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- {%- include disqus_comments.html -%}
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diff --git a/_posts/2016-06-25-first-week-class-cnu.md b/_posts/2016-06-25-first-week-class-cnu.md
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--- a/_posts/2016-06-25-first-week-class-cnu.md
+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: First week of class at CNU
----
-
-I’ve just finished my first week of class at Chonnam National Universty here in Gwangju with CLS and everything is amazing! I am staying with a host family in a suburb about 40 minutes from school by bus, so I get to practice my Korean 24/7.
-
-Speaking in a new language can feel like doing the dishes with chopsticks. One of the conditions of the CLS scholarship is that students use only the target language when they are on campus, even outside of class, which is both exhausting and rewarding. Listening and speaking are my weakest language areas, and trying to explain a multi-step process in Korean or politely make a request of my host family often leaves all parties frustrated and confused. I am committed to the language policy, but it seems to worry my host family that I come home each day exhausted of my Korean abilities rather than more fluent.
-
-Life in Gwangju is really nice. Gwangju is the sixth largest city in Korea, so although most people here have interacted with foreigners, we are by no means common. I certainly feel the preen of cautious eyes turning toward me when I get on the bus or enter a restaurant. The questions I most often receive from strangers are whether or not I can eat spicy food and whether I know how to use chopsticks.
diff --git a/_posts/2016-08-07-sorites.md b/_posts/2016-08-07-sorites.md
deleted file mode 100644
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--- a/_posts/2016-08-07-sorites.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: Sorites
----
-
-We pretend stability by tracking our life’s progress as a series of marginal changes, so that from each day to the next we can see that we are still ourselves, changed perhaps in substance, but never in identity.
-
-But sample two days, say, ten or twenty years apart within the spread of a life—could you recognize the images as of the same person? Over time the marginal changes penetrate to the being’s core. The transformation becomes comprehensive.
-
-
-
-In seven or ten years’ time, nearly all of the cells in our bodies regenerate. They either fall off, as in the case of skin and hair cells; die, as in the cells living in the acidic environment of the stomach; or are “willfully” (to the extent that our body has a sense of will) killed by the immune system to fight or prevent infection.
-
-Similarly, in the chrysalis, a caterpillar digests itself into a loosely differentiated soup. It emerges a butterfly. Its new appearance is entirely unrecognizable; the only way the observer can know that the caterpillar and butterfly are *the same* is by witnessing the whole process—maybe you tried this in an elementary school science class. Moreover, if you perform classical conditioning on a caterpillar, the butterfly retains the memory. Few would deny that the caterpillar and the butterfly are the same organism.
-
-It is self-observation, in the form of memory, that preserves our identity as we pass through the many transformations (willful or otherwise) that constitute life. Memory is what gives life a sense of flow; it enables us to compress the many different forms our existence takes into a comprehensible narrative. Memory gives continuity to life’s many interruptions and breaks.
-
-Animators know that using continuity is the smart way to model a dynamic process. Modern animators do not draw each frame from scratch, the way you would make an animated flipbook. Instead they draw the first image, and then make several small changes to it to produce the next frame.
-
-Digital video compression works in the same way. The first frame, called a keyframe, is stored much the same way as a still image. Then, each subsequent frame is rendered by describing how it is different from the keyframe—something along the lines of, “The image darkens by 10% and the block of pixels in the corner moves slightly to the right,” but in computer language. After a certain number of frames pass in this way, the change becomes too drastic to account for in so few words. The video encoder determines mathematically that it would be more space-efficient to snap a new picture, so it creates a new keyframe and proceeds from there.
-
-This special point at which the computer decides it would be better to encode a new keyframe then to narrate its progress since the last one has, I think, an analogue in the human experience. When we change our life abruptly or in a major way, we often speak of being “reborn” or “finding a new life.” But we lack the computational diligence of a computer to tell us when a transformation could be more efficiently accounted for with a new raw description than a description of changes.
-
-This is perhaps easier to understand if we imagine describing someone other than ourselves. If we take two snapshots of different points from an individual’s life, at how many years apart do the snapshots become unrecognizable as the same person? In other words, in the video of that person’s life, how often and where would we insert keyframes?
-
-A picture of them from last week and from this week would look quite similar. If last Monday was a keyframe, the description of today’s frame may read, “Weight increases by two pounds and facial hair is removed.” It may also read, “Slightly less anxious about finding a job, but more strongly longing to make up with his ex.” Straightforward. We practice making these sorts of descriptions every day, even about ourselves, when we answer questions like, “Are you feeling better today? You looked pretty down after evals came out.”
-
-But describing our transformation as a continuous process becomes a much more awkward process when we try to trace changes in our lives over several years. If you and I had attended kindergarten together but never met since, and I asked you to describe yourself today by comparing your current self with your four-year-old self, would I be able to deduce an accurate picture of who you now are? You might say, “I whine a lot less,” but of course, given that four-year-olds are prone to excessive whining, the description is hardly informative. You could be a whiny person still, as long as you are less so than you were at age four.
-
-In this case, I would be better off asking you for a keyframe description of who you are. If I asked you, “Are you happy with your work?” your answer would probably give me a better understanding of whether or not you are whiny person than even the most precise comparison of your four-year-old and present day habits—and that’s with a sideways question.
-
-After a certain point, the transformation simply becomes too comprehensive to be accounted for in the language of continuity. You have been born anew. Outside of the perception of those who know you closely and have watched you evolve through every stage of your being, there is no way for me to verify that you are, in fact, yourself.
-
-I am interested in the location of this point, a simultaneously knowable and unknowable point. As in the sorites paradox, in which some unknowable minimum number of grains lumped together eventually produce a “heap,” the changes that shape our lives and identities are so marginal and nameable that a close observer would never be able to name a point at which one has comprehensively transformed. That’s because in the process of observing, the observer becomes keenly aware of the continuity between the original and transformed object, such that a transformation that any outsider would call *comprehensive* is to the observer recalled as only the sequence of marginal changes that it actually was.
-
-So we arrive at a problem: Our memory—the set of observations of our own transformation—is what confirms to us that we are ourselves. That’s because without observing continuity between two apparently different objects, we cannot identify them as the same. But how can we know that our memory is itself continuous? As above, the brain is constantly recycling its own cells. Even on a psychological level, we sometimes rewrite our memory, underlining and punctuating emotionally intense moments and lumping similar experiences together into generic memories (“my commute”). We are perhaps not ourselves, but figments of our own imagination, a cluster of observations that exist only to verify their own existence.
diff --git a/_posts/2017-08-31-students-as-creators.md b/_posts/2017-08-31-students-as-creators.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 11d2d2d5..00000000
--- a/_posts/2017-08-31-students-as-creators.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,87 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Centering students as creators
----
-
-In an influential article
-reimagining
-how we teach art in the modern classroom, Olivia Gude observes that when
-students set about “looking for and developing images from inkblots, smoke
-marks, or wax drippings,” even the artistically checked-out ones begin to
-recognize themselves as creators:
-
-> Initially, students may be confused and suspicious—claiming they don’t see
-> anything in the blurs and blobs, but as peers and teachers model an
-> experimental attitude, soon the classroom is filled with exclamations as new
-> images and combinations are spontaneously discovered. Students who are taught
-> to access the creative unconscious don’t drive teachers mad complaining, “I
-> don’t have an idea.” These students have learned the important artistic lesson
-> that artists do not know the outcomes of their works before they begin.
-> Artists immerse themselves in a process of making and sensitively interact
-> with images and ideas as they emerge.
-
-We would do well to follow Gude’s lead in other fields of art education, too.
-When I interned at The Greater Seattle
-Bureau of Fearless Ideas this summer, I noticed the staff was well prepared
-for students who would claim, “I’m really not the creative type.” In our
-workshops, we sometimes had students brainstorm on paper as a warm-up activity,
-but the proper beginning would always involve dissecting a story or film clip
-and bouncing original ideas around in a group discussion.
-
-This works great for elementary schoolers, whose boundless imaginations seldom
-need more than a push-start. It’s insecurity about speaking in front of unknown
-students (these were summer day camps, after all), not insecurity about their
-creative facility, that holds them back.
-
-High school students are another story, though. By tenth or eleventh grade, a
-subset of kids now identifies as “ambitious.” They are eager to see their name
-at the top of a page filled with text—especially if they can send it off as a
-college or scholarship application—and they like the idea that they have a story
-to tell. And they all *do.* But early on in our college essay workshop at BFI,
-when asked to describe their apprehensions about writing their applications, all
-also said some version of: “I have a vision for myself, but I’m not sure how
-telling the story of my past adds up to it.”
-
-The lead teacher on that workshop, a professional essay counselor who
-volunteered to do this workshop for free, was excellent at helping students
-connect their future ambitions with narratives of their past. Her process seemed
-like a formula at first, until you looked closer and realized it was the exact
-opposite. The students filled out surveys to get their superficial interests out
-of the way—things like sports and music, or what Gude would call “‘symbols of
-themselves’ [that] promote narrow, limited, socially pre-defined categories of
-identity.” Having found this rhythm, the students next did a similar
-questionnaire asking about their values and social concerns.
-
-The task of the workshop (and, I suppose, the college essay broadly) was to use
-storytelling to bridge column A with column B, and this central *how* question
-of writing was left to the students’ creativity. There was, of course, the
-obligatory read-over of successful application essays to top universities. But
-this teacher didn’t ask the students to count the number of anecdotes, have them
-calculate the ratio of “showing to telling,” or make any other such cruel
-attempt to reduce writing to a mathematical exercise (as if words weren’t
-intimidating enough *without* numbers). Instead, she led the students in a
-discussion focusing on the emotional impact of specific phrases within each
-essay. The students picked out the writerly gestures they found interesting;
-there was no judgment if they favored a passage others deemed corny or wordy or
-mathy. They were recognizing writing as a subjective undertaking. They were
-seeing the faces in the inkblots.
-
-As I prepare to be teaching music music again after a summer of creative
-writing, I’m finding Gude’s article an impactful synthesis of this summer’s
-implicit realizations. In arts education, we can do more than turn up the volume
-on existing channels of students’ personas. Rather than asking that
-stereotypical music-teacher question, “What kind of music are you into?” I think
-we can arrive at a more innovative—and more stylistically robust—pedagogy by
-asking students (and ourselves), “What kind of musician do you want to be?”
-People, after all, are at art’s center.
-
-By way of a soft ending: The next stop on this train of thought is
-[Huib Schippers’ *Facing the Music: Shaping Music Education from a Global Perspective*](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/facing-the-music-9780195379761?cc=us&lang=en&),
-the core text for an elective I’m taking in our music education department. To
-decenter western models of music teaching and learning, Schippers favors the
-anthropological term *transmission* in describing how people encounter music.
-“What we hear, learn, and teach is the product of what we believe about music,”
-he writes. We believe music can inform a positive self-identity, an emotionally
-attuned lifestyle, and the construction of stronger communities, but what
-message do we send students when we spend forty minutes of a precious hour’s
-general music class memorizing solfege syllables?
diff --git a/_posts/2018-05-02-fulbright-korea.md b/_posts/2018-05-02-fulbright-korea.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 9d314134..00000000
--- a/_posts/2018-05-02-fulbright-korea.md
+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: Fulbright
----
-
-Fun fact: the most-viewed post on this blog, by a long shot, is the one where [I shared that I’d received a Critical Language Scholarship]({% post_url 2016-03-12-cls-korea %}) from the US Department of State to study Korean in Gwangju. Today, I’m pleased to announce there will soon be another addition to the State Department–mandated disclaimer at the bottom of this blog.
-
-Beginning early this July, I’ll be spending a full year in South Korea as a Fulbright fellow. I’ll be serving as an English teaching assistant at the elementary level. After our six-week orientation in Seoul, I don’t yet know the city I’ll be working in. That said, though Korea isn’t a small country, it possesses an excellent transportation infrastructure. If you’ll be there at all during the next year, send me an email so we can catch up!
-
-[Here’s a spotlight](https://music.usc.edu/two-seniors-earn-fulbrights/) on the website of the Thornton School of Music about me and my friend Geetha, also a new Fulbright fellow.
diff --git a/_posts/2018-08-25-a-thing-here.md b/_posts/2018-08-25-a-thing-here.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5ba63e23..00000000
--- a/_posts/2018-08-25-a-thing-here.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,76 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Things that are a thing here
----
-
-They say that major lifestyle changes—even positive ones, like starting a new
-job or moving—are one of the biggest stressors out there. By that measure, it’s
-been a wild week: I’ve moved in with my host family in Naju, set up a Korean
-bank account and phone number in my name, and started teaching English at two
-middle schools. Unfamiliar digs, unfamiliar language, unfamiliar students and
-coworkers. But on all sides, I’ve been fortunate to find myself surrounded by
-supportive, understanding, and hardworking people.
-
-Skip these two paragraphs if I already told you about my weekly schedule. I
-spend Monday through Thursday at an all-boys’ middle school in Naju’s old town.
-At about forty students in each grade (divided into two classes), it’s smaller
-than average, but our students more than make up for it with their rambunctious
-energy. Fridays, I’m out in the countryside in an actually tiny one-building
-school that has only twenty-five or so students (it’s the satellite of a school
-in a neighboring city), all very proper and devoted to their grade-level
-classmates. The second school is in a gorgeous setting: epic mountains pouring
-down fog from all sides.
-
-At my main school, each homeroom gets English class two or three times a week; I
-teach one class and my supervising coteacher teaches the other. After school, I
-teach a smaller group of students an English conversation class (the students
-are all required to participate in a club class but they get to choose from
-various school subjects). I expected the large classes to be the hard part
-because of, you know, crowd control. But the club classes have proven more
-challenging because they expose the students whose English isn’t as strong. Half
-of the students are bored because they understand nothing, and the other half is
-bored of waiting for the former to catch up. This situation calls for creative
-pedagogy. I don’t know what that’ll look like yet, exactly.
-
-Now, I’ll do my utmost not to be that foreigner who windbags about “how the
-Koreans do it.” So, with the caveat that I do not intend to define cultural
-differences comprehensively, let me share two things have stood out to me this
-week: First, it’s really striking how much authority teachers have here. Despite
-my youth and inexperience, my fellow teachers place a lot of faith (certainly
-undue) in my ability to plan solid classes. They’ve given me a textbook to
-follow, along with ample supplies and auxiliary materials, but nobody has nagged
-me for any bureaucratic nonsense like a tabular correlation of my lesson plans
-with those of my supervisor. The team trusts that I’ll do the work well, and I
-do my best to meet their expectations.
-
-Observation number two: There’s a stereotype that Korean schools teach
-everything by rote, but to me, this appears to be more of a generational
-difference than a cultural one. If anything, it’s kids in the US who suffer
-truly tedious classes, structured the same way every day (“I will be able
-to … ”), because American teachers’ livelihood depends so desperately on their
-students’ standardized test scores. While standardized tests are also a big deal
-in Korea, teachers themselves seem to assign (and are permitted to assign)
-students’ overall learning and well-being more importance. Additionally, my
-students in Korea take a much wider variety of subjects than their American
-counterparts. Art, music, literature, and “morality” class[^morality] matter
-just as much as the STEM subjects, whereas the schools I’ve worked at in the
-States seemed to treat anything that isn’t quantitative as an ancillary. (But
-then, I did grow up in the shadow of Microsoft, Boeing, and Amazon.)
-
-In short, I really love my job. Call this the honeymoon phase, but I want to
-gush about one more thing while I’m riding high: On my first day, I received
-from the vice principal a tabbed, leather-bound notebook labeled “Teacher’s
-Diary.” I chuckled at the odd English, thinking it was just a regular planner,
-but it isn’t. Many of the teachers at our school actually keep a journal, in
-prose, reflecting on their daily lessons and pondering ways to improve their
-pedagogy. I’ve started doing the same. And I can already feel it making me more
-present in the classroom, more aware of how my students are faring. I mean, why
-wasn’t this a thing in my high school?
-
-[^morality]: I really want to observe this one. I was leafing through the
- morality textbook and it consists mostly of short parables and comic strips,
- which students read and then respond to with brief journal entries. When I
- remarked to another teacher that there are no such classes in America, she
- asked if we just learned morality during philosophy class. I told her we
- don’t normally have philosophy classes in grade school either. She turned
- back to her computer, looking perplexed.
diff --git a/_posts/2019-10-18-using-data-ell.md b/_posts/2019-10-18-using-data-ell.md
deleted file mode 100644
index dcc95895..00000000
--- a/_posts/2019-10-18-using-data-ell.md
+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: Using data to understand ELL students
----
-
-In August, I surveyed my students about their motivation for learning
-English, their opinions about our class and my teaching style, and
-what resources they were using to study English outside of class. By
-analyzing the results using some of the statistical tools I’ve
-taught myself this year, I came up with some effective strategies for
-reaching the disengaged students in my classroom.
-
-At the moment this post goes up, I’ll be giving a presentation
-about that project at Fulbright Korea’s fall conference in
-Gyeongju. Here’s
-[a digital version of the talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgAhgY3TVEc).
-
-And here’s a detailed
-write-up of my survey design and results.
diff --git a/_posts/2020-01-02-houseplant-measurements.md b/_posts/2020-01-02-houseplant-measurements.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 9128b209..00000000
--- a/_posts/2020-01-02-houseplant-measurements.md
+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: "Houseplant measurements"
----
-
-I have been measuring the leaves of my houseplants.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-It is surprising how normal these distributions are.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-I’m putting my stats notes
-[here](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/blob/e08d16ffa237fcb418a96fcae35298d3b04e733d/math/stats.ipynb).
-
-> **Note:** I imported this post from my Blogger archive on April 27, 2024. The original title was “Aretha and Brad”—the names of the houseplants (after Franklin and Mehldau, respectively) whose measurements are pictured. This mindfulness project was likely inspired by the beloved [iris dataset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_flower_data_set).
->
-> I’ve updated the “my stats notes” link to point to the latest version of that Jupyter notebook in GitHub’s view of the Git source tree for this site, in the unlikely event that it is useful to anyone.
->
-> With four years of additional perspective, I would be remiss not to point out that leaf geometry in which both the area $$XY$$ and the aspect ratio $$X/Y$$ are both normally distributed would be serendipitous indeed—and that the plots above don’t look particularly linear to me anymore.
diff --git a/_posts/2020-01-19-what-you-learn-humanities.md b/_posts/2020-01-19-what-you-learn-humanities.md
deleted file mode 100644
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+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: What you learn in a humanities degree
----
-
-The more I learn, I find myself with fewer and fewer things to say.
-
-
-
-As a humanities student, I studied many “theories.” One theory is historicism, which says that things are the products of their historical settings. Example: At a career mixer, a well-dressed alumnus, class of ’70, approaches a sophomore journalism major. “The first thing you should do once you’re financially independent and you’ve got some money saved up is make a down payment on a house. Nobody will ever stop needing houses,” he says. The advice is a historical artifact, extruded from a certain moment in American politics and a certain set of assumptions about credit scores and work contingency and citizenship status. The student may react with with doubt; her doubt is also historical. It encodes her upbringing, and a different relationship with houses and banks and the word independent.
-
-
-
-We could apply any number of other theories to this interaction. There is a theory that explains why the man feels no reservation in handing out unsolicited advice, and another that explains why the student smiles and sips her iced tea instead of challenging him. There is another theory that explains why conversations about what to do with wealth are appropriate at a university career mixer—what the conversation implies about the prestige of the university, the status of the alumnus, the prospects of a nascent journalism career. Given a set of questions about a situation, or “text,” we can use contrasting theories to harvest competing answers to the questions. Then the merits of the theories can stand in for the merits of the answers. (If we are especially cunning, we might presuppose which answers we want to find and then focus on the theory that guides us there. You can bring up this point as a lazy counterargument next time I say I am using an “interdisciplinary approach” to argue for an idea you disdain.)
-
-When I was a student, my favorite theory was what we might call discursivism, a literary theory that says, essentially, that language is simultaneously “about” both language itself and whatever it is that the language at hand is talking about. “Nobody will ever stop needing houses” is not just a phrase, but a catchphrase, an idea whose snappy wording embeds a claim about its salience. The secret message is something like: If what I am telling you right now isn’t true, then how come I can say it so succinctly? Indeed, anytime we raise our voice, we are secretly transmitting a claim about our own act of speech: I am able to put these thoughts into words, therefore they must have some merit.
-
-Theories are quite powerful, because they allow us to convert small amounts of information into large amounts of information. (More words have been written about Shakespeare than Shakespeare ever wrote.) We use theories to put words into others’ mouths. For example, Americans tend to think of themselves as formidable amateur psychoanalysts. It is not uncommon to hear Americans dismiss each other by saying they are “projecting” or “deflecting” or “repressing” something. Psychoanalysis is a theory, a theory according to which we spend life restaging traumatic incidents from childhood in a hopeless search for resolution. Like many theories, psychoanalysis rejects the possibility of objective observation; thus you can talk in circles by telling your opponent, “No, I think you’re repressing!” Without realizing it, we are two levels of abstraction away from the issues at hand, but because culture has made us comfortable with pushing theories around like pieces on a chess board, both parties proceed in the illusion that material gains are at stake. In fact, when we pit theories against each other, what we are gaining is information: about the matter in question, yes, but also about the theories themselves, their breadth and depth.
-
-We cannot break free of theories. Whether or not you have received a traditional education, your thought patterns have been shaped by your experiences of people and your interactions with “texts.” A theory doesn’t need to have a Wikipedia entry for it to color your thoughts. Thus, one of the goals of a liberal education is to equip you with a wide range of theories, so that in an unfamiliar situation, you can try out various theories in succession as a corrective against your default narrative, the hope being that you will test out various responses and select the best one. However, being theoretically versatile—I have called this narrative fluency—is more likely to make us good at justifying our prior beliefs (whether or not they are correct) than at reexamining and overturning them.
-
-Thus, I am finding myself with less and less to say, because I am paralyzed by the sense that if I manage to say something convincing, it will be so only because I have applied a theory in a novel or resonant way, and not because the underlying idea has merit. I have spent so much time playing with theories that nowadays, I sometimes myself testing facts against beliefs rather than beliefs against facts, so that when I encounter a set of facts that resist one of my beloved theories, I search for better facts instead of modifying my assumptions.
-
-In courtroom dramas, lawyers begin their closing arguments by saying, “Let’s let the facts stand on their own,” and then they proceed to enumerate the facts, thereby preventing them from standing on their own. When—not if—the facts are inventoried, curated, rehearsed, ordered, voiced in a measured tone, calibrated for this trial and these jurors, then the facts are being coerced to an invisible theory. We are awash in theories, and the only way to let the facts stand on their own is to say nothing.
diff --git a/_posts/2020-04-16-accidental-signals.md b/_posts/2020-04-16-accidental-signals.md
deleted file mode 100644
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+++ /dev/null
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----
-layout: post
-title: Accidental signals
----
-
-It is a well-known result in psychology that measures of intelligence correlate across domains. If you are good at math, you are probably also good at verbal reasoning, and vice versa. Therefore, if a company is hiring for a position that requires a variety of skills (as most jobs do), it should pick a candidate who has demonstrated impressive skill in one domain over someone who has demonstrated middling proficiency in a number of different domains.[^1]
-
-Hiring managers’ preference for specialists is widely known. So, smart people, who tend to be good at estimating job-market incentives (thanks to the correlation between domains of intelligence), gravitate toward programs that award narrow, in-demand credentials—even when the credentials are nominally equivalent (a BA in linguistics vs. a BA in English). This can create a feedback loop in which fields that are perceived as “challenging,” like computer science, attract challenge-seeking entrants, raising the standards of proficiency within the field and making it more difficult for a newcomer to rise above average. On the other hand, majors that are perceived as relatively easy, like sociology, may attract less-ambitious students, leading to deflated expectations and dissuading hard workers. (I have met a few people who told me that they majored in the liberal arts because they were “bad at math.” I have never met a STEM major who chose their field because they were “bad at writing.”)
-
-
-
-
- (National Center for Education Statistics,
- Undergraduate Degree Fields)
-
-
-
-Nothing in this argument depends on the skills actually conferred by a given degree program or the skills actually required by an employer. A tech company needs managers and product designers just as much as it needs engineers, but positions in management and product design are typically reserved as rewards for distinguished engineers rather than handed out to people who majored in management or design. This is because a coder’s science degree(s), plus a few years of demonstrated commitment to the company, signals greater potential for success in the new role than some stranger’s design credential, which may relate more to the job but is also easier to obtain.
-
-The problem comes when we confuse these signals of potential with the thing itself. To depart from credentials for a moment, one such signal is “grit” (tenacity, work ethic, passion), which Angela Duckworth argues is the best predictor of career success. This conclusion is obvious if taken as a prescription for moneymaking. But the book (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, 2016) becomes more interesting if we read it as a diagnosis: an attempt to organize American capitalism’s scattered, ever-changing incentives under a handy label. It is this explanatory power that makes grit conceptually coherent. Successful people come from a range of economic and educational backgrounds, but what they all have in common is—see book title.
-
-However, grit’s conceptual strength comes at the cost of moral clarity. In a later chapter, Duckworth begins to caution that grit is morally neutral: good and bad people (she mentions Hitler) alike can be possessed of grit, so we should not regard someone as morally virtuous just because they are gritty. This is correct, but Duckworth fails to take the further step of disclaiming the converse: she assumes that moral people will see value in grit and pursue it for its own sake. On the contrary, we (moral people, presumably) ought to question the value of grit, because the positive traits by which Duckworth defines it can be easily reframed as negatives: Where does tenacity end and stubbornness begin? What about work ethic and workaholism, or passion and temper? We can think of a few geniuses whose “passion” had disastrous consequences for their personal and professional lives.
-
-While you may cultivate success through grit (and leverage your success for moral good), will you, in your power, recognize the worth of someone who is highly intelligent and hardworking but has not developed grit as a signal of this potential? Under a different incentive structure—an unstable family environment, for example—an effective learner might develop, in place of tenacity, the ability to recognize a losing battle; in place of discipline, flexibility; in place of passion, consideration of communal needs. These latter traits are not incompatible with grit’s essence, but they may interfere with grit’s signal when it is measured by prompts like, “I finish whatever I begin” (to which the respondent answers on a scale from “not like me at all” to “very much like me”). Grit is an abstract concept that attempts to unify many disjoint values under one label. It may reliably indicate career potential—it may even be the most reliable such indicator available—but it does so only “by accident”: it signals the presence of a collection of traits that employers value, not the merit that undergirds the traits themselves.
-
-So it goes with credentials. Achieving a high level of expertise in any field is hard. But the accidental arrangement of the job market at a particular moment in time has stiffened competition in some fields and weakened it in others. Today, it is relatively easy to parlay a STEM degree into a number of careers. That is not because everyone “needs” to know differential equations, but because knowing that someone passed a differential equations (`MATH 235`) tells us more about their overall intelligence than knowing that they can speak intermediate French (`FREN 235`). A STEM degree is a proximate signal of being good at following directions, which is in turn a proximate signal of career success.
-
-Ideally, employers, grad schools, and other such gatekeepers would shun such imperfect signals. Instead, they ought to evaluate each candidate on an individual basis, combing through their background in search of desirable traits. But this is cost-intensive, so gatekeepers bet on the reliability of cheap signals like credentials and test scores instead. They do not work perfectly, but they work well enough, most of the time.
-
-[^1]: You may have heard that the instruments we use to measure “intelligence” are biased toward people from dominant cultural backgrounds and people of financial means. This is a good argument against the use of standardized testing in college admissions, but it does not contradict the claim that I am using here, namely, that intelligence between domains (and within an individual) is correlated.
diff --git a/_posts/2020-05-06-nonnative-teacher.md b/_posts/2020-05-06-nonnative-teacher.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: The benefits of a nonnative teacher
----
-
-In addition to the myth that it’s impossible for adults to “really” learn a
-foreign language, a widely held misconception about language learning is the
-notion that beginners must learn from native speakers. Many are willing to allow
-that a nonnative English speaker could make *as good* a teacher as a native
-speaker, but fewer recognize the pedagogical *advantages* offered by someone who
-has learned the target language as an adult and can understand what it looks
-like from the student’s perspective.
-
-In the ELL classroom, we often encounter questions like: Why is it correct to
-say *I am going to school* but wrong to say *I am going to home?* A native
-speaker has to think about this: Is there a reason we drop the *to* before
-*home,* maybe something to do with the fact that you can attend, in theory,
-multiple schools but can have only one true home? Or is it because it just
-“sounds better”? Or maybe it’s just a random exception, but then, which one is
-the exception and which one is the rule?
-
-Someone who learned English as an adult can tell you immediately that *I am
-going home* is a random exception, and that *to* is the rule when you are going
-to a specific, named place. The only reason I, a native English speaker, know
-this is that a similar exception exists in German: *Ich bin zu Hause.* When I
-asked my German teacher (a nonnative English speaker) about that sentence, she
-asked, rhetorically, “Why is it correct to say *I am going to school* but wrong
-to say *I am going to home*?”—having learned this very thing in school.
-
-With some effort, you can generate sentence pairs that demonstrate the opposite
-case, where a native speaker feels inclined to call the difference a random
-exception when in fact there’s a grammatical rule in play. Here’s a test
-question that I’ve encountered in various forms:
-
-> I think dogs are awesome. I think cats are OK. Circle all correct sentences:
->
->
->
I like dogs more than cats.
->
I like dogs better than cats.
->
I like more dogs than cats.
->
I like cats less than dogs.
->
I like cats fewer than dogs.
->
-
-The answer is choices B and D. Most native speakers see nothing wrong with A,
-because it’s something that we actually do say, but according to a strict
-interpretation of the rules of English grammar, A is wrong for the same reason
-that C and E are wrong: *more* is for comparing quantities of things, but *like*
-expresses a binary preference. By an even stricter interpretation of the rules,
-you can argue that choice D should have *worse* instead of *less,* but the
-prescriptivists who write Korean standardized tests of English grammar have
-moved past that archaism even as they’ve resisted allowing choice A.
-
-Native English speakers who teach in Korea are often given test questions like
-these, along with the answer key, and asked to explain the correct choice.
-Because the answer key disagrees with our intuition, we tend to grasp for an
-explanation and fail. On the other hand, a Korean teacher can reference the
-textbook page that discusses *more than* and *better than* and be done with it.
-
-You might argue that memorizing these kinds of formalisms falls short of actual
-language acquisition, and you would be correct—language learners need *also* to
-engage with authentic texts and audio, experiment with the target language in
-roleplay scenarios, and practice speaking freely without worrying about errors.
-But teaching the *more than/better than* distinction, *even if* the student will
-eventually discard that rule as they encounter English in the wild, is useful
-because it primes the student’s awareness of the different kinds of comparisons
-available in the language.
-
-Consider: You can allow choice A in the above question, but then students will
-ask why its parallel, choice E, is wrong, and you’ll teach them the *fewer
-than/less than* distinction, but then you’ll have to explain why there isn’t a
-*more than/better than* distinction as well. Yuck! It’s better (more?) to avail
-beginners of a consistent set of principles that mostly work, while maintaining
-a mental inventory of exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, in case a
-smart kid asks a good question.
-
-Most native teachers long to do away with multiple-choice questions like the
-above. At best, they make for interesting illustrations of how English grammar
-is a moving target and there’s no universal set of rules obeyed by all English
-speakers everywhere forever. At worst, they make for frustrating illustrations
-of how English grammar is a moving target and there’s no universal set of rules
-obeyed by all English speakers everywhere forever. A nonnative speaker, who can
-detach herself from personal feelings about what constitutes “natural” English,
-can distinguish between language usage and test-taking strategy. A savvy
-test-taker, confronted with the above question, doesn’t have to know whether *I
-like dogs more than cats* is admissible in Korean Standard English; she merely
-recognizes that this question is “about” the *more than/better than* distinction
-and eliminates choice A because standardized examinations test rules, not
-exceptions.
