Heartcrossings

Loved this post by a math teacher on where and how AI can help students with learning math . Learned a new phrase - productive struggle. This seems to apply widely in other parts of life. Our desire to skip the process of productive struggle or cut corners around it can impact outcomes in both personal and professional lives. It got me thinking about the productive struggle to become a better parent for example.  Doing it right takes patience, fortitude and discipline. Every day is different with your children, the way they respond to your efforts can be quite contrary to your expectations and their evolution into independence can leave you lost and confused. As a parent you feel like you are working with a moving target and the rules of the game change unpredictably. The temptation to bypass the productive struggle to overcome all of that with a focus on what truly matters to you as a parent, is very strong.  The parent has a life outside parenting that can be overflowing with challen

B and I go back to college days and I would could her among my closest friends. Midlife crisis has come to our lives at different times and ironically, it has not helped us to support each other any better. When it was my turn a few years ago, I did what I always do in times of stress and trouble - I made several radical changes to my already complicated life almost to see at what point I would burst. It is only by providence that I managed to get out of all that mess mostly intact. That was my way, or if one believes there is no such thing as free will , then it was what was destined for me. In the case of B, she made hard choices much earlier in life - a few years after graduating from college, that set the tone for how the rest of her life would shape up to be.  Unlike most young people who march fearlessly in the direction of their dreams and don't let minor obstacles bother them until age and disappointment take their toll, B was an old soul who saw things differently. Most dr

Listening to the Mahalaya song on the morning of made me tearful - the familiar effect of this music on me the longer I have been away from home, family and roots. I can pretend none of that matters most of the year until on the first day of Puja, the sound of Birendra Krishna Bhadra's voice triggers good memories I have left behind. The mild nip in the air, waking up very early in the morning and tuning into Akashvaani to listen to this with my parents. The scene was repeated in every Bengali household - we were a community in a way we never were any other time of year. This was the music that set the stage for Puja - a much simpler affair when I was growing up in a semi-rural place outside Bengal.  There were enough Bengali people there for Puja to be a big thing and the everyone else was more than happy to participate in the festivities. So even if Bengali centric, it was not a celebration that excluded anyone. Very few of my friends were Bengali at the time but their enthusiasm

There is a big difference between knowing and familiarity as this article about companionship AI points out, I have been using ChatGPT to help me with travel itineraries and the results are somewhat useful. I get enough information to re-think my original plan or fine tune what I had in mind. In this case the AI knows information on the subject where I want help but is not familiar with me beyond what I share in the prompt itself. For example, it has not had the opportunity to review all pictures from my past vacations and identify the common themes for those in which I looked the happiest. There could a dimension there that helps with building me a custom trip-plan - one that was aimed to maximize my happiness.  If your house caught fire and you asked a stranger walking by to help, they might be able to call 911 for you, which would be helpful! But if someone who knew you for 20 years was there, they’d be ready to grab your pet turtle, or remember you needed your insulin, or realize

For several months now, I have been working slowly with my parents and J to organize a vacation from the three of them in India but away from Kolkata. The idea was that it would be a change of scenery for parents while J could see a part of India she has never been to. Making this happen turned out to be a very slow and iterative process with many fits and starts. While everyone involved is well-intentioned, age and cultural differences makes bringing them together complicated. Plans are made and unmade all the time. This is very far from a conflict and yet the process has proved stressful for all involved.  My friends who have elderly parents have counseled me that I would be better off not trying to dislodge my parents from the comfort of their home - have J visit them where they live. There is some sense to that but I find that I am struggling to give up on my vision of a vacation for the three of them in a place new to them all. The hope is to create new memories where everyone sta

OMG (2023) is a movie that could be classified under a few different genres. Irrespective of tagging, it was enjoyable and brings up an very relevant topic in a non-threatening way. I grew up in an India full of contradiction at home and outside. In the same family we had people who were extremely prudish and would sooner die than talk candidly about sex and those who did not believe in filters. And this was not about age or gender. From what I could, the attitudes were more determined by what each person's understanding of Indian culture and heritage was.  There were those who had fallen victim to Macaulay's efforts  to cleanse our heritage away to replace it with some foreign and serving the interests of our overlords. The others believed that an true independence for India meant returning to our roots. We are hardly agreed on what those roots were and how far back in history we needed to return to find them and if the misogyny of Manusmriti was anything worth clinging on t

The findings of this expose are not so surprising. If the consumer is gullible enough to be influenced by an influencer on seriously big-ticket items like health, then perhaps that is the real problem - they need to be taught to be more critical and skeptical. Its one thing for a consumer to follow fashion trend on clothes or the latest in home decor (neither entirely without risk but definitely not catastrophic) but quite another if they decide to listen to advisory on what they should eat - even if that comes from a so-called dietician.  If what they hear does not square with long-standing wisdom, they would be wise to question it. There are no new or novel trends to follow to maintain good health - the commonsense advisory includes lowering stress, being physically active, getting enough rest and eating sensibly. Those things have been true forever and will not change until the human body evolves to become something entirely different from what it has been for our recorded history. 

