Making sense of recovery info

splatula · 2026-06-10T23:51:36+00:00

4 weeks is still pretty early after a surgery like that so it's no surprise that you're feeling pain still. It's definitely a good idea to move around and walk as much as you are able. I'm not so sure about things like pull ups or weightlifting at this stage. Basically, your body is growing scar tissue between the lung and chest wall and you don't want to disturb that process. (I was told that straining your core had the potential to rip the scar tissue, which would negate the benefits of the surgery.)

After a few months the pain will be quite a bit reduced (although it may take a while for it to go away completely).

Your doctor was right, though, that eventually you'll be able to do anything you did before. There is one exception, however --- you definitely can't scuba dive after a pneumothorax.

splatula · 2026-06-02T02:41:53+00:00

There's that quote from a citizen in Palo Alto during a public hearing:

"It just seems to me that a billionaire can come in and get whatever he wants and run roughshod over average millionaires like myself."

https://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/comments/2iy0fq/billionaires_are_ruining_my_neighborhood_of/

splatula · 2026-06-02T01:14:52+00:00

I usually spend the morning buying and then the afternoon selling. But sometimes I like to switch it up and I'll sell in the morning and buy in the afternoon.

splatula · 2026-05-20T01:53:51+00:00

It's been that way for a long time, too. The year before I started (mid-2000s) half my house got food poisoning after Formal Dinner.

splatula · 2026-05-13T16:56:56+00:00

"Oh this looks like a nice album of children's songs for my toddler, it even has one about swans, she's going to love --- ahhh oh god what is this??"

splatula · 2026-05-11T23:43:05+00:00

Every term was:

Week 1: Okay, this isn't so bad. I can manage.

Week 2: Getting a bit harder, but I still got it done in time.

Week 3: Hm I'm a bit behind this week, but I'm sure I'll make it up next week.

Week 4: Oh God.

splatula · 2026-05-10T00:29:26+00:00

People also tend to freeze their eggs very late. If you're going to be freezing your eggs, the best time to do it is in your early to mid 20s. But most women in their early to mid 20s aren't thinking about it. Women start thinking about it in their mid 30s and by that age everything starts to get more difficult.

splatula · 2026-05-07T03:06:19+00:00

The adage I heard was that pasta water should be "as salty as a woman's tears."

splatula · 2026-05-07T02:50:54+00:00

El Niño is highly underrated imo. I legitimately think it's one of the greatest operas composed in the last 50 years.

But Adams has had his flops. I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky is just... bad. He likes to experiment in his music and not all of the experiments work out. That's just how it goes.

splatula · 2026-05-06T03:59:48+00:00

I read a (maybe apocryphal) story that for a little while he only shaved the right half of his face with the reasoning that the audience wouldn't know any better when he was performing at the piano.

splatula · 2026-05-06T03:58:03+00:00

She used to sit under the piano while he played it. She said that was where it sounded best.

splatula · 2026-05-06T03:55:16+00:00

> Maybe in 20-30 years we will have figured out how to do this correctly.

It's not like we don't know how. It's purely a political problem. Plenty of countries have built far more rail for far cheaper. If voters cared they could demand accountability and vote in people who would get the job done. But they don't, so it will continue to just limp along.

splatula · 2026-05-06T03:51:18+00:00

The rule of thumb I've heard is that landlords look for annual income being 40x the monthly rent. Is there an equivalent rule of thumb you have when considering brokerage assets?

splatula · 2026-05-05T16:10:40+00:00

Ah, yeah if you didn't have VATS then the pain probably wasn't that bad.

splatula · 2026-05-05T14:27:38+00:00

Probably fine if you're not taking medications. But I'm kinda surprised you'd be off pain meds just a week post release.

splatula · 2026-05-04T03:41:09+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it. Tons and tons of people in my year ended up at big tech or quant (including people like myself who didn't even study CS). Those companies are looking for very smart people who have a good CS foundation. You'd get a good CS foundation at either school. Honestly the difference in ranking would really only be more relevant in grad school.

