About Today

 I destroyed my clean streak by drinking beer yesterday, and staying up late. Feel like doing it again tonight... will see. I was late to office though, and I do not want to be. Want to come in on time, that requires me to wrap up quickly and crash. So will try to do that today, and if I cannot do it, will stop. 

I am flying to Mumbai on Saturday. Need to get the tickets printed before that, though it is not necessary. Plan to travel light, but it is not possible to travel too light because I need a notebook. Will figure it out. I have travelled like that while going to events, but people look at you weird if you are at an airport with just a notebook. IDK why people have time to judge the most randomest things. 

I did not do my quota of eight stories today, but that is fine, I am giving myself time, and logged out of work PC a good half an hour before the timing of my shuttle. I also closed all the work tabs on my personal laptop, which have been open for years. Right now this Blogger tab is the only one open, and it has been years since I used a single tab on my browser. Feels good man, reminds me of the time when there were browsers without tabs, and you actually had to open multiple windows. NeoPlanet FTW! 

I wonder why desktop software lack flash screens now, they used to be such a cool thing. One story I wrote today that is doing well is about the stick man aurora. I am imaging some ancient human tribe looking up at the sky and seeing this awesome apparition. Unfortunately, Gemini did not do a good job of rendering it, repeatedly turning the plasma cloud into something else only, either too colourful, or too incoherent. I also wrote about an interesting study on Biophobia, where people, especially in urban areas are increasingly displaying aversion, fear or disgust towards plants, animals and nature. 

The parents today are just so over protective, that they do not allow their children to play in the mud, hunt for eggs, climb trees, or keep butterflies as pets. I know some parents who do, but these people really are biophiles, people who love nature. What can I say humans are idiots. 

Another very weird thing happened in the morning today. Uber suddenly logged me out, and would not allow me to book, and kept showing me around Vidya Vihar and Kurla for some reason when I was in Garhi Market in New Delhi. It also would not allow me to book without clearing some past due, that I forgot about, but the payment method was not working through the app. Uber Support is very good on X, where you can directly ask the question instead of choosing from preset options, that may not even list your problem. They got it sorted out, the unpaid ride was two years old! From Jan 25, 2024! I do not know how it remained like that, or even if it is the same account. I am very careful about maintaining my rider score, and this has a lower one than my other account. Also my previous rides list disappeared! IDK what happened, also for the first time I think I used Ola. It was not bad! 

Some days ago I had caught a cab from Okhla to Home, and my battery died. The cab driver had a special kit in his dashboard, with connectors for all types of phones. He was more worried about my battery than me, and he made sure that I came to the front and juiced up my batteries, and then - this is the weirdest thing - insisted that I pay using UPI! He was the first and only Uber driver I have met who preferred UPI over cash, and this guy happened to meet me when I had the cash, which I usually do not! Then the Uber guy who was bringing me over today was also particularly worried about my battery, even though I paid him at the start of the ride itself. He moved on only after I reassured him that I will be able to recharge the phone at the Office. I guess since their whole profession depends on it, Uber drivers empathise with riders with low battery lol. 

Akshit got drunk yesterday and took a holiday today, telling people that his parents were visiting. Good thing I did not take a holiday today, but it came close, did not feel like waking up today. He has started making 'hmm hmmm' noises to mimic and make fun of the noisy fan on my laptop. I have to whack him on the head for that. I have to be careful about the dates of the flight, will see if I can get the printouts today itself while going home. The flight is early in the morning, and I really hope they send a cab. The rickshaw driver yesterday who took me home was driving very slowly lol. 

