Intrinsic Value

Watching this video about play-to-earn NFT games left me bewildered. I had to go read more to understand how the monetization worked. 

Ever since online gaming enabled shared virtual worlds, there has been some form of a real-money market for digital items. Whether the grey-market trade of potentially stolen accounts/goods, or the more official purchasing of skins, hats, or other cosmetics directly from the developer—people like to collect digital assets and are willing to spend on their hobby.

Before blockchain, though, the digital items players spent countless hours amassing weren’t technically even theirs. The items are available to use, of course, but they aren’t actually owned by the player. 

Blockchain tech, and more specifically non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have completely changed the game. Players actually own their digital items, which can be easily verified. 

So if you own things that have intrinsic value even if among a select group of people, there is a way to convert that to real money. The idea that people in rural parts of the third world having lost most of their traditional ways of earning a living will now play NFT games to make one seems wrong. If this was one of many options they had and chose of their own volition that would be fine but collecting Axies is the only way to survive that is a different matter entirely. 

Work Anywhere

A smart example for other companies to emulate. Being at home surrounded by people and things that make you comfortable helps employees cope with work environments that are difficult and even toxic. Home can be the buffer from a lot of that. My friend L changed jobs in the middle of the pandemic and does not like her new workplace. Over time she's learned to navigate but it does not make the conditions any better. Recently, she told me that if she had to commute each day to work with these people in a physical office collocated for eight hours a day, she would quit. 

The only thing that makes this bearable is she works from home. Can take short breaks between meetings, walk her dog and chat with her old neighbor who is always out in the yard tending her plants. These things keep her sane and not having to spend time with people she has very little in common with. In a physical office, you need to keep your game face on all the time, can't turn off the camera and not bother about it anymore. If some companies go the way of GoCardless, the rest will be forced to follow-suit or lose good talent like L. 

Dream Writing

Reading this article reminded me of an admonishment I often heard as a child - dreaming about stuff does not make it real, you have to work for it. That position would be worth reconsidering now. 

Somewhere in our writing thought process, we form the intention of using a specific character, and using an implant to track this intention could potentially work. Unfortunately, the process is not especially well understood.

Downstream of that intention, a decision is transmitted to the motor cortex, where it's translated into actions. Again, there's an intent stage, where the motor cortex determines it will form the letter (by typing or writing, for example), which is then translated into the specific muscle motions required to perform the action.

There is indeed a tenuous path from dreaming to doing. My handwriting has been on a downward slide for decades with no signs of improvement despite switching to a fountain pen for note-taking. I thought that for sure would help. The decline in quality could hold indicators for my health if I knew what to look for. 

Hot Coal

I read this interview on a day I had dealt with some aggravating stuff including a guy in pickup truck trying to mow us down in rage as we were out on our walk. He got off the driveway and over the curb and charged at us all because we declined his request for using my cellphone. We called the police, provided enough information to hopefully stop this demented individual before he caused serious harm to people. 

.. becoming more self-aware made you less creative. I said no, it makes you more creative but less productive...Because you become less driven. The neuroses and anxieties that make you driven become reduced.

Back to the interview, lot of little gems all around. This one, I thought was very poignant: 

I can't claim I know this to be true by personal experience. There was a certain level of manic energy I once had fueled by misplaced anger at people and events they were part of. I believed that was the source of all my troubles. So part of that energy was expended in proving the naysayers wrong. The remaining was spent trying to sever ties with the rest. Both bad and stupid ideas to say the least. However, one of the beneficial side effects was that it allowed me to work hard at useful goals. So once I was able to see the error of my ways, I was left with some good that served me well. 

Back to the guy in the car, maybe his life had crashed and burned around him exactly at the time he saw us walking by. Maybe something about us served as a trigger and he wanted to engage aggressively. Maybe he did not have anyone tell him that “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” But he is definitely driven by his anxieties and neuroses at a level that is harmful to society. If therapy could reduce his drive and "productivity" the world would be well served.

Mowing Grass

Mowing grass and pulling weeds are among my preferred ways to fight stress. It is real, tangible work and the results are directly proportional to time and effort applied. None of that is true about the rest of my life. I find the complete predictability of outcomes (in a world that is spinning out of control) very comforting and apparently so do many others.

“Mowing generates by far the most reports of players having a really positive experience with regards to mental health,” Loades said. “We have had some really touching feedback. 2020 was a stressful year, so there were a lot of people playing to relax, but also frontline workers playing to help with the stress of the pandemic and even people playing to help with the grief of loved ones dying. It is hugely rewarding for us as the developers to get this kind of feedback, and it wasn't really a thing with our previous games.”

