I’ve always been curious about many things. But never very persistent with any of them. By profession and primary interest — I’m into software development, and I like building things just for the love of it. All things distributed systems, with a specialty in AWS. Lately I’ve been learning AI inference engineering.
interests
By other interests — I’m into history, physics, geography, geopolitics, personal fitness, space, biology, all things technology, mathematics, and many other things that are hard to capture here. A few of them deserve more than a list entry.
history
I hated the course textbooks (or maybe just the way my schools taught them). What I love are the stories, and the rhymes you can hear once you’ve read enough of it — the ups and downs, the fragility of our civilization, the same human patterns showing up through every kind of boom and bust. The collective behaves in this constant way, and yet shoots of exceptions keep coming out of it.
physics
That pale blue dot on the vast map that is us has always grounded me in the vastness of what we call the world. I keep pondering whether it’s just us on this little planet or whether there are more out there — most of the time I feel like there’s more. I have a theory that we still don’t really know what created us. Not even a theory — I think that much is mostly proved. What’s left is speculation grounded in some evidence. I’d like to clear out my clouds on that from first principles, as they say.
geography & geopolitics
We tend to assume the maps we have today have been constant through time. They have been anything but.
And geopolitics is the constant hum that’s always going around — none of us can really hear it until things break. It’s global, and at the same time very, very human. The impact two human beings can have on the global order is fairly underestimated, and reading geopolitics through a human lens is something that interests me very much. I think it’s underrated.
personal fitness
More recently, I’ve been working on my health. I’ve only done it in patches so far — three, four months at a time — but the last patch has really got me hooked, especially the lifting, sleep, and diet aspects of it. I won’t say I’m very good at them, but I’ve certainly been getting better.
What has flipped in my head is looking at my body as a distinct entity from me — the most loyal, closest, most intimate friend I will ever have.
Sleep is something I often struggle with. I blame Twitter for that — though I have a love-hate relationship with it.
all things technology
I think technology is one of the seeds our civilization sprawled from. It’s increasingly intermingled with capitalism, but the two are very separate things — throughout history, people have done technology without making money off of it. Capitalism has been the uplifter, though: of technology, and of human civilization at large. It has had some not-so-good side effects on other species and civilizations, but for humans, at least, it has consistently — over longer periods of time — helped us grow and live better. And that is still really underselling it.
Technology is a broader word, but I think it’s everywhere: there’s nothing around us today that cannot be attributed to some technology invented or discovered sometime back in our histories. These days computers are nearly synonymous with the word, but within technology I’m interested in computers, rockets, energy (particularly nuclear), space tech, weapons (particularly the advanced ones coming out of late), biotech, governance tech — and everything else. This is one area where the breadth of my interest is the widest.
mathematics
Mathematics is the most fundamental core of everything. Everything boils down to it — there’s nothing a human can really truly understand without it, and increasingly, neither can inorganic entities. If we draw the tree of all concepts there are to be learned, I think mathematics would be at the very root of it.
You just understand things better if you have a good grasp of mathematics. With a good base, everything makes much more sense — you have to remember less, because you can reason about things naturally over time.
Within mathematics, there are specific areas I think are more fundamental than the rest. But that’s for later. Maybe a dedicated post.
no way to reach me
By nature I’m quite reticent and introverted — but evidently quite the opposite when in the company of the right types of people. Which is a roundabout way of saying: there is no way to reach me.
This is a one-way door for now. Maybe it opens up later and I add something here, but right now it’s just me writing into the void — until I get comfortable with it, or until people find their way in and enjoy the stay.
Useful, I don’t aspire to be. Enjoyed, I’d rather be. I’m not writing to derive any value whatsoever. I’m writing to cultivate the muscles needed to nurture these interests I’ve always carried but never really pursued.