Camille > Recent Status Updates

This has been such a poignant little novel so far. I love the device of Adina observing Earth life as both an actual alien and an alienated teenager.

Well, now I have beef with Amy Chua for TWO things! (1) writing Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2) introducing JD Vance to her agent and launching him into the national consciousness

This author seems to be one of NPR's current favorites to interview when it comes to parenting advice questions. I don't have kids yet, but I wish I had read something like this when my niblings were younger instead of judging their parents for not focusing on etiquette or discipline.

This is a wonky policy read. If you've read any stories about retirement in the NYT lately, this is the researcher they've been interviewing a lot. Stuff to chew on:
- history of Social Security, the end of mandatory retirement ages
- pensions! we need those and 401ks suck
- lowering the Medicare age to 50s. Expanding access to preventative care / screening.

If you enjoy Jenny Odell’s and Rebecca Solnit’s writings AND want to think about pregnancy and birth, I think you’d like this.

Ugh. As someone currently working in government, this book rings painfully true.

"Nothing has been preserved, there are only things being preserved. Preservation is the result of ongoing work of people and commitments of resources. The work is never finished."

Now chock full of statistics that are going to make you very angry I hope 👏

This book reads like a breathless, starry-eyed primer on food logistics for tech VCs. The author leans in heavily on IoT systems and autonomous vehicles, while treating organized labor as "friction" in the way of adopting more optimal systems. Picked this up to indulge my past work in the consumer packaged goods industry, but unsure whether I'll actually finish this.

"Biomedicalization has taken over as a mental model, a habit of thought that makes medicine the most readily available explanation for why things are the way they are. In a biomedicalized world, it is easier to acknowledge the impact of a cluster of neurons than the impact of culture or society on why people behave in the way that they do."

Going to be digesting this for a long time.

indulging a new obsession with fancy lamps 😬

"Forgiveness, you offer requires the confrontation of two parties, a meeting face-to-face between people who have the capacity to hurt each other, and thus, perhaps to discover grace."

Revisiting different systems of logic and...my brain hurts.

Heading into a tech lead role and I guesssssss this is better than nothing? But I don't know why all of these interviews are with engineer who have never worked on their communication or leadership skills before assuming this role ._.

Oh, you know me. Can't resist when writers use astronomical phenomena to describe relationship dynamics.
"...the barycenter of Pluto and Charon lies outside Pluto. Strictly speaking, Charon does not orbit Pluto, nor Pluto, Charon. They rotate around a barycenter between them. Looking only at one piece of each other."

Just sobbing.

- I didn't know that Cecile Richards had a background in labor organizing!
-The stuff about her relationship with her mom made me sob...a lot.
-Everything feels terrible in the world these days but it's inspiring to hear about people fighting the good fight

Uhh so this pseudoscience made it into hiring assessments, college admissions, and screening candidates for espionage assignments. And UC Berkeley was ALL ABOUT THIS, apparently (see: Institute of Personality Assessment and Research). They took over an ex frat house and threw shindigs for for studying graduate students, creatives like Truman Capote, and more...

Mostly enjoying the complaints of British botanists re: how they thought Linnaeus' system, which categorized plants by examining their sexual organs, was so LEEEEWD