2026 / Cabinet of Thoughts

December 39, 2025:

It’s well into 2026 at the moment, but it feels like we’re in retrograde so I’m having a hard time advancing the year counter. I think the saddest thing of all is that we completely lack hope. From 1848 until the 21st millennium, humanity had some form of viable alternative to the world order, even as the latter continuously dismantled dignity and happiness around the globe. Children were born into a world where hope was still alive, even if just barely, and young adults, eyes yet full of starlight and not dulled by the immiseration of life, could still imagine a better future as they blinked through an overlay of dream, or they could pick up a pen, pamphlet or rifle in the name of something better. The option was there, and as anyone in a situation of hopelessness knows, Hope is the foundation of all happiness and every positive emotion in the world. She is sinister yet all-powerful, since her mere existence, however distant, is enough to elate millions upon billions. She’s like the sun – you do not need to look at her to see her. When alive, she cannot not be seen. You know she’s there and you can breathe again. Nothing else has this power. Hope is Tinúviel dancing in Morgoth’s court, surrounded by absolute darkness, deep in the caverns of Angband. You’d think hope should be immortal. But she wasn’t. She’s gone now. She left this world for somewhere nicer. We have nothing now. The demon is omnipresent and politics is dead. It died a few decades back, but its funeral was truly held these past few years.

Nowadays what are children or emerging minds supposed to aspire to? Initially, as humans first developed cognition and formed civilizations, Hope was bright in the sky, white and luminous. Her heart brimmed with possibilities, all good avenues that could be taken – so many opportunities, so many beautiful futures. But by the nineteenth century, watching us, she got severely disillusioned and turned bright red in protest, mirroring our blood. She became the crimson star, fluttering in the night sky, barely visible at times, yet always there, reminding mankind that something better is possible. But we murdered and grave-stomped her. She’s gone now – gone far away. Now there is only darkness where her star once pulsed. Red rotted into black and an enormous void has now emerged where once she shone with all her glory, where billions of children, workers, farmers gazed up for solace, for hope, and for their next breath. That void now continuously siphons the hopes and futures of those still born in this abandoned world, tangled up in the dark bowels of evil, suffering, and inequality from birth to death. What sort of rescue operation is even possible for the rigged idiocy that we call the modern world ‘order’?

February 7, 2026:

After the interesting week where we got a boatload of snow in Rotterdam (a boatload compared to what is normal), now the usual god-forsaken cobwebs of gloom have draped their sinewy tendrils all across the skybox once again. That snow saga was indeed a hilarity in its own right. First off, everything ground to a halt with what was not even that much snow – I received a code orange warning message from Leiden University to “not even dare coming to work” because of the “terrific volume of snow” (it was like maybe 5cm max). And when I flung myself outside, because I’m a sucker for some snow action, I spotted one of the most pathetic sights known to mankind: It was a one-man sized vehicle (you know those microcars, one-person wide) with a snow-plough attached to its front, ploughing the road really slowly and basically entirely ineffectively. Apparently, this is all the Rotterdam municipality has to clear snow. It seriously looked like a toy. The things snow does to a city’s dignity… I was also slightly concerned for the geese in front of my window (by the canal), since -10 Celsius seemed a tad nippy for them and the entire canal froze over so they could not chillax in the warmer water. But then I thought fuck them, because they are indeed a strange bunch of little fuckers. I mean, wouldn’t you agree that there is something profoundly strange about geese? It almost feels like they are aliens or mind-controlling droids softening us up for the eventual goose-o-calpyse. IDK but there is definitely something deeply, deeply disturbing about these goddamn geese, sitting around there all sus, day and night, without any chill, quacking away at 3AM. W.h.a.t.e.v.s.

Beyond that, working on three different articles in addition to the final CUP manuscript, and also delivering a course at the BAIS institute is keeping me busy. I’m striving to really push everything work-related to the maximum when I’m not with Selin, since (1) being occupied makes it more bearable, and (2) I can have more free time when I’m with her. She visited me last week and we had a complete blast. Rotterdam was ours. Our kingdom. We wined and dined through it like the royalty that we are. I basically didn’t work at all that week. Wish I could just live that week on repeat, forever. In addition to many other things, we also binge-watched all four currently released episodes of Bridgerton Season 4 in one sitting. I cannot believe we now have to wait a month to see the rest… It was the most captivated I’ve been watching something in a long while, much to my surprise. Ohh you will never guess what else happened last week: the Epstein files were released (or at least some of them) and the typical clod decided it was now finally time to have a meltdown. Meanwhile, anyone with half a brain knows that we did not actually learn anything new. All billionaires and super-rich people being bad is not news. I mean, who would’ve thought, right? What a shocker. If you sit for one single second and consider what a billion is and then think of what a million is and then just sort of stew in the concept of numbers and magnitudes etc. it is pretty easy to see that anyone with that sort of accumulation is inherently and by default an evil fucking person. Oh, wow, Bill Gates or whoever-else-the-fuck-you-thought-was-not-evil, apparently went to Epstein’s mansion and molested kids or women or whatever, and played dirty, and did all other sorts of shit… how shocking. Would never have guessed. Anyway, I’ll just continue reading Barron’s Not a Speck of Light – seems fitting.

February 22, 2026:

The wind is howling like it’s the end times, trying to sweep away all the shit that has accumulated on the lithosphere. The windows are rattling like a disintegrating dream, while rain levitates and slams horizontally into them. A boundless gray has displaced all color outside, even the geese look dead inside, silent as they stand in the billowing gusts, suctioned to the mud with their webbed feet. But this silvery haze seems to have invaded inside the house too, even as a I try to desperately dissipate it with some yellow light action. But my efforts are futile, the grayness is entrenched. Meanwhile, here I sit on this fine Sunday morning, facing down the world once again, coffee in hand, classic FM ringing in the air, as I try to piece together yet another goddamn article idea. Last week, I was finally able to submit my CUP manuscript, including boat loads of metadata and other forms, in addition to submitting my “Toward a Historical Psychology of the Byzantine Village” article to a relevant journal. So now it’s time for a new project (I need to start focusing on the IMF one). Beyond that, I had this great revelation yesterday: Every few days I notice an accretion of dust atop my desk and books and stuff (that I then have to wipe away), and it is quite distressing to realize that that is me, disintegrating; dead skin, exhalations, and other such grime-cells. I am that debris. What a goddamn realization. I’m basically gradually becoming one with this house, a sobering thought on existence. It’s also quite ironic that I am wiping myself away, trying to clean my own imprint from this world, like a good little agent of the human condition. Human Exemplar v.35.