I finished watching “A House of Dynamite” on Netflix last night. Oh man. What a movie. I don’t remember being so stressed out watching a movie for a long time. I also don’t recall the last time I watched such an “adult” movie. Thank god. It feels like most of the movies that wash up are for kids/teenagers. It’s nice to see something tense and difficult. Makes me want to go back and watch Zero Dark Thirty (same director) or Sicario (another deeply tense movie). ...
I finished “The Ape that Understood the Universe” (Steve Stewart-Williams, 2018) this week. A good book on evolutionary psychology, probably the best I’ve read in years. Anyway, there was a piece at the end talking through the evolution of culture and memes, and the “Protestant Work Ethic” (PWE) as a meme and its effect. Very cool idea. So, here it is: Protestant work ethic, Wikipedia. It’s not a thing per se, but a theory by the sociologist Max Weber. It’s well named I guess and became a thing. A meme/memeplex. ...
As part of my Quake 2 Bot Archive project, I’ve been doing research into old quake bot websites. I gather the research in markdown so I can re-trace my steps later, and also for good file provenance and complete mod coverage for the archive. For example: Quake II Bot Research Anyway, this lead into into capturing links to old collections of Quake2 mod tutorials and bot tutorials. For example: Quake II Code Tutorials Damn it. ...
Warren Buffett had a quote along the lines of: if you only had one car for the rest of your how would you look after it… It was a thought exercise and analogy for how you should look after your body. The paraphrase of the quote from chatgp5 is: Imagine you had a car and it was the only car you would ever have in your life. You would maintain it carefully and treat it like a treasure. Well, you only get one body and one mind — take care of them. ...
I read “LAN Party” last week: LAN Party: Inside the Multiplayer Revolution, GoodReads. More here: LAN Party, Read-Only Memory. It’s more of a photo book with occasional essays and interviews. I went to a lot of LAN parties in high school (circa 1995-1998, a couple after this) and it was awesome. I ended up hosting many parties because I had a ton of network cards, cables, and space. The best lan parties were the all day affairs. The worst were overnight/all night as nothing is fun when you’re sleep deprived. ...
I finished Tim Berners-Lee’s autobiography yesterday: This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web The description early years was good. The latter part of the book was a push for his Solid Project. More here: Solid (web decentralization project), Wikipedia It sounds like something like this (private date wallet) is a good idea. Maybe even this approach.
I’m watching the TV show “For All Man Kind”. I’ve finished S1 and I’ve just started E1 from S2, and it keeps getting better and better. I can’t believe such an awesome show has just been sitting there and it took me 4-5 years to find it, and to then pull the trigger. It looks like another meh apollo program show, but it’s so not. It’s hard scifi + alt history. Win! ...
I’ve been doing research into the release chronology of some Quake2 bots. This is for the Quake2 Bot Archive. Specifically: Famkebot C.R.Bot Eraser Bot The idea is to nail down exactly what files were released and when. This helps when searching, e.g. what files to look for and how to disambiguate multiple releases with the same filename. It’s also a lot of fun.
I’m re-reading “Lies My Doctor Told Me”. It’s good. What I really like is the structure. Something like lie, science-backed truth and it finishes with further reading or “homework. It encourages the reader to do their homework and come to the same conclusions. And the book recommendations are solid. Great stuff.
I just read two books on celebrities whose lives were ruined by addiction: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry. The Book of Sheen, Charlie Sheen. I’m so glad this disease does not afflict my wife or myself, and I really hope my sons are spared. It also reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote along the lines of “the hard thing about being rich/famous/powerful is not losing your mind” ...