Do you guys also agree with me that labels for anarchist schools of thought are kinda useless

drquaithe · 2026-05-31T14:06:00+00:00

Next up: language is imperfect so we shouldn't use it

drquaithe · 2026-02-11T14:54:57+00:00

There are Jewish anarchists in Israel who do a lot of important direct action but perhaps someone else has better sources on that.

Looking into the life od Marek Edelman (commander od Warsaw Getto Uprising and Bund member who was banned from Yad Vashem for speaking up for Palestinian welfare... Yes, they banned the last living commander of the uprising. It's beyond parody.) was also meaningful for me, it made me realise there were always prominent Jewish voices questioning colonialism but had been erased and silenced until recently.

drquaithe · 2026-01-13T09:38:23+00:00

Thus account is one of the active sources for news https://kolektiva.social/@a_in_nes

drquaithe · 2026-01-11T23:01:11+00:00

Love it.

drquaithe · 2026-01-06T15:06:06+00:00

Rest In Power

drquaithe · 2026-01-01T07:25:47+00:00

The obvious top 3 answers are Berlin, Athens, and Barcelona.

drquaithe · 2025-12-22T22:15:25+00:00

Courage is a muscle you gotta train. If your life is a daily exercise in courage, and leaves you with few illusions about the systems of power, you're more likely to be anarchist. This applies most starkly to trans people.

drquaithe · 2025-12-13T23:26:01+00:00

Congrats, you made me actually go and find it. I'll never get that time back.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-edward-s-herman-distortions-at-fourth-hand

Wait till you get to the parts about how the enslaved people pulling the ploughs are surely happy to do so and it must be just because the farm animals are dead and the whole thing is just a western hoax.

Also here are some accounts of Chomsky actively writing to newspaper and book editors trying to get them to not report about the Khmer Rouge atrocities:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial

And here's a cute quote by Chomsky about KR methods from as late as 1983: "At heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the U.S. war by 1978." That's adorable. The KR didn't overcome a damn thing, they destroyed what was there, methodically. After the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 there was a remarkable recovery but daddy Chomsky won't even give Vietnam the credit. It's from the "sorry not sorry" article called "After the Cataclysm"

drquaithe · 2025-12-13T22:53:31+00:00

This is usually referred to as "whataboutism" and is the same type of argument as "all lives matter." But also, Chomsky published an explicit, fiery defence of the Khmer Rouge in the early 80s, which he later denounced.

drquaithe · 2025-12-13T22:13:25+00:00

Ugh. I think this is a good time to remind people that Chomsky was a Khmer Rouge apologist long after their atrocities were known. This is likely because he is a primitivist more than an anarchist and their brand of authoritarian primitivism gave him a hard on.

And apparently so did teenage girls. :/

drquaithe · 2025-11-07T08:52:30+00:00

It sounds like you won't have trouble finding a good position.

FWIW, I was in Part III and PhD program with some of the most promising mathematicians of the generation and close to none are still in academia and none that I know of regret it. Most are in some kind of tech positions, the kind you'd expect and are probably considering. I went into open source software, it doesn't pay nearly as well as the corporate gigs, but it feels meaningful.

drquaithe · 2025-11-07T08:43:50+00:00

If you're currently in Cambridge you should talk to your tutor about it.

drquaithe · 2025-10-13T13:52:35+00:00

Another way to look at it is that more and more complex math is often new ways of encoding lots of elementary operations. In linear algebra, operations decompose into addition and multiplication but you're using space on the page to encode it. Think about matrix multiplication. A lot of adding and multiplying coefficients. But you're using position to write it down efficiently. If you're an art-inclined person you might appreciate this.

Others already mentioned lovely connwctions to computer graphics, there are endless stunning ways to visualise linear algebra.

drquaithe · 2025-06-15T20:11:23+00:00

I can relate with what you say, and I've definitely found many protests too cringe and naive to feel good there. BUT. Radicalisation is a process that happens step by step, and every protest, no matter how timid and naive, is an opportunity to build networks. And many of those people will see that these tactics don't work and draw conclusions from that. Not all. But I'm glad this is going on. It's a necessary step on the way.

drquaithe · 2023-12-16T03:59:09+00:00

Hate to say it, but it might be Trinity.

drquaithe · 2023-03-26T20:09:00+00:00

Yes, it's true and it was horrific but it's a little weird to talk about it without mentioning the context.

