This week I finished: The Male Brain, by Louann Brizendine: I heard of Brizendine’s first book The Female Brain, but the library had The Male Brain, so I got it instead. Reading it was satisfying, learning about differences between the male brain and what I hear more about, which is our commonalities. There seems to be a mainstream outrage that claims that the male brain and body are considered normal[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Racism: A Very Short Introduction, by Ali Rattansi: This book follows up last month’s The Myth of Race. I’ve read a lot about slavery, abolitionism, Nazism, what people call race, and related topics but haven’t read scholarly books about the history of racism. Racism seems just a part of human society, like marriage and school. In principle I knew it had to have started at some[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-ups Change the Future, by Mike Maples Jr and Peter Ziebelman: I borrowed this book after hearing Mike speak about it. In parts, I felt he spoke to me about my work: starting a company can revolutionize a field, but doesn’t have to, even in Silicon Valley. Many ventures simply provide a service in a system it doesn’t change. By contrast, some[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by Robert Wald Sussman: Wow! What a fascinating book on the history of the concepts of race (by more than one definition of the term) and the practice of racism. Sussman was an anthropologist and academic, which are the lenses he mostly looks through. He defines what he means by race and racism, describes some[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, by Ryan Holiday: Like Courage is Calling, Holiday recalls virtues largely abandoned these days with diverse historical examples. It makes sense to practice them, yet we don’t. I don’t think I’m flattering myself to say I believe I practice discipline, approaching a quarter-million burpees without missing a day in over a decade among other sidchas. I think I also[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Matewan: In college, a teammate on the ultimate Frisbee team was a graduate student in the film school and cited this movie as one of his favorites. I watched it a long time ago and re-watched it this week. I found it compelling as a movie. Having taken acting classes, I thought about how much fun an actor could have playing the bad guys since they[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, by Rob Henderson: I saw Rob Henderson speak about this book in person and met him briefly. I confess I didn’t know much about the book before learning about the event, but other attendees shared how much the book meant to them. It also sounded like it resonated with some experiences of my childhood. His sounds[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series), by Ryan Holiday: This book spoke to me about what I’m doing with living by a different culture than nearly everyone around me. I hadn’t considered myself courageous. I’m just living by my values. For that matter, I’m living by the values everyone who values I also hadn’t considered those compromising on those values to[…] Keep reading →

We’ve all read stories about how algorithms, polarized media, and so on are leading to situations where people with different political views learn such different information about the world we might as well be living in different worlds. If one person watches only liberal media and another only watches conservative media, they view events through different lenses. One may view the environment as an issue about protecting wildlife while the[…] Keep reading →