Welcome to my website!
I hope you have a good time here. Thanks for dropping by.
Background
Education
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.)
- Bowflex SelectTech Adjustable Dumbbells (Perhaps overly optimistic, but it’s good to dream.)
- CAP Barbell Flat Weight Bench (Essential for chest exercises.)
- Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter (It’s so good because he’s crazy.)
- iBUYPOWER Pre-Built Gaming PC (For work and play.)
- Oilway Blue-Light Blocking Glasses (Reduces eye strain from extended screen time.)
- Redify Jump Rope (Who needs a treadmill?)
- StriveZen 2-Month View Wall Calendar (Record weight, reps/sets, diet, important dates, etc.)
- Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef’s Knife (A good knife has a thousand and one uses.)
- Vive Wrist Brace (Type for ten hours a day.)
Hobbyist Books
- CultureShock! Philippines by Alfredo Roces (Retiring to Manila sounds nice.)
- How to Cook Everything: The Basics by Mark Bittman (Includes the steps most authors skip.)
- How to Eat by Mark Bittman (Healthy living is a choice you make every day.)
- Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman (Still the gold standard.)
- Logical Chess by Irving Chenev (Teaches the consequences of small changes.)
- The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises by Adam Campbell (Endless workout variations.)
- 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.)
- Set Your Voice Free by Roger Love (How well you speak affects every interaction.)
- Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (Pair with the DVD for best results.)
(For computer programming books, check out this list. Supplement with ChatGPT.)
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
- Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (Are most white-collar jobs really necessary?)
- 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.)
- 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.)
- Screen Schooled by Joe Clement (Social media has mentally crippled multiple generations.)
- The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil (I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.)
- The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (Global climate change will ruin everything.)
- Untrue: Women, Lust, and Infidelity by Wednesday Martin (Primate dating market dynamics.)
Blog Posts
- “2007 USC Law School Address” by Charlie Munger (Blueprints for personal success.)
- “2024 Election Polls” by FiveThirtyEight (Who will be this season’s commander-in-chief?)
- “Automation and the Future of Work” by the Hipcrime Vocab (Technology causes poverty.)
- “The Coming European Economic Apocalypse” by Seshadri Kumar (World War 3 has begun.)
- “Generation X Faces a Bleak Old Age” by Ted Rall (Après Boomers, le déluge.)
- “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.)
- “India: Another China or Another Brazil?” by Michael Roberts (Riches, but only for a few.)
- “Life in India After Returning from US” by Shuddha Kannadiga (All moves have trade-offs.)
- “Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander (We run ever-faster just to stay in place.)
- “The Merge” by Sam Altman (The marginal value of intelligence is going to zero.)
- “The Obama Factor” by David Samuels (In some ways, he set the stage for Trump.)
- “Overshoot” by Alan Urban (Everything lasts forever until it doesn’t.)
- “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 Truthasaurus” by Zach Weinersmith (All relationships are transactional.)
- “Welcome to the Ruzzkiy Mir” by Evgenia Kovda (Understanding modern Russia.)
- “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Moat” by Steve Yegge (The AI genie is out of the bottle.)
- “What I Think Is Going On With U.S.-China Relations” by Ray Dalio (We’re f**ked.)
- “Will India Get Too Hot to Work?” by the McKinsey Global Institute (Is there a future?)
- “Why Software Is Eating the World” by Marc Andreessen (Unforeseen consequences.)
- “Women in Science” by Philip Greenspun (STEM careers may not be worth the sunk costs.)
- “The ZIRPing of America” by Craig Smith (Root of every political issue of the past 15 years.)
History Books
- The Book of Islamic Dynasties by Luqman Nagy (Eurasia’s past, present, and future.)
- Born in Blackness by Howard French (African slaves built Western civilization.)
- The Great Speeches of Modern India by Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Straight from the source.)
- Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis (50 million forgotten murders.)
- Montaillou by Emmanuel Ladurie (Based on actual interviews with medieval peasants.)
- 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.)
- “Attention Is All You Need” by Ashish Vaswani (Invented modern large language models.)
- “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
- Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino (Watch the films as you read to fully get it.)
- The Governance of China by Xi Jinping (Perhaps the 21st century’s most influential person.)
- Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella (His talent for acquisitions sparked a new AI arms race.)
- The Office by Andy Greene (Behind the scenes of the greatest TV show ever made.)
- 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 House of God by Samuel Shem (Only 57% of doctors would go into medicine again.)
- 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 (Pre-COVID depictions of dystopia seem optimistic now.)
- “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.)
- “Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (No man knows the future.)
Television
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman (Thinly veiled metaphor for corporate life.)
- Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino (Escaping misery is a universal struggle.)
- 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.)
- 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 Machinist by Scott Kosar (A guilty conscience can ruin your life.)
- 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.)
- Nightcrawler by Dan Gilroy (Markets don’t reward what’s best for society.)
- Nope by Jordan Peele (Make not a spectacle of others, lest you be destroyed in turn.)
- The Office by Greg Daniels (Pair with “The Gervais Principle” to forever alter your life goals.)
- Oldboy by Park Chan-wook (We are but playthings for the gods.)
- 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.)
- The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy (Is continuing to live rational?)
- 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 (Quit while you’re ahead.)
- World’s Greatest Dad by Bobcat Goldthwait (Quiet desperation is the American way.)
- Zhangjin Hu by Chen Kaige (Resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea!)
Comic Books
- Buddha by Osamu Tezuka (Existence is a fever dream, and the self is an illusion.)
- Invincible by Robert Kirkman (Thrilling post-9/11 visions of U.S.-led multilateralism.)
- Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy (Life’s a beach and then you die.)
- The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (No matter how powerful you get, you’re still mortal.)
- Swamp Thing by Alan Moore (It’s better to be a plant than an animal.)
- The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman (Started a post-apocalyptic craze that swept America.)
- Yossel: April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert (Fascism is imperialism turned inwards.)
Click the pictures!