These are my random notes across years which don't fall into read logs or status updates.
2025
I mobilize in swarms; Saturday night, the makerspace was flooded with friends trying to make mushrooms to control robots, designing proteins, people running around with skateboards and biohackers explaining what the RNA is with bioinformatics. I have learned to use kicad!!!
I used to be confused when people talk about their favourite text editors. This is just hyperfixation applied to code. Having seen the physics and tumblr versions, this is quite human. I took a super long break and just returned to coding seriously this year.
“Even if a basic researcher does find a good applied problem, who’s to say that the problem is the best use of their time? There is almost surely a better problem out there. That’s life. The question is, can someone reliably find it?”
“Complete freedom is not very helpful to a person who is inexperienced in the world, while it’s certainly bad to be directed to do things very, very narrowly and with no freedom”Good science project on Bell Labs.
Observation: everyone who stayed back in the office instead of going to the anniversary in Switzerland was Asian
"I want to turn you into a cat and shield you away from the world forever!”
—Dashel, to a friend.
Broke into major hackathon even though they spent $10k on security! Some friends didn’t follow through; lowkey disappointed. Recall the friend who was really stubborn and eager to achieve their goals?? This is what it appears to others.
People’s life trajectories could be altered, and the decision-makers are on holiday. (It’s winter break!!) You can wait for the perfect time or you can act with speed. Events likely run out of spots if you apply near the end. But life is long and people learn from their mistakes. People who are broke need to work 10x harder. When you judge people for their boring vocab or the lack of empathy, you’re asking for conditions they were never given. Be kind to the service people. A stable life is built on so much invisible infrastructure.
2024:
A friend can no longer tolerate my usage of Windows. So, I got a free macbook! It has changed my life. Thank you so much.
Existing shouldn't feel like the world is crumbling all the time… please fix this!
One day in the library, a harvard guy yelled at me for being stuck in the Windows purgatory. He tried to delete my system files and forced me to use Linux.
A friend I just met texted that he was killing himself. At 12 am, I led two friends to check on him at his house, but didn't find him. People didn't know what to do. I lead them to alternative entrances. When police arrived, one tried to run, and the other made a lot of pressured jokes about drinking tea trying to lighten the mood. The police pinged his phone and it was out of charge at 2pm. Other than that (after we suggested multiple ideas) they could sweep the hospitals next morning or create paper posters. If there were cameras everywhere this would’ve been different. I'm disappointed by the infrastructure/analytics to find people since it's not a limit of physics but is a political problem.
Earlier, he visited C house where I gave him a fruit salad. We were sitting and out of nowhere asked to take a picture with me.
Communicating why someone is rejected isn’t always helpful and can lead to conflicts! Sometimes distancing is the wisest use of energy.
I made a presentation to a founders inc startup team on joining as a cofounder. It was a good try but not successful. He asked me what’s so bad about being a founding engineer. He’s doing well with thousands of followers now!
2023:
I was going to a programming competition tomorrow. but I was dying of pain in the emergency room at midnight and couldn't speak. Doctors there insulted my English and cursed me. When pain is objective, complaining is not very productive… Also couldn’t do anything aside from lying down for 2 weeks from pain, I needed to quit various fun competitions, but I still managed to write a philosophical analysis just before the deadline which was highly rated.
Someone was playing La Campanella in the QNC basement. Golden leaves, warmth, free wifi. We were visiting my friend Victor. We couldn’t find any chairs or desks so everybody hunched over their laptops on the floor. A professor opened the door and stared weirdly at us. Upon asking, he was kind enough to guide us to a computer lab, which became a regular spot for the "study harder" group afterwards. During weekends, you can meet friends skateboarding on campus. We'd go study together on the first floor of Dana Porter library. On the second floor, I tend to doomscroll huggingface and cohere videos. On weekend mornings in spring, I would bike to outside and take meetings there. We played fun games of guessing 2/3rds of the average and discussed prisoner’s dilemma. Excited and disappointed, I hastily called a friend to argue about fellowship application questions. Also, I'm a huge hoarder of the mathNEWS magazine.
2021:
I was totally immersed in a not "CMU capture the flag" random puzzlehunt in an Indian STEM discord server (lol, why were we so excited! there weren't even any prices). We threw decryption, AI, steganography tools at puzzles. Starting from a chain of numbers, we eventually ended up in a YouTube music video. Information is really fascinating!
