Aspiring Expert

An "parenting expert" who took pause during the pandemic to consider if she had any expertise at all (great self-awareness there) and then without skipping a beat wrote another essay on her new found wisdom. My working theory about parenting is that you should have parented upward of three kids of your own and spent a lot of time with kids your whole life to even qualify for the application of parenting expert role. Kids are very different in level of effort and complexity - you could get lucky once but more than three times unlikely. Also, all your kids should be in their 30s before you do apply. Lot of disasters can take place in the late teens to the mid to late twenties. A kid may look like they are off to a running start and have problems lifting off or keeping momentum even if they do. 

Really need to make sure they are fully launched before you as a parent can take a victory lap and take on the role of telling others how to do it right. So this woman with a couple of infants and a very extensive support system claiming to be a parenting expert sounds like a sad joke.But apparently she has made a profession out of doling out her wisdom and now as we see walking some of her earlier pronouncements back. The average parent is already struggling to keep their head above the water and not screw up their kids in irreversible ways. Trading lessons from the field with other parents is always valuable and if there are parents in the expert bracket they should be sought out for counsel at all times, but treating the mother of couple of toddlers as the parenting expert is likely not a recipe for success. 

Old Soap

Nice article about the history of Margo soap. My grandparents swore by it and it was always a staple in our home too. My generation ofcourse had plenty of choice in terms of soap and we liked things that smelled nice. But if we need a good scrub after getting muddied, scraped or cut playing outside, it was always a thorough scrubbing with Margo - nothing else was qualified for the job. I would recognize that smell anywhere and immediately be transported to my childhood. 

Almost a century ago, at a time when Indian markets were being dominated by British-made goods, an Indian entrepreneur rose to take a bold step against it. Although his name is lost in the annals of history today, he was one of the few pioneers of the Swadeshi movement who stood up to threaten the colonial hold on Indian economy, with home-grown Swadeshi products. A revolutionary, a chemist, an entrepreneur and a mentor, this man was behind the research, development and marketing of one of the most prominent FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) products, the Margo soap that today has risen into a popular brand in itself.

It’s interesting to see that this product commonly found in Indian households even today, is rooted in the core of India’s Swadeshi past.

I was not aware of the Swadeshi history of Margo and wonder if that was the reason my refugee grandparents were so devoted to the brand. 

Simple Malady

Was reading this poem, as I was recovering from a minor but aggravating ailment recently. My mother is the person we go to when in need for a home remedy. She usually has one or knows someone who can make a recommendation. This time, it turned out not be enough - I had to seek more mainstream help. For a few days, the conversation changed from how they are coping in the pandemic to how I was doing. In a strange way, it brought them some relief in what has got to be a very suffocating time cooped up in their apartment with no end in sight. 

My issues were not serious enough to warrant their worry and yet it was one where some help was needed. So they sprung into action suggesting what they could to me. The conversations turned more normal than they have been in a long time. For many months my calls have laden with anxiety and helplessness knowing they are on their own there, would need to survive this thing and cope with being isolated for an unknown period of time. 

At their age, the passage of time is very sluggish and without something to look forward to except counting days, it could very well feel like waiting for death. There are no magic solutions for the mental health of the elderly in these times but I try to keep signaling signs of life and movement from afar.

A Chair

Beautifully written short story about a woman and her house guest. The narrator describes the state of her marriage in words that reminded me of scenes from many marriages I have seen at close quarters

At the time we had been married for almost three years, we had two children, and I wasn’t happy. To my husband I represented something like a piece of furniture, which you’re used to seeing in a particular spot but which doesn’t make the slightest impression.

The spouse in due course becomes a piece of furniture around the house that everyone is used to seeing at the designated spot. It may have some intrinsic value even like a chair you sometimes sit on to tie your shoe-laces but not quite the favorite couch where you curl up with a book under a throw. Such a chair has utility in the household and it would be annoying to all concerned if it one day went missing. 

But it is not a big, irreparable loss - another chair can take its place or the person needing to tie their shoe laces could perhaps find another place to do so. Either way, life would go on unhindered. That is why the chair "doesn't make the slightest impression". Such could be the fate of spouse in an unhappy marriage. 

New Words

It was one of those days when I started out feeling low for reasons that feel foolish. It can be described as anemoia. In my case the time I have never known is the longing for having a life that would appear more "normal" to my own world-view. It was therapeutic to dredge through The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to find words that defined how I felt that morning. The one that came close to perfect was nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

Choosing your own adventure is something I was never comfortable doing. My favored way was always to go with the flow of events, not make any sharp moves or big decisions. As luck would have it, I was forced by circumstances to do all of the things that were inherently uncomfortable for me. Had to break from the flow by force, make drastic moves and irreversible decisions. So, the plot of my life was upended to become a thing that I have no agency over. Sometimes on a quiet day, I have the time to think about what the alternate might have been and that could trigger some undefined sadness that I cannot create room for - it seems like an act of ingratitude towards the blessings I have had despite my missteps.

