Angela Ambroz

Arghhh, I feel like such a total asshole for giving this 3-stars, but I gotta stick to my Goodreads rating principles. And 3 stars is what I felt when I read this!

This book is ABOUT a 5-star person (Bryan Stevenson, who graduated from Harvard Law and then founded the Equal Justice Initiative - working to reverse the unfair, unjust and often incorrect sentencing of death row inmates). This book is ABOUT 5-star humanity: mercy, compassion, forgiveness - as well as 0-star humanity: brutality, violence, our worst decisions. There are moving, tearful moments of depth and complexity. I found it really hard to listen to the stories of some of Stevenson's clients, such as the mentally disabled young man with multiple sclerosis who dreams of becoming a journalist.

I guess the reason I actually had trouble getting into it is that my eyes instantly glaze over whenever legal stuff is mentioned. I know, I know. It's important! There are some great law podcasts out there. But I had trouble focusing on the different cases, and keeping track of them all. Stevenson uses one particular case as the core focus, and he includes stories from a number of other clients: demonstrating different aspects of the often inhumane, almost always very racist judicial system - for example, treating minors as adults and sentencing them to life imprisonment or even the death penalty. The grisliness and ludicrous brutality of the death penalty itself.

Definitely an important story, about important issues. I think I would have been better able to absorb it as a documentary, just to help me keep track of all the cases.

Absolutely phenomenal. Apparently, this is what my heart and mind have been after since childhood. I used to draw lots of these little things throughout my childhood - and, as an adult, I've always felt a strong kinship and attraction to the Renaissance artistic scientist/engineers like Brunelleschi. I've always been amused and tickled and romanced by things like the golden ratio. Well! Apparently what I've been after is math art!!!

This is ostensibly geared towards kids - and I wish I had had this as a kid - but I found this just as amusing and enriching and enchanting as an adult. I don't know why SOME types of games and puzzles are considered “intellectual” or virtuous - the NYT Crossword, for example, or Wordle - while others, like figuring out an Euler circuit are just nowhere to be seen?

I will dive more into this rich and promising vein! Huzzah for math art!

Ha! I remembered reading this book as a middle schooler? High schooler? And my memories were that it was transformative! Captivating! Ethics thunderdome! Super deep! Amazing! Like, the way 12 Angry Men feels to me now.

So I re-read it with great anticipation and enthusiasm.

And was surprised??? By how, like, maudlin and kinda trashy and overly simplistic it felt? Some books just meet you where you're at and then, I guess, you grow apart!

I discovered Eddie Izzard long ago, when I was in high school, and his comedy was a revelation. I didn't even KNOW comedy of that type existed, and it was such a balm. Nerdy, rambly, cinematic, it was super up my alley. I still think “Dressed to Kill” is basically a perfect standup, but - as the years have passed - the halo of magical perfection has definitely faded. I saw Izzard live once, when he received an award from the university atheism club, and I found his usual schtick kinda - weirdly narrow? I dunno. Not all rambles are funny rambles.

Which is basically this book. I tried this once, as an actual book, and gave up. I tried again, as an audiobook, and figured that having him read it would amp up the funny. But, instead, the endless footnotes within footnotes, the self-indulgent digressions and meticulous recounting of both the interesting and the banal, made this all VERY hard going. So I'm giving up at 34%.

It even made me - weirdly - start to see Izzard as a bit narrow-minded? I would never, ever have characterized him as NOT progressive - his transvestism was an integral part of his show since the 90s, he now identifies as transgender, he was vocally anti-Fascist before it was, ahem, “trendy” to say so and his secular/democratic principles imbue a lot of his comedy - BUTTTTT I found small moments in the book that irked me. That made me feel vaguely offended on someone's behalf. That felt kinda tone deaf, or a bit insensitive. This was surprising - and disappointing. I can't even articulate it; like, I can't remember specific examples (I know, very helpful), but I just got this vibe. And I started thinking, “well, the dude IS 50+.” He didn't feel very woke?

But that's not the main problem. The main problem is that this book just REEEEALLY needed a good editor. Izzard's comedy style has always been absurdist and full of digressions. So stuff like Jesus trying to preach to the dinosaurs, or Darth Vader ordering penne all' arrabbiata in the Death Star canteen, are random and funny digressions. Here, every single possible thought that Izzard could have had about every single banal observation is included. It makes for impossible listening, since he - and you - can barely keep to the main thread. A thread which is often quite boring! (e.g. Izzard liked soccer in school... and played in this one tournament once... and there was this girl who was quite good... but she didn't play well because she was sick...)