The game was designed to create a zen-like state, Loades says, noting that he’s especially proud of the digital grass and how it moves in the virtual wind. They wanted to tap into that sense of satisfaction you get from taking something messy (in this case, too-long grass) and morphing it into something neat and tidy.

Comforting Words

It takes that feeling of being in a purgatory to cling hard to one's roots. Listening to Tagore's songs on death have been my way to cope with it. To understand the beauty of the words feels like a great privilege - one that J does not have. Her roots are not where mine are and maybe that is okay. It's a gift I owe her and have to find a way to give to her. We were talking the other day about her college experience is shaping up to be. 

The kids have been yanked back and forth between the cloister of home and freedom of college life several times through the course of the pandemic. For some this is proved to be a growth experience where they re-doubled their efforts to be free despite the conditions while others regressed to safer place going back to being a child. 

The group of friend J started out with pre-pandemic has morphed into smaller sub-groups based on how they have been able to cope with "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". In a much smaller way, J is grieving the loss of what college might have been and what it has become, the lifelong bonds that could have formed and what the reality of her own experience might be. Compared to the over-sized, incomprehensible stories of loss that we are surrounded by these days, J's woes are very insignificant but they too need expression and resolution. I sent her these lines by Jane Hirshfield for comfort.

All the difficult hours and minutes

are like salted plums in a jar.

Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,

they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass.

Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.

First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

Safely Invisible

Reading this story about fish that are all but invisible and cannot be caught by nets warmed the heart. Good for these fish and may we never find ways to catch them and disturb their way of life.

An international team of marine biologists has found mesopelagic fish in the earth's oceans constitute 10 to 30 times more biomass than previously thought.

UWA Professor Carlos Duarte says mesopelagic fish – fish that live between 100 and 1000m below the surface – must therefore constitute 95 per cent of the world's fish biomass.

This also made me think about the power of being normal in all dimensions to the point of being invisible. Such a person would have accomplished at average level in every dimension of life, never undergone any life changing or deeply traumatic experiences, would have kept the same circle of friends all their life and kept as average distance from family and so on. 

Very quickly you realize hitting average or normal scores across the board in life is extraordinarily difficult but as a reward, the person would not stand out in any way that complicates their lives, attract negative attention or be targeted for anything. They would be like these dark fish safe and away from the mess that not such perfectly normal folks need to deal with.

Looking Glass

Most deplore the trash in parks but walk on, some roll-up their sleeves and clean it up and a rare few turn into works of art. The artist's answer to the question what she sees in other people's trash is poignant:

I think it’s been a lot of self-reflection, like finding a water bottle and thinking about the number of times I forgot my reusable water bottle and had to purchase a plastic one at the store. It has really helped me build more sustainable habits. That’s the point of my art: picking up an object and seeing myself in it. It’s helped me be hyper aware of my own footprint and how I can reduce my own impact.

For some reason, that made me think about why I like watching movies about people in highly dysfunctional, chaotic and stressful life situations. For one thing, there is always something to be learned from how the characters cope or fail to do so. More importantly, it helps me put my own life in perspective. While a lot of has been off the beaten track and involved complications that people with more "normal" lives don't face, much of it is very pedestrian. Specially when compared to the characters in the movie. They reflect the reality of some lives even if in a very distorted, hyperbolic way. Sometimes, the story can be subtle and nuanced with no right or wrong answers. That resonates with me.  

Longing Comfort

Watching The Door made me want to look up Hungarian recipes. Helen Mirren was amazing as per usual - no surprise. She makes the character of Emerenc come alive - this is a person who sucks up all the air in a room while being a maid. She is regal and proves that her station in life simply does not define her. She is a great cook too judging by the elaborate spreads she produces all the time. That made me curious about the cuisine I know little about. There are a few different dishes I have on my list to try. This was an interesting and unexpected reaction to a serious, thought-provoking movie. The women separated by class and socio-economic status come to love and respect each other. Magda betrays Emerenc in a way that is deeply personal. The world outside would not judge her harshly for her actions and yet she would find it hard to forgive herself. 

