This resonates with and amplifies some of my reflections lately. Seems like there's an active quality to this healthy surrender—e.g. listening to that inner voice within and taking risks accordingly—versus its "near enemy" of passivity or resignation. sashachapin.substack.com/p/should-you...

Surrender as a non-stupid life strategy

...

sashachapin.substack.com

WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? HELL NO! got to introduce the tween & 10-year-old to this monumental cultural deep cut today. I bet their teachers will appreciate me!

Two things I’d like to shout out into the void today: (1) hantavirus isn’t COVID-19, and even if it was, this isn’t Feb 2020; (2) if you must monitor the situation, asymptomatic transmission is much more important than the details of exactly who got sick on the ship/plane.

Hantavirus ≠ COVID-19: This Is Not February 2020!

Please "Monitor the Situation" More Thoughtfully

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Insomnia, Homer, taut sails—here I translate and comment on a lovely poem by Osip Mandelshtam that expresses this idea of everything moving by/through love. Predictably, I have Dante on the mind, who also seems fairly obsessed by this idea, although it's sorta horrifying as applied to Inferno.

Insomnia, Homer, Taut Sails, and Love: Mandelshtam and Dante

"Love" Isn't Always Comprehensible or Easy

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Lobotomy was banned in the USSR at the height of its international popularity. The Soviets made the right decision for a strange mix of good and bad reasons, which perhaps illustrates the importance of memetic diversity & multipolar decision-making structures as a resilience mechanism for humankind.

Lobotomy: A Nobel Prize in Europe, Banned in the USSR

Some Musings on How to Avoid Catastrophic Mistakes

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Mind is a sense, like the others. A tasty idea is tasty like a ripe peach, and an intellectual glutton is a glutton. As with the other senses, it’s all about what you do with it. I'm a pretty indifferent practitioner tbh, but this idea has stuck with me over the years.

Mind as a Sense: An Insight from Buddhism

With a Brief Detour Via Ron Swanson and Social Distortion

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Etymology has a distinct flavor because it tries to establish maximal certainty about small facts, and then builds from there. As exemplified through this debate about the word “apple,” involving Eric Hamp, a remarkable linguist and person who I briefly crossed paths with.

The Etymology of “Apple”: A Methodological Microcosm

Etymology As a Guide Through This Bayesian Vale of Tears, with the Slightest Detour Involving Communist Albania

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Albanian is an interesting language for a lot of reasons — but a relatively little known one is the diversity of alphabets/scripts that have been used to write it, including some that were specifically invented for the purpose but never entered into widespread use.

Unique Alphabets for Albanian

A Few Short Notes from the History of Literacy

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

The unexpected/expected decay of Zosima’s corpse had various consequences, including (146 years later) my ruminations about non-acceptance vs. rejection. The former seems to be linked to a healthy spiritual autonomy and agency, the latter—to obsessive bargaining. Also, the trolley problem sucks.

Rejection vs. Non-Acceptance in The Brothers Karamazov

By The Way, The Trolley Problem Sucks

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

True friendship breaks the logic of Hell. Reading Dante while listening to the soundtrack of Hazbin Hotel (with a detour via the Pogues) took me to some interesting places. sandstoneviolin.substack.com/p/friendship...

Friendship in Hell: Dante, Hazbin Hotel, and The Pogues

Musical Reflections With A Side Of Aristotle

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

A rainy day activity with the kids somehow metamorphosed into the strangest (and only) movie review I’ve ever written. In a nutshell, “Super Mario Galaxy” brings out the childlike and quaint aspects of surrealism. Uncharacteristically for myself, I bring up Trump too.

Super Mario Galaxy, Trump, and Surrealism

A Movie Review That Surprised Myself

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

I’m not particularly interested in commenting on politics, but I did find myself thinking about how Turkic/Persian linguistic contact in Iran is an interesting echo/semi-parallel of Turkish in the Ottoman Balkans. This parallel might be worth exploring in greater depth.

