The stories

It is said that the history is always written by the victors. I kinda disagree on that for many reasons. Sure, journalism as in modern world is more sophisticated than ancient times but recording of an event, however exaggerated is mostly limited by the acceptance of the said story. Let me explain. See, we have comics all around right and we also have television shows and some party/fun events. Suppose tomorrow, there was a mushroom cloud lined with barium and was powerful enough to decimate human life as we know it. By sheer luck, suppose the only book/film that survived was a ten year old's iPhone. The humanity that recovers from those ashes might be teens in all probability. Now, with their limited knowledge of the world that existed before them and all the evidence they could gather, they might start a cult that speaks of superman for instance. This seed, supported by several archaeological diggings recovering books or film may start a belief that superman could really exist.
 After all movies are shot on sets and over time sets may inspire buildings in turn. This may lead to a natural instinct of a possibility of superman. This would continue until people continue to feel superman as an existing entity. His backstory is perfect and would be unquestionable in that future. Even though different editions contradict each other, they could be called as doctrines and perspectives. Any discrepancy could be snubbed while it is budding and they wouldn't know anything about what's true. My question is who's the victor? I mean, it would have become history (a comic history but for them, no difference) and by chance, if they ever recover Henry Cavill or Brandon Routh in bones (or by cloning), it would become undeniable fact. It might sound vague but added enough information and convenience that could occur triggered by a disaster, (just like we rose from dinosaurs) we could imagine a scenario where in superman could be accepted as a literal God who once walked on earth (not that there are no people living now, who actually think that but you get the point).
Moving on, let's go to a place where Gandhi is just a guy on a currency note and that's all is left of him. There is no physical evidence to support Gandhi because frankly more people know superman than Gandhi. Also, there are continuously generated comics of superman and not so competitively for Gandhi. This creates a divide. What's not to say that Gandhi is just a figment of imagination like Uncle Sam? Future people may find it strange that one normal human was able to defeat many without proclaiming blood lust ( and true to myself, I think Netaji played a greater role than Gandhi). Since the England is still ruled by a Queen, it still maintains a decree of royalty. That alone might set off alarms as England being innocent and Indians being arrogant. I mean, USSR became Russia, didn't it? In this world, how would people know which one is true and which one is false.
The answer is strictly, not possible. There is no individual Nexus point where people can agree on. If evidence is the only criteria, one should be ready to understand that the evidence can lie. If there is no way of testing it, probably other opinions do matter. I know that taking evidence is the closest way to approach an unknown but then again, falsifiable doesn't mean false and neither is the corollary or contrapositive.
There are somethings beyond comprehension. People from 18th century wouldn't probably know the importance of digital assistance because they do have a personal assistance with a human. Today we wouldn't believe that there was a civilization that foresaw eclipses more accurately with almost zero equipment when even with satellites surrounding the planet, we still have a decidable error margin. Perhaps technology existed before and got destroyed. It may not be true but how much of human history have we known, since its inception (not the movie). There are still a lot of blanks to be filled in and we will debate on some parts and agree on others. This is not because who wrote the history but how it is interpreted and by whom. It's no one to blame except for the guy who first blasted the mushroom cloud I was talking about.

Horopter

Do you even remember bro?

Hello guys, today I am going to deal with multiple facets of remembering stuff. It involves imagining too as both tasks are like brothers in action. Then we step into hallucinations and finally well, there is a surprise.

Remembering:
Right off the bat, I am gonna start with saying that, each time humans remember a memory, they are essentially re-living it for a fraction of time. In general, a memory is just a path in the life which you light up each time you travel through it. The day you stop going there, you loose everything that path could lead you to. My question is why do we remember things? If anything serials like blindspot have told me, it's that losing memory is scary. They connect it to having identity. Then again, having a memory of death of an uncle, a necessary one? Evolution has its way here but it doesn't make sense why I remember specifics of that time and not the specifics of a language I code in. This is just confusing.
Turns out, it's the impact of the memory that binds in. The experience was so horrifying that all my neural network engaged me to remember as detailed a memory as I could. Some part of me definitely knew that this was my destiny. I mean, we all have to die someday for sure but it could have been the very next day. Heck, it could be the very next moment. It is full of gore and disturbing imagery to think of the ways a person could die. It's more terrifying to know that, that person, could be the person you love the most. It could be your family, your friends, that weird uncle you hate with all your guts or even that annoying pestilence of a neighbor, when someone near you dies... they never come back. That part of you is lost. It's just like old skin. Even if that old skin tore off, it left behind a scar and no new time period of natural skin regeneration can ever remove that scar. You have lost a member and here's a memory. Each time you remember that person, you are living with them again. Essentially, in you, you are bringing them back from the dead. In my opinion, a person is dead when the person is forgotten by the last remembering person on the planet.

Imagination:
The memories in our brain create a platform to a very diverse of conclusions. The back-end is still mysterious (not in literal sense) but we have a fair idea of dreams. Remember that time you worried about tomorrow's exam. You might have probably imagined if this question would come. It's crazy. Imagination is essentially one thing that separates us from computers now. It tells us that we have an internal model of reality. What makes us imagine?
The answer is still not found but I have a theory. It's a copy-paste of individual items taken from different scenarios and putting them in a permutation and observe. Now, we are touching the realm of curiosity. A survey conducted by a team of scientists in early 2000 on a few hundred teens revealed the motive of imagination, or that's what they thought so. They asked them to *awkward alert* masturbate thinking of their crushes. The MRI scans lit up with more nerves engaging in experimental borders of copulation. That test was archived until ten years later, they were asked to do the same (okay, turns out not all of them came back for the experiment but a 62% is roughly acceptable). This time the preferences changed. Even though they were gifted with an open choice of whomever they wanted, most of them chose their spouses and went very delicate. Back in the day, it was very controversial to attempt such statistical tests considering the residue religious groups still condoning the practices but I am more interested in the results. It tells us that whatever we imagine is just what we are capable of perceiving, but in a more bizarre way. The fantasies we have may be a way to explore our options in a non-conventional way and they also define the lateral thinking. The more realistic it gets, the more purposeful our lives become. The aforementioned experiment said the same too. It told that no matter how many options you put forth, when it comes to reality, we express the more intimate and logical side of ourselves because we care. Imagination is the border between the true self and the person we think we could be. Being satisfied doesn't work, granted but it is also a reminder of what is happening, who we are and frankly, our past self. And yes, imagination can lead to both ups and downs. You always have a choice.

