Not actually the worst description of moduli spaces

"Yo dawg I heard you like geometry, so we put some geometry on your geometry, so you can geometry while you geometry."

Victory is ... nobody's?

W: Shouldn't that be true more generally?
M: I don't think so ...,
W: ... well, one of us wins.
C: Nah, it's not such a nice game. We could all lose. 

---from this week's Topology seminar

Just one more thing now ...

Not too long ago the (apparently still English) current chair of the doctoral committee informed me that "now all that's left to do is to write and defend a thesis." That seems to have sparked a little bit of a dark mood in me. Now comes the part where you fall deep into a rabbit hole, for years and years on end, and never emerge, possibly not ever again, to see the broad sweep of the plains and the distant majesty of the mountains, is what some part of me seems to have heard.
But that was not what was said, and that is not what you should do. You should remember the way down the rabbit hole, the better to climb up back out of it. You should take note all of the tunnels that go between the rabbit holes, and the intricate networks that they form, and how they transverse the broad sweep of the plain and take you, sight unseen, towards the mountains. You should never forget, as you seem dimly aware of now, that the rabbit holes, for all of their fascinating depths, are only ever part of the story, and that you should never lose sight of the whole.
It will be a constant struggle to remember this, to remain as broad as you could be even as you delve deep into your chosen rabbit hole. But it's something that you can at least try to do, that you must at least try to do---and your work and life will be the richer for it.  

We only like the semisimple stuff around here

Parabolics just make us hurl.

Fine, you can name those after me

L'un des auteurs insistant pour que l'on adopte cette terminologie, aujourd'hui généralement admise, l'autre auteur s'y résigne

Armand Borel and Jacques Tits, "Groupes réductifs", footnote explaining the origins of the term "Borel subgroup" 

Ignorance and bigotry are like cancers

And we should treat them like we treat cancers, or other diseases of the body. Not with outrage and loud denunciation, or at least not with those alone. Those might be useful for drawing attention to the problem, but they're not going to make it go away.

No, we should study them closely, and understand deeply their origins and how they grow and spread. We should use this knowledge to systematically and methodically eradicate them, the same way we have eradicated smallpox and are so close to eradicating polio. 

Calculus quiz haiku, Round Two

thin thin flimsy walls
made of donut dough ready t
o collapse, yummy  

(Theis) 

Donald Trump looks like
Burnt coffee cakes that went through
Space exploration 

(Salhaney)

(the following came in a pair)

Donald Trump will make
America great again:
Slash NASA's budget!  

No funds for spaceships---
Trump Administration buys
Lots of coffee cakes.

(Hoopingarner) 

Qu'elle est belle, la devise de Paris

Depuis des siècles, des amoreux de la mort ont tenté de nous faire perde le goût de vivre. Ils n'y sont jamais parvenu. Ceux qui aiment. Ceux qui aiment la vie. À la fin, c'est toujours eux qui gagnent.
...
Les gens qui sont morts ce soir étaient dehors pour vivre, boire, chanter. Ils ne saviaent pas qu'on leur avait declaré la guerre. Au lieu de nous diviser, vous nous rappelez comme tout cela est précieux: notre mode de vie. Amoreux de la mort, si Dieu existe, il vous exécre. Et vous avez déjà perdu, sur la terre comme aux cieux. 

Fluctuat nec mergitur: ça signifie merde à la mort. 

---Johann Sfar 

Thursday's problem session went hilariously well

Okay let's just try to muddle through this ... 

[two minutes of silence] 

... 

If I weren't here you would all be sulking right now ... more than you already are.

... 

Okay, let's try problem 4. 

I hate problem 4.

Wait, we've been saying that about every problem we've tried! Problem 1---no, we hate problem 1. Problem 2---we don't like problem 2 either. Problem 3---no ... 

...

I think I'm going to quit math and become a janitor. 

I'll join you!  

