Stung Eye

Regular: Reading in 2025I read 22 books last year. ...

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:39:24 +0100

Reading in 2025

I read 22 books last year. 7 of them were on my Kobo e-reader and the rest were deadtree format. 12 of them were fiction. 10 were non-fiction.

There were so many great books this year. I’ve returned to listing a separate top three for fiction and non-fiction, plus a list of runners-up.

Fiction in 2025

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke - “I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.”
Dragon song - Anne McCaffrey - “Oh, Tongue, give sound to joy and sing / Of hope and promise on dragonwing”
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette - Jeanne Birdsall - “A different bed can bring you different dreams, she thought.”
The Razor’s Edge - W. Somerset Maugham - “Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose”
The Cheese Monkeys - Chip Kidd - “After age twenty-five, you’re not a victim anymore — you’re a volunteer.” (accidental re-read)
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan - “There are so many ways to go wrong. All we’ve got are metaphors, and they’re never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.”
The Magician’s Elephant - Kate DiCamillo “That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.”
The Warren - Brian Evenson - “The feeling that you, or rather I, are at once dreaming and remembering and simultaneously doing something as if for the first time.”
The Seven ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton - “Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.”
Bunnicula - James Howe and Deborah Howe - “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harold. I come to writing purely by chance. My full-time occupation is dog.”
Mother Courage and Her Children - Bertolt Brecht - “You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. And when do you get organization? In a war.”
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday - Saad Z. Hossain - Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Mars, the Red King, the Lord of Tuesday, Most August Rajah of Djinn, wakes.

Non-Fiction in 2025

On Tyranny - Timothy Snyder - “Take responsibility for the face of the world.”
Einstein & the Honeybee - Rees Shad - A collaboratively written introduction to game design.
Gritty City - Nigel Webber - Oral history of Winnipeg hip-hop from 1980 to 2005.
My Salinger Year - Joanna Rakoff - “To read Salinger is to engage in an act of such intimacy that it, at times, makes you uncomfortable.”
Tidy First? - Kent Beck - “The biggest cost of code is the cost of reading and understanding it, not the cost of writing it.”
Devotions - Mary Oliver - “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
A Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout - “Overall, the best way to reduce bugs is to make software simpler.”
Level Up - Scott Rogers - “If you think something is innovative, it just means you haven’t been paying attention.”
Deep Fitness - Philip Shepherd and Andrei Yakovenko - A mindful approach to strength-training.
Becoming a Video Game Designer - Daniel Noah Halpern

Top Three Fiction Books of 2025

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Piranesi lives inside a metaphor, a House with seemingly infinite Halls and nothing outside it save for the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. The House contains an Ocean and many Statues.

No Hall, no Vestibule, no Staircase, no Passage is without its Statues. In most Halls they cover all the available space, though here and there you will find an Empty Plinth, Niche or Apse, or even a blank space on a Wall otherwise encrusted with Statues. These Absences are as mysterious in their way as the Statues themselves.

This book left me feeling delightfully melancholy. Like I had visited somewhere strange and sacred and beautiful, and wasn’t ready to leave.

The Razor’s Edge - W. Somerset Maugham

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
There are psychologists who think that consciousness accompanies brain processes and is determined by them but doesn’t itself exert any influence on them. Something like the reflection of a tree in water; it couldn’t exist without the tree, but it doesn’t in any way affect the tree.

I picked this up after learning that Bill Murray agreed to star in Ghostbusters in exchange for Columbia Pictures agreeing to make a film adaption of The Razor’s Edge. It probably would have been best for me to have read this in my early twenties. It would have paired nicely with On The Road, Siddhartha, The Beach, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Mother Courage and Her Children - Bertolt Brecht

Back in January of 2025 I posted this poem to social media by German playwright Bertolt Brecht:

Motto
In the dark times,
will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
about the dark times.

My cousin Carrie wrote back to recommend I read one of his plays, and later lent me her copy of Mother Courage.

Mother Courage and Her Children was written in 1939 in response to the rise of Fascism and the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. The play is set during Europe’s Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, and follows Anna Fierling (Mother Courage) and her three children. Courage makes her living selling supplies to soldiers, and we watch in horror as she slowly loses all three children to the war. By her own admission, Courage isn’t all that courageous. But then, like many of the play’s characters, she is both a victim of the war and, in her own small way, complicit in sustaining it.

