Sunday, January 12, 2020

Sabtu

Kami menghabiskan waktu seharian dengan Nathan. Mencamil stok makanannya, memakan tteokbokki yang ia masak (dan lalu saya tumpahkan di boneka Bastetnya), membeli gantungan dan lem di Daiso Menteng Huis, menyantap masakan Indonesia untuk makan malam, dan melintasi pusat Jakarta untuk menuju Bundaran HI—tempat kami akhirnya berpisah jalan. Banyak makanan, beragam percakapan. Hari itu menarik (Nathan orangnya menarik).

It had been a long time since we spend a day unstructuredly with other people. We—I—thought our days of unstructured socializing were behind us. We're older: we got things to do, relatives to visit, obligations to fill. So the last time we had long conversations was when we were hiking Ciremai and Gede (so it's been too long). Hiking is ideal for long conversations: we did that with Cori, Laurie, Chantal and Willy at different times. It's not that we can't have interesting conversations while staying put. Now that we have our own place we've had a great time having Akshay, Cesar, Monica, Kunto, Shu Min, and others coming over. Those were nice, but ambling around a city with a friend whom you shared a history were nice too.

Maka saya pulang dengan sekerat rasa sendu. Banyak teman menarik di Jakarta, sementara Boston jauhnya tak terkira. Sayang kita tak bisa memiliki segalanya.


Friday, January 3, 2020

Internet Reading 2019

I read a lot in 2019--as usual, but actually even more so. Other than papers, books (my Goodreads count is the highest ever), I also read plenty of articles on the internet.

Since May 2019, I have been keeping a text file on my desktop to throw in the links to articles I found most interesting and engaging. It grew steadily. Have a look, click on the drop-down triangle. I think you'll find some of them interesting too.

Environment: Global Apathy Toward the Fires in Australia Is a Scary Portent for the Future

More on Environment:


Capitalism, the Left, and Modernity: Questionnaire, a Poem by Wendell Berry

More on this:


China, India, Africa, Australia: A large population of people who play games, buy household goods online, and order food delivery does not make a country a technological or scientific leader.

More on China, India, Africa, Australia:


Nathan J. Robinson: The first time I actually became concerned was when Buttigieg described Harvard Square. There’s a fact about the world outside the Harvard gates that is instantly apparent to most newcomers: It has long had a substantial population of homeless people. [Pete] doesn’t mention seeing injustice. (All About Pete)

More from Current Affairs:


Learning: Why books don’t work

More on Learning


Thinking and Arguing: Strong stances

More on Thinking and Arguing


Uber, Cars, Space: Let's build houses for people, not cars.

More on Uber, Cars, and Space:


Racism, Discrimination: The Common Table by Eileen Chong

More on Racism, Discrimination:
  • The Great Land Robbery - The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms
  • No, The Irish Were Not Slaves Too
  • Hell in the House of God
  • I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
  • Ijeoma Oluo: 'I am drowning in whiteness'
  • Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on Falun Gong practitioners and possibly the Uyghurs
  • What’s Missing From “White Fragility”
  • A Brief History of Racist Soft Drinks
  • The Match, a short story by Colson Whitehead
  • Fascism Has Already Come to America: For Generations of Black Americans, the US Between the End of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement Was a Dystopian State
  • Bari Weiss’s Unasked Questions
  • In Defence of the Bad, White Working Class
  • Not Even Water?


  • Research and Academia: Job market candidates, you need to spend more time editing your abstract and introduction. It will be worth more than your fourth robustness check. Promise.

    More on Research and Academia:
  • But Shouldn’t That Work Against Me?
  • Causal Inference Animated Plot
  • On the academic quantified self
  • Claesbackman's Tips for PhD Students
  • Richard Hamming ``You and Your Research''
  • How to Give an Applied Micro Talk
  • How Can I Academia When My Brain Can't Even?
  • Common statistical tests are linear models (or: how to teach stats)
  • Doing Research
  • Harvard's Job Market Information


  • Marriage, Sexuality, Patriarchy: How My Wife Can Stand Me

    More on Marriage, Sexuality, Patriarchy:
  • What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse
  • 'Did I ever really know him?': the women who married gay men
  • Being asexual
  • Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Recommendation
  • In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream: Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silencing Machine
  • Cash/Consent: The war on sex work


  • Coding: Embrace Your Fallibility: Thoughts on Code Integrity

    More on Coding
  • Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer
  • Writing system software: code comments.
  • Stack Overflow Question Checklist
  • Things You Should Never Do, Part I


  • Writing: No, you probably don’t have a book in you

    More on Writing
  • Resep Meracik Paragraf Pembuka Cerita
  • Journalists on the ‘aha’ moments that changed the way they work
  • Cormac McCarthy’s contribution to the theory of increasing returns
  • Novelist Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great science paper
  • Storygram: Ed Yong’s “North Atlantic Right Whales Are Dying in Horrific Ways”
  • An Interview with Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics
  • Blogging With Extreme Confidence
  • How to Be a Writer: Joy, Suffering, Reading, and Lots and Lots of Writing; 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit
  • How to Design a Better Pitch Deck
  • The YC Seed Deck Template


  • Communicating: Praise is a vitamin

    More on communicating:
  • Skip the small talk (part one)
  • Against Contempt: What is the opposite of the opposite of communication?
  • The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling


  • The Internet: - How can we talk about screen time without knowing what is taking place on the screen? In defense of screen time.

    More on this:


    Science: Can One Earthquake Trigger Another On the Other Side of the World?

    More on Science and Health:


    Presidential Run and US Politics

    More on USA politics:


    Indonesia: Bersepeda Seperti Gunther, Esai Setelah 20 Tahun Reformasi

    More on Indonesia:


    Miscellaneous: When was the last time you had a great conversation? When you overheard yourself saying things you never knew you knew, when you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that found places within you that you thought you had lost, a conversation that continued to sing afterwards for weeks in your mind?

    More Miscellanea: