Author aconfusedprimate

TELLY‑VISION OF WAR

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You ever notice how every war comes with its own advertising campaign? They don’t just drop bombs anymore, they drop slogans. Russia and Ukraine? That’s the “freedom and democracy” brand. Israel and Palestine? That’s the “complicated family dispute” brand. Same blood, same rubble, but two completely different commercials.

And the media — oh, the media. These people don’t report the news, they sell it. They package it like laundry detergent: “New and improved conflict in Eastern Europe! Now with 30% more moral clarity!” When Russia invaded Ukraine, the whole news machine snapped into action like a Broadway musical. Somber music, maps with arrows, anchors with serious voices. “This is an attack on freedom itself.” Freedom itself! Sounds big, doesn’t it? Sounds like they’re defending truth, justice, and the American way. Which is funny, because the American way has usually meant bombing the shit out of someone who can’t fight back.

And suddenly, everybody’s a Ukraine expert. People who couldn’t find Kiev on a map if it was tattooed on their ass are posting hashtags, waving little flags, changing their profile pictures. McDonald’s pulls out of Russia. Coca‑Cola makes a statement. Starbucks issues solidarity. You know a war is real when the people who sell sugar water and fries get involved. “You may be starving in a bunker, but at least we stand with you — limited time only!”

Now flip the channel. Israel and Palestine. Oh boy. Whole different script. Same bombs, same dead kids, same smoke in the air, but the coverage? Suddenly it’s like you walked in on a family argument you weren’t invited to. The anchors lean in: “Well, it’s complicated.” You ever notice how “it’s complicated” is just adult code for “We don’t want to lose our advertisers”?

Because here’s the deal: Russia is an easy villain. Putin is the perfect bad guy. He’s got the scowl, the shirtless horseback photos, the whole Bond villain starter kit. Perfect casting. Israel and Palestine? That’s messy. That’s history, religion, politics, money, land, blood, and guilt all tied into one giant ball of “don’t touch that if you want to keep your job.” So instead, the media becomes contortionists: “Both sides… cycle of violence… shades of gray.” Shades of gray? Folks, I don’t need fifty shades of gray. I need you to stop bombing hospitals and schools.

And don’t think for one second the media doesn’t love war. War is their Super Bowl. War is ratings. War gives them the chance to look serious while cashing checks. They’ve got correspondents in flak jackets standing fifty miles from the action just to say, “As you can see behind me…” No, I can’t see behind you. I see a brick wall and some smoke in the distance. You’re safer than I am in my living room, asshole.

Meanwhile, the talking heads sit in their studios with touch screens and charts, pointing at arrows like they’re ESPN analysts: “And if you look here, the Russians have advanced from the east, and if you look here, the Palestinians have advanced their desperation.” It’s not news, it’s a video game. They’re narrating body counts like it’s Monday Night Football. “And that makes 25 civilian deaths today — back to you, Tom!”

And here’s the callback, folks: the Ukraine war got a branding kit. Blue and yellow filters, celebrity fundraisers, heartfelt speeches. It had marketing value. Israel and Palestine? That one doesn’t get the package deal. That one’s “complicated.” You can’t slap a “Stand with Gaza” frappuccino on the Starbucks menu without losing half your customers. You can’t make a “Peace in the Middle East” Happy Meal without getting angry letters from both sides.

Because let’s face it: the only thing that matters to the media, the politicians, and the corporations — is comfort. Who’s comfortable crying for whom? Who’s comfortable buying a T‑shirt, a flag, or a latte? They’ll let you have outrage, sure — but only the kind they can monetize.

So don’t be fooled. All these wars, all these conflicts, it’s the same damn play. Money, land, power, and whose God has the bigger dick. That’s it. Same script, different actors. And the media? They’re the hype men. They don’t care who dies, as long as the ratings live.

And you know what the real punchline is? The war doesn’t end when the bombs stop. The war ends when the advertisers get bored. That’s when they move on to the next tragedy, the next “special report,” the next human suffering package they can sell you in 30‑second intervals between soap and soda commercials.

So remember, folks: when you’re watching the news and you see bombs falling and anchors crying, just ask yourself — what’s the slogan for this war? Because there’s always a slogan. And behind that slogan is a network, a sponsor, and a bunch of executives who are praying — not for peace, but for good ratings

An Elephant and a goldfish

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Long time no blog…

Its been 758 days since I published a blog. I have since drafted 40 blogs but never finished even one of them. Now I completely understand the concept of ‘Writer’s block’. There were a lot of reasons such as 2 international relocations and busy work schedule, but above all, it was just the lack of enough interest and motivation to rant (write) about something. I always peeved about George R.R. Martin not completing Winds of winter or not even giving a tentative release date for it. Now I get it. If you are stuck, you are stuck. If I cannot drag myself to write a couple of hundred words on a generic topic, who am I to judge someone who has the grueling task of completing an epic series of books. But looking at Mr. Martin shifting his focus to making some easy money for HBO by helping them make shitty spin offs of his work, my worst fear is that ‘Game of Thrones’ will end up being the Sagrada Familia of books.

May be the ending of the TV Series was the actual ending he planned. The last 2 seasons were bad. In fact, calling them bad is an understatement. Especially compared the rest of his work. I totally agree that that was the only logical ending possible. I am a little proud that I predicted the fate of most of the characters. Its was just the pace and screenplay that ruined everything. The outcry and disappointment of fans may have caused him to reconsider another/alternate course to the story line and may be he is stuck.

Now that I have beat around the bush infront of my house and also all the bushes around the neighborhood, lets get back to the point. Elephants and Goldfish are on the opposite ends of a very particular spectrum – ‘Memory retention’. At least that’s what people have you believe it. Researching for this blog led me to a fact that it is actually ‘Bees’ that have the shortest memory and Goldfish have been unfairly maligned about their mental abilities. Renaming this blog to ‘An elephant and a bee’ would have been easy enough but I did not want to burn the few remaining credits on DALL·E to create another image for this blog. It also reinforces the point I am trying to make here.