Hallucinations:
What happens when you forget the border between a reality and a dream? You are likely hallucinating. It doesn't mean that you are seeing imaginary people or situations, necessarily. You might be living a casual life and yet remembering the facts wrong. If a lie has been told by a majority of people in your surroundings, you accept it to be true de-facto. Some people take it to extreme lengths and mass hysteria. It's very controversial to argue on what is mass opinion and what is mass hysteria. Democracy actually thrives on this debate as the events of facts and propaganda are blurred to the point that de-jure laws seem unfit. Then again, democracy is like the sick puppy. You just medicate and wait until it becomes healthy again.
Sometimes you need to listen to what others are saying and change and other times you don't. That is adapting to the environment. It's tough to choose in a million ways but we could try our best. Sometimes we need to question our practices and their applicability. Imagination is the way to use this and try. Other options may be to see what others are doing and learn or refer to the past or check the statistics of likelihood. When this process has been skipped to create a false universe of our own and remembering things wrong way, it can affect our internal model of reality and finally can bomb our identity.

Surprise:
I told we were gonna talk about a surprise and yes we are talking about 'surprise'. It is commonly an unexpected event in our favor, mostly. It so happens sometimes that you are caught by surprise and you like it. Although there is a theory that everything is planned, the sheer factor that you don't know it is still valid to consider it a surprise. Now, you may ask why I am ranting about random things. This is the part where it all binds. You see, the element of surprise actually defeats our routine triggering an exception that lasts for a time that can tilt the outcome of an event by some small error margin but enough to propagate a butterfly effect. The amount of nerves involved is in logarithmic proportionality with the impact of such event. Then you remember that event in some circumstance generated by the mildest moment of an event triggered by this surprise. You are likely to imagine a scenario when the surprise didn't happen, like at all and flow with the modified timeline in a train of thought. If the surprise didn't turn out good, you may even hallucinate accordingly. This whole process repeats till it becomes knowledge. Now, time for conclusion.

Conclusion:
You might have asked why we need to do this all in our life. I give you the answer that I think is right. It's not for you. Your knowledge is not for you. It's for another person. It's to protect others from not repeating our mistakes and doing again what worked. It is to experiment on what was said to prove or disprove it in time. So next time you are asked to remember something or hear a story, please don't avoid it and try to remember as is. This way you are not corrupting the knowledge. You might not be able to do anything with it but in passing on the knowledge, you become a teacher. Don't ridicule your friend for being nothing but a bookworm or the one who just remembers things not knowing or appreciating what they mean. In fact, that person is being more productive in passing down information than you could ever achieve. Then again, it's only because personal evidence/anecdote is more reliable than a book. Also plural of anecdote is not data. At least the knowledge is not being corrupted or corrected. Say thank you to that friend of yours next time you meet for me.

Horopter

Tools are us

People lose their shit when it comes to a new item. Sometimes even, gold that is shiny even after say 30 years is deprecated in its value. The proverb old is gold gets a different perspective now, doesn't it? Similarly a new born child who will eventually become a serial killer was once a beautiful baby in a phase. Science tells us that all particles in the universe are constant when it comes to a number. The particles that once constituted a star system are in a different star system, and some are being chunks of pure dust bombarding literally anything in their path. Quite frankly there is nothing new under the sun or to be truthful, around it. If you were a Hindu like me, you'd know that all souls are constant in number too. They just shift different planes of existence due to their deeds. I am sure that other religions might agree partly to the same fact.  So, why is it that people don't see things for what they are and determine something to a quality by its age?

Turns out, that evolution (don't fight it with your religion, its true nonetheless) wanted creatures to find new things because 'aging' factor in organics leads to its toxicity. After the age of metal, people discovered corrosion. So, something happens if you keep a thing for too long, by this logic. The corollary follows that if you indeed had something new, you'll witness it last for a specific phase of the time that, for some reason, is useful to you. If you are satisfied with that answer, you probably belong to the kind who still believes humans as just a social animal. In fact, partly, we are but on the other hand, we are curious for ts own sake. The question I am asking myself while drafting this blog is, why, especially in the era of technology, should the old antiques and new smartphones should influence us alike? It is not that complicated initially and probably your first guess is that "Bro, new technology means ease in doing things" and you are right.

See, the technological aspect of human thinks that it's easy to do things when those things are automated by some force by you. It sends a feedback that you no longer have to learn things that you are supposed to do. This lessens your curiosity and guides you to more application in general. However, there are scientists curious about the making itself who research the flaws and get back with a newer solution. The antiques become a reminder of how old people used to do it and we take cues from them time to time smiling each time to realise that we have forgotten to see what was already there. The whole aspect is pure science. Speaking socially, you can now show off either as a person who is rich and capable of doing things because some other person automated it for you. Now, do you see the difference and the point I am getting at?

