November newsletter

After the Trump disaster

The disastrous outcome of the US election dominated the beginning of this month. My main response has been to reduce my focus on day-to-day politics, and try to think about longer-term issues. I’ve cancelled a bunch of subscriptions to US newsletters and journals, and reassessed my future research program.

That reassessment has been helped by getting acceptances on two articles, one on basic incomes with my former student Peter Limerick, and one on game theory and competition with Flavio Menezes. These papers represent a conclusion to streams of research I’ve been working on for a long time. I plan to keep active in public discussion of basic income and competition policy. But my theoretical research on those topics is done for now, and probably for good.

I’ll still be working on my big theoretical topic of bounded awareness (popularly discussed in terms of “black swans”) and commenting, a bit less frenetically, on policy issues. But I’ll be able to reduce my workload to something more consistent with my official half-time status.

I don’t feel like slowing down, at least not yet. I plan more family visits, catching up on lots of reading, and developing my (limited, at present< cooking skills). I’ve also joined the committee of the Sunshine Coast Triathlon Club. Despite my notorious lack of administrative skills, I’m sure I can find something useful to do there.

In other sporting news, I’ve been dealing with a persistent knee injury (probably meniscus or bursitis). It’s only problematic if I run, so the advice has been to do other exercises until I recover.

Mostly I’ve followed advice. But one of my big events for the year, the Hervey Bay 50 was on 16 November (1km swim, 40km cycle, 9km run). I did the event, knowing I would pay for it afterwards. Despite running slowly, I was rewarded with a 2:42 time (good for me) and a 2nd placing in my age group. Admittedly, 2nd out of 2, but I beat all the old guys who didn’t show up.

As is often the case with this kind of injury, my knee worked fine while I was running, but seized up afterwards, setting my recovery back by a week or two. A price worth paying for this trophy .

Newspaper articles

Friendly fire: a nuclear push by allies at COP29 poses a sticky problem for Albanese, The Conversation, 21 November

The fierce reaction to Australia’s new Future Fund mandate is a throwback to a bygone era, The Guardian 22 November

Media

My November media report is here (password quiggin)

Visit my Substack blog