electrolumen

Latest Posts by electrolumen

Warm yourself by the fire, NASA style!

Look no further than this cozy and relaxing fireplace – complete with four RS-25 rocket engines to fill your hearth with light. (And 8.8 million pounds of thrust to power your party to the Moon.)

How to study for long hours/

I find it easier to study with the pomodoro method, where you focus for 25 minutes at least and then take a break.

However during exam preparation or whenever we have situations where there’s a lot of portions to cover, focusing is really hard. We often get distracted by our phones and devices as well as social media.

So I introduce my favourite life changing app!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this app, it’s available on both android and iOS.

It basically has a feature where you can choose the apps you want for studying and the rest of the apps are blocked.

It also has a study log where it basically tracks how long you study for a subject.

It allows me to use the apps that I WANT for studying as well as block social media. It reduces my screen time and distractions immensely and I’m able to focus much better !

(Ps- this is not sponsored)

I hope this helps!

Love,

Mith <3

30 THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU BECOME MORE SELF-AWARE

❦ how much self-control do i have with things that i know are bad for me, but tend to indulge in?

❦ how do i respond to someone who is different from me or whose ideals and beliefs i don't agree with or understand?

❦ how do i deal with being misperceived or misunderstood?

❦ how do i respond when someone judges me, makes fun of me, or calls me names?

❦ how do i deal with other people's mistakes and unpleasant behavior?

❦ how do i deal with people who have hurt me in the past?

❦ how do i spend my free time?

❦ how do i deal with negative people?

❦ how do i deal with stressful situations? do i tend to worry a lot? what else do i do?

❦ how do i deal with inconvenient life situations?

❦ how do i respond to situations that i have no control over?

❦ how do i deal with negativity in my environment?

❦ how do i deal with challenges in my life?

❦ how do i respond to situations that force me to get out of my comfort zone?

❦ how motivated am i to change my life for the better?

❦ how much do i follow through on what i preach and talk about?

❦ how do i deal with uncertainty, the unknown or a future event that i have no control over?

❦ how do i respond to obstacles, hardships, and "bad" things that happen in my life?

❦ how do i respond when i don't get what i want?

❦ how fulfilling is my everyday life?

❦ how do i respond to new ideas and new ways of thinking?

❦ how do i respond to bad or inconvenient news?

❦ how do i deal with the violence, hate, and suffering in the world?

❦ how do i recharge, rejuvenate, and replenish my energy?

❦ how much do i prioritize spending time and energy on myself and on my passions?

❦ how do i deal with change? new job, new house, new lifestyle, new people, new rules, new technology...do i tend to avoid it, welcome it, fear it, like it, complain about it, stress out about it, worry about it?

❦ how do i deal with emotional pain?

❦ how do i respond when plans change or plans get cancelled without my say so?

❦ how do i respond when i make a mistake or when i fail at something?

❦  how do i deal with rejection?

Hello all, it's me again

I just wanted to give an update and to tell you why I am off of the grid all these months

I have been dealing with toxic shame a lot, and it has been exacerbated by working a job that is not related to my studies and my poor mental health. There is an irrational thought in my heart that I am undeserving of my studies, and seeing all the positive/productive posts. I know it makes no sense... I have felt this way since I was very little, and the origins of these feelings are very complex, so I don't think there is an easy solution for this...

I am not doing better when it comes to this, but I can't just give in to these feelings!!! So I will try to be more active on here and also be more honest, because I know I am not alone in this struggle 🏵️ Might help someone get out of their shell too :> I know it's hard, but I shouldn't betray myself like this

brain rot makes me angry

brain rot, according to newport institute, is a slang term used to describe the silly or less valuable content online, the negative effects that can come from spending too much time online, and the negative psychological and cognitive effects caused by excessive exposure to low-quality internet content, especially in niche communities. it highlights how exposure to low-quality or superficial content can impact our thoughts and language.

