Sharing Blues

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 still dating. 

I can't remember hearing a man share a personal heartbreak story - the breakup will be mentioned as a fact if the situation warrants it but nothing further will be discussed. When one of my closest childhood friends was struggling in his marriage, I knew there were troubles and he wanted out but there was very little if anything he shared that could help paint a clear picture of their marriage. In my over-sharing phase after divorce, he heard a lot of painful detail, frequently rehashed because only repetition ad-nauseum helped with easing the pain. Even that never prompted him to open up. There are other things about him I know that even his wife might not have. Challenges at work, lingering health issues that caused worry, disputes with close family members over things that most people would consider fairly private. I was privy to all that but relationship troubles was off-limit. The last time I had a male friend talk about difficulty in relationships must have been in my mid-20s. That's probably when the door that opens to vulnerability is shut tight. 

Seeking Vintage

 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 length about being “homesteaders”, usually sprinkling in romantic notions of living on farms, raising animals, eating an all-natural diet, and sewing their own clothes.

It’s a far cry from what you see in some of their videos – modern kitchens and appliances, expensive ingredients, glamorous (store-bought) outfits. That’s not even to mention the fact that many of them don’t even live on farms, or aren’t married, or any of the other things they espouse the virtues of – they are, in effect, playing dress up. Many of them sell “trad”, vintage-inspired products through their websites so that you, too, can live out your mildest dreams.

Maybe young women are over-whelmed by the what needs to come true for them to even have a shot at marriage, family and motherhood. This is no longer an easy feat to achieve. It takes years to get to the level of financial stability when having baby is in the realm of possible. Often by then biology is not on the woman's side. It is also likely, she does not have the stable, loving and reliable partner she wants to commit to in marriage. 

So dreaming about the imagined perfect life of her grandmother played out by an influencer is the closest she can come to her dream. This is the same reason by food and home improvement shows are so popular - people want to live vicariously and have what they desire but cannot have. I could live on dessert but know I would live too long if I did, so watching a baking show is my best bet - it definitely beats stress eating pastry in times of trouble.

Sounding Alarm

 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  into the boy who cried wolf. Even folks like me who are doing what little they can every day to limit their footprint and consumption, are not being truly edified by all this information. In the hottest, most unbearable days of summer, people might take a minute or two to wonder what is going on. But for the most part, they are worried about paychecks, bills, family and such. They are looking for ways to work around the excessive, unprecedented heat problem - because it stands in the way of problems that are more impactful to them. 

People will work from home instead of commute, keep their kids indoors and do what they can to stay cool. If they had heard the story on the radio that talked tried to explain what was going on with the earth, they would not pause the flow of their life and have a family summit to discuss what actions they would each take. I wish there was a way to make things a bit real and actionable for regular people and more importantly give them feedback on how their efforts are moving the needle - there has to be a sense that what we do actually matters. Media is no longer a trusted source of information - the spin and bias is blatantly obvious. This makes all their claims even if vetted and accurate sound dubious. 

The interviews revealed that language describing climate change as a crisis and an urgent threat was met with suspicion by many participants. The disconnect between crisis rhetoric and the participants’ own beliefs and experiences drove doubt about the motivations of the people making these claims, sowing suspicion and deeper mistrust.  

Interviewees widely rejected the national news media as a credible source for climate information. They see these outlets as presenting information that suits their own agendas. Interviewees generally expressed greater openness toward hearing from scientists on climate change because of their subject matter expertise. Still, participants stressed the importance of hearing factual statements from scientists rather than beliefs that may be shaped by their own political leanings or their research funders.

Comfort Vibes

 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 scattering or stores, a few gas stations and a handful of hotels. If an establishment is rated family- friendly, it's usually my top choice when I don't have much else to go by and then I start to look at the negative reviews to see if there are any serious red flags. People complaining about noise from the street is not enough to detract me but its intolerable for some. The last time we checked into a place that looked may more run-down in reality than it did in the pictures, I wondered if we need to go somewhere else. The neighborhood was very busy and full of tourists, plenty of families with kids but the place did not exude comfortable vibes. Right when we were about to start looking for an alternative, we saw this desi family pull into the parking lot of the establishment. They had two young kids and more than a couple of bags. This family intended to stay here for a few days to check out the local attractions I guessed. That sight immediately put me at ease. The stay ended up being uneventful and  breakfast better than I expected.

