Heartcrossings

 The analogy between the solution for homelessness and aspirin in lieu of chemo for a cancer patient is pretty sad one.  . . just a quarter of those who used these tiny homes ended up in permanent housing, and fears increased interest in investment in temporary solutions can divert resources from the real solution.  “Imagine if you have cancer, and the treatment is chemotherapy but I tell you there’s not enough chemo to go around, so you’re going to have to wait, and I’m gonna give you some aspirin,” Loving says. “That’s cool, but you need the treatment. There’s nothing wrong with doing a better job of keeping people in more dignified housing options. But if we’re not making sure that we’re focused on permanent housing, this is an intervention that will be filled up in a minute.” Following the analogy, it would seem that seventy-five percent of those in need would never get chemo - they would remain forever in the tiny home, a crude shelter that aims to offer a thin laye...

Read this news a few days after a couple of my British co-workers joked that they had AI running their government so it does not matter who runs for office or who wins. They advised us not to worry about elections in America either. AI would sort it all out. I thought they were just being cynical about things but turns out there is some truth to that statement about what's going on in their country.  Though the concept of an AI politician may seem silly to some and disturbing to others, Endacott said he wants to make clear that his platform is “not a joke.” He rejects the premise that the AI is replacing a human politician — instead insisting that the aim is to bring “more humans” into politics. “​​It’s not AI taking over the world. It’s AI being used as a technical way of connecting to our constituents and reinventing democracy by saying, ‘You don’t just vote for somebody every four years; you actually control the vote on an ongoing basis,’” he said. “Which is very, very radical ...

We were visiting with some friends we haven't seen in a long time and S insisted we try some of his Japanese whisky gifted to them by their grand-kids who wanted to introduce them to something cool and trendy. Being completely ignorant about whiskies good or bad, I was not the right person to opine but sampled anyway. They all seemed pleasant enough but connoisseurs would know better no doubt. Reading this article  reminded me of my own experience and failing to understand much: “To consider only Japanese malt whisky as Japanese whisky is disingenuous and rooted more in politics than in the reality of how all other world whiskies are created,” he said. “Rice whiskies have an equal if not more authentic history of being categorized as Japanese whisky, as they are based on the grain of Asia and exclusively distilled, matured, and bottled in Asia. The goal should be for Japan to expand the category and offerings of whisky styles from its beautiful country, its multiple distilleries, a...

 This article about jhankar beats was a great read. It brought back many memories of childhood in India. While I had observed the T-Series phenomenon up close, did not know the wonderful backstory that has to do with being customer obsessed and making music accessible to everyone. It's about meeting the customer where they are: Bhushan Kumar, chairman and managing director of T-Series, tells Vogue India that it all started when his father, the late Gulshan Kumar, found out that truck drivers were unable to listen to older songs by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar because the low-cost sound systems in their vehicles were not equipped to play them without distorting them. These songs already came with minimal production, in mono recording, and when they were played on the truck speakers, they’d distort and crackle even more. “When he interacted with rickshaw drivers up north, they told him the same thing, that as much as they like listening to original songs by Mohd Rafi, a  c...

Reading these lines from Hemingway's letter consoling parents in the loss of their young child made me think about people I know who have lost a child . As horribly tragic and irreparable the event, it seems that the surviving parents came to have a larger impact on the world in some way because of this experience. The death of the child had deepened their humanity.  Absolutely truly and coldly in the head, though, I know that anyone who dies young after a happy childhood, and no one ever made a happier childhood than you made for your children, has won a great victory. We all have to look forward to death by defeat, our bodies gone, our world destroyed; but it is the same dying we must do, while he has gotten it all over with, his world all intact and the death only by accident. Maybe there comes a time in the life of the bereaved parent when they make peace with what happened for exactly the reasons Hemingway describes. One of my dear friends who has survived such loss once told ...

Reading this post about the  defining traits of bad managers was so relatable that it made me laugh. Self-centered is correctly #1 on the list I would say self-absorbed falls in the same category. Several examples come to mind - C is probably top of the list. This individual took it upon himself to be a people manager but never had any team meetings, put any effort to create team cohesion or share any thoughts he had on where this team was headed. No surprise, people quit feeling stuck in the mud because that is the only feeling being on C's team could possibly evoke. To be fair, we got along fine and he treated me with respect and advanced my cause best he could. But C was not well-regarded among his peers and leadership so there was very little he could realistically do to advance anyone's cause even if he wanted to. All of us who were on his team were looked about upon as losers to be reporting to C of all people - surely anyone with a shred of competence could fare better ...

