vishkk

Since I shared it last time, I have been still working on it — adding more content, tiny improvements and enrichments, and socializing it so that i can get some crowdsourced help with the content and research. I would say I worked more on the CMS/admin panel behind it.

Those of you who are new to this, Qawwali is predominantly south asian genre that is centuries old. My goal with this website is more like wiki, or a gateway for anyone wanting to get introduced to the genre. One of the main, and the complex feature that i worked on was building family trees/lineages. https://www.qavvali.com/

sure thing —- feel free to share with anyone else interested. It starts at 1PM EST, and goes on for roughly 8 hours so drop by/tune in anytime you want: https://luma.com/823kzuci?tk=IiDKu2

Thank you, and absolutely! I have been trying to get more people to try — my friend and i host a Zoom listening session every 3 months or so where he curates a playlist to introduce new artists.

Not sure if it is niche, but focused on one South Asian music genre -- been working on this personal project to compile, and collect resources from reliable sources along with mapping lineages of people. Also, I archive a lot of music for this genre from different sources before it vanishes from internet!

https://www.qavvali.com/

EDIT: I have one more page but that is not in navigation yet for people not familiar with the genre. The site is still work in progress -- if you have any feedback, please do leave it here, on the website if you can. The content curation is the most tedious part! https://www.qavvali.com/tradition/

Pretty cool —- should do it for NYC subways!

Thank you for sharing -- that was a great read!

Didn't have vocab for it, but seems like I have been doing something similar. For example, having a JIRA ticket on my board that I don't want to do will make me finish all the other tickets. I will procrastinate till the last minute -- kind of pitting one ticket against all others for myself to get the stuff done.

Whatever it was — a lie, the truth, or, most likely, their mix­ture — that caused me to make such a decision, I am im­mensely grateful to it for what appears to have been my first free act. It was an instinctive act, a walkout. Reason had very little to do with it. I know that, because I've been walk­ing out ever since, with increasing frequency. And not necessarily on account of boredom or of feeling a trap gaping; I've been walking out of perfect setups no less often than out of dreadful ones. However modest the place you happen to occupy, if it has the slightest mark of decency, you can be sure that someday somebody will walk in and claim it for himself or, what is worse, suggest that you share it. Then you either have to fight for that place or leave it. I happened to prefer the latter. Not at all because I couldn't fight, but rather out of sheer disgust with myself: managing to pick something that attracts others denotes a certain vulgarity in your choice. It doesn't matter at all that you came across the place first. It is even worse to get somewhere first, for those who follow will always have a stronger appetite than your partially satisfied one. - Joseph Brodsky

Quite neat. Reminds of this one that I used to use: https://pythontutor.com/visualize.html#mode=edit

Surviving.

To supplement, this is quite a good read: https://longreads.com/2015/10/14/i-would-rather-be-herods-pi...

I was checking when I created my account, it is March 21, 2014 -- hitting my 11-year anniversary in two days!

I do the reading, but now I have a problem of finding the best reading too, and the whole rabbit hole is reading about what could be the best reading.

I have been actively working on it, and sticking to one thing and just starting, but i am a creature of habit and love hoarding and finding resources.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-life-changing-magic-of-japanese-c...

I shared this link earlier in one thread, and someone suggested that it deserves its own post. So, let's discuss these strong opinions — agree, or disagree. Share your strong opinions.

Let me do that!

hahah love it, thank you for sharing!

Nabokov's recommendations: http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations

I love Dostoevsky too much and am quite happy in my bias and echo chamber of that—he was one of the writers that I read in my early days, and to date, I feel that he changed a lot in me or resonated so much that I can't explain.

I believe Nietzche said this about him "the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."

And one of my favorite quotes by him:

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!”

Not entirely related to the article, George Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By is quite interesting. How, over the years, the words we use have become associated with the context in the past, or borrowed from other contexts, literally or figuratively. For example, IIRC, the book mentioned that all, or most of the words we use with time are related to money -- we spend, waste, lose, invest. Words related to arguments come from war/battle language -- defend, attack, counterattack.

I wonder if euphemisms have some metaphorical overloading that changes over the time, or so.

Pretty cool, really like it. I have been using Overlap by Moleskine on iOS for a while: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/overlap-by-moleskine-studio/id...

Maybe Arc.

One of my favorite products -- been using it for note-taking, journaling, and miscellaneous stuff for almost a decade now!

Definitely one of my most favorite writers in the last few years — been pushing people around me to read him, and have managed to make one person a fan. Advocacy to be continued!

“I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.” - Pessoa

Absolutely! Hoping that more and more people read him!

a little romanticizing:

“Just as some people work because they’re bored, I sometimes write because I have nothing to say. Daydreaming, which occurs naturally to people when they’re not thinking, in me takes written form, for I know how to dream in prose. And there are many sincere feelings and much genuine emotion that I extract from not feeling”

- Fernando Pessoa

“I hesitate in everything, often without knowing why. How often I’ve sought – as my own version of the straight line, seeing it in my mind as the ideal straight line – the longest distance between two points. I’ve never had a knack for the active life. I’ve always taken wrong steps that no one else takes; I’ve always had to make an effort to do what comes naturally to other people. I’ve always wanted to achieve what others have achieved almost without wanting it. Between me and life there were always sheets of frosted glass that I couldn’t tell were there by sight or by touch; I didn’t live that life or that dimension. I was the daydream of what I wanted to be, and my dreaming began in my will: my goals were always the first fiction of what I never was.”

Fernando Pessoa

Another distinction that will be helpful is between loneliness and solitude. Spending time with yourself in the forest, reflecting or enjoying your company would be the latter for me.

https://jacobin.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/

Dealing with anxieties of everyday existence. What am I doing, whoami?

“I don’t much believe in the happiness of animals, except when I want to use this conceit as a frame for highlighting a particular feeling. To be happy, it’s necessary to know that one’s happy. The only happiness we get from sleeping without dreaming is when we wake up and realize that we’ve slept without dreaming. Happiness is outside of happiness.

There’s no happiness without knowledge. But the knowledge of happiness brings unhappiness, because to know that you’re happy is to realize that you’re experiencing a happy moment and will soon have to leave it behind. To know is to kill, in happiness as in everything else. Not to know, on the other hand, is not to exist.

Only the absolute of Hegel managed to be two things at once, but in writing. Being and non-being do not mix and meld in the sensations and laws of life; they exclude one another, by a kind of reverse synthesis.

What to do? Isolate the moment like a thing, and be happy now, in the moment we’re feeling happiness, thinking of nothing but what we’re feeling and completely excluding everything else. Trap all thought in our sensation..”

Excerpt from The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

“Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.

The world must be measured by eye.”

- Wallace Stevens