Heartcrossings

Went on quick grocery run after work yesterday and was glad to see many people with their masks on. It was reassuring and also helped not to stick out. I always look at what is sale in the frozen food aisle even though I rarely buy from there. It serves as an interesting indicator of what the grocer thought would be a hit with their customer base and ended up being a miss. A lot of vegetarian meal options were on sale last night. If I had to guess, the merchandizing was driven by market trend analysis and perceived buyer interest that ended up not squaring with reality. The fact is if a person is not vegetarian but open to trying it as an option or even has a strong preference for it, if they are at the frozen food aisle on a weeknight chances are that the food has to meet an immediate need. They are likely hungry, had a long day and want to go home eat  and retire for the day. So a meal that looks like it may be too lite or too little will lose over something that is tried and tru...

This video from the essay on love addition got me thinking about the value of novelty in sustaining intense romance. Helen Fisher provides a few examples of what might constitute such novelty in a relationship and it is sensible advice. But in real life, this can be way more messy and complicated to allow for the types of novel experiences Fisher suggests as simple as they are. And also novelty can come from outside sources unbidden. Change in jobs, needing to travel to unexpected places driven by needs of family or business, adversity coming from the outside, relocating temporarily, picking a new hobby, meeting a new neighbor and so on. If what is coming at the couple does not pull them apart, chances are it serves to fuel the intense romance Fisher speaks of. The more the rhythm of the couple's life is unchanging, the higher the likelihood of ennui and therefore by Fisher's logic the fading of that romantic intensity. It was interesting to consider how adversity and generall...

In The Liar's Dictionary , the author talks about how people can come to resemble their hand-writing: I’ve heard people say that dog owners often look like their pets, or the pets look like their owners. In many ways David Swansby looked like his handwriting: ludicrously tall, neat, squared off at the edges. Like my handwriting, I was aware that I often looked as though I needed to be tidied away, or ironed, possibly autoclaved. By the time afternoon tugged itself around the clock, both handwriting and I degrade into a big rumpled bundle. That definitely holds true for me - not so much in the actual shape and form of my writing but more so in its overall affect to whoever is trying to read it (or trying to build a working relationship with me). There is a overall sense of order, clarity and tidiness to my writing specially when looking at it at a glance without trying to actually read anything.  But upon closer inspection, there are more aberrations that one can count. The letters ...

Read this great quote by John Coltrane on who innovates in the world: Innovators always seek to revitalize, extend and reconstruct the status quo in their given fields, wherever it is needed. Quite often they are the rejects, outcasts, sub-citizens, etc. of the very societies to which they bring so much sustenance. Often they are people who endure great personal tragedy in their lives. Whatever the case, whether accepted or rejected, rich or poor, they are forever guided by that great and eternal constant — the creative urge. This reminded me of a Forbes article I had read a while back on why dysfunctional families great great entrepreneurs.  ..of children raised in a dysfunctional family, some emerge from childhood with a keen ability to focus and take action despite discord. They develop skills to cope with uncertainty and learn how to thrive even in the face of instability. Their brains are wired for resilience. Additional research supports the suggestion that a difficult upbri...

Interesting essay on the addictive power of love . It got me thinking of my own life experiences and those of others I have known over the years -  women particularly because it makes it easier to relate. Some girls can spin out over relationships where as others can stay very grounded.  Love addiction is not the same as cocaine addiction at the neurological level: important differences, like how long it takes for the desire for another "hit" to occur, do exist. Rather, the authors see this as an opportunity to reconsider our approach to addiction in general and to think about how we can help the heartsick when they just can't seem to get over their last relationship. Lot of good advice on how the brain can help in the process of  building and sustaining a happy partnership . Putting personal observations together with this essay, it seems that the tendency to spin out in the intense period of romantic love could be related to the target being unattainable in some way and...