White Room

The experience of reading poetry can feel like looking at a piece of art. Some are bursting with energy and myriad ideas - a visual and sensory overload  that can even leave you fatigued. And there are those like a Charles Simic poem - sparse and requiring the observer to focus intensely on an idea that is presented masterfully. In his poem The White Room, Simic takes the reader along a journey that ends with these lines:

Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn't it.

Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light—
And the trees waiting for the night.

The idea of seeing God in everything was something I first heard about as a child. It may have been in response to my question to my mother about why people would worship a rock under a tree and believe that the rock would answer their prayers. The answer as I recall was faith can turn any object into a deity and in that sense its upto us to see God in everything, So I would wonder about things lying around the house that were not of particular value or use to anyone and wonder if the empty can of paint, the old newspapers or the broken plastic bucket could have hidden divinity in them. There was a sense of absurd combined with wonderment in that idea. But as Simic says they were  "Just things as they are, Unblinking, lying mute". 

On Bullshit

I was deeply puzzled by this piece of writing about real leadership. Granted that the standards of leadership have declined across the board and in business but for this to merit a story is a road too far. You have to wonder both about editorial judgment and quality of readership. In my case I came upon this gem via LinkedIn because one of my contacts had shared it. It brought to mind the time and circumstances of my acquaintance with V, the person who had shared this post. I instinctively un-followed her. 

Yesterday it was someone else also on LinkedIn who had shared their view that our President was appointed by God. I have to wonder if people are collectively losing their beans in these pandemic times or its just a set of random events. That leadership non-story made me think of stories that did not make the news. This one is about the grooming gap - women who take the time to put themselves together earn more than those that do not. 

Not sure how scientifically accurate that research was but the conclusion is somewhat common-sense. I don't see a lot of men in leadership roles looking disheveled either. It would be interesting to track the wage gap for men too - well groomed versus not. The leadership story and the wage gap story have a couple of things in common - they are about women and they are about nothing. I have been reading Bullshit Jobs and its been interesting to hear the first person narratives of people who believe their jobs are bullshit jobs. Extending that concept, the articles cited here are in the bullshit category for one reason or another and the fact that I would take the time to write my "thoughts" about them makes this post derivative bullshit. 

Unlocking Salve

I am a big believer of natural remedies and always try those as the first step. Often, it could be enough specially if the condition is detected early and the symptoms relatively mild. It was interesting to read this

That a mixture of onion, garlic, wine, and bovine bile can work so well in this context is pretty amazing, and it’s clear the inventor of this brew was onto something. As to how it works, that now presents a bit of a mystery.

This is quite an unique and specific mix of things. On the other end of the spectrum of natural remedies would be something like Neem, Growing up, I saw Neem being used as a cure for a variety of internal and external maladies. The leaves were put to use fresh, cooked, dried and powdered, wet ground to a paste or they could be boiled in hot water. If one of these things did not fix the problem then you might look into other options -  found in the yard or in the kitchen too. I miss having a big Neem tree in my yard but I make do with my Aloe plant which is just as wonderful in being the one stop remedy for a variety of small things.

Raising Sameness

I went through a phase in J's elementary school days when homeschooling felt like a very attractive option. In hindsight, we both agree that would have been a bad decision for her - public school played a vital role in her social and academic life despite the sporadic disappointments and frustrations. Reading about pandemic pods brought those days to mind. I can see parents who are going through that phase deciding to pull the trigger because the times justify the action. In speaking with other parents over the years, I have learned that the yen to home-school is not so uncommon but the drivers could vary. In my case it was triggered from feeling endlessly overwhelmed and guilty about not giving the kid enough time. 

When I look back, it was more about me and less about J. I wanted to feel like a better parent and somehow homeschooling would help me achieve that goal. It was fed by a presumption that a well-intentioned and diligent parent and do it all and do it better than a public school where their kid will be lost in the shuffle. The trick is to learn how to stay above the fray, be heard over the noise and make the most of the resources the school provides. This is the life skill the kid will need in the real-world and the sooner they learn the better. If I had gone about my misguided venture of home-schooling J, she would have missed out on many formative experiences that shaped her life - friends and teachers both. These are the people who made J who she is - I only provided support along the way. It would be sad, if kids growing up today end up losing the best parts of the school experience to be substituted by a pod where one or other form of uniformity will doubtless grow. 

Easy for me to say I guess, having been fortunate to have sent J to public schools that bore no resemblance to what this article describes and having teachers there that were nothing like those in Waiting for Superman where I learned about the dance of the lemons. Ironically, those of us who are already getting the best deal out of the system are the most anxious to yank our kids out of it in hopes of "doing better" whatever that entails. 