-
-Now, native speakers can learn to speak abstractly about grammar like nonnative
-speakers do, but it’s an acquired skill, just like algebra. While it’s
-theoretically possible for a native speaker to deduce the rules of his
-language’s grammar from first principles, a speaker who learned the language as
-an adult learned those rules at the same time, whereas native teachers like me
-have to scramble through Google to find answers or make up rules that seem right
-at first but collapse upon inspection.
-
-I have learned a great deal of Korean from native speakers, but my foundation in
-the Korean language was established in a class at the UW taught by an American.
-After that, I had Korean professors and TAs who had invested considerable time
-in learning to speak *about* Korean, and they understood the utility of abstract
-grammar because they had relied on it themselves in learning English. To the
-extent that I’m good at Korean now, I attribute my success more to the many
-opportunities I’ve had to carefully examine Korean grammar and etymology than to
-my friendships with native speakers. That part’s just fun.
diff --git a/_posts/2020-07-07-next.md b/_posts/2020-07-07-next.md
deleted file mode 100644
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----
-layout: post
-title: Next
----
-
-They say that we perceive time by the accumulation of novel experiences, so that if you want to have a subjectively long life, you ought to do many spontaneous and hard-to-repeat things, but if you want to have a happy life, you ought to find one or two high pleasures that you can enjoy on a spiritual level and repeat the hell out of them, because they also say that on average, people derive more happiness from repeating a good experience than from trying something new.
-
-You could write a linear program that targets your ideal mix of longevity and happiness and it would tell you exactly how many times to do this or that activity before moving onto something new. But what this calculus leaves out is the feelings of uncertainty that stain the transitions.
-
-I am leaving Naju, after having grown accustomed to this routine, this commute, these faces, and I cannot say with any confidence that I have reached a joy plateau. Every week of teaching here has been better than the last: my skills have improved, my confidence has grown, and the teachers and students have become only more important to me. I could be happy like this for a long time. But.
-
-
-
-
-
-But too much comfort has a way of smearing all the time together, so that the things that take place in a given day feel less like events and more like footnote references to proto-events hovering in the firmament of the distant past. I have already seen the river clog itself with duckweed; I have already looked down the street from all four of the intersection’s corners, trying to make the buildings line up with the trees. Upon inspection, a more sensitive man might look at these rhododendrons and see something more than last year’s blossoms in a different configuration, but I am a pattern-matcher by nature, too easily bored to remain a recluse. It is time for a new challenge.
-
-As I wrap up my Fulbright grant, I am delighted to share that I have been accepted into the Government of Korea Scholarship program, through which I will be returning to Korea in the fall to pursue a fully funded master’s degree in industrial engineering at Seoul National University.
-
-Thank you to all who have encouraged me.
diff --git a/_posts/2021-03-07-stable-matching-planet-money.md b/_posts/2021-03-07-stable-matching-planet-money.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: Stable matching on Planet Money
----
-
-Planet Money, an NPR show about economics, recently ran an episode entitled “The Marriage Pact” that deals precisely with my research topic. It’s a great episode that discusses both the basic ideas behind stable assignment as well as its applications in organ donation, job placement, and (my area of focus) school choice.
-
-The episode begins with an interview with a Stanford econ student who designed a marriage market for his peers and managed to get 4111 of them to sign up for it. What a cool project! The student makes a few minor misstatements about the Gale–Shapley proposal algorithm that Planet Money leaves uncorrected. In this post, I want to offer a few corrections, not just because I can, but because in my opinion these marginal details are what make stable assignment an interesting and profitable research topic.
-
-
-
-The interviewee says that because the proposal algorithm produces a stable matching, it is guaranteed to provide participants with their “best” match. But it turns out that even when the participants in the proposal algorithm have strict preferences, there can actually be more than one set of stable matchings, and which stable matching you get depends on which form of the algorithm you use.
-
-If you run the algorithm in the male-proposing form, you get a match that is simultaneously male-optimal and female-pessimal. This means that among all of the women Fido could be stably matched with, the male-proposing algorithm is guaranteed to pair Fido with his first choice, and to pair Fido’s mate with the male she likes least among the males she could stably match with.
-
-Likewise, if you run the algorithm in the female-proposing form, you get a match that is female-optimal and male-pessimal.
-
-In the episode, the hosts mention that the algorithm provides the participants with no incentive to lie about their preference order (notwithstanding misrepresenting basic facts about themselves like height). But an important corollary of the result above is that the male-proposing algorithm is actually not strategy-proof for the female participants—by lying, they may end up with a male better than their worst match.
-
-I don’t know how the Stanford match works, but it’s likely that (for the straight participants) they used an extension of the Gale–Shapley algorithm developed in the 1980s that finds the “male–female optimal stable match”—a sort of compromise between the male- and female-proposing forms. This extended algorithm, while egalitarian, isn’t strategy proof for either group of participants, precisely because it gives both groups a slightly suboptimal match.
-
-The good news it that in the one-to-one matching case with strict preferences, the differences between the male- and female-optimal matches are quite minimal (usually just a shuffling a few pairs around at the edges, if any), and the “strategy” you need to use to beat the market is not at all obvious.
-
-But when we relax the assumption of strict preferences and start to work with many-to-one matching, as is the case in school choice, the set of stable matches becomes very large, and coming up with a good way to maximize participants’ outcomes while maintaining incentive compatibility is an interesting challenge. The dominant contenders in this space are randomized “tiebreaking” (lottery) mechanisms, including those used in school markets in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. I’ve run a bunch of computational experiments on these mechanisms, and you can see some fun graphs on the GitHub page for my Julia package DeferredAcceptance.
-
-(I sent a version of this to the Planet Money team, but I’m not betting on a response.)
diff --git a/_posts/2021-05-16-economic-view-korean-admissions.md b/_posts/2021-05-16-economic-view-korean-admissions.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: An economic view of the Korean college admissions market
----
-
-Existing computational models of admissions markets tend to fall at one of two extremes: Either they envision a centralized admissions process in which the school board runs an algorithm that says which students go where, or a decentralized process in which colleges compete for the best students. But the Korean college admissions process cannot be adequately described in either of these terms.
-
-
-
-The Korean admissions process is decentralized in the sense that students ultimately can choose which college to attend from the subset to which they are admitted. However, the application procedure is facilitated by the government, which enforces a limit on how many schools each student can apply to (currently six) and requires a certain distribution of applications across three tiers of selectivity. This means that the Ivy League sweep is theoretically impossible in Korea.
-
-In addition, the government assigns each college a quota, meaning the maximum number of students it can “recruit” in each academic major. In smaller universities, the quota for a given program may be as small as a single-digit number. To ensure that no college exceeds its quota, students are admitted over the course of several rounds of acceptances, with different scoring criteria and cutoffs in each round. Because colleges are not allowed to use empty seats in one major to admit extra students in another, this creates endless possibilities for strategic application. As an applicant, if you can identify an underdemanded program at your target school, you will be guaranteed admission in the final round as long as you meet the minimum application requirements.
-And, as many have probably heard, a signature feature of the Korean admissions process is a big test called the Suneung or CSAT. Whereas American universities have begun to discount standardized test scores, a typical Korean university determines about 80 percent of applicants’ composite score using the Suneung; the remainder comes from high school grades, an interview, and/or an admissions test specific to the program the student is applying to. It is from this weighted average that the college defines its final ordering of the applicants and sets its score cutoff. As a result, students’ admissions probabilities are highly correlated across universities.
-
-The argument for this design is twofold: First, it is cost-efficient, because it caps the total number of applications and therefore reduces the number of applications that each college has to read. (However, we ought to question the amount of reading actually involved, since very few universities require anything as textually substantial as the American “college essay.”) Second, it is fair in the sense that it evaluates all students on the same, quantitative metrics.
-
-The most obvious and common argument against the semicentralized admissions procedure used in Korea is that it is actually unfair, because evaluating students in approximately the same way at every college means that winners take all. A student with low test scores but a high degree of motivation does not have the chance to prove herself by actually taking college courses alongside high-achieving peers. You have to get smart by the end of high school, or it’s game over. A related argument says that the Suneung is unfair because wealthy students receive private tutoring in order to increase their score. However, I find these arguments to mistargeted, because (to my knowledge) the high priority colleges give to the Suneung in their admissions decisions is not mandated by the government. In theory, if a college wants to admit students purely on the basis of high school grades or tennis ability, it can, but colleges stick to the Suneung because they like it. It’s a legible (if unreliable) indicator of academic ability, it avoids the appearance of corruptibility, and it’s easy for the college to track year over year as it tweaks its admissions standards in response to market conditions.
-
-However, even if we set aside the Suneung and the attendant debate about fairness, I argue that the Korean admissions process is economically inefficient because of the limits it imposes on students’ application strategies. If an outstanding student from a rural area knows that she can only apply to two schools ranked within the top fifty, she may be inclined to hedge her bets by applying to schools ranked in the thirties and forties rather than wasting an application on (what Americans would call) a “reach” school in the top ten. Because of situations like this, in any admissions process that circumscribes students’ ability to consider a broad range of colleges, the outcome is highly sensitive to students’ ability to intuit their rank in the broader distribution of academic talent.
-
-I hypothesize that students who don’t have role models who attended top universities will tend to adopt a minimax strategy, and end up attending a university that’s worse than where they could theoretically get in under an efficient allocation. On the other hand, students who have the financial means to take a gap year can afford to apply to reach schools, and reapply to a more conservative set of schools next year if they don’t get in. With the right computational model, we can attach numbers to these hypotheses; for example, if the number of allowed applications increases from six to seven, we can try to predict the change in the number of students who decide to take a gap year.
-
-Why study the Korean college admissions market from an economic perspective? Anyone familiar with the computational models typically used to study admissions markets should have raised an eyebrow at the monolithic notion of better and worse schools implied by the previous two paragraphs. In fact, the very thing that makes the classical school-choice problem interesting is the possibility that students have diverse preferences (based on individual variations in geography, academic interest, family alumni, etc.). Thus, in the canonical problem, there is not necessarily a global ordering of better and worse schools. Nor is there a global ordering of students, like the one that arises when all universities grade students based on standardized test scores. Korea is exceptional on both of these points. Most schools rank students in a similar way, and because of the high degree of vertical differentiation, most students have a similar preference order over the 300ish universities in the market.
-
-Loosely speaking, when the preference orders are more or less random, the set of possible stable assignments is relatively large, and we can start to “play” with other distributional goals, like trying to obtain gender parity at each university while preserving overall stability. This is what a lot of current papers in stable assignment are doing now. However, in a stylized Korean admissions market in which most students have a similar preference order over the schools and all schools assess students in the same way, there is only one stable assignment (as I can show mathematically). Although we don’t get to play with distributional goals, because the stable assignment is unique, we can examine it in greater detail, and compute comparative statics such as the marginal effect of a change in student population on the selectivity of each university.
-
-Another reason to take a closer look at correlated admissions procedures like the one used in Korea is that such market designs are common around the world, not just in Asia, but also in many European countries and in local school-choice markets in places like New York City. It’s cool, if you know how to program, that we have a simple algorithm for computing stable assignments in arbitrary discrete admissions markets given lists of student and school preferences. But by narrowing our focus to the case of correlated admissions, we can make more ambitious quantitative predictions about the long-run behavior of the market, including, hopefully, computing the efficiency cost of admissions quotas and limits on the number of applications each student has.
diff --git a/_posts/2021-10-21-administrative-allocative-efficiency.md b/_posts/2021-10-21-administrative-allocative-efficiency.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: Administrative vs. allocative efficiency
----
-
-This fall marks my final semester of coursework, and penultimate semester overall, of the master’s course in industrial engineering here at Seoul National University. I’m taking courses in combinatorial optimization and advanced microeconomics, as well as continuing my study of college admissions markets as a research assistant in the Management Science/Optimization Lab.
-
-Recently, I have been focusing on risk-averse behavior in college applications. In an ideal universe, college applications are completely standardized and there are no constraints on students’ ability to apply to many schools or on schools’ ability to assess a large number of applicants. In reality, many highly qualified students fail to apply to top schools because they doubt their ability to get in or receive a sufficient financial-aid package. For these students, the time and money required to submit an additional application to a so-called reach school takes away from time that could be spent refining an application to a target school. This opportunity cost is not trivial, because modern admissions offices strongly prefer students who tailor their personal statement to the characteristics and interests of the target school or program.
-
-
-
-In Korea, such strategic behavior is [baked into the college admissions process]({% post_url 2021-05-16-economic-view-korean-admissions %}) at the policy level: No student may apply to more than six colleges in a given year, and colleges are allowed to adopt more generous admissions standards for students who list the college as their first choice. A student who wishes to apply to a top university therefore needs more than just confidence in her academic talent; she must also be willing to accept the risk of being rejected and ending up at the bottom of the pile at her second choice.
-
-We know, however, that risk aversion is not homogeneous across the population. Some of the variance is just temperamental: There are people who will continue working at an unsatisfying job because they fear that whatever job they switch to will be even worse, and there are other people who happily take the leap (paywall). But some of the variance in risk aversion is correlated with demographic traits. For example, all other things being equal, women are less likely than men to guess randomly on a hard multiple-choice test like the SAT that penalizes wrong answers (paywall). And we know that kids from low-income backgrounds tend to fail the marshmallow test; perhaps it is not stunted patience, but deliberate, risk-mitigating behavior that makes them favor the sure bet.
-
-In college admissions, administrative efficiency requires any practical admissions procedure to put up some minimal barriers to application; otherwise, truly underqualified students will spam top universities with vain applications, wasting everyone’s time. However, if the application barriers are too high, they may force marginally admissible students—that is, qualified students—to engage in strategic behavior that does not reflect their actual preferences or abilities. A highly qualified, risk-averse student may list her second choice as her first, or neglect to apply early decision to her dream school (early decision increases admissions likelihood but arguably entails financial risk). And as a result, a less qualified but more cocksure student can step into her place.
-
-The scenario above—which, to be clear, is speculative—suggests that market features designed to produce administrative efficiency, like requiring students to express a specific interest in their target school or indicate whether the school is their top pick, trade off with allocative efficiency in the composition of top universities’ entering classes. Moreover, if the psychological findings above on risk-averse decisionmaking also hold with respect to applicant behavior, then it is possible that the social cost falls most heavily on precisely the marginal groups whom we are trying hardest to recruit.
diff --git a/_posts/2022-04-14-school-location-problem.md b/_posts/2022-04-14-school-location-problem.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: The school location problem
----
-
-I’ve spent a few days thinking about a facility location problem that
-we might call the *school location problem.* The goal is to place $$n$$
-schools to serve $$m$$ families, such that the *furthest* distance
-between any family and their *nearest* school is *minimized.* This
-problem is almost a $$k$$-means or ellipsoid fitting problem, but its
-unusual “minimin” form makes it computationally challenging.
-
-In the video below, and associated Jupyter notebook ([GitHub](https://gist.github.com/maxkapur/e907289b457ebee8e3a191cbda7f7381), [HTML viewer](https://nbviewer.org/urls/gist.githubusercontent.com/maxkapur/e907289b457ebee8e3a191cbda7f7381/raw/37cd78433076b0f880ef3d645a93ef278abce33d/SchoolLocation.ipynb)), I discuss the formulation of this problem, show to express it as a mixed-integer second-order convex program, and then solve a small instance using the Julia/JuMP/Juniper/SCS stack.
-
-Here’s the [video link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/bjreiQRHerU).
diff --git a/_posts/2022-05-04-college-application-on-arxiv.md b/_posts/2022-05-04-college-application-on-arxiv.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: "“College Application” on arXiv"
----
-
-In advance of a conference I will be attending with my labmates next month in Jeju, my thesis advisor and I have posted a preliminary version of [“The College Application Problem” on arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01869). Here’s the abstract:
-
-> This paper considers the maximization of the expected maximum value of a portfolio of random variables subject to a budget constraint. We refer to this as the optimal college application problem. When each variable's cost, or each college's application fee, is identical, we show that the optimal portfolios are nested in the budget constraint, yielding an exact polynomial-time algorithm. When colleges differ in their application fees, we show that the problem is NP-complete. We provide four algorithms for this more general setup: a branch-and-bound routine, a dynamic program that produces an exact solution in pseudopolynomial time, a different dynamic program that yields a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme, and a simulated-annealing heuristic. Numerical experiments demonstrate the algorithms' accuracy and efficiency.
-
-Rolling updates to the paper as well as various slideshows presenting the research are [available on GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication).
diff --git a/_posts/2022-05-13-college-application-presentation-korean.md b/_posts/2022-05-13-college-application-presentation-korean.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: "The college application problem, presented in Korean"
----
-
-I gave a brief
-[presentation about the college application problem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZCSwCPd1Qc)
-at a research fair hosted by our department. English subtitles are included.
diff --git a/_posts/2022-06-19-thesis-defense.md b/_posts/2022-06-19-thesis-defense.md
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----
-layout: post
-title: "Thesis defense"
----
-
-This week, I defended my master’s thesis at Seoul National University. My thesis concerns an NP-hard portfolio optimization problem that I call the college application problem. My slides, presentation script, and the thesis itself live on [this GitHub repository](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication), and all are provided in both English and Korean versions. I also have a very brief deck of [reveal.js slides]({{ site.url }}/CollegeApplication/) introducing the problem, and I recently wrote some [documentation for OptimalApplication.jl]({{ site.url }}/OptimalApplication.jl/stable/), the Julia implementation of my solution algorithms.
-
-The defense process was relatively painless: I received some very helpful comments and reference suggestions from the professors on my committee, and I was pleased that they were persuaded by my argument that the model of the college admissions process I have chosen represents the best tradeoff between realism and tractability.
-
-I also was able to give a brief presentation about my research at a conference in Jeju at the end of last month. Here’s a terrible photo for Mom:
-
-
-
-
diff --git a/_posts/2022-06-25-migrating-to-jekyll.md b/_posts/2022-06-25-migrating-to-jekyll.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 9853e458..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-06-25-migrating-to-jekyll.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,54 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Migrating to Jekyll"
----
-
-
-After reflecting on my unsustainable dependency on Google services, I have decided to bite
-the bullet and migrate my blog from Blogger to the open-source [Jekyll](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll),
-with hosting provided by GitHub. In the full version of this post,
-I explain some of the technical reasons for making this change.
-
-
-
-# Advantages of Jekyll
-
-The Jekyll workflow offers several advantages over Blogger. For one thing, when writing a post in Blogger,
-I was forced to choose between a buggy WYSIWYG editor and raw HTML. To obtain granular control over the
-post formatting, blockquote styles, image sizes, embedded video behavior, and so on, I came to favor the HTML
-editor over time. However, since Blogger’s interface offers only limited control over the blog’s stylesheet, in
-order to obtain the post layouts I wanted, I always had to
-bob and weave among inline CSS styles, a custom stylesheet I appended to the Blogger theme, and various
-sliders in Blogger’s config GUI that let me indirectly modify the underlying template. It was yucky.
-
-By contrast,
-the Markdown/Jekyll workflow creates a clear distinction between writing and typesetting tasks. I can compose
-my posts in Markdown with minimal distraction from all those HTML tags, and format everything from above by tweaking
-the well-organized stylesheets from Jekyll’s templates. For readers, I hope this means I will be able to maintain
-a more consistent voice in my writing, and because the formatting, typesetting, and layout will be stable from post to
-post, you can expect less visual “noise” from the website itself.
-
-Because I have total control over every bit of code on this new website, I also can ensure that it is free of the
-cookies, UA sniffers, and other tracking devices that were embedded in Blogger. As someone who aggressively uses
-browser extensions to nerf these devices when another site deploys them on me, it felt hypocritical to subject my
-readers—both of them—to the same surveillance.
-
-Finally, since Jekyll builds everything to static HTML on the server side,
-the load times should be faster. And later on, if I want to switch hosting providers or set up my own web server in my
-basement, future migrations should be much easier than this one.
-
-# Pain points
-
-If you are reading this post shortly after it went up, chances are that I am still configuring things and repairing links.
-For example, [old.maxkapur.com](https://old.maxkapur.com/) should take you to an archive of the old blog,
-but the links embedded on that blog may 404.
-
-Another difficulty with this migration is that to host a Jekyll blog using GitHub pages, you have to create a GitHub project named `maxkapur.github.io` (or whatever your GitHub username is). But I already had a project with that name, which I used to host various one-off essays and coding projects at the URL [misc.maxkapur.com](https://misc.maxkapur.com). Now, I have overwritten the `maxkapur.github.io` repository with the code for this site and created separate GitHub repositories for the projects that felt worth preserving. If I set things up correctly, then the old links should forward to correctly to their new homes. Of course, you can also
-dig into the [commit history](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/commits/master) for `maxkapur.github.io` and find the source code for those
-pages that way. But this will probably break some of the links on the old blog that used absolute paths instead of relative ones.
-
-Jekyll offers some tools for automatically importing past posts from other blogging services, but I have decided against importing the full history, both because it is a nuisance, and because the design and layout of the old Illusion Slopes concords with the tone and content of those posts in a way that (in my view) the new design does not. Nonetheless, because it is easy to create backdated posts, I will probably pull in a couple of the most recent posts and some of the “greatest hits” (i.e. posts that were major drivers of search engine traffic) from the old Illusion Slopes site. This will help me practice the new workflow and get a feel for where I need to apply further customizations to the Jekyll CSS.
-
-# New license
-
-The previous instance of Illusion Slopes featured a prominent copyright notice in the footer. Going forward, this blog will be licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, a copyleft license that grants you the right to remix and reuse these materials without asking for permission as long as you credit me (preferably by linking to [maxkapur.com]({{ site.url }})) and release your work under a similar open license.
diff --git a/_posts/2022-07-01-opening-pandoras-box.md b/_posts/2022-07-01-opening-pandoras-box.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 1f4e3e9d..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-07-01-opening-pandoras-box.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,78 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Opening Pandora’s Box
----
-
-A harrowing thing that happens in research is that occasionally, you stumble upon a
-[paper from 1979 (paywall)](https://doi.org/10.2307/1910412) that appears to solve
-the exact problem that you’ve been working on for months, but that escaped your
-attention because it used different terminology or notation.
-
-That *almost* happened to me this week, but mercy was on my side. The paper linked above, Martin Weitzman’s
-“Optimal Search for the Best Alternative,” considers a problem called the Pandora’s
-Box problem that resembles my college application problem except for one crucial
-difference: The Pandora’s Box problem has a time dimension, whereas the college application
-problem is static.
-
-The unusual thing is that the static problem appears more difficult.
-
-
-## College application vs. the Pandora’s Box problem
-
-If we apply the Pandora’s Box problem to college application, we get the following scenario:
-Pandora applies one by one to colleges in the admissions market. At each point in time,
-she can either submit a new college application (which costs money),
-in which case she will observe her admissions outcome after a time delay,
-or she can enroll at one of the schools she has already gotten into (and receive a payoff).
-The problem is to determine an optimal *stopping rule* for when Pandora should halt her
-search and accept the payoff she has on hand. Weitzman showed how to calculate a
-*reservation price*—roughly, the expected value of application—for
-each of the colleges. The optimal policy is to halt the search when
-the value of the current best offer exceeds the reservation price of all the colleges
-left to apply to.
-
-Weitzman’s model is a dynamic model because under the optimal strategy,
-there is no way to predict Pandora’s application decisions from the problem data alone.
-The set of schools she ultimately applies to, or her *application portfolio,*
-depends on the values of the random variables observed in a given “round” of the admissions game.
-On the other hand, in the static model of college application considered in
-[my master’s thesis](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication),
-the decisionmaker commits to her entire application portfolio at the outset.
-
-Arguably, the static model is more hostile to students than the Pandora’s Box problem.
-If, for example, an unlucky Pandora is rejected from a safety school at an early round of application,
-then she can compensate for the unexpected loss by applying to new safety schools in subsequent
-rounds. By contrast, the static college application problem does not allow
-students to modulate their risk allocation after observing some of the random variables.
-
-The admissions process used in the United States can be viewed as the concatenation of
-both problems: In the fall, students solve the static problem, send out a batch of
-applications, and pray for a good outcome. Then, after observing their first-round
-admissions outcomes in March, they use the Pandora strategy to pursue additional opportunities
-by negotiating their financial aid offers[^1]
-and applying to schools that offer rolling admissions.
-
-## Static models aren’t necessarily simpler
-
-Often, when we are presented with two optimization models and told that
-one is “static” and the other is “dynamic,” it is safe to guess that the static problem
-is a special case of the dynamic one. College application breaks this intuitive
-principle. In the dynamic Pandora’s box problem, any given moment,
-you are only asking two questions:
-
-- Should I apply to another school?
-- If so, which one?
-
-To answer correctly, you only ever need to compute the marginal utility of *individual*
-college applications relative to the offers you already have on hand, which is not terribly
-difficult. But in the static college application problem, the expected payoff depends on the
-*combination* of schools in the application portfolio. This yields a larger array of choices,
-and a more challenging decision problem.
-
-In my thesis, I prove that the college application problem is hard in a mathematical sense
-called NP–completeness, which means that barring an unprecedented computational breakthrough,
-there is no way to solve it that is both fast and accurate. The NP–completeness proof
-exploits the interaction among simultaneous applications in order to make the
-objective function misbehave.
-
-[^1]: For the uninitiated—yes, you can [negotiate college financial aid offers](https://www.forbes.com/sites/markkantrowitz/2021/04/19/how-to-negotiate-a-better-college-financial-aid-offer/?sh=361cdbb61420).
diff --git a/_posts/2022-07-15-srt-delay.md b/_posts/2022-07-15-srt-delay.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 8a913fb7..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-07-15-srt-delay.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,62 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Python utility for manipulating subtitle timings
----
-
-One of my current projects involves editing several hours’ worth of subtitle files in the
-`.srt` format to accompany an online course in numerical optimization. Because we haven’t
-decided exactly how we want to break up the videos, I needed an efficient way to delay
-or advance all the subtitles in time, so I wrote a small Python program called `srt_delay.py` today to help me with this task.
-
-Usage examples below the cut, or you can just go straight to the `README` in the [GitHub repository](https://github.com/maxkapur/srt_delay).
-
-## Usage
-
-We will demonstrate `srt_delay.py` using the subtitles for the open-source movie
-[*Elephants Dream*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_Dream). The file can
-be downloaded from the repo linked above (`sample_input.srt`) or from
-[Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/TimedText:Elephants_Dream.ogv.en.srt).
-
-Here is what the input file looks like:
-
-```bash
-$ head sample_input.srt
-1
-00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,951
-At the left we can see...
-
-2
-00:00:18,166 --> 00:00:20,083
-At the right we can see the...
-
-3
-00:00:20,119 --> 00:00:21,962
-```
-
-Each line contains either an index number for the subtitle (`1`), the subtitle’s
-timing (`00:00:18,166 --> 00:00:20,083`), or the subtitle text itself.
-
-Suppose we want to **advance** the subtitles by 1.5 seconds. We can pass
-this interval in `.srt` timestamp format (`00:00:01,500`) to `srt_delay.py`
-with the `-a` or `--advance` flag:
-
-```bash
-$ python3 srt_delay.py sample_input.srt -a 00:00:01,500 | head
-1
-00:00:13,500 --> 00:00:16,451
-At the left we can see...
-
-2
-00:00:16,666 --> 00:00:18,583
-At the right we can see the...
-
-3
-00:00:18,619 --> 00:00:20,462
-```
-
-By default, `srt_delay.py` prints to standard output. In most cases,
-you will want to save the output to another file:
-
-```bash
-$ python3 srt_delay.py sample_input.srt -a 00:00:01,500 > sample_input_advanced_by_1.5s.srt
-```
diff --git a/_posts/2022-08-02-mulberry.md b/_posts/2022-08-02-mulberry.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2b8fd64c..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-08-02-mulberry.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,27 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Mulberry: A college application strategist"
----
-
-I recently created [Mulberry]({{ site.url }}/mulberry), a web app students
-can use to compute their optimal college application strategy. It is a free,
-open-source, user-friendly interface to Algorithm 1 from my
-[MS thesis](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication).
-
-
-
-
-Why Mulberry? There are boatloads of “chance me!” websites (some more trustworthy
-than others) that help students gather information
-about colleges and estimate their chances of admission. But when it comes to the
-question of *where* to apply (given that you can’t apply everywhere),
-many people resort to folk wisdom, risk-averse heuristics, and gut feelings.
-
-Mulberry complements these introspective techniques with dispassionate,
-numbers-driven advice. You input estimates of your admissions chances at
-each school and the amount of utility you associate with going there,
-and Mulberry sorts the schools in the order you should apply
-to them to maximize your expected utility.
-
-The interface is at [maxkapur.com/mulberry]({{ site.url }}/mulberry),
-and the code is on [GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur/mulberry).
diff --git a/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md b/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 019a63ed..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Grading multiple-selection questions"
----
-
-Consider the following test question:
-
-> Which of the following are US States? (select multiple)
->
->
->
Washington
->
Delaware
->
Frankfurt
->
Memphis
->
-
-This is a multiple-selection question, so the correct answer is `a` and `b`. How would you grade a question [like this]({% post_url 2020-05-06-nonnative-teacher %}) on an exam?
-
-
-When I was in school, the Scantron machines we used supported these kinds of multiple-selection questions, but they were graded all or nothing: You got one point if your answer matched the key exactly, and zero points otherwise. I have it on good authority that the MOOC site [edX](https://www.edx.org/) works the same way.
-
-In the era of floating-point arithmetic, all-or-nothing grading for multiple-selection questions is a hard practice to defend.
-A student who answers `a` is clearly *more correct* than a student who answers `c` and `d`, because the question above is really four questions:
-
->
->
Is Washington a US state?
->
Is Delaware a US state?
->
Is Frankfurt a US state?
->
Is Memphis a US state?
->
-
-## An alternative to all-or-nothing grading
-
-I propose grading multiple-selection problems as $$n$$ true-or-false questions, each weighted $$1/n$$ points. In this example, a response of `a` is correct with respect to questions a, c, and d, and receives 0.75 points. A response of `c` and `d` is correct with respect to none of the items and receives zero points.
-
-What about students who guess randomly? A student who guesses randomly receives, in expectation, 0.5 points under my proposal and $$1/ 2^n$$ points under the all-or-nothing method. Therefore, one objection to my proposal is that it provides students with a strong incentive to guess. I contend that this is not a real problem, because
-
- - The incentive for students to guess is still positive under all-or-nothing grading,
- - In creating examinations, there is no objective reason to make “discourage students from guessing” a design goal,
- - Even if you insist that reducing the incentive to guess is a good thing, you can accomplish this by instating a penalty (of 0.5 points) for incorrect answers.
-
-Wrong-answer penalties, however, are a [potential source of bias (open-access article)](https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1776) in testing because students vary in their risk aversion.
-
-## Better yet
-
-Multiple-selection questions are not very user friendly to begin with. Some students fail to realize that they are allowed to choose more than one answer and agonize over technicalities (*Maybe he means Washington, DC?*). Others (mistakenly) *assume* that they will be graded all or nothing, recognize the slim chances of success, and just skip the question to pursue lower-hanging fruit.
-
-Therefore, as long as you accept my argument that multiple-selection questions should be regarded as $$n$$ true-or-false questions for grading purposes, why not simply write them out that way on the test sheet? Then there is no way to misread the question as a single selection, and the grading scheme is obvious.
diff --git a/_posts/2022-09-01-apply-fifty-colleges.md b/_posts/2022-09-01-apply-fifty-colleges.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 989c9a50..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-09-01-apply-fifty-colleges.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,120 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Apply to fifty colleges"
----
-
-In this post, we’ll use fake numbers and a simplified model to argue that the most college applicants should apply to far more colleges than they actually do. You can probably extend the argument to job applications and the dating game. I’ll also compute a few fake comparative statics and speculate about why real students don’t apply to more schools.[^obvious]
-
-[^obvious]: We will avoid the obvious argument that goes, “If you are willing to spend six figures on an a college education, then what’s a few hundred extra in application fees?” This argument is incorrect, because it assumes that each additional application is worth the value of attending that college times the probability of getting in. In actuality, you can only attend *one* of the colleges you get into; thus additional applications make a sublinear contribution to the overall expected utility. Our model will account for this.
