Last Train

I met a couple of women recently at a friend's birthday party. One was in her mid 60s, S and the other in her mid 50s, P. They are both single and from the way they described it bounce between enjoying the freedom of being single and feeling like the last train to find a companion for life is leaving the station any minute. 

The bouncing back and forth can feel tiresome. They've had different cosmetic surgeries over the years and chatted freely about more things they'd like to do in the future. S said jokingly that the self-improvement never stops. Watching Things you can tell just by looking at her, reminded me of the couple of hours I spent chatting with these two women. In the movie, there are no magical endings for anyone - the women return to where they were when we first saw them. 

It also brought to mind some women I know that have been married for many decades and still find themselves lost in the mid-life. They see who they are with and can't find any reason for it other than habit. They too have a decision to make - continue with old habits or break them to take a chance on the world before that last train leaves. M told me once that she just misses having a man in her life she could have a real conversation with while having a nice meal together. 

Sounds like the most basic thing a person could ask for but she can't have that with her husband of going on thirty years. D wants to hold forth but is not really into conversation and he is an extremely picky eater - an overwhelming majority of things that M likes, D does not. So they have standardized their meals to point of infinite simplicity leading to as much boredom for M. This is how D evolved into from whomever he was when they met in high-school and fell head over heels in love. 

Finding Link

Joined an Eurovision watch-party by random chance and found myself rooting for singers I had never heard of until that day. The song that I loved won but I didn't think it would because it sounded too operatic maybe uncomfortably high-pitched in some passages. Yet there was something unique about the song that made it stand out. One of the woman that the event asked if if I could tell any of the songs apart because they sounded so formulaic. She was right I think and we agreed this was one of the ones that did stand apart. 

There other ones I enjoyed came in close to the top but the winner (as far this group was concerned) was the most pleasant surprise. In that group of strangers, there was a song that was the crowd's favorite to win and also mine. That created a bonding moment among people most of whom had never met each other before. The experience took me way back in time to my highs-school days of watching the Grammy Awards. 

Being able to predict who would win was as fun then as it is now. If you and a bunch of others (friends and strangers) picked the same song, that felt particularly good. It was like connecting to something beautiful and yet obscure that allowed us all to experience music in the same way, have a common language in the tune and lyrics of that song even if we had nothing else in common. It made sense that humans around the world could love a song with the same degree of passion, that a band from any country could become a global sensation. It was a cause for hope - of being more like each other than not. It was wonderful to experience that again so many years later, even if only for a couple of hours. 

Watching Strife

My friend S mentioned a few days ago that spending time with her parents is like watching a tragi-comedy unfold. She is at their home trying resolve some serious and long-neglected health conditions that have rendered her father almost immobile. She experienced some guilt over her reaction to their way of communicating with each other. The parents have been in a love-less marriage for as long as S remembers. They are deeply incompatible but managed to raise a couple of kids and build a family together - each contributing equally. When they were younger, S recalls loud arguments, her mother crying because she felt completely unheard and misunderstood. 

Her father would rage and sulk by turn for similar reasons. Nothing ever changed for the better. The two kids learned to isolate themselves from the chaos and take care of each other while their parents returned to whatever normalcy was attainable in this family. As time passed, both the frequency and intensity of these events reduced. It seems they lost both the hope that things could change along with the energy to fight for it. Yet they had no intention of parting ways. It was tossed around as a threat during the most vicious arguments but even the kids knew it was not to be taken seriously - just a way for the parents to imagine a different life that would never be.

S says, it made her and her brother wonder if the would be fundamentally flawed as humans because they were the products of such strifeful union. S was married very briefly and seemed to have exited at the first hint of trouble, anticipating a turn for the worse, ending up like her parents. Her brother is in his late 40s and single. She has not had occasion to see her parents' interact daily for decades until recently. 

She likens it to two equally skilled fencers jousting. It starts strong and at some point devolves into chaos - the verbal jabs turn more caustic and condescending but they are not protracted. Then they shift gears to more teasing and bantering which suddenly changes to mean-spirited jokes about each other. Then all at once there is silence. Typically her mother leaves the scene to go to the kitchen. When she reemerges from there after a long while it is as if none of earlier events had transpired. They may sit together in the living room and watch their favorite soap opera in silence.

If S is there, she might join them for a bit and try to spark some conversation but it does not work always but there are days when it does - there is an hour of perfect normalcy in the home. I believe this is how her parents cope with the dysfunction of their marriage of close to sixty years now. Outsiders like S may see the absurdity of it and find it tragic-comic like she does but it is what it takes to live.

Gold Spots

Nice essay about the history of the blinking cursor. It's everywhere, serves a very useful function but does not call attention to itself. Made me think about what part of the human body it would be most like - eyelashes perhaps maybe the pinky toe? I found it hard to assign the blinking cursor the value it deserves

the items we cherish, protect, and even ignore in our daily lives are all part of a larger and often unexamined picture. Small moments or inventions may not live vividly in the public consciousness, but they are still nonetheless crucial points of color -- like strikes of gold creating a pointillism sun. If we can appreciate small legacies like these, maybe we can learn to appreciate our own as well.