Learning Slow

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 experience with trying to cook banana stem - a very common meal item growing up, for the first time ever made me think about true and imagined familiarity with things including food. If I was venturing into cooking something I actually knew nothing about, chances are I would try to learn before I plunged in. Banana stem is so absolutely commonplace that it never crossed my mind that my familiarity with it maybe only imaginary. It's like being familiar with the woman who goes across my yard on her daily runs because I recognize her face.

 She's been running this route for as long as I have lived in my home. I don't know her name and we have only exchanged smiles if I happened to be outside. This woman likely has a life full of rich detail outside her running. I know nothing about that. That was me meeting the banana stem on my kitchen countertop. Every detail about it was novel to me though I have "known" this vegetable for decades. This was the first time I got to learn about it, understand how it works or does not work. 

Saddest Lines

 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 the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Radical Simple

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 designed for categories of cuisines and restaurants. I was a Korean place recently that served a half a dozen restorative soups and nothing else. It was a family run operation and the owner was super-friendly and attentive to the customers. It might be a bad idea to automate this place not because it is impossible to design a soup-making robot but because the whole point of the restaurant will be lost of the owner did not come by and chat with you at your table and teach you about the ingredients in the soup, and suggest banchan that you might want to try. Customers love this place as much for the experience as the food as the hundreds of glowing reviews suggest. 

Learning Patterns

 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 living. Despite busy jobs and having to raise four kids, they found time for hobbies that took a lot of time and effort. This was a couple that seemed to be able to get a lot out of their day and were inspiring to others. Over the many conversations during our stay, I was able to piece together how the tide turned. It is a story of death by a thousand cuts - small disappointments, things not working out quite as expected in many fronts and ennui from lack of meaningful change. Considered alone, none of the events are quite cataclysmic but they add up and create this desire to leave it all behind and never look back. 

L reminded me of my father in the years leading up to his retirement. He was so ready and counting down the days - like a prisoner waiting for freedom. He stopped trying to bring about change in his life when in fact he was completely free of responsibility at the time and could make big, bold moves if he wanted to. Instead, like L, he chose to shrink the boundaries of his universe very drastically. It became his dream to go out to the market every morning to get fresh fish and vegetables for the day. He had no further plans for how he would spend his retirement years. For someone who worked a very complex job for thirty some years, traveled extensively and made decisions impacting many every day, this was the epitome of an uncomplicated life. My father is eighty now and continues to live his simple life as he had wanted. He has the satisfaction of doing it his way and he has built upon his desire to simplify by limiting his engagement with the world outside home. 

J and I find it very difficult to communicate with him because there is nothing to talk about. This was not the person he always was. This is who he turned into by choosing to live the way he does. Part of me wanted to tell L that the retirement she was dreaming of could have unintended consequences. She already struggles to find common ground with her kids who are in their thirties. I chose to hold my peace fearing it was not my place to tell a woman close to retirement age how she should live the rest of her life. With my father back in the day, I felt I was within my rights and shared my concerns many times to no avail. His mind was completely made up and there was nothing to rethink or revisit. 

Killing Good

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 part of more than one title. The two domains are inherently at odds with each other and the thinking might have been to make one leader be responsible for both so the decisions are more centered than skewed. There could be some passable sense in that. Now to make three leaders with various portfolios to also co-own search and ads is wildly dysfunctional. Nothing good could possibly come out of such arrangement and so no surprise that it did not work out for Google. Its been long overdue for users to have choice in search and not be forced to be billable eyeballs for ads they don't want to see.

Standard Fare

 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. Notwithstanding the limitations, they have close to 5 star reviews and a loyal customer base. Maybe the chain establishments need to go robotic and provide value for money along with consistent quality. The individuality of the chef could shine in the smaller, local and niche establishments that excel at some specific things. This would not be such a terrible thing 

Labor is one of the highest costs for restaurants, and automation can help reduce these expenses, ensuring consistent execution and approachable pricing. However, it also raises concerns about job displacement. While robots take on cooking duties, the need for human staff decreases, reducing employment.

