Reflecting Contrarian on Caste This is going to sound extremely callous. You will feel I am making a case for ignorance, chauvinism, intellectual withering, the caste system, and all sorts of other ills that the Enlightenment so
Reflecting The Lie Hitler it was who said, in essence, that the larger the lie, the easier it is to sell. The largest lie told to us is of Western exceptionalism. Before I continue, I want
Looking Ahead Borderless Worlds A small mid-twentieth century experiment to connect American universities is catalyzing the next phase of consolidation among countries. We are moving towards a world government and single planetwide nation-state.
India The Kathua and Unnao rapes started in your living room first The Kathua and Unnao rapes have their roots in television shows and the rape culture we unconsciously and unconscionably espouse
Reflecting How You Too Can Win on the Web When you first start an online business or a presence, it is easy to be seduced by the Internet's immense possibilities and imagine yourself riding a never-ending upsurge of customers towards unimagined wealth
India Why are we like this only? We in India like to declare (with a certain bullheaded pride) that "We are like this only." No one ever questions 'Why "we are like this only"?' No
Fun The Banality of Aliens Audio version [Soundcloud Link] The apocrypha goes that prior to 9/11, America was much different from the ever surveilling, TSA pat down focused police state it has now become. I often read
Hacking What I found when I dug deep for my WHY Tl; Dr: I answered these questions honesty and the outcome is not what I thought. In response to bullet point number 14 in this post by Thrive Global [Medium Link], I took a
Reflecting When I die When I die, someone - me? - who used to pay my hosting company for the privilege of using their bytes will eventually stop doing that. After a few billing cycles pass without
India Mughalsarai There is so much history in place names. Take Mughalsarai [Wikipedia entry]. The name literally means the way stop of the Mughals. The city has long existed on the Grand Trunk Road which
India Bannon misread the tea leaves It was believed that Steve Bannon took the election of Narendra Modi in 2014 as Prime Minister of India as a grassroots endorsement of nationalist, anti-globalist politics. The next vindication of his beliefs
Reflecting Not an example I’m not an example, Nor a ladder to be climbed, I’m not one in a tiny sample, Or a case study to be mined. My mother asks me what I want
Reflecting Lessons from A Man In Full Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full is a wonderful read, and not just because it is set in Atlanta, a city I’m very very familiar with, at least geographically, if not
Mind Mind your time This Hacker News thread on the nature of time got its share of people declaiming the article. The article in question theorizes that time is a product of the observer's biology. Briefly, time
Reflecting Self defense is a bear India has riots. We have cow vigilantes - people who go and kill other people suspected of killing cows. Our police force is old and antiquated. Their response times are abysmal. I have
Reflecting Hacking - contrarian view Along with 147 million other residents of the United States, my SSN, DoB, and email address was stolen from Equifax. According to Have I been Pwned, my email address has been knocking around
Reflecting Prix Fixe! Peace of mind I like the peace of mind afforded by knowing to the last decimal digit how much something is going to cost me in future. For example, even after a vast majority of the
Reflecting Process of learning Maybe it's just me but I believe learning penetrates deep inside our brain through adjacencies. Say I want to explain to you an abstract thought. For example, I wanted to say to James
Reflecting What I didn't say then... I loved you then with a passion that used to overwhelm me when you weren't around. I loved your smell, your presence, your thought. I wish I had had the courage then to
Reflecting "Genius!" "Maverick!" Does calling someone a "genius" or a "maverick" say anything about the caller? Are they trying to call attention to their own facility at recognizing talent and ability where
Mind How to do things for their own sake? I do things because I like being known to have done them or to be seen doing them. This blog gets less than a visitor a day. No one knows it exists. For
Hacking Marketing is hard I am an engineer. I am used to giving an input, waiting a second or so for the _system_ to do its magic, and then seeing an output. Marketing is structurally similar. There
Reflecting Work solo but not alone A close friend of mine lost his wife a few years ago to cancer. They were both in their early thirties when she died. To cope with his grief, his therapist advised him
Reflecting Kahaniyaan Kahani - कहानी - is pronounced Ka (like Casimir), ha (like hard), and ni (like niece). It's a Hindi word meaning story. Kahaniyaan is the plural form of kahani. Alan Kay, deep
Hacking Gut microbes I love that every few weeks there is news, that microbes in our gut keep us safe from disease X or condition Y. Let the Pfizers and Schering-Ploughs of the world invent blockbuster