Chicken paprikash played a very minor and insignificant role in the whole thing and yet I found myself reading up recipes soon after the last scene. Thoughts about the story itself returned to me a few days later and I wanted to learn more about Magda Szabó's life and writing, about the book itself. The value of a good movie is to me is all the thoughts that come to mind after watching it. In this case that was food which over the weekend translated somehow to cooking a Bengali dish that I had not had since childhood. The scene where Magda visits Emerenc at her flat one night and asks for dinner was a deeply moving one. She truly relishes the meal she is served and Emerenc looks absolutely fulfilled in the act of serving the meal. It made me miss the comfort of food in its most basic and authentic form. 

Using Words

Funny list of familiar words with new meaning attached to them. Each one is great but people can still have their favorites. Mine is : Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. 

The list made me think about the way we use words daily, how much of them we use and the effect that they have on others. In my job, I have to talk a lot and also listen to others talk a lot. When there is that much in volume of words flying in all directions, chances are very little or any of it is poignant or meaningful. I had a boss once who used to coach the team on how to use words for effect - trim how many words you use, be efficient and make them count. 

Generally sound advice and I try to apply if just about every time I speak. The results are interesting from what I see - the more effort I apply to being coherent and cohesive in what I say, the more it sticks out from the overall ambient noise that everyone else is contributing to. It sticks out and often not in the best way. 

If I dial it back some, relax about being concise and get closer to the average level, it fits in much better but I can't stand to hear myself.  So there is no good option as far as I can tell - atleast not in my particular situation. I pay attention to people around me whose manner of speech I like - most of them are subject matter experts in areas I know very little about. Wanting to learn from them is the driver for paying close attention and because so much new information is coming my way, the mechanics of how they deliver it is not relevant. 

The stuff that I got good at over the years has a lot to do with applying commonsense and listening closely to people as they describe problems they need to solve. I am not a specialist in inventory optimization and have not done that for the last thirty years. There lies the big difference perhaps. When the supply chain guru holds forth no one feels like a spot of common sense and a little good listening could have answered that problem - there is much more to it. So it's okay for the guru to be economical with their words, make them count and so on. It does not produce an alienating effect on those listening.

Modern Tyranny

Interesting essay about modern tyranny. The observation about writing and its ability to manipulate is one of the many nuggets of wisdom in this piece 

"Paul Valéry was not immune to the metaphors of his time. For much of his life he conceived of writing as a sort of machine, consciously manipulating the reader’s emotions."

There there is this one about mobile-apps

"Mobile applications, whatever their purpose, are little bureaucrats with a checklist or a punch card in our pockets. Whether they are centralized or distributed, deployed by the government or peddled by a small startup, the applications have the same effect: an increasing perfection of the totalitarian vision of nineteenth-century administration."

And finally on the democratization of tyranny

"Its first manifestations in the so-called gig economy can seem almost harmless, and are at most the object of mild social critique: hailing a ride without raising an arm or counting change, ordering a meal without speaking a word or touching a dollar bill. There is, however, a philosophical difference between adjusting the thermostat with a smartphone and summoning a car with it, between purely technological conveniences and the conjuring of services, whether or not we compare their human and ecological costs. The latter, after all, are not only material devices providing a degree of material convenience but means of exercising power over others, organizing labor, imposing order on society, from positions of pure passivity. We conceive an idea, and by a purely abstract mental process, minus a few thumb swipes, it becomes reality. "

Coming From

The last couple of years, I have been trying to read more history. The way history was taught when I was in high school made it hard to understand the value of the subject. 

Fast forward a couple of decades, and meaning of the quote “If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.” started to become alarmingly clear. 

In my own life I was at a place that I believed was right for me based on that fact I really did not know where I was coming from in a broad historical context. The place may or may not have been right. I made peace with that. But being able to move forward was even harder - nothing felt right so status quo was the only way. 

Reading these lines from The Anarchy, made me think about the hazards of not knowing where one comes from:

Mir Jafar, in his position as paymaster of the Bengal army, was prepared to offer the Company the vast sum of 2.5 crore* rupees if they would help him remove the Nawab. Further investigation revealed that the scheme had wide backing among the nobility but that Mir Jafar, an uneducated general with no talent in politics, was simply a front for the real force behind the coup – the Jagat Seth bankers. ‘They are, I can confirm, the originators of the revolution,’ wrote Jean Law many months later. ‘Without them the English would never have carried out what they have. The cause of the English had become that of the Seths.

