slug's recent activity
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Comment on People who turn off their electronics hours before bed... What do you do at night? in ~talk
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Comment on Your favorite band that no one has heard of? in ~music
slug LinkI quite like shoegaze and post-rock for background listening when I'm working at a desk or trying to read on a commute. Caspian's 2012 Waking Season is an uplifting post-rock listen, with warm,...I quite like shoegaze and post-rock for background listening when I'm working at a desk or trying to read on a commute.
Caspian's 2012 Waking Season is an uplifting post-rock listen, with warm, anthemic crescendos. Quick pick: "Gone in Bloom and Bough".
Tortoise's TNT is a more experimental post-rock album, with jazz and bossa nova influences. The songs are characterised by adding and removing percussive layers in an unobtrusive way, which has the benefit of keeping it an interesting listen without distracting me. Quick pick: "The Suspension Bridge at Iguazú Falls".
Lantlos' Melting Sun is a loud shoegaze album. Not really sure how to describe it, but it's dreamy. Quick pick: the first track, Melting Sun I.
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Comment on What are some things you do "the old fashioned way," which might come with unexpected benefits over the modern, "improved" way of doing things? in ~talk
slug Link ParentAbsolutely! I'm demonstrating on field courses now and it's already beginning to irritate me that some students refuse to shop for field attire (coats and shoes particularly) in-person, and...Absolutely!
I'm demonstrating on field courses now and it's already beginning to irritate me that some students refuse to shop for field attire (coats and shoes particularly) in-person, and instead purchase things online closer to the time. It's no good rocking up in ill-fitting boots and a coat which won't keep you warm and/or dry; that's just asking for misery.
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Comment on Please help keep the signal high and the noise low in ~tildes
slug Link ParentTangential to the discussion at hand, but an obstacle to high-quality comments is a lack of engagement (which is inherent to how small Tildes is). For example, on the most recent recurring thread...Tangential to the discussion at hand, but an obstacle to high-quality comments is a lack of engagement (which is inherent to how small Tildes is). For example, on the most recent recurring thread in ~books I've posted a review which has no engagement at all, and the most recent Exemplary label I've received is on a comment with fewer than 10 votes and no responses, despite it taking me about an hour to type up. You have already pointed out the low barrier of entry for posting low-effort comments - I would argue that the barriers to higher-quality conversation on more niche topics are twofold.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
slug LinkI've finished reading the Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith. Some say that it is better to read the series with the seasons, but I'm far too impatient for that, so I binge-read it all (spending hours...I've finished reading the Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith. Some say that it is better to read the series with the seasons, but I'm far too impatient for that, so I binge-read it all (spending hours travelling on trains helps).
The books intertwine with each other – just like the seasons – with overlapping characters and concepts (mainly contemporary issues in the United Kingdom: e.g. Brexit, immigration, and national identities). I think the primary purpose of the series is to expose connections between people, between history and the present, and between political concepts*. If this seems hazy, that’s because it is. I find that Smith’s writing can verge on ham-fisted. Chapters segue from as disparate as a family conversation through to immigration detention centres – it’s easy to get whiplash.
Smith’s Seasonal Quartet was written to be topical. In fact, Smith employed a strategy of delaying finalising the manuscript to as close as the publication date as possible, so to keep the books close to the throb of British political happenings. This is both a blessing and a curse: the books do feel contemporary, but they mainly litigate Brexit-related political issues, rather than other salient UK issues (public services, the constitution, health outcomes etc.) due to it really being the zeitgeist of the 2016-2020 period the quartet was written and published in. Furthermore, Smith’s characters are largely middle-class; most are or seemingly will be educated to at least an undergraduate degree standard; it really feels like literature geared towards the pro-European liberals of southern England. This undermines the undertone of the books: that we are all connected to each other, both on these islands and further afield.
My favourite book of the four was the first one, Autumn. The final instalment, Summer, was a close second. My least favourite by far was Spring, the penultimate novel, as it felt especially sanctimonious.† All told though, I’m glad that I read the Seasonal Quartet.
(I don't know how to make spoiler tags on Tildes, so this will have to do...)
