Another salve for the soul…the fearful soul… youtu.be/KvzewZYo3Fk?...

I think activism for any cause always starts by opposing political power. It begins through negating an action or policy, and the sad thing is that it often remains just that, a negation. It rarely, if ever, offers a solution./1

This has become the symbol of Valentine’s Day on Iranian social media. A woman saying her final goodbye to her partner, killed in the January massacre.

Research papers are like tattoos on your intellectual body. If you don’t attend to them properly, they get infected. Half-understood ideas sitting uneasily under the skin. I finally have time to sit with a few old ones. It feels like a cat licking old wounds.🐈

Alice James told her brother Henry James that, could she have her close friend Katherine Loring “quietly and uninterruptedly for a year to relieve her of all responsibility, she would get well”. Alice was diagnosed with hysteria and Henry cruelly surmised that her illness was a ploy to keep K close

“Israel does not become stronger if the Iranian regime falls; it becomes stronger when people’s struggles all over the region, including Iran, are discredited and dismissed, […] when the voice of people […] drowned in the toxic calculations of geopolitic.”

“Thinking of home” by Arghavan Khosravi

A quiet trend has emerged among the grieving. Mothers who lost children in the recent massacre have begun to dance at memorials and burials, as if whispering to the ones they’ve lost: ‘I’m exhausted from this endless darkness. I have no more tears left. So let me dance for you instead.‘

“The Islamic Republic functions as a coherent political formation that fuses clerical authority, security apparatuses, and nationalist ideology into a durable system of domination. Its violence is constitutive. Any Marxism, any Leftism that cannot recognize this collapses into state fetishism.”

They say the wise don’t suffer less. They just expect more to go wrong, and are less surprised when it does. But I lost a whole self in the dust of the 12-day war, the massacre, and everything that has followed. How was I supposed to expect that? I lost myself. How is anyone supposed to expect that?

You can’t be the wisest political analyst and the most effective political activist at the same time. Political activism demands an emotional vigilance in which you can’t sustain a neutral, risk-averse analyst perspective.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I wish I could keep this account for my academic life and not pour the chaos of my political life into here, but given what is happening in my country, I feel guilty for even having this wish! I understand if you decide to unfollow given the disturbing content.

“An Iranian woman lies next to her sister’s body after she was killed by the Islamic Republic during the protests.”

Thousands have been killed and are being killed… in darkness… What can I do? God… what can I do…despair…absolute despair..

Some of my favourite quotes from @iran.feminist.liberation (on Instagram): 1- Reducing people's uprisings to geopolitics and state actors erases lived experiences.

Doctor says more than 200 reported dead in Tehran as regime opens fire on protests time.com/7345092/iran...

He’s lying beside me asleep. I can’t forget the look in his eyes trying to comfort me: ‘How can I make you happy again, Mummy?’ ‘Maybe the doctors made a mistake. Maybe she just fainted.’ Today I lost a close friend in a car accident in Iran. I may be out of reach for a while.

Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four, Lord I’m five hundred miles from my home… youtu.be/B_K6z3HiRAs?...

We need a new Pascal’s Wager that accounts for the fact that believing in God can activate a superiority complex.

by the legendary Mary Oliver

Maybe you'd also enjoy this recording of a concert I've been to two years ago. It was inspired by the musical director being an ethnomusicologist documenting the practice of naqsh-e khāni all over the country www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDw...

A salve for the soul youtu.be/ubcHGGDgqiU?...

Listening to this famous poem from Rumi, I remembered the first time I heard about the concept of longevity…I remember it was so strange to me! The whole idea of trying hard to be alive in this world as long as possible was so unfamiliar and weird to me!/1 youtu.be/_WS4So1l7ds?...

I’ll be joining this fascinating project soon and am quite excited about it!☺️ richardpettigrew.com/the-foundati...

I was watching this knitting competition on Channel 4 and one of the knitters said “I’m probably perceived as being quite quiet, but I’m just soaking everything up and seeing what I can really do to be really loud with my knitting, albeit being quiet myself”. I loved it!

I think the most significant part of philosophy research (and maybe all research) is identifying worthwhile questions. I recently discovered a funny personal shortcut: when I start working with a question, sometimes I get this vivid picture of…/1

It's not news that the key to the success of almost any social movement is patience and persistence. Change doesn't happen overnight. But persistence is impossible if you constantly see individuals from the oppressor group as oppressors!/1

At 16, this album carried me through late nights of wrestling with hard math problems. It’s stayed with me as my endurance melody. Now whenever life feels too heavy, I play it and feel my soul muscles grow stronger. youtu.be/c0ItncVzXxk?...

I believe there is a significant and often ignored factor that distinguishes survival chances in humanities versus sciences: how long it takes graduate students and early career researchers to grasp the notion of 'meaningful contribution' in their field./1

Pishi and my armless chair philosophy: for some reason, she really likes this chair and doesn’t appreciate the fact that I actually need it for thinking!

Gold!

We're coming up on philosophy PhD application season. In case it is helpful for you or your students, I have a guide to this process, developed over the years of working with SFU MA students. Let me know if you have questions or suggestions #philsky #philsci www.hkandersen.com/applying-for...

I have this vivid picture that at each point in time, my present self is an unstable tile between my past self and my future self, and I struggle to balance myself on that present tile. So I keep jumping back and forth until the present self tile breaks apart,/1

I was watching one of Duflo’s lectures and she showed this picture as an example of a beautiful representation of data. It’s a visualization of a Facebook network of 1000+ friends in Somalia. It reminded me of what kept me sane during the social movement in Iran 3 years ago./1

September is coming and it marks the third year of my exile. I don’t even know whether I should call it an exile. Everything in that geography is uncertain…

Sitting in my home, mother, they forced me to fight mother Capable, mother, I’m not mother, I can’t Say goodbye for me, I’m opening my door, mother maybe I won’t return, say goodbye Tell those who are afraid, my heart’s bullets are sharp/1

It's usually assumed that awareness of a cognitive bias is good, like once you know about it, it'll affect your decisions less and you'll get better at avoiding it over time. But is there any solid evidence for either of these claims?/1