Table of Contents

1. Biography: About myself and this webpage.
2. To-Read Lists: What I'm interested in reading.
3. Featured Writing: Amateur prose and poetry.
4. Artwork of the Month: Pictures I like.
5. Rolodex: Other webpages I like.
6. Read/Watched Log: Chronological entries of books I've read and movies I've watched.
7. Music Collection: My CD collection.
8. Birdwatching Lifelist: Every bird I've ever seen.
9. Appendix: Miscellaneous objects and links.

Biography

My name is Aaron. I am currently a student of Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. My other interests are varied and include:

1. Topics in natural sciences, especially ecology, evolutionary biology, and more recently ornithology.
2. Grappling sports, weight training, and other sports
3. Language learning
4. Literature and film

If you don't yet have my contact information, you can find it below. Please feel free to contact me about anything you encounter on this site that you'd like to dicsuss.


email: adivsin "at" protonmail "dot" com
discord: aivsin

To-Read Lists

These lists are meant to be suggestive of the topics I'm interested in. They are not comprehensive.

Biology, Evolution, Ecology, and other Natural Sciences
1. Evolution - Zimmer
2. Guide to Flowering Plant Families - Zomlefer
3. On the Origin of Species - Darwin
4. Annals of the Former World - McPhee
5. Life Fantastic - Gould

History and Politics
1. Nature's Metropolis - Cronon
2. Ecological Imperialism - Crosby
3. Fanshen - Hinton
4. Rice in the Time of Sugar - Perez
5. Carbon Technocracy - Seow
6. Capitalism in the Web of Life - Moore
7. Sweetness and Power - Sidney Mintz

Theory, Criticism, and Philospohy
1. Capital - Marx
2. Science of Logic - Hegel

Literature and Film
1. Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thiongo
2. Petersberg - Andrei Bely
3. Native Son - Richard Wright
4. Paradiso - Jose Lezama Lima
5. Collected Poetry - Derek Walcott
6. The Passion According to G.H. - Clarice Lispector
7. The English Understand Wool - Helen DeWitt
8. The Red and the Black - Stendhal
9. The Carnival Trilogy - Wilson Harris
10. Gargantua and Pantagruel - Rabelais
11. Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
12. Crab Ship Cannery - Takiji Kobayashi
13. Three Streets - Yoko Tawada
14. Water Margin - Shi Nai'an

Featured Writing

I hope to write more in response to what I read, and to think more systematically; I hope you find these exercises interesting or useful.

1. Two Poems
2. An American Utopia - Frederick Jameson
3. The Triple Helix - Richard Lewontin

Artwork of the Month

April, Natalia Goncharova, "The Blue Cow"

See previous entries.

Rolodex

A number of my friends have webpages of their own, which may be of interest to you. I will also store other interesting websites here:

1. Olivia's neocities page: a friend studying the history of capitalism and the japanese railroad network.
2. Alex's neocities page: a friend who hosts some interesting artwork and poetry.
3. Advith's neocities page: a friend with an interesting blog.
4. Iris' neocities page: a friend studying Chinese history and Tiantai buddhism.
5. Richard's essays: an incarcerated penpal writing about capitalism, colonialism, and waste management.
6. James' essays: a friend studying 19th century German philosophy.
7. The Phenmoneal World newsletter: some great writing on various topics in modern political economy.

