Personal blog by Jodie covering math, poetry, web development, and life
People living comfortably in the first world complain about how hard it is to see so much suffering in the world. They aren't starving. They aren't being bombed. They're watching it on their big TV, while eating delicious pizza in an air-conditioned apartment. They are suffering, but not because of the suffering on the screen. You're not selfish for suffering. You don't need to frame your…
— Written as part of We Have Inkhaven at Home We tend to focus on not feeling bad, but the goal isn't feeling nothing. The goal is to feel good. Right? Nothing should be too mundane to make you overjoyed. Imagine a child seeing a grocery store for the first time. Imagine them seeing a gym, which is basically a playground for adults. Hamsters run in their wheel for fun, and we're so bored by…
A friend of mine is going to this big fancy retreat called Inkhaven where you write one blog post a day. And I was like "I can't do that, but I'll sure as hell try!". I don't want to spam this blog, so I'll link my daily posts down here and I'll add the best ones to the main feed later after some polish. April 1 st - How to Leverage Effective Altruists to Fix Housing Prices in the Bay Area -…
we're different types of gray mine is jagged concrete yours a calm rainy morning people always say we match but gray is just the way colors look when they're all blended together
The Farmers Meta makes about $50 per user per year. Google makes about $70. You are not paying for these products, advertisers are. And those advertisers make even MORE money. Big Tech doesn't make the product good for you . They make it good for advertisers, advertisers who've gotten frighteningly good at exploiting your weaknesses. The Pasture Some software exists because someone thought it…
— Read at the 2025 Secular Solstice celebration At first glance humans aren't very equipped for survival. We have no claws to defend ourselves, no fur to protect us from the cold and the sun. But what we have is one unique trait that allowed us to thrive: imagining the future. Through predictive modelling, long term planning, and a fair bit of wishful thinking, we didn't just hope a better world…
Why Be an Accelerationist ? I don't know the exact risk from artificial superintelligence, and neither does anyone else. But I do know the risk of doing nothing: disease, poverty, war, pollution, worms that burrow into people's eyeballs. Technology is for fixing things. Faster. Cheaper. For more people. I want new drugs discovered in weeks, not years, because the patient doesn’t have years. You…
My own behavior baffles me. I find myself doing what I hate, and not doing what I really want to do! ― Saint Paul The smartphone isn't the ultimate tool. It isn't even a tool. It's all the tools. You Aren't the Main Character If you have a book, you read. If you have a camera, you take pictures. If you have a Game Boy, you play a game. If you have all of those crammed into a phone, you don’t do…
I made this dead-simple rational approximation of the black-body radiation formula. vec3 blackbody(float t){ vec3 a = vec3(2.59734600e-07,4.72510121e-07,1.47450666e-07); vec3 b = vec3(9.63147451e-04,6.61403216e-04,-2.61032012e-04); vec3 c = vec3(8.43099559e+00,-8.07987659e-01,-4.90914001e-02); vec3 d = vec3(4.15314246e-07,4.77927333e-07,6.80670967e-08); vec3 e =…
Possibly the fastest (decently) accurate square root yet. 5x less latency and 7x throughput! (on some hardware) https://godbolt.org/z/6dnW6dKW3 static float decent_sqrt(float x){ unsigned int b = ftu(x) >> 1; float s = utf(0x1fbf8ddb + b); float r = utf(0x5eaf6eaf - b); return fmaf(fmaf(-s, s, x), r, s); } Relative Error Plot
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. ― Arthur Conan Doyle Anyone who's pulled an all-nighter, been bored, or fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole knows that time is subjective. Brains aren't clocks. They cheat constantly. Code Monks Programmers enter multi-hour flow states without fatigue or hunger. Usually helped by autism headphones and chemical stimulants. Bullet Time People in…
I've been working on an image compression format lately (coming soon!). This led me down the rabbit hole of information theory , and it's made me see graphics programming with a fresh perspective. Information theory is too often overlooked in the context of graphics optimization. It’s not just adjacent to what we do. It's the whole darn map ! Compute Generates Data Redundancy can be compressed.…
Your words linger in the silence. Eyes wet, throat dry, I felt the cold wind blow, and I broke like a wave. In the wake of my deeds, am I the only one? or did you feel the same cold wind as you sailed away?
Shifting a float by 1 approximately squares or square-roots it very quickly. This is probably useful for rms error calculation or getting the length of a vector. static float garbage_len(float a, float b){ return utf(ftu( utf(ftu(a)<<1u) +utf(ftu(b)<<1u) )>>1u); }
My blog now has an RSS feed! You can find it here . The script to generate the feed is my first experience trusting ai to write all the code. The recently released Claude 3.7 is pretty good so far. I found out today that GitHub Copilot allows you to use it right in your ide .
