Speaking of book piles, here is one from 3 years ago, shot in November, which was to be my holiday reading. Ended up reading four out of the seven, including A Pattern Language.
The November 2020 stack.
For your (and mine, time permitting) weekend reading, listening, and/or viewing pleasure: the Tim Ferris interview with Nassim Taleb and Scott Patterson. I sure hope you are familiar with the former; the latter is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who also wrote a book about “black swan traders”, which, yes, is probably going to the pilethe antilibrary. It is a 2-hour discussion rightfully described as a feast.
September 8, 2023
Finished reading: Wanting by Luke Burgis 📚, which I wish had existed for me to read back in my early 20s, but maybe I would have thought it trite back then? Probably not: ever since The Dude’s parroting of pop culture was mistaken for profundity I knew how powerful mimesis was and how blind people were to it. The contents of Wanting would have brought into sharp focus that we are not only copying other people’s words and actions, but also — most of all, perhaps — desires.
Like The Dao of Capital it is overflowing with new-to-me mental models,
[Note:
One day, I should write a list of all these models and how I use them. Alas, not today.
] or at least with words to describe what may have tickled me already: calculating versus meditative thought, thin desire versus thick, and — in a nod to Taleb — Celebristan versus Freshmenistan. At the very least it clarified too me why Taleb himself was a model worth emulating.
Miyazaki has a new movie coming out, “The Boy and the Heron”, and the teaser trailer looks like “Spirited Away” mixed with “Grave of the Fireflies”. I’m sold!
This would, of course, be Miyazaki’s third last film ever to date. Here’s hoping for many more. (ᔥwaxy.org)
2023 Judith H. Greenberg Early Career Investigator Lecture by Dr. Akhila Rajan, FHCC, and I know the title doesn’t tell you much but per the description “Dr. Akhila Rajan will discuss her research in a 30-minute talk on investigating how fat cells communicate with the brain, followed by a 30-minute live Q&A” (Wednesday, September 27, 1pm EDT)
One I absolutely must attend is held tomorrow (Thursday, September 7) at 6pm EDT, when I will talk about RNA cell therapy as the keynote speaker at the Maryland BioNetworking Summit, held at the BSE Facility at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville. It is in-person only and free to attend, if you register here.
There are so many things one could be doing at any particular moment, and so many variables — where you are, how much energy you have, whether you’re being interrupted — that the whole exercise can feel like a game of five-dimensional chess that frequently leaves even the most skilled and seasoned players bewildered by an unexpected move.
This was such a great description that I had to share it. His advice, drawn heavily from GTD, is:
