iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Do faculty in India get special training to turn into the heartless psychopaths that their institutions need? Or is it targeted hiring? What are students supposed to think when they see a faculty responding to a student suicide with this tweet?

I am what you would call a "strict" faculty,l
carry a Brahmin surname.
The @iitbombay fiasco is genuinely scary. Am I supposed to discipline students based
on their caste now?
I don't want to lose my job/go to jail.

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aphex twink @peregrinator.net · 07/09/2026

since we're talking about people with PhDs going for 180 and turning brainrotted boomer pilled, my father who is a PhD in ecology thinks any random shit he reads online about psychiatry that looks like a scientific publication is to be trusted. the rest is history

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

It's time for a new season!🥳🥳 For E1, we are joined by friend-of-the-pod Prof Indranil Dutta @academicmargin.bsky.social and Prof Chandan Narayan @ch-narayan.bsky.social for a fantastic discussion on language science fundamentals, ling data, and much more! Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0wqH...

Linguistics 101 with Chandan and Indranil

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Did you know that the Desi Acad Pod does special episodes outside our seasons? Tune in to the latest ‘Supplementary Materials’ where we get into the “physics is totally over” grift economy with Hassaan Saleem @superconformal.bsky.social: open.spotify.com/episode/73VL...

The “Physics is ded” discourse with Hassaan Saleem

Desi Academia Podcast · Episode

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Curious about the full story behind this

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

We join the Bharatiya Junta Pod to discuss The Juggernaut and its position vis-a-vis academic contributors and influencers from the Global South. and how this diaspora publication found itself in the path of LifeofPujaa and the discourse around rural authenticity. open.spotify.com/episode/1z0m...

BJPod Thoughtein hi Thoughtein- Popculture radio hour! South Asia

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

“In 2022, a State-backed tribal welfare body assumed powers it did not legally hold to issue consent—now challenged in the Calcutta High Court—on behalf of the Shompen, a reclusive indigenous tribe in the Andaman archipelago...“ article-14.com/post/a-state...

article-14.com

A State-Backed Tribal Body—Without Authority—Grants Consent On Behalf Of A Tribe For The Great Nicobar Project

In 2022, a State-backed tribal welfare body assumed powers it did not legally hold to issue consent—now challenged in the Calcutta High Court—on behalf of the Shompen, a reclusive indigenous tribe in ...

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Vivek Nityananda @viveknityananda.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Thanks to @wildanimals.bsky.social for the funding and this beautiful coverage of our work. Very exciting to be taking these ideas out into the field. Sarah has been absolutely brilliant and the results are coming in- watch this space for more!

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John Hawkinson @johnhawkinson.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

KSENIIA PETROVA (Harvard clawed frog embryo computational biologist) wins her Vermont habeas case on partial summary judgment: the Court finds the cancellation of her visa was arbitrary and capricious and must be set aside, and therefore the revocation of her visa is set aside.

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Vivek Nityananda @viveknityananda.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Sobering and depressing story about the awful conditions faced by several international students, and how this stems from the terrible politics behind university fees and immigration. www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

theguardian.com

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK

The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

New publication on ant communication from DAP listener, Dr Joshi. Do check it out!

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Very telling that the Union government is attempting to go back to colonial-era laws with expanded medical surveillance, policing, and fearmongering. Who is this for? Not the transgender community, clearly: www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/s... 🏳️‍🌈

hindustantimes.com

'Self-perceived' sexual identities not part of new transgender definition bill

The definition “shall not include, nor shall ever have been so included, persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities.”| India News

Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

It's almost time for a fantastic conversation on mathematics, 'labless science', and seeing the world in an elegant way!

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Kaustubh Naik @kaustubh.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

In my new Substack post, I write about ‘this survived the brutal Portuguese rule’ hook for Insta reels and the algorithmic flattening of Goan history. open.substack.com/pub/kaustubh...

open.substack.com

The Algorithmic Flattening of Goan History

The Instagram algorithm rewards retention and engagement.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

We start Season 11 and 2026 with insights into a serious question: what if your chosen research path is beyond a PhD ? We are joined by Harsha to continue the story of his research journey- onto an industry career: open.spotify.com/episode/16aF... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

S11E1: Pivoting from a PhD- navigating an alternative career path with Harsha

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

It's time for Season 11, and we start 2026 with a discussion on resilience and grace. Harsha joins us again to share how he navigated a career shift when his academic program failed him, the harsh reality of funding games, and the price PhD students pay for systemic problems.

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Chinmay Hemant Joshi @chjoshi.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Pre-print alert 🚨🐜!!! I am really excited to share results from the first empirical chapter of my PhD. We ( @dornhaus.bsky.social and I) set out to examine how fire ants deal with perturbations to communication during foraging. Turns out their foraging is not robust to this perturbation. (1/5)

biorxiv.org

Persist or Give up? Fire ants motivated to search for a high-quality food source even if they don’t know how to find it

Finding resources for the colony is one of the most difficult and risky tasks for a social insect worker. A worker on a foraging trip can face a number of challenges, including interference from other...