Oh yeah, the lift was a pain. Need to wait so long to go either up or down. There was this one funny frustrated guy who was pressing the button repeatedly preventing the lift from going up. Then he began pressing the button even when the button was already pressed, doing absolutely nothing. Even in corporate offices there are idiots who press both the up and down buttons. Sometimes, people just remain uneducated, illiterate and dehati, cannot remove that dust in the brains. Then there was another guy, who seemed a bit confused, who was repeatedly pressing the fifth floor while he was on the fifth floor. He then remembered and got off just as the doors were closing, causing one woman to exclaim in exasperation and impatience, and another guy to leap forward and vigorously press the door closing button. This woman, was a smartass who had just two floors before said the problem is not with the lift, you are getting impatient, when another woman complained about the lift taking too long. I feel like some people just like to make noise and wind from their mouths for no reason. 

About Today

Today was a good day at work for everyone. People got their salaries a day late. People were telling each other that they got the 'credited' messages and shouting to each other across bays that 'salary aa gya'. A whole bunch of people are going to get drunk tonight, and people have applied for leaves tomorrow also. So, tomorrow is also going to be a great day. I just hope that there is less shouting in office. I paid off, and shut up my landlord, who was asking me for 2000-1000 Rs like my friends do at the end of the month. 

Yesterday, I was walking to the station when an electric rickshaw picked me up. I wanted to walk but did not have the heart to say no to him. I tried the popular Japanese probiotic Yakult for the first time. This was one of the celebratory things ordered by a colleague to celebrate the salary deposit. The bottle looks like the small, fat dick of the Laughing Buddha, and whatever is inside tastes like something coming out of such a dick. Therefore, drinking Yakult is gay, hence proved. 

In the evening, I gave a very sad party to two unwilling colleagues, at a McDonalds in a food court that opened near office. There is also an Udupi Uphar coming out there (which a colleague read as Achar Uphar for some reason), hope it opens soon. We just had two strawberry juices and a large fries. The other two were reluctant to eat or drink anything despite repeated prompting, and actually I did not want anything too! Classic Abilene paradox. At least we got to bitch about Happy Meals and how McDonalds lies to little kids by saying the meals pack in a toy when it is actually a book! Fuck You McDonalds with a peri peri potato fry. Akshit remembered how the toys from McDs were long lasting, and how his parents entertain any kids at home with the toys, which are the only ones to have survived for so many years. 

He also told me some funny things. Apparently while crushing hash, some people would deliberately deposit some in their fingernails, and then extract them to put them in a bidi. I had heart of an anta, which is the smallest unit of smokable hash. A smaller unit is a chanta, which is half the amount of hash you would put in a j or a chillum. Now I heard of the head of the fly, or makhi ki sar, which is a tiny granule of hash that you can apparently smoke, presumably to get a nanodose or a placebo kick. Such people deserve to be kicked fr real, with a leg. 

The second funny thing he told me was a joke on a Freudian Slip. While putting in the dateline, which is and really should be known as the placeline as New Delhi in an article, I ended up writing New Scientist. My work friend said "That is a Freudian Slip, where you replace a word with mother". It is a joke. He said mother instead of other. Haha. Fuck that shit. 

Got a fuck ton of post-budget quotes from deep tech, AI, Fintech, Agri, VC leaders, NGOS and random companies that I never heard of, and then deleted them all promptly. If I have not heard of your company, I am not carrying your quote, sorry lol. I need to go on a rant against Windows one of these days. I also hate browsers saving urls for Web 2.0 sites, which is very irritating. Every time I open up Netflix, I end up in the same episode of The Rookie, every time I open up Spotify, I end up in the same Joe Rogan episode with Graham Hancock and a poor, battered skeptic, and every time I open up X, I ended up on the same post that I posted long ago, because that is just what the browser remembers. Come on Vivaldi, at least you can do better than that! 

I like fat men, because the identity of a fatty is going to be a fatty no matter how much they earn, what they achieve in life, and how much of a pedo they are. Also, after Epstein, pedos are essentially any rich fucker. GG Epstein.  

