This week I finished: 8 Billion Angels, directed by Terry Spahr: I’ve become friends with Terry since first watching his documentary on overpopulation years ago. He recently released it free on YouTube. I recommend it. Here’s the movie’s page: https://8billionangels.org. From Scientific American: Eight Billion People in the World Is a Crisis, Not an Achievement The major driver of plant and animal loss is habitat destruction caused primarily by the[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-Wai: It’s hard not to first mention this movie’s style in the qipaos, hair, make-up, ties, and music. Each dress and hairdo must have taken hours to get right each time, looked sewn-in. The word I keep coming back to for the style is: perfect. What a beautiful movie. But the movie covers more than style. Who hasn’t[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn: I’m sure I read this book before, but long enough ago that this time was almost anew. I’ve been reading about liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. I’ve read and written about slavery and the Holocaust. Soviet / Stalinist gulags are on par, but different, and equally important to understand what a nation, or dominance hierarchy,[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It, by podcast guest Chris Voss: I read this book before recording the podcast with Chris and liked it, but not enough. This time I loved it. I think last time I compared it with Getting to Yes and thought it didn’t add much knowledge. It mostly promoted the value of practice and tactics beyond[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore: I’ve seen Jill Lepore’s books at the top of bestseller lists and read pieces she’s written in the New Yorker and probably other places. Her work seems to overlap with authors I’ve found valuable: Akhil Reed Amar and Gordon Wood. Her two big books These Truths and We the People are huge and daunting, though reviews[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: As of today, Sunday, my usual day to post on what I finished this week, my solar battery is very low (as I posted yesterday: And just like that, I’m almost out of power for a couple days. Batteries have a lot of problems), so I’m limiting my time using the computer. For now, I’ll just post the works. When there’s more sun, I’ll write more.[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: I Am Not Your Negro: directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s manuscript Remember This House: You can probably tell that Baldwin’s views resonate with me. How he describes the perspective from the bottom of a dominance hierarchy. He attributes it to color, which I see as a proxy for access to a resource with no alternative, but the view is the same. Partly it[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin: After last week’s Fire Next Time, and August’s debate between Baldwin and Buckley, I want to learn more about Baldwin. I like his analysis. It’s hard to gauge how much of his analysis was new. I read that Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that Baldwin “articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin: I’ve known about James Baldwin for years but never read his work. I’ve seen him speak on videos, but a book is another story. A book takes time to compose. Almost always when I finish a book I reread at least the first few paragraphs, sometimes the first few pages. A teacher in college told me that authors can’t[…] Keep reading →