Yard Thoughts

H cuts the grass in my yard and for a very reasonable price. When I first hired him, he was younger and even more naive than he is now. I asked him to take a look at the yard and quote his rate. The number was much lower than I expected so I offered higher and he accepted gracefully. H is just a few years older than my daughter and was newly wed at the time. I felt a maternal need to protect him how I could. He is a good kid, well-mannered and friendly. The only problem is that it takes about a week each time to track him down for the job. In the meanwhile, his life has grown more complex. He had a baby and the young parents took turns caring for their son as they worked different shifts on their respective jobs. H added some handyman work to his landscaping, the wife was a nurse. A year ago, I started to hear less about wife and child, but he was always happy to show me pictures of his baby if I asked to see. He is now divorced and paying child support and unable to get his professional life organized. 

He cannot be counted on to show up when he says he will. It takes may attempts to make contact with him and get a response of some kind. So recently, we took an afternoon to resuscitate our old lawn-mower back to life and I cut grass myself. It took me a lot longer than it takes H and the quality of my work leaves much to be desired but I controlled the timing of the event which was liberating. I would love to help H - I have previously tried and failed to help kids around that age who shared similar qualities. A nice kid, who probably did not work hard enough at school, now an adult that needs to find their way in the world - willing to work but lacking structure and organization to be successful. The same reasons why they likely did poorly in school. I wish there was a way for me to help H make a successful yard maintenance business but that is wishful thinking.

Grasping Straws

This past birthday I received a Sennheiser Monoural UC Headset as a gift. There is a specific point to this particular choice. I refuse to use a hearing aid though I have very limited hearing from my left ear. To me that is a sign of succumbing to and accepting that my deafness is winning. The last time I saw a hearing doctor and she walked me through the graphs, I felt some despair but it did not diminish my desire to to be defiant. The good doctor was unable to persuade me to consider one of many concealed hearing aid option - so small that no one would notice. I would know and that was not going to work. A knows this about me and hence the gift. It is meant to give me the option to hear through my bad ear all day as I go from one call to the next. 

This way I would be providing aural stimulation to the ear that will likely die on a vine otherwise. Doctors have related this cognitive decline over time - and every time my hearing was measured, I was warned about this by the doctor. I love my gift because it gives me a chance to stay in this fight in my own way and not feel I had to throw in the towel - not quite as yet at least. I know many elderly people who are similarly defiant about getting help for their bad hearing. My father is one of them - and as much I as dislike that he makes it difficult for us to have a conversation by phone, I respect his desire not to be reminded constantly of his failing faculties and requiring to depend on things and people to get through the day. That could feel like a failure to a man who took pride is being there for family at all times, taking charge and being able to provide. It is not just about the loss of hearing - it is about loss of agency overall. 

Growing Up

J is an adult now and makes sure I don't lose sight of this important fact. We have more equal conversations now but there are times when we slip into old patterns. Not all such instances are viewed as negative by either of us - there is some fulfilling nostalgic value to these events and if short-lived. Recently, I was asking her if she remembered when she was a child, I did a weekly performance review with her - asked her how did I fare as mommy the past week. The intent was for her to provide candid feedback to the sole authority figure in her life without fear of consequence. It worked much better than I expected when I started this tradition.

She would offer feedback much in the manner of a good boss - start with the positive, raise the concerns and wrap up on a high note. Maybe it is what humans are naturally conditioned to do because no one taught J how to provide a performance review. I would offer my point of view in the areas she deemed I performed less than satisfactory - in some instances, I would accept that I had been wrong. 

After we had the talk, we both felt better. I believe it gave the confidence to negotiate with me as she grew older while still respecting my authority. Where appropriate, I promised to make efforts to improve even if I could not fundamentally correct my flaws - she appreciated the effort. J did remember the performance review chats but could not recall how often they happened. In hindsight, she thought it was cool but not something kids can routinely expect from a parent. Reading this story about attachment and therapy reminded me of this conversation 

that what happens between client and therapist goes beyond mere talking, and goes deeper than clinical treatment. The relationship is both greater and more primal, and it compares with the developmental strides that play out between mother and baby, and that help to turn a diapered mess into a normal, healthy person. I am referring to attachment. To push the analogy further, what if, attachment theory asks, therapy gives you the chance to reach back and repair your earliest emotional bonds, correcting, as you do, the noxious mechanics of your mental afflictions?

Easy Path

Great story about how one bakery hires its workers without making them contort themselves infinite ways to prove they are worthy of the job. Every job I have had in my life where it turned out to be a positive experience for me, the hiring manager had made their decision with ten minutes of speaking with me. The rest was just process they needed to follow to make sure all the boxes were checked and they were being in compliance with company policy. Everyone else involved in the vetting process knew the decision was already made so we spent the time getting to know each other's professional background, I learned about the work they did in their current role and so on. At the bakery they wisely decided to not waste anyone's time and get on with the program. 

