non-fiction

How To Fight

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 14:11 on 29 May 2018, kitt created this:

I've been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's works a lot recently. When everything seems to be this raging maelstrom of pain, anger, frustration, and loss, his words seem to be a rock that, while I may not be able to cling to, I can see and head towards.

And that counts for a lot.

Mom gave me this book to read. I read it along with Reconciliation, also by Thich Nhat Hanh. The second is about looking inward, the first also about looking inward, but also about looking outward to another, a person, or a group. It's about being gentle with ourselves, understanding that suffering is all around us, and that anger is manifestation of that suffering. We suffer, but so do our opponents.

I don't know, the book might not arrive in the right place at the right time for the next person who reads it. It arrived when I needed it. It is a calming book, I've already read twice. I'll be turning to this copy again, I'm sure.

I strongly recommend this book. If you need a copy, let me buy you one.

Usually when we are angry with someone we are more interested in fighting with them than in taking care of our own feelings.
Page 14

We “kill” our anger by smiling to it, holding it gently, looking deeply to understand its roots and transforming it with understanding and compassion.
Page 20

When Things Fall Apart

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 12:35 on 18 May 2018, kitt created this:

I read this book. I am, however, not sure I should mark this as read, because as soon as I finished it, I restarted reading it.

So, maybe I can count this one as read? Maybe? Not sure.

One of the issues I have with this book is that I, and a number of other people I know, have read this book at a hard part in life. Things are difficult, problems are numerous and overwhelming, and this is when we turn to this book for comfort.

Yet, sitting with that discomfort is part of the story, part of the journey to becoming whole and not-whole again.

This is a book that needs to be read, too, when things aren't falling apart, when we can think as clearly as we are able, when we can see the wisdom of the words without the sorrow of our souls.

I strongly recommend this book, with a caveat. Yes, read this book, but experience it again with someone reading to you. Either check out the abridged version of the author reading it, or the unabridged version with another reader, but do listen to the book. The experience is much different, and differently richer.

Everybody Lies

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 21:26 on 14 May 2018

Okay, unlike the last big data book I read, this WAS the big data book I wanted to read. While it does describe the mathematics used in the different ways big-data affects society, it does show how big data, how using small bits of innocent data can reveal surprising truths about who we are and what we really think.

If you start with the assumption that everybody lies on surveys (and this isn't a bad assumption, people mess with surveys all the time, to make themselves look good, to make someone else look bad, to withhold information for ulterior reasons, or really just to f--- with the survey data), then the fundamental data from which theories and beliefs develop is wrong.

But put people in a place where they believe their thoughts are anonymous, truly believe the data they provide will not be traced back to them, then said people become more open and, well, more honest with what they are thinking.

Which is where Stephens-Davidowitz's data research idea came from, to use Google search data as a research source, and where many assumptions about what people are thinking can be debunked.

And the results are fascinating.

Stephens-Davidowitz provides a number of examples of "here's common knowledge, everyone knows this," and shows where, with big data, the "knowledge" is wrong. Either we aren't the same as when the knowledge was first determined, or it was declared as true based on something unknown, or simply accepted as true based on some voice of authority. Regardless of the source, the actual data, the actual numbers, show a different story, and that is the fascinating part.

Black Hole Blues

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 14:40 on 7 May 2018

When I joined the Caltech Alumni Book Club, I didn't realize what the theme of the book club would be. After this book and the last one, I can say with a good level of confidence that the theme is "has to do with Caltech." And really, that's expected and probably in the book club description that I didn't read when I joined ("A book club? SQUEEEEE! Join!"). The book club reads more slowly than I read, which is to say, more slowly than the maximum library checkout time, so I've been finishing these books faster than the book club. Not a great thing when I want to be participating in the book club.

Phew. That all said...

This book is, unsurprisingly, about the gravitational wave experiments, the people involved in it from the beginning, the stumbling blocks, the successes, and the failures. It's a great scientific tale that I enjoyed reading about.

That some of it occurred while I was AT Caltech reminds me of just how f---ing oblivious I was when I was at Tech, as well as how oblivious I must still be about my world. I want to believe I'm more aware, and more appeciative, of things around me. NO IDEA IF I AM.

