Heartcrossings

There are so beautiful many layers of irony about a desi sister who teaches English in University of Cambridge writing her thoughts about the coronation  in a publication that may not the first choice of either Desis or Brits. The writing is solid and so is her perspective for a reader such as myself. It is very strange business that the monarchy still exists and the people are expected to gather around and celebrate that they need to pay for it to exist. The same sort of people that are dying of hypothermia because energy bills are so high as the author cites in her essay. I could not agree more with Gopal when she says: Far from being anomalous, the extravagance of this unnecessary coronation precisely represents and even glorifies this morally untenable social order in which to be rich is to have the right to rule and to get richer. " Subjects” not only become poorer by the day but are required to pay joyful obeisance to the very system that renders them so. When the former...

I was shopping online for some clothes and noticed how many of the models in the pictures were clearly AI generated. That did not make any significant difference to my shopping experience. Ultimately, human or not, the fit of the item will never be a given until I try it on. There is a threat to the modeling business due to AI . As always there are two sides to the story. The impact to the human models is negative  ..we human models have worked really hard to have our stories heard and our authentic experiences considered, and we’ve fought to change the perception that we are just a sample size or a prop for clothes. We’ve mobilized in groups, such as the Model Mafia network that I am a part of, to advocate for social issues and push back on exclusivity in the fashion industry. In some cases our activism has even cost us jobs. But now that we are finally starting to see changes in the industry, digital models can just land the jobs that we took risks for. Or worse, brands can just ...

Wendy's use case of a customized language model is one that other fast food and fast casual restaurants might pick up. Placing the order is often the longest part of the process and not the most enjoyable one. If a chat-bot could engage the customer better, be friendlier and chattier and help them make their choices more effectively, that could help outcomes for both sides. Those preparing the order would have confidence that the order accurately reflects what the customer asked for. The customer could experience less friction in the flow. I was at a Cava recently pretty late in the evening. They were missing some items for my order so there was back and forth on substitutions.  The same thing happened with three other customers in line behind me. With a chatbot, it would not be so hard to present the customers with options that the currently available ingredients will support. The bot can also recommend the right substitutions for your favorite item in the menu when some componen...

I happened to be passing through J's city on my way back from a business trip on Mother's Day weekend. We met for dinner on Friday and brunch on Saturday before I flew home. The holiday itself never held much meaning for me but J has always done something to celebrate it which I very much appreciate. This time, I experienced the weekend in a new way - the mother of an independent young woman who took charge of me, made me comfortable and planned everything. I just had to show up and enjoy the time together. As we talked about her work, life and other things there was this strange experience to me speaking to a much younger version of myself and seeing flashes of my mother from my childhood. It was as if J was a composite of three women living in a different place and time. The words she spoke could not have been mine or my mother's - she is her own woman and very distinctively so. She has wisdom far beyond what I had at that age and a sense of calmness that I still don'...

Watched Run a few days before Mother's Day and it gave much food for thought. There is an universal presumption and expectation of a perfect love flowing from mother child. It is expected to be the natural order of things so any reports of deviation are viewed with great skepticism. The messenger is often killed and the message must wait another day to be heard if ever. Diane in the movie is a horror-inspiring mother - that is the point of the story and she delivers a powerful performance.  But there are micro-aggressions leading to micro-traumas far more pedestrian mothers are responsible for. In my own extended family are a couple of mothers that clung to at least one of their children as a long-term security solution. These mothers created circumstances in which the kids remained emotionally stunted, unable to get into a relationship or marriage - embark on their own life journeys. The  mother has built a co-dependent relationship with this middle-aged person who has no lif...

I met my one time neighbor and very old friend M when I was visiting her city for work. It turns out she lives in the heart of downtown, a few blocks away from where my meetings were. M is one of those warm, generous people that are very easy to be around. That was her when I first met her over twenty years ago and is true even today. We often met at the gym in the apartment complex where we both lived at the time. I remember the first time she invited me over, she made this wonderful rich chocolate dessert from scratch. It was an impressive production and by her description not that hard to make.  My marriage was on the brink back then and unbeknownst to me, so was hers. A few years later, I reconnected with her and learned about the bizarre way in which her marriage had ended around the same time as mine. She said, she never saw any signs of trouble with me - I guess we both did a good job of putting on a show of normalcy. M's apartment as I recall was picture perfect. It was wha...