-
-## Fake numbers and a simplified model
-
-We’ll start by making a few simplifying, conservative assumptions about the college admissions process. Here “conservative” means that we will err on the side of *understating* the value of applying to college, thereby arriving at an *underestimate* of the optimal number of college applications. Thus, our choices make it challenging to arrive at this post’s headline conclusion, such that if we *nonetheless* draw the conclusion that students should apply to more colleges, we have some degree of confidence that this statement applies to the actual numbers, too.
-
-First, let’s assume that you always have the option of attending a “safety school.” The safety school could also represent a community college or entering the workforce directly after high school. In addition, there are many “reach schools,” or elite universities, with competitive admissions. It is better to attend a reach school than the safety school, but applying to a reach school takes time and effort.
-
-Let $$t$$ denote the utility of attending an elite university, measured in monetary units relative to the safety school. By a conservative estimate, an elite university might offer us an expected salary increase of \$20,000 per year, at a tuition cost of \$30,000 dollars per year higher than the safety school. Thus, aggregating over 40 years of employment and 5 years of college attendance, we can estimate
-
-$$t = 40 \times 20000 - 5 \times 30000 = 650000.$$
-
-Let’s assume, for simplicity, that all the reach schools are equally competitive, and let $$p$$ denote the probability of getting into an elite university. Assume that admissions at each school are probabilistically independent. Let’s pick $$p = 0.1$$, which is near the acceptance rate (and therefore, the average admissions probability across all applicants) at many elite US universities. If you apply to $$x$$ reach schools, the probability of getting into *at least* one is $$1 - (1 - p)^x$$, in which case you receive $$t$$ units of utility.
-
-However, applying to college is not free: You have to pay an application fee, various clerical fees for submitting transcripts and test scores, and then there are time costs associated with writing essays, requesting recommendation letters, and filling out the online form. Let $$c$$ denote the cost of applying to a reach school, so the cost of applying to $$x$$ schools is $$cx$$, and the expected utility of the entire college application process can be written as follows:[^sublinear]
-
-[^sublinear]: Note that our assumption that the cost is linear in $$x$$ is conservative: In reality, since you can recycle essays and recommendation letters, the marginal costs diminish as $$x$$ increases; a function like $$c \ln x$$ or $$c \sqrt{x}$$ is arguably more realistic.
-
-$$f(x) = t\bigl(1 - (1 - p)^x\bigr) - cx.$$
-
-Typical college application fees are \$50 or so; let’s take $$c = 200$$ to account generously for the other costs. Our goal is to maximize $$f(x)$$.
-
-## The model says apply to fifty colleges
-
-With these values of $$t$$, $$p$$, and $$c$$, here’s the graph of $$f(x)$$. As you can see, the maximum occurs at about $$x^* = 55$$ applications!
-
-
-
-We can solve for the maximum analytically using a method you might have learned in high school calculus: $$x^*$$ represents the point where $$f(x)$$ stops increasing and starts decreasing. That is, the point where its slope $$f'(x)$$ is zero.
-
-With a little bit of legwork, you can check that the derivative of $$f(x)$$ is
-
-$$f'(x) = -t (1-p)^m \ln(1-p) - c$$
-
-and setting this equal to zero and solving for $$x$$ yields
-
-$$x^* = \frac{\ln c - \ln t - \ln \bigl(- \ln\left(1-p\right)\bigr)}{\ln\left(1-p\right)}.$$
-
-(It’s a pleasant surprise to encounter a nested logarithm somewhere other than computer science.) Plug in $$t$$, $$p$$, and $$c$$ to obtain $$x^* = 55$$, as promised.[^exact]
-
-[^exact]: The exact answer is $$x^* = 55.39$$, but you can only apply to a whole number of colleges. Since $$f(x)$$ is a concave, univariate function, the optimal integer solution has to be either 55 or 56, and you can verify that $$f(55) > f(56)$$. We’ll use the same approach for the rest of the post.
-
-## Checking our work with comparative statics
-
-The reflexive economist move is to stick the expression for $$x^*$$ in a [Desmos box](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/yhxxla3wko) as follows, start dragging the sliders around, and see if we can spot any patterns. For example, click the “edit graph on Desmos” box and try increasing the value of $$c$$ slightly: You should see the vertical line, which represents the optimal number of applications, move to the left.
-
-
-
-If we’re feeling especially inspired, we might take the derivative of $$x^*$$ in each of the parameters. Computing these so-called comparative statics will help us verify that our “conservative” assumptions are actually conservative in the way that we think we are. For example,
-
-$$\frac{\partial x^*}{\partial c} = \frac{1}{c \ln (1- p)} < 0$$
-
-(since $$1-p$$ is less than one, its logarithm is negative) tells us that increasing the costs *decreases* the optimal number of applications. But (in my opinion) the linear function $$cx$$ is an *overestimate* of the cost, and the true optimum $$x^*$$ should be even higher: conservatism fulfilled.
-
-Similarly, $$\partial x^* / \partial t > 0$$, meaning that in the [(probable)](https://money.com/wage-gap-college-high-school-grads/) case that an elite college degree is worth more than \$650k, the central argument of this post is even truer.
-
-$$p$$ is where we get into trouble. I lowballed $$p$$ above on the assumption that the “value” of a college application correlates with how likely it is to yield an admission letter. However, the *marginal value* of a college application is actually greatest when colleges are hard to get into, and therefore so is your willingness to invest in an additional application. In other words, I should have tried to overshoot $$p$$ instead.
-
-To understand this counterintuitive result, let’s compute
-
-$$\frac{\partial x^*}{\partial p} = \frac{ \ln{c} - \ln{t} - \ln{\bigl(- \ln{\left(1 - p \right)} \bigr)} + 1}{\left(1 - p\right) \ln^2{\left(1 - p \right)}},$$
-
-whose sign tells us whether the optimal number of applications is increasing or decreasing in the admissions odds $$p$$. The denominator of this expression is positive, so the overall sign depends on the sign of the numerator, which is positive only when
-
-$$p < 1 - \exp(-ce / t).$$
-
-But in college admissions, this is seldom the case: Typically, $$t$$ is much larger than $$c$$, meaning that $$1 - \exp(-ce / t) \approx 1 - \exp(0) = 0$$, breaking the condition. Lowballing $$p$$ is only conservative if $$p$$ is very small in the first place, and $$c$$ is large relative to $$t$$.[^exceptionalregime]
-
-[^exceptionalregime]: For example, to see a regime where $$x^*$$ is increasing in $$p$$, try setting $$t = 10000$$ and $$c = 1000$$ in the Desmos box, and vary $$p$$ between 0.1 and 0.2.
-
-## Oops, apply to thirty colleges
-
-So, if we are being conservative, we should try to *overestimate* $$p$$. If we double our previous estimate to $$p = 0.20$$ and repeat the calculation above, we get a more modest result of $$x^* = 30$$. But this is still much higher than the number of colleges real students apply to, right?
-
-We have to increment $$p$$ much further before $$x^*$$ starts to align with typical applicant behavior: When $$p = 0.7$$, for instance, you get $$x^* = 7$$. Now, you might object that $$p = 0.7$$ sounds like a perfectly reasonable admissions probability for an ambitious student. To this, I offer two responses:
-
-1. As someone who reads blog posts about economics in their free time, your social circle may have instilled in you an biased sense of what is achievable for the typical student.
-2. *Some* students have high admissions odds, but others don’t: The odds have to average out to around 10 percent for elite colleges to maintain acceptance rates in that neighborhood.
-
-In other words, our comparative statics analysis revealed an error in our so-called conservative fake numbers, but the error wasn’t quite large enough to undermine our central argument.
-
-## Why don’t students apply to more colleges?
-
-Most students apply to ten or so colleges. Why not more? What do they know that our model doesn’t?
-
-One idea that might come to mind if you’ve played with [Mulberry]({{ site.url }}/mulberry/) is that most students apply not just to elite schools and a safety school, but also to a continuum of “target schools” in between. Target schools have higher admissions odds, and indeed make up the [bulk of the admissions market](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/). This observation isn’t enough to explain real students’ small application portfolios, however, because elite universities also are (perceived as) much more valuable than target schools.
-
-The model above can also be applied to a student who has already applied to safety and target schools and is trying to decide how many reach schools to add to her portfolio: Simply discount $$t$$ to reflect the value of a degree from an elite school relative to the (actuarial) value of a degree from a target school. Conservatively, if we hack $$t$$ all the way down to \$200k, take $$p = 0.2$$, and $$c = 200$$, we *still* get a hefty $$x^* = 24$$.
-
-Here’s what I think is really going on: Students don’t apply to zillions of colleges because they aren’t optimization machines. When I was a senior in high school, I categorically refused to apply to more than five colleges because I didn’t want to look like a tryhard.[^idw] The psychological costs of college application are *really large,* because they include not only the exhaustion of composing and submitting applications, but also the cost of *imagining* the disappointment of being rejected from a dream school.
-
-[^idw]: It didn’t work.
-
-## Revealed cost of college application
-
-What, in dollar terms, is the value of the subjective cost students associate with college application, after taking into account this risk aversion? Let’s stick with our conservative $$t = 200000$$ and $$p = 0.2$$ scenario, and turn the question around: Given that most students apply to about a dozen colleges, what application cost $$c$$ makes this number of applications optimal?
-
-To figure this out, we just need to solve our $$x^*$$ equation for $$c$$. The answer is
-
-$$c = - t (1 - p)^x \log{\left(1 - p \right)}$$
-
-and plugging in the numbers yields $$c = 3067$$ dollars per application.
-
-Remember: These numbers are fake. But we have made a plausible argument that the majority of the costs incurred in the college application process are psychological, rather than material. If you can overcome the psychological costs, then by applying to thirty or fifty colleges, you may be able to reap significant material rewards.
-
-## Reader exercises
-
-- Repeat the calculations above for another situation, such as job application. How many jobs should you apply to? Is the model a good choice?
-- Identify a regime in which $$\partial x^* / \partial p$$ is positive and explain, in qualitative terms, why this is the case.
-- If every student adopts the optimal application strategy, then everyone might apply to twice as many schools. But then each school will become twice as competitive, changing the admissions odds and therefore the optimal strategies. Can you sketch the equilibrium criteria for this market? What other information would you need? [(Paywalled academic paper about this.)](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/675503)
-- Suppose that the admissions probabilities and utility values for the reach schools are all different. What is the utility expression in this case? *Hint:* Replace $$x$$ with a set indicating which colleges you apply to. You can find the answer [here]({{ site.url }}/mulberry/) or in my [master’s thesis](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication).
-
-
diff --git a/_posts/2022-09-04-masters-graduation.md b/_posts/2022-09-04-masters-graduation.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2cefb9fa..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-09-04-masters-graduation.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,17 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Master’s graduation and two free optimization courses"
----
-
-On September 29, I received my master’s degree in industrial engineering from Seoul National University!
-
-
-
-It’s been a wonderful two years. Despite the challenges of social distancing, I was able to take a diverse assortment of courses in optimization, economics, and human factors; participate in research projects in two different labs; present at a conference in Jeju; and write (in both Korean and English) a thesis I’m [rather proud of](https://github.com/maxkapur/CollegeApplication).
-
-As part of my duties in the Management Science/Optimization Lab, I had the opportunity to serve as the course TA for two of my advisor’s optimization courses, both of which have now been published as free online courses:
-
-- [선형 및 비선형 최적화 (Linear and Nonlinear Optimization)](https://etl.snu.ac.kr/courses/630f4b716b3fac204b3e4a98) is an upper-division undergraduate course on linear programming and convex optimization.
-- [Introduction to Optimization](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-optimization) is an edX course targeted at undergraduates and working professionals, which we created with the support of a grant from SNU’s center for teaching and learning.
-
-Developing the edX course was especially fun: edX has an [open platform](https://openedx.org/community/documentation/) for online courses that lets you create an interactive classroom with videos, captions, automatically graded exercises, and plenty more. Setting up the student activities with automatic grading in a way that is both user-friendly and rigorous was a neat challenge. I hope these courses can bring the theoretically grounded, practically oriented education that I received at SNU to a wider audience of optimization students.
diff --git a/_posts/2022-11-06-two-truths-one-lie.md b/_posts/2022-11-06-two-truths-one-lie.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 7fbb78f4..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-11-06-two-truths-one-lie.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,58 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Two truths and one lie"
----
-
-A puzzle based on the icebreaker game.
-
-> Two truths and one lie:
->
-> 1. I have a twin.
-> 2. I used a random number generator to decide whether to place a true or false statement in #1.
-> 3. I do not understand the rules of “two truths and one lie.”
-
-Solution inside.
-
-
-Hint
-
-The solution to the puzzle consists of assigning a truth value (true or false) to each of the three
-statements.
-
-
-
-
-Solution and explanation
-
-Start by taking cases; there are eight:
-
-- Suppose I used the RNG. Then we have `2: true` and
- - `1: false` and `3: false` is an inconsistent assignment, because I claimed to understand the rules but broke them by writing two lies and one truth.
- - `1: false` and `3: true` is an inconsistent assignment, because I denied understanding the rules but followed them.
- - `1: true` and `3: false` is a consistent assignment, because I claimed to understand the rules and followed them.
- - `1: true` and `3: true` is a consistent assignment, because I denied understanding the rules and broke them.
-- Suppose I didn't flip a coin. Then we have `2: false` and (applying similar logic)
- - `1: false` and `3: false` is inconsistent.
- - `1: false` and `3: true` is consistent.
- - `1: true` and `3: false` is inconsistent.
- - `1: true` and `3: true` is inconsistent.
-
-The consistent assignments are as follows.
-
-|Statement:|1|2|3|
-|-|-|-|-|
-|Assignment A|true |true |false|
-|Assignment B|true |true |true |
-|Assignment C|false|false|true |
-
-It appears that any of the statements could be true or false under a consistent assignment.
-However, since I could not know the result of the RNG in advance, I could only have used it if
-I knew that the three statements would admit at least one consistent assignment whether the RNG
-returned `1: false` or `1: true`.
-
-But this is not the case: There is *no* consistent assignment in which
-I used the RNG and got the result `1: false`. Therefore, I must not have used the RNG at all, which rules out
-assignments A and B and leaves assignment C, namely `1: false`, `2: false`, and `3: true`, as the only option.
-
-See Wikipedia, [“Boolean satisfiability problem.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem)
-
diff --git a/_posts/2022-12-17-this-years-reading.md b/_posts/2022-12-17-this-years-reading.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5d338757..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-12-17-this-years-reading.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,18 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "This year’s reading"
----
-
-A subset of the books I enjoyed this year:
-- Barbara Kingsolver, *The Poisonwood Bible,* a novel about evangelical Christianity and cultural arrogance.
-- 손원평, «아몬드», a novel debating whether or not emotions are a distraction.
-- Walter Isaacson, *The Codebreaker,* a biography of biochemist Jennifer Doudna.
-- Michael Lewis, *The Undoing Project,* a biography of behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
-- 황보름, «어서 오세요, 휴남동 서점입니다», a slice-of-life novel about a bookstore owner overcoming the loneliness of urban life.
-- Ayoko Sono, *Ningen no Bunzai,* a “collection of writings” (according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayako_Sono#Works), and I cannot come up with a better description). I read the Korean translation «약간의 거리를 둔다» by 김욱.
-- 김애란, «달려라, 아비», short stories about the legacy of childhood experience.
-- Jia Tolentino, *Trick Mirror,* essays about identity, authenticity, and social media.
-
-In progress:
-- 김금희, «너무 한낮의 연애», short stories about people at the margins of society.
-- David Foster Wallace, *Infinite Jest.*
diff --git a/_posts/2023-01-27-kiss-guitar-modeling.md b/_posts/2023-01-27-kiss-guitar-modeling.md
deleted file mode 100644
index cf12d9d2..00000000
--- a/_posts/2023-01-27-kiss-guitar-modeling.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,33 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Applying the KISS principle to amp modeling"
----
-
-I’ve been playing electric guitar using only computer modeling software (without a physical amplifier) for about five years now.
-I started out with Garageband and Mainstage, then briefly experimented with [Amplifikation Vermilion](https://www.kuassa.com/products/amplifikation-vermilion/), and for the last year and half have turned to a free, open-source package called [Guitarix](https://guitarix.org/) and a small collection of impulse response files culled from guitar forums.
-In my experience, a good impulse response file fed into a basic convolver does a lot more for your sound than trying to optimize the countless parameters on an expensive simulator.
-
-
-
-The hardest thing about playing through an amp modeler is overcoming the desire to replicate the sound of a classic physical amp.
-Modern software is powerful enough to get you asymptotically close to a reference tone, but only with some know-how and a lot of fiddling.
-For a hobbyist, it’s better (for your sanity) to treat the simulated guitar amp as a distinct instrument from a vintage combo, and try above all to create sounds that are interesting and dynamic on their own.
-This goes doubly for people (like me) whose understanding of classic guitar tones draws more from listening to carefully mastered recordings than firsthand experience.
-
-The second-hardest thing about amp modeling is creating a sense of physical space.
-With a physical amp, you experience each note in several different ways: the physical vibration of the instrument against your body, the sound coming from the amp, the vibration of the floor in response to the amp’s low end, and the echoes of the sound off the walls of the room.
-A digital amp model, even one with low latency and good dynamic response, can sound sterile and distant when fed into headphones or bookshelf monitors because it doesn’t provide these rich audiospatial cues.
-I rely on three devices to create a sense of physical space in my simulated guitar sound:
-
-- Delaying the right channel by 20–40 ms.
-Just a simple sample delay at any point in the signal chain will do.
-It creates the sense of an amp sitting just to the left of your head, but still filling the room with sound.
-- Judicious use of a chorus effect.
-This also helps cut through the mix when playing along with recordings.
-- Rolling off the bass a little.
-The principle here is that if your overall sound has a heavy low end, then your body will expect to feel sympathetic vibrations through the floor and chair.
-By opting for a warmer tone, you remove this cue.
-
-My primary goal is to keep my setup as simple and portable as possible.
-I don’t subscribe to a particular chorus or reverb effect, nor do I have any impulse response files I couldn’t live without.
-I have trained my fingers to make the most of middle-of-the-road settings.
diff --git a/_posts/2023-02-05-korean-idioms-fortunes.md b/_posts/2023-02-05-korean-idioms-fortunes.md
deleted file mode 100644
index ff9c01a9..00000000
--- a/_posts/2023-02-05-korean-idioms-fortunes.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Learning Korean idioms with UNIX fortune"
----
-
-[fortune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(Unix)) is a classic UNIX program that displays random fortunes, pithy quotes, and the like:
-
-```text
-$ fortune
-If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
-```
-
-Today, I repurposed fortune (really [fortune-mod](https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod)) as a language study tool by scraping some [Korean idioms from Wikiquote](https://github.com/maxkapur/korean-fortunes) from Wikiquote):
-
-```text
-$ fortune korean
-“쇠귀에 경 읽기.”
- 아무리 좋은 말을 하면서 가르치려고 하여도 그 뜻을 제대로 헤아리지 못하는 사람을 두고 하는 말.
-```
-
-This one says “Chanting sutras into the ears of a cow,“ defined as “A phrase used when someone fails to understand what you are trying to teach them no matter how well you choose your words.”
-
-I set `fortune korean` (with some gentle text styling) as my fish greeting, so I can learn a new idiom every time I open a terminal—see below.
-
-
-
-You can find my database and `fish_greeter.fish` script on [GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur/korean-fortunes).
-
diff --git a/_posts/2023-06-17-fzl.fish.md b/_posts/2023-06-17-fzl.fish.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 37a26f4f..00000000
--- a/_posts/2023-06-17-fzl.fish.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "fzl.fish"
----
-
-I’ve been using the following fish alias `fzl` (“fuzzy list”) to run `fzf` (“fuzzy find”) in the current directory with a `bat` preview. It’s just a couple of light tweaks to the examples listed in the [`fzf README`](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#preview-window).
-
-`~/.config/fish/functions/fzl.fish`:
-
-```shell
-function fzl
- # `bat` is aliased to `batcat` on Debian
- if type -q batcat
- set -f bat_command "batcat"
- else
- set -f bat_command "bat"
- end
-
- # Set the overall width of the `bat` preview to
- # 50% the width of the current terminal
- set -l bat_width $(math ceil $COLUMNS x 0.5)
-
- # My preferred `bat` options
- set -f bat_command \
- $bat_command \
- --style numbers \
- --color always \
- --italic-text always \
- --wrap auto \
- --terminal-width $bat_width
-
- fzf \
- --preview "$bat_command {}" \
- --preview-window right,$bat_width,nowrap
-end
-```
-
-Example below.
-
-
diff --git a/_posts/2023-07-22-guitarix-troubleshooting.md b/_posts/2023-07-22-guitarix-troubleshooting.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 8a963d38..00000000
--- a/_posts/2023-07-22-guitarix-troubleshooting.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Guitarix troubleshooting"
----
-
-For the past few updates of [Guitarix](https://guitarix.org/), I have been
-having issues where changing the JACK server latency causes the audio output
-to go crazy. This seems to stem from changes that the developer has been
-making to the config files, because the following commands usually get things
-working again:
-
-```bash
-mv ~/.config/guitarix ~/.config/guitarix.backup
-mkdir ~/.config/guitarix
-cp -r ~/.config/guitarix.backup/banks ~/.config/guitarix/banks
-```
-
-These commands backup your amp/effects presets from `~/.config/guitarix/banks`
-(which are the hard part to restore manually), and let the default settings
-take over the next time the application is launched.
diff --git a/_posts/2023-11-05-recent-reading.md b/_posts/2023-11-05-recent-reading.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 001a6aaf..00000000
--- a/_posts/2023-11-05-recent-reading.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,19 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Recent reading"
----
-
-Finished reading, but still thinking about:
-
-- 정유정, «종의 기원», a thriller.
-- 김연수, «이토록 평범한 미래», a collection of short stories.
-- 권여선, «레몬», a thriller.
-- 신경숙, «엄마를 부탁해», a classic.
-- Cory Doctorow, *The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation,* a tinkerer’s manifesto.
-- Paul Abel, [“I thought I wanted to be a professor. Then, I served on a hiring committee.”](https://www.science.org/content/article/i-thought-i-wanted-be-faculty-member-then-i-served-hiring-committee)
-- From the September issue of *The Sun,* [“No Small Wonder”](https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/573/no-small-wonder) (paywall), an interview with psychologist Dacher Keltner, a student of awe. It pairs nicely with *Bewilderment* below.
-
-Currently reading:
-
-- Richard Powers, *Bewilderment,* a novel of astrobiology, biofeedback, and conservationism.
-- 정유정, «내 심장을 쏴라», a thriller.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-01-01-handy-submodular.md b/_posts/2024-01-01-handy-submodular.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 1321fe26..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-01-01-handy-submodular.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,222 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "A handy class of submodular functions"
----
-
-In this post, we will show that functions of the form
-
-$$
-f(X) = 1 -
-\prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} (1 - p_i)
-\prod_{i \in X} (1 - q_i)
-$$
-
-are submodular for $$p_i, q_i \in [0, 1]$$ where each $$p_i \leq q_i,$$
-and examine an application of this small result that demonstrates its
-practical value.
-
-# Background on submodular functions
-
-Given a ground set $$\Omega,$$ a function $$f: 2^\Omega \mapsto \mathbb{R}$$
-is called [*submodular*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submodular_set_function)
-if, for any $$X \subseteq Y \subseteq \Omega$$ and $$j \in \Omega \setminus Y,$$
-we have
-
-$$f(X \cup \{j\}) - f(X) \geq f(Y \cup \{j\}) - f(Y).$$
-
-In plain language, this says that the marginal value of adding $$j$$ to $$X$$
-is greater than when adding it to $$Y$$. Thus, submodularity expresses a
-form of diminishing marginal returns (for set functions) that is analogous to
-concavity (for continuous functions).
-
-Submodular functions have a number of desirable traits. A famous result of
-Nemhauser et al. (1978) holds that when maximizing a monotone[^monotone]
-submodular function over a cardinality constraint, the greedy algorithm that
-iteratively adds to $$X$$ the element that yields the greatest increase in
-$$f(X)$$ is $$1 - \frac{1}{e} \approx 63.2\%$$ optimal.[^optimal] Efficient algorithms
-that provide the same approximation ratio for more complex constraint structures
-have also been identified (Badanidiyuru et al. 2014, Chekuri et al. 2014,
-Kulik et al. 2013). See Vondrák (2017) for an introduction to submodular functions
-with many examples.
-
-# Preliminary interpretation of $$f(X)$$
-
-The function $$f(X)$$ defined above can be used to model the probability of
-a parallel system failing when optional repairs are made to its components.
-For example, suppose there are a dozen roads between our town and the next,
-and the probabilities of each road being open in the coming winter are
-given by $$p_1$$ through $$p_{12}$$. For each of the roads, we can engage
-in repairs to increase the availability to $$q_i$$. Letting $$X$$ denote the set
-of roads that we repair, the probability of *at least* one road being open in the
-winter is one minus the probability that all of them are closed, which is $$f(X).$$
-
-With this interpretation in mind, we are tempted to give $$f(X)$$ a
-tortured-but-accurate name such as the “parallel process success probability
-with quality upgrades” function—but we’ll just stick with
-$$f(X)$$ for now.
-
-The applicability of $$f(X)$$ in its current form is, admittedly, a bit
-narrow. The versatility of this functional form shows itself more clearly
-when we start taking conic combinations—see the examples below.
-
-# Monotonicity and submodularity proof
-
-**Theorem:** $$f(X)$$ as defined above is a monotone submodular function.
-
-**Proof:** The monotonicity of $$f(X)$$ is clear from the constraints
-on $$p$$ and $$q$$: Adding any element $$j$$ to $$X$$ replaces the
-$$1 - p_j$$ term with the (smaller) $$1 - q_j$$ term, increasing the
-overall function value.
-
-To prove submodularity, pick any $$X \subseteq Y \subseteq \Omega$$ and
-$$j \in \Omega \setminus Y.$$ If $$p_j < 1,$$ we have
-
-$$
-\begin{aligned}
-f(X \cup \{j\}) - f(X)
-&= \biggl[1 -
-\frac{1 - q_j}{1 - p_j}
-\prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} (1 - p_i)
-\prod_{i \in X} (1 - q_i)
-\biggr] -
-\biggl[1 -
-\prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} (1 - p_i)
-\prod_{i \in X} (1 - q_i)
-\biggr] \\
-&= - \biggl(\frac{1 - q_j}{1 - p_j}\biggr)
-\prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} (1 - p_i)
-\prod_{i \in X} (1 - q_i) +
-\prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} (1 - p_i)
-\prod_{i \in X} (1 - q_i) \\
-&= \biggl(1 - \frac{1 - q_j}{1 - p_j}\biggr)
-\Bigl(1 - f(X)\Bigr) \\
-&\geq \biggl(1 - \frac{1 - q_j}{1 - p_j}\biggr)
-\Bigl(1 - f(Y)\Bigr) \\
-&= f(Y \cup \{j\}) - f(Y).
-\end{aligned}
-$$
-
-The penultimate inequality follows from monotonicity, and the final
-equality is just applying the first three steps in reverse, with $$Y$$
-instead of $$X.$$
-
-In the $$p_j = 1$$ case, $$f(X \cup \{j\}) = 1$$ for any $$X$$ and
-the inequality collapses to $$- f(X) \geq - f(Y),$$ which is just
-monotonicity. ◼
-
-# Application: Optimal scrum velocity, aka the $$m$$-dimensional Zeno walk
-
-Let’s examine a plausible(ish) application of this functional form.
-
-**The Zeno walk:** Consider a
-[Zeno walk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#Dichotomy_paradox)
-between an arbitrary origin and destination. Let $$\Omega$$ provide a set of
-possible *steps* that we can take toward our destination. Each step’s size
-is $$s_i \in [0, 1],$$ which means that if you choose to take step $$i,$$
-you get $$100 s_i$$ percent of the way from your current location to the
-destination.[^zeno] If $$X$$ is the set of steps you choose to take,
-you will make it
-
-$$
-g(X) = 1 - \prod_{i \in X} (1 - s_i)
-$$
-
-of the way to the destination from your starting point. This $$g(X)$$
-is just $$f(X)$$ where each $$p_i = 0$$ and $$q_i = s_i$$.
-
-**The multidimensional Zeno walk:** Now, consider a process optimization
-problem. We have a set $$\Psi$$ (indexed by $$j$$) of *goals* to achieve,
-as well as a set $$\Omega$$ (indexed by $$i$$) of *tasks* we can complete
-in service of the goals. Tasks can advance multiple goals at once. Let
-$$v_{ij}$$ denote the *effectiveness* of task $$i$$ against goal $$j,$$
-meaning that if you engage in task $$i,$$ then $$v_{ij}$$ of (whatever
-remains of)[^whatever] goal $$j$$ will be completed. Each goal is
-worth $$t_j \geq 0$$
-*[story points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burndown_chart),*
-and goals can be completed fractionally.
-
-We would like to choose the set of tasks $$X$$ that maximizes the team’s
-[*velocity*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_(software_development))
-in the current planning period, defined as the total number of story points
-completed, which is
-
-$$
-h(X) = \sum_{j \in \Psi} \Bigl(
-t_j - t_j \prod_{i \in X} (1 - v_{ij})
-\Bigr).
-$$
-
-Tasks are subject to a variety of constraints due to considerations such
-as cost, scheduling, and dependency. It is not immediately obvious which
-tasks we should prioritize—for example, should we favor tasks that
-advance many different goals, or those that have high effectiveness
-against the most important goals? Well, the $$j$$th term of $$h(X)$$
-is just $$t_j g(X)$$ where $$s$$ is the $$j$$th column of $$v$$. Thus,
-$$h(X),$$ as a conic combination of submodular functions, is itself
-submodular,[^conic] and we can compute the optimal velocity using
-any of the well-known techniques for submodular maximization.
-
-Returning to Zeno’s paradox, the business process described above is
-akin to a *multidimensional* Zeno walk in which $$t_j$$ gives your distance
-from the target in the $$j$$th coordinate axis, and each step $$i$$ moves you
-$$v_{ij}$$ of the way towards the target along that axis. The function
-$$h(X)$$ measures the one-norm distance between your final position and the
-target.
-
-# Remarks
-
-**Linearization:** To maximize $$f(X)$$ as written, in typical cases, it
-will be simplest to minimize $$1 - f(X),$$ which is a *modular* function
-after taking the logarithm.[^modular] The logarithm trick doesn’t work,
-however, for conic combinations of $$f(X)$$; the best we can do is introduce
-helper variables and reformulate the problem as an integer convex
-program.[^integerconvex] Thus, recognizing the submodularity of $$f(X)$$
-(and the strong approximation results implied) is worthwhile.
-
-**Serial processes:** It is not difficult to show, using a similar proof
-as above, that the “*serial* process success probability with quality upgrades”
-function
-
-$$
-\tilde f(X) = \prod_{i \in \Omega \setminus X} p_i \prod_{i \in X} q_i
-$$
-
-with $$p_i \leq q_i$$ is monotone and *supermodular;* that is,
-$$- \tilde f(X)$$ is monotone *decreasing* and submodular. Note that
-$$1 - \tilde f(X)$$ has the same functional form as the original $$f(X),$$
-but the inequality on $$p_i$$ and $$q_i$$ comes out backwards. This turns
-back into the original result (that $$f(X)$$ is increasing and submodular)
-if you interchange the roles of $$X$$ and $$\Omega \setminus X$$.
-
-# References
-
-Open access:
-
-- Badanidiyuru, Ashwinkumar and Jan Vondrák. 2014. “Fast Algorithms for Maximizing Submodular Functions.” In *Proceedings of the 2014 Annual ACM--SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms,* 1497–1514. .