My friend M is has one kid graduating college this year and the other who is a rising senior at high school. M's oldest goes to an elite university and it is expensive. Parents pay for most of it as there was no clear expectation that the child would pitch it too. There seems to be this implied understanding that parents will pick up the tab for school - however long that experience lasts. Even when times were tough with one of the parents being laid off, expectations were not recalibrated. The kids have learned to be oblivious to the issue of money - it just comes along as needed. Now the oldest wants to go to grad school at the same time as the youngest will start college - presumably a fancy one like the big sister given her profile.  While the kids in this case may not be financially hobbled for life given generous parents with income to support their education, the impact on M and her husband is starkly obvious. They are both committed to staying in the workforce for years to...

You know you are person of certain vintage when you don't recognize a single song or band that makes the top 12 list for the summer.  I take that back - did know a few names there.  I am very impressed by people of my age and older who keep up with trending music and are able to discover new things they like apart from the music they grew up with. My theory is that their brain and hearing is more nimble, receptive to unfamiliar stimulus and most importantly then minds are still young.  There is no glory in becoming unable and unwilling to stay in touch with the times, it only makes your world shrink and get crowded out by the newness that you cannot be part of or relate to. I listened (or attempted to) to all the tracks in the list and nothing except one stuck .  Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open” is a bit of a Rorschach test for music lovers. Depending on whom you ask, the Philly soul-inspired collaboration from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak is an obscene exercise i...

Manipulating sleep as a way to get a person to by more beer is a troubling idea. Would be easier to get people to agree on that - nothing useful is coming out of this process for the consumer. But imagine EdTech running with this idea and telling parents that their kids could outperform their competition if the learning continued to happen as they slept. I can see that sit much better with some of the same folks who would not like to be sold beer without their active participation.  “You could have this sort of 1984 situation where advertisers buy advertising time on these devices, and nobody ever knows they’re hearing them.” It wouldn’t be an entirely straightforward process. To sell a project involuntarily through dreams, the potential advertising campaign would have to be linked to adverts people see while they are awake. Stickgold said it could potentially be done by playing a certain sound every time a product – a Coors beer, or a Corrs album, for example – is seen during a t...

I met a L, a young mother of two recently. I know both her daughters - they are both in elementary school, very chatty and adorable but had not met their mom yet. I introduced myself to L but we did not shake hands - not a thought that crossed either of our minds it seems. It was an awkward few seconds but it passed quickly - we both sensed that the handshake would be even worse than awkward. Since I am still working remotely, this issue has not surfaced in the workplace context but I am going to guess many people are going to be wary .  We’re at a critical inflection point when it comes to the handshake. The greeting, which has faced scrutiny practically since the advent of germ theory, has come under withering fire in recent years. In 2014 Vox published an article with the unambiguous headline “Handshakes are a filthy, disease-spreading tradition” The Atlantic ran a piece simply called “Handshakes are Disgusting” which pointed out that up to 80 percent of all infections were tran...

Nice essay about keeping traditional knowledge and skills alive by using it continually.  But the most important technology at Jingu is social - it’s the transfer of skills and techniques from one generation to the next, ensuring the temples and artifacts can continue to be reproduced accurately. This sort of knowledge is difficult to document - it exists as reflexes and muscle movements that are beyond the reach of language, or as decisions that are so context and environment dependent that it’s infeasible to explain them. The techniques used to build Jingu depend on experience and expertise; learning them requires practice and feedback. Transferring the knowledge required to build the shrines can’t be done with words or text. The only way to pass it on is to create the conditions for someone to acquire it. In small and local scale, we do this in our homes when we learn how to cook from our older family members who know recipes from times far pre-dating us. Home remedies we learn...

..Seats offer massage, vents emit refreshed air and sound-dampening materials eliminate outside ruckus. To avoid jarring seat-belt reminders and other car alerts, Lincoln, which is owned by Ford Motor Co. , worked with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to compose soft chimes to play instead. A lighting display that activates when approaching the vehicle is called the “Lincoln Embrace,” ..  This WSJ story makes for sad reading. Being highly stressed is apparently a burgeoning market segment for all things from cars to cereals. It won't be long before the data science people are tasked with identifying features in consumer data sets that are most valuable in predicting degree of stress in a prospect or a customer. Our response to stress can vary a fair bit so it would be a challenging problem correlate to personal buying behavior. The more achievable goal is what these brands are going after - target the overall high-stressed population with an assortment of comfort objects. The aggreg...

