Guilherme Turnes' Blog

Burnout Society

Published on February 28th, 2025

Byung-Chul Han (b. 1959) is certainly one of the most famous modern philosophers. This is because he is capable of synthesizing our current times with perfection, clarifying things we didn’t have a clear view of yet. He is part of German thought, even though he was born in South Korea. Thus, it isn’t hard to conceive of his books being full of references to Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche.

“Burnout Society” is his most famous work to date. It is a short essay investigating our modern society and why people have been so tired recently. Neurodivergencies like ADHD have been becoming more and more common, and we are experiencing a depression and anxiety crisis worldwide. People are becoming extremely occupied and don’t have time for leisure anymore, and superficiality has taken over. Hence, Han’s work is of paramount importance.

To begin his train of thought, Han starts by describing the evolution of violence through time, explaining that we now live in a period characterized by neuronal violence, which contrasts with the previous immunological violence. The latter corresponds to violence where the self tries to negate the other, and vice versa (a process that creates the negation of the negation). However, as time passed, alterity has turned from an enemy into something more akin to a weight we have to carry.

Furthermore, the phase we are living in has been characterized by an excess of positivity – this is the dialectic of positivity, in Hegelian terms. The dialectic of positivity consists of a process characterized by a dialectical process of similarity, not alterity. Therefore, the violence we experience today is not a violence against the other, but rather against ourselves. We are not trying to negate the other; we’re actually experiencing an excess of affirmation towards ourselves. This is what characterizes what he calls neuronal violence, and this is the process we frequently see in our daily lives.

Neuronal violence is always characterized by excess, especially the excess of the self. One example of this is what the philosopher calls the “yes, I can do it” culture, which corresponds to the current glorification of productivity, which only ties us to this “it.” We are tying ourselves to too many things, incapable of contemplating or doing nothing, denying ourselves for a while. Moreover, Han uses the two types of violence to classify the previous society and our current one.

The previous society is the one described by Foucault in his work, where the individual suffers from coercion – constant surveillance – to maintain productivity. Therefore, this society is called the disciplinary society. Nowadays, according to Han, we live in a performance society, where we are told we are “our own bosses,” capable of managing our own lives. However, what this actually does is make us paranoid.

For capitalism, it is more productive to have individuals enslaving themselves rather than having someone act as a slave owner because it makes coercion easier to accept by the enslaved person. In reality, there is no coercion; the individual thinks it is their own will to remain within the productivity chain, as Byung-Chul Han explains in his other book, What Is Power?.

Additionally, the way stimuli are distributed to us has changed. As Han says, we live in a society dominated by the pedagogy of seeing, where a constant stream of visuals rules. This system incapacitates us from reflecting; everything around us serves to distract us from our own minds.

As he said: “The excess of positivity also manifests itself as the excess of stimuli, information, and impulses, radically modifying the economy of attention with these fragments and destroying attention.” (Han, Byung-Chul. Sociedade do Cansaço, p. 31). Moreover, this seems to be another way capitalism profits from our destruction: mitigating our attention means selling us more, especially to fulfill the desire to be entertained, or at least not be in profound tedium.

Afterward, the philosopher discusses two concepts: vita activa and vita contemplativa. Vita activa refers to the practice of having an active life, where action and doing are prioritized. He argues that this type of living is unhealthy, as it blocks any chance for deeper reflection, going against the thoughts of Hannah Arendt.

Vita contemplativa is the complete opposite. It is a life of contemplation, observation, and thinking. It is slower and less active, but it does not profoundly harm us. Han mentions Aristotle’s ideal life, which corresponds to this, in short. For him, this is what might solve our problems, somehow allowing people to have negativity – a negation of the self.

Reusing a quote from Nietzsche that appears in the book: “From lack of repose, our civilization is turning into a new barbarism. At no time have the active, that is to say, the restless, counted for more. That is why one of the most necessary corrections to the character of mankind that must be undertaken is a considerable strengthening of the contemplative element in it.”

Proving That (Some) Countable Infinite Sets Have The Same Cardinality

Published on January 23rd, 2025

Hello! This is my first post on pure mathematics per se, what makes me feel strange since from the beginning of this quasi-blog I said I would write about mathematics. To be honest, this wouldn't become a post. I was just curious about the topic and wanted to try doing the proof myself as some kind of exercise, however - as it took me a while to complete it - I decided to post it here. Moreover, I didn't know I could add math symbols to HTML and I got excited with this (I thought I'd have to first write in LaTeX and then use images of the writings).

In my opinion, this set of proofs is neither elementary or advanced. It is quite hard to get a first (it can escalate to really hard concepts if you keep asking deeper questions), but it is nothing from other world. Other proofs involving infinite sets cardinalities - especially those uncountable - are way harder. Basically, it consists of creating a one-one and onto map of the elements of one set (domain) to another (image). This means that the value in the image - or counterdomain as both are equal in this case - is unique for every single value of the domain and every single value of the image has a correspondent element in the domain that fits this requisites. As a consequence of these conditions, the cardinality of the image (number of elemts on it) should be equal to the one from the domain.

