Segregation and Coincidence

I've been reading Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas Schelling, which reminded me of Nicky Case's fantastic Parable of the Polygons. I wanted to create a simple p5.js sketch illustrating the same idea, so voila: Schelling Segregation.

I've been walking and practicing my French at morning and lunchtime yesterday and today. I think more frequently lower-intensity exercise really helps my rheumatoid arthritis.

In fact, I have a (possibly crackpot) theory that the stress and repeated minor injury and inflammation of connective tissue caused by exercise without adequate warmup might be what triggered my rheumatoid arthritis in the first place. I don't know if that's true or not, and there's probably no way to know if it is true, but if it is, it makes sense.

I was 36 at onset, but I was quite fit - I'd quit smoking five years before, I'd lost about ninety pounds, I was running half-marathons regularly (though slowly), and I had just done my first pullups in about 15-20 years. To suddenly lose my ability to run, to develop a chronic degenerative condition... just as I was really delighting in my body and in exercise for the first time as an adult, seemed so incredibly cruel and unfair! Like the universe reaching out to squash me like a bug.

But if it was indeed triggered by joint inflammation caused by not warming up sufficiently prior to exercise (not caused; I suspect that it was years of abusing my body prior that set up all of the necessary conditions, and that the physical strain of that year was the final straw), then that at least makes sense. It seems less cruel.

In keeping with my recent strong interest in AI systems and their formal verification, compliance automation, etc, I reached out today to a coworker who has relevant experience and works in an adjacent capacity, and asked her to keep me in mind if anything like that came across her desk and she thought I might be of some use. She replied that there was actually something she had in mind, so that's very exciting.

When I was in college, I read The Celestine Prophecy - I don't really have a high opinion of that book, but I do think there's something about trying to actively pursue your own destiny and be open to opportunity that the book expresses well. The idea, essentially, that there's no such thing as coincidence.

So several days or a week or two ago I went on this AI-formal-verification spree and started checking some things out, and then earlier today I came across a blog post on HackerNews saying, basically "your manager isn't going to spend their time babysitting your career; you need to take the initiative" and I thought, yeah, that's absolutely right - and that's what I haven't been doing! And so I reached out to my coworker, and got an exciting response.

Great stuff. That's the kind of small step that turns into a good, healthy jog.