View allAll Photos Tagged self-reflection
taken on sgoralnick's whistle stop tore of england, sadly i did not manage to get a full english down her (not my fault we met up at 12 noon in london witch is not my turf). next time she comes i am going stuff her little tummy with a breaky of biblical proportions! but she did buy her some good fish and chips
Photo captured via Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D AF Nikkor lens at Clam Beach. Humboldt County. Late September 2013.
*Top Non-Fiction: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, Melanie Mitchell A great guide for anybody with a high-school education to understand the importance and limitations of modern Artificial Intelligence, and demystifies the methods.
*Top Business: First Break all the Rules, Marcus Buckingham great way to think about hiring and assembling teams, even if the title is wrong and the vocabulary of “talent” today would be called “passions”, but separating that from knowledge and skill is critical.
*Top Fiction: Rememberence of Earth’s Past, Cixin Liu everything right with SciFi: good story, social and technological reflection, and pushing the edges of todays theories to extremes.
www.icloud.com/pages/0CAzWdygH5A8OKfXvnwHuhIEg#2020-Books
Full Reviews
1) The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman; This was a great engaging and entertaining old school Great Man, generals and battles history. It tells the story of so many mistakes, and the inability to plan or even adapt to the consequences of new technology. It tells the detailed dynamics and motivations of the first 30 days of the war and does an excellent job of setting up how that context set up the next 4 years of war.
2) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey; Back again to my self reflection book, this year I need to invest in my personal and spiritual aspects. I also need to make sure that I build more win-win agreements with my kids. I finally can actually remember all 7 habits in order.
3) Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, Melanie Mitchell; Great summary of the history and limitation of 2020 AI. No systems today can solve problem by abstraction, analogy, or simulation. The current state of the art is just search and extraction. Symbolic/Expert Systems are just software with all the same limitations and benefits and need General Knowledge to move any further. Neural networks work, but require massive quantities of data and are extremely task/sample specific. So much data in fact that some times they can be beat by random values over training. Today there is is no system to determine the depth or cardinality of convnets. Reinforcement Learning leads to overfitting, and is still an art to choose how much evaluation you use, Deep Q reinforcement need insight for dimensionality. All specialized systems are VERY brittle.
4) The Woods,The Likeness, Tana French; The Woods was fun and engaging as a crime novel, but nothing very insightful, weak male protagonist characterisation too much melodrama and overstated psychopath. The Likeness was actually good fun, now the character’s were believable though the plot situation was ridiculous, but believable characters in unbelievable situations make for better entertainment. It was helpful to have the background from “The Woods” but not really necessary, fun situations could you imitate someone you physically resembled? How do you outsmart someone who knows you are faking but nobody will believe them if they say it out loud and university days nostalgia.
5) A History of the American People, Paul Johnson; Actually the history of American Persons as it is a great man based history. The pre-civil war is the best world contextualized history of the US I have ever read. The apologies for robber barons are not convincing, but does document an important archetype of America. The final chapter, post Eisenhauer , is a disaster with a characters assasination of JFK while building up Nixon, while not standing up to the previous level of documenting events, politicians, wars, and social movements it does document the memory of America’s Right of the increase and control of crime, persecution of Chistianity, its exclusion from academia, and unfairness and illegitimacy of policy change with regards to law, rights, and race.
6) The Psychology of Performance, Eddie O'Connor; This was based primarily on Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), but it included many research based approaches to supporting performance, there are overlaps with other aspects of life, but it is specifically about sports. As most athletes are children it had a high focus on techniques that work with kids. Develop competence, autonomy, and relatedness; focus on outcomes and behaviors; teach attentive control, rather than focus or denial, mental defusion is a critical skill to develop.
7) Die linkshändige Frau, Peter Handke; Die Stimme dieser Geschichte ist extrem kalt. Aber die Einzelheiten sind so reich, das der Leser sich zu der Suche nach Gefühle und Bedeutungen gezwungen fühlt. Meisterhaft und künstlerisch geschrieben, das Hauptthema ist der Kampf zwischen Sehnsucht nach Individualität und Schmerz der Einsamkeit, weil Einsamkeit der Preis der Individualität ist. Der grundlegende Ennui der Frau bleibt aber unverändert und ungeklärt.
