Watching Trees

Reading this story produced a sense of calm and permanence in a time the turmoil is the order of the day. The trees featured here lived long before we did and and will outlive us by a lot too. On our walks in the evening, we often pass by a playground that hosts a very gnarly old tree in one corner. 

Back in my childhood I would have considered it the ideal climbing tree - its begging for children to clamber all over it, given the fortuitous shape and height of the main trunk and branches. The children play in the swing-sets and the slides but have never seen anyone by the tree. I have passed by that tree hundreds of times by now but every time feels special - it has such a special character. You have to wonder how it came to acquire its strange contortions with so many nubs and warts all over. 

Researchers still don’t know how different tree species set the angles of their branches — going wide like an oak, or arching like an elm. They don’t know how trees alter those angles during the course of mature growth, as branches sprout from branches sprouted from branches, until some of them finally point down. Trees are both kindred and foreign to us, their various forms so familiar, but their architectural rules still in so many ways opaque.

Prime Unready

Feel good story about scientific research that left me with some questions as a layperson reading this. The fact that Vice picked it up was an interesting data point. So we talk about how this will solve for over a tenth of the waste being generated in the world - that is a staggering number and gets you engaged. It's built on work done since 2005 so you pause to wonder why in almost 20 years the problem was not solved. 

They throw in AI as it it was the magic wand that ultimately revealed the answer that was being sought in vain for decades. But AI has existed for many decades and the data used in this particular model is not novel either. The article closes with the reality check that makes you wonder why this was being reported in the first place - we are not talking about the high school science fair winner here. 

First, Alper says, he and his team must test FAST-PETase on the wide range of different types of PET found in the waste stream, and the detritus that’s often found in plastic bottles or on top of plastic containers when it’s recycled. Should the researchers find an enzyme or group of enzymes with the robustness to be used practically, they believe it can help tackle the “billions of tons” of waste in our environment. 

Two and Three

Two decades and three today

No grand milestone year, but

If you remembered know I did too

The knicks and cuts we gave each other

Follies of youth those were

I forgive me, you and us for those

Those nights long ago when you 

Told me stories of pirates and shipwrecks

Read me beautiful poetry

Your eyes dreamy with feeling

Which I imagined to be love

There was a place the roads parted

Two decades and three today

I wish you well, my friend

We were not meant to be more

And for trying what could not be

Lost what should have been

It was hard to forget and it still is

Grand Betryal

Being the mother of a daughter the return to medievalism perpetrated by the Supreme Court hits very close to home. My friends and family in other countries can't stop talking about how America's best days are well behind it and how this reversal of woman's rights will eventually have witches burning on stakes around the country. Just give it a few decades. 

They find it ludicrous that this country is so concerned about preserving democracies around the world, war-mongering nonstop to do so while at home half the population became second class citizen overnight. It is left to the Amazon's of the world to do what is right by the women of America. I came here a few decades ago and was able to make decent life for myself even as a single mother with no access to family support most of the time. My daughter is a great beneficiary of the system that helped her achieve her potential. 

The path from where I started to to this point has not been easy but it always seemed worthwhile. Today, I don't know anymore. Is this the country I want to see my grand-daughters raised in. Will they enjoy the same rights and privileges I did even as an immigrant. Is there an American Dream left for women anymore. Which of our rights will go next. Is there any guarantee that women will have a right to work or get equal pay for equal work even if they do. If the person is a second class legally, it seems like their rights and liberties would be second class too. There is no safe haven for a woman - my grand-daughter will have to travel across continents and oceans like I did to find a place that will let her live a dignified human existence. If our descent to the dark ages it faster then J will need to make that journey.

Tipping Right

As a consumer that started to re-engage with the food service industry coming of the pandemic, I can't say the ubiquitous tip options at every turn makes for delightful customer experience. The set of options remain about the same irrespective of the quality or type of service rendered. 

