I'm Keiji.
I wrote these notes for myself but you're invited! I've found that writing notes is helpful for understanding things better, and it can also serve as a quick reference for sharing my favorite interests.
Please email me (
[email protected]), shoot me a discord message (username:`kogappa`), or send me [anonymous feedback](https://www.admonymous.co/keiji) if you have any suggestions, questions, or just want to talk!
Some suggested starting points:
- General:
- [[essays]]
- [[quotes]]
- [[tools]]
- photos
- [[life]]
- [[wildlife]]
- cooking
- [[teriyaki]]
- [[sukiyaki]]
- Technical:
- [[learning]]
- math
- [[vectors]]
- [[linear ODEs]]
- physics
- [[fundamentals]]
- [[newtonian mechanics]]
- [[dimensional analysis]]
Some things I believe:
- with great power comes great responsibility
- use your education to make the world better
- technology can be [good or bad](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html). don't build bad technology.
- power over nature for individuals is good
- power over people and centralizing power is [bad](https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2022/02/09/the-problem-of-the-state.html)
- parasitic companies are bad
- also bad: ads, addictive apps, [autonomous drones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU) , superintelligent AI
- motivation is the bottleneck, everything else is an excuse
- be conscious of what you're motivated by
- engineering is problem motivated
- science is curiosity motivated
- avoid status games
- anything that increases your motivation is precious
- speed matters, and [there's no speed limit](https://sive.rs/kimo)
- nothing has a skill ceiling
- money doesn't measure value
- markets are inefficient as hell
- Minecraft is $30
- [all the container shipping companies](https://companiesmarketcap.com/container-shipping/largest-companies-by-market-cap/) vs [Palantir](https://companiesmarketcap.com/palantir/marketcap/)
- [power laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) and [exponentials](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage) rule the world, and you can [write them](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space?yScale=log&country=OWID_WRL~USA)
- only boring people get bored
- good taste is the ability to appreciate, not criticize
- the world is a museum of passion projects
- if it's easy you're not trying hard enough
- prophecies tend to be self-fulfilling
- we can want and do whatever we want, but we often lack courage and integrity
- unhappiness can be addictive
- history is made by small teams with big dreams
- work-life convergence is better than work-life balance
- good friends [listen well](https://kogappa.com/rants/listening/)
- joking about suicide is harmful
- reading, writing, running, and sleeping are really good for you
- college is about exploration not training
- try a lot of things and go outside your comfort zone
- you'll learn faster doing the work than studying it
- read the textbook and take good notes
- you forget what you don't use, and that's fine
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothings going to change. It's not.”
– The Lorax