8) Inheritors of the Earth, Chris D. Thomas; This book attempts to make a new vision for conservation that we can serve bio diversity as opposed to the reactionary view of preserving a specific time in history. He makes it very strong case and ecosystems are fundamentally dynamic systems and there are no actual equilibrium’s. He explicitly calls into question the notion of invasive species and the value of eliminating them and points out the very interesting findings that.For me the key thinking here is how to re-approach problems in alternative ways he doesn’t look at conservation through the traditional ones but he doesn’t deny its value either and I and that ability to think through what is it we’re really trying to accomplish and in and out of the box kind away is what makes it fun and fascinating book
9) The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bruce Bueno De Mesquita; Realpolitik 2.0 or Public Choice theory in practice. Covers African Dictators, CEOs, and demogratic politicians, using the Economic reasoning of self interest on the currency of power. Ultimately it comes down to the electorate/interchangeables, selectorate/influentials, ruling-coalition/essentials to provide map of what entities need to be rewarded to maintain a leaders power. Cynical in the extreme, but believable and makes clear the importance of institutional rules.
10) Remembrance of Earth’s Past (Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End), Cixin Liu; Everything right with hard-SciFi, borderline understood science taken to extremes, fantastic but plausible theories on the universe (Dark Forest), rich social parallels of our own times extended out into the future, and interesting thoughtful explorations into human consequences of technology.
11) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campell; It feels a little overblown to notice the similarities between the Hercules and Jesus taken to an extreme. The whole premise seems a bit stretched to try apply to all of human Myth, however his ideas were so influential they have become more standard in late 20th Century storytelling than they were before. I still find the idea that one can use Western psychoanalyst technique on the global human psyche laughable.
12) Corona Virus Update (Podcast), Christian Drosten; Normalerweise zähle ich Podcasts nicht zu den Büchern. Ich mache eine Ausnahme, da dies der beste populärwissenschaftliche Journalismus ist, dem ich seit Jahrzehnten begegnet bin. Gute Zusammenfassung der neuesten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse zu einem Thema, das uns alle betrifft, mit einer klaren Beschreibung der Geschichte der Corona-Virologie und einer Aufschlüsselung der Argumentation der neuesten Vorabdrucke. Mein Gymnasium und meine Universität Biologie und Chemie wurden wieder aufgefrischt und praxisnah.
13) Exxon Mobile: Private Empire; Steve Coll; This was a company portrait of Exxon from the 1980’s through early 2000’s CEOs Lee Raymon and Rex Tillerson. It was a critical but balanced review of the an important American company, how it saw itself, how it saw its relations to government and larger society. I documents a section of America away from the coasts that believe itself rational and inevitable, producing a culture of extreme arrogance and indifference to its very narrow world view, but also why it was able to accomplish things that other companies, NGOs, and government cannot approach.
14) White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo; The use of silence and offence to maintain existing power structures is well documented and persuasive. She articulates well Traditional vs CRT White Supremacy and how it appears minor under the CRT framework. Traditional White Supremacy refers to intentional efforts to place whites in control of other races, while CRT-WS represents a system of power domination that maintains white racial norms and control that is expressed in lived experience outcomes of people of color. She is unconvincing for me to give up White/Western Ideals of: individuality, objectivity, meritocracy, and universalism.
15) Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan; Part I is fun allegory with a healthy focus on virtuous and vice words with good story pulling the narrative along, Part II is overly doctrinaire on specific flavor of Christianity and itself an interpretation of first part.
16) Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee; This is a great medical history, that does a great job of explaining what we knew at a particular point in history and makes it was from the ancient Egyptians to 2010.
17) The Road, Cormac McCarthy; Bleak dark blue-colar survivalist fantasy. The happy ending feels tacked on, but still with the epic phrases and connotation filled descriptions of everyday things.
18) The Innovators, Walter Isaacson; Strongly against the idea of the individual inventor (but the importance of individual on specific forms), talks about competing and co-inspiring innovation models. Collaborative: narrow or wide audience, low capital (Internet, Wikipedia, Linux, Academic knowledge), Institutional: narrow but with spillover, moderate capital (DARPA, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Space Race), Commercial: wide audience, very high capital (Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google) and how innovation of each kind inspired and forces the other to work harder.
19) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume; Argues that our knowledge of things is limited to probabilistic expectations based on experience and composed of tradition, analogy, and sensation. Chance is only defined by the absence and is not a motivating force, cause & effect merely correlation and therefore fully symmetrical in time (use to contradict intelligent design)
20) Untouched by Human Hands, Robert Sheckley; Classic 1950’s perspective twisting SciFi. I really enjoyed the short-story style of thinking of the world from a new perspectives. This style seems to have become less popular as SciFi moved into the Space Opera series style, but this is a good example of those short and sweet little twisters.
21) Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari; An even better explanation of his definition of religion as trans-personal purpose, I like his term “inter-subjective” reality best modeled with money. Full of baseless speculation, but fun and gives some idea of how to view anti-liberal trends in society.
22) First Break all the Rules, Marcus Buckingham; Survey based management, this brings forward that employees leave managers not companies and focuses on facilitating strengths rather than investing in improving weakness. Talents/habits are keys to productive employees, find the right people and positions to let them flourish. Compensate, measure, and encourage outcomes to optimize effectiveness not steps, not promoting positions. Talent (search for), skills (train for), knowledge (fact train, understanding search)
23) Drive Your Plow over the Bone of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk; A rapid murder mystery with fantastic little quotes/verses observing human nature. It is an attack on hunters/animal-husbandry and institutional morality from a deeply flawed narrator. Deep views into the hypocrisy of the world and the neglect of many living things, but from an extremist and unstable viewpoint. The story calls for change but discredits its own moralizing in the process, leaves plenty to think about and was casus belli in Poland for various alternative groups.
24) Being Mortal, Atul Gawande; Medical institutions rob us of our autonomy and dignity, and we must be clear to what purpose. Technology now allows us to trade thoughts and feelings for bodily function. The author tells of the importance of hospice and assisted living, and most importantly the hard conversations between loved ones as perspectives change. Also he says professionals (doctors in particular) need to be counselors not commanders nor experts.
25) The Second World War, Winston Churchill; Real history from a personal perspective. Old school politics and war. Leadership through relationships, expectations management. “In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Good Will.” What remains impressive is the degree that this was not just a policy statement but a leadership principal. This account has become the background interpretation of WWII for most of the world that can be exposed or criticized.
26) The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck; A simple engaging plot with a beautiful circular end, but filled with characters of massively different perspectives on the events occurring around them. It does bring up many Chinese social characteristics alien to westerners that still survive to this day, including that many Chinese see that as too large of a grouping, and that China is more like Europe. It also digs deep into the ugliness of poor rural life and some of its charms.
27) Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter; A personal journalist tale of junk/scrap/recycling industry and why in the 21st century it flows from USA to China, he points out that this is a story of demand not exploitation. He also points out that we ordinary citizens engage in harvesting not recycling and that it is really a classic traders business full of outsiders with new information about what could be useful where and it scales from pickers in streets Chengdu to the offices in LA doing the same business at different scales.
28) Mao's Great Famine, Frank Dikötter; This is a terrifying look at how personality cults and ideology can ravage people. I feel the author spent too much time on incidents and did not address the comparison to what came before the communists, as starvation and flooding pre-existed, just not at the same scale and breadth. Systematic incompetence along with incredible belief in human potential turned to cruelty and self-deception as it became realized in massive human horror.
29) The Stand, Stephen King; King is master of the craft of writing but not the art, these characters are fully detailed like real people like meeting people at a bar, not your friends and family. More of a post-apocalyptic than a plague story, curiously focused on an American concept of small communities as good.
30) A History of India, Michael H. Fisher; Pre-history focuses on the myths and religions of India as that is what we have, does a good job of explaining the enticement of the Indus Valley civilization and how the soil means we don’t have more, provides a solid short explanation of Jati and Varna as “Caste.” And a whirlwind of lightly opinionated context into the 21st century.
31) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America, Mathew Desmond; Details the structural and positive feedback mechanism of poverty, showing both the landlords and the poor tenants, it also shows the unintended consequences of legislation designed to protect but further limiting access to housing, police, and safety.
32) Great Expectation, Charles Dickens; A classic meditation on how “good” character and “good” motivations matter. Only with a real reasons from a sensible context can one accept Great Expectations and make them your own. With the perfect lawyer, the aged, the insane elders trying to force their fears into another generation. Not so simple that good, or even knowledge always pays, but it is a prerequisite for a good life. I especially enjoyed the relationship between Pip & Jo his adoptive father.
33) The Water Kingdom, Phillip Ball; Focusing the long history into the straight jacket of water occasionally was strained, but it did explain why Mao was so obsessed with “Water Conservation.” The importance of rivers in 4 thousand years of China history. It does cover various empires, philosophic, and artistic movements with historic context. A bit too centered on European sources, but it does give a broad brush view of China with modern judgements with water as a framing.
