Angela Ambroz

Well, McKinsey pubs are always a pleasure to read, since they combine relatively sound analysis with relative readability. I say “relatively” because academic journal articles normally are more innovative in their analysis, while being much less readable. (As one prof once said in a seminar I attended, “It makes you want to tear your hair out.”) So that's nice.

This report is a nice, comprehensive overview of the global infrastructure challenge. I say challenge because the authors note that, just to keep present-day infrastructure needs met, we'd need a global investment of $57 trillion (if not more). This doesn't address improving existing infrastructure: so that's, well, most of the developing world out the window. This is just to keep the status quo. And that's pretty crazy.

The other big message is that governments tend to repeatedly make a mistake when thinking about infrastructure: first, they tend to invest in building new infrastructure, instead of modifying, maintaining and improving existing systems. And second, they tend to think about things in terms of singular projects (e.g. a highway expansion program), rather than systems (e.g. overall transportation and commutes into and out of the city). The authors note that governments could make huge savings if they just (1) adopted best practices and became more efficient and productive in soliciting infrastructure bids, (2) put a preference on integrated, systems thinking, and (3) put an additional preference on working with what we have, rather than building new stuff.

There were two (I think, major) things which the authors abstracted away from, and so this is - by design - an insufficient story: First, the authors intentionally abstract away from corruption and political economy matters. This is huge. As Acemoglu and Robinson noted, governments know exactly what they're doing. They're not choosing crappy, say, infrastructure or development programs because they lack the technical capacity to ID good ones - they're choosing them purposefully, because of (perverse) incentives to, say, reward a particular company, or be swayed by bribes. Infrastructure investments match the electoral cycle, don't they? An example of such incentives: there was an interesting World Bank report about the port at Dar es Salaam, and how its inefficiencies may have less to do with crappy infrastructure, and more to do with perverse incentive structures and, for example, protectionist behaviors by the local private sector. That is, if you make the port so bad and so inefficient, then imports become very pricey and local companies become much more competitive. This is a huge issue which the McKinsey report doesn't tackle, and only briefly acknowledges.

Another missing piece of the story is alternatives and “future proofing” your infrastructure investment. As the technology of alternative energy sources improves - solar, wind, hydro - then it may become more and more feasible (and cost-effective) to use them to supplement the traditional, non-renewable sources. I'm thinking specifically of how it's much cheaper to install solar panels in the village than drag out the electricity infrastructure; much lower initial investment, surely? And, in a place like Tanzania, where 75% of folks still work (and live, presumably?) on farms, it's a highly relevant alternative? Again, this is something that could both change the $57+ trillion price tag McKinsey sets, and something that could have provided some good food for thought in their prescriptive “best practices” section.

Actually, gosh, now I've convinced myself the report was totally insufficient! I guess you'll have to read it for yourself. It's certainly a good starting place for thinking about these issues - and fascinating issues they are!

A note for (my own) future reference: this was the week 0 reading for the EdX MOOC, Next Generation Infrastructures (University of Delft). Very excited for the rest of the course!

Amusing good ol' boy “Golden Age” sci-fi - aka straight white Basic Geek guy sci-fi - that now reads a bit like wish fulfillment YA nonsense by, again, a very Basic Geek white guy indeed. Like, our hero - Jack Loftus (lofty indeed) - is a 17-year-old whiz kid from California who HOLDS THE FATE OF EARTH'S FUTURE IN HIS HANDS. Also, btw, that midcentury American rock music is some real claptrap, I mean am I right or amirite???

OK, basically, the plot: It's the near future US, and whiz kid Jack Loftus is a “foreign service cadet” with the Secretary of Space. AKA, he's an intern. In this near future, school goes as fast as they can cram knowledge into you - v good if you're a bookish nerdy school-loving geeky sort - and, oh yes, no sex is allowed for cadets until they have finished their apprenticeships (when they're like 30?). And none of that filthy rock music!!!

