Skip (David) Everling > Recent Status Updates

Long-view history, the book of civilization. Lots of revealing analysis and insightful comparisons.

Wisdom for Dummies

Liked the late (and early) chapters on networks and emergence, particularly the explicit challenge to thoughts about free will!

Interesting lectures on the concept of Punishment in a deterministic universe. Biggest policy problem for determinists outside of apathy.

Learned a lot about vision, though would have liked more exploration of the concepts in the final chapter ("The Mind's Eye")

Makes me want to learn the quirks in my own vision I'm unaware of. The idea of hyperstereoscopic vision is pretty cool (extra wide set perspectives)

Interesting look at language and internal states

Tons of intelligentsia in this book, a new perspective every page or two. Rather stimulating!

Not as good as Plato and a Platypus (also seems to be fewer jokes), but true to the title

Actually pretty funny. Maybe I'm predisposed to like the jokes but they're making me laugh and they're pretty well matched to the philosophy topics.

Liked how it was written, a very modern, edgy take on an epistolary novel, but I wasn't compelled by the future dystopian world that Shteyngart elaborates for the setting of his culture-paralleled love & loss story. His absurd exaggeration of Internet age interaction (or lack thereof herein) is funny when it's on target and I laughed at the "acerbic wit" throughout, but the absurdity hampered the emotional thrust.

This book could probably add Insane and Raunchy to the title

Dystopian future novels are getting closer in time and wider in speculation (this one takes the conception of superficiality of social networks to a an absurd funny extreme)