hi! this is lili, you found my little digital corner. i made this as i wanted a space to write freely, to refine how i think about the world. expect raw ...
I've always been fascinated by anarchist societies. I have disliked hierarchy and authority a long time and so I have been fascinated by a society that would not rely on these and yet still maintain cohesiveness. Yet, a society with no hierarchies would be inherently decentralized. How would science, hailed as one of the great benefits of a centralized power structure, be done in such a society?…
I begin each day checking my work email and reading the news. I reprimand myself for it. Why do you do this to yourself? Make some time to think for yourself. Take a break! Still each morning like clockwork before I even get up, I check my phone. I used to go to bed with a book and read until I fall asleep. I found this relaxing and enriching. In the past week, I've gone to bed with my phone…
It's interesting to read in the neighbor bearbloggers how much they love literature, perhaps from an early age. In another life perhaps, I would have loved my high school English class. I would have devored each book and spent time dissecting its themes. In another life.. but not in this one. The truth is that on some level, I have always enjoyed reading and writing, and now that I am older I have…
This summer I went on a few sailing races, in the hopes of learning from the more experienced sailors. In the race, you have to navigate a sailboat along a path marked by buoys. However, the buoys are quite far apart and we could barely make them out. In each race, I swore I would get some binoculars for next time. Finally, I did buy some binoculars! Alas, it was towards the end of summer and I…
I don't know when I started daydreaming. Sometimes I intentionally pay attention to world, but most of the time I am daydreaming. My body is here but my thoughts are distant. Growing up, I was a weird kid. If my poor English or lack of knowledge around American pop culture didn't set me apart, my spacey nature sure did. My thoughts were just fundamentally exotic. It has gotten better since I left…
What books in your library will you never read (or read again)? Which books are there as ideals, those which surely you will read soon enough? Then which books must you keep forever, because their words shaped your thoughts and you can't part with the molds? These were the questions my girlfriend and I faced, looking over our personal library. We had over 300 books together and they were…
[I have been away from the blog for a while. In the meantime, the ideas I want to write about have grown terrifyingly large. Rather than squeezing each in a large post, I wanted to try writing a series of smaller self-contained posts. Thus, I am starting a series on my journey in sailing.] My obsession with sailing started about a year ago. At that time, I came across post on "Weathering Software…
At a graduation party, I was talking to someone about my life and how I found an aim outside of my academic career to give me something achievable. She replied that it sounded like I found some balance. I understand what she meant, and I think I did find a balance in some sense, perhaps by leaning more outside of my work. Still, upon reflection, what I'm seeking isn't really a work-life balance,…
This week, I'm visiting Atlanta on a work trip with my coworkers. In the morning we went out to a breakfast place, courtesy of our host. When the waitress took our orders, I watched as my coworkers and hosts each ordered a cup of coffee along with their food. During breakfast, they talked about how important coffee is to a scientific workplace. At our institute, there is a single set of coffee…
As of today, it's been a year since I started this blog. when i started When I started this blog, I felt really disconnected from the world. A year ago, I had cut off my relationship with my mom, whose values still provided a foundation for my life. I was in the depths of finishing my last year of graduate school, writing up my final projects and planning my graduation without a clear job lined…