If you had guessed, "The show off is by rich people who want to show off", you are indeed partly right because that's not completely my point. My case is more generalized. In this scenario, people loose their brains when they see a new thing and I am not including transformers movies because fuck them. People only get excited as new things means that the arrival of something better has arrived. The sense of time in us ticks a new minute every time something this sort happens. It tells us that time is moving and we are not stuck. It tells us that we are indeed progressing. Even in evolutionary perspective, new things, like food-shelter-clothes meant that we are longer bound by our past. It might has well included a sabretooth chasing a primal down the forest. Let's get real now. It is show off that bothers me. Sure, you can do new things with whatever you got but really? All you are trying to prove that you are capable of owning something made by somebody else to make your life easy. Be it a smartphone, a laptop (not so subtle hint that I am showing off my new purchases), or even gold; you owned something you liked. That made you a customer followed by a collector.

In case of gold, what is the use of keeping it in a safe for say, five years and wearing it on the day of your cousin's marriage? You wanted to make yourself beautiful and trust me, even though you are flawless without jewelry, it couldn't hurt to wear it once a month. Find an occasion and use it for you. I know I shouldn't be at my age but some magazines like Vogue say that naked woman with jewelry spiced up sex life in Español countries. I wonder if Indians do the same. In case of a smartphone, we could use it more than itself for communication and gaming. How about we use mobiles for reporting corruption? I don't see people going stealth mode mobiles capturing illegal things happening. I see people snapchatting. People are reaching to their destinations safely now more than ever, good. Why didn't you plan a ride just to see where it leads? Exploring world doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go out of your own nation. All I ask is acknowledgement of the snack guy who makes delicious hot dogs in the next block. In case of a laptop/notebook or whatever you want it to be called, games and entertainment are okay but did you at least plan your week's expenditure? Instead of salivating or other fluiding on a naked <your sexual preference here>, you could have learnt animating and making films to express who you are,

But hell no, we just show off  irrespective if we understand what we have. Things have become toys-like for adults where using a thing is valued down by the arrival of a new one. Now-a-days relationships have been so. You don't try to understand each other but if you did, you wouldn't have been a 22 year old, being single or in a relationship with a person who could barely understand you. Since, you don't understand tools are meant for tinkering, you won't get that person who is soul-mate material. Understand the abiotic environment, followed by how you define them and own/won them, concluding it by what you are to the people around you. I don't expect you to understand this either.

Yours truly'
Horopter

Secrets of my life

In case this be found lurking around the Internet, after my lifetime account has been deactivated, just a reminder that I am real while writing this down and I existed in time and space. On that note, I am just pouring out somethings people didn't care to ask me in the first place and assumed my behavior eccentric. I am not giving an explanation here or apology. It's just that I am giving what made me into what I am. Just to be clear, my paternal grandparents were long dead before I was born and I mentioned my maternal grandparents here. So, gather around since this just got real.

One thing most people really don't know about me is that I am evil from the inside. See, I look this clown of a figure that is more socially awkward guy than Jesse Eisenberg's characters. I embraced that part of me for a very long time but the fact is, I experience my psychotic episodes now and then. According to my mother it started when I was like 8 or something but my therapist took it back to when I was 5. I used to be animal-like in my behavior and the symptoms were,
a. Being hungry at off hours
b. Biting and scratching my siblings.
c. Sleeplessness
d. Having an imaginary friend until I was 14. (that is messed up right)
I wanted dominance and absolute power. My imaginary friend who I had named Venky for some reason, told me about things. The most hilarious one being when I was 7 years old. He said that eating someone's food makes me behave in their control. Whenever I got angry, he made me bounce off food from table so that I could turn into my swan form and fly away. In a fit of rage, I almost pushed my elder sister from the stairs.

Now that you know the basics, let's dive into the uncharted areas. The trigger of my episodes was very simple in nature. No one can say anything bad about my father and my grandparents from his side. This is probably because, I idolize my father and he idolizes his parents. I didn't spend quality time with my father when I was young and it was mostly with an all female batch of mother-siblings club of my mother. They used to do all boring stuff and whenever moment struck, talk shit about my father. My mother was too polite to defend her husband before her parents and siblings. That created a rift and somehow  I saw that they were poisoning my mother or at least that's what Venky said. Truth is ten years later, Venky is still right. Those people are evil AF and they left my mother into a helpless state. Although I am happy that I was right all along, I had to witness the suffering first hand. My father rented a new house and  my mother is recovering from the turmoil, and she will be fine. After all my father is the best man on the Earth you could ever bet. Whenever I go home, I am happy to see my parents having understood the situations they were being through. I just love my parents.

The next thing has nothing to do with the aforementioned but has been a very recent tragedy. My cousin was the most beautiful baby that I had laid my eyes on till today. Some shit happened and she became mentally challenged. I just couldn't bear it. She was suffering. She was fighting a disease she had no clue of. I don't know what it's called but it looked far worse than Parkinson's. It just ripped my heart and shred it into pieces. The next thing that happened is I lost faith in beautiful people. I somehow felt responsible that if I like someone beautiful, their life is gonna get ruined. I cried myself to sleep and Venky sorted things out. He was just elegant in explaining things to me. He showed me the harsh reality of people behaving irrationally for money and asked me not to do such things myself. The point is, I can't speak to girls now. I kinda wanna ask them out but I don't because I feel I'll ruin their lives by just being in it. That beautiful baby had taken her last breath about five years ago in a terrible accident on a road with her mother. Life's never been the same for me. I had completely recovered from that in my first year of engineering, when I saw Kitty and although, she didn't reciprocate anything, I am happy for not involving her in my bad luck. Now, she's just another star in the night sky.

