After two fruitless hours of trying to sleep between 3 and 5 am, I decided to dress and go for a minimalist walk around the neighbourhood with just my keys, no wallet, phone, masks, or any of the other gear that routinely accompanies me when leaving the house. I got as far as the corridor […]
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The protagonist of a YouTube channel about blacksmithing which I have been watching used the aphorism “Buy once, cry once” as a rhetorical justification for buying high-quality tools. If you buy the right thing the first time, you cry once at the expense. By contrast, if you buy an inferior alternative you will cry the […]
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In my spare time I’m excited to be reading Gudrun Harrer’s: “Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme: The Inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1991-1998”. I’ve long been curious about the work of the IAEA and it looks like a fascinating and well-supported source.
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I am deviating somewhat from the planned timeline here, moving forward the first soft edit of the whole manuscript for coherence and structure to before finishing the literature review and incorporation of material from interviews. In part, that’s just an effort to break out of a low productivity pattern of toiling at the same very […]
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Looking back through my calendar, I think the last time I deliberately met anyone was March 7th. I foolishly skipped a couple of Massey College social events in the next couple of days and helped my ex-flatmate Silas move out, but by the time another friend was visiting town on the 14th, she cancelled her […]
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CBC’s Ideas with Nahlah Ayed ran a good segment on Stoicism during the coronavirus pandemic. It covers a lot of what I find appealing about philosophy and the contrast with the “power of positive thinking” notion which I dispute both factually and ethically. We can’t make things happen by wanting them or “thinking positive”, and […]
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The always-slightly-overenthusiastic Slate.com reports: The financial world resumed melting into goo on Monday thanks to the global coronavirus outbreak, with stocks falling so hard and fast in the morning that it triggered a rare 15-minute timeout on trading. By day’s end the S&P 500 collapsed by 7.6 percent—its worst showing since the financial crisis. The […]
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Samoyed (By icezar, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/)
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A few factors in the last few weeks have left me thinking broadly about the past and the future: the date roll over to 2020, my 36th birthday, and the feeling of progressing toward finishing the PhD. It has been a mingled set of feelings, but with a sad tone. Breaking it down into components, […]
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