Not waiting, cause the verb needs an object. And a subject

 The title is pretty self-explanatory.

The lack of objects is pretty specific to my life. The absence of a subject is fairly subjective, being a philosophical problem and the like, but I am quite convinced of its veracity. Some things cannot be proved but they remain true.

In addition to being specific, lack of objects is a permanent theme. Data is a diagnostic tool and I have been writing here for more than ten years. This should serve as a tool to help diagnose something, but it hasn't-so far, that is.

I intend to change this, but then me and my intentions, or should I say poor me and my poor intentions, never amount to anything.

Recently I have been thrown into a crisis of causality. Earlier I have had crises of meaning and existence, but this one is different, as I find it hard to see causal connections between events. People say, I did x and it resulted in y, but fifty thousand other people did do x to the best of their abilities and yet it resulted in nothing. No y, no z.

Also, I tend to gamble with things and situations these days but to be honest I don't have much left to gamble, apart from my work and my family maybe.

Feedback is almost impossible to get in the world, unless it is in the form of sparse discrete signals, like an acceptance here and a rejection there. Otherwise, people will not say a single true word to your face. This is part of why I am tired of interacting with people once again.

However, I have been informed that I make emotional decisions, and I have taken it to heart. Where else? Thing is, it is hard to rise against a charge you do not understand in the first place. Yet, I am convinced of its conformance to reality.

Reality is another fascinating, beguiling topic. Recently I summarized that my grip on reality is tenuous at best and staggers from time to time. It is generally easy, so very easy to see and diagnose the shaky grips others have on reality, but when the question comes to one's self, things get extremely obfuscated.

Recently I have had overwhelming and negative feedback in a lot of avenues. In fact, in all avenues of life one can think of. It was discrete, it was tangible, it was negative. For some reason, I have simply stopped caring. Things are what they are.

Somehow the crispness of the evening and the promise of spring is tempting, too tempting for me to sit back and indulge in complaining over non-entities. The city is a bit dusty, but it'll do.

Getting tired of complaining

 I should have gotten tired of complaining about all the stuff, but apparently I have nothing else to do.

2 minutes' run of Bert expand into an hour or so on my machine.

Once a tool, always a tool

 Albeit a third grade one.

I have reached a conclusion: I am primarily a tool for writing. No one's tool in particular, but a tool nonetheless. Most of the time a third grade one, and asymptoatically reaching 2.5th grade in some niches and at some moments, but a tool in all circumstances.

It actually explains a lot of things, unlinke my theories regarding NLP and deep learning. Why people behave the way they behave towards me. Why I behave the way I behave. Why I always return to the same themes in life. Why I constantly fall in the same patterns.

A tool cannot escape its destiny, it seems, try as it might. It can even try denying the very notion of destiny, but no one will listen to it babbling incoherently to itself. Even destiny won't be listening to it. Incoherently cause the third grade, you see.

Might as well seriously get into writing and stop trying to fit into the world of humans as a woman of flesh and bones with passions on the side. As for the third grade, there should be ample market for it.

What particularly rankles is the fact that my paper got a 3 while another by my classfellows got a 9. They deserve all the success and more, but it just highlights the difference in the quality of their work and mine as the bottom 1% vs the top 1%. Back in dec 2017, I wasn't exactly a bright student and three years of lack of stability seem to have pushed me further away. Ah well, can't really help things like these. I guess I can just try to improve the quality of my work in general.

A meeting tonight

 I have a meeting in 3 minutes. 

It should be fun.

Growing one's armour back

 So I had decided to look into improving the writing for one of my poor drafts and landed here. Of course, this was bound to happen.

Ambition is all very good and nice but I have realized that it should never be driven by anything negative, like an inner void, an inferiority complex or a simple lack of things to do in life because these drives are not sustainable. Not that I would know anything about true ambition, of course. My work hours have shifted and 'I don't know how I feel about it'.

'How do you feel about it' was recently raised in a work meeting and I felt like replying, I didn't know that I got paid by my feelings, but again I kept it to myself.