Sorry, I am getting distracted by the amusingly prim and conservative social/cultural hijinx. BACK TO THE HARD SCIENCE. THE PLOT. THE POINT! So, Jack is tasked with the ultimate intern project: he's been assigned to a crack team of three - a super-brain technocrat, his minion, and Jack - to go make Second Contact with an alien race nicknamed “Angels”. The Angels are named Angels because they're super duper old (like, age of universe old), and are basically pure balls of energy. There is 1 female character (this book is like a super hard Bechdel Test fail, but like, it was never even trying there HA HAAA), she is a crack journalist cadet (or maybe she just graduated?) whose name is Sylvie? But I shall call her Sparky McNewsroom, because those were the vibes I got.

Anyway, Jack and Technocrat and Other Minion go to space in a super fast, super cool ship. We spend a lot of time salivating at the ship. They make a (literal) pit stop at an amusing planet called - and I am not joking here - “Aaa”, where a race of - and, again, I am not joking here - sentient cat-people live. Then they get down to business and fly to the Coal Sock? Coal Sack? Horsehead Nebula? Some space place. And finally meet these Angels.

OK, so we have covered, I just want to go over this again, but this is Blish's vision:
- Spaceship is beautiful, so cool.
- Education should have no pacing; pacing is for losers and dumdums.
- The reason education takes so long (and you can't be a super cool space cadet negotiating treaties with Big Bang-born aliens by 17) is because of the commodification of teen sex drives into bad music (rock n roll).
- Trust the 17yo white guy.

This book suffers from that unfortunate thing that happens in fiction, where we are made to believe that a character is a Super Brain - but obviously his brain is a subset of the author's brain. And the author's brain is, well, just ok? Like, I mean not to harsh Blish, but it's just cringe when you're like:

Jack: [says something relatively banal and straightforward]
Other character: MY GOD MAN, this kid is a genius.

Sigh. I will say that - maybe I am mellowing in my old age - but I was more amused than irritated by this book, and I flew through it, reading it in maybe 2 sittings? I did sometimes get more than a little irked by the lack of any imagination on the social/cultural front. Like, why does Jack have to be - of all things - a white guy? Ah yes, because anything else was - for many of these Golden Age authors - apparently UNTHINKABLE. More unthinkable than energy beings and lots and lots of dressed up science baloney.

(I will also say - another thing that irks me about Golden Age sci-fi and the worshipping of “smarter than thou” Basic Geekdom (which has been gate-kept so hard, in general) is how fixed mindset it is. But that is for another review, perhaps.) Anyway, Blish eventually wrote for Star Trek - the ultimate, utopian, growth mindset, truly big brain show ever - and that redeems him quite a bit.

Another entry in my aggressive “GROWTH MINDSET MATH, KIDS” agenda of the moment.

Freaky, atmospheric, horror-esque watercolors accompany this thrilling tale of scarce resources. A bunch of charismatic megafauna - plus a caterpillar - debate who will eat a peach. The caterpillar is most cunning. We learn about measuring stuff. And relativism. I found it unsettling, but math-worthy. My kid LOVED the tortured drama (they are very concerned with fairness these days, given they have a sibling), and spent the next day measuring various stuffed animals. So, that's a win.

A very unexpected book. A very funny book.

Basically, this is a Socratic dialogue between two gruff, modern dudes named Achilles and Brutus. I imagine them to be thoughtful butch hipsters with big beards, flannel, tattoos and kind eyes. BOTH OF THEM. Anyway, it's written as a play and HO BOY, it contains that rarest of champagnes: writing/thinking that is both at the heights of fun irreverence (there are references to “Clear and Present Danger” and how good it's ending is) and the depths of some Really Deep Thinking. Covering epistemology (do we know anything?), ontology (why is anything anything?), with the obligatory sidecar ride into “God?! GOD?!?!”/First Mover arguments, this is a traditional Socratic back-and-forth. It reads really easily, it introduces amazing concepts, and it finishes up with - MY OLD FAVORITE - the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics! Which means, the reason anything exists is because EVERYTHING exists: there are (infinite?) (parallel?) universes where every single counterfactual exists: the one where I don't write this Goodreads review, the one where I decide to be extra-pompous and write it as ‘Sokratic', the one where I am a banana engaged in nuclear war, and so on.

