A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces | Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/maryam-mirzakhani-is-first-woman-fields-medalist-20140812/


> Mirzakhani has learned over the years to think big. “You have to ignore low-hanging fruit, which is a little tricky,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’s the best way of doing things, actually — you’re torturing yourself along the way.” But she enjoys it, she said. “Life isn’t supposed to be easy.”

> Mirzakhani likes to describe herself as slow. Unlike some mathematicians who solve problems with quicksilver brilliance, she gravitates toward deep problems that she can chew on for years. “Months or years later, you see very different aspects” of a problem, she said. There are problems she has been thinking about for more than a decade. “And still there’s not much I can do about them,” she said.

watched Nolan's Odyssey (finally!)
man i do love watching movies on a big screen lmao

i really want to learn about the mythologies of civilizations across the world! hopefully read them in their native tongues!

??

Any Human Ever: one life from over 100 billion
https://anyhumanever.com/

Reality has a surprising amount of detail
https://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail

Barkha Ritu Aayi - Sanjeev Abhyankar (ytm)

me likes me pi interface

https://commoncog.com/optimise-for-usefulness

"The core concept is simple enough to state: if a belief is useful to you in achieving your goals, keep it. Otherwise, discard it."

"the fanatical acolytes of vibe coding are missing a very important thing that makes humans take artefacts seriously—finitude. They’re generating a vast Borgesian library where they themselves are likely to be lost in an ocean of slop generated by sycophantic agents. Slop, not because the code is of poor quality, but because anything that can be generated infinitely without effort and has no meaningful provenance, is very hard to value or take seriously."

https://nadh.in/blog/code-is-cheap/

"We all make fun of one another behind one another’s backs, even the people we love. Of course we do — they’re ridiculous. Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating: making the same obvious mistakes over and over, dating imbeciles, endlessly relapsing into their dumb addictions and self-defeating habits, blind to their own hilarious flaws and blatant contradictions and fiercely devoted to whatever keeps them miserable."

"Just as teasing someone to his face is a way of letting him know that you know him better than he thinks, making fun of him behind his back is a way of bonding with your mutual friends, reassuring one another that you both know and love and are driven crazy by this same person"

"if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known."

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/i-know-what-you-think-of-me/

You should be able to strip a man naked and throw him out with nothing on him, By the end of the day, the man should be clothed and fed. By the end of the week, he should own a horse. And by the end of a year he should own a business and have money in the bank.