I had always wanted to post this clip from a weird movie on my first trip to the USA, so now that I am here for the first time in my life, here it is!

আমি তো ভীতু, বেশি জ্ঞানও নেই, থাকিও বিদেশে, আর “পলিটিকাল স্টেটমেন্ট” দেওয়ায় বারণ আছে, কিন্তু সত্যি বলছি, এই এক দশক পৃথিবীর এত জায়গায় এত লোক দেখলাম, কিন্তু মায় বাঙালির মত আত্মঘাতী, আত্মবিদ্বেষী, অন্ধ গাধাস্বগাধা জাতি দেখিনি, তা সে সীমান্তের এপারে হোক বা ওপার।

People of the USA, what scam is it that to save 30 minutes on a somewhat faster Amtrak Acela train from Washington DC to New York City, one has to pay four times as much as the North East Regional or Vermonter train? Vande Yuktrashtra?

I have not taken the RER B for 2 weeks now but have been commuting with the bus of my workplace. Not screaming, crying, shaking, throwing up nowadays. What is this new energy?!

The successor to Cardinal Richelieu, the Prime Minister of the French Kingdom, was known to feel cold and appreciate Indian Chinese food. He was Chilly Mazarin.

Getting bits & pieces back from a dream I saw last night. Involved attending a Giorgio Parisi lecture in Paris, & on the bus back with cool air on my face, watching cars on rainy roads speed by, spraying aerosol while humidity forces a bead of sweat to form slowly on my forearm.

Is there any French university that is *not* under administrative strain, thus delaying things even more so than usual, due to cyberattacks a few months to a few ago?

If any journal wants you to upload the figures of your academic paper separately from the text AND the figure legends separately from the paper, and that’s how you upload on bioRxiv, may the Lord of the Flies have mercy on you if we ever meet.

Syed Mujtaba Ali was probably the last Bengali litterateur who lived in, knew of, and was appreciated by Bengalis across modern borders. Born in what is now Assam (Sylhet), lived in Kolkata, Kabul, Cairo, and Dhaka - in British India, Indian Republic, East Pakistan, & Bangladesh.

I would love to read a book, Alok Rai Hindi Nationalism style, focusing on Bengal and on Bengalis, talking about their relationship to Hindustani, be it Hindi (India) or Urdu (Pakistan). Would be an interesting book.

Given my recent interests, it is crazy how dopamine is only called the 'pleasure molecule' in popular media, while it has such substantial effects on movement. Even Parkinson's Disease implicates issues in dopamine (substantia nigra). Why didn't I think more of this before?

This is the worst waste disposal bin design I’ve seen (this one’s on Avenue d’Italie). Completely malfunctioning with the slightest of wind. Wonder who came up with it!

125th birthday of Ligne 1 (and hence of Paris Métro) today! Here’s the newly inaugurated plaque at Porte Maillot.

Apparently Paris’s first place that claims to serve Indian Chinese, and it didn’t disappoint! The Chicken Manchurian was really good! Shera, Paris 17e.

Wait, the RER C is also not working?! I was supposed to go to Issy from Paris 13. They completely cut off Massy-Palaiseau from Paris? Because they had to hold the Olympics last summer ? Amazing!

What is exactly 'inclusive' in having a satellite meeting of NeurIPS in ... Copenhagen (EurIPS) again? Please tell me about how visas for the Schengen Area via the Kingdom of Denmark are easier to obtain than visas for the United States of America?

Instagram unironically helping solve doomscrolling by forcing one to pause with “ad breaks” while scrolling if you choose to have non-personalised ads and also don’t want to pay 7.99€ a month.

If you didn't hate cars on Indian roads enough yet, here's all the more reason to. indianexpress.com/article/citi...

Happy national day to the French Republic, and happy last day before the RER B starts going bonkers for 2 months and essentially cuts off the Saclay plateau from Paris, asking people to ... postpone their work ... for 2 months. Amazing productivity expectations.

Heart skipped a beat when I saw a 'correction' on a beautiful and famous paper - Dung beetles use the Milky Way for orientation - 12 years after its appearance, but it's just a reporting error of units, which does not change the conclusions. Thank the Milky Way!

Things I learnt today that I can use to get out of situations : - Did you call me a DORK? - No, I meant Drosophila open-rectifier K+ channel

As I wait again for ANEF to literally just *do their one job*, I read - « Ils attendent, souvent dans le silence, un ­renouvellement de titre de séjour qui n'arrive pas, un récépissé qui tarde, une réponse qui ne vient jamais. » www.latribune.fr/la-tribune-d...