Rohit Shitty is such a dumbfuck

 Rohit Shitty has built an empire on exploding cars, gravity-defying stunts and cheesy dialogues. Even his pyrotechnics are plagiarised. He is a master illusionist, and his biggest magic trick is serving reheated leftovers from Hollywood and packaging it as high-octane entertainment. He thinks his audiences are idiots without exposure, and maybe they are, but what does that say about your shitty, unoriginal films? He should not be allowed to waste film, and should be banned from cameras. The worst part about Rohit Shetty are his fans who lap it up. His entire filmography consists of the greatest hits of other people's work, and it is time someone called you out on your unoriginal bullshit. 

Yeah laugh all the way to the bank, it is bad karma for a lifetime that you are sure to suffer in hell. Dilwale was a patchwork of pilfered scenes. The high-speed car racing sequence was lifted straight from Mission: Impossible 2. What I feel sad about here is he made SRK and Kajol, two legends, copy Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton. The one minute date scene was copied from How I met Your Mother, where Ted does the same thing with Stella. The cop universe is a frankenstein. Singham taking down goons in the warehouse is lifted from Red. Singham 2 has sequences copied from Mission Impossible 3, complete with the hanger-on stunt by Cruise. Shitty is just a con, and at this point just a tribute band. 

Then there is the Golmaal series. Golmaal 3 is a remake of Khatta Meetha, which itself is a blatant copy of Yours, Mine and Ours. Shitty adds in shit from marathi films and itnernational comedies as well. Chennai Express copies from Mission: Impossible again, and Simmba copies from Temper, and Sooryavanshi copes from Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru. Shitty embodies everything that is wrong with Bollywood, formulaic drivel that prioritises box office numbers over artistry. When og directors such as Nolan or Spielberg forge worlds, Shitty squats in them. The audiences need to really wake up and demand something better. The worst is when Pathan copied from Jackie Chan Adventures. I mean really? You are copying from a kids cartoon? How low can you get. 

Now I have no interest in watching Shitty's Shitty Shit, but Volvo drivers across the country only have Shitty DVDs. His response to critics is that poor people like my movies. Go fuck yourself in a flying volvo lol. Fuck this, I don't want to give this dumbfuck any more bhaav. This is all the Shitty I want in my life. I am done lol. 

Plato really was an asshole

 If you know about Plato at all, you are probably a starry-eyed college student seeking some kind of enlightenment in the musings of ancient, old, dead people, clutching a dog-eared copy of The Republic like it is the goddamn Bible. This ancient Greek windbag was not some enlightened sage, but he sure was the father of western philosophy, which is as hollow as it is convoluted. Plato was an elitist, manipulative, censorship-supporting grumpy grandpa whose thoughts have poisoned the firangis for millenia. Frankly, someone needs to really call out this overrated hack before another generation falls for his pseudo-profound bullshit. 

Let us start with his magnum opus. The literal classical definition of a utopia, a society where the masses are herded like sheep by philosopher-kings, who alone possess the divine wisdom to rule. Plato actually spits on democracy, that should be a news flash for most. He watched Athens execute his mentor, Socrates, and then decided that the problem was not mob justice or the kangaroo court, but the unwashed plebs having a say. He actually critiques democracy as a stepping stone to tyranny, comparing it to a drunken party where chaos ensues because everyone gets a vote. Nobody even asked him for his opinion! 

Plato was born into Athenian aristocracy, and was sucking on his silver spoon by lecturing on virtue. He invented the concept of 'I am smarter than you, so shut up and let me decide.' This is literally the playbook of every dictator from Stalin to the Orange Turd Pile Sub-human Nobel Beggar. According to his Theory of Forms, the real world is just a pale shadow of perfect, eternal ideas floating about in some metaphysical ether. The chair that you are sitting on is not real, but the idea of chariness is. Basically, Plato devalues everything tangible, art, science and human experience. What a condescending prick! 