Top Three Non-Fiction of 2025

On Tyranny - Timothy Snyder

Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century:

Do not obey in advance. Defend institutions. Beware the one-party state. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Remember professional ethics. Be wary of paramilitaries. Be reflective if you must be armed. Stand out. Someone has to. Be kind to our language. Believe in truth. Investigate. Make eye contact and small talk. Practice corporeal politics. Establish a private life. Contribute to good causes. Learn from peers in other countries. Listen for dangerous words. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Be a patriot. Be as courageous as you can.

Gritty City - Nigel Webber

Gritty City is the first book to tackle the history of Winnipeg hip-hop, treating it not as a passing fad or a subgenre of rock, but as its own distinct and significant culture and artform. Much like the city itself, hip-hop locally was born out of struggle, out of the intense racism that plagued elements of Winnipeg for much of the 1980s. As the culture blossomed and gained acceptance, slowly but surely the community became more and more prominent, leading from the DIY ‘90s to the heyday of the early 2000s.

I first discovered my love of hip-hop (Thanks Jeff!), and the local hip-hop scene, 25 years ago. If you want a taste of the current scene I’ve put together mixtapes of my favourite local hip-hop artists from the last few years:

Tidy First? - Kent Beck

Software design is an exercise in human relationships.

Does this still hold in an era of AI-generated coding? Perhaps. I’m not quite ready to give up being part of the code creation process, even when I’m using AI tooling.

This is a tiny book about ways to clean up a codebase before adding to it. A catalog of 15 “tidyings” that will improve code “readability”, making it easier to understand and to change.

Runners Up

The Seven ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton - Groundhog Day meets Memento meets Quantum Leap in the 1920s.
The Warren - Brian Evenson - Unsettling!
A Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout - Paired incredibly well with Beck’s Tidy First. After reading both books I was inspired to put together a series of lectures on code smells and refactoring for my game development students.
Devotions - Mary Oliver - A collection of Oliver’s favourite poems. Her poems urge us to pay attention, reflect, and maintain a sense of amazement at the world and our place in it. She writes of loss, salvation, joy, and the wilds of nature. You can read some of her poems here.

I’m still reading aloud to my youngest. We very much enjoyed The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, The Magician’s Elephant, and Bunnicula. Revisiting Bunnicula in particular, a book my mom read aloud to me and my sister, was a lovely thing.

I also read more poetry this past year than usual, but I’ll save that for another post.

Regular: Reading by Number Number of books read each year from 2011 to 2024. ...

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:37:37 +0100

Reading by Number

Number of books read each year from 2011 to 2024. I’ve been averaging 18 books per year for the past 15 years.

Past yearly overviews: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.

Regular: Manitoba Party Music 2025Party music for party people. ...

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:01:24 +0100

Manitoba Party Music 2025

Party music for party people. Twenty rock and pop tunes with some dancey music at the end.

Rock this playlist at your next kitchen party! All songs were released by Manitoba musicians in 2025. This is the third and final MB 2025 “mixtape” I put together over the holidays. These tunes were discovered by way of the curated selections of Manitoba Music, our not-for-profit music industry association.

Half of these groups were completely new to me. It was a joy to discover them and poke around in their back catalogs. Both Leith Ross and Bluebloods were also included on my other two 2025 mixtapes.

Without further delay, here are twenty of my favourite Manitoban party tunes from 2025. Enjoy! Listen here or in the embedded players below:

Previous MB Music Playlists

You might also enjoy my Manitoba mixtapes from 2024, 2022, and 2021:

Manitoba Gold 2024: YouTube and Spotify
Manitoba (Party) Music 2024: YouTube and Spotify
Manitoba Hip Hop 2024: YouTube and Spotify
Make a Scene MB Music 2022: Spotify and Mixcloud
Smoke on The Breeze MB Music 2021: Spotify

Regular: Soulful Manitoba Music 2025Twenty-one indie, folky, jazzy, soulful, tunes with some ...

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 09:27:55 +0100

Soulful Manitoba Music 2025

Twenty-one indie, folky, jazzy, soulful, tunes with some quiet contemplation to close.

I dare you to listen to this playlist twice in a row and not fall in love with every single track. All of these songs were released by Manitoba musicians in 2025. I discovered them during my yearly deep dive into locally created music curated by Manitoba Music, our not-for-profit music industry association.