The idea of work-life balance is harmful. Work isn't Hard It's tragic that we accept work is unfun. We shouldn't accept that we're forced to do something that sucks. This framing isn't just bad for you, it makes workers as a group accept terrible working conditions. This shouldn't be considered “normal”. Fun isn't Easy Most people's idea of fun is spending money and engaging in vice. People see…
there's a voicemail full of excuses you haven't listened to yet I wonder if you miss me like I do if you'll rewind the tape to hear my voice your scarf still hangs by my door waiting for you to walk in I watch the snow fall outside my window I trace your name in the condensation I don't think I feel sad anymore our story ended before it got old
Replace unhealthy sugary treats with fancy salads. Replace social media by hanging out with your friends or texting them. Replace gambling with starting a business. Vices usually fill a void, find out a healthy way of filling it.
Relative colors and Oklch in css enable this clean, composable pattern. With one class for the base color and one for the lightness. You can play around with the code on this codepen . .swatch{ background: oklch(from var(--base) var(--l) c h ); } .l-20{--l:0.2} .l-40{--l:0.4} .l-60{--l:0.6} .l-80{--l:0.8} .l-100{--l:1.0} .aquamarine{--base: aquamarine} .crimson {--base: crimson} .goldenrod…
https://godbolt.org/z/djTqa5x7K static float garbage_sigmoid(float x){ return utf( ~ftu( utf(~ftu(x))- utf(ftu(4.f)|ftu(x)&ftu(-0.f)) ) ); }
time moves like honey sweet and slow even the wind limps dragging its hem across the thorns the clouds weep softly too heavy for the sky to hold each moment settles like dust remembered but never recalled here, for a moment or an eternity I can stop doing, and simply be
Humans aren't made to have long-term goals. If you have a goal, don't think about the goal. Stop caring about the goal. Failure to achieve the goal is neutral. Do not let yourself think about it. Not having reached the goal yet should never be on your mind. Learn to enjoy the process. Want to be strong? Learn to enjoy exercise. Want to lose weight? Learn to enjoy hunger. Want to be rich? Learn to…
Things that are pleasurable aren't necessarily addictive, and things that are addictive aren't necessarily pleasurable. Addiction is a trickster. It makes you rationalize. You need this! You enjoy this! Without those stories, you'd feel guilty and stupid. But addiction isn't pleasurable. Addiction is a cycle of craving (unpleasant), a short hit of meaningless pleasure (optional), followed by a…
shimmering dewdrops jewels in the grass dawn's vaulted ceiling adorned with golden clouds this hill, my ornate throne where I am king
One limitation of therapy is that you can't have a therapist be with you 24/7 to examine your behavior. Luckily we now have ai that can monitor everything you say, and correct bad thought patterns and behaviours in real time. Computers turned us into information and math cyborgs, now they allow us to enhance our emotional intelligence.
I recently got interviewed by Charlotte Collins of Architectural Digest about furniture-free living. Read the article here .
I've been using my phone as my main computer for a week now. I'm even coding on it, and it's… fine? I'm writing this blog post on my phone right now in fact, using termux, neovim and unexpected keyboard. I might get a foldable phone and/or a physical keyboard in the future, but I'm not in a rush.
About a year back, I moved into a new apartment and couldn't bring my desk. I could work at the kitchen table or on the sofa in the meantime. My plan was quickly thwarted by my new roommate's cat, who I would come to learn, was the most annoying cat in the world. Having no money for a desk at the time, I sat on the floor in my room, and after a short adjustment period, I found that I had a new…
Do you feel like you have no time? No energy? Check your screen time in your phone settings. Mine was eight ! If you had asked me to estimate, I would have said 2! I had no idea! That's a full-time job! How I Regained Control Here's what allowed me to cut my screen time down to 1-2 hours a day: I started sharing my screen time with my friends every day to keep myself accountable I removed time…
┌───────────────┐ │ Am I happy? │ └┬─────────────┬┘ Yes No │ ┌───┴─────────────┐ │ │ Will the thing │ │ │ make me happy? │ You don't need └───┬──────────┬──┘ the thing Yes No to be happy. │ │ │ │ │ Don't buy Buy the Don't buy the thing. thing. the thing.
One common flaw in HNSW implementations is using ordered sets to track visited neighbors. This causes a huge performance overhead. Using a bit array to keep track of visited neighbors is much faster. For a code example, see Joann , my HNSW implementation.