To me these work spaces look so sanitised/artificial, bordering on being sterile.
Lot of people I know have all sorts of clutter in their workspace. A sticker from here and badge from a conference, a poster, books and notebooks lying around the table. The cluttered chaotic looking workspace has its own aesthetic, indicating a rich experience for the senses and the worker. Things where they should be for their functional aspects not only aesthetic one.
I learnt a lot from these, and found other books which are detailed explorations. Using interactive applets would make wonderful companions for these explorations.
I am planning to use jsxgraph for the interactive applets.
I have an old iPad, which doesn't seem to run anything other than the default apps, hence it is distraction free in a sense. The only thing I use it for is to read, works quite well and I have managed to accomplish reading quite a few books.
Yes, there was something in the pipeline to print, nicely (re)typeset books around the time covid stuck and the plan got sidelines. Will see if there is a possibility again.
We are using worpdress.com for the hosting, so that more focus is on curating the content with minimum maintenance required (it is mostly me, with little help from colleagues every now and then).
You can download the entire collection via our Internet Archive collection. You can use the export option from advanced search and keep mir-titles as the collection, then use wget or curl to download all of them.
Magazines are tricky to get hold of, as they were ephemeral and not seen to be of lasting value. Two magazines which we have been looking for are Misha! (though some volumes are there) and Science in the USSR, ( I distinctly remember one with interviews about great Lev Landau by his colleagues).
The blog and the archive page are not in sync, we try to publish one book a day on the blog. The archive collection has more (recent) titles than the blog.
If whatsapp is restricted in India people will be on the streets. But as you said, this might be first of many bans on Telegram. In the end they will make it a hassle to use it reliably.
Your comment reminds me of a quote by the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, that has helped in my lows
How slowly one advances in a boat that does not float along with the stream in a specific direction! How much easier it is when one can connect with the work of great predecessors whose value is not doubted by anyone. A personal experiment, a construction whose foundations one must dig himself and whose walls one must erect himself, runs a real risk of becoming a humble hovel. But perhaps one prefers to live there rather than in a palace that has been built by others. (Escher on Escher – Exploring the Infinite)
Many of the ed-tech products that are introduced in the classroom are solutions looking for a problem. Not many have much understanding of the context of teaching and learning processes. And yet, as history of ed-tech tells us, gung-ho business optimism will sell these to managers/administrators as THE solution. The most important stakeholders in the process the teachers an students, who are end-users of the said product/technology, are left out in this decision chain.
I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve.
perhaps because writing is a third order exercise.
first order being in thinking in one's mind, one has to talk with oneself. second order is talking to someone else we are directing thoughts towards that person, but in writing we have to imagine the reader and then write.