Musings on the Human Condition

As I wrote in a previous post , about five years ago I completely transitioned from handwritten notes to digital notes. I ended up choosing Sublime (aka Sublime Text 3) as my text editor and have stuck with it.  The file structure I use for notes is as follows: A daily file named mmddyy.txt for all notes related to that day (mostly work-related, but can also include personal stuff like a random conversation with a school teacher that has no other home) Topical files for notes relating to specific technologies, e.g. python-notes.txt Topical files for notes relating to other topics, e.g. chess-notes.txt Although the topical files don't need to be searched via the file system, the daily notes often need to be searched in a way that can search across all files to, for example, find a note regarding a specific client conversation that happened sometime in the year 2020. Using a plain text format for these notes not only removes any dependence on a proprietary product, e.g. Evernote, but...

  I have been reading the Enron book over the last few weeks as part of my currently active 10-15 book rotation. Those who know the Enron story know that Jeff Skilling was an incorrigible gambler starting at a very young age. As I read about Jeff Skilling's gamble to apply for business school only to Harvard and nowhere else, I was suddenly reminded of an event from my own life history that I had stored somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain and nearly forgotten about. I vehemently don't think of myself as a gambler. Whenever I've found myself in front of a slot machine at an arcade or in Vegas or any game of mere chance, I've had zero urge to take part. I have not once in my life played the lottery. I don't believe in astrology, tarot cards, luck, and other similar phenomena that reward something other than one's own effort. So, it came as bit of a shock to be reminded, as I was reading about Skilling, of my own very bold gamble in grade 12 (senior year of ...

This incredibly eye-opening documentary shot at a trouble spot called Sangin explains why it was paramount for the US to get out.  And why the outcome we're seeing today was inevitable and fully expected by anyone familiar with the situation on the ground.  And why the Taliban might actually be the good guys in this story.  The Afghan forces (ANA - Afghan national army and ANP Afghan national police) are actually just another name for the northern alliance of yore.  They're lazy, corrupt, often on weed or heroin, with no desire to learn, work hard, or follow international norms like the geneva convention.  Pedophilia and child sexual abuse is a way of life and passed on from generation to generation; "I abuse because I was abused" The Taliban aren't angels, of course, but relatively speaking, they are more disciplined and have a greater sense of unity and purpose and sense of nation The US forces mostly lie to their superiors and tell them what they want to hear...

  Yesterday India won a bronze medal by defeating Germany 5-4 in an exhilarating men's field hockey game at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. (The 2020 Olympics were delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) It was a welcome end to the drought since India's last medal in men's hockey at the 1980 Moscow Olympics 41 years ago.  Many in India are fond of asking, why doesn't India win more often? Is India not competitive enough? Do Indians lack athleticism? Does India not spend enough on sports?  These questions got me thinking about a book I've been reading called Range by David Epstein. The book talks about the downsides of early and deep specialization and the benefits of generalization. I played several sports growing up. Partly because I grew up on a university campus where my father was a professor of engineering. The IIT Delhi campus has excellent facilities for almost every imaginable sport. And I played them all. I took a special liking to a few sports like tennis, ...

One of my favorite childhood memories is about the "homemade" biscuits we used to enjoy. Mom would deposit raw materials (flour, butter, sugar) at a bakery in Hauz Khas (New Delhi) and a few hours later pick up a 16-liter tin can full of delicious "atte wali Punjabi cookies". I was far from an ideal son. I probably deserve three lashes for every time my mom's heart stopped because she went into the tin to grab some biscuits for guests and found only crumbs! My siblings and I (mostly me) finished them up within days of arrival. Our misbehavior was made worse by the fact that "sardar ki dukaan" (and Gupta's paan) was just around the corner and we could make a quick end run while mom tried to somehow keep the tea from getting cold. God bless her soul. 

I recently watched a podcast with Pierre Kory and Bret Weinstein extolling the virtues of Ivermectin as prophylactic and treatment for COVID-19. Here are some of the key takeaways from the almost 3-hour long podcast. These are rough notes, but I am publishing them as is rather than wait to clean them up in the interest of time, given the urgency of controlling the COVID pandemic worldwide.  cell called a macrophage, which is part of the immune response, amoeba-like cell that serves as a scavenger/garbage collector, that attacks the lungs by then the virus is no longer multiplying significantly  perhaps it is the debris left behind by the virus, the RNA from the dead virus that triggers the out of proportion immune response   moving away from house calls has taken away doctors' ability to detect patterns, e.g. a disease spreading in one part of town   establishment kept harping on evidence-based therapy, everything had to go through a trial, but what about ...

Growing up in India, the most important exams for an engineering school aspirant were the entrance exams for engineering schools, like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). These exams were unlike the grade 10 and grade 12 "board" exams because they tested deep understanding and creative thinking, as opposed to rote learning. Here's a list of books that I tried to master from cover to cover in my own time (outside of school) in order to prepare for these exams. That's a huge amount of dedication relative to what kids in North America might put in, for example, for SAT exam preparation. Grammar by Wren & Martin Trigonometry by SI Loney Physics by Resnick and Halliday Inorganic Chemistry by Lee Algebra by Hall & Knight There were probably more. But the above titles are seared into my brain because of the amount of time I spent reading and learning from them. Since we're on the topic of books, perhaps I should also mention some of the non-academic books...

