Knot 4: Empathy, Tech Scepticism and Climate Change

I completed a major stage in a big project this week. Emerging from the haze, I had a bit more time to read for pleasure / curiosity. This helps explain the older selections of article that follow, and the number of books I managed to get through. I made steady progress with my language-learning coding side-project (about which more soon), and recorded three new podcast episodes to be released in the next few weeks.

Articles

• Nick Romeo - “The Chatbot Will See You Now” (New Yorker)

This is an article about how technology might help provide some kind of therapeutic intervention at scale. A specific case explored in the piece is that of Syrian refugees who use the app to help deal with things they experienced as a result of the ongoing conflict (or as a result of refugee life). Results on efficacy and so on are still unknown, but it’s at least an intriguing idea.

• Mark A. Heberle - “Must Everyone Write English?” (Claremont Review of Books)

Heberle explores how translation into English is both a blessing and a curse. It brings about this kind of ‘global literature’ and awareness of other cultures for English-reading audiences, but it also changes the kinds of expression that takes place. It’s a challenge to the English-first trend that will leave us so much poorer over time.

• Lisa Miller - “An Experiment in Empathy” (New York Magazine)

This piece is accompanied by a video (here). The video is worth watching, but both show what happens when various parties from ‘opposing sides’ of a contentious issue (gun laws in the USA) come together to try to understand and/or empathise with each other. I’ve long talked about the need for finding a place for empathy in how we understand other people, other places, other contexts, but this piece pushes back a little against that logic. Paul Bloom has also recently published a book (‘Against Empathy’) which argues against the use of empathy as a primary means of making decisions. I will be reading that soon to see how it meshes with my current understanding.

• Michael Knox Beran - “In Defense of Memorization” (City Journal)

A common charge levelled at those who study ways to improve their memories is that there is no need to learn facts since everything is available online. This article shows how memory fits into different kinds of education and learning and how it enriches your mental landscape.

• Cal Newport - “Some Thoughts on Transitioning to Digital Minimalism” (CalNewport.com)

Sensible advice on how to start thinking about reshaping your digital consumption habits. Newport’s last book, ‘Deep Work’, gets into all of this in much more detail, but it’s a useful entry point if you’re considering making a change.

• Tristan Harris - “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist” (The Startup)

A useful reminder of the ways that our oft-used tech-enabled gateways and services are highly addictive, and designed to be so. This, to my mind, should make us think and pause and consider ways we can be less dependent.

• Jonathan Stray - “The Dark Clouds of Financial Cryptography” (JonathanStray.com)

I’m simultaneously fascinated by the various new digital currencies that have emerged in the last year or two but also overwhelmed whenever I try to understand how they work. This article by Jonathan Stray brought me a little closer to learning about the ‘how’, but also some of the ‘why’ and reasons for possible uncertainty and concern.

• Tara Duggan - “Seafood’s New Normal” (San Francisco Chronicle)

A richly reported story on how climate change and fishing practices are changing how seafood reaches our plates as consumers. It’s told through a very specific lens (that of California and the American west coast) which helps give the piece its power.

• Mark Schapiro - “The Unique Burden of Covering Climate Change in the Middle East” (Pacific Standard)

A really nice overview of the challenges that local journalists face in the Middle East when trying to cover climate change. Schapiro tells his story by way of a workshop in Amman hosted by the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. We get to meet reporters from different countries. This was a great way to get at the story, and I wish there were more pieces like this.

• David Schenker - “Jordan’s Economy Was Always Shaky. The Refugee Crisis Has Only Made Things Worse.” (The Tower)

I understand next to nothing about how economies and financial systems work, but this article on Jordan’s economy seemed to make sense. Things were always difficult, but now is especially so.

• Donna Abu-Nasr - “Saudis Are Trying to Figure Out How the Post-Oil Era Works” (Bloomberg)

Lots has been written on the Saudi pivot, how they want to be less dependent on oil and reinvent the Kingdom’s role in the Middle East and the world at large. This was the first piece I’ve read that laid out some of the confusion and contradiction as to what exactly that means.

Books

I read Irving’s ‘Guide to the Good Life’, a useful and practical guide to stoicism, a Greco-Roman philosophy that is undergoing a revival in certain circles these days. Harrison’s ‘A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington’ was a slightly dry but compelling account of the role of reading in the life and career of George Washington. I read Deci’s ‘Why We Do What We Do’ on the strength of Deb Chachra’s recommendation during her Sources and Methods podcast interview. Deci argues that internal motivation beats external motivation every time; I’ve started employing some of the suggestions in my language coaching work as a result. I also finished Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami’s excellent ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’ (my longer review here).

