March 2020 Release Notes

I spent the first week of March studying for my mid-semester exams and once I was done with them, I packed my bags and headed home for a week. Little did I know that I would be staying at home for the entire month. The Coronavirus has transformed our lives permanently, and when (if we do) we tackle this problem, we will be looking at a completely different planet. There will be so many questions about priorities, so many reports written, so many leaders defending their actions and so many families and friends mourning their losses. I was conflicted about whether I should make this a post about the virus itself but again, I decided against it. There’s too much information going around that it’s overwhelming.

So, another month of ordinarity it will be. I got back with my books, finishing eight of them this month. There were lots of political thoughts running around in my head too, no doubt inspired by all the Orwell I read. I also started my endgame studies, I’ll see if I can figure out how to include a LiChess study in this post.

Book Reviews

I got through eight books this month and I enjoyed reading all but one of them. I’ll list some of them in chronological order.

Born a Crime, Trevor Noah

“On February 20, 1984, my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations—I was born a crime.”

Trevor Noah spent his early days hiding indoors as his parents - who were never married - couldn’t be seen together, and also because he looked nothing like the other black kids around him. Yet while their lives dealt with crushing poverty, violence, and racism from all sides, his deeply religious mother never let anything bother her, or stop her from raising her son to know he was loved, and to know that he truly could accomplish anything he wanted, despite all of the obstacles in his way.

“She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her.”

This is a book about growing up in a culture of poverty and crime, and how easy it was to get caught up in that, especially when it was one of the only ways to make money and be able to feed, clothe, and enjoy yourself. It’s also a book about fear, how it motivates you, how it paralyzes you, and how it threatens to take away the one thing you cherish more than any other. More than anything, though, this is a book about the unwavering love of a mother for a child she chose to have. She knew it would be difficult raising her son in the age of apartheid, and in fact, she had no idea when he was born that it would end anytime soon. But Noah was a remarkable child, and while he exasperated, frightened, and upset his mother from time to time, she knew he would accomplish great things one day.

We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.

Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Personally, I think this book is filled with nonsense and jargon for people looking to listen to things that they already know from a deep voice. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s actually review this waste of paper.

Extreme Ownership is written by two former Navy SEALs, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. The experiences they share in this book are intense and eye-opening–not to mention unique. There aren’t many books out there that give such detailed glimpses into the lives of SEALs in action.

The main points of the book are as follows:

• The leader is always responsible.

• Everyone on the team must believe in the mission.

• Work with other teams to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

• Keep plans simple.

• Check your ego.

• Figure out your priorities.

• Clarify your mission.

• Engage with your higher-ups

• Act decisively, even when things are chaotic.

Done, now you don’t have to read the book and waste your energy.

Origin, Dan Brown

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone looking for excellent writing, well-developed characters and a whole lot of sense-making. But if you want to sprint through an almost 500-page novel at breakneck pace and escape from thinking for a while, then it is very enjoyable.

Fake news now carries as much weight as real news.

This book plays to the younger generation by splashing out terms like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, etc. But Robert Langdon in this book knows absolutely everything until it’s convenient for him to not know something so someone can explain it to him. Brown’s plots and codes and puzzles are interesting enough to legitimize this book. I love all the information about history, art, science and religion. I love how you can look up the organizations mentioned and find that they are all real.

Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell

We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy. If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy.

Malcolm deals with Fidel Castro’s fooling of the CIA, the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal, and the main plot of the book, the tragic death of Sandra Bland.

• The Default to Truth Problem

  • We do not behave, in other words, like sober-minded scientists, slowing gathering evidence of the truth or falsity of something before reaching a conclusion. We do the opposite. We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away.

  • To assume the best of another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature is violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.

• The Transparency Problem

  When we are confronted with a stranger, we have to substitute an idea - a stereotype - for direct experience. And that stereotype is wrong all too often.

  The requirement of humanity means that we have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. That is the paradox of talking to strangers. We need to talk to them. But we’re terrible at it… we’re not always honest with each other about just how terrible at it we are.

• The Mismatch Problem

  • We are bad lie-detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.

  • If you want people to be themselves in a social encounter with a stranger - to represent their own desires honestly and clearly - then they can’t be blind drunk.

• The Coupling Phenomenon

  • The first set of mistakes we make with strangers… have to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But there’s a second category of error that has to do with our inability to appreciate the context in which the stranger operates… Coupling is the idea that behaviors are linked to very specific circumstances and conditions.

  • That means when you confront the stranger, you have to ask yourself where and when you’re confronting the stranger - because those two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who the stranger is.

Reading Gladwell means spending a lot of time saying to yourself, “Hey, wait a minute, what about [fill in thing you know a little something about here]?” It’s not about whether you agree with his views. It’s more about learning a new form of thinking with which the world looks a little bit different. And that can make a world of difference.

Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Maybe a one-time read, nothing in here that merits all the popularity it received.

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Now it seems there are only shadows and silence. Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters…So many windows are dark. It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumes, the lamps all extinguished.

This has to be the best book I’ve read this year (yet). From the chillingly beautiful prose, to the realization of what the title actually means: that underneath the surface of history, there is light - and stories - that have not been seen; that have gone untold.

Open your eyes, concluded the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever, and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.

1984, George Orwell

Need I say anything about this classic?

A nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.

Chess Studies

I created two chess studies, the first is a game played by Bobby Fischer. I really liked how he constricted the opponent king with multiple attacks and making use of the bishop pair.

Fischer vs. Sherwin

Random Thoughts

I really loved this “tech talk”.

Joe Rogan with Micheal Osterholm, this talk was the best on the COVID-19 pandemic from an informative point of view.

Extremely touching podcast episode by The Daily: “It’s Like a War”

Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand and a Twitter thread/summary

Handbook of COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment

Bill Gates’ AMA regarding COVID 19

A practical summary of the covid-19 situation by Jeremy and Rachel

A Mathematician’s Lament is beautiful, it’s like something I would have written in my problem-solving prime.

Jeremy Howard implementing modern deep learning optimization methods in Excel

Against Dog Ownership. Great piece, found it on Aella’s Twitter and I really like the whole blog, maybe a competitor to guzey.com.

Done. Next

I cannot predict anything for this month, I hope that all this blows over soon. I know, I know, I’ve been looking at the patterns and it doesn’t look like anything positive is on the horizon. But we can’t open Pandora’s box, not yet.

To everyone on the frontlines.

Ciao.

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