A day late..
Links
Crem on interracial marriage rates which have increased over time. Whites have the lowest rates. Asians haven’t changed over time. Also, his findings reconcile with the famous OK Cupid data a while back where it differs across the sexes. Black women and Asian men are the least likely.
Cool Smooth Criminal electric guitar cover.
Ava on the importance of friends. Everyone knows friends are important but Ava posits they are the most important factor to a flourishing life.
Twitter thread on Tasmanian Aboriginals. I’ve always been a bit sceptical about the claim they lost the ability to make fire just because that’s it’s insane to keep going without it. Misha Saul writes about them too.
Movie review of Saturday Night Fever being a good movie about left side of the bell curve people.
Novels
I’m now talking about (fiction) books with my friends Benny and Rich. The schtick is three dudes who come from STEM-ish slash rationalist slash critical rationalist backgrounds stumbling through the classics.
It’s called: Do You Even Lit?
Some episodes of books I’ve already blogged about:
Metamorphosis by Kafka — We discuss whether the story’s about depression, a genius being surrounded by mediocrity, or if it’s just the poor bug’s fault.
Ubik by Phillip K Dick — Benny dislikes the writing while Rich and I forgive the imperfections. We talk about god, Gnosticism, and physical realism.
Stoner by John Williams — Is it the perfect novel? We’re all charmed by William Stoner’s failures and mediocrity.
We’ve also done Maugham’s Razor's Edge, Wallace’s Brief Interviews, and more.
Check them out. They’re on Spotify and all the podcast apps.
Frankenstein
We also did Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which I haven’t mentioned talked about on here yet.
Surprisingly easy to read for it’s age. The Penguin edition has a nice quick biography of her too which is well worth reading. Although, the first few sections of the actual novel are a bit slow going.
I’d even skip the Walton letters but make sure to come back to them. Same for the early life of Victor Frankenstein which is the most boring. Starting at Chapter 5 wouldn’t be a terrible idea.
For similar reasons, our part 2 discussion is probably better.
We’re still figuring out if it’s best to split books up into multiple episodes. We’ll definitely do that for longer works like Infinite Jest and Dostoevsky but I’m leaning towards a single episode for shorter books.
In other news: Del Toro is doing a new Frankenstein film which I’m excited for.
Episodes coming up:
(If you want to read along beforehand)
The Fall by Camus
Hamlet
Piranesi
And more…
Non-fiction
Rasmussen’s The Infidel and the Professor
Recommended. A great rumination on friendship in the early pages. The biggest takeaway was how much they influenced each other. In another world we might remember Hume as the economist and Smith as the philosopher.
Hume’s gregariousness, erudition, physiognomy, and atheism kept making me think of Christopher Hitchens.
Stephen Fry’s Heroes
A fun read to learn the Greek myths. Or if you know them, you might enjoy a quintessentially British and quintessentially Fryean retelling.
A little hard to keep track of all the names but that’s part of the territory, I suppose.
LFG