Tagged: Pondering

Of big questions

AI and mental decline - New York Times

"The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling—an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a …

Sallust’s Theorem - true alignment

Sallust was a Roman historian who believed that alliances are only truly strong when they are formed due to fear of a common enemy.

I am not a playbook.

Feeling lost and free, I started thinking about my in between time, not as a dead end to escape, but as a space worth exploring. And with that mindset, I quickly became reacquainted with an old friend and ally: curiosity. Not having a clear playbook to follow opened a world …

Justness and choices

Anita did not participate in the events of that morning. She’d been inside the house, and she felt that an injustice had been done to the woman. But does being just necessarily entail shooting oneself in the foot? Even in the flush of their victory, Amma and Malati noticed Anita‘s …

Love is not a product.

There are some situations in life we cannot see clearly until time has passed, until the story has unfolded in ways we cannot force through hard work and determination. One of the most enduring fantasies in relationships is that if we love enough, work hard enough, communicate enough, understand enough.. …

Hallucination or Illusion?

Illusions… maybe produced by stimulation of the temporal cortex… and the disturbance produced is one of judgement in regards to the present experience – a judgement that the experience is familiar or strange or absurd: that distance and sizes are altered, and even that the present situation is terrifying.

The two kinds of villains - evil vs troublesome

Pixar films often feature two main antagonists - one benevolent and one malicious - Buzz/Sid, Princess/Hopper. Ratatouille has three main antagonists: one evil (Skinner), one benevolent (Linguini) and a third, Anton Ego. Ego isn't malicious the way Skinner and Muntz are, but I wouldn't call him benevolent either. He is …

Things I learned from making a youtube video for Microsoft

1. Product making and product marketing are completely orthogonal skills
2. It takes a village to create a youtube video - everyone chips in, creates stories, adds diverse content
3. A script with clear narration and accompanying picture (storyboard) is the edge in video making
4. There's no point memorizing …

Misery: the battle between integrity and despair

Pain can be protective - staying in a depressed place can be a form of avoidance. Her inner critic serves her. "I don't have to take any action because I'm worthless". And there's another benefit to her - she may feel that she stays alive in her kids' minds if …

Rock bottoms

My Github profile in the year of a major life transformation. We come to know about denial only post-facto.

The phone for loneliness

The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in this space between things - leaving a therapy session, at a red light,standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator - they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be …

Apologising for crying

Almost every woman I see apologises for her feelings, especially her tears. I remember apologising in Wendell's office too. Perhaps men apologise pre-emptively, by holding their tears back.

To copy is to memorize.

Drawing doesn't have to be hard. Always try to break down your visuals to basic shapes and then put them back together. Take inspiration from these pages and feel free to copy. By copying, you store the image in your visual memory.