“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” — Yogi Berra Standing in long lines has been a new reality in our Covid world, whether for grocery stores, food banks, or voting. …

Growth mindset meets baseball analytics. Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik describe the (far more advanced) successor to Moneyball, in which players and teams are not just better measuring value but also creating it. By using modern imaging technology (especially a global shutter camera called the edgertronics), for example, pitchers can…

A book on how to engineer a company worth tens of billions of dollars in just a few years, written by the experts. …

This is Part 1 (ranks 1–10) of my ranking of books read in 2018. See also Part 2 (ranks 11–30) and Part 3 (ranks 31–52). As in previous years, I resolved to briefly review books in order to ensure both close reading and a modicum of memory. In the process…

This is Part 2 (ranks 11–30) of my ranking of books read in 2018. See also Part 1 (ranks 1–10) and Part 3 (ranks 31–52). Welcome to Part 2 of my ranking of books I read this year. Upon examining my preliminary rankings, I realized that (outside the top 10)…

This is Part 3 (ranks 31–52) of my ranking of books read in 2018. See also Part 1 (ranks 1–10) and Part 2 (ranks 11–30). Welcome to the final part of my rankings of books read this year. As in Part 2, they’re roughly organized by topic, though the overall…

This book starts with two serious, non-trivial, overarching claims: that Buddhism is correct in Its diagnosis of the human condition, that we seek, mindlessly and eternally, temporary pleasures that fail to satisfy us and thus cause suffering, and Its prescription of meditation as a way to understand this condition and…

A historical survey of the major developments in the world’s collection and use of energy, from coal to steam power to electricity. It contains a bunch of interesting tidbits, including a few that corrected misconceptions I had. For example, it tells the story of the battle between AC and DC…

A book that deserves a longer review than I have here. In it, journalist Franklin Foer argues, as in the subtitle, that big tech companies are an existential threat to many (good) modern institutions, and that it must be stopped. In particular, he lays out the case that big tech…