Plato was responsible for building the first ivory tower, which the intellectuals occupied for centuries while contemplating their beautiful navels. Plato also advocated for a rigid caste system, which is basically a form of eugenics. He suggested breeding humans like dogs for optimal traits, and lying to the masses with 'noble lies' to keep them in line. Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies claims Plato's ideas inspired Hitler and Mussolini, and I believe him. Plato wanted to ban poets from the city-state. What kind of asshole fears imagination? 

Plato was actually a wrestling nickname and he was born as Aristocles. He came from wealth and privilege, in case we did not mention, at a time when the world was a far crueler and brutal place. He idolised Spartan austerity while living in Athens. What he did to Socrates was mean and cruel. Fuck Plato! 

Women were vessels for breeding philosophers. In Timaeus, the soul reincarnates downward from women or animals if it fails. This misogyny is not even subtle. Modern education still force feeds his cave allegory, teaching people to distrust their own senses. Plato's asshole legacy is rigid ideologies, anti-democratic populsim, and well, smug intellectuals who are the absolute worsest. 

In conclusion, fuck plato. His philosophy is just elitist escapism. For those who are flash-banged by him, there is no fucking cave. 

Stupid Landlord

My landlord keeps calling me from different numbers and expects me to pick up. I guess he has had too much experience in people avoiding his calls lol. Today is the 1st and I have to pay him, but I cannot unless my salary gets deposited. 

I really want to explain to him that I have a life, I do things in my time, and I am not sitting around waiting for him to call. Also, that I do not take calls from unknown numbers. Also, I don't take calls, period. At least 90 per cent of calls are not good for you, they are usually people who want something, that will be of no benefit to you. 

Spent a lot of time yesterday writing a detailed copy on Hubble Tension. The budget today morning was a bit of a bummer as there were no points on space, and very little on science. And it got over quickly, the whole newsroom was so prepared. It was eerie to walk through an office where everyone is watching the budget. The different video feeds were slightly off, some were using headphones, but many were not. IDK how people can function in an environment with so much noise pollution. 

When to the Taste Of Madras to consume two small puny vadas without sambar, which was my lunch, dinner and breakfast for today. Had idli-vada yesterday at this place called Raju Vaishnav Dhabha, that is right opposite the Iskon Temple in Delhi. This place gets as crowded as Carnatic Cafe or Juggernaut during the weekends, and the food is twice as good, priced at less than half. At least their chutney is gattier than the other two. 

Done with my work, and have about an hour and a half to kill. Will prolly go write something for Starbullet.in. 

I have also stuck a nice fake 500 Rs note on my desk. I have seen removal marks, so at least two people have tried to take it, discovered that it is fake, and have pinned it back lol. 

Echoes of a Forgotten world

 Who does not like a delicious conspiracy theory? The British author and journalist Graham Hancock in his books Fingerprints of the Gods and Magicians of the Gods, as well as the Netflix documentary series Ancient Apocalypse proposes an advanced global civilisation that existed during the last ice age. This society possessed sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, architecture, agriculture, navigation and spiritual practices, and well, they talked to plants lol. Hancock argues that this civilisation was seafaring and capable of long-distance ocean voyages. Now this civilisation has not been identified. The Indian archaeoastronomer Nilesh Nilkanth Oak claims that Sugriva, one of the vanar kings created a detailed world atlas 14,000 years ago. The theory is that Sugriva dispatched search parties that explored the entire world. The geographical descriptions align with Ice-Age landmasses, coastlines, and features such as lower sea levels. Both the Piri Reis map and Sugriva's Atlas feature places such as Antarctica far predating modern cartography. These claims are outlined in the book The Historic Rama: Indian Civilisation at the End of Pleistocene. 

Now these numbers are relatively tame, and not that dramatic. It is just that our recorded history has a short horizon, but our archaeological excavations have revealed that Homo Eructus had the capability for sea faring, a complex language, and demonstrated tool as well as fire use over 1.5 million years ago. So 15,000 years ago is not at all a surprising timeframe for such activities by humans. The problem here is agriculture and domestication, we know for a fact that these occurred 12,000 years ago at best, limiting the possible time frame for a more advanced civilisation. This civilisation may have existed in more harmony and balance with the natural world than humans today, who may one they revert to such a state with sufficient technological progress. 

