This was tough. taketest.xyz/vocab-cat

Why are Nepalis burning themselves to death? A good and timely piece by @inkthink on an issue I have been thinking about for quite some time, and one that deserves much more discussion and reporting. @WeeklyKalam api.omarshehata.me/substack-…

Child abuse allegations shake ISKCON’s Kathmandu centre International Society for Krishna Consciousness Gurukul’s global leadership suspended eight Nepal-based officials pending an inquiry, nearly five months after a family filed a police report on child abuse. The person accused of sexually abusing a girl remains at large. Aarya Chand’s reporting: English: kathmandupost.com/national/2… Nepali: ekantipur.com/news/2026/09/2…

बालेनदेखि ओलीसम्मका संवेदनशील डेटा छताछुल्ल, निर्वाचन आयोगको लापरबाहीले पौने २ करोड नागरिक साइबर आक्रमणको जोखिममा ! techpana.com/2026/159224/bal…

Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream. To kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things. #Futurama

Rahul Rao's (@thariel) review of Pankaj Mishra's "The World After Gaza", in which the centring of Jewish trauma leaves Palestine diminished. himalmag.com/pankaj-mishra-e…

The nurse who wanted to heal Rasuwa Pratima Tamang Lama was a nurse, community worker, and ambitious local leader who dreamed of becoming Nepal’s health minister. The Bhotekoshi flood cut those dreams short. kathmandupost.com/province-n… —by @nayak_paudel

Yet another self-immolation on the streets of Kathmandu. Last time, I wrote about Ganesh Nepali. Today, I am writing about Dawa Lama. And I keep coming back to one deeply uncomfortable question: What has to happen inside a human being for them to believe that their own death is the only remaining way to say, “ENOUGH. I HAVE NO OTHER WAY TO BE HEARD”? I see a lot of people responding with one argument: “Traffic rules must be followed.” Yes. They must. But why have we convinced ourselves that this is where the conversation ends? Traffic rules must be followed AND people must not be pushed to a point where they see self-destruction as their last act of protest. These are not contradictory positions. This is not EITHER/OR. It is AND. A civilized society should be capable of enforcing its laws without losing sight of the human being standing in front of it. If someone violates a traffic rule, there should be consequences. But if an interaction with the state, an institution, or a system leaves a person feeling completely powerless, humiliated, unheard and trapped, then surely we also have a societal question to answer. Not: “Who was right?” Not: “Whose side are you on?” But: “What kind of system are we building if some people reach a point where they believe dying is easier than living with it?” That question does not excuse anyone’s actions. It does not mean rules don’t matter. It does not mean institutions should stop doing their jobs. It means we should have the maturity to ask a harder question while trying to establish accountability - have we left a person no place to plead the case? Have we made it inaccessible to plead the case? Have we made the rules so tough to plead the case? Recently, in our social media when any tragedy happens, our instinct seems to be to pick a side almost immediately - society is breaking apart along political party lines. Us versus them; Old vs. New. And then we argue. And argue. And argue some more! Meanwhile, a human being is dead and the definition of humanity is being redefined along party lines. These moments should have made us less interested in winning an argument and more interested in examining the society that produced such despair. In an age where so much of what we see online is amplified, manufactured or generated by algorithms and AI, even our outrage is increasingly being turned into content. More than 50% of internet traffic is AI generated according to Cloudflare. Surely some incidents deserve more than a “hot-take”, witty one-liner, punchy statements! A human being choosing death because they no longer see a viable way to live, be heard or seek justice should be one of those things. “Sabhya samaj”—a civilized society— not only have rules, they also leave an accessible pathway to let people go to and say, “I am hurting, I am angry, I feel powerless” and ask for help before arriving at “I have nothing left except my own life.” That is the conversation we should be having. I know it is always easy to have an EITHER/OR conversation instead of an AND because EITHER/OR allows you to walk away without delving deeper. “AND” forces us to introspect. Forces us to find solutions/options among a lot of constraints!

Godmother. Used to hang out at their home/studio in Budhanilkantha and the Infoshop in Lazimpat during my +2 years. Went to every show. Learned a lot from guff with Sareena di. Got a shit ton of films & music from Sampreety. Rai ko Ris is still the greatest Nepali punk band ever.

Remembering one of the most important woman and acts from Nepali Underground music scene: Sareena Rai of Rai ko Ris. Almost single-handedly spearheading the entire punk scene in Nepal since the early 2000s An anarcho-punk band - radical, outspoken, extreme leftist political edge

67 years ago today, ‘Take Five’ by Dave Brubeck Quartet was released as a single. It went on to become the best-selling jazz single of the 20th century.

I recently watched the famous lecture by the late MIT professor Patrick Winston, titled ‘How to Speak.’ He opens by saying: “Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, in that order.” Freaking brilliant.

म: १० बजे देखि लाइन गएको, १ बजे सम्म आएको छैन, कहिले आउछ होला? उहाँ: ४-५ बजे आउछ अब। म: के होला समस्या? उहाँ: चपली तिर तार मिलाउँदै छन्, लाग्छ समय। म: यसरी पूरा दिन बत्ती गयो भने त हामी घर बाट काम गर्ने लाई गार्हो हुन्छ। उहाँ: अरु बेला लाइन दिएकै छ त, कहिले काँही जान्छ। 🤷🏾‍♂️

Hallucinating AI robots wrote an article in one of the largest English papers in the world saying I quit writing to become a gardener. I did not! Instead I wrote about them. Read on: sarahkendzior.substack.com/p…

The US scholar Mary Slusser never bought a historic artefact from anyone authorised to sell it. She told herself and others that she was “rescuing” these stolen goods from neglect. But her “care” sometimes physically damaged these artefacts – and always did inestimable harm to Nepal’s heritage and cultural traditions. Discover what went into this investigation by Erin L Thompson in this episode of Himal Footnotes: piped.video/jrbelpBtD08 You can read the full investigation here: himalmag.com/mary-slusser-ne…

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Out now: a new Himal Southasian investigation by Erin L Thompson on how Mary Slusser, a renowned American scholar celebrated as an expert on Nepal's cultural heritage spent years illicitly buying sacred Nepali artefacts and smuggling them out to the United States. Across the Kathmandu Valley, empty pedestals and niches still mark the spots where stolen gods once stood. This investigation traces the paper trail behind one of the largest undocumented removals of sacred art from Nepal and adds crucial evidence to the ongoing global movement to recover the region's stolen heritage. Read the full investigation here: himalmag.com/mary-slusser-ne…

New issue of the journal Himalaya vol 45 no 1 (2026) journals.ed.ac.uk/himalaya New issue of the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research No 66 (2026) journals.openedition.org/ebh… New issue of Studies in Nepali History and Society (SINHAS) 31(1), June 2026 martinchautari.org.np/mc-pub…

My take for the @ProSyn: The floods in Nepal were as much a development failure as a natural catastrophe. While climate change was the primary cause, hydropower expansion and construction along historic riverbeds made the damage far worse. Link: project-syndicate.org/commen…