What are you learning about?

Mental health, thanks to The Blindboy Podcast, books on cognitive behavior therapy & transactional analysis, and a counselor who I pay their attention, consideration, and advice on other books to read (I find information from Blindboy and books the most actionable, and a counselor is a helpful reality-check so I don’t get lost in the weeds of exploration at the cost of iterating out of challenges I have some agency about).

Also learning about complexity science, ecology, and human culture over millennia.

The limits of empathy.

I got into a situation with a friend who I now assume has ADHD. I’d not noticed before, because our circumstances didn’t reveal it. We were just dog owners, and our dogs were friends.

Then I invited her to stay at my beach house for a week, in gratitude for her minding my dog.

While there, she initiated significant renovations, ripping up the carpet, removing the vertical blinds.

But she didn’t finish most of the tasks! 3 weeks later the curtains were only half done and the place was unrentable.

Her response? Start new projects, also incomplete.

I tried to understand through empathy, but I realised I’m not able to imagine what’s going on in her thoughts.

Maybe that’s always the way. I’m thinking empathy is only really possible when you’re sure the other person thinks the same as you.

I’d never recognised the need to calibrate this.

Fungi and mushrooms! I watched Fantastic Fungi on Netflix this week, bought a bunch of books on the topic, and am super excited to start learning about and cultivating mushrooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism

- Tensor calculus, Differential Geometry (and in so doing, also trig, single/mv calc, linear algebra...algebra...)

- Cuda, physically based rendering

- ML

- All things related to home ownership (holy crap there's a lot!)

- How to manage adhd

- Interpersonal and relationship skills

Rails 7 & Hotwire at this moment. I’m excited to be back in Rails after spending five years in JS ecosystem. It feels pretty f* good.

Pre-algebra now -> algebra soon.

Decided that I'm going to go study CS this year and realised that I don't remember a thing from HS math.

Behavioral biology. Watching Standford lectures on YT how mono/poligamy, being gay etc. are biology based (different sizes of brain parts, different number of receptors for X etc., animal models, humam studies).

- Taking a course about embedded on edX

- Learning to adapt to a life I don't enjoy

Happy new year!

Was learning rust by doing advent of code over Christmas. Now trying to see if I can write a smart contract for Solana using it.