Pardon the provocative title. Doctors are being kicked out of their houses unceremoniously, police are beating up doctors on their way to and from duty, and basic necessities including drinking water are being denied to doctors for fear of getting infected.
Shove the claps up your asses. You don’t deserve the overworked doctors.
Notes from a conversation with a friend. I use ‘we’ since I presume this isn’t uncommon or unrelatable.
Sometimes, we get used to a certain level of discomfort, it becomes our comfort zone. We feel proud of being strong in the face of adversity, however little or trivial it is, and may not take active steps towards fixing the situation for fear of losing the ‘meaning’ associated with the suffering. The suffering would be meaningless if we could just wish it away with some action, so it must be hard to get out of. A very circular logic, but I’ve seen it play out, though I lacked the ability to realize it for what it was – a toxic coping strategy.
I found the book Prophet by Kahil Gibran lying at a friend’s place today, and picked it up to read. I’m neither religious nor spiritual, however, I found a few lines worth remembering.
The book is a quick read, partitioned into short chapters, each a dialogue/monologue on a topic. Here are select snippets with the chapter titles and occasional comments
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you to cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
I can’t articulate exactly why this resonated with me but it did. So did this next one.
Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
[…] let there be spaces in your togetherness […]
Love one another but not make a bond of love; let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls
The last line beautifully echoes the sentiment.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Leave space for growth. In love or marriage, or in any relationship. There will be differences, there will be disagreements. Love shouldn’t seek to control.
Oh this one is sweet. Especially since I get triggered by parents who seek to control their children. Helicopter parenting as an extreme but in many subtler ways.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday
You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
You work that you may keep peace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
Work is love made visible
This is superficially in conflict with my philosophy of work. However it is merely superficial since I despise working as a necessity. I wish to work for my own well-being, so that I may not remain idle and wither. Modern life of work that does not leave the choice is repulsive to me. The choice matters to me.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again at your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
What have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors? […] Is it just the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest and then becomes a host and then a master? It becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, […]
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
How true. It is extremely easy to get into a us vs them mindset. Or to believe we are somehow above those who do wrong.
What of the cripple who hates dancers? What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things? […]
You can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
A very nice spiritual point of view, but I’m not ready to embrace it yet, if ever. I chase freedom, recognize how it is a binding in itself, but consider them necessary for now and wrap them willingly.
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
Surely you would not honor one guest above the other, for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and faith of both
That is a very good analogy in my opinion.
The vision of one man lends not its wings to another man
When you part from your friend, you grieve not, for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber may be clearer from the plain
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live
Such a sappy statement but one worth remembering.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed
A wordy way of saying little things matter, but I like the words.
Speak little, and well. That’s all.
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered.
Not all talk, but yeah.
Even those who limp do not go backward
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good, you are only loitering and sluggard. Pity that the stags can not teach the turtles.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion
Advice and philosophy that more people should follow, religious or otherwise.
After failing to fall asleep despite having work to do in the morning and appointments to keep, yet another time, I’ve thought of ways to make my phone less interesting.
Deleting the slot machines works for a while, then I get anxious about missing out on connecting with people and conversations. Or my favorite rss feeds. Not being active on fb or twitter has a notiiceable impact on my life, both good and bad. I recently got on the instagram bandwagon, and am yet to get used to the novelty of just seeing people post so many pictures. I’m expecting to develop instagram slot machine immunity in another week or so, with a tiny bit of progress every day. Built in reminder for time spent on app helps.
I already have a search based launcher, minimal homescreen with no widgets at all, and tried experiments like postbox. Postbox is too rough, I missed work notifications, but my launcher has been working great for me. Being able to search contacts, apps and settings or do quick math and launch searches directly from the combo bar is handy. The launcher doesn’t really support widgets, and I’m okay with that.
I wondered, can I make my phone greyscale? Turns out it is quite easy with a developer setting. And I’m not the first one with the idea. Lots and lots of pages describe the trick, some describe their experiences, and some claim it to be the holy grail.
Anyway, long story short, my phone is now in greyscale. I hope I can keep it this way all the time. I just wish it was easy to have red tinted grayscale, cutting down on the blues. Wish me luck? And good night.
Most programmers work in an IDE or an editor. A few work on paper before/while they work in an editor. Some work a lot in their minds before moving it to paper and eventually an editor. Where you work is probably one of the most important factors contributing to quality of code.
A beginner can only work in an editor. Keep trying things in an editor until the compiler/runtime does not complain. Depending on how much of it was planned before typing, the number of iterations vary.
A somewhat skilled programmer knows their most common tools, and has developed good pattern recognition skills for problem solving, cutting down on the number of iterations significantly. A little work implicitly happened before they start mashing the keyboard. If they are dependable, anything major is also documented to let others benefit from this hidden work.
The best ones have a plan for entire systems in place before writing a single line of code. They code top down, making assumptions on subsystems that will eventually be ready. They developed a talent for drawing boundaries between subsystems, and enforce them well. They are aware of their assumptions, and ideally document them. They plan twice, code once.