On Wednesdays, up to linear distortion

C: "I'm not really a geometer, only a quasi-geometer---"
S: "Well, are you a quasi-geometer, or are you quasi a geometer?"
C: "I'm quasi a quasi-geometer."

---overheard at this week's RTG seminar 

But is it better to let never exist?

Clearly you believe that, in the case of commitments you doubt you can honour, the answer is a resounding yes. Even if that exchange on Kenmore did make it seem as though, in general, your opinions were exactly the opposite. 

Welcome home

Of course I'm happy to be home. Excited to see friends and family, and glad to find comfort in the familiar. But this time I also feel sad, that in some perhaps distinctly limited---but very concrete---sense this will soon no longer be home. Upset, angry even, because I feel like my home is being taken away from me---but really there is no reasonable or good target for this anger. Part of me is defiant---it doesn't matter, this will always be home; or: what does it matter? The world is my oyster---; part of me is already grieving over what it sees, rather overdramatically, as imminent exile.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses. 

Oh well

What the hell

"Oh hello!!!"

Anger and outrage is all very well, but maybe it's more useful to investigate the causes---calmly and systematically, though insistently nonetheless---and address them. Ignorance and myopia and bigotry are scourges, I agree. But they are scourges which we should aim to eradicate, not merely condemn. Unless public condemnation be part of that process of eradication---but honestly I cannot see it being the entire solution in and of itself. 

Not even sure why I'm angry or whom I'm angry at

But I am. I think it's a sign that, no matter how hard I try to rationalise it, my heart emphatically does not want to uproot itself anymore. 

三十六计，走为上计

sauver: to save or rescue.
se sauver: to bolt or run away.

Only a crazy person would do that

Senator Daniel Inouye served in WWII and was seriously injured while attacking a German position along a ridge in Tuscany.  He stood to throw a grenade into a machine gun nest, when one of the gunners shot him in the stomach.  Inouye ignored the wound and killed the machine gunners with his Thompson SMG. 

Instead of getting out of combat, Inouye continued the attack and destroyed a second machine gun nest before collapsing from blood loss.  After collapsing, Inouye crawled toward a third machine gun nest to continue the assault.  As he prepared to throw another grenade, a German RPG severed his right arm.  He used his left hand to remove the live grenade from his dead right arm and tossed it into the machine gun nest. 

After destroying three German positions, being shot in the stomach, having an arm severed by an RPG, and nearly being blown up with his own grenade, Inouye got up and ran around the ridge, shooting at the remaining Germans with his left hand.  He continued to do so until he was shot in the leg, fell off the cliff, and was knocked unconscious at the bottom. 

When he awoke in a hospital, his friends told him what he had done.  He replied, "No.  That's impossible.  Only a crazy person would do that."

as told by Josh Stein, via Quora 

This is probably why I dislike extroverts (and should stop)

Because I spend more time---or at least think I spend more time---in a conversation asking questions about the other person than saying things about myself, and I---subconsciously, at least---expect others to reciprocate. And you get annoyed when they don't, and see it as a case of their monopolizing the discourse for their own ends. Except, you know, that's probably not the most helpful way to think about or deal with this. Especially not when you start to go into long cycles of resentment, variously directed and undirected anger, self-loathing, and rinse-and-repeat. 

Calc I Haikus

(i)

The derivative 

The derivative is hard

Good luck GPA

(ii)

Lemurs live the dream

They don't do derivatives

Math is really hard

(iii)

The lemurs jumped from

the space shuttle and began

skiing down Diag

(iv)

Flying through the void

Leaving behind the ground quick

Always fly: shuttle

(v)

Nothing is as odd

as skiing down the diag

that has no real hill

---from the overworked students of section 001.

Ick!

