I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a little uneven but it has three basic ideas: 1) the relative size of souls from small mosquitoes all the way to the most compassionate, selfless humans, and 2) the ability to share one's soul closely in great detail or largely in a general way, 3) consciousness arises from conscience.

Leaving aside the issue of animals for the purpose of this review I believe in the equal treatment and honor of all humans as the basis for good and my conception of goodness itself or God. On the flip side, sociopathic cruelty towards any human is evil and I am not open to relativism. In other words, I completely reject #1 and embrace #3.

The book itself feels like it jumps from these three topics sometimes accompanied with logic puzzles or personal stories without actually persuasively tying these topics together. It wasn't a bad read though, it definitely gets your brain going and introduces some new things to think about.

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Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Pérez

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every now and then I read a book that changes the way I see the world. This is one of those.

Of course, I am aware of some of the things mentioned in the book because I am a woman. I am well aware of the relative danger I face while walking around at nighttime as opposed to a man, but there is so much more than those types of observations here. The author explores so much in the world of data that my entire perception of moving through the world has shifted.

Absolutely everything seems different. I'm even looking at the headrest in my car with wonder and confusion. I'd give this book 10 stars if I could.

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Liberal Privilege by Donald Trump Jr.

Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden And The Democrats' Defense Of The Indefensible by Donald Trump Jr.
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

First of all, this is self-published which is a huge RED FLAG that it's horrendously written, edited, and not fact-checked. I can confirm this is the case.

1) Biden versus Trump health. Donald Jr. is correct that the media has not harped on Biden's aneurysms, to the point that if I'd heard about it, I had forgotten about it. I read Promises to Keep but don't recall that fact in there but did confirm it. But okay, Biden has been so forthcoming about his health that we even know about his aneurysms. Donald Jr. is really disingenuous about President Trump's health. We know he constantly eats McDonald's, can barely walk around (forget jogging on a treadmill that's absurd), and lies about everything. Dr. Ronny Jackson is now a Republican congressman, and Republican congressman have fallen in line behind Trump regardless of his policies, words, lies.

We've seen Biden bicycling around, and Biden suffers from a life-long stutter, not mental impairment as Donald Jr. would have you believe. But Donald Jr. doesn't mention the stutter AT ALL in his assessment because he's not interested in reality or educating the public, (hence the self-publishing) this is a lengthy ad in the form of a book. Now yes, the many political memoirs I read were also ads, but they were about the candidate's accomplishments not baseless attacks on their competition.

2) The DNC did not pick Joe Biden, primary Democratic voters did. He wasn't my first choice at all, but lots of CONSERVATIVE Democrats did want him. "Leftist extremists" typically called progressives, have virtually no power in the Democratic party. Biden is centrist, Nancy Pelosi is centrist, as are the majority of Democrats with any power. DT Jr. attacks Biden both for being too liberal, and too conservative, and for being racist to boot. I don't disagree that Biden has exhibited racism in the past (one of the reasons I supported more progressive candidates) or that he is very conservative, but President Trump has definitely exhibited more racism and more recently. So his argument completely falls apart logically.

3) This one is a perfect example of how DT Jr. constantly twists logic. Did Donald Trump Jr. commit treason? He doesn't discuss the details at all while dismissing the entire thing as impossible. Well, meeting with Russian informants to get information about Hillary Clinton is a crime that is dangerous to our country: a) You aren't supposed to receive presents from foreign countries that might make you beholden to them, b) they shouldn't have "kompromat" or secrets of yours that they may use for blackmail, and finally, c) you shouldn't allow foreign countries to influence our elections to their benefit, and I would add, d) Russia is our enemy in that it seeks to divide and harm our population so that it may follow its policy of local dominance over its neighboring countries and world hegemony more generally. DT Jr.’s emotional but not logical stance against this position is that the punishment for treason is the death penalty. No one of consequence in the Democratic party has called for the death penalty, or even really supports the death penalty more generally. The majority of death sentences that have been carried out in recent years have been by conservative leaders who have not issued pardons or delays. (By contrast, Steve Bannon has called for the beheading of private US citizens for merely advocating the truth.) Regardless, none of this contradicts that DT Jr. committed crimes for which he should rightfully pay. President Trump is well aware of this which is why he seeks to try to pardon DT Jr. before he has even been rightfully charged with these crimes.

4) He's right about political hypocrisy regarding sexual assault- something both Democrats and Republicans engage in. Um hello Roy Moore? https://www.washingtonpost.com/invest...
And then DT Jr. also does by not mentioning the many sexual assault and rape accusations against his father and his father's admission of sexual assault on tape.

5) Did media support liberal candidates? Or did media love all the money they made from the spectacle that was Donald Trump in 2016? Did they pound Hillary Clinton for her email server issue?