What we now about the world is driven by the narrative set around it and there are only a few but very influential ‘entities’ in the world that do this. For every Rupert Murdoch there is a George Soros. For every Fox News, there is a CNN. For every BBC there is a Al jazeera. All these ‘entities’ want you to see the world in Black and White. The world we live is too complicated to be put into 2 buckets. If you read between the lines, you will see that everyone has an agenda.

What’s the first headline you see in any major publication since the last one month? Its the Israel and Palestine conflict. Who created the problem in the first place? Yes, the Jews were driven out of the middle east but it was centuries before the colonization by the British. The jews were allowed to migrate back to the region by the British and then after the 2nd world war, United nations passed a resolution to carve Israel out of Palestine. If you care about Jews so much and wanted a safe place for them, why not carve our the just now defeated Germany or some other part of Europe? If the US, who had so much influence in the UN was so moved my the Zionist persecution, why didn’t they make a 51st state for them? California or Texas would be climatically Ideal. US already has so many places names after European towns and cities. Who stopped from creating a new Jerusalem? Wouldn’t creating a Jewish state in the middle of Arab world be the most dangerous thing to do given the history of hate between the Abrahamic religions and track record of the would be neighbours?

You may say that it was to correct the historical wrongs and the . But some things are beyond salvage. If they did want to truly correct the wrongs of the past, most of Europe should have given back all the wealth looted from its colonies. The self proclaimed ideal nation – the United states should have vacated America and given it back to the Natives. None of them happened. It will never happen too.

If the reason was to give Jews back Jerusalem and their ‘Holy’ land, they should have set the example, they should have destroyed Mount Rushmore and given back the natives their holy lands. The British in India should have given back Ayodhya and Mathura back to Hindus. The Australians should have given back the occupied sacred spaces to the Aborigines. The Spanish and Portuguese should have given back the Incan gold and don’t even get me started on Africa.

Pardon my french but Who the fuck divides a country that way? Let alone a country, who the fuck does divide anything this way?

If you think about it, it doesn’t surprise me at all. It looks to have been done on purpose. It was the perfect way to permanently destabilize a region and ensure that there can never be peace. It was after all a model that worked perfectly well only a few months before November 1947. India was partitioned. It ended up with East Pakistan and West Pakistan bordering India on both sides. What about the Hongkong situation? There is a clear pattern. The United states politicians still do this till date to their own country. Its called Gerrymandering. Its done to ensure that the black and hispanic voters do not have a majority in any district or county. Its not even subtle.

You can live life as a Goldfish – Forget what happened in the past and live life as it come or an Elephant – Never forget anything that happened to you. But the problem is that they want you to be an Elephant about all the wrongs done by you and a Goldfish about all the wrongs done by them. They want you to be a Goldfish and tell you that Goldfish has a very short memory even if that’s absolute bullshit.

Its a pattern that has been and is being repeated across the world. They will keep doing it. They do not want anyone else to prosper or live in peace. They do not care about any faith other than theirs. The do not care about any race other than theirs. It happened to middle east, it happened to Americas, it happened to Africa, it happened to Oceania. It happened in parts of Europe.

Americans and rest of Europe were greedy but the British have always been petulant. If they cannot have it, no-one can.

Once a loser…

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Anybody familiar with the periodic table of elements would be familiar with the concept of exceptions. Despite our human brains exceptional desperation to classify and group things into buckets, the world we live in is full of exceptions. The list of things also includes people. History has often shown that the people who are different and do not fall into this buckets are often the ones who contribute most to the world. These are the ones who defy the status quo and the normal notions of the society. These are the ones who can bring change. Some times bad, more than often good. These are called odd balls in simple language, data science calls them outliers. Do you know what data engineers do to outliers? They discard them.

Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning seem to be the latest and hottest trends in technology according to many. Its not only the latest ‘fad’ for CEOs and CTOs but has also become a very integral part of our lives (even if you don’t want it to – more on that later). But that is this? Machine learning algorithms are just simple programs that are instructed to look into a data set and come up with a model that gives the most accurate prediction for future data. Might sound simple, but there is a lot more to it. All it does is split the data into a training set and a testing set. It trains itself with training set is one of they predefined ways and then tests itself against the testing set to see if its logic was correct. if not, it tries another predefined way. There are about 10 commonly used predefined ways. If you don’t fit into any category, then you are screwed.

One way that Netflix or YouTube or other video streaming service would suggest a video to a user would be using Naive Bayes algorithm. Its a simple calculation of probability of you liking A because you liked B. For this they use your Likes, Age and location etc together with genres or key words they associate certain programs with. Lets say, you watched Daredevil, then you must like super-heros and Marvel cinematic universe. You watched a standup comedy show? More from same comic or other comics who do similar kinds of material must be a good guess.

Metflix: Because You Watched X. Where are we at? | by Mohtadi Ben Fraj | HackerNoon.com | Medium

Now lets go step further, A mall or an e-commerce sites wants to target ads to users and want to link your age, gender to your spending patterns. The ones marked below are outliers, that means the k-means algorithm used for customer segmentation cannot place you into a cluster/group because you do not fit the purchasing patterns of the data they have. Here the words “Data they have” is very important. More on that later. So, since you do not fit, the data engineer discards these outliers as faulty data or insignificant data. It means you get generic suggestions/ads or irrelevant ads. Annoying but still not dangerous.

But the problem comes when these standard data mining algorithms are used to take decisions that may make or break lives. For example, approval of a loan or admission into a college or a job. May be someone had a personal tragedy and had bad scores for a couple of years? May be someone went broke because they spent all their income on medical bills of a family member. Then you seem as an unusual data point to the Machine learning algorithm. It cannot handle you because it never looks for a cause. For it, you are just a row in a spreadsheet that doesn’t fit its idea of the world. The data it has is its world view.

