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What is Serbest Defter?

Serbest Defter is an independent digital notebook covering economics, finance, technology, artificial intelligence, reading notes, and personal essays. The posts here make no claim to be a professional publication; they are simply personal notes, thoughts, readings, and records of evaluations.

What it is not

Financial posts are not investment advice. The articles are not intended to provide buy, sell, or price direction recommendations. Sources are cited for transparency where relevant; the final evaluation is strictly a personal note.

Use of artificial intelligence

AI may be utilized during the site setup, formatting, and the process of reviewing notes. The final choice, responsibility, and publishing decision rest entirely with the author.

Even though you think you have a ton of ideas when planning things like this, once you sit down with a pen and paper, your mind suddenly goes blank. I’m sure I’ll get into the groove over time.

I think it’s best to start by explaining my purpose. I assume you’ve heard of artificial intelligence. 🙂 In fact, if you haven’t, I’d suggest never leaving your cave. But if you insist on coming out, the world will beat you right back in anyway.

For years, I’ve had this idea of setting up a website and jotting things down. To be honest, it wouldn’t be a lie to say I wanted a way to get the knowledge building up in my head out into the world. Because while I’m constantly bombarding myself with information, a certain loneliness unfortunately comes with it. After a while, looking for ways to share things with the outside world becomes inevitable.

Making YouTube videos could actually have been cool. But setting up the necessary gear is a whole hassle in itself. Plus, since I don’t have a suitable space to shoot videos, I went back to the blog idea that’s been on my mind for years.

If you’re wondering, “What does AI have to do with this?”—AI was actually one of the most important factors in developing this idea. If something can be done, learning by doing is always my first choice. As someone who has been messing around with technology and gadgets for years, I wanted to build my own site and bring this idea to life. But when you don’t know how to code, you end up dependent on ready-made website builders or purchased templates. I’m not saying those are bad, but I’ve always wanted to dig a little deeper. That’s exactly where AI stepped in and helped me build this site.

Whether studying, reading a book, or analyzing a company, I’ve always worked by taking notes. Pen and paper have always been my best friends. But with the rise of AI, the possibilities of what you can do with notes expanded so much that it became essential to bring those notes into conversations with AI. Analyzing and reviewing notes with AI models is incredibly useful; I highly recommend it to everyone. So I thought, “Since I’m taking these notes, and since I can build a website, why not bring this idea back to life after all these years?” Let’s wait and see how it turns out.

If you ask, “I get that you’re going to write down your notes, but what topics do you usually take notes on?” honestly, I have so many interests that it feels like if I didn’t work at all and just focused on them for a hundred years, I still wouldn’t get bored. I haven’t been bored for about ten years; the only difference is that I’ve been working at the same time. I’ve been repeating this sentence for five or six years, and people find it strange every time. On the flip side, I find it strange when people get married, upgrade their phones every year, and spend at least two or three months’ salary doing so. There are plenty of other things I find even stranger, but somehow we get along. I want to write about these too, and we’ll see what you think about my quirky ideas.

Getting back to the notes, writing essays on topics that people might find odd is at the top of my list. Sometimes, I like to revisit my thoughts on the same topic after years have passed. This is where AI comes in really handy. I can easily analyze the evolution between my past and present ideas by asking it.

Technology, especially computer technology, is an area I’ve been interested in since childhood. What started as a hobby of taking things apart, putting them back together, and experimenting on my own later evolved into reading almost at an academic level.

AI models and advancements in this field have become my latest hobby over the past year. I don’t just follow news about models or companies. I thoroughly enjoy reading about how we can develop our own models, how to run open-source models on our own servers, and how much TPS, VRAM, or RAM is required, along with topics like AI-vectors, RAG, and LLMs.

I can also list more familiar interests like movies, TV shows, anime, manhwa, and books. I try to stay on top of almost all the good new releases without missing a beat. Let’s see when my brain finally explodes. 🤯

Lastly, partly due to my major, the area I spend the most time on and enjoy the most outside of my profession is economics and finance. Strictly speaking, finance is a subfield of economics. But I don’t know if this is the case in other fields—it makes you want to ask, “How on earth is this just a subfield?” I did my master’s in economics, and that whole education took just under four years. I’ve been involved in finance semi-professionally for three or four years, but it wouldn’t be a lie to say I’m still at the very beginning. 🙂 Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit; economics is truly a vast ocean. You could spend years studying monetary theory and policy alone. Anyone who doesn’t believe it can just look at the economic situations of the countries around us. 🙂

As you can tell, I’m not a professional writer. If it weren’t for AI fixing my typos and grammar mistakes during the site setup, note analysis, and ultimately in every single post I write here, this blog probably wouldn’t exist.

I don’t have a grand purpose or big claims. Besides, the site doesn’t cost me anything, meaning I have no financial expectations in return. That’s why, as the name suggests, I’ll just be freely scribbling things down. I’m happy for anyone who finds value in what I write. For those who don’t, I hope you spend your time in much better ways. Because even though we don’t appreciate it enough most of the time, time is the most valuable thing in the world.

Here’s to spending our time as meaningfully as possible.