His holier-than-thou atheism was also pretty grating; i.e. at every single mention of “god” (as in “oh my God”, or “good God” or “God willing”), EVERY SINGLE MENTION, merited a footnote of Izzard going “who doesn't exist”. It's like, yes, we get it. You're an atheist. Atheism! Got it! Oh man.

Some toys wait for stuff by a window. Some have a good reason for waiting, some don't. Some just enjoy the state of waiting-ness. The first children's book I read that I think is so Zen it's completely over my head. LOVED IT.

Okay, this did not “change my life”, as the Harvard undergrad course on which this book is based claims. It did, however, give me some good food for thought, and provided a useful outside view to this prison of post-Enlightenment rationalism we all live in (insert smiley faces :)))))))), as well as a nice dialogue with and against Buddhism.

My main takeaways (and reminders to my future self) would be:
- The power of “as if” rituals in envisioning and training our better selves, and a better world. I think that was Confucius.
- “Trained spontaneity”, which was akin to finding “flow” - i.e. when we're (joyously) lost in a task, focused and flexible. Jazz guitar?
- The nature of the world as being already artificial, and much more malleable than we imagine; the ways in which we mis-perceive the world around us as fixed or natural or whatever, when, hey, GMOs have been around for millennia! So let's make better GMOs!
- Taoism, and the power of weakness/bending like the young sapling tree. This actually reinforced my deep devotion to Dale Carnegie's (!) “teachings” about social interaction, and how the most liked people are usually the ones that just keep asking questions and appearing interested. I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TAO!
- My New Year's resolution is balancing my qi (“energy force”), which I'll interpret as not over-extending myself with courses, and paying attention to the Full Roundedness that is Angela, or the many Angelas.
- The no-self, or self as a multitude of patterns idea, but yo, that's just plain ol Buddhism.
- The interplay between Buddhism and Taoism and other Chinese philosophies: agreeing on the no-self, disagreeing on the detachment.
- The socio-politial context of Axial Age philosophies and Abrahamic religions; this blew my mind. Puett only mentions it from time to time, but I could have listened to an entire course on JUST that: what was the economic and political context of the rise of Buddhism, Jainism, Confucius, etc., and likewise for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. If I remember correctly, the former, the Axial Age, was a time of fragmented, tradey stuff and the loss of power among aristocratic elites. While the Abrahamic religions thrived in periods of consolidated power and domination (e.g. Ancient Rome). Just like, whoa: I love thinking about how the hyper-macro (political/economic) context can influence that which we find spiritually enlightening. So these aren't universals!
- The specific things that European Enlightenment ignores, and the way some of its big ideas (e.g. a meritocracy) were borrowed from China (!), as reported by Jesuit missionaries there.

This kinda made me wanna watch Crash Course or Khan Academy stuff. A good introduction, gave me stuff to pursue and a good grounding, but didn't (yet) CHANGE MY LIFE. And now, just for some entertainment, an Epic Rap Battle with Confucius, Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu versus Nietszche, Voltaire and Socrates. Haaaahahahaha.

This is usually a topic I'm super interested in, but the book left me with such a strong sense of foreboding and anxiety that - just damn. I can't say I enjoyed it.

First, this book feels instantly outdated, because it ends right with the sublimation of Anonymous's radical/anarchic/mostly lefty ideals in the Great Moral Drama that was Edward Snowden's whistleblowing in spring 2013. That's all fine and well. Snowden's leak might be seen ambiguously by some, but I believe he made the right call in exposing the surveillance state in America. And, if you're an admirer of Cory Doctorow, Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, etc, Snowden's act was courageous and important and good. And you can feel good about it. Go hacksors.

And there the book concludes - after giving a (largely sympathetic) portrayal of Anonymous's origins in the primordial Internet soup that is 4chan, to its central role in the Arab Spring, Occupy, and the Steubenville/challenging of America's rape culture. This makes it seem like, for however chaotic and “punk” and self-aggrandizing the el333tee haxxors are, they're still largely fighting for pretty robust causes: taking down anti-democratic despots, challenging a broken financial system, etc. Fine. Good.

