168 posts tagged with "in-English"

Inspired by Paul Battley (whom in turn was “inspired by Tom and Nat and Chris”) I’ve decided to start writing weeknotes. Specifically, around the end of last year I decided that I would write brief weekly notes and share them online.

To make that easier, and because I stumbled upon a nice 2022 calendar-diary template on Reddit (and because I'm usually eager to find new use cases for my loyal reMarkable 2) I would also start writing a page about my day, every day.

Unrelated to all that, I had been meaning for a long time to have a blog again (I have been “blogging” and “microblogging” on third-party platforms, but I always missed owning my content and being part of the IndieWeb like in the good old days).

Last month it all came together, and eight days ago, on January first, I finally managed to (re)launch this blog. (I started doing other new things, but those aren't relevant now, or I won't share with the world.)

So here go my first weeknotes for week 1, 2022 (plus a few more days, for context):

Today, a friend of mine liked this LinkedIn post:

The Female Lead on LinkedIn: Siera Bearchell: "I have to tell you something that once I realized |…

The nice folks at Sentience Research (an organisation within the Effective Altruism movement) published a few days ago an extensive interview with the British philosopher David Pearce. Pearce is a vegan, a transhumanist, and a negative utilitarian. In 1995, he published on his web site a manifesto outlining his “hedonistic imperative” theory: the moral imperative to abolish all kinds of suffering in sentient creatures.

I don’t agree with everything Pearce says. And I don’t understand a lot of what he says. But there are so many passages that I found inspired and inspiring in this interview (and in his work in general), that I have to collect them somewhere. Here they go.

What I read in 2018, and what I’m planning to read next

Six years ago I discovered The Greatest Books, and loved it immediately.

I am one to be easily overwhelmed by choice, volume and variety — in general. I also love books, and have a quasi-irrational belief in the importance of reading. It is estimated that the total number of books ever published is around 130 million. Undoubtedly literature, in the form of essays or fiction, has had a huge influence in human history and development. Some books are clearly better than others — better crafted, more insightful, funnier, deeper.

“We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

This novel is mind-boggling.

It took me more than six months to read it, together with most of Shmoop’s notes and analyses of chapters, themes and trivia. If you are going to read Ulysses, make yourself a favour and plough through it with a good companion text at hand from day one. Shmoop is not exactly an oracle of rigour and scholarship — but I found their informal guide surprisingly thorough and well researched; if you want something more serious, use Ulysses Annotated. I think a reference or summary for Ulysses is essential if, like me, you are not a native English speaker: I would have missed lots of details in the action and many allusions, subtleties and puns without it.

What transgender politics may reveal when they go to eleven

At the beginning of the year Now, a Toronto weekly, published “Love your body” (photographs are NSFW): a series of portraits and short interviews focused on the “body positivity movement”. I stumbled upon it yesterday, following a link on social media (I didn’t even know the outlet Now).

“NOW created the Love Your Body issue four years ago […] to counter the onslaught of body-shaming headlines every January. ‘Lose weight! Diet! New year, new you!’ They’re as pathetic as they are predictable. By featuring dozens of inspiring Torontonians willing to bare all and tell their stories of transformation, reclamation and acceptance, we hoped to shift the discussion from self-criticism to self-love.”

One of the people featured this year is William Lavinia (again, explicit photograph), a “performer and model” whose breasts were surgically removed (two big scars are clearly visible), is on hormone treatment, and keeps a vagina that “isn’t going anywhere”. Lavinia poses naked for Now, full frontal, and declares to have a body that is “beyond the binary”.

On the difficulties of fruitful conversations about feminism

The other day I was having a drink with friends. At a certain point during our lighthearted conversation, I started to sense that The Topic was approaching, lurking unavoidably behind an innocent-looking comment or two: gender issues, sex-based discrimination, feminism.

The more I read and reflect (and worry) about those issues, the more reluctant I grow to engage with these topics in casual settings. I have three reasons for that.

I am not by principle opposed to Catalonia splitting from Spain and becoming an independent state. I consider myself a classical liberal, believe in individual rights above all, and see modern states solely as guarantors of those individual rights. I strive to get rid of all remnants of tribal instincts within me: nationalism, patriotism, chauvinism, inherited guilt, collective pride, irrational attachments, groupthink. Because of that, I can’t feel proud —nor ashamed — to be a Spaniard.

I suspect that there is an honest and coherent case to be made for Catalan secession. Many of us who love politics, economics and reason would be thrilled to engage in a debate about those ideas. Unfortunately, that is not what we are getting from the separatists in Catalonia on a daily basis. What we have heard on TV during the last decade or two, from elected officials in Catalonia, is embarrassing demagoguery, circular logic, regionalist hatred based on the worst of stereotypes, historical lies and conspicuous attempts at deviating public attention from their own corruption scandals and budget cuts and from social issues in Catalonia (immigration and unemployment, among others).

One major issue common to all democratic variants (to which autocracies are immune), is that elected officials have strong incentives to be short-sighted in their proposals and actions — to maximise perceived short-term gains at the expense of long-term progress. That is because they focus on re-election and the popularity of their parties and allies in the near future, instead of the common good in the long run.

One way to fix that would be deferring rewards for elected officials: holding a significant chunk of their salaries, bonuses and pensions for a period of time, and releasing that only if their administration is deemed “successful” with the benefit of hindsight, or releasing part of those funds in proportion to their “performance” while in office.