general update

this is just a lot of mostly independent paragraphs

• ved gave me $500 under the condition that i’d return it if he achieved his monthly goals (which he did). we also settled on an additional deal where i could invest his money and he’d assume 50% of the gains or 25% of the losses, though i ended up not bothering to. multiple people pointed out this wasn’t a particularly favorable contract in the sense that i could just put that $500 in the bank and then invest $500 of my own money instead, but it was an interesting arrangement regardless and i’m curious how these things will evolve
• i tried coffee and mountain dew a few times and so far have not felt any highs or crashes from the caffeine 😐 not sure what’s up with that, but maybe it’s not a surprise since i’m usually similarly unaffected by sugar. so far i haven’t actually been enjoying drinking coffee at all; it feels almost entirely like a status drink in the same way that milk tea feels like it’s entirely about signalling to friends. in general i’ve never been good at understanding drinks though; i can appreciate fanta or other sodas because i feel the carbonation in my nose, and i can appreciate buffalo sauce or alcohol because i feel the burn sink down my throat, but when all i can sense are tastes in my mouth it feels like i might as well just drink water? i also know nothing about coffee so maybe i’m just making it badly, suggestions appreciated 😛 
• we went to chinatown and the walk was pretty nice, but then we ordered food which was probably a mistake since as usual with obscure restaurants i contracted food poisoning afterwards 😦 honestly i should just cook more; as far as i know i have never poisoned myself, and it takes around $4 and 20 minutes per day anyway (i don’t make fake food like instant noodles, but i do have low standards) on an unrelated note, trinidadian cuisine and knish are both cool
• we watched fiddler on the roof, soul, and blade runner, and they were all good! fiddler on the roof was cool because of how eastern all the numbers were, which i am not used to from musicals, but that made the songs interesting despite the lyrics not being particularly unique. soul was amazing in general and i was surprised by how blatantly adult-oriented the movie was (like, not sure how much of the humor or the message are comprehensible to kids). blade runner was… not that great but good for its time and definitely influential for the sci-fi genre? there were lots of cool ethical questions (i prefer to assume deckard is a replicant); honestly i’d probably like it a lot more if it wasn’t full of jumpscare-type fight scenes, which i strongly dislike. it was also sort of amusing that they thought we’d have ai in 2020 but still be using normal cars and apartments, and how awful the futuristic TVs were because the concept of a touchscreen hadn’t been popularized yet
• i finished reading human learning and memory 🙂 it was a nice introduction to concepts from conditioning, reinforcement, and memory; i think the next psych-related thing i learn will either be neuroscience or choice architecture, leaning towards the latter because i’ve just never been able to find enjoyable neuro resources 😦 although multiple people keep telling me to learn compilers and rust, so i might do that instead. reading about non-western religions probably has to be postponed for now 😦 i’m not in the right mindset to be learning them at the moment anyway; life is very stable right now and i prefer learning about religion and philosophy when the world is shaking
• after training a lot of models on genomic data i finally feel like i could potentially say i sort of understand how to begin to do machine learning. this is far from an assertive sentiment, but it was not something i felt even two weeks ago; in particular, 6.036 intro ml + reading through elements of statistical learning + the coursera ml and deep learning courses + doing some healthcare nlp work were not enough to make me feel this way. you could attribute this to me having exceptionally low confidence in whether i know things or not, but i genuinely believe the issue is that the essence of non-theoretical ml takes much longer to truly grasp than people expect. also they uploaded intern pics so i’m on the asimov website now and look 5 years younger than everyone else -_- 
• our biochem class had a social event on gather with the profs, TAs, and students, which is the first time any of my classes has done this. i liked it and appreciate all the work the TAs are putting in, which probably has to do with many of them being sophomores and juniors. also the profs are cool and the psets are actually pretty fun (essentially walking through various experimental procedures and asking questions along the way with flavortext plot), especially since i have no grade pressure 🙂 
• interning and taking biochem (which i still spend 1-2 hours per day on despite it being pass/fail, just because the work is so fun) takes slightly more time than i expected. back when i was spending an additional ~1 hour/day on psych and multiple hours/day meeting new people i would literally not have time for anything else. but i really do believe i’m healthier than ever and that all the context switching is helping me learn a lot of things quickly, which is a nice feeling to have
• one of my housemates was on a call with people from mit and i was about to jump in to say hi when someone else said don’t do it vincent, don’t give yourself fomo and that was probably one of the more thoughtful things anyone’s said to me recently. maybe i want an alert system to warn me whenever i’m walking myself into things like this 😛 
• i’m wondering whether or not to live in boston with ~1 roommate for april-may, the alternatives being to go home or hang out in sfba with the current group. sf would be cool but also i don’t know how beneficial being in silicon valley would be if i’m still a sophomore and focusing on research-y biotech work full-time. boston would be nice for visiting people and also because i’ve been alternating between group houses and home for a while, so maybe trying out a more isolated environment would be helpful. the choice currently rests almost entirely on the extent to which i miss mit and harvard friends, but maybe that shouldn’t be the basis of the decision, especially if most people i know say they’re too busy to hang out anyway. i’m fairly confused about this, and every time i make a housing decision it feels like i’m starting from scratch because in every scenario the details and my immediate needs are quite different from previous scenarios >_<