For a whole week recently, I met a lot of people - much more than I usually do. It was work and vacation combined in the form of a road-trip that allowed us to stop at places we haven't been in a while. Around day four, I noticed I was getting exhausted from meeting yet another person (who I was still excited to see after a long time) because it meant I would need to sit across from them, see them and have them see me for a period of time. I wasn't sure why I would find that draining all at once.  Maybe it was the passage of time and having to confront who we had each become - the fear of being disappointed combined with that of disappointing might have played a part. In the end, none of that happened - it was just nice to meet people after a long time, the initial shock of seeing and hearing about the changes since the last meeting disappeared quickly and the conversations felt just as easy as before - however far back in time that before might be. Reading this essay about how

When people in positions of power, authority and influence make off the cuff remarks , the consequences could be unpleasant. Its unclear what how the 50 vs 10 data point came to exist but it would be a shame if it morphed into a fact President Biden  recently made the extraordinary claim  that, largely due to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), “we’ll see more technological change in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50 years and maybe even beyond that.” If AI could deliver such progress, it would represent an incredible advancement in human progress, and policymakers should do everything in their power to realize its potential. But even with AI’s dizzying possibilities, it is highly unlikely that technological advancements in the next decade will outpace the achievements of the past five decades given the extent of innovation in this timeframe. This matters because if the assumption is that robust innovation is on autopilot, then efforts to promote innovation ca

Loved this article that makes the case for the modern-day luddite . The author calls for a new kind of visionary:  The kind of visionaries we need now are those who see precisely how certain technologies are causing harm and who resist them when necessary. Lessons from history are worth remembering and learning from: In the 1800s, entrepreneurs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: the factory system. In the 2000s, CEOs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: algorithmically organized gig labor, in which pay is lower and protections scarce. In the 1800s, hosiers and factory owners used automation less to overtly replace workers than to deskill them and drive down their wages. Digital media bosses, call center operators and studio executives are using AI in much the same way. Met my friend H for coffee recently and found her perspective as a linguist particularly interesting. H thinks that LLMs will greatly reduce the number of writers producing origina

I haven't seen most of the shows that this list includes in the top fifty but have seen Mad Men which is probably my all-time favorite TV show as well. Being that Sex and the City (which I have also seen) is at number fifty, I get a decent sense of the where the rest would fall specially that I am familiar with Parks and Recreation, Better Call Saul, The Americans and The Daily Show. I feel like I have tasted a good sampling platter of shows that would be interesting to watch. The Tudors, Ozark and Monk did not make the cut for some reason. As with any curated list that takes the sensibilities of much reviewers into account, some inclusions and exclusions:  This final list doesn’t look like what any of our individual Top 50s would be — and that’s exactly how a process like this is supposed to work. A lot of these shows are canon, and you’ll see them in any ranking of this type. But hopefully you’ll find some of our inclusions strange and unexpected. Even more hopefully, perhaps whe

Upon stumbling upon this intriguing chart , I couldn't help but reflect on my own experiences while traveling through the first three countries on the list. The food culture in these places, especially in the more remote areas away from bustling cities, left an indelible mark on me. At first, I attributed my enchantment to the rosy lens of vacationing, seeing the lives of local people as more idyllic than reality allowed. However, as they say, the numbers don't lie. When food is not merely sustenance but a profound experience for the body and soul, it naturally takes time to savor its entirety. In many ways, the pace of eating in a culture mirrors its values and priorities. Take, for instance, countries like France, Italy, and Spain, where I, as a visitor, was captivated by their unhurried approach to dining. Meals transcend mere nourishment; they transform into social events, occasions for families and friends to convene and relish not just the food but also each other's c

