manish vij

Vision Pro: what was I made for?

Vision Pro: You can’t multitask with eyes and both hands, have to look at each control serially and tap with one hand. More like a telegraph than a keyboard.

Eye tracking works better for fighter pilots because they also have physical controls like weapons buttons, eyes are just used to pick targets.

MacBook trackpad, keyboard can control native Vision Pro windows, can actually get work done until you get tired of it on your face.

The virtual keyboard only supports pecking with the index fingers.

The aesthetic is much cleaner than geeky Meta. Less Wii, more Bauhaus. Less social, more productive.

You can practice your presentation on a virtual stage at the actual venue, with the slides on a big screen behind you.

Panoramic photos are curved around you, like a peek into real world.

AR pomodoro timer:

Personas show your hands as you gesture. The angle of your head match Lee who you’re looking at.

Spatial audio matches the virtual environment you pick, and when you move a person’s window to the side or back, the sound matches.

Showing 5 screens at once in a semicircle around you isn’t useful for me, though it would be for air traffic control, stock traders, etc.

The simulated eyes are lenticular so they look like they’re actually on your face, not bugging out in the screen. But that sacrifices brightness and clarity.

MKBHD: the simulated eyes are not as visible if you have dark skin.

Personas explain Apple’s fixation on Memojis, they were working toward these 3D sims.

Optic ID is probably iris biometrics.

Lots of little niceties. Setting pupil distance is motorized, not manual. People ghost into view when they’re looking at you.

Apple seems to have solved anchoring virtual objects in physical space, rock-steady according to reviews.

‘Monkey Man’

Monkey Man: Dev Patel doing John Wick in Bombay…

… crossed with the Delhi Kaala Bandar / black monkey hysteria, with a glancing nod to Mexican lucha libre

Contrasts Hanuman as “the white monkey” with Kaala Bandar

Hanuman burning Lanka

The “Rang De” mujra song × Kathakali-ish demon masks

Malignant godman is an eternal Indian trope, alludes to Sacred Games (Vipin Sharma?)

Crooked cop, probably: a Bombay classic (Sikandar Kher)

Love interest (Sobhita Dhulipala)

Corrupt party has BJP colors; they may evade censors because saffron is a Hindu trope

Class war like The White Tiger with a shot of the Mumbai metro over slums

Sharlto Copley worked with Dev in robot movie Chappie, probably why he was cast. But Dev’s the audience bridge, not the white guy. He’s accessible, Common for desis.

“Mundeya To Bachke” is basic, way overdone at this point. Plenty of bhangra and Bolly bangers to choose from.

Jordan ‘Peele… was so taken with Patel’s vision that he believed it deserved a theatrical release…
Patel plays Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club… wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash…
sets out on a quest for vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor [THR]

Trailer:

‘Late Bloomer’

Late Bloomer: The very funny Jusreign (Jasmeet Raina) pens a dramedy series based on his life, going from struggling You Tube comedian to viral hit.

It’s extremely specific Sikh and YouTuber humor, like “Man Like Mobeen,” “Ramy,” “Mo” ❤️️

His Punjabi mom’s just like mine

First 2 eps surprisingly downbeat, based on his life making comedy vids in the basement while peers make bank as realtors etc.

Too many Sikh gurus

Buddy’s a white #Sikh

Running gag about safe sexting

Stock gag about overly-religious temple boys (mosque boys in “Ms Marvel,” etc.)

Plus kid with novelty-sized kirpan / ceremonial dagger

Perfect one-word joke, yelling “Singh!” in a gurdwara

Godman grifter kirtan / prayer channel

Our food’s better

Douchey, sellout influencer agents

Kayfabe interracial relationships just for the ad rev

Gatka martial arts ref :)

Late Bloomer trailer:

Neargoggling

Before trying it— Vision Pro seems much improved over earlier VR like Vive, but feels like niche use cases rather than daily productivity.

Focused on productivity over gaming, with iOS apps available. I don’t buy this yet. For comparison, AirPods Max are enough friction to don / doff that I sometimes just use the crappy built-in speaker on the Mac mini—let alone something significantly heavier which covers my eyes too.

I’m skeptical people will strap this to their face for half a day. I could see using this for specific, relatively short purposes.

Eye tracking is faster than a trackpad, famously used in fighter jets.

Gesture tracking seems like it would be much less reliable than tapping a trackpad, but is more natural than controllers.

Higher res gives you much nicer video pass-through, which makes it more convenient to leave the headset on, and less likely to have people sneak up on you.

Nicer materials, Apple-style, at the cost of excess weight, again Apple-style.

3D uses:

Navigation
Piloting drones
Design
Assembly
Repair
Video

Travel: portable IMAX, nicer experience. But not more portable than a laptop and AirPods.

Warby / Zenni knocked out most of the optometrist racket, except for the eye exam cartel. Cut my cost for reasonably stylish glasses by 90%.

The Vision Pro prescription lenses cost more than my entire pair of glasses, including lenses and frame.

Shamanic Pixie Desi Girl

Ink & Sigil urban fantasy series by Kevin Hearne, in the Iron Druid universe, has a Goth, Mohawked, lesbian British Asian sidekick with supernatural powers—a Shamanic Pixie Desi Girl :)

As love child of an Indian god, “Nadia Padmanabhan,” battle seer, can see and avoid bad events right before they happen.

She’s a trope like “Kali Prasad” on Stranger Things (Linnea Berthelsen 🇮🇳🇩🇰). Always South Indian. Never white-passing—deep brown exotic.

The Iron Druid series sets several pantheons against one another in an Avengers: Endgame-style story, framed by the Norse Ragnarok.

Main characters are from Irish myths. Norse are next most prominent because they’re metal, and popular in the West. Olympians are present, but treated as boring and overdone.

Indian and Japanese myths are just chopsocky stereotypes, used initially as pure backdrop for Euro characters, the novel version of Hollywood yellow filter and ululating Arab score over India.

Hearne writes Indian witch “Laksha Kulasekaran,” a Kali stand-in, who possesses “Mhatini,” a woman in an abusive marriage: trope squared, written glibly.

As the series wears on, Hearne tries to improve. He humanizes Laksha, who sacrifices herself to save Ireland. It’s probably a noble savage trope, but could be a reference to Savita Halappanavar, whose completely unnecessary death got abortion rights passed in Ireland.

The teen-boy perv vibe of early books turns into chapters written in a powerful female character’s voice.

The Monkey King runs a boba tea shop, a good Buddhist joke. It’s in Taiwan, which avoids trouble with Chinese wingnuts :)

Hearne either isn’t interested or deft enough to pull it off entirely, writing Durga, Ganesha and Japanese myths as Orientalist cardboard cutouts.

(In his tale, the Himalayan yeti are secretly Irish. He’s Everything Comes from Ireland uncle, lol.)

Which may be why later books are warded with completely gratuitous leftie sigils: solar, Prius, anti-T•••• refs jammed in where they don’t fit the plot.

Or they may be genuine. Hearne emigrated to Canada in ’17, after T••••.

All that said, the Iron Druid series is an irresistible if pulpy read, it’s fun reading Durga going nuts on asuras astride her lion, and the repetitive, NPC-fight formula gets better in later books.