This is the second of three MB 2025 “mixtapes” I put together over the holidays. This one is mellow and intimate, lyrical to start and a little experimental towards the end. Lots of new names for me, with a few of my longtime favourite local artists (Jess Rae, Begonia, Jocelyn Gould, & Slow Leaves).

The stand-out discovery from this group was Leith Ross’s new album I Can See The Future. Leith recently moved from Ontario to Winnipeg to join the Manitoba indie/folk scene. This February to May they will be touring the UK, Europe, and Canada to promote the album.

And now here are twenty-one of my favourite Manitoban indie, folky, soulful, or jazzy tracks of 2025. Listen here or in the embedded players below:

Regular: Manitoba Hip Hop 2025My top fifteen Manitoban rap tracks from 2025 to start the year. ...

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 08:35:00 +0100

Manitoba Hip Hop 2025

My top fifteen Manitoban rap tracks from 2025 to start the year.

Over the holidays I tore through the 250+ songs released by Manitoba artists in 2025 featured on Manitoba Music’s regularly updated playlist of local music. This has become a year-end ritual of musical discovery and provincial inspiration.

Here are my favourite hip hop tracks released in Manitoba last year. From the praries, through the muskegs, to the tundra, yo.

Listen here or in the embedded players below:

Regular: Manitoba Gold 2024Alright, music lovers, it’s time for the third and final ...

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 08:39:55 +0100

Manitoba Gold 2024

Alright, music lovers, it’s time for the third and final installment of my Manitoba music roundup for 2024. This one's golden.

Back in December, I listened to over 300 tracks released in 2024 by Manitoba artists and curated three playlists. The first two focused on party tracks and hip hop bangers.

With this playlist I’ll slow down the pace to present fifteen standout songs from Manitoban musicians, spanning genres, styles, and moods. Whether you’re into jazz, folk, indie rock, country, or pop, there’s something here worth exploring.

Listen here or in the embedded players below:

The majority of the artists and bands on this playlist were completely new to me. In fact, only FIINN, Jocelyn Gould, and Begonia were previously on my radar. Many of these tracks gave me full-on chills down my neck when I first heard them. I hope you love them too.

This wraps up my 2024 Manitoba music deep dive. Keep your ears open, watch the Manitoba Music website for upcoming local concerts, and support local musicians!

Regular:

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 08:03:18 +0100

Regular: Previous MB Music Playlists I didn't put together a playlist last year, but you ...

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 08:02:37 +0100

Previous MB Music Playlists

I didn't put together a playlist last year, but you might enjoy my MB music recaps from 2022 and 2021:

Regular: Manitoba Hip Hop 2024 Today’s drop is a hip hop mixtape of my fav 15 releases from ...

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:07:00 +0100

Manitoba Hip Hop 2024

Today’s drop is a hip hop mixtape of my fav 15 releases from Manitoban rappers and beat makers last year.

I’ve been readying Gritty City: An Oral History of Winnipeg Hip-Hop Music: 1980-2005 by Nigel Webber, a deep-dive into local hip-hop history. That’s right, Manitoba has been head-bobbing to beats and rhymes for over 40 years. I found the scene 25 years ago and have been a fan ever since. The talent here always blows my mind.

Back in December I listened to 300 tracks released in 2024 by Manitoba artists and curated three playlists. The first playlist was 17 slices of Manitoba Party Music. The second is this mix of 15 MB hip hop tracks from across the province.

🚨 Explicit lyrics. Listen here or in the embedded players below:

The playlist features Manitoba hip hop OGs, The Gumshoe Strut, Charlie Fettah, and The Lytics. I first heard Strut on the Milch & Allegra tape in 2000, and both The Lytics (Big City Soundgirl!) and Fettah (as part of Winnipeg’s Most) in 2010.

You’ll find familiar names like Anthony OKS and Super Duty Tough Work (with Cadence Weapon!), a wave of up-and-comers, fire tracks from Northern Manitoba, and Indigenous talent making moves.

One more MB 2024 playlist to come. It's eclectic!

Catch you on the flip side, grinners.

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Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:06:19 +0100

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Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:06:10 +0100

Regular: Manitoba (Party) Music 2024Hey music lovers! Ready for some amazing Manitoba-made ...

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 10:59:00 +0100

Manitoba (Party) Music 2024

Hey music lovers! Ready for some amazing Manitoba-made music?

Over the holidays in December I listened to over 300 tracks released in 2024 by Manitoba artists and curated three playlists of the hottest local tunes.