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I would not have made this connection.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

It's season 10 (Yes, we can't believe it either!) and the OG gang gets together after a long time to vent about all things academia. In this episode of Desi "postdoctoral" podcast, we catch up with Aditya, talk about our lives post PhD and much more! open.spotify.com/episode/50Uk...

S10E1: Desi Academia Podcast founders meet: Postdoc edition!

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025

Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Any researchers or scholars thinking about Return to India should first try and post in support of our peers.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Have you ever wondered how an Islamic Studies scholar explains their research to an immigration officer? Watch this space for our latest episode, where we find out more!

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

I would I would like to share this snippet from my dissertation's acknowledgements section. I cannot stress how IMPOSSIBLE academic success is in the Global South without disobedience. Fuck academic paywalls forever.

Screenshot: Finally, a huge thank you to the institutions, networks and people who make science accessible. I thank all the scholars who shared their code, data, and research with me in the spirit of open science. I thank all the collectives that battle against the profit-motivated gatekeeping of science and made scientific research a reality for me in the Global South: the moderators, managers, and contributors of SciHUB, LibGen, Internet Archive, and ArXiv. Thank you, Aaron Schwartz. I am profoundly grateful to the tireless defenders and advocates of public-funded higher education in the United States and India, who raise their voices even in the darkest of time. Thank you for fighting the good fight.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

There is something so ugly about a country desperate to claim a foreign prime minister or second lady as its own, while using its military might to displace and exile life-long residents. There is no coming back from purging people's records and casting them out. scroll.in/article/1085...

scroll.in

In today’s India, some will not be Indians no matter how many documents they possess

With processes like the revision of electoral rolls and the NRC, the state is going further down the path of sorting out who can and cannot belong in New India.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Delighted to share that the Desi Academia Podcast is now the "Desi Postdoc Podcast, PhD"! 💪😎 We balanced this production with two dissertations, research projects, international relocations and a whole lot of paperwork. 1/2

Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

What does it take to fight against unethical behavior in research publishing? Tune in to our latest discussion with the founder of India Research Watch, Achan Agarwal , in which we talk about his double career as an scientist and plagiarism sleuth.

Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Indian scholars deserve better. Making the constantly walk a tightrope between blatant exploitation and lack of opportunities is a reflection on our inability to give them value their contributions.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

What is vibe coding? wrong answers only.

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Vivek Nityananda @viveknityananda.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

In March we put on an insect cabaret show I developed with Cap-A-Pie Theatre about insects and the threats they face. We've now uploaded the songs and everyone can now see how brilliant the actors and song-writer were. Thread of songs below 👇🧪 #Insects #cabaret #theatre #scicomm #songs

A poster for a play: "The Vanishing Act: A new cabaret about Earth's disappearing insects". On the right is a black and white ant in a top hat with one leg extended. Radiating from the finger are children's drawings of insect- bees, butterflies, beetles and so on.

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Karen James @kejames.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Reminder: sci-comm and outreach costs money, and it’s being defunded across all STEM fields. It’s not just something scientists “do” (or fail to do, or need to do more). I mean, most of us do “do” it on our own time too, but that will never be enough.

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

It’s pride month 2025 and DAP is back with a new episode with @chowkhani Join us in this riveting conversation where Dr. Chowkhani explains what is single studies or "singleism" and her research that attempts to understand boyhood, sexuality and society. open.spotify.com/episode/3fab...

S9E1: Understanding boyhood, singleism, society and sexuality with Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Small teaser of the things to come! Interesting conversations, amazing people…stay tuned!!

Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

📣📣Coming soon on Desi Academia Podcast!! Very excited for the upcoming episodes of DAP focusing on research around gender and society. Don’t forget to tune in for some sharp conversations and fresh perspectives!! 🎧🎙️new episode dropping soon! *Watch this space*

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Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Privatisation favours the spineless. Source: theobserverpost.com/ashoka-unive...

Meanwhile, Ashoka University issued a statement distancing itself from the professor’s remarks. “The comments made by a faculty member on his personal social media pages do not represent the opinion of the university,” the statement said. It added that the university stands firmly with the nation and its armed forces.

In response, academics from across India have begun rallying in support of Mahmudabad. A letter initiated by Delhi University’s Professor Apoorvanand and Ashoka University’s Professor Aparna Vaidik has called for the withdrawal of the summons, describing the case as an attack on academic freedom and the right to dissent.

Amit Kaushik @amitkaushik3.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

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Thanks to Meghavarshini Krishnaswamy and Vatsal Sachan for inviting me to their fantastic #podcast. I thoroughly had a great experience! In this podcast, I talk about my path into #conservation and #anthropology, and connecting science, art, people, and ongoing projects.