6) I'm old enough to actually remember what actually happened with regards to Russian election interference. I also read the Mueller Report (written by lifelong Republican Mueller) and listened to our intelligence agencies that were all in agreement about the facts but not in agreement with the Trumps. The intelligence agencies also said there was no truth to the accusation against Joe Biden behaving inappropriately with regards to Hunter Biden's business. Continuing to push this narrative goes beyond lying to participating in Russian efforts to destabilize our elections and our democracy and to divide our people.

On and on, the pattern in this book is the same, DT Jr. attacks Biden or his family for a small or untrue infraction and fails to mention the huge MOTES in the Trump families' eyes. It's infuriating and misleading and it gets one star for making the world a worse place.

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Caffeine by Michael Pollan

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World by Michael Pollan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't quit caffeine to test out what Pollan is saying, but I did drink extra coffee while listening to this audiobook and I just remembered another study that said that coffee makes you extra-persuadable... hmm. Well, I enjoyed the book and I am persuaded. Nonetheless, I am going to keep drinking coffee because I'm addicted and I choose to cherry-pick the evidence of longer-lived coffee drinkers.

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Pale Ride by Laura Spinney

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read a few books about the 1918 flu this year, and this was an excellent overview ofthe history, science, and changing culture of the time. It was entertaining, well-written, and not overly dark considering the topic.

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The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman

The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was interested in this book mainly because of the title. I thought it would be a sociological exploration of the concept of childhood and how it's changed. The first half of this short book was mostly that but then it was mostly about television dumbing down the world. In part, due to its short length, it wasn't enough of an exploration of anything. It was an okay read though.

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The Rules of Contagion by Adam Kucharski

The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread--And Why They Stop by Adam Kucharski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like a lot of people said, this both about viruses spreading and about information/misinformation/disinformation spreading. It's sort of the perfect book for our time in that both of those things are a danger right now. But the organization was really poor and there were only a few new things covered.

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 “We received a new dataset each day. Because it took time for new cases to be reported, there were fewer recent cases in each of these datasets: if someone fell ill on a Monday, they generally wouldn’t show up in the data until Wednesday or Thursday. The epidemic was still going, but these delays made it look like it was almost over.” 

 “R = Duration × Opportunities × Transmission probability × Susceptibility” 

“Epidemiology is, in fact, a mathematical subject,’ he wrote in 1911, ‘and fewer absurd mistakes would be made regarding it (for example, those regarding malaria) if more attention were given to the mathematical study of it.’” 

 “Tackling harmful content will have a direct effect – preventing a person from seeing it – as well as an indirect effect, preventing them [from] spreading it to others. This means well-designed measures may prove disproportionately effective. A small drop in the reproduction number can lead to a big reduction in the size of an outbreak.”

Humble Pi by Matt Parker

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was getting ready to give this book 3 stars at the beginning but as I went on I realized that some of these math mental hurdles are driving the covid spread. For starters, many Governors, even 11 months in seem fundamentally unaware of how exponential growth works which is the underlying prediction threat of covid growth. Additionally, most people have very little familiarity with even the basics of how statistics work, useful in understanding all types of science research, for example in vaccine trials. Another example is the Swiss cheese engineering strategy which is also necessary to implement to avoid covid spread but many people and even state governments seem unaware of this.

This book is interesting both for people that do not understand math and for those that do. Those that understand math are usually unaware of how deeply clueless others are but since they make systems for people who do not understand- or at a minimum are fallible humans- humans are likely to screw everything up, possibly with fatal results. It's also a pretty entertaining book as the author genuinely seems to enjoy math and resultant foibles.

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“I love the example of someone who starts work at 8 a.m. and by 12 p.m. they need to have cleaned floors eight to twelve of a building. Setting about cleaning one floor per hour would leave a whole floor still untouched come noon.” 

“There is always the chance that something else is influencing the data, causing the link. Between 1993 and 2008 the police in Germany were searching for the mysterious ‘phantom of Heilbronn’, a woman who had been linked to forty crimes, including six murders; her DNA had been found at all the crime scenes. Tens of thousands of police hours were spent looking for Germany’s ‘most dangerous woman’ and there was a €300,000 bounty on her head. It turns out she was a woman who worked in the factory that made the cotton swabs used to collect DNA evidence.” 

Compromised by Peter Strzok

Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump by Peter Strzok
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is particularly interesting in the beginning where the cases are concluded and public. But the portion regarding Trump rehashes public and well-known information (especially well-known to me, having read the entire Mueller report) and hinting at additional but still secret information regarding Trump. This is more frustrating than enlightening.

