thought that an argument for syncretism and the blurry nature of culture can be used to first enter the religious or sacred places of non-Hindu communities and then lay claim over them?" Most of all, read Singh's article and conclude, because Singh himself *forces us to*, that his remarks are foolish. All he has are big words wrapped around a statement that can't possibly make sense. *Hat-tip to Jahnavi Sen* ### Nothing cryptic about another 'crypto' disaster URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/22/the-defi-disaster-that-wiped-41b-in-market-cap/ Last updated: 2022-05-22T10:04:50.000Z Earlier this month, a cryptocurrency token called Luna crashed in price – an event that also brought down the value of bitcoin, became the biggest crash in cryptocurrency history thus far, earned the person or persons [who (probably) orchestrated](https://fortune.com/2022/05/13/terra-ust-stablecoin-crash-suspicious-potential-attack-george-soros/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this fall [nearly a billion dollars](https://twitter.com/OnChainWizard/status/1524123935570382851?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and stuck a big-ass wrench in the machinations of the cryptocurrency community. Luna's originated, a South Korean entrepreneur named Kwon Do-hyung, a.k.a. Do Kwon, has been [charged with fraud](https://cryptopotato.com/terra-co-founders-face-lawsuit-from-korean-ust-and-luna-investors/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Stablegains, a cryptocurrency-based "yield generation project", [lost $44 million](https://cryptobriefing.com/yield-app-stablegains-faces-lawsuit-after-losing-44m-on-ust/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and may face a lawsuit from its investors for having misguided them about where the company was storing their wealth – in the "stablecoin" to which Luna was pegged. Money-making algorithms of the Venus Protocol, running on the BNB blockchain, [lost $11 million](https://therecord.media/collapse-of-luna-cryptocurrency-leads-to-11-million-exploit-on-venus-protocol/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) due to Luna's crash. There have been [many more, and worse, repercussions](https://the-blindspot.com/crypto-reflexivity-and-the-ultimate-stablecoin-reading-list/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). While this fiasco is neither novel nor likely to be the last of its kind, it merits attention for those interested in (the opposition to) cryptocurrencies – for the sort of disaster that only a nascent piece of financial technology backed by the self-delusion of techbros could wreak. A few semi-helpful explainers on Twitter indicated that crash was a repeat in technique of the one George Soros [orchestrated against the Bank of England](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2773265/Billionaire-who-broke-the-Bank-of-England.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 1992, leading to the occasion known as 'Black Wednesday'. Soros shorted the British pound shortly after the currency had become part of the European Rate Mechanism, which required the government to maintain the value of the pound within a fixed range with respect to the Deutsche mark. But Soros foresaw that thanks to inflation and higher interest rates, the pound would drop under this range against the mark and the Bank of England would be forced to buy back pounds on the open market. He eventually built up a short of $10 billion and made a profit of $1 billion. In this current case, replace the pound with the Luna or the bitcoin, as the case may be. To put things very simply: Do Kwon, invented two cryptocurrency tokens called Luna and Terra. Terra was an algorithmic stablecoin, meaning a) 1 Terra would always be worth exactly $1 and b) algorithms running on the blockchain on which Terra traded would ensure that 1 Terra could be exchanged for $1's worth of Luna and vice versa. The 1:1 pegging would be ensured through [arbitrage trades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Luna, however, was not a stablecoin and its price could fluctuate. Do Kwon intended for Terra to protect Luna against market volatility. *Bloomberg* columnist [Matt Levine](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-11/terra-flops?ref=slightlyacidic.com) pointed out that Do Kwon wrongly assumed that this financial system – of coins, pegs and algorithms – would remain stable as long as Luna maintained a non-zero value, i.e. that it wouldn't crash. Or Do Kwon wasn't wrong and knew that the system had another point of stability: when Luna's value was zero. (He probably wasn't wrong: a previous stablecoin experiment that failed to the tune of $54 million was run by two anonymous persons named "Rick" and "Morty", and ex-Terra employees [have alleged](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/05/11/usts-do-kwon-was-behind-earlier-failed-stablecoin-ex-terra-colleagues-say/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that "Rick" was really Do Kwon.) On April 1, 2022, Luna had a value of $115\. But in May, someone realised that while Terra's value was pegged 1:1 to the US dollar through arbitrages, they could short Luna itself. (Here's a simple explanation of [how shorting works](https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1280150884534456320?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) One possibility that some have floated (see [here](https://twitter.com/OnChainWizard/status/1524123935570382851?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [here](https://twitter.com/4484/status/1524006086147252227?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) is that the attacker bet in favour of Terra and against bitcoin. This arises because Do Kwon had setup a reserve of [39,897.98 bitcoins](https://www.coindesk.com/learn/the-fall-of-terra-a-timeline-of-the-meteoric-rise-and-crash-of-ust-and-luna/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to back up Terra. First, the attacker bought a large quantity of Terra and then began to dump it, forcing Do Kwon to start selling bitcoin to keep Terra from becoming depegged from the US dollar. Then the attacker shorted bitcoin. Whether this individual(s) took the simpler route or the more involved one with bitcoins, Luna's price crashed from $80.84 on May 1 to $0.000169 today. As David Rosenthal, from whose [blog post on the topic](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/05/metastablecoins.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) I've benefitted immensely, put it, "By May 11th LUNA was under $1 and BTC was under $29K, down around 17% from before the attack, although it recovered to around $30K. By May 13th \[Terra\] had transitioned to … under $0.20 and LUNA was under $0.0001, having vanished $41B of "market cap"." On May 12, Terra ['halted' its blockchain](https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=terra-blockchain-is-halted-after-token-crash-increases-threat-of-governance-attacks&ref=slightlyacidic.com); since Terra and Luna are/were tokens on the chain, they became worthless to their owners. But Do Kwon [has already said](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-16/do-kwon-proposes-creating-another-blockchain-from-terra-s-ashes?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that he plans to launch another blockchain. ### Press releases and public duty URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/20/press-releases-and-public-duty/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T10:56:33.000Z From ['Science vs Marketing'](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/science-vs-marketing.html), published on *In The Dark*, on May 20, 2022: > … there is an increasing tendency for university press offices to see themselves entirely as marketing agencies instead of informing and/or educating the public. Press releases about scientific research nowadays rarely make any attempt at accuracy – they are just designed to get the institution concerned into the headlines. In other words, research is just a marketing tool. What astrophysicist and blogger Peter Coles writes here is very true. It is not a recent phenomenon but it hasn't been widely acknowledged either, especially in the community of journalists. I had [reported in 2016](https://science.thewire.in/health/exaggerated-health-advice-press/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on a study by researchers at the Universities of Cardiff and Wollongong that concluded that university press releases bloated with hype don't necessarily result in reports in the media that are also bloated with hype. The study was mooted in part by an attempt to find if there was a relationship between the two locations of hype: in press releases and news reports. The study's finding was a happy one because it indicated that science journalists at large were doing their jobs right, and were not being carried away by the rubbish that universe press offices often printed. But this said, the study also highlighted the presence of hype in science news reports and which I have also blogged about on many occasions. It typically exists in two contexts: when journalists turn into stenographers and print press releases either as is or with superficial rephrasing, and when journalists themselves uncritically buy into the hype. I find the former to be more forgivable *in the Indian context* in particular because there are many hapless science journalists here: journalists who are actually generalists, not bound to any particular beat, and whose editors (or their editors' bosses) have forced them to write on topics with which they are not at all familiar (I strongly suspected [this bizarre article](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/over-90-deaths-went-unreported-why-who-data-raises-questions-7903417/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Indian Express* – while not being based on a press release of any sort – to be a good example of some sort of editorial pressure). Such a failure reflects to my mind the state of Indian mainstream journalism more than Indian science journalism, the best versions of which are still highly localised to a single handful of outlets. The latter – of science journalists willfully buying into the hype – is a cardinal sin, more so when it manifests among journalists who should self-evidently know better, as with [Pallab Ghosh of the BBC](https://thecritic.co.uk/the-bbcs-black-hole-baloney/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). University press releases affect the former group more, and not the likes of Pallab Ghosh, although there are exceptional cases. Journalists of the former group are more populous and are also employed by larger, wealthier newsrooms with audiences orders of magnitude larger than those that have adopted a more critical view of science. As a result, bad claims in bad press releases crafted by university press offices often reach more people than articles that properly interrogate those claims. So in addition to Coles's charge that universities are increasingly concerned with "income", "profit" and "marketing" over "education and research", I'd add that universities that publish such press releases have also lost sight of their duty to the publics, and would rather be part of the problem. ### Hail the Royal Society URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/14/hail-the-royal-society/ Last updated: 2022-05-14T01:16:09.000Z It's an underappreciated form of our colonial hangover when a body like the Royal Society appoints its first Brazilian member since 1871 (on May 13) and almost everyone including the appointee talks about why the Society continues to be great instead of facing it with hard questions over why it didn't elect Brazilian scientists into its ranks for 151 years and rejecting the deceptive honour of its admission. It's a similar story with the Nobel Prizes: no women or no non-white persons win one for decades on end, so when the first exception appears on the scene, it's because the prizes are great – not because the scientists were perfectly able to labour without the incentives presented by the prizes and certainly not because the prizes are an assertion of colonial power. Why don't the Royal Society or the Nobel Prizes – and for that matter any award-giving entity in India that coasts for decades without acknowledging the work of scientists of non-Brahmin caste denominations – suffer a reputational crisis when their prejudice is spotlighted by their own feeble and frequently meagre attempts to rectify it instead of enjoying a rhetoric suffused with praise for "doing the right thing"? Prestige-awarding institutions like the Royal Society must be torn down as a rule of thumb – and we must simultaneously also strive to move past the idea that such institutions are necessary to move the needle in a world that will ultimately only perceive another reminder that prestige is relevant and valuable. This particular brand of iconoclasm is not easier to say and significantly more not-easier to do in our era of crises, when outspoken scientific consensus is a triply valuable thing and bodies like the Royal Society are seen as being necessary to birth, hold and present that consensus to the elite cadres of both science and society – the movers and shakers, as it were. "Hail the Nobel Prizes," we say – "Raman has won a Nobel Prize" – "the state listens to Raman" – "let's let Raman run a science institute" – "the institute is producing good work!" – "hail the Nobel Prizes," we repeat. For example, the new Brazilian appointee to the Royal Society, climate scientist Carlos Nobre, [told *Reuters*](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/royal-society-names-climate-scientist-first-brazilian-member-since-1800s-2022-05-13/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "The Royal Society is giving international recognition to the risks that the Amazon faces. It's an enormous risk that we could lose the greatest biodiversity and the biggest tropical forest on the planet." But from where I'm sitting, it's easier to feel the weight of a history that precipitated the need for a Royal Society to return to the climate scientists of Brazil the self-evident relevance of their voices – as well as an elite institution piggybacking on the urgency of the defining crisis of the Anthropocene epoch to right a wrong that should, in fairness, have destroyed it long ago. Then again, I can't fault Nobre himself because from his point of view he has acquired access to one more pedestal – one to which no other compatriot of his has access – from which to bring the world's attention to the ruin of the Amazon. Or maybe I do, but not Nobre himself as much as the community of all scientists for not unionising (whether or not in the traditional sense) against the arbitrary selectivism of the Royal Society, et al.\[1\] and their campaigns of piecemeal restitution. \[1\] It inherits the problems of everything from admission to well-funded science institutes to one's ability to publish in 'top' journals to appointment in senior positions at research centres. ### 10 years in journalism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/10/10-years-in-journalism/ Last updated: 2022-05-10T13:40:49.000Z Thinking about the number '10' is hard. It's the number of years I will have soon been a journalist for (as will my ACJ batchmates). Why commemorate it? - In this time, I've seen many of my colleagues and peers in different organisations quit journalism for communications jobs in non-journalistic settings, which pay better and are likely easier on the mind and on life. So to be able to persist for so long in this profession, also rendered more treacherous by a vengeful state, is to question one's privileges on various levels. - Ten is a round number, and that roundness has I suspect something uniquely bio-psychological going for it. Our choice of the decimal number system is surely rooted in the number of fingers on our hands, which makes counting in multiples of 10 intuitive. Other than this, the value of 10 – that is, to have 10 of something – seems inscrutable. Do we commemorate six years of something? Or 11 or 4.5? To celebrate 10 often seems to be a privilegement of our own biology – especially when we have achieved little else. - When [*The Wire Science* interviewed physicist Kip Thorne](https://science.thewire.in/science/its-your-generation-of-experimenters-that-makes-me-look-good-an-interview-with-kip-thorne/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2017, the interviewer asked him if the discovery of gravitational waves 100 years after Einstein's development of general relativity meant anything special to him. Thorne said: "Oh no, not particularly. We just happen to use base-10\. If we used base-9, it wouldn't work. Maybe I have faith in our choice of the base." Modern classical as well as quantum computing use base-2 systems (0s/1s and two-dimensional Hilbert space, respectively). It's all a matter of convenience – which I only say to conclude that commemorations based on time alone seem inherently meaningless (except when the passage of time is itself a virtue). - In December 2018, I wrote to a close friend in an email: "On December 23, 2018, I will be 3.94 galactic seconds old (one galactic year is the time Earth takes to go around the Milky Way, about 240 million years). Isn't that simply more celestial? On May 26, 2019, I will be 4 galactic seconds old." A nice, round number – but comfort in what is this? Positive integers? Rational numbers? But most importantly, it's a reminder that there is no fixed way to measure time. - I wrote this post today, May 10, 2022, Tuesday. I've developed a habit of making anagrams when I'm bored, and found Anu Garg's wordsmith.org as a result when I was looking for an [anagram animator](https://wordsmith.org/anagram/animation.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). I also subscribed to [Garg's newsletter](https://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about words and made a donation to support his work on it; you don't find many newsletters dedicated to words whose authors don't also bother their readers with too much of their own writing (e.g. Maria Popova). The weekly theme in the newsletter for the week of May 9 is words related to time. Opportune. The word for Monday in particular was *timeous*: "in good time". Example: "I knew Bridget always ran out of supplies during a party and thought I should make timeous provision" (source: Andre Brink; Before I Forget; Sourcebooks; 2007). My commemoration of having been a professional journalist for 10 years wouldn't be timeous. ### Some comments on India's heat URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/06/some-comments-on-indias-heat/ Last updated: 2022-05-06T11:38:53.000Z On May 5, a couple people from BBC World reached out to me, presumably after reading [my piece last week](https://science.thewire.in/environment/heatwaves-north-india-wet-bulb-temperature-exceed-35c/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the heatwave in North India and the wet-bulb temperature, for a few comments on a story they were producing on the topic. They had five questions between them; I'm reproducing my answers roughly verbatim (since I spoke to them on phone) below. ### Are these high temperatures usual? A: Yes and no. Yes because while these numbers are high, we've been hearing about them for a decade or so now – and reading about them in news reports and hearing anecdotal reports. This isn't the first such heatwave to hit India. A few years ago, peak summer temperature in Delhi touched 47º C or so and there were photos in the media of the asphalt on the road having melted. That was worse – that hasn't happened this time, yet. That's the 'yes' part. The 'no' part has to do with the fact that India is a large country and some parts of the country that are becoming hotter are probably also reaching these temperatures for the first time. E.g. Bangalore, where I live, is currently daily highs of around 35º C. This is par for the course in Chennai and Delhi but it's quite hot for Bangalore. This said, the high heat is starting sooner, on this occasion from mid-March or so itself, and lasting for longer. That has changed our experience of the heat and our exposure. Of course, my answers are limited to urban India, especially to major cities. I don't know off the top of my head what the situation in other parts is like. ### The government has said India has a national heat plan and some cities have adopted heat action plans. Are they effective? Hard to say. Only two score or so cities have adopted functional heat action plans plus they're *cities*, which is not where most of India lives. Sure, the heat is probably worse in the urban centres because of the heat island effect, but things are quite poor in rural areas as well, especially in the north. The heat also isn't just heat – people experience its effects more keenly if they don't have continuous power supply or access to running water, which is often the case in many parts of rural India. The benefits of these action plans accrue to those who are better off, typically those who are upper class and upper caste, which is hardly the point. When North India's heatwave was underway last week, NDTV interviewed shopkeepers and small scale traders, vendors, etc. about whether they could take time off. All of them without exception said 'no'. Come rain or shine, they need to work. I remember there being vicious cyclones in Chennai and waking up in the morning to find the roads flooded, trees fallen down and loose electric wires – and the local mobile vegetable vendor doing his rounds. Also, in urban areas, do the heat action plans account for the plights of homeless people and beggars, and people living in slums, where – even if they're indoors – they have poor circulation and often erratic water and power supply? ### What should the government do? That's a very broad question. Simply speaking, the government should give people who can't afford to shut their businesses or take time off from work the money they'd lose if they did, and rations. This is going to be very difficult but this is what should be done. But this won't happen. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government didn't plan for the tens of thousands of migrant labourers and daily-wage earners in cities, who, once the lockdown came into effect, slowly migrated back to their home towns and villagers in search of livelihoods. This sector remains invisible to the government. \[I also wanted to say but didn't have the time:\] the experience of heat is also mediated by gender, geography and caste forces, so state interventions should also be mediated by them. For example, women in particular, in rural India and especially in Central and North India (where literacy is relatively lower) operate in settings where they have few rights and little if any financial and social independence. They can seldom buy or own land and go out to work, and often labour indoors, performing domestic tasks in poorly ventilated residential spaces, venture out to fetch water from often distant sources – a task performed almost exclusively by women and girls –, often have to defecate in the open but do so early in the day or late in the evening to avoid harrassment and shame, which then means they may not drink water to avoid peeing during the day but which would render them vulnerable to heat stress, etc. If state interventions don't bend around these realities, they will be useless. ### \[One named government official\] said India is tracking heat-related deaths and that these numbers suggest the country is in control of the problem. What's your sense of this? The moment you mention data or figures that you say you obtained from this government, the first thought that comes to mind is that it's probably inaccurate, and likely an underestimate. Even now, the Indian government has an ongoing dispute with the WHO over the number of people who died during the pandemic in India: India is saying half a million but the WHO as well as many independent experts have said it's probably 3-5 million. For example, if the government is collecting data of heat-related illnesses at the institutional level (from hospitals, clinics, etc.) you immediately have a bias in terms of which people are able to or intend to access healthcare when they develop a heat-related illness. Daily-wagers don't go to hospitals unless their conditions are acute – because they'd lose a day's earnings, because their out of pocket expenses have increased or both. ### Do you think parts of India will become unliveable in your lifetime? This is a good question. I'd say that 'unliveable' is a subjective thing. I have a friend in Seattle who recently bought a house in what she said was a nice part of the city, with lots of greenery, opportunities to go hiking and trekking on the weekend, with clear skies, clean air and large water bodies nearby. Liveability to her is different from, say, liveability to someone living in New Delhi, where the air is already quite foul, summers are very hot and winters are likely to become colder in future. Liveability means different things to people living in Delhi, London and Seattle. Many parts of India have been unliveable for a long time now, we just put up with it – and many people do because they don't have any other option – and our bar just keeps slipping lower. ### The problem with giving “Mother Nature” rights and duties URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/02/does-mother-nature-have-rights-and-duties/ Last updated: 2022-05-02T13:00:01.000Z Recently, the Madras high court [passed a curiously worded order](https://science.thewire.in/environment/madras-hc-grants-mother-nature-living-being-status-with-rights-and-duties/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which Justice S. Srimathy extended the Uttarakhand high court's 2017 order, granting the rights due to citizens to [the Ganga and the Yamuna](https://science.thewire.in/environment/ganga-yamuna-whanganui-human/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) rivers, to "Mother Nature" *in toto*. It's hard to say what this means (I haven't read the order, only some excerpts), especially since "Mother Nature" is hard to define. For example, homosexuality is [not proscribed in nature](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/infinite-in-all-directions-why-is-homosexuality-considered-unnatural?ref=slightlyacidic.com), so do homosexual tendencies qualify as a manifestation of "Mother Nature"? Or is the definition restricted to our natural resources? Then there is the question of nature's gender: it has been routinely cast as a motherly figure to invoke the image of an entity that gives, typically by birthing new life, but its use by a high court needs to be more careful and completely well-defined. That isn't the case here. This confusion is exacerbated by one portion in particular (emphasis added) of the court's pronouncement: > It is right time to declare/confer juristic status to the “Mother Nature”. Therefore this Court by invoking “parens patriae jurisdiction” is hereby declaring the “Mother Nature” as a “Living Being” having legal entity/legal person/juristic person/juridical person/moral person/artificial person having the status of a legal person, with all corresponding rights, **duties** and liabilities of a living person, in order to preserve and conserve them. Apparently, "Mother Nature" has duties. Does it – sorry, 'she' – have all 11? Consider #6, for example: "To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture". Last year, the Government of Rajasthan denotified a part of Band Baretha Wildlife Sanctuary to allow builders [to mine pink sandstone](https://science.thewire.in/environment/rajasthan-denotifies-forest-area-to-mine-pink-sandstone-for-ram-temple/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for use in the Ram temple under construction in Uttar Pradesh. The latter state government, like the one at India's helm, is led by the BJP, according to which Hinduism is [a superposition of religion, culture and economic policy](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-rise-of-hindu-nationalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), depending on what's most convenient at any given moment. But the equation also effectively whitewashes the rituals of Hinduism as a matter of the country's culture, evading the inconvenient demands of secularism. Might these governments and/or that of Rajasthan now be able to argue in court that it was the duty of the trees and animals of Band Baretha to let themselves be cut down and killed in order to "preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture"? Similarly, must the mountainsides flanking the Char Dham highway under construction let themselves be blasted off in order to "uphold and protect the sovereignty of India"? Will we be able to sue an avalanching mass of ice, mud, wood and stone for destroying a hydroelectric power project because the belligerent aggregate failed "to safeguard public property and to abjure violence"? The possibilities are endless – probably because the high court's pronouncement personifies what was never intended to be personified. The duty that seemed the oddest to this author vis-à-vis "Mother Nature" was "to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavor and achievement". 'To strive' implies intent, and here a part of a [2019 essay](https://tif.ssrc.org/2019/12/09/science-bilgrami/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by philosopher Akeel Bilgrami may provide a useful perspective. Bilgrami writes: > The idea that nature makes demands on us is a metaphor. Nature contains values but their normative demands are not intentionally made. The reason is straightforward. It is a mark of what we mean by intentionality that subjects who possess intentionality are potentially appropriate targets of a certain form of criticism. I can criticize you for doing something wrong or for having destructive thoughts, as you can me. … I can criticize you for making certain normative demands of me—unreasonable ones, by my lights. But we don’t criticize elements in nature or artifice in the same sense. We may say “a hurricane was destructive” but that is a “criticism” only by courtesy, not the sort of criticism that you and I make of each other’s doings and thoughts and demands. Bilgrami, currently a professor at Columbia University, New York, goes on to write that "elements in nature and things do not possess or carry out any such deliberative structure or process, so there is no similar ground for attributing intentionality to them, nor, as a consequence, intelligibly criticizing or punishing such elements". He also writes that ascribing intent to nature is "unnecessary" because the intentionality can only be captured by a metaphor – that "nature names demands on us" – and that it is not dispensable, or real, as a result. Instead, we may be better served by considering the rights of plants and birds and animals in a way, fundamentally, that acknowledges the differences between these domains of life and humans themselves. For example, Indians have rights to life and to free speech with reasonable restrictions. Plants instead might be accorded a right to evolve, to not be cut if they are older than 50 years, and to be planted only in places where they were native until the 20th century. Such rights would be much better than to say polluting rivers is wrong because rivers also have rights. Polluting rivers was [wrong even before](https://cpcb.nic.in/water-pollution/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) such pronouncements, so they only kicked the can down the road. Giving either individual rivers or the natural universe as a whole the rights given to Indians is at best protection against destruction. But even then, the government has only needed [reconstituted responsibilities](https://science.thewire.in/environment/national-board-for-wildlife-prakash-javadekar-environment-ministry-destruction-protected-areas/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [verbal gymnastics](https://science.thewire.in/environment/draft-eia-notification-2020-environment-ministry-ease-of-doing-business/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), suppressed [data and research](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/india-2021-state-of-forest-report-flawed-methods-unverifiable-data-climate-commitments/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and an [absolute majority](https://science.thewire.in/politics/government/caqm-ordinance-lapse-air-pollution-issue-neglect-government/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Parliament, finally garnished with [some fantasies](https://science.thewire.in/environment/supreme-court-mopa-airport-moefcc-eac-environment-development-eia/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), to claim that the environment ministry is really protecting the environment by nuking environmental safeguards. ### India – where repairing a bad road could make life worse URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/05/01/india-where-repairing-a-bad-road-could-make-life-worse/ Last updated: 2022-05-01T12:21:07.000Z There is a long road that runs from Mantri Mall to Sankey Road, in Malleshwaram, Bengaluru, called Sampige Road. There are eighteen smaller roads that branch off from it on either side (straightforwardly numbered one through 18), and both the main stem and almost all of these side roads, or crosses, are full of shops selling everything from flowers to clothes, from SIM cards to electronic goods. Sampige Road is an excellent neighbourhood shopping destination. So it was true to experience when the city government decided to ruin it. (I live nearby and have firsthand details.) ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/2b674-screenshot-2022-05-01-at-6.39.42-pm.png?w=1024&h=638) The tree-lined line marked 'Sampige Road' runs from the bottom to the top of this Google Earth screenshot. Some years ago, the then AIADMK government in power in Tamil Nadu, as well as in Chennai, wanted to revamp the city's Pondy Bazaar area, a very popular shopping destination (with bigger stores than on Sampige Road and its Chennai counterpart, Ranganathan Street), under the Indian government's mega-gentrification project, a.k.a. the 'Smart Cities' mission. The mayorate collected all the roadside hawkers and pushed them into a building in Pondy Bazaar, which defeated the point of why roadside hawking is successful (opportunistic buying) while the building also quickly turned squalid, and it repaved the sidewalks and widened the mainstem road. On November 6, 2021, Chennai received 23 cm of rain; two days later, it received 21 cm more. These were both previously unreported quantities of rain in 24 hours in the city for many, many years, and thus it flooded almost everywhere. But one of the places that flooded first, the most and the longest? Pondy Bazaar. City officials had relaid the mainstem in the market not with asphalt but with concrete. Chennai has an [average elevation](https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/j790/Chennai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of 16 m but the part of the district hosting the urban complex is almost entirely flat relative to the sea, which means water poured over the city isn't eager to run into the Bay of Bengal. The concrete road and the repaved sidewalks in Pondy Bazaar exacerbated this problem: all the surfaces held the water there like a big bowl. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/56063-screenshot-2022-05-01-at-6.41.51-pm.png?w=1024&h=638) The roughly square shaped area cut by the diagonal mainstem in this Google Earth screenshot is Pondy Bazaar. A similar fate awaits Sampige Road, which the local government plans to re-lay from 1st cross to nearly the 15th cross with concrete – including the sidewalks, which have until now been a medley of roadside vendors and pedestrians. There are four more things that make matters much worse. The first two are unique to Sampige Road. First, it is sloped, climbing upward at about 30º from 1st cross onwards and plateauing around 16th cross. This means rain that falls over this stretch of the road will run off into the crossing roads or, more likely, pool into the four-way junction at the origin of Sampige Road – a point that is already notorious for awful traffic jams. Second, Chennai has historically received more rain than Bengaluru but most of the former's rainwater arrives in just two months ([October and November](https://web.archive.org/web/20071031032139/http://www.imd.ernet.in/section/climate/chennai1.htm)) while the latter receives it more uniformly, from [May to November](https://web.archive.org/web/20070708113015/http://www.imd.ernet.in/section/climate/bangalore1.htm). Put another way, Pondy Bazaar will be a watery hellscape for two months but Sampige Road, and/or its immediate neighbourhood, is at risk of being that way for more than half the year. Third, 'Smart Cities' or not, concrete roads are a symbol of lazy governance. Their prime advantage is that they last for longer before requiring repairs. Asphalt roads are more easily damaged by rain because the water seeps into and destabilises the undersoil, which adversely affects the integrity of the asphalt. But on the flip side, asphalt roads can be patched, whereas concrete roads – which are often reinforced with embedded steel rods – need to be replaced block by giant block. Additionally, in Pondy Bazaar at least, the road is already bumpy and coarse. Concrete roads also reflect most of the incident light and heat (leading to glare and hot environs) and are more slippery when it rains. The fourth problem is the most important. By opting for concrete roads over asphalt ones, both cities are solving for road repairs – the one consequence of heavy rain for which governments are most accountable. But in both cases, the governments are making problems worse for the people using these roads. Both a single, intense burst of rainfall as is typical in Chennai and a sustained campaign of showers as in Bangalore will lead to flooding. The only option for this water to drain will be stormwater drains. In Pondy Bazaar, once the flood waters had drained, [experts found](https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/what-s-flooding-chennai-s-t-nagar-mainly-rs-110-cr-stormwater-drain-network-158155?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the area's new stormwater drains, installed/refurbished at a cost of Rs 110 crore under the 'Smart Cities' mission, were insufficiently voluminous and, crucially, in almost a dozen areas, were located higher off the ground than where the water collected. This combination caused water to flow out of stormwater drains in the area, maintaining the mainstem in a constant state of floodedness. There is a related problem (the real fourth problem) that many news reports at the time didn't address, and is likely to affect the new Sampige Road as much as it did Pondy Bazaar: *garbage*. Stormwater drains around India's cities are routinely choked with plastic trash quite simply because people litter where they feel like, with no regard for public or, for that matter, infrastructural hygiene. The drains around Pondy Bazaar were already poorly planned; they're also highly likely to have been loaded with trash, leaving the rainwater with fewer opportunities to move away from the area. Similarly, in the near future, the people of Sampige Road will enjoy easier walking, driving and shopping experiences for a little while longer than if the city had relaid the road with asphalt – but at one point, the area will confront the same state of dysfunction towards which the road is already barrelling today: stagnating water, traffic jams and unsafe conditions for pedestrians. The garbage problem is harder to solve because it's not a technological problem but a social one: it's more wicked, requires 'soft' solutions like raising awareness and changing people's attitudes, needs carefully designed incentives that – among other things – will require people to repose more faith in the government, and will ultimately improve living conditions without translating into bursts of revenue from a contractor hired to build the road and later to undertake expensive repairs. Concrete roads do have another advantage: manufacturing asphalt required for road-laying is more harmful to the climate than manufacturing concrete (although [both](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809014/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [materials](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are up there in terms of their carbon footprints), but I'm yet to read of city officials alluding to this benefit in their statements. I'm also curious about the respective carbon footprints for the entire lifecycle of both materials in use, especially considering asphalt can be made in smaller quantities and asphalt roads are amenable to being patched. Perhaps more importantly, both Bengaluru and Chennai are endowed with well-funded, well-staffed research institutes (IISc and IIT Madras). Couldn't city officials have commissioned them to develop road-laying materials that last longer, can be patched and are absorbent or porous? Such a material, together with changed social attitudes towards littering and a ban on cars on Sampige Road, will be the ideal solution. *Featured image credit: Credit: Liam Riby/Unsplash.* ### There's a scientistic eclipse URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/30/theres-a-scientistic-eclipse/ Last updated: 2022-04-30T05:14:54.000Z There is a solar eclipse today and news websites are as usual participating in amplifying nonsense. It's *prima facie* not nonsense in and of itself but because it's not qualified as astrological material. That is, it's an example of news sites not exercising good judgment. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/ef19a-screenshot-2022-04-30-at-10.28.50-am.png?w=1024&h=342) Science doesn't have a monopoly on sense-making, so calling it "nonsense" isn't fair. Science also isn't implicitly entitled to be the prime belief system. So while these assertions are non-scientific, they shouldn't be qualified with respect to meaning but to the scientific truth-value. But assuming science has a monopoly implicitly elevates science's ability and efficacy to make sense, especially in a non-exclusionary way. People who wouldn't eat during an eclipse aren't necessarily wanting for scientific facts. Sometimes, it's because of how scientific literacy is currently limited. Pseudoscience enslaves but so does science. So we should be mindful of the words we use to describe pseudoscience, and keep open the possibility that the social consequences of these two knowledge systems can, in quality, overlap. As I [wrote in an older post](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/12/27/eclipse-rationalism-superstitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > There is a hegemony of science as well. Beyond the mythos of its own cosmology (to borrow Paul Feyerabend’s quirky turn of phrase in *Against Method*), there is also the matter of who controls knowledge production and utilisation. In *Caliban and the Witch* (1998), Sylvia Federici traces the role of the bourgeoisie in expelling beliefs in magic and witchcraft in preindustrial Europe only to prepare the worker’s body to accommodate the new rigours of labour under capitalism. She writes, “Eradicating these practices was a necessary condition for the capitalist rationalisation of work, since magic appeared as an illicit form of power and an instrument to obtain what one wanted without work, that is, a refusal of work in action. ‘Magic kills industry,’ lamented Francis Bacon…”. For example, [hardcore](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/02/25/slate-star-codex-no-time-for-malice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), or by that same measure naïve, rationalists have been known to erect a *pandal* on the road and eat food during an eclipse, apparently in defiance of the beliefs of others. But that's only defiance *per se*. Their actions say that they have underestimated the agility of the belief system and apparently ignored its punitive mechanics. Ultimately, it comes off as ignorant and is thus easily dismissed. Why is science "the best"? It isn't, and such scientism is harmful. What is "the best" is whatever empowers. The knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples predates science. Are they automatically disempowered? No. Other eclipse beliefs exist because of where social power and legitimacy lie. People believe it because others believe it. As [Renny Thomas's new book](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/science-religion-india-renny-thomas-book-review/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) suggests, they may also believe it because we have erected a false binary between science and religion. Zee News's wording also presumes all "Indians" are "orthodox Hindus" and that their beliefs are indistinguishable from (unverified) Ayurvedic prescriptions – a form of the religion/culture superposition to which the regime has often taken recourse. (There is also a Hindiness to its language: "grahan" v. "grahanam", for example.) If astrology is pseudoscience, is science pseudo-astrology? The Indian right-wing is fixated on impressing the West, otherwise it may have noticed this. 😜 This said, astrology is bad and must be curtailed because it has a [greater potential](https://thewire.in/caste/astrology-iisc-alumni-association-pseudoscience-superstitions-caste?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for harm. But we won't fix anything by reflexively replacing it with another hard-to-independently-verify knowledge system. If one enslaves, the other must liberate. Otherwise, to quote from [an older post](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2019/12/27/eclipse-rationalism-superstitions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > But using science communication as a tool to dismantle myths, instead of tackling superstitious rituals that (to be lazily simplistic) suppress the acquisition of potentially liberating knowledge, is to create an opposition that precludes the peaceful coexistence of multiple knowledge systems. In this setting, science communication perpetuates the misguided view that science is the only useful way to acquire and organise our knowledge — which is both ahistorical and injudicious. *This post is also available as a* [*Twitter thread*](https://twitter.com/1amnerd/status/1520263332258717696?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* ### Why there's no guarantee that Musk's Twitter will resemble Dorsey's URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/26/why-theres-no-guarantee-that-musks-twitter-will-resemble-dorseys/ Last updated: 2022-04-26T03:54:18.000Z A lot of folks are saying they're not going to leave Twitter, in the wake of [Elon Musk's acquisition](https://file+.vscode-resource.vscode-webview.net/Users/4manifold/Documents/musk-twitter.md?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the social media platform, because Musk and its once and long-time CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey aren't very different: both are billionaires, tech-bros, libertarian and pro-cryptocurrencies. And they say that they did okay under Dorsey, so why wouldn't we under Musk? I find this argument to only be partly acceptable. The other part is really two parts. First, Twitter under Dorsey is significantly different because he cofounded the platform and nurtured through a few years of relative quiescence, followed by a middle period and finally to the decidedly popular platform that it is today. (I joined Twitter in the middle period, in 2008, when it was hard to say if the next person you were going meet in real-life was be on Twitter. Today the converse is true.) Musk, however, is inheriting a more matured platform, and one whose potential he believes hasn't been "fulfilled". I'm not sure what that means, and the things Musk has said on Twitter itself haven't inspired confidence. Both men may be evil billionaires but setting aside the sorts of things Dorsey supports for a moment, you've got to admit he doesn't have nearly the persona, the reputation and the cult-following that Musk does. These differences distinguish these men in significant ways vis-à-vis a social media platform – a beast that's nothing like EVs, spaceflight or renewables. (In fact, if Musk were to adopt an engineer's approach to 'fixing' whatever he believes he's wrong with Twitter, there are many examples of the sort of problematic solutions that could emerge [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31153277&ref=slightlyacidic.com).) The second part of the "Musk and Dorsey are pretty much the same" misclaim is that a) Musk is taking the company private and b) Musk has called himself a "free-speech absolutist". I'm [not a free-speech absolutist](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/16/elon-musk-is-a-free-speech-elitist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in fact most of the people who have championed free speech *in my circles* are not. Free-speech absolutism is the view that Twitter (in this context) should support everyone's right to free speech without any limitations on what they're allowed to say. To those like me who reject the left-right polarisation in society today in favour of the more accurate pro-anti democracy polarisation, Twitter adopting Musk's stance as policy would effectively recast attempts to curtail abuse and harrassment directed at non-conservative voices as "silencing the right", and potentially allow their acerbic drivel to spread unchecked on the platform. Running Twitter [famously affected](https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514942308147347458?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Dorsey. Unless we can be sure that the platform and its users will have the same effect on Musk, and temper his characteristic mercuriality, Twitter will remain a place worth leaving. ### 2.5 weeks since WP.com's price revision URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/21/2-5-weeks-since-wp-coms-price-revision/ Last updated: 2022-04-21T07:02:31.000Z WordPress.com squandered the trust of bloggers it had accrued for almost a decade (approx. since the advent of their Calypso editor) with the decision to introduce the Pro plan the way it did. There were many proclamations – direct and indirect – in between, chiefly by Automattic CEO Matt Maullenweg, about how this trust was important to the company. Now I've got to think that the Pro plan rollout was a true reflection of how WordPress.com perceived the trust, and wonder how WordPress.com will treat hobby bloggers in future. The most popular request in responses to WordPress.com's [post on its blog](https://wordpress.com/blog/2022/04/05/introducing-wordpress-pro-one-plan-infinite-possibilities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and CEO Dave Martin's [post in the forums](https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/pricing-feedback/?view=all&ref=slightlyacidic.com) is that WordPress.com needs to bring back its old plans (which the Pro plan replaced) quite simply because none of the users found them confusing. I tend to agree. Both Martin and Mullenweg have said that WordPress.com created the Pro plan because the old plans were confusing – but considering I'm yet to come across a WordPress.com blogger who feels the same way, I suspect this is something WordPress.com wanted to do to "score the investors a higher multiple", but which "seems like a move that is incongruent with the mission statement and the strengths of the existing brand" ([source](https://masterwp.com/why-is-wordpress-com-squeezing-its-free-users/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). And once they made this decision, they retconned it by claiming that it was what bloggers wanted. I'm glad all the bloggers in the post comments and on the forum spoke up. Third, there are some WordPress.com staff members who are periodically encouraging WordPress.com users to keep sharing their feedback as responses on the forum. The Wordpress.com blog post also said that they're listening to users' feedback, implying that users should keep it coming. I found this heartening at first but now, almost three weeks since the abrupt price change, these calls seem disingenuous. How much feedback does WordPress.com really need to understand the extent to which it screwed up? If it's a lot, then it would mean the company screwed up big time. (I think this might be a valid concern based on this line in Martin's forum post {emphasis added}: "We **plan to test** adding monthly pricing back in, but we don’t have a specific date for this just yet.") Surely it's the responsibility of the top management to obviate such a tremendous need for feedback by anticipating what it is that its users want. This also makes me doubt the short surveys that used to appear on the WordPress.com dashboard and what the people running it took away from the responses. It's annoying that WordPress.com staff constantly ask for feedback to be given *right now*, instead of in the many, many years in which bloggers were happily publishing on the platform. This is exacerbated by the fact that none of the staff members are able to provide a deadline for changes to the Pro plan, which I can only take to mean that the company didn't anticipate any of these changes. ### To be better at being anti-crypto URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/20/to-be-better-at-being-anti-crypto/ Last updated: 2022-04-20T13:51:17.000Z Molly White has a [difficult read](https://blog.mollywhite.net/anti-crypto-toxicity/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), one that I'm forced to agree with in spite of my vehemently anti-cryptocurrency position. Three representative paragraphs from her post: > I … think that \[cryptocurrency-based financial solutions\] are enormously attractive to people who see them as a tangible option in a world where these problems are not being solved—where we are being failed by our political establishments in so, so many ways. I don’t think they are a feasible solution, and in fact I think they will worsen many of the problems they ostensibly aim to solve, but they are certainly being sold as the solution, and a solution that people desperately need. > > And I really can’t fault someone for deciding to hitch their wagon to crypto and web3 because they are hopeful that those salesmen might be on to something. I can disagree with them, I can explain my point of view, I can think that their engagement is in some small way enabling something I fundamentally disagree with and believe to be harmful—but I can’t believe that buying some crypto, collecting an NFT, or joining a DAO automatically make someone a bad person. > > … > > If you feel the urge to “cyberbully” someone in crypto, direct it at the powerful players behind crypto projects that are actively taking advantage of the vulnerable. Or, just as reasonably, direct it at the powerful tech executives, venture capitalists, elected representatives, and lobbyists who have contributed to the untenable situation we find ourselves in. Or the policymakers and governmental agencies who have failed to uphold their duty in regulating crypto and enforcing existing regulation that would protect people from rampant fraud. But not the artist who hoped to earn a few bucks selling their digital art in what is otherwise an extremely difficult field, or the person who hoped that maybe a lucky crypto buy could help them dig out of crushing debt just a tiny bit faster. This is a sensible position – and one that's hard to remember in the heat of an argument when the other side defends a choice to invest in or deepen one's position on cryptocurrencies. But to this picture of two sides I'd add two more (in fact, it may well be a continuous spectrum of positions): 1. Those who back cryptocurrencies knowing the harm it causes, to the environment as much as social justice, while also not exploring other financial options well enough. 2. Those who invest in cryptocurrencies in ignorance of its nature, technological sophistry and ontological vacuity, and later claim they "didn't know" but also don't/can't exist because they have sunk costs. These people are certainly [less in the wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FRelativity%5Fof%5FWrong?ref=slightlyacidic.com) than those who are outright evil – the people deserving of our vitriol, in White's estimation. And even between these two 'new' groups, I think those who are lazy are *wronger* than those who are ignorant. I was prompted to think of these two gradations to White's spectrum because they describe some of my friends. In fact, I think I have at least one friend belonging to each of the four groups before us: - "Those without another solution available to problem at hand", - "Those who trip into it even though they're educated well-enough to not", - "Those reaching for cryptocurrencies without sufficiently exploring other options", and - "Those aware of the bad outcomes but doing it anyway to become richer". I should of course clarify that these two additional groups exist principally because of privilege. That is, they become visible when you look at White's first group through the prism of privileges that accrue to different social groups in India, particularly among the upper class, upper caste lot: they have, without exception, passively but automatically foregone ignorance or another similar excuse for their actions. And it's because of their privileges, and not particularly because its wanton exercise has been directed at cryptocurrencies on this occasion, that they don't deserve to be spared our scorn. ### Renewable energy and technological debt URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/20/renewable-energy-and-technological-debt/ Last updated: 2022-04-20T06:08:51.000Z It's sensible to read anything the World Bank puts down in words and feel like something's amiss. I also recently read the following, on the [Yale E360 blog](https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-are-nature-based-solutions-on-climate-being-overlooked?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (h/t @SanerDenizen): > … policymakers and funders still mostly prefer engineering solutions. \[One study\] found that less than 10 percent of funding for climate adaptation in the least-developed nations – which are usually the most vulnerable –went into projects that harnessed nature. The remaining 90 percent "poured concrete." Overall, the UN Environment Programme and the Global Commission on Adaptation, an international body set up by the Dutch government, both estimate that about 1 percent of total climate finance has so far gone toward such nature-based adaptation projects. Put these two together and then read this tweet: … and you might start to wonder if renewable energy is the new oil – deemed to be necessary, even vital, in the nascent stages; lending itself to the persistence of extractive economies and resource colonialism; open to being prospected by engineers in various countries by potential and capacity; guaranteeing predictable outcomes (over the implicit variance of those of nature-based solutions) up to the medium term but leading to over-engineering in the longer; and finally leading the way to obsolescence, disorganisation and [technical debt](https://www.bmc.com/blogs/technical-debt-explained-the-complete-guide-to-understanding-and-dealing-with-technical-debt/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Sci-Hub isn't just for scientists URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/19/sci-hub-isnt-just-for-scientists/ Last updated: 2022-04-19T13:16:27.000Z Quite a few reporters from other countries have reached out to me, directly or indirectly, to ask about scientists to whom they can speak about how important Sci-Hub is to their work. This attention to Sci-Hub is commendable, against the backdrop of [the case in Delhi high court](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/academic-publishing-access-elsevier-sci-hub-alexandra-elbakyan-libgen-copyright-claims-delhi-high-court/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), filed by a consortium of three 'legacy' publishers of scientific papers, to have access to the website cutoff in India. There has been a groundswell of support for Sci-Hub in India, to no one's surprise, considering the exorbitant paywalls that legacy publishers have erected in front of the papers they published. As a result, before Sci-Hub, it was impossible to access these papers outside of university libraries, and universities libraries themselves paid through the nose to keep up these journal subscription. But as in drug development, the development of scientific knowledge also happens on government money for the most part, so legacy publishers effectively often charge people twice: first when they publish papers written by scientists funded by the government and second when they need to lift the paywalls. The prices are also somewhat arbitrary, and often far removed from the costs publishers incur to publish each paper and/or to maintain their websites. All this said, I think one more demographic is often missing in this conversation about the importance of Sci-Hub, as a result of which the latter is also limited, unfairly, to scientists. This is the community of science writers, reporters, editors, etc. I have used Sci-Hub regularly since 2013, either to identify papers that I can report on, write about cool scientific work on my blog or to select papers that are data-heavy and attempt to replicate their findings by writing code of my own. We must also highlight Sci-Hub's benefits for journalists if only to remember that science can empower in more ways than one – including providing the means by which to test the validity of knowledge and reduce uncertainty, letting people learn the nature of facts and expertise based on what is considered valid or legitimate, and broadening access to the tools of science and the methods of proofs beyond those whose careers depend on it. ### Middle fingers to the NYT and NYer URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/19/middle-fingers-to-the-nyt-and-nyer/ Last updated: 2022-04-19T03:23:38.000Z On April 18, celebrity journalist [Ronan Farrow](https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1516033825490493445?ref=slightlyacidic.com) tweeted that he'd "spent two years digging" into the inside story of Pegasus, the spyware whose use by democratic governments around the world – including that of India – to spy on members of civil society, their political opponents and their dissenters was reported by an international collaboration that included [*The Wire*](https://thewire.in/media/revealed-how-the-wire-partners-cracked-pegasus-project-implications-india?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Yet Farrow credits only "Pegasus Project" in his story, once, and even then only to say that their reporting "reinforced the links between NSO Group and anti-democratic states" – mentioning nothing of what many of the journalists uncovered, probably to avoid admitting that his own piece overlaps significantly with the Project's pieces – even as his own piece is cast as a revelatory investigation. Tell me, Mr Farrow, when you dug and dug, did you literally go underground? Or is this another form of [your tendency](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to keep half the spotlight on yourself when your stories are published? This is the second instance just this week of an influential American publication re-reporting something one or some other outlets in the "Orient" already published, in both cases a substantial amount of time earlier, while making no mention that they're simply following up. But worse, the *New York Times*, the second offender, whose Stephanie Nolen and Karan Deep Singh reported on [Amruta Byatnal's report](https://www.devex.com/news/exclusive-the-pushback-against-who-s-imminent-covid-19-excess-deaths-estimate-101522?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Devex* after two weeks and based on *the same sources*, wrote the story like it was breaking news. (The story: India wanted the WHO to delay the release of a report by 10 years because it said India had at least four-times as many deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic as its official record claimed.) To make matters worse, India's Union health ministry (in a government in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls all the shots) responded to the *New York Times* story but not to *Devex* (nor to [*The Wire Science*'s re-reporting](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-who-delay-covid-excess-deaths-data-10-years-setback/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), based on comments from other sources and with credit to Byatnal and *Devex*). This BJP government and its ministers like to claim that they're better than the West on one occasion and that India needs to overcome its awe of the West on another, yet [when Western publications (re)report](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2018/01/29/we-dont-have-a-problem-with-the-west-were-just-obsessed-with-it/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) developments discovered by journalists working through the minefield that is India's landscape of stories, the ministers turn into meerkats. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/natgeowild-nat-geo-wild-meerkat-lookout-2imYjutn9uvAGR2ILU?ref=slightlyacidic.com) For the journalists in between who first broke the stories, it's a double whammy: American outlets that will brazenly steal their ideas and obfuscate memories of their initiative and the Indian government that will treat them as if they don't exist. ### Re: Musk v. Twitter URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/17/re-musk-v-twitter/ Last updated: 2022-04-17T12:52:11.000Z I don't want Elon Musk to acquire Twitter because [I don't like](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/16/elon-musk-is-a-free-speech-elitist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) his idea of free speech. Twitter, which adopted a 'poison pill strategy', may just be bargaining on the other hand: > True to form, Twitter left its door open by emphasising that its poison pill will not prevent its board from “engaging with parties or accepting an acquisition proposal” at a higher price. > > … > > But on Thursday he indicated he was ready to wage a legal battle. > > “If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty,” Musk tweeted. “The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale.” > > ['What is Twitter’s ‘poison pill’ and what is it supposed to do?'](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/16/explainer-what-twitters-poison-pill-is-supposed-to-do?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Al Jazeera*, April 16, 2022 Rosen calls out the weird thread by @Yishan that, to me, failed to acknowledge the responsibility of social media platforms in placing the lies increasingly typical of conservative politics on the same footing as pro-democracy writing, and undermining the value of public dialogue. What might Twitter be like under Musk? His 'Pravda' idea comes to mind: > Elon Musk [tweeted](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999367582271422464?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this week that he plans to setup an online platform called ‘Pravda’, where people can “rate the core truth of any article and track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor and publication.” This isn’t a joke. Bloomberg [reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-23/musk-filed-for-pravda-business-months-before-scorning-the-media?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on May 24, “The California secretary of state’s website shows a Pravda Corp. was registered in October in Delaware. The filing agent and the address listed – 216 Park Road, Burlingame, California – are identical to the name and location used for at least two other Musk entities: brain-computer interface startup Neuralink Corp. and tunnel-digging company Boring Co.” > > … > > Musk wants to call this platform ‘Pravda’. Even as an attempt at irony or black humour, the name cannot transcend the founding conceit of the initiative. The word is Russian for ‘truth’; more notably, *Pravda* was the name of the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It served the Bolsheviks at the time of the 1917 revolution, and was published continuously until 1991\. Until the late 1980s, it published propaganda that furthered the cause of ‘actually existing socialism’ – the official ideology of the erstwhile USSR. While this ‘official organ’ of the Communist Party underwent an ideological transition towards 1990 and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union, *Pravda*‘s editorial positions on either side of this historic line illustrate the vacancy of Musk’s idea as well as choice of name. > > … > > Musk is lazy because, instead of trying to build a credibility-rating platform, he could either engage with journalists – especially women, whose credibility is constantly dragged down by faceless trolls assailing them not for their views but for their gender – and the underlying idea of journalism (together with how its purpose continues to be misunderstood). He is lazy because he thinks that by getting the numbers on his side, he can show journalists up for the phonies he thinks they are. Musk is likely to have better success at shaping public opinion if he launched a news publication himself. > > ['There Is Neither Truth nor News in Elon Musk's 'Pravda' – Forget Usefulness'](https://thewire.in/media/elon-musk-journalism-credibility-pravda?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Wire*, May 25, 2018 Also: > While Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter Inc., he’s no longer the company’s largest shareholder. > > Funds held by Vanguard Group recently upped their stake in the social-media platform, making the asset manager Twitter’s largest shareholder and bumping Mr. Musk out of the top spot. > > Vanguard disclosed on April 8 that it now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3% of the company, according to the most recent publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. > > ['Elon Musk Is No Longer Twitter’s Largest Shareholder'](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elon-musk-twitter/card/elon-musk-is-no-longer-twitter-s-largest-shareholder-BNwzaP8JDQLlUc6yAJBb?mod=e2tw&ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Wall Street Journal*, April 14, 2022 Ultimately, this is what we're hanging on right now: > Still I imagine that Twitter's bankers at Goldman Sachs will sit down with Musk's bankers at Morgan Stanley and Goldman will say “so uh where's the financing coming from” and Morgan Stanley will say “oh the financing is in this can” and hand Goldman a can and Goldman will open the can and a bunch of fake snakes will pop out. “AAAHHH,” Goldman will scream, and then they will chuckle and say “oh Elon, you got us again” and everyone will have a good laugh. Because, again, uniquely among public-company CEOs, Elon Musk has in the past pretended he was going to take a public company private with pretend financing! I am not saying that he’s joking now; I am just saying he’s the only person who has ever made this particular joke in the past. > > ['Sure Elon Musk Might Buy Twitter'](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-15/sure-elon-musk-might-buy-twitter?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Bloomberg*, April 15, 2022 Then there's this guy: ### Free-speech as an instrument of repression URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/16/elon-musk-is-a-free-speech-elitist/ Last updated: 2022-04-16T09:19:20.000Z One of the more eye-opening discussions on Elon Musk's attempt to take control of Twitter, and the Twitter board's attempts to defend the company from the bid, have been playing out on Hacker News ([here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025061&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and, after Twitter's response, [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31043439&ref=slightlyacidic.com)) – the popular discussion board for topics related to the tech industry. The first discussion has already racked up over 3,000 comments, considered high for topics on the platform – but most of them are emblematic of the difference between the industry's cynical view of politics and that of those who have much more skin in the game, for whom it's a problem of regulation, moral boundaries and, inevitably, the survival of democracies. (Here is [one notable exception](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31029496&ref=slightlyacidic.com).) For example, the majority of comments on the first discussion are concerned with profits, Twitter's management, the stock market and laws pertaining to shareholding. The second one also begins with a comment along similar lines, repeating some points made in the 'All In Podcast', together with an additional comment about how "one AI engineer from Tesla could solve Twitter's bot and spam problem". The podcast is [hosted by](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCESLZhusAkFfsNsApnjF%5FCg/about?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg, all investors and entrepreneurs of the Silicon Valley variety. A stream of comments rebuts this one, but in terms of it being an engineering problem instead of the kind of place Twitter might be if Musk takes ownership. There have also been several comments either along the lines of or premised on the fact that "many people don't use Twitter anyway, so Twitter's board shouldn't deprive its shareholders of the generous premium that Musk is offering". Not many people use Twitter compared to Facebook – but the platform is in sufficient use in India and in other countries for its misuse to threaten journalists, activists and protestors, to undermine public dialogue on important government policies, and to spread propaganda and misinformation of great consequence. Such a mentality – to take the money and run, courtesy of a business mogul worth $260 billion – represents an onion of problems, layer over layer, but most of all that those running a company in one small part of one country can easily forget that social media platforms are sites of public dialogue, that enable new forms of free speech, in a different country. If Twitter goes down, or goes to Musk, which is worse, those who are nervous enough will switch to Mastodon (I have been running a server for three years now), but if this is an acceptable outcome, platforms like Twitter can only encourage cynicism when they seek to cash in on their identities as supporters of free speech but then buckle with something Muskesque comes calling. Thus far, Twitter hasn't buckled, which is heartening, but since it is a private company, perhaps it is just a matter of time. Another point that grates at me is that there seems to be little to no acknowledgment in the Hacker News discussions that there are constitutional limits to free speech in all democracies. (Again, there are nearly 4,000 comments on both discussions combined, so I could have missed some.) As Article 19(2) of the [Indian Constitution](https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/COI...pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reads: > (2) Nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of 4\[the sovereignty and integrity of India\], the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence. Musk [has said](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk-launches-43-billion-hostile-takeover-of-twitter?ref=slightlyacidic.com) he wants to take over Twitter because, in a letter he wrote to the company, it "will neither thrive nor serve \[its free speech\] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company." He also said separately that "having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation". Yet his own conviction in the virtues of free-speech absolutism has blinded him from seeing he's simply bullying Twitter into changing its agenda, or that he is bullying its hundreds of millions of users into accepting his. He also seems unable to acknowledge that "maximally trusted and broadly inclusive" – by which I'm not-so-sure he means both the far-left and the far-right should be allowed to mouth off, without any curbs – points only to one type of social media platform: one that is owned, run and used by the people (Mastodon is one example). As another point from the 'All In Podcast' was quoted on the forum: "The elites have somehow inverted history so they now believe that it is not censorship that is the favored tool of fascists and authoritarians, even though every fascist and despot in history used censorship to maintain power, but instead believe free speech, free discourse, and free thought are the instruments of repression." It's hard to tell which 'free speech' they mean: the one in both the US and India, where it is limited in ways that are designed to protect the safety of the people and their rights, or the lopsided one in Musk's mind that free speech must be guaranteed in the absolute. I have no interest in listening to the podcast – but the latter is entirely plausible: while keeping the rest of us occupied with fact-checking The Party's lies, lodging police complaints against its violent supporters and protecting the rights of the poor and the marginalised, the ministers can run the country in peace. ### MIT develops thermo-PV cell with 40% efficiency URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/14/from-mit-a-hot-new-way-to-generate-electricity/ Last updated: 2022-04-14T14:47:01.000Z Researchers at MIT have developed a heat engine that can convert heat to electricity with 40% efficiency. Unlike traditional heat engines – a common example is the internal combustion engine inside a car – this device doesn't have any moving parts. Second, this device has been designed to work with a heat source that has a temperature of 1,900º to 2,400º C. Effectively, it's like a solar cell that has been optimised to work with photons from vastly hotter sources – although its efficiency still sets it apart. If you know the history, you'll understand why 40% is a big deal. And if you know a bit of optics and some materials science, you'll understand how this device could be an important part of the world's efforts to decarbonise its power sources. But first the history. We've known how to build heat engines for almost two millennia. They were first built to convert heat, generated by burning a fuel, into mechanical energy – so they've typically had moving parts. For example, the internal combustion engine combusts petrol or diesel and harnesses the energy produced to move a piston. However, the engine can only *extract* mechanical work from the fuel – it can't put the heat back. If it did, it would have to 'give back' the work it just extracted, nullifying the engine's purpose. So once the piston has been moved, the engine dumps the heat and begins the next cycle of heat extraction from more fuel. (In the parlance of thermodynamics, the origin of the heat is called the *source* and its eventual resting place is called the *sink*.) The inevitability of this waste heat keeps the heat engine's efficiency from ever reaching 100% – and is further dragged down by the mechanical energy losses implicit in the moving parts (the piston, in this case). In 1820, the French mechanical engineer Nicolas Sadi Carnot derived the formula to calculate the maximum possible efficiency of a heat engine that works in this way. (The formula also assumes that the engine is reversible – i.e. that it can pump heat from a colder source to a hotter sink.) The number spit out by this formula is called the Carnot efficiency. No heat engine can have an energy efficiency that's greater than its Carnot efficiency. The internal combustion engines of today have a Carnot efficiency of [around 37%](https://news.mit.edu/2010/explained-carnot-0519?