Heartcrossings

My friend A is judge in the state science fair and I enjoy listening to him talk about projects that impressed him. They tend to be uncomplicated yet novel - something he attributes to a kid's natural curiosity about the work and the ability to apply what is taught in school in original ways.  I have always been skeptical about science fairs because they seem to crowd out the type of kids who A would root for. Their projects are not grand and unlikely to change the world. They are the child's own and the lack of maturity and access to resources is plainly evident. Those are exactly the reasons the kids deserve encouragement. Unfortunately, the winner of the big science fairs rarely if ever fall in this category.  There are not enough judges like A around to push them all the way to the top. This year A was excited about how kids were tinkering in cloud technology and making commonsense use of the capabilities. The ease of access has made experimentation easy for anyone with ...

I caught this episode of Finshots Daily on my walk last evening. I stumbled upon this podcast after a very unsatisfying experience of listening to idle prattle on design thinking with no outcomes on Think Fast Talk Smart . When I spend the end of my long work day listening to something, I want to learn something interesting so my mind travels in directions that the workday simply does not allow. The Stanford b-school production was a real disappointment but the folks over at Finshots made up for my loss. I learned a lot of new things - the episodes were truly bite-sized, did not seek to patronize or restate the supremely obvious like the other one. There was line there that gave me much to think about  "A report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released last week pegged that human smugglers make a staggering $10 billion a year. For context, that’s what Coca-Cola makes in a year by selling its fizzy drinks. It’s a lot of money!" The presenter carried the comparison...

Recently, I spent a whole weekend raking leaves from my yard to make it possible for things to grow in spring. Cutting grass and removing dead leaves always promotes a lot of bird activity so it was no surprise to wake up in the morning to the loud chirping of birds feasting in the grass. The whole place had come to life thanks to my cleaning efforts and that's a great reward.  It reminded me yet again of my desire to have a bird feeder installed in the yard - the thought always crosses my mind after such weekends but I never act on it. In large part because I am not sure if this is a good thing for the birds that I want to attract. I used to have a hummingbird feeder a long time ago and it was a wonderful experience at first and then I learned it took daily effort to keep it clean and in good order for the birds . If I was out for several days, then the feeder was not useful to the hummingbirds and they would not return.  The feed and care of anything in life is complicated ...

Its been interesting reading all the opinion pieces and commentary on Musk buying Twitter. An assortment of pundits would have us take a guided trip through Musk's brain and unpack why he did this and what manner of terrible consequences it brings for us plebians.  Seems to me that the answer is relatively simple - the man has more wealth and resources that most of us would even be able to fathom or compute.  With that comes freedom and latitude to do things - some of which cost a bit of money (even on his scale) and provide for a bunch of entertainment. Its a lot like folks feeding koi in a pond or ducks in a lake. There could even be signage posted that such wanton feeding is unwelcome but the person armed with some stale bread feels in a position of power to rustle up a some creatures who were minding their own business, looking for their own food in ways that nature had intended. They have the means for this spot of entertainment and so they avail it. The clamor that follo...

Learned the phrase lie flat reading this story on Bloomberg. Its interesting to the consider the impacts on the lives of folks who go against the tide of their generation. If the zeitgeist supports and welcomes a lie flat mentality, for someone who wants to work harder and earn more than their parents did, scale up the upward mobility ladder and so on, they would lead a very lonesome existence. Reading this made me think of my mentee B. She is twenty four and doing well in her career- working hard but not crazy hours, being rewarded for her work but not in ways that make headline news.  B is in a very comfortable place in her life - she has learned to do her job well, earns very decent money and lives in a relatively low cost city. Her parents are in a town two hours away from her so she does not feel displaced from everything she grew up with. She would be able to afford down-payment on a modest house if she wanted to own a home but she is not quite there yet. In the meanwhile sh...

Reading about Infalurt got me curious about other products in this space because this seems such a sensible and well-known problem to solve for. No surprise that are over two hundred options to choose from on Amazon. This is one of the perils of imagining an IoT based business. If there is any merit to the idea at all, its already been done and you will be entering a very over-crowded space trying to get attention. The subtle differences between one product and the next are largely lost on the consumer.  They see it as a choice fatigue inducing situation. The reviews of the product or word of mouth referral if that applies is the only way to stand out. In this instance, upon filtering the search it turns out that the Infalurt solution while not entirely novel, is still not saturated. There is room for more players to come in but the door will shut pretty quickly if this is a market worth being in - it will get to the point of choice and decision fatigue. If its not a popular item ...

