Nibir's Brain Dump

Life gives you what you don't ask for

2026-03-31T09:05:55Z

Life gives you what you don't ask for.
A moral dilemma.
Bad grades.
Few disorders.
Them happy without you.
Misaligned perspective.
A deficit.
Headaches.
An urge.
Curse of self-awareness.
Stomach ache.
Failure.
Suffocation.

You also get
A happy, energetic dog.
Books.
Parents.
Few fountain pens.
Music.
Few talents.
Mathematics.
Philosophy.
A touch.
An embrace. Sometimes.

Trade-offs. Balance. Life.

Kangaroo

2026-03-25T15:40:55Z

I want to be a kangaroo.
Hopping over cars
And train stations
And domestic airports
And cities.
Trampling over humans.
Crushing them,
Squishing them.
Hopping on,
With a free mind,
A free spirit.
How ecstatic.

Why I encode my music into Opus

2026-03-17T04:31:36Z

I hoard music. I have a 117gig library full of lossless flacs, something that you don't see an average high-schooler/mathematician doing. Although it's comparatively smaller than what the expert hoarders have- petabytes. Mine is only a fraction.

But why even that? Several reasons:

I like to have control over the media I consume; I hoard other types of media too. No Netflix, no Spotify, and no YouTube unless necessary: I like my files local.
I am an avid audiophile. Though my rig is quite modest (yet), I like to listen to a higher quality audio than average folk. Though nothing wrong with listening to okay-ish quality here and there; I AM NOT A PEDANT!

Examples of exceptions: I do stream music when my friend pesters me to listen to that one song or when I need to revisit my 80s mix/radio. I use Metrolist (FOSS) on my phone for that.

Okay, 117gigs. That's a lot. A lot for an Android phone, or a minimalist ThinkPad with 512gigs of storage. But again, I need my music handy. I listen to stuff a lot.

I have two options: serve it via Navidrome/other music server, or take it local. I tried the former, and well.... storage is cheaper than bandwidth + power consumption. I can't afford to have server running, with internet and Tailscale configs and so on.

Thus, a truce- convert all the flacs into opus. And take it local.

If you look at the specs of the opus codec, you'll see some impressive stuff. I don't want to get into technicals here, but TL;DR- opus "conserves" ~95% of the good stuff, and that too with a considerable amount of compression.

Think about this: all my flacs (a mix of 24 and 16 bit, about 1700 songs), of 117gigs converted to 128k opus is just 14gigs!! That's ~12% of the original! And that too without losing too much of the "quality."

Surely, I can take those 14gigs anywhere. On my laptop, on my phone, no worries. Now the question is: how much time does it take my computer to do all of this?

Well, in a modern computer, it takes very less. ffmpeg can encode flacs into opus in a fairly high speed. And most conveniently, you can use the power of scripting to do it for you!

You can have your main flacs in a harddrive, convert them to opus into your laptop, then you can rsync/syncthing it to your mobile device. Simple workflow!

This is the script I use for encoding my whole library, which checks for new files and encodes those only, for which the core command is:

ffmpeg -v warning -n -i "$file" -c:a libopus -b:a 128k "$target_path" < /dev/null

I find this pretty cool. No more fussing. Just me and my music. Simple *nix tools such as ffmpeg can do wonders.

So this way, I can just put stuff on my phone and laptop and listen away. I use cmus on my ThinkPad and Poweramp on my Android.

Ending with some music recs:

TooL - 10,000 Days
GoGo Penguin - Fanfares
Ruby Rushton - Trudi's Songbook Vol. 1 & 2
Yussef Kamaal - Black Focus
Bongripper - Hippie Killer
Deftones - Around the Fur
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
Vildhjarta - Måsstaden
Russian Circles - Gnosis

Cheers!

What happens when you're not around?

2026-03-03T07:43:50Z

It's been a while since I've written and posted a blog. Precisely three months as I am writing this. I wonder what happens when I am not around. I wonder what happens to your creations, your community, your people.

Maybe they don't go anywhere. Maybe people still read your blogs (gosh I hope!), and maybe people still get inspired or learn something from what you've made. I just want to make someone's life just a tiny bit better.

Well, I didn't have a choice really. I had to stop creating. I realised I was escaping from a lot of things, taking shelter in making stuff. But I needed to confront my demons head on. I was going through a lot; emotionally, academically, and life wasn't about to get easy. I had to do something drastic.

I made a video update in late January, in case you're curious on what happened exactly, minus some personal stuff.

As of writing this, my final Grade 12 exams are going on. They'll end by 25th of March. And from that till mid-June, I'll be stuck in exam mode. My primary focus right now, is academics only. I realised that I may not have been as gifted as I thought I was two years ago (something that happens to high-achievers when they finally realise that they've been living around mediocrity and well, that doesn't help!). And hence, it is obvious that I have to/am putting in more effort on my learning to be at a better position.

My blog/website hasn't been updated since the last time I posted. I feel like a lot needs changing. The about page, the projects page, the design (maybe). My beliefs on a lot of things also have changed, and I want accomodate those beliefs here. For example, my beliefs on school, Indian entrance tests, the need of flexibility (in terms of ideas), anti-dogmatism, technology, note-taking methods, *nix and so on. Oh well, I realise that I just made a to-do list for future essays/blogs. Stay tuned, I suppose.

I've also been considering migrating to Geminispace, or contributing to it in some way (maybe creating STEM content?) for quite some time. I was extremely pleased when I discovered the ~tildeverse. Definitely some niche stuff, but I am definitely driven by the minimal, decentralised and hackable nature of such systems/protocols.

Oohkay now. I'll end this post right here. I gotta work on my blog-posting workflow (I am new to Emacs! Give me tips if you have any!).

See ya. Soon.

Doing nothing has never felt so good

2025-12-03T11:52:14Z

Just sitting there
Plopped up on the swing set
Hooded and warm, that's me.
And a cup of coffee.
Time starts moving slow.

I resist the wave of industry,
To be and not do,
To busy myself not with work
But with the present,
The sounds, the air, the sights.

To do nothing, and feel everything
The spirit of the moment seeping in me
With every mindful sip.
And stillness sprouts with merry laughter.

Doing nothing has never felt so good.

Life is a Hades Run

2025-11-26T15:47:50Z

Here's how it goes:

We try
We die
We start again.
We go further this time.
We die again.
We go stronger.
We unlock new tools, new ideas, new guides.
Sometimes we meet friends. We talk. We get wisdom.
We die another time.
We are resurrected, and we begin again.
And so it goes, until we escape hell.

This is lifelong learning.

Every run makes us stronger. Every run teaches us something.
Life is a Hades run.

I hate exams, so I turned it into an experiment.

2025-11-10T10:38:10Z

I mean, who likes exams, eh? If they do, I really pity them.
Either way, no matter what I say or do, exams are inescapable with the current state of the world (education system).

But there's no written rule that I cannot make it fun, right? I am allowed to integrate a menial, arduous task into something that matters to me.

And what matters to me are challenges. I am a big fan of ideas like Ultralearning and deep work. Taking on hard projects (both creative and scholarly) gives my life a purpose (at least that is what I think so.)

So, I started the 30-day study rebellion - a multiplayer/communal challenge where I do study-with-me livestreams everyday and build a community around the grind. For 30 days, me and my warmates will study like maniacs, grinding till our asses turn red and then some.

My goal is to turn studying feel like playing on a Minecraft SMP server. Studying can be super fun with friends, and with the exam season coming up, I felt that it was an excellent opportunity to do what matters: bringing people closer and getting some clout heheheheheh (ooh intrusive thoughts.) + it will be a great challenge to study, stream, survive, repeat, every single day.

Stay updated:

Join the Discord Server
Watch my livestreams (and sub!)

The degree of win-ness

2025-10-19T12:37:31Z

I think there's a degree of win-ness:

On the top, you have big wins like getting a PhD, or a scholarship, or something like that. High-stakes, massive ROI and several quality of life improvements.

Then you have wins related to long term goals. These show that you're on track, that you're progressing. Stuff like earning a good grade on a mock test, or a subscriber milestone.

The Daily wins (like I post on my Telegram channel) show that you matter. These give you momentum and motivation to keep things going even when it feels slow. They also keep you accountable and present you with an opportunity to reflect on your day.

Lastly, you have smaller, atomic wins. Stuff that you write in your diaries, stuff like "I smiled at a stranger" or "I made a kid laugh." They give life a narrative. It's like small side quests in games. Always makes you feel good, no matter how small.

I think it's really important to have all of these kinds wins, because everything compounds. Also, it seems that you can't have big wins without having smaller wins. They are foundational.

If you look at the big picture, everything is a win - excluding evil actions of course. It's only a matter of embracing them rather than obstinately ignoring them because you're a perfectionist.

So log your wins down. No matter how small. Everything will turn out to be okay in the end.

What does meditating mean to me?

2025-10-11T04:25:34Z

One of my friends asked me what meditating meant to me. And honestly, this was one of the most interesting question I have been asked in a long time. I had never really thought about it, so it was a great opportunity for some introspection.

So, what does "meditating" mean to me?

I feel that the act of meditating is one of my anchors. The kind of anchor Byung-Chul Han talks about in his books^[1]. It grabs me and pulls me back before the truck called "fast-paced world" can hit me. It heals me. It's my natural decompression & cooldown period.

I meditate to calm myself down and to cultivate presence, especially before studying and before bed. It's almost spiritual. Ritualistic. Mechanical but organic. It's instinctive to me. I don't force it. It comes on its own. It's like a second nature.

Of all the different kinds of meditative activities, I mostly like stillness, breathing and visualisation exercises. Does yoga nidra count as meditation? Not really, not to me, but I do it for the instrumental value of napping better. Sometimes settling down for some time and journaling can also be pretty meditative and grounding.

For some people, meditating might be an instrumental (like how yoga-nidra is for me) rather than a spiritual activity, but for me, meditating is becoming myself. Whenever I meditate, I become more whole, wider, larger, spacious. It's not really physical, but it's there. It's extension- it's a part of my growth.

I would love to get your thoughts on this as well. Please, do comment on how meditating makes you feel! And don't forget to chill out!

Footnotes

Han, Byung-Chul. The Agony of Eros. MIT press, 2017 ↩︎

On Resonance Journaling

2025-10-08T04:40:12Z

"Curate your life!"

That's what Resonance Journaling means to me: to curate my life, to see what I love and what I hate, to rediscover myself.

Basically, it's a place (usually a notebook) where you log everything that you resonate with. It maybe book quotes, conversations, film dialogue, pictures, life experiences, self-made aphorisms and so on. It doesn't matter how small, or how big, you log it down.

And at the end of every month, you come back and read your entries. You'll find out more about your tastes, your dislikes, and find familiar patterns throughout. You'll know what kind of person you are, what makes you, you.

Noticing what you resonate with makes you more vigilant towards the new stuff that you might resonate with. So instead of taking movie recommendations from TMDB or trakt or that friend, you'll end up stumbling over something yourself that you'll know you'll like.

Resonance acts as a bridge between discovering new ideas, thoughts, "stuff" and revisiting your favorites. Resonance journaling is very similar to writing a Codex Vitae, except that you write pretty much everything here. You can also use it as a grounding or mindfulness practice. I use it to maintain a balance between my work-y, "disciplined" self and the softer, more creative self.

The first time I heard about rtesonance journaling was on this episode of The Mug of Insights podcast by one of my favorite, and inspirational creators, Robin Waldun. And I was very intrigued by the idea. Coincidentally, I had just realised that I've got to be more grounded, stable and happier. So I thought I'd give resonance journaling a try.

I used to be an avid commonplace book fan, with a collection of about 7-8 commonplace books from over 2 years. But recently, I rarely touched my notebook. Mostly because the way I capture ideas have changed (Anki, blogs/YT, e-reader annotations for the win!) and I don't really want to invest on a sunk-cost.

So I turned my commonplace book into a resonance journal. The same leather cover, the same physical entity, but different vibes. Now I look at it as if I am writing my own future.

Let's see where that goes, how much mileage I get from this. I am pretty excited to find out what my taste buds look like.

Also Robin's been making more content on using resonance as a means to be more attuned to life and as a tool to become a better reader. So check him out!

Good luck exploring, nerds!

Kilmer

2025-09-17T05:33:43Z

Content Warning: This story includes scenes of abuse and violence that may be distressing for some readers. Please proceed with caution.

"Kilmer! KILMER!"

"Yeah mom, what's wrong? Why are you shouting?"

"Kilmer, you bloody bastard! You ate the damn pudding!"

"Wait, wasn't it for me?"

"No, you dimwit! My boyfriend's coming over, and you ate the goddamn pudding!"

"But, it's my birthday... I thought you'd-"

"I don't care you little shit! You're gonna pay for this. Come here, boy!"

I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I tumbled through cabinets in the kitchen, the couches in the rec room. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mom, well,
my step-mom, chasing me with her black leather belt in her hands.

I reached the front door. It was locked.
There was no way out.

I turn my back towards the door and felt her alcoholic breath on me.

"Kilmer, boy, you're done."

I don't wet my pants anymore. After Dad, things got worse, and I guess just got used to it. I don't even know why I try to run. I know there's no saving me.

But there's always tears. Mechanical. Automatic. Tears.
"Mom, I'm sorry!" I plead.

With one hand she pushes me against the door, and with the other she whips me. I close my eyes before the first whip. My senses come to a close. I imagine Dad and I at the park we used to go every Thursday, the bedtime stories he read me. I am at a safe place now. Nothing can hurt me.

The belt hits my thighs and calves one at a time. I wince. My mom cursing me every time she swings her belt. "You idiot, you sick fucking child, you rotten piece of shit."

And then there's a loud thud. The whips stop for a while.

"Mom?" I call out. There's no answer.

I open my eyes to see my mom lying on a puddle of blood. Eyes wide open. I get close to her. "Mom? Wake up, mom!" I know she's not going to wake up. She's dead.

"Yeah, she's dead." A voice calls out. "We killed her."

I see a boy sitting on the couch. He has a blood-stained baseball bat in his hand. My baseball bat. He catches me looking at him, "Well, that was supposed to happen sooner or later. I figured I'd help you out a bit."

The boy looks like me. He is me. But how do I know that?

"You know that because I am really you, Kilmer, and you are me. Two sides of the same coin," he says, examining the bat in his hand. "Come here and sit down with me."

Timidly, I do as he says.

He moves his eyes from the bat to me, "You know I'd always protect you, right? I would never let anyone hurt you."

I nod, "I know."

"Good. But you see, there's no time to dance. We've got a problem in our hands," he says, pointing to the dead body with the bat. I follow the bat's direction. I see my abusive step mom, just lying there. Bloody. Contorted. Dead. The scene closely resembling the grotesque image of a pig beaten to death.

I can't stop my tears.

"Hey, Kilmer, look at me." I look at him.
"Stop worrying. Nothing's going to happen to us. I got you." I nod. He touches my cheek, wiping my tears.
"We're going to handle this like we always have. And always will. Have you got that?" he says.

"Yeah."

"Great." he snuffles and gets up from the couch, "Because we're just getting started."

He walks up to the body, and looks at me.
"Sit tight, Kilmer. It's all going to be a-okay." And he smashes her skull to pieces.

"GAAAH!" he strikes it again. I can see the brain matter flowing out of her skull, and it makes me nauseous. I close my eyes. I take deep breaths. I don't hear his grunts anymore. My senses come to a close. I am being taken to a safe place now. I am going to be okay. Nothing can hurt me.

Polymathy is a counterculture

2025-09-11T15:16:34Z

Recently I finished a grind for a math olympiad and thanks to this article written by a friend, I fell into the loving arms of sociology. So I decided to dive deep for three days and I must say that I made a very, very good decision.

I have been interested in sociology and its siblings- psychology and economics- for a long time. It's a shame I didn't get to choose any of those in my school (I am in the Science stream). But on the other hand, I am glad I didn't because school ruins everything.

As many of you may know, I am an aspiring polymath. And learning sociology gave me a new lens to see people, society and the world. Not only that, it also helped me understand why this path of mine, i.e. polymathy, is frowned upon by authorities, parents, random uncles-aunties and the society in India as a whole.

Let me set the stage to continue telling this story. Picture this:

You're a high-schooler in India. You're seeing everybody- your friends, seniors, that one cousin- enroll in coaching for JEE/NEET/CUET/[insert some entrance exam]. Your parents are nervous. Your school is pointing a gun at you. You are scared shitless.

You have no time for anything else but studying and finishing up your syllabus/portions. Your parents and teachers keep nagging you at your monthly/weekly test grades. Your grandmother is calling from the village to see if you'll become the next doctor/engineer/IAS officer in the family.

Now, if, by chance, you get curious and start developing interest in something else. Say, programming, or philosophy, Linux, or even sociology, and start studying that instead, what would be their reactions?

"Beta, curiosity won’t pay the bills; stick to what’s useful."

Yes, polymathy, or even a mild form of it, such as, having multiple interests and putting efforts in other things is considered deviant in this competitive, rationalised society.

Specialisation is one of the cultural mores in 2025 India. Children are expected to have already chosen their dream job when they are in 9th grade. Curiosity outside the scope of what you're learning in formal education systems gets called a "waste of time."

Polymaths run differently. They are not aligned to this tunneled vision, which makes it a counterculture to this general culture of following the herd.

Polymaths make their own rules. They explore the world themselves rather than being told where to look. They'd much rather do 5 ambitious jobs at a single time than conform to a system where alienation is the norm.

Yes, students are alienated from others as well as the self. The competition becomes a zero-sum game; everyone fighting to be in the 99.9999th percentile. There is no relation between the sense of self and what they are doing in the society, that is, mindlessly trying to win a game where everyone loses.

Being a polymath in India is hard. There are many infrastructural and bureaucratic problems that prevents us from being ourselves. It feels like rebellion when we actually take time to do things that make us naturally curious.

I have been told by my teachers to stop focusing on my hobbies. ("Focus on your studies beta. Master your subjects beta. Start preparing for entrances beta.")
My parents still scold me for writing blogs or trying to learn Haskell instead of finishing up some chemistry chapter. ("Stop wasting time, baba! First become something respectable!")

Interdisciplinary curiosity is social stigma. It takes a certain sense of awareness and wisdom to understand what this pursuit of knowledge actually means, which the majority of the society does not possess.

A polymath is labelled as the "Jack of all trades but master of none". But they forget the full version of the same line:

A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.^[1]

I think this mindset has become the norm because of the capitalist-rational society-

Specialization helps the elite stay elite. Think of how much money coaching institutes earn. Would they want students to become curious all of a sudden?
Bureaucratic companies want people with specific roles and experience- potentially more profit.
Academia ostricises people when unable to produce papers on a single subject.
It creates class and status stratification (e.g. "My son is a doctor" is considered "high status").

The ones chasing this specialised dream are caught up in a Kafkaesque machine. This is generational debt that has accumulated since the days of Independence.

Well, we aren't so independent in the end, are we?

Despite that, I believe there are many like me who would gladly go beyond this societal and intellectual Tartarus and continue flourishing with a greater depth of self, of others and a will to do something good.

It takes guts. It is clearly not a idyllic path. But we polymaths are not going to give up. We are not going to conform. We are not going to stop.

Flight Club

2025-09-09T09:22:59Z

I met a half-empty attaché case on a flight to Kuberstan. He was sitting on the window seat next to me. He let me have the armrest for myself, which I thought was super cool.

We struck up a pretty heavy conversation for at least 3 quarters of the flight duration, which was, three hours if I am not wrong. I found out that he was returning home from a spiritual retreat- he was a hippie-yoga master type- and I really wouldn't have expected him to have such good ideas and values. But he did, and you'll see why.

I learned some really valuable lessons and tips and tricks from him, and soon he earned a place in the ranks of people I admire.

I am no disciple or anything, but I thought it would be cool to note them down and share his wisdom to the world. So here it goes:

Don't carry a gun in your underwear.
Buy an e-reader and place it under the left front tyre of your car so that it can read what humanity has been upto for the past 300,000 years.
Insert an USB Drive through the slit behind your ears to increase your memory span.
Smell a putrid smell? See a slim, gaunt and shadow-ey figure in your kitchen? Run. Don't look back. Get on your bicycle and pedal away. Far away.
Don't listen to music while you're driving. Pay attention to the road and your screaming wife.
Take eyedrops with your eyes slightly open but not so much that your dirty soul can escape.
If you ever get arrested, then tell them a good story about your innocence. Make them laugh, would ya? Make them smile and forget the pain they have been through since they've been into the police force. Give them a chance to kick you and beat you in your cell and be mirthful again.
Remember that you're from the future. You've already seen what happens. So why bother worrying?
Go to the gym four times a week for the rest of your life. If everything goes well, they'll call you for an interview for the job up at the mountains. You'll have to leave everything behind for that job, which you will, and settle up there. You'll find more gym equipment than ever, more supplements and better looking women. But you can't miss a single gym day. That's the deal.
Don't let Daniel Bergman into your house. I repeat, don't let Daniel Bergman into your house!
Look into the mirror and smile. If you see a fat, grumpy looking pig, then there's nothing to worry about. The real problem is if you see a human.
Promise me that you'll never leave me at the airport.
You'll never die. If you do, you can always press "Restart from Checkpoint." And you'll be back again at the save point.

If you're reading this, Mr. Case, sir, then I want to tell you that I am really grateful to have met you on the flight. I really hope you'd come alive someday and take me away from this rotten place. I don't want to be here anymore. Please. Take me. Take me. No more, sir. You're my only savior. Please. I am so done here.

Nibir's Class Notes from parallel universe

2025-08-10T12:53:52Z

Electrophile and Nucleophile blah blah blah some geometric isomerism yada yada yada forms SN1 something SN2 with clockwise and anticlockwise yes yes uhuh nod. Don't think too much, just read it with technical difficulties and yes some isomer and reversed inversion uhuh. Why aren't you writing this down, Nibir. Why aren't you studying? Why do I always have to repeat, repeat, repeat? Sorry, ma'am. No! Write, teach, do, here, why, then, how, okay, hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, iron oxide.

Some RCN and RNC molecules and ambidentate nucleophile bites me in the ass. I am so tired. Covalent ionic bonding and loathe yourself. Think! Something's happening somewhere, but not here. Why should it? Why must it?

I am learn organic chemistry while dying out of boredom and too many amphetamines. September. October. Dead. Great students off-white perspective off and self-made losers. Gratitude. Guided meditation.

I am not a teenage girl, and not an emo kid, just stuck with hydrogen bombs and stale graphite I cannot eat. Remember, KCN is predominantly ionic. Domination. Conquest. Wine and sodium phenobarbital, thoughts and questions but too tired to speak. Sensory deprivation. Cry. Cry. Cry. Die. Die. Die. Crash.

Wake up. Wake up, Nibir. It's 2058. Humanity's dead. But you're alive. Alive in all of us. Alive in me, alive in Joe's water bottle. Talk to me! Roger, get me an injection! Wake up, Nibir. I am going to inject you with some ideas and philosophical thoughts, are you ready? Roger! Get me Mills and Nietzsche quick. Also Schopenhauer cause what the hell. Roger! Don't forget that guy, what was his name, the weird Czech, the Kaf- something. Yeah, that one. Bring me that. We need to revive this guy.

I almost died. Now I pray to Joe's water bottle.

Kafka is my barrista

2025-07-31T18:02:51Z

Twenty minutes left for my work day to start.

I spent fifteen minutes deciding if I should make a thermos full of hot coffee or make it iced.

I flipped a coin.
I said to myself, "If I get a heads, I'll go make some hot coffee."

I got heads. I didn't want hot coffee.

So I went an made myself an iced coffee.

I was 10 minutes late for work, but I am glad that I made the decision without turning myself into a cockroach.

Reading vs Literature

2025-07-31T12:14:08Z

I finished reading four books cover-to-cover this month. I binged them. They really made me fall in love with reading as an activity again.

Three of them- Dark Matter, Yellowface, Never Lie- were fast-paced books that can suck you in like a vacuum cleaner on full power. But I can't really say that they have an essence. There wasn't anything literary to them. They are in a way, fleeting.

Which brings me to the thought that has been squatting on my brain-house for a couple of weeks:

I think that there are two kind of (fiction) books:

books that are good for reading.
books that are good to read.

The books I read last month fall into the first category. They are bingeable, dopamine dumps and page turners.

Think of them as a trip to the water park. A few rides, a few moments of short-lived fun and you're back home washing your dishes. They don't leave you with anything but the memory of you having read the book. You just devour and move on.

And then there's the second category.
Books like Crime and Punishment, Giovanni's Room, The Fall, The Trial fall into this category. They are dense, literary and reek of good prose. They make you gather your fallen brain cells and put them back in your noggin.

These books make you grow. They are a pain to read, but you're glad to read them. They give you perspective and depth, they present you with a mirror, and they make you linger. They are a categorical imperative!

But the thing is, you need both the types of books in your shelf. One because it's fun, the other because it is necessary.

But what if you could get the best of the both worlds?

Presenting: the type of book that read like butter and leave you thinking till 4am in the morn.

Think The Stranger, The Metamorphosis, Slaughterhouse-Five, and maybe *The Sense of an Ending.

This type of book is not only engrossing, but also thought-provoking. And maybe even superior to the other two? Just saying...

I am searching for more books like this, so if you have any recs, then please comment down below.

