This is a short post about Paulina Rowińska’s Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers. Who is this book for? What did it teach me? Read on to find out.

The good thing about taking some time off over the winter holidays is that it gives me two weeks of “petri dish time”. I can look at myself and the things around me, and decide what I want to change for next year. Then, when it’s “real life time” again, I can get to work on things I want to change. This blog is one of them.

Buy Nothing Day is this Friday (29 Nov 2024). It’s a holiday I fully intend to celebrate, and not just because I’m on a budget this year. This means I decided to plan ahead, and brainstorm a few ways to spend it. Feel free to borrow or steal them!

People are leaving Twitter. Many of them are moving to Bluesky. Some others are already on Mastodon, and are getting upset at the popularity of Bluesky, imploring others to “maintain a meaningful presence elsewhere”. I can’t remember the last time I was so infuriated by a phrase in English. So here is a handful of ideas for “maintaining a meaningful presence”.

I came back to uni. Was fortunate enough to enrol for free (definitely the best employer perk ever). The course started some time ago, at the start of October. Here’s what I like about it all, so far.

“I work in hope.” This is not the kind of answer to “So, what do you do?” you’d ever think was possible. But look at the mood or trajectory around every progressive project you ever cared about, and think again. Here are ten ideas for hope-focused jobs.

I’ve been feeling restless for about a week now. The election news just added to the restlessness. The jitters are all related to my work, and to the work of those around me.

I messed up, but at least I’m getting a blog post out of this.

So. Let’s assume you want to avoid being online so much for a while. A long while: oh, say, the duration of one US presidential term. Think through this with me. We can do it.

Finished reading Anna Neima’s The Utopians yesterday. It’s a warm, thoughtful, but unflinching look at what the author calls “six attempts to build a perfect society”. Here, in no particular order, are ten of my thoughts after reading this.

I’m a serial blog starter, and a chronic blog abandoner. “The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes”, says Miłosz - for myself, I’m sure that the history of my blogging attempts would at least be a good blog listicle on its own.

This is a blog post I am writing on my Jekyll blog.

Next you can update your site name, avatar and other options using the _config.yml file in the root of your repository (shown below).