Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt
Stephen Platt's Imperial Twilight tells the story of the Opium Wars with more sympathy for the Chinese side than most Western histories—but it is still a Western book. The narrative arc is familiar: a...
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Into the Dream Lab by Michelle Carr
Disappointing to read as a person who is curious about dreams and mental health, for someone who has been researching the same for the past two years. Still interesting enough to learn new techniques that can induce sleep and engineer dreams. These techniques they list what rural communities have practiced for ages - atleast rural communities in India. One of her suggestions is to maintain a dream journal. I have myself maintained a dream journal for the past fifteen months after a friend’s wife suggested because I was sharing my dream with her in the morning.
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From the Shelf
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Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a classic story about survival, not of spiritual growth. It contains hints of colonial anxiety - or lets say colonial supremacy -, which do not diminish after isolation from humans ...
From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett
Profound, thought provoking and insightful are the three most appropriate words to describe this book. It takes on a humongous task of understanding human mind - particularly consciousness - and prese...
The Open Society and its Enemies vol. 1 by Karl Popper
‘Socrates Good, Plato Bad’ is the only way I can summarise this book. Although it may seem controversial, Popper has persuaded me enough to let go of any reservations against the phrase. Popper dissec...
Memoirs of a dutiful daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
The book is appropriately divided into 4 books, each representing a phase of her life - childhood, school, high school, and college. The first book describes a happy childhood of a curious mind - yet ...
The Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtel
The morning after reading the book, I wake up with a different feeling. I doubt if my thoughts on a book so impactful towards society are fair, or will it carry the bias of a critic more scientificall...
Plato and platypus walk into a bar
While the name seems funny, and the authors do make a big attempt in presenting the dour subject of philosophy in a humorous manner, the book can best be categorised as a comprehensive overview of var...
Words by Sartre
The origins of poor literature and trash writing lie in a person’s desire to write long sentences to exude sophistication. The academic rigour and necessity of coherence creates lines of unnecessary w...
Ideas
All Essays →From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett
Profound, thought provoking and insightful are the three most appropriate words to describe this book. It takes on a humongous task of understanding human mind - particularly consciousness - and prese...
The AI Challenge for Humans: Can Society Remain a Passive Audience?
Introduction
On 12 September 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,800-word essay, "We Must Pace the Frontier," asking for controls on how fast frontier AI models are developed [1]. Before th...
Soros on Soros
Great things are paradoxical and so is this book. I can judge this book in hindsight which allows me to be more critical of George Soros’ current mindset. But, at the time of this book’s publication, ...
The Wire
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