What I said can be expressed mathematically the following way:

Now, I'll shortly explain the difference between countable and uncountable sets since it's important to know this difference for the proofs I'll show you. In summary, Georg Cantor proved that there are different kinds of infinites. Meaning that even with have two infinite sets, we might not be able to create such a mapping between them. For example, we can't map the whole numbers to the real numbers since one infinite is "bigger" than the other one. Thus, it is common to use different notations to differ (a pleonasm!) these infinities when we're talking about sets. We call every single set with the same cardinality as ℕ a countable infinite set, a little bit vague, but this is what we have. I like to see these sets as sets where there is no elements in-between the two extremes of an interval of a given size, in other words (a,b) = ∅, where a = min([a,b]) and b = max([a,b]) (I think this might create problems somewhere, that's why the formal definition is different, but it helps me to imagine things better).

With all the things we had to do before starting to prove things done, let's start! In my opinion, the best proof to start is proving that the cardinalities of the set of natural even numbers and the natural numbers are equal. Also, we define the cardinality of the last one as ℵ₀ by convention. As stated, the first thing to do is find a mapping between the two sets. A really simple one is the following: (0,0), (2,1), (4,2), (6,3), and so on. Getting the pattern of it is simple since the first element of the order pair is the double of the second (or the second element is half the first, do it as you want). Thus, we can write f(x) = x/2, with f: 2ℕ → ℕ (note that 2ℕ means the set of multiples of two in ℕ ).

After defining the function, we have to prove it bijective. Firstly, let's start with injection:

Now let's do the same, but for surjection:

Hence, we have proven |2ℕ| = |ℕ| = ℵ₀.

Let us then do our final proof. In this case, we will show |ℕ| = |ℤ|. The best way to do this is by using a function by parts to map the elements of the sets. So, lets organize our ordered pairs in the following way: (0,0), (1,-1), (2,1), (3,-2), (4,2), and so on. To see how the function actually looks like, lets separate it in odd and even x values. Thus, we have (0,0), (2,1), (4,2), and so on, and (1,-1), (3,-2), (5,-3), and so on. For the evens, f(x) = x/2, which implies that the part of the whole positive numbers is covered since we proved this function is bijective above. Now, it might be quite hard to observe, but we can say that f(x) = -(2x + 1)/2 for odd values (test it yourself).

Then, we just have to do our procedure from before:

So, that's it for this post. I decided to show this proofs because they're cool enough to be here, because in my view they show the concept of "infinites greater than other infinites" is more complex than what is commonly thought. Also, they're simple enough to a high schooler understand, however you can estipulate questions such: "How could I expand this proofs to the rational numbers?", or "How can I demonstrate the real numbers are of different cardinality?". From now on, if I find some problem I solved to be interesting I'll try to bring it here. If there were any typos or math mistakes in this post, please contact me because I will promptly change them. Thanks for reading!

"Sputnik Sweetheart", By Haruki Murakami

Published on January 16th, 2025

Another Murakami book on this blog! Seriously, I love reading his novels and this one has certainly entered in my top of all time. Just to warn you, this book contains a couple of sensitive topics that I won't be mentioning here in order to everybody be able to read the post, however think twice before buying if you don't like this kind of thing.

Like many other Murakami's novels, this also discusses dualism, especially the distinction between dream and reality. As far as I've noticed, this is the most common charactheristic of the author's books and is generally a central part of the plot, and with "Sputnik Sweetheart" it's not different.

The novel is written in the perspective of K., a history teacher living in Tokyo who loves reading. He's the best (and only) friend of Sumire, the girl that is the main focus of the plot. She is an aspiring novelist who lives with an allowance given by her father and stepmother. Both met at college randomly (thry were four semesters apart from each other), however Sumire ended up giving on it because it was not what she want.

She, as well as K. loved reading and this was what firstly united them, however, as the time past, they started to create a stronger bond to a point where they could talk about everything. Usually Sumire would call K. in the middle of the night to talk with him, what somewhat annoyed K., but he always answered her.

Sumire - Violet in Japanese - has this name because of the piece Das Veilchen of Mozart. Her mother loved the piece because it sounded sweet, however the lyrics are the complete opposite, telling the story of a girl who destroys a violet without even noticing, inspired by a poem of Goethe. This annoys her but she still used her name when necessary.

During one of their conversations, Sumire mentioned not being able to complete the start or end of a book, making her writing always incomplete. She doubted she would ever finish somethings, in her view, she lacked some key internal component as she also never felt passion or love to anynone. However, K. argued she would one day fall in love with somebody, what six months later happened. Also, he told her that stories are things that take their "soul" from the other world - what resembles me of Plato's World of Ideas. Then, K. explained an ancient Chinese superstition of killing dogs and distributing their bloods in sacrifice to the fallen warriors in order to ask them protection. The blood of the dogs would symbolize the passsagem from "here" to "there", as this would connect both worlds.

As K. predicted, Sumire had fallen in love - for a older woman. Her name was Miu and she was a Korean entroponeour who inherited her father's company and was its president even though she didn't work there, rather she had a wine importing company that bought from all over Europe. They met in an event and talked a lot about music. In fact, Miu studied piano in France and Switzerland, however an event that happened 14 years prior made she stop completely. They agreed in everything when it came to music and by the end of the event Sumire was already in love.