If it's a fast casual establishment making me a standard sandwich in the menu to go while I wait in line to pick up my order is not worthy of a 30% tip. That is not the customer's perception of value. Now if it were a party of twenty out for dinner with many folks having dietary restrictions or otherwise needing substitutions that's different. Add to that the party arriving at different times and being at different stages of ordering - some haven't figured out their drinks yet and others are close to ordering their entrees. 

It takes a lot of effort to keep all the balls in the air with such a group, get the orders right and deliver them in a way that makes for a seamless experience for the group. That is worth 30% easily. It has to be noted, the level of talent servicing the customers in these two situations is very different. I had a young woman at the local Subway scowl at me for asking her to toast the bread before she fixed the sandwich. It went downhill from there with her throwing stuff at the bread like she was attacking it. If 30%  was one of the options on the tip menu (in this case there was none), I am not at all sure if I'd be inclined. 

The idea of building the cost of tipping into the price of the service makes more sense. The customer still has a choice - they can take out instead of sitting down and not have to pay the premium. Studies show that greater the number of tipping options the higher the total amount collected. I must be an anomaly because I work with the dollar amount I have in mind and it is never one of the available percent options. I would imagine there are customers like me out there who resent being boxed in by pre-set numbers that do not calibrate the quality of their experience that the tip is meant to reflect.

Virtual Assault

Reading this article makes me painfully aware of my lack of understanding of where social media is headed. As it is with such things, people are less likely to engage with what does not make sense and as we get older the number of such things grows.

The events unfold with the person taking action to disable a safety setting in the virtual world:

According to SumOfUs' account, users invited the researcher to a private party on Horizon World earlier this month. Users in the same room then asked her to disable a setting that prevented others from getting within 4 feet of her.

The avatar of this person was then raped in the virtual space. 

Even though it happened in virtual reality, the incident left the researcher "disoriented," she said in the report. The researcher noted her controller vibrated when the male avatars touched her, resulting in a physical sensation that was a result of what she was experiencing online. "One part of my brain was like WTF is happening, the other part was like this isn't a real body, and another part was like, this is important research," she said in the report.

It just so happened that I was re-arranging my book shelf a little before reading this and leafed through my volume of Ramayana before placing it back. So the parallel to Sita's abduction by Ravana came to mind almost at once. A very different place, time, culture and setting but similar outcomes. In a sense not much has changed for women since then. So coming back to metaverse and such, the question is what one worthy problem that this solves in the world.

Second Lap

I am that point in my life that if I were to interview for a role, chances are that the person interviewing me is significantly younger and with children not yet in middle school. Unlike me at that age, these folks have been on a career track for a decade plus and don't plan to pause or stop. Having never been that person despite having gone through that life stage, I find it hard if not impossible to relate to them. Conversely, I know several women who took long hiatus to raise children alone or with a partner who was pursuing their career full throttle. 

These women now have the time to focus on career - its as if they completed one lap and are starting the next one. Most people around them are way ahead but few have completed their first lap. This is the demographic I can identify with. They tend to be goal-oriented but without the burning need to prove and achieve milestones at a remarkable clip. If that is your boss, in order to be a team player you need to pull your weight in proportion to their ambitions. You need to be supremely motivated by the tokens, accolades and recognition of performance. 

If those things don't mean much to you and you have your own personal motivations to do the work you do, you are not a fit. I have seen a few women like me struggle to find a professional home where they can thrive and deliver their unique value instead of being caught up in the mesh of metrics they cannot relate to or agree with. There is plenty of advise for empty nesters wanting to re-enter the workforce but not much is talked about folks like me who put career on backburner for decades without ever opting out of it. 

In an ideal world I would love to be honest and say that I really started to think about what I should be doing in terms of a "career" three years ago once J left to college. The stuff before that was whatever I needed to do to take care of her needs and wants. Sometimes I lucked into a great opportunity that allowed for personal and professional growth. There were other times when the job was mundane but predictable so I stayed because it was convenient. Either way, I never had a plan and there was no career. In a sense, I am like a person a few years out of grad school just that I have been around way longer and learned things along the way. 

