I realized I want to continue writing. To build a habit, I’ll imitate kipply’s regular digests.
I read John Stuart Mill’s autobiography. I was mostly interested in his childhood. Somehow I pictured James Mill as a tyrannical father whose education methods drove John into a depression. Wrong! He was eccentric and flawed but overall very sweet. Allowing a child to interrupt your work at any time, as long as the question is about work, is a great trick that must have taken a lot of patience. I think an underestimated part of his success was being friends with many great thinkers who were happy to mentor John.
Intrigued by John Psmith’s review, I also read the first half of Anabasis, which I enjoyed but have little to say about besides recommending the review. One extra impression is how insanely hopeless the plan must have seemed in a world with no maps. It’s not just that they walked around Tigris through Armenia, but also that they did not know the way:
I sacrificed and found the victims unfavourable to an advance against the king. After all, it is not so surprising perhaps, for, as I now learn, between us and the king flows the river Tigris, navigable for big vessels, and we could not possibly cross it without boats, and boats we have none.
After hearing these statements, the generals seated apart those who claimed to have any special knowledge of the country in any direction; they put them to sit apart without making it clear which particular route they intended to take. Finally the resolution to which they came was that they must force a passage through the hills into the territory of the Kurds; since, according to what their informants told them, when they had once passed these, they would find themselves in Armenia
I read Sayonara Eri; it was super fun. So fun that I pushed all my friends to read it. Zero did; let’s just say I learned that pushing is not an effective strategy! Fujimoto’s signature move is making you feel five different emotions in extremely quick succession, and there’s more of it in Eri than in Chainsaw Man the manga (and much more than in the anime).
I stumbled upon Tilelang puzzles, did them, then wrote a flash attention kernel. Writing a basic kernel is easier than I thought, and is a lot more fun than I thought. I should keep practicing.
I read the (well-known?) essay Reality Has a Suprising Amount of Detail and added it to my reread-regularly list.