2020:
I got sent the article “The AI revolution” from WaitButWhy. It was totally immersive. I thought this Eliezer Yudkowsky dude was interesting! Plus, I’ve been recommended to read his Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality several times by discord users. 2 hours later, I stumbled upon LessWrong. The writing automatically clicked. I loved the nuanced aspects of cognition brought into awareness by invented jargon. While certain school classes caused so much boredom akin to physical pain, I felt warm and fuzzy on this website and started crying in a corner at school. Yay, there are others who think about the same stuff! That year, LessWrong Community Weekend took place on some random discord server. I got up with excess energy very early in the morning to hear people discuss cryonics in the vc. My internet friend shared with me wealth of cool links about Heaven is Terrifying, homomorphic encryption, The Measurements of Decay, Cold Takes, the Codex, Visakan and fascinating stuff. I was a too intimidated to join a meetup. The next thing I knew, I was dragging a curious, innocent school friend to Kitchener-Waterloo rationalist meetup organized by Jenn! We were excitedly pointing at random objects in the room and squawking in broken Toki Pona. “[Me yellow]!” An Asian girl said as she pointed at herself. Well, rationalists have clear flaws but are like my extended family: Huge wall of texts and thinking. (Don’t throw your mind away and Time-Time tradeoffs are very representative posts) Where are the graphics, non-verbal communication, engineering and code 😭 (https://uli.rocks/p/rationality-sucks/)
I wrote a super long article debating the ethics of sci-hub.
As a cognitive science enthusiast I noticed working memory volume does actually change over time! I was reminded of my working memory test results in high school.
2019:
- Attempted to exit the matrix. Failed. Tried again. Failed. Respawned in a void field of snow _███...A friend let me crash at their place. Friendship token self-destructed.
- I was on the junior honour roll (top 1% across canada) in financial literacy contest!
2016:
My math teacher asked the class, what does it mean to ‘calculate something’? I prompted my deskmate to respond: “To use a calculator to get numbers!” The class roared. I led my friends to create a magazine featuring all kinds of rote-learning ugliness and placed it on the hallway. This clearly indicated a revolution. My homeroom teacher banned the magazine. The horror spread through the entire grade and teachers started analyzing the handwriting to infer the authors. However, my classmates were addicted to this thing and stole them back. While achieving high grades, I got repeatedly banned from the class for disruptive activity and was requested to sit outside. I was weird, hyper with chaotic energy. A teacher passed by on the hallway frowning at me. I smiled and read my chemistry book. My best friend convinced me, if I get expelled, it wasn't the end of the world. She'd donate her books and I could sculpt myself. I could move to a new city, start a new life outside of the education system! My chemistry book discussed arsenic in water (watch your waterbottle if you’re too smart someone may poison you), aspartame in food, and yes!! the chemistry of everyday life! At home, I got yelled at for wasting so much time. I cut myself with knives and I also crawled online forums with painfully slow internet and learned English :D At night, I really enjoyed playing podcasts, to the history of science, Gregori Perelman, Einstein’s biography, Marie Curie, quantum entanglement and fascinating concepts, and explain quantum entanglement incorrectly and excited the next day. At 3 am, I'd realize I haven't actually prepared for a class presentation the next day and did it last minute. My insomnia had gotten much worse starting from here.
Hopscotch was a children’s block coding app. I instantly got addicted to the app, creating games, cat animations, farm simulations etc. During tests, I couldn't focus, I fidgeted while staring out the window and only thinking about my ten thousand hopscotch projects about social media simulation, physics or latest scoops like how kiwicute is leaving the app to prep for the SSAT or Real Funky 63 encourages us to build in public all the way from greenland or t1 and Madi and all the happy users. I drew thousands of pictures of hopscotch users and the team in my notebook and filled multiple drawers with these notebooks, consisting of Hopscotch! When I was sent to Australia, my friends read these comics over and over again. One afternoon in Australia, I appeared in the middle of the living room. For some reason, I was reciting the qwerty keyboard and talking about new coding technique which displayed things in 3D on a 2D engine. Then I was met with a punch in the face mistaken for a witch. I grabbed her by the arm in attempt to defend myself. She screamed for parents, teachers and told everyone that I was a bully. She was a sociopath; I was a happy, clueless nerd.
“Bullying is unacceptable!” The teacher lectured me. Words rushed up to my throat and got stuck. I stammered and blushed. “See, she is a liar!” The girl exclaimed and taunted me as not-a-girl. I shut myself in the bathroom editing my face with scissors, with excessive energy I almost smashed into the ceiling fan. Luckily I was saved!
The next two months involved teachers monitoring my conversation with parents. I was stupid, so the teachers placed me in grade 5 in the Australian school (rather than 6). At this point kids started using morse code to communicate with each other. Teachers materialize like apparitions during recess and did things to me in a room constantly. In bright summer afternoons, other kids run around lively on playground. I am screaming in my mind. I should vanish immediately! I was banned from doing anything and reminded of my lowbie status by teachers every minute. My brain almost melted itself.
Anyway this was to say children should learn about social dynamics, people's incentives and learn to communicate please!! Make what you say valuable!! Authority can harshly penalize innocent individuals so easily. I learned to question authority, their motives and be skeptical of their actions.