Excursions

Historical #SolarEclipse2017

Historical it was tagged. It had so much of hype and so much of build-up. It really was surprising how much big of an event it was made. And of course, given I inadvertently end up consuming more news blurbs from US, I had logged, wondering where, of all the possible sources streaming this event live, should I catch this event as it happens.

I am happy I did. It indeed was an event with a style. Eclipses are always captivating, they make you realise of your order & significance in nature’s canvas. And given it happened in US gave this one the best opportunity to be caught in all its glory. And of course I wanted to Journal all the best posts about it. Starting with mine.

https://twitter.com/statuses/899687057496317959

And of course there had to be a timelapse of this mesmerising event.

https://twitter.com/statuses/899685904553451522

International space station did not miss a chance to photo bomb the Eclipse.

https://twitter.com/statuses/899679364920389632

And then this capture. Sigh. This one post makes you realise how minute you are in grand scale of things when you capture nature playing its games.

https://twitter.com/statuses/899728331364458496

I have become a big fan of the Mc Sweeney’s publication. Every day brings a new satire, a new angle, new humor to the terrible events in the world. Here’s their satirical take on Mr. President’s horrible tweet. “As you can see on this X-ray, the tumor is currently about the size of a baseball in an all-white baseball league. I could surgically remove it as soon as tomorrow afternoon. However, I will not be doing that. I view this tumor as an important symbol of your body’s history and heritage. Removing the tumor would be yet another example of misguided medical correctness in today’s liberal America. I protest this surgery and refuse to whitewash your rich medical history. The tumor must be kept prominently displayed inside your body.”

Bravo! Satire, more often than not, hit the hardest. https://twitter.com/statuses/898169407213645824

As I read this, I sat there with a chill down my spine. “Terror is not an unjustified reaction to knowing this virus exists. We have no room to be wrong about this. None. We can be wrong about other things. If smallpox got out, it would be unfortunate, but it has a fourteen-day incubation period, it’s easy to recognize, and we would stop it. Much the same is true with sars. But with flu you are infectious before you even know you are sick. And when it gets out it is gone.” https://twitter.com/statuses/896659144819695617

I was writing the setup page of this site when this thought triggered in my mind. iPad is just a consumption device till you try. Once you do, you will start loving producing content on it.

https://twitter.com/statuses/896654686891016192

The Google Memo debate

I had a lot of thoughts on the whole Google is handling the diversity wrong” memo kerfuffle. Here are some of them.
- The memo had the leadership in tricky position. Unfortunately, what played out looks driven from external pressure than “corporate values”.
- “No matter how often this all happened, it still hurt” The debate, & the sick views it brings to the fore are damning to all involved.
- Why’s this always forgotten — “people may have a right to express their beliefs in public, that does not mean companies can’t take action.”

At times, satire is the best mean to address and comment on a muddled topic. And this one at McSweeney’s by Ben Kronengold takes the cake.

Positions in the tech industry often require long, arduous hours that may conflict with humans’ desire to run home and see if Ozark is any good. Robots don’t have this problem, for they are pushed into coveted jobs for the status that they entail.

This writeup from John Battelle has to be one of the most clear headed, to-the-point and no-bullshit take on the whole “Google is handling the diversity wrong” kerfuffle.

.. that narrative is bullshit, and all rational humans know it. Yes, we have to pay close attention — and keep our powder dry — when a company with the power and reach of Google (or Facebook, or Amazon, or Apple…) finds itself a leader in the dominant cultural conversation of our times.

But when a legitimate and fundamentally important debate breaks out, and the company’s employees try to come together to understand its nuances, to find a path forward …..To threaten those engaged in that conversation with physical violence? That’s fucking terrorism, period. And it’s damn well time we called it that.

Another iPhone Story

A must watch short documentary from WSJ, named so aptly “Behind the Glass”. The story behind iPhone’s journey to existence will keep fascinating us, coming out every now and then, bite-sized.

Change is important. Change is inevitable. But if not, it has to be forced. Change is one thing I plan to undergo every time there is nothing happening around.

Change the way I commute to office. Change the route I use. Change the time I travel. Change the schedule at office. Change the schedule at home. Change the services I use. Change the products I use. I.e. Change everything that’s changeable.