Can't say that learning that Google manipulates our search queries to make up its own variant to drive monetization. There is a reason that most searches yield unsatisfactory results and there are no good alternatives to Google notwithstanding DuckDuckGo and Bing. Ultimately money controls the aperture through which people see the world. Between manufactured queries to boost ads, blacklisting of sites for no good reason and lack of other credible search options, those who pay Google for visibility control what the rest of us see or not.  More illuminating is the lack of coverage in the media of Google's antitrust trial. I was not aware of the reasons for it but they make sense from Google's perspective. By keeping this business out of the public eye, they can create a narrative that this whole things is irrelevant and so there is nothing to see.  ..deference of Judge Amit Mehta to Google’s neurotic demands to keep as much as possible of the evidence presented in court out

I met a former colleague recently who had been fired from the job when we worked together. The circumstances leading to his leaving the company were shrouded in mystery. No one talked about it. We were told S is no longer with the company effective immediately. S was one of the best sales people on team and his exit was met with surprise. Its been a long time since the event, the cast of characters who precipitated his departure from the company have moved on to other jobs.  L was our former manager and I found it amusing that S rated her as "adequately competent" and no major complaints. That is quite a bar to set for a people manager. The person only has to get a barely passing grade and that's completely okay. By any objective measure, L was quite a terrible manager and was let go not too long S departed. In his present job, the hierarchy is much worse and L's only expectations are that his manager will not impede his ability to do the job he is being paid to do. T

Met V after fifteen years and saw some shades of the person I had known back then. She always impressed me with her boldness and confidence at work. She and her then boyfriend owned a marketing agency. She sold and he executed - they worked very well together. V used to be coy about her relationship with N. He was always introduced by the title on his business card and there was no mention of anything else. I worked closely with both of them for about a year and observed the signs of a warm and loving relationship. I was divorced and raising J alone back then and often wondered if V and N had just by stroke of luck found themselves through work and then started a company together. Knowing of her hesitance to talk about her personal life, I never asked.  Over lunch that afternoon, I learned that N and her are married and have a teen-aged daughter together. Counting back, that kid was likely already born when we first met. I seem to recall vaguely that she had a baby she was always stres

We checked into the hotel close to midnight after a long drive. The lobby area was heavily decorated for Halloween with a ghost presiding over the front desk. A woman came over in a couple of minutes to check us in. I opened the door and walked into piles of clothing, an unmade bed and strong smells. Apparently the system had not registered the person had extended their stay, marked the room as clean and given it to us. They system also showed there were no other rooms available. The woman continued to smile a big smile at us even as my frustration mounted with time and growing tiredness. She offered no solutions other than repeating that her supervisor was on her way. For a well know hotel chain to commit this kind of faux pas placing customer privacy and safety at risk was already mind boggling but that unrelenting smile on that woman’s face was even more aggravating.  At some point in the next hour that we waited to have the situation resolved, I realized that half of her face was p

Met my friend S after nine years today. Depending on life stage that can be a very large or rather trivial number. For us it is in between - S is five years younger than me. The spate of events in both of our lives has been intense during this period. She got married to the man she had been in a relationship with since her early twenties. It took her that long to recover from betrayal by her first love, recover her ability to trust anyone. I saw her this time a married woman, comfortable in her life choices that her family did not quite support.  We were taken aback when we first saw each other in the lobby of my hotel - life experiences have changed us both more dramatically than nine years would warrant. It made us struggle to find the right words to express what we were seeing without being hurtful to each other. She was a dramatically different person even if a lot had remain unchanged. It is as if she went from being a character in one movie to another one of a very different genr

I met W after over two decades at a coffee shop in the town where we had first met as young women. She was single at the time and lived in the apartment above mine. I was pregnant with J and on very unsteady ground in my marriage. I have yanked out large chunks of memory from that time to help me forget pain that was making me act in destructive ways.  Years later, when I look back I can barely reconstruct a few hours of content about my life from a period spanning a decade. When I meet someone like W who recalls details I no longer remember, it is as if they are returning pieces of my life to me that were given up for lost, damaged or both. She shared some of her recollections and I was very grateful for that.  Like W holds a few fragments of me, I hold some of others in who passed through my life. I am all but certain those memories I have of them are not the most significant ones for them - but in the context of our short acquaintance, they etched a mark on me. There was a young cou

Not surprised to read this story about CVS pharmacists . My local one is a quiet part of a small town and still manages to produce long wait times for customers who need to pick up their prescriptions. There is only one pharmacist there that has been around for any length of time. The rest are a revolving door. If you step on the system even in the smallest way, the whole thing grinds to a halt. My own experience involved a very trivial issue compared to what others might be faced with. I was traveling out of country for several weeks and need my refill a few days ahead of schedule. That out-of-turn request caused a massive issue and required me to wait for an hour almost. The customers queuing up behind me got super-frustrated as I can imagine. As some point I stepped aside and asked to come back later.  When I got back, the issue was not resolved but they were nearing closing time so the queue was lite. The problem was finally resolved and I went on my way but standing there as long