Then, Miu offered Sumire a job in her company, which she accepted even though it was different from what she originally intended. There, she'd learn Italian while also being a kind of sercretary of Miu. In the event, Miu asked what was the difference between sign and symbol (a duality), what she didn't quite know. Thus, she asked K. which answered her comparing Japan with the King of Japan.

Suddenly, Sumire disappeared, however she actually went to Europe with Miu, as she later clarified to K., for work. There they spent most of their time in Italy, however they met a English man who offered them a stay in his summer cabin in a Greek island not far from Rhodes. They were having a good time until Sumire completely disappeared. Then Miu called K. and asked if he could came to Greece and help in the search for Sumire, what he promptely does although he had to start working in one week.

There, he learns things about both Miu and Sumire, that I prefer to not say here, but they didn't help to find Sumire at all. However, they clarified she was in this kind of other world, as well as half of Miu. She somehow ran away there and K. was sure of that. He had some experiences involving it as well while he was in the island. Then he returend to Tokyo, and after a while received a call from Sumire saying she returned, comparing her journey to Ulisses' odissey to Ithaca.

Miu, however, disappeared. K. had seen her once, but she was unacessible and appeared to be just a shell, in the middle of life and death. In my view, she was the "dog" Sumire had sacrificed. She had to let her go, then she'd be able to become whole, complete. Like a satellite, they met and fell in love, but their orbits would soon get separated and would never meet again.

As far as I see, Murakami likes to work with dualism in his novels, and here he points out how things such as dream and reality, life and death, and even sign and symbol, are intrinsically connected to eachother, and some things are born from the mixture of those. However, the two are always opposite forces, who keep an consistent eternal duel (like Hegel's Dialectics). Moreover, I see Murakami arguaing that dualism isin't everything, pointing out the importance of subtle changes, and that reality works more like a gradient rather than a simple two collor pallete.

Sumire is an in between, in my view, travelling in between the two worlds, two personalities, masculine and feminine. To be honest, reading Murakami is hard, it takes a while to mature the ideas of a book of his. But, as K.'s personal motto says, a little original thought/idea of yours is better than the whole previously discovered great ideas.

Thank you for reading! Today I managed to write a really long post. If you read the book and want to discuss, my email is in the contact section of the blog.

"Love And Math", By Edward Frenkel

Published on January 12th, 2025

Recently I've finished Frenkel's "Love and Math" and for sure this was an incredible book. I borrowed it in my cities library randomly, I'd already heard of it, but never looked up anything about it. First things first, seeing this book in my town's library was surprising since it is really small and there isin't many people interested in mathematics over here. As far as I've checked the last person who borrowed it did it almost 15 years ago, what is comprehensible. Reading it was certainly a pleasure.

For those who haven't read it yet, it tells Frank's story with mathematics and his research on the Langlands Program. Starting from his teenage years where he he first had contact with key concepts of the subject such as simmetry, then passing through his college life and research with Boris Feigin to his arrival at Harvard University and his research the book tells the entirety of the Langlands Program story and explains a little bit of the math involving it.

For me it is beautiful to see the intrinsic connections between different math fiels and even quantum physics. Mathematics seems to be an extra sense, as Darwin said in a quote shown in the book. It is also beautiful, there's something in mathematics that makes it atractible to the soul. I also loved to read Frenkel's autobiography. His story is truly interesting, especially his time in his homeland Russia and his first steps doing research.

To be honest, I'm not the proper person to explain the math in the book so I invite you to read it yourself and be amazed with mathematics, especially if you aren't into it yet.

Math Olympiads

Published on January 9th, 2025

Here in Brazil we have a huge culture sorrounding mathematical olympiads because of OBMEP. This is a test organized by IMPA, the Institute of Pure and Applied Maths of Brazil, who is the "home" of notable people such as Artur Avila, who won the Fields Medal in 2014. This olympiad was a way to make more people start studying mathematics and trying to bringing the subject into people's life.

The numbers of it are really big, with usually 18-20 million anual participants annually, making this by far the biggest mathematics olympiad in the world. It serves as an entry point to OBM, that is the final step before the IMO for Brazilian students. Getting a prize on it is hard, with only a few hundreds getting the gold medal, the greatest prize on the competition. This olympiad was what popularized the model of competitions in Brazil with now almost every state having its own and also other competitions being created.

Usually, math olympiads involve harder problems in areas students see in school normally, especially mechanical problems, with only a few olympiads covering demonstrations, for example. To be honest, I don't see any problems with mechanical problems, however I think these competitions depict what is mathematics in a wrong way.

It is common to see in the sciences a lot of competition, what is awful and just creates a more hostile community that gets more and more isolated from society, making science underplayed. As a consequence of this kind of competition, many put the idea that they should always be the best or that sciences involve superiority, what is a lie. Mathematics is about mathematics, afterall, not about who collects more prizes and honors. Yes, you get recognition from your work and that's awesome, but if you work only for recognition the sciences in general aren't your deal.

Obviously, mathematical olympiads are a awesome way of getting into the science, as I've stated previously this was how I firstly fell in love with the subject. They also can bring a lot of opportunities. I, for instance, was able to spend time in my state's university maths' departament and there I met many people who certainly impacted on me. Simple things such as someone explaining me partial derivatives (I was starting multivariable calculus at the time and a math major helped me in getting the idea behind them) to getting carrer advice in the area.

