Heartcrossings

The mishaps of a woman's dating life and romantic relationships can serve many purposes. Among friends it could provide release, amusement not to mention camaraderie. Just talking through the thing can help with discovering detail that was previously missed, lead to understanding preventing (one hopes) future disasters. If sharing with relative strangers, it could be as useful as therapy. All this is probably not the same for men coping with their romantic failures and disappointments as this essay suggests . Men in my experience are happy to talk about how they met their wives, specially when they have remain married to the woman for many decades. The way they tell that story is quite different from how women may tell it. There is a lot of self-deprecation when the man tells it - he married up, she took him on a charity case, definitely not his looks or his brilliance that closed the deal and so on. Sometimes there will be a funny yet illuminating anecdote from the times they were...

 A yen to return to simpler times is very understandable. Many of us expats who are several decades removed from the present reality of our home countries like to visit and return to the memories of what had been- often seen through rose-tinted glasses. We tell our kids stories of the simpler joys of our own childhood and don't go into details of that which was not so wonderful. My mother stayed at home and took care of the family. She sewed, knitted,  and make all meals from scratch from locally sourced food - just like the current fad influencers are peddling. Her life was not simple or uncomplicated but it was very traditional. More importantly that was not the life she really wanted - it is what happened to her. That is story of many in her generation - maybe her mother's generation in the western world. The women did not opt-in. Despite encouraging the lifestyle, there’s nothing particularly “trad” about the way some of these women present themselves online. They talk at...

 Driving to the gym one evening, I caught an interview on the radio about some heavy, potentially unstoppable and unsolvable climate change insight that the researcher was talking about. After a while, the average person forgets the detail and nuance of what is going on and why it is so alarming. Every such interview I have heard follows the same pattern. We are just now finding out that some highly abnormal and grossly concerning stuff is going on. On planetary time scale we don't know how random or predictable this thing is. We haven't seen anything like this as long as anyone has kept record of seeing such things. We should be optimistic about our future and do the equivalent of eating more veggies for dinner to help the climate along so the earth does not self-destruct.  The information sharing might be well-intended but the way it's done in a highly alarmist manner coupled with a ton of holes in logical reasoning really does nothing to help the cause. It al turns  in...

 This hotel chain has always had a bit of a reputation but I did not know it was this bad . Makes you wonder about establishments in the vicinity of one of these and if there is a spill-over effect. Over the years, we have lived in establishments that are very far from "fancy". It specially makes sense when on a road-trip, arriving very late and leaving quite early. The place we stop for the night is usually an hour or more from our destination and marks as far as we were comfortable driving before needing to break for the night. It's not always possible to plan these stops ahead of time because that kills spontaneity and freedom to change plans as we like. I am glad we've never ended up in an establishment like the one in the story - not yet atleast. I do try to research the safety of the neighborhood we will spend the night - in America or abroad and generally select a somewhat boring and uneventful place.  Our stops for the night often have only one main street, a ...

I have watched women at home cook banana stem (thor in Bengali) many times but have never worked with it myself. So when I emboldened myself to buy some recently from the Indian grocery store, I assumed I knew how to prepare it for cooking and even called my mother to confirm. But as it turns out detail matters and so does hands-on experience. My production tasted about right but needed to be slow-cooked overnight to overcome the stringiness.  At that point, the dish did not resemble any thor recipe I know of. It tasted "fine" in the end (in large part because I was keen to make the most of a disaster) and got me scouting for a tutorial on how to properly prepare banana stem. My online wanderings brought me to the wonderful Bong Eats channel and I learned that my favorite kosambari uses banana stem. I was able to recall the taste from memory and it made sense that banana stem was an ingredient. I had never connected the dots and never thought to make it at home.  The experi...

 I read Pablo Neruda's Isla Negra for the first time as a teen. Each poem was like one in a series of doors that led to an enchanted garden. I wasn't sure what I expected when I had finished the book but still remember soaking in afterglow of his words. I was too young then to know the pain of  love lost or know how quickly the tide can turn, the foreboding along the way ignored to one's own peril.  Coming to the other side is on be on dry earth with no sign of cloud or rain. All that you held true or knew of the shared past, the brightest of memories all rendered ashen at once. There are some lines that are like refrain bear meaning all through life and a few that shine bright once and then fade out. If there was love once that is now lost , no words more powerful than these to remember who and what had been Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And...

