AlexChabot.net

Follow @alexchabot on Micro.blog.

Archive Photos Replies Projects About Search

2024 Holiday Newsletter

This is the 8th and installment of the annual newsletter I share with my colleagues (previous years 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017).

This installment was my parting gift to Enthought when I left on November 22, after nearly nine years. I plan on continuing to write them in the future.

Three-ish Things

Again, this is an attempt to get people to read/listen/watch at least one thing from this (overwhelming) newsletter. :)

  • Listen to Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion - Rectangles and Circumstances, my favorite album this year.
  • Read any book by the amazing Sebastian Junger:
    • 🎧 Tribe. I listened to this book at the beginning of the year, a few weeks after my recommendation in last year’s email to spend time with people you love. This is along the same lines, on the power and importance of being part of a (small) group that shares purpose and meaning. Pairs well with the article below about pickup basketball.
    • 🎧 Freedom. A travelogue of him and three friends illegally walking the railroads of the East Coast and an essay about freedom. Fantastic.
    • 🎧 In My Time of Dying. Gripping. Like Oliver Sacks last year, Junger is on the move. The chapter about his near-death experience is gripping. “Finding yourself alive after almost dying is not, as it turns out, the kind of party one might expect. You realize that you weren’t returned to life, you were just introduced to death.”
  • Read The Secret Code of Pickup Basketball from The Atlantic: So. So. So. Good. I miss having a team.

Reading

Books

Because my wife was pregnant and then a new mom for most of the year, I got to walk the dog a lot and listen to a ton of audiobooks, and even read a few physical books.

Interesting things about humans

  • 🎧 Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. Posits there are three types of conversations: practical decision-making conversations: what’s this really about?; emotional conversations: how do we feel?; and social conversations: who are we? You will not connect if you and your partner think you’re having different kinds of conversations. The book then covers how to hold different the kinds of conversations. Highly recommended.
  • 🎧 Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change by W. David Marx. A little dry, and long, but a really compelling model of how culture emerges (it’s about conventions, the choices we make about the arbitrary things in life, like how one dresses) and changes.
  • 🎧 The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink. Key phrase for me: “Thinking is for acting. Feeling is for thinking.” Regret is a feeling that leads to thinking, that leads to behavior changes. Categories of human regret: Foundation regrets: failure to be responsible, conscientious, or prudent. It’s picking the grasshopper’s path instead of the ant’s path. It’s a consequence of temporal discounting. Often included the words “too much” or “too little”; Boldness regrets: chances we didn’t take. “If only…” “what if…” usually regrets of inaction; Moral regrets: morally dubious decisions; Connection regrets: broken or unrealized relationships.
    • When anticipating a regret, if it’s one of the four core for regrets, then project yourself in time (5 years, 10 years, at 80, etc.) and ask yourself what will build the strongest foundation, do the right thing, take a sensible risk, or connect with others. Otherwise, just satisfice. Reach out to an old friend? Minimize the regret. New shoes? Satisfice. It’s a very good book.
  • 🎧 Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson. Meh book. You need some margin, or buffer, in these areas of life; otherwise, you’ll thrash if you ever get close to capacity. See also Cal Newport’s work and, err, computer science?
  • I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Not for everyone, but I appreciate his directness and matter-of-factness. His “new” podcast, Money For Couples, is fascinating.
  • 🎧 On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver. It’s more of a journalistic tour of people who think of and use risk for a living than a book where you’ll… learn anything. Disappointing.