That this book was published before LIGO succeeded is delightful. That LIGO succeeded is even more delighful. I enjoyed this book, enjoyed reading about people who love science as much as I do, and had the courage to pursue that love.

I recommend this book to anyone who has a slight interest in the biographical information about the LIGO project, black holes in particular, or science in general. Fun read.

Weapons of Math Destruction

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 14:42 on 3 May 2018

Okay, this book has been on my to-read list for a long while. I bought it I don't know when, with the intent of reading it, but it just lingered. When Suzanne said her session of the book club she and Bob are in, is reading it, and that the session would meet the Monday I'm there, well, I pulled out the book and started reading.

It was not what I was expected, which is fine, really, most books aren't quite what I was expecting. This one, however, caught me more off-guard than I was expecting. I thought this was a book describing the mathematics used in the different ways big-data affects society. Instead, it is a book describing the ways mathmatics is used in big data to disadvantage the already disadvantaged.

It is, at its core, a book about the growing unfairness of big-data in our lives. It is about the ways the poor are kept poor, the rich can stay rich, the powerful abuse their power, and society continues to stratify, all with the help of numbers and math and statistics and data.

The first session of the book club summed up the book as, "It reads like a novel, and is mostly about the unfairness of big-data, it's a social justice book." Bob commented, "Yep, we're done, I don't think there's anything else to talk about." I agree. The book was example after example of the ways big-data is problematic. The examples are important to know. I recommend the book.

Math provided a neat refuge from the messiness of the real world.
Page 1

I can understand this desire to leave the messiness for the beauty of mathematics.

Dark Money

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 20:43 on 27 April 2018

While I do have a reading goal this year of having one third of the books I read be non-fiction books, I was really planning on reading more science books than politics books. When Bob said this was one of the books he was reading for his local book club, I checked the library and was delighted that it had a short wait time for the book. The next day, I had the book. Unfortunately, I managed to finish it only just before arriving in Pasadena.

Reading this book is like talking with Dad about politics, which was interesting to me because I now understand where he gets the crap he spouts. I had commented to him a couple years ago that he doesn't have any original thought it in head, he parrots back whatever hate he's getting from somewhere without thinking through the unintented (or intended, actually) consequences of his ideas. Well, the political agenda this book chronicles is pretty much what Dad is parroting. Dad is the type of person the conservatives targetted with their hate. This book describes the origins of that hate, not the reasons for it, but how it came to be and how it grew into the abomination that it is.

Abomination? Is that the correct word to use? When you have 27 families in a country of 360,000,000 million people able to stop the government and services of said country, yeah, you have an abomination.

This was a hard book to read, mostly because I kept wanting to throw it against the wall. I wanted to participate in Bob's book club, though, so I kept reading.

It comes down to this: liberals fundamentally believe that everyone can govern themselves, conservatives believe only they can govern and everyone else should bow to them. It's a matter of trust.

Flat Broke With Two Goats

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 10:40 on 22 April 2018

This book was a Libby app Big Read, where pretty much every library on Libby (might have been all of them, might have been only five, my sample size is small) offered the book to read or listen to, regardless of the number of copies the library actually had. It was billed as a worldwide book club, with this as The Book.

I thought, uh, okay, sure, why not. I'm trying to have a quarter of my books this year be non-fiction, and this is a memoir, so, okay. I checked it out from the library, then was surprised when it was auto-returned for me less than two weeks later. Turns out, that was a glitch, and the book was back in my reading queue a day later.

I read it today and was entertained. The book is the arc of a woman going from the "typical" American suburban (not really) housewife to a level of acceptance and enlightenment of the world. While there is some level of "ehhhhhhh, how could you not know?" McGaha does comment many times that, yeah, she should have known, should have done this or that, probably this and probably that.

Included in most chapters are recipes related to goats, who don't appear until the end of the book, and there are mreo than two of them, or the topic in the chapter. While most of recipes weren't particularly interesting to me, the presentation and story around them were amusing.

This isn't a book I would normally pick up, and wouldn't have read if it weren't blasted in my face every time I loaded Libby on my phone (which would be blasted in my face 3-4 times a day), but it was a fun read. If you're stuck on a desert island, you could read this one multiple times and still be entertained.