Still, I think we should try new practices in order to stimulate mathematics in society, especially for young people. Math is everywere, it has always been. Charles Darwin once said those who knew mathematics appeared to have an extra sense, so developing mathematics is a kind of freeing act, in my opinion. By it, you discover a new reality, or multiple of those. Thus, you start seeing beauty everywhere, how even simple things are actualy just a shell for complex mechanisms that consist in the world we live in.

Thoughts On "After Dark", By Haruki Murakami

Published on December 17th, 2024

Introduction

This is not my first book by Murakami, he is already my favorite author, making me biased to recommend you this book. But his work is amazing without any doubts. In my opinion, this novel is perfect for those who never read Murakami before or for those who don't like the explicit content in his other works since it does not have any highly descriptive scenes of that kind. Haruki Murakami is a master of magical realism and in creating deep stories with good ambience. In this book, the author transports the reader to the late night Tokyo in a way it appears to be real. So, give it a try.

Summary

Eri

Eri's part of the story is short. At first, she is sleeping and the narrator, who describes itself as "we" - usually referring to itself as camera, a perspective -, starts telling the reader about her room and her appearence, reenforcing the idea of the girl's beauty.

After it, something strange starts to happen with Eri's TV. Even though it was off, images started forming on it and later on a strange man appears on it (this is the most confusing part of the story) and keeps glancing at her.

When the narrator returns to the room, Eri was not there anymore. Later, it finds she was on the TV, the other world or "there". It proceeds to go there and see her in confusion trying to understand what happenned.

Finally, Eri is back in her room and Mari goes there silently and hugs here, entering in sleep together with Eri (it is not clear if she will wake up or not or what will happen later), ending the novel.

Mari, Takahashi, And Kaoru

"After Dark" tells the story of multiple characthers, but focuses in Mari Asai. She is a 19-year-old gril who is trying to run away from a problem: her sister went to sleep to months before and the never woke up.

Mari almost never had a good realtionship with her sister. She describes her sister as "Snow White" and herself as "sheep shepherd". She reckons herself as someone normal, by this, she means that she does not present any talent for something.

Takahashi, who studied with Mari's Sister - Eri, sees Mari sitting alone at a Denny's and decides to sit with her, what she reluctantly accepts. There, they talk for a while, making us know a little bit more about both.

Takahashi was going to practice playing music with his band and had to leave, leaving Mari alone. However, a little bit after, a woman named Kaoru reaches her asking if she knew Chinese, what Mari did, and asks for Mari's help.

Kaoru is the manager of the motel Alphaville, what later on made Mari rememeber of Jean-Luc Godard's movie with the same title. There, a Chinese prostitute had been violented and robbed by a salary-man.

Thus, Kaoru, Mari, and two other workers from the motel - Koorugui and Komugui, start a journey to find who was the criminous. They were sucsseful since they were able to find a video of him in the motel's cameras, and them Kaoru gives a picture of the man to the Chinese mafia member who came to pick up the Chinese girl, in order for him to "revenge".

Later, Mari meets Takahashi again to talk more, goes to the motel and has a realy important conversation with Koorugui, sleeps for a while, and again meets Takahashi to go home.

Shirakawa

Shirakawa is the officer who violented and robbed the prostitute. He is shown working in a computer company called "Veritech" overnight, solving a problem at the company's servers.

His wife calls him, asking why he didn't come home that day as he had promissed. He lies to her, covering up the case with the Chinese girl. He then proceeds to promisse that on the next week he would be returning again to his normal working hours and go home on time again (probably a lie since the man wanted to avoid his family at all costs).

Then, we see him exercising in the sound of classical music and getting a taxi to go back home. Then, he stops at a 7-Eleven to buy something his wife asked and throw away the prostitute's things.

There, he lefts the telephone of the girl, that is later found by Takahashi who was going to buy some food. A man says that when he felt someone touching his back, he knew what was going to happen. Takahashi finds the message stranges and gives the phone to the store's cashier in order for the owner to get it back again. Later, the cashier receives a simillar call.

"Here" And "There"

Murakami is an author who likes to portray the world in a way where things are uncertain. In the novel, he does this with maestry, contrasting two places: "here" and "there". These are subjective, and change depending on the speaker and the way in which we interpret them, however, he generally wants to show us that the distinction between the two isin't clear.

The first sight of this view comes with Eri Asai, who is in a profound sleep state, living in a species of in-between reality and dream. She wakes only for the sake of keeping her body functioning, and sleeps for the rest of the time. Then this progresses to a point in where she goes to a place of nothing. Koorugui, one of the workers of the Alphaville motel. Talks on how she wanted to enter in eternal sleep - simillar to Eri, even though she didn't knew her situation at the time - in order to run away from something. This seems to be the same to Eri. Something is keeping her amidst both places.

Takahashi also mentions something simillar. He tells that, when he was in a court case, he watched a man be condmend to death penalty. Immediately, he thought the man lived in a completely world from his, however, as he continued to reflect, he realized both worlds could have already merged, and that the distinctions between them were unclear. When talking with Mari, he mentions something as a thin pelicule which divided both worlds that could be easily transpassed, something that made things unclear.

