tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83069615246361326672024-03-14T09:50:13.960-04:00Draft CopyThere's a first draft for everythingNeil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.comBlogger350125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-11065694476924780092020-04-20T09:20:00.001-04:002020-04-20T09:20:20.011-04:00ussome days I remember the lies you told me and i laugh at both of us<br />
<br />
at me, for wanting so badly to believe you<br />
<br />
at you, for having the audacity to try them on me in the first place<br />
<br />
later you asked me if i wanted to talk about it, the lies<br />
<br />
i laugh about that too<br />
<br />
it was probably all a mistakeNeil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-88232262059109149082019-12-22T22:36:00.000-05:002019-12-22T22:36:34.290-05:00ABWBernard was awake. He glanced at the time -- 4:33. His flight wasn't for another few hours. Awake twenty-seven minutes before his first alarm, regardless. He didn't need much time to get ready; his villa in the Bahamas was a twenty minute ride to the airport. He did want to be first on the plane, though. It was a busy time of year for trips to the Southern hemisphere; this he knew.<br />
<br />
This *everyone* knew. The spring equinox had passed just three days ago, in another week the island would be largely deserted. Again. The sun is hot. The sand gets warm. The water won't cool you off.<br />
<br />
The alarm went off. Bernard sat up and reached for his earbuds, silencing the alarm with his decisive movements. The lights dimmed, then shifted to a warm glow, matching the tone the sunlight would make, when it first stikes the house.<br />
<br />
Bernard was wealthy. He owned the local e-bike exchange. His villa was outfitted with the latest in sun capture technology, with enough capacity to allow his A/C to run 24/7, all through the winter. The molten salt battery backup being the largest indulgence, and mostly an indulgence, he had allowed himself here. In the off-season, like most of his solar capture peers, the excess energy he harvested from the sun went to securing his digital assets with the bootleg crypto miners he had bought from a dark exchange a few years ago. That was before miners became hard to come by, before the heat waves and off-season fires decimtaed the factory work forces. Before the national powers consolidated their grip on production, and bought up all excess stock. Before they consolidated their grip on the internet; the exchanges were all incredibly had to get access to these days.<br />
<br />
Bernard knew he, like his neighbors, was lucky.<br />
<br />
The 5:10 delivery of croissants, dried jerky, and finely chonked pineapple squares arrived, the electric motor hum of the drone passing overhead pulled him out of his shower reverie. He toweled off and started a last minute check of his luggage, prepping the bike for his short ride to the airport.<br />
<br />
Bernard traveled light these days -- just his keyboard, headphones, and monitors. He needed it all to log online, to keep track of the production schedules and time lines for his mostly automated machine parts supply company. His contacts in Thailand were particularly good at keeping up with his erratic hours and requests for new prototypes.<br />
<br />
Bag packed and breakfast largely eaten, Bernard pulled the concrete barricades down over the villa windows, double checked the electrical connections for the mining gear, and puttered off down the clay-paved road to the airport.<br />
<br />
The island was awake -- a few other cars were on the road already this morning. South, that's where they were headed, every single human would be gone, and soon.<br />
<br />
ABW was the joke -- "Always Be Wintering". Weird to think that just a century ago <i>summering</i> had been not only possible but fashionable. Bernard preferred the winter days though -- the early sunsets and long nights were without end. He didn't really get credit for it, but Bernard had been the one to coin the phrase, in the late twenties. A blogpost he had written had gone viral. He had written as a wry commentary on his own personal lifestyle, since he'd been a winter nomad for a years already at that point. Not because of the heat, but for the eternal sweater game he could pull. At least, could, then. It was getting a bit too warm these days, at least in the few spots he spent most of his time. His investment in relocating the cotton trade had paid off pretty well in the meantime.<br />
<br />
The islands really weren't what they used to be. Bernard owed some of the highest land on the place, but his models showed it all going underwater in the next two years. He was pretty sure a hurricane this summer would wash away another good portion before then. He had already made plans to put his villa up for sale at the end of the summer, the legions of winterers grew every year. He assauged his conscience about selling soon-to-be damaged goods by planning to only sell it at cost, more or less. Minus the miners, of course. These he was moving to his most recent toehold in Greenland, which should be finished at summer's end. He wasn't sure yet how Greenland fit into the ABW lifestyle, the daylight swings weren't something he was sure he could handle for long periods of time.<br />
<br />
He had just celebrated his 53rd birthday, happy Aires season. His model showed Greenland was a long game play, for his retirement in twenty years or so. By then, he calculated, he wouldn't care about the daylight patterns affecting his focus cycles so deeply. That was the plan, at any rate.<br />
<br />
The plan had been working out so well so far.<br />
<br />
At the airport, he checked his electric-bike into the elevated concrete bunker, originally built by JUMP bikes; he had taken over the e-bike's rental system for the island a few years back, when he first moved to the island. The automated attendant refunded his seasonal deposit and swang down the metal rolling door behind him.<br />
<br />
Bernard strolled across the clay road, into the rounded, concrete structure that served as the waiting lounge. It had been rebuilt a few decades ago to withstand the high wind storms that were an almost daily occurrence now, in the late fall.<br />
<br />
Out the open gateway, he could see the Redontor, erected ages ago by the re-colonizers, as they called themselves. The indigent population had been wiped out in a large storm cycle, an unpredicted week of daily hurricane landings that had decimated most islands in the Caribbean and surrounding Gulf Coast states. There wasn't enough catastrophic aid hands or funds available to reach every island -- a fever broke out and the potable water dried up. Everyone died. A few Bahamanian expats, mostly from the NYC community, came together in the aftermath to rebuild some parts of what was left of the islands. They had erected the state in tribute to their dead past, an echo of the marvelous one still standing down in Rio. Bernard had bought his villa land from one of the original re-colonizers, who moved to the Swiss Alps a few years ago to start another communal movement. This was before ABW came into vogue, when the summer heat had just started claiming full-timers. They got out while they could.<br />
<br />
There weren't any full-timers left now. Some had become ABWs, others had followed Chad to the Alps, still more had simply died. People died from heatstroke, from starvation. It was just how things worked themselves out now.<br />
<br />
The flight was full, as Bernard had expected. He settled into his window seat and switched his devices to Airplane Mode, which would connect directly to the SatNet once in the air instead of using the local relays.<br />
<br />
The plane launched silently into the early morning air, its electric turbines whirring up to cruising altitude through a low, southward breeze. Bernard could see the large storm his models had predicted springing up that afternoon gathering steam on the eastern horizon, as they made their way southwards.<br />
<br />
Bernard hoped his neighbors would ge tout in time, before the heat became truly deadly. The storm had small yet significant chance of knocking flights down for a bit if took too much of the electricity grid offline. They needed the sun to recharge the plane, to get off the island.<br />
<br />
The ABW lifestyle had its ironies -- the sun was both the enabler of your globe trotting lifestyle; it was also the sum of your ever-threatened demise.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-49071785100325610392019-05-20T20:53:00.000-04:002019-05-20T20:53:01.413-04:00procrastinatei'm really struggling with confronting work today. i've told myself that it's ok to run away. i can run away as long as i'd like to, but there are certain places that are off limits for that running, one of which is twitter. writing is okay though -- this blog is a safe space.<br />
<br />
i make mistakes.<br />
<br />
one of which seems to be not opening up my terminal getting to typing first thing this morning. the sooner i do it, the better off i'll be.<br />
<br />
ok here goes.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-29010973997391706172019-05-05T20:09:00.001-04:002019-05-05T20:09:16.068-04:00moar to sayi don't actually want to type any more. i just want to emote. that feeling of finding myself through an attempt to digitize it. to write it. to feel it out.<br />
<br />
so much anxiety about the destination. about the meaning. about the being understood. about liking this when i go back to read it, not just now but two three four years from now. forever. the forever book.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
is that what this is? my forever book.<br />
<br />
having read other popular blogs i think i know finally why this isn't a popular blog. why it's not something that you share or tell people about. it's not the kind of discourse that you popup a forum for.<br />
<br />
i could try moving it to a new format. i could make this into a newsletter.<br />
<br />
<br />
there's nothing wrong with trying new, weird things. may be i can merge some of the disparate identities, slowly draw them together into the real.<br />
<br />
<br />
album pages don't make sense for singles. maybe this outpost doesn't make sense for this output. what does it mean to build community online? hard to say huh.<br />
<br />
ok, it's bedtime.<br />
<br />Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-9480135847830802792019-04-27T00:57:00.003-04:002019-04-27T00:58:18.694-04:00expellsionmy brain doesn't work like others do. i think that this is true of all of us. for a while i used to worry about typing and talking in weird, convoluted sentences and phrases but i think it's just a way of being. in the end of things, there is a brightness here. that's what matters, i think, truly.<br />
<br />
do they said, what it is that you need to do. what you would do if the revolution was won. what would i be doing when the revolution is won?<br />
<br />
it's worth considering. all modes of being involve living. that's the hard part, i think. living, in the tickled sense, is a lot of being in my brain. moving out of it is hard.<br />
<br />
i dreamed deep a few days ago about you and the things that you've told me. it's genuine, i need to embrace that. to trust my thoughts on these things. it didn't make me sad to see your future. i don't think it's a sad thing, i think it's perfectly normal. why do none of you remind me of me? or was seeing your future a bit like looking into my own? if not in this singular example, but as a hope that i will soon be able to reach as deeply into my own and see it, fully, in one singular prophesy.<br />
<br />
i don't know if i write this way with the intention to hide, to not explain. this feels like the actual display of my interior thoughts, but composed in form. that seems hard to run from. that this is my idea, not so much of fun, but at least of being. this kind of writing is a way of being. it is a mental space that i can crawl into. i do worry about it being legible. i worry a lot. it is a deep stress that i feel as i write these words it's leaving me, leaving my body. or is it sinking even more deeply into the pit of my stomach.<br />
<br />
this is something i don't talk or write about. that i'm afraid to. that's how i imagine the person reading these will feel about them. will they be comprehensible? is it possible to see?<br />
<br />
<br />
