20 - Beep Boop Boop

# Hello

Acknowledging that 2020 has been an abnormal year is about as vapid a sentiment as can be communicated. This year, rather than boring each other with meteorological truisms, we sagely declare at every opportunity that we are "living in crazy times". The fact that we revert back to these inane conversations does suggest to me that we don't actually enjoy talking to each other all that much but just happen to be even less comfortable with silence, clinging to dialogic styrofoam like drowning men to life-rafts.

Image by Nathan Saad.

Anyway, all of this is just a long-winded way of saying that 2020 has indeed been weird but I'm quite enjoying the reduction in small talk (notwithstanding the tragic catalyst for all this weirdness). The other personal benefit has been that I have been working from home since March, excising a couple of commutes from my day and gifting me increased time to work on pointless shit like Keep Cool But Care and this very website.

# dr00bot.com

I initially started putting this website together because I wanted somewhere to host some web-apps and data visualisations, but once I got started I figured I may as well exhibit all my less nerdy projects on here as well. I've also been considering writing a blog for a little while because I do enjoy doing data analysis and building machine learning models in my spare time (this is what I do in my work hours too but on less interesting topics). I plan to mostly write about "data science" (a necessary but gross term that has been co-opted by the cocaine and high-frequency trading brigade) but who knows if that will eventuate. The best laid plans of idiots and robots often do go awry (I also have a Harry Potter podcast where we mostly discuss songs from the late 90s and the NRL).

It does feel slightly uncanny creating a giant shrine to myself since I actually have been burdened with overactive shame sensors and tend to eschew social media for fear of looking foolish. While we are on the topic of insipid opinions, here's another ubiquitous one - "it's ironic that we are more connected than ever before, but somehow more detached" 🤢 . But my disdain for the FAANG crowd doesn't really stem from the modern day svengalis who run them, I'm just often flummoxed by my unselfconsious and prolific friends (at times questioning whether we could possibly be of the same genus). I'm no ideologue though, and while Tik Tok unnerves me, my nostalgia for the halcyon days of the nascent internet is equally strong.

All I really want in this life is to be left alone, but as famous idiot Morrisey once sang, "I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does". So welcome to dr00bot.com; a self-prescribed dose of exposure therapy designed to rid me of chronic embarassment.

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