*E.g. comparing the ‘othering’ of migrants - particularly irregular migrants - in the UK, to internment of German-origin Britons during WWII while pointing out that the British people ‘rose up’ to their decency and ended internment in 1941... as compared to the treatment of refugees in the modern day.†A security guard called 'Brit' responsible for calling a security firm on a child refugee? A child refugee who can somehow walk into an immigration detention centre and magically get a bunch of people to converge on a location in the Scottish Highlands? Too forced...
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Comment on Python in Excel: Combining the power of Python and the flexibility of Excel in ~comp
slug Link ParentI am rather confident that skybrian knows that and is pointing out that this is sensible for Microsoft from a risk mitigation perspective.I am rather confident that skybrian knows that and is pointing out that this is sensible for Microsoft from a risk mitigation perspective.
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Comment on Anti-corruption candidate wins Guatemala presidency in landslide in ~news
slug (edited )LinkArchive link. I was meaning to post this on the day but I've been on holiday. TL;DR Bernardo Arévalo, an anti-corruption, social-democratic candidate who, three months ago, nobody thought could...- Exemplary
I was meaning to post this on the day but I've been on holiday.
TL;DR Bernardo Arévalo, an anti-corruption, social-democratic candidate who, three months ago, nobody thought could win, won a presidential run-off. An authoritarian left-wing populist - Sandra Torres - lost (though I would argue they were the 'blue' rather than 'pink' candidate in this election, as Guatemala's culturally conservative establishment swung behind them). This is a momentous result, but there are still political tensions on top of the daunting in-tray.
Run-up to the election
In the run-up to the first round of the election several candidates were disqualified by the electoral court, including the frontrunning conservative candidate, Carlos Pineda; a prominent journalist was also jailed for six years after alleging that the outgoing president is corrupt. The two candidates making it to the run-off achieved a total of 36% of the vote. Roiling the country's politics further, the president-elect's party was suspended by the electoral court: a move which the US has described as a ‘threat to Guatemala’s electoral democracy’. While the move was reversed by Guatemala's supreme court, it nonetheless served as political intimidation.
In the first round, Torres and Arévalo won a combined 36% of the vote, reflecting widespread apathy. Turnout in the second round was just 41%.
What's the context?
In 2019 Guatemala’s UN-backed anti-corruption commission shut down. Since then repression and corruption in the country has increased, with an estimated 30 anti-corruption judges and prosecutors having fled the country for fear of arrest. The worsening civic environment is a burden: 83% of Guatemalans think their country has declined over the past three years.
The second round
The expected front-runner in the second round was Sandra Torres, a former first lady and three-time presidential candidate associated with social programmes initiated by their late husband, and has a groundswell of support among the rural poor. In Guatemala’s fractured political landscape, Torres would ordinarily be perceived as ‘leftist’. Yet in this election, they were the conservative. (Blue is the new pink.) A self-declared ‘social Christian’, Torres opposes abortion and same-sex marriage - her campaigners lampooning Arévalo as a crypto-communist in the pockets of a gay lobby who prey on children - and wishes to emulate El Salvador’s gangs crackdown. Resultantly, Guatemala’s conservative establishment swung behind her.
Meanwhile, Arévalo is a social democrat who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, including restoring the anti-corruption commission. It’s this pledge which disgruntles Guatemala’s establishment: the UN-backed commission was highly effective. In 2015, its investigations resulted in the arrest of the then-president Otto Pérez Molina and their deputy.
An unhappy establishment has more tricks up its sleeve
Arévalo’s opponents are desperate to stop him, to the extent of attempting to suspend his political party before the presidential run-off election – a move which was described by a fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations as “Guatemala… becoming the new Nicaragua”. Given that deputies from Arévalo's Semilla party only have 23 out of 160 seats in the Congress, it's unclear whether Arévalo has a path to a functioning governing majority.
But that isn't his biggest problem. Torres has been alleging electoral fraud, and judicial challenges to the election results are likely, even if at this point there isn't much likelihood of the election being overturned. Prosecutors are trying to prevent Semilla deputies in Congress from holding key positions such as the speakership. If successful, this would stymie Arévalo's legislative agenda.