While this is not a formula that can be used in all types of jobs, there are many where the person can be trained and on the job, paid some for their efforts and if all works out well they can be brought on board full-time. Those that do not make it would have hopefully learned some skills they could take elsewhere, the company would have benefited some from what little they managed to contribute. It is a decision about where to spend the money in the hiring process which is always rife with uncertainty for both sides. You take a new job because you absolutely look forward to working for your new boss - and for the few months that you do, life is great. But a big reorg happens and the boss and you part ways and nothing is the same after that. You decide to move on. 

This is not the ideal situation for either side but one of many ways a new hire could leave much sooner than expected, fail to provide enough return for the investment the company made in them - including but not limited to a rigorous hiring process that takes weeks and months and involves a few dozen people to invest their time on the candidate. All of that for nothing. There is a lot of room for improvement in the process - the bakery example is definitely worth drawing inspiration from for any company that has a convoluted hiring mechanism. 

Unwinnable Choice

In her book Why We Can't Sleep, Ada Calhoun quotes a woman who says this about her "career"

“I don’t know that I have a formal career, not one I carefully chose and then built,” said Lori, forty-one, who grew up in Pittsburgh and is now a contracts analyst in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I just sort of wandered around until I finally landed in my current job. And it’s fine. It’s corporate, it’s safe. Predictable. But sometimes, I have these moments of clarity—usually during lengthy conference calls.

Maybe a slightly different journey in my case, but I completely share the sentiment. It is impossible for me to describe my professional life as a "career". To me that would imply that I had a plan and worked diligently on executing it, put energy into accomplishing the goals and milestones in that plan. No such thing happened in my life - like Lori, I wandered around until I landed where I am. Men who started out where I, when I did are now at the top of their game - many are C-level execs and I read about them in trade publications. Unlike Lori, they did choose and build a career, they almost always had a wife who supported their ambitions and took care of everything so they could focus on their work. Lori might have had what it took to be a CFO but needs to make do with being a contracts analyst. 

My friend N, a single mom with two daughters decided go pursue career with the kind of fervor we could only dream of. While all of us women who are her friends and have kids of our own, root for her success and take pride in her many accomplishments, none of us would be able to muster the courage to do what she does. N has achieved things to be proud of, her girls see very little of her and the youngest has some seriously attention-seeking behavior that troubles her. Unfortunately, just like Lori, N has moments of clarity too- also during lengthy conference calls. The questions in her head are about what is right and her duty to her children versus her own "selfish" career goals. 

Postman and Johnson

Early on in Amusing Ourselves to Death, the author Neil Postman writes: 

"It’s great to be an entertainer. Indeed, in America God favors all those who possess both a talent and a format to amuse, whether they be preachers, athletes, entrepreneurs, politicians, teachers or journalists. In America, the least amusing people are its professional entertainers." 

"There is no shortage of critics who have observed and recorded the dissolution of public discourse in America and its conversion into the arts of show business. But most of them, I believe, have barely begun to tell the story of the origin and meaning of this descent into a vast triviality."

What was true when Postman wrote this book in 1985 is true today as well. Everyone is either a visual learner or has to deal with people who are. With that being said, there is no room for robust dialogue or probing ideas for deeper understanding. If you were able to grasp the one concept conveyed in one visual then you are good to do. When an Infographic becomes the most erudite medium of communication, it is no surprise that we all wallow in the "vast triviality" that the author speaks of.

It was interesting to read his take on clocks, the printing press and also eyeglasses. Since some of the same ideas surface in Steven Johnson's Six Innovations that Made the Modern World, one might surmise Postman inspired Johnson to take these ideas through his own narrative arc.

Next Stage

Listening to Being Mortal on my evening walks has been a deeply sobering experience. Every line of the book makes me think about my aging parents and their options as they grow older. Their differences as people continue to impact their life together - my mother is ready for the next adventure, another move meeting new people learning and growing. My father wants to stay back and rest among people and things he knows. 

She was never one to form strong friendships or attachments with anyone - I can't think of one person in the world she could call a friend but she has a large set of acquaintances of various sorts with whom she maintains a superficial relationship. It would be very easy for her to form these connections at any time and anywhere. That is probably to her advantage. My father is more conventional - he likes the known and well-worn in life. 

So when they think about the next phase of life - should they need help to do what they do on their own now, or just grow tired of being self-sufficient all the time and need a hand sometimes, they can't agree on what that phase would look like. I have been encouraging to think about the various possibilities, preparing way ahead of time so there is no unplanned rush to do something they were not ready for. 

They are taking a few tentative steps - making some phone calls, talking to people, asking questions. But I sense this sense of trepidation in both of them that Gawande speaks of so eloquently in their book - the fear of losing freedom to live and become captive to a system designed around priorities that do not at all coincide with their desire to have their own kind of life. This is the story of every elderly person transitioning from an independent life into the unknown. 