So much around us in our everyday life are this "strikes of gold". The things we are so accustomed to that we don't recognize it to be special. Any time I reach out for my needle threader, I give thanks to whoever thought to invent it. The same is true for nail clippers. When you luck upon a really good one, you really never want to part ways with it. My favorite nail clippers were from my father's trip to Japan when I was a kid. I took it with me when I left to college and it remained with since then and now J has it because it is her favorite too. 

Good Cycle

A young woman I know is pregnant with her third child. I did not know until she shared the news recently but there was change in the air for a few months. L went from being somewhat despondent and cynical about her professional life to being alive, alert and hopeful.

 Looking back that changed might have coincided her finding out she's pregnant. It made me think about the wonderful ways in which the anticipation of a new baby can transform the mother. To L, this defines completeness for her family unit. She grew up in a large family and valued having siblings at home and relatives within reach. It's not surprising that she wants her children to have what she did.

 I often think of J when I see L though they are quite far apart in age. L is the product of a complete family unit that was there for her at all times. It made dealing with many challenges big and small less daunting. Now in her late thirties, she is calm, centered and raising a family much like her own with both parents working full time. I wonder if J will have the on-ramp a person needs to reach this state of equipoise in their life by L's age. This is not an arbitrary concern for me - research shows that J is not naturally set up for the kind of outcomes L has had. If she gets specially fortunate, she can begin the cycle of good though. 

Too Perfect

Love reading about miracle drugs that cure everything. What's most miraculous is easy it to get people to believe in such miracles. Then some twenty years later the miracles will be proven to be a series of unintended catastrophes. But until what's wrong with living and breathing miracle each day. 

The patients of Los Angeles internist and obesity specialist Pooja Gidwani are microdosing GLP-1s as part of a longevity approach. “It’s becoming more and more mainstream in the Hollywood community, and many want to do this in combination with peptides,” says Gidwani, who offers GLP-1s along with IVs of the co-enzyme NAD.

Addiction and obsessive behavior are other targets of microdosers, as the drugs seem to tame cravings for more than just food. Anyone on a GLP-1 inhibitor can tell you downing even one glass of wine can be a challenge, but Kahn says her patients have stopped everything from smoking to compulsive shopping. “It influences the brain’s desire and decreases cravings for substances,” she explains. “It helps dampen unhealthy impulses.”

I have a friend who is diabetic and has tried many different things over the years and now Ozempic. She's lost a good amount of weight and as advertised does not experience food cravings. When she visited last time I cooked her the dish she loves and she was excited. But when it came time to have dinner, she barely touched it. I recall the sad look on her face as she said I wish I could love things the way I used to but everything else is so much better so I don't want to get off it. The everything else is something she's grateful for but she misses being herself - which is the price to pay to have it. She is obsessive about perfection when it comes to things she's skilled at and that makes her a phenomenal teacher. I hope for her sake and anyone whose been lucky to learn from her that the miracle does not including taking that away from her, making her settle for mediocre - that would be taking her soul.

Owning Fifty

I meet V for the first time a couple of weeks ago. She was introduced to me by a common friend who thought we should connect. V's about my age and has been in tech for her whole life- been there done that and not afraid to take on big, messy problems. She's never been married and is single - these facts were stated by way of introduction to get it completely out of the way. That was shortly followed by sharing some of the menopause related challenges she's been having lately. 

I admired the confidence to tell a stranger (even if a friend's friend) within five minutes for the first meeting. We chatted about other things after but this was the most remarkable bit for me - specially being so candid about age related problems. She works for a company where the average workforce is closer to J's age than ours. I am going to guess she is pretty fearless talking about these things with her co-workers as well. V is a self-confessed health and exercise nut and it shows in her level of fitness. But this is also where she's struggling the most with the crazy dips combined with a pervasive level of low energy. 

Meeting people like V is invigorating for me (though she sadly is not feeling much of it these days). I have not been able to make peace with where I am and what I am doing in life - it all feels at odds with what I wanted. It is also true that some things have worked out way better than I ever imagined they could - this is the reserve of strength to draw from when I feel like I am mostly failing. V is bold about jumping into things head-first - her new job sounds like a perfect nightmare but she is intent on making it work and thriving there no matter what. That's her track record it seems. She swoops in, cleans up, leaves things better than she found them, and moves on to do the next thing - ideally a little harder than the last one. 

She reminded me of a client from years ago, M who went from never having exercised a day in her life an obese to becoming a triathlete at over fifty. Like V she never thought twice about making jokes about her hot flashes among a room full of people. I respected her too.

Toxic Limit

 A few days ago, I had to call someone out in the middle of a meeting for being rude, cutting her mid-sentence and leaving her shell-shocked. It made everyone else present very uncomfortable as well. We've worked together for over a year and this was not this person's first offense. Everyone ignored it because such is the culture of this organization. 

