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The night of March 10, 2023 was strangely cathartic. Although I’ve lived through previous sunsets of many beloved services and apps like Google+, Curiosity.com and Google Inbox, this time was different. With AltspaceVR, I was actually there when a platform closed its doors for the final time. I was among the last few to be … Continue Reading

‘Imagine you see a baby lying in the street, and the baby is crying. What do you do?’ asked Richard Tait, a Microsoft hiring manager back in 1992 to the then unknown young man from India. The young man answered that he would dial 911. Tait, who went on to co-found Cranium Games, walked the … Continue Reading

For me, 2019 was a year of many firsts. I travelled  to North India, experienced the thrill of  bungee jumping, endured  real cold climate and most importantly, moved out of my 17-year hostel life.  Moving out of my comfort zone signalled something. A thirst to change the way I live gripped me. A thirst to … Continue Reading

So, it went like this. We went into lockdown, and I thought we would be equal. All of our activity restricted the same, our freedoms curtailed similarly. All permitted one exercise a day, all directed to stay away from friends. But quickly, too quickly, it became apparent that we were not equal. Some still had … Continue Reading

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception. Here, we offer our … Continue Reading

We’re losing breath. Black lives matter, how could they not. He says I can’t breathe, and my throat closes in sympathy. How have we ignored the numbers stacked against those with darker skins than mine for so long? I think of the campaigns and reports written over the years, of the hundreds of hours of … Continue Reading

How do you dive into the Immediacy and Serendipity of the Burning Man Multiverse when your eyes function differently? Burning Man culture invites us to place ourselves in strange situations and crazy constraints, to express ourselves with immediacy and a spirit of gifting and communal effort. How do these principles survive when our community’s magic … Continue Reading

This time yesterday I was reading a chapter about “partible paternity”, a belief present among many South American horticulturalist and hunter gatherer societies, that pregnancy is viewed as a matter of degree, not clearly distinguished from gestation… Well, after approximately nine months, and with several fathers and mothers, I feel that our organisational baby, Blind … Continue Reading

Fire: its emotional intensity, potency in rebellions, and insistence on transformation, are key to my experience of Art and its opening of new possibilities. Perhaps not surprising for a kid making his way to the fire-splashed playa from York, a Northern English town infamous for raising Guy Faulkes, whose plot to blow up the Houses … Continue Reading