Wasted no time downloading Merlin Bird ID as soon as I read this article  and can't wait to try it. Some mornings, the incessant chirping of birds in the yard don't let me snooze. As much as I love they are out there and being noisy, I wish they would start a bit later. Now, I might learn what birds are out there and if we installed a bird feeder that would prove helpful. I find myself using the Seek app all the time when we go hiking and over time, I have learned to recognize some plants and trees I did not know by name before.  To me this is a lot like know your neighbors and community - it is isolating when you don't know who is out there. I like that I now know what weeds and wildflowers are growing in my yard and that I can recognize them in the wild as well, understand if the flowering bush in my yard is unhealthier than its peers around the neighborhood. It will be fun to know the names of the birds we often see on our hikes - thanks to the wisdom of the crowds that...

If you were the parent of a teen gaming his nights away, falling asleep in school and getting close to failing grades, how might you feel about a system that policed your child's gaming habits ?  The system in question: ".. includes a ban on minors playing video games from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., as well as limiting their playtime to 90 minutes a day. The law also prohibited minors from spending more than $28 to $57 a month on micro-transactions. New rules requiring all individuals, regardless of age, to register for games using their real identities and prohibiting citizens from playing games that include “sexual explicitness, goriness, violence, and gambling” were also implemented. " At first blush a harried parent who can't get a grip on their kid's gaming habit, might find this an useful intervention. But the relief may prove short-lived for many reasons. Kids as we know will find ways around such clamp-downs and choices made in desperation will prove bad or ...

A few days ago J was texting me quite excited to share news of a kid she had re-connected with after a long hiatus. Little S as I remember her was one of the girls from J's dance class. She was a couple of years younger and we typically met at once J's class ended and hers began. The mother was intensely focused on S's education and all around development. At the time S played four sports, took dance lessons, studied art and robotics outside of school. While all time was structured time but S was a free spirit in a quiet sort of way. J was excited to report that S had reached out to let her know she is off to college soon and will be following her dream - she was going to study art and art history. S maintains a great blog on art - her own art portfolio is impressive and so are her ruminations about her favorite pieces of art from visits to various museums. S's love for the subject shines brightly - her blog is the place she is most herself, quite unlike that harried ki...

There has been a lot more choice of organic eggs in the grocery stores since the pandemic hit. I wondered if it was because people were not eating out and had extra money lying around for indulgences like pricey eggs laid by cheerful hens. It's one of those things where the per unit price is low enough even for the most upscale product so its a relatively easy splurge to make.  I like Happy Eggs myself but learned that they are up to no good and are being plainly deceptive to consumers. Is this a piece of information I really needed - I don't know. But having run into it by accident,  I felt compelled to make a fact based egg buying decision and not be swayed by the mental image of clucking hens roaming free and wild in acres of green. Also learned that there are scorecards that show how organic something really is. The reason for eggs to get expensive during the pandemic are explained differently by those in the know , but it seems once people adjusted to the higher price ...

Read this take on how winners and losers are being determined in Scott Galloway's Post Corona The thing about capital market predictions is that they are to an extent self-fulfilling. By deciding that Amazon, Tesla, and other promising companies are winners, the markets lower those companies’ cost of capital, increase the value of their compensation (via stock options), and enhance their ability to acquire what they cannot build themselves. Being anointed a winner works about the same at the person level as it does for a corporation. If a person is a presumed winner, forces start to conspire to make it so. Some of them less ethical than others. Similarly what he says about value of brands of companies apply at the individual level too.  As much as we humanize them, brands are not people—they are assets to be monetized. Letting one die is only a bad thing if you don’t get all the value out of it in its golden years. Too many managers try to Botox their aged brands into a semblance o...

