Tag: Books

Confirmation bias, Daily Life

It’s Not What I Thought

Every once in a while, a book manages to surprise me. A great example is “World War Z“. I saw the movie first, so when I started the book imagine my surprise when I realized the only thing the book shares in common with the movie is the title. Seriously. Someone bought the movie rights to a great book and said, I love it. Let’s change everything. I don’t get that. Interestingly, it was written by Max Brooks. Son of Mel Brooks.

This week I found another gem to surprise me. Someone suggested “Starship Troopers“. I was very reluctant as the movie was awful. It couldn’t decide if it wanted to be campy, a spoof, or an actual science fiction flick. The end result was just stupid. Like World War Z, the novel version of Starship Troopers shares the name with the movie and that’s about it. It’s a great read with some pretty deep insights. In a nutshell, the book covers societal structure, the morality of war, and moral breakdown.

First published in 1959, it’s eerie how closely it parallels some of the issues society today is facing. At one point I had to go look up the publish date because I didn’t believe it wasn’t written recently.

And since this seems to be the week of surprises, I had another one yesterday. I had a preconceived notion of someone’s political leanings, and was gob smacked to find out I was completely wrong. If you haven’t followed cartoonist (creator of Dilbert) Scott Adams’ controversial blow up this week, it’s a doozy. On his live stream he made some controversial statements. You can listen here. I had just assumed he leaned towards the right side of the political spectrum. When he made those comments, I thought oh great – more ammo for the left to claim republicans are racist.

After making his comments, Adams sat for a long podcast interview, and I was shocked. He’s very left-wing. Contributed to BLM, supports reparations, and strongly believes systemic racism is the cause of many issues. The exact opposite of what I assumed his beliefs are. It’s a good interview and worth listening to. His rational for making those comments are certainly not how the media is portraying them.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his premise, he intentionally risked everything to say it. Within a day his comic strip has been dropped from every newspaper in the country and his book publisher canceled him. It takes guts to throw yourself on the sword in the name of starting a national discussion about race.

It’s only Wednesday. If there are any more surprises coming… I hope they’re good ones.

Daily Life, Lists

What’s Your Taste?

Music. Food. Blogs. YouTube. What’s the one thing these all have in common? They all satisfy a particular taste at a moment in time.

Take music. I have a very eclectic music playlist. Everything from reggae, blues, old school punk, OG rap, to hard core metal. What I find interesting is that on any given day I have a “taste” for a particular genre of music. I rarely just randomly listen to my playlist. When I have a taste for punk, that’s all I want to hear. If some other genre pops in, it just doesn’t sound right. Often the current taste lasts for several days and then I burn out and a new taste kicks in. It’s the same with reading or watching YouTube. I’ll get on a political kick and simply can’t get enough analysis of some weird arcane political topic. Day after day. And then suddenly, I can’t stand it anymore and move on to reading motorcycle tire reviews or the history of the Crusades or something.

The brain is an amazing thing. I find it fascinating that your brain can crave a particular input. Why do I get that dopamine hit listening to Rage Against the Machine one day, but the next it might sound like screeching static to me? Why do I have a taste for reading nothing but autobiographies for a month, and then suddenly the only thing I can stand to read are escapist spy thrillers? Does everyone’s brain work that way, or is it just me?

The real killer is when you lose your taste. That feeling of flipping through the radio, channel after channel, and nothing sounds good. Music, talk radio, sports, nothing is working. When you cycle endlessly through twitter, blogs, news sites and nothing seems even remotely interesting. What causes that? Is the brain on overload? Are you tired and don’t realize it? Dehydrated and the receptors aren’t firing? The brain is a complicated creature.

I have very little point to any of this. I started thinking about it this morning as I scrolled through YouTube. YouTube’s algorithm drives me nuts. You’d think at this point they’d be more sophisticated. I get that If I search or click on a thumbnail about a particular thing, I’m expressing interest and they want to serve me more videos about that topic. Fine. Except that they flood you with that topic.

Search for how to repair a lawnmower, and for two weeks your feed will be flooded with nothing but videos about lawnmowers, lawn care, gardening, lawnmower reviews, lawnmower racing, secrets to the perfect lawn, the best oil for lawnmowers, women in bikinis mowing the lawn (ok, I might have clicked on that one), redneck lawnmowers, careers in lawnmowing, etc… Do they not understand that taste is fleeting? How come they can’t figure out that if I haven’t clicked on a lawn mowing thumbnail in two days, I’m probably no longer interested in that topic?

Maybe rather than the random babble I push out from time to time, instead I’ll start posting nothing but my current daily “tastes”.

