StatistaGilfix: 2021

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

I spent more time watching and reading about the Olympics in the past three weeks than any other thing I can think of ever having consumed in such a short time. So I thought it might be worth writing down some of my favorite memories. This is something I want to start doing more in my life, mostly with things I actually participated in, but the Olympics seems like a good place to start anyways. It is both good to reflect on things as they happen, and very nice to have written memories to look back on.

These are extremely me-specific (i.e lots of Israel, Croatia, and whatever I happened to be watching) so I'll probably miss a few of the "big moments". And while I don't really know what the point of writing most of what I've written on here is, this one in particular has no point or intended audience beyond future me.

MAGA: Make A (Great Olympic) Games Already!

In my humble opinion, The Summer Olympics are the greatest event in the world. What else even contends?

Who doesn’t have some memory of growing up watching the Summer Olympics? If you aren’t a sports fan, Tom Brady and LeBron James might mean nothing to you beyond their commercials. But you probably watched (or heard about) Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps race to world records. You know McKayla Maroney’s “not impressed” face.

Kamala Harris Kissing Fish or: How to Memorize a Deck of Cards

Do you think you can easily learn to memorize the order of a deck of cards in a few minutes? Well guess what, you can!

I’m sure I am far from the only person to read Moonwalking with Einstein and get inspired to try some memorization. It turned out to be pretty fun and eye-opening! One week after finishing the book I was able to memorize the order of a deck of cards in under 10 minutes.

In honor of len(deck), here are 52 thoughts/takes:

College Is Bad

Epistemic status: Very uncertain, I’m interested if others agree and if any other writing or research on this exists. Don't take too seriously.

For most smart-ish upper-middle class-ish kids these days (well, maybe not *these* days; thanks covid), going to college means moving out of your house (and often your state) and into a dorm, doing schoolwork for a few hours a day, and spending the rest of your time hanging out with new friends, who will likely be very similar to you in their interests, political views, and smarts.