The Piri Reis map may even explicitly depict a Vanar! 

Graham Hancock's advanced civilisation lasted between 115,000-11,700 years ago, ending due to comet impacts that ushered in the Younger Dryas between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago. These events caused floods and sea-level rise around the world. The survivors of this disaster imparted knowledge to nascent cultures in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Southeast Asia and South America. In the Valmiki Ramayana, the vanars are a race of people that resemble monkeys or apes in appearance. Their king, Sugriva dispatches four search parties to scour the Earth for Rama's abducted wife Sita. His instructions themselves form a comprehensive atlas detailing rivers, mountains and oceans. There are over 600 stellar references in the text, which has been used by Oak to date the Ramayan. 

Oak dates the events of the Ramayan to around 12,209 BCE, right in the middle of the Younger Dryas impact. Sugriva's description align with a world with lower sea levels, exposed land bridges, and ice-free coastlines. He references seven continents as well as Antarctica, which are supported by the world as described in the Brahma Purana. The vanars had the capability for rapid transportation and flight, which can be interpreted as possessing high technologies. In 1513, the Ottoman General Piri Reis compiled a fragmentary world map drawn from over 20 sources, including maps from the Library of Alexandria. These source maps are now lost. It depicts Atlantic coasts with eerie accuracy, including the contours of South America, the Carribean and Queen Maud Land without the ice sheet in Antarctica. Hancock cites this map as proof of Ice Age Explorers, arguing that the advanced tech needed to explore these longitudes were not available in the 16th century, let alone antiquity. In the Valmiki Ramayan, Sugriva describes the Udaya Mountain as the easternmost point where the Sun rises, with a prominent landmark. This is a golden pylon resembling a palm three with three branches, etched on a golden rock peak, with a golden base. This feature is described as an easterly compass, a directional marker established by celestial beings called deva-nirmana. The description matches a feature known as the Candelabra of the Andes. This is a geoglyph found on the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay in Peru. 

Skeptics claim that in the Piri Reis map, Antarctica is likely to be a distorted Patagonia, with inaccuracies stemming from Portuguese voyages. The depictions of the ice-free southern lands align with geological data. Antarctica was last navigable around 4,000 BC, but Hancock pushes the dating back to the last Ice Age, implying lost sources from a drowned civilisation. My question here is that if they were so advanced, why did they drown so easily while the primitive peoples of the world survived? In any case, Sugriva's vanars are dated to around the same time, and were a society capable of seafaring, studying astronomy, and creating world maps. Both Sugriva and the Piri Reis map depict an unglaciated Antarctica, including lost mountains and seas. Sugriva's teams are dispatched eastwards to the Americas, west towards Europe, north to the Arctic regions and south to Antarctica. There are descriptions of land bridges lost to rising seas. The transatlantic details on the Piri Reis map are also difficult to explain, with the longitudes showing spherical projections far ahead of 1513 science.

Now, Oak's dates of the Ramayana based on the 600 astronomical references align with Hancock's proposed timeline for the destruction of an advanced Ice Age civilisation around 12,800 years ago. One way to reconcile the question of survival is that there was a widespread global cataclysm, but the civilisation survived! Ramayana's narratives do include cosmic events and widespread destruction, associated with the serpent Ananta, that can easily be interpreted as a comet that caused the cataclysm. The potential influence of Ramyana on ancient sites such as Angkor Wat, also align with Oak's timeline. Oak's dating of Sugriva's Atlas at the end of the Pleistocene is consistent with Hancock's hypothesis of a seafaring society that mapped a world with lower sea levels. Oak relies on bathymetric and sea-level reconstructions by the geologist Glenn Milne to validate Sugriva's descriptions matching Ice Age configurations such as exposed land bridges and unglaciated coastlines. These maps were published in Hancock's book Underworld. Long story short, Oak's Vanars may be the lost ancient civilisation of Hancock. 

