SJtheGreat

Still waters run deep

[sj-the-great]

9 July 2026

A portion of my summer was spent as a research intern of Earth & climate science at IISER Pune. The lab I worked in was brilliantly pleasant.

Our computational and storage servers were named Tahiti and Hawaii respectively.

The main table of the lab always had a Hulk and Iron Man mask lying on it, for no particular reason.

A plastic chess set also sits on the table, where daily chess games are played. I'm the lowest ranked player in the lab at 900. My PhD collaborator is 1500. The highest is 1800.

Numerous whiteboards in the lab stand scrawled with math and physics and occasionally, swear words.

A blackboard in the corridor is a daily (surprisingly good) art piece. Its previous art features include a flower, a fighter jet, linear algebra, the Saturn V, and philosophical questions such as, "why do the simulation results not match the analytical?"

A rather beautiful PhD student in a neighbouring lab has become daily motivation to sit and work on climate models.

Another PhD student in my lab leaves for Germany for a conference this week, all the best to her.

A labmate randomly came up to me and offered me a rock. If I ever am in need of rocks, I can approach him, he says. He has many Himalayan rocks of interesting composition.

When I deleted a year's worth of data accidentally (thankfully backups existed), my PhD collaborator simply said "be careful. Only use the UI/VI to visually inspect, don't do any operations. Always codify all operations. I've lost my fair share of important files due to sheer negligence."

I really like it here.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.

you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today. 

it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.

about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.

i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.

but i think - to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-

i think opportunity knew it was loved. 

every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.

that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.

[sj-the-great]

3 June '26

This is too good to not share.

[sj-the-great]

31 May '26

I just finished seeing The Wild Robot, by Chris Sanders. My goodness. What a beautiful film. Literally and figuratively. Everything from the art style to the music is so rich. Hats off to that film.

I absolutely adore the simple power of animated films. They're usually aimed towards children, so they tend to be fairly straightforward and grounded in their message. Love. Kindness. Compassion. The good ones always push some of these universal emotions, with no ifs or buts or subversions or subtlety. And I love that. Between the more adult-aimed films, watching a work of art like The Wild Robot is always a breath of fresh air.

And a gust of wind in the sail to anyone who needs a reminder that being good matters.

[sj-the-great]

26 May '26

What is it with labs naming servers the most random things? I just began research-interning in a lab and our two servers are named Hawaii and Tahiti. My friend's lab's server is named Lasagne. What is up with these names? Let me know if your lab has a funny server name.

[sj-the-great]

22 May '26: Geek Out

From what I've seen, students rarely truly enjoy their major. They may like it or love it, but to truly enjoy your field, you need an opportunity. You need to be allowed to enjoy your work. Situations differ, but either you allow yourself or someone else (like a professor) allows you. To enjoy, you must play. Play is the ultimate sign of peace, of calm, of contentment, of growth. My major (applied mathematics) is heavy. I always tried my best to play with it, but how? I'm still figuring it out, but I think a great way to do so is to simply discuss it with people far removed from it. The dialect of mathematics I am learning differs so much from the dialects of engineering, design, literature, etc. etc. Conversing in that dialect to people not fluent in it brings out how rare it is, how much of a bubble I function in. Similarly, hearing about other bubbles makes me aware of the depth available in other worlds. I think there's something truly beautiful about that.

[sj-the-great]

30 April '26: The Gambler's Edit

As end-of-semester draws near, I would like to introduce you to the Gambler's Edit. A new, simple framework for editing, especially when time is short. Perfect for cutting down essays that are over the limit or require tightening. For the Gambler's Edit...you simply pick paragraphs at random and delete them. Then you pray the remaining essay still makes sense and hit submit. Easy-peasy.

[sj-the-great]

21 April '26: A Word for TBBT

The Big Bang Theory is an old show. It ended before COVID-19 was a thing. And it's also my favourite show ever. We can go into specifics, like favourite anime, favourite drama, etc., but a primary spot in my favourites will always belong to TBBT. My comfort show, if you will. I've seen shows that were better, bigger, bolder, but only TBBT has been rewatched thrice by me. It's not simply because I'm a nerd and I enjoy the nerdy, sometimes inaccessible comedy of TBBT. I love the characters, I love their interactions, I love the details. Hell, I even love their spaces, I love Leonard and Sheldon's apartment. I saw the show during the Lockdown, so I tore through it in roughly two months, but by God I love it. That show feels like home, the characters literally feel like my friends. Not to mention it's one of the few long-running shows with an ending that is mostly well-received (in my opinion maybe the show ran a little long, but the final episode certainly ties everything up very well). I'd highly recommend TBBT to anyone and everyone.

My interaction with the show began far before I even knew what it was. I had signed up for this random stargazing event when I was like 12/13, and I was the only kid there. On the way to the campsite, this group of college students essentially adopted me. One of them said this throwaway line, "you're so much like Sheldon". I had no idea what/who he meant, and I wouldn't until a few years later. That show is one of the reasons why I love doing science, why I love my major, for all the suffering mathematics causes. That show was one of my actual entries into science, because while it didn't show me how science exactly is, it certainly showed me the kind of life you may get with it. And I was a fan.

