about me
I am Leona Mollica, a Bay Area transplant with interests in philosophy, logic, cats, calligraphy, and tenants' rights. This site is for coordinating news about my (modest) public life.
Stay safe! :)
merry christmas
Merry Christmas!
Christmas is a celebration of many things for many people, but one thing I try to commemorate every year is the great, spontaneous truce on the Western Front during the first World War, which today turns eleventy-one. Thinking on it always puts a tear in my eye, and in recent years has brought to mind a particularly touching passage from the Bhagavad Gita (Johnson trans.):
And looking at all these kinsmen so arrayed, Arjuna, the son of Kunti,
Was overcome by deep compassion; and in despair he said: Krishna, when I see these my own people eager to fight, on the brink,
My limbs grow heavy, and my mouth is parched, my body trembles and my hair bristles,
My bow, Gandiva, falls from my hand, my skin's on fire, I can no longer stand - my mind is reeling,
I see evil omens, Krishna: nothing good can come from slaughtering one's own family in battle - I foresee it!
I have no desire for victory, Krishna, or kingship, or pleasures. What should we do with kingship, Govinda? What are pleasures to us? What is life?
The men for whose sake we desire kingship, enjoyment, and pleasures are precisely those drawn up for this battle, having abandoned their lives and riches.
Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, maternal uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and kinsmen;
I have no desire to kill them, Madhusudana, though they are killers themselves; no, not for the lordship of the three worlds, let alone the earth!
Where is the joy for us, Janardana, in destroying Dhritarashtra's people? Having killed these murderers, evil would attach itself to us.
It follows, therefore, that we are not required to kill the sons of Dhritarashtra: they are our own kinsmen, and having killed our own people, how could we be happy, Madhava?
And even if, because their minds are overwhelmed by greed, they cannot see the evil incurred by destroying one's own family, and the degradation involved in the betrayal of a friend,
How can we be so ignorant as not to recoil from this wrong?
Would that we might all take a little more of this leaf from Arjuna's book, on big matters and small.
25 Dec 2025
pittsburgh status update
I am pleased to announce that I have officially passed my comprehensive examination for my doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh philosophy department and am thus on track to complete my PhD this academic year.
10 Oct 2025
permutation city planning
I've written a little browser game based on the exceptional outer automorphism of the symmetry group on six: Permutation City Planning. Check it out!
This is the first time I've worked with an IDE in over a decade so forgive my no doubt atrocious code and focus on the glory that is Out(Sym6).
24 Jul 2025
trip to seattle
I recently took a trip to Seattle to visit some friends. I had a blast! Here are some especially nice photos from the trip.
Some of my favourite moments:
- I was walking into the public library by Green Lake in my witch hat (a very solid investment as a new addition to my standard outfit), and had a kid from a gaggle on a field trip exclaim, "She looks like she's going in to learn a spell!"
- I finally got around to working through the classification theorem for finite abelian groups, which was a delight.
- My visit happened to coincide with a bunch of ducklings learning to swim on Green Lake.
- I reread Peter Geach's classic Mental Acts, which I last read I think in undergrad without really appreciating it. The negative components (like the tirades against "abstractionism") continue to hold up quite well, and it is interesting to see him anticipate a bunch of post-Kripke/Kaplan work on reference by way of expounding on the "conversio ad phantasmata" in Aquinas.
- On a lark I also read through Milan Kundera's famous "The Tragedy of Central Europe", which was particularly extreme, enlightening, and entertaining for such an essay in its self-absorbed stupidity.
- I got to meet up with so many very fun friends.
- The fireworks show by Gas Works Park was spectacular!
13 July 2025
trump and ramaphosa
In the wake of the recent White House meeting between Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, I submitted for publication a short reaction piece, which was passed over. By the time it was rejected, events had already passed it by, so it didn't seem appropriate to submit it elsewhere. I thought I would include a link here, though, just for anyone curious. (link).
4 Jun 2025
a marvelous series of coincidences
I have been very gradually dipping my toes into group theory recently, which has been interesting but quite outside my comfort zone.
One really enthralling theorem I came across recently was the existence and uniqueness of an outer automorphism on the symmetry group on six elements (that is, roughly, an automorphism of the group of permutations of six elements that does not come for free from conjugating by some fixed permutation). It is an exceptional automorphism: no other symmetry group possesses an outer automorphism, and the sixth has only the one. This is a quite old theorem (proved in 1895 by Otto Hölder), and not very complicated to prove, but I still find it deeply charming.
There is something remarkable and captivating about it. The way it relies on all these coincidences about n=6 to line up just so (chiefly, the equal number of the two-element subsets of a six-sized set on the one hand and its partitions into such two-element subsets on the other: 15), and the fact that there was such a strange and complex double aspect hiding all along in as familiar and deceptively simple a creature as the different ways of rearranging six arbitrary objects.
It fills me with an evangelising zeal. I strongly recommend that you check out the proof and feel grateful to be alive!
15 Mar 2025
grad school status
I want to clarify my status with regard to grad school, since it may be somewhat unclear to onlookers.
I entered the PhD programme at the University of Pittsburgh philosophy department in fall of 2014, right after finishing my undergrad at Shimer College. I progressed to ABD status by 2018, when I left for Los Angeles to study for a year with the University of Southern California philosophy department. During my time there it became clear my mental health was in too poor shape to finish my PhD at that time. I thus in 2019 requested leave from my programme at Pitt, with the intention of eventually returning. As of now, I am making arrangements with Pitt's department to return to finish up my doctorate. My formal affiliation with Pitt and its philosophy department is, for the time being, lapsed.
1 Mar 2025
selfie
A picture of me, from Alan Witt Park in Fairfield. Taken this summer.
19 Feb 2025
new opinion piece
I have a new opinion piece out in Jacobin arguing that progressives should be cautious about pursuing ballot initiatives, based on the lessons of California (link).