-- Vondrák, Van. 2017. “Submodular Functions.” Lecture 14 from Math 233B: Polyhedral Techniques in Combinatorial Optimization. .
-- Wikipedia, s.v. [“burndown chart.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burndown_chart)
-- Wikipedia, s.v. [“submodular set function.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submodular_set_function)
-- Wikipedia, s.v. [“velocity (software development).”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_(software_development))
-- Wikipedia, s.v. [“Zeno’s paradox.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#Dichotomy_paradox)
-
-Paywall:
-
-- Chekuri, Chandra, Jan Vondrák, and Rico Zenklusen. 2014. “Submodular Function Maximization via the Multilinear Relaxation and Contention Resolution Schemes.” *SIAM Journal on Computing* 43, no. 6: 1831–79. .
-- Kulik, Ariel, Hadas Shachnai, and Tami Tamir. 2013. “Approximations for Monotone and Nonmonotone Submodular Maximization with Knapsack Constraints.” *Mathematics of Operations Research* 38, no. 4: 729–39. .
-- Nemhauser, George, Laurence Wolsey, and Marshall Fisher. 1978. “An Analysis of Approximations for Maximizing Submodular Set Functions—I.” *Mathematical Programming* 14: 265–94. .
-
-
-
-[^monotone]: A set function is called *monotone* if $$X \subseteq Y$$ implies $$f(X) \leq f(Y)$$.
-
-[^optimal]: This means that if $$X^*$$ is the set that maximizes $$f(X)$$ and $$\tilde X$$ is the set produced by the greedy algorithm, we are guaranteed to have $$f(\tilde X) \geq 0.632\,f(X^*)$$. In practice, the optimality gap is often much narrower.
-
-[^zeno]: In the original Zeno walk, each $$s_i = \frac{1}{2},$$ and the (supposedly unachievable) “goal” is to reach the destination rather than to get as close as possible to it.
-
-[^whatever]: Depending on the context, it may be more appropriate to have tasks advance goals additively—but that would just be a knapsack problem. Here, we are interested in the more difficult case where tasks make diminishing marginal contributions against the goals. One way this arises in real life is when tasks address goals in redundant ways. For example, against the goal “get rid of all the junk in my house,” the tasks “throw away any items not used in the past six months” and “throw away any items that spark fewer than $$k$$ units of joy” may separately elicit a 50 percent reduction in the total junk, but doing *both* tasks won’t necessarily remove all the junk, because there is some overlap in the junk removed by both operations.
-
-[^conic]: The fact that a conic combination of submodular functions is submodular isn’t mentioned on the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submodular_set_function), but it falls right out of the second definition.
-
-[^modular]: A set function is *modular* if it is both submodular and supermodular. This means that each item’s marginal value is constant—and thus modular functions are equivalent to *linear* functions of the characteristic vector. The knapsack objective function is an example of a monotone modular function.
-
-[^integerconvex]: [Email me](mailto:{{ site.email }}) if you would be interested in a follow-up post explaining how to do this.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-03-10-housekeeping.md b/_posts/2024-03-10-housekeeping.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5cee5f96..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-03-10-housekeeping.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,41 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Housekeeping"
----
-
-Completed some overdue site maintenance over the past few weeks:
-
-- **RSS feed styling:**
- With help from a
- [template found on GitHub](https://gist.github.com/andrewstiefel/57a0a400aa2deb6c9fe18c6da4e16e0f),
- I created a stylesheet for the RSS feed so that it looks nice when
- viewed in the browser. Ctrl+F “via RSS” on this page to find the link,
- or just scroll all the way to the bottom, or maybe
- [try this link](/feed.xml).
-
- I am not a big consumer of RSS feeds myself; I prefer to just
- bookmark blog URLs and read posts in their original context. But RSS
- is an important bit of
- [plumbing](https://inessential.com/2013/03/14/why_i_love_rss_and_you_do_too.html)
- for the indie web, and probably covers accessibility use cases
- that I haven’t anticipated.
-
- (Technically, I am serving an Atom feed rather than RSS, but
- [people use the terms interchangeably](https://indieweb.org/RSS).)
-
-- **Upgraded to Jekyll 4:**
- Jekyll is a tool for building a static HTML site out of Markdown files.
- The built-in GitHub functionality for hosting a Jekyll blog uses an old
- version of Jekyll which has some end-of-life dependencies, and they are
- [stuck searching for an upgrade path](https://github.com/github/pages-gem/issues/651#issuecomment-581069671)
- that doesn’t break existing sites.
-
- I followed this
- [wonderful guide](https://www.moncefbelyamani.com/making-github-pages-work-with-latest-jekyll/)
- to switch my publication workflow to a GitHub Action that lets me manually
- manage my Ruby and Jekyll versions. It’s a great tutorial that also helped
- clear up several misunderstandings about Ruby, Gems, and `rbenv`.
-
-- **Removed embedded YouTube videos:**
- I replaced embedded YouTube videos with simple links to improve page load
- times and user privacy.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-03-18-recent-reading.md b/_posts/2024-03-18-recent-reading.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 139f5656..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-03-18-recent-reading.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,37 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Recent reading"
----
-
-Mostly novels this time:
-
-- 조남주, «82년생 김지영», a 2016 novel about (I have struggled to phrase this
- in a way that isn’t too dead-on) why it is so hard to be a woman in
- contemporary Korean society.
-
- The movie version from 2019 is better known, perhaps thanks to the sanitized
- resolution in which the title character learns to
- channel her resentment into creative energy—and writes the novel that
- the movie is based on. In the novel, however, the final chapter reveals
- the narrator as 지영’s therapist, and he comes within inches of a feminist
- awakening as he weighs different diagnoses for her, then reverses course.
- Witholding spoilers, I suspect that much of the hand-wringing around the book
- turns on its withering, cynical last sentence.
-
-- 장강명, «한국이 싫어서», a novel about a woman’s decision to migrate from
- Korea to Australia, and for reasons that are no surprise if you’ve read the
- book above. This one has a happy ending.
-
-- Mishele Maron, [“Anger Management”](https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/578/anger-management)
- (paywall), a memoir by a psychologist whose job was to “goad men with a
- history of violence into wanting to punch me” and create the opportunity for
- them to examine their feelings in group counseling.
-
-- Greg Egan, *Permutation City.*
-
-- Philip K. Dick, *The Man in the High Castle.*
-
-I am looking for Korean bookstores that deliver within the US. So far
-[반디북US](https://www.bandibookus.com/) has proven reliable, but I’d like
-to have a backup option in case their rickety website finally gives way. Write
-if you know of any others.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-04-14-new-old-device.md b/_posts/2024-04-14-new-old-device.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2bef10e0..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-04-14-new-old-device.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,53 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "New old device"
----
-
-On a recent visit home, I dug this 2007
-[Sansa Clip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanDisk_portable_media_players#Sansa_Clip)
-out of a box.
-
-
-
-
-
-It’s battery life is shot, but everything works, and I unearthed some critical
-throwback jams from the built-in 4GB of flash memory (among other things, the
-first four Brad Paisley albums in .wma format). As the picture shows, I also
-installed a bit of custom firmware called [Rockbox](https://www.rockbox.org/).
-
-
-
-I remembered Rockbox from using it on a different MP3 player (a Sansa e200)
-prior to the Clip. It runs on dozens of classic ’00s devices (including some of
-the early iPods) and provides a wide range of features and customization options
-beyond the stock firmware—things like support for the FLAC audio format, a
-dynamic equalizer, and better tools for managing playlist and the “now playing”
-queue. There are additional plugins for games, translations, font selection, and
-image viewing.[^imageview]
-
-[^imageview]: Image viewing works even on the Clip’s simple two-color display. It uses random [dithering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither) to represent fractional lightness values, and rerolls the randomness with each screen refresh to produce a nice composition effect. This kills the battery in short time.
-
-Rockbox distributes an installation wizard for Linux platforms, but I couldn’t
-get it to work (it 404’d trying to download the fonts package[^404]). Fortunately,
-the “manual” installation isn’t hard. You just download one of the official
-firmware updates from Sandisk, then apply Rockbox’s patch and transfer the
-result to the device’s root directory. By design, the Clip attempts to execute
-*any* file in the root directory whose name matches a certain pattern. This
-firmware update mechanism was a welcome convenience for tinkerers, but it’s
-probably too insecure for today’s internet-mandatory smartphones.
-
-[^404]: I wasn’t sure how best to spell *404’d,* and couldn’t find the verb form in any of the dictionaries I checked, but I settled on this spelling by comparison with a reference to *86’d* in this [Merriam-Webster article](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin). The more you know.
-
-Playing with the Clip has renewed my excitement for the
-[Tangara](https://sr.ht/~jacqueline/tangara/), an open-source, crowdfunded MP3
-player slash nostalgia platform that aims to combine the hackability of those
-2000s devices with such modern comforts as Bluetooth and USB-C. I don’t fault
-Tangara for writing their own firmware, but I really hope that Rockbox gets
-ported to it, too, as Rockbox basically defined the “handheld music player”
-interface for me at a formative age. Nothing else feels quite as flexible or
-obvious.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-04-26-iso-dates-filenames.md b/_posts/2024-04-26-iso-dates-filenames.md
deleted file mode 100644
index ef5eebc4..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-04-26-iso-dates-filenames.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,46 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Why I put ISO dates in filenames"
----
-
-I am one of those obnoxious people who begins his filenames with an ISO date,
-like `2024-03-06_blog_post_idea.md`. I know that file metadata already tracks
-creation and revision dates, but I don't like those: The creation date is
-misleading when you duplicate a file to reuse its format or content, and the
-revision date is all but meaningless because modern software modifies files on
-disk in all kinds of spurious ways. I put an ISO date in my filenames
-to assign them a *canonical* date. The canonical date means something like “the
-last date at which this file underwent a significant change,” and I alone (not
-software) can determine what that means.[^spurious]
-
-[^spurious]: An example of the spurious ways in which modern software modifies files on disk: If you open a Microsoft Excel worksheet, adjust the zoom, and try to close Excel, it will issue a “Do you want to save your changes?” warning. I’m not sure why the zoom level is stored in the `.xlsx` file at all. In Word (as far as I can tell), the zoom level, like scroll position, belongs to your session state and will thus be remembered separately for different viewers of the document.
-
- I have had some funny moments in client meetings where I pulled up an Excel sheet and it loaded at an illegible 50% because my last edit was to finalize the layout. 100% is the default for a reason!
-
-Another reprehensible habit of mine is that I often duplicate files (creating
-a new, ISO-datestamped copy) before making big changes despite knowing I can
-roll things back in our sync software (OneDrive). I do so because I have
-essentially unlimited storage space (1TB), and visiting the web UI means leaving
-the comfort of my local file manager for a terrible, laggy web app. But this
-practice is not just a matter of personal preference; it’s also a crucial
-mitigation against the version-control issues wrought by the collaboration
-features of the “modern office tech stack.” See, I have colleagues who, at the
-end of their work day, leave their computer on with all their Office files
-open.[^logoff] A few hours later, their VPN session expires, which disconnects
-OneDrive. So, if I log in before them in the morning and make some edits, their
-version of the file goes out of date, but their OneDrive is powerless to detect
-it or show them my changes. This results in an instant version conflict when
-they come back online, make an edit, and reflexively press
-Ctrl + s. I munificently prevent this problem by copying
-each file and advancing the ISO date before making edits so that everyone can
-see that my version is the newest.
-
-[^logoff]: When I sign off for the day, I like to shut my computer all the way down to purge the demons. But I can’t fault others for not doing so, because cold-booting Windows with all the bloat, reopening all your files and email, and logging into Workday is a fifteen-minute process *at best.*
-
-Ironically, the VPN vs. OneDrive fight would never arise on an old-school NAS or
-“`S://` drive,” because (assuming the shared drive is behind the VPN), when the
-VPN lease expires, the `~$whatever.docx` lock file (a hidden file that indicates
-when a file is being edited, and is completely ignored by OneDrive) would stay
-on the NAS, and I would be *forced* to make my edits on a copy of the file
-instead of the original—which is exactly what I already do, manually, now that
-I’ve learned never to trust software.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-05-03-best-thing-about-fish.md b/_posts/2024-05-03-best-thing-about-fish.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0ce2f875..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-05-03-best-thing-about-fish.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "The best thing about fish"
----
-
-The best thing about fish is probably the
-[lateral line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_line),
-which sort of like ears for underwater that enable fish to sense and locate
-predators even in dark or murky conditions.
-
-The best thing about the fish command-line *shell,* on the other hand, has to be
-its “fuzzy” completions. In most other shells (like Microsoft PowerShell, which
-I use every day at work), you can tab-complete a filename like
-`blog_post_idea.md` by typing `blog` (the first part of the filename) and
-pressing Tab. If there are multiple matches, you use the arrow keys
-to scroll through them until you get the one you want.
-
-This works fine if you put the most-unique part of your filenames at the
-beginning. But I like to begin my filenames with
-[ISO dates]({% post_url 2024-04-26-iso-dates-filenames %}),
-so to tab-complete `2024-03-06_blog_post_idea.md` in PowerShell, I have to
-type `2024` and then jab the arrow key a bunch of times, which is like using a
-phone book that is sorted by phone number. In fish, I can just type `blogpost`
-(even without the underscore) and it will autocomplete to
-`2024-03-06_blog_post_idea.md`.
-
-Similar completions work for the options of most command-line programs, and it’s
-(relatively) easy to extend the built-in completions with your own
-[configuration files](https://fishshell.com/docs/current/completions.html)
-(but I’ve never needed to).
-
-
diff --git a/_posts/2024-05-12-new-logo.md b/_posts/2024-05-12-new-logo.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 00a9d24b..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-05-12-new-logo.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,19 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "New logo"
----
-
-I created a new logo for the site today:
-
-
-
-The old one was just a square with my initials, MK, which seemed a little too
-self-indulgent (not to mention that I share these initials with half of my
-extended family, so I can hardly claim them as my own):
-
-
-
-The new logo still kind of forms a stylized letter *m,* if you imagine the three
-theme-colored vertical segments as hanging from the horizontal segment on top.
-It also *kind of* recalls the shape of the word *Ill,* which spells the start of
-the blog title and doubles as a fun bit of retro slang.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-06-07-sports-idea.md b/_posts/2024-06-07-sports-idea.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 76c6a351..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-06-07-sports-idea.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,18 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Sports idea"
----
-
-A footrace, but the objective is to run as far as possible in a fixed amount of
-time rather than speeding through a fixed distance. The catch is that the time
-limit is drawn randomly at the start of the race, so you cannot strategize
-around it being a sprint or distance event.
-
-I think a good choice of distribution would be an log-normal distribution with a
-mean of around four or five minutes and a fairly high variance. Perhaps we could
-clamp the maximum time at eight hours, out of respect for the athletes’
-work-life balance.
-
-I ran (ha) this idea by a friend who is a competitive marathoner and he said,
-“That sounds like hell.” This makes me think I am really onto something, because
-many popular sports sound like hell to those who are not yet good at them.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-06-23-drivers-ed-error-recovery.md b/_posts/2024-06-23-drivers-ed-error-recovery.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 72279f70..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-06-23-drivers-ed-error-recovery.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,70 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Driver’s ed should teach error recovery"
----
-
-I live near a one-way street, and drivers keep turning into it the wrong way by
-mistake. Most react by getting flustered and backing dangerously into the
-arterial, perhaps following an instinct to “undo” the error. The safer solution
-(in my eyes) is to park the car, wait for traffic to clear, then use a driveway
-to point yourself in the right direction.
-
-Unfortunately, driver’s ed doesn’t teach you how to recover from mistakes like
-this—at least, mine didn’t. Instead, driver’s ed teaches the rules of the
-road and how to follow them. Once you have violated the law, even if by
-accident, you are in undefined territory. Hence, drivers develop a strong
-impulse to immediately “reverse” errors rather than identify a safe course of
-action.[^errors]
-
-[^errors]: Well, my driver’s ed course did talk about what to do after you get
- in a *collision:* Exchange phone numbers, take lots of pictures, call the
- police, and get clear documentation of who was at fault.
-
-The Federal Aviation Association has invested considerable effort into
-identifying the root causes of safety incidents and increasing safety baselines.
-They promote an idea called “just culture” as the alternative to a *punitive*
-culture that addresses each safety violation with swift discipline. Instead,
-
-> Safety inspectors must understand the difference between accountability, which
-> accepts responsibility and looks forward, and blame, which focuses on
-> punishment for what has already occurred. The key to a just safety culture is
-> the ability to determine where the line should be drawn between unsafe acts
-> that can be effectively addressed by using compliance tools (accountability)
-> and unacceptable behavior that requires the use of enforcement action
-> (blame).[^faa]
-
-[^faa]: LeRoy Stromenger, “Understanding the Compliance Program: One Bite at a
- Time!” *FAA Safety Briefing,* January/February 2024, 7,
- .
-
-In the car world, many safety violations, such as drunk driving, street racing,
-cell phone use, and so on, fall squarely into the “blame the driver” category.
-But others are better understood as symptoms of inexperience, reasonable
-reactions to *other* drivers’ unsafe actions, or simply the inevitable
-consequences of poor signage. (Here I have deleted two paragraphs complaining
-about the placement of the `ONE WAY` signs in my neighborhood.) The blame
-belongs to multiple parties, and punishing only one yields only a marginal
-improvement in safety.
-
-Another example we often see in city traffic is drivers who get stuck in the
-middle of an intersection when the light turns red. Of course, the driver’s
-manual says plainly that you should never enter an intersection unless you have
-the time and space to clear it. But this open-and-shut perspective doesn’t
-account for the real-world practice that drivers need to hone the timing
-instinct. Nor the pressure received from other drivers (sometimes imagined,
-other times real honking and yelling) to advance into an unsafe position. Nor
-how the previous factors interact with the frequent anxiety new drivers
-experience on the road. I am not saying that we should legalize running red
-lights, only pointing out that the *perception* that every unsafe situation
-flows from an individual’s culpable act makes it harder to identify safety
-improvements that require coordinated action.
-
-I *still* don’t know the safe way to get out of the red light situation, nor how
-best to react (e.g. as a pedestrian crossing the street) when I see someone make
-that mistake. So, yeah, as the title suggests, I wish that driver’s ed taught
-strategies for dealing from these common errors, even a simple suggestion such
-as “Try to focus on how to make the situation safe *now* rather than what you
-*shouldn’t have* done.“
-
-Generalizations to corporate governance, cybersecurity, academia, and so on are
-left to the reader.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-08-13-advanced-cafe.md b/_posts/2024-08-13-advanced-cafe.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 3e5a5e67..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-08-13-advanced-cafe.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Advanced café techniques"
----
-
-Most cafés have separate lines for placing your order and picking it up. After
-you order, you move to the next line, and since drinks come out in more or less
-the order they were requested, the barista usually announces your drink around
-the time you get to the front of the second line.
-
-However, for simple drinks like drip coffee, all the barista has to do is fill
-the cup, so they can often hand it to you right at the order counter. This also
-applies to pastries. If you are a rule-follower and immediately move to the
-second queue after ordering one of these items, it can actually slow things
-down, because your drink will typically be ready *before* those of the people
-ahead of you in line, and you’ll need to elbow your way to the front.
-
-Advanced combinations such as “coffee and a hot croissant” are marginal. This
-could be a one- or a two-queue order. Such situations require careful planning
-and deft execution.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-09-24-bimatrix-game-equilibrium.md b/_posts/2024-09-24-bimatrix-game-equilibrium.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 314d377f..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-09-24-bimatrix-game-equilibrium.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,102 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Bimatrix game equilibrium via nonlinear programming"
----
-
-[These lecture notes
-(PDF)](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-254-game-theory-with-engineering-applications-spring-2010/9cca6ef4a5399a4e05891f471d667441_MIT6_254S10_lec09.pdf)
-from Asu Ozdaglar give a bilinear program whose solution is the mixed-strategy
-equilibrium for a two-player, non-zero-sum game with finite action spaces—also
-known as a bimatrix game. I wanted to reproduce this highly practical result in
-a more accessible format and offer some implementation notes.
-
-# Definitions
-
-A *bimatrix game* is characterized by two matrices $$A, B \in \mathbb{R}^{n
-\times m}.$$ When Alice chooses strategy $$i$$ and Bob chooses strategy $$j$$,
-their payoffs are $$A_{ij}$$ and $$B_{ij},$$ respectively. Mixed-strategy
-probability vectors $$x$$ and $$y$$ yield expected payoffs of $$x^T A y$$ and
-$$x^T B y,$$ respectively.
-
-$$(x^*, y^*)$$ is an *equilibrium* if $$x^T A y^* \leq x^{*T} A y^*$$ and
-$$x^{*T} A y \leq x^{*T} A y^*$$ for all probability vectors $$x$$ and $$y.$$
-
-# Result
-
-**Theorem:** $$(\implies)$$ If $$(x^*, y^*)$$ is an equilibrium, then there
-exist $$p^*$$ and $$q^*$$ such that $$(x^*, y^*, p^*, q^*)$$ is the optimal
-solution to the following bilinear program:
-
-$$
-\begin{aligned}
- \text{maximize} \quad & f(x, y, p, q) = x^T A y + x^T B y - p - q \\
- \text{subject to} \quad & A y \leq p \mathbf{1} & \text{(OptA)} \\
- & B^T x \leq q \mathbf{1} & \text{(OptB)} \\
- & \sum x_i = \sum y_i = 1 & \text{(ProbVec1)} \\
- & x \geq \mathbf{0}, y \geq \mathbf{0} & \text{(ProbVec2)}
-\end{aligned}
-$$
-
-$$(\impliedby)$$ Conversely, the optimal solution of the bilinear program is an
-equilibrium for the game.
-
-**Proof:** $$(\implies)$$ For any feasible solution to the bilinear program,
-each element of $$x$$ is nonnegative (by ProbVec2), so we can use $$x$$ to
-combine the rows of the condition OptA to obtain a new valid inequality $$x^T A
-y \leq x^T p \mathbf{1} = p \sum x_i = p$$ (by ProbVec1). Applying the same
-logic to $$y$$ and $$q,$$ we find that $$f(x, y, p, q) \leq 0.$$
-
-Now consider the equilibrium probability vectors $$(x^*, y^*)$$ and set $$p^* =
-x^{*T} A y^*$$ and $$q^* = x^{*T} B y^{*}.$$ Then $$f(x^*, y^*, p^*, q^*) = 0,$$
-and we have only to show that this solution is feasible. To be an equilibrium,
-$$x^*$$ must earn Alice a better payoff against $$y^{*}$$ than does the $$i$$th
-pure strategy: $$p^* = x^{*T} A y^* \geq (A y^*)_i.$$ This is precisely the
-$$i$$th row of OptA. OptB follows similarly.
-
-$$(\impliedby)$$ The bilinear program is clearly feasible and bounded (as shown
-a moment ago). Let $$(\bar x, \bar y, \bar p, \bar q)$$ denote the optimal
-solution. By Nash’s theorem on the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria, we
-know that an equilibrium exists, and from the first part of the proof, we know
-how to use this equilibrium to produce a feasible solution to the bilinear
-program with an objective value of zero. Thus, $$f(\bar x, \bar y, \bar p, \bar
-q) \geq 0,$$ which rearranges to
-
-$$(\bar x^T A \bar y - \bar p) + (\bar x^T B \bar y - \bar q) \geq 0.$$
-
-By the constraints OptA and OptB, each of the terms in parentheses is less than
-or equal to zero; thus, the inequality on $$f(\bar x, \bar y, \bar p, \bar q)$$
-can hold only when each of these terms *equals* zero exactly.
-
-Now consider any probability vector $$x$$ and use it to combine the rows of
-OptA: We have $$x^T A \bar y \leq x^T \bar p \mathbf{1} = \bar p = \bar x^T A
-\bar y,$$ which says that $$\bar x$$ is a best response to $$\bar y$$. Applying
-the same logic to $$\bar y$$ and $$\bar q$$ completes the proof. ◼
-
-# Remarks
-
-Solving the bilinear program is not necessarily easy. If merely solving a
-bimatrix game of this form is your goal, then mitigations against local optima
-such as [iterated local
-search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterated_local_search) are essential. You
-can check whether a solution is local or global by comparing the objective value
-to zero, which is the global optimum guaranteed by Nash’s theorem.
-
-In practice, I have used the bilinear program above when implementing the
-[double oracle algorithm](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12185) for games with
-complex action spaces. For example, in a modeling problem I am working on, pure
-strategies are subsets of $$\mathbb{R}^n$$ with additional inequality and
-integrality constraints.
-
-The “first oracle” in the double-oracle algorithm has you compute the
-equilibrium of a subgame with discrete action sets and uses the bilinear program
-above. In the second oracle (typically the hard part), you then augment these
-action sets by computing a pure-strategy best response for each player against
-the mixed-strategy equilibrium obtained from the first oracle. You can use the
-double oracle algorithm to approximate either pure- *or* mixed-strategy
-equilibria by checking convergence and terminating after either the first or
-second oracle, respectively.
-
-In my use case, the open-source solver [Ipopt](https://github.com/coin-or/Ipopt)
-gives acceptable results for the first oracle. I also learned about
-[cyipopt](https://github.com/mechmotum/cyipopt), a nice set of Python bindings
-for Ipopt that lets you `@jit` your functions with Numba or Jax for performance.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-11-02-gwangju-again.md b/_posts/2024-11-02-gwangju-again.md
deleted file mode 100644
index ced6d661..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-11-02-gwangju-again.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,56 +0,0 @@
----
-title: 'Gwangju again: CLS Media Literacy and Democracy seminar'
-layout: post
----
-
-I had the honor this week of participating in the first ever [Critical Language
-Scholarship Alumni Seminar](https://clscholarship.org/news/2024/cls-international-alumni-seminars)
-([archive.org mirror](https://web.archive.org/web/20241015125209/https://clscholarship.org/news/2024/cls-international-alumni-seminars))
-at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea. The seminar focused on
-media literacy and democracy, and I can’t think of a better time or place to
-study the topic.
-
-Koreans take their democracy very seriously, as evidenced by the high degree of
-civic participation (there is virtually *always* a protest going on in front of
-all the major government buildings in Seoul) and high voter turnout (77% in the
-2022 presidential election). One reason is that Korea didn’t adopt a democratic
-constitution until 1987, which puts Korea’s long struggle against authoritarian
-rule well within living memory. The memory is especially fresh in Gwangju, the
-site of the 5/18 (1980) independence movement, in which hundreds of activists
-(many of them CNU students) lost their lives to state violence.
-
-As we learned, throughout the 1980s, citizen journalists played a pivotal role
-in resisting media censorship and spreading the true narrative of 5/18 via
-informal publications; their contributions were arguably a key factor in the
-eventual success of the 1987 democracy movement. I was encouraged to hear from a
-panel of CNU student journalists about their efforts to document important
-issues in the community and carry forward CNU’s tradition of advocacy through
-journalism.
-
-Our discussions during the seminar also reminded me of the important role that
-art plays in shaping the collective narratives that energize and sustain a
-democratic society. Today is another special moment in Gwangju’s history as the
-city celebrates the author Han Kang’s receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
-Han Kang was born in Gwangju, and one of her novels, *Human Acts* (소년이 온다),
-memorializes the 5/18 independence movement. I have to add this book to the
-stack, as I have only read *The Vegetarian* (채식주의자), and only in
-translation. Our group also viewed, at the [Gwangju Museum of Art](
-https://artmuse.gwangju.go.kr/ ), a pair of paintings by a then student
-activist, now senior citizen who began in retirement to paint scenes from the
-5/18 movement to preserve his memory and perspective. (Unfortunately, I can’t
-find this artist’s name on the website.) Such images create a relationship
-between the viewer and the events of 5/18 that rings “true” in a way that
-journalistic accounts cannot.
-
-As for me: Participating in this seminar meant that I got to return to the exact
-institution where I did [CLS in 2016]( {% post_url 2016-03-12-cls-korea %} )—my
-first visit to Korea—with the added perspective of eight more years of Korean
-study and four years of living in the country. It was a delight to show the
-other participants around and see Korea again through the eyes of a newcomer.
-
-During CLS in 2016, I was too shy to explore much of the city, but on this visit
-the only limiting factor was time. After the seminar, I took a day to walk all
-around the Asian Cultural Center, an endless arts complex. My highlight was
-*Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse,* a massive video installation from the studio
-of science fiction creator Ayoung Kim (김아영). I also enjoyed the ACC’s library,
-which has a slick reference area with art magazines and comfy chairs.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-11-06-gwangju-fm.md b/_posts/2024-11-06-gwangju-fm.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0428544e..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-11-06-gwangju-fm.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
----
-title: 'Media literacy chat at 88.9 Gwangju FM'
-layout: post
----
-
-I wanted to follow up on my [previous post]( {% post_url
-2024-11-02-gwangju-again %} ) about the CLS alumni seminar in Gwangju to
-spotlight my favorite excursion of the week: our visit to the [88.9 Gwangju
-FM]( https://kjfm.communityradio.kr/ ) community radio station. Gwangju FM has
-no particular theme, but they dedicate part of their schedule each week to
-programming related to the Gwangju international community. When our group of
-twenty-five showed up, the staff divided us into five groups and gave us two
-hours each to produce a one-hour broadcast on a topic of our choice.
-
-The task seemed impossible when the guide explained it to me (at work, we
-routinely spend *weeks* choreographing what amounts to a brief slideshow
-presentation), but the time pressure worked to our group’s advantage: all we
-could really do was create a list of discussion questions and songs to provide
-forward motion, then improvise from there. We ended up having a [spirited
-discussion](
-https://kjfm.communityradio.kr/broadcast/podcast/subPdcstList.do?pdcstId=PDCST_00000000003858&pdcstCd=C&orgnztId=OPRTN_01
-) about media literacy and news consumption. (Email me if the link breaks and I
-will upload an MP3 instead.)
-
-After our group disbanded in Gwangju, I got to spend a few days in Naju, my
-“second hometown” where I taught English for two years as a Fulbright grantee. I
-tried a new (to me) gomtang place called 나주곰탕사매기, which has a cool
-aquarium, a garden, and even birds! A few pics below.
-
-Here is their garden:
-
-
-
-
-
-And here is the soup:
-
-
-
-
diff --git a/_posts/2024-11-29-rbenv-vs-conda.md b/_posts/2024-11-29-rbenv-vs-conda.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 41ccd1bb..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-11-29-rbenv-vs-conda.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,93 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Replacing rbenv with conda
----
-
-Why I am using conda instead of rbenv to install Ruby inside of the CI job that
-builds this static site.
-
-# The problem
-
-I wanted to make the GitHub Action that builds this static site more portable by
-replacing the
-[parade of third-party GitHub Actions](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/actions/runs/11923415581/workflow)
-with simple shell scripts.
-
-With a self-contained build process, I can match my local build workflow to the
-one used to deploy the site from GitHub without going to (IMO) extremes like
-[running the GitHub Actions Docker image locally](https://github.com/nektos/act).
-It also makes it easier to migrate my hosting away from GitHub Pages if I ever
-should desire to.
-
-However, in my previous attempts to make a portable build script, I kept having
-difficulty with what should be the easiest step: Installing a Ruby version of my
-choice (currently v3.2) and pulling in all of Jekyll’s dependencies.
-
-# The normal solution
-
-Most of the guides I consulted recommend
-[rbenv](https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv), which is a Ruby version manager that
-lets you specify your desired Ruby version in a `.ruby-version` file and install
-it with `rbenv install`.
-
-Unfortunately, installing rbenv itself is not that simple: On Debian stable and
-Ubuntu 22.04 (which is currently `ubuntu-latest` in GitHub Actions), the version
-of rbenv in the repos is too far out of date to install the version of Ruby I
-want. The rbenv developers recommend using the
-[rbenv-installer](https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv-installer) script to install
-the latest rbenv from Git instead, but then the rbenv-installer README advises
-against usage in a CI pipeline, which is exactly what I want to do:
-
-> For automating installation across machines it’s better to *avoid* using this
-> script in favor of fine-tuning rbenv & ruby-build installation manually.
