I love my day job. When I speak with very close friends about it, it’s when i’m down. With others, it’s usually details and economics. but the core of it that I want to bring out more– I love my job. I wonder if I can communicate why. The thing I love most about it …
Sociology
Scale, and The Legacy of Slavery
A lot of discussions around big topics seem to forget that a majority of the “great” things done in the past were only possible because of brutal slavery. We slowly realized slavery is evil, but inherited systems that need it, so, shoehorned modernity into that framework. It is difficult to overstate just how much depended …
Bad Citizen, Good Complainer
Note: this was originally a thread posted by me during the peak of COVID, in 2021 How disgustingly entitled is it to literally *mass delete* a contact tracing app (Aarogya Setu) and not use it for *a whole year* because “it’s a fascist data collection system for bhakts” and then be surprised about surges in …
Individualism and India
Individualism has a surprisingly high LD50. Which is why it is so convenient that the East needs to learn only one value from the west to see prosperity beyond anything they achieved even in history: Individualism . a.k.a the ability and willingness to leave others the alone, to admire ambition and achievement, to venture to …
The “Masculinity Crisis”, Its Vultures and Bleeding Hearts
I keep seeing questions like this: “masculinity is in crisis. what should we do about it?”“who should we give men as examples of healthy masculinity?”“now that we’ve deconstructed/destroyed masculinity, what should take its place?” And the unpleasant answer is:Nothing. Nobody. Just pull the plug. Where is the growth or selection from crisis if you’re supplying …
The Wasted Potential of Villains
I wish more movies & shows steelmanned their villains. i.e made them heroes in every way on the other side of the fence, rather than the same old boring “the world is grey and complex” or “humanize/intellectualize the bad guy” or childhood trauma stuff. For example: All these shows can seriously strengthen their case by …
Manners
Why are you so prickly? Your life would be 10x easier, happier, better vibed, if you had manners, and you would find it trivial and *fun* to learn if you stopped trying to find excuses for why you can’t or don’t need to learn them. manners, its subset, politeness, and their superset, communications skills, aren’t …
Intersectionality as a Method, Not a Madness
A quick piece on how it can meet its potential, instead of its end. EDIT: I should add links and examples I’ve collected. Once I’ve stopped procrastinating. When its most well-known associations are discarded, intersectionality is simply a method for identifying and understanding what happens in the intersection points of distinct categories, attributes or domains. It’s …