Reem

Co Founder Oogwai Analytics
ex Advertising guy.
Bluesky:

[Reem @reemsaied]

Update:
All content creators, podcasters, standup comics & film makers need to read these BNS laws related to free speech
Blasphemy: 299, 302
Promote enmity & prejudice: 196, 197
Insult & public mischief: 352, 353
Sedition: 152
Obscenity: 294, 295, 296
Defamation: 356

[Jason Kint @jason_kint]

Google says its AI Overviews on searches create a better experience and “higher quality” clicks. We were sent research clearly showing otherwise.
- AI Overviews didn’t improve satisfaction
- and they didn’t improve visit quality
- they just reduced clicks to their sources 1/5

[Down To Earth @down2earthindia]

India’s groundwater is in persistent decline, warns a new UN-backed WMO report, highlighting multi-year depletion, over-extraction in northern regions, and a global shift toward below-normal freshwater storage with serious risks for people, agriculture and economies https://t.co/o26424Aq2C

[Reem @reemsaied]

And all this was before AI slop.
Imagine a situation where ai agents “peer review” ai slop and publish in agentic journals.
Infinite supply of “papers”, makes it worth zero.

Need some safeguards. Fast.

[Sann @san_x_m]

Indian universities publish a very large number of research papers.

One man decided to actually read some of them.

What he found was papers bought and sold, fake authors, and journals that will print anything for a fee.

His name is Achal Agrawal.

He has a doctorate in applied mathematics from Paris Saclay University in France, completed in 2016. His research was on how wireless networks share resources.

He came back to India in 2018 and worked as an academic in data science.

Then he started something called India Research Watch.

To understand why it matters, you need to know how academic promotion works. A researcher's career depends heavily on how many papers they have published, and in which journals. More papers means promotion, funding and rank for the institution.

That creates a market.

If papers are what you are counting, somebody will sell you papers.

So there are now services that will write a paper for you, or sell you an authorship slot on somebody else's, or publish anything you send them in a journal that exists only to collect the fee. The industry has a name. Paper mills.

India Research Watch went looking for this in Indian institutions, and published what it found.

In 2024, Agrawal and Moumita Koley at the Indian Institute of Science raised a further problem. They flagged evidence that some universities may have been manipulating the numbers used in the National Institutional Ranking Framework, the government's official ranking of colleges and universities.

That is the list parents look at when deciding where to send their children.

In 2025 the framework changed. It began penalising institutions with high numbers of retracted papers. A retracted paper is one a journal has withdrawn after publication, usually because something in it was wrong or fabricated.

India Research Watch's work is credited with contributing to that change.

Also in 2025, the journal Nature named him in Nature's 10, its annual list of people who shaped science that year.

That list normally contains people who discovered something.

He is on it for checking.

[Tiempo De Tenis @Tiempodetenis1]

Boris Becker salió con todo a defender a Alexander Zverev tras las críticas por su título en el US Open:

🗣️ "Vinieron los críticos diciendo: 'Solo ganó porque Alcaraz y Sinner no jugaron, o Sinner estaba lesionado', o 'Tuvo un cuadro fácil'. No es culpa suya si Sinner se lesiona antes, o si Alcaraz estuvo cuatro meses fuera y pierde en cuartos contra Shelton".

🗣️ "No es culpa suya si todos los favoritos pierden pronto. Uno solo puede vencer al rival que tiene enfrente en la pista. Me parece una auténtica vergüenza y una falta de respeto increíble hacia su rendimiento".

🗣️ "Se metió en la final por tercer Grand Slam consecutivo. De hecho, en Melbourne sacó para partido ante Alcaraz; podría haber estado en la final de los cuatro grandes de este año".

🗣️ "Es el actual campeón de Roland Garros y US Open, y finalista en Wimbledon. Ahora, en la recta final de su carrera, la gente tiene que rendirle el respeto que se merece".

[Philippe A @PhilBlack09]

2/2
#Zverev leads the ranking for hours spent on court since 2023 & has now played 688hrs in 2023-26!
#Sinner is 150hrs behind (540hrs), #Alcaraz & #Medvedev 170hrs behind, #Djokovic 270hrs!
Zverev ability to be physically fit to compete day in day out over the year is unmatched!

[Reem @reemsaied]

Vote rigging in Ancient Greece 👇

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

Ostracism in ancient Athens was an annual democratic procedure where citizens voted to exile a political figure for ten years using broken pottery shards called ostraka...

Ostracism was a political procedure introduced in 5th Century BC Athens, traditionally attributed to the democratic reformer Cleisthenes around 508 BC. Once a year, the Athenian Assembly (Ekklesia) voted on whether to hold an ostracism. If they agreed, citizens gathered in the Agora to scratch the name of the individual they deemed a threat to the state onto shards of broken pottery known as ostraka. If a quorum, typically 6,000 votes total, was met, the individual with the highest tally was banished from Athens for ten years.

Unlike a criminal conviction, ostracism carried no stigma, loss of property, or physical harm. The exile retained full ownership of their land, estate, and financial assets, which were managed by designated stewards or family during their absence. The primary objective was preventative rather than punitive: to neutralize potential tyrants, defuse bitter political rivalries, and protect the fragile democratic stability of the city-state before a single leader could consolidate monarchical power.

Despite its original intent, ostracism frequently evolved into a tool for political factions to eliminate prominent rivals. Illustrious leaders such as Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon were all famously ostracized when their influence swelled or their policies lost favor. The practice fell into disuse around 417 BC following an infamous vote where political rivals Alcibiades and Nicias conspired to redirect the votes toward Hyperbolus, exposing how easily the system could be manipulated.

