karma police

Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Underrated underworld undertones.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a book that pits romanticism against idealism not in a classroom, or the halls of a government – but in the bleakest background possible – a segregated reform school. It explores the possibility of empathy in the face of cruelty, of movements in the face of racist stagnancy.

The book revolves around a single friendship between two boys who embody these warring ideals – two boys with similar objectives but wildly differing paths.

The books begins by tracking Elwood, a young African American on the fast track to college with all the “desirable” traits – conscientiousness, intelligence, righteousness and industry – the traits the American dream sells us on. The fact that such a boy ends up in a reform school masquerading as front for the near torturous, murderous, and often paedophilic urges of it’s administrators is a stunning indictment of American police. They saw an old white man and a young black man in a car – and immediately arrested Elwood for car theft.

The problem is this – Elwood wants to believe in humanity and people. He wants to hold on Martin Luther King’s assertions. He wants to break up fights on campus and report errors to authority. He still wants to pay his dues, “graduate” from Nickel Academy quickly and continue with his life – an objective which even he realises quickly to be naivety.

The book not only tracks his journey through Nickel, but also the trauma after. The fundamental realisation that just like war, abuse at levels so pervasive has permanent impacts. The idea that there are naturally inviolate parts of us, thresholds not meant to be crossed, sanctum sanctorums that we are meant to protect – parts that if fiddle with, can have unfathomable impacts.

But the beauty in this book is in it’s specific symbolism – how on their escape from Nickel, idealism (Elwood) is shot, while skepticism (Turner) runs faster and further without looking back. How Turner realises that maybe he could have protected Elwood from being the Icarus that flew to close the son. How Elwood interacts with his grandmother Harriett – the war-weary soldier who lost her husband and children, and now stands to lose Elwood.

The realisation that in a world as shattering as 1960s Florida, life takes and it takes and it takes, and they keep giving anyways. The realization that life-shattering circumstances steal from our heart and whittle us down to our essence – that the parts we decide to give up decide the sculpture we are carved into.

The Black Mirror of Education

Good evening, Internet. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke.

But today, I’d like to tell you a tale.

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A school is an indoctrination center where their child has been sent to be stripped of his individuality and turned into a soul-dead conformist member of the American consumer culture. – George Carlin

I hope that perhaps unlike the donkeys and horses in Animal Farm, we have not yet forgotten what our ideals for education were meant to be – that we have not let the pigs blunt our incisive knife of reason. I say this, because it is difficult to understate the importance of education.

“Education is our passport for the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” – Malcom X

That is the vision we had for education – these are slogans that we shouted, the flags we waved, and the placards we thrusted, when we started out on our glorious march to progress. But somewhere along the path, we let the wanton wind lead our fast-moving stream to wander too far away from it’s destination.

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ROTE MEMORIZATION AND EXAMINATION

Rote memorization for exams fails to achieve anything worthwhile.

Albert Einstein also once said, that “education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learnt in school”, or in other words, how much of the information we are able to process and understand, and utilize for the remainder of our lives. What school textbooks provide is information, and what school exams provide is a mean to test the short-term retention of that information. THAT IS THAT.

And it is our other-wordly obsession with marks that breeds this behavior. We train students to study only for exams, and in that process, they learn only what is in the text-book. And by doing that, you will kill curiosity, the thrill of discovery, and the joy of exploration. What Albert Einstein said is absolutely true: “it is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education at all”.

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NO REAL EDUCATION

“I wasn't taught how to get a job But I can remember dissecting a frog I wasn't taught how to pay tax But I know loads about Shakespeare's classics”

-Dave Brown, “Don’t Stay in School”

School fails to adapt itself to the needs of every child. Education is an extremely personal journey. School presumes that if you teach every kid the same subject for the same time in the same way in the same place with the same amount attention, that everyone will somehow improve. That sounds to me, entirely presumptuous. People are different and every child has different needs.

I believe that we need to break free from this rigid curriculm. Just to be clear, I am not saying, that some subjects are pointless. I am not saying the individuals must not be exposed to all possible subjects. I am not saying that a basic understanding of most topics is essential. I am merely saying that, way too much is mandatory in schools right now, and that needs to change.