Alive Music

The local symphony orchestra was giving a free performance at a local park a recent weekend. They used to do this every summer until the pandemic so people were out in their numbers for the first time after a long pause. Such a treat to hear popular arias again in the open air. The music transformed this rather run-down park in the middle of the city to a something special. There were a lot of families there that afternoon with very young children. 

I might not have otherwise noticed it but it was remarkable how not one child in the audience of hundreds was fussing or crying. It's well-known that babies respond well to classical music in-utero but the effects continue after birth too. The finale was a zesty rendition of the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th. The babies around us were fully engaged and listening. In a time when parents are increasingly tethering their children to screens and devices for fear of missing out and enlisting digital nannies to assist, it was heartwarming to see the kids connecting to beautiful live music.

Mastering Tools

I have seen a lot of amazing work done on Excel but these paintings are at a whole another level of Excel mastery. It reminds me of my boss P at my second job out of college. Changing jobs made me feel grown up and competent - I even managed to negotiate a better salary. All that newfound self-assurance went to the wayside once I started working for P. She made me realize that I had a lot of growing up left to do. P was one of those women who age remarkably well. 

Based on her resume she was in her mid 40s but she did not look much other than a college student. She was single and had no intention of changing that. The guys at work took her seriously - I learned from observing how her bullshit detector worked. Clients respected her opinion and her word was usually the the last one on any contentious topic. P was tough but fair and you got not extra credit for being female or a newb or both. You worked hard and delivered good results to earn points with P. The rules were simple and they worked.

And P was an artist. During lunch break she doodled on Paint as she ate at her desk. We knew better than to bother her or ask if she'd like to join us for lunch. About six months into the job, I emboldened myself enough to sneak up to her desk during the sacrosanct doodling hour. She ignored me - which was already a win. I pulled up a chair and observed her quietly. She was painting a scene from the Mahabharat only aided by imagination - an on Paint. Her level of mastery with what was clearly a vastly inadequate tool, blew me away. Over time, P showed me full set of paintings - a series themed on the Mahabharat that she dreamt of exhibiting one day. 

Imagining End

Reading this poem always fills me with a mix of energy and sadness - that is also what makes me return to it. A poem about death, but not everyone who loves it sees only death - there is something for the living too. I have experienced it different over the decades. Sometimes it has been about death and the passing of someone I did not want to let go. 

At other times, it has been about finding renewed energy to overcome difficult times, not give up and allow a part of me to die in the process. At some point it became J's favorite poem and like other fans she returned to it time and again. As I read the poem today, my thoughts are definitely on old age and dying, not being able to hear the voices of loved ones ever again once they breathe their last, not understanding the depth of my own feelings until it is too late to do so:

 It’s no accident, surely, that Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a poem which is read at two out of every three funerals. We respond to the sense in that poem, as in so many others, that the verse engine is so turbocharged and the fuel of such high octane that there’s a distinct likelihood of the equivalent of vertical liftoff.

Interview Bot

An interview prep bot is an intriguing idea. For a young person embarking on their first job search or someone older who is seeking a new career, it could be a good way to learn the ropes. The questions atleast in the areas that I tested the bot were a bit mundane. Interviewing can be great learning process at any career stage and as my good friend A never fails to remind me - it is the best way to deal with a shitty day at work. You feel like you are back in the saddle with some control of your destiny. 

I have had the opportunity to interview a fair bit the last few years and each one of them has been a learning experience for me. The way a candidate deflects a question that they don't have the ideal answer to, what the choose to emphasize or de-emphasize when they talk about their accomplishments, their level of candor in admitting failure - each person is unique as is the story of their career progression. I hope in the future we won't only speak to those who have been primed by an interview bot because getting to know real people and their work is very rewarding.

