This will be the last weekly digest in the current format. From next week I’ll be trialling a new format that will hopefully mean more consistency, more links, and more time for me to write “proper” posts. More details on that to come.

Happenings

  • Yesterday I attended the funeral of one of my students. That evening I hugged my own children a little tighter. Truly one of the saddest things, his sudden illness and passing were a shock to everyone.
  • I joined a new gym. Two reasons: my previous gym jacked its prices, and also, it was frequently populated by students. Most were, of course, perfectly pleasant. Some were nosey but meant well. Others were rude and gloated about being stronger than me. Either way, it didn’t feel like a break from work.
  • Cancelled Amazon prime. I’ve wanted to for along time, for ethical reasons. But when you’re a working family, the convenience and low prices (I know some commentators like to point out that Amazon often inflated prices, but in most cases, they’re the cheapest option, sometimes by a huge margin) are real factors. When we’ve known of decent alternatives to Amazon for certain categories of products (e.g. books), we’ve used them. But for the randomly arising needs of life, the inconvenience of shopping around, creating additional accounts, and the real risk of other “shops” being nothing more than phishing scams (yep, this happened to us recently, we lost a few hundred pounds but we’re able to block our card before they absolutely rinsed us out) will be a sacrifice, but worthwhile to stop supporting Amazon’s worker exploitation, environmental harm, and friendliness to American fascism. That’s now Audible, Amazon, and Spotify we’ve left. Which big bad tech company will be next??

Reading

I said 2026 was going to be a focus on reading. So far, so good, I am at least keeping up with the main text of Jared Henderson’s book club for the month, Non-things by Byung-Chul Han. The supplementary text for the month was a Heidegger essay and hooboy, despite its short length, it is also Heidegger and therefore pretty much completely inaccessible to me, at least if I want to keep up with the schedule.

Links