1: August and Tiber

Gavin Leech
September 02, 2024

Where I am now: Cambridge, UK. Considering London.

What I’m doing now: pretending to be an academic, catching up with Arb after a month at ESPR.

Last Song: Hellfire by Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz

Currently watching: Northernlion

Currently reading: The Visible College

Current Obsession: ESPR fundraising

Busy few months!

June

Finished my thesis with lots of help from Juan. Also did the thing you’re never supposed to do and added a whole chapter of novel material (chapter 4) at the writeup stage.
flew straight to Prague, immediately caught food poisoning and covid at Healthcamp. Also bit a doctor while unconscious.
- Taught a class on how weak the health sciences are and why. Also a class on How to Read a Paper With a Hammer. Also taught the nerds to deadlift. Also a Men’s Health session (which I only did because the women were doing one and everyone seemed to think it odd that we wouldn’t too). But it turned out to be a total sensation, ran for almost 3 hours, overlapping and overruling dinner. First time that lots of attendees had ever been able to talk about the feeling.

Me and Misha did a strategy retreat in Copenhagen for a week (eating and talking). This is the first time that both of us have been full-time on Arb, ever, so it’s an interesting time and we’re deciding whether to scale or maximise fun.
Flew to California for a month. All-expenses. Ridiculously productive; it really is boneheaded to try to run a research consultancy without having a Bay presence. Coworking with Juan constantly. Comfy.
Was planning to chill but instead a client asked me to write a book in 3 weeks. It’ll be out with Stripe Press in the spring. (Looking for proofreader volunteers, get in touch!)
Me and Juan finally finished our expose paper.
K’s first time in America. She had a pretty good time, which is encouraging. Also got a business class flight upgrade for free.
Was investigated for plagiarism (some little fucker copied most of my PNAS paper for his master’s thesis). My university is constituted such that checking the order of two publication dates takes them a whole month.
New laptop, because I was so curious about the new Snapdragon X, which turns out to be crazy fast. My long wait outside of Apple silicon hath ended. The linux kernel isn’t ported yet so I’m on Windows for the first time in about 10 years. It is bad but tolerable.

Couple days of calm and solitude after California…
and then ESPR hit. An unusually good year, but also unusually draining. Highlights: the noise gig we put on on campus, the ceilidh we put on, bellringing with the local group theorists, improvising a class on metaphysics on demand in 16 hours, the student who maintained a comically thick French accent at all times with zero slips for the first three days, the student who built a raft and sailed it down the Thames. Probably our last time at Queen’s College Oxford - relatedly, we are now actively fundraising for next year.
As I write this I’m on the train to Cambridge to pretend to be an academic (I am a visiting fellow with no responsibilities).
Strongly considering going to a full set of undergrad physics classes while I’m here.

As always, if you suspect that Arb can help you with whatever you’re up to, holler.

I’m planning to do these updates monthly; if you like you can sign up for them here.

Strength to your arm,
Gavin