The occasional linklist – July 19, 2020

I have been pondering creating a column on my blog where I share links to articles I read and liked. I perform this function on Twitter at the moment, but the attention some links attract are rubbish, and I reflexively share only relatively bland things there these days as a result. I’m also starting to …

Partial review: ‘Hitler’s Circle of Evil’ (2018)

Hitler’s Circle of Evil is a documentary series on Netflix that narrates the lives and actions of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, leading up to and during the Second World War. This is a partial review because it is based on watching eight episodes, of a total of ten, though I’m confident about publishing because I’m …

The sea of metal

Two of the most decisive moments of the Second World War that I can’t get enough of are the Battle of Stalingrad and the D-Day landings. In the Battle of Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler’s army suffered its first major defeat, signalling to Nazi Germany that it was just as capable of bleeding as any other regime, that …

The fascist’s trap

The following lines appear in the opening portion of G.S. Mudur’s report in The Telegraph about government opposition to student protests: “The people protecting our democracy are the people in JNU. They’re taking beatings on our behalf,” K.S. Venkatesh [a professor of electrical engineering at IIT Kanpur] told the assembled group [of students and faculty …

The Resistance of the Time

Let us visit the future – a suitable point of time located in one of the many tomorrows ahead of us, a tomorrow far enough to have left The Time behind. What do we see? We see, among other things, that many people spoke up. Many people did not. Many people who spoke up did …

A personal manifesto

Many people who are unsure of how their work can help put out the various (figurative) fires ravaging the country at the moment often quickly conclude that purpose is best found at the frontlines of this battle. The common trap here is to conflate the most obvious path with the most right path, or either …

My country is burning. Why should I work?

A few days ago, I found asking myself the following question: My country is burning, why should I work? I ended up with some (admittedly inchoate) thoughts, delineated below. I’m trying to fight off this abject helplessness I’m feeling and edit some science articles, and failing. I’m not able to justify to myself why I …

A return to Umberto Eco

The unwavering intensity of his writing, and of his commitment to seem to be chronicling something as opposed to be vainly conjecturing something, is what made his fiction worth committing to.