Big shoutout to Manitoba Music, our non-profit industry champions who keep a running playlist of recent local releases. I dove deep into their selections and emerged with fifty-three bangers.

First up: Seventeen stand-out party rockers. Fifty minutes of fire hip hop, rock, country, jazz, pop, electronic, and even some punk-flavoured Ukrainian folk music.

Listen here or in the embedded players below:

I’ll post my other two playlists soon!

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Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:09:00 +0100

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Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:07:51 +0100

Regular: Reading in 2024I read 15 books last year. ...

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 10:10:00 +0100

Reading in 2024

I read 15 books last year. Eight on my Kobo e-reader and the rest were deadtree format. Nine of them were fiction. Six were non-fiction.

There were many great books this year, making it difficult to select just a top three. As such, I’ve included a selection of runners-up.

Fiction in 2024

A Line to Kill - Anthony Horowitz - “I’m surrounded by silence but at the same time I’m drowning in words and it hardly ever leaves me, that sense of disconnection.”
The Midnight Library - Matt Haig - “The only way to learn is to live.”
This is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - “Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”
Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky - “Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.”
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street - Jeanne Birdsall - “Tra-la the joy of tulips blooming, Ha-ha the thrill of bumblebees zooming. I’m alive and I dance, I’m alive though death is always looming.”
The Secret History - Donna Tartt - “It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
Children of Memory - Adrian Tchaikovsky - “She’s learning that getting a proper education doesn’t answer questions, it just teaches you to ask them.”
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro - “She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.”
A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin - “Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”

Non-Fiction in 2024

The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin - “Musicians, actors, athletes, philosophers, scientists, writers understand that brilliant creations are often born of small errors.”
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI - Ethan Mollick - “The cost of getting to know AI—really getting to know AI—is at least three sleepless nights.”
The Playful Game Design Process - Richard Lemarchand - “Where idealism meets experience, wisdom is born.”
Teach Like a Pirate - Dave Burgess - “Light yourself on fire with enthusiasm and people will come from miles around just to watch you burn!”
We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society - David Camfield - “If people could collectively take control of the productive forces that capitalism has developed and use them to meet their needs, they could build a cooperative commonwealth.”
True Love - Thich Nhat Hanh - “Thinking prevents us from touching life deeply. I think, therefore I am really not there.”

Top Three Books of 2024

This is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

You ask if I’ve been lonely. I hardly know how to answer. I have observed friendship as one observes high holy days: breathtakingly short, whirlwinds of intimate endeavour, frenzied carousing, the sharing of food, of wine, of honey. Compressed, always, and gone as soon as they come. It is often my duty to fall in love convincingly, and certainly I’ve received no complaints. But that is work, and there are better things of which to write.

Burn before reading. A co-written epistolary novella that blends espionage, time travel, poetry, and romance. Lent to me by a student. It left me wanting more, but any longer and the letter writing conceit may have worn thin.

The Playful Game Design Process - Richard Lemarchand

Imagination and design are closely connected. The dreams we dream at night and by day can lead to the greatest accomplishments in art and literature, science and technology, industry and entertainment. But until we make decisions and act upon them, we are not designing, only speculating.

A non-technical handbook on producing video games with a focus on curiosity, flexibility, generosity, humility, and respect. It has already had a profound impact on how I run the Game Studio courses in the Red River College Polytech Game Development program.

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI - Ethan Mollick

You should try inviting AI to help you in everything you do, barring legal or ethical barriers. As you experiment, you may find that AI help can be satisfying, or frustrating, or useless, or unnerving. But you aren’t just doing this for help alone; familiarizing yourself with AI’s capabilities allows you to better understand how it can assist you — or threaten you and your job.

Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management at U-Penn’s Wharton School, encourages us to experiment widely with Ai to explore the limitations and possibilities of this evolving technology.

Ai can mean many things. This book focuses on Ai chat systems built on Large Language Machine-Learning Models, which generate text by re-purposing patterns found in their vast training data. These models have been trained on an enormous volume of text — drawn from books, articles, and the public internet — shaping the model’s ability to mimic human responses.

If you haven’t spent time playing around with generative Ai, I’d recommend Claude for text-based chats and Pi for voice conversations.

