198 - books and science are BACK 📚
Hey there, !
Note before I start - I'm nearly at the big TWO HUNDRED posts which is kinda insane. So...anything you want to hear about? Any questions you want answered? Let me know! Open book, any question, yada yada yada.
Also this one is a bit unhinged because I'm doing it last minute - some book recs, but also some fun SCIENCE links at the end. Please go read about the new superconductor stuff - it's FASCINATING.
Yeah I read. It's cool again, y'know?
Anyway, a few quick reviews of things I've started, but not necessarily finished in the last few weeks:
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Song of Achilles - Fiction - This new? trend of re-writing Greek myths and stories into more modern retellings is fantastic. For me, it started with Stephen Fry's Mythos and Heroes where I finally learnt all of Hercules 12 feats :D The Song of Achilles was different, but had the same sort of style. The feelings, the setting - it was all simultaneously familiar, but also otherwordly. A world of kings and demigods and adventure and romance. Such a shame I couldn't finish it as I had to return it to the library :(
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Wound is the Origin of Wonder - Poetry - I guess I'm into poetry now? This book is written by Maya Popa - completely sucked in by her Twitter which posts a number of really great poems every day. I...thought I would get it, but with some of them I just go 'oooh pretty sounding words' but don't really get the meat of it. I finished it and it was fun to read - but I think I only really loved the first poem:
Dear Life
I can’t undo all I have done unto myself,
what I have let an appetite for love do to me.
I have wanted all the world, its beauties
and its injuries; some days,
I think that is punishment enough.
Often, I received more than I’d asked,
which is how this works—you fish in open water
ready to be wounded on what you reel in.
Throwing it back was a nightmare.
Throwing it back and seeing my own face
as it disappeared into the dark water.
Catching my tongue suddenly on metal,
spitting the hook into my open palm.
Dear life: I feel that hook today most keenly.
Would you loosen the line—you’ll listen
if I ask you,
if you are the sort of life I think you are.
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Greg Egan - Sci Fi - I had never heard of this author before, but he's apparently a highly regarded Australian Sci-Fi writer. And...well, his short stories in this Collected edition are actually pretty great. They cover a lot of things around consciousness, and what it means to be human (i.e. the best ways to explore scifi) rather than just technology advancements. I appreciate that a lot!
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Thinking in Bets - Pop-Sci - Still a great book - a bit light on the concepts, and a bit waffley as I'm getting through it, but that's to be expected from a pop-sci style book. Heavy on inspiration, light on detail. From my understanding, the main lessons are:
- The world is less like chess, and more like poker - there's a lot more uncertainty in outcome (due to the luck of the deck) rather than being able to plan everything out
- Therefore, think about how you are assessing the quality of your decisions (or, bets on a future outcome), rather than the actual outcome, which can always be up to luck
- Beliefs therefore are bets - and you can have a % confidence in an outcome - don't think of it as a 'win/loss', but think of it as somewhere along a spectrum - if you have money on the line, that's what you start thinking about, right?
- This is all difficult to do because we hate to be wrong so it's important to get comfortable with being wrong, assessing whether you were actually wrong (i.e. your decision-making process) rather than just an outcome that was wrong
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Fizban's Treasury of Dragons - DnD - Dungeons and DRAGONS baybeeee. I got a whole host of dragons and dragon worlds and lore and all of it coming through that I wanna prepare for and get inspired by. Creativity+++. Did you know that there can be chromatic, gem and metallic dragons? Have you ever thought of a RUBY or PLATINUM dragon?! 'Cos now I have!
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Nothing Fancy - Cookbook - a recent gift from my friend Laura - a cookbook I've wanted to read front to back since it came out because every time I got through the introduction in a bookstore I was very much into the vibe of 'hey sometimes shit goes badly so it's fine to order a few pizzas instead'. Sifting through the recipes for new things to try - a lovely time reading it! I really gotta learn how to do this salads thing...
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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The Hardware Club - these little, funny joints that I'm certain I've passed SO many times - yet have never tried them. A wonderfully cute Italian place I went to recently with a really lovely set menu. A spanner crab main, a delectable tiramisu, a nduja and flatbread thing - it was just divine. Highly recommended!
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polepole - I think this is one of the first re-recommends I've had? I think I recommended it a looong time ago (2? 3? years) and went back recently - still lovely, still awesome African flavours. I wanted to get some jollof rice somewhere and they had some jollof rice balls, in addition to some great tasting plates. Most notably they had some fun drinks I've never seen before - we tried a South African Pinotage which was pretty nice! Recommended if you wanna try something different :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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How ancient Chinese skywells are keeping Chinese homes cool - we love seeing old solutions to new problems. Well, technically still an old problem but it's interesting that we reimagine these solutions in new contexts. Always wonderful to see!
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LOOK HERE ---> Ambient Temperature Super-Conductors are here? - y'all can't sleep on this shit - ambient temperature superconductors will be an absolute GAMECHANGER for a whole host of electrically run things. A super simple summary below:
- Most materials have stuff that gets in the way of electrons (electricity) moving through them, which causes resistance. We don't like resistance, because it causes electrical loss, and dealing with a lot of other annoying interference things.
- Superconductors allow electrons to travel along free pathways with no resistance. Essentially, imagine the difference between an open 100m race, versus hurdles. It's much easier to run with no barriers in the way, right?
- Usually, we had to get materials chilled REALLY cold for this effect to be seen, or had to use REALLY HIGH pressures to push the electrons together to flow the right way.
- Thus, it had been high cost, and impractical to use in real life. We were testing LOTS AND LOTS of materials to try and work out if any material had those properties.
- HOWEVER, we've now (allegedly) found a material that can super-conduct at ambient / room-temperature (!!!)
- This was only found because a scientist in Korea accidentally bumped a table when creating a certain type of material, and found out that the properties of this new material were superconductive. The material is called LK-99, and is made of lead-apatite and small amounts of copper.
- The way it works is by using 'internal tension' to create those electron channels to allow it to flow (I am a little lost at the moment with the science, but that's my understanding). Kind of like a Prince Rupert's drop - the internal tension keeps it together, hardened and strong. In this case, it's letting electrons flow like a superconductor.
- This twitter thread gives you a fantastic summary of how it's gonna change the world (electricity transmission, maglev trains, energy storage). Lots of work in replicating the paper from the Koreans at the moment - it's FASCINATING to read, and to follow backyard scientists try to replicate. There's a Russian scientist trying to replicate the effect in her kitchen - and it seems to have worked??
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Computationally optimal arrangements of barbell plates - science is SO BACK today - this guy working out the optimal way to set up your plates when moving up weights based on how many shifts you have to make. Technically it's for American pounds but I'm sure it could be replicated for kilograms!