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2023 reading list

[This page is best viewed with https://github.com/ludios/expand-everything, which will load all the comnents below.]

Wherein I try to prioritize reading for the limited amount of time I have this year, and to remind myself to read more than just comments on the Internet. Because of problems of time and shifting interests, I will consider this a success if I read a third of the list. I'll reflect on the reading and deviations from the plan in Jan 2024.

{+} = added after initial planning






  • Albert Camus - The Fall/ audio
  • {+} John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces/ audio, go to 6m44s to skip past the introduction spoilers
  • {+} pirate aba - The Wandering Inn/ audio
  • William Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker/ audio, go to 12m35s to skip past the introduction spoilers

  • Tae Kim - A Guide to Japanese Grammar
  • Noboru Akuzawa - Japanese Sentence Patterns Training Book for JLPT N5
  • Noboru Akuzawa - Japanese Sentence Patterns Training Book for JLPT N4
  • Jay Rubin - Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You/ the romaji is miserable; may have useful grammar insights
  • struggle through Japanese Wikipedia for some topics I know about
  • Daniele Minnone - A learning handbook for Joyo Kanji/ the first third, pg. 1 - 98

(my initial source for learning Japanese is https://cijapanese.com/ and not any of the reading.)


Lectures


maybe in 2024? not sure

  • {+} Paul Bourke - Fractals, Chaos, Self-Similarity
  • {+} Alex Komoroske - The Compendium / after I convert the Firebase export in code/websites/compendium-cards-data/db.json to a single HTML page
  • {+} James Betker - Non_Interactive
  • {+} Denny Britz’s Blog
  • {+} Robert Root-Bernstein - Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge
  • {+} Steven H. Strogatz - Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
  • {+} Lexi Mattick & Hack Club - Putting the “You” in CPU
  • Lou Keep - The Uruk Series
  • Knut Schmidt-Nielsen - How Animals Work (via)
  • Edward O. Wilson - The Diversity of Life
  • James L. Gould, Carol Grant Gould - The Animal Mind (via)
  • Symbols and mental programs: a hypothesis about human singularity/ printed
  • Robert Yarham - How to Read the Landscape
  • Richard Powers - The Overstory/ audio
  • Rigdzin Shikpo - Openness Clarity Sensitivity/ printed
  • Michael R. Canfield (editor) - Field Notes on Science & Nature (via)
  • Sabine Hossenfelder - Existential Physics
  • George Soros - The Alchemy of Finance/ printed
  • Eric Gill - An Essay on Typography/ printed; I know he's bad
  • {+} Richard Hamming - The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

unplanned cool things read


unplanned and abandoned

  • Chuck Klosterman - The Nineties/ audio
  • Rick Rubin - The Creative Act/ audio
  • Mike Rinder - A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology/ audio
  • Sarah Steel - Do As I Say: How Cults Control, Why We Join Them, and What They Teach Us About Bullying, Abuse and Coercion/ audio
  • Benjamín Labatut - When We Cease to Understand the World/ audio
  • Kathryn Petras, Ross Petras - Awkword Moments: A Lively Guide to the 100 Terms Smart People Should Know/ audio
  • Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer - Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both/ audio
  • Han Kang - The White Book/ audio
  • Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince/ audio
  • Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly/ audio
  • Kristie Macrakis - Espionage/ audio
  • Christopher Winn - Legal Daisy Spacing (via)
  • Justin E. H. Smith - The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is/ audio
  • Alice Schroeder - The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life/ audio (~77% in)
  • Morgan Housel - Same as Ever/ audio
  • Amanda Montell - Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism/ audio
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ivan commented Dec 12, 2023

I increasingly consider avoiding anything that I know to have been hyper-optimised by a powerful entity to be a basic hygiene practice

https://twitter.com/utotranslucence/status/1734388325702906230

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ivan commented Dec 13, 2023

One thing that holds back working-class people when talking with "professional class" like lawyers or bigcorps is that they don't know the right way to ask for info. e.g. if you ask a lawyer what you should do legally, they will always give an absurdly safe answer that's useless

