The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a barbaric act by a nation wishing it were still significant in more than its ability to lash out. It started in Crimea, continues in the Ukrainian East, and should be pushed out by Western forces. Russia's hopes were to reinstall the puppet regime it once had; a pliant state, as obedient as Byelarus is under its dictator.
Russia's excuses for the invasion are facile. NATO is a defensive alliance. It does not invade, and its necessity has been demonstrated by Russia's actions. Russia's claimed fear of it is merely that NATO won't let Russia pull shit against its member countries. Russia has a treaty obligation to Ukraine to respect its territory, which it has ignored in its occupation of Crimea and its continued invasion.
Russia does not have a leg to stand on. Its actions undermine international trust - we should be in an era where nations don't seek territorial gains through invasion. Defense treaties just formalise that international norm, a norm which provides for security and economic growth.
Nuclear weapons make war more dangerous, but we cannot afford to let anyone who has them do whatever they want in the world; we must respond.
I call for four things:
Earlier this week, I donated $1000 to the University of Pittsburgh as part of something called Pitt Day of Giving. This is a yearly event where the various departments, student orgs, and programmes extend their hand, and as people interested in the University we can open our wallets and help out. I have no deep ties to UPitt, but I feel more ties to them than my actual alma mater, and I think CMU (probably the University I feel the strongest ties to) doesn't really need my money, so I've done this for the last few years.
My donations:
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I could talk at length about why I picked the departments that I did, and how they fit into my ideas of bettering the world, but that might not be that interesting. Instead, let's talk about academia and how it fits into the world.
I occupy a position on the left that's not presently very loud - that of cosmopolitan technocratic socialism. I take part in broader efforts that span the political spectrum in pushing back against woke social changes, and it being a very broad effort means not everyone in it sees the struggle the same way. My model for understanding this difference is one of Corruption, Cleansing, and Eradication.
I understand the "fuck it all" mentality. I suspect it's not a modern creation so much as a primal urge, part of our mental toolbox for problem solving. I think we should be able to look it in the face and reject it. We also should reject the idea that we must weigh, in great detail, the faults of the woke versus the faults of the populists. They both are very heavy, and we should side with neither, accepting that we will anger both.
I've been trying to improve my understanding of music recently, turning what once were highly informal understandings of various types of rhythms into ones based on more than just my own observations. I've been ordering a few books on the topics (unfortunately, some of them haven't been published yet, so they'll arrive in my Kindle library whenever they do) and reading up. In some ways it's nice to have waited as I already have well-worn ways of thinking about things that I can test by seeing how they line up with the views of others - it's more interesting. Although were I to want to become a scholar proper, these initial understandings might need be torn down for wholesale replacement. Perhaps. Or perhaps they would give me a unique perspective - there are those tensions in scholarship.
As I start to think about the coming internship, I also now know that at least one of the people I work with closely is heading off to the next stage of his career. Perhaps both. Strange how the subjective impressions of time passing fit into the numbers. Anitya. Today I met with another coworker who just returned from some travel and needed a mouse, and talked about a lot of things. I usually worry about talking too much, touching on hot-button issues that can destroy even work relationships. This was fine though, I think. I touched on some of the big differences in perspective between respect-oriented and expression-oriented discourse, and how each sees the other as defective. I probably talk about that too often when blogging, and maybe in person too.
The coronavirus came into focus over the last month. So many things are shut down, and there's a lot of bad information floating around. I'm glad I have good sources of information.
Last night I saw Dara O'Briain live for the first time. Was great. Was interesting how packed the theatre was given how he hasn't done a lot that would make most Americans know who he is. Although NYC is the kind of place that probably could fill a theatre of people visiting from any major country at any given time, so maybe it's partly that. Was also struck by how tall he is.
