Earth to AI world

 In the process of reviewing the idea of adding hobbies and interests to my resume, I realized I used to have a hobby called blogging. Took me a few tries to get to my blog, but was so much fun to go read some of the old posts. Hey, I don't write too badly, do I?

Well, for one, I am not a PhD student anymore, for another, I am not young anymore. Phaedrus and Lotstodo have a 9-year-old daughter, who is nothing like the 2 of us and everything like the 2 of us.

Lotstodo is a bit LOSTtoDo lately. Almost 20 years of dabbling around in optoelectronics. What is next?

AI tools to get a blog post written everyday for me?

Prompt 1: Write a blog post about the pleasure of fitting into old grad school t-shirts from way beyond when - the first Doughman, a homebrewn ECE t-shirt, another one called Karma Recycles and of course, the one I am going to auction if I run out of money in retirement, which I surely will in California: 2010 NCAA Basketball Championship. This prompt is getting long, guess I wrote the content already.

Prompt 2: Writ a blog post about the actual possibility of working with your Ikigai. What am I good at: whipping people's a*&^ to get sh$% done. What does the world need? Getting sh$% done. What do I love: bossing people around to get sh$% done. Will the world PAY FOR IT, please??? Okay, why am I writing this, wasn't this Miss AI's job?

Prompt 3: This hobby is becoming work. Sam Altman, can you get Your sh$% together and stop losing all your mega deals and mega superintelligent people, so that LotsToDo can have her blogs written for her while she is whipping people's as*&s to get stuff done, wearing her XX year old Doughman t-shirt? Thank you very much.

PS: The above was AI generated

PPS: The above was clearly written by a human.

PS and PPS fight it out and LotstoDo has definitely lots of time in the post-apocalyptic AI world

Originally from June 2016 - I have a 7 month old, and a lot of my friends who are parents often get offended when I compare human babies and puppies and say how similar they are.
The aforesaid friends obviously have never had puppies. Neither have I, literally speaking. But the offense puzzles me. I am not degrading a human baby, I find it fascinating that so much of animal life, mammals in particular, are so similar in this circus of life, that you wonder about the humour of the ringmaster and the hubris of humans.

Explanations to a 4 year old

As of today, these are some questions my 4 year old and I are wrestling with:

What is the Government ?

What does the President do ?

What is the coronavirus ?

Methinks the last one is easiest to comprehend and explain - It is a germ. It makes you sick. Keep washing your hands to get it off so it doesn't make you and others sick.

In the present day, the answers to all three questions may be indistinguishable from each other.

Pots and Pans

Pots and Pans

These colorful toys with lights and bling
These farm animals that moo and sing
These fancy cloth and textured books
These boxes with sounds of waves and brooks
These silicone, acacia and latex teethers
These non bpa stage 1 stage 2 feeders
These whirling mobiles and swinging dolls
These swirly tops and bouncy balls
They catch my eye for a moment or two
They soon become old what were just now new
From your kitchen give me a pot and pan
And a wooden spoon to bang and clang
You will make me smile and laugh and play
For hours on hours of  my day!

Who you?

Stare at the mirror today.
Look at its eyes
Who is it?
A First name ,  Last name?
With a temporary postal address?
Somewhere on Google Maps?
On a postage stamp of land
that the owner of the eyes stands on
claiming ownership of a unique consciousness
borne of firing neurons
and pumping blood,
identifying it as A 'Person'
with a First name  and a Last name
Somewhere on Earth.



 

Another oversimplified quantum physics metaphor

A simple web search of any keywords involving quantum physics, spirituality and god reveals articles that are a dime a dozen. Given any layman's rather limited understanding of what quantum physics is all about, not to mention most physicists not reaching any consensus on how to explain quantum physics in layman terms, means that I can add a few more intellectual sounding buzzwords to this quantum soup and get away with sounding pretty (and!) intelligent.

A concept of quantum physics that has always fascinated me is that the very act of measuring or observation changes the experiment. It forces the phenomenon being observed into a state that it wasn't in prior to the act of observation. In other words it affects the experiment. And hence another quantum physics metaphor that I would like to add to the growing list of "quantum physics explains everything".

Consider the concept of memory and recall. Say you have to commit to memory a long list of complicated calculus theorems (I don't know why you would...maybe to impress your equally dorky significant other), or a grocery shopping list for the next day (what happened to the smartphone or the old school post-it...just go along with me, will you?). Time = t0, You first look at the list and repeat it to your self. I poll you at time t1 and t2 to check how much of the list you remember. Time t3 is showtime. Now, imagine I didn't poll you at time t1 and t2 and you directly move to time t3 = showtime. You know where this is going. There is a much higher likelihood that you will remember more of your list when I polled you, than when I didn't. The very act of forcing you to recall reinforces the memory of the shopping list. The act of observation (is the shopping list in your memory?) changes the physical state of the memory by reinforcing it.

