What is up y’all!
You might notice a slight style change—I’m trying out a new newsletter service (Substack).
It’s summer (!!!) however I’m not doing summer very well. I haven’t gone to the beach yet.* San Francisco is cold and foggy, and I spend most of my time in an office building. 😂😭
That said, I have a lot of exciting stuff planned this summer. I’m going to see one of my favorite bands, Vulfpeck, in July. In August we’re heading to China to see pandas, eat spicy food, and get married again! 👰😊💍
*I lied. Earlier this month I went to Corgi Con at Ocean Beach:
Here are the 2 best things I came across this month.
Data is Like Plastic
Elettra Bietti, a S.J.D. Candidate at Harvard, proposes regulating the creation of data like plastic, since both are produced en masse and can cause long-term harm if not managed properly.
Both of these things—really useful, both of these things—completely overproduced, each in small scale seems to be great—at large scale produces very abstract and large harms. The difference between them is that data is less visible than plastic, and so maybe we can use the example of plastic to think through some of the harms that data is causing to humanity today.
Coming Home, One Word at a Time
I thought this article was beautiful. That is all.
“The main difference is not what languages are made of, but what they choose to talk about,” said Ali Taqi, my Urdu teacher. He spoke to me about how words in the language can be ephemeral, experiential: “Urdu has a depth that Hindi doesn’t have, a sentimentality. It is a tool to convey more inherent matters, of pain, pleasure, love. It is much more than just function.
Updates from Personal Pursuits
Mandarin 中文
Since I’m going to China in August, July will be my last big push for practicing before I go! 我会加油!
Reading 📚
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans is a good read for pride month 🌈 and a pretty detailed education into trans issues today—like did you know an athlete’s performance ranking in their respective gender is about the same before and after transition? (taking into account the one-year buffer period standard in the NCAA & Olympics)
They found that if a runner was (for example) in the 90th percentile before, they were in approximately the 90th percentile after transition. The study concluded: “Collectively, the age graded scores for these eight runners were essentially the same in both genders.”
Several parts are the book get somewhat depressing when you realize laws and society are not on a trajectory to get much better for trans people anytime soon. All the more reason to spread awareness. Here are my reading highlights from the book.
Also: I have a (kick-ass) intern this summer. This is my first time being somebody's manager, so to learn how to not suck at it, I've been reading The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo.
Running 🏃
The toe is slowly getting better! 🦶 My PT cleared me to run anything under 3 miles. I wrote about my personal experience with the cycle of injury and recovery on the blog.
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
—Terry Pratchett, novelist (28 Apr 1948-2015)