What's next?
Guatemala is a country which posts strong economic growth, yet is highly unequal and has the highest level of food insecurity in Latin America. In both 2021 and 2022, 230,000 Guatemalans were found illegally crossing the US border – with an uptick in violent crime and inequality being motivations.
It won't be easy for the new government to address the underlying problems in Guatemalan society. Arévalo's key pledges are to increase the tax take by reducing tax evasion, digitising public services, and recreating anti-corruption bodies - but these won't have immediate positive effects, even if he can implement these.
The greatest immediate risk to Guatemala may be political apathy, and a belief that there aren’t democratic solutions to the country’s problems. Guatemalans already have little faith in political solutions: polling reveals that only 23% of Guatemalans cite security as a top political priority, 35% cost of living, and 17% corruption, despite all three being key issues for the country.
(Spelling/punctuation/grammar edit)
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Anti-corruption candidate wins Guatemala presidency in landslide
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Comment on Finland's former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb will run as a candidate in the presidential elections – will face the popular former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto in ~news
slug Link ParentNot Finnish, but I met Alex Stubb at an event in London (he often seems to be in the UK). I thought he was very affable, but primarily interested in the macro-scale and pan-European political...Not Finnish, but I met Alex Stubb at an event in London (he often seems to be in the UK). I thought he was very affable, but primarily interested in the macro-scale and pan-European political issues.
Ideologically, I'm from the same loaf of bread as him, and as I don't have a grasp of Finnish politics I can't opine on his tenure as prime minister or finance minister.
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Comment on President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage in ~misc
slug Link ParentThanks for the explanation. I'm a bit sceptical about the usefulness of this approach in this instance, but I defer to your better judgement in keeping the boards tidy.Thanks for the explanation. I'm a bit sceptical about the usefulness of this approach in this instance, but I defer to your better judgement in keeping the boards tidy.
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Researchers, how do you take notes on the papers which you read?
I've been struggling with finding a good workflow for taking notes on the journal articles which I read. I collate articles using Zotero, yet its in-built notetaking features (and comment scraping...
I've been struggling with finding a good workflow for taking notes on the journal articles which I read. I collate articles using Zotero, yet its in-built notetaking features (and comment scraping from PDFs) is quite poor. So, my alternative so far has been to write up notes by hand, but this is pretty cumbersome and makes it take some time to refer to my notes. My approach is clearly not effective!
How do you take notes on the papers which you read? Do you prefer to use written notes, or do you type your notes? In any case, what is your preferred means of storing and categorising your notes? And are there particular software which you use, if you opt for typed notes? (At present, I use an A5 notebook. Yet, this is not alphabetised or organised by topic, which compounds my struggles.)
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Comment on President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage in ~misc
slug Link(Noise post, please ignore): @mycketforvirrad, how comes this has been moved from ~news? The coup in Niger is a current event, and the president of Niger penning an article is itself news, in my...(Noise post, please ignore): @mycketforvirrad, how comes this has been moved from ~news? The coup in Niger is a current event, and the president of Niger penning an article is itself news, in my view. Indeed, the sidebar of ~news states 'All the world's current events, including politics as well as analysis or opinion pieces' - so I thought it was a suitable board to post in.
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Comment on President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage in ~misc
slug Link ParentYes, the demonyms are Nigerien and Nigerian respectively :-). I completely agree. It has to be ECOWAS, and even Bola Tinubu of Nigeria (who is a staunch pro-democrat) is being attacked as a...If anything is able to go help the situation I think it will have to be the reactions on the neighboring countries and the Nigerians (is there a separate word for people from Niger vs Nigeria?) themselves.
Yes, the demonyms are Nigerien and Nigerian respectively :-). I completely agree. It has to be ECOWAS, and even Bola Tinubu of Nigeria (who is a staunch pro-democrat) is being attacked as a 'French stooge' by the illegitimate military juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso, despite France being desperate to avoid any association with military intervention to topple the provisional military government.