History and Biographies

  • 🎧 Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram. John Boyd was an Air Force pilot, instructor, and eventually an engineer and (military) strategist. He invented the Energy–Maneuverability theory, pushing for developing smaller, more nimble fighter jets rather than the fat and slow bomber the Air Force leadership was pushing for. He was hated by leadership because he always did what he thought was right, not what he was told (and he tended to be right). He didn’t suffer fools, liars, careerists, and doing bullshit work. Thankfully, he attracted a small group of smart people who supported and enabled him. They named themselves the Fighter Mafia. He invented the OODA loop (aim to be inside your opponents loops, be faster than them; it’ll disorient them). It’s an amazing life and book.
  • 🎧 Boom Town by Sam Anderson. From the city’s creation to today, revolving around the OKC Thunder NBA team. Much, much, much more interesting than you think it may be. One of the latest chapters, about tornadoes and Gary England’s reads like a thriller.
  • 🎧 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. I didn’t love this book, but it is an absolutely fascinating story of the world’s greatest art thief. He and his girlfriend stole what’s estimated to be $2 billion worth of art across more than 200 heists.
  • 🎧 The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson. On how anarchist groups used Nobel’s dynamite to cause terror and how that eventually led to the role of detectives whose job was to solve crimes, and eventually to the creation of the FBI. It’s an excellent book, but I didn’t love it. Johnson released The Long Context, just two days ago; an experiment in turning his book into a detective game using Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5 LLM. He works on NotebookLM now?!
  • 🎧 IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore. A history of the USA in the late 60s and early 70s, revolving around the Simulmatics Corporation, the first company to basically suggest data could be used to control populations. A turning point in American (world?) society. Jill reads it herself. You can hear her frustration and her emotion. Her reading of Kennedy’s assassination may be the best audiobook moment I’ve ever heard. Just a little story from the book: In 1966, the US government thought of establishing a National Data Bank, like the national archive and the national library, but for financial data like the US Social Security office and the national census. People were strongly opposed to it, thinking that it was communist-like overreach. But Paul Baran of RAND Corp. said that it wouldn’t matter what the government did. Computers would get connected, and data would get aggregated. Baran said the US government should set ethical guidelines, safeguards, and rules instead. What is data? To whom does the data belong? Can data be shared? Can data be sold? The Gallagher committee didn’t do anything. They just tabled the idea of a National Data Bank. How did that turn out?
  • 🎧 Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab). A book about taxonomists, and wanting to create order in the world and love. It’s lovely and read by Miller herself.

Management and Business

  • 🎧 Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Marcus Buckingham. The chapter titles read like fighting words, especially if you read HBR regularly (I do). Could be considered a dangerous book. I loved it.
  • 🎧 This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations by Bjarte Bogsnes. Budgets combine three objectives: target setting, forecasting, and allocating resources. They are bad at all three at once. Instead, replace them with three separate exercises, on their own schedules. The analogy that stood out to me is that of the roundabout versus the street light. In roundabouts, people need to act with the latest up-to-date information. With streetlights, the timing of the lights depends on some centrally managed schedule that does not reflect reality. But for a roundabout to work, the drivers need to be more experienced, have better awareness, basically more training. But the result is better throughput and less frustration. The book argues that budgeting in a normal way is a little bit like being stuck in traffic with a bunch of street lights. The goal in business should be to turn all the street lights into roundabouts.
  • 🎧 Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders by David L Marqueth and Stephen Covey. Strongly reminiscent of Netflix’s Context of Control concept. Push decision-making down the hierarchy, then coach for competence and communicate for clarity. “Don’t move information to authority; move authority to information.”
  • 🎧 The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists by Richard P. Rumelt. He roasts the idea of vision statements, mission statements, goal-setting, etc. Goals are the outcome of strategy, not inputs. Strategy is problem-solving. It should be decoupled from budgeting. Chapter 19 is a great write-up of facilitating a “Strategy Foundry.”
  • Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. As usual, a pretty good book. Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. Every work unit has overhead. If you do too much, overhead dominates. The sign that overhead is dominating is stress. You must control overhead before stress shows up. Limit big projects. Contain the small. And pull instead of push work.
  • Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton. Simple and useful model to use Conway’s law to your advantage.
  • The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel. It was really bad. Too much working, too hard. MECE (Mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) is the most interesting idea.

The Built World

  • The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander. A documentary and commentary on Alexander and his team building custom houses for a group of families in Mexico. Building was cheap, and the families loved their houses. The government hated the project because every house was different, the tools were different, and the process was different. They never funded another project. A tragedy.
  • The Complete Yurt Handbook by Paul King. Read in a yurt while climbing at Hueco Tanks. One day, I’ll make one!