Setting Aside

My niece L got married at thirty two and everyone was happy for her. But that was relatively short lived. Given her age, the extended family started to wonder when they would hear the happy news - which means only one thing. There was none forthcoming in the last two years and then the pandemic happened. For now the expectations for her motherhood have taken a pause. In the meanwhile, L has been able to think through what it means to bring a child into the world with the man she is married to. When she views this decision through the lens of her parents' marriage and the degree of success they had with raising her and her brother, she is not entirely sure what the future bodes for her. 

Within my extended family she is one of many women who took pause around this age to make a decision about motherhood. The pressure to become a mother was nearing its peak and so was their uncertainty about that decision. Their marriages would experience shift in the balance of power, the child would force actions and compromises that they would otherwise not need to make. And finally, the option to leave if things did not work out would become untenable. I have know these women since they were kids. Some were born when I was in high school so I have maternal feelings towards them. I could say with some degree of confidence that in an ideal world they all would have loved to have children and made good mothers. Many among them teach in young kids in schools to fill the maternal void. 

Yet, none of them are married to men with whom the parenting journey is one they feel confident or eager to take. They would rather give up on maternal desire than complicate their lives in ways they cannot anticipate. Reading this story about Indian women choosing to be child-free because motherhood is overrated made me think about L and others in my own family. They say that too and there is some truth to that if you have no time, energy or mental capacity to be a parent.

Filter Criteria

It would be funny if were not so sad that a skin-tone filter exists on online matrimony site. It brought to mind the many Indian weddings I have attended in my life and how in the overwhelming majority of them the color of the bride's skin was a metric of great consequence. Lighter the better. Families score points by the number of light-skinned relatives they possess. They carry themselves with an air of superiority. I recall the rather cruel remarks made about my paternal aunts by extended family on account of their dark skin. It is as if their whole person-hood was subsumed by color. It did not matter that every one of them was well educated and had musical talents, it did not matter that they raised good kids or were good wives. They failed the first test by being dark-skinned. 

When I came of age, it was my turn to be ranked and compared by color of skin, to other females of my generation in the family. I fell somewhere in the middle - the place of irremediable mediocrity. One of my favorite cousins was at the dark end of the spectrum. She was very fashionable and knew to work with colors and textures that made her look wonderful. Her make-up highlighted her sharp features and she made made a statement in her hand-loom sarees and kurtis. R had turned the tables on the system and I was a big fan. But not everyone has the inner confidence that R did. The color of her skin seemed to have spurred her to force people to look at everything else about her. When R showed up at a family wedding, she aimed to stun and she succeeded. She made the light-skinned girls, raised to believe they were beautiful feel completely inadequate. Us folks in the middle were rooting for R. She gave us confidence to be much more than a filter-criteria.

Connecting Dots

One of my long-term volunteer gigs has been for a social enterprise. Since they started operations fifteen years ago, online ads had been the mainstay for sales revenue. Customers found they via keyword search, looked up the website and then usually called the main number. Sometimes, they might email but more often than not they called. That business model produced a decent income for the business while employing around ten people. 

Around 2015 the online advertising completely cratered and the business has been on a downward slide ever since. I used to think that not being able to play the online ad game was a function of lack of expertise - none of us had much to speak of. They few times they tried to hire consultants to help remedy the situation, it was just a waste of resources they did not have. Reading this 2018 interview of someone who clearly knows their way around the web, made me re-think how 2015 turned out for this small business and if that was the beginning of the end for many others just like it. 

For years, the site was supported mostly by advertising and a little bit by [affiliate revenue from] Amazon Associates. That worked well until about three years ago, when the wheels started falling off the Internet advertising wagon.

So it turns out the the all sides were hurting in the on-line ad eco-system. The small business where I volunteered was not able to remain visible despite every effort. They used a programmatic ad service that failed to get them in front of the right audience. The ads were being displayed where no one clicked them - such as this very popular blog referred to in the interview.

Old Wars

I missed this story about a lawsuit against Cisco for caste based discrimination until a friend who lives in Cupertino told me about it. L was asking me if I thought this had any merit and if this was even possible. There is a certain level of bizarreness to this whole business that causes disbelief. Our desi brethren have apparently transplanted prejudice that is thousands of years old to their country of domicile. Not at all hard to believe. I have not seen as much of an active caste system in play in companies I have worked or consulted with. In many of these places there are large contingents of desis in leadership. What I have seen in the high concentration of individuals from the same region of India with a shared language and culture - there is certainly some logic to that whether we like it or not.

