#picture?

Domestic Sachi 🥰

Happy böéærthdäy to sister dearest. The number goes big-like in the upward direction(?). Blessings bestowed.

Q: What makes you happy?

I think I answered this before with the deeply unsatisfying: I don’t think about it. So I’ll try to give some more specific answers this time. The main thing that comes to mind is that I really enjoy seeing ideas click in people’s heads. That is, when they’re struggling with some concept or problem, and I’m able to give them the insight that they need to understand. This is definitively the best thing about teaching, in my opinion--being directly responsible for enlightenment. It’s a pretty great feeling.

There’s this thing that I’ve observed a bunch--it’s come up recently because I’m attending a conference--where lecturers will basically imitate the cadence of their advisors. For instance, I watched some lectures from Chris Eur in Stanford. He works under the supervision of June Huh, who I have I also observed lecturing, and they have almost the exact same cadence and speaking tempo (here’s a video of him on Numberphile). It’s just really cute to watch.

I know I do this too, because there’s this specific way that one of my supervisors Mike says “too!” that I’ve picked up (or when he’s thinking about something he’ll say “weellll” and move his jaw in this specific way, that I also started doing). I find the whole concept of this really amusing, it’s like this kind of familial bond passed through lecturing styles. This is part of a more broad phenomenon of imitation of people that you like, I suppose, since I think people like to imitate the behavior of their close friends as well (I started saying “thumbs up emoji” and now many of my friends started doing it too). Anyways, that makes me happy.

In case you’re wondering, I think it’s safe to say that I am presently happy, in a broad sense. Although I wouldn’t say I achieve the platonic ideal of happiness taught to us by popular media, in the sense that I believe things can still get better in my life. But nonetheless, my life is pretty great, and I’m lucky to be in my situation.

I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy 14. A lot of my friends have recently been jumping ship, partly because of the horrifying trainwreck at Blizzard, and partly because the hype around ffxiv has been building a lot. It’s pretty great though. I think ffxiv specifically does an incredible job of simulating a “real life hanging out” experience. I spend most of my time at my house, actually, just chilling and putzing around with my friends. Here’s a picture of me.