If you wanted to develop a program that screened resumes and shortlisted potential candidates for interviews. Old school way was to write a lengthy list of skills you are looking for and match the resumes with them or a sub set of skills. In the modern way, you just feed the resumes of all your employees to it and ask the Machine learning algorithm to figure out what your company needs. You may think that the program will deduce the skills required. But it can also come to a conclusion not to select female candidates if only 20% of your workforce is woman. As per the data you prefer Men 80% or 4 times over the other gender. If majority of the work force is in 30’s, it can also conclude that the company doesn’t want to hire other age groups. You may think this is too hypothetical, but this actually happened.

Being ignored for a job because of your gender is…. BAD, but not a catastrophe. How about being denied a loan because of your race? How about being arrested for a crime you did not commit because the data engineers used the facial data related to only a specific ethnic group to a facial recognition algorithm?

A lot of the technology news is filled with success stories of Machine learning and how it can help businesses earn more. But the other-side of the story is often suppressed. Did you know that a twitter bot by Microsoft was suspended mere 16 hours after it went live after it started to tweet stuff like this.

TayTweets: How Far We've Come Since Tay the Twitter bot

Training a machine learning algorithm is like teaching a child. Like a child trusting their parents to give them all the accurate,true information, the algorithms assumes that the information given to it is the only information. But unlike children who may change their opinion when they see a new point of view or set of information, computers do not have the autonomy to seek additional data. They always think that the data given to them is full and final, no other type of data can exist. For a company with 20% female work force, the algorithm truly believes that this is the way things should be, the percentage cannot increase. Thus AI kind of works to ensure that the status-quo is maintained. Thus killing progress. For computers, once a loser is always a loser.

If a bias is conscious then it means that you are dealing with an Asshole, if a bias is unconscious then you are dealing with someone ignorant. A computer program is only as smart as the people who build it. If the people who build it are ignorant, then it is going to be ignorant. But unlike humans, computers do not look for reason, that makes them dangerous. Like all human beings, the programmers or data scientists or data engineers are also biased. They may fail to acknowledge it because most of us don’t know our own biases. If you don’t believe me, Harvard has a simple online test to prove this. Don’t worry, they don’t ask for your personal information to take the test.

If majority of the venture capitalists and investors were using Machine learning to decide their choices, What would be the AI calculated value of success for a college drop out, a lumber-mill worker and a guy selling books from a garage? I am pretty sure it would be in single digits if not zero. If that had happened, we would be in a world without Facebook, Tesla and Amazon. The same algorithms that these guys are creating now, would prevent similar success stories. May be that’s the plan. May be they do not want competition.

Imagine If they decided sporting results, same teams would always win. A winner will always be a winner and a loser will always be a loser.

Imagine if machine learning algorithms decided elections, politicians will become de-facto dictators. Wait! Hasn’t Facebook already almost ensured this?

I will let Will Smith summarize why I detest these algorithms.

Idiocracy

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“Don’t attach locations or ethnicity to the disease, this is not a ‘Wuhan Virus,’ ‘Chinese Virus’ or ‘Asian Virus,” the World Health Organization wrote in a February 2020 bulletin. This was funny in a way because the last pandemic of this scale was called ‘Spanish Flu’ ( the disease did not even originate there) and more recently there was MERS or Middle eastern respiratory syndrome. Not to forget the fact that Ebola was named after a river in Congo. Lyme in Lyme disease is a geographic location.

If calling COVID 19 a China Virus is Racist and unfair. So was the case with other diseases. But one significant difference between them and COVID 19 is that China has been very secretive of the virus and has been reluctant in carrying out transparent investigations into the origins of the virus. China did exactly what the world expected it to do. Hide any useful information. Arrested the guy who tried to warn others about the disease and left him to die. So, irrespective of the argument on weather associating the virus with Wuhan is bigotry or not, Chinese government is responsible for all the deaths that happened in the first wave of infections. Let’s call it for what it is. There of no need to mince any words here.

But since then, for every wave of infections and every variant of COVID 19 going around, we and we alone are responsible. By we I mean the great citizens of the world. Most people blame the governments for not doing enough. But this is not an earthquake or a tsunami for the government to send in a disaster recovery team and quickly fix it. It’s a disease that transmits trough proximity and can be contained by self restraint. To put in simple words, if everyone in the world stays where ever they are and puts in an effort to live with the minimal interactions required to survive, everything would have gone back to normal long time ago.

But we are a species that isn’t able to eradicate AIDS. A virus far more easy to avoid. Why is it so? We call ourselves the only cognitive living organism in the world. Why can’t we restrain ourselves for a few days/weeks/months? I have hardly moved my ass in more than a year. It’s not easy. I too crave a vacation outside the 4 walls of my house. But I’m just trying to fulfill my share of social responsibility.

Is it the instant gratification that humans are now habituated to? Is it the over compartmentalization, politicization and polarization of news feeds? Is it utter disregard and lack of value to others lives? May it is one, may be it is everything. Except for a handful of countries that actively against vaccinations or use of masks, most have been at least trying to inoculate citizens and are advising caution. But this is all they can do. Ironically, this is not a new problem. Part of it is ignorance, part of it is apathy and part of it is desperation.

Funny enough each of these parts are associated with a different set of people. But it all boils down to greed. Lets imagine a world without equity. A world where every organization is not at the gun point called Share Value and is forced to show quarter on quarter, year on year improvement in revenues and profit. Lets imagine a world where everyone doesn’t need to get a pay hike every year. Imagine, even its hypothetical, a world without loans and credit cards. Wouldn’t it reduce the number of desperate people and desperate companies?