Turkic Languages in Iran - Part 1

Preliminary Notes on Language Contact

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

In Canto XV of Inferno, Dante encounters his former teacher, Brunetto Latini, among the sodomites. He treates Latini with remarkable respect, but also puts him in his place. This resonates for those who’ve had difficult mentors (and for mentors, teachers, or parents).

Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV: Sodomy and Mentorship

Brunello Latini and Difficult Mentors

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Today (day 6/30) I revisited some lingering discomfort I felt with an otherwise excellent performance of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard in Marin County. Ultimately, it’s a translation issue, but one related to emotional subtext rather than word choice. sandstoneviolin.substack.com/p/chekhovs-c...

Happy Life-Defeating-Death Day (aka Easter). Here’s an unusually nice Easter poem by Mak Dizdar, written from the perspective of one who stands in the shadows. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Sun-Christ: An Easter Poem by Mak Dizdar

On Standing in the Shadow

substack.com

This game has accounted for quite a bit of my time and energy this week, so for day 4 of April’s 30-day writing challenge, I decided to see whether research on the philosophy of games could help me articulate what makes Blood on the Clocktower fun. sandstoneviolin.substack.com/p/blood-on-t...

Blood on the Clocktower - Part 1

Conceptual Tools from the Philosophy of Games

sandstoneviolin.substack.com

Out of nowhere, my 12-year-old son can now destroy me at chess. I wrote out some thoughts on this sudden nano-singularity and what I can learn from losing. (Excluding, of course, how to avoid repeating chess mistakes. That’d be ridiculous.) substack.com/home/post/p-...

Losing at Chess

Reflections on Parenthood, Perceptions, and Enjoyment

substack.com

Day 2 of this semi-self-imposed (along with a friend) 30-day writing challenge for April. In short, the Karamazov trial feels like it could take place on the Jerry Springer stage. And that’s a good (or at least interesting) thing. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Dostoyevsky and Jerry Springer

The Philosopher-King of Trash

substack.com

A friend urged me to try to write and publish a thing per day in April. Today wound up being some reflections on etymology and epistemology based on the Albanian linguist Eqrem Çabej's work. substack.com/home/post/p-...

An Etymological Detour Through Communist Albania

Notes on Methodology

substack.com

Peak parenting experience: introducing my sensitive, thoughtful 4th grader to "The Man in Black", explaining what makes it so cool, and being met with considered appreciation rather than eyerolls.

This dinergoth piece is getting attention elsewhere with much wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth, but it's neat. It aligns with some things I've observed, puts them in a bigger picture, echoes how I see my kids starting to explore the world (for better or worse). www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

American Diner Gothic

In the 2020s, the weird soul of placeless America is being born on Discord servers.

thenewatlantis.com

War, war, what is it good for? ... According to an editorial I'm editing today, training higher-quality trauma surgeons 😬

Somewhat lost in the discourse hubbub, this is huge news - increasingly seems like we're committing to trying a private response (or lack thereof) to climate change. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...

Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change

nytimes.com

It's been a difficult week on multiple levels — and having a Thursday with two @catherineproject.bsky.social discussions of Dante and Dostoyevsky with groups of incredibly thoughtful readers has been the absolute highlight of it. Tremendously spirit-lifting. (And completely free.)

It's mildly trippy to be editing a paper by East Asian researchers where "USSR" is used as an acronym for ulnar superficialis slip resection. The world moves on, life-changing institutions for some are random historical footnotes for others, and so forth.

Somehow I never watched the classic James Bond movies — and I'm delighted to find that the most charming part of "From Russia with Love" is the background footage from early 1960s Istanbul.

I was noticing today how I still get ~1-2% of my editing work in .doc, not .docx, format, even nearly 20 years after the .docx format was released. Kinda interesting re: technology obsolescence cycles, maybe especially for technologies that generally fly below our conscious radar screen

Introducing the 4th grader to some (recorded) late night talk shows: "Is Stephen Colbert a bear? A cold bear?"

This meso loop of #Melissa from CIRA is absolutely stunning at it makes its closes in on landfall in southwestern Jamaica. rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/... #hurricanemelissa

Ooh, another nice linguistic coinage tonight from the middle schooler — "more sneakily" is "sneakilier".