When we studied the rise and fall of the British Raj in school, Mir Jafar was the depicted as the villain and his treachery was made responsible for all our woes. There was no mention of the Seths whatsoever. That is a significant rewrite of history. And I am sure there were hundreds of such oversimplifications and misrepresentations leading to us growing up with a fully distorted view of where we came from. Contrary to what we were taught, the fate of India as it turns was shaped by bankers from Bengal:

..This was something quite new in Indian history: a group of Indian financiers plotting with an international trading corporation to use its own private security force to overthrow a regime they saw threatening the income they earned from trade.60 This was not part of any imperial masterplan. In fact, the EIC men on the ground were ignoring their strict instructions from London, which were only to repulse French attacks and avoid potentially ruinous wars with their Mughal hosts.

. 

Returning Home

Two years in a young person's life is like eternity. Long enough to form habits that are hard to change. So it makes sense that re-opening schools will not make kids just return. Being able to learn from home is an option that works well for some children and their families. Specially where the parents can make good use of the time they get with the kids.

It's a privilege and an opportunity they may want to make the most of. There are kids who may not particularly enjoy school - there are plenty of those. If being home is an option that is not met with much opposition, they will take it. And that is not even taking into account trauma people have suffered and the fear that comes from it. 

"There's a lot of people that are still very wary about being in person. You know, there are those of us who have lost people we love."

Destroying Creativity

This quote gave me a lot to ponder over when I read it recently: 

One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power ... If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn't use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That's why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities.

- Marie-Louise von Franz 

There is so much truth to this observation. I can't recall the number of times, when meeting people from work in a social setting, I have learned about some talent the person has but never used, some hobby the choose not to pursue, a channel of creativity they decided to shut off. These were semi-professional dancers who had quit cold-turkey, college athletes that had not played their sport even with their young children to teach them the basic, musicians who no longer had their instrument at home and the list goes on. 

In each instance, this person was an absolute nightmare to work with. The older the person, the worse the outcomes for people around them. It makes sense why that would be - the person has stymied that wonderful positive force until it turned toxic. These folks are creative and there is inherent power in them that is now unleashed upon the world in unsavory, destructive ways. 

Conversely, the people who consistently make the time to feed their creativity - an Etsy side hustle, selling baked goods at the farmer's market, being in a blues band and so on - are even-keeled and easy to be around. 

Making Easy

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is an awesome book for folks like me who want to know the subject but are way too intimidated by it. After a lifetime in software sales and consulting you don't have any many illusions left about your mental abilities. Over the years, more and more subjects seem to have progressed to "above my grade level" line. It takes that much extra work to make up for the loss. So it took some courage for me to get started on this book and I am glad that I did. 

Such a breath of fresh air the way Tyson explains things that are unbelievably complex. He makes you believe that if you stick with him, you might actually come away with some simplistic understanding. Reading a book like this for a person like me is like reconnecting to that rush of learning how to read as a child - I don't remember how that felt for me but have observed many kids achieve that milestone so I think I can relate. 

The book also reminded me of that time many years ago, I thought I saw Tyson waiting for his flight like like regular folk by the gate. He was immersed in a book he was reading. Like me a few others were looking in his direction curiously, likely thinking what I was thinking "Could this be Neil deGrasse Tyson". None of us were able to summon the courage to walk up to the man and ask for his autograph - I don't suppose other options would apply. 

We stood around and before we knew it he had boarded his plane.  I remember asking the woman standing near me if she thought it was him and she replied "Certainly did look like him". I guess none of us could believe that a person of his stature would be sitting by the gate reading a book - maybe that was his best cover and crowd avoidance technique. There are any number of people who think he is cool but that could turn into a tiresome fan-base if they did not take the time to become culturally conversant in his area of expertise. I am trying to that now. 

Consensual Hallucination

Heard the phrase "consensual hallucination" in a documentary about WeWork and had to learn more about. I found the book where it originally came from and it's on my reading list. Also found this essay on the topic. Bit of a long read but its interesting:

Increasingly, while still notionally embodied as users sitting at our desks or hunched over consoles in arcades, we project ourselves elsewhere. Our bodies and consciousnesses are losing their definition, distributing themselves across some version of Gibson's matrix. For many people, this appears continuous with the experience of the shaman or the curandero projecting into the spirit world. Access to the digital dreamtime is solely dependent on the quality of the interface, and the hardware driving it. The shift from phonecalls to full body meltdown becomes a question of improvements in processor speed and interface design. This is not a specious point. It is here that the relationship between computers and drugs ceases to be metaphorical. Both are prosthetics. The only difference is that one technology is based on semiconductors, the other on chemistry.

