non-fiction

The Eating Instinct

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 12:32 on 15 April 2021

This book was mentioned in another book, though I don't recall which recently-read one it was. The book discusses just how detached we are from our normal hunger signals, to the point we all have some sort of eating dysfunction. From trauma-induced aversions (L's dislike of asparagus and bacon is a strong example similar to the ones listed in the book, where L ate too quickly and choked on both asparagus and bacon at different times, and now "doesn't like them"), to media-induced distorted body images inspire us into often-unhealthy restriction diets, the Eating instinct is a great starting point for "finding your food freedom," a Whole30 tagline.

I enjoyed the book, and immediately went to the freezer, pulled out a dozen cookies, and ate them without guilt.

Mediocre

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 11:32 on 7 April 2021

Well, I keep reading books that piss me off. This book continues the trend.

Pretty much a glorious rant on how we as a collective are subjugated to the "leadership" of mediocre white men. No, not all leaders are mediocre, but one can give a very, very, very long list of mediocre men suppressing the more brilliant subordinates of all genders and races.

If you're interested in reading this book and can't a find a copy at your library, I will buy you a copy. If you read it and see yourself in the book, be better.

Lost In Thought

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 21:26 on 2 April 2021

As a recommendation engine, the XOXO conference group slack books channel does not disappoint with this book. A lovely book about learning and reading for the sake of learning and reading, that the activities don't have to lead to increased wealth or better productivity or higher social status. One can read because she enjoys reading.

Invisible Women

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 22:07 on 20 December 2020

Okay, fundamentally, this is an incredibly difficult book to read. It starts with a smack upside the head with how women are historically dismissed, ignored, not believed, undercounted, gaslit, and written out of history. It continues with the data to support the claims, then examines the various areas and ways women are invisible through out history, today, and likely for a long time.

Despite being roughly half the population, women do not have the representation in government, access to opportunities, power, or resources that men do. Accomplishments by women are often ascribed to men, or dismissed as luck.

Worse, women are considered "inferior men," who should "just be more like men." Instead of recognizing that women are fundamentally different, we are dismissed as "too messy," told to "be less emotional," instructed to "not be a bitch" after asserting ourselves.

Truly, being a woman is a no-win situation.

This book should be required reading for any researcher, hard or soft sciences, that deals even remotely with people. This book should be required reading for EVERY machine learning researcher.

I want you to read this book. Buy one at your bookstore. Check your library. If they don't have a copy, let me know. I will buy you a copy I want for much for you to read this book

Do Nothing

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 19:32 on 16 December 2020

Similar to How to Do Nothing, this book (full title is "Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving") is a woman's journey into the realization that, hey, hamster on the hedonic treadmill is not the way to a happy life, and neither is killing ourselves for our capitalist overlords (my phrasing, not Headlee's).

This book goes through Headlee's journey to, not slowing down per se, more like recognizing that all of this attention grabbing stuff is adversely affecting your well-being. I appreciate that Headlee also specifically calls out luck for her success: there are millions of people working hard to be successful, and it's the good luck that springs them over the top into success. The parts where Headlee says, "this is true for me, so it is true for other people," well, I unsurprisingly both noted that and disagreed with them.

Also similar to How to Do Nothing, there's the history of work: how we used to work less, Industrial Revolution changed the economic landscape, labor fought for fewer hours, labor negotiated fewer hours for us, we drifted back into longer hours. And talk about longer hours: Headlee completely dismisses women's unspoken, unregistered, unpaid workload. While reading this book, I wanted to mail her a copy of Invisible Women and ask her to rewrite the book. As a single mother, I was hoping Headlee would not have been as dismissive of the unpaid work women do, as, as above, she has a "this is true for me, so it is true for other people" elements. Maybe she didn't recognize that the overwhelming amount of work she did includes that unpaid work, and that the workload is different for men and women? I don't know.

The Math of Life and Death

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 20:18 on 23 November 2020

Oh, I enjoyed this book so much. I am on a roll with choosing non-fiction books that delight me. I strongly recommend this book for its exploration of various ways different areas of mathematics can help us understand the world around us. This book also delivers a whole bunch of (previously unknown to me) biases, all dealing with math, giving me even more joy.

In a very approachable way giving many examples from the real world and history (none of these "two trains are on tracks going in opposite directions at forty kilometers an hour" problems), the various chapters discuss exponential growth and decay (Chapter 1), sensitivity and specificity specifically in medicine (Chapter 2), how math (statistics, in particular) is used in legal matters (Chapters 3 and 4), different numbering systems (Chapter 5), algorithms in general and how they can apply to one's life (the 37% rule is a very common algorithm used to illustrate how algorithms can make our lives better, see also Algorithms to Live By), and the most relevant topic of 2020: mathematical epidemiology, or the topic of epidemics, pandemics, and the spread of disease.

I mean, discussions of false positives and false negatives, how one can intimidate jurors with numbers, how to interpret stats you read in the news (hint: context matters a LOT), an overview of virus transmission (asshat anti-vaxers not understanding that vaccines don't cause autism, a leaky intestinal system causes autism, but that's another line of research that didn't get earlier funding because Jenny McCarthy decided murdering thousands of children was a better "mother feeling," leaving scientists to debunk her shit first for public health before finding the true cause of autism, but here we are), and ideas that can help people live better lives.

Pages