ashish.is — writing Essays from Ashish Srivastava's corner of the indie web https://ashish.is/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z Ashish Srivastava https://ashish.is/ The Library That Reads You Back https://ashish.is/writing/2025/library-panopticon/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z We built a library and woke up in a panopticon. On surveillance, the web we lost, and the web we could still build. The Architecture of Accountability https://ashish.is/writing/2025/architecture-of-accountability/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z What Good Manufacturing Practice can teach us about algorithmic accountability: paper trails for the systems that govern our lives. The Folly of the University; or, Why Students Hallucinate https://ashish.is/writing/2025/why-students-hallucinate/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z OpenAI says language models hallucinate because training rewards confident guessing over admitting uncertainty. Universities do the same thing to students. Learning out Loud https://ashish.is/writing/2025/learning-out-loud/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z On learning in public, office-hours culture, and why gatekeeping knowledge helps no one. Photoshop the Bass https://ashish.is/writing/2025/photoshop-the-bass/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z JPEG compression and audio EQ are secretly the same idea: reshaping frequencies to throw away what you can't perceive and boost what you can. The Cloud That Appears When You Crack a Drink https://ashish.is/writing/2025/weather-in-a-bottle/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z Why a little cloud appears when you crack open a cold drink: adiabatic expansion and everyday thermodynamics. Managing a Personal Library in Obsidian https://ashish.is/writing/2025/home-library-organization-obsidian/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z How I catalog and manage my home library in Obsidian: building a personal librarian into my second brain. Confusing Chemistry and ChemE (Picking the Right Major for the Wrong Reasons) https://ashish.is/writing/2025/confusing-chemistry-cheme/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z I picked chemical engineering thinking it was chemistry. On how teaching shapes perception, and picking the right major for the wrong reasons. Love for the Bazz Fuss https://ashish.is/writing/2025/love-for-the-bazz-fuss/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z An ode to the Bazz Fuss: the low-component fuzz pedal circuit every DIY audio tinkerer should build. A Mathemagical Calculator Trick https://ashish.is/writing/2025/mathemagical-calculator-trick/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z A mathemagical pattern hiding in your phone calculator's 3x3 grid, worked out on paper at a beer garden. Lab Notes Proposal — Crowdsourcing the Perfect EQ Presets https://ashish.is/writing/2025/crowdsourced-eq/ 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z 2025-06-01T00:00:00Z A proposal for crowdsourcing EQ presets: what if we could share how music sounds, not just screenshots of equalizer settings? Joining the Indie Web https://ashish.is/writing/2025/joining-the-indie-web/ 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Why I built my own corner of the web: a home-base for experiments, half-baked projects, and genuine curiosity.