My struggle with productivity on my personal projects has crept back into the center of my attention - my habits are not good for this, with there always being a plan "next weekend" to do things, and then when the weekend starts, I keep managing to do very little. I get a lot of reading done and play some games, maybe take a walk, but the projects sit fallow, with the ideas I keep having for them falling out of my attention (either lost entirely or in endless little notes in Google Keep). Working on changing that and arresting this flow of time with little output. It's hard. I sometimes dream of taking a week off sometime and imagine that I'd spend it well. I don't know if I would. Sometimes in the past I have, when my usual distractions get a bit old and I remember all the other things I want to do. Sometimes it's just a more bulky nonproductive weekend. I imagine many others suffer this - other creative types who are still often accidentally in orbit around passive consumption.
I am increasingly worried about politics - both the long-term unwelcome social shifts that radical progressives are pushing into society, and the populist directions of both parties. Right now it looks like Sanders is likely to be the Democratic nominee, and this strikes me as very dangerous in that:
On Saturday I saw a 4-person play called The Imbible, set in a small bar. It was about the history of alcohol in human civilisation. Cool topic. It was a little too hammy for my taste in parts, but the singing was good and it was interestingly different. Maybe more like an interactive bar show than anything else - it was a little bit interactive (powerpoint with some trivia).
Recently, as having a summer intern comes into focus, I've been asking myself repeatedly about if I'm prepared enough to try to be a good mentor, because this is in my view one of the most important things to get right. Done poorly, I could waste someone's time for the summer and maybe even drive them away from topics I really care about. Done well, I could offer them a lot of enrichment, connection, habits, and skills that they could carry forward into their career, long after I am no longer working. Have been planning the hell out of all of this, knowing that plans need to be flexible, but they're substance we can draw on as needed so our wiser longer-term self can aid our more limited immediate self.
I also have been kind of sad as yet another person at work that I'm growing closer to is planning to head off to the next stage of their career. It hurts.
A few interesting things:
On a longer subway ride recently, one of the rare ones where I had managed to get a seat, I was thinking about recent and past rides and times where I've given up my seat. In particular, there are times when I've decided (based on someone being old or having trouble standing) to do so, other times where I've done so due to some existing subway policy for doing so for some classes of people, and the rare circumstances where someone has demanded that of me absent such a policy (sometimes I've complied, often I have not). There have been times in that last category where a polite request or even had I noticed someone wanted the seat I may have offered, but the demand so put me off that my willingness dissolved. A lot of this comes down to attitude and the expressed reason. This got me thinking of both the appropriate direction of expressed gratitude, and about more general times in society where we may give things up for others. I don't believe in voluntarism to the extent that all such exchanges must be voluntary, and largely believe in norms/rules, but there is something lost when those dominate these topics.
Politically, these have been infuriating times; our governmental norms are probably weaker than they've ever been as the legislative and executive branches are captured and transformed into tools of advantage for our current POTUS. Recently read an article comparing this to Chavez's rise to power. And as usual, I am frustrated that some parts of the left would be happy to commit these sins themselves had they the power, even though right now this failure is because of corruption on the right. And some people call this realisation - that human political flaws are not unique to one side of the divide - to be both-sides-ism.
Hoping to volunteer with a debate organisation that's trying to raise the level of discourse in American society. Not sure they can use someone like me productively, as I'm easily socially exhausted, but perhaps. Brought it up with one of their organisers at the last debate. Will bring it up again at the next.
I've been preparing to "pass the torch" a bit more directly, by having an intern this summer. Not that I'm ready to retire or anything, but mentoring feels like a good deed that I haven't done enough of recently. I am very impressed with my top five choices and have been having the needed conversations to make it happen. Looking forward to it; I know it's a lot of work, but people invested time in me (many of whom are retired now). This is one way we build continuity with the whole of human civilisation.
A few thoughts on a lot of things:
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Last Friday I didn't make it to work because I had a weird gut pain when I woke up. Possible TMI ahead (Nothing sexual, just body stuff).