Missing Treat

I had been yearning Cheeslings for a while and had not been able to stop by at the local desi grocery store. So each time I passed a snack aisle in another store, it triggered a reminder that I was still thinking about it. A few months has passed between the first time the thought crossed my mind and when I finally got it. Maybe memory plays tricks on our taste buds because what I ate was nothing like how I remembered the taste from childhood. In our home this was a treat, typically served when we had visitors not something to indulge in routinely. Maybe the circumstances in which I ate this snack helped create the affinity. I would get my serving and eat it while the adults had their chai and snacks. It would be rude for me to get a second helping so took my time to finish what I had. 

That time in my life was well-ordered and predictable to the point of boring. I had to finish homework upon return from school, get a snack and take a break to do what I liked. If guests were expected, I had to change out of my home clothes into something better. Then it was waiting for the doorbell to ring. Looking back, I cannot imagine how doing nothing could occupy so much time. In the monotony of daily life, someone coming to visit was a splash of color. Now without that framing and context the once beloved snack felt unremarkable. I could not imagine why I liked it so much back then. 

Going Fast

A lot of younger folks I know have recommended that I consider working for a start-up at this stage in my life because many of them value having an adult in the room and I can afford to take more chances now than I could back when I was raising a young child alone. While I have given thought to this idea off and on but bever quite acted on it. Recently, on a whim,  I decided to evaluate if this might be an option for me. I have had the chance to interview with a fair share of founders in the process. Being the adult in the room is not quite as I had expected. A lot of these folks come from a past life in large enterprise where they saw a really pesky problem no one was solving for.

So they started out by building tools to help them do their own job better. In time, they were able to create a market for their solution and venture on their own - from swimming against the tide in a river they had now plunged into an ocean. The set of challenges had changes significantly in that process. The conversations were good and informative for both sides but something about the energy felt off. I realized pretty quickly that these founders need people who believe in their mission very deeply. My questions while interesting did not demonstrate the blind faith in the cause that they seek. And its not because they are ego-maniacs. It is just operationally expensive to the point of untenable if everyone is not running in the same direction at top speed. 

Downward Spiral

I was talking to a friend recently about unrealistic goals on which people's performance is measured at work and how some people feel like perpetual failures because they can't meet them. We have both experienced that feeling at different points and known others who have too. After that conversation, I grew curious about organizational psychology and setting unattainable goals. What is true in personal life is true in professional as well - while for some such goals may promote the constant zeal for improvement and perfection, others may have a very different outcome. I would argue if failure to attain is correlated to power, prestige or money then chances are negative outcomes will dominate:

..unattainable goals often end in failures and how people react to failure varies greatly. For some, especially those who put a great deal of time and effort into a long-shot goal, failure can be a crushing blow. If not managed well, fixating on the fact that one failed may lead to negative self-fulfilling prophecies or self-critical thinking (“I’m just not cut out for this,” or “I’m worthless.”). Prolonged thoughts like these can lead to a psychological downward spiral.

It was never clear to me why having a large part of the workforce go on a downward spiral of mental health is a good thing for an organization - it leads to distress and churn in the ranks. Those that can withstand the regimen tend to be a very specific type of personality and that precludes any chance of having diversity of style and thought. 

Rising Cost

On our recent trip, going out to eat proved to be an illuminating lesson on how the world has change since the pandemic and events following it. The waitstaff is paid a decent wage for a high school student trying to make money for college tuition.  There is a path for them to earn $10,000 over summer which should cover the bulk of costs for an in-state public university. That part is great - we are helping kids get out of college debt free and enter their independent lives with a lot of choices. 

While that is good for a person in that life stage who has their room and board covered by parents, it is not enough someone older and its no surprise that the staff is uniformly young - not so different from pre-pandemic days. But what is remarkably different is the portion sizes of items on the menu relative to the price. They are very small - to the point an entrée looks closer to an appetizer and is priced double of what it used to be pre-pandemic. The combination makes for a very over-priced and unsatisfactory experience for the customer. 