Runners-Up

Birdsall’s Penderwicks series continues to captivate the girls. Read these to your kids!
Tchaikovsky entire Children of Time series is a must-read for sci-fi lovers.
Le Guin’s masterpiece A Wizard of Earthsea might seem full of fantasy tropes, until you realize she create those tropes with this book.
All teacher’s (regardless of grade level) should read Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning and Burgess’ Teach Like a Pirate.
Camfield’s We Can Do Better is an accessible introduction to Marxist reconstructed historical materialism. From the Sara Farris quote on the cover: “For anyone who wants to understand the complex forces that shape our society and change them.”

Regular: Reading by NumberNumber of books read each year from 2011 to 2024. ...

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 09:13:00 +0100

Reading by Number

Number of books read each year from 2011 to 2024. I’ve been averaging 18 books per year for the past 14 years.

Past yearly overviews: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.

Regular: Strength & Movement in 2024Here’s a snapshot of my exercise achievements in ...

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 09:45:00 +0100

Strength & Movement in 2024

Here’s a snapshot of my exercise achievements in 2024:

I covered 2,100km last year, splitting my cardio between running and cycling. Running accounted for 900 km, mostly along the Harte Trail and throughout Assiniboine Forest. I run outdoors throughout the summer and the winter. Most of my runs ranged from 5 to 10km, with two standout runs hitting half-marathon distance (21 km). Cycling made up the remaining 1,200km, largely from my fair-weather bike commutes to work. It’s a 14km journey each way to the Red River College downtown campus.

Winter running in Winnipeg requires some special care. After fracturing my wrist in 2017 from slipping on ice in Assiniboine Park, I started adding Kold Kutter motorsport ice-racing screws to my running shoes for better winter traction. They are incredibly effective — I’ve had zero slips since then.

I also kept up a strength training routine in 2024, working out 2 to 3 times per week throughout the year, even while managing a minor injury (more on that below). These home workout sessions include a mix of dumbbells, a Total Gym 1000, and body-weight exercises.

My strength training routines were developed with ChatGPT back in 2023 — yes, I’m even a nerd when it comes to exercise. I fed in all my available equipment and asked for “a full-body, time-efficient and highly effective strength training plan.” Since starting this program in July 2023, I’ve completed over 180 sessions. They consist of three focused workouts: chest and shoulders, back and biceps, and legs and shoulders.

In an effort to preserve the strength and mobility of my knees, I’ve also incorporated the Knees Over Toes Zero protocol into my weekly routine. So far so good! It’s especially fun to see the surprise on people’s faces when I’m running backwards on the Harte Trail.

In early 2024, I noticed discomfort in my lower left bicep during workouts. Over time, the discomfort progressed to pain, which I later identified as distal bicep tendonitis. My initial approach — stopping bicep exercises and waiting for it to heal — proved ineffective even after three months of rest.

To address this, I began a re-strengthening protocol using light weights, beginning with just 3-pound dumbbells and gradually working up to 20 pounds over four months. The recovery program included short bicep curl sessions twice daily, exercises with a Theraband Flexbar (a specialized tool for tendon rehabilitation), and voodoo flossing, which helps improve blood/nutrient flow and mobility.

Most exercises are now pain-free, but there’s still some minor discomfort on bicep days. I still haven’t returned to pull-ups or chin-ups, preferring to stick with assisted versions of these exercises on the Total Gym while continuing my recovery.

My goal for 2025 is to hit 2,000km again for running and cycling, and to continue the full-body workouts and knee protocol. Shout out to Shan, my exercise inspiration. She doesn’t track all her exercise like I do, but probably tripled or quadrupled my stats or more! :)

Regular: Podcast Listening in 2023I’m still listing to podcasts near daily, mainly ...

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 12:33:00 +0100

Podcast Listening in 2023

I’m still listing to podcasts near daily, mainly when I run or while walking to/from the bus. (On the bus is reserved for reading.)

I’m currently subscribed to 25 different shows in my podcatcher (Pocket Casts).

Last year’s listens can be found at the end of my 2022 reading and listening post.

Completionist Listening

I’m listening to nearly every episode of:

ADSP, CBC Spark, Conversations with Tyler, Game Dev Advice, Hard Fork, Lex Fridman, Long Now Seminars, Nice Game Club, Philosophy Bites, Philosophize This!, Search Engine, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, Song Exploder, Stuff Dutch People Like, The Bike Shed, This American Life, This Developer’s Life

Occasional Listens

I’m cherry picking episodes of:

Broken Record, Canadalands Commons, CBC Ideas, CppCast, Hanselminutes, Overdue, Tetragrammaton, The Tim Ferris Show, Syntax

New Podcasts in 2023

Broken Record - Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bruce Headlam interview icons of music. Liner notes for the digital age.
Hard Fork - A tech-news show about the future that’s already here.
Search Engine - A podcast that tries to answer every question. No question too big, no question too small.
Tetragrammaton - In-depth interviews with iconic music producer Rick Rubin.
This Developer’s Life - A podcast that looks into the daily life of software developer. (Technically a reboot. The podcast that got me into podcasts back in 2015.)

