About me
I'm Esin, pronounced /eˈsin/ (see Wikipedia's IPA page for Turkish for more info)! You can also call me William (pronounced /wɪl.ˈjəm/) if you'd like! I'm a trans boy, and I use he/him pronouns! I was born on December 6, 2007. I am in my third year of university as of September 2026; my major is computer engineering. I'm Turkish, of Ossetian and Romani descent. I have autism and ADHD. I live in Antalya, Turkey, if it wasn't obvious already.
My interests (main ones in bold)
- Mathematics
- Computer science
- History of computing (and science history in general, but mostly history of computing)
- World War II (especially cryptography, espionage, and home front)
- The life, work, and modern legacy and impact of Alan Turing (I often simply call it "Alan Turing studies")
- Magazines
- Critical AI researchers and their work (Guest, Van Rooij, Hermans, Monroe, Birhane, Heffernan, Gebru, Torres, Bender, Hanna, et al.) and AI researchers in general
- The public transportation system of Antalya, Turkey
- Internet culture (mainly modern)
- Household and culinary chemistry
- Modern politics (Especially Turkish, US, British, and Dutch)
- Homonationalism, pinkwashing, Turkish secular nationalism, and AI industry entryism (I LOATHE these ideologies/strategies; it's that I am super drawn into researching and writing about them)
My hobbies (main ones in bold)
- Drawing, digital and traditional (mostly illustrations and comics, also 2D animations)
- Reading
- Writing (including worldbuilding and wiki editing)
- Playing video games
- Making videos, long-form and short-form
- Coding, including game development
- Listening, playing, and making music (singing, playing the piano, songwriting, composing)
- Riding public transportation and going around the city
- Keeping a commonplace book
- Sewing and embroidery
- Collecting things (especially magazines, also books and DVDs)
- 3D modeling
- Photo editing/manipulation (especially making digital collage and sbubbies)
My favorites
- Book genres/types: Modern/Contemporary fiction (Turkish and Western), non-fiction science, history, and politics and investigative journalism; comics/graphic novels
- Books and book series (Comics/graphic novels included, of course): Mai ve Siyah (Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil), The AI Con (Emily Bender and Alex Hanna), Squire (Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas), Watchmen (Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and others), Murmur (Will Eaves), Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney), Otisabi (Yılmaz Aslantürk), The Summer Hikaru Died (Mokumokuren), Puella Magi Madoka Magica manga series (Magica Quartet author team and Hanokage)
- Video games: Minecraft (especially modded), Stardew Valley, Balatro, Hearts of Iron IV (especially vanilla, The Fire Rises, The New Order: Last Days of Europe, and Twilight of the Anthropocene), Consume Me, Bomber Crew, Undertale and Deltarune, Papa's Gamerias (mainly Bakeria, Scooperia, and Paletaria), Hypnospace Outlaw, Geometry Dash
- Movies: Ghost in the Machine (2026), Backrooms (2026), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Casablanca (1942), Oppenheimer (2023), Mulan (1998), The Dark Knight (2008)
- TV shows: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (I both like the webseries and the TV show), HBO Chernobyl, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Little Witch Academia, House MD, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders
- Webcomics, webseries, ARGs, podcasts, blogs, other internet media: The Monument Mythos (especially Seasons 3 and 4, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (I both like the webseries and the TV show, as I said before), Aster in the Mirror, Chanta, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, A Magical Girl's Guide to Adulting, The Wrong Man, Inside the Lines, Emmy the Robot, Simulator Spring, Welcome Home, Pendog Creative Library, Pivot to AI, Dreaming Against the Machine, Behind the Bastards, Computer Science Off Course, Monroelab/Computational Impacts, Felienne newsletter/blog, Realtime Techpocalypse, Olivia Guest's online writings, Aftermath, Some More News, Factually with Adam Conover, Onlar TV, alan / Ayrım, Vesaire, Dergi Melatonin