I did the same deciding it was not worth dealing with. Post-confrontation with someone who is hyper-competitive and ties up their entire self worth with achieving goals (with no concern or understanding of real impact of their actions),is unpleasant. One has to be prepared to live in a smoke-filled room for a long time because such individuals cannot let it go until they get even. So a lot of their time an energy is spent to finding that opportunity - work does not get done in that smoke-filled room. But that afternoon, she had managed to go past what I willing to tolerate and as such a public reprimand seemed the only logical solution. 

The event left a nasty taste in the mouth thinking about how a person my age and stage of life can waste what good, productive years they have left getting into entirely pointless things like this. This person will not change - she has neither the desire or incentive too. She is set in her ways and thus far in her still early career, her toxicity has served her well. It is unlikely that she will give up what works and rewards here. She is one of those people who will stay on for ever, long past folks like have come and gone. Those visiting will have one of those days like I did when they would lose it with her but it won't matter - they were visiting anyway. I wasted that time then when I lashed out and I wasted this time now mulling over it. 

Eating Right

Love the idea of having a present wrapped to look like a loaf of bread even it is only a concept now. Everything that looks like food isn't - that could be the message a present tries to convey much like this barcode scanning app that tries to tell consumers if what they are eating is food or not as defined by what things it contains and if they are good or bad for you.

..in France, the number of additives in food products declined as Yuka grew in popularity. Noting the app’s influence, French supermarket chain Intermarché since 2019 has reformulated more than 1,100 products, removing about 140 additives.

Besides Yuka, similar tools include the Bobby Approved app, developed by social-media influencer and food personality Bobby Parrish, which gives groceries a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on ingredients. Health-tech startup FoodHealth Company has created a scoring system that is embedded into the apps of retailers like Kroger. 

I like the health scoring my purchases that the Kroger app provides. Not quite the level of detail I'd like and also not the full picture because I get my groceries from a few other stores too but it is still a good spot check of how healthy my purchases are. 

Talking Over

Food for thought in this interview. Among other things, getting along and just letting things be is the worst way to get to know someone - that is logical. In relationships that truly matter, that should be not be the standard but for everything else, it often is. I was reading this piece while having lunch at work. I usually pick an empty table in the break room and eat by myself. The groups that form at lunch time are usually pre-made (these folks are also working on the same or related things) and its a bit odd to jump into their circle though I've done it sometimes. 

What is much harder for me to get into the flow of their conversations which is always about nothing. One person talks about something random for a bit, there are no almost questions or follow-ups on whatever it is that they said. Someone else goes next, same process. You have to get in there and take your turn when you see an opening otherwise someone else will jump into to talk their share of random. I find this whole process both confusing and stressful. So much better to sit it out and catch up on my reading. I tried to imagine trying to have a real conversation with this crowd never mind engaging them in debate or argument. 

My husband and I have been arguing for the past two days about something. I can’t tell you what is—it’s private—but it’s been nonstop arguing for two days. We spent yesterday at the Art Institute in Chicago. We were there for hours and we just argued the whole time. We kept trying to look at paintings, but we kept being drawn back into argument. It was very emotionally draining. We weren’t angry at each other, but it wasn’t pleasant. It was stressful and upsetting. But it also felt like, OK, there are big stakes here. And that does happen pretty regularly for us. We can discover that we’re not on the same page and it’s deeply upsetting. And then each of us realizes we don’t have to justify our view as much as we thought we did through the conversation. We’re trying to arrive at a shared view of the situation, but that could take a long time.

There was this one time that I joined one of these pre-made groups and asked one of the guys there who had recently changed roles about how he liked his new job. The table went silent and he was forced to respond which I don't think he appreciated very much. But it got worse because I asked a couple of follow-up questions which he responded to and by then the group had really had it with me. 

Kitchen Things

I used to always envy people whose kitchen contains things that truly belong to them. That would mean they bought it alone or together with the person they are with and have been for as long as they have not been single. That to me is a sole source kitchen, Mine is not but I have seen others that are even more heterogenous than mine - to the point where none of the significant objects in it share a common story. I stayed at R's as a room-mate way back in the day. She told me I was free to use the kitchen and store my stuff in the pantry and fridge as needed. This was her home and she was room-mating to feel less alone after her husband died. That kitchen had things from three different families going back to the 1960s when R had newly immigrated to America. They were sharing a place with two other families at the time. Then there was stuff from adult children who moved in and out over the years before they finally move to their own homes. 

Sometimes there was a significant other of the R's kid who might have come with their set of things to her kitchen and then never took it at the time of leaving. Finally, there was us room-mates - a revolving door of women who came and went. In the midst of all this clamor of stuff from all over the place there was this one saucepan R made a point to call everyone's attention to. It belonged to her mother and she had owned it her whole adult life. We could use anything we wanted in that kitchen but that saucepan - never. Upon my recommendation R hung it to a hook on the wall across from the stove so it was plainly in sight and there could be no doubt about which saucepan was out of bounds.

Certain kitchen objects become loaded with meaning in a way that we are not fully in control of. You can’t predict which will be the utensils you get attached to – the favourite mug, the spoon that feels just right in your hand – and which belongings decline over time into clutter. And then there are the objects that – even if they were made in some anonymous factory and bought in some anonymous shop – seem to carry with them a kind of magic. There is the plate that makes everything you put on it taste better, or the bowl you keep but can’t actually bear to use because it reminds you too strongly of the person who gave it to you.

