September 2022
Not long to go until our baby arrives. We’ve prepped the house, had double glazing installed, and bought a car that is more suitable for carrying a child around. The Baby Box from the Government arrived. We are celebrating a year in the flat, and reflecting on all that has changed and is about to change.
Edinburgh was a stange place for much of the middle of the month. With the death of The Queen the streets were busy - the Scottish version of “the queue” looped through The Meadows near our house.
I took off on a cycling trip doing the C2C from Whitehaven to Tynemouth over the course of four days. I added some photos and details to my journal.
EdinburghJS resumed after the summer break with a talk by Rory Gianni on the Principles of D3. We had a great turnout, and I’m looking forward to growing the meetup with Esteban and Allan into the new year.
Jac was kind to invite us over to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with her and some friends. We ate sweet food, round bread, and listened to a valiant effort of some shofar blowing.
Reading
This month I read a fair amount of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism and:
- The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. This continues from the authors previous work Why Nations Fail and discusses how we need both a strong state and civil society to develop economically, prevent tyranny and extractive institutions. Recommended.
- Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama. I thought I might read through Fukuyama’s books, as I read The End of History at least a decade and a half ago, but want to revisit it to understand how the arguments have held up. This book was a general tour of liberal thought in our current political climate: neoliberals vs the woke.
That’s all for this month. I’ll be spending the next few weeks in a state of nervous excitement, waiting for the baby to arrive. 👋