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A steam generator at a large power plant can go up to 51%. Against this background, the heat engine that the MIT team has developed has a celebration-worthy efficiency of 40%. The other notable thing about it is the amount of heat with which it can operate. There are two potential applications of the new device that come immediately to mind: to use the waste heat from something that operates at 1,900-2,400º C and to take the heat from something that stores energy at those temperatures. There aren't many entities in the world that maintain a temperature of 1,900-2,400º C as well as dump waste heat. Work on the device caught my attention after I spotted a [press release from MIT](https://news.mit.edu/2022/thermal-heat-engine-0413?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The release described one application that combined both possibilities in the form of a *thermal battery system*. Here, heat from the Sun is concentred in graphite blocks (using lenses and mirrors) that are located in a highly insulated chamber. When the need arises, the insulation can be removed to a suitable extent for the graphite to lose some heat, which the new device then converts to electricity. On Twitter, user Scott Leibrand (@ScottLeibrand) also [pointed me](https://twitter.com/scottleibrand/status/1514459475402321929?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to a similar technology called FIRES – short for 'Firebrick Resistance-Heated Energy Storage', proposed by MIT researchers in 2018\. According to [a paper they wrote](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919305082?ref=slightlyacidic.com), it "stores electricity as … high-temperature heat (1000–1700 °C) in ceramic firebrick, and discharges it as a hot airstream to either heat industrial plants in place of fossil fuels, or regenerate electricity in a power plant." They add that "traditional insulation" could limit heat leakage from the firebricks to less than 3% per day and estimate a storage cost of $10/kWh – "substantially less expensive than batteries". This is where the new device could shine, or better yet enable a complete power-production system: by converting heat deliberately leaked from the graphite blocks or firebricks to electricity, at 40% efficiency. Even given the fact that heat transfer is more efficient at higher temperatures, this is impressive – more since such energy storage options are also geared for the long-term. Let's also take a peek at how the device works. It's called a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell. The "photovoltaic" in the name indicates that it uses the photovoltaic effect to create an electric current. It's closely related to the photoelectric effect. In both cases, an incoming photon knocks out an electron in the material, creating a voltage that then supports an electric current. In the photoelectric effect, the electron is completely knocked out of the material. In the photovoltaic effect, the electron stays within the material and can be recaptured. Second, in order to achieve the high efficiency, the research team wrote in its paper that it did three things. It's a bunch of big words but they actually have straightforward implications, as I explain, so don't back down. **1\.** "The usage of higher bandgap materials in combination with emitter temperatures between 1,900 and 2,400 °C" – Band gap refers to the energy difference between two levels. In metals, for example, when electrons in the valence band are imparted enough energy, they can jump across the band gap into the conduction band, where they can flow around the metal conducting electricity. The same thing happens in the TPV cell, where incoming photons can 'kick' electrons into the material's conduction band if they have the right amount of energy. Because the photon source is a very hot object, the photons are bound to have the energy corresponding to the infrared wavelength of light – which carries around 1-1.5 electron-volt, or eV. So the corresponding TPV material also needs to have a bandgap of 1-1.5 eV. This brings us to the second point. **2\.** "High-performance multi-junction architectures with bandgap tunability enabled by high-quality metamorphic epitaxy" – **Architecture** refers to the configuration of the cell's physical, electrical and chemical components and **epitaxy** refers to the way in which the cell is made. In the new TPV cell, the MIT team used a multi-junction architecture that allowed the device to 'accept' photons of a range of wavelengths (corresponding to the temperature range). This is important because the incoming photons can have one of two effects: either kick out an electron or heat up the material. The latter is undesirable and should be avoided, so the multi-junction setup to absorb as many photons as possible. A related issue is that the power output per unit volume of an object radiating heat scales according to the fourth power of its temperature. That is, if its temperature increases by x, its power output per volume will increase by x^4\. Since the heat source of the TPV cell is so hot, it will have a high power output, thus again privileging the multi-junction architecture. The epitaxy is not interesting to me, so I'm skipping it. But I should note that electric cells like the current one aren't ubiquitous because making them is a highly intricate process. **3\.** "The integration of a highly reflective back surface reflector (BSR) for band-edge filtering" – The MIT press release explains this part clearly: "The cell is fabricated from three main regions: a high-bandgap alloy, which sits over a slightly lower-bandgap alloy, underneath which is a mirror-like layer of gold" – the BSR. "The first layer captures a heat source’s highest-energy photons and converts them into electricity, while lower-energy photons that pass through the first layer are captured by the second and converted to add to the generated voltage. Any photons that pass through this second layer are then reflected by the mirror, back to the heat source, rather than being absorbed as wasted heat." While it seems obvious that technology like this will play an important part in humankind's future, particularly given the attractiveness of maintaining a long-term energy store as well as the use of a higher-efficiency heat engine, the economics matter muchly. I don't know how much the new TPV cell will cost, especially since it isn't being mass-produced yet; in addition, the design of the thermal battery system will determine how many square feet of TPV cells will be required, which in turn will affect the cells' design as well as the economics of the overall facility. This said, the fact that the system as a whole will have so few moving parts as well as the availability of both sunlight and graphite or firebricks, or even [molten silicon](https://www.solarpaces.org/mit-proposes-pv-to-discharge-energy-from-2400c-silicon-thermal-storage/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which has a high heat capacity, keep the lucre of MIT's high-temperature TPVs alive. *Featured image: A thermophotovoltaic cell (size 1 cm x 1 cm) mounted on a heat sink designed to measure the TPV cell efficiency. To measure the efficiency, the cell is exposed to an emitter and simultaneous measurements of electric power and heat flow through the device are taken. Caption and credit: Felice Frankel/MIT, CC BY-NC-ND.* ### At last, physicists report finding the 'fourth sign' of superconductivity URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/13/at-last-physicists-report-finding-the-fourth-sign-of-superconductivity/ Last updated: 2022-04-13T10:11:17.000Z Using an advanced investigative technique, researchers at Stanford University have found that cuprate superconductors – which become superconducting at higher temperatures than their better-known *conventional* counterparts – transition into this exotic state in a different way. The discovery provides new insights into the way cuprate superconductors work and eases the path to discovering a room-temperature superconductor one day. A superconductor is a material that can transport an electric current with zero resistance. The most well-known and also better understood superconductors are certain metallic alloys. They transition from their 'normal' resistive state to the superconducting state when their temperature is brought to a very low value, typically a few degrees above absolute zero. The theory that explains the microscopic changes that occur as the material transitions is called Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. As the material crosses its threshold temperature, called the *critical temperature*, BCS theory predicts four signatures of superconductivity. If these four signatures occur, we can be sure that the material has become superconducting. **First**, the material's resistivity collapses and its electrons begin to flow without any resistance through the bulk – the electronic effect. **Second**, the material expels all magnetic fields within its bulk – the magnetic (a.k.a. Meissner) effect. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/416aa-1280px-meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg?w=1024&h=732) A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor, thanks to the Meissner effect. Credit: Mai-Linh Doan/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 **Third**, the amount of heat required to excite electrons to an arbitrarily higher energy is called the electronic specific heat. This number is lower for superconducting electrons than for non-superconducting electrons – but it increases as the material is warmed, only to drop abruptly to the non-superconducting value at the critical temperature. This is the [effect on the material's thermodynamic behaviour](https://www.britannica.com/science/superconductivity?ref=slightlyacidic.com). **Fourth**, while the energies of the electrons in the non-superconducting state have a variety of values, in the superconducting state some energy levels become unattainable. This shows up as a gap in a chart mapping the energy values. This is the spectroscopic effect. (The prefix 'spectro-' refers to anything that can assume a continuous series of values, on a spectrum.) Conventional superconductors are called so simply because scientists discovered them first and they defined the convention: among other things, they transition from their non-superconducting to superconducting states at very low temperature. Their unconventional counterparts are the high-temperature superconductors, which were discovered in the late 1980s and which transition at temperatures greater than 77 K. And when they do, physicists have thus far observed the corresponding electronic, magnetic and thermodynamic effects – but not the spectroscopic one. A new study, [published on January 26, 2022](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04251-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com), has offered to complete this record. And in so doing, the researchers have uncovered new information about how these materials transition into their superconducting states: it is not the way low-temperature superconductors do. The research team, at Stanford, reportedly did this by studying the thermodynamic effect and connecting it to the material's spectroscopic effect. The deeper problem with zeroing in on the spectroscopic effect in high-temperature superconductors is that an electron energy gap shows up before the transition, when the material is not yet a superconductor, and persists into the superconducting phase. First, recall that at the critical temperature, the electronic specific heat stops increasing and drops suddenly to the non-superconducting value. The specific heat is directly related to the amount of entropy in the system (energy in the system that can't be harnessed to perform work). The entropy is in turn related to the spectral function – an equation that dictates which energy states the electrons can and can't occupy. So by studying changes in the specific heat, the researchers can understand the spectroscopic effect. Second, to study the specific heat, the researchers used a technique called angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES). These are big words but they have a simple meaning. Photo-emission spectroscopy refers to a technique in which energy-loaded photons are shot into a target material, where they knock out those electrons that they have the energy for. Based on the energies of the electrons knocked out, their position and their momenta, scientists can piece together the properties of the electrons inside the material. ARPES takes this a step further by also recording the angle at which the electrons are knocked out of the material. This provides an insight into another property of the superconductor. Specifically, another way in which cuprates differ from conventional superconductors is the way in which the electrons pair up. In the latter, the pairs [break rotational symmetry](https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-d-wave-superconductor-vs-an-s-wave-superconductor?ref=slightlyacidic.com), such that the energy required to break up the pair is not equal in all directions. This affects the way the thermodynamic and spectral effects look in the data. For example, photons fired at certain angles will knock out more electrons from the material than photons incoming at other angles. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/fda48-screenshot-2022-04-13-at-3.21.46-pm.png?w=1024&h=988) The angle-specific measurements of the specific-heat coefficient (y-axis) versus the temperature (x-axis). Credit: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04251-2 Taking all this into account, the researchers reported that a cuprate superconductor called Bi-2212 (bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide) transitions to becoming a superconductor in two steps – unlike the single-step transition of low-temperature superconductors. According to BCS theory, the electrons in a conventional superconductor are encouraged to overcome their mutual repulsion and bind to each other in pairs when two conditions are met: the material's lattice – the grid of atomic nuclei – has a vibrational energy of a certain frequency and the material's temperature is lowered. These electron pairs then move around the material like a fluid of zero viscosity, thus giving rise to superconductivity. The Stanford team found that in Bi-2212, the electrons pair up with each other at around 120 K, but condense into the fluid-like state only at around 77 K. The former gives rise to an energy gap – i.e. the spectroscopic effect – even as the superconducting behaviour itself arises only at the 77-K mark, when the pairs condense. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/3cad5-bi2223-piece3_001.jpg) A small sample of Bi-2212 The side is 1 mm long. Credit: James Slezak, Cornell Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, CC BY-SA 3.0 There are two distinct feats here: finding the spectroscopic effect and finding the two-step transition. Both – but the first more so – were the product of technological advancements. The researchers obtained their Bi-2212 samples, created with specific chemical compositions so as to help analyse the ARPES data, from their collaborators in Japan, and then studied it with two instruments capable of performing ARPES studies at Stanford: an ultraviolet laser and the [Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource](https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/content/science/scientific-techniques?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Makoto Hashimoto, a physicist at Stanford and one of the study's authors, said in a [press statement](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220126122419.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "Recent improvements in the overall performance of those instruments were an important factor in obtaining these high-quality results. They allowed us to measure the energy of the ejected electrons with more precision, stability and consistency." The second finding, of the two-step transition, is important foremost because it is new knowledge of the way cuprate superconductors 'work' *and* because it tells physicists that they will have to achieve two things – instead of just one, as in the case of conventional, low-temperature superconductors – if they want to recreate the same effects in a different material. As Zhi-Xun Shen, the researcher who led the study at Stanford, told [*Physics World*](https://physicsworld.com/a/elusive-superconducting-transition-signature-seen-for-the-first-time/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "This knowledge will ultimately help us make better superconductors in the future." *Featured image: A schematic illustration of an ARPES setup. On the left is the head-on view of the manipulator holding the sample and at the centre is the side-on view. On the right is an electron energy analyser. Credit: Ponor/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* ### Anonymity in journalism and a conflict of ethics URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/12/anonymity-in-journalism-and-a-conflict-of-ethics/ Last updated: 2022-04-12T03:19:01.000Z *I wrote the following essay at the invitation of a journal in December 2020\. (This was the first draft. There were additional drafts that incorporated feedback from a few editors.) It couldn’t be published because I had to back out of the commission owing to limitations of time and health. I formally withdrew my submission on April 11, 2022, and am publishing it in full below.* --- ## Anonymity in journalism and a conflict of ethics ### Tiger’s dilemma I once knew a person, whom I will call Tiger, who worked with the Government of India. Tiger was in a privileged position within the government, not very removed from the upper echelons in fact, and had substantial influence on policies and programmes lying in their domain. (Tiger himself was not a member of any political parties.) Tiger’s work was also commendable: their leadership from within the state had improved the working conditions of and opportunities for people in the corresponding fields, so much so that Tiger was generally well-regarded by their peers and colleagues around the country. Tiger had also produced high-quality work in their domain, which I say here to indicate Tiger’s all-round excellence. But while Tiger ascended through government ranks, the Government of India itself was becoming more detestable – feeding communal discontentment, promoting pseudoscience, advancing crony capitalism and arresting/harassing dissidents. At various points in time, the actions and words of ministers and senior party leaders outright conflicted with the work and the spirit that Tiger and their department stood for – yet Tiger never spoke a word against the state or the party. As the government’s actions grew more objectionable, the more Tiger’s refusal to object became conspicuous. I used to have trouble judging Tiger’s inaction because I had trouble settling a contest between two ethical loci: values versus outcomes. The question here was that, in the face of a dire threat, such as a vengeful government, how much could I ask of my compatriots? It is undeniably crucial to join protests on the streets and demonstrate the strength of numbers – but if the government almost always responds by having police tear-gas protesters or jail a few and keep them there on trumped-up charges under draconian laws for months on end, it becomes morally painful to insist that people join protests. I might wither under the demand of condemning anyone, but especially the less privileged, to such fates. (The more-privileged of course can and should be expected to do more, and fear the consequences of state viciousness less.) If Tiger had spoken up against the prime minister or any of the other offending ministers, Tiger would have lost their position within the government, could in fact have become *persona non grata* in the state’s eyes, and become earmarked for further disparagement. As symbols go, speaking up against an errant government is a powerful one – especially when it originates from a person like Tiger. However, speaking up will still only be a *symbol*, and not an *outcome*. If Tiger had stayed silent to continue to retain their influential place within the government, there is a chance that Tiger’s department may have continued its good work. The implication here is that outcomes trump values. Then again, I presume here that the power of symbols is predictable or even finite in any way, or that they are always inferior to action on the ground, so to speak. This need not be true. For example, if Tiger had spoken up, their peers could have been motivated to speak up as well, avalanching over time into a coordinated, collectivised refusal to cooperate with government initiatives that required their support. It is a remote possibility but it exists; more importantly, it is not for me to dismiss. And it is at least just as tempting to believe values trump outcomes, or certainly complement them. Now, depending on which relationship is true – values over outcomes or vice versa – we still have to contend with the same defining question before we can draw a line between whom to forgive and whom to punish. Put another way, when confronted with deadly force, how much can you ask of your compatriots? There can’t be shame in bending like grasses against a punishing wind, but at the same time someone somewhere must grow a spine. Then again, not everyone may draw the line between these two sides at the same place. This is useful context to consider issues surrounding anonymity and pseudonymity in journalism today. ### Anonymity in journalism Every now and then, *The Wire* and *The Wire Science* receive requests from authors to not have their names attached to their articles. In 2020, *The Wire Science*, which I edit, published at least three articles without a name or under a pseudonym. Anonymity as such has been commonly around for much longer vis-à-vis government officials and experts being quoted saying sensitive things, and individuals whose stories are worth sharing but whose identities are not. It is nearly impossible to regulate journalism, without ‘breaking’ it, from anywhere but the inside. As evasive as this sounds, what is in the public interest is often too fragile to survive the same accountability and transparency we demand of government, or even what the law offers to protect. So the channels to compose and transport such information should be able to be as private as individual liberties and ethical obligations can allow. Anonymity is as a matter of principle possible, and journalists (should) have the liberty, and also the integrity, to determine who deserves it. It may help to view anonymity as a duty instead of as a right. For example, we have all come across many stories this year in which reporters quoted unnamed healthcare workers and government officials to uncover important details of the Government of India’s response to the country’s COVID-19 epidemic. Without presuming to know the nature of relationships between these ‘sources’ and the respective reporters, we can say they all likely share Tiger’s (erstwhile) dilemma: they are on the frontline and they are needed there, but if they speak up and have their identities known, they may lose their ability to stay there. The state of defence reporting in India could offer an important contrast. Unlike health (although this [could be changing](https://science.thewire.in/health/data-covid-19-india-experts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), India’s defence has always been shrouded in secrecy, especially on matters of nuclear weapons, terrorist plots, military installations, etc. Not too long ago, one defence reporter began citing unnamed sources to write up a series of articles about a new chapter of terrorist activities in India’s north. A mutual colleague at the time told me he was unsettled by the series: while unnamed sources are not new, the colleague explained, this reporter almost never named anyone – except perhaps those making banal statements. Many health-related institutions and activities in India need to abide by the requirements of the Right to Information Act, but defence has few such obligations. In such cases, there is no way for the consumers of journalism – the people at large – to ascertain the legitimacy of such reports and in fact have no option but to trust the reporter. But this doesn’t mean the reporter can do what they wish; there are some simple safeguards to prevent mistakes. One as ubiquitous as it is effective is to allow an offended party in the story to defend itself, with some caveats. A notable example of such an incident from the last decade was the 2014 *Rolling Stone* investigation about an alleged incident of rape on the University of Virginia campus. The reporter had trusted her source and hid her identity in the article, using only the mononym ‘Jackie’. Jackie had alleged that she had been raped by a group of men during a fraternity party. However, other reporters subsequently noticed a series of inconsistencies that quickly snowballed into the alarming revelation that Jackie had probably fabricated the incident, and *Rolling Stone* had missed it. In this case, *Rolling Stone* itself claimed to have been duped, but managing editor [Will Dana’s note](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/a-note-to-our-readers-72612/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to readers published after a formal investigation had wound up contains a telling passage: > “In trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault, we made a judgment – the kind of judgment reporters and editors make every day. We should have not made this agreement with Jackie and we should have worked harder to convince her that the truth would have been better served by getting the other side of the story.” Another ‘defence’ is rooted in news literacy: as a reader, try when you can to consider multiple accounts of a common story, as reported by multiple outlets, and look for at least one independently verifiable detail. There must be *something*, but if there isn’t, consider it a signal that the story is at best located halfway between truth and fiction, awaiting judgment. Fortunately (in a way), science, environment and health stories frequently pass this test – or at least they used to. While an intrepid *Business Standard* reporter might have tracked down a crucial detail by speaking to an expert who wished to remain unnamed, someone at *The Wire* or *The Hindu*, or an enterprising freelance journalist, will soon have been able to get someone else on the record, or find a document in the public domain attesting to the truth of the claim. ### Identity as privilege I use the past-tense because, since 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which formed the national government then – has been vilifying any part of science that threatens the mythical history the party has sought to construct for itself and for the nation. The BJP is the ideological disciple of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and soon after the BJP’s ascent, members of groups affiliated with these organisations have murdered at least three anti-superstition activists and others have disrupted many a gathering of scholars, even as senior ministers in government have embarked on a campaign to erode scientific temper, appropriate R&D activities into the party’s communal programme and degrade or destabilise the scope for research that is guided by researchers’ interests, in favour of that of bureaucrats. Under the party-friendly vice-chancellorship of M. Jagadesh Kumar, the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi has slid from being a national jewel to being blanketed in misplaced suspicions of secessionist activity. In January, students affiliated with the BJP’s student-politics wing went on a violent spree within the JNU campus, assaulting students and damaging university property, while Kumar did nothing to stop them. In November, well-known professors of the university’s school of physical sciences alleged that Kumar was intervening in unlawful ways with the school’s administration. Moushumi Basu, secretary of the teachers’ association, [called the incident a first](https://science.thewire.in/author/ppulla/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), since many faculty members had assumed Kumar wouldn’t interfere with the school of physical sciences, being a physical-sciences teacher himself. (Edit, April 11, 2022: Kumar was succeeded in February 2022 by [Santishree Pandit](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/02/08/the-new-jnu-vcs-statement-has-bad-grammar-so/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and at the end of the first week of April, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad [assaulted JNU students](https://thewire.in/rights/jnu-violence-non-veg-ram-navami-abvp?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on campus with stones over cooking non-vegetarian food on the occasion of Ram Navami.) Shortly before India’s COVID-19 epidemic really bloomed, the Union government revoked the licence of the Manipal Institute of Virology to use foreign money to support its stellar, but in India insufficiently supported, research on viruses, on charges that [remain unclear](https://science.thewire.in/health/manipal-virus-research-national-institute-virology-health-ministry-icmr-nipah-virus-bsl-4-bioweapon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The party’s government has confronted many other institutes with similar fates – triggering a chilling effect among scientists and pushing them further into their ivory towers. In January 2020, I wrote about the [unsettling case](https://thewire.in/education/vijay-chauthaiwale-iiser-pune-mohali-iit-jnu-jamia-milia-aligarh-anti-caa-letter?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of a BJP functionary who had shot off an email asking university and institution heads to find out which of their students and faculty members had signed a letter condemning the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019\. I discovered in the course of my reporting two details useful to understand the reasonable place of anonymous authorship in journalism. First, a researcher at one of the IISERs told me that the board of governors of their institute seemed to be amenable to the argument that since the institute receives funds via the education ministry (formerly the human resource development ministry), it does not enjoy complete autonomy. Second, while the [Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules 1964](https://dopt.gov.in/ccs-conduct-rules-1964?ref=slightlyacidic.com) do prevent employees of centrally funded institutions, including universities and research facilities, from commenting negatively on the government, they are vague at best about whether employees can protest on issues concerning their rights as citizens of the country. These two conditions together imply that state-funded practitioners of scientific activities – from government hospital coroners to spokespersons of billion-dollar research facilities, from PhD scholars to chaired professors – can be arbitrarily denied opportunities to engage as civilians on important issues concerning all people, even as their rights on paper seem straightforward. But even under unimaginable pressure to conform, I have found that many of India’s young scientists are still willing to – even insistent on – speaking up, joining public protests, writing and circulating forthright letters, championing democratic and socialist programmes, and tipping off journalists like myself to stories that need to be told. This makes my job as a journalist much easier, but I can’t treat their courage as permission to take advantage. They are still faced with threats whose full magnitude they may comprehend only later, or may be unaware of methods that don’t require them to endanger their lives or careers. Earlier, postdoctoral scholars and young scientists may have been more wary than anything else of rubbing senior scientists the wrong way by, say, voicing concerns about a department or institute in the latter’s charge. Today, the biggest danger facing them is indefinite jail time, police brutality and avoidance by institutes that may wish to stay on the party’s good side. (And this is speaking only of the more privileged male scientists; others have only had it increasingly worse.) Once again: how much can we ask of our compatriots? How much in particular can we ask of those who have reason to complain even as they stand to lose the most – the Dalits, the women, transgender people, the poor, the Adivasi, the non-English non-Hindi speakers, environmentalists, healthcare workers, migrant labourers, graveyard and crematorium operators, manual scavengers, the Muslims, Christians and members of other minority denominations, farmers and agricultural traders, cattle-rearers, and indeed just about anyone who is not male, rich, Brahmin? All of these people have stories worth sharing, but whose identities have been increasingly isolated, stigmatised and undermined. All of these people, including the young scientists as well, thus deserve to be quoted or published anonymously or pseudonymously – or their views may never be heard. ### Paying the price of fiction There are limitations, of course, and this is where ethical and responsible journalism can help. It is hard to trust an anonymous Twitter user issuing scandalous statements about a celebrity, and even harder to trust an anonymous writer laying claim to the credibility that comes with identifying as a scientist yet making unsubstantiated claims about other scientists – as necessary as such a tactic may seem to be. The safest and most responsible way forward is for a ‘source’ to work with a journalist such that the journalist tells the story, with the source supplying one set of quotes. This way, the source’s account will enjoy the benefit of being located in a journalistic narrative, in the company of other viewpoints, before it is broadcast. The journalist’s fundamental role here is to rescue doubts about one’s rights from the grey areas it occupies in the overlap between India’s laws and the wider political context. However, it is often also necessary to let scientists, researchers, professors, doctors, etc. to say what they need to themselves, so that they may bring to bear the full weight of their authority as well as the attitudes they don as topical experts. There is certainly a difference between writing about Pushpa Mittra Bhargava’s statements on one hand and allowing Pushpa Mittra Bhargava to express himself directly on the other. Another example, but which doesn’t appeal to celebrity culture (such as it is in the halls of science!), is to let a relatively unknown but surely qualified epidemiologist write a thousand words in the style and voice of their choice about, say, the BJP’s attempts to communalise the epidemic. The message here is contained within the article’s arguments as well as in the writer’s credentials – but again, not necessarily in the writer’s religious or ethnic *identity*. Or, as the case may be, in their identity as powerless young scientists. Ultimately, the most defensible request for anonymity is the one backed by evidence of reasonable risk of injury – physical or otherwise – and the BJP government has been steadily increasing this risk since 2014\. Then again, none of this means those who have already received licence to write anonymously or pseudonymously also have license to shoot their mouths. Journalists have a responsibility to be as selective as they reasonably can to identify those who deserve to have their names hidden – with at least two editors signing off on the request instead of the commissioning editor alone, for example – and those who are selected to be reminded that the protection they have received is only for the performance of a necessary duty. Anonymity or even pseudonymity introduces one fiction into the narrative, and all fictions, now matter how trivial, are antithetical to narratives that offer important knowledge but also a demonstration of what good journalism is capable of. So it is important to not see this device as a reason for the journalist to invent more excuses to leave out or obfuscate yet other details in the name of fear or privacy. In fact, the inclusion of one fiction should force every other detail in the narrative to be that much more self-evidently true. Though some authors may not like it, the decision to grant anonymity must also be balanced with the importance and uniqueness of the article in question. While anonymity may grant a writer the freedom to not pull their punches, the privilege also foists more responsibility on the editor to ensure the privilege is being granted for something that is in the public interest as well as can’t be obtained through any other means. One particular nuance is important here: the author should convince the editor that they are compelled to speak up. Anonymity shouldn’t be the only reason the article is being written. Otherwise, anonymity or pseudonymity will easily be excuses to fire from behind the publication’s shoulders. This may seem like a crude calculus but it also lies firmly in the realm of due diligence. We may not be able to ask too much of our compatriots, but it is necessary to make sure the threats that face them are real and that they will not attempt to gain unfair advantages. In addition, the language must at all points be civil and devoid of polemic; every claim and hypothesis must be substantiated to the extent possible; if the author has had email or telephone conversations with other people, the call records and reporting notes must be preserved; and the author can’t say anything substantial that does not require their identity to be hidden. The reporter or the editor should include in the article the specific reason as to why anonymity has been granted. Finally, the commissioning editor reserves the right to back out of the arrangement anytime they become unsure. This condition simply reflects the author’s responsibility to convince the editor of the need for anonymity, even if specific details may never make it to the copy. At the same time, in times as fraught as ours, it may be unreasonable to expect reporters and editors to never make a mistake, even of the *Rolling Stone*’s proportions (although I admit the [Columbia University report](https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling%5Fstone%5Finvestigation.php?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on *Rolling Stone*’s mistakes is unequivocal in its assessment that the magazine made no mistakes it couldn’t have avoided). The straightforward checks that journalists employ to weed out as many mistakes as possible can never be 100% perfect, particularly during a pandemic of a new virus. Some mistakes can be found out only in hindsight, such as when one needs to [prove the negative](https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil%5Fof%5Freligion%5Ftext/CHAPTER%5F5%5FARGUMENTS%5FEXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com#:~:text=Here's%20what%20the%20The%20Objectivist,only%20with%20that%20which%20exists.), or when a journalist is caught between the views of two accomplished scientists and one realises a mistake only later. Instead, we should expect those who make mistakes to be prompt, honest and reflexive, especially smaller organisations that can’t yet afford independent fact-checkers. A period in which anonymous authorship is becoming more necessary, irrespective of its *ad hoc* moral validity, ought also to be a period in which newsroom managers and editors treat mistakes not as cardinal sins but as opportunities to strengthen the compact with their readers. One simple first step is to acknowledge post-publication corrections and modifications with a note plus a timestamp. Because let’s face it – journalists are duty-bound to walk the same doubts, ambiguities and fears that also punctuate their stories. ### NFTs aren't thriving – they're often in the hospital URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/11/nfts-arent-thriving-theyre-often-in-the-hospital/ Last updated: 2022-04-11T09:15:00.000Z This is not a real anniversary but it's worth commemorating, if only to remember the pseudo-events propping up the NFT business-culture. One month and one year ago, a cryptocurrency user named Metakovan purchased an NFT associated with a piece of art from its creator, a fellow named Beeple, in an auction at Christie's. (Here's a [beginner's guide to NFTs](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/03/25/intro-to-nfts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Even at the time this incident took place, its absurdity was clear: as I [wrote at the time](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Metakovan's plan – an ostensible effort to democratise and to fight racism in art ownership – was riddled with problems: it was one big red herring of excuses supplied to mask the Ponzi super-scheme that cryptocurrencies and NFTs need to survive. Since then, as NFTs have 'matured', especially by revealing what they truly are to the world, we have become better at understanding what that moment in time has meant for the industry. Today, cryptocurrencies and NFTs are investment options whose prices climb up (and down) purely through speculation, so they must remain constantly in demand, thus the Ponzi. Other than that, they serve no purpose whatsoever. While the $69.3 million that Metakovan paid for Beeple's NFT bleached our vision, we realise today that it had to; [there's nothing underneath](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Similarly, there is today a near-constant drone of faux optimism emanating from cryptocurrency evangelists founded on nothing more than greed and stupidity – one that we must constantly look past to remind ourselves that NFTs are ailing, as they should be. Here are some useful articles I would recommend on the topic. - [Cryptocurrency Weekend](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/04/cryptocurrency-weekend.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "It isn't just charities that are finding cryptocurrencies less popular than the media would have you believe. Game publishers were salivating at the prospect of selling NFTs purporting to represent in-game items. Their customer's reactions led to headlines such as 'Roller derby community resoundingly rejects NFT project', 'MeUndies cancels its NFT underwear plans and sells its Bored Ape after community backlash', 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developer quickly cancels NFT plans after fan outcry', 'Sega cites fan backlash in surprisingly cautious take on gaming NFTs', 'Ubisoft’s first NFT experiment was a dumpster fire', and so on." - [After the NFT Takeover of Art Basel Miami Beach 2021](https://caesuramag.org/posts/caesura-roundtable-nft?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "For cryptocurrency investors and tech workers, they represent financial opportunities and the ground on which to create an art world all of their own. They are deeply naive about art and often disarmingly sincere in their excitement about it. … Is there any potential in this new art market, which seems poised to edge out the old as it is integrated into art fairs, galleries, and auction houses? Is capital, even in its present decrepit form, more progressive than art theory? … Blockchain may be decentralized, but Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where NFT stars like Beeple have been taking their work direct to market, certainly are not. Art-for-NFT may eschew elite curation from MFAs and PhDs but relies instead on other hierarchies that have more to do with celebrity and straightforward access to money than visual quality, let alone conceptual positioning. It has already proven itself not to be the very thing its digital art proponents hoped it would be: an equitable market (as if such a thing exists) cleared of undesirable barriers. To the contrary, the majority of transactions are concentrated in the top 10% of market actors and the average artist has nearly no shot at making a buck…" - [‘This Was a $69 Million Marketing Stunt’: Why Crypto Purists Say Beeple’s Mega-Millions NFT Isn’t Actually an NFT at All](https://news.artnet.com/market/beeple-everydays-controversy-nft-or-not-1952124?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "Kelani Nichole, who first priced and sold artworks in bitcoin in 2013 as the owner of the new-media-centric Transfer Gallery, … reached an unequivocal conclusion about Christie’s proclamation that it had made NFT history. … First, multiple users \[of cryptocurrencies expressed\] confusion over why, as one member put it, they saw “none of the usual stuff you’d expect to see” for an NFT sale through Etherscan, an established portal for viewing verified data on the Ethereum blockchain. … the second point of disagreement is even more existential. On one hand, Christie’s role in facilitating the sale of Beeple’s work was seen as a powerful validation of NFTs by (very) late adopters in the traditional art world. On the other hand, true believers in blockchain’s revolutionary potential aim to eliminate gatekeepers of all types. They saw Christie’s very presence in the sale as a betrayal of crypto’s core values…" - [The NFT Ecosystem Is a Complete Disaster](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdvnd/the-nft-ecosystem-is-a-complete-disaster?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "Forms of self-dealing among an elite are also baked into the market and the history of how it got so big in the first place. Take Vignesh Sundaresan, a collector known as “MetaKovan” who purchased the $69 million Beeple NFT that touched off one of the earliest hype cycles around the digital assets. MetaKovan is the financier of Metapurse, a Singapore-based investment firm that earlier this year listed its mission as to "democratize access and ownership to artwork." Metapurse has bought 20 Beeple NFTs, four virtual museums, a soundtrack, and consolidated it all into an "NFT bundle" that offers fractionalized ownership through 10 million B20 tokens. Beeple, as it turns out, happens to be a business partner of MetaKovan and owns 2 percent of all B20 tokens, while MetaKovan owns another 59 percent." - [Art for Earth’s Sake](https://thebaffler.com/latest/art-for-earths-sake-kelly?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "… Lemercier’s sale of six crypto artworks of Platonic solids late last year consumed more electricity within ten seconds than the entirety of his studio in the last two years. Worse still, with every resale, their footprint will grow: one estimate indicates the mere act of selling an edition of one hundred NFTs consumes more energy than an individual living in the European Union for a year—and there are already more than six hundred thousand NFTs in existence. Though the hype of NFTs will likely burn off, the noxious fumes produced by these ostensibly ethereal works will linger in the atmosphere for decades, if not centuries, to come." - [Vitalik Buterin v. Reality](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/03/vitalik-buterin-vs-reality.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) "Time's cover story by Andrew R. Chow, The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future, is supplemented by his I Spent 80 Minutes Inside Vitalik Buterin's Brain. Here's What I Learned. What I learned from these two pieces of hagiography was that Buterin is having a lot of difficulty dealing with the failure of Ethereum to live up to the goals he had for it. … The entire story is shot through with the normal cryptocurrency gaslighting, claiming that the benefits Ethereum will bring to the world are because it is decentralized, even though it isn't. At the fundamental level it isn't — last November two mining pools controlled the majority of Ethereum mining. At the API level it isn't, as Moxie Marlinspike describes in 'My first impressions of web3'. But the detachment from reality goes much further. … The quote “Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong” reveals two of Buterin's delusions. First, the idea that the dystopian effects of cryptocurrencies are a future potential, not a current reality. And second, that the dystopian effects are merely a symptom of improper implementation, rather than fundamental attributes. Chow reports Buterin's ideas for cryptocurrencies implemented right: … These utopian dreams fuel the gaslighting that covers up the real-life casino and "wretched hive of scum and villany" that cryptocurrencies have become. The idea that, at some time in the future, the Ethereum ecosystem is "at risk of being overtaken by greed" is laughable to everyone outside the cult." ### On the NBDSA opinion against Zee News URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/07/on-the-nbdsa-opinion-against-zee-news/ Last updated: 2022-04-07T10:17:24.000Z On April 5, JNU PhD student [Shehla Rashid tweeted](https://twitter.com/Shehla%5FRashid/status/1511322370040299525?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the National Broadcasting and Digital Standards Agency (NBDSA) had ordered Zee News to remove links to a show it had broadcast in [November 2020](https://thewire.in/media/lacks-objectivity-impartiality-nbsa-tell-zee-news-to-take-down-show-on-shehla-rashid?ref=slightlyacidic.com), alleging that Rashid was indulging in “anti-national activities” and that she was “funding terror”. The program was hosted by Zee News editor-in-chief Sudhir Chaudhary, who, the NBDSA statement found, hadn’t bothered to present Rashid’s defence of herself on the same show nor stopped to check if the claims being made on the show – by Rashid’s father, from whom she her mother and her sister are estranged – were true. Even if they haven’t watched the show in question, readers of this blog must know by now what its tone, style and decibel-level must have been: shows like this have been regular programming at a clump of pseudo-news-sites trumpeting Hindutva ideals and hate. These outlets deserve without exception to be brought to book by the relevant national institutions, including the NBDSA – even as Rashid added, agreeably, that simply asking hateful content to be taken down from their pages doesn’t suffice. They need to issue public apologies and pay steep fines, say as a fixed percentage of their revenues, for every transgression identified by the NBDSA. But even as we rejoice – just a little – in the knowledge that the NBDSA had some integrity where many other national institutions haven’t, I wish it had used different language in its statement upbraiding Zee News. Rashid had [shared a screenshot](https://twitter.com/Shehla%5FRashid/status/1511322378743480321/photo/1?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of a part of the NBDSA’s statement showing the bottom fifth of one page and the top four-fifths of the next one. In this portion, the NBDSA is concerned repeatedly with the “impartiality and objectivity” and their absence in Zee News’s show. To quote: > With regard to the broadcast, NBDSA was of the view that the issue under consideration is whether the programme lacked objectivity, impartiality, neutrality and whether it violated the complainant’s privacy. NBDSA noted that by allowing the interviewee … the channel had presented only one side of the story. Further, not only had the broadcaster failed to approach the complainant for her version prior to telecasting the impugned programme but bymaking only a fleeting reference to her denial of the allegations, the broadcaster had also failed to adequately present her version. In any case, the Authority noted that to broadcast the version of the complainant available in her social posts was not sufficient compliance of the \[Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards and\] Guidelines. That Zee News failed to accord any meaningful screen time to Rashid in a programme about slinging mud on her work and views is a cardinal sin. Even if you have a great investigative story on your hands, with documentary evidence for every claim, not giving the implicated parties a chance to defend themselves will only undermine the story. It’s a small step and often an easy one: either the parties will decline comment, as many in India have chosen to do of late, or seize the chance to air their side of the story. This opportunity reflects, among other things, the media’s refusal to serve as an arbiter but also its implicit acknowledgment of the possibility that it its narrative isn’t the ‘ultimate truth’, however that’s defined. However, the NBDSA has tied this rule to “objectivity”, which doesn’t make sense. This is because Zee News, from its point of view, surely believes that it has been objective: Rashid’s father does hold the views that he does, and Zee News has broadcast them without alterations. There is no violation of objectivity here *per se*. Even when unscrupulous outlets like *OpIndia* quote ministers and government officials spouting hateful rhetoric or articulating policies grounded in dubious assumptions, they are being objective in the sense that these statements do exist – i.e. their existence is a fact – leaving the outlets to simply report these facts to a larger audience. And even if *OpIndia*, and Zee News for that matter, aren’t objective in other ways (esp. when they publish false news first-hand), the definition of objectivity encompasses the reporting of facts and thus allows them to claim to the consumers of their bilge that they’re being “objective” where others aren’t. This is how the pursuit of objectivity can be, and often is, anti-democracy. Many feckless (pseudo) news publishers in India have hijacked the false virtue of objectivity to project themselves as the purveyors of ‘real journalism’, while many of the rest of us have allowed them to do so by vying for the same objectivity. We don’t need to be objective; we need to be pro-democracy: the latter compels a greater fidelity to the truth, in substance as well as spirit, that proscribes technicalities of the sort that pro-Hindutva ‘reporters’ have been known to employ. If the NBDSA had instead pulled up Zee News for not being on the side of democracy, instead of not being on the side of objectivity, (that part of) its statement would have been perfect. It would also have set an important precedent for other news outlets, at least those that are interested and willing, to follow. ### Awaiting more info on WP.com's new pricing URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/06/hi-wordpress-com-youve-complicated-it-further/ Last updated: 2022-04-06T06:57:16.000Z After my [last blog post](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on WordPress.com's bizarre paid-plans rejig, which stayed on top of [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30894980&ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a few hours and eventually caught the attention of the CEOs of WordPress.com and Automattic, the former, [Dave Martin](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896807&ref=slightlyacidic.com), said the company was listening to bloggers' feedback and would incorporate it into the new options. I [also suggested](https://twitter.com/itsdavemartin/status/1510621313974652929?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the same day, Sunday, that they publish a post on the WP.com blog allaying many fears about the new Pro plan's adjustments for "just there to blog" bloggers and for those in non-Western markets, including India. This post [appeared on the WP.com blog yesterday](https://wordpress.com/blog/2022/04/05/introducing-wordpress-pro-one-plan-infinite-possibilities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) but, disappointingly, it only repeated what Dave had said on the HN forum; in fact, 75% of it is advertisement for the new Pro plan, and the remaining 25% rephrases Dave's words – that the adjustments in question are coming soon. Both Dave and Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, which owns WP.com, have said that it's customary for them to roll out the changes first before issuing any kind of statement formally announcing them, so that they have time to fix any bugs in production. I suppose this makes sense for technological fixes, but it doesn't for one that will ultimately determine whether a person is able to WP.com at all. I like that the statement has increased the free plan's storage limit to 1 GB and has removed the ill-conceived traffic limit from both the free and the Pro plans. To me these changes also indicate a deeper possibility: if these settings (more storage, no traffic limit) are feasible now, why weren't they feasible earlier? They must have been. So why weren't they implemented at that stage? WP.com says in its statement, as Dave Martin did as well, that the Pro plan was the product of listening to users' feedback. I doubt this bit – or at least, WP.com only incorporated feedback that was in line with its own sensibilities, sensibilities that I suspect continue to ignore the needs of those for whom paying $5-8 a month is more feasible than to pay $180 a year. Second, the post promises: (quoted verbatim) - Additional storage will be available for purchase at a very reasonable price, very soon. - As-you-need them add-ons for both plans, to give you a la carte upgrades. Coming soon. Considering one of the stated reasons for introducing the Pro plan is to reduce the number of options and enable users to make easier descisions, wouldn't the availability of "a la carte" options reintroduce the same 'complexity'? I realise these options won't be available for all features but depending on which ones they are, WP.com might as well retain the personal and premium plans of old (the ones, along with the business plan, that the Pro plan has replaced). Second, how will these "a la carte upgrades" be priced? A related issue here is that WP.com recently started allowing users to attach images to their posts without leaving the WP.com editor, through the [Pexels](https://wordpress.com/support/free-photo-library/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Openverse](https://wordpress.com/support/openverse/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) integrated photo libraries. When you select an image to add to your post, WP.com imports it into your blog's media gallery. Most of the photos on my blog were imported this way. If WP.com isn't going to compress these images in any way, then they will hasten the user's consumption of the 1 GB of free space. If WP.com is going to charge more for storage (it did earlier as well but then the personal and premium plans existed), it should also provide image compression or downsizing measures. And third, the post doesn't even mention if WP.com plans to tweak its prices for the India market. This was and is a big thorn in my side, because the India rates differ significantly from the rates in the US. The business plan, which the new Pro plan is by and large, cost Rs 7,680 a year in India – or 101.80, whereas the Pro plan costs $80, or Rs 6,033, *more*. These aren't small sums of money in India. Dave had said in his HN post that his team had missed out on adjusting the Pro rates for India (and Brazil) and would do so. But the statement doesn't mention anything about this, even as superficially as it has touched on the other issues. While Dave's, and Mullenweg's, words in response to my blog post seemed reassuring at the time, I'm yet to be convinced that WP.com still cares about its "just there to blog" bloggers. We still need more clarity and information. ### What are you doing, WordPress.com? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/04/03/what-are-you-doing-wordpress-com/ Last updated: 2022-04-03T05:02:57.000Z *Be sure to check out the update at the bottom.* I [recently wrote](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/10/17/will-this-blog-be-online-a-hundred-years-from-today/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that I've stuck with WordPress.com for so long, for all its purported limitations, because its features fully suffice the committed blogger whose content is textual for the most part and because the company behind WordPress.com is running a good business, with the right ideals. (To the uninitiated, [here's an explanation](https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/what-is-the-difference-between-wordpress-org-and-com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the differences between WordPress.*com* and WordPress.*org*.) But in the last two or three days, WordPress.com has jolted both these beliefs with a surprisingly wide-ranging rejig of its paid plans. Earlier, there were five plans: free, personal, premium, business and e-commerce. The free plan came with no custom domain and 3 GB of storage – which is great for people looking to just write and publish and because WordPress.com subdomains had tenancy: it kept them alive even if the blogs at those locations had long died and it didn't, and still doesn't, allow people to register a subdomain that used to be owned by someone else and has since been deleted. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/4a1f0-screenshot-2022-04-03-at-10.18.53-am.png?w=1024&h=461) But at some point late last week, WordPress replaced all of the paid plans with a single 'Pro' plan and reduced the storage on the free plan 6x, from 3 GB to 500 MB. It also imposed a traffic ceiling on both plans where none existed: 10,000 visits a month and 100,000 visits a month (and it hasn't said anything about overages – so far). As these changes were rolled out to user dashboards over the weekend, [many users](https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/reason-behind-plan-upgrades/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) have also reported that the changes had been imposed on their *old* blogs as well, whereas the norm is to grandfather old user accounts with preexisting subscriptions (i.e. allowing them to continue on those plans and restricting the new plans to new users). There hasn't been any official announcement from WordPress.com either about what we're seeing, whether these users' experiences are the exceptions or the rules, or anything else. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we should have seen this coming: the new full-site editing option has rendered premium themes, and thus the premium and business plans redundant; the Gutenberg upgrade allowed users on free as well as personal plans to do some of the things that were previously only possible with premium or business plans. But to be honest, the hindsight doesn't explain why WordPress.com – whose free plan, pro-open-source stance and focus on making publishing technology more democratic made it many a modern (non-technical) blogger's host of choice – would pull the rug out like this. I for one am particularly bummed because neither the storage space nor the traffic cap on the free plan work for me. The Pro plan currently has only an annual payment option (the older plans had monthly options) and it costs Rs 13,800 a year. I could arrange to spare this much money every year, sure, but it's a ridiculous amount to pay for WordPress.com's features – especially those I will really need to use. Imagine looking for a good-quality surgical mask to wear in a park but finding out that the most reliable vendor in town has suddenly decided to sell only chemical safety masks. The next-best thing for me to do right now is to find and move to a well-reputed, reliable managed hosting provider, but there's a reason this wasn't the best option to begin with, which is what we stand to lose right now: WordPress.com "being there" for bloggers who just want to blog, without being in need of any of the complicated features that businesses seem to need, and WordPress.com being both a good-spirited technology company (unlike, say, [Medium](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22349175/medium-layoffs-union-evan-williams-blogger-twitter-subscription?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [Wix](https://ma.tt/2021/04/wix-dirty-tricks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) out there whose prices were entirely reasonable. On a related note, I'm also frustrated because WordPress.com had recently reduced its paid plans' rates for the Indian market. For example, the business plan of old cost around Rs 7,400 a year whereas the new Pro plan, which matches the business plan feature for feature (plus an e-commerce option), costs Rs 13,800 a year, i.e. effectively going from $8.x a month to $180 a year. Again, this may be great for businesses – but it's a shit move for bloggers. Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, which runs WordPress.com, [recently said in an interview](https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22977857/wordpress-tumblr-simplenote-internet-automattic-matt-mullenweg-interview?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "I'll tell you a stat most people don’t realize. Half of all users who sign up for WordPress.com every day are there to blog." I'll tell you that for all of *these* people as well as the people who are using WordPress.com to blog (including me), the new plan is a betrayal of our interests. Update, April 3, 2022, 7:46 pm: WP.com CEO Dave Martin responded to this blog post after [it went big](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30894980&ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Hacker News (thanks!) [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896807&ref=slightlyacidic.com). Gist: traffic limits based on honour system, region-specific plans en route (vis-à-vis the separate rates in India), à la carte options on free plan coming soon, and communication wasn't great. I already feel a bit better than when I wrote this post. I've also [asked Dave](https://twitter.com/1amnerd/status/1510622012321910789?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to adapt his reply on HN for an update on the WP.com blog – I've been checking it regularly for an announcement on the Pro plan and I'm sure others have been as well. ### TV ads are becoming creepy URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/31/tv-ads-are-becoming-creepy/ Last updated: 2022-03-31T16:16:27.000Z It began for me with the advertisements for vehicle tires. There was a relatively recent one in which Aamir Khan’s character [does ridiculous things](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2021/09/28/dance-aamir-dance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on the road, like driving down the wrong side like it was the right side, setting off firecrackers and spilling recklessly into it with a group of dancers at a wedding, in every case forcing people in vehicles to depend entirely on the performance of their tires and brakes to avoid injuring/killing someone. Ads like this caricatured what we had internalised by then – that traffic discipline in urban India was such a lost cause that we, the people pining for this change, were better off adapting to the shenanigans of these supposedly intractable people instead. In just the first three months of 2022, however, this cynicism towards change seems to have ballooned past the thin line between the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ that the tire manufacturers pretended existed, with the manufacturers claiming to help the ‘us’. Instead, in many ads today, the companies are collectively one party, the ‘us’ from their points of view, and the rest of us the ‘them’. This perspective seems to encourage consumers to give in to their inner cynics and cowards, as the case may be, and submit to what the companies have to offer. Four examples come swiftly to mind. There is Magicpin, in which people brawling on the street – and in a subsequent edition a suit-clad man riding in on a battle tank – [politely ask](https://severityoftests.wpcomstaging.com/2022/01/19/look-away/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a befuddled onlooker to point his camera instead at nearby stores where he can shop at a discount. The second is Swiggy’s Instamart, a prompt delivery service for grocery-store items, à la Zomato’s promise to deliver some foods in 10 minutes and a similar offering on Dunzo’s part. In the Instamart ad, a fellow watching TV on his couch is startled when his daughter starts to scream because they’re out of chocolate-flavoured cereal. The fellow quickly orders the thing on Instamart and a “delivery executive” shows up a minute later at their doorstep. The daughter promptly stops crying. Such children are frankly annoying, but not more than their parents, who refuse to discipline their kids in public places and who often seem to believe their kids are entitled to their tantrums, and the irritation of everyone else around. And the fact that Swiggy believes it is healthy and desirable to encourage such behaviour, by catering to such life choices as quickly as possible, is deeply disheartening. Then there is Rapido – Uber with motorbikes. Bikes already exist on Indian roads, sure, but they are often driven the way Aamir Khan’s character does in the tire ad above. And Ranveer Singh, Rapido’s brand ambassador in Hindi, makes a show of how bikes can squeeze in the gaps in traffic and reach their destinations faster. This isn’t driving behaviour we need to encourage: it is in fact part of what makes driving on city roads so harrowing and unsafe. In the Telugu version of Rapido’s ad, Tollywood star Allu Arjun – to quote from [*The News Minute*’s article](https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/rapido-has-pull-down-allu-arjun-ad-state-transport-bus-heres-why-158397?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – says “state buses take too long, and that using a Rapido bike is faster and safer. The actor tells a customer that travelling by a crowded public transport bus would mince a commuter who is like a regular dosa into the stuffings of a masala dosa, suggesting that using Rapido is more convenient”. This outright promotes civic disengagement from the task of improving public transport. Finally, there is the crowning jewel: the ad for PharmEasy, in which three clones of Aamir Khan turn up one by one at the house of a desperate middle-aged man about to rush out to a pharmacy in pouring rain late at night. But he opens a window, and there’s a clone; he opens a door and there’s a clone; he opens a hatch in the middle of the floor in the living room and there’s a clone. All bear boxes of medicines and ask the man why he feels the need to step out at all. The poor chap, now trembling, backs down and says he won’t step out again. As the lightning storm continues to rage outside and the man browses the PharmEasy app on his phone, the three box-bearing clones break into an elated dance. If this isn’t a home invasion, what is? Consider all four ads together and what they seem to imply for what these companies imagine their potential consumers’ lives to be like: don’t step out, get everything on your app, expect deliveries in 10 minutes, throw ear-splitting tantrums if you don’t; if you do need to get out, stick to shopping at all costs – but at discounts – and get to these shops in taxis prepared to make the experience of other commuters miserable. And for your own good, don't try to do better. ### The paradoxical virtues of primacy in science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/28/the-paradoxical-virtues-of-primacy-in-science/ Last updated: 2022-03-28T02:27:26.000Z The question of "Who found it first?" in science is deceptively straightforward. It is largely due to the rewards reserved by those who administer science – funding the 'right' people working in the 'right' areas at the 'right' time to ensure the field's progress along paths deemed desirable by the state – that primacy in science has become valuable. Otherwise, and in an ideal world (in which rewards are distributed more equitably, such that the quality of research is rewarded a certain amount that is lower than the inordinate rewards that accrue to some privileged scientists today but greater than that which scholars working on 'neglected' topics/ideas receive, without regard for gender, race, ethnicity or caste), discovering something *first* wouldn't matter to the enterprise of science, just as it doesn't mean anything to the object of the discovery itself. Primacy is a virtue imposed by the structures of modern science. There is today privilege in being cited as "Subramaniam 2021" or "Srinivasan 2022" in papers, so much so that there is reason to believe many scientific papers are published only so they may cite the work of others and keep expanding this ["citation circus"](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/citation-circus-ignites-explosion/108578.article?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The more citations there are, the likelier the corresponding scientist is to receive a promotion, a grant, etc. at their institute. Across history, the use of such citations has also served to obscure the work of 'other' scientists and to attribute a particular finding to a single individual or a group. This typically manifests in one of two forms: by flattening the evolution of a complex discovery by multiple groups of people working around the world, sometimes sharing information with each other, to a single paper authored by one of these groups; or by reinforcing the association of one or some names with particular ideas in the scientific literature, thus overlooking important contributions by less well-known scientists. The former is a complex phenomenon that is often motivated by 'prestigious' awards, including the Nobel Prizes, limiting themselves to a small group of laureates at a time, as well as by the meagre availability of grants for advanced research. Scientists and, especially, the institutes at which they work engage as a result in vociferous media campaigns when an important discovery is at hand, to ensure that opportunities for profit that may arise out of the finding may rest with them alone. This said, it can also be the product of lazy citations, in which scientists cite their friends or peers they like or wish to impress, or [collections of papers](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081871&ref=slightlyacidic.com) over the appropriate individual ones, instead of conducting a more exhaustive literature review to cite everyone involved everywhere. The second variety of improper citations is of course one that has dogged India – and one with which anyone working with or alongside science in India must be familiar. It has also been most famously illustrated by instances of women scientists who were subsequently overlooked for Nobel Prizes that were awarded to the men who worked with them, often against them. (The Nobel Prizes are false gods and we must [tear](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [them](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2021/10/12/scientific-renown-science-prizes-and-awards-as-philanthropy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [down](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/science-prizes-wealth-location-and-social-signals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com); but for their flaws, they remain good, if also absurdly selective, markers of notable scientific work: that is, no prize has thus far been awarded to *work* that didn't deserve it.) The stories of Chien-Shiung Wu, Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell come to mind. But also consider the Indian example of Meghnad Saha's paper about selective radiation pressure (in the field of stellar astrophysics), which predated Irving Langmuir's paper on the same topic by three years. Saha lost out on the laurels by not being able to afford having his paper published in a more popular journal and had to settle for one with "no circulation worth mentioning" ([source](https://science.thewire.in/science/nobel-archives-shed-new-light-on-key-omissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). An equation in this theory is today known as the Saha-Langmuir equation, but even this wouldn't be so without the conscious effort of some scholars to highlight Saha's work and unravel the circumstances that forced him into the shadows. I discovered recently that comparable, yet not similar, circumstances had befallen Bibhas De, when the journal *Icarus* rejected a paper he had submitted twice. The first time, his paper presented his calculations predicting that the planet Uranus had rings; the second time was five years later, shortly after astronomers had found that Uranus indeed had rings. Stephen Brush and Ariel Segal wrote in their [2015 book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22935641-making-20th-century-science?