Hcmc

I should be reading in Chinese or about stoic philosophy, but The Blade Itself is… distractingly enjoyable.

** Down, out, and liberal in the 2010s ** I didn’t know it was possible to write a period piece about the last decade, but here we are. I’m still not sure what really compelled me, but I couldn’t put it book down. On this flight I forgot I was even in the air, where I’m coming from or going to, what year I’m in, I was just living inside the story. Maybe it’s because the story gradually felt familiar. Raising kids, even if you’re not climbing the same kind of corporate ladder as the characters, hits familiar notes. It’s grimdark, yet full of both overt and subtle moralizing, and every chapter ends with a life lesson like Grey’s Anatomy in space. ...

Daring to be Different Completed: March 19, 2025 Last edited time: February 9, 2026 1:39 PM Status: OBE Type: Book

This isn’t Robert Caro, but it’s still pretty good. Truman is probably the most relatable president I’ve read about. And as we enter into the twilight of Pax Americana, it’s poignant to read about the person who laid the cornerstones of it.

**Decohere ** * Ubik—the only book that reads you as you read it. Side effects include narrative dissonance and ontological vertigo. * Do books need to make sense? Ubik certainly doesn’t. Supposedly that’s the meta point - a dream, or constructed reality always has seams the reader can pick at, Ubik just makes it more obvious. The core narrative is about surviving in half-life, and different minds collide and cannibalize. Yet, if the narrative is not even an attempt at coherence, what are we left with? Art? A dream? Why do we even read? Maybe Ubik is the diving board from which the reader should jump into more profound thoughts. I just fell into the abyss. ...

** Wired for Thought ** The stamina required to endure the AI winter and emerge into the present era makes me grateful I didn’t choose academia. Worlds I See offers a reasonable introduction to the modern history of artificial intelligence and neural networks, though its publication date means it omits recent advancements. One intriguing idea Li introduces, though without deep defense, is her version of Dunbar’s number: how many concepts is the human brain aware of? She suggests 30,000—what could be called ‘Fei-Fei’s number’—as a probable natural limit to human cognition and labeling, aligning with dictionary entries and her goal for ImageNet. ...

Diversity over Diagnosis All members of my immediate family are neurodiverse, and I certainly never felt the same as those around me. Yet, much of the medical literature on neurodiversity either talks about those within one standard deviation of the norm, or deviants themselves. Such language is inherently belittling, and uninteresting. Rather than discussing traits, it focuses on disorders. I have been watched my mother diagnosed with a parade of DSM classifications, giving me firsthand experience of academia’s ineptitude in addressing neurodiversity. A far more insightful way to learn about this topic is through personal stories. ...

** Murder, Magic, Malaise ** If Romantasy is court intrigue with a swooning heartbeat, this is its jaded sibling: Mysterantasy—suspicious deaths, arcane trickery, and protagonists too tired to care. Din, a detective who’d rather not chase another corpse, moves through a world where power, like rot, is ambient. His weariness isn’t melodramatic. It’s the flat exhaustion of someone who’s seen too many patterns repeat. Solving murders feels increasingly pointless. The system remains: “And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist.” ...

** Money into Power, via Intelligence ** ‘The Thinkers’ traces the rise of modern think tanks as an unseen influence of American policy. The pivot point is 1973, when the Heritage Foundation was founded—not just another research shop, but the first to openly embrace ideological warfare. Heritage became the Fox News of think tanks: fast, partisan, and media-savvy. The others followed. What began as university-adjacent, data-driven analysis evolved into a partisan arms race. RAND begat Heritage begat the current ecosystem—ideological, nimble, and well-funded. ...

Our present moment might not be so unprecedented. *