That these words mean to you what I want them to mean to you is such a precarious conjecture.
Then, that meaningful words, even perfectly arranged in the most meaningful way to you, might in any case result in you envisioning something close to what I see in my own mind seems a foolish hope.
But it works because the words that return are consistent in usage with previous words spoken, despite disparate existential experiences.
I am perpetually irritated, in some fundamental aspect of my being, by the lie of symbolism.
The extreme difference between the fullness of lived experience and the simplicity of, and poor precision of, words and phrases seems to me to be commonly ignored, willfully.
It is not just a philosophical topic, philosophical though the topic may be. The details of experience must be picked and chosen, and human decisions at this frequency are simply mostly not carefully researched.
So what is missing ?
@actuallyautistic unmasked, I get cryptic. Attempting genuine communication produces inaccessibly dense language. I wrote the above last night and now I want to take it down, as if to apologize for missing the audience. But there is no audience for my simplest truths.
As if to stand up from the wheelchair of banality were a sin.
I remind myself. Say less. Reference memetic trends. Start from an ongoing conversation or I'm alone.
The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books
Librarians are amazing.
They were known as the “book women.” They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky’s isolated mountain communities.
The Camel Mobile Library Service lends more than 7,000 books to nomads in Kenya's impoverished North East Province, often because camels are the only means of crossing the inhospitable terrain. Many of the books are supplied by Book Aid International.
"People say they want real justice... so we fob them off with a slightly less unjust system of justice. Workers howl that they're being flayed like donkeys... so we arrange for the flaying to be a little less severe and slash their howling entitlement, but the exploitation goes on. The workforce would rather not have fatal accidents in the factory... so we make it a teeny bit safer and increase compensation payments to widows.
They'd like to see class divisions eliminated... so we do our best to bring the classes marginally closer or, preferably, just make it seem that way.
They want a revolution... and we give them reforms. We're drowning them in reforms. Or promises of reforms, because let's face it, they're not actually going to get anything."
-- #DarioFo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist (2/2)
Public Books has a wonderful newsletter. This edition is all about the 220th anniversary of Haiti's independence and Haiti's influence on world politics since then: https://www.publicbooks.org/?utm_source=PUBLIC BOOKS Newsletter&utm_campaign=9e68afec90-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d048c39403-9e68afec90-181069426&mc_cid=9e68afec90&mc_eid=f8928db7e7
I've been reading a lot about the state of scientific publishing. Some people seem to think it's in trouble, but I see signs of health from the various innovations people are trying. Some interesting examples include the use of openreview.net to open up reviews and give credit to reviewers, and the decision by eLife to stop issuing rejections, but open up the process instead. There is an interesting critique of the eLife decision by @MarkHanson located here: https://mahansonresearch.weebly.com/blog/do-we-really-need-journals
It's a weird time for me to be working on a new journal publishing platform, but maybe it's the right time. I've always been bugged by the economics of journal publishing, and that's what got me started working on it. Maybe I should shift my focus to the social process of publishing. The death of #AcademicTwitter hasn't helped, and I don't think LinkedIn and #AcademicChatter on the fediverse have filled the need yet.
@tragiccommons I have vague ideas of a federated academic publishing model (primarily hosted by universities) on an OSS stack... but you're right there is evolution in publishing which may work better than revolution
On connecting with academics, you can also follow @academicchatter
I guess we do #introduction posts over here? I work on the #neuroscience (am I doing those hashtags right!?) of learning and memory, specifically how we learn while we navigate space and context. To do this, I take in vivo recordings (currently calcium imaging but ephys has my heart) of freely moving rats! After that, I use computational and mathematical approaches to analyze their neural activity! I am currently a BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 postdoc at Northwestern working with John Disterhoft and Sara Solla. I was trained at MIT with Matt Wilson, where I got my PhD in biology, and my BS is from Carnegie Mellon. Welcome!
Ever since I got back from my knee injury, I have been playing some pretty good hockey (hope I didn't jinx myself). Had another solid game in the net this morning, and we pulled ahead to win, 7-5. I didn't have a chance on a couple and a few more were very frustrating, but I felt good, anticipated the play, and made some nice saves. I'm thinking of getting new goalie pads but that's like a $1,000 investment and I wonder how much longer I can keep going?
I have been doing something pretty amazing, for me at least. Not only am I getting books read and reviewed, I'm actually cutting into my ridiculously long Currently Reading list. It's down to only 6 books! I wrote 3 reviews yesterday. Unfortunately, none of them knocked me out, but hey, they can't all be grand slams. You can find my reviews here:
If you're in London and interested in my work, please join me for my inaugural professorial lecture entitled 'Architectures of Care: From Data-Driven Design to User Empathy'
7 March 2024, 7pm at UCL
All welcome!
Good news for people outside of London: there is now an option to join my inaugural professorial lecture on 'Architectures of Care: From data-driven design to user empathy' online via zoom live streaming.
#NLI buys Bonar Law collection of historic maps https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22343003/#Maps#IrishHistory Audrey Whitty, Director of the National Library of Ireland, talks to RTE about the acquisition of 19,000 maps and prints of Ireland going back to the 16th century.
@IrishStudiesQUB First question asked in the interview was my first question:
'Any connection to the early 20th c UK prime minister, who was an opponent of home rule?'
Answer given was not entirely clear, but collection is named not for the UK prime minister per se, but rather for the collector, who happens to be the prime minister's 90-year-old grandson and namesake.