Mastodawn

I am leaving the university system, possibly forever, at the end of this month. I will be living in the woods, studying mathematics and (hopefully) farming enough to survive. I have posted an essay explaining why I'm doing this on my website:

https://aten.cool/leaving_university_2026.html

#math #research #academia #USpol #mathematics #trans #transgender #farming #solarpunk #fascism #university

Leaving the university

Show thread

instantiatethis 19h ago

@caten I relate to a lot of this but "I now feel that I don't care to fight the corporatization of academia for the rest of my life. I see wealthy white men with tenure endlessly complaining about university administrators maiming the academic system for personal gain. If they are subject to these forces in their own domain, what chance do I have against them?" In particular is something I have been struggling with recently.

Wish you lots of luck and rest on your journey

Show thread

Charlotte Aten 19h ago

@instantiatethis Thanks! I can imagine this kind of stuff hits libraries hard too. They're too awesome not to be messed with, unfortunately.

Show thread

instantiatethis

@caten yes my recent reflection has been that I love libraries as punk anti establishment collectives but management likes them to be "nice" and "neutral" as the status quo must be maintained. Not sure how long to keep trying to circle that square because actually I quite like my square peg. For the moment I have the university buy as many queer, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist texts as I can justify.