Daily Life, Government, Health, Politics

Death By Jingle Bells
  • Time of death was 1735. Ten and a half hours into the shift. The Christmas music loop playing over the hospital loudspeakers had just begun the forty seventh repeat of Jingle Bells for the day. He was found slumped over his desk, eyes rolled back, drool pooling in the corners of his N95 mask. The charting system was open and his last known note had not yet been saved… “Patient observed laughing while on phone call. Patient informed this nurse that pain was 10/10. This nurse provided education on pain medication schedule and alternative pain relief strategies. Patient was observed yelling obscenities at staff members. This nurse will continue to monitor patients pain levels closely….”
  • Thank god we finally have some diversity at the highest levels of government. The media proudly gushed that Pete Buttigieg will be the first openly gay cabinet member. Pete himself made a point of saying this during his acceptance speech. Apparently Richard Grenell as DNI doesn’t count because, well, he was appointed by Trump. And he even though he’s gay he probably secretly hates the gays. And he’s a racist obviously. Does it worry anyone else that Mayor Pete, who couldn’t even get the potholes fixed in South Bend, is now in charge of Transportation? Optics and symbolism are clearly what’s most important.
  • 8 inches of snow overnight. I’ve got stuff do this morning, so the first downhill day will have to wait until tomorrow. We’ll get some skate skiing in with the hound this afternoon.
  • The backlash over Jill Biden insisting on being called ‘Doctor’ has been hilarious. Reviews of her dissertation have not been kind. Tucker Carlson’s skewering of her academic prowess was pretty damn funny. You didn’t really think, after four years of being called racist, and trashing the first lady, folks would just magically unite did you? Silly rabbit.
  • Remember the days of riots, looting, and police officers being shot over the tragic police shooting of Breonna Taylor? Well, it turns out when someone does actual journalism (remember that?) reality doesn’t match the mob outrage. Poor miss Taylor doesn’t seem to have been the innocent bystander she was portrayed as. Will the media report on this? Nope. It doesn’t fit the narrative and we wouldn’t want to upset people with minor details like the truth.
  • While a bit long, this thread is worth reading. It asks some interesting questions about the flu and why it’s been nearly non-existent this year. It shows how little we actually know about Covid and if our myriad of strategies for dealing with it are even doing anything. You know, science.
  • Magically after the election, Twitter returns the retweet button back to its original functionality. All is well, nothing to see here folks, move along. Twitter will add a “fact check, disputed claim” to a video posted by a conservative. They don’t when the exact same video is posted by a liberal account. If you’re an honest, thinking person this should bother you.
  • I don’t normally read James Bond type books, but I’ve been hooked on the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney. Been binge reading. I’m on book 8 of 10. Good stuff when you want an easy escapism read.

Song of the day: Beastie Boys “Root Down”

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.017

A random list of things and shower thoughts that an old Gen X dude finds cool or worth pondering.

  • Spring appears to be here (in the West anyway). Blue skies and no signs of further snow in the forecast. As much as I like winter, I’m done. Been thinking more of the bike than the skis.
  • Speaking of skis, my new ones are scary fast. Super stable at speed with no chatter. Several times yesterday I caught myself at ludicrous speed and thought… crashing would be bad right now. They are forcing me to be more aggressive, which is a good thing I suppose.
  • We had to hire a crew to remove our snow disaster at the house. These folks worked their asses off for days. The vast majority of the population in this country has lost that all-day farmer strength we used to have. We’re doomed when the zombie apocalypse hits.
  • Speaking of zombies, a great book to read is “World War Z” by Max Brooks son of Mel Brooks. It’s what the movie was loosely based on. And by loosely I mean they share the same name, that’s about it. One of the neat concepts in the book is that post-apocalypse, society flips. The blue collar folks become the sought after leaders because they know how to actually fix and build things. The white collar workers are useless without electricity and become the new ditch diggers.
  • I’m fascinated by the Instagram algorithm. How is it that an account with 1 post has several hundred followers, but others with many hundreds of posts have only a few?
  • My shoulder is still messed up several years later. I can’t do pull ups or back squats due to pain. I need to fix this somehow.
  • Hard to gage who will be the democratic front runner. Kamala would be their better choice, but Bernie has the dollars. Beto, Booker, and Warren will be busts. Yang and Schultz could be interesting. Biden is corrupt as hell and I’m not convinced he’ll run.
  • An interesting interview by CNBC with GOPRO founder Nick Woodman. I still think the main problem is the learning barrier to editing and creating a watchable video. People buy the camera, use it a few times then it sits. I may or may not be referring to myself.

Song of the day: Rebelution “Feeling Alright”

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.012
  • A note for my two readers… Notions will be sparse to non-existent for a week. I’ll be on an island drinking tropical drinks with tiny umbrellas and fighting a heroic battle to remain in ketosis. Not.
  • The US government hit its borrowing limit yesterday. The estimate is that they run out of money by September if we don’t raise the debt ceiling (again). Our total debt is $22 trillion. But whoo hoo, a green new deal!
  • I love this quote from @garyvee “Technology has not changed us, technology has exposed us”.
  • There are some thoughts that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. I love that stuff. I’m also not smart enough to understand what the hell I’m reading. As Forrest Gump says, “I’m not a smart man”.
  • Speaking of reading, I struggled to find a few books to read on vacation. I don’t know why but lately finding books that keep my interest is like searching through Netflix for a movie. I settled on these three. Don’t judge.
  • I’ve been doing an experiment-ish on the Twitter. Created a new account. I have exactly 1 follower. Been slowly adding a few tweets, some hashtags, following people, etc… I’m curious what will be the spark that actually gets followers?
  • Still no Instagram story. Maybe this week.
  • Dropped the hound off at the pet sitter yesterday. Surprising how quiet the house is without that knucklehead. See you in a week!

Song of the day: Buju Banton “Love Dem Bad”