I didn't particular enjoy writing college admission essays---the whole idea of "selling oneself" just didn't quite click. I understand what it is and why it would be necessary, but somehow just. Can't. Bring myself to do it. People should't make judgements about other people based on a small amount of information cherry-picked and presented to them in a short period of time under intense pressure. Such judgements seem to be almost certainly doomed to be bad judgements, on the whole. But well. Such is the way (parts of) the world work at the moment ...
And now I find myself on---not quite the other side, but another side anyway---of the table. Not making admissions decisions, but having to give my evaluation or impression of an applicant based on a small amount of information they cherry-pick and present to me within a short period of time under pressure. An evaluation or impression which will then form part of the small amount of information that the people who actually make decisions will actually see. I'm not particularly enjoying it either.
Talking to those people was fun. Having to evaluate them, not so much. I could be just brutally honest. Some of the applicants I interviewed were really interesting people and had interesting ideas, and those I thought really deserved a shot at admission. Some others just seemed like lost high school seniors. But I feel bad writing that. I don't know whether that would be quite enough to torpedo their chances of admission, but it's certainly not going to help; and looking back, I was probably more like one of them than like the people who had ideas and interesting things to say.
Meh. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and do that (in more diplomatic language.) I'm sorry, but at the end of the day I'm not responsible for the dizzyingly low admission rate.
I guess what you really should do, if you feel bad about hindering these kids, is to address the issue of educational (in)equity more broadly and think about broadening opportunities and access to education at a level comparable to Princeton ... 

In which I feel vindicated

A proprement parler, il n'y a pas de certitude; il y a seulement des hommes certains

Charles Renouvier

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point

Blaise Pascal 

And so the wheels of the world turn

... as Chilean Ambassador in 1972, Neruda spent most of a three-hour meeting with President Georges Pompidou designed to negotiate Chile’s foreign debt discussing Baudelaire instead.

--d'ici

Expand your comfort zone

You're comfortable in your solitude. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything that's a strength, not a weakness. But you should also learn to be comfortable around people. 

Finely-tuned apathy

Does it strike you that there is a slight resemblance between (a) what you regard as your parents' mildly unhealthy attachment to you, (b) what your students might regard as your being too demanding / micromanaging in your concern for their grades, and (c) what you perceive as someone caring too much about what his class thinks about him?
In all of these cases, there's one party which holds itself responsible for some aspect of the other, expects that to be reciprocated to some extent by some form of appreciation, and is duly nonplussed (and a little upset) when that appreciation does not quite materialise---but have they taken into account how the counter-party feels about this whole rather paternalistic setup?

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty,

in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence---too weak to live, too cowardly to die.

(Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it really stands for)

Part of a conversation I'm having with 2012 me

I believe that nation-states are legal fictions and artificial constructs, whose current shapes and peculiarities are but accidents of history. Lots of people---most people---would disagree, perhaps vehemently so. But that is only because of a lack of clear thought, often encouraged by politicians and regimes for reasons of their convenience.
Certainly there should be some sort of apparatus to give a coherent organization to society, and the modern nation-state, where it works, does this very well. But also we should recognize that nation-states, as such, are nothing more than conventions of convenience. Why should we get so worked up and excited about mere conventions? I don't understand.

Well as you quite rightly point out there is no one natural way of organising human society; what we have is, perhaps, not as good a solution as could ever exist, but it is what it is. Accidents of history and mere conventions by agreement they may well be, but the fact of their existence, the miracle, minor or less minor, that they have been conjured, willed, brought into existence, is surely worth something,
So, perhaps, these things are worth celebrating and worrying about. Though, also, it behooves us not to take them too seriously, for there are, ultimately, higher and more important things in this world than country. 

Hier gaan over het tij,

de wind, de maan en wij

(the Dutch, at Neeltje-Jans on the Oosterscheldekering)

Now I really want to see that plaque. It is a little bit out of the way though ...

Both bitter and serene

'The next day I woke up with the feeling that I was myself at last. A great calm, at the same time both bitter and serene, spread through me. I no longer had to struggle between my Russian and my French identities. I accepted myself.' 

(Andrei Makine trans. Geoffrey Strachan, Dreams of My Russian Summers, 183)

You're missing the point.