Having Intuition

The sudden loss of intuition can be paralyzing for anyone not just a medical doctor. In my own case, I have struggled to find my bearings in personal life more so than professional. It is not an uncommon experience for me to feel unsure of my thinking about a topic where I once felt pretty confident about my position - most of it was intuitive. I just had sense for it.

When I could tell how things would unfold and they did, it helped reinforce that intuition. Where I have faltered the most is when it would take a very long time to know if I am right or wrong. All at once, I don't trust myself nearly as much and what is more if a loved one is seeking my opinion to make a decision, I would not provide it from fear that I could be wrong.

Professionals who lose their intuition also sometimes lose their will to act. Faced with a difficult case, the feeling of certitude that accompanies intuition helps turn thought into action. Without it, doctors like me might hesitate to do anything at all.

To accept intuition as revelation, it’s as if the world had not yet undergone division. Belief and knowledge unite, mystery ceases to be anathema, and the science of decision-making, no longer parsed between rational and irrational, acknowledges an element that surpasses human comprehension, on par with the universe or eternity.

Serving Good

I picked up the local newspaper in my hotel room in Delhi when I was there a few months ago and noticed a familiar face as I was flipping through the pages. It was someone I knew in high-school - the smile was the same just on a face that had lived more life since then. D was featured in an interview about saving the artisans who weave silk and cotton sarees in her home state of Maharashtra. She had started a boutique from inside her flat decades ago and now it was a well-known brand, doing great work. D gave her husband a lot of credit for making her dream come true and putting her on the map, could have never done it without him. 

Reading the interview brought to mind scenes from our teens. D was among the most fashionable people in our class. She knew a lot on international cosmetic brands at a time when it was a novelty back home - these brands were not commonly available at stores but she had several relatives who lived abroad and provided access. That might have been the "foreign-made" phase of her life. It gave her a sense of exclusivity in our small town where the average teen had a pretty limited world view. Very few had seen much of India never mind any other country.

We parted ways when we graduated and left to college. I don't think I ever saw or heard from her after that. Her bio in the interview suggested she had worked for a couple of years after college as a flight attendant (which made perfect sense for D), then after marriage she was able to focus on her project to protect traditional Indian weavers. Since I don't have a sense of D's evolution as a person after she became an adult, to me this felt like the flicking of a light-switch in her mind. 

One minute it was all about wanting things that came from afar to really diving into sarees woven by hand in the Indian hinterland. I was glad to see her channel her energy into such good cause. Needless to say D looked like a million bucks in her Sambalpuri cotton saree paired with beautiful silver jewelry. She'd still count as the most fashionable person I know. Some things don't change.

Miserable Bunch

Insightful read about the state of my generation in aggregate. I did not realize that we were such a sorry bunch all around. 

Gen Xers are reluctant to be corporate drones, placing more emphasis on work-life balance and autonomy. It is no coincidence that in 1999, when Gen Xers were in the prime of their lives, there were two hugely successful films in which people broke free of life’s shackles. In “The Matrix” Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer, discovers the world is an illusion simulated by intelligent machines. In “Fight Club” an office worker joins a secret society whose members kick lumps out of each other. All very exciting, of course—but hardly conducive to a solid career

Being a non-autonomous corporate drone with no work-life balance is a bad outcome for anyone irrespective of generation. It is possible some do not have the choice to opt-out of that life so they tolerate it best they can. Gen X believed that they have a choice. For me, observing my father was the most important factor in my decision not to have career drive the rest of my life. I saw him give up the best of his human potential for his and while that may have brought him some reward and satisfaction, it only highlighted to the perils of that way of life to me. It's unclear if my way was any better and will result in better outcomes. I am definitely at the U-bend right now and have been there since J went to college:

A recent 30-country poll by Ipsos finds that 31% of Gen Xers say they are “not very happy” or “not happy at all”, the most of any generation. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College finds all sorts of nasty things, from unhappiness to anxiety to despair, top out around the age of 50. This is consistent with the “U-bend of life” theory, which suggests that people are happy when young and old, but miserable in middle age. Baby-boomers went through it; before long millennials will, too.

No Work

Even for those who graduated college a few years before they could outsource their entire education to ChatGPT are not doing so great in the workplace, but when this generation of grads enter the workforce it will likely be a new low: 

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” he said. “Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.” That future may arrive sooner than expected when you consider what a short window college really is. Already, roughly half of all undergrads have never experienced college without easy access to generative AI. “We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”

In tech increasingly the expectation is that every role, every function in the organization is able to boost their productivity using AI tooling. The goal is to reduce headcount and get more done with less. Realistically, the cuts will not be uniform across the board. Logically, middle managers that don't produce actual work and only package the news of other people's work will need to go. 

The news of work done can be reported in infinite number of ways by AI. When it comes to work itself, people who have actually done work in the past, know how do it without AI and are experienced enough to catch hidden errors and gaps will likely stay to be the human check for AI generated work. These new grads who are constructively illiterate, cannot take on these roles and neither can they bring any unique value at the low-end because they only have the ability to cheat. That skill is not needed in the workplace - an AI agent will do just as well if not better. 