The idea of the computer connected to the internet being a prosthetic has definite merit. If a person does not force themselves to consciously disconnect from cyberspace, the machine does become a part of them, an extension of their physical and emotional identity. The always-on way of life hurts the ability of the person to connect with another human being without digital distraction getting in the way.

First Reading

Finished read The Splendid and The Vile after many fits and starts. Was also reading The Anarchy in parallel - not related to the WW2 but useful in understanding the East India Company and therefore British colonization of India. Somewhere along the way found this essay that offers a point of view on the WW2 that is not the lens that Erik Larson uses in his book. Reading snippets of history that tackle small perspectives at a time is a lot like the parable of the elephant and the blind men - the only thing I learned is that the topic is vast and complex and just to understand the all points of view could take a life-time and yet provide no resolution. 

The key protagonists are complex and multi-dimensional. The unambiguous villains are the easiest ones to classify but the "heroes" can invoke a fantastic range of response depending on who is telling the story. Larson shows Churchill as a hero in his book and given the plot points he covers, there is some logic to that. Others have called him a war criminal and they have their reasons too. I have a few more books lined up to read on WW2 and am sure that will only serve to open my eyes to the many other perspectives on what happened and why. 

Fish Doorbell

Nice idea of a fish doorbell, putting technology to use in ways that help nature instead of  helping us to consume even more. Crowd sourcing to keep an eye on the fish that need to get through so they can breed.

If you see a fish, press the digital fish doorbell. The lock operator is sent a signal and can open the lock if there are enough fish. Now you can help fish make it through the canals of Utrecht.

Pressing the fish doorbell notifies the lock operator that there are fish waiting to pass. The operator can decide whether or not to open the lock. The lock seldom opens in spring, but can now be opened daily, if necessary. The fish doorbell allows us to work together to ensure that fish do not have to wait as long at the Weerdsluis lock. This is good news, because it means they are less likely to be eaten by other animals, such as grebes and cormorants.

Feeling Love

Sometimes you read a story in the news so heart-warming you forget a lot about the world is not right. When I read this, I shared it with J and she loved it. As a young person soon to be going out into the world on her own, I felt a story like this can serve as a shining example of what love looks like in the sunset years. Long after the days of guts and glory have faded, some dreams fulfilled and others left to waste, this is what remains. This is a story of a mellow love, grace and kindness that a young person does not quite experience. 

When I read things like this  at J's age, I often wondered if anyone I knew could one day become who this man is. Back then the answer was either a no or I did not know enough to say yes or no. But his ability to love and give would have been evident to me even back then. I hope J will put this away somewhere in the back of her mind, as she goes about her busy days and that it will help her in some intangible way in the future. 

Data Headlines

Sexy headline but not much of a story about so called "data poisoning".  The idea is that individual users who are hyper-vigilant about their privacy maybe taking all the right measures but it does not move the needle so collective action is needed:

What if millions of people were to coordinate to poison a tech giant’s data well, though? That might just give them some leverage to assert their demands.

There may have already been a few examples of this. In January, millions of users deleted their WhatsApp accounts and moved to competitors like Signal and Telegram after Facebook announced that it would begin sharing WhatsApp data with the rest of the company. The exodus caused Facebook to delay its policy changes.

The magic number for the exodus to work is large enough to make a dent on the ad revenue. Until then it's not likely to bring about lasting change. That's in addition to people having the same notion about the trade-offs between privacy and convenience. Finally, when the alternative to current state exceeds what people have come to expect from their technology, they will migrate to what is better on their own. I have high hopes for Neeva for example and can't wait to leave Google Search behind. Whether that comes to pass remains to be seen.

Coercive Culture

This story about phones being locked up by pre-installed apps for missing loan payments makes for sad reading. The culture of coercion leading to compliance allows for this to work. The same dynamics play out at the family and community level where no money has changed hands. People feel compelled to do things that they are not comfortable because they cannot withstand the coercive force of others that bears down on them. Weddings in India are a great example of this dynamic at work. Just about every move anyone makes is predicated by the amount of pressure applied on them by others. In the case of the bride's family it could range from the date of the wedding, logistics, the expectations of how lavish the celebration will be and so on. If the groom comes from a higher status family they hold all the cards and they can apply the force needed to bring the bride's family into compliance. 

The relatives of each side will similarly be subjected to pressures to perform and deliver. They need to show up, participate, spend time and money, see and be counted. Scores are kept to death any there are consequences for non-performance. You want you relatives to show up when you have a medical emergency, you best have done what they expected from you at the weddings of their children. The more points a person earns through compliance over the years, greater the latitude they receive for an occasional slip-up. But habitual offenders can and will be subjected to the equivalent of having their phone locked for default of loan payments. 