Also, what is the last book you read that made you feel good? How about the one that made you feel smart?

Two minutes to midnight

2025-07-26T17:15:55Z

Two minutes to midnight
And I wait for the impending doom.
I see dreams of the future past
Now lost within the
chaos of potentiality.

One minute to midnight
And I am overcome with self-pity.
A contemptuous slow-dance,
A look in the eyes of lost opportunities,
I say, "Love of my life, you've hurt me."

Thirty seconds to midnight
And I try to fight once again.
I turn this moment into a quite rage
Against the unruly rules.
I hear them say, "Give it up! Give it up!"

Ten seconds to midnight
And I swallow the black pill.
Everything is determined,
Extremely malevolent;
To mend the way is now foolish.

Three seconds to midnight
And it's almost over,
Time and space are bending,
Everything is moving fast
Even I, a slowpoke.

One second to midnight
For one last time, I try to remember,
What was the point of it all?
Clenching my teeth and squinting my eyes,
Bracing myself for the wave to crash into.

Midnight, now,
A blissful impact,
In place of death, there was light!
My every sin, washed.
A new beginning, a new fight.
But I long for the next midnight.

I wrote this poem about a year ago and posted it on my Substack. I thought I'd repost it here. Maybe because of the nostalgia, or maybe because of the ulterior motive of posting anything.

What a dumb WhatsApp riddle taught me

2025-07-10T05:51:49Z

Before you read the post, I want you try solving the same riddle that served me as a source of mild annoyance as well as a learning opportunity:

Tried it?

Okay, let's move on. (Answer's somewhere in the middle).

After seeing the riddle in one of my friend's WhatsApp status, I felt cringe. I thought, "Pffttt, this is what Fifth graders do! I bet I can solve it in no time!"

I knew it's definitely not "West". Otherwise, it wouldn't have been so viral (people lost more often than win), so it must have been something hidden. I tried to play smart.

I analysed the first line:

Someone's mother has four sons.

And I was like "Aha! Caught you! The answer is 'Someone'!"
I thought the word "Someone" is being used as a noun here.

I messaged my friend, and this was her reply:

I immediately checked the second (not third) sentence and sure enough, it was a statement, not a question. I tried to defend myself in my head: "But 'someone' is still correct! It must be!"

No, son. It is not. Not if the next statement literally tells you the fact in the most logically coherent form. In that case, you cannot seek the vague idea to satisfy your ego.

I had been played by linguistics. That made my stomach turn, and so, I did not repost, instead I milked the riddle for this blog (how moral!!)

But really, I was humbled.

And I learned a valuable lesson:

The older we get, the more we tend to take the basics, the foundations for granted. The foundations start cracking while we make the skyscraper taller, playing with our high level tools for money, job, knowledge and fulfillment. But sooner or later, the foundations give in and the whole building collapses.

Don't forget that almost everything can be derived from these fundamentals. Sure, the riddle is corny example, but it applies to everything: math, science, governance, politics, problem-solving and so on. Sometimes, you just need to go back to the roots and build yourself back up.

Don't forget the basics, kids.

Homelabbing is fun!

2025-07-04T13:07:38Z

I love learning new tools and experimenting with them like a madman. Recently I discovered docker and tailscale, and oh boy...

Sure enough, I found myself diving deeper into the homelabbing culture (thanks reddit and youtube). But thankfully I have not yet bought an SBC (but I am desperate to get one!)

Docker and Docker-compose

I use Arch. Things get messy. You run into weird dependency errors, AUR BS, and typical problems that you might experience with a rolling-release type Linux distro.

Then Docker came into my life. I had heard about it so much, but never bothered to try it out. What it essentially does is create isolated environments (called "containers") for you to run your software on. Without any interference.

Docker and Docker-compose are basically the same thing, except that docker-compose allows you to manage your containers with a simple yaml file. It's quite handy if you want to get a lot of stuff running, like this:

Just make a folder where you will store your yaml file and necessary configs, and run sudo docker-compose up -d. (Make sure to check tutorials before lol).

And vóila, I now have my own music server (Navidrome), Jellyfin which I can access from anywhere.

Wait, but how?

Tailscale

Tailscale is (sort of) a VPN service that you can use to access your devices from anywhere.

So, what you can do is, keep your homelab at your home (duh!) and access it from that shitty bistro you visit every now and then.

All you have to do is connect to your Tailnet (that's the name for your Tailscale network) via the VPN (available on almost all possible OS's).

They also have this thing called MagicDNS, which allows you to type in the nickname of the device to access it, and you don't even have to type the IP!

You can also ssh into any device like that!

Just do:

ssh nibir@absurd

or whatever the device name is. Super cool!

Also... I found a cool workflow to use Tailscale:

Remote Music Production

My producer friend lives 60kms away from my home, and we needed to make the song we've been putting off for 1.5 years. And since I am the musician and have all the setup, I needed my friend to take control of my PC and DAW and help me record and mix stuff.

But how could he do it? We also needed crystal clear audio. Latency on his side didn't matter as long as the quality was nice; he didn't need to record anything.

So, we set up a tailnet of our own, connected our devices and used Sunshine+Moonlight to control the PCs. These apps were actually made for playing games from other devices, but you could do more than that, right? Like, making music!

That is how I discovered Tailscale actually- we were struggling to get Sunshine+Moonlight working, there was some problem in my router settings that I couldn't figure it out. So I said, fuck it, let's try Tailscale.

And it worked perfectly.

Sunshine+Moonlight was working great. There was very low latency, but of course you cannot expect a LAN-like 10ms from a relayed connection. Now, the next problem was my Linux system. Sunshine couldn't pick up the audio.

That's where Sonobus came in.

It's an open-source software for transferring audio from one device to another, and it integrates very well with your DAW. Just what we needed. You can even host your own server, and since we were using Tailscale, we could access it without worry.

So, that's how my friend and I recorded one part of our song. Listen here!
A lot more to do, but we at least we got something done!

Amazing experience. Though I have had to do some tweaking here and there. These reddit posts helped me.

Future plans?

I wanna do a lot more with docker and tailscale.

Host wallabag
Buy an SBC
Move Navidrome there
and use Pi-Hole
yada yada yada blah blah
and so on.

Aah I will burn some of my money now.

Please feel free to send me some here. Or UPI: nibir@fam.

Gracias!

Thank you Mr. Aristotle

2025-07-01T07:08:05Z

"An unexamined life is not a life worth living,"
Said Mr. Aristotle.
I examined mine and found that
Modern schools are not worth attending.

I realised that
School is my oppressor,
My own Kafkaesque machine;
Its cogs and gears crushing me,
And every desire I had to learn.

But now it must burn,
Burn and get consumed in the scorching fire.
So that I may be reborn,
Calm, curious and autonomous,
In its blazing funeral pyre.

And so I light the match.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

2025-06-29T13:12:47Z

A story that grips you and doesn't let go. Every chapter, you'd find yourself wondering what the fuck is happening. You think you and the protagonist are this close to finding the answer, but you're not. It's a giant game, and you're not about to win just yet.

The prose is well written and truly makes you feel you're in a Victorian mansion. Seems like it's not written by a contemporary writer, but it is; an impressive example of literary fiction in this century. And beneath it all is time-travelling, mystery and science fiction, and it's not explicitly stated. There's no hyperadvanced technology. No machines. Just your mind, and that is the beauty of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

This is not just a murder mystery-drama novel, but an amazingly constructed psychological narrative. I have to commend Turton's brilliance here for making sure every detail, object, thing mentioned in the story plays a role. Every moment is a foreshadow. Every scene is a clue.

I couldn't stop reading this story. It was a complete pageturner. Even though, it may not have been a "deep", or philosophical book, it is certainly a nice lit-fic, with an impressive "hero" arc and a massive fan-fiction potential.

Very cool. Very nice. Liked it very much. 5/5

Giovanni's Room

2025-06-29T13:12:47Z

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin was beautifully tragic. And it hit like a freight train. This book had me looking at love, humans and myself in a completely different light. I immediately felt the urge to grab my loved ones and say: "Oh I am so very sorry. Oh I love you so very much!"

I wouldn't dare classify this as only a romance novella; it's certainly more than that. It's about relationships, identity, sexuality, poverty, and the duplicit nature of humans. It's a tragedy, beyond tragedy itself.

I was, and still am, overwhelmed with feelings of longing, of sadness, of understanding and of love. I felt as if everything that happened in this book, was happening to me.

It's equally heartbreaking and sensual. I think it is a very, very important read for anyone. Imagine Anxious People, The Fall and The Sense of an Ending had a threesome and conceived a child with all of their qualities, but gay.

This post is a bit rambly and sporadic, because I cannot seem to string it all together. The feelings are really hard to put into words. But anyhow, here are my thoughts and inner reflections.

There is no literary discussion on this post, but I assure you that the language flows like sweet honey. It is very pretty. I read the print version along with the audiobook (read by Matt Bomer).

It's terribly difficult to be a man who hides, who wants to remain clean, pristine, untouched, and unloved. He pushes everyone away. He is afraid. Afraid of everyone and afraid of himself.

Who would want to be that man? But you are. We all are.

"I have something to say to her- to her?- but of course it will never be said. I feel that I want to be forgiven, I want her to forgive me. But I do not know how to state my crime. My crime, in some odd way, is in being a man and she knows all about this already. It is terrible how naked she makes me feel, like a half grown boy, naked before his mother."

We are afraid of being honest, afraid of appearing without a mask in this costume party of a world. Fear does a lot of bad things to people, and to love.

This book made me understand how deep love is. How beautiful and yet, how cruel. It pushes you off a cliff and catches you at the same time. It is rapturous, treacherous, and oh how it makes you thrive. How it makes you live!

"Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?"

Sure, love is complicated. But I'd much rather be in love than not. It may seem very naïve- since I am only over 18, at the time of writing this- but love makes you whole. It anchors you.

It is a Pascal's Wager. Who wouldn't want to be in love?

This book will make you terribly sorry for everything, but you won't know why.
You may even cry, and you won't know why.

But linger onto that feeling of utter destruction for a while. Dwell on it, reflect on it, let it intoxicate you. Feel it.

And then, maybe, just maybe, we'll all understand some divine truth, about ourselves and about everything.

4.5/5

22 uses for a cup

2025-06-05T13:51:16Z

Drinking tea
Drinking coffee
Drinking water
Measuring (cup)
Gifting
Making cup-cakes
Upside Down => Stand
Showing off (if it's particularly impressive)
Pretending it's your friend and ranting about your life to it
Explaining rolling motion to a 5 year old
Lidding the cup and using it as a air tight container
A souvenir
A memento
Breaking it down when angry
Practicing Stoicism (when it breaks)
Practicing your art (using the cup as a canvas)
Printing your quotes/memes/reminders
A memory device (you might remember something if someone hits you with a cup)
A forgetting device (the same as above, but the opposite might happen)
Storing coins when begging in the streets
To hit someone in the balls
Covering your balls so that you don't get hit

The Fall

2025-05-24T13:53:31Z

Peace is the by-product of our inability to apprehend our own sins. How could we? How could live after knowing disgusting facts about ourselves, the hopeless misadventures and myriads of sins we have done, of all the cruelty we have subjected into this world?

Two ways to go about it. First, commit suicide. Remove yourself as the sole object in a doubtful case. Or, second, become a judge-penitent. Ruthlessly confess, ruminate, reproach yourself. And preach. Make others disbelieve. Make others miserably aware.

We humans are vile. We humans are driven by lust, power and melancholic pride. We remain indulgent, evermore fueling our egos. We want to dominate. We want to win.

Always, "I, I, I." It is the motto of our living.

We live to commit debauchery, to gloat and and live in the shadows of falsehood to hide ourselves, not because we are scared but because everything seems works just fine. Until you fall.

Albert Camus's The Fall gave me the existential creeps. I did not understand it all, but understood enough to make me think more about myself and the world around me.

everything is done ad hoc, even this post.

2025-05-21T08:45:19Z

Recently, I got myself an used ThinkPad T14 Gen2a. And I've been fiddling with it ever since. I had to revamp my whole workflow / workspace around it, which was obviously expected, but poor old me fell into Planning Fallacy and did not apprehend it. So, I ended up with a unproductive week (in the sense of "work").

I had to do a lot of ad hoc scripting, ad hoc cable management and make an ad hoc laptop docking station made of cardboard boxes. Everything was spontaneous, nothing was planned. But everything resulted in a complacent Nibir and a doable workflow.

This made me think: every activity that a human can do, is done ad hoc.

To verify this conjecture, we have to dive deeper into the semantics of the phrase "ad hoc" and also see if some real life scenarios imply such a thing.

Semantics

The phrase ad hoc shows two meanings;

adverb:
- when necessary or needed.
adjective:
- created or done for a particular purpose as necessary.

Which suggest that doing something "ad hoc" is to fulfill a particular necessity, as required.

Here are some examples of such instances:

I bought the ThinkPad ad hoc to give Mom her laptop back.
I brought my water bottle ad hoc to quench my thirst.
I turned on the lights ad hoc so that I can see other things in the dark room.

But giving certain examples doesn't prove that everything is done ad hoc. I want to prove this more formally, reducing ambiguity as much as possible.

Formal Proof

I am claiming that everything (i.e., every activity that can be done by a human being) is done ad hoc.

So, let $x$ denote any activity. And let $A (x)$ be the property of "being done ad hoc".

The claim, expressed in logical notation, is:

\begin{array}{l} \forall x [A (x)] \end{array}

(for all $x$ , $A (x)$ holds true).

To prove this, we must show that its negation is false.

Therefore...

\begin{array}{l} \exists x [\neg A (x)] \end{array}

(there exists an activity $x$ such that $A (x)$ doesn't hold true).

...should be shown false.

But we are left with a problem. We need to show that such an activity does not exist, which means analysing every activity for the property. The path to the solution becomes circular.

Even with our vast reservoir of experience or knowledge, we cannot, pragmatically, do that.

But instead, we can prove that our initial assumption ( $\forall x [A (x)]$ ) is false by finding a counter-example. Which will prove that not everything is done ad hoc. And that counterexample is .....

I cannot find any. Maybe because I am biased. Maybe the premises of the proof are shaky and cannot be built upon. Maybe I failed as a mathematician and as a philosopher.

Noticing fallacy

I notice something shady in the Semantics part. Maybe this necessity I speak off should be universal, not personal. And that I am turning some personal data to prove something universal. This suggests that I am a buffoon and need to fix this mess.

Very soon. Let me know if you prove this before I do.

I could probably write about something but what would I write about?

2025-04-30T13:06:54Z

I could probably write something,
but what would I write about?
Maybe trees? No, it's a cliche.
Maybe my friends? Well, I don't think so.
Perhaps myself? Pffft! That wouldn't be very nice.
Then, how about I write about you?

Yes, you!
You, the reader,
The traveler of space and time,
The dweller of the human body,
The crazy person pretending to be not,
How about I write about you?

Well, why should I not?
You say you're not special,
You say you're just a spot in the ever-expanding universe,
(That you may be)
But that doesn't stop you from reading.
That doesn't stop you from being.
So, how about I write about you, huh?

"What is happening?!",
And you tell the others of what transpired,
Of the memory and experience put into you,
You scrupulous soul, you chagrin eyes,
That is all the more reason
to write some things about you.

They would surely enjoy a nice story,
Of another enigmatic human,
Alive and maybe not well,
But doesn't matter.
Because even if I wrote about you,
What difference would it make?

So I move on to find another.
Topic; and forever.

k-ratings: Prioritise Efficiently

2025-04-14T08:59:57Z

Being a math guy, I love finding mathematical solutions to stuff that don't really need them, or do they?

Presenting: k-ratings

k-ratings are my way to identify which tasks are more appropriate to do at the moment without any bullshit. It is Eisenhower Matrix on steroids.

\begin{array}{l} urgency \times (alignment + importance) = k \end{array}

where,

urgency: 1 - low, 2 - medium, 3 - high
alignment: with my current identity and values (1-5)
importance: "what's the return on investment on this thing, especially for the long term?" (1-5)

Eh what?

Rules

Make a list
Assign values to Alignment, Importance and Urgency.
$k$ = (alignment + importance) x urgency.
Sort descending.
(!!!) Remove anything with $k < 10$ . Trust me, you don't need them weeds.
If anything with equal $k$ value, prefer the one with higher urgency. If equal urgency, prefer the one with higher importance... and so on.

\begin{array}{l} urgency < importance < alignment \end{array}

Example

According to the rules,

SAT Prep has the highest $k$ rating, and so it is the priority task.
Music Theory and Playing Games should be cut off from the list.
Math Course and Babysitting Thor have the same $k$ rating, but Babysitting Thor has a higher urgency, so it will be preferred.

In the end you have:

So, babysitting Thor is more appropriate than doing math?

Limitations? Could be. The user base is too small (just me) to analyse anything. Systems are like that.

Further Whatever

Once you have the tasks prioritised, make a structured plan to work on them and not wander aimlessly.
Forecast events in your life, and be more calibrated. I use fatebook.io, and it is wonderful.
Ask ChatGPT to come up with something ridiculous and snarky.
Call out on bullshit and comment on this post.

Happy planning!

Fahrenheit 451: Thin as Paper

2025-04-10T03:54:51Z

I've finally read Fahrenheit 451 after first putting it on my TBR around 2 years ago. And in my honest opinion, this book isn't great. Goodreads rates it 3.97/5, but at best, I would rate it 2.5/5.

A lot of people hold this book in highest regards, but this book hasn't aged well. The only "wow" factor of this book is the concept of a book-less world.

The world built to accommodate the concept is tragic and nascent. The plot is quite mediocre. The characters in the story are thin as paper, with no supposed depth in them.

:Spoiler Warning

This book felt like a subplot in Brave New World which focuses on books and books only.

But it was very interesting to see that a lot of the elements of Bradbury's world are similar to this 21st Century world that we live in. Technology is surely eating us up.

Bradbury tried to make the ending as hopeful as possible, and it wasn't that bad, the whole subplot. But it was typical.

In a nutshell, I guess dystopias are not really my thing.

:x char-analysis

For example, Captain Beatty's death felt too weird and flimsy. He was supposed to be a major antagonist (apart from the state itself) and he died just like that?

How about Montag himself?

Right and Wrong

2025-03-31T09:25:56Z

Imagine there's someone knocking at your door in the middle of the night. You go up to the door, and lo and behold! It's Norman The Kid-killer!

He says, "My good sir, being in receipt of your humble kindness, I, Norman, with utmost gratitude, would like to ask you the whereabouts of your children, so that I may slit their throats while they dream of the fairyland. Many thanks!"

What do you do? Do you tell them the truth? Or do you lie?

Unless you're some insane and terrible person or Immanuel Kant, of course you'd lie. But how do you know what is right and what is wrong?

What is right and what is wrong?

Whenever I discuss this topic with my friends, we mostly reach to a conclusion that morality is subjective. But is it really?

Normative ethical theory (a branch of ethics) investigates the question "How should one act in a moral sense?". People adhere to different ethical models and each of those have different criterion to justify the morality of an action.

Let's see what these different models have in stock for us.

Deontology

Also known as "following rules is cool".

Deontological theory uses the "action" for classifying if something is moral or not. If the action obeys certain "pre-set" moral principles (e.g. "Thou shall not kill"), then it is "moral", otherwise, not so much.

Let us go back to Norman the Kid-killer.

Say, you adhere to the moral principle that "lying is bad". Then, from a deontological point-of-view, lying is "immoral".

And thus, you'll tell the killer the location of your kids and they'll will die. But at least, you followed the rules! This is exactly what Kant would've done, that stone cold bastard of a philosopher.

Pros

It is extremely reliable since you already know what to do.
You can avoid discretion and do the said thing.

Cons

It is really inflexible and very rigid.
Doesn't "care" about the actual intentions of the person doing the action (as long as it obeys the rules).
May get your kids killed.

Moral Absolutism is the most extreme form of Deontological theory where you have a sort of dogmatist view. A moral absolulist would rather prefer millions dying out of agony than lying.

Consequentialism

Also known as "I am right because nothing bad happened"

Consequentialism puts weight on the "consequence" rather than the actions for classifying something as moral or not. So, as long as the outcome is okay, you're good to go!

Going back to Norman the Kid-killer scenario.

You don't really want your kids to get killed (consequence). So, if you lie, then from a consequentialist point-of-view, lying is "moral".

So you'll lie about their location (tell him that they're at your in-laws or something) and live happily ever after!

Pros

It is very flexible.
Cares about the "intentions" of the action.

Cons

It is really vague because it is hard to really know the consequences and whether they'll work out just fine, to be able to decide what to do.

Utilitarianism is a form of Consequentialism, which seeks to maximise on the utility of any action.

Which one to pick?

Neither, or maybe, both. Because every situation calls for a different approach of making decisions. In reality, Deontology vs Consequentialism is a spectrum, and we belong somewhere in the middle of it.

But perhaps, it might be better to look at another ethical model: Virtue Ethics.

Virtue Ethics

Instead of focusing on rules (Deontology) or outcomes (Consequentialism), morality in virtue ethics is evaluated by character and values of the individual.

It emphasises virtues like honesty, courage, bravery, and so on.

In the same Norman the Kid-killer scenario, if you are aligned to such a model, you might end up engaging in a fist vs. knife fight so that you can disarm him, pin him down on your doorway, call the police and save the day.

Why? Because you're brave, just and courageous. You'll do what aligns with your identity, not because of rules or any outcomes.

Stoicism is a very popular form of Virtue Ethics, and I think it is pretty sustainable.

Conclusion

One more example.

Imagine someone insults you in public.

Deontologist: "I won’t insult them back because following rules against rudeness is my duty."
Consequentialist: "If I ignore them, the situation won’t escalate, and that’s the best outcome."
Virtue Ethicist (Stoic example): "A wise and just person wouldn’t let insults disturb their peace. I’ll remain calm because that aligns with my character."

Conclusion of Conclusion

I'd say: Do whatever you want as long as it doesn't break the greater harmony. "What is 'greater harmony'", you say? Well, figure it out yourself.

Notes on the Virtuous Life

2025-02-11T09:03:38Z

The virtuous life is hard.
It requires resilience, patience and self-control.

What is a virtuous life?

It is the life where you give up hedonism, where you stop sabotaging yourself and stop being decadent. It is a life where you seek tranquility, equanimity and morality. My definition of the "virtuous life" is inspired by Stoicism, minimalism and focuses on self-improvement.

What are the characteristics of a person who leads such a life?

That person takes care of others, is humble and does his duties. S/he always tries to become a better version of themselves.

S/he always reflects on their actions, examines their life and tries to understand what is wrong and what is right, and do things that matter.

Why live a virtuous life?

Because it allows you to gain control of your life again, remove anything unnecessary, and seek long-term joy and stability. This is the path to reach Eudaimonia.

Why do I want to live such a life?

Because this life attracts me.
Because I want to be in control of my own life.
I want to experience struggle, which in turn will give meaning to me.
I care about being a better human.
It takes patience, mental and physical strength to overcome problems in life, and I want to build that resilience, so that I may never have to rely on other, and instead focus on being more helpful.
I want to be more honest, more straightforward.
I want to prioritise what is important: the good things.
I want to remove any base desires like porn, indulgence to entertainment, online shopping (on bulk) and excessive workaholism.
I want to replace them with tasks that matter, like connecting with people, reading, learning, social activities, chores, studying.
Living this life means being more rational
I want to purge anything extra, anything that doesn't reinforce my identity (scholar, builder, self-improvement fanatic.)
because this life is beyond happiness.

How can you live a virtuous life?

By doing what matters.
Being responsible for everything.
Keeping a healthy body and a healthy mind.
Prioritising things that are absolutely important and taking the path of least effort for others.
Moderation, and delaying gratification.
Focusing on: updating beliefs, improving systems and spiritual values.
Examining life.

Thank you Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, James Scholz, my friends, and all the people I have learned from.

Dostoevsky and Love

2025-02-08T09:31:36Z

Contains Spoilers of Dostoevsky's Works

Most of Dostoevsky's works revolve around human introspection, conflict between rationality and love, and psycho-social predicaments.

But I did not know that "love" was such an important topic for Dostoevsky until I listened to Stephen West's analysis of Notes from Underground and read White Nights.

The reason I did not really paid much attention to "love" in Dostoevsky is because I was obstructed by my own definition of love. As I grow older, my definition of love is changing. It is not "a whim" anymore, but more like the Socratic idea of "love". And I can now at least comprehend other possible definitions and interpretation of love, which certainly helps in understanding Dostoevsky's interpretation.

For him, love is rapturous. It saves Raskolnikov, destroys the Underground Man, and makes the protagonist in White Nights feel the happiest in his whole life. Hence, "love" is the only concept which is capable of either destroying or building "life".

Love, as I have noticed in Dosto's works (like in Notes from Underground or Crime and Punishment) is merely an undertone, not the main focus of the plot. Instead, it serves as an instrument to the plot.

Dosto's description of love is not the most optimistic, but rather more practical, more real. Love is complex, and Dosto tries to show this complexity in his stories by producing different effects:

"Love" as a source of suffering and guilt (as in White Nights)
"Love" as cause for redemption (like how Raskolnikov feels in the end of C&P)
"Love" clashes with rationality and intellectualism, creates internal conflict (thus, characters like the Underground Man exist.)
"Love" is not what it seems (infatuations vs. "true love", as in White Nights)

And so on.