Bypass Behavior

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 be nearly impossible to bypass the safeguards for the vast majority of kids no matter how motivated and ingenious they are. It would create the right incentives for them to earn the rights to a "normal" device. 

When regulators shoot from the hip and try to create a regime that is punitive but does not offer smart, well thought through alternatives, they hurt they very section of the population they mean to protect. Time after time, we see how this story ends but regulators go about their business no lessons learned from the past.

Bad News

 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 time because there was no way for that person to fly. Patients could have died from hospitals not being able to take them in on time. The list of possible tragedies that have come about from this event is only limited by our imagination. 

It could take millions of person-hours of work by corporate IT professionals to fix all the computers that were affected, said O’Neill, the former FBI counterintelligence operative. But, he said, coming up with a firm estimate is difficult because it’s unknown how many computers were affected.

That is the Y2K of our times and its unclear where those resources are going to materialize from. More likely than not, random people closest impacted computer would need to follow the directions of a remote sysadmin, serve as the button-pusher, do what is needed to get the computer back up and running. I am trying to imagine a scene where one of my parents is getting instructions by phone on how to boot up a computer in safe-mode and it feels surreal.

In organizations where that is not allowed for reasons of policy and bureaucracy, it may be a long while before things are back up and running. 

The lack of quality control and testing done before a global release is quite astounding. If the error is as basic as reported then it appears as if a high-school intern was left in charge of the code release with no one watching - this is assuming the intern even did their own work and did not get an LLM to write code while they chilled.

The problem with CrowdStrike’s update was that it wasn’t formatted correctly “and causes Windows to crash every time,”

Good Intention

 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 characterized by higher poverty rates and lower median incomes compared to more prosperous counties. Introducing skilled immigrants to these areas could help reverse these negative trends and stimulate economic development.

This program could set a precedent for regional development through targeted immigration policies, harnessing the full potential of America's immigrant workforce to revitalize the heartland.

Seeking Approval

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 try solving real problems in highly constrained situations to see if they were ever worth the title they once held or the money they made. The real heroes in most large companies are unsung and unrecognized. They love what they do and are exceptionally good at it. The combination makes them oblivious to the fact their work needs to be showcased and displayed nonstop to powers that be in ways that makes sense to them. The packaging and presentation of the work done by these folks is lacking or entirely absent. Along comes someone like the author who "sees the bigger picture", "thinks outside the box" and "moves the needle". They are able to ride the wave of real work and further their own career. Needless to say, it creates the need to rationalize and justify why they deserved to get ahead and so they serve up all this advisory for lesser mortals -  many of whom are destined to toil away in anonymity and serve as catalyst for growth of others' careers. 

Thanks to the career coaching and mentoring this individual and others like him provide, the same pattern of bad and failed leadership continues to plague companies that employ the beneficiaries of their guidance. 

Over Share

 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 not but it is far more informative than it used to be. 

The way the United CEO describes the evolution of their customer experience makes sense;

For years, I’ve asked our teams to pretend that I’m on the flight and have called and asked why there’s a delay. I want them to proactively tell customers exactly the same thing that they would tell me.

That’s been easy for me to say but really, really difficult to do given the complexity and real-time nature of the flight network. Technology is moving this closer and closer to reality.

Our teams are using gen AI to help write the real-time text updates we send customers whose flights have been delayed, and for those customers impacted by weather we’re now including a radar map that shows how it’s affecting flights. We’re the first and only U.S. airline providing these kinds of specific messages and sending them with assistance from gen AI tools.

Over Hype

 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 best and brightest in the world. These folks have no sense of what data is all about and manage to write horrific, underperforming code when all they are required to do is call miscellaneous APIs. They simply cannot be trusted do anything more intellectually demanding than that. Given my lived experience, I felt infinitely validated when I read this line: 

Consider the fact that most companies are unable to successfully develop and deploy the simplest of CRUD applications on time and under budget.

