oct-dec

apparently the last post about concrete events in my life was in early october, so now is a reasonable time for an update. i view the lack of posts of this type as a positive signal, as it implies i’ve been writing about other subjects which i find more interesting, but it’s probably best not to let this blog get too far behind the rest of my life

stuff from the semester: 

• hadestown has been my favorite musical for a few years now, and they were touring in boston for two weeks. i decided to go by myself because i predicted i would cry a lot, and this turned out to be the correct choice. the minimalist set design and entire second act were amazing, and most of the songs sounded better live than in the original broadway cast recording, though my favorite song from the recording (wait for me ii) was not as good. i suppose that is to be expected though
• i read two pieces that made me much more aware of word usage in communication (mostly texting, speaking, and writing). the first one, politics and the english language, discusses how people increasingly conceal meaning behind metaphors, turns of phrase, and vaguely-defined words, and how politicians exploit this to further their agendas when addressing the public. in a similar vein the second one, nameless feeling, talks about how young people tend to summarize things as having “___ vibes” instead of doing the work of crafting precise descriptions. the tldr for both pieces is that ideas need to be described with the proper level of specificity if you want to have substantive discussions about them; making statements like “this song has nostalgic vibes” creates room for the other person to agree with you and think they know what you’re talking about even when the two of you have entirely different ideas in mind. and similarly, if you’re unsure what the definition of a word is you should actually check before using it. the net result of thinking about this is that i’ve become more insistent on making my friends clarify what they’re telling me if i feel like the meaning is being underspecified
• the mit orchestra (along with the choir) performed beethoven 9. i didn’t like the first three movements much (they’re each decent on their own, but way too long when listened to back-to-back) but the fourth one was good. i especially liked the conductor’s discussion of how the german lyrics to ode to joy fit into the general context of beethoven’s life, particularly his issues with his father and love life. it’s something i either never learned or hadn’t thought about in a while, and it makes the humanism in the piece more powerful
• the ohms concert happened. apparently we sounded alright. i will not comment further because saying i thought it went well would be dishonest and saying i thought it went badly would be unfair
• i visited the asimov office! it was nice to finally meet my coworkers in-person, and i got to pick the ceo’s brain a bit about biotech / neuroscience / ml / startup advice
• halfway through the semester i started getting bogged down with work and decided i will never again attempt to take a writing class and a music class simultaneously. i simply don’t have the creative bandwidth to satisfy two creative-output-oriented classes at once, especially given that i already write blog posts and music for ohms. i ended up not getting to work nearly as much on writing short stories as i’d wanted to
• i watched the first 3.5 seasons of attack on titan (the second half of season 4 hasn’t come out yet). this was my first time pacing myself effectively while watching a show, meaning that i started in august and finished in december even though all the episodes being available the entire time, and i’m pretty happy about that. anyway, aot has great worldbuilding and music and visuals. the character development is also excellent until the beginning of season 4, when a timeskip and the simultaneous introduction of a large number of characters makes the writing feel sloppy. my favorite character is levi, mostly because i think he’s one of the most realistic depictions i’ve ever seen of someone embracing their dharma
• i took the putnam, mostly because i was curious how much math i still remember nowadays. it went alright and was surprisingly therapeutic – i ended up not working on the problems much and instead decided to revisit various memories that the contest environment triggered. not revisiting in a nostalgic sense, more in the sense of here are some experiences i haven’t thought about in a while, and these are some ways in which they affected past-me and present-me, and i thought that was a meaningful way to spend a few hours
• i ended up getting a total of 8 hotel guests in the fall. they were all people i’d already known beforehand, but it was a nice mix of mit students and people from high school / group houses / the internet. unfortunately it looks like covid restrictions will tightening up again soon, to the point where non-mit overnight guests will probably not be allowed in the spring 😦

stuff from winter break: 

• i finally got around to reading slaughterhouse 5. i don’t have much to say, other than that it’s beautifully constructed and does a great job of portraying a narrator whose psyche has been completely traumatized by fighting in world war ii. there’s a good 5-10 pages in the middle where every description has hints of death imagery or of being a coping mechanism. also lots of paragraphs like this one, which are innocent enough on their own but very tragic when read in context: “There was a still life on Billy’s bedside table – two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of that dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.”
• then i read hell yeah or no, because some of my friends said it was life-changing. i ended up only finding ~10% of it interesting, possibly because it espouses a worldview that i’ve already encountered a lot. tldr it’s yet another book about cutting unnecessary stuff out of your life and staying in touch with what you actually care about
• now i’m reading the wikipedia revolution. just started so idk how it is yet
• i’m teaching weblab (an mit web development class), so i’ve been spending time on lecture prep to make sure i don’t melt down when talking in front of a few hundred students in january. it’s very exciting, though i’m also feeling a degree of pressure that i haven’t felt before when eg. teaching at oly math programs or splash. the prep has been going alright so far; the lectures i’m teaching (barring more schedule changes) are: 
  • some general react/javascript stuff. pretty standard, though we finally made the switch from class components to functional components this year, meaning this lecture has some new content that wasn’t present in past years and i had to update a bunch of slides and workshop code accordingly. it’s definitely a change i’m happy about though, since the class component lifecycle is pretty confusing and has a lot of subtleties
  • a libraries class. i didn’t like how this class was taught in past years, so i rewrote most of the lecture and now it’s essentially watch vincent figure out how to integrate css / 3d graphics / music libraries into a website live, which should be a good class if i don’t mess up too much
  • a typescript class. i basically just explain why type safety is good, how to define types, and how to migrate untyped react code to typescript. i actually don’t have a particularly good explanation of why type safety is important yet (currently i just have a slide with examples of js bugs i’ve written that would’ve been caught if my code was typed, and i don’t think this is a particularly convincing argument) so if this is something you’re passionate about feel free to send me a better explanation