Seeking beauty, clarity, and good decaf

Election Night

vivianimbriotis | Nov. 6, 2024, 11:59 p.m.

Confidence intervals narrowThe Bayesians start to sweatThe Pax Americana sobs and gibbers in the bedThe dreams of revolutionBrought about by Third EstateLook upon the mess we've made in th' manner of

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ST segment changes in ischaemia: Much more than you wanted to know

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 23, 2024, 12:55 p.m.

When we die, for many of us it will be coronary ischaemia that escorts us offstage. Sometimes it comes for us early, and a phalanx of soldiers armed with alteplase or paclitaxel-eluting stents can sta

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For M and D

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 21, 2024, 8:15 a.m.

Or: For the bravery of a husband, in fulfilling his wife's wish to donate her organs to the project of medicine, in the most unrelenting of circumstances A candle flameWhen blown isA process that has

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Upon learning that lepidopterists freeze insects to pin them

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 29, 2024, 7:33 p.m.

Circuitry in ganglia propelsMy wings to lift aloft and flyUpon great thermals and swellsIn autumn time to California But this box keeps me tiedAnd my antennae weigh a tonneThe icy cold seeps into meAs

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A poem for my dad

vivianimbriotis | April 28, 2024, 6:02 p.m.

You’re with me in my head still, a little voice I hear,A pale imitation of your rough and raucous toneTelling me a joke and keeping my head clear The first thing is honor! I learned that from you

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On strict poetic forms

vivianimbriotis | Feb. 15, 2024, 2:06 a.m.

Almost all modern poetry is free verse, and that's terribly sad.Now don't get me wrong, I love reading free verse, even really degenerate filth like ee cummings. But when I write poetry, I prefer to w

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What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem

vivianimbriotis | Feb. 15, 2024, 2:03 a.m.

Marcus Ogulnius Lepidus was a Roman, as if you couldn’t tell – and while a plebeian, his family line had once produced a Consul of Rome. So, like all well-to-do Romans, he was off to visit Egypt.The r

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Elsewhere

vivianimbriotis | Jan. 8, 2024, 9:07 p.m.

A wood nymph lay immanentThe future on her oak lipsA dragon girl innocentI was someone she could fix My mind wove a fabled groveA lover fair, a canopyA night cold, a cradled stoveA world serves m

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The Sydney Housing Crisis

vivianimbriotis | Dec. 20, 2023, 5:44 p.m.

Wikipedia lies to you. For instance, it will tell you, if you ask, that the Sydney Harbor Bridge was built after World War One, but everyone who lives here knows the truth. The bridge has always been

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The Third Law

vivianimbriotis | Dec. 3, 2023, 5:15 p.m.

1Observe the black pitch of the night, as the rain buckets down. The forest is thick here, but no canopy could deter this downpour. To the left, note the squat cliff face, barely the height of two men

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Dysequilibrium

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 30, 2023, 7:10 p.m.

The clock hits four thirty p.m., so you click your pager on. You have to get bloods from Mrs Moore, so you walk towards the cannulation trolley. Needle, syringe. Band-aid, alcohol wipe. There are no t

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Koan 1

vivianimbriotis | July 23, 2023, 8:51 p.m.

The pneumonia does not live in the lung. It lives between the heads of the people who think there is pneumonia.

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Invocation 1

vivianimbriotis | July 23, 2023, 8:48 p.m.

May there still be moss for you to walk on.May there still be people for you to love.May there still be events for you to talk onAnd dinner parties and hail and doves. May there still be sunsets

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An Ode to Mike

vivianimbriotis | July 2, 2023, 1:56 p.m.

Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out? Silly question, of course. The candle flame was a process, and now the things that were contributing to bringing about that process have ce

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The more things change

vivianimbriotis | June 3, 2023, 2:31 p.m.

If you are one of the unlucky few who have been here before, you'll notice things look a little different. I built this blog using Django, a python web framework that is a genuine pleasure to use. Pre

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Dr Seuss, Gen Med JMO

vivianimbriotis | May 23, 2023, 2:26 p.m.