In all my years I have only seen one team accomplish this feat - deploy a CRUD application on time and under-budget. That has also got to be the most high-functioning team I ever worked with. 

Forever Home

 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 somewhat follow the rationale and it is also true that I fell in love with this city when I first visited almost two decades ago. My feelings towards Seattle have evolved since then - there has been a falling out of love as I have spent more time over many visits since that wonderful first one, now a perfect memory. I recall bringing back a bouquet of dry flowers from Pike Place Market from that trip, protecting it on the long flight by holding it my hand. It found a place on my dining table in our tiny apartment. I was married then. In my home that bouquet did not feel nearly as stunning. It spoke to the death and decay of my relationship, held together much like those flowers life and love long gone. When I left, the flowers remained behind along with the many pictures I had taken of that trip to Seattle.

Maybe the truth is somewhere is between. The place in one's dreams needs to meet the places the person sees in the course of their life - specially the ones that come to be imbued with happy memories. Somewhere at that junction, is perhaps the one's forever home. 

End Education

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 a very selective college and is well aware of what it takes to make the cut. He is adamant that he does not wish that life for his kids. I asked him what if they want a life like his (and theirs) which is great part can be attributed to where he went to school and the connections he made while there. Several of P's closest friends have national standing in their fields. More than once in his career, these friends helped him land a job he was less than qualified for. With such blessings in his life, P is able to give his kids a high quality of life and a chance to go to school where there is no need or expectation to perform.

 I very much doubt his kids are ready for the rough and tumble that awaits them in college and beyond. The protected life of chartered school will end along with the fully funded lifestyle where there are no performance expectations whatsoever, These kids go on three to four big vacations a year and countless small ones. The mundane business of life and school happens in the gaps between vacation. The New York proposal seems to be akin to P's parenting style delivered at scale and not requiring the parent to have the means P does to support the non-performing life of their kids. 

Morning Nap

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. She had been up late the previous night and had to wake up early to meet me - the rest it seems was much needed.

There was nothing at all about that morning that could be called remarkable, I met my kid, we had breakfast and she took a nap in my room. I left, she left an hour later. We both returned to the flows of our separate lives. Yet, I know I will remember that morning for a long time to come. The mother and daughter seated next to our table at breakfast. J giving me her opinion about some changes at my work and what she thought I should do. She clarified my thinking on the subject and was able to identify options that are not worth consideration. J looking lost at the coffee bar because she wanted tea and the options were slim.  There was a light breeze when I stepped outside. Every turn of the way to the train station, I felt like I saw a young woman much like J - being young, free and independent. I see my some tiny specks of my daughter in many of them and always wonder if they see random bits of their mothers in me.

Perfect Union

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 reminiscent of Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen movies. They reminded me of the places I knew as a child, relatives who lived in homes that looked ready to collapse any minute. 

I want to believe that change has come upon Kolkata too - that people have more choices and better lives than they did back then. Yet, setting the story back in the past takes away from it being the story of a contemporary couple who have a marriage that works like magic. The magic lies in the synchronicity - how they are able to be there for their partner without ever being there physically.

This is the only way perhaps a modern union can work - anywhere in the world. If the two are busy pursuing money, career or dreams there is still a way to be a warm, immovable emotional and spiritual presence in each other's lives. Whether or not it was the director's intent, this movie is about why marriage is so venerated in India -  if the pairing is right, it can to lead to the state of perfect harmony, which serves as an infinite reservoir of strength. 

Glaring Sun

 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 element there, I am just passing through town.

When J first left home to go to college, leaving her was incredibly hard - I put on a brave face and pretended that it call came to me naturally. That place at the intersection of two streets by a big field of green where I waved goodbye in her freshman year, is etched forever in memory. I watched her turn to the street leading to her dorm and walked to the railway station. The stores and restaurants along the way were not all open yet. 

I committed the scenery to memory the best I could so I would be able to imagine where she was and then took my plane back home. J settled into her new life slowly - there were highs and lows but she impressed me with her resilience, specially through the pandemic. For the first six months it felt like I lived outside my skin at a constantly elevated level of anxiety that no rational thought could quell. Then time and distance did their work  - the anxieties started to dissolve. 