Recently I have rediscovered Poe and the guy is a master story teller. I simply love sitting in front of the heater or lying wrapped in my blanket, reading a Poe story. A friend was once disturbed by his story about one guy's hatred towards another's blue eye but I think what she overlooked in her horror of the extraordinary is that Poe has extraordinary skill in conceiving of plot, putting them into words and creating a story with a remarkable flow. It is absolutely heartbreaking that he was destitute in his life and died so very young. My personal biases aside, I do think that writing just isn't an art for the young and if anything it gets exponentially better with life imbuing experience to it.

Reading Poe made me realize that there are some universal themes in story telling; perhaps they spring from the commonality of the human spirit and all its associated longings, desires, aspirations, hopes, dreams and fears. One such theme is treasure; you just find something extremely valuable. Another is the idea of having an entity that is separate from oneself but is in many aspects a mirror image of one, mentioned in a story about William Wilson I think. Poe seems to have had a remarkable imagination and this makes some of his stories an absolute treat to read, such as the descent into the maelstrom. He is also well-versed in the peculiarities of human nature and maybe he does not equal Chekhov in this but he is brilliant in his own way.

Guy is extremely underrated, say I.

Waiting gets boring

Okay I think I should stop waiting for any emails to arrive, because even if they aren't coming, my waiting just impacts me badly.

Also I guess that means working on a plan B, although there aren't a lot of potential Bs around at this point and their acceptance rates are even lower.

Shair e shor angaiz is a delight to read. I am no renaissance woman but I like interesting stuff.

Life is what it is is the mantra these days.

The threat of My Favourite

 Once upon a time I used to have some vestiges of a thing called personality, with associated aspects like likes/dislikes/interests/opinions.

So when I used to work previously at my current company, there was one person there who actually knew statistics and stuff and after attending a couple of meetings(4-hour long ones) and watching him shooting stupid ideas down, I marked that person as someone I would like to work with.

Seems that he might get involved in something I am doing right now, and if he does, it will probably be a nightmare. He is exacting and not always very polite, and these days I stay away from stress at all costs. Stress triggers very very weird pathways in my amygdala and life is hard enough as it is.

I emailed someone darya kinaray and seriously wish he'd take me up as his protegee. Seriously. The place should be awesome and the work would be much more interesting. Not that my current job doesn't seem full of promising potential to me-it does, at times- but I am very very wary of all my impressions now.

One question that has been bothering me is this: what does it mean to be emotional at any given moment? Does it mean a specific hormonal profile? Are feeling really only the hormonal currents in you, something that has always felt right to me?

Same old(void)

 For some reason I did some work today and it helps one from hitting rock bottom.

Otherwise I don't really have anything to report. There are a couple of films to watch though.

It isn't like writing a daily update will help speed things up. It is just that interviews are falling everywhere. Everywhere except for my courtyard.

Also someone found my transcript unacceptable.Yes, that happens too.

I also have a couple of interesting movies to watch, and a meeting to attend quite late. Ah well. The state of affairs in DC is saddening; one needs an ideal to lookup to, individuals as well as nations.

I am higher than where I was predicted to be, although I often proclaim that there is no concept of happiness or joy in my life. If only someone would reply to me.

Ah too many official emails to send out. Not that any is going to be any help.

On an overarching void

 As much as I love listening to I guess I'll die another day, the existence of the void can not be denied.

It is particularly big and particularly vacuous these days, particularly since I'm not getting any relevant emails. None at all, when tis the season.

There is just so much you can feel sorry for yourself, at some point your battery is going to run out in a weird manner. Mine has and although I still get flashbacks, there is no module left for feeling.

At least not a functional one.

I like to think of this as my year of rest, but it is an illusion too like anything else.

Got reprimanded by my main boss for not maintaining a page. It was justified so can't complain. But I do feel like getting thrown out would be interesting and relieving but it is my usual streak for self-destructiveness talking.

How many setbacks can one face in a row? A question for anyone who cares to empathize. Ah well, it is pointless anyway. 

It is going to be a horrible day, but I am going to detach my feelings from it like from everything else.

Waiting for life

 As if it is going to happen.

So I have stopped trying to study decision theory because I don't get measures, and critique because I don't get it all, so nothing left to do.

One can sleep, for sure, but ultimately you have to get up. I tried sleeping for12-14 hours but yes the spell ends.