Request

If you’re still reading, please drop me a note if you have a spare moment. I see the stats on how many people open these ‘Knots’ link collections but I’m unsure as to whether they’re useful. Let me know if you find them useful, and/or what else you’d like me to write about.

Talking DevonThink with Gabe Weatherhead

I’ve been on a bit of a DevonThink kick these past weeks, and the catalyst for all of this was a conversation I had with Gabe Weatherhead (@macdrifter over on Twitter, though that account is no longer active).

You can listen to the full episode on your podcast player of choice or over on the Sources and Methods site. Towards the end of the episode we get into the weeds on how he uses DevonThink Pro Office and several other pieces of software. I’m looking forward to hearing Gabe’s much-anticipated appearance on MacPowerUsers in January, since I imagine he’ll go into even more detail there.

We also discussed social media and some of the ways he found himself drifting away from commonly-used sites like Facebook and Twitter. For me, this was the most interesting part of the podcast.

Syria’s Revolution: The First Draft

I haven’t been following events in Syria that closely. ‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’ (by Robin Yassin-Kassab, Leila Al-Shami) is only one among several books that have been written in the midst of the ongoing conflict, but I’d heard consistently good things about it since its release at the beginning of 2016. It doesn’t disappoint. I started it yesterday, lulled by the conclusion of a large project and a thousand pictures of Christmas dinner preparations on twitter. I woke up this morning and finished the rest.

Burning Country is compellingly written, not only on a structural level but also on account of its interspersed interview and other oral history-type testimony. This is the book’s primary strength, I felt. It’s hard enough to write accurate and compelling history after the fact. Doing so while events are still unfolding makes the job even harder. Thankfully, Burning Country delivers the goods.

After introducing Syria and Syrians as if to set the stage, Yassin-Kassab and al-Shami launch into an account of the Syrian uprising’s early days, told through a diversity of sources from a variety of backgrounds. They make a strong case for the initial moments of the revolution as being less co-opted by one group or another, even as later chapters show how a variety of forces pushed and pulled that initial impulse in unintended directions. I learnt a lot from the accounts of initial organisational strategies, the way different groups responded to similar kinds of threats from the state and how the logic of violent escalation started to take on more prominence. The chapter on cultural shifts (or expressions) brought about by the revolution (chapter eight) was also excellent. The end of the book falls a little short, if only because the conflict is ongoing and you had the sense that it is an unfinished project.

As a one-stop shop introduction and opening-out to some important parts of Syrian society, history and current affairs, Burning Country is well worth your time. The book ends with a note on thinking about and understanding Syria:

“In order to truly think globally – rather than to hide from thought behind clumsy globalising paradigms – it is necessary to act locally. We ask the reader, rather than applying the usual grand narratives, to attend to voices from the ground.”

I hope we get to read other histories of Syria (and other countries) that employ the same logic.

Share the Gift of Language Coaching

If you’re still looking around for last-minute Christmas presents, look no further. How about the friend who has been struggling to learn a language? Know someone who is always talking about how they want to learn a language but don’t have the time? Or even you yourself: are you always putting off studying Arabic or French (or even Mandarin) that you know would benefit you, but you just don’t know how to get started?

I offer custom-made language coaching to suit your schedule and needs. You might need help with motivation, accountability, coming up with a grand plan and/or just require someone to be a sounding post for a study plan you’re already working on.

Whatever you language-learning needs, I’ll be happy to work with you. My goal is to help you reach your goals as directly as possible. We’ll work to your strengths and find ways to make the process less of a chore.

You can read more about the whole process here.

To purchase a gift subscription, please get in touch here.

The Best Books I Read in 2016

Compared to 2015, this year was a relatively slow year. I decided to reduce the number of books that I wanted to read after it became clear to me just how much work I’d have to put in to finish my PhD dissertation.

Last year I wrote that I wanted half of the books I read in 2016 to be fiction. I also said that I didn’t want to buy any new books. I failed firmly and thoroughly on both goals. I only read nine works of fiction this year, and I bought many books. Part of the reason for less fiction was due to a realignment of my broader goals (less writing of fiction in my daily life and more writing of computer/programming code). Nevertheless, I want to be reading more fiction as a regular habit. I’ll probably set a Beeminder goal for 2017 to facilitate this.

