Hi! I’m @ftlsid. I’m a scientist-adventurer-writer in search of fun and freedom. I quit my full-time engineering job in April of 2022. Since then, I’ve been traveling, creating, and figuring out what it means to live well.

I also write on substack at cybermonk. If you’d like to support me, buy me a coffee!

• Insulation - on opening yourself to the world
• Reflections one year after leaving my job
• The inner world - on my relationship with fantasy
• Reflections on independent research

• Quitting your full-time job
• left my job last week…
  • follow-up thread five months later
  • reflections, a year later
• How do you make money without a job?
• Reflections on turning 24
• Excuses - on money-making schemes
• Intentionally, nothing - how I spend my time

How should one act?

• North - on honor
• Insulation - on opening yourself to the world
• Why would I? - why I don’t have the same goals as most people
• “Unhinged”
• On being
• Book recommendations

Immersion in fantasy as a child really affected my perception of reality.

• The inner world - on my relationship with fantasy
• Wind - more on fantasy

Some tweets that I find meaningful:

• does anyone else repeatedly get attached to new ideas?
• intimacy of work
• where is the energy
• hands

I have a tendency to analyze the world like a machine. The following pages are slices of that mindset.

• Invert the applicant mindset
• Never public markets
• Making money
• Become the broker
• Against fairness
• Let yourself speciate
• Avoid linear actions

I have an ongoing love affair with Japan; I grew up watching anime, I speak Japanese fluently, and I’ve traveled all over Japan several times.

• Learning Japanese
• Japan again
• Japan adventure log
• Those words - on studying a foreign language
• pieces of mind - snippets from Japan
• Sushi - on authenticity, effort
• Reflections on traveling

I’ve been building electronics and writing software since I was very young. I’m also an independent researcher, and I’ve studied male pattern baldness and artificial life extensively. One of my long-running goals is to understand the computational basis for evolution.

• How I got interested in tech
• Reflections on independent research
• Summary of my artificial life research
• why I want to visit New Caledonia
• Why do many men go bald? (work in progress)
• Avoiding baldness (practical tips)
• some plant pics
• fossils!

This website contains my notes. You can navigate using the graph below, search by pressing /, or visit the index of all notes.