auto: 2026-03-20T02:10:39Z

content/me/index.md

@@ -25,6 +25,9 @@ I have always thought that the defining characteristic of what makes Levi *Levi*
 
 The realization of this curiosity/creativity complex yields what I find simultaneously as my greatest strength and my most detrimental flaw. I can be relentlessly ambitious and work persistently towards goals that others might dismiss as too far-sighted, impossible, etc. - but I also consistently bite off more than I can chew and overwork myself. I'm at least aware of the latter fact and try to counter it by introducing work that I enjoy, such as work on this website!
 
+### Personality
+For what it is worth, I am an **INTP**. Whether or not this means anything is up to your interpretation. In other, perhaps more grounded descriptions (ie those from my fellow humans) I am usually thought to be neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, one of those introverts who is really an extrovert with a *limited* social battery, a particularly animated and energetic person when the focus is something about which I care, and often I am found to be deep in thought (or mental composition of music). 
+
 ### Aphantasia
 
 I have [**complete aphantasia**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia), which means that I cannot visualize anything in my mind. My mind works entirely off of linguistic and indescribable "visualizations." This has had a profound impact on my life. I did not realize that others could visualize actual images in their mind (I thought that when people spoke of this, they were being highly metaphorical and or poetic) until I was in high school. 
@@ -120,3 +123,36 @@ I have long had some notion of a "Linguistic Bucket List" - a collection of lang
 - **Latin & Greek.** I am interested in *reading* the ancient texts in these languages, and perhaps pursuing Greek further, as it is part of my heritage.
 - **Sanskrit & Pali.** I am *also* interested in *reading* the ancient texts of these languages.
 
+### Naturalism
+I am fascinated by and interested in flora and fauna of all types, but as for the latter, birds and herps are especially intriguing to me. I have a lot of broad aspirations for this, but there always seems to be too little time to see them all the way through.  
+
+### Running
+
+My sport of choice these days is distance running. I am particularly fond of trailrunning, but more frequently run on roads, trails, or, most regrettably (though only when *absolutely* necessary), the treadmill. I find running to be a juxtaposition of soothing and exhilarating. Watching the sun rise over the various bays and beaches of Rhode Island is incredibly soothing. Working your way straight up a ridge of bedrock in the midst of a heat wave is absolutely exhilarating. 
+
+I don't use strava, nor an electronic watch, nor do I really pay much attention to my times. This takes away from what is to me the great joy in running - being disconnected, in tune with my thoughts and my bodily perceptions, and enjoying the only moment that there is - NOW. 
+
+---
+
+## Technology I use
+
+### Desktop
+I have used many different setups during my life. My earliest vague technological memories are of a family laptop that ran Windows XP. Windows 7 was used in the computer lab at my elementary school, a place that classes ventured to once or twice a year. I came into possession of my first true computer in middle school - it (regrettably) ran Windows 10, and although I did basic programming on it, I didn't make it much farther than simple Python, text-based games, and occasional Scratch. I have since superceded this hardware; my primary desktop is now a rig that I built, running Gentoo Linux with Hyprland and a custom shell ("Levshell") implemented with [Quickshell](https://github.com/quickshell-mirror/quickshell). I use Gentoo on my desktop for several reasons:
+
+- I care deeply about performance, and compiling my software delivers measurable performance increases.
+- Compilation also gives me fine-grained control over my software configuration, linking, etc.
+- I find it is the best maintained Linux distribution that I have ever used.
+- The community is phenomenal.
+
+I have strong opinions about all aspects of my computing, not just the operating system (and variant thereof). I have a strong preference for AMD processors over Intel, and AMD graphics cards over Nvidia. (I have used at least 2 distinct products from each company, so the sample size is *good enough*.) My current desktop uses all AMD components, as does my current laptop. In theory, I would absolutely love to move to a RISC-V machine, but I have no idea when this will be feasible. My email and VPN are self-hosted, and I use Thunderbird as a client for the former. Somewhat similarly, I use [LibreWolf](https://librewolf.net/) for my browser. I find the Chromium monopoly and the incompetence of Mozilla at browser development to be simultaneously and equally concerning, so LibreWolf was the best solution. I use Emacs for editing most things, including this website. I've played around with many other IDES, and generally have strong opinions on them. Neovim, for instance, seems wonderful - but I absolutely cannot stand vim keybindings, much preferring the Emacs sort. VSCode is pathetic slop - does anything more need to be said? Zed looked promising, but seems to be going in the wrong direction.
+
+### Laptop
+As for laptops, I originally used a Macbook, but this proved too little power for my computing needs. After my sophomore year at Brown, before I began an intensive summer of AI research work, I ditched my Macbook for a P-series Thinkpad. On it I run Arch Linux with Hyprland and a custom shell ("Levshell"). I use Arch in favor of Gentoo because the compilation times are simply too long on my laptop, and due to portability concerns, constant compilation on battery is far from ideal. I deeply love both Arch and Gentoo, but Gentoo does remain my preference. Portage *is* better than pacman. I do not *necessarily* have anything outright against MacOS or Macs in general - in fact, the Apple Silicon hardware seems to be very good, and ARM as an architecture is certainly superior to amd64 - but I have invested so much time in creating a hyper-optimized setup on Linux that is custom tailored to the finest details of my workflow that I am unlikely^[This is still a pretty good outlook for MacOS - I can say with **absolute utmost certainty** that I will **never** use Windows again!] to ever return to the land of Mac. I do not think I can productively live without my hyprland keybinds and modifications - I need a tiling window manager that behaves exactly how I expect!  
+
+### Phone
+I use [GrapheneOS](https://grapheneos.org/) on my phone, and for multiple reasons. Not only is it the only reasonably secure and private option for a mobile device, but the restrictions that it imposes help me to use my phone only in meaningful ways. I have my four most important apps pinned - AnkiDroid, Phone, Signal, and Wikipedia - and very little else installed.
+
+### Artificial Intelligence
+I believe that AI is a great power that brings with it great responsibility. I thus use AI very cautiously, as someone who worked on one of the frontier models as a summer job^[No, I won't tell *you* which, at least not here and not yet. What I *will* say is that working in such a capacity **greatly** changes how you look at these tools, in a juxtaposing sort of way.]. I refuse to delegate or outsource all of my original thought, programming, and especially writing to AI models. I will use AIs to collaborate on code (indeed, this website has been the result of such collaboration), and in more limited sense for preliminary literature searches and random ideation. I will **never** use an AI model to write for me, and urge you to also never do this. There has never been a more crucial moment in the history of writing to write for oneself! 
+
+I do not have a binding preference for any model. I currently use the Claude family of models more than any proprietary other, but if they are no longer the best models for the types of tasks I would like to do, then I will switch at moment's notice. As for open models, I tend to prioritize these - my desktop is more than capable of running open models - and the best open models are very quickly closing the gap with the proprietary frontier models. I hope to be a part of the push for an open victory over proprietary during my upcoming years as a graduate student!