Writing & field notes
Essays on data investigations, tech and the questions it raises, plus slower notes on football, travel, and the things I point a camera at.
Meet Honey: A hummingbird built a home on our patio
A tiny hummingbird named Honey built a walnut-sized nest in the Christmas lights on our patio. A short story …
A season of two halves: Manchester United 2025/26 review
Manchester United's 2025/26 season was defined by a managerial implosion in January and an unlikely redemption …
TN 2026 Explorer: Every seat, every party, every region in one dashboard
An interactive dashboard for Tamil Nadu's 2026 Assembly election. 234 constituencies, 12 parties with seats, …
How DMK lost Tamil Nadu, region by region
DMK went from 133 seats to 59 in one cycle. The collapse was not uniform. Their strongest regions in 2021 fell …
The Thalapathy bench: 12 TVK MLAs who share Vijay's name
Twelve of TVK's 108 MLAs in the new Tamil Nadu Assembly share the founder's name. A short note from the floor …
Tamil Nadu just elected its youngest, most-educated assembly ever
The new Tamil Nadu Assembly's median MLA age is 52, twelve years younger than the cohort it replaced. 41 MLAs …
The chief minister lost his seat: How TVK knocked out 56 sitting MLAs in 2026
M.K. Stalin lost Kolathur by 8,795 votes to his own former associate. He was one of 93 sitting Tamil Nadu MLAs …
How many of the 329 dummies actually mattered
Three weeks ago I flagged 329 suspected dummy candidates in TN 2026. The results are in. In the cleanest test, …
TVK 233: How Vijay's party won 108 seats in its 2026 debut
Vijay's TVK won 108 of 233 contested seats with 34.92% of the vote, posting the highest seat-to-vote …