If you are at a fried chicken restaurant do you care all that much about whether your cashier is real or virtual . Between the robotic kitchen and the virtual cashier, the food service business could be mostly devoid of humans. You could order your meal electronically, wait for the robots to prepare it. Fetch it from the counter, seat yourself where the virtual hostess told you to, pay by the device attached to your table (this I have experienced a few times already) and be on your way. The level of friction in the whole process is low. The virtual hostess in Philippines can be easily replaced by AI once people get used to the virtual instead of live interaction. There are some types of restaurants that could work quite well in this format. The whole experience would be smoother, more predictable and cost-effective. If there is no seating involved, even easier to run the thing and pass on the savings to the customer. This is what Mezli does already. The equipment would need to be desig...

 I have known L for years but visited her for the first time a few weeks ago. It was a short but memorable stay. Her place sits on hillside and is next to a state park. The view from the back porch is fantastic - you see mountain ranges on one side, a forest and lake on the other. She has numerous fruit trees in the yard and a magnificent Jacaranda in full bloom. We sat there taking in the scenery. The distant whooshing of cars was the only interruption to the sound of the many chirping birds. L gave me her binoculars so I could see them flitting in the trees. Every day could feel like a vacation sitting on L's porch. It is no surprise that they are both reluctant coffee badgers but are willing to do what it takes since the end is so close. They are willing to put with the pointless commute to earn their credits for the week. She and her husband are a few years away from retirement and very much looking forward to it. There was a time when they both enjoyed what they did for a liv...

Insightful read about how Google search turned into the hot mess that it is . The villain of the story is the archetype of the leaders who run large companies after the founders have made their billions and sailed into the sunset with more money than their ten generations would know what to do with. The point of the product that the company was known and loved for is completely lost once professional manager types take over:  This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when “management” is synonymous with “staying as far away from actual work as possible.” And when you’re a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You’re not a user, you’re a parasite, and it’s these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value. The most fascinating bit about the story  was how there were at least three different VPs with overlapping turf. Search and Ads was p...

  Something I need to try next time I am in LA. Affordable, authentic and well-cooked food coming together is exciting:  The robots do a good job of mimicking one of the most important qualities of Chinese cooking — “wok hei,” a term referring to the distinct, smoky flavor imparted by high-heat cooking in a well-seasoned wok. The robots can stir-fry, stew, boil, and simmer with heat control of up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. They can also add up to 16 kinds of seasoning to a single dish and test the temperature of the food before serving it. Afterward, the machines will automatically wash and sanitize the work in under 30 seconds. Eventually, the owners say, these robots will upload data that can be analyzed to optimize recipes. Some of the best dining experiences I have had in post-pandemic have been in chef-owner establishments sometimes run by two or three people with a limited but exceptional menu. They may only be able to seat a couple of dozen customers at any time. Notwi...

The situation with requiring age-verification to visit a site and they way the site operator is responding to it is interesting. They just won't operate in the states which have such requirements. That is the least complex solution for the problem without creating new data breach risks. This story made me think about ways in which the age verification requirements could be extended to other areas - often with good intent. Parents may want any number of sites to be made inaccessible to their kids. This is not inherently a bad idea.  But if those site operators take a page from PH's book, they will simply stop operating in those states knowing full well that the kid's that are meant to be protected will come via VPN. So the problem remains unsolved as far as the parent is concerned. A more effective way as the story notes is to make the blocking device based. The parent can buy a device that is child safety built in at the hardware and operating system level so that it would...

 First thing I did yesterday morning when I woke up is to call my parents in Kolkata and then J to let them know about the Crowdstrike outage so they would not be surprised or stranded just because they hadn't read the news yet. One of the bad habits I have been trying to break for years is not read the headline news before I am out of bed in the morning. It is not a great way to start the day given how such reading makes a person feel. Yesterday morning was no different, I was following my ritual and then the news was such that I had to make the calls.  Just a small mistake, such enormous consequences was the first thought that crossed my mind. If a business is big enough to have a large number of remotely located computers affected by this outage but lacks the financial resources to dispatch technicians to go physically fix the problem, they could bleed to death just from this singular event. There are people who are would die without seeing their loved one for the last tim...

 Sounds like a good idea at first blush but as an immigrant who has gone through the process and continues to see things get worse over the decades, I am cynical about such proposal ever seeing the light of day. It is all too easy for those that did not partake in the process to say no and just block the whole thing. It gives them visibility effortlessly. It is also likely that about half of the voters will agree with their vote. The ones who tried and failed would have worked infinitely harder and have no proof points to show for it. The choice to do one versus the other becomes rather obvious at election time. If by some miracle this sees light of day, chances are that the system will be abused in ways that no one could have imagine and a set of  sad, unforeseen consequences will follow for the very immigrants this scheme was supposed to help. Eligible regions for the Heartland Visa include those with significant population declines or economic stagnation, generally charact...

