Media diet for Q2 2018

July 1, 2018 by Luke 3 Comments

Books

Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Interesting, albeit obviously not convincing. Just me trying to get a sense for how international relations debates work.
Rosling, Factfulness. Decent for what it’s trying to be. Similar in spirit and content to Enlightenment Now, but narrower in scope and written for a wider audience.

These days I finish fewer books than I used to, and prefer to skip around more.

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this quarter:

Joe Fiedler: Like, Strange (2017)
Taal: Skymind (2003)
Circus Maximus: “Biosfear” (2005)
Sameer Gupta: A Circle Has No Beginning (2018)
Toby Fox: Undertale (2016)
Blanck Mass: “D7-D5” (2016)
Baaba: Baaba w Akwarium (2008)
Maestro Trytony: Enoptronia (1997)
Eskaton: 4 Visions (1981)
Danielle Dax: Pop-Eyes (1983)
Ex Orkest: Een rondje Holland (2001)
Uz Jsme Doma: Uprostred Slov (1990)
Godley & Creme: L (1978)
Visitors: Visitors (1974)
Nik Bartsch: Awase (2018)
Guapo: Five Suns (2004)
Kingdom Come: Journey (1973)
Samla Mammas Manna: Familjesprickor (1980), Kaka (1999)
Von Zamla: Zamlaranamma (1982), No Make Up! (1983)
Munju: Moon You (1978)
Magma: K.A. (2004), Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré (2009), Félicité Thösz (2012), Šlaǧ Tanƶ (2015)
Offering: Part 1/2 (1986), Part 3/4 (1990), A Fïïèh (1993)
Jean Claude Vannier: L’enfant Assassin Des Mouches (1972)
Serge Gainsbourg: “Cargo Culte” (1971)
Laura Marling & Mike Lindsay: LUMP (2018)
Jon Hassell: Listening to Pictures (2018)
Barney Wilen: Dear Prof. Leary (1968)
Caveman Hughscore: Caveman Hughscore (1995)
Brainstorm: Smile a While (1972)
Anna von Hausswolff: Dead Magic (2018)
Kamasi Washington: Heaven & Earth (2018)
Maneige: Les porches (1975)
John Coltrane: Both Directions at Once (2018, rec. 1963)
Gong: I See You (2014)
However: Sudden Dusk (1981)
Robert Wyatt: ’68 (2013)
Weidorje: Weidorje (1978)
Virgil Moorefield: Distractions On the Way To the King’s Party (1994)

Had completely forgotten about, now rediscovered and really liked:

Arthur Brown: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (1968)
Pearls Before Swine: Balaklava (1968)
Les Maledictus Sound: Les Maledictus Sound (1968)
David Axelrod: Songs of Innocence (1968)
Van Der Graaf Generator: H To He Who Am The Only One (1970)
Nektar: Journey To The Center Of The Eye (1972), A Tab in the Ocean (1972)
Jade Warrior: Last Autumn’s Dream (1972), Waves (1975), Kites (1976), Way of the Sun (1978)
Gentle Giant: Acquiring the Taste (1971), Three Friends (1972)
Samla Mammas Manna: Samla Mammas Manna (1971), Måltid (1973), Klossa Knapitatet (1974), Schlagerns Mystik (1978)
Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: Darwin! (1972)
Area: Arbeit Macht Frei (1973), Caution Radiation Area (1974), Crac! (1975)
Picchio dal Pozzo: Picchio dal Pozzo (1976)
Magma: Köhntarkösz (1974), Üdü Ẁüdü (1976), Attahk (1978)
Catherine Ribeiro: Paix (1972)
The Flock: The Flock (1969)
It’s a Beautiful Day: It’s a Beautiful Day (1969)
Gong: Camembert Electrique (1971)
Hugh Hopper: Hopper Tunity Box (1977)
Hatfield and the North: Hatfield and the North (1974)
Greaves / Blegvad: Kew. Rhone. (1977)
Slapp Happy: Acnalbasac Noom (1982, rec. 1973)
Peter Blegvad: The Naked Shakespeare (1983)
National Health: National Health (1978), Of Queues and Cures (1978)
La Düsseldorf: La Düsseldorf (1976)
Popol Vuh: Seligpreisung (1973), Einsjäger & Siebenjäger (1974), Letzte Tage, Letzte Nächte (1976), Sei still, wisse ich bin (1981)
Eberhard Schoener: Trance-Formation (1977)
Agitation Free: Malesch (1972)
Michael Hoenig: Departure from the Northern Wasteland (1978)
Between: Einstieg (1971), And the Waters Opened (1973), Dharana (1974)

Why so many re-discoveries this quarter? I’m listening through the history of rock music again and constructing this playlist along the way. Many great albums aren’t listed above because I hadn’t forgotten about them.

