Marcellus Insights

Short read: Going Terminally Offline

The malaise of social media cannot be overstated. As this piece by Nick Magguilli recounts social media’s reaction to the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, an American political activist. He was specifically referring to the slew of comments cheering the killing: “How anyone could cheer for such a thing is beyond me. That’s when it […]

Short read: What do people actually use ChatGPT for? OpenAI provides some numbers.

Over the past year or so, we and most people we know, all have explored ChatGPT or Perplexity or some such AI tool in our lives – professional and personal, to varying degrees and increasingly so. But what do the 700m users on ChatGPT, the most popular of them all, with 2.5bn daily messages actually […]

Short read: The Indian city that sparkles like Paris at night

Long read: The making of Mondo: How Duplantis is reaching new heights

A remarkable development in recent times is the dominance of specific individuals in sport. Tennis witnessed almost two decades of dominance by the troika of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. The world was waiting for the sport to get democratised as these legends inevitably aged, only to see a new era of ‘Sincaraz’ […]

Long read: How separate lifts in Mumbai highrises sustain caste prejudice in the city

Nolina Minj of Scroll takes all of us who live in buildings which have separate “Service Lifts” to task in this hard-hitting essay. If you are someone who enjoys the fact that the people working for you use Service Lifts you might want to skip this article. Service Lifts says Ms Minj not only eat […]

Long read: India’s Data Workers: The Human Labour Making Machines Learn

Whilst it is increasingly obvious that AI and workplace automation is adversely affecting the Indian job market thanks to multiple rounds of layoffs from tech companies (and more silent job cutting by Financial Services and Media companies), Neha Arya points out that the world has seen multiple rounds of tech driven job destruction and creation […]

Short read: Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

If you are one of those who looks forward to the Three Longs and Three Shorts every Sunday or any other form of reading, you should know that you are a rare and dwindling breed. The Economist follows up the FT piece we featured last week on the same subject of the decline of reading as a habit. So, […]

Short read: Why we have hair on our heads

“We were once covered head to foot in hair. And then we lost most of it but kept the mop up top. Why the hairy scalp? What scientific purpose does it serve? “ Filmmaker Alexander Trowbridge investigates. In this video he says that the main function of hair is “protecting the head’s precious contents…beyond protecting you […]

Short read: Why India Should Not Walk Into the China-Russia Trap

Over the past month as India has tried to build a future without America as a geo-political ally, India’s flirtation with China has led to a slew of editorials around the world about whether the Dragon and the Elephant are now going to kiss & make-up. Amongst these articles, James Crabtree’s piece stands out for […]

Long read: If you meet the Singaporean on the road

Continuing with the theme of building nations, here’s a counter-intuitive take on Singapore – a country people world over have marvelled at over the years, all the more commendable given the short span in which it has achieved this status. The author, a Singaporean whilst proud of its development, laments about the lack of creativity. […]

Long read: Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire

In last week’s edition, we featured a piece on the Electro-Industrial stack that will build the future as software gets embedded into industrial systems and how America is behind China on critical elements of this stack. This piece in some ways builds on that. It is actually a critical review of a new book on China, the world is […]

Long read: How Patients—And Private Hospitals—Are Struggling With Ayushman Bharat

The Ayushman Bharat (AB) health insurance program for the masses should be hailed as one of the major achievements of this NDA government. Brilliant in conception, AB gives the poor access to Rs 10 lakhs of annual health cover at a small fraction of the cost of medical insurance policies from the private sector. Furthermore, […]