White Nights was a particularly shocking read to me, because "love" was not an undertone but the crux of the plot. It felt too simple and "romantic" to be written by Dostoevsky. I was even a bit disappointed. But I get it now. The whole point of White Nights is to show that Love is really not that simple. It is crazy.

I think White Nights was Dostoevsky's meditation on love: an emotion which remains a mystery to all of us, and Dostoevsky almost solved it.
My teacher, who taught Social Science in 10th Grade, had once said that Dostoevsky was a genius, and I absolutely agree with him. He was indeed a madlad.

Incomprehensible

2025-01-31T09:00:50Z

How does it feel when someone you've been with since the beginning of your life does something absolutely preposterous and moronic? When you don't seem to comprehend if it is the same person or someone else possessing their body?

No, this is not about teenage angst; that is an entirely different point. This is about parents who went through a momentary lapse of reason and did something which directly or indirectly hurt people, damaged public image and most importantly, broke the sacred bond of trust.

When a parent does something so atrocious, something that you had never expected, how do you rationalise it? How do you get away from it? What do you do about the fact that you descend from a family of hedonistic lunatics?

How do you stop feeling ashamed?

A parent does something sinful, how do you look at them again with the same eyes as before? You used to admire your parent, but now it all seems pointless. Such an event, so corrupt in nature, is contagious enough to spread, from being a mere concept, into people's hearts.

How do you comprehend such an event? Is it possible to let go?

Maybe. Maybe not. Stoic philosophers ask us not to be surprised when a fig tree produces figs^[1]. Maybe we should not expect Godliness, or perfectionism from humans, because they are the epitome of imperfection and flaws.

Psychoanalysis also says that humans sabotage themselves^[2]. Maybe these parents (who are also human) are ever so oblivious of their shadow-self, that they are not able to think reasonably about their own actions and their consequences.

Some things remain a mystery. They haunt you later in life.

Footnotes

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.15. ↩︎
Jung and the Shadow self. Resembles Freud's Id as well. ↩︎

Have You?

2025-01-26T09:19:44Z

have you explored the world enough?
have you done your homework enough?
have you checked your dms enough?
have you outdone yourself enough?
have you tried and failed enough?
have you lied to your parents enough?
have you cried and fought enough?
have you indulged in mental masturbation enough?
have you lived enough?
have you beaten yourself enough?
have you?

Seeking Tranquility

2025-01-19T07:00:12Z

I have been a follower of Stoicism since 2021. It helped me a lot in tough times. And I recently started reading the Enchiridion (Epictetus's Handbook^[1]). His lessons feel much more practical and soothing than Marcus Aurelius's (not that they are bad or anything; they are just different).

I am deeply affected by:

12.2 A drop of oil is spilled, a little wine is stolen; say to yourself, ‘Such is the price at which equanimity is bought; such is the price that one pays for peace of mind.’ For nothing can be acquired at no cost at all.

Here, Epictetus is saying that we have to let go of things for our peace of mind (which is very important if you want to reach Eudaimonia). We have to let go of our stolen possessions, petty feuds with people, and so on. This is the price to pay for tranquility.

Another one:

8. Don’t seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you’ll have a calm and happy life.

This way, you can learn to live better. Because to achieve tranquility, you must go through both ups and downs in your life. Live a natural life, devoid of superficiality.

If you seek a happier life, apply the Stoic philosophy in your daily life.

Footnotes

Epictetus, Robin Hard, and Christopher Gill. Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. ↩︎

Sharp Objects

2025-01-07T09:02:21Z

Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects is a page-turner full of psychological malevolence, disorders and dysfunctional households. This book is a sacrilegious representation of how our childhood is not always idyllic, and often the cause of many, many problems.

I had first read this book in 2022, and I read it again last September. Surely, my understanding of the book and the characters has evolved in the past two years. Everyone in the story is pitiable. You don't really like anybody, and everyone has some flaw which, as a whole, represents the defective aspect of humanity.

It gives me a sad feeling that not all people have good childhood; it can leave a mark and stop them from living. Trauma seeps in to the child and manifest itself as a poor guide in the adult future.

This book is about re-living one's dreadful past and facing the same wrath they faced as a child, now as an adult. And it shows how powerful, how utterly powerful that force is. How it damages you, crushes you- everything inside you.

This book is not for the faint-hearted. It is still as disturbing as the first time I had read it.

Originally written on September, 2024. Edited January, 2025.

Happy New Year

2025-01-02T17:42:52Z

The cranium
still desecrates the sphere.

Voraciousness,
Continues to crumble
the Spirit, the Substance,
of Everything.

Creating vortices of
"shitting where you eat"
and still,

Bags of meat, flesh and bones,
Shaped like humans
Celebrate in vain,
the end of some 365 days.
And the start of some other 365 days,
Another year, another broken embrace.

Lolita

2024-12-28T15:39:42Z

Don't expect much. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita^[1] one of those novels which you have to read again and again and again and still you won't get everything. This was my first read, and I hope to read it again.

The plot is suggestive of the sexual, but it is not about sex at all. It's about the debilitating and crippling compulsion, the moral and ethical lapses, the limit to which one can go. It is about choices, and it's very psychiatric.

Nabokov's writing relies on tacit knowledge; you have to know a lot about literature and history beforehand to understand better, which I absolutely did not. The dense wording and obscure imagery makes it a bit difficult to read, which is why I had to read it with an audiobook (read by Jeremy Irons). There are almost 150 pages of extra notes in the end which elaborates on most of the allusions and metaphors, and I didn't read them; you have to save something for the future, no?

Even though the language is difficult, it is very thorough. It is not a "brick"- it does have life, humor and substance. I think the convolution reflects the nature of the protagonist himself. One cannot, in simple terms, can ever put down the right feelings in any other style.

Nabokov says that this book doesn't really have a moral, and I think I disagree. But perhaps that is because literary critics are not satisfied easily (it is an identity which I seem to have acquired of late and take silent pride to, but don't want to say it out loud).

I might not understand the point of this book but these words come to my mind: mania, impulse, man, captivity, cancer.

Footnotes

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. Edited by Alfred Appel. Rev. and Expanded version of the 1970 ed., Reprint. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 2000. ↩︎

Psychoanalysing Summit Bowlson

2024-12-25T08:46:27Z

Foreword

Summit Bowlson is a physics teacher at Central High School, Minnesota. This sentence says a lot more than you think. You see, physicists, especially physicists who teach, are a bit eccentric. Consider Walter Levin; great guy, purely eccentric. We don't even have to bring Richard Feynman; everyone knows he was the Spiderman in the Physicist Cinematic Universe.

These are the good guys, but the main character in our story (or, scholarly text, to be precise), is unique. He's an angel and a devil, a jerk and the-best-teacher-ever: all at the same time. The lack of determination is clearly visible.

Summit Bowlson's eccentricity is on par with his lack of social skills and rational opinions that don't involve physics. His equally lackluster students acknowledge this when they laugh and applaud at his ludicrous jokes on money and business, the ridicules against the humanities and the social sciences, and so on. Psychology is not a pure science, yet a psychoanalyst has written the text and analysed the very person who says humanities are for the inferior. What an irony.

Someone I admire once told me that one's lack of social skills should not be held up to them if they are brilliant. Not sure if I completely agree to that, but Summit Bowlson is indeed brilliant, which is why I'd like to include some things where he is exceptional:

Physics: He likes it. He is great at it.
Solving problems that involve logic.
Has great mathematical aptitude.
Lazying around and letting the students check their own copies as they laugh and laugh and laugh.

But Summit Bowlson fails as a physics teacher. His students open their mouth and gape at a difficult derivation which was written and explained in the span of only 3 minutes. "Any doubts?" Bowlson asks, but the lack of response can only mean that they haven't understood anything, and that they're too scared to say it out loud.

One might even say that Summit Bowlson got the job of a schoolteacher by mistake. He should've been a researcher, a professor even. But he's stuck at Central High School, a school that sucks ass, a decrepit state and a degrading education system. It is obvious that one may experience what the psychoanalyst has written.

Dated 30th February, 2024 John Suave Ray, Jr. PhD

---

Psychoanalysing Summit Bowlson, schoolteacher, 34

Date: 36th December, 2023
Subject Name: Bowlson, Summit
Age: 34
Sex: ~~Probably all the time~~ M
Analyst: Carlos Young

Summary

The subject suffers from irratobipedamania, a disorder correlating with psychopathy and the lack of social intelligence, causing anomalous, irrational behavior and is most likely a psychosomatic response to physical and mental trauma of the subject's life.

Behavior

The subject displays forms of suppressed aggression while communication and which relays a message of dissatisfaction with one's own life.
The subject is frugal and overly economic, which in this case is an unfavorable social behavior.
The subject holds biased, stereotypical notions of human culture.
The subject is analytical and comprehensive when it comes to subject knowledge.
The subject is less skillful in teaching concepts due to the lack of the understanding of the social cues in a classroom and perhaps load of the sub-par education system.
The subject displays high levels of irrationality despite being in a field which advocates rationality and evidence.

Analysis

While analysing a subject, one must remember not do it from a biased perspective. The analyst, especially an amateur one, feels the urge to confirm their own biases by asking irrelevant questions or misinterpreting information.

To counter this, I had made no efforts.

I have been a psychoanalyst for the past 15 years and I know enough to swear to God that this man, this Summit Bowlson, is a magnificent piece of human disaster. He's a fuckin' headache! Lord, I haven't seen anyone so uncooperative and so confusing as this Bowlson since Nurse Pritchard from Arizona Mental Asylum, where she was both a nurse and a patient. Pure nutcase.

Regardless, after going through therapy myself, I made some efforts to reach to a conclusion and to understand Bowlson's unpredictable and irrational behavior.

Bowlson suffers from a chronic case of irratobipedamania, plausibly caused by his hostile childhood and life experience. Although, this is by no means the fault of the subject. Because it is not the fault of the individual that she suffered from an unfriendly childhood. Bowlson's only fault was that he didn't recover from that childhood, which is necessary to have a fruitful adult life.

This is a predicament that causes extreme discomfort, both in a subject's professional and personal life. The modern man locks his shadow, an important but undervalued part of ourselves, into a chest and never opens it. In a sense, he has lost a part of himself. This, combined with modern forms of torture like diluting attention and societal yoke, transforms the modern man into an absolute pain in the ass.

Irratobipedamania is also a byproduct of WEIRDness. Joe Heinrich, a contemporary in my field, says, the more WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) you are, the more discrete and separated you become. This results in disconnection- with our loved ones, ourself and nature, which in turn causes irrationality and frustration.

In the end, here's how I rationalise Bowlson's behavior: he's ambitious but stuck, he's capable but insecure and he's a WEIRD and extremely dissatisfied. And I am sure Summit Bowlson is not a unique case. It's just too sad.

My dog talks to me

2024-12-06T13:30:17Z

Yes, my dog talks to me. And he says things like "aww hell nahhh" and "no, fuck you!". He has been doing this for a couple of months now, and he says mostly these words (I've been counting): fuck (126 times), hell (65), nahh (68), lmao (200), you (178), bruh (54). I can't quite fathom why he says "bruh" the least, even though I say that word a lot. I think I expected him to mimic me or something, I guess I wanted him to be like me. I've had Spiegel (that's his name) for 8 years now. And I thought that we had established a connection apart from matching sleep schedules and eating patterns (no I don't eat dog food). But seeing that he doesn't use the word "bruh" as often as I do, makes me feel betrayed, violated and even ashamed! What have I not done for him! What have I not given him! Yet he proceeds to torment me with his poor choice of words!

Let me tell you about an incident that happened a couple of days ago. I returned from school, and as usual, Spiegel was sleeping on my bed. When I went near to pet him, he growled and said, "Now, why the fuck would you ruin my sleep?" And of course, as you'd expect, I was taken aback! How dare he talk to me like that! But I was too shaken to reply, so I slipped to the other room.

Now that I think of it, I think he might've had an awful childhood. I mean, we grew together and we fought a lot (the way you'd fight with your brother or sister). He didn't get much formal training per se, and picked up traits from the family. That is, shouting, fighting, growling and so on. You can only pick up so many things from a dysfunctional household.

But how can he speak? And why does he only speak to me? At first I thought I was imagining things, because neither of my parents had witnessed anything. Am I in a simulation? Is is all real? No, I don't ask me that. I mean, I am not too sure... ummm.. I trust my senses... kinda... but... it all seems soo.... surreal... Like something out of a Murakami book... I could rationalise all this and blame it on drugs or shrooms, but I didn't take any!

So how should I go on about rationalising this? Should I scream "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ONNN" or should I just come to terms with all of this? Well, if I go on with the first route, I might end up in an asylum, so that is out of the question. Hmm, so I am left with an odd choice of accepting all this ridiculously unbelievable story. Perhaps you and I are on the same page here. NO!!!! I am not raving! You're wrong to accuse me like that! My dog actually talks to me. In fact, let me tell you another incident to make you believe me.

Alright, so Spiegel hates firecrackers. I think all dogs do. But anyway, there was one time I bought home some of those small firecrackers and started to burst? them with my friends. I can still remember Spiegel's contemptuous eyes on me when I sat at the dinner table. The next day, I found dog shit in my cereal. Yea, no shit, genius, it was Spiegel! It was his revenge!

"It was his revenge!" That's how his letter ended. Abruptly. I don't have any reaction to this. He's been like that all his life. Doctor said it's some kind of "complex psychopathological condition", not sure what that means. But I think he's getting more aware of that.

He's surely creative, don't you think? I mean he doesn't even have a dog and he managed to conjure such a story! That's what I like about that boy. He is really good with a pen. I'd even say that he could someday become like that crazy, depressed Czech writer.

Ooh imagine all the fame! And he's too dumb to care for money! Ooh I must take care of this boy! Imagine all the money I can get out of him if I just become a "good friend"! Heh heh! Now that is a great idea!

(The so-called friend rushed over to his so-called friend's house to see him hanging from the ceiling. He felt sad not for his so-called friend but for the money that he thought he had rights to.)

Wait, if you think that the suicide was too abrupt and nonsensical, you're absolutely right! Whoever wrote this story (well, story of a story) is a genuine pain in the ass! He makes such contradictory statements, leaves a lot of loopholes and there's no substance whatsoever!

I must say you've wasted your time reading this, and so did I. No, I will not console you; I am too angry at the moment. I suggest you find something else to read and forget about this farce. Oh such arrogance!

poems that i wrote when i finished my exam early

2024-11-28T14:44:22Z

I had finished an exam early, but wasn't allowed to submit and go (I would've gone and read Kant, I guess). Since I wasn't left with many choices, I flipped to the last page of the question paper and started writing some poems in Assamese.

তুমি আৰু মই

অপৰাধ কৰিলে মাৰ খাবা
কোবন দিম মই,
নকৰিলেও গাধৰ দৰে খাতিবা
তুমি, মাথো তুমি।
সৰ্বশ্ৰেষ্ঠ তুমি আৰু মই।

ৰুছ

ভগবান পুতিন
আৰু "হিদেন পোলিটিকেল এজেন্দা",
অনিৰ্ণেয় কাৰ্যপ্ৰনালী;
নিঃকন্ঠ, নিৰুপায়
সবল বৌদ্ধিক সম্প্ৰদায়।

মৰমৰ মামা

মৰমৰ মামাই বোলে মোক
মাৰি পেলাব চেষ্টা কৰিছিল।
মোক বেয়া পাইচিল হৱলা,
সেইটো এ হৈছে মোৰ "ছাইল্ডহুদ ত্ৰমা"।
এদিন গলো, জেল,
ছাব,
মামা কংশক,
দেখাত কলা-মলা, বোম বালখুৰুৱা;
একো বিচাৰ-খোচাৰ নকৰি,
গুচি আহিলো মই,
স্ৱৰ্গত, যত কোনো ত্ৰমা এ মোক হাত দিব নৱাৰে।
"ভগবান, এতিয়া আমাক কোনে ৰক্ষা কৰিব?"
এঃ ৰবা হে, নৰ-মনিচ,
মোৰ টেনছন কিবা কম বুলি ভাবিচা নেকি?

It's sad that despite being a native Assamese, I have a really bad handwriting. Aah, urbanisation!

I was told not to run

2024-10-28T08:54:27Z

I was told not to run,
Not to look away
And speak up!
But couldn't when the moment called for.
I did the opposite and ran away,
Screaming and frantic
When I tripped, fell,
And died a quick, painless death.
So I couldn't run anyway.

source

Are you feeling proud of yourself?

2024-10-14T08:49:05Z

generated with firefly

"Feeling very proud lately..."

But pride swallows you. It gulps you and spits your bones out. It wants to grab you but you must not let it.

Run away. Run away as soon as you find yourself content and happy with your frugal achievements. They won't help you grow; they will instead kill you.

You will want to indulge in that feeling of ecstacy, you will want to it to stay. But the serotonin it releases is too much for your brain to handle, and so it will explode inside your skull, leaving invisible hemorrhages in your brain and clots in your soul.

Don't be too proud of yourself. Don't be oblivious of the possibility that everything might collapse right this moment. What will you do then?

Will your pride save you?

No, it will not. The thing that can save you is humility. It is the fact that you don't know anything. Your faculties lie to you, you perceive illusions. There's always someone who's a master at something you're not.

There is much to know and much to understand. And pride will not help you in that quest.

To maintain your current position, and progress in life, you have to keep yourself grounded. Familiarise yourself with the ground, the soil, the earth. No matter what laurels you bring, what achievements, awards, accolades you receive, you must always remain grounded. KNOW where you come from and what you truly are: a mere flawed human capable of only a few things.

Remember that you are biased and that you don't have many choices. How could you be proud? How could you feel better than others when it is for a fact that you are not free?

You can only go so far.
But you can go so far.

Only if you remain humble and do your things with composure and integrity. You're alive because you had the choice to survive.. Now survive again. By being who you are supposed to, and doing what matters.

Music I enjoyed recently

2024-10-09T08:39:03Z

Here is the list of music I enjoyed recently (in a couple of months).
Some are new for me, some are not, but they've all given me a feeling of belonging, a catharsis.

In no particular order,

Songs for the Deaf (Album) - Queens of the Stone Age
Indiscipline - King Crimson
World of the Void - Kaipa
Var kommer barnen in - Opeth version
First Two Albums: Core & Purple - Stone Temple Pilots
Aerials - System of a Down
La Villa Strangiato - Rush

There are a lot more, but I fear that they are not on top of my head.
If you'd like to see what I listen to as a whole, check out my Last.FM profile.

Am I actually Free?

2024-10-04T14:58:13Z

Once I had an epiphany and then I thought, "I am capable of recognising my deeper self... That, I can BE myself, that I have the choice to know myself."

Probably a long-shot, but I think that because I have a choice to know myself, I am a free being. I don't know what you might call this, but does seem like another cogito ergo sum.

But, am I actually free?

Psychologically? No. Our "reason" is a slave to stimuli. It is biased. This quote comes to mind:

"If the content of a screen saver on an irrelevant computer can affect your willingness to help strangers without your being aware of it, how free are you?"
-Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, p. 128. About Priming Effect

I am not a free-being in my beliefs as well.
Because many of those are a result of the knowledge we gained in our ancestral environment over hundreds of millions of years. I think Locke's tabula rasa is probably not valid.

Physically? Perhaps not either. As humans, we succumb to bodily desires and we feel pain despite not choosing it.

If we're not free both in our minds and our body, what is left for us?

Now, I can't think of anything but to have hope. Yet, I know that hope doesn't bring free-will. Optimism only makes it worse in anticipation.

Thoughts on The Prestige (2006)

2024-09-30T08:24:59Z

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
-Confucius

The Prestige (2006) is one of the most intellectually stimulating films I've ever watched, which is confirmed by the fact that I am still thinking about it after watching it almost 4 days ago; not many films have been able to do that. In fact, I want to mull over it. It already has a grip over me and I have surrendered to it.

This film, in my opinion, is one of the best Nolan movies (among the ones I've watched). Sure, Interstellar and Oppenheimer may be his magnum opus, but this movie really got to me, man. This movie was fabulous.

People have been watching and re-watching this movie and that's understandable because you can understand so many new things in the second pass. It's like reading a book again and finding a whole new perspective of it.

And, here is the part where I say Spoiler Warning.

This movie doesn't have action, nor does it messes with your mind (unlike Inception). It just forces you to think. It wants you think and explain why the character did what he did, all the social and behavioral phenomena.

You see how it all spirals, but it's different from the typical "spiraling into chaos" narrative. Because in the end, you're left with no particular conclusion, no particular justification of actions, only a mere signal that, one has won the battle and that costed him a part of himself.

Borden (played by Christian Bale)

The most important part of this movie is how the characters' moral sense decays progressively. Each trying to outwit the other and losing control of themselves in the process, which in the end becomes so fervent that one resorts to framing the other, or killing themselves (you'll see what I mean by this when you watch the movie).

Angier' character is a tragic one because he is a "slave to his obsessions". His revenge is empty. Because, the real grief, that he felt for his wife's death, had already vanished when he grew more and more incompetent and obsessed. He had already lost the battle against Borden when he let his obsessions took hold of him.

Angier (played by Hugh Jackman)

Borden's character is strange. I think it is a metaphor for Jungian or Freudian divide of the human mind, the "parts of the self"; that, there are, simultaneously, multiple us trying to live. Why the twins chose to live that way, that I do not know. But it is for certain that their life was the greatest act of all.

All in all, this movie is worth brooding over. It is very thought-provoking. The whole plot makes sense now. Every foreshadow (Nolan does it a lot) makes sense, and it is so satisfying to think about it.

I was not here with a literary theory or analysis. I was just here to tell you that movies can be fabulous, and it's often those movies that are outright classified as underdogs.

10/10

Failures in Complex Software Systems

2024-09-12T06:43:55Z

generated by deepai.org

This is an exercise for the AI Alignment Course Session 1, a case study on "Disinformation on Facebook and the Rohingya genocide".

For context, watch this video.

Prompts

What was the purpose and use-case of the software system?

(2011) Myanmar was emerging from the choke-hold, opening up to the world at an ever-increasing speed. People started using phones, which were rarely used just a few years ago.

These phones, preloaded with Facebook allowed people to connect to the internet without much effort. And this was supposed to create a connection between the people of the country, and the outside world.

Facebook wanted to spread their services, thus gaining more ads and revenue from its increasing use in the country. Facebook was the prime source of information and that in itself was a major cause of concern...

What were the faults, and how severe were the consequences?

Buddhist Extremists and Hate Speakers used that platform to spread hate for the Rohingya Muslims. And the Facebook algorithm supported it.

Because there was little to no moderation by Facebook in the ongoing activities, the posts spread like wildfire, like a contagious virus. And that led the extremists to exploit people's biases and feed them misformation. As a consequence, there are almost a million refugee Rohingyas whose country and people have failed them.

This ethnic cleansing was not directly caused by Facebook. It instead proved to be the catalyst in the reaction.

What other factors contributed to the incident?

Availability Bias: The frequency of such hateful speech and misinformation on Facebook was a lot. And because of that availability, people started believing in lies.
Neglect from Facebook HQ: Because the admins ignored to moderate the algorithm in Myanmar, and instead focused on supposed "growth", people conformed to the availability bias.
This means that misalignment can be caused by inaction (of us humans).
Lack of Fact-checking in algorithm: How will you classify misinformation if you don't check for it? And generally the algorithm doesn't do that (it cares about "trends").
Morality in Humans: Sounds like a good thing to discuss over a evening cup of tea.

How did the incentives of the people involved affect the emergence of the fault?

Myanmar was becoming a more "open" country, which meant that social connection and networking had to be established. And Facebook tried to do just that.

It was a sort of win-win situation. Facebook experienced growth, and the people of Myanmar enjoyed the unmoderated discussions and news that had the capacity to ignite a country-wide fire.

And people wanted to connect. International bodies too ignored everything that was happening inside and instead focused the good-looking outside.

Result? A failed algorithm driven by primitive social instincts.

More such examples

Anti-vaccine conspiracies
WhatsApp "university": rumors, unscientific notions, only to confirm there preconceived notions (although it is more of a social phenomenon than a technical one?)
Misinformation during elections
Pandemic misinformation: consider every false information we got during COVID-19..

What do we learn?

Technology for us, is equivalent to the fire for the Homo erectus. It is helpful, but very, very dangerous if not used carefully.

sometimes I feel awfully depressed

2024-09-04T08:12:41Z

Sometimes I feel awfully depressed. And as absurd as it sounds, in such moments, I calm my nerves with a lollipop.

Had a bad day at school? No problem. Had a fight with your friend? Nothing to worry about. There's nothing that a lollipop can't do. It has become my sole confidant.

It's been a while since my social life got fucked. My best friends, J and R, and I, were a trio, now separated. We don't get together that often except for calls. My online friends, friends with whom I was particularly close to; all of them busy in their own stuff.
It is a busy world, and for the first time in my life, I could certainly say so.

School. The testament of bullshittery. Count me as a school hater, I don't care. I don't believe there's any point of schools except the social factor. And that too becomes mundane sometimes.
Not accomplishing anything, not knowing anything, not understanding anything, not moving. I could come up with 50 words about "school" that all start with an "f": frivolous, foolish, fucking hell...

