¶ 1. Hello, everynyan and welcome to my personal virtual space. People often call me Gustav, and I consider it fitting to begin by introducing myself, so that the reader may understand the vantage point from which the essays and notes collected here are written. I hold undergraduate degrees in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of São Paulo (USP), as well as a master's degree in Pure Mathematics from the same institution, and I am currently pursuing a doctorate in Pure Mathematics at USP.
¶ 2. In mathematics, my primary interests lie at the intersection of geometry, algebra, and foundational theories. I am particularly occupied with Poisson, Dirac, and Courant geometries, as well as the theory of Lie groupoids and algebroids, with Courant algebroids and groupoids forming a central focus of my active, ongoing study. My engagement with these structures naturally extends into the study of differentiable stacks and sheaf theory, which together provide the sophisticated categorical machinery necessary for rigorously approaching a broad array of theoretical problems, most notably both geometric and deformation quantisation. Alongside these subjects, I maintain a deep engagement with the foundations of mathematics, category theory, homotopy type theory, and abstract algebra, including its homological and algebro-geometric branches. This mathematical inclination naturally informs my pursuits in physics, where my attention is directed towards mathematical physics, physical cosmology, and gravitation, with particular emphasis on quantum field theory in curved spacetimes, encompassing the study of black hole physics and early-universe cosmologies.
¶ 3. My philosophical investigations are broad, though unified by an appreciation for structural rigour and formal logic. I engage with canonical authors such as Kant, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche and Hegel; with phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Desanti and others); and with French structuralism and its epistemological milieu (Cavaillès, Lautman, Foucault and Badiou). My engagement with these authors is by no means uniformly sympathetic and I do not take familiarity with a thinker to imply wholesale adherence. With that in mind, in aesthetics, I am most strongly Adornian, with some excursions into Danto and Krauss, alongside an interest in the formalist and structuralist debates surrounding modernism. I am particularly drawn to structuralist approaches to the foundations of mathematics, especially those associated with Cavaillès, Stewart Shapiro, Øystein Linnebo and related figures. In philosophy of science, my orientation is broadly critical-realist, whilst remaining informed by the epistemological traditions above. I also engage with analytic philosophy, with “hardcore” formal philosophers who employ rigorous mathematical frameworks in their metaphysical and epistemological theories, such as Hannes Leitgeb and Timothy Williamson, and with the legacy of Rudolf Carnap.
¶ 4. Beyond traditional academia, this space serves as a repository for my writings on game studies. I approach interactive media through a dual lens: examining the philosophical, aesthetic and art-theoretical dimensions of games, whilst also dissecting them from a strictly technical and computational standpoint, exploring the intricacies of computer science and programming. My fascination with complex, emergent systems extends naturally to my own ludic preferences; I am an avid player of notoriously intricate titles, including traditional roguelikes, 4X and grand strategy games, classic CRPGs and colony management sims, like my beloved Dwarf Fortress. Finally, I am a staunch advocate of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), working primarily within Linux and FreeBSD environments. In my leisure time, I take great pleasure in hardware modification and maintenance, which ranges from assembling bespoke modern desktop systems from component parts to restoring and tinkering with vintage machines, particularly classic IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads.