Weeknotes 7/10
Sleep - Wake Transition Study
Continued my independent research project on sleep-to-wake transitions. I collected more data and did some fixes on my automated sleep lab.
I have an issue where I feel awake but my sleep staging model thinks I’m in REM and tries to wake me. I can’t tell if my model is inaccurate or I’m misinterpreting my state. I might be in a mixed state; a conscious semi-REM state.
I added a new signal to my protocol. Now I can distinguish between the instances where I felt I woke up, and where I felt I was already awake. If I was better at manual sleep staging I’d be able to better understand what state I’m in.
On Tuesday, I incorporated the new already-awake signal. But I sometimes had low confidence that I was already awake after I signaled, so I added a low-confidence signal as well.
I collected data on Sunday night, Tuesday night, and Friday night.
I ran some analysis on the data but nothing super revealing so far.
Non-AI Errands while running out of Claude credits
I keep running out of credits on the $20 Claude but I’m not allowing myself to upgrade until my to-do list is complete. I got through a large chunk of tasks this week while waiting for my Claude limits to reset.
Reflected on a friend getting bullied on the internet
My friend, Shaily Hakimian, had a nice conversation with author Becca Grischow at an event, who she later found out live-shit-posted about her while they were chatting.
Shaily posted about the situation on LinkedIn. Understandably she was upset. I would be too! And I was angry for her.
( TLDR Becca Grischow peeked at Shaily’s phone screen at the event. She saw Shaily ChatGPT-researching the people at the event and didn’t like this.)
It’s hard to know what was going through Becca’s head. Posting about someone while talking to them, knowing they will see it later (on the social media you gave attendees) seems cruel. Perhaps Becca thought she was just venting on social media, not realizing Shaily would notice. Maybe it was the cruel former, maybe it was the careless latter.
Below Becca’s post, her followers joined the bandwagon with their own comments. One reads “EW”. Another is a gif of Lucille Ball looking disgusted. (How dare you use Lucille Ball for evil?)
Whether or not their intention was to be hurtful, it’s clear people have lost touch with the effects their words (or gifs) have.
Amongst the mean comments, there was no meaningful critique of what Shaily did wrong. It seems totally normal in 2026 to use AI to research conference attendees.
There’s obvious irony here. A person criticized Shaily for misusing tech, while, mid real-life conversation with her, shit talking her to the internet; instead of expressing herself to Shaily in real life, at this event about connecting in real life…
Shaily is one of the most open-minded people you will meet. She would have engaged in any critique Becca had about her if they just told her in person. It’s one of the reasons I have been friends with Shaily for so long.
In middle school, people, including my friends, bullied her. I didn’t like it then and called them out. How sad to see successful adults are no different.
There is a huge issue with adult bullying that the internet has brought out. And worse, society has accepted this as normal, not something to be corrected.
Instead of saying “we should stop adult internet bullying,” most people say the victims “need thicker skin” just because it’s on the internet. Yes, we should avoid being overly sensitive, but it’s not thin-skinned to have a normal reaction to undeniably rude behavior.
Having normal human emotions is a good thing. It keeps us from becoming psychopaths.
We should not be pushing for people to lose their human emotions. We should push to stop justifying cruelty just because it’s digital.
I posted on Becca’s thread, pointing out what I thought she did wrong with her post. People look down on getting involved in “internet drama.” But by now, the internet is a part of our daily lives, and it’s just as real as any other interaction.
If bullying happened IRL, I would say something. The only reason I would keep quiet here would be to avoid looking cringe. I think it’s cowardly to let someone get hurt because you value not looking cringe.
I originally wrote this without mentioning Becca’s name. This made my notes hard to read, and since it was obvious who I was talking about, I put her name in. Her name is already on the LinkedIn post. She never responded to the original posts/comments to clarify, so I’m not sure of her side. She most likely just disagrees on what is acceptable internet etiquette, which is fine. I will remove her name if asked.
Met an Evidence-Based Medium
At a ChiTribe happy hour event, I wrote on my name tag that I was interested in consciousness research. This caught the attention of a medium who is interested in the scientific side of mediumship. I’d love to record their brain while they do mediumship. I made plans to meet up with them.