Richard Gao
“…I’m hoping for there to be a similar community for creating, curating, and contributing to a body of research that uses ML and AI to advance our understanding of neuroscience, neurobiology, and neurological disorders.” Me, January, 2024 Okay I’m gonna be real here, back when I first started...
Dina-Perla Portnaar
You’re invited to join the digital book launch on April 9, 2026, from 18:00 to 22:00 CET. If you have a TikTok account, you can comment and submit questions during the TikTok Live. If not, you can join via the link but you won’t be able to interact. To register, send an email and you...
David Banica
“The terror of the future is always grafted onto the desire to experience that terror”. Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born The Landscape, Such As It Is The French Republic has emerged as a dominant political force in the eastern provinces of the European Union — most notably in Romania...
Dina-Perla Portnaar
I’m the last person who wants to tell women how to look. For centuries, religions and social norms have dictated images of femininity. Today, new groups join the chorus, performing womanhood as if it’s a costume. Still, I feel it: when I see women with immaculate fake nails, eyelashes that defy...
AbdulFattaah Popoola
Over twenty years ago, I arrived at OAU as an eager adolescent. Registration meant managing paper documents, and enduring long queues in intense heat. I arrived at the faculty before 7 a.m., holding my documents, joined the crowd, and hoped the official would remain available when it was my turn....
achyut
Prefer listening? Here's a voice version.I turned thirty last week. I write one of these every year. It’s become a ritual. I start a week before my birthday and go through my photos, calendar, and journal - trying to remember what happened. I look for patterns, acknowledge the journey, and sketch...
achyut
Someone I love and respect called me out recently. We were talking about Andrew Cuomo, and she was surprised I didn’t know the full story behind the sexual harassment allegations. Then she asked if it was because, as a man, I didn’t care as much about these things. That landed harder than I...
Adam Achrati
Notes from attending ‘Attention Lab 1′ at the School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn. The event included two guided exercise and a few guided discussions between groups of two, four, half or all of the 40 odd participants. Introductory conversations while waiting for the lab to begin covered...
achyut
Chicago, October 15, 2022. It was 8am - windy, like always. I was in a car, parked across from what used to be my home. Waiting. My ex-wife was flying back from India with her mother. I wasn’t there to say goodbye-I just needed to see that it was real. New York, October 16, 2024. Two years later....
achyut
At this age, every year brings another wedding. It’s almost a rhythm now—a close friend gets married, and the wedding becomes our annual reunion. These events are more than just ceremonies; they’re time capsules. They bring us all together again, like college days but with fewer shabby hostel...
achyut
I'd love for you to read this while listening to the above track :) Another year, another orbit around the sun. This blog has become an unintentional ritual. A way to mark time, reflect and wrestle with the inevitable uncertainties that come with another lap through life. Patience was my word for...
Richard Gao
I didn’t forget about this. My laptop bricked back in February and somehow the one meaningful thing I lost was this uncommitted draft. The thought of re-writing it was dreadful, so I didn’t. Then life happened, and all of a sudden it’s August. Tale old as time itself. A brief recap: what’s the...
Richard Gao
2023 came and went, and I somehow logged exactly 0 blog posts…for the first time since starting this blog in 2014. So I’ve resolved (once again) to write more and write more regularly, and as a consequence, post less polished thoughts. With that in mind, I’m going to start the year with a bang and...
Richard Gao
Uhh so this whole thing got a bit long, and I thought about breaking it up into parts, but I just can’t be bothered to make two different posts and tweet it multiple times, so just use the table of contents above to jump to what’s interesting/relevant for you. The 3 sections are more or less...
Richard Gao
Last month, I served as one of the PhD application evaluators for my village’s local graduate school (IMPRS), and I took some notes while reading through the applications on what I looked for, in real time. It’s probably a bit late for this year’s application cycle to be immediately helpful, but I...
Alex Berger
Whelp. That was a year. As I re-read last year’s birthday blog post, I get goosebumps. Published on March 31st, a few days after my birthday, the company where I work had just announced a three months 20% salary reduction/one day a week furlough. COVID cases were skyrocketing. I had just jumped on...
Richard Gao
This is Part 3 (of 3) of the blog series on neuronal timescales, you can find here Part 1 and Part 2. There’s finally some useful stuff in this one, I think, as well as some strong opinions on scientific publishing (constructive and…ranty). 10. tenured professor runs own analysis…(October 2019)...
Richard Gao
This is Part 2 (of 3) of the blog series on neuronal timescales, you can find here Part 1 and Part 3. I think this one covers most of the actual scientific “discoveries”, if you will. The serendipity/luck that went into making this happen is beyond my comphrehension, but I’d probably be still...
Richard Gao
1. preamble The third and final paper from my PhD thesis is published, just in time for when my degree is processed at the end of 2020. I am irrationally happy and proud about this fact, because of the weird feeling of completion it gives me. Like, I’m done. But what I feel more strongly is a...
Richard Gao
Like many, I fear that I will have said something insensitive or incorrect here, or that I’m taking up too much space. I apologize if that is the case. But more than that, I fear how I will feel down the line if these words never left my mind. TL;DR: go listen to Dave Chappelle. Fear I. Death...