Change something. Change at least one thing. Because that cascades down one’s life to change everything. And this change is important. It freshens one up. It pushes one out of his comfort zone. Rather it just doesn’t allow him to enter a comfort zone; a zone of mechanical activeness.

Yesterday there was a buzz going along in my office. My colleague asked me if I would be interested in parting away $2 of mine to embrace a chance to win 15million. (Yeah you heard it right, that is the amount I was told. million as in 7 .. arrr 6 zeros.)

Now I am not those champu “1$ bole to (translation ‘equals’) 40 rupaya” kind of guy. But the confidence with which this $2 ke 15 million deal was sold to me made me enquire further. It turns out, my “hard earned” money was betted on a lottery ticket.

The concept is simple she said. Join a bunch of 10-15 guys and buy a lottery ticket together. One guy gets lucky, everyone gets benefited. Playing safe and sensible she called it.

Now I am no economist, but one thing I can tell you for sure is this “deal” is not going to work in long run. All it would take is one moderate win to break the group. Lucky guy will part, because he will think he could have won this money by himself. And group will shrink with each and every win.

Plus what amazes me is how much lucky a lucky guy would have to be to overcome lucklessness of 9-14 other unlucky suckers!

I always feel that an equilibrium can be attained to make sure that a person will never run bankrupt by any sensible spending; investment is the key. I aim to attain this equilibrium, which my current spending habits are making extremely difficult to.

I am sure these $2 spent today are as much an expenditure as they are an investment. Atleast as of today.

Prologue: I have been working on quite a lot of posts recently but could not finish them and bring them to any bloggable format. So finally decided I should repost some old post. Here goes one such post.

Yesterday i had quite a random dream. Random indeed it was. For the most part of it i was pretty happy about what i was experiencing. And suddenly i went blank. I would say the dream went blank. Making me befuddled. Completely perplexed. Full of queries, queries for myself to answer. But before i get into the dream itself, let me blabber my views on dreams in general.

Dreams are angels. Yes, they have the power to make you experience the bests and worsts of your life at the same time. Indeed we experience the dreams, not just see them. How else can you explain your turning, jumping, twisting, crawling, grawling in the sleep. We are experiencing the event, the dream. I myself have woken up thanking god for turning whatever i experienced into a dream. And then there are those times when i just put myself to sleep again, just to experience what remained incomplete, unexperienced.

Further, the dreams are mutable portkeys. I feel i change lives in dreams. Butterfly effect you can say. But there one can decide if he wants to change his life. Here i don’t. It all depends on my other self, the dreaming threaded me. If he wants me there, i go. Otherwise i just lay here, wake up and continue.

Details. Two threads, if dreaming together, show how the life each is experiencing. We exchange both the positives and negatives. Yes, if you notice, each dream comprises of both goods and bads. We experience some scenes of that life, both happened and yet to happen. Yucks and Wows. If both agree to switch, we switch.

Now you see this concept explains a lot of usualities. Take Deja Vu. Yes indeed it is that ‘yet-to-happen’ scene of the life. We experienced it in the dream before we made the shift. Those jerky wake ups. May be the other self just slapped me for spending such sucking life. Or may be i did it to him for his sucking life. Roaming with unknowns. Yes, you don’t afterall expect two me’s having the same set of friends. Those long nights can be the result of just a mismatch between timings of two threads. Same goes for the short nights.

I will stop. Remove your thinking caps and plunge into the dreamland with the view. You might find quite a few interesting answers.

Anyways back to my dream i dreamed yesterday. I dreamed i was a singer, i was singing well. (Ok, i never said the other me has to be “me”ish. He can indeed me quite contradictory to who i am right?) Audience were happy. I saw my struggle. I saw my first assignment. I was watching myself happy. I watched all the happy me’s. Nothing bad. No yucks. And suddenly it was blank. I don’t remember something like this happening earlier. The dreams changed. The places changed. I woke up suddenly. But it never happened that the dream turned blank, with me facing eternity full of whiteness.

Puzzled, I lay there, closed eyed and open minded, waiting for something to happen. But all in vain. Blank. Whiteness everywhere. Finally i woke up and tottered my way along … With mind full of questions. Unanswered question.

Lets have a look at the word cloud for this random messy place. I am surprised to know that i blog most about “blog” and i “know” a lot too!!!

Courtesy: Wordle