  This is my absolute favorite chocolate because of its unique texture, taste, and quality. I used to find it easily at the Whole Foods location in Bedford, MA. Individual bars are about 9''x2"x0.5" and wrapped in cling wrap. Around $10 each. Note that this is the milk chocolate version, not the dark chocolate version, which also exists.  Lately, they've been hard to find at the Nashua location. It's usually in the baking section along with other baking chocolates. But since it is considered a specialty item it is placed at the discretion of the specialty foods department that manages the specialty cheeses near the deli in the back. On one occasion, the Nashua location had the bars in the wicker basket in the back near the deli. They said they didn’t have any shelf space for it. Probably because of all the Easter-related displays. On another occasion, I found them placed near the cash registers at the front of the store. Have to be careful not to get the Jiver...

  What do you do when despite all public health measures (vaccination, masking, social distancing, hand washing) you end up getting infected by Covid-19?  This video was recently brought to my attention by some friends. After watching it I realized that it is perhaps one of the more useful videos I have seen to date. The video explains the timeline of the Covid infection, danger signs to watch for, and treatments to take (based on consultation with a physician).  After discussing with some of my doctor friends, I offered to create the following timeline graphic to accompany this video. It is still evolving and I will update it here on this blog page as I continue to receive feedback. Your feedback as a reader is also most welcome. I hope you find this useful. A high-resolution version of this graphic is available here .

  Moral of the story: If you're a developer, then don't use dark mode in Chrome.  I was using Chrome Dev Tools in dark mode and couldn't even see that there's a drop-down in the styles tab color picker widget that brings up the page color palette. I don't know whether Google runs accessibility tests on Dev Tools, but the color contrast is pretty much non-existent.  The page color palette is invaluable to validate compliance with the style guide or pick the right color for an A/B test and still be true to your branding guidelines. But you wouldn't even know it exists if you're using dark mode. Dark mode could literally leave you in the dark! What I've concluded is that dark mode is only useful in apps that were designed to be dark-first, e.g. Discord or reddit. With light-first apps, dark mode isn't mature enough to compete with the years of UX effort that has gone into light mode. So, with light-first apps, I'm going back to light mode at least u...

I asked my extended family members living in Australia how their covid vaccinations were coming along. Had they been vaccinated? Booked an appointment at least? They said they haven't paid much attention to it. I was surprised. At first, I thought they were being callous. Then I looked at the number of new cases on April 2, 2021. Australia: 13, US: 68,844. Enough said. (And if you're curious, Canada: 2,686, India: 89,129, UK: 3,402.) On a per-capita basis, America is the clear leader (or should we say loser?).

I was trying to figure out what subdomain name to choose for my new space on Quora , I tried "musings," of course, to go with the name of this blog.  "Taken," said Quora.  I tried a few others until the word "triumphant" came into my head. Does anyone really understand what causes certain words to jump into your consciousness when you're trying to think of a unique name for your website domain name or company name?  I tried it and to my surprise, it was not being used and the subdomain became mine. triumphant.quora.com That's the address for how to get to my unique space (web page) on Quora. Pretty damn neat. It wasn't until later on when I picked up the book I had been reading that I came to understand why "triumphant" had been the word to pop into my cranium at that moment. That book is "Range: Why Generalists Triumph In a Specialized World." In the book, David Epstein lays down a compelling case for what I've always b...

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As you may know, Apple, Google, and many others have finally responded to users' concerns regarding privacy and decided to move away from the use of third-party and first-party cookies. Until recently, cookies were often created and stored without the user's permission. The advent of GDPR and CCPA has resulted in most responsible sites now asking for permission to use cookies. Whereas cookies made implicit assumptions about a user's permission to store their preferences and sell to them based on their known buying habits, a cookie-less world requires that permission be granted more explicitly. Therefore companies need new strategies in order to respond to this new cookie-free environment. The keys to succeeding with digital marketing in a cookie-less world will be comprised of three pillars : customer acquisition, customer engagement, and customer retention. The common theme is, you guessed it, the customer.  Of course, anonymous/pseudonymous personalization will continue t...

This is a review of Kai-Fu Lee's book "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order" .  Lee's predictions are unsettling at first. Being an American citizen I found myself getting defensive about how rosy the picture Lee paints looks for China. But the author patiently and fairly elaborates on why his forecast is what it is. A few chapters in I found myself gradually coming around to seeing the validity of his arguments.  The China Advantage Apart from Lee's fondness for the word "juggernaut", the book is well-written and informative. Having worked in China, I have first-hand experience of how they've modernized themselves almost overnight to become the envy of the world. I have had the pleasure of traveling on their fast trains, e.g. the one connecting Shanghai to Hangzhou (a technology hub and home to the Chinese e-Commerce "juggernaut" Alibaba), and they are second to none. After visiting China, it is embarrassing to ret...