December 2024

December was a fairly relaxed month, despite starting a new role with a client. We held a social for the JavaScript meetups, celebrated Harriet’s birthday, we visited Kirkcudbright for Christmas, and that was about it! The rest of the time was spent looking after Jack.

I read Second Act by Henry Oliver on late bloomers, the moral of which is that it is actually not too late. I also read The Dawn of Everything by Davids Wengrow and Graeber. That was a fairly epic read giving a tour of the more distant past of humanity. The basic argument was that the standard narrative of state formation is not supported by evidence, and that the forms of human organisation are more complex and varied. This chimed and rhymed with some of what I have read from Ostrom, etc on ways of community management of resources, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that their rejection of some mainstream ideas necessarily lead to the conclusions they had made.