Finding Anchor

Read this lovely essay about an eccentric professor and her legacy. Not everyone is lucky to have known an educator in the university years that transformed their lives but this goes much beyond that. Young people are not always the best at keeping in touch - not because they don't care but because they are starting out in life and can be busy with too many things that matter to their future to consider looking back at things from the past. Maybe this professor as complicated as her legacy is knew something about helping her students remain anchored to something of value even it was not in their past.

Over potstickers at the Cheesecake Factory or French onion soup at a local bistro, Professor Hassold gossiped with them about rival art professors or recalled adventures with old boyfriends in New York. She expressed dismay over her belief that New College was losing its liberal, countercultural spirit — a shift that would become more pronounced decades later.

Professor Hassold was always digging into her students’ aspirations.

“What do you want to do and how do you get there?” her students remembered her asking. “Who do you like to read? Where do they teach? They teach abroad? How do you save up the money to go?”

These dinners, Dr. Archer recalled, “were these fun spaces where you could imagine a life for yourself without restrictions.”

To have been asked those questions by someone who cares and is wise enough to guide, when one is young and seeking clarity is a precious gift already. But these students got luckier.

Not Remembered

On Mother's Day, I was driving past a cemetery not too far from where I live. A few people were tending to the graves of their mothers. Earlier, a few of the women I met at my exercise class were planning to go out to brunch with their kids. One had come to class with hers. My thoughts turned to mothers dead and alive. How it must feel for those who no longer have a mother, no one they could celebrate. And for those who are estranged from their mother for reasons right or wrong, about the sense of isolation they might feel. Etsy always sends these thoughtful emails before days like this to see if you would be open to receiving promotional emails understanding that no everyone has the same relationship with the occasion. 

I never made a habit of wishing my mother on Mother's Day because it was not a tradition I grew up and the concept is foreign to her. Knowing her she's likely to find quarrel with it, think it minimizes the contributions of a mother and so on. But I did think about a woman I know since childhood, a few years older than my father. She lost her daughter after a long illness a couple of years ago. She has severe memory loss and can swing back and forth between the 1950s and the present in a few sentences that make sense to her and no one else.

As much as she has forgotten, the memory of the dead child remains sharp and piercing. She can wake up in the middle of the night, go to the balcony and sob loudly calling out to her daughter, asking her to come back. I could not helping thinking of her as I turned at the intersection past the cemetery to the street that leads to my house. 

Status Anxiety

I think of Alain de Botton's writing as deeply palate cleansing. When my mind is gunked up from reading things that were written poorly, mindlessly and without the benefit of high-quality editing, I feel the need to recalibrate and read what to me is the bar for precise writing, where each sentence matters and the words in that sentence were chosen to bear significance. Reading Status Anxiety right now and experiencing that same sense of rejuvenation all of de Botton's writing brings to me. This is a small excerpt from the early in the book:

..we each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities. We discern evidence of both cleverness and stupidity, humour and dullness, importance and superfluity. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance. Neglect highlights our latent negative self-assessments, while a smile or compliment as rapidly brings out the converse. We seem beholden to the affections of others to endure ourselves.

Maybe I am reading all the wrong things and wrong writers these days but it must have been a year since I last read something this polished. The feeling is like drinking an exceptional tea that greatly exceeds your expectation because it has such a perfect balance of strength and aroma. 

Close Encounters

I watched Close Encounters of The Third Kind for the very first time only a few days ago. For someone who loves cinema and has watched a fair bit, this is a strange and inexplicable miss but now that is resolved. There is a benefit to watching something this iconic almost fifty years after it was made. There is a certain innocence and naiveté about the storyline but for me it did not take away from the quality of the visually stunning experience. I particularly liked the sequence of scenes where Roy is slipping out of control because the close encounter has taken such a strong hold of his mind. He gathers supplies from his and his neighbor's yards to put together a model of the mountain he has seen in in mind - he believes it is important and he must know what is really happening. The lady next door is watching in awe but continues to blow dry her hair as the wild scene plays out. The wife in stupefied by all this and decides to gather the kids up in her car and leave - she just can't take his descent into madness anymore. That line between what is crazy versus perceived as crazy is a precarious one. 

Without context it is hard to tell where something should fall. Maybe if the wife and kids had had the same experience as Roy, they would feel more solidarity with him, things might end up differently but they did not. The idea of a friendly alien society trying to make musical contact with humanity is a comforting one. Like E.T, this is a kid's movie I think but a great one. I remember watching E.T when I was young and having liked it but having an entirely different experience watching with J when she was a child and seeing it through her eyes, the magic and wonderment that she saw. It would have been a miss for me to not have watched with her because I was able to enjoy the movie in a very different way. I felt the same way about Close Encounters - this is something an adult should watch with young children. 

