This is mostly just a programming note here, so I won’t shoot it to anyone’s inbox - but I felt a proper writing outlet, regardless of how small and “low stakes experimental” it is, ought to have a proper banner name.
Even though I’m @goltra on pretty much every platform, it doesn’t work well as the name of a publication, regardless of its inherently personal nature.
Thus, I’ve chosen to re-brand this space under the banner of Speculations - including the subdomain here on substack. (Though of course I remain squatting on the original ‘goltra’ subdomain still, so don’t try any funny business 😎)
So, why Speculations? To some extent it will be my job to make this name obvious to the reader in my future posts here, but I will leave you with two thoughts on the nature of speculation:
Speculation is a word with multiple useful meanings. If you are someone whose mental toolkit is inherently more intuitive and whose personal endeavors are closely associated with the examination of uncertainty/risk, the word speculation is likely descriptive of much of your earthly pursuits.
(Were I more erudite, I would likely expound here a bit on the Latin etymology of Speculation, what it meant to the Romans, and its various uses in early Romantic cognates - but I’m just not sufficiently literate to pull that tangent off without it being a clearly rehearsed ploy to seem smart. 😬)Present day uses of speculation get a bit of a bad rap. In polite conversation, you might want to hedge your statement by saying “well, I would hate to speculate as to her intentions.” If you consider yourself a professional investor or trader, you might take umbrage with being dismissed as a mere “speculator.” If there’s a rumor about you, you might say that “it’s all speculation and hearsay.”
I believe that treating speculation in this way is unfair to a word that is supposed to stand for something akin to an “intelligent contemplation.” A wise man understands the world around him intuitively and can make inferences accordingly: he is a good speculator. In a world where we outsource much of our decision making faculties to machines, intuition is at risk of becoming a dying art.
Let us celebrate the art of speculation!
Risk & Intuition | Venture & Conjecture | Speculation & Speculation
Why this photo of a cephalopod? I’ll leave you to speculate on that one.