The L-grip that came with my camera has a 1/4"-20 tripod-thread on the side, for convenient vertical videography. A large percentage of the stuff (images and videos) the media team at River creates, are 1080×1920 versions of whatever they would have made otherwise. Looks like the world has moved on from appreciating landscapes to indulging portraits on screens full time.

I also realise—with not a small amount of concern—that it is only a matter of access (neither choice, nor philosophical or otherwise stance) before the floodgates of narcissism-slash-comparison bursts in to drown out our lives. (We recently got a KL11-phone to look at messages sent via WhatsApp groups. The phone has KL11’s Instagram account signed in.)

The lack of room for peripheral vision feels worse than blinding.

PS: I was reading NickAsbury’s latest ThoughtsOnWriting column discussing billboards (public advertisement). We make a lot of billboards (sometimes lovingly called ‘hoardings’ in emails that forget to turn on the doublespeak) to sell the Indie to unsuspecting victims of traffic and shopping. The ones that S and H work on are beautiful, well-made, fun even. The ones that I used to make were pages from books disguised in cloth-flex. I am used to pointing out how in most cities, the bill-board-ed folks are the only people smiling at you. The point is that we contribute to the clutter and the incessant nudging and the noise that one cannot turn off. Wondering what my penance could be.

This:

The need for unequal privilege in an industrial society is generally advocated by means of an argument with two sides. The hypocrisy of this argument is clearly betrayed by acceleration. Privilege is accepted as the necessary precondition for improving the lot of a growing total population, or it is advertised as the instrument for raising the standards of a deprived minority. In the long run, accelerating transportation does neither. It only creates a universal demand for motorized conveyance and puts previously unimaginable distances between the various layers of privilege. Beyond a certain point, more energy means less equity.

And this:

Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.

From Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity. Thanks to short nights at the W Library.

I’ve had this phone since 2012. The 7-year itch is a good self-deprecating joke to go back to, for lack of material isn’t exactly uncommon but I realised it was no small feat on an email thread to V. The phone was a Diwali gift from Co (I had started working there after the dip) and was light-years ahead of the Nokia I was wielding to scare dogs away on my way back home in the ill-lit streets of SushantLokPhaseOne.[1] It is—technically—not the same phone in Theseus-terms; I’ve replaced the screen twice (Once on my own for INR 500; an achievement I wish I had a certificate to show off for. I’d moved out of the hostel-with-the-neighbour-with-a-pentalobe-screwdriver by the time that broke again.), taken the camera module off after short-circuiting the flash innards riding to Wayanad in the rain, with the second screen broken (and not taped over like in the scan here) and the phone soaking up water in my raincoat’s pocket. In the beginning, I could do serious damage (or so I fantasised) with just the phone and a fruit-branded ecosystem. The photos looked alright with heavy-handed Instagram filters but it was the scan-for-processing that worked like a charm. Tethering the thing to the Mac was flawless and I could go from sketch to vector in a matter of minutes.

Thanks to being so far out of the OS update loop, I was getting two-three-even-four days of life from a full charge. It had essentially become a Nokia if one were to discount its breaking often in the last couple of years. Except for the orientation-challenged 30-pin connector, it was perfect for a low-tech lifestyle in spite of the smartness bits. As a phone to make calls and type properly punctuated, smart-quoted text messages with, it delivered way more than what I had come to expect from seven-year old electronics with screens on them. Yet, I was dreading the day the thing finally needed replacement not because we had fallen in love. I do believe it is perhaps possible to feel quasi-mystical connection with things, especially when they have known intimate stuff about your choices for years. While it is somewhat (…) true that I am too much of a cheapskate when it comes to undoing purse-strings over anything other than upgrades to bicycle-parts that don’t really need them, I was also dreading the loss of street-cred (no?) and facing the possibility that the next phone might not last as long as this one. Plus, how long do I wait before markering the figleaves out of the selfie camera from the inside?

I’ve made the switch to a more (…ish, at least) modern thing with a lovely greyscale view doodad that I switch out of only to make sure the colour bits still work. It is thinner and taller and wakes up when lifted and given scritches with love. Or maybe I am mixing this up with Miss K on that last one.