Two works of fiction did stand out among the 76 (as of today) books I did manage to read. Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’ was an unrelentingly miserable book. At 734 pages, it was also very long. It was a significant time investment, but the craft of the writing kept me reading. I avoided reading reviews when this came out, but was aware that many people were saying positive things. The events that take place in this book are traumatic, to say the least, and the author has been criticised for writing ‘torture porn’ by a number of readers. So take this or leave it. It’s incredibly powerful and beautifully written.

2016 was also my year to jump on the Elena Ferrante bandwagon. I read the first two volumes in a series of four. I enjoyed the first, ‘My Brilliant Friend’, more than the second, though that was perhaps on account of the pleasure on discovering a new writer (to me) who told engaging and emotionally satisfying stories. This book didn’t send me on a nostalgia-infused journey as it seems to have done with others, but it was certainly one of the books I savoured reading most this year. “Deliciously compelling,” I wrote immediately after finishing.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work was what spurred me to finish my PhD in an intense three-month period at the beginning of the year. I think anyone doing some kind of freelance work, or remote work, or work where you aren’t immediately / directly under the supervision of someone else would benefit from reading this book. Newport is occasionally a bit preachy, but don’t let that distract you from his important thoughts on quality of work and production. (Some related thoughts in an old blogpost here.)

Austin Kleon’s ‘Show Your Work’ (original blog here) is responsible for the uptick in posts on this blog. (I even have a Beeminder goal to keep me honest.) This was a quick but rich overview of ways in which sharing ideas, work and other moments where you learn something can be useful for both the author and his audience. Lots of practical ideas, most of which could be boiled down to what happens when you keep a blog regularly updated. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks for a living.

‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by W. Timothy Gallwey is my final pick, if only because I really need to absorb some of its lessons. Gallwey makes the point that conflict between competing ‘voices’ in our minds is often the source of self-sabotage. I wrote a longer summary here in case you want to learn more.

The year is 97% finished, and arbitrary as the passing of time is, I remain mindful of the fact that there aren’t that many days. I also have been trying to hold the paradox of things mattering (but at the same time not mattering) in my head.

So 2017: more fiction, (probably) more blogging, (certainly) more coding and maybe a return to Afghanistan-related topics.

Reading and the American Revolution

‘A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington’ tells the story of Washington’s reading habits (and how they benefited him). You can read only the introduction and get the main message: he read a lot and the things he read allowed him to grow as a military and political leader. The rest of the book is a detailed exploration of this thesis alongside some of the supporting evidence.

Extensive and deep reading alike were important throughout his career. In one of the most fascinating sub-sections, Harrison shows how Washington’s military campaign benefited from some of the latest military theories of the day, both in terms of tactics and strategy.

I benefited from the way the book proceeded chronologically through Washington’s life, not being familiar (at all) with the events of the American Revolution and the time period being examined. One of my first questions to other readers (over on Goodreads) was the extent to which someone not immersed in this American history could read this book without trouble, and I’m pleased to report that relative newbies like myself shouldn’t find much issue.

This book is repurposed from a PhD thesis, and it tells. The narrative is sometimes diverted to a discussion of sources or the evidence on which certain claims rest. This is all fine and proper, though it disrupts the flow. I wonder whether those discussions might not have been relegated to an appendix. That said, I also occasionally felt that too much was made out of the baseline evidence on which the book seems to rest, i.e. the records of which books were owned, annotated and/or read by Washington. Harrison writes a lot about the various ways we can deduce what Washington might have been reading at period X or Y, but as a reader myself I felt disappointed that somehow we hardly ever seemed to actually catch Washington directly in the act.

One of the points that I found most interesting was how Washington seemed to go about selecting his books. There were fewer titles at the time, so he seemed to have more opportunity or necessity for deep reading (annotating copies line-by-line, for example) than in the present day where it’s probably easier to develop habits of wide/extensive reading that are ultimately shallow. A fascinating section in this respect was where Washington decides he needs to overhaul his farm and agricultural practices, and Harrison shows how he used what he read to take a risky but ultimately profitable decision to reform and overhaul how he managed his land.

Two Charities Needing Your Support

If you do any kind of end-of-year charitable donations, now would be a good time to support one or both of these organisations.

CAGE works in the UK to advocate on behalf of communities and individuals affected by the so-called War on Terror. They occupy a niche space among UK-based NGOs and the work they do is unique and important. Contribute to their campaign here.

The Kabul Mobile Mini-Circus for Children is a group that I’ve fundraised for in the past. I visited them a few years back in Kabul and it was one of the happiest places I’ve been to. The children seemed to love being there, exploring what they could do through learning new skills, working with each other and so on. They’re building a new training / social / educational centre, and you can support their campaign here.

