Rambles

S celebrated her 6th today. Unicorn themed - of course - and had her first and probably last ever Piñata. But for a mega meltdown initially she did great all through the event. A few weeks ago, we signed up for a Diwali party organized by the Indian Association in Mexico. Primarily on a whim and maybe for the food? The event was last evening and boy, it was a terrible disappointment! It started late as expected. And obnoxiously loud for no reason. Not quite sure if it was the acoustics at the venue or just the MC shouting into the mic. Maybe both? I love some good rock and metal. I love some good loud music. But I guess not all loud is the same. Also, this day and age, who even does a looping slideshow of pictures of people organizing the event? Dinner was supposed to be served by 1900. Servers said they had orders to serve only at 2030. Maybe the organizers wanted the food to be served only after the main event? When we rechecked at 2030, they said it was pushed to 2130. Had enough of it and walked out. People were still on the dance floor and there was a good turn out. I guess this kinda boisterous social mayhem is just not my jam? ...

A few things I’d really like to dumb down or sort out over the next few weeks: Site: This site runs on WordPress, has facets of the indieweb, has ActivityPub and a crude implementation of self engineered micropost interface. All cool but needs quite a trim to make the best use of all these features. Hardware/Infra: VPS, VPN, Odroid for reverse proxy, NCP, NUC, Moose, External hard disks…Love the current implementation for the various utilities they serve. However, I see myself spending lesser and lesser time in front of the PC. Which is good? But which also means I need to find a better way to manage these in the little time I want to spend. ...

With quite a few things constantly evolving over the last several months, I haven’t actively paid much attention to this space. I’ve posted a few micro posts now and then, but nowhere close to chronicling things as much as I’d like to. This is a quick run down of a few things occupying my mind space: It’s been about four months since we moved to Mexico City. We absolutely love it here. People are terrific, weather is just right, and this city’s got a dash of almost every city we’ve lived in so far! M&S have been able to explore the regular tourist spots thanks to the CLO trips. I’ve joined them for a few, but what I really enjoy is just experiencing the city for what it’s got to offer - And there’s no dearth to that. Absolutely blown away by the city planning and the presence of so many parks. The city is spectacularly clean for the number of people living here. Every Sunday one of the main avenues is closed out to vehicular traffic and opened out to runners, cyclists and essentially anybody who wants to enjoy the roads. Amazed at the resources that the local government is able to draw from to sustain this every single weekend! We haven’t been that lucky to find decent vegetarian food here. Most local restaurants offer some form of meat in almost all dishes and the vegetarian items are rarely tasty. Dining out definitely leaves a lot to be desired - unless of course you try out other cuisines. I’m sure there’s good food out there - yet to find it though. ...

Leave a comment if any of this doesn’t make sense. I’ll be more than happy to help. Over the last few years, I’ve been wanting to setup a comprehensive and secure ‘handover’ document for my family - In case I cease to exist. My key priorities were it should : be easy to update and maintain when I am alive be easy to reference and access when I am dead have multiple fall-back points Now, the most straightforward way to do this would be to have all the information on a secure spreadsheet or document. But that’s not fun! So I decided to use Trilium Notes for it. When it’s time, my wife has three options to access the support checklist a) Online via a secure portal/app b) Using a secure flash-drive c) Old school printed sheets ...

Since March 2020, I’ve had this internal debate of getting the Covid Vaccine mostly underlined by the following: The science behind mRNA is fascinating and so is the engineering of the vaccine Every strand of mRNA is made up of four molecular building blocks called nucleosides. But in its altered, synthetic form, one of those building blocks, like a misaligned wheel on a car, was throwing everything off by signaling the immune system. So Karikó and Weissman simply subbed it out for a slightly tweaked version, creating a hybrid mRNA that could sneak its way into cells without alerting the body’s defenses. ...

An interesting point on M1 and M2 [Measures of money]. With the signing of the 1.9T$ bill today in the US, we’ve essentially created 6T$ over the last 10 months. Just like that… Covid19 has brought unprecedented suffering to many. Deaths, Unemployment, Medical complications, lifestyle changes, Social unrest and several other ramifications which we are yet to experience. If anything, it has taught us highlighted how abysmally poor we are in collectively addressing pressing issues. It has also shown us that when disaster strikes, we only take care of our own and we are selectively biased even at that. Nature gave us yet another opportunity to show how we could better ourselves and elevate us to the next stage of evolution and we miserably failed. With our myopic non-collaborative actions, pushing politics and power over general good, we’ve defined a new low. Mileage on isolated or individual efforts unfortunately does not carry the ripple effect that can scale. Nothing surprising there - Humans are selfish creatures. We of course needed something to balance all the intelligence and cognitive advances we supposedly have over other living things. Humanity rests is constant chaos and Covid19 was continues to fuel that chaos. ...

Pleasantly surprised to read this piece from ProPublica/NPR. Michael Frank was my professor for a Health Insurance course I took while at Columbia and he was a terrific one at it. Though I moved on to Property and Casualty Insurance as an Actuarial Analyst, I continue to be intrigued by Health. Who wouldn’t be - Such an entangled mess that the U.S. Insurance space is! Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a strong proponent of Insurance. I’ve spent years mining through claims data and have seen the tremendous benefits, a well structured Insurance plan provides - for both parties involved. Where we’re actually faltering is the policies and regulations that govern the Insurance markets. Profits drive decisions and the U.S. healthcare system is on an abysmal downward spiral latching on to just the monetary front. Why in this day and age is it unclear how much I might owe when I visit my Physician or undergo a procedure? I’d much rather pay higher taxes than live in eternal uncertainty. ...

Just about a decade ago, we leased a property on a pristine and desolate beach. The house didn’t have robust walls - It just had a few curtains to protect us from the elements. The rooms internally had walls full of transparent glass. It was a beautiful property with lots of cross-ventilation and something that was just right for our family. Over time, more people moved in around us and it didn’t feel all that secluded. Visitors to the beach, neighbors and more so the property owner started getting more interested in our mundane lives. At times we felt, they were interested more in us than the pristine beach. The property owner started hiking the rent overtime and started charging us for random things. At one point, he even started deciding when we could actually use the beach. As much as we’d wanted to stay at that place and enjoy the neighbors company, we decided it was time to take things in control. ...

Came across this phenomenal documentary from Patagonia about the Tarkine in North western Tasmania. Reminded me of the incessant wood logging that I witnessed almost on every backpacking trip across the western ghats in India. Irrationality of humans blows my mind beyond all proportions. If only there was a master switch to reset it all… [embed]https://youtu.be/MHdE2YCRjck[/embed]

Back in India, about eight years ago a colleague of mine sent out out an e-mail blast to the company bulletin board checking to see if anyone was a marrow donor. His son needed a transplant and the odd’s weren’t in his favor. I had no clue what that entailed and read up a bit on it. Later that evening as I tried registering on to the Be the match portal, I realized they didn’t have the support framework to sign-on users outside the U.S. It didn’t take a minute for me to close the tab and get back to what I was doing. A couple weeks later I learnt the kid died and somewhere deep in my heart I regretted not trying harder to sign-up or figure a way around. But again with all things good and bad, that moment passed and I moved on. ...