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "Although he did succeed in getting his paper published in another journal, he rarely gets any credit for this achievement." In both these examples, and many others like them, scientists' attempts to formalise their successes by having their claims detailed in the literature were mediated by scientific journals – whose editors' descisions had nothing to do with science (costs in the former case and who-knows-what in the latter). At the same time, because of these two issues, *flattening* and *reinforcing*, attribution for primacy is paradoxically more relevant: if used right, it can help reverse these problems, these imprints of colonialism and imperialism in the scientific literature. 'Right' here means, to me at least, that *everyone* is credited or none at all, as an honest reflection of the fact that good science has never been vouchsafed to the Americans or the Europeans. But then this requires more problems to be solved, such as, say, replacing [profit-based scientific publishing](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/scientific-publishing-peer-review-open-access/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (and the consequent valorisation of [sensational results](https://science.thewire.in/science/priggish-nejm-editorial-on-data-sharing-misses-the-point-it-almost-made/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) with a 'global scientific record' managed by the world's governments through an international treaty. Axiomatically, perhaps the biggest problem with primacy today is its entrenchment. I'm certain humanities and social science scholars have debated this thoroughly – the choice for the oppressed and the marginalised between beating their oppressors at their own game or transcending the game itself. Obviously the latter seems more englightened, but it is also more labour-intensive, labour that can't be asked freely of them – our scientists and students who are already fighting to find or keep their places in the community of their peers. Then again, beating them at their own game may not be so easy either. I was prompted to write this post, in fact, after I stumbled on four seemingly innocuous words in a [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about stellarators. (I wrote about these nuclear-fusion devices yesterday in the context of a study about [solving an overheating problem](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2022/03/27/better-nuclear-fusion-thanks-to-math-from-biology/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) The article reads that when a solenoid – a coiled wire – is bent around to form a loop, the inner perimeter of the loop has a higher density of wire than the outer perimeter. Surely this is obvious, yet the Wikpedia article phrases it thus (emphasis added): > But, **as Fermi pointed out**, when the solenoid is bent into a ring, the electrical windings would be closer together on the inside than the outside. Why does a common-sensical claim, which should strike anyone who can visualise or even see a solenoid made into a loop, be attributed to the celebrated Italian physicist Enrico Fermi? The rest of the paragraph to which this sentence belongs goes on to describe how this winding density affects nuclear fusion reactors; it is an arguably straightforward effect, far removed from the singularity and the sophistication of other claims whose origins continue to be mis- or dis-attributed. Wikipedia articles are also not scientific papers. But taken together, the attribution to Fermi contains the footprints of the fact that he, as part of [the *Knabenphysik* of quantum mechanics](https://thewire.in/history/quantum-pauli-fermi-dirac?ref=slightlyacidic.com), worked on many areas of physics, allowing him to attach his name to a variety of concepts at a time when studies on the same topics were only just catching on in other parts of the world – [a body of work](https://theparticlehorizon.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/unseating-feynman-and-fermi/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) enabled, as is usual, by war, conquest and the quest for hegemony. Maybe fighting over primacy is the tax we must pay today for allowing this to happen. ### Better nuclear fusion – thanks to math from biology URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/27/better-nuclear-fusion-thanks-to-math-from-biology/ Last updated: 2022-03-27T02:34:25.000Z There's an interesting [new study](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.085001?ref=slightlyacidic.com), published on February 23, 2022, that discusses a way to make nuclear fusion devices called stellarators more efficient by applying equations used all the way away in systems biology. The [Wikipedia article about stellarators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is surprisingly well-written; I've often found that I've had to bring my undergraduate engineering lessons to bear to understand the physics articles. Not here. Let me quote at length from the sections describing why physicists need stellarators, which also serves to explain how these machines work. > Heating a gas increases the energy of the particles within it, so by heating a gas into hundreds of millions of degrees, the majority of the particles within it reach the energy required to fuse. … Because the energy released by the fusion reaction is much greater than what it takes to start it, even a small number of reactions can heat surrounding fuel until it fuses as well. In 1944, Enrico Fermi calculated the deuterium-tritium reaction would be self-sustaining at about 50,000,000º C. > > Materials heated beyond a few tens of thousand degrees ionize into their electrons and nuclei, producing a gas-like state of matter known as plasma. According to the ideal gas law, like any hot gas, plasma has an internal pressure and thus wants to expand. For a fusion reactor, the challenge is to keep the plasma contained. In a magnetic field, the electrons and nuclei orbit around the magnetic field lines, confining them to the area defined by the field. > > A simple confinement system can be made by placing a tube inside the open core of a solenoid. A solenoid is a wire in the shape of a spring. When an electric current is passed through the wire, it generates a magnetic field running through the centre. > The tube can be evacuated and then filled with the requisite gas and heated until it becomes a plasma. The plasma naturally wants to expand outwards to the walls of the tube, as well as move along it, towards the ends. The solenoid creates magnetic field lines running down the center of the tube, and the plasma particles orbit these lines, preventing their motion towards the sides. Unfortunately, this arrangement would not confine the plasma along the length of the tube, and the plasma would be free to flow out the ends. > > The obvious solution to this problem is to bend the tube around into a torus (a ring or donut) shape. A nuclear fusion reactor of this shape is called a tokamak. > Motion towards the sides remains constrained as before, and while the particles remain free to move along the lines, in this case, they will simply circulate around the long axis of the tube. But, as Fermi pointed out, when the solenoid is bent into a ring, the electrical windings would be closer together on the inside than the outside. This would lead to an uneven field across the tube, and the fuel will slowly drift out of the center. Since the electrons and ions would drift in opposite directions, this would lead to a charge separation and electrostatic forces that would eventually overwhelm the magnetic force. Some additional force needs to counteract this drift, providing long-term confinement. > > \[Lyman\] Spitzer's key concept in the stellarator design is that the drift that Fermi noted could be canceled out through the physical arrangement of the vacuum tube. In a torus, particles on the inside edge of the tube, where the field was stronger, would drift up. … However, if the particle were made to alternate between the inside and outside of the tube, the drifts would alternate between up and down and would cancel out. The cancellation is not perfect, leaving some net drift, but basic calculations suggested drift would be lowered enough to confine plasma long enough to heat it sufficiently. These calculations are not simple because this how a stellarator can look: ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/W7X-Spulen_Plasma_blau_gelb.jpg) The coil system (blue), plasma (yellow) and a magnetic field line (green) at the Wendelstein 7-X plasma experiment under construction at the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Greifswald, Germany. Credit: Max-Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik When a stellarator is operating and nuclear fusion reactions are underway, impurities accumulate in the plasma. These include ions that have formed but which can't fuse with other particles, and atoms that have entered the plasma from the reactor lining. These pollutants are typically found at the outer layer. An additional device called a diverter is used to remove them. The heavy ions that form in the reactor plasma are also called 'fusion ash', and the diverter is the ashtray. It works like a pencil sharpener. The graphite is the plasma and the blade is the diverter. It scrapes off the wood around the graphite until the latter is fully exposed and *clean*. But accomplishing this inside a stellarator is easier said than done. In the image above, let's isolate just the plasma (yellow stuff), slice a small section of it and look at it from the side. Depending on the shape of the stellarator, it will probably look like a vertical ellipse, an elongated egg – a blob, basically. By adjusting the magnetic field near the bottom of the stellarator, operators can change the shape of the plasma there to pinch off its bottom, making the overall shape more like an inverted droplet. ![The shapes of an egg and an inverted droplet, laid side by side to compare.](https://rpr2.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/a943a-egg-droplet.jpg?w=1024&h=682) The shapes of an egg and an inverted droplet. Note that the shapes are illustrative and aren't exact representations of the shape of the plasma. Credit: Good Ware/Flaticon At the bottom-most point, called the X-point, the magnetic field lines shaping the plasma intersect with each other. At least, some magnetic field lines intersect with each other while others move towards each other without fully criss-crossing, but which are in contact with the surface of the reactor. (In the image below, the boundary between these two layers of the plasma is called [the separatrix](http://fusionwiki.ciemat.es/wiki/Separatrix?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Diverter plates are installed near this crossover point to 'drain' the plasma moving along the non-intersecting fields. ![An illustration showing the effect of the diverter coils on the plasma, the X-point, the layer of plasma that will be 'scraped off', and the diverter plates at the bottom – in the Joint European Torus, a plasma physics experiment at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Oxfordshire.](https://rpr2.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/e7c4b-screenshot-2022-03-27-at-6.30.28-am-1.png?w=843&h=1024) An illustration showing the effect of the diverter coils on the plasma, the X-point, the layer of plasma that will be 'scraped off', and the diverter plates at the bottom – in the Joint European Torus, a plasma physics experiment at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Oxfordshire. Credit: [EUROfusion 2016](https://www.euro-fusion.org/fileadmin/user%5Fupload/Newsletter/EUROfusion%20Fusion%20in%20Europe/EUROfusion%20Fusion%20in%20Europe%202016%20Mar.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com)/United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority ![](https://rpr2.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/fe22c-screenshot-2022-03-27-at-6.39.21-am.png?w=1024&h=862) Note the placement and shape of the diverter coils and their effect on the shape of the plasma, at the Joint European Torus. Credit: Focus On: JET/Matthew Banks, EFDA JET In the new study, physicists addressed the problem of diverter overheating. The heat removed at the diverter is considered to be 'waste' and not a part of the fusion reactor's output. The primary purpose here is to take away the impure plasma, so the cooler it is, the longer the diverter will be able to operate without replacement. The researchers used the Large Helical Device in Gifu, Japan, to conduct their tests. It is the world's second largest stellarator (the first is the [Wendelstein 7-X](https://www.ipp.mpg.de/w7x?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Their solution was to stop heating the plasma just before it hit the diverter plates, in order to allow the ions and electrons to recombine into atoms. The energy of the combined atom is lower than that of the free ions and electrons, so less heat reaches the diverter plates. How to achieve this cooling? There were different options, but the physicists resorted to arranging additional magnetic coils around the stellarator such that, just before the plasma hit the diverter, its periphery would detach into a smaller blob that, being separated from the overall plasma, could cool. These smaller blobs are called *magnetic islands*. When they ran tests with the Large Helical Device, they found that the diverter removed heat from the plasma chamber in short bursts, instead of continuously. They interpreted this to mean the magnetic islands didn't exist in a steady state but attached and detached from the plasma at a regular frequency. The physicists also found that they could model the rate of attachment using the so-called predator-prey equations. These are the famous [Lotka-Volterra equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra%5Fequations?ref=slightlyacidic.com). They describe how the populations of two species – one predator and one prey – vary over time. Say we have a small ecosystem in which crows feed on worms. As they do, the crow population increases, but due to overfeeding, the population of worms dwindles. This forces the crow population to shrink as well. But once there are fewer crows around, the number of worms increases again, which then allows more crows to feed on worms and become more populous. And so the cycle goes. ![A plot showing the varying populations of predator and prey, as predicted by the Lotka-Volterra equations.](https://rpr2.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/4496e-1024px-lotka-volterra_model_1.1_0.4_0.4_0.1.svg_.png) A plot showing the varying populations of predator and prey, as predicted by the Lotka-Volterra equations. Plot: Ian Alexander and Krishnavedala/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Similarly, the researchers found that the Lotka-Volterra equations (with some adjustments) could model the attachment frequency if they assumed the magnetic islands to be the predators and an electric current in the plasma to be the prey. This current is the product of electrons moving around in the plasma, which the authors call a "bootstrap current". When the strength of the bootstrap current increases, the magnetic island expands. At the same time, the confining magnetic field resists the expansion, forcing the current to dwindle. This allows the island to shrink as well, receding from the field. But then this allows the bootstrap current to increase once more to expand the island. And so the cycle goes. ![](https://rpr2.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/7b9af-220218_001e.png) Competitive relation between magnetic island and localised plasma current derived with the predator-prey model. Increased current (bottom left) enhances the magnetic island. In turn, electric resistivity increases, which reduces the current (bottom right). Eventually, the magnetic island shrinks, which leads to reduction of the electric receptivity and increase of the current. Caption and credit: National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan The researchers reported in their paper that while they observed a frequency of 40 Hz (i.e. 40 times per second) in the Large Helical Device, the equations on paper predicted a frequency of around 20 Hz. However, they have interpreted to mean there is "qualitative agreement" between their idea and their observation. They also wrote that they expect the numbers to align once they fine-tune their math to account for various other specifics of the stellarator's operation. They eventually aim to find a way to control the attachment rate so that the diverters can operate for as long as possible – and at the same time take away as much 'useless' energy from the plasma as possible. I also think that, ultimately, it's a lovely union of physics, mathematics, biology and engineering. This is thanks in part to the Lotka-Volterra equations, which are a specific form of the Kolmogorov model. This is a framework of equations and principles that describes the evolution of a stochastic process in time. A stochastic process is simply one that depends on variables whose values change randomly. In 1931, the Soviet mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov described two kinds of stochastic processes. In 1949, the Croatian-American mathematician William Feller [described them thus](https://projecteuclid.org/ebook/download?urlId=bsmsp/1166219215&isFullBook=false&ref=slightlyacidic.com): > … the "purely discontinuous" type of … process: in a small time interval there is an overwhelming probability that the state will remain unchanged; however, if it changes, the change may be radical. > > … a "purely continuous" process … there it is certain that some change will occur in any time interval, however small; only, here it is certain that the changes during small time intervals will be also small. Kolmogorov derived a pair of 'forward' and 'backward' equations for each type of stochastic process, depending on the direction of evolution we need to understand. Together, these four equations have been adapted to a diverse array of fields and applications – including [quantum mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker%E2%80%93Planck%5Fequation?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Examples), [financial options](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility%5Fsmile?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [biochemical dynamics](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7656229/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). *Featured image: Inside the Large Helical Device stellarator. Credit: Justin Ruckman, Infinite Machine/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.* ### Intro to NFTs URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/25/intro-to-nfts/ Last updated: 2022-03-25T04:33:58.000Z ### First I wrote this piece for a friend who wanted to understand what NFTs were. I have considerably simplified many points and omitted many others to keep the explanation below (relatively) short. If you're interested, you can read the following articles/sites as well as find links to more discussion on this topic from there. 1. [https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-versus-gold](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-versus-gold?ref=slightlyacidic.com) 2. [https://rpr2.wordpress.com/tag/nft/](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/tag/nft/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) 3. [https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (I left out talking about scammers – this post has great explanations and additional learning resources on this front) 4. [https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet](https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### Background info What is an NFT? To understand NFTs, we need to understand the 'T' first: tokens. And to understand the Ts, we need to understand the reason they exist: the blockchain. The blockchain is widely touted to be a ledger of transactions. But I – a person who has struggled to understand banking and finance terminologies – have found it more useful to understand this technology in terms of the fundamentally new thing it facilitates. In 'conventional' banking, banks – state-owned and otherwise – validate financial transactions. If I transfer money from my wallet to yours online, the bank knows a) whether money has been deducted from my wallet, b) whether money has been credited to your wallet, and c) whether I, the wallet's owner, performed the transaction in question. The blockchain is a database that, together with a bunch of algorithms, offers a way to perform these tasks without requiring a centralised authority. Instead, it helps the people who are transacting with each other to ensure the security and integrity of their transactions. Say 10 people have already been using a blockchain to validate their transactions. Each row in this database is called a *block*. When one of the 10 performs a new transaction, it is added as a new block in the database along with some data pertaining to the previous block. This bit of data is called a *cryptographic hash*. Using the hash, all the blocks in the database are linked together: every new block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, all the way back to the very first block. This chain of blocks is called the blockchain. Every time a new transaction is performed, and a new block has to be added to the blockchain, some algorithms kick in to *validate* the transaction. Once it has been validated, the block is added, a timestamp is affixed to the operation, and a copy of the blockchain in that instance is shared with all the 10 people using it. This validation process doesn't happen in a vacuum. You need computing power to perform it, drawn from the machines owned and operated by some or all of the 10 people. To incentivise these people to donate their computing power, the blockchain releases some files at periodic intervals. These files denote value on the blockchain, and the people who get them can use them gainfully. These files are called *tokens*. Different blockchains have different validation incentives. For example, the bitcoin blockchain releases its tokens, the *bitcoins*, as rewards to those who have provided computing power to validate new transactions. The bitcoin protocol states that the number of bitcoins released drops by half for every 210,000 blocks added. In May 2020, this reward stood at 6.25 bitcoins per block. The blockchain will also stop releasing new bitcoins once it has released 21 million of them. Technically speaking, both centralised and decentralised validation systems use blockchains. The one that uses a central authority is called a *permissioned* blockchain. The one without a centralised authority is called a *permissionless* blockchain. This is useful to know if only to understand two things: 1. The concept of blockchains has existed since the early 1980s in the form of permissioned systems, and 2. Permissionless blockchains need tokens to incentivise users to share computing power whereas permissioned blockchains don't need tokens The demand for bitcoins has caused the price of each such token to rise to $43,925, or Rs 33.47 lakh, today (March 25, 2022, 9:06 am). The tokens on a blockchain can be fungible or non-fungible. An example of a fungible token is bona fide currency: one one-rupee note can be replaced by another (equally legitimate) one-rupee note and not make any difference to a transaction. Bitcoins are also fungible tokens for the same reason. On the other hand, NFTs are tokens that can't be interchanged. Each NFT is unique – it has to be because this characteristic defines NFTs. They are **n**on-**f**ungible **t**okens. Bitcoins are basically files. You write an article and store it as a docx file. This file contains text. A bitcoin is a file that contains alphanumeric data and is stored in a certain way. You can save a docx file on your laptop's hard-disk or on Google Drive, and you can only open it with software that can read docx files. Similarly, you can store bitcoins in wallets on the internet, and they can be 'read' only by special software that work with blockchains. Similarly, NFTs are also files. The alphanumeric code they contain are linked in a unique way to another file. These other files can be pictures, videos, docx files, bits of text, anything at all that can be stored as digital data. When one person transfers an NFT to another person over a blockchain, they are basically transferring ownsership of the file to which the NFT is linked. Put another way, NFTs facilitate the trade of goods and value that can't directly be traded over blockchains by *tokenising* these goods/value. This is what NFTs fundamentally offer. ### Emergent facts This background info leads to some implications: - Bitcoins have been exploding in value because a) their supply is limited, b) investors in bitcoins and/or blockchain technology have built hype around this technology, and c) taken together, the rising value of each bitcoin has encouraged the rise of many Ponzi schemes that require more people to get in on cryptocurrencies, forcing demand to rise, which further pushes up the coin value, allowing investors to buy low and sell high. - The demand for bitcoins, and other cryptocurrencies more broadly, has obscured the fact that a) permissionless blockchains need tokens to exist, b) these tokens in turn need to be convertable to bona fide currencies, and c) there needs to be speculative valuation of these tokens in order for their value over time to increase. Otherwise, the tokens hold no value – especially to pay for the real-world costs of computing power. - This computing power is very costly. It is highly energy-intensive – if it weren't, anybody could validate any transaction and add it to the blockchain. In fact, one of the purposes of the compute cost is to prevent a hack called the Sybil attack. A copy of the blockchain is shared with all members participating in the chain. Say my copy gets corrupted for some reason; when the system encounters it, it will check it against the copy that exists on the majority of computers on the network. When it doesn't match, I will have *forked out* of the blockchain and no longer be a part of it. A Sybil attack happens when multiple users work together to modify their copies of the blockchain (to, say, give themselves more money), confusing the system into believing the corrupted version is the actual version. A high computing power demand would ensure that the cost of mounting a Sybil attack is higher than the benefits it will reap. This power is also what leads to the cryptocurrencies' enormous carbon footprint. - If you provide more computing power to the pool of power available to validate transactions, you have provided the system with *proof of work*. Another way to validate transactions is through *proof of stake*: the more value you have transacted using the blockchain, the more stake you are said to have in its proper operation, and therefore the likelier it will be for your transactions to be validated. Proof of stake is less energy-intensive, but its flaw is that it's a 'rich get richer' paradigm. From a social justice point of view, both proof of work and proof of stake have the same outcome: wealth inequality. Indeed, a principal failing of the ethereum and bitcoin blockchains today is that a very small number of individuals around the world own more than half of all the computing power available to these networks – a fact that directly undermines the existential purpose of these networks: decentralisation. - NFTs differ in their uniqueness, but other than that, they also require the use of blockchains and thus inherit all of the problems of permissionless blockchains. - NFTs also have two problems that are specific to their character: a) they have to be scarce in order to be valuable, and this scarcity is artificially imposed – by investors but more broadly by tech-bros and their capitalist culture, in order to keep NFTs exclusive and valuable; b) the items that NFTs currently tokenise are simple crap made with conventional software. For example, the user named Metakovan purchased last year an NFT associated with a big collage by an artist named Tweeple for 500 ether ($69 million). This collage was just a collage, nothing special, made with Photoshop (or similar). Now, if I uploaded an image on a server and linked it to an NFT, and one day the server goes down, the NFT will exist but it will point to nothing, and thus be useless. This vacuity at the heart of NFTs – that they contain no value of their own and that whatever value they contain is often rooted in conventional systems – is emblematic of a bigger issue with cryptocurrencies: they have no known application. They are a solution in search of a problem. - For example, Metakovan said last year that using cryptocurrencies to trade in art was a way to use the anonymity afforded by cryptocurrencies to evade the gatekeepers of the art world, who, in his words, had thus far kept out the non-white, non-rich from owning the masters' paintings. But many, many art critics have ridiculed this. I like to quote [Laurie Rojas](https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "Even with all the financial speculation around NFTs, the point that Art’s value is determined within the parameters of a society in which commodification is the dominant form of social relations (i.e., capitalism) has too easily been abandoned for poorly defined neologisms. … NFTs are the latest phenomenon to express this." - NFTs' newfound association with artistic works is [something for NFTs to do](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), otherwise they have no purpose. In addition, small-time and/or indie artists have criticised NFTs because they don't solve the more fundamental problem of people not funding artists like them or protecting their work from copyright violations in the first place – much less because potential funders don't have the requisite technologies. This criticism also speaks to the criticism of the bitcoin network itself: to quote [Alex De Vries](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-versus-gold?ref=slightlyacidic.com), "One bitcoin transaction requires … several thousands of times more than what’s required by traditional payment systems" to perform a transaction of the same value. Therefore it can't be a functional substitute for the world's existing banking system either. And we've seen in a previous point that they're not decentralised either. Two last issues – one about a new way in which blockchain tech is trying to find relevance and one about a pernicious justification to allow this technology to persist. - The first is what has come to be called "web3". The current iteration of our web is known as web2, supposed to have begun around the mid-2000s. Web1 was the first iteration, when the web was full of websites that offered content for us to consume. Web2 was about content production – social media, blogs, news sites, etc. Web3 is supposed to be about participation – based on Metakovan's logic. In this paradigm, web3 is to be powered by blockchains. This is a stupid idea for all the reasons permissionless blockchains and NFTs are stupid ideas, and others besides. - Second, some entrepreneurs have started to buy carbon credits from various parts of the world and offer them for a price to blockchain entrepreneurs, to help 'neutralise' the carbon footprint of the latter's efforts. This is wrong and evil because it's a wasteful use of carbon credits that diverts them away from more socially responsible uses. It's also evil because, in this paradigm, cryptocurrencies and NFTs foster two paths towards greater inequality. First, as mentioned before, they impose a prohibitive energy cost to use them. Second, developed countries need to cut down on their carbon emissions right away – but many developing countries and most under-developed countries (in the economic sense) still have room to emit some more before they can peak. Carbon credits, the demand for which cryptocurrencies are increasing, reverse these outcomes – allowing the former to keep emitting while purchasing 'room to emit' from less developed nations, and thus lowering the latter's emissions ceiling. - Finally, a fundamental flaw of the carbon credits system is that it assumes that emissions over one part of the world can be compensated by supporting forests in another. So carbon credits may in fact make the problem worse by allowing cryptocurrency folks to keep kicking the can down the road. ### Lord of the Rings Day URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2-2/ Last updated: 2022-03-25T03:00:00.000Z Today is Lord of the Rings Day (previous editions: [2021](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-4/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2020](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-3/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2019](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2018](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2017](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/happy-lord-of-the-rings-day/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2016](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/a-happy-lord-of-the-rings-day-to-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [2014](https://taphysika.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/lord-of-the-rings-day-2/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).). Every year, I spend a part of March 25 thinking about the continued relevance of this book; even though this may have diminished significantly, it remains for better or for worse the work that founded modern fantasy literature (in the English language) and which subsequent works [sidestepped, superseded or transcended](https://rpr2.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/a-tribute-to-tolkien/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, thinking about *Lord of the Rings* has largely been, to me at least, thinking about fantasy as escape, but this year, it may represent something else – and in doing so also become a little bit more relevant in my own imagination. This year, on this day, war is on all our minds. In J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Middle-Earth saga, of which *Lord of the Rings* is one important part, there are many, many wars. The fundamental themes of *Lord of the Rings*, the greatness of friendship and the triumph of good over evil, are themselves consummated by victories in battles, a motif that Tolkien establishes in the (fictitious) history of Middle-Earth from the very beginning itself. Some of them come immediately to mind, for being more poignant than the others: the Battle of Sudden Flame, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the War of Wrath and the Defence of Osgiliath. Three of these four conflicts are tragedies. In the Battle of Sudden Flame ('Dagor Bragollach' in Sindarin), Morgoth, the primordial antagonist in Tolkien's works, breaks the siege around his fortress by the high-elven Noldor and marches forth with a great army, including the first dragon, to reassert his power in the region of Beleriand. Shortly before this battle, some of the Noldor had contemplated an assault of their own to quell Morgoth once and for all, but didn't proceed for want of consensus. Most of the Noldor believed the siege alone, which by then had lasted over four centuries, would suffice and that Morgoth would fade away. But after the Battle of Sudden Flame, Morgoth rose and rose in power. Two decades after the siege was broken, many of the high-elves, dwarves and Earthlings – led by Maedhros – united once more under his banner, inspired by the heroics of Beren and Luthien against the kingdom of Morgoth, and intended to take the fight to him instead of, as with the siege, letting him muster his forces. But through a network of spies and turncoats, Morgoth got early wind of the Union of Maedhros. This led to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears ('Nirnaeth Arnoediad'), in which the Noldor were decimated, by the end of which Morgoth had an iron grip on the continent's north, and had only three kingdoms left to challenge him: Gondolin (which had secluded itself anyway), Doriath and Nargothrond. Some six centuries, and many interim epics, later, Eärendil pleads with the Valar – the angelic peoples called the "Powers of the World" in the Middle-Earth mythos – to help the elves and the humans defeat Morgoth. They agree, thus the Host of Valinor is assembled, and thus begins the War of Wrath, which by one account lasted fully 40 years. The exchange of power is so great in this time that Beleriand itself is reshaped and many of its mountains and plains are drowned by newly recast rivers and seas. Morgoth himself is defeated and cast into the "Timeless Void" (that favourite place of fantasy authors in which to consign villains who have become too mighty for anyone's good). His lieutenant, the necromancer Thû, however escapes and hides in east Middle-Earth, eventually creating the dreaded kingdom of Mordor and himself becoming known as Sauron. The Defence of Osgiliath transpires when Sauron is preparing to assault Gondor, a great kingdom of humans on Middle-Earth. Osgiliath, by this time, is an outpost with a military garrison. A small scratch force from Gondor sets out to prevent Sauron's forces from occupying Osgiliath, and fails miserably. One of the casualties is Faramir, younger son of Denethor, the steward of Gondor. Faramir, as captain of the party, sets out to defend Osgiliath though he knows he can't, that he may even die, simply because Denethor had wished Faramir had died in battle instead of his older, and favoured, son, Boromir. I was hoping in the course of this recollection to find parallels to Russia's war in Ukraine. I don't know what they might be. However, the battles of Beleriand – especially the ones the 'good guys' lost – in Tolkien's telling are not about underestimating Morgoth's might or miscalculating one's own, even when they are. They are ultimately animated by the spirit of resisting a mindless tyrant irrespective of the outcome. It's certainly folly to found one's attacks on flawed strategies, but in the face of an enemy who can't be reasoned with and who just won't back down, there are times when waiting for the numbers to add up, for the skies to clear, for the stars to align can be more indefensible. Ukraine may not have wanted this war but it must fight anyway to resist Russia, and Vladimir Putin. > War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. > > John Stuart Mill, [*Principles of Political Economy: And Chapters on Socialism*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/841158.Principles%5Fof%5FPolitical%5FEconomy?ref=slightlyacidic.com), 1848 Happy Lord of the Rings Day! *Featured image: '*[*Maps of Tolkien world*](https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035688462@N01/2613315218?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*',* [*tamburix*](https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035688462@N01?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*,* [*CC-BY-SA 2.0*](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*.* ### A Brahmin wedding URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/13/a-brahmin-wedding/ Last updated: 2022-03-13T07:50:16.000Z I was at a wedding this weekend. It had a distinct [Omelas-like](https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/readings/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-ursula-le-guin/view?ref=slightlyacidic.com) quality throughout. For most of the elders present, it was an *oru naal koothu* — a single-day celebration that has been many weeks in the making. But the bride, whom I knew, didn’t want to get married, especially to the groom her parents had picked out without her consent. I was told they had gone ahead anyway because the bride’s parents had liked the groom’s parents, and the two families had liked each other and wished to be related. When the bride insisted, as best she could, that the wedding be postponed (or the groom be replaced — not a bad idea considering this was a man who believed sincerely that the women who spoke out in #MeToo were doing so only for attention), she was first met with a barrage of emotional blackmail: “think of what will happen to your mother”, “your grandmother will have a heart attack”, etc. — followed later by her father insisting that she provide a good enough reason, only to dismiss each one (‘don’t like the groom’, ‘don’t want to get married now’) promptly as not being “good enough”. The wedding itself was a deeply patriarchal affair — an upper-caste conclave in which its members asserted their caste and “culture”, made a display of observing and preserving ancient traditions, brought two families together by unanimously waylaying the life of one woman. Like the story of the *Mahabharata* seems so different from that pieced together in *Yuganta*, viewing a Brahmin wedding through the eyes of an unwilling bride can reveal a very different picture from the wedding that everyone else experiences. It is no different from a tradition that her parents, the groom and his parents, and the extended family on both sides — enabled by a swarm of priests — further using the body and soul of one woman, with or without her willing participation. Good wedding ceremonies with willing participants exist, but only the bad ones truly demonstrate their totalitarian character. For example, furthering the agony are the rituals immediately preceding the knot-tying, in which the bride and the groom are led through a series of joint activities by the priests and the extended family. They are apparently modelled on the rituals of two gods who got married: sitting on a swing together, exchanging garlands while perched on the shoulders of their fathers and brothers, and so forth. Surely these sound like the activities of a pair of people excited about getting married; to force them on a bride who has been brought there by (emotional and social) force has really no meaning, other than to reinforce the importance for all these rituals of a pliant woman, the ultimate vessel of Brahmin assertion. The instrumentalisation of the bride and her functions begins in fact from the make-up — slathered on the bride, who also has to don silk sarees and other ornaments with no regard for the Chennai weather, while the groom stands next to her in a cotton shirt, a cotton *veshti* and the customary streak of vermillion on his forehead. She also has to sit through more rituals than him, some of which happen late at night or early in the day (she was woken up at 2 am for the make-up); cannot know when or what she can eat, or if she can visit the canteen or must have food brought to her; and, of course, she is expected to smile at all times for the cameras. While the matrimonial traditions of the families of the bride and the groom overlap for the most part, there are a few differences – yet all of them impose an equally unforgiving information asymmetry on the bride. Meanwhile, the priests are chanting something in Sanskrit, a language no one in the room understands. It is hard to know what they are saying and why, but even as they are, there is another man with a bag full of cash standing just behind them, possibly belonging to the bride’s side, handing bills to them as part of rituals that require people to exchange wealth or give it away to others — i.e. to more relatives or to the priests themselves. There are some new observances as well, and while everyone is keen to observe them, no one asks the priests of their provenance or meaning. If they’ve been invented, it seems they will be observed — like the bride’s father having to carry a plateful of cash (intended to be donated to a temple) out of the room. They’re clearly nothing other than more lines drawn to distinguish between those whom the priests claim are “real Brahmins” and those who aren’t, and charging a fee to do so. As the groom tied the three knots and everyone in the hall blessed them, and came away smiling, the wedding ended. Everyone was happy, nodding at each other in an implicit acknowledgment of having brought another conclave to a successful finish. The bride and groom were still onstage, next to a “holy fire”, spelling out the remainder of their prayers. The camera crew was taking a break, the relatives were heading in droves to the canteen, and the bride had to take a quick break in between as her new mother-in-law approached her with a make-up kit. *Featured image credit: Viktor Talashuk/Unsplash.* ### Climate change, like quantum physics, will strain language URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/10/climate-change-like-quantum-physics-will-strain-language/ Last updated: 2022-03-10T14:17:34.000Z One of the defining features of quantum mechanics is that it shows up human language, and thought supported by that language, to be insufficient and limited. Many of the most popular languages of the world, including Tamil, Hindi and English, are linear. Their script reads in a line from one end of the page to the other, and their spoken words compile meaning based on a linear sequence and order of words. It is possible to construe these meanings in turn only after word after another, through the passage of time. If time stops, so does language. Such linearity is incompatible with the possibilities in quantum mechanics for simultaneity, in both space and time. Quantum superposition is not exactly a system in two states at once but in a linear combination of states, but without the specialised knowledge, language can only offer a slew of metaphors, each of which hews asymptotically closer to the actual thing but never captures it in its entirety. Quantum entanglement, similarly, causes one particle to affect another instantaneously, over hundreds of kilometres, defying both the universal information speed limit and the ability of human minds that remain constrained by that limit, as well as a human language that has no place for, and therefore can't identify, simultaneity. All we have something after another, effect after cause, the first step and then the second, and never both at once. Indeed, the notion of *causality* – that cause will always precede effect – is one of the load-bearing pillars of reality as we strive to understand it. But while quantum mechanics is so kooky, it is also excusably so, considering it represents a paradigm shift of sorts from the truths of classical physics (it plays by different rules, that is). It is almost simply natural that our languages do not encompass the possibilities afforded by a phenomenon we didn't encounter until the 20th century, and still don't except through specialised apparatuses and controlled experimental conditions. However, there is another system of things that plays largely by the rules of classical physics – our interactions with and formalisation of which paralleled the evolution of our languages – and yet increasingly defies the ability of our languages to describe it faithfully: *climate change*. True, weather and climate patterns include aspects of [chaos theory](https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-chaos-theory-10620?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which explains how minute differences in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes. But chaos theory still only takes recourse to non-linear effects, which, while harder to conceive of than their linear counterparts, are easier than to grapple with non-locality and non-causality. Of course, climate change doesn't violate any of these or other similarly foundational principles, yet it complicates interactions in the global weather system and intensifies the interactions between the elements and human culture, technology and biology – both to such a degree that they have consequences both different and new. For example, to quote from an article *The Wire Science* [published this morning](https://science.thewire.in/environment/indian-ocean-marine-heatwaves-monsoons-dry-spell-intense-cyclones/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Climate change will further exacerbate marine heatwave risks in the \[Indian subcontinent\] region, according to \[Ming\] Feng. This could suppress coastal upwelling – the process by which strong winds move surface water in the ocean, permitting water from below to surface – and reduce the amount of oxygen in the water. This in turn could have a “great impact” on fisheries. A big part of climate change's (extant as well as impending) devastation is in the form of surprise – that is, of the emergent phenomena that it makes possible. Expounded most famously by the brilliant physicist Philip W. Anderson, especially in his 1972 essay ['More Is Different'](https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1%5F2011%5Fmore%5Fis%5Fdifferent%5FPWA.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), emergence is the idea that we cannot fully describe a large system only by studying its smallest components. Put another way, larger systems have emergent properties and behaviour that are more than the sum of the ways in which systems' most fundamental parts interact. Studying climate change is important because the additional complexity it imbues to existing weather systems are ripe with emergent effects, each with new consequences and perhaps more effects of their own. At the same time, the bulk of these effects, taken together, anticipate such a large volume of possibilities that even though they certainly won't defy reality's, and human languages', assumption that causality is true, they will push it to extreme limits. Two events are still at liberty to happen at the same time, each with a distinct and preceding cause, but even as the ways we communicate wait for cause before composing effect, climate change will confront us with a tsunami of changes – each one reinforcing, screening or ignoring the other, rapidly branching out into a larger, denser forest of changes, until the cause is only relevant as an historical artefact in our grammar of the natural universe. ### Must war have consequences for scientists? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/03/05/must-war-have-consequences-for-scientists/ Last updated: 2022-03-05T06:48:00.000Z The *Journal of Molecular Structure* [has temporarily banned](https://retractionwatch.com/2022/03/04/journal-editor-explains-ban-on-manuscripts-from-russian-institutions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) manuscript submissions from scientists working at state science institutes in Russia. The decision extends the consequences of war beyond the realm of politics, albeit to persons who have played no role in Putin’s invasion and [might even have opposed it](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/4750-russian-scientists-science-journalists-sign-open-letter-against-ukraine-war/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) at great risk to themselves. Such reactions have been common in sports, for example, but much less so in science. The SESAME synchrotron radiation facility in Jordan, operated by CERN and the Jordan atomic energy agency and with support from UNESCO, [takes pride](https://www.sesame.org.jo/about-us/coop-arrangementsendorsements/resolutionsendorsements?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in promoting peace among its founding members (Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey). CERN in Europe, born in the aftermath of World War II, has a similar goal. In fact, in the science-adjacent enterprise of spaceflight, the corresponding US and Russian agencies have cooperated against the shared backdrop of the International Space Station even when their respective heads of state have been at odds with each other on other issues. But as Pradeep Mohandas [wrote recently](https://science.thewire.in/spaceflight/russia-invasion-ukraine-roscosmos-rogozin-oneweb-isro-sce-200-gslv/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Roscosmos’s response to sanctions against Russia have disrupted space science to an unprecedented degree, including the ExoMars and the Venera D missions. *Update, March 8, 2022, 7:14 pm*: CERN also seems to have suspended Russia’s ‘observer’ status in the organisation and [has said](https://twitter.com/CERN/status/1501189763776356361?ref=slightlyacidic.com) it will cooperate with international sanctions against the country. Such virtues are in line with contemporary science’s aspiration to be ‘apolitical’, irrespective of whether that is humanitarian, and ‘objective’ in all respects. This is [of course misguided](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/the-politicisation-of-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), yet the aspiration itself persists and is often considered desirable. In this context, the decision of the editor of the *Journal of Molecular Structure*, Rui Fausto, to impose sanctions on scientists working at institutions funded by the Russian government for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes across as enlightened (even though Fausto himself calls his decision “apolitical”). But it is not. Science in the 21st century is of course a reason of state. In various conflicts around the world, both communities and nation-states have frequently but not explicitly appropriated the fruits of civilian enterprise, especially science, to fuel and/or sustain conflicts. Nation-states have done this by vouchsafing the outcomes of scientific innovation to certain sections of the population to directly deploying such innovation on battlefields. Certain communities, such as the [casteist Brahmins of Silicon Valley](https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidden-caste-system/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [misogynistic academics](https://science.thewire.in/science/lawrence-krauss-sexual-harassment-allegations/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in big universities and even those united by their [latent queerphobia](https://thelifeofscience.com/2021/12/31/sexual-harassment-in-indian-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), have used the structural privileges that come with participating in the scientific, or the adjacent technological, enterprise to perpetrate violence against members of “lower” castes, female students and genderqueer persons, for reasons that have nothing to do with the latter’s academic credentials. However, the decision of the *Journal of Molecular Structure* is undermined by two problems with Fausto’s reasoning. First, the Russia-Ukraine conflict may be the most prominent in the world right now but it isn’t the only one. Others include the conflict in the Kashmir Valley, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the Yemeni civil war and the oppression of Uyghur and Rohingya Muslims in South and Southeast Asia. Why haven’t Fausto et al. banned submissions from scientists working at state-sponsored institutes in India, Israel, Saudi Arabia and China? The journal’s editorial board doesn’t include any scientists affiliated with institutes in Russia or Ukraine – which suggests both that there was no nationalistic stake to ban scientists in Russia alone and that there could have been a nationalistic stake that kept the board from extending the ban to other hegemons around the world. Either way, this glaring oversight reduces the journal’s decision to grandstanding. The second reason, and also really why Fausto’s decision shouldn’t be extended to scientists labouring in other aggressor nations, is that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is an autocrat – as are the political leaders of the countries listed above (with the exception of Israel). As I wrote recently in an (unpublished) essay: > … we have all come across many stories in the last two years in which reporters quoted unnamed healthcare workers and government officials to uncover important details of the Government of India’s response to the country’s COVID-19 epidemic. Without presuming to know the nature of relationships between these ‘sources’ and the respective reporters, we can say they all likely share a conflict of ethics: they are on the frontline and they are needed there, but if they speak up, they may lose their ability to stay there. Indeed, India’s Narendra Modi government itself has refused to listen to experts or expertise, and has in fact often preempted or sought to punish scientists whom it perceives to be capable of contradicting the government’s narratives. Modi’s BJP enjoys an absolute majority in Parliament, allowing it a free hand in lawmaking, and as an authoritarian state it has also progressively weakened the country’s democratic institutions. In all, the party has absolute power in the country, which it often uses to roll over the rights of minorities and health and ecological safeguards based on science as much as to enable industrial development and public administration on its own terms. In this milieu, speaking up and out is important, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves about how much we can expect our comments to achieve. Similarly, in Putin’s Russia, more than 4,700 scientists and science journalists [recently signed](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/4750-russian-scientists-science-journalists-sign-open-letter-against-ukraine-war/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) an open letter protesting the invasion of Ukraine, potentially opening themselves up to persecution (the Russian government has already arrested more than 5,000 protestors). But how much of a damn does Putin give for scientists studying molecular structure in the country’s state-funded research facilities? In an ideal scenario, pinching the careers of certain people only makes sense if the country’s leader can be expected to heed their words. Otherwise, sanctions such as that being imposed by the *Journal of Molecular Chemistry* will have no effect except on the scientists’ work – scientists who are now caught between a despot and an inconsiderate journal. Ultimately, Fausto’s decision would seem to be apolitical, but in a bad way. Would that it had been political, it would also have been good.Modern science surely has a difficult place in society. But in autocratic setups, there arises a pronounced difference between a science practised by the élite and the powerful, in proximity to the state and with privileged access to political power, and which would deserve sanctions such as those extended by the *Journal of Molecular Structure*. Then there is the science more removed from that power, still potentially being a reason of state but at the same time less “open to co-optation by the powerful and the wealthy” ([source](https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se02.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). ### 'Aatmanirbharta through science' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/27/aatmanirbharta-through-science/ Last updated: 2022-02-27T09:16:13.000Z *The Week* magazine [distinguished itself last year](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/disappointing-persons-of-the-year-2021/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by picking Indian Council of Medical Research chief Balram Bhargava as its 'person of the year' for 2021\. And now, ahead of National Science Day tomorrow, *The Week* has conducted an "exclusive" interview with science minister Jitendra Singh. ~~Long~~ Small story short, it's rubbish. ![](https://clarificationneeded.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/screenshot-2022-02-27-at-12.41.06-pm.png?w=1024) I discovered the term 'Gish gallop' in a [2013 blog post](https://respectfulinsolence.com/2013/04/26/all-truth-comes-from-public-debate-a-corollary-to-crank-magnetism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by David Gorsky, in which he wrote about the danger of acquiescing to cranks' request for experts to debate them on a public stage. While such invitations may appear to legitimate experts to be an opportunity to settle the matter once and for all, it never works that way: the stage and the debate become platforms on which the cranks can spew their bullshit, in the name of having the right in the limited context of the event to do so, and use the inevitably imperfect rebuttal – limited by time and other resources – as a way to legitimise some or all of their claims. (Also read in this context: ['No, I Will Not Debate You'](https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) One particular tactic to which cranks resort in these circumstances is, Gorsky wrote, "to Gish gallop": to flood their rhetoric with new terms, claims, arguments, etc. with little regard for their relevance or accuracy, in an effort to inundate their opponents with too many points on which to push back. In their 'interview', with the help of kowtowing questions and zero push-back, *The Week* has allowed Jitendra Singh to Gish gallop. In this case, however, instead of Singh drawing credibility from his 'opponent' being an expert who couldn't effectively refute his contentions, he derives his upper-hand from his interlocutor being a well-known, once-reputed magazine, and secretly from its (possibly enforced) supinity. The penultimate question is the best, to me: "Yet, India’s good work gets shadowed by pseudoscience utterances. Somehow, your government has not been able to quieten the mumbo jumbo." Dear interviewer, *the *government itself* is the origin of a lot of the mumbo jumbo*. Any question that isn't founded on that truth will always ignore the problem, and will not elicit a solution. Overall, the interview is a press release worded in the form of a Q&A, with a healthy chance that the opportunity to publish it was dangled in front of *The Week* in exchange for soft questions. Yet its headline may be accurate in a way the magazine didn't intend: this government is going to achieve its mythical goal of perfect 'Aatmanirbharta' only by boring a hole through science, and reason and common sense. Happy national science day! *Featured image: Jitendra Singh, May 2014\. Photo edited (see original* [*here*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jitendra%5FSingh.jpg?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*). Credit: Press Information Bureau/GoI, GODL – India.* ### NSD II URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/27/nsd-ii/ Last updated: 2022-02-27T09:00:18.000Z That the Modi government has been able to coopt National Science Day as well as it has speaks only to the occasion’s moral vacuity. India’s National Science Day is the day on which physicist C.V. Raman discovered the optical effect named for him, and the government zeroed in on this discovery, over numerous others, because it won Raman a Nobel Prize. (If another scientist wins another science Nobel Prize in future, will the day be changed?) The Day’s foundation in effect has nothing to say about the spiritual, moral and aspirational scaffolding of science’s practice in the country. It doesn’t encourage, for example, the ethical practice of science, or that science must as a duty inform politics and governance, or that the scientific publics must in all contexts strive to uphold the spirit of critical thinking. National Science Day has no prescriptions attached to it; it simply commemorates one man’s one achievement at one time. (The theme ascribed to each science day is equally purposeless.) So its coattails can be easily hitched to any wagon, even to pseudoscience – as the BJP in power at the Centre has done, by celebrating National Science Week and having its ministers talk in the press about National Science Day while calling the inclusion of Ayurveda and homeopathy within the national healthcare system “integrated science” and talking about misinformation and disinformation as if everyone else but itself produces them. "Integrated Approach in S&T for Sustainable Future" is, incidentally, the theme for National Science Day 2022. Much as I dislike the concept, I do believe we need a National Science Day – but not the one that exists. The latter is a container, a receptacle that is only too happy to hold anything poured inside, whether an elixir or sewage. Instead, we need a National Science Day to remember what we have lost as a result of the occasion’s current character. For one, we have lost an opportunity for an occasion that reaffirms a science-related thing to which we can all aspire. For example, we can renew a vow every year on this day to keep considerations of caste, class and creed out of our universities and research facilities. (So that when one scientist does, others understand in a simple way why they have to stand up and speak up.) We can promise to keep science from contributing to any form of violence – physical, mental, economic, structural. (So that when the government develops [“chilli grenades”](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/indias-unfortunate-connections-to-the-2021-medicine-nobel-prize/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), both scientists and the non-scientists at large have a simple justification for resistance.) We can attach scientific success to open knowledge and open access so that the fruits of scientists’ labour are available for everyone to enjoy. (So an administrator doesn’t withhold a scientist’s promotion because the latter didn’t publish peer-reviewed papers that would end up behind a paywall.) And so forth. There are many virtues to be had through the honest practice of science, and a national festival – such as it is – is a phenomenal opportunity to formalise them for science’s benefit. We also need a National Science Day that skips over the obsession with the scientific temper, or at least combines scientific temper with social responsibility. But one goose step at a time. ### Art is something for cryptocurrencies to con URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/22/art-is-something-for-cryptocurrencies-to-con/ Last updated: 2022-02-22T06:24:18.000Z Joe Dunthorne penned [an amusing article](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n03/joe-dunthorne/diary?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *London Review* earlier this month about encountering a fake account of him on Instagram, whose user promoted the real Dunthorne's poems and book. Dunthorne begins by citing Fyodor Dostoevsky's *The Double*, in which a doppelgänger usurps the life of a nondescript young man named Yakov Golyadkin by taking over his life and social circles. The original is eventually confined to an asylum because everyone in his life, such as it was, prefers the new fellow. Dunthorne himself quests for the identity of the person impersonating him, only to find, through many twists and turns, that it is a guy who constantly changes his identity as he goes about scamming people to invest in cryptocurrencies by posing as someone whose work doesn't directly involve these digital entities in the first place. It's a fascinating con – although not the one Dunthorne may believe it is, as he writes: "Then there was the one where scammers tricked people into investing $2.7 million in cartoons of apes. In fact, this was a double scam, convincing buyers first that the images were timeless works of digital art and then that they should pay huge amounts of money to an organisation that didn't exist." Dismissing these investments because they're directed at companies that "don't exist" in the physical realm is naïve. Nonetheless, while Dunthorne ponders if a random stranger has done a Yakov Golyadkin on him, there is a con here – one that brings to mind [a post](https://photomatt.tumblr.com/post/674592358411714560/dear-photomatt-my-name-is-kevin-im-a-tumblr?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by a user named kevbrinx on Tumblr: > Tumblr is known for being a place where creativity happens because it's cool, it's fun, it's different and difficult! "I will make it because I can". > > The majority of NFT artists I've seen don't share the same mentality. And that is worrying. > > I'm sure out there are many works of art that aren't made by a computer and have been created with the intention to inspire. However, just like it has been demonstrated on Twitter, who buys wouldn't do it just to showcase their precious possessions? > > Where is the value in that? > > It might be not what NFTs have been created for originally, but right now they represent vanity and greed to many. Expecially when there are other safer ways to support artists economically. > > … > > "The focus of NFTs is not actually the art". The post is addressed to Matt Mullenweg, the cofounder of WordPress. Mullenweg's response is ambiguous, noncomittal: > The list of things to do before we got to anything NFT-related is super-duper long. I don’t share all your worries about NFTs, but I am not fanboying them. The only NFTs I hold myself right now are Wapuu related: [https://web3wp.com/](https://web3wp.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) If Mullenweg doesn't see the problem that already exists, he's not going to solve it. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a (disagreeable) way to fund art, and therefore supposedly support artists, using the Trojan horse of NFTs. (For a detailed yet accessible detailed explanation of this concept, [see here](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Dunthorne's story illustrates that cryptocurrency evangelists – including scammers – are looking for ways to promote it without letting their prospects be tainted by the conflict of interest of how much they have to gain: lots of money, and the advantage of being invisible to law enforcement – in exchange for allowing struggling artists to enter the cool cryptocurrencies circuit. But what Dunthorne leaves unsaid is that the *modus operandus* of his scammer is indistinguishable from those who claim they're legitimately supporting artists by trading their work using cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Separating the item in question from the value of it that's being traded may seem virtuous, but it's really the essence of the scam: art becomes another financial asset, one that the rich and the powerful are already familiar with. Art here is being used to give cryptocurrencies something to do, and to look any bit respectable while doing it. But breaking into this art-trading system only legitimises the rituals of the moneyed and renders art, and its makers, inseparable from their limited representation in the plutosphere. The purpose is money, and profiteering, not the art itself or the issues embedded therein. The antics of the cryptocurrency-proponent Metakovan last year, buying an NFT of a collage of pictures for $69 million, popularised the concept and set this ship sailing, but in his case itself, [as I wrote](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Metakovan’s move was ostensibly about getting the world’s attention and making it think about racism in, for some reason, art patronage. And it seems opportunistic more than anything else, a “shot fired” to be able to improve one’s own [opportunities for profit](https://www.inputmag.com/tech/record-breaking-sale-of-beeples-nft-artwork-seems-kind-of-shady?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the crypto space instead of undermining the structural racism and bigotry embedded in the whole enterprise. This is a system which owes part of its current success to the existence of social and economic inequalities, which has laboured over the last few decades to exploit cheap labour and poor governance in other, historically beleaguered parts of the world to entrench technocracy and scientism over democracy and public accountability. To quote [Rosanna McLaughlin](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/06/how-nfts-non-fungible-tokens-are-shaking-up-the-art-world?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of *The White Review*: > The most shocking aspect of the NFT to the art intelligentsia is its brazen entanglement with finance. Trading art has always been a pastime of the wealthy. Much of what counts for art history consists of flattering portrayals of the rich and powerful, and artists have long been expected to perform what Tom Wolfe called the Art Mating Ritual – attracting the interest of wealthy patrons and conservative institutions, while simultaneously presenting as Bohemians and renegades. Yet with the NFT, the distinction between art and asset seems to have disappeared. In place of the curated exhibition is the auction website; symbols of the market have seeped into the aesthetic language of the art itself. Prices, not ideas, dominate. > > Despite the promise of “art for everyone”, the final destination of the NFT might not actually be art. Art may simply be a useful way to advertise the possibilities of a new technology. “I’ve done everything from fashion, fragrances to endorsements,” Paris Hilton says, adding that NFTs are another way for “fans to have a piece of me”. As well as working with the rapper Ice Cube, Jones recently made an NFT for the whisky company Macallan, to be auctioned alongside a very expensive cask of scotch. This, it seems, is a taste of where NFTs may be heading: not a radical new model for trading art, but a digital marketing bauble. [Anil Dash](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), the CEO of Glitch: > Meanwhile, most of the start-ups and platforms used to sell NFTs today are no more innovative than any random website selling posters. Many of the works being sold as NFTs aren’t digital artworks at all; they’re just digital pictures of works created in conventional media. > > … > > There’s only one exception to the lack of interest in blockchain apps today: apps for trading cryptocurrencies themselves. What results is an almost hermetically sealed economy, whose currencies exist only to be traded and become derivatives of themselves. If you squint, it looks like an absurd art project. > > After a decade of whiplash-inducing changes in valuation, billions of dollars are now invested in cryptocurrencies, and the people who have made those bets can’t cash in their chips anywhere. They can’t buy real estate with cryptocurrency. They can’t buy yachts with it. So the only rich-person hobby they can partake in with their cryptowealth is buying art. And in this art market, no one is obligated to have any taste or judgment about art itself. If NFT prices suddenly plunge, these investors will try buying polo horses or Davos tickets with cryptocurrencies instead. Think of a kid who’s spent the day playing Skee-Ball and now has a whole lot of tickets to spend. Every toy looks enticing. NFTs have become just such a plaything. Finally, [Laurie Rojas](https://caesuramag.org/posts/laurie-rojas-why-no-good-nft-yet?ref=slightlyacidic.com), cofounding editor of *Caesura*, on the inevitability of NFTs because of art's foregone relationship with capitalism: > Commentators, however, actively neglect the lesson learned since the late '60s that trying to escape art’s commodification is futile, or merely a pretense, and rarely reflect on the artwork’s connection to capitalist social relations. The connection between these two tendencies — that art’s value is determined/critiqued by commodity “fetishism” or that art’s value is determined/critiqued by socio-political position-taking — is deeper than it appears at first glance. These “critical” tendencies express how much Art has become caught between being an end in itself and a means to an end. NFTs are the latest phenomenon to express this. > > Even with all the financial speculation around NFTs, the point that Art’s value is determined within the parameters of a society in which commodification is the dominant form of social relations (i.e., capitalism) has too easily been abandoned for poorly defined neologisms. Rarely is there a reflection on the relation of the artwork — its form, technique, beauty, contemplativeness, incomprehensibility, and what have you — to the increasingly barbaric commodity form. > > Has the art world gone mad? No. This is business as usual. *Featured image credit: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels.* ### For colours, dunk clay in water URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/22/for-colours-dunk-clay-in-water/ Last updated: 2022-02-22T04:58:30.000Z It's not exactly that simple, but it's still a relatively simple way to produce a lovely palette of colours. Researchers from Norway and Germany [have reported](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl8147?