EEG, not quite mind reading

Well I'm behind schedule and even though I was given an extra week (6 days now) I don't know that I'm going to meet my deadline. It's not me, it's my computer, things take time to run so I'm stuck waiting for it to do its thing. Today let's talk about what EEG is and how we make sense of it.

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Please don’t thank me for my service

Yesterday was veterans day, the day before that was the Marine Corps birthday. I purposefully was going to ignore both, but an interaction on twitter the other day made me realize that I should at least touch on the subject. My feelings surrounding my service have always been complicated, but why not talk about it?

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Why do we lack a safety net?

Ever have a day where you just don't want to do anything, but need to do basically everything? Today is one of those days. Most of the time when the feeling hits I have at least a buffer that I can use to relax and not have to worry, but unfortunately that's not the case this time. Why the hell we built a society like this is beyond me, but here we are.

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The stress of an education

I've got a lot on my plate at the moment. I'm sure that's probably true for most people, but in academia it's somehow considered normal that you balance the tightrope of sanity while more and more pressure is added to you. It's a toxic environment for sure, more so now that COVID and current affairs are gumming everything up.

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COVID and Education

Today I received an email from the Chancellor of the school I attend. This is the person that is in charge of the entire university school system (since there are several campuses). The email was with regards to a survey that was sent out asking how comfortable we would be with returning to school with the pandemic going on. Why it was up to popular vote is beyond me.

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The politics of education

It's time to make a minor shift back to the focus of my little daily posts and that's getting a PhD. Technically even the most political of posts are part of this journey, but I think it would make sense to discuss the link a little more explicitly since we never made the connection and I think it's important.

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Trump is out, but there’s still work.

Well today started off with me thinking it was going to be yet another election day. However, surprise of surprises, they finally called it. Biden will be our 46th president. We will have not only our first Black VP, but a Black Woman! I don't particularly care for either of there politics, but it's a baby step from the brink, so let's take a day to celebrate because there is a lot of work to do.

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Remember, Trump is just a symptom

Well we may have actually done it. It's been days and while we are still (STILL) waiting the final count, things are looking good at the moment. That doesn't mean it won't be a rocky several months or that the victory is assured. It also doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of work to do.

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Why does counting votes take so long?

Well here we are, it's a few days post election and we're still counting votes. It seems odd, right? We should know by now who won and who lost. Part of the problem is that racist piece of crap the electoral college. That isn't the only issue though, if you want to know why we still have no clue who won, we need to remember that this was a manufactured problem.

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The power of racism

America the colorblind. It's not that we don't see color here, it's that we ignore it intentionally. Willful ignorance to the depths of our hatred for others is not an excuse and has never been one. We, as in the US, elected literal neo-Nazi's to office (not talking about Trump, or rather not JUST Trump). I fought for this country, buried friends for this country, is it so fucking hard to ask that the country not be racist?

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The Fall of the House of America

I'm old enough that I remember the fall of the Berlin wall, but young enough that at the time I didn't understand its significance. We will get into why that's important, but let's talk about the post for the day. Today is yet another history lesson courtesy of the labs. Like all history, we're doomed to get kicked in the face by it. Oh well, let's do it anyway...

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Your vote doesn’t count, but you should still do it.

The U.S. election is here, we will soon decide who leads us for the next four years. Four years, that's the standard length for a military service contract. It didn't seem like a long time, I mean four years out of what, on average eighty or so that we get to live? Yet the last four have felt like decades and it reminds me that while your vote doesn't count, you should still do it.

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Out of my hands

November 2nd at 12am. That's the deadline for this years NDSEG application. Which means that today is the last day for me to get my application materials ready, double check that I have all the boxes ticked, and that my references did their part (they did). Then we play the waiting game.

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Love is Forever

Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, partner, there are a lot of names you call your significant other. Personally I prefer partner, because let's face it that's what the relationship is at its heart, a partnership. It's a commitment to be a team forever, but what happens when it doesn't work out? Well you could just walk away, but what if you couldn't? I mean a partnership is forever, right?

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On anxiety

If you're finding yourself in the high anxiety club, welcome! I've been a member since well before the pandemic. I'm sorry, but I've got some bad news for you. We are constantly being bombarded with reasons why we should be highly efficient and constantly producing something. That's how we end up with articles claiming that we can turn anxiety into a super power. Which are complete garbage and are written by people who've obviously never lived with chronic anxiety.

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The NDSEG Fellowship

I might as well talk about it, this will be my second time applying for NDSEG, so today we'll go over exactly what that is, why I'm doing it, and why, if you're working on a PhD, you may want to do it as well. NDSEG is tricky, but if you get it then you should be pretty well set for funding, it's a great program, but it also means you're being funded via the DOD.

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Funding and you, a PhD story

New day, yet another topic for me to talk about. Today I've decided to spare everyone from hearing about my data processing woes to instead touch on a topic that I haven't discussed before (at least I don't think I have!). Today we're talking about funding your PhD. Specifically why it's important and what power you have over the funding you recieve.

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The end of the experiment

Well today was a milestone for me, the end of an experiment I wasn't too excited to do in the first place! Of course, now comes the semi-difficult part. I need to process the data, draw some conclusions, probably publish a few papers, and get a presentation made. Things need to happen quickly too, so while I'm done, I'm not. At least, not yet.

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I’m writing a book chapter!

Well talk about spoilers am I right? The title gives away the surprise for sure, but we can talk details since that's probably why you're even reading this. I get to write a book chapter, as in a actual published book you could get at the library book chapter. Not something technical either, something more personal. Don't worry I'll explain.

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A writing realization

I had one of those shower realizations last night. I was thinking about all the writing I've done and how much I still have left and suddenly it occurred to me that I was done with all the writing... for now. That's not the only thing though, I had the realization that I wrote more the second two weeks than I had the first two, by a lot.

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