[sj-the-great]

19 April '26

I read the Song of Ice and Fire books years ago, and now I have finally gotten around to seeing the Game of Thrones show. As with most people (especially those who've read the books), I found seasons through 1-5 spectacular. Season 6 was decent. Season 7 is where I'm noticing the quality significantly dip.

The main part of this is that Season 7 feels more like a comedy than a drama. It's entirely carried by character interactions.

The best of which so far has to the expedition beyond The Wall by Jon Snow and company. This is the epitome of a boys' trip gone wrong. That entire squad is nothing but testosterone, alcohol, and bad temper. The interactions are marvellous: The Hound and Torment, Jon and Beric, Thoros and Gendry. Jorah's just happy to be there. It's the most wildly inefficient plan. You're sending arguably the best warriors in Westeros to capture exactly ONE wight, fend off an army of the undead, then safely make it back to show the rest of the unbelievers that zombies exist. Ridiculous, but it is fun.

[sj-the-great]

10 April '26

I've had my Kindle Paperwhite for over a decade now. I had a thought about upgrading it when I graduate.

Apparently that's not gonna happen. Not because it's expensive or anything; it simply doesn't exist. Amazon stopped selling Kindles in India. I was considering buying the Oasis--but that's a step further than not being sold, it got discontinued! The audacity of Amazon to not have the one thing I actually would like to buy. Kindle Paperwhite is still sold (somewhere that is not India I suppose), so no clue how I'll source that.

On the other hand, my current Kindle is honestly still going great. Despite being a decade old, its age only shows in the fact that it's a bit slow. Aside from that all functions work like a charm. Greatest ROI I've ever experienced. I'm not sponsored to glaze Kindle (although I wouldn't mind), but this genuinely has been one of the most important and significant things I've ever bought. GGs to Amazon, you built a solid e-reader. I appreciate it.

[sj-the-great]

15 March '26

Maths might have my soul someday. Summer has begun here in my home city of Pune, India. I see the beautiful sunny days pass me by in the library as I put my head down and grind on the hellscape that is partial differential equations. Then I fail at the tests regardless.

On the bright side, at least I'm failing at the most difficult major my university has to offer. I'm failing at something worthy. It becomes fun after some practice, honestly. There's worse things to be bad at.

[sj-the-great]

27 February '26: What is a hobby?

Over the past few years, I realised that I had lost actually DOING some of my hobbies because of academics (high school and then college). So over the past year or so, I've been trying to get back in touch with it.

I slowly built a routine of reading before sleeping and during breakfast, so I read like half an hour a day at least. I got back in touch with regular leisure writing so I upload short posts on Tumblr every week or so. It's not a lot of writing because I already write a lot for assignments, but it's something. I don't know if this counts as a hobby but I love watching videos about public transit, urbanism, and history, so I watch those often; as well as shows like House MD or Modern Family and such. I've been trying to reconnect with French (which I learnt a bit during the my freshman year and then forgot), so lately I've been solving an elementary French grammar textbook. Also some guitar here and there, but I dont really care about that I just do it at times because I learnt guitar few years ago. There's also socialising and timepass with friends, but that happens automatically. I'm excluding swimming and running because I do that for exercise, not with the mindset of a hobby.

My concern has been this - for a long time, work was lectures and assignments, and timepass or leisure was either playing video games on my phone or watching stuff on YouTube. For some reason my mind still thinks of French or writing or reading as some form of 'work,' not a hobby. So often I find myself doing French or whatever and I wanna 'escape' that and do actual timepass like watching a public transit video.

What is a hobby? Feel free to let me know in the comments below. I'll follow up this post if I realise something as well. Au revoir.

[sj-the-great]

25 February 2026

I saw that my friend had changed her phone's language from English to German. I first thought she was learning German--but nope. The language change served no logical purpose. Turns out she just found it funny. It gets confusing at times, and she enjoys the quirky nature of it.

Excellent use of free will, in my opinion. Maybe I'll set my phone to French.

[sj-the-great]

21 February '26

Can I call myself a polyglot if I speak Marathi, Hindi, English...

And mathematics?

I can argue that math is a language. I may get terrible grades in that language and sometimes the grammar is a crime to behold and comprehend but still? Can I?

Also je parle un peu français, mais j'apprends encore.

[sj-the-great]

21 February '26

Calling the Chinese S2000 aerostat electricity generator "Howl's Moving Power Plant" has to be the funniest thing I've heard today.

[sj-the-great]

Valentine's Day 2026

"You know what they say...?"

"What do they say?"

"...oh...I was hoping you knew, that's why I asked."

[sj-the-great]

12 February '26

In my partial differential equations course, one of the first methods we learnt to solve PDEs was change-of-coordinates. Essentially, we change our coordinate system from the usual XY-axes to something specially catered towards a particular PDE. Solving from there onwards is significantly easier.

This may be a stretch of the analogy, but I think this a great way to represent that approach regarding changing your perspective in a bad situation. There's often at least one perspective where a shit situation is positive, at least one reason why something is positive. Finding that perspective, building that mindset takes time, but it is well worth it.

[sj-the-great]

9th February '26

Truly despise it when people say, "I said sorry—I was wrong, I apologise, I don't know what else you want me to do"—like, grovel or something. Console me. Court me. Let me act like a baby and make it up to me. Convince me to let it go. What happened to old-fashioned penitence? Or whatever you want to call it, contrition, tenderness. Make amends, you idiot, don't just apologize.