in the short term, brain rot can lead to decreased cognitive function. when we consume too much low-value content, it can make it harder to concentrate on more demanding tasks. emotionally, silly or trivial content might lead to a less engaged or emotionally flat state, affecting your mood and overall mental well-being. additionally, constant scrolling and exposure to pointless content can result in mental fatigue, leaving you feeling mentally drained and less motivated to tackle more meaningful activities.

over the long term, brain rot can have more severe implications. a steady diet of low-quality content can erode critical thinking skills, making it harder to engage in deep and meaningful analysis. spending too much time in specific online communities can also alter your perceptions, warping your view of the world and normalizing certain behaviors or opinions that might not be healthy. furthermore, constant exposure to bite-sized content can reduce your attention span, making it more difficult to engage with longer, more complex material. this can impact your ability to learn and be productive, as you may find it challenging to focus on tasks that require sustained attention.

it's important to balance your digital diet with high-quality and meaningful content to maintain a healthy mind. by being mindful of the content that we consume and taking steps to limit exposure to low-value material, we can protect our cognitive and emotional well-being.

let me leave you with these: ndtv article, stopdoomscrolling-cafe

have you noticed these effects in your own experience or observed them in others?

❤️nene

Awwweeee 🥹💖💖💖 I am so glad I met you!

reblog if you've made a good friend on tumblr.

ppl on here get sooo mad when someone says you should be a little bit grateful for lgbt allies like sorry but i have homophobic overbearing parents & im used to people thinking gays are freaks and “groomers” so the concept of “cishet people who are willing to ally themselves with the lgbt liberation movement” is something i dont think ill ever take for granted. but thats just me i guess idk. yeah its praising the bare minimum but receiving the bare minimum allyship is a blessing when im used to deeply entrenched homophobia. i’d rather shit talk the people who actually want me dead instead of the cishets showing up at pride to day drink with drag queens. what does ridiculing them do except ruin the vibe :|

SHIRT MY FRIEND GOT ME

‘𝗙𝗨𝗡 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗦’ 🐈

A little repost from the ol' archive.

Saw a tweet that said something around:

"cannot emphasize enough how horrid chatgpt is, y'all. it's depleting our global power & water supply, stopping us from thinking or writing critically, plagiarizing human artists. today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools. this isn't a world we deserve"

I've seen some of your AI posts and they seem nuanced, but how would you respond do this? Cause it seems fairly-on point and like the crux of most worries. Sorry if this is a troublesome ask, just trying to learn so any input would be appreciated.

i would simply respond that almost none of that is true.

'depleting the global power and water supply'

something i've seen making the roudns on tumblr is that chatgpt queries use 3 watt-hours per query. wow, that sounds like a lot, especially with all the articles emphasizing that this is ten times as much as google search. let's check some other very common power uses:

running a microwave for ten minutes is 133 watt-hours

gaming on your ps5 for an hour is 200 watt-hours

watching an hour of netflix is 800 watt-hours

and those are just domestic consumer electricty uses!

a single streetlight's typical operation 1.2 kilowatt-hours a day (or 1200 watt-hours)

a digital billboard being on for an hour is 4.7 kilowatt-hours (or 4700 watt-hours)

i think i've proved my point, so let's move on to the bigger picture: there are estimates that AI is going to cause datacenters to double or even triple in power consumption in the next year or two! damn that sounds scary. hey, how significant as a percentage of global power consumption are datecenters?

1-1.5%.

ah. well. nevertheless!

what about that water? yeah, datacenters use a lot of water for cooling. 1.7 billion gallons (microsoft's usage figure for 2021) is a lot of water! of course, when you look at those huge and scary numbers, there's some important context missing. it's not like that water is shipped to venus: some of it is evaporated and the rest is generally recycled in cooling towers. also, not all of the water used is potable--some datacenters cool themselves with filtered wastewater.

most importantly, this number is for all data centers. there's no good way to separate the 'AI' out for that, except to make educated guesses based on power consumption and percentage changes. that water figure isn't all attributable to AI, plenty of it is necessary to simply run regular web servers.

but sure, just taking that number in isolation, i think we can all broadly agree that it's bad that, for example, people are being asked to reduce their household water usage while google waltzes in and takes billions of gallons from those same public reservoirs.