I come home from the hospital; I try to typeThe pokey motel room does not have a kitchenIt does have two wall-mounted massive black screensI comfort myself that the hospital's payingAnd sit in the sho

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Apo-Kalyptein

vivianimbriotis | May 10, 2023, 2:26 p.m.

I commit this to writing despite the danger of evoking words. I do this to prove that we still have the capacity, some of us.Apocalypse comes from apo, to move away from, and kalyptein, a covering. To

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A nonexhuastive list of reasons not to date me

vivianimbriotis | March 19, 2023, 2:25 p.m.

You shouldn’t date me because I am bad at sleeping in a bed with someone else.You shouldn’t date me because sometimes I am inconsolably sad with no clear cause.You shouldn’t date me because I am easil

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Gustatory Luckpilling

vivianimbriotis | March 17, 2023, 2:24 p.m.

I have been obsessed with Luck lately, and she is hungry.Her stomach growled when she saw How To Be Free by Epictetus on my bookshelf, and she started by eating that. Then she ate Epictetus himself, w

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Monastic Luckpilling

vivianimbriotis | March 3, 2023, 2:23 p.m.

The dove, when it comes, is not white. You would simply call it a pigeon, though formally it goes by Columba Liva, the rock dove.  It does not come at the same time each day, and sometimes it doe

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Coping

vivianimbriotis | Dec. 30, 2022, 2:22 p.m.

Sometimes I imagine youAs you will be, or, well,As you might be, someday I imagine you telling me to excelImagine you telling me I’ll be okayImagine you brushing my hair behind my ear. I ima

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Spurn the advice of the talented

vivianimbriotis | Dec. 29, 2022, 2:21 p.m.

"I am famished,” said the elk, pawing at the ground. The mouse nodded in sympathy.“Perhaps I could teach you to find food as I do?” the mouse offered.“And how is that?”“By stealing the cheese and the

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Dissolving the brain disease model of addiction

vivianimbriotis | Nov. 22, 2022, 2:20 p.m.

I originally wrote the below for the 2022 Allan J Foster Memorial Prize, from the University of Tasmania, which I received.  “What are you up to, doctor?”That’s Socrates. He has walked in from th

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Cape Pillar, Tasmania 2022

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 30, 2022, 2:16 p.m.

The highway’s death and the forest’s birthDrizzle falls between the banksiasHere at the ends of the earthOf warmth there is a decided dearthOnce walking stops and chills seep inAt the trail’s death an

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A brief primer on intravenous milk

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 24, 2022, 2:08 p.m.

Disclaimer: do not infuse milk into anyone.Having recently injected milk into the veins of a patient about to die, who survived for some hours after the operation, and believing that this therapeutic

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Bloviating

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 16, 2022, 2 p.m.

“One of the things I strongly dislike about myself is my need to say banal and uninteresting things in an obtuse and bloviating way.” That’s Socrates. He is sick, remember? He’s sitting in a blocky fo

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The moral manifesto

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 15, 2022, 1:59 p.m.

Let me tell you a story. We have within us a well of energy. We give from this well when required by our job (and by other commitments but centrally to this story by our job); we give to our

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Limericks

vivianimbriotis | Aug. 29, 2022, 1:59 p.m.

There once was someone who froze upAt a voice raised or a man struckHe lived in his headAnd wrote on his bedAnd was diagnosed as chronically moonstruckThere once was a forest TasmanianLoud with insect

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Even here, where the moon is hidden

vivianimbriotis | June 13, 2022, 1:57 p.m.

We know the landis disappearing beneaththe sea, islands swallowedlike prehistoric fish.We know we are doomed,done for, damned, and stillthe light reaches us, fallson our shoulders even now,even here w

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Repetition

vivianimbriotis | May 30, 2022, 1:56 p.m.

Dating apps are fuel for solipsism.An endless sea of people with no abilityTo say anythingOr at least say anything distinct from Everyone else.Repetition legitimizes;No I can’t believe you’reStrangely

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The Lion and the Mouse

vivianimbriotis | April 22, 2022, 1:55 p.m.