Yes, it hurts to care. But that doesn't mean you should just not. And it certainly does not mean that you should systematically construct a worldview that will justify why you should not. 

To discover

 ... to push a little farther back the foamy line of language, to make it encroach upon that sandy region that is still open to the clarity of perception but is already no longer so to everyday speech---to introduce language into that penumbra where the gaze is bereft of words. An arduous, delicate work; a work that reveals, as Laennec revealed distinctly, outside the confused mass of scirrhi, the first cirrhotic liver in the history of medical perception.

(Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith, 169)

Where do you live now?

Singapore. Do you want a street address? Yes I do happen to be studying here now, and for that purpose I'm staying at this other address about an hour from here. How long will I be here? Five years (four and a half more, I guess.) What are my plans after graduation? I intend to find a job in my home country. Which is? See above. I know that's not entirely true and you probably have an inkling that that's not entirely true, and I know that you know and you probably know that I know and here I think the chain of mutual knowledge might break down. But we will mention none of this. Because you're only a CBP officer, and that's as far as you need to know, and the subtleties of what a home country is and what it means to inhabit a place are entirely irrelevant to the purely bureaucratic concern of border control, and there are twenty people behind me in the line waiting to clear the border so why don't we end this conversation right here and let's all go back to our merry business. Next!

To fight aloud is very brave, / But gallanter, I know,

Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe. 

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love. 

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

(Emily Dickinson, Poems, Series 1, XVI)

In before the tsunami

Home is where the heart is. It's the people, the things, the places you care about---all of them, not just any one of them. (Clearly these aspects can be independent of one another, but oftentimes it makes little sense to think about them in isolation.)
So don't be so worried about not having a roof over your head here where you think home is. As long as you continue to engage with the place in a meaningful way, as long as you continue to care, these will be mere logistical details. They matter, but they can be overcome.
And, now, welcome to Michigan. Tuesday morning will be a fun time.

54 hours later, some thanks are due

To Singapore Airlines for upgrading me to a flat bed across the Pacific, and to a truly awesome friend for offering a couch to crash on for a night at extremely short notice. 

Abstract Nonsense

I woke up this morning feeling distinctly unmoored. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, but for a fleeting but distinct moment, nothing and no-one seemed to matter at all. And then I fell asleep again.
Maybe the relentless drive towards fundamental, pure nihilism has just about bottomed out, and now you can actually build something meaningful. 

I don't know, the Chinese come pretty close

Culinarily, they are among the most homesick people I have ever met.

---ici 

What is loyalty, anyway

Where does it stop? What if you grow apart? What if time has changed you so much you are no longer recognizable to each other?
It shouldn't matter, says one answer. Loyalty should never stop. And I think there's a grain of truth in that.
But then, if you say it never stops: at what point does it become blind and meaningless?
It doesn't, would be the only logically consistent answer. But that cannot be all there is to it. That would be far too simple.
If someone has changed beyond all recognition, thoughts, beliefs, values, habits, and all, is s/he really still the same person? To insist that s/he is---should that be seen as a necessary kindness rendered to him/her, or a grave disservice, or perhaps an unnecessary and silly mistake?
And, in particular (a bit of a leap, but I started out pondering these questions and somehow got to those other questions above), how hard should we hold on to those who are about to leave? Yes, they were very kind to us. Yes, we owe a great debt of gratitude to them. Yes, we would all be happier if they weren't leaving. But we are all mortal, after all. And at the end of the long, long day, when it almost seems like they have decided it's time to leave, how hard should we fight that judgement that they make?
Maybe there just are no universal answers. We can only give the benefit of the doubt, and navigate each individual conundrum as (or hopefully before) it comes into sharp, uncomfortable focus.

Maybe this should be my new answer

That is the beauty of it. There is no why

Philippe Petit 

Means, not ends

"Achievement" is the "diabolical" element in human life; and the symbol of our vulgarization of human life is our near exclusive concern with achievement ... Whereas the only human value lies in the adventure and the excitement of discovery.

