Abe is 6 years old. Most kids in his grade 1 class can count to 20 but Abe cannot. Therefore Abe will never go to law school because law schools only want top students. Alex is 18 years old. They tried their hand at driving a couple times and almost hit a tree. Therefore Alex…
All posts by Kino
You can’t think yourself into confidence
“You have to stop looking for external validation or else you’ll never truly be happy.” That’s something I hear a lot. I’m always a little bit confused by it, because it contradicts every bit of my experience. But it does sound like the right kind of thing to say, and I can’t deny the possibility…
Troubleshooting is off-CV DEI work
Diversity statements are becoming common in job searches. Contrary to what you might think, I actually like these statements, in much of the same way as I believe in the value of forcing people to pitch valuable research (aka grant writing). I don’t know how seriously diversity statements are taken — probably somewhere between what…
People googling things for me, and other time wasters
1. I got back onto Twitter about 1.5 years ago after Facebook algorithm made it impossible for me to interact with anyone. (No matter what I do, every time I refresh, FB gives me an entirely different timeline.) I’ve always been a bit nervous about using Twitter professionally. The way how comments are not strictly…
Great book | Thick
I have read this book Thick, and other essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom for quite a while now. I’ve always wanted to blog about it, but haven’t been able to. Partly is that the book is a collection of essays so it’s difficult to summarize as a whole. Partly is also that the book is really,…
Dealing with stuff in the profession
I haven’t been posting lately because, you know, the world fell apart. I also finished a draft of my dissertation, which is pretty good given that the world fell apart. I’ll try to get back to it by writing something short today. I was recently mansplained analytic philosophy at a departmental Zoom social, which is…
Great book | lies and identities
I’m slowly getting back to reading and writing. I’ve recently finished the book The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity by the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (btw, turns out there are many books titled “Lies that Bind”). I listened to this book on Audible. It’s narrated by the author. He has a great narration style, and the…
Intentions don’t matter part II
A short thought. But since I haven’t been writing much lately (I, like most people I know, have been politically depressed in the past month or so), I thought I’d start small. Years ago I read Anscombe’s Intention in a reading group. I have no background in anything remotely related to philosophy of action, so my…
Intentions don’t matter
I haven’t been blogging much lately because of political depression. I’d like to try to write something I’ve been thinking for quite some time today. I was talking with a friend, who wanted to talk about why some people are “inconsistently good/bad”. There’s a social media post that we both read. The post goes like…
In defense of gossip
When I was little, the culture within China around me was such that the most natural question following “what do you (or your parents) do?” is “how much do you (they) earn?” Sometimes the second question is phrased as “oh so that’s like $5k a month, right?” which leads to the same effect. Nobody thought…