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that when a synthetic clay called Na-fluorohectorite is suspended in water, the material separates out in thin nanosheets – i.e. nanometre-thick layers of Na-fluorohectorite separated by water. And these sheets produce *structural colours*. Colour is the frequency of light that we see, after other objects have absorbed all the other frequencies of light. For example, if you have a green-coloured bottle in front of you in a well-lit room, you see that it's green because the bottle has absorbed all other frequencies in the visible light, leaving only the green frequency to reach your eyes. On the other hand, structural colours are produced when the structure of an object manipulates the incoming light to pronounce some frequencies and screen others. When light enters between the Na-fluorohectorite layers in water, it bounces between the layers even as some beams of light interfere with other beams. The layer's final colours are the colours that survive these interactions. The amazing thing here is that class 10 physics allows you to glean some useful insights. As the researchers wrote in their paper, "The constructive interference of white light from individual nanosheets is described by the Bragg-Snell's law". The equation for this law: 2d(n2 − sin2θ)1/2 \= mλ d is the distance between the nanosheet layers. θ is the angle of observation of the layers. m is a constant. λ is the wavelength of the light "enhanced by constructive interference", according to the paper. When the colour visible changes according to the angle of observation, θ, the phenomenon is called *iridescence*. However, the researchers found that Na-fluorohectorite layers were non-iridescent, i.e. the colour of each layer looked the same from different angles of observation. They attributed this to bends and wrinkles in the nanosheets, and to [turbostratic organisation](http://www.next-toulouse.eu/agenda/turbostratic-or-graphitic-that-is-the-question?ref=slightlyacidic.com): the layers are slightly rotated relative to each other. Similarly, the effective refractive index of the light, interacting with two distinct materials, is given by this equation: n = (n12Φ1 \+ n22Φ2)1/2 n1 is the refractive index of one material and Φ1 is the amount of that material in the overall setup (by volume). So also for n2 and Φ2. Taking both equations together, by controlling the values of n and d, they researchers could control the colour of light that survives its interaction with the water-clay composite. In fact, as we'll see later, the volume of clay suspended in the water is very low (around 1% at a time), so the effective refractive can be approximated to be the refractive index of water – around 1.33\. So if n is fixed, the researchers would only have to change d – the distance between the – to change the structural colours that the clay produced! Here's a short video of the team's efforts: https://videopress.com/v/7UA2RqRh?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&muted=true&persistVolume=false&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=trueDOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl8147 The researchers found that some white light still survives and dulls the colours on display, which is why they've used a dark substrate (in the background). It absorbs the white light, accentuating the other colours. This is a simple workaround – but it's also inefficient and limits the applications of their discovery. So they found another way. The researchers dunked Na-fluorohectorite in water along with atoms of caesium. Within "seconds to minutes", the Na-fluorohectorite formed double sheets – two layers of Na-fluorohectorite sandwiched together by a thin layer of caesium atoms. And these double layers produced bright colours. ![](https://clarificationneeded.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/screenshot-2022-02-22-at-10.19.06-am.png?w=738) Difference in colour brightness between the single- and the double-layer nanosheets. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl8147 The double layers form so rapidly because of a phenomenon called [osmotic swelling](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0169131789900057?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The surfaces of the Na-fluorohectorite single-layers are negatively charged. The caesium ion is positively charged, and gets attracted to these surfaces. If two layers, called L1 and L2, are closer to each other than to other layers, then the concentration of caesium ions between these two layers will be significantly higher than in the rest of the water. This prevents the water from entering the gap between L1 and L2, and allows them to practically stick to each other. ![](https://clarificationneeded.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/screenshot-2022-02-22-at-9.59.01-am.png?w=1024) The percentages denote the amount of Na-fluorohectorite by volume. Ignore the orders. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl8147 There's more: the researchers also found that they could change the colours by adding or removing water. This is wonderfully simple, but also to be expected. The separation between two nanosheets – i.e. between L1 and L2 – is affected by the concentration of caesium ions in the water. So if you add more water, the concentration of ions drops, the separation increases and the colour changes. An edited excerpt from the paper's discussion section, on the findings' implications: > Because of the sustainability and abundance of clay minerals, the present system carries considerable potential for upscaled applications in various areas ranging from pigments in cosmetics and health applications to windows and tiles. The results and understanding obtained here on synthetic clays should be transferred to natural clays, where vermiculite … presents itself as the most suitable candidate for upscaling the concept presented here. … our results could break new ground when embedding appropriate amounts of these clay nanolayers into transparent but otherwise mechanically weak matrices, providing structural coloration, mechanical strength, and tunable stability at the same time. https://videopress.com/v/XdvPxWST?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&muted=true&persistVolume=false&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=trueDOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl8147 *Featured image credit: Tim Mossholder/Pexels.* ### Streaming now: the 24/7 human centipede URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/19/streaming-now-the-24-7-human-centipede/ Last updated: 2022-02-19T08:38:57.000Z You could be easily forgiven for not having watched, or even knowing about, the 2009 film *The Human Centipede*. If you hadn't heard about this film earlier, its title can be a reverse-spoiler: you probably think a 'human centipede' is a twisted metaphor for some detestable aspect of the human condition, only to discover that it is in fact grossly literal. In the film, a surgeon kidnaps three people and stitches them together, anus to mouth, to form a centipede, each segment of which is an adult human. The film's writer and director Tom Six released two more films with the same premise in 2011 and 2015, each more deranged than the last. A friend who managed to watch the third film, simply called *The Human Centipede: Final Sequence*, said the centipede itself might have been the least objectionable thing about it. I had occasion to recall these films when, late last month, the Bigg Boss franchise launched *Bigg Boss Ultimate* (in Tamil), a reality TV show that follows the usual template of a bunch of celebrities being confined in a purpose-built house fit with cameras, supplied with all amenities, and directed by the unseen 'Bigg Boss' to perform various tasks together as viewers watch and vote to evict celebrities they dislike from the house. The last person still in the house wins a lot of money. But *Bigg Boss Ultimate* has an additional 'feature': instead of being edited into 60-minute episodes that are released in one or two installments every week, it is live-streamed 24/7 (with a day's deference) on the OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar. It's an offset but continuous relay of the participants' lives, with everything from them lazing around chit-chatting to having loud arguments being watched by lakhs of viewers in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere. The mind boggles at what so many people consider to be entertainment, but it boggles more at one factoid that I learnt many years ago and its odd, unsettling resonance the premise of *Bigg Boss Ultimate*. The parent concept for the 'Bigg Boss' franchise is the Dutch TV franchise 'Big Brother', conceived in 1997 by Dutch media tycoon Johannes de Mol, Jr. and produced and aired as a TV show from 1999\. And one of the very first directors of this show, which ran for six seasons, was Tom Six. Six has called his three centipede films *First Sequence*, *Full Sequence* and *Final Sequence*. In 2016, he stitched the three films together together and released what he called *Complete Sequence* – a "movie centipede" in which each film followed the next while being able to stand alone in its own right. Paralleling his efforts, the 'Bigg Boss' franchise has now evolved (or devolved?) into an unending broadcast from the house of celebrities. What might have been a single weekly episode earlier now blends seamlessly into the next one, stretching into a 1,700-hour centipede of celebrity culture and voyeurism. Make no mistake: as vapid as the show is, it's also a pinnacle of consumerism. It's hard to watch any segment of *Complete Sequence* without at least retching, a reaction honed by evolution to keep our bodies away from things that might make us sick or kill us. But *Bigg Boss Ultimate* has created an analogous centipede for the human psyche, and has convinced people that it's' a harmless, even desirable, way to bide their time. *Featured image: Tom Six in June 2013\. Credit: Nigeldehond/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.* ### If WordPress supports NFTs, should I boycott it? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/17/if-wordpress-supports-nfts-should-i-boycott-it/ Last updated: 2022-02-17T14:20:47.000Z I'm a blogger, an amateur coder and an employee at a nonprofit organisation. My experience in these realms of endeavour is such that, taken together, keeping my blog online means a) using a trustworthy web host, b) using a simple as well as moderately featureful content management system, c) achieving this at a reasonable monthly cost, and d) not having to spend any time whatsoever thinking about the setup’s availability or security. Currently WordPress.com is fulfilling (a), (b), (c) and (d). The next best alternative is a shared host offering WordPress hosting followed by a VPS managed through a control panel and with WordPress. If I drop WordPress, the options available to me dwindle rapidly. There’s Ghost, of course, but not much else. There are very many content management systems out there but the vast majority don’t have an option to import WordPress posts and also have either fewer features or too many for my limited programming chops to handle. (I should stress here the extent to which I'm out of sorts in this area. I don't understand all the differences between cloud hosting and VPS hosting. I kinda know what shared hosting is but I don't know why its problems don't assail other forms of hosting. It took me years to get the hang of static-site generators and what web-servers really do. I barely get Docker now and have no frigging idea what Kubernetes is or does. My sense of what is good is simply some better-informed people's sense of good.) In this scenario, can I afford to boycott all platforms and services that are interested in, or whose leaders are interested in, incorporating NFTs into their products? The answer I think is a distinct and discomfiting 'no'. WordPress cofounder [Matt Mullenweg](https://photomatt.tumblr.com/post/674592358411714560/dear-photomatt-my-name-is-kevin-im-a-tumblr?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is pro-NFTs, as are Ghost's [John O’Nolan](https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1433148673907740672?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Twitter's [Jack Dorsey](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/jack-dorsey-sells-his-first-tweet-ever-as-an-nft-for-over-2point9-million.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Reddit's [Alexis Ohanian](https://in.mashable.com/entertainment/24746/alexis-ohanian-showed-off-the-nft-he-bought-for-serena-williams-at-the-met-gala?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Salesforce's [Marc Benioff](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-01/nft-site-backed-by-mark-cuban-ashton-kutcher-raises-new-funds?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Twitch's [Justin Kan](https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/fractal-justin-kan-nft-gaming?ref=slightlyacidic.com), as well as [Microsoft](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/09/microsoft-leads-27m-funding-round-for-palm-nft-studio/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Google](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/startups/scaling-blockchain-and-nfts-with-google-cloud?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Amazon Web Services](https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/nfts-explained/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Akamai](https://www.finyear.com/Akamai-and-MUFG-Announce-Blockchain-Based-Payment-Network%5Fa39475.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (for blockchain in finance) and many, many others. Hosting companies like Amazon Web Services and Digital Ocean ban the use of their services to mine cryptocurrencies, but I doubt they will assume a similarly hardline position against the storage of NFTs. When you're interested in boycotting the work of people who favour the use of a technology you [distrust and dislike](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/the-persistence-of-nfts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), but then find yourself having boycotted every platform, service and/or product you've needed and/or admired thus far, what do you do? This conundrum is largely already real. Many of our internet-based tools today are the brainchildren of people and companies operating primarily out of that American white Democratic libertarian tech space (although I'm bearing in mind only the worst of this group here, principally Zuckerberg). I really like my smartphone but I have many problems with the practices of the company that made it. The same thing goes for my laptop, Kindle, debit card, WhatsApp account, Fire Stick, a vision-impaired aunt's voice-activated phone, my neighbour's electric scooter, etc. My (first) point is that a certain geographically restricted demographic has monopolised innovation in the information technology sector worldwide. As a result, the best tools we have available to use (in this category) to do the work we'd like to do are often made by people and companies doing other technological things with which we're often likely to disagree yet from which we can't ever fully divest ourselves, and whose products we can't readily replace with those of alternative provenance either. At the same time the builders of these tools have accrued more decision-making power than the tools' users, the result of which is that – for one example – we're all contemplating the possibility of a "web3" erected on blockchain technology even though the population of people interested in that future is eminently minuscule. Another is that WordPress powers 43% of all websites on the web while Mullenweg has the single-most say on whether this mass will one day became NFT-friendly. The second point is that of quality and scale, which taken together ensure a good user experience at a relatively low (monetary) cost. For example, if the best American cloud-hosting companies today start to offer pro-NFT services, my hosting options will suddenly be limited to Asian competitors with shady business practices and pricier European ones that, while being better with user privacy and such, also charge more as a result. (I'm neither aware of nor know how to evaluate hosting companies in other parts of the world). I get the philosophy of "either pay or be the product", but here’s the thing: I work in journalism in India and don't have much money to spare, not to mention neither the time nor the inclination to spend becoming a better technologist. The third and final point is about the act of boycotting itself. Why has it been meaningful? It has been meaningful because it has had the power to force managers to change their minds in favour of consumers' demands. Would it be as meaningful as it has been before to boycott WordPress or Twitter or Google? No, because boycotting does not have that power against companies whose breadth of innovation is so diverse that they build the tools with which to organise protests against tree-cutting as well as – to slip into a metaphor here – manufacture the axes with which they will be cut. At this point, a quote from *Elementary* (2:21), the TV show on Amazon Prime – another behemoth, wouldn't you say? – comes to mind: "Piffle. They want an army of drones keeping tabs on all of us." *Since when do you care about other people's privacy?* someone else asks. "I make use of the tools available to me. That doesn't mean to say I have to applaud every advance in the field." I suppose this is my conclusion… for now. I think this will allow me to continue to use WordPress while retaining the moral authority to criticise Mullenweg's support for, or even his equivocation on, NFTs… for now. ### Marie Curie: An icon or 'in the way'? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/16/marie-curie-an-icon-or-in-the-way-nobel-prizes/ Last updated: 2022-02-16T04:49:51.000Z Who would have been the most iconic woman physicist of all time if the Nobel Prizes didn't exist? In 2017, *Science* published an article by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Marie Curie. I got to it today because of this tweet: One of the most well-known woman physicists and scientists – if not *the* most well-known – of the post-industrial era is Marie Curie. This is due in large part to the fact that she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (physics, 1903), the first woman to win any Nobel Prize, the first person as well as the first woman to win the Nobel Prize twice (chemistry, 1911) and in two different fields. As awesome as this roster of accomplishments sounds, they were all manufactured. The Nobel Prizes create prestige by being selective: they pick awardees for a prize after rejecting hundreds of equally eligible candidates for arbitrary reasons. [One important reason](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is that potential laureates have to be nominated and are then considered by a committee of 'luminaries' behind closed doors. Both the nomination and the deliberation have historically been dominated by men, so as such few women were nominated in the first place and even fewer made it to the shortlist, if at all. Ultimately, using the Nobel Prizes to describe "iconic" scientists forces us to inherit the Nobel Prizes' prejudices. As a people, do we want to assemble a list of iconic scientists – members of society that were shaped by our collective morals and aspirations, and worked among us, often struggling through shared problems – that is assailed by the flaws that beset the Nobel Prizes? I assume the answer is 'no'. While Marie Curie may deserve her laurels for all the notable work that she did, we must remember that notability is like a fraction: the numerator is that individual's contribution and the denominator is the background of achievements *against which* we examine it. The Nobel Prizes have horribly skewed the denominator in favour of men and of pseudo-signifiers of notability, like publishing in certain journals at certain times from certain countries. Marie was the first woman to record a clutch of achievements vis-à-vis the Nobel Prizes, and all of them were the prize-giving committee's failures – not Marie's success. We don't know how many other women everyone from the first nominators to the final committee overlooked. More importantly, we don't know how many more women, and scientists of other genders, *we the people* ourselves overlooked, because we were too busy paying attention to the Nobel Prizes. I can't claim to speak for Marie Curie but I know it's not fair to call her the "most iconic" on the back of a false distinction. As Hemmungs Wirtén wrote in [her article](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9627?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Curie's track record is well known. So far, the only woman twice awarded the Nobel Prize – her 1903 and 1911 distinctions in physics and chemistry, respectively – ensure her a permanent seat on the Mount Olympus of science. … The material that transformed Curie from person to persona comes to us largely via Eve Curie's famous hagiography of her mother, *Madame Curie*. … > > Recent years have seen this idealized version of Curie challenged by less-celebratory interpretations. In Julie Des Jardin's *The Madame Curie Complex*, Curie is described as "a superhuman anomaly," one who causes female scientists frustration by establishing unrealistic expectations of scientific accomplishment, rather than inspiring them to excel. … For some, Curie is simply in the way. "Stop talking about Marie Curie," suggested Rachel Swaby in a [piece in *Wired*](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/women-in-sciene/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2015\. She casts too big a shadow, is too well known, and has become the one and only female scientist in the public imagination, Swaby argues. There is some merit to this argument. *Featured image: An edited photo of Marie Curie, c. 1920\. Credit: Public domain.* ### A nominal milestone URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/15/a-nominal-milestone/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T16:00:49.000Z In 2018, I discovered that my blog posts since mid-2014 had taken on a somewhat different character than those before, becoming more critical and paralleling my increasing, and increasingly nagging, questions about what it means to be a journalist – particularly a science journalist – in India at this time. So I reorganised my blog at that point to support this character more, including to truncate the archives at June 2014\. And I discovered a short while ago that on this *new blog*, I have published 1,000 posts. The milestone to me is nominal (references to such round numbers always bring to mind [a comment](https://science.thewire.in/science/its-your-generation-of-experimenters-that-makes-me-look-good-an-interview-with-kip-thorne/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by physicist Kip Thorne, that to celebrate multiples of 10 is mostly to celebrate our choice of a decimal system). This said, it's gratifying that such a large number of posts have had readers and subscribers – sometimes one, sometimes a few thousands, but never zero. So thank you all for reading along. It means a lot to me. :) Take care. ### PTI, celebrating scientists, and class/caste URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/15/pti-celebrating-anna-menon-class-caste/ Last updated: 2022-02-15T05:43:24.000Z SpaceX announced a day or two ago that the crew of its upcoming Polaris Dawn mission will include a space operations engineer at the company named Anna Menon. As if on cue, [PTI published](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/spacex-engineer-anna-menon-to-be-among-crew-of-new-space-mission/article65051328.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a report on February 15 under the headline: "SpaceX engineer Anna Menon to be among crew of new space mission". I've been a science journalist for almost a decade now and I've always seen PTI publish reports pegged on the fact that a scientist in the news for some reason has an Indian last name. In my view, it's always tricky to celebrate scientists for whatever they've done by starting from their nationality. Consider the case of Har Gobind Khorana, whose birth centenary we [marked recently](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/remembering-biochemist-har-gobind-khorana-on-his-100th-birth-anniversary/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Khorana was born in Multan in pre-independence India in 1922, and studied up to his master's degree in the country until 1945\. Around 1950, he returned to India for a brief period in search of a job. He didn't succeed, but fortunately received a scholarship to return to the UK, where he had completed his PhD. After that Khorana was never based in India, and continued his work in the UK, Canada and the US. He won a Nobel Prize in 1968, and India conferred him with the Padma Vibhushan in 1969, and India's Department of Biotechnology floated a scholarship in his name in 2007 (together with the University of Wisconsin and the India-US S&T Forum). I'm glad to celebrate Khorana for his scientific work, or his reputation as a teacher, but how do I celebrate Khorana because he was born in India? Where is the celebration-worthy thing in that? To compare, it's easy for me to celebrate Satyendra Nath Bose for his science *as well as* his nationality because Bose studied and worked in India throughout his life (including at the University of Dhaka in the early 1920s), so his work is a reflection of his education in India and his struggles to succeed, such as they were, in India. An even better example here would be that [of Meghnad Saha](https://science.thewire.in/science/nobel-archives-shed-new-light-on-key-omissions/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), who struggled professionally and financially to make his mark on stellar astrophysics. But Khorana completed a part of his studies in India and a part abroad and worked entirely abroad. When I celebrate his work *because he was Indian*, I'm participating in an exercise that has no meaning – or does in the limited, pernicious sense of one's privileges. The same goes for Anna Menon, and her partner Anil Menon, a flight surgeon whom NASA selected to be a part of its astronaut crew earlier this year. According to Anil's Wikipedia page, he was in India for a year in 2000; other than that, he studied and worked in the US from start to today. I couldn't find much about Anna's background online, except that her last name before she got married to Anil in 2016 [was Wilhelm](https://wikibio.in/anil-menon-astronaut/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), that she studied her fourth grade and completed her bachelor's and master's studies [in the US](https://polarisprogram.com/team/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and that there is nothing other than her partner's part Indian heritage (the other part is Ukrainian) to suggest she has a significant India connection. So celebrating Anna Menon by sticking her name in a headline makes little sense. It's not like PTI has been reporting on her work over time for it to single her out in the headline now. The agency should just have said "SpaceX announces astronaut crew for pioneering Polaris Dawn mission" or "With SpaceX draft, Anna Menon could beat her partner Anil to space". There's so much worth celebrating here, but gravitating towards the 'Menon' will lead you astray. This in turn gives rise to a question about one's means, and in turn one's class/caste (historically as well as today, both the chance to leave the country to study, work and live abroad *and* the chance to conduct good work and have it noticed has typically accrued and accrues to upper-caste, upper-class peoples – Saha's example again comes to mind; such chances have also been stacked against people of genders other than cis-male). When we talk about a scientist who did good work in India, we automatically talk about the outcomes of privileges that they enjoy. Similarly, when we talk of a scientist doing good work in a different country, we also talk about implicit caste/class advantage in India, the country of origin, that allowed them to depart and advantages they subsequently came into at their destination. But when we place people who are doing something noteworthy in the spotlight for no reason other than because *they have Indian last names*, we are celebrating nothing except this lopsided availability of paths to success (broadly defined) – without critiquing the implied barriers to finding similar success within India itself. We need to think more critically about who we are celebrating and why: if there is no greater reason than that they have had a parent or a family rooted in India, the story must be dropped. If there is a greater reason, that should define the headline, the peg, etc. And if possible the author should also accommodate a comment or two about specific privileges not available to most scientists and which might have made the difference in this case. *This post benefited from valuable feedback from Jahnavi Sen.* ### 'Steps in the right direction' are not enough URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/14/steps-in-the-right-direction-are-not-enough/ Last updated: 2022-02-14T05:00:14.000Z > This is a step in the right direction, and the government needs to do more. You often read articles that have this sentence, typically authored by experts who are writing about some new initiative of the Indian government. These articles are very easy to find after the government has made a slew of announcements – such as during the Union budget presentation. These articles have the following structure, on average: introducing the announcement, a brief description of what the announcement is about, comments about its desirability, and finally what the government should do to improve (often the bottom 50% of the article). There was a time when such articles could have been understood to be suggestions to the government. Some news publications like *The Hindu* and *Indian Express* have traditionally prided themselves on counting influential lawmakers among the readers of their op-ed pages and editorials. But almost no one could think this is still the case, at least vis-à-vis the national government. The one in power since 2014, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has always done only what it wants, frequently (and perhaps deliberately, if its actions during the COVID-19 pandemic are anything to go by) to the exclusion of expert advice. And this government has launched many schemes, programmes, missions, etc. that are steps in the right direction, *and that's it*. They have almost never become better with time, and certainly not because bona fide experts demanded it. Some examples: [Ayushman Bharat](https://science.thewire.in/health/ab-pmjay-scheme-health-insurance-packages-cashless/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [KISAN](https://thewire.in/labour/budget-2019-unorganised-sector-workers?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Swachh Bharat](https://thewire.in/government/a-failed-attempt-to-create-an-equally-sanitary-india?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [Mudra Yojana](https://thewire.in/labour/only-20-of-mudra-loan-beneficiaries-started-new-businesses-govt-survey-shows?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and 'Smart Cities' ([too many instances](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:thewire.in+smart+cities&client=firefox-b-d&ei=bdsJYrvuKIOb4-EPjbSIqAk&start=0&sa=N&ved=2ahUKEwj72NjDrv71AhWDzTgGHQ0aApU4FBDy0wN6BAgBEDg&biw=1440&bih=705&dpr=2&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to cite). Most of these initiatives have been defined by lofty, even utopian, goals but lack the rigorous, accountable and integral implementation that these goals warrant. As such, the government's PR and troll machineries simply spin the ministers' announcements at the time they are made for media fodder, and move on. To be sure, the government has some other initiatives it has worked hard to implement properly, such as 'Make in India' and the GST – a courtesy it has reserved for activities that contribute directly to industrialisation and economic growth, reflected in the fact that such growth has come in fits and starts, and has been limited to the richer. So at this time, to laud "steps in the right direction" followed by suggestions to improve such initiatives is worse than a mistake: it is to flout an intentional ignorance of the government's track record. Instead, an article would be better if it didn't give the government the benefit of the doubt, and criticised it for starting off on a weak note or for celebrating too soon. Apart from making suggestions to the government, such articles have served another purpose: to alert their readers, the people, to what needs to happen for the initiatives in question to be deemed successful. So the experts writing them could also consider pegging their statements on this purpose – that is, communicating to their readers as to what components an initiative lacks and why, therefore, it would be premature to hope it will do good. ### Crypto: Climate change means new tech has less time today to prove itself URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/13/crypto-climate-change-means-new-tech-has-less-time-today-to-prove-itself/ Last updated: 2022-02-13T15:00:00.000Z I spent this weekend reading about permissioned and permissionless blockchain systems. If you want to get in on it, I can’t recommend this [post by David Rosenthal](https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) enough. Much of the complexity of executing transactions of the major extant cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, arises from the need for these systems to ensure they are permissionless from start to finish, i.e. to maintain their integrity and reliability without deferring to a centralised authority entity. This simple fact is more important than it seems at first because it challenges in a significant way the reality that most bitcoin and ether mining pools are highly concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people. Put another way, everything from the verbal sophistry to the speculative fundraising to the enormous power consumption that sustain the major cryptocurrencies have failed to do the one thing that cryptocurrencies were invented to do: *decentralise*. Most other cryptocurrencies likely operate with the same problems; I say ‘major’ only to limit myself to what I’m familiar with. Second, don’t underestimate the value of simple facts in an ecosystem in which jargon and verbiage are core components of defending against criticism. One such bit of verbiage is the oft-repeated claim that “it’s still the early days” – in the face of questions about how much more time cryptocurrencies will need to become stable and, importantly, socially useful. Software engineer [Molly White has written](https://blog.mollywhite.net/its-not-still-the-early-days/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about how this is simply not true: > … a lot has changed in the technology world in the past six to twelve years. One only needs to look at Moore’s law to see how this is pretty much built in to the technology world, as once-impossible ideas are rapidly made possible by exponentially more processing power. And yet, we are to believe that as technology soared forward over the past decade, blockchain technologies spent that time tripping over their own feet? Something I see missing from this already expansive discussion (i.e. I might have missed it) is how climate change alters the picture. The biggest criticism facing bitcoin and ether is that their [power consumption](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/the-foolishness-of-a-carbon-negative-blockchain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), based on the method they use to protect against fraud in a decentralised way – called ‘proof of work’ – is colossal. Rosenthal defers to the [Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index](https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index?ref=slightlyacidic.com), according to which the annualised bitcoin network power consumption (at 6:47 pm on February 13, 2022) was 125.13 TWh – roughly equal to that of the Netherlands. Others, like Molly White, have written about the fact that 13-14 years after the advent of the web, there was much more adoption and innovation than there has been in the 13-14 years since the birth of the idea of using permissionless blockchains to execute financial transactions. This can be interpreted to imply that the proponents of cryptocurrencies have been expending energy – both literal and otherwise – fighting against the system’s indefatigable tendency to centralise. And by failing, they have kept this energy out of reach of its “more socially valuable uses,” to use Rosenthal’s words. I think both these arguments – the straightforward carbon footprint and the social disempowerment – are significant and legitimate but often lead people to ignore a third implication specific to technology: the time a technology has available to prove that its adoption is desirable is falling rapidly, perhaps as fast as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) is increasing. The creation and [implementation of the web](https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2125/1972?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – technically, web1 from the early 1990s and web2 from the mid-2000s – happened at a time when the [atmospheric CO2 concentration](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1091926/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) was 354.45 ppm (1990) and then 379.98 ppm (2005). In 2021, the concentration was 416.45 ppm. Tech folks may find this arbitrary, but for an observer at infinity (which I consider myself and anyone outside of the cryptocurrency as well as IT/software spaces and located in an economically developing or ‘under-developed’ country to be), it seems eminently reasonable. Climate change has broken the symmetry between our past and our future vis-à-vis our ability to tolerate energy-intensive technologies, and constantly breaks it. Roughly 16 years lapsed between the advent of web1 and the birth of Twitter, but in the era of manifest climate change, the fuller statement has to be: “Roughly 16 years lapsed between the advent of web1 and the birth of Twitter, as the atmospheric CO2 concetration increased by 27.64 ppm.” Obviously there may be no generally accepted way to compare levels or even types of innovation, so saying “innovating something in the cryptocurrency space comparable to Twitter” doesn’t make sense. Let’s flip it to a marginally more meaningful statement, one that I hope will also illustrate my point better: how much innovation did technologists achieve in the cryptocurrency-space in the time in which atmospheric CO2 concentrations *increased by 27.64 ppm*? Note here that web3 – a web based on storing, transporting and validating information using blockchains – seeks to depart from the incumbent web2 by *decentralising*, and liberating, user experience from the silos of ‘Big Tech’, a group of companies that includes Twitter. So there may be a way to compare the carbon emissions vis-à-vis efforts to achieve web3 versus efforts to achieve web2\. Proponents of cryptocurrencies and [NFTs](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/the-persistence-of-nfts/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) may contend in turn that the social consequences of web2 and web3 would be apples and oranges, but I think I’m comfortable ‘cancelling’ that difference with the opportunities for social welfare squandered by wasteful energy consumption. Second note: the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is distributed [like this](https://earth.nullschool.net/?ref=slightlyacidic.com#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/winkel3/loc=-120.747,38.672). But in our calculations, we need to adopt the global *average* for reasons both obvious (it's *climate* change, not *weather* change) and subtle. Some entities have created (permissionless) "carbon-negative" blockchains; the negativity is attained through carbon offsets, which is a stupid idea. To quote from a [previous post](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/the-foolishness-of-a-carbon-negative-blockchain/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > Trees planted today to offset carbon emitted today will only sequester that carbon at optimum efficiencies many years later – when carbon emissions from the same project, if not the rest of the world, are likely to be higher. Second, organisations promising to offset carbon often do so in a part of the world significantly removed from where the carbon was originally released. Arguments [against the ‘Miyawaki method’](https://science.thewire.in/environment/why-the-miyawaki-method-is-not-a-good-way-to-afforest-chennai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) suggest that you can only plant plants up to a certain density in a given ecosystem, and that planting them even closer together won’t have better or even a stagnating level of effects – but will in fact denigrate the local ecology. Scaled up to the level of countries, this means … emitting many tonnes of carbon dioxide over North America and Europe and attempting to have all of that sequestered in the rainforests of South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia won’t work, at least not without imposing limitations on the latter countries’ room to emit carbon for their own growth as well as on how these newly created ‘green areas’ should be used. To conclude: Global warming is accelerating, so I’m comfortable comparing two events – such as two bits of innovation – only if they occurred in a period of the same atmospheric CO2 concentration (give or take 10%). Perhaps more fundamentally, clock-time is a less useful way today to measure the passage of time than the value of this number, including vis-à-vis the *tolerability* of innovation. ### The persistence of NFTs URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/10/the-persistence-of-nfts/ Last updated: 2022-02-10T15:57:18.000Z NFTs freak me out. One of the ways in which my grandmother lost touch with her daughter – my mother – was my mother's generation's access to and use of computers, smartphones and the internet. And one of the ways in which my mother and father are out of touch with my generation is digitisation: the amount of information, and ways to manipulate it and extract wealth from it, that has become virtual. And I'm becoming surer that NFTs will be one of the big ways in which I'll lose touch with the generation following mine. From my point of view, NFTs have two facets, one each for the physical and the digital worlds they span. NFTs are essentially digital, but their name itself – non-fungible tokens – indicates that they are the product of a time in which the physical, typified by the fungible, and the digital coexist but in which the fungibles are still more important, even as the non-fungible is starting to evolve its first 'offline communities'. Such communities are perhaps the best indications there could be that something is worth noticing, even if it's misguided or just culturally hollow. The film (and the book, which I haven't read) *Ready Player One* should quickly clarify how powerful and how liberating the non-fungible universe, the *metaverse*, can be, even though it's very much an [outcome fantasy](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and NFTs are allowing people to crenellate around such possibilities. Yet I remain deeply sceptical of NFTs because they exist in a superposition of high energy-consumption, the socio-economic privileges of their proponents, the absence of socialist values in their development trajectories and, immutably, a soup of jargon that constantly keeps their principles out of reach of those who would like to debate them. (The last point is non-trivial: intended inexplicability is a common symptom of scams). I'm aware that, with these vectors of scepticism, I'm also part of a global community that's pushing back against the nebulous rhetoric that has enveloped NFT culture – a community animated by the obvious and considerable distance between the present as lived by countless people in the "Global South" and the future as those in New York and California are imagining it. At the same time, I've also been sort of wary of what the *essential* motivation for the NFT culture and the metaversal tendencies more broadly might be. This picture isn't immediately clear because both cryptocurrencies and the metaverse are the brainchildren of that white + libertarian + Silicon Valley + tech-bro space that has prided itself on its profiteering, technocratism, cynicism of politics and a [unique brand of super-rationalism](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/slate-star-codex-no-time-for-malice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). So it's hard to conclude that anything this group thinks is a good idea is more than a good idea to make more money. On the flip side, the existence of communities around an asset as baffling as NFTs at least indicates the presence of a deeper angst, particularly among people of certain ages. What might this be? I recently read an [article by Ginevra Davis](https://palladiummag.com/2022/01/21/when-the-stagnation-goes-virtual/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), published on January 21, that attempted a diagnosis: > Our generation is notable for our lack of a youth-led counterculture, or any coherent rebellion, at least not on the scale of the late 1960s. But this lack of open rebellion does not mean that we are more satisfied than previous generations, or that we have nothing to rebel against. We are by many measures poorer, sicker (mentally and physically), and have fewer close relationships than our parents or grandparents. But instead of running away to some proverbial California, we have mostly chosen to express our frustration in private, on the internet, where you can laugh at memes about major depression or wanting to kermit sewer slide from the safety of your bedroom. > > In the NFT community, we are witnessing the logical conclusion of a generation that is so alienated, so profoundly unfulfilled, that they are considering abandoning the physical world altogether. At least the metaverse is something new—maybe somewhere they can be rich, or important. Either this is really true or it's what the NFT-evangelists are telling themselves. Either way, it's led to the creation of a parallel dimension that apparently promises to quell the tension that inhabiting the physical world in the 21st century entails. But it's probably what the evangelists are telling themselves because, for an observer at infinity, it's very difficult to distinguish the mores of the wider cryptocurrency + metaverse community, especially the self-indulgence and consumerism, from those of the tech scene that this community is apparently tiring of (Metakovan's [eyebrow-raising purchase](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of that piece of art for $69 million comes to mind). In fact, it's tempting to consider whether NFTs are the result of a people doubling down on a culture and worldview in search of a purpose that this culture and worldview have thus far failed to produce, that their angst is less the desperation to break out and more the desperation *per se*. Davis herself is more charitable in her conclusion: > In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” \[Joan\] Didion captured a moment in time; a small group of teenagers who tried to find meaning in psychedelics. But it was also one of the first major literary works documenting the broader phenomenon of American decadence, or cultural malaise in the face of unprecedented economic prosperity. In the fifty-odd years since “Slouching” was published, a diagnosis of “decadence” has become shorthand for a constellation of cultural neuroses plaguing Western countries, including technological stagnation, cultural repetition, sterility, and nihilism. Unlike in the 1960s, it no longer includes coping with unprecedented prosperity. > > As I wandered through New York, I wondered what Didion would think of the festivities at NFT.NYC. Are the desires of NFT proponents to rebuild the world online the endgame of a fully stagnant society—a final detour into the absurd before we give up on progress for good? Or is the starry-eyed optimism of digital true believers a last stand against decadence? > > … > > I came away from NFT.NYC with a certain respect for the NFT community. They are not taking decadence lying down, and have found a way to revel in the absurdity. I don't know agree with her, of course. My principal point of disagreement is Davis's use of the word "we" to refer apparently to all of us as one cohesive mass. But there are many wes here: on the ground, there are super-rich Americans, wannabe-rich Americans, white Americans, non-white Americans, immigrants; off the ground, there are people around the world that technically belong to the same generation but are operating in much less privileged socio-economic contexts, as well as others in the same context who are in turn further disprivileged by class, caste, race, gender, geography, leadership, etc. On this multi-layered pyramid denoting many strata of a single generation of people, there are many, many things that people on the lower rungs have left to do – from exiting poverty to eliminating caste-based discrimination, from improving income equality to reducing carbon emissions – before the future looks bare enough to populate with NFTs. The only way a unified "we" makes sense is that we will all suffer the vision this vanishingly small group of wealthy and influential people has for a better future. ### Review of a review: 'Rocket Boys' (2022) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/09/review-of-a-review-rocket-boys-2022/ Last updated: 2022-02-09T01:45:00.000Z Tanul Thakur [has reviewed](https://thewire.in/culture/rocket-boys-review?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a series on SonyLIV called *Rocket Boys* for *The Wire*. I haven't watched the show and don't plan to, for want of time as well as because, reading Thakur's review, I think I know enough about how the series depicts the work of Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Jehangir Bhabha vis-à-vis transforming India into a "scientific superpower" (Thakur's words). This said, I found some of the statements in Thakur's review worth additional comments in their own right. For example, Thakur, and presumably *Rocket Boys* itself, says this duo's goal was "scientific superpower" status, but this is not true. Neither man was interested in science and the goal of their work was never *scientific*. They pursued the use of technology for India's betterment, in line with Nehru's vision, but neither man aspired to technological superpower status *per se* either; more importantly, conflating their work with scientific work is detrimental to the public perception of science, especially what the people at large believe constitutes progress towards becoming a scientific superpower. Launching rockets and building nuclear reactors will never get us there – only the non-glamorous work of better funding and administering research and not expecting immediate results can. This distinction, rarefied though it may seem, leads to the second part of Thakur's review that I'd like to address: > Even though the biopic has exploded as a sub-genre in Hindi cinema over the last decade, profiling a vast range of sportsmen, leaders, even gangsters, it has paid scant attention to Indian scientists. Such depictions are so rare that I remember watching something similar almost eight years ago (a National Award-winning documentary, *The Quantum Indians*, chronicling the lives of Raman, S.N. Bose and Meghnad Saha). So, *Rocket Boys*, centred on the personal and professional lives of Bhabha and Sarabhai, is a fresh and long-due departure. *The Quantum Indians*, made by Raja Choudhury and released in 2013, had the ridiculous blurb that it concerned the work of three "forgotten" Indian scientists – whereas its subjects were the three most well-known Indian physicists: C.V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose and Meghnad Saha. The way we have forgotten these men is often at odds with the way we tend to remember them, which is true with *Rocket Boys* as well. In 2014, Thakur quoted Choudhury as saying: "In 2012, when the \[Higgs\] Boson particle was announced, there was no conversation on S.N. Bose in international media at all. That riled me a little." The reason few invoked Bose in that context was because his work [had nothing to do](https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/much-ado-about-the-bose-in-the-boson/article5226043.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the Higgs boson! Now, Thakur's axis with *Rocket Boys* is that the biopic genre in India has once again finally visited Indian scientists. But to repeat myself, it hasn't: Sarabhai's and Bhabha's contributions weren't as scientists but as technologists – but to be more accurate, they are best remembered as fine administrators. Both the Department of Atomic Energy and the institution that became ISRO shortly before Sarabhai's death were the product of Bhabha's and Sarabhai's ability to properly define the problems they needed to solve, build good institutions, staff them with the right people, lead them with integrity and, of course, work with the political establishment to have them funded and supported. Casting Sarabhai and Bhabha as scientists is to mischaracterise, and ultimately gloss over, the precise nature of their achievements; by extension, to recall them as scientists or their work as scientific at this point of time is to continue to believe technological progress will lead to scientific success. (It's entirely possible that *Rocket Boys* paid attention to their work as administrators but, given the givens, I don't have my hopes up.) And in my view this conflation negates this axis of the review: the Indian biopic genre, at least in Hindi, has yet to concern itself with Indian *scientists*. Instead, I'd say (again, without having watched it) that *Rocket Boys* is of a piece with the heightened valorisation of the Indian spaceflight and nuclear power enterprises since Narendra Modi became India's prime minister in 2014\. Modi has clearly celebrated India's prowess on these fronts; he has also frequently sought to appropriate spaceflight achievements in particular to make himself and his party look more powerful, smarter, more decisive. In ISRO's track record, Modi seems to have unfettered access to a slew of accomplishments that he has sought to attach to his own legacy. As I wrote in [my review of *Mission Mangal*](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/review-mission-mangal-2019/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (2019), the film "wouldn’t have been made if not for the nationalism surrounding it – the nationalism bestowed of late upon the Indian space programme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the profitability bestowed upon nationalism by the business-politics nexus" that his government has fostered. Since 2016, I have also noticed (anecdotally) an uptick in the number of books and articles about the 'golden' years of the Indian space programme (which could have been a direct fallout of the prime minister's view, which influences industry and culture). In the same period, and in a more thoroughly documented trend, ISRO has become more opaque, more petty and averse to failure in a way reminiscent of the Modi government itself. In 2019, ISRO also introduced a [Vikram Sarabhai Award](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2019/07/24/do-you-smell-that-is-it-isro/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh for articles that cast ISRO in positive light. Taken together, it might be more useful to understand *Rocket Boys* as yet another manifestation of the "*hamara* ISRO *mahaan*" sentiment, especially since Thakur also writes that the series ultimately descends into a hagiography of Sarabhai and Bhabha (and Abdul Kalam) – than to consider it as a subject of the more-storied biopic genre. *Featured image: A still from 'Rocket Boys' (2022). Source: SonyLIV.* ### The new JNU VC’s statement has bad grammar. So? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/08/the-new-jnu-vcs-statement-has-bad-grammar-so/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T06:48:55.000Z I strongly disagree with some criticism that has emerged on Twitter against the new JNU vice-chancellor Santishree Pandit. The object of criticism is a statement that Pandit has apparently drafted and in which she states, broadly, what she considers to be her mandate. In response, BJP MP Varun Gandhi wrote: Here are screenshots of tweets by two other people, both with a not-insubstantial number of followers on Twitter: ![](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/screenshot-2022-02-08-at-4-56-16-pm-png.html) ![](https://www.slightlyacidic.com/content/files/2026/08/screenshot-2022-02-08-at-4-56-52-pm-png.html) At the outset, while Pandit deserves the criticism that has come her way for her [use of abusive language](https://science.thewire.in/education/new-jnu-vice-chancellor-santishree-dhulipudi-pandit-twitter/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on Twitter against the country’s students and farmers, using the quality of the English language in the statement to deride her is unfair. I have two reasons. First, listen to [this talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwkzpwe2GBo&ref=slightlyacidic.com) (also embedded below) Pandit delivered in 2015: her diction is much better than her new statement would suggest. It suggests strongly that someone else wrote the statement and that Pandit simply signed off on it, as a formality. Second, even if we assumed Pandit wrote the statement, or that the criticism of Varun Gandhi and others were really to be directed at the statement’s real author… English is a difficult language to learn and use. Its grammar often has a mind of its own – typically in the form of what linguist Noam Chomsky has called opaque structures: turns of phrase that allow us to deduce nothing about their origins based on their composition itself (“trip the light fantastic” comes to mind; it means, of all things, to dance in a nimble way.) There are word and sentence constructions in English into which someone who doesn’t read, write and speak the language regularly is unlikely to ever stumble. As such, the language is part deduction and part memorisation (sort of like biology), and unless someone claims to wish to succeed [Mary Norris](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/mary-norris?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [Mary Beard](https://www.the-tls.co.uk/categories/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), or wishes to draft law, criticising a person’s flawed use of the English language can only amount to a criticism of their lack of access to English-speaking habits, circles, etc., and in turn a criticism of either their inability or their unwillingness to have this access. And this is [not a sin](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2020/11/27/a-qa-about-my-job-and-science-journalism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). In fact, I suspect that the statement’s author is more fluent in a different language than in English and that if that person had penned their statement in that language, it would have been much less grammatically iffy. One may contend that the critics expect better from the vice-chancellor of JNU. What is this ‘better’? At the risk of affirming the consequent, let’s flip the argument such that it becomes: “A vice-chancellor of JNU must be able to string two sentences together in a grammatically correct way.” Why must this requirement be met? There is a presumption here, however slight, that the goodness of Pandit’s knowledge of the English language is an indication of her being unfit for the job, or more generally that it could be a proxy for the many, many things that count towards literacy, not to mention her prowess as a teacher and her familiarity with the subject matter. (Before her appointment, Pandit was a professor of political science at the Savitribhai Phule Pune University.) If the requirement must be met nonetheless, should we subject all future vice-chancellors to this ‘test’, to have them demonstrate their literacy? Should we also extend these tests to the heads of other important institutions – such as, say, S. Somanath of ISRO or health minister Mansukh Mandaviya? Pandit works at a university where many classes are conducted in English and where English is also an important language of administration – but this is easily true of ISRO and the health ministry as well. Most extant knowledge of space science, engineering studies, medical science and Indian public administration exist in English. Attacking Pandit’s grammar could in effect set up a requirement for vice-chancellorship that could easily say nothing at all about the appointee’s competency. Pandit’s statement expresses itself without confusion and, given the context, its real author likely didn’t have and/or enlist the assistance of other people who could fix the grammatical mistakes (it’s entirely possible they didn’t check for grammatical mistakes and/or that they believed that they wouldn’t matter to her intended readers). In fact, I appreciate that the statement dispenses with appearances and seems to come straight from Pandit’s or another author’s desk without having visited a PR unit in between. If such a PR team had helped draft the statement and we all hadn’t discovered today that her English isn’t perfect, we wouldn’t have lost any bit of the information we actually need to scrutinise her Twitter comments and her vice-chancellorship – as much as we haven’t gained anything today by knowing that Pandit is okay with using “would” instead of “will”. Ultimately, the only criticism that makes sense here, assuming someone else did draft Pandit’s statement, and if that person’s *job is to draft statements*, then a) they should do better, and b) Pandit should read public statements before signing them. If she doesn't, that signals another kind of problem. *Featured image: Santishree Pandit delivering her 2015 talk. Source: YouTube*. ### News coverage in India of open access papers URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/05/news-coverage-in-india-of-open-access-papers/ Last updated: 2022-02-05T01:37:00.000Z In a [study published](https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/2/3/828/102385/All-the-research-that-s-fit-to-print-Open-access?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in November 2021, Teresa Schultz, of the University of Nevada, Reno, reported that gold, green and hybrid open-access (OA) modes of publishing of scientific papers were correlated with more mentions in the news. Gold OA refers to scientists publishing their paper in an OA journal, and green is when scientists publish their paper in *a* journal and then self-archives a copy on an openly accessible website or in a repository. A hybrid OA journal is one that allows for some papers to be published OA (or gold) and for the others to stay behind a paywall. Schultz didn't check if there was a causative relationship between a paper's OA status and the likelihood of it being covered in the press, but found a significant correlation. It's a heartening result – but I think it might be useful to qualify this finding with a perspective from India, a country whose scientific-*publishing* literacy is likely to be lower than the global average, and certainly lower than that in the richest nations, which also have some of the world's more mature science-journalism enterprises. (To be sure, and lest we forget, science journalism is more than just [coverage of the pandemic](https://observerinmotion.wordpress.com/2022/02/02/are-preprints-reliable/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) An Indian perspective might also help to understand that a paper's coverage in the news media is as much about whether it's OA as about whether journalists know what OA is. Schultz has found that the contents of a green/gold/hybrid OA paper are more likely to be covered in the news than those of a non-OA paper – but didn't check for a causative relationship. One way to interpret the latter is that she didn't check if a journalist determined to report on a paper *because* it was OA. Now, a journalist making this decision requires automatically that she be aware of what OA publishing is, its merits (and demerits if possible) and the ins/outs of displaying a preference – as a journalist – for OA versus non-OA papers. Such awareness exists among Indian media-persons but it is sharply confined to some small pockets. And when awareness of OA, at least in opposition to non-OA, is so limited, the question of whether to cover a paper based on whether it has been published in an OA journal is relegated to the bottom of the priority list – if it finds mention at all. In India, it is likelier for the average journalist who has been tasked with covering a scientific finding – rather than a science journalist *per se*, because the former are at least one order of magnitude more common – to consider whether the paper was published in a journal at all; whether, in keeping with the dominant view in the Indian scientific community, that paper was peer-reviewed; and whether it was published in a *prestigious* journal. Otherwise, the journalist may not even discover that paper. When I was at *The Hindu*, I received a lot of emails from scientists requesting coverage of their paper, and 90% of the time, they would add with pride that the papers had been published in the peer-reviewed \[insert name of legacy journal here\] journal; I receive fewer such emails at *The Wire Science* but still around half-dozen a day. This is just to say that the way the average journalist in India discovers papers is skewed in favour of non-OA, paywalled journals, typically one of *Nature*, *Science*, *The Lancet*, etc. (In a roundabout way, the [popular support](https://science.thewire.in/science/how-scihub-is-at-the-forefront-of-the-quest-to-frame-scientific-knowledge-as-public-good/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for Sci-Hub in India might attest to this reality: we need Sci-Hub because we need to access papers behind paywalls.) Another factor in India that skews the discoverability of papers, albeit to a lesser extent, is journal outreach. The Nature Publishing Group, PLOS and *Science* are all prolific outreachers (the last through the EurekAlert! service) and the papers that are covered most often by Indian mainstream media outlets have likelier than not been published in one of these journals. In fact, this together with scientists flagging their own papers to journalists would cover almost all papers published in the mainstream Indian press. So as such, a shift in favour of OA papers isn't likely to arise from the quarter of journalists covering science in India – at least not without significant efforts to improve their awareness of the principles of OA. Note that this post is based on my personal experiences in the Indian news media space since 2012; if you have evidence to the contrary, please share. I'd be happy to be wrong on this front. ### The BJP's fake news (fake?) meeting URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/02/the-bjps-fake-news-fake-meeting/ Last updated: 2022-02-02T11:31:16.000Z *Reuters* published a very interesting [report](https://www.reuters.com/world/india/exclusive-heated-meeting-india-seeks-tougher-action-us-tech-giants-fake-news-2022-02-02/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on February 2, entitled 'Exclusive-In heated meeting, India seeks tougher action from U.S. tech giants on fake news'. Excerpt: > Indian officials have held heated discussions with Google, Twitter and Facebook for not proactively removing what they described as fake news on their platforms, sources told Reuters, the government's latest altercation with Big Tech. > > The officials, from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), strongly criticised the companies and said their inaction on fake news was forcing the Indian government to order content takedowns, which in turn drew international criticism that authorities were suppressing free expression, two sources said. I'd have thought any good-faith attempt to crack down on fake news on social media and news-aggregation platforms will inevitably crack down on right-wing content generation enterprises, including the BJP's bot/troll armies, its ministers and 'news' outlets like *The Daily Guardian*, *OpIndia*, etc. So BJP government officials getting worked up over this issue is insightful: contrary to what I thought was usually implied, the government honestly believes news that is at odds with its narratives is fake – or, knowing that Google, Facebook and Twitter will push back, this is the government's ploy *to be seen* to be taking fake news on these platforms seriously without eventually having to do anything about it. The government has an able collaborator in Google at least, whose executives had a solution for the government officials' problem: reduce transparency. > Executives from Google told the I&B officials that one way to resolve that was for the ministry to avoid making takedown decisions public. The firms could work with the government and act on the alleged fake content, which could be a win-win for both sides, Google said, according to one of the sources. Interestingly again, according to *Reuters*, officials "summarily rejected" this idea because the "takedowns also publicise how the companies weren't doing enough to tackle fake news on their own". This "heated exchange" sounds like the real win-win to me: the party comes off looking like a) it's opposed to fake news and b) its social-media legions *aren't* engaged in manufacturing fake news, while these 'tech giants' don't alienate the political right and protect their profits. ### Are preprints reliable? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/02/02/are-preprints-reliable/ Last updated: 2022-02-02T01:30:00.000Z To quote from a paper [published yesterday](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001285&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *PLOS Biology*: > Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal through April 30, 2020, representing the initial phase of the pandemic response. We utilised a combination of automatic and manual annotations to quantify how an article changed between the preprinted and published version. We found that the total number of figure panels and tables changed little between preprint and published articles. Moreover, the conclusions of 7.2% of non-COVID-19-related and 17.2% of COVID-19-related abstracts undergo a discrete change by the time of publication, but the majority of these changes do not qualitatively change the conclusions of the paper. Later: "A major concern with expedited publishing is that it may impede the rigour of the peer review process." So far, according to this and one other paper published by *PLOS Biology*, it seems reasonable to ask not whether preprints are reliable but what peer-review brings to the table. (By this I mean the conventional/legacy variety of closed pre-publication review). To the uninitiated: paralleling the growing popularity and usefulness of open-access publishing, particularly in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, some "selective" journals – to use wording from the *PLOS Biology* paper – and their hordes of scientist-supporters have sought to stress the importance of peer-review in language both familiar and based on an increasingly outdated outlook: that peer-review is important to prevent misinformation. I've found a subset of this argument, that peer-review is important for papers whose findings could save/end lives, to be more reasonable, and the rest just unreasonable and self-serving. Funnily enough, two famously "selective" journals, *The Lancet* and the *New England Journal of Medicine*, [retracted two papers](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/scientific-publishing-peer-review-open-access/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) related to COVID-19 care in the thick of the pandemic – invalidating their broader argument in favour of peer-review as well as the efficiency of their own peer-review processes vis-à-vis the subset argument. Arguments in favour of peer-review are self-serving because it has more efficient, more transparent and more workable alternatives, yet many journals have failed to adopt them, and have instead used this repeatedly invalidated mode of reviewing papers to maintain their opaque style of functioning, which in turn – and together with the purported cost of printing papers on physical paper – they use to justify the exorbitant prices they charge readers (here's [one ludicrous example](https://rossmounce.co.uk/2012/11/07/gold-oa-pricewatch/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). For example, one alternative is pre-publication peer-review, in which scientists upload their paper to a preprint server, like arXiv, bioRxiv or medRxiv, and share the link with their peers and, say, on social media platforms. There, independent experts review the paper's contents and share their comments. The paper's authors can incorporate the necessary changes, with credit, as separate versions of the same paper on the server. Further, and unlike 'conventional' journals' laughable expectation of journalists to write about the papers they publish without fear of being wrong, journalists subject preprint papers to the same treatment that is due the average peer-reviewed paper as well: with reasonable and courteous scepticism, and to qualify its claims and findings with comments from independent experts – with an added caveat, though I personally think it unnecessary, that their subject is a preprint paper. (Some of you might remember that in 2018, Tom Sheldon argued in a *Nature News & Views* article that peer-review facilitates good journalism. I [haven't come across](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/preprints-dont-promote-confusion-so-taking-them-away-wont-fix-anything/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) an argument more objectionable in favour of conventional peer-review.) However, making this mode of reviewing and publishing more acceptable has been very hard, especially for the demand to repeatedly push back against scientists whose academic reputation depends on having published and being able to publish in "selective" journals and the [scientometric culture](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6109637/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) they uphold, and their hollow arguments about the virtues of conventional, opaque peer-review. (Making peer-review transparent could also help deal with reviewers who use the opportunity anonymity affords them to be [sexist](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/05/07/sexism-in-peer-review/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [racist](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culturally-speaking/202007/racism-in-academic-publishing?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) But with the two new *PLOS Biology* papers, we have an opportunity to flip these scientists' and journals' demand that preprint papers 'prove' or 'improve' themselves around to ask what the *legacy modes* bring to the table. From the abstract of the [second paper](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001470&ref=slightlyacidic.com) (emphasis added): > We sought to compare the and contrast linguistic features within bioRxiv preprints to published biomedical test as a while as this is an excellent opportunity to examine how peer review changes these documents. **The most prevalent features that changed appear to be associated with typesetting and mentions of supporting information sections or additional files.** In addition to text comparison, we created document embeddings derived from a preprint-trained word2vec model. We found that these embeddings are able to parse out different scientific approaches and concepts, link unannotated preprint-peer-reviewed article pairs, and identify journals that publish linguistically similar papers to a given preprint. We also used these embeddings to examine factors associated with the time elapsed between the posting of a first preprint and the appearance of a peer-reviewed publication. We found that preprints with more versions posted and more textual changes took longer to publish. It seems to me to be reasonable to ask about the rigour to which supporters of conventional peer-review have staked claim when few papers appear to benefit from it. The process may be justified in those few cases where a paper is corrected in a significant way, and that it may be difficult to identify those papers without peer-review – but pre-publication peer-review has an equal chance of identifying the same errors (esp. if we increase the *discoverability* of preprints the way journal editors identify eminent experts in the same field to review papers, instead of relying solely on social-media interactions that less internet-savvy scientists may not be able to initiate). In addition, it appears that in most cases in which preprints were uploaded to bioRxiv first and were then peer-reviewed and published by a journal, the papers' authors clearly didn't submit papers that required significant quality improvements – certainly not to the extent to which conventional peer-review's supporters have alluded to in an effort to make such review necessary. So, why must conventional peer-review, in the broader sense, persist? ### Some facts are bigger than numbers – a story URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/31/some-facts-are-bigger-than-numbers-a-story/ Last updated: 2022-01-31T06:33:36.000Z Some facts are just boring, like 1 + 1 = 2\. You already knew them before they were presented as such, and now that you do, it's hard to know what to do with them. Some facts are clearly important, even if you don't know how you can use them, like the spark plug fires after there's fuel in the chamber. These two kinds of facts may seem far apart but you also know on some level that by repeatedly applying the first kind of fact in different combinations, to different materials in different circumstances, you get the second (and it's fun to make this journey). Then there are some other facts that, while seemingly simple, provoke in your mind profound realisations – not something new as much as a way to understand something deeply, so *well*, that it's easy for you to believe that that single neural pathway among the multitude in your head has forever changed. It's an epiphany. I came across such a fact this morning when reading [an article](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/12?