Kopfkino

  "The best books.. are those which tell you what you already know." - extract from 1984. In today's world, every step we take and word we speak is recorded. We sit helplessly as media being fed to us gets dangerously close to narrow propaganda. Each day we find it harder to raise our voices against our governments which become increasingly dilute and fragmented in their accountability. George Orwell's famous works of literature are, '1984' and 'The Animal Farm', revolve around the harmful by products of an autocratic rule, but strikingly stand out even in the world we live in today.  The word 'Orwellian' is often used interchangeably with 'authoritarian'. But the true meaning of the author's works and what the word stands for is far more interesting and grave. It is also interesting to note that Orwell himself was an avid socialist and his works focussed rather on the harmful consequences of a totalitarian regime where the masses w...

In the opening chapter, Gregor Samsa is portrayed as a very busy man leading a hectic life as a travelling salesman. He puts up with a rigid schedule and unfulfilling life so that his family may be supported.  He is the only earning member of his family of four and barely ever gets to spend time with them. However, his parents and sister are incredibly grateful and appreciative of his sacrifice for them and think highly of him.  The plot starts off when one day, Gregor wakes up in his room transformed into an insect. He struggles to move and barely manages to get off his bed. His parents are suspicious of his delay to get ready for work and the surprising change in his voice unsettles his mother.  Before he struggles to reach the door, his manager has already reached his home and threatens him with the consequences of missing work.  Already, we are shown the miserable life Gregor leads and gain a feel for the weight of the pressures on him and expectations he carries...

The sound of the waves grew louder as the teal blue streak of metal roared up the incline onlooking the shore.  The sky set apart from the deep blue by its monsoon-grey contained no evidence of the sun. Gusts of wind carrying sea salt were shot upwards by the hillside rock and into the open window of the 1985 Chevy Impala.  The hunk of metal moved with an overly listless speed, flaunting its elegance at every bend leading up to the lighthouse.  Waves eternally rose and fell onto the same shores with the same sand no matter how morbidly stagnant their view would stay for eternity. On their side of the hill ran a continuous steep black granite cliff on which no life grew whatsoever, except for the places where the narrow concrete road carved through.  Faded white supports and a rusted barbed wire ran along the length of the road and were the only things set apart from the monotone colours of the ridge and the heavy skies. The beach spanned only a few yards in width and...

 A -235  - This is a copy of an official document dated 23|05|2029 under the Witness accounts and survivor records catalogue. Duplication in any form of Class A documents is severely punishable. Victim: Aleksey Dmitri Ivanovic (28) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Last Location: Брянск  -   Bryansk, Russia Known Relatives: Spouse (Ex) - Alya Ivanovic (29) D aughter - Nastasya Ivanovic (11) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I've been fortunate enough to run into this seemingly tame video about ellipses by 3Blue1Brown , and I think I've found a nice anchor to base my love for math on. Though I read about it in textbooks and was content enough to feel I understood it, I never stopped to ponder why an angled section of a cone would give an ellipse. And I mean going down into the depths of it to really find a mathematically sound way I could represent it. I think this provides a good insight into how our imaginative minds work too. I often find myself feeling convinced of something when I successfully understand the bare basics of it. Maybe this has something to do with the Dunning Kruger effect? Perhaps so. Maybe our minds are still primitive in this sense. Even a plastic shovel can do the job of lifting off the topsoil and so can an excavator. But to dig deep into the earth, a shovel breaks immediately. And so do weak superficial proofs which provide immediate satisfaction.  I couldn't have been...

Every thought one can have is nothing but a complex and new permutation of known facts and memories. A man without any memory, knowledge or experience of all life senses technically, should not be able to imagine, well... anything! Every thought we have is but a mere extrapolation and combination of pre existing thoughts. Or is it something more.  Our thoughts are but a product of all stimuli ever received. Just piled up. Being consumed, processed, replayed, remodelled.. In all the permutations and combinations that strike our mind first. I would honestly love to be disproven in this matter. It is eerie how missed out experiences in life contribute more to our path than we could ever know. Merely because, we do not know what we've missed out on! Stimuli is replayed behind our eyes again so that we make sense of the world around us. The catch is, this constantly changes the way we think or - the permutations used before the memories fade. Forcing us through a fixed, rigid path of wa...

It's funny and extremely taken for granted how all humans perceive sound in the same way. Every ear and brain has it hardwired in it to listen to the same tone the same way.  It's somehow so internal to us. But why….  The fascinating thing is, I can ask a person if they've heard a song and when they say yes, I have no second thoughts if the song sounded the same to them. To me and another person on the other side of the planet, a note sounds the exact same though our inheritance and genes may be completely different. Two people having no common ancestry even a hundred generations back, will vibe to the same song in the same way. That's something now…

It took humankind 200,000 years to reach a billion in population, but only 200 to reach 7 Billion.. This trend suggests some very apocalyptic images for our future. However, the UN forecasts that the 12 billionth human will never be born at all.  Why and how may this be true? Population explosion is defined as a sudden increase in population of a region due to various catalysts. The first one was the advent of farming which allowed for settlements. And the last two centuries have had some of the most intense developments like the industrial revolution and the rapid growth of advanced sciences. Almost every country in the world goes through a demographic transition which includes 4 phases. In the 1800s, most European nations too had severe poverty, famines, poor health and low life expectancies. A woman had around 6-7 kids but even then only 2 would make it to adulthood. The second phase sees the growth of living conditions in the region…. as we see with the industrial revolution, b...

       Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Suborder: Haplorhini Infraorder: Simiiformes Family: Hominidae Subfamily: Hominidae Tribe: Hominin Genus: Homo This, is what a human living today is classified into. You are human. But you are also a 'Hominin', and so was this dashing fellow- Humans have been evolving for about 6 million years now. That's 0.000016th of how long you will be here on earth if you're lucky. We often tend to overlook our roots and where we come from, to give you a perspective, this is how your first great-grandpa probably looked - This....is how your 300 millionth Great-grandma looked!   Hope I could pique your interest! Humans as we know, began evolving separately from Chimpanzees as far as 7 million years ago.  About 20 million years ago, the first shy steps to our evolution began. Proconsuls roamed about peacefully in the trees with no threat of predators and abundant fruits to eat, all this made l...