A former big tech VP's ruminations often end up on my LinkedIn feed thanks to his followers. There is an odd nugget of wisdom here and there but for the most part his writing seeks validation from his readers. He needs reassurance that he was and continues to be something special. As such he needs to deny that he got where he got through a lot of performative work and access to the speed lane on account of privilege. None of it happened because he was special - this is a hard pill to swallow once a person stops getting their ego fed every minute of the day on account of their title in the company. The truth is far more deserving and capable peers were left far behind because they did not choreograph their work theatrically enough and lacked all the social advantages this individual had. If he accepted reality he would find that the accomplishments that define his self-worth and identity mean very little if anything at all.  It might a therapeutic experience for people like him to t...

 I was delayed on a United flight recently where we had to return to the airport after take-off due to a software issue. It did not pose a risk but the pilot did not think it prudent to proceed on a five hour flight without the technicians resolving what was wrong. He went as far as to speculate on the PA system that the a restarting the software might be sufficient but for that we did have to turn back. Along the way, we were given multiple status updates and how much longer before we could be back up in air.  The pilot was in fact right - we got the computer re-started, got re-fueled and got on our way. The whole thing caused a two and a half hour delay but having a long layover, I still made my connection. Others were not quite as fortunate and decided to deplane. A negative experience generally but the over-sharing of information was a positive for sure. The app is a significant improvement and tries to be helpful. Does it address every last passenger need and want, maybe...

 This has to be one of the best pieces of writing on the out of control AI hype I have read lately. What he says about the data science gold rush days is all true for AI these days: The number of companies launching AI initiatives far outstripped the number of actual use cases. Most of the market was simply grifters and incompetents (sometimes both!) leveraging the hype to inflate their headcount so they could get promoted, or be seen as thought leaders As some who has worked with Postgres for nearly as long as it has existed and never once thought it had turned irrelevant, I am highly sympatico with the author when he says: spending half of the planet's engineering efforts to add chatbot support to every application under the sun when half of the industry hasn't worked out how to test database backups regularly. I am routinely aghast at the quality of engineering talent that fills the ranks in the companies I have worked in over the years - some of whom claim to attract the b...

 Where to live long term has been a top of mind question for us for the last few years. The variables in our lives are fewer and some are likely to be resolved in the next few years. There is a place of my dreams which we happened to visit not too long ago. The road winds along the coast and there are mountains on the other side. A small home on a cliff overlooking the water is what I have always dreamt about and that has not changed. Seeing the place in reality only served to confirm that the dream is worth hanging on to. The living may not be as idyllic as I had imagined it to be. Striking the right balance between proximity to urban amenities and the seclusion of countryside is quite tricky. It is much easier to have one or the other - yet neither is what I truly want. The spot somewhere in between will be hard to come by.  Reading is article about the right town to live in based on your personality type was interesting. The prescription for me is Seattle and I can somewha...

Every generation as it ages out thinks that the newer ones are on the path to decline. The quality of life and education is worse and people are on balance less bright than before. If that had been really true we would have worked ourself into extinction by now. Since we still around, its safe to the say that the degree and pace of decline might have been over-stated. But reading this article about what it will take students to graduate high school in New York , does make a person wonder, if this might not be the beginning of the end.  One of my co-workers sends his three kids to a charter school that does not have have tests and provides no feedback on a the child's performance. They are required to bring their best selves to school and do the best they can while there. The outcomes don't matter and most certainly don't count. P is very pleased with the system because it makes for a low stress life for his kids who are all a few years away from college.  P himself went to ...

My hotel room overlooked an apartment building. People were going about their lives. My need for privacy exceeded theirs - I was a guest in their "home". The last day of my stay, J came to visit for breakfast. I had cleared up my morning to spend time with her. Sometimes, just being in the same space talking about nothing consequential is all the heart longs for. Finding the puzzle pieces that make up your child. They are an assortment and span her life - some I know much better than others. The turn of phrase, the smile that gives way to laughter, memories, markers from her time with me and all that is new about her since then. She had a few hours before her meeting so we came back to my room after breakfast. Before I knew it, she had pulled the blanket on herself and fallen off to sleep. It was soon time for me to leave , it felt wrong to wake her up - the same peaceful face I have known since she was child. She woke up on her own, gave me a hug and went back to her nap. Sh...

