https://njames.xyz Mathematics and comparative literature. en-us Sun, 03 May 2026 22:07:44 GMT https://njames.xyz/p/3d5f141b-5f5d-46e6-ae2c-750bf97898f1.html https://njames.xyz/p/3d5f141b-5f5d-46e6-ae2c-750bf97898f1.html Tue, 28 Apr 2026 01:53:37 GMT Introduction I love art. Both of my sisters are artists, and it's something I've always been surrounded by at home growing up. It's one of the reasons why I study Comparative Literature at Princeton today! I'm currently taking a class on Byzantine Art on Mount Athos (ART 430), but for this post I wanted to write about one of my favorite artists, Pablo Picasso. In particular, I want to focus on on… https://njames.xyz/p/9411f824-aeb5-4ae2-91a2-34d25c7d6253.html https://njames.xyz/p/9411f824-aeb5-4ae2-91a2-34d25c7d6253.html Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:35:24 GMT Χαῖρετε ὦ φίλοι! A lot of my past blog posts have been about classes I've taken a while back during my time in college. I figured I should write something more recent, so let's do Greek stuff since that's what I spend most of my time working on. I'm currently taking CLG 108, which is an introduction to Homeric Greek as a dialect. Up until this point I have taken 3 and a half years of straight Gre… https://njames.xyz/p/ee39c978-dd47-4276-b67b-8938ebcbea9a.html https://njames.xyz/p/ee39c978-dd47-4276-b67b-8938ebcbea9a.html Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:00:59 GMT Given that I study comparative literature, I often get asked the question "what is your favorite book of all time?" This naturally is super hard to answer, since it really depends on the person asking the question since interests always vary a ton. But since people in startups and business are presumably reading this blog, I thought I would write about one of my favorites pertaining to idealism,… https://njames.xyz/p/cf335811-e3b5-40a2-a903-a2b801ea68a6.html https://njames.xyz/p/cf335811-e3b5-40a2-a903-a2b801ea68a6.html Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:07:16 GMT I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes people do things. Not in the trite sense, but in one that is much deeper. What compels someone to devote years of their life to a cause? For example, why do people toil, and arduously suffer and dedicate themselves to a craft, a company, a nation, or a brand? Addressing a blog I made previously on the principle of least action, what pulls people ou… https://njames.xyz/p/89b4064b-5adc-47e5-bf14-a36cc0449759.html https://njames.xyz/p/89b4064b-5adc-47e5-bf14-a36cc0449759.html Sat, 21 Feb 2026 23:34:05 GMT During my freshman year of college, I took a class with Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava. Unlike most professors, Manjul never has course textbooks for his classes. This class in particular (MAT 419) was about quadratic forms and p-adic number theory. It is easily the weirdest class I have ever taken in my life, and also taught me profound lessons on how to think better too. In this blog post, I w… https://njames.xyz/p/a5c07b16-aadb-417c-9039-a1d65eb34252.html https://njames.xyz/p/a5c07b16-aadb-417c-9039-a1d65eb34252.html Fri, 20 Feb 2026 06:37:56 GMT For my first blog post, I want to write a reflection on laziness. This is something that I often talk about with my friends over dinner and such, but usually I write it on a napkin or just write with chalk on the table and it gets smudged. This is just a formal record of my thoughts on the matter. Introduction Let's start simple here. Fix two points and in the or whatever. Consider all smooth cur…