But! Spring 2013 was probably a tectonic shift; in my mind, at least. It's like Coleman finishes the book right before the Empire strikes back, and, oh btw, everyone dies and Obi-Wan and Yoda now live as exiles. She ends on a note of hope, and that just feels totally, completely WRONG, given the world we live in today. We're living in the dark timeline, people.

2013 was the year that Gamergate started happening, and, as soon as that died down, the toxic shitstorm that was the 2016 presidential campaign began, and WikiLeaks suddenly decided to publish DNC emails that Russian hackers sent them - errr, what about RNC emails, Julian bro? Ya, thanks. Meanwhile, Reddit almost got waterlogged by the troll army in /r/the_donald and Twitter was a shitpile of Pepe the Nazi memes and a man walked into a DC restaurant with a gun to “self-investigate” HASHTAG PIZZAGATE. Because people are stupid and the web is poison and oh my god.

Which is all to say that it's hard to get all warm and fuzzy (as Coleman does) about the digital direct actions of Anonymous's yesteryore, given that the same platforms and same tactics (doxxing, ddosing) and same humor (u mad bro?) are being used to effectively silence and frighten people, and the Internet has now become a perpetual outrage machine. ARGHRHJRKJERJLK SEE!! I'M OUTRAGED! THIS WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A REVIEW!!

Anyway.

To practice what I preach and bring back some MODERATION to the toobs, I did really enjoy Coleman's deep dive into Anonymous from an anthropological POV. It was cool to learn about its primal social rules: (1) erect tall barriers with shock language, shock humor, etc. (indeed, I cannot type the slurs they use, I was too disturbed), and (2) practice radical ego-suicide (one of the biggest sins Anons can do, according to Coleman, is seek self-promotion). On (2), it was excellent and interesting to learn about how the no-ego mentality extends to never sharing any info about yourself (name, age, gender, etc), since Anon philosophy correctly identifies that, as soon as you do that, you introduce power dynamics which sully the purity of... the IRC channel? The ideas being exchanged, I guess.

Recommended if you like learning about tech stuff and this crazy modern world. Not recommended if you need a break from the insanity. Not recommended as an audio book, since hearing someone read out timestamped IRC chats and emails and long pastebin URLs is, at first, funny, but then very, very tiresome. Yes, ha ha.

30% DNF. And I feel like 30% was about as much as I needed. This was funny enough, in a kinda very middle of the road way? Not really my jam, though I have enjoyed his standup. I feel like his m.o. is to be very palatable to as many Americans as possible; and yet I felt alienated by some of this stuff. Meh.

I realized recently this is the book I recommend most frequently to new first-time parents. It's basically a short-ish reference book of pediatric advice.

I like it for a few reasons. First: it's organized into various easy-to-find sections, like “Vomiting”, “Bed-wetting” or whatever. Then, in a few chatty paragraphs, the bottom line is always the same: laissez-faire. Do less. Observe. It's probably fine.

I also have, as a comparison, the official American Academy of Pediatrics book, which I consider the voice of the current institutional pediatric “mainstream”. And THAT book is much more alarm-raising, just because it's less opinionated and more, “If you're kid is vomiting, it's probably fine, they must have eaten something strange, so probably it's nothing... UNLESS IT'S GERD, IN WHICH CASE GET THEE TO THE ER.” Dr. Cohen basically assumes everything is fine and reassures you - the high-strung parent - that it is. (In contrast, the AAP book notes that things are probably fine but here are a few ways they could REALLY NOT BE.)

All that to say, this book is a nice antidote to the sort of “I will reduce all risks to zero” irrationality of intensive American hyperparenting (that leads to bad outcomes, dammit! talk about Greek tragedy/irony). For example, we learned in Bringing Up Bebe that French babies sleep through the night at 2 months. Dr. Cohen explains this French method: at 4 months old, you put the baby in their crib in their own bedroom at 7pm, close the door, and re-open it at 7am the next morning. REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU HEAR IN THERE. This may, of course, rub people the wrong way (see the critical Amazon reviews accusing him of cruelty, child abuse, etc). But, well, the evidence (from randomized-control trials) is on his side...

His method of toddler discipline is similarly, ehhh, NOT attachment parenty and quite, hmmm, “traditional”? Basically, he advocates puppy training. At any infraction (e.g. touching parent's laptop), toddler is placed in a prison (crib, room with locked door). They can come out when they stop screaming. Rinse and repeat. (I actually don't know if the evidence is on his side on this one.) Toddler throws food on floor? Meal is over, no food given until next meal in 2 hours. And so on.

