2019: Year 2 in Review

Posts

Total Posts this year: 39 (+1 vs 2018)

Decent posts this the year:

• Roughly Book Reviews
  • Against Bryan Caplan on Open Borders
  • Against Bryan Caplan on Raising Children
  • The Tragedy of Liberation
• Observations on the corporate world
  • Normalizing Dissent
  • Optimizers vs Drones
  • Observations on norm erosion
  • Don’t Clap
  • Incentives Matter
• Philosophy
  • Rapesaving
  • Infinite regress, circularity or axiomatic beliefs. Pick one.
  • Identity 101
• Practical Rationalism
  • Disaggregate Ideology
• Politics/Issues
  • Housing and Invisible Problems
  • A collective action justification for compulsory voting
  • Midnight thoughts on modern hate
  • Why do populists succeed?

I still write far less than I would want. I should have written a review of kolyma stories, a sequence on identity and a whole host of other things that I didn’t get around to. My writing also seems to be skewing towards the topics which occupy most of my waking life, work and organizations, as opposed to ethics or the far future.

Books

Total Books Read This Year: 24 (+1 vs 2018)

Decent Books:

• 5 stars:
  • A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!
  • Kolyma Stories
  • Legal Systems very different from ours
• 4 stars:
  • Fiction
    • Axiomatic
    • Blindsight
    • The Eyes of the Overworld
    • Emphyrio
  • Non Fiction
    • The Siege
    • Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
    • The Trial of Henry Kissinger
    • Barefoot Over the Serengeti
    • The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
    • Grokking Algorithms An Illustrated Guide For Programmers and Other Curious People
    • The Little Go Book
    • Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
    • Hard Time: Banged Up Abroad Raving Arizona

I finally finished Kolyma Stories this year. It’s one of the best books I’ve read and one of the few I unconditionally recommend.

The year ahead.

I should continue to write and read. I should write more. I should try to write one long-ish sequence going in depth into a certain topic. Identity or an introduction to ethics would be good sequences to start with. I should finally get serious with that podcast and start interviewing interesting people, of whom there are many.