Archive - Prefaces

Mar 5 •

February 2024

on four different ways to lie to yourself

This semester I have been co-teaching a class on ancient and modern accounts of science. I have asked the students to consider the physicists…

Feb 13 •

January 2024

Should you go to graduate school?

The question recurs online with significant regularity. The recurrence is regular and significant because academics (former grad students…

Jan 25 •

and thinking about it with Kierkegaard

Jan 18 •

December 2023

prying open tautologies

My sister-in-law once had a cat named Harry. Harry was a prize Persian, belonging to her landlady, a cat breeder. Harry had an impeccable pedigree—one…

Dec 14, 2023 •

how I made friends in my thirties

now unpaywalled at the The Hedgehog

Dec 1, 2023 •

November 2023

dramatic failures of self-understanding

Last summer I had a dream that a friend walked up to me, stood unusually close, placed a hand on my shoulder and said: “Matty, you’re a mess!” In the…

Nov 23, 2023 •

How I made friends in my thirties

I have a new “note” in the The Hedgehog Review. I think it’s paywalled, but The Hedgehog is, for my actual money, one of the best little magazines out…

Nov 1, 2023 •

October 2023

why Matty can't read

on the screen, that is

Oct 24, 2023 •

September 2023

At the Heaven and Hell Cotillion

Rushmore, cliches, and growing up

Sep 25, 2023 •

Fart the Ferret's Morning Routine

My fourth daughter, Rachel, was born on the second-last day of 2018. She subsequently did not sleep for more than two hours in a row until halfway…

Sep 20, 2023 •

What I did on my summer vacation

This is something a little bit different: a report on what I did this summer. So, it’s a new academic year. The chutzpah involved in asserting that a…

Sep 5, 2023 •

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