Gathering thoughts…
A world of little thoughts.
I just finished a delightful read on Substack. I’m consistently in awe at the volumes of good writing that’s just waiting to be read out there. It will take no less than a miracle to find these pieces. For as many templatized, SEO-optimized, value-because-it-monetized pieces out there – I think there might just be as…
Most people test what AI can do. Ankur Goyal suggests testing what it should be able to do. Typically, as product developers, we build a feature then write some tests to protect it. When tests fail in the future, you know you've broken something important and need to fix it before pushing any changes. This is true of…
A ex-Google engineer name Blake Lemoine was fired for falsely asserting that an "AI" chat bot called LaMDA was sentient. It made for good headlines, with plenty of interesting comments from armchair experts. Here's another hot take. When the time finally comes, how can we determine if a computer is intelligent? Or…
Ahh reading of an old utopian idea with a realization that it has a possibility to exists in the context of today...
Are the poor more generous than the rich? It's an interesting if romantic notion, somewhat backed up with serious but contested research. But while the science isn't clear, most of us have personal experience of the generosity of the not-so-fortunate. As a little boy in mid-70s Srinagar, I'd sometimes be given the…
I'm guilty of doom surfing. I spend most of my time on StreamRing... you know the drill: press the 'Random' button and watch people from all over the globe trying to get famous. This is what I do while having dinner. The other day I got a weird one: An anon account streaming an old computer showing just text. Well,…
Got to think that one of the main deterrents acting against a writer’s production is the idea of his readers knowing he thinks or feel certain things. Period.
Learning to be sociable is a skill Because life is not all about technicals and academia - you need to put effort into having to know yourself as a human Even now you talk sound like a robot And the number 1 first rule to be a sociable human being is to: Be your OWN human; not feeling anxiety or fear or "trying to…
a little bummed that the sun goes down at 5:30 and at 6:00 it feels like midnight i like the night but still it is far too early to feel like i have to start cooking... i'm starting to like poetry (thanks, sylvia plath) also i am no longer afraid that i won't have time to read all the books i want to read i am now…
Every day we would be receiving hundreds of emails and we would be responding back to them as a part of our work or in our personal capacity. But, we always make a few mistakes which do not look wrong but are more like disasters. Let's look at a few of them: 1. We send Or receive emails with an URGENT written in caps…
would be a good day if we would be a could be.
It's been a while since I wrote. A whole month has passed. There was some anxiety closer to the NT Scan when I started bleeding a little. Nothing to worry, baby is doing well. We made a baby announcement. Was happy to share this news with the world. Almost 15 weeks pregnant now. A long way to go, but have also come a…
"What types of jobs are you looking for?" It was an obvious, straightforward question. But to be honest, I didn't really have an answer. I was in business school. I know. I know. (I'll talk more about the pros and cons of business school later.) There is a glut of information about startups. Search twitter, tech news…
Kara Swisher interviewed Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, shortly after he left his position at the company. Two things in particular stuck out at me during the interview. Firstly, Roth seemed genuinely interested in presenting the arguments and perspectives of people with whom he disagreed in…
Ahh powerful moments in history are not the creations of what we make now. it is the evolution of conversation around the creations that dictate what makes history...
I went to dinner with a group of strangers. After each course, I was paired with someone new. I met three interesting people. There was a stack of conversational cues on the table if we didn't know what to talk about. We were allowed talk about anything we want, except what we do. This wasn't about dating. That's not…
A writer doesn't choose to write. That's why they often run from it. Avoid it to the point they'll procrastinate. They'll clean instead of clean (express) the interior of their mind. It's easy to run away from the work. But, a writer is called to do the work, regardless of the outcome. I've heard other writers say,…
After a day full of tasks, meeting friends, and spending time with my family, today I finally had time to sit down and study. But the focus just wasn't there. My attention kept drifting away, and I couldn't to bring it back. I've realized that I have more motivation to study at night because there’s nothing else to…
i remember going to war once. the air smelled of burnt flowers and chemical dreams. the ghosts of my past made a mountain of bodies besides a wrecked house. inside, my mother was wiping off her tears as she made my favorite breakfast. father was dreaming of his aged self. you're on your own, soldier. just a few more…
i woke up this morning not knowing where i was but my eyes were heavy so i played a game of "where am i"? before revealing the answer i had some guesses a sailboat in sicily was not one of them (my soul plays this game with me regularly to see if i like where i am. this morning i was rather pleased. it's a splendid…
I'm here to kickstart my digital writing habit. Here's my grand idea: write 30 atomic essays in 30 days. (Of course, the idea is stolen from @dickiebush) But it is not about the idea. It is about building a system. A system is a collection of parts that work together to produce an output when fed with an input. This…
"Everything you want is on the other side of cringe". I read that line somewhere on X, and it changed the way I judge my own actions. It's one of those rare sentences that illuminates a truth that has been experienced but not verbalized. I love those sentences. Anyway, I digress. Cringe is an emotional barrier that…
Usually, I love trying new tech products. But this month, I've avoided the shiniest new AI Agentic browsers: Perplexity's Comet and OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas. I'm sure they are great products. But something about them doesn't sit right with me. So I asked myself: Why? Upon introspection, here are 3 things I discovered:…
This emptiness I feel. Every song I hear leads me back to you. I want to get you off my mind. Trust me I'm trying. The romance was short but the feeling is strong. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe I missed an angel. Maybe I dodged a bullet. I can't say. You should be my queen. It feels right to have you adorn that…
