Mind of my Stroked Brain

This was another thought triggered by a conversation my wife recently had with me. (She was just complaining yesterday she Is very weary of speaking in front of me - lest I write something about it. Boy I am going to hear about this. Or not hear about it - to be on the safer side). I have heard in many places how we can manage to cater to 9.x billion lives by 2050. We are already 7.x billion and struggling, stretching all resources and destroying our planet. Blah, blah, blah, "Climate change", blah, blah, blah.... Really? "Our" planet? I don't know the actual numbers, but I am guessing, there are some Trillions of animals. Trillions of birds. Trillions of insects. Trillions of worms. Trillions of fish and aquatic beings. Etc. Etc. And that is only things that can move about. If we include immobile stuff, there are trillions and trillions of shrubs, plants, trees, etc. Humans are in such insignificant numbers, we don't even figure as a relevant percentage. I

I recently was chatting with someone and the saying "when you are given lemons, make lemonade" came up. There are probably many similar meaning memes floating around somewhere in the net.  It's nice , but a bit abstract to relate to for me. From sometime back - I don't exactly know from when, I have developed a kind of Parallel approach. Similar - not same. I can vouch for it though. _________________________ When life throws a curve ball (and it will), And we don't know how to react to it yet, Laugh! It is best to laugh at it first. Laugh at the circumstances, laugh at yourself... Most of the scenarios, resulting consequences, etc. play out only in the mind. It takes some time for the dust to settle down, to be able to see the situation clearly and understand the real consequences, so that we can have a considered response after. Meanwhile, we can amuse ourselves and be entertained ourselves at least...

I watch mostly news, TED talks, cooking videos on YouTube. I watch action and thriller/suspense inclined movies on Netflix, Prime, Disney, etc. I buy and browse certain types of things on Amazon, Myntra,etc I don't go to other SM sites like FB, Insta, Twitter, TicToc etc., But I am fairly certain it is the same. They all know me well enough to dish out a curated list of anything just for me.. If I could eat, by now they would know my likes, dislikes and dietary preferences better than me by now. If I dare stray away, I am chaperoned back by Google.  And they are doing their best to help in a way, so as to navigate through the clutter and get to where I most likely will go anyway. As this curation gets better, I get faster in doing what I want to do, quicker in making up my mind, smarter with what I know, etc. The "algorithms" don't really know me. They are helping my mind focus on things quicker, better, smarter, etc. Yual Noah Harrari predicts these algorithms to be

This thought was triggered by a conversation I had with my wife. To be accurate, a conversation my wife had with me. I had made a video - a sort of collage of photos for my daughter's birthday. It was a fun video. However, making it took a while. Except for the last 3 years, I have a very very huge archive of photos. So I looked through every one of them over many many days, selecting and shortlisting them. During all those days, It brought back memories of all those times all those years. The memories evoked all kinds of emotions - Joy, happiness, sadness, deep sense of loss, etc. Dealing with those emotions and feelings took more time than seeing and shortlisting the photos. We humans have evolved over millions of years. How and why are debatable, but the debate of millions of years has been put to rest. It has been about 200 years since photography was invented and a little over a hundred years for the video. A couple of thousand years of getting portraits painted before that (a

Now, this is not new information. It is just new to me. Why am I writing about it? Because I am happy I found out something which I had taken for granted all along.  Besides, I am bored and nothing else to do... All my life, I have known that we in Bangalore have "tropical" weather. I know it is so because it lies between the two lines (tropic of Capricorn and tropic of Cancer). I had never stopped to ask why the 2 arbitrary lines are there. Surely a km this side or that wouldn't make a big difference to the weather... And it doesn't. They have nothing to do with the weather. The weather is just a consequence of being there.. If we take a long and narrow pole and erect it perfectly vertical, it will form a shadow based on the time of the day (where the sun is) At 12 noon, the sun is directly overhead and there is no shadow.  That is what my textbooks said. The truth is there will still be a shadow depending on the time of the year (tilt of the earth). That shadow at 1

When I was in the hospital after the stroke - maybe 2-3 months after, I could move my left palm. I used to indicate that they, anyone, had to keep my legs apart (shoulder width maybe). I don't know if anyone knows why. It was probably another one of the ocd behaviors. Well not really. Anyone wearing a diaper will know how uncomfortable it is to keep the legs close together. But really did I feel uncomfortable? I have had no feelings there for a very long time. Initially when my neck was not able to lift the head - I couldn't even see the body when lying down. Even now, I am able to feel very little. So I was not feeling anything. I just knew that it would be uncomfortable and I was feeling uncomfortable the way I thought it must feel uncomfortable.  Now, I can see and also feel a bit. It's still uncomfortable. But it's a different uncomfortable. This is what the body is feeling and not the one the mind is making up. I am fed every 2 hrs. If it gets delayed for some reas

Today was (is) my daughter's birthday. Had a good time this evening. Was on the wheelchair for a long time, but it didn't feel like much and I hardly remembered the time. Thinking of it, what is time? Ya I know it's supposed to be relative, there is a scientific model, there is probably a mathematical formula describing it and so on.. But what is it really? How does one imagine it? When I think of it, I can only imagine it coming back to the clock or calendar. The earth rotates once, it is 24hrs. The moon goes around once, it's a fortnight. The earth goes around once, the calendar turns a year. Basically all cyclical events. Only a reference really. Not time itself. Both the clock and calender are very recently man made. What did we think before that. What do all other species think even now? They don't know clocks and calendars... I fall asleep and live a half day's worth of living, but it's only 5 minutes of REM by the clock when I sleep. I get knocked ou