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Christopher Guest: Mascots (2016)
Various: Atlanta, season 2 (2018) ★
Blue Planet II (2017) ★
Ramsay: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Linklater: Last Flag Flying (2017)

Games

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Alto’s Odyssey

Old favorites

Discovered long ago…

Book: Understanding Comics by McCloud
Music: “Starless” by King Crimson
Movie/TV: Dogville by Lars von Trier
Game: Lemmings by DMA Design

Media I’m looking forward to, Q3 2018 edition

July 1, 2018 by Luke Leave a Comment

Added this quarter:

Chater, The Mind Is Flat (Aug 2018)
Quammen, The Tangled Tree (Aug 2018)
North, How to Invent Everything (Sep 2018)
Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Sep 2018)
Andrew, The Secret World (Sep 2018)
Hooper, Superhuman (Sep 2018)
Liberman & Tversky, Critical Thinking (Oct 2018)
Poldrack, The New Mind Readers (Oct 2018)
Rees, On the Future (Oct 2018)
Williamson, Doing Philosophy (Nov 2018)
Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe (Dec 2018)
Kahneman et al., Noise (TBD)
Portmore, Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism (TBD)
Ritchie, Hypeology (TBD)
Chandor, The Triple Frontier (2019 film)

Books

bold = especially excited

[Read more…]

Projects I wish I had time for

May 27, 2018 by Luke 10 Comments

Everyone Is Lying Again: A blog dissecting how, in response to the majority of even slightly controversial or partisanship-evoking news stories, all “sides” (right, left, etc.) grossly misrepresent the facts and/or their scientific, historical, or cultural context. Probably one dissection per week, allowing time for substantial research for each post.
The Story of Rock Music: This podcast would guide the listener through the history of rock music, playing extended clips of >10 tracks per episode and helping the listener hear exactly how different styles developed, split off from their roots, and recombined later. For example in one episode I might explain what a raga is and play an example clip, then explain what modal vs. chordal improvisation is and play contrasting clips, then explain what blues rock is and play an example clip, then explain what post-bop jazz is and play an example clip, and finally talk through (with example clips) how these forms were fused together in the classic Mike Bloomfield track “East-West,” one of the earliest examples of “raga rock.” Episodes would proceed in roughly chronological order, so that the listener could “hear” the evolution of music over time, as later episodes build on the stylistic evolutions described in past episodes.
Evolving Sounds: Relatedly, I’ve long wanted to research, compose, and record a many-hour continuous piece of music that recapitulates the entire history of “Western music” (which is better documented than other traditions). The piece would begin with sections composed in accordance with scholarly guesses about how prehistoric music might have sounded, eventually transition into the earliest styles from recorded history, then evolve into styles covered in e.g. Burkholder’s History of Western Music, up to the present day. This is a pretty obvious idea and I’m upset that nobody has attempted it yet.
Everything is Awesome and We’re All Going to Die: This book would start off like a more thorough and epistemically scrupulous version of the empirical sections from Enlightenment Now, and would then proceed to explain in detail why global catastrophic risk is nevertheless increasing over time via Moore’s Law of Mad Science, inescapable asymmetry in the difficulty of creation vs. destruction, inadequate equilibria, and related phenomena.
Better Moral Judgments: Moral philosophy makes little attempt to estimate what our moral intuitions would be if we were smarter, better informed, etc. Works like The Righteous Mind and Moral Tribes are baby steps in the right direction, but still far less ambitious than what I sketch here, which could easily be expanded into quite a large research program. But I’d start with a book sketching out that research program and working through some initial examples.

