2025-02-05
The first month of the year has been memorable. We got sick on the new year’s eve, we think it was COVID. Awful stuff, led to a mild bronchitis. Then our daughter started going to daycare, which has resulted in additional sickness updates to the houshold. Not fun, but we count our blessings, I am off on baby-bonding leave, and ain’t no better bonding than caring for her through this with 100% empathy.
Because of this sickness, I’ve not been able to lift or run as much as I’d like to, but there’s some slow progress. I hit new personal bests on the squat and bench press: 1x120 kg and 1x100 kg respectively. The latter had been a goal for a bit. Next goals: Squat 3x120kg and bench 3x100. My clean technique had a step improvement after I realized that the truly explosive part of the movement is ripping under the bar, not the hip drive that sends the bar up.
Like many Indian expats, I’ve been following US politics closely. One big insight for me was how a even a popular government can be tossed out of office if it fucks too much with the powers that run the economy. The constant threat to regulate up and coming tech, an outlook to doing things “safely” without actually defining what safe means, or without regard to the market-oriented culture that make the US a great breeding ground for successful businesses, did not seem to go well with the capitalist elite. Even with those who used to vote Democrat. I do think the Left has a lot to answer for for this failure. It has gone from a liberal, freedom-oriented culture to groupthink, no-debating-over-wrong-topics over the last decade or so. It is clear that AI is going to see an accelerated development across the world. India, like China, must develop its own moat here.
I have a new interest in philosophy, especially questions around morality, nature of knowledge. Above all, it tends to demand a certain structure on one’s thinking which is very useful and transfers well to day-to-day decision making. I’ve also been deeply enjoying linear algebra as a subject in and of itself, even though I’d started to refresh myself on the topic to understand the math behind transformers and quantum computing better. I have also used this time off work to get fluent with tech I don’t get to use at work: Kubernetes, Docker, new age editor wars (there’s VSCode, Zed and a million AI-assisted editors/IDEs). Also as I’ve been writing a ton of Go, I like the language a overall, but I still think some things are more difficult than necessary.
Also starting late last year, I’ve been working on anger. I’m not a destructive person, but tend to get mild-to-moderate pissed at the smallest situations if they are of the Right Shape. Only after my daughter’s birth did I realize truly that this only takes away from my enjoyment of the world. So with step one, the acknowledgement of the problem, out of the way, I’ve made progress in developing my own toolkit to defer expression of anger, which usually leads to its dissipation. I don’t know if it works well yet, and so I’m not yet ready to write about it.
I have decided to give a good shot to dressing well (well, at least better). I enjoy X threads from @dieworkwear, and decided that I can at least try to put together my next shopping bag with some more intention.
Well so much so far, looking forward to the rest of the year. It’s going to be good.