I feel very intellectual.

Very Funny

Funny does what Funny says

Funny does it for funny's praise

When Funny tries too hard to fun it up

Funny falls and can't get up

(Almost) Everybody is a Bengali

Now that I have your attention , with the Paati (pure) Bengalis' neck hairs prickling and the Abangalis ( rest of the world) wondering what they did to deserve such exaltation , or demotion, depending on how you view The Bengali.
No. it is not the Hilsa jhol, unreasonable Pujo euphoria, red bordered white saris, white shanka red paula, excruciatingly slow Tagore song singing singers in every family,  and saccharin sweet shandesh that makes a Bengali, though that helps. What defines a Bengali is a poetic mind and a philosophical bent, or poetic bent and philosphic mind. We thinks of words and ideas, lay them out, rearrange them, discuss them, frown over them, pedantically peddle them to our fellow human beings. With furrowed brows and a smirk, from the comfort of our arm-chairs, our self-worth supported by other cha-drinking arm-chaired learned pedants, we pontificate on how things are and how they should be. The arm chaired artistic Bengali  will look in horror at the plebian who gets up and says, okay my cha is finished, my ideas formulated, the rest of my learning shall be in the doing.  Oh no, the  beauty of our thoughts and words should never be soiled by the pedestrian action of reduction to practice.
So are we, the rest of the privileged world, keyboarded and tethered to our electronic armchairs, our self worth propped up by the mirroring of our words and images,  through tweets and retweets, posts and re-posts, a plethora of comfortable online petitions and an occasional feel-good donation, updated statuses of a flock of  bright parrots all perched on a 10 Gbps fiber optic line, chanting Me-too, me-too. Just like this blog post, re-posted and re-linked, waiting for X comments and Y likes. And I, doubly doomed, a Bengali sceptic and a Facebook Filosopher, an air-conditioned American Armchair Activist, so little to say of worth, so little to do of worth, yet so much to Update!

Angootha Chaap (Thumbprint Signer)

How easy it is to be reminded, that one's life experiences are but an infinitesimal fraction of the world's and one's knowledge and learning in one sphere is of little consequence in another.

Two weeks ago I prided myself on being able to speak 4 languages. A week later, stepping into the far-east, my utter illiteracy felt like a scathing slap to my misplaced hubris. Mandarin, a language spoken by over 20% of the world's population, with a beautiful pictographic script evolved from 5000 years of rich culture and history, where each character/word is laden with meaning, heavily nuanced, differently intonated,  and an art and history lesson in itself.

Yet, all I could do is make vague hand gestures, or get things written by helpful hands for me to wave to taxi drivers and tour guides. In other words, I had become LotstoDo, PhD. Angootha Chaap (thumbrint signer).

The last 45 days

It has been a lovely last 45 days, three of of Phaedrus' and my friends got great job offers, Phaedrus and I finally moved together to upstate NY to the same city (and apartment!) after 18 years since we became friends in middle-school, and are finally fighting it out over choice of living room furniture. We might live to tell the tale yet.
In the last 45 days I also said good bye to many many friends in Durham, who helped me survive grad school, and became my extended family. Turns out Durham is colder than Albany today. So can't moan and use the line: "I miss NC weather" anytime soon, and have to admit to "I miss NC friends " instead when I am in a complaining mood. On the other hand, we've reconnected with old friends in the new place and made new ones, so it's not altogether bad.
In the last 45 days I also put my sister back on the plane to London, having met her after 2.5 years. The Lotstodo sisters had traveled to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Washington DC, The Blue Ridge mountains, New York City and of course Durham and up-state NY. Very eventful, as would be expected with 2 strong willed sisters and an "I know what is best for you"elder sister (ahem).
In the last 45 days I learnt that furniture that isn't sourced from Craig's list or the last grad student in the apartment actually costs $$, and 0% financing is a good thing while you are trying to repair your bank balance buffeted by the domestic airline industry for the last so many years (MSP, here I come!, RDU here I come!).
Phaedrus already started work....I still have a week more to go. So In the last 45 days I also learnt, that feminism or otherwise, it is great to have a guy pay for everything. He feels chivalrous, and I feel pampered. My feminist core doesn't seem to be taking much of a beating, so maybe I am not a feminist any more. In the last 45 days I also learnt that though I can cook decently if I put my mind to it (to feed the family and friends like a good wife should), I'd rather be doing something else, like putting a mean spin on a ping-pong ball or reading a book or agonizing over how ill-prepared I feel for a job that is designated "scientist". So post-grad world, umm... here I come?!