-
-This gets at another difficulty with rbenv, which is that it builds Ruby *from
-source* when you `rbenv install` a version that isn’t in your local cache. This
-means installing `ruby-build` in addition to a bunch of dynamically linked
-development libraries. On some of my workstations, I struggled and failed to put
-together a functional `ruby-build` toolchain; on my laptop, I finally got it
-working, only to have the build fail because I ran out of memory.
-
-For those who have the time and computational resources to compile from source,
-rbenv is a great tool, but for me, what I really needed was a precompiled
-binary. (Thus, I also ruled out [RVM](https://rvm.io/), another popular
-recommendation.)
-
-# The conda solution
-
-Enter [`conda-forge::ruby`](https://github.com/conda-forge/ruby-feedstock).
-Conda is a cross-platform package management and virtual environment system that
-is generally associated with the Python world (because it is written in Python)
-but supports generic binary packages. I used to be skeptical of conda because
-the most popular distributions (Anaconda and Miniconda) are proprietary, but
-[Miniforge](https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge) is an open-source
-alternative that covers all my use cases.
-
-After installing conda (and [mamba](https://github.com/mamba-org/mamba) because
-why not), I created build scripts `configure.sh`, `build.sh`, and so on that
-simply wrap `mamba create` and `mamba run`. The
-[GitHub Action that builds the site](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/actions/runs/11923546983/workflow)
-is now basically just this:
-
-```shell
-./configure.sh # Create the conda environment and run bundle install
-./info.sh # Log package versions
-./build.sh # Build the site
-./check.sh # Lint scripts with ShellCheck; might add more checks
-```
-
-This workflow takes an average of two minutes to run on the GitHub cloud
-runners, which makes it *faster,* on average, than the parade of GitHub Actions
-I had before, which took about three minutes (except when running the workflow
-several times in a row, in which case caching would bring the runtime down to 20
-or 30 seconds).
-
-# Alas
-
-Alas, my GitHub Action workflow still has one third-party dependency: The
-[Setup Miniconda](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-miniconda)
-action. Despite the name, it can set up either Miniconda or Miniforge, and it is
-a little easier to work with than Miniforge’s interactive installer script.
-
-I *think* this is a sustainable solution, although those are probably bold words
-from the guy who just set all this up last week.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-12-06-self-host-fonts.md b/_posts/2024-12-06-self-host-fonts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index f36aa415..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-12-06-self-host-fonts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,54 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: How I self-host fonts on this blog
----
-
-I recently transitioned this blog to self-host its fonts (IBM Plex Sans, Sans
-KR, and Mono) from within the GitHub Pages artifact instead of calling the
-Google Fonts API. This makes the site a little more “static” by eliminating the
-need for your browser to download font files from an external domain. Here, I
-explain how (and why) I self-host fonts without bringing them into the source
-tree.
-
-The easiest way to self-host fonts with a static site generator like Jekyll is
-to store the `.ttf` or `.woff2` font files and their CSS inside of the `assets/`
-folder of the source repo. But this turns the font into an in-tree dependency,
-which I wanted to avoid: Although IBM’s
-[SIL Open Font License](https://github.com/IBM/plex/blob/4b8acbebe10a52a14d3a80b3f95cc9ff0ec9b39b/LICENSE.txt)
-appears to permit this sort of vendoring, I have an (admittedly puristic) desire
-for my repo to consist only of code I wrote myself. And I wanted to try
-automating the process of downloading and installing a dependency *without*
-using a package manager like conda or apt.[^packagemanager]
-
-My source repo already has a `configure.sh` script that installs Ruby, Jekyll
-and friends to the local workstation so that it can build and preview the static
-site. To this script, I added `curl` and `unzip` commands to
-[automatically download the latest IBM Plex release and extract](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/blob/f6521d7800c2e8a3111de226767e808f97f50572/configure.sh#L99-L132)
-the fonts to the `assets/` directory (where they are `.gitignore`d).
-
-Now, as long as IBM follows semantic versioning in its font releases, updating
-to a new version of IBM Plex requires no more than changing the version number
-in these lines from `configure.sh`:
-
-```text
-IBM_PLEX_MONO_SRC="https://github.com/IBM/plex/releases/download/%40ibm%2Fplex-mono%401.1.0/ibm-plex-mono.zip"
-IBM_PLEX_SANS_SRC="https://github.com/IBM/plex/releases/download/%40ibm%2Fplex-sans%401.1.0/ibm-plex-sans.zip"
-IBM_PLEX_SANS_KR_SRC="https://github.com/IBM/plex/releases/download/%40ibm%2Fplex-sans-kr%401.1.0/ibm-plex-sans-kr.zip"
-```
-
-(It is also possible to modify these URLs to automatically
-[pull the latest release](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/linking-to-releases)
-instead of pinning a version.)
-
-[^packagemanager]: I [already use conda]( {% post_url 2024-11-29-rbenv-vs-conda %} ) as part
- of my `configure.sh` script, so installing a font with conda wouldn’t be a
- heavy lift, but only the Sans variant of IBM Plex is
- [available in conda-forge](https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/font-ttf-ibm-plex-sans),
- and I need the KR and Mono variants, too. (The conda package also doesn’t
- include CSS font definitions.)
-
- These fonts *are* available
- [in the Ubuntu apt repositories](https://packages.ubuntu.com/oracular/all/fonts-ibm-plex/filelist),
- but then my build script would no longer function on other Linux distros,
- and I’d still have to use `./configure.sh` to copy the files from
- `/usr/share/` to my site’s `assets/` directory.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-12-08-novels-to-understand-korea.md b/_posts/2024-12-08-novels-to-understand-korea.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a85e2e48..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-12-08-novels-to-understand-korea.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,53 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Two novels to understand Korea’s political turmoil
----
-
-On Tuesday night, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law
-across the country for six hours. He retracted his declaration only after the
-National Assembly passed an emergency resolution ordering him to back down. As
-of this writing, the Assembly has drafted but failed to vote on articles of
-impeachment. Instead, Yoon’s party has announced a plan for the president’s
-[“orderly resignation.”](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20241208050033)
-Many details remain up in the air.
-
-As an American, it is not my place to take sides or say what Korea should do
-next; I can only observe and interpret. With that as my goal, I would like to
-discuss two novels that may supply context to the current political situation.
-
-First, to understand the images that Koreans associate with “martial law,” we
-must discuss Han Kang’s 2014 novel *Human Acts* (한강, «소년이 온다»), which is
-available in an English translation by Deborah Smith. The novel portrays 1980’s
-5/18 movement and the ensuing government crackdown in which public officials
-killed, sexually assaulted, arrested, and tortured pro-democracy activists in
-Gwangju on false charges of communist sympathy—crimes that the Korean government
-has since acknowledged.[^ack] As Friday’s *New York Times* explains
-([paywall](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/world/asia/gwangju-massacre-human-acts-han-kang.html)),
-Han Kang’s recent Nobel Prize offered a moment of catharsis and vindication for
-victims of the 1980 incident; the recent turmoil has cut short their
-celebration.
-
-Next is *28* by Jeong You Jeong (정유정). Set in Hwayang, a fictional city on the
-outskirts of Seoul, this 2013 novel imagines the outbreak of a highly infectious
-disease transmitted between humans and dogs. Once the Korean government grasps
-the infection’s contagiousness and lethality, the president imposes a swift
-military blockade on the city. Within, anarchy prevails. As the citizens of
-Hwayang clash with the occupying troops, *28* makes transparent reference to the
-crimes of 5/18, but pushes further to ask how martial law would unfold with
-modern technology and social media. Jeong also raises difficult questions about
-the transactional relationship between humans and animals. (And, because it is a
-Jeong You Jeong novel, there is a serial killer running around.) It looks like
-Chi-Young Kim translated this novel into English at the Literature Translation
-Institute of Korea, but all I can find is an
-[excerpt](https://www.kln.or.kr/lines/fictionView.do?bbsIdx=358).
-
-These modern novels remind us that in Korea, the concept of authoritarian rule
-is more than a rhetorical foil, but a living memory than looms over public
-policy and civic life. At this moment, martial law is no longer in effect,
-President Yoon has apologized, and the democratically elected National Assembly
-controls the government. That means that Korea’s future is, for now, safely in
-the hands of its people.
-
-[^ack]: It took [until 2018](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46123548) for the
- Korean government to acknowledge that soldiers sexually assaulted civilians
- during the crackdown.
diff --git a/_posts/2024-12-26-server-side-katex.md b/_posts/2024-12-26-server-side-katex.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 666139f8..00000000
--- a/_posts/2024-12-26-server-side-katex.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,93 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Server-side KaTeX rendering with Jekyll
----
-
-This post explains how I set up server-side KaTeX rendering to improve the load
-time on pages that include mathematical notation.
-
-KaTeX is a math typesetting library that lets you render nice-looking math
-equations like $$f(t) = e^{rt}$$ inside of an HTML document. As the [KaTeX
-documentation describes](https://katex.org/docs/autorender), the easiest way to
-use KaTeX is to import their CSS and JavaScript from your website’s ``
-element by adding these three lines:
-
-```html
-
-
-
-```
-
-With this client-side setup, visitors to your site only receive the KaTeX
-“source” (something like `$$f(t) = e^{rt}$$`) from your server, and then their
-computer runs the code (KaTeX) that transforms this into MathML and tells the
-browser how to style and arrange the individual symbols.
-
-However, by running KaTeX on the *server* instead of the client, you can send
-readers the MathML code directly, which removes the need for redundant
-computations and queries to the KaTeX CDN. [Guillaume
-Endignoux](https://gendignoux.com/blog/2020/05/23/katex.html) and [Xuning
-Yang](https://www.xuningyang.com/blog/2021-01-11-katex-with-jekyll/) explain how
-to achieve this setup using Jekyll, the static site generator I use. In summary:
-
- 1. Add the `duktape`, `execjs`, `katex`, and `kramdown-math-katex` gems to your
- `Gemfile`. (You can leave out `duktape` if you already have Node.js on your
- path.)
- 2. Set the following options in `_config.yml`:
-
- ```yml
- markdown: "kramdown"
- kramdown:
- math_engine: "katex"
- ```
-
- 3. Add the following line to your site’s `` element:
-
- ```html
-
- ```
-
- 4. Download a KaTeX release [from
- GitHub](https://github.com/KaTeX/KaTeX/releases) and extract `katex.css` and
- `fonts/` to your source repo’s `assets/` directory.
-
-The last step left me unsatisfied. As I described in a [previous post]({%
-post_url 2024-12-06-self-host-fonts %}), I want to avoid introducing a
-third-party code dependency to my source tree—especially one like the KaTeX CSS
-that I’d have to keep manually in sync with the version of KaTeX installed by
-the Ruby `katex` gem. Instead, I tweaked my `configure.sh` script to
-automatically retrieve the KaTeX fonts and CSS from within the `katex` gem after
-installing it with Bundler:
-
-```shell
-function install_katex_resources () {
- KATEX_CSS_SRC="$(find ./vendor/ -ipath "*/vendor/katex/stylesheets/katex.css")"
- KATEX_CSS_DEST="./assets/katex.css"
- rm "$KATEX_CSS_DEST" 2> /dev/null
- if [ ! -f "$KATEX_CSS_SRC" ]
- then
- echo "E: Failed to locate source katex.css" >&2
- return 1
- fi
- ln -v "$KATEX_CSS_SRC" "$KATEX_CSS_DEST"
-
- KATEX_FONTS_SRC=$(find ./vendor/ -ipath "*/vendor/katex/fonts/*.woff2")
- KATEX_FONTS_DEST="./assets/fonts"
- rm "$KATEX_FONTS_DEST"/*.woff2 2> /dev/null
- # shellcheck disable=SC2068 # splitting intended
- for f in ${KATEX_FONTS_SRC[@]}
- do
- BASENAME=$(basename "$f")
- ln -v "$f" "$KATEX_FONTS_DEST"/"$BASENAME"
- done
-}
-```
-
-This puts the files in the `assets/` directory—right where they need to be—but
-keeps Bundler in control of their versions. Using a hard link (`ln a b`) instead
-of copying (`cp a b`) the files spares a few unnecessary disk operations when
-rerunning `configure.sh`.
-
-I admit that the maintenance burden this eliminates isn’t large, but in a
-project with many dependencies, the little things add up.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-01-11-newly-excavated-posts.md b/_posts/2025-01-11-newly-excavated-posts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index b6ab6b08..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-01-11-newly-excavated-posts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,29 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Newly excavated posts about teaching
----
-
-When I migrated from Blogger to Jekyll a few years ago, I left a bunch of posts
-behind, with the vague resolution of importing them at some point. Today, I
-excavated a few more from the archives, all about teaching:
-
-- The benefits of a
- nonnative teacher (2020): A very long-winded way of saying that language
- learners often benefit from having a teacher who *isn’t* a native speaker of
- the target language, because then the teacher has empathy for the student. I
- think I stand by this take.
-- Things that are a thing
- here (2018): Just a few days into my Fulbright job, I was enamored with
- how seriously Korean teachers took their profession—and still am. But knowing
- what I do now, I would not write “Art, music, literature, and ‘morality’ class
- matter [in Korean schools] just as much as the STEM subjects.” Of course, all
- these subjects factor into your GPA, but as in the US, many Korean teachers
- and parents believe that the best jobs go to STEM graduates. And thus, even if
- it’s not their intention, they tend to celebrate students’ success in those
- subjects with a bit of extra energy.
-- Centering students as
- creators (2017): Notes from my undergrad internship. I think I see the
- germ here of an idea I’ve grown more certain of since: When you don’t know how
- to proceed, the first thing you should do is *start.* You know—open a
- document, put your name and the date, choose a font. These first steps shake
- off the fear of failure and assure the brain that it is safe to proceed.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-02-12-conda-updated.md b/_posts/2025-02-12-conda-updated.md
deleted file mode 100644
index fee15710..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-02-12-conda-updated.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Conda updated?
----
-
-Using a tip from
-[Travis Hathaway](https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/14418#issuecomment-2513806325),
-here is a shell one-liner to check if a Conda environment is up to date:
-
-```shell
-conda update --all --dry-run --json | jq -e '.success and (.actions | length) == 0'
-```
-
-It exits (`-e`) with `0` if the environment is already updated and `1` if
-updates are available.
-
-I use this in CI so that I get an email if my `environment.yml` file is holding
-any packages back.
-
-Because this command actually executes the dependency solver, it won’t report
-the environment as out of date unless a package both has an available update
-*and* can be updated while satisfying all the other dependencies’ version
-constraints.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs-local.md b/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs-local.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a1c5bb21..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs-local.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,221 +0,0 @@
----
-title: People and Blogs interview (local mirror)
-layout: post
-hidden: true
-date: 2025-02-14T12:00:00
----
-
-Here is a local mirror of my interview on Manuel Moreale's
-[People and Blogs](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-max-kapur) series.
-
-**Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?**
-
-Sure. I grew up in Seattle, went to college in Los Angeles, then lived in South
-Korea for four years, first as an English teacher in Naju, then as a grad
-student at Seoul National University. In 2022, I moved to the Washington, DC
-area for my current job as a numerical analyst at a government consulting firm.
-
-I joke that I have “reinvented myself” several times, because I double-majored
-in jazz piano and Korean language in undergrad, then considered becoming a
-schoolteacher, then grew interested in math and programming and did my master’s
-in industrial engineering. But there’s continuity through these chapters. At
-work, I build numerical modeling tools (picture something like
-[Universal Paperclips](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/)) for clients
-who are sometimes skeptical of analyzing their data quantitatively. That’s
-because they’ve been disappointed by past attempts that failed to account for
-the right variables, or that offered too much technical flourish with too little
-explanation. So, in my role, equally important to getting the math right is my
-ability to tell a convincing story about why I modeled the problem a certain
-way. That’s where I draw on my teaching background, the performance skills I
-learned in music school, and my ability to translate specialized concepts into
-accessible terms.
-
-Sorry—I devolved into my job interview spiel. My blog is
-[Illusion Slopes](https://maxkapur.com/). I post book reviews, notes on
-programming and game theory, and observations about Korean language and culture.
-I hope there’s something for everyone, but you might have to scroll a bit.
-
-**What's the story behind your blog?**
-
-In music school, we often discussed the importance of building an artistic brand
-and having authority over what comes up when someone Googles your name. So, when
-I started my blog in 2015, it was with the vague hope that bolstering my online
-presence would help me find piano students, sell sheet music of my compositions,
-and maybe get my book reviews in front of an editor. It was a very careerist
-project—and not very successful by that yardstick! Still, I held onto the idea
-of the blog as digital resume for some time. When I was an English teacher, I
-blogged about
-[language teaching](https://maxkapur.com/2020/05/06/nonnative-teacher.html); in
-grad school, I blogged about my
-[academic research](https://maxkapur.com/2021/10/21/administrative-allocative-efficiency.html)
-into college admissions markets.
-
-Now that I have a stable job, I feel less pressure to professionalize my blog’s
-content. Instead, my goal is simply to keep writing, even at the risk of
-publishing an imperfect or overplayed take. Lately, I’ve been trying to post
-[silly ideas](https://maxkapur.com/2024/06/07/sports-idea.html) and
-[low-stakes opinions](https://maxkapur.com/2024/04/26/iso-dates-filenames.html)
-to practice writing in a different voice. The most enduring lesson I took from
-music school is the growth mindset
-([I memorialized it with my Crocs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NltUqfuxT-M&t=69s)),
-which says that in order to improve at anything, you must find the edge of your
-comfort zone and take targeted risks. Before I die, I would like to get better
-at writing of all forms, and Illusion Slopes is one way I practice.
-
-**What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?**
-
-Well, I have two piles of notes: a Syncthing folder full of Markdown files, and
-a stack of handwritten pages torn from legal pads. I try to record all of my
-ideas, even the terrible ones, as soon as they arrive. Like
-[Taylor Troesh says](https://taylor.town/idea-kitty) (aside: it is very cool to
-be on the [same P&B as him](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-taylor-troesh)), you
-have to make yourself a magnet for *all* ideas if you want to attract the good
-ones.
-
-Every month or so, I shuffle through my piles of notes and try to turn a few
-into (for lack of a better term) finished products. A finished product can be a
-blog post, but honestly, it’s more often an email or a long message to a group
-chat, especially if the content is personal or an inside joke. (I like what
-[Steven Garrity](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-steven-garrity) said about
-blogging in his company’s Slack chat—very relatable.)
-
-In my blog’s queue, I also maintain a slush pile of kind-of-finished posts
-scheduled for various dates in 2050. If I can’t salvage any ideas from the notes
-but have fallen behind on posting, I pull something forward from the slush pile.
-Technically, these posts are already readable through GitHub, but I assume
-anyone who goes to the effort to find them there will recognize them as drafts
-and adjust their expectations accordingly.
-
-The downside of my approach—gradually laundering notes into blog posts—is that
-it doesn’t provide a mechanism for following up on old posts with new
-information. For example, I recently wrote about
-[the then-impending Korean presidential impeachment](https://maxkapur.com/2024/12/08/novels-to-understand-korea.html),
-but I never wrote an update when Yoon Suk Yeol was actually impeached (and
-more). I’m a bit embarrassed by the lack of continuity. But at the same time,
-part of the zen of non-professional blogging has got to be to release yourself
-from the obligation to always have a take.
-
-**Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical
-space influences your creativity?**
-
-Not really. Sometimes I write on my phone, other times on the computer, other
-times longhand. I think I do my best writing when I revisit the same piece in
-different surroundings. For example, if I write the first draft on my phone in
-the subway, I’ll do the second draft on a notepad at home.
-
-**A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?**
-
-I started out on Blogger, which I had used once for a school project. Then I
-migrated to a static site in 2022. I chose Jekyll because GitHub sets it all up
-for you, meaning you can start with their opinionated configuration, then pivot
-to self-hosting if your needs become more specialized. In my case, I still host
-the site using GitHub Pages, but now I use a custom build script so I can run
-the latest versions of Ruby and Jekyll. The one unconventional thing I do is
-install the
-[Ruby stack in a conda environment](https://maxkapur.com/2024/11/29/rbenv-vs-conda.html)
-instead of using rbenv or a Docker container.
-
-I bought my domain on Google Domains in 2018 or so and was automatically
-migrated to Squarespace after the sale. One of these days, I want to try
-migrating my domain to another registrar, mainly just to practice doing so
-without breaking my 301 redirects, email, and so on.
-
-**Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do
-anything differently?**
-
-You know, despite all the drama with Matt Mullenweg lately, I sometimes wish I’d
-gone with WordPress. Most of my friends are not programmers, so when they ask me
-about creating a personal site (welcome to the ’sphere,
-[Longtime](https://longtimestories.wordpress.com/)), I can’t recommend my setup,
-which requires you to know and love Git, Markdown syntax, YAML, SSH keys, etc. I
-usually refer people to WordPress.com instead, because at least WordPress is
-free, open source, and can’t trap them in a walled garden. But I wish I were
-making the recommendation from a place of greater firsthand experience.
-
-**Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost
-to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And
-what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?**
-
-With free hosting from GitHub Pages, my only direct cost is 12 USD/year for the
-domain name. Every few months, I pay a penny to rent a VPS, set up my site’s
-build pipeline, configure Apache, and test it all out. It’s that practice
-mentality again—I want to know I have options if I ever decide to move away from
-GitHub Pages.
-
-I don’t object to others monetizing their blogs. However, when it comes to my
-personal consumption habits, I seem very reluctant to pay for anything on a
-subscription basis. My only media subscription is to the print edition of my
-[favorite literary magazine](https://www.thesunmagazine.org/). I think my
-revealed preference is for blogs that are wide open but double as a storefront
-for the author’s print books or CDs, sort of like Cory Doctorow’s site.
-
-**Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And
-also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?**
-
-So, one corner where old-school blogs are still going strong is in the community
-around foreign exchange programs like the (US government) Critical Language
-Scholarship, Fulbright, and Peace Corps programs. Participants in these programs
-often find, as I did, that living overseas for an extended period produces a
-kind of character growth that is difficult to fit into the tidy post formats of
-traditional social media. My friends
-[Bethany](https://bethanymaz.wordpress.com/) and
-[Paula](https://paulazhang.wordpress.com/) have kept their blogs going for years
-since returning to the US, and both sites are awesome rabbit holes of personal
-reflection and useful information about how these exchange programs work.
-Fulbright Korea itself also has an official WordPress blog called
-[Infusion](https://infusion.fulbright.or.kr/) run by current grantees.
-
-Further recommendations: [Anh’s homepage](https://anhvn.com/) is one of my
-favorite personal blogs. I don’t know the author, but the design and content
-work together to project a very vivid sense of her personality. And she is an
-exceptional artist;
-[check these out](https://anhvn.com/sketchbook/pleinairpril/).
-
-[Shellsharks](https://shellsharks.com/) is also design inspo. I appreciate the
-[Style Guide](https://shellsharks.com/style) that shows all the CSS styles in
-one place. This site is super ambitious—really three or four blog-type things
-layered over each other—but totally sticks the landing.
-
-[Idealistic Future](https://idealisticfuture.com/) is a small trove of insights
-and anecdotes about the role of storytelling in the modern workplace.
-
-I’ve followed [Futility Closet](https://www.futilitycloset.com/) since I learned
-how to work the internet.
-
-I love Airplane on a Treadmill,
-specifically for this opening line:
-
-> I created this blog specifically to make this post. It may be the only post I
-> ever write, but since human ignorance is seemingly unbounded, perhaps it won’t
-> be.
-
-(He wrote three more posts.)
-
-I am not a parent, but I’ve always enjoyed the
-[Free Range Kids](https://www.freerangekids.com/) blog, which challenges the
-decades-long trend of helicopter parenting in favor of letting kids make
-mistakes and grow.
-
-The [*Chicago Manual of Style* blog](https://cmosshoptalk.com/) and
-[Q&A](https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/latest.html) are entertaining
-if you are into such things.
-
-But as for who to interview next: I want to hear from
-[Herb Childress](https://herbchildress.com/blog/). He is a retired academic who
-has written vividly about
-[trying and failing](https://herbchildress.com/2019/03/01/on-cooling-the-mark-out/)
-to land a tenure-track job. He might offer interesting thoughts on carving out a
-space (including on his blog) for his writing and academic identity despite
-rejection from traditional institutions.
-
-**Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?**
-
-First, track 1 from Gregory Porter’s *Water* album, which is where I got my
-blog’s name.
-
-Second, Jia Tolentino’s *Trick Mirror,* which my friend got me into. I keep
-coming back to this collection of essays, especially the one about unearthing a
-DVD of her appearance on a reality TV show a decade after it aired. Big thoughts
-about constructing the self through the perception of others.
-
-Third, whatever the hell is going on with [fluxus.org](https://www.fluxus.org/).
diff --git a/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs.md b/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 0207ec8b..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-02-14-people-and-blogs.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: People and Blogs interview
-date: 2025-02-14T13:00:00
----
-
-Manuel Moreale, a tireless indie web advocate, recently
-[had me as a guest on his People and Blogs series](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-max-kapur)
-([local mirror]({% post_url 2025-02-14-people-and-blogs-local %})).
-Welcome to anyone visiting this site via Manu’s feed! Take a look around and
-[let me know](mailto:{{ site.email }}) what you think.
-
-I was super excited to be interviewed by Manu, as many of his writings have
-sharpened my thinking around why I prefer blogging, email, and group chats to
-brand-name social media:
-
-- [On personal websites and social web](https://manuelmoreale.com/on-personal-websites-and-social-web)
-- [Staying small](https://manuelmoreale.com/small-scale-is-the-best-scale)
-
-Manu has compiled a lot of useful information for people trying to pivot from
-social media, such as his
-[list of blogging platforms](https://manuelmoreale.com/blog-platforms). If you
-are one of the friends I’ve been trying to talk into creating a personal site,
-definitely check out Manu’s list.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-02-20-type-em-dash.md b/_posts/2025-02-20-type-em-dash.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 85b54ec9..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-02-20-type-em-dash.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: How to type an em dash
----
-
-- Phone (Android): Long press the hyphen button
-- Desktop (Linux): [Compose key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key)
- sequence `---`
-- Work computer (Windows):
- - If in Word or Office: Type two hyphens and let it autocorrect
- - If Markdown: Use the HTML character entity `—`
- - Otherwise: ⊞ Win + . character chooser, or just Google
- “em dash” and copy/paste
diff --git a/_posts/2025-03-04-check-prove-human.md b/_posts/2025-03-04-check-prove-human.md
deleted file mode 100644
index fe20d7ea..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-03-04-check-prove-human.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,9 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Check this box to prove you are a human
----
-
-Why is the burden on me to prove that I’m not a robot instead of on the server
-to prove I am? This is a vain question if you reflect on the adversarial nature
-of internet spam, but I am asking anyway. Here’s a fun game:
-[Prove you are a human.](https://proveyouareahuman.com/)
diff --git a/_posts/2025-03-12-authenticity-ai-policy.md b/_posts/2025-03-12-authenticity-ai-policy.md
deleted file mode 100644
index adfa500a..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-03-12-authenticity-ai-policy.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,50 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Authenticity and the Illusion Slopes AI policy
----
-
-I attached my real name to this site. That means that above all, this site must
-represent me *authentically.*
-
-Authenticity is why I don’t use any generative AI tools in authoring or editing
-my posts. Heck, I barely even use spellcheck. The
-[2006 Adam Sandler movie *Click*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_(2006_film))
-pretty clearly spelled out the risks of letting an AI autopilot your life: Such
-technology promises to augment the self, but dilutes it instead. I would rather
-document my ideas, even if they aren’t very good, than some
-[weird average](https://tracydurnell.com/2025/01/27/the-open-web-as-gift-economy-part-4/#:~:text=averaged%20amalgam) of my thoughts and every Reddit comment GPT has ingested.
-
-Authenticity also requires that I abandon any pretenses about what happens after
-I inject my thoughts into the world. I don’t use AI, but I don’t use any
-countermeasures against AI scrapers either, such as blocking OpenAI’s domains in
-`robots.txt`. If the scrapers don’t get the text from here, they’ll get it from
-GitHub, or from someone quoting me on another blog. Although I do not welcome
-plagiarism, it’s a risk I accept as the price of participating in an
-interconnected society. (If you want to reuse text from Illusion Slopes,
-[`LICENSE.txt`](/LICENSE.txt) gives the terms.)
-
-Finally, on the internet, it appears difficult to combine authenticity with
-marketing. So, I don’t use Illusion Slopes to try to sell anything, nor do I
-employ any marketing cookies or user fingerprinting tech to collect statistics
-about the people who visit the site. Back when I used Blogger, I used to get
-some “dumb” analytics about post views by IP geolocation, but now that I use a
-[static site generator]({% post_url 2022-06-25-migrating-to-jekyll %}),
-I don’t even know which posts are more or less popular. I like it that way; it
-ensures I am writing for myself.
-
-Putting this all together, I realize that the Illusion Slopes AI policy is
-really a non-policy. I’m neither for nor against AI; it’s just “there,” a
-technology that doesn’t have much to do with what this site is about. That could
-change in the future, as the technology becomes more pervasive and harder to opt
-out of (and hopefully
-[more useful](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/)). But for now, I
-am happy with the incidental benefits of failing to reposition my website for
-the AI era:
-
-- Without AI-generated filler images or heavy JavaScript analytics, the site
- loads quickly (I hope?).
-- Everyone who wants to read the site, can. I don’t have to worry about an
- aggressive anti-scraping filter that accidentally
- [blocks legitimate users]({% post_url 2025-03-04-check-prove-human %}).
-- If I write something wrong, then won’t have to issue shallow excuses about
- how “the model told me so.” For better or worse, I own my errors.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-03-19-pipx-install-topgrade.md b/_posts/2025-03-19-pipx-install-topgrade.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 227ec362..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-03-19-pipx-install-topgrade.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,30 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: pipx install topgrade
----
-
-Many Rust projects, such as [Topgrade](https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade),
-also publish themselves on PyPI. This means you can install them using `pip` or
-`pipx` as follows:
-
-```shell
-pipx install topgrade
-pipx install zizmor
-```
-
-This pulls a binary (wheel) directly from PyPI, which obviates the need to
-compile from source—handy on low-powered machines where `cargo install` can take
-a while to run or exhaust the memory (ask me how I know).
-
-If you maintain a Rust project, it looks pretty easy to enable this installation
-method using [Maturin](https://www.maturin.rs/bindings.html#bin).
-
-Speaking of Topgrade: Topgrade is a helpful command-line tool that automatically
-updates everything it can on your system (think
-`sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && flatpak update && ...`). I recently got
-a [PR accepted](https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade/pull/1047) that enables
-Topgrade to run `conda clean`, which can free up gigabytes of space on a
-well-used conda installation. I also have an
-[open PR](https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade/pull/1048) (perhaps merged or
-rejected by the time you read this) that lets you configure additional conda
-environments to upgrade besides `base`.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-04-06-circular-regression.md b/_posts/2025-04-06-circular-regression.md
deleted file mode 100644
index bede8266..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-04-06-circular-regression.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,149 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Circular regression when you already know the period
----
-
-This [Stack Exchange](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/660199) answer reminded
-me of a useful data science trick. In short, if you try to model $$y$$ as a
-sinusoidal function of $$x$$, you obtain a regression formula that is nonlinear
-in the parameters. However, if you know the period, you can use a trig identity
-to linearize the formula and compute an exact least-squares fit.