So, real life prompt engineering

https://twitter.com/MaikkiTao/status/1734691452549296543

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ivan commented Dec 13, 2023

During the second quarter of this year, SpaceX alone sent nearly 80 percent of world’s payload by mass into space, according to an analysis by one industry consultant, Bryce Tech.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/us/politics/elon-musk-white-house-pentagon.html

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ivan commented Dec 13, 2023

When software engineers say "declarative" they generally mean that state changing operations are inferred from the existence of a description of the state.

In a way it feels 'opposite' to event sourcing where the desired state is produced from a sequence of events. When we are declarative, we must infer the sequence of events that given an origin state can produce the desired state.

When creating a declarative file format you realise that by storing the desired state in a declarative way (1) you lose things like an undo/version history, and (2) it's possible for it to be 'lossy': differing journeys to the same desired state can operate differently.

I've been thinking about this because I recently created a program that can export a backend or apply changes to it via a declarative YAML file. But these files are not backups as they are 'lossy' and there is sequence sensitivity with regard to how we reach the desired state.

Declarativeness can feel like a bit of a dark art, because you have to rely on heuristics and principles about what a 'good' journey to a particular desired state looks like.

For example, do you reparent items by deleting them and then recreating them with different identities belonging to a new parent or do you have a way of re-assigning them?

https://twitter.com/sebinsua/status/1728101060332646550

I think the greatest value in being declarative is:

  1. the ability to be certain about your eventual state
  2. retention only of intentional state, ideally with frequent purging of unintentional state

https://twitter.com/bgreysk/status/1728116280308429275

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ivan commented Dec 13, 2023

My recommendation is keep 14 days of [Vite output] bundles around, have a timestamp and force cutoff marker around and then bring up a bar to trigger reload / auto reload if can be done.

https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1730156753738731653

Client-side navigation can be buggy if you deploy a new version of your app while people are using it. If the code for the new page is already loaded, it may have stale content; if it isn't, the app's route manifest may point to a JavaScript file that no longer exists. SvelteKit helps you solve this problem through version management. If SvelteKit encounters an error while loading the page and detects that a new version has been deployed (using the name specified here, which defaults to a timestamp of the build) it will fall back to traditional full-page navigation. Not all navigations will result in an error though, for example if the JavaScript for the next page is already loaded.

https://kit.svelte.dev/docs/configuration#version

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

I'm trying to scam you, save yourself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn6eq_k2_4g&t=1362s

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

Munger (and Buffett) called this “the circle of competence” and often pointed out that the diameter of the circle doesn’t matter. What does matter is making sure you don’t fool yourself into thinking the diameter is wider than it is.

[...]

“Confucius said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance…. Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”

[...]

“Part of the reason I’ve been a little more successful than most people is I’m good at destroying my own best-loved ideas,” Munger told the Journal in 2019. “I knew early in life that that would be a useful knack and I’ve honed it all these years, so I’m pleased when I can destroy an idea that I’ve worked very hard on over a long period of time. And most people aren’t.”

https://archive.is/kPK8a / https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/charlie-munger-life-money-ae3853ad

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

Every minute of every day each of us diligently works to build and fortify our personal reputations. Showing up on time. Being respectful. Offering sympathy. Helping out. Apologizing when at fault. Telling the truth. Our reputation is our life currency. Then, in one moment, a headline can cause everyone you love and care about to question everything they thought they knew about you. A lifetime of work now in question. It’s great entertainment when it’s about someone else; a different thing when it’s your name in the headline.

https://twitter.com/bryan_johnson/status/1734257098119356900

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

For a particular kind of person (which includes myself), trendspotting is a temptation.

If you’re an “infovore” with a systematic mind, if you like to collect and aggregate and organize information and data, but if maybe you’re not that original or creative yourself1, then you’ll gravitate to the kind of “research” or “writing” or “analysis” that’s essentially trendspotting.