One remark of sadness: I used to be SO INTO THIS SHIT, back in grad school. (As you can no doubt tell by my fluency with the arguments and references, ho ho.) But now, alas, such alas, that part of my brain has been dead for such a long time. I am thinking it is the RIGHT side of my brain, and I am (seriously) considering various ways to re-activate that imaginative, creative, philosophical side. Hallucinogenics? Trying to draw using my left hand, or skateboard with my left foot forward? Reading one of those “how to activate the right side of your brain” books? Suggestions welcome.

Anyway, I liked this a lot. I liked the light sprinkles of weirdness too -the fourth wall-breaking, the ALL HAIL MU magical mu number stuff, and the self-referencing (e.g. the Tom Clancy/Clear and Present Danger thing about ending stuff mid-

No. Aaaugh, no, no, no. No to the max. No a million times. Why am I reading this? Why did I finish this? WHY DOES ANYONE LISTEN TO HOBBES?

Hobbes is known for saying that life without gov is “nasty, brutish, and short”. The basic idea is that: humans are animals that will tear each other apart (like chimpanzees!), and so the gov has to be the Strong Man that strikes fear into the heart of everyone else and keeps us in check. And it's better if that Strong Man gov is actually, literally a strong man, like a dictator. “‘Tyrant' is just what we call leaders we don't like!” Hobbes says at one point (I paraphrase).

Ugghhh. Can you see why I'm not into this?

Not only am I not into this from the get-go, but I also found Hannah Dawson's love/hate-Hobbes thing kinda demotivating. Like, much of the book's commentary is, “Yo, everyone hates Hobbes, even his friends hated him, OK, he was kind of a douche, but ain't it true we're all jealous angermongers all the time anyway? I mean, he's right in a way, RIGHT?!” And I was just like, no. No, this doesn't jibe with my experience. But then, I wasn't a butthurt Royalist during the English Civil War. I shouldn't kid about these things, I know. The English Civil War was a serious business.

Seriously, though. I was annoyed by this at the textual level, but also the meta level. Cuz WHY OH WHY does Hobbes (still) get a platform for his ideas, but non-white, non-dead, non-men are relegated to the ghettoes of “feminism/women's studies” or “African-American studies”? The School of Life - which is basically the Alain de Botton factory (and I like Alain de Botton!) - produced this book as part of a series. De Botton/School of Life stuff is all about being kind of intellectual yet whimsical, drawing us to learn from Great Authors and Classic Philosophers via quirky, fun books/videos/lectures that make a joke about iPods and teach us about Schopenhauer. I'm down with that.

But what is starting to annoy me is School of Life's extreeeemely conservative definition of who the Great Thinkers are: i.e. it's the same dead white dudes (DWDs) that have been considered Great Thinkers by the Oxbridge crowd since forever. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and so on. I'm fine with that - IF THEIR GREAT THOUGHTS ARE INDEED GREAT. Hobbes's thoughts did not feel so great. I had to read The Leviathan in school. It was very meh. I ended up (re-)discovering philosophy in grad school, and writers like Said, Foucault and Derrida were MUCH more interesting. Why can't School of Life do a Foucault book? Or, for the love of God, a Judith Butler or Simone de Bouveoir one? Or Paul Freire? Again, why are these other authors always given some “genre” label (“post-colonial studies”), instead of being recognized as, just, Great Thinkers. We don't call Hobbes “English Civil War studies”. We normalize the DWDs and ghettoize non-DWDs. And, dammit, as Fannie Lou Hamer would say, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired about it. :/

A simple, clear, and prettily drawn telling of the basically official Siddhartha story. This would be a nice way to introduce a very little one to the story of Buddhism. Loved the illustration of the (famous) morning star.

I could not get through this without laughing. I tried very hard to inhabit the essence of the book - as I do whenever reading books to my kid - and I just could not. This book reads like a travel brochure. It reads like a tourism commercial. It reads like Zombo.com. You can do annnyythingggg in Ponyville.

At least my kid thought it was amusing that Mom kept losing her shit trying to get through this.

