Travelling + Vibes
That crazy video above summarizes how the month of March went, and is possibly one of the best gifts I’ve ever received (Thanks Jamie!).
After spending April in the Philippines (my home country), I am now back in the UAE and everything seems to be moving at blazing-fast speeds. Events popping up, friends achieving crazy things, AI and neural networks changing the game in every single sector. The contrast is staggering. Most people in the small town where I’m from in the Philippines haven’t even heard about ChatGPT-4… When I was there, it was all about farming and slow living, lots of eating, nature, and storytelling. 🌳 And lots of poverty….
I haven’t visited my home country in 5 years, so it brought some refreshing and interesting shifts of perspectives… perhaps more on this on a future blog post :)
GPT-4 TKS Hackathon
A few weeks earlier, I also participated in a TKS competition that involved using GPT-4 to help the bottom billion gain access to knowledge and/or resources. We developed the idea for an app called “CareLink” a GPT-4 powered platform to make healthcare more accessible in Yemen–– building an interactive prototype of a healthcare management system that connects those in need to healthcare providers and efficiently allocates resources.
BuildSpace + Content Posted
Finally did a dual-publish of two projects I’ve been working on. I wrote what turned out to be this giant behemoth of a piece trying to explain the basics of plant engineering and created a less-technical youtube video making DIY glowing flowers.
I learned that trying to edit videos well and cinematically is actually… really hard (LOL). Gawx makes it look so easy...
I’ve also been working on a few more videos aside from this one over the past 2 months, but traveling definitely slowed the pace far more than I liked. So I recently joined buildspace’s Nights&Weekends Season 3 to accelerate things up, build up my youtube channel, and create sci-art projects filmed in a Gawx-style manner.
Here’s how youtube progress is going:
Goal by May 20 is:
As I’ve submitted enough of the weekly updates for buildspace, I’ll be attending their IRL event here in Dubai this coming June 1-3 so if anyone’s also coming over, HMU!
This leaves 2 videos and gaining 34 more subs within the next week. I am feeling optimistic!
One of the videos I’m most excited about is documenting the TKS moonshot.
First, we’ve forgotten how to dream big dreams—the really big dreams—the kinds of dreams that show that mankind can reach for, and actually touch, the stars. “Impossible” dreams that truly do come to pass when somebody dares to dream them.
- Naveen Jain, Moonshots
What’s the TKS moonshot? It’s about choosing a big problem to try and impact, then using all your skills + creativity to develop a solution that’s 10x better than what exists today. It takes a deep understanding of what’s possible with all sorts of emerging technologies as well as clarity on some of the root causes of their problem.
I teamed up with Eszter Czenteri (who recently published this awesome doc about cancer that you should totally check out 🧑🔬). Both she and I are obsessed with sciart and sci-comm, and decided to collaborate on a project to discover how art can find a way to bring more magic to science. AND how science can bring a lot more magic to art. The big problem we were going to try to solve was… *drumroll*
The Education Problem.
Yep, It’s the big E. It makes sense— At the end of the day, a huge part of sci-comm boils down to education. And education definitely needs a 10x-solution remix. I’m documenting the entire process through a youtube video–– we’re currently in the very early ideation stages, but if this interests you, you can stay tuned in this newsletter and keep up :D
1517 Medici Grant
Thank you to Danielle Strachman for believing in me and awarding the 1517 Medici grant. With a $1k grant for materials and $10k in AWS credits, I am immensely grateful for the support and community helping me keep building and working on what I love.
I also recently had a wonderful conversation with Hayley from the fund about how there was a perceived lack of innovation in the arts. So far, this has been a running theme with this inter-intellect salon talking about how there aren’t enough good stories to go around. When you combine this with that report that came in a few months ago about the lack of disruptive science, it makes you think..
Maybe, the world is just really inefficient and no field (or person) is ever truly satisfied with their progress. There’s this analogy about the Tetris player who runs a sub-30 40L (clears 40 lines of blocks in under 30 seconds) who, even though they’ve beaten their personal best, can come up with several ways they messed up–– always believing that they could be just a little bit faster.
Social media is apparently early and has much more to improve, the creator economy is early, agroforestry and agrotech needs an Os update, education is making everyone live in the matrix and everyone is inefficient, etc. etc. Everyone everywhere is pushing for progress in their own respective markets; identifying non-obvious problem areas and believing that more people need to become interested in x or y. This mass discontent, of course, is what drives innovation. ☀️
My takeaway is that maybe most things can be improved (by a lot), and it’s up to you to just follow your curiosity and decide what problem area you want to work on. This ArkInvest report (coming out before ChatGPT was released and the AI hype began) is full of sectors where innovation is likely to occur within the next decade. Autonomous logistics is the sector that’s kind of interesting to me–– crazy to think that they estimate the market will grow from $0 today to $2-3 Trillion by 2030. That’s.. sort of insane.
Masason Foundation
Got through the first masason foundation screening and had my second screening last week!
Synbiobeta Conference + SF & California
Say it with me 3x, - let’s hope my VISA works out.
🤞🤞🤞
Super grateful to the Synbiobeta Team for granting me the opportunity to attend the Synbiobeta synthetic biology conference in California this May. If you’ve seen my “Guide to Synbio” video, you’ll know how much I freaking adore Synbiobeta. Especially excited to meet people like Andy Bass, Rick Loverd, and Stephany Folsom, and to attend talks about SynBio and the Beauty industry, Space Biomanufacturing, The Medicine of Mushrooms, Pop-Culture Storytelling, and so much more!!
The only thing that’s blocking me from going is my need of a US tourist VISA. Last year, i had the opportunity to attend igem in paris as a member of the bioart steering group, but my Schengen visa wasn’t approved on time. :( Fingers crossed that this May, my US visa comes through!
Meeting my heroes
I have been ridiculously lucky recently with being able to interact with the people who have inspired me the most.
I was able to meet and speak to Refik Anadol, my favorite science-artist when he gave a talk at Dubai’s Museum of the Future. It was surreal, I adore his work so much.
Recieved some feedback for some ideas in my most recent article about longevity from naval ravikant, “7 Arguments against Immortality” –– this is exactly why Airchat is so interesting, there’s a lower barrier from thought to mouth than thought to keyboard so you never know who is listening to you.
Some of my favorite youtubers have noticed my youtube videos as well?? In my last few vids, Ryan Ng, Wholesome Simon, have commented. And I even got to meet Hamza, the youtuber who got me into self-improvement irl, and beat him at a chess game at a party when he came over to Dubai.
It’s been weird.. Exciting times!1
Last few quotes I’ve resonated with:
When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl.
-5th wave
“The sooner that we become less impressed with our life, with our accomplishments, with our career, with whatever that prospect is in front of us, the sooner we become less impressed and more involved with these things, the sooner we get a whole lot better at doing them.”
-Green Lights
Till the next update newsletter. Ciao x
Something that made me happy
A quick plug for an old beloved org: iblieve.org
Back in highschool, I led digital marketing for an organization called “IBlieve” which provided tutoring services, and IB resources (International Baccalaureate) for free to thousands of students around the world. Recently, I found out that IBlieve, just became an official partner of the actual IB organization! This is truly amazing to me to see what the team has accomplished since all those years ago. Prior to even volunteering as a director, I was a pilot student in their first cohort and can attest how much help their free mentoring and tutoring resources have been for me. Watching IBlieve grow from its very inception, I am so proud of how far it’s come. It’s made by a wonderful group of people and
I (very unbiasedly) encourage every IB student to check out their website and resources.