This post from Netflix reminded me of the free AOL CDs I used to receive in the mail when I first got here. The first few times I was bemused by them and then started to wonder if there were things I could do with them instead of just tossing them in trash. There is only so many coasters a person can use. The AOL CD was profoundly aggravating because they would not stop coming and there was nowhere for them to go . Not everyone has what it takes to turn those into a throne "AOL...takes the saturation-marketing concept and the creation of needless waste to an unprecedented level," McKenna said. "As (the discs) are not recyclable and last for centuries, they are desperately in need of changing their practice. Others do it too, but  everyone  has received many unwanted AOL CDs, multiple times, from multiple sources." The Netflix DVD in the signature red envelope was nothing like it. Those red envelopes got the recipient excited and in the mood for movie night. It was

My cousin M and I are about three years apart with M being younger. From childhood into the years before we got married, we got along well but our mothers didn't. Over time, their conflict bled into our relationship in ways M can't seem to shake off. Anytime I reach out to her, I hear the warmth in her voice, a hint of nostalgia for childhood long past and generally goodwill towards me. Yet, she cannot cross the chasm to be friends with as two women our age could be. She had a a tough time balancing her higher education, career, marriage and kids in America and finally started to coast in her thirties. Her twenties like mine were the lost decade - just that our reasons and outcomes were different but that was lost time all the same.  Coming out the other side around the same time as she did, I looked around to see who else was around from times past that I could reconnect with. She was not ready yet so I gave her more time and yet more time. Recently, I was passing by her town

Recently while driving home from a beach town that gets is fair share of hurricane weather each year, I could not help noticing how flimsy the new homes looked compared to the older ones, which tended to be further inland. The older homes were generally made of brick, were single story and not close to the water. For all those reasons, they had stood the time even if they were not the most desirable pieces of property. The new homes have a nice view of the ocean which is a treat on days when the weather is nice. It can ugly when that is not the case.  I wondered why more of the new homes were not made of brick and durable things that would not get flung around in a storm. People were not entering but leaving the profession of bricklaying for one - maybe fearing  robots taking over their jobs in the future . In the interim, while those conceptual robots become reality, the pool of talent dries up and there is no one to build old fashioned houses. It is also true that these homes are not

Charming story about a village where time has stopped for a while and where rent is not subject to inflation . In a time where privacy is very far from a given and is being encroached upon from every direction, the founder's rationale for creating this low cost housing project is very interesting:  The estate's namesake is its founder, Jakob Fugger, a prominent Augsburg merchant and entrepreneur whose family name was synonymous with copper trading. While Fugger required his tenants to pray for him three times a day as a strategy to limit his own time in purgatory, he was also a pioneer in terms of creating affordable housing for the poor.  Astrid Gabler, the head of communications at the Fugger Foundation, said Fugger's idea of creating a space for impoverished citizens to get back on their feet was unusual for the time. "Fugger gave people the chance to have a right to privacy when they slipped into poverty," she said. At the time, impoverished families were oft

My father's recent illness helped me restore connection with a cousin I was dear friends with as a child and got estranged with over the years. It was a slow drift and almost imperceptible at first. We were both young and busy with our own lives without much concern for keeping up with close relatives - there was a presumption that a cousin is a static fixture in the evolving landscape of life, there was no need to feed and care for things that were a given and unchanging.  In a couple of decades, the relationship had turned so awkward that we had no place to start chipping away at the ice. Every move felt stiff, formal and unnatural. This is not who we were, this is not the conversation we would have had in the times where talk flowed effortlessly between us. So we let more time pass and more freeze gather and settle unless it was an impenetrable wall of ice.  As my father recovers, I have been reaching out to people to help him along the way - mainly with recommendations for doct

I was chatting with my friend D (who is also Bengali) about fish we love versus fish that is available to us where we live. The mullet turned out to be something we both had easy access to. Back in Kolkata, it would not be our first choice of fish but it feels like a treat now where the other options are even less inspiring. We both have frozen hilsa in the fridge to cook on occasion. The whole conversation about fish made me think how we build adaptations around taste we developed from childhood and where we find ourselves in terms of access to those tastes.  Every expat has their unique story of adaptation. It could be oatmeal dosa, scrambled tofu made in the style of egg bhurji, sandesh with ricotta cheese and so on. After we got off the phone, D sent me this link with a message "maybe rethink the mullet?". It made me smile to think of the unforeseen potential consequences of cooking mullet with mustard paste as I like to do sometimes - trying to dress up a fish that I gre