So if say the boss is Punjabi it would be no surprise to find a large number of Punjabis in the ranks of the organization. They would be the kudzu choking out other varieties of desis - Tamils, Biharis, Marathis and so on. The organization, in this case, if hiring a desi would have a strong propensity for the Punjabi kind. The story is the same for just about every other variety of desi minus Bengalis. We are not an easy bunch to work with, generally insubordinate and difficult to drive towards any shared, common goals. We tend to be too opinionated and rate our own abilities a little too highly. So if the person in a leadership role is Bengali, they don't try to bring in other Bengalis to stir trouble in the ranks. So back to the Cisco story, it will be interesting to see what comes out of it and who ends up prevailing. 

Failed Catch

Watched Catch-22 recently and found it disappointing despite the foundations of a great story and a gifted cast of characters. Sadly the movie feels like a two dimensional caricature of the book which I had read in my college days. The memorable lines from Heller's book are served up as zingers and yet for someone who comes to the movie without having read the book, it would appear facile and comical. They would fail to get the point of it. Satire and dark comedy about war has been done to death - this is yet another one of those. 

For those of us who loved the book and came to the movie with great expectations, we would struggle to explain to the other person why Catch-22 is so special and why it is not all about Yossarian trapped in the eponymous catch but a story of the human condition, the various traps and catches that make up the sum total of our lives. Like Yossarian, we too are afraid of death and don't want to needlessly put ourselves in it's path. As we try to escape it we inevitably run into our personal version of Catch-22. That was the narrative arc of the Heller novel - arguably a very difficult thing to capture in a movie. Sadly it failed to come even close. I found myself defending the greatness of the novel and minimizing the flaws of the movie to those in the family who had never read the novel.

Inverted Pyramid

Interesting article about falling fertility rates. Women once had children for lack of choice and agency. And the large brood kept the woman occupied with childcare with no time for improving her own life. 

".. it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children.In many ways, falling fertility rates are a success story."

There is a myriad of consequences arising from declining population and a high percent of it being elderly. Systems that society depends on are not designed for it. 

Prof Ibrahim Abubakar, University College London (UCL), said: "If these predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option. "To be successful we need a fundamental rethink of global politics.The distribution of working-age populations will be crucial to whether humanity prospers or withers."

It would be ironic if some day, countries that are shunning immigrants get to the point where they compete for them to choose their country over others. 

Duped Twice

 I have been reading Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All and his rants against philanthrocapitalism. His ideas have merit certainly but at some level his tirades against the rich and powerful trying to good without hurting their own interests, does ring hollow. It seems like a cozy win-win situation here. He takes down some holy cows, calls some babies ugly and skewers the rich for trying to solve problems that they created in the first place. 

Yet he speaks at Google on this very topic so the powers that be gain absolution while scoring points for self-awareness. Maybe they are not like the rest of their well-heeled ilk. By giving Giridharadas a platform to tell it like it is, the philanthrocapitalist is able to legitimize whatever it is that they do to "make the world a better place". Works out great for the author too - an endless publicity tour for his book and platform for is opinions. The average person in the meanwhile is being conned twice- into reading this book ( that at some point made a big splash and everyone had heard about) and then having to read rich people tell is the system is screwed.

In Denial

There is a scene in the movie Denial where the judge presiding over a libel case asks the question - if a person actually believes the things he is claiming based on some deep prejudice is holds, then can he still be accused of lying. In this context it was about holocaust denial. It was a satisfying movie to watch but this particular question gave much food for thought given the times we live in.  

There are people who believe that the pandemic is a hoax and living their lives based on such belief. The source of the belief could have roots in political or other prejudice but the person holding it is likely not lying. To that end, if they go around asserting their views and trying to create more awareness of it they would not be propagating a lie but the harm they cause in the process is immense. This review of the movie makes a great point about the absurdity for needing to defend the patently obvious.

.. no one would dream of asking Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin to share a podium or TV studio with someone who believed the moon landings were faked.

Yet in reality the author had to fend off the libel lawsuit by a holocaust denier and it was not entirely given that she would prevail. Her legal team certainly did not take this casually. Made me think that giving up on people who believe in conspiracy and hoax theories can do a lot of damage if these views get to propagate unchecked in acquiescence to their right to free speech.  There could be some that are harmless and even amusing but there are those that could be much worse. Context matters as does impact. As the author says in the final scene of the movie in the press conference - all opinions are not equal. 

Alternate Views

Recently I ran into a Medium post by someone I worked with a long time ago. A very tenacious self-promoter and now an analytics guru, R did a good job of putting her LinkedIn network to work and that's how she showed up on my feed. She edifies readers on how App makers should consider the interests of the target demographics before building an app, some thoughts crossed my mind. R has basically taken three or four simple graphs produced from aggregated App download data and explained what each meant. Are we so mentally lazy these days that we need a bar-graph explainer? R also high-lighted the data points of note in a five paragraph article and concluding remarks to make it worth the five minutes it takes to read this thing. For some reason this is insightful to people and so she is busy speaking about her topic in conferences and doing webinars. 

