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Starting a thread with the music I like, an eclectic mix of Indian classical, world music, jazz + others. Later additions will come below [@PMenonIFPRI]
Alison Brown Quartet's "Under the Five Wire" from Bluegrass Underground ... youtu.be/fUvLgx-3Rbc via @YouTube
Alison Brown Quartet's "Under the Five Wire" from Bluegrass Underground ... youtu.be/fUvLgx-3Rbc via @YouTube
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Gautam Menon retweeted
This recent story about the high profile failure of two promising heart disease drugs is a great example of the kind of work that AI has cut out for itself to do.
Even at the end of the trials, the doctors and scientists who did it are wondering if they picked the wrong mechanism, the wrong trial or the wrong patient population. This was in spite of the best data that they had which was suggestive of the intervention.
Drug discovery remains incredibly hard because biology is so ill-understood. AI can certainly contribute insights and speed up parts of the process, but the idea that it can somehow magically prevent these kinds of failures is akin to a religious belief.
nytimes.com/2026/11/07/sci…
Even at the end of the trials, the doctors and scientists who did it are wondering if they picked the wrong mechanism, the wrong trial or the wrong patient population. This was in spite of the best data that they had which was suggestive of the intervention.
Drug discovery remains incredibly hard because biology is so ill-understood. AI can certainly contribute insights and speed up parts of the process, but the idea that it can somehow magically prevent these kinds of failures is akin to a religious belief.
nytimes.com/2026/11/07/sci…
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Gautam Menon retweeted
“We have archived the BBC’s coverage for three years … We are calling this first part: ‘BBC: The Would Say Files’.”
#ManufacturingConsent
#ManufacturingConsent
It’s hard to grasp the BBC’s systematic attempt to launder Israeli propaganda until you see the sheer scale of it. Here's a compilation of them doing it at 2x speed.
The latest was on Newsnight on 4 November. When Bernie Sanders called Israel’s government extremist, Victoria it: “And the Israeli government would deny that they are extremists.”
As this video shows, BBC presenters repeatedly do this as guests describe Israel’s crimes: “Israel would say.” “Israel would deny.” “They would reject that.”
We counted 70 of these denials and justifications in 52 aired interviews. The BBC calls this impartiality. But in not one of those 52 did a presenter raise any of these words from Israel’s own leaders:
- “We are fighting human animals.” Yoav Gallant, 9 October 2023
- “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” Isaac Herzog, 12 October 2023
- “They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” Israel Katz, 13 October 2023
- “Remember what Amalek did to you.” Benjamin Netanyahu, 3 November 2023
- Starving two million people in Gaza until the hostages came back might be “justified and moral”. Bezalel Smotrich, 5 August 2024
On 10 October 2023, Tahani Mustafa told the BBC that Israeli forces were not distinguishing civilians from fighters. The presenter replied: “They would reject that.” Mustafa then had to bring up Gallant’s “human animals” herself. The BBC supplied the denial. The guest had to supply Israel’s own words.
That is cherry-picking. The Royal Charter requires the BBC to be impartial, and the public pays for it through the licence fee. In these interviews, it handed its audience Israel’s denials and left out its leaders’ own words, during a genocide streamed live to the world.
We have archived the BBC’s coverage for three years, and we are now counting all of it: 50,000 video clips and many more written excerpts.
We are calling this first part: "BBC: The Would Say Files".
Handing Israel its denials is only one of the ways the BBC launders Israeli propaganda, so we will count every other technique too. Over the next few weeks, we will announce each milestone as we complete the report.
These are the first results, with every clip, quote and source: newscord.org/editorials/bbc…
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Anurag, drawing from his extensive experience as a clinician turned scientist, makes a passionate and well-argued case for Indian innovation and entrepreneurship in the broad medical/diagnostic space.
1/n. I refuse to pay for twitter / X blue tick so this will be a long post. Bear with me. Over the last couple of weeks, it has been interesting to see that my science views are unlike many outstanding clinician scientists who I know. I do not actually practice medicine anymore
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Gautam Menon retweeted
1. Medianama : docs.google.com/forms/d/1_HZV6…
2. SFLC : sflc.in/donate/
3. IFF : internetfreedom.in/donate/
2. SFLC : sflc.in/donate/
3. IFF : internetfreedom.in/donate/
This Diwali, I would strongly recommend that when you're considering giving, please consider giving to organisations like @internetfreedom and @SFLCin (and I'd add supporting @medianama as well. though we don't take donations), because the work we all do helps protect our freedoms online, especially in an environment in India that is negatively impacting free speech, privacy, and the ease of doing business online.
Our role is to hold governments and companies to account and help maintain the balance of power, and things look dire for safe harbor right now: the removal impacts us as citizens, and businesses we work with, not just Meta and Google, alike.
What happens when that support for these organisations vanishes?
Well look at what happened to the fount of digital rights research in India: CIS India, that helped support the learning that many of us gained related to digital rights.
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Gautam Menon retweeted
.@AbdulElSayed makes the fundamental point that criticism of Israel's misconduct is not necessarily a swipe at Jews any more than criticism of Egypt's misconduct is is a swipe at Arabs. If you don't care for human rights for all, you don't actually care about human rights at all.
I've been in politics for a quarter century. It's hard to express how staggering it is to see a conversation like this on corporate US media. The Morning Joe panel gobsmacked by the directness of @AbdulElSayed's points.
(clip via @DropSiteNews)
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Gautam Menon retweeted
Co-organizing a workshop "Modeling complex biological systems: from high-throughput data to cell fate prediction" at ICTS, Bengaluru, from March 1-12 2027. Open to interested graduate students and researchers, applications open now! Link in post below
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Gautam Menon retweeted
I have a story about the pink books, which are Analysis I & II by Tao, published originally by AMS.