It's all very CLEAR, very NOT attachment parent-y, very French? Which, again, I did find and do find quite refreshing when - in a moment of panic (and it is normally moments of panic) - I'm like, “omg the child is hitting other children, what parenting do I doooo?!!” (iirc, “nothing” is Dr. Cohen's advice)

Indeed, if there's one criticism I can level at the book, it's that he is SO confident in his approach (and I do kinda think... he might be right on most things?) that he sometimes scares you straight about using it. e.g. If you DON'T put your 4-month-old baby in their crib dungeon by 7pm and lock the door, you will get divorced. If you don't time-out the hell out of your toddler, DIVORCE for you too! Etc. I think, in general, parenting can be so anxiety-riddled and perfectionistic anyway that advice and judgment should be as mild as possible. But maybe I'm just still suffused with my new “parent as therapy Buddha” from The Emotional Life of the Toddler (which, if Dr. Cohen is “parenting as puppy training”, that book is “parenting as free, 20-year therapy session” - and I say that with love for both books!).

Very weird, which is always refreshing. This is a surreal fever dream of numerous little comic skits and ideas - heavy on the body horror, often quite vulgar or very sarcastic. I loved the “spotted deer” slug, as well as the litter gang.

Adorable. Came via the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Pro-dads. Dads get really shafted in America's obsessively mom-centric “maternal instinct” culture. Hoo boy. The amount of times the school emails ME about something instead of him (all the time). The local neighborhood new parents group called: “Mamas”. The guy at work who asks me, when I'm on a business trip, “so who's watching your kids?” :

The phrase that sticks out in my mind from this book is “naked babies missing their sex organs” (he's talking about cherubs in Christian art).

So: hilarious! This is a fresh, witty book that challenges (and even gently mocks) the certain, um, less aware forms of western Buddhism that have developed. Where by “less aware”, I mean “Orientalist” and maybe even “ignorant” - but Rinpoche is much too kind to say something so mean. Nonetheless, he DOES provide a very readable, informative guide to help a questioning western Buddhist decide whether Buddhism IS, indeed, for them. Or whether they just like the sounds of prayer bowls (who doesn't?!) and how cool the Tibetan script looks.

Despite Rinpoche's Tantric lineage (a school of Buddhism that I've always found more obfuscating than clarifying), he does a great, almost ribald-Zen-teacher-esque job of boiling Buddhism down to its essentials. Very fun.

Oh, geeeee. I luxuriated in this book. I think this was my second or third time reading it, and I loved it even more this time. This is such a perfect book: so masterful, so deep and touching. Damn, do I suspend my disbelief for this! I also couldn't shake the brainwave I had during my last reading - that Karhide is Tibet and Orgoreyn the People's Republic of China - it informed my entire interpretation of the culture of Gethen. But I get ahead of myself!

The plot: This is set in Le Guin's “Hainish cycle”, where human worlds across the galaxy are reconnecting after millennia of separation, and where humanity originated on a planet called Hain and was seeded to other worlds (including our Earth). As the human worlds are coming back together, they form an interplanetary alliance called the Ekumen. The Left Hand of Darkness follows an Ekumen “Envoy” named Genly Ai, a man from Terra (our Earth), as he makes first contact with the human civilization on Gethen. Gethen is a frozen winter planet (HOTH!), and the humans have evolved (or were genetically engineered by Hainish colonists, long ago) to be “ambisexual” - that is, they are sexually inactive most of the month and then enter “kemmer”, a monthly period when they become sexually active and can develop either male or female sex organs. So, basically, anyone can become pregnant, anyone can be a father, and so on.

Sooo DUH this book is hugely about gender and sexuality, since Genly Ai - as the resident extraterrestrial diplomat on a mission to open this culture up to the rest of the humanity, and a dude - struggles with a world denuded (ho ho) of a patriarchy/matriarchy/sexual oppression/sex politics/all that stuff. On this world, Genly is considered a “pervert”, someone “permanently in kemmer”, since, you know, his penis is always just THERE. Gethenian shudder of disgust

But beyond the gender and sexuality stuff, this book is such a phenomenal piece of writing about anthropology, and culture, and diplomacy and foreignness. I remember reading this in 2010 and thinking that, GOD, everyone who works in international development should be required to read this (and The Dispossessed, which also focuses on economics and innovation). Le Guin is BRILLIANT, a MASTER, at writing intelligently and sensitively about cultures meeting - about exploring “the other”, and thus exploring the world/universe. It's so inspiring, and gorgeous. Also, I personally LOOOVE “first contact”/”alien invasion” stories - they're so wonderful and exciting.

