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Polar Bear | Canada Wild

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from https://x.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1852827869413863907

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There's a bunch more

(if you don't want to scroll up the link was https://x.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1852827869413863907)

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lol my advisor said I might should add a couple more schools to my list but he said I was good on safeties and should add more stretch schools? point goes to my ego.

prefacing this with: I don’t endorse any of what I’m saying and I know it’s not how I should be thinking about grad schools and all that

both my parents and my current research advisor went to extremely good phd programs (two ivies, one public university that is maybe best in the country in the field). and I’m very smart and have won one fancy research award. so basically I have to get into one of the best phd programs or I’ve failed completely to live up to my potential. so why would I go somewhere else and condemn myself to my career being permanently not as good as it should be. but also I can’t give my recommenders this list of five schools that has three ivies + aforementioned public university that’s maybe the very best program on it, because that’s full of myself and overconfident and if it results in me not getting into any grad schools I’ll hate myself so so much.

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Red-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorhynchus) on a rhino, sound asleep.

In South Africa by Zaheer Ali: Zali_Photo

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A jungle cat (Felis chaus) in Jim Corbett National Park, India

by Sanjana Srinivasan

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Collected diagrams from the first volume of The Luminance of Explication and Mysteries of Proof in the Understanding of the Paradigms of the Science of Weights and Measures, a 14th century text on cosmology and metrology by Arabic alchemist and polymath Aidamur Ibn Jaldakī.

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Paul Henry (Irish, 1876-1958), The Stony Fields of Kerry, 1934-39. Oil on board, 11¾ x 16 in.

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bad news everyone my crush didn't comment on my haircut. on the other hand I think I've received more compliments on this haircut than any other one in my life, and it's exactly the same as every other haircut I've gotten in the past four years, so this is a good sign of how many friends I have now.

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what I wish people would understand about fundraising for gaza is that while everyone is desperate and I would never say not to fundraise for or donate to individual families-- I currently fundraise to support multiple friends' families-- the overwhelming narrative I see on Tumblr that the best and most ethical thing you can do is send money to individuals and there is no option for anything else is so so incredibly damaging and inadvertently lends support to the marginalization and distrust of any remaining communal social infrastructure. the sameer project, which you should donate to, talks about this in a recent video they put out. the situation in gaza is unimaginable and everyone is in need of a huge level of support, and yet this fundraising discourse by well-meaning people in the west that donating money to individuals is the only moral way reproduces societal divides wherein resources are directed to people who speak English, who have relationships with people outside of gaza, and who have internet access while hundreds of thousands are left behind.

there ARE non-ngo locally based grassroots initiatives working to meet those needs however they can, and your small donation goes a lot further with them because they are able to buy food/water/supplies in bulk at a reduced price and reach more people with less money. again I'm not saying people shouldn't fundraise for individuals because these initiatives are so limited and many people cannot access them -- but as an example, the group I fundraise with is currently serving people fleeing north gaza who are starving and have nothing, and when we fundraise enough to do cash aid distribution there's so much need that our partners can only distribute 100-200 per large family. and then I go online and see people who have absolutely no understanding of this context at all exclusively working towards raising tens of thousands for just a few people when evacuations haven't been possible for months. it's good to do whatever you can but please consider how this narrative being reproduced among westerners trying to help that there are no other options has the potential to damage groups working towards equity and wider reach however is still possible

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ok last thing. but what people fundamentally need to get through their heads is the significance of gaza fundraisers not being the same as like mutual aid when you're helping someone get groceries, because it is a genocide. there is insane deliberate scarcity and prices are unmanageable, because there is nowhere nearly enough for everyone, so only people who can pay can eat. and what positioning individual fundraisers as the only course of action does is quite simply give a tiny percentage of random people whose fundraisers take off the ability to pay those prices while thousands of others can't. and every one of those thousands of people without a fundraiser is suffering through the same inconceivably horrific reality. it is giving a few completely desperate people out of hundreds of thousands a slightly more favorable position in a horrific war economy of imposed scarcity. and what grassroots community kitchens do is try to mitigate in some small way that inconceivable hierarchy of who can pay and who can't, by stretching ingredients as far as they can last to cook meals at large scale and give them out at no cost. and obviously people are still going to send money to their friends and families because this is hell what else are we supposed to do but please just think about that before promoting endless individual fundraisers as somehow the most ethical way to help

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I sent some scary emails to potential research advisors at a grad school that wanted applicants to do that and one of them already sent back a super nice but SCARY email wanting to meet over zoom. his use of phylogenetic trees is so cool… his assessments of what assumptions models make and the limits of what they can tell us are so careful… what if he doesn’t like me…

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Banana slug

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prefacing this with: I don’t endorse any of what I’m saying and I know it’s not how I should be thinking about grad schools and all that

both my parents and my current research advisor went to extremely good phd programs (two ivies, one public university that is maybe best in the country in the field). and I’m very smart and have won one fancy research award. so basically I have to get into one of the best phd programs or I’ve failed completely to live up to my potential. so why would I go somewhere else and condemn myself to my career being permanently not as good as it should be. but also I can’t give my recommenders this list of five schools that has three ivies + aforementioned public university that’s maybe the very best program on it, because that’s full of myself and overconfident and if it results in me not getting into any grad schools I’ll hate myself so so much.

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highlights of "this is drawn right from the book" are (1) the song "balaga" where they for some reason start talking about how crazy this troika driver is, (2) the part where anatole tells everyone to sit down and they all sit in silence on the stage and he's like "this is a russian custom." ingenious joke in that it's funny if you don't know what's happening and hilarious if you remember that that's a footnote in the english translation.

natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 is so good you guys. and I'm glad to have waited to watch/listen to it until after I'd finished the relevant sections of war and peace because I can confidently report: it's so exactly like the book. yes even with the crazy lighting and the dancing and stuff I promise that only makes it a more accurate adaptation of the text of war and peace.