This is a perfect book for my needs:
- Basic German, perfect for a mom learning the language.
- A well-crafted narrative, with a setup, climax, and excellent payoff/punchline.
- Some violence, which the kid always appreciates (and always wants to linger on the page where the rabbit drop-kicks the weasel out of the tree), but not enough to unsettle us (this isn't a Grimm story).
- Short but not, like, baby board-book short.

This has been in circulation for 1+ year as well; longevity at this age is also a remarkable feat!

Entry #3 in our personal family math propaganda agenda. You don't have to be good at it, you just have to accept it into your heart!!!

So I read this before, by myself, and was like, How obfuscating! That is not at all my mental model for addition! I also was annoyed by the topsy turvey gummy bears.

My kid, however, picked it out, “What's thisssss?” And then enjoyed it. The rhyming was good (the kids always take to rhyming). We said some numbers. We did some concepts. I feel like the jump from “patterns exist” -> programming will be short. So we'll be on “Teach your kid Python” next. Maybe.

Anyway, a decent entry. I'm going to keep the math flowing HARD at this house, you hear me!!!

An excellent reminder that we don't need to squeeze productivity from every single second of our lives. I enjoy also finishing this by shouting, “FINE! FINE! FINE!”

It is neither birds, bees, nor storks.

More nonfiction for my child. I love it.

And education for me! My kid is possibly entering the obligatory Dinosaur Phase (oh I do hope so), so I thought this would be nice. DINOS! I had never heard of Mary Anning before this. As a parent, I am increasingly being made aware of just how much of the Stone Age I am. Anyway, we learned together.

Art style was lovely. I spent a lot of time pondering it.

Concepts from this book that I had to explain to my 3 yr old (and what I said):
- Poor: not having money
- The male scientists stealing Mary's work: uhhhhhhhh A lot of these Little People, Big Dreams books are clearly advancing a feminist agenda. Which is great. I am feminist. They are fighting the good fight. But sexism and the patriarchy is something I am really challenged in explaining to my kids. “Some people think boys are better than girls”? Uhh, screw that, I'd rather not even tell them that. “Long ago, girls weren't allowed to do certain things?” That applies to boys too. “The patriarchy keeps both men AND women down. And that's not even to touch on non-binary, transgender people. We have a patriarchy because we're irrational apes, okay, and so we don't always make the best choices, like as a society. Some think it grew out of the agricultural revolution - yes indeed lots of present-day power structures really started then” shut up Mom just please shut up.

It's funny. I just hate saddling my small small kids with all this grown-up, Stone Age bullshit and sadness of our specific societal/American/Western/WEIRD -isms. I kind of want to keep them pure and innocent, rather than recruit them into the good fight already? I am also really struggling with how to parent a son vs. a daughter, given that it's like, “look here, son, the boys are assholes stealing Mary Anning's work cuz she's a girl, poor Mary Anning - hey, kids, don't fight”. Ugh. Oh glob. What to do.

I read this in two sittings - including one 3-hour sit while my arm was tattooed and very loud Latin pop blared. The music was often in sync with the story's emotional beats!

So this is a memoir by Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel for Medicine/Physiology in 2023 for her work on the mRNA Covid vaccine. I had read one other article about Kariko, basically exclaiming how incredible her win was, given that she spent almost her entire academic career languishing as a poorly-paid, non-tenured, postdoc-type. If you've ever spent any time around academia, that is remarkable indeed. AND OOOHH THE JUSTICE!!!! (everyone hates academia's dumb power politics)

And I did love her underog-triumphs conclusion, but I also, well, just loved her heart of gold, pure of spirit LOVE/obsession with science. And her nerdiness, and her sassiness, and - tbh - her writing! I was like, HOW is this woman who claims to care about nothing beyond the cell SUCH A GOOD WRITER? I laughed and teared up several times. Honestly, I just loved spending time with her and sharing her life with her. A really warm, inspiring story!

Wow. WOWW.

OK, so this is a historical romance set in 1857 India. It was recommended to me by Claude (AI) after a long discussion where I shared (a) my youthful, torrid fanfic habits, and (b) my love and knowledge of India. Claude assured me I would love this and that, no, it was not colonialist claptrap and my sensitive liberal heart would be unscathed. And oh, how right Claude was!