Support Loss

Sad reading about kids and their mental health crisis. Depending on how its measured, it seems like girls and boys get disproportionate coverage. Boys being left behind in school, not going to college in the same proportion as girls and generally being lost in their 20s and 30s is talked about a fair bit. But how they cope with social media generated peer pressure and anxiety is likely not covered as much. This problems girls have to contend with is depicted as the bigger more urgent one to solve. Increasingly families are on their own as far as outcomes for their kids. Used to be a village that raised kids - extended family, friends, neighbors, school and more. 

Those sources of support are not what they used to be. I see parents with younger kids try to do it all themselves. If its a two-parent household then there are well-defined pick-up, drop-off duties to make sure the kid is able to be in daycare for the parents' aggregate workday. There is not much support available from the grandparent generation in most cases because those folks are still working and not able to retire. They don't feel financially secure quite yet. The public school system seems to have gone through a great crisis of identity during the pandemic and coming out on the other side they haven't sorted out what role they are meant to play in the lives of their students in the time of AI for everything, where homework and testing to standards is largely irrelevant. What does knowledge even mean what should education be about. 

While these questions are being sorted, chaos reigns supreme and kids are not being served well. So only the parents can save them if they have time, capacity and the ability to do that. Even without the bane of social media, these would be incredibly challenging times to be a parent:

Children and teens were finding the normal challenges of growing up “totally distorted” by the pressures of social media, the rise of the influencer and the 24-hour nature of communication, said de Souza. “In many ways I’m worried that we’ve gone backwards as a society,” she said.

But wider social norms and outdated structural systems, such as parental leave entitlements, were letting both girls and boys down, said Joeli Brearley, a maternity discrimination campaigner and host of the To Be A Boy podcast. “Something is going badly wrong,” she said. “The old systems don’t stand any more, but this generation needs help and support to create a society that doesn’t leave them feeling like they are looking into the abyss.”

Giving Voice

 It is all about storytelling in the end so a dead man's testimony delivered by his AI avatar should not appear that wild or outrageous this day and age. The range of ways something like this can be abused is quite infinite

Using an AI generated video to have a dead victim deliver “their own” impact statement is unprecedented. AI avatars are obviously not the real person, and what they say must either be scripted by a different person, or generated using an LLM that is not the person. In this case, the video was used to help determine the prison sentence of a living person. The video that Pelkey’s family played contained several minutes of video of Pelkey from when he was alive, but everything the AI avatar said was scripted by his sister.

Some thoughts that came to mind were around giving the power of speech and expression to those who cannot self-advocate. A victim of elder abuse who has become non-verbal can benefit from something like this if a loved one could use AI to let them explain what is going on in their own words. The veracity of the statements would ofcourse need to be inspected more closely than ever but the voiceless victim now having a way to be heard sounds like a good thing. 

Staying True

I am Bengali but the dishes I cook best are from other parts of India. There are only a few Bengali dishes that I can reproduce per specification - most stray too far from standard to be considered authentic. But my sambar and curd rice will meet pretty exacting standards because I learned from the best. Reading this story about the national origin of chefs in Italian restaurants made me wonder if my South Indian dishes will fail the test because I am from a different part of India. I want to believe my effort to learn and execute well should matter more than where I am from. That should be standard any cook should be held to professional or not. Did they truly immerse themselves in the culture and learn how to get it right. Can they tell the difference between the prefect dish and one that is only trying to be. 

But there is a question whether those changes, so far subtle, are happening as a conscious effort to be creative, or simply foreign chefs reverting to the flavors they know from home.

Pierluigi Roscioli, a member of the family that runs the restaurant that won the best carbonara award, said there was a risk that tradition would slowly erode if Italian chefs did note oversee those foreign ones who had less training.

“Without supervision, they tend to drift toward what is in their DNA,” he said. “When it’s by choice, it’s great, but not when it happens because someone isn’t paying attention.”

Given the current pace of change, he and other experts estimate that cooks in low- to middle-level restaurants in Italy may be almost entirely non-Italian within a decade.

I am sure a bit of me seeps into my rendition of dishes that are not native to where I am from. That is not just about Bengali food but the sum total of my life experiences. But the same is true for anyone no matter how ingrained they are in the culture - if they have stepped out of it, been in the world outside they are no longer as uninfluenced. 

Becoming Product

Every student athlete has a path to becoming an influencer. Possibly a good thing if earnings from being on social media is how that is measured. It takes both a ton of natural talent and perseverance to get to this level so it makes sense there is some form of reward for extraordinary achievement. It would motivate others to excel. 

Yet the way the monies are made does not sound particularly appealing. The person needs to turn themselves into a non-stop spectacle to earn and maintain their influencer status. As the field gets crowded and competitive, the demand to perform non-stop will only grow. Getting turned into a product and being fed into a greedy marketing machine that will stop at nothing to sell more does not sound like a great outcome even if there are financial rewards for it

Athleta’s chief digital officer, said it was testing ads with the students in part to help “build a bridge to our next generation of consumers,” and to see if the exposure could eventually exceed that of traditional college sponsorships.

What seems to be missing entirely is education itself - the reason students would be college to begin. By the time they are done fulfilling their obligations as collegiate athletes and working on being a viable influencer, its unlikely there would be any capacity left to learn. Maybe there is no need to anymore if you know how to correctly prompt your AI of choice. 

