The new IPCC report has been released, and the desire to just roll over and close my eyes and pretend to be asleep till I die is very great. The one cheerful thing today was listening to a podcast about Emmy Noether and while I can’t say I really understood her breakthroughs it was a […]
Rare earth
One day is much like another these days, weekend or not. I was working today, unwilling and unable to make much progress. The sun was out, and we went for coffee in the late afternoon, taking a winding way back. Now I am working again as the GF cooks dinner. I listened to an interesting […]
Empires of the west
I have been enjoying a new/old podcast: the podcast is the Ottoman Histories podcast which I have subscribed to for a time now, and the specific series is a lecture course on Islamic history. It has some problems: South Asian Islamic history barely gets a look-in, leave alone South-East Asian Islam and history; Central Asia […]
Year of sadness
I listened to a podcast on the coronavirus response in the UK. It went through aspects of the pandemic response over the last nearly-year, and asked if it was inevitable that things would be this bad. The answer, inevitably, was no. They summed it at the end: an unserious prime minister, a weak centre, good […]
Day the first
This lockdown business is not suiting me at all. That said, it doesn’t seem to be suiting anyone else either. This morning I woke and saw a ghostly moving figure outside on one of the picturesque streets leading towards the Galata Tower. There I saw a young woman in a flowing white dress posing for […]
Impressive
I listened to an interview with Arafat Mazhar, a very impressive young man indeed. His new film, Swipe, is genuinely very good, as was his first one (Shehr-e-Tabassum) and it was such a pleasure to listen to a Pakistani who was intelligent, well-spoken, well-read, and trying to draw on indigenous ways of understanding the world.
Looking back
There is a bit of this-ing and that-ing about the Caliphate podcast which I listened to a couple of years ago. Curious to see my brief notes from that listen and how they completely miss the controversies of both then and now.
Astonishing
The Republican National Convention is on this week, and the party has decided that instead of having a manifesto it is supporting Trump. This is really remarkable, really dangerous. Clearly time for a USAID funded project to develop democratic institutions in that country – I worked on one a few years ago (funded by another […]
Supply chains
I listened to a podcast this morning about supply chain management was disappointed to find I learned almost nothing new, despite knowing littie or nothing about supply chain management. However, I did notice this jar of salt, which came with our flat, and wasn’t purchased by us. I am quite sniffy about Himalayan pink salt […]
Start of something new
The news this morning is distressing, terrifying, even. It is infuriating to read a site like Metafilter where it is viewed so intensely through American eyes that much of the discussion so far is about Democrats being better. As though it matters? As though they are? But I have just read that discussion coming from […]