The last thing that I am letting you in is the fact that I have killer instincts. Let me explain, I could be the guy you'd know will win in a fair fight. Then again, I am the guy whom you wouldn't trust in the same building. One of the many great things Venky taught me was the control of anger. I should be thankful to him. He made me cope with angst, disgust and corruption by making me laugh unnecessarily. I'll give you, throw me your worst joke of the day, I'd be still laughing. Now, don't you relax my dear friend. All that anger bundles and heaps in my special zone. Once every two months, I take it out on abstract things. Initially it was animal abuse. I used to be kind to animals but situations made me hit piglets with stones. Then it was racing games like RoadRash where you could beat the living shit out of people. It took a more satisfying detour in playing street fighter because mortal kombat wasn't available. Eventually, the games lost their charm on me. Now, I take it productively by making something out of something else. Since 2008, that has been my mantra. Every now and then, people come to me taking me as easy as humanly possible and poke me at my worst. The last guy, that did it was named Anaas and I caused a crack in his skull by hitting him with a brick at his most unexpected moment. It was all planned including the cover up story and people taking me easy was my advantage. Before that, I almost killed my grandmother with a kitchen knife but Venky talked me through. More recently, a prick is flashing off his newly possessed electronics to boost his ego and he doesn't know, like you, that I have all planned to take every non-family person down in case it be necessary. Then again, I am sober for three years now without any incident.

Now I know the truth about Venky but I am not that idiotic to let you know about his features. That's still my secret. In short, you may take this story lightly and I may not show even the slightest of my evil side but trust me, that's just the proof that I can be that master in things that I do. As like in my group therapies, now might be a good time for you to say, thanks for sharing.

Safety part 1

I am sure that (based on my limited viewership), you guys must have watched the Avengers. No, not the highly disappointing sequel but the groundbreaking phenomenon of 2012. You must have seen and got intrigued by the way Hawkeye scooped out an eyelid (or that's how we were lead to believe).
That got me thinking, really? There is no way to protect oneself from things just like that? I mean for so long, we were lead to believe that fingerprints are reliable to trace a person but the problem is that it's as vague as getting two consecutive tens while picking a number from a heap of a bazillion numbers and replacing it every next time assuming of course, the standard rules of probability being applied. Now we are shoved with iris technology and many of its digital manipulations.

I don't know if Spielberg is a time traveler but he called the drawback like 13 years ago when minority report came out. The flaw he pointed out is not just the flaw of the technology but the flaw of the system itself. There is no way to protect you from social engineering anyway and since passwords like voice detection or iris verification (which is a misnomer because it is a retina scan actually) and if we were going with Krrish, heartbeat(?) are so easy to get around, what makes them so secure? Speaking of social engineering, some websites or apps don't require your age for any purpose, They are making it available for some reason to the hackers. It's just pathetic if you asked me. I mean why store an information when you don't need it. It's not like your apps are greeting you every single birthday of ours but if you think that would be cool, I suggest you make some friends immediately.

Let's first deal with the problem at the hand --- The developers. See, the developers actually are the people who make the apps. They are good as in good enough to keep the product up and running but they kiss goodbye to some of the important steps. They want to finish their work quickly and if you read my previous post, you'll understand that most of the developers are bodgers. They just pick up the code from their pals and reuse it until it dies one day. We'll discuss about the life-cycle of code some day (Hey just to be sure, why don't you comment if you want it?). Moving on, they don't have the responsibility to be well, responsible. Most of the times, the code is sent to a less interesting job of testing which is more likely to be handled by a lesser degree people if I were to believe Indian job placement system. There are some good workers out there who get more paid or have respect towards their job. If you are one of them, I salute to you. These people are liable to see if the app is deployable but mostly all they do is run through coding errors or run test cases until the app fails. Trust me when I say that this takes nearly 60% of the time spent in developing an app. Everything runs fine until one of the sly people in hacker community plant their flag.

There are tools called penetration testers (invalid penis joke) who penetrate (please get your mind out of gutter, thank you) the software (holy cow man! Okay, sorry, what was I thinking... KFC caption... no... okay  yes) which are operated by penetration engineers. It is a special zone of software testing where you intentionally hack the system to know its vulnerabilities. This stage is spent less of a time and according to reddit posts, it's declining. So, if someone clever does that unethically, you know what happens next. He blackmails the company with whatever he has to get whatever he needs. More often than never, you might have guessed it, he gets a job. Now, if that's not being done, you my dear loyal android user are in pain. Your data is easily retrievable and crackable to know everything you own. You might just be carrying a burning charcoal if you wanted a hole in your pockets. Worse yet, you might be carrying the spawn of the devil. Now, Apple is more hackable but at least its market is nowhere near Android but still manages to get more than Microsoft. My concentration is on Android because it reminds me of the time Code Red virus became a sensation.

Now that we have the platform as a flaw, we go a level up to deal with the surface problem. In short, there is not a single way that exists today to overcome social engineering and get your passwords. These attempts create a diversity to prevent you from getting hacked by the bad guys. They are in no way secure. For example, there is always eye-transplant like in Minority report or scooping up your eye like in Avengers. Fingerprints are as easy as searching a door knob or coffee mug, facial scan is as effective as playing a video and worst case, heartbeat which in no way is a unique identity. Your DNA is the most easily available substance and there is no safe way to trigger security breach without giving yourself out in the first place. This is a real complex scenario and fortunately, there is a way out. You may google it to know more and it will make you a bit more prepared for the case study I am going to present you somewhere next week. Thanks for your support and give me your feedback.