Letting Go

I was a graduation party recently and felt old. Many among the guests were retirees. The parents of the graduate looked a mix of relieved and anxious. It felt like they need reassurance more than they needed congratulations. The road to this day for the kid in question had been more than usually bumpy. Some among us knew about those events that left these parents terrified. He was almost not going to make it and then suddenly, magically he turned a corner and here we were. Would this be a lasting peace and had this family been through the worst and it was smooth sailing from here might have been questions on our mind as we mingled, made small talk and celebrated the day. 

One of the relatives of the family - an aunt if I recall sat by herself in the far corner of the patio. She was choosing to carve out some space for herself so everyone left her alone. Every once in the while the kid would go and check in on her, they'd exchange a few words and he would be off talking to the other guests. At some point the parents retreated to the backyard with their neighbors away from us all. By the time we were leaving, the house had been taken over by outsiders and the hosts had receded to the periphery. It felt awkward to linger on. Returning home I wondered what about the afternoon had felt uncomfortable to these folks who had opened their home to us and left us alone. Was it their way of being hospitable or a way to escape the memories of the what they had been through the last few years. 

Getting Wrong

I was chatting with J recently about the source of information that her generation uses to make important life decisions and how many of them could be dubious and of unverified provenance. Since its an always on culture, the the stream of information is never-ending, there is little opportunity to fact-check.

..although people of all ages are bad at detecting misinformation — which is only getting harder amid the rise of AI — members of Gen Z are particularly vulnerable to being fooled. Why? There’s a dangerous feedback loop at play. Many young people are growing deeply skeptical of institutions and more inclined toward conspiracy theories, which makes them shun mainstream news outlets and immerse themselves in narrow online communities — which then feeds them fabrications based on powerful algorithms and further deepens their distrust. It’s the kind of media consumption that differs drastically from older generations who spend far more time with mainstream media, and the consequences can be grim.

Conspiracy theorists of all ages are particularly at risk in this eco-system. I know elderly ones that are doing just as poorly as their Gen Z counterparts. There is also the problem of conformance with your generation and having a common framework for communication. If a young person decides to eschew all sources of information popular with their generation, they would experience alienation from their peer group. In a time of romantic recession, losing connection with the friend group leaves the person alone with their independent thinking.

Things Past

I met J for a day while on a work trip. It was a long day for her but a very rewarding time for me. Since she moved, I have seen her a lot less than I did before. This might have been the first time since she left to college that I felt that I got it right as far as being mother to a grown-up kid. I was able to make the subtle changes in my behavior that gave her room to be her own woman while still being my daughter. One does not compete with the other. That took several years to happen. I am sure I will slip up some in the future but this one day set a baseline for both of us in terms of what we'd like our relationship to be. 

Later that day when I called my mother she informed me that M, a kid we both know and love (only a few years older than J) was paralyzed from brain stroke and it was not clear how long and how much he would recover. I met him a few year ago and was happy to see him thriving - he had a job he loved and was with a woman we thought was great for him. My sense of disbelief was profound - such things are not meant to happen to people who are around my kid's age. They have too much life left to live. And so does my friend who has been fighting a cancer more tenacious than her. That was not supposed to happen to her because she is such an amazing human being and yes also young. Yet these things do happen. One minute life is normal M and his girlfriend are watching a movie and eating leftovers for dinner, next thing he is in the ICU and without use of half his body. 

Over and over after I got off the phone with my mother, I recalled scenes from the past. The first day I had met M's mother. She was newly wed then and was introduced as a radio singer. She sang a song and it was polished and professional. Then the other scene with her pregnant with M visiting our home not feeling comfortable sitting down because she was in final weeks. M as a baby his jet black hair that his mother made into a ponytail. It was indeed too beautiful to cut. Every scene brimming with joy and optimism about what was next. And then the scene I had not seen but was related to me - my mind just blanked out at that one.

Missing Lavender

My favorite lavender perfume is running low and the perfumery no longer makes it. It was classic lavender scent with no frills and it smells of hope and bright beginnings to me. Trying to find it has been an adventure reminiscent of my attempts to locate fragrances I recall from my childhood - perfumes my mother wore, some soaps, shampoos, and talcum powder we used at home also incense sticks. Sometimes I recall the details of the container or wrapper in great detail but the smell itself is harder to recall. I would not be able to describe it well to someone who was not familiar with it. 

Some of the smells are connected with the sweltering heat of summer relieved by a long shower and that transient feeling of freshness until it passed. Lavender is a smell from childhood summers - my love for it has not changed or diminished in all this time. I recall a very fashionable owner of a boutique perfume store telling me that lavender is basic and while lovely, its the starter end of good perfume - she recommended I try things that are a bit more complex. I did buy a perfume at that store and indeed it was amazing and even perfect for me. I love it but very rarely wear it. It's like expensive jewelry that you set aside for special occasions expect fragrance is an everyday thing for me - and I do like continuity. I always return to my trusty lavender to bring the bright energy into my day.

