two essays

• i wrote two essays for class (21w.022 autobiographical writing) recently. the first one is full of trashy writing to satisfy assignment requirements but might contain informational content some of you haven’t learned about (relating to bio) and the second one has less trashy writing but also no informational content. i guess i should thank christine for introducing me to tokyo ghoul and cj for some inspiration with formatting (although tbh i dont think there was any other viable format anyway since google slides is the only program i regularly use with any sort of image editing power 😛 )
• coursera machine learning is going well 🙂 its a lot of fun and finally understanding what {backprop, svms, etc.} actually do is nice. it’s also like <5 hours a week; totally recommend if you’re interested in the subject. im intentionally staggering the content and programming exercises 1 week apart for better retention but honestly i think it’s well-designed enough so that peoples’ usual concerns about remembering info from online courses dont really apply
• spent forever trying to figure out hindi accents/syllables for ohms and was not successful sigh
• also got extremely stuck on my urop i suppose that was to be expected though
• i got completely destroyed by the final round of alibaba math competition and received a reminder of how much room i still have to improve in terms of problem-solving and such. so ive been spending some time doing interesting-looking problems that ive previously attempted but not solved

also watched 2 movies:

1. infinity war: yes i watched infinity war approximately a year after watching endgame i know this is weird. honestly it doesn’t matter much since everyone knew the ending to infinity war anyway, and endgame exists pretty much independently of everything from infinity war other than the ending. i think thanos is a very very well-written villian in this film and the pacing in general is great; it’s also one of the first superhero movies i’ve watched where the plot actually holds up. like, (spoilers) the avengers lose because they’re spread out and uncoordinated, and the movie actually sets up good reasons for why this is the case instead of using stupid plot mechanics or whatever. so i guess this was pretty good; definitely a much stronger story than endgame (which has/will always be doomed single-handedly by its use of the time travel gimmick) 
2. the place promised in our early days: so im continuing with all the shinkai films. you can tell this is much earlier in his career than the films hes famous for; pacing is uneven and sometimes boring and world-building is a bit sloppy (but not that bad). but like with many of his works this one is carried by the ending scene. would not recommend unless you’re just out of good anime to watch or something

this is a short post i guess; ive spent most of my recent writing energy on the essays linked to above, so im not going to write much else here.