And so came the lollipops, helping me in numbing the pain, or the harsh feelings that come with the daily life. In hindsight, the lollipop is my healthier version of the cigarette. Why waste a lung when you can have the same feelings of escapism and comfort with a lollipop?

And c'est la vie. There's not enough profanity in the world which can ever compensate for the world's pure brutality. Oh, I used to be a really happy kid/boy/man/child. Now I am busy meeting demands of that unseen force, suffering without cause. What changed? Everything.

Sometimes I feel this pressure on my face. I feel like actually bursting to tell all of my peers and teachers and whoever the fuck wants to hear, that I never wanted things to turn out this way and that I don't belong here at all.

Yes, though I am living a paradoxically complacent life, I wasn't supposed to be here. I never came to terms with it, never accepted it.

And so, I comfort myself, by doing the things I love, and a lollipop.

The Puzzle

2024-08-20T18:03:28Z

The missing parts in me
Are perpetually growing
In numbers, possibly even
Becoming infinite,
Till that swallows me whole
And I become myself
Once again.
But empty this time.

Reflections on Existence and Meaning

2024-08-16T07:49:59Z

Nature is like someone throwing a ball in the air, gauging its rise and arc-and where it will fall. And what does the ball gain as it flies upward? Or lose when it plummets to earth?

What does the bubble gain from its existence? Or lose by bursting? And the same for a candle.

Meditations 8.20

What is Marcus Aurelius trying to tell? This "parable" is hard to understand, and I can only assume what it is saying.

It is saying that nature is ever-changing, but that it is an "isolated" system and nothing changes inside it. For nature doesn't do anything outside the norms of logos. [Nature is like...]

It might also be saying that existence per se doesn't mean anything. [What does the bubble...]. But I believe that it is what you do with that existence that matters; the purpose is the work that is to be done, which creates meaning for itself (here I borrow from the Camus).

We could also look at it from another side and analyse the metaphor in human life: we do not gain anything from success or lose anything from failure. It simply doesn't matter, and it is natural.

Reflecting on such topics is highly impersonal, subjective and difficult. One can only touch the surface without tiring or experiencing existential dread.

Notes on Spaced Repetition and Mathematics

2024-08-13T14:38:41Z

These are the notes/stuff I learned on Michael A. Nielsen's 2019 essay titled "Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics". [1]

To see through a piece of mathematics, you must dissect it and familiarise yourself with its individual parts. You must tear it apart and analyse as if you were trying to solve a literal puzzle.

Construct questions, and answer them, from different perspectives and leave pieces blank in questions. The more variation (redundancy) you have, the clearer the proof/theorem/piece of mathematics will be.

Put effort in both specialized and generalised statements. It may be very time-intensive but it is worth it, for it will make you a bit sure about that concept. Things will seem very clear and thorough.

This can be done in Anki to improve the cognitive process and remember the individual & broader concepts for a longer duration. Use Cloze Deletions, Reverses, etc. (cf. 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge)

There will be a time when the answers will become a part of yourself that then you'll recognise the "truth" of that particular piece of mathematics.

Summary

Redundancy
Looking from Different Angles
Anki and Spaced Repetition
Truth.

Works Cited

Michael A. Nielsen, “Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics” http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics, 2019.

Stoner

2024-08-08T14:32:01Z

This book is about the seemingly ordinary and unimportant life of William Stoner, who may not be the best husband, father, lover or teacher, but just like the rest of us, alive. The story has no villains or heroes, it is rather an intricate analysis of the complexes of the human nature that surrounds us. This is- as the author himself says- an "escape to reality."

If I had to talk more about Stoner himself, he is perpetually searching for himself and never quite finding it. He has a reverence towards being dedicated, and lives a life with a secret passion towards teaching and simply being.

Buy on Amazon

Stoner finds himself tangled into a myriad of problems- he marries the wrong girl, realises true love only in his later part of life, couldn't be the teacher he wanted to be, and didn't progress enough professionally. Nonetheless, he was somehow content, with an almost Stoic and indifferent attitude.

At a certain point, inside him was a tired spirit and had aged exponentially only in a couple of years out of profound loss of a mystical kind, and of regret. We can juxtapose that scenario with ourselves: haven't we felt as though we were profoundly sad? When everything is hard, even to breathe?

This struggle, this lurid feeling, led to his inevitable revelation and improvement of his life. He began taking control of his life, and pushed himself to find and be more of himself. But that wouldn't last long. This was a war for a meaningful existence; he had a lot more to do, but could he?

Apart from a moving and sad plot, this book is also of literary importance. It blurs the line between a "classic" and a "modern", consisting of brilliant imagery and literary devices. William's articulation of every scene is on point and coherent.

A deeply profound and philosophical book, full of real insights which frequency seem to increase as the book gets closer and closer to the end, and as the characters themselves realise how life is very, very strange.

It might not be as "astounding" as Kafka or Camus, but it is special in a discrete way; a phenomenon, that you could feel, breathe and live. John William's 1965 novel "Stoner" gets to you in a way you can't imagine.

Sankar Ramzaan Choudhury

2024-08-05T13:42:09Z

যেনে তেনে চব থিকে আছে
আল্লাহৰ ৰেহেম আৰু
ঈশ্বৰৰ বৰদান
ৰাতিপুৱা পঢ়ো পুথি,
সন্ধিয়া শুনো আজান।

দুখে ভাগৰে যেতিয়া
মঞ্চৰ পৰা নামো,
মই পাহৰি যাওঁ মোৰ নাম,
আছিল 'শংকৰ' নে আছিল 'ৰমজান'?

"বাৰু থিক আছে চৌধুৰী,
আমাৰ স্বাৰ্থ বোৰ কোনে
পুৰাব? কোৱাচোন"
মই মিচিকিয়া হাঁহিৰে ক‌ওঁ
"যিশু খ্ৰীষ্ট, আৰু কোন?"

6 things I learned from 6 weeks of n&w s5

2024-08-04T12:21:27Z

buildspace's nights&weekends s5 has been an experience for me. It was unlike anything. I've been to academic workshops, science camps and stuff, but nothing came close to this.

This was where you could do shit that you loved, build things passionately along with 1000s of people. It was a mass hysteria, a phenomenon, but in a good and constructive way.

There were lectures and labs given by the Farza and the team at buildspace. I learned a lot of things from them and from my own experiences over the 6 weeks.

My project was Explanatory: teaching math, science, philosophy concepts to high-schoolers via Khan Academy style videos.

And these are the 6 things I learned in the 6 weeks:

create -> launch -> feedback -> learn -> iterate -> repeat
the correct thing for you to do now is experiment and see what works out.
show people your work and get feedback. this is the only way you can truly iterate on your work.
make it really easy for them to understand the stuff you're working on so that they are inclined to check it. also give them the call-to-action (what they should do now)
review what's working for you and what isn't. consider numbers, emotions, feedback and so on. and experiment.
you don't have to care. just keep making stuff, stay consistent and always iterating.

It has been an honour.

You can make something good.
— Farza 🇵🇰🇺🇸 (@FarzaTV) June 24, 2024

Spending time intentionally

2024-07-25T13:19:55Z

Let's just stop using the term "productivity" to mean "doing more in less time". Instead, we should use the word to mean "doing more intentionally".

And in that context, I have not been productive lately. While I use a somewhat productivity-rich system, it is not quite working. So I need to iterate, and come back with an even better system to spend my time intentionally. Because:

You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall down to the level of your system.
-James Clear, Atomic Habits.

And I have a few ideas in mind.

Identify

I have to first identify what I spend my time on. This is so that I get a statistical data of "which task takes how much time". This will also help me timeblock more efficiently.

Time Tracking
Identifying the things I waste my time the most.
What websites/apps do I use the most?
What triggers that response? What kind of pattern does it make?

Prioritise

This is very important. If I don't prioritise the important stuff, then I am gonna lose a lot of time.

“Curb your desire. Don’t set out your heart to so many things, and you will get what you need.”
-Epictetus

Prioritising makes sure that you're working on what matters.

Progression Tasks > maintainance tasks. ^[1]
Tasks like sleeping, eating, cleaning up are maintainance task and don't contribute to your progression. What does help you progress is writing a book, training for a hackathon, getting ready for that basketball tournament, and so on.
Automate the maintainance tasks as much as you can. Save time.
There are no shortcut for sleeping, eating and exercising though.
Use Retrospective Time-Table instead of the Progressive one. ^[2]
Keep a tracker for important metrics like health, studies, relationships, etc.
"Hell yeah, or no."

Energise

If you ain't got no energy, you can do no thang.

Makes sense. What could you do about it?

Energy Tracking. When do you feel the most energetic?
Pay attention to that Biological Prime Time. That's the time which you should dedicate to deep work ^[3]
Meditation. This is very very important. You all know it is.

Improve

Habit Stacking to make things much easier.
- Always pair a passive and active task, not passive-passive or active-active (they act like the like-poles of the magnet and repel). Or else, it won't be of any use.
Make use of "Portable Tasks" ^[4]
- These are the tasks that are low-effort, doesn't require much initialisation and can be done while travelling / commuting.
- Like reading a book, listening to audiobooks, podcasts, etc.

Your (and my) objective should be to be more mindful and intentional. There is no such trick or technique to do that. There will be time when you're just as "unproductive" as the neighbourhood watchman, but that shouldn't stop you from tweaking your system and being a better person. Every time.

Footnotes

Ali Abdaal. (2024, February 14). How to Find Time for Everything with a Full Time Job. YouTube. ↩︎
Ali Abdaal. (2019, February 24). How to study for exams - The Retrospective Revision Timetable. YouTube. ↩︎
Bailey, C. (2018). Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction. Pan Macmillan. ↩︎
Tayla Burrell. (2024, January 27). 5 Habits that Save me 25+ hours a week | Time management for busy people. YouTube. ↩︎

The Dichotomy of Control

2024-07-17T07:52:02Z

You shouldn't be surprised if life gives you lemons, or if you find yourself at a tough spot, just lost and dumbfounded.

Did you think that life would be that easy? Of course not. There are many things out of your control. You can't really do much about it. It would seem silly if those are the reasons for your frowning.

You can protest, fight, disobey. But remember that you're not the only one in history who did all that. Those who came before you, have already been through what you call "dread". They too fought, bickered, throbbed. And where are they now? Six feet under, along with everyone else.

Everyone has the same fate. It's upto you to decide which path you want to take towards that destination.

However,

Protest, but with cause.
Fight, but with honesty.
Disobey, but with justice.

Ground yourself with the truth. That you can't have everything under control. But you have the autonomy to accept it. Accept it to live well, and to make the world a better place by focusing on what is important.

Singularity

2024-07-14T12:41:31Z

I am tired of turning my head
When I look at you,
In the presence of lingering eyes.

Let's just go, you and me,
To a secluded bubble of our own
Where I could content myself,
By staring at your glimmering eyes
And morning smile.
Without being afraid,
Without control.

That I can be myself
To embrace your warm skin,
Your smooth face and long fingers.
No mortal being could interrupt;
A singular moment of the singularity that took place next.

Reflections on a disturbed life

2024-07-05T07:27:05Z

I am guilty of a fervent disconnection.
Severed ties to my glowing past
To embrace the lonely present.
I am here, but I am not;
I am in the tangent between the lost and found,
So ludicrous and provocative at times,
The busywork and isolation;
A case of unfulfilled prophecies,
That I made, for my own,
Only to see them fail.
I am discontent of this leitmotif
That the days host in me;
Thoughts of escapism are candle flames
Waiting to be blown.
Indifferent towards the inevitable change
And to never be tired, or surrender,
To accept the evergreen choice
Of being, as a good being,
With humility, without hypocrisy.
And self-compassion.

Improving productivity by changing keyboard layout

2024-06-28T13:15:15Z

how to be more humble: switch to a different keyboard layout. trust me, you WILL be humbled.

(typed w/ tarmak-1)
— Nibir Sankar (@moisentinel) June 27, 2024

Backstory

Okay so, I am trying to switch to Colemak using the Tarmak transitional layouts, and I changed my keyboard layout in both my phone (colemak) and pc (tarmak-1). And a thought came to my mind...

that this is a great method to turn you productive af!

Sure, switching to another keyboard layout may improve your productivity, but that's not how this thing works..

Bruh what do you mean?

Imagine that you're chatting constantly, posting comments on reels like it's your job, and so on. And suddenly you see that you keyboard looks different.

my keyboard layout (colemak), on my phone

You're unable to type, because everything is different. This introduces a "friction", your brain becomes lazy to type and you get angry when you have to type. And thus, inevitably, reduce your screen time. Yes, that's what I am talking about.

As simple as that. Plus, you don't lose functionality per se.

Loopholes

"bruh, I can just learn the new layout."
- so maybe one can make a "keyboard key randomizer"? so that people get a random layout every time they try to chat.
"bruh, I can just use voice notes."
- yea, and :you should! And prolly you should just call that person.
"bruh, my brain just finds new ways to get dopamine."
- i think you should work on your overall focus improvement...

Future?

Maybe someone's bold enough to try this out voluntarily and tell us how it worked out for them.

If you do, don't forget to tag me! (@moisentinel on X)

But tbh, this won't work on it's own, this is just another one of those "productivity techniques". You must work on your overall development, be more mindful and moderate yourself.

P.S: wrote using tarmak-1 layout. i can feel it running in my veins.

:x convo

Conversation-Centric Communication

This philosophy states that conversation is the only thing that counts. Such as phone calls, irl meetings, and video calls. This is because of it's humane nature and attributes.

But other techs such as sms, instant messaging, etc should be used as a supporter, not solely. For example, to arrange a meeting or send some information or location. They should complement humane connection, not take it away.

Critique of One's Own School

2024-06-23T08:03:29Z

Listen to the audio while reading the post:

Your browser does not support the audio element.

:how do I change the speed?

Kendriya Vidyalaya Mangaldoi.

I was scrolling through Google Reviews and I saw that a lot of people gave this school a 5 star. Though there are reasons for that, but one needs to criticise a system as well and point out the flaws so that the system may improve. Because-

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
—Gil Stern

After studying 10 years in this school (from Grade 1 to 10), I have observed both the ups and downs of this school. And that is why, I believe that I can show the reader a different side of the commonplace. Moreover, I have an urge to resolve the concern about the future of my school.

my review from when I was in Grade 4

In this critique, I will try not to give a biased opinion. In fact, I will be as critical and as honest as possible, because I believe it can, and will, contribute to the development of the school. This is a tribute to the good times I had in my school, and the time that I will spend in the future.

:x change-speed

Click the "three-dot" menu in the player, and select the playback speed. For now, it goes only upto 2x.

1. Introduction

There are three factors worth considering when analysing any system:

The White
The Black
The Grey

The White are things that are innately good about that system. And in our context, the things that are good about the school and the body governing it.

The Black are things that are bad about it. And the Grey are things that are out of our control. It is a complex variable in our equation.

I will write about these three factors. Keep in mind, I am writing based on what I have experienced. You should try to form your own opinion, and not solely based on this text.

You can also skip to The Black where I have written about the flaws of the school in length.

2. The White

I believe that ANY school can give the student a memorable experience. It becomes a second home for them, a place to seek solace at times of dread. But what makes this school any more special?

This school may not be as posh or "hi-fi" as others, but this school continues to excel at many aspects. If you ask any KVian if s/he is proud to be the part of the Sangathan, s/he would never deny.

KV Mangaldoi provides an experience that no one, except other KVs can give. There is no other replacement.

Being a student of a Kendriya Vidyalaya will give you many perks:

The ability to participate in a variety of activities like sports, cultural, STEM, etc.
You are not limited to the school-level (unlike private schools). It can be a platform where you display your skills in a state or national level.
You can meet people from all over India through those activities.
From an economic standpoint, it is a bang-for-the-buck. A low fee and tons of features (since a school is also a consumer service).
Optimal infrastructure and facilities.
The admissions are indiscriminate. Meaning that you're not limited by your economic or any other condition. You have a right to education, and you shall have it.
Competitive exposure: You are directly connected with the centre of CBSE. So you get notifications about more competitive exams such as IOQM/PRMO, Aryabhata Challenge and other opportunities sooner.

There are also great things specific to KV Mangaldoi:

There are teachers who are quite supportive and always trying to nudge us in the right direction. We are always grateful to them!
When we need advice, we also have a counsellor to help us with countering problems in academics and beyond.
There are a quite a few students who excel in their domains and are always achieving. From getting selected for National Level NCSC, RBVP and Sports, ISRO-held Young Scientist Program, publishing research articles, to even authoring a book.

the space is great too! source: X

And many more.
Just ask any student. You will hear many good things about this school, and you must. Because this school is genuinely one of the best school in Mangaldoi. But it does have quite a lot of flaws.

3. The Black

What does a school consist of? In my opinion, it is primarily the students, teachers, parents and administration. The building and space comes next. They are interdependent and mingled, and form a soft of biosphere in the school.

It is these four primary factors that govern the environment in the school. Let me repeat those: the students, teachers, parents and administration. And by that logic, if there is a flaw, it is because of these (the 'good' come from these as well). Of course it goes beyond these four factors. We will talk about it in The Grey.

One side note:
To my peers, juniors, teachers, and authorities reading this: please keep an open mind. My intention is not to defame anyone, but to present facts that could help solve larger issues. Let's aim for constructive discussions rather than arguments.

Here is a detailed analysis of my experience with the Four.

3.1. Students

1.

There is little to no student enthusiasm. Only a fraction of the students have it. They do not want to bring change and evolve; they are content with getting berserk over a games period.

This is harmful. When the students do not initiate anything, the output decreases. There is no more growth, only the same old stuff. Change must be constant, and students, or people in general, seem to forget that.

2.

Which makes sense, because students have a lack of individuality and self-awareness. They are lethargic, dependent and apathic. They are spoilt and indulgent. Maybe it is related to the environmental and social culture of the place? Because I've seen overly active and aware students in other regions (Refer to 3.3.2). It may also be because of the technological epidemic that we are in.

3.

Students do not collaborate. They do only when the school organises CCA and Sports events. But it needs to go beyond that. Students need to unite when it calls for a change, they need to learn from each other, support and teach each other instead of being arrogant and jealous. They refuse to contribute to their peers and the school they are in.

4.

Even though there is a student council, the members often get "chosen" rather than elected. And the chosen ones, as I have seen, do nothing. The council members only stand at their spots when they are "ordered". They are too busy studying for their 12th-board exams and entrance tests. They choose not to impart the knowledge and experience they have.

5.

Only a small fraction of students operate on their own terms, to do something good or even extraordinary. That is clearly because students are directly or indirectly dependent (Refer to 3.2.3 to see why). In fact, they don't even know how to study on their own until they are too old. I know it because I have seen my seniors settling for subpar learning methods.

6.

And so, they rely on tuitions/coaching than focusing on school and self-study. I've seen many people (even my friends) waste their time going to tuition for 1-2, and even 3 subjects. But when board exams came near, they had to do it all over again- all on their own. No one can give you a good score if you don't study on your own. I believe that self-study, if done right, can solve almost all the problems.

Although it is natural that you might need help, and you should ask for it. But make sure you've used up every inch of your brain-power before that.

3.2. Authority (teachers and administration)

1.

The library was locked 70% of the time in 2023-24. We were not allowed to utilise the resources properly. Why? The explanation given was, "there's a lack of teachers, so we can't let you in without any supervision". Why couldn't the students step up and be accountable for themselves? And why couldn't the authority try to teach the students to be more accountable? In the core, students do not have autonomy and they don't rebel.

2.

There must be a reason, right? Yes, few unsavory incidents did occur, which forced the authority to take harsh measures. Students were more restricted; there needed a "supervisor" for every situation, be that practicing for an event or even studying in the library. These authoritarian measures didn't make sense, at least to me. It's like a parent trying to restrict their kid from going out just because they had made a mistake. Perhaps I am biased; there may be an other side to this. But this doesn't stop here.

3.

Spoon-feeding is a major problem in schools. Sure, a child needs to be guided and mentored until s/he attains maturity, but with an emphasis on promoting independence of the student, so that s/he can cope up with reality- that nothing comes easily.

This spoon-feeding can be in many ways, such as prompting while the student is answering, giving instructions to almost everything, answers on textbooks (this issue extends beyond authority), etc.
Let students think. And let them think enough.

4.

I understand that every teacher's teaching technique is different. But in my opinion, teachers, at best of their abilities, should use evidence-based, scientific teaching methods. For example, the use of flashcards, spaced repetition, quizzes, immersive experiments, etc.

As I have observed, these "special" things are done only on inspection days; either the teachers have too much workload, or perhaps this aspect needs some time to actually evolve organically.

For me, the linear note-taking system which has been going on since the beginning of time, doesn't work. Neither does the "notes completion = good" metric. It shouldn't be the norm.

5.

The X handle (@KVMangaldoi) is used only for posting things that are made mandatory by the Education Ministry; the bare minimum. It doesn't display the achievements that students have got and nor anything that is relevant to current affairs of the school.

Many of peers and juniors have achieved a lot in academia, culture and sports, and they should be posted in the X Handle. Because this is 2024, almost everybody uses X/Twitter. Posting their achievements will promote the student as well as the school in itself.

I suggest there should be a team to handle social media accounts for the school which comprises of both the students and teachers. It can also be another platform for students to show their creativity.

3.3. Parents

1.

The involvement of parents is very low in a positive sense. Only a few parents actually contribute to the development of the school. The majority just limit themselves to the societal notion of "good marks = good kid" and rant about how the school doesn't do X and Y instead of going to the bottom of the problem.

2.

Parents are misguided. In other regions, people are aware and understanding. But that is often not the case here, and that reflects on the personality of their child. If you observe closely, people here lack the motivation at times. They could benefit from a bit more initiative.

3.

I do understand that they too want their child to get good marks and have a good future (who doesn't?). But the reason for which they want their kid to get good grades here is absurd: to compete with other parents. This happens and it is not healthy. This makes the parents to become more self-centric and competitive, making them unable to see the bigger picture.

3.4 Hierarchical Influence

Apart from school-level administration, KVs are also influenced by regional and national level administration. And most of the times, the schools are required to follow the orders sent by them.

Here are some flaws which the school inherits from influence:

1.

The Student-Teacher Ratio in an average classroom is 40:1. This means that it is impossible for the teacher to engage with students individually and provide a personalised education. Every student is different, yet the teacher has no choice but to adapt to a generalised mode of teaching.

There should be individual interactions. How else is the teacher suppose to analyse the students' performance and solve their specific problems?

2.

Call it fate or bad luck, 3/5 of our subject teachers were transferred in October 2023.... and we had our pre-board exams in November. After this abrupt transfer of teachers, things got disrupted completely. Even if new/substitute teachers came, it was for us hard to bond with them over such a short period of time.

This can sometimes lead to a degrading performance of a student, and especially of those students who had been very dependent on the first place (Refer to 3.2.3). The Sangathan should transfer the teachers in the end of the session instead of the middle.

3.

Summer Break misalignment. Almost all the KVs in Guwahati Region suffer from this. The summer break happens during May-June. But the "real" summer begins in July. Even the state board schools have their summer breaks in July.

4. The Grey

This is the factor which is out of our control. We cannot do much about it. The Grey includes things like institutional policies, societal notions, traditions, etc. It will take time to make progress in this sector, yet I want to point out a few things I don't like:

1.

The Indian Education System sucks. In fact, EVERY education system sucks. The education system doesn't want the median student to do anything that s/he likes. S/he is supposed to achieve goals that isn't his/hers ^[1]. I have given up on it after seeing the NTA-NEET mishap, misconduction of CUET, JEE rat race, increasing suicide rates and so on.

There is a lack of freedom and versatility in mainstream boards like CBSE and ICSE. These boards focus on making students good enough to crack exams, but not to live and think well.

My only hope is that the implementation of NEP 2020 will solve things, which will take another 5-6 years. I hope that my younger friends don't have to suffer like us.

For now there is no choice but to be content:

We tend to complain a lot about the broken education system, but complaints don't recover the 6 hours per day we spend with it. Here are my tips to having a fulfilling school experience, from what I've lived condensed into a guide I wish I had when I started high school: [thread]
— laura (@laurgao) April 12, 2022

2.

IITs and other institutions are just a brand. You get in, you get a special "pass" you can use to get high-paying jobs. This is a developing country. The govt. wants you to make money and promote industry. And all they are doing is making people money-making machines. I've written at length about this. I don't get why people chase for it.

3.

Society. It wants you to feel little. It judges you every step of the way, never moving its eyes from you. It holds high expectations; yet, if you achieve that, people will feel jealous. Kind of paradoxical, isn't it?

It sets up metrics: "you have to get a good job!", "eh? only 70%?", "why are you doing B.A. in Philosophy? who will give you a job?", etc.

No rational being would create such orthodox and misinformed notions in 2024. Quoting George Orwell, "Orthodoxy is unconsciousness". And this holds true for people in India even beyond the academic landscape.

4.

Education is a pay-to-win game. This sounds harsh, but it is true. Studying abroad will cost you your kidneys, studying in a private school will cost you your sleep. Freedom in academia costs money.

For example, take :A-Levels (Cambridge) or IB (:what are these?). Schools with these boards are only available on urban centers in India. And suppose you were a eager kid but have no money, you have slim chances of studying in such systems. This is only a single example, you can simply observe to realise that it is true.

