AI

Leer in with an initial skepticism: the jump from trad RNNs to attention-only was not — could not be — that dramatic, right? A tired argument, I know, but I'm setting the stage. Continue on with a more formal (but still limited) criticism: induction does not produce knowledge. The pig that gets fed every day thinks nothing of the axe replacing the pail. Ninety-eight, 99, 100 (°C) and yet the temperature in the kettle does not continue. You can't always follow the trend to the next bit, and so

Arthur, My Cousin and Me

I don’t know how to detangle myself from Arthur. What follows is something like half him, half me. It’s more journal entry than elegy, but it’s what I’ve got. Remember this if and when you get to the end. To start with, what I'm thinking and feeling: I felt like I knew Arthur, up until now. Then I heard what others had to say and saw what others had to feel, and I realized I wasn't in as much of his inner circle as I thought. His death exposed the truth of my more recent position

A Few Memories of Bob Jones

Us grandkids called him Papa. It’s sort of absurd how many eulogies I’ve had to write recently, and there’s something obscene about how thoughts from one period of loss might be relevant to another. Your gut tells you that you shouldn’t compare, that every experience with life should be unique and pristine. But having reflected on death, love, and family so often as of late, I’ve found some repeating patterns. The first I’ll mention is that: grief is rarely the predictable, black-veiled, tear

Eulogy for Pappou

Adamos Georgiou has passed away. Finally, he is allowed to rest. The obvious and uncomfortable irony of trying to memorialize him now is that he’s been gone, in truth, for a long time. The mind of the man who passed away was not that of the man who created his legacy, my family’s legacy. It is a harsh thing to point out in such a sensitive setting, but my pappou’s late condition is necessary to note in order to properly prioritize the simple, tragic, and relatively short-lived character of his

Eulogy for Yiayia

Death is difficult. It’s hard to think about, it’s hard to watch, and it’s hard to experience. On top of all that, it’s hard to be honest about. What do you say? When my Grandma Annie died I was 20. I had lost a loved one before, but never as an adult. Losing someone as a kid is intense, but also kind of cartoonish. When you’re a kid the future is completely unknown anyway, so while a violent change in plans is rough, your plans aren’t that developed to begin with. It’s easier

Quit

Social media is a middle school cafeteria. Political post’s possible outcomes: people who already agree with you nod their head. People who don’t agree with you make themselves known. People gracefully change their minds. With some exceptional charity let’s assume you convince everyone to be on the same page, and we all end up thinking that it’s appropriate for players to (not) stand during the anthem. Then what? Nothing. Superficial problems inspire surface-level solutions. We find something e

Aaron's Epitaph

What do you write about when someone you truly loved dies? Should you write anything at all? Do you write about grief? About how experiencing it changes the more you do it and with age? About how, at least for me, it goes from an uninterrupted frustrated inconsolable sadness, stuttering in air between snot and tears and sobs; to more of a pallet of emotions and ideas? A battle over whether the things you’re thinking are appropriate. Whether you’re sad enough. Whether you’re a sociopath for *no

greatness and fame

greatness and fame. some people are famous ‘cause they’re great. some people are great, but they’re not famous. others are famous and suck. most are neither famous nor great. i once was walking down the street in Chelsea, passed a fancy hotel and saw a mob of people screaming at the increasingly shrinking space between the building’s entrance and a black SUV. i asked one of the crowd’s 13 year old lemmings who she was screaming for and why. she told me it was none of my fucking business. guess

The Zen of a Shitty Crowd

I recently went to a show with a shitty crowd. An outdoor venue with people sitting on the floor of the pit, pissed that others could be so rude as to think grooving in front of them was somehow appropriate. Rage that the rail didn’t have at least five feet of space per person. Disgust that a shoe or two might of been stepped on, or worse that their picnic-blanket-colonization of the limited real estate was being disregarded. Others leaving during the set, returning with entire cafeteria tr

Re: Humans Need Not Apply

In response to the video titled, Humans Need Not Apply [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&feature=youtu.be], originally posted as a comment in an online conversation with a friend: A few things come to mind whenever I hear these kind of points being made. Most of them are abstract day dreams with a lot of hand waving and unsubstantiated assumptions, but they’re fun to talk about none the less, so here it goes: Economies deal with the systems for distributing and producing goods and s

Brands

Brands are powerful. They’re convenient containers in which we can easily pack up and pass around dense information. But there’s a catch: information loss. We throw away depth in exchange for efficiency. What does “McDonalds” mean? What does “The Swastika” symbol mean? What does “Middle Class” mean? Most arguments are the result of mis-communication; conflicting assumptions about the fundamentals of the topic being discussed. You call yourself pro-choice. I call myself pro-life. We both ass

Who Cares?