The first half of the book is a smart portrayal of politics and diplomacy, as Genly Ai tries to figure out Karhidish concepts of “shifgrethor” (face-saving, elliptical conversations). The second half of the book is an unexpectedly involving adventure story, a survivalist's tale over Gethen's polar ice caps. SO GOOD.

So I don't know where I saw this, or if I came up with it myself, but the parallels between Karhide/Orgoreyn and Tibet/PRC were many and seemed obvious. Wasn't Le Guin a Taoist? Oh yeah, she translated the Tao Te Ching. And she was such a smart, political lady, and this was written in the 1960s - a decade after the PRC's invasion of Tibet. I feel like it's clear! Karhide has mountain monasteries with oracles; the journey of Genly Ai from snowy homestead to homestead, with papers welcoming him to the next village, reminded me of Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter daisy-chaining their way towards Lhasa,
with local officials giving them just enough permission to go a few steps further. Meanwhile, Orgoreyn is an oppressive, meticulous bureaucracy, ruled by a committee of 33 central bureaucrats, with a creepy secret police and gulag-type prisons (basically Rura Penthe!).

Definitely one of the best spec fic books of all time. ALL TIME! No doubt. I re-read this since Le Guin sadly passed away in January this year. I look forward to re-reading and reading all of her stuff now, in homage, because she was truly one of the great masters of the genre (I place her WAY higher than Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein - who all wrote supposed classics that have never moved me much - and even Bradbury - who wrote ONE classic that blew me away, but then a bunch of okay stuff). BOWS DOWN IN REVERENCE

An incredibly compelling, deeply moving and ultimately disturbing book. It's compelling on two distinct levels: first, the content of Aaron's thoughts - the clarity of his vision, his impressively singular focus on a moral north star, his intelligence and passion - and, second, the “meta” of Aaron himself. I read this and then immediately this piece by the New Yorker, and I want to watch the documentary now as well.

A bit of personal background: I worked at MIT from 2010-2013. MIT has a long, respected tradition of “hacks” - i.e. pushing (legal) boundaries to make political points or have fun (e.g. putting a police car on the dome). The wifi at MIT is free and open - if you're somewhere near Kendall Square in Cambridge, you will get access to MIT's network, and thus access to JSTOR and all the paywalled academic articles. So, as Aaron would say, if you're wealthy and live in the 02139 zip code, you have access to top scientific articles for free. If you live in Accra or Bogota or Dar es Salaam, you do not.

Anyway, at MIT there's a general vibe of “hacker counter-culture” (Richard Stallman hangs around at CSAIL, apparently refusing to use the key fobs to enter buildings since they can be tracked). So Aaron's action was, in my 2010 view, a completely normal and unremarkable “MIT hack” that was a bit more political, but making a generally benign/admirable point (paywalled academic articles are absurd, after all).

This is all to say that the Federal prosecution of Aaron has been rightly criticized for being so anti-human and dystopian.

Anyway, about this book: I felt like I knew the “story” already - but I found this book still so surprising because, (a) I didn't realize Aaron touched SO MANY things I consider important (and even use frequently!) like Markdown (!), RSS (!), Reddit (!) and (b) I felt like I got a much better (but still incomplete, no doubt) picture of who Aaron was as a person. I was amazed and inspired by his absolute clarity of thought: his posts on governance, corruption, copyright, education (!) are righteous and true. They just make sense. But I was also bummed by the “darker” patterns: his absolute conviction which felt like moral perfectionism, his humorlessness, the intensity of his righteousness. And I was irked by some of the “brilliant young dude” traits like his worshipping of David Foster Wallace and Noam Chomsky, and his - like Cory Doctorow - sometimes condescending explanation of econ principles.

But! Honestly, those flaws just enriched this whole reading, since they made Aaron seem more human and imperfect, and therefore made his achievements even more impressive.

Wonderful art, a charming (dense, and exotic!) setting, sweet characters, though the plot loses steam a bit. This is brief graphic novel, set in early 19th century Turkey, about a cosmopolitan swashbuckling goddess, Delilah Dirk, and a sweet, introverted, tea-worshipping imperial drone, Selim the Turkish Lieutenant.

