Welcome to my website!
I hope you have a good time here. Thanks for dropping by.
Background
Education and Certificates
Click the pictures!
Favorite
Music
Consumer Goods
- AccuCheck Digital Body Weight Scale (Measure daily to avoid surprises.)
- Alera High Performance Task Chair (My spine’s best friend.)
- Asus VS228H-P 21.5” 1080p Monitor (Ideal bezel, size, and display ports for extended use.)
- iBUYPOWER Pre-Built Gaming PC (For work and play.)
- Redify Jump Rope (Rainy-day cardio.)
- StriveZen 2-Month View Wall Calendar (Record weight, reps/sets, diet, important dates, etc.)
- Vive Wrist Brace (Type for ten hours a day.)
Desktop Software
- “FFmpeg” by Fabrice Bellard (Lightning-fast video editing.)
- “Scoop” by Luke Sampson (Windows command-line installer.)
- “Unhook” by Unhook App (Removes YouTube’s social media aspects.)
- “Video Screenshot” by Martin Strauss (Generate desktop wallpapers from streaming sites.)
- “Vimium” by Phil Crosby (Mouse-less browsing.)
- “youtube-dl” by Ricardo García (Download YouTube videos.)
Programming Books
- Coders at Work by Peter Seibel (Mentorship from the great programmers of our time.)
- Game Programming Patterns by Bob Nystrom (Notes on building maintainable software.)
- Learn C++ by Alex (For those of us who went to JavaSchools.)
- Learn OpenGL by Joey de Vries (Graphics from scratch.)
(For more fun, check out this list by the Free Ebook Foundation.)
Hobbyist Books
- Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman (Still the gold standard.)
- Logical Chess by Irving Chenev (Teaches the consequences of small changes.)
- The Penguin Book of Card Games by David Parlett (A lifetime of fun. Also see pagat.com.)
- Poker Tells by Mike Caro (Reading body language for fun and profit. Comes with videos.)
- The Royal Road to Card Magic by Jean Hugard (Spice up game night.)
- Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (Pair with the DVD for best results.)
Philosophy Books
- The Analects by Kong Fuzi (Building a society that works starts from the bottom.)
- The Art of War by Sun Zi (Conflict is the default state for all life.)
- The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (From one thing, know ten thousand things.)
- Certain to Win by Chet Richards (How to outmaneuver and defeat much larger enemies.)
- The Complete Works by Arthur Schopenhauer (Patron saint of intellectuals.)
- Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Thriving in the white-collar workplace.)
- Feline Philosophy by John Gray (There is no higher goal than becoming a cat.)
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (Either exercise power or have it exercised on you.)
- Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich (Living in fear of death is worse than dying.)
- Poker For Dummies by Richard Harroch (Works as a metaphor for pretty much everything.)
- Straw Dogs by John Gray (Happiness is living according to one’s nature.)
- The Trouble with Being Born by Emil Cioran (Resignation is only the beginning.)
Economics Books
- The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan (We waste a third of our lives social signaling.)
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (Modern finance is rooted in medieval Europe.)
- The Great Convergence by Richard Baldwin (Wealth’s journey from East to West and back.)
- The India Way by Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (Moving up in the world as a middle power.)
- The Neoliberal Endgame by David Blacker (America’s destiny, as set forth by Nixon.)
- Open Borders by Bryan Caplan (Immigration restrictions make no economic sense.)
- River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (Suffering and scarcity are built into the system.)
- Untrue: Women, Lust, and Infidelity by Wednesday Martin (Primate dating market dynamics.)
Blog Posts
- “2024 Election Polls” by FiveThirtyEight (Who will be this season’s commander-in-chief?)
- “The Coming European Economic Apocalypse” by Seshadri Kumar (World War 3 has begun.)
- “The End of the Hit-Driven Business Model” by Chris Moore (Why movies are worse now.)
- “Generation X Faces a Bleak Old Age” by Ted Rall (Apres Boomers, le deluge.)
- “The Gervais Principle” by Venkat Rao (Pair with The Office to forever alter your life goals.)
- “Has China Turned to Capitalism?” by Domenico Losurdo (Understanding modern China.)
- “How the Taliban Did It” by Benjamin Jensen (Teamwork and resolve trump everything.)
- “Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander (We run ever-faster just to stay in place.)
- “Overshoot” by Alan Urban (Everything lasts forever until it doesn’t.)
- “Return From U.S. To India” by Shuddha Kannadiga (As globalization ends, time to cash out.)
- “Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant” by Steve Yegge (Microsoft’s path to world domination.)
- “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years” by Peter Norvig (No royal road to geometry.)
- “Uncomfortable Truthosaurus” by Zach Weinersmith (There’s no substitute for hard work.)
- “Welcome to the Ruzzkiy Mir” by Evgenia Kovda (Understanding modern Russia.)
- “What I Think Is Going On With U.S.-China Relations” by Ray Dalio (We’re f**ked.)
- “The ZIRPing of America” by Craig Smith (Beginning of the end.)
History Books
- American Kompromat by Craig Unger (Trump being a Russian asset explains a lot.)