These lines from in  Flights by Olga Tokarczuk , rang so true and familiar to me. Coincidentally, I was reading the book on Kindle on the plane and my layover, surrounded by people everywhere: With the years, time has become my ally, as it does for every woman—I’ve become invisible, see-through. I am able to move around like a ghost, look over people’s shoulders, listen in on their arguments and watch them sleep with their heads on their backpacks or talking to themselves, unaware of my presence, moving just their lips, forming words that I will soon pronounce for them. I don't know if this is every woman's experience, but I seem to have gone through a few distinct phases - very young and the male gaze had not fallen on me yet. Then suddenly it did - it was everywhere all the time with no chance of escape. Suddenly I had become visible and had some sort of power than I did not know or have control of. Then came the more steady state experience where I was visible but not the sh...

For folks like me that don't enjoy shopping it could very well be that the Gruen Effect makes it so unlikable. When I was growing up in India, shopping for clothes was a event that took place a few select times for the year - connected with some important festival and something new for the birthday. There were two ways to go about it. Buy the fabric and visit the tailor to have something made or buy ready-made. I preferred the former so it turned into a multi-step process with no instant gratification involved anywhere along the way.  The day of fabric shopping would have my mother and I dropped off at the largest fabric store in our town. It was pointless to go other places since the assortment was not comparable. This would be the one stop shop no matter what the project. The shopkeeper's assistant would pull down the bolts of fabric we liked, it would be unfolded a bit to spread on me. Everyone would look in the mirror and opine.  So between my mother, the shopkeeper's ...

This story about AI decoding brain signals was the topic of an interview I tuned into on the  radio while driving between some errands. The person the host was interviewing was a social scientist of some sort but I had missed the introduction. The whole conversation was rather alarmist and insinuated that the day is not very far when random entities can eavesdrop on our brain signals, intercept them and direct them in ways that served their needs. A bonanza for advertisers and anyone who wanted us to act in a specific way to further their business goals. They went so far as to speculate that it would be possible to get a murder conviction without laying a hand on the suspect or ever interrogating them. The brain signals would be tapped to get the confession - nice and easy.  .. the researchers addressed questions about potential misuse of the technology. The paper describes how decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly in training the d...

My friend C has been at his mother's side in hospice for a few days now. The family has gathered about and the end is near. C is an English major and in times like this the ability to convey the depth of feeling words sparsely but effectively makes a difference.  He sent us a note about what was going on and I read it a few times because it was so beautifully written. When she does pass, I am not sure we will have the appropriate words to comfort him. Reading this essay where Henry James is quoted on the topic of his mother's passing brought C to mind. The essay starts with a quote about motherhood more universally: “Every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman,” the visionary psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote as he considered the mother as a pillar of society. Having a mother is a lifelong complexity. Losing a mother, no matte...

I like the parallels between painting vs camera and writing vs ChatGPT .  The logic is that the camera did not kill painting so it is unlikely that that AI will kill writing, If anything it should raise the bar for high quality writing where the voice of the writer is so distinct that it cannot be mimicked.  Recently, I had ChatGPT write me a poem that explains microeconomics in Shakespearean sonnet style. It did as it was told and the results were amusing and entertaining. That said, it very much fails to make the cut of the real sonnets we know and love by the said Shakespeare. The AI's production was a good caricature of the style devoid of the feeling that words can produce in the hands of a master.  The camera—which Susan Sontag once compared to a gun—didn’t eradicate painters or painting as a medium. On the contrary, photography led to the birth of Modernism. Much like how smartphone owners are all casual photographers, the prevalence of ChatGPT will, in theory, str...

Love some of the ideas for how to break the stranglehold of dependency on devices - specially the smartphone. When I am driving alone and even to a place I have been many times before, I find myself turning on directions on my phone. Not because I cannot get there without assist but using the map on the phone to drive has become habitual. I actually like the radio being interrupted by instructions to merge, turn left or right.  Logically, I should not want that specially that I know how to get to my destination. Every once in a while, the absurdity of my behavior makes me pause and drive without turn by turn directions. I feel better in the end. Can listen to something interesting or just do nothing but drive. There is a long way to go for me before I can do what the author is recommending: If you approach your phone with your own version of ritual propriety, you may end up using it more, or less. You may use it at different times, or in different ways. The Way is not the same eve...

Reading about Color Moods made me think of two things - how green the yard looks this time of year and my closet. The colors in my closet have been trending bolder and brighter over the years. Some of it as a result of gifts I got from friends and family in India who know of my tastes from a time when I was much younger. Once they planted the seeds of vivid orange, yellow, red and pink there, the overall mood of my closet shifted in that direction. Yet, when I tested this thing online, I found my eyes resting most comfortably and a low level of stimulation. I generally love colors a lot brighter than that but it did not work that way on the screen. The trees outside are another story. There is no amount of green that is too much. Innumerable shades and riches of color and texture feel wonderful. Maybe because those are all natural colors and they work magically well together.  Anyone looking for a mood-based approach to color combinations can benefit from this tool. Whether your p...