It is no surprise that clients chase after insights from data all day long and yet cannot take real action on it. In the real world, where the likes of R can't fit the graph to tell the story they need to tell, data can be made to tell any story. It all depends on who is telling it and what drives them to align with a certain narrative. I recall a simple topic and sentiment analysis work my team once did for a client based on their customer survey data. This is a fairly controlled situation where the set of questions was fixed though the answers could one of few options or a limited amount of free text. Technically a very benign project and the more serious geeks could not be bothered to deal with it - too yawn inducing for them. The client had a pretty decent sense of what their customers thought of them - the strengths and weaknesses of the brand so they were eager to learn more from us.

Once the data was put through it's paces, we did have some pretty solid looking charts and graphs. Someone had to come up with the supporting story-line for the read-out. We put L in charge of this job given his knowledge of the domain and also because he told a damn convincing story. Many past successes made him the clear choice. Once he was done, we looked it over, and everything computed ever so perfectly. I recall us having the collective feeling of how amazing it was to have truth teased out from the minds of the survey-takers unbeknownst to them. L was pretty happy and was ready for show-time. 

The show ended up being a real disaster. Every time the client questioned L and team why this and not that was how a certain graph should be interpreted, we had no incontrovertible fact to support our answer. Given that the foundation was in question here, none of the insights or recommendations could remain credible. The client's perspective was just as valid as L's and they had five times more experience in the business and function than he did. So that was the fate of a our much anticipated client read-out after six weeks of work. They paid, said thanks for all the effort and never took any of the recommended actions. It was a pretty humbling moment for us all. R, I presume is yet to arrive at that point in her career. 

Reading Joyce

Instead of starting with his short-stories, I launched straight into Ulysses as a teen and retired hurt never to return to Joyce again. Recently, I watched the movie Nora which made me want to try again - see if knowing about the man and his life would make his writing more accessible. Also, I had age and way more life experience on my side now. This time, I decided to start with The Dubliners and see how I fared before taking on more challenging books. The writer of The Guardian article tells it exactly as it is:

When James Joyce finished writing Ulysses, he was so exhausted that he didn’t write a line of prose for a year. I can believe it; I needed a nap after reading 40 pages.

For the last three months, I’ve glared at its fat, lumpen form on my floor with a vague sense of personal failure. I’ve opened Ulysses twice, determined to finish it, and achieved getting all the way to page 46 (it’s a bit longer than that). I have read so little both times I started that I have never bothered with a bookmark; it seemed too sad flagging such a hollow achievement.

I doubt I will ever make it all the way through Ulysses but it is possible I may manage to read his less difficult looks now.

Blurred Identity

The casualties of the pandemic are many - some make sense and others not as much. Not needing business attire is part of not needing very much clothing overall if people are mostly staying home, so that one makes sense. Odwalla is not the most expensive juice out there - there are others in the similar price range that seem to be doing okay (so far). You have to wonder if these first one's to go in their particular spaces are somehow canaries in the coal-mine for what is to follow. 

Nordstrom's, J.Crew and Macy's have been struggling as well. Would it get to the point where people lose the desire to buy new, fashionable clothes because it does not matter what you wear if who you are is obscured by a mask. The point of fashion has always been to craft a personal identity - if that identity is now blurred with the crowd, how much does fashion even matter. With the juice it is a bit harder to see how the pandemic brought about the demise. It could be the last straw for a company with pre-existing struggles combined with reduced patronage at coffee shops. Interesting list of professions that have taken a hit due to the pandemic.

New Birdsong

The times are strange and the light at the end of the tunnel feel far. Ran into this NatGeo article that is about things way less stressful - the changing song of a sparrow. There are people who spend their time studying birdsong - I have to imagine, their lives have been relatively less impacted by the pandemic. Instead of worrying about the spread of a virus around the world. these folks are lucky enough to ponder the reasons for why a new birdsong went viral

New variations of songs crop up constantly, but the vast majority of these aren’t picked up by other birds.

“For some reason, some birds just went deviant,” says Podos, describing the advent of the new doublet-ending song. “You figure it would have just died on the vine, but somehow other birds must have found it interesting.”

Otter and his team didn’t find that birds singing new doublet-ending songs were better at wooing mates or defending territories, so it doesn’t appear to be advantageous or deleterious. This just adds to the mystery of the song’s virality.

The world needs such specialists to do their thing so there are tiny oases of sanity where others could dip into sometimes. Reminded of these lines from the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance "The range of human knowledge today is so great that we are all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them always has to forego closeness with the people around him"

There is indeed a chasm between academicians who study of the viral birdsong and say brokers selling insurance to extreme sports enthusiasts is not one can be crossed naturally. Thanks to modern technology, it is possible to move more between specialties than had been possible when Prising wrote his book. That is not to say that such movement does not come at the cost of closeness to people. 

