1 / Reading

Working my way through Anil Ananthaswamy's Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI.

2 / Building

I built another coding project: books.caseyjr.org. It's a running catalogue of books I've read and remember over the years.

At launch, the repository has ~700 books categorized across 11 themes. You can search by title or author, or peruse a recommendations page.

The site is a static catalogue powered by SQLite, Python, and Eleventy, with metadata pulled from OpenLibrary and Google Books. Learn more about the project here.

I had a leg up with the back catalogue by exporting a file from my Reading List app, but there was a hefty amount of manual additions in a .csv file.

The code is on GitHub if you're curious or want to build something similar.

3 / Listening

Enjoying a tour through Antibalas' back catalogue. Especially the first album, Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1.

Also, found a lot of resonance in this interview with Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha—one of the largest stock brokerages in India. (h/t artlu)

4 / Number

83%

Decline in Gaza's GDP in 2024 (UN).

The crisis in Gaza has wiped out 69 years of human development and stands as the most severe economic crisis ever recorded.

GDP per capita in Gaza fell to $161 – among the world’s lowest. Inflation surged to 238%, unemployment hit 80%, and all 2.3 million people living in the enclave fell below the poverty line.

Thanks for reading. Happy New Year to you and yours.

Abrazos,
Mike