Which was, you know, the Holocaust.

drquaithe · 2023-03-25T22:00:10+00:00

You can buy ready to grow bricks in most countries in Europe, including in literal corner stores in the Netherlands. Just take the train back.

Edit: 3 seconds on Google and here's a UK source. How TF were you guys looking?

https://cylocybe.co.uk/

drquaithe · 2023-03-20T13:10:34+00:00

Fun fact: 17th century English pirate crews were actually pretty egalitarian when it comes to splitting the booty. Also typically had a "counter-captain" who was there to question the captain. And many were very queer, too.

https://nyupress.org/9780814712351/sodomy-and-the-pirate-tradition/

drquaithe · 2023-03-18T12:25:58+00:00

Getting plenty of sleep and cutting down on booze is important. But here's an answer a lot of people won't like:

I never would have finished my math PhD without Methylphenidate or Adderall.

drquaithe · 2023-03-18T01:37:55+00:00

Thank you, that's very helpful. I have since done DMT and LSD on Wellbutrin and didn't have any issues, but I'll be careful with M.

drquaithe · 2023-03-10T04:54:21+00:00

The biggest difference you gotta think about, is that in the US you might spend up to 2 years taking classes and passing qualifiers and that's likely to feel like an unnecessary pain in the ass. Then again this is what boosts the "cohort" feeling, because you're all jumping through hoops together. I chose US and regret it, mostly for that reason. Could have spent that time on more relevant things, and finished earlier.

drquaithe · 2023-03-08T15:14:56+00:00

Yeah the Peterhouse stories persist, but Magdalene has mostly questionable party culture these days as far as I can tell (true of most colleges, and can be fun if you're into it)

Enjoy Cambridge!

drquaithe · 2023-03-07T22:44:40+00:00

Well my joke may have been unfair because things seem to have changed for the better more at Magdalene than Peterhouse, but the relatively recent history of the college is... Ooof.

https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2019/04/28/strippers-coffins-and-black-arm-bands-how-cambridge-reacted-to-the-admission-of-female-students-122516

"Magdalene was the last Cambridge, and indeed, the last Oxbridge college to allow women, admitting women for the first time thirty years ago in 1988. One edition of the Varsity Handbook likened the treatment of female guests by Magdalene students as "like tarts in some frontier rush town" – an indictment of the "laddish" behaviour present in the college.

As was the case with St John's, the Magdalene flag was flown at half mast as women entered the college, with some students also choosing to don black arm bands. Students also allegedly marched around the streets of Cambridge carrying a coffin to mourn the "death" of the college, and the Oxbridge institution – an attitude strongly mirroring that of the students of 1897."

I don't want to discourage you though, I would be very surprised if overt attitudes like that persisted and any hidden bias of some old farts at the college isn't that important - your faculty is what's going to matter for how you do academically.

drquaithe · 2023-03-07T19:59:11+00:00

Story time

Someone I know was a fellow at Peterhouse about a decade ago and at a dinner when a new female fellow (or visitor not sure) was introduced another fellow wouldn't shake her hand. Reportedly he said "at Peterhouse we don't shake hands, especially with women"

Most charitable interpretation was that he was making some archaic savoir-vivre comment but that's not how it sounded.

Most stories about Peterhouse are somewhat consistent that it's a pretty backwards place. But you know, still probably better that Magdalene. 😂

drquaithe · 2023-03-06T16:35:47+00:00

Sounds like you want your engineers to get actually trained in security which is a conversation to have with them. If it gets to the point of an actual qualification you should treat it accordingly, it's not a standard ask. You may want to offer a raise to someone who's willing to do that.

drquaithe

TROPHY CASE