Another great year of reading, and with a back log the length of human history why would every year not be as great?

Fiction

1. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, which if I were being pedantic should be books 1–3 but I view this particular trilogy as really just the final book, That Hideous Strength, with two extended prologues.
2. Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer, last in the Terra Ignota trilogy, made me want to read The Illiad.
3. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, even better than I remembered it from 20 years ago.
4. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir will make for a good movie but please do not watch the trailer unless you want to see a major mid-story spoiler.
5. Babel by R. F. Kuang felt rushed and ultimately forgettable.

Science and technology

6. Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows was the best introduction to systems thinking for people in your life who are not into systems thinking.
7. How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg, a slice of Incerto applied to large projects.
8. The Notebook by Roland Allen, better than I expected.
9. In the Beginning… Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson, an essay that aged very well indeed.
10. A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins, a billionaire turned neuroscientist.
11. Thinking With Tinderbox by Mark Bernstein will be useful only to users of the Tinderbox app but if you are reading this you may want to take a look.
12. Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, a much needed antidote to the pro-big tech authors I tend to listen and read.
13. The Occasional Human Sacrifice by Carl Elliott, an antidote to the pro-clinical trial authors I tend to follow, though I still question whether it was needed.
14. The Billion-Dollar Molecule by Barry Werth, yes, biotech is broken by design.

Philosophy and religion

15. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis will be on my yearly re-read list because sadly the anti-human movement has gone from strength to strength propelled by useful idiots who think that this time it’s different.
16. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis was hilarious.
17. A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher opened my eyes to Shumacher’s work which is as timely as ever.
18. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher, the world could have taken a turn for the better in the late 1970s but then something happened.
19. Good Work by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was not as strong as the first two and has an uncomfortable addendum about superior people tacked on at the end so I still don’t know what to make of it.
20. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, who sounds like a delightful person to be around and the half-lotus is in fact my preferred position for reading books but that is as far as my Earth-locked self will go into Eastern mysticism.
21. Books - A Manifesto by Ian Patterson, delightful.
22. Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds was a better introduction to Wittengstein and Poppper’s works than any formal biography.
23. Feline Philosophy by John Gray, mediocre.

And here are years past: 2024 — 2023 — 2022 though of course the book reviews go way back.

• Guru Madhavan: Compulsive tracking doesn’t measure what really counts. And this is not even taking into account Goodhart’s Law
• Diana Mariska and A. Anantha Lakshmi: Move over, Tokyo — the world has a new biggest city. It is Jakarta, which its own citizens call — and I don’t know if they actually do or if it is an FT-ism but I find it delightful — the Big Durian.
• Stephen Bush: Creativity thrives with constraints. I nod my head in agreement even as the whole family is giddy in anticipation of what will inevitably be another polished turd to premiere on Netflix tonight at 8pm EST.
• Jonathan Vincent: How the AI ‘bubble’ compares to history. But why the scare quotes, oh FT?
• Janan Ganesh: The case for denial. It all makes sense until you find yourself missing the last train out of Berlin.
• Hannah Shuckburgh: Should you have a library in your loo?. Without getting too personal I would like to point out that my reading history would have been dramatically different — and poorer — had there been smart phones back in the day.
• Chloe Fox: **I opened a bookshop. It was the best, worst thing I’ve ever done **. A better way to keep books, though realistically the loo is more in my wheelhouse.
• Aimee Farrell: Green Knowe, the house that inspired a children’s classic. It is about the oldest inhabited house in Britain, which is all well and good with some great-looking photos but then I imagine walking in and hitting a wall of mustiness.
• Mark Ellwood: Instagram is coming for your house move. Good. Lord.
• Oliver Smith: I went in search of spiritual renewal in Japan — and ended up being dangled off a cliff. Good. Lord. Though in a different way.

Enjoy!

Behold the survivors of my November podcast purge:

Lindy

The Talk Show With John Gruber is, I think, the first podcast I ever downloaded, at a time when a white 1st generation iPod Nano was the only Apple product I owned. I haven’t missed a single episode since, though I am still waiting for one that matches its November 2016 peak.

Accidental Tech Podcast is one that I have listened to since the very beginning, when it was the after show of the host trio’s short-lived car podcast Neutral. I did drop it at some point but am now back to being a supporter, if for nothing else then to continue listening to John Siracusa kvetch about various topics. Though that, too, is yet to reach levels of his first and now retired podcast Hypercritical

Dithering is the only one I actually pay for. Like the two above it is about mostly about (Apple) technology, this one with a tinge of sports and geopolitics that Ben Thompson brings to the table.

