The Anthropocene Reviewed, Reviewed, Reviewed

Come for the facts, stay for the feels I I don’t usually do podcasts1, but I came upon The Anthropocene Reviewed under unusual circumstances. I’d previously heard of it from a more senior colleague during my days as a postdoc researcher. He’d described it to me as a guy doing five-star reviews of random things

Dark Chant – José Régio

“Come this way” – some tell me with sweet eyes “Come this way” – some tell me with sweet eyes Extending their arms to me, and sure That it would be good if I heard them When they tell me: “come this way!” I eye them, eyes lax in mood, (There, in my eyes, are

A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The Second Dynasty (House of Avis)

[See also: A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The First Dynasty (House of Burgundy)] The Interregnum [1383-1385] The first post in this series ended in a cliffhanger in 1383. D. Fernando, the last Portuguese King of the House of Burgundy, had just died without a male heir. His only daughter, D. Beatriz, was

Neptune and Vulcan (Part 2): A not-so-random sample

Historical anecdotes and general thoughts on Neptune/Vulcan dilemmas [Follow-up to: Neptune and Vulcan (Part 1)] I In the first part of this series I introduced the Neptune/Vulcan class of dilemmas thusly: I also briefly discussed the following examples of Neptune/Vulcan dilemmas in modern physics/astronomy1: That post ended with the natural epistemological interrogation: So how should

Neptune and Vulcan (Part 1)

An astronomical lesson on epistemology I In 1846, Urbain Le Verrier made a historic presentation to the Parisian Academy of Sciences. He had calculated how the gravitational effect of each known planet in the solar system affected the orbit of each other planet, and shown that the orbit of Uranus was not fully consistent with

Dear Me

Letter to self from a trainee teacher As I have previously mentioned, the academic year of 2021/22 saw me working towards a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) with the goal of becoming a secondary school Science teacher. The first half of September was spent in a relatively standard University classroom setting, with about four teachers-turned-lecturers

The Crown of Karpov

[Note: This post is also available on Substack] Earlier this year Ding Liren became the Chess World Champion after beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in tiebreaks. If you read any news about it, you probably realised that the protagonist in that match was arguably a man who wasn’t playing in it: Magnus Carlsen, the previous world champion

Out of the Mist [announcement]

On 5th August 1578, the Portuguese king D. Sebastião led his armies into the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir, known in Morocco as the Battle of the Three Kings. There the flower of Portuguese nobility perished, and the King was lost to History. The crisis triggered by this national catastrophe would soon lead to the loss of

How I accidentally became British

I came to the UK to do my PhD, back in 2014. At the time, Portuguese politics were still very much dominated by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis; and every time someone my age announced their intention to go abroad someone would inevitably bring up that one time that our then Prime Minister

Portuguese Independence: The emergence of a kingdom

A few days ago it was the 5th of October, the Portuguese holiday which celebrates the institution of our First Republic. Curiously, it is a little-known fact that this is also the day associated with the most famous date in Portuguese History: 1143, the year of Portugal’s independence (and thus ironically also of the institution