--Michael Oakeshott

To your lasting credit

The two things I still remember (and will probably remember for a long time) from our valedictorian's speech are "they're chasing us out!" and "tsk, instrumentalist thinking." 

The heart asks pleasure first,

And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering; 

And then, to go to sleep;
And then if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

(Emily Dickinson, Poems, Series 1, IX) 

A Castle So High

I accepted the offer. And I made myself a promise. I'd build a castle of words so high on the banks of the Detroit River that they couldn't help but see it from Times Square.

Detroit: An American Autopsy, 20

Day 23: Burası Mountain View değildir

It would be interesting to see an anthropologist or a sociologist describe Silicon Valley. It seems so much like an extended, expanded college campus, or the bits of campus inhabited and animated by the COS community, anyway, except on steroids.

Day 21: ... to shining sea

"Stanford zengin bir okuldur. Stanford'a gitsin."

Day 20: Believe

Apparently, Nevada isn't all desert, although its towns do seem to be all (well, most visibly) casino.

Day 19: All over Idaho

Not quite the craters of the moon, but still quite other-worldly.

Day 18: Wow

 Time to break out the superlatives, I think they're actually justified here.

Day 17: The World's Biggest Collection of Geysers

Now that I think about it---Geneva's Jet d'Eau resembles exactly a geyser. As usual, Nature got there first.

Day 16: Fairy-tales on the prairie

This is the historic town of Deadwood, South Dakota. It sprung up in the late 19th century when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, miners flooded in from the East, from Europe, even from China (there was a Chinatown here---a Chinatown in the middle of the northern prairie!) and hustlers of all kinds flooded in after the miners, and quickly became the regional hub of the Black Hills. Today the miners are gone, and the hustlers have turned their attention to tourists. The saloons and speakeasies are still there, and Main Street is lined with casinos. Not so inappropriate for a former gold-mining town, really.

This is the Devil's Tower (or, in [some of] the native languages of the area, Bear Lodge.) It was created when seven sisters being pursued by bears jumped unto a low rock, and one of them prayed to the rock to help them escape. The rock started to rise; the bears clawed at it even as it continued to go higher and higher, until the sisters were pushed into the sky and became the Pleiades.
Fantastic stories both, if you ask me.

Day 15: Drugstores and Bison

 "The whole middle of the country is a mystery to me. I had forgotten that South Dakota existed until you mentioned it."

Day 14: Welcome to the West

 "To me (mentally), the Dakotas are about as remote as Tibet ... "

Day 13: Last city before California

And they're Twin Cities too!

One of them is even built around a waterfall (Minneapolis apparently sprung up around a bunch of flour mills which used the St Anthony Falls as a power source.)

Spending more time in the Twin Cities made me a little sad (again) that I chose not to make this my new home. But oh well, such is life ... 

Day 12: Mooooo

"In and of itself, Milwaukee is fairly boring ... it's having history that matters."

Day 11: Repeat, further up Lake Michigan

"It's so big you can't even see the other side!"

Ambivalent

is an imperfect word that doesn't describe how it's possible to have a variety of stances toward things ... a coarse simplification of the complex feelings toward others that toss and turn inside people, toward their native country, toward all that is.

Day 10: Visit friends, not monuments

Though somehow the only photos I have from that day are of the Bean.

At least now (after three visits, a course in radical political thought, and seeing Fallingwater) I think I understand the piece of art that is Cloud Gate better.

Day 9

The Sun is still there, but his alleged Brother with his palatial raised residence and glory and splendor and vast urban center are long gone ...

Also, somewhere else that could have been your new home, except you chose otherwise. Ah, well then.

Day 8

Wouldn't it be nice?

Also the wonderful things that can be done with a simple, unadorned catenary are really quite amazing.

Day 7: There are Ducks in the House

Not quite Venice, but still a very nice canal that Indianapolis has.

Good enough for this duck and her ducklings, anyway.