Long Wired essay linked to essays generated by ChatGPT. Judging by the similarity in style of writing and the excessive length of writing, I guessed both pieces of writing had AI help. One was acknowledged and showcased as an example and the other was not. Both pieces appear collaborative so the writer's voice and tone is not completely drowned. The essays were mediocre and it was surprising to learn that they were included in some best essay anthology - as a shining example of AI parlor tricks played on literature and writing, maybe there is a case for that. On the merits of writing alone, not so much.  Reading about the mother who does not like the children's book options in the store and wants to write her own adventure story - I can relate to that. My mother was a prolific maker of such stories when I was a child. They were all made up on the fly and held my attention. Sometimes I remembered the plot points at a level of detail she could not replicate in her second telling

Watched Peepli Live recently and though the director did a remarkable job. The issue of farmers committing suicide in India is serious and shameful one - it has made plenty of headlines over the years but the news cycle has moved on. The plight of this community only grows worse . Notwithstanding the weight of her chosen topic, Anusha Rizwi delivers a scathing dark comedy that makes the viewer laugh at times while feeling awful that they find any of this funny,  The situation for India’s more than 260 million agricultural workers is dire. Nearly 30 people in the farming sector die by suicide daily, according to the most recent figures available, typically due to overwhelming debt. Indeed in 2020, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives, according to government data. It was interesting to read a western reviewer's take on a style of story-telling that would be a bit niche even for audiences from India. ..most of the satire has a secondhand feel to

Employers trying to get employees to find friends at work sounds a lot like a anxious and over-zealous parent trying to get other kids to play with their at the park or schoolyard. It does work sometimes and that can be true at work as well. Is the role an employer should play? Not so sure that it is entirely wrong to lend a hand. In a large, diverse and dispersed company it may work quite well without some of the complications the article cites. If the employer brokers a connection between an employee who works a machinist to another who works in the legal department for example, there is almost no likelihood that one would become the boss of the other at some point in the future. However, there is a tremendous benefit to bringing two people together who in the normal course of events have never crossed paths.  ..You thought life was bad? At least you are not making crumpets with a stranger in finance. It is a mistake for managers to wade into the business of friend-making, and not j

Enjoyed this lovely essay about the ponds of Bengal . The author's recounting of how a nameless pond adjoining his ancestral house managed to survive the tide of modern construction was particularly satisfying to read about: ..As construction progressed, however, resistance arose from an unexpected quarter. Every time water was pumped out of the pond, it magically reappeared the next morning. It seemed as if the pukur itself was resisting annihilation. A few old-timers guessed that it was being replenished by neighboring waterbodies through subterranean capillaries. Others found recourse in the metaphysical. The resurrection was bhuture, “ghostly,” a vitalist force commandeered by spirits. Unable to lay the foundation for a planned two-story house, the builders gave up after a few months, leaving behind debris on the pond bed. As the water reclaimed lost ground, memory of the incursion lingered in the form of a lonely pillar, its steel rods jutting from the surface. Kingfishers ret

I read this Slate essay as a mother-daughter relationship story - really pulling out all the fluff and the extras until only the breath of life remains. It reminded me of my former co-worker D whose daughter did a fair share of drugs but not to the point where an intervention was required - atleast not at the time I knew of her. D was mostly on edge except in those fleeting days and weeks between crises when her daughter sounded happy and normal, making a serious effort to stay away from drugs.  That was when D shone - she could dive into work, immerse herself in it completely and produce the most remarkable results in a very short period of time. The manic phase as she referred to it, kept her employable and earned her the reputation of someone who got hard things done. There was this glorious period of two or three years when the daughter had been completely sober and was really making strides in her own life. D relaxed in sync and did some of the best work of her career during that

My friend P went from being a lazy and occasional cook with a very limited repertoire to a high-caliber home-chef in a period of about three years. At first it would be the barely passing effort to try a standard desi recipe that folks would cheer him on for. Then it took a more serious turn. He started to bake and really found his stride. It was as if he was meant to be a baker and just did not know that was his calling.  Every iteration was more perfect and P started to diversify - if the dish went into an oven for any length of time, then P would conquer it. That is when we started to see the quiches, pies, pastries and cakes coming through. Interestingly enough, the desi dishes showed up regularly too and now they looked professionally produced.  Watching P over the years, I have had to wonder if all of us who cook regularly have some kind of a core skill that we should try to discover and really work on perfecting. For P that was clearly baking and he seemed to have stumbled upon