there's two foreigners visiting town this week. both of them are natives of their own countries, yet they speak and express themselves fluently in english. they are a part of our world and our culture. have they always been online? is this what the future looks like? i worry for us, for this flattening. it flattens in some corners and hides itself in others, the culture does. what will happen to french on the internet? will it forever have its corner? how big is the 'french on the internet' corner, really? what about the japanese on the internet? or mandarin on the internet?<br />
<br />
there are a lot of things i am curious about.<br />
<br />
i do want to know what the web looks like. it's funny, when you call it a crawler because it's not actually crawling anywhere. it doesn't run or live or exist anywhere other than on your computer. rather than crawling the web it sends out http requests to every domain number that it finds.<br />
<br />
there's actually multiple ways to crawl the internet, you know. i mean, none of them live on anywhere other than your computer, as far as i know.<br />
<br />
the other way to crawl the internet would be to iterate through the entire public IP address space. you can just probe every single IP address and it's port at 80. i wonder if this is one thing that the new IPv6 space will make practically impossible. to what extent was the expansion driven by this need for deep internet surface.<br />
<br />
it's incredible to think that the internet, the http port 80 world, is so large, really. the sheer amount of landscape that you can see buried in just port 80. there's 65 thousand ports per machine. the biggest one lives at 80 (though increasingly moving to 443).<br />
<br />
it's weird to think that the bitcoin network exists as a set of nodes that are reachable through the internet, the DNS network. is there anything connected that isn't on the DNS network?<br />
<br />
to some extent that's what the blockstream boys are working on. building out a portion of the internet that is outside of DNS, somewhat. or does it all, at its core, resolve to DNS?<br />
<br />
i think it all resolves to DNS. which is absolutely bonkers when you think about it, how locked in to DNS we are. absolutely bonkers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
i wonder a lot what it'd be like to go back and learn about what the internet is now. these days. i have this really strong desire to go out and teach school children about the internet. this like, permanent camp or after school program that is all about unix and the internet. networking for children. we'd build spider nets and domain crawlers. we'd talk about how computers experience the world. we'd build ships and sail them into ports, like port 80. we'd learn about the diffie hellman key exchange and we'd build fortified 443's.<br />
<br />
networking for children.<br />
<br />
maybe they'd make friends in class. maybe they'd learn what it is to be a citizen on the internet. we'd learn about anonymity and the dark web and digital money. we'd learn about them as things should be learned, experienced.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
there was culture then, back before the internet but it was shared and scoped in a much different fashion. what does that culture then, the kenny g's of the past, tell us to expect for our own future? what about boomer pain is a reflection of all of their fantasies? how does the old fantasy build itself into the pain and desires that they all feel now?<br />
<br />
at what point is it our responsibility, as the adults of the now, to stop and put to rest the dreams of our old parents. we let them get away with more than they should. they've learned how to enslave us, have they not? bound to them for how long.<br />
<br />
bound to them for how long.<br />
<br />
back in the past your family was yours forever. you lived near them they were a part and parcel of your being. how much of belonging and being of the family is not being of your parents?<br />
<br />
did the destruction of the clan serve to boost the patriarch, to the doubt and declination of all wider family as family. i'll, we'll, never know. my family wasn't bigger than my father, really for a long time.<br />
<br />
i need to let these things go. just. let them go. stand up for myself and walk away from these other's dreams.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
is kamasi washington just our generation's kenny g? i thought we were more and different and that those things would die but now i don't know any more.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
god i really have to get out of here. more than i know but as every bit as much as i feel. this place is... bad.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-40718191609235263222019-04-27T00:25:00.000-04:002019-04-27T00:25:17.668-04:00Forgetting.What I want to know is how it came to be like this. With mother, without father. We started together, a state that none of us have known for far too long now. What was life like, back then before the Internet bound us together in an untouchable, unseeable certainty?<br />
<br />
What kind of lives were they all living, back then before the Internet? How did it all come together, if at all? Did it come together? What is together, if anything at all?<br />
<br />
Why is there so much pain there for us, for all of us?<br />
<br />
Juanes plays on the radio and we dance, together. When's the last time that we danced?<br />
<br />
What kind of life is it that to live, not knowing the last time that there was common music and common togetherness and just common dancing. Dancing friends. Friends out dancing and loving and moving and breathing pasos.<br />
<br />
Performance.<br />
<br />
Que se corres, carita.<br />
<br />
Nem quero sobrevivir ainda. Ainda eh a morte que danca pra frente, paso por paso. Sultry, coming, advancing paso a paso, pra frente.<br />
<br />
O que voce sabe, ja<br />
<br />
Que se vive, ja.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-83253394741397842452019-02-14T19:45:00.000-05:002019-02-14T19:45:07.635-05:00it was easyit was easy to make the transformation. i just blew you up into a real human. i took the caricature that i had of you in mind and proceeded to cast it out via eviction by lack of space. there's too many corners and extent to you now to fit behind the cardboard copy that i had had. it is useless now. it served its purpose as a place marker, one of the many that i have held in mind over the years.<br />
<br />
did yesterday actually happen? i'm kind of proud of myself for walking forward with it, anyway, you know. the walk into your fears and all of that.<br />
<br />
this could be good<br />
<br />
... (*real*) ...Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-88058948476992852062019-02-05T01:40:00.002-05:002019-02-05T01:44:24.249-05:00On Secrecy and the State<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I meant for this to be a wide ranging piece on the relationship between secrecy and the state, but as works such as Scott’s <i>Seeing Like the State</i> emphasizes, this topic could easily span years and fields and many many pages.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead, I think it would be a better use of time to merely sketch out a few of the threads that I’ve been intuiting as of late, and leave the grander pull of condensation and compressor to someone far less dilettante.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, you should know that I work in a cryptographic adjacent industry. I attend talks by the era’s leading thinkers and have heard much, albeit briefly, of Shamir’s shared secrets and Pederson’s commitments. I am familiar with the concept of blinding keys, randomness, that seeks to hide the true meaning of your actions and data transmissions.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second, you should know that I am a citizen of the Corporate state, a 9/11 child, come of age when Snowden told us all about the NSA and what they knew about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-document-metadata-2016-12">our metadata</a>. </span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The blinding keys that the state uses are not numbers. They are the compliance of large organizations, set firmly in the greedy self interest or abject fear of poverty that guarantees the adherence of the salaried to the ever present NDA. The state issues warrants in <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/national/what-fisa-warrant/WqP428Eg04nHe933u1GazO/">secret courts</a> that give them permission to see your information, with the caveat that you may, no must, be left in the darkness as to the breach of your privacy.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The secrecy that the state seeks is to not just know your actions and your community but further to shield you from knowing of the extent of their invasion. They keep you blind as to the illusion of your privacy. This is their ultimate power.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cryptography seeks to grant you back this permission to choose who can see your data. It looks to go up against the claimed right of the elected kings and the birthed oligarchy.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing that stuck out to me about the wealthy, at least the wealthy that are depicted, I like to believe accurately, in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Rich_Asians">Crazy Rich Asians</a></i> is the extent to which they control their own right to privacy.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go look at the top 500 billionaires that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#4d3eca80251c">Forbes lists</a> and know that there are probably fortunes left out from their sheer ability to hide behind conglomerates and byzantine <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/17/do-you-need-a-generation-skipping-trust.aspx">generation skipping trusts</a>. The extent of Donald Trump’s madness is not his politics but the extent to which he craves that which most truly, hidden wealthy strive to avoid. If anything his legacy may be the way he bullied and cajoled the lesser of the oligarchs to flaunt themselves in the public sphere. We, the impoverished in both privacy and power, may but hope his grand delusions may be their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson">forever</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mnuchin">folly</a>.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We don’t hear about the truly wealthy. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist">That in itself speaks to their wealth</a>. </span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So then what is cryptography if not private wealth for the masses? What does cryptography bring if not some small consolation of truly private power back to the hordes from whom their lives have been marked by its very lack? It may not make us rich in spirit nor in power but it brings the hope of something that for long we have lost — that of true <a href="http://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=commit;h=93a96e3c0c33370248f6570d8285c4e811d305d4">equality</a>.</span>Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-68882908225086113572019-01-10T00:08:00.000-05:002019-01-10T00:08:23.498-05:00A Year of Reading in Review, Vol 4This is my fourth year of writing up a yearly reading review. In time, that's about equal (more or less) to a college education. I'm not convinced that I've lived up to that in the past, but future reading trends are pointing a more scholarly direction. You can see a type of specialization happening in my reading from this year already -- when I find something I like I really dig down into it.<br />
<br />
There were several of these types of 'marathons' this year. Previous years have definitely had themes to them, no doubt about that, but this year's felt particularly interest driven. Michael Lewis and Hannah Arendt are the two biggest carry-overs from 2017, so I definitely 'completed' the goal of reading more of them in 2018. To date, I think I've read almost every book Lewis has published. I'm probably about halfway through Arendt's works. I've got one of her books on the docket for 2019 but I'm not very optimistic about getting through it. My interests for 2019 are taking a bigger role in dictating what I'm prioritizing reading, and I don't think that Arendt quite makes the cut.<br />
<h3>
Stats</h3>
<div>
I try to keep track of the books that I read in Goodreads. One because it makes it easy to sort and two because they do a nice year end summary of total pages and book counts. I still have to compile publication dates by hand, though. Here's hoping they add that as an easy metric to track at some point in the nearish future. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I hate to say it but I think I'm going to be extra lazy this year and not put together a 'when was it written' histogram. As much as I love knowing the stats, I'm not feeling particularly up to it at the moment. I might come back and update this later, but probably not.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
According to what I've remembered to enter into Goodreads, I either finished (or decided not to finish) 50 books last year, for a total of 15,006 pages. Compared to last year that's almost twice the number of books, but only 5,000 pages (33%) more.</div>
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<h3>
Errata</h3>
<div>
For what it's worth, 2018 felt like the year that reading hard books got a lot easier. Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism in some weird, unfathomable way, marked a big turning point in my personal ability to read 'difficult' works. I mean, I've read a lot of technical, not so easy things over the past decade or so, but something about the subject matter and just Hannah's insightful way of writing feels like it changed the game in terms of both what kinds of work I find myself able to enjoy and my bar for what good writing should read like.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In addition to moar reading, I also did lots more writing in the second half of 2018. Both on this blog as well as my two other media properties, plus Twitter. I also was an 'official' editor for the first time ever in 2018, for The Prepared. I edited the piece they just published on supply chains in Africa.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I also got into reading technical papers and books, more so than any previous year. As with previous years, I spent a lot of time on Twitter -- I probably spent hundreds of hours reading and replying to threads. I wonder how many books that reading time would have translated into. This next week I'm going to try picking up a book in the morning instead of my phone, to see how much farther through my stack I get.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
And boy howdy do I have quite the stack right now. 2018 was a big year for book buying. I read a small fraction of the books that I acquired, and I'm looking forward to lots of great reading in 2019. To be honest, this year-end review is a huge motivator for getting through the books I've got piled up, a bit like looking forward to adding them to my killsheet. If we're being honest, if I stopped buying books today (and trashed my library card) I would, hands down, have enough books to get me through 2019. Is finishing books the point? Yes definitely, because each book represents a specific skill or interest that I'd like to acquire. I'm a very greedy person, in that regard.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
As you're wont to do in your senior year, I've finally hit upon a writing project that is going to require a good amount of reading investigation. I expect this coming year to be filled with books that help support my latest academic interest: quantum rhetoric (you can follow along with my reports back on the project's blog: http://foolproof.ink/).</div>
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<h3>
Reviews + Top Picks</h3>
<div>
Alright, enough exposition. Here's my top picks.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<h4>
Top Picks</h4>
</div>
<div>
<i>The Intelligent Investor </i>by Benjamin Graham. Classic on investing and stocks.<br />
<i>Debt: The First 5000 Years</i>, David Graeber. What is money, really?<br />
<i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i>, Hannah Arendt. Great fucking book on where political movements come from, specifically authoritarian ones.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
My top picks are all about explanation: political and economical and marketable. See below for a bit more info on these, and every(?) other book I read in 2018.</div>
<h4>
Hot Takes</h4>
<div>
<i>The Question Concerning Technology </i>Martin Heidegger, translated by William Lovitt</div>
<div>
7/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
First off, fuck William Lovitt. As far as I can tell, his is the only translation of Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning..." in English and it sucks. It is hot, over done trash. It reads like a graduate student's project. I mean yes, I am grateful that he spent the time to translate it because the essay is really phenomenal but I cannot, unfortunately, recommend the translation. It's on my 'todo' list to put out a translation of the translation -- i.e. something actually readable, because the essay deserves it. Sort of.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you can get past the terrible translation, this essay is marvelous and brilliant and thought provoking and Heidegger is a fucking trolling turkey and I love him for it. Written around the time of the nuclear bomb, Heidegger attempts to situate human's relationship with technology in terms of our general 'nature'. It's an absolutely stunning piece, one that comments deeply on the often talked about relationship between technology and the humanities or arts.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Trouble in Paradise</i>, Slavoj Zizek</div>
<div>
-/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I didn't finish this, as I just couldn't get interested in it. Maybe someday, in the distant future. Maybe someday, in a different reality.</div>
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<i>The Soul of An Octopus</i>, Sy Montgomery</div>
<div>
-/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yet another book I tried and failed to read. This book fit a writing style or pattern that I seem to be struggling to engage with lately. It's a personal memoir with science-y anecdotes thrown in, more portrait than prose or narrative. Or maybe not, I honestly just couldn't get into it. I wanted more of a contemplation on consciousness, but this book wasn't it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<i>The Economic Naturalist, </i>Robert Frank</div>
<div>
2/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The intro to this book alone is far higher than 2/10 but the rest of the book is incredibly not worth reading. It's mostly a compilation of questions about why the world is the way it is, that's attempted to answer via an 'economic' mindset. Entertaining, sort of but it got old really quickly.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview and Other Conversations</i>, Jane Jacobs</div>
<div>
4/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
I've concluded that I've read almost all I can by Jane Jacobs that would be new information. This book, sadly, only reinforced that idea. It's got some great interviews with her, but none of them were really new to me. Ce la vie, eh?</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Making Things Move</i>, Dustyn Roberts</div>
<div>
8/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Oh my goodness this book was absolutely amazing. It's more of a how to for electronics projects, but as someone who knows not very much about circuits or power or how motors work, this book was the perfect introduction. I now own a benchtop power supply because of it and feel 100% more confident in my ability to get motors and other electronic projects up and going. I highly highly recommend this book to anyone who's circuit or electronic project curious.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Worth noting that Dustyn was a professor at ITP, an amazing graduate arts / technology program at NYU.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<i>The Bone Season</i>, Samantha Shannon</div>
<div>
<i>The Mime Order,</i></div>
<div>
<i>The Song Rising,</i></div>
<div>
<i>The Pale Dreamer.</i></div>
<div>
6/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Fantasy series from a British author. Good, light reading about a dystopic London filled with magic and shadowy death creatures. I read them while hiking through Portugal on vacation and while I can't recommend them for a hiking backpack (they're a bit voluminous), they're great fun escapism. I'm looking forward to her next 'standalone', <i>The Priory of the Orange Tree</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Mastering Bitcoin, </i>Andreas Antonopoulos</div>
<div>
8/10</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This book really changed the career game for me this year. I read it in March/April when I started a new job working on a Bitcoin custodial wallet, and I immediately fell in love with Bitcoin. The book is a great primer on the topic from a technical angle, but is a bit far behind now in terms of SegWit and Lightning. If you're looking for a nuts and bolts explanation of how Bitcoin the protocol works, you could do far worse. I even talked my mom into reading this one. She was suitably not impressed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Flash Boys, </i>Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
This book really opened my eyes to the realities of modern stock market trading and dark pools and front running, and weirdly enough, convinced me that stock trading isn't nearly as complicated as the jargon makes it out to be. Caveat emptor: You may not have the same thought reading this book. It's the story of a man named Brad Katsayuma and his quest to build a stock exchange that looks after the interests of its investors, not the hedge fund traders looking to bank in on having a technical edge -- one that lets them cash in on microsecond long information asymmetries. If you're at all interested in how modern money markets work, this book is a must read.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>The Big Short</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
I read a lot of Michael Lewis this year. Because his books are great -- every single one of them. This book tells the story of the financial crash of 2008. I took a couple things away from this story. The first is that willingness to dig in and just read the information that's public and out there sets you apart from 95% of anyone in a field. At least, used to. The other is that even money is political. Spoliers coming but: I can't remember the character's name, but the weird med student turned hedge fund trader that sets up shop in California, makes a big bet on the subprime market collapsing, cashes in big, and then gets abandoned by all of his big investors because of the tactics he pulled to make sure that the bet came off ok. Trust is important, no matter what field you work in.<br />
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<i>Binti, Binti:Home, Binti: Night Masquerade</i> Nnedi Okorafor<br />
6/10<br />
<br />
One of the few sci-fi series I read last year. I really enjoyed getting into some shorter fiction. They didn't quite hit my system construction buttons as much as I would have liked, but I think that was a function of length. Short synopsis is about a woman who leaves her small town backwater for space university.<br />
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<br />
<i>The Tompson Method of Bodywork, </i>Cathy Thompson<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
My voice teacher recommended this book to me for the vocal exercises in it. I'd never heard of bodywork, but this book is revolutionary in it's wholistic look at emotions and aches. I've long believed that emotions and mindstate is heavily influenced by our bodies -- that the mind/body connection is more connected than the little slash between the two words would have you believe (mind is a construct that originates in the body and all that). This is an incredibly practical book full of low key stretching exercises to help you sort out and find apparent and latent pain. I'm terrible at doing body maintenance things regularly, but this book helped me work through some excrutiating back and arm pain earlier this year. Desk work sucks!<br />
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<br />
<i>Men Explain Things To Me</i>, Rebecca Solnit<br />
4/10<br />
<br />
In a lot of ways, this book helped sparked a movement called `mansplaining`. I'm sure it's good, but I don't remember it so I'm giving it low marks. These sorts of tracts are ones I always have trouble holding in my head, which imo is never a great sign for the writing or topic.<br />
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<br />
<i>Eichmann in Jerusalem</i>, Hannah Arendt<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
Forget fucking Anne Frank's diary. This is the book that we should be making high school children read when we teach the fucking Holocaust. Arendt attended the trial of a Nazi party wonk in Jerusalem and wrote back court reports for an American magazine. This book is the compilation of those reports. This is easily one of Arendt's most accessible books, and it's brilliant and scathing and so incredibly damning. It was hugely controversial in the Jewish community when she released it, mostly for how it told the real story of how Jewish communities in Europe inadvertently helped keep the gas stoves full. All in all, this is a world class portrait of bureaucracy and personal responsibility -- issues that are more modern now than ever.<br />
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<br />
<i>Boomerang</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
I read a lot of Michael Lewis this year. I think this one is the one where he goes around to all the countries that got fried by the 2008 financial crash and reports back what the aftermath of the meltdown has been. Destinations include: Greece, Germany, Iceland, and Vallejo, CA. This kind of detail on a financial crisis is what makes Lewis such a great, and reliable story teller. His stuff is good because he does the on the scenes reporting, talking to the characters that no one else seems to think to ask about.<br />
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<i>Reconsidering Jane Jacobs</i>, Max Page<br />
2/10<br />
<br />
Another one I don't really remember the content of. I picked this up a while back when I was looking to get a better understanding of what critical work had been put out in response to Jane Jacobs' theories about economies. The short answer is not much. This book has some rebuttals but none of them were particularly coherent or salient.<br />
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<br />
<i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i>, Hannah Arendt<br />
10/10<br />
<br />
Out of all the books I read in 2018, this is one of the ones that I'm the most proud of having finished. It was a real job to get through it, as the prose is incredibly dense. Dense, but so rich. The level and clarity of Arendt's insights into how human political bodies think and the history of their motivations is unparalleled. This work is a classic, and speaks so soundly to our modern era. I truly think that Arendt will prove to be the philosopher of our modern times. It really upsets me that she's not as widely read as other, more ancient philosophers like fucking Descartes or Plato or Nietzsche or fucking Marx. Like fuck Marx. He doesn't have nearly as much relevant shit to say as Arendt fit into this one book. Briefly, <i>Origins</i> covers three large social trends in Europe from the late 1800's up until the 1940's: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism, and Authoritarianism. Part history lesson, part philosophy, part sociology, Arendt explores the events and motivations for human action that contributed to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and the Bolsheviks in Russia. Meticulously researched, if I let her, she'd have filled up my reading list for the rest of the year with original sources. I did buy <i>Democracy in America</i> on her recommendation, and am looking forward to getting into it in 2019.<br />
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<i>Networks of New York</i>, Ingrid Burrington<br />
3/10<br />
<br />
This book is more like a who's who of network paraphernalia and ISP providers in New York City than the indepth look at computer networking that I was hoping for. It's well researched and the pictures are quite good. I rather liked learning about the companies behind all of the city's connectivity but my initial disappointment at wanting a book on 'networking' rather than equipment and companies is why it's rated so low.<br />
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<br />
Aw yeah here it comes. The great Lewis run. Ready?<br />
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<i>Panic!</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
This book is a compilation of news articles and clippings surrounding the last four biggest stock market crashes that we've had, internationally as well as in the USA. The goal of this book seemed to be to show us how incredibly nothing that we as humans know and understand about financial crashes; both that no one can predict them and that they're devastating. The article format didn't make it the smoothest in terms of narrative, but it did change the way that I think about investing and crashes and that's been incredibly valuable in the last few months.<br />
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<i>The Money Culture</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
6/10<br />
<br />
Compilation of articles Lewis wrote while he was working at an i-bank in NYC in the 80's. Great look at the mentality of men who trade money for a living. A bit dislocated because of the article nature of it.<br />
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<i>Home Game</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
7/10<br />
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Journalistic recounting of the joys and pains of fatherhood. Great short read.<br />
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<i>The New New Thing</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
Profile of Silicon Valley told through the lens of the story of the man who made a zillion dollars at least twice during the first dot com boom (Silicon Graphics and Netscape): Jim Clark. In some big way, Clark was responsible for a lot of the way investors approach Silicon Valley. At least, according to this book he is. Most of this book focused on the huge side project Clark worked on during most of his time during the period that he was supposedly starting big new projects -- a self-sailing sailboat called Hyperion. (Which incidentally is now up <a href="https://www.edmiston.com/yacht-brokerage/yachts/hyperion">for sale.</a>)<br />
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<i>next</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
I loved this one. It's a short series of profiles of people who's lives have massively changed by the Internet, way back in the 90's. It reads incredibly fresh and relevant, even 20 years later. I'm continually amazed at how Michael is able to pick up on interesting trends and movements in society and then find interesting stories to showcase them. Ace job on this one, imo.<br />
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<i>Losers</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
This one's interesting to me, because it doesn't really readily appear on most collections of Lewis's work. I think I found it on Wikipedia, or another book's list of 'other works by'. It's basically a behind the scenes tour from the 1994 campaign trail, from the Republican field as they work towards knocking Bill Clinton off of the pedestal. Ultimately a failure, but it's again fascinating to see how certain, um, trends in the Republican platform have been around for pretty much forever at this point.<br />
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<i>Pacific Rift</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
A look at Japanese business and money culture, from Lewis's time working in the financial industry in the 80's.<br />
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<i>Coach</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
Short book telling the story of Michael's high school ball coach, that's also a meditation on growing up, personal responsibility, and the role of parents in their children's lives these days.<br />
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<i>The Undoing Project</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
I really didn't want to read this book, as I thought the reviews of it weren't that interesting (two economists that work together, who cares?). I was wrong. As usual, Lewis found a great story to tell, this time of two Israeli economists who spent a lot of their time re-evaluating how human emotion and biases impact our actions and judgments. This feels, in a lot of ways, like a furtherance of the themes on bias and numbers that Lewis started with <i>Moneyball</i>.<br />
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<i>The Blind Side</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
Absolutely a great story about how the game dynamics of football changed the value of a particular position, and the rise of one particular low-income boy who just so happened to be the perfect build for that particular, now well valued, position.<br />
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<i>The Fifth Risk</i>, Michael Lewis<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
Recently, Lewis has been working to understand what kind of an impact the coming Trump presidency will have on bureaucracy in America. For this one, Lewis went around and interviewed a bunch of people that worked on the Trump presidential transition as well as long time bureaucrats who left office with the regime change. Fucking terrifying in its conclusions with regards to project management expertise and the current administration.<br />
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<i>Debt: The First 5000 Years</i>, David Graeber<br />
10/10<br />
<br />
Graeber's one of those writers to watch. If I had a million hours, I'd definitely go back and read everything he's written. Which is a hell of a lot, to be honest. In <i>Debt</i>, he digs into the history of money. Where did it come from? I really enjoyed the anthropological view that he took on money. This book definitely changed the way that I think about both commerce and Plato's theory of forms. It also led me to some particularly interesting insights into Bitcoin, which you can check out in this <a href="https://basicbitch.software/posts/2018-07-01-On-the-Nature-of-Bitcoin.html">basicbitch post</a>.<br />
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<i>Thinking in Bets</i>, Annie Duke<br />
-/10<br />
<br />
I didn't finish this because I couldn't stand the narrator. I'd classify this as an overhyped business book. It might have some gems of wisdom in them, but I'm not about to torture myself to get them. Ostensibly about Duke's experience winning poker hands.</div>
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<i>The Intelligent Investor</i>, Benjamin Graham<br />
10/10<br />
<br />
This book is a bit slow going, but really great. If you get it, get the updated copy with commentary from Jason Zweig -- some of the regulation and availability of different securities has changed in the last 60 plus years. Graham 'invented' the concept of value investing, which basically means buying stocks that are worth the money. He also goes into how bonds work, and various different types of investments. I learned a lot and it's really made picking stocks out a bit more fun than it was before. If I was actually taking his advice though, I'd buy index funds. I might try to set this up for 2018.<br />
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<i>Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle</i>, Silvia Federici<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
Collection of essays and articles by feminist Federici. This is one of the most coherent takes I've seen on the chronic undervalue of women's labor -- both at work and in the home. Federici argues that we should be paying women a wage for housework and I couldn't agree more. Between this book and Graeber's <i>Debt</i>, I think I've got a pretty good case for the masculinity of money.<br />
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<i>Distributed Systems</i>, van Steen and Tannenbaum<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
I wanted to take a course on distributed systems, but couldn't make it work with my schedule so instead I read the textbook. That was this one. I managed to get through it in a week, which was no small feat but holy cow did reading this book change the game for me in terms of understanding both Bitcoin and modern problems in computing. I'm not sure I'd totally recommend it though, since the writing style is more case study like than explanative. That being said, it's really clear that the authors know their stuff -- I really appreciated their ability to understand and sort convey the importance behind a bunch of key work in distributed systems.<br />
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<i>The C Programming Language</i>, Kernighan and Ritchie<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
This book is about the C programming language. It's good for people that are new to the language. I really enjoyed the tone that this book was written in and found the exercises incredibly helpful. It's short, to the point, and does a great job of pointing out the nuances of the language in an easy to understand way.<br />
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<i>The GNU Make Book</i>, John Graham-Cunningham<br />
5/10<br />
<br />
Just ok, I think. I picked this up because I don't really understand Make. I understand it a bit better now. This book did a good job of talking through some of the more advanced usages of the make system, but I didn't love it.<br />
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<i>Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah</i>, Richard Bach<br />
6/10<br />
<br />
A short book slash parable about what it'd be like to be god. Pretty good if you're into new age philosophical works.<br />
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<i>Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground</i>, Kevin Poulsen<br />
8/10<br />
<br />
It feels like I read a bunch of books about early Silicon Valley this year. This is one about a hacker named Max Butler who gets into the stolen credit card game, what was easily the biggest 'digital money' available for stealing on the Internet, at least until Bitcoin. It was interesting to read about the Hungry Hackers gang -- it seems like a good number of them still live in the Bay Area.<br />
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<i>Prometheus Rising</i>, Robert Anton Wilson<br />
6/10<br />
<br />
I picked this book up because it teased something about quantum mind states. It turned out to be another new age philosophy slash metaphysics books. It goes through the levels of consciousness and awareness, consolidating thought from Freudian, yogic, tarot practices, to name a few. Thought provoking and a quick read, I learned a lot about tarot from it.<br />
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<i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i>, Douglas Adams<br />
9/10<br />
<br />
Great book by an amazing comic. I was, in some way, struck by how similarly the Adams' prose mimics some short stories I've written in the past. It was eerie to realize that other people had a similar style. About the book: adventure story about getting blasted around the galaxy with a man who's a professional intergalactic hitchhiker. I was really shocked by how close this book gets to discovering quantum rhetoric on its own.<br />
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<i>How to Change Your Mind</i>, Michael Pollan<br />
7/10<br />
<br />
Both a history and personal recounting of psychedelic research in America. Based on the broad conclusions of this book, I would love to see psychadelics both decriminalized as well as institutionalized in terms of being an easily available form of treatment for depression and addiction.<br />
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<i>My Year of Rest and Relaxation</i>, Ottessa Moshfegh<br />
5/10<br />
<br />
Depressing fucking book about what happens if you disappear from your life with the help of a bunch of prescription pain pills. Sort of a great portrait of what a disconnected, disappearing life in New York City is like. I really like reading books based in NYC, so this one was super fun for that.<br />
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Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-92123685942865383362018-11-26T00:33:00.004-05:002018-11-26T00:33:50.537-05:00sickness fallsi feel sick. actually sick. my throat has a bit of a hitch to it, my head hurts, i'm finding it hard to smile, exactly. my stomach hurts. i'm uninterested in work or any one of my myriad of side projects. i've got plenty of books to read and blog post ideas to flesh out, but i'm just not *interested* in doing any of them.<br />
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i'm pretty sure most of this is a combination of failure to exercise along with being in austin and not really having a set routine. i'm here for one more week but i'm still struggling to confront the things that need doing.<br />
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i really hope this is just a failure to exercise and not some deeper bad attitude that seems to seep into and ruin everything. ruins everything!<br />
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coded. i finished reading vigor's article on the gerry principle yesterday and i want to write a rebuttal so badly, but also i know that it's not wrong. it's not wrong!! just that there's other ways of seeing things.<br />
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really it's pretty ingenious and i appreciate the ingeniousness of it. applaud it, even.<br />
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i'm so sick of twitter. i've been doing nothing but checking checking checking the website the past few days it feels awful. absolutely awful. it's part of the malaise, this classy unclassy always on the Internet feeling. writing isn't that, writing is movement, it's coming out of things but damn.<br />
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i went and did watercolor yesterday with my sister and i'm proud of them but i also sort of just wanted them to put up on my internet corkboard. i love aesthetic things. i want more aesthetic things.<br />
<br />
i really want to finish up the upstairs space. it needs a decent amount of work, but it's incredibly doable. i should do it.<br />
<br />
finishing things is incredibly hard. a coworker once told me that the thing that set him apart from other people, his real edge if you will, was that he finished things.<br />
<br />
he *finished* things. i don't have that edge and i feel it pretty roughly recently.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-64521804290234937292018-11-11T02:49:00.001-05:002018-11-11T02:49:57.659-05:00So many blogsI finally feel that I have almost enough blogs and it’s the best feeling I could ever have imagined. There’s one missing still, and I know exactly what it is. Someday I’ll erect it. Not today. Today is not the day.<br />
<br />
I started a new blog for all things post rational. I’m really worried that my writing style is going to choke it off from mass acceptance but I also think my style is the absolute best thing about it. There’s a way to mitigate the real problem, which is a certain hesitation to dig into explaining. I can usually break through this reluctance when I’m high. Not now though, that’s not an option. It’s ok but I can’t help but wonder if it’s an illusion anyway.<br />
<br />
Rastros means traces or signs left behind.<br />
<br />
I’m worried that I’m conflating the term context. I need to more rigorously define it, I think. Actually that feels like a great next piece. I’m really struggling with how to open up the discussion into quantum territory — exploring context seems like a good next bridge piece, as I think it will be a good start into the core of what quantum rhetoric is.<br />
<br />
This is fun, this journey into the unknown path of slow exploration explanation.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I’m in Australia now, having just finished up the Lightning Summit in Adelaide. The apartment I’m staying in is across from the fair grounds. Today, Sunday, there’s an outdoor concert in the park and I’m having trouble placing the music. It’s old, maybe mid-aughts in the US. It’s hard to figure where this set of people would be in American culture. Forget trying to place them in terms of Australian culture.<br />
<br />
We spent a few hours walking on the beach yesterday. I saw a lot of different types of people, small glimpses of overlapping micro cultures and I’m again struggling to feel like I have a good grasp of what the competing factions are. For me, this is the hardest part of traveling to native English destinations, the feeling at home and fluent while also being endlessly barraged by a completely different set of norms. Everything feels just slightly off. It’s a bit nauseating, in the seasickness sense. I like knowing to expect it, as it makes it much easier to enjoy the sensation of.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-35914713137827081712018-11-02T14:45:00.003-04:002018-11-02T14:45:31.747-04:00self express expressa few things.<br />
<br />
Things.<br />
<br />
You know how sometimes Things keep coming across your view of the world? We call them coincidences but they always feel like an inevitable amount of magic.<br />
<br />
Like that odd fascination with seeing the clock, once a day, lined up as 12:34 and then you email me and the timestamp receipt is that, just<br />
<br />
12:34.<br />
<br />
Or how I get into a weird, random obsessive hole about a particular elliptic curve thing, like really go superficially obsessive, only to see it pop up again and again later when following an intuition about what's going to be on the table at the lightning summit next week. Bam. Recognition, in the most small of random ways.<br />
<br />
Or how all those, my, personality tests say "sexual". Scorpio the house of fantasy and sexual energy, enneagram two with a three wing, sexual variant.<br />
<br />
What does it mean?<br />
<br />
It's a struggle to see yourself.<br />
<br />
The thing I like most about personality tests isn't so much what it says about me, rather, I love the foiling that it provides. The ability to see other people, with my own possible blindspots pointed out, a template to hold up and see the edges through. They're fun in the aggregate, in the lines, in the spaces between you and other people that they create or reveal.<br />
<br />
It's not 'other people' in the conjunctive though, other people in the specific, the interactional. Talking to someone and realizing how the lines of difference move through a conversation, through an outlook, a perspective. Where the branches lie, between you and I, and where they're the same and how where you end up at the end of that conversation is a much different place than where you started out and where you would have ended up on your own.<br />
<br />
Is that a sexual thing, to be into finding branching lines of difference? Into digging into the ins and the minutiae of existence, at the boundary lines between people?<br />
<br />
Something in this interpretation lends itself to communality, to interaction. Can you be sexual in a box, population one? You can logic in a box, you can stoic in a box, you can fantasy in a box, sure, but can you sexual in a box?<br />
<br />
Can you? Can you?<br />
<br />
And then Reading through 'other people's' blog posts looking for the difference. The spark, the feeling, the what is it that there is here that there is not elsewhere. Because,<br />
<br />
there is a thing.<br />
<br />
There is a thing here that stands to be delineated and wondering, to myself:<br />
<br />
Does 'sexual' define the difference?Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-24423692280028934622018-10-30T01:42:00.001-04:002018-10-30T01:42:41.388-04:00vittgensteini feel this strange pull toward wittgenstein, an increasing curiosity, largely inspired by the inability to find the book of his that i bought in portland earlier this year.<br />
<br />
i need to read wittgenstein. i know nothing about wittgenstein, only that i must read him. i must read him, i must. i know that he tweeted. i know that he has only one full book. i know that he is quoted on the wikipedia article for occam's razor.<br />
<br />
i have so many books to read. so many blog posts to write. but i need to know this man. i need to know what he thought.<br />
<br />
i need to know why i can't stop thinking about him.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-86428972736644361902018-10-13T12:40:00.001-04:002018-10-13T12:42:07.604-04:00dream log<p dir="ltr">lazer walker and i were at a party and we decided to take a day trip to see the Presidio, which ended up being a ruin on a hill.</p>
<p dir="ltr">we didn't end up making it there, instead we huffy puffied our way up and up. i did the thing i do best, which is figuring out which way to go to keep moving forward. we hunted the top through buildings and schools, and long staircases and steep upward slopes. in a way, it was like finding your way to the Acropolis in Athens.</p>
<p dir="ltr">there were others on the way up, but none were as good at getting up as me.</p>
<p dir="ltr">at one point the trail led through a school that had been shut down for an event and we rang the bell anyway. we wandered around the corner to try to find another in, but eventually the doir opened and we were in a high school gym dance party. everyone was wearing Halloween costumes and damn they could boogie. but so could i! we danced our way out the other end of the school, through hallways of revelry.</p>
<p dir="ltr">we didn't make it to the top before the sunset, which was game over.</p>
Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-90379060481455007212018-10-04T02:34:00.000-04:002018-10-04T02:34:09.042-04:00the worst partthe worst part is watching them disappear you. seeing them slowly back away from the you and yourself, mentally parking themselves into some strange reality that where the you that is you doesn't exist. it's like watching someone choose to live in a different reality. it's painful, because it's a reality that you don't exist in, one that is defined by the static, bad copy of you that they've chosen to live with. or erase entirely.<br />
<br />
it's a process of universe selection that you can't change. or at least, one that i haven't figure out how to arrest, not yet anyway. even if i could stop it or offer some kind of course correction, i'm not sure that i would want to. what universe you choose to live in is just that: your choice. i can't imagine taking that away from you.<br />
<br />
it makes me sad, to know that i'm not cut out for working at big companies. literally cannot do it, am not built for it. it kills me, a piece of me. i hate knowing how much i hate it. i hate knowing that it's not my thing, because i think i've always in some small way wanted it to be a thing i was good at, that i felt comfortable doing. maybe age changes it. i hope age changes it, but also, i think the reality is that i know that i've wasted too much time there already.<br />
<br />
<br />Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-18315103519082149812018-09-21T23:49:00.001-04:002018-09-26T13:34:45.364-04:00it's taken me a long timeIt always feels like it's taken me a long time. But!<br />
<br />
I realized that you don't mind it when I'm myself. Fully and happy and myself. You don't mind when I ask silly questions or make particularly feminine exclamations. I hid them, you know. Not very well mind you because that's not the kind of person that I am, I am.<br />
<br />
Or maybe I was right to hide them the whole time until I could get to a place where I feel safe. Maybe this is the place where I can do and be the thing.<br />
<br />
Is this the place? Maybe this is the place.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-9676821573714943002018-09-04T02:32:00.001-04:002018-09-04T02:32:46.683-04:00rethinkingI've had the opportunity to really rethink some things this weekend and I honestly couldn't have thought of a better way to spend the time. I also read a metric shitton and it was the best thing I could have imagined doing with my time. I feel like I'm finally getting over some really big hang ups with algorithmic thinking and computational problem understanding. It's huge in a way I can't describe, really. The ease with which I can flip through a textbook on programming topics and really grok what they're talking about is mind-bendingly new and radical. I mean, I've had this happen to me before in other domains, but this honestly feels like a new kind of superpower. It's not just a problem domain, it's a way of understanding problem domains.<br />
<br />
Honestly, what's helped the most is all of the difficult, non-fiction book reading I've been doing lately. I've really dug in, in the last year, to reading dense, long form non-fiction books. It felt really crazy to be devoting so much time and energy to reading such difficult stuff in my free time, but man has it paid off in spades. What really helped me get through them was picking stuff that I find genuinely interesting and that's just blow-your-socks off amazing. Which is to say, authors that sincerely reward the effort. Ok ok, it's mostly just Hannah Arendt. Her stuff is so good though. Finding someone that can really reshape the way that you see the world is intensely powerful. I made it through Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. I'm really glad I started with Condition, it was by far the most difficult of the three, but incredibly worthwhile. I've got her short book On Violence floating around somewhere -- I seem to have lost track of it but I'm super keen to get to it, if and when it ever shows up.<br />
<br />
I took my personal vanity, which has always given me much personal grief in the form of guilt, and put it in this new, intelligent, true context. I look at myself because I want to know what I look like. It's a curiosity. The real negativity comes from feeling like I shouldn't want to look, and really, who needs that kind of negativity weighing down their features.<br />
<br />
Slowly drying you out of my head one table turning conversation at a time. It's a weird thing to evict a tenant of any standing. It's not like it's been long, but I know you're better off elsewhere. It's been nice to have my perspective back though, and to really see instead of watching the picture window my fantasies have been projecting out onto reality. They don't call it a reality distortion field for nothing, sweet jesus. One of the biggest reframing of it though, has been to realize how much having you inhabit my head was, in some ways, not unlike having a muse. I agree, it's a very strange and grandiose comparison, but, in some ways, not totally inaccurate. The real tragedy would be to have been inspired by the experience and not embracing that. In fact, more people should be upfront about their muses, traditional gender roles be damned.<br />
<br />
I looked in the mirror today and the first thought was that I'm turning into a terrible looking middle aged woman. Then I tried looking at myself as if I were a man: was I handsome, how strong is my jaw? and, well fam, I don't look particularly striking as a man either. Some things are just good to see.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-64434080645205708812018-08-19T12:26:00.001-04:002018-08-19T12:26:16.521-04:00birthdays and suchI'm going to be an aunt (soon!) and I've been getting high a lot more lately and somehow these two things converged on birthdays and family and I realized that birthdays are a celebration of a new person joining the family and<br />
<br />
I think to fully appreciate how novel this is you have to understand how much I've always (always!) struggled with what my birthday meant, exactly. I have a weird relationship with birthdays, my own especially. It's never felt entirely healthy. The weirdness isn't necessarily related to aging (though truthfully I do try to hide my age from co-workers and professional people now because other people's ageism isn't something I want to have to deal with). I am nebulous number of years old!<br />
<br />
I mean, you can celebrate a birthday without a number. The number has never been that important to me. I usually tell myself that I'm older than I actually am. I've done this since I was 8 or 9, at least, if not earlier. This is mostly because I was the second child and there's always your older sibling there, doing the things that you're 'not old enough' for yet. It's so easy to lie to yourself, to say that you're older. When I was 25, I told myself I was 27. At 28 I was already 30. Now I'm 30 for real, in clock time, and I don't even know what age is any more. I know I'm young, but not as young as I used to be.<br />
<br />
No, my problem with birthdays was always with what it meant, exactly. Why it was special. Was I special? Did it make me a special person that day? But why? I knew what time I was born, and one year, in 3rd grade, waited with anticipation for the clock to hit the time (13:13). When the moment arrived, I stood up on my chair and announced it's my birthday!<br />
<br />
My teacher told me to sit down.<br />
<br />
Some people wear crowns on their birthdays and have whole weeks where they treat themselves to cake and self-indulgence. As I've gotten older, I hide my birthday now. Jealously guarding the actual date and time like a well-kept secret that I secretly wish someone else would also remember.<br />
<br />
One year, in college, I opened up a bar tab for a bunch of friends and paid for everyone to get drunk at my expense at a fancy cocktail place in downtown Austin. Being small-time wealthy for a college student was fun because I could do things like that but in terms of meaning, it didn't mean anything. I haven't done it again.<br />
<br />
What is a birthday? Why do we celebrate them? In America, the land of the individual, they seem, at least in the communities I grew up on, focused on the individual. A celebration of their existence. But now, that my sister is pregnant and I'm about to see a birthday happen, in almost real-time, I've realized that birthdays aren't about the individual. They don't make sense as an individual's celebration, because it isn't something for you, personally, to celebrate. It's a celebration of the day that you became family. That you gained a family, that a family welcomed a new member.<br />
<br />
Honestly, I'd never really understood wedding celebrations before now either. But it makes sense. There's only a few times that a family gains a new member. Families, for better or worse, really are secret societies with very strict member requirements. Birthdays are your initiation into the clan, so are weddings. I see people talk a lot about how family is the friends that you make and the community that you build, and I do believe that's true but how do you celebrate 'births' in that family? Do you? You probably do, but just not in a way that any one explicitly recognizes. Do you change your birthdate, when you create a new family?<br />
<br />
So why celebrate your birthday with friends, when the real celebration should be with your family? Maybe that's how we bridge the gap between birth family and made family -- we celebrate our birthdate with the people that we see as our present family. And that is special, you know.<br />
<br />Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-5699235188453143372018-08-11T11:40:00.001-04:002018-09-26T13:34:22.780-04:00dream log<p dir="ltr">strangest of strange.</p>
<p dir="ltr">at one point i wrote a note in my dream about how the police had forced me to sign a document giving up some right to a trial when and if they decided to deport me, yet i knew it was a lie and i worried what you would think if you found it, the lies, all.</p>
<p dir="ltr">we had been on a field trip. we went to a dance class, and sang an old song. on the way back, in a 7-person van, we passed carnage. cars were down below us, the river was full of them, chock full of hundreds, if not thousands. i was worried about us, about where they had come from, how they had ended up there, so many but our driver just kept going. we were fine. we came around a bend just in time to see a the last of a fleet of expensive, last minute buggies disappearing into the tail of some large boat. a joyride amidst the destruction. it was impossible to tell if the boat had, in some way, caused the wreckage of all the other cars. impossible to tell.</p>
<p dir="ltr">the next thing i knew i was alone at the strangest subway I've ever been to. it had these tracks that were more like moving in walkways. it was a long but narrow station. everyone spoke Finnish and I couldn't understand a thing. it was late. i took the wrong train, by accident, and ended up at this part of town where the trains only ran one direction. even getting back to the train platform felt impossible -- all the walkways were running in the wrong direction. every time someone new arrived, a crowd would cheer. it was here that i wrote the letter, the fake. as i was writing it i knew it was dramatic storytelling, expressing how trapped I felt, but also wondered what anyone would think if they found it. </p>
<p dir="ltr">so bad.</p>
<p dir="ltr">i eventually went outside and it was quiet except for the roaring of a freeway in the distance. there were no cabs in sight and i couldn't communicate with the lone woman, standing there, not even with a paper map. </p>
<p dir="ltr">i resolved to sleep in the bushes.</p>
Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-78518223802258218902018-07-15T03:00:00.003-04:002018-07-15T03:00:51.234-04:00latelyI've been writing a lot more lately, and it feels like it's completely changed my relationship with this blog. Instead of this being the outlet for the first barage of thoughts, I've only got more distilled information for you.<br />
<br />
I find myself wanting to report back from the fields of inquiry, rather than using this as a place for self expression.<br />
<br />
Journaling is so wonderful because it really lets me organize my thoughts and gives me this great fodder of jumping off points for inquiry later, when I'm not in a productive or contemplative mood.<br />
<br />
Two things have come up lately, both related to works that I'm currently reading.<br />
<br />
The first is around investments and returns, precipitated by Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor book*. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book (I just finished chapter 4). There's some interesting discussion about T-Bills, municipal bonds, and preferred vs common stock. I spent some time tonight digging into how bonds are valued (what's a discount versus premium bond means, and how to approximately calculate their value to maturity). I added a couple questions around this to Anki, which feels super good. I figured out how to search for Houston municipal bonds in EMMA, and even ran a couple of calculations of what the YTM (yield to maturity) would be for a few of them. It's pretty cool that EMMA will show you the tax-preferred status of bonds in the titles. Some bonds are subject to the AMT. According to the internet, these trade at a bit of a better rate, so if you're not subject to AMT it might be a good deal. (Most salaried people aren't subject to AMT).<br />
<br />
I also went through and looked up the current dividend status for all of my current stock holdings. About a quarter of the stocks that I own currently have a dividend. The highest rate was 6.69%, the lowest was 0.23%. Of course, rate is a function of the stock price itself so this fluctuates based on the stock's valuation. A dip in stock price would mean that dividend rate would go up.<br />
<br />
The next things I want to look into are: how to invest in bonds using my existing trading account, and what is some currently available corporate paper rates. Write up a small Excel program that can calculate the total return of a stock pick based on both it's stock price gains plus dividends, ideally connected to some data source that can just keep the damn thing updated. Graham's function for how to value a stock was price + dividend return - inflation - tax rate. I'd love to get a calculator that can handle this for me.<br />
<br />
Karthik and I were talking about soccer and I realized that soccer, as a game is still in this really young, malleable state. They update the rules for the game constantly, and no one seems super upset about it. They're really far ahead in terms of understanding how to cut out trolls and protect the game, too. They have this amazing policy of not replaying video of fans that rush the field, so as not to encourage copycats. It's both frustrating and also incredibly amazing. They care about the game, and making it better, and it really shows. I'm sure soccer has other problems, but as a game and community it seems really wholesome.<br />
<br />
I want to start an ETF for soccer. It would grow marvelously over the next 30 years.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The second thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is networking. This particular train of thought was mediated by starting another book, Ingrid Burrington's Networks of New York. As a preface to reading it, I tried to write down everything that I already knew about computer networks, specifically the Internet, worked. It turns out that I get lost somewhere between "TCP is a packet formation and call/response protocol" and "RS232 is a way of sending data between two computers". What's missing is all of the routing and packet switching info.<br />
<br />
Ingrid's book didn't really answer this for me**, so instead I've started reading RFC 791, which lays out the IP (Internet Protocol).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* It's the updated version that was annotated by Jason Zweig around 2002.<br />
** It really reads like more of a who's who and where's what of NYC internet infrastructure.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-19254527807796345152018-07-06T03:18:00.001-04:002018-07-06T03:18:17.157-04:00Putting the Civil back in Civil LibertiesI'd really like to go back to a state of taking civil liberties for granted.<br />
<br />
Civil - funny how that's so close to civility. But think about it means for a second. Civil, like civil discourse. And civic. Community. With liberties. Like the liberty to walk down Main Street in your underwear. That's a "civil liberty" -- one that we, as a populace, grant to other members of our community. Yeah, it's funny but also really empowering to think about, just how simple it is to let someone walk down the street in their skivvies without interfering.<br />
<br />
Civil liberties used to be amazingly localized. It literally was whatever you could do in public and get away with.<br />
<br />
It's worth noting that in this definition, white dudes <i>really do</i> have greater civil liberties than the rest of us. They can literally walk down the street naked and we'll call it "streaking". Ok, not all men, but if you're in a group you're probably golden. I could also run down the street naked, and if I'm with a bunch of people (aka dudes) you'd also call that streaking. If it's just me you might call the cops. Or ... think I'm a slut? Though, technically, slutiness really does imply a certain level of clothing, ironically enough. Actually that's hard to imagine too. It's hard to imagine what running down the street naked looks like as a woman, how people would take it. Catcalls, lots of cat calls. Also probably people trying to follow you.<br />
<br />
Civil liberties are a thing that we grant to one-another. It's a pact between members of a community, a locality. Every locality has these rules, they're just not talked about as much, especially on the news. Instead we concern ourselves with the greater, written laws. At least, that's the case on the Internet and in larger towns and cities. You still hear, occasionally about small town papers which devote a few columns to the local civil liberties people have tried taking (and largely failed, hence their appearance in the paper). Like a police report for someone picking all the apples off a neighbor's tree, or dumping waste in your bin.<br />
<br />
Civil liberties feel increasingly like a thing we have to ask for from a higher power. We've moved the locus of our civil liberties from our actual, participatory communities to this small, concentrated body of about 500 people, at least in the aggregate.<br />
<br />
Well, that was dumb.<br />
<br />
Now it feels increasingly like we're in a position where we have to ask for our civil liberties, and defend them -- from what? Now the cops are arbiters of our civil liberties and sometimes I feel like we don't really question what that means about our community.<br />
<br />
When you think about it, how much actual crime do you think is seen by police? Like, how much crime do they witness for themselves, in person, and decide to intervene as it's going on? Most of my understanding of actual police work comes from either the TV or being pulled over by a traffic cop, both of which are situations where police seeing crime in action are presented as the norm. (At least that cop had <i>better</i> have witnessed me committing crime otherwise what the hell is she doing pulling my ass over?). <br />
<br />
When was the last time that you went to a large gathering of people that had some sort of authorized law figure present? Not as a private citizen, but in their official capacity of 'keeper of the peace', the Rule of Law there to observe the people, not to be of the people. We don't have large, unpoliced celebrations anymore. Not even carnavals! Jesus, not even carnavals. What kind of barbaric society have we become?<br />
<br />
We're incredibly repressed. And we've done it to ourselves. We've gotten to the point where we're all, all of us, waiting to see what the tyrant does to our precious freedoms next. Or trying to see what we can get away with before The Law notices. That's Trump's game, anyway. We're not acting like citizens of a common, civil liberty community, but rather as prisoners who want to see how far they can push their luck before the whole thing comes crashing down.<br />
<br />
Trump's gotten quite far, but he's not the only one.<br />
<br />
What happened to us, as Americans? We used to be a community of smart, self-policing, self-assured men and women. Now we're scared. We're beating each other bloody out of fear, on both sides. We're not acting like communities we all feel as if we're fighting for our civil liberties.<br />
<br />
Fighting for our civil liberties, not as a nation, as individuals.<br />
<br />
We're doing this to ourselves. We, to each other. And for what?<br />
<br />
Congress isn't the one raising the cost of tuition -- members of our community are. Congress isn't issuing debt trap credit cards and housing loans. Congress isn't doubling, or tripling the price of prescription medicines. Members of our community are. We are profiting off of others' misery. We are holding ourselves back from fixing everyone's fear and hatred.<br />
<br />
A different way is possible. We can change. It's not nearly as hard as we make ourselves believe it is, because we've all, in some ways, forgotten what civil liberties actually are, at their root. It's not that hard, we just have to do it. We have to communicate, and we have to grant liberties to our community, to live their lives. All of us, together, with or without our "government" can get broadband for all. We can grant each other civil liberties.<br />
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Us. Each and every one.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-18951856843710477952018-07-04T03:44:00.000-04:002018-07-04T03:44:01.433-04:00journalingI spent a lot of time writing in my journal tonight. I killed one pen and one journal, two things that I've literally never done before in a single sitting. It's weird to do things that you've kind of given up hoping would happen.<br />
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You know, I don't really know what it's like to be a writer. Writing comes naturally to me, but I literally have no idea what my life would be like if I sat at home and spent hours writing every day. The scariest thing is that I know I could do it. If writing at home were exactly like the kind of writing that I did in my journal, I could do it, no problem.<br />
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I don't, I think, because I struggle to think what the point or purpose of that writing would be. Undriven writing. Actually, all writing sort of strikes me as dangerously superfluous. Superfluous in that I'm afraid I might write too much and not ever be able to go back and read it all.<br />
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Sometimes I think that the reason that I don't write more, like actually truly write more, is because I'm afraid that if I do I won't have enough time to go back and read it all.<br />
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Twitter is like the journal that I never could bring myself to have.<br />
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Does the Twitter tweet for me? I tweet for thee.<br />
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Things I've been obsessed with, a list in no particular order:<br />
Werner Herzog. I went so far as to read/watch a good number of the films and books he lists as required reading for his film workshop that he runs from time to time. I wonder how many people actually apply every year. Do you think it's in the hundreds? The thousands? For some reason I find it hard to believe that more than a few hundred people spend enough time and energy making film that they have the requisite raw material to submit to Herzog for a film. That guy that did the amazing one man screen show. Do you think he even knows who Herzog is? Do you think that film would be enough to get him into the class? These are good questions to ask.<br />
