How 1920s Russia can teach us about 2020s Quarantined America

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We meet Count Rostov first in a Soviet courtroom where he somehow avoids execution with a mix of pomp and 19th century wit, which though could not save him from being placed under house arrest in a fancy hotel for the next 30+ years. The writing here focuses you on one or two adjectives or adverbs where, after thinking about it, leads you to the essence and tone of the scene; a room is cluttered with the “caprices of casual urgency” or a pidgeon looks with a “decidedly proprietary air”, or yet a waiter smiles “ecclesiastically”.

The author clearly took to heart the 1949 quote from Winston Churchill that “broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all” .

Besides the excellent technical work, at its heart this is a book about a man mastering his circumstances and what that even really means. We see that mastering circumstances does not mean rising at dawn each day, threatening the calendar and clock with more stuff; instead “the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew”. We see how the butterfly effect reveals an unexepected yet rich life for Count Rostov living in what is a hyperbolic version of home quarantining for us now at the time of writing. If the Count had been a little more reluctant or resigned, fate would certainly had been more tempted. In a call for action within inaction, the Count would say to us now “master [your] circumstances through practicalities” or else the butterfuly effect is less likely to be as kind to you.

The real James Bond is a woman

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And her name is Virginia Hall, and as the titles suggest she was both a badass and little-known. An American born woman of the 1920s, she is already in her 30s by the time she is scouted in France by British intelligence and trained to operate within Nazi-occupied territory. The author, Sonia Purnell, does well to balance setting up the background history and general scene in France at the time (1940-1945) with how Virginia fits within it. As Virginia herself did not want to be well known it apparently was a tough research topic in and of itself, with Sonia having to dig through actual classified documents.

Virginia's actual missions clearly inspired the creation of James Bond, with incredible escapes, personable enemies, and to dissuade this from sounding too romantic, devestating losses. The life and times of Virginia Hall have gone on to be celebrated posthumously by the CIA where she worked after the war, and rightly so! I can’t help but imagine her story fertilizing compelling action within an HBO dramatization.

Some number of diatribes for any century

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Part 1 fleshes out healthy speculation about potentially distant AI-driven changes in workplace and artistic ventures with expected lack of addressing the “How?” in a well-written diatribe meant to spur debate instead of concretly answer questions. It reads like something inbetween a modern Nostradamus prediction and a script for the next Terminator.

Part 2 is a brilliant look at how politics is not global relative to science and religion as a result of nationalist thinking. A main argument here is that religion is a facade of nationalism itself with some compelling examples of such.

Part 3 carries on, almost for too long, looking at ethics and religion in what feels more like an extension of the author’s previous work Sapiens rather than focusing on the 21st century. Part 4 has an interesting review of the movie Inside Out among thoughts of how post-truth has been a human creation not unique to modern times; I am not exactly cherry picking what is covered the presentating is a bit scattered. Part 5 starts with an interesting thought: education up to now has mostly been about imparting information but if that information is likely to be obsolete given how fast tech is growing, what is education to do? Unfortunately the book ends without really addressing this excellent point but instead moves on to a more autobiographical tone.

Overall a book firmly in the “pop-psychology/philosophy” genre characterized by raising thought provoking questions while remaining too broad-stroked to properly address them.

Fun and serious error anecdotes that humanizes math

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Each chapter explores a theme of types of mathematical / programming errors from history that are usually comical but of course sometimes cause real world havoc. Curriculums typically emphasize how correct calculations / methods are supposed to look and never dive into how common errors might come about, something that should and has to be done in a lot of circumstances.

Books read on Audible by their author are almost always enchanced quite a bit by the effort and this one is no exception. Books about math usually are either inaccessible due to difficulty or embrace easiness in an overly enthusiastic and cringey fashion. That is where this book is happily an exception. I also enjoy how Matt had to use “Math” and not “Maths” in his title, take that Brits!