Got to love it when the world's richest man tells the rest of us what way of working is morally wrong . Not only is what he is saying problematic for many whose only chance of being part of the workforce is working from home because nothing else makes them whole. They are care-givers to children and elderly in their lives because they cannot afford professional help no matter how long they commute and how many hours they sit at the desk to be "moral" and upstanding employees. There are women who have given birth and need to choose between exiting the workforce or continuing to work from home until they are able to return. Maybe in this man's book a mother wishing to stay home and bond with her baby is not quite "moral" because a the full battery of service folks she needs in her life do not have the same privilege. Imagine a new father wants to spend time with his baby because that phase of life is so fleeting. Wouldn't that be a complete outrage. Not on...

This story made for an intense and sad read . How the dreams we have at the end of our lives, can predict how close we are to the finish line. The author refers to the work of Dr. Kerr in this area:  Kerr is one of the only physicians in the country who has studied this phenomenon in depth. He undertook the study of end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs) because he repeatedly encountered patients whose dreams and visions were important to them and were frequently predictive of death. Yet, without research findings that validated the importance of such dreams, Kerr could not get physicians to take them seriously. I wonder if such dreams also come to those who are not hospice-bound and have know way of knowing that their time is up. Maybe such dreams are harbingers of such news to those as well except that there may not be such an organized body of data to demonstrate if the the dreams are truly predictive of the end.

Josephine Dorado is a New York-based media artist, performer and social entrepreneur. In her work, she explores the extension of the performance environment with technology, often utilizing movement-based, sensor-driven synthesis and networked telepresence. She is also interested in the process of cultural exchange through creative interplay in virtual spaces, which led to founding ZoomLab and initiating the Kidz Connect program, which connects students internationally via creative collaboration in virtual worlds such as Second Life . Me : What triggered the creation of Zoomlab ? Josephine: I had gotten a Fulbright scholarship and went to Amsterdam to do interactive art & performance. I was fortunate to get an artist residency while there and immersed myself in the field of networked performance (are you familiar with networked performance?) Me: No I am not. Josephine: These are performance in which the artists are in disparate geographical locations, using networked technolog...

Parrots and social media in the same sentence can happen to and not by accident either. Seems like they are not that different from human. Popularity is important and decides if you get calls or not:  Pet parrots that are allowed to make video calls to other birds show signs of feeling less isolated, according to scientists. The study, which involved giving the birds a tablet that they could use to make video calls, found that they began to engage in more social behaviour including preening, singing and play. The birds were given a choice of which “friend” to call on a touchscreen tablet and the study revealed that the parrots that called other birds most often were the most popular choices. That sounds just like us on with our curated to perfection lives in pictures and video -  full or "preening, singing and play". Mouse models have been standard in scientific research for longest time. With this parrot study, it seems like consumer product development could rely on bird m...

Watched The Elephant Whisperers recently. It is beautifully shot and shows the loving bond between elephants and their human caregivers eloquently. A bereaved mother (Bellie) feels comforted by the elephant she tales care of - he reminds her of her now deceased daughter when she was his age. She is bereft when that elephant is separated from her to be given to another caretaker. I grew up in India very close to indigenous people and it is probably the best thing that happened to me in my childhood. I remember these folks as being hard-working, carefree and centered to something the rest of us not even see. You could think of their lives as "simple" but that would be wrong. They lived in a world apart from ours that was always alluring and mysterious to me. We may have had more and better things than they did but we but that was all we had.  Watching Bellie and Bomman in the movie tending their blended human and elephant family took me back in time. Bellie reminded me of a tri...

So heartwarming to read about technology making a real difference to the most underserved . In this case making sure a person was actually paid for the sale “Confirmation that money has come was a perennial issue for vendors,” Pai told Rest of World. “A lot of vendors had feature phones with SMS limits, and hence, confirmations of payments didn’t come in real time as SMS inboxes were full. Some asked to see customers’ phones or asked customers to send [the payments] again, which led to lots of arguments and a poor checkout experience. Sound box [services] seem to have solved that problem. The customer for the solution is one I am very familiar with. They have not changed all that much since my childhood years in India to last summer when I was back home in Kolkata. It was always unclear to me how the small-time vegetable sellers with a little space on the side of the street was able to eke an existence. Just about everything was conspiring against their success. And yet they persisted ...