When the two were going to the train station in order to Mari go home. Mari tells Takahashi something about her personality, leading him to disagree with her. In his opinion, her temper wasn't "shadowy", as she said. Nevertheless, he mention how this shadow is the in-between light and dark, and therefore reality wasn't a pure duality but a rather complex system.

Before, in the motel, Koorugui tells Mari to find a moment, a memory, where she and her sister had been conected. Where two different people, from different worlds, "here" and "there", where the same. Later, she tells this moment to Takahashi, and as we see in the end, she seems to reconect with Eri. Conjuncting to different things at something exclusive, unique, a kind of shadow that is the mix between of two conflicting forces.

Urban Life And Its Problems

Another topic that is present in the novel is urban life. More especifically, the late night life. Murakami portrays the scenario of a global metropolis perfectly.

Its interesting to see people going at cafés and restaurants at night for many different reasons. People who work late at night going to eat, couples hanging out, or people trying to run away from something of the day (like Mari).

The motel case contributes to this because it portrays the poor conditions of work of women who had to unfortunatelly take the same path as the Chinese girl. Usually, in big urban conglomerates, this type of things start to hapenning with more frequence.

I see, in the man who commited the violence against the Chinese woman, the picture of the broken patriarchate. He is a man who is distant from his family, trying to run away from his marriage and children. Because of this, he starts to use the type of service the Chinese girl offered. Basically, the man lives in two different worlds.

The crime in question is common something that is not rare in real life. People like the Chinese woman don't have a way to protect themselves. For society, they aren't individuals, so they live in a life of invisibility.

What I've Listened This Year

Published on December 11th, 2024

It has come to the time of the year where for a brief moment everybody talks about their Spotify Wrapped. To be honest, I hate it. It makes all you listen to feel like a simple statistic. It seems to break the entire purpose of music for me because it encourages passive listening, as Spotify as whole does. People brag about listening to music 24/7 instead of actually talking about the artists they've listened to. Thus, I decided to list some albuns I've listened this year and just write a little bit about why I like them.

Clube da Esquina by Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges

In my opinion, Clube da Esquina is the best album in the entirety of Brazillian music. Its name is also the name of an artistic movement both authors took part. This movement was informal, consisting of friends in the state of Minas Gerais that frequently gathered themselves to write music. Certainly Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges are the most famous members of Clube da Esquina, however other like Beto Guedes, Wagner Tiso, and Márcio Borges also had an important role in the development of the movement.

Realesed in 1972, Clube da Esquina is certainly different from what already existed in Brazillian music, especially MPB, the genre of the album. It has diverse influence, including jazz, samba, and The Beatles' rock. The authors included regional influences in their music too. Representing the culture of Minas Gerais while also trying to depict the reality in all Brazil. This makes the sonority of it incredible.

The lyrics of most songs are profound and represent different themes, however, depicting poltical, philosophical, social, and instrospective themes is common for the artists. Moreover, the voice of Milton Nascimento is probably the best in the country too (and certainly one of the best in the world). I don't know how to explain that well since I'm not a professional musician nor know a lot about technical things, nevertheless he has a strong voice, that marks his presence.

Clandestino by Manu Chao

Manu Chao's Clandestino is certainly an album that depicts the core of South American music, with diverse influences from the continent. It was a product of the musician's travellings around the world after the fragmentation of his band, Mano Negra, in 1994. The lyrics show the struggles of a modern world including topics such as crime, illegal immigration, the invisibility of certain people, more.

One charactheristic of Chao's album is the usage of pieces of audio of a diversity of sources in his songs, including radio transmissions, news, speeches, and other songs. The feel that this creates in his music is something I really appreaciate. Also, the musician preferred to keep an acoustic aesthetic, highlighting his acoustic guitar and his voice, what contributed to the message he want to transmit with the album.

For Lovers by Lamp

I'm learning Japanese, so I still don't get most of the lyrics of Japanese musicians and bands, however I still like them a lot, especially because of the sonority. One of these bands is Lamp. Recently, Lamp got popular on the internet and it wasn't without reason. They have a calming rythm that mixes bossa-nova, shibuya-kei, and city pop. This mixture is the reason behind the creation of interesting compositions that caught my ear.

Flying Beagle by Himiko Kikuchi

I don't even remember when I first listened to this album, but I certainly know the cover and title were two things that made do it. However, what was just a random album that I had found suddenly became my entry point to japanese jazz-fusion. Kikuchi presents vibrant tracks that give me different feelings. I always liked funky music, especially soul and classic funk. Thus, jazz-fusion was a perfect match for me. Many of its influences come from Brazillian music, what makes me like it even more.

I cannot describe the feeling that listening to Kikuchi's album gives me. I think it is something unique to every person, but it seems to transport me to another place.

Seychelles by Masayoshi Takanaka

Takanka's Seychelles is probably my favorite jazz-fusion album. It, alike Kikuchi's Flying Beagle, makes me feel in another place. It has a tropical sounding, what is a common charactheristic of Takanaka. Also, we see a kind of idealized version of tropical places as paradisiac places. Also, because of this and other works, Masayoshi Takanaka has become my favorite guitarrist.