These lines in Twilight of the Elites quoted from the valedictorian of one the best public high schools for gifted kids gives real food for thought: I feel guilty because I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do any of you. We received an outstanding education at no charge based solely on our performance on a test we took when we were eleven-year-olds, or four-year-olds. We received superior teachers and additional resources based on our status as “gifted,” while kids who naturally needed those resources much more than us wallowed in the mire of a broken system. And now, we stand on the precipice of our lives, in control of our lives, based purely and simply on luck and circumstance. There is so much truth to what is young person is saying. Some very well-deserving kids on that day and hour failed to make the cut in the test for reasons they did not control. The family circumstances could have been so miserable that the student simply could not summon themselves up, they had no one...

The idea of wasting a customer's time in a pharmacy store when they trying to to get their shopping done and be on their way sounds like a really bad idea that was not tested with actual consumers before it was launched. No customer will want to be subjected to an ad to earn the right to open the freezer door to grab their frozen pizza . This is simply not the time and place for it.  "People really appreciate their routines. They're not always seeking excitement," said Julio Sevilla, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Georgia who studies consumer behavior. Digital screens, he said, can add uncertainty and physical barriers to a simple and literally transparent process: reaching into a glass fridge. Sevilla doesn't believe consumers are looking for novelty when they visit a grocery store: "We all love to get into a supermarket and know exactly what we're getting. I know also exactly where things are. For this type of utilitarian-relat...

You know your friendship is real when your friend is on the floor with with the department store employee wrestling the leggings off the mannequin because its the one you like and the only one your size is on the mannequin. It was a bizarre sight to behold as it unfolded in front of my eyes and finally A walked over to me triumphantly holding the desired item of clothing. A and I go shopping once in a very long while and we both know to make those hours count because it will be many months before we do this again. This trip as long and painful as it was netted a few useful things in colors I have not worn for decades. We spruced up A's ancient wardrobe too.  Learning to accept that I am now much closer to the end than the beginning of life has been difficult, there is so much that will never get done. The lack of interest in clothes shopping is part of the territory I think as it seems to decline further with every passing year. While  struggling with the passage of time, I ha...

My bestie from college S introduced me to N recently, someone she's known for years. N and I have know of each other for this entire time but for reasons best known to the mysterious S, the introduction had to wait until now. It was the strangest first conversation I have had with a stranger in my life. We have a lot in common with difficult marriages, being single mothers, raising our kids in a foreign country. She is American and raised her son in India - an inverse image of my parenting experience. Oddly the challenges were not that different even though the venues were far apart. That feeling of isolation and unrelatable to people with normal lives seemed identical. We both have experienced what it means to have a certain expectation of what our adult lives would turn out to be and then have it go completely off-script. We were raised by average parents in average family circumstances and assumed outcomes that were the norm for people like were similar to us.  The more we diver...

At some point in our lives we have told someone or have been told by others to listen to our inner voice . If we could hear it and act on it then it would have saved us from making poor decisions. Sometimes the inner voice is like an infinite reel that can't and won't stop. You are meant to pick up the crumbs of wisdom to save your life from the ceaseless stream of chatter. In my own life, I have found that it can get tinged and stained to the point of uselessness with your state of mind.  When I am feeling pessimistic about something, the inner voice often reinforces that negativity instead of helping overcome. Similarly in times of exuberance, that voice can mirror and fail to warn of blind-spots. It's almost as if the mind has to be in a place of balance and equilibrium for the inner voice to deliver optimal results. It seems like our mileage varies in other ways too: .. there is a huge amount of variation from person to person. Some people hear inner voices that may sou...

