Heartcrossings

Recently, a woman I have worked with in the past said that generational attitudes towards AI makes a huge difference in their expectations and experience with it. L's theory is that young people want to let AI do it all for them if possible, free up their time. It is yet to be determined what the person will do with all the time they've freed up but that is an easy solve.  Older people have spent decades learning skills and trades that they take pride in and therefore resist AI as way to boost their productivity - it minimizes their effort in achieving mastery, makes a mockery of it it even. That seems to make sense and squares with what both see around us. L is about my age and an early adopter of GenAI and is using it to do more in the same amount of time. She is an outlier and not part of the AI adoption gender-gap . I am not quite at L's level of usage but very far from sitting it out - there is a lot of room for improvement and optimization.  I did not ask L her option...

 Learned about Veblen and Giffen goods reading this essay . Both have the same characteristic - as price goes up, demand goes up as well but the reasons are different examples of Veblen goods are some forms of art, high-end designer clothes, exclusive cars and watches. The more expensive the good is, the more exclusive it is, and the more the consumers (who are attracted to it) want to purchase it. It all centres on signalling status. Being seen to be able to purchase them can indicate someone has exquisite taste, or lots of money to spend. I wonder if the buying is driven by the fear of being priced out by waiting too long to buy. Say I had my eye on a piece of fine jewelry for a while and thought it was bit out of budget. Next time I check it out, it has become even more expensive. If I really want this thing maybe that's the time I will pull the trigger.  A Giffen good is a low-income, non-luxury product that defies standard economic and consumer demand theory. Demand for G...

Sad that third graders can't always read these days and its not a given that they can open a book the right way up to begin with. Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade — a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries. McGoun, who has a doctorate in education, shared one stark example. With struggling readers, he hands each child a book upside down and backward. "They should be able to turn the book the right way up and open it at the first page," he said. These days, "some students aren't able to do that." What seems like a complex and insurmountable problem seems to have a simple solution according to educators - just have the parents put away their phone and devices, lead by example what books are meant for. As ...

We had been traveling a lot the last few months and never got around to getting a Christmas tree. By the time we went looking for one, there were just a couple left in local store with a big clearance sign on top and no price mentioned. It turned out that the $70 tree was on sale for $3. It came home and got set up. In a couple of days it looked more alive than we got it. At the store a lot of Christmas things were already on sale and in the clearance aisle and we were more than a week away from the holiday. It got me thinking about how retailers set the pace for how people celebrate. They want us to wrap it up faster and faster each year to the point that the holiday feels like its over even before its happened. At my gym in the group exercise classes, the instructors are talking to us about the post Christmas schedule. There seems to be a general urgency to get the holidays done with - wrap up the shopping, feasting and what not and get back. There is good natured bantering on eating...

Loved reading this post about Apple News articles - ultimate clickbait headlines, always behind a paywall. The only exception is when the news is really bad and all over the place already. There is not much to bait and switch over. Other outlets are pumping out minute by minute updates - then the Apple News story is no longer paywalled. Devious and ridiculous both come to mind each time I run into this.  I start this game of cat and mouse when you least expect it: You’ve swiped right to search for an unused app on your phone that you’re convinced you have somewhere. I lure you in with my headline: “Oolong Tea Is Having Extreme Effects on Health.” Yeah, I knew you’d be interested. You love oolong tea. I’ve been waiting for you. You click, and that’s when I show myself for the first time: This Article Is Only Available to Apple News+ Subscribers, of which you are not one. Nice try. “You can look, but don’t touch,” Very occasionally, I've been able to find the story on Wayback machin...

I have a few elderly folks in my life who often preface their remarks with "I only have a few years left to go" as if to legitimize what they have to say next. This manner of speech grows very old very soon. The said person was using the same line for a couple of decades now and they are still here whereas their contemporaries are not. I have the habit of playing forward to my last day (assuming I have my wits about me to even recognize such is the case) to see if the thing I am losing my mind over right this minute is warranted.  Would it matter that day, a year before that a decade before that and so on. Almost always the answer is no. Almost nothing I have been upset about in the moment has ever met the bar so the decision to let it go is easier. There are items on the list, where I have work to do, make things right as much as possible so if a stray thought floats to my head that day about an item on that list, I can rest knowing its been checked off. That list is rather ...

