Reading

This post was first sent to my newsletter on April 4th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) A tiny bit of houskeeping before we begin. I used to track how many people read the newsletter, partly out of morbit curiosity and partly because Sendy, the software I use to write and schedule these letters, did not have an option to turn it off globally. I would have to turn it it off every single time, I wrote a letter and well, my life is too short to be doing all that. However with the latest version of Sendy all that has changed. And I have turned off all tracking! Yippee! Talk about the importance of sane defaults!) And now, on to the letter … ...

Despite financial troubles there’s a sense in which my childhood was immensely privileged — a pauper in the material world, I was a sultan in the world of ideas. — Erik Hoel I started by wanting to share that quote and link on my microblog and then my thoughts turned into a blog post sized comment. I decided to post it here too, then. ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on March 7th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Before we get into this weeks newsletter, I’d like to take a moment and recognise the loss of my grandmother, who passed away on the 24th, last month. She was a simple, thoughtful and kind woman, who raised a village. I miss her dearly. This was my eulogy to her. ...

*Image, courtesy [Tom Gauld][tgt]* This post was first sent to my newsletter on February 1st, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Welcome to the first, “serious” newsletter of 2021. This was supposed to be my year end post, but life, as usual got in the way. Now that I’ve jammed both the blogs together, most of the personal stuff is going to stay focussed on stuff about books and reading and writing and a few photos thrown in once in a while for good measure. Seems like that is what I was doing most of last year, anyway. ...

I have been telling the young ones, that reading the things they consider important, needs to be engaged. Engaged with the words. Engaged with the flow. With the author. Her ideas. The way she makes her case. Or tells her story. To wrestle with what is being said, or left unsaid. To build a mental model with the ideas being presented. To write it all down. To wrestle with the work and draw your own conclusions. (which might not necessarily be what the author intends). ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on December 7th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) The beginning is always today. — Mary Shelley The biggest obstacle to ultralearning is simply that most people don’t care enough about their own self-education to get started Finding Time for Ultra learning What matters is the intensity, initiative, and commitment to effective learning, not the particulars of your timetable ...