Reading this story about going paper-less in India is heart-warming. It is unlikely that I will ever convince my parents to adopt such technology but the fact that it exists and is being widely adopted is great. We used to have drawers full of files, folders and binders to hold documents of different sorts and  that is still the case in my parents' home. Every time a document was needed it threw my mother into full panic mode because she could not recall where it was and my father's organization  did not make sense to her.  Watching this deep disconnect blow into a high-stress event was a part of my childhood. Like my mother I am not able to remain organized around my paperwork and struggle to find things in a hurry. Unlike her, I am the one who is doing the organization not someone else. Our shared struggles with organization may have less to do with inability or incapacity and more with refusal . There is also the concept of the brain's Area 47   Area 47 contains ...

Reading this story about life in Japan felt particularly calming. A tiny microcosm where perfection is possible.  “Handing in a lost or forgotten item is something that is taught at a young age,” says Tamura. “Children are encouraged to deliver lost items to the kōban, even if it’s 10 yen (7p). A child can deliver this coin to the kōban, the police officer will treat it formally as any lost item. A report is made up, and the coin is taken into police custody. Yet, knowing that no one would report [it], the police then gives the coin back as a reward. Therefore, although it is the same monetary amount, the process of handing it into the police is different from outright taking the money - that is, one is theft, the other is a reward.” This made me nostalgic for my own childhood. We were taught to donate any money we found on the street to the temple. It was never okay to keep that money even if  it was a small coin - it had to be given away so it could serve greater good. Much...

 Interesting article on IQ and the difference between the self-assessment of it by gender . After statistically controlling for the effects of actual measured IQ, we next examined the strongest predictors of self-estimated intelligence. The results showed biological sex remained the strongest factor: males rated their intelligence as higher than females. However, psychological gender was also a very strong predictor, with highly masculine subjects rating their intelligence higher (importantly, there was no association with femininity). There was also a strong contribution of general self-esteem to participants’ intellectual self-image. As noted above, males report higher self-esteem than females. In the workplace women with high self-esteem often come across as abrasive. Have seen this time and again throughout my career. Successful women are able to wrap that into something less challenging to others through their EQ. So they would hold strong opinions, have clarity in vision and ...

Did not know the phrase civil inattention until reading this abstract and it lead me to learning a bit more about the topic . Being tactfully inattentive is a related concept:  With the phrase “tactful inattention,” Goffman captured the socially salutary response to the undue access to someone’s backstage; it is a sort of averting one’s eyes, as one might do, for instance, in a locker room or a gym. Information may be available to you, but you should not scrutinize it or use it to your own advantage The idea is very relevant to data privacy - a topic that is close to my heart for personal and professional reasons, the authors of the paper say:  ..we would benefit if we would protect privacy by sometimes requiring tactful inattention by potential users rather than total secrecy by the target. That is, some legal privacy protections should stop emphasizing secrecy and instead emphasize the appropriate uses of personally identifiable and often sensitive information by gelling t...

The Last Days of Capitalism has the characteristics of a play and not having been to the theater in a long time, it was a welcome change from the typical movie experience. The real identity of the two protagonists is unknown at first and as information is bartered out over time, its mostly untrue with some shreds of truth thrown in. Context is important in understanding the story as it unfolds through the conversations between the two and yet without knowing how each person really is, context is hard to form and just when you think you may have found something, the foundation shifts yet again. To the end, we don't know if either side revealed their real identity. But there are some facts that did come to light - both the man and the woman wanted to experience something real, something to remember before they returned to whatever world they actually inhabited in reality. Trying to achieve that goal when the balance of power between the two sides is severely skewed by money makes it...

I was traveling for work to a city in Midwest I have never been to before. It turned out to be tidy but unremarkable town and I had arrived too late to meet the others from team for dinner. Having nothing better to do, I turned on the TV to catch the local stations and see if I could get a better feel for the place. I have lived TV-free for decades in my home so every time I turn on the TV it is a shock to the system. An hour of it left me struggling to fall asleep even though it had been a long day and I was tired. I thought it was a result of all the visual and aural stimulation I am not used to but maybe its not just me . “We’ve found that self-proclaimed binge-watchers exhibit higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression,” says  Jessica S Kruger , an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who has studied the public health impacts of binge-watching. “There are also studies out of Harvard showing that among people who spend two hours watching TV the risk of diabetes ...