I thought I was content learning but apparently it is useless too. Maybe I should detect the beginning of a downward slide here and trigger some fail-safe mechanism, like an intense session of maths. I guess I will, because in spite of all my love of self-pity, it gets really ugly really fast and spirals out of control and I am not going to go to that point again.

Winter evenings ordinarily give one a very mellow feeling, but I am done with all shades of happiness/mellowness/grief for now, and refuse to indulge in them.

Yes, no response from anyone. Yes, I meticulously check my emails.

I wish there was something easy in my life, but wishes do not a life make. And who cares. A sense of justice should never spring from a sense of entitlement.

My communication is poor, just like my mathematics. I was going through stuff about Maryam Mirzakhani, realized that she is the kind of woman who inspires me, and then double realized that she and I are so different as to be practically different species, and insights from her life do not apply to mine.

Recently I have become interested in the question of identity, as in what one chooses to believe is the most essential part of one's being. I guess people have different answers, but all of them have one thing or the other on which they hang their existential angst. A poet once told me that he considers his poetry to be the only reason for him to continue existing and I think it shows that he identifies with his poetry. I argued that it was not a very befitting reason for existing, and one is just because one is, but he found it too drab a train of thought. I suppose he was right and I was wrong, as usual.

Recently I have discovered a remarkably accurate classifier for detecting lapses of judgment. It is rather simple and goes like this: if I am making a judgment, it is the wrong one to make. If I am thinking something, of course it has no relation to reality. If I have an idea in my mind, a standard, a principle, it is bogus by definition. This applies to the first layer of thinking and not the questioning that follows up. I have finally decided to let go of the supposedly tenuous grip on reality I had, which was never tenuous in the first place, just non-existent.

Pyrrho would be awed, I think. Skepticism is too much work and too much pain. This way is easier and more elegant. Right, too, if anything like that matters.

Once a dogmatist, always a dogmatist, and ever in need of a creed to adopt.

What can I say? Particularly when it is known that whatever I say will be wrong and far away from reality.

And of absolutely no use.

Still, I think I will go and study nonprametric Bayesian estimation, for I refuse to go down tonight.

If you think of the world as an adversary(and you better) then your emotional reactions are something it uses against you, when you have complete control over them. I am going to get a button right there.

Yes, I do think that not being contacted by 6th Jan pretty much means it is a no from everywhere.

An abundance of oscillations

 I suffer from a case of extreme oscillations, from emotions to ideas to actions. Maybe it is too much neurpolasticity, maybe it is too few neurons. Who knows and who cares.

To many dangling threads of work make me question my practises at times and I'll have to start closing some of them.

It does seem like every relevant person is getting an email at this point and I am one of those selected by fate among the rejected pile but by this point there is nothing I can do about it. My time circuit is weird as hell and life is already hard enough as it is.

Last night I started reading Faruqi's shair ghair shair and nasar and there are some observations:

1. Why the hell did I not discover him before? He is someone who knows a lot of stuff.

2. I have to read The Lady of The Lake. Also masnavi seher ul bayaan, but it is something that should be read out loud. Mir does depict the moonlight in a beautiful manner.

3. The question of what constitutes poetry as well as how to rank poets is a universal one and bothers people in all languages. Personally I think that a simple surface with a complex interior is the hallmark of beauty. The thing has to look effortless and simple and well-knit, but when you sit down and analyze it, there are layers and layers of meaning, or there is a single idea but it is extremely well formed and the delivery is well executed. I suspect that there is not a single kind of beauty, nor is there a single ingredient to it, and this is what derails these questions. Two couplets can be beautiful in very different ways and due to very different reasons and weighing them against each other is kind of pointless. 

4. Well I am impressed by him, how else do I put it?I don't know one hundredth of the stuff he knows. There is always the question of not getting the right kind of environment for an aptitude for learning to flourish but the internet has made this kind of moot. Maybe I need to loop someone into my study of literary theory and discuss stuff with them. The technique has helped in decision theory.

So yes anything to take my mind off things I guess but I genuinely like this stuff, even though my brain has pretty much atrophied by now and I have trouble distinguishing shades of meaning. Words and meanings, what do they represent after all? Nothing and no one.

Back up plans, girl, back up plans.

