🗓️ When September Ends… (#6)

How has it already been another month?!

I remember speaking with a friend in college a few years ago and expressing incredulity about how busy he claimed to be. I now formally retract those statements; I have never felt so engaged.

Turns out, my first week was a bit misleading. The question isn’t what I should be doing, it’s what I shouldn’t be doing. Coding or carillonning? P-sets or ping pong?

The work is strenuous, but that was to be expected. What I didn’t necessarily anticipate - how much I’m enjoying my courses. I have found learning Chinese in particular to be extremely rewarding.

I’m starting to feel like I’m settling in - within the last few weeks I gave a tourist directions and pulled my first late-late-nighter to finish a CS p-set. I’m getting involved in the entrepreneurial community - YES - as well as the Effective Altruism fellowship - YEA.

I also joined the club running team - YCR (every club here is a 3 letter acronym that starts with Y). I’m excited to run in our first meet, the Brown Invitational, against many northeastern universities tomorrow!

🚀 Updates

Friday V2 has officially launched! Whether you're confused by a lecture concept, or stuck on a tricky problem set, Friday will explain the answer like a teacher’s assistant or tutor. You can check it out at https://friday.education.
I’m continuing to edit my next FreeCodeCamp course, which should hopefully be out soon...
I may be potentially helping to start a new orientation program here focusing on entrepreneurship - more to come on this in future updates.

💭 Thoughts

(3 things I've been thinking about this month)

Forget Web3 -- You Should Be Excited About NLP!: From essays to art, I discuss the exciting possibilites and challenges within the space of natural language processing.
AI Ethics and Westworld: the Contrast between Artificial and Authentic Life: Through HBO's Westworld, I discuss my thoughts on several topics within AI ethics including consciousness, moral status, free will, cloning, sex robots, and if any of it matters.
The Centralization of Decentralization – Why Blockchain Isn’t Being Used To Eliminate Platforms: I discuss why Web3 has given rise to new dominant, centralized platforms.

👍 Recs

(2 articles, 2 novels, 2 videos, 2 tv/movies)

🗞 The Talent Vortex: Mafias and Magnets
🗞 Titles
📗 "The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses" by Eric Ries
📘 "The Emperor's Soul," by Brandon Sanderson
📺 The Man Who Owns All The Bread In Israel For Eight Days A Year
📺 The Complete (Satirical) Guide to College Admissions
🎬 "La La Land" by Damien Chazelle
🎬 "The Social Network" by David Fincher

Thanks for reading :)

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