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about a star that may have gone supernova. The author packs the fact into one throwaway sentence. > Roughly every second, one of the observable Universe's stars dies in a fiery explosion. The observable universe is 90-something billion lightyears wide. The universe was born only 13.8 billion years ago but it has been expanding since, pushed faster and faster apart by dark energy. This is a vast, vast space – too vast for the human mind to comprehend. I'm not just saying that. Scientists must regularly come up against numbers like 8E50 (8 followed by 50 zeroes), but they don't have to be concerned about comprehending the full magnitude of those numbers. They don't need to know how *big* it is in some dimension. They have the tools – formulae, laws, equations, etc. – to tame those numbers into submission, to beat them into discoveries and predictions that can be put to human use. (Then again, they do need to deal with [monstrous moonshine](https://observerinmotion.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/four-trillion-and-moonshine/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) But for the rest of us, the untameability can be terrifying. How big is a number like 8E50? In kilograms, it's about a [100-times lower](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/stanford/universe.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) than the mass of the observable universe. It's the estimated volume of the galaxy [NGC 1705](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%5F1705?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in cubic metres. It's approximately the [lifespan of a black hole](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.13.198?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with the mass of the Sun. You know these facts, yet you don't *know* them. They're true but they're also very, very big, so big that they're well past the point of true comprehension, into the realm of the I'd-rather-not-know. Yet the sentence above affords a way to bring these numbers back. The author writes that every second or so, a star goes supernova. According to [one estimate](https://www.universetoday.com/112500/how-much-of-the-universe-is-black-holes/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), 0.1% of stars have enough mass to eventually become a black hole. The observable universe has [200 billion trillion stars](https://theconversation.com/how-many-stars-are-there-in-space-165370?ref=slightlyacidic.com). This means there are 2E20 stars in the universe that could become a black hole, if they're not already. Considering the universe has lived [around 38%](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/06/30/ask-ethan-could-the-universe-be-torn-apart-in-a-big-rip/?sh=6714ad193bd8&ref=slightlyacidic.com) of its life and assuming a uniform rate of black hole formation (a big assumption but should suffice to illustrate my point), the universe should be visibly darkening by now, considering photons of light shouldn't have to travel much before encountering a black hole. But it isn't. The simple reason is that *that's how big the universe is*. We learn about stars, other plants, black holes, nebulae, galaxies and so forth. There are lots and lots of them, sure, but you know what there is the most of? The things we often discuss the least: the interstellar medium, the space between stars, and the intergalactic medium, the space between galaxies. Places where there isn't anything *big enough*, ironically, to be able to catch the popular imagination. One calculation, based on [three assumptions](https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/question221.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com), suggests matter occupies an incomprehensibly low fraction of the observable universe (1\. [85% of this](https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is supposed to be dark matter; 2\. please [don't assume](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/04/16/you-are-not-mostly-empty-space/?sh=60c799b82c2b&ref=slightlyacidic.com) atoms are also mostly empty). In numbers, the bigness of all this transcends comprehension – but knowing that billions upon billions of black holes still only trap a tiny amount of the light going around can be… sobering. And enlivening. Why, in the time you've taken to read this article, 300 more black holes will have formed. Pfft. ### An Indian paper retracted for 'legal reasons' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/28/an-indian-paper-retracted-for-legal-reasons/ Last updated: 2022-01-28T05:34:06.000Z > The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article because it was published in error before the peer review process was completed. The content of this article has been removed for legal reasons. The authors have been offered to submit a revised manuscript for further peer review. All authors agree with this retraction. This is the notice accompanying the retraction of [a paper](https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs12524-020-01267-5/MediaObjects/12524%5F2020%5F1267%5FMOESM1%5FESM.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) published in Springer Nature's *Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing*. The editor in chief is Shailesh Nayak, the director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies at IISc campus in Bengaluru. As [*Retraction Watch*](https://retractionwatch.com/2022/01/27/paper-on-suspicious-activities-on-india-china-border-retracted/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reported, the paper – about "suspicious activities" on the Indo-China border in 2020 – was being retracted for, *legal reasons* aside, being replete with grammatical errors. The excerpt on the *Retraction Watch* page also suggests it's qualitatively less like a research paper and more like an internal submission; the paper's corresponding author, an Aditya Kakde of the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, a private institute in Dehradun, also didn't comment on the retraction, and isn't contesting it either. The comment by Nayak, the editor in chief, is interesting: he says the badly-written paper had been published before it was peer-reviewed. First, how is this possible? Second, I'm personally convinced Nayak is trying to protect his journal's reputation by implying that the mistake was processual in nature, and that their functional peer-review system would have caught the paper's quality problem. But this is also an *ex post facto* explanation that makes Nayak's claim hard to believe, considering the process error was a big one. Third, if you think you need an exercise as formally defined and intensive as a peer-review to catch such low-quality papers, I doubt your credentials as an editor. Fourth, and to continue from my [previous post](https://7idal.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/the-thing-about-punishing-plagiarism/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), when editors publish bad papers like this, instead of helping authors correct their mistakes and thus avoid a retraction later for bad language, they're practically setting up the authors to incur a retraction against their names. Finally, why – in Nayak's telling – was the paper retracted for "legal reasons"? It seems like a ridiculous, but also devious, thing to say. Considering the paper's authors, including Kakde, haven't been accused of other issues, I assume the paper's contents are legitimate: that the authors have developed an image-analysis tool that purports to eliminate one step of some military surveillance procedure (although the images in the paper look quite simplistic). At the same time, one of the hallmarks of the current Indian government is its, and its supporters', tendency to threaten their detractors with vexatious police and court cases, especially under draconian anti-terrorism and sedition provisions in Indian law. So Nayak's allusion "legal reasons" can't be dismissed easily, as an attempt to be ambiguous and beyond reproach at the same time – although that's just as possible (note: he's a "distinguished scientist" in the Ministry of Earth Sciences). ### Why it's important to address plagiarism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/27/the-thing-about-punishing-plagiarism/ Last updated: 2022-01-27T15:32:02.000Z Plagiarism is a tricky issue. If it's straightforward to you, ask yourself if you're assuming that the plagiariser (plagiarist?) is fluent in reading and writing, but especially writing, English. The answer's probably 'yes'. This is because for someone entering into an English-using universe for the first time, certain turns of phrase and certain ways to articulate complicated concepts stick with you the first time you read them, and when the time comes for you to spell out the same ideas and concepts, you passively, inadvertently recall them and reuse them. You don't think – at least at first – that they're someone else's words, more so if you haven't been taught, for no fault of yours, what academic plagiarism is and/or that it's bad. This is also why there's a hierarchy of plagiarism. For example, if you're writing a scientific paper and you copy another paper's results, that's worse than if you copy verbatim the explanation of a certain well-known idea. This is why former University Grants Commission chairman Praveen Chaddah [wrote in 2014](https://www.nature.com/articles/511127a?ref=slightlyacidic.com): > There are worse offences than text plagiarism — such as taking credit for someone else’s research ideas and lifting their results. These are harder to detect than copy-and-pasted text, so receive less attention. This should change. To help, academic journals could, for instance, change the ways in which they police and deal with such cases. But if you're fluent with writing English, if you know what plagiarism and plagiarise anyway (without seeking resources to help you beat its temptation), and/or if you're stealing someone else's idea and calling it your own, you deserve the flak and (proportionate) sanctions coming your way. In this context, a new [*Retraction Watch* article](https://retractionwatch.com/2022/01/27/the-authors-plagiarised-a-large-amount-of-text-butretractions-should-not-be-used-as-a-tool-to-punish-authors%ef%bf%bc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by David Sanders makes for interesting reading. According to Sanders, in 2018, he wrote to the editors of a journal that had published a paper in 2011 with lots of plagiarised text. After a back-and-forth, the editors told Sanders they'd look into it. He asked them again in 2019 and May 2021 and received the same reply on both occasions. Then on July 26 the journal published a correction to the 2011 article. Sanders wasn't happy and wrote back to the editors, one of whom replied thus: > Thank you for your email. We went through this case again, and discussed whether we may have made the wrong decision. We did follow the COPE guidelines step by step and used several case studies for further information. This process confirmed that an article should be retracted when it is misleading for the reader, either because the information within is incorrect, or when an author induces the reader to think that the data presented is his own. As this is a Review, copied from other Reviews, the information within does not per se mislead the reader, as the primary literature is still properly cited. We agree that this Review was not written in a desirable way, and that the authors plagiarised a large amount of text, but according to the guidelines the literature must be considered from the point of view of the reader, and retractions should not be used as a tool to punish authors. We therefore concluded that a corrigendum was the best way forward. Hence, we confirm our decision on this case. > > Thank you again for flagging this case in the first place, which allowed us to correct the record and gain deeper insights into publishing ethics, even though this led to a solution we do not necessarily like. Sanders wasn't happy: he wrote on *Retraction Watch* that "the logic of \[the editor's\] message is troubling. The authors engaged in what is defined by COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) as 'Major Plagiarism' for which the prescribed action is retraction of the published article and contacting the institution of the authors. And yet the journal did not retract." The [COPE guidelines](https://publicationethics.org/files/COPE%5Fplagiarism%5Fdisc%20doc%5F26%20Apr%2011.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) summarise the differences between minor and major plagiarism this way: ![](https://observerinmotion.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/screenshot-2022-01-27-at-9.07.32-pm.png?w=1024) Source: https://publicationethics.org/files/COPE\_plagiarism\_disc%20doc\_26%20Apr%2011.pdf Not being fluent in English could render the decisions made using this table less than fair, for example because an author could plagiarise several paragraphs but honestly have no intention to deceive – simply because they didn't think they needed to be that careful. I know this might sound laughable to a scientist operating in the US or Europe, out of a better-run, better-organised and better-funded institute, and who has been properly in the ins and outs of academic ethics. But it's true: the bulk of India's scientists work outside the IITs, IISERs, DAE/DBT/DST-funded institutes and the more progressive private universities (although only one – Ashoka – comes to mind). Their teachers before them worked in the same resource-constrained environments, and for most of whom the purpose of scientific work wasn't science as much as an income. Most of them probably never used plagiarism-checking tools either, at least not until they got into trouble one time and then found out about such things. I myself found out about the latter in an interesting way – when I reported that Appa Rao Podile, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, [had plagiarised](https://thewire.in/education/hyderabad-university-vc-admits-to-plagiarism?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in some of his papers, around the time students at the university were protesting the university's response to the death of Rohith Vemula. When I emailed Podile for his response, he told me he would like my help with the tools with which he could spot plagiarism. I thought he was joking, but after a series of unofficial enquiries over the next year or so, I learnt that plagiarism-checking software was not at all the norm, even if solutions like Copyscape were relatively cheap, in state-funded colleges and second-tier universities around the country. I had no reason to leave Podile off the hook – but not because he hadn't used plagiarism-checking software but because he was a vice-chancellor of a major university and had to have done better than claim ignorance. (I also highly recommend this November 2019 [article in *The Point*](https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/is-plagiarism-wrong-agnes-callard/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), asking whether plagiarism is wrong.) According to Sanders, the editor who replied didn't retract the paper because he thought it wasn't 'major plagiarism', according to COPE – whereas Sanders thought it was. The editor appears to have reasoned his way out of the allegation, in the editor's view at least, by saying that the material printed in the paper wasn't misleading because it had been copied from non-misleading original material and that the *supposedly lesser* issue was that while it had been cited, it hadn't been syntactically attributed as such (placed between double quotes, for example). The issue for Sanders, with whom I agree here, is that the authors had copied the material and presented it in a way that indicated they were its original creators. The lengths to which journal editors can go to avoid retracting papers, and therefore protect their journal's reputation, ranking or whatever, is astounding. I also agree with Sanders when he says that by refusing to retract the article, the editors are practically encouraging misconduct. I'd like to go a step further and ask: when journal editors think like this, where does that leave Indian scientists of the sort I've described above – who are likely to do better with the right help and guidance? In 2018, Rashmi Raniwala and Sudhir Raniwala [wrote in *The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/education/predatory-journals-fake-journals-plagiarism-peer-review-mhrd-ugc/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the term 'predatory', in 'predatory journals', was a misnomer: > … it is incorrect to call them ‘predatory’ journals because the term predatory suggests that there is a predator and a victim. The academicians who publish in these journals are not victims; most often, they are self-serving participants. The measure of success is the number of articles received by these journals. The journals provide a space to those who wanted easy credit. And a large number of us wanted this easy credit because we were, to begin with, not suitable for the academic profession and were there for the job. In essence, these journals could not have succeeded without an active participation and the connivance of some of us. It was a good article at the time, especially in the immediate context of the Raniwalas' fight to have known defaulters suitably punished. There are many bad-faith actors in the Indian scientific community and what the Raniwalas write about applies to them without reservation (ref. [the cases](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/annamalai-university-plagiarism-ugc-naac-research-misconduct-fraud/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of Chandra Krishnamurthy, R.A. Mashelkar, Deepak Pental, B.S. Rajput, V. Ramakrishnan, C.N.R. Rao, etc.). But I'm also confident enough to say now that predatory journals exist, typified by editors who place the journal before the authors of the articles that constitute it, who won't make good-faith efforts to catch and correct mistakes at the time they're pointed out. It's marginally more disappointing that the editor who replied to Sanders replied at all; most don't, as [Elisabeth Bik](https://scienceintegritydigest.com/about/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) has repeatedly reminded us. He bothered enough to engage – but not enough to give a real damn. ### Science shouldn’t animate the need for social welfare URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/25/science-shouldnt-animate-the-need-for-social-welfare/ Last updated: 2022-01-25T15:50:34.000Z This is an interesting discovery: First, it’s also a *bad* discovery (note: there’s a difference between right/wrong and good/bad). It is useful to found specific interventions on scientific findings – such as that providing pregnant women with iron supplements in a certain window of the pregnancy could reduce the risk of anaemia by X%. However, that the state should provide iron supplements to pregnant women belonging to certain socio-economic groups across the country shouldn’t be founded on scientific findings. Such welfarist schemes should be based on the implicit virtues of social welfare itself. In the case of the [new study](https://www.pnas.org/content/119/5/e2115649119?ref=slightlyacidic.com): the US government should continue with cash payments for poor mothers *irrespective of their babies’ learning outcomes*. The programme can’t stop if any of their babies are slow learners. Second, I think the deeper problem in this example lies with the context in which the study’s findings could be useful. Scientists and economists have the liberty to study what they will, as well as report what they find (see third point). But consider a scenario in which lawmakers are presented with two policies, both rooted in the same ideologies and both presenting equally workable solutions to a persistent societal issue. Only one, however, has the results of a scientific study to back up its ability to achieve its outcomes (let’s call this ‘Policy A’). Which one will the lawmakers pick to fund? Note here that this isn’t a straightforward negotiation between the lawmakers’ collective sensibilities and the quality of the study. The decision will also be influenced by the framework of accountability and justification within which the lawmakers operate. For example, those in small, progressive nations like Finland or New Zealand, where the general scientific literacy is high enough to recognise the ills of scientism, may have the liberty to set the study aside and then decide – but those in India, a large and nationalist nation with generally low scientific literacy, are likelier than not to construe the very availability of scientific backing, of any quality, to mean Policy A is better. This is how studies like the one above could *become* a problem: by establishing a pseudo-privilege for policies that have ‘scientific findings’ to back up their promises. It also creates a rationalisation of the Republican Party’s view that by handing out “unconditional aid”, the state will discourage the recipients from working. While the Republicans’ contention is speculative in principle, in policy and, just to be comprehensive, in science, scientific studies that find the opposite play nicely into their hands – even in as straightforward a case as that of poor mothers. As the *New York Times* article itself writes: > Another researcher, Charles A. Nelson III of Harvard, reacted more cautiously, noting the full effect of the payments — $333 a month — would not be clear until the children took cognitive tests. While the brain patterns documented in the study are often associated with higher cognitive skills, he said, that is not always the case. > > “It’s potentially a groundbreaking study,” said Dr. Nelson, who served as a consultant to the study. “If I was a policymaker, I’d pay attention to this, but it would be premature of me to pass a bill that gives every family $300 a month.” > > A temporary federal program of near-universal children’s subsidies — up to $300 a month per child through an expanded child tax credit — expired this month after Mr. Biden failed to unite Democrats behind a large social policy bill that would have extended it. Most Republicans oppose the monthly grants, citing the cost and warning that unconditional aid, which they describe as welfare, discourages parents from working. > > Sharing some of those concerns, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, effectively blocked the Biden plan, though he has suggested that he might support payments limited to families of modest means and those with jobs. The payments in the research project, called Baby’s First Years, were provided regardless of whether the parents worked. Third, and in continuation, it’s ridiculous to attach the approval for policies whose principles are clear and sound to the quality of data originating from scientific studies, which in turn depends on the quality of theoretical and experimental instruments scientists have at their disposal (“We hypothesized that infants in the high-cash gift group would have greater EEG power in the mid- to high-frequency bands and reduced power in a low-frequency band compared with infants in the low-cash gift group.”). And let’s not forget, on scientists coming along in time to ask the right questions. Fourth, do scientists and economists really have the liberty to study and report what they will? There are two ways to slice this. 1: To clarify the limited context in which this question is worth considering – not at all in almost all cases, and only when a study uncovers the *scientific* basis for something that isn’t well-served by such a basis. This principle is recursive: it should preclude the need for a scientific study of whether support for certain policies has been set back by the presence or absence of scientific studies. 2: where does the demand for these studies originate? Clearly someone somewhere thought, “Do we know the policy’s effects in the population?” Science can provide quick answers in some cases but not in others, and in the latter, it should be prevented from creating the impression that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence. Who bears that responsibility? I believe that has fallen on the shoulders of politicians, social scientists, science communicators and exponents of the humanities alone for too long; scientists also need to exercise the corresponding restraint, and refrain from conducting studies in which they don’t specify the precise context (and not just that limited to science) in which their findings are valid, if at all. In the current case, NYT called the study’s findings “modest” – that the “researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st”. Modest results are also results, sure, but as we have come to expect with COVID-19 research, don’t conduct poor studies – and by extension don’t conduct studies of a social-science concept in a scientific way and expect it to be useful. ### Ricardo Bofill (1939-2022), architect URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/23/ricardo-bofill-1939-2022-architect/ Last updated: 2022-01-23T03:46:55.000Z The Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill passed away on January 14, at the age of 82\. I don't know most of his work, which means this note of remembrance is less about Bofill the architect *per se* and more about Bofill the designer of the La Muralla Roja, an apartment complex in Manzanera, Spain. Spanish for 'The Red Wall', La Muralla Roja is a brutalist-style complex in the shape of a Greek cross (all arms of equal length) with around 50 houses, designed to maximise the availability of space, natural light and social interactions. But the most striking things about La Muralla Roja are its colours – the walls are red, the courtyards are blue and pink, and everything else is violet – and that all its houses have a view of the Balearic Sea. As such, La Muralla Roja is Bofill the architect's conception of utopian living. Ironically, if you didn't know about this complex, you probably noticed an architectural design it most likely inspired in the dystopian show *Squid Game*. I'll leave you with some beautiful images of the complex (all by [beasty ./Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@beastydesign?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). See [here](https://www.archdaily.com/332438/ad-classics-la-muralla-roja-ricardo-bofill?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for more photos, including those provided by Bofill himself. *Featured image: A view of La Muralla Roja. Photo: Zhifei Zhou/Unsplash.* ### What I didn't like about 'Eternals' (2021) URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/22/what-i-didnt-like-about-eternals-2021/ Last updated: 2022-01-22T11:34:48.000Z I rewatched *Eternals* today and had some time to collect some of my thoughts on it. Spoilers ahead (including one each for *The Tomorrow War* and *Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings*). 1. Too much *deus ex machina* – took 55 minutes minutes to find out what the Eternals are *not* capable of. And this trope continues through the film up: when Phastos makes the Uni-mind; when Ikaris brings the Domo down by putting a couple dents in it (that thing had neither discernible engines nor an aerodynamic design, so what exactly got damaged that it stopped levitating?); when Phastos bound Ikaris; and when Sersi froze the celestial. Specific to the last two instances: the bummer was that the audience is given no sense of how much power these individuals can be expected to wield (just as in *Shang-Chi*: great fight sequences, but no sense at the outset of what the rings are/aren't capable of). (Follow-up: How exactly did the deviants get trapped in ice? The same thing happens in [*The Tomorrow War*](https://proofreproof.wordpress.com/2021/09/28/review-the-tomorrow-war-2021/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), in which similar creatures get trapped in ice, but only because they were trapped inside containers trapped inside a crashed spaceship trapped in ice. In *Eternals*, wouldn't the deviants have had to lie still for a very long time to get trapped in ice? Unless of course the Eternals caused an ice age.) 1. Every new narrative arc begins with them saving lives – gets very holier-than-thou very quickly. 2. "Conflicts lead to war, and war actually leads to advancements in life-saving technology and medicine." This is Phastos's rationalisation of Ajak's anti-interventionist policy, but the policy's been around for millennia while I thought this war-innovation nexus was at best two centuries old. 3. Too tropey. 4. The cast makes the film resemble a panel discussion with too many members: everyone gets one point in but that's it – but also the event organiser wants them to be great points, so it's mostly just some big picture points and nothing else. 5. Not sure whose side to take! Sure, the deviants are villainous by appearance, but hundreds of movies have taught us to look past that. 6. Why is Hindi spoken with an American accent ("nuch meri hero")?! Also, good to see Hollywood's Bollywood hasn't changed much. Also, the whole valet thing didn't sit well. 7. Ridiculous scene 1: when Gilgamesh finds out Ajak's dead – morose music, serious dialogue – the pie slides off the pan onto his boot with the sort of sound befitting slapstick comedy. 8. Ridiculous scene 2: when the Amazon ambush is underway, Kingo fights off a few deviants and Karun (the valet) shouts, "Very nice, saaaar!" (Follow-up: The film's makers clearly tried to work in some comedy in between, or sometimes within, the action sequences, but it never works. The Eternals are just too serious the rest of the time for it, so they just come off a bit psychotic.) 1. Kingo, the Indian character, is often a doofus. 2. How're they keeping track of where each Eternal ended up after five centuries of not being in touch? This isn't trivial: in movies with human characters, barriers like this have often been insurmountable. 3. Maybe just me but this was a dull, even insipid end-of-the-world story. I much prefer [*Last Contact*](https://web.archive.org/web/20080725045740/http://www.solarisbooks.com/books/newbookscifi/last-contact.asp) by Stephen Baxter: like *Eternals*, it concerns itself with a very small group of people confronting the end of the world, but who do so in an unlikely-ly comforting way. 4. Shallow characters – particularly Sprite, with her betrayal at the end, which no one saw coming, and not in the way people don't see but then ask themselves why they didn't suspect it, but in the way no one saw coming because they had *zero* reason to consider it. 5. At this point, including the end-credit scenes, it's hard not to tire of the MCU – quite like we all tired of J.R.R. Tolkien's *Middle Earth* saga even though the Tolkien Estate didn't want us to, with its strategically spaced-out posthumous book releases. Like Discworld had turtles all the way down, the MCU apparently has turtles all the way to the top, and in increasingly less unpredictable ways. 6. TV news anchor at the end: "The sudden appearance of an enormous stone figurine in the Indian ocean…". There's clearly daylight over the Indian ocean at this point. But when Ikaris left Earth, en route to jumping into the Sun, he paused for a view of the Americas – which were also in daylight. How? I also wrote a bit about the celestial, Tiamut, [here](https://proofreproof.wordpress.com/2021/11/12/the-names-of-our-dragons/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). *Featured image: The opening scene of* Eternals*. Source: Hotstar.* ### Look away URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/19/look-away/ Last updated: 2022-01-19T06:26:00.000Z Not something I usually blog about but boy is this funny. (At least) Star Sports has been airing an ad for an app called 'Magicpin' that I think helps you in some way when you shop for stuff. And this is how the ad goes: So… a fight breaks out in the middle of the road over some pseudo-accident, as it usually does in India. A bystander starts to film the fight until one of the picaros charges on the camera-wielder, points to a side-street full of stores and says, "The magic isn't happening here, it's there." And when the camera moves to view the stores, imaginary discount tags pop up onscreen, the music starts to play and the word 'Magicpin' blares in a medley of colours. I don't know about you but it's really hard for me to miss the allegory about an independent press here – as if to say, "a fight holding up the traffic for no good reason isn't important, do look away, go shopping, get distracted". Plus it's apprently also what late capitalism expects of us, considering Magicpin thinks the skit is… amusing. ### Getting ahead of theory, experiment, ourselves URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/14/getting-ahead-of-theory-experiment-ourselves/ Last updated: 2022-01-14T06:28:00.000Z Science journalist Laura Spinney wrote an [article in *The Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/09/are-we-witnessing-the-dawn-of-post-theory-science?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on January 9, 2022, entitled 'Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?'. This excerpt from the article captures its points well, I thought: > Or take protein structures. A protein’s function is largely determined by its structure, so if you want to design a drug that blocks or enhances a given protein’s action, you need to know its structure. AlphaFold was trained on structures that were derived experimentally, using techniques such as X-ray crystallography and at the moment its predictions are considered more reliable for proteins where there is some experimental data available than for those where there is none. But its reliability is improving all the time, says Janet Thornton, former director of the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) near Cambridge, and it isn’t the lack of a theory that will stop drug designers using it. “What AlphaFold does is also discovery,” she says, “and it will only improve our understanding of life and therapeutics.” Essentially, the article is concerned with machine-learning's ability to parse large amounts of data, find patterns in them and use them to generate theories – taking over an important realm of human endeavour. In keeping with tradition, it doesn't answer the question in its headline with a definitive 'yes' but with a hard 'maybe' to a soft 'no'. Spinney herself ends by quoting Picasso: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" – although the para right before belies the painter's confidence with a prayer that the human way to think about theories is still meaningful and useful: > The final objection to post-theory science is that there is likely to be useful old-style theory – that is, generalisations extracted from discrete examples – that remains to be discovered and only humans can do that because it requires intuition. In other words, it requires a kind of instinctive homing in on those properties of the examples that are relevant to the general rule. One reason we consider Newton brilliant is that in order to come up with his second law he had to ignore some data. He had to imagine, for example, that things were falling in a vacuum, free of the interfering effects of air resistance. I'm personally cynical about such claims. If we think *we* are going to be obsolete, there must be a part of the picture we're missing. There was an idea partly similar to this 'post-theory hypothesis' a few years ago, and pointing the other way. In 2013, philosopher Richard Dawid wrote a 190-page essay attempting to make the case that string theory shouldn't be held back by the lack of experimental evidence, i.e. that it was *post-empirical*. Of course, Spinney is writing about machines taking over the responsibility of, but not precluding the need for, theorising – whereas Dawid and others have argued that string theory doesn't need experimental data to stay true. The idea of falsifiability is important here. If a theory is flawed and if you can design an experiment that would reveal that flaw, the theory is said to be falsifiable. A theory can be flawless but still falsifiable: for example, Newton's theory of gravity is complete and useful in a limited context but, for example, can't explain the [precession of the perihelion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests%5Fof%5Fgeneral%5Frelativity?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Perihelion%5Fprecession%5Fof%5FMercury) of Mercury's orbit. An example of an unfalsifiable theory is the one underlying astrology. In science, falsifiable theories are said to be better than unfalsifiable ones. I don't know what impact Dawid's book-length effort had, although others before and after him have supported the view that scientific theories should no longer be falsifiable in order to be legitimate. [Sean Carroll for one.](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25322?ref=slightlyacidic.com) While I'm not familiar enough with criticisms of the philosophy of falsifiability, I found a better reason to consider the case to trust the validity of string theory sans experimental evidence in a [June 2017 preprint paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02790?ref=slightlyacidic.com) written by Eva Silverstein: > It is sometimes said that theory has strayed too far from experiment/observation. Historically, there are classic cases with long time delays between theory and experiment – Maxwell’s and Einstein’s waves being prime examples, at 25 and 100 years respectively. These are also good examples of how theory is constrained by serious mathematical and thought-experimental con- sistency conditions. > > Of course electromagnetism and general relativity are not representative of most theoretical ideas, but the point remains valid. When it comes to the vast theory space being explored now, most testable ideas will be constrained or falsified. Even there I believe there is substantial scientific value to this: we learn something significant by ruling out a valid theoretical possibility, as long as it is internally consistent and interesting. We also learn important lessons in excluding potential alternative theories based on theoretical consistency criteria. This said, Dawid's book, entitled *String Theory and the Scientific Method*, was perhaps the most popular prouncement of his views in recent years (at least in terms of coverage in the non-technical press), even if by then he'd' been propounding them for nine years and if his supporters included a bevy of influential physicists. Very simply put, an important part of Dawid's arguments was that string theory, as a *theory*, has certain characteristics that make it the only possible theory for all the epistemic niches that it fills, so as long as we expect all those niches to filled by a single theory, string theory may be true by virtue of being the sole possible option. It's not hard to see the holes in this line of reasoning, but again, I've considerably simplified his idea. But this said, physicist Peter Woit has been (from what little I've seen) the most [vocal critic](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?s=Richard+Dawid&ref=slightlyacidic.com) of string theorists' appeals to 'post-empirical realism' and has often directed his ire against the uniqueness hypothesis, significantly because accepting it would endanger, for the sake of just one theory's survival, the foundation upon which almost every other valid scientific theory stands. You must admit this is a powerful argument, and to my mind more persuasive than Silverstein's argument. In the [words of another physicist](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.01966.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Carlo Rovelli, from September 2016: > String theory is a proof of the dangers of relying excessively on non-empirical arguments. It raised great expectations thirty years ago, when it promised to \[solve a bunch of difficult problems in physics\]. Nothing of this has come true. String theorists, instead, have \[made a bunch of other predictions to explain why it couldn't solve what it set out to solve\]. All this was false. > > From a Popperian point of view, these failures do not falsify the theory, because the theory is so flexible that it can be adjusted to escape failed predictions. But from a Bayesian point of view, each of these failures decreases the credibility in the theory, because a positive result would have increased it. The recent failure of the prediction of supersymmetric particles at LHC is the most fragrant example. By Bayesian standards, it lowers the degree of belief in string theory dramatically. This is an empirical argument. Still, Joe Polchinski, prominent string theorist, writes in that he evaluates the probability of string to be correct at 98.5% (!). > > Scientists that devoted their life to a theory have difficulty to let it go, hanging on non-empirical arguments to save their beliefs, in the face of empirical results that Bayes confirmation theory counts as negative. This is human. A philosophy that takes this as an exemplar scientific attitude is a bad philosophy of science. ### On science, religion, Brahmins and a book URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/12/on-science-religion-brahmins-and-a-book/ Last updated: 2022-01-12T05:40:26.000Z I'm partway through Renny Thomas's new book, *Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment*. Its description on the [Routledge page](https://www.routledge.com/Science-and-Religion-in-India-Beyond-Disenchantment/Thomas/p/book/9781032073194?ref=slightlyacidic.com) reads: > This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices, and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’. By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories. To be fair to Renny as well as to prospective readers, I'm hardly familiar with scholarship in this area of study and in no position to be able to confidently critique the book's arguments. I'm reading it to learn. With this caveat out of the way… I've been somewhat familiar with Renny's work and my expectation of his new book to be informative and insightful has been more than met. I like two things in particular based on the approximately 40% I've read so far (and not necessarily from the beginning). First, *Science and Religion* quotes scientists with whom Renny spoke to glean insights generously. A very wise man told me recently that in most cases, it's possible to get the gist of (non-fiction) books written by research scholars and focusing on their areas of work just by reading the introductory chapter. I think this book may be the exception that makes the rule for me. On occasion Renny also quotes from books by other scientists and scholars to make his point, which I say to imply that for readers like me, who are interested in but haven't had the chance to formally study these topics, *Science and Religion* can be a sort of introductory text as well. ![](https://observerinmotion.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/c8777-3c711-f43aa-9781032073194.jpg) For example, in one place, Renny quotes some 150 words from Raja Ramanna's autobiography, where the latter – a distinguished physicist and one of the more prominent endorsers of the famous 1981 'statement on scientific temper' – recalls in spirited fashion his visit to Gangotri. The passage reminded me of [an article](https://www.nature.com/articles/488431a?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by American historian of science Daniel Sarewitz published many years ago, in which he described his experience of walking through the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. I like to credit Sarewitz's non-academic articles for getting me interested in the sociology of science, especially critiques of science as a "secularising medium", to use Renny's words, but I have also been guilty of having entered this space of thought and writing through accounts of spiritual experiences written by scientists from countries other than India. But now, thanks to *Science and Religion*, I have the beginnings of a resolution. Second, the book's language is extremely readable: undergraduate students who are enthusiastic about science should be able to read it for pleasure (and I hope students of science and engineering do). I myself was interested in reading it because I've wanted, and still want, to understand what goes on in the minds of people like ISRO chairman K. Sivan when they insist on visiting Tirupati before every major rocket launch. And Renny clarifies his awareness of these basic curiosities early in the book: > … scientists continue to be the ‘special’ folk in India. It is this image of ‘special’ folk and science’s alleged relationship with ‘objectivity’ which makes people uneasy when scientists go to temple, engage in prayer, and openly declare their allegiance to religious beliefs. The dominance and power of science and its status as a superior epistemology is part of the popular imagination. The continuing media discussion on ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) scientists when they offer prayer before any mission is an example. Renny also clarifies the religious and caste composition of his interlocutors at the outset as well as dedicates a chapter to discussing the ways in which caste and religious identities present themselves in laboratory settings, and the ways in which they're acknowledged and dismissed – but mostly dismissed. An awareness of caste and religion is also important to understand the Sivan question, according to *Science and Religion*. Nearly midway through the book, Renny discusses a "strategic adjustment" among scientists that allows them to practice science and believe in gods "without revealing the apparent contradictions between the two". Here, one scientist identifies one of the origins of religious belief in an individual to be their "cultural upbringing"; but later in the book, in conversations with Brahmin scientists (and partly in the context of an implicit belief that the practice of science is vouchsafed for Brahmins in India), Renny reveals that they don't distinguish between cultural and religious practices. For example, scientists who claim to be staunch atheists are also strict vegetarians, don the 'holy thread' and, most tellingly for me, insist on getting their sons and daughters married off to people belonging to the same caste. > They argued that they visited temples and pilgrimage centres not for worship but out of an architectural and aesthetic interest, to marvel at the architectural beauty. As Indians, they are proud of these historical places and pilgrimage centres. They happily invite their guests from other countries to these places with a sense of pride and historicity. Some of the atheist scientists I spoke to informed me that they would offer puja and seek darshan while visiting the temples and historically relevant pilgrimage places, especially when they go with their family; “to make them happy.” They argued that they wouldn’t question the religious beliefs and practices of others and professed that it was a personal choice to be religious or non-religious. They also felt that religion and belief in God provided psychological succor to believers in their hardships and one should not oppose them. Many of the atheist scientists think that festivals such as Diwali or Ayudha Puja are cultural events. In their worldview, the distinction between religion and culture has dissolved – and which clearly emphasises the importance of considering the placedness of science just as much as we consider the placedness of religion. By way of example, *Science and Religion* finds both religion and science at work in laboratories, but en route it also discovers that to do science in certain parts of India – but especially South India, where many of the scientists in his book are located – is to do science in a particular milieu distorted by caste: here, the "lifeworld" is to Brahmins [as water is to fish](https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Perhaps this is how Sivan thinks, too,although he is likely to be performing the subsequent rituals more passively, and deliberately and in self-interest, **assuming** he seeks his sense of his social standing based on and his deservingness of social support from the wider community of fellow Brahmins: that *we must pray and make some offerings to god because that's how we always did it growing up*. At least, these are my preliminary thoughts. I'm looking forward to finishing *Science and Religion* this month (I'm a slow reader) and looking forward to learning more in the process. ### On anticipation and the history of science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/10/on-anticipation-and-the-history-of-science/ Last updated: 2022-01-10T07:09:45.000Z In mid-2012, shortly after physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe had announced the discovery of a particle that looked a lot like the Higgs boson, there was some clamour in India over news reports not paying enough attention or homage to the work of Satyendra Nath Bose. Bose and Albert Einstein together developed Bose-Einstein statistics, a framework of rules and principles that describe how fundamental particles called bosons behave. (Paul A.M. Dirac named these particles in Bose's honour.) The director-general of CERN, the institute that hosts the LHC, had visited India shortly after the announcement and said in a speech in Kolkata that in honour of Bose, he and other physicists had decided to capitalise the 'b' in 'boson'. It was a petty victory of a petty demand, but few realised that it was also misguided. Bose made the first known (or at least published) attempts to understand the particles that would come to be called bosons – but neither he nor Einstein anticipated the existence of the Higgs boson. There have also been some arguments (justified, I think) that Bose wasn't awarded a Nobel Prize for his ideas because he didn't make testable predictions; Einstein received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1915 for anticipating the photoelectric effect. The point is that it was unreasonable to expect Bose's work to be highlighted, much less attributed, as some had demanded at the time, every time we find a new boson particle. What such demands only did was to signal an expectation that the reflection of every important contribution by an Indian scientist ought to be found in every major discovery or invention. Such calls detrimentally affect the public perception of science because they are essentially *contextless*. Let's imagine that discovery of the Higgs boson was the result of series of successes, depicted thus: O---o---o---o---o---O---O---o---o---O---o---o---o---O An 'O' shows a major success and an 'o' shows a minor success, where major/minor could mean the relative significance within particle physics communities, the extent to which physicists anticipated it or simply the amount of journal/media coverage it received. In this sequence, Bose's paper on a certain class of subatomic particles could be the first 'O' and the discovery of the Higgs boson the last 'O'. And looking at this sequence, one could say Bose's work led to a lot of the work that came after and ultimately led to the Higgs boson. However, doing that would diminish the amount of study, creativity and persistence that went into each subsequent finding – and would also ignore the fact that we have identified only one branch of endeavour, leading from Bose's work to the Higgs boson, whereas in reality there are hundreds of branches crisscrossing each other at every *o*, big or small – and then there are countless epiphanies, ideas and flashes, each one less the product of following the scientific method and more of a mysterious combination of science and intuition. By reducing the opportunity to celebrate Bose's work by pointing to just the Higgs boson point on the branch, we lose the opportunities to know and celebrate the importance of Bose's work for all the points in between, but especially the points that we still haven't taken the trouble to understand. Recently, a couple people forwarded to me a video on WhatsApp of an Indian-American electrical engineer named Nisar Ahmed. I learnt when in college (studying engineering) that Nisar Ahmed was the co-inventor, along with K. Ramamohan Rao, of the direct cosine transform, a technique to transmit a given amount of information using fewer bits than those contained in the information itself. The video introduced Ahmed's work as the basis for our being able to take video-conferencing for granted; direct cosine transform allows audiovisual data to be compressed by two, maybe three orders of magnitude, making its transmission across the internet much less resource-intensive than if it had to be transmitted without compression. However, the video did little to address the immediate aftermath of Ahmed's and Rao's paper, the other work by other scientists that built on it, as well as its use in other settings, and rested on the drawing just one connection between two fairly unrelated events (direct cosine transform and their derivatives, many of them created in the same decade, heralded signal compression, but they didn't particularly anticipate different forms of communication). This *flattening* of the history of science, and technology as the case may be, may be entertaining but it offers no insights into the processes at work behind these inventions, and certainly doesn't admit any other achivements before each development. In the video, Ahmed reads out tweets by people reacting to his work as depicted on the show *This Is Us*. One of them says that it's because of him, and because of *This Is Us*, that people are now able to exchange photos and videos of each other around the world, without worrying about distance. But… no; Ahmed himself says in the video, "I couldn't predict how fast the technology would move" (based on his work). Put it simply, I find such forms of communication – and thereunto *the way we are prompted to think about* science – objectionable because they are content with 'what', and aren't interested in 'when', 'why' or 'how'. And simply enumerating the 'what' is practically non-scientific, more so when they're a few particularly sensational whats over others that encourage us to ignore the inconvenient details. Other similar recent examples were G.N. Ramachandran, whose work on protein structure, especially Ramachandran plots, have been connected to pharmaceutical companies' quest for new drugs and vaccines, and Har Gobind Khorana, whose work on synthesising RNA has been connected to mRNA vaccines. ### The Print's ludicrous article on Niraj Bishnoi URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/08/the-prints-ludicrous-article-on-niraj-bishnoi/ Last updated: 2022-01-08T07:34:39.000Z *The Print* has just published a [bizarre article](https://theprint.in/india/bulli-bai-mastermind-a-porn-addict-had-sexual-content-on-laptop-hacked-1st-website-at-16/798271/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about Niraj Bishnoi, the alleged "mastermind" (whatever that means) of the 'Bulli Bai' app. I know nothing about Niraj Bishnoi; the article's problem is that it has reproduced the Delhi police's profile of Bishnoi and indications in that profile, provided by police personnel, of Bishnoi's alleged deviancy sans any qualification. I've reproduced relevant portions of the article below (with a left-indent), and my annotations are intercalated. But first, according to [Sukanya Shantha](https://thewire.in/author/sukanya-shantha?ref=slightlyacidic.com), my colleague at *The Wire*: "These stories are quite common. They mean nothing in court. Defence comes up with such BS everytime before arguing on quantum of punishment. We saw similar stuff during Shakti Mills, and Delhi rape too. Even Ajmal Kasab was called 'mentally deranged' by his lawyer." While such *claims* like those by defence lawyers may be common, I don't understand why the media – and especially independent media – has to amplify them without sparing a thought for what they ultimately imply. ![](https://observerinmotion.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/a6dc5-01b42-ab8ca-screenshot-2022-01-08-at-12.57.06-pm.png?w=1024&h=494) > Suspected 'Bulli Bai' app creator, 20-year-old Niraj Bisnoi had 153 porn film downloads and lewd, sexual content in his laptop, sources in the Delhi Police claimed Thursday. The evidence in his laptop suggest Bisnoi is a “porn addict” and “has abnormal desires towards elderly Muslim women”, the sources added. This para – the first – sets the tone for what you can expect from the rest of the article. And *The Print* considers the most important point vis-à-vis this article to be that Niraj Bishnoi had 153 pornographic films on his laptop, that he is a "porn addict" – presumably the Delhi police's words – and that he harboured "abnormal" desires "towards elderly Muslim women". We may never know how either the police or the author of the article leaped from pornography and fantasies to an implied justification for Niraj Bishnoi's alleged crimes. A [2015 article](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-blame-game/201506/view-or-not-view-is-the-question?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in *Psychology Today* did a good job summarising what we knew about pornography until then, and I think the conclusions still stand: a) there's both good and bad to viewing pornography, b) the bad that is often attributed anecdotally to pornography is grossly at odds with the effects that psychologists have found; and c) even so, causal links between consuming pornography and holding specific beliefs or committing specific acts don't yet exist. Against this context, what *The Print* has found fit to print is an unfounded opinion of the Delhi police and not a cause by any stretch. Also, echoing Sukanya Shantha's point, why is the Delhi police rising to Niraj Bishnoi's defence, instead of Bishnoi's lawyers? (Assuming of course that this is a defence…) > According to sources in Delhi Police, Bisnoi was introduced to the virtual world at the age of 15 and first hacked a website a year later, as “revenge”, after his sister was denied admission by a school. > > “At the age of 16, he first hacked a school’s website when his sister didn’t get admission,” a source in Delhi police claimed. "Introduced to the virtual world". How clandestine. First off, this is access journalism of the worst kind – neither to make sensible claims nor to name your sources. Public officials, including the police, shouldn't be allowed to get away with being anonymous sources in articles; if they absolutely must remain unnamed, the publisher should specify the reason that the publication has decided to grant anonymity, on every occasion. (*The Wire Science* recently adopted this protocol, inspired by [*The Verge*](https://www.theverge.com/press-room/22772113/the-verge-on-background-policy-update?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Otherwise, as a reader, there is no one to hold accountable. Second, I once 'hacked' a website to find out the class XII board exam score of a friend. However, does it count as 'hacking' when the website loaded the results for all roll-numbers as HTML, on its source page, but didn't display them on the front-end, so all I had to do was right-click on the displayed page, click 'view source', and be able to access all the data? How good a hacker is depends both on the hacker's skills and how well the object of their hack is guarded; if the object is barely concealed, we can learn nothing of the hacker's prowess. And in this case, since Niraj Bishnoi allegedly hacked a school's website, I sincerely doubt he did more than I did. > According to police sources, the code script of the Bulli Bai app has been recovered from his laptop — a high-end gaming machine, with a heady duty graphic card. Sources claimed the laptop only had games and porn. Please, I'm laughing. A high-end gaming machine? My laptop is a high-end gaming machine. Any devices with Apple M1 or AMD Ryzen chips are high-end gaming machines. Many smartphones these days are high-end gaming machines. And what is "only games and porn" supposed to imply? Other of course than that the case against him apparently rests on one of the most tiresome snowclones of this age. > Those who know Bisnoi personally, also claim him to be a “loner”, someone who is more active in the virtual world than in the real one around him. > > Sources in Delhi Police told ThePrint that Bishnoi displayed “abnormal behavioural traits” in his interaction with the police and has threatened to commit suicide multiple times since his arrest. > > “He has told the police that he will fatally hurt himself — cut his veins with a blade, hang himself to death,” the source mentioned above claimed. > > A second source added: “He doesn’t eat, has to be forced to eat. Today he skipped lunch. We had to order food from outside to feed him around 3.30 pm.” This seems like the beginnings of some kind of personality profile that's supposed to imply that Niraj Bishnoi was mentally unsound in some way – but which is psychotic in its own right for forgetting that none of these are excuses for what he allegedly did. I'm only prompted to recall the excuses many alleged perpetrators bandied about during the height of the #MeToo allegations – that they had PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc.; some only alluded to vague mental health concerns. These individuals may actually have had these conditions or disorders, as the case may be, but none of them implied any consequences that would have prevented the individuals from knowing that what they were doing – at the time they were doing it – was wrong. Yet such excuses persisted, and only served to further stigmatise others who were unwell in the same way, especially in the company of their parents, employers and others. > The probe so far has revealed that Bisnoi is addicted to the internet and his laptop, claimed sources. They also claimed that the 20-year-old is accustomed to creating fake accounts and user handles on social media platforms. Is my tax money paying for this probe? Also, I once created 22 GMail accounts, simply because each one comes with 15 GB of space on Google Drive. The point is none of this is dispositive proof – or even points *towards* dispositive proof – that Niraj Bishnoi did what he allegedly did. Wouldn't the bit about fake handles on social media platforms be true for every troll out there? The story so far only suggests that the Delhi police is building a loseable case and/or that it is colluding with Niraj Bishnoi's lawyers to manufacture sympathy for his plight. > “Bishnoi has said that he doesn’t talk to anyone much in the outside world, that he doesn’t like to talk to anyone and that he has no friends in the real world. His only interactions are under assumed names and identities in the virtual world. His day starts and ends with the internet and laptop,” the second source claimed. > > Police claims of the accused’s being a recluse are repeated by acquaintances who knew Bishnoi while he was a school student, and who spoke to ThePrint on condition of anonymity. > > All of them described the accused as a “loner”, someone who was used to staying “aloof” and “didn’t interact much with the outside world” since he was a teenager. > > “He has created his own virtual world around him,” claimed an acquaintance doesn’t want to be identified. Ah, the stereotype has landed. As another colleague of mine said, Niraj Bishnoi probably lives in his mother's basement, too. And [Naomi Barton](https://thewire.in/author/naomi-barton?ref=slightlyacidic.com), yet another colleague, said: "Also, lots of people are loners who spend the majority of their time in digital spaces – and that can be both good and bad, for instance queer children who don't have any community in real life. What this story is doing is pretty much just blowing innocuous, if generationally different, habits out of proportion to scare-monger." > Referring to another of the accused’s behavioural traits, the second police source claimed: “Whenever the interrogation hits a certain peak, he urinates in his pants. He has done this three-four times. We have checked if this is because he has a medical issue, but he doesn’t.” If *The Print* hadn't already crossed a line, it has now – by forwarding as it if were a knock-knock joke on WhatsApp the Delhi police's claim that Niraj Bishnoi can urinate on demand when the "interrogation hits a certain peak". Hits a certain peak? Is this a euphemism for the intensity of the interrogation? And what sort of 'behavioural trait' is this in which the bearer of the trait urinates – the insinuation being that he does this for reasons other than what might make people pee in these situations – for anything other than because something has prompted him to? All this claim does is bring to mind Rowan Atkinson's ['Fatal beatings' skit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZMoB6ms2mE&ref=slightlyacidic.com). > According to the source, the 20-year-old has also not expressed remorse for his alleged involvement in the ‘Bulli Bai’ app. > > “He said he did the right thing,” claimed the source. Finally, something that doesn't sound ridiculous, although it isn't worth publishing. Ultimately, if Niraj Bishnoi – and others, to be sure – was responsible in any part for the 'Bulli Bai' app, he needs to be brought to justice and he needs to have a fair (and sensible) trial. But what we could all do without is a 'news report' that brings the nonsensical claims of the Delhi police – words that appear to be designed to exonerate the alleged actions of Niraj Bishnoi, but which may yet backfire, and nothing to remain sensitive to the people that the app has harmed – out to thousands of readers, if not more, without qualifying/rebutting them as warranted instead of letting them rot in the rooms in which they were manufactured. *Featured image credit: karatara/Pexels.* ### Physicists observe long-expected helium superfluid phase URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/02/physicists-observe-long-expected-helium-3-superfluid-phase/ Last updated: 2022-01-02T07:08:53.000Z Physicists have reported that they have finally observed helium 3 existing in a long-predicted type of superfluid, called the *ß* phase. This is an important discovery, if it's borne out, for reasons that partly have to do with its isotope, helium 4\. Helium 4 is a fascinating substance because the helium 4 atom is a boson – a type of particle whose quantum properties and behaviour are explained by rules called Bose-Einstein statistics. Helium 3, on the other hand, is a fermion, and fermions are governed by Fermi-Dirac statistics. Bosons and fermions have one important difference: bosons are allowed to disobey [Pauli's exclusion principle](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2021/11/28/is-mathematics-real/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and by doing so they can assume exotic states of matter rarely found in nature, with many unusual properties. For example, when helium 4 is cooled below a certain temperature, it becomes a superfluid: a liquid that flows without experiencing any resistance. If you poured a superfluid into a bowl, it will be able to climb the walls of the bowl and spill out without any help. But helium 3 atoms are fermions, so they are bound to obey Pauli's exclusion principle and can't become a superfluid. At least this is what physicists believed for a long time, until the early 1970s, when two independent groups of physicists found – one in theory and the other in experiments – that helium 3 could indeed enter a superfluid phase, but at a temperature 1,000-times lower than the critical temperature of helium 4\. The theory group, led by Anthony Leggett at the University of Sussex, had in fact made a significant discovery. Today, we know that the flow of superfluid helium 4 is analogous to the flow of electrons in a conventional superconductor, which also move around as if they face no resistance from the surrounding atoms. Leggett and co. found that the theory used to explain these superconductors could also be used to explain helium 3 superfluidity. This theory is called Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, and the materials whose superconductivity it can explain are called BCS superconductors. Electrons are fermions and cannot 'super-flow'. But in a BCS superconductor that has been cooled below its critical temperature, some forces in the material cause the electrons to overcome their mutual repulsion ("like charges repel") and pair up. These electron pairs, while being made of two individual fermions, actually behave like bosons. Similarly, Leggett and co. found that helium 3 atoms could pair up to form a [bosonic composite](http://www.pmaweb.caltech.edu/~mcc/Ph127/c/Lecture9.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and super-flow. Over many years, physicists used what they had learnt through these discoveries to expand our understanding of this substance. They found, among other things, that superfluid helium 3 can exist in many phases. The superfluidity would persist in each phase but with different characteristics. Superfluid helium 3 was first thought to have two phases, called [*A* and *B*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/superfluid-helium?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The temperature-pressure plot below clearly shows the conditions in which each phase emerges. ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/7da59-screenshot-2022-04-14-at-9.19.41-am.png) Credit: E.V. Thuneberg, *Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics*, 2005 When physicists subjected superfluid helium 3 in its *A* phase to a strong magnetic field, they found another phase that they called *A1*, whose atom-pairs had different spin characteristics. In 2015, a group of researchers led by Vladimir Dmitriev, at the P.L. Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems, Moscow, discovered a fourth phase, which they called the polar, or *P*, phase. Here, they confined helium 3 in a nematic aerogel and exposed the setup to a low magnetic field. Aerogels are ultra-light materials that are extremely porous; nematic means its molecules were arranged in parallel. The aeorogel in the Dmitriev and co. experiment was 98% porous, and whose pores "were much longer than they were wide" ([source](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/s156?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). That is, the team had found that the [shape of the container](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.881509?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which helium 3 was confined [also affected](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4067?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the phase of its superfluidity. In [August 2021](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.265301?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ([preprint](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.06302.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), the same team reported that it had observed a long-expected-to-exist fifth phase called the *ß* phase. They reported that they took the setup they used to force superfluid helium 3 into the *P* phase, but this time exposed it to a high magnetic field. According to their paper, they found that while the superfluid earlier moved into the *P* phase through a single transition, as the temperature was brought down, this time it did so in two steps. First, it moved into an intermediate phase and then into the *P* phase. The intermediate is the *ß* phase. (If this sounds simple, it wasn't: the discoveries were each limited by the availability of specially designed instruments capable of picking up on very small-scale changes unavailable to the naked eye. Second, researchers also have had to know in advance what changes they should expect to happen in each phase, and this requires the corresponding theoretical clarity.) ![](https://7idal.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/a57c3-medium.png) The temperatures at which the phase transition between the two polar phases differ as the magnetic field strength increases. The gap between the two phases is bridged by the ß phase. Source: [https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.265301](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.265301?ref=slightlyacidic.com) I have considerably simplified helium 3's transition from the 'normal' to the superfluid phase in this post. To describe it accurately, physicists use advanced mathematics and associated concepts in high-energy physics. One such concept is symmetry-breaking. When a helium 3 atom pairs up with another to form a bosonic composite, the pair must have a 'new' spin and orbital momentum; and their combined wavefunction will also have a 'new' phase. All these steps break different *symmetries*. There's a theory called [Grand Unification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand%5FUnified%5FTheory?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in particle physics, in which physicists expect that at higher and higher energies, the three fundamental forces that affect subatomic particles – the strong-nuclear, the weak-nuclear and the electromagnetic – will combine into a single unified force. Physicists [have found](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/superfluid?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in their mathematical calculations that the symmetries that will break in this super-transition resemble those broken by helium 3 during its transition to superfluidity. Understanding helium 3 can also be rewarding for insights into the [insides of neutron stars](https://compstar.uni-frankfurt.de/outreach/short-articles/superfluidity-and-superconductivity-in-neutron-stars/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Neutron stars are extreme objects – surpassed in their extremeness only by black holes, which exist at the point where known theories of gravitational physics collapse into meaninglessness. A few lakh years after a neutron star is born, it is expected to have cooled sufficiently for its interiors to be composed of superfluids and superconductors. We may *never* be able to directly observe these materials in their natural environment. But by studying helium 3's various phases of superfluidity, we can get a sense of what a neutron star's innards could be like, and whether their interactions among themselves and the neutrons on the surface could explain these objects' still-mysterious characteristics. *Featured image: The liquid helium is in the superfluid phase. A thin invisible film creeps up the inside wall of the cup and down on the outside. A drop forms. It will fall off into the liquid helium below. This will repeat until the cup is empty – provided the liquid remains superfluid. Caption and credit: Alfred Leitner, public domain.