Other Thoughts

Random musings, ideas, and observations that don't really fit into my other pages. Usually off-the-cuff, hardly proof-read.

Football Nirvana

12.01.2025

I haven't seen either of my football teams lose for 9 weeks in a row. The Patriots last lost on Sept. 28th and Indiana Football hasn't lost since Dec. 20th of last year. I'll probably never have this run of football success ever again, so I'm just basking in the moment. Trying not to fly too close to the sun.

Old Stuff

11.30.2025

I've recently been thinking whether or not to delete my old blogs and projects that are either outdated or no good. One one hand, I only want to put the best out there. I use this site as a portfolio of sorts, and I want it to reflect my best work. For example, I'm not a huge fan of my Dyson Spheres post (yet), and some of my projects on github are pretty antequated.

On the other hand, I do think there's a lot of value in seeing the evolution of work over time. Additionally, I've found myself revisiting old projects and ideas and building on them. I've recently been playing around with Google's AI tool suite and stumbled across Jules, an autonomous coding agent. Instead of starting from scratch, I took an old project and used Jules to help me refactor and modernize the codebase. It was nice to have a playground to experiment with, where it didn't really matter if I broke something or not.

Ultimately, I think it's good to keep up the old stuff. If nothing else, it's a good place to experiment.

A few takeaways from M&A class

09.04.2025

Here are some insights I learned from my first M&A class that I think are generally applicable in life and business:

  • The only bad risk is uncompensated risk
  • If you can't model it on a napkin (or architect it / summarize it in a simple way), it's probably not worth pursuing
  • Never walk into a deal without knowing who could get rich from it

Learning for the Future

08.20.2025

With the rise of AI, we should probably lean away from take home problem sets and essays that students turn in and aren't responsible for again. My thought is that we should enter an "accountability" era in learning, where students create something then are responsible for that output.

For example, have a student write an essay (that, yes, can be ChatGPT-able) but then have them defend that essay or position in class. Start mini-dissertations earlier in a school career. In our tech strategy class, we used an AI to debate against us AHEAD of class, and then we defended our positions in class with other students. I liked this model of AI prep then real world discussion. I know you can't do this for every class (how do we defend points in math class...? do we have people defend their proofs?) but I think this is a possible model for the school future. Most importantly, it teaches students to be accountable for their work and to think critically about their own ideas. Accountability is a key skill in the real world, and critically thinking will prevent brain-rot that seems to be widespread with the rise of AI.

Relevant Quote

08.18.2025
"If people just sit inside and play video games all day, then Pawnee will die" - Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation, Seasons 3 episode 1