iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 6h

the only way i actually remember lim sup vs lim inf is by thinking "soup (sup) is in a bowl, so the U (a bowl) is innermost"

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

I love my research bc Im able to think about maths & biology and it’s all allowed. If I think about properties of asymptotic series that’s allowed for my research, or about subtypes of progenitor cells, that’s allowed, or if I want to think about stochastic differential equations it’s allowed…

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

Awesome!!! Congratulations to them and to optogenetics!!!

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

ugh on the bus this guy in front of me kept coughing with his head politely turned away from his friends in front of him but the coughs went right into my face.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I’m still paying 0 dollars for AI, and I’m not using the free access to models from my university either. I think I want to never develop a dependency on it, especially a financial one. In the future if people evaluate me for hiring etc, they will have to accept or deny what I do with my brain.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I am glad I combined my first two projects. I’m much happier with what I’m doing now being the first thing I’ll produce, bc this is going to have a lot of my statistical field theory ideas in it and I honestly want to keep doing SFT throughout my career, I am obsessed with it.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If I ever have a child, when I’m pregnant I’ll be like “finally, I’ve made a model of embryonic cortex that will satisfy biologists” (kidding lol)

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Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Broke: all models are wrong but some are useful Woke: models are useful because they are wrong

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

When I was doing my thesis proposal revisions I had to write a rebuttal to all the comments (so so many comments omg) I decided not to change in my proposal and I think that process was pretty enlightening. A lot of my stuff was in response to things like

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I feel like my personality changes as I write scifi stories? Idk if I’m just method acting each story. I write them serially, give everything to one story at a time. Tbh these things have shaped my life since 2019, I’m living my life for them in some ways.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Omg after my QFT class the physics PhD students were like “so why are you here?” lol. I ended up explaining path integrals and Feynman diagrams as used in neuro. They had no idea those things were used in neuro! They’re going to help me w/ physics stuff too I never encountered in Euclidean space.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

going to tackle a tedious as hell derivation today (msrdj path integral lmao) for my research pray 4 me

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

damn maybe I do want to be a professor. I want to help promising scientists in future generations reach their full potential. And provide an actually decent environment for them to do research in bc there are so many stories of totally crappy ones.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

the undergrads I really root for and I’m like “I really hope this kid succeeds” are the ones I see putting themselves in really difficult classes and struggling but persisting. There was an undergrad like that taking the graduate statistical field theory for neural nets class I was in last year.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

you know, my philosophy for classes since I switched into an area I had zero background in in undergrad in 2019 was “screw grades, I’ll take whatever I’m interested in even if it’s hard” and *eventually* that philosophy worked out for me + led me to surprising myself with what I actually could do!

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

finally struggling through Helias and Dahmen Ch. 11. this equals 1

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Omg I just legit had an idea about how to think about radial glial cells that is seriously all thanks to measure theory.

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Here's a story about how Doris Lessing wrote a novel under a pseudonym after she was famous, told by the person who rejected that novel at a publishing house. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

newyorker.com

Doris Lessing and the Perils of the Pseudonymous Novel

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normal-wife @category-fury.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hey all I am trying to stay here in Australia (and out of America) permanently but the cost of a partner Visa is a bit extreme. Please help me stay here with my beautiful partner Lucy for good! gofund.me/b264e145f

gofund.me

Donate to Help Olivia stay in Australia (Partner Visa), organized by Olivia Borghi

Hi all I have been living here in Australia for 5 years now. I came here … Olivia Borghi needs your support for Help Olivia stay in Australia (Partner Visa)

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maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It happens so often it can be hard to even see. Men having the same experience I am, but I hit a place where the attention becomes unpleasant. Inuendos start. I have to wiggle out of something I did not start (cautiously! trying not to upset any dangerous egos!) so I leave, while the men get to stay

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I am reading a lot more Nietzsche. Hegel though is impenetrable to me right now. Hegel feels like statistical field theory once felt to me a few years ago, I need to learn a toolkit of philosophy first I don’t think I currently have.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I had a dream I wrote a litfic but it could only be published if I went under the pseudonym “Rula” (no last name), because my personality (as determined by a cartoonish man with a cigar) under Arula Ratnakar wasn’t marketable.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Would an individual integral that an individual Feynman diagram represents ever diverge? I don’t see why it couldn’t mathematically. But what does this mean for the moment that diagram is part of a series for? Is the perturbative expansion technique just crap in those cases?