-
-# Background
-
-Suppose you are trying to create a regression model for data that looks like
-this:
-
-
-
-$$y$$ is clearly a sinusoidal function of $$x$$ (plus noise), so there are three
-parameters we need to estimate:
-
-1. The period $$T$$ (distance between peaks)
-2. The amplitude $$A$$ (height of the peaks)
-3. The phase $$\phi$$ (where in the cycle the peaks occur)
-
-For some data, there’s really only one value for the period that makes
-sense. For example, if $$x$$ represents “day of the year” (as in the Stack
-Exchange question), then we are clearly expecting a yearly cycle (or else we
-would have collected exact dates). Thus, $$T = 365.25$$ (or however you want to
-handle leap years), and we have only to estimate the amplitude and phase that
-best fit the data.
-
-# Problem statement
-
-Without loss of generality, we can assume that $$T = 2 \pi$$ (if not, multiply
-each $$x_i$$ by $$2 \pi / T$$). Then our objective is to minimize the error in
-the system of equations
-
-$$y_i = A \sin( x_i + \phi )$$
-
-for each $$(x_i, y_i)$$ in the input data.
-
-Unfortunately, this model is not linear in the parameters to be estimated ($$A$$
-and $$\phi$$), so we can’t estimate it using ordinary least-squares regression.
-
-# The trick
-
-The trick is to estimate the following model instead, which *is* linear in the
-parameters $$\beta_0$$ and $$\beta_1$$:
-
-$$y_i = \beta_0 \cos x + \beta_1 \sin x$$
-
-To see that this model is equivalent, apply a [trig
-identity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trigonometric_identities#Angle_sum_and_difference_identities)
-to find that
-
-$$A \sin( x_i + \phi ) = A \cos x_i \sin \phi + A \sin x_i \cos \phi.$$
-
-Matching coefficients on $$\sin x_i$$ and $$\cos x_i$$, we have
-
-$$
-\begin{aligned}
-\beta_0 &= A \sin \phi \\
-\beta_1 &= A \cos \phi .
-\end{aligned}
-$$
-
-Dividing the first equation by the second, we recover
-$$\phi = \operatorname{atan2}(\beta_0, \beta_1)$$. Then
-$$A = \beta_0 / \sin \phi = \beta_1 / \cos \phi$$.
-
-# Demo
-
-The following Python script demonstrates our technique.
-
-```python
-#!/usr/bin/env python
-import numpy as np
-import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
-
-rng = np.random.default_rng()
-
-if __name__ == "__main__":
- # Make fake training data
- size = 128 # Number of points
- x = rng.uniform(0, 10, size)
- A = rng.standard_exponential()
- phi = rng.uniform(0, 2 * np.pi)
- sigma = 0.20 * A # Scale of random noise
- y = A * np.sin(x + phi) + rng.normal(size=size, scale=sigma)
-
- # First plot showing what the data looks like
- plt.scatter(x, y)
- plt.savefig("cyclical-data-before.svg", transparent=True, bbox_inches="tight")
-
- # Transform x to its cos and sin, then solve
- # y = x_transformed @ beta
- # by least squares.
- x_transformed = np.stack([np.cos(x), np.sin(x)]).T
- (beta0, beta1), *_ = np.linalg.lstsq(x_transformed, y) # Discard other outputs
-
- # Recover A and phi using the transformation we derived. Estimate A using
- # both expressions and take the average.
- phi_pred = np.atan2(beta0, beta1)
- A_pred = (beta0 / np.sin(phi_pred) + beta1 / np.cos(phi_pred)) / 2
-
- # Plot the estimated model using regularly spaced values of x
- x_pred = np.linspace(x.min(), x.max(), 500)
- y_pred = A_pred * np.sin(x_pred + phi_pred)
- plt.plot(x_pred, y_pred)
- plt.savefig("cyclical-data-with-fit.svg", transparent=True, bbox_inches="tight")
-```
-
-Here is what the predicted model looks like:
-
-
-
-# Notes
-
-**When to retain the linearized parameterization:** In the Python code above, we
-computed $$\phi$$ and $$A$$ just to demonstrate that the technique actually
-works. But the code will throw a zero-division error at the computation of
-`A_pred` if $$\phi$$ is a multiple of $$\pi / 2$$ (which happens when one of the
-$$\beta_j = 0$$). In practice, I recommend discarding the $$A$$ and $$\phi$$
-values and running predictions using the
-$$y_i = \beta_0 \cos x + \beta_1 \sin x$$ model instead. Experienced data
-scientists will recognize this transformation, but you could add a comment along
-the lines of “this is a linear reparamaterization of $$A \sin( x + \phi )$$.”
-
-**Linear combination of sinusoids:** You can also use this technique if your
-$$y$$ variable is a linear combination of sine waves of known periods. For
-example, if $$x$$ is “minute of day” and $$y$$ is “volume of emails,” you might
-expect an overall daily trend (period of 24 hours) with smaller variations
-within each hour (due to scheduled emails going out at the top of each hour).
-Then you can set $$w_i = 2 \pi x_i / (24 \cdot 60)$$, $$z_i = 2 \pi x_i / 60$$,
-and minimize the error in
-
-$$y_i = A_w \sin( w_i + \phi_w ) + A_z \sin( z_i + \phi_z )$$
-
-using the transformation above.
-
-**Fourier transform:** If you *don’t* know the period $$T$$ and your $$x_i$$ are
-evenly spaced, then what you’re looking for is probably not a regression model
-but a [discrete Fourier
-transform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_Fourier_transform).
diff --git a/_posts/2025-04-16-need-smartphone.md b/_posts/2025-04-16-need-smartphone.md
deleted file mode 100644
index f9296d63..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-04-16-need-smartphone.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Reasons it’s hard to abandon a smartphone
-layout: post
----
-
-Reasons (excuses?) that I cannot
-[downgrade to a dumbphone](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/opinion/how-quit-smartphone-addiction.html):
-
-- 2FA apps. You can set up a generic TOTP program on your computer, but that’s
- not very convenient, and some organizations explicitly require you to use
- Microsoft or Google Authenticator. (I don’t know how they enforce this given
- that the algorithm for generating TOTP codes from the secret is an open
- standard.)
-- My apartment building used to require an app to unlock the package room. The
- app is proprietary and probably not secure. The only alternative to the app is
- to bother the staff to open the package room for you.
-- During the pandemic, Korea adopted a contact tracing system that involved
- scanning a QR code in an app on your phone at every business you entered. Many
- businesses would let you just write your phone number on a clipboard as an
- alternative, but some (Starbucks) required the app. Was the app secure? Has
- the database ever been breached? I sure hope not.
-- Concert tickets from dice.fm. They have an exclusive deal with many venues
- that makes them the only place you can buy tickets, and their system requires
- you to store your tickets in their app, for anti-fraud reasons or whatever.
- (At smaller venues, if you don’t have the app, they can manually verify your
- name on the guest list.)
-
-I don’t like that a smartphone has become a de facto requirement participation
-in society. Smartphones have only *existed* for a few years. The main purpose of
-the “prove you own a (smart)phone” tests that most commercial and government
-services put you through these days seems to be to combat spam: Acquiring and
-maintaining a non-VOIP phone number that can receive SMS messages is too
-expensive for most spammers to do at scale. But
-[again]({% post_url 2025-03-04-check-prove-human %}),
-I resent that the burden of proof is on me to prove I’m not a spammer instead of
-on the service to prove I am.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-04-23-music-videos.md b/_posts/2025-04-23-music-videos.md
deleted file mode 100644
index d04bf10a..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-04-23-music-videos.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,29 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Music videos
-layout: post
----
-
-A side effect of my refusal to subscribe to Spotify (I just buy albums on
-Bandcamp or used CDs) is that when someone sends me a song to listen to, I
-usually look it up on YouTube and end up watching the music video. Because of
-this, there are some songs or artists that I like more than I might have without
-the video because the video adds an additional layer of interpretation.
-
-I think I had mentally blocked myself from verbalizing this thought before
-because of my background as a musician. I would like to think of myself as
-someone who values the music itself and whose opinion of a song isn’t swayed by
-the addition of a video track. After all, a music video is kind of like an
-advertisement for the song or artist, a reference rather than the thing itself.
-
-But then, I should have realized my susceptibility to music videos sooner,
-because a big part of jazz school was learning how to *watch* jazz performances:
-Musicians on stage employ a wide vocabulary of visual and bodily cues to steer
-the ship while improvising.
-
-And I went to a school whose music buildings were right next to the film
-school—I think they actually had a small
-[scoring stage](https://musicbehindthescreen.blogspot.com/2013/03/scoring-stages-sony-mgm.html)
-somewhere. Lots of my classmates did collaborations with film or animation
-students, but I went the other way, preferring to incorporate “analog” art like
-poetry and fiction into my music by setting texts to melodies. A missed
-opportunity.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-04-30-organize-tabs.md b/_posts/2025-04-30-organize-tabs.md
deleted file mode 100644
index fef370a4..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-04-30-organize-tabs.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
----
-title: How I organize browser tabs
-layout: post
----
-
-I didn’t realize I had a system for this until I did.
-
-My system: I only ever open one browser window (OK, two on my work computer
-where I use MS Edge profiles for different Microsoft accounts).
-
-When I open a new tab, I scan the tabs already open and move it left or right so
-that the tabs remain ordered by decreasing priority. “Priority” means something
-like, how annoyed would I be if I closed this by accident?
-
-- High priority: Things that I keep open all day (email, GitHub issues).
-- Medium priority: Documentation or reference material for the current task.
-- Low priority: Random ephemera, landing pages from clicking a confirmation
- email, article I already read but just need to copy a quote from, etc.
-
-Whenever I start to have more than 15 or 20 tabs, I get a cramped feeling and
-start axing tabs from right to left until I arrive at one that I still want
-open. Usually, this leaves two or three tabs.
-
-Sometimes I accidentally close things that I still needed, but I tell myself
-that the time wasted reopening them is offset by the time saved searching
-through dozens of tabs to find the right one.
-
-Is this system any good?
diff --git a/_posts/2025-05-21-tennessee-impressions.md b/_posts/2025-05-21-tennessee-impressions.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 4d0461bc..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-05-21-tennessee-impressions.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,19 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: First impressions after moving to Tennessee
----
-
-- *Honey, baby,* etc.
-- Even young people have the accent. This surprised me because I thought that
- regional accents were slowly melting away thanks to mass media. In Korea, kids
- may have picked up a few regionalisms from family, but for the most part they
- spoke like the video game streamers they watched on YouTube. In Tennessee, you
- can hear an accent even in young toddlers.
-- Frequency of conversations with strangers is somewhat higher than on the
- coasts, but more noticeable is the length and depth of the conversations. I
- spoke for five minutes with a guy in the elevator and we kept having to stick
- our arms in the door to reopen it. We finally stopped talking when the
- elevator starting beeping at us and forced the door closed. Didn’t even find
- out his name.
-- Haven’t heard any cool aphorisms like “it’s all grist for the mill” yet, but
- my ears are open.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-05-28-guitar-like-piano.md b/_posts/2025-05-28-guitar-like-piano.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 5f0b2eda..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-05-28-guitar-like-piano.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Still playing guitar like piano
-layout: post
----
-
-I still play the guitar like a piano. It’s most obvious when I try to play along
-with the lead guitar part in a recording of a two-guitar band. Often, the lead
-guitar just has a simple single-note riff or triads in the upper register, but I
-cannot resist the impulse to insert bass notes in the “left hand” (often
-grabbing them with my thumb). It doesn’t feel like a complete part without them.
-
-Of course, there is already a bass in the recording, so playing in this way does
-not add any value, and comes at the cost of less fluidity in the actual guitar
-melody. I am trying to discpline myself to double lead guitar parts exactly, but
-it’s hard to break the habit of embellishment.
-
-Another way my piano training interferes with playing guitar is an instinctual
-aversion to the capo. On the piano, if you want to play a song in a different
-key, you *play it in a different key.* (Actually, a lot of keyboards have a
-transposition feature, but using it is frowned upon.) But a guitar capo is
-sometimes musically necessary access open chord voicings in flat keys.
-
-My pianist problem is that when I play the guitar with a capo, I can never
-decide whether to think in the transposed or concert key. The open chord
-voicings certainly are easiest to remember in the transposed key, but as soon as
-I need to play a melody higher on the neck, it’s like the capo isn’t there, and
-I have to think in concert key to make any sense of it. Most often, I just get
-really confused and put away the capo.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-06-04-kubuntu-setup.md b/_posts/2025-06-04-kubuntu-setup.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 4d3034fb..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-06-04-kubuntu-setup.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,202 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: My poorly automated Kubuntu setup
----
-
-The target audience for this post is myself. I recently set up a new (old)
-laptop and tried to bring it to parity with my main Kubuntu workstation in as
-few steps as possible, which turned out to be … a lot of steps, most of them
-manual. I wanted to document the full process and see if I can find worthwhile
-opportunities for automation.
-
-00. **Install Kubuntu the usual way.** Configure LUKS disk encryption and user
- account. `sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y`.
-
- 🎨 Difficult to automate because I make different partitioning and file
- system choices for every device.
-
-01. **Copy password vault** manually via USB drive. Installed KeePassXC via
- `apt` because I will need it for basically everything that follows.
-
- 🔐 Won’t automate. If you trust the KeePass security model, then in theory
- you should be willing to put your KeePass vault on a public URL and download
- it automatically … but I don’t think anyone’s that bold.
-
-02. **Generate SSH keys** (`ssh-keygen`) for various Git hosts. Add entries like
- this in `~/.ssh/config`:
-
- ```
- Host github.com
- IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_just_generated
- ```
-
- Log into GitHub and others in Firefox and add the new SSH keys manually.
-
- 🔐 Won’t automate. I guess I could script this a little more with the GitHub
- CLI, but at some point I would still have to manually enter the MFA token,
- so the benefit would be marginal. (Some people choose to use the same SSH
- key for every client, which would simplify this step greatly, but I like the
- ability to scope and revoke keys individually for different workstations.)
-
-03. **Install Syncthing** (`apt install syncthing`). Run Syncthing manually (we
- will configure autostart in step 8) and set up folder connections with other
- devices.
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate via a script that automatically finds my main Syncthing
- server and prompts for authentication.
- [For later reference.](https://docs.syncthing.net/dev/rest.html)
-
-04. **Run a configuration script** `setup.sh` (see below) to automatically
- install various tools, do some basic configuration, and clone a few git
- repos.
-
- 💻 Automated. I created this script for the first time as part of this setup.
- In the past, I just installed packages as I thought of them. Eventually I
- want to integrate `setup.sh` with my dotfiles.
-
-05. **Set up Nextcloud** using the desktop client (installed in `setup.sh`).
- Configure offline folders.
-
- 🎨 Difficult to automate. You can
- [kind of](https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/advancedusage.html#mass-deployment-and-account-creation)
- predefine the Nextcloud server connection parameters, but there’s no getting
- around the MFA step, and I choose different offline folders for each device.
-
-06. **Install dotfiles:** I have a private git repo (cloned in `setup.sh`) with
- a custom shell script that does this. It’s basically three steps:
-
- 1. Apply fish shell configuration: aliases, universal variables, a few
- custom functions.
- 2. Copy dotfiles for some command-line programs:
- [topgrade](https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade),
- [micro](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro).
- 3. Apply git configuration: `git config --global user.name`, etc.
- 4. Copy some utility scripts:
- [Borg backup](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/) with preferred options,
- a primitive Markdown linter (I should clean this up and post it
- sometime).
-
- My dotfiles repo is private because it hardcodes a bunch of parameters like
- my name and email address that would only cause confusion for someone else.
-
- 💻 Automated enough for me.
-
-07. **Configure Korean keyboard input** with `fcitx5`. This is always the
- hardest step when I try a new Linux distro. For Kubuntu, `setup.sh` installs
- all the necessary packages, but a few additional setup steps are needed to
- get Korean input working with KDE under Wayland. Basically, the trick is to
- repeatedly log out and back in again and follow the instructions in the
- notification that automatically pops up from the automatic diagnostic tool.
-
- These are the changes I had to make this time around:
-
- 1. Set the `XMODIFIERS`, `GTK_IM_MODULE`, and `QT_IM_MODULE` variables
- according to the latest recommendations in the
- [Fcitx wiki](https://www.fcitx-im.org/wiki/Setup_Fcitx_5).
- 2. In KDE’s settings, under Virtual Keyboard, choose Fcitx5 Wayland Launcher
- (Experimental).
- 3. Run the `im-config` GUI, let it run its diagnostic, and follow the
- prompts.
- 4. Open the `fcitx5` settings by clicking the system tray icon and set up
- preferred keybindings for switching between Korean and English input.
-
- After doing all this, I still got a notification upon login saying that I
- should unset the `GTK_IM_MODULE` and `QT_IM_MODULE` environment variables.
- But it seems like this was a false positive, because I can verify from the
- shell that these variables are empty (as recommended). Anyway, Korean typing
- works fine everywhere I’ve tried.
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate.
-
-08. **Configure Syncthing (again):** Run Syncthing Tray (installed in
- `setup.sh`) manually and follow prompts to let it autostart itself and
- Syncthing.
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate.
-
-09. **Generate SSH keys (again):** This time for shell access to remote servers.
- Add `HostName`, `User`, and `IdentityFile` entries for each host to
- `~/.ssh/config`.
-
- All the servers I use allow *only* key-based access, so I used Nextcloud
- (hence waiting until now) to copy the public keys over to a client that
- already had access, then ran
- `ssh-copy-id -f -i path/to/id_whatever.pub server-hostname` on that client
- to vouch for the new one.
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate. I could write a script to prepare the keys on the client
- that already had access, then run this script prior to setting up the new
- machine and transfer the keys as part of step 1.
-
-10. **Install [Miniforge](https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge):** `curl`
- then `bash` and follow interactive prompt. I install it to
- `~/.local/miniforge3` instead of the default `~/miniforge3`. Say yes when
- asked to update shell profile. This seems to only affect `bash` so I went
- ahead and ran `~/.local/miniforge3/bin/conda init --all`. Make sure I can
- configure and build
- [my website]({% post_url 2024-11-29-rbenv-vs-conda %}).
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate in `setup.sh`. If
- [setup-miniforge](https://github.com/conda-forge/setup-miniforge) can do it,
- then presumably I can too.
-
-11. **Set some weird keyboard preferences:** Menu key (if
- unavailable, right Alt instead) as compose key, swap
- Esc and Caps Lock, a few other keyboard shortcuts for
- window management. I do this in the KDE settings GUI.
-
- 🧪 Hope to automate.
-
-These steps are in a woefully illogical order. But I think that the dependencies
-among these actions simply necessitate some jumping around between manual and
-automated configuration, GUI and command line, and different physical computers.
-
-I gaze in awe upon setup guides like
-[Brian’s](https://briantruong777.github.io/2025/01/01/my-arch-linux-setup-2.0.html)
-that proceed monotonically from bottom (disk partitioning) to top (configuring
-backups). I have to admit, I doubt that his real process is as clean as his
-guide suggests: Surely Brian must backtrack and make some changes to his desktop
-environment config after installing all those bespoke fonts, right? Anyway, it’s
-an ideal to strive toward.
-
-## Setup script
-
-Contents of `setup.sh`, slightly redacted to make myself look better:
-
-```shell
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-
-# Cache sudo credentials
-sudo -v
-
-# apt packages
-sudo apt install -y \
- keepassxc fzf curl pipx git fish \
- nextcloud-desktop dolphin-nextcloud \
- fcitx5 fcitx5-hangul fcitx5-config-qt \
- syncthing syncthingtray syncthingtray-kde-plasma
-
-# snap packages
-snap install --classic codium
-# ...
-
-# pipx packages
-pipx ensurepath
-pipx install topgrade
-# ...
-
-# Configure/enable firewall
-sudo ufw default deny incoming
-sudo ufw allow syncthing
-sudo ufw enable
-sudo ufw reload
-
-# Change shell to fish
-chsh -s /usr/bin/fish
-
-# Git repos (assumes SSH keys already set up)
-mkdir -p "$HOME/gits"
-pushd "$HOME/gits" || exit 1
-git clone 'git@github.com:maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io.git'
-# ...
-```
diff --git a/_posts/2025-06-18-thesaurus-cheating.md b/_posts/2025-06-18-thesaurus-cheating.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 491d74ad..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-06-18-thesaurus-cheating.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,51 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Is using a thesaurus cheating?
----
-
-I remember taking mild offense when my middle school language arts teacher
-introduced our class to the thesaurus. I thought, if I let the thesaurus choose
-my words for me, then is it even *my* writing anymore? This seems like a flaw in
-my temperament: I always regard technology with suspicion when it threatens to
-supplant human creativity.
-
-Inevitably, as I progressed through high school and college, I made peace with
-the thesaurus, and now I rely on it. A typical use case would be: “What’s that
-word that means *deferential* but like, in an obnoxious way?” I plug the obvious
-profanity into Merriam-Webster and it hands me back *obsequious.* I’ve trained
-myself not to regard it as a creative failure if I accept this sort of help.
-After all, it’s not like the thesaurus *tells* me which word to use; it just
-brings it forth from the tip of my tongue.
-
-OK, so this post had to be about generative AI, right? After a few years of
-watching the world use and abuse large language models, I’m beginning to find
-ways to accept an LLM’s assistance without feeling like I’ve outsourced my
-creative process.
-Mostly, I use LLM chat as a better search engine. For example, one of my first
-questions was “Is there a NumPy built-in that does this?” with
-a quick example. The machine pointed me immediately to `numpy.unravel_index()`,
-which was
-[exactly](https://numpy.org/doc/2.2/reference/generated/numpy.unravel_index.html)
-what I needed. It would have taken me much longer to get to the same answer with
-Google.
-
-Sometimes, I have tried more involved discussions with the chatbot to improve my
-understanding of a technical concept. In lengthy conversations, I try to put a
-lot of thought into my questions. I ask the LLM to check my assumptions, issue
-corrections, and supply keywords I can look up in an official reference—but
-never to generate code, text, or ideas. (Sometimes it does that anyway, which I
-find highly annoying.)
-
-“We use tools to embody their virtues,” writes
-[Fernando Borretti](https://borretti.me/article/you-can-choose-tools-that-make-you-happy).
-I guess I value [authenticity]({% post_url 2025-03-12-authenticity-ai-policy %})
-or craftsmanship—my fingerprints on the finished product—more highly than laying
-down as much code or text as I can in a fixed amount of time. This value
-judgment (and it really is just that) precludes more aggressive uses of LLM tech
-that, yes, might make me more productive in the short term. I’ll own that
-tradeoff.
-When it comes to new technology, we often speak of “early” and “late”
-adopters—as though tech literacy means no more than finding the smooth part of a
-hype wave. My goal is to adopt tools not on the basis of urgent marketing or the
-fear of being left behind, but because I can use that tool to make myself
-smarter.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-06-26-cls-advice.md b/_posts/2025-06-26-cls-advice.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 544d2119..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-06-26-cls-advice.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,41 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: CLS advice nobody asked for
----
-
-Awesome people occasionally reach out to ask me about the US State Department’s
-[Critical Language Scholarship](https://clscholarship.org/) (CLS) program.
-I participated in CLS Korean in
-2016, and I *still* find myself learning from the experiences I had in Gwangju
-all those years ago (and that's with four additional years of living in Korea
-and several visits in between).
-
-This year’s CLS cohort is getting started now or so, so I thought I would
-write up a couple of tips for making the most of the program that I’ve
-collected and shared over the years.
-
-1. Contribute ideas for activities to do with your language partner, because
- they may run out of them before long. Your outsider perspective might
- generate interesting adventures like visiting a family with young kids or
- sneaking into a college lecture.
-2. Embrace a Zen attitude with respect to the language policy. Understand that
- some cohort members may need space to process new experiences and cultural
- differences in English; this doesn’t mean they are not getting the most of
- the program. Language acquisition doesn't have to be your *only* goal.
- (Context: CLS is famously an immersion-based program and requires
- participants to sign a language pledge saying that they won’t use English for
- the duration or the program. In retrospect, I was too much of a stickler
- about it.)
-3. Identify and recognize your own stress responses and consider how they may
- contribute to or ameliorate the stress experienced by others. This is
- especially true for “elder” CLS participants (grad students and up), whom
- younger participants tend to see as role models in adapting to unforeseen
- challenges.
-4. Buy an umbrella in Korea and
- [thank me later](https://www.cvs.com/shop/weather-station-folding-automatic-oversize-umbrella-assorted-colors-prodid-457782-reviews).
-
-And please email me if you are on CLS this
-year and have any stories to share! I still have a
-[few posts]({% post_url 2016-03-12-cls-korea %}) around
-[from my CLS days]({% post_url 2016-06-25-first-week-class-cnu %}), but nothing
-profound.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-07-02-tried-recently.md b/_posts/2025-07-02-tried-recently.md
deleted file mode 100644
index b80d2eb2..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-07-02-tried-recently.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Some things I tried recently
----
-
-[Kagi Search:](https://kagi.com/) It’s a paid search engine that promises to
-give better results than Google and friends. Indeed, the search results are a
-little more relevant, especially when researching technical topics. I made great
-use of the ability to
-[filter and promote entire domains](https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard).
-However, the pricing doesn’t work for me: \$5/month gets you 300 searches, which
-isn’t enough (I burned through the free 100 searches in a week), and for
-unlimited searches, you have to pay \$10 for a bundle deal that also includes AI
-stuff I don’t care about. Kagi wants to become an everything app (probably
-[adding email soon](https://olly.pagecord.com/some-thoughts-on-kagi-search-after-two-months)),
-which a tough sell while claiming to be a privacy-focused company. (Same issue
-with Proton, by the way.)
-
-[Fender Studio:](https://www.fender.com/pages/fender-studio) Fender, the guitar
-company, just kind of threw this over the fence in May. It’s a free (but not
-open source) digital audio workstation, so it competes with the likes of Ardour
-and GarageBand. But Fender Studio runs on Linux, and quite well at that. On my
-machine, it supports JACK with minimal configuration and achieves lower latency
-than [Guitarix](https://guitarix.org/) while doing a lot more. The vendored
-backing tracks are a bit cheesy but well engineered.
-
-[Proselint:](https://github.com/amperser/proselint) It’s a prose … linter, i.e.
-you feed it your draft blog post and it complains about vague wording and common
-typography problems like curly vs. straight quotes. I like that Proselint uses
-regex instead of an LLM, so there’s no
-[creative interference]({% post_url 2025-06-18-thesaurus-cheating %}); it’s more
-like an automated style guide than a chatty editor. But my homegrown
-`typography.py` script (I need to upload this to GitHub sometime) enforces a few
-lesser irks, such as
-[en dashes in numerical ranges](https://editorsmanual.com/articles/number-ranges/),
-that Proselint lets be, so I’m still using both.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-07-09-related-posts.md b/_posts/2025-07-09-related-posts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 755610e1..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-07-09-related-posts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Jekyll plugin to recommend related posts"
----
-
-I wrote my first plugin for the Jekyll static website builder: [a tool that
-recommends related posts](https://github.com/maxkapur/jekyll-related)
-at the end of each page. It determines the similarity between post pairs using
-a fairly unremarkable token-counting algorithm, so it's fast enough to rerun on
-every site build. You can configure the number of posts to recommend and a
-parameter `factor` which determines the algorithm's sensitivity to rare vs.
-common words.
-
-I made a little [demo of the plugin]({{ site.url }}/jekyll-related/) with a fake
-blog whose posts are the articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human
-Rights. You can also see a demo on the current version of this site if you click
-the "read more" link below to go to this post's individual page. I think it
-works pretty well!
-
-There are still some tweaks I want to make before I publish this plugin to
-[RubyGems.org](https://rubygems.org/). Currently, `jekyll-related` depends on
-this ancient [tokenizer](https://github.com/arbox/tokenizer) gem, which I want
-to inline so I can add more configurable options for things like whitespace and
-capitalization handling.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-08-20-full-of-types.md b/_posts/2025-08-20-full-of-types.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 65a4e3bb..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-08-20-full-of-types.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Full of types
-layout: post
----
-
-I’m obsessed with this essay
-["Raising a person in a culture full of types"](https://theoutline.com/post/8627/raising-a-teen-personality-types-growth-mindset)
-by Dan Brooks. Before we get to the author’s message, let's take a moment to
-appreciate his sense of comedic timing, e.g.:
-
-> My son talks incessantly about VSCO girls and Karens and other categories of
-> people he has learned about from YouTube. He described a classmate as “the
-> kind of person who borrows your pencil and doesn’t give it back,” i.e. she
-> borrowed his pencil and didn’t give it back. For a while he tried to propagate
-> a type of his own invention, “the Suzan,” whose behavior was ill-defined but
-> tracked closely with that of my mother of the same name. It did not catch on,
-> and eventually he concluded that he was not the kind of person who could come
-> up with memes.
-
-Is it just me, or is this a highly clever paragraph?
-
-Brooks's point, expressed better there than I will here, is that our culture's
-emphasis on “being“ over “doing” prevents us from separating people’s actions
-from their destiny. At best, the idea that people belong to fixed, inescapable
-categories is merely the antithesis of the growth mindset; it saps motivation
-from our desire to try new things (why learn programming if I am not a "math
-person"?). At worst, as Brooks points out, "The illusion of a fixed nature gives
-us an excuse to repeat bad behavior," because every mistake is like a movie
-trailer for the rest of your life. And like a TV commercial, the fixed mindset
-is an illusion with a *slope* (sorry): it inclines us toward the most automatic
-decision instead of assessing the alternatives on their merits.
-
-I will not pretend to be a paragon of the growth mindset. I talk myself out of
-good ideas, such as learning how to actually cook, all the time. But if I could
-choose to have one impact on the world, it would be to motivate those around me
-to reject limiting beliefs and embrace challenge—even at the risk of failure.
-And if linking you
-[again](https://theoutline.com/post/8627/raising-a-teen-personality-types-growth-mindset)
-to this essay, which has a wonderful subplot about fatherhood, is the way to do
-it, then, OK.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-09-03-abc-smc-evolutionary-algorithm.md b/_posts/2025-09-03-abc-smc-evolutionary-algorithm.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 8c644e79..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-09-03-abc-smc-evolutionary-algorithm.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,198 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Is ABC-SMC just an evolutionary algorithm?
-layout: post
-katex: true
----
-
-Suppose we have data $$D$$ and a model that expresses $$D$$ as a noisy function
-of a parameter vector $$\theta$$. We want to determine a value of $$\theta$$
-that fits the data. For the purposes of this post, we're concerned with models
-that are "difficult," meaning we cannot write down a simple expression for the
-likelihood function and maximize it, whether analytically (as in ordinary least
-squares) or numerically (as in nonlinear regression). In fact, all we really
-know how to do is sample data from the model when given an arbitrary $$\theta$$.
-(We'll get a different $$D$$ every time, because the model is nondeterministic.)
-
-If you enjoy Bayesian statistics, then you may have already pattern-matched this
-problem statement to the ABC-SMC algorithm. But if you are like me and view
-parameter estimation as an optimization problem (there is no reason to privilege
-this view; it's just how I turned out), then you might instead apply an
-evolutionary algorithm. Below, I describe such an algorithm, then argue that
-ABC-SMC is a special case. This insight suggests improvements to the
-implementation and usage of both evolution and ABC-SMC.
-
-
-
-# Evolutionary algorithm
-
-OK, so the basic template for an evolutionary algorithm looks like this:
-
-1. Guess $$N$$ different parameter vectors $$\theta_i$$ (e.g. by sampling them
- from a distribution or applying a heuristic to the data).
-2. For each $$\theta_i$$, simulate the model to generate a bunch of data
- $$D'_i$$.
-3. Compare each instance of simulated data $$D'_i$$ to the real data $$D$$,
- perhaps with a distance measure $$d(D'_i, D)$$ like the 2-norm or
- summary statistics.
-4. Pick a subset of the $$\theta$$ values, perhaps the $$k$$ with the lowest
- distance measure.
-5. Generate a new sample of size $$N$$, perhaps by sampling randomly from the
- $$\theta_i$$s that "survived" the previous step and adding random noise.
-6. Repeat an arbitrary number of times from step 2.
