It feels a bit weird to be writing about my summer in October, but it’s sunny in London today and besides, I’ve been wearing T-shirts for the whole of last month. Since this is the first “now” post, it might be somewhat longer and more retrospective than in future. We’ll see!
- Locations: Spent September in the Bay Area, back in London for the weekend before going to Oxford on Tuesday (4 days from now)
- Projects: Working out what (& how much) I want to do for Oxheart this term; helping organise a new AI Safety group in Oxford; finalising my report for HEPI about access to exam scripts
- Interests: Got thoroughly nerdsniped by index wallets; doing leetcode again; the financial mechanics of startup fundraising are pretty cool to learn about
Where I’ve been
Quite a lot of travel over the vacation. Canterbury, Warwick, Paris, Dublin, Oxford, Skye (+ Glasgow/Edinburgh), Berkeley/SF, Boston.
Really enjoyed the software engineering I worked on in Berkeley; I do want to move more in a technical direction. Met up with lots of people in the Bay, though fewer times with each than I was hoping.
What I’ve been thinking about
- How to organise events well; how to make it easy for others to find you
- e.g. I’m planning to run a hackathon to attract economics-y people in Oxford, inspired by a suggestion from Bassel
- Friendship, ways to get closer with people, how I can achieve that this term
- Pros and cons of suspending from Oxford for a year starting in January
- AI safety, the implications of this quick take
Media consumption
Lots of Bleachers, Glass Animals (thanks, Claire!), Maggie Rogers (a summer discovery), Gracie Abrams. Sabrina Carpenter is growing on me. Plenty of Lorde and Taylor Swift as usual.
Started watching The Expanse on Damon’s recommendation for a non-anime rational fiction TV show; enjoyed the first episode. Certainly better than Hijack, which I gave up on multiple times because of how stupid the plot was, but kept returning to anyway.