Briefly, the story: Laura Hewitt is a “spinster” - aka, an unmarried 20something - accompanying her super bitchy (sorry but not sorry, totally true) cousin, Emily, to India on the latter's fairly ambitious honeymoon with her new husband, Charles. The story is fairly straightforward. It begins on the boat from England. They land in Calcutta (Kolkota). They travel inland to Lucknow. They meet Charles's half-brother, Oliver Erskine, who is a “zemindar” (landlord) of a big plot of land in a remote part of the country (outside of Lucknow). It's 1857, so a war explodes. Laura and Oliver fall in love.

OK, but... THIS BOOK, MAN. THIS BOOK.

First of all, this book was a brick - 800 pages! - and each page was alive with OH THE HUMANITY. I will be shelving this book right next to the nonfic version of a tempestuous love story amid troubled historical times: Indian Summer. This book was also kinda like a very specific type of hip-hop track where the lyrics are super basic, but the production and samples are eye-poppingly WOW. That was this book.

The bars, aka the romance plot
This part was, tbh, fairly pedestrian. All the usual beats are here. Oliver is a basic Byronic bro. I appreciated him... a bit. I mostly appreciated Laura, who was also a basic protagonist - smart, sensible, aka completely relatable to me, the reader. Their love story - the way they meet, the way they are torn apart, blah blah - was all very predictable. Gratifying as well, but literally nothing here was new or energizing. It was completely meh.

But the production!!!! aka, the background, the context, the everything else
THIS. THIS!!!!! THIS was CHEF'S KISS. The portrayal of daily life for a British woman in 1857 India - from the banal British bubble during peacetime, to the devastation and deprivations of the Siege of Lucknow - this was written with SUCH a rich, tactile feel. GAHHHH. I LIVED and BREATHED this woman's life. I also adored the rich characterizations of her milieu - each person felt so vivid and understandable (even that b, Emily). For much of the book, I realized, our protagonist, Laura, just kinda... observes. It's written in the first person. And her meditations on daily life, both in peacetime and war, were so, so, SO on-point. I really was struck by a lot of what she said. And even though her life was 150 years ago, in a totally different context, I couldn't help thinking: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

But let us dwell now on colonialism. Because that was really at the forefront of my mind (and, uh, at the forefront of a lot of people's minds in 1857).

Laura is basically a Hilary Clinton-style liberal Democrat, living in her British bubble. She is extremely curious about India - she starts to learn Urdu, she wonders about the people she sees, etc - but she has, well, no Indian friends. Indeed, her life is VERY ensconced in this British life. Oliver, instead, is an Englishman born in India, to an English father also born in India. He's a bit like Kim , in that he can straddle the two cultures with relative comfort. And he is, like Kim, loyal to both.

Given these two characters, it was VERY strange to read a book about India - and about this time period - that features near-zero Indian voices. There are a few characters who emerge from the otherwise undistinguished crowds (as another review said): Wajid Khan, Moti, Ungud. And there were some great moments with each of them. But they are NOWHERE NEAR as fleshed out as the British characters.

In a way, this constricted, purely-British perspective felt suffocating. I kept wanting Laura to talk to someone - ANYONE - outside of her bubble. And, again, she kinda does. But she's a Hilary Clinton type: she's not a radical anti-colonialist. She's a liberal/pragmatist. But then I realized - by giving us this view of Basic British Colonist, we get a view into the daily machinery of colonialism. It was incredibly fascinating (and tragic) to see how the narrative about their own struggle was developed (e.g. the horrors of the Bibighar massacre). I actually spent a LOT of time wondering about how these traumatized British survivors returned home, and what they carried with them - how that indignant trauma informed the colonial narrative in the UK. (Side note, but the Siege of Lucknow section was very reminiscent of JG Ballard's memoir of being interned in a prisoner of war camp during WW2.)