This story makes for a heart-warming read . The children come ahead here with two mothers instead of none which is where divorce can leave many. It takes for two strong, confident and loving women who have the right priorities to make something like this work. My friend T shares a very similar relationship with her ex's new partner. Her two daughters are beneficiaries of the co-operation between the women. T does still does not like her ex but is grateful he chose a good woman who loves the girls. She knows its in her best interest to nurture that relationship irrespective of the issues she has with the ex. Such people should serve as role models for those struggling to make their blended families work.  Maybe at the root of all this is fundamental decency and the desire to do right by children no matter what works and does not work between the adults. T is by nature a generous and social person. She is more likely to get along with someone than not. Leaving her ex was a choice she...

Watching Ray on Netflix was a good experience but it left me wishing I had actually read the stories on which this series is based. Notwithstanding, as a Ray fan who has watched just about every movie he made, I echo the sentiments of this reviewer:  But try as they might, the sizeable cast and crew are unable to bring out the depth in Ray’s stories. As an artist, it is important to understand the context in which Satyajit Ray created his oeuvre. In the early ‘70s, Bengal was ushering a new era of corporate bigwigs. Under an ever-growing capitalistic market, the cultural  babus  were choosing to denounce years of arrogance from ancestral  zamindari  days and join the workforce to earn an honest living. Ray’s works then became a mirror to society, a direct naysayer to the reigning communist government of the time. This production is not about nuance and it anyone comparing it to the the subtle qualities of movies like Agantuk or Seemabaddha would only come away ...

Renting clothing makes some sense if the rental location serves a population in driving distance. There is no shipping and return involved but at the same time the aisle is not endless as it would be online. So it's no surprise that the current model is not helping the planet .  Many experts and activists believe that the circular economy could help the fashion industry become more sustainable. The problem is that many brands have co-opted one small aspect of the circular system—like using some recycled materials or renting clothes to keep them on the market longer—and then marketing their entire company as sustainable. The idea of wearing clothes until they were literally unwearable - as in falling apart, torn beyond repair - was a good one and served people well for ages. Maybe its best not to fix what was not broken. A lot of creativity went into giving clothes a second and third lease of life as children grew into clothes of their older siblings, daughters inherited their mothe...

I took my best friend out for dinner as a birthday treat a few weeks ago. One of the first times I have sat indoors in a restaurant with everyone including the wait-staff being mask-less. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. Everyone around seemed to be trying too hard to make things appear normal. This was far from a dinner time scene pre-Covid times. We were all making an effort that is for sure.  Our waiter was a young kid who aimed to be nice and friendly but was not sure if he was getting too close to us for comfort. So he lurched back anytime he felt he might be less than six feet away from our table. It was an acrobatic effort for him to land all the food and drinks safely on the far edge of the table while staying away from us. Times have clearly changed and in some cases there is not path to return to "normalcy". The robotic service option may grow more wide-spread with more spill-over effects: ..suppose you’re a business, and labor suddenly becomes really expensive, ...

 Watched Captain Fantastic recently and could not help thinking about parents including myself try so earnestly to do their best by their kids and end up missing the mark wildly. We come into parenting with our own traumas, baggage and ideas about what perfection means. The people we are raising are not attached to any of that. More often than not what we feel the need to over-correct is not an issue for our children. I was very vacation deprived growing up because my father had a job that kept him on the road a lot and when he was home he just wanted to rest and recover. Travel for fun was not a concept that came to him readily. Visiting ailing grandparents was the only travel we did regularly.  The rest was considered overboard. Based on such experience, I made overzealous efforts to fit travel into J's life once she was old enough to enjoy and be able to recall the trip. It turned out that J had a very full and complete life in school and outside of it. Fitting a vacation ...