Turing Irrelevant

Trip down memory lane reading about the series of missteps by Yahoo. GeoCities was once cool, and I had my starter website there like millions of people back in the day. Many of these site were an eye-sore with loud, clashing colors, animated font and other travesties. Those were the disco years of the internet when compared to the modern design aesthetic. Yahoo lives on while other relics of the time have long since passed. 

Even with it's relevance declining every day, it is still good to see Yahoo around much like it is good to see a pay phone now and again that you could point out to the young and uninformed, explain that there was a time before cell-phones and if you got stuck somewhere with a car trouble, you used one of these to get help. Such relics of times past serve an useful purpose but knowing Yahoo it may not be long before they kill themselves entirely instead of hacking bits and pieces off all the time - might actually be a good thing too. Once its over people will stop agonizing, archiving and get on with their lives

In fact, Yahoo’s bad reputation may be thanks, in part, to the fact that it had such a good eye for acquisitions 15 or 20 years ago. It kept buying things that people really cared about, cool companies that could have had more interesting futures if their founders hadn’t sold them to a megacorporation that would eventually pull them from public view.

Exhaling Finally

Adversity sometimes does good in our lives. One benefit of this difficult time as I observed it from the outside was that it brought my parents closer to the middle ground that had evaded them their marriage of fifty years. They realize they have to stick together, protect each other so the unit stays safe. There is no difference between one and the other. 

The fiftieth anniversary came and went unnoticed in the middle of a lockdown. It was apropos in a sense, It was the marriage I had observed most closely growing up and one that left me with no desire for that institution. Age and a forced year long isolation from the world seems to have created some connections that did not exist. It is still an uneasy peace but there is some peace finally. I hope the day will come soon when they can safely drive into some offbeat destination in rural Bengal and spend a month away from it all. 

But post-pandemic life may not be what we think it might be, J tells me her friends are not rushing to avail every socialization opportunity they get. There is some inherent caution among the young people- they would rather be safe than sorry after the endless disruptions to their college life. 

Per a report released by the Harris Poll in March, three-quarters of survey respondents said they learned during the pandemic that they “preferred smaller social gatherings at home or at [a] friend’s place over going out to bars or restaurants.” A similar proportion predicted that in the post-pandemic world, they would miss “the comfort of [their] home while socializing.”

I find that the more time that passes, the better I am able do without a social life. While meeting people is hard, I have been able to restore communication with people I had drifted out of touch with. Resuming long-distance and remote turned out to be an easier path on both sides minimizing the awkwardness of talking after a long hiatus. Now we are in a good flow state and not everyone is anxious to meet in person. All this was much harder at first and than it it now. For many this was a learned skill and we got good at it over time. Some of us actually enjoy it and might want to keep rather than lose the skill we worked hard at learning.

Good Women

Read this poem by Charles Bukowski and was intrigued by these lines:

good weather
is like
good women--
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.

That is intriguing and makes you wonder if you as a woman are as fickle as he describes or have known other women to be that way. Maybe there is some truth to it. The unwavering constant types might not be the most conventional either. They are able to stay that way because the their life circumstances remained relatively unchanged. But I was not sure where the poet was going with this. He clarifies in a bit: 

a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
here a man can become
stronger
by being hated.

That is an interesting point of view. I am not sure about women being nursed into subsistence by love but a lot of strong and powerful men are well hated and it does seem to serve them well 

Irrationally Happy

This quote by Mary Churchill in The Splendid and The Vile is so relatable to that period of youth. She talks of her own state of mind when England is under constant attack by Germany and the mood of the county is anything but happy:

“I think it will always stand out in my memory. It has been very happy for me too—despite the misery & unhappiness in the world. I hope that does not mean that I am unfeeling—I really don’t think I am, but somehow I just haven’t been able to help being happy.”

The exact time period when that happens -  just haven’t been able to help being happy might differ along with the duration for which it lasts, but there is such a magical time. There is a lot of needless exuberance, laughing until your sides hurt, seeing everything in bright colors. The lines reminded me of a teenager I know who's had a very difficult life for the last four years and things are not improving. 