Restoring Balance

My friend M had to have her left leg amputated to the knee several years ago. I did not know her when still had full mobility. M has managed to live a reasonably normal and independent life for over a decade now. She uses a prosthetic leg and a walking stick to get around but is deeply resistant to the idea of a wheel-chair. That rejection has impeded her mobility a great deal. If a trip involves a wheel-chair she refuses to make it. I understand the point of pride there and she desire for self-reliance and it has served her well all these years. 

Yet, when I read this story about an all-terrain wheel-chair, I can't stop myself from asking M if she may consider something like this even if only on occasion - to be able to experience the outdoors she loves so much in a way that she has not been able to for a while. The answer is a tentative maybe but I know her heart is not in it. She used to be a dancer back when she was much younger. For a person who's life meaning centered around being able use their legs as their instrument of expression and communication with the world, there might be no path for any wheel-chair to restore balance they once had. 

Fake News

I have been reading Zucked by Roger McNamee. It is a book worth reading even for those who are very familiar with the Facebook story and have a decent understanding of what is so wrong with this "platform". There are any number of long form essays and books on this topic - some of which I have read. Where McNamee shines is in being able to connect the dots and show the reader how Facebook went down this destructive path. Profit over all other considerations and by manipulating human thought and behavior to fuel it's growth engine. I maintain a Facebook page for this blog but never had one of my own.

I use the blog's Facebook page out of a perverse curiosity to understand exactly how Zuck is trying to manipulate the entity that it thinks owns this page - I am sure they have connected dots despite my efforts to make it difficult. How much do they know and what are they doing with that knowledge. I have cranked the dials up and down in terms of how much I would allow Facebook to inundate me with content they believe would stick with me. Based on my home grown experiments with the giant AI machinery of Facebook, I have revealed a few things. 

First, Facebook has determined that I would be very interested in Bollywood gossip and glossy pictures of starlets in beautiful saris. Most women will flip through a fashion magazine if they have nothing better to do and yes I do think the sari is the most wonderful thing a girl could wear - just about any woman looks her best in the right sari for her. As far as Bollywood gossip, its not relevant or interesting to me. The names that I am familiar with are past retirement age and certainly don't feed the gossip mill anymore. More likely, I read news of their passing. 

Second, Zuck thinks that I am interested in pseudo-science and pseudo-social science. To that end a lot of my feed is populated with headlines that suggest research and analysis backing some provocative "finding". Provocative is key here - never saw a story that was not click-bait. The sources are almost always dubious. The likes of Nature or Lancet are not referred to in any of these things. The pseudo social science is even more hilarious. An entire essay could be structured around a line chart and the author could draw the most preposterous, unsupported, unverifiable conclusions from it. The final take-away is always along the lines of "the world is going to hell in a hand-basket". 

Whomever is cranking the levers to create the fake AI at Facebook has not being getting it right about me. I like saris as much as the next desi woman and but fake research is really not my thing. I bet they are missing the mark with millions of others too. But it takes a level of vigilance to mess the AI up to the point that it turns into a joke and can't really do the harm that Facebook is set up to do if allowed to run unchecked. As the authors in the HBR article point out this charade of magical, automatic, machine-driven AI needs to stop and companies like Facebook need to own up to what is really going on:

The first step is to require more transparency from tech companies that have been selling AI as devoid of human labor. We should demand truth in advertising with regard to where humans have been brought in to benefit us — whether it’s to curate our news to inform our body politic, or to field complaints about what some troll just posted to our favorite social media site. We should know there’s human labor in the loop because we want to have both the capacity to recognize the value of their work, and also to have a chance to understand the training and support that informed their decision-making, especially if their work touches on the public interest.

Boxed Education

I may be out of touch with the times but the notion of a K-12 AI camp feels deeply disturbing and disappointing to me. I can't think of one redeeming quality of such education for the under 16 age-group. To create any artificial intelligence of value, the person creating it must have a fully formed emotional awareness and understanding of the world they will be operating this AI in. Kids that young have a lot of growing left to do in that area. A notional understanding of what AI is and the discussing the ethical concerns around it are very beneficial. Just blithely applying the key-phrase social-impact is not a way to circumvent the real problem here. 

Why does an kindergartner need to implement AI Out of the Box? What possible use or good that be to the child or anyone else? What happened to the idea of focusing on fundamental things like reading, writing and numeric literacy and then going on to logic, reason and philosophy? Those are the skills every kid needs to make sense of what is going on in the world and consider what they could do to change things they don't like. Awareness of tooling like AI is good to have so when the time comes they will know what tool is fit for purpose - their purpose. Not some ill-conceived curriculum that puts AI in a box. 

This is exactly the kind of misguided education that is driving academic achievement of American kids down compared to those in other countries. STEM and now AI is not stuff you are pre-process like a frozen dinner and and consume like so many episodes of a reality show. There are basic concepts to learn and build on over a period of time to gain facility with the disciplines that fall under those acronyms.