Week in Review

1/22/22

A short school week because of the MLK holiday, which also saw us get our first significant snowfall of the season (hopefully not the last…). I had to do a lot of running around this week— doing book-promotion interviews and interviewing candidates for our ongoing tenure-track search, plus I tried to get in as much cross-country skiing as possible. This cut down a bit on the writing I was able to do.

Me on Substack:

— The End of The Expanse II: The Expansening: Thoughts on the final season of the TV show version of The Expanse, which mostly sticks the landing (aside from one curious choice).

— My Completely Impractical Voting Reform Proposal: This has exactly the same chance of passing as the bill the Democrats were inexplicably pushing this week.

— On Modern Religions: Some noodling about what we mean when we say something’s like a new religion.

— Authentically Toxic: Some thoughts on how high-stakes gatekeeping processes help fuel a toxic atmosphere in academia.

Me Elsewhere:

— The Year That Only Had 355 Days at Forbes: A story about the day-dropping that accompanied the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

— Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning Podcast: This may be paywalled for a couple of weeks, but it was a fun conversation.

Links Dump:

— A Brief History of Timekeeping review at Foreword Reviews: My favorite bit is when it praises the book’s “meticulousness and occasional sardonic humor.” I feel seen.

— In the End, ‘The Expanse’ Broke the Wheel by Miles Surrey: The thoughts of someone who does this for a living.

— Let's Honor MLK's Birthday By Being Impotent and Embarrassing by Jeff Maurer: This week in “I Bet That Was Cathartic.”

— The false "trap" of bipartisanship by Matt Yglesias: Fix the Electoral Count Act, already.

— Why aren't there enough hospital beds? by Judd Legum: This week in “Private Equity Ruins Everything”

— YOU are the economy! by Josh Barro, Liz Bruenig, and Megan McArdle: First episode of Barro’s new podcast; I liked McArdle’s suggestion that some of the increase in public misbehavior we’re seeing is just a function of who’s out and about.

— Every Pink Floyd Studio Album, Ranked, by Steven Hyden: My favorite music critic takes on one of my favorite classic rock bands.

Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:

I put this on Instagram on Monday, and toyed with captioning it “Ski at last!” but I chickened out for fear that somebody would find that too irreverent. (So I saved it for this, which nobody will read…) Anyway, we finally got snow, and I managed to get out on my cross-country skis four of the five days this week, including two runs on Monday when the snow was fresh and soft. This is at the Schenectady Municipal Golf Course, probably the closest of the spots I go regularly.

Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:

I use both Amazon Music and YouTube Music for shuffle play purposes when I’m away from my main music collection, and they both served up a bunch of songs from this record until I finally bought it. It’s really good.

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There’s your weekly round-up. Next week is going to be super hectic, as A Brief History of Timekeeping is released on Tuesday in the US. I’ve already done a couple more podcast interviews that are being edited, and have three more scheduled, plus two live events. The following week is the UK release, and there’s a busy schedule of stuff to go with that, too. If you want a front-row seat for all of it, here’s a button:

and here’s one for just this post:

and if you have something to say regarding any of the above, the comments will be open.