I am headed back home by train that was over an hour late. The compartment is mostly empty but there is crying infant nearby. He goes off and on randomly unhappy or uncomfortable or both until too worn out from it all. Outside, the river is full to the brim. There had been a flashflood warning only a couple of days ago. The sky had cried out many tears it seems and then quit much like the infant - there had been no flooding. We all give up with the tears in the end was the thought that crossed my mind - things in nature like the child and nature itself. Earlier at work, I was trying to calm down a distraught colleague who had recently immigrated to America not entirely of her own volition and was not sure she liked it so much. She had been here on business many times over the years and is no stranger to the city she now lives in. But it refuses to become home for her and she can't fall in love with her new life.  L needs to bawl like the infant to work it through her system but she...

Being a leader and also having a life  seems quite optional for leaders who are always on, 24/7 types that set the pace for their organization and make it look like having a life outsider work is the realm of the losers. There maybe many reasons that drive a person to treat work like it were the only thing that mattered and had value in their life. But once this style of work starts producing results, they get addicted to it for bigger, greater success which often comes about. That vindicates their style of work and they redouble their efforts. They would find it hard to appreciate how anyone could aspire for a leadership role in their organization if they had a full life outside work.  In a sense it's the difference between an amateur and a professional. An amateur violinist practices with the all-volunteer orchestra in their town a few times a week, goes on with the rest of their lives being a chiropractor or accountant and performs in ten concerts in a year. They may be som...

Dating with intent of finding a long-term, reliable partner was never fun and it seems as though things have gotten much worse over the years and decades. To the point that an AI boyfriend is preferred by some . The companionship factor is definitely a thing even for those who are use AI in their daily lives even if not to date. My friend L was deeply skeptical about the value GenAI could bring to her job. She had all the usual reasons to avoid it - more trouble than it's worth because you have to verify everything the AI produces so its not a productivity gain in the end and so on.  Recently, L had a change of heart and has started to incorporate AI into her work-day. The most important benefit is that of socialization as L says, having a sounding board for your ideas and being able to chat at all times. Work feels less deary and sometimes the hallucinations can be entertaining. There is some value to be had as well but that is almost a secondary benefit. AI might as well be the m...

New York seems to be on the right track by considering a ban on smartphone for school kids . I never figured why access to such devices was needed for people under the age of 18. Ability exchange calls and texts should alleviate safety concerns. J started out with a feature phone and that worked well enough for all concerned. She graduated to a smartphone in time but by then she had plenty of real-life things to occupy her time with and there was no marked difference in behavior with the new phone.  The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children’s privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act addresses algorithmic feeds. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they have chosen to follow rather than algorithmically suggested ones. The bill would also mandate tha...

This blog post about a woman's dream of being a writer coming true at last was a nice read. The first success at forty eight implies the person has the resilience to recover from rejection combined with faith in her dream . Reading this reminded me of one of our neighbors when I was growing up in India. The woman was friendly and I would often see her and my mother chatting across the fence. Her father-in-law lived with them.  His wife had passed many decades ago. The old man was generally peaceful and kept to himself but did not get along with his son. It was known that he wrote things in his notebook - in fact there were several such notebooks. They were considered private and off-limits and no one knew what the contents were. She suspected he wrote the words he would have said to his son if their relationship had been different. That theory made sense to outsiders like us who were aware of the strained father-son relationship. No one had ever seen them exchange a word. He was fi...

Interesting idea about forcing the rich to partake in public systems and not escape from it by paying for private amenities. Free public education until a bachelor's degree for anyone who wants it should be an option. Likewise, parents who want to pay for private school from kindergarten should be able to fulfill that wish. I am not sure a one size fits all mandate is the right answer. The legal system would benefit a great deal if court assigned attorneys were the only option for one and all specially that AI is now available and can be use to resolve most things without the matter needing to get in front of a judge.  Both sides submit their filings and the AI can provide a decision based on how the judges in that court will likely rule. If that is found acceptable, everyone goes home with the situation resolved. If that is not workable, then they get their assigned lawyers who will a fixed number of hours on the case and be paid a fixed amount. There won't be incentives to d...

My friends who live in Florida are either retired or have pre-school kids, so I had not heard about the situation with public schools there . Vouchers for home schooling sounds would be a good option for parents who have the time, inclination and ability to teach their kids at home. Specially if that is supplemented with activities with other kids homeschooled and otherwise. Not an easy option to pull off from I have observed over the years with homeschool parents. A couple I know were able to achieve great outcomes for their daughter academically - she went to one of the top computer science programs in the country before she turned 16. Things were a bit choppy and uneven for the kid apart from her academic success despite the parents being diligent about giving her every opportunity to socialize with peers.  The mother quit her job to home-school full time and the father worked a job he was significantly over-qualified for to spare enough time for the family. In balance, a story ...

