Tie Dye Kit

 

Tie Dye Kit, AIPASA Tye Dye Kit,16 Dye Packets,8 Color One-Step Tie Dye Party Fabric Dye Set

One summer camp at Girl scouts, kids made tie dye with their favorite item and loved it. If kids are not going out, they can still have the summer fun with these tie dye kits.

When you meet your loved one after a long time

 

Hand Casting Kit Couples & Molding Kits for Adults, Wedding, Friends, Keepsake Hand Mold Kit Couples for Anniversary and Holiday Activities by Godora

If you are meeting someone after a long time, how can you immemorialise that hand shake?

Save 40% on select product(s) with promo code 40PKGOBE on Amazon.com

Dutch dough whisk

 

Inmorven Danish Dough Whisk

I have not seen a Dutch dough whisk before. they seem to come with varying number of loops inside - 1,2,3.. you count them.

Have you ever tried making a dough without using hand. Till some point it is ok, but after that, you just give up and knead with hand. But Dutch dough whisk has been put to test. If you have tried mixing dough with a ladle, I am sure this does a better job. 

While dough whish is easier to clean, recall the dough gloves that you end up with when you are making dough. Sometimes only after having started mixing the dough, do I consider the sleeve that should have been rolled up or the sleeve that was rolled became unrolled.

If you are upto some cleaning, this dough bag can survive some rough handling.

 

Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything

 

Journey Around the Sun: The Story of Halley's Comet

Anything related to the sky - stars and comets, makes us dreamy and wonder how did Copernicus know his things.
If you want the historical aspect of it, or the data science of pattern matching and prediction, art, whichever angle you want to come at it, you will find it in this book. Enjoy the exploration and make kids curious of all things around.
Well written book which piques curiosity of readers. So many civilizations and historians, observed the comet and archived it in their journals. Amazing that Edmond Halley was able to make that prediction. A book from the point of view of the comet is creative. Good drawings. Works as an art history book too.

 

Where Does My Poo Go?

This book reminded us of the time we watched a video on how suga ris made. So many processing steps.

This is such a wonderful book, more exciting than I thought it would be. Wow, little scientists after reading this should understand the whole 20 step process. makes for a great STEM book too. Cute illustrations. Lots of fun on each page.
Having read this book, I have better appreciation of the recycled water. Earlier I was apprehensive about the recycled water in parks. But now I know the path it takes to get clean.
I think the more kids see the process of what goes underneath, beyond, making the hidden or the invisible visible, kids start to ask the why questions or the how and what questions, maintain or increase their curiosity and come up with better solutions. This is a good way to make our future innovators. Show them the wonderful world and then they will start turning everything up and down to see, how the world is made.

 

The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever

"But putting a computer in everyone's pocket was the consequence of their original goal, not the goal itself" of Apple.

Venmo started from forgetting a wallet.

Braintree - while they could move the credit card info from one app to another - that would freak customers out. Freakish convenience. We need a layer for that. eg. Zelle. between your own bank makes you trust it better.

supply-side, demand-side

If you bring customer to merchant, then merchant will pay you some.

LendingClub reducing the spread between how much credit card charges you compared to the interest paid on your savings. Moving that to consumers is eating bank lunch. Wow spreading out lending.

Quiet periods. Work with SEC.

Community Reinvestment Act to Engine of Inequality

"You cant build a risk model without giving bad loans" - Kathryn Petralia, Kabbitch. "Social data is more predictive than credit data".

Mint is Yodlees youtube. While Mint wanted to know the customers data from bank which was each different, one bank to another, with Yodlees scraping its like removing the particular bank's structure on data and rearranging it the way you want it.

"when I look at an industry, I think about whats inevitable, given what technology enables, and i try jump ahead four or five years ahead and plant  aflag in that space"- 

You are only 40% done

 

Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet

When you think you are done, you are only 40% done.

 

A Woman's Guide to Claiming Space: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard.

Unapologetic bravery.

How Bacteria talk

 

Talkative bacteria and quorum sensing.

"they don’t actually know each other is there, they can’t actually count, they can’t see. They’re measuring the concentration.

So, when the molecule hits a particular level, the bacteria detect it. And they all respond by changing their gene expression, which then changes their behavior. And they begin to carry out these group tasks."

Perfume analogy.

Star break

 

                        Image: MIT technologyreview

There were stars in the sky

Some time when the world 

is busy

stars line up

on the power lines

equidistant

Then all gravity rules 

break

A break

from all that twinkling

being wished upon

Get Good with Money

 

Personal Finance flowchart in So you saved a little money. What should you do with your pandemic savings.

Live Richer Challenge

What it means to be financially whole

 

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science 

"Beginning with his study of mathematics and engineering at West Point, and taking us through the tumultuous years leading up to publication of “The Raven,” Tresch shows that Poe nurtured a fascination with science from his earliest days as a writer."

 

The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness

History is full of surprises.

"We think of Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but that’s not how he saw his own career.'

 

The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero

"As case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation’s prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the United States."

 

Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans

"Van Doren is not just an entrepreneur, he’s an innovator. In 1966, when the first House of Vans store opened, there were no stand-alone retail stores just for sneakers. Paul’s bold experiments in product design, distribution, and marketing (Why not sell custom shoes? Single shoes?), aided by legions of fans—skateboarders, surfers, even Sean Penn wearing Vans’ famous checkerboard slip-on shoe in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High—made Vans a household name. But there was also back-breaking work, a shocking bankruptcy, family turmoil, and a profound shift in how customers think about athletic shoes."

On poets

 Pessoa: A Biography

"Much as José Saramago brought one of Pessoa’s heteronyms to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa’s imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. Nothing less than a literary masterpiece, Zenith’s monumental work confirms the power of Pessoa’s words to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of modern life."

All things Law

Great Dissent

Thomas Healy's Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia was recommended by a reader of electric city book.

"Indeed, free speech as we know it comes less from the First Constitutional Amendment than from a most unexpected source: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. But in 1919, it was Holmes who wrote a dissenting opinion that would become the canonical affirmation of free speech in the United States.

Why did Holmes change his mind? That question has puzzled historians for almost a century."

Laski harvard

 

For the People: A Story of Justice and Power

"Readers follow Krasner’s lifelong journey through the streets and courtrooms and election precincts of one American city through his swearing-in ceremony to see how our system of injustice was built—and how we might dismantle it."

Kids and writing

 Why kids hate writing

My little KG started writing. Few weeks ago, she asked me for the topic. She thought of something, drew it first and then wrote on it. She drew a broom. She is taking no subject, nothing short of poetic to another level. She connected broom to cleaning and how she keeps her playroom clean. It is amazing to see such little kids read all the multiple choice statements and know the right answer.

Capitalism

 Capitalism is in crisis. To save it, we need to rethink economic growth.

 

Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night 

" Sancton brings novelistic flair to a story of human extremes, one so remarkable that even today NASA studies it for research on isolation for future missions to Mars."

We always look to the past and similar experiences to be ready for the future. Lessons Learned that can save us. 

Ian Fleming's War: Inspiration for 007. Is creativty rampant during uncertain times? Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia  about the "Ford Plan. But while some saw it as a way to conjure the future and reinvent the South, others saw it as one of the biggest land swindles of all time. They were all true.", promises to be interesting.

A body meditation

The Anatomy Coloring Book

 While reading, I held my head in the palm of my hand, I felt a pulse, its the facial artery. You can do  abody meditation, by drawing or coloring parts of a body.

There are so many books to read

 

Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR

I have recently come across books that I would like to read, but there is not enough time for them all. Atleast I should write down the reason for my interest which might help others discover something they might like. Initially it was the story of LifeLines: An Inspirational Journey from Profound Darkness to Radiant Light by Melissa Bernstein. You might not know her by her last name, but if you have kids in your vicinity, you will be familiar with Melissa & Doug. The book has lots of creativity and poetry lines showing her ropeway to success on the big mountain of life. HBR interview.

