From now until at least the end of March, I guarantee that posts will release biweekly!
If you want to vote on my new blog name, skip to the bottom!
This is an updates post, linking to media reviews for books, movies, and tv shows I’ve consumed, examining my goals for fall term and winter break and to what degree I accomplished them, and outlining my goals for the first half of spring term.
Media Reviews (linked)
…why does there not exist a reviewing platform for tv shows or podcasts. Or just a reviewing platform for everything. …ugh.
New Books: Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (rationalism for irl use), The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (opposing arguments on genetic editing), The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy (why aliens will look a lot like Earth species, plus why ems will adhere to principles of natural selection), The Sparrow (Jesuits go to space, crazy interesting xenoanthropology), Xenolinguistics (what it sounds like) and The Immortal King Rao (Indian CS immigrant is futurist benevolent tyrant Steve Jobs).
New Movies: Whale Rider (incredibly beautiful, top 5 favorite movies of all time), Scott Pilgrim vs The World (lmao), Borg vs McEnroe (what it sounds like), Encanto (Coco but worse), 10 Cloverfield Lane (mid psychological thriller but, maybe, aliens?), The Secret World of Arrietty (human beans are mostly good but sometimes bad), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (surprisingly rly good!!), Saltburn (good but… ew), and The Boy and the Heron (amazing after the first 30 minutes).
New TV Shows: Arcane (5/5 amazing sorry I ever doubted it), Survivor 45 (lmao), three episodes of Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (SOOOOO good), San Junipero (pretty good), and USS Callister (SOOOO good one kind of weird plot hole but didn’t matter), the last two episodes of The Gilded Age (much better than expected! but mostly good because of why I was watching it).
New Podcasts: Homecoming s1 (so good!) and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: The Albert Summers Matter. (Both of these were for a class but WOW are podcasts/radio shows a much deeper medium than I’d thought. Really high fidelity AND lot of space to imagine. Plus I don’t have to open my eyes!)
Goals
Fall Term
It was my first semester of college, and I was prepared to slack a little. I knew my personal projects were going to take a hit, and I wanted to give myself time for adjusting to new classes and friends and a different way of life. This meant a certain amount of wasted time was inevitable, but oh well. Now I hopefully know what works and what doesn’t, and going into next semester I’ll be better.
Basically, my goals were much more vague than I’m used to. Stuff like:
Make good friends and connections
Don’t do too much work you don’t have to do
Figure out when/where you get what type of work done best
Figure out what campus groups have the best vibes for you
I think I accomplished all of these. Minor setbacks included a slight November-Rule scare and me attempting to do too many clubs—both failure modes that I probably could’ve predicted epistemically looking back. But I think I overcame each pretty well so it’s fine. Major unexpected successes include finding a girl I’m willing to watch The Gilded Age with and finding CORTEX, where incredible vibes and extremely impressive people can be found. And breakdancing, although I wish I leaned more into that later in the term. Breakdancing is fun.
Winter Break
I was very ambitious during winter break. My top-level goals were:
Write enough blog posts so that I can publish until spring break biweekly.
Revamp my youtube channel and edit enough videos so that I can publish until spring break biweekly.
Create a pai sho strategy youtube channel with my brother, and edit enough videos so that we can publish weekly from the launch of the ATLA live action on February 22nd to spring break.
Make an Akkadian rap music video.
Learn basic python.
Figure out what to do with my summer.
Write a second and third draft of my 25-page short story for CORTEX.
So what have I accomplished?
I have written enough blog posts. My brother and I have scripted more than enough short-form videos (now we’re thinking reels/shorts/tiktoks) and started editing them for our PaiShoBros channel. I have written and recorded an Akkadian rap (still need to do the video part though). I have learned basic python skills. I have… kind of figured out the options for my summer. And I have written a second and third draft of my CORTEX story, plus a whole other story/poem/piece of flash fiction, an interactive html poem which I’m very proud of.
Basically, I did almost everything except revamp my youtube channel. This was pretty much because my youtube channel was the task I saved for last—knowing that once I started it I would be consumed and unable to do other tasks in between writing and editing and recording youtube videos. Welp! I guess this says something about my priorities, and I’m still very happy with how break turned out.
Spring Term
My goals for spring term largely depend on a) what classes I end up taking and b) whether CORTEX is publishing another issue. If I get into Narrative Podcasts, writing narrative podcasts will be a top-level goal. If CORTEX decides to go for another issue this year, writing stories for that will also be a top-level goal. Otherwise my goals will mostly consist of habits, at least until Spring Break when I reevaluate.
Habits I want to foster:
Regularly practicing breakdancing on my own in the JE dance studio, rather than just with Yale Breaking.
Stricter bedtime, doing a lot of work before my 11am classes, regular siestas.
Regularly journaling but not too much.
Reading every night before bed (could be substituted with audiobooks or narrative podcasts, we’ll see).
Writing a new blog post every week.
If I don’t get into Narrative Podcasts and CORTEX only has one issue this year, weekly creative writing.
Cleaning my camera roll every weekend.
Not caring about getting a B or C in my credit/d/fail class (likely either Primate Evolution and Behavior or Akkadian II).
…potentially, consistently tweeting. I need to decide whether I actually want this to be a goal (I need a way for it not to take up absurd amounts of time).
I also want to finish up on my goals for this winter:
recording and publishing pai sho videos
filming and publishing Akkadian rap music video
actually figuring out my summer plans
And that’s it! See you at spring break!
Oh yeah I’m also thinking about changing my blog name because I don’t think it has accurately reflected my posts since… before I got on substack. I’ll also poll on twitter and among friends. I left Boa Trees in there because if it somehow gets an overwhelming majority of votes I’ll keep it, but I kind of doubt that’ll happen.
also i would really really welcome name suggestions (in comments or contact me :)
(approval voting pls)