Review

A GPT recommendation. This one somewhat surprising because of the low following and seeming limited connection to artificial intelligence, but I leaned some nice things about memory and the neocortex.

**Google OpenAI and the Red Sea ** Published in 2005, John Battelle chronicles the rise of Google among a sea of competitors in a year when Google was worth around $23 billion in market capitalization. Now, with a value exceeding $1.6 trillion and a workforce of over 100,000, the influence of Google on modern society is undeniable. The narrative of Google is surprisingly relevant considering its age. Google was able to beat out what was then a red-sea of competitors by combining a reticence to monetize (many competitors were monetizing via a portal/banner ad strategy), an emphasis on maximizing user value through a clean UI, better search results, and a willingness to accept false positives when it came to prioritizing users over businesses. The pot of gold at the end of this path was bigger than almost anybody realized, and many of John Battelle’s ‘what-if’ scenarios are now functioning companies like Vivino and applications of Google Maps. ...

Neither a playbook nor novel, but at least provides a counterpoint to the common American expert narrative that China has fallen off the bandwagon ever since they stopped taking advice from the Washington consensus.

Surprisingly little about Yellen. Could have been titled: Akerlof: life, times and family.

A reasonable starting point on what it means to physically live a good life. Good review of caloric restriction. Emotional health better in Harvard Study. Nutrition better in How not to Die. Fitness better in: Bigger Leaner Stronger Sleep in more detail of: Why we sleep. More to come.

For the first few chapters, I thought the gaps in character and world building were intentional. But after the romance went from clumsy to 21st century teenage hormonal awkward, and the challenge course was ripped straight out of Ninja Warrior I doubted whether there was anything holding the gaps together. After a few GR reviews and plot summaries, it seems there isn’t. So thank you goodreads community for saving me from the other, banal, 80%.

** Playground Rules: Playgrounds Rule ** When I was 9, I went on the carnival with my dad for 2 weeks during high season. He worked full time, leaving me mostly unsupervised for the duration in a different city each week. This was a turning point in my life, and while I continued through a public school education and appreciate the ability of a classroom to learn coding and Chinese, am receptive to the idea that maybe there’s something better than the classroom. ...

**Hand-Waving Advice ** Posits that parents should be more gardeners than carpenters. OK, but what does that mean? I thought it would mean gardening in the way that Seeing like a State describes farming: a complex interaction between farmer and environment that includes non-reducible complexity and generations of built in-knowledge that is ignored by intersubjective human systems. That would have been an interesting avenue to explore. But alas, when the Gopnik says gardening, what she really means is allowing kids to play, rather than being overly didactic or prescriptive in parenting. Maybe for somebody in my grandparents generation who thought that kids should be ‘seen and not heard’ this thesis is new. But for me, this is not news. I would have wanted to know more about types of play, what are effective methods of fostering play, when is it still necessary to be didactic etc. Instead the advice is just: ’let them play’ which while I directionally agree with, doesn’t need a book to convince me or fill in any details to justify the time and price for this one. ...

** Inner Fictional Game of Tennis ** It’s hard to exist on Goodreads without seeing Taylor Jenkins Reid. Reid takes the pacing of a blockbuster, and substitutes Grand Slam tournaments for action scenes. Modern sensibilities about media expectations and gender imbalances creep into a narrative that that explores the will to victory. Sure the ending is nearly inevitable, some of the plot events deserved an eyeroll, such as mother dying when she was young, father dying before the last tournament in the book, but the literary production values make it a tennis thriller I’ve already recommended to others. ...

Interesting for parts: the language and references and moments. But this is not a story like other plays. Characters are pretty thin, plot is a bit forced, maybe it’s because I listened to this while sick on a transatlantic flight with a sick kid, but the parts didn’t really fit together into any whole.