Rubber Soul by The Beatles

This album by The Beatles is certainly a classic. Songs such as "In My Life" marked generations of listeners. I always have been a fan of The Beatles' rock, but what made me listen to this album this year was Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. When I started reading the novel, I kept listening to the song which gave the book's title and the whole album by consequence. Usually Murakami makes conections between song lyrics and his works. Thus, this helped me understanding the novel a little bit more.

I love The Beatles' lyrics, and the voices the members fit the songs well. Overall, I like the way that the band sounds, they certainly influenced many others (including Clube da Esquina) what makes me see a lot of value in the sonority of the group.

Remember That You'll Die by Polyphia

I always loved instrumental rock and discovering Polyphia was amazing. The songs in the album are incredible and show how skilled the musicians are (I'll probably never reach the level to play one of their songs). Basically, I can say that their songs 'go hard'. This album had Y2K and others from the same scene in the production of some tracks, what brought a little bit of trap music to the songs. The mixture ressonated perfectly for me, even though I'm not the biggest trap fan in the world.

Twilight by Bôa

If you're here in Neocities, chances are you've watched Serial Experiments Lain. Thus, you probably know "Duvet" from this album or already have listend to it entirely. I love Bôa. It simple like that. Their songs incorporate indie rock well. They are sentimental with a 'darker vibe' (yes, I don't know how to describe music, I'm sorry). I was listening to this album a lot during the rainy season in my town, making the perfect ambience to it.

T H E by Tricot

Coincidentally with my taste for mathematics, one of my favorite genres is math rock. I love the structure of the songs, especially the guitar. For me, what makes Tricot special is the way they transmit a rebelious energy through their songs. They weren't the first math rock band I've listened to, but certainly they are the main reason I started loving the genre.

"Frühling" by Franz Liszt

"Frühling", or "Spring" by Franz Liszt is my currently my favorite piano piece. This work truly encompasses the feeling of spring to me. I feel as I was rebirthing while listening to it. As I have said, I'm not a professional musician nor know a lot about technical things (although with time I'll get better at this since I'm studying a lot of music, especially classical pieces) so I think I'm not the appropriate person to describe why or how this piece transcribes these emotions into sound, however this is certainly what I would call 'beauty', something that makes you closer to the symbolical elevation of spirit.

愛をあるだけ、すべて by Kirinji

Kirinji is probably the only j-pop musician I've listened actively through the year. I've seen people describing some of his songs as 'fruitiger aero', what I know kinda agree. As I've said, I am not fluent in japanese making my understanding of the lyrics not so great, however I started understanding some of his songs over repetitvely listening to them. For me, the best thing in Kirinji's music is the sonoroty, that is really interesting and truly seems to be what 'fruitiger aero' would sound.

Conclusion

Obviously I could expand this article indefinitely, however this would be time consuming since I'd need to do deeper research into the artists and albuns. Here I prefered to write about my experience with this albuns and how do I feel about them rather than do a profound depiction of their creation and the musical/poetical structures behind them. Also, many artists weren't placed here because I simply didn't have time to do it, but I think 11 is a great number (in a math study group I participate there's an internal joke about this number) though.

On The Waste Of Time

Published on December 10th, 2024

Wasting my time was always something I feared. Time is a scarce resource, making every second important. I fear that the way I'm using it is not the best sometimes. Obviously, there's not a right way to spend it. No one is telling you how to live your life. Still, this feeling comes to me frequently. Looking to it now, I see good things in it. It is clear that we shouldn't avoid dissapointments. They, somehow, serve as a pathway to reflection. It is through them that we can define how to continue.

For me, time wisely spent is the time we pass doing things to elevate our spirit (here I don't mean the traditional concept of spirit, but a rather symbolical figure). There are activities that make us engage more in the world and in ourselves. This is what makes me love mathematics. By studying it, I learn about myself and the world around me. Mathematics is about beauty, afterall (see this this post in Thricegreat's Webpage on beauty).

Yesterday, I was watching a news report about Antônio Carlos Jobim, the composer of 'The Girl From Ipanema' and many other bossa nova songs, who died 30 years ago. There, for a brief moment, in an old interview of him that I couldn't find later (I can't link the full news eport too), a phrase of his caught me. There, he explains that, in his view, there are different types of music, for every single situation, and what he liked to do was composing music to 'approximate of God'. This view of art is what I see as elevating one's spirt. This is contradictory since I'm an atheist, however, as I've mentioned, I view the concepts of 'spirit' or 'God' as pure symbolical concepts.

Morever, I also think time shouldn't be viewed as a commodity, nevertheless sometimes it is unavoidable to do that because of the system we live in. Portraying this dimension of reality (as it happens with space) as a product transforms our entire existence in an asset. My view of wasting time becomes a paradox because of this, since it portrays time as a commodity, however it seeks to avoid things that consume your time as product.

In short, spend your time wisely since you'll never go back to what you were.

Perfectionism And Comparison

Published on December 06th, 2024

All my life, I have been a person who has always compared myself with others. I always felt inferior to others because I didn't achieve as much, even thought I many times had got incredible achievements. This is obviously dangerous to oneself because it can make one get completely demotivated of doing things.

