augustradjoe's stream

"I cannot remember the books l've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you have a STEM undergraduate degree from a top-30 US school (Ivy, UCs, Rice etc), you're so incredibly lucky you don't even know. There's children born to Russian Oligarchs that are less fortunate. Less to do with pedigree or quality of education, but if you know, you know.

For intl women's day, I tagged along with my girlfriend to a local GDG Boston event. The keynote by the fantastic Noelle Russell put things into perspective. She quotes this poetry attributed to Ralph Emerson, but originally is by Bessie Anderson Stanley, goes as follows.

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded."

As someone obsessed with improving the livelihood of people, I'm rethinking parts of my basic ideologies. Wonderful talk, but this quote and the story behind it stuck with me (women being undercredited). Also had me thinking about ethics of AI, which I didn't think about too deeply before.

A difference between American self-help, and my personal motivation is American self-help raises status of self. Mark Mason says, "Statistically, a normal person is physically unhealthy, emotionally anxious and financially in debt, fuck being normal" as a way to motivate you to do your own thing. This sounds horrific to me, in that I believe people have altruistically and greedily, both improved human lives, I am on this planet to help improve the general livelihood of others too, why else am I born in privilege, given this opportunity. This might involve short term getting rich so I can allocate capital efficiently to causes I think are good. But that's the subtle difference.

"There's a right way to do things, and there's a wrong to do things" - paraphrasing from A Man Called Ove.

Since Google updated the UI (a fantastic IQ test on security for the startup-folks who are saying "Google spent 2 months rewriting CSS" by the way) - and updated the callback URL, and my password managers refuse to believe I am going to use Google products.

Was planning to demo dirtypipe container escapes in my talk tomorrow, but my Docker got jacked up last minute.

One of the reasons why there is so much hatred, out in public, on social media platforms, is because it isn't publicly acceptable to be a bigot, and people live alone, and past 8PM, in suburbia, there isn't really a lot to do on a daily basis. You end up becoming a child of the algorithm, and end up producing content that creates rage, and thus money for the big tech mafia. The brain is programmable.

Denver was great. Vast big flatlands, stores large as a millionaire's house in Boston, friendly people who got me to talk, and not a looming undertone of bigotry that I've come to associate with many parts of the world.