According to the Internet that loves ridiculing the idea of top programmers, they probably also ride unicorns and create singularities with every breath.
But seriously, this is the profession where I have observed the most variance in talent. Planning can never be bad, unless its in a committee. Documentation and communication can only improve your output.
It never hurts to use a pen and paper. A programmer’s most important tools in my opinion are a pen and a paper, and a rubber duck (real or imaginary). The good habits can be learnt, and they improve with practice.
A talented person’s intuition is just distilled experience and learning.
https://thewire.in/education/can-a-students-suicide-note-make-us-rethink-the-iit-dream/amp/
Modern education is fucked up almost everywhere, but competetive exams in India take it to a whole new level.
I was lucky to not feel any pressures. Neither me nor my parents heard of IITs until coaching was pitched to us in 10th class.
Suicides happened during my stay at IIT. The reaction within the campus was underwhelming. I don’t blame the IITs. The environment there is very good. It is the parents whom I hate with a passion.
Parents who demand longer school hours, coaching and extra classes from ridiculously young age, I wish I was joking, but some coaching classes for IIT are marketed by schools to 10 year old kids. Parents who don’t provide adequate emotional support, or let the kids enjoy their lives. I hate them all.
If you’re working on empowering kids and youth to make informed choices, and not succumb to parental or peer pressures, I would love to talk.
About two years ago, my laptop almost fell from my lap, and I caught it. However the sudden movement while disk was spinning was enough to damage the disk permanently. This was the first disk in my first ever laptop, and had accumulated a lot of data over the years.
I was quoted 50k INR for an attempt at recovery in a clean room, and wasn’t confident they would be able to do it. I was using btrfs, and it was unlikely that their tools support it, or their engineers understand it well enough. I did not take the risk.
Found this list I compiled in Jan 2017 when I was trying to come to terms with that. A text file, loss.md, silently sitting on my sister’s machine.
- Financial records - Bills - Statements - Ledger journals - Uncommitted customisations in dotfiles - Private dotfiles - GPG keys, SSH keys - SSH config - List of curated, interesting nix packages - Uncommitted/unpublished tweaks and contributions - A repository of notes collected over the years - Lots of pdfs, epubs collected over the years - Multiple calibre collections - Music collection - Unsynced taskwarrior tasks - Backups of old personal and professional projects - Copies of tools I made for clients - Database dumps of now defunct services I once managed - Email archives of my college days, with many memories and important notes - Personal photo collection - Chat logs - IRC, messenger, hangouts, ... - Notes and photos of a few close friends - A huge collection of stuff downloaded from DC and not categorized - Backups of all old home dirs I ever used - Large reading list of research papers, white papers and manuals on obscure topics - Encrypted and locked copies of interesting malware samples - Saved FF sessions
About a year later I lost another disk. A hybrid-ssd replacement for the previous one. This was during a trip, and the machine was not running at the time. I can only guess at the cause, called it bad luck. I’ve not replaced that disk since. I did not even make a list of things I lost this time. That machine lies in my room collecting dust for now, while I’m using another borrowed one “temporarily” for over a year.
I’ve learnt a little since then. I try to back things up periodically, but it is still not properly automated. I’ll try to fix that soon.
A daily wage laborer may not have a real choice in whether they go to work or not. Either they work, or they go hungry. Someone who gets to sit in an office, and doesn’t have to worry about going hungry if they fall ill for a day – is certainly more privileged.
As a general rule, the capability to choose is a privilege. The privilege of choice.
A kid who can choose a toy is privileged, and so is someone choosing a meal from a menu. A child who can choose their religion is similarly privileged, as is one who gets to choose their profession. Someone who chooses to work is far more privileged than one who must, or else.
Remember the privilege inherent in every choice you make.
A bunch of posts were published from my blog with little to no content just a few minutes ago.
Apologies to anyone whose rss feeds or subscriptions picked those up. WordPress mobile decided to bulk publish some of my drafts. I’ve unpublished them now.
If you did recieve the contents by email, sorry for the spam, and have a good laugh at the hodgepodge of ideas in there.
If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, go watch this.
The issue is very polarizing. My own opinion in short is that I don’t find the ad offensive. However I understand when people take it personally and/or are tired of being blamed.
Rest of this post is a selection of comments from youtube I found interesting.
This advert was not just grossly insulting to men but I think it was the final straw for many after decades of bashing in the media. Hence, the unprecedented backlash.
i can’t even shave without a lecture now?
boys will be boys and men should be men, and Gillette should be a razor company not a social commentary.
The same razor company that wants men to treat women better, also charges extra for pink razors.
Interesting ad, but a few issues:
Labeling bullying as “toxic masculinity” implies that it’s somehow a “masculine” trait, which in turn implies that women can’t do so, or at least, if they do it is their “masculine” side to blame. That is simply untrue. ((And no, “toxic femininity” isn’t simply “internalized misogyny”, we must acknowledge that women can be terribly mean to men as well, for all their feminine graces. Adding this in because someone mentioned it earlier today to me and I still think it’s really daft.))