We have slowly been brainwashed into valuing non-essentials more than essentials. In Nature, there are lots of experiments. Some work and others don’t. The natural selection process had previously helped weed out everything that did not work or would not work. But the Homosapians have changed the rules. We do not contribute anything to Earth, we only consume and we are not that smart about out future as well. The issue of melting polar ice caps and global warming always divided people when there was no room for argument at all. Its just the Oil companies want to stay rich, that is why they find new stupid, dumb reasons against renewable energy. Sometimes they are do it through phony research funding, some times they do it through lobbying. This is best explained in the dystopian comedy Idiocracy.

Look at the logical way to price something. Its the cost of manufacturing + cost of logistics + Profit Margin. This is how most of the essentials are priced. But what about Non essentials? Coke is cheaper than Water in many countries. You take water, add a bunch of things to it and a shit load of sugar, then market it like crazy and still end up selling it for less than the cheapest ingredient involved in Manufacturing? How can these numbers ad up?

They have build a very powerful maze for common people where no matter which route you take, you will always end up where you started. Most people do not have enough savings to sit out of their job. So, not sure if and when we will get out of this cycle. Until we do that, we may not even get out of this pandemic.

Talking to strangers…

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I have been an introvert my whole life. By Introvert, I don’t mean that I am silent. You ask me about something I know, I will talk till you are tired, strangely, I can do this with strangers too. But I struggle with small talk. Wishing someone Good morning or saying thank you or saying you are welcome are very difficult for me. One of the reasons being I think these words are pointless. I don’t help someone for a ‘Thank you’, I do it because I can. So, I expect any one able to help me in a situation to do the same. Likewise, I don’t know what kind of a day someone is having. How can I wish their morning to be good? Anyways, because I talk a lot people think I am an extrovert. But they get it wrong. It has nothing to with how much people share or talk. An extrovert is someone who seeks company of people because they need external simulation to their brains. My mind most of the time needs a break from over stimulation. That’s what introverts are. That is why I prefer solitude to company. So, I prefer minimizing external triggers. Thanks to a world wide pandemic enforced work from home way of life, things have been good. But lately I am getting annoyed by another side effect of the pandemic. The fall in revenue for big corporations..

I do not have any financial interest in the welfare of these companies. I actually think abolishing all Stock markets will do the world a great deal of good. If there is no pressure from investors to deliver Year on year and Quarter on quarter improvement in profits, there would be less corruption, less unethical practices, less targets, less up-selling, less cross-selling, less marketing and finally less marketing calls. It’s one of the things I hate in the world. Some smart-ass with an MBA reading a couple of books by so called successful people and forcing their text book non-sense on the world through desperate people trying to make a honest living(so called telemarketers)

This is exactly the corporate world right now. Its called machine learning and artificial intelligence in marketing to enhance the lead to sales ratio. In plain English it is trying to sell stuff to people based on decisions taken by a software written by a bunch of geeks with zero social skills and no understanding of human beings. This is why Google and Facebook got a heart attack when Apple pushed an update that let users decide which apps can track them. The Facebook and Google business model is to predict things you are likely to engage with, show it on your screen and show an ad now and then. Why do you think the streaming services provide different profiles for an account. That’s because they want to separate the recommendations per profile to increase the chances of you spending more time looking at the screen. Why can’t a person have diverse interests? Why can’t someone appreciate both Les Miserables and Fast & the Furious?

https://theconfusedprimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/8a04d-bedroom.gif

Its called targeted marketing and for that they need data. Data on what you like, what you bought, how much you earn, where do you live. Silicon valley was once a simple place, people wrote software and they sold it. Now they are giving it away for free so that they can sell ads.

I digress. So, the annoying telemarketing phone calls have increased a lot. I do understand that the country I live in has more serious problems than to think about making laws for privacy and customer data protection. I don’t mind getting calls for products I never subscribed for, I am most annoyed with the ones that I am a customer. Because, in this case, I should have say in opting in or out of promotions. It took me 4 months, 3 complaints, 2 escalations and 2 consumer affairs complaints to stop my bank from calling me everyday asking me if I wanted a loan. Why does this happen? Its because the stupid software are designed in such a way.

The angry face on top is a word cloud of all words longer than 4 characters from my first 53 blogs combined, minus the words that have occurred fewer than 5 times. The size of the font is directly proportional to the frequency of occurrence. It took me 90 odd minutes with the help of another blog Text Mining: Extracting and Analyzing to create it. Since you cannot eyeball the image for frequency, I made a chart below that shows top 15 occurring words. God knows what people are doing with their machine learning trainings and certiications.

If I would feed this to an algorithm to take a decision on my ideas or even better to lets say come up with a list of topics that I would prefer to read. This is something some websites do for click bait. Thankfully, Most of them do not spend time on analytics, they just try to use some low hanging fruits like donations to save a life, easy ways to earn money, weight loss tips. Or for men, its just random articles with photographs of women.

If you look at the analysis of my blog and decide that news on Music artists would interest me, you would be wrong. All 50 occurrences are from a single post about my taste in Music. Words ranked 2 to 13 can’t be used to judge be. That leaves Movies and Earth. Film gossip doesn’t interest me. I like movies a lot, so I do not watch many. That sounds like a contradiction but its not. If I like something very much, I would prefer quality over quantity. What would you sell me with earth? Donate to Save the earth campaign? If you actually read my blogs, you would understand that I believe that the there is no way humans can save the earth. The thing I most frequently read is Football news. I did write a blog on it. But machines can count words, not measure emotion or passion. I know guys in the IBM Watson team would disagree. I would truly love to see its results. I remember using it to try and measure the mood of customers based on emails. This as well before the Brisbane city council thought it sarcasm. May be it now knows Australian sarcasm. Again, I digress.