I think that children should be allowed to spend more time studying the subjects that they know they love, and not be restricted to the few subjects that the school offers, for the little time that the school teaches them. Everyone has their own unique talents, and school must offer a way to develop them. However, as it is, the current system works to actively crush our individual talents.

But forget all of those wishy-washy utopian ideals. It would seem obvious, that at the very least, school would teach children about the formalities of living in a society, which everyone must follow. But here again, school fails to achieve it’s task. School does not teach us how to apply for a colleges, vote for a politician, be successful at a job, raise kids, and save money for old-age. THESE BASIC THINGS. These are some basic things most kids will need at some point or the other, and yet school does not teach them.

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So, that’s mostly it. School, for the most part fails to teach things that children love, and does not even teach things which are important to their lives. What it does teach is the ability to retain facts, and vomit information, and it attempts to re-inforce this information with an ineffecient and outdated medium known as exams. Therefore, for little to no contribution to one’s life, it rakes in millions of dollars, and steals the formative years of every kid’s life from them.

Sounds like a scam to you?

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But enough about the system. The painting of the real world in an almost comic-book-esque appearance, that of a tall black glass building of evil fighting the heroic, determined masses. Because, dear reader, I’d like to address you directly.

In the spirit of learning, I think there is a reality that we have always accepted as true that we must un-learn. In the age of echo chambers, it feels like finding the truth has become like navigating a maze of mirrors. Everbody lies. It is important to fight the duplicity and deception at it’s very core.

Now then the question arises, who's deceiving who? Who's fooling who? Well, you're deceiving yourself. Everybody takes the shortcuts, everybody plays tricks, everybody has an element of duplicity, of deception” – Alan Watts Discusses Island

It’s easy to say that this a story about massive international conspiracy designed specifically to rob you of your individuality that you are probably unknowingly a part of. It is a horrific tale involving brainwashing, propoganda, deceit and lies.

But at its core, this is a story about you. About your treatment of a truth that has been staring you in your eye, all this while. Those who suffer from it have been clanging pots, and flashing lasers in your eyes to grab your attention, but all you did was turn the other way. But why?

“Everybody wants to change the world But one thing's clear No one ever wants to change themselves That's the way things are All because we hate the buzzkill Jaded when we need to feel”

-Do You Really Want It?, Nothing More

Hell, even you are a victim of this massive system. You complained for years and years put together about how vile and vicious it was. But as soon as you were set free, you forgot about it. You romanticized your past, and turned a blind eye to those you were leaving behind.

But that does not mean that those of us that currently suffer from it will not stand up and petition. Because we are the victims that toil through it relentlessly day after day, like a machine made out of rag-doll steel. And we will rise. Because, as Muse puts it in Resistance, “It’s time the fat cats had a heart-attack.”

There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

So the next time you wonder why fascists get elected, why people hedge their life on horoscopes, why wars exist and why religion kills, look no further than the botched-up, rotting mess of a factory we all lovingly call education.

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told...if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

borders. nations. flags.

when you say you love a nation, believe in a religion, or maybe identify with a sports team, are you simply outsourcing your identity? are you taking the shortcut to a pretty picture of yourself in the mirror, making yourself believe that what you see is you?

if you are not and they come from a much deeper place, something beyond your reflection in the mirror, go for it. use religion and sports and patriotism for good. so many of you do. sikh langars. the euphoria of a world cup victory. the joy we all felt when isro broke those records. these are proof that these can be inherently beautiful forces.

but if you don't see yourself in the mirror, just a filtered imitation – well, then you have hijacked these forces. you will either use them for you own twisted agenda, or align with those who do. you will forget the inherent force, the values and beliefs that drive these concepts – and align with those who pretend to align with those values.

because you never understood them in the first place.

Worlds

We create entire worlds just to speak to one another To whisper sweet nothings and wake from our slumber Transpose realities and lose ourselves In what's right in front of us.