The author does a great job here of showing the moments when Laura glimpses outside her British bubble's narrative: for example, I won't spoil it, but when she encounters a young wounded soldier towards the end of the book. Another moment when she marvels at the fetishized paranoia around rape by an Indian soldier... vs. the normalizing of being raped by a British soldier. It's all nuts! NUTS!! At one moment, Laura despairs at humanity and how stupid and brutal humans are. It's really true!!! So I guess the book is great in its ultimate moral: choose love!

Addendum: The cast
Oh, and because obviously I cast this in my head, here they are:
Laura - me, obviously
Oliver - Lee Pace
Kate Barry - Kathy Bates
Mr. Rogers - Richard Briers, he was in Much Ado About Nothing (1993) as the father of Hero, remember??
Wajid Khan - Jammubhai from Mississippi Masala (aka Aanjjan Srivastav)

This didn't slap me in the face the way Howl did, though it came pretty close. The mood seemed a combination of Rumi's slightly self-indulgent squishy softness (forgive the alliteration), with Schopenhauer's angry 19th century Germanic interpretation of Buddhism (WOE UNTO US ALL). I loved Rilke's use of natural imagery - trees growing out of ears, girls sleeping in ears, actually, I guess it was mostly ear stuff - and some of the poems really blow your socks off. The intro, also, was a treat; it made me hungry to take a MOOC on Rilke! Does such a MOOC exist!?!

It works! ELO went up! Yay.

Good. Fine. Decent.

I don't feel very invested in the paradoxes of Christianity - certainly not anymore. And, if I did, I think I'd read something like Ted Chiang's Hell Is the Absence of God (chef's kiss!!), or maybe Karen Armstrong's book on how Christianity kinda lost mysticism back in Medieval times and isn't that a shame, or maybe that angry atheist book whose title now eludes me (not by Dawkins and not by Hitchens).

This was fine. It's about the core paradoxes of Christianity, as embodied by Judas, as told in the kinda awkward early 2000s, ahem, cool slang. I skimmed the original cast list and saw that Sam Rockwell played (originated?) the role of Judas and, well, that kinda ruined it for me. I couldn't hear any other voice, see any other actor. Aw, damn. I don't love Sam Rockwell. He's fine. I loved him in Galaxy Quest (“man, I'm just jazzed about being on the show” - one of my go-to quotes). Here's a great trailer of one of his movies. Shrug!

One of the best American poets ever, and maybe the best of the 20th century? I dunno. I know I love it. It's like updated Whitman, with lots more grit and modernity. When I first read “Howl”, it was a sublime experience. Re-reading it only deepened that feeling: it revealed more layers, seemed even more amazing.

The other poems in this collection are generally OK or good, though the two great poems are “Howl” and “Kaddish”. The latter - an elegy for Ginsberg's mother, Naomi, who passed away in 1956 and had likely suffered from schizophrenia - is brutal, powerful, and makes “Howl” look pretty chilled out, by comparison (which is saying something). I look forward to re-reading that one too, though I may need a serious breather from it first.

It's a bit impossible to extricate Allen from the Beat Generation he was so famously part of; I run into the Beats every now and again, mostly via the Buddhism stuff (they were all into Zen and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche). From a historical perspective (especially the history of Buddhism in America), that's always very interesting; Ginsberg's allusions to Buddha this or Buddha that - very intriguing.

A fluffy, rambling riff on food - how great it is!! - and economics - also great! I would NOT recommend this as someone's first Ha-Joon Chang book, or first economics book. But, if you've already thought “wait, mainstream neoclassical econ is bullshit” and “where the hell did the other economicses go” and “mmm kimchee nom nom nom” then... well, this is your book.

Reading about a plague year during our own plague year 2 was kinda harshing my (already very bummed out) mellow. So... maybe not.

Life got in the way of this one - so back to the library it goes. But I was enjoying it! For some future season, when things settle down...

It is John's turn to present his “talent” at the school's daily (?)/weekly (?) talent show. John is a ballerino. He's clearly very good and passionate. Also very nervous before performing. Who wouldn't be. The portrayal of dance - and John losing himself in it - was touching..

I'm a pretty easy sell on thoughtful graphic novels (see my star-blitzes on Y: The Last Man, or the Buddha series). As Woody Allen would say, I don't just love this genre. I loaf it. I lub it.