This year it didn't happen differently, I compared myself a lot of times with others, but this comparisons were always unfair with me as I've now realized. When I compare myself to others, it seems that my mind frames the situation to make it appear that I'm inferior. Although I have accomplished many things this year - and more generaly in the (short) time I've until now spent on Earth -, I always seem to cherry-pick some trait that I want to achieve and compare with those who already developed it fully.

Things get worse when it comes to academic related things. I always want to study to my maximum potential, however I sometimes don't get to do it for many factors. Still, looking back, I'm happy with what I've done. It was definitively not perfect, however it was still great because I've seen solid growth on myself and many things that I consider as 'fails', I'll still be able to correct them.

I think one one of the biggest reasons for this is my perfectionism. I always wanted everything to be perfect and when things got out of my control I would feel bad. That's also the main reason behind me quitting many things after a short time. I would always feel that I was doing them incorrectly, however if I continued I'd probably have something nice in the end.

What made decide to write this was the result of the final test of a subject that I took this semester. In short, I won't be able to reach a perfect 4.0 GPA anymore. This lead me to a kind of crysis. I spent some days reflecting on (and trying to accept) what happened. It was hard to see that I thing I was planning for years (I don't really know why) was ruined - by me. Obviously I can't put all the blame on myself because I would be lying. Many factors out of my control had influence on this grade.

The Problem With Digital Media

Published on November 17th, 2024

Firstly, I want to clarify that I love that the internet brings acessibility to good media. I probably wouldn't have read many books - such as Kamo no Chomei's Hojoki - without it. The same would happen with good music albuns like Himiko Kikuchi's "Flying Beagle" or Masayoshi Takanaka's "Seychelles", for example, that were brought to me by the internet. However, I still think the way digital media is being distributed is not good.

This has come to my mind because I was trying to find a Shibuya-kei band called Satellite Lovers in Spotify and discovered all their songs got removed from the plataform. This wasn't a problem since their songs are available on YouTube, but this raised awareness to another thing: you basically don't own any digital media anymore.

The main reason this happens is because many companies have switched to selling streaming services rather than individual products. For instance, buying music has become harder, with the best option being buying CDs or LPs, what requires appropriate equiepment. Also, many albuns have only been realesed trough streaming services, what makes it impossible to buy them. Good series and movies frequently get lost or hard to access because of this.

Even though this is bad, there is a worse case. Basically, everything you buy "permanently", is not technically yours. Companies like Amazon or Valve can remove your digital products out of you for various reasons. What is horrible, especially for the preservation of content and for you, who allegedly spent your money in a book, a game, or an albun.

Also, owning your own media allows you to lend/borrow things to/from your friend, what allowed me to read tons of books. Obviously, physical media is more expensive than digital media, however, I think the difference in price is justifiable, but as I have said, I love digital media, I just don't get (obviously to profit more on you) why companies work like this.

The Reasons Why I Quit Duolingo

Published on November 11th, 2024

I have always been passionate about languages, but this feeling had skyrocketted on me around five years ago when the idea of learning Mandarin got stuck on my my head. I tried to learn it for about three to four months, but I didn't know what I was doing, so progress was minimal. I remember that around the same time I was talking to a teacher of mine about languages and she told me she was learning Japanese, and that was probably the moment where the idea of doing the same entered my head.

I already knew some basic facts about Japanese such as that it had two syllabaries (Hiragana and Katakana) and it used Chinese characthers (Kanji). In my head, having syllabaries would make the process of learning the language easier than it was with Mandarin since I was struggling with Hanzi (the name of the Chinese logographic system). Even though a while back ago I would say that younger me was wrong, nowadays I really think that syllabaries do really help in the learning process because it does not take a long time to learn them what makes it faster for you to be able to immerse in the language. But, at the time this made me switch learning Japanese. Later, I probably had learned Hirgana and Katakana in one to two weeks and then proceeded to quit studying Japanese for three years.

Last year I finally decided to give another chance to learning the language, and my first decision was to use Duolingo. I already knew about more effect resources such as Anki or Memrise, this last one that, as far as I have seen, has gotten worse than before, but I still decided to use the green owl app because in my memory, it was great. For my bad luck, the new update had arrived for me almost at the same time, making the experience horrible, but even with this I managed to mantain my streak for more than 1.5 years.

My point is, Duolingo was great back then, especially when I first met it, nevertheless it has become unusable now. Before the course wasn't completely linear, allowing you to chose what you would learn first. Also the units were shorter when compared to those we have to day that take you about an hour to teach you random AI generated phrases that don't have any pratical purposes. My progress with the app was minimal and it wasn't null since I used other resources like books and immersion. For instance, I managed poorly to solve an JLPT N4 mock test while my goal was to reach N3 by the end of this year.

Also, the transition of Duolingo from free to freemium locked many features under a paywall, what I don't see as problem since they are a business and need to profit. However, the features which they have decided to restrict were essential to allow you to really learn something. For example, they removed the possibility of commiting mistakes out of the free plan (first on mobile, and later on the web version), what, for me, made using the program terrible. The way they did is the classic energy/heart system that limits something by giving a definite amount of credits for the user to use in a certain period of time a charge for more.