In many cases the menu's are dynamically priced and you scan a QR code to see what the numbers are today. The checkout is digital and via tablet so there is efficiency in that - but with the downside of the waitress holding up the tablet to your face as you decide the tip amount. In contrast cooking a nice meal with grocery store ingredients is more expensive than it used to be but not nearly close to what a lunch a decent establishment would cost. 

Every place we visited was busy and running at full capacity - if rising inflation is hurting people's ability to spend, that is certainly not evident from seeing the flow of traffic to these establishments. Maybe its still the euphoria of being free to go out, mingle and not be masked at all times. People are not done celebrating that yet. I had to wonder what happens when that fades out because there will come a time when the music will slow down and the party thin out. 

Even more surprising was our attempts to pick up some produce at the farmer's markets that dot the state route we took to return home. We have been this way many time and stopping for fruit, vegetables, honey and preserves is something we look forward to. The prices are a bit higher but the quality more than makes up for it. 

This time around 90% of the stands were shuttered and the few that were open had no customers on a weekend with high traffic conditions. We made several attempts to find a place that was half way reasonably priced and it simply did not work. The assortment was not what it used to be and everything was priced four or five times higher than before. No surprise that they were not selling much. We observed shoppers leave with one item maybe two.

Hearing Potential

One weekend in May, we decided to rent a place in a sleepy town by the ocean lacking the kind of beaches that draw the tourists in. We "planned" the trip in under thirty minutes and got our Airbnb minutes before the host was going to stop taking requests for the following day. Magically, we got the place we wanted and arrived there late on Friday night. For a random and impulse booking, it was really nice - met our needs and was close to everything. Over the weekend, we took very long walks and explored the entire island by foot. On Saturday as we took our post-lunch stroll with the intent of taking a short nap right after, we ran into this billboard advertising a sunset cruise. That experience turned out to be the most important one of our trip because of our tour guide. 

An incoming college freshman, the young man was helping with the family business in summer like he always did. The family had lived on the island for five generations and his father was the town mayor. Everyone on that boat could see he was a politician in the making, the kind many of us might vote for. A couple of folks asked him about his career plans and no one was surprised to hear political science and pre-law. The young man left a strong impression on me - one that would stick long after the memories of the sunny days on by the sea had faded. I won't be surprised to see his name in the news someday - a Congressman from his district and maybe even more in time. 

Gnarled Tree

We were passing by a playground the other day and saw a child with her grandmother there playing by a gnarly old tree. The little girl was clearly taken up by its strange beauty - its limbs contorted and spread out close to the ground, making it easy to climb. The tree was old with a huge trunk and branches curled around to act like steps. We heard grandma laugh and say "You love that tree, don't you?" and the child replied gleefully "Yes, I do!". They were both smiling and laughing enjoying the gift of this unique tree that was so accessible, easy to love. 

As we walked away, I could not help thinking about the many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that tree must have endured to be hobbled to its knee, the innumerable burls on its trunk and branches that were signs of trauma and suffering. It was older than any other tree nearby. Its decades of silent pain and morphed into this spectacle of beauty and character that drew people to it. Maybe such too is the case with people who have suffered disproportionately in their lives - maybe they acquire an aura of splendor that draws others with more pedestrian lives into their orbit.

Vocabulary Words

I have to say I was familiar with most of the words on this list that people in my age bracket are not supposed to know. This list caught my eye because I have been thinking about how the way I speak Bengali (my native language) in a way that sounds dated even when compared to my parents who live in Kolkata. The culture and language moved on without me and I am hanging onto a relic no one recognizes anymore. The why and how of language evolution is a complex topic but it's interesting to observe the effects of being left behind. 

In the workplace, I see this manifesting itself as new set of buzzwords and catch-phrases that replace the old ones. You hear a client use a turn of phrase and store it in your repository and a curiosity. Then in months to follow you hear and read it many other times from different sources. Now that phrase rises up to common parlance in business and you start to use it. Before long it becomes part of everyday vocabulary. If for instance a person were to take a a decade long break form work to pursue their passions or raise a family, upon their return to work they would struggle with the language just as I do with Bengali with my peers. 

