Yoyo 2027
Rolling dice on fictitious events. Singapore, shenzhen, WeChat gc mod, cowriting, microgrants
see also: celeste 2027
Relocating to Singapore, p ≈ 0.6
After 75 warm and cold emails, a “Come build with us! We’re in Singapore and use brainwaves to race drones. Worry about paperwork later” landed in my Telegram. I relocated on a whim.
Daily standups. Ran overtime. I’m updating the design docs. Check all stakeholders; Check requirements, both technical and non-technical, and then on the components level too. How to validate? Lunch.
The afternoon is continuing to fix code, because alamak, 100 quadcopters have crashed into a lake in Unreal Engine. My deskmate see the screen and goes “Wah, bro, rug pull??” I want to pa his head, but HR is a thing.
Later I wayang my way through classical piano recital at the Esplanade and greet Ashish Xiangyi Kumar (who has retired at the ripe old age of 30), run into visakan veerasamy on the exit and tell him “heyyy!! I’m the one who emailed you about future forum like 5 years ago but you never reply, but it’s okay I buy you kopi c siew dai next time” Not a lot of people in the MRT today… I meditate on how Shenzhen essentially mirrors Singapore’s sustainable city design. Home. The AC is set to 20°C. 8:45pm. My brain is fried. I crack open an ice mountain from the fridge and code more personal projects.
Surviving a people-sea attack in Huaqiangbei electronics market, p ≈ 0.8
A Turk brushes past me holding 300 LEDs in a plastic bag yelling “让一让！让一让!”In perfect Chinese—make way!
I’m hunting for a Chinese teapot in record time for the thirst trap of the decade. The gate erupts with a few hundred humans surging into the SEG-e market. Unattended children zig zagging “老板，要什么?” what do you want! A vendor yells. “Raspberry Pi!” A granny demands. “Cloning! Decryption!” a lit red/green sign rotates. A swarm of Arabs materialize and block my way, points at relay and says “二百个！“ to granny while voicecalling on whatsapp. “二十块！Twenty!“ A guy punches on a calculator! One floor up. Someone plays fur Elise but looping the same snippet over and over again. Pakistani girl shakes her head “没有“. I passed by a guy eating a half watermelon without a spoon. He looks. I break through a final wave of GPU resellers. The teapots were in shortage, so they sent me to the rooftop garden. The walls were full of communist texts surrounded by dusty meeting rooms. The security guard was on a smoke break and I can hear his Tiktoks. I take his chair. At 18:15pm, when the speakers were blasting “回家” (the off song), I finally get my teapot. The granny explains that the courier went to the wrong warehouse 2 times and offers me hot water.
Shenzhen factories and WeChat GC mod, p ≈ 0.5
Morning begins when factory #23 pings me on WeChat that their prototypes are in shortage and can’t meet a deadline. 30 factories across Shenzhen, Foshan and Dongguan are corroborating across a bajillion group chats, videos of CNC machines here and a photo of a congee there. My schedule’s been replaced with push notifications. I replied through twenty emails and then have lunch at the Chinese cheap buffet cafeteria while dunking on the latest Twitter Weibo hot takes that accidentally become life philosophy.
Multiple suppliers are visiting this afternoon. I hit auto-write on more emails. Heading to a dinner with suppliers; I am late, because I got distracted by a Hatsune Miku cosplayer dancing in the mall while checking the destination constantly on AMap. I used to cite Qiqihar plant fails in Manchurian industrialization. Colleague laughs and replies with a WeChat sticker. “Your theory is 1 kHz. In Shenzhen, we clock at 100 kHz.” Onward the global supply chain runs.
Full-time applied physics/systems neuroscience research, p ≈ 0.75
This also includes grad school.
Campus is real after 6 years of online classes??? I walked into the lab at 8:15 am, immediately spotted as free labour. A postdoc waves frantically "You’re strong, right? help us move the lithography machine.”
