This Is The Mess That I Call Political Philosophy

ive trying to consciously make studying enjoyable, but also rigorous and productive lately. started by downloading forest and tidying up my desk (a very good mix of art and law obvs). today is day one. hope everyone is staying safe.

do you have any favourite love letters from the past?

“You have fixed my Life – however short,” Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia” / “Throw over your man, I say, and come,” Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

“Love is my religion – I could die for that, I could die for you,” John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days,” Oscar Wilde to Alfred Lord Douglas

things we really have to stop:

using fat people to illustrate greed

using thin people to define health and happiness

using fat people as an example of ill health and sadness

bringing up a fat person’s health at all

the use of headless fat people in news reels

using fat as an insult

thin people jumping in on conversations about the lived experiences of fat people and making it about them

the idea that a fat person who is in comfortable clothing is “sloppy”

basically, treating fat people any differently than a thin person.

3.12.2020 gloomy days

quiet autumn mornings in london 🍂🍁

dropbox containing linguistics textbooks

contains 34 textbooks including etymology, language acquisition, morphology, phonetics/phonology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, & translation studies

dropbox containing language textbooks

contains 86 language textbooks including ASL, Arabic, (Mandarin) Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew (Modern & Ancient), Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh

dropbox containing books about language learning

includes fluent forever by gabriel wyner, how to learn any language by barry farber, polyglot by kató lomb

if there’s a problem with any of the textbooks or if you want to request materials for a specific language feel free to message me!

8.12.18 

A new coffee bean just opened and I just love the interiors and the lighting! And it’s just right across from where I live. Finally, a new study place! Idk why but I’m not a huge fan of their coffee though. 

I will be trying my best to be active again. I’m now in my 3rd year of law school. I started my studyblr during my first year and it has helped me de-stress from my law school life. 

Super duper thankful of the upperclassmen and seniors who willingly share their notes with us! You are the real MVPs! Wouldn’t survive law school without you guys!

17.05.2020 / 22:33pm

i have to start my actual studying for my finals the day after tomorrow and i am not ready

Hi! Love your page, what are some Indian dark academia movies/TV shows? Would love to hear your recs!

Hi! Thank you so much :) I can’t think of any academia TV shows except Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (and arguably Malgudi Days), but here are some movies I like and, in my opinion, fit the mood -

Maqbool - an adaptation of Macbeth fit to the Indian context as a story unfolding in a crime family; really well done

Haider - same director as Maqbool (Vishal Bhardwaj), this time an adaptation of Hamlet; set in Kashmir, also really well made. Also check Omkara (adaptation of Othello), although I have only seen bits of that one

Fitoor - an adaptation of Great Expectations; didn’t do well commercially, but it’s such a good movie zskjdbjsbk

Elizabeth Ekadashi - it’s a Marathi movie about these four kids who get together to earn enough money to save their cycle ‘Elizabeth’ from being given to a moneylender as mortgage for a loan; really, really sweet movie; shows financial strain and the lives of children during the strain; 14/10 would recommend

Killa - coming-of-age story about an 11 year old boy coming to terms with his father’s death and his mother’s job transfer which takes him to a new town and new school; the cinematography is *chef’s kiss*, shows coastal Maharashtra; about the boy adjusting in school, the friends he makes; the melancholy of knowing that his he will have to move soon; so dark academia it’s crazy

Aligarh - a Philadelphia-esque story about a gay professor who is accused on indecency; also about privacy and sexual morality

Udaan - coming-of-age story about a small-town boy who wants to be poet while his father wants him to get into the family business; really well-made; explores small-town aspirations really beautifully

Aankhon Dekhi - about a man who decides that he’s only going to believe something once he sees it for himself, and the implications of this philosophy on his family life; very fine movie

Pyaasa - about a poet in early post-independence India and his struggles with getting his work published; explores hypocrisy, redemption, tensions in 1950s India

Kai Po Che - based on a book (Three Mistakes of My Life by Chetan Bhagat; I have not read the book); on the lives of three friends as they start a sports shop and how their lives are caught in multiple upheavals of their time; kind of political drama, shows the friendship of 20-somethings in very poignant ways

Masaan - parallel stories of two people in Varanasi as they seek to break free of barriers of caste and gender; shows how their lives are governed by a strict moral code; very sublime in its depiction of tensions; really uplifting in the end

Kalyug (1981) - an adaptation of the Mahabharata set as a conflict between two rival business houses

Shatranj Ke Khiladi - based on a story by Premchand of the same name; historical drama set in Awadh in 1856 (right before its annexation by the British); shows two nobles who continue to play chess against the background of the schemes and intrigue happening at court regarding the annexation; shows the relationship between the political and the recreational areas of late nobility in 19th century India

Junoon (1978) - historical drama; based on Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons; set around the rebellion of 1857; explores the lives of people differently placed in the social hierarchy and their response to the rebellion and its differing impact on their lives. (I highly recommend the book as well)

That’s all from me, head over to @papenathys for more Indian academia recommendations. Hope you find something you like in these :)

'blossom' - daniel gerhartz