8 January 2026

Yerba Mate!

At times, I had seen people drinking from a coffee cup but with a straw! The straw was made of metal and shaped more like a pipe. It looked more like a pipe-meet-coffee cup!

Found out in Uruguay – where lot of people were doing it – that is used to drink Yerba Mete – sort of like herbal tea except, caffeinated!

Got a few varieties of the Mate and two of those cups. Now, I need some excuse to drink it!!

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8 January 2026

Book Review: The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher

I forget how I landed up with this book. I think I was reading an article in The Economist that mentioned this book.

It is a fascinating book to understand what causes some of the grave ills of social media. I used to see all the young kids constantly on their phones. But from The Economist article, I learnt that constant social media doomscrolling is affecting the older generation even worse.

The author does not delve very deep into certain aspects of psychiatric issues caused by social media, like loneliness, anxiety, and so on. Instead, he focuses much more on how social media causes mass hysteria around conspiracy theories and deep echo chambers, to the point that ordinary people are becoming unhinged from reality.

He has studied Facebook and YouTube in the greatest detail. Interestingly, not much analysis of TikTok was presented, but he suggests that its algorithms are doing exactly the same.

It stems from the social media company single-mindedly chasing screen time – or the user’s attention. This is clearly driven by profit motives (ad revenue is proportional to the time you spend on an app or site).

As a second step, the social media companies created algorithms to feed you more stuff that they deem will keep you on the screen. The algorithms have developed this magic by constantly studying the behavior of millions of human beings. In and of itself, it does not have any value judgment – but a very good idea – based on data, what will make you stay on the screen.

And the third part is the foible of us human beings. We are attracted to salacious news items. We discount data that goes against our beliefs and instead are likely to believe more data that supports our belief – even after we are told that the data source is spurious!! And if enough people say it, we take it as a cardinal truth.

All this, when done on a large scale – where no human being can truly understand the AI algorithm’s complexity anymore – leads to extreme behavior from human beings. To the point, people have killed people – and in extreme cases, genocides like that in Myanmar – purely based on believing something to be true since the algorithms kept feeding one kind of item only.

The author has a strong point of view: owners of social media need to bear significant responsibility for this and should be held accountable. The owners, on the other hand, claim that it would be a violation of free speech. They have sometimes taken action when faced with political or social pressure, but things regressed soon after.

I think the problem manifestation is clear (people are killing people, and human beings are suffering from deep psychological issues – this is undeniable). However, the solution is equally unclear. In fact, the author does not seem to offer any elegant solution beyond suggesting that we hold social media owners responsible for what their algorithms do.

I would recommend reading this book.

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7 January 2026

Some observations about Uruguay… if you plan to come here sometime

Wrapping up my trip to Uruguay. Waiting for my flight back to Atlanta via Panama. Absolutely loved the trip here. Here are some observations and tips:

1. It is a big country with very few people. Population is about half that of greater Atlanta. Of which, nearly half live in the capital city of Montevideo. But the people are very helpful and kind.

2. However, not too many people know English. Even in the large resorts, it was difficult to find somebody with passable English. Menus, instructions, directions – all are in Spanish. But people try to understand you and there is always Google translate.

3. This is a very safe country and traffic is incredibly disciplined. They will let the odd tourist cross the road nowhere near the pedestrian crossing without making much of a fuss. I took a bike and the cars would give me a wide latitude in the lanes. I would put this in the category of Costa Rica in terms of safety for tourists.

4. Uber is ubiquitous. My wait time was so little every time, it reminded me of Malta. Extremely efficient.

5. If you are a vegetarian, you might have a challenge. Like I experienced in Argentina and Brazil, this is totally a carnivorous country! There are grills everywhere. Getting vegetarian food is difficult. Even the Indian restaurant I went to had only one vegetable curry option!!

6. This I have never seen anywhere … it is very difficult to get salt shakers or ketchups at meals. Apparently, Uruguay has been going thru a concerted effort to reduce salt consumption for the population. Apparently, hypertension and obesity is something the government is trying to tackle to the ground!!

I hope you will visit Uruguay and absolutely make sure you keep Punta del Este in your schedule..

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7 January 2026

*Almost* made the mistake

Desperately needed to go the restrooms after lunch. The “banos” were upstairs. I glanced at the sign – and almost walked in, when instinctively looked the other way and realized something was amiss. Thinking “M” was for men and not “mujeres”, I almost created a scene. It does not help that the men and women sign for the bathroom has the man’s picture on the “M” side of the bathroom!

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