Observations, Opinions, and Cultural Critique
Cultural Essays from a Life Lived Between Worlds
Brain Rot Is Infecting AI Too: How Doomscrolling Is Breaking Human and Machine Minds
People are writing research papers on which biryani (Indian-flavored rice) is the best, but more on that later. 😅 This might be the most important paper on AI we will read. Scientists are showing how large language models can rot their own minds, in the same way...
Roblox Danger Exposed: How Millions of Kids Are at Risk of Grooming, Abuse & Exploitation
Roblox: A Social Network Masquerading as a Game I honestly don't know where to start. For years, my students and I would immerse ourselves in the world of Roblox and create games and worlds that we would share and have fun in. Then, slowly, I started noticing...
Living in America’s Melting Pot While Confronting the Housing Crisis No One Talks About
It’s safe to say that even in America, as a true blooded Indian, I live in my own world of Indian food and Bollywood style parties. What little I understand about how everyone else lives is mostly through shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City and movies like...
When Parenting Influencers Go Too Far: The Shocking Truth About Child Exploitation
I remember that summer of 2023 like it was yesterday. I kept replaying this three-minute Ring camera video over and over that I had seen on news. It showed an emaciated, slow moving 12-year-old boy walking up to a neighbor's door around 10 am in the scorching Utah...
Iranian Female Protest Rap That Defies a Regime — Real Rebel Music That Hits Hard ✊
The below is a story about the taste of freedom, and about the strength of standing against intolerable darkness. It's difficult to forget what happened in Iran in 2022. 22 year old Mahsa Amini was visiting Tehran with her family when she was stopped by Iran’s...
Unlock Lifelong Learning: Top Movie & Documentary Recommendations That Inspire Growth
- “You’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket, and you’re too much of a p*ssy to cash it in. You don’t owe it to yourself, you owe it to me. In twenty years, if you’re still living here working construction, I’ll f*cking kill ya. Hanging around here is a...
Living Deliberately Without the Woods: How to Build a Meaningful Life in a Noisy World
Excuse my language. There's a meme I once saw while helping one of my clients with his decluttering project. "Working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need." Doesn't it sum up the way we are living our lives? This continues to bring me back to Henry David...
When Death Isn’t the Fear: A Soul-Shaking Review of “A Battle with My Blood”
Tatiana Schlossberg was a mother, an environmental journalist, and a cancer patient - in that order. She passed away at the age of 35 a few days ago. And she had written an essay about her last days. The scope of my essay on hers is to highlight her love for...
Empowerment or Desperation? Why Are Aging Pop Stars Still Chasing Clout Like Teen Influencers?
Hey, look, I’m by no means a prude. I’ve made two babies, for crying out loud. But day after day, seeing talented artists, musicians, and celebrities parading their half ass bodies on the internet is driving me up the wall. I’ve jammed to Jennifer Lopez’s songs in...
Finding Peace on a Walk Across America: What a Dog, the Deep South, and a Buddhist Monk Teach Us
How Do We Find Peace? “By practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is the medicine we all need.”This was the answer given by a Buddhist monk at the Walk for Peace event yesterday in deep south Georgia. And what a moment it was. A group of dedicated Buddhist monks,...
Be Happy in the New Year: The Meme Moments of 2025 That Made Us Laugh, Cope, and Carry On
I'm telling you something I've not said out loud before, especially in front of my Gen Z children. Gen Z is the absolute GOAT when it comes to hilarious memes and comment trolls on the internet. For example, here's their take on a Instagram influencers, many of them...
Scandinavian Crime Fiction That Excels In The Art of Being Moody and Riveting
- I work with a lot of Danes, and I find them quietly fascinating. They're humble, economical with words and rarely interrupt in meetings. Even if they are the subject matter experts, they don't find the excessive need to show off their merits like some of us...
AI Chatbots Are Being Misused to Create Child Sexual Abuse Material. And It’s a Wake-Up Call
- Parents, Here's The News Coming From The IWF For the first time ever, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has confirmed something deeply disturbing: AI chatbots are being used to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This isn’t just a hypothetical risk...
When AI Becomes More Human Than Humans: Relationships, Intimacy, and the Age of the Promptstitute
- Erotica, Intimacy And AI It feels like yesterday we were seeing huge societal changes happen in the way Gen Z is turning to AI for emotional support instead of actual dating. I had written about it here. And just this summer, I was whining about how adults...
Let Final Words Celebrate Life and Not Fear Death – A Love Letter to Living Fully
Listen To The Article - A Love Letter to Living Fully I’m writing this in case I die earlier than expected. Don't worry, I'm fine. It's just that if life takes an unexpected turn, I want my final words to be about living, not about dying. I’ve always liked the...
Most of Us Only Become Remarkable by Dying Too Soon: Lessons on Life and Legacy
- The Untimely Remarkable: Valuing Life Before Loss Many years ago, I wrote in a poem: “Only untimely deaths make most of us remarkable.” What I meant was that, too often, our brilliance is only acknowledged if our life is cut abruptly short. Here's the truth....
Smartphones Are Destroying Young Minds Faster Than Any Technology in History
- Smartphones: A Civilizational Threat to Human Cognition 🧠📵 An opinion piece by Colby Hall in Mediaite, titled “Alarming New Study Finds Smartphones Ruining Our Brains at Unprecedented Speed,” is going viral. And rightfully so, because it warns that...
Reclaiming Your Mind: How to Keep Your Agency in the Age of AI and Endless Distraction
- Losing Agency Voluntarily I remember the first time I said the word “Agency” out loud. I was in my mom's kitchen in our village of Poranki looking out of our balcony. Fifty feet across in our neighbor's balcony, an old woman was getting bathed by her son and...
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