N is a few years older than me but has the spirit of a much younger person. She is still up for a lot of adventure and exploration, excited about things many of our peers stopped caring about long ago. Spending any amount of chatting with her is rejuvenating for me. It forces me tap back into my twenty year old soul and believe in miracles again. While life does not unfold in a series of miracles, just being able to get into that state seems to have benefits. Most recently, after we went over the shenanigans in her current relationship combined with her son getting serious about a woman she thinks is entirely unsuitable for him, I felt like a reset button went off for me somewhere inside.  This conversation forced me to take stock of what I can at the moment change and not change in my life. There is a good bit of undesirable stuff in the cannot change pile. Borrowing a leaf from N's book, I decided to separate myself mentally from that pile in entirety and allow time to resolve th...

Loved reading about the book vending machine for kids . I have not seen one of these myself but it sounds like a wonderful idea -making it fun and exciting to read a book. Loving to read fairly common pre-internet and most of us from those times probably took a while how much times had changed.  On the surface, book vending machines look similar to those that dispense snacks or beverages. But inside there are tidy rows of kids’ best-sellers published by Scholastic and other companies, including popular titles like Dog Man; Eyes That Kiss in the Corners; and Norman the Slug With the Silly Shell. The machines don’t take regular currency. Instead, the organization that owns them gives kids tokens for good grades, acts of kindness, or any other behavior it wants to incentivize, which the kids can then exchange for a book. The idea of exchanging tokens earned for positive behavior to pay for the books makes so much sense. I can see the kindergartners I work with being very excited about...

I am not sure what kind of vows the this man exchanged with his wife at the time of their marriage but blaming her  for his troubles seems like a move he borrowed from another political guy in a bit of trouble . Seems to a popular playbook these days frame the wife and claim the man had nothing to with it. For one thing that is a very public declaration of a dubious if not sham marriage - if the parties are that far apart and oblivious to each other's activities, then they are not even friendly room-mates never mind spouses. Why are we calling this a marriage?  If they want to benefit from the state of matrimony the union should somewhat resemble the standard of marriage established by their officiating institution - both church and state in this case. Maybe there comes a point when the marriage gets so dysfunctional that it should be invalidated for legal and religious purposes even if the parties want to continue the social charades and play house.  The tax-payer sponso...

There is science that explains why relitigating the past and going through dark feelings is bad for your health. It seems obvious that you feel bad mentally though if stirred up enough emotionally, it can feel awful physically as well. Reading this reminded me of the the cycles of anger I have been through in my younger years over events that where I had been hurt without cause. It was like being a victim for the second and third time without gaining any clarity or being closer to resolution. The whole episode was a waste of mental energy.  "We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don't yet understand what may cause these changes," Shimbo said. "Investigation into the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events." I am thinking about the people in my life who have suffered heart attacks - all of them witho...

Read this interview with the author of The Dictionary of Obscure words on why he felt it necessary to make up words. The idea is to give word to a somewhat complicated feeling or emotion for which there is not a single word. The author created one. It would be considered a success if others agree it makes sense and conveys the meaning it is supposed to. That is not so trivial. Specially if one person on their own goes about making up a dictionary of words that needed to exist (in their mind) but don't. That is probably not how the words have existed in the dictionary for a while came to be there.  I defined a word called “sonder,” the awareness that everyone around you is the main character of their own story, but to you they’re just extras in the background. Sonder caught on in a way that none of the others have. Often, I’ll run into sonder being used in earnest online, and I’ve even overheard it being used in conversation at cafés. That changed everything for me because we usuall...

I can't recall how I ran into this ancient NYT article where Nancy Mehta describes without much sugar-coating what it is like to be the wife of Zubin Mehta . Her experience is shared by other like her - the wife who remains silent and ever-present in the background so the star can shine brightly: She herself tends to refer to him as “my husband” rather than by name. She attributes this to “the fact that Zubin Mehta is not my husband. There is no room in there to be husband.” But, she continued matter-of-factly,  “I had a revelation recently that the great people in any category historically are basically self‐oriented. The self‐interest is necessary to bring the greatness to its apex. Nehru and Einstein weren't terrific family men. Not that they wouldn't have been if that's what they decided to do, but they decided to do something else.” Self-orientation and greatness being strongly corelated isn't something outsiders would put together naturally. You imagine, there...

