I'm someone who gets really inspired and moved by things. Usually these things are pieces of media or other people. Beautiful is a heavy-lifting adjective for me.

Some movies that have shaped me are Whale Rider, Princess Mononoke, Ajami, and Avatar. I'm also a huge Avatar: the Last Airbender fan. I've been less shaped by, but still moved by, Across the Spiderverse, Brand New Day, Battlestar Galactica, and Arcane. I deeply love the short film Two Cars, One Night.

I have perhaps been even more shaped by books: the Green Bone Saga, Unsong, The Thief Lord, The Sparrow, and the entire Ender Saga. My favorite book is Xenocide. I also love some good nonfiction, like The Sequences, The Gene, and Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and some short stories, like those in Ken Liu's and Ted Chiang's books. Growing up, I was a huge fan of Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, and Wings of Fire.

My music taste has steadily gotten more contemporary over the years, but my favorite album is still Aijuswanaseing by Musiq Soulchild. I also love the Octopath Traveler soundtrack, Oneohtrix Point Never, Nas, the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, the Black Hawk Down soundtrack, the Prince of Narnia soundtrack (I've never even seen these last two movies), and most recently Laundry Day. I love slchld, and my favorite composer has been Ludwig Göransson ever since Black Panther.

Finally, my life has been inextricably impacted by people. I feel deeply grateful to have learned with Bob Frank, Casey Dunn, Jim Wood, Raffaella Zanuttini, Gary Tomlinson, Simon Charlow, Richard Prum, Tom McCoy, David Watts, Maria Mercedes Piñango, and Richard Bribiescas, among others. I also have quite a number of amazing friends, many of whom aren't online, but some of whom are listed here: Ryan Yang-Liu, Deven Huang, Sid Rao, Oona Yaffe, Michael Gao, Kamini Purushothaman, Chris Shia, and Katelyn Wang. And I feel lucky to have collaborated with Richard Luo, Anton Hampe, Natasha Thalluri, Morgan Sinclaire, and Neelasha Sudarshan (at least those on the web). Finally, there are certain blogs I have grown to deeply vibe with - I feel like if I turned the world over to these people everything would work out ok: Scott Alexander, Joe Carlsmith, Ajeya Cotra, Noah Smith, and most recently Eliana Du. I'm also very close to my family, and to my amazing girlfriend.

P.S. I'm a big fan of backpage content like Harry Potter and the Stone, IKEA Heights, and ULTRAVIOLET.