Vendôme

To comprehend 2024 is to comprehend fleeting moments, and a romanticize them sufficiently.  The Chanin building stands in its auburn limestone glory at the heart of midtown. The low-hanging facades are visible crossing to Grand Central Station, rendering low marine lifeforms: fern-like organisms and tertiary animals crawling about. The Chanin building is the most beautiful when the daybreak radiance reflects into its neighbor, Socony-Mobil building, and all the 1930's warehouse windows have stopped quaking in the aftermath of the strong afternoon winds. These strong decade-long winds bring fortunes benevolent and malevolent.  I have felt the city's electrifying energy from the magnanimity of wistful silence. In California, it was a competition of who is the loudest--- garnering attention and acclamations. Banal tomfoolery bathed in Pacific saltwater deemed fitting. I embraced it. New Yorkers enjoy subtleties of intentional disguise. Suppressed emotions, lowered gazes, and hush...

Impinging upon a full year in New York is a whimsical sentiment, I feel these foreign faces have imprinted a familiar shade on me.  Let me tell you, Reader, of a story when I was 11. Cindy, my only close acquaintance in elementary school in Toronto, had haughtily told her mom in English that Lisa hasn't ever read Nancy Drew nor Geronimo Stilton books. That, in comparison, she has finished both series and enjoyed them.  She knew that I couldn't understand English well enough to answer her articulately in English, much less to read those books. It was my 4th month in the North American continent.  Perhaps it was her effort to impress her mom, or a childish tease at an immigrant's poor English--- she succeeded. Her mom said that her Cindy is the smartest, and some children can't read yet. Cindy's mom wanted to see me hurt, so she said it loud and clear, in Chinese.   But I was the Head Girl in Beijing! My fragile ego felt tremors. (Interestingly, they never warn yo...

"Mimicry is the purest form of appraisal, and replication is the utmost act of idolization" For a very long time I believed that by perfecting a set of moral codes or institutionalized doctrines, I would nimbly align to an superego self. The truth is, these doctrines and codes deem inherently oppressive, and are widely accepted because they are oppressive. By conforming, the mind dulls and dwells in the sweet confines of amorphous hierarchical structure. This structure is very much alike elitist organizations and associations. Much of the world's elitist associations are self-proclaimed, their importance inflated, are prone to pragmatism, and oft lack prudence. Be very careful if you find yourself in such a situation.  Much of the world's population behaves as an enactment, a result, an afterthought of the contemporary social turbulence. What I mean is that, for example, in making strides of great technological advancement to have information dispersal, the adverse ef...

Fanaticism likens an ensnarling Siren's call because this macrocosm feeds upon vehemence  only with my vision pristine and bindings firm can I separate crazed zealotry from evangelism "How do we yearn and strive, subversively--- if we can only convalesce from our circumstances?" no grand orations, momentous sermons, or blandishments sweet Could fatalism ever rival my promises due East Metropolitans in these hushed corridors cajoled the youth to be an anticipator  so that she won't miss the days  of exchanging idiosyncracies under a Camphor

True scholars prefer the clandestine accommodations of secluded chateaux to the ostentatious finance and interlocking corporate consortium They indulge in ambrosia-glazed idols in a Bayreuth opera house And vials with oil of brazilwood, distilled Amazon dew, creme de Java  And I could fill the days with flame-kissed roses, powdered saltwater pearls, essence of lilac---  half-heartedly allude to commentaries that blend in with volumes of Penrose's crowds Revert disillusioned nebulous eyes mine into an exhilarating rhinestone gleam:  "to let the warm light in!"

               A year, introspectively summarized      A primal and gravitational feeling is the feeling of belonging--- though the whole sense of "purpose" is artificial, defined deliberately by people who want others to emulate them. Emulation stunts creativity, just as the proclivity to belong stunts agency. I am delighted by the platform that I am given to practice my agentic self, now and continuously onward.       There will be a time when t he basis of your understanding, you learn, was fabricated---even some of your strongest beliefs need reinterpretation, the very framework under which you operate proves inflexible and restrictive. Perhaps the best remediation strategy then is desensitization of the action-oriented part of your mind. You must compromise scaling for precision.       In January, I wrangled with partial differential equations and AI Safety fundamentals course with BlueDo...

DevOps is a holistic approach to work, spanning the entire software delivery lifecycle, from product conception to delivery. It also encompasses all business functions involved in the software delivery process, from development through to finance, HR, leadership, security, and operations. This has led to the title evolving, with terms such as BizOps, CloudOps, DevSecOps, FinOps, ITOps, NetworkOps, NoOps, and others, growing increasingly common.   The fundamentals of DevOps are people, processes, and products. The flow down starts with requirements, design and code, integrate, test, and operate and maintain. Incorporated contiguously is the agile software development methodology. We can also refer to this methodology as extreme programming (XP), which introduces the practice of continuous integration. Continuous delivery aims to release bug fixes, new features by developing software that is deployable throughout its lifecycle.   Transparency underpins the success of the other c...

