I listened to a podcast about The Batavia, a Dutch East India Company ship which wrecked on its maiden voyage. The survivors subsequently mutinied and orchestrated a terrible massacre. The mutiny and massacre was orchestrated by a man named Jeronimus Cornelisz. He, and the other mutineers, were eventually captured, tortured, and/or hanged. One particular note I found interesting was that the two juvenile mutineers were made to draw straws to see which one would be hanged.

Another podcast I listened to, The Joy of X featured cosmologist Janna Levin. Her book, “How the Universe Got Its Spots” is definitely on my “to read” list now. The excerpt which she read in the podcast was beautiful and I especially like this excerpt:

…we are the product of this universe and I think it can be argued that the entire cosmic code is imprinted in us. Just as our genes carry the memory of our biological ancestors, our logic carries the memory of our cosmological ancestry. We are not just imposing human-centric notions on a cosmos independent of us. We are progeny of this cosmos and our ability to understand it is an inheritance.

This feels very similar to Carl Sagan’s sentiment’s about how our origin as “stardust” make us more like children of the cosmos than distant observers.

I got an on-site interview for a job opportunity I had a phone interview for yesterday. It is exciting to have a chance at something new but scary to dive back into the pool of uncertainty.

I decided to start blogging in the year 2020 when blogs seem all but dead. I’m doing it for me, however. I’d like to write more and having a structured way to do so. This will likely never be seen by anyone, similar the roadside Silphium that Aldo Leopold muses about. It is facing an extinction very few will care about or see.

Anthony Miller

Software engineer