The Lion lay sleeping in his cave, rumbling snores emerging from his nostrils. The Mouse, temped by a morsel, skittered past him. The Lion, all at once awakened, placed his huge paw upon the Mouse and

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To the person who stole my bike

vivianimbriotis | Jan. 27, 2022, 1:55 p.m.

Hi,I figure this is probably not a great time for you. Either you really, really needed a bike or you’re going through something, and either way I wish things were going a little better for you.Just a

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Two bad poems and one good one

vivianimbriotis | Jan. 19, 2022, 1:53 p.m.

Micrographia Do you ever feel like no oneHas ever seen you?Really truly understood you -Bone and gristle and spine understood youVinegar and blood and brine understood youCrying on the shower floor wi

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Fractional Julia Sets

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 28, 2021, 1:52 p.m.

Here are the Julia sets of a family of functions:f_a(x) = x ^ (a) + 1 + 1ifor a in the real interval [1,2.2].Colors taken from the http://colormind.io/ API (highly recommended).

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The demogorgon

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 28, 2021, 1:50 p.m.

Behold! The Demogorgon approaches!A beast of steel and asbestos with tiny windows for eyes!It has a voracious appetite, consuming a diet only of white stickers filled with numbers and barcodes and nam

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Micropoems

vivianimbriotis | Oct. 27, 2021, 1:48 p.m.

International (carnal) relationsYou told me it wasn’t a love letter,It was a declaration of independence.I miss you, butWe’re different polities now.Quixotism We wear face masks at the hospital.I can’

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Language, Gender, Nosology

vivianimbriotis | June 20, 2020, 1:47 p.m.

Observe: as the camera pans across the softly-lit office to the daybed, where reclines a patient with long white beard and flowing white toga, the door swings open and there enters, stage left, a man

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Medical school kills curiosity

vivianimbriotis | March 8, 2020, 1:46 p.m.

I have always been intensely curious. I want to know how things work, and it irritates me when a question doesn’t have an answer. This is part of the reason I like medicine - the process of diagnosis

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The Pot Plant Plot

vivianimbriotis | Feb. 25, 2020, 1:43 p.m.

Here is no water but only rockRock and no water and the sandy roadThe road winding above among the mountainsWhich are mountains of rock without waterIf there were water we should stop and drinkAmongst

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Idle osmusings

vivianimbriotis | Nov. 17, 2019, 1:42 p.m.

I think I first learned about osmosis in grade seven. We cut up potatoes into long, identical strips, and placed them into three solutions - one of pure water, one with some salt, and one with a lot o

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Exponential julia sets

vivianimbriotis | Nov. 16, 2019, 1:42 p.m.

Images of the Julia sets on the argand plane for Re(Z) in (-4,2) and Im(Z) in (2,2) of a family of exponential functions given by f(z)=exp(z)exp(ia), a in (0,2pi). The color represents the number of i

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Measuring fuzzy objects

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 25, 2019, 1:40 p.m.

An epidemiologist and a philosophy student started their morning with coffee and an argument. “So I was reading this blog post about Goodhart’s law, and I was thinking about how it might apply to heal

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Machine learning intuition

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 25, 2019, 1:39 p.m.

The phrase “machine learning” is in the news a lot, and for good reason. Voter manipulation, youtube ads, facial recognition, language processing, artificially generated images of cats...machine learn

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God(hart's law)

vivianimbriotis | Sept. 5, 2019, 1:38 p.m.

It is a little-known fact that gods live and die on worship. Zeus, for instance, had been dead for a long time now. Some American flies a kite, and someone in a white coat mutters something about elec

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About Viv

Mid-twenties lost cause.
Trapped in a shrinking cube.
Bounded on the whimsy on the left and analysis on the right.
Bounded by mathematics behind me and medicine in front of me.
Bounded by words above me and raw logic below.
Will be satisfied when I have a fairytale romance, literally save the entire world, and write the perfect koan.