Lately I've been struggling to stay focused. Without missing a beat, the first piece of unsolicited advice I got was to try meditating. Then again. Meditation. Whether you're depressed, distracted, grieving, stressed out, anxious or, well, pretty much anything these days, you can rely on someone nearby who won't shut…
Imagine if technology treated our attention as sacred rather than a resource to extract. Imagine if technology was accountable to those affected by it rather than to those who profit from it. Imagine if technology helped us make better choices rather than incubating helplessness in the face of catastrophe. Imagine…
This will likely happen many times over. I'm not necessarily building towards something, which makes this pseudo-habit hard to complete. Which brings up an interesting thought for me: am I conditioned to do things if and only if it leads or builds towards something? I definitely have this mindset these days. While not…
Ramesh was sick of it. Sick of a mediocre life. Sick of being an average employee, of having a middling personality. But hope is a thing of feathers... or something... he never particularly enjoyed poetry. Why couldnt they just write what they meant instead ? He figured that his problems emerged from his drifting…
A few days ago, I took a blog post, https://nicheless.blog/post/a-busy-street, that I wrote here, and I posted it on my personal blog, https://johnjago.com/blog/busy-street/. But there was a problem: I was disgusted with my own writing. I still believed in the message I was trying to convey, but the writing was awful.…
At times not doing anything even though you have a lot on your plate and too much in your mind going on is actually relaxing. I have been in that phase for the last three days and i feel lighter a lot. Too many thoughts passed through the mind and they did not bother me much. Often we are told don't take life too…
5pm, sometime in March in the year 2000. Six young men sat on the floor of a sparsely furnished living room in a flat in Bandra. They had spent the past few days working out the details of how to structure their new law firm. That firm needed a name. And there was a flight to catch. We had agreed that the firm would…
Lately, the past two weeks, I have been trying to figure out or trying to answer the question "Who am I?". It has been a couple of rough months for me, given a recent unemployment, but, I now have time to slow down, think, and prioritise what are the most important things to me. What I want of my life? What I value?…
Do your habits serve you? They should. Any habit you keep needs to serve you as long as you keep it. It only makes sense that your habits will change as your needs change. My journey with journaling is an example of this. My journaling has come a long way in 18 months. I started journaling three simple sentences of…
Karena merupakan hal paling rasional untuk dilakukan, jika menggunakan sistem keuangan saat ini. Yang dikenal dengan istilah "FIAT currency". Uang fiat adalah mata uang keluaran pemerintah yang tidak didukung oleh komoditas fisik, seperti emas atau perak. Salah satu kekurangan uang fiat adalah inflasi. Bank Indonesia…
An observation I had while waiting at the international airport departure terminal in Bangalore. Picture a 40,000 square feet departure lounge. Interspersed with a mix of cafes, restaurants and plenty of lounge chairs, sleeping pods and tables. The departure gates on their part are on the outer periphery of this…
there are some scenarios that people think of as "adventures" but that are NOT in fact adventures!!!! if you know how it's going to end, it's NOT an adventure!! like skydiving. not an adventure. true adventure is responding spontaneously to life's calls and not knowing where you'll end up i have a sense of adventure…
Imitation game is one of my all time favorite movies. I find this quote prodoundly true. Alan Turing: When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean, they say something else... It's interesting how, when someone says something, they actually meaning something else and intend for the listener to…
(The following is a role playing diary written from the perspective of my Project Zomboid character) Days became easier once I got a working car, tools, weapons and a nice place far in the woods. I'm busy every day, yet sometimes I enjoy little moments like this more than before the outbreak. I was drowning in a badly…
This blank page is a promise. It promises, quietly, that if I write my innermost thoughts here with no judgment I will find something of value under the detritus. Will I? I have never been able to sustain writing. I have dried up quickly, as if I saw a mirage of a deep lake and only find once I get close that it's a…
Ahhh! a bold idea can spark conversation between those who never spoke before. it's weight is heavy before the conversation existed. it becomes lighter as the idea is shared in conversations with others...
In the foggy winter of 2011, my father constantly nudged me towards a tennis class, just two blocks from home. He was concerned for my fitness, as I had, for over three years, preferred the digital companionship of my PSP over evenings outside with neighborhood friends. A crisp, filled-out form for Penguin School's…
Ahhh... Artificial Intelligence (AI) has intrigued me recently because it challenges the way we understand. it is like a true mirror of ourselves. it has the potential to create beauty and already does. but it may also show us a side of ourselves we do not like...
It’s so difficult to persuade yourself to work on weekends. Long time ago it was easy, maybe I was younger and more involved in the tasks. I didn’t scare to be fired, I just work. It was interesting but there were a lot of work.
The factual background of this book is already striking. Padma and Lalli, two lower-middle class teenage girls, go missing from their unremarkable Western UP village in the summer of 2014. They are found hanging from a mango tree. Their family refuses to allow the bodies to be brought down till justice is done. Sonia…
"Your only power in life is to inspire other people. And the only way to inspire them is to live the most authentic and genuine life to yourself possible." - Naval Got very inspired by this quote from Naval this morning and it made me think of a recent convo I had with ldf saying how I feel almost pressured to do a…
Today I had one of the worst outbursts possible. I screamed like hell at mummy. It’d been brewing since morning. Festival time is always a delicate trigger time for mom. One would need to dig deeper to find out why she’s like that. It seems to stem from some memory she has of being judged by festival days. For me, it…
Suddenly 10 days had passed and it feels like I arrived yesterday. It feels weird that tomorrow my mom goes and for the first time I won't really know when is the next time I see her, for what I know it's probably gonna be minimum a year which it would be the longest without seeing each other. I'm kind of used to be…
trocar de contabilidade, agência de publicidade e etc... parece terminar um relacionamento e começar outro. Dá um nervoso terminar