Obvioulsy the app has some good points. One of these in my opinion is that there a stories that are meant to be comprenhensible for the level of the learner troughout the course, but these are scarce for the size of the learning program. I also like how they implemented sections for learning Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) and Kanji. It is also impossible not to mention about the gamification on the app, that is amazing for keeping you learning, but there was a time I got sick of it.

That is why I decided to quit it and go straightfoward to immersing myself the maximum as possible in the language. I still think I need some conciouss studying though, so I am still reading a grammar book by Tae Suzuki and Yuki Mukai called "Gramática do Japonês para Falantes do Português", which in my opinion is the best book for learning Japanese avaliable in Portuguese. Reflecting now, this is the way I learned English. I started immersing myself by the age of six or seven and without realizing I got fluent on it by the age of ten of eleven.

Thoughts On My First ENEM (Brazil's College Admissions Exam)

Published on November 10th, 2024

Introduction

ENEM (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio) is an exam created by INEP (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas), a government agency, that works as Brazil's main college admissions exam. It usually takes place on the month on November and lasts two Sundays, containing an essay and 180 questions about languages, humanities, natural sciencies, and mathematics.

This year was my first time doing it, however I didn't do it with the sake of getting into college since I am a high school freshman (9th grade). My main reasons behind it were testing my current knowledge and preparing myself for the time when I do it officialy. Moreover, I think that, for my goals, I did a great job.

Essay

The essay is certainly one of the most important parts of the exam since it has the biggest weight out of all sections. It is always an argumentative essay, but themes vary each year, covering important social or environmental topics. This year's theme was 'Challenges for the valorization of the african heritage in Brazil', which I find really interesting and necessary.

Albeit this theme is complex, I think that writing an essay about it is not so hard since it is widely discussed. You could use a couple of popular songs and books to support your claim, for example. My argument was centered on the third chapter of Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity, that, in a nutshell, explains how society marginalizes what is considered to be differnt form normalcy. I also used some examples and a novel, but still sorrounding the idea of Bauman's book. I think there are a couple of things that I could have done better, but I am happy withe my work

I don't think my score will be amazing since, as I have already stated, I could have done some things better, especially improving my text's cohesion. My guess is that I will be getting 700 points out of 1000 possible, what I consider to be a medium grade.

Languages

The part of ENEM that cover languages was the one I did the best (scored 39 out of 45). It is basically textual interpretation and literature analysis in Portuguese and a foreign language (English or Spanish). I didn't have any problem on this section and I don't even get why I didn't ace it.

A thing that I really liked of it was that there were some questions about novels that I really like such as Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro (not really about the book directly, but a parody called Capitu: Memórias Pósutmas). A problem of the section is that it is very exausthing to complete because of the huge amount of texts to read.

Humanities

I love humanities, seriously, however I didn't prepare especifically for this exam, so I didn't remember everthing that was asked. I think the only think that I could have done to get a better grade in this part of ENEM was studying especifically to it. According to an extra-oficial correction, I got 35 out of 45 questions correct, but this does not say much about the final score because it is calculated with the Item-Response Theory (IRT).

In my opinion, the topics covered in this section are amazing. You can see questions about Horkheimer and Adorno's cultural industry, Marxist theory, Aristotle's eudaimonia, Kant's categorical imperative, tectonism, Brazillian history and more. But, as you might already have thought, the diversity of subjects makes it hard to study everything.

Natural Sciences

For me this was the hardest part of the exam, what really reflected on my grade, that was the worst out of the five sections (29 out of 45). The main reason behind this is that I haven't studied the majority of the contents covered in it yet. That is also why this was the last thing I've done on the second Sunday (November 10th, 2024). Out of the three subdvisions of this section - Biology, Chemstry, and Physics -, the one that I did the worst was chemstry and the complete opposite happenned with biology, what is logic since I have studied more biology than any other of the three and my chemstry knowledge is almost non-existent.

Mathematics

Mathematics is the subject that I have the most knowledge and also my favorite. Thus, the logical thing to happen to me was getting my best score in this section of ENEM, however this is not what happenned. A thing that I have realized is that whenever it comes to math, I get really anxious. This happens probably because I subconciously want to prove to myself that I am good at it, even though my concious self already knows it. This anxiety has been my nemesis for a while, and today was no different.

Out of 45 problems, I answered 31 correctly. The biggest part of my mistakes occured because of tiny details that I missed, and not because I didn't know how to solve. Overall, this section is really easy, covering mostly basic math. The two hardest questions of this year were about exponential functions and logarithms, but they are relatively easy when compared with other exams.

Moreover, I would like to criticize that this part of ENEM is poorly written by INEP. This makes some questions unnecessarily hard. Sometimes I even tought that I was reading gibberish in some questions because their explanations were completely nonsense, but after reading them again some time later I managed to solve them.

Conclusion

Finally, I would like to say that I think I did a great job. I scored an amazingly high grade for my current school year, even though I am not satisfied with it. Also, making the test this year allowed me to find my weaknesses and now I will be able to target them in my pratice later. I need to admit that I got a bit sad when I had seen the extra-oficial results (when the oficial ones get realesed I will probably write about it) because I expected a lot more of me, but after reflecting for a while, I have realized that I don't need to put so much pressure on myself, principally because this was (and is) hurting my mental health.