Books, music, etc. from Q1 2018

April 1, 2018 by Luke 14 Comments

Books

Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine. Pretty good, scary.
Kwak, Economism. Not ideal, but still: many people need to read an economics 101 textbook, and many other people need to read Economism.
Simler & Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain. Pretty great, especially given the authors’ own caveat that “we are no doubt wrong in many places, not just in the details, but also in some larger conclusions” and that “to demonstrate that hidden motives are common and important” they “don’t need to be right about everything.” Though I wish it was more clearly flagged that one key reason much of the book is likely wrong is just that the underlying research is false, as must be true for ~all books summarizing large amounts of “soft” science.
Caplan, The Case Against Education. I read about half. I don’t know much about the research in this area but I personally find the “mostly signaling” model more intuitive than the alternatives. A good example of synthesizing important relevant data from multiple fields (not just from economics).
Pinker, Enlightenment Now. Generally pretty good. I disagree with the section on existential risks and AI, and I disagree with Pinker’s weird transcendental argument in favor of humanism, and I’m less confident in humanism’s role in human progress than Pinker seems to be, and his account of “the Enlightenment” is inaccurately clean & rosy, and some his data are exaggerated and cherry-picked, but shrug, I generally agree with most of the book, and with the overall thesis about human history. Pinker also skips over the history of likely-sentient animal welfare, but at least he tweeted Jacy Reese’s essay about that.
Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader. I read this on Pinker’s recommendation of Sowell in general. These short essays didn’t exhibit much of anything special. Maybe he’s more impressive in longer formats.
Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon. I found it pretty informative, but I’m still far too much a China novice to know whether Pillsbury’s overall take is more reasonable than the other high-level takes I’ve read.
Rid, Rise of the Machines. Fine, I guess.

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this quarter:

Rubblebucket: Survival Sounds (2014)
Hammock: Mysterium (2017)
Weaves: Wide Open (2017)
Pryapisme: Hyperblast Super Collider (2013), Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium (2017) [wow!]
Ex Eye: Ex Eye (2017)
Kashiwa Daisuke: Re:RED (2017)
Arrigo Barnabé: Clara Crocodilo (1980)
Flat 122: The Waves (2005)
Nils Frahm: All Melody (2018)
Snarky Puppy: We Like It Here (2014), and especially this keyboard solo [wow!]
Son Lux: Brighter Wounds (2018)
Wacław Zimpel & Kuba Ziołek: Zimpel/Ziołek (2017)
Daniel Hart: A Ghost Story (2017)
Ulver: Blood Inside (2005), The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2017)
Vitor Araújo: Levaguiã Terê (2016)
A.A.L. (Against All Logic): 2012-2017 (2018)
Superorganism: Superorganism (2018)
inside//outside: inside//outside (2013)
Adam Neely: Exigence (2015)
Olli Hirvonen: New Helsinki (2017)
Sunwatchers: II (2018)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Benson & Moorhead: Resolution (2012)
Gertwig: Lady Bird (2017) ★
Gillespie: I, Tonya (2017) ★
Pesce: The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Zahler: Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
Safdie brothers: Good Time (2016)
Lehmann: Blue Jay (2016)
Soderbergh: Mosaic (2018)
Wright: Baby Driver (2017)
McDonagh: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) ★
Vigalondo: Colossal (2016)
Reeves: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) ★
Soderbergh: Logan Lucky (2017) ★
Anderson: Phantom Thread (2017)
Various: Top of the Lake, Season 2 (2017)
Richards: Pushed to the Edge (2016)
Iannucci: The Death of Stalin (2017) ★
Franco: The Disaster Artist (2017) ★
Baker: The Florida Project (2017) ★

Games

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Skyrim
Stardew Valley
Rayman Legends
Celeste ★

Media I’m looking forward to, Q2 2018 edition

April 1, 2018 by Luke Leave a Comment

Added this quarter:

Agrawal et al., Prediction Machines (Apr 2018)
Leigh, Randomistas (Apr 2018)
Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets (Apr 2018)
Schilthuizen, Darwin Comes to Town (Apr 2018)
Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct (Apr 2018)
Winchester, The Perfectionists (May 2018)
Fox & Christoff, The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought (May 2018)
Pearl & Mackenzie, The Book of Why (May 2018)
Rhodes, Energy: A Human History (May 2018)
Boyer, Minds Make Societies (May 2018)
Posner & Weyl, Radical Markets (May 2018)
Baumberg, The Secret Life of Science (May 2018)
Sanger, The Perfect Weapon (Jun 2018)
Cirkovic, The Great Silence (Jul 2018)
Sejnowski, The Deep Learning Revolution (Aug 2018)
Quammen, The Tangled Tree (Aug 2018)
Kandel, The Disordered Mind (Aug 2018)
Sunstein, The Cost-Benefit Revolution (Aug 2018)
Johnson, Farsighted (Sep 2018)
Lee, AI Superpowers (Sep 2018)
Ausiello, The Making of a New Science (Oct 2018)
Page, Model Thinker (Nov 2018)
Carroll, Something Deeply Hidden (2019)
Sumner, The Money Illusion (TBD)
Seth, some book about consciousness (TBD)
Wellerstein, some book (TBD)
Tetlock, another book about forecsting tournaments (TBD)
Kaufman, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (TBD 2019) [film]

Books

bold = especially excited

[Read more…]

My worldview in 5 books

March 22, 2018 by Luke 4 Comments

If you wanted to communicate as much as possible to someone about your worldview by asking them to read just five books, which five books would you choose?

My choices are below. If you post your answer to this question to Twitter, please use the hash tag #WorldviewIn5Books (like I did), so everyone posting their list can find each other.

1. Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies

(2015; ebook/audiobook/podcast)

A singular introduction to critical thinking, rationality, and naturalistic philosophy. Both more advanced and more practically useful than any comparable guide I’ve encountered.

2. Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

(2016; ebook/paperback/audiobook)

If Yudkowsky’s book is “how to think 101,” then Carroll’s book is “what to think 101,” i.e. an introduction to what exists and how it works, according to standard scientific naturalism.

3. William MacAskill, Doing Good Better

(2015; ebook/paperback/audiobook)

My current favorite “how to do good 101” book, covering important practical considerations such as scale of impact, tractability, neglectedness, efficiency, cause neutrality, counterfactuals, and some strategies for thinking about expected value across diverse cause areas.

Importantly, it’s missing (a) a quick survey of the strongest arguments for and against utilitarianism, and (b) much discussion of near-term vs. animal-inclusive vs. long-term views and their implications (when paired with lots of empirical facts). But those topics are understandably beyond the book’s scope, and in any case there aren’t yet any books with good coverage of (a) and (b), in my opinion.

4. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

(2018; ebook/paperback/audiobook)

Almost everything has gotten dramatically better for humans over the past few centuries, likely substantially due to the spread and application of reason, science, and humanism.

5. Toby Ord, forthcoming book about the importance of the long-term future

(forthcoming)

Yes, listing a future book is cheating, but I’m doing it anyway. The importance of the long-term future plays a big role in my current worldview, but there isn’t yet a book that captures my views on the topic well, and from my correspondence with Toby so far, I suspect his forthcoming book on the topic will finally do the topic justice. While you’re waiting for the book to be released, you can get a preview via this podcast interview with Toby.

A few notes about my choices

These aren’t my favorite books, nor the books that most influenced me historically. Rather, these are the books that best express key aspects of my worldview. In other words, they are the books I’d most want someone else to read first if we were about to have a long and detailed debate about something complicated, so they’d have some sense of “where I’m coming from.”
Obviously, there is plenty in these books that I disagree with.
I didn’t include any giant college textbooks or encyclopedias; that’d be cheating.
I wish there was a book that summarized many of my key political views, but in my case, I doubt any such book exists.
Economic thinking also plays a big role in my worldview, but I’ve not yet found a book that I think does a good job of integrating economic theory with careful, skeptical discussions of the most relevant empirical data (which often come from fields outside economics, and often differ from the predictions of economic models) across a decent range of the most important questions in economics.
These books are all quite recent. Older books suffer from their lack of access to recent scientific and philosophical progress, for example (a) the last several decades of the cognitive science of human reasoning, (b) the latest estimates of the effectiveness of various interventions to save and improve people’s lives, (c) the latest historical and regional estimates of various aspects of human well-being and their correlates, and (d) recent arguments about moral uncertainty and what to do about it.