34) Open - A Self Portrait, Andre Agassi; This is an unusual auto-biography, it goes over a lot more details of self inflicted personal suffering than most. It paints a sorry picture of celebrity, but it is inspiring to see how hard someone is willing to work, and how much he was willing to give up to his “team.” It brings up a very interesting question about talent, in sport physical gifts are necessary, but not sufficient, physical gifts never means complete gifts his spine was always a problem. Driven by hate, anger, and fear for so many years it is not surprising how chaotic he was, and how that was part of his charm.
35) The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler; Curious to read a true noir novel, funny descriptions and one liner shots, with never ending plot twists and action. Stereotyped interactions, from playfully but shallowly sketched characters. Not high literature, but a fun read.
36) A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, Adam Rutherford; A journalistic book on the current state of genetics and rants about how the popular press gets it wrong. I was interested to hear the definition of genes (makes a protein) and how that is out of date with modern DNA. How much technology we got from the human genome project, though it didn’t become the map that some had hoped. That a region (say Europe) all share a common ancestor 1k years ago and all people alive today about 3.6k years ago. Over the moderns stats and methods of genetics.
37) Start with Why, Simon Sinek; Surprisingly literal, the book is more about branding than leadership, but it is one of the better arguments for “authenticity” in branding. Brands are about trust and identity, and if that is true make it clear why our brand exists, how you will approach that problem, and what you have done to solve it. As a communicator do this and drive consistency and you get trust and support.
38) Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet, Herta Müller; Ein Haßlied der Kommunismus. Die Scheinheiligkeit des Staates aus Gier nach Geld, Sinnenlust, Macht, und Rausch überall sind. Den Menschen haben den Krieg in körperlicher und seelischer Armut überlebt, leben aber im Wahnsinn und Angst nicht vor dem Grauen aber vor der Banalität als Straffe fur die Sunden des fluchtwunches.
39) Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces, Laura Turnbridge; A modern biography that assumes you already know the life and music of Beethoven. Ms. Turnbridge does a great job of explaining the context of Beethoven’s life in relation to its time and concerns. She brings up that arrangements for 2 handed Piano was the way to make money from music, that reading aloud was the ordinary way to consume books at home, how symphonies were import for respect and reputation but hardly anybody heard them as a single unit or would pay for them, but music was critically important for social status and entertainment.
40) Why We Swim, Bonnie Tsui; An overly personal modern journalism piece. The stories of Nihon Eiho and Iceland were fun, a little detail into Torres as an individual was amusing. She has a strong obsession with swimming that I can sympathize with, her ultimate answer that swimming is about survival I find a curious conclusion. I empathise and echo with many of my experiences with swimming, the book did made me sad to be in a winter Berlin lockdown thinking about swimming.
41) Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner; A very complicated structure to give a sense of the South’s history as seen through its own lens. It gives a sense how the Plantation wanted to be noble houses of europe, but lot of “free” land and the institution of slavery prevented it from developing true Nobility, no matter how much they tried.
"Never stand between two mirrors. Mirrors contain infinity. Infinity contains more things than you think. Everything, for a start. Including hunger. Because there's a million billion images, but only one soul to go around."
~Terry Pratchett
From The Wintersmith (I think)
I'm standing outside of a chapel @ Westwood Village Memorial Park. The viewer is seeing what I saw. Chairs, floor and curtains inside the chapel are not reflections. Everything else is. To the left are memorial plaques, in the background are the burial grounds and mausoleums. You can see my reflection twice...in the foreground and in the background....Phew! (o: @ Westwood Village Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California USA
Michael Alfano, 2022, near Seven Stars Bakery, Jewelry District, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, sculpture
External feedback often arises from doing something noteworthy to an outside perspective. This form of a feedback loop lacks regularity and consistency and true growth requires regimented self reflection.
--
When it rains in Norway, it fucking pours
In a Google cafe wasting time while waiting for a ride. Should have grabbed an ice cream instead of doing goofy things like this.
Are you sure that you know your true identity? Will you be able to look at yourself without all the distortions created by your subjective world? In general, we are more close to the animal self than to the human self.
The animal self seeks the satisfaction of its own passions at all costs although it may often have to disguise them and present them under the appearance of great saintliness. In this way, this man, that thinks that he 'does what he likes,' is in reality the slave of his own slaves.
J.A. Livraga
Stock used:
Raven here by ~FallowpenStock
Texture here by ~SolStock
Blood brushes here by ~Scully7491
Background is my own stock. It was done last week in west Ireland, in the same place than the photo beside.
Thank you for looking