Endling

In the late 21st century, 87 years after the cascade, a small group of survivors cling to existence in a high-altitude refugium, a network of reinforced concrete bunkers and shallow caves carved into a rocky hillside in what was once northern Scandinavia. This is now a cold, windswept plateau with patchy permafrost and stunted vegetation. There are fewer than 80,000 humans left in the world, scattered in similar isolated pockets around 60°N where the deposition from the fallout was lighter, and some sunlight manages to penetrate the thinned atmospheric haze. 

Mara, 34 years old, was born five years after the last engineered pathogen had subsided. They are one of the group's four primary foragers and water processors. Their day begins at first light around 04:30 local time, in the perpetual gray dimness. 

They wake in the communal sleeping chamber on a pallet of salvaged foam and layered hides from the few hardy reindeer that still migrate through the area. The air is cold, and smells of damp stone, wood smoke and unwashed bodies. A low cough echoes from someone in the corner. Chronic respiratory issues are common because of radiation exposure and persistent particulates. Mara checks a Geiger counter clipped to their belt, the background radiation levels are between 0.8–1.2 μSv/h, which is elevated, but within the long-term tolerance threshold of the group. It is safe to venture into the surface. 

The first order of the day is water. Mara joints two others at the melt station. They chip blocks of surface ice, carefully selected from areas tested for low radionuclide contamination, and feed them to a solar-assisted wood-fired smelter. The photovoltaic panels were scavenged from prior to the cascade, and have weak output. The process takes hours. The water has to be filtered through multiple layers of charcoal and ceramic. The daily ration per person is between two and three litres, which is strictly allocated. Occasional hot particles from distant fallout zones still blow in on winds. 

By mid-morning, Mara heads out with a partner for foraging. They wear layered clothing reinforced with duct tape over seams, respirators, and carry dosimeters. The landscape is barren, dead conifer stumps, lichen covered rock, sparse dwarf birch and willow. They target known patches where edible mosses, crowberries and cloudberries persist. Yields are down from even a decade ago due to soil acidification and shortened growing seasons. Mushrooms are gathered cautiously, some species bioaccumulate cesium and strontium. Today's haul is four kg of mixed plant matter and one small hare caught in a snare. Meat is rare. The primary source of protein is grubs and ants, boiled into a paste or from occasional fish. 

Back at the settlement, the group processes the haul by early afternoon. Plants are washed, boiled and portioned. The hare is skinned, gutted and roasted over a small fire in the central chamber to minimise smoke detection. AI-directed drones are rare now, but legends persist of autonomous systems still patrolling old grids. Conversation is sparse, and focused on updates on the sick. One elder has worsening cataracts and skin lesions, which are likely stochastic effects of cumulative exposure. 

In mid-afternoon, some repair the wind-traps for ventilation, while Mara sharpens bone knives. The group's nominal leader, a 58-year-old former engineer reviews the inventory. There are stored grains from before the cascade that are now threatened by mould. The output of the solar panels are dropping. The decisions are pragmatic, reduce adult rations by 10 per cent for two weeks, priorities children under 15, and send another scouting party south for rumored seed caches. 

The communal meal in the evening is lit by LED strips powered by a hand-cranked generator and a small battery bank. Food is a thin stew of boiled greens, insect protein and shreds of hare. The calories are just enough to prevent rapid starvation, but not for growth or full recovery from injury. Stories are told of violent, desperate bands. 

At the fall of night, Mara takes first watch, scanning the horizon using a periscope rigged from salvaged optics. Occasional aroura flicker through the haze. There is no movement, today. This is the life of most humans, procurement, processing, rationing and vigilance. Mara simply endures, one day at a time.