Django vs Flask

I am diving back into the coding of my language-related web tool, as I mentioned a few days back. In and of itself, the functionality is quite simple, but there are three parts that have to all work together, so it’s harder for me to put it all together than I had expected.

One of the decisions I’m currently mulling over is whether to use Django or Flask to allow my Python code to interact and get displayed on the website. For those of you who aren’t familiar with coding and how websites work, these two frameworks are what allows me to write the bulk of the tool in Python, but then use either Django or Flask to display it on the web and interact with the web server. (I realise I probably butchered that explanation.)

Django seems to be what most people recommend I use, in part because it comes with a number of useful things built-in. As a result, or maybe independently of that, it has a steeper learning curve and feels like a larger proposition than perhaps I need for my (somewhat small) project.

Flask is pretty basic and pared down. It doesn’t contain all the bells and whistles that Django offers, but as a result it’s easier to get your head round and make a working prototype sooner.

If I had a bit more time, I think I’d go with Django. The user community seems bigger and I’d probably end up using the built-in features, but Flask allows me to get a working prototype hosted somewhere much faster and thus seems like probably the option I’ll choose.

For now, I’m getting a bare-bones Python-only version of the tool ready, then I’ll hook that up to Flask and see how that interaction works.

DevonThink Resurgent

There has never been a better time to get into DevonThink and Tinderbox. Winterfest 2016 is on, and you can get 25% reductions on both those apps, as well as a number of other really useful pieces of software like Scrivener, TaskPaper, Bookends, Scapple and PDFPen.

If you’re unsure if DevonThink is something you’d be interested in, they have a 150-hours-of-use free trial for all their different apps. MacPowerUsers podcast just released a useful overview of the current state of the app — an interview with Stuart Ingram. ScreenCastsOnline also published the first part of a trilogy of video learning materials on DevonThink.

If you’re a Mac user who is perhaps uncomfortable with Evernote’s privacy policies or just seeking to get more out of the data you’ve stored on your hard drive, give DevonThink a try.

Seeking Python Code Mentor

My initial foray into the world of coding began earlier this year. I’m now at the point where I am at the least cognisant of the major structures and features of this language. If you give me some Python (or Javascript) code I can most likely start to figure out what’s going on.

I’ve wanted to make progress on a small Python side-project involving a front-facing website, a Python application hooked up to a database (most likely PostgresQL since that’s what I know).

I have been stuck for a few weeks, not knowing how to move forward and unwilling to commit to any one of several options in case it turns out to be a dead end. I want to keep learning, and not keep getting stuck so that long time periods pass between attempts to tackle this (very small) project.

So I’m looking for someone who has made web apps and is familiar with Python and very simple databases with whom I can talk my project through. I’d still like to code it all myself, but I need someone who might have thirty to sixty minutes every now and then to point me in the direction of tools or libraries that I might not have heard of. I’m aware that a lot is discoverable via Google and StackOverflow, but nothing beats not having to explain myself and my project from scratch every time I ask a question.

I know there are a lot of developers with experience and an eagerness to give back to the community by helping beginners, so consider this my call for your help. My project is a tool to help language learners, moreover, so your help will have an effect beyond just me improving in my coding skills.

If that's you, and you're willing to spend up to an hour per week helping me improve, please contact me on Twitter or via email. If you know someone who might be interested, please share this blog post with them. Location doesn't matter if you're comfortable sharing code during a video call.

Thank you!

P.S. You can read some blogposts where I discuss my coding progress, and you can also find me on Github.

Knot 3: Encryption, Race and Tunnels

More focus this week on finishing a big project, so less time for books or outside reading, but nevertheless some articles to recommend.

Articles

• Ursula Lindsey - “Funds Cut for Prominent Arabic Language Program” (Al-Fanar Media)

An extremely short-sighted decision. The CASA programme has been a really important source of support over its forty-nine years. This is a decision that affects American students of Arabic, but we shouldn’t forget that it’s symptomatic of how language studies are treated elsewhere.

• Rosalind Adams - “Intake: Locked On The Psych Ward” (Buzzfeed)

Anyone who still says Buzzfeed doesn’t do important reporting just isn’t reading. This piece looks at the way a for-profit system works to the disadvantage of patients’ welfare and the healthcare system in general. A must-read for an American audience, and for Europeans / Brits as a portent of what probably is headed our way.