Until next time
Horopter

Bodging and Hacking

We all are not engineers now, are we? Don't get offended engineers, you are not an engineer either statistically speaking. You are just the people who read some books, understood it because "Mathematics" and are doing same thing over and over. So, in general the concept of engineering as in developing solutions is not exactly being covered. For others, I say, you are likely engineering the stuff out of things more than engineers themselves. And don't get too flattered because the things you are engineering are more likely to be used by you than others. In short, the goal of engineering has failed your engineering. So, what are you getting paid for, you ask engineers? You are getting paid for bodging.

For those reading this and don't understand the concept of bodging, I may ask you to google first because in that way you can understand better supposedly. As far as I am concerned, bodging is an act building a bridge of cards. You are sure that it is going to fail and still you kind of don't want it to happen until of course you want it to collapse it by yourself. During the process if you had asked the purpose of building it, you might have saved the effort and frustration that are likely to follow. All of us concentrate on the inevitable satisfaction of destroying it ourselves. That dopamine rush is needed. The same theory is transferable to other kinds of building stuff. Clever people who know that things are capable of lasting a little longer, make it multipurpose. It devalues the product in terms of its original purpose initially but along the run of tinkering, it may be improved. The thing that is immune to changing scenarios are buildings historically. I mean sure, you can build a 500 foot statue of a naked man today and expect it to last forever. The failure you are missing certainly in this scenario is the maintenance of the statue. Since no body is actually using it, it is definitely prone to elements of the nature and one day, it will become an oddly shaped material that people have long forgotten. Don't trust me? How about statue of liberty? You should really look into the maintenance of the statue.

Buildings on the other hand are a utility. Whatever purpose it might be designed to serve, it is a shelter and shelters become homes in right hands. It is not just a mere rock sitting there, it is made of bricks. No, I am talking about the bricks of family, the cement of sentiment and well, the paints of emotions. Lucky buildings see several owners of whom each want a different order of things and while it stays withering, it sees a plethora of its own forms. It's beautiful. Now, who made all that possible? Artisans? No. Engineers? No. Those professionals who decide what's better for you because you couldn't give two thoughts yourself? No. It's that little bodger in you. That little prick knows that you are gonna toss around things and couldn't care less if the book is under the bed or where your last nail clipper went missing. All that one wants is to keep things in order for now, so that you'll break it down and he could have the satisfaction to build it in a different way. How childish of that guy.

This happens every time but you don't realize it. I may give a long list of examples but you wouldn't know it. Every now and then you do that very monotonous work to keep your livelihood running. Unknown to you, you kind of do it differently every time. If you could just notice that little spark in your work, you are golden. This process continues until you stop for a little while. You stop not to enjoy your work but to compare notes with people doing the same thing. You will have this feeling that others are better than you because you failed to notice things apparently and they magically did. You may go about it in three ways. First type are the people who get disappointed and that results in the lesser efficiency in their little bodging and finally give up on the work they were initially impressed with. Second type of people loose their minds complaining about how their design is better, actually invoking the debate that never existed in the first place about who is a better performer. Those two are equally pathetic and all of us contain more than a little traces of those types. Just admit it so that we can move on. 

Okay, moving on... The third type of the people, are curious. They want to incorporate the features they want after much filtering about what they really want but couldn't do it. These people are nice. They often start of with an innocence that they could get access to the ideas they never put up in the first place. More often than never, the other people become selfish and attack for no reason. They invoke a concept of security that protects things because the owner wants to protect it. There is no question of breaking laws or being unethical. The owner protects it because he doesn't want to share. He wants to show off and expect people not to know about the details. The third type of people go in two ways about this. One set of people are thieves. They are first of all lazy to figure things out by other sources or convince the owner about why they need it because they think that sitting and discussing is not better than making the owner suffer. The other set are of course hackers. They are made to be sly by the situation they are in. 

Hacking is cool if you ask me. Only hackers know the difference between learning and applying. Scientists share notes about what they done and how they did it. It needs verification, testing and if we know any thing about the infamous, Royal Society of Sciences (headed by Newton), it needs politics. Hacking is just a bunch of people hanging around bodging around things, stumbling upon new ideas in a very dynamic cluster and sharing because sharing is nice. It's all happy happy scenario. The name itself is misleading though. The traditional meaning goes as tearing things down and computers made it confusing. No, hacking in my context is defined as aforementioned. Everything else is a human tendency to attack each other to the point of killing. It's pathetic and gruesome. 

If engineers by profession or not, I don't care, could actually feel the weight of the things, realize that nothing stays forever and things are the symbols of something that transcends time and space, they could just unlock the spark for happiness. I might be bold when saying that things like relationships or ideas may get lost in the tremors created by lack of proper understanding, but given enough thought, they are hackable. You can learn, unlearn and relearn every single time because of those tremors. You could share advice on different aspects of life, try and fail on different things and pass it down to the next guy in  line. After all, life is too short to play all by yourself. So try to bodge and hack the stuff out of your life.

Until next time

Horopter

Promises

"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot..."
It's odd that I am quoting a British reference considering the fact that I despise their philosophy. Also, coming to India has significantly changed their culture much to the angst of several social groups. Personally, I feel that distinguishes the British from the Americans. On an other note, Americans hating the British culture is pointless, it should be Native Americans but that's probably just me. Anyway this quote is famous for two things. It might be arguably the most famous quote involving a date reference. Secondly, it talks about healthy terrorism.

It's more of a promise if you ask me. Now, I am not here to talk about V or Guy Fawkes if that's what you are here for. I am talking about the simplicity of the idea and the complex misinterpretations it may lead to. Also interpretations are not like opinions and I believe that an interpretation needs a context or many of them. It is bipolar, good or bad. Now that we have these ground rules established, I need you to look closely at the idea. It reminds of a time when revolution on a mass scale was needed to bring down the existing system and replace it with a new system. It talks about an idea of violence that is necessary to deal with the problem at hand and calls for a primal instinct of retaliation. It however, promises a hope of a new beacon of light that could supposedly come after solving the problem at hand. I just need you to know that you can not get any more of a bullshit reason than this one.

