Author: manuscrypts

  • Three shades of freedom

    At large

    It is freedom weekend in this part of the world. We make an impromptu lunch plan, and use the metro. Then go to a mall for bubble tea, our new comfort drink. There is something metaphorical about that – our bubble inside a messy reality. I noticed that at the restaurant, on the roads, in the mall, there weren’t a lot of smiling people. I reflect that maybe it’s a sign of the times. After all, if you go by social media, everyone else is doing better.

    And it isn’t just online, it’s a reality too.I think specifically about the service staff in the restaurant, security guards at the metro station. They are working on a day when everyone else has the day off. Waking up early, going back late. They are living lives of precarity, something I read in Eula Biss’ Having and Being Had.

    “…depending on the will or pleasure of another was the original meaning of precarious, and that it comes from the Latin for prayer. Precarity is everywhere, it seems. Maybe it is, as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes, the condition of our time. It is also the defining feature of an entire class of people, the precariat. 

    Illness or disability can force somebody into the precariat as can divorce, war, or natural disaster. The precariat is composed of migrant workers and temp workers and contract workers, and part-time workers. People who work unstable jobs that offer “no sense of career.” There are few opportunities to advance in these jobs, and no way to bargain for better terms.

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  • Notes from A Psalm for the Wild-Built

    As with many other excellent books, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built too came via the better half – a book that one of her colleagues mentioned as his favourite. Since solarpunk fell in the larger ambit of speculative fiction, of which I am an enthusiast, I promptly added it to my list. I rarely write a review for fiction these days, because I think each book speaks to a person differently, and sometimes even to the same person differently across time. This book is no different, so no review here. But for me, this book came at a very opportune time – it raised the same questions I had, but with a far more positive outlook. It even managed to reinforce an answer. Hence, sharing a few lines by Becky Chambers that really spoke to me.

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  • Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

    Annie Jacobsen

    It was in a show called Hunters that I first heard about Operation Paperclip. Even before WW 2 ended, and though there were common organisations among Allies, the race was on between the would-be victors to get Nazi science and tech to their own countries. This expanded to the Nazis who were working on such projects. Originally called Operation Overcast, the then rechristened Operation Paperclip was the US version, which ran between 1945 and 1959, and as a part of which more than 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Nazi Germany to the U.S. and more often than not, given government employment. The American Dream!

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  • Old Mill Brewing Co.

    Old Mill Brewing Co. popped up when we were looking for new places around our hometown – Whitefield. But we were thwarted two weeks in a row, courtesy rains! The third time wasn’t really the charm, as the 6km drive took 45 minutes! But things turned around when we finally reached there.

    Since we got there relatively early in the evening, it was near empty, and we were glad to see a brewery without dirty waterbodies, loud music, and underaged kids shooting for reels! Refreshing change of scene. The place is quite huge with seating options across multiple floors.

    Old Mill Brewing Co.
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  • The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

    Daniel J. Levitin

    The title – The Organized Mind, and the subtitle – Thinking straight in the age of information overload – led me to quite some expectation, which unfortunately weren’t met. A better title for the book, IMO, would have been ‘How the mind is organised’. That the book was published in 2014, when the noise levels were of a magnitude different from the current circumstances, also doesn’t help.

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