Favourite Podcasts of 2023

Some of my favourite episodes from the past year, listed alphabetically by show:

Broken Record: Beastie Boys and Spike Jones (2020)

Canadalands Commons: Cory Doctorow knows why monopolies are killing art

CBC Ideas: Is artificial intelligence intended to serve human welfare or Big Tech?, Inner City Winnipeg

CBC Spark: ChatGPT and the future of AI

Conversations with Tyler: Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship, Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas, Lazarus Lake on Endurance, Uncertainty, and Reaching One’s Potential

Game Dev Advice: Starting Your Own Studio, BioShock Infinite, Anti-Crunch Culture, Learning Patience, Rendering and Graphics, and more with Steve Anichini

Hansleminutes: The Web’s Next Transition with Kent C. Dodds, The History of Data with Ted Neward

Lex Fridman: Joscha Bach: Life, Intelligence, Consciousness, AI & the Future of Humans, Stephen Wolfram: ChatGPT and the Nature of Truth, Reality & Computation, Neil Gershenfeld: Self-Replicating Robots and the Future of Fabrication, Matthew McConaughey: Freedom, Truth, Family, Hardship, and Love, Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe

Long Now Seminars: Coco Krumme: The False Promise of Optimization

Mindscape: Michael Tomasello: The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency, David Deutsch on Science, Complexity, and Explanation, Michael Muthukrishna on Developing a Theory of Everyone, David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information

Overdue: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Philosophize This!: Why is consciousness something worth talking about?, What if free will is an illusion?, Is ChatGPT really intelligent?, Is Artificial Intelligence really an existential threat?, Should we prepare for an AI revolution?

Search Engine: How do I find new music now that I’m old and irrelevant?, Does anyone actually like their job?

Song Exploder: Alvvays - Archie, Marry Me

Stuff Dutch People Like: The One About House Interiors, The One about Weddings, The One About Haunted Amsterdam

Tetragrammaton: Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen DJ Episode: From Avant-Garde to Pop

Tim Ferris: John Vervaeke: How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation, Apollo Robbins: The World’s Most Famous Pickpocket, Seth Godin: The Pursuit of Meaning, Choosing Your Attitude, Overcoming Rejection, and Committing to Making Positive Change, Arthur C. Brooks — How to Be Happy, Reverse Bucket Lists, The Four False Idols, Muscular Philosophies, Practical Inoculation Against the Darkness, and More

This American Life: The Rest of the Story, Rest Stop (2009), Say It to My Face, How I Learned to Shave

Regular: Reading in 2023I read 21 books last year. ...

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 11:46:00 +0100

Reading in 2023

I read 21 books last year. Nine on my Kobo e-reader and the rest were deadtree format. Sixteen of them were fiction. Five were non-fiction. Night-time reading with the girls continues, but with less consistency. Cold-weather-commuted to work by bus, which accounts for the increase in books compared with 2022 & 2021.

Fiction in 2023

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - 80s nostalgia and sci-fi tropes.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers - “Hope isn’t about predicting the future; it’s about how you approach it.”
Freeze Frame - Peter May - A locked (in-time) room mystery.
Hail Mary Project - Andy Weir - “Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”
The City in the Middle of the Night - Charlie Jane Anders - “Humans are experts at storing knowledge and forgetting facts.”
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin - “To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.”
Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman - “Adults follow paths. Children explore.”
The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz - “Diana Cowper had planned her funeral and she was going to need it.”
Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon - “Writers, unlike most people, tell their best lies when they are alone.”
Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks - World-building introduction to the Culture.
Blackthorn Key - Kevin Sands - Fun YA recommendation from a middle-school teacher.
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin - If Zevin’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was a love letter to video games, this is her love letter to books and bookstores. “The words you can’t find, you borrow.”
Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas - A maddeningly storyless-story purchased for its beautiful cover. - “We should have stories not to tell us how to live and turn out lives into copies of stories, but to prevent us from having to fictionalise ourselves.”
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky - Evolution, generation ships, and the future of intelligent life.
The Sentence is Death - Anthony Horowitz - Hawthorne and a meta-fictionalized Horowitz part 2.
The Penderwicks - Jeanne Birdsall - “Parents almost always want what’s best for their children. They just don’t always know what that is.”