Il est minuit à Delhi Il est cinq heures au Mali Quelle heure est-il au Paradis ?

Looking at what architectural marvels to visit in Mumbai and - what's the grey-brown-beige colour that's on most of the colonial-era architecture of Mumbai from? Sandstone and limestone with added pollution? Looks good!

It's 'scientific refugees' if it's from the USAmerique region of France, else it's sparkling economic immigrants who are, & I quote, joining a program, which aims to woo researchers who have experienced or fear funding cuts. www.politico.eu/article/meet...

OMG, I just tasted Japanese Karamucho hot chilli chips in Paris and they are almost exactly like the Lays Magic Masala ones!

It will never not be funny about how much the French used to hate the British, so much so that they funded the then colonial separatists (« Americans ») in the 18th century, leading to economic ruin and eventually the French Revolution.

The air is cool, the sky is overcast, the city is getting back home, heaving a sigh of relief. Paris 13e.

New month, new courriel to the préfecture de Paris, asking them to reimburse 180€ that they wrongly charged me 9 months ago, while I read about how they paid 15,000€ in legal fees for the kind policeman who executed a teenager for the crime of ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶A̶r̶a̶b̶ speeding.

L’État qui aime la police ! 🥰😘 www.liberation.fr/societe/poli...

I thought that the fake Bourbon of India guy was from Bhopal, but I’m seeing this tacky fake Versailles chateau with gold switches and dozens of luxury cars in … Indore, owned by a … government contractor? Look to the Pays-Central, Jacques Necker.

I try to take the only bus back from work (it’s usually too early for me) on days like this (heatwave) as the bus has an AC. However, I had to walk 10 minutes to the bus-stop and OMG. Zero tree-cover, almost melting hot concrete, desiccating air, hell. Got a heat-headache.

WOW, WE'RE DOING TARDIGRADE NEUROSCIENCE? Noice! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Seeing clueless online children on this site go - this foreign-born person (e.g. Zohran Mamdani) lived in the USA for 20 years, why did they wait so long as a foreigner and not naturalize, strange! - and I just can't. They ... don't know *anything* about naturalization, eh?

I’ll be visiting Bombay (Mumbai if you will) for the first time in my life in the middle of August. I’ll there for 4 days, including a weekend. Suggestions of things to do, eat, see, etc.?

The Howrah-Sealdah metro connection was supposed to be done when I was supposed to visit the City of Vice around ২৫শে বৈশাখ but that didn’t happen. Will it happen when I visit the city around ২২শে শ্রাবণ? Paris metro suburban line 18 construction is running on time, by the way.

TIL the Indian Embassy in Paris is stopping the outsourcing of its consular work to VFS from July. The Indian Embassy in The Hague already stopped working with VFS from June. This is a revolution, lol.

One, do people really think that London and Paris have “communist” mayors, and two, do they really think these cities are, sais pas, “socialist hellholes” or something?!

It’s really funny (dark) when British people come to Paris for football marches or music festivals and get beaten and tear-gassed by French police because the French police handbook for crowd control was last updated in October, 1961.

Choose France for Science!

Tried to download a large compressed file from my own Google Drive via Firefox, and it failed multiple times!? Finally used Google Chrome and it worked? What sorcery is this?

Just heard the full version of মেলার গান, the first two lines of which have been all over Instagram for me (আমাদের বকুলতলায় ভিড় জমেছে, বসেছে মেলা, দেখতে যাব আমি তুমি) and holy sh*t, that is a dark song.

We are $750 away from our next landmark of $12.5K, which will see us two-thirds of the way towards securing our baseline funding for next year. To get us there: www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...

Guess which French mathematician wrote this! Devinez quel mathématicien français a écrit cela !

Existe-t-il un moyen de savoir quel RER B dispose d'une climatisation en état de marche ou s'agit-il simplement d'un jeu de roulette de la combustion en cette période de canicule ?

Whenever I go around Paris 75 (like yesterday), I remember how much I love Paris and how much I detest the ~3 hours I spend every day to and from Saclay on public transport that is not adapted well at all to transport people to and from the Saclay plateau.

Are people simply not talking about the National Population Register, related to the House Listing part of the first phase of the 2027 Census of India? It's still planned, right?

Every year, the « canicule » arrives, the Parisian metro system gets completely overwhelmed with no air conditioning or working air circulation, passengers falling sick, technical difficulties, etc. and yet every year, in our climate changey world, they are Pikachu faced.

Is Indian academia the only one of its kind in the world to have an absolute age limit for positions of professors and scientists, rather than a relative to PhD defence date age limit?

A Parisian lab retreat.