Maybe

New Creative Era got me interested because of its second season, which is about the Internet as a dark forest. The whole Metalabel enterprise is worth checking out, though it’s too late to browse it for Christmas presents. ⊕ Unless, of course, your church’s December 25th falls on January 7, in which case I am willing to bet your “Christmas” gifts are exchanged on New Year’s Day and you may still have some time.

Old School with Shilo Brooks brings a new celebrity each episode to talk about a book that changed their lives. Although a part of The Free Press, it has no politics and much nostalgia. I don’t care much for the host, but where else would I be able to hear Nick Cave talk about Pinocchio?

Cortex has lost my favorite YouTuber as a co-host, but in its stead has a series of Internet personalities talk about their daily routines and productivity. Yes, please.

Will try them out, one of these days

Hard Drugs started off great, with the first two episodes being under 20 minutes and about topics that are essential for drug development (proteins and the development of insulin). The streak didn’t last: episodes 4, 5 and 6 are 54, 60 and 274 (yes, really) minutes long respectively. The young people who made it clearly had time on their hands; sadly, I don’t.

Statecraft, a podcast about American domestic and foreign policy, ⊕ I will take a moment here to note that Serbian and the adjacent langages — “naš” or “our” language in modern parlance — use the same word for both policy and politics, which is politika. Much evil has come from this confusion in terms. goes out of its way not to be about politics, focusing on the successes and lessons learned from the recent history. This is why I am on the fence about listening to any of it: maybe a podcast about the domestic policy of the late 1800s would be more applicable to the present day.

In Our Time is, on the other hand, a timeless podcast which I plan on listening well into my retirement. Not having retired yet, this year I only had time for Italo Calvino and Slime Moulds

And here are years past: 2024 — 2023 — 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 — 2018 — 2017 — The one where I took a break from podcasts — The very first one

Our favorite Smithsonian museum(s) continue to surprise and delight. Tucked away on the third and fourth floors of SAAM is the storage center you can actually visit, featuring one impressive sculpture. The parallel space in the National Portrait Gallery is as impressive, though currently empty.

I praised the acting and cinematography of Pluribus, but should not have left out the music! There are long stretches without dialogue that could have gone terribly wrong, but are instead on my re-re-rewatch list. At the top is Manousos’s drive up South America towards the Darién Gap to the tune of Esperanza (and the extended version on Apple Music), which led me to the Tiny Desk Concert by Hermanos Gutiérrez of whom I am now a faithful listener.

• Ben Sasse (@BenSasse): Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.. I first learned about Sasse from his conversation with Tyler where he presented himself as a down-to-earth, sensible nerd. In that light, his short and turbulent tenure as University of Florida’s President was not a surprise: “Dr. Sasse didn’t have much respect for the U.S. News & World Report rankings, but the university’s politically connected board of trustees very much did.” And now this. So it goes…
• Caleb Watney (@calebwatney): OSTP asked for concrete suggestions to accelerate American science. Here are our thoughts. In a world where people like Ben Sasse were still in politics these kinds of sensible solutions might have had a chance of being implemented. But the recommendation that “the administration should prioritize visa applications for researchers and entrepreneurs…” would have to wait for the likes of Stephen Miller and his nativist friends to leave the premises.
• NonsparseOncologist (@5_utr): Is “Precision Oncology” just marketing? The thread suggests that it is, and I can confirm. The word scores quite well with both doctors and patients so you’d better claim that your drug is precise no matter what it actually means.
• The White Rabbit (@White_Rabbit_OG): When two faces flash rapidly while you fixate, the brain overcorrects for contrast. The illusion is real and unnerving, as is the background music.
• Jack Connor (@Jac5Connor): I’ve watched this at least 30 times. Robot kicks man in the groin. As the post he quotes states, it is a beautiful metaphor for 2025, the year in which humanity got its feet firmly planted in the Ow my Balls! territory.

Our Stranger Things rewatch reminded me that one of the main character’s sexual orientation has been telegraphed since the very first episode, and in seasons 4 and 5 we learned that it is in fact crucial to the whole story. I have bones to pick with those two seasons, but having a main character who is gay is not one of them. Those Internet trolls who are giving the penultimate episode one-star reviews because of a very plot-appropriate if not very believable coming out scene are way out of line, so I dusted off my IMDB login to give the episode 10 stars, even though it is at most an 8.5.

📺 Pluribus (2025) was a perfectly paced masterpiece of cinematography and acting that raised questions which were at once urgent and eternal. Would it surprise anyone that so many people online identified with the hive mind and thought Rhea Seehorn’s character was the villain?

Season 2 coming 2027!