While ostracism is famous as a political tool, archaeologists have discovered that it was also the stage for widespread vote-rigging and pre-made propaganda campaigns. During excavations of a well near the Acropolis, researchers uncovered 190 ancient ostraka (pottery shards) all bearing the name of the politician Themistocles, written by only 14 distinct hands. This revealed that literate political operatives or wealthy factions would mass-produce pre-inscribed shards in advance and distribute them to illiterate voters outside the voting grounds, turning a supposedly pure democratic safeguard into an easily manipulated popularity contest.

#archaeohistories

[Reem @reemsaied]

According to Bernstein's estimates, "...transactions above Rs 2,000 account for only around 4 per cent of UPI volumes but nearly 70 per cent of transaction value."

Source: ET
https://t.co/GWRg5hUXDy

[Reem @reemsaied]

Not many realise, that @RafaelNadal is the ONLY male tennis player to win the 3 MOST IMPORTANT MAJORS - French Open on clay, Wimbledon on grass, and US Open on hard court - in a single calendar year
@nadalprop_

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Wow, 88 of the last 89 men's singles tennis Grand Slams have been won by Europeans. The 2010s only saw European Grand Slam champions for the men. HT @LevAkabas

[Danny @DjokovicFan_]

This was the point Alexander Zverev was told he'd never play tennis.

He was only 4 years old and just diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. A year earlier he was already hitting tennis balls and dreaming of being a tennis player.

Doctors told his parents that tennis would be too physically demanding for him.

His parents never told any of this to him. They never told him to stop. They never treated his condition as something that would limit him.

They allowed him to train and live his dream.

Many years later this same kid became an Olympic champion and a 2-time Grand Slam winner.

He didn’t outgrow diabetes. He outgrew the idea that it ended the dream.

[The Tennis Letter @TheTennisLetter]

Zverev gave an emotional speech after winning the U.S. Open about his mom and how she helped him achieve his dreams despite struggling with diabetes

“I wanna thank one more person who’s never actually watching my matches but is the most important person in my tennis life and in my life in general.

When your 4 year old son gets diagnosed with diabetes, and doctors in the office tell you that life and sports will be very very limited for that child, it takes a very very strong mother to walk out of those offices and say ‘My son will be wherever he wants to be.

If he wants to be a tennis player he’ll be a tennis player. If he wants to do something else, he’ll do something else. But this illness will not define us.’ My mother is the most important and strongest person I know. It takes an unbelievably strong woman to do what she did.” 🥹

[US Open Tennis @usopen]

HE DIDN'T REALIZE HE'D WON 🏆

Alexander Zverev exorcises his 2020 demons and defeats Shelton 6-3, 7-6, 5-7, 6-2 to win his first US Open title!

[US Open Tennis @usopen]

The camera panning from the clock at 0:07 to Pierce Brosnan.

Absolute cinema.

[Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2]

Elena Rybakina is a breath of fresh air in women’s tennis. No costumes, no flash, no on court antics, no off court yammering, no politics, no self gratifying side projects. She just focuses on her game and systematically destroys her opponents with a sheepish smile on her face. Well deserved US Open title and world number one @lenarybakina

[The Tennis Letter @TheTennisLetter]

Elena Rybakina came to the U.S. Open off of a bad foot injury, but it turned into one of the greatest Grand Slam title runs of all-time.

She missed the entire first week of practice, but believed she could recover, focus, and play her way into this tournament…

Think about how hard that is.

On top of that, she had to beat:

4-time Grand Slam Champion Naomi Osaka.

Olympic Gold Medalist Qinwen Zheng.

2-time Grand Slam champion Coco Gauff.

4-time Grand Slam Champion and the reigning world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

She won her last 3 matches of the tournament in 3 sets.

On top of that, she leaves as the World No. 1.

She does not let the world know her feelings on the court. She doesn’t scream when she’s pumped up. She doesn’t lose control when she misses a sitter. She keeps an icy fortress of composure and focus around her, no matter the moment.

Because of that, not everyone knew the strength, guts, and fire she possesses inside.

But instead of telling us, she’s showing us who she is.

An icy mindset, a heart made of fire, and above all… one of the truest champions the game has seen.

🇰🇿🩵🇰🇿

[Financial Times @FT]

India’s central bank tells Tata Sons to take conglomerate public https://t.co/llUCa9q19r

[US Open Tennis @usopen]

TOP OF THE WORLD 🌎

Elena Rybakina defeats Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 to claim her first US Open title!

[Reem @reemsaied]

@sudhanshuy yes, especially the heavy, large ones with wheels.
small handheld ones can be useful

[Reem @reemsaied]

Two good financial decisions. Thank me later.
1. Don't buy any holiday time shares.
2. Don't buy giant LED tv screens.

[Reem @reemsaied]

Samaritan vs Machine

[Jacob Coxon @hilbertspaess]

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

[Reem @reemsaied]

Very interesting piece. Thanks @DalrympleWill for sharing it.

This fact hasn't been highlighted much in mainstream media 👉 "Russia is now very much bogged down in Ukraine. But if that were to change, there is a 1921 agreement between Russia and Iran. Much of Soviet foreign policy was essentially based on the 1921 agreement, which stipulated that if a third power invades Iran, Russia has the right to send in troops. This is not often discussed, but this was the main umbrella Iran has always had against the West."

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Thoughtful and interesting piece on Iran
https://t.co/SJpD9i0Qlg