Now, hold my Sambharam while I congratulate self variously over apparent frugality and finally being able to superswipe people on Tinder.

1: Diwali, light-years, ill-lit, Phase One. Stop reading if you aren’t laughing hysterically already.

[Talking about the Amish way of dealing with ‘new’ stuff.] If it’s going to make it [core principle valued above all else] stronger, then we can adopt it, and if it’s not, we’re not. Often the way they’ll do this is they’ll test it. They’ll essentially the Amish equivalent of an alpha geek use it. Great. Here’s a cell phone came along. Use a cell phone for a while. Let’s watch it. Let’s see what happens. Here’s a car. Great. Someone buy a car. Let’s watch. Does this make things better or worse in terms of the thing we really care about which is community strength? …

I think if you leave the walled garden of social media and go back out to the wild web, you can find interesting things. You can connect to interesting people. You could express yourself in interesting ways and you can do it in a way that’s just so much healthier because you don’t have these algorithmic forces trying to push you into weird extremes, or to pacify you, or to get you upset, or to get you mollified or whatever’s going on that’s necessary to get revenue up at these private companies.

— Cal Newport in conversation with Brett McKay. Podcast discussing Digital Minimalism, with transcript; I don’t think the second excerpt above does justice to being representative of the rest of it. He discusses the not-easily-perceived opportunity costs (such as in the Amish example) in detail in Deep Work, as well.

In The Last free Generation, Austin Waters writes:

When we don’t know what’s real — everything loses meaning. This is the death of freedom of information; poisoning the well, so-to-speak. Worse than propaganda, because we can no longer distinguish what is real. Eventually, we will all lose faith in “facts.”

I find it increasingly uncomfortable speaking in the vicinity of mobile devices with un(non?)-taped-over-microphones and -cameras and working internet connections. (Which is—now that I think of it—almost always.) The (sad) thing is that I am aware of this. And that it forces a tiny uncomfortable amount of self-censorship. Does this mean an end to honest conversation? What do we do with classes? (Immediate dilemma.) Life?

The way we represent ourselves online has devolved from the quirky, personalised, HTML webpage-homepage of the 90s to the somewhat modular but still strange presence of a MySpace page, to the completely formatted and market-friendly presence of a Facebook page… What we’ve done is [we have] moved from personal, human, open-ended self-expression to completely market and computer-friendly, regimented and conformist expression. And that is because we have turned the net from a venue for self-expression to a way to render ourselves up onto the market.

Douglas Rushkoff, from Stare Into The Lights My Pretties

Also, zverina.com, the quirky, HTML home to an email newsletter I willingly receive and look forward to.

Here is a live feed of the Supreme Court judgement declaring privacy a fundamental right. (Use adblocker of choice.) Here is a relevant(?) thread on r/india. Hoping reasonable restrictions mean the biometric thing is optional.

Installed Linux Mint (Cinnamon) on the other hard-drive (that came with the X230). Trying to go the free and open-source software route. Does anyone have any experience similar to these people? I am told (even G says) it is hard to switch to an all-free-software workflow if you have a graphic/interaction design practice. Has anyone tried ElementaryOS? I have dealt with Scribus before and it wasn't pretty. Will see what can be. To share your INR 0.63, my email is abhijith@keyaar.in

With great powerlessness of resisting the cozy surveillance benefits of the Aadhaar card, comes great financial freedom. I can finally take that INR 201 paid every two-three months to the cellphone tower people and go buy an island off the Lakshadweeps. (They have already got my mug in various poses, my teeth count, my hair samples, dreams of my unborn children and blank pages in my soon-to-stop-being passport, which apparently don’t prove the whole snowflake nature of things. They say pigeons are making a comeback in certain circles. Can’t. Wait.

Graduating again in a few days. This is what I have learnt in two years. That, and sneaking V for Vendetta references into thesis reports is fun. (Also, that barring my typewriter and the book about typewriters, all life's essentials can fit into a 35L backpack.)