Some data analysts may point out that there is more to data science than just top 15 words. I know that. Linear Regression, Linear Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines, Naive Bayes, Decision trees. I have learnt them all and tried them out and ultimately came to a conclusion that brains are far too complex to be simulated especially when you want to use it for selling stuff. Yes, I was only telling partial truth earlier when I said it took me 90 minutes to draw a word cloud. The time was to learn to scrape the data from a WordPress site without using paid extensions, the ability to understand and interpret data takes years.

My Amazon recommendations are so inaccurate that I turned off the notifications. May be it’s also because since the app Wunderlist was purchased and killed by Microsoft, me and my wife have been using Amazon app for shared shopping list. That may be messing up the algorithm. My Netflix recommendations have the same accuracy of my daily horoscope no matter how many movies I rate. The machine may decide the recommendations, but its a human who is tagging and categorizing the movie. Yesterday I saw a category, “Asian movies with strong female lead”. I mean what the fuck is that? My wife watches a lot of Korean movies and may be a couple of the last ones had a female oriented plot. But WTF? That’s what algorithms do. In case of movies or books, doesn’t sticking to same genre or style bore you?

Cathy O’Neil starts her book Weapons of Math Destruction with an example of a horrible failed idea of using AI to grade the performance of teachers. Read it, it’s a nice book. In the theoretical world of computers, the parameters are fixed, in real world they aren’t. The real world doesn’t abide by the rules of the digital world.

If you think that I am against technology, I am anything but that. Just like movies I like technology very much. Just as I hate bad and mediocre movies, I hate seeing technology being used for stupid things. I will give you an example, I once spoke with a guy who told me that they put GPS trackers on their construction equipment to know if they are being used on non-working days. I asked him about the accuracy of the reading. He told me 200 meters. Then I asked him “A crane or a poclain or a fork lift can be used in a construction site without moving for more than 50 meters. The only time they move more than 200 mts is when they are moved to a different site”. He did not give me a response for that.

You can use data or technology for good things too. I would prefer technology being used to eliminate malaria, not selling burgers. If people need it, they will buy it. If you make stuff that people don’t need, you have to find stupid ways to sell it. The irony of all this is that, they are asking computer programs to think like humans and asking their humans to stick to per-determined responses like a computer program .

 "Would you like fries with that?"

Curiosity killed the cat

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When I watched The Trueman Show for the first time, as a kid, it completely went over my head. I couldn’t understand it. Why would someone pay to watch another person’s life. That too 24×7. The idea seemed absurd and idiotic. I watched it again recently after almost 2 decades. My wife didn’t know that it existed. It started with us watching the Netflix special ‘The Social Dilemma’. At the end of the day the entire concept of social media is to let other people know what they are doing in their lives. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are like an audit trail of people’s lives. Or at least the events that they deemed to be important. So I was reminded of the movie which now I feel was well ahead of time.

Side-bar: May be I should sell this idea to these IT giants. Most of the celebrities are avid consumers of social media. So why not automate writing of Biographies? 
When ever google photos a notification on my phone saying ‘5 Years ago today’ or ‘2 Years so today’ it scares the hell out of me. I feel like I just received a note like 👇

Anyways, my wife doesn’t like spoilers, so I did not tell her what it was about. Though we still don’t understand the joy people derive from watching/knowing about others lives, we understood that it was possible. The times we live in are where every Tom Dick and Harry television network is full of so called reality shows. So it now made sense.

May be it always did. May be having parents who did not gossip (bitch) about others made me ignorant of the trait most of us have. Curiosity. Not in Science, not in spirituality, not in seeking the purpose of life but in what our neighbors are doing. May be if everyone lived in houses made out of transparent glass, we wouldn’t need televisions anymore.

It’s not just adults, take a bunch of kids who receive presents. Everyone would be more curious about what others got. They would be restless until they know that they got something better than others or may be until they are sure no one got something better than them. Next comes education. Whenever grades are announced first we look at our grades and then ask everyone around about theirs. Strangely the only ones we retain are the ones who did better than us. I’m sure that the sadness of a low grade was always washed away on learning that our friends didn’t do any better either.

But before the Orkuts and Facebooks came along, this was it. We just frown for a day or two and you were done. But any like and comment on the posts by anyone you know will keep rubbing salt into the wounds of your failures. We forget about your life and get fixated on others.

As a kid I used to watch tons of Discovery channel. It was informational and it was educational. Well theoretically it still is. But lately its focus has been on teaching survival skills in the wild and fishing techniques. That’s reality TV too. Feels like attempts to make non fictional versions of Cast away. This is the PG rated version of reality TV if you believe eating animal shit and insects wouldn’t scar kids for life. The more popular versions of this reality based television programming are borderline voyeurism.

Truman show was truly a movie made ahead of its time. But looking at the world around me I think we are way past the concept of the show. People are volunteering to be on reality shows. A side effect of people starting valuing themselves based on the number of followers they have online or the number of likes they get. I always thought that the word Celebrity meant that a person celebrated for something they have achieved. But now it just means popular. All you have to do is let people watch you. For every video on the internet, there are 10s of videos of people filming themselves watching them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyL78n4wIiw

But I still don’t understand why one would want people to follow them and watch them all day long. If Voyeurism is watching people in intimate moments, whats the word for wanting to be watched?

Pack of wolves

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Any typical school kid from India must have learnt about Ashoka – The Great. He once ruled the entire Indian subcontinent. What we were thought in school was that he was a great king, he got trees planted along the side of the road to make travel easy. It may not be the most important thing he did in his life but again I did not write my text books. The symbol of a 24 spoke wheel on Indian flag is his legacy being celebrated. But he wasn’t always great, in fact he started out a terrible ruler and only changed after the battle of Kalinga. He self reflected and had a realization after massacring thousands of people. He did not completely cut out violence after that but he became a far better person. If he were living in this day and age, #AskohaTheTerrible would have been trending after his first war. I am actually waiting for some descendant of the people he killed to start an online petition to remove the Chakra from the Indian flag.

