"Loveless" by Alice Oseman

 Recently for a book club I finally got around to reading Loveless by Alice Oseman. The book has gotten a lot of attention lately, what with it winning the Bookseller's 2021 YA Book Award, and being a great portrayal of asexuality and aromanticism. I really liked the book! I mean I have a lot of thoughts but it's so nice to see a portrayal of this story and it just highlights the need for more of them.

The story follows Georgia, a high schooler about to graduate and head to college with her two best friends. She's never been in a romantic relationship, or even kissed anyone. It's not something that she's been worried about, but she's starting to get concerned that she's behind everyone else and "not normal." When she gets to college she meets her roommate Rooney, a sex positive Shakespeare-obsessed mystery who slowly turns into a friend.

Georgia decides to try and date her friend Jason, figuring if she can love anyone then it's him. It ends with her realizing through her friend, Sunil, that there's such a thing as not being interested in sex and romance and it's called being "aromantic asexual" or aroace for short. Jason is devastated. Meanwhile Rooney has fallen for Pip, Georgia's lesbian best friend, and Pip likes her back but it's complicated since Rooney hasn't realized that she's queer yet. Rooney then tries to help Georgia out by kissing her and Pip sees. She's also devastated. 

Final part of the book mostly centers on Georgia getting her friends back together again. And coming to terms with her identity. She isn't necessarily "proud" yet, but she knows that she'll have the love of her friends for the rest of her life. 

One of the things that this book does really well is with giving an explanation of asexuality and aromanticism that doesn't feel like a lecture. It gets woven in with the characters journeys and understanding of the concepts, taking the reader with them. She also shows the breadth of the community by having characters that aren't white and discussing that intersectionality, as well as characters that are asexual and not aromantic or aromantic and not asexual.

I really liked the book for a more personal reason, which is that it reminded me a lot of my own journey. Not because I'm also asexual but because the book takes place in the UK, the first place I joined a queer org. The discussion of drinking and clubbing culture, Fresher's Week, the structure of the college, even the formal event really brought me back. I realize that this is super specific to just me, but it speaks to how realistically the characters and the setting are portrayed. 

The book doesn't get into queer platonic relationships at all, or how aromantic individuals can still date and form partnerships. I think in some sense this is beyond the scope of the book, a lot of it is simply about how you don't need to follow the trajectory that everyone else does, and it's alright to mourn this, but you have to do what makes you happy. It does feel in some ways that something has been left out though. But I'm not sure, it works on its own without that just fine.

My only issue is at the end of the book Rooney says that she's going to be Georgia's best friend for life and that they can still be each other's special person even if they aren't in a romantic relationship. Which is cute, but I have to be honest, that's something that I think everyone has said to a friend in college and then stopped talking to them. Plus Rooney just got into a romantic relationship which is a good sign for people about to leave their friends behind. Not to mention that the book ended right after that so we didn't see them navigating these relationships or anything like that. It's cute, I get it, but I think it detracted from the intensely realistic depictions in the rest of the novel.

Read Loveless! It's so important to support aroace stories and aroace creators! There's so many good things about this book.

This Is Beautiful: Shakespeare in the Arb Audition

 So I auditioned for the local production of Shakespeare in [insert park here] on a whim. This was also the same weekend that I was losing my mind over that previous final that I probably tanked. It's a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which is absolutely perfect for doing outside this summer.

Anyways so I thought that the audition and everything went really well, but my hopes weren't exactly high. I'm not a great actor, plus there's like real acting people auditioning as well. I walked into the callback and there were 25 people there, plus I was only called back for the fairy roles and not the human roles. I just did some movement stuff and then left. 

What I didn't expect then was that I'd be cast as Puck! This is the main fairy who goes around and causes chaos in the play, it's a pretty big role even if this production is splitting it up between 3 people. It's just absurd, I'm still in shock, and I'm really looking forward to this play.

Coding Final

 This is late, but that's because I was working on a final all weekend. I have to admit, I have a lot of issues with the way that this final was run so this is going to be my venting space.

First of all there the time period. All of the homeworks gave us a week or two to get those turned around, and the final was larger but we had 3 days. Something about that seems messed up to me and as though it isn't preparing us for the final exam.

Then there's the time limit itself. This was a coding exam and all of our code has to run in under 15 minutes. This is something where I understand why it happens, it's so that the TA isn't sitting there for 50 years running our code. But this was really the hardest part for me, with the requirements of the assignment I just could not get it until that limit. I got it close, but couldn't quite hit that. And it means that ultimately I had to make sacrifices with other parts of my code to make it less accurate and cut down my grade that way instead.

Finally there's the way that it was graded. We had to generate a model, and 80% of our grade was flat out how well the model performed on a withheld dataset. So if your model is able to classify the data correctly 80% of the time, you have an 80 on the final already. The only way to get a 100 is to have a perfect model that runs under the time limit. This seems absurd to me, primarily because none of our other assignments were graded this way! We never generated a perfect model in the class, it was more can you generate the best possible and is your reasoning clear. Why is this final so different from the rest of the class?

Anyways so at the time of writing, I don't know if this will be curved or not. What I do know is that I need at least a 30 on the final to get a B in the course and that is good enough for me. So what if I also am tanking the average grade from the course? I'm just glad that this class is over.

