Today was busy (errands, appointments, events). Data & Society were having a happy hour but I only managed to stop by for two minutes. Apparently, June will be packed with more events! At Data & Society, even an elevator conversation can bring out the word ‘systemically’ (which is largely why I had applied for their fellows program at the last minute, on January 15, 2018).

I had a much longer conversation in the afternoon: Jennifer wanted to ask me about the Carpentries, which I am always happy to present and promote! Jennifer is a bright, humble, driven software engineer who has scaled machine-learning pipelines at Google (wow). She has built infrastructure to manage and process sensor data (think massive and real-time).

This is the kind of people you get to meet at RC. We discussed the following:

  • scientists vs engineers (a reference)
  • labour, work, and action (Arendt)
  • ethics and politics (Aristotle)
  • politics vs the political, which sounds better in Romance languages, e.g., la política y lo político (Schmitt, Mouffe)
  • And much more…