SARATH THARAYILHS.T.[W] WRITEUPSWWRITEUPS[P] PROJECTSPPROJECTS[A] ABOUTAABOUT
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Building thoughtful software, writing notes, and shipping experiments across data, AI, and the web.

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© 2026 Sarath Tharayil/IST --:--:--

Writeups(22)

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May 2, 2026
The Pharmacy of the World
How India quietly became the source of 40% of America's generic drugs, 60% of the world's vaccines, and one of the most important forces in global healthcare. A fifty-year story of bold laws, brilliant scientists, and one audacious phone call.
May 1, 2026
Why You Dream Big and Do Absolutely Nothing
A deep look at the real neuroscience and psychology behind why ambitious people consistently fail to act on their own ambitions. Hint: it is not laziness.
May 1, 2026
Your TV Is Taking Screenshots. Here Is Exactly What That Means.
The smart television sitting in your living room is a continuous surveillance device. This is how it works, which brands do it, what they earn from it, and how to make it stop.
Apr 30, 2026
The Country That Got Lucky With Two Letters
In 1995, a bureaucrat assigned the internet suffix .ai to a tiny Caribbean island. Nobody cared. Then ChatGPT launched. Now Anguilla is abolishing taxes.
Apr 30, 2026
How Your Wi-Fi Can See Through Walls
The Wi-Fi router sitting in your living room can, with the right software, detect your presence, track your movements, estimate your body pose, and identify who you are. No camera, no sensors on your body, and it works through solid walls. Here is exactly how that works, and what you can do about it.
Apr 29, 2026
A River Runs Through This Website
There is a river in the footer of this website. Literally. Here is what it is, where it comes from, and why I put it there.
Apr 28, 2026
Why Things Work Badly, Strangely, or Unexpectedly in Modern Life
Modern life is full of things that feel broken but are not, things that feel designed well but were not, and things that were designed for something else entirely and just never left. A philosophical walk through why the world is like this.
Apr 27, 2026
The 465 MW Hole Kerala Dug For ItselfSERIES · 3 PARTS
Kerala's 2026 power crisis starts nine years ago with four contracts, a procedural shortcut, and a regulatory body that decided rules matter more than electricity. Here's how the state lost 465 MW of cheap baseload power and then spent two years failing to get it back.
Apr 26, 2026
Why Different AI Models Excel at Different Tasks
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Perplexity all feel meaningfully different to use, and that is not random. Their architectures, training data, and system-level design push them toward genuinely different strengths. Here is what is actually going on under the hood.
Apr 24, 2026
All Of This I Did, Without You
Gerald Durrell's love letter to Lee McGeorge, July 31st 1978. I first heard it read by Tom Hiddleston in LettersLive and have not stopped thinking about it since.
Apr 21, 2026
Probably Means Something Different to Everyone
A phrase like 'unlikely' can mean 10% to one person and 35% to another. This gap has been documented in CIA memos, medical guidelines, and climate reports for over sixty years. The data is stranger and more consequential than you might expect.
Apr 20, 2026
Adding Typefaces to Render Beautiful Malayalam Ligatures
All seven Malayalam fonts available on this site, with live previews. Six are from the Rachana Institute of Typography.
Apr 19, 2026
Building a Personal Archive for the Language I Think In
The old proverbs, the quirky observations, the things that only make sense if you've lived in Kerala. A place to keep them before they expire.
Apr 19, 2026
Your Zodiac Sign is not What You Think It Is
On tropical and sidereal zodiacs, Earth's 26,000-year wobble, and how the Malayalam calendar and Western astrology quietly drifted apart from each other.
Apr 17, 2026
The Struggle Is Real, and That's the Point
Ben Horowitz wrote the leadership book I wish existed before I ever had to make a hard call. Notes on The Struggle, radical honesty, and why protecting your team from bad news is the worst thing you can do.
Apr 14, 2026
The Court That Proved the Textbook Right
India's Supreme Court banned an NCERT civics chapter for saying the judiciary can be corrupt. The chapter quoted their own sitting Chief Justice. What followed made the chapter's point better than the chapter ever could.
Apr 11, 2026
How India's North-South Divide Was BuiltSERIES · 3 PARTS
The North-South divide isn't geography. It's the result of colonial land systems, a disastrous freight policy, and radically different bets on human capital. Here's how two Indias were made.
Apr 10, 2026
My Friend Wrote About Love and Language
Yahvi compared love to language , how it evolves, gets forgotten, and takes on dialects over time. Here's what that made me realise about the people I've lost fluency in.
Mar 26, 2026
Kerala Assembly Election 2026 InsightsSERIES · 3 PARTS
A quick breakdown of how I built my Kerala election reference tool, what the model uses, and where it can be wrong.
Mar 7, 2026
Be Delusional, What If It Actually Works Out!
A short note on useful delusion, public embarrassment, and why betting on yourself is often less ridiculous than it looks.
Jan 29, 2026
The Versions Before This One
A look back at every iteration of this website, from a teal student portfolio to whatever this is now.
Nov 13, 2025
Building an Aesthetic Questionnaire
Saw a fun questionnaire webapp somewhere and decided to build my own, with a bit of personality.