Reading these line from a Charles Simic quote in the book Twilight of the Elites , made me think about how this disappointment and anxiety of about the state of the country is timeless and pervasive and each culture and groups of people within it deal with the issue differently: “I know that when I get together with friends, we make a conscious effort to change the subject” from the state of the country “and talk about grandchildren, reminisce about the past and the movies we’ve seen, though we can’t manage it for very long. We end up disheartening and demoralizing each other and saying goodnight, embarrassed and annoyed with ourselves, as if being upset about what is being done to us is not a subject fit for polite society.” There are times when society as a whole is more politically aware and engaged than others. You would see that reflected in the discourse of students in high school and college most prominently. The rest of society have pre-occupations that do not allow for very st...

Reading this essay about aging and our relationship with it brings thoughts of my mother to mind. For decades she had been one of those people who did not age, in my teens and twenties we were often mistaken for sisters. Once she became a grandmother, something inside her changed and it impacted the way she aged and the pace of change.  Very slowly at first and small invisible ways and then in a chaotic rush as if to remake herself in the image of an older woman - perhaps that of her beloved grandmother. It is not the person she was in her mind, if anything her mental state reversed to a point where there is equilibrium between the two edges she seems to have pushed herself to. Physically feeling much older than she needs to and mentally going quite the opposite direction.  It is a terrible lack of harmony that I can't begin to explain to her, there is no longer a way to communicate with her as two women with a lot of life experience might with each other. I have to wonder if...

Chanced upon this short film about a man who has been living on cruise ships for a couple of decades . Listening to him describe his days made me think about the trap of routine - different for each person but still a trap. Its why we can't wait for Friday to spring out of it. But that craving for Friday is far from equal and what's to say the weekend is not another trap - just a different one. Many people have a repeatable weekend pattern by choice or by necessity. In that case it would just be a change of scenery within a trap that never really ends. The cruise ship sounds like a variant of that.  It's possible to change the scenery often or rarely. Cruise water of different countries see new ports of call, meet new strangers while sailing. And all of that is a pattern that repeats in the confines of a cruise ship. I have been on a cruise only once to experience it and while it was enjoyable for couple of weeks its not something I would return to. It's much like our s...

Reading the right poem for your mood is a lot like magic. Suddenly the feeling that you had no words to express is flying like a big bird with resplendent wings -its made to be seen and noticed. The poem led me to this quote by the poet: "Somebody asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it." I particularly loved that he advocates waiting and not trying because I have always wanted to live that way and regretted trying too hard on things that were important at the time. The moment inevitably passes, the value of the effort always diminishes and coming out on the other side of the chasm you a...

Reading this story about the gender gap in smart phone ownership in rural India took me back to the 80s when I was growing up in semi-rural India. Our domestic help, R had three daughters and a son. The oldest, V took care of her younger siblings, worked as a domestic help herself in a few homes and was the one responsible for preparing meals in their own household. Despite this endless litany of responsibilities at a tender age of thirteen, she enrolled herself into an evening school to gain basic literacy. Within months she was reading and writing. After the days work was done and the younger siblings went to bed, V would complete her homework. When I saw her last she had completed eight grade and had well exceeded her dream of basic literacy.  Her brother, the youngest of the siblings, went to regular school for which the entire family worked and paid for. He had neither the burning desire for education like V nor any natural aptitude or talent for learning. V had accomplished ...

Mindfulness without paying mind to it can apparently lead to bad things: It’s important to recognise that these studies examined the effects of mindfulness exercises in very specific contexts, when guilt was salient in the participants’ minds. “We shouldn’t over-generalise and conclude that mindfulness makes you a worse person,” Hafenbrack says.  His results might, however, encourage us to be a bit more thoughtful about when we apply it. We should think twice about using it after a disagreement with a friend or colleague, for example, particularly if you already know that you were in the wrong. “If we 'artificially' reduce our guilt by meditating it away, we may end up with worse relationships, or even fewer relationships,” he says.  As someone who has forever struggled to practice mindfulness despite being convinced of its benefits, I am not sure what to make of this. What little I have been able to do has centered around making peace with situations and people that aggravat...

This picture reminds me of Madhubani art and invokes the same sense of comforting familiarity even though they come from different cultures. Both would fall under the category of primitive art but there is something derogatory in that definition. If a piece of art comforts the viewer, and is labeled primitive, there is an implication the viewer is deficient and unsophisticated. I am thankfully not around any art connoisseurs and feel free to express my love for such " primitive " works and have them around me.  .. art is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a culture, linked up with the history of the culture and with the history of the people. Consequently, we should view primitive art as merely a general term covering a variety of historical phenomena; the products of different races, mentalities, temperaments, historical events, and influences of environment. Every people, however primitive, has developed a specific style by giving preference to certain objects and ...

I met an interesting Uber driver on my way to the airport recently. He had been a career insurance salesman and was doing this Uber thing for fun not the money. It was before 4 pm and I was his last ride for the day. We chatted about selling life insurance and what made for a compelling customer experience. After a long day it was refreshing to hear a voice that was not pursuing goals like crazy and enjoying his life and conversations with random strangers.  I spend a lot of my professional life dissecting customer experience and its second nature for me to mentally catalog both the good and bad ones that I have. This was definitely a good one. I did not have to wait too long for the bad. At the airport, I wanted to grab a bite and the only reasonable option was a bagel store. Two young women were running the place and my repeated efforts to get their attention to place my order failed.  They simply refused to acknowledge me and there were no other customers anywhere in sight....

Very sobering analysis of our environmental impact when we consume the "Cloud" and do so indiscriminately.  The ecological dynamics we find ourselves in are not entirely a consequence of design limits, but of human practices and choices — among individuals, communities, corporations, and governments — combined with a deficit of will and imagination to bring about a sustainable Cloud. I read this at this after a few hours of failed online shopping for business casual clothes. Travel has picked back up and like many, I can't relate to the clothes I wore pre-pandemic. It is an unusually high level of discomfort to wear them and be around people all day long after such a long pause from business travel. I also have this need to express my ethnic identity more strongly than years past - it may be a factor of age and life stage.  After having spent decades trying to blend in and not call attention to my differences from the mainstream, I feel exhausted from the effort that it ...

Have been watching Inventing Anna lately and don't know what to make of it. At some level, the average person will experience schadenfreude at how Anna was able to fool the elite, classist, undeservedly rich hoping it is true what they say about the fool and his money being soon parted. In a sense, Anna was trying to test out this axiom and came somewhat within striking distance.  Makes you wonder this whole saga might be a demonstration of Peter's Principle  that enabled a woman that young with no "credentials" to bamboozle an array of rich, powerful and influential. So while she is a  consummate con artist it is also true that the victims were not particularly astute, so perhaps they had "failed up" to those positions they were not capable of holding. Men do what Anna did all the time and there are not only no consequences, they are rewarded.  Based on how the story was told in the series, its hard to feel any sympathy for the victims. That said, it is a ...

Cool idea for converting those old phones languishing around into portable security cameras . Its so obvious, I can't imagine why it never occurred to me. We also have some pretty ancient tablets sitting around that no one wants to discard for old time's sake and yet it serves no purpose other than gathering dust. Think about it: Cellphones have decent cameras. They connect to the internet. They can work for hours without being plugged in. Real cameras cost money.  It’s a techno-match made in cheapskate heaven. And lest you think it’s complicated to teach an old phone new tricks, the method I’m going to share with you is about as simple as logging into an app. If the set-up is meant to be permanent, then the camera would need to be plugged in at all times. Wonder what it does to the battery over time specially that these things are old and the battery is worn out already. Other than that it's a pretty neat idea. 

I read these lines in Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All one one evening right before listening to a Ted Talk about the struggles of farmers in India . In some ways, being very rich and very poor are strangely similar. Just as having not enough money creates fear and anxiety, so can having more than you know what to do with. At both ends of the spectrum, money tinkers with our notions of self-worth, our egos, our social lives, the stability of our marriages, our relationships with children, parents, and siblings—even our mental health. In recounting the event that triggered his foray into making the low-cost portable green-house for small-hold farmers,    Sathya Raghu Mokkapati talks about seeing a farmer eating a ball of mud because that was his only choice apart from death by starvation. When the author of Jackpot, Michael Mechanic talks of the very rich and the very poor being akin at some level, clearly has no idea of what being very...