13 Feb 2022
artificial-intelligence
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book-review
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capitalism
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sci-fi
Ted Chiang is a path breaking philosopher and fiction writer. I started saying that after reading
his short story “Story of Your Life.” His second book, “Exhalation”, is a collection of short
stories from 2019. It covers an even wider range of topics than his first collection. Chiang has the
ability to zoom out of the present moment and write about human nature without providing solutions
or trying to pose arguments about complex questions; instead, his writing makes the reader think
about what they would do in that situation, and that is the primary method he uses to engage the
reader in a discussion. This ability to inhabit someone else’ life for a period of time is the
reason I read fiction, and the characters in this collection are put in situations where you want
to be riddled by the dilemmas and struggles that they are facing. The striking aspect of Chiang’s
short stories is the amount of time that one remembers their premise and key questions for. The key
questions in a handful of his short stories have remained with me despite having last read them 3
years ago.
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11 Feb 2022
beatles
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music
I found out about the Beatles documentary from a podcast episode. The host was talking about a clip
showing the Beatles legend, Paul McCartney, composing the song “Get Back.” The stunning part of this
video was that he had started from nothing. He was idly strumming chords on his guitar, early in the
morning. Ringo Starr and George Harrison were sitting across from him; they appeared disheveled,
tired, and sleepy. The final Beatle, John Lennon, was nowhere to be seen. I watched this video a few
times; hoping to get a glimpse of something around McCartney which gave him the inspiration to come
up with the melody. I wonder if other viewers were watching the video looking for a similar kind of
revelation. But there was nothing. McCartney had created the song out of nothing; like a vaguely
remembered dream converted into a beautiful melody. I learned more about what the documentary was
and where the footage had come from. (Admittedly, I went through this information gathering process
in a frenzy.) This past week, some theater chains in Japan capitalized on the mania of Beatles fans
by airing a 1-hour special, The Rooftop Concert, for a limited period of time. I watched the
special, and here are some thoughts about my experience.
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31 Jan 2022
monthly
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reading
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series
For the first recommendations post of the year, I have picked out some of the best New Yorker
stories that I read as I worked through my issue backlog from early 2020. I have given up on reading
the New Yorker at the pace at which it is published. However, the articles that are included in each
issue are rarely “current affairs” related and can basically be read and re-read years into the
future. Lately, the role played by magazines in our reading diets has become clearer to me: They are
published at a much faster pace than great fiction or non-fiction; while they are written by the
very same people who will eventually produce those great works; so magazine pieces offer us a window
into upcoming great work. (I think.) So, this month I have a mix of dealing with grief, bad
governance as seen through the eyes of an official, compared with the impact of bad policy as seen
through the eyes of a journalist, the “mad science”-y feel of triggering avalanches intentionally to
avoid larger avalanches, and a disturbing article about the effects of late-stage capitalism on
workers.
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29 Jan 2022
covid19
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skype
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video-calls
Video calls are ubiquitous. Skype and its modern counterparts were the go-to tool for connecting
people who were not in the same physical space. In the era when travel was possible, convenient, and
exciting, these tools were stopgap solutions; to be employed until the time that you could
refill your “physical presence” account balance with people. Then, COVID19. Everyone was stuck at
home. Travel became impossible. Video calls became the only way to meet some people. At work, the
number of people that I interact with on a daily basis whom I have never met in real life has gone
up from 0 in March 2020 to 5 this past week. I don’t think my experience is an outlier. The
necessity of using this tool could not be escaped; neither could the feeling of tiredness that would
always follow its use. What is the source of this tiredness?
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16 Jan 2022
emotions
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social-media
When Facebook came on the scene, the most attractive features on the platform for me were photo
albums and life events. These two features in combination gave the user the ability to build a
timeline of their life. Every trip that you go on, place that you visit, and dinner that you eat
can be documented for the present and archived for the future. The photos and events were arranged
as milestones that the user chose to retain when they told their story. The digitized nature of
this data enabled the creation of works that were out of reach for the ordinary scrapbooker or the
amateur video editor: The personalized Facebook “Lookback” videos, which were generated for
Facebook’s 10th anniversary, were the biggest “proof-of-concept” of a world which was digitizing at
a fast pace. I feel that Facebook was at “peak utility” back then. Nostalgia was the currency that
the platform traded in effortlessly. Product managers at Facebook intuitively understood the value
that they were creating in their users’ lives. Looking at the Lookback video is not like looking
back at photo albums from a decade ago because in the latter experience there is no
curation. However, Facebook’s usage is on the decline. Platforms that focus on creating Anxiety in
their users’ minds are on the rise. Did something fundamental change?