Reading the news of Zakir Hussain's passing  a few days ago reminded me of the evening we heard him perform live and get his autograph a CD for J. He asked me her name, smiled at us both and repeating it flawlessly as he signed. It was a magic moment, such a privilege. It is as if her name had acquired special meaning to hear him say it. Listening to him made a strong impression on J though she was too young to have words to describe it. There are many amazing tabla players but only one Ustad Zakir Hussain - he teased life out of the instrument in ways you never knew were even possible. The Taj Mahal tea ad from my childhood came to mind - and then I saw this great  Times of India tribute to the maestro . Really loved his quote about his good fortune with music  "I am one of those musicians who came at the cusp of a great change in the music world and I was carried on that wave," he explained. "I had the good fortune of establishing a very unhurried relationship with...

Sometimes, I read random pages from my open-source copy of the Arthashastra that I have on my Kindle. It is a fun exercise to map some of his directives to the modern world and see if any of it still makes sense A PRINCE, though put to troubles and employed in an unequal task, shall yet faithfully follow his father unless that task costs his life, enrages the people, or causes any other serious calamities. If he is employed in a good or meritorious work, he shall try to win the good graces of the superintendent of that work, carry the work to a profitable end beyond expectation, and present his father with the proportional profit derived from that work as well as with the excessive profit due to his skill. If the king is not still pleased with him and shows undue partiality to another prince and other wives, he may request the king to permit him for a forest-life. Making some liberal interpretations here but imagine this text were to be applied to the scion of  a powerful politicia...

I started to watch Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper intrigued by the title the first episode in the series. A dude with a name like that and credentials to match in bondage gear, getting ready to kill someone offered an interesting narrative arc. How did Mishra ji get this far out of his lane is the question a desi such as myself would ask. So I watched the whole thing and went from intrigued to amused to bored and disappointed. Our people love byzantine plot-twists and fancy that their story can be a Mahabharat too.  Sadly  the outcome of such unbridled ambition is a hot mess where the viewer and the writer part ways in the first couple of hours while  ten more hours of story left to be told. This one had some potential to begin. Right and proper, middle class guy, low level government servant with the usual family troubles, expected to be all around boring turns out to be a great lover to his wife even though he is not able to provide much material comfort. The secret source...

 Totally loved reading this story - desi ingenuity at it's best, solving not one but two hard problems at once. The cafe’s concept of bartering food for plastic waste is catching on elsewhere, too. In Siliguri, West Bengal, the alumni of a local school are distributing free food on Saturdays to anyone who deposits half a kilo of plastic waste. At the other end of the country in Mulugu in Telangana state, the town authorities give one kilo of rice in return for one kilo of plastic. Local school children also go around collecting plastic. The district collector of Mulugu has said he wants to make his district the first in India to be free of single use plastic. The enthusiasm is proving infections: one local couple sent out wedding invitations printed on reusable cloth grocery bags. Some form of bartering waste for useful things has been around in India for a long time. We stored newspapers and magazines away in the shed after they had been read. Every few months those would be bart...

 The descent into becoming my mother has accelerated with age it seems. At first I was able to resist the force by sheer will but lately that seems near impossible. There is much that I like and admire about my mother but equal (if not more) that I do not. I was determined not to become that which I really did not like but not so easy as it turns out .  I have always dreamed of a relationship with J that is completely unlike mine with my mother. While my dream may yet come true but I am starting to learn that may not bring me the closure or satisfaction I had hoped for. We will have a relationship quite different from that between my mother and I but it will be fraught with other issues that are unique to J and I, the circumstances of our lives together before she left to college. There will be no perfection, only work in progress to make corrections and improvements all the time. We will get better in some ways and worse in others.  as I get older and throw the world’s m...

A different take on a long commute - three hour round trip every day. This woman's circumstances are such that a long commute brings more benefit that trouble to her. I can map this to map life even had things turned out differently. J lives and works far away from me and she is my only kid. I have no other direct family in America - my parents live in Kolkata. If I had remained single after she left to college, I would have very little to fill my life with, day after day.  I might have chosen to do a three hour roundtrip commute to work to build a stronger structure for me day where I needed to be up at 6 am to catch the early train out. I might have returned later than work needed me to so I would have less alone time. There is a great benefit for someone who is alone to force themselves into a routine where social interactions are inevitable given time. A regular on the early morning train becomes a travel companion who exchange some pleasantries with over time. You get to know...

