10.31 | hi! i'm dead tired!

✉️ letter #70

It’s Halloween here in New York City, probably my favorite non-holiday holiday! I didn’t get around to doing much in 2024 but something about the energy I’m absorbing and reflecting in late 2025 made me want to really get out there and truly enjoy myself. As I put it in my journal of goals for October, “don’t be lame.”

Ultimately, I did manage to go out last weekend, a much needed break after what I thought was a busy week. And I will probably go out again this Halloween night, ending what turned out to be an even busier week. My get up: panda, to reflect/hide the bags now forming under my eyes.

One thing I did not expect coming into this Masters program was the amount of group projects I would need to be a part of at once. Literally every single class I am taking has looped me into a group projects or another — some which form the core of the course, some in lieu of midterms, some timed to lead that week’s discussions. I had a bit of unfortunate luck that the last category all happened to get scheduled for the same two-ish week span as the other two.

🎼 the soundtrack | Evil Ways - TOBEHONEST

And so I’ve been careening from group project to group project, trying to set up meeting times amongst over a dozen competing schedules, researching and writing and refining, presenting and doing post-presentation reflections etc. etc. etc. and god, even my advertising company didn’t try to force me to represent so many different perspectives at once.

Forget a costume, just in the latter half of October, I’ve been:

• The moderator on a NY state workshop trying to keep the CLCPA alive
• An amateur historian, charting the understanding of heat waves and urban heat islands in the city from the 1870s to the 1990s.
• The Africa bloc at the COP30 Negotiations
• Haiti in a panel on climate change-induced migration
• South Africa charting how the coal industry fueled both its apartheid and anti-apartheid movements

And if felt like every time I hit submit on one, another group project popped up to replace it:

• You forgot! You were scheduled to lead discussions on the concept energy transition justice next week!
• You know what would be a fun final for the climate PHYSICS class?? A group project where you guys make a video explaining one of those science-y things.
• Wait, speaking of finals — your final for Climate Justice is also a group project. Get a team together and make a poster.

Not to mention that those two subject: New York ones above are ongoing team-ups that last until the end of the semester (at least). Don’t get me wrong, all the subjects are incredibly interesting and I enjoy that they’ve now been added to this incredibly esoteric knowledge base of mine.

But for someone who had just spent over a year essentially working alone, this has… been an adjustment. Group projects are starting to infiltrate my nightmares. How’s that for spooky season?

All of which to say, I had a more focused idea for a newsletter this Wednesday but felt much too fried to write it. In corporate speak, we talk about the need to wear many hats. I guess I changed up hats so many times that I lost track of my head.

🪢related threads

• The “intoxication thesis”: The evolutionary benefits of getting drunk. Am I going to be thinking about this when someone offers to buy me a drink tonight? Yes. Yes, I am. [Big Think]
• "For centuries, automata accompanied the human imagination, helping thinkers to conceive of a rational universe governed by regular mechanisms (well before such mechanisms could be practically put to work). This historical lineage complicates the view of the machine as a purely instrumental tool: its material utility was often secondary to its epistemic power." I very much liked this meander around the idea and appeal of "useless robots." I miss when there were more of them. [The Reader]
• It makes me a little sad to think I might never actually know what it's like to meet an orca. Though from what I know about orcas, they'd probably torture me to death and then wear me as a hat. All the power to them, honestly. [The Marginalian]
• Let's talk about the concept of a "casino" economy. As Kyla Scanlon writes: "It’s in the stock market, it’s in fiscal policy, it’s in the investments that venture capital firms are making, it’s in prediction markets - it’s everywhere. It’s nothing new! But it’s accelerating. And that’s why it sometimes feels like the economy isn’t “good” or “bad” anymore as much as it’s just… tradable? Half the country is barreling toward recession, 40 million people might lose access to food stamps because of the continued government shutdown, and meanwhile the stock market is acting like we’ve boarded onto a 24/7 all-access party cruise or something. Apparently, the invisible hand also deals cards." [Kyla's Substack]

✨enjoying: a piece of pop culture fun

I voted in the NYC mayoral election! With my politics it's probably not hard to guess for who, but in general, I've been thrilled with this go-around. All three candidates have been Characters with a capital C this time, and it's been a consistent reminder that as much as I may not like the other two candidate's policies (and possibly, their personalities should I ever have to work with them), I do love watching New Yorkers being New Yorkers.

Some highlights, because the mayoral debates have turned out this time to be better than regular television. Usually, because the winner's so obvious, Republican candidate stalwart Curtis Sliwa doesn't get as much of a platform has he's had this time around. While Zohran brought the drama and clapbacks, Sliwa definitely brought the comedy:

• Have you ever been shot five times and gotten Chrons and needed medical marijuana for it?
• Mayors should be at all Parades!
• Oh please don't be glazing me here, Zohran!

On a side note, Instagram is the stupidest platform to try to do a search ever. God.

🗨️a final quote

Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.
-- Gary Shteyngart in the New York Times

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