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31 Dec 2021
monthly
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reading
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series
There is no specific theme for this month’s recommendation list. It is an assortment of the articles
I read over the past year which had one thing in common: I wanted more people to read them and
decide what they thought about the underlying institutions and people that these articles
described. So, we have two articles about the tennis world: one about an athlete within the world
and another about the incentive structure of the sport; one article about a non-contrarian CEO with
some interesting ideas about running companies that he does not divulge, and another one about a
politician with new realizations that helped him confirm 3 nominees to the US Supreme Court even
though the confirmation of a single Supreme Court nominee was hailed as a big achievement just a few
years ago on the TV Show, West Wing.
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26 Dec 2021
book-review
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complex
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philosophy
Descartes has a gift for reasoning that I will not attempt to summarize in the few paragraphs of
this review. Descartes’ essay is worth reading if you have ever wondered about the philosophy behind
his saying “I think, therefore I am.” It is worth reading if you have a few hours to yourself and
you want to think. It is challenging, and some of the philosophy went over my head. Despite that,
I got a basic understanding of what he was trying to do. He attempts to reason from scratch to prove
the existence of the “soul” and of “God,” for he believes that if he is able to prove their
existence, then even the most irreligious person would follow his reasoning and become religious. I
was not completely convinced by his logic in this regard, with regard to his proof of God’s
existence. But I was convinced about the reasoning behind his quote connecting doubting, thinking
and existence. In this review, I have explained both Descartes’ lines of reasoning and the
doubts that arose within me when I followed these lines “without prejudice”.
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19 Dec 2021
economy
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finance
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india
The National Monetisation Pipeline was a policy announced by the BJP government in India in
August 2021. This policy was not widely covered in any of the national newspapers, and there were no
policy analyses that went deeper than the headline numbers highlighted by the government. While some
articles started coming out in September with more details about the government’s expectations, I
couldn’t find any criticism of the government’s approach. A tired comparison to Australia’s asset
monetisation plan was everywhere, but this did nothing but scratch the surface. (The same comparison
was repeated in multiple publications including The Print and India Today.) This post is a summary
of my understanding of the policy after reading some detailed coverage in the September 27, 2021
issue of the India Today magazine.
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11 Dec 2021
monthly
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reading
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series
The theme for November’s list is Nature. Movies starting with Jurassic Park have tried to show
humans that Nature’s powers are wielded at the most uncomfortable times for human beings and that
there is really no consideration for us. This does not stop us from wanting to change the natural
course. And this forceful change in nature’s course that we effect through our actions, our
scientific understanding of fundamentals, our engineering acumen to build huge structures, and our
knack for planning long, complex adventures with far-fetched goals in mind is the theme of this
month’s recommendation list. It includes one article about a ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal,
a team of people who want to set a world-record and thus circle the globe 1.5 times in their
pursuit, and the story of a government’s need to do data-driven policy gone haywire.
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02 Nov 2021
covid19
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monthly
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reading
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series
I have tried to stay away from COVID-19 on this blog. Most people are writing nearly constantly
about it and I don’t have many original takes on this topic. But this month, I reverted back to a
way-of-life that was typical for me before the pandemic began. I traveled to another city to meet
relatives; I went on a vacation; I traveled to some places in the city that I am in; I went out to
restaurants and dined-in. These experiences signal a return to normalcy which seemed unlikely in
March 2020, 18 months ago. These experiences also shined light on a change within myself: I have
gotten used to not being among strangers. Going back to a previous lifestyle, seeing and listening
to strangers again has been an interesting return to normal. (I am glad that the “new normal” was
transient.) So, this month’s theme is a receding pandemic. I look back at some of the articles
which I read at various milestones during the pandemic, starting from the beginning of the pandemic
in Japan last year, through the emergence of the vaccines, and right up to the most recent article
about the long-term effects of this crisis.
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