The setting was an absolute delight - rich with historical detail. The tone was warm and humor-filled. In some ways, then, it's a bit like that wonderful manga, A Bride's Story (set in 19th century Turkmenistan). I don't normally enjoy swashbuckling, though I did enjoy some of it here.

The plot lost a bit of steam halfway through, and - judging by the reviews of the next two installments - I'm so-so on reading the next ones. But Tony Cliff's research and his art are really great.

Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke. And then cry. And then puke again. What a miserable, miserable story. I mean, I guess it's good. But it's also horrible.

Remarkable. This stayed with me for a long time.

Hooooo my God. Is Liz Prince me!?!?

I didn't know what this was when I picked it up, but it ended up SPEAKING DIRECTLY TO MY LIFE EXPERIENCES. It's about a late 20something living in Cambridge, MA, in the early 2010s and lookin' (often longingly, always tragical-romantically) for love. And mostly falling flat on her ass.

It's about dressing like a giant dork tomboy and making awful jokes and just bein' a real nerd. It's about makin' eyes at cute bearded hipster-punks that wander around Porter Square, Davis Square, and Harvard Square. And it's about being shit at taking compliments, mismatched flirting, and the “human horror show” that is OkCupid. Like, I think literally every panel in this book happened to me in a very similar way, apparently in the exact same spots and coffee shops. Except, instead of a bunch of bearded hipster cuties complimenting my band t-shirt as I board the Porter Square T, it was my neon hi-tops (THEY ARE SWEEEET, and I still remember one boy's compliment: “Your shoes just made my day”).

Now I'm convinced I must have walked past Liz Prince a bunch of times.

PERFECT IF YOU ARE LIKE US IN ANY WAY. I laughed loudly and often while reading this.

Interesting, though frustrating, read.

Frustrating for three reasons: first, it's frustrating - maddening even - to read about the sleazy, manipulative Zen monk, Eido Shimano. This guy is basically your stereotypically awful person who hides behind a shroud of spiritual authority. He harasses and molests the women who come to his Zen center (he had two, one in Manhattan and one in upstate New York). He gaslights people who try to accuse him of wrongdoing. He sounds like an ass. :/

The second frustration is his sangha's inability to call him out on it (this shit went on for YEARS), and their consequent enabling of it. The author, Mark Oppenheimer, theorizes that this is characteristic of American Zen Buddhism - if not American Buddhism in general. Indeed, many of these charismatic Buddhist pilgrims from Japan and Tibet who came to the US in the 1960s and got the whole Buddhist thing going turned out to be really, hmm, how to put it... controversial? Ahem. Controversial because several of them were accused of sexual harassment, one may have been an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver, and yet they attracted and still attract plenty of defenders. Oppenheimer alleges that this is because the American Buddhist community was so enamored with these mystical men from the East that they were, at best, willfully blind to some of their crazy shit and, at worst, covering it up in order to Protect Buddhism in America (glorious music, lots of gongs).

And it's this interpretation - or rather, the way Oppenheimer stretches it to some limits - that became my third frustration with the book. Disclaimer: I'm an American Buddhist, and have practiced Buddhism stuff in daaa West for well nigh 14 years (hollaaaa experience). I can definitely believe that some of these communities willfully covered up or turned a blind eye to Buddhist teachers abusing their positions. It happens in all sorts of religious communities, and, alas, if there's one thing Buddhists can be relied on, it's to be just as awful as anyone else! So much for being the “nice ones”!

But what Oppenheimer then proposes is that American Buddhists are, almost by definition, a bunch of Orientalist “damaged people” who willingly suspend their critical faculties when joining a Buddhist community. Dare I say, the word “cult” comes up, in a sort of equivocatey, wishy-washy “I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens” way. Hmmm. In particular, Oppenheimer kinda goes on and on about how the ladies that had been victimized by Eido Shimano were just - so - damn - victimy! He paints them as such fragile beings, gosh, it almost sounds like he's starting to gaslight them. I had to take issue. Sir, I am an American Buddhist lady and I have indeed been a bit of an Orientalist in my day. But to maintain that every Buddhist is some New Agey “seeker” misfit trying to fill a giant hole in their life is just - oh, come on. What about all those nice American Buddhists that just like to meditate, and think about the philosophy of epistemology, and still have a brain?! What about Harold Ramis, for the love of God? Anyway, I found Oppenheimer's pseudo-Freudian assessment of all our silly New Agey brains reductive and, like much of the rest of the book, a little salacious.

