may-july update
notable things i read
non-books
two articles on economic imbalances (no country ever got rich from tourism, will datacenters crash the economy?)
a neuroscience paper on how humans operate at 10 bits per second (the unbearable slowness of being)
john green’s personal interpretation of christianity (my religion), which manages to feel more grounded and practical than most atheists, it’s quite remarkable
the case for ai standards + insurance + audits (underwriting superintelligence hey look mom i’m in the news)
also one of my new favorite poems, i think love is something that happens to other people :’)
crime and punishment was very slow and verbose but quite good. tldr protagonist commits a crime at the start and is wracked by nerves / guilt / paranoia for the remainder of the story. halfway through the book we get an intro to the best character, police investigator porfiry petrovich, who alternates between psychoanalyzing / confusing / torturing / giving genuinely helpful advice to the protagonist. it's some of my favorite character writing of all time
cloud atlas was interesting. it’s basically 6 slightly related narratives bound in a single book. pretty impressive how well the author switches between very distinct styles / narrators / historical eras
did not really understand why letters to a young poet is so well-known? i thought the letters were okay; it was cool to see rilke’s correspondence with someone he’s never met, but ultimately it felt very repetitive (i think almost all the advice can be distilled down to trusting your voice and worrying less about perception?)
enjoyed parts of anna karenina, especially the first ~100 pages. the writing about marriage problems / jealousy / boredom / cheating is extremely clear and you get a great understanding of why the characters are behaving the way they are. unfortunately there are also some long digressions about the state of russian politics + farming that i did not enjoy. also has some hilarious passages about people roleplaying as artists:
They talked about Mikhailof and his paintings. The word talent was often heard as they talked; they meant by it an innate gift, almost physical, independent of intellect and heart, and they tried to express by it all that had been experienced by the artist. It seemed as if they needed to have a term which should express something of which they had not the slightest comprehension, but yet wanted to talk about
Vronsky's enthusiasm for painting and the Middle Ages was, however, of short duration; his art instinct was strong enough to prevent him from finishing his painting. His work came to a standstill. He had a dim consciousness that his faults, at first apparently trifling, would grow more and more grievous if he went on
notable things i watched
bubble was basically a shinkai film but with parkour and bubbles everywhere. really pretty, like look at these frames (and the second one feels like it was ripped directly out of weathering with you)
cloud atlas was objectively not a well-constructed film (very scattered between 6 plotlines with too much time on exposition, which was kind of inevitable), soundtrack was good though and there are some cool moments where multiple plotlines came together
watched rick and morty season 8 with my housemates! feels like the show ran out of innovative ideas and has as a result pivoted from hard sci-fi to being more character-driven / focusing on rick’s growth. i like the new focus so i still find the show quite enjoyable, but the shift is not for everyone
spirit: stallion of the cimarron plot was okay, the horse animations were incredible. during production they sent ~300 people to learn about horses and nail down all the body language + facial expressions? some of the most natural-feeling animal movements i’ve ever seen
other
finally found a good dentist in sf! first time meeting someone who seemed like they actually wanted to deeply understand the science of oral health - they gave me a lot of helpful things i’d never heard of like saliva ph tests, mouth plaque stains, regenerative peptides for tooth decay, etc
visited seattle, a bit boring, best part was bainbridge island + museum of art. also uw has the best-dressed undergrads of any school i’ve visited
redesigned my personal website which also meant reading through all my public writing from the past 6 years to decide what to put on the site. i was surprised by the number of posts from ~2020-2022 which 1) i had no recollection of writing 2) i mostly still agree with and find reasonably coherent. young-vincent was ignorant of many things but also more self-aware than i can remember. also fun to see the focus evolve from being depressed (~2020) to being stressed about post-grad life for all the wrong reasons (~2022) to friends and feelings (~2024)
played celeste, my new favorite game! best portrayal of mental health and wrestling with different parts of yourself since bojack. music, difficulty curve, storyline were all incredible. protagonist is adorable. extremely cathartic final boss fight
You can do this.
i love celeste! and bojack!