The idea itself proposes the arrival of a utopia that things change drastically that can always lead to good after a system changes. If you take the movie V for an example, the protagonist was hell-bent to tear down the corrupt society headed by a large evil conglomerate presided by a arsehole (wink to my British mates).  Fine, at the end of the day, he played his cards right and somehow brought down an entire system symbolized by the fall of a particular building. Ever since falling of a building has been tabooed with a revolution, especially if it belongs to a government. Four years prior to that movie, in 2001, we saw a real event with the fall of two buildings. So, what is terrorism? Falling of buildings with killing innocent people who are by the feature of evolution adapted to cope with their environment to the point that they are forced to take advantage of the system while despising it? This leading to a syndrome where people are too adapted to the system that they begin to like it?

I agree on the part that it is too complicated to understand but bear with because I am about to break it down. Terrorism in its bear essence is synonymous with violence aimed at spreading an idea forcefully. Now, if you conquer lands and force the poor and the hungry to accept your philosophy in promise of food, that's blasphemy. You are not allowing the person to use his judgement of requirement. I am looking at you St. Xavier. And of course we have had our share of terror with Osama Bin Laden. Falling of buildings is just a reminder and doesn't work that well with common folk. It's more like a jumpscare to a polity than a horror. All I am saying is terrorists are idiots. They are like bacteria. They attack until an antibiotic is served and then well, they attack again. No, that's just a chase. Attack like a virus, now that's terror. It stays within, hides behind everything and doesn't reveal itself until you don't have a choice but to bear it. One noticeable thing is that it doesn't just die, it leaves a scar behind.

So, as far as the quote goes in order, it is terrorism. It just wants momentary violence and expects people to remember. It doesn't leave a scar and hence it needs to be repeated or in this case create a special reminder with a God damn date. It doesn't speak much to the consequences of an action or the sacrifices necessary to cope with the new environment. Take for an example, the case of Charlie Hebdo. In the name of freedom of speech, he desensitized a religious symbol. He could have given a disclaimer about it being purely journalistic and could have taken it back. Now, I am not sure about his choices or the person he was. I am not sure if he actually did that and I am ready to apologize for any misinformation. The point is that he was murdered before a fair analysis of a situation could be made and that's terror. It's a fear to be judged and punished before a plea could be made. Sorry for being insensitive but logically, he caused his own death through his actions.

From another perspective of the situation, the terrorists or the people who influenced them might well be smoking cigars and rest in their cozy little beds for what they have done. They are certainly not in favor of any remorse as far as criminal psychology goes. I mean come on, it wasn't a self defense or an accident. This assumption is fair for most of the cases. The consequence was the many people changed their facebook images and several notifications were passed to commemorate the brutality of the situation. The incident lead to people become more united, mostly french. Some people in Asia actually gave a damn about a European country that's not UK. Most of all people learnt or at least pretended to know the French phrase "Je suis Charlie". Lives moved on and since only one person was involved in a death, people care less about terrorism. It didn't make an impact. Why? because there was no point in killing a person. The incident of 9/11 was more with impact as it affected business and people alike. Majorly, it gave a sense of insecurity and communal hatred. If the spread of Islam was the point, they have missed it because Muslims in America lost their livelihood. If it had left a scar, Americans would have a holiday declared or would have given a name for a day like 'The fallen day' or 'Day of devil's stare' or something sinister. Instead we are stuck with a date. That just tells us that it is as important as our friend's birthday or it's passable or both as we take it.

Consider a situation in textbooks a decade from today. The topic of terrorism would be small and insignificant because we as a generation didn't involve an attention as much as it is needed. We integrated it as a part of our lives to not consider a life precious enough to commemorate. We failed to teach our kids that death is bad, especially when it has occurred due to a man's tyranny. Sure, the date may be important but how will the next generation remember it? We fear because we got impacted by it. We saw it and were alive to see it happen and the consequences that followed. For the next iteration of the great human evolution, it will just be another date. A date to be remembered just because we said so. Speaking of which, why is fifth of November so important and why do we need to remember it? If you are reading this, you might probably have encountered the date reference for the first time or are googling right now in a new tab. To you, I say, don't bother because no matter how much you try to know about it, it is just chaos in theory. The current solution may be to break down the existing system but one should consider the need  and plan the next step before a radical step is taken. A promise is just an inspiration but without an action or a plan, a path that should accompany, it will be an idea, good or bad, that will lead to bad choices to a significant fraction.

On that note, remember to let this be a reminder to be responsible for the actions you take and until next time with a much boring topic,
Horopter.

The insufficiency factor

What does a person who literally has everything need? Well, my philosophy makes that person automatically the God or at least the person who has achieved salvation. So, does that mean that others are having a level of insufficiency? The answer is undeniably yes. We all are somehow have that gaping wound of a hole to fill. From an evolutionary standpoint, we just try to be a better version of ourselves. There are different factors stopping us from really doing that exact same thing. Starting with laziness, we have a plethora of situations or "accidents" to prevent us from doing things and they end with juvenoia. Juvenoia is when we become a part of a scenario that prevents others from being better. One should google it out to know more and  one can start with the Vsauce video. These factors are not always bad and not every time good. We have a choice and choices under certain contexts lead to different outcomes. Thus we generate diversity. We then group with people with near similar outcomes and you know, we formed society and culture. As a group we can win more than we individually could but then again, will team work fill that gap of not being able to achieve personally?