• Bron Gondwana - “Why we don't offer PGP” (Fastmail Blog)

PGP has been much discussed (more than usual, at any rate) this past week. This post offers a useful overview of some of the things that PGP can help protect against, versus some of the places where trust in what it can do are misplaced. Pair this article with Bjarni Rúnar’s “Too Cool for PGP” to cover your bases.

• Annalee Newitz - “Evernote apologizes for its new privacy policy” (Ars Technica)

A useful corrective from Ars Technica (one of the best places to go for informed reporting on science and technology) about Evernote’s recent policy changes relating to privacy. The important point to take away from all this is that Evernote probably isn’t where you want to be storing your notes if you care about your privacy. Try DevonThink instead for a far saner approach to encryption and storage.

• Amal el-Mohtar - “'Iraq + 100' Is Painful, But Don't Look Away” (NPR)

This review of a new collection of stories seems (from the review, at any rate) like it is worth reading. Imaginative and creative responses to events on this scale are, I think, the kinds of things that will ultimately survive far longer than the political analysis and commentary that so far has dominated the discussion of what happened in Iraq. I look forward to reading this book.

• Ryan Holliday - “Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News.” (Observer)

You can ignore the focus on US politics and still take away the broader argument, that following the day-to-day news cycle is (for the broad majority of us) unnecessary and probably actually detrimental to our health and ability to do work that really matters (to us or others). A useful reminder.

• Laura Reiley - “Farm to Table: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction” (Tampa Bay Times)

A great piece of investigative work, Reiley shows how a lot of the promises of the farm-to-table movement in California are false claims. This piece is the first in a series that is worth reading in its entirety.

• Roger Cohen - “Broken Men in Paradise” (New York Times)

This is an important reminder of the realities of life for those refugees refused entry to Australia following harrowing journeys across the seas. Authorities in the places they are sent to operate with seemingly little restraint or care for their wellbeing.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates — “My President Was Black: A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next” (The Atlantic)

This piece seems to capture a moment. Based on several interviews with Obama as well as his usual command of the context that explains this moment, this is a (long) must-read.

• Gideon Lewis-Kraus - “The Great A.I. Awakening” (New York Times)

Important from perhaps a different angle, this is a long overview of the ways so-called artificial intelligence is poised to change our world. It views the transformation through the lens of developments in Google’s online translation service. It offers context and explanation to two different approaches to machine intelligence and the different algorithmic decisions being made. If you’re interested in technology and the ways that computers will continue to be embedded in our daily lives, you won’t want to miss this one.

Books

This week I read Lynne Kelly’s “The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments” in preparation for an upcoming podcast episode interview. Dr Kelly makes a convincing case for how old archeological sites (like Stonehenge) were probably used as forms of memory aids to recall information important for local communities. The book is best accompanied by a glance at a truly fascinating series of memory experiments that she’s been working on. I also read Rebecca Solnit’s “Men Explain Things to Me”, a very useful and sobering reminder of the ways that society works against women, whether directly through violence or other perhaps less visible means.

Films / TV

I wrote yesterday about “Into Eternity” (trailer here), one of my favourite documentaries of the past year. It’s filmed with an idiosyncratic approach to detail and atmosphere. I am ignorant about where Finnish director Michael Madsen gets his influences from, but I certainly look forward to seeing more. Just today I saw another documentary, “13th”, which focuses on the ways that racial inequality has manifested itself in the United States, specifically in the prison system. This is a powerful statement, particularly for American viewers, I imagine, and it made me think about the ways that similar trends are to be found back in Europe.

Into Eternity: the construction of Onkalo's tunnels

I watched a gripping documentary this evening on the construction of a tunnel / radioactive waste burial facility. Onkalo is located on the west coast of Finland and is designed to store the country’s national nuclear waste until it is no longer harmful to life. This amounts to around 100,000 years.

If you think that human life has been around for a very small fraction of that (see the images above for a sense of the scale), and most of the designed ‘things’ have never lasted that long, this makes the design and implementation of such a storage facility a really huge proposition.

The tunnel and related storage areas will only be completed post-2100, but the design team take into account things like their assumption that there Earth will be due another ice age in around 60,000 years from now. They consider the various possibilities of new or different civilisations coming and going.

Into Eternity is a fascinating documentary. Find it online if you get the chance.

Broken Pots

Kintsugi or kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of rebuilding a broken pot or other ceramic in a way so as to make it more beautiful than it was before. This is sometimes done with gold or silver, or other materials to join the broken pieces together.

There are some great images of this if you search Google Images.

Anab Jan also has written something on the way that repairing bikes with a kintsugi approach means the history of repair remains visible in the bike even after the repair is finished.