* ### Reading books, writing words URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2022/01/01/reading-books-writing-words/ Last updated: 2022-01-01T12:54:38.000Z It suddenly feels like a lot more people have been reading a lot more books. Or maybe they're talking about it a lot more. I have one friend who went through more books in 2021 than there were weeks. And I've been quite jealous looking at her and others' Instagram and Twitter feeds about all the great books they read and the places to which the books transported them. I want to go to those places too! But instead of reading books, I just really want to go to those places. I lost my ability to read books years ago, probably around the same time, and probably because, I began to read articles, essays and short stories more. I don't really miss it except when most of the people I generally interact with put their book-reading on display, typically at the end of each year. When I shared this sentiment with my friend, she said I should just give it time and that I'll get the ability back at some point. Sage, but also unfalsifiable, advice. Instead, I've found considerable solace – when I'm feeling down vis-à-vis reading books – in the realisation that I may not have read many words in books, but I've read many words in probably every other form of the written text *than* books (excluding social media posts). I launched [The Weekly Linklist](https://linklist.substack.com/about) in July 2020 after an app told me that I'd been reading 12,000 words or so per day on average for at least a year until then. I believe I've read many books' worth of words but just not books per se. It's helpful to frame things this way because the longer I didn't read a book, the more stigmatising it got in the circles in which I moved and still move. "Oh, you can't read books? I'm sure you will soon." Some people implicitly make a virtue of reading books. Reading books is important, no doubt, but I'm wondering if things have got to a point where reading 50,000 words is less important than if they were printed on paper, glued together and published as such. Granted, there is value in both presenting and consuming a single argument (used in its broadest sense, such that it encompasses fiction as well), or some non-tenuously related arguments, across tens of thousands of words. But not every argument that's present this way is good (i.e. there are bad books) nor are shorter arguments inherently inferior. Yet books, and book-reading with them, have accrued a certain prestige that doesn't attend to, say, essays. Then again, it's entirely possible I'm a frog in a well and there are other wells where frogs talk about all the great essays they read that year, share news articles talking about the same things, whose Instagram pages are replete with screenshots of essay titles, and so forth. --- I'd originally intended to write a short introduction and then segue to the annual presentation of the number of words I've written in the previous year on this blog but the words snowballed. So: - I wrote 117,573 words in 2021 on this blog – bringing the cumulative total to 831,826 words. - Steven Erikson's *Malazan Book of the Fallen* series is a little over a million words long. I hope to cross that figure next year. - These words were published in 118 posts, which means the average post length was 996 words. I'm happy with this because it continues my trend of writing longer posts on average since 2014 (when it was 665 words). - However, I don't see the length increasing much past 1,000 words because I like my own posts and articles, on *The Wire Science*, to be that long. And I'm pleased that I'm able to keep track without consciously keeping track (my first and final drafts aren't very different unless I've made a big mistake.) - The vast majority of the posts were categorised 'Analysis'. - In the last quarter of 2021, I mostly reacted to things that had happened instead of synthesising insights, and I didn't like that. - I also wrote 127 articles on *The Wire Science* and *The Wire* in 2021 – the second-highest in a single year and for the second time in excess of 100 for the same publication. (The highest in both cases was for *The Hindu* in 2013.) - Thus far, I've written 845 articles across *The Wire Science*, *The Wire*, *Scroll*, *Quartz*, *Hindustan Times* and *The Hindu*. ### A false union in science journalism URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/28/a-false-union-in-science-journalism/ Last updated: 2021-12-28T12:16:44.000Z At what point does a journalist become a stenographer? Most people would say it's when the journalist stops questioning claims and reprints them uncritically, as if they were simply a machine. So at what point does a *science* journalist become a stenographer? You'll probably say at the same point – when they become uncritical of claims. I disagree: I believe the gap between being critical and being non-critical is smaller when it comes to science journalism simply because of the nature of its subject. The scientific enterprise in itself is an attempt to arrive at the truth by critiquing existing truths in different contexts and by simultaneously subtracting biases. The bulk of what we understand to be science journalism is aligned with this process: science journalists critique the same material that scientists do as well, even when they're following disputes between groups of scientists, but seldom critique the scientists' beliefs and methods themselves. This is not a distinction without a difference or even a finer point about labels. One might say, "There aren't many stories in which journalists need to critique scientists and/or their methods" – this would be fair, but I have two issues on this count. First, both the language and the narrative are typically deferential towards scientists and their views, and steer clear of examining how a scientist's opinions may have been shaped by extra-scientific considerations, such as their socio-economic location, or whether their accomplishments were the product of certain unique privileges. Second, at the level of a *collection* of articles, science journalists who haven't critiqued science will likelier than not have laid tall, wide bridges between scientists and non-scientists but won't have called scientists, or the apparatuses of science itself, out on their bullshit. One way or another, a science journalism that's uncritical of science often leads to the impression that the two enterprises share the same purpose: to advance science, whether by bringing supposedly important scientific work to the attention of politicians or by building the public support for good scientific work. And this impression is wrong. I don't think that science journalists have an obligation to help science, and I also don't think that science journalists *should*. As it happens, science journalism is often treated differently than, say, journalism that's concerned with political or financial matters. I completely [understand why](https://proofreproof.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/what-it-means-to-give-fucks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But I don't think there has been much of an effort to flip this relationship to consider whether the conception and practice of science has been improved by the attention of science journalists the way the practices of governance and policymaking have been improved by the attention of those reporting on politics and economics. If I was a wagering man, I'd wager 'no', at least not in India. And the failure to acknowledge this corollary of the relationship between science and science journalism, leave alone one's responsibility as a science journalist, is to my mind a deeper cause for the persistence of both stenographic and pro-science science journalism in some quarters. I thought to write this down when reading a [new editorial](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7633?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by Holden Thorpe, the editor of *Science*. He says here: > It’s not just a matter of translating jargon into plain language. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson at the University of Pennsylvania stated in a recent article, the key is getting the public to realize that science is a work in progress, an honorably self-correcting endeavor carried out in good faith. Umm, no. Science is a work in progress, sure, but I have neither reason nor duty to explain that the practice of science is honourable or that it is "carried out in good faith". (It frequently isn't.) Granted, the editorial focuses on communicators, not journalists, but I'd place communicators on the journalism side of the fence, instead of on the science side: the purposes of journalists and communicators deviate only slightly, and for the most part both groups travel the same path. The rest of Thorpe's article focuses on the fact that not all scientists can make good communicators – a fact that bears repeating if only because some proponents of science communication tend to go overboard with their insistence on getting scientists to communicate their work to a non-expert audience. But in restricting his examples to full-blown articles, radio programmes, etc., he creates a bit of a false binary (if earlier he created a false union): that you're a communicator only if you've produced 'packages' of that size or scope. But I've always marvelled at the ability of some reporters, especially at the *New York Times*' science section, to elicit some lovely quotes from experts. Here are three examples: This is science communication as well. Of course, not all scientists may be able to articulate things so colourfully or arrive at poignant insights in their quotes but surely there are many more scientists who can do this than there are scientists who can write entire articles or produce engaging podcasts. And a scientist who allows your article to say interesting things is, I'm sure you'll agree, an invaluable resource. Working in India, for example, I continue to have to give reporters I commission from extra time to file their stories because many scientists don't want to talk – and while there are many reasons for this, a big and common one is that they believe communication is pointless. So overall, I think there needs to be more leeway in what we consider to be communication, if only so it encourages scientists to speak to journalists (whom they trust, of course) instead of being put off by the demands of a common yet singular form of this exercise, as well as what we imagine the science journalist's purpose to be. If we like to believe that science communication and/or journalism creates new knowledge, as [I do](https://proofreproof.wordpress.com/2021/07/05/scicommers-as-knowledge-producers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), instead of simply being adjacent to science itself, then it must also craft a purpose of its own. *Featured image credit: Conol Samuel/Unsplash.* ### JWST and the imagination URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/26/jwst-and-the-imagination/ Last updated: 2021-12-26T06:12:01.000Z When the Hubble space telescope launched in April 1990, I was too young to understand what was going on – but not yesterday, when NASA launched its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Every once in a while, the Hubble telescope team releases an image of thousands of stars packed into one shot, the so-called "deep space" views. I don't know if there is another way to react to them than with awe. But given the hype surrounding the JWST as well as its better technical specifications, its launch just seemed surreal – the threshold of a new era of astronomy photographs that everyone says will be better than what the Hubble has managed thus far, yet I can't imagine how. In 2015, I [had written](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/of-small-steps-and-giant-leaps-of-collective-imagination/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), after gazing for an hour at [a Hubble image](https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-messier-5?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the M5 cluster, that the telescope's images are so flawless, so devoid of the aberration of its instruments, that it is easy to forget the telescope lies between our eyes and the subject of its image. This sensation was reminiscent of the opening of Roland Barthes's *Camera Lucida* (1980): > One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852\. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: "I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor." Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it. My interest in Photography took a more cultural turn. I decided I liked Photography in opposition to the Cinema, from which I nonetheless failed to separate it. This question grew insistent. I was overcome by an "ontological" desire: I wanted to learn at all costs what Photography was "in itself," by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of images. Such a desire really meant that beyond the evidence provided by technology and usage, and despite its tremendous contemporary expansion, I wasn't sure that Photography existed, that it had a "genius" of its own. The JWST is now expected to top this… this *flawlessness*, and I'm already excited for the possibilities – yet I'm also instinctively inclined to temper this excitement because of something else Barthes said in the same book: a warning about making the meaning of an image too "impressive", too powerful as to render its aesthetic qualities more keenly than its political – or in this case technical – ones: > Yet the mask is the difficult region of Photography. Society, it seems, mistrusts pure meaning: it wants meaning, but at the same time it wants this meaning to be surrounded by a noise (as is said in cybernetics) which will make it less acute. Hence the photograph whose meaning (I am not saying its effect, but its meaning) is too impressive is quickly deflected; we consume it aesthetically, not politically. The Photograph of the Mask is in fact critical enough to disturb (in 1934, the Nazis censored Sander because his "faces of the period" did not correspond to the Nazi archetype of the race), but it is also too discrete (or too "distinguished") to constitute an authentic and effective social critique, at least according to the exigencies of militantism: what committed science would acknowledge the interest of Physiognomy? I don't know if this argument applies here or, if it does, how exactly. I thought to recall it only because of the possibilities with which the JWST will soon confront us, their implications for astronomy as a whole, and how we might respond as a people and as a species to them. And of course as science communicators. *Featured image: An infrared image of the 'Pillars of Creation' in the Eagle Nebula, photographed by the Hubble space telescope in 2014\. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA.* ### About vaccines for children and Covaxin… URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/25/about-vaccines-for-children-and-covaxin/ Last updated: 2021-12-25T17:43:50.000Z I don't understand his penchant for late-night announcements, much less one at 10 pm on Christmas night, but Prime Minister Narendra has [just said](https://science.thewire.in/health/modi-announces-covid-19-vaccines-for-children-aged-15-18-booster-doses-for-health-workers-elderly/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the government will roll out vaccines for young adults aged 15-18 years from January 3, 2022 – around the same time I received a press release from Bharat Biotech saying the drug regulator had approved the company's COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, for emergency-use among those aged 12-18 years. I think there's a lot we don't know about Covaxin at this time – similar to (but hopefully not to the same extent as) when the regulator approved it for emergency-use among adults on January 3, 2021\. But what grates at me more now is this: more than being any other vaccine to protect against COVID-19, Covaxin has been the Indian government's pet project. This favour has manifested in the form of numerous government officials supporting its use and advantages sans nearly sufficient supporting evidence, and in the form of help the vaccine hasn't deserved at the time the government extended it – primarily the emergency-use approval for adults. Most of all, Covaxin [has become a victim](https://www.livemint.com/science/news/how-covaxin-became-a-victim-of-vaccine-triumphalism-11622022760541.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of India's vaccine triumphalism. And I'm wary that Prime Minister Modi's 10 pm announcement is a sign that a similar sort of help is in the offing. Until recently, [up to December 24](https://science.thewire.in/health/rajesh-bhushan-vinod-paul-confused-claims-muddle-government-view-booster-omicron-transmission/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in fact, officials including Rajesh Bhushan, Vinod K. Paul and Balram Bhargava said the government is being guided by science on the need to vaccinate children. Yet Modi's announcement coincides with the drug regulator's approval for Covaxin's emergency-use among children. I admit this isn't much to go on, but it isn't an allegation either. It's the following doubt: given the recent political history of Covaxin and its sorry relationship with the Indian government, will we stand to lose anything by ignoring the timing of the prime minister's announcement? Put another way – and even if pulling at this thread turns out to be an abortive effort – did the government wait to change its policy on vaccinating those aged younger than 18 years until it could be sure Covaxin was in the running? (The drug regulator had approved another vaccine for children in August, Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D – [another train-wreck](https://science.thewire.in/health/zydus-cadila-zycov-d-dna-plasmid-covid-vaccine-missing-data-dcgi-approval/?ref=slightlyacidic.com).) Modi's announcement also has him making a deceptively off-handed comment that today is Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birth anniversary. Such an alignment of dates has never been a coincidence in Modi's term as prime minister. Makes one wonder what else isn't a coincidence… ### The way we talk about computing power URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/23/the-way-we-talk-about-computing-power/ Last updated: 2021-12-23T07:40:00.000Z > Whenever I hear someone rhapsodize about how much more computer power we have now compared with what was available in the 1960s during the Apollo era, I cringe. Those comparisons usually grossly underestimate the difference. > > [A Quadrillion Mainframes on Your Lap](https://spectrum.ieee.org/ibm-mainframe?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Rodney Brooks, *IEEE Spectrum* And I cringe whenever I hear someone rhapsodise about computing power – however accurately – sans the context of its ubiquity. Those comparisons usually grossly miscommunicate what it *means* to have such power. It recently struck me that, contrary to the problem of presentism that frequently undermines what amateur historians have to say about events of the past, assessments of computing power are frequently undermined by pastism: of the tendency to quantify the computing power we have in our pockets (smartphones) or on our laps (tablets and laptops) as multiples of the computing power available to the people who launched the Apollo missions. These are often thinly veiled exhortions to people to use the computers at their disposal more wisely, and they're often bad advice as well. > But I wonder, are we using all that computation effectively to make as much difference as our forebears did after the leap from pencil and paper to the 7090? > > Same source as above Since the advent of the personal computer and then the internet, the ubiquity of computers – and the information that they can carry, distribute and access – has transformed the context in which information exists, and is required. Instead of talking about how our laptops have a quadrillion-times the computing power that exist in an IBM 7090 mainframe, and therefore simply inferring how much more we can do with it, I think it would be better to imagine that the 7090 had one-quadrillionth the power of a modern laptop. More than illustrating the progress we have made to improve the speed with which some well-known computers perform calculations, looking at the past as being in possession of a small fraction of the computing power we can access today could help us remember, say, the quantities at which information can be useful (depending on the context) or how quickly innovations in information-processing technologies from the mid-20th century changed our lives. Mainframe systems operating with magnetic tapes helped some people obtain, accumulate and analyse large amounts of information and synthesise enough knowledge to get people into orbit around the planet and land them on the Moon. Half a century later, there were enough of these machines going around to make the accumulation and processing of information not the goal but often the problem, in some contexts even *the* problem. And this is just one way to look at it. Another is illustrated by the following example: I use lots of power relative to, say, some calculation involving the G-force that a rocket motor might have to adjust for to update my blog and make sure as many people on the planet as possible can access it, preferably within a second of them clicking the link. This is thanks to the democratisation of computing power. In the 1960s, only large organisations could afford the machines required to host and operate computing engines. As a result, when we think about computers of the past, we have only a few examples to consider – such as NASA launching astronauts to space. But think of computers today and you get to think about a mind-boggling array of activities, each of which may not use nearly as much power but which together use a lot more than was available in the Apollo era. I'm sure social scientists do but too many news articles and social media commentators don't stop to think that as our relationship with information changed, the expression of computing power as multiples of that in the mainframe era became less useful. Put another way, the past still matters – but using the language of computing power to talk about it sweeps our altered relationship with information, and the kinds of economy and enterprise it has spawned, under the rug. *Featured image credit: Pixabay/Pexels.* ### Charles Lieber case: A high-energy probe of science URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/22/charles-lieber-case-a-high-energy-probe-of-science/ Last updated: 2021-12-22T04:33:26.000Z There's a phenomenon in high-energy particle physics that I've found instructive as a metaphor to explain some things whose inner character may not be apparent to us but whose true nature is exposed in extreme situations. For example, consider the case of Charles Lieber, an American chemist whom a jury found guilty earlier today of lying to the US government about participating in a Chinese science programme and about having a Chinese bank account. Through our everyday interactions with protons and neutrons – sitting in the nuclei of their respective atoms – we'd have no reason to believe that they're made up of smaller particles. But when you probe a proton with another particle at an extremely high energy, such a probe can reveal that the proton is really made of smaller particles called *up* and *down* quarks. Similarly, Lieber's case is an extreme instance of a national government clashing with the nation's scientific enterprise for engaging in a science-related activity with immutable political implications. In our everyday interactions, there is no reason to believe that the government, or any other relatively more powerful political entity, could have a problem with what some scientist is working on or has to say. But sparks start to fly the moment the scientist's work, words or even thoughts begin to have political implications. It's not like the protons are not made of *up* and *down* quarks when probed at lower energies; it's that the latter don't reveal themselves. Similarly, it's not like science isn't a political activity even when it lacks political implications; it's that the relationship between science and politics, in that limited context, is too feeble to matter. But it's there. According to a [*New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/science/charles-lieber.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) article explaining Lieber's case, by Ellen Barry so you know it's well-written, the Trump-era 'China Initiative' to "root out scientists suspected of sharing sensitive information with China" has been accused of "prosecutorial overreach", but also that Lieber also shot himself in the foot by denying his involvement in the Chinese programme when "he was specifically asked about his participation". Barry's article makes the point that scientists are scared because the US government criminalised otherwise innocuous activities – activities that scientists have spent decades learning to *not* fear. At the same time, it would be unfair to spare Lieber – an accomplished nanoscience expert employed at Harvard University – the expectation to know what the consequences of his actions might be and the risk of ignoring them. Perhaps he harboured a sense of exceptionalism vis-à-vis his cause; perhaps he thought the 'China Initiative' that had knocked on the doors of other scientists wouldn't knock on his; perhaps he just assumed it wouldn't matter. But any which way, more than just being "about scaring the scientific community", as one of Lieber's former students says in the article, the initiative's victory in the Charles Lieber case should also remind scientists that the best way to beat the initiative is for the scientific community to proactively engage in political issues. Lieber's excuse, according to tapes of his interrogation by FBI officers, was that he wished to train younger scientists in a technology he had developed and thus increase his chances of winning a Nobel Prize. This is the science-politics link coming back to bite Lieber, and others like him (notably Brian Keating, whose [act of 'coming clean'](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/how-cut-throat-competition-forces-scientists-to-act-against-the-collective/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on this sentiment I continue to find admirable), who risk ruining their careers just win the prize (see addendum). One major impediment to acknowledging that politics is suffused in every human enterprise – including science – that happens in any organised society whose people govern themselves is that people often misunderstand politics to be "what their politicians say/do" instead of "the practice of self-governance". But by understanding it to be the former, there's a hoopla every time some political leader or other apparently oversteps their remit. --- #### Addendum Three comments. First, somewhere between the early 20th century and the early 21st, the prize's perception went from being "do good work and you'll win it" to "do good work and then hack your way to winning it". Second, I've seen this tendency of going 'over and beyond' to ensure one wins a Nobel Prize predominantly among scientists of the US – which in turn is hard to separate from the fact that most winners of the science Nobel Prizes have been from the US. There is perhaps a academic-cultural issue at work, and there's certainly a competition issue at work. People are first nominated for a prize by eminent individuals and former laureates, and thanks to a historical skew of the laureates' countries of citizenship (in favour of the US thanks to the rise of Nazism in Europe) and the way industry and the scientific publishing enterprise are organised today, both these groups of people as well as new laureates are skewed US-ward. What happens when a country produces "too much" good work for one prize, and its inexplicable rule to award only three people at a time, to consider? Surely Lieber believed this and wanted to get ahead of others, leading to his bullheaded actions? Third, [dismantle the Nobel Prizes](https://proofreproof.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). *Featured image: Charles M. Lieber. Credit: Kris Snibbe/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* ### Make war for the environment URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/19/make-war-for-the-environment/ Last updated: 2021-12-19T16:23:39.000Z Last week, India voted against a resolution in the UN Security Council to allow the council’s core members to deliberate on climate issues because, in the resolution’s view, they impinge on national security. Russia and India, among others, voted ‘against’. Russia is a permanent member so its rejection sunk the idea; India’s rejection, on the other hand, turned out to be the most articulate – at least according to a video circulating on the web of India’s permanent representative T.S. Tirumurti delineating India’s stance. Senior Indian officials seldom have anything to say these days that’s working taking seriously; this was one of them. India’s position, according to the statement Tirumurti read out, was centered on the following point: > This draft resolution is a step backward from our collective resolve to combat climate change. It seeks to hand over that responsibility to a body which neither works through consensus nor is reflective of the interests of the developing countries. India had no option but to vote against. Read Devirupa Mitra’s explanation of the significance of India’s vote [here](https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-negative-vote-unsc-climate-change-overlapping-mandates?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and Aathira Perinchery’s report on what climate policy researchers made of it [here](https://thewire.in/environment/not-the-right-forum-experts-back-indias-stance-on-climate-change-at-unsc?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Fundamentally, war gives rise to the most ridiculous ideas because war also gives rise to one of the most anti-democratic of what Lewis Mumford called the [authoritarian technics](http://www.mom.arq.ufmg.br/mom/02%5Fbabel/textos/mumford%5Fauthoritarian.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com): anti-accountable decision-making. In the context of India’s vote, arguments against the resolution were also rooted in the fact that one permanent member – the US of A – continues to [drag its feet](https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-biden-slapdown-us-climate-finance-frugality/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on useful climate action, especially domestic and international climate finance. As if to set the ground for the resolution, the US Department of Defence [published a report](https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD-CLIMATE-RISK-ANALYSIS-FINAL.PDF?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in October this year that said: > The risks of climate change to Department of Defense (DoD) strategies, plans, capabilities, missions, and equipment, as well as those of U.S. allies and partners, are growing. Global efforts to address climate change – including actions to address the causes as well as the effects – will influence DoD strategic interests, relationships, competition, and priorities. To train, fight, and win in this increasingly complex environment, DoD will consider the effects of climate change at every level of the DoD enterprise. While these may be legitimate considerations, holding closed-door meetings to, say, weaken climate action because doing otherwise could weaken national security – which, if India’s example is anything to go by, could be as arbitrary as you [need it to be](https://observerinmotion.wordpress.com/2021/10/07/isros-national-interest-bullshit/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – would just be a backdoor that undermines already weak climate pacts and treaties. As Tirumurti said: > It sends a wrong message to the developing countries that instead of addressing their concerns and holding developed countries responsible for meeting their commitments under the UNFCCC, we are willing to be divided and side-tracked under the guise of security. A less ridiculous but still [precarious idea](https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/08/climate-change-already-disrupting-military-it-will-get-worse-officials-say/184416/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is that responding to climate-change-fuelled natural disasters could distract the armed forces from the training required to fight the country’s enemies abroad. While it’s reasonable to argue that there aren’t enough properly trained people to respond, specifically as *first responders*, to an extreme weather event, it’s hard to square America’s defence spending (and somewhere in there its Department of Defence being the world’s [single-largest consumer](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use%2C%20Climate%20Change%20and%20the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Revised%20November%202019%20Crawford.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of oil) with the view that such ‘distractions’ may cost American lives in wars abroad. Fundamentally, including vis-à-vis the Security Council resolution, it would be a case of putting war before the climate. And now that I’ve put it that way – the most ridiculous examples I’ve come across of this variety (H/T to [Samir Malhotra](https://science.thewire.in/author/smalhotra/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) is a [research opportunity](https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1207769?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the Small Business Innovation Research programme of the US government issued in 2017: bullets loaded with seeds that sprout plants once they have been in the ground for many months. > The US Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) has demonstrated bioengineered seeds that can be embedded into the biodegradable composites and that will not germinate until they have been in the ground for several months. This SBIR effort will make use of seeds to grow environmentally friendly plants that remove soil contaminants and consume the biodegradable components developed under this project. Animals should be able to consume the plants without any ill effects. > > PHASE I: In Phase I the contractor develop a process to produce biodegradable composites with remediation seeds that can be used to manufacture 40mm-120mm training rounds. These Training rounds shall meet all the performance requirements of existing training rounds. The contractor should also explore avenues to produce biodegradable composites with remediation seeds for use in products outside the defense sector. > > PHASE II: In Phase II the contractor will prove out the fabrication process and manufacture prototypes that demonstrate the process is ready for industrial use. Provide a sufficient number of prototypes for the government to perform ballistic tests. > > PHASE III: Contractor will coordinate with PEO Ammunition and ammunition prime contractors to establish a transition path for the SBIR technology. Paralleling its government’s viscous approach to international climate action, it seems like the American military establishment has also been looking for ways to make war for the environment. ### Some thoughts on Robert Downey, Jr.'s science funding idea URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/17/some-thoughts-on-robert-downey-jr-s-science-funding-idea/ Last updated: 2021-12-17T14:49:31.000Z On December 12, Iron Man, a.k.a. Robert Downey, Jr., and David Lang coauthored an [op-ed in *Fast Company*](https://www.fastcompany.com/90706338/robert-downey-jr-why-were-launching-science-fast-grants?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that announced a grant-giving initiative of theirs designed to help fund scientists doing work too important to wait for the bureaucracy to catch up. Their article opened with a paragraph that, to my eye, seemed to have many flaws in reasoning, or at least overlooked them, perhaps in favour of getting to their limited point. > If there were a Nobel Prize for Overcoming Bureaucratic Adversity, do you know who would win it? Katalin Karikó. Her story of enduring decades of little to no support for her research into the properties of mRNA, which led to the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, has transcended science. It exposes a blind spot of our current scientific institutions to find and nurture every passionate scientist and line of inquiry. Except it isn't a blind spot. I think it's a romantic ideal that dreams of funding every idea scientists have. You can, there's nothing wrong with it, except you'd need lots of money. The current system is designed – even if it hasn't been implemented – to ensure at least a certain percentage of good ideas are identified and funded at the right time and in parallel to maximise that percentage. What Iron Man and Lang imagine in their article is a system that will fund all good ideas, including those that *The* System has let slip. It's a welcome move, perhaps, but it isn't more virtuous, even when it rewards adversity that, again, *The* System has let slip, simply because The System's way – which is effectively the tax-funded government's way in most parts of the world – is the most efficient for its limited corpus of funds and its responsibility to organise research output to maximise societal good, directly or indirectly, instead of letting it all be open-ended. Granted, in times of great adversity, it [might be foolish](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/will-covid-19-be-evidence-based-medicines-nemesis/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to wait for evidence before waiting to act, and a 'wartime' funding paradigm during a pandemic makes some sense, even if it's a solution designed for wartime alone. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic – and the 'fast grants' for pandemic research that seem to have inspired Downey, Jr. and Lang – is a different kind of adversity than climate change. The latter is longer-lasting and more persistent, is a wicked problem (i.e. has multiple interrelated and/or emergent causes), has significant social implications that complicate the relationships between causes and effects, and is decidedly inter- and multi-generational. These differences could in turn render unbridled rapidity counterproductive. A part of the reason for the authors' outlook, concerned with 'catching' good ideas before it's too late, sticks out in the first sentence, in which Iron Man and Lang single out Katalin Karikó for praise for her work on mRNA vaccines as well as signal that they consider the Nobel Prizes to be the ultimate reward. If you've been reading this blog, you know [where I stand](https://rootprivileges7.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on these prizes. But more importantly in the current context, the use of these prizes in particular and the choice of Katalin Karikó as an example of the sort of scientist they'd like to fund is… jarring. Iron Man and Lang seem to believe, as they write, that it's important to catch brilliant ideas quickly (and that "the major impediments" to funding scientific work "are the obvious limitations of decision-making by committee"). First, one cause, among many, of the bureaucracy's slowness is the bureaucracy's need to be accountable to the polity about how it spends the polity's money. And I don't know if Iron Man and Lang are making room for any kind of slowness, and the corresponding paperwork, in their grant-funding programme. 'Risk-seeking' shouldn't become an excuse for 'accountability-avoiding'. On a related note, to zero in on 'speed of funding' as the principal problem with not funding the "right" kind of environmental research is [also to ignore](https://rootprivileges7.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/being-apolitical-doesnt-mean-politics-doesnt-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) other, potentially more fundamental problems hiding behind the slowness – like "the party currently in power is not interested". Second, many of us have lambasted others for singling out individuals – typically white men – as the sole originators of great discoveries. However, many people have identified Karikó more than anyone else with creating the idea of mRNA vaccines, aided by long profiles published by major newspapers about her work and her role in BioNTech, yet haven't elicited the same or even similar reactions. If adversity is our measure, i.e. "we're going to associate the person who struggled the most to make a meaningful contribution to an important idea", then Karikó is by no means alone – nor is she likely to be, as just the post-war history of science has taught us, if we're focusing on women. She couldn't have worked alone, and even if the people we're ignoring as a result are white old men, it's still problematic to say Katalin Karikó is deserving of a Nobel Prize – at least not without, at the same time, admitting that it would be legitimate for the Nobel Prizes to award two or three people for the invention of mRNA vaccines. (I discovered that *Nature News* published [a deep-dive](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in October on the "tangled history of mRNA vaccines" after I started writing this post, discussing the work of a long line of people, including Karikó, who contributed to this enterprise. So on a related note, if Karikó's story is being used to illustrate new science-funding ideas, what might the professional experiences of all those other people say about how science is funded – as well as about how we apportion credit?) Third, it's kind of a bummer that, heartening though it is for major Hollywood actors to get interested in the relatively more obscure problems of science administration and funding, and in turn to become part of a concrete solution instead of running their mouths on Twitter, this new initiative refuses to break from the tradition of devising new solutions to old problems instead of *fixing* existing solutions – an admittedly much less glamorous enterprise. The only other person who's compared to Iron Man as frequently as Robert Downey, Jr., one Elon Musk, is infamous for this kind of thinking vis-à-vis 'revolutionising' personal transport. Musk wants more people to own cars – especially the ones his company makes – but will go so far as to dream up Hyperloop and The Boring Company to avoid considering fixing existing *public* transportation options. Similarly, Downey, Jr. and Lang, and their supporters, will go to the extent of setting up a whole new platform, or getting on a relatively new platform (same difference), instead of building on the things The System is already getting right. And this is a problem for at least three reasons. First, the new system will set up its own forms of discrimination and in-ness. For example, Downey, Jr.'s and Lang's idea goes like this: > FootPrint Coalition is funding early research in brand new environmental fields, and doing it under the direction of esteemed Science Leads who can move quickly and fund at their discretion. The FootPrint Coalition Science Engine builds off suggestions made in the Funding Risky Research paper. It operationalizes the “loose-play funding for early-stage risky explorations” but doesn’t bind it to universities. > > We’re doing it “in public” on the [Experiment](https://experiment.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) funding platform, a website for crowdfunding science research projects, so anyone can participate as a cofunder. As a platform that you get on, describe your idea and convince potential funders that your work is worth funding, 'Experiment' fundamentally requires you to be able to communicate clearly and with the same sensibilities as your future funders, most of whom are likely to be English-speakers of the US or Europe, if you expect to be successful. This in turn quickly eliminates a panoply of scientists who aren't great communicators or aren't even fluent in English. And in the specific case of the 'Science Engine', your work needs to appeal to the 'Science Lead' and fit into their sense of what's important and what isn't. A version of this problem [already exists](https://science.thewire.in/science/science-journals-might-international-not-editorial-boards/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with scientific journals – where major journals' editorial boards are often filled with editors who turn down papers because they're not as enthusiastic as the authors might be about, say, the nutritional properties of an ant species endemic to Odisha. In addition, not all ideas to save the environment are great ideas. For example, climate geoengineering is popular with the US government because it needs to make up for historical emissions without compromising on current economic growth, it needs to placate the local, powerful energy industry and it wields the clout to disregard how much geoengineering solutions could screw up the weather in other parts of the world. Second, as a system designed to patch "leaks" in the "scientific talent funnel", it still presumes the existence of a funnel for its own success even as it does nothing to fix the funnel itself. This is self-serving. And third, allowing scientific work to achieve success based solely on what gets funded quickly – that too based on descriptions on platforms on the internet, unmoderated by the criticism of other scientists (have you visited [PubPeer](https://pubpeer.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)?) or even by the critical attention of competent science journalists, and based on what people who are already rich think is "cool" – can be a short path for things the world could [really do without](https://rootprivileges7.wordpress.com/2021/09/20/forget-mammoths-protect-elephants/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to get funded. So, do I think Iron Man's and Lang's pitch is a good idea? I still don't know. *Featured image: A screenshot of Iron Man in action in* Avengers: Infinity War *(2018). Source: Hotstar.* ### Disappointing persons of the year 2021 URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/14/disappointing-persons-of-the-year-2021/ Last updated: 2021-12-14T03:18:41.000Z I’m starting to think that in this day and age, you will but err when you pick individuals for traditionally ‘prestigious’ awards, prizes, recognitions, etc., probably because the sort of people who can stand out by themselves have to have had the sort of clout and power that typically comes not through personal achievement as much as systemic prejudice – or they need to have screwed up on a magnitude so large that the nature of their action must overlap significantly with a combination of centralised power and lack of accountability. And on the spectrum of possibilities between these two extremes lie *The Week*‘s and *Time*‘s persons of the year 2021. *The Week* has picked – wait for it – Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director-general [Balram Bhargava](https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2021/12/09/meet-icmr-chief-dr-balram-bhargava-the-week-man-of-the-year-2021.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for his leadership of India’s medical response to the country’s COVID-19 crises. I doubt I’d lose my journalistic equipoise if I said he deserved to be the “clown of the year” not just because Bhargava, and ICMR with him, has made many batty claims throughout the epidemic – principally [in press conferences](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Athewire.in+balram+bhargava+icmr&client=firefox-b-d&ei=5%5Fm3Ydu9J%5FuVseMP%5FoiSwAg&ved=0ahUKEwibzfuHmOL0AhX7SmwGHX6EBIgQ4dUDCA0&uact=5&oq=site%3Athewire.in+balram+bhargava+icmr&gs%5Flcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EANKBAhBGAFKBAhGGABQ7ANYhApg8gtoAnAAeACAAViIAYMCkgEBM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ref=slightlyacidic.com) – but also because, to echo the recent words of [Barton Gellman](https://twitter.com/jayrosen%5Fnyu/status/1470242333362995201?ref=slightlyacidic.com), he has pushed an independent medical research body outside the democratic system and into the prime minister’s office. Yet *The Week*‘s article justifying its choice makes no mention of these transgressions and sticks only to Bhargava making life-impacting decisions at 3 am – like tens of thousands of healthcare workers around the country, who did that *and* kept their collective spine – and a can-do attitude in which *The Week* fails to see that “getting things done” to the appreciation of your colleagues also means that unless someone takes more initiative than they’re expected to, the organisation is systematically incapable of going “over and beyond”, so to speak. One way or another, it’s not hard to conclude that Bhargava will leave ICMR worse than it was when he joined. *Time*‘s person of the year 2021 is [Elon Musk](https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Its profile reads much less like the profilee is doing the profiler a favour, but it also fails to overcome the suspicion that it expects the sheer magnitude of Musk’s ambitions for the world to absolve him of his failures – failures that appear like minor glitches in a grand, technocratic future-vision to Silicon Valley and Wall Street honchos (and their mimics worldwide) but to anyone else suggest something worse but also familiar: a plutocracy in which each billionaire is only looking out for himself, or at best his company’s interests. *Time*‘s profile is essentially a paean to the extent to which Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX companies have reinvigorated their respective industries (automotives and spaceflight) through innovations in manufacturing and industrial management, but it’s often presented in a context-limited, value-neutral fashion that prompts concerns that the magazine wouldn’t have had access to Musk if it didn’t promise to write nice things about him. For example, *Time* writes that “Musk’s … announcement of a $100 million climate prize rankled some environmentalists because of its inclusion of proposals for direct-air carbon capture,” and that its sole criticism is that this tech doesn’t work. But the greater issue is that focusing on carbon capture and storage technologies is a technofix that allows Tesla and other vehicle-makers to evade responsibility to reduce the demand for carbon, and that Musk’s ‘challenge’ is really a bid through philanthrocapitlism to prolong ‘business as usual’ climate scenarios. For another related example, about Tesla’s success with electric vehicles, the profile says: > That has made Musk arguably the biggest private contributor to the fight against climate change. Had the 800,000 Teslas sold in the last year been gas-powered cars, they would have emitted more than 40 million metric tons of CO₂ over their lifetimes—equivalent to the annual emissions of Finland. But EVs may ultimately be less important to the climate fight than the central innovation that made them possible: batteries. Tesla has repurposed the lightweight, energy-dense cells that power its cars for huge grid-scale batteries that provide essential backup for renewables. Demand for Tesla’s smaller home-based Powerwall, which can store electricity from rooftop solar systems, has spiked as consumers look for alternatives to the grid, driven by everything from February’s Texas power shortage to the fire risk in California that has led to power shutoffs. Yet the profile doesn’t mention that even when electrified, more and more people owning cars only exacerbates the underlying problem – the demand for electricity, from a climate mitigation standpoint, and urban traffic and congestion – and that we need cities to shift to more affordable, usable and efficient modes of public transport. (The profile also and obviously doesn’t include Musk’s [comment in 2017](https://qz.com/1165724/elon-musks-comments-about-public-transit-hurts-everyone/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that he dislikes public transport because he grossly mistrusts other people.) And if Tesla’s technologies will ultimately benefit the US’s, and the world’s, public transport systems, it’s hard to imagine the extent to which they would’ve also undermined our fight for climate and social justice by then. Instead, this is profiteering, plain and simple, and *Time*‘s failure to see it as such – throughout the profile, not just in this instance, it repeatedly tries to reflect the world’s aspirations in his own – seems to me to be a symptom of a desire to coexist with Musk more than anything else. Once in a while the profile has a few paragraphs of complaints against Musk and his businesses, only for them to be followed by an excuse for his behaviour or an indication that he was sanctioned appropriately for it, and never anything that goes far enough to contemplate what Musk’s politics might be. “Something about our upbringing makes us constantly want to be on the edge,” Elon’s brother Kimbal says – in the same paragraph that makes the profile’s sole meaningful allusion to the centrality of lucrative NASA contracts to SpaceX’s success. That, to me, said enough. I wish both *The Week* and *Time* had picked persons of the year who make the world fairer and better in *spite* of the people they’ve actually picked – but at the same time must conclude that perhaps this is one more tradition [whose time has ended](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). *Featured image credits: ICMR/Facebook and Steve Jurvetson/Flickr.* ### The foolishness of a carbon-negative blockchain URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/10/the-foolishness-of-a-carbon-negative-blockchain/ Last updated: 2021-12-10T05:21:04.000Z With the experience of [‘fortress conservation’](https://science.thewire.in/environment/fortress-model-conservation-protected-areas-forest-dwelling-communities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [poor implementation](https://science.thewire.in/environment/indias-forests-and-their-peoples-are-caught-between-two-ministries/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Forest Rights Act and the [CAMPA philosophy](https://science.thewire.in/politics/rights/centre-conservation-forest-rights-tribals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in India, it’s hard not to think that the idea of carbon offsets is stupid. This mode of ‘climate action’ has been most popular in the US and the EU, given that carbon offsets are essentially status-quoist: they only remove carbon downstream, after the activity that released it has been performed, and doesn’t lower the demand for carbon or carbon-producing activities (i.e. consumption) in the first place. With the emergence of entities that collect carbon debt from multiple sources and offset them through afforestation drives, many organisations and companies now claim to be carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative by simply passing on their debt and paying a fee to have it offset. And now, dispiritingly, even cryptocurrency enterprises have joined this party, with advertisements of carbon-negative blockchains that continue to ignore the fact that crypto is still a solution looking for a problem. It’s constantly baffling how a community composed mostly of rich, white libertarians, presumably with a good education culminating in some of California’s or Massachusetts’s finest institutes of study, fails to acknowledge the inefficiency of a financial system more cumbersome and energy-intensive than the one already in place, sustained by [self](https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)\-[indulgence](https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and inflated promises of [socio](https://bengrosser.com/projects/tokenize-this/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)\-[financial](https://thebaffler.com/latest/saviors-or-speculators-stieb?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [revolutions](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [carbon-neutrality](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2021/03/23/on-crypto-art-racism-and-outcome-fantasies/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), all in the name of liberties that few others care for. Now specifically, crypto hitching its wagon to the international carbon-offset programme is doubly problematic because it’s two status-quoist enterprises working together to further erode climate and social justice. Crypto proponents, notably the Ethereum community, have deflected arguments against the energy demand of cryptocurrency transactions by claiming they’re already implementing or planning to implement the ‘proof of stake’ over the ‘proof of work’ model of verification. I’m sure you’ve heard that to earn bitcoins, you use your computer to solve some difficult math problems, with the coins as your reward. Your computer’s work is your proof of work – the thing you use to demonstrate that you’ve *earned* the coins. ‘Proof of stake’ demands that you already own some coins – or, more generically, tokens – to perform transactions on the blockchain that the tokens are already part of. Proponents of the ‘proof of stake’ model like to say that it’s less energy-intensive than ‘proof of work’, which is true in the same way the Delhi government [plans to cut traffic pollution](https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhi-pollution-govt-launches-red-light-on-gaadi-off-101634580401630.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by asking drivers to turn off their cars’ engines at red lights. This is because ‘proof of stake’ has its own big problems, ranging from concerns that [it’s a scam](https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-people-promoting-it-are-scammers/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to, more pertinent to this post, being rooted like ‘proof of work’ in the more fundamental tenet of ‘proof of preexisting wealth’. To quote [Everest Pipkin](https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3?ref=slightlyacidic.com) writing in March this year: > Proof of stake is, and always has been, valuable as a bait and switch, but there are other, obvious problems with PoS (and various other proofs), which are that to more or less degrees they don’t address any of the problems with access to cryptocurrency relying on existing wealth. > > Proof of stake coins use a variety of mechanisms to determine “lottery ticket” allocation, but it essentially boils down to: 1 coin in your wallet, one lottery ticket. Proof of capacity gives you a lottery ticket per available hard drive segment. Proof of assignment gives you a lottery ticket per smart device / internet of things consumer electronics good you own. Proof of donation gives you a lottery ticket per donation to a charitable organization. > > I’m sure you’re seeing the problem here – there is not a schema that doesn’t reward those who already are already wealthy, who are already bought in, who already have excess capital or access to outsized computational power. Almost universally they grant power to the already powerful. > > This is also a climate issue. > > Climate justice is social justice. This is true in that the worst impacts of climate collapse are felt by those with no means to avoid them, while those with resources easily fuck on off to somewhere where they don’t have to see it. > > But climate justice must mean giving leadership and power to those who will bear the worst effects of climate catastrophe, including the very young, those living in the global south, those living rurally in coastal areas or farming regions, those living in poverty, those in marginalized communities, and particularly to indigenous communities who have actual experience in managing complex local ecosystems for generations without creating spiraling, resource-extractative devastation. And carbon-offsets just make a false promise to make this better. Trees planted today to offset carbon emitted today will only sequester that carbon at optimum efficiencies many years later – when carbon emissions from the same project, if not the rest of the world, are likely to be higher. Second, organisations promising to offset carbon often do so in a part of the world significantly removed from where the carbon was originally released. Arguments [against the ‘Miyawaki method’](https://science.thewire.in/environment/why-the-miyawaki-method-is-not-a-good-way-to-afforest-chennai/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) suggest that you can only plant plants up to a certain density in a given ecosystem, and that planting them even closer together won’t have better or even a stagnating level of effects – but will in fact denigrate the local ecology. Scaled up to the level of countries, this means (I assume) that emitting many tonnes of carbon dioxide over North America and Europe and attempting to have all of that sequestered in the rainforests of South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia won’t work, at least not without imposing limitations on the latter countries’ room to emit carbon for their own growth as well as on how these newly created ‘green areas’ should be used. Too many people also continue to maintain the [colonial-era view](https://science.thewire.in/environment/arid-lands-deserts-colonial-irrigation/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that planting trees is the answer even if it means we degrade ecosystems that don’t want trees – helped along by one wildly misleading [2019 study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0848?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that pro-offset groups have cited more often than they have cited a [big correction](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc8905?ref=slightlyacidic.com) it received a year later. Ultimately, by bundling so many injustices together, crypto + carbon-offsets is just a bigger racket. *Featured image credit: Michael Dziedzic/Unsplash.* ### On The Caravan's new profile of The Hindu URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/09/on-the-caravans-new-profile-of-the-hindu/ Last updated: 2021-12-09T06:47:34.000Z On December 1, *The Caravan* published a 50-page report entitled [‘Paper Priests: The battle for the soul of The Hindu’](https://caravanmagazine.in/media/the-hindu-soul-modi-malini-ram-hindutva-rss-left?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The report – actually, as a friend put it, *a big profile* – has many good parts and many others, not so much, especially from the point of view of an insider: I worked there from June 2012 to May 2014, coinciding roughly with Siddharth Varadarajan’s tenure as editor-in-chief. It is hard for me to comment openly on the subpar parts because they’re rooted in my position as once-insider, with information that anyone else will have a hard time getting their hands on, at least not without considerable effort. In that sense, those parts of the profile may not be subpar *per se*. My second concern is that my comments at this point can only appear in a non-journalistic context and at the same time lack the liberty to be as detailed as they may need to be, and both these limitations are bad for the spirit of being fair. Nonetheless, I think I will attempt an overview with these caveats – of the subpar followed by the better bits. The principal contention is that the profile is titled ‘The battle for the soul of The Hindu’ when in fact the ‘soul’ bit remains unclear to the end and ‘The Hindu’ refers to just the newspaper’s [political and related journalism](https://rationaltechnics.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/what-it-means-to-give-fucks/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and not, as one might assume, its entire breadth of coverage. I was particularly disappointed that the profile didn’t bother with the sports and internet departments, for example, which have had many issues in the past under multiple editors and which merit inclusion. Second (and also in my friend’s view), the profile’s authors could have spoken to more employees of *The Hindu*, both current and former, to get a fuller sense of what it means or meant to work there. It is interspersed with quotes but the bulk of it is narrative, with a lot of material collated from what is already in the public domain. There is value in curating things in the right context, and that to me is a big strength of the profile. At the same time, as an insider, reading it was both a big trip down memory lane and a sharp reminder at many points about which decisions, which people and which assets were left out, why, and how their absence diminished the narrative at that point. It serves to give non-insiders a good sense of *The Hindu*’s workings, but beyond that, the profile, while exhaustive, is not comprehensive. Third, the profile overlooks some issues adjacent to running the newspaper smoothly and which provide insights that the more ‘mainstream’ issues in the organisation may not. One prominent example was *The Hindu*’s design. N. Ram and other members of the board overseeing the newspaper took a keen interest in its pages’ layouts, colours, fonts, etc., and made a big deal of getting designer [Mario García](https://garciamedia.com/blog/pthe%5Fhindu%5Fthe%5Freinstating%5Fof%5Fa%5Fdesign%5Fconcept%5Fp/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to change the way it looked from its 125th anniversary. That *The Hindu*’s chiefs paid so much attention to the design was heartening. At the same time, when Varadarajan quit as editor, design changes made in his tenure became one source of contempt for Malini Parthasarathy’s new dispensation, with derisive comments directed that way to ensure there were no doubts about how much she was prepared to change things and little thought for the designers caught in the crossfire. Other examples: the primacy of publishing in print versus online, how much different people should be paid, and the circumstances in which a person could be sacked. The goodest part of the profile is that it places *The Hindu*’s Brahmanism front and centre. (I’m also glad it takes a sterner look at Malini Parthasarathy’s closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a friendship discomfitingly proximate to its decision to part ways with Varadarajan because he was anti-Modi and its tendency to ‘balance’ criticism of Modi with favourable reports.) At the time I worked there, a friend and I received a considerable salary hike at one point and wanted to celebrate with a good dinner in the office canteen. We got there, got our plates, got some rice and dal, and sat down at a table along with a box of some egg-based dishes we’d ordered from outside. When we opened the box, the people on the tables around us suddenly lost their shit and had us leave, and we had to finish our dinners in my friend’s car parked in the office garage. *The Caravan* profile discusses a similar incident involving overt expressions of Brahmin privileges, as well as quotes Sudipto Mondal extensively, and some others less so, on the newspaper’s upper-caste character at the newsroom level. My egg-eating colleague and I are both Brahmins, so we may not be able to fully articulate how the office’s few non-Brahmin, rather non-upper-caste, staff members felt in circumstances when others around them engaged in distinctly upper-caste rituals and conversations, excluded them in intra-newsroom social settings, and sidelined them in decisions about which stories could feature on the front or national pages, or what stories they could work on, even to the detriment of the stories’ implicit merit. The profile fixes this gap in awareness to an appreciable extent. In fact, overall, *The Caravan*’s profile is well worth your time for its efforts to locate *The Hindu* and its coverage of political issues in the broader context of its preference – conscious or otherwise – for upper-caste ideals through its history and many parts of its inner workings. *Featured image credit: ashni\_ahlawat/Unsplash.* ### The omicron variant and scicomm URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/09/the-omicron-variant-and-scicomm/ Last updated: 2021-12-09T01:45:00.000Z Somewhere between the middle of India’s second major COVID-19 outbreak in March-May this year and today, a lot of us appear to have lost sight of a fact that was central to our understanding of COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020: that the only way a disease outbreak, especially of the novel coronavirus, can be truly devastating is if the virus collaborated with poor public health infrastructure and subpar state response. (Similarly, even a variant deemed mild in, say, the UK could lead to disaster in Chennai.) The virus *alone* doesn’t lead to catastrophic outcomes. Just as India’s second outbreak was picking up speed, there was a considerable awareness that the delta variant was wreaking as much havoc as we were letting it. In fact, the Indian government was [more than *letting it*](https://science.thewire.in/health/kumbh-mela-shahi-snans-biggest-super-spreaders-in-pandemics-history-dr-ashish-jha/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). But since the outbreak began to subside in kurtotic fashion and, much later, as the omicron variant appeared on the scene, the focus on the latter has appeared to overwhelm – at least in public discourse – the extent to which we’re prepared (or not) to face it. Put another way, the focus on the omicron variant and the contexts in which it has been discussed have remained far too scientific. I’m not saying that it should become less scientific but that the social should start finding mention more. I realise that everyone is weary of the pandemic and would like if it ended already, and together with the fact that most people in India’s cities have received their two doses of some COVID-19 vaccine, it might seem to everyone that there’s sufficient ground to persist with the idea that the omicron variant couldn’t possibly be devastating, and that we can all return to some kind of normal soon. Now, this is one kind of fatigue. There appears to be a second kind also, based on the fact that the delta variant was the first “major” variant, in a manner of speaking, and the way we talked about it and acted in its potential (and menacing) presence co-evolved with its dispersal through the population. The omicron variant, on the other hand, affords both scientists and science communicators the option to simply refer to the narratives and discourses we developed with the delta variant, simply updated to match what we’re finding out about omicron. And this, not surprisingly, has led to a bit of laziness as well. The form I find most lazy, and most annoying, is some scientists’ insistence on pointing to graphs of the number of cases over time in different countries and saying, “If this doesn’t shake us out of our slumber, what will?” This is scientism, pure and simple, even if it’s not on the nose: pointing to case trends alone isn’t going to solve anything, especially not in the face of the sort of significant, demographic-wide yearning for a ‘new normal’, or in fact any kind of normal, instead of more and more upheavals. In fact, consider the fact that for most of 2020, most poor people in India believed that if the novel coronavirus had an infection fatality rate of just 1%, it was no big whoop, and that they would continue going to work and eke out a living. Let’s be clear, this is perfectly reasonable. The idea of letting the virus take its course through the population went sideways in Sweden, but in India, if something has a 1% chance of getting you really sick – or even killing you – it’s tragically the case that it quickly falls down a long list of threats, most of which are often much more lethal, beginning, in too many parts of the country, with breathing the air around you or drinking the water that’s available to you. To repeat in this context exhortations based solely on graphs printed in English and shared on Twitter that rapidly rising case-loads elsewhere on the planet should suffice to nudge us out of the Indian subcontinent’s collective torpor is a deference to facts that, I’m very tempted to say, understand only 1% of what is going on. Even if these exhortations are directed at state leaders and government officials, they are really misdirected: as I have written before in the context of Anthony Fauci’s [senseless interview responses](https://ergosurface.org/2021/05/01/being-apolitical-doesnt-mean-politics-doesnt-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), if the government hasn’t done something that’s obvious to everyone, the reason just can’t be that it hasn’t seen the chart or the numbers you’ve seen to reach your conclusions. The only way such statements could make some sense is if they are intended to galvanise public opinion, but even then, I’m not convinced. And seeing these scientists do what they do strikes me that just as much as we’d like to encourage scientists to communicate science as often as is possible, there may be virtue in casting science communication as much in terms of what it does as what it doesn’t. For example, as the number of cases due to the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is increasing in different parts of the world, socially responsible science communication requires us to not stop at pointing at graphs but to continue to reflect on and articulate how much – or how little – the greater transmissibility of the variant means in and of itself. And in my view, not doing this would just be socially *anti-responsible* communication: sticking to the science, and accomplishing little overall. ### The vaccine that was built from scratch URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/04/the-vaccine-that-was-built-from-scratch/ Last updated: 2021-12-04T11:03:56.000Z I have no plans to read ICMR chief Balram Bhargava’s new book, *Going Viral*, about the “inside story” of Covaxin’s making, and am grateful for that reason for Dr Jammi Nagaraj Rao’s quick but seemingly thorough [review in *The Wire Science*](https://science.thewire.in/health/book-review-balram-bhargava-going-viral-icmr-covaxin-inside-story/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). My lack of interest in the book itself also means I’m going to take those bits from the book quoted in Rao’s review literally, in no need of additional context (a reasonable assumption given the rest of the review and Bhargava’s now-tattered reputation). With this preamble: reading Rao’s review brought three things to mind. First, is the Indian clinical research establishment aware of the catch-22 inherent to defending its decisions regarding Covaxin over and over in the public domain? Of the two major COVID-19 vaccines in use in India, Covishield hasn’t prompted even a tenth of the amount of defending (say, by number of words or inches in newspaper columns) Covaxin has seemed to need to maintain its reputation – even when there were multiple news reports in February and March to suggest Covishield may be associated with most vaccine-associated severe adverse events at the time. Then again, the establishment will say – as it has said so far – that Covaxin has required defending *because you were bent on attacking it for no good reason*. And with Bhargava continuing to deflect criticism in his book, this circus will only continue. However, while both us critics and the establishment can keep going, as if our energies were conserved, the catch-22 is that Covaxin’s reputation is not: the longer the circus goes on, the more it will decline. Second, the Indian government has progressively invaded multiple public institutions and yoked their machineries to the ruling party’s electoral agenda. Perhaps the most ‘notable’ was the fall of the Election Commission, which, in a recent example, drafted the dates for West Bengal’s assembly poll phases to the BJP’s convenience. But Balram Bhargava’s new book seems to be a new frontier: Rao’s review indicates that *Going Viral* is one large advertisement for the Indian government, and for the BJP by extension. It’s a new frontier because it’s a book, and it’s a book by the head of a public institution that the government has already invaded. Put another way, there may be nothing Bhargava can say or do as the ICMR chief – including write a book – that we can assume will have any distance between himself and the party itself. (Once he’s done as ICMR chief, of course, the party is likely to offer him a cushy posting in some low-intensity government position.) Now, it is tempting to consider that by guiding the composition of a whole book and stamping some pandering functionary’s name on the cover, the BJP is also attempting to invade the space of books as an expression of intellectual achievement, of the sort that the current government has liked to associate with its fiercer critics. Third, there is a curious line in Rao’s review that may provide the fort of insight into Covaxin’s development that no government official (at least of this government) will ever admit. Rao writes that the book > … is not a detailed exposition of the science behind vaccine development in general or Covaxin’s development in particular. There is a retelling of the well-known Edward Jenner story, and some interesting details about why Bharat Biotech was uniquely placed to develop Covaxin: mainly that it operated BSL-3 facilities and had a track record of developing vaccines from scratch. One reason the BJP, essentially Prime Minister Narendra Modi, blessed Bharat Biotech was that it could develop vaccines from ‘scratch’? Why should this matter during a pandemic with billions of people around the planet desperately looking for an affordable and good-quality vaccine – except the power that the words “homegrown” and “Made in India” carry for the party, and the government? Neither I nor others can offer dispositive proof that this is what Prime Minister Modi was thinking when he toured Bharat Biotech’s and Serum Institute’s facilities in November last year; the closest we can come is the way in which the party-government combine micromanaged every aspect of Covaxin – down to its ridiculous approval on January 3, 2021, in “clinical trial mode”. This façade of self-sufficiency is just that, as two counter-examples can show. First, let me quote from Rao’s review: > … in his zeal to characterise Covaxin as a ‘completely indigenous vaccine, an epitome of Atmanirbhar Bharat’, Bhargava overlooks the fact that the thing that made Covaxin appropriately immunogenic was the inspired use of an adjuvant called Alhydroxyquim-II, under license from an American research company named Virovax. The licensing arrangement between Virovax, funded by the US National Institute of Health, and Bharat Biotech dates to before the pandemic, in 2019, in a collaboration set up at a meeting organised by the Indo-US Vaccine Action Program. The terms were later extended to include Covaxin. Second, there’s a twisted irony in insisting on building a vaccine from scratch at home (because that is [politically advantageous](https://thewire.in/the-sciences/india-covid-19-response-scientific-superpower-impossible-dream?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) instead of equally supporting both vaccine development and license-based [vaccine-manufacturing](https://science.thewire.in/health/narendra-modi-government-overestimated-india-covid-vaccine-manufacturing-capacity-shortage/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), then [dragging your feet](https://thewire.in/government/realistically-how-can-india-expand-covid-vaccine-production-quickly?