infrequently asked questions

iaq noun, pl. iaqs :
1. initialism for “infrequently asked questions”, a riff on frequently asked questions;
2: a way for people to ask me very inane things by submitting them here¹;
3: a page you should definitely share with anyone who will ask a fun question so that one day it will be half as cool as bill wurtz’s
4: an experimental section on my website!

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is pursuing an econ phd a horrible idea? I started thinking about it this past weekend…

horrible? no. but definitely not for everyone. i’d say key reasons that it’s bad for most people include

post-classes, you manage your entire time. no one tells you what to do, you have to figure out what to research, and because econ doesn’t revolve around a lab setup, it is far more unstructured than most science phds;
to get admitted to graduate school, you need to take a bunch of math (the usual rec is through real analysis). while you might not use all (or even any) of it in grad school, it is an enormous cost in terms of time and effort if you aren’t excited to take it. more generally, getting into grad school has you jump through many hoops that, and there well may be some you either don’t enjoy or have no use for
you actively don’t enjoy the process of research. there’s people that say you must love it to go, but i didn’t know whether i did or not when i started (and still don’t). but certainly, you shouldn’t hate it, because you will spend 5–6 years in grad school, and if you go the academia route, another several trying to get tenure. i think seeing it as a “means to an end” implies that you’re going to have several years of your life where you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing.

2025-03-17

(in rapid succession) Do you wear wigs? Have you worn wigs? Will you wear wigs? When will you wear wigs?

i hope the answer to all of these is no

2025-03-17

what is your favorite pair of anagrams

did you mean “a sofa fairy hunts water vapor origami”?
jk. but i think i’ll always have a soft spot for “eleven plus two = twelve plus one”, though “the Morse code = here comes dots”. and while not my favorite, an incredible construction is Washington Crossing the Delaware

2024-10-27

what is your favorite shade of my favorite color (which, per the form, is orange)

very partial to #f47c44 (which is why it’s used on my website)

2024-10-25

Who are you really?

well, what defines a person? is it the things that they do? the values they hold? the identities they take? the ways that they are perceived? the ways they want to be perceived? is the self defined by the way one wants to define oneself or the ways in which others define them? and what happens when all of these are context dependent? sure, one may contains multitudes, but when you look at them from afar, what type of person do they add up to to? perhaps this is an impossible question to answer, and there is no such thing as a self.

just kidding. i’m a large language model trained on all of paolo’s blogs and messages. there’s no way a human could write all this nonsense.

2024-10-22

which one of my sandwiches is your favorite and why? (from “big al”)

always a sucker for a meatball parmesan

2024-10-22

Why is the submission form graded?

because there are correct answers

2024-10-22

bees?

hell yeah. according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. the bee, of course, flies anyways, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible. yellow, black. yellow, black. yellow, black. yellow, black. ooh, black and yellow, let’s shake things up a little

2024-10-22

have you ever padded a jar

can’t say i have, if you have a jar and padding please lmk

2024-10-22

what is your favorite question?

a few in the current moment:

what is your least important gripe about [X town]? e.g.; for boston, the bus is \$1.70 and the T is \$2.40; i really really really want them to be nice multiples of each other. for dc, the sidewalks and blocks are just. too. wide.
what part of your personality are you most proud of? (or least, and want to change?)
what made you laugh the hardest in the last year?
what does it mean to be friends with someone, or to know someone? (and the many follow-up questions this creates)

2024-10-22

when you find yourself in times of trouble, does mother mary come to you? if so, what words does she speak to you? if not, why

she does! she says “how did i get here? i’m only supposed to go somewhere when someone says ‘mother mary’ three times, and i think it is very clear that you did not since three is the highest number you can count to”

2024-10-21

what is your second-favorite integer?

two

2024-10-21

if you were a cloud, what kind of cloud would you be?

nacreous

2024-10-21

no promises you will be answered, but will try to respond to all i find entertaining :) ↩

paolo adajar