Anyway, The Burma Chronicles struck an extra-tender chord, since it realistically portrays the Expat Life (oh, expat life). Author Guy Delisle accompanies his wife, who works for Doctors Without Borders, to Burma. Along the way, he plays stay-at-home dad to their adorable, peanut-head-shaped baby son, he teaches an informal animation class to some Burmese comic artists, and we learn a LOT about the regime.

The book is divided into ultra-short vignettes, often not lasting more than a page or two. These vignettes illuminate one specific part of life there: the AC/heat, Aung Sun Suu Kyi (who pops up again and again), the Australian Club, and so on. Delisle's voice (and drawing style) is straightforward, honest, acerbic and deft. He brings out illuminating details, such as... well, I can't think of one right now (I'm not having a very deft moment!). But just trust me.

As such, it's a quick read that brings your blood to a low simmer from time to time. I already imagined Burma as a place whose beauty and charms were still masking a brutal regime, and Delisle confirms that. But he reminds us again and again that we can't forget about the regime because of the charms.

I expected this to be a climate change eco-disaster book of despair, but it filled me - instead - with a strange Zen acceptance that it's not climate change that's the problem, it's humans from day 1 that are the problem.

That is, while human-caused climate change is almost certainly destroying our (current) ecosystems and accelerating a mass extinction (possibly non-linearly), Kolbert discusses the ample evidence that shows that this great, sixth, Anthropocene extinction began well before industrialization - i.e. well before the toxic changes we're making to the environment via carbon emissions and ubiquitous plastics. This was, at first, pretty Zen. Kolbert acknowledges that the Earth has been in a constant state of flux since it formed as a ball of goo, and that - if you were to zoom tens of millions years into the past - you would find a very inhospitable, unpleasant, and not-diverse place indeed. Change is constant. No one ever said this rock was supposed to look like this, and support us thinking apes, forever.

This made me think a lot about how conservation efforts are attempting to place a stake in the ground - deciding that the eco-diversity of the, say, 16th or 17th century (i.e. nostalgia trips) is the One True Ecosystem that we should always be working to preserve and protect. Save the dodo, etc.

Of course, this ignores that the ecosystem has always been changing - is, by definition (of natural selection), in a constant state of flux, and that that flux is not necessarily at some apotheosis of Most Excellent Ecosystem. Like, who cares if the dodo is dead forever? Existentially, it doesn't matter (we all survived well enough without it). Why do we consider it more of a tragedy than, say, the destruction of the woolly mammoth? I guess because we're so very guilty of killing it. But, as Kolbert writes, we tend to kill and drive to extinction EEVVVRRRRRYYYYOONNNNNNE (Gary Oldman voice) - and the myth of the noble savage (e.g. indigenous populations living in Harmony With Nature) is false. i.e. It's not just that we're killing the planet with cars; it's that cars are just the latest, most efficient and scalable manifestation of our ability/willingness/DNA-weirdness-thingie to kill the planet ANYWAY, ALL THE TIME. All this evidence points to giant charismatic megafauna quickly going extinct as soon as humans arrived on the scene - see, e.g., all the big animals of Australia (now all dead) and all the big animals of the Americas (also dead).

Anyway, this - at first - filled me with Zen fatalism, as I said. “Okay, thank God,” I thought. “The cataclysmic Second Dark Ages that are inevitably going to come once our current ecosystem crashes and we run out of fossil fuels - well, that is just inevitable, and not JUST the caused by the evils of modernity. Maybe this finally answers the Fermi Paradox?” i.e. It just feels like it's not modern American consumerism that's the eco-problem around here; it's that HUMANS are, by design, the problem. Kolbert very much emphasizes that there's SOMETHING SPECIAL (an evil gene!?) in our DNA that makes us particularly destructive, particular over-killers. We're basically a weed, and, like weeds, we homogenize the landscape and can bring fragile, diverse ecosystems crashing down.

