Yesterday, I got the results from my latest scan (we do them every six months or so), and the metastases in my lungs continue to get smaller: two examples are a met dropping from 15x23mm to 13x21mm and another down to 23x17mm down from 27x20mm. The report also says my gallbladder is “present and unremarkable.” […]
Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
Medical News–not much of it is pretty good
Suddenly, it’s been two months since my last cancer blog. No news is good news! I had a CT scan on Friday which I’ll learn about in 2 weeks, and my tumour marker keeps going down. I had a heart ultrasound last week and my heart looks great. My favourite side-effect, weight loss, continues steadily. […]
Some extremely obvious reflections on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
It’s all connected. Yesterday was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I don’t believe I had any relatives at Auschwitz, but members of my extended family did die in the Holocaust. They also died because of anti-semitic conscription during World War I in the Austro-Hungarian empire (in fact, this is the reason my mother’s […]
Some quick takes on AI-based music composition startups
I just responded to two questions about AI-composition startups from a student and thought I’d share them here as well. This is a placeholder for deeper thoughts. The questions: What are your thoughts on the uses of Amper music specifically as an AI generative software? A user can create their own personal track by determining the […]
2020: “Hit record”
My New Year’s resolution is “hit record.” Very simply: it means that I will record a lot of my musical improvisations over the course of the year. I’m aiming for twice a week give or take, but I’m not going to be precious about it. I have ideas for what might happen after that, but […]
Health update / McGill Bullshits on Divestment
Health update: I went back to the oncologist today. My tumour marker is back down, which means last time was a blip, or variance, or measurement error. Which is what I expected. The BP drugs are still not working so we are trying yet another one. Which is good because I’m getting monster headaches from […]
NaNoWriMo / #academicwriting month: a review
Bottom line: November is a terrible month for academics to make a push on writing. I recommend picking a different month. But it worked for me. I benefitted from publicly announcing a schedule and from the support of friends who knew what I was doing. Word counts ended up being useless to me: in most […]