Aftermath

There have been very few times that I can name that have dramatically affected the trajectory of my life. Events that I turn over and over again in my head to try to make sense of. Events that I can knowingly point to and say “this is where a new Lilly began”

Angsting about CMS and Robotics

It’s “ethics week” in Petey and Mehitabel’s “Networked Cultures class” and I accidentally wrote 2.5 benkrafts on this prompt. I guess if you haven’t talked to me in a while, it’s a pretty good summary of my screaming for the last two years.

inb4 Ava gives me yet more grief for not using my insane fellowship money for just fucking off and actually just doing CMS full time, aka. “When was the last time you touched a robot?”

DQ1: Read deTar. Share an occasion where you have felt the terms of your professional or educational success were in conflict with your ethics. Can you apply this advice practically?

Maturing Research Interests

Lately, in both my research and personal endeavors, I’ve definitely felt like I’ve grown up and gained a lot more maturity / discernment in what I do. Ever since I’ve started graduate school in September 2017, I don’t feel like I’m flailing around trying to cram things into my head as fast as possible, but I now have time to think and plan and really dig deep in what I actually want to devote my life to – for the short term of 5+ years, for the long term of my entire research career. I feel a lot more secure in my own identity / self-expression and a lot more ready to explore.

For litchin@, what this means now is that a lot of queued up posts that I had been planning on writing now no longer seem super interesting or relevant. I really like Mehitabel’s phrasing when we were streaming The Stanley Parable together: “Now that I’m no longer in middle school, I no longer feel the need to label everything as meta. I can dig in a little deeper and say ‘yup, this is meta. What effect is it creating?’ rather than being ‘it’s cool because it’s meta’ “.

Contemplation on Jeopardy

I’ve finally finished cleaning out my aggregation of all of my Jeopardy observes into one post, so it’s time to share them out.

Posts can be found here and my compilation of social media comments can be found here. Passwords are [redacted – please contact me if interested]

The Unfortunate History of the “Kek” Article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kek_(mythology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kek_(mythology)&action=history

I looked at the history because the 2016 election (and 4chan shenanigans) basically catapulted this obscure Egyptian god into internet fame. (Wikipedia version here)

CSAIL’s Song

Floor Dreyfus Five, thy postdoc lies
Of his drinks are caffeinate;
Bloodshot orbs that were his eyes;
Written code won't terminate,
Making loops quite intricate.
Going down the infinite,
PIs ask for "Progress, yet?"
Knock-knock.
Hark! now I hear them - knock-knock, "nyet".

with apologies to Shakespeare