And a lot more.

Such situations make us feel that there's no point in escaping this "cage", because there's always a bigger cage waiting. We should try to be content with it, and do whatever we can to make things better within our control.

:x A-Levels-IB

These are boards/qualifications (like CBSE or ICSE) which put emphasis on knowledge, practicality and application rather than rote memory or "exams".

5. Conclusion

Okay, I have said enough.

I would like to remind you that this was by no means, a hateful remark on the school. This was based on my experiences to point out the things that might otherwise go uncovered...

...and also because I love my school. I want to improve it and contribute to it, and this is one of my few steps towards that goal. I will spend the next 2 years in Kendriya Vidyalaya Mangaldoi (I have taken admission for Grade 11), and I can't wait to see a positive change in the school.

I realise that there is a big difference between reality and dreams, but I dream big. I really want to see things change and go beyond the norms. But I cannot do this alone. I will need the support of many, many people- volunteers, active people, teachers, students, authority. :See how you can help. So that the dreams can become the reality.

May the force be with you.

:x help

Share this post, talk to your friends about it. Discuss on the problems that I have written, or tell your own problem and find a solution for it.
Be more active in school and just be a better person. Do what matters the most.

Footnotes

Andy Matuschak, Interview ↩︎

Why do I want to be more focused

2024-06-22T16:05:30Z

It has been a while since I have not been focused enough. I have been juggling too many projects, working on too many things at once. While that seemed to work for a while, I now have a short attention span and a feeling of FOMO. The worst thing is that it is now affecting my productivity, academics and even my relationships.

I can't seem to have only ONE thing in my attention space, even though ironically, I have been an advocate for the "focus movement" for quite some time. It's really uncomfortable when you notice that you are unable to talk to your loved ones without doing anything else or study without seeing yourself chatting on Discord.

I've been reading Chris Bailey's Hyperfocus, and it is really insightful. It talks about how you work efficiently (and that is by keeping ONE complex task in hand at one time) and how you become more focused in general. Also, I am revisiting this section of one of my essays.

I feel that it's a good time to regain my focus, especially since my classes will be starting soon. And I will follow the book's lessons to work on that.

I don't want to juggle too many projects at this time. I want to be more focused, more streamlined so that I can be more satisfied, go to sleep without a feeling of dread and profligacy and not blame my mother for not reminding me.

I hope that things will get back to track when my school (finally) starts. I do understand that the change will be a bit harsh at first, but I think it will provide me an opportunity to work on my priorities.

P.S. all the paragraphs start with an "I".

The Hackathon Experience

2024-06-21T03:46:44Z

6 June, 2024. It definitely wasn't a perfect hackathon. I mean, it were only the three of us: Jonak, Anubhav and Me. And we didn't even finish the project.

Even though we picked a fairly simple thing to make (or so we thought), we struggled with even the basics. Maybe picking Python as our language was a bad decision.

We were making flomo, a flowmodoro CLI for productivity enthusiasts. The idea was to create a stopwatch, which stops on user input, divides the time by 5, creates a timer with that. We also wanted a clean and aesthetic UI. And that made things a lot more complicated.

we do have a working model now tho, check it here.

We had to use threading, nested while loops and essentially bloat our code. A lot of unforeseen circumstances.

We got only 40% ahead in our project.

Here's 15 things that I learned from the experience:

Things are not as easy as they seem. Don't underestimate things, especially if you don't know much about it.
Writing code is far more easier than figuring out the Logic.
Linux >>>>>> Windows.
People love watching people do crazy stuff.
You need a strong mathematical and logical reasoning foundation to code efficiently.
LLMs are a programmer's friend, if they know how to use it. But overusing doesn't work. It tends to produce a lot of mistakes in the long run.
Things don't need to be perfect, but you have to do your best.
Hackathons need to be more than 1 day long.
Managing a hackathon requires you to be patient and hear others out. You also have to make sure that people are on track and not doing some crazy unnecessary stuff.
Learn to use Git. It is TOO powerful, you can do some good stuff with it. Thanks Jonak ;)
Open-Sourcing is the new future. And people seem to be getting more and more aware of it. We need to create more open-source software.
DIY spirit >>> "i'll just buy the stuff". Bro it's more eco-friendly.
You tend to get distracted pretty quickly, use methods to keep track of time while co-working and making things together.
Keep an open mind and learn from your fellow programmers. Trust me, they KNOW some pretty cool stuff.
You'll make a ton of bad decision without realising them. The best way to minimise damage is to try getting back on track.

Hypocrisy

2024-06-16T09:52:57Z

Making contradictory statements are a piece of cake for me because I am a hypocrite.

If there had to be a hypocrite LLM, they'd better study me for that. I have the best possible dataset for that, since I am the most hypocrite person ever.

Indulging in my hypocrisy, I advice people not to become a hypocrite. Sometimes I do it just for fun, for the ironic "satisfaction".

One question though, how does lying differ from being a hypocrite?

And which one's worse? Hmm. I think being a hypocrite is worse. Aah, I am being a hypocrite again. Should you really believe me?

You don't have to be a hypocrite to be a liar. But you must be a liar to be a hypocrite. Count this as another one of those "hypocrite wisdom".

Why am I a hypocrite, you ask? Because I am confused being. I prefer to remain neutral. Thus, sometimes I am forced to have two faces- be on two sides. This internal conflict allows me to be the best hypocrite ever.

Now, what if I say that I am not a hypocrite after all, but an illusionist instead? Would you feel better or worse?

I bet you didn't get a single thing of what's written here. You shouldn't anyway.

Five Haikus

2024-06-16T09:32:21Z

Here are 5 completely unrelated haikus that I wrote while I went on a trip to Bhalukpong.

Silky rainy roads
And reflections of myself
Obscured, both of them

Broken bus stands still-
Accidents happen like this.
But I am at home.

Fast locomotive
And a beautiful river.
River always wins

Dry tree,
Skeleton remains
A nervous system

Never tired
Never surrender
I am a river.

I found haikus to be a neat way to consolidate what you've observed. Those moments of insights need to be remembered. Plus it doesn't take much time, and you don't have to worry about your readers not getting the real meaning of the haiku.

This is my first try of course, another one of those pretty journeys.

A Short Detour

2024-06-16T09:28:30Z

15 June, 2024, 0900hrs

The river has a particular sound; when the water crashes with the stones and makes the little pebbles roll. A brown noise helping me to focus more.

I am sitting around trees and nature, a peaceful climate, cloudy and about to rain. I can see the river and the mountains that surrounds it. The river looks really small from here, but in reality it's wide enough to gulp a whole train.

I can see the deep forests on the other side of the river which stay still like sleeping giants. I wonder what is hiding in that. Can I just go away and get lost in it? Away from everything? Let me make amends with animals- because they are far more capable and intelligent than animals.

Perhaps I was wise enough to come here for a change. It's a shame I have to return today- back to the mundane. Back to that prison and to the problems that never seem to leave us.

14 June, 2024, 2215hrs

Right now, I am at Prashaanti Cottages, Bhalukpong. There's a beautiful river and I can see it when I get out of the room (when it's day ofc, now it's night). I am planning to do some writing tomorrow morning, or just nature watching.

Now, why did I come here?

Well, I am not alone- I came here with Ma. After planning more than 5 trips with friends/family, and seeing that none of them will come to fruition, we decided to come on our own. Even though it's off-season and there's nothing much to see here at this time. Ma came here out of spite, to prove that we can do anything by ourselves. That sounds a bit misanthropic, but it is true most of the time. Yet, I continue to believe that you can never be a "self-made" man/woman; you must work alongside others.

She managed to convince me to get out of my rot as well. Hmm.. I do experience laziness or friction to just GET OUT. I don't know, but I get pretty "slow" when I have to go out somewhere. But once I gain enough momentum, I can sustain that for long periods of time.

Although there's one thing I realised: trips don't have to be long or even "perfect". You don't really have to go to some popular place. Sometime you just need a trip just for the sake of it, to just head out; away from the mundane, society and from stress.

I think it is a form of escapism. As long as you're not overdoing it (the escaping part), you should just keep travelling, go on trips and LIVE. That's the most important part: to live.

This is a cool detour. Short, but enough to reset our lives.

Sometimes you can find meaning in the most meaningless stuff. That's called life. It's absurd, yet beautiful.

We did some boating on the river as well, along the sides of the Nameri Forest Reserve.

It was raining mad. Still, we went out in the wild river. Letting the current take us, wherever it wants...

Sweat

2024-06-04T08:35:29Z

There is a bead of sweat on his forehead. Veins showing, red forehead. The expression on his face is tumultuous. Beyond distinguishable, as if all the emotions have found a host in one single face. A creature? Not possible. He is not a creature. I doubt if he is even an organism. He can simply be reduced to an amoeba.

His red forehead, trying very hard to compensate for his ridiculous tininess incites me. It makes me frown, with sheer superiority. Yes, I am far more superior. Far more intelligent and capable. The word comes to my lips, but I refrain to malevolently block him from the truth: "pathetic".

Instead I look down on him with my tired eyes, and see him shouting, salivating and drooling. So furious and so upset; it makes me want to flick him with my middle finger. But I do not. I observe with discretion. I choose not to intervene. I think, of course, he might as well be acting; a theatrical performance showing the very best of his tribe. A tribe filled with barbaric rage and commitment.

He is tired now, I see. And now I feel pity for him. Are those tears on his obscure face? The organism sits, putting his legs close to his chest, holding them with his puny hands and looks at me. For the first time in his pantomime, I felt something invade me. His cold eyes, straight into mine.

In his eyes I see the same disgust I feel for him. I shiver. What is happening? He stands up and calls to me.

"I blame you for my sins, for you did not give me the things that I wanted."

I thought that I would be challenged and thrilled- that would've been amusing. Instead, he starts a petty argument. This is not worth my time. It is not well for me to spend my energy to answer to a microscopic organism. But I had to answer. I could not resist. I laughed.

And I could see him with a red forehead with a bead of sweat on it. The expression on his face is tumultuous.

Hospitals are Kafkaesque

2024-05-25T16:51:55Z

I have been to a few hospitals. I saw all kinds of people. From completely dysfunctional to astonishingly fit. I saw doctors, nurses, hospital administration, machines and everything that makes a hospital.

The smell of disinfectant, false hope, the chilling air conditioning that makes everyone even more sick, disoriented patients and anxious attendees, and indifferent staff. Nervousness evokes when you enter a hospital.

People in long queues, people running here and there, people struggling to operate the token machine and cursing the management. It's a big maze; you could get lost in it if you choose to. And no one would search for you, because everyone is just like you, away from home to find hope.

There are a few places I think no one visits until it's a bad time. Those are, the hospital, the courtroom and the police station. People seek their "oasis" in those places.

But those institutions rarely give us hope. They make us uncomfortable instead. They are full of incessant chaos, rules and regulations, meaninglessness and most importantly, :Kafkaesque-ness.

Consider the courtroom and judicial system.
Kafka's The Trial expresses the tyranny of the repetitive and mundane system. It's unpredictable, ambiguous and people suffer. The judicial system is much like an omniscient and omnipotent creature that deals its cards with mortals, and it's probably not aligned to do just good.

And I think that the whole system relies on the :Framing Effect to prove a point. Meursault's trial in Camus' The Stranger is a great example of how it twists everything. Lawyers negotiate, much like smug businessmen. Guilty are proven innocent, thanks to persuasive tactics and rhetoric. This makes us ponder upon its "justice".

Another such example of Kafkaesque institute are the hospitals.

I went to AIIMS Guwahati a couple of days ago. I was reminded of everything I felt, saw or experienced in the past couple of years: the ICU, the post-anaesthetic delirium and the wailing people. Homesick. And I think I'll be reminded of that every time I visit a clinic or a hospital.

It was 2021. The year of the COVID. Things were becoming better for the world, but worse for me. I had a major surgery. I had to have my gallbladder removed. Things were, in one word, crazy.
I remember everything.

And it was then, when I realised that Hospitals are Kafkaesque.
The ambiguity and smugness in billing counters, nonchalant nurses, numerous doctor visits, constant anxiety and so on. And that cycle repeats. For time doesn't work the same as the world outside, it slows down, and even stops. It's up to the hospital.

You need to make friends, use mathematical abilities and drama skills to move forward in queues. You need to see patterns and reason with people. This is enough to make the hospital feel more like a puzzle than a place where one seeks treatment.

A complete farce. Pay your bills, and we shall treat you well.

Coming back to AIIMS Guwahati, it was very much the same. The same repetitive actions, queues, smug businessmen. It's crazy how being a doctor or a nurse is just a job. A mere job. They'd have to be saints to treat people altruistically, and no one is a saint.

The thing I hate the most is that chilling AC. Never have I ever felt any more contempt towards any non-living object. It weakens me; I am already cold-blooded.

Once I realised that you can't do anything about these, I simply laugh when anyone complains or frowns. Haven't they realised that you're meant to stand for hours, to be weakened, to be afraid...? A never ending process...

To be weakened and to be afraid. That's when they grab you and squeeze everything out of you.

:x Kafkaesque

This word is used to describe situations that are weirdly absurd, complex and illogical. It is derived from the name of the writer Franz Kafka who often wrote about such situations.

:x Framing Effect

Different ways of representation evoke different kind of feelings
For example, which ice-cream would you buy? "80% fat-free" vs "20% fat"

An Ode to Sleep

2024-05-22T04:24:55Z

Appetite to sleep
On long queues
Suppressing the
Urge to dream.

A bad stomach,
A bad leg or hand
Forces me to become
Drowsy as ever.

Awaiting a deep slumber, I sit
For the meeting to end
For the next to begin.
And as drowsy as ever,
The ode to sleep is formed.

Come Hypnos, take me
To your land, the endless,
Vast land of forever night.
I seek a long, dreamy sleep.

To my friend

2024-05-14T14:38:28Z

To the guy who taught me many things, you've left me with your memories. And I remember everything.

To the guy who was a walking encyclopedia, you always told us the most random and weird facts. We'll never forget that part. And how clever you were...

To the guy who made the most dank jokes ever, you always were a companion to me in that regard. I'll never forget the pranks we made together, and the fun we had.

To the guy who was a pain in the ass, but really very smart. I remember your passion for physics and mathematics, the way you'd talk to us about them. I implore you, talk to us once more.

To the guy who told us about opportunities, I thought you'd go there too. I can't even think where I would've been, if it wasn't for you. But you've left me. I still can't believe it. How could this be? And why? I thought you'd be here, I really did.

I am sorry. I hope you're in a better place now. We'll remember you, for everything good that you did.

Rest in Peace, Angaraag.

Donald's (im)mortality.

2024-05-05T09:35:10Z

This is a brief analysis on Donald's mortality from the Amazon Original series Invincible. If you've not watched the second season of the series, I encourage you to watch it. It's pretty damn good.

Keeping that in mind, spoiler alert.

In the end of the First Season, we see Omni-Man kill Donald, as he bombed the house they were in, to hurt Omni-Man. But after the smoke disappears, we see that Omni-Man is standing still, without a single bruise.

Cecil acknowledges Donald's sacrifice, as he's always been a loyal and good soldier. We, viewers are also primed to feel sadness, to feel the destruction that Omni-Man caused, to feel hate against him and pity the weak.

But, what happens in the second season? Donald is still alive. Well, well, what the fuck? What's even crazier is that he doesn't KNOW that he died. What is he, a clone? Maybe. He's slowly getting suspicious, things feel strange to him. Soon he discovers that he is a cyborg.

He confronts Cecil, as angry as ever, as confused as ever, unsure of his own existence and of his individuality. What the fuck happened to him? Turns out that he died over 39 times, and he's only 2% Human. His memory was consensually wiped; he thought that it's the only way he can do his job well.

Every time he died, a part of him went away with it, something like an exponential decay...

Taking the variables Donald gave,

Died: >39 times (we'll take it to be 39)
% Human: 2
Average part of himself left every time he dies: $x$

\begin{aligned} \underset{Donald as a whole}{100} \times (x)^{39} = 2 \\ \Rightarrowx\approx0.9046 \end{aligned}

That means, on an average, 10% of him goes poof every time he dies, and is replaced by mechanics/tech/etc.

Note: Please feel free to indulge on the equation and let me know if it's wrong!

We're stuck with a question: what makes you "you"?

Are you still you if your body is replaced by technology but you still have reason and choice? Are you still you if you don't know that you're already dead (as Donald didn't)? Are you still you if you are only 2% Human, but don't know that?^[1] And how do we know that we're not Donald in some way?

Is it okay to trick death? Shouldn't death remain sacred?

Is immortality a curse or a boon? If it's a boon, why did he finally choose not to do it anymore?

A lot of questions, and a lot vague answers that sleep in a corner of my mind.
What constitutes one's "being"? Is it reason, is it the decisions we make? Or is it just another flawed philosophical idea?

Well, if you find answers to some of these questions, don't panic. Just embrace the beauty of this world.

Man, I never would've thought a cartoon would be this philosophical...

Footnotes

SOMA is a game about that very existential dread. "Are you human?". Very philosophical, you should try it once. ↩︎

Five things I learned from Make Epic Money

2024-05-05T08:50:56Z

5 Things

Keep your friends close, families closer and acknowledge money from a distance. Even though money can give you freedom and a sense of security, you must never let it control you.
Time is money. The sooner you start investing, the more it will compound; reap more rewards in the future. Rather than "saving" money by putting it into a savings account, invest it on MFs and other assets.
You need to manage your money well. Don't spend too much unnecessarily, beware of the societal and psychological factors (cognitive biases). Do budgeting, and have a "wealthy" mindset. Sustain your money.
It's okay to make bad decisions sometimes. Because no matter how hard you try, you're still going to make them. Just make sure you don't make that mistake again.
A salary gives you financial stability, but financial literacy gives you financial independence. Because that's the thing you need, to be truly free, to do things that you love, to care for people that you love. To love yourself.

Buy this book here, and support me at no extra cost!

It was a really nice book, a great starter for anyone who wants to do what matters the most. Making money, growing money is a hard task, and what's even harder is having a humble mindset.

Ankur Warikoo acknowledges his own flaws, and never tries to "sell" his ideas. Yet, he accomplishes to make everyone understand the nature of money a little bit better.

I am glad I read this book. This is only a beginning of my journey of personal financing. I hope I make good decisions as well (as much as I can!)

leftover dirt

2024-04-29T13:19:18Z

One lives in an absent void.
The suffering of happiness,
Of life.
Chaos is order
Black is white
There's certainty in uncertainty
One must live to find.

To find, meaning
In a dog's panting,
A fan's whirring,
A tree's rustling,
Is not trivial.

Of passion and pain,
There's life not in vain.
A speck of dirt in the cosmos
Thee shall find thy purpose.

Witness, in the present,
Your brevity
And live your leftover life.

ভোক (Hunger)

2024-04-25T17:51:03Z

ভোক

হই।
লোভ এ পাপ, পাপ এ মৃত্য়ু
কিন্তু এইতু মোৰ লোভ নহয়,
ভোক হে
পাৰ্থক্য আছে।

বহুদিন ধৰি অনুভব কৰিছো,
মোৰ ভোক নপলায়।
চেষ্টা কৰো,
কিন্তু মই অসমৰ্থ
চিঞৰি যাঁও, "ভোক লাগিছে মোৰ"।

এই ভোকে মোক বলিয়া কৰিছে।
এই ভোকৰ সন্ত্ৰাহে বান্দৰ ৰ নিচিনা নচুৱাইছে মোক।

উপাই নাই, যি পাঁও তাকে খাঁও।
ধন আছে যদিও মই অৰ্থহীন, অধিকাৰহীন।

Declutter your digital life

2024-04-25T11:14:22Z

TL;DR

A 30-day program/activity/event in which you opt out of "optional technologies" and change your tech-using habits. In these 30-days, you experiment and find other high-quality activities which are far more positive than mindless technology usage.

This is not a Digital Detox, where you come back to use everything. This is supposed to give you a chance to rebuild your digital life from scratch. Rapidly disengage from a highly digital life.

About

Brought forward by Cal Newport, this event allows you to change your relation with technology. It is divided into three steps:

Plan
Execute
Rebuild

Plan

The objective is to effectively eliminate the use of optional technology, so that it doesn't harm the professional or personal life but doesn't take the life out of us.
The optional technology can be anything, ranging from Social media, Media Streaming to video games.

Even if one can't completely eliminate it, one should be specific about it's usage. For example, if you want to continue to watch movie, define a boundary, let's say, "you're allowed to watch movies ONLY with friends". But must be disciplined.

One can also restrict and specify their usage, for example, checking social media only on Saturday evening with a healthy snack and while following only X, Y and Z people who are inspiring. This gives the activity a meaning.

Plan the list of activities and be ruthless.

Tips

Block sites by default, and access only at specified times
- Use site/app blockers -> Freedom, StayFocusd, Digital Detox app
Be really specific, and use with intention.
Pick only the important

Execute

The reason people fail to complete the 30-days is because they forget to replace those meaningless activities with meaningful ones. In these 30-days, you stop indulging in low-quality activities and experiment highly to find better ones.

You're very likely to have withdrawal symptoms in the first few weeks, but it will soon go away. This your chance to discard those habits that you picked up unknowingly.

Find high-quality leisure activities (physical activity, playing music, etc) to replace the low quality ones, opt for Conversation-Centric Communication (yes to Phone calls, video calls, IRL Meetings. No to WhatsApp, email, etc.), and many more.

Tips

It requires self-control and willpower
Make sure to replace those old habits and tasks.

Rebuild

After 30-days of minimal tech-usage, slowly add technology to your daily life.
But with a few caveats. To be added to your life, the tech must:

Serve a purpose, it needs to provide a positive output.
Be able to be scheduled and constrained.
Be the best possible way to do X.

The point is to use new technology mindfully, and use tools to supplement your workflow, not the other way around.

Solitude; or the lack of it

2024-04-14T16:02:32Z

Welcome to the modern lifestyle! We provide you with loads of information, fits of doomscrolling, absurd methods to connect with your loved ones and we let you stay wired all the time like an addict!

Are you sure you want this?

Change in Zeitgeist

Everything changed with the invention of the iPhone. This new technology enabled us to stay connected all the time. And for a while, we thought, "wow! that's wonderful!", but then the attention engineers and conglomerates (yes I am talking about you, Facebook) started exploiting this.

This "ability" to stay connected constantly proved really helpful for those companies, as they earned profit from our time. You can now see the same business model in almost every mainstream Social Media website. With the help of the framing effect, the companies tell only the good-side of the story, but what about the bad side?

Social media makes people unhappy. Despite having the word "social" in it, social media actually makes us feel lonely, insecure and inadequate. Yet, we are addictive users of these services. And this very change in the zeitgeist has led the modern human to be inhumane.

What makes things worse is the enshittification of the internet. Generative AI has degraded our internet and consequently, we're becoming worse consumers and dumber too. Our habit of instantly gratifying our impulses has degraded our lives.

The need for solitude

"To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery."
-Walden, 138. Thoreau.

Though uncomfortable, as many think, we need solitude to live well as a human. Solitude gives us the chance to deeply think about ourselves, and understand ourselves. These moments of self-reflection are crucial and need to be sought. A mixture of regular socialisation and few hours of deliberate solitude prove wonders. But do we notice this in this era? In fact, people would give themselves electric shocks rather than being alone with their thoughts.

Let me recall the time I went to stay with my cousins in the nearest city. In that weeklong trip, I wanted to spend meaningful time with family and discourage intensive tech use.

While I did have a great time with my cousins, I noticed that a few of them would be on their phones instead of talking and being present. That was, as I realised, a result of the modern lifestyle, where one shows the other their favourite reels and shorts instead of talking about their life.

I felt the need to be alone, at least for a while. Maybe because I have only a finite amount of social energy, but that need was never fulfilled. Because I too, found myself on the phone, constantly wired (talk about hypocrisy). The modern life had got me.

As a result,

I was still unhappy.
I couldn't collect my thoughts.

Why did this happen? Why was I deprived of my solitude, as many are?

Solitude Deprivation

The causal explanation for this is the ease of access of pulling my phone out and the endless amount of possibility of what I could do with it in an instant. This becomes a habit. Whenever we face a particularly mundane situation, we put our hands into our pockets and voila! We're into the matrix.

We're deprived of our solitude because of our own habits. But how do we change that?

The most simple solution is to spend time alone without any external inputs. The best way to do that is to walk in nature. Nietzsche, Thoreau, Rosseau and many more used this method to collect their thoughts and clear their minds. It also helps us to build connections with oneself and our surroundings.

Another solution is to live a digitally minimal lifestyle.

"Man is by nature a social animal."
-Aristotle, Politics

Aristotle said this thousands of years ago, yet the statement continues to make itself proven to be true. Even the parts of brain which light up while performing no activity involve thinking about social aspects.

Despite my advocacy for solitude, I understand that socialising is necessary too. But I believe that we must make sure not to indulge in cheap socialising methods like instant messaging, emails and other modern communication methods. Especially social media, since it is the equivalent of the fast food, and it is corrupting our social nature.

There are ways to counter that.
One such way is to opt for conversation-centric communication.