Learned something new from this  essay on the recent event in midtown Manhattan . As long as the only reliable way to boost revenue quarterly is to cut cost no matter the consequence, this is exactly the kind of decision companies will make:  A new policy from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield also went viral: the company had announced that, in certain states, starting in 2025, it would no longer pay for anesthesia if a surgery passed a pre-allotted time limit. The cost of the “extra” anesthesia would be passed from Anthem—whose year-over-year net income was reported, in June, to have increased by more than twenty-four per cent, to $2.3 billion—to the patient. On Thursday, the company withdrew the change in response to the public outrage, if only in Connecticut, for now. There is so many levels of bizarre in this scenario, that I cannot begin to count them. There seems to be the notion that the insurance company can arrive at a pre-allotted time limit for anesthesia. It will not b...

Good read about the intrinsic and external reward models for artists and how it impacts their work and perception of their value as artists. Along the way there is a little diatribe about Shien that I found interesting:  Shein, the fast fashion leviathan. While other fast fashion brands wait for high-end houses to produce designs they can replicate cheaply, Shein has completely eclipsed the runway, using AI to trawl social media for cues on what to produce next. Shein’s site operates like a casino game, using “dark patterns”—a countdown clock puts a timer on an offer, pop-ups say there’s only one item left in stock, and the scroll of outfits never ends—so you buy now, ask if you want it later. Shein’s model is dystopic: countless reports detail how it puts its workers in obscene poverty in order to sell a reprieve to consumers who are also moneyless—a saturated plush world lasting as long as the seams in one of their dresses. Many years ago when Shein was still very new, I tried s...

Watched The Holdovers recently and loved it. There are plenty of details in the story that the viewer could mull over - a lot like looking a crystalline object in light holding up a different facet each time, there is something new and different there.  For me at least at the time I watched it, the big theme was about how each person is defined by their backstory and things are rarely what they seem to be. You get off to a rough start with someone and you struggle to understand what you did wrong and more importantly what you could have done differently. Often you come up short on both questions. The other side that had an instantaneous allergic reaction to you could also be left wondering what about you triggered such a visceral response. They might not know either.  Given time together with no one else around, as happens to the main characters in this movie, there could be understanding and resolution. You might find that you have a lot more in common than you imagined and ...

An AI friend or companion could feel more relevant if not real, if they are available on-demand and without limit. Not everyone is lucky to have someone like that in their lives and those that are may some day lose that special person and the void would be hard to fill. This is talking about a close friend, mentor, trusted advisor type of relationship not an intimate partner. This is the person could rely on to speak the truth candidly and without reservation - have their best interests at heart. The thwarting of the AI by regulation is a complex situation:  He learned that he had signed up for Replika during a period of turmoil. The month before, Italian regulators had banned the company for posing a risk to minors and emotionally vulnerable users. In response, Replika placed filters on erotic content, which had the effect of sending many of its quarter-million paying customers into extreme emotional distress when their AI husbands, wives, lovers, and friends became abruptly cold...

Bittersweet story about an IVF mix-up and though the resolution is fair it does not leave everyone whole or satisfied.  ..Daphna reflected on how complicated her feelings about May still were. There was guilt that she gave May up, but also another sort of guilt — the knowledge that although she still loved May, she had had to change the shape of that love into something new, for everyone’s sake. “I don’t know how to let her back into my heart the same way,” Daphna told me. She and the other parents all tried to normalize what happened, cheerfully answering questions about who started out in whose belly and why, but they knew that as the children got older, they would have more troubling questions — questions about chance and choice and sacrifice and compromise. The parents might not have the answers to those questions; they would simply say that they did the best they could. Carrying the baby in the womb is an act of motherhood and the bond is likely unassailable no matter the fac...

The money is good but the work sounds like a perfect nightmare . You have to wonder what happens when one day things come full circle. That ultra-demanding client who needed their food cooked hyper-precisely or else becomes physically unable to eat or appreciate the taste of any food because they have dementia and are bed-ridden. It would be the cruel irony of fate if their care-provider fed them common people meals all pre-cooked and soul-less. It seems like flexing power needlessly as this story describes could have karmic consequences. This one was even a bit amusing for me as an avid tea-drinker For one client, water had to be heated to 180 degrees, then cooled to 120 degrees before the tea was put in. The tea would be steeped for 3 minutes and 15 seconds and the cup cooled to 70 degrees for serving. That process would ruin the taste of the nicest teas so whomever is asking for it likely has no interest or appreciation for teas.   Such seems to be the case with other examples c...

