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Short Essays

(12)
YOLO A long time ago, Siddartha decided to leave all his belongings and ‘find the way’, after seeing the following four sights: an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic. Dialing it back, Siddartha is the person who later became the first enlightened one, to ‘start’ buddhism. He was a prince who lived in a castle all his life, surrounded by luxury and pleasure. On his first journey outside a..
Quarter Life Crisis Quarter Life Crisis I believe that in every stage of our lives, we are struggling, and that struggle is what defines us. What we strive for, what we aim to be - is who we are. Life is an everlasting race, where we are in constant pursuit for things we find valuable. The direction of our race is our values and our identity. From adolescence, where we start to construct a sense of self-identity, w..
From a machine learning novice: After working with machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, or whatever you want to call it, I've grown - as any person who knows little about something, but enough to fake it would be - skeptical and confused. I preface this rant by saying that this only applies to machine learning applications in engineering. Normally, a good algorithm ( or a simulation, in the engineering sense, I gu..
On Political Comedy Shows I’ve been watching these late night show political shows, like the ones from Hasan Minhaj, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver. Although they are quite fun to watch, I find it, as always, a bit problematic. To cut to the chase, I think it is rather symbolic of how our generation deals with things. The Wall Street Journal and a survey by Deloitte (https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2019/07/14..
On Dorian Gray To this date, to be fair, I have read half of the book. I am at the morning after he discovered the movements in the paintings. And I’m writing at 3 am in the morning. This book is quite romantic, it starts with these seemingly rich men, lords or some shit, who dont seem to have a single pragmatic worry in their minds, having an eloquent, sophisticated yet base discussion. Then comes Dorian Gray..
Mother I visited a feminism panel discussion a while back. It was a large lecture hall, and was for an hour and a half. The panelists urged for a life `unlike that of my mother’. I had no prior exposure to feminism, so I thought that was quite mean(?) of them, to discredit their mothers’ lives like that. However, as time passed I started to understand them - that what I considered a `mother’s role’, wa..
아버지 나의 청소년기는 아버지의 인정을 향한 끊임없는 갈망이였다. 어렸을적 나는 크게 아버지에게 인정을 받지 못했다. 딱히 잘하는것도 없었고, 그냥 평타(?)를 치는 아들이였던 것 같다. 중학교를 들어가면서 기쁨보다 실망을 많이 드리게 되었다. 고등학교에서 사고를 쳤을때는 정말 절망적이였다. 대학교도 그닥 좋은곳을 간게 아니라 항상 가족모임에서 눈치를 봐야 했다. 그렇게 나는 항상 아버지에게 죄송한 마음을 가지고 살아왔다. 그렇게 많은 돈을 투자했는데 마땅한 결과를 못내는 나 자신이 실망스러웠다. 이 실망감과 분노(?)는 나에게 좋은 원동력이 되었고 나는 아버지의 인정을 얻기 위해 열심히 노력했다. 그렇게 좋은 결과들이 나와 아버지에게 처음으로 `아들, 난 니가 자랑스럽다’ 라고 들었을때는 어지러울정도로 기분이..
어머니 예전에 서울대학교에 페미니즘 토크 콘서트를 보러 간 적이 있다. 큰 강의실에서 한시간 반정도 이뤄졌는데, 패널리스트들이 주장한 것은 `난 우리엄마처럼 살지 않겠다’ 였다. 페미니즘에 문외한 이였기때문에 난 패널리스트들이 굉장히 못됐다(?) 라고 생각했다. 어떻게 자신을 낳아주고 길러준 어머니에게 이런말을 할수가 있지라고 생각했고, 솔직히 `정말 이상한 사람들이구나’ 라고 생각하고 넘겨 짚었다. 하지만 시간이 지날수록 난 그 사람들을 이해하게 되었다. 내가, 우리가 당연하다고 생각하는 `어머니’의 역할은 정말 부당한 직책이였다. 우리 사회는 모성애라는 집단 최면으로 여성들에게 자신의 꿈과 열정을 `접어두고’ 주도하는 역할이 아닌 보조하는 역할로 밀어낸다. 집안일은 쉬운일이 아니며, 일에비해 받는 보수는 잔..