According to this philosophy, conversation using phone calls, video calls and real-life meetings are the only methods that count.
And that other methods such as instant messaging, etc should only be used as a complement, and not on their own. For example, to arrange a meeting or send some information or location. They should complement human connection, not take it away.
But this requires sacrifice, as people who can commit to conversations are less.

Digital Minimalism in brief

This blogpost borrows greatly from Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism. His philosophy encourages us to ruthlessly disengage from impulsive use of technology. Digital Minimalism, as he tells, is not "anti-technology". Instead, it advices us to think and be mindful about our tech life.

I am deeply affected by this idea of being digitally minimal. I believe it promotes creativity, critical thinking and being more present in our surroundings and people. Being digitally minimal doesn't mean to completely abstain from technology, instead we opt to use only the technology that is needed. I mean, surely we can live without compulsively checking our Facebook feeds, right?

How do we start living a digitally minimal life? What are the trade-offs?

We can start by performing a digital declutter, which I am currently doing (post about it).
And the common trade-offs include fighting against withdrawal symptoms and being able to commit towards rebuilding a better tech-life which is devoid of any mindless scrolling and cheap dopamine intakes.

We need to go back to the time when it was more peaceful, slow and steady. We need to stop prioritising the humdrum and the fast-paced modern lifestyle. We need to embrace solitude, and refrain from poor-quality social activities.

We need to be humans, as we ought to be.

Eliminating misalignment burnout

2024-04-13T15:06:16Z

Burnouts and Misalignment

Many of us experience burnouts. These burnouts can be the result of three factors:

Overworking
Improper energy management
Misalignment

The following practices are to mitigate the third type of burnout: the misalignment burnout.

This happens because we do things that do not resonate with our goals, values and ethics. That can often result in internal conflicts, procrastination and much more. In the end, we end up feeling miserable.

How to solve it?

What we need to do, in general, is:

Identify your goals, values and ethics.
Gain Clarity on what actually needs to be done and why based on current situation.
Do it.

We are going to do that by following this reverse pyramid:

Long-Term (Identification)

5-10 Year Span

In this part, you reflect on the next few years (yes, time travel.)

Eulogy Method

What do you want them to say in your funeral? What would your Eulogy be? Write that down.
Do you want them to say that you were a good person and a good father/mother? Then, it's a sign that you want to align your activities towards that.

Odyssey Plan

What would your life be in the next 5 years if you were following:

the current path
an alternate path
a completely radical path.

For me, the next 5 years in the current path is studying in an uni outside India. In an alternate path, I am toiling in an Indian institute hoping to get a better job placement (this is against my current values). The completely radical path can be to completely drop out of formal education, study on my own and be like Tesla or Pascal.

You may also want to check out Goal Factoring.

After trying these methods, you'll end up with a profound understanding on what your values are and what you need to do to have a better life, in the long term. But it is still vague...

Mid-term (Clarity)

1 Year Span

Alright, you know what you want your future life to be. But what do you do NOW?
In this part, you assess the current situation and get a better understanding of the things you can do in a shorter span of time, to have a better life later.

Wheel of Life

In a nutshell:

You have 4 concentric circles.
You divide them into three parts (Health, Relationship, Work), and them into another 3 parts.
You shade the parts based on how satisfied you are in that particular area.
- The more parts you shade, the more satisfied you are.

Visual Representation:

12-Month Celebration

Imagine yourself 1 year into the future. You're having a catch-up dinner with your best friends and talking about how's life. Think of your achievements in the last 12 months. What did you do?

For me, it's creating 1 video per month on the topics that I like, blogging about the things that I like twice a week, going on a vacation with my family and so on..

This "idealistic" perception will help you know the goals that you want to pursue.

Pre-Mortem

The term "pre-mortem" was originally coined by Gary Klein, and it basically means dissecting before death.

Pre-mortem:

Gives an idea of what you've neglected
Legitimises doubts
Abolishes over-confidence

To oversimplify the process, consider that the plan had failed miserably. And then figure out what could have gone wrong.

So pretty much a pessimistic version of the 12-Month Celebration, but much necessary. You can take the achievements that you thought of in the previous practice, and perform pre-mortem to understand what might go wrong.

This will help you understand what needn't be done. You may also want to check out Planning Fallacy and read Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Short-term (Execution)

Daily-weekly

After all the introspection and reflect, you know your goals, values and ethics and what needs to be done too. But how do we implement it in our day-to-day life?
In this part, you're going to do the things that you really want to do.

Daily Highlights

After performing the Wheel of Life, you must have got an idea of which areas of your life you need to work on.

So each day, pick one task/activity to do for each area of your life, and do it. These activities should be given more priority to other tasks. And be as specific as possible.

For example:

Work
- Research on starting a tutoring business
Health
- Start the workout routine
Relationships
- Call up XYZ

Small changes

Yes, everything compounds.
Start making small changes to your schedule and lifestyle; you can't do everything at once.

Even if you try to better yourself 1% everyday, you'll reap benefits 100x more than if you had not done anything.

Constant Reflection

Make sure to track your progress using a journal or any type of reflection mechanism. And review your long-term and mid-term goals EVERY week. This will help you stay on track, and not forget.

This practice of reflection and reminding yourself is the most important practice in order to do what you really want.

In the end, you'll see that you're much more satisfied with your actions. Sure there maybe some constraints, such as your job, or things like that. I encourage you to research on that, find alternatives, and be a good human.

Happy debugging!

This blogpost is the consolidation of the chapter "Align" from Ali Abdaal's book Feel-Good Productivity. You should read that book.

What I learned from The Master and Margarita

2024-04-11T12:54:38Z

May contain spoilers, or maybe not. See for yourself.

Things I learned/enjoyed/liked

Story of Jesus and Pontius Pilate

I would never have searched about it otherwise. There are somethings you should know, even if you are not a follower of Christianity. Moreover, it was very interesting to know that Jesus was in fact, a real person and that he is also a prominent figure in Islam and Judaism other than Christianity.

Soviet Lifestyle and Stalinism

Everybody knows that this is a satire of the Soviet life in the Stalin era. I still feel that I could've better interpreted the metaphors if I had researched the history, rather than referring to Pevear and Volokhonsky's notes.

Nihilism, Despair and Tragedy

The master is a tragedy in a whole. After being devastatingly humiliated, the master lost his purpose. He was now content with the feeling of unworthiness. Only Margarita brings life into his story.

Courage and Bravery but morally grey

Margarita's character is flamboyant as ever, but with it's own flaws. We must not forget that she and the master are also humans. And humans, as ever, are truly paradoxical.
She is brave enough to make a deal with the Satan to save her lover. But on the way she makes some decisions that makes you hate her.
She's not perfect, but she's loyal.

Humour

It's important to point out Behemoth's humour, who is probably my favourite character in this book. Pair him with his best buddy Koroviev, and you get a deadly duo.
Behemoth brings a different shade into the book and you gotta look out for it.

Russian Literature references

Wooooooooo. I am like a fangirl when it comes to Russian Literature.
Wouldn't I like it when Behemoth says "Dostoevsky is immortal!"?

Manuscripts Don't Burn

The truth can never be hidden. You may be punished for it, ridiculed for it, but they'll realise it sooner or later. Then you'll be praised.

Mad Love

Margarita's capacity to put up with master's nihilistic sentiments is wonderful. She never lost hope for him, and it is commendable. What makes a person be so dedicated in love?

Brutal self-discovery

Ivan's realisation came at a cost of his friend's murder, meeting an unbelievably mystical being and talking with an already dead person. But that's not the point.
The point is that, much like Ivan Ilyich's (Tolstoy) revelation, he went through a drastic change as a result of introspection. It's crazy what disasters can bring to people.
It's better sooner than late.

I hope to read it again in 5-6 years.

Death is supreme

2024-04-10T10:41:14Z

Death is superior to life in the following logic:

We all die at some point; we live to die.
But we don't die to live (unless it's a metaphorical death.)

But what is the symbol of death? I believe it is an example of a Negative Good (Nagel^[1]).

I believe that death is good because all the pain, suffering, regrets go away at an instant. In the end, only a bright light remains (Tolstoy^[2]).

If afterlife exists, even better; assuming you will go to heaven. And death is good because it is unbiased, indiscriminate and just. So what differs God from Death? Maybe God (if He exists) IS death. Maybe Satan and God are the same being?

I mean, how am I supposed to know?

Footnotes

What does it all mean?, Nagel, 1987 ↩︎
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy, 1899 ↩︎

A venture into serendipity

2024-04-05T12:14:24Z

As you grow older, you begin to gain a shape from the blob of matter you've been. It helps you understand literature, talk with adults and understand their conversation and generally, be more mature and analyse things deeply.

The more I grow older, the more I meet people that share my ideas. Maybe because I gained some experience and now my opinions and ideas are more sure to me.

There happens a major transition in our lives when we finally find the values that guide us. This may or may not be related to puberty and emotional maturity, as there have been many instances of people not following any philosophy and running around wild, with the flow.

But besides age, tons of other things matter when you go out into the real world. Some encounters may be horrifying. Such as, you may get stuck with a group that makes you feel outlandish. Yet, some encounters will be so blissful and you'd often think about it later in your life.

When I set out to travel alone to the nearest city for the first time, I had such a serendipitous experience with the person sitting next to me. I glad I chose that seat.

We didn't talk until we completed 60% of our journey. I kept scribbling notes in my commonplace book while listening to the audiobook of Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism.

I could see that he noticed it a couple of times, and I could see that he was a tiny bit surprised. I decided to strike up a conversation.

That man was a teacher (as I had apparently guessed from his attire and body language). But more importantly, he was a wise person. He was aware of the problems with systems, current state of education and the need of critical thinking in a modern student. We talked about research, math, philosophy, politics, theology. It was fabulous. I didn't even know that I had reached my destination.

And that is why you should go out in the world and explore, for yourself. Sure, you maybe skeptical at first, but don't judge prematurely^[1].

I am still grateful to meet him, as I learnt a lot from him. Who knows, maybe I'll meet him again someday?

I recall one more such instant.

About a year ago, I was in an airplane. And the person beside me was a musician (I saw him put some string instrument into the cabin storage; it was a lute). I noticed that he was listening to a recording of him playing the lute in a studio and being completely immersed in it. After mustering enough courage, I asked him about it.

And soon, I was listening to his recording and was talking to him about music production and experience playing instruments. This is another serendipitous experience as he was also at some point a metal guitarist (just like me!). Another thoughtful and great encounter.

Btw, check Bonny out on Spotify:

In the last couple of months, I have been lucky to be a part of a community which offers such serendipity. And I have met people who are just amazing.

This is where I show my gratitude to Saaim, Vihaan, Sampurn, Divya, Richard, Abhi, Shiven and Jord. Thank you for the invaluable things you've taught me.

So what is the point of writing this?

To remind the future to continue venturing and approaching people, and be more open.
And to convince you to go out, live, meet some great people and make new friends.

Happy Exploring!

Footnotes

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."- Matthew 7:1-3 ↩︎

Reading Non-Fiction Effectively and Efficiently

2024-03-27T17:35:54Z

Why?

To get the best out of books, we need to read them efficiently. This is especially in the case where you're reading to gain knowledge and not for entertainment. Most of the text in non-fiction books are repetitive and put in as "filler". The authors are also human, right?. Only some part of the book is the real deal.

Take for example How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Half of the book is filled with examples. Sure you can potentially learn from them, but it is not going to be as efficient as you'd think so. Here, my definition of "efficient" is learning the most in less time with more accuracy and retention.

One important thing to know is that the following steps may not be applicable to everyone and every book, so you may have to tweak it to your liking; consider a book like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, where almost everything is important and "learnable". It also depends on the person and their intention.

How?

Get a map

Get the gist of the book first by reading the summary or watching a video, etc. This will create a map in your mind by which you can navigate to the things that are truly important (and that serve your purpose) in the book. Imagine that you are a book connoisseur and so, critically "curate" the text based on the "map". Skip around, put some crosses and sketches, do whatever you like!

Take more time to read things if they are relevant. Or else, you know what to do. Audiobooks are a great method trade-off between getting the gist of a topic and learning the topic deeply as you can listen to it on 2x, 3x speed. It can be a great activity to do while commuting.

Know why you're reading the book

It's important to know why you're reading the book. Is it to learn something? Is it for some reference? Is it for pleasure? Unless you know why you're reading, you'll fail to optimise the reading experience.

For example, you're reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. There's no way you're going to read selectively. That's the difference when you read for pleasure versus when you read to learn something.

In my opinion, one should not optimise their experience for reading fiction, unless they don't really want to immerse in it (then why are you reading fiction in the first place??)

Focus on creating neural connections

Reading stuff passively will only slow your learning down. Instead, relate the information in the book with your previous knowledge. This is called Applied Reading. When you do that, you're developing neural connections in the brain.

Tricks like superficial reading, speed reading and others don't really work. Just as there is no such thing as "easy money", there is nothing as "easy knowledge". Quality > Quantity. So, there should be an emphasis on the accuracy instead of time.

Exercises to read effectively

To develop stronger neural connections, you can apply these exercises in your reading time:

Review: After reading a chapter or so, ask yourself what was the idea really? Try to actively challenge your brain.
Debate: Play the Devil's Advocate, find something wrong with the idea and argue (with your imaginative friend, of course).
Be the professor or creator: Teach in a coherent manner, write about it (or produce something entirely different) and fix the loopholes. Basically the Feynman Technique.
Use Spaced Repetition and Active Recall. This is how you memorise things for longer periods of time. Say bye-bye to the forgetting curve.
Don't do passive note-taking: That way, we're just offloading the information on to the system, and that doesn't challenge our brain enough. Resist the urge to do so.

So next time, when you read a non-fiction book, know why you're reading it, get a gist of it, curate the text, focus on creating connections and lastly, don't be passive.

My [New] Workout Routine

2024-03-26T10:44:08Z

Getting into a better shape is one of my main goals this year. And since my exams have ended (for now), I have the time and energy to properly plan and work on my health.

I am a person who exercises everyday, except for a few days when you just can't. I feel bland without it. I mean, I like working out. I feel good when the sweat comes out and my heart rate pumps up.

My objective is to build muscles and lose some fat. And doing unguided, random exercises are not going to be enough. That is why I was not progressing. So I thought that I should finally wipe off the dust from my dumbbells and start committing to a proper and proven routine.

Research

I researched a few hours, and I found out that the best routine is to just start lifting (or any form of exercise). That is the aphorism. What I mean by that is, researching and finding the "best routine" won't help if I don't even work out. Procrastinating won't work either. It's better to just start with a beginner program, and stick with it.

But really, I found some really good guides and programs to help me out with weight training. The reason I chose weight-training over cardio (for fat loss), is for the long term. I want to preserve my gains and be fit for long term. (Check out https://thefitness.wiki; I am not really a fitness-geek.)

I am what you can call, a skinny-fat guy. I am neither over-weight nor under-weight. There is fat, and at the same time there isn't. I need to tweak my nutrition to help me with that, since most of "being fit" has to do with the kitchen. I think I will talk about it in another post.

The Routine

I have figured out (most of) the routine. I am following the Dumbbell Stopgap (yea, it does require dumbbells).

3 Times a week (Tue/Thu/Sat), altering between Workouts A and B

Workout A

Bulgarian Split Squat or Lunges
Floor Press
Straight-legged Deadlift
Pullups/Rows/Dips*
Plank

Workout B

Bulgarian Split Squat or Lunges
Seated Shoulder Press or Savickas Press
Bent-over Rows
Pullups/Rows/Dips*
Plank
*Check Extras

Progression

Use the lightest weight at first
Up to 10 reps for 3 sets
1 minute rest between each set
Add weight when you can do 3 sets of 10 reps each (perfectly).
For the plank - 3 sets for as long as possible.

Extras

Pullups/Rows/Dips are very essential to a program and I have added that to my workout routine. It wasn't present there originally.
- Check out this video for places to do those.
- Bedsheet Rows
On Day 1 of this routine, I found that it's important to perfect the form first instead of rushing on to more weights. Make sure you are doing the exercise with the best form.
- Especially the Bulgarian Split Squats. I started doing Lunges instead. Will do BSS when I get more stability.

What to do on Rest Days?

This requires much experimentations, and I think I will keep giving updates on this.
I am planning to do some low-intensity activities like light running, or some Yoga. Doing Tai-Chi is also very interesting, let's see where that goes...

And some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) 1x per week. I haven't decided on what to do exactly. But yes, This does sounds like a nice plan.

I want to emphasise more on the "rest" part of the rest days and avoid overworking. I really need to be more patient and control the urge, I guess.

Edit- Apr 5, 2024:
I have been trying out Tai-Chi for a couple of days, and it's definitely something. It's gentle and feels good. As one of my friend calls it, based.
Thinking of ditching the HIIT plan and doing cardio- running/jogging 2x a week.

Taking things seriously

No really, it's time. It's really time to take health seriously. You and I both. And this is my first step to do so.

I will keep a log where I track my progress. I will jot down the time, reps, sets, etc. It will help me to reflect and be more conscious about my approaches. Plus, it is really important that I am regular with my routine. And considering that "working out regularly" is already a part of my identity, I can expand on that and produce some amazing results (I hope so, even though it is a long-term journey).

I just want to enjoy the process. And all the while, I will keep posting things related to it, the mistakes I did, the progress I made and all the stuff.

Well, happy being-your-best-self!

Is This The Land of Opportunities?

2024-03-24T11:39:12Z

A wave of pessimistic rage reaches their shores,
Will I find solace if I keep sailing my boats?

I curse the land and its inhabitants
Their bellies full of tar and hearts full of money,
Gluttony, greed and lust,
Mankind defined by their inhumanity.

Let the devil take them
And make deals with me,
I shall sell my soul to set my seas free;
But I wonder if I have the courage,
To suffer being nailed, guiltily.

I am insignificant,
With my own incompetence
And my own ignorance;
For what credential do I claim to be their king?
I am too, trapped in the depths of consciousness
In solitude and uncertainty I cling.

But righteous we are and how I feel,
My crew minimal yet strong,
Are ready to turn the wheel
Of time, space and reality.

As the wave of pessimistic quietness stills the sand,
I grab the cannons and fire upon their optimistic land.

deep down the iceberg

2024-03-17T15:50:21Z

A deep dive

The beginning of 20th Century marked the start of the never-ending deep dive to understand ourselves. In 1900, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, the first attempt at theorising the "unconscious" mind. He believed that the unconscious mind contains some of the deepest secrets of an individual. Dreams, as he thought, were a way the unconscious mind reveals itself. Freud sought out to understand it, and solve his patients' problems.

Sigmund Freud c. 1921

Freud's Free Association

Freud developed the Free Association method as the alternative to the hypnotic method to help his patients. Basically, the patient rambles on about anything, no matter how embarrassing or incoherent it may be. But it needs to be honest.^[1] No prompting or intervention is done by the analyst. The patient could talk about their dreams (Dream Interpretation), or thoughts, memories, etc.

Later, the analyst analyses the information and finds the source of "conflict". Free associations reveal the connections in the unconscious that might otherwise go uncovered.

Jung's Word Association

His Swiss counterpart Carl Jung thought that this takes up a lot of time, and that efficacy also depended on the chemistry of the patient and analyst (whether they were comfortable or not). He developed the Word Association test with his colleague.

Carl Gustav Jung c. 1935

In that test,

There are 100 words, which the analyst prompts to the patient.
The patient is to speak whatever comes to their mind first, when they are prompted a word.
The patient is not delay speaking.
The patient is to be honest.

Jung's technique differs from Freud's in a few ways.
Freud's involved no prompting, but Jung's does. Free Association is more free-formed, but Word Association is more structured and robust. But both of the techniques are meant to understand the deeper self.

How does it work?

If the responses are absurd or delayed, it suggests a cause of concern. For example, if I hesitated in replying for the word "milk" or said something peculiar, that means something is wrong between me and milk.

The Word Association test helps in uncovering emotionally charged complexes, patterns and suppressed thoughts, which are identified by the time taken to respond and the response itself.

The delays and startles by the patient suggest a conflict between parts of the self. One part (unconscious) wants to speak and other (conscious) wants to stay silent.^[2]

Example Conversation

A: cold
P: winter
A: needle
P: hospital
A: lamp
P: flame
A: mother
P: uhhhh, [insert 5second delay], lies?
A: Aha! There you go, Mr. P. Your mother is the cause of your acute schizophrenia.
P: This is RIDICULOUS, Dr. A! I am not going to pay for this session! Proceeds to walk out

We can also test it on ourselves by recording the time taken for responses and analyse it ourselves, although I don't know how credible it would be. You might as well find something weird about yourself! Talk about self-awareness!

In modern era

Free Association is still used in modern psychoanalytic practices, but not in it's pure form.^[3] Many variations have been created, which include more instructions by the analyst and are more standardised.

Example in modern culture

Word Association test is used by Kabir in the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) to "get to the roots" of Imran's dilemma. Although, Arjun refers to Kabir as "Dr. Sigmund Fraud", which can mean two things: either Arjun didn't know about Jung's theory, or Jung is yet again undermined by Freud's popularity.

Stills from ZNMD (2011)

Surely, this makes one thing certain, amidst the uncertainty of life: humans are complicated.

Footnotes

brownguyrhymes. “Free Association - Sigmund Freud.” YouTube, 1 Mar. 2022, Link ↩︎
The School of Life. “Carl Jung’s Word Association Test - the School of Life.” The School of Life, 12 Mar. 2024, Link ↩︎
Wisner, Wendy. “How Free Association Lets You Be Your Most Authentic Self in Therapy.” Verywell Mind, 4 Dec. 2023, Link ↩︎

Into the nativity

2024-03-15T12:01:15Z

when he neglects

I have spent more or less 10 years of my life neglecting Assamese. I wasn't too keen with its grammar and literature even though it's the language I use for communication on a daily basis. I hate to admit, but I considered Assamese as an "inferior" language. I considered my own mother tongue to be "poor". Never have I ever was so ashamed of making a statement.

Maybe it was due to my compassion towards English and western lifestyle, maybe I had just taken it for granted or maybe I was ignoring my ignorance. I didn't "connect" with my own tongue. It slipped forgotten and remained there in the corner, full of dust, until last year.

Professor Khadane is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. He had this thing, he made people question reality (so mind-boggling he was). People in academia are kind of weird. He told us to read in our mother tongue, and that only through it we can understand wholly and become good humans. And I thought, "huh, maybe I should try it."

This was all before I was into any of this: writing wasn't my passion, philosophy was an adversary. Those days I spent in the IIST Campus were of contemplation and revelations. I understood a little more about what I want.

when he learns

Fast forward to the last quarter of 2023,

I started to read Assamese, and thankfully, I knew enough to read it (or else I would've been a big disgrace, eh?). I just had some problems while writing it. I wrote Assamese as frequently as I would take deworming medicines (i.e., very rarely).

I started reading those weekly regional newspapers, perhaps later that year, and they had short stories at the end. I liked them very much.

After taking some time to explore outside of the end-pages, I was baffled to see translated texts of English literature, philosophical talks (which I was getting into, in English). And suddenly, I felt proud. There was a sense of belonging. My ideas converged with my nativity. I was highly influenced by them. The ambition to create a movement came from reading a few articles there.

Soon, my mother got me some books that were packed my Grandma's trunk. I was so amazed to see them. I picked one up and started reading it. It was "Bohnisikha" (Rain of Fire) by Ranju Hazarika, a sci-fi apocalyptic tale. It was interesting.

Things changed when I picked up Jayanta Patowary's "Buddhijibir Atmasamarpan"(Intellectual's Surrender). It had themes like morality, modernity and its cons, society, intellectualism, people, etc. And man, it gave me a surreal experience. I didn't feel that it was written about 20 years ago; it felt as though it was written so recently. I want to translate it sometime.

Now, I feel this sense of connection and it's not explainable. I am learning new vocabulary and I feel grateful to have finally learn the real value of it.

One really shouldn't neglect their own language, their legacy. I want to live to see our generation, especially the ones living in urban areas to carry on our cultural heritage. It is crucial and indispensable.

Thoughts on Kafka's Metamorphosis

2024-03-14T09:40:58Z

Drudgery, duty and dreams of escape.
That's what led to the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In this story, protagonist Gregor Samsa turns into a gigantic insect when he wakes up from a good night's sleep.

We see him getting alienated by his own family, while he secludes himself to save them from pain. Whom he loved, turned away from him in a banal attempt to understand him.

Kafka's Gregor is a coward. Neither he protested nor revolted in his family's actions. He deliberately avoided pain. Some part of me believes it was his subconscious "choice" to transform and save himself from his duty to provide, yet in the story he is depicted as a good son who cares for his family and their needs. Nor does he protest being an insect. He simply accepts the fact.

According to the family, Gregor should've "went away" if he actually wanted them to live a good life. But Gregor chose to live under their roof. Why did he do that? Was he afraid of the world? Was he afraid that society would ostracize him, that he chose to confine himself?

The depiction of the relationship of Mr. Samsa and the transformed Gregor is a splitting reflection of Kafka's own experiences with his father Hermann Kafka, who "believed in only the severest measures suitable for dealing with him" (Kafka, 129).

The family, after Gregor's transformation sought work to earn a living, as Gregor was the one who gave them the money. His transformation, not only hampered his own ability to work or communicate, but also endangered his own family. He still wanted to provide for his family, but only made good-for-nothing promises to himself.