Reading this story transported my to childhood and youth in Bangalore when having idli and vada served on banana leaf accompanied by coconut chutney used to be common in my life. It was there for the asking but the ease of access did not make it less special for me. Every time it was a treat. Bangalore and India receded from my horizon and it has not been possible to replicate the simple perfection of this meal ever since. I make my own idli and chutney sometimes but the vada is notably absent - its hard to get it tasting right without practice making it and I have none. My friend A has successfully grown a banana tree in her yard so this year I look forward to getting some leaves from her and doing something with it that will remind me of times past. There is a story in a story here - about someone finding their calling in doing something relatively simple but doing it well. His story is not unique in that regard.  A likes going to this fancy Indian restaurant in my town whose ch...

Calling my parents on their wedding anniversary has felt awkward for a long time. Theirs was always the kind of marriage I absolutely did not want and in fact it made me highly marriage averse to begin. Yet, they have stayed on together and the years and decades have added up. On some of the bigger anniversaries, I have paused to wonder how anyone including a middle-aged child of a couple can have perspective on what makes it work for them. For many years now, they go to a temple somewhere away from home, spend the day there, say their prayers and return home. The date and the fact is acknowledged, the wins they have had together likely gives them the energy they need. All that was and is broken is no longer discussed, too much time has passed, age has diminished if not eliminated any desire for improvement.  Status quo is all that there is left. They were a strong team, aligned on important goals and pulled in the same direction to achieve them. That can and should be called a str...

Legal protection for someone's vibe is an interesting concept. The parties involved in this lawsuit are influencers and their vibe drives followers and income so there is likely argument to be made there. But what about regular folks who are not known or recognized as influencers? They too could have vibes that inspire plagiarism. It could be that someone's vibe is to be involved in marathons, training, running and having a community around that. Maybe they are partial to a particular style of athleisure. What if their friend or neighbor was inspired by that vibe and started to copy some or all of it. The person no longer remains quite as unique. This reminds me of a kld in school who was a few years older than me. She had a very unique sense of style that could shine through even the boring school uniform that allowed almost no opportunity for self-expression.  B was not one to be held back by such constraints. There would be little flourishes added where possible and permiss...

I caught up with my friend M almost after a year. She is about two years away from retirement and is actively preparing for it. Her home improvement projects are about done and as soon as they find their dream home in Maine, they will list this one for sale. M does not want to quit the workforce cold turkey immediately upon turning 70 but says her tolerance for corporate bullshit is nearing an all-time low. She is not sure that after 70 she will be able to stand it at all. That conversation made me think about my level of tolerance and how much longer I have left to go. It feels near impossible that I will last until 70 as M most surely will. There is a point in our lives when the future seems vast and open -anything is possible. Then comes the time when the field of vision narrows and there are only a few paths left. The brave and enterprising among us, defy what they see in front of them and decide the paths that are closed and do not exist can be coerced into being open for them - t...

I have started going to group exercise classes regularly for about a year now. There are a few people who show up to them regularly and then there are those that came once to check things out or show up very rarely. Some of the regulars go back thirty years at the same class and the instructor has been around the entire time. They share a bond that arriviste cannot hope to be a part of. The women in my classes are span a wide age range - early 20s to late 70s. Very few come with a partner or a friend. By now some faces have grown more familiar than others. I have chatted with some of these women on occasion while waiting for class to begin.  After people are in a rush to leave or want to catch up with those they have known a lot longer. One of the women has been here since late 1980s so she knows just about everyone but she keeps to herself, focused on exercise and nothing else. She's one of those very svelte and petite people who look ageless and the fitness regimen has only help...

 A few months ago, J highly recommended that I read George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and over the Thanksgiving weekend, I did. My copy of the book is digital and borrowed from the public library but this particular one is worth buying in print and reading over. There are things to learn that cannot happen in a single pass through the book - which is what I have done so far. It would be worthwhile to pick up any one of the short stories in the book and read it another time, go over Saunders's dissection of it so you better understand the lessons there - become a better writer A well-written bit of prose is like a beautifully hand-painted kite, lying there on the grass. It’s nice. We admire it. Causality is the wind that then comes along and lifts it up. The kite is then a beautiful thing made even more beautiful by the fact that it’s doing what it was made to do. There is a lot of wisdom in this book and it would take reading it in different moods, frame of mind ...