Watched Asha Jaor Majhe recently. The only way I can describe it is a bitter-sweet ode to Kolkata. Not a single word is exchanged between the two main characters in the movie and the action takes place in a twenty hour period in the couple's life. Some sequences were too protracted to my taste - maybe because I am Bengali and know all the detail that scene is unfolding too well. But that aside, it is an amazing movie about what love in marriage might look like where the couple is very young and yet have no time to be together, never mind be intimate. The acts of love are abundant and in fact being able to perform them seems to be the sole source of energy of each of them to carry on with the daily grind of earning a living.  The fact that the movie is made in 2014 feels wrong in that the Kolkata that unfolds through the scenes is the one I knew from my childhood. One would imagine that things are not the same anymore. The squalid living quarters and crumbling back-alleys are remin...

 J sees me off by her metro station after dinner and tells me to text her when I reach my hotel. The roles have changed - she is young, strong and invincible and does not see me that way anymore. That was a very different time. I walk on to 37th  street and the setting sun lunges into the street wanting to eat us whole. The light is so blinding that I cannot look ahead. "What is that light, is it the sun?" I ask J and she laughs saying of course it is. I don't know what other answer I was expecting.  There is water on the other side of the sun, I have been there a couple of times - its a nice walk. Today, it seems impassable with that dazzling light - it makes we want to turn away. The restaurant she had picked turned out to be a hot spot on Monday evening. We got on the waitlist but were too hungry to actually wait an hour. The place we ended up going instead was cozy and not overcrowded; quiet enough to talk. The food as great and the staff very friendly. She is in her ...

The institution of marriage seems embattled from all sides these days. The new Supreme Court decision is another strike . It will be interesting to see how this case will serve as precedent to deny spousal visas across the board for any number of reasons - since there is no fundamental right, then there is no basis for due process. It is possible that in the specific instance of this denial the reasoning was correct but by taking the steps that followed and removing the option for judicial review, this becomes about granting the consular officers unlimited power and no expectation of accountability. Not all decisions will be fair or correct but on the basis of this ruling, that will be the final, irreversible decision anyway. It becomes possible that the visa can be granted or denied at whim - based on something not feeling right. It's not about a singular decision based on the details of the case but how it was extrapolated in the ruling to become bigger to the point of limitless....

There is nothing particularly wrong with an electronic price tag unless the key driver is to facilitate non-stop price gouging. Wal-mart may or may not be considering the possibilities .  “If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there's something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst. Translated to Wal-mart that would be a bad idea. The average shopper there has an expectation of the lowest possible price. If I am some unfamiliar part of the country, the sight of a Wal-mart gives me a sense of anchoring - I know what I can expect once I get inside. There will not be a situation where a tomato is marked heirloom and priced at $8 each. At a Wal-mart things are predictable and there is a certain joy in that when the travel has already been long and eventful. It would be great to see things remain that way. While the labels give retailers the ability to increase p...

A nice story about good intention and honest effort that don't yield the desired results. While the regular person does not usually concern themselves with return of  museum artifacts to the country they were removed from, there are elements of this story that we can all relate to: Using state-of-the-art technology in a warehouse-like workshop, digital archaeologist Roger Michel and his team are recreating the hotly contested Parthenon marbles. The idea behind it is simple — make exact 3D replicas of the marbles and donate them to the British Museum in exchange for the return of the original sculptures to Greece. But when the British Museum shut down an official request by Roger's team to go and get the 3D scans, the team decided to get them anyway, "guerilla-style" At work a junior employee has a good idea that they are passionate about and are happy to invest their personal time in building (for the greater good of the company - not for any reward other than the gr...

I don't enjoy eating out unless the experience is unique in some way and the food is not easy to reproduce at home. If traveling for work, I try to eat at least one meal from a grocery store salad bar. Certainly not the kind of person who would benefit from experiencing the top fifty restaurants in the world . It turns out not be such a great idea even for the experts and food connoisseurs.  ..Today the list is dominated by tasting-menu restaurants, and every year those menus seem to get longer and more unforgiving. There are more courses than any rational person would choose to eat, and more tastes of more wines than anyone can possibly remember the next day. The spiraling, metastasizing length of these meals seems designed to convince you that there’s just no way a mere 10 or 15 courses could contain all the genius in the kitchen. Food does not have to be about genius. Offering abundant comfort along with a small element of surprise is so much better. The meals I have enjoyed the...