In the movie Munnabhai MBBS, there is a scene where a pick pocket tries to pinch the wallet of an elderly person. Get gets caught in the act and immediately the people in the vicinity transform into a lync mob and start trashing the wanna be thief. The elderly man intervenes and asks the thief if he wishes to be left at the mercy of the angry mob. He goes on “These are the citizens of our country. See the anger in their eyes? One just had a fight with his wife, someone’s son isn’t heeding his words, another is jealous of their neighbor and someone got a scolding from their landlord in the morning. They never speak up there, because they lack the courage. They will show all their anger on you.” Even though the move came out in 2003, it was right on point about the general outrage not just in India but around the world. In a way that scene was written well ahead of its time.

“There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, says that there are no worthless people, they are like that because of their upbringing. I do not agree completely to the statement. I understand the premise, but I feel that there is a point in every ones life when they are a weed. But most people in normal circumstances, get out of this phase and do make something better of themselves. At least they try. The ones that do not try, even if the conditions are favorable are really worthless. There is a difference between a person who sends you an email that he is a Nigerian Price who can send you his fortune if you pay the customs fee and Lehman brothers. There is a difference between a guy who ogles women in a bus stop and someone like Harvey Weinstein. The former are either victims of circumstance or still in that stupid phase. The latter are the worthless people. If Hugo was alive, he would definitely call them the result of bad farmers.

But, just like the people who tried to trash the pickpocket in the movie, the people now a days are finding it difficult, in fact even more difficult to distinguish between the two. The social media, especially twitter is full of people who, like a pack of wolves waiting to pounce on any and every mistake made. I have been hearing about the numerous lives destroyed for something someone did or said decades ago. Last year, a top executive in Boeing had to leave the company for an article he wrote 29 years earlier that argued women shouldn’t be in the defense forces. There is a separate pack on stand by to attack people on separate issues, ideologies. When the liberals do it, the conservatives call it Cancel culture, but when they do it they refer it to as protecting the moral standard of the society.

Be honest and name an Ideal person. A person who never did any mistake in their life? Aren’t you yourself embarrassed if not ashamed by things you did or said? I am. I have many instances of things that I did that I was not particularly proud of . I am sure many of the poor souls who got kicked out of their jobs because of the cancel culture are too. Most Indians would name Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation as an example of an Ideal person. But he too did not stand against racial injustice as soon as he saw it. He did not change until things got personal and he was kicked out of a 1st class carriage on a train in South Africa. Speaking of South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s first wife accused him of beating and being threatened with an axe.

The public shaming has now gone on to such ridiculous lengths that one mistake in judgement can end your life as you know it. It doesn’t matter if its a simple joke between friends, or even if the so called victim the twitterati imagined was not even offended by the action. It doesn’t matter if the matter is stupid and personal or even purely accidental. The world is a complex and messed up place. You cannot apply the same medicine to every disease, each and every one of the have to be looked objectively. If one feels outraged or angry at someone, take a moment pause and think about if what they did was just stupid or unintentional. Check if you are really looking at a weed or if its a plant that needs to be forgiven for one mistake. May be sometimes they were speakeing the truth and you just didn’t like it.

It is necessary to take out the weeds but it is also important not to take an axe to every tree with a crooked branch. If we do that, we may end up in a world with no trees. Our society as a whole is becoming too politically correct for its own well being. There is a saying in India that a person with Jaundice sees the entire world as green, which is equivalent to seeing the world with ‘Tinted’ glasses. They also say a picture is worth a 1000 words, not sure how much a video is worth (24 frames*number of seconds*1000?)

Shaken, not stirred

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New Research Ends Marvel Vs. DC Movie Debate, But Is It a Fair Fight?

HBO max is planning a great birthday gift for me next month. Finally the Jack Snyder version of the Justice league will be released. A movie that was destined to be one of best works ended up being reshot and contaminated due to a personal tragedy of his daughter passing away during the post production and the formula based calculations of the production house. Marvel makes a lot of money from their movies, they all have comedy, so let’s squeeze in some funny dialogues and punchlines here and there. Marvel seems to know the hit formula, let’s copy. Our director is not available, the film he made looks very dark and gloomy. Why not rope in the guy who made Avengers? Henry Cavill has already grown a mustache for Mission Impossible and is contractually obligated not to remove it? Let’s go ahead and shoot with a mustache, graphics team will take care of it. A movie before post production is just a bunch of scenes shot in random order. This movie was put together by people who had no idea of what the original film maker intended to convey.

This is why the Justice league felt so awkward and illogical. A movie whose titles start with a bitterly peimistic rendition of Leonard Cohen’s everybody knows cannot have silly things in it.

Every James Bond movie ever made, has the MI6 agent order a Martini. He is specific about how it is made. He wants it shaken, not stirred. Just like Monsieur Bond, I have a specific preference to the movies I watch. I prefer the ones that shake me to the ones that stir me with excitement. If they are exciting too, that is a plus but the minimum requirement is that they shake my brain into a thought process. From the movies like 12 Angry Men and The man from earth that shook my idea about what a film needs to be, to be engaging, to the animation features from Pixar before they were acquired by Disney, to the super hero movies of the present generation which are mostly guilty pleasures, I always find solace in the ones that have a deeper meaning and original thought in them.

For example, 12 Angry Men and The man from earth showed me the value of screenplay Both of them have a plot that can be explained in 20 seconds, have absolutely minimal background score, have no super stars, were shot on a shoe string budget in a single room. Christopher Nolan is the master of showmanship. His movies are a visual spectacle but your need to put all your grey cells to work to understand them. Compare that with Quinten Tarantino, who shoots the movies in the sequence of scenes, has clever dialogue, simple plots but complex characters. You learn something new in the movie every time you watch it. Then come the animated pieces of art from Pixar where they took you into their crazy thoughts of what if your toys came to life to what if your emotions are things living inside your head. Finally we come to the fast food equivalent of today’s cinema.

