Finished reading: I enjoyed Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson. Some of his usual attention to detail without getting too dry and a nice emphasis on Chinese culture and historyπŸ“š

Finished reading: Although difficult to describe, I enjoyed The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. A strange, slightly creepy story about modern work life πŸ“š

Finished reading: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik is a great sequel to A Deadly Education πŸ“š

Finished reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator by Keith Houston is more fun than you might expectπŸ“š

Finished reading: My Murder by Katie Williams has an intriguing premise, good twists, and is well written. A great bookπŸ“š

My plan for the week

Feet on a deck chair with palm trees and blue sky

Finished reading: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older is a fun, short murder mystery on a gas giant planet πŸ“š

Finished reading: I enjoyed My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee more than I expected. A great testament to hard working, talented friends. Also a great excuse to revisit Rush’s music. I’d missed their last few albums and it was a pleasant surprise to discover themπŸ“š

A toasted old fashioned kind of night

Old fashioned in a glass with ice beside the bottle from BarChef

Trying to avoid Apple’s Journal app πŸ“”

I have 9,698 entries in DayOne across 4,312 days. This is one of my favourite and most consistently used apps. And, yet, somehow I am tempted to switch to Apple’s Journal app. This post is to remind me why that is a bad idea. So, here’s a list of DayOne features I use that Journal doesn’t have: I use DayOne on my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and the web. Journal is only on the iPhone.

Read More

πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ Misty run today

Path through some trees with white mist permeating everything

πŸ”— How to Talk to Whales - The Atlantic

This would be a first-contact scenario involving two species that have lived side by side for ages. I wanted to imagine how it could unfold. I reached out to marine biologists, field scientists who specialize in whales, paleontologists, professors of animal-rights law, linguists, and philosophers. Assume that Project CETI works, I told them. Assume that we are able to communicate something of substance to the sperm whale civilization. What should we say?

Fascinating to think what this would be like and what we might learn

🎡 TANGK - Idles

I’m enjoying their new sound

TANGK - Idles poster

πŸ”— “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel | Strong Songs: A Podcast About Music

Strong Songs Season Six kicks off with a widely requested classic: Peter Gabriel’s 1986 yearner “In Your Eyes.” Because why hire one rhythm section when you can hire two for twice the price?

🎧 A favourite song on a favourite podcast

Finished reading: Although I’m far from having a crisis, I’m well into midlife. So, Midlife by Kieran Setiya was a powerful book.

I could relate, when Setiya describes what he expects to feel after he finishes writing the book:

If experience is anything to go by, the hole will be filled soon enough. There will be another project: a class to teach, a book to read, an article to write. I will move on. But the movement is like running on a treadmill. Life is a succession of projects, each one left behind, their numbers slowly adding up. What the future holds is only more of the achievements, and the failures, that make up my past. It will differ only in quantity from the life I have already lived, a mere accumulation of deeds.

I won’t spoil the outcome. Suffice it to say that this book has lots of good advice, written clearly and with humour.

Setiya also has a good session on Waking Up.

πŸ“š

πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ Back to cold, snow, and ice on today’s run

Icy and snow trail. Overlaid with run stats: 16km in 1.5 hours

Investing in the MacSparky Productivity Field Guide βœ…

There is absolutely no shortage of productivity methods and content out there, especially in the β€œinfluencer” racket. I’m quite sure that there is no one true way to be productive. In fact, I think there’s some merit to switching up my approach on occasion, just to reinvigorate my interest. To that end, I’ve really appreciated the MacSparky Productivity Field Guide. I find the roles based approach suits me really well, as I try to juggle multiple parts of my life, while the intentionality it creates helps with prioritizing and staying engaged.

Read More

πŸ”— The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics

What is surprising is how poorly we still understand global ant societies: there is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today. It might seem like a familiar story, but the more time I spend with it, the less familiar it seems, and the more I want to resist relying on human analogies. Its characters are strange; its scales hard to conceive. Can we tell the story of global ant societies without simply retelling our own story?

Fascinating

Finished reading: I enjoyed Making It So by Patrick Stewart. Although not as much Captain Picard as some Trekkies might want, I appreciated the broader view of his career πŸ“š

Great video from Casey Neistat. I too, somehow, continue to get older and am trying to hold on to some goals.