Dwinnie Fernandes

Sigmund Freud believed that a dream is a window into someone’s subconscious. Freud argued that dreams reveal a person's desires and repressed emotions. No matter how absurd a dream, it is related to reality. Heavily altered, but a dream is made up of what the mind has already seen, felt, and buried. That is what makes the story of “This Man” so unsettling.  Why did so many people on the internet believe they had dreamt of the same man? Dreams are often based on personal experiences, and no one knows this face outside dreamland. Are the memories of that man so repressed that the conscious mind forgot? That would be plausible, but only if there were a handful of people claiming that.  But here it’s the entirety of the internet. If dreams are rooted in memory and experience, then the mystery of “This Man” is not just why people saw him, but why so many were willing to believe they had.   The picture above is of “This Man”. In late 2008 or early 2009, Italian marketer And...

All of mankind has stared at the same moon. Not only did they admire it, but they also got innovative with it. Back before the days of clocks and calendars, people would calculate days with the phases of the moon. During the Cold War, it was used to calculate a nation's success. Being moonlit or moon-kissed is a compliment towards someone’s looks. The moon, as enchanting as she is, is the epitome of ethereal beauty, but what is prettier than the moon? Earth from the moon. The Apollo 11 mission was the first time a man ever set foot on the moon. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Neil Armstrong rewrote history as the first man to walk on the moon. 20 th July 1969 wasn’t just a win for America, but a win for humanity as a whole. NASA shot for the moon, and they succeeded.   When World War 2 ended, the Cold War began. USA and USSR used technological advancements to make themselves the superior nation. There began a space race. During the war, Dr...

  Imagine you’re seated on the hot seat at Kaun Banega Crorepati when you hear Amitabh Bachchan yell out “SATH CRORE”. You would feel elated, but imagine all that money without possessing any skill. Doesn’t that feel better? So, you pick up the winning lottery ticket (after several duds). With all the money, you would be able to indulge in lavish spending that you otherwise never would’ve thought of. You may think that this big win has set you for life, but unlike your answers at KBC, you’re wrong. The 7-crore sum is a ton of money, but it isn’t a perpetual cheque. The money runs out eventually. And it leaves you in financial ruin, worse than before you ever got the money. This isn’t a scare to stop you from trying out your luck, but many sources believe that almost 70 per cent of windfall winners eventually go bankrupt.   This situation is a lot like an oxymoron. Complete opposite concepts coming together: A broke lottery winner . Someone lucky enough to get so much yest...

We all have stories of when Bluetooth has gotten on our nerves. From constantly refreshing to check if the device finally shows up to pair, or dancing around with your earphones as it only wants to connect one at a time. Hopefully, it doesn’t annoy you too much, as it is everywhere now. This invention has made our lives hassle-free, letting us be free of a tangled, wired mess. Connection at an instant. A connection that isn’t seen. Modern life depends heavily on invisible systems: Wi-Fi, GPS, cellular networks, cloud storage and so on. But despite relying so heavily, how much do we really know about Bluetooth? Bluetooth feels like sorcery. It can’t be seen or felt, but it gets the job done. It works on radio waves to send data between devices at short distances. A Piconet is formed. A Piconet is a small network formed when Bluetooth devices connect and assign roles to one another. The roles may involve one device controlling the other, like a phone controlling the headphones, or both ...

Twinkle twinkle little star, oh how I wonder what you mean. We have been raised on nursery rhymes. The simple wording and catchy rhythm help these rhymes stick in kids’ minds, shaping their early development without them even realising it. It is no surprise that nursery rhymes are taught worldwide. But these innocent words have a darker origin than you may think. Here are some popular nursery rhymes with meanings way different from what we believe   Baa Baa Black Sheep Baa-baa black sheep, do you have any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full One for the master, one for the dame One for the little boy who lives down the lane Baa-baa black sheep, do you have any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. It had been theorised that Baa Baa Black Sheep was about chattel slavery in America. The slaves were considered the sheep, and wool as cotton, which is why black has been substituted for other colours in recent recitations. However, the nursery rhyme predates the Un...

White privilege is the greater life opportunities one receives on the sole grounds of being white. White privilege doesn’t guarantee that all white people live privileged lives. There are still grounds for discrimination based on gender, sexuality, poverty, and religion. However, even when facing those struggles, white privilege is still present, as their condition is far more favourable than that of a person of colour in the same situation. But just like everything else in the world, privilege has evolved, too. Many of the people who were once classified as “non-white” are now central to what we think of as white today. When America was first forming, it was typically the English and Northern European settlers who held the majority of the high positions in society. They were the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). They believed that they were superior to other races; to justify slavery and colonisation with their own power, many writers, politicians, and scientists gradually creat...