NOT "Just Friends"

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 20:47 on 19 April 2018, kitt created this:

This is a hard book review to write and a somewhat difficult book to admit to reading. People will make all sorts of assumptions about the book, about the topic, about people who must be involved if someone is reading this book, about me.

To which I would like to comment, you have it all wrong. If you don't believe you have it all wrong, then accept you have about 91% of it wrong, and you'd be 91% closer to being right.

This is a book about affairs, the infidelity kind not the state or paper kind. The book describes how they happen, how we don't recognize the slippery slope of relationships, how affairs differ in our society than they did from a century ago, how to recover from said infidelities, and how a relationship can survive.

The process isn't pretty, it isn't fast, and it isn't easy.

It is, apparently, doable.

I've read this book a couple times now. Please don't read more into the fact that I read it to assume anything. The book is about recognizing the differences between people, setting boundaries, understanding different approaches to relationships, and, let's admit it, accepting losses.

Those losses don't need to be physical object lossses, they can be the loss of youth, the loss of a love, the loss of opportunity for adventures, the loss of a fantasy of the perfect partner, the loss of a dream, the loss of comfort, the loss of trust, the loss of a belief about another person.

So many losses, but also opportunities for a better relationship with a chosen partner.

Emotional infidelity is a big part of this book and is part of affairs. It is nice to have someone who listens, who makes you feel like the most important person in the world. How sad that we don't all have that person, that we can't always be that person for the one we love most.

It's Even Worse Than You Think

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 14:32 on 31 March 2018

Before I started reading this book, my thought was, "I'm pretty sure this book is going to thoroughly piss me off. Reading anyway."

Post reading, yep, this book is rage-inducing.

It is also, at the end, hysterical, because of the absurdity of the whole thing. That someone so incredibly incompetent even thinks he is remotely competent makes me realize just how thankful I am that most smart people are essentially good. Had Trump actually been smart and this psychopathic, we'd all be in far, far worse trouble than we are in now.

Found out yesterday that if you signed up for the Trump campaign emails, they send out “buy this trump stuff” emails now. What I REALLY want to happen is that the Emoluments Clause to trigger a billion dollar tax bill on Trump when he leaves office, to pay back all his gains during his tenure. Then have it all go to education.

That would be sweet, sweet justice.

Or impeachment now. That would be okay, too.

The book is worth reading, even if the subject matter is the step-by-step dismantling of American Democracy. It's a painful story to read, so read fast or borrow the audiobook from your library (before even those are defunded). I just wish that the people not blind to rational thinking but who had voted for Trump "for a political change," read the book. That would be great. I'm not holding my breath for it, though.

The couple also complained that Trump was in violation of the sixty - year lease of the Old Post Office , which was owned by the federal government. Section 37.19 of the lease“ specifically forbids ”any federal employee from receiving any gain or benefit from the lease."
Page 18

Conspiracy

Book Notes kitt decided around 15:33 on 18 March 2018 to publish this:

Okay, so, this was not the book I was expecting.

It is, however, the book I needed.

I knew vaguely about the outrage over Thiel's backing of Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. I knew vaguely that Gawker was a piece-of-shit website. I knew vaguely that Thiel was an asshat who backed Cheetoh. What I didn't know was all three were involved in a modern-day Machiavellian Power Struggle™.

I am very glad that Ryan Holiday wrote this book. I am very glad I read this book. The book won't change anyone's life, but this book is an incredible tale about power, conspiracy, and the brilliant long-term maneuvering of someone Doing The Right Thing™.

Before this book, I pretty much thought Thiel was the Bad Guy™. He's not, by the way.

Like the ™s? Me, too.

Yeah.

This book reads like Machiavellian case study. It is brilliant in its telling. Yes, one side was arrogant. Yes, one side messed up. Yes, one side was Wrong™. Yes, one side was whatever. Yes, yes, yes. But is it really ever "one side"? The brilliant, illustrative nature of this tale cannot be understated. I understand why Holiday had to write this book. I'm glad he did.

I strongly recommend this book. It may or may not change your life, but is far far far worth reading.

Our tendency to shy away from this truth creates a profound ignorance of how things really work, and what it means to be strategic, to be powerful, and to try to shape events rather than simply be shaped by them.
Location: 51

Seneca is the author you read when your life’s work has been destroyed,
Location: 131

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