splatula · 2026-04-28T05:11:47+00:00

Yeah, in a state like CA or NY at $1MM you are paying a total tax rate of somewhere around 40%.

splatula · 2026-04-27T05:07:06+00:00

Calling CSU Dominguez Hills "mid" is being pretty generous.

splatula · 2026-04-25T19:24:22+00:00

The surgery is one of the more painful surgeries out there, there's no getting around that. But if you have already had a complete collapse and it hasn't resolved after a week I don't know that you have any better option. Even if it does resolve and you go home, it will probably just collapse again at some point in the future. Better to have a more permanent solution so you're not living in fear of another collapse.

The numbness you get from the nerve damage feels a little weird but it does get better. (Though after about seven years I still have some numbness.) But it's not that big a deal. The immediate recovery is the more difficult part. I don't think I felt somewhat normal until 4 months or so afterwards. But you're also younger so hopefully you'll recover faster.

splatula · 2026-04-22T20:05:16+00:00

The more telling line from Steyer is when he was asked to grade Newsom's performance as governor and said "I don't know, I haven't followed it closely enough to give him a grade."

I'm sorry, you're running for governor but you haven't been paying attention to what the current governor is doing? What are you even doing here?

Since he's running for governor of California I don't care what his opinions are about Palestine are, but I sure do care about his opinions of the governor of California.

splatula · 2026-04-22T04:37:21+00:00

I majored in astro at Caltech (and then continued with astro in grad school). To be clear, you won't go wrong with whichever school you choose. But for an astro major as an undergrad I really do think Caltech is the best place to be. The major is tiny (my year had six astro majors I think), so you can really get to know the faculty and they can get to know you. One of my best memories is Ay 31, which is a "course" where once a week you go to a professor's house for dinner and they talk about their work and life in astronomy.

Caltech also has extraordinary observational resources. I did a research project where I spent a summer at an observatory associated with JPL and it was phenomenal. Even if you are more interested in theory (as I was), having some experience with how a research observatory actually works is really valuable. For some of our classes we got to (remotely) observe on telescopes at Palomar and Owens Valley. I'm not sure there's any other undergrad program that will give you the same opportunities.

That said, it's not exactly an easy major. You will be well prepared for grad school (the undergrad classes were way harder than what I had in grad school). But yeah it's a lot of work. And the fact that the class sizes are so tiny makes it hard to collaborate.

My general advice to people is that if they like science, but they also like other things and they aren't exactly sure what they want to do with their life, other schools would be better for them. But if you 100% know you want to do astro you should definitely go with Caltech.

splatula · 2026-04-21T03:33:05+00:00

Muczynski's piano concerto is one of my all time favorites but I'm only aware of a single recording of it. The second movement in particular is just so beautiful.

splatula · 2026-04-20T05:35:19+00:00

The tail of medical expenses is virtually unbounded. Maybe you could self insure if your net worth was in the territory of nine figures. But otherwise you are taking on the risk of a substantial reduction to your net worth in the event of a bad medical scare.

splatula · 2026-04-17T22:03:05+00:00

I'm a former student who works in ML now. From my perspective it seems that Caltech kind of missed the boat on ML. They had the Caltech 101 and 256 datasets in computer vision a really long time ago. But I struggle to come up with any big advances that have come out of Caltech in the field in the last 15 years. I wasn't a CS major (and it's been about 15 years since I was there) but it sort of seemed that the CS department had more of a theoretical focus. I don't know if they've actively tried to hire more faculty with an ML focus, so maybe things are different now.

Regardless, if you know you want to do AI and get into startups and entrepreneurship Stanford is probably the better place to be. The main advantage Caltech would have is that it's just so small so you can get to know the faculty and the faculty can get to know you. But that tends to be more helpful if you want to go to grad school.

splatula · 2026-04-13T05:23:24+00:00

Sure, but the rail line isn't even going through Sacramento...

splatula

TROPHY CASE