but again, let's put this in perspective: in 2017, coca cola used 289 billion liters of water--that's 7 billion gallons! bayer (formerly monsanto) in 2018 used 124 million cubic meters--that's 32 billion gallons!

so, like. yeah, AI uses electricity, and water, to do a bunch of stuff that is basically silly and frivolous, and that is broadly speaking, as someone who likes living on a planet that is less than 30% on fire, bad. but if you look at the overall numbers involved it is a miniscule drop in the ocean! it is a functional irrelevance! it is not in any way 'depleting' anything!

'stopping us from thinking or writing critically'

this is the same old reactionary canard we hear over and over again in different forms. when was this mythic golden age when everyone was thinking and writing critically? surely we have all heard these same complaints about tiktok, about phones, about the internet itself? if we had been around a few hundred years earlier, we could have heard that "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth."

it is a reactionary narrative of societal degeneration with no basis in anything. yes, it is very funny that laywers have lost the bar for trusting chatgpt to cite cases for them. but if you think that chatgpt somehow prevented them from thinking critically about its output, you're accusing the tail of wagging the dog.

nobody who says shit like "oh wow chatgpt can write every novel and movie now. yiou can just ask chatgpt to give you opinions and ideas and then use them its so great" was, like, sitting in the symposium debating the nature of the sublime before chatgpt released. there is no 'decay', there is no 'decline'. you should be suspicious of those narratives wherever you see them, especially if you are inclined to agree!

plagiarizing human artists

nah. i've been over this ad infinitum--nothing 'AI art' does could be considered plagiarism without a definition so preposterously expansive that it would curtail huge swathes of human creative expression.

AI art models do not contain or reproduce any images. the result of them being trained on images is a very very complex statistical model that contains a lot of large-scale statistical data about all those images put together (and no data about any of those individual images).

to draw a very tortured comparison, imagine you had a great idea for how to make the next Great American Painting. you loaded up a big file of every norman rockwell painting, and you made a gigantic excel spreadsheet. in this spreadsheet you noticed how regularly elements recurred: in each cell you would have something like "naturalistic lighting" or "sexually unawakened farmers" and the % of times it appears in his paintings. from this, you then drew links between these cells--what % of paintings containing sexually unawakened farmers also contained naturalistic lighting? what % also contained a white guy?

then, if you told someone else with moderately competent skill at painting to use your excel spreadsheet to generate a Great American Painting, you would likely end up with something that is recognizably similar to a Norman Rockwell painting: but any charge of 'plagiarism' would be absolutely fucking absurd!

this is a gross oversimplification, of course, but it is much closer to how AI art works than the 'collage machine' description most people who are all het up about plagiarism talk about--and if it were a collage machine, it would still not be plagiarising because collages aren't plagiarism.

(for a better and smarter explanation of the process from soneone who actually understands it check out this great twitter thread by @reachartwork)

today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools

i mean, this is true! AI tools are definitely going to destroy livelihoods. they will increase productivty for skilled writers and artists who learn to use them, which will immiserate those jobs--they will outright replace a lot of artists and writers for whom quality is not actually important to the work they do (this has already essentially happened to the SEO slop website industry and is in the process of happening to stock images).

jobs in, for example, product support are being cut for chatgpt. and that sucks for everyone involved. but this isn't some unique evil of chatgpt or machine learning, this is just the effect that technological innovation has on industries under capitalism!

there are plenty of innovations that wiped out other job sectors overnight. the camera was disastrous for portrait artists. the spinning jenny was famously disastrous for the hand-textile workers from which the luddites drew their ranks. retail work was hit hard by self-checkout machines. this is the shape of every single innovation that can increase productivity, as marx explains in wage labour and capital:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital. Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease”

this is the process by which every technological advancement is used to increase the domination of the owning class over the working class. not due to some inherent flaw or malice of the technology itself, but due to the material realtions of production.