One bold author has peered into the crystal ball to see what lies a decade ahead of generative AI.  It is a daunting task and this version of the story ends quite badly. I want to believe (even if naively) that more good than bad with come out of generative AI over a period of time. Being able to adapt and use it in creative ways is where the winners will separate from the pack and forge their path.  This is true for every line of work, The question to ask at the moment is what jobs do I as a person need to get done in my personal and professional life where this can help. Once we get further along, the question should likely change to what have I never considered as a job to get done in my personal or professional life because it was never possible do. Of these are there any that I would love to get done and then can this technology help me.  For those of us who were around for the dotcom boom and bust cycle, we recall the endless vomit of ideas and how everyone was in t...

J came home to visit for a weekend recently and it had over a year since the last time she did. We both took Monday off to hang out. This is the first time she is home a working woman living independently in her own apartment. She took me out to brunch and we talked for hours. As J has achieved degrees of freedom through her teens and now as as an adult, our relationship has ebbed and flowed. Sometimes she felt distant and mentally lost to me. At other times, it like I was her last and only anchor. Rarely was it then even-keeled place in between. This visit, for the first time in a long while, I experienced that fine balance. We were like two friends who go way back, understand each other and make each other laugh. It takes me constant work to grow alongside her, adapt to the evolving reality of J and keep pace with change.  It is a lot of work and all to easy to slide into what was familiar and comfortable for the majority of my motherhood - treating her like a child. My mother si...

A character in a movie I watched recently reminded me of K as a kid. He was my best friend M's little brother. M and I were in our early teens at the time. K was a quiet guy and lived in his sister's oversize shadow. She loved him dearly but was a bossy young woman. When M's family relocated to Shimla, K had just turned thirteen. That was the last I saw him. In my memory he remained this quiet kid, who followed his sister around and did her bidding. He was unfailing polite and respectful. He spoke only on occasion and very little. K was programmed to be useful - at home and outside, always first to lend a helping hand. So when that movie brought the memories of K and childhood to mind, I  got curious to see what had become of the kid. His LinkedIn profile sounded like a dream - he was doing his own thing, had left the corporate world behind and found an interesting niche to thrive in. He still had the same face only an older man now. I imagine he is still holds doors for wo...

All around me, trees and flowers seem to be flourishing exuberantly this year - more so than the past few. I have noticed it but never connected it to bad seasonal allergies that have bothered me for months. Apparently, the two are connected and we owe both to climate change .  Climate change is caused by an increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which trap and hold heat. Carbon dioxide is one of those gases, and it's released in heavy quantities due to fossil fuel extraction and burning. However, carbon dioxide also serves an important role in pollinating plants by helping them "grow bigger and faster, flower more, and produce more pollen per flower," per the Journal​​​​​​. With more pollen comes worse allergic reactions. Combating climate change is necessary to stop the season from continuing to stretch longer. There is a divine logic to this in a sense. Maybe this is how the earth heals itself, producing more plants and trees to help creatures t...

Reading this article on slow travel made me think that travel for pleasure likely killed the concept of slow travel. For most people who have to earn their living, the right to leisure is one that has to be paid for through time and effort at work - no matter what the nature of that work. Once enough leisure has been earned, the person might take time off and travel. It is no surprise that the the earnings run out quickly and they have to go back.  The travel under such conditions cannot be be too slow. When travel was a necessity to live and survive, there might have been few if any constraints on how long it should take or last. People left their land and home on account of floods, famines, wars and the like. There was nothing to return to and the only way was onward until they came upon a hospitable place. It would take whatever time it took with stops and detours along the way. Modern day travel is not tethered in such primal life-saving purpose.  It’s hard to pinpoint it...

Nice interview about the loss of conversation . The way the balance between having a real human conversation and a digital life is described makes sense: ..we have now created an environment that will distract us to distraction. My recipe does not involve my giving up my phone. It’s too useful. But it means not using it on occasions like this when I am trying to give you my full attention. The human voice occupies a lot of bandwidth if you listen to it properly. If I was also texting, you would not be getting a sense of me. When J was still living at home with me, she used to call me out on being distracted by phone. To her credit, she used hers sparingly if at all when in the middle of a conversation. I acknowledged the problem and agreed on no phone at dinner table rule. As Turkle rightly points out, adults are often the worst offenders and kids want to have a real conversation. That is a short-lived period in their childhood when they want to hear and be heard. It is tragedy for the...