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on licensing a vaccine when you do have one to public-sector manufacturers within the country (much less [anyone else](https://science.thewire.in/health/covid-19-india-covaxin-conundrum/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), while demanding in international fora that vaccine-makers abroad and their respective governments [be okay](https://science.thewire.in/health/covid-vaccines-where-does-india-truly-stand-on-the-trips-waiver/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) with waiving IP rights to broaden manufacturing. ### Specific impulse, etc. URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/12/03/specific-impulse-etc/ Last updated: 2021-12-03T18:00:48.000Z One of the best rocket propellants there is is hydrolox – a combination of liquid hydrogen, the fuel, and liquid oxygen, the oxidiser. This might seem a bit unexpected because most (if not all) other fuels performing the same function are compounds, not elements – like 1,1-dimethylhydrazine. An engine that uses hydrolox as its propellant must technically be a *cryogenic* engine. This is because storing and transporting gaseous hydrogen, which is its natural form at ambient temperature and pressure, is very difficult. Hydrogen has the lowest density of all elements, and thus occupies a large volume for a given mass; is difficult to pump; and reacts explosively with oxygen to form water. To use it in an engine, then, engineers typically cool it until it becomes a liquid, at -253º C, and store and move it in containers that are also constantly maintained at this temperature. The same condition applies to the oxygen used to oxidise the hydrogen in the engine’s combustion chamber; oxygen becomes liquid at -184º C. ‘Cryogenic’ today typically refers to systems that operate [below -150º C](https://trc.nist.gov/cryogenics/aboutCryogenics.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or so. The spaceflight industry goes to all this trouble for hydrogen because hydrolox affords a very high specific impulse among all rocket propellants, together with the engine designs currently in use. In technical terms, specific impulse refers to the efficiency with which the reaction mass – the propellant, in this case, liquid hydrogen plus liquid oxygen – lifts the rocket, a.k.a. creating *thrust*. The higher the specific impulse, the more efficiently the engine can use the reaction mass, the higher the rocket’s acceleration per unit of fuel consumed. The concept of a specific impulse applies to jet engines as well, with a small difference. Rockets typically carry the fuel and its oxidiser; on the other hand, [jet engines](https://web.archive.org/web/20080616043527/http://travel.howstuffworks.com/turbine.htm) carry only the fuel and ‘breathe’ the oxygen from the atmosphere. So a jet engine’s reaction mass is only the fuel. In these cases, the specific impulse is directly proportional to the velocity at which the exhaust exits the engine’s nozzle. In rocket engines, the relationship is similar with a small modification. But in both cases, the specific impulse depends on the exhaust velocity, which in turn depends on the difference between the combustion chamber pressure and the ambient pressure. The exhaust velocity is highest when the engine operates in vacuum, because this is when the difference between the combustion chamber pressure and the ambient pressure is highest. Also in both cases, the specific impulse also depends on how the engine itself works. For example, the [CE7.5 cryogenic engine](https://science.thewire.in/spaceflight/cryogenic-ce-20-isro-gslv-mk-iii/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uses on its GSLV Mk 2 rockets has a specific impulse of 454 seconds in vacuum. The most common way to measure specific impulse is in terms of seconds – that is, “for how many seconds can one kilogram of fuel produce one newton of thrust”. (1 N = 1 kg m/s2). So this means the CE7.5 engine allows one kilogram of its reaction mass – hydrolox – to produce one newton of thrust for 454 seconds in vacuum. The [CE20 engine](https://thewire.in/science/cryogenic-ce-20-isro-gslv-mk-iii?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that ISRO uses onboard its GSLV Mk 3 rockets has a specific impulse of 443 seconds in vacuum – and the Aerojet Rocketdyne [RS-25 engine](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a36880258/space-shuttle-rs-25-engine/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which the Space Shuttle used, has a specific impulse of 453 seconds in vacuum. Yet all three engines use hydrolox as their propellant. Jet engines typically have much higher specific impulse. For example, the [GE GEnx](https://www.geaviation.com/commercial/engines/genx-engine?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and the [Rolls Royce Trent 1000](https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/civil-aerospace/airlines/trent-1000.aspx?ref=slightlyacidic.com) engines, both built for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, use aviation fuel and have specific impulses of 12,650 and 13,200 seconds, respectively. One reason for the higher specific impulse of rocket engines that work with propellants that have liquid hydrogen as the fuel is hydrogen’s high heating value – the amount of energy released when a fixed mass of it is combusted. The theoretically highest heating value of hydrocarbon fuels is 42 megajoule per kilogram (MJ/kg) in air. The heating value of dihydrogen, or H2, is [143 MJ/kg](https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1480785?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in air. This is the highest of all known fuels, for rockets or otherwise, and is also why hydrogen has been increasingly [touted as “key”](https://science.thewire.in/environment/hydrogen-has-been-hyped-as-key-to-a-global-energy-transition-why/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to the world’s energy transition. *I wanted to see if I could break my writer’s block by writing something. This was it. Thanks for reading. :)* *Featured image credit: NASA.* ### Is mathematics real? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/28/is-mathematics-real/ Last updated: 2021-11-28T07:24:40.000Z I didn't think to think about the [realism of mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy%5Fof%5Fmathematics?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Mathematical%5Frealism) until I got to high school, and encountered quantum mechanics. Mathematics was at first just another subject, before becoming a tool with which to think intelligently about money and, later, with advanced statistical concepts in the picture, to understand the properties of groups of objects that couldn't be deduced from those of individual ones. But by this time, mathematics – taken here to mean the systematic manipulation of numbers according to a fixed and rigid system of rules – seemed to be a world unto its own, separated cleanly from our physical reality akin to the way ["a map is not the territory"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory%5Frelation?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Put another and limited way, mathematics seemed to me to be a *post facto* system of rationalisation that people used to understand forces and outcomes whose physical forms weren't available for direct observation (through one, some or all of the human senses). For example, (a + b)2 \= a2 \+ b2 \+ 2ab. To what does this translate in the real world? Perhaps I had 10 rupees in one pocket and 20 rupees in the other, and 29 other people turn up with the same combination of funds in their pockets. We could use this formula to quickly calculate the total amount of money there is in all of our pockets. But other than finding application of this sort, I didn't think the formulae could have any other purpose – and that, certainly, knowing the formula wouldn't allow us to predict anything new about the world (ergo *post facto*). I was constantly on the cusp of concluding mathematics was made up, a contrivance fashioned to fit our observations, and not real. But in high school, I came upon a form of mathematics-based reasoning that suggested I should think about it differently, if only for the sake of my own productivity. In class XI, my physics teacher at school introduced Wolfgang Pauli's exclusion principle. The principle itself is simple, at least at the outset. Every particle has a fixed set of *quantum numbers*. An electron in an atom, for example, has four quantum numbers. Each quantum number can take a range of discrete values. A particular combination of the numbers is called a quantum state (i.e. the combination confers the particle with some possibilities and impossibilities). The principle is that no two particles in the same system can occupy the same quantum state. Now, it is Pauli's *principle* – a logical relationship *between* various facts – that animates the idea, and not any mathematical rule or prescription. At the same time, the principle itself is arrived at by solving mathematical problems. Why do electrons in atoms have four quantum numbers? Because historically we started off with one, because we perceived the need for one, and over time we added a second, then a third and finally a fourth – all based on experiments in which the electrons behaved in a certain way, but because direct physical observation was out of the question we invented mathematical relationships between the particles' parameters in different contexts and ascribed meaning to them. It was still 'only' empirical: scientists tried different things and those that worked stuck. There may be another way to make sense of the particles' behaviour with, say, five dim sum (🥟) numbers, and reorganise the rest of quantum mechanics to fit in this paradigm. Even then, only the mathematical features of the topic will have changed – the physical features, or more broadly the specific ways in which particles are *real*, will have not. But this view of mine changed when I read about experiments that proved Pauli's principle was real. A mathematical system we set up eventually led to the creation of a fixed set (not more, not less) of quantum numbers, and which Wolfgang Pauli eventually combined into a common principle. If scientists had proved that the principle was true and therefore real, could the mathematics undergirding the principle be true and real as well? Not all fundamental particles obey Pauli's exclusion principle. The four quantum numbers of an electron in an atom are: principal (*n*), azimuthal (*l*), magnetic (*m*l) and spin (*s*). Of these, the spin quantum number can take two kinds of values: half-integer (1/2, 3/2, …) and integer (0, 1, 2, …). Particles with half-integer spin are called fermions, and the rules describing their behaviour are defined by Fermi-Dirac statistics. They obey Pauli's exclusion principle. Particles with integer spin are called bosons, and the rules describing their behaviour are defined by Bose-Einstein statistics. They don't obey Pauli's exclusion principle. When some kinds of heavy stars can no longer continue fusion reactions outside their core, they collapse into a neutron star – an ultra-dense ball of neutrons. Neutrons are fermionic particles – they have half-integer spin – which means they obey Pauli's exclusion principle, and can't occupy common quantum states. So the neutrons in a neutron star are tightly packed against each other. Their combined mass generates gravity that tries to pull them even closer together – but at the same time Pauli's exclusion principle forces them to stay apart and remain stuck in their existing quantum states, creating a counter-force called [neutron degeneracy pressure](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Astro/pulsar.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). We wouldn't have neutron stars, or [electronic goods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Energy%5Fbands%5Fand%5Felectrical%5Fconduction) or [even heavy elements](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3815?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the periodic table, if Pauli's exclusion principle didn't exist. Most recently, three separate groups of scientists described a new physical manifestation of the principle, called Pauli blocking. Most atoms are fermions (as a whole); each group first created a gas of such atoms and cooled them to a very low temperature – to ensure that in each gaseous system, all of the lowest available quantum states were occupied. (The higher a particle's quantum state, the more energy it has.) A group at JILA, in Colorado, used strontium-87 atoms. A group from the University of Otago, New Zealand, used potassium-40 atoms. And a group from MIT used lithium-6 atoms. (The last one includes Wolfgang Ketterle, whose work I [have discussed before](https://ulagamae.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/when-cooling-down-really-means-slowing-down/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Usually, when a photon and an electron collide, the photon is scattered off into a different direction while the atom absorbs some of the photon's energy and recoils. The absorbed energy forces the atom into a higher quantum state, with a different combination of the quantum numbers than the one it had before the collision. In an ultra-cold fermionic gas in which the particles have occupied the lowest available quantum states, and are packed tightly together as if in a solid, there is no room for any atom to absorb a small amount of energy imparted by a photon because all of the 'nearby' quantum states are taken. So the atoms allow the photons to sail right through, and the gas appears to be transparent. This barrier, in the form of the atoms being 'blocked' from scattering the photons, is called Pauli blocking. And in the three experiments, its effects were directly observable, without their validity having to be mediated through the use of mathematics. My views in high school and through college being what they were, I don't have any serious position on the matter of whether mathematics is real. In fact, my reasoning could have been flawed in ways that I'm yet to realise but which a philosopher who has seriously studied this question may consider trivial. (Update, December 10, 2024: More than three years later, I can think of one. Both the theoretical description of X and the experimental verification of X — where X is any phenomenon grounded in the exclusion principle, e.g. neutron degeneracy pressure, Pauli blocking, etc. — are founded on a mathematical description of a physical reality, i.e. neither activity/event directly accesses the physical condition of X but deals only with the way we've chosen to describe such activity/event mathematically, and thus it's no surprise that the experimental verification of X holds up the mathematical description of X.) This said, having to work my way through different concepts in high-energy, astroparticle and condensed-matter physics (as a science communicator) has forced me to accept not anything about mathematics as much as the importance we place on the distinction between something being real versus non-real, and the consequences of *that* on what mathematics is and isn't allowed to tell us about the real world. Ultimately, dwelling on the distinction and its consequences distracted from what I found to be the most worthwhile part of discovery: the *discovery* itself. Even this post was motivated by an article in *[Physics World](https://physicsworld.com/a/pauli-blocking-is-spotted-in-ultracold-fermionic-gases/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)* about the three experiments, whose second paragraph (and in fact most of whose second paragraphs) focused on potential, far-in-the-future applications of cold fermionic gases displaying Pauli blocking. I don't care, and I think that from time to time, [no one should](https://granularmatter.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/on-the-lwon-post-the-abdication-of-implicit-responsibilities/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). ### Panicking about omicron URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/27/panicking-about-omicron/ Last updated: 2021-11-27T07:30:00.000Z The new omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has got *everyone* alarmed – which is darkly ironic. This variant has [reportedly racked up](https://science.thewire.in/health/new-variant-from-south-africa-of-significant-concern-ravindra-gupta/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) more mutations than previous variants of concern, including the delta, with virologists and epidemiologists from South Africa and the UK paying particular attention to real-world data that suggests it could be more transmissible and cause breakthrough infections and that some of the mutations in its RNA correspond to changes on the spike protein that could (speculatively) render the existing crop of WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccines less efficacious. Uncertainty about what a new strain of the virus can do, or even uncertainty more broadly, has always been sufficient reason for panic. Nonetheless, the rise of the omicron variant is significant and the response to it more instructive because of its predecessor. The delta variant set a new benchmark for how quickly the novel coronavirus could spread, but its effectiveness also [prompted some wonderment](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/mutations-does-sars-cov-2-have-a-fixed-number-of-moves-in-its-arsenal/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) if the virus may be approaching 'peak mutation' – that is, if the delta might represent one of the most transmissible forms of the virus and if future outbreaks happening in a partly vaccinated world may not be so deadly. The omicron is thus significant because it dispels this line of thinking, while demonstrating that as bad as the delta was for global society, *things can get worse if we let them*. Clearly we have. And the world's panic is ironic because of the particular ways in which we have. As far as COVID-19 vaccination coverage is concerned, there are two distinct groups of people: those who have been fully vaccinated and those who have been partly vaccinated or haven't been vaccinated at all. The corresponding split in India is qualitatively similar to the one worldwide, particularly in that it has come to be aligned almost perfectly with the class divide. This is the first point. Second, most – if not all – of the current WHO-approved vaccines haven't been tested for their ability to [directly prevent or reduce](https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009509&ref=slightlyacidic.com) the transmission of the novel coronavirus (such as by reducing the amount of viral shedding). So there's a not insubstantial possibility that even fully vaccinated individuals could get and transmit the virus, while enjoying the vaccine-granted privilege of not falling ill. Third, we don't know if the omicron variant can cause more severe disease, so let's say that – at least to those of us who aren't experts – right now the chance of it not being able to cause more severe disease is a reasonable 50%. Taken together, the three points suggest that panic is understandable only among those who haven't received one or both doses of their (two-dose) COVID-19 vaccines, and whose populations may have been 'incubating' the same or different variants by allowing them to persist for longer in their bodies, and replicate, in the absence of the vaccines (depending on each vaccine's time-to-recovery). For these people, the chance of the omicron variant being able to last for longer in the body and cause more severe disease is *already higher*. This is a crucial difference between the vaccinated and those who have been kept from getting vaccinated – a difference fostered by countries that hoarded vaccines, blocked attempts to ease patent protections and transfer technology and money – the same countries that are now blocking travel from parts of the world where their selfishness encouraged the rise of new variants. On the other hand, panic verges on the offensive for fully vaccinated individuals – who are also likelier than not both in India and around the world to be able to access and afford good healthcare and antiviral drugs – to freak out about a viral variant that is currently only known to be able to be *transmitted* more effectively than the delta. This shouldn't bother us very much because most of us seemed to have stopped thinking about transmission even though the vaccines weren't tested for preventing that, and went easier on masking up and washing hands just because we'd received our two doses, even as the delta variant continued to spread through the population. (Infections stopped surging but that's not the way only way a virus can continue to circulate.) It's disingenuous to suggest now that the situation on the ground with omicron in play is somehow different (with the 50% disclaimer) even as we're responding by blocking travel and trade instead of by increasing access to vaccines. In fact, apart from whether any instance of panic could be pseudoscientific or offensive, there's the question of whether it's *warranted*. Among the fully vaccinated, it's simply not. The rise of the omicron variant in a world of vaccine apartheid should in fact be a grim reminder that, again, we can't afford to let things get worse, because they will. More people will fall ill, more people will die, more healthcare systems will collapse, more people ill with other diseases will be at greater risk of death or disability, and so forth. If you're fully vaccinated, mask up; if not, please go get vaccinated and still mask up. But if you can't because vaccines are being withheld to your country – you may have reasonable cause for panic. ### Don't donate bad food and call it 'dharma' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/13/dont-donate-bad-food-and-call-it-dharma/ Last updated: 2021-11-13T03:23:21.000Z There's a troubling pattern among some people who give food away to homeless people and beggars. I have seen this happen first-hand with my folks, my extended family and their wider group of neighbours and acquaintances. All of them are Brahmins, so I don't know if this is a Brahmin thing because they're who my family hangs out with and/or lives around; because Brahmins make up the most part of India's affluent lot that can afford to give away food on a regular basis, especially of the sort I'm about to describe; and/or because there's an entrenched tradition of giving away in Hinduism that modern conservative Brahmins' interpretation has twisted to include a not inconsiderable sense of pity, and the sense of superiority that comes with it. One way or another, it seems safe to assume that this is a Brahmin thing. The troubling pattern is really a lack of common sense: these people give away food they're not going to consume because eating it gave them indigestion or something like that, to other people who are typically already in very poor health, in the name of *dharma*. But this can't be dharma: it is selfish and cruel. When our own better-fed, better-attended bodies can't handle these foods, I don't understand the Ariadne's thread that leads to the conclusion that people who desperately want for food, or every next meal, will be okay with it – perhaps based simply on the assumption that food of any form or kind will do. This morning I had a quarrel with my neighbours about giving away a bag of Kellogg's Chocos to beggars near a temple they were going to visit; their defence was peppered with the word '*paavam*', Tamil for 'pitiable' (roughly). Chocos has *maida* and is loaded with sugar, and leads to constipation, at least without also consuming lots of water and fibrous foods. By giving ill-fed people Chocos, we burden them with the responsibility of finding these other foods as well, or living with the pain, discomfort and the prospect of falling very sick later. I'm additionally concerned that: - As we valourise acts of 'giving away' as part of efforts to circularise our economies, - As the makers of junk foods [push harder](https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Unhealthy-Developing-World-Food-Markets.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (p. 5) into developing countries, - As "food that is considered to be unhealthy from a biomedical perspective is often cheaper, more easily available and aggressively promoted by the processed-foods industry" ([source](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-social-context-family-relationships-chronic-illness-care/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)), and - As inequities in the global food system keep the price of unhealthy foods [lower than](https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/high-price-healthy-food-and-low-price-unhealthy-food?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that of healthy foods, - As people with lower levels of literacy have fewer or less efficacious protections against [suggestive advertising](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/is-neuromarketing-actually-legit-or-just-advanced-mumbo-jumbo/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), from bodies regulating [advertisements](https://cdn.cseindia.org/userfiles/junk%5Ffood%5Fsharadvadehra.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) or [food-safety standards](https://blogs.unicef.org/east-asia-pacific/the-effects-of-unregulated-fast-food/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and compliance – or both… … we – especially common-sense-challenged Brahmins – will give away more illness in the name of dharma. This isn't really a novel concern either: I recently saw an ad in which wealthier people leave a bag of food – from one of those burger + fries + soda type fast-food chains – near unsuspecting homeless people, and when the people discover the bag, the food inside and then smile, the camera makes sure to get that up close. They're smiling because it's food and they're hungry, but giving them food that has been widely documented as contributors to poor heart health and diabetes is to exploit their glee in order to feel better about yourself. I also believe the same thing goes for many of the same people who live in gated apartment complexes or high-rise apartment buildings, and feed pigeons and (especially) free-ranging street dogs in the name of dharma, but are really fostering a nuisance – deadly in [the case of dogs](https://science.thewire.in/health/dogs-rabies-neutering-safety/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – and doing nothing to be part of the solution (buy what you need, dispose your organic trash properly, don't feed dogs, help the city neuter/shelter/adopt them instead). As for people: please donate food, but do apply what you've learnt in school, what your doctors tell you, whatever your salary (or giving-ability more broadly) is and the general health condition of the person you're donating to to determine the *most nutritious* kind of food you can give, and give that. If you've determined that the answer is Chocos or cheeseburger + fries + [Coca Cola](https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/cocacola-responds-after-cristiano-ronaldo-gesture-cost-it-4-billion-101623830150314.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com), however, I hope you can see what that says about your intelligence, your assessment of your privileges and your attitude towards your wealth. ### The toxic affair between Covaxin and The Lancet URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/12/the-toxic-affair-between-covaxin-and-the-lancet/ Last updated: 2021-11-12T08:44:48.000Z That Covaxin has been leading a ceaselessly beleaguered life is no mystery – but *The Lancet* journal may not know that it has been pressed into the questionable service of saving the vaccine's reputation on at least three occasions. In the latest one, for example, Bharat Biotech, some clueless media outlets and their hordes of followers, assisted ably by the aptly named bhakts of India's ruling party, have been hollering from rooftops high and low that *The Lancet* 'has said' Covaxin is 77.8% efficacious. Background: *The Lancet* medical journal has published the paper describing Covaxin's phase 3 trial results. But to Covaxin's misfortune, these people appear to be assuming, as they have many times before, that a journal publishing a paper is by all means synonymous to the journal itself speaking for, even endorsing, the paper's contents. If you didn't know better, you'd think *The Lancet* had pooled together all the evidence, comments and documents pertaining to Covaxin and pronounced its own verdict about the shot's reputation. But because you know better, you know that a journal's editors, and peer-reviewers if they were involved, only checked if the submitted paper's data is consistent with the submitted paper's statements and conclusions, and that it was free of research misconduct (although I'm [wholly pessimistic](https://science.thewire.in/science/priggish-nejm-editorial-on-data-sharing-misses-the-point-it-almost-made/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the latter). The problem is that the number of people who know better appears to be vanishingly small – so small, in fact, that it didn't strike me until earlier this year that both clinical trials and scientific publishing involve the sort of specialised education that most people, including (seemingly) all engineers and exponents of many other fields of science, peeled away from many decades ago (depending on how old they are). Even what constitutes publishing or the qualitative differences between good and great papers varies from one specialisation to the next. As a result, when Bharat Biotech's people cheer that *The Lancet* has 'held up' their findings, there's both very few people to call out their bullshit – the journal published their paper, and didn't wave a flag for them – and they're met more often than you'd think with resistance from both Bharat Biotech's and other scientists, typically because of vested interests. In fact, vested interest, singular: by publishing a paper in a journal, many scientists seek to partake of the journal's prestige. Call this a nuanced take, but it has significant real-world effects, as we're seeing with the strange but certainly myopic ways in which Bharat Biotech has sought to defend Covaxin (including, in the latest instance, by [undermining the WHO's approval](https://science.thewire.in/health/bharat-biotech-krishna-ella-defence-covaxin-undermines-who-approval/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for it). Of course, *The Lancet* itself, together with some other journals, including the *New England Journal of Medicine*, the *Journal of the American Medical Association* and *Cell*, has actively cultivated this notion of 'prestige' to pad its pockets as well as to passively silence questions about the many problematic papers it has published. Journals engaging in such practices together with the scientists who fall for them have thus contributed in a significant way to the idea that 'prestige journals' are in effect 'prestige conferrers', so perhaps *The Lancet* deserves its fate. But the many less- or entirely ill-informed people out there don't, especially when they start to believe, "*The Lancet* has said Covaxin is safe, so it must be safe." Medical journals, including *The Lancet* and the *New England Journal of Medicine*, have expressed opposition to the idea of releasing medical research papers as preprints, contending that unlike potentially incomplete papers on other topics, the ones they receive could cost lives if they're published without independent checks first. An entirely reasonable argument. So what happens when *The Lancet* or the *New England Journal of Medicine* publish good papers about a vaccine that's flawed in other ways, and whose authors then piggyback on the journals' self-proclaimed superiority to toot their own horns, even as the journals all know that they've only checked the papers, not [anything else](https://www.livemint.com/science/news/how-covaxin-became-a-victim-of-vaccine-triumphalism-11622022760541.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)? Apart from all the other problems with the notion of a journal's [isolated excellence](https://ulagam.org/2020/08/08/the-matter-of-a-journals-reputation/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), it's ridiculous that journals accrue it the same way they've been accruing their profits: with no socially meaningful contribution of their own. ### The names of our dragons URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/12/the-names-of-our-dragons/ Last updated: 2021-11-12T04:09:10.000Z The first piece of very-popular epic fantasy fiction I read was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth saga, which, among many things, reminded me how much the American and British writers of ‘high fantasy’ owed the ancient mythologies of the people of Northern Europe and, to a lesser extent, east and central Asia. I read many other books of the same genre after until I was introduced to Steven Erikson’s grand *Malazan Book of the Fallen* series. The 10 books of the main series have hundreds of protagonists and more than a thousand named characters (including non-humanoid life-forms and excluding inanimate things like [deserts](https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Raraku?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [valleys](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/in-the-valley-of-drums/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) overall – and reading about them, I thought I had finally found one writer whose work allowed me to escape the mythological thrall of Norse and Asian mythologies. But it wasn’t to be. Many years after I’d finished the series (and declared it to be my new all-time favourite), I discovered that Babylonian mythology has a dragon goddess named Tiamat, a “deification of the primordial sea” ([source](http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/tiamat/index.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). The Malazan series makes repeated references to an Elder goddess and the mother of all dragons named T’iam, and who, the series’s characters hint every now and then, came into their shared realm from a different, unknown one many eons ago. (A prequel trilogy, centered on the city of Kharkanas, also describes the formation of a “poisonous” **sea** [called the ‘Vitr’](https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/T%27riss?ref=slightlyacidic.com), from which a new primordial being emerges; she is later named the ‘Queen of Dreams’.) To be sure, it is just a name, but only if you also ignored the economics of symbolism. The authors of the Malazan series, mainly Steven Erikson but with some help from his friend Ian C. Esslemont, went to great lengths to name an incredible array of characters. Every one of them is far from contrived, with close attention paid to the sounds and common arrangements of letters in other words of the same language the name-bearer’s people spoke. Tolkien did this also, by loading dwarven names with Ds, Gs, Rs and Ns, and elven names with Ls, Ss, Ns and Os. The point is – why to go so much trouble for so many names, but include T’iam ‘as is’, considering its nominal proximity to Tiamat? (By the way, Dungeons & Dragons lore has a big bad dragon named Tiamat, and Erikson and Esslemont both used the game to develop their books. If Erikson borrowed T’iam from D&D’s Tiamat – or if both share a common ancestor –, and not directly from ancient Babylonian mythology, the problem still stands. I’m only leading with *Malazan* here because I know more about it.) Second, if T’iam was rooted in Babylonian legends’ Tiamat, what else did Erikson and Esslemont borrow from this and other mythologies? (Note here that there can be no dispute for primacy between an author writing in the 20th or 21st centuries and those who wrote their stories thousands of years ago. Note also that wherever the Babylonians and the people of other civilisations adapted *their* symbols from, the emergence of written communication – including drawings and paintings – in their time precluded modern historians from deducing much about the people who lived earlier, except if their stories survived in written records of some sort.) The answer to what else the duo borrowed won’t change the fantastic stories of the *Malazan* series; instead, it would impinge on the genre more broadly. That is, it would ask: has any popular work of epic fantasy completely transcended the symbols first created by, and preserved in, people's ancient tales? Whatever the answer *isn’t*, it can’t be Marvel Comics either, which coopted Thor, Odin, Freyja, Loki and a host of other Nordic characters and Americanised them. More fundamentally, and perhaps also more forgivably, while the writers and illustrators of Marvel produced big hits with the mass market, I doubt they set out to redefine the elements of epic fantasy through their work for this production house, and in hindsight may have contributed more towards justifying the US’s socio-cultural pursuits in each era, as exemplified by the rise of ‘Captain America’ in the post-war period. (This is speculation; I could be horribly wrong, and also beside the point.) The Marvel Cinematic Universe has further entrenched this process of Americanisation, including through its latest offering: *The Eternals*, which features a supreme antagonist, from the PoV of the film’s narrative, named Tiamut the Communicator. In Marvel’s canon, Tiamut is known as the ‘Dreaming Celestial’, a being of extreme power and, later, thoughtfulness, which starts off with a mandate to annihilate Earth. (Its title is reminiscent of Erikson’s ‘Queen of Dreams’, which suggests a deeper connection with ‘dreaming’ in Babylonian lore.) American comic-book artist Jack Kirby first introduced Tiamut [in 1977](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Week%5F37,%5F1977?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (Tiamut’s last appearance, so far, was [in 2013](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Age%5Fof%5FApocalypse%5FVol%5F1%5F14?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). As with ‘T’iam’ in the *Malazan* series (and ‘Eru Iluvatar’, etc. in *The Silmarillion* versus Odin All-father, etc. in Norse mythology), is the act of reusing a name, with some modifications trivial enough to maintain the similarity, a tribute? Tiamut in the comics bore no other similarity to Tiamat – although Tiamut goes from being an antagonist of sorts to a protagonist whereas Tiamat in Babylonian lore goes from being creator to destroyer. Or is it an admission that the writer is adapting an old trope in order to stave off ridicule; an attempt to evoke preconceived impressions of dragon-like power; or, ultimately, a complete failure of the imagination? ### Dirty power URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/11/03/dirty-power/ Last updated: 2021-11-03T12:10:00.000Z Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow that India will install 500 GW of non-fossil-fuel energy generation capacity by 2030\. In his [analysis of Modi’s speech](https://science.thewire.in/environment/days-after-environment-ministry-says-no-net-zero-modi-announces-2070-target/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for *The Wire Science*, Kabir Agarwal wrote that the phrasing evokes a contrast with Modi’s announcement at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit on New York, where he said India would install 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Apparently, “non-fossil-fuel energy” is not the same as “renewable energy”, and that the biggest difference between them is hydroelectric power production. As much as drastic climate action is warranted, it must also ensure we don’t privilege the ends at the cost of the means. For example, decarbonisation must happen such that the inevitable wealth loss, current and prospective, is distributed *justly* in society – such that the super-rich lose the most and the poor lose the least – and climate deals (both international and sub-national) should account for the corresponding mechanisms in their terms. Saving the planet by destroying the poor would be a meaningless triumph. Such incrementalism demands that we consider our problems one step at a time. For example, first we must all agree to phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewable sources of energy. Then we can get on to figuring out ways to incentivise manufacturing and installation, and then to energy storage, distribution and grid parity. On this path, hydroelectric power seems to have been relegated to the “non-fossil-fuel” side sooner than other renewable sources – so much so that invoking it requires a careful shift in the language used to talk about it at multilateral fora. But while the syntactic choice shouldn’t surprise us, it should remind us that the differences between hydroelectric power and solar and wind power are often very small. An important one is the perception that hydroelectric power is dirty – but so are solar and wind today, albeit in more circuitous ways. The shift from fossil fuels to so-called ‘green energy’ is fundamentally a shift from extracting hydrocarbons to extracting minerals and metals instead. It doesn’t spell the end of extractive capitalism, or change the fact that mining is bad for the land, its life, the air above and the local micro-climate, or that solar and wind installations are not as pleasant as they sound. Some of the world’s largest extant reserves of the specific metals, especially lithium and the lanthanides, and minerals required for the systems of the futuristic ‘green world’ – electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, renewable-energy batteries and in fact everything ‘smart’ that promises to increase energy efficiency by adjusting demand according to supply in real-time – are located in [Africa](https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12076?ref=slightlyacidic.com), [South Asia](https://books.google.co.in/books?id=PK80DwAAQBAJ&redir%5Fesc=y&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [South America](https://www.statista.com/topics/5436/mining-in-latin-america/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). These regions also host most of the world’s low- and middle-income countries, and are often the sites of extreme wealth inequality, unstable local governments and poor representation in high-level climate deliberations. It is not unheard of, as [in Bolivia](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/bolivia-s-almost-impossible-lithium-dream?ref=slightlyacidic.com), for governments to be erected on or trip over who gets the profits from mining these materials – the locals or privately owned conglomerates. An [Oxfam review](https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/bp-africa-mining-vision-090317-en.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of the Africa Mining Vision in 2017, eight years after it was introduced, found that contrary to the vision’s goal to have mining on the continent benefit the people there, lax implementation and economic inequality were forcing countries to enter into deals with companies that were profitable in the shorter term but hurt later. In addition, solar and wind power generation require substantial quantities of steel, plastic and concrete, most of which the world still produces [using](https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-want-renewable-energy-get-ready-to-dig-11565045328?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [fossil](https://www.worldcoal.org/coal-facts/coal-steel/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) [fuels](https://undark.org/2019/11/13/cement-carbon-green-concrete/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and whose production releases significant quantities of carbon into the environment. Taken together, solar and wind power are dirty as well, but perhaps just less dirtier than hydroelectric. Put another way, Modi’s new announcement roping hydroelectric power into the task of ‘greenifying’ India’s power generation mix only makes the mix dirtier than it already was. Perhaps we’re giving hydroelectric short shrift because its turbine is located much closer to the ground its chassis has gouged out than ‘solar farms’ are to the sand removed from distant rivers or wind turbines are to the bauxite mined from a remote peninsula. And then there is the inundation that dams bring. The ‘dirtiness’ of hydroelectric power is much more in your face, whereas those of solar and wind are often hidden away as [negative externalities](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/external.htm?ref=slightlyacidic.com). A [spate of accidents](https://science.thewire.in/environment/why-we-already-know-the-rishi-ganga-flood-was-a-sooner-or-later-event/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in Uttarakhand has only reinforced the awful reputation of hydroelectric power – and the recklessness of the people, including Prime Minister Modi, who make the decisions to build them the way they do. Second, Modi must realise that solar and wind power need ‘cleaning up’, too. The problem areas aren’t hard to find. In Gujarat, wind turbines are [being installed](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/residents-of-gujarat-village-protest-against-windmills-being-set-up-on-forestland/article35781540.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on forest land and solar power plants [have been flagged](http://pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/files/23466353/Yenneti%5FDay%5FProcedural%5FIn%5FJustice%5FEnergy%5FPolicy%5F2015%5FPost%5FPrint.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for “procedural” irregularities. In Karnataka, farmers and cattle-breeders have [spoken out](https://science.thewire.in/economy/energy/karnataka-pavagada-solar-park/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) against the concrete foundations for solar farms that change soil-water interactions. In Tamil Nadu, villagers [had to mount](https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2017/jun/06/adani-solar-plant-guzzles-illegal-fresh-water-in-drought-hit-tamil-nadu-1613326.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a noisy protest to keep an Adani-built ‘solar park’ from guzzling water from a nearby river. In the Western Ghats, wind turbines [have affected](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0707-z?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the diversity of predatory birds and [the livelihoods](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211464518302185?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of an indigenous population. In Assam, proponents of a solar power plant [didn’t have patience](https://thewire.in/rights/assam-nagaon-azure-solar-energy-plant-small-marginal-farmers-rights?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for stakeholder consultation or the proper approvals before starting construction. Incrementalism, especially if it’s quicker, is essential to ensure we make a[ just transition](https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/moving-away-from-fossil-fuels-isnt-separate-from-moving-towards-social-justice/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) away from fossil fuels – while also committing to the possibility that things that are bad for the planet today needn’t always be so, through a combination of technological innovation and the value chain reshaping itself according to new incentives and sanctions. If hydroelectric power is not “renewable”, perhaps this is an admission from the most powerful individual in India that it deserves to be discarded, not replicated. But equally importantly, Modi’s statement also visibilises the problems with solar and wind power, and reminds us that the cleanliness of our energy is fundamentally political. India, and other countries, need solar panels and wind turbines, but if our leaders in government don't adopt them in sustainable, democratic and socially just ways, it will be just another meaningless triumph. ### 60 years of 'Tsar Bomba', history's most powerful nuke URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/31/57-years-after-the-mad-bomb/ Last updated: 2021-10-31T03:40:00.000Z *This post was originally published on October 31, 2018\. I republished it once in 2020 after Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy corporation, released 40 minutes of previously classified footage of RDS-220's explosion on August 28, 2020 (embedded below). Watch this* [*minute-long excerpt*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtCTzbh4mNQ&ref=slightlyacidic.com) *by* Reuters *of the explosion. I'm republishing it again, today, following the publication of a new report that examines the US's reaction to the bomb.* Fifty-seven years ago, on October 30, 1961, the Soviets detonated the most powerful nuclear weapon in the history of nukes. The device was called the RDS-220 by the Soviet Union and nicknamed Tsar Bomba – 'King of Bombs' – by the US. It had a blast yield of 50 megatonnes (MT) of TNT, making it 1,500-times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs *combined*. The detonation was conducted off the island of Novaya Zemlya, four km above ground. The Soviets had built the bomb to one-up the US and followed Nikita Khrushchev's challenge on the floor of the UN General Assembly a year earlier, promising to teach the US a lesson. The B41 nuke used by the US in the early 1960s had a yield of half as much. But despite its intimidating features and the political context, the RDS-220 yielded one of the cleanest nuclear explosions ever – and was never tested again. The Soviets had originally intended for the RDS-220 to have a yield equivalent to 100 MT of TNT, but decided against it for two reasons. First: it was a three-stage nuke, weighed 27 tonnes and was only a little smaller than a school bus – too big to be delivered using an intercontinental ballistic missile. Maj. Andrei Durnovtsev, a decorated soldier in the Soviet Air Force, modified a Tu-95V bomber to carry the bomb and also flew it on the day of the test. The bomb had been fit with a parachute (whose manufacture [disrupted](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwarhead.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the domestic nylon hosiery industry) so that between releasing the bomb and its detonation, the Tu-95V would have enough time to fly 45 km away from the test site. But even then, the bomb's 100 MT yield would have meant Durnovtsev and his crew would have nearly certainly been killed. To improve their chances of survival to 50%, engineers reduced the yield from 100 MT to 50 MT – by replacing a uranium-238 tamper around the bomb with a lead tamper. In a nuclear weapon, the material undergoing fission or fusion is typically surrounded by a layer called a tamper that serves two functions: keep the material from expanding due to the heat of fission/fusion so that it stays supercritical for longer, and to reflect neutrons emitted during fission/fusion back to increase the energy output. But Tsar Bomba's design was more complicated: the first stage nuclear fission reaction set off a second stage nuclear fusion reaction, *which then set off a bigger fusion reaction* in the third stage. The original design included a uranium-238 tamper on the second and third stages, such that fast neutrons emitted by the fusion reaction would have kicked off a series of fission reactions accompanying the two stages. Utter madness. The engineers switched the uranium-238 tamper and put in a lead-208 tamper. Lead-208 can't be fissioned in a chain reaction and as such has a remarkably low efficiency as a nuclear fuel. The second reason the RDS-220's yield was reduced pre-test was because of the radioactive fallout. Nuclear fusion is much cleaner than nuclear fission as a process (although there are important [caveats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion%5Fpower?ref=slightlyacidic.com#Waste%5Fmanagement) for fusion-based power generation). If the RDS-220 had gone ahead with the uranium-238 tamper on the second and third stages, then its total radioactive fallout would have accounted for [fully one quarter](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwarhead.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of all the radioactive fallout from all nuclear tests in history, raining down over Soviet Union territory. The modification resulting in 97% of the bomb's yield being in the form of emissions from fusion alone. One of the more important people who worked on the bomb was Andrei Sakharov, a noted nuclear physicist and later dissident from the Soviet Union. Sakharov is given credit for developing a practicable design for the thermonuclear weapon – an explosive that could take advantage of the fusion of hydrogen atoms. In 1955, the Soviets, thanks to Sakharov's work, won the race to detonate a hydrogen bomb that had been dropped from an airplane; until then the Americans had detonated hydrogen charges placed on the ground. It was after the RDS-220 test in 1961 that Sakharov began speaking out against nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race (one bomb didn't change his mind, to be clear). He would go on to win the [Nobel Peace Prize in 1975](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1975/sakharov/lecture/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). One of his important contributions to the peaceful use of nuclear power was the tokamak, a reactor design he developed with Igor Tamm to conduct controlled nuclear fusion and generate electric power. The ITER experiment [uses](https://thewire.in/energy/is-nuclear-fusion-worth-the-wait?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this design. --- The reason Tsar Bomba or any weapon like it, with a yield in excess of 50 MT of TNT, was never tested again was the Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed two years after the Soviets tested the weapon. In a [new study](https://thebulletin.org/2021/10/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of historical records, nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein has reported that while then US President John F. Kennedy responded outwardly by minimising the bomb's importance, closed-door discussions *among* government officials, including Kennedy himself, suggest that the bomb had much more of an impact on American thinking than they cared to admit. Wellerstein's report is long and full of new details about many aspects of Tsar Bomba. (Its lead image offers a view of the test explosion from Maj. Durnovtsev's Tu-95V.) Look out for Arzamas-16 (the 'closed city' that was the Soviet Union's first nuclear research and production centre), Project 49, the engineers Yuri Trutnev and Yuri Babaev, Edward Teller's plans and the weapon-concept known as [RIPPLE](https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/23/2/133/101892/Ripple-An-Investigation-of-the-World-s-Most?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=slightlyacidic.com). It's also interesting how the physics of the bomb itself began to have a say what the US government could, and couldn't, do next. For example, the American military establishment wanted to respond to the Tsar Bomba test with a bigger detonation of their own (of course). Defence secretary Robert McNamara told Atomic Energy Commission chairman Glenn Seaborg, and Seaborg subsequently relayed to the upper echelons, that this could be in the form of a scaled up Mark 41 with a possible maximum yield of 65 MT. But at 5.8 feet wide, 25.4 feet long and weighing 15.8 tonnes, it would just about fit in the bomb bay of the B-52, a.k.a. the "Stratofortress", and would require five years to make. That was too far away in the future. For another, and much earlier in the narrative, a Soviet weapons scientist named Leonid Feoktistov, belonging to Chelyabinsk-70 – a rival establishment of Arzamas-16 – expresses disappointment that the Tsar Bomba represented not a new frontier of weapons so much as 'just' a bigger version of weapons that already existed. Trutnev and others disagreed with this assessment, saying that scaling up a multi-stage nuclear reaction wouldn't guarantee success and that, in their words, "many things could have happened, including a failure to achieve the desired explosive yield" of 100 MT. The contention is fair, but to my mind Feoktistov's argument also seems directly connected to what Robert McNamara would later tell US Congress: that there wasn't much to be gained in terms of the science itself by detonating weapons of even higher yield. Indeed, Wellerstein delves into the immediate political, diplomatic and military response to the Tsar Bomba test to conclude, with good reason, that the US was left with two mutually exclusive choices: start a programme to build bigger, badder nukes or double down on and ratify the Limited Test Ban Treaty ('limited' because it wouldn't prevent underground testing, which was strictly for low-yield weapons because of the need to fully contain the fireball). > Secretary of Defense McNamara would be called before Congress to defend the military implications of the treaty before they ratified it. He was emphatically in favor of it—the only area where the United States was not ahead of the Soviets in testing was “very high-yield” weapons, but he now argued that the United States had “no great interest” in those. It was a return to the public rhetoric that had proliferated after the first announcement of a 100-megaton test by the Soviets: Such weapons were wasteful and ridiculous. Lower-yield weapons, which were still quite powerful (a megaton or two is nothing to sniff at!), could be even more destructive if deployed in quantity. The security gained from a treaty that would not only reduce global fallout but would also guarantee a trend toward lower yields, would be worth anything that could be gained from multi-megaton tests. But neither the US nor the Soviet Union, but especially the US, entered the treaty blind. The US inserted a "readiness" clause, which meant that it would stay ready to resume above-ground tests if the USSR violated the treaty. This was deemed necessary because the two power blocs had agreed to a 'Test Ban Moratorium' in 1959 that Nikita Khrushchev violated in 1961 with Tsar Bomba – to intimidate then president-elect Kennedy and to compensate for the lack of strength implied by the USSR not having any missile launch points close to the American mainland, a lacuna that also led to the [Cuban Missile Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban%5FMissile%5FCrisis?ref=slightlyacidic.com). *Source for many details (+ being an interesting firsthand account you should read anyway):* [*here*](https://web.archive.org/web/20030221213340/http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1993/may93/may93Khariton.html)*. Featured image: The RDS-220 weapon seconds after detonation, as its fireball develops overhead unto to its maximum width of 8 km and height of 10 km. Source: Reuters/YouTube.* ### Is Covaxin's WHO approval guaranteed? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/29/is-covaxins-who-approval-guaranteed/ Last updated: 2021-10-29T05:29:53.000Z I suspect after reading this [PTI report](https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/bharat-biotech-submitting-data-regularly-very-quickly-who-official-on-covaxin-2591697?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that the WHO is practically helping Bharat Biotech put together a better application to have its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, get the body's approval for international use, instead of simply considering what Bharat Biotech chooses to submit. The overall tone of the report is mollificatory – as if the WHO wishes to appease both the angry and the doubtful that the many months the relevant committee is taking to decide on Covaxin's candidature shouldn't be taken as a comment on the Indian vaccine-manufacturing industry. The biggest supplier of vaccines to the WHO's COVAX initiative is Serum Institute of India, in Pune, so the WHO has a conflict of interest when it says it holds the industry in good esteem. But even vis-à-vis Bharat Biotech (whose production planning and output have both been disappointing), PTI writes: > India's Bharat Biotech has been submitting data on the EUL of Covaxin "regularly and very quickly" to a technical committee which hopes to have a final recommendation to the WHO next week, a top official of the global health agency said on Thursday, stressing that the UN body "trusts" the Indian industry that manufactures high quality vaccines. There is something of an analogy with customer service. Say two companies both sell the same product at the same price. Company A's customer service is excellent and its product has a quality rating of 75%. Company B's customer service is average and its product has a quality rating of 100%. Which company will you buy from? I'd pick Company B because being spared the trouble of having to contact customer service is more valuable than having to contact customer service and then having a good experience. The same goes for Bharat Biotech's application with the WHO for Covaxin: the company has been submitting more information "regularly and very quickly"? Great. But why does it have to do this at all instead of keeping all the data ready before any kind of approval? This characterisation of Bharat Biotech by the "top official" also feeds into what the committee is prepared to do en route to Covaxin's apparently impending approval. As the PTI report says later: > \[Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO chief,\] added that WHO's job is to save as many lives as possible and as fast as possible. This includes ensuring no product lies unused. Considering COVAX's premise, to ensure everyone everywhere has access to vaccines instead of just the rich guys (and ignoring its [inability to fulfill](https://science.thewire.in/health/naively-ambitious-how-covax-failed-on-its-promise-to-vaccinate-the-world/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) this mandate so far), what Aylward says is desirable, that all good vaccines should be used up. But this also raises a question about where the WHO draws the line between rejecting a bad application and accepting a bad application and helping to make it good. Covaxin is clearly a bad product – its [clinical trial](https://science.thewire.in/health/peoples-hospital-bhopal-covaxin-clinical-trials-exploitation-ethics-ground-report/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), its [emergency-use approval](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-vaccine-approval-dcgi-cdsco-gagandeep-kang-covishielf-covaxin/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), its rollout and the [agonising wait](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/new-covaxin-study-makes-absence-of-phase-3-data-more-conspicuous/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for access to the trial data (followed subsequently by issues of [trial ethics](https://science.thewire.in/health/bb-covaxin-paper-quiet-on-peoples-hospital-tragedy-impact-on-results-unclear/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [data quality](https://science.thewire.in/health/bharat-biotech-releases-long-awaited-covaxin-phase-3-data-claims-77-8-efficacy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) threw up so many questions, but none of the Drug Controller General, Bharat Bitoech or the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have deigned to answer any of them, at least not honestly. This was followed later by questions about how Bharat Biotech, and the Indian government with it, estimated that the company would be able to produce X number of doses by certain dates, only to fall strikingly short on each occasion, so much so that together with Serum Institute's failure to project output and demand, India – the "vaccine superpower" that ICMR's Balram Bhargava [recently said it was](https://farfromeq.wordpress.com/2021/10/22/where-the-atmanirbharta-in-spine/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – had a shameful vaccine shortage for the first half of 2021. As good as the science underlying BBV152 may have been, Covaxin the product is untrustworthy. This isn't a comment on the science so much as a reiteration of the oft-overlooked fact that science progressively gives away to social issues that emerge in non-linear fashion when science's requirements collide with societal gradients, particularly once the giant [phase 3 tests](https://science.thewire.in/health/covid-19-serum-institute-clinical-trials-chennai-volunteer-communication-ethics-dcgi/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) have begun. Given all of these issues, the WHO committee repeatedly asking for more data from Bharat Biotech regarding Covaxin served to highlight – loudly and effectively – an immutable fact: that the Indian government and Bharat Biotech didn't have this data at the time the Drug Controller General approved the vaccine for emergency use (in "clinical trial mode" to boot) in January 2021, and probably that Bharat Biotech didn't have this data ready when it claimed, on more than one occasion, that it had submitted all the info it had on Covaxin to the WHO. Now, with a WHO committee member seemingly suggesting that Covaxin's approval is a question of when, not if, are we to believe that the vaccine is really good and that we're all thinking about it wrong? This is an important question, to me at least, because one less-than-ideal alternative is to contemplate how one committee can 'fix' a vaccine – by legitimising it with its approval – that is so broken that even with the Indian government's support, [only some 11%](https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) of eligible Indians have taken it. Another is to confront the similarly dispiriting possibility that millions of people are so desperate for vaccines around the world that the WHO can no longer afford to stop at being a quality filter – and should step up to help insincere vaccine-makers over the fence. (Recall the ['right to choose without choices'](https://science.thewire.in/health/dcgis-covaxin-verdict-forces-first-vaccine-recipients-to-make-tough-call/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) from January?) Any which way, the implied promise of approval seems to me to be too much of an easy way out for Bharat Biotech, and the intractable, unabashed Indian government behind it. ### It's great that the WHO isn't just 'not cutting corners' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/27/its-great-that-the-who-isnt-just-not-cutting-corners/ Last updated: 2021-10-27T04:51:09.000Z Call me anti-national (and I'm sure many will) but I'm glad that the WHO isn't just ["not cutting corners"](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/covaxin-covid-vaccine-who-approval-7578616/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the process of considering Bharat Biotech's application for the UN body's [stamp of approval](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines?ref=slightlyacidic.com) Covaxin but is also openly calling for more and more information from the company at periodic intervals. This isn't just a validation process in the larger scheme of things – which could imply something as banal as the WHO considering a really complicated application – but has also served to humiliate the Indian government's instruments, from the clinical trial regulation apparatus to the prime minister's office (let's not forget that the PM is indeed a tool). The WHO's process is resistant to ["diplomatic" and "political"](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-to-push-for-covaxin-recognition-by-who-and-eu/article34625955.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) inputs, even as every meeting of its vaccine approval committee has concluded thus far with demands for more information from Bharat Biotech. This doesn't prove that the Drug Controller General of India and the Central Drug Standards Control Organisation screwed up their vetting process to push Covaxin's emergency-use license through earlier this year – but surely *suggests* it, and that's just as well. Everyone from Bharat Biotech's upper management to Prime Minister Narendra Modi have failed to understand that bad data alone doesn't cause vaccine hesitancy, that absent data has the same effect. The Indian government, specifically the Bharatiya Janata Party, dragged Covaxin to the centre of its vaccine triumphalism and afforded it the same privileges it has extended to other parts of government – trenchant opacity, approval sans data, vanishing accountability. As such, we were never talking about a product of the Indian medical research community as much as something resembling a corrupted political object, and that in turn should lead us to the conclusion that this vaccine deserved to be met with hesitancy, and the WHO's repeated requests for more data indicates that it still deserves to be. Thus far, the current government has seemed most responsive (albeit like a child, lashing out and hurting someone else) to the threat of humiliation. So, glad, even if I'm sure it will be short-lived. Once the WHO grants its approval (although there's no guarantee), the government will certainly embark on a past-washing campaign, pressing its ministers to the task of weaving together an alternative history of why the approval process was unusually protracted. Is there any way we can preempt that? ### Dream11: How hard should we work to play cricket for India? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/26/dream11-how-hard-should-we-work-to-play-cricket-for-india/ Last updated: 2021-10-26T07:25:52.000Z The TV ads for the fantasy cricket app Dream11 seem objectionable, to my mind. Thus far, I've seen three high-profile players of the Indian men's cricket team in these ads: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Jasprit Bumrah (there may be others). Each player stars in a version of the ad in which the ad summarily chronicles their childhood pursuits of becoming a professional cricketer. [Dhawan's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZoGYrZo6Ss&ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [Sharma's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yj47x9Vd30&ref=slightlyacidic.com) ads both extol lots of hard work and commitment to the demands of the sport, as does [Bumrah's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9%5FXkjaeEY7E&ref=slightlyacidic.com) ad but I think to a lesser extent. What the ads fail to mention is that India is a country of [717 million men](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.MA.ZS?locations=IN&ref=slightlyacidic.com) (2020) but for all of whom there is only one men's cricket team. We'll obviously need to subtract those younger than 18 years and older than 40 years, but assuming a highly conservative estimate that men of the 'admissible' age make up only 10% of the total, we are still left with 71.7 million men. Consider New Zealand, on the other hand, which had almost [250,000 men](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.MA.ZS?locations=NZ&ref=slightlyacidic.com) in 2020 – including those on either side of the 18-40 group – and still fielded a cricket team among the world's best in that year. Simple logic dictates that by virtue of having a larger pool of talent to pick from, the Indian men's cricket team should be orders of magnitude better than those fielded by other countries – and simple logic is clearly wrong. The exploits of the Indian men's cricket team have demonstrated, repeatedly, that if you put 11 sufficiently talented and qualified players together, train them, and give them the resources and the opportunities to get better, they will get better. And the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has the money, the political heft and talent pool to achieve this – but it won't. Instead, by considering only 11 (or 15, 21 or whatever) players at a time, the BCCI has created a hyper-competitive environment that is conducive neither to the fair selection of cricketing talent at the bottom rungs nor the selection and retention of talented players at the highest level. The abundance of talent only forces players to be in form at all times – or in excellent form sometimes – under threat of being replaced, even as the hierarchy of contracts with the BCCI tapers rapidly towards the top, squeezing more and more resources into fewer and fewer players, and ultimately leaves more for itself. The consequent demand for an intense physical regimen will in turn privilege richer players over poorer ones. As such, the BCCI has been administering an unjust model of cricket in India, and which companies like Dream11 are glamourising in uncritical fashion. Dhawan's Dream11 ad – embedded above – concludes with the man himself saying that he plays for India because he dared to dream that big, in effect saying those who don't make it didn't because they didn't dream, because it's their fault, because dreaming is all it takes. The inequitable nature of this model only further undermines the knee that the Indian men's cricket team took ahead of their game against Pakistan on October 24, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement – although we must admit there [wasn't much left to undermine](https://twitter.com/dpanjana/status/1452305503628009481?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Given India's population and the popularity of cricket around the country, it should by all means field 10 teams – maybe even 30, one for each state. Uttar Pradesh's population alone is 40x that of New Zealand, and to echo [Nayantara Sheoran Appleton](https://thewire.in/government/why-uttar-pradeshs-proposed-population-bill-is-anti-fact-and-anti-people?ref=slightlyacidic.com), making better use of so much talent will always be a better idea than to coerce people to reproduce less. In the same vein, brands like Dream11 should stop glorifying the sort of backbreaking work required to break into the top 11\. Doing so only glorifies the absurdity of rigging a system to produce only 11 men (or 11 women, for that matter) and then claiming this team is better than every other combination of 11 people drawn from a base of 71.7 million (or 67.6 million). By the way, that's 5.97 x 1028 possible combinations without repetition. ### Where the atmanirbharta in spine? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/22/where-the-atmanirbharta-in-spine/ Last updated: 2021-10-22T14:14:46.000Z Truth be told, I didn't expect CSIR chief Shekhar Mande could be so disingenuous. "India didn't have to depend on western countries," he says. What is this abject refusal to thank other countries for help – and preferring instead to take their help and rewriting the past to pretend we didn't need any? Of all those who received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in India, 88% received Covishield, which was first conceived by scientists in the UK and licensed by a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company to an Indian manufacturer. Even Covaxin, which accounts for the remaining 12% (screw Sputnik V), draws on technologies [perfected by scientists](https://science.thewire.in/health/how-indigenous-is-bharat-biotechs-new-covid-19-vaccine-covaxin/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in the US, among other places, against the SARS and MERS viruses. And while India's drug controller approved a glut of drugs to treat severe COVID-19, the rights to the most popular among them and which also demonstrated [some efficacy](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/cmc-vellore-covid-19-guideline-development-evidence-based-medicine-drugs-policy/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in any well-designed trials and observational studies – remdesivir – belong to a Californian pharmaceutical company. Some of the special containers and chemical reagents required to conduct RT-PCR tests are [mostly imported](https://science.thewire.in/health/insacog-ccmb-igib-novel-coronavirus-variants-genome-sequencing-covid-19-surge/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Indian industry adapted in a relatively short span of time to boost local production of masks, PPE kits and syringes, but there's a lot that it depended on the west for and for which the west depended on India. In *The Statesman* article, ICMR chief Balram Bhargava also says, "The experience of developing Covaxin has instilled self-confidence in us that India is now much more than the pharmacy of the world. It is also a vaccine superpower." Kind sir, India [is no longer](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-pharmacy-of-the-world-covid-19-vaccines-modi-government/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the 'pharmacy of the world'. And we'd have to be a shitty kind of "vaccine superpower", whatever that means, to a) run low on [vaccines](https://thewire.in/government/covid-19-vaccine-shortages-centre?ref=slightlyacidic.com) *and* [syringes](https://thewire.in/government/india-syringe-shortage-govt-didnt-place-advance-order-interview?