so again the overarching point is that none of this is uniquely symptomatic of AI art or whatever ever most recent technological innovation. it is symptomatic of capitalism. we remember the luddites primarily for failing and not accomplishing anything of meaning.

if you think it's bad that this new technology is being used with no consideration for the planet, for social good, for the flourishing of human beings, then i agree with you! but then your problem shouldn't be with the technology--it should be with the economic system under which its use is controlled and dictated by the bourgeoisie.

your friends think about you, y'know? they smile and think about goofy shit you've said. they pray for you. they smell your perfume in a shop and think of you fondly. they tell anecdotes involving you to strangers and friends. they remember the way you hug or bite or high five and want to repeat it with you. they love you. i promise.

Taking a slight tangent from classical optics, I decided to delve more into non-linear optics.

As someone who never had to use Gaussian form of Maxwell's equations, never used Tensors, and had never used Einsteins notation for summation; let me just say the algebra of the book proved to be a hard nut to crack!

What am I learning about? Anisotropy! Who knew that the direction at which you observe/propagate through a material such as a crystal plays a role in the material properties you will experience!!

I still don't believe you can determine eigenvalues and eigenvectors for an arbitrary 3x3 permittivity matrix (I need to use numerical examples to really see it) and that there exists rotational matricies that let us make the math all neat and proper.

But, slowly and with growing pains, I am continuing to slowly tread the waters of this fascinating topic!

SAT prep.

I feel you... I am a bit younger, but I have lost so many years too, and with that I feel like I've lost myself too. Something that has helped me is to lower my expectations and slow down in life, and to allow myself to grieve those lost times. Also to allow myself to be disappointed, and than forgive yourself. You don't have to be anything right now, you just have to exist and keep pushing forward. And have the belief that the answer will reveal itself to you the more you allow yourself to experience life. At least, that is what I am hoping for.

Also don't forget you are way stronger than you think! 💖

i KNOW that 25 is not old i KNOW that i have more time to be someone but i also feel like i have lost so much youth to my mental illness and grief and that in itself is part of the reason why i cannot bring myself to be anything

i hate this fucking "i'm just a girl" brand of feminism bc it is so easy for young women in their 20s who are afraid of big changes and personal growth to revert to depending on their gender and the associated fragility of it so that they can make it through life when really they're just trapping themselves in a position where they cannot and will not grow out of that fear.

Today’s Exhibit of the Day? It’s one of the largest amethyst geodes in the world! At about 13 ft (4 m) tall and 9,000 lbs (4,082 kg), this giant weighs about as much as three compact cars. It was born when molten magma poured from the Earth’s crust some 135 million years ago. While its dazzling purple crystals might catch your eye, this geode would have originally been composed of colorless quartz—its distinctive amethyst color deriving from millenia of natural radiation, heat, and trace contaminants. 

You can spot this geode, and other sparkly specimens, in the Museum’s Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals. We're open daily from 10 am-5:30 pm! Plan your visit.

Photo: D. Finnin/ © AMNH

a quick “why is my life so bad” checklist

how’s your sleep schedule

have you eaten or drank anything besides sugar and caffeine

how long have you been sitting in one spot

have you gone out in public recently

have you taken a shower/brushed your teeth/groomed yourself properly

have you spent time doing an activity that doesn’t involve a screen

etc

my mom taught me the therapeutic power of cleaning. open all the windows. throw out the old. wipe down the entire house. burn some incense. roast some coffee. then rest. that way the tears from last night don’t feel as heavy. 

study/productivity server!

here is the link to the study/productivity group server that i said i'd make!

join in to accomplish your goals with others like you!

By tracking mRNA scientists can view chemicals within the brain creating memories for the first time. 