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The hospital was an interesting place. I think that were I not in such a bad state I would enjoy hanging out there at odd hours of the night - there's always a lot going on, there's a feeling of purpose, and there's a certain amount of drama I noticed from my fellow patients (only a few of which I saw, but some of the more colourful ones I heard). I still sometimes struggle with purpose in my life, and the "things keep going on" there felt nice.
The kidney stone? Just another thing that happens to people. All the other little things that tell me I'm not as healthy as I should be in general because of the blood tests? Those are things I should work on. I'm glad my coworkers have been okay about this. I'm not entirely sure I've passed it yet, but it at least shifted to where it hasn't been bothering me much today.
A few things:
Reading about eusociality and people working out how it may have developed, I feel I finally have a solid argument for kin selection, something I've long been convinced of, where I believe the opposition to the idea is mostly people not thinking clearly enough about the dynamics of natural selection.
Playing along with the artifice of the boundaries of the clock, and at peace with it right now because of the idea of constraints being helpful for creativity. Physical analogy: bridges over gaps.
Yesterday, on Christmas, I decided to have Chinese food, and it led me to a very nearby restaurant (less than a block away) that had very good food. Perhaps that's another example. I liked the experience of seeing NYC with slightly fewer people - still more than a normal Pittsburgh day by a wide margin, but comparatively desolate for here. Novelty is something I worry about getting enough of, particularly as I am alone and need to take care to feed myself enough of it to avoid ossification.
Been slowly growing close to some more coworkers, although some of them look like they're preparing to lift anchor and the pain of that loss is already something I anticipate and resent.
My body has been reminding me that although I now understand my headaches and can mitigate them somewhat, they're not gone. Still helpful.
I'm starting to put together the set of ideas that will turn into my DragonCon 2020 costume idea; I am pretty sure I'll be going as Tychoides (from Mage:Ascension). The problem here may be that it's a bit underconstrained, as the character was never very well described in the official source material, and interactions and persona are entirely lacking. But that's fun too. Brainstorming into a Google Doc. I also should be starting to plan the trip to Buenos Aires next year; I had hoped to get a feel when the neuroscience conference at Janelia will be so I can steer clear of that, but I can't wait on that forever.
Having a bit of fun with the New Year in that I selected a new set of sounds for my phone. Been nostalgic for "The Critic", and its nice smooth intro seems like it would be good to wake up to. As one example.
Some inputs and thoughts:
Earlier today I went to see Bettlejuice - the play. I found myself initially weirded out at the large plot and characterisation differences from the film, but once it was clearly far enough from that that I had to let go, I was fine - it was as if they took the original film, put it in the blender with a sprinkle of the cartoon series and few other ingredients, and made a very new echo. And it was a lot of fun on those terms. And in some ways they had more fidelity to the original plotline than my memory did - I had forgotten that Lydia was a stepdaughter rather than daughter of Delia, for example, and the married-for-immigration-status thing was an echo of a joke in the original. There are a few topics in the play that are .. difficult for me, in that they touch on some emotional trends that I normally like to keep mostly-buried, but overall I had a great time and I loved the set design.
Was hoping to get tickets for Hadestown, which was advertised in the playbook, but it seems to be quite hard to find affordable tickets. Not that I couldn't afford it, but I have a notion of reasonability for tickets and I'm not willing to go above that or to accept less good seets to stay below.
This past week I went for tea with some coworkers. Had a good time - some of the best desserts I had ever had. We're going again at the beginning of December, at least partly to give our fourth member, who wasn't able to make it this time, a chance to see it.
Glad that the shot Tortfeasor got seemed to cure his nose-cold, for now. Hoping that the thyroid meds Beefalo is now getting as an ear cream are working well for her.
Broadly, I am comfortable with some paternalism in our laws and institution, when it serves a valuable societal end. Recently I spotted a Twitter quiz asking people to think about age minimums for various things. And so, some thoughts.