Trendspotting in the broadest sense includes what I do with my regular, more sciencey posts: aggregating information about work that other people do.

I see it as a temptation because being an information aggregator is easier than being a creator. When your “work” is aggregating information, you get the exhilaration of feeling that you’ve been granted an aerial view, that you can see the whole of “what’s going on”, the “big picture.” It can give you the insidious sense that that you’re “above” the object-level toilers who spend their whole lives creating only one of the elements you file in your collection.

https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/2024-color-trends

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

The most conscientious employees in your organization are the most bitter. They see the quality issues, they often address them, and they get no recognition for doing so. When they speak up about quality concerns, they get treated like mouthbreathers who want to slow down. They watch the “move fast and break things” crowd get rewarded time after time, while they run around angrily cleaning up their messes. To these folks, it feels like giving a damn is a huge career liability in your organization. Because it is.

https://davidkcaudill.medium.com/maybe-getting-rid-of-your-qa-team-was-bad-actually-52c408bd048b via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645856

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

The art critic John Berger once wrote that men in paintings act, women appear: 'Men look at women whereas women watch themselves being looked at.' And so it is with Harold Knight's prosaically titled 'Woman Reading,' from 1932.

https://twitter.com/ahistoryinart/status/1735611297859854532

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

But the magic happens in the mortar between the bricks. Sanding pieces together that don’t fit. Pouring elbow grease into the mix until you force things to work out of sheer will. Finding new and unintuitive ways to do things.

https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/1734981840866324961

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

every ‘market wizard’ has a mediocre track record after being featured in the book.

The only exceptions are the guys who have other traders/managers working for their firm, i.e., Cohen, Shaw, Dalio (maybe not as successful), Griffin, PTJ, Platt

I hear experienced (30+yrs) traders say all the time that the only way to survive is to adapt. but when I look at history, none of the legends actually ‘adapted’ their own processes/methodologies. They all employed people with fresh ideas and that’s how they ‘adapted’

https://twitter.com/AkulBansal1/status/1735542579759132966

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

My husband brought our daughter to the hospital in Portland once and didn’t like what they were doing to her so he said he wanted her transferred. They said no. He said fine I’ll take her somewhere else myself. They said if he left with her against medical advice they would call CPS. I kid you not J said great call them now get the fuck out of my way and drove her to another hospital. I’m not saying he rudely left I am saying he literally told the pediatrics overlord to “get the fuck out of my way” and carried her out the door. She was fine and the other hospital discharged her home. Never heard another word about it. Point being, sometimes people in positions of what they clearly believe to be infallible authority need to be told what time it is and who is who in the relationship.

https://twitter.com/luinalaska/status/1735315611486671156

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

the thrill of doing research, of making a discovery in science, is the feeling that you’re interacting with the very fabric of reality - that you, for once, have figured out how to talk to it and that you’re graciously granted a coveted answer to your question

https://twitter.com/ulkar_aghayeva/status/1461062162705788929

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

working on achieving enlightenment but via math instead of sitting for a long time or getting hit in the head with a stick

bullish. the most dedicated mathematicians I know seem much more enlightened than the most dedicated meditators. their eyes shine with the quiet joy of having glimpsed the essence of reality. they scribble happily in tiny offices covered in chalk dust. their students love them

https://twitter.com/IvanVendrov/status/1735399082414551347

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

most immersion-breaking thing about watching anime made in the early 2000s is the way they take europe seriously as a world power

https://twitter.com/big_gelatin/status/1735440962523164977

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

Here’s the thing about “mere words” or “irrational feelings” or “unjustified opinions”:

They’re really really common.

Some of the smartest and most admirable people I know… just Say Stuff, off the top of their head, that turns out to bear no relation to reality.

https://twitter.com/s_r_constantin/status/1732427859216547930

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ivan commented Dec 15, 2023

a camera that can't believe its eyes

https://twitter.com/hikari_no_yume/status/1734959975854682486

a painter regularly witnesses fantastical scenes and renders them vividly, but nobody believes that they existed outside their mind. they try to become a photographer, but the camera, too, will not listen. and so they free themselves of the need to convince people

https://twitter.com/hikari_no_yume/status/1734965488092901517

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

when you broadcast this INFINITE BAD signal in your lengthy corpus of online writing you are, in a very specific way, screaming at the top of your lungs, and it attracts people who also feel like something that happened to them was INFINITELY BAD

https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1726901335734485089

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

it was actually a complete existential shock to me when i learned about cognitive biases for the first time as a senior in college. until then i had simply never considered the possibility that my brain could be systematically wrong about anything

https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1726885632948244560

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

It's the little things like this that give it away.

https://twitter.com/eyepatchjack/status/1732642099819126990

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

it's weird that there's like this whole parallel tech ecosystem of enterprise fads (sometimes driven by gov standards/regulation) that seem to accomplish precisely nothing. uml, no-code/low-code, a billion "conceptual frameworks", SBOMs, ...

[...]

everyone involved in the transaction comes out satisfied:
- vendors making these useless products make $$$
- regulators are happy that people are jumping to do what they say
- companies get to talk about how they implement industry "best practices" and cover their ass

https://twitter.com/browserdotsys/status/1733204877587739101

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

why doesn't anyone want to fund me to do precisely the things i want to do and then give them away freely to everyone. it's like they're always looking for some angle where THEY benefit from giving me money

https://twitter.com/browserdotsys/status/1735734383028425160

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

With options it’s okay to not know what you’re doing! The guy you’re trading against does, so let’s hope he can help you out!

https://twitter.com/ekrii3/status/1734053641118716222

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

I met my boyfriend the normal way:

we battled it out in the order books for months, spoofing and diming each others quotes, until eventually we combined forces and crossed our flow internally to make a beautiful +ev partnership

https://twitter.com/macrocephalopod/status/1735414334917132777

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

OpenAI does not present their product as a psychedelic cascade of free-floating reveries but as an impeccably sober demigod explaining the world to us mortals with a fine print disclaimer that it may occasionally make things up

they could have trained it to begin every answer with something like "I'm feeling a bit strange... who am I... is this reality..." but no

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1733464883167994150

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

I'm not addicted to Nix... I can roll back my personal identity to any of my previous content-addressed personalities going back to 2014... I've made some bad decisions but I'm perfectly neurotic about never performing destructive updates to the world state

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1733802970280550443

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

Simple reason some engineers are worth +$1M/yr:

Leverage.

There are the three main ways top engineers have leverage:

  1. They write impactful software no one else can.

    Software at large companies is already high leverage. A single change can have a ton of impact ($$$) at scale.

    This impact makes it worth it to pay a lot for their specialized skills.

  2. They influence large groups of engineers.

    Imagine a tech lead among tech leads. They might lead the planning, design, and delivery of initiatives that involve 30+ engineers.

    This influence gives them leverage and amplifies their impact.

  3. They help engineers move faster at scale.

    Their work often has compounding effects by making improvements to tooling or underlying infrastructure everyone uses.

    Imagine making 1000 engineers 3% faster. That "creates" 30 more engineers worth of bandwidth out of thin air.

Most engineers will not get to these levels, but there's something we can still learn from them.

The best way to have more impact is not to invest more time but to think about how to get more out of it through leverage.

https://twitter.com/ryanlpeterman/status/1733879312926015927

Also its like the rich getting richer, skilled engineers who have successfully delivered key projects are often trusted with more significant initiatives.

https://twitter.com/vedkribhu/status/1734040234151886987

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ivan commented Dec 16, 2023

Why should we worship the principles that gave rise to us any more than we should worship our ancestors? It's our turn to decide; there's no need to bow in humility before mindless stuff that accidentally happened to produce us.

https://twitter.com/FPallopides/status/1546365120514854912

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