As always, these are my views and not my employer’s.

Favorite podcasts of 2017

January 15, 2018 by Luke 6 Comments

(no order)

S-Town
Ponzi Supernova
Crimetown
Planet Money
StartUp
Slate Star Codex
Everything Hertz
Casefile
Reply All
This American Life
Pessimists Archive
Waking Up
EconTalk
80,000 Hours
Rationally Speaking
The Weeds
The Daily
Conversations with Tyler
The Insight
Criminal
Radiolab
More Perfect
Ben Shapiro Show [good for popping my filter bubble, but also see here]

Books, music, etc. from Q4 2017

January 1, 2018 by Luke 2 Comments

Books

Berezow & Campbell, Science Left Behind: Meh.
Biederman & Bennis, Organizing Genius: Some interesting stories, not sure how reliable they are, authors make no attempt to get data on the question.

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: The Kid (2017)
James Holden: The Animal Spirits (2017)
Daniele Luppi & Parquet Courts: MILANO (2017)
Kristofer Maddigan: Cuphead (2017)
Tale of Us: Endless (2017)
The Great Harry Hillman: Tilt (2017)
Schnellertollermeier: Rights (2017)
Bent Knee: Say So (2016)
The Kandinsky Effect: Somnambulist (2015), Pax 6 (2017)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Denis Villenueve: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ★
Mike Mills: 20th Century Women (2016)
Various: Top of the Lake, season 1 (2013) ★
Various: Bojack Horseman, season 3 (2017)
Noah Baumbach: The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) ★
Mike Leigh: Life is Sweet (1990)
Dee Rees: Mudbound (2017)
Various: Broad City, season 4 (2017)
Various: Better Things, season 2 (2017)
Johnson: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Aronofsky: Mother! (2017) ★

Games

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Breath of the Wild (2017) ★
Super Mario Odyssey (2017) ★
Steamworld Dig 2 (2017)

Media I’m looking forward to, Q1 2018 edition

January 1, 2018 by Luke Leave a Comment

Added this month:

Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here (Mar 2018)
Kurzban, A Different Kind of Animal (Nov 2018)
Scharre, Army of None (Apr 2018)
Damasio, The Strange Order of Things (Feb 2018)
Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Jan 2018)
Burns & Shulgan, Autonomy (Aug 2018)
Lukianoff & Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind (Jul 2018)
Payne, Strategy, Evolution, and War (May 2018)
Duke, Thinking in Bets (Feb 2018)
Gaddis, On Grand Strategy (Apr 2018)
Clark et al., The Origins of Happiness (Jan 2018)
Ord, book about existential risk (TBD)
MacAskill et al., book on moral uncertainty (TBD)
Sandberg, Grand Futures (TBD)
Valeriano et al., Cyber Strategy (TBD)
several movies & TV seasons

Books

bold = especially excited

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Storeable, convenient veg*n meal options

October 4, 2017 by Luke 1 Comment

Ever since I wrapped up my animal consciousness report, I’ve been working to become a better reducetarian. As such, I’ve been hunting for storeable, convenient veg*n meal options. (Getting restaurants to carry tastier veg*n food is harder, but I’ve been enjoying my Impossible Burgers!)

A spreadsheet of my findings thus far is here. In my area, they’re available locally via Instacart. So far, my tastiest solution is “buy Vegetarian Plus meals.”

Most of these meals don’t satisfy me on their own, so I usually supplement with a banana or whatever.