-
-There are a lot of details to fill in, particularly in the choice of loss
-function and resampling method.[^details] But essentially, we try to sample new
-$$\theta$$ values in a way that is *biased* toward the winners identified in
-step 4 (exploitation), while maintaining enough random noise in step 5 to escape
-local optima (exploration). If we strike the right balance between exploitation
-and exploration, evolutionary algorithms like this can be quite effective in
-practice. [Free textbook
-(PDF).](https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/metaheuristics/Essentials.pdf)
-
-# ABC-SMC motivation
-
-As an operations researcher who tends to neglect Bayesian statistics, I am half
-content to stop here. But the setup given above—a model, a sampler—is common
-enough that we should expect to find a solution more tailored than evolution (a
-rather blunt technique). Well, that solution is called [approximate Bayesian
-computation
-(ABC)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_Bayesian_computation).
-
-(Depending on the order in which you learned things) an intuitive way to think
-about ABC is as an alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Algorithms in
-the MCMC family take a likelihood function $$l(\theta)$$ and produce a sample of
-the probability distribution implied. This is useful because for many
-statistical models, we can easily *construct* a likelihood function
-([PyMC](https://www.pymc.io/welcome.html) will do it for us), but maximizing
-$$l(\theta)$$ is hard (for example, due to nonconcavity or expensive gradient
-computations). With MCMC, we can just draw samples from the posterior $$P(\theta
-| D)$$, which produces not only a point estimate for each entry of $$\theta$$,
-but also confidence bounds, their covariance … indeed, an estimate of the entire
-distribution.
-
-Unfortunately, MCMC proves inadequate for regression problems (many involving
-rank and order statistics) where we cannot write out the likelihood function in
-a computationally tractable form. Consider, for example, a model where we draw
-$$X$$ from a multivariate normal distribution (whose mean and covariance matrix
-are part of $$\theta$$), clamp these values to unknown lower and upper bounds
-(more parameters in $$\theta$$), then observe (as $$D$$) the third order
-statistic. I don't think this will yield a useful likelihood function (although
-I admit I haven't tried). Thus, we turn to ABC.
-
-# ABC rejection sampling and the ABC-SMC algorithm
-
-ABC is a sketchy alternative to MCMC which works even when we cannot compute a
-likelihood function. All we need is the ability to sample data from the model
-for given values of $$\theta$$, just like our problem. [The ABC rejection
-algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_Bayesian_computation#The_ABC_rejection_algorithm)
-is basically this:
-
-1. Sample a $$\theta$$ vector from a prior distribution.
-2. Sample data $$D'$$ from the model.
-3. Compare the data $$D'$$ to the sample $$D$$ using a distance measure $$d(D',
- D)$$.
-4. If the distance is less than tolerance $$\varepsilon$$, accept
- $$\theta$$. If not, repeat.
-
-I call this algorithm "sketchy" because before running it, we don't know how
-many times it will loop before accepting $$N$$ posterior samples. To maximize
-the sample's accuracy, step 4 tempts us to set $$\varepsilon$$ close to zero.
-But doing so might drive the acceptance rate down to 0.1%, in which case we must
-draw millions of samples from the prior to get thousands from the posterior. (We
-might as well just figure out how many iterations we can afford to compute—say,
-100,000—and accept the 1000 samples of $$\theta$$ with the lowest distance
-measure. Sound familiar?)
-
-We can tame the ABC rejection algorithm using a modification called sequential
-Monte Carlo (SMC); [here is a good tutorial
-(PDF)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.4472). Instead of picking a huge sample size
-and tiny $$\varepsilon$$ and crossing our fingers, ABC-SMC has us gradually ease
-the tolerance $$\varepsilon$$ toward zero as the sample converges to the "true"
-posterior. The algorithm looks like this:
-
-1. Sample $$N$$ vectors $$\theta$$ from a prior distribution; call this the
- "population."
-2. Construct a new population using ABC rejection sampling, with a tweak:
-
- 1. Sample a $$\theta$$ vector from the population.
- 2. Tweak: Add random noise to $$\theta$$.
- 3. Sample data $$D'$$ from the model.
- 4. Compare the data $$D'$$ to the sample $$D$$ using a distance measure.
- 5. If the distance is less than tolerance $$\varepsilon$$, accept $$\theta$$
- and add it to the new population.
- 6. Repeat from step 2.1 until the population has size $$N$$.
-
-3. Keep repeating step 2 with decreasing values of $$\varepsilon$$.
-
-This algorithm is more practical than pure ABC because we can log the acceptance
-rate at each iteration in order to see how it is doing. If the acceptance rate
-is too small, then we restart with a less aggressive tolerance schedule (i.e.
-$$\varepsilon$$ decreasing more gradually).
-
-The tweak in step 2.2 (adding extra noise) is necessary to enable ABC-SMC to
-search beyond the $$N$$ samples initially drawn from the prior. The scale of
-this extra noise—call it $$\sigma$$—is an additional free parameter in the
-algorithm design. If $$\sigma$$ is too large, then the algorithm won't converge,
-because each pass through step 2 resembles a fresh run of the ABC rejection
-sample (poor exploitation). If $$\sigma$$ is too small, then the algorithm gets
-stuck in the neighborhood of whichever $$\theta$$ from the initial sample
-happened to be the best (poor exploration). So, like the evolutionary algorithm,
-ABC-SMC is no turnkey solution; it requires parameter tuning to balance
-exploration and exploitation effectively.
-
-# It's the same picture
-
-The similar "user experience" of evolution and ABC-SMC suggests we consider what
-else these algorithms may have in common. Upon examination, we can recognize
-step 2 in the ABC-SMC algorithm as another way of implementing steps 2 through 5
-in the evolutionary algorithm. The difference is that in the evolutionary
-algorithm (or at least the way I wrote it out), we choose the acceptance rate
-$$k / N$$ at the outset, and the acceptance threshold $$\varepsilon =
-\max\{d(D'_i, D)\}$$ (over the surviving indices $$i$$) is implied. In ABC-SMC,
-it's just the opposite; we commit first to a tolerance $$\varepsilon$$, then
-keep sampling until we've filled up the population.[^superficial]
-
-Recognizing the similarity between evolution and ABC-SMC might lead us to
-discover new algorithms by mixing features from each. For example, in ABC-SMC,
-instead of imposing a series of decreasing tolerance, we could choose a fixed,
-large *sample size* from which we always accept the top $$N$$ by distance.
-Because the samples converge,[^tuning] the sequence of (implicit) tolerances
-still decreases, so this algorithm should still afford the Bayesian
-interpretation of producing a *sample from the posterior* (not just a point
-estimate of $$\theta$$). But this modification makes the algorithm's runtime and
-memory usage deterministic, a desirable property (for example, it lets us
-preallocate all the arrays for a performance boost).
-
-Another idea we can transplant from evolution to ABC-SMC is forced exploration.
-In evolutionary algorithms, a common practice is to always include a few totally
-random samples in each new population. In ABC-SMC, this could look like
-modifying step 2 to construct a new population using $$\lceil 0.9 N \rceil$$ ABC
-rejection samples, and filling the rest with fresh draws from the initial prior.
-This should reduce the ABC-SMC's propensity to get stuck in a local optimum (a
-real problem, in my experience), at the cost of a lower acceptance rate and
-longer runtime.
-
-What about going the other way—incorporating ideas from ABC-SMC into evolution?
-In evolutionary algorithms, the custom is to return the global best solution,
-but one can argue that the entire final population, as a "sample" of parameter
-values that survived the top-$$k$$ filter repeatedly, deserves more attention.
-Like a Bayesian posterior, this population conveys the *distribution* of good
-$$\theta$$ estimates, which could have properties such as clustering or
-correlation that warrant further investigation.
-
-[^details]: And we should take care to ensure that the size of each sample
- $$D'_i$$ is sufficiently large to ward off a [winner's
- curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse) outcome where the
- $$\theta$$ you return is actually a good estimate, not just a "lucky"
- instance where all the noise happened to point in the right direction.
-
-[^superficial]: Another difference between the algorithms as I laid them out is
- that in my evolutionary algorithm, you upsample the $$k$$ "survivors" into a
- size-$$N$$ population at the end of the inner loop (step 5), whereas in
- ABC-SMC the upsampling occurs implicitly in steps 2.1 and 2.2. I think this
- difference is superficial—it's a matter of setting up each iteration at the
- end of the previous iteration versus at the start of the current one. Note
- that $$k$$ (not $$N$$) in the evolutionary algorithm corresponds to $$N$$ in
- ABC-SMC.
-
-[^tuning]: Well, *if* the samples converge—which depends on tuning $$\sigma$$.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-09-18-tension-condaverse.md b/_posts/2025-09-18-tension-condaverse.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 6ced805b..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-09-18-tension-condaverse.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,57 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Tensions rise in the condaverse
----
-
-GitHub has a tool called Dependabot that automatically finds outdated package
-versions pinned in project configuration files and issues a pull request to
-update them. Support for conda `environment.yml` files has long been one of the
-[most requested](https://github.com/dependabot/dependabot-core/issues/2227)
-features in the Dependabot repo. At long last, GitHub has now added partial
-support for conda to Dependabot, first as a
-[beta announced last week](https://github.com/dependabot/dependabot-core/issues/2227#issuecomment-3274344175),
-and now
-[generally available](https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-16-conda-ecosystem-support-for-dependabot-now-generally-available/).
-But there have been some issues with the rollout.
-
-The main appeal of conda over something like
-[Poetry](https://python-poetry.org/), [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/), or just
-plain-old `requirements.txt` is that conda can manage arbitrary dependencies,
-not just Python packages. You can
-`conda create --no-default-packages git micro compilers` to set up a Fortran dev
-environment if you want. Dependabot's conda support includes only Python
-packages. A few folks grumbled about this limitation in the GitHub issue
-comments, but it’s understandable: The space of "all conda installable packages"
-is vast indeed, and the Dependabot devs had to start somewhere.
-
-A more compelling criticism of the new feature stems from the fact that
-Dependabot determines the latest versions of Python packages by looking up the
-names given in `environment.yml` on PyPI. This is a problem because PyPI is an
-entirely different package ecosystem from conda. Some package versions are
-released on PyPI well before they appear in conda repos, and some packages have
-different names between the two.
-
-For a nasty example, [Ipopt](https://coin-or.github.io/Ipopt/) is a nonlinear
-programming solver written in C, and
-[cyipopt](https://cyipopt.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html) provides Python
-bindings. `conda install ipopt` installs the C library, and
-`conda install cyipopt` installs the Python wrapper. But `pip install ipopt`
-actually refers to [cyipopt](https://pypi.org/project/ipopt/). The upshot, if I
-understand correctly, is that if you pin `ipopt` in your `environment.yml`, then
-Dependabot will check its version number against that of the latest version of
-cyipopt, a flawed comparison.
-
-Luckily, Ipopt/cyipopt is the only such case I could find in
-[this Rosetta stone](https://github.com/regro/cf-graph-countyfair/blob/fd3061b427cc4b605d783ab40a115ff17e3dc1a7/mappings/pypi/grayskull_pypi_mapping.yaml)
-(the fact that this exists …) mapping package names across ecosystems. But
-[anyone(ish)](https://pypi.org/account/register/) can post packages on PyPI, so
-the current behavior of Dependabot creates new opportunities for typo-squatting
-attacks on conda users. As
-[Jannis Leidel](https://github.com/dependabot/dependabot-core/issues/2227#issuecomment-3307935405)
-(a conda maintainer) put it, “This premature rollout makes the conda ecosystem
-less secure and shouldn't have occurred.”
-
-I'm not sure what the right move is for Dependabot. For a start, they could use
-the Rosetta stone to map conda packages to the correct PyPI names, but this
-would only solve the naming issue, and not the possibility of different versions
-between the two repositories.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-09-24-python-scripts.md b/_posts/2025-09-24-python-scripts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 05607ff7..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-09-24-python-scripts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,20 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Python scripts
-layout: post
----
-
-I cleaned up a few utility Python scripts for the GitHub:
-
-- [fetch_python_docs.py](https://github.com/maxkapur/fetch_python_docs.py) sets
- up a local mirror of [docs.python.org](https://docs.python.org/) on
- `http://localhost:8004` for offline reference. It can also provide and enable
- a systemd unit file, so you can run the script once, bookmark the local URL,
- and forget about it.
-- [typography.py](https://github.com/maxkapur/typography.py) (which I mentioned
- [here]({% post_url 2025-07-02-tried-recently %})) checks for ASCII typography
- that can be better rendered as Unicode. For example, it recommends changing
- the hyphen in the page range `278-81` to an en dash.
-- [dated.py](https://github.com/maxkapur/dated.py) applies my [obnoxious
- filename convention]({% post_url 2024-04-26-iso-dates-filenames %}) to create
- a dated working copy of a file—useful when collaborating with people who
- aren’t comfortable with version control systems.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-10-21-cls-application.md b/_posts/2025-10-21-cls-application.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 86e4fc5a..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-10-21-cls-application.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Apply for CLS
-layout: post
----
-
-This year's application for Critical Language Scholarship from the US State
-Department is now [open](https://clscholarship.org/apply). (Thanks, group chat!)
-
-CLS is a fully funded summer language immersion program for American
-undergraduate and graduate students. I strongly encourage any interested in
-learning one of the nine
-[critical languages](https://clscholarship.org/languages) to apply. Some
-languages require prior language study; others accept beginners.
-
-*Feel free to email me* if you are
-considering the CLS program or have questions about the experience. I completed
-CLS Korean in 2016 and have kept in touch with participants from lots of cohorts
-since then. Here is my [advice post]({%- post_url 2025-06-26-cls-advice -%}).
-
-Good CLS blogs:
-
-- [Bethany Maz](https://bethanymaz.wordpress.com/)
-- [The Good Things Coming](https://paulazhang.wordpress.com/) (Paula Zhang)
diff --git a/_posts/2025-11-23-urban-arts.md b/_posts/2025-11-23-urban-arts.md
deleted file mode 100644
index df5fdd51..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-11-23-urban-arts.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,19 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Urban Arts Career Pathways Takeover
-layout: post
----
-
-My team at work recently got to host a Career Pathways Takeover at
-[Urban Arts](https://urbanarts.org/), a nonprofit based in New York that teaches
-programming, animation, and storytelling education to high schoolers to prepare
-them for success in college and beyond.
-
-I was so impressed by the students’ thoughtfulness and engagement. We walked our
-group of Game Academy students through our team’s event planning process, and in
-less than an hour they put together a rock-solid plan for a community arts
-program to raise awareness about mental health issues, including how they'd use
-data to capture the event's positive impact (where I fit in). I hope the vision
-can become a reality before long…!
-
-Massive thanks the Urban Arts team for hosting us and for all that you do
-through the Game Academy.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-11-26-time-person-2006.md b/_posts/2025-11-26-time-person-2006.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 267480e7..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-11-26-time-person-2006.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,49 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Person of the Year 2006
-layout: post
----
-
-If you need a fun fact for a corporate icebreaker activity, you can always say,
-"I was *Time* magazine’s Person of the Year in 2006," then stand around
-awkwardly waiting for someone to Google it.
-
-The
-[official announcement](https://time.com/6258607/you-time-person-of-the-year-2006/)
-of "your" accomplishment makes for good reading in 2025. In tech circles, we
-often regard the early days of Web 2.0 as a time of naivety when we thought that
-letting anyone post on the internet would democratize media and unlock an era of
-creative expression. Of course, we know now that it isn't so simple—that open
-platforms can amplify extreme views, for example, or serve as vectors for
-misinformation. But apparently we *also* knew this then, in the earliest days of
-YouTube and Facebook:
-
-> Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the
-> comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the
-> spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.
->
-> But that’s what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social
-> experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.
-
-Obviously, the course we chose twenty years ago led us to the world of today.
-But we didn't select this path arbitrarily, or without regard for the challenges
-it would present; we examined the risks and decided the experiment was worth it.
-
-I got a similar sense from reading Thomas Friedman's *The World is Flat* (2005),
-which lays out a theory of globalization based on the convergence of
-technological development (the internet) and trade liberalization. Some of the
-passages feel quaint:
-
-> If there is a skilled person in Timbuktu, he will get work if he knows how to
-> access the rest of the world, which is quite easy today. You can make a Web
-> site and have an e-mail address and you are up and running. (Ch. 3)
-
-(In the ebook, I commented, "Taxes? Immigration law?") But elsewhere, Friedman
-anticipates critiques of globalization which have now become standard:
-
-> In the flat world, the balance of power between global companies and the
-> individual communities in which they operate is tilting more and more in favor
-> of the companies, many of them American-based. These companies command as much
-> if not more power than many governments. (Ch. 13)
-
-Not to mention "What the world has never witnessed is an old-style pandemic in a
-Wal-Mart world," later on in the same chapter.
diff --git a/_posts/2025-12-10-pytest-ruff-mypy.md b/_posts/2025-12-10-pytest-ruff-mypy.md
deleted file mode 100644
index b9f12df1..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-12-10-pytest-ruff-mypy.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,67 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Pytest + Ruff + Mypy
-layout: post
----
-
-There is a [pytest-ruff](https://pypi.org/project/pytest-ruff/) plugin for
-Pytest (a Python testing framework) that will automatically run
-`ruff format --check` and `ruff check` as part of your test suite. The
-[pytest-mypy](https://pypi.org/project/pytest-mypy/) plugin does the same thing
-for Mypy. These plugins are handy, but for some reason , the tests they generate
-are exempted from the `pytest -k ...` logic. Normally, you can use `-k` to
-select a subset of tests to run, but if you install one of the plugins
-mentioned, that plugin's tests run no matter what. This can slow you down if,
-like me, you develop on a slow computer.
-
-So, here's what I use instead of pytest-ruff and pytest-mypy: A humble
-`test/test_qa.py` file with three functions.
-
-```python
-import subprocess
-import sys
-from pathlib import Path
-
-import mypy.api
-
-REPO_ROOT = Path(__file__).parent.parent
-
-
-def test_mypy():
- stdout, stderr, returncode = mypy.api.run([str(REPO_ROOT)])
- sys.stdout.write(stdout)
- sys.stderr.write(stderr)
- assert returncode == 0
-
-
-def test_ruff_format():
- subprocess.run(
- [sys.executable, "-m", "ruff", "format", "--check"],
- cwd=REPO_ROOT,
- check=True,
- )
-
-
-def test_ruff_lint():
- subprocess.run(
- [sys.executable, "-m", "ruff", "check"],
- cwd=REPO_ROOT,
- check=True,
- )
-```
-
-(I run Mypy via its Python API instead of the command line to save a tiny bit of
-`subprocess.run()` overhead, but it doesn't make a massive difference.)
-
-This gets you all the functionality of the plugins, but with two fewer
-dependencies, and the `-k` flag works:
-
-```shell
-# Run tests for an in-progress feature and skip QA
-pytest -k test_some_feature
-
-# Run only the QA tests
-pytest -k test_qa
-
-# Run all tests
-pytest
-```
diff --git a/_posts/2025-12-19-perfect-match-integer-programming.md b/_posts/2025-12-19-perfect-match-integer-programming.md
deleted file mode 100644
index c8d335c6..00000000
--- a/_posts/2025-12-19-perfect-match-integer-programming.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,339 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-katex: true
-title: Find your perfect match with integer programming
----
-
-Owen Lacey
-[blogged](https://blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-you-the-one-is-free-money/) about
-a reality game show called *Are You the One?* in which contestants win a
-prize by guessing the soulmate ordained for them by the show's producers.
-Specifically, there are $$n$$ men and $$n$$ women, and each one has an unknown
-"perfect" match; to win the prize, the contestants (as a group) must pair
-everyone up correctly.
-
-During each episode, the contestants get two kinds of clues:
-
-1. Truth Booth, where the contestants submit a single *couple* and learn whether
- that couple is a perfect match.
-2. Match Up, where the contestants submit a *matching* (assigning everyone to a
- couple) and learn the number (but not the identity) of perfect matches
- present in their matching.
-
-The game ends after Match Up if all $$n$$ couples in the matching are correct.
-Definitely check out Owen's post, which has a better (and illustrated!)
-explanation of the rules.
-
-Below, I present an efficient algorithm for playing Are You the One.
-It exploits both the informational clues and contestants' intuitions to find
-perfect matches quickly. With modest assumptions on the quality of
-players' intuitions, my algorithm wins by episode 10 in 100% of simulated
-seasons.
-
-(I will style the name of the show as *Are You the One?* and the name of the
-underlying game as just Are You the One.)
-
-# Owen's algorithm: Eliminate alternatives with information theory
-
-To set the stage, let me summarize Owen's approach. In short, he chooses Truth
-Booth and Match Up submissions on the basis of the expected information to be gained.
-
-Imagine writing down a list of all $$n!$$ possible matchings at the beginning of
-the season. If, in the episode 1 Truth Booth, we learn that Alice and
-Bob *aren't* a perfect match, we can cross off all $$n! / n$$ matchings that
-include this couple. That's progress.
-
-Similarly, after we get our Match Up score
-at the end of the episode, we can examine each possible matching and ask, "If this
-were the ground truth, what would have been our guess's Match Up score?" If the
-observed score differs, then that rules out that matching.
-
-As the season evolves,
-Owen's goal is to narrow things down as quickly as possible by submitting the guesses
-that eliminate the most matchings. Thus, in both subgames, his algorithm has us
-simulate each potential guess against each potential matching. We count up the
-average number of matchings that each guess would cross out. The logarithm of this value
-is called the guess's *entropy.* We play the guess with the highest entropy.
-
-This algorithm won the game by episode 10 in 98% of Owen's simulations—convincing
-evidence that *Are You the One?* is "pretty much free money."
-
-# My design objectives
-
-Owen's post left me with two questions.
-
-First, the information-theoretic algorithm is
-pessimistic. It assumes zero intuition about which couples belong together;
-every matching is equally likely. But what if we *do* have some
-intuition about compatibility—can we exploit this knowledge to
-win sooner, or more consistently?
-
-- **Objective 1:** Exploit both clues *and* contestant intuition to
- maximize the win rate.
-
-Second, computing entropies entails a lot of math. In Truth Booth and Match Up
-alike, to count the number of eliminations, we have little choice but to scan
-the full, long list of potential matchings. There's no shortcut, because previous
-eliminations interact with new clues in complicated ways. And we have to run that
-scan for *every* possible guess. Owen
-applied a few clever optimizations to avoid provably wrong guesses, but it's
-hard to salvage factorial time complexity:
-
-> I ran this information theory simulation 41 times (for no other reason than I
-> got bored waiting)
-
-Can we make our algorithm computationally efficient? Here's an arbitrary benchmark
-that I totally didn't come up with until after testing my code.
-
-- **Objective 2:** Simulate 100 seasons in under 1 minute on an unremarkable
- desktop (AMD Ryzen 5 4600G processor, 16GB of RAM).
-
-Point of emphasis: With these objectives, my algorithm and Owen's aren't really
-in competition. My problem setup is more generous (players have additional
-information at the outset), and my goals (win more, simulate faster) are
-therefore more ambitious.
-
-# My algorithm: Balance intuition and informational constraints
-
-My model of Are You the One includes three components:
-
-1. A statistical model of the "vibes" that contestants get about each couple's compatibility
-2. An algorithm for choosing which couple to guess for Truth Booth
-3. An algorithm for choosing which matching to guess for Match Up
-
-The statistical model lets us slide the strength of contestants' intuition
-up and down to experiment with how it affects the win rate.
-The guessing algorithms are based on integer programming (IP), an operations research
-technique that lets us optimize for a goal (my guess reflects my intuition)
-while applying logical constraints (my guess doesn't contradict any clues).
-IP solvers don't need to iterate every possible solution or matching, because they
-leverage the problem's mathematical structure to prune whole families of suboptimal
-solutions from the search space.
-
-## Statistical model of contestant intuitions
-
-To generate random instances, my model first assigns each couple a compatibility score
-$$c_{ij}$$ drawn from a standard normal distribution. These values represent
-the "true" compatibility of man $$i$$ with woman $$j$$ (according to the
-show's producers). We then solve the
-[maximum-weight bipartite matching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_problem)
-problem to obtain the ground-truth perfect matching.
-
-This computation sounds fancier than
-it is; the idea is to match everyone up in a way that maximizes the overall
-sum of compatibility scores. [More sophisticated matching algorithms]({%- post_url 2021-03-07-stable-matching-planet-money -%})
-exist, but the maximum-weight procedure suits our purposes well.
-It generates each of the possible $$n!$$ matchings with equal probability, and
-it comes with extra data $$c_{ij}$$ that we can use to drive intuitions.
-
-Contestants don't get to see $$c_{ij}$$, but instead observe
-$$v_{ij}$$, which is $$c_{ij}$$ plus a normal variate with mean zero and
-standard deviation $$2^{-s}$$. Here $$s$$ represents the strength of
-contestants' intuition. If $$s \ll 0$$, then their intuitions are essentially
-random noise; if $$s \gg 0$$ then their intuitions are spot-on.
-
-The strength parameter $$s$$ enables us to test how bad players' intuitions
-can get before a pessimistic algorithm like Owen's has better odds of
-winning than one based on vibes. I chose to scale $$s$$ exponentially on the
-hunch that this would yield a roughly linear relationship between $$s$$ and the
-number of turns to win (which turned out to be true).
-
-## Match Up algorithm
-
-I'll present my algorithm for Match Up first, because the Truth Booth algorithm
-builds on it.
-
-In my algorithm, we pick the guess for Match Up that best resonates with our
-vibes without contradicting any of the clues we've gathered. Formally, we compute
-the maximum-weight bipartite matching using the $$v_{ij}$$ values as the weights,
-while applying logical constraints generated by previous rounds of Truth Booth
-and Match Up.
-
-Let the binary decision variable $$x_{ij}$$ equal one if man
-$$i$$ matches with woman $$j$$ in our Match Up submission, and zero if not.
-
-Let $$P$$ denote the set of couples $$(i, j)$$ known (from the Truth Booth) to be
-perfect matches, and $$\cancel{P}$$ the set of couples known *not* to be perfect
-matches.
-
-Let $$\mathcal{M}$$ denote the set of Match Up results. The elements of
-$$\mathcal{M}$$ are tuples $$(M, k)$$, where $$M$$ is the set of couples $$(i,
-j)$$ submitted, and $$k$$ is the score.
-
-The solution to the following IP is called the *best matching:*
-
-$$
-\begin{aligned}
- \text{maximize} \quad & \sum_{i=1}^n \sum_{j=1}^n v_{ij} x_{ij} \\
- \text{subject to} \quad & \sum_{j=1}^n x_{ij} = 1 & \forall i \in \{1 \dots n\} \\
- & \sum_{i=1}^n x_{ij} = 1 & \forall j \in \{1 \dots n\} \\
- & x_{ij} = 1 & \forall (i, j) \in P \\
- & x_{ij} = 0 & \forall (i, j) \in \cancel{P} \\
- & \sum_{(i, j) \in M} x_{ij} = k & \forall (M, k) \in \mathcal{M} \\
- & x_{ij} \text{ binary} & \forall (i, j) \in \{1 \dots n\}^2
-\end{aligned}
-$$
-
-The first two constraints define the
-[bipartite matching polytope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_problem#Solution_by_linear_programming).
-The following three constraints require that $$x_{ij}$$ agree with our clues.
-The final constraint just says that $$x_{ij}$$ is binary (not a fraction).
-
-## Truth Booth algorithm
-
-The Truth Booth is purely informational; we don't win anything with a correct
-guess. However, in the absence of other clues, a correct guess in Truth
-Booth rules out more matchings than an incorrect guess. So, for the Truth Booth, my
-algorithm tries to make a guess that is *not certain,* but still *likely* to be
-correct.
-
-First, we compute the best matching using the IP above. Any of the $$(i, j)$$
-pairs in the best matching is a *valid* guess for truth booth. But some of them
-are *silly* guesses, because we already know they are a perfect match; we
-should filter these out (hence the "not certain" criterion above).
-
-The easiest couples to filter out are those that were already revealed as a
-perfect match in a past Truth Booth. No sense submitting them again.
-
-Among the remaining couples, even without a Truth Booth result, we may know
-*implicitly* that they go together, because all matchings in which they don't
-are contradicted by the sum of our clues. To detect if $$(i, j)$$ from the best
-matching is an implicit perfect match, we can solve another IP, which consists
-of the best matching IP with the additional constraint $$x_{ij} = 0$$. If this
-adjusted IP is *infeasible,* then $$(i, j)$$ is an implicit perfect match, so
-we shouldn't submit that couple to the truth booth.
-
-The couples that survive these filters are *flexible couples,*
-i.e. we can identify a matching, compatible with our clues, in which they pair
-with someone else. Among the flexible couples, my heuristic is to guess the
-couple with the *highest* vibes. This satisfies the "likely" criterion above.
-
-(I experimented with choosing the flexible couple with the *poorest* vibes.
-There isn't much of an impact to the bottom-line win rate, but the
-script spends longer solving the integer programs.)
-
-# Implementation and experiments
-
-I implemented the algorithm in Julia using the JuMP.jl modeling language and
-SCIP solver. You can find all the source code [here on
-GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur/AreYouTheOne.jl).
-
-I ran three experiments to verify that my algorithm fulfills the design objectives.
-
-## Experiment 1: Intuition strength vs. turns to win
-
-For this experiment, we sample $$s$$ uniformly between $$-5$$ and $$5$$. These
-endpoints represent signal-to-noise ratios of 1:32 and 32:1, respectively, so
-the x-axis in the plot below runs the [gamut](https://www.etymonline.com/word/gamut)
-from "virtually no intuition" to "spot-on intuition."
-
-Each point in the scatter plot below corresponds to one full game (one season).
-The y-axis represents how many turns contestants took to make a correct
-guess in Match Up.
-
-
-
-
-
-We see a roughly linear, negative relationship between intuition strength and
-turns taken. We win by episode 10 most of the time, even on the noisy side
-of the plot.
-
-## Experiment 2: No intuition
-
-To stress-test my algorithm, let's focus on the left edge of the experiment 1
-plot and slide the intuition strength all the way down to $$s = -\infty$$. (What I actually do is
-delete $$c_{ij}$$ entirely from the expression for $$v_{ij}$$ and sample
-the vibes as pure Gaussian noise.)
-
-This case is similar to Owen's setup. Participants have no intuition about which
-couples are perfect matches, and their vibes $$v_{ij}$$ serve only to give the IP
-solver something to optimize.
-
-The histogram below shows how many episodes contestants typically need to win.
-
-
-
-
-
-In the challenging environment of experiment 2, my algorithm wins by
-episode 10 only 93% of the time, compared to Owen's 98%. However, 93% is
-still appreciably better than the 74% and 71% accuracy obtained, respectively,
-by random guessing and actual *Are You the One?* contestants (according to
-Owen's post). And it takes just under two minutes to run all 500 simulations
-reflected in the plot above.
-
-## Experiment 3: Weak intuition
-
-The conditions of experiment 3 cater best to my algorithm's objectives.
-Here, we fix $$s = -1$$ (a signal-to-noise ratio of 1:2),
-meaning that contestants have some intuition, but it's not particularly strong.
-
-
-
-
-
-In this case, we eke out a win 100% of the time! And again, running all 500
-simulations takes less than two minutes.
-
-# Best we can do?
-
-Above, we devised an algorithm for Are You the One that balances competing
-objectives:
-
-- Exploit clues from Truth Booth and Match Up
-- Capitalize on contestants' intuition about compatibility
-- Compute efficiently
-
-Under favorable conditions, the algorithm wins 100% of simulated games. Under
-unfavorable conditions with scrambled contestant intuitions,
-the algorithm still wins 93% of the time. In every case, it's fast enough to
-simulate many seasons without getting bored.
-
-Like Owen, I find Are You the One to have charming similarities
-to Wordle. In Wordle, you must balance the information gained by *exploring*
-unused letters against the win potential of *exploiting* clues already provided.
