Re: Stages of "vegan" retreat

On Mon, 16 Feb 2026 11:27:14 +0100, Rupert McCallum
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On 16/02/2026 10:15, Derek wrote:
>> On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 11:39:22 +0100, Rupert McCallum
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Rupert. Long time. I haven't seen Jon around lately, and a quick glance
>> at his facebook profile shows that either he or someone on his behalf
>> tightened it down 11 hours ago at the time of my writing this post. He
>> usually has it quite open. He was 74 in December. Hope he's alright. He
>> seems awfully quiet.
>
>Hi Derek. Yes, hope he's okay. I was wondering how you folks were doing. 
>You yourself are in reasonably good health, I hope?

Thank you for asking. I get asked about my health a lot and, to be frank, I
often wish they hadn't because answering honestly makes me appear like
someone looking for sympathy, so I'm sorry to have to give you my stock
answer: I have good days and bad days and today's a good day so far.

>We've recently bought ourselves a new house in Eindhoven, Netherlands, 
>and I'm keeping myself busy with my maths as per usual, plus a bit of 
>teaching.

You've got a house? That's fantastic news. Well done!

>When we get up to May 7, as you realise, I'll be celebrating my 50th 
>birthday, and you'll celebrate your birthday too although I hope you'll 
>forgive me if I cannot remember exactly how old you'll be. 

Congratulations on your up-coming 50th. My birthday is the day after yours
on the 8th. I'll be 64.

>And we'll do 
>a celebration for my birthday on Saturday May 9 at our new house with 
>some family and friends, and I'll be in Australia from May 16 to June 7, 
>doing a celebration of my birthday with some old schoolfriends on May 24 
>and a celebration of my cousin's 50th birthday on May 30.

Well, seems to me you've got your half century celebration and house-warming
all worked out. Sounds great.

>There are a couple of ambitious maths projects I've recently uploaded to 
>arXiv and in the case of the set theory one I may shortly receive a bit 
>of feedback from a colleague from the University of Barcelona, and then 
>at that point I can judge whether or not I want to have a go at 
>submitting that one to Annals of Mathematics. 

Good good luck mate, although I'm sure you'll get there without any luck at
all. In fact, wishing a mathematician 'good luck' seems a bit insulting, so
hey, break a slide rule.

>I'm also getting ready for 
>a talk at the Effective Altruism Netherlands centre on Saturday about 
>why the P versus NP problem (another one I think I might be able to 
>solve) could be relevant to mitigating AI risk, which is a topic that 
>effective altruists are interested in.

You just never sit still, do you? I hope Mari's doing as well as you seem to
be doing.
>I've also been supporting Animal Charity Evaluators and Animal Free 
>Research UK and doing a little bit of veganism advocacy work every other 
>Sunday with a local animal rights organisation.