 Until an artist develops their signature style that is easy to recognize, they are not significant and likely not making much money. Once they have achieved this elusive goal life does not get much better as this essay shows Robert Beatty, a Lexington, Kentucky-based artist and musician, echoes this sentiment, mentioning several experiences when major corporations tried to strong-arm him into making work for less. “I can name so many companies who simply hired somebody to copy me when I said no to their measly budget,” he says, listing examples from fast-food conglomerates to major tech companies that publicly claim to champion creativity, yet have unashamedly exploited his work. He adds “I think at this point creative agencies just get me to sign NDAs about projects they never intend to hire me for so I won’t call them out when they poorly imitate my work.” And all this is not even counting the effects of AI where the style can be poorly imitated and almost no cost. All of this ...

I have never posted pictures of J online and was one of those parents that always chose to decline giving her school the right to use her pictures taken in school. No one other than grandparents were ever in receipt of her pictures when she was a kid and they are not technically savvy enough to share them with anyone. That said, I can see the desire to share pictures of your kids online - specially among those who have a large and vibrant social network. There is no logical reason to not share your kid's pictures with those you know and believe to be your friends. You can't obviously prevent security cameras in homes around your neighborhood from taking pictures of you and your kids even if you are over-zealous about privacy. It may be a bit fallacious to assume that there is one singular way that pictures of a kid below the age of consent can get into the training set for an AI . There are very many ways for this to happen.  As a parent you could potentially do your part to mi...

 I think this story about Musk pursuing laid-off employees for inadvertent overpayment of salary is fascinating. What if the argument was that the said employees had been overpaid for work that they were supposedly doing but in fact were not - the reason for their layoff. Accounting errors could come about in different ways. If the employer could prove that the effective hourly wage was not quite earned by the employee because they had mouse-jigglers doing pretend work or their performance was so abysmal that it called for wage-recalibration. There are many ways to claw back money from the hapless employees. It matters little that in many situations they were hired to do performative work and boost headcount so that the hiring manager could make a "strong" case for their own promotion.  I have been in situations where the number of employees is off by a factor of five to twenty depending on how you are counting. In such a situation, the overwhelming majority of people milli...

 I watched Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors recently and found myself thinking about the scenes from the movie several days after. A Romeo and Juliet themed story is universally accessible and that is probably why this movie makes sense to a global audience. Beyond that it's about detail and how the director chooses to depict the state of mind of his character, draw us into their live and times. Justice is swift and final for one thing - we see that very early on in the movie. The level of infraction and the outcome would be hard to correlate for an outsider. From there tragedy begets tragedy until there is no one and nothing left to mourn over.  The movement of the camera in many parts of the movie leaves a feeling on being on roller-coaster trying to take in the scenery the best you can. The period of grief Ivano (the main protagonist) experience is depicted in a blur of color and fast moving images, scenes go from being shot in color to being black and white. Through the haz...

 This is very welcome news for New Yorkers and visitors to New York who all have long struggled to find a public restroom . My solution involves staying semi-dehydrated while I am out so I would not need to use a facility until I returned to the hotel. While an unhealthy idea it probably works if you are out there only for a couple of days at any time. My troubles with restrooms in the city always reminded me of life in India when I was growing up. If we had to travel any significant distance at any time. Parents would start to tell kids that they need to use the bathroom (multiple times if need be) before they left and caution them against drinking too much liquid along the way.  My mother used to carry a water bottle for us if we were out and about in the summer but it was very much rationed so there would be no need to visit a bathroom. New York is not alone in lack of access to public restrooms - there are way too many places in around the world that have the same problem...

My one and only trip to Disney was when J was about nine years old. Splash Mountain had been one of our favorite rides. Reading that is had been a controversial ride and needed replacemen t was quite puzzling. I had no idea of the history of the ride and don't think would care to learn about it either. There seems to be no point in taking an amusement park so seriously - families bring kids there to have a fun time and go on with their lives. All around the park I am sure a person could pick on things to get offended over.  The whole thing is very Euro-centric so a person like me could take umbrage that my land and culture as ancient as it is does not have a place in Disney. Perhaps, my poor kid will not find a thing to anchor to that speaks to her roots and will come out forever damaged from the experience. And even if India got a spot in Disneyland, I am sure it will not be satisfactory to most Indians. This process of replacing things that have been around historically for good ...