Philipp > Recent Status Updates

Smithsonian Mag has a beautiful write-up on Cormac McCarthy's personal library; I am jealous.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-c...

Vernor Vinge has died https://file770.com/vernor-vinge-1944...

Beautiful long portrait of Samuel R Delany in the New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/bo...

Cormac McCarthy has died.

Apologies for flooding your feed with a ton of book reviews. I haven't had the energy these past six months to sit down and write three sentences for a book. I hope there's something in there that'll interest you.
See you in six months :)

John Swartzwelder, one of the early Simpsons writers (all the good episodes!), has an amazing interview in The New Yorker and now I have a new pile of books to read https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the...

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Harlan Ellison has died.
Neil Gaiman's obituary: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2018/06...

So far, really good - history of genetics, 1920s eugenics, and methodological errors in early hereditary research

Really useful, so far - and so much work to do in machine learning, 99% of advice seems to be 'yeah usually people do X in this case but nobody knows why this works better than Y'

Surprisingly clear1

there's not enough SF around the unique attributes of plants

Wow, university studying used to be *free* - a fellowship that included funding for 'a summer of travelling', no mention of publishing paper pressure, copious billiard and theatre sessions...

So good, I want a longer morning commute

Battles, battles, battles

Napoleon's unlimited energy, the invasion of Egypt coups, all-encompassing reforms of France's government and laws, Napoleon's sexism and racism, dumb mistakes after attempts on Napoleon's life

Things I learned so far:
- Being from Corsica, Napoleon started to learn French only at around 9, always speaking with an accent
- due to his great skills in mathematics he became officer of an artillery regiment at age 16 (!!), what a different time

The Vogt and Borlaug biographies are over - now it's 'Wizards' vs 'Prophets' as different viewpoints to solve various crises (climate change, agriculture etc.). Can't say I agree with this strict dichotomy Mann builds up here, I don't think these labels/group memberships are as strict as Mann makes them out to be

So far, this is very good, but then again, Borlaug is my idol

A short biography of William Vogt as an exemplar of a 'prophet' (of doom, i.e. mankind should strive to live in harmony with nature), and a short biography of Norman Borlaug as an exemplar of a 'wizard', someone who believes that technology can solve the future, only now does it go into the details of those two worldviews

How is this so ridiculously funny??

This is surprisingly good and the opposite of what I expected

New 2017 translation - it's very modern language, almost prose, thinking it's a good entry point for people completely unfamiliar with this kind of text

(media is hyping a lot around 'the first woman translator', but I don't think gender has much to do with it)

A clickbait title hides a smart discussion on how the medium influences the message and so changes the entire discourse

Bit too short and focuses too much on TV and televangelists, but good food for thought

This goes on my 'recommended reading' list for students

more than 60 years ago, yet extremely relevant, i think the review will just be a ton of quotes

This feels like a mix of Hannu Rajaniemi and Stanislaw Lem, i.e., prettttyyyyy good!

Lots of useful knowledge:

In other words, the end result of this line

my_dict.setdefault(key, []).append(new_value)

is the same as running

if key not in my_dict:
my_dict[key] = [] my_dict[key].append(new_value)

except that the latter code performs at least two searches for key—three if it’s not found—while setdefault does it all with a single lookup.

Recommended reading:
'Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and the Status Quo - How speculative fiction lost its ability to imagine alternatives to capitalism'
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/1...

If you're into Japanese Science-Fiction, the current Humble Book Bundle has some great ones (Legend of the Galactic Heroes 1-3, Yukikaze, the 60s classic Virus)

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ha...

A crime novel set in a 2011 where the German Democratic Republic is still around? Sign me up!
Like a German Yiddish Policemen's Union