Microposts

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 history📚

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 them📚

🔗 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

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.

📚

🔗 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

📚 These Wheel of Time books are long! I only got 1/3 of the way through The Shadow Rising before the library loan ended

Finished reading: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is rather strange. Some really lovely, poetic passages about the tranquility and beauty of Mars, coupled with buffoonish characters from Earth. I totally get this could be intentional, though it is jarring 📚