Also, though I am certain Strzok tried his utmost to be fair in a bipartisan way in his investigations, he seems blind to his own soft-touch misogyny regarding Hillary Clinton. The poor IT guy illegally deleting information just got caught in partisan crosshairs. The male leaders at the FBI are heroic. What about the woman who rose the highest in US politics? Well her hyper-competence made her dislikable and suspicious. Her email server mistake was not illegal but extremely careless and meriting termination in another government job even though ultimately her emails were safer than the hacked state department servers. And isn’t that just an ironic laugh riot? Like rain on your wedding day? No, Strzok, it’s not funny. Why don’t you all take responsibility for the horrors the FBI’s poor decision-making and underlying misogyny have visited on the entire country? You know who else grilled Hillary Clinton for her “disqualifying” extreme carelessness? Matt Lauer. Sit with that company for a while.

But the book does get better when he explains the horrors of what happened to him and his family as the results of Trump's vindicativeness and undemocratic means.

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 “I had lived through four revolutions on three continents. Whether in Iran, West Africa, or Haiti, all shared common characteristics, and all taught me lessons about dictators and authoritarians and their hunger to consolidate power and obtain, or at least convey legitimacy. That quest for legitimacy played out in a host of ways. One was the desire to manipulate, control, or discredit media. A relentless distortion of reality numbs a country’s populace to outrage and weakens its ability to discern truth from fiction. Another way dictators sought to secure power and legitimacy was by co-opting the power of the state, its military, law enforcement, and judicial systems, to carry out personal goals and vendettas rather than the nation’s needs. Still, another was by undermining dissent, questioning the validity of opposition, and refusing to honor public will, up to and including threatening or preventing the peaceful transfer of power.”

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book would have been great if it had had serious editing. The first 13 chapters are background on a number of scientists who fail to capture the imagination -- probably because he simply covers too many of them. In chapter 14, Barry finally starts to write about the pandemic, and by the time you're halfway through the book, the information is basically over. The rest is just a rehash of what you've read. However, the second quarter of the book was very interesting.

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1,000 Comic Books You Must Read by Tony Isabella

1,000 Comic Books You Must Read by Tony Isabella
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Coffee table book with some old classics. Not really a book you can just read through to get an idea of best comics to prioritize.

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Win Bigly by Scott Adams

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The thesis of this book is that Trump is a master persuader. Let's grant him this even though he has only persuaded 30% of the US population and no world leaders. I suppose he was more persuasive than the other (too many) Republican primary candidates. The concept that he was more persuasive than Hillary Clinton is low grade ridiculous since she persuaded 3 million more people than Trump.

Here's another central proposition in this book: that Trump is not incompetent. See Adams wrote this at the beginning of the administration when that was even moderately believable. Shutting down the pandemic response, and increasing covid deaths in the US say otherwise.

Also he claims that Trump is often "directionally" correct but operates in the realm of hyperbole. But he's not "directionally" correct. And Adams claiming Trump is "directionally" correct is ridiculous levels of bias in favor of Trump no matter how many times Adams says it is not.

Another main theme is that Scott Adams is so smart. He doesn't even understand the most basic concepts about racism. Of course, a racist can hug a black person or kiss a black baby. What utter nonsense. Adams claims he was able to predict elements of the 2016 election accurately! But again, reading this in 2020, you can see that Hillary Clinton is still healthy, Donald Trump has come out in support of white supremacists repeatedly and it was the election of Trump, that erupted in violence in the US. The idea that Trump supporters are not violent and Clinton supporters is divorced from reality. Adams will of course disregard facts in favor of emotions. Possibly because Adams gets everything wrong.

Surprise surprise, Adams is also a climate denier in that he feels that scientists could be in a mass delusion which is just not how science works. Yes, sometimes scientists are wrong but the point is to follow the experiments and analysis and studies until there is something that contradicts it. After decades, there isn't much doubt left about climate science.

Here are some Trump strategies:
1) Refocusing your energy on what he wants to discuss even if he's claiming something crazy. You want the critics to scream so you get attention on what you want.

2) "Setting the table" You can negotiate down from your crazy stance to a more moderate position where you are the winner. (Not at all what Trump has done - he's insisted on the crazy stance.)

3) Continue to repeat the big lie after they've been completely debunked. Adams didn't phrase it like this because he thinks comparisons to Nazis are hyperbole. Or maybe Adams is wrong again.

At a certain point, I started wondering if Adams is mentally ill as he has delusions of grandeur and thinks he can predict the future. I'm not kidding.

This book gets 1 star for making the world a worse place than if Adams had not written it.

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White House, Inc. by Dan Alexander

White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business by Dan Alexander
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The worst of this is mostly things I already knew from following the news and the rest is not that exciting.

