The stickier conversations.
Pieces where I am less interested in being balanced than in being right. On Indian AI, on cultural policy, on the political economy of cultural production, and on the long afterlife of specific works of art. Same pipeline transparency as the Culture pieces. Positions are mine.
Who gets to train the Indian model?
India is about to have its AI moment. The current public discourse is almost entirely about consumption. Almost none of it is about the much more important question of who will be calibrating the models and to whose standards. A short argument for a different question.
Ray's economic effect on Rajasthan, reconsidered.
Satyajit Ray's 1971 novel and 1974 film of Sonar Kella reshaped tourism, local economy, and cultural production across Jaisalmer for three decades. A closer look at the numbers, and what the arts establishment has consistently refused to learn from them.