Sharad Pandian

History of Science graduate student at Princeton. Interested in heat, standardization, and technology

[Adrienne LaFrance @AdrienneLaF]

New in The Atlantic this morning: an extraordinary cover story by @rosehorowitch.

If you’re generally only reading tweets, emails, texts, and machine-generated sentences, you should really, really read this story (and after that, a novel!):

https://t.co/izCxIr0MW2

[karlcifer @KarlFelippe]

Eu, particularmente, gosto do que o Terry Pratchett fez em Discworld, em que ele usa os termos do jeito que existem, mas no universo a etimologia deles é completamente diferente, como por exemplo:

[Matthew Sitman @MatthewSitman]

"Same-sex love annoyingly poses the question of what the meaning of desire is—in itself, not considered as instrumental to some other process, such as the peopling of the world. We are brought up against the possibility not only of pain and humiliation without any clear payoff, but, just as worryingly, of nonfunctional joy—of joy, to put it less starkly, whose material 'production' is an embodied person aware of grace." (Rowan Williams, "The Body's Grace")

[Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins @daniel_dsj2110]

What a loss. RIP: https://t.co/vFTq7cqSKF

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

Almost every single person on Earth lives with rats. Only 5 million people out of 8 billion live rat free. They are the Albertans.

Alberta is the only significantly human-inhabited place on Earth that is rat free. It achieved this in the 1950s as rats invaded from the East, by introducing a rodent surveillance state, obliging every citizen of the province to report them and terminating any sightings with extreme prejudice. They laid 63,000 kg of arsenic across a 600-kilometre-long, 29-kilometre-wide Rat Control Zone along the province's Eastern border.

Back then, rats were so unfamiliar in Alberta that officials distributed preserved rat corpses to teach people what the enemy looked like. One pest-control officer held public meetings at which he ate warfarin-soaked oatmeal to show it was safe.

And it worked! They held rats off and numbers remained so low that the surveillance and eradication system could keep numbers at essentially zero for years, at extremely low costs – Alberta spends about 11 cents per resident on rat control measures, much less than neighbouring provinces that are infested.

Today, Albertans have grown so unfamiliar with rats that they frequently mistake squirrels, gophers, and other small animals for them: of 875 reported sightings in 2025, only 47 turned out to be actual rats. Pet rats are banned, vehicles entering Alberta are checked, and sightings are responded to with overwhelming force.

Could the rest of the world manage it? Probably not. The secret was to stop them before they could establish themselves. For the rest of us, we probably need gene drives. Read the story of how Alberta won the war on rats at Works in Progress now.

https://t.co/RZVjOXE2wz

[Nate Holdren @n_hold]

my article's up online now, so that's cool. I'd appreciate if you'd read it, please. thank you. (fair warning, it's kind of a downer.)

https://t.co/TBz0gKRUHV

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Vijaita Singh @vijaita]

Excl: Ground reality vs official records: Census fieldwork is throwing up data that differ from govt records on open defecation free villages, use of cow dung cakes/kerosene/crop residue for cooking in urban areas despite LPG connection, no electricity. Enumerators asked to revisit and review the “data discrepancies”.I ✍️

https://t.co/1LaYwpiiED

[Shubhanga Pandey @ShubhangaP]

Nehru doodling and scribbling during Bangdung 1955. Wonderful article by @vineet1232. https://t.co/d36n1ACUqc

[Press Trust of India @PTI_News]

VIDEO | Hapur, Uttar Pradesh: Severe heat has pushed mercury past 41 degrees. Coolers have been installed to prevent the transformers from overheating.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

On May 22, 2026, every single one of the world's 50 hottest cities was inside India. The 51°C tap water in this video shows what that looks like at street level. The house has no water heater. The sun alone heated water in a rooftop tank to temperatures that blister skin.

On a single day this week, 26 of those 50 cities sat in one Indian state, Uttar Pradesh. Nineteen Indian cities crossed 45°C by Friday evening. Brahmapuri in Maharashtra recorded 47.2°C, the country's seasonal peak so far. India's electricity grid hit an all-time record on May 21, with peak demand jumping more than 5% in three days as air conditioners across the country ran flat out.

The tap water in the video gets to 51°C without a heater because of how Indian homes store water. Most rooftops have big plastic tanks holding the household's daily supply, and those tanks sit in direct sun for 8 to 10 hours a day in summer. A peer-reviewed study of rooftop tanks across hot countries measured what happens. With 30°C water flowing in and full Indian sun overhead, a standard plastic tank climbs past 50°C by afternoon. On the worst days it peaks near 60°C.

Lucknow reported a 30 to 40 percent rise in heat-related illness this week. Maharashtra has logged 226 heatstroke cases and at least two deaths since March. Delhi's RML Hospital admitted a 24-year-old man this week and put him in emergency ice-water immersion. A climate research group called ClimaMeter says 44 million people and $341 billion in economic activity are now exposed to dangerous heat conditions. India's average night temperature is climbing about 0.21°C every decade.

ClimaMeter's analysis published this week attributed the heatwave's intensity to human-caused climate change. Summer arrived weeks ahead of schedule. The pre-monsoon rains that normally cool things down failed to arrive at all. India has now logged four consecutive years of record-level heatwaves, and the 2026 monsoon is still weeks away from reaching the worst-affected northern states.

[Daily Nous / Justin Weinberg @DailyNousEditor]

Philosophy and other departments at Nottingham will see significant cuts to their faculty if the administration's plan is implemented. https://t.co/EuIe8qpbN5

[IHPST | University of Toronto @UofT_IHPST]

Congratulations to Prof. Edward Jones-Imhotep on the publication of his new book with @mitpress
Even better: the book is available open access! We invite you all to explore this exciting new work. https://t.co/n5isTIlbXC

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

After surviving 133 years, Princeton’s Honor Code “finally met its match in generative AI,” @rosehorowitch writes: https://t.co/sTDTt8qNmI

[James Vincent @jjvincent]

an absolutely riveting essay — ostensibly about Karp's book, but really about what karp's book *doesn't* contain: i.e., how you create a techno-nationalist elite, with the historical example of the antebellum US https://t.co/3cltO8z94A

[J. History of Ideas @JHIdeas]

Celebrate this coming May Day by listening to Disha Karnad Jani's interview with Edward Baring about his latest book, “Vulgar Marxism," and the relationship between Marxist theory and the practice of worker education. @DishaKJani @UChicagoPress

https://t.co/gt1cWKuuWo

[Tirthankar Roy @RoyHistory1]

Join leading historians and economists as they reflect on why the West forged ahead. This series explores colonialism, fossil fuels, science, and global shifts to reveal how the Great Divergence continues to shape our world today. https://t.co/eOkrTKCN3H