If we dreamt in a dream that we were so awake If we woke to realise it was just a dream I lived in a cave and saw the shadows dance From the one source of light at the end of the tunnel Never thought to turn back to see what broke the light

And the edges blur and I ask myself One simple question – to what end? To what end? Where are we going? Why are we going? Why do show up, paint our eyes Change the game and raise the stakes?

If all you know is your perception slowly fading to deception Why do you fight for all of those rights? Why do we scratch but never fail to re-write?

I asked you this question, I asked you this question Why?

And you said Why not?

And I couldn't answer either question. I couldn't answer either question.

#100DaysToOffload #NotAPoet

Book review: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a book that starts out like many others – with a simple metaphor at it's core, and a simple point to drive. Minimal, and potentially cliche, it starts with the simple metaphor of a seagull stuck in a herd of other seagulls, wishing to escape. To make both the figurative and literal flight away from the monotony of routine.

That's about when the resemblance to any other literature you might have read stops.

The story, just like the gull, flies away from cliche and monotony – into profound, moving, yet basic revelations. With the elegance and nuance of a seagull pulling into a dive, the book nudges the reader's hearts and minds. There is no action. There is no drama. There is only the gentleness of true and open-hearted conversation – of people (in this case, gulls) leaving themselves vulnerable and discovering themselves.

It's a book that also functions as a black mirror – it takes little to no effort to see ourselves in the myriad characters in the story. Whether it be the struggle between ambition and realism, between acceptance and authenticity, between outside expertise and internal intuition- the author takes these questions and plays them out on the blanks pages of his book.

The story also serves as a satire on societal judgement – going from shunning the outcast, to envying the outcast, to celebrating the outcast. The aspirational, yet ultimately false, separation between the successful and the common person.

There is a dual takeaway from this book. The first is reflected in this quote- “Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there”. Strive for re-invention instead of sprinting harder. Search for a door instead of banging your head harder against a wall.

The second is reflected in a quote from Murakami's Norwegian Wood. “What happens when people open their hearts?” “They get better.” True strength comes from vulnerability. Only if you take the gamble inherent in laying out your heart will someone else be able to heal and soothe it. Only then will you realize what you truly want, where your true happiness lies. Seek mentorship and seek advice. Ask people and be willing to re-adjust. Fail a hundred times so you can succeed once.

Maya Angelou once said about people that won't remember what they said or did. You will remember how they made you feel. It's the same for this book. I don't remember what it said. I didn't remember what the author's name was until I said down to write the review.

But I remember how it made me feel. I remember smiling at my computer screen even as my eyes begged me to sleep. I remember, then, not being able to sleep, as my mind became the stage for these ideas to play around. I remember the serenity and meditation that this book brought me.

And that's the best review you can give a book.

Book review: The Mom Test by Robert Fitzpatrick

Recommended reading for my Nu School summer program, this book redefined my perspective on my own projects. You see, as an engineer at my core, my first instinct has always been to open an IDE and see how I can fix the problem. WRONG!

This book provides an excellent framework that everyone can utilize to interview users. A lot of times, we tend to ask bad questions: – “Do you think this product is a good idea?” – “Would you pay X for a product that does Y?”

These are examples of questions that WILL make people lie to you, because they don't want to hurt your feelings. This book leads you away from fluff, compliments, and mere annoyances to facts, data, and real world user problems.

It's written in a dry, real style. It gives advice so practical that you could read this book and go off and ask questions.

“It boils down to this: you aren’t allowed to tell them what their problem is, and in return, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, you own the solution.”

#100DaysToOffload

Blurred

As you became Dancing patterns of pixels Three moving dots and a bubble I saw new weird angles and lighting

A chainsawed off A pale, cut-off Imitation of your hesitation.

I needed to be alone Didn't expect an accept- ance with no resistance Why didn't my dance rhyme with yours?

So then I held on much tighter To lightless visions To countless imaginations This lack of vision An absolute lack of direction All with a new revelation.

My dance rhymes with yours now My laughter crackles so loud now Shuffled so it rhymes in the now now Through your tinny speaker And terrible fibers that drive our connection We work that much harder for it now.