For 2024's entries

Read/Watched Log, 2025

1. 5-Jan-2025: Film: All For The Winner (1990)
   A spectacular comedy with great slapstick. Instantaneous recommendation from the very first scene. (100 minutes)
2. 9-Jan-2025: Fiction: Journey to the West, vol. 1 (2012) Wu Cheng'en
   translator Anthony Yu. What a fantastic story. I love the comedic bits between Eight Rules and Sun Wukong. I'm looking forward to finishing this, although I don't anticipate being able to do so soon. I'm also interested in reading Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase. (379 pages)
3. 12-Jan-2025: Film: Sound of Metal (2020)
   A pretty good film. At times it accomplishes some really interesting effects with the sound design - I think of scenes where it is ambiguous whether it is simply a silent environment, or we are "hearing" Stone's deaf perspective. And the sonic congruence between the final party scene, when the experience of total social alienation overwhelms him, matching the total dissonance of the roaring distorted metal songs, is really striking. Underwritten and formulaic in many of its early beats. Lukewarm recommendation. (80 minutes)
4. 14-Jan-2025: Fiction: The Idiot (2017) Elif Batuman
   A really superb novel. Truly a feat that something so boring could be so quick-witted, so funny, and so intense and crushing. A definite recommendation. (423 pages)
5. 14-Jan-2025: Comic: Dykes To Watch Out For (1986) Alison Bechdel
   Spectacular. (77 pages)
6. 29-Jan-2025: Fiction: Klara and the Sun (2021), Kazuio Ishiguro
   An enjoyable novel, which was kindly gifted to me. I really admire a work of science fiction more interested in exploring a novel and unique subjectivity than poorly posed social-political questions. Really bruising in its final passages. Recommend. (303 pages).
7. 27-Feb-2025: Nonfiction: Emptiness and Omnipresence (2016), Brook Ziporyn
   My mind is like a sieve lately, so I feel like I got very little out of this. When I'm more powerful again I'll try the lotus sutra and the mohochikuan. Recommend. (336 pages)
8. 13-Mar-2025: Nonfiction: Age of Revolution (1962) Eric Hobsbawm
   A fantastic book. The wide breadth of topics is really stunning, and it leaves a lot of interesting topics I feel compelled to follow up on in greater reserach. Particularly interesting subjects to me were the political details of the French Revolution; the ambiguous relationship between scientific advancement and social, economic, political developments at the time; the process of deindustrialization in colonial India; and the history of the Greek revolution. A strong recommendation. (366 pages)
9. 27-Mar-2025: Fiction: The Adventures of Augie March (1953) Saul Bellow
   It took me a long time to like this book - I first tried reading it in my junior year of high school. At the end I really was wooed by the kind of idiotic, charming psuedishness of the character. I was also a little dissapointed in its self-seriousness and self-importance. Sometimes very well written but other times way too taken by syntactical excesses, or by pastiche. Would recommend, to some. (536 pages).
10. 3-Apr-2025: Fiction: Three Streets (2022) Yoko Yawada
    translator Margaret Mitsutani. A very good little set of dream-ghost stories. Liked it better than "The Emissary". Recommend. (80 pages).

Music Collection

These are all albums I have on CD. I started a little collection from some old, scratched up discs my mom gave to me and have been adding to it slowly. Hopefully, I'll add a little radio station or music player here soon.

Visiting Discs: I checked these albums out from the library and listened to them at home.

Birding

I started going birding this winter, being newly enrolled in an Ornithology course and making some friends interested in the hobby. Here is my life list, organized by order and family. Within this list you can find a list of prospective birds I would love to try and find this year. My eBird is here

Accipitriformes (dirunal birds of prey)
1. Bald Eagle
2. Cooper's Hawk
3. Northern Harrier
4. Red-Tailed Hawk
5. Turkey Vulture
   Anseriformes (waterfowl)
6. American Black Duck
7. Blue-Winged Teal
8. Bufflehead
9. Canada Goose
10. Greater White-Fronted Goose
11. Green-Winged Teal
12. Lesser Scaup
13. Mallard
14. Northern Pintail
15. Northern Shoveler
16. Ring-Necked Duck
17. Wood Duck
    Charadriiformes (shorebirds)
18. Killdeer
19. Wilson's Snipe
20. Woodcock
    Columbiformes (pigeons and doves)
21. Mourning Dove
22. Rock Pigeon
    Coraciiformes (kingfishers)
23. Belted Kingfisher
    Gruiformes (rails)
24. American Coot
    Passeriformes (perching birds) (internally alphabetized by family)
25. Brown Creeper
26. American Crow
27. Blue Jay
28. American Goldfinch
29. House Finch
30. Tree Swallow
31. Brown-Headed Cowbird
32. Common Grackle
33. Eastern Meadowlark
34. Red-Winged Blackbird
35. Black-Capped Chickadee / Carolina Chickadee
36. Tufted Titmouse
37. American Tree Sparrow
38. Dark-Eyed Junco
39. Field Sparrow
40. Song Sparrow
41. White-Throated Sparrow
42. House Sparrow
43. Golden-crowned Kinglet
44. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
45. Red-Breasted Nuthatch
46. White-Breasted Nuthatch
47. European Starling
48. Carolina Wren
49. American Robin
50. Eastern Bluebird
51. Northern Cardinal
52. Eastern Phoebe
    Pelicaniformes (large waterbirds)
53. Great Blue Heron
    Piciformes (woodpeckers)
54. Downy Woodpecker
55. Hairy Woodpecker
56. Northern Flicker
57. Pileated Woodpecker
58. Red-Bellied Woodpecker
59. Red-Headed Woodpecker
60. Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
    Podicepediformes (grebes)
61. Pied-Billed Grebe
    Strigiformes (owls)
62. Barred Owl
63. Northern Saw-Whet Owl

Appendix

My button:

My memento: a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune...

Additional Object #2: New Years Resolutions 2025

Additional Object #3: Page Counter