Waiting for emails like Godot

So it is 4th Jan and I haven't heard back from anywhere which naturally means it is a no from the entire NLP community. Not that I have a single damn left to give at this point, but of course the idea is alive and well in my mind. Recently I have developed a strong case of it is what it is and the main issue is that I will have to make another plan at this point. It is going to be work but ah well can't escape work. Shouldn't, in fact.

I do not chide myself over anything now; there are far too many people to do that in that world. Mostly I chill. Of course low temperature can make one numb and I suspect this is what has been happening to me. I am tired of the whole world lusting after the one thing on which I set my sights but that is a story for another day.

The trick is to read a NO and go back to studying statistics, but I wish I was as hardy as that. I'll spare my own feelings and stay away from potential sources of NO.

I can personally complain all day long but observing other people is always an interesting phenomenon. People obsess over admissions-everyone does. However most of them are probably 8 years younger and thus another specie altogether. Most of them are bound to be in a better position in life though, but that is an irrelevant metric.

I don't know, life is empty but fine. Things are fine by definition, for as long as they are. Overthinking is for those who can't do, I guess. Still, the allure of checking gradcafe is strooooong. At times I do feel like playing a guessing game about the order of rejections(because what else) but it isn't fun enough. I had decided to live like a hermit till Sept but Sept is not going to arrive in Sept and might extend 5 years, who knows. Ah well the correct counter argument is, who cares.

Absolutely no one.

I have mixed feelings about my work on active learning.

Of waiting and working

 I am waiting actually and it sucks but there is nothing I can do about it, so mostly I try to find serious, positive diversions.

Also, I have work to do and got an earful this friday so I should be working on it.

Pure waiting might be fine in a sense but there is also this worrying about whether everything is complete or not. With so many applications, it takes a lot of time to track everything, and I'll have to check all of mine for test score requirements today. It is soul sucking work but I need to stop thinking about the kind of work I'm doing in general.

Also I woke up at 1pm on a Monday morning.

The guessing of outcomes is no fun, so now I'm reading shair-shor-angaiz. Faruqi raises some very interesting points about how poetry should be evaluated, how two poets should be compared, what makes a great poet great, what is the relation between a poet's life and his art, and how we should read poetry in general. Of course I don't agree with everything he says, but he makes quite a few interesting remarks and I think it is high time I escaped my bubble of jahaalat. Of course I am becoming a bookish bore but it can't be helped.

He mentions that one thing we should notice is the situation of the couplet- who is saying what to whom, what kind of person the speaker is, what kind of person you can deduce the listener to be, and how does it fit within the usual narrative of ghazal. A couplet isn't just a couplet, but it gives you a glimpse onto a living breathing person. I agree with him that we tend to idealize the beloved in ghazal so much so that he ceases to be a human and often appears as a beautiful impossible-to-attain object. I am personally guilty of this, as is almost anyone who writes in the classical tradition. The allure of the beloved derives from the very fact that he or she is impossible to reach. This does lead to pictures and depictions that while being beautiful and inspiring, are very far from reality. They should not be constituting a major portion of our literature. The more humanized a situation is, the easier it is for the reader to relate to it, and we do consider that spontaneous and heartfelt ejaculation 'Ah, I have felt this too!' from a reader to be the ultimate gold benchmark in poetry.

The kiddies who write these days have realized this and most of them do write more of realistic situations than of hard-stolen single glances that drive a man insanse, but what they often lack is the depth of narrative and the portrayal of complex emotions that you can find in every human breast but very few couplets. Personally I am a true dinosaur and almost always sacrifice the humanising touch for the sake of sophistication and rakh-rakhao, so much so that most of my poetry would be equally valid for a boy and for MIT. Of course it is a personal preference but I'll be experimenting from time to time.

He also mentions that people have always borrowed from their predecessors and so has Mir( mostly from the persian poets) and there is nothing inherently bad about it, but you mustn't dip down in quality when doing it. Mir often succeeds in this, but not everyone.

In his opinion, a truly poetic poet is one who has tried his hand on a lot of sub-genres. By that definition I am destined to remain a nobody.

I read a few chapters and I'll have to read them again to thoroughly understand it.