9:00 am hybrid lab meeting. I had to stop myself spamming 👍 in the chat (old habits die hard). Breakfast skipped, so I go for lunch with a physics student from Ukraine who writes poetry, an ML friend who’s trying to recruit for a hackathon, and a labmate who is evidently trying and failing to explain their experimental setup. I had much sympathy. Everyone laughs.
Afternoon: Updating my lab notebooks for several hours with another two students calibrating 9-DOF IMUs and people passing through the hallway. Someone derails the conversation by drawing snakes on the whiteboard—Yet everyone is serious about science and tech. Every face is a counterfactual future and past of every other.
I run kinda late to a reading group but they have free pizza. 11pm. I’m binge reading “Birth of a Theorem!” by Cedric Villani because what else aside from taking full advantage of an academic attractor basin ✌️
Accidentally taking over an underground intellectual salon in p ≈ 0.45
At 6:55 am, I receive an email from Joscha Bach:
I show up unstacking chairs at the supposed “crypto cafe” in Montreal. Just when I’m taking a Twitter break, a shadow fall across my screen. A slim figure gestured at the third, empty chair on stage. I blink. He gestures again. I suddenly realized I’m supposed to sit there. Resistance is futile. I go on the stage and yap about Kardashev scales. I need to learn how to talk publicly. But after 2 years… hopefully with better skills
Running two quarters of a microgrant program p ≈ 0.55
After my trans friend has been kicked out of another Airbnb, I decided to run a microgrant program for 6 months. To do it properly.
In this case, funding goes towards: Erdősian graph-walkers, transdisciplinary cat researchers, Nicky Case’s diaspora, local anarchist hackerspace enthusiasts.
The application is 5 mins because fundraising is brain damage. Asking for links to existing profiles: GitHub, public lab notebooks. Asking for a budget spreadsheet, for your 10 fails. Applications are accepted rolling, and grants awarded at the end of each quarter. The trick is convincing my sponsors that my portfolio of grantees is worthy. I send them the finalist applicants and invite them to a discord server that’s set up in the right way.
Co-writing a sci-fi novel with a friend p ≈ 0.75
Previously, I wrote fiction like Every Kindness a Category Error. Today I sit at Long Now cafe, waiting for my friend Nil to arrive to do worldbuilding. Nil strings in various elements from Remembrance of Earth’s past. Seveneves. Dragon’s Egg. Blindsight. Andromeda Strain references. We decided: Kardashev scales. Most likely to cowrite 1 story before committing to the entire novel.
Queer dates involving math, p ≈ 0.93
P(they like nLab) ≈ 0.8. Physics. Chemistry. Goth raves. Visit TSMC. Russian lit.
Want: Forming a small chosen family in the next decade. I’m open to dating other non-binaries, queers, women (including transfem) as *people*, not checkboxes. Cis guys do not contact. Physical safety. People who are calm under stress. Clear map of who’s in the circle and who are guests. Irl dating is much better. But this is difficult given that I’m still moving around a lot so I’ll see after 2 years. What is there to do right now? Rant in more substacks and twitter threads? Dress better?
My pronouns: they/them/she
What I don’t want: Too much complaining, because energy is sacred.
Misc.
Visiting a synchotron p ≈ 0.45
Tour Antarctica p ≈ 0.25
Talking passionately about a Nicky Case indie game while accidentally running into Nicky p ≈ 0.1
Dance performance p ≈ 0.3
Spawn at Antikythera. Click buttons at dynamicland. Meet Dai Zhang. p ≈ 0.1
Appear in public as Wu Zetian and say “当然不行” p ≈ 0.2
Visiting student researcher at CUHK p ≈ 0.25
Graduate from university p ≈ 0. I am class of 2028 and it’s seriously not possible to graduate by 2027
Founding a startup p ≈ 0.475
Making a systems tool that other researchers use p ≈ 0.7
One writing gets cultist status p ≈ 0.6
Starting cult events p ≈ 0.55
Reverse engineering cheap microscopes p ≈ 0.6