We might be settling scores or we might be opening doors. It’s up to us. Grievance and possibility have confusing roots. Grievance isn’t about grieving. In fact, it’s the opposite. Grievance is the na

Predictive model of human movement Fitts's law: draft of target size W and distance to target D Fitts's law (often cited as Fitt's law ) is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human

Bariani Road Race, March 2010. I'm circled in yellow, rubber side up. I was in the wrong position and had the cracked sternum to prove it. Many of you might remember that I used to race road bikes com

Feb 13th 2021 S OMETIMES FICTIONAL characters are so vivid that they cannot be confined to the page. Augustus Melmotte began life as a villain in Anthony Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece “The Way We Live N

We have three dogs in the house. One LOVES to run and runs with me. One loves to run but can only go for short bursts, and one is for a recovery super slow stroll (The OG Roy the Bulldog ) . Manny the

The new ritual, even more than checking the windows and doors before bed, is to check the incoming. Doom scroll a bit, check Slack and email and make sure there are no loose ends. And then the ritual

Feb 6th 2021 D AUGHTERS HAVE long been linked with divorce. Several studies conducted in America since the 1980s provide strong evidence that a couple’s first-born being a girl increases the likelihoo

There’s this idea that, if you do great work at your job, people will (or should!) automaticallyrecognize that work and reward you for it with promotions / increased pay. In practice, it’s oftenmore c

F or many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to dea

Featured on Hashnode Subscribe to my newsletter and never miss my upcoming articles If you want to learn the math involved with the Big O, read Analysing Algorithms: Worst Case Running Time . Data Str

It is now clear that if you are Muslim in Narendra Modi’s new India you can be arrested for selling shoes, taking part in a protest, talking to or walking with a Hindu girl, driving a cattle truck, cr

W ith many of us working from home, shielding or just following the requirement to stay in our houses, it’s going to be an expensive winter if we have the heating running all day. Last week, the write

Jan 23rd 2021 W HEN, AS A young woman looking for solid work, Katharine Whitehorn was moving round from one grungy digs to another, she realised that the cookery books of the time were no use. To begi

I have been on a documentary roll. I have also been on a film roll. Documentaries examine facts—information for your brain. Movies tell creative stories. I watched a few films this past weekend showin

The purpose of marketing is to cause change. If we’re trying to build a movement, raise money for a non-profit, sell a product, change lifestyles, build community–these are all marketing activities th

Jan 23rd 2021 W HEN ITVAN KEBADIAN spray-painted the words “abolissons la police” above a mural in Paris last year, he was thinking of George Floyd, an African-American whose death under the knee of a

In a perfect product development scenario, a designer could sketch some boxes on a napkin and hand it to an engineer who would know exactly what to build. The boxes would correspond to elements in an

The first half of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography makes some things abundantly clear: He had no natural ability to play the guitar. In fact, after his first lessons, he quit, unable to play a note.

Yesterday, I had a gap in the middle of the day. So the Gotham Gal and I took an hour-long walk with our dog Ollie. It cleared my head and when I got back to work, I was full of energy and clarity. I’

Jan 7th 2021 I N ALL THE world there was nothing as beautiful as a goat. As she sat among them on the steep wooded slopes of the Valle di Felice, watching them tussle and shimmy in the tall weeds, Agi

This essay was first published on Huff Post India (30 Oct 2020). Temporarily posting it here until it finds a new home. When we first moved to Basavanagudi in Bangalore, a relative told Appa he should

Imagine a historian centuries far into the future looking back at our present times. If they can access the digital detritus of our limitless traces of social media, the one thing they will have no de

Hamish Blair / © Getty Images England v Australia, Edgbaston, 2005 I n early May 2005, 12 months on from a debut so excellent it prompted England's captain Nasser Hussain to retire and make way, at th

Apr 9th 2020 THE OPENING sequences of television shows do several jobs at once. They must pay tribute to the stars and set the tone for the episode to follow. Above all, they must entice the viewer to

Dec 19th 2020 All on the Board. Yellow Kite; 288 pages; £14.99 I T WAS MARCH 2017 and fans were streaming out of a concert by Craig David at the O2 Arena in London and into North Greenwich Tube statio

For many people, work consists of a series of urgencies. Set them up and knock them down. Empty the in-box, answer the boss, make the deadline. Over the next few weeks, there may be fewer urgencies th

Jan 2nd 2021 T HE FRENCH , wrote George Canning, a British statesman, to a ministerial colleague in 1825, “have but two rules of action: to thwart us whenever they know our object; and when they know

My dad, General Robert Maris Wilson, or Bob as most people called him, passed away on Monday at the age of 92. He had been in failing health for the last few months and moved on peacefully. My dad was

Dec 18th 2020 M y Jewish grandparents adopted many local traditions when they fled to Britain from Vienna in 1938. They became members of the Women’s Institute and Rotary Club, attended an Anglican ch

Based on the recommendation of a friend who had once described his waistline as “changing more often than Britney Spears’s (?) bra size”, I read Jasun Fung’s The Obesity Code over the last couple of d

Here are some books for the end of the year… fifty years of ideas that have helped me understand the world differently: Gödel, Escher, Bach — Before meta was cool, Douglas Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Pr

Some Dutch names sound plain funny in the English language. So, what’s the story behind names like Kok, Pekelharing, and Smallegange? On first arriving in the Netherlands, I allowed myself a little sm

It’s fun to say the perfect thing at the perfect time. Mic drop. The problem is that then you have to bend over and pick up the microphone. Conversations take more effort but tend to be worth it. This

An almost magical idea, a tiny little word, a chance to make it real. If someone tasks you with carving something profound into a block of granite, the emotional overhead is probably too high to do ou

“You’re welcome,” is not the same as, “it’s my pleasure.” and “No problem,” is not the same as, “I’m happy to help.” These sentences are the closing parentheses of a simple conversation that opens wit

Photo by Peter Okwara on Unsplash Eliud Kipchoge a few days before he ran a sub two hour marathon. Pressure is everywhere in this world, if you’re a human being. I’m trying to stay as calm as possible

Lately I’ve been doing some career counseling for people off Twitter (long story). The central drama for many people goes something like this: “I’m a senior engineer, but I’m thinking about being a ma

Nov 21st 2020 E VERY MORNING he could, Jonathan Sacks pulled on his tracksuit and went out jogging. He was not called the “rapid rabbi” for nothing. Jogging, as his desk-sign reminded him, led to posi

Nov 14th 2020 “B ECAUSE POLITICS. ” “Latinx.” “Doomscrolling.” Language is developing all the time, as new usages like these arise and old ones disappear. One common way to describe this process is to

Tags ai , books Categories Books I read G. W. Constable’s near term sci-fi book Becoming Monday . If you are a fan of near term sci-fi, AGI, or the singularity, go get a copy right now – you’ll love i