Besides I am reading decision theory in beautiful detail and again I have to go through things multiple time to understand stuff but hey, I solve my equations myself! Normally it makes sense to pace a course slower in the beginning, so that people get a grip on stuff. It takes me quite some time to understand things from scratch and I am finally not ashamed of being a slow person. When you are self studying, you can pace things whatever way you want! All I've read upto now revloves around decision principles, losses, finding best estimators, and something about two Bayesian priors never agreeing that I still don't understanding. Slow women deserve a place in the world too, although I'm over my childish fantasies of ever participating in the game of life. So many truths that I deemed sad are just facts of life and not sad at all.

Contrary to my own belief, I found shair-e-shor angaiz a very inspiring read, so much so that I have trouble getting to work now. The flame of life has to be protected and fed on all dimensions though. However, shouldn't the probability of you getting a reprimand from your boss on any particular day go down when conditioned on the fact that he reprimanded you on the last work day? Question for the philosophers.

NELL for a puny human being

 I miss those days when I did not have to repeat things to memorize them. Recently, I have been trying to seriously learn french and my best language learning years and behind me by some 25 years. Still, one gotta do what one gotta do, and in a stable peaceful manner.

Learning is fun, and I am trying to find the best strategy for it these days. Productivity is a metric for machines and not humans and while it is important to build the world and oneself, it should never ever be the main goal. Productivity is what I associate with the workplace at most- these guys pay me and I owe it to them to deliver maximum output for the time they have engaged me. The definition of output has to align a lot with their definition, but it is the only place in the life of a human being where it matters.

Also, I should take a one week vacation from office and spend ten days entirely cut off from the world, with absolutely zero communication. The joy it is going to bring mw can only be paralleled by a few things in life.

Back to being a cog-I am a cog for financial reasons, but I have a life of my own too. So-NELL. Mitchell's research sounds very fancy and important, so I have never dared look closely into it, but I can toy with the idea.

Reading books about fun stuff is fun but acquiring knowledge requires some structure to retain it. So I think it is important to build one's own database and to make original contributions after acquiring a certain level of skill. There has to be some effort made into showing it to the world since the populace at large deserves to benefit from an exchange of ideas, but not too much because it is an extremely stupid goal to pursue. I am an extreme fan of people like Azad who are scholars through and through and it is their only passion in life. More than being a fan, I relate to it. The wanting part though, and not the achieving one.

So there are multiple questions around this problem: how does one select an area of study? Should one work on one area, or multiple in parallel? After reading something, how do you make sure that you retain something from it? Memory is notoriously bad, and mine is almost non-functional these days. There are a lot of solutions, and the search for the perfect one takes forever, so I'll have to settle for some sub-optimality. I guess I am going to start noting things down on paper. Summaries, so to speak.

As for single vs multiple, I really can't say. Right now I have my eye on a few things, all of them theoretical of course but that can't be helped at least for now. For now the solution seems to be to choose a few and stick to them. Focus is key, so I think I can do one thing a day, spend a few hours on it, but I'll have to make sure the work gets done with extreme focus. There is no point in doing things half-heartedly-watching youtube would be a better alternative.

I would like to read stuff up in the following areas:

1. ML

2. Philosophy

3. French

4. Poetry

5. Politics but maybe

6. Filmain, cause I love them

Okay I think we can skip politics(or serious study thereof) for now, but I'll be working on the rest of them. If I work on my so called research a lot of time gets diverted to ML but that is life for now, and I need this work for my backup plans too.

If I ever get the chance in the future, I might pick up something different like fencing or kathak but these are my only options for now.

It seems to me that writing stuff is a fundamental part of the learning process and just like it is needed to learn decision theory, it is needed for philosophy and poetry too. I might be reporting here to mention what I have learned in a day. I am a bookish bore and I am not going to try to escape it.

A peaceful saturday and a possible flu

 I discovered my red nail polish and I am very ambiguous about the shade. The day was nice for a change-probably I have calibrated myself well to continuous zalalat-but I have a slightly sore throat and I just hope it does not develop into full blown flu.

I am waiting for rejections but they are usually slow so I don't even have anything to look forward to.

I have serious backup plans to make, but I don't even have an inkling of where to start.

Ah well I will figure it out. In the meantime, I have some decision theory to study.

All along, I have been right and people have been-silly. Ah well people are people, can't expect them to understand anything beyond their own petty interests.

I have petty interests too, but I'm unable to take care of them, so poor them are just left in the void fending for themselves. 