Media I’m looking forward to, October 2017 edition

October 1, 2017 by Luke 2 Comments

Books

* = added this round
bold = especially excited

Added this month:

lots of movies and TV
Blattman, some book (TBD)
Gioia, a history of subversive music (TBD)
Oppy, Blackwell Companion to Atheism and Philosophy (TBD)

Full list:

[Read more…]

Books, music, etc. from August-September 2017

October 1, 2017 by Luke 1 Comment

Books

Tegmark, Life 3.0

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

Deerhoof: Mountain Moves (2017)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Luciferian Towers (2017)
Kamasi Washington: Harmony of Difference (2017)
L’Rain: L’Rain (2017)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Spicer: Ingrid Goes West (2017) ★
Ross: Captain Fantastic (2016)
Shults: It Comes at Night (2017)
Young: Hounds of Love (2016)
Alvarez: Don’t Breathe (2016)

Books, music, etc. from July 2017

August 1, 2017 by Luke 4 Comments

Books

[none]

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

The Moonlandingz: Interplanetary Class Classics (2017)
The Arcade Fire: Everything Now (2017)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Nichols: Loving (2016)
Gray: The Lost City of Z (2016)
Various: Transparent, season 3 (2016)
Mangold: Logan (2017)
Showalter: The Big Sick (2017)
Peele: Get Out (2017) ★
Nolan: Dunkirk (2017) ★
Arnold: American Honey (2016)

Media I’m looking forward to, August 2017 edition

August 1, 2017 by Luke Leave a Comment

Books

* = added this round
bold = especially excited

Added this month:

Woodruff, Philanthropy and Philosophy (TBD)
Pummer & Greaves, Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues (TBD)

Full list:

[Read more…]

Books, music, etc. from June 2017

June 30, 2017 by Luke 1 Comment

Books

Allison: Destined for War (2017). Decent, but very one-sided in its arguments. Scary.

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

[none]

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Various: Stranger Things, season 1 (2016)
Campos: Christine (2016)
Various: Fargo, season 3 (2017) ★
Various: Better Call Saul, season 3 (2017) ★
Various: The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1 (2017) ★

Media I’m looking forward to, July 2017 edition

June 30, 2017 by Luke 4 Comments

Books

* = added this round
bold = especially excited

Andrews & Beck, Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Animal Minds (Jul 2017)
Gat, The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace (Jul 2017)
Brown, Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments (Jul 2017)
Shapiro & Todorovic, The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions (Jul 2017)
*Johnson & Rommelfanger (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics (Jul 2017)
Gelman & Nolan, Teaching Statistics 2e (Jul 2017)
Corns, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain (Jul 2017)
Peterson, The Ethics of Technology (Jul 2017)
*Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives (Jul 2017)

[Read more…]

Books, music, etc. from May 2017

June 1, 2017 by Luke 4 Comments

Books

[none]

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

Saagara: 2 (2017)
Perfume Genius: No Shape (2017)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Birbiglia: Don’t Think Twice (2016)
Various: Master of None, season 2 (2017)

Media I’m looking forward to, June 2017 edition

June 1, 2017 by Luke Leave a Comment

Books

* = added this round
bold = especially excited

McAfee & Brynjolfsson, Machine, Platform, Crowd (Jun 2017)
Mcpherson & Plunkett, Routledge Handbook of Metaethics (Jun 2017)
Callaghan et al., The Technological Singularity: Managing the Journey (Jun 2017)
*Bernecker & Michaelian, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory (Jun 2017)
Doudna & Sternberg, A Crack in Creation (Jun 2017)
Owen, Into the Gray Zone (Jun 2017)
Brannen, The Ends of the World (Jun 2017)

[Read more…]

Books, music, etc. from April 2017

May 1, 2017 by Luke Leave a Comment

Books

Callahan, The Givers. An interesting quick portrait of contemporary mega-philanthropy. I haven’t bothered to form opinions about the recommendations in the final chapter.
Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction. Meh.

Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this month:

Adam Rudolph: Glare of the Tiger (2017)

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

Ade: Toni Erdmann (2016)
Guadagnino: A Bigger Splash (2016)
Yeon: Train to Busan (2016)

Media I’m looking forward to, May 2017 edition

May 1, 2017 by Luke 2 Comments

Books

* = added this round
bold = especially excited

Schultz, The Happiness Philosophers (May 2017)
Sapolsky, Behave (May 2017)
Mcpherson & Plunkett, Routledge Handbook of Metaethics (May 2017)
Kasparov, Deep Thinking (May 2017)
*Smil, Energy and Civilization: A History (May 2017)
Phillips, Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience (May 2017)
*Lo, Adaptive Markets (May 2017)
*Ball, The Water Kingdom (May 2017)
*Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies (May 2017)

[Read more…]