becauseofyou 1st generation author

i got to know him this year (see: eurovision 2024). he is my absolute winner. i like it when such things happen in the least expected moments. i wasn't expecting much from eurovision in terms of discovering songs to listen to over and over again, to lose myself in them. they made us get used to seeing shows & dances rather than pure, naked songs.

ok, enough complaining! this guy absolutely blew my mind. i don't even remember how many times i've listened to that song "mon amour" to this day, and his special performance where he does that acapella thing is something you gotta see.

and let's not skip the crucial part of his performance; his eyes * what lovely-looking eyes those are. it's been a while since i've come across someone who "looks" like him.

i've already become a fan, and he has great songs other than mon amour, here are my favorite ones belle, la recette, je te le done, viens on s'aime and mon amie la rose and much more... check his spotify!!

good things are like russian nesting dolls; they come with more good things within. as i ended up discovering more french artists, both old & new whom there was no way i'd discover otherwise. oh thanks to spotify's recommendations!

online, as we all know, people present themselves as they want to be, not necessarily as they are in real life. we behave in ways we wish we could in reality. that's why i think many people online prefer staying anonymous * because if a friend saw what we wrote, they might mock us, saying, "that's not really you. what's with all this stuff? you're faking!"

but when you fall in love with that person online, you're giving them a chance to become the person they actually want to be. it's like saying, "i fell in love with 'the person' you introduced me to, so if you can actually be that person too, then come here, darling."

some succeed, some don't, and give up. i think what matters is giving that chance to ourselves and to the other person in hopes of meeting somewhere in reality.

the year i was in junior high (at the time, making jokes and trying to roast the teachers was my life's mission), our english teacher asked a question and scanned the classroom for someone to answer.

i actually knew the answer for once (which didn't happen often throughout my school life), so to outshine my classmates, i said, 'mrs. johnson, are you looking for me? i'm right here!' to which she replied, 'i'm afraid not...' that response hurt more than the worst insult i've ever heard. it must've really gotten to me because even now, whenever i think about it, it still gives me chills.

this year's nobel prize in physics is actually going to the masterminds behind chatgpt. john hopfield and geoffrey hinton are the winners for their groundbreaking work in machine learning and neural networks.

these two scientists used fundamental physics principles to develop methods that form the foundation of today's powerful machine learning. john hopfield created an associative memory that can store and recreate patterns like images in data. geoffrey hinton invented a method that can autonomously discover features in data, enabling tasks like identifying specific objects in images.

at a time when ai has become so embedded in our lives, i think it's safe to say this is a well-deserved award.

it's january 2004. lloyd braun, the top executive at abc back then, came up with an idea and ordered a tv show script based on it. the show would be about a group of people stranded on an island after a plane crash. however, braun wasn't happy with the script, so he reached out to j.j. abrams, the creator of alias at that time, and asked him to write a new pilot script.

initially, abrams thought the concept wasn't suitable for a tv series, but he eventually got to work, convincing the producer that the island couldn't be just any "normal" island. partnering with producer damon lindelof, abrams filmed the pilot episode in a brief 12 weeks.

the result? lost's pilot became the most expensive in tv history, with a budget of 12 million dollars! braun, having greenlit such an expensive project, was fired from abc. as you know, lost turned into one of the greatest commercial and critical successes in tv history. abrams solidified his reputation as television's (and then cinema's) golden boy.

as for braun, the man who first discovered the show, he ended up accepting yahoo's job offer after he asked this question to his kids "whether they'd rather give up their computer or tv" and not surprisingly they said "tv".

and just one last note; the chilling "previously on lost..." voice that opens each episode, though slightly slowed down, was actually braun's voice.