February 2020 Release Notes
Audiobooks, running, and the coronavirus.
Here we are for a second consecutive month. I never thought I would do this for two months in a row because that’s how fickle-minded I am. I’ve been writing a lot this month, and I have not restricted my writing to journalling. Subscribing to the Jordan Peterson method of note-taking has helped me. I watch lectures on YouTube twice now, the first time in 3x and the second time in 2x. I wait for at least half a day, and I sit down to write my notes on that lecture, purely based on memory. This is opposed to taking notes while watching the lecture. The first few times, I was surprised by how little I remembered, but a few iterations helped me get better.
I got my first taste of audiobooks this month, and I have mixed feelings. Running in the mornings became something I can’t stop doing enough of though I attribute it mostly to how pleasant the weather is that time of the day. This month, I chalked up a decent chess training program, and I am waiting to see how long it’ll take before I realize why everyone hires chess coaches. I also finally got around to checking out the race for the Democratic Nomination to stand against Donald Trump in November. And I will not leave out writing about COVID-19. Read on for all this and much more, I hope you have fun.
New Features and Bug Fixes
The most significant addition to my daily schedule was running. I started doing 5k runs every morning, and I ran 18 days this month. I told myself that I’d finish the entire distance even if it meant I would have to walk. The first few days were tough, but once I got going, it didn’t feel that bad. My goal is to finish the TCS World 10k in May. The mistakes I made during the initial days were very much mental. Thankfully, on the way back from my first run, when I lasted about 6 minutes, I got a solution to my problem from none other than David Goggins himself. I figured out on the way back from the run while listening to David Goggins explain what it takes to run ultra-marathons and how to prepare a body and mind before one undertakes that insane feat. A few minutes into the run, my mind wasn’t even on the run, I was listening to my audiobook. Then, the Nike Run Club app reminded me that I was 6 minutes into the run, which broke my mind. In my head, I thought that there was no way I could go on for 25 minutes at this pace. So, I slowed down to a walk after 20 seconds. So what did David Goggins say that made me realize my mistake? First of all, I should have known that there were going to be mental blocks; I wasn’t that inexperienced with running either. I should have had a dialogue with myself beforehand about what I would do when I encountered these. And second, I should not have stopped running. The moment I stopped running, I lost so many mental battles that I could not go on anymore. So, the next morning, I disabled the notifications on my Nike App and just didn’t stop moving. Loads of lessons there.
I wanted to write about some thoughts I had on diet and various health-related topics. Firstly, I was looking a lot at organic foods this month. The major problem with most food we buy is the amount of pesticide content in them. I travelled to some farmland areas not so long ago, and stopped to talk to many acquaintances along the way. A prominent topic of discussion was failing health and how present-day nutrition just isn’t doing justice to the money we spend. More importantly, the bodies that we attempt to nourish them with are degrading with every passing year and generation. The cornfields are grown on water and pesticide interchangeably. The chicken eats the pesticide-laden corn and falls prey to human knives inevitably. A classic case of biomagnification in action as you and I eat that meat. All the thinking about pesticide-ingestion took me to organic foods, the data as to 1) Whether or not organic food is healthier and 2) Whether or not organic food is better for the environment is still up in the air. Yet, I have also seen studies that show that people who consume organic foods have lower measurable levels of pesticides in their system. And that seemed like a good enough deal for me. As for other aspects of nutrition, I think we overeat a lot, if we stopped actively eating food that makes us want to eat more, we would be much better. And also, protein is the best macronutrient we should all be eating. There is nothing better than eating more of it and hitting the gym regularly.
I have also been interested in getting the most out of what I do when. For example, I’ve limited food consumption post-sundown for a variety of reasons: 1)We’re most insulin sensitive during the day, our metabolisms are faster, and 2) Circadian rhythm disruption as the body burns fewer calories when consumed late at night. I’m sure we can find loads of other reasons. Early morning light is beautiful, and we should all be getting at least an hour of sunlight as soon as we can. For me, this involves going out for a run 15 minutes before sunrise. The other side of that is to limit late-night artificial light exposure, I usually listen to podcasts or write something after sundown and rarely look at my laptop. One last thing I wanted to say regarding the health part, I think thermal exercise is critical, and we should be less scared of going out into the cold without all those layers of clothing on our bodies. Personally, the weather rarely bothers me, and I’ve found out that the resistance against both cold and warm climates is an indication of a healthy immune system.
