A small departure from the usual schedule for these things, where I tend to do week-in-review posts on Saturdays and week-in-movie-nights posts on Sundays. In this case, though, we didn’t have any Movie Nights this week, because I was at a Board of Trustees event on Friday night and The Pip had a late baseball game last night. The Board meeting continued into Saturday, which knocked out the week-in-rview post, but since there’s an opening in the schedule today, I decided to squeeze it in.
Me on Substack:
— On Deadlines: Some thoughts on different approaches to due dates, mostly in academia.
— Sanity Management Tips from an Ex-Chair: In a similar vein to the previous, the two big things I learned while serving as department chair (or just after it) that were most helpful to maintaining my personal productivity and sanity.
— Last "Live" History of Timekeeping Event: A bit of a plug for the streaming event I did with New Scientist on Thursday of this past week. I may type out something longer about the contents of the talk, depending on what else comes up this week.
Me Elsewhere:
—Physics and imagination | Prof. Chad Orzel | Ep. 2
I’m not sure what you call a podcast that’s on YouTube, but this is a wide-ranging interview with a channel called Tattva Deep, covering somewhat more philosophical territory than I often talk about. It was a fun conversation in the moment, though I admit I haven’t watched the video all the way through…
Links Dump:
— The Secret Joys of Christian Entertainment by Jordan Calhoun: An interesting look back at alternative pop culture.
— What the DLC Got Wrong by Matt Yglesias: A look back at early-2000s political squabbles.
— It's Always the Adults' Fault by Jeff Maurer: I’m not sure what he’s talking about is the complete expanation of our current problems, but I do think it’s a piece of it.
— Google Slides is Actually Hilarious by Laura Javier: I’ve had this open in a tab for ages, and definitely don’t agree with it, but I want to close that tab. Maybe I’ll come back to this and explain my disagreement.
—The psychology behind Netflix thumbnails by Trung T. Phan: A fascinating look at how the marketing sausage gets made.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
I really don’t intend this to become “Baseball Photo of the Week” but this came out so well that I couldn’t not use it.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
Another bit of mid-90’s alternative ephemera, which is weird even by Lou Reed standards. But pretty great at the same time.
And that’s a bunch of stuff… My schedule opens up a lot from here, and I’ve got reasonably solid ideas for a few things to write about, so I hope to have interesting content for you. Of course, it’s entirely possible that stupid events will pre-empt that. If you want to find out immediately, here’s a button:
And if you just have thoughts on the awesome weirdness of circa-1996 Lou Reed, the comments will be open: