Willa

Hi there!

I'm focused on learning about the different causes of death and how to get rid of them: Viva Immortality!

I am into IT, anti-aging, politics, and more!

I also write over at the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/willa

Join the EAHub professional network and community! You don't have to rely on LinkedIn to find other EAs for interesting and impactful job opportunities or discussions. https://eahub.org/profile/willa-lambert/

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Thanks for coming out all! The meet-up has concluded. Until next time 🙂

I have made it to fair grounds and claimed the big table. I brought a dry erase board for the sign, someone with artistic capabilities should probably redo it once they get here.

Tomorrow's ACX Meetup will take place at Fair Grounds starting at 10:30am instead of the Pagoda due to inclement weather. Address: 806 Baldwin Ave # 2, Norfolk, VA 23517

I will get there early to secure the round table.

So, there are supposed to be thunderstorms much of Sunday including during the meetup time according to a few different weather sites + the National Weather Service. The Pagoda is fine (very well covered) for drizzles or light rain, but might not be a great spot for heavy rain or thunderstorms. If the forecast hasn't improved by 2pm tomorrow I'll send an update out, we can meet at Fair Grounds instead (might be a bit cramped cause it's a Sunday, but I can get there earlier to try to secure a good spot).

We are on the William and Mary campus: (37.2712247, -76.7129380)

We are heading outside to walk around, message on Discord to reach us.

We’re just inside of the cafe entrance on the right

Finalized Venue & Schedule:

  • 11:00 Meet at Aromas Coffeehouse Bakery & Cafe (431 Prince George St, Williamsburg, VA 23185). If the weather is nice then we'll likely sit outside, otherwise find us inside. I'll wear a green shirt and a green & yellow hat.
  • 13:00 Walk around the festival, check out the arts & music, check out the marketplace vendors, etc.
  • 13:45 Meet back up at Aromas Coffeehouse Bakery & Cafe
  • 14:00 Official end of the meetup
  • After 14:00: If I haven't eaten already I'll probably want to get food at this time and otherwise/then go for a walk around the town & university campus, company welcome.
  1. April 9 Williamsburg VA Meetup, AI, and thank goodness Spring is almost upon us

If you find yourself in or near Williamsburg, Virginia on 2023/04/09 come join for a Virginia Rationalists Meetup and the Williamsburg 2nd Sundays Art & Music Festival.

This week was a bit overwhelming in AI news, with GPT-4 releasing, new Midjourney, Stanford's Alpaca, more AI offerings from Google, Microsoft CoPilot 365, and honestly a bunch more things. I've spent too much time already talking with the GPT-4 version of ChatGPT given how long it's actually been available...oh well, it's a very useful cognitive prosthetic, I'm finding myself actually wanting to write & produce content again since drafting things got so much easier (none of this post was written by an AI, this is a casual shortform so it's all me). I wish the AI Safety folks the best of skill in updating to account for this new burst of capabilities.

Seems that SAD knocked me out a bit for some of January and all of February (I improved my home's lighting considerably this winter, but didn't go far enough it seems, among other things). Temperature fluctuations in Norfolk aside, Spring is definitely starting, and I'm very happy about that. Time to touch grass and do more things outside again!

There is no overarching narrative conclusion to see here, just the end of a post :)

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #147 Working & Considering Partial Digital Nomadism

I experience significant value-add to my life / nice things when I travel. I trialed working semi nomadically in December when I stayed at 7 or 8 households over 10 days while working remotely full time. That was fun, exhausting, and a very valuable learning experience! I definitely overbooked myself on that trip and did not schedule enough downtime, plus, I found working from a single laptop screen a bit less efficient than my normal 4 screen work setup & other desktop accoutrements.

With a bit more equipment optimized for working from anywhere, a few more optimized habits picked up from frequent travelers, and ensuring that I schedule in downtime, I feel confident that I could go a solid month or two working fully nomadically without experiencing significant issues or drawbacks. I do occasionally go onsite for projects & team meetings at my job so I likely would want to not be gone for longer than a month or two at a time anyhow.

For a variety of reasons I don't really want to go too too far out of state and work until late summer, so I'll practise digital nomadism in the meantime by doing multiple local, near local, and nearby state trips so I can find remaining pain points and build the habits, get the equipment, or otherwise develop solutions to address those pain points. Then late summer I'd like to head out to the other side of the country (US) and visit up and down the west coast. It would be fun to visit rationalists in all the cities I travel to, so when I do travel I intend to reach out in the meetup groups, discords, and elsewhere to coordinate such visits for each city I end up in!

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