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Background

Education and Certificates

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Investing Rules

Political Views

Hobbies

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

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