Day 6

Overheard at A2SF: "If you want to give your parents a heart attack, you tell them that you're quitting your day job after eight years to become a full-time musician ... If you want them to have a triple bypass, you tell them that your wife is also quitting her day job, to become a full-time writer."

In other news, President Obama waz here (maybe that's part of the reason for the long lunch line.)

Day -7.5: On the Most Solemn Occasion of Commencement

"Seriously?"

Day 5: Welcome to your new home

Whee ...

Day 4

 "This is a nice place. We plan to be here for the rest of our lives."

The caged bird sings / with a fearful trill

of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom. 

Day 3: Well then

That's probably not true. A lot was happening in Pittsburgh in 1897.

Pittsburgh wasn't quite New York or Chicago, but it was still quite the city. It felt a lot like any of the cities around the Allegheny, but scaled up. And it still had a lot going for it, in terms of infrastructure and activity and goings-on and all, despite all that talk of decline. Guess that's all relative, really: the place has been declining, but from a high.

Day 2

Fallingwater blends beautifully---and, really I do mean beautifully---into its surroundings. But it seems to me a triumph of human design and engineering just as much as it is a statement about living in harmony with nature.

Also, meow purrr nyan. 

Day 1: From sea...

Day 0

Oh, Philly. Every time I visit you become a little more endearing, warts and all.

Day -1

Four years of quarterly visits make me a honorary New Yorker, right?

Day -2

My parents actually liked the area around Central Park enough to consider (in the loose sense of that verb) living in New York. Hm.

Day -7

May there be many more good dinners in the days to come.

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. 

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace. 

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. 

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

Biggest non-story of the year

“I’ve seen the accumulation of powers that Orwell could not have imagined, and not only that, but, in the hands of a relatively small number of people, this stunning capacity to track you,” he said.

And yet nobody even seems to notice anymore. Bah humbug. 

WOOHOOOOOOO

More inchoate thoughts

Some days I wake up with a fire burning inside ... that usually dissipates by the time I finish brushing my teeth. Oh well. Pity, some of that fire might actually motivate me to do something useful in life.
I'm going to write down some of the thoughts that stick for those 15-to-30 minute intervals, and maybe that part of me that mediates the daily hustle and lets it take over before breakfast is over will pick up on some of them and decide to do things with / about them.
It bothers me that the society we live in (broadly speaking) is so unfair. Maybe it's just the way the world is. But I don't believe it's the way the world must be.
There is not enough empathy in this world. There should be more. I should do something about it.
Elon Musk is doing awesome stuff. There're all these shops shuffling digits around in some form or another, and then there's Tesla and SpaceX. I should get on his level.
I should make it a life-goal to learn (and retain!) as many languages as possible.
Maybe you are more than your work. Maybe you can still be the change you want to see even if you don't choose to become a social activist or political organiser. 

Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή,

ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξύς,

ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερή,

ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή.

-- Hippocrates

Disinvigorate

Just a unnecessarily convoluted way of saying "weaken", or different and a useful addition to the English language? Discuss.

Blei describes his profession

"There are many names for it ... this one [data mining] is bad. This one [statistics] sends people running, this one [data science] is good for finding a job, and this one [machine learning] people who've watched The Matrix are into."

You are what you are

You'll go where you go and carry your long and fragmented history with you wherever you go. And you will learn to be at peace with that and draw strength from it and see it as a source of support, not a weakness to be overcome. Others have done it. You have done it. You might change a little in the process, but why are you so afraid of that? Let those changes happen. You'll be fine.

Meh

I feel like the ground has been pulled out from underneath my feet all over again. It really, really sucks.
But I guess this was bound to happen at some point, since you don't fundamentally agree on where home is. You can't have everything you want all the time, and whatever they propose to do is perfectly within their rights. They have already done a lot for you. Time to stop depending on them and face up to reality. 

Thesis deadline minus 16 hours

"At some point in the next 16 hours I'll write my results chapter ... meaning I'll run my code, generate my results, and write about them."

Well, godspeed.