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Kelly Wearstler. When I first saw her work, featured in a Architectural Digest issue via the house of a woman she worked with, that she had helped do the interior decorating for, I was out and out horrified. It was really awful, but in a consistent way. For some reason, I found her on instagram and started following her account and I really love it. I love Kelly Wearstler's style. Her weird big, exotic material hands. Geometric forms, sharp black edges. A certain heaviness. I love it. I love it love it love it.<br />
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I once spent an entire year trying to get a picture of the sun either rising or setting. I think I managed to get about 2/3rds of the days.<br />
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Richard Feynman. I haven't read all his books, but they're all gems. Did you know he learned Portuguese, like me? His book on light, QED, is one of my all time favorite books. I forget sometimes how much I like thinking about the universe. I told my mom about it once and I think at some level she was surprised that I was able to read it? I don't know it was weird.<br />
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The Wizard of Oz. I softcore wanted to be Dorothy for as long as I can remember. I didn't name my dog Toto because she's not a Toto, but she does really look a lot like Toto. I discovered the actual Wizard of Oz books when I was in grade school and read all of them. Like literally as many of them as I could get my hands on. Some summers we used to go and stay at my grandparent's for a few days or a week or two and one time my Grandmother took us to the central library and it was crazy good. I loved it. They had a bunch of Wizard of Oz books that I had never read. Until I had a teacher in the 6th grade who actually really truly loved the Wizard of Oz in this really outwardly obvious way and rather than bond with her over our shared love of Oz, I got really weird about it and realized that I must truly not have loved Oz and Dorothy as much as this woman did so well you know that was that. I spent a lot of time analyzing how my affinity for the Wizard of Oz as a story wasn't as deep or authentic as this woman who taught me English.<br />
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Jane Jacobs. I've read almost all of her books. I've currently got her first book, the only one she ever published as a Butzner, in my physical to read stack. It's the only one that she's authored that I haven't read.<br />
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Hannah Arendt. She's so incredibly good, her books are worth the energy it takes to get through them. I'm constantly amazed at how much writing she manages to put out that's so incredibly well tied together. I'm not sure I could ever write that much, that coherently. So far I've read just her big works: Eichmann in Jerusalem, Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Human Condition. They're all incredibly different in terms of style and goals, and it's impressive how wide ranging and insightful they are. I have a short book of hers, On Violence, in my to read stack.<br />
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BItcoin and the Lightning network. This is an incredibly recent obsession. I read one book on Bitcoin three months ago and now I'm obsessed. It's embarrassing, how quickly and vocally I feel like I get into things.<br />
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Hardware. Like kind of low key, but it feels low key in the way that my Wizard of Oz affinity is low key. I'm incredibly obsessed with it and yet it seems entirely passive, in some weird ways.<br />
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House furnishing and decoration and trends. It started with the Kon Mari book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up. I got really into working with space. You know, a lot of things in my life feel cluttered right now. My clothing, the upstairs room that's supposed to be my workspace. Where I keep my keys and Ginger's leash. The shoes downstairs. My career. Personal relationships. How I'm doing in terms of working toward actual life goals, and not imagined ones.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-54242436626771881072018-07-03T00:11:00.000-04:002018-07-03T00:11:39.183-04:00ambitionsomeone once told me that my ambition would eat me and<br />
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they were right.<br />
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it feels so much like my insides have been eaten out and all that's left is<br />
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this shell.<br />
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(there's no echo)Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-16688966766931622092018-06-30T12:28:00.000-04:002018-06-30T12:28:39.109-04:00dream logwe were moving. it was a group effort. we had rented one of those big 18 wheeler trucks and used it to port everyone's things around. everyone from the office needed to get their stuff but i was in charge of moving the truck. i wasn't bad at it, which was weird because i thought that i would be. we had all tossed our stuff into the back of the truck, luggage and things mostly, like hiking backpacks and pillows. i moved the truck close to the new place so everyone could unload it. luckily there was parking out front, but of course there was parking, it was a fire zone only. the building was like a north williamsburg warehouse that had been transplanted somewhere tropical, i parked and knocked but no one came. we sat out there, sweating and no one came. i rang the doorbell and pounded, small diminutive pounds, on the large wooden door and no one came. eventually i just went inside and told some people and then they all showed up but the experience of no answer left me shook. i left the van parked for a bit and waited inside. when i went back out to move it, it was empty but it was also time for us to leave. we needed to get on the road before rush hour and head downtown to visit some old teachers but there was no way to do it all, you know, before the traffic started. we left in a hurry.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306961524636132667.post-33935136003407876922018-05-28T16:38:00.001-04:002018-05-28T16:38:43.052-04:00Reflections on TotalitariansmI'm still working on Hannah Arendt's <i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i>. It's dense and a great read and I'd also very much like to be finished with it soon, mostly so I can move on to the other books that are piling up.<br />
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It's slow going because of how incredibly dense it is. I'm pretty sure that what would be 100 pages in most sci fi books of the day are crammed into 20 pages in this particular copy.<br />
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I'm not firmly into the last section, Totalitarianism. I finished up chapter 10 today (The Temporary Alliance between the Mob and the Elite) and got through the first half of chapter 11 (Totalitarian Propaganda).<br />
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Generally speaking, while it's obvious that Arendt has read thousands of pages of source material and has a very good understanding of the order of events and internal machinations of the Bolshevik and Nazi movements, she doesn't do a great job of laying out the historical events. As a reader coming almost 80 years later, with little to no knowledge of the series of events or speeches or rallies of either the Nazis or the Bolshevic movement, it's sometimes hard to follow the series of events that she describes. I understand that her aim isn't to provide an account of events, but rather to provide analysis, the situate the happenings in a broader framework and provide a commentary overlay that organizes the various aspects of the phenomenon into categories and tendencies, like "A Classless Society" and 'Race Thinking" and "The Decline of the Nation-State". She does this brilliantly, but I am feeling a bit as though I'm going to need to do a lot more reading in order to fully understand the underlying events that her analysis sits on top of. Luckily, her footnotes and bibliography provide a great starting place. Unluckily, I don't really think I have the time to read them now. There's too many other things that I'm interested in reading after this. Namely, de Toqueville's <i>Democracy in America</i> feels incredibly urgent. And then for work, I feel some amount of urgency to really dig into Benjamin Graham's <i>The Intelligent Investor</i>. Finally, <i>Debt, the First 5,000</i> <i>Years</i> looks amazing.<br />
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Notes from the section on the elites alliance with the masses:<br />
- Arendt's analysis points towards a certain vengeance of the "elite" to punish the society that wouldn't accept them, or take them seriously. Thus, the rich and powerful align themselves with the masses with the goal of forcing society to listen to them, and finally take them seriously, if not by just completely wiping them out then at least elevating their own platform and sycophants to the level of culture previously occupied by a 'high society' that has largely been barred to them. It's notable that Arendt's use of the word 'elite' wouldn't be recognizable today. There has definitely been a categorization of a cultural elite that certain want to be rich and powerful people (cough Trump) have thrust themselves upon, using the anger of the mob to propel themselves there. We don't call Trump's well-to-do friends the elite, but we do recognize them as a portion of society that is wealthy and not the hoi polloi, and yet, they aren't part of high society or society in general in any recognizable way. We don't really have a word or cultural signifier for the Trumps, or at least didn't used to. "Elites" has been co-opted to mean something else.<br />
- "I am the movement, and the movement is me". It's fascinating how closely the Trump movement is tied to the cult of personality. I didn't realize how incredibly 'Fuhrer' based the Nazi movement was; it's interesting to see the parallels between 'Trumpites', who ostensibly wouldn't have a movement at all without Trump. Trump does an ok job of recognizing his followers (the red states map, the call outs to 'my people', trying to get help to people that voted for him), yet doesn't seem to have near the grasp of loyalty.<br />
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Notes on propaganda:<br />
- I hadn't realized how much of Nazi propaganda was centered on secrecy. There were things that those not in the movement weren't allowed to know, and the organization on a whole was entirely geared toward keeping a knowledge gap between those considered insiders of the party and those that were mere sympathizers or external audiences. The Nazis would say one thing to the external audience, things that were lighter versions of what their actual intentions were.<br />
- At the same time, they got credit for being 'forthright' in a way that no 'established' or self-respecting politician would. The Nazis campaigned on antisemitism and were open about checking potential party members' birth charts. Trump has been anything but quiet about the things he wants to do with regards to throwing out immigrants and building a wall. But the people of the Right have been wanting a wall and complaining loudly about immigrants for decades.<br />
- A large amount of persuasive totalitarianism begins by pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of a system, and boldly claiming the immorality that the establishment deludes itself into saying it doesn't do, but that it actually does. This is why the current political candidates that don't accept corporate money are the most powerfully poised as an anti-dote to our current political malaise.<br />
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General thoughts:<br />
- The Bolsheviks and the Nazis were a lot smarter than I feel I've been conditioned to give them credit for.<br />
- I didn't realize that Stalin's doublespeak was a nod to a deep internalization of the Hegelian dialectic.Neil Saitughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430041602206276231noreply@blogger.com0