/marginalia/ Recent content in marginalia on home Hugo -- gohugo.io en Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 /marginalia/margins-in-the-marginalia/ Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 /marginalia/margins-in-the-marginalia/ There’s a phrase that keeps surfacing in medical literature about patients with rare or undiagnosed conditions: they “fail” treatments. Not the treatment fails them. They fail the treatment. It’s such a strange inversion. And the more I sit with it, the more it feels like a diagnostic error that happens before any clinical one — a problem framing failure. Someone living with an uncharacterized condition spends years accumulating evidence. Filing from specialist to specialist. /marginalia/read-it-like-an-open-book/ Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 /marginalia/read-it-like-an-open-book/ A few months ago, I paid almost $10,000 to make one of my papers “open access.” I couldn’t stop thinking about the irony of paying thousands of dollars so the public could read research that the public had already helped fund. It made me wonder what, exactly, I was paying for. Was I paying for peer review? For editorial expertise? For long-term archiving? For the journal’s reputation? Or was I paying for permission to let other people read my work? /marginalia/maybe-journals-are-just-record-labels/ Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 /marginalia/maybe-journals-are-just-record-labels/ I’m not a musician, so I’ve been texting friends who are. It started with a throwaway thought: Maybe journals are just record labels. Every time I think I’ve found where the analogy breaks, someone sends me another text that makes it a little more interesting. One friend pointed out that recording studios are a bit like research labs. You can have a brilliant song sitting in your Notes app. At some point, though, you need a place, the equipment, and the people to help turn it into something real. /marginalia/telescoping-time/ Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 /marginalia/telescoping-time/ “The end was contained in the beginning.” — George Orwell Rather than thinking about Legacy as a single destination, imagine looking at your life through four increasingly distant lenses. Each time horizon asks a different question. Together, they reveal not just what you hope to accomplish, but the world you hope to help create. 100 years from now Prompt What is your Legacy, 100 years from now? For many of us, that strains the limits of imagination.