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Comment on President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage in ~misc
slug Link ParentAnti-coup protests are banned and a few thousand people turned out for a pro-coup rally in a city of 1.4 million (Niamey). You take that to mean that the citizenry is in favour of the coup, when...From what i've seen citizens seem to be supportive of the coup
Anti-coup protests are banned and a few thousand people turned out for a pro-coup rally in a city of 1.4 million (Niamey). You take that to mean that the citizenry is in favour of the coup, when men with arms are silencing dissenters?
Not to mention supporting the junta's 'stance against France'. The democratically elected government of Niger should be responsible for the country's foreign policy, not Russian mercenaries and army men. Niger's existing security is largely due to foreign aid from various sources, not merely French boots on the ground. If there's any neocolonialism being practiced on the African continent right now, it's under the Russian flag.
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Comment on President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage in ~misc
slug LinkThis article was penned by the democratically elected, deposed president of Niger Mohamed Bazoum. I'd urge people to read it. Niger was a (relative) beacon in the Sahel region for stability and...This article was penned by the democratically elected, deposed president of Niger Mohamed Bazoum. I'd urge people to read it. Niger was a (relative) beacon in the Sahel region for stability and civil society rights — and this is all at risk of being undone.
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President of Niger: My country is under attack and I’ve been taken hostage
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Comment on A charge on supermarket single-use plastic bags has led to 98% drop in use in England since 2015 in ~enviro
slug Link ParentJust goes to show how effective the plastic bag charge is — can't say I've bought one since the initial levy was introduced so the increase completely swept by me! But yeah, it's a nominal sum....Actually in England the minimum charge for a single-use carrier bag is ten pence. It was raised from the original minimum of five pence in 2021.
Just goes to show how effective the plastic bag charge is — can't say I've bought one since the initial levy was introduced so the increase completely swept by me! But yeah, it's a nominal sum. The cost isn't itself the salient part of the nudge.
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Comment on A charge on supermarket single-use plastic bags has led to 98% drop in use in England since 2015 in ~enviro
slug Link ParentI'm not sure why pigouvian taxes, which are ubiquitous across the globe, ought to be considered 'particularly British'. Strange comment.I'm not sure why pigouvian taxes, which are ubiquitous across the globe, ought to be considered 'particularly British'. Strange comment.
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Comment on A charge on supermarket single-use plastic bags has led to 98% drop in use in England since 2015 in ~enviro
slug Link ParentIt's five pence per bag in England which is analogous to the eight cent charge where you live. As you say, presenting a barrier to obtaining plastic carrier bags is the principal 'nudge': it's not...It's five pence per bag in England which is analogous to the eight cent charge where you live.
As you say, presenting a barrier to obtaining plastic carrier bags is the principal 'nudge': it's not the cost that dissuades people per se but rather the fact that you now have to approach a store worker or walk away from the checkout to obtain one. To some extent I think there's also a social stigma towards plastic bags (instead, reusable jute and/or bags are very popular across the country).
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Comment on Power impasse continues in Niger, 48 hours after coup against Bazoum in ~news
slug Link ParentECOWAS is now threatening to invade Niger if the coup plotters don't stand down by two weeks' time. The situation in Niger is pretty existential for the future of democracy in the region....ECOWAS is now threatening to invade Niger if the coup plotters don't stand down by two weeks' time. The situation in Niger is pretty existential for the future of democracy in the region. Interestingly, Nigeria's new president Bola Tinubu is the one really spearheading the strong stance of ECOWAS on this issue, despite Nigeria's internal security problems.
The army is also split on the choice of military junta president. With internal divisions, plus civil society and foreign pressure, I expect there to be another coup soon and/or external intervention.
I know this slightly undermines the point of the thread, as they are electronic devices, but nonetheless I find that reading books on my e-reader has markedly improved my sleep hygiene. Personally, I prefer e-readers as I can use Overdrive - which is a bit like having a library at one's fingertips - but also because I find that I benefit from larger page margins and font sizes than are often available in print books.
I like to think that with an e-ink display and reading by lamp rather than backlight that it isn't harmful. I wouldn't get half as much book reading done without my e-reader.
All you say is very reasonable though. And there's a unique pleasure to looking through a library to pick out books!