Venkatesh Srinivas

2022

2022 Grab Bag:

• Finished my Masters degree (CSE @ UW)!; on top of that, took an Advanced Computer Architecture class & an Electric Grid regulation class from a WA UTC commissioner
• Two ten-year anniversaries - ten years since my 4K bike ride from Baltimore to Portland (Chelsea from my year wrote the best retrospective); and ten years since I started working at Google
  
• Failed to hold a relationship together
• Tens of thousands of miles of EV road-tripping!
  Seattle, WA to Bodega Bay to North Lake Tahoe to Moab to Pullman, WA;
  Seattle, WA to Dolores, CO and back;
  Seattle, WA to Taos, NM and back;
  
  
  
  
  
• A week sampling clover at Bodega Marine Lab, overlooking the Pacific Ocean
  
  
• Spent a month in a ~new place and state (Taos, NM)
• Donated a quarter of my income to climate and Effective Altruism organizations 😬 (details)
• Read 26 books; top three:
  • Warmth, Daniel Sherrell - Talking about "The Problem" (Climate Change) in letters to a future child.

    The author, Daniel Sherrell, is from New Jersey, not far from where and when I grew up; he works on climate advocacy in New York State. I found his perspective very relatable - he understands and draws on the technical, but writes the visceral. His evocation of love as fury is pretty powerful and stood out to me among climate writing.

  • On Repentance and Repair, Danya Ruttenberg - Thinking about repentance, repair, and reconcilliation through a framework from Maimonides

    The framework offered here is fairly different than the one I grew up with - it starts with objective statements of what happened; change to ensure the harm is not repeated; restitution and consequences; apology (delayed all the way to step 4!); and making different choices. As elaborated, it sounds like it would better address harm I have caused; it also seems like it'd be pretty demanding. I particularly appreciated an examination of something I do (apologize) but had never given great thought to.

  • Ducks, Kate Beaton
  
  
• First concert since the pandemic started (Gregory Alan Isakov at the Gorge)
  
• Made jam and Ice Cream for the first time!
  
  
  Made Fig and Pear, Peach, and Onion jams; Onion was the most successful
• Biked Mt. Constitution, part of the Sea to Sky Highway (BC Hwy 99), and Harvest Century
  
  
• Grew tomatoes, a Sequoia, and potatoes (by mistake!)
  
  
• News story from the year that's stayed with me - Climate Change from A to Z, Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker Nov 2022

It's been an eventful, rich year. There's a lot I wish I'd done, a lot I wish I'd done better; but I tried new and hard things and learned from both the successes and failures.

See you in 2023!

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