Gregor's sister Grete "volunteered" to take care of the transformed Gregor and his errands, yet could not bear to look at him. A distance and disgust soon entered between them as she chose to abandon him to have a better life for their family.

In the end, Gregor's existence was merely forgotten by his family who considered that it was a "good omen" that he died. Can we really think of it as a good ending when Mr. and Mrs. Samsa and Grete move into a different house and focus on living their life well? Are they wrong, or are they right? Should they not grief for their beloved son and brother?

But what led to Gregor's transformation in the first place? Does a Kafkaesque factor comes in play here? His work in his firm required him to travel and sale things constantly. He wanted to escape, but perhaps not like this. Was it immoral to neglect his "duty" to live a more content life. But it wasn't really his "duty", he was just working a job which lacked any satisfaction and freedom to repay debts.

We're led to believe that Gregor's sacrifice was needed for them to be happy, and his demise was necessary. A sign of struggle towards reality, that the world is unfortunate.

8/10.

Edition: Kafka, F. (2018), The Complete Stories, Vintage.

so, what now?

2024-03-12T11:10:07Z

The moment I had been waiting for, is finally here. My exams ended yesterday (11th March), and now I have been successfully freed from my cage and put into a bigger one!

I had been fantasizing for this moment for so long, "Oh yeah, it would be so good I can't wait!". Yet, now I feel empty. I feel purposeless. I miss those inner conflicts and mental breakdowns. Classic example of Stockholm Syndrome.

I am satisfied with the end. It was tragic yet amiable. I was both happy and sad at the same time. Not so long ago, I was furious and angry at myself for not being able to study, pointing out the very fact that exams are good for nothing. But I had found a purpose (yes finally.)

At the end of February, I had made up my mind that I would start doing those James Scholz-style Study-With-Me livestreams on YouTube. I was aware of the Hawthorne Effect and I thought to try it out. And surprisingly, it went well.

What I discovered was more than being accountable to the viewers. I felt that I was helping people. Helping them focus, helping them not feel alone. Board exams are kind of overhyped in India, so millions of students every year feel stressed out. They go through inner conflicts and mental breakdowns too. It was great to talk to many people (most of them trolls, btw), and improve my communication skills. Speaking in front of a camera is a skill one should have (before they go on to the stage?)

That's what made me a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Is being helpful counter-productive? Well, at least now I know that I like making content on video and just talking to people about the stuff that I talk about here and on my newsletter.

Btw, my exams went well ;)

It's time to reset my priorities and sort out my long bucket-list.

What I am chasing now is new experiences, new perspective to see this world and some cold hard facts that'll make me humble. And I know some things might not work, but I am willing to try them all out.

I have almost three-months spare to do a lot of things. I'll finally finish reading my TBR and get over my writer's block. I'll finally revamp my Personal Knowledge Management system. I'll finally dedicate more time to myself, my family and my friends. Some trips and travels and a romanticist approach to life.

I was reading this amazing article by Robin Waldun, it had a line:

"If we ever lose the giddiness when we notice something new, can we still call what we’re living life?"

Oh no, no, we need that. We need to feel giddy, we need to feel the emotions that arise from it. We need to observe and experience. Down with monotonous-ness of modern life.

“Just now, as I raced across the street, stomping in the mud to get through that chaos in motion where death gallops at you from all sides at once, my halo slipped off my head and onto the filthy ground… And then I said to myself, look for the silver lining. I can now walk around incognito, doing whatever nasty things I like, indulging my vices just as lesser mortals do. And here I am, just like you, as you see!”
-Charles Baudelaire

The silver lining is that I can do whatever I want now. Struggle, feel the pain, remember the absurd, and have a great time with my life. I am now getting back on track.

Another change, another thing to be grateful for.

Modern Era and Connections

2024-03-06T15:55:08Z

I've been thinking about this, as I brush off the dust from my parents' old point-and-shoot film camera. "How cool", the tactile feeling, the tangibility. That feeling lost in the modern era as we start inclining towards smartphones capable of doing everything.

It's both a boon and a curse. Sure, people can now connect online, but it has created a distance among our close ones. I mean, it's not supposed do that. It's supposed to supplement our human relationships and serve as a tool for strengthening connections, not break them. Technology creates ease-of-access, but with an opportunity cost of emotions, commitment and deeper bonds.

The modern society is a consumerist society. In this age of high information and content and "productivity" one tends to slip into some eternal wormhole of "more, more and more". But it is not the absence of ties, but the ties themselves. that set us free (Han). We must look forward to ritualizing our lives and think for a moment: "Is it worth it?". We need to take a step forward towards being digitally minimal. A pause, a reversal.

A core concept of digital minimalism is to introduce friction and sort of "dumb" down off technology. That's why I started developing an interest to using an actual camera to take photos.

It's the camera we bought in 2014 (not the one I mention in the first sentence; that was an old Kodak Kroma 35). And no, it doesn't take pictures as good as my phone, but the process of clicking pictures through it gives me pleasure. It's a romanticist feeling I cannot describe.

One more example could be writing with a fountain pen. As far as my observation goes, it has become obsolete nowadays. Ball-point pens are disposable, cheaper (but not in the long term), easy-to-use. Thus, the mass opts for such pens.

But using a fountain-pen has this unique process, the inking, accidentally getting ink smeared in your hands, the writing, the feedback from the nib. All these contribute to a personification of an inanimate object. For me, writing with a fountain pen is a pleasure that any pen cannot replace.

Maybe it's a temporary feeling (as my parents often say), I am not really sure! I feel as though I am trying to get involved with life and nature in a deeper way. But nevertheless, I am sure that I have to pause, live slowly with vigour. That's a rare thing to behold in this modern life.

5 reasons why you shouldn't clear your browser history

2024-02-29T15:14:36Z

1. So that you can clear it later.

Maybe leave it to the future you. They got this!

2. You might need to search for the stuff that you searched for 3 years ago on a Sunday evening while laying on your bed.

For those unusual circumstances, just don't clear it. You never know when you might need it!

3. Family Bonding.

I know you know that they know.

4. Because you live in 1970s and the internet isn't here yet.

Hello there grandpa, would you like some help with your wireless communication device?

5. Because you use incognito mode all the time anyway.

You, my friend, are an absolute chad.

Anyway, here's a blog about a Chrome extension to help you study: View

মই নিচাসক্ত (I am an addict)

2024-02-21T11:29:10Z

মই এজন নিচাসক্ত যুৱক
পঢ়াৰ বাবে, শিকাৰ বাবে,
বুদ্ধিৰ ভোক পলোৱা হল মোৰ নিচা।
উৎসুকটা মোৰ সংগিনী,
আৰু মই, নিচাসক্ত ।

মই এজন নিচাসক্ত ভাবুক
পুৱা-ৰাতি উঠি ভবা হল মোৰ নিচা।
জনাৰ তাড়নাত, বিচৰাৰ তাড়নাত,
কত কি পাও, কোনে জানে?
সেই বাবে, মই নিচাসক্ত।

মই এজন নিচাসক্ত শিক্ষক
চক পেঞ্চিল নুচুলে মই ম্লান হয় পৰো।
শিকোৱা হল মোৰ নিচা।
উন্নতি এ মোৰ গুৰুদক্ষিনা,
মানৱতা বচাই ৰাখিবলৈ,
মই নিচাসক্ত।

মই এজন নিচাসক্ত লিখক
বহি-কলম মোৰ মাদক দ্ৰব্য,
কাগজত চিয়াহীৰ চাপে মোক সঁহাৰি দিয়ে।
সমান্তৰাল ভাবে যায় মোৰ লিখনি আৰু বিপ্লৱ,
এনেদৰেই মই নিচাসক্ত।

নাই, ওহো, নহব!
নালাগে মোক গগন চুম্বী অট্টালিকা,
নালাগে মোক ধন,
কৰি দিয়া মাথোঁ মোৰ নিচাৰ ইচ্ছা পূৰণ,
মোৰ এই নিচাতেই মগ্ন হবৰ আছে মন,
কাৰণ, ম‌ই নিচাসক্ত।

about this poem

This poem is very close to my heart. This poem is me. It is the confession of my addiction to learning, gaining knowledge, curiosity, thinking, teaching and writing. And I found that I could express it only in my native tongue Assamese.

I had never thought I would write something in Assamese, as I wasn't very "connected" with it. Recently, I started reading some Assamese literature and I was delighted. I understood the actual value. Maybe I will write about all this someday.

Anyway, this was my first endeavour in writing Assamese literature. Many more to go (I hope).

a literal translation

There's no point in reading "translated poetry" since all the euphemisms and nuances are lost in the process. You're NOT supposed to. I just didn't want to keep (some of) you in the dark, at least you'll be able to get the gist. You can skip it of course:

I am an addicted man,
To study, to learn
Satisfying intellect's hunger is my addiction.
Curiosity is my partner,
And I am, an addict.

I am an addicted thinker,
Waking up at dawn to think is my addiction.
With tremendous desire to find and learn,
Who knows what I might find?
Thus, I am an addict.

I am an addicted teacher,
I feel despair when unable to touch a chalk.
Teaching is my addiction.
Development is my 'Gurudakshina' (tribute paid to a teacher),
To save humanity,
I am an addict.

I am an addicted writer,
Paper-pencil are my narcotics,
The ink stains gives me solace.
My writings and revolution go parallelly,
That's how, I am an addict.

No, uhuh, nay!
I don't need skyscrapers,
I don't need money,
Just fulfill my wish to be addicted,
I only want to indulge in my addiction.
Because, I am an addict.

when you have metamorphosised

2024-02-17T13:28:17Z

1

You're 15, 16, 17 or whatever years old, and you're walking that path you've always walked, and suddenly you start discovering yourself. You start defining your individuality. The path which you used to always walk changes and you start walking the untrodden, unharmed path.

Then everything changes. Your timetable, your personality, you. You grow out of love with things and you meet new people. It's just the cycle of life. You start getting consumed by your work, by your passion and your interests. You start to learn more about the world. You start to understand the limitations and the advantages of living that life. You start to cuss at the system. You start to realize that things might be better if you did this or that. You start cussing at your past self for not having this epiphany earlier. You start reading, writing and fuelling your curiosity. And you become a workaholic.

Sometimes things fall apart. You get in conflicts with yourself. You cannot decide what you want. You cannot seem to understand why you're supposed to do X and Y and Z, why you're giving an exam that doesn't really matter, why you're fighting with your parents, why you're not talking to someone, or talking more with someone. You sometimes get upset, because you don't get to do the things you want.

You start exploring and you start devouring those uncharted territories. You start to like this life, this new life. You've killed your past self and now you feel like a completely different person. You have shed your skin, you've grown out of, you know, the shell or whatever. You have metamorphosised. You hate your past self, you cringe and you feel as though you have just woke up from a nightmare. That's the thing about discovering oneself.

2

Maybe people are surprised and don't like this. And they think it's harming you because you're "wasting" too much time into exploring and that shit. Sometimes you doubt yourself and feel that you should not be doing this. But then again, the other part of you tells that you should, and that's important.

Once you get past that stage, once you start becoming more aware of your actions and of the world, it becomes as though you're living a different life. As if you're seeing things through a third person perspective. You see things out of the ordinary, you're not blind anymore and now you can see colors. That's the thing about discovering yourself.

You start reading about Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and those who came before us. You pour yourself compulsively into what Dostoevsky said, what Kafka said, what Camus said and you study those great thinkers. You discover philosophy and morality. You try building your own ideology, your own set of ideals that you run by, sort of mental model. And then you go insane. A good kind of insane.

You start writing about your life and your ideals because you realise that this world needs change. It's dystopic, Kafkaesque and because YOU, can bring change. You seek people who share a similar mindset. You try to create a movement, against all odds. It's a pity you thought it would be easy. But do you stop? Hell no, you go on and you keep putting effort into the things that you really love. That's the thing about discovering yourself.

3

You meet more people. You become friends with some amazing people. People that are smart, likeable and helping. They are just like you, but better. And so you like them and you learn from them. You learn rationality and what it is like to transcend beyond the norm, you find serendipity and a sense of belonging, maybe be a bit too much.

And then a thought comes to your mind: "Not every relationship, every friendship works out." You often get into disagreements with the person you were very fond of. You start to think if you were made for something else. You stay in that relationship because of sunk-cost fallacy. But yet, you start spending less and less time with them.

It's a whole mess. You need that. There's chaos and yet there's order. There's entropy. It's absurd. You are absurd. We are absurd. The world is absurd. And discovering oneself is absurd.

You start getting addicted to a lot of things. You start getting addicted to thinking, to again fuelling your curiosity, to seeking out things that really matter, to discovering meaning. You start spending hundreds of hours trying to develop a new skill, you start delving more into the abstract feelings, the emotions, the language and the stuff that you had never even thought about. That's the thing about discovering yourself.

You start receiving reproaches from your loved ones. Because they care. They care too much. Because they are your family, your friends, your people. They fear. They fear that you're not going to be okay, that you should focus on other things. They fear because it's new and absurd. But you disregard everything, the system, the society, the negativity. Out of spite, you create, learn, grow and escape. And eventually things get much better. That's the thing about discovering oneself.

Why? Why? It's a different, very different feeling. It's amazing. It's fucking amazing. I only wish I had discovered myself sooner. But I am really grateful that I did. You should try it sometime.

From the observatory

2024-02-14T11:50:36Z

The way they move,
Caw Coo, Caw Coo,
Chirping here and there, Caw Coo;
The dimmed bright light, orange and warm,
A streamlined body, swift as a shadow,
Like an exoplanet before a star.

My eyes a telescope,
My ears a microphone,
Caw Coo, Caw Coo, all black,
In front of the dimming red light.

Jumps up and rustles the leaves,
The shelter, an epicenter,
The source of the shadow;
Big and haughty, the way they bound,
The light yet dims into a purple sound,
A song, so appealing, finds it's way around.

God is Evil

2024-02-10T12:37:08Z

First of all, we don't know if God exists or not. I don't think there's a way to prove it. (Descarte's way of finding god was in my opinion, buffoonery). But let's say away we found a way to prove that it exists. What changes will it bring? Perhaps people will start to ponder upon another question: "Whose god is this?"

What if it isn't what we thought all along? What if it isn't a supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being? What if God is not "God"?

And what about the possibility that God is Evil? We haven't considered that yet, have we?
I read about it for the first time in existentialcomics.com, and then I discussed the topic with my friends.
That question intrigues me. What if, really, God is Evil?

That would change everything, or maybe not. There are a few plausible outcomes: people will then stop believing in God, or blame others: "It's YOUR God" unlike if God was good: "It's OUR God". Or something completely different altogether. Perhaps it will change their standards. "Evil" will become the new "good", as jain put it.

It will turn out as a nightmare and existential crisis, if the God, which is evil, really made us. If it did, then did it make us all evil, a part of itself? Is this why violence comes naturally to us?

This is all a big IF though, since we don't really know.

Now, let us suppose we don't know if it exists (which we really don't; i.e, reality), does it really matter if it is evil, or good, or dumb? Maybe to me it doesn't, and to some rationalists, atheists, agnostics, EAs, etc. either.

But, the majority yet suffers. A banal attempt to put "God" in place of "good" and "truth". They can't quite "un-believe" yet. It's their faith, their only solace, how could they deny?

The word "God" is created by man, interpretations are made by man, and confusions are caused by man. Well, bunch of rational creatures, aren't we?

It's something entirely different. We're just substituting. In my opinion, we're not capable enough to truly understand the gist. There's no way to conclude anything.

Edit: fixed petty typos.

have people stopped to learn for the sake of learning?

2024-02-05T00:00:00Z

Long gone are the times when you see people learn for the sake of learning, and long gone are the times when you see people curious, and use that curiosity to solve the unsolvable.

This statement was based on my own observations. I hadn't consulted any statistics. Perhaps it was a base-rate neglect from my end, plus it was very small-scale. After a discussion with vhaangogh and untrivial, I realised that this "claim" might not be much true.

untrivial contradicted my statement by saying that the era might not be gone, that learning for the sake of learning has become in fact more common, justifying it by:

"More resources & education & social benefits per person increases base rate of curiosity/solving and that these effects dominate any negative externalities caused by development."

I countered the argument by saying that people usually take things for granted; resources are endowed upon us much easier then before, which reduces their value. And that consumer culture (tiktok, instagram, etc.) kills our curiosity.

There was no way to be sure if the no. of people learning for the sake of learning had a change or not.

The answer to generalists vs specialists was also highly personal, because of different learning styles of people. Is there any way to tell which of them is better? Perhaps not from the "opportunity" standpoint (i.e, jobs), but for the amount of value it brings to the learnings?

Uncertainty loomed clear.

why do I study?

2024-02-04T00:00:00Z

motive

"What is my motive to study?"
'No, it is not to score, but to learn.'
"Then why do I have inner conflicts when studying?"
'I love studying. The issue is with "why" I am supposed to study. The most causal explanation I can give is that I put too much weightage on my principles against the "study to score" idea, which seeps into my mind when I am practicing and studying.'

remembrance

I would like to frame things differently to myself now. Instead of solving question papers for the best possible marks (which is inherently the objective behind mock tests and such), I will solve them to check my understanding and refine my knowledge (this aligns with my core values, which is to learn and acquire more knowledge.)

It won't matter if I score low. I would win inevitably if I learnt something new. And I believe that it may make me score more (I mean, if you are crystal clear with your concepts, how can you not score?).

But the main motive is to keep in mind that I am not doing it for the marks.

intentions

Whenever I will watch a video on a concept or revise a topic, I would make myself remember my intentions of doing so. And they are:

I love learning, and I will learn for the sake of learning (intrinsic motivation).
It will help me understand the world.
I can use it to contribute to the world.

wb college?

Many students, including me, get startled when they think about college. "Oh no, I have got to do X and Y to get into a good college!".
I believe this is some sort of FOMO, but everything will be alright eventually. If you have your reasons clear, you are going to accomplish your job.

My parents worry about this too, because I am too "away" from the mainstream. This does not align with their ideology; well, they were raised in a different era and a different way.

realisation

I do realise that I had been in a slump. I had lost my curiosity, because I forgot my reasons why I study. Maybe this is high time that you too realise why YOU study.

Studying and learning should be fun, not mundane and aimless, which is why you need to understand what tickles your inner (studious) Laughing Buddha to wake up.

another Renaissance

2024-01-28T00:00:00Z

Long gone are the times when you see people learn for the sake of learning, and long gone are the times when you see people curious, and use that curiosity to solve the unsolvable.

What if you could pursue a wide range of disciplines while educating yourself on the way, and feel a sense of autonomy on your hands? I feel that the world would’ve been a better place if many of us pondered upon this question. But what stopped us to do so? There can be many reasons, including capitalism, technology (how ironic), etc. I will leave you to think about it.

But let us remind ourselves of the Renaissance. Many thinkers adopted themselves to learn several of the disciplines, most notably Leonardo da Vinci, which now is remembered as one of the most important innovators, painters, engineers, scientists, sculptors, and architects and so much more. We’ll discuss just that in this post.

generalists vs specialists

There are two types of people, generalists and specialists.
The specialists are able to do work only in a specific discipline, but they master at it. And on the other end of the spectrum are the generalists, which have a wide skill set and a variety of knowledge and in turn, are able to use it to interlink multiple disciplines and solve problems which are new and difficult.

I am deliberately making the generalists seem superior in the above description. Specialists, without doubt, can do wonders at the field they are in, can only do so much for problems that require an enormous amount of inspiration, understanding and observation.

polymathy

Generalists, also known as polymaths, Renaissance Man or Homo Universalis, embrace the natural state of human life, that is, to explore and be curious [1]. And they have tapped into that very stubborn and childish curiosity which successfully keeps them wide awake at night.

modern Renaissance man as depicted by Firefly

Most notable polymaths include Benjamin Franklin (one of the founding father of the USA), Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes (father of modern philosophy), Isaac Newton, Rabindranath Tagore and so on.

Elle Griffin writes about the need of bringing back the Renaissance man concisely in her post

what makes a polymath?

You need two things, curiosity and dedication: the eagerness to question, and the patience to learn.
These are the things that make a polymath. They do not simply have broad interests and knowledge, but also have significant expertise in several of the fields, too.

To be a Renaissance man, you have to be exploring and self-aware. You have to develop skills and educate yourself.

why become a polymath?

For me, it gives a sense of autonomy, and the ability to do whatever I want. And because I am fairly confident that I can put it into good use, I don’t ever want to become a specialist and confine myself to a monotonous lifestyle.
If you choose polymathy, you are not bound to maths, sciences, physics, etc. You can explore, you can choose to do whatever excites you.

Polymathy grants you freedom and a chance to cultivate your curiosity and make something fruitful.

autodidactism

Autodidactism (or Self-Educating) runs hand-in-hand with polymathy. You learn more intuitively when you teach yourself. And it becomes even more effective when you teach somebody else [2].

I have been teaching myself a thing or two for as long as I can remember. I taught myself coding, playing keyboard, a bit of music theory, guitar, some philosophy, etc. and I never went to any tuition or coaching for my studies. And so far I am doing great. The coding skills that I learned about 4 years ago, still come handy to this day.
As of now, I am trying to teach myself some precalculus now, with the help of Intermediate Algebra by Miller, O’Neill and Hyde [3].

When I try to teach myself a new skill, I am choosing to do so, without any external force. It is my purely intrinsic motivation and curiosity, which drives me to understand things on a deeper level. You learn only for the sake of learning, and not for any other reason.

my concern

The craze for autodidactism and polymathy has reduced, and so has peoples’ ability to think [4], and I am concerned about it.

Source

The conventional education systems are a testament to Goodhart’s Law. Where students are taught to score good rather than teaching how to be a good human and live life well. We are deliberately prevented from cultivating our curiosity.

We need to make people aware of this. Saaim, Vihaan Sondhi and few of my friends want to start a literary movement (another Renaissance?) on this issue. It might be a long shot, but we are not going to stop.

We need an intellectual reform, because even though people are educated in the modern era, they fail to be wise. There is a stark difference between the two.

glorious purpose

We are humans, and we are born explorers. We are obliged to pay homage to what we were made for and what our purpose is in this life.

“Our purpose goes beyond personal fulfilment; it involves contributing to the well-being of many.”
-Jen Hitze in her post

How do I relate polymathy and autodidactism to contributing to the collective soul?
In my opinion, we can use the knowledge gained by educating ourselves on a myriad of fields to create. This creation can be as minor as this post written by me, or maybe even a cure to an untreatable disease. It needs not be an act of EA, but anything that contributes to a greater good.

It is up to us now, to bring mankind back to its glory.

[1] Paths to Polymathy - Ben Vandgrift, TEDxCharlotte

[2]

“Qui Docet Discit”
-Seneca

Translates to: “He who teaches, learns”

[3] This was recommended by The Math Sorcerer. You can check him out if you want to self-study math.

[4] an intellectual dilemma - me.

Originally posted on Substack

What a strange life..

2024-01-18T00:00:00Z

Some reflections/ food for thought:

People are so much less ambitious, they don't want to become someone who contributes to something good, or live a better life. They toil and toil, yet they are unable to succeed. Why? There is a lack of self-awareness, a lack of understanding the world and lack of exposure.
System is too conserved. People cannot be either too good or too bad. In special reference to Indian society, the "system" is where the good are punished for being good. They are banished from the system and the hope for change is once again lost [Anand Mishra, IPS].
Life's purpose is to contribute to the collective soul. That mean's helping the community, either by creating something, doing something or anything else. Once you do it, people will remember you. And your glorious purpose is fulfilled. In short, change the world.
There can be two types of people: the creators and the destructors. The creators contribute to the society, make amazing discoveries, help people. The destructors do the opposite. They hate, they destroy, they slow down growth.
But the question is, can either of them survive without the other?
You are like a cantilever. You can only go one direction, and that's towards improvement (one of my teachers used to say that "I can only go up, not down.")
Only the people who are crazy enough to proclaim that they can change the world are the only ones that do so (Steve Jobs)

Originally posted on Postulate

An Intellectual Dillemma

2024-01-14T00:00:00Z

I am stuck in a dilemma, and there doesn't seem to be a solution. This is an angsty ramble, a culmination of a sleepless night and countless hours of internal conflict.

the dilemma

Exams are near (within a week) and here I am, completely burnt out of the want to do conventional study- by this, I mean studying for exams and entrance tests and all that.

Some part of me tells that I should be more disciplined and focus on one task for now. A larger part of me fells me to go explore because it thinks that this scenario is limiting me from unlocking my potential. That larger part of me is curious, exploring and dedicated. After all, this is the natural state of humans [1].

My calendars don't work anymore. I often find myself doing something else: reading, editing, writing, organising my obsidian, instead of giving tests and revising. Don't get me wrong, I love studying, I love it. but I am against the system of studying FOR exams. Call me idealistic, I don't care, because this is an outrage.

what’s wrong?

Math appeals to me, so do writing, reading, creating my own website, publishing things, building a knowledge workflow, organising my system, planning, polymathy, philosophy, physics and imagination.

I often blame the education system for putting us into this place. We are deliberately dumbed down to confine into a conventional path, guided by the conservative society. Curiosity has been killed, imagination has been prevented.

