Author: manuscrypts

  • I Would Prefer Not To

    I would prefer not to

    This is one of my favourite t-shirts. It is based on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”. Set in the 1800s, it’s Bartleby’s response to the world, and has a tragic ending. I have to admit, I bought it intuitively because of a mindset, before I went around figuring out the origin story.

    What mindset? I am hardly the first person in middle age to come to the realisation that one should spend more time on things that actually matter to one’s life, rather than what the world dictates. That is, of course, easier said than done. But that, I think, is also how one loses character.

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  • Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power

    Timothy W. Ryback

    Timothy Ryback’s Takeover is an absolute thriller, even though the outcome is known history, and it doesn’t let go until the nail-biting finale because even five minutes before President Paul von Hindenburg was scheduled to acknowledge Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany, the coalition partners were still in disagreement. It is fascinating to realise how differently things might have turned out for the world if even a small move from any of a bunch of personalities had slightly diverged.

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  • Toit Mahadevapura

    We’ve now made around three trips to Toit Mahadevapura, which we fondly call ‘our rural Toit’. The only problem we have encountered is Google/Uber maps showing a route through the tech park when coming from the Whitefield/ Varthur Road direction. The security guys won’t let you in, so do use the ORR entrance.

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  • Frowndation

    Oct 2nd was Gan Ja, but the first Friday in October is also World Smile Day. AI & I came up with some fine lines for you. 😉

    Frowndation

  • The Worm at the Core

    Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski

    A big theme of my reading in 2024 was around answering “why am I like this?” The Worm at the Core has given that understanding a paradigm shift. The basic premise of the book is that the awareness of our own mortality is the hidden engine of human thought, emotion, and culture.

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