Depending upon me is always a bad idea.

For fourteen programs, if I guess the order in which I am going to get rejected from them, what would be the probability of me being right?

What is the probability of me being right, ever? Exactly zero.

Exactly.

Still one stupid letter left.

I am also reading an interesting story. 

Man, age makes one mellow.

There should be a glue for nails. Natural.

Er Turan makes for nice background music for study.

I am rather tired of one thing after another holding me back. I am done with it. However, as with most of my decisions, this one is not very likely to get translated into anything.

I don't know what is the thing with principles. People usually don't have any. Most of the ones they have are adopted on an ad hoc basis, to serve self interest. I have no issues with anyone acting in their self-interest, but I rather wish people would be upfront about it. As for me, I need them more for theoretical reasons than anything. Otherwise it becomes difficult to act independently all the time.

If only I could seriously study philosophy.

Well I can, if I want. Maybe I just don't want it enough. I am done with overthinking, and procrastination is next. Laziness and ignorance too. Being ignorant is inevitable, for there are infinite many things to know, but I am going to die fighting it.

Life requires a very specific level of intensity, one that I often have trouble regulating. Ah well, one of these days.

Bracing for an entire year of zalalat

 I was in an okayish mood when I got up at 12, but then I saw a multi-point reprimand by my boss and of course that was the start of a downward slide. Still, I am trying to rationalize it, since he is right and I just suck at my job. I am sure there is some self-sabotage at play here too and I do not relish the idea of getting fired; in fact, it would be a tangible loss and a problem for me, were it to happen, but I have been robbed of the ability to give a damn.

Still, this is a realistic forecast for the year, and I should not be surprised if the following happen:

1. I get rejected from all 14 places. In fact, it is quite likely. 

Okay I just got a new year package from my office. I love these guys, and feel sorry for them.

Back to the incoming wave of rejections. I have one letter pending now, but the process was and continues to be draining. You hear all these things about how hard it is to get into NLP and then I am a weak candidate by so many definitions.

I check gradcafe from time to time, but I have a story and some decision theory to read so it isn't frantic scrolling. Anyways I could never compete with the world.

I hope I can somehow make it to darya kinaray. If it is a low stress place, I might even be at peace there. If there is an actual darya there, I'll visit it in the evenings and read poetry.

I wonder if I can make it to a single competitive program, but maybe I am entirely unsuited to these programs.

2. I get fired from my job. Pretty self explanatory at this point.

3. My mental balance deteriorates even further. However, I will be working really hard to prevent it. Right now, it is the only thing that matters and I can go to extreme lengths to protect it. For maybe the first time in my life, I actually mark topics as not-to-be-considered. Like I simply don't care. Feelings are only a matter of training your own grey matter and I can and will do it.

4. Bad stuff happens. A category as broad as broad can be.

Agonizing over consequences just gives one a pathetic digestive system, something that I am tired of. I need to start marking things as binary, in my control and not in my control. If they are in the former, I will think and adopt the best strategy. The latter will just get banished from my mind; them pretty neurons deserve stuff that wants to be there. 

My writing is full of non-sequitrs, just like me, and it makes writing academic papers hard. Writing papers is a hard skill and it will take me quite some practise to get something done.

I hope I stick to decision theory and see it through.

Emotion regulation is the only thing I really need to work on. The rest of life just falls in place.

If I happen to die in this year in an abrupt, non-dramatic manner, I'll consider myself the luckiest of creatures. The only good thing that can happen to one in any given year.

People suffer and toil a lot in the world, and I get sick of my own whining. Still, this is something I have been writing here for the past ten years, so the realization has never been the problem. It is the follow up work that I have problem with.

I wonder what it is with the human need to form and belong to communities. Maybe everyone is just looking for information to maximize their own gain. Maybe this is the sole reason and I have mistakeny been looking at a longing for belonging as the cause. People socialize because it is useful.

Well, I can socialize. During 2020, I was rated as 2/10 on work and negative infinity on charm among a group of women that extends from sahiwal to seattle. This year I'll be running a psychological experiment in my free time, as much of it as can be spared, that seeks to rank my attractiveness. Experiment design is a science but what people don't realize is that I formally studied it in grad school, and it is high time I had a reliable estimator for this problem.