Soooo my whole take on the book was (1) yay for American Buddhist history, cuz I do find that interesting, but (2) arghhhh for the story and the way it was told.

Thus endeth my lunchtime reading book. I intermittently read this, over the course of many months, usually over a sandwich at lunch. For this style of reading, it holds up well: the chapters are discreet packets of data science chat. That said, I agree with other critiques of this book: if you're an aspiring data scientist, this book is NOT sufficient to get you off the ground. It's not a good beginner's book. It's maybe a good “pop data science” book, a pre-beginner's book. It's very light on the technical stuff, and, if anything, it's more like an anthropological survey of the state of the field.

Each chapter covers a technique or common challenge or strategy, describes the general jist of what's going on, and then points you in the direction of papers, other books, or tutorials online. Early chapters have some “exercises”, though they're more like general pointers of “oh, you could try this, I guess?” Later chapters don't even bother.

For an O'Reilly book, I was disappointed that the GitHub repo didn't have, for example, the code examples mentioned in the book, or the exercises and toy datasets. (What? Are we supposed to manually copy down several pages of R code?!) Or even just a README.md with a bibliography (given how many shortened Google links are used as citations)? This makes it a starkly UNFRIENDLY book, which is weird since O'Reilly books (well, the good ones) can be very, very rich resources. This, instead, felt thin - and the repo is basically pointless.

I will say that I enjoyed the banter-y tone of the book, and some of the discussions of techniques (e.g. there was a great, intuitive explanation of Principal Component Analysis) and “real world” issues (e.g. how Kaggle competitions are basically data science in a vacuum; what it's like to be a lady data scientist) were quite good. But, overall, yeah, this isn't really a “good enough” data science book.

Ehhh. Definitely decent. Definitely met me where I'm at. Or even a bit behind. 3.5 stars, maybe?

I've recently become interested in the meta of learning, and this book is a good summary of all the different, “modern” (to me, at least) techniques to, ahem, hack your brain.

Namely:
- Spaced repetition, and the value of memorizing in general
- Memory palaces (ok, this is not modern, this is apparently Medieval/Renaissance)
- Working memory slots (apparently we have average 4, not 7), and chunking
- The Pomodoro technique, and avoiding all those cognitive energy vampires/attention sucks of the modern smartphone (screw you, smartphone!!!)
- The interplay between focused and diffuse attention

So, I have been intimately familiar with - and actively using - everything in this list for the past few years, EXCEPT the focused/diffuse attention hack. That was quite charming, actually. The basic idea is that the brain has these two attention modes - focused and diffuse. Focused is when you're deep in the pomodoro, actively trying to figure something out. Diffuse is when you STOP trying to figure it out. You step away, go for a walk. Even sleep. Apparently our brains keep noodling on our last focused attention task while we're sleeping/daydreaming/whatever-ing.

I found this extremely charming and interesting because, intuitively, I had certainly been advised and advised myself to just “step away” when I was hitting a brick wall on some coding thing. And I have, like every human, had those “ah ha” moments, those r/showerthoughts moments, those esprit de l'escalier/spirit of the stairs moments, and just assumed that was some magical brain fizz - some AETHER - coming into my brain. I didn't realize it's actually super predictable/programmable. Basically, all you need to do is:
- Think hard about something (focused attention).
- Then very actively STOP and switch your brain to something more relaxing/zoning out.

I tried this with some stats stuff before bed. I ended up having vivid noodly dreams of pooled standard errors. Lots and lots and lots of dream-chewing over how a standard error is calculated, what a standard error MEANS, etc etc. I was amazed! Good job, brain! Thanks, Barbara Oakley!

So yeah. Super interesting and inspiring, in that regard. I've recommitted to my Pomodoro and Anki cards. I really need to clean up my Anki deck, it's a nightmare right now. I am not experiencing the Champagne-like brain fizz of good Anki in my life.

What I did NOT care for in this book - well, two things. One small and one larger.

The large quibble: This book is 100% geared towards undergrad students in STEM degrees. Fine. But, like, I'm not in college. Oh well. I could still apply almost everything since I am indeed a knowledge worker, I need to constantly study (and love it with a deep passion), and I am even tested periodically (those damn technical screens - curse you, CoderPaddddd!!!). So that was fine, but - oh, it's fine.