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I really studied people for years after I graduated undergrad in 2021, and I tried to capture them in Axiom and Fractal Karma (2023 and 2024), bc in my stories from 2019 to 2022 (Insaan Hain, Submergence, Lone Puppeteer, Babirusa) they came from a place where I didn't interact with people much.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

maybe I'll write a litfic out of spite for ppl who dont think I can. (i checked my goodreads reviews like a masochist, dont mind me)

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Rachael @rachaelskye.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Women actively hide it from you to protect ourselves. We play nice to keep men from imploding and we do it right in front of you without you ever knowing. starting as children, we hide the damage that men do, and learn to manage everyone's feelings, to stay safe. this is why we need your help 💛

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julia 🌋 @hypv.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

having thought about this, my conclusion was that it's irksome when a piece of math gets explained to lay audiences as a paradox and something that doesn't make sense. it contributes to the false perception that math is just random rules that make no sense and you have to memorize them. whereas

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Omg! The QFT class for once went over things I’m familiar with from SFT! Wicks theorem and propagators that are Greens functions etc. it’s weird though because Feynman propagators are not causal, Ive only seen causal propagators.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

as cells are created and annihilated and convert from one type to another as they interact with each other and forces in their environment, in various systems in dev bio, and the numbers of them obviously don't stay the same, I wonder if anything is in fact being "conserved" across all of them.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This video has been a lifesaver. It locks me in like nothing else. I can do anything if I focus for this one hour of the Avatar lion turtle chant on a loop youtu.be/CIbCq5eRCM8?...

youtu.be

lion turtle 1hour

YouTube video by The Tone Bender

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Please what are your lighthearted comedy recs? I don’t want something preachy, nor do I want horror comedy, nor do I want stuff like Baby Reindeer. I want stuff like idk, the Eric Andre show lmao. Or trashy early 2000s comedies. But not stuff I’ve seen 🥲

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My short scifi story “Coda” from last year is in this! You can preorder these now.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This is just not true, it saddens me that scifi and fantasy readership is so often reduced and generalized in this way. I wish more literary fiction only sticklers tried reading for example, the contemporary genre fiction magazines.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

omg, I showed someone work I did for my quantum field theory problem set, which took me literally hours & hours of effort over weeks to solve (+ catching up on QM, special relativity, tons of other stuff) & they replied "I don't know, doesn't look that interesting. A bunch of mechanical derivations"

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

My friend told me to read Nietzsche bc they thought I’d have opinions. I have to say I’m surprised by how much I like the way Nietzsche writes? I might or might not agree with the philosophical content but each paragraph of his writing contains layers upon layers of ideas packaged together.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I had the urge to put pistachio gelato on one of those salty crispy rice cake things, it’s really good.

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Liℤℤy Kodpuak née Acid Lich (can’t spell sheaves without she) @acidlich.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Despite what you may think math is in fact very creative, there is lots of room for play. Come on now

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

omg I just thought up another scifi story. I think my years-long writers block is finally gone! I think I needed to stop writing novellas and go back to writing novelettes.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I'm actually so much happier now that I'm doing statistical field theory in my project lol. Combining my first and second projects into becoming one "novella paper" was a good move.

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yeah, you're right. All probabilities in QM are numbers between 0 and 1, and the probabilities of mutually exclusive events sum to 1. Btw, I did a lightning course on these things here, deriving as much as possible from a few simple rules: youtu.be/Y0a8GlJsQkw?...

youtu.be

Standard Model 4: Quantum Physics

YouTube video by John Baez

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Gregor @coexact.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

what might be confusing you is that QM is connected with probability theory in *two* ways: - the Born rule turns amplitudes into real probabilities - but separately(!) and esp. in relating SFT with QFT, one can view amplitudes, not their norm-squares, as directly generalizing probabilities

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

everyone should do this. I picked up a calc 3 book to work through on my own when I was 23 & now I’m in a PhD doing mathematical neuro research w/ statistical field theory, taking measure-theory based probability, I‘ve aced graduate math classes & been taking classes w/ math & physics PhD students.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is correct right? Or maybe there are weird complex probabilities I don’t know about/haven’t learned about yet.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

statistical field theory has infected how I think about everything.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

the average behavior of a large group of people is to be fair-weather. A crowd ingratiates itself with you when it perceives success, but will abandon you on a whim. Sometimes individual people use this mean field behavior to make decisions, which further feeds the large-crowd patterns.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

man people really believe in me. im trying 😭

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Hendrik De Bie @debiehendrik.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Does OpenAI have an advisory board of artists whose work they are ripping off?

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

man, I asked my advisors “have I just wasted the last two years” bc I’m doing this 8th iteration of my model now and it’s incorporating all this other math now it wasn’t before.

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