I shared this Andy Jassy interview with some kids I know who are still early in their careers. While not everything applies to everyone the part that I liked most was what he said about having the right attitude early in your career and being a ravenous learner all the way. The need to find sponsors and mentors has been talked about a lot but Jassy offers some concrete tips on what showing up with good attitude means and how that can further a young person's cause to find those much needed sponsors and mentors. He also indirectly illustrates a few other things with his own story that are worthy of consideration. You have a kid that is passionate about sports or something else non-academic. They understand winning, losing, scores, and points in that context. It is not the worst thing to re-frame learning to that context they know and love. He talks about how this played out in his own life.  A failure to reach the pinnacle of dreams does not mean that the dream is not worth pursuin...

Gen Z is regularly called out as difficult to deal with in the workplace. I have a few in mine but don't relate to all the issues cited in this story  all the issues cited in this story .  The disconnect between Gen Z and the workplace could in part be due to the pandemic. According to a 2021 study, 46% of Gen Zers said the pandemic made pursuing their educational or career goals more difficult. Plus, when work and school moved to an online format, many Gen Zers never had the opportunity to fully experience an in-person office dynamic. I find that some Gen Zers are able to make the most of the forces that shaped them and use that to their advantage. They are able to demonstrate that they bring value to the organization even if everyone does not agree with how they go about their business. Some are able to make small compromises that helps bridge the gap between "them" and "us". The ones who succeed in the multi-generational workplace of today are able to grasp t...

This  story about the PTO culture (or lack thereof) of millennials is not so unique to that generation or the the current times. Unlimited PTO has existed for a while and it is usually a bad deal for the employee because their management sets an implicit limit by their own actions. We have all had bosses who are always on and connected to work does not matter if they are on vacation or its a national holiday. They send emails at ungodly hours. Everyone knows the person has no life outside work and that is their bar for performance.  It's up to the individual to decide if they want to play that same game or do something else. The most successful in such an organization tend to be the ones who have a mind-meld going on with this boss - which means no life outside work and being always on. The more "clever" ones fake their dedication to the cause using all the methods cited in the article. I have not seen it work beyond a point because the fake dedication is easy to see for...

Read these beautiful lines in an essay by V.S. Naipaul : India as an ache, for which one has a great tenderness, but from which at length one always wishes to separate oneself. He talks about his impressions upon his visiting the country for the first time - the constant whirl of things happening, the desire to place people in an understandable frame of reference because India is vast and complex. Naipaul also notices that people want to plunder and leave as far as state of mind goes - not stay from love, loyalty or something else.  How strange to find, in free India, this attitude of the conqueror, this attitude of plundering—a frenzied attitude, as though the opportunity might at any moment be withdrawn—in those very people to whom the developing society has given so many opportunities. This attitude of plundering is that of the immigrant colonial society. What Naipaul observed back then must have been the harbinger of what is to come. Since that time to the present day, there ...

When we arrived in Marseille, it was already dusk and we were hungry for dinner. I picked a place that seemed to be a favorite with the locals and ordered bouillabaisse . It may have been the excitement of actually seeing Marseille for the first time mingled with hunger but the dish was a excellent. I wish I could remember what about it made it so special and different from other times I had tried the dish other places. Reading this ode to Marseille's cuisine  and why it may not feature in guidebooks and not be Provencal and fancy enough brought back the warmest memories:  Such people aren’t too crazy about aïoli, bouillabaisse or anchovy purée. They don’t know anything about the pleasure of fried chickpea cakes. They’ve never tasted snails in spicy sauce, or sea urchins, or lambs’ feet and tripe, or cod in a tomato and red wine sauce, or eggplant ratatouille or fresh bean stew, and they don’t know the joy of feasting on slightly warm vegetable soup with basil and ga...

Reading these lines in Rajat Parr's book The Sommelier's Atlas of Taste made me smile - it perfectly described my first time tasting Sancerre. An easy and likable wine, it just made sense to stick with it: Sommeliers have a love-hate relationship with Sancerre. They love it because it sells, sells, sells. As one wine director told us, “If we put it by the glass, it’s all anyone orders!” For sommeliers, it’s never bad to have a reliable cash flow. But if you sense a hint of exasperation in the above quote, it’s for the same reason. Sancerre is the knee-jerk selection of people who don’t bother to engage with wine. It’s the same as saying, “I’ll have a Bud” or “Give me a gin and tonic” without bothering to look at a menu. This is just a notch above asking for the house red or white based on what you are eating. No thinking is involved. You want to enjoy the meal and the company and trust that they who are serving you the food know what they are doing with their house wines.  I go...