Family Trip

On a hike along the coast, I noticed family of four who always seemed to find the best vantage points for pictures. The youngest was a bit bored and kept asking when they could go home. The mother was trying to keep him interested in the outing. Father was the designated photographer with a fancy camera and the oldest, a teenaged girl was happy to pose for pictures. I never had a family of this configuration so what is obviously a mundane experience for them is unique to me. 

It made me wonder about the value of travel for kids so young that they can't actually appreciate what they are seeing. This family has two kids one of whom is ready to see the world and the other is not quite there. By the time the youngest comes along, the oldest will be a off to college and out of bounds for the most part. So the parents are doing what is right and logical - trying to make it work for everyone to some extent. This particular trip might end up a blur or even completely forgotten by the son by the daughter will likely have wonderful memories and pictures of her in a field of wild flowers under the cerulean sky.  

I have great memories from my travels with J because I chose to preserve those moments and forget the stress and frustrations of doing it all alone. I would imagine the vacation one way when I planned it and it might end up being quite different. In the moment it was hard to reconcile and not feel somewhat defeated. Looking back, it was mostly good. I hope as more time passes, J will similarly remember what was best.

Unique Color

There is something to be said for being able to see a color only five people in the world can. Imagine using a color as as social status signaling mechanism - you see if one way if you are in select group and a different way if you are an outsider. I read this story soon after overhearing a conversation at a coffee shop while waiting for my drink. Two people were discussing the use of specific colors on the customer support chatbot experience - how the use of some colors in conjunction with the rep's response to the customer issue can trigger emotions that transcend the current problem. 

One example cited was a the rep says we can't make an exception for you because that wouldn't be fair to the rest of our customers. Apparently that is a highly triggering statement to some folks and can be very neutral to others. I wasn't able to catch how this was exacerbated by color because these folks picked up their coffees and left. I made a mental note to ask some UX designers I know about this. If the page in question used colors that people would see differently based on whether a laser had been fired into their eye (or something else), then perhaps the triggering issues could be modulated. 

I love it when I randomly hear bits and pieces of insight and wisdom from strangers in places I never expected to do so. 

Separate Feeling

The full force of my introversion hits me when I am on stage facing a large audience without the benefit of a podium in front of me. The physical barrier creates the isolation I need most desperately in such a situation. On a whim recently, I took to opportunity to speak at a conference where I would have to be centerstage atleast to begin and then get behind the podium. That in itself was a big leap for someone my age without any prior exposure to this format and size of audience. But that was not scary enough for me. I decided to go without teleprompter or notes since the time centerstage was much smaller compared to time behind the podium. I also did not make it in time for dress rehearsal and no one knew that this was my first time. 

On the day, I felt like the words dried out of my mouth anytime I looked at the sea of people in front of me. I survived and did better than survive behind the podium but the experience was deeply unpleasant. It was not always like this. I grew up fairly comfortable on stage as a kid was not particularly fearful of public speaking. This event made me ponder when the tide had turned so sharply. With time and age, I felt like I diverged more and more from what I view to be mainstream and "normal". This is self-inflicted because no one has actually said this to me. People have complex lives and the level of complexity can be much higher than mine. The difference is likely that they have not self-attested themselves as deviant and used that tag to then grow uncomfortable about their place in the world. I have done those things for some reason that I yet to fully understand. 

Repair Cafe

Love the idea of a repair cafe. My first thought when I read this was it it would be great to have a clothing repair and altering cafe along the same lines for the same reasons - social interaction, more reuse and less waste. 

No surprise - it does exist and there is one in my town. I have several alteration projects where I could use help and ambitious upcycling ones that I don't have the skill to even start. Maybe some of my pipedreams will come true and interesting people to meet as well

"We have refugees, older people, younger people, people with employment barriers or disabilities, all come together for a common purpose and that inclusiveness is really benefiting," she says.

"We hear some wonderful stories of people who are socially isolated, but who see a repair cafe as a perfect avenue for them to get involved with people, to share their knowledge. 

"It gives them confidence and helps them make friends.

Feeling Comfort

While waiting for my plane at the gate recently, I noticed a young kid eating his snack. A completely mundane event except for how much love and care someone had put into preparing it. It was a slice of bread decorated with jams of different color and some berries to make it look like a smiling face. The child was likely traveling alone for the first time. What caught my attention was how carefully he was eating his food trying not to destroy its perfection. I often pack my food for the flight specially if it will be long enough for me to miss my regular meal times. Every time, my food gets pulled aside by TSA for closer inspection but it passes without hitch. It seems to make a world of difference to my experience if I can eat food I cooked at home. 

Some distance away from the kid, I ate my meal - we were the only two. I grew up in India knowing that you always carried food with you when you traveled (and for us it was by train). You brought enough to last the trip but sometimes that needed to be supplemented with a thali meal. Because it was such a novelty to eat out while traveling, I have happy memories of Indian Railways food. It generally signaled we were close to our destination because we had finished all the food we had brought for the trip. I am glad that I have reintroduced that part of my childhood travel experience into my life now. The only difference is that I am in a minority of one (two this time) but back then just about everyone in the train had their own meals packed and ready to eat - it was such a natural thing to do.