I have rescued my fair share of discarded Ikea furniture glad that I would have the finished product without spending time on assembly which does not come to me naturally. Reading this story made me think about stuff from Ikea that I have discarded - could think of planters, dish-towels, sheets and such.  In February, Ikea launched disassembly instructions for six popular products. That effort, combined with its furniture-rental programs and the ever-expanding buyback initiative being hyped in the new Norwegian ad are all consistent with Ikea’s People & Planet-positive strategy unveiled in 2018, in which the company committed to becoming fully circular by 2030. That involves designing products with reuse, repair, repurposing, and recycling in mind from the beginning; using only renewable, recycled, and recyclable materials; and eliminating waste. Though the reputation is that Ikea furniture is not meant to last too long, my rescues have done well for themselves. They met some ...

This season I had one of the worst allergies I have ever had. Talking to the nurse who was my first call after suffering from the symptoms for a week was illuminating. He said this year people were coming in with severe conditions - and in large numbers. So I was definitely part of the trend. He had a hypothesis that this could be related to climate change - things were blooming out of order to create combination of things in the atmosphere that our bodies does not know how to process.  This was not his professional opinion even though there are studies that show this is happening . That conversation with the nurse made me think it would be great if people could become aware of what they are breathing in their environment and doctors could use that data to better diagnose and guide the treatment needed. As it turns out, such a device is already possible to assemble so it's probably a matter of time before it become commonly available. 

Red at the Bone is not my kind of book but even so, it was worth browsing through it. Ran into this line for instance that holds a deep meaning for me. It comes in the context of a bunch of ninth graders challenged to think about the image of Christ hung to the cross and left to die. They had to think "Literal or Metaphoric. Truth or Fiction." The narrator takes says: .But now I knew there were so many ways to get hung from a cross—a mother’s love for you morphing into something incomprehensible., A mother's love is a very complex thing. It took me close to four decades to make sense of my mother's love for me. It involved setting up figurative walls, moats, bridges and dams to deal with its heedless flow. It is indeed love but expressed in ways that can be destructive if the recipient does not know how to channel it.  My my case, I was salvaging what was left of my life at that point when I came to such realization. I have learned as a mother myself that my love for...

I spent a good part of a recent weekend on the phone with a young woman I mentor. P is on the cusp on what could be her first serious relationship. The man in question is a good bit older than her, with more experience and more ready to settle down than she is. He also has a lot more money to spend than she does. Both factors skew the balance of power between them. Some gestures could come across as effusive without it really being so. On the other matters that appear problematic may have a logic path to resolution that a couple with such disparity cannot always solve together.  P wishes this man would be the one so she would not have to spend the next decade of her life looking for that person and many women her age end up doing. The man wishes the same because P is perfect for him and he does not see the point of staying in the dating game if she decides in his favor. But that is the question that neither can answer. P is too young to make a decision so big. The man has no way of...

On our walks in the evening that takes us through the woods nearby, sometimes we run into turtles sunning themselves by the side of the trail. The other day we saw one that was much bigger and older than what we typically see and moved even more slowly. The shell was muddy and looked old - like a house that has not been maintained well over the years. It reminded me of a rather dusty RV I see parked not far from where I live.  Soon after the big turtle sighting,  I read about this  two-story RV with a balcony that looks beautiful , It makes the concept feel way less claustrophobic. Something like this could well replace a condo for some people - if they are willing to pay the price tag. RVs are having a moment with the pandemic  so maybe it comes easier to mind for many folks these days. Back to the turtle, I was curious about what kind I had seen and it turned out to be an alligator snapping turtle and was likely pretty old. 

I have been working with marketers for more years than I can count now but it was only recently that I learned how the Hero's Journey is put to work. The person who explained this concept to me is an brand consultant with a liberal arts education. I have worked on and off with P for a while now and was impressed by how she always had the most unique and refreshing ideas of anyone else in the room even when there are a lot of creative types around.  Every encounter with P is a learning opportunity. She reminds me of my friend A who is largely self taught and tinkers around with mechanical and electronic things. He is able to bring his education into real life every day - at home and at work, it is well-integrated whole. P has similarly brought her education to bear upon every real-world interaction she has, in ways that are seem unique to those of us who don't have the background she does.  When a person is able to integrate learning, work and life in a beautiful symbiotic way ...