I am not sure what to make of this HBR piece on what organizations should do with toxic senior leaders who are too critical for the business to just be fired when infact that is one and only right solution for the problem. The examples cited in the story connect the bad behavior to some unresolved psychological issues going back to the person's childhood. While that is mildly entertaining for all to know, it is entirely unclear how it helps resolve the issues the individual's behavior is causing company wide. How does it exactly help those who are impacted every day to learn that this person is the world's greatest jerk because his parents did an awful job of raising him - why does that need to become our collective cross to bear.  Every place I have ever worked in since I graduated college has had a few of these hyper-toxic, absolutely insufferable leaders that contaminated everything they came into contact with. The higher their position in the food change, the more havo...

Happiness in India is described as an anomaly in this article that analyses results from a survey:  India is an anomaly. Here, life satisfaction was found to be higher among the older people. At 140 million, India’s older population is the second largest in the world and growing steadily, with the average growth rate “three times higher than the overall population growth rate”. The researchers relied on the  Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI, 2017-19) dataset  and analysed the following metrics: satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination and self-rated health. Education, wealth, access to healthcare, support systems and social acceptance were also analysed. To their surprise, and a departure from scholarly research, older age in India was associated with higher life satisfaction. The opposite was believed to be true to so far. Age and life satisfaction go hand-in-hand only in high-income countries; the experiences of India’s old people were also...

These lines were written by the author within the last few years and it immediately brought to mind what D.H Lawrence had to say about being a women a long time ago ..cool chicks are still women. And there’s no easy way to be a woman, because there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe you drink a little. Or a lot. Lawrence in his essay Give Her a Pattern says: ..the real tragedy is not that women ask and must ask for a pattern of womanhood. The tragedy is not, even, that men give them such abominable patterns, child-wives, little-boy-baby-face-girls, perfect secretaries, noble spouses, self-sacrificing mothers, pure women who bring forth children in virgin coldness, prostitutes who just make themselves low, to please the men; all the atrocious patterns of womanhood that men have supplied to woman; patterns all perverted from any real natural fulness of a human being. The problem identified by D.H Lawrence about women r...

Beautiful lines from a D.H Lawrence essay that explains why free verse exists and what purpose it is meant to serve But in free verse we look for the insurgent naked throb of the instant moment. To break the lovely form of metrical verse, and to dish up the fragments as a new substance, called vers libre, this is what most of the free-versifiers accomplish. They do not know that free verse has its own nature, that it is neither star nor pearl, but instantaneous like plasm. It has no goal in either eternity. It has no finish. It has no satisfying stability, satisfying to those who like the immutable. None of this. It is the instant; the quick; the very jetting source of all will-be and has-been. The utterance is like a spasm, naked contact with all influences at once. It does not want to get anywhere. It just takes place. There seems to be the implication once perfection is achieved in the romanticized past or yet to come future which can be perfected by our imagination, there is an ex...

These lines by Tolstoy about why humans need religions gave me food for thought for many days after: ..a rational human being had to and always did establish a relationship to the whole of the infinite and eternal universe, understanding it as a single whole. And this establishment of a human being’s relationship to that whole, of which he feels himself a part and from which he derives guidance for his actions, is that which has been and is called religion. And that is why religion always has been and cannot stop being a necessity and an inescapable condition for the life of a rational human being and a rational humankind. Establishing a relationship between oneself and the infinite whole and a framework a person can use to guide their actions - that is the raison d'etre of any and all religions per Tolstoy. It makes sense that the flavor an existing religion takes (or a new one comes to exist) is determined by the social norms and the cultural mores of a people. The same guiding ...

 Nice essay about sports parents which easily transcends sports. Of the second death died by a sports parents, the author says: ..the death that comes in the midst of life, the purgatorial purposelessness that follows the final season on the sidelines or in the bleachers, when your sports kid hangs up their skates, cleats, or spikes after that last game. That purgatorial purposelessness is the fate of any and all parents who wrap up their hopes and dreams into the lives of their children - see parenting as an act of sacrifice where nothing is too much as long as the kid wins big. The field where this win needs to be delivered could be baseball, business or something else. It is where the parent's own hopes for grand success had been belied.  The way the child asks out of living the parent's dream is also typical and mirror's the author's experience: “I’m going to think about it.”  Think about it?  For me, this was the same as a girlfriend saying, “We need to talk.”O...