Fiction

  • 🎧 The Bear by Andrew Krivak. A short and beautiful book about the lives of a father and her daughter, the last two people on Earth, as the live in and of nature. It would make for a lovely movie. Strongly recommend.
  • 🎧 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A fiction book about two friends who make video games together over their lifetime.
  • 🎧 Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. A publishing industry horror story. It’s good.
  • 🎧 Mille secrets mille dangers by Alain Farah.
  • Sur la dalle by Fred Vargas. My favorite French crime stories author.

Started but Didn’t Finish

Articles

Watched

TV

Movies

We completed our projects to watch all the Bond movies. My 2 cents: you can ignore all pre-Pierce Brosnan Bond movies. The Daniel Craig movies are really good.

  • James Bond 18: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
  • James Bond 19: The World Is Not Enough (1999)
  • James Bond 20: Die Another Day (2002)
  • James Bond 21: Casino Royale (2006)
  • James Bond 22: Quantum of Solace (2008)
  • James Bond 23: Skyfall (2012)
  • James Bond 24: Spectre (2015)
  • James Bond 25: No Time to Die (2021)

The other stuff:

  • 32 Sounds by Sam Green (2023): Fun documentary seen live at the Bass Concert Hall in Austin, with Sam Green on stage. Everyone wore headphones for a big part of the movie, but took them off at key moments. A neat experience.
  • Barbie (2023): As good as everyone says. I don’t do beach.
  • Dream Scenario (2023). It was alright.
  • Dune (2022) and Dune: Part Two (2024).
  • Hit Man (2023): It’s pretty good, but the one-on-one scenes where Glen Powell and Adria Arjona play as if they’re improvising are electrifying. Worth it for those scenes alone.
  • Molly’s Game (2017): I can’t believe this is a real story. I enjoy Aaron Sorkin’s movies.
  • Past Lives (2023): I started watching this thinking it was Perfect Days, for which Patrick Watson did the music. It wasn’t it. But it was fine.
  • Poor Things (2023): unpredictable, fun, creative.
  • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019): Slow, calming, beautiful. Don’t start it too late at night.
  • Sharper (2023): Surprising, well-made, con-artist movie shot in little vignettes going back and forward in time.
  • The Bourne Ultimatum (2007): Still a solid action movie.
  • The Instigators (2024): Surprising, tight writing, funny, and smart (even if the characters are not). With Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, written by Casey.
  • Triangle of Sadness (2022): Absolutely over-the-top, and on-the-nose, social commentary. Mix The Menu with White Lotus, but on the boat, with a Lost finish.
  • Wolfs (2024): George Clooney and Bratt Pitt play in a movie where they have to become friends even though they’re competitors. They’re great actors, but it’s not a great movie. A little formulaic.

Podcasts

  • Tape Notes interviews artists to discuss the making-of of three of their tracks. The host is genuinely curious, knowledgeable, and asks great questions. Think of it as a more raw version of Song Exploder. The episodes with Four Set, 100 gecs (it takes a while for them to warm up, but there are joyous moments where the host is like What is going on?!), St. Vincent, and Jacob Collier, were fascinating. Fred again.. is worth its own bullets!
    • Creating as a habitual act. Always be creating, even if it’s just sketches or collections of sounds, because you’ll never know when inspiration will strike.
    • He plays a lot of his tracks on his iPhone speaker while composing. It forces him to focus on the composition and the arrangements, not details like the kick drum sound. He also records all his vocals on his iPhone.
    • He does a lot of what I’d call “chiseling”: start from something, like a sketch, sounds from someone else (Brian Eno), a sample, and then do stuff to it to turn it into a song or at least something interesting.
  • Search Engine continues to produce great episodes, including Is everyone pretending to understand inflation (or just me)?, Who’s behind these scammy text messages we’ve all been getting? (What are these weird text messages apologizing for disturbing you all about? It’s much, much darker than you think.), and the two-parter Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain? (Part 1) and Part 2.
  • Every episode of localfirst.fm feels like a masterclass in