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and completely fail to see that coming, b) celebrate 100-crore [*preordained* inoculations](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2021/10/22/one-billion-doses/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), c) go so gung-ho with COVID-19 that we [fail to deliver](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-records-greatest-increase-of-kids-who-didnt-get-first-dose-of-dtp-1-shot/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) doses of a DTP vaccine to 3 million children in a year (the world's highest) and d) preferentially award vaccine-making contracts [to private companies](https://science.thewire.in/health/covid-19-indian-psu-vaccines/?ref=slightlyacidic.com). Of course, BB has been a [foregone conclusion](https://science.thewire.in/health/icmr-balram-bhargava-covaxin-clinical-trials-bharat-biotech-politics/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for a while. But that Mande can thump his chest like this… Are we to believe, then, that the rumours about why the Manipal Centre for Virus Research [was shut](https://science.thewire.in/health/manipal-virus-research-national-institute-virology-health-ministry-icmr-nipah-virus-bsl-4-bioweapon/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), just as the pandemic was beginning, are true? That it was poised to undermine, with its foreign funds, foreign collaborations and foreign-trained scientists, the 'Make in India' narrative that the government as much as the government-funded scientific enterprise is wedded to. Perhaps the most regrettable thing about Mande's comment is that – if the head of India's largest government-funded scientific research establishment is prepared to lie in public, and to himself, that Indian researchers, manufacturers, traders, healthcare workers and patients didn't want for anything that wasn't already available in the country in early 2020, he is also prepared to believe there aren't any problems that need to be fixed or resolved today either. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I don't have my hopes up. Whatever we're atma-nirbhar with today, it isn't spine among government scientists, it seems. ### The 'one billion doses' hype URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/22/one-billion-doses/ Last updated: 2021-10-22T11:47:57.000Z Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed India's people 10 times during the country's COVID-19 epidemic. This is fairly regular but also not frequent – that is, Modi's addresses are something of special occasions, especially since it's one of the few ways he interacts with the people at large (he doesn't like speaking to the independent media) and even if most of what he says is banal. In the latest edition, for example, he celebrated the fact that India had administered one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines between January 16 and October 21, 2021. Now, why was this point the subject of a prime ministerial address? It's quite nonsensical. If you wait long enough, any country with at least 500 million adults is going to administer one billion doses of two-dose COVID-19 vaccines. It's not an achievement – it's the natural course of action, like pooping if you've eaten enough food or peeing if you've had enough water. Unless of course the prime minister considers the metaphorical pooping and peeing to be achievements as well – i.e. that vaccines were produced at all, distributed at all and pierced skin at all… A little more than a year ago, the same government [also claimed](https://science.thewire.in/health/india-union-health-ministry-covid-19-recovery-rate-fact-check/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) a 70% COVID-19 recovery rate in India as an achievement. It was the same logic, and the same perversion of common sense: on average, {X}% of people everywhere with COVID-19 will recover because, on average, {100 minus X}% of COVID-19 patients die – *if you wait long enough*. The question the prime minister should have answered then, and should be answering now, is why it took so long. On the latter count: he promised in mid-January 2021 that the Union health ministry would vaccinate India's 300 million frontline and healthcare workers by July. But as of September 30, 99% of healthcare workers had received at least one dose and 85% had received both doses. These figures are likely to be lower if frontline workers, like the police and municipal workers, are included. No doubt 85% is a big number, but we are also three months past the deadline and the delta variant has accentuated the difference between one dose and two doses. So these figures only speak of a government that can't plan properly and is destined to celebrate only that which will happen anyway. (*The penultimate paragraph above appeared in an article by my colleague Ajoy Ashirwad,* [*published on October 22, 2021*](https://thewire.in/politics/modi-speech-100-crore-covid-19-vaccine-doses?ref=slightlyacidic.com)*, as one of my inputs.*) ### He is never wrong URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/21/he-is-never-wrong/ Last updated: 2021-10-21T05:27:58.000Z Akshay Deshmane reported for [*The Morning Context*](https://themorningcontext.com/chaos/environment-minister-scraps-process-initiated-by-predecessor-for-amending-forest-act?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on October 20 that the Union environment ministry has reversed two important decisions it made earlier this year: (a) to invite private law firms to help amend the Indian Forest Act 1927 and (b) to oppose the Delhi high court's directive to translate the new draft EIA notification to 22 languages and extend its public consultation deadline to December this year. These are both major U-turns in the sense that the original decisions were both obviously anti-democratic and had the government's unwavering support, so to walk back on them is to admit that the government's original stance on both counts was *wrong*. Now, I'm of the firm belief that India is currently ruled not by a government but by an autocrat at the very top who likes to be seen pulling the ministerial strings when things go right but pushes some sod forward when things go sideways. I concede that this has pretty much been an *ex post facto* rationalisation, but it fits the facts every time and also draws some support from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has his fingers not in some pies but in *every* pie. This would entail a certain failure rate – as would be statistically typical, as is *normal* – but if the government's press releases and communiqués and ministers' speeches are to be believed, he has never screwed up. *Never.* The incumbent government is also incapable of making any decision without his express approval, if not being entirely of his office's initiative. In this context, it's notable that between making the two decisions and admitting that they were wrong, in July 2021, Prime Minister Modi reshuffled the Union cabinet, replacing a glut of ministers – and apparently also giving himself room to rethink some decisions without requiring a *mea culpa* or, at least and as has become so common, retaining plausible deniability. Among the new lot was Bhupender Yadav, brought in to replace Prakash Javadekar as the environment minister. And it was Yadav's office that announced it wouldn't challenge the Delhi high court and that it wouldn't continue with the process to have private firms amend an important legal instrument. Would the ministry, and the minister, have been so brave as to admit wrongdoing while they were still in the same office? Unlikely; it has seldom happened before. Would the prime minister have been so brave as to admit wrongdoing? Ha! A similar thing happened with the outgoing health minister Harsh Vardhan and the incoming Mansukh Mandaviya, [who said](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-may-become-first-country-to-have-a-dna-based-jab-says-mansukh-mandaviya/article35427336.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) shortly after his new appointment that the health ministry didn't do enough against India's second COVID-19 outbreak in April-May this year. There's no reason to stop believing that the prime minister is still pulling the strings, and there's no reason to stop believing that he will continue to 'prove' he's always right. *Featured image credit: Al Soot/Unsplash.* ### Why you should care about the Uttarakhand floods URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/20/why-you-should-care-about-the-uttarakhand-floods/ Last updated: 2021-10-20T04:34:51.000Z You already know why. We all do. ### A new way to harass editors? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/18/a-new-way-to-harass-editors/ Last updated: 2021-10-18T09:30:00.000Z There’s a new way to harass editors – or perhaps it’s an old way that we’re just finding out about, first-hand. We know that [repressive governments have started using](https://www.accessnow.org/dmca-takedown-demands-censor-activists/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the US’s infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act ([DMCA](https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) as a new means to censor content they do not like. But it now seems private parties have also discovered the utility of using alleged copyright infringement to target media coverage. In the first week of October, an individual with an address in Thane, Maharashtra, lodged a complaint with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts *The Wire* websites, including *The Wire Science*, alleging that one of the latter’s articles contained ‘unlicensed copyright protected content’. It has been my experience, and that of every other editor, I imagine, that honest complaints of copyright infringment are addressed to the editor and the reporter in question – and not the website’s host. (My email ID is on *The Wire Science* homepage; our ombudsperson’s email ID is available on the [‘About’ page](https://thewire.in/about-us?ref=slightlyacidic.com#ombudsperson).) But in this case, the complaint was lodged with AWS, with a link to the corresponding article on *The Wire Science*. The AWS abuse team, in turn, has written to me and my colleagues multiple times asking us to specify what steps we have taken or will be taking to resolve the issue. We have written back but I am not sure if the members of the abuse team are equipped to understand the editorial issues involved. Their principal issue appears to be that the charge implies *The Wire Science* has violated AWS’s terms of service and could therefore have to be removed from its servers. Why would the complainant take this route to resolving an allegation of copyright infringement? The article in question could provide the answer: it is an[ investigative report](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/shycocan-covid-19-jargon-absence-scientific-validation-pseudoscience/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) by science writer Anusha Krishnan (April 3, 2021) about a device called ‘Shycocan’, whose makers have claimed it can “attenuate” particles of the novel coronavirus by simply emitting photons into the air of a room. The report cast doubt on ‘Shycocan’ as well as its maker’s claims. **The news report** One particularly important, but easily refuted, claim made by the company was that the device has the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The truth comes in two parts: that the FDA found the device to fall in a category that could be distributed in the US without complying with certain regulatory requirements, and that according to ‘Shycocan’’s maker, the device belongs in the category of ‘sterilisers and disinfectants’, not ‘medical devices’ *per se*, meaning it doesn’t need clinical trials to prove its merit. Some claims had simply spun these loopholes in the maker’s favour. The maker’s representatives responded to our article on ‘Shycocan’ with a detailed statement sent to me seven weeks after the article was published, even though both the reporter and I had asked them many of the same questions during reporting (with many days to reply). I refused to publish it because I had no obligation to do so – plus it seemed to me to contain unclear science. For example, Umesh Kadhane, the head of the physics department at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, had told *The Wire Science* that the maker’s “claims that the electrons produced by their device will only kill the coronavirus is completely bogus. Electrons cannot distinguish between viruses or bacteria or any other thing.” The statement responded thus: “Most bacteria are negatively charged. The Coronavirus is a positive sense virus. Human cells have a negative potential. The electrons emanated by the Shycocan and due to this opposite polarity they attach themselves to the Coronavirus in real time thereby neutralizing or attenuating it.” By this logic, ‘most bacteria’ should not be able to affect human cells, so this part of the statement is likely incomplete. The electrons should also be affecting every susceptible particle they encounter once they are emitted – not just the coronaviruses in the air. Many atoms and molecules in air [capture free electrons](https://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/Ielect.html?ref=slightlyacidic.com). As the report also said: > “It’s … unclear how ‘Shycocan’, though capable of producing so many electrons – much more than air ionisers that are currently in the market as air purifiers – apparently doesn’t produce ozone, according to the company marketing it. When oxygen in the air encounters free electrons, it becomes ozone.” But the maker’s statement said our sentences lack “scientific basis” and that the device produces photons in the “trillions per second, which in turn produce photoelectrons when striking solid surfaces.” This raised two further issues: 1\. Photons need to have a specific energy to produce photoelectrons from specific materials, called photoemissive materials. Not all photons can elicit photoelectrons from all surfaces (“aerosols, microscopic impurities, viral particles, solid surfaces, walls, etc.,” as the statement says). 2\. If all these surfaces are photoemissive (unlikely), why don’t *their* photoelectrons lead to the formation of ozone? And so forth. *The Wire Science* report also raised concerns about missing details in the documents ‘Shycocan’’s maker shared with us (requesting us to not share them publicly; we agreed). Independent experts Anusha Krishnan and *The Wire Science* spoke to said the documents lacked information about the testing methods and, in at least one case, efforts to eliminate bias. Arindam Ghosh, a physicist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, had also told [*Indian Express*](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/senior-scientists-question-device-that-claims-to-kill-coronavirus-in-closed-spaces-6582956/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) last year: “The claim is that if you fire a lot of electrons, it affects and deactivates the S protein of the coronavirus. I do not know of any scientific document which proves this. To my understanding, there is no data available even outside the publication domain which proves it. I do not understand … how some weird electrons seek only the coronavirus to kill, leaving everything else unaffected.” As a result of these findings, *The Wire Science* report said: “As of now, there appear to be no published scientific studies, experiments or publicly available data (that other scientists can use) to establish the efficacy, safety or usability of ‘Shycocan’. All of the information on the device is to be found on the company’s website, in news articles, press releases and anecdotes related by the people marketing it.” **The implicated para** Now, the complaint with AWS alleges that *The Wire*‘s report contained one paragraph in the article that was copied from a magazine with a single [‘article’](https://issuu.com/jaiprakash36/docs/the%5Fcurious%5Fcase%5Fof%5Fshycocan%5F?ref=slightlyacidic.com) hosted on Issuu. The article, which carries the date of March 30, 2021, is published by ‘jaiprakash36’ (who has published nothing else) and contains precisely two paragraphs – one, the supposedly copied para, and two, a para that appears to be an advertisement for ‘Shycocan’: > Shycocan Stands for Scalene Hypercharge Corona Canon you can buy it on amazon at the price of 24,999\. According to the device makers Shyconcan can disable upto 99.9% virus in the installed area. Turn now to the paragraph which the complainant claims was copied: > The company Eureka Forbes has also advertised the “Forbes Corona Guard, powered by Shycocan” as a device that could attenuate 99.9% of coronaviruses in enclosed spaces. In November 2020, after complaints from scientists, the Consumer Complaints Council of the Advertising Standard Council of India directed Eureka Forbes to withdraw its claims. Yet the company still lists the product as available, along with its purported effectiveness against the novel coronavirus. Shortly after receiving the first communiqué from the AWS abuse team, we responded with a timestamped document that clearly shows Anusha Krishnan and me co-editing a Google Doc document containing her report, with edits of the concerned paragraph dated *before* the Issuu ‘article’ was published, on March 30, 2021\. (I suspect, sans proof, that the complainant published the single-page magazine after our article was published and then backdated the page). However, the AWS abuse team has been repeatedly emailing us asking us to describe the steps we will or are going to take to resolve this issue, unmindful of the proof we have provided. To them, it appears, this is a potential DMCA violation that can only be resolved by us responding to the complaint by making some changes at our end. To us, the abuse team doesn’t seem to be prepared to consider that the complaint is baseless. This has been a frustrating experience, and is still yet to be resolved. [*The Wire*](https://thewire.in/media/invoking-a-dmca-complaint-is-this-a-new-way-to-harass-editors?ref=slightlyacidic.com) October 16, 2021 ### Will this blog be online a hundred years from today? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/17/will-this-blog-be-online-a-hundred-years-from-today/ Last updated: 2021-10-17T05:40:00.000Z For almost two weeks now, we at *The Wire* have been dealing with a complaint that someone from Maharashtra lodged against us *with Amazon Web Services* (AWS), our sites’ host, for allegedly copying one paragraph in one article sans consent from a source that the complainant allegedly owns, and thus violating AWS’s terms of use and becoming eligible – if found guilty – to have the offending webpage taken down. The paragraph is not plagiarised (I edited and published it) but the alleged source of the ‘original’ material is shady, and there’s reason to believe a deeper malice could be at work, as I’ve explained in an [article for *The Wire*](https://thewire.in/media/invoking-a-dmca-complaint-is-this-a-new-way-to-harass-editors?ref=slightlyacidic.com). The matter is still unresolved: the AWS abuse team has been emailing us almost every day asking us to tell them what we’ve done to ‘address’ the complaint, ignoring the proof we sent them showing that the article couldn’t possibly have been plagiarised (we shared the Google Doc on which the article was composed and edited from scratch, with date and timestamps). The abuse team remains unsatisfied and would simply like us *to act*, whatever that means. From my point of view, it seems like AWS doesn’t have the room to consider that the complaint could be baseless. I also think that any organisation that doesn’t know or want to deal with editorial complaints shouldn’t receive editorial complaints in the first place. Otherwise, you have a situation in which an unknown private entity can allege to a *tech company* that one of its clients has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – the overreaching American legal instrument that is the principal blunt weapon in this episode – forcing the tech company to bear down on the client to make the problem go away, without pausing for a moment to think if it’s been conned into becoming an agent of harassment. But why would it, considering so many tech companies registered in the US actually benefit from the overreaching character of the DMCA. (It’s doubly ridiculous when these agents are Indian and based in India, and who may not be aware of the full story of the DMCA but are required by their contracts of employment to enforce it.) The awfulness of this entire episode, still ongoing, strikes to me at the heart of questions about who gets to access the internet and how. The AWS abuse team has told us on more than one occasion that if the matter isn’t resolved to AWS’s satisfaction, they will have to remove the offending webpage from their servers. Obviously we can find a new host, but whichever host we find, the problem remains: one of the many mediators of our access to the internet, starting from the internet service provider, is the entity hosting those websites. And not just any entity but a predominantly American one, and therefore obligated to enforce the terms of the DMCA. I don’t have to point to any numbers to claim, safely, that a vast majority of the internet traffic today pings the servers of websites hosted by AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. Recently, [Tim Bray blogged](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/10/08/The-WOrst-Case?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about what the consequences might look like if the biggest of AWS’s 24 datacentre “regions” – called simply us-east-1 – went offline. It would be an unmitigated catastrophe. My blog has been hosted with/on WordPress for 13 years now and I’ve seen a lot of competing platforms come and go.\[1\] (My very first blog was hosted by [Xanga](http://xanga.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) before I moved, a few months later, to WordPress.) A lot of people who like to talk or blog *about* blogging have expressed dissatisfaction with how some platforms “don’t talk to each other”, that they’re fans of the [Quiet Web](https://briankoberlein.com/tech/quiet-web/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)\[2\] or that [static sites](https://jamstack.org/generators/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are the way to go for the speed, security and controllability. But to me, all these concerns pale compared to the question of whether a platform will actually stay online. One alternative I’ve been referred to is micro.blog – looks nice and has an agenda that some bloggers seem to love, but will it stay online? *I don’t know.* It’s easier for me to believe a) that WordPress will stay online because it has been online for 15 years now – which is a long time in the Internet Universe – and because it has been both profitable and conscientious about what it does; and b) that AWS will stay online because its market capitalisation and revenue mean it’s just too big to fail at this point (as Bray has also written). Heck, of all the blogging platforms that have come and gone, one of the longest-lived has been Google’s Blogger. Google clearly didn’t spend much time on it after a point but Blogger is still around, as are the bloggers who continue to publish there. And to my mind the ‘Persistent Web’ – a place that convinces you that it’s going to be around for a long time – is a better place to be (see ref. 2). \[1\] One of the platforms that I was really sad to see die was [Posterous](http://www.posterous.com//?ref=slightlyacidic.com), which Twitter bought from the guys who built it and then killed it. These guys subsequently created [Posthaven](https://posthaven.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and pledged that it would never get bought or be killed as long as at least one blogger paid to use it – except the guys have added no new features since 2017 nor updated the blog. [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is pretty much a ghost city now even though its been bought by the foundation that runs WordPress, and even though it attracted a great deal of negative attention for its erotic blogs. Typed, made by [a company](https://www.realmacsoftware.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that became profitable by building apps for Apple devices, was ridiculously short-lived. [Silvrback](https://silvrback.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)‘s founder sold it a few years ago to some mid-level management professor who’s modified it – badly – back to the early 2000s. [Svbtle](https://svbtle.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is still around, and has a pledge like Posthaven’s, but is both extremely minimal in terms of its features and fairly opaque about how it’s doing as a company; also, it [appears to be](https://w3techs.com/sites/info/svbtle.com?ref=slightlyacidic.com) hosted on AWS. [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)‘s mood is just awful and doesn’t seem trustworthy as a company either, especially if you’re particular – as I am – but about not putting in with enterprises that [treat editorial people badly](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22349175/medium-layoffs-union-evan-williams-blogger-twitter-subscription?ref=slightlyacidic.com). This is also why I’m put off of Ghost, whose maker John O’Nolan has seemed quite full of himself on occasion. [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) itself is a great product, although it started off as a blogging company only to change direction to become a publishing company, leaving WordPress – which it sought to usurp as every blogger’s platform of choice – to dominate the blogging space. [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) is the sole *long-lived*, *equally legitimate* alternative to WordPress, but it doesn’t offer a self-hosted version. I could go on. \[2\] Brian Koberlein writes here that he defines the Quiet Web thus: “Exclude any page that has ads. Remove them if they use Google Analytics or Google Fonts. Remove them if they use scripts or trackers. It’s a hard filter that blocks the most popular sites. Forget YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter. Forget the major news sites. So what remains? … Most personal websites don’t pass the test. They are either ad-driven or managed on platforms like Blogger or WordPress. But the quiet personal sites are diverse and interesting.” I think he overlooks a huge part of the internet here, comprising websites that self-host WordPress instead of using it on WordPress.com. Many of the features he ascribes to the Quiet Web can be built with WordPress – including this site you’re reading. As celebrated ~~web-designer Jeffrey Zeldman~~ tech blogger John Gruber [has written](https://daringfireball.net/2007/03/blank%5Fslate?ref=slightlyacidic.com), WordPress shouldn't be blamed for many of its users’ awful design choices. (Edited at 8:43 am on October 27, 2021, to attribute that comment to Gruber instead of Zeldman.) So when someone asks if my blog will be online and accessible a hundred years from now, I’d like the answer to be ‘yes’. And while I don’t like it, AWS is going to remain one of the options to make that happen with little effort on my part. I'm not a programmer except in the tinkering sense, and still struggle to understand how websites really work (esp. [beyond the application layer](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/layers-of-osi-model/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)). Pertinently this means I'd much rather host my blog, which is invaluable to me, with an entity that knows what it's doing rather than try to cobble something together myself that could well break or be exploited a day later. And this in turn is why I’m really going to stick with WordPress, which continues to be an excellent alternative to every other similar option, with my fingers firmly crossed that the people managing it continue to do so the way they’re doing it currently. ### The great Nobel Prize hypocrisy URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/13/the-great-nobel-prize-hypocrisy/ Last updated: 2021-10-13T12:22:27.000Z Katie Langin's [report for *Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/one-reason-men-often-sweep-nobels-few-women-nominees?ref=slightlyacidic.com) on October 12 is an eye-opening account of one reason why the committees that pick every year's Nobel Prize winners almost never pick women: because they aren't nominated. Given the Nobel Foundation's frustrating policy of secrecy, there aren't many numbers available for us to work with, but Langin's report adds one more column to the mix. Quoting from her piece: > The selection committees have generally been secretive about nominee statistics, citing a Nobel Foundation statute stipulating nominations be kept secret for 50 years. But committee members shared summaries of the data with *Science*. The total number of nominations for a physiology or medicine Nobel jumped from about 350 in 2015 to 874 this year. Over those years, the percentage of female nominees more than doubled, from 5% in 2015 to 13% this year. The chemistry committee saw a similar increase: At 7% to 8%, female nominees have doubled their share since 2018\. A representative for the physics committee declined to share exact figures, but wrote in an email, "The number of nominated women has increased significantly in the last few years." In Langin's telling (here and in other parts of her piece), the committees and some of their quoted members sound like they're constrained by the number of women nominated. There is, more broadly, a noticeable vein of objectivitism running through the article, reflecting what sort of arguments the committees themselves will and won't admit vis-à-vis their decision-making process. Here are some telling lines: > Members of the powerful selection committees that sort through the nominations say they aren’t satisfied with the progress. “The fraction of women among the nominated people is very low and I don’t think it represents the \[fraction of\] women that were doing science even 20 years ago,” says Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, a biophysical chemist at Chalmers University of Technology who is one of two women on the eight-person chemistry committee. > “We want to have more women nominated,” agrees Eva Olsson, an experimental physicist at Chalmers who is a member of the physics selection committee. > This year, the physics committee had seven men and one woman, the chemistry committee was composed of six men and two women, and the physiology or medicine committee had the highest proportion of women, with 13 men and five women. > “Thanks to new recruitments over the recent ten years or so, the proportion of women \[on the committee\] is now similar to the proportion of female full professors at the \[institute\],” Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the physiology or medicine committee and a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute, in an email to Science. \[*Paraphrased*\] > The committees don’t consider gender when they discuss which discovery to award a Nobel Prize, Olsson says. “The focus is on science.” The reason I'm getting into this is that waiting for the number of women scientists nominated to increase or double or whatever before including them among the laureates seems like a red herring. The 'availability' of women in the pool of nominations, which committee members can then pick from, has never been the problem. We all know there are too few women scientists; Göran Hansson, the head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, even [said yesterday](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58875152?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that "it's sad that there are so few women Nobel laureates and it reflects the unfair conditions in society, particularly in years past, but still existing." The problem is that the Nobel Prize committees aren't defying convention to pick and highlight women, that they're waiting for the real world to fix the problem first before – from their point of view – simply reflecting that in the composition of their laureate lists. But when the laurel is as prominent and as storied as a Nobel Prize, we need *affirmative action*. But Hansson put paid to this possibility when he said in the same interview that the prizes will never have gender quotas, obviously mindless of the stunning hypocrisy. The most legitimate protests against the prizes are rooted not in the narrower domain of awarding more men than women but in the wider one of the prizes having [never reflected the conditions](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/how-the-nobel-prize-maintains-sciences-inequalities-and-how-it-can-stop/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) in which science is practiced in the real world. (The prizes are not awarded posthumously, and only to three laureates at a time, for example.) And Langin's article doesn't touch on this possibility at all. In fact, it pushes the next weightiest argument against the Nobel Prizes to the last paragraph: > "How people get on whatever list of possible nominees is a mystery to most people," \[Handelsman\] says. "If women are unaware of whatever that political process is, then they can’t place themselves in the appropriate situations or \[get\] linked to the right people who can help them get nominated." That is, the committee that deliberates on the nominations is not happy that so few women are being nominated, while no one (outside the Nobel Foundation) knows the people staffing the nomination committees. Now, it's unlikely to be the case that the many more men who are nominated for the Nobel Prizes start off knowing what these political processes are; it seems likelier that the bias against women begins not from women not knowing what these processes are but from biases on the part of the 'low-level' nominators, so to speak (I don't care if they don't have many women to pick from or what their idea of the Nobel Prizes is). Handelsman may be right that women [may not be 'naturally' clued in](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2021/09/29/the-bhatnagar-prizes-are-courting-irrelevance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to these processes, but expecting them to assume this work, in addition to science work, seems like the wrong way to solve this problem. It's also wrong*er* that the nominators' identities are such a secret, effectively blocking our view of them and their thought-processes behind the same veil that the [likes of Anthony Fauci](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/being-apolitical-doesnt-mean-politics-doesnt-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) have used to separate science from society. What's the right way to solve this problem? [Dismantle the Nobel Prizes.](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/why-are-the-nobel-prizes-still-relevant/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) ### Are major science prizes a form of philanthropy? URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/12/scientific-renown-science-prizes-and-awards-as-philanthropy/ Last updated: 2021-10-12T16:29:37.000Z The Association for the Advancement of AI conferred its 'Squirrel AI Award' on Cynthia Rudin, and Duke University – her employer – published a [press release](https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/rudin-squirrel-award?ref=slightlyacidic.com) celebrating it. Here's one para from the release: > "Only world-renowned recognitions, such as the Nobel Prize and the A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery, carry monetary rewards at the million-dollar level," said AAAI awards committee chair and past president Yolanda Gil. The press release also had a curious headline: > Duke Computer Scientist Wins $1 Million Artificial Intelligence Prize, A ‘New Nobel’ 1. If a prize carries a million-dollar purse, is it *like* the Nobel Prize? Follow-up: Being compared favourably to the Nobel Prize is one thing, but aren't the 'Squirrel AI Award' folks offended that the virtues of their award aren't being considered in their own right? 2. If the prize money is so important, why did the Duke University release's headline not say "A New Templeton"? (The Templeton Prize is awarded to work that harnesses "the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind's place and purpose within it." Pertinently, the prize money [was first set](https://www.templetonprize.org/templeton-prize-history/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to be greater than the Nobel Prizes' purse in order to grab the world's attention. See Q. 6.) 3. Does a prize have to be 'like' the Nobel Prize to be taken seriously? 4. What is the greater cause célèbre – the prize or the work that wins it? (Ref. 1: Cynthia Rudin in the press release: "I want to thank AAAI and Squirrel AI for creating this award that I know will be a game-changer for the field. To have a 'Nobel Prize' for AI to help society makes it finally clear without a doubt that this topic – AI work for the benefit for society – is actually important." Ref. 2: [Piers Forster in *The Conversation*](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2021/10/12/real-science/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): "With a Nobel prize in physics under our discipline’s belt, it gives me and climate modelling colleagues the credibility and recognition we have yearned for: climate science is real science.") 5. Does a recognition need to have a million-dollar purse to be "world-renowned"? Follow-up: What does that say about what the world's people in general consider to be 'renown'? 6. Does Yolanda Gil, the "awards committee chair", expect the award to be Nobel-esque and/or renowned simply because her employers have attached a million-dollar purse to it? Follow-up: Does this mean the award has nothing else going for it? 7. While university press releases are infamous for their hype, Duke University and AAAI appear to be colluding here to hype up the prize. Is this ethical from a public communication point of view? 8. As I've written [about the Infosys Prize](http://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/science-prizes-wealth-location-and-social-signals/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), what is the point of giving a million dollars to one scientist who is already succeeding at their work? Follow-up: As with the Infosys Prize, is giving already-successful scientists a lot of money the conventional way to make the *prize* more prominent? (One simple and entirely non-drastic solution to many of these problems is to decouple the prize-money from the prize itself: give deserving laureates medals and certificates, and split and distribute the money less according to achievement and more according to potential for achievement.) § **Awards as philanthropy?** Bill Gates & co. have made a name for themselves through philanthropy, more precisely philanthrocapitalism. On October 9, Julieta Caldas [wrote for *Tribune*](https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/10/philanthropy-is-a-scam?ref=slightlyacidic.com) magazine that philanthropists' "brand of social justice … follows only the imperative for ruthless innovation," that they "refer to the act of philanthropy using the euphemistic term ‘giving’, which both obviates the need to concretely mention money and stresses the generosity of donors," that "the philanthropic system depends upon \[the poor\] remaining splintered and isolated as subjects" and "represents, at best, a capitalism generously willing to help alleviate the problems it causes," and that "their justifications are cloaked in the language of collaboration and listening, but their guiding principles are nakedly technocratic". She concludes in the headline itself that "philanthropy is a scam". Now, with regard to the last question in the list above: are big-purse prizes a form of philanthropy? Unlike billionaires and/or their estates/foundations, it is hard – if not impossible – to accuse the Nobel Prizes, the Infosys Prizes, the Breakthrough Prizes, the Templeton Prize or any others like them of furthering a technocratic agenda by giving away their money to scientists working in this or that field. In fact, they may not have any agenda at all except to abide by the broad terms of the prizes themselves – or so it would seem. For example, the Nobel Prizes require their laureates' work to have proved itself, so to speak, in some way in the real world, to have been of benefit of society. Here, society's composition, needs and aspirations matter because they determine what scientific work is valourised, adopted, allowed to scale and ultimately become profitable (not just in terms of money, although that has often been a necessary condition). The Nobel Prizes are not outside society, much less beyond it, as its prize-giving body [seems to believe](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58875152?ref=slightlyacidic.com): contrary to popular belief, they don't *have* to be any kind of watermark on scientific achievement. In this context, awarding a million dollars to the recipients, whose work has by definition matured in terms of its application and appreciation to a great degree, glamourises their particular fields of study as well as lines of work and inquiry. And just as philanthropy of the Bill Gates variety perpetuates wealth inequality and preserves the socio-economic status quo, showering money on work that has already proven itself may widen a *respectability* inequality in the sciences. Of course, most – if not all – scientists who go on to win Nobel Prizes didn't start their careers or their eventually award-winning work thinking they would win the prizes, ergo not pursuing one question over another based on the probability of a future laureateship. But on the flip side, scientific work until the 1980s or 1990s is not what it is now. There is an important truth to memes about how Peter Higgs or Albert Einstein may not have been able to produce their greatest work today because they wouldn't have had jobs or brought in a large number of grants; both these tasks have become astoundingly more competitive today, accompanied by concomitantly less secure, more fluid terms of employment. As a result, the appetite for more exploratory and potentially riskier lines of inquiry are unlikely to be funded or supported beyond the best-funded research institutes. There is already some evidence that if the exponent of one topic wins a prominent prize, other scientists working on the same topic tend to become more productive over the subsequent decade. > Our longitudinal analysis of nearly all recognized prizes worldwide and over 11,000 scientific topics from 19 disciplines indicates that topics associated with a scientific prize experience extraordinary growth in productivity, impact, and new entrants. Relative to matched non-prizewinning topics, prizewinning topics produce 40% more papers and 33% more citations, retain 55% more scientists, and gain 37 and 47% more new entrants and star scientists, respectively, in the first five-to-ten years after the prize. Funding do not account for a prizewinning topic’s growth. Rather, growth is positively related to the degree to which the prize is discipline-specific, conferred for recent research, or has prize money. > > Brian Uzzi et al., ['Scientific prizes and the extraordinary growth of scientific topics'](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25712-2?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *Nature Communications* This is just tremendous. The next time anyone from a Nobel Prize Committee blames society for preventing women from winning its exalted honours, someone tell them that whom they award their prizes to may just be influencing that field's success, in turn influencing the scientific output and knowledge that is available for any society to make use of. But more importantly (for this post), it doesn't seem to me to be hard to imagine that Big Prizes have an impact on society that is quite similar to the impact that philanthrocapitalism has on society: to extend the lifetime of what has already sunk deep roots, even if the resources it continues to demand are more in need elsewhere. ### 'Real science' URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/12/real-science/ Last updated: 2021-10-12T12:30:00.000Z From [‘The most influential climate science paper of all time’](https://theconversation.com/the-most-influential-climate-science-paper-of-all-time-169382?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Conversation*, October 8, 2021 (emphasis added): > Manabe, working with various colleagues, went on to write many more [seminal climate modelling papers](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-0469%5F1975%5F032%5F0003%5Fteodtc%5F2%5F0%5Fco%5F2.xml?ref=slightlyacidic.com). He set the foundation for today’s global climate modelling efforts. The physics was beguilingly simple so his models could run on these early computers. Yet, by being simple, the results could be understood and tested. His application of these simple models to the pressing problems of today was insightful. > > After graduating with a degree in physics over 30 years ago, I chose a [career in atmospheric science](https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see/staff/1267/professor-piers-forster?ref=slightlyacidic.com) over particle physics. I always worried about how my applied physics was viewed by mainstream physics colleagues. **With a Nobel prize in physics under our discipline’s belt, it gives me and climate modelling colleagues the credibility and recognition we have yearned for: climate science is real science.** The author of the article is a Piers Forster, a professor of physical climate change at the University of Leeds. The part in bold is an unlikely comment from a ‘real scientist’, quite in the spirit of Elon Musk when the latter [said in 2018](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999579712484790272?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that nanotechnology is “bs”. But while it’s disappointing to read, considering how it equates scientific legitimacy with winning a Nobel Prize, it may be more useful to interpret the comment as a reflection of how science really works: not by the isolation of facts and discernment of principles alone but also through social acceptance and the (maximal) recognition of one’s peers. ### Political merch from a newsroom URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/12/political-merch-from-a-newsroom/ Last updated: 2021-10-12T04:58:05.000Z Shekhar Gupta, the editor of *The Print*, shared the following image on his Instagram profile a couple days ago: ![](https://saidapetsocrates.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/e64da-be7b3-05190-img_2283.jpg?w=828) The post had the following note: > Since we so love politics at ThePrint, we are developing a range of gifting merchandise. This mug is one such example. In the course of the next few days I will share more with you. Please do say what you think. We will soon make these available for sale… I will say what I think. This is a poor but on-point example of a news establishment convinced that it has a view from nowhere upon the world – wherefrom it can dispense both op-eds criticising one policy or the other, news reports that call out one political leader or the other, and merchandise that seeks to appease and profit from supporters of one political party or the other. This would be a view that affords the establishment the belief that the stuff of its reports, even when they get wholly dispiriting with stories of caste and class discrimination, state-sponsored harassment and unpunished demonstrations of physical violence, still only concern the shenanigans of one more political party in the long parade of India’s political parties – and not the symptoms of an unchecked autocracy toppling a democracy. That it is therefore okay to sell mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with images and symbols of different power-players to their supporters who are all, but of course, on equal footing. No; *The Print*‘s decision here is as simple as profiting from Hindutva fandom. Journalism professor Jay Rosen’s comments for the American political press, just before Trump’s ascent, are apt here: > These are people who live daily with “the partisan divide,” a cliché they helped make into a cliché. But on the chance that they’re being sincere let me be equally straight with them… > > Every time you had to “leave it there” after ideologies clashed mindlessly, fruitlessly. Every dubious truth claim you had to let pass because challenging it might interrupt the flow or make you sound too partisan. Every time you defaulted to “will it work?” when the bigger question was “is it so?” Every dutiful effort you made to “get the other side” without asking if the number of sides was really *two*. Every time you asked each other “what’s the politics of this?” so you could escape the tedium and complexity of public problem-solving. Every time you smiled weakly to say, “depends on who you ask” before launching into a description of public actors who dwell in separate worlds of fact. Every time you described political polarization as symmetrical when it isn’t. Every time you denied that being in the middle was a position so you didn’t have to ask if it was a defensible one. Every time you excluded yourselves from a faltering political class. > > Every pox you put on both houses because it felt good to float above it all. Every eye you rolled at the humorless scolds who rage at the White House Correspondents dinner. … Every time you pointed with pride to the criticism you were getting from both sides, assuming it meant you were doing something right when you might have been doing everything wrong. Every operative you turned into an expert. Every unprincipled winner you admired for their savvy. Every time you thought it was not up to you to judge when it *was* on you — especially on you — to assess, weigh and, yes, judge. > > All of it, every moment like that had the effect of implicating you in this mess. > > Jay Rosen, [‘Tone poem for the “leave it there” press’](https://pressthink.org/2015/12/tone-poem-for-the-leave-it-there-press/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *PressThink* India today is not the land of a civil contest between different political parties but, more broadly, a contest for survival between one entity that has seized control of the national government, while being openly dissatisfied with the demands of running the country with a democratic apparatus, and a people who are constantly assailed by a pressure to conform to the upper-caste orthodox Hindutva way of life or suffer physical, social and mental violence. (Did the love of politics miss this?) If, in this context, *The Print* is able to claim that it belongs to no camp, it quite simply belongs to *that* camp. (Aside: Don’t come at me saying other political parties screw up, too. They do very much, but calling their bullshit out doesn’t require distancing oneself from objecting to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s nationalist programme – journalist or not – in the name of objectivity.) **Edit**, 10:56 am: I'm told *NewsLaundry* has been selling similar merchandise for some time now, but the operational term seems to be 'similar'. As one friend said about [this T-shirt](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0480/0325/2390/products/tshirt%5F3.jpg?ref=slightlyacidic.com), for example: "The difference is between lampooning (NL's brand) and apparently celebrating (Yogi as the Vitruvian man, Modi as Leonardo?)." *Featured image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Red Fort, August 15, 2021\. Credit: Prime Minister's Office/Wikimedia Commons.* ### India and the 2021 medicine Nobel Prize URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/10/india-and-the-2021-medicine-nobel-prize/ Last updated: 2021-10-10T03:54:38.000Z The Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for 2021 has been awarded to [David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/medicine-nobel-discovery-temperature-touch-receptors-david-julius-ardem-patapoutian/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) for discovering the receptors in the human body responsible for our ability to feel heat and cold. **Science** Central to the discovery of how we sense temperature is a chemical compound called capsaicin. Its technical designation is 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide. It looks like this: ![](https://saidapetsocrates.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/12c6e-5532d-7b0ad-1280px-kapsaicyna.svg_-1.png?w=1024) The vertices and tips are carbon atoms, a single edge is a single bond and a double edge (the parallel lines) is a double bond. Capsaicin belongs to the vanilloid type of compounds. These compounds have a vanillyl group – the ringed structure on the left plus the OH and O–C ends. Many vanilloids, including capsaicin, bind to a receptor in the body called TRPV1. It is somewhat common knowledge these days that the first step of the novel coronavirus hijacking a cell in the human body is to bind to a receptor on the cell’s surface, called ACE2\. Not all cells express the ACE2 receptor on their surface, but those cells lining the human respiratory tract do. Similarly, capsaicin binds to a receptor called TRPV1, which is expressed by cells of the central nervous system. And once it does, it triggers a severe burning sensation. The Nobel Foundation has credited David Julius with discovering that [TRPV1 is the receptor](https://www.nature.com/articles/18906?ref=slightlyacidic.com) – encoded by the *TRPV1* gene (gene names are italicised by convention) – responsible for our bodies being able to sense acidity and heat, especially noxious heat, i.e. a temperature that could damage tissue. This also means these receptors are involved in our body’s ability to regulate its acidity and temperature levels. Julius, and others, did this by studying capsaicin’s effects on the body. All cells in the body have proteins called ion channels. These proteins are porous, and produce small electric fields that allow some ions to pass through their pores and in quantities determined by the cells’ needs. According to the [Nobel Prize website](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2021/advanced-information/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), Julius discovered that the receptor to which capsaicin binds is TRPV1 (which is an ion-channel-type receptor). Once it binds, TRPV1 allows positively charged ions, especially those of calcium, to pass through, producing an electric signal that travels through the nervous system to the brain. **Democracy** Capsaicin doesn’t actually burn or damage tissue. Its contact with TRPV1 simply prompts the brain to react as if the tissue is being burnt. Of course, this will be of little solace the next time you inadvertently bite into a chilli. But this doesn’t mean capsaicin is harmless either. The burning sensation is still a real sensation, and India has some dubious connections with capsaicin that highlight this truth, which is unfortunate. In 2014, the then Member of Parliament from Seemandhra, L. Rajagopal, was quite opposed to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, which had yet to occur. But hours after the Lok Sabha passed the controversial Bill, Rajagopal stood up in Parliament and released ‘pepper spray’ from a canister into the room, triggering a commotion and forcing his fellow lawmakers to scramble outside. The then Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar called the incident a “blot” on democracy. Rajagopal’s canister didn’t contain pepper, or even chilli, powder. Instead, it held capsaicin that had been converted into a resin, emulsified with water and pressurised into the can. In 2014, Mohan Kameswaran, a senior ENT surgeon in Chennai, had [told this correspondent](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/it-is-neither-pepper-nor-chilli/article5694649.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that “the spray contains an irritant that doesn’t burn but causes a reaction like a burn”. It can’t be washed away with water either. Kameswaran also said that “in people with conditions like asthma or allergic conjunctivitis, \[capsaicin exposure\] could worsen the conditions and make them critical.” Another way capsaicin hurts is by causing the brain to respond for too long to its effects, eventually desensitising TRPV1 to the presence of capsaicin. At this point, the ion channel closes and the body begins to stop being able to feel noxious pain. Since pain is often a signal to the body that it is doing something it shouldn’t be, it is easy to see how being unable to feel pain could be dangerous. **Violence** Capsaicin is available in significant quantities in fruits of plants of the genus *Capsicum*. These fruits include chillies. The spiciness of chillies is measured by Scoville heat units (SHUs). The modern way to measure the SHU of a chilli variety is to [directly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance%5Fliquid%5Fchromatography?ref=slightlyacidic.com) determine its capsaicin content (it helps that capsaicin glows in the dark). Pure capsaicin has an SHU of 16 million. Famously, in 2007, a chilli called ghost pepper, a.k.a. ‘Naga chilli’, from Northeast India became the [hottest known](https://www.academia.edu/54753051/Naga%5Fchilli%5FA%5Fpotential%5Fsource%5Fof%5Fcapsaicinoids%5Fwith%5Fbroad%5Fspectrum%5Fethnopharmacological%5Fapplications?ref=slightlyacidic.com) variety at the time: it had an SHU in excess of 1 million. Such varieties are called ‘super-hots’, and ghost pepper was among the first to be found. And in 2015, scientists from the US reported [something unique](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279564263%5FNovel%5FFormation%5Fof%5FEctopic%5FNonplacental%5FCapsaicinoid%5FSecreting%5FVesicles%5Fon%5FFruit%5FWalls%5FExplains%5Fthe%5FMorphological%5FMechanism%5Ffor%5FSuper-hot%5FChile%5FPeppers?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about them. As Kendra Pierre-Louis wrote for [*The Atlantic*](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/ghost-pepper-heat-research/473361/?ref=slightlyacidic.com): “Conventional wisdom holds that a pepper’s power is concentrated in the placenta – the central core of the fruit that contains the seeds, otherwise known as the pith – and the thick veins that attach the placenta to the pepper wall. Removing the seeds, then, usually results in removing the placenta and veins, thus cooling the fruit’s heat.” But the scientists found that ‘super-hots’ also contained capsaicin in their fleshy parts. The ghost pepper was of course a non-violent connection between India and capsaicin, but the Indian military establishment saw differently. Specifically, it saw an opportunity. In 2010, Col. R. Kalia told [*Associated Press*](https://web.archive.org/web/20100324222353/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100323/ap%5Fon%5Fre%5Fas/as%5Findia%5Fchili%5Fgrenades) that scientists at the Defence Research and Development Organisation had found a way to pack capsaicin into grenades. When tossed, these grenades would release the substance into the air and disperse rioters or flush out terrorists, as the case may be. In 2016, after Indian security forces killed militant leader Burhan Wani in Anantnag, unrest erupted around the Kashmir Valley. The security forces responded, among other ways, by shooting protestors with pellet guns, wounding and maiming thousands for life. The use of these sub-lethal weapons came under criticism. In response, Lt. Gen. [D.S. Hooda said](https://web.archive.org/web/20180630052855/https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/ht-exclusive-army-backs-pepper-over-pellets-in-kashmir/story-Vvc2Y3zkcuISfxxKk7pWrJ.html) a committee appointed by the Centre to look into alternatives was also considering the ghost-pepper powered ‘chilli grenades’. The committee [subsequently recommended](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/Chilli-filled-grenades-to-replace-pellet-guns-in-JampK/article14621960.ece?ref=slightlyacidic.com) the use of grenades loaded with a substance called nonivamide, technically pelargonic acid vanillylamide (PAVA; note the ‘vanillyl’). Research[ has shown](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22961689/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) that though both capsaicin and PAVA are naturally occurring capsaicinoids capable of ‘activating’ the TRPV1 receptor, PAVA could be less potent – but [still more painful](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/nonivamide?ref=slightlyacidic.com) than CS gas, the principal component of tear gas. Official bean counters are always asking “what is the use” of research. Nothing makes a scientist happier than for her discovery to be useful to people. But sometimes science also becomes complicit in the ill-treatment of human beings. [The Wire Science](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/indias-unfortunate-connections-to-the-2021-medicine-nobel-prize/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) October 4, 2021 ### ISRO's national interest bullshit URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/07/isros-national-interest-bullshit/ Last updated: 2021-10-07T06:24:10.000Z For data and other objects, like images and videos, it places in the public domain, the Indian government attaches the GODL license – short for ‘government open data license’. The terms of [this license](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:GODL-India?ref=slightlyacidic.com) are fairly straightforward: that > … all users are provided a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, adapt, publish (either in original, or in adapted and/or derivative forms), translate, display, add value, and create derivative works (including products and services), for all lawful commercial and non-commercial purposes, and for the duration of existence of such rights over the data or information. There is then an attribution requirement: > The user must acknowledge the provider, source, and license of data by explicitly publishing the attribution statement, including the DOI (Digital Object Identifier), or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) of the data concerned. But despite the breadth of its permissions, the license isn’t obviously liberal because of some exceptions (emphasis added): > The license does not cover the following kinds of data: a. personal information; b. data that is non-shareable and/or sensitive; c. names, crests, logos and other official symbols of the data provider(s); d. data subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade-marks and official marks; e. military insignia; f. identity documents; and g. **any data that should not have been publicly disclosed for the grounds provided under section 8 of the Right to Information \[RTI\] Act, 2005**. Note the last one, (g). I have been interested in the GODL license because it is the license on images produced by ISRO and uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons catalogue. I have written about the problems with this licensing setup at length [here](https://science.thewire.in/spaceflight/ekta-kapoor-mangalyaan-altbalaji-isro-copyright/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (principally, a. the license only covers objects published after 2012 and b. ISRO retains the copyright on all its products through a separate statement on its website). In this context, the exception under Section 8 of the RTI Act is notable: it seems quite reasonable, except for the fact that the Indian government has of late applied this limitation to the most innocuous of queries under the Act. A new case in point came with [Pradeep Mohandas’s newsletter](https://pradx.substack.com/) this morning. Twitter user @frustratedpluto filed an RTI applicatio with ISRO seeking answers to 10 queries, transcribed below from screenshots the user shared on Twitter. Look at [the responses](https://twitter.com/frustratedpluto/status/1443622557643468801?ref=slightlyacidic.com) they received. **1\.** Provide what constitutes in Lander Sensor Performance Test (LSPT) Phase-3 test in general? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **2\.** Has LSPT Phase-3 test for Chandrayaan-3 has been conducted? If yes, provide me when was it done? If no, provide when will it likely to be conducted? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **3\.** Provide me the number of Lander Actuator Performance Test (LAPT) were done for Chandrayaan-2? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **4\.** Provide me if any LAPT test done for five engine configuration? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **5\.** Are there any LAPT planned for Chandrayaan-3 mission? If yes, then provide me names of ISRO facilities would be used to conduct it? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **6\.** Provide me the location of NASA LRA Payload onboard Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2? (Please illustrate on a diagram if possible). > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **7\.** Provide me finalised design of Chandrayaan-3 mission > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **8\.** Provide me the expected launch timeline of Aditya L1 and Exposat mission > Based on the present assessment and taking into account the COVID restrictions, the launch is planned in third Quarter of 2022. **9\.** Provide me the number of payloads for Aditya L1 have been received to ISRO from PI institutes? > The information sought is exempted from disclosure under Section-8(1)(a) of RTI Act as it would prejudicially affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest of the state / country. **10\.** Provide me how much time will Aditya L1 take to reach L1 point after being lifted off from ground? > Mission planning is under progress and it will be decided in due course. This is an absolute travesty. Given the extent to which ISRO has invoked exemptions under Section 8 of the RTI Act, you might think Chandrayaan 3 is an orbital weapon, not an S&T mission. These replies, such as they are, have one of two possible implications: either, as @frustratedpluto has noted, they reflect an irresponsible laziness on the part of ISRO staff responsible for addressing RTI applications or they provide a peek into what the government considers to be proprietary information in the nationalistic sense – something to be fiercely guarded against threats as considerable, and as vague, as the national interest. A notable government official said at a meeting I attended early last year that one shouldn’t attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence. But here, confronted with a choice between these two causes of ISRO’s reticence, accusing it of something as slight as incompetence would be laughable. This is more so when: a) We have all been witness to a significant decline in ISRO’s outreach efforts over the last half-decade or so and, more importantly, the people’s and journalists’ ability to access its scientists for information on ISRO missions; b) K. Sivan’s leadership of the organisation has been marked by statements from his and his colleagues’ offices that seem grossly out of touch with reality (perhaps most famously: Sivan’s comment that the failed Chandrayaan 2 mission was a [“98% success”](https://science.thewire.in/spaceflight/senior-isro-scientist-criticises-sivans-approach-after-moon-mission-setback/?ref=slightlyacidic.com)) (A related point here is that by claiming that details of tests like the LAPT and the LSPT are central to India’s scientific and technical interests to the extent that ISRO can’t share their details, the organisation is letting itself, and its mandate and goals, become appropriated by the political establishment, as well as – thanks to its troll army – helping sustain narratives that the establishment is hard at work protecting India from previously unknown threats, one of which might be people like @frustratedpluto asking ‘dangerous’ questions about science missions); and c) The country’s political leadership has made subtle attempts to coopt ISRO missions to its electoral advantage. In fact, the importance The Party places on giving the impression that is in complete control of The Situation (which can be any situation) is impossible to overstate: > The current Government of India is clearly determined to constantly be right and constantly on higher ground, nothing less. To realise these conditions, it lies, evades, deceives and hides when a time comes for it to say it was wrong. When there is a mistake, or even when something entirely out of its control happens, it tries to lie the problem away, either to give the impression that the problem didn’t exist in the first place or that it has found a solution against all odds. > > [‘India COVID-19 Response Suggests ‘Scientific Superpower’ Tag an Impossible Dream’](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/india-covid-19-response-suggests-scientific-superpower-status-an-impossible-dream/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), *The Wire Science*, December 2020 On top of all this, @frustratedpluto has been trolled on Twitter for seeking details of the final design of Chandrayaan 3\. I really cannot see a straight line between this question and the answer that sharing this information would “affect the scientific, technical and strategic interest” of India, but it is tempting to see here glimpses of the Supreme Leader’s [Midas touch](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/india-covid-19-response-suggests-scientific-superpower-status-an-impossible-dream/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and its ongoing disruption of our scientific enterprise. In this context, the GODL license may be small fry – but the fact remains that the government could take it away or limit its terms, in turn further affecting our access to even the photos and videos that ISRO produces, if the government behind it senses even a small threat to its sense of control, leave alone perfectly harmless details about upcoming science missions. *Featured image: ISRO’s PSLV C45 before launch (with modified colours). Credit: Twitter/ISRO.* ### The Nobel Prize, its men and climate change URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/10/06/the-nobel-prizes-its-men-and-climate-change/ Last updated: 2021-10-06T15:01:16.000Z The sciences part of this year’s Nobel Prize announcements have concluded. These are the new laureates: - Physics – Syukuro Manabe 🇯🇵 🇺🇸, Klaus Hasselmann 🇩🇪 and Giorgio Parisi 🇮🇹 - Chemistry – Benjamin List 🇩🇪 and David W.C. MacMillan 🇬🇧 - Medicine/physiology – David Julius 🇺🇸 and Ardem Patapoutian 🇺🇸 I have yet to come across a more overt vestment of faith in the notions of prestige and genius whose increasingly *unjust* nature does little to diminish its value than the science Nobel Prizes. I seem to repeat this like clockwork every year but it bears repeating: few seem to care that the Nobel Prizes overlook the achievements of women (and people of other gender and racial identities) too often for them to be legitimate markers of achievement. Yet they continue to be so. This year, I have one more grouse… of sorts. It is at the least a sad irony at the centre of the 2021 physics and chemistry prizes. The citations for four of their recipients, out of five, connect their work to climate change directly or indirectly: [Manabe and Hasselmann](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/press-release/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (“for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”), and [List and MacMillan](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2021/press-release/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) (“for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction \[that\] has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener”). By awarding its prizes for these citations to no one else, the Nobel Foundation has found one more way to exclude women and others from our narratives of climate change. This may seem like a roundabout concern, if not too tenuous to matter at all, but there is something to be said about justice here – especially what we deem to be steps too inconsequential to achieving it. Beating climate change won’t just require us to lower our greenhouse-gas emissions. More fundamentally, it demands that we abandon modes of social and economic development that privilege [wealth accumulation](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/3/20/21184814/climate-change-energy-income-inequality?ref=slightlyacidic.com) and [gender stratification](https://www.peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/Teaser-4-Sophie-Rita-Women-Undermining-Extractive-Mining.pdf?ref=slightlyacidic.com), among other things. However, the Nobel Prizes seem determined to gather white men at the centre of our conception of how science works and/or progresses ([and thereon](https://cardinalcomma.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/theyre-trying-to-build-a-telescope/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to how we can “develop” or “progress” as a nation), to the exclusion of people who, simply put, haven’t caught the prize-giving body’s attention by publishing in high-profile journals, by collaborating with notable researchers and/or at good universities, or simply by slipping past the surfeit of biases at research centres around the world – from who can [win grants](https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/how-big-is-the-gender-gap-in-science-research-funding?ref=slightlyacidic.com) to whose work [is appreciated](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00654-0?ref=slightlyacidic.com), from who’s selected for [lucrative jobs](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225763&ref=slightlyacidic.com) to who’s rejected on the basis of [‘fertility discrimination’](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537119300429?ref=slightlyacidic.com). And when so many people, including most scientists, kneel at the altar of the Nobel Prizes, they help normalise the marginalisation of non-white (and non-trans) men from the public imagination of ‘important’ science and scientific achievements. This point of view obviously banks on the hope, however misguided, that the Nobel Foundation could become interested in wedding its considerable clout to an agenda to improve the fortunes of those who are held back by society’s prejudices – instead of simply continuing to treat scientific contributions to be wholly independent of the people who make them, and the social circumstances in which they do. This [irrational division](https://cardinalcomma.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/being-apolitical-doesnt-mean-politics-doesnt-exist/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) only entrenches science’s myth of objectivity, and supports fallacious claims that leaving out everyone but (non-trans) men doesn’t [deprive science](https://science.thewire.in/society/gender/quantum-information-q-turn-2020-chennai-brazil-transgender-lgbtqia/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), and its application to human betterment, of novel, valuable and more *just* perspectives.\* In fact, the Nobel Prizes must strive towards this agenda, to echo what I [recently wrote](https://rootxprivileges.wordpress.com/2021/09/29/the-bhatnagar-prizes-are-courting-irrelevance/?ref=slightlyacidic.com) about the Bhatnagar Prizes in India: that these prizes “will fall by the wayside if they continue to fail to provide society with a way to recognise its members’ achievements without conforming to a view of science that became dated decades ago.” But of course, few care. :) \* Aside: The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1938 comes to mind. The prize-giving committee awarded it to Richard Kuhn in spite of his ardent support for Nazism and his [shameful conduct](https://books.google.co.in/books?id=kKXQ4PhcwGQC&pg=PA256&dq=Otto+Hahn,+nazi&lr=&as%5Fbrr=3&cd=11&redir%5Fesc=y&ref=slightlyacidic.com#v=onepage&q=Otto%20Hahn%2C%20nazi&f=false) towards his Jewish colleagues two years earlier. *Featured image: Gösta Florman's portrait of Alfred Nobel, late 19th century. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.* ### Making a good drug URL: https://www.slightlyacidic.com/2021/09/02/making-a-good-drug/ Last updated: 2021-09-02T18:12:35.000Z Priyanka Pulla has a new blog, and in [her first post](https://insicknessandinhealth.in/2021/09/02/india-and-the-nitrosamine-saga/?ref=slightlyacidic.com), she writes about her report in *Mint* on nitrosamine contamination in some Indian drugs and answers two follow-up questions she received from readers. One of these answers contains the following portion, describing what exactly a drug-maker needs to do to ensure a drug in question doesn't have any dimethylnitrosamine (also shortened as NDMA). > To do this, it must invest in expensive apparatuses – maybe a liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectroscopy system (LC-HRMS) that costs up to Rs 2 crore. Then it must find a skilled professional to operate it, and that skilled professional must develop an appropriate method to test for NDMA in the drug. This is because a pharma company cannot directly copy publicly available testing methods: each drug and formulation requires a custom test. This is such a good example of how lack of investment in R&D and of attention to problems in higher education can affect our research output. Many articles (including some of my own) allude to such connections but we don't often come across such clear examples that explain how, say, not being able to access a chromatograph or mass-spectrometer in the classroom or not specifically training students to devise new solutions to new problems leads directly to low-quality drugs that endanger the lives of Indians. Priyanka's article as well as her blog post touch on the fact that investing in an LC-HRMS device plus a suitable person to operate it will increase the price of the drug, which would be anathema in a highly price-sensitive market like India – so drug companies cut corners. But simply harping on keeping costs low doesn't make sense when, as the nitrosamine story alone shows, there are at least two more things we can do but aren't: a) encouraging local innovation on laboratory devices towards reducing their costs; and b) extending state subsidies to manufacturers and their quality control practices, in a way that will improve access to and affordability of high-quality drugs. _Includes the latest 500 public posts. Use `/sitemap.xml` for the complete archive of public content._