User:Incredible Oedipal Egg

he/him/his

I'm a Ph.D. candidate in Russian history (which in my case is, for all practical purposes, a Ph.D. in Russian, Canadian, and transnational migration history); my research centers on the intersection of nationality and ethnoconfessional identity among religious-minority emigrants. In particular, my dissertation examines how Doukhobor emigrants who settled on the Canadian prairie situated themselves at once within both their new and old homes. I am also conversant--but do not actively work--in history of computing/STS, sport history, and music history.

At any rate, the dissertation is kind of stuck right now, due to health and other issues...maybe working on Wikipedia will help me get back on course. Or maybe it'll get in the way.

I also have a lot of hobbies:

• I write (for fun! not just academically...)
• I read (same)
• I dabble in computer programming--I'm mainly interested in exotic operating system concepts, and also thinking about/implementing as proof-of-concept cryptographic payment systems that avoid the complete failure of the developers of most if not all existing so-called "cryptocurrencies" to consider the social, ethical, cultural, ecological, legal, etc. contexts in which their systems have to operate to be useful (this may not be possible, particularly if one insists on envisioning such a system as a currency *as such*)
  • I don't think "crypto" is *inherently* a scam, but the Jurassic Park "just code" mentality of a lot of those involved in creating various such systems makes it *incredibly* easy to be abused for fraudulent and exploitative purposes, and without regard for its impacts on its most vulnerable users and the broader world
• I watch altogether too much baseball, football, soccer, basketball...
• I cook! I clean...reluctantly (what sucks is that usually you want to get the crappy part out of the way first if you can, but you can't when it comes to cooking and then cleaning up because that's just not how it works, it really accomplishes nothing to wash a pot *before* you've made the sauce in it)
  • I also eat, which I guess is really the the point...talk about burying the lede?
• I love cats but am also allergic to them
• Lego with my niece (definitely my favorite hobby!)

Born and raised in Indiana, grad school in California, came back to Indiana after COVID interrupted research travel plans after I had already let my apartment lease go.

Desperately in need of one of those "here's why this article needs work" templates you see on articles: "This user page reads altogether too much like a William Faulkner novel. Problems may include excessive stream of consciousness (or any stream of consciousness, really), unpredictable and unmarked shifts of perspective, and just generally structure that's...there, but it's not ever really completely stated, you know?"