Near Miss

Loved this story about trees whose seeds have been to the moon and back. The fact that these seeds could  have been the subject of a scientific experiment but were not, should have been fussed over but were largely neglected and forgotten makes you wonder about the grand missed opportunities in life. 

This applies to the life of the ordinary person but also that of larger institutions and society overall. There are many misses in business and they speak to the lack of foresight on the part of the person who passed on what would turn out to be blockbuster. The story of these seeds is more like a near miss - atleast some of those trees survive to this day. If there were learnings to be had from controlled experiments - that was a big miss

All the trinkets and tchotchkes that the Apollo astronauts took with them in their personal canvas bags are cool for this reason, bestowed with a magical sheen the second they were returned to Earth—space souvenirs. But the seeds that Roosa, who died in 1994, carried feel different from other mementos. They weren’t put in museums or auctioned off. They were buried in the soil of the Earth, the only soil like it in the solar system—in the entire universe, as far as we know.

Meeting Bot

I am not using voice to text software to take meeting notes for me yet but it seems like the best way to deal with many meetings. Specially for the times a person is triple booked - a note taking bot could attend all three of them and summarize the key actions (if any). If this becomes norm, chances are that the organizers of these meetings will be more thoughtful while sending invite and only those with substantial speaking parts will need to attend them. Everyone else can have bot presence and be covered. 

The uses of meeting attending bots extend past the work place too. There is any amount of useful content out there in the world. If I wanted to attend every webinar that was relevant to me there would be no time in the day for me to work my job. The meeting bot could potentially attend these for me and provide a quick recap of the topics and keywords I tell it to focus on. Since the technology exists, its upto us to start using it extensively to bring about positive change in meeting culture in our places of work.

Reading Connection

Nice essay on what it feels to finish a book or audiobook that you loved. The deepness of the engagement is driven by the reader or listener:

"What the author or writer does is provide maybe one third, but we ourselves, as we engage in that, we provide two thirds. Because what we're being offered are not descriptions, they are suggestions which we then take up and imagine for ourselves. And our emotions are our own as well,"

The favorite books of my childhood were always about escapism - another world, another time, another culture in some combination. Here and now had absolutely no appeal to me. I sought escape from my small town existence, the complete lack of excitement and change that made all the days of the week, month and year turn to an an amorphous blob. There were things of redeeming value - the smell of rain on dry earth, dry brown bleeding into vivid shades of green, the mynahs and parrots on the mango tree, the smell of chai and so on. But none of that offered the ultimate escape books did. 

That ability to escape to another world has long disappeared. I don't like reading stories of imagined and fictive lives anymore no matter when and where they are set. A well-researched and thought-provoking work of non-fiction is the only kind of reading that keeps me engaged. And those are hard to escape into no matter how well-written the content and how passionately the author cares for their subject.

Sea Living

Cruising is cheaper compared to cost of assisted living. That alone can be enough for some to choose sea over land. The idea of being able to sea the world comfortably for a price point that makes sense is very appealing. The industry is clearly starting to cater to this market segment:

 Oceania, for its part, had a Snowbird in Residence program, which has since been canceled — specialty agents are waking up to this lucrative demographic.

CruiseWeb, based in Tysons, Virginia, launched a Senior Living at Sea program that both builds out retiree-specific itineraries and helps clients manage their their lives back on shore.

It's interesting that the same tenets of monthly costs, ease of travel and quality of care would be hard if not impossible to pull off on land. This model make sense at sea on something the scale of a cruise-ship and with that comes the cost the world needs to bear. 

Motherhood Reflections

Truer words were not spoken: "In our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it". You only have to look around to see this to be true just about all the time. The only exception I can think of is a super-specialized surgeon who can save a life because their skills are truly unique and so they are very expensive. The rest of who makes money in the world around us are not doing work that obviously benefits other people.