- Magazines: Bilim ve Teknik, Kafkaokur, Bavul, Çok, Ot, #tarih, LubunFanzin, Kaldıraç, Boleka
- Music genres: Classical and orchestral, rock, rap, electronic, pop
- Musicians, bands, etc.: The Living Tombstone, Kendrick Lamar, Amateur Crastinator, Ayden George, mor ve ötesi, Epic Rap Battles of History and various fanmade rap battle channels (Freshy Kanal, Epic Rap Battles of Housery, Discord Rap Battles, Fightmarker, etc.), Tchaikovsky, Aram Khachaturian, Beethoven, Erik Satie, Edward Elgar, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Ludwig Göransson, C418, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, 44e-prone, Toby Fox, Penelope Scott
- Songs: The Living Tombstone - It Doesn't Matter, The Living Tombstone - I Can't Fix You, 44e-prone's チューリング・テ[]ト (Turing Teto) series, mor ve ötesi - Uyan, Kendrick Lamar - Mortal Man, all the Drake diss tracks Kendrick Lamar made (but particularly Meet the Grahams), Hildur Guðnadóttir's Joker (2019) soundtrack, Ayden George's The Fire Rises soundtrack, Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique (especially the 3rd movement), Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March, Milky - Just The Way You Are, That Handsome Devil - Charlie's Inferno, Steve Lacy - Dark Red, Indila - Tourner Dans Le Vide, Yoeko Kurahashi - 沈める街 (Sinking Town)
- Letters: H, E, C
- Flowers: Peonies, tulips, lavenders, daisies, roses
- Colors: Baby blue, cornflower blue, periwinkle, navy blue, hunter green, pastel yellow, beige, khaki
- Foods: Frozen berries, instant noodles, ice cream, tofu meatballs, kuru fasulye, iskender
- Drinks: Iced tea, flavored green tea, şalgam, fruit juice (especially orange, apple, and mango), lemonade, şerbet, flavored sparkling water, soda, water (OF COURSE I DO, especially cold water), hot chocolate, diet cola
- Cities: Antalya, Samsun, Ankara, and Denizli (all in Turkey)
- Bus routes in Antalya, Turkey: TK36, MF40, KC06, KC33, UC11, DC15, SD20A, DC79, SA65
Other things I like
- Libraries
- Bookstores and sahaflar (Turkish secondhand media stores)
- Books in general
- Stationary and stationary stores (I have a lot of highlighters, notebooks, and washi tapes!!)
- DVDs
- The radio
- Public transportation in general
- The Akdeniz University campus (I tend to look for any excuse to go there lol)
- Cats
Other facts about me
- My native language is Turkish. I can also speak English (in an advanced level; for reference, I scored 96 in the TOEFL I took in April 2024 which apparently is equivalent to C1 in CEFR), German (I finished the Busuu B2 course and now I'm doing the C1 one, and I'm trying to actually be confident in the language because I don't feel like I'm truly B2 lol; I also have a Telc A2 certificate), and I'm also learning French and Dutch. I also knew a little Latin but I forgot a lot of it.
- For programming and markup languages, I know Python, Java, HTML, and CSS. I can also work with Rest API!
- For traditional art, I mostly use crayons (erasable, classic, occassionally silky), pencils and pens/fineliners, colored pencils, and markers (alcohol, water-based, and acrylic). For digital art, I use Krita with a medium-sized Wacom Intuos 2018 graphics tablet.
- I'm a Linux user. My computer is a Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon / Windows 11 dual-boot.
- I used to be part of the Antalya Youth Council in the 2025-26 term. I got kicked out in February 2026 due to misconduct, more specifically badly representing the Youth Council or something like that. (If you're wondering what I did, I publicly shittalked about someone else at the Antalya Youth Forum 2026. From then on I've been trying to learn how to be more of a professional hater.)
- I'm a member of Özgür Üniversite Hareketi. I love my friends there!!
- I draw stuff for the zines LubunFanzin and Oyunbozan!
- I'm in Ali Al-Khatib's AI Skeptics Reading Group, and I really enjoy being part of it!! Meetings used to take place at 3 am in my timezone, but the time was changed to 3 pm ET which is 22:00 Turkey Time which means I no longer have to interrupt my sleep schedule to participate in meetings!!
- I'm learning how to drive! Right now I'm attending driving school for a Class B driver's license, which is needed for cars. In the future I'd like to get a Class D driver's license which is for buses!!
Go back to the homepage