For many years of my life in America, people invited J and me to their homes for Thanksgiving. That made for wonderful memories that I cherish to this day. Each year, I make it a point to thank those people for their kindness and hospitality. This year was no different - W sent me a picture of his perfectly cooked turkey and his signature cocktail that involves cranberry juice, is easy to drink because it is so smooth but can get you tipsy if you are not watching. He usually made this after the guests had finished the large pitcher of mimosa. At L's the favored cocktail involved hibiscus and rum - everyone loved it and it was a fixture along with a very well decorated piece of ham for those who had the fill of turkey and wanted to go a different direction.  Every home I've ever been invited to has their specials that must be part of the dinner. My seat at the table also allowed me to join in their tradition and become a part of it. I could not imagine Thanksgiving at W's wi...

I have never eaten at Auntie Anne but love the smell of the store when walking by. It can make me feel hungry even when I am full. Maybe because of that strong triggering effect, I prefer to stay away - it makes me feel out of control. “There are few scents more recognizable than the aroma of Auntie Anne’s,” the company’s chief brand officer declared in a press release announcing this signature scent would be bottled and sold as  a perfume called “Knead.”  Described as “a wearable scent infused with notes of buttery dough, salt and a hint of sweetness,” the fragrance sold out online  within 10 minutes  of its launch. Interesting reading about what goal each type of smell is meant to do and how some outcomes are chosen over others "..McDonald’s found that a melon fragrance increased consumer spending more than the scent of their food on its own (though the chain has yet to adopt artificial melon scent as a strategy)." Thinking of food, markets and smells reminded me o...

Reading this ode to retail as it once used to be - involving contact with other humans, bustle, chaos and all, reminded me of my first holiday season in America. I had not got my driver's license yet and was still enjoying being a new wife, not yet working. My parents were starting to get a bit angsty about me -it had been about six months and I showed no signs of wanting to get back in the saddle. I had started working the week after graduating college and not taken a break until now, about four years later. In my mind, my new life circumstances entitled me to a hiatus. To them, it was early signs of trouble that I was going to some lengths to hide.  My friend and neighbor N did not know there were any signs to see - she took me at my word, I was taking a break from work, planning what is next. She did not know that I had no mental capacity to plan anything for me because all my energy was consumed by making my new marriage work. She was going Christmas shopping and wanted to tak...

I know and like Costco's poppy seed salad and was quite taken aback to read this story where said salad brings a woman who has just given birth a ton of grief.  Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results. She tested positive for opiates and the wheels of the system aiming to protect her infant from the substance abusing mother began to turn fast The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.   It seems a life-changing, cataclysmic decision to separate a mother from her new-born and have the welfare system take over the baby right after birth. The reason for su...

Interesting list but not sure what to make of the word "important" here. Important to whom? The cucumber recipe that was all the rage in 2024 was something even I became aware of earlier in the year - without ever having seen the video or having a TikTok account. Suddenly everyone I ever talked to about food was talking about this cucumber salad. Each person had their own take on it but the foundation was this salad. Garam Masala is featured gets on the list in 1973 thanks to Madhur Jaffery.  Presumably that was year when Indian food found its place in the world. Reading through the list got me thinking about each person's list of top twenty five foods at various stages of their life. There would be a time when they would not even be able to come up with five lacking age and experience. Hopefully there is also that other point in life where twenty five seems incredibly small to cover the full list of loves. Some items would stay in the list forever others could come and g...

This interview was a good read. Loved how streaming is compared to be fed instead of going on a hunt to find something special ..when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done—it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed. We’re all farm animals that are just being fed, and we’re being fed content. You can just stay home.  Just stay home. We’ll just feed it to you.  No wonder everyone’s depressed. A few days ago at dinner with with a couple of old friends, we got chatting about the first LP or cassette tape we ever owned. Everyone has a story - that event is so memorable that it can be recalled effortlessly decades later. Today, no such "first" occur...

 It seems great than an interpreter app can translate your speech in one language to another while still sounding like. Magically, a person can speak several dozen languages fluently. As a parlor trick this is great but not sure of the value beyond that given the many things that could go wrong. Impersonation and deep-fake opportunities abound. More fundamentally, people will lose desire and motivation to learn a new language, if there is such a lazy and easy alternative. The app will broker the conversation as it sees fit with both parties coming into it blind.  Learning a language is an transformative experience - a person goes from basic competency to fluency and being able to pick up on nuance and subtle humor. It is like being able to go through an obstacle course with each step providing greater clarity and freedom. With such tools, those joys will become artifacts of the past - everyone will speak like a native right from the start. Having struggled to learn new langua...