I can't recall her metro station where we parted ways after dinner nearly as intensely - she is a grown woman, there is nothing remarkable about that stop for her. She met me there because it was close to my hotel. The gaping sun is there every evening, she does not look at it like I did and wonder what that light is.

Limited Right

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. How things work out in practice is a different matter, there is a human element, officers who have empathy and are keen on doing what is right and fair. But the system has now been set up a particular kind of outcome becoming rampant without any remedy. If the spouse is not "guaranteed" entry then other relatives including parents probably can expect only worse extending the logic that was applied to rule on this case: 

Coney-Barrett surveyed the history of immigration law, stating Congress has “never made spousal immigration a matter of right.” Instead, according to the court, spousal immigration is a privilege that cannot trigger judicial review of an immigration decision

Likewise there is absolutely no right to parental immigration. If said parents are well past retirement age, they can only add burden to the American system by consuming goods and services, not producing anything in return. They are unlikely to assimilate and integrate into the mainstream and would stick out as aliens from a different culture until death. There is arguably no value for the state to bring such people in as immigrants. 

Marriage is already becoming the preserve of the rich and educated. The decision to have children is even more fraught - the cost of childcare makes it impossible sometimes for both parents to work. If one has to give up their career, that marriage best be rock-solid. These are the times we live and so it makes sense that having aging parents close by so you are not anxious about them is the most extreme form of privilege that America might not deem required for the average naturalized citizen - they were afforded plenty of privilege already (which is arguably true given where they came from)

Boring Sticker

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 prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way.

“To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”

Rather than seeing an opportunity to use surge pricing, Gallino says retailers are likely drawn to electronic shelf tags to ensure consistency between online and in-store pricing.

Good Intention

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 greenlight from management to proceed). Their idea is either ignored or shot down. The employee is relentless and decides to go ahead anyway - with or without sanction. They get the job done, the results are great and they never missed a beat on their assigned work. 

A great situation all around one would imagine. But as it often turns out, this thing that the "over-zealous" employee has built does not sit well within how decision-makers in the company see the puzzle pieces fit. So the thing gets cast aside, never adopted and put to practical use. The junior employee moves on with their life. But not everything is in vain. Someday, the efforts of their guerilla artists maybe the reason the Parthenon marbles find their way home. Likewise, someone in the company might dust of  the junior's employee's project and see great success. These events will unfold at a time that the people who pushed for change do not control.

The issue with the Parthenon marbles can appear simple or complex based on perspective. Did the marbles come into British possession by legal means or were they removed without proper authorization. Does a lawful action that took place in the past, make it irreversible in the present when the tide of public sentiment has turned. While nearly not as complex, some of reasons that are not immediately obvious sealed the fate of the junior employee's project. 

At work the junior employee might have been better served to understand why stakeholders were not as enthused about his idea as they should have been. The guerilla artists with their plan for the Parthenon marbles could have partnered with likeminded organizations to create grass-roots support for their plan, demonstrated how the British museum would have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

Culinary Assult

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 most have looked deceptively simple but the mastery would be impossible to replicate. There was a vegetable, pork and white bean soup I had in a village once that I will never forget. The chef told me it was her Hungarian grandma's recipe that she had carried with her to Italy and made it faithfully every afternoon. It was the most popular dish and people returned for it. Her other dishes were excellent but her soul was in that soup. She might not have a been a genius chef but she made memorable meals every day.

Creative Arc

 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 converges into lack of incentive for artists to fully exercise their creative muscle and if they do, make their output publicly available. The only option left is for artists to hold paid viewings for their work with no ability for patrons to record or copy anything. If a big corporation wants them to do work for them - the same rules of engagement apply. The issue is that every artists would have to abide by the rules of engagement - a guild or union approach, for the community to have more power in negotiations with entities much bigger than them - even collectively. That seems to be quite an impossible goal to achieve.