#100DaysToOffload #NotAPoet

Closed Source

My two eyes I thought my own Spotted a comet in the sky Trailing dust and specks of the moon And I thought it a distraction. But as you straked through the shky In a graceful parabolic curve My eyes followed you.

At first I thought you an offshoot An additional addition A pop-up window in my augmented reality.

And then you landed onto my planet Created a crater in my heart. I thought it a crack I created To fill the others that existed just like it.

And then you rose again And I saw the flame twirling in the periphery As it took center stage. And just like that you rewrote the code And created our brand new virtual reality.

#100DaysToOffload #NotAPoet

Book review: Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston

Delightful, wholesome, ambitious.

I went into this book skeptical. It was so far outside my typical genre selection that I had nothing but my best friend's recommendation to go by. YET another romantic novel featuring lovey-dovey teenagers?

Red White and Royal Blue is a delicious book.

It tells the story of angsty, lovesick, intrepid oddballs who literally have to fight the world (the Queen of England included) for their love. It's a story so populated by lively characters and insanely courageous bonds that it gently warms one's heart into a wide, wide smile. It's a book that makes you feel alive – as the characters and words and actions and settings fly off the pages in sumptuous paragraphs.

That's why I said the book was delicious – it's a book to devour. It's not a book that felt like a chore to read. It's a book that laughts in the face of deriving beauty from sadness and fragility and introspection – chosing instead to derive beauty from friendship and love and the present.

A book like no other, it lucidly weaves together the tale of a presidential campaign, a delicate royal image, personal frustrations and desires: and most importantly, places the unconventional on the center stage with the spotlight flashing brightly on it.

How does a Cryptocurrency gain value?

We’ve all heard about cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. Most of us know what they are, and some of us know how they work. But most of the struggle to understand one simple question – “how do they have any value?” How do carefully flipped bits in servers across the world represent real monetary value?

Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. They aren’t food that you can eat or water you can drink. However, the same can be said about cash. A piece of paper has no intrinsic value – however, since society as a whole has decided that a 100 rupee bill represents a certain amount of value, and it can be transacted freely in exchange for other goods and services, it is considered to have value.

So here’s how something like Bitcoin gains its value:

– Durability – since cryptocurrency does not exist in the physical world, it can never be destroyed, and will never lose its value. Even if a user loses the keys to their wallet, the currency itself will never itself be destroyed.

– Scarcity – the total supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million Bitcoins. Litecoin is capped at 84 million Litecoins. Increased scarcity (or lower supply) drives prices up, causing an increase in the value of such currencies.

– Divisibility – cryptocurrencies are typically more divisible than traditional currency. For example, the Indian Rupee can be precise only upto 10^-2 places. A currency like Bitcoin, however, is better in this regard – being divisible to upto 8 decimal places.

– Transportability – cryptocurrencies can be easily transferred from one cryptocurrency to another, and even to traditional fiat currency. Unfortunately, this process is not very seamless, involving hefty transaction fees. In terms of transferability, cryptocurrency can be efficiently transferred between wallets.

– Recognisability and utility – while not comparable to traditional currencies, cryptocurrencies have been gaining traction and support – it is not uncommon to see them supported for payments and donations at major retailers and distributors.

So if that’s the case, and Bitcoin is just like fiat currency, why is it’s value so volatile? Why are people still on the “crypto-fence”?

The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. When the demand for bitcoins increases, the price increases, and when demand falls, the price falls. There is only a limited number of bitcoins in circulation and new bitcoins are created at a predictable and decreasing rate, which means that demand must follow this level of inflation to keep the price stable.

Because Bitcoin is still a relatively small market compared to what it could be, it doesn’t take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down, and thus the price of a bitcoin is still very volatile.

Such are the wonders and complexities of the modern world. Thankfully, there is little stopping an average user from dealing in cryptocurrencies, due to the increased sophistication of modern wallets and trading platforms. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies still wait at the fringes – all set for mainstream adoption.

Disclaimer: This post does not qualify as professional financial advice. Always consult your financial advisor and think wisely before making any investment decision.