I’m only aware because I lived there the last two years!

At least Quebec is *also* in the “destroying its academic system harder” category: universityaffairs.ca/features/que...

Fwiw my impression is that New Zealand are going as hard as anyone on the “destroying their academic systems” front: www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

One of my favourite kinda-obscure podcasts is The Animals - Simon Callow and Alan Cumming reading Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy’s love letters - which could be engaging (interesting people!) but banal (just their everyday lives!)

Dr.? Yes!

Worth noting that they have an enormous backlog of accepted-but-not-yet-published papers: a paper isn’t being published until more than a year after acceptance. While that backlog is still growing and without the budget to reverse trend, avoiding extra upward pressure on acceptances maybe sensible.

There’s been at least one previous attempt to get phil of mirrors (“philosophical catoptrics”) up and running as a subfield: philpapers.org/rec/STEFR-4

I’m not sure my blood pressure could take that today, sorry!

- When he last ran for reelection, he included a made-up person called “Glen Stark” on his ticket. He was finally defeated by Putin’s former deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, and everyone was relieved because that meant FIDE was about to become a lot less corrupt. The end.

- As President of FIDE his supporters included the head of the Bulgarian Chess Federation, whose enormous embezzlement scheme he turned a blind eye to;

- His critics included the head of the English Chess Federation, who himself claimed to have punched a man to death in Amsterdam one time;

- As President of Kalmykia, Ilyumzhinov made chess a compulsory subject in schools and built a complex known as Chess City in Elista. He claimed this was the will of the people, as communicated to him via an “extra-sensory field” to which he was acutely attuned;

- An opposition newspaper editor in Kalmykia was murdered, and one of Ilyumzhinov’s own aides was convicted. In Ilyumzhinov’s autobiography, there is a chapter titled “It only takes two weeks to have a man killed in Russia”;

- Ran successfully for the Presidency of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia (the only Buddhist majority region of Europe) on a platform of giving $100 dollars to every voter and a mobile phone to every shepherd. His campaign slogan was “A wealthy president is a safeguard against corruption”;

- arranged for the World Championship to be hosted in Baghdad as a favour to his friend, Saddam Hussein;

- Flew into Tripoli during the Libyan civil war to play chess with his friend, Muammar Gaddafi;

- Was placed on a sanctions list for money laundering on behalf of his friend, Bashar al-Assad;

1. Endnotes at the end of the book > footnotes > endnotes at the end of each chapter

2. Print if possible (I’ll definitely try to buy yours!)