I planned my chess training schedule midway through the month. I am not very good at openings and middlegames, but I can hold my own in an endgame. So I was tired of just messing around on LiChess playing HyperBullet and not learning anything. I saw Magnus and John Bartholomew discussing endgames from 100 Endgames You Must Know and I downloaded that book to better my endgame quality. I plan to train for three hours a week on endgames and play two games with more extended time controls on the internet. The plan for endgame analysis is simple; I’ll write every single variation I think of and along with, insert an annotation explaining why it does or doesn’t work. There will be two iterations, obviously, the first without an engine and the second with one. Let’s see how far I go with this. I haven’t had a chance to start with this plan of mine yet.
Audiobooks
As I wrote in my last post, I took up audiobooks this month. I started with Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. I have to admit; it wasn’t precisely an audiobook in the traditional sense. David Goggins doesn’t do anything the way others do it, and this was an audiobook/podcast with Goggins offering some more insight into his world as his co-author Adam Skolnick read out the book brilliantly. I have to say that I was more than impressed by the extra that audiobooks bring to the table. As for the book, Goggins’ story is one for every individual to read. It is a personal account, but not of Goggins’. It is your story; it is my story. It is the struggle of getting out of bed on time, the battle against going for a run in horrible weather, the internal debate when you know you shouldn’t buy that extra packet of chips. If there’s anything the book does, it shames you. The obstacles that we create in our heads are minuscule, and yet, we succumb to the demons. I loved every moment of listening to the book; a distinctive feature of this book is that he has a set of challenges for the readers/listeners. They are actual challenges that require you to take stock of your life and make small incremental steps towards growth—10/10 for this book and David Goggins in general.
After that extraordinary initiation, I picked out Atomic Habits by James Clear. I haven’t linked it here because I don’t think anyone should be reading that book. Just watch some of Clear’s videos on YouTube or read his blog. It’s mostly a rip-off of Charles Duhigg and B. J. Fogg. The best way to get what’s in this book is to watch a summary video of it on YouTube. I’d have linked a video if I cared enough—1/10 for this one. The audiobook experience was still excellent, though, and James Clear has a remarkable talent for making irrelevant facts sound new and fresh, after repeating them for the third time.
After these books, I had one concern that was nagging me, speed. I am a speedy reader, and I was wondering how much time I was gaining/losing by not reading the book instead. So, I picked out Relentless by Tim Grover and started listening while reading the book. I found that I could not follow the reader on just audio after 1.5x. When I was reading + listening, I could hear at 3x, and even then, the reader wasn’t keeping up with my reading. So, I figured that I at least lost twenty minutes per hour of material by listening to audiobooks, which is a lot. Of course, when I’m travelling, my reading speed is usually at zero wpm. Now that I think about it, I have achieved nothing by making this observation, or have I?
Podcasts
Contrary to what I wrote last month, I did not decrease my consumption of podcasts. I’ll list them below because there are that many I felt required a mention.
The Punies
The untimely passing of Kobe Bryant influenced this choice. I wanted to get a piece of the creator in him, and I wasn’t disappointed. “The Punies” follows a team of neighbourhood friends who play a variety of sports together. The podcast’s style spoofs sports broadcasting (brought to you by “WKID”), shrunk down to a smaller scale as the play-by-play commentary of skateboarding contests, gymnastics meets and high-dive competitions at the local pool.
Each episode goes through a new challenge and adventure with the crew, known as “The Good Ol’ Gang,” all in less than 16 minutes. Game broadcasts are filled with original songs and cute “advertisements” for things like telling your grandma you love her and remembering to drink water. The result is a vibrant and goofy podcast that’ll get kids engaged with the joy of competition and engrossed in the imagination of theatre of the mind.
The idea for a podcast like “The Punies” was born out of Bryant’s desire to give the teamwork and leadership insights he took from his lifetime in sports to his kids, in a way they’d want to hear them. For Bryant’s four girls, that meant the lessons couldn’t keep coming from him, because kids tune you out after a while.
“It’s important to have stories that can teach the kids these lessons without the parent feeling like they’re on top of the kid all the time saying the same old, same old.”
Jocko Podcast
The first 25 videos from the above link should give everything that Jocko offers in his frankly, repetitive podcast. He runs out of answers all too frequently and Echo’s brilliant efforts to nudge him towards a more lucid answer yield no fruits. He has a video on the homepage of his YouTube channel which is a montage of him saying “Good” every two seconds. The idea is a good one, where he encourages us to take the positives out of situations, and not let the situation get to you. And ironically, it is the perfect video to put on the homepage as the entire channel runs on Jocko giving the exact same answers to every question. Please note that I agree with him and it is one of my core philosophies. But I have no clue how he took off so well. Maybe there is a specific audience that likes listening to military veterans that sound like a broken record.