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Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is more of a book about cleaning your own emotional house and doesn't really at all address structural inequality. It rejects the idea of persuasiveness and instead counts on readers who pick up this book being completely dedicated to the cause already, and so it might be effective for a pretty limited audience. I found some interesting new perspectives in it.

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It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens

It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is pretty much what I want to say to Senator Ben Sasse and all the other Republicans who claim to be "reasonable." Let's never forget how they betrayed everything our country stands for because they were afraid of losing power.

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Raising Trump by Ivana Trump

Raising Trump by Ivana Trump
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is more of an autobiography of Ivana Trump with a special focus on her children (and written contributions from Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric). She’s had an interesting life and her book is very readable. There’s barely a bad word about Donald Trump and that’s just as well, because despite picking this book, I am sick of reading about him. It was an accidental break from him.

I don’t buy it though. 1) She claims Donald wasn't particularly rich when she married him. Compared to what? He paid the tab for her entire table of models, right? And we all know he inherited all of his wealth from his father and made investments that only cost him money. 2) Also, hard work is nice, but what about all the hard-working employees Trump failed to pay? 3) I'm glad that she feels she worked hard at the family business but who was going to tell her otherwise if she was slacking? How would she have qualified for such a job in the first place if it wasn't the family business? 4) But okay, supposing she did work hard, if you happen to be at the intersection of hard work and good luck it’s easy to say that hard work got you where you are. But what about all the many people who work just as hard for their whole lives and don’t get a fraction of the pie? To overlook them or to purposely look away is to miss the entire story.

I don’t buy her biased view of her children, here they are supporting the worst administration in my lifetime so I snorted reading about her children’s charities when Donald Trump stole money from his and Eric resigned from his for reasons that are unclear to me from news stories.

It's my experience that people that struggle in communist regimes tend to over-value ambition and the accumulation of money precisely because their lack of political freedom was tied to a lack of economic freedom. I despise tyranny, and I am not advocating laziness, but I think the helping professions are of greater spiritual value than those in which the only focus is the accumulation of wealth. And when the accumulation of wealth results in active harm to employees (such as those Donald did not pay) it is an evil.

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Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good primer on what happens when you try to befriend the devil or the devil's "sweet" wife. But this doesn't just apply to the Trumps or evil people in politics more generally, I think it's a pretty good breakdown on how and why you can't expect to successfully deal with people who break rules, laws, take advantage of others, or lack basic empathy.

It's also an excellent reminder of why it's important not to sign non-disclosure agreements, though frankly, I have signed one myself. Often, when people are confronted with such agreements they are tied to money and the signee feels that they don't have a choice of whether or not to sign. But if you don't absolutely have to sign one, do not sign!

Also, I find am very suspicious of Maggie Haberman's journalism now.

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The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart

The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life by Julie Bogart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It had some good ideas and some good frames for thinking about motivating kids. But it felt a bit fluffy and a little disorganized/repetitive. I preferred some of the parenting advice over the actual homeschool advice though I was reading it to learn more about homeschooling (through Covid).

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Rage by Bob Woodward

Rage by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's not at all about rage. It's surprisingly interesting given that I've been very carefully paying attention for 4 years and therefore didn't expect there to be anything new here. I mean a lot of it is things we know about Trump but it's a bit a different view with Woodward asking him things over and over in hopes of getting answers, and it's more organized and thorough than Woodward's Fear. He's clearly trying to be fair to Trump and interviewed people who know him well and both dislike or like him. In particular, I was engaged - if not completely convinced- by the concept that China possibly failed to contain the virus to just China on purpose for economic or political reasons (given that shutting off travel from the China end was more straightforward than all countries shutting down all travel). Worth reading, and better than Woodward's "Fear." Interestingly, Woodward clearly read "The Room Where It Happened" and only found one sentence of value in that entire book so it's probably skippable.

Update: I just heard some of the Woodward recordings and now I know why the book is called Rage. It's not what is written in the book it's probably the sense Woodward got that Trump is enraged when answering Woodward's questions. But this might possibly be because Trump interrupts constantly, defensively, and speaks condescendingly to Woodward. Or it could be Woodward's sense that Trump hates Democrats collectively and individually.

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Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

While Gladwell makes some interesting points and connections which deserve attention and action particularly in policing, I think he has too much sympathy for the devil in general. There is no mention for example of how police feel they deserve complete respect or to what extent they feel comfortable abusing their (basically unlimited power). Furthermore, there is no discussion about how racism, both conscious and subconscious, causes white people to expect complete respect from black people, even when they have no cause to expect or merit such perfect and high respect. And the deadly consequences of both such mindsets especially in combination. Trying to explain the Sandra Bland tragedy without more than an allusion to those issues is completely unbalanced.

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