Yet in the last few months, he has been irrationally exuberant, optimistic about life ahead often naively so - but this happiness is indeed something he cannot help himself feeling as none of the conditions in his life would make it logical. Reading this and thinking of this kid, I wondered if there was a way to tap into this natural reservoir of unstoppable happiness that humans have in them, and somehow use it to combat depression that is far too common in this same age. 

Sinking Low

Just when you think there is not much lower Facebook could sink, they manage to exceed expectations. Now its about scraping data from from hopes and prayers. Find a person at their most vulnerable and over-sell them on something they don't need and maybe can't afford. Poor decisions are made when we are in a bad mental place  - often also the times when we feel inclined to pray and have others pray for us. 

Facebook’s found a new way to capitalize on the thoughts, prayers (and data) from the religious side of its user base. On Thursday, the company confirmed that it’s begun expanding a new feature called “prayer posts” that will let members of particular Facebook groups literally ask for (and offer up) prayers for other folks on the platform.

These are very difficult times we live in and fearing the loss of a loved one and losing loved ones had become normalized to the point of anxiety and compassion fatigue. My cousin M has lost some of her closest friends to covid and others in her social circle have lost one or both parents. 

We used to chat often even in the early days of the pandemic but lately she is reluctant to engage - her heart is not in the casual banter. The overhang of tragedy is too large for that. That is the kind of mental state Facebook is targeting - it is very specific and therefore has analytic value. It will be interesting to see how shameful the next thing they do is - monetizing grief might not be Facebook's nadir yet. 

Evolving Language

Interesting article about good and bad English and now non-native speakers can figure out what the others are saying even if their brand of English has localization they don't know about. The native speakers are being called out to become more inclusive:

..the onus shouldn't be on non-native speakers but rather on native English speakers to improve their comprehension of accents different from their own.

Take a page out of non-native speakers' book, says Hansen, by modifying your English to be more inclusive. That means no more confusing idioms, jargon and sports references ... so no "touching base on improving synergy with your teammates."

Another suggestion from Hansen: Instead of policing others' accents, native English speakers can focus on changing their own enunciation to be more understandable. For example, research shows that clearly enunciating hard "t" and "r" sounds in your speech makes it easier for non-native English speakers to understand you.

I am trying to map that advisory back to Bangla and Hindi the other languages I speak. Both are stuck in the past and I sound out of date and out of touch when I speak with friends and family in India. I speak well enough but I have completely missed the organic growth of the languages in the last few decades. I try to make up for this gap by watching movies in both languages but it does not do the trick. 

It seems to me that in India the type of inclusion the Hansen is speaking of occurs organically as populations move from one state to the other bringing their native languages to their new domicile. Over time as these populations root in, the local language is enriched and transformed by what they add to it. My uncle S when in stress starts to speak in very refined Bangla that harkens to how characters in the 1940s movies used to talk. I hear him use words that have disappeared from circulation for a long time and it takes a minute to grasp what he is saying. I wonder if this has something to do with returning to a time and place when such language was common as a source of comfort when present conditions are quite dire.

Seeking Empathy

It events of that weekend started with a small mistake. My friend S and I have cars keys that look identical and she took mine as she was leaving to travel out of the country on a family emergency. Her own keys were in her bag. I was staying back at her house to take care of some unfinished chores S was in no shape to  complete. When I got ready to leave, I and noticed my keys were missing. Called S, she was super apologetic and rushed to FedEx it to me over-nite on her way to the airport. That unplanned stop almost caused her to miss her flight. 

On Friday night once S had boarded the plane and my tracking number showed that I would be re-united with my keys in the morning, it felt as if after a minor hiccup all was well. I was so wrong. The package was attempted to be delivered but for unknown reasons it was not and went back to the main FedEx station. Another friend gave me a ride and we hoped my car would not get towed - I was not planning on staying this long and did not have the visitor permit. 

The FedEx location did have the package but they refused to give it to me because the package was not addressed to me - S had mailed to herself as it was being delivered to her house. Nothing illogical about it. S had arrived at her destination at this point and so I called. The agent explained to the both of us that she was following company policy and would be promptly fired from her job if she had the package to me when clearly the name and address on the mailing label did not match mine. The agent said the only thing to do was to ship it back to S and have her re-ship it proper name and address. This after I had explained the whole situation already. I was beside myself and started to lose it while other customers looked on. 

I asked the agent about her complete lack of empathy no matter company policy - my friend needs to be supporting a bereaved parent in another country who we can hear sobbing in the background - we are on speaker phone. S has been authenticated as the person who shipped me the item, I can show the tracking number she sent me, I can tell them exactly what is inside the envelope. But nothing would move the agent's position. S had to spend an hour on the phone calling their main number and getting me to be the person authorized to pick up the envelope - it took several escalations before she found someone who understood the problem and had a reasonable way to resolve it. 