I am not writing this in abstract and trust me I am going somewhere with this when I say love is a delusion. See, things start as an attraction and based on our previous choices, we develop infatuation with some of them. We expect our zeal to get reflected in our infatuation but that's not always the case. We tend to promise love, sometimes too soon but it might not get replied back. Now the question is how do you know that its love? It might be an obsession. Scientifically, all pleasures are a variation on dopamine. I could literally make you like eating your least favorite food by releasing dopamine at regulated rate. So, is that it? We are just a bunch of dopamine generators and consumers. It feels so off and unnatural. I know that I felt that I was better off not knowing it as a fact. That got me thinking, what differentiates a love from an obsession? All I had to start with is that take any two things and they are different in at least one aspect for sure.

I went to take non scientific approach as scientific answer might ruin my basic perceptions and I am not ready to take it. I compared my obsession with planning and my perceived love for, well you know who (definitely not a Harry Potter reference). The answer became clear. I think about planning when I am in a problem but I think about her every passing second. She just doesn't know it yet. That is a vague answer to the question. I went more intimate. Would I be more devastated having my plan failed or would it be at the time I realize she is gone out of my life for good? Again, I'd be devastated without her. The answer illustrated the concept based on the outcome but it's still unclear and gives a vibe of bad comparison. So, finally I asked myself, given a day to live, would I plan to live further or spend whole day with her. This is when I realized I loved her. I'd definitely and undoubtedly choose to plan live further.

"You bastard", one might say. Listen me out. I just can't leave her side. I want to be with her all time. I'd obviously try to live longer with her. My primal instincts kicked in and love became merciless to me. She doesn't know that I couldn't move on and after a string of failed attempts, I've realized that I'd be devastated on the day she has gone for good from my life. Why doesn't it pain me today? Why doesn't the mathematics scare me? It's because I know about the insufficiency factor. I know that I have a set of insufficiency preventing me from reaching her. I know that I could never get over her but the fact that she is happy and content, fills the wound of her not being with me. I am happy now that I am still trying to impress her.

Consider 9, okay now 9.9 and then 9.99 and 9.999 and 9.9999 and continue infinitely. Let that final number be 9.9_. Any person in their right mind would say that once you stop adding 9's after decimal, it will still be less than 10. There seems to be an inherent insufficiency. Mathematics proves that if you keep trying, you'll reach 10. In fact 9.9_ is 10 in disguise. Poetically, the process of trying and trying may not give you your desired option but the path itself is the destination. No matter what insufficiency you have, try to make your life better by removing obstacles and iterate with intention of achieving, you'll have achieved before you know it. Worrying about something gets us nowhere, acting towards goal is literally the goal itself. Perhaps in this way insufficiency is good.

The day night cycle

Apparently you can learn anything anytime. With the advent of electric bulb, the earth lit up like a new bride. People started working longer than before. The primate behavior probably left us for good around that time. We are still afraid of dark, more afraid in fact. The behavior of grouping after evening and stargazing is out of window. One of the activities people did even when light went out is study. Fast forwarding the time a few decades, we have a different version of bulb, a camera and end of leather-bind books. We have evolved to work more than ever now aided with pictures. Just to spare you fast forwarding, next came video camera, televisions and oculus rifts. You know one thing that is real fun that flashed for a second in this swift montage? A view master. For those of you who don't know, you should really google it real quick. There were different flavors and unfortunately, one with a porno edition. I was lucky enough to get one with animals and pictures of flowers. The view master got an upgrade this year with android and hell yeah I intend to teach my future kids space stuff with that.

That reminded me of my own time in school. It was one of the factors in my education and that story is often untold. Well, most of my stories go untold but this one somehow became irrelevant to me. So, to start with, I was this fat guy in my school, real annoying as usual to others, and I hated mass physical training sessions (MPT). They literally do monotonous stuff. For that matter, I felt that games like cricket or basketball are monotonous. They do the same thing over and over, are not productive and you get all sweaty at the end. I had this obsession of being clean that I bathed thrice everyday. Now, sometimes days pass without a drop on my body. Ah! times. During that time of may be an hour, I'd sneak into our computer lab. NIIT gave a set of video lectures for each class in math, science and social studies. I used to see them and learn. Other kids weren't probably interested or they didn't know it even existed. The flash animations were convincing than a teacher's monologue about merits and demerits of some Muslim invasion. Now, for a kid, invasion is bad. He doesn't know change of political demographic, merging of cultures, cross-cultural learning, stereotype developments or sexual dominance of a culture. That gave me a bad taste about the entire Muslim culture.

I began isolating myself from all my Muslim friends. Somehow I felt that they are evil and due to that teacher' way of delivering ideas, they questioned themselves to the point of their allegiance and origins. This created two sets of muslims in our class. One kept their country before their identity while the other proclaimed their religion before their country. I am not gonna go in depth about what happened next. I wanna end it with a note that this point lead to the fact that I don't tell this story anymore. I learnt the ideas meant to be transferred because of those videos. I understood the power of dictatorship, the might of strength followed by the might of a word that generates idea. I quickly apologized for my behavior and social stigma that I was a part of. I continued skipping MPTs and binge watched lessons. The curiosity was at my peak. I ditched lunch breaks, toilet breaks and sometimes classes. Our lab in-charge was kind enough to let me do that. That baby step towards virtual reality evoked the creative side of me. It lead to experimentation, long lasting inquisitiveness and somehow retention of facts. That was until tenth grade.