JEE? NEET? No, I call it rat race. There's anger in me. And I can't seem to pour it out anywhere but in writing. I am thinking about my future, where I want to create something good, not "enjoy" with a nice "package"- with special reference to the Indian culture of education (and money grabbing)

We were not meant to enjoy, we were made to suffer. And in suffering, we find peace. We were made to contribute to the collective soul and do good. Yet, we stray farther and farther away from that.

I see people suffering from depression while preparing for JEE and NEET. In turn, they fail to prosper even after staying away from home to study for 1 year. They also consider going abroad. There they find the recurring crappy obstacle: money. They can't afford.

This bone-crushing competition and mindset of grinding FOR exams has crippled us, intellectually, mentally and socially.

What can you do then? What choice do you have? This is not a wealthy country.

Educate yourself, learn yourself and teach others, not to crack exams, but to solve the unsolvable.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Blaise Pascal, Einstein, Feynman, Edison, Tesla and hell our own Ramanujan were autodidacts. Not to mention countless others.

Autodidactism has lost its popularity, and so has the peoples' ability to think. I fear for the next generation if this trend continues.

Source

Many of my peers often discuss starting a new Renaissance, and while it is pretty idealistic, we are in dire need. We need some sort of intellectual reform. People are educated in the modern era, for sure. But they fail to become wise.

Peace?

This doesn't end here. I have not yet found peace. But through suffering, I will. I love my struggles, that's all. But I will not struggle for a worthless, trivial goal: the goal to prep for exams and getting a good career. I have my glorious purpose: to become a good human, and change the world.

And I will fulfil it, anyhow.

Originally posted on Postulate

Subhashitani (Proverbs)

2024-01-09T00:00:00Z

This is my translation of a few Sanskrit shlokas from the book Shemushi (NCERT Class 10).

आलस्यं हि मनुष्याणां शरीरस्थो महान् रिपुः।
नास्त्युद्यमसमो बन्धुः कृत्वा यं नावसीदति ॥1॥
Translation: Laziness is man's ultimate enemy and struggle is man's true friend.

गुणी गुणं वेत्ति न वेत्ति निर्गुणो,
बली बलं वेत्ति न वेत्ति निर्बलः।
पिको वसन्तस्य गुणं न वायसः,
करी च सिंहस्य बलं न मूषकः ॥2॥

Translation: Only the wise can appreciate wisdom, not the unwise;
Only the strong can appreciate strength, not the weak;
Like how crows can't appreciate autumn as cuckoos do and how mice can't appreciate the strength of lions as elephants do.

निमित्तमुद्दिश्य हि यः प्रकुप्यति,
ध्रुवं स तस्यापगमे प्रसीदति।
अकारणद्वेषि मनस्तु यस्य वै,
कथं जनस्तं परितोषयिष्यति ॥3॥
Translation: Who gets agitated with a purpose finds happiness in the end;
How will the person who gets angry without a reason find satisfaction?

उदीरितोऽर्थः पशुनापि गृह्यते,
हयाश्च नागाश्च वहन्ति बोधिताः।
अनुक्तमप्यूहति पण्डितो जनः,
परेगितज्ञानफला हि बुद्धयः ॥4॥
Translation: Even horses and elephants can understand what is told and instructed, only those who understand the untold [hints or metaphors] are truly wise.

क्रोधो हि शत्रुः प्रथमो नराणां,
देहस्थितो देहविनाशनाय।
यथास्थितः काष्ठगतो हि वह्निः,
स एव वह्निर्दहते शरीरम् ॥5॥
Translation: The destroyer of man is the anger inside us. Like the timber burns itself from the fire that it causes, the anger in us turns us into ashes.

मृगाः मृगैः सङ्गमनुव्रजन्ति,
गावश्च गोभिः तुरगास्तुरङ्गैः।
मूर्खाश्च मूखैः सुधियः सुधीभिः,
समान-शील-व्यसनेषु सख्यम् ।।6।।
Translation: Deers make friends with other deers,
Cows with other cows,
Horses with other horses,
Fools with other fools,
Wise with the wise.
Similar people attract.

सेवितव्यो महावृक्षः फलच्छायासमन्वितः।
यदि दैवात् फलं नास्ति छाया केन निवार्यते ॥7॥

Translation: One should seek shelter in a shade providing, fruit giving tree. But, if by any chance, there is no fruit, no one can prevent you from getting the shade.
अमन्त्रमक्षरं नास्ति, नास्ति मूलमनौषधम्।
अयोग्यः पुरुषः नास्ति योजकस्तत्र दुर्लभः ॥8॥

Translation: No mantra is devoid of letters,
No medicine is devoid of herbs,
No man is unworthy,
Finding these particular combinations are rare.
संपत्तौ च विपत्तौ च महतामेकरूपता।
उदये सविता रक्तो रक्तोश्चास्तमये तथा ॥9॥

Translation: Noble person acts the same at both the times of despair and bliss.
Like, the sun remains red both at the times of rising and setting. [Similar to Stoicism]
विचित्रे खलु संसारे नास्ति किञ्चिन्निरर्थकम्।
अश्वश्चेद् धावने वीरः भारस्य वहने खरः ॥10॥

Translation: In this strange universe, nothing is meaningless.
If the horse is useful for running, the donkey's niche is to bear weight.

Originally posted on Postulate

what is it like to be present and observe?

2023-12-31T00:00:00Z

a travelogue.

I had been preparing for it since the night before. Bags, check. Clothes, check. Notebook and a pen, check. Enough audiobooks and podcasts, check.
I wake up early, and start getting ready. And off we go, packed up with 12 other people in a mini-bus.

This particular time of the year is called the Picnic Season. People can be seen overflowing in all the beautiful places: lakes, rivers, waterfalls. And I was going to be a part of it.
What happens here is that, multiple families (friends, acquaintances, etc.) make an arrangement to go to some place together. Now, I am not a person who likes to spend time in scenic places with people I don’t really know. But this time, I had to.

I stay silent for most of the journey. I am listening to Feynman’s Fun to Imagine interview^[1]. I am observing the journey with curiosity. I am in a dormant state.
We are almost there. It is a hilly area, the roadside looks unknown, isolated and lacking people. Something out of an apocalyptic video game.

The picnic spot is a riverbank full of people with loudspeakers all around; a stark difference. On the other side, there is a hill which is full of trees. We settle down in a secluded place. The water is greyish. I see people over there, dancing, playing, cooking. They have littered too much.

There was enough time for lunch, so my mother and I go to a beautiful part of the picnic spot. If I was to describe it in one word, it would be “serene”. I sit down on this boulder, and feel the current of the river in my hands.

Being away from phones, and just being present to the nature; that is peace. Maybe, I think, I can write about this (even though I am not a poet):

Here I sit on a stone,
Flow of the river,
Crashing aloud
And white foam in between
Stagnant boulders;

Adrift ashore,
With the person I adore,
Without a cloud in the sky
Yet I feel the bliss
And what I was looking for;

Near the smooth cold water, I write
A warm hope flows by.

We continue roaming around. I feel more alive and happy. This place has brought out something in me.

I see a group of drunkards dancing. My first instinct was to go and dance with them. But buried by my shyness, I didn’t. I think now, why do we care too much? Why do we think about consequences? What decides at what times you should be cautious or reckless?
We find the drunkards again. They are happy, carefree and hedonistic. This time, I go and dance. This feels awkward, but this is beyond the norm of what you should do, and what you shouldn’t.

Soon enough, we reach our group. I talk with an uncle, and he gives me some advice. “Be progressive”, he said. “Be yourself”, he said. And I couldn’t quite disagree. He turned out to be a college lecturer in the sciences field, but he had spent enough time with law, arts and commerce alike. Kind of a polymath. Quite relatable, I said to myself.

There’s so many people, yet I seem to find the most pleasure in solitude. I go to a corner and sit down. I recall how one of my friends wanted to be an omnipresent observer^[2]. I feel that way now. I want to learn what makes them tick, what drives them, and how do they go on about their lives. Is it necessity? Is it a ritual or a tradition? Why are they here? Seeing, I believe, is an art form in its own way.

I write. I feel that we are a speck of dust compared to this world and beyond. Yet, we take pride in our trivial problems. What a waste. We disgrace the collective soul by being too self-indulgent. I knew, while writing, that I maybe hypocritical. That made me frown.

A stranger sat down by me. Well, almost a stranger. He is our driver.
He struck up quite a conversation, and I realised that you learn more by talking to a stranger than by talking to someone you know quite well.
He talks about waterfalls, about his previous journeys, nature and rivers. I think, man, he knows his stuff. Turns out, he studied geography. He is also an artist, but he left doing art a while ago, because he realised that people don’t appreciate art enough; they think that it is easy. But I tell him that art is wonderful, obscure and grand. He agrees.
Unfamiliarity turned into likeability, just like Byung-Chul Han says in The Agony of Eros.

Soon thereafter, we had lunch, and it was time to go.
The whole group clicks a photo together, and I see myself smiling. I am quite happy on how it all turned out. I was skeptic of this notion of “picnic culture”, but this instant made me see the beauty of this world.
Others may have different definitions for picnics. But mine is that it gives you an opportunity to be present, observe and let the contentment flow into you.

It’s almost night. I am feeling tired, so I sleep for a while. I am listening to The Truth^[3] and a few chapters of an audiobook. Everybody’s tired, only a few are talking. I glance outside the window, into the sky. There, I see the Orion constellation. For the first time in my life, I have noticed a constellation. And I feel quite proud, as a profound feeling of happiness fills me.

On this day, I understood that, maybe, we ought to be more observant.
But this makes me think, what’s next?

This travelogue depicts the events of 30th Dec, 2023. It was a trip to the Mawkrang Picnic Spot. It is “outside” the themes that I usually write on. But I wanted to try writing a narrative and see where that takes me. I thought, “well, why not?”

Originally posted on Substack

Footnotes

Richard Feynman’s most famous interview → Youtube ↩︎
“Have you ever craved to be a God? An Omnipresent One!” - Sumit ↩︎
One of my favourite anthology podcasts → Spotify ↩︎

Fictitious Babble

2023-12-27T00:00:00Z

I found them grovelling, shovelling, up in the snow. It was a narrow road on a hill, and beyond the edge was oblivion. They said, "There ain't no point in grimacing, we do this everyday." There, on a cold morning, I found them whimpering.
Up until that point, I had been driving for 3 1/2 hours towards north. On the road, I saw lumberjacks cutting wood from certain trees out of many. I saw snowbound possums and rodents waiting to be killed by predators. I saw beyond what was present, not a blue sky and whiteness spread across.
I saw red, and black. I saw misanthropy, and I calculated. I had lust for it, I wanted it so bad. Differences of opinion, between my other ego, clashed just in front of them.
"Whadaya want?". I wanted to free them of their remorse, because I knew how bad it feels, to be stuck, like Sisyphus. He wasn't happy.
As they ran, I ran along, like the possum and the hyena I saw, screaming and howling. When the hyena caught up to the possum, there was never a better time. Only one could win.
Splatter, grind. Silence. There was no whimpering. Both the possums lay there wasted. Death never left.
I went upto my car, and I thought why I had done it. But there was only silence, even my other ego stopped talking.
Had I not find bliss? Was I condemned to drive, forever?

Originally posted on Postulate

curb your desires

2023-12-23T00:00:00Z

“Curb your desire. Don’t set out your heart to so many things and you will get what you need.”
-Epictetus

As Epictetus suggests, you shouldn’t try to participate in a number of desirable activities at one time, and then one shall be able to achieve the things that one needs. Less is more.

desire leads to retribution

Until a few weeks ago, I was overly optimistic, ambitious and really idealistic (perhaps it can be seen in my post). I wanted to do many things: study multiple subjects which are outside my league and my current coursework, engage in multiple projects and hobbies, I wanted to be “knowledgeable”, and inspired by people across the world, I wanted to be extraordinary (or as my mentor said, an octopus).

I wanted to grasp everything and anything, and for that I sacrificed one very important thing, and that is mastery. Sure, my so-called field was expanding, but it lacked the much-needed depth. And surely I could talk about many things, and I believed I found my niche. But when I was asked about the very insides of a particular topic, I couldn’t answer.

That’s when I realised, too much is too much.

mastery > completion

But we, humans, tend to overload ourselves. But we must remember to focus on what is needed. We must value our time, which is already so very little, and make the best out of it.

Gaining mastery is tedious. It takes perseverance. It takes time (~10000 hours). And thus, naturally, we don’t like to do tedious work. But it is all worth it; with the mastery of a particular skill or subject, imagine how much you could contribute to this world. You could actually do something worthwhile.

Why should we wander around pointlessly, dividing our precious time to things that don’t matter at the moment? Every event, every possibility, is scheduled, and are not in our hands. One thing at a time, it is possible to become “knowledgeable” as well as again mastery.

acceptance

We fight. We humans are optimistic (well, most of us). It is both a curse and a boon. But in a few scenarios, such like this, we do not have a choice but to surrender to the truth, the odds.

Nietzsche writes in his book Ecce Homo:

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

We must love our fate, and what it has in it for us. And we must be pragmatic about our decisions and our goals and plans. One step at a time, progress will be made. I think in my case, I have grown since that point of time. Consider this post more as my personal reflection.

To think about it, even nature is not perfect, so why should we be?

Originally posted at Postulate

on discovery

2023-11-19T00:00:00Z

the art

Once you start reading and writing, it all compounds into something much more, something greater. It all piles up to wisdom, to self-discovery and to attain a sense of tranquility and wisdom. Your writings are your life from a bird’s eye view, captured into pages, like the webbed information on the Internet. They are your thoughts, your belongings and you.

the finding

I feel much “able” and happy when I write, even though I acquired this knack very recently. I believe that, the discovery of oneself is one of the most important and profound findings that one can have in one's lifetime. And the craziest thing is that it never stops, and we’re constantly discovering something new about ourselves.

But above all, we should celebrate this sense of change and growth and cultivate a habit of recognizing ourselves.

the influence

According to Robin Waldun [1],

We are what we are because of multiple complex influences, many of whom we are not aware of.

When we surround ourselves with the things that we love and are good for our upbringing, we are investing in ourselves. We are making sure a better version of ourselves. That is how we create ideas in us, and those very ideas are our identity, the certitude of our individuality.

Little by little we’ll build ourselves. And soon, after many years, we’ll begin to notice; a profound change. A cause of nature and oneself, after which one will try to move past it and do it all over again, without hesitation. A new perception, a new you and a new world.

[1] Robin's video on Self-Discovery. He’s definitely an inspiration for me.

Originally posted on Substack

The Idiosyncratic Era

2023-11-07T00:00:00Z

Junkie: noun, informal:
a person with a compulsive habit or obsessive dependency on something.

Looking back a year ago, or maybe even a few months, I could have been classified a junkie. Not your usual drug addict, but your friendly neighbourhood dopamine junkie. Far worse, far more dangerous.

What is this ‘idiosyncratic era’ that I am talking about? This idiosyncratic era is formed off our self-indulgence, lack of self-awareness and the sameness that comes with it. This era developed from the idiosyncratic generation that the internet brought us.

the idiosyncrasy

The peculiarity lies within itself. Our perception of time has changed, along with our attention span and our sense of clarity. This is because of this age’s natural social and technical advancements which is leading us to a hedonistic world like in Huxley’s Brave New World, where it is a dystopia disguised in a form of a utopia; lacking of thought, individuality, making us paralysed from the mind and soul.[1] In contrast, the world in Orwell’s 1984 seems less terrifying.

Perception and Rituals

According to Byung-Chul Han, in his book The Scent of Time, the modern individual is in a state of a temporal crisis. We’re in a constant rush of things and are unable to catch up to ourselves. There’s no “wiggle room” for us, as we’ve filled all our time with events just to keep us busy.[2]

"The reason they are so disposed, however, is that they are preoccupied with living, not with living well.”
-Aristotle in Politics

We now associate living well with being busy. But we’re busy without any conclusion. A mindless rush, which gives no sense of completion, and we end up dissatisfied.

We have to pause. We have to adapt to rituals that take enough time for us to stop drifting across: synchronise ourselves with the asynchronous routines that stop the rush and have certain thresholds for which we work to reach. And these thresholds give us the idea of what we need to do. These have vanished in this modern world, where we have the freedom of choice to do anything.

“It is not the absence of ties, but ties themselves that set us free.”
-Byung-Chul Han in The Scent of Time

When you feel that time is flying by fast, and you end up disappointed, get away from the exploitative nature of automation.

Where does all our time go?

The modern individual, especially teenagers, spends his time mindlessly scrolling social media and the Internet. But why that is so?

Eva Illouz says, in her book Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation,

“[The Internet] is positioning the modern individual as a desiring subject, longing for experiences, daydreaming about objects or forms of life, and living experiences in an imaginary and virtual mode.”

This age of high-information faces as a hindrance to our curiosity, creativity and imagination. I mean, if we can get everything, by doing nothing, who wouldn’t choose to live that way? And in the modern age, the social media feeds and streaming recommendations let you achieve just that.

Consumer culture, in this way, proves as a medium to kill our imagination [3] as we keep getting more and more recommendations and ads and what not. All without lifting a finger.

Capitalism, and the rise of use of AI and technology is leading to illiteracy, and a lack of clarity (remember Brave New World? Does it seem familiar?). The cognitive ease that modern systems evoke, makes it much easier to get trapped. Because our brain is a lazy, spoilt brat. Once it tastes bliss, it doesn’t want to let go.

We are living in the inevitable phase of the internet [4]. One can only hope that people get bored from all this, and eventually change their course of life. Zeitgeist is always changing.

“But there is a good side of the internet too!”

If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been writing here. Millions of writers, content creators and researchers need the Internet. But this is the creator culture, not the consumer culture (which has its own cons). It’s the modern consumer who should be more careful (maybe we can argue about this point?).

It’s a curse and a boon, no doubt. Maybe many of us still use it for good and well-defined purposes. I probably never would have been a reader, or a writer, if it wasn’t for the Internet. Nevertheless, the distractions seep into our day-to-day lives. Without permission. How do we solve this?

going to the other side

How much are you willing to sacrifice for your future?

The time you spend mindlessly scrolling this and that and those, could have been used for your better future (although the example doesn’t only apply to scrolling). Perhaps you could learn a new skill, work on a project, spend time with family.
The solution is to delay the gratification process, and producing obstacles to increase the friction between you and the things that are distracting you.

“An idle mind is a dangerous mind”

Because of this idleness, we like to see ourselves distracted. But with what we are distracted is not always very productive. Instead, add more to your plate, though make sure that it is something that you like and which serves a purpose.[5]

The most coherent solution, however, is to live a digitally minimal life. Cal Newport, Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, captures this area insightfully in his book. Reducing our dependency on technology inevitably leads to the end of the overstimulation.

Memento Mori

The Stoic philosophers lived by the code of “do your best, because clock’s ticking”. And they lived pretty well for most of their lives.

“The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.”
-Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, 4.32

Analyse what you've been wasting your time on and get a hold of yourself. Stop slipping by.

In reality, it's hard and tiresome. But you'd be doing your future self a favour. And you can expect changes within months. Maybe it's just the thing that can save us. Pausing, thinking, and taking enough time to live well.

Thank you for reading Vision of Life. If this post was valuable to you in any way, spread the word!

[1] I reviewed Brave New World a while back. But I didn’t think enough on that.

[2] Robin Waldun’s Video on The Scent of Time

[3] Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros, p37

[4] The End of the Extremely Online Era - Thomas J. Bevan

[5] Cajun Koi Academy’s video on Distraction

Originally posted on Substack

we're not studying for fun

2023-10-24T00:00:00Z

It is so sad that we do not study for fun, to learn, but to score marks in our exams, compete and get a job. Is this what we were made for?
When’s the last time that you actually sat down to study, not because you had exams to prepare for, but because you actually liked it?

why goals are slowing us down

I have noticed that we perform better, when we don’t have a goal and just do things because we like it. But nowadays, we’re becoming mindless as if part of a hive mind.

Blinded by the expectations, the environment and influenced by the “ideal” life that is passed on by the society, we have stopped pondering the truths about this world, about why things happen as the way they do, and why can’t we do things that we like. We don’t read for passion, for knowledge, for gaining a vision. We read it because we have to and get some good scores.

We're simply sucking the fun out of it. We have made our life a Kafkaesque story.

“Intellectual adventures turn into intellectual labour.”
- Robin Waldun

spite and us

Remind yourself of the time when you sought out to clean your room, but then your parent comes and asks you to do it. Then what happens? Out of spite, we don’t clean our room.

What I am trying to say in this post is similar. But in our case, we don’t deliberately refuse to do the thing. We do it, and get much less satisfaction out of it, and reduce our potential productiveness. But what if, what if we didn’t have a particular goal in mind, no external interference distorting the transmission to ourselves? Could we have succeeded far more than we do now?

What if, we actually loved our work or study, but we don’t know that because we lived our whole life this way. How could we have known that things could be any different? We are taught things merely for scoring in exams, and we are not shown the bigger picture. No wonder we suffer from identity crisis. ^235d26

If you love doing the thing, you are going to excel at it either way. Let’s make sure you do that.

“this is too unrealistic.”

For the most part, I agree that it is idealistic. But why can’t we stop for a moment and think why we’re actually doing the thing. Why we are studying? Is it because we need to get a job? But are we enjoying the process? Are we getting something out of it? Shouldn’t our prime goal be to become a good human?

But, you can’t love everything and every subject which you are supposed to study. Then what do you do? Do you just give up if you don’t like it? Well, I might contradict my own opinion here, but,

"Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will- then your life will flow well."

-Epictetus, Enchiridion.

You can’t always get everything. I know because I have to do things that I don’t want to do too. But then how are you actually going to endure? By searching for something, some aspect of that particular topic and embracing it. Loving that very bit and being grateful for the knowledge that you gain by it.

That’s the point, isn’t it? Gaining knowledge and grow? (Also, this might help)

making the best out of it.

Apart from everything, our main motive should be to make the best out of it. Human life is trivial, small and very, very brief. Why should we NOT take a moment for ourselves and learn.

There’s still time. Make sure you love the work you do, and don’t forget to gain something out of it and create something good.

Originally posted on Substack

Nibir's Brain Dump

Life gives you what you don't ask for

Kangaroo

Why I encode my music into Opus

What happens when you're not around?

Doing nothing has never felt so good

Life is a Hades Run

I hate exams, so I turned it into an experiment.

The degree of win-ness

What does meditating mean to me?

Footnotes

On Resonance Journaling

Kilmer

Polymathy is a counterculture

Further Reading #

Footnotes

Flight Club

Nibir's Class Notes from parallel universe

Kafka is my barrista

Reading vs Literature

Two minutes to midnight

What a dumb WhatsApp riddle taught me

Homelabbing is fun!

Docker and Docker-compose #

Tailscale #

Remote Music Production #

Future plans? #

Thank you Mr. Aristotle

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Giovanni's Room

22 uses for a cup

The Fall

everything is done ad hoc, even this post.

Semantics #

Formal Proof #

Noticing fallacy #

I could probably write about something but what would I write about?

k-ratings: Prioritise Efficiently

Presenting: k-ratings #

Eh what? #

Rules #

Example #

Further Whatever #

Fahrenheit 451: Thin as Paper

:x char-analysis #

Right and Wrong

What is right and what is wrong? #

Deontology #

Pros #

Cons #

Consequentialism #

Pros #

Cons #

Which one to pick? #

Virtue Ethics #

Conclusion #

Conclusion of Conclusion #

Notes on the Virtuous Life

What is a virtuous life? #

What are the characteristics of a person who leads such a life? #

Why live a virtuous life? #

Why do I want to live such a life? #

How can you live a virtuous life? #

Dostoevsky and Love

Contains Spoilers of Dostoevsky's Works #

Incomprehensible

Footnotes

Have You?

Seeking Tranquility

Footnotes

Sharp Objects

Happy New Year

Lolita

Footnotes

Psychoanalysing Summit Bowlson

Foreword #

Psychoanalysing Summit Bowlson, schoolteacher, 34

Summary #

Behavior #

Analysis #

Further Reading

Docker and Docker-compose

Tailscale

Remote Music Production

Future plans?

Semantics

Formal Proof

Noticing fallacy

Presenting: k-ratings

Eh what?

Rules

Example

Further Whatever

:x char-analysis

What is right and what is wrong?

Deontology

Pros

Cons

Consequentialism

Pros

Cons

Which one to pick?

Virtue Ethics

Conclusion

Conclusion of Conclusion

What is a virtuous life?

What are the characteristics of a person who leads such a life?

Why live a virtuous life?

Why do I want to live such a life?

How can you live a virtuous life?

Contains Spoilers of Dostoevsky's Works

Foreword

Summary

Behavior

Analysis

তুমি আৰু মই

ৰুছ

মৰমৰ মামা

Prompts

What was the purpose and use-case of the software system?

What were the faults, and how severe were the consequences?

What other factors contributed to the incident?

How did the incentives of the people involved affect the emergence of the fault?

More such examples

What do we learn?

Summary

Works Cited

Identify

Prioritise

Energise

Improve

Backstory

Bruh what do you mean?

Loopholes

Future?

:x convo

Kendriya Vidyalaya Mangaldoi.

:x change-speed

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The White

3. The Black

3.1. Students

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

3.2. Authority (teachers and administration)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

3.3. Parents

1.

2.

3.

3.4 Hierarchical Influence