This piece of news reads like an Onion article except it is actual news. We have a AI Czar now and the lady in question does talk a lot like a chatbot. Maybe that was one of the key qualifications for the role. More telling is that was thought fit to hire someone who has no track record of delivery in any related capacity (and some may argue in any capacity whatsoever).  Back in day when she was elected, I remembered mixed emotions in desi circles. Some were elated because she could be claimed to be one of our own (atleast in part). Others were not sure they wanted her to represent the brand desis were aspiring for in the world. Now the hand-wringing will resume in sober earnest I presume.  The poor woman has been saddled with a job way more qualified people would be afraid to take on. It is all but given that she will fail - it is not an if but when and how big. Inaction and ineptitude will have over-size consequences. She would be smart to find a well-credentialed and quali...

The aftermath of S's visit lasted a while in how many ways I felt pressure-tested. We have more in common than I would like to admit. S said during dinner the first night of his stay, that his daughter was the product of three generations of broken families where the parents of the child had little love and warmth in their marriage if the union lasted at all. I would say the same is true in a sense of J. My grandparents on both sides were in what would be called unhappy marriages in current parlance. Back in their time, in the aftermath of partition survival was the bigger more pressing concern - the lack of love in marriage was not something anyone had time to mull over.  Both grandmothers became widows by the time I was in my teens. Sometimes they talked about their discontent in their marriages and how they accepted it as an unchangeable fact of life. It seemed like in their old age when they no had responsibilities left for anyone, both women reminisced about the wasteland...

Interesting article about the social cost for a woman who chooses to negotiate her job offer . It is a delicate balance. If you are a woman and negotiating there is a Goldilocks zone that you should try to hit. Don't undersell yourself or that will set the tone for how you are treated once you accept the offer. However, try not to become among the highest paid people in your level. That invites attention and scrutiny disproportionately. Specially, if you want to be bold and take chances on the job itself, break some glass along the way. Being somewhere in the middle of the pack is a good safety net to have for such experiments. You may even garner the support of leadership and they will reward you for your troubles because there is room to grow.  If a woman negotiates a really good deal and then proceeds to makes a bunch of waves, chances are that she will be viewed as problematic and at some point that problem will be resolved in ways that will not be to her liking. Many of these ...

The arrival, stay and departure of S is on my mind. I could have done it differently and there were many chances to recover but I did not use any of them. I just wanted him to know I had not sought his presence in my home and felt imposed upon. Yet, I have been his shoes two decades ago - a very different phase of life but much of what he is dealing with at sixty I did back then. A life upended by the implosion of a marriage, no financial safety net and a future with responsibilities looming ahead. J was less than a year old back then and his daughter is in her 20s but very far from being settled. S has responsibility for her even as he can barely fend for himself. Notwithstanding, I could not summon any compassion for his cause. Desperate people need lifelines - maybe the short stay at my home was one of such myriad lifelines he depends on.  I came to realize that my outrage was borne out his lack of candor and manners. When I was in his shoes, I was at my most vulnerable - my car...

A few weekends ago I suffered a crisis of moral compass in that I failed to live up to the principle of atithi devo bhava  - an ideal I was raised on and had many opportunities to learn by observation in my own family. Guests were treated with kindness and respect, made to feel at home and when they left they knew they would be welcome back. It was how I was treated by the overwhelming majority of hosts I have spent time with in my life. It is also how I observed my parents conduct themselves.  With that being my background, I don't have an excuse to fail at being the kind host I have come to expect as a norm -  behave like the exception . Yet, I failed quite resoundingly. The guest in question, S is a friend of a friend. We know of him more than we know him. That Friday, he texted us that he was visiting his daughter a few hundred miles north of us on his way down south to where he lived. I assumed he would be driving but he was not - he was coming by bus. I also assume...

I always check the gourmet cheese on sale at my neighborhood grocery store. Much of what I have tasted that is fall outside by typical range is because it was on sale there. While the assortment is far from remarkable, it is a small window that opens to the much bigger world of cheese. Recently, I picked up something I could not even associate with another cheese I know for form, taste or smell. It got me curious about an authoritative catalog of cheese and how to understand what I had in front of me. This led me to discover this listing  and this one where I learned about cheese made of reindeer milk.  My little tour around the world of cheese felt no different than a dive into anything. One of my favorite things in the kitchen is my fresh garlic cloves and no surprise that is there not just one kind of garlic . In years to come, the bar to dabble in a bit of everything in life will likely drop lower - which is generally a good thing. But to specialize in one tiny niche and ...