But! BUTTTTT. This Zen fatalism quickly turned to a deeply unsettled feeling with Kolbert's penultimate chapter, on all our (now-extinct) hominid siblings: the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and homo floresiensis. All of these sibling species are now extinct and, interestingly, many of us carry some small percentage of Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA. One of the great mysteries is why they're extinct and we're not. And one of the unsettling answers is that, like every other creature we come across, we killed them until they were all dead. :/ Which is like, WHY?!

The book closes with this fundamental paradox: we, as humans, go to great lengths to save and conserve species. We wring our hands a lot about climate change (despite what American politics and Big Oil would have you believe). But, at the same time, there's some fundamental, parasitic quality to us that - even if you took away our fossil fuels - we would still basically drive everything to extinction. Including ourselves!

I just started this book today and, now, 10% in, I'm going to DNF it. Because BOY DO I HAVE THOUGHTS. This book is predicated on a premise that is, apparently, a huge philosophical trigger for me.

OK, so the basic premise is: we meet Nora, a depressed 35-year-old English lady who is full of regrets. REGRETS, DID YOU HEAR ME. If you remember from the book description, this book is a pop treatment of Borges's library of Babel. That is: Nora is given, early on and after an attempted suicide, the option to “redo” her life - undoing a single regret (and she has many!) and letting the “better option” play out.

OK! So! The basic idea here is the freedom of free will. But I simply just do not buy this! Indeed I found it stifling! Suffocating! This is so deeply, aggressively alien to my core philosophical belief and existential feeling that I simply must take to Goodreads to vent:

The idea of “having regrets” and being weighed down by them is, of course, a very common feeling. And indeed a big symptom/characteristic of depression. But it's founded on a cognitive error! “Having regrets” is a kind of perfectionism - as if every past choice had a “right” or “wrong” choice and, poor Nora, she just picked all the wrong choices. But... like... what?! Sometimes both choices can be wrong! Or right! Furthermore, Nora's “regrets” seem to often derive from (1) she didn't want to do it in the moment (e.g. being a high-performing athlete under massive pressure), or (2) she was afraid to do it, even though she wanted to (marrying that guy). Surely (1) is allowed? Why regret not doing a thing you didn't want to do at the time anyway? You're still you?? Jeez, let youself be you! I sometimes regret not doing a comp sci undergrad degree... but hey, I did econ, which I love with all my heart. I just also love comp sci! Yes, there's not enough time in the day, not enough years in a life, to do it all, but that's quite distinct from “oh shit I made a mistake and now I'm in shitty life version B”.

On (2), sure, it sucks to have let fears, anxieties and our “lesser angels” guide our hand but - jeez - have some latitude. Beating yourself up for not making the so-called “best” decision every time is just perfectionism! Where's your self-compassion? Ay ay ay.

Honestly, I think I'm just deterministic. I did what I did cuz I did it and I'm me and the universe is the universe. There is no alternative? Or maybe - if there is an alternative (since I also believe in the multiple worlds theory, probabilistic universes, God playing dice etc.) - who knows if it'd be better or worse. Like that TNG episode where Picard lives a total domestic life on some planet playing the flute. What a mindfuck, eh. But just that! A mindfuck! Nothing more. No depression-infused moralizing about which one was better. Starship captain, or flute-playing stay-at-home dad? Both have pros and cons!

In addition to being a boring determinist, I'm also a Buddhist - aka, life is suffering. Make the best of this shit! As the Germans say, das Leben ist kein Ponyhof. Life is not a pony... stable? Pony ride? PONIES ARE A PRIVILEGE, NOT A RIGHT. (As I scream to my children.) I'm glad Nora was on antidepressants. Maybe she needed regular therapy too! Bedford sounds fine, stop knocking small towns! Arghhh THIS IS ALL SO BASIC.

Oh yeah, on the subject of kids: I know Matt Haig was just framing this all as relatable to a certain midlife, WEIRD (Western educated etc etc) set, and hey - I did appreciate the Fleetwood Mac poster - but I also found it stifling and conservative and BASIC (in its mindset) and bleghhhh.

OK, vent complete. DNF!

(Side note but Carey Mulligan did the audiobook narration and gosh, she's just so cute.)