No one cares thatGary Clark Jr [https://www.facebook.com/GaryClarkJr]is black. He still shreds. No one cares thatAllen Stone [https://www.facebook.com/allenstone]is white. He’s still got soul. No one cares thatNeil Young [https://www.facebook.com/NeilYoung]is pushing 70. He’s still innovating. No one cares thatBrandon Niederauer “TAZ” [https://www.facebook.com/Branonniederauer]is eleven. He’s still skilled. No one cares thatTedeschi Trucks Band [https://www.facebook.com/DerekAndSusan]is lead

The Holidays

I was walking from Penn. to work today, like I do everyday, but this morning was especially nice. It was cold, the sidewalks were icy and sprinkled with old snow and new salt, and the sky was perfectly blue and clear. After about 15 minutes of walking, I went into a coffee shop to get some coffee. I opened the door to the place and right as I did I got that great relieving feeling you get from walking into a heated room after being out in the cold; when warmth envelops your cold face, evaporati

Why I Read

I started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace today. I bought the book a few months ago after having seen it mentioned a few times in random articles and having heard Stephen King recommend it. Now, I’ve never read anything by Stephen King. By chance, I had come across some interview he’d given where he mentioned the book, and knowing that he is a popular author and having liked what he was saying at the time (I don’t remember what it was about), I momentarily – and superficially – va

Cynic's Antidote

Just got back from the Mountain Jam and Bonnaroo music festivals, and I’m so happy. I was thinking today after work, about how fun it was running around on Hunter Mountain in the rain and the Bonnaroo farm in the heat, and also how almost all of the people I met were so loving to me and similarly interested in the things I liked. The daydream continued throughout my walk to the train and I had a bit of a personal revelation: If you’re attracted to someone – anyone – then “theeverybody” can’t b

Faith In The World

I’m in the process of reading “Style; Lessons in Clarity and Grace”. It’s a book about how to create good prose, focusing on a set of tips that tend to produce rich and impactful writing, and by providing examples that illustrate each point. Some of those examples are obviously crafted for the purpose of demonstrating the author’s ideas, but others were taken from already existing and excellent pieces of literature. One such quote was not only a masterpiece of English, but also contained a powe

Note to Self.

If you’re constantly looking at yourself in the mirror, expecting some change in appearance to produce a change in confidence, then you’re indirectly associating appearance with excellence. Excellence — whether it’s physical, conversational, sexual, or otherwise — is not correlated to appearance. This is my conflict, because I’ve always been self-conscious of my appearance (I struggle with weight), yet at the same time hold it in such low rank among what I consider to be indicative of awesomenes

Thought or Emotion; Which Comes First?

I’m having trouble telling if emotions precede or follow events, when those events are things you’re remembering or anticipating – in other words, thinking about the past or the future. For stuff that’s happeningnow, it seems pretty obvious that emotions follow the events. For example, you land a new trick, you feel good; you don’t follow through on something, you feel bad. But for things that have already happened or for things you’re expecting to happen, it seems to me to be more of a “chicken

Jack White.

Jack White is an interesting fellow. I've never met him, but I've seen him. He got me thinking… among other things. I got the chance to see one of his shows this past Sunday, and initially wasn’t too stoked on it. I had had a long night the night prior, seeing Neil Young, The Black Keys, and The Foo Fighters tear it down in Central Park — life is rough, what can I say. Anyway, I got the call from a friend that he had the extra Jack White tickets, and I had always wanted to see him; I mulled

Labels, Love, and Sex.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and how intense they can be. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how there are different labels for popular types of relationships, and how certain fringe-type relationships don’t have labels and are harder to talk about, precisely. For example, most of us have some people in our lives that we would label as family; specifically, you might have a brother or a sister, a mom and a dad, etc. There are other people that are labeled as friends. Others

Optical Implants and Evolution

Here’s some cool technology [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/sight-for-sore-eyes-optical-prosthetic-mimics-retina-functionality/] : an optical implant that trans-codes visual stimulus into the format that the cells in your eye expect, rather than just increasing the magnitude of the signal. The technology is in its infancy right now, but it sets the stage for some really awesome progress, in the realm of helping the disabled, but also enhancing the average. Imagine being able to replace

Ben Graham and High Frequency Trading

Just read Ben Graham’s book, “The Intelligent Investor” which taught me a lot about investing, specifically about the logical divide between speculation and value-investing. It was really insightful. Armed with that knowledge, and having my curiosity stirred by all the opportunities being offered to software developers in High Frequency Trading, I started thinking about HFT field and how it relates to Graham’s principles. Trying to make a long story short: given the little I know about HFT, the

First things, first.

There have been a lot of topics on my writing queue lately, but wanted to start off with an idea I’ve been ping-ponging with my rediscovered friend, Jude Safo. The topic in question is choiceand how it manifests itself. In a recent conversation, Jude brought up this Freudian principle: the idea that the unconscious mind comes into contact with a near infinite amount of stimuli, filters it, and then propagates high level concepts to our conscious mind. Thinking about it from a software engineer’

Facebook

I’m trying to figure out how to use Facebook non-narcassitically. I feel like a large part of what I’ve recently posted has been too “look-at-me” and shallow… I think Facebook is a tool, and, aside from logistical stuff like event planning, it’s best used to share beautiful, mutually beneficial, and inspiring things: meaningful photos, art, yet-to-be-answers questions, postulates, etc. Too often, though, I use it to as a naive way to satisfy a craving for self-affirmation and an outlet for pri