Apoorv Upreti - Observations (Page 2)

Dominican Republic Travel Notes, Pt 2: Sargassum

I learned about the Caribbean's Sargassum problem when I was planning the DR trip. Sargassum is a brown seaweed with little berry like pods that help it to float. Sargassum. Source: WikiMedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sargassum_weeds_closeup.

sabbatical

Dominican Republic Travel Notes, Part 1

I'm half-way through a 10-day trip to the Dominican Republic. Here's a random collection of things that stood out to me: * Relations with Haiti. The DR shares a border with Haiti. The DR is the richer country, with a GDP

Dailies

Caplan On Home-schooling

The idea of home-schooling has always felt weird to me. Although I agree with critics of traditional schooling that schools are quite inefficient at teaching kids, schools provide a social life that seems really hard to replicate with home-schooling. Bryan Caplan recently wrote [https:

Dailies

Nikon Small World 2021

Nikon recently announced the winners of its 2021 Small World micro-photography contest. Some really great photos in here: * Snowflake [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/snowflake] * Louse Body [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/rear-leg-claw-and-respiratory-trachea-of-a-louse] * Slime Mold [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-photomicrography-competition/slime-mold-comatricha-nigra]

biology

Empty Red-Blood Cells

I'd read somewhere that red-blood cells don't have any of the typical cellular machinery in them; no nucleus for example. Turns out this is true only for mammals. This Twitter thread [https://twitter.com/c0nc0rdance/status/1434195459996798978] goes over some

Dailies

Cartoon Fan Theories

The Fandom wiki has interesting fan theories about the hidden meanings behind some of my favourite childhood cartoon TV shows: Pinky and the Brain [https://fantheories.fandom.com/wiki/Pinky_and_the_Brain] > Pinky is the Genius And The Brain is Insane >

books

What I'm Reading, September 2021 Edition

You can find the May 2021 Edition here [https://apoorvupreti.com/what-im-reading-may-2021-edition/]. Books The Life of Samuel Johnson [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/688826.The_Life_of_Samuel_Johnson], James Boswell. 30% finished. The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an

Dailies

The Sabbatical

I'm taking some time off work and starting a sabbatical starting in a few days. The plan is to do a multi-month tour of Latin America, starting with a one month island-hopping trip to the Caribbean. Here's my rough itinerary,

Going Daily Again

For most of 2020 I made daily posts to this blog. Starting 2021 I decided to trial doing weekly posts instead, hoping that would give me a chance to focus on longer form content. That experiment … didn't go very well. I found

software

Steering Big Ships

My last two years as a Software Engineer have been mainly about figuring out how to drive big, multi-person, cross-team projects that will take months / years before they are done. Some things I've learned from this experience 1. How to get started

books

What I'm Reading, May 2021 Edition

You can find the April 2021 Edition here [https://apoorvupreti.com/what-im-reading-april-2021-edition/]. Books The Life of Samuel Johnson [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/688826.The_Life_of_Samuel_Johnson], James Boswell. 25% finished; has held my interest so far. I'm picking

AI

Fun With GPT-3

Last week I finally got access to GPT-3. Asking for facts First off, GPT-3 does a pretty good job when you want factual information: At least 50% of the facts here seem to be true!Asking for recipes The model doesn't do

History

Remembering The Telegraph

I vaguely remember learning about a defunct medium of communication called the telegraph when I was in school. Recently it struck me that I knew almost nothing about this technology that had been the fastest medium of communication available for almost a hundred years

Systems

How Understanding The Principal-Agent Problem Can Change Your Life

#1 I used to come up with long, complicated narratives to explain to estate agents why I was only willing to pay a certain amount for a flat they showed me that I wanted to rent: I couldn't afford it, the carpets

books

What I'm Reading, April 2021 Edition

You can find the March 2021 Edition here [https://apoorvupreti.com/what-im-reading-march-2021-edition/]. Books Ducks, Newburyport [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43412920-ducks-newburyport]; Lucy Ellmann. Critically acclaimed novel written as a single sentence in a stream-of-consciousness style. Read a dozen pages before I realized there

food

Productivity Growth And Olive Oil Production

I was wondering how olive oil made recently, and curiosity led me to contrast methods of production over the past two thousand years: An olive press from Biblical times: An old-fashioned olive oil mill (unclear how old it really is though): Large scale modern

economics

The Origins Of Money

An article on the origins of money [https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/] from the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Fascinating because it ties together insights from evolutionary biology, economics, and human nature to explain why even ancient societies needed some standardized medium of exchange, i.e., money.

History

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism was a primitive computer, created in Greece over two thousand years ago to predict the positions of planets. Researchers at UCL made this fascinating video that covers some recent discoveries they made about the machine: Besides the fact that Greek astronomers

books

What I'm Reading, March 2021 Edition

You can find the Feb 2021 edition here [https://apoorvupreti.com/what-im-reading-feb-2021-edition/]. Books Working in Public, [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54140556-working-in-public?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=2ATLCzClid&rank=1] Nadia Eghbal. About how the community behind open-source

Flash Fiction

The Odds Man [Flash Fiction #3]

#1 Exactly at 9:00 on a cold winter morning on a busy London street, W walked out the door of his townhouse. As he started to walk down the short flight of steps, he had a vague feeling of unease. He was forgetting

computer-science

Paper: The Design Philosophy of DARPA Internet Protocols

This paper [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-design-philosophy-of-the-DARPA-internet-Clark/66e35b497d679dddefccc50005a5fd6986053667] covers some of the design decisions made in designing the internet protocols. Short but insightful. Here are some of the highlights: The goal of the internet was to connect smaller networks: > The top level

AI

Don't Close Your Eyes To AGI

In the paper Concrete Problems In AI Safety [https://apoorvupreti.com/concrete-problems-in-ai-safety/], there's a great example of how AIs can evade objectives they are asked to accomplish. A cleaner robot is asked to vacuum the dirt it sees in the room. It

books

What I'm Reading, Feb 2021 Edition

You can find the Jan 2021 edition here [https://apoorvupreti.com/what-im-reading-jan-2021-edition/]. Books Continued my Agatha Christie winter binge: * Spider's Web [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16346.Spider_s_Web]. Ok 3/5. * The Mystery of the Blue Train [https://www.

economics

The Use Of Knowledge In Society

Years ago, as a recent graduate with an engineering degree, I found myself drawn towards technocratic solutions to the problems I saw around me: * Too much corruption? Appoint an anti-corruption commission that will focus on finding and prosecuting corrupt officials. * Bread costs too much?

Flash Fiction

27 Defenestrations of Sirius Grey [Flash Fiction #2]

defenestrate: verb; to throw (a person or thing) out of a window. On the last few occasions the roof of his red Ford Fiesta had broken his fall, but this time he fell onto the windscreen. He heard it crack as his body dashed

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