README.hamidah

This page is inspired by ZW. And here's a surprise.

(Some) Past and Present: Emergent Ventures, Interact ('23), Amazon FE ('23), MIT Science Policy Bootcamp ('24), GWWC (Charity Elections), Better Trajectories, NaijaCoder

Quick Facts

• O'Canada is indeed my home and native land. I was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area.
• I'm around 5'9. I don't know or remember my official height, but that should be about right.
• I'm Nigerian and Ivorian. I'm fluent in French, depending on how fluent you are.
• My only party trick is I can (try to) freestyle (yes, the rapping kind). It's fun.
• For the time being if you search my name on the internet, you will see a bald-headed Hamidah. I find this photo very embarassing. Yes, my hair was short. I also went to a Catholic high school and that was my uniform! I was also quite chunky. I wear my shame with pride :/
• I am very blessed. A wise woman asked: "at what cost?" and I guess we'll have to wait and see!
• I write here a lot. At the very least, I can feed the models with a little bit of spice. In expectation, I can store some of my thoughts. At best, I can entertain and maybe educate.
• At any point, I can or will divest responsibility (from anything on this site) in the name of Straussianism.
• I don't use a static site generator, yet.

Being in School

Currently, I'm a student at McGill. I have the intention to major in math?? You see, I wouldn't say this is my thing, but while I'm here I might as well get my money's worth. My heart will always be with the prose, but for now it's with the greek alphabet and numbers. Will this come at the expense of a sexy GPA? Most likely. But what is life without a little virtuous sacrifice and ego degradation?

I experimented with discipline affiliations (cough, cough economics). University is an opportunity to learn the fundamentals; try out interests like outfits; and do all the fun stuff outside of classes. I really appreciate economics, but I'm enjoying exploring the other ones (physics, math, the humanities). Regardless, I love me a good paper and please send me one if you think it's interesting.

Being taught by professors is underrated, self-studying is hard to do well. There's a lot I don't know, it's nice to know that there's relative experts to help.

I didn't come in with as much intention as I would have liked, but maybe this was good. Having "student" as your main identity label is interesting...a very solid thing for the time being.

(Select) Music to Transport

My music taste is a lot more disparate than this list suggests. I listen to a lot of music. As usual, send recommendations; I'll listen.

• "Parfum D'Etoiles" — Ichiko Aoba
• "Memoir" — Ann Annie
*Tears are forming, sheesh.
• "L'Autre Cote" — Elijah Fox *A fav.
• "Crystal Falls" — Elijah Fox
• "Wyoming" — Elijah Fox
*For full effect, listen to these three songs of his back-to-back.
• "Rises the Moon" — Liana Flores
• "24 Preludes, Op. 11" — Scriabin
• "Vicino A Te" — Stelvio Cipriani
• "New York Herald Tribune" — Martial Solal
• "Once Upon A Time" — Austin Farewell
• "Toroka" — Christian Kuria (w/ Alex Isley) *A fav.
• "6 Pezzi, P. 44: No.6. Internmezzo-seranata" — Respighi (+ 6 Pieces)
• The Andy Warhol Diaries Soundtrack (Notably: "You Can Recreate Yourself," "Old Fashioned Kind of Living.")

Some Great Words

• Jupiter Rising
• Matt Lakeman
• from Endymion by John Keats
• Howl by Allen Ginsberg
• The Prisoner of Chillon by Lord Byron
• Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Percy Shelley
• For the Young Who Want to by Marge Piercy
• The letters of Julie Yip-Williams to her daughters
• Ted Chiang's...(everything I've read is insane. I'm so unique, I know.)
• The Word of God

Personally Seminal

• Bluebooking Happiness
• Indifference is a power
• Money and Modern Life
• He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won a Fields Medal.
• Invisible Geniuses: Could the Knowledge Frontier Advance Faster

An excerpt from something I (jokingly) wrote a little while ago:

I'll say the cliché thing and posit that it isn't in inertness that you grow. I don't have a perfectly articulable value system, and it arguably seems dope to have one, right? Certainty. A quick response time when someone questions your "why."

I wake up from my slumber and ask myself what can I do today to save the billions of suffering shrimp. Hard-work, and it's not for the weak, but one must do what has to be done.

Yeah, like no. I want to help people, make sure that (relatively) lucking out wasn't in vain, put the energy spent on empathy to better use, do the rationally altruistic thing and give away my surplus.

I'm glory-seeking and part of me just wants to be great; connection-seeking and wants to find my people; knowledge-seeking and wants to understand the complexities of the world that I merely accept without question. But, I have no clue what all this boils down to.

You optimize because you identify this optimum and it only makes sense you put all your might into getting as close to it as possible. But, I'm dumb. Sure, there's local optima and I work for those, but it seems quite wrong to try for any given thing.

...Work hard and have no clue what you're doing. It's fine. I accept it as a means to personhood. To the extent I have executive function, I try to complete the tasks on my to-do list while still being the person that strolls the streets until dawn.

I let it go. I tried to let whatever it was go, and the plot actually started to get good. Maybe it should have happened sooner, but hey, a drawn-out start is a novel classic.