The mega assembly line of super hero movies coming out of the Marvel factory that churned 23 movies in last 11 years is the Coca cola of the mutant movies. Very successful, very popular but is it good for you? FYI, they have 11 more planned for release in next 3 years. Phew! that’s a lot of movies. When you compare the number or the money they make with the next one in line, the DC comics there is no comparison. But every couple of years a movie like the Watchmen, Dark Knight, Joker , Wonder woman and the now much anticipated (at-least by me) Batman come by which do not make a lot of money, do not grab a lot of awards but give you an idea of what a comic book based movie could be like.

I am not saying I hate Marvel. They do come up with occasional gems such as Logan and Deadpool. But since Disney has decided to become the British empire or in cinematic terms Mr Smith from matrix, everything from Pixar, Star wars and now comic book heros have been destoryed on the comveyor belt designed to mint money. Did you know that The Pirates of carribean was supposed to be a children’s movie? The director saw it differently and Disney released it as is because they had already spent the money and didn’t want to spend anymore reshooting it. It was a huge hit, then Disney started laying its eyes on making movies for Adults. This board room bureaucracy from Disney has nipped the creativity of so many artists and they are not stopping anytime soon. They started with taking moral oriented fables and tales from all across the world and modifying them into pop corn worthy material from which no child can learn anything, moved on to influencing girls into getting into abusive relationships. They spent the past decade spoiling more franchises and ruining the originality and imagination of film makers. Logan and Deadpool were not because of this bureaucracy, they were inspite of.

Tim Burton Quote: “Don’t worry about how you ‘should’ draw it. Just draw it the way you see it.

Now look at the works from DC. There are some stupid stuff. When it comes to new ideas, not every thing work. Who can forget green lantern, catwoman and George Clooney as Batman. The adaptations of the graphic novels Watchmen and V for Vendetta carried the idea and ideology of the books to the silver screen. So did count less batman adaptations. If Marvel owned Batman, would they have let Tim Burton give his weird take on it? Or would they have let Christopher Nolan make the epic saga, which only leaves you pondering if only Heath Ledger was alive and they could have gone ahead with the original script for part 3 or would they have approved one of the darkest movies ever ‘Joker’?

This is why I prefer DC. I see more passion in their screenplays and story lines. They are philosophical not genre driven. Watchmen shows how the lives of super heros in a practical world would be like, V for Vendetta shows the worst case scenario of a non-inclusive, xenophobic society, the History of violence shows you the life of a guy haunted by his past, so does Batman begins with a sumptuous load of the journey a person who set out for revenge but ends up becoming a vigilante, Womderwoman was a review of patriarchal society and hypocrisy of the human race, Dark knight returns was the take of finding courage in outrageous adversity. I’m not even going to get started on Dark Knight. It will take hours to explain the master piece.

Most of the initial movies in a franchise are brainchild of a writer, the sequels and prequels that follows are driven by the greed of studios. John wick and Mad max are exceptions. But that discussion is for another day. Just like a Vodka Martini that is shaken instead of just stirred shows the additional effort and passion that went into making it, DC offers the heart of some film maker much more often than Marvel does.

PS: I also thank DC for Anne Hathaway as cat woman. The most gorgeous portrayal of a female super hero I ever saw. Her image on the Batman bike has burnt a everlasting impression in my retina And then shattering it with Gal Gadot as wonder woman.

Status-quo

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mount rushmore destroyed - Google Search | Red dead redemption concept ...

Scott Morrison, the current prime minister of Australia has received a lot of flack for his comments on January 26th being a holiday. It was the day on which the British landed in Australia. For the aboriginals or the natives of the land it looks like the celebration of colonization and reminds them of the oppression. But Mr Morrison spoke just like Mr Trump after Charlottesville when he said that there were fine people on both sides. Both of them did it based on their electoral calculations. But the way they portray it is like “This is the status quo”. It is true that Natives of Australia and America have been reduced to negligible percentages of the population. Just like Persians/Parsis can no longer call Iran their home or Mesopotamia whose ancestors cannot call Iraq their home anymore. The status quo is that both countries are now Arab states. The natives are not welcome anymore.

But strangely, the same people who talk about status quo when things change talk about taking America back from immigrants. The same argument was the reason English voted for Brexit. The overwhelming feeling of we are being marginalized in our own country is causing all this hostility. If they want things back to the way they were, where do we stop? Do we go back to 19th century? 18th? how about 3000 BC? Even if you manage to build a time machine to travel back in time, you ought to set the date you want to go back to?

Mount Rushmore is a very recognizable monument, built in the honor of colonists by the colonists. Americans may have had a war with the British and gained Independence. But unlike most of the British colonial empire, it was Europeans fighting Europeans. In the 1800’s, Black hills region where this monument was later built was granted the the Lakota people, a native American tribe. But later it was taken back and they built a monstrosity on the sacred lands of the Natives. There is still a legal dispute going on with the tribe demanding the entire land be returned to them and also reparations be paid in billions. Why not go back to 1800s and give the land back to them?

This is not new to America. In 1490, Jeruselam had 150 Jewish families. Most of them were driven out of their land by Arab invaders, just like the Parsis and Mesopotamian s. The UK, supported by US, carved out the Arab occupied territory to create a home for Jews and thousands were transported back to their ancient homeland in ships. Not sure why they did not do the same favor for the Parsis who took refuge in India. They have to apply the same standards to every one. Right? Nope, they do it only when it serves them.

One of the bloodiest event in post Independence India was the demolition of Babri Masjid. The Hindus argue that the Birth place of their beloved god should instead have a temple. It took decades to solve the problem but in 2020, finally the temple construction started. This scenario is a little similar to the Jews wish to return to Zion but is also very different in another way. Even now, 80% of the Indians are Hindus. The British managed to take a lot from India. But they couldn’t take Indians out of India. As per 2020 census, Native Americans constitute less than 2% of the US population, i.e 5 million compared to 96 million. The construction of the temple has sparked a wide spread condemnation from many western countries as rise of right wing nationalism. But they are comparing apples and oranges here. Indian government was trying to erase the monuments that remind the oppression of the Mughals who preceded the British in looting India. They are trying to wind back the clock and return the the way things were in the past.