My mess is a bit of a life is a funny title.

Back to Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR, "captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories." Origins are always such interesting stories. Recently when someone asked about finding PMF, product market fit, Suhail of Mighty, said that you dont realise you found it until someone asks you how you found it. Interest in Founder stories too is such an inflection point, where you want to know how they got there and how did it begin.  

 

Patricia's Vision: The Doctor Who Saved Sight (Volume 7) (People Who Shaped Our World)

Dr Patricia Bath was inspired by Albert Schweitzer. Had a lesson about him in high school. 

 

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

Having recently read the story of the first post graduate women engineer at Ford, Damayanti Hingorani Gupta and learning her challenges to that achievement, I was interested in this story too.
Loved the story of not only the pioneer and first-female engineer of Lockheed but all the Cherokee values that she followed in learning skills, humility, sharing the credit with the team.

 

Chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino 

Rainbows and Things course

"I have done something very bad today by proposing a particle that cannot be detected; it is something no theorist should ever do." - Wolfgang Pauli, PBS on neutrino

How neutrinos saved the world makes it clear about the three flavors that neutrino could be in, of which only one was detectable until the effort that won Nobel prize 2015.

How neutrinos saved your teeth cavities

Environmental affordances

 Environmental Affordances

The Code Breaker

 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

The Code breaker

Book excerpt

"Embrace your interests, your passions, and really give it your all!”

We interviewed 2020 Chemistry Laureate Jennifer Doudna last week and had a lovely conversation about role models, diversity in science and her collaboration with Emmanuelle Charpentier: https://t.co/QHtle42k8Y pic.twitter.com/kWiXbIOPjh

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) February 19, 2021

 

Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering

"Forgetting happens when old or unused connections are removed entirely". -  Jeff Hawkins, author of A Thousand brains

"To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions." - Funes the Memorius by Jorge Luis Borges

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

 

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

Cricks DNA essay that inspired Jeff.

AI can detect leaks

Why new experiences are important

Felleman and Vanessen vision model

What might have happened in the involuntary coffee drinking case is that the old brain figured the coffee color pattern and recognised the happy Pavlov signals but didnt involve the neocortex in this system? Cravings and neocortex.

The Mindful Brain by George Edelman and Vernon Mountcastle

Our brains keep evolving too

"To predict the next note, you can't just look at the previous note or the previous five notes. the correct prediction may rely on notes that occured a long time ago. Neurons have to figure out how much context is necessary to make the right prediction." 

A context is that length of pattern matching needed to get settle into a new mode.

 

Why neurons have thousands of synapses?

One Thanksgiving, when having good time with friends and talking over a cup of tea, it muight be warm snuggy feelings, that I forgot that I was holding the cup and it kept tilting until my friends reminded me of that. My brain prediction might have been overridden with the feel good feelings.

Brain reference frames

"The longer you work on a problem, the more constraints you discover and the harder it becomes to imagine a solution. .. The likelihood  that a solution is correct increases exponentially with the number of constraints it satisfies."

The author says its like solving a crossword puzzle.

A Theory of How Columns in the Neocortex Enable Learning the Structure of the World

Reading of animals, that can tell where they are with respect to its environment, I was reminded of a bird.

I had to get all the clothes out from the washing machine into the dryer. Kids socks were too small and away from reach. I had a wine opener on the side, which I used to get them all out. Thinking of the smart crows and ravens, they know how to extend their body abilities. For example, the wine opener made my arms magically long. The stool makes us have long legs instantaneously. To know that solves the problem and being able to get that into action.

Place cells, grid cells

"Neurons take the same amount of time to search through a thousand maps as to search through one"

Locations in the neocortex

"thinking is actually moving through a space, through a reference frame"

"being an expert is mostly about finding a good reference frame to arrange facts and observations" 

 "Knowledge in the brain is distributed"

AI - knowledge representation, embodiment of language.

Living the high life

 Temperature inversion can cause clouds below you

Not a good time for spraying herbicide