Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

Rather good so far. Nicely paced. Can see why this won lots of plaudits.

Lots of aspects here that I didn't know, mostly due to my knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars stemming almost entirely from the Sharpe novels / TV series. I don't think I was even aware of Britain bombarding Copenhagen, or our general dickishness to everyone. Unsurprising, but still...

This was all a bit obvious at first, but now I've picked it up again it seems to have picked up.

The narrator of the audiobook version is *awful*. Good voice, but atrocious intonation - emphasis totally wrong, tonally utterly out. It's read like it's a 1950s children's book. The book itself is solid, though - a narrative history with a solid explanation of global drivers, impacts and implications that's finally helping to make the Aubrey-Maturin novels make contextual sense.

Promising, this. Comparative context, not just a long list of battles. Just what I was after - hope it keeps up...

This book remains frustrating, alternating as it does between informative and interpretative, with the interpretative elements generally pretty lightweight and obvious, detracting from the art rather than enhancing it. Also, I remain annoyed at the title not being remotely accurate: The artists in this book would almost all fail the Bechdel Test, in this telling. Men remain at the heart of it all, sadly.

I should have read this twenty years ago. But in delaying I've ended up knowing many more of the places he's talking about - the first couple of legs are quite near me...

I like this book. Makes me want to read several others, some of which have been sitting on the shelf since I was a teenager...

Ignore the fluffy title and this is a really rather good history of existentialism and phenomenology through a biographical lens that definitely helps aid understanding. I like this kind of history of ideas - far less abstract when tied to people, personalities and relationships.

More about statistics and logical fallacies / pattern recognition biases than AI, but all that is helpful in illustrating why AI's approach to data analysis can lead to issues. Basically, correlation does not equal causation - but AI tends to lack the contextual understanding to seek true causes rather than statistically-likely ones. Interesting and helpful for this innumerate idiot.

The sections on demons, witchcraft and astrology as causes are great fun, but likely about as accurate as the sections on food and diet...

Mirabeau, eh? Like Boris Johnson if Johnson was as clever as he thinks he is.

Reading about the Revolution over the Coronation weekend is especially entertaining.

The main part, published in Musil's lifetime (against his will) now finished, and ends appropriately enough, I'd say. Now onto the posthumous papers - the bits he was still working on and revising. Excellent introduction to this bit - which sadly I don't have in print, so relying on the astonishingly good (60+ hour) audiobook only from here on out.

This is impressive. First time I started reading it I got a bit overwhelmed by the extent of the background context. It wasn't quite what I was looking for, and ended up reading Hilary Mantel's excellent A Place Of Greater Safety instead for an easier narrative of the main events of the French Revolution. This time I'm actively enjoying all the background, the details washing over me to build an impression of causes.