Smaller quibble but BOY THIS BOTHERED ME: Oakley uses many (many!) examples of various intellectual luminaries - her favorites being Feynman (who among us doesn't love him, especially as a paragon of how to learn - always learn irreverently!!) and this Nobel Prize winning biochemist, oh Lord I forgot his name. Anyway, one of her examples is William Kamkwamba, who she describes as being born “in Africa”, doing cool STEM stuff with windmills “for Africa”. Oh my Lord. This made me die. Africa is not a country. Can you imagine if she described Einstein as being born “in Europe”, doing STEM stuff “for Europe”. I just aaaghhh. Is it because Malawi is too exotic for the undergraduate STEM audience?! What in the. Anyway. That is a small quibble, but it did bother me so much I took a solid star away.

A really great, satisfying novel about the patriarchy, gender roles, and conformity - written in the 1920s, but still just as fresh and relevant in the 2020s.

Super brief summary: There is a family. It's made of:
- A dreamy, poetry-obsessed, kind-hearted dad
- A super efficient, super productive, super practical mom
- 3 kids

An accident happens and the roles are reversed. The rest of the story is just - chef's kiss! Woven into this are these amazingly empathetic and sweet meditations on the mind of an ornery 3 year old. I'm not even joking, these were almost spiritual - they brought a tear to my eye.

Loved the ending. Highly recommend! Read this, coupled with Richard Reeves's Of Boys and Men (about how gender roles constrain men, women, all genders!), and/or E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops (just incredibly prescient novels from 100+ years ago).

Gasp. They make graphic novels for preschoolers!? This will be PERFECT for when my kid starts to learn to read. How exciting and fun!

Gorgeous art style. A cute, relaxing story. A FOREST BATH.

A brief, beautiful book - ho man, it hit me right here, right in the heart. And the brain. Lovely. Sometimes books meet you right where you are and you have, basically, a perfect date with a book. I just had a great, great date with this book. It's brief - <200 pages, or only a couple audiobook commutes. I want to read it again! And everything else by Lightman! Fun fact, but I've had him on my TO-READ list since TWO THOUSAND SIX. 11 years!!!

Anyway, this book is kinda similar to Carlo Rovelli's Sette brevi lezioni di fisica (Seven brief lessons in physics), in that it's short, dense, deep, and loving. Very heartening! It's a collection of essays/meditations on cutting edge physics and its intersections with philosophy, cosmic mysteries. There's one essay on how screens mediate our reality too much, with a shout out to Sherry Turkle, and a general sense of aaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHH and our post-human future.

So, like Rovelli's book, this covers the cosmic weirdnesses of modern physics - specifically, the multiverse, quantum mechanics, and the time-bendy wavey nature of things very very very great or very very very small. We dwell on why there is anything, and Lightman kinda shook my foundations a little bit by answering it in the usual ways: the multiverse (i.e. this highly improbable, intelligent life-sustaining universe exists because every other possible universe also exists) or, gah, GOD. Theism has all of zero social prestige in my liberal/secular circles, and so I found Lightman's (who notes he is an atheist) discussion of how cosmically improbable a medium zone planet being birthed from a Big Bang with perfectly calibrated levels of hydrogen, ergo First Mover, spooky and disquieting. I mean, when the choice is inscrutable First Mover vs. multiverse, BOTH ARE VERY STRANGE CHOICES. People, it's this or this!?

Lightman also sticks it to Dawkins, which was satisfying (Lord, grant me the patience to tolerate Richard frickin Dawkins), and his whole social, professional and spiritual life is centralized around MIT, which was ALSO very satisfying. (Glory, glory be to MIT!) But those two bits are just icing on the cake.

Wonderfully written, inspiring, and YES WE SPEND TOO MUCH TIME IN OUR SCREENS. Even though Lightman sounds like a 60+ curmudgeon when he complains about young people “emailing their Facebooks” with pictures of nature walks (thus defeating the purpose of the nature walk), I did - basically - 200% AGREE. YA DAMN KIDS WITH YER DAMN BOOK OF FACE!

Strongly recommended. Do not wait 11 years to read this.

Pretty grim stuff. It felt like the love child of Toshiro Mifune and Bill Watterson; the enormous, beautiful vistas, the staccato pacing of the panels, felt like Calvin's vast internal world. The plotting was basically any Mifune-as-disgraced-wandering-samurai black and white film. I wasn't sure about the Zen; yo, I be all about the austerity of Zen, but I can't really reconcile it with chopping people's heads off.