I hugely admire Terence Tao, and appreciate that he didn’t curate the bookshelf in the background… But, Javascript for Dummies—on TOP of Guide to the Bible???
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And he's worked in agent-based models!
Newly elected Senator Abdul El-Sayed has an H-Index of 37. This makes me inordinately happy. Expertise matter. Science matters. Facts matter. Rationality is a magic power -- @AbdulElSayed
#ScienceMatters #FactsMatter #BLUEWAVE
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This isn't a field I have any intuition for, but admired the careful documentation: "To make this project fully accessible, I have made a repo with the writeup, history, and full research handoff zip for this project.. Just download it, boot it to Astra or Fable .."
hello there ℤ is Diophantine in ℚ, thanx to my close friends Astra and Claude
The polynomial characterizing ℤ isn’t quite Tweet-sized; it has m=292,890,231,905 variables, is of degree d < 2^^7, and all its coefficients have absolute value < 2^^8.
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Indeed. Nothing has done more to destroy the credibility of the BBC than its brazen support of a genocide.
.@BBCNewsnight @BBCNews constant defence of extremist, genocidal Israel is
1. Embarrassing for the BBC
2. Drains credibility from the BBC
3. A betrayal of basic journalistic standards
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I remember once,a Pakistani-origin bus driver in Amsterdam, expressing a similar opinion to me.
He said "If the Europeans, after so many wars fought against each other, can form a union, why can't we?"
He said "If the Europeans, after so many wars fought against each other, can form a union, why can't we?"
I think of all Pakistanis (& Bangladeshis) as Indian origin. From a place of love, shared history, culture, & language.
Not politically. I have no interest in Akhand Bharat.
But i dream of a day when we have an EU like border regime in South Asia.
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Gautam Menon retweeted
Indian origin mayors of two of greatest cities in the world - London & New York - get hardly any coverage in Indian media. Their anti Muslim bias is bigger than their solidarity for fellow Indians. State legislators stand no chance.
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Gautam Menon retweeted
We need a holistic reform of researcher assessment and incentives at academic institutions
There is a growing disconnect between what institutions say they value and what assessment systems actually reward. Many colleges and universities emphasize broader societal impact as an yet assessment systems continue to rely heavily on publications, citations, and grant expenditures.
“instead of valuing what we measure, let’s measure what we value.”
Reform efforts are already underway at several institutions to revise promotion criteria, increase reliance on narrative CVs and broader impact statements, and better recognize mentorship, open science, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
We need this at a broader systemic level. Creating a better academic and scientific culture should be part of our evaluation.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
There is a growing disconnect between what institutions say they value and what assessment systems actually reward. Many colleges and universities emphasize broader societal impact as an yet assessment systems continue to rely heavily on publications, citations, and grant expenditures.
“instead of valuing what we measure, let’s measure what we value.”
Reform efforts are already underway at several institutions to revise promotion criteria, increase reliance on narrative CVs and broader impact statements, and better recognize mentorship, open science, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
We need this at a broader systemic level. Creating a better academic and scientific culture should be part of our evaluation.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
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Gautam Menon retweeted
We are offering free and priority access (including for commercial applications) to our national river flow datasets to researchers, NGOs, consultancies, and Indian startups. Please fill this form: forms.gle/62YVnFPSvbAw6z…
ILDAS-Flows is a high-resolution streamflow reanalysis the Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS), an integrated hydrologic–hydrodynamic modeling framework for the rivers and floodplains of the Indian subcontinent. Built on a 12 m river network, it provides daily streamflow estimates from 1948 to 2022 in 500,000+ river reaches, assimilating gauge observations from over 200 discharge stations through a Localized Ensemble Kalman Filter (LEnKF). For each river reach, the dataset includes daily discharge, annual maximum discharge and its date of occurrence, 2- to 100-year return-period flood estimates, flood seasonality indices, and fitted flood frequency distribution parameters. Reach metadata include reach and downstream reach identifiers, stream order, upstream drainage area, reach length, slope, coordinates and basin name.
ILDAS: hydrosense.gitbook.io/ildas
HydroSense Lab: hydrosense.iitd.ac.in
ILDAS-Flows is provided “as is,” without warranties or liability for its use, and must not be relied upon for critical decisions without independent verification and expert assessment.
ILDAS-Flows is a high-resolution streamflow reanalysis the Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS), an integrated hydrologic–hydrodynamic modeling framework for the rivers and floodplains of the Indian subcontinent. Built on a 12 m river network, it provides daily streamflow estimates from 1948 to 2022 in 500,000+ river reaches, assimilating gauge observations from over 200 discharge stations through a Localized Ensemble Kalman Filter (LEnKF). For each river reach, the dataset includes daily discharge, annual maximum discharge and its date of occurrence, 2- to 100-year return-period flood estimates, flood seasonality indices, and fitted flood frequency distribution parameters. Reach metadata include reach and downstream reach identifiers, stream order, upstream drainage area, reach length, slope, coordinates and basin name.
ILDAS: hydrosense.gitbook.io/ildas
HydroSense Lab: hydrosense.iitd.ac.in
ILDAS-Flows is provided “as is,” without warranties or liability for its use, and must not be relied upon for critical decisions without independent verification and expert assessment.
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Gautam Menon retweeted
AI agents enter the wet lab.
In new @Nature N&V article, I discuss recent advances in agents running automated labs and ideas on how to make these systems more reliable. nature.com/articles/d4158…
In new @Nature N&V article, I discuss recent advances in agents running automated labs and ideas on how to make these systems more reliable. nature.com/articles/d4158…
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