Travis > Recent Status Updates

Slow and steady will eventually complete this race. Epictetus is grabbing me the same way Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. But it also took me a while to warm up to their writings.

It takes a bit to let Grover's shtick wash over you so you can get over it and focus on the material he presents. I resisted highlighting or marking up my copy until I reached page 38 and the paragraph starting with "Do. The. Work." That's when it finally clicked for me.

A lot of the writing does still sound like a huge sales pitch for his coaching, though. He talks like he's working a customer.

So far, so standard YA. It's not bad, it just feels exactly like the cover says: a cross between The Hunger Games and Harry Potter. Throw in other dystopian YA (Divergent, Maze Runner) for good measure, and mix in other popular YA (Percy Jackson). But sometimes you just want comfort food. And I want to check out a book my daughter recommends to me.

An invaluable resource for learning and understanding all the scorekeeping rules of baseball. I've had to fundamentally change how I score games because I discovered I was doing it wrong in several cases. The author's commentary on each rule makes each rule comprehensible and the examples are excellent.

A book that sounds like it comes from the manosphere, but it actually comes from a liberal at the Brookings Institute. It lays out the underlying causes for the divide between the left and the right on men's issues. It's a fine line to walk without getting shouted down by feminists and liberals.

Excellent lunch time reading as the MLB season winds down and my son's fall ball season is in full swing.

While this one covers more of the guidelines, it's not nearly as insightful or readable as Beautiful C++, which covered only 30 of the guidelines but provided way more context with way less assumptions about prior knowledge.

In response to my own previous update, I am heartened by the comments on this review that show an appreciation from people on the left for a critique of the extreme left:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I agree with the sentiment that tearing down the right would be the "expected" thing and come off slightly low rung thinking.

Yeah, I can see where the left-leaning crowd would get very upset with the portrayal of "social justice fundamentalism" in this book, and the fact that tearing it down is given far more space than critiques of modern conservatives. I've never considered myself totally "woke", but I like to think I lean more in that direction. The actual philosophy of SJF has me thinking maybe I can't ever be "woke." More exploration.

"Tim's-career-tanking deep dive into America's social justice movement." He certainly predicted what would get people on Goodreads riled up!

It's a shame too many people will skip the footnote explaining the classical definition of the word "liberal" versus the modern American political meaning of "left-wing."

Isn't an "Idea Lab" just a "Think Tank"? I assume there is a connotation to "think tank" Urban wanted to avoid?

I can feel the end of Peanuts in these strips. The jokes just aren't there and there's just a sense of melancholy that wasn't as prevalent in the past.

Chapter 8, Spiritual Elevation and Degradation, feels a little out of left field. It might just be an attempt to shoehorn in a couple of Haidt's previous books, The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind. I can see the points he makes, but this was the first truly "weak" chapter in the book that was just a way for Haidt to rail against social media in general.

Getting to hear Serj read his own words is so much better than just reading those words on a page. He emotes and adds a lot of nuance to the text.

I feel a little validated by all the attention to minutia in just the first eleven rules of this slim book. Someone else worries as much about where to put a comma in a sentence! And which pronoun to use with which verb!

I found it funny/irritating how much vitriol the author showed toward video games compared to his relatively tame take on alcohol, drugs, and prescription drugs. I've played games all my life. Could I have achieved more in that time? Sure, but I also had fun. Maybe I just never reached the point of addiction, but that's bad no matter what you're addicted to.
His take against weed was also relatively strong.

Reminds me of Jeff Lemire's outstanding graphic novel, "The Underwater Welder".

The tiny chapters really do a good job keeping the reader engaged. It's constantly "one more chapter" since they're so short.

The men in this book are worse than any Harry Potter villain. That sounds like a joke, but the level of misogyny by the workers is astounding. The conversation between Kate and her older sister was heartbreaking.

Such an interesting book since he often gives advice that sounds counter to what you normally hear. Such as "play better", not just "work harder." Or saying there are fundamental things you can't practice. Not having a backup plan if you want to make it as a ballplayer. Accepting your weaknesses to work on other things. You can tell this comes from a seasoned (jaded?) baseball player.

Sam and Sadie finished their first game in 1996. So they are about five years older than me. Which puts me in the time after them where it became so much more complicated to make a video game.

Reading this book really made me nostalgic for that college era of my life. A new album from a formative band I discovered freshman year even released while I was reading this book.

How did someone as smart as Sadie not figure out the meaning of the Pioneers baby's name?

Unusual techniques: second person chapters (Marx POV), video game avatar chapters (MMORPG), chapters split between characters (not alternating chapters, like many YA)