(x)

working student's survival guide for life 👩‍💻💻📱

also my phone's colors are a little happier today, yay! 🌷

everyone tells you how to launch and advance within your career, but i haven't found a lot of advice about surviving the day to day that has actually consistently worked for me. so here are some tips and tricks i learned the hard way. none of them are a magic pill, but i hope it helps even a little bit ☺️ these are also not really limited to being a working student, adulting can be a pretty universal struggle 🙈

talk to a friend — preferably a friend who shares common hobbies rather than a shared career, location, etc. you don't have to be picky by any means!! i talk to friends who are in the same career, school, etc. all the time! i've just found that when i talk to friends who share hobbies, it eliminates stress so much more effectively because the topics tend to center around our shared hobby and i've never found out later that there was an ulterior motive for the friendship because it's all just for fun!

take lots of breaks — don't worry about appearing unproductive because your work will speak for itself. i used to have my butt pretty much glued to my chair from 9-5 and most days even beyond. now, i take breaks to exercise, read a fun book, complete my studies, sometimes even take a nap, and i get the same amount of work done!! of course, knowledge plays an important role and for a time, putting in those extra hours may even be necessary, but it should definitely not be treated as the gold standard!

get a hobby — this is closely tied to the first point, and no, watching TV doesn't count (unless you actively participate in the fandom by creating fanfic, gifs, etc.). it can be hard to find something that sticks. it can also be hard to accept that this is something fun that you can suck at. but don't give up!! try many things! try things you've already tried! and for the love of all good things, do not turn your hobbies into a side hustle!! (unless you also commit to having new hobbies outside of those)

you've probably already heard at least some of this before, in which case, consider this a friendly reminder — you got this! 💕

more survival guides: done is better than perfect, the best night routines start in the morning, organize your life like an engineer, high-energy productivity checklist, tech girlie tips, take control of your life, on doing your best

YEAAAAAAHHHHH

Study tipps that work for me as an autistic ADHDer

(who massively struggled with any school related studying for years)

Finding out when I can focus best. I can't think by daylight. I need it to be dark outside to study. Therefore I study at night. If you can study at the time of the day you can focus best, do that. It doesn't matter if everyone else gets up at 5 am to do their ✨perfect productive morning routine✨. There's no one right time to be productive.

Stimming or moving while studying if I feel like it I can't focus (especially when I have to listen to recorded lectures for hours) when I don't move. I need to sit in my rocking chair and rock back and forth to take in any information at all. Pay attention to if you feel like moving when studying. If you're used to suppressing your stims, try to relearn stimming in a safe space if possible. The better regulated you are, the easier it will be to focus.

Nice distractions. Ali Abdaal once mentioned that he always studied with his door open so friends who passed by would come in for a little chat. You need to take breaks anyway, so think about somethings like that to make them more enjoyable. If you study at home or live alone, text your friends before you start studying, so replies will drift in while you're studying. TL;DR: 1. Study when you can focus best, you don't need to be productive in the morning if you're not a morning person. 2. Listen to your body and move if you need to move to focus. 3. Make your breaks nice, I like chatting with friends in between studying. Feel free to add what works for you : )

Life update 🌟

Hello everyone, I have been missing in action for a couple of months, and I haven't really explained myself properly... I have hinted at having some big life changes coming my way, but it was way bigger than I could've anticipated.

Basically, I have lost almost all financial support, so now I have to financially support myself, including paying for the scholarships (which isn't much since I am almost at the end of my Bachelor's degree, thankfully).

It was a very difficult situation, and here and there I really had to strap in to make it thru, but I believe the worst has passed. Now I am financially stable, but I am still struggling with balancing everything on my plate, studies and a full time job. Our curriculum is designed so you only have that on your plate + an internship, not a full time job also. All that combined with my not-so-great mental health... Yeah it's a struggle.

So yeah. I initially made this blog for motivation to finish my studies, but during this time my studies became such a sore spot for me, because all of it made me feel inadequate, since I really struggled to study as much as I've wanted to, and my schoolwork took a massive hit. I know it's silly considering my situation, but that's how I felt, and hell I still do. That is the feeling I have to learn how to deal with.

If you are in a similar situation - please know you are not alone. I know in a sea of pretty pictures and motivational quotes it can feel like you are not doing enough, but you have to live and learn by your tempo... Or your health will pay the price, which is something I am still paying. And hell, it ain't worth it!

Thank you for reading this, lots of love 💝💖💝