As someone who could not afford to and did not want to have someone else take over raising my kid, this "illogic of the market" never made sense to me: Parenthood likewise forces an encounter with the illogic of the market: good fortune means getting to pay someone less than you make to do a job that’s harder and probably more important than your own. 

Parenting a child is the most significant work that a person can do in their life. To outsource that would make sense if you were paying someone way better qualified than you to do that job. Also that person would need to love and care for your child no less than you would. A very tall order but not impossible to fulfill if one had such resources to find such a person. Most people don't and when the market pushes them to do that higher paying job that is not nearly as essential, rewarding or meaningful as raising a child, they have to pay someone a pittance to do that job on their behalf. 

Simple Skill

This graph has been around a while but seeing it for the first time a few days ago made me chuckle.  Imagine you stay in that job for a few decade and only ever go as far as learning code a few Excel macros and formulas into your spreadsheets. The pinnacle of your math education having been in the early part of your undergraduate degree. Comes a time when you begin to wonder if you really needed anything beyond an eight grade education to do that job that you do and if in fact what you did not learn in school by that point could not have easily be learned on the job. 

The education past that point until you enter the workforce are like toll-gates that lead to better or more selective opportunities - its not that the eight grader could not handle to the job, just that they would be not be given access. Along the way as a result of maturity that comes with age, learning things, meeting people, going places the person evolves to become an improved version of their eight grade self. That and being handy with Excel (bonus points for Power BI) is all it takes to be successful in the workforce. Needless to say, Excel continues to improve all the time so you only need to keep your skills sharp there not to slide into obsolescence. I have known clients whose business lived in Excel and people to get promoted because their Excels skills were at Ninja level compared to their competition. I have always been a user and fan.

Magic Box

 Saw this very excellent visual come through my LinkedIn feed recently and could not agree more. Companies imagine there is this box bearing untold riches and gifts all tagged AIML All they need to do is to summon up their data to open it and out the other comes business value pouring. First hard thing is to tell them such box does not exist. 

When you say that as a vendor, they assume you must not be good enough so they RFI and RFP around to guided by the Magic Quadrant to hear from the best and the rest. When no box is forthcoming from anyone, they might return to you to build them one. Now comes the second hard message to convey - the box can be built but it will be expensive and time consuming for all of the reasons in the bottom half of the visual. 

They dislike this answer even more than the first. More RFPs follow to find someone who will do it on the cheap. Some vendors raise their hands just to get their foot in the door. They get in, get stuck in the mud real bad, worse things ensure. Everyone wishes they had not won the deal or walked away when they had a chance. After the dust settles, after many box makers have come and gone, the data science people carry on business as usual - they do deliver value but it is in proportion to effort, no magic wand stuff coming out of AIML boxes.

Calling Quits

A woman I worked with several years ago seemed to be on a great career track supported by a husband who cared about her achieving her potential. He worked a less demanding job than she did and took on a larger share of household and child-rearing. C is the e kind of woman that makes it to the top because the right combination of thrusting forces came to play in their life in a timely manner. Recently, she quit her C-level role at the firm  she had helped grow from nothing to what it is today. She is self-employed now picking up gigs when she is able. The kids are in high school and getting ready for college in a few years. The husband is ready to go do his thing now that his parenting responsibilities are waning. He might not end up working on a pasta truck but its likely he won't go back doing more of what he had been doing this whole time. 

Ten years ago, I would have never considered C to the be kind of woman who will just hop off her career track to do gig work. But here we are as the trends point out. My former client M went from being a CIO to a consultant for an unknown, small-time company. She is in her mid 40s and I never saw that one coming either. There must be something to be said for people becoming acutely aware of their own mortality, having the opportunity to pause in their homes around their loved ones and think long and hard about what really matters. For C and M they had achieved the pinnacle in a sense. More time and work would mean a similar role in a larger company, becoming more visible in their business, board memberships, speaking engagements and such. Maybe they are done with all that and want to spend the last few years close to their soon to be adult kids who will leave for college. 