Its just stupid to have the photo of Mount Rushmore on the Lonely plant USA edition. So, they put the grand canyon.

Lonely Planet USA by Lonely Planet, Paperback, 9781743218617 | Buy ...

But what did they do with the Indian version? By the way, the Taj mahal is also in a way a symbol of oppression. This is just hypocrisy. They should have the same standards for all Lonely planets. They should have the same standards for entire planet. They should have the same standards for every person on this lonely planet.

Lonely Planet guide to India | MCN

The main objection to the argument is again would be Status quo and hurting the sentiments of the Minorities. So, USA and Australia are hurting the sentiments of minorities by keeping the Status quo but India is India is doing it by changing it. Weird right. You might take me to a Right wing activist. Trust me, I am not. I am just looking for logic in all this mess. So, everyone should just calm down and decide. Do they want to change the status quo or keep it. If they want to change it, how long do we go back?

Its funny that the same argument written by an American would be called a left- wing argument. Just like the side of road we drive on may be the political definitions of Right and Left are also reversed here.

Donald Trump was the revenge of Conservative America for Barack Obama. They will no doubt be plotting another revenge for Kamala Harris. They should just accept the fact that the history is repeating itself and the new immigrants are taking over the old immigrants. To borrow their words, that is the status quo now. The only difference is that it is happening in a more civilized way with far less bloodshed. It they don’t agree with it, they should wind back their clocks, demolish all the monuments they built, give back the country to the Native Americans, get on the ships to England and home their ancestors accept them as at least refugees.

Taking a Q

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Our blind-spots and their consequences

When you first start learning how to drive any decent instructor would have explained how to set your rear-view mirrors and explained the concept of the blind spot. The area that is invisible to you if you just look at your mirrors. The instructor I had was a little over the top in his ways, so when ever I changed lanes without checking the blind spots, he used to yell you just killed a kid driving a bicycle or you just killed a person on a bike. In a way, it did help to hammer home the point he was trying to make. Though hypothetical, he was just explaining the consequences of my actions in the real world. Just like in a car, the driving seat of the journey called life also has blind spots. How often do you check for them?

In your opinion, what’s wrong with the world? I’m not concerned about everything that is wrong in this world. What is one thing that in your opinion, the biggest problem in the world? Well! The answers would differ. Based on your nationality, financial status, Age, gender etc, the answers might vary. What if I told you there is a more prominent thing that influenced your answer?

As the old English saying (correctly) goes, Birds of a feather flock together. That’s the way of the nature. But in the era of globalization, different birds are having to flock together. The street you live in, the bus you take, the super market you use, the place your work… all of them have people from various cultures, races and backgrounds. I am not going to be a saint an say everyone is same. We are different… well that sounds a little negative.. let me try it this way. We are all unique in our own ways. Even the twins may only look same. In terms of ideas and ideologies they can be polar opposites.

When it comes to inconsequential things like favorite color/food/actor, there is never any harm. They may argue a little and may have trouble ordering food as a group in a restaurant. But when it comes to matters that are more serious and uncompromising in our petty minds, we tend to seek birds of same feather. This is because these so called uncompromising things are mostly beliefs and its never fun to be challenged to defend something that cannot be logically defended. Things such as political or religious affiliation, where there is no flawless/perfect choice, people get offended easily because they will not be able to make a clear logical argument for their choice.

So, naturally we tend to interact with people with similar political/religious affiliations be it physical or as it is becoming more and more common – virtual. Those Twitter/Facebook/Instagram feeds filled with memes, jokes and news that consciously and sub-consciously create echo chambers where you keep hearing the same thing again and again. You know what… if you hear something long enough, even if it is horrible you will start to find it tolerating. I owned a house near a highway for 4 years. All the long distance buses used to queue there and from 8 pm to 11 pm and the drivers used to honk like hell. First week was horrible, but after a couple of months, they did not bother me. I got used to it. Okay… you may say that I started ignoring those sounds. But another case in point, again me. I spent about an year driving 260 kms for work every day. That meant I spent 4 hours on road. For the fear of dozing off, I used to play music at full volume. Some of that music was horrible, the only criteria for the songs that I used was good bass and a fast beat. After an year of hearing to them, these horrible songs with stupid lyrics became some of my favorites. They still are my guilty pleasures of music.

Social media echo chambers and democracy - Technology vs Humanity: the ...

This is what happens over time, you tend to develop selective blindness and selective deafness to things that normal people would cringe at. This is exactly what has happened since 2017 when an anonymous used started a theory and that ended up in the attack on the US capitol building 3 years layer. The Q Anon movement is a big thing in America. In reality, it might be a playful guy putting a wild theory on a message board and that in-turn being used by some politically motivated groups to further their self interests. Last week I was going through some applications of machine learning in word processing and I came across someone who actually did an analysis of the posts from this so called Q and came to a conclusion that they were 2 different people. A lot of people who had were aligned with the ideas or just wished the things said by Q were true. So they took a cue from what every he said and converted a small dumpster fire into a wild fire that has started to engulf an entire nation.

Two authors are behind QAnon messages, shows machine learning analysis from Swiss company Orphanalytics.
Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qanon-is-two-different-people-shows-machine-learning-analysis-from-orphanalytics-301192981.html

So, it is very important to discover if you are living in an echo chamber. Technology provides some options such as Ground news. But it is ultimately up-to you. How diverse is your network? How many people do you know are different from you? Try to be more open in your choice of people you hang out with, you have a better chance of not being sucked into an echo chamber.