Remember how I always bitch about my fall occurring after tenth? Well, one of the factors is that I was no longer having those videos to help me get the idea. I cringed to imagine the thing taught to me. It was not a pretty sight. Science needs demos. Now, all of my science teachers are so poor at drawing that I could bet all my chips on a five year old. I may sound ridiculous but you weren't there. There were paid sites like topper-learning or meritnation. I had even paid for meritnation where students essentially made it a dating website. Similar things happened in orkut which is a story for another time. Examfear videos were slowly stepping up by September of 2011 but not strong enough to reach me. Four years later, I am endorsing exam fear videos to all my siblings. Learning became drastically different. Kids who are a decade younger than me are outperforming me in several areas. This is not a cultural change or a social change. This is evolution taking its spin. Humankind started with pictorial data representation before alphanumeric symbols gave us any meaning. We remember what we see, just not a plain text of repetitive symbols. Colors, graphics and movement detection are hardwired into our system. Any effort to resist it may cause a certain outburst and trust me it's not good.

We have neglected our biological clock now, haven't we? I mean with increasing technology, we ditched our instincts to work at a certain period of time. We evolved to cope with darkness unless we are talking about cliche horror movies or creepypastas. We can take advantage of it by being more productive and not binge watching serials on netflix. We won't do that ourselves, We need a push, a motive or some other external help. I'll give you one. On the other side of spectrum, children are not getting their right to education. Corporate laws have literally made the education system, a business. If you have time and you tend to plug in a playlist on youtube, I suggest you go to Khan academy or thenewboston channels. Learn, be productive in your life and apply your knowledge because may be you are not as great as Einstein or your work may be shit. If you could inspire someone and if that someone created something which in turn created the next generation scientist, YOU can call yourself worthy of living a human life. The day night cycle will continue till the Sun gives up, and its about time you owned some of them.

Until next time
Horopter

The delusions we have

Today has been a blast. I saw myself being a part of something big. It's good that I am learning but does that learning last? For example, we all read in our school that discipline is an important trait to be learnt from ants. Are we really that disciplined in every work that we do? There comes an age when we also learn the usage of ant-kill. We supposedly are a greater life form than ants. Don't get me wrong, I know for a fact that we are evolved. Does it give us the right to kill them? I mean we don't eat them. the question is not about sustenance. We tend to kill them none the less. There is an option to distract them out of our house but nope, we kill them. What have we learnt then? We don't feel sorry and we don't acknowledge their team effort. Had it been the case, we would all be leaders. It's the butterfly effect. Small things we unlearn can prevent our progress. It doesn't mean that learning is delusion or knowledge is delusion. The delusion we all have is that we retain our learning.

This can answer another question of why we have so many incarnations of God or manifestations of divinity. The purpose, context and application of knowledge are three parameters that literally change with time. People need examples, different test cases to deal with. Sometimes it takes a person and sometimes it takes an incarnation to guide us. Popularity in public is one kind of abstract hunger we have. Some people forsake their lives to set an example. Most of the times, they do it for popularity. Charity is a good initiative but people form different sets of trusts or banners in the name of awareness. Awareness is the sister of inquisitiveness. If you want people to be aware, raise a question. These people are setting examples of some kind. They are encouraging other set of people to do the same. There is no transparency in deed or workflow, you just trust them. Charity is a selfless deed and requires no publicity. People do it, for they don't know that ever lasting popularity is a delusion.

I am not going to enlist the types of delusions but aforementioned are the delusions we have. They are nothing but the tip of the iceberg. I have an unusual delusion, satisfaction. I tend to be satisfied sooner than others. I am afraid of experimentation. Now, I wasn't like this before 2010. The only thing I was afraid of was public speaking. Okay snakes and ghosts are still up there but you know what I mean. The other day, I met the topper again and I saw his approach towards the problem given. He wasn't only solving the given problem. He was understanding why the problem was solved in a different way by others and, he tried to simplify the problem beyond the given one. That piqued my interest. What was that stopping me from doing that? I was in fact preoccupied with just finishing off the list of problems that I never realized to stop and feel the beauty of the problem. After mirroring what he did, it doesn't look that beautiful anymore. Probably, his curiosity made him do that but without him knowing, he accidentally learnt more. I was, on the other hand satisfied.

One fact I did forget is that sometimes, the tools of a sculptor, define him. Sure they define sculptures but the sculptor? I found about it recently and I was taken aback. Stay with me here. In my first year of engineering, everyone got into android mode. By that I mean, started developing things. Some really rehashed available work and mostly people came up with some rather interesting stuff. My laptop has 3GB RAM and that's not enough juice to run things smoothly. I lost an opportunity to learn. My other friends had a luck factor their as new laptops came with new specs. Topper, however stayed silent until after two years, he unleashed a project that was pretty useful and get this, very easy. Literally anyone could have made it in a couple of days. I still don't know what makes it so special. He got all the attention while the fairly advanced technology deployed by Mr. Sam didn't get that much. That got me thinking, had I gotten an opportunity to learn android that early, would I make an app that elegant? May be or may be not. I don't know. It's like that time I missed an opportunity to prove myself to Ms. Angel, the one which I probably won't get again. The thing that pains me is the missed opportunity and frankly, it was because of the fact that the tools weren't sufficient.

Now you may say that a bad workman blames his tools but seriously? Give a doctor an axe and ask him to perform a bypass surgery. It just doesn't fit. I have now decided to upgrade the proverbial armor. I could have taken a macbook for instance. I will get a better performance and longevity but I don't wanna lose familiarity. I may be wrong now but I am sure that I will put the tool to good use for all tools wear one day. Speaking of opportunities, I know I have postponed gate exam stuff for too long. I have resolved multiple times in vain. I just hope that there won't be a blog post here speaking of this missed opportunity. Perhaps it's my delusion that I am capable of cracking the exam but I like to have such delusions.