Normal things that seem to sparkle when you are drunk on a weekend (as in drunk on the weekend itself, not on alcohol):
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| northern lights, May 11 |
Salutations 'M (00).
Thank you for your patience in awaiting this response! To be honest, I am curious about the redacted 700 words that shrunk your word count from 2000 to 1300. Were they embellishments/footnotes, or an entire anecdote omitted for brevity?
I will do my best to address your questions, but please don't hesitate to reiterate if I missed something.
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Your prom outfit and makeup were so classy! I'm squinting at the picture you took at the pier, but are those heels? I like the pointed toe silhouette. Do you have an everyday makeup routine now, or is it more for special occasions? Though I am still quite the novice with regards to makeup, I have picked up some knowledge from Susan/Iris/Vivian (Iris is our resident Redditor and she is the one who frequents r/namenerds). Recently, they've been discussing the beauty approach of being "high maintenance for low maintenance", which as paradoxical as it sounds, makes a lot of sense. Instead of spending 10 minutes a day fiddling with an eyelash curler and mascara, Vivian performed her own "lash lift", which is some sort of equivalent perm one can apply to their eyelashes that lasts around a month. Just some food for thought in case you have opinions on beauty (practical/theoretical), as I believe that is a topic we have yet to discuss.
On the theme of beauty, I like the idea of attributing "evolutionary reinforcement" to positive phenomena of nature. Yes, these electrons knew to orient in this manner to facilitate cellular processes. All good things are intended; the bad are outliers.
While I am far from having a physical intuition for Ising models, I am slowly making my way through this resource (https://web.stanford.edu/~peastman/statmech/phasetransitions.html) to learn more :) The way I have learned about them, I look at Ising Models as a graph where the node states can be statistically predicted based on spin states of magnetic dipole. It turns out natural phenomena (such as phase transitions, magnetic fields), as well as computational problems like combinatorial optimization can be represented with the Ising Model. In relation to the research, we used the energy of the system as an optimization function to map NP-Hard and NP-Complete problems onto, reasoning that the graph structure can be compatible with hardware systems that are already buff for ML (et voila, slap a neural network onto it!).
Media
I have watched Bottoms (I'm a budding Rachel Sennott fan after Shiva Baby) and enjoyed the ridiculousness of it. How was Drive Away Dolls -I've been thinking of watching it! Does Teresa have a top-movies list, as I think our movie taste may align (sample size N = 3).
Currently, I am still reading Dune (our book club at work has serendipitously chosen it as well, though most of them had read it "many years ago in high/middle school"), Additionally, I am reading Wind, Sand, and Stars. For Dune, I am still diligently plodding through the world building and name-dumping exposition (having never watched the movie, I am going in blind). The lyricism of Wind, Sand, and Stars caught me off guard (though I should have seen it coming given The Little Prince), but the exploration of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's life through his passion for flying makes consulting a dictionary every few pages tolerable (or maybe French is just inherently more romantique /s). So far, it reminds me of Roald Dahl's Going Solo.
The African folklore booth had some books that were indeed in the vein of Percy Jackson in that modern characters were inserted with African deities. Though not present at the booth (since it is a retelling of Arthurian legends combined with African American spiritual traditions -rootwork), the Legendborn series is one that I really enjoy as well.
Thank you for sharing about Little Blue Encyclopedia! Let me know if there are more thoughts on it if more progress has been made (np if not, though).
Wheels and Friends
"Flavors of resuming and growing" are apt words to describe the nature of friendship with Ant. My disorientation comes from the discrepancy between my high school image of his persona, versus the more up-to-date iteration that I've slowly been seeing. I think the high school friendship was a typical one of proximity, mutual friends, and an obsession with the same webtoons, whereas the post-grad one is built on common interests (biking, running, cars) and similar experiences at this point in life. In terms of intensity, I am determined to keep it very low-grade and preferably hobby-oriented, as I suspect a lot of positive/sparkly feelings may be conflated with my general enthusiasm for the weekend (Susan literally laughed out loud when I said this; Iris suggested AB-testing on a weekday).
Do you have any friends with a similar relationship dynamic where you might have had to reconcile past with present versions?
I've recently switched to a road bike (acquired off craigslist), and I have the exact same concern as yours (in relation to motorcycles) in that actuating the brakes is actually kind of painful with small hands. We did some city biking around SF this past weekend, and I noticed that I was riding a lot more cautiously on the downhills, for fear of not being able to stop as quickly given my lack of grip strength in pulling the brake levers if my hands are on the hoods of the drop bars.
How was your trip down to LA? Was the drive up on the I-5 tolerable in the Camry?
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We went to SF to watch T100, a professional triathlon race. |
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Lots of interesting fancy bike designs. This one lacks a seat tube, as it sits on the top tube. |
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| Bike 1, Bike 2, Bike 3 |
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| We biked up Twin Peaks, as well as a few other hills in SF. |
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Visited a bicycle co-op called The Bike Kitchen. They were very friendly in telling us about the workspace and advising us on bike maintenance basics. Also conveniently located next to Tartine :3 |
New York Recap
A quick, but sweet trip to the Big Apple, as I escaped from the other big apple.
Day 1: Hong Kong cafe in Chinatown, walking the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, running in Central Park, cookies from Levain.
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| HK Cafe |
Day 2: Bagels and lox at Barney Greengrass, the Highline, hiding from the pouring rain with the rest of New York at the Met. I especially appreciated the Central Asian art section, as I don't think I've seen a lot of it before. My favorite piece was The Ceiling (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451373), as I liked the geometry as well as the historical mush of Islamic, Sephardic, and Christian influence. Other favorites were this really beautiful room (https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/islamic-art/damascus-room), and this exhibit that juxtaposed art from the Ottoman empire and modern day Turkish artists (https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/islamic-art/modern-artists-ottoman-past) -I was surprised to see a lot of Chinese styles in the Ottoman porcelain (silk road I suppose).
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| The Ceiling. |
Day 3: Turtles at Central Park, really yummy Korean tofu (no pictures unfortunately) at Cho Dang Gol.
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| Turtles in Central Park. |
I indeed enjoy bossa nova and musical numbers, and watching The Great Gatsby on Broadway was the highlight of the trip. I was surprised to love Eva Noblezada's stage-talking voice as much as her singing voice (impeccable), but hearing Jeremy Jordan belt out his hopelessly-in-love ballad ("For Her"-I'll send a better link when the album is released) was my favorite vocal piece. The lighting and stage design were as glamorous and extravagant as the roaring 20's, and I was surprised to see actual cars being driven on stage. Samantha Pauly (as Jordan Baker) was also girl-bossing very admirably, and I thought that she was leaning into a queer subtext until I was reminded of her romance plot-line with Nick (:skull-emoji).
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| Three bridges on the way back. |
Rapid Fire
My toxic personality trait was being Debbie Downer (I forgot the exact breakdown).
O: 4.67 / C: 2.83 / E: 2.33 / A: 3.83 / N: 2.33
Congrats on finishing the SF semester, and good luck to the Berkeley one!
Looking forward to June 23rd,
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[https://open.spotify.com/track/1lnWb1e7XWFBnwiKmBq9ZS?si=96f04ac90343475a]