Limited Share

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 minimize the proliferation, be careful to share (if you choose to share at all), deny permission always and so on. Inspite of doing all that, you may find that your kids' pictures have ended up where you did not want or expect them to be. What is your recourse at that point? Do you want to fight what might be a losing battle or just let it go. Maybe the answer is to poison every image before you ever share or post it anywhere. That way you can have a social network for thousands for friends who are waiting eagerly for you to post pictures of your toddler doing the next cute toddler thing because your production value is so amazing, it makes your toddler stand out from the crowd for million other toddlers who do the exact same things but are not blessed with a parent who has the eye for seizing the moment perfectly every single time. 

Making Whole

 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 milling around doing so-called work really, truly have nothing to do. They do their best to look busy (back to back meetings all day long is the most favored and well-recognized way) and deliver results (extremely detailed and completely non-informative status reports submitted in various incarnations multiple times a week, is a well-known way to show progress towards goals where none exists - either progress or goal). The sad reality is that most employees cannot demonstrate that their work had value or meaning. 

My friend E works for the government of his state. E has been tasked with reducing the cost of running that state's operations in the cloud. It turns out that the cloud provider has no desire to tamp down the cost of running the state's business on the cloud. The vendors will help him to an extent but want to place long term contract headcount in the state in return. E has no winning strategy. 

He is not technical enough to re-architect the cloud implementation he has been tasked to optimize and the "experts" are lacking the incentives to help him out. It may be argued that E is failing to do the job the state paid him to do. Some overzealous state government apparatchik may decide E needs to be laid-off for non-performance. In reality though, E is doing the best he can given the hand he has been dealt. While it is true that he had failed to reduce the cost of operations by 25% as was the goal assigned to him, it certainly not account of him being malicious or lazy or worse. If employment contracts were tweaked a bit, E could be laid off and the state could ask him to return the extra dollars that were paid to him.

Grief Colorized

 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 haze, sometimes there is a bit of clarity where the camera pauses ever so briefly on something that the viewer can take in. 

I found this depiction of the suffering through the lost of the beloved very poignant. Even for a viewer who has no familiarity with the the language or the culture, the striking visuals resonate - you see the person trying to cope with loss best he can, losing is mind along the way and coming out the other side, transformed into something unrecognizable to those who had known him before. There is a lot beyond the visualization of intense grief a person could take away from the movie - but for me it was what made the strongest impression.

Public Spaces

 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. It will be great to see Google convert this to a global map layer so people (specially children) can be put out of their misery. I feel glad that I have learned adaptation techniques early in my life so I can cope better than those who did not have such opportunity. 

The group Alliance for Public Space Leadership, which promotes equity and effective management of New York’s public spaces, said in a statement that the new Google map “will make our public realm more accessible for everyone” but added that New York City has far too few public restrooms.

“These facilities should be easy to find and abundant so all New Yorkers can enjoy public space with peace of mind,” the group said

Own Conclusions

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 replacement 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 and bad reason with something new and unoffensive has no end. No matter what the replacement is, it is bound to get some set of people feeling upset and excluded. 

Disney has been criticized for racist tropes in films made in earlier decades. The crow characters from the 1941 film “Dumbo” and the King Louie character from 1967’s “The Jungle Book” were viewed as African American caricatures. The depiction of Native Americans in the 1953 movie “Peter Pan” and the Siamese cats — often deemed as Asian stereotypes — from the 1955 film “Lady and the Tramp” also have been derided.

Back home in India, lot of folks were offended by Kipling's Jungle Book because it was deeply disparaging of the natives and made the British out to be the ones to save our heathen souls - a pretty popular opinion outside India too. Notwithstanding, I remember quite fondly how we put up a Jungle Book production for our annual school play when I was about twelve years old. The whole school was involved from set design to costume making, setting up lighting and sound to auditioning for the multitude of roles. At the time, we were too young to have an opinion about Kipling or his racist tendencies - we just had a great time preparing for and putting on the show that allowed us to be creative. It would be great shame if the powers that be had decided Jungle Book need to be canceled and removed from our lives. We had plenty of time left to grow up and come to our own conclusions on the issue - why hurry the process.