slug's recent activity
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Comment on Icelandic PM Katrín Jakobsdóttir announced her resignation – said that she will run for president, a ceremonial post that is mostly above the daily political fray in ~news
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Comment on Advice for Guatemala and possibly nearby? in ~travel
slug LinkHi! I'm actually in Guatemala right now conducting field work. I would strongly recommend Antigua; it's a beautiful town which feels safe and has a good food scene. I have spent the past three...Hi! I'm actually in Guatemala right now conducting field work. I would strongly recommend Antigua; it's a beautiful town which feels safe and has a good food scene. I have spent the past three weeks - excluding camping for field work - walking along the RN14 at night to get to my guesthouse and the only thing which has made me feel unsafe are the insane chicken bus drivers, rather than the threat of muggers. I'm a short, male, purely anglophone Brit for reference.
I'm currently staying at Baraka Antigua which is slightly out of town - it costs about 150Q a night. Lunch is easily doable for as little as 20Q at one of the nice bakeries in town and dinner can be anywhere from 60-150Q (I haven't exceeded that as I don't want to blow my entire PhD stipend while I'm out here...)
As for visiting ruins, you will want to find a reputable rather than merely cheap tour provider: this is very possible. I'm a geologist and the volcanoes are more of my thing - Pacaya and Fuego volcanoes are nearby, with the former a very tractable day trip and the latter a hike up Acatenango to view the eruptions at night (and it is cold up there, btw.)
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Comment on Red, juicy, heat resistant: The hunt for a climate-proof apple in ~food
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Comment on What's your favorite dinosaur? in ~science
slug LinkPatagotitan, because titanosaurs were huge! My institution has an excellent exhibition on right now which I'd heartily recommend if you find yourself in London. A good friend of mine works on...Patagotitan, because titanosaurs were huge! My institution has an excellent exhibition on right now which I'd heartily recommend if you find yourself in London. A good friend of mine works on digging them up in Argentina, and I could relay questions to them. :-)
I helped out on the Children Museum of Indianapolis' dig site in northern Wyoming last year for a project called 'Mission Jurassic'. At that site they're excavating sauropods, alongside well-preserved plant fossils and a bunch of miscellaneous float. Not as exciting as Patagotitan, certainly, but since I'm not a palaeontologist that was an exciting experience!
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Comment on Timasomo 2023: Week 1 Updates in ~creative.timasomo
slug Link ParentNice first blog post - those three books span a wide gamut of topics. Static web pages are a breath of fresh air. What made you pick Zola instead of Hugo? And what's your method of pushing updates...Nice first blog post - those three books span a wide gamut of topics.
Static web pages are a breath of fresh air. What made you pick Zola instead of Hugo? And what's your method of pushing updates to the website?
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Comment on Getting frustrated studying for a certification in ~health.mental
slug Link ParentDitto. OP, consider whether you are taking notes near-verbatim. Most of what you're listening to is going to be filler - identify the salient points and write those down as scribbles. You may find...Ditto. OP, consider whether you are taking notes near-verbatim. Most of what you're listening to is going to be filler - identify the salient points and write those down as scribbles. You may find that there are diminishing returns to writing down precisely what is said in the lectures. Also, you may find that distilling from these scribbles into neater notes, if you prefer, aids memory retention.
I sympathise though - the COVID-19 pandemic hit half-way through my undergraduate studies and I remember struggling to adjust to online lectures and recordings. Having no formal time limit to take notes led me to time-wasting until I was pinched on it!
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Comment on Four doctors gunned down on a Rio beach, including brother of leftist legislator Sâmia Bomfim, political motives very likely in ~news
slug Link ParentNot wading into this argument per se (I'm neither from the United States nor Brazil) but this comment is unnecessarily abrasive, especially considering I learned a fair bit about the context of...Not wading into this argument per se (I'm neither from the United States nor Brazil) but this comment is unnecessarily abrasive, especially considering I learned a fair bit about the context of the article from your first comment and the follow-up response.
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Comment on Israel-Palestine escalation - live updates in ~news
slug Link ParentI agree. The equivocation on whether attacking and kidnapping civilians is 'justified or not' is distasteful. I've also noticed an eyebrow-raising comment on the other, locked thread about Hamas...I agree. The equivocation on whether attacking and kidnapping civilians is 'justified or not' is distasteful. I've also noticed an eyebrow-raising comment on the other, locked thread about Hamas targeting 'illegal settlements' — yet this escalation is targeting settlements in southern Israel which are within the 1948, UN-demarcated borders.
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Comment on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s job is at risk after US House of Representatives votes to move ahead with hard-right effort to oust him in ~misc
slug Link ParentIt's unwise of McCarthy to have done this. Yes, it would have inflamed tensions within the House Republicans to seem to have offered an olive branch to House Democrats - but the fractures are...It's unwise of McCarthy to have done this. Yes, it would have inflamed tensions within the House Republicans to seem to have offered an olive branch to House Democrats - but the fractures are already present. He has refused to take the high road and that is that.
As a friendly observer of your country's politics, I hope that the United States can return to stable governance without the threat of a funding shutdown. Yet, I do not see this without a clean break between MAGA Republicans and the cowed, Main Street factions of the party. An interesting development to me in national-level American politics is how the Democratic Party has consolidated its factions and can present a united front, yet the Republican Party is increasingly in disarray. This reflects in how the 'not Trump' movement in the party is splitting four ways and is increasingly ideologically moribund.
A divided America is not good for Americans principally, but the western alliance and the stability of global politics too. (Ukraine, as an example, sticks out as a sore thumb.) Thus we take interest in your political developments over on this side of the Atlantic.
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Comment on People who turn off their electronics hours before bed... What do you do at night? in ~talk
slug Link ParentI 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....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!
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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.)
25 votes
I've always been quite puzzled by the volatility of Icelandic political dynamics. Perhaps a bit rich an observation coming from a Briton, but anyhow. And that the governing coalition in Iceland is between Atlanticist, Thatcherite conservatives and anti-NATO left-wing populists. But the country holds together.
I wonder what this resignation means for the future of the governing coalition in Iceland. It looks like the polling is quite unfavourable for all the governing parties, especially the Left-Greens, and that a social-democratic government might form after the elections.