Obvious Observations on America
from a European fresh off the boat
Isaak.net
Neuro, Math, Mandarin.
Latest posts
Ozempic For Sleep
Thanks for key conversations & early feedback: George Church, Andrew Payne, Luke Piette, Michael Retchin, Flora Guo, Merrick Smela, Greta Tuckute, Misha Yagudin, Tyler Cowen, Helena Rosengarten . This idea that we can engineer sleep in adults led to some awesome write-ups from: Minjune Song , Blake Byers , Sam Harsimony , Niplav
Future Forum
On my last gap year after high school, I ran a not-for-profit conference in San Francisco. What we planned on being a 150-people event went viral and we got 1,300 applications within weeks. We spun up a full-scale team — most of us were on
War on Malaria
A rant. 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 滅 灭 Horn of Africa. Dawn of mankind. We barely learned to walk upright. As every species awakens, so do its demons. Algae, Which learned to pierce cells.  Which learned to
Methods of Mandarin
I got pretty good in Mandarin within 12 months of rigorous part-time study. I'm not even close to perfectly fluent, but I got far into intermediate fluency. Read my personal story of learning Mandarin here: isaak.net/mandarin This post on my Methods of Mandarin (MoM) is
12 Months of Mandarin
Estimates for achieving intermediate fluency in Mandarin Chinese range up to spending years and around 4000 total hours (2,200h classroom hours, 1,800 outside). I did it in 1500 hours total and less than a year. [1] There is a lot of disagreement on language proficiency estimates. They are
Westlag — Pro Tips To Jetlag Productively
Jetlag sucks. But jetlag isn't created equal. It's easy to stay up six hours later, but it's impossible to fall asleep six hours earlier. Going westwards is easy. Going eastwards is hard. Really hard. Arising from the legends of traveling Starcraft pro-gamers who