Recents Posts

2024

2022

2021

2020

Fear. [10/52]

Black lives matter. Or, they should matter, but currently, they don’t. That’s it. You can stop reading here. If you do go on, please note that there are some...

Challenge Accepted (Round 2) [1/52]

3 years ago, I challenged myself to post something on the blog every week for a year. I failed, ending up with only half that total. But it had the intended ...

2019

2018

CCN2018: Thoughts and Hot-Takes

Great, diverse talks; Loved the mind-matching; Panel discussion question was too unconstrained; Could use more non-deep learning stuff as a whole.

2017

Combatting bias in science. (21/52)

However, to say that quotas simultaneously select for the best candidates and try to equalize existing disparities is, if not disingenuous, then completely m...

March for Science? (16/52)

No, we were marching for the existence of science in this world, its value in our current society, and the potential impact this anti-science sentiment will ...

Climate of Complete Certainty. (17/52)

After all, the fact that science is not 100% Truth and Certainty is nothing new. However, by omitting the danger of inaction, as well as the relatively stron...

The life of a TA. (14/52)

By the end of the 10 weeks, I learned something about prepping for big classes like these: don’t do anything at the beginning that will make you hate yoursel...

GET OUT. (12/52)

Nonetheless, it shocked me to realize that a lot of things that I thought were ‘normal’ not because they were, but because of the environment I was in. I’ll ...

Cycles and Subline (11/52)

Am I rooting for the immaculately shaped fireball to disappear, or to stay? When it does quietly sneak away, though, I feel an even stranger sense of satisfa...

Science as a belief system. (8/52)

Science education in schools and popular media largely ignore the philosophy of science and how the process itself is a process of elimination. At best, when...

My 5 butt words. (5/52)

“Basically, I was like, can we just go see the clowns and stuff, they’re definitely really cool.”

2016

Year 2

So positive or negative, as long as we keep doing what we believe is right, there really is no bad outcomes, because science, more or less, is the business o...

On Doing-Nothing: At the Dentists

Doing-nothing has been losing ground to doing-something at a very fast pace, with the pervasiveness of the interwebs and hand-held entertainment steadily per...

It’s just a game: Goodnight Mr. Bryant

Thank you, for taking the world by its throat, when it mattered a lot and when it didn’t. Thank you, for creating storylines after storylines that we can rel...

Wise Words

Since I haven’t written any toilet humor in a while and this might take more than 140 characters:

2015

Year 1 (Part II)

It is now technically 10 minutes into the first day of second year, which means that, surprisingly, I finished this on time.

Year 1 (Part I)

I am now in the 52nd week of being in San Diego, so this marks an excellent opportunity to document my first year of graduate school. I’d also just realized,...

See no evil.

In reality, it’s just a bunch of regular Joes and Janes sitting on the (extremely) long end of a seesaw, catapulting the world across from them - not by mali...

untitled

In my experience, rabbits don’t notice you unless you notice them first.

You don’t know what foodporn is.

Well, if you are too lazy to make lunch everyday, too sane to eat shit lunch everyday, or are too poor to purchase “healthy” lunches everyday, Soylent is for...

Redesigning the TP.

In other words, we NEED to decouple the two functional components of toilet paper - soft contact and rigid support - such that prioritizing for one does not ...

2014

Don’t Worry, Be Being Happy

Instead of saying “I am sad”, sometimes it feels better to say “I am being sad”, as stupid as that might sound.

Who came first: the chicken or the egg?

Is similarity the basis of categorization? Or does categorization inevitably lead to similarity? Will we ever know? Is this even a good question? In addressi...

Is human reasoning rational?

Shamelessly plugging course work into the blog. Why not, right? Since I have to write once a week, might as well get my blog back up to healthy numbers.

RGAO|EU2014: Aftermath

Well, to avoid further delays, I’m just going to start with the easiest: the quantifiable.

San Antonio: A Tale of Two Spurs.

Honestly though: the Spurs getting too old 6 seasons ago was the reason why the Spurs won the title this year. Isn’t that something?

Creative Serendipity: Death by Googling.

I’m just going to end today’s segment with this: we often applaud the innovators of every generation for their massive creativity/intellect/ingenuity, but wh...

The Fault In Our Stars.

Reading TFIOS as a 23-year old male is like watching the Dark Knight trilogy but not knowing who the fuck Batman is and not caring about the action, while ap...

The Danger of Rationality.

Rationality is a tool to express yourself, to organize yourself, and to improve yourself. It is not a boulder behind which to hide yourself and your choices,...

We are our 10%.

To put it crudely, you probably recruit more than 10% of your brain when you try to take a poop (uncited, though this will make an awesome xkcd what-if segme...

It’s Getting Hot In Here.

All in all, what I’ve managed to learn through this little excursion is that 1) people hate hot and humid temperatures, 2) cognitive performance does not act...

Cause and Effect.

Correlation neither is nor implies causation- it’s simply more useful.

My Biggest Fear Realized

So here I am, scared shitless about finding what I value in myself, and consequently, what values I can bring to the people and society around me. But I do k...

Moving Forward.

And so, it is on this day- a day of ending and beginning in every sense, but a day unceremoniously residing in its square on the calendar, preceded and prece...