746A — So I got wasted like all my potential...

Today was less productive than yesterday, but, on the whole, still not as bad as it could have been. There are particular reasons for celebration and particular reasons for sorrow, but this is has always been and will always be true. Maybe that statement is a sense of resignation more than it is a notion of self-acceptance, but it feels at least somewhat true—or, maybe, it is both. As the famous Whitman quote goes, "do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)."

This thought has cropped up on the edge of a lot of small items recently. I don't remember them all—it sort of flits in and out without much impact, although I recall its presence. One thing I do remember it relating to, however, was this fact I discovered on the 18th, based on data from the South Dakota Department of Health and an email from MIT administration:

COVID-19 tests done by MIT yesterday: 1930
COVID-19 tests reported by South Dakota yesterday: 954

I tweeted this with a thinking emoji, which garnered a surprisingly large reaction. One interesting response came from one of my high school debate teammates, who asked me to "clarify the point you’re making with this post." To me, this seemed counterintuitive. There wasn't really a point, a specific argument I was making. To me, it just seemed like this was a fact that was absurd on its face. There's something absurd about this situation. As is commonly said: "that's it. That's the whole tweet."

It is perhaps interesting, however, to examine this specific circumstance. I think we can start to try and deconstruct why this seems absurd to us—and what the societal factors are causing this conflict. Personally, I think it's prima facie an indictment of the South Dakota government, which can't even get its resources together in a manner comparable to a college which serves a much smaller community. However, I think there's something that also strikes me as unreasonable in the fact that MIT is capable of doing something like this—that we have the resources to accomplish more than an entire state (no matter how little that state is trying) and that, even though I feel MIT is doing is unarguably good for its community, it makes me wonder why we have the power to do this. Why is MIT, an obviously tiny portion of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, capable of conducting 20% of its tests on a given day? It reflects a failure of the state writ large (i.e. in the broad sense of "government"), but it also reflects a failure of society (or is it a failure? maybe I haven't read enough of the literature to conclude this) in allowing private institutions to concentrate this much power, in whatever form it takes. (Capital, of course, but also in this case, the direct translation of that capital to human safety.)

The reason this reminded me of the Whitman quote is that these two lenses feel like they are somewhat in conflict, as well as the fact that the second lens is in conflict with my personal interest in my institution. The point is, therefore, that it is possible for all of these ideas to be true in some sense of that word. The world is large; it contradicts itself.

Enough philosophizing for the day, I think. Today was reasonably decent. I woke up at a reasonable time (around 9 AM), which was immensely surprising and a great sign—until I laid in bed and sort of just let the moment fade away while on my phone (no carpe diem for me) for hours on end. I eventually got up, ate lunch, and then spent some time playing a few piano sonatinas to sort of reinvigorate myself. Eventually, this led to me actually accomplishing some small tasks, although this was not at all consistent nor up to expectations, in the broad sense of that word. I called my fellow UROP for a bit, discussing our work and our plan for the presentation/report we need to put together. I also worked away at some 18.701 [Algebra I] content, which was fun, although I am once again struggling a little to make the small jumps in thought process necessary to complete proofs. Such is life and learning math, I suppose.

I did some additional 18.701 work after dinner, along with some other time-wasting activities. Eventually, it came time to go to bed, so here I am, writing this.

Tomorrow, a small 18.701 gathering if I don't sleep through it, and then hunkering down in preparation for ESC week. In unrelated news, the smoke from fires in Colorado and California have been wafting their way over to my state, and we are now shrouded in it. I can smell it, and my throat itches, which is hopefully not a sign of a disease that will deny me access to the state of Massachusetts. We'll see when it passes.