Books
Life in a nutshell
1. Go to a book club meet 2. Gain inspiration and insight 3. Add good reads to your list 4. Realize you can’t read most of them, ever 5. It then sinks in that it’s an amplifying loop 6. Feel unproductive despite growth
Musings
Reflections on anything at large.
Links
Gaining context on China and its rise (Good reads)
Between China’s rise in lunar exploration and my visit to the country last year, I’ve grown more curious about how the Chinese collectively think and work. So I set out to gain some high-level context of Chinese policies and history, which have now helped me identify specific areas
Life
Utterly fascinated by dinosaurs—want to launch them to space
Lately I’ve been watching Prehistoric Planet. I’ve always been fascinated by dinosaurs but the show’s visuals and explanations are so good that they help you get a sense of how the dinosaurs might have spent their day-to-day lives. And now I’m even more curious about them.
Blogging
Responding is better than replying
The other day I posed a question on the Web that has (gladly) initiated a string of responses from people. And by that I do not mean comments on social media but entire blog posts. Before sharing a few thoughts on that and making it all meta (the good kind)
Life
I do (not) care
I don’t care if you like or react to my posts on social media. I’ve hunted down and turned off all such notifications everywhere possible so I barely know you liked them anyway. I don’t care if you don’t read my blogs even though my writing
Writing
The media and arbitrary ethics
Someone from a legacy Indian media outlet called me recently to ask me to write an article on Indian space within five days, and for free. They expected me to agree to commit to it then and there itself. I said I’d have considered contributing but the timeline is
Musings
On the gap between voter turnouts in the US and Indian elections
2024 is a national election year for both the US and India. Some web searching led me to check past voter turnouts in both countries, and I was quite surprised with the numbers: The US (Source) * 2004: 60.1% * 2008: 62.5% * 2012: 58% * 2016: 59.2% * 2020: 66.9%
Life
Trains over planes
I love trains. Why you ask? * I get to spend hours reading without much interruption from humans. * Eating and relaxing is more comfortable in AC coaches and above than being cramped in planes. * With trains you essentially just get in and get out. There’s no fuss of guards, check-ins,
Musings
How to have sustainable conferences
* Complain about disposable cutlery and water bottles * Fly Business class in domestic flights * Spend the whole day at the conference venue but sleep only at 5-star hotels * Do not have virtual participation, and then give out grants to 1% of attendees * Give talks so public-safe they could’ve been a
Musings
Interviewing Prof. Miron Livny, whose open computing system contributed to two Nobel Prizes
Working on a single problem statement since 40 years and continuing.
Musings
Imagine – Free(dom) Software version
I love freedom respecting software that's also open source. In this fast growing digital-first world, it's more important than ever to have everyday digital tools that work transparently for us users. With that in mind, here's my fork of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’
Musings
How science fiction helps us contemplate reality
Reality is too big for our puny minds to capture all at once. This is where science fiction comes in.