Last week: IVF, reflections on writing, an upcoming Japan trip, and Poppy!
For folks not in the know, this is a weekly stream of consciousness zero-agenda “here’s what’s happening” or “here’s what’s interesting” post.
What’s been happening
- Our IVF treatment didn’t succeed this round too. It’s the fifth time we’re trying, so while we’re used to the ups and downs, it’s like a soul drain: while the brain tells you that it’s a probability numbers game, the heart doesn’t listen. Here’s a photo of us on our ever interminable hospital visits.
- Poppy was with us all of last week, it was nice to hear the squeak-squeaks that he made. He’s still young, less than a year old, but super feisty.
- Loved this 28 slightly rude notes on writing. One thing that struck me pretty clearly is that while I resonate with a lot of the thoughts in there, it’s very clear that while I may have the soul of a writer, I don’t have the will of one. Also a lovely quote from the essay that I’ll reproduce below that echoes John Berger’s Ways of Seeing: when technology advances, what’s considered art is what makes us most authentic.
There’s a scene in the movie Her where Joaquin Phoenix realizes that the AI he’s fallen in love with has, in fact, fallen in love with hundreds of other people as well. The AI doesn’t think this is a big deal, but Mr. Phoenix does, as any human would, because we only know how to value things that are scarce. If love doesn’t cost you anything, is it even really love?
The same dynamics are at play in writing, […]
- I’ve been on the lookout for a better CO2 monitor, and Ultrahuman just seems to have released its new Home product. Seems pretty cool. It’s my hunch that indoor CO2 poisoning is one of the biggest cognitive productivity hits for a remote worker.
- Watched Ouseppinte Osiyethu (Joseph’s Will) this week. This was a really good watch. Loved the acting from the entire cast, and the story also has enough suspense to keep you hanging. Recommended!
- I still haven’t managed to get Cursor rules working right, but I’ve been using it more for smaller refactors. The biggest problem really is remembering to use it more.
- Booked flights & hotel tickets to Japan & will apply for the visa this week. We’ll be traveling from June 27-July 7, and spend all of it in Tokyo, with perhaps a short visit to Osaka. July 4-6 is our Chronicle team meetup, and Ammu & I will spend the rest of the time just soaking Japan in. I’ve been doing some prep watching Youtube videos about Tokyo, and it seems like it’s a wonderful, very large city that’s heavily optimized for public transport:
Links of the Week
- Last week I mentioned Wispr Flow. MacWhisper is also pretty cool and has a free app.
- Zod v4 is out. Have always been impressed with how much the TypeScript world brings to practical (instead of academic) type safety, and Zod is at the forefront of dynamic type-safety in JavaScript land. Combined with libraries like ts-pattern, it results in pretty ergonomic pattern-matching code as well.
Leave a Reply