I realized I want to continue writing. To build a habit, I’ll imitate kipply’s regular digests.
I read John Stuart Mill’s autobiography. I was mostly interested in his childhood. Somehow I pictured James Mill as a tyrannical father whose education methods drove John into a depression. Wrong! He was eccentric and flawed but overall very sweet. Allowing a child to interrupt your work at any time, as long as the question is about work, is a great trick that must have taken a lot of patience. I think an underestimated part of his success was being friends with many great thinkers who were happy to mentor John.
Intrigued by John Psmith’s review, I also read the first half of Anabasis, which I enjoyed but have little to say about besides recommending the review.
I read Sayonara Eri; it was super fun. So fun that I pushed all my friends to read it. Let’s say I learned that pushing is not an effective strategy! Fujimoto’s signature move is making you feel five different emotions in extremely quick succession, and there’s more of it in Eri than in Chainsaw Man the manga (the anime sadly doesn’t inherit this ability).
I stumbled upon Tilelang puzzles, did them, then wrote a flash attention kernel. Writing a basic kernel is easier than I thought, and is a lot more fun than I thought. I should keep practicing.
I read the (well-known?) essay Reality Has a Suprising Amount of Detail and added it to my reread-regularly list.