This Is Beautiful: Student Written Musicals

 This past weekend I had a couple friends performing in a musical that one of said friends composed all of the music for. The show was a ton of fun! I think there's a lot of flexibility in writing your own shows, and particularly with a student org, a lot of fun, niche jokes that can be thrown in.

Some of these jokes end up being essentially inside jokes for the org. That happens when you don't get a much bigger crowd than your friends and other org members. But a lot of it is jokes about some shared community that you have, if that's the school or the community. Since you aren't performing for a larger audience, there's no need to try and make it applicable to anyone else.

It's also just really fun to see something that your friends put so much time and effort into! Even if it's a small production, it's really satisfying to put your heart and soul into a piece and see if come to fruition. I think we forget that a lot where we want to make money and milk something for all it's worth. But sometimes it's fun to do something for the sake of doing it!

So that's all, support your local theater productions and make your local artists happy. :) 

On Student Orgs and Responsibility

 I'm having a tough time right now with a student org and I literally cannot say much right now. But I do want to make the point that student orgs have one hell of a responsibility towards its members. If someone comes forward with an issue, then the org needs to act on it and ensure a safe environment for its members. 

If it's a situation where the person doesn't want the board to do anything at all, then this likely isn't an issue for the board. Because once you're in a position of leadership you do have that responsibility and will be held accountable towards that. 

If board members don't want to take action and take on that responsibility, then they shouldn't be in that position. I don't care, that's what you signed up for and that's what you made a commitment to. Anything else is flat out unacceptable.

I am sure I'll have more thoughts on this eventually, and this definitely applies more broadly than just student orgs. But that's all I can really say for now.

This is Beautiful: Chris and Jack's Podcast Pilots the Podcast

 We all know that I've had some tough times recently. One fun thing that has brought me a lot of joy is this podcast that I recently found, "Chris and Jack's Podcast Pilots the Podcast." Jack is Jack De Sena, the voice actor of Sokka from "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (ATLA) and Callum from "The Dragon Prince." Chris is Chris Smith, an actor and writer that I know less about from only watching gay children's cartoons but the two together come up with many sketches and are really good friends.

The premise of this podcast is essentially a bit, it originally started as a Patreon exclusive for the sketch comedy supporters but then it was put up online as a separate thing. The two pitch the premise of a podcast, spend 30 minutes on the pilot, and then evaluate the premises based on if it was fun, repeatable, and added value to the world. (Rarely do any pitches hit all three.) The idea is eventually they'll find a premise that they want to make a second episode of.

I'm not kidding when I say that this series is hilarious, it's wonderful seeing their friendship and watching them flesh out really silly premises and ideas for 30 minutes before evaluating them. I found this podcast through Jack promoting it on "Braving the Elements," the Nickelodeon podcast based on rewatching ATLA, really unfamiliar with any of their sketches. Definitely no prior knowledge is required, there are very few inside jokes that the audience doesn't immediately understand or that aren't explained.

It's also really nice to see these guys just be guys and demonstrate male friendship that clearly isn't toxic or anything like that. There's an episode where they call another one of their friends and end the call with "I love you" and it's super wholesome. Let guys be bros! Go kiss the homies goodnight and listen to this pod!

International Asexuality Day 2022

 Oh my goodness I totally forgot to post for International Asexuality Day this week! International Asexuality Day (IAD) is a day for celebrating asexuality all over the world! This is the second annual IAD and probably my favorite this far haha.

Personally, I celebrated the day by participating in a panel on sex education in schools. It was host by an asexual group based in the Netherlands (NOA) and featured other panelists from Argentina and Italy. It was really cool to hear about everyone else's experiences and thoughts on sex ed, and to get at the differences between countries.

You can watch the panel here! Happy IAD and hug an asexual today.

This Is Beautiful: Grant Submitted

 A grant that I've been working on for months is finally in! It feels so good, there is an enormous weight off of my shoulders. I'm off to nap and do nothing for a while, that is all!

Fuzzy Labels

 This will be a bit of a strange connection between queer culture and machine learning, but stay with me.

So a lot of machine learning is finding similarities and differences between data, whether that's numbers or pictures or something else. As a result, defining boundaries is a key concept. Now there's broadly two ways to define these boundaries: strict and fuzzy boundaries. Strict boundaries are hard limits, for example saying that anyone under 5'2" is short while 5'3" is medium. Fuzzy boundaries are looser, so saying that someone can be both short and medium height at the same time. Fuzzy boundaries were essentially developed to imitate the way humans typically think of boundaries. You can be short in some situations and medium height in others. We don't assign hard labels to anything, it all tends to be situational.

What this made me think of though were labels that we use to describe our identities and orientations. We can use one label in one situation, and one label in another. To some extent, we can be many different labels. Maybe we're kinda bi and maybe we're kinda lesbian. There isn't a strict box for any label, and there isn't a strict box for any person.

But many people don't think of labels this way. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to fit into one definition and for that to be a perfect description of us. Or alternatively a lot of people can put that pressure on us and invalidate certain labels for groups of people. What's really interesting to me though is that this system of "fuzzy boundaries" was developed to fit more how people think of categories. And yet we sometimes reject this mentality in favor of being imposing and dictating just what a certain identity looks like.

Essentially, we all need to relax and embrace fuzzy labels a little more. Don't sweat the details so much, this is an established thing and method of thinking. We are all going to be just fine if we don't fit one category perfectly.