-In the *New York Times* version of Wordle, a pessimistic strategy informed
-by information theory is the only way to guarantee a win. But in two-player
-Wordle, where an opponent chooses the word, you can leverage intuition about the
-opponent's favorite words to guess the answer more quickly.
-
-Many numerical optimization problems feature such an explore/exploit tradeoff.
-In classic cases of the [multi-armed bandit
-problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit), for example, we can
-prove that certain strategies strike an ideal (in a technical sense) balance between
-exploration and exploitation.
-
-I doubt that my algorithm attains the optimal probability of winning for
-my problem setup, even in the special case of experiment 3 (where the 100% figure
-is merely empirical; if you keep running my script, you'll see losses here and there).
-The information-theoretic concepts introduced in Owen's blog post can be applied to arbitrary, not just
-uniform, distributions over matchings, including the conditional distribution of
-the ground-truth matching on the vibes $$v_{ij}$$. If you can estimate that
-distribution (more simulations …), then you
-can compute the entropies in Owen's algorithm as weighted averages over
-matchings. That algorithm would be, you know, *optimal* optimal. And *very* slow.
-
-# Further reading
-
-- [Owen Lacey's blog post](https://blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-you-the-one-is-free-money/)
- analyzing Are You the One from an information theory perspective
-- [3blue1brown video](https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/wordle) solving Wordle
- with information theory
-- [Adversarial Wordle](https://absurdleonline.github.io/), where the word keeps
- changing to prolong the game—imagine an analogous variant of Are You the One,
- where the perfect matches change to confound the contestants
-- [Source code](https://github.com/maxkapur/AreYouTheOne.jl) for my algorithm
- and plots
diff --git a/_posts/2026-05-06-pageranking-pb.md b/_posts/2026-05-06-pageranking-pb.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 317bddbb..00000000
--- a/_posts/2026-05-06-pageranking-pb.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,54 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: PageRanking People and Blogs interviews
-katex: true
----
-
-I recently learned about [PageRank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank), the
-original Google algorithm for ranking webpages. It works by constructing a
-Markov chain on links between pages and computing the stationary distribution.
-The stationary probability of a given page measures the page's centrality in the
-web, an index of popularity.
-
-I wanted to try implementing the algorithm myself and fiddle with a few Rust
-libraries, so I wrote a [script](https://github.com/maxkapur/pbnx) that runs
-PageRank on interviews from the [People and Blogs](https://peopleandblogs.com/)
-series. P&B interviews are a tidy dataset for the algorithm, because Manu always
-asks interviewees to recommend other blogs, then he uses these recommendations
-to pick subsequent interviewees. This means the graph is well connected despite
-its small size.
-
-I was going to share the results here, but ranking blogs by popularity seems
-against the spirit of the indie web ethos, so you'll have to run the program
-yourself. (But to make it clear I'm not covering anything up, let me acknowledge
-that [my interview](https://manuelmoreale.com/interview/max-kapur) is in a
-61-way tie for last place, with all the other blogs that had no links to them.)
-
-A few observations from this exercise below.
-
-- I computed the stationary distribution explicitly using `ndarray_linalg::eig`
- because that's one of the libraries I was fiddling with, but for a graph with
- a large number of nodes, storing the $$O(n^2)$$ Markov array in memory is
- impractical; you'd be better off just simulating the random jumps instead.
-- A Monte Carlo simulation would yield cleaner code than my solution, too. Most
- of the bugs I had to fix in my implementation had to do with constructing the
- Markov matrix, normalizing columns, and handling edge cases like nodes with
- outdegree zero. If all you're doing is walking the graph one node at a time,
- you can address the edge cases procedurally in a way that's more obviously
- correct (e.g. "if a page has no links, jump randomly to any page").
-- The hard work in Google's implementation would surely have been the data
- engineering. You have to find the "content" part of every page to avoid
- overrepresseing header and footer links like About and Privacy, but semantic
- HTML wasn't a thing yet. And it would take a lot of work to normalize URLs to
- handle synonyms that differ only by a `www.` prefix or trailing slash (not to
- mention redirects and permalinks).
-
-Like many developers, the LLM era is interfering with my motivation to post
-[brain coded](https://domm.plix.at/perl/2025_10_braincoded_static_image_gallery.html)
-projects like this. That's especially true when, as here, I'm exercising a
-language or concept that I'm still learning—my PageRank implementation is
-neither performant nor educational. But as I told Manu in the P&B interview, I
-use my blog and GitHub more for accountability than publicity: The goal is to
-simply keep myself writing and coding.
-
-Publish post.
diff --git a/_posts/2026-06-03-metasystems.md b/_posts/2026-06-03-metasystems.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 896c4a8e..00000000
--- a/_posts/2026-06-03-metasystems.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,96 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: Systems for making systems
----
-
-I read a comment stating that git (a tool programmers use to collaborate on
-code, sort of like Word's Track Changes) is not a version control system but a
-"system for creating a version control system."
-
-That got me thinking about other such "metasystems" I use, and the frustration
-that arises when one expects a mere system and instead gets the meta
-thing.
-
-# Anki
-
-[Anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) is a system for making a flashcard system.
-I've used this excellent program for about four years to memorize Korean vocab.
-But the first time I tried Anki, I downloaded a stock deck of Korean words and
-felt confused and overwhelmed.
-
-Studying with someone else's Anki deck is a mistake, because it skips the most
-important part of spaced repetition learning: determining what you're actually
-trying to learn and breaking it into flashcard-sized units. For example, if
-you're using Anki to learn a language, how do you want to handle synonyms? (That
-might be a separate post.) Creating your own deck forces you to answer such
-questions and clarify your learning goals.
-
-# Microsoft Excel
-
-Much hated, but much misunderstood. You may think Excel is a spreadsheet tool,
-but it's actually a tool for making spreadsheet tools.
-
-I learned this the hard way when I did process automation stuff at work and
-witnessed how widely people's Excel conventions vary. Everyone uses the
-file/worksheet/row/column hierarchy differently. Some enlightened people code
-booleans using the native `TRUE` and `FALSE`, but others use the strings "yes"
-and "no" (or blank), the checkbox widget, or the cell background color (have fun
-querying that in Pandas).
-
-Did you know that Excel incorporates an entire
-[programming language](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/overview/excel)?
-OK, but did you know about the
-[other one](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/overview/excel-add-ins-reference-overview)?
-Or sorry, [this one](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/)?
-
-Sometimes, I wish Excel had a
-[bumpers mode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAzdvyFxzy8) that removes all the
-formatting options (especially Merge Cells!!) and forces you to put data in
-named
-[tables](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/overview-of-excel-tables-7ab0bb7d-3a9e-4b56-a3c9-6c94334e492c)
-with strict column types. But that would just be a spreadsheet tool. It wouldn't
-be Excel.
-
-# CSS
-
-CSS is how you set the color, layout, and style of web pages. The CSS for this
-site is quite a mess, a bunch of
-[ad-hoc fixes](https://github.com/maxkapur/maxkapur.github.io/blob/938899557c4214dcd1e649cef8bca29913d366ba/_sass/minima/_layout.scss#L187-L195)
-tacked on as I added new features to Illusion Slopes. I've gotten better at CSS
-since setting up the Jekyll build, but my skills are mainly useful on new
-projects, where I can architect the HTML and CSS from scratch. The mental shift
-I made is from using CSS to style an individual page, to using CSS to create a
-*system* that styles pages. A *cascade* of styles, if you will …
-
-[This post](https://jacobb.nyc/writing/how-i-write-css-in-2024) from Jacob
-Bleser outlines the kind of CSS system I want to set up for my site once I
-gather the courage to do a big migration.
-
-# Powerful but frustrating
-
-Everyone new to git has had the [xkcd 1597](https://xkcd.com/1597/) experience
-of trashing and re-cloning the repo to make a merge work. Metasystems like git
-are powerful but hard to learn, which explains the abundance of businesses like
-GitHub that purport to make the underlying tool more approachable.
-
-But a good metasystem tends to resist such taming efforts because it is
-precisely as complex as the problem space requires. Simplifying tools are often
-unwieldly in their own ways (see
-[this critique of Tailwind CSS](https://blog.sebin-blog.sebin-nyshkim.net/posts/tailwind-suffering-from-success/nyshkim.net/posts/tailwind-suffering-from-success/)),
-while disappointing power users who want access to the raw workflow—the worst of
-both worlds.
-
-But hey, they added
-[yet another programming language](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-python-in-excel-a33fbcbe-065b-41d3-82cf-23d05397f53d)
-to Excel.
-
-
diff --git a/_sass/minima.scss b/_sass/minima.scss
deleted file mode 100644
index 57ff2c69..00000000
--- a/_sass/minima.scss
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,74 +0,0 @@
-@charset "utf-8";
-@use "sass:color";
-
-// Base and monospace font
-$base-line-height: 1.5;
-
-$base-font-family: "IBM Plex Sans", "IBM Plex Sans KR", sans-serif;
-$base-font-size: 1rem;
-$base-font-weight: 400;
-$base-font-weight-strong: 600; // 700 is too intense
-
-$monospace-font-family: "IBM Plex Mono", monospace;
-$monospace-font-size: $base-font-size * 0.9;
-$monospace-font-strong-weight: 600;
-
-// Used in figcaption, footer
-$small-font-size: $base-font-size * 0.875;
-
-// Used by minima layout
-$spacing-unit: 30px;
-
-// Obligatory black text. Muted variant for post titles, blockquote text, code
-// comments.
-$text-color: black;
-$text-color-light: #546270;
-
-// Primary background color, and a brighter alternate background color for code
-// blocks and table body
-$background-color: #ffffeb;
-$background-color-light: #fffff5;
-
-// Plain brand color is used for links (there are plenty of them). Desaturated
-// variant is more legible, for visited links and strings in syntax
-// highlighting. Light variant is for secondary design elements: horizontal
-// rules, vertical rule left of blockquotes, table header background. Should
-// mainly be referenced via border-heavy to ensure consistent width.
-$brand-color: #008000;
-$brand-color-desaturated: color.adjust($brand-color, $saturation: -50%);
-$brand-color-light: #b7ccb7;
-$border-heavy: 2px solid $brand-color-light;
-
-// Width of the content area
-$content-width: 800px;
-$on-palm: 600px;
-$on-laptop: 800px;
-
-// These two mixins are intended to differentiate normal links
-// from hovered links:
-@mixin subtle-underline {
- text-decoration: underline solid currentColor 1px;
-}
-
-@mixin heavy-underline {
- text-decoration: underline solid currentColor 1.5px;
-}
-
-// For completeness' sake, this mixin undoes the other two in
-// case one of those styles was inherited:
-@mixin no-underline {
- text-decoration: none;
-}
-
-// Use media queries like this:
-// @include media-query($on-palm) {
-// .wrapper {
-// padding-right: $spacing-unit / 2;
-// padding-left: $spacing-unit / 2;
-// }
-// }
-@mixin media-query($device) {
- @media screen and (max-width: $device) {
- @content;
- }
-}
diff --git a/_sass/minima/_base.scss b/_sass/minima/_base.scss
deleted file mode 100644
index 10a2cf28..00000000
--- a/_sass/minima/_base.scss
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,337 +0,0 @@
-@use "sass:color";
-@use "sass:math";
-@use "minima" as *;
-
-/**
- * Reset some basic elements
- */
-body,
-h1,
-h2,
-h3,
-h4,
-h5,
-h6,
-aside,
-p,
-blockquote,
-pre,
-hr,
-dl,
-dd,
-ol,
-ul,
-figure {
- margin: 0;
- padding: 0;
-}
-
-html {
- font-size: $base-font-size;
-}
-
-/**
- * Basic styling
- */
-body {
- font: $base-font-weight #{$base-font-size}/#{$base-line-height} $base-font-family;
- color: $text-color;
- background-color: $background-color;
- -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;
- -webkit-font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
- -moz-font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
- -o-font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
- font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
- font-kerning: normal;
- display: flex;
- min-height: 100vh;
- flex-direction: column;
-}
-
-strong {
- font-weight: $base-font-weight-strong;
-}
-
-// This keeps sup elements from making their lines awkwardly higher than others
-// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1530685/how-can-i-keep-consistent-line-height-with-superscript-elements
-sub,
-sup {
- line-height: 100%;
-}
-
-/**
- * Set `margin-bottom` to maintain vertical rhythm
- */
-h1,
-h2,
-h3,
-h4,
-h5,
-h6,
-p,
-aside,
-blockquote,
-pre,
-table,
-ul,
-ol,
-dl,
-figure,
-%vertical-rhythm {
- margin-bottom: math.div($spacing-unit, 2);
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * `main` element
- */
-main {
- display: block;
- /* Default value of `display` of `main` element is 'inline' in IE 11. */
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Images
- */
-img {
- max-width: 100%;
- border-radius: 8px;
-}
-
-// By default, images are the full width of the text. This is a little loud for
-// some images; add a .compact class to those that we want to be a bit smaller.
-img.compact {
- max-width: min(100%, 600px);
-}
-
-// Add this style to remove the border radius from images (e.g. graphs) that
-// have content all the way to the corners.
-img.squareborder {
- border-radius: 0;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Figures
- */
-figure {
- display: flex;
- flex-direction: column;
- align-items: left;
-}
-
-figcaption {
- font-size: $small-font-size;
- color: $text-color-light;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Lists
- */
-ul,
-ol {
- margin-left: $spacing-unit;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Headings
- */
-// h1,
-// h2,
-// h3,
-// h4,
-// h5,
-// h6 {
-// }
-
-
-
-/**
- * Links
- */
-a {
- color: $brand-color;
- @include subtle-underline;
-
- &:visited {
- color: $brand-color-desaturated;
- }
-
- &:hover {
- @include heavy-underline;
- }
-
- // Couple of places where we don't want links underlined until hovered:
- h1 &,
- h2 &,
- h3 &,
- h4 &,
- h5 &,
- h6 &,
- .site-header &,
- .excerpt-warning & {
- @include no-underline;
-
- &:hover {
- @include heavy-underline;
- }
- }
-
- // This is a weird case: Without this block, the space before the username
- // also gets underlined, which looks bad; we only want the username itself to
- // be highlighted. Moreover, selector specificity requires this rule to be
- // last so that it overrides the &:hover rule above (or else the space is
- // again underlined on hover). Ditto the RSS link (which appears in the social
- // list).
- .social-media-list & {
- @include no-underline;
-
- .username,
- .rss-link {
- @include subtle-underline;
-
- &:hover {
- @include heavy-underline;
- }
- }
- }
-}
-
-/**
- * Blockquotes
- */
-blockquote {
- color: $text-color-light;
- border-left: $border-heavy;
- padding-left: math.div($spacing-unit, 3);
-
- > :last-child {
- margin-bottom: 0;
- }
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Code
- */
-
-// Inline code
-code {
- font-size: $monospace-font-size;
- padding: 0 0.1em;
-}
-
-// Code blocks
-pre:has(code) {
- font-size: $monospace-font-size;
- border: $border-heavy;
- padding: 8px 12px;
- overflow-x: auto;
- resize: both;
- background: $background-color-light;
-
- code {
- padding: 0;
- }
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Keyboard
- */
-kbd {
- font-family: $base-font-family;
- font-size: $small-font-size;
- border: 1px solid $text-color-light;
- border-radius: 3px;
- padding: 3px 5px 2px 5px;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Wrapper
- */
-.wrapper {
- max-width: $content-width - $spacing-unit * 2;
- margin-right: auto;
- margin-left: auto;
- padding-right: $spacing-unit;
- padding-left: $spacing-unit;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Icons
- */
-.svg-icon {
- width: 16px;
- height: 16px;
- display: inline-block;
- fill: $text-color-light;
-
- padding-right: 5px;
- vertical-align: text-top;
-}
-
-
-
-/**
- * Tables
- */
-table {
- background-color: $background-color-light;
- text-align: left;
- border: 0.5px solid $text-color-light;
- border-collapse: collapse;
-
- th,
- td {
- // NOTE: Padding matches
-
-{%- endif -%}
diff --git a/chipotle.md b/chipotle.md
deleted file mode 100644
index c739f48b..00000000
--- a/chipotle.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,60 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: page
-title: Chipotle
-sort_order: 999
-hidden: true
-permalink: /chipotle/
----
-
-[IndieWebCamp wiki:](https://indieweb.org/chipotle)
-
-> You should make a “chipotle” page so when a friend is picking up Chipotle for
-> you, you can send them a link instead of having to redescribe/retype your
-> Chipotle order.
-
-# Chipotle (to-do)
-
-OK, so I have only actually been to Chipotle a few times and can’t remember what
-I like.
-
-# Panera
-
-Sandwich
-
-- Toasted Italiano
-- Half size
-- Defaults
-
-Drink
-
-- Signature hot chocolate
-- Regular size
-
-# Starbucks
-
-If in season: Tall peppermint mocha with whip.
-
-If not: Tall mocha with whip.
-
-# Subway
-
-Frame
-
-- 6-inch sub
-- Italian bread
-- Provolone cheese
-- Roast beef
-- Toasted
-
-Veggies
-
-- Lettuce
-- Tomato
-- Onion
-- Banana peppers
-
-Sauce: First of these that’s available:
-
-1. Peppercorn ranch
-2. Sweet onion
-3. Honey mustard
diff --git a/colophon.md b/colophon.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 04bcec86..00000000
--- a/colophon.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,44 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: page
-title: Colophon
-hidden: true
-permalink: /colophon/
----
-
-[IndieWebCamp wiki:](https://indieweb.org/colophon)
-
-> A colophon … describes how the site is made, with what tools, supporting what
-> technologies.
-
-# Local tools
-
-- [Micro](https://micro-editor.github.io/) (on desktop) and
- [Markor](https://github.com/gsantner/markor) (Android) text editors
-- [mdformat](https://mdformat.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) and
- [Rewrap](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stkb.rewrap) for
- formatting Markdown
-- VS Code or VSCodium for HTML/CSS maintenance
-
-# Fonts
-
-- [IBM Plex](https://github.com/IBM/plex) family
-- Default $$\KaTeX$$ font
-- I have a stylesheet
- demo post
-
-# Site build
-
-- Conda ([Miniforge](https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge)) for environment
- management (why)
-- [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) v{{ jekyll.version }} to build the HTML
-- GitHub Actions (wrapping Bash scripts) for orchestration
-
-# Hosting
-
-- Web hosting: GitHub Pages free tier
-- Domain: Squarespace (automatically migrated from Google Domains)
-
-# AI
-
-- Nope
-- Does [Hunspell](https://github.com/hunspell/hunspell) count?
diff --git a/content/_index.md b/content/_index.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ef6083b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/_index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
++++
+template = "index.html"
++++
diff --git a/about.md b/content/pages/about.md
similarity index 92%
rename from about.md
rename to content/pages/about.md
index e63d5492..386f74c6 100644
--- a/about.md
+++ b/content/pages/about.md
@@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
----
-layout: page
-title: About
-sort_order: 10
-permalink: /about/
----
++++
+title = "About"
+aliases = ["/about/"]
+
+[extra]
+sort_order = 10
++++
Illusion Slopes is a personal blog. I write about whatever’s on my mind. My goal
is to document my thoughts and gain perspective on how they have evolved since
@@ -48,9 +49,8 @@ video](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06yMQdXWrp9VsynaPe2mg2gjHfr45VZO)
# Contact
-The best way to reach me is by emailing me at [{{ site.email }}](mailto:{{ site.email }}).
-You can also find me on
-[GitHub](https://github.com/{{ site.github_username }}),
+The best way to reach me is by emailing me at {{ mailto() }}. You can also find
+me on [GitHub](https://github.com/{{ site.github_username }}),
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/{{ site.linkedin_username }}), and
[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRfryFgD6JkqJiTA_MTkHXw).
diff --git a/_posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md b/content/posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md
similarity index 98%
rename from _posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md
rename to content/posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md
index 2e4bfec8..36841658 100644
--- a/_posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md
+++ b/content/posts/1970-01-01-formats-masterpost.md
@@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Formats masterpost"
-hidden: true
-permalink: /formatting/
----
++++
+title = "Formats masterpost"
+aliases = ["/formatting/"]
+
+[extra]
+hidden = true
++++
Here is a post with all kinds of crazy formatting so that I can test out my CSS.
diff --git a/_posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md b/content/posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md
similarity index 95%
rename from _posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md
rename to content/posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md
index cd0bb6e8..0eea061a 100644
--- a/_posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md
+++ b/content/posts/2016-03-12-cls-korea.md
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: CLS Korean
----
++++
+title = "CLS Korean"
++++
I am blessed and honored to have received a Critical Language Scholarship from the US Department of State to study Korean language this summer at Chonnam University. This will be my first visit to Korea, and I am incredibly excited as well as anxious about becoming a study abroad student for the first time.
diff --git a/content/posts/_index.md b/content/posts/_index.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..49f37090
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/posts/_index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
++++
+title = "All posts"
+template = "posts/list.html"
+page_template = "page.html"
+paginate_by = 10
+sort_by = "date"
+transparent = true
++++
diff --git a/feed.xml b/feed.xml
deleted file mode 100644
index 086a95f3..00000000
--- a/feed.xml
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,92 +0,0 @@
----
----
-
-{%- comment -%}
-
- This custom XML file replaces that produced by the built-in jekyll-feed
- plugin. You may still see the jekyll-feed plugin do its thing during site
- build because it is part of the minima theme, but the feed rendered by this
- file is the one that gets included in the end.
-
- References:
-
- - https://gist.github.com/andrewstiefel/57a0a400aa2deb6c9fe18c6da4e16e0f
- - https://www.roboleary.net/webdev/2022/06/14/how-i-fixed-the-atom-web-feed-on-my-website.html
-
-{%- endcomment -%}
-
-{%- comment -%}
- Date format used in the field below
-{%- endcomment -%}
-{%- assign date_format = site.minima.date_format | default: "%b %-d, %Y" -%}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- {{- site.title | strip_html | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
-
-
-
- {{- site.description | strip_html | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
- {{- site.time | date_to_xmlschema -}}
-
- {{ site.url }}/
-
-
- {{- site.author | strip_html | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
- {{- site.email | strip_html | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
- Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license
-
- {% for post in site.posts %}
- {%- if post.hidden -%}
- {%- continue -%}
- {%- endif -%}
-
- {{ post.title | strip_html | normalize_whitespace }}
-
-
-
- {{ post.date | date_to_xmlschema }}
- {{ post.date | date_to_xmlschema }}
-
-
-
- {{- post.date | date: date_format | xml_escape -}}
-
-
- {{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ post.id }}
-
- {{- post.excerpt | strip | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
- {{- post.content | strip | normalize_whitespace | xml_escape -}}
-
-
-
- {% endfor %}
-
-
diff --git a/feed.xsl b/feed.xsl
deleted file mode 100644
index 11adc6ff..00000000
--- a/feed.xsl
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,104 +0,0 @@
----
----
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- <xsl:value-of select="atom:feed/atom:title" /> | RSS
-
- {%- include styling.html %}
-
-
-
- {%- include header.html -%}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- {%- comment -%}
- TODO: Cannot include footer because it uses XML namespaces internally
- that cause the styled XML feed to fail to render.
- {%- include footer.html -%}
- {%- endcomment %}
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Web feed preview
-
-
-
This is a web feed, also known as an RSS feed, for the
-
-
-
-
- blog. You can subscribe by copying the URL from the
- address bar into your newsreader app.
-
Visit About
- Feeds to learn more about newsreaders.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- {%- comment -%} Intentional whitespace {%- endcomment %}
-
-
-
-
-
- {%- comment -%}
- Uncomment below to incorporate post excerpts into the styled preview.
- Note that the excerpts are included in the *feed itself* in either
- case, as defined in feed.xml.
-
-
- {%- endcomment %}
-
-
- {%- if paginator.next_page -%}
- Next page
- {%- endif -%}
-
-
- {%- endif %}
- {%- endif %}
-
diff --git a/projects.md b/projects.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 2d024369..00000000
--- a/projects.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,114 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: page
-title: Projects
-permalink: /projects/
-sort_order: 20
-redirect_from:
- - /publications/
----
-
-{%- comment -%}
- Redirect above is because I used to have separate pages for projects and
- publications.
-{%- endcomment -%}
-
-# Professional projects
-
-I’ve given a lot of thought to how to organize this projects page now that I
-work for a private company. The truth is that I do my *best work* for my
-employer, because my employer gives me the two resources I need to produce good
-stuff: awesome colleagues, and time (in that order). But rattling off a list of
-all my clients and work projects here on Illusion Slopes would undermine my goal
-of maintaining a healthy separation between my personal and professional
-identities. As a compromise, I hope this spiel from my [People and Blogs
-interview](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-max-kapur) ([local
-mirror]({% post_url 2025-02-14-people-and-blogs-local %})) will suffice as an
-introduction:
-
-> At work, I build numerical modeling tools (picture something like [Universal
-> Paperclips](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/)) for clients who are
-> sometimes skeptical of analyzing their data quantitatively. That’s because
-> they’ve been disappointed by past attempts that failed to account for the
-> right variables, or that offered too much technical flourish with too little
-> explanation. So, in my role, equally important to getting the math right is my
-> ability to tell a convincing story about why I modeled the problem a certain
-> way. That’s where I draw on my teaching background, the performance skills I
-> learned in music school, and my ability to translate specialized concepts into
-> accessible terms.
-
-If you are interested in professional collaboration, please [email me](mailto:{{ site.email }})
-or reach out on
-[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/{{ site.linkedin_username | cgi_escape | escape }}).
-
-# Open source contributions
-
-See my pins on [GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur).
-
-# Selected publications
-
-[“The College Application Problem,”](https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01869) arXiv,
-May 2022. A roll-up of the main results from my master’s thesis, which examines a
-novel submodular maximization problem involving the expected maximum value of a
-portfolio of random variables.
-
-[“Human-Centered Design in Acoustics Education for Undergraduate Music Majors”](https://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/10.0010043)
-(paywall), *The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,* April 2022. A
-survey study of undergraduate music majors with a discussion of how to harness
-the natural affinity between acoustic science and musical practice in acoustics
-education.
-
-[“Characterizing Nonatomic Admissions Markets,”](https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01340)
-arXiv, July 2021. A parametric model of a college admissions market that has
-attractive numerical properties. I estimate the model using an open dataset and
-produce an intuitive ranking of American universities.
-
-[“Cyborgs, Cyphers, and Feminist Compromise in Contemporary South Korean
-Science Fiction,”]({{ site.url }}/cyborgs-and-ciphers/) *Emory Journal of East
-Asian Studies,* 2020. I examine two contemporary South Korean science fiction
-authors and situate their complex relationship to the SF genre in the context of
-a longer history of “bargains” that Korean feminist writers have made in search
-of a literary platform.
-
-“ ‘The Shoes of the Trees’: How Trees Find Their Footing in Contemporary Korean Poetry,”
-BA honors thesis, May 2018. A study of the symbolic and discursive role of trees in Korean lyric poetry and ecocriticism.
-
-[“The Making of the Kim Ku Mystique,”](https://www.scribd.com/document/364446649/OAPS-2016-2017)
-*Outstanding Academic Papers by Students,* 2016–17. A historical research paper
-examining the origins of a prominent Korean nationalist and anticolonial
-activist’s high standing in contemporary Korean political and social thought.
-
-# Essays
-
-[“Using Data to Understand ELL Students,”]({{ site.url }}/esl-data/)
-August 2019. A tour of some rudimentary data analysis techniques that ELL
-teachers can use to better understand their students.
-
-[“How Do We Learn What’s True? Narrative Fluency and the Pedagogy of
-Information,”]({{ site.url }}/how-do-we/) February 2019. I created this digital
-essay in response to what I saw as an unquestioning embrace of trendy
-information-literacy pedagogies.
-
-# Presentation videos
-
-My [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/maxkapur) includes recordings of
-many of my conference presentations, along with accessible summaries of my
-research and a few Julia and Python tutorials.
-
-# Teaching assistantships
-
-During my master’s degree at Seoul National University, I served as a course TA
-for the following MOOCs:
-
-- Sung-Pil Hong,
- [Introduction to Optimization](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-optimization)
- on edX.
-- Sung-Pil Hong,
- [선형 및 비선형 최적화 (Linear and Nonlinear Optimization)](https://etl.snu.ac.kr/courses/630f4b716b3fac204b3e4a98)
- on SNUON.
-
-# Broken links
-
-If you are looking for the “Published Pieces” section from my old website, which
-had links to my work at the USC Daily Trojan and various litmags,
-[here you go](https://illusionslopes.blogspot.com/p/published-pieces.html). Be
-warned that many of those links are dead.
diff --git a/assets/images/number-of-degrees.png b/static/assets/images/number-of-degrees.png
similarity index 100%
rename from assets/images/number-of-degrees.png
rename to static/assets/images/number-of-degrees.png
diff --git a/assets/images/profile.jpg b/static/assets/images/profile.jpg
similarity index 100%
rename from assets/images/profile.jpg
rename to static/assets/images/profile.jpg
diff --git a/templates/base.html b/templates/base.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..66ecea09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/base.html
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+
+
+
+
+
+ {% block title %}
+ {{ config.title }}
+ {% endblock title %}
+
+
+
+
+
+ {% block header %}
+ {% endblock header %}
+
+
+ {% block main %}
+ {% endblock main %}
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/templates/index.html b/templates/index.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..150cd063
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/index.html
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+{% extends "base.html" %}
+
+{% block main %}
+{% set posts_section = get_section(path="posts/_index.md") %}
+{% set recent_posts = posts_section.pages | slice(end=config.extra.homepage_n_posts) %}
+
+{% for page in recent_posts %}
+ {% include "posts/_snippet.html" %}
+{% endfor %}
+
+{% endblock main %}
diff --git a/templates/page.html b/templates/page.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..052563f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/page.html
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+{% extends "base.html" %}
+
+{% block main %}
+
+ {{ page.title }}
+
+
{{ page.date }}
+{{ page.content | safe }}
+{% endblock main %}
diff --git a/templates/posts/_snippet.html b/templates/posts/_snippet.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..f5b8a22b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/posts/_snippet.html
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+
+
+
+{% endblock main %}
diff --git a/templates/shortcodes/mailto.html b/templates/shortcodes/mailto.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..a322c8ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/templates/shortcodes/mailto.html
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{{ config.extra.email }}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/zola.toml b/zola.toml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..60951a74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/zola.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# The URL the site will be built for
+base_url = "https://maxkapur.com"
+title = "Illusion Slopes"
+description = "Max Kapur’s blog"
+
+# Whether to automatically compile all Sass files in the sass directory
+compile_sass = false
+
+# Whether to build a search index to be used later on by a JavaScript library
+build_search_index = false
+
+exclude_paginated_pages_in_sitemap = "all"
+
+[markdown]
+
+[markdown.highlighting]
+theme = "catppuccin-mocha"
+
+[extra]
+# Put all your custom variables here
+homepage_n_posts = 5
+email = "max@maxkapur.com"
-
-
-
- 
-
-
-
-
-Why Mulberry? There are boatloads of “chance me!” websites (some more trustworthy
-than others) that help students gather information
-about colleges and estimate their chances of admission. But when it comes to the
-question of *where* to apply (given that you can’t apply everywhere),
-many people resort to folk wisdom, risk-averse heuristics, and gut feelings.
-
-Mulberry complements these introspective techniques with dispassionate,
-numbers-driven advice. You input estimates of your admissions chances at
-each school and the amount of utility you associate with going there,
-and Mulberry sorts the schools in the order you should apply
-to them to maximize your expected utility.
-
-The interface is at [maxkapur.com/mulberry]({{ site.url }}/mulberry),
-and the code is on [GitHub](https://github.com/maxkapur/mulberry).
diff --git a/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md b/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 019a63ed..00000000
--- a/_posts/2022-08-18-multiple-selection.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Grading multiple-selection questions"
----
-
-Consider the following test question:
-
-> Which of the following are US States? (select multiple)
->
-> 
-
-
-
-
-
-