- The Book of Islamic Dynasties by Luqman Nagy (Eurasia’s past, present, and future.)
- The Great Speeches of Modern India by Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Such squandered potential.)
- Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis (50 million forgotten murders.)
- A Most Holy War by Mark Pegg (Western civilization’s roots.)
- Reconstruction by Eric Foner (Ongoing ripples of Lincoln’s assassination.)
- Stalin by Domenico Losurdo (Perhaps the 20th century’s most influential person.)
- The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands by Alfred Rieber (As relevant now as ever.)
- Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft by Allen Lynch (From failed state to world power.)
(For more, check out the World History Association’s list of Bentley Book Prize winners.)
Historical Documents
- “The ABC of Communism” by Nikolai Bukharin (Primer on what tens of millions died for.)
- “Address to the Nation After 9/11” by George W. Bush (Prelude to 20 years of war.)
- “Asia After Viet Nam” by Richard Nixon (Sino-American rapprochement.)
- “From a China Traveler” by David Rockefeller (Neoliberal honeymoon.)
- “The Minority Nationalities in the Southwest” by Deng Xiaoping (How to build a nation.)
- “Modernize and Never Seek Hegemony” by Deng Xiaoping (Father of globalization.)
- “On Contradiction” by Mao Zedong (Set the DNA of modern Chinese thought.)
- “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” by Vladimir Putin (Tsardom reborn.)
- “Remarks on the End of the War in Afghanistan” by Joe Biden (Graveyard of empires.)
- “The Social Responsibility of Business” by Milton Friedman (Death knell for the welfare state.)
- “Speech on China Trade Bill” by Bill Clinton (Birth of the Chinese Century.)
Autobiographies
- Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (Hollywood at its zenith.)
- Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino (Watch the films as you read to fully get it.)
- Four Star Reviews, 1967-2007 by Roger Ebert (Forty years at the movies.)
- The Governance of China by Xi Jinping (Perhaps the 21st century’s most influential person.)
- Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella (His talent for acquisitions started a new AI arms race.)
- What Happened by Hillary Clinton (Her electoral losses defined the 21st century.)
- Working by Robert Caro (Vita brevis, ars longa.)
Novels
- A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (Living history is written in blood.)
- The Long Walk by Stephen King (Masculinity in a nutshell.)
- Pet Sematary by Stephen King (Death makes a mockery of everything.)
- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (Hypnotic in its intensity.)
- Submission by Michel Houellebecq (Prescient satire of the “end of history”.)
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Surreal reflections on Western imperialism.)
- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Required reading for the Indian diaspora.)
Short Stories
- “American Gold Mine” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Any professional can relate.)
- “Coding Machines” by Lawrence Kesteloot (Debugging meets cosmic horror.)
- “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin (You can’t outsmart physics.)
- “Fleep” by Jason Shiga (If you lose your memories, are you still the same man?)
- “Frost and Fire” by Ray Bradbury (Man that is born of a woman is of few days.)
- “A Full Life” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Dystopia arrived faster than expected.)
- “Golden” by Nick Bostrom (Animals are trapped in a real-life horror movie.)
- “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka (The best gifts find the fewest admirers.)
- “Sandcastle” by Pierre Oscar Levy (Life’s a beach and then you die.)
- “To Build a Fire” by Jack London (To ignore reality is to court death.)
- “Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (No man knows the future.)
- “Yossel: April 19, 1943” by Joe Kubert (Long live the Jewish people.)
Television
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever by Ryan Coogler (Modern myth-making.)
- Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino (Started a new wave of race-conscious cinema.)
- Get Out by Jordan Peele (Lampoons the racial weirdness of the Obama years.)
- Gisaengchung by Bong Joon-ho (Class struggle is swiftly returning.)
- The Green Knight by David Lowery (It really is all a game.)
- Invincible by Robert Kirkman (Somehow even better than the source material.)
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi by Ono Jiro (There is bliss in doing your job well.)
- Kaze Tachinu by Miyazaki Hayao (You can do everything right and still fail.)
- The Menu by Will Tracy (Eating is not the same as cooking.)
- Mononoke Hime by Miyazaki Hayao (Everyone’s the hero of their own story.)
- Nope by Jordan Peele (Resurrects and deconstructs the Spielbergian blockbuster.)
- The Office by Greg Daniels (Pair with “The Gervais Principle” to forever alter your life goals.)
- Oldboy by Park Chan-wook (Intensely, painfully relatable.)
- The Personal History of David Copperfield by Armando Ianucci (My favorite comedy.)
- Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg (Still the best film ever made about racism.)
- Squid Game by Hwang Dong-hyuk (Thinly-veiled allegory for corporate life.)
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Tim Burton (Peak of film musicals.)
- Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman (Your life, and mine, and everybody’s.)
- The White Tiger by Ramin Bahrani (Required viewing for the Indian diaspora.)
- The Wolf of Wall Street by Martin Scorsese (Markets don’t reward what’s best for society.)
- World’s Greatest Dad by Bobcat Goldthwait (Quiet desperation is the American way.)
- Zhang Jin Hu by Wu Jing (Resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea!)
Comic Books
Click the pictures!