Non-Fiction in 2023

How To Love - Thich Nhat Hanh - “Every one of us is trying to find our true home. Some of us are still searching. Our true home is inside, but it’s also in our loved ones around us. When you’re in a loving relationship, you and the other person can be a true home for each other.”
Built to Move - Kelly Starrett & Juliet Starrett - “Can your ability to get up and down off the floor provide insight into how long you’ll live?”
Excellent Advice for Living - Kevin Kelly - “Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them
“Is there more?” until there is no more.”
The Autism Partner Handbook - Joe Biel, Dr. Faith G. Harper, Elly Blue - Love on the spectrum.
The Creative Act - Rick Rubin - “Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”

Top Three Books of 2023

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back — I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.”

Two friends — often in love, but never lovers. A beautiful story about friendship, love, trauma, work, play, time, art, and the creative process. A coming-of-age novel, for its multiple protagonists and for the video game industry they grow up within.

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

“There had been those back on Earth who claimed the universe cared, and that the survival of humanity was important, destined, meant. They had mostly stayed behind, holding to their corroding faith that some great power would weigh in on their behalf if only things became so very bad. Perhaps it had: those on the ark ship could never know for sure.”

This book is full of wonder. A mix of science fiction and science fact. I’ve been told that I’m not great with spoilers, so I’ll proceed with caution and tempt you with an odd quote for a space opera:

“She knows that individual ants themselves cannot be treated with, communicated with or even threatened. Her comprehension is coarse, of a necessity, but approximates to the truth. Each ant does not think. It has a complex set of responses based on a wide range of stimuli, many of which are themselves chemical messages produced by other ants in response to still more eventualities.”

Built to Move - Kelly Starrett & Juliet Starrett

Future-proof your body through mobility, balance, breath, sleep, and nutrition. Ten quick health assessments with daily physical practices for improvement. An example assessment, the Sit-and-Rise Test:

“Stand next to a wall or steady piece of furniture if you think you will need help. From there, cross one foot in front of the other and sit down on the floor into a cross-legged position without holding on to anything (unless you feel very unsteady). Now, from the same cross-legged position, rise up off the floor, if possible, without placing your hands or knees on the floor or using anything else for support. Tip: Lean forward with your hands outstretched in front of you to keep your balance.”

Scoring this assessment:

“Start by giving yourself a score of 10, then subtract one point for each of the following assists or problems:

- Bracing yourself with a hand on the wall or other solid surface
- Placing a hand on the ground
- Touching your knee to the floor
- Supporting yourself on the side of your legs
- Losing your balance”

Humble brag: I scored an inelegant ten on this assessment. I figure that’s the past twenty years of sporadic yoga paying off. That said, I’d like to be a ten on all these assessments at eighty, which means strength training, mobility work, and increased protein consumption.

Glad to have found this book at 46, but it should probably be required reading at 16.

Family Books of 2023

It’s getting harder to fit in nighttime reading with the girls. This year we wrapped up the Lumberjanes graphic novel series with books 18, 19 and 20. We’re definitely going to miss Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Riple, but the first half (quarter?) of this series was the strongest.

Our family favourite for the year was The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, a summer tale of four sisters, two rabbits, one dog, and a very interesting boy. Although published in 2005, this book has the nostalgic feel of the E. Nesbit books (from the early 1900s) mom read to me and my sis as kids. (As a side note, many E. Nesbit novels are available for free from the Standard Ebooks project.)

From an adult’s point-of-view, not much happens in the Penderwicks, but from a kid’s perspective every day in this novel is full of curiosity, adventure, heart-break, joy, friendship, and many perils great and small. So glad to learn there are four more books in this series.

Coming Soon

I normally pair podcasts with my yearly reading recap, but it’s already mid-February and I want to post what I’ve got. :)

Regular: Reading by NumberNumber of books read each year from 2011 to 2023. ...

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 08:44:00 +0100

Reading by Number

Number of books read each year from 2011 to 2023. I’ve been averaging 18 books per year for the past 13 years.

Past yearly overviews: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.