![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She includes a surprisingly sympathetic judgment of misogynist internet trolls and a polemic against rape culture that contains the unfortunate phrase “the first time I was roofied.” The specifics of Koul’s life are unique, but the overarching theme of inheritance is universal, particularly the vacillation between struggling against becoming one’s parents and the begrudging acceptance that their ways might not be so bad. There is an occasional essay of sheer slapstick, as when Koul describes getting stuck inside a coveted garment in a boutique dressing room (“I flew too close to the sun with this skirt,” she remarks sadly), but she also reflects poignantly on race, sexism, and body image issues. She discerns the “shadism” of India’s caste system and its more benign cultural quirks, like every woman being given the title of “aunt” (“Mom, why do you have forty sisters? Was your mother a sea turtle?”). ![]() She provides insight into the experience of traveling to her parents’ homeland, undergoing the inverse of their assimilation, and the conflicting desire to maintain and amend cultural traditions (for example, she dislikes weeklong wedding celebrations with alcohol restrictions). Simultaneously uproarious and affecting, the personal essays in Buzzfeed contributor Koul’s debut explore the nuances of life as a first-generation Canadian with Indian parents, from phobias, guilt trips, and grudges to the drama of interracial dating. One Day Well All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is a collection of essays by Scaachi Koul about the anxieties and despairs of life, especially as reflected in Kouls. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() The present tense has been used throughout, and this is a wonderful tool for placing the reader right at the point of action. The boy is in the sea, a victim of the current, and is ‘just slightly too far from shore to make it back’. They spin him round, topple him over, force him deeper down and down’. How can this be? And what is this strange, deserted place?” The novel begins in the following way: ‘Here is the boy, drowning… He is strong, and young, nearly seventeen, but the wintry waves keep coming, each one seemingly larger than the last. Then he wakes, naked, bruised and thirsty, but alive. The plot which Ness has crafted is so interesting, and is sure to entice readers everywhere: “A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. The book’s blurb says that Ness’ book is ‘one of the most provocative and moving novels of our time’. ![]() If you have not come across any of Ness’ books before, or are wondering which to start with, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of More Than This. Surely that is reason enough to begin reading his work. An author whom April and I both love, John Green, hails Patrick Ness ‘an insanely beautiful writer’. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() there are so many reasons this book was healing to me, you’ll just have to read my full review. I was telling a friend about this, and she said, “It sounds too painful to read right now!” and while I understand, the truth is that this is a book about hope and healing and learning to trust and love again. Even though I was so emotionally numb as I read this because of other life situations, it brought me to tears. ![]() This story is beautiful in the most heart-touching way. I wish it had been a little more healing - the redemption could have been a lot more powerful. (I mean, I’m not a supervillian.) But it was amazing how honest and relatable it was. This hit so close to home, despite my life-situation being completely different from the MC’s/. And Sand Castle Dreams, I really appreciated the fact that even though things were better, there were still struggles. I cried through Porch Swing Girl, I totally related to the blow after the blow. Porch Swing Girl & Sand Castle Dreams by Taylor BennettĪhh! These books were so healing.But this book was a reminder that I don’t have to heal the world. Having gone through my own pain, I find it hard not to dive into the pain of those around me. And in so many ways as a chronically ill friend, sister, daughter, and writer, I related to her. This book was about a girl who heals by taking on other’s pain. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In quantum theory, the unobserved past (like the future) is indefinite, and exists only as a spectrum of probabilities. The authors’ perception of reality is shaped by the assumptions of quantum physics as explained by Richard Feynman, whose “sum over histories” approach posits that any physical system has not one history but every possible history. These issues traditionally have been part of the realm of philosophy, but the authors assert “philosophy is dead.” The answers they give to those deep conundrums are suggested by recent developments in physics, particularly the hyper-exotic concepts of what has become known as M-theory (which introduced an eleventh dimension to the previously posited ten dimensions of string theory). In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow address the questions of what the nature of reality is, and whether the universe needs a “creator” to make sense. ![]() ![]() But in the ChatGPT era it also produces valuable data. ![]() In a world without AI chatbots, that would create what economists call productivity. “Let’s imagine you called me with a problem, and I solved it,” says Danielle Li, an economist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management who coauthored the study with MIT PhD candidate Lindsey Raymond and Erik Brynjolfsson, director Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab. But for the researchers conducting the study, the results raised a provocative new question: Should the top workers whose chats trained the bot be compensated? When the National Bureau for Economic Research, a nonprofit, published those results in late April, they were quickly seized upon as confirmation that ChatGPT-style bots would indeed transform work. And sure enough, when MIT and Stanford researchers analyzed the results, the AI tool had boosted the support team’s productivity by 14 percent. ![]() ![]() The bot had been trained on previous customer chats, with a special emphasis on answers from top performers. In 2020, 5,000 customer service agents mostly based in the Philippines became guinea pigs in an experiment testing a question that by 2023 would feel urgent: Can an AI assistant based on OpenAI’s text-generation technology make workers more productive? The automated helper offered agents suggested responses to small-business owners seeking tech support. ![]() |