Posts in: books

Finished reading: The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis 📚

Anecdotes about federal employee life which don’t amount to much data, but do paint a bleak picture of figthing the buearacracy within and the doubters without for little to no recognition.


Fooled by randomness, tornado edition (from The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis) 📚


Finished reading: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 📚

Three remarkable achievements here: Hamilton’s for having lived the life he did, Chernow’s for assembling his remarkable tale, and Miranda’s for distilling and rearranging it into a Shakespearean work of art. Will read again.


In the late 1700s, America’s founding fathers had a fight over the best treatment for yellow fever, then sweeping though Philadelphia. Republicans preferred bloodletting and purges; Federalists took a more conservative approach.

If it’s any consolation, the country survived.


I love Hamilton the musical, but the opening 5 minutes didn’t quite capture the absolute horror of his tween years. Yikes.


Pre-weekend reading: How to nurture a personal library. Just lovely.


📚From The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen, February 2017.


📚 The last paragraph of the last chapter of Fooled by Randomness, and I can’t read it without thinking about Norm Macdonald.


📚 On regression to the mean in Fooled by Randomness. Beware the uncontrolled phase 2 data, especially ones with surprisingly large effect sizes.


📚 Halfway through Fooled by Randomness, the seeds of Antifragile. It’s all one work, all that’s missing is cross-references from earlier to latter written parts.