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I’ve been thinking about mini tech books on Quake for about 15 years. My first google doc of ideas is dated 2010. I was thinking today, why not develop a “quake press” with a large suite of books over many years. What kind of books? All kinds! There could be references, e.g. quakec reference, release histories, bsp file format reference, etc. There could be code walk throughs, e.g. how do weapons work, monsters, bots, etc. There could be mod walk throughs, e.g. reaper, quakeworld, ctf, team fortress, etc. There could be interviews, e.g. mod authors, community leaders, mappers, etc. There could be tutorials, e.g. weapons, monsters, bots, etc. Each book could be high quality yet short and sweet (highly targeted), e.g. ~100 pages. ...

I read a book about Denisovans this week in the book: The Secret World of Denisovans: The Epic Story of the Ancient Cousins to Sapiens and Neanderthals It book was not bad, buy not as exciting as Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins about discovering Homo naledi. A different kind of a book, more of a general story/history of what we know. Anyway, I took away two interesting titbits. ...

I’m about half way through Nick Bostrom’s “Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World”. I love it. I don’t love the discussion/socratic sections (skip), but I love the lecture sections. Anyway, early on he talked through groups of people now/historical who don’t work as a model for what it might be like in a post-work future. Obvious and helpful. Why didn’t I think of that. I typically read books about retirement/retirees to get thoughts in this space, but that is only one of many groups. ...

My eldest son started working out at the gym this year. It’s really great! Something I tell him all the time is: …once you gain good muscle, you will keep it the rest of his life What I mean is, if he stops for some period of time then later, with modest retraining, he’ll be able to get back to the same tone/size. Or something like that. I tell him that once you gain the increased number of muscle cells, you keep them. They may shrink if you stop training, but they are there waiting to grow as soon as you start up the exercise regime again. ...

This week, I finished the book: The Gold of Troy: Story of Heinrich Schliemann and the Buried Cities of Ancient Greece It was great! Here’s a summary from gpt5.1: The Gold of Troy: Story of Heinrich Schliemann and the Buried Cities of Ancient Greece tells the dramatic story of Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy, self-taught archaeologist whose obsession with Homer’s epics drove him to search for the real Troy. The book traces Schliemann’s rise from impoverished beginnings to international fame, focusing on his excavations at Hisarlik in modern-day Turkey and his discovery of what he claimed was “Priam’s Treasure.” It explores both his groundbreaking contributions to archaeology—helping to uncover lost Bronze Age civilizations such as Troy and Mycenae—and the controversies surrounding his methods, exaggerations, and destruction of archaeological layers. Overall, the book presents Schliemann as a complex figure: visionary and passionate, yet reckless, whose legacy reshaped our understanding of ancient Greece while raising lasting ethical questions about archaeological practice. ...

My eldest loves playing video games, which is understandable. We limit screen time per day. Why? Generally, I say things like: It feels like you are achieving goals, but it is all fake. And: It ramps up your emotions and makes you overly angry when you talk to us. Fine. What does gp5.2 have to say as the main negative points against: It crowds out real life — games take time away from school, sports, friends, and sleep It messes with your brain’s reward system — games give fast rewards, so real work feels boring It makes stopping harder — you get used to instant fun and struggle with self-control School can suffer — focus, homework, and reading get harder Sleep gets worse — late gaming = bad sleep and worse mood Social skills can shrink — less practice talking and hanging out in real life Emotions get bigger — more anger, frustration, or anxiety when you can’t play Your body pays a price — sitting too much hurts fitness, posture, and health Real goals feel slow — real achievements don’t “level up” as fast as games It can turn into a habit you don’t control — you think about games even when you shouldn’t And a persuasive paragraph about why limiting video game time per day is important, targeting a 14 y/o: ...

I read “Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes” last week. Good book. Half was a rough biography of Archimedes the other half was about the history of the Archimedes Palimpsest. I found the latter a whole lot more interesting. It dug into the history of this important document, something I was interested in/hoping for recently (for example, with plato’s dialogues). Here’s a summary of the palimpsest via gpt5.2: The Archimedes Palimpsest is a medieval parchment manuscript that preserves an overwritten Byzantine Greek copy of several works by the ancient mathematician Archimedes and other authors, originally written around the 10th century and later scraped and reused in the 13th century as a Christian prayer book (a euchologion). Because the original Archimedean texts were thought lost, the palimpsest is uniquely valuable: it contains the only known Greek versions of important works such as On Floating Bodies, The Method of Mechanical Theorems and Stomachion, among others, revealing insights into Archimedes’ use of mechanical reasoning and early ideas akin to integral calculus. Discovered in the early 20th century but hidden for decades, it was rediscovered at a 1998 auction and has since been studied with advanced imaging techniques that recover the erased undertext, profoundly enhancing our understanding of ancient science and mathematics. ...

I’ve read a few books about Troy recently. This week I read “Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor”. It was serviceable. Who were the people living in Troy? Was it an break-away Greek settlement? Nope. Many peoples have lived at the site, there are layers and layers of settlement. I guess I’m interested in the Bronze Age and the time of Homer’s poem. Checking in with gpt5.2, it seems they were (probably) Anatolian, at least during the Bronze age. ...

I read Artifact by Jeremy Robinson this week. Great fun. Here’s the blurb: In an isolated Alaskan town, the local sheriff uncovers a secret lab where generative A.I. and bioprinting have unleashed grotesque, living anomalies—and now, something monstrous is loose. Sheriff Colton Graves prefers the quiet life in Raven’s Rest, Alaska, a remote town accessible only by tunnel and home to a hardy mix of locals and secrets buried in the ice. But when a camel wanders down Main Street—its head grotesquely sprouting a dozen eyes—Colton knows his quiet days are over. The bizarre incident leads him to NovaGen, a nearby research facility constructed inside a Cold War bunker, buried in the mountains above town. There, a trail of blood and eerie silence hints at something far more sinister than an escaped animal experiment. ...

I read a great course on Greek Philosophers this week and another on Ancient Writings: An Introduction to Greek Philosophy Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity It got me thinking about the corpus for a given writer, e.g. Plato. There must be hundreds of copies of his dialogues that have survived. Each copied at a different time, in different condition, with differing levels of completeness and errors. Scholars must analyse each new discovery and see how it updates the main corpus. Repeat with all other ancient writers. ...