The best videos are the ones with Dr. Jordan Peterson in them and #155: The Gulag is my favourite. No surprise that they’re the most viewed as well. Dr. Peterson offers a brilliant contrast of an academic against Jocko’s rugged field knowledge. They talk about the Gulag Archipelago and how the Soviets managed to commit the atrocities that they committed. There is another podcast where Jocko reads from the Gulag Archipelago.
That brings me to the sole positive, they read out a book!!. And that’s that. It’s mostly a podcast for people looking for motivation highs and offers absolutely little otherwise.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards is one of the most unorthodox history podcasts that are out there. Robert talks about the personal lives of the worst human beings that existed. I liked the episode about Josef Stalin a lot and the Harvey Weinstein episodes made my skin crawl. It was with great fascination that I found out about Hitler’s obsession with YA novels and about bin Laden’s hard-drive contents. I would actually love to go into many more details but that would mean spoiling so many “whoa, I did not know that” moments. And y’all are welcome.
The Daily
I was on Twitter and I found this tweet about Donna Rotunno’s disgusting response to a question asking whether she had ever been sexually assaulted on my timeline. Now, I only knew superficially about Weinstein and nothing apart from the fact that he was accused of many misdemeanors and sparked a worldwide movement against people taking advantage of vulnerable humans. I definitely had not heard about Donna Rotunno. So, I downloaded the episode and listened to it on the way to the football field the next morning. I loved the episode, the questions, the format, the transparency, everything. The Daily is the hallmark of journalism, and as an Indian for whom most of the press is a joke, I found it refreshing and informative.
An Anti-Endorsement in Nevada introduced me to Bernie Sanders and it was another beautifully done episode, they had audio footage from the field and put out facts without supporting any particular side except for one: free speech.
Can Corporations Stop Climate Change? opened my eyes to a character called Larry Fink and how much influence he has on the Silicon Valley giants. Also, I learnt about how much truth and validity existed in all the companies’ claims that they want to go carbon neutral etc. The press exists for exactly this reason, to make sure we don’t have to vet everything they say and bring complex points to the public.
I have to give special mention to The Weinstein Jury Believed the Women, I was expecting a very one-sided account of the whole affair which wouldn’t have been surprising considering the fact that two journos from The New York Times broke the story. But they were very neutral, you’d have thought they were on the side of the defense on a few instances. The Daily is a gift and I’m planning to get myself that New York Times subscription in the next few days
Nature Podcast and Science Magazine Podcast
As the names suggest, these were mostly scientific. I liked Nature a lot more than Science but both are good for once a week listen. The main issue is the fact that most of the scientific research they report on cannot and should not be boiled down to a couple minutes. Yet, they do it very well and I love listening when I can.
COVID - 19
Initially, I’d planned to write a separate blog post about the latest dragon that we’re gearing up to face. But I noticed that I was taking a lot of information from the same sources and I figured I’d just link them here.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
What can I say? I love John Oliver.
Random Thoughts
I was getting really into voting systems in the beginning of the month and I found this to be a very good read - On Voting Systems
I found out about Christie Blatchford on Dr. Jordan Peterson’s Twitter account when he tweeted this link of a National Post Obituary. I instantly liked the person and the reporter she was even if I have as much familiarity with her work as Agamemnon with benevolence.
Also, a legendary blog post by the legendary Jürgen Schmidhuber about the 2010’s and the advances in Deep Learning over the last and next decade kept me occupied for two whole days. I’m linking it here for future reference: The 2010s: Our Decade of Deep Learning / Outlook on the 2020s.
I started two lecture series this month and I’m almost done with both. MIT 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation, Fall 2016 and The man who invented calculus: the life and work of Madhava. The latter is by ICTS which is slowly but surely becoming an amazing research institute in Bangalore.
Do read this and tell me what you make of it, I’ve had conflicted opinions: The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI’s bid to save the world.
Another fun and well-written article on Magnus Carlsen’s legendary online presence: DrDrunkenstein’s Reign of Terror.
Done. Next
In March, I predict warm weather and a lot more of running and football. I have also taken an affinity to basketball but we’ll see how long it’ll be before I lose interest (it has happened before). I also have my exams which means my first ten days will be spent in mugging for Civil Engineering exams.
I bought the Gulag Archipelago, 12 Rules for Life and A Gentleman in Moscow to read too. I also want to write more fiction and poetry this month. It has been a while.
I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Thanks for reading, I hope you found something that was valuable. Feedback to improve is always welcome and if there are any topics you would like me to write about, please let me know.
Ciao.