Essays & Musings

Apps and digital tools I liked in 2025

And you might too. 💻

Essays & Musings

Gaining context on China and its rise (Good reads)

Between China’s rise in lunar exploration and my visit to the country last year, I’ve grown more curious about how the Chinese collectively think and work. So I set out to gain some high-level context of Chinese policies and history, which have now helped me identify specific areas

Essays & Musings

For the love of RSS feeds, simplify your blog’s subscribe page

I love reading blogs, newsletters, and virtually anything else on the Web through RSS feeds. As a space writer, it’s the best way for me to keep track of, read, and search what hundreds of sources publish every week. And, I proactively offer my own readers an option to

Essays & Musings

Plunge, hope, and rise—poetic perspectives

I recently read lyrical poems by Aurobindo, an Indian freedom fighter, philosopher, and writer. Some of his verses capture deep views on life, and you can almost live through the emotional cycle of progress. The fall But suddenly there soared a dateless cry, Deep as Night, imperishable as Time; It

Essays & Musings

A list of good enough blogging platforms by price if you just want to write

Plus some blog recommendations as a nice side effect.

Essays & Musings

Responding is better than replying

The other day I posed a question on the Web that has (gladly) initiated a string of responses from people. And by that I do not mean comments on social media but entire blog posts. Before sharing a few thoughts on that and making it all meta (the good kind)

Essays & Musings

The story of my blogs

I’m the latest guest on the “People and Blogs” series by Manu. Hearing from people in this series has been a great way for me to meet some of their blogs over coffee. And now some of you web humans reading this might like the story of my blogs

Essays & Musings

On the gap between voter turnouts in the US and Indian elections

2024 is a national election year for both the US and India. Some web searching led me to check past voter turnouts in both countries, and I was quite surprised with the numbers: The US (Source) * 2004: 60.1% * 2008: 62.5% * 2012: 58% * 2016: 59.2% * 2020: 66.9%

Essays & Musings

LinkedIn Newsletters are spam and a scam

Many people have been suggesting me to start a “LinkedIn Newsletter” for my space articles specifically because it will tap into my existing connections and their networks on the platform. After much reluctance against joining yet another siloed service, I thought perhaps it doesn’t hurt to give it a

Essays & Musings

A focused phone experience with Archaic Intelligence

I’m sharing with you the simple process I used to customize my phone such that in terms of incentives, it’s now easier to do the things that are good for me versus the things that are better off accessed with some friction. For any kind of serious work,

Essays & Musings

Mastodon and the Fediverse is too noisy. Why?

Mastodon and most Fediverse platforms may be better than traditional social networks at interoperability but they don’t do much about other issues. In fact, they largely copy these issues straight from the social media giants. Most Fediverse platforms, including Mastodon, publicly display follower counts, like (favorite) counts, and share

Essays & Musings

Tired of social networks? Here’s why you could be Fediverse curious

Many of us are familiar with the feeling of investing time and effort on a particular social network, only to either see it become irrelevant over time or do something stupid or malicious that scatters people over to half a dozen platforms. And so you start over, with all your