As this drama unfolded, our other friend who had dropped me off had to leave as she had an appointment she could not miss and there I was stranded and feeling miserable that I could not give S time she so desperately needed. I was almost in tears and furious at the same time. We got things resolved and I got my keys, got an Uber and finally made it back. All told, this one mistake had costed us several hours of our collective time.

Once I had calmed down, I thought about serenity and how that may have prevented the calamity to begin with. When someone we care about is in the midst of a crisis, the best support we can offer is to help plan and organize, check and double check for mistakes, omissions and blind-spots. S was in no shape to think through what she was doing. My job was to provide the structure she lacked in her condition. I had failed her as a friend and compounded her troubles in a very fraught time. And that feeling of incompetence was expressed in the form of my upset with the FedEx agent. If she had to take action on every exception customers brought her way she would get nothing done in her entire shift. 

While I was waiting there, there were three other folks who came up to this agent with asks that were beyond her ability to accommodate. In each instance the customer was asking for something outside the norm. One man for example wanted to know if he could pop some large piece of trash into their dumpster. He spent a good five minutes explaining why he should be allowed. This was right before I came with my problem. And I was not last either. I was complaining about the agent's lack of empathy when in fact I was hardly demonstrating any myself. 

Water Shoes

We took our first road-trip since the beginning of the pandemic and met the families of three friends in all many different states along the way. Meeting people in a setting as normal as it could be under the circumstances was as bewildering as it was refreshing. Every time, I reminded myself this is how the world used to be once. One of our friends said people will refer to this period we are experiencing as Pre-C and Post-C and she is probably right. At every service area, we found most restaurants closed for business and the few that were opened, running short staffed and without their full menu. People are not sure what they are meant to do about masks - keep them on as if they were not fully vaccinated, keep them somewhat on so as to make others comfortable in their presence or not bother at all. 

The population seems to be a mix of the three making for a complicated situation. One of the small towns we stopped for gas had very limited offerings at the only fast food establishment that was operational in the vicinity of the gas station. We needed some dinner and drove around until we found an open sea-food establishment. We were told to order in ten minutes as they were closing early. There were two or three other patrons in the establishment and the two owners were hovering over the full set of customers. I did not notice any waitstaff.

The food was unremarkable and expensive. The duo offered many apologies and asked if they could remake our order. We did not have the heart to bother them - maybe they did not have enough staff in the kitchen either. If may be the lack of practice but the quality of the cooking was far from professional and this place had terrific ratings on Yelp - maybe they were great Pre-C. They had managed to keep lights on but it was not all there.

The world felt fractured, broken and trying to heal with people milling around confused about what to do with their new found freedom. We are all going through the motions of normalcy trying to behave as we remember ourselves from Pre-C times. But it does not fit or make sense for what the world has turned into. There may not be a path to return to the way things used to be but we are yet to accept that reality or shape our lives accordingly. 

Reading the history of the seafood establishment we had visited made me sad: 

In May 2001, Tim decided to leave the corporate world and pursue his passion as a waterman. For 10 years, he caught crabs and delivered them to local crab businesses. During this time, he and his wife, Ava, always had the idea and vision to open their own place so they could offer the freshest crabs at the best prices. In 2011 Tim and Ava opened this restaurant.

This was clearly a labor of love, something that had taken risk-taking and giving up the stable, tried and true. Now after twenty years, they might be forced to close shop and hang up their water shoes. 

White or Mud

Exciting news about this ultra-white paint that can help combat global warming. Always thought material scientists have among the best jobs in the world:

The new ultra-white paint, which the researchers say is the coolest on record, reflects nearly all of the sun’s rays and sends infrared heat away from the surface, providing an average cooling power of 113 watts per square meter. If painted onto the roof of a 1,000-square-foot home, that translates to a cooling power of 10 kilowatts, which is more powerful than most residential central air conditioners..

There are low tech ways to cool one's house. The inside of a mud-walled house has the perfect temperature no matter the weather is a reason for that:

“Mud buildings are similar to the human body. Mud walls, being porous, can breathe, like our skin. This helps in maintaining comfortable indoor temperature, irrespective of extreme weather conditions outside. So one can save a lot of money spent on ACs and other mechanical means to keep the space comfortable,”