Anvita
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anvitalakhera.bsky.social
Anvita
@anvitalakhera.bsky.social
I’m fish
And I’m net
I’m fisherman
And I’m time

I’m nothing
Says Kabir
I’m not among the living
Or the dead
—Kabir (translated by Arvind K Mehrotra)

Sociology, natural history, birds, poetry
“The birds’ early activity shows that the dawn chorus doesn’t begin with light–it begins in anticipation of it.”
“The consistency between lab & natural conditions showed that the mechanism is universal. The motivation to sing builds in darkness, & light sets it free.”

www.earth.com/news/scienti...
Scientists discover why birds sing so passionately at dawn
Birds sing at dawn due to built-up energy from nighttime silence. When light returns, they release the energy through intense morning singing.
www.earth.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Anvita
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 AM
“Her writing reminds us that representation – forging words into sentences to capture things, places, people, histories – is the primary effort of fiction, its fundamental act.”
March 27, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Pico Iyer’s “Aflame: Learning from Silence.”: The silence sought and found at the Pacific retreat is, in effect, a silencing of the will. This stilling of “the flow of the purposeful” is precisely how…the Swiss thinker Max Picard defined the idea of silence. lareviewofbooks.org/article/eloq...
Eloquent Silence | Los Angeles Review of Books
David E. Cooper reviews Pico Iyer’s “Aflame: Learning from Silence.”
lareviewofbooks.org
March 26, 2025 at 3:23 PM
On Mavis Gallant: Her fiction…enigmatic &elegant…could also be scrappy, blunt &odd, full of inexperienced people with few resources making dubious choices due to the pressure of their circumstances…would be surprised to learn that happiness was even an option…”

spectrumculture.com/2025/03/25/t...
The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant: by Mavis Gallant, edited by Garth Risk Hallberg - Spectrum Culture
Though it could be enigmatic and elegant as Cheever and Updike’s writing, Gallant's fiction could also be scrappy, blunt and odd, full of inexperienced people with few resources making dubious choices...
spectrumculture.com
March 26, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Anvita
“Vitamin A is not an effective way to prevent measles…two doses of the [MMR] vaccine are about 97 percent effective.

…vitamin A can cause liver damage…doctors at West Texas hospitals have said they’ve seen patients with yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes…both signs of a damaged liver.”
March 26, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Data: Congestion Pricing is Not Rerouting Traffic to Other Boroughs

Traffic on 4 outerborough bridges dropped in Feb— defying MTA forecasts…

At the same time, vehicle entries into Lower Manhattan dropped by double digits since congestion pricing began

nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/03/12/d...
March 12, 2025 at 7:22 PM
“The Many Lives of Sayeda X” by Neha Dixit: bookended betw 2 riots (1990&2020) the life of an “unseen” woman in Delhi working 50 odd jobs to survive. Life of every marginalised women in many countries, yet also uniquely hers due to her religion& socioeconomic status:
writingwomen.co/the-many-liv...
The Many Lives of Syeda X: Whose Story Is It Anyway? – Writing Women
writingwomen.co
March 11, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Katherine Rundell:”There’s a willed optimism inherent in the act of writing for children…To write those books is to insist tht though the world burns,& there is more fire to come,it will always be worth teaching children to rejoice…worth showing them hw to build an internal blueprint for happiness.”
‘The very first children’s books in English were instruction manuals for good behaviour. One of the earliest, “The Babees Book”, from around 1475, is a list of instructions: “Your nose, your teeth, your nails, from picking keep.”’

Katherine Rundell: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Katherine Rundell · Why children’s books?
Children’s books, to a great extent because they are written for those who cannot participate in the market, can offer...
www.lrb.co.uk
February 5, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Pico Iyer & Caryl Phillips on migration, Walcott, Naipaul &home.
“home is the place, for me, where, when you arrive, they don’t want to take you in…even the most undefended refugee shares many of the questions that we carry…”—Pico Iyer

granta.com/in-conversat...
In Conversation | Pico Iyer & Caryl Phillips | Granta
Pico Iyer and Caryl Phillips discuss migration, V. S. Naipaul and the meaning of home.
granta.com
January 5, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Canids as pollinators? Nectar foraging by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to the pollination of Kniphofia foliosa (Ethiopian red hot poker)
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Canids as pollinators? Nectar foraging by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to the pollination of Kniphofia foliosa
Click on the article title to read more.
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 4, 2024 at 2:37 PM
About 125 years ago, four Lakota nuns enlisted as Army nurses, traveling from North Dakota to Florida, to Georgia and eventually Cuba to help wounded soldiers.The first known Native American women to serve in the United States military.

19thnews.org/2023/11/firs...
How 4 nuns were the first Native American women in the military
About 125 years ago, four Lakota nuns were sent to Cuba as Army nurses.
19thnews.org
November 11, 2024 at 2:17 PM
The horrifying desiccation of the Amazon: sumauma.com/en/infografi...

Photo: Severe drought has altered the landscape of the Solimões River in Manacapuru, Amazonas State, forcing the local population to make drastic changes to their way of life.
The horrifying desiccation of the Amazon - SUMAÚMA
River levels have reached record lows in what is usually one of the planet’s great sources of freshwater, another sign that the vast rainforest basin is slipping toward a point of no return
sumauma.com
November 7, 2024 at 6:56 PM