I listened to No One is Coming to Save Us on my walks the last several days and found it generally interesting and informative. Notwithstanding the pundits who held forth on their areas of expertise, the most memorable nugget of wisdom for me from the Gloria Riviera's young son - famous last words at the end of the last episode. I don't recall his exact phrasing but in the best way that a child could say it, he asked his mother what is the point of her going to work to some place just to pay for a sitter to take care of him in another place. That question hit hard and took me back about fifteen years in time when J had asked me her variation of that very question. I am going to guess this is top of mind for any child in that age group who has a working mother and therefore needs childcare during the day.  J was very lucky to have her grandparents around her until four and a half years old. Her daycare days were the bridge between that age and kindergarten. Even during that peri...

Recently, I met a friend's grandfather who happens to be an avid birder and photographer. Birds are often the subject as can be imagined but he has an amazing eye for people too - all in candid settings. He showed us one picture that I found competition worthy and told him so. Apparently he had tried but was too late for consideration.  Later at dinner, we joked about grandpa making an NFT out of it. He was intrigued but the idea was a bit alien to his mind. Reading this other NFT story  featuring the inventor of the internet (a fact which seems to make the creator feel a lot older than his real age), reminded me of my friend's grandpa “Three decades ago, I created something which, with the subsequent help of a huge number of collaborators across the world, has been a powerful tool for humanity. (...) NFTs, be they artworks or a digital artefact like this, are the latest playful creations in this realm, and the most appropriate means of ownership that exists. They are the...

Interesting benefits to our lives as we crawl out of the pandemic. The ability to choose a home that is  not dictated by the short commute during rush hour . The coronavirus pandemic, however, is no two-week Olympics, no localized earthquake. It has lasted so long that people have discovered new preferences and lost the muscle memory of old routines. We know that the longer disruption lasts, the more likely it is that long-term changes in society follow, said Giovanni Circella, a transportation researcher at the University of California, Davis. Disruption can also prove more lasting, he said, when it intensifies existing trends than when it creates entirely new ones. And the most notable trend in commuting for the last generation has been the steady rise of telework. For every single person that does not have to plan their lives around rush hour traffic, there is a benefit to society overall. Lower stress, safer driving, less road-rage, more time to spend will a loved one and the a...

This story about an employee quitting because she was being prodded to show to work in person is understandable. For the past year and a half she had opportunity to live a very different kind of life and the comforts of being able switch off the camera and take a mental break. There is no way getting up to an alarm, dressing up, commuting to work and being in work-mode around a large number of people all day can seem more enticing.  "..If anything, the past year has proved that lots of work can be done from anywhere, sans lengthy commutes on crowded trains or highways. Some people have moved. Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues. And for Twidt, there’s also the notion that some bosses, particularly those of a generation less familiar to remote work, are eager to regain tight control of their minions. “They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” she said. “It’s a boomer power-play.”.." It is a privilege to have a job where ...

We were walking past an El Salvadorian restaurant the other day and reading the menu posted on the window, wondering if we should stop by for dinner after our walk. On the sidewalk, a young man who we guessed might be a chef there was taking a smoke break. Watching us trying to make a decision he broke into a big smile and gave us an impromptu education on the cuisine and some of the signature dishes. We were back an hour later, hungry and ready to try some of what we had heard about. The food was amazing and the prices very reasonable. Every sauce was made from scratch. The attention to detail that went into preparing the dishes was amply evident.  The young man served us, made us our drinks and also introduced us to three different jalapeno sauces - each distinctly different from the other. If not for him taking that smoke break exactly when we were passing by, we would have never discovered this place. Once we got home, I checked the reviews of the restaurant. It turns out that ...