The Core

Sad how poverty, bad governance and violence work together in a death spiral for so much of Africa.

Nothing high brow or challenging here.

It wasn't intentional. I have found it happening organically as I have more mental space. That said, I generally don't distinguish. Some of my favorite books are comic books (Raymond Calbuth series in French and the Sandman series in English). I just like an engaging read, but what that means has changed a lot over my life.

That conference is roughly my vision of hell.

I just this minute finished listening to "Upheaval" by Jared Diamond and would highly recommend it.

I'll say more later.

Please do.

Have you read Yuval Harrari's "Sapiens," I would strongly recommend it. I think Rupert read it too if I recall.

If you like a bit of Fantasy

Not usually, but I am actually looking for something light. I've been reading a lot of dense, heavy stuff lately. Which is great, but I'm sort of in the mood for a page turner. I'll check it out. If not me, sounds like a good choice for my wife.

>> I am a slower reader

Me too. Quite slow. That is why I initially gravitated toward philosophy and paleography. Everyone has to read slowly in those cases. A long book is a big investment for me, so I often do not finish books. Many people have recommended David Allen's Getting Things Done. I just could not get it done. It was very effective at putting me to sleep though.

>>Krishnamaurti

I tried to read Krishnamaurti during a period of intensive reading of "eastern" philosophy and could never quite get into his writing. It always felt very in the "intellectual" register. But in perhaps a similar vein, I just heard a long interview with Jack Kornfield and it made me want to read "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry."

What did you get out of it? Why do you like it?

When I looked up the Krishnamaurti book, by the way, it had some suggestions in the "you might like" which reminded me... If you have any interest in poetry, I would recommend Marie Howe,
 - What the Living Do
 - Magdalena

She is literally my favorite poet since Homer. A few years ago when I decided to memorize a poem each month, I started with the title poem of What The Living Do.
 - https://poets.org/poem/what-living-do

That has been bumped as my favorite now, though, but the publication of The Affliction.
 - https://poets.org/poem/affliction

I think she is an utter genius.

Two books that are great as audio

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, read by Sherman Alexie. His reading with his "Indian" narrator voice (not the voice the author usually has in interviews) adds a lot to the nuance of the language. It's a beautiful mostly autobiographical story of trying to escape the reservation and what he gives up to do it. Funny and heartbreaking.

2. Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk. Also very funny. Not heartbreaking. A great peek into the US. The whole novel takes place during the span of a Dallas Cowboys football game where Billy Lynn's unit is being honored because of a video of them that went viral. This was recommended to me by a West Point grad who was a US Army Ranger with combat experience and I suggested it to a friend who was a Marine enlisted man who served in Iraq. To me it felt true to life, but I have no way to judge, but it got their imprimatur. Again, the audio version is really well read.

Tracing how the basic research was funded...

Subject to verification. And obviously, there is tech in the iPhone strategically omitted from this graphic. Still, it's interesting.

Go Daddy!

No rest for the wicked. Hackers exploit SSH vulnerability and compromise 28,000 GoDaddy accounts. Couldn't have happened to a nicer registrar or host.

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/05/28000-godaddy-hosting-accounts-compromised

SSH, while extremely secure if configured correctly, can allow logins with either a username/password combination, or a username and a public/private key pair. In the case of this breach, it appears likely that an attacker placed their public key on the affected accounts so that they could maintain access even if the account password was changed.

Just because I thought of it the other day. For many years, this was taped above my computer monitor. It is often cited, but out of context, as a John Muir quote, which it is, but as remembered by Sam Hall Young and quoted in his book about Muir. I give the section, with my beloved quote in bold.

For a bit broader context - After his adventure years wandering the Sierra Nevada as a young man, Muir married and took over his wife's family's farm. Being Muir, he worked 16-18 hours a day and was driving himself into poor health. His wife was starting to worry, as were friends. In the meantime, though, he amassed a reasonable amount of his savings, his wife finally prevailed. She told him his contribution to the world would be writing, speaking and organizing, not growing apples. The money he made in the fruit business gave him the platform to become the writer and organizer and happy person we know as John Muir. This was near the low ebb of that period.

A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very distasteful work—managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress" of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.

Passionately he voiced his discontent: "I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news."

It's one of my two favorite JM quotes.

Funny that this this world-changing philanthropy is framed as something bad. Almost everything that Corbett complains about here is something for which I admire Bill Gates and for doing something positive with his ill-gotten gains.

Bill Gates has spent much of the past two decades transforming himself from software magnate into a benefactor of humanity through his own Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In fact, Gates has surpassed Rockefeller’s legacy with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation long having eclipsed The Rockefeller Foundation as the largest private foundation in the world, with $46.8 billion of assets on its books that it wields in its stated program areas of global health and development, global growth, and global policy advocacy.

That's a bad thing?

The near-eradication of polio has only happened because of the partnership between the Gates Foundation and Rotary International (I used to be in Rotary, for whom eliminating polio is a major priority, with Gates putting up more money than the combined efforts of Rotarians around the world). The Gates Foundation mandates an open access policy on all research they fund and they also make public all their donations, so you can see where all their money goes. Neither of those are true for many less open foundations.

Meanwhile, Corbett spends his energy and money denying climate change, railing about chemtrails and promoting "false flag" conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma City bombings.