“Boys will be boys” isn’t an excuse generally used to sweep aside bad behaviour, whatever TV may tell you. The only time it is is when you have a bad parent. Presenting it as though it is the be-all-end-all excuse ignores the fact that if it gets “too much”, such as a fight breaking out, or harassment, is simply untrue. Yes, it’s an exaggeration, but that’s the way it presents itself.
So now for the “not all men” argument which has a lot of people rolling their eyes (despite the same point being delivered when it’s “not all women” or “not all feminists” and so on and so forth), the ad presents the idea that most men do not have standards, or if they do, really low ones. But we know that that is untrue, a lot of men step forth and hold other men accountable for their actions, regardless of the fact that they all happen to be men. Even terrible people, criminals do. Rapists in prisons get beaten up, sometimes killed, as far as I remember reading. It isn’t “some” as the ad seems to imply, it’s “most”. I don’t think any of us can actually be mad about a crime that we don’t even know about, so I think it’s fair to say that we can’t all hop on the hate bandwagon all the time. And some of us would really rather due process happen before jumping on said wagon. Sure, you can again say that it’s “only men who are problematic who would react negatively to this”, but that isn’t true. Nobody likes being accused of anything and this ad is rather accusatory.
((You could, of course, attempt to argue that it isn’t “most” men, but if that were the case I’d honestly hope that you would meet more average men than you already do because clearly you’ve got the bottom end of the bell curve for examples going about in your life.))
That being said, I must now pose a question, if we do acknowledge that most men are already holding their fellow men accountable and doing their best in being, well, decent men:
What’s “better”? What’s the definition of “better” here? Is calling out on people not enough? Is stopping a man from talking to a woman “better”? What if a man approached a woman to ask her for directions? Do I charge at him to stop him? What if said woman stole his dog and he’s chasing after her? Do I stop him regardless and smack him, acting in the name of being “better” without knowing the context? ((There was a Youtube video where a woman did steal a man’s dog, fortunately he managed to get it back.)) Do I let them talk so I at least know said context? But if I do, that’s me not stopping him from hitting on her before he hit on her, does that mean that I’ve failed and have inadvertently encouraged “toxic masculinity”?
What else can we do? I’ve seen women tell the Internet that to be a better “man”, to not be “toxic” you have to give up a chance at promotion if a woman might get it. I’ve seen people claim that due process in courts, investigations and allegations against men made by women shouldn’t be done because doing so means that you don’t trust the women, and that’s internalized misogyny which is toxic masculinity.
Is that “better”?And before people tell me “oh you can tell others and spread the word”, people who already know how to act like decent human beings are already, in most cases, acting like decent human beings. Pretending otherwise is an insult to common decency. Those who don’t act as such probably don’t care. So what am I supposed to do, nag at them? Attack them? Verbally or, heaven forbid, physically? I’m already calling them out, I already agree that rapists, actual rapists and not just alleged ones mind you, are terrible, and sexual harassment is a thing that shouldn’t happen.
What’s “better”?
EDIT: For the record, I think most men who dislike this video dislike it because they’re tired. They’re tired of being painted as eternal perpetrators, they’re tired of feminists pointing the finger at them and telling them that somehow they’ve not done enough. I think that they’re done with the accusations and are now simply reacting terribly because they’re done with it all.
Let’s pretend that we saw a video that showcased black people doing drugs, and then another black guy steps in and says “We need to be more responsible”. Then they show black gang members about to knife each other up, and another black guy comes and says “Woah, we should be better, guys”. Or maybe black men putting on ski masks and pulling out guns about to rob a convenience store, then another black guy stops them and says “Stop. Not cool guys”. How would you feel about a video like this?
It would be horrible, right? Racist? Discriminatory?
Well, the makers of the vid can always tell the complainers that “this video is not for all black people. Only for those who actually do the stuff in the vid.”
You can also say something like, “Yes, we know not all black people do these things, but there are enough of them who do so we need to address it.”
And then imagine that everytime a black person complains about that video, other people will silence these complaints by applying the negative stereotype on the speaker, as they will say something like “The fact that you’re complaining about it must mean that you engage in the exact same toxic black actions shown in the video.”
Horrible right?
And yet it’s that exact same kind of stereotyping that is shown in the gillette video. They take some of the worst practices done by some men and then present it like it’s how majority of men act. They’re presenting a negative stereotype of men… and here I thought we were fighting against stereotypes?
What’s worse is that every time a man complains about the ad, people are quick to apply that negative stereotype on the complainer, claiming the complainer is “not a real man” and is instead proof of the toxic masculinity showcased in the video.
I mean, think about it. Isn’t this the kind of discrimination we worked so hard to fight against?
Imagine a gillete commercial about women being lying, manipulative, superficial, narcissistic, gold diggers and then adding “not all women” at the end.
I’m sure there would be no backlash…
PM 