A close friend gifted me Rilke's "The Sonnets of Orpheus", and I am compelled to document these sagacious lines. You are what you read, after all.  Second elegy---  "Even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth." Recently a series of happy happenstances led to a long-coveted outcome, and I may not have the appropriate judgments to decipher its future trajectory —  I certainly must regard it intently. Historians have difficulty demarcating one period of time from another, reaching a consensus only blearily. So how do we demarcate our microscopic and noise-infiltrated lives with tags like "pretexts" and "postscripts"? The answer is to change grandly and constantly, to initiate large changes faster than the rate of change life impels upon you. Make sweeping and not seeping changes, thus filtering out noise and quotidian coincidences that the mundane crowds experience.  Third elegy---  "This is what fate means: to be ...

 The AI governance landscape composes of series of standards and regulations that addresses catastrophic risks, AI-assisted bioterrorism, and AI-exacerbated conflict. Some example approaches to address AI risk are: model evaluation, hardware export controls, cautious coalition expansion, privacy-preserving verification mechanism treaties, lab governance, "CERN for AI".  I will be documenting my AI Safety Fundamentals: Governance course notes on a weekly basis. I will be posting on LessWrong also.  The AI Triad and What It Means for National Security Strategy [https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-AI-Triad-Report.pdf] Modern AI's complexity is summarized as: Machine learning systems use computing power to execute algorithms that learn from data.  An example of Supervised Learning (SL)'s impact on national security is that US military's instatement of Project Maven (the creation of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team). It applied SL to photos...

A transcendentalist, Whitman abandoned the conventional themes of vehement appraisal of nations and warfare popular in the mid-19th century and instead envelopes his fervent adoration of the United States with naturalism doctrines. "Leaves of Grass" is an amalgamation of the poet's thirst for unrestricted discourse and his admiration of "beauty for beauty's sake"--- a praise for the bucolic!  "No myth, no legend, or romance, nor euphemism, nor rhyme" is the reflexive statement delivered by the ex-editor on his poetry. A literary reactionary like Whitman is averse to stock ornamentation--- the truest countercurrent innovator in the publishing world.  As I traversed through the Great Plains and seen the quotidian, billowing smoke of New England cottages, I am etching out a sketch of the great American landscape. This isn't to say that he doesn't talk about the dissolution and gestation of states at all, it is simply that in the larger Whitman...

Democratizing Pharmacy  1. Seeking to increase the efficiency of alternative drugs to treat COVID, by primarily reducing inflammation. 2. Example of treatment of cystic fibrosis, which costs $300/dosage, can be reduced using blockchain to be applied to big pharma. This would require small investors to solve patient needs by outletting to DAOs to make specialized drugs through IPOs and secondary markets.  3. For 40B in Drug R&D, the pipeline follows scientists who make target gene discoveries drugs, the drugs are patentable but publications are not claimable. In cancer therapy treatment, there have been attempts at patenting the 7 versions of inhibiting the PD1 pathway.  ____________________________________________________________ Incentivizing climate action via Regenerative Cryptoeconomics  1. Cumulative global emission of gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) per year, which is > 2 degrees more than precedent historical trends.  2. What if we can manage the Carbon Ma...

I had studied Keats' most famous odes. While the other ones are more well-known, I enjoyed "Ode to Psyche" the most. In his time, Walt Whitman and Lord Byron were the prime naturalist poets. This poem has the most natural element in it. To convey a distinct Keatsian style, Keats merged both mythology and imagination. As we know, Psyche is the Greek goddess who was immortalized by her symbol of love for Eros, the god of love. Through turbulent tasks and many of Aphrodite's trials, Psyche prevails. On the other hand, the psyche means the human mind and consciousness. Many have commented on how this poem reminds them of a dream-like state. This can be attributed to how Keats is "looking" at Psyche and Eros from a distance, therefore creating this illusion of being at once present and not present.  In this poem, Keats captures the ethereal state of innocence; however, Keats is listed amongst poets in the romantic era for the ode’s sensuality. A form of a sonnet ...

  From the very first chapter, Meursault was extremely dismissive about his mother’s death and was quick to clear himself the blame from his boss. Directly, he comes into contact with the director of the elderly home. Meursault’s sentences are concise and spoken in a manner that is almost unconscious. His reaction to the present world is one that is muffled and suppressed. After talking with the caretaker, Meursault emerges from the mortuary. The caretaker had asked him if he was hungry, by which Meursault answered: “But I wasn’t hungry,” and “I drank the coffee.” These sentences are simple sentences with no hanging participles or phrases. Reading about his condition, readers are seeing a slide-show (fragmented) more than a scene (fluid motion). When the elderly women (Maman’s friends) greeted Meursault, Meursault had a great sense of drowsiness and pain. Meursault’s senses are concentrated on his miseries and agitations: “I didn’t feel drowsy anymore, but I was tired and my back w...

  East of Eden "Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." Bibliographic Information: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden was published in September 1952, under of which title Steinbeck had received a Nobel prize in literature. Born in Salinas in 1902, John Steinbeck largely based off of the setting of East of Eden to his perception and experience in the valley. Later in his writing career, Steinbeck set out to write a tale that encompasses his beloved Salinas Valley with its primordial roots. The historical era of the publication had a large role in the chronological timeline in the story, which begin around the 1890s to the 1930s. The literary period or era of East of Eden can largely be credited to the late Victorian era that progresses into modernism, with signature works like W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and John Steinbeck himself. This literary period marks a significant self-conscious break with traditional modes and modernist objectives just before WW1, w...