Lulz

All these e-mails---it feels like a denial-of-service attack against my brain.

Micah M. White 

Death has become him

Fun fact of the day: De'Ath is an actual surname.

Foundationlessness

Ne me demandez pas qui je suis et ne me dites pas de rester le même

(L'archéologie du savoir, Michel Foucault) 

This is not new

Not at all. At least you deal with it a little better now, I do think.

But the advice you gave yourself then holds every bit as true. And maybe I should add: be nimble. Learn to embrace your lightness. To count your blessings and treasure them, but also to let go. Because you will probably have to do a lot of that in the years to come ...

Protip #1566

While it is probably true that you should stop over-analysing the living daylight out of all your thoughts and impulses, those instincts in moderation also serve you pretty well in general. You should listen to them and stop freaking out.

Protip #5772

When in excessive doubt, you're probably just being a coward.

Meh

You aren't just free to dispose of your time as you want to.
Well, at the moment, I am. Maybe I won't be in the future. But that's simply not true now. Yes to some extent I'm being "childish" and "irresponsible". But really more than anything I'm hearing this. Have you never heard of the concept of a graduation trip? Jeez.
There is so little structure!
Yes, and I'm comfortable with that. You should be too. At the end of the day I have anchor points, and that's all that's needed.
You're wasting your time.
The time is mine to waste. Don't you worry about it. (Also I do actually plan to do stuff in between. I just haven't told you about it yet ... I guess I should.)
I guess at the end of the day it boils down to this: my life is not yours to direct. Don't try. I don't know how sharply I'll react if you push. 

Things I Realized Today

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a privately-held company. So is Koch Industries. So are many firearms manufacturers. Any number of the interesting firms lobbying Congress are privately-held and so don't (aren't oblige to) disclose very much information about themselves. At which point the study of money politics goes back squarely into the shadows of murk, estimation and guesswork. Or maybe there's a way to scrape all that information off the massive hairball of information that is the Internet. That would be one hell of a scrape though.

Yet Another Sign of Creeping Senioritis

Echo Chamber

Not in the sense of killing out competing views, but certainly in the sense of being potentially somewhat enclosed and amplifying anything that might come up into huge, unhealthy feedback loops. Probably something Not Terribly Good that you should try to change.  

Cryptic Reminder of the Day

The operative question at the moment is, how?

Beware.

Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about---and pays off on---what you can do with what you know (and it doesn't care how you learned it.) And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills---leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.

Paz, esperanza y alegria

Absolutely the same thing as peace, hope, and joy. Except not. Except yes. Except not. Except ...

The Merry Month of February

For the next two weeks you will not worry about the future. The future will be a distant mirage and you will engage fully with the present, front and center. Until such time as good news comes crashing to shore and makes the mirage real again. Or, if not, till March arrives. 

Almost two years now but no less true

When more and more people around you start learning your language---just out of interest, or because they feel "they'll need it" in the future---; when whole provinces of neighboring countries start making it compulsory in schools ... you know something is afoot.
About time, you could almost hear so many say.
But even as we bask in the newly-(re?)found glow of attention, we should take care not to become arrogant and short-sighted once again. We should be careful not to repeat the mistakes of times past, and shrink back into a conceited cocoon. 

The Manchineel tree

Sounds like something in the Hunger Games arena.

 ... if you stay under its foliage while it's raining, the water will cause instant blistering wherever it touches you. ... You can't burn the Manchineel's wood because the smoke will cause temporary and even permanent blindness ... Ingestion [of the fruit] may produce severe gastroenteritis with bleeding, shock, bacterial superinfection, and the potential for airway compromise due to edema.

时势造英雄

Aitzaz Hasan is a brave man. I have nothing but respect for him.
More than once I've wished I could be like him ... but then I'm ashamed I could make such a perverse wish. For it would imply putting everyone else around in grave danger, and creating much disruption and grief ...

Probably the best riposte to L'Académie française

'English may be a shifty whore, but she's our shifty whore.' 

--Kory Stamper