PostDoc Problems
The Peripheral (Jackpot Trilogy)
Books
My favorite part about William Gibson’s writing is his world building. He is truly a visionary, an understatement about the guy who envisioned The Matrix. What kept me getting back to The Peripheral was Gibson’s unique take on how humans would eventually merge with technology and the res . . . Read more
PC Building
Northwestern
I built my first PC! There were several Black Friday discounts that make the build substantially cheaper. Still the price ended up being slightly higher than I had hoped. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FmpjQ6 Type Item Seller Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor Amazon $137.06 Motherb . . . Read more
Glass onion
Movies
Sequel to Knives Out. It must be very difficult to make a good detective movie today, since there has already been so many such movies and the entire point of a detective movie is in the suspense. If the audience gets even so much as a clue of how the mystery is resolved the entire movie gets spoile . . . Read more
Decision to leave
Movies
Made by the same director who directed the Vengeance trilogy and the Handmaiden. The actress, Tang Wei, is phenomenal. Throughout the movie you cannot make up your mind as to whether she is the victim or a femme fatale or if those two are even meaningfully distinguishable. The ease and authenticity . . . Read more
Talk at NU on Lean
Lean
I gave an hour long talk at the NU Math Club yesterday about Lean and theorem proving. Things that went well It was fun to talk about Lean and to show examples. The most fun bit was playing with the Lean Chat plugin for VS Code, which has gotten quite good now. Things that did not go well It was a b . . . Read more
The French Dispatch
Movies
Going in, I was quite skeptical of this movie. I had seen the trailer and it looked pretentious. There were a hundred different big named actors in a hundred-min-long movie. It seemed too fake to be good. It did not help that the theater I was in was bad with a small, awkwardly placed screen, seats . . . Read more
Acceptance
Meditation
One of the often quoted, somewhat grandiose term from mindfulness is that of Acceptance. You’re supposed to “accept the current moment” for what it is. I was under the impression that I was doing this already and that I had pretty much figured it out. I’m a pretty chill guy w . . . Read more
Brain as a Neural Net
Meditation
We’re still struggling to figure out exactly what Consciousness is. One theory that I kinda like (although I have no sense of how correct it is) is that consciousness is a way of approximating the base reality. There is too much data coming in through our senses, and it is impossible for every . . . Read more
Television Addiction
Stray Thoughts
“Television”, or in its current avatar “netflix” and “youtube” or whatever new fad exists these days, is really the modern day opium and alcohol. David Foster Wallace understood this. So did Don DeLillo. I have only recently started noticing this pernicious qualit . . . Read more
The Gene: An Intimate History
Books
This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science: the “gene,” the fundamental unit of heredity, and the basic unit of all biological information. When you read good books, you start immersing yourself into the world of . . . Read more
What is an Idea?
Philosophy
A couple of weeks ago, on an evening of drinking and philosophizing, a friend asked me this question and I did not have any answer then. Chris Anderson’s video about giving TED talks kept popping into my mind; I remembered it mostly for the pretty visuals it had representing what an idea is. B . . . Read more
Philosophy & Me
Philosophy
Disclaimer: I’m using the term Philosophy in an ill-defined manner. For me, it means something like an analytical tool or a way of thinking, and not a subject studied in universities. I grew up with a deep distaste for Philosophy, thanks to having seen the perils of eastern philosophies first . . . Read more
Midnight Diner
Series
“When people finish their day and hurry home, my day starts. My diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. They call it “Midnight Diner”. That’s all I have on my menu. But I make whatever customers request as long as I have the ingredients for it. That’s my po . . . Read more
Why I Meditate
Meditation
“Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.” – Dalai Lama Mental Health This is the most obvious reason to meditate. If you think of your mind as another organ, then just as you need to keep your muscles healthy . . . Read more
My Issues With Meditation
Meditation
I’m quite sold on Meditation and do it pretty regularly. In a separate post, I’ll write about what about Meditation interests me. Here, I want to collect all the things about the cult of Meditation that offend me in some way. I’m mostly doing this for my own clarification so that I . . . Read more