Savory Sweet

It was a warm afternoon complete with dazzling blue skies uncluttered by clouds. There were many errands to run and things to complete over the weekend but I chose to do none of what was "essential". Instead I raked leaves, watered the plants while watching birds and squirrels out in their numbers. When my reminder for my 3 pm appointment went off, it had been five hours of blissful idling doing nothing useful. In the car, when NPR came on a desi sister was rhapsodizing the virtues of chai and pakora for snack in the monsoon days. She pointed out correctly that that combination of smells - the savory of the pakora and the sweet spice of the chai makes you want to look out the window expecting to see rain - there almost must be rain. 

Monsoon afternoons were my favorite thing growing up and the memories of pakoras and chai very much a part of them. Listening to this woman whose name I had missed brought it all rushing back. Suddenly in the middle of mild spring day, I craved the chai and pakora she so lovingly described. I knew I had to make it as soon as I came home. As it turned out we got busy with other things and that desire faded. But I know it has not receded too far. The next time it rains and weather has us stuck home, the chai and pakoras will make their much needed appearance. 

Being Influenced

I have not read much about what it means to be an influencer in the marketing business so this article was educative.

From Botox to breast implants, medical providers have turned to social media for a new kind of personalized advertising that comes directly from influencers. And in the growing industry of cosmetic providers, there are few to no rules when it comes to advertising body modifications, which opens the door to offering teenagers free, unlimited cosmetic procedures. 

This is sad and wrong at so many levels. A teenager generally feels like they know all the answers and the adults are out of touch. That is normal rite of passage into their own adulthood. When this young person's mostly unwarranted self-assurance and is boosted to stratosphere by their ability to influence others to buying things, its already a step in the wrong direction. 

To make one-way decisions to alter their bodies at this age just because its free and someone wants to use them push product, it is another dimension of wrong. It is only a matter of time that their ability to influence will fade and along with these unlimited freebies - its like the house of cards falling apart. 

Giving In

The idea of being a shopper in a AR enabled store where the staff are able to see see thought bubbles floating over my head is a bizarre mix of scary and absurd. If I as the shopper pay enough I should similarly be able to see my segmentation attributes and churn score floating above the head of the store manager. The presence of such data layer and ability to as deep as you pay will preclude the need to have people skills, emotional intelligence and just about all other markers of being human. We can all be making data driven decisions all the time - more likely have an agent having make them on our behalf. 

And no, you won’t just take off your AR glasses or pop out your contacts to avoid these problems. Why not? Because faster than any of us can imagine, we will become thoroughly dependent on the virtual layers of information projected all around us. It will feel no more optional than internet access feels optional today. You won’t unplug your AR system because doing so will make important aspects of your surroundings inaccessible to you, putting you at a disadvantage socially, economically, and intellectually.  The fact is, the technologies we adopt in the name of convenience rarely remain optional — not when they are integrated into our lives as broadly as AR will be.

A long time luddite, I succumbed to a smart thermostat and there are benefits to it as I can see in the past year that I have had it. At first it was very optional and not something I thought I would need or use - but I was proven wrong soon enough. The same logic extends to other "conveniences" as this article correctly points out. We sit it out and we sit out of the flow of life around us - certainly a choice but not one that is easy to make.

Breaking Up

Creative way to future-proof furniture by design. Not every spilt of material goods need to be tragic and that's where the choice of the word friendly is a nice touch even though the use case for unfriendly and contentious is clear. Merging households is just as chaotic as splitting them up. Each side has attachment to things the other does not care out and even actively despises. 

One of the benefits of such splitable furniture in a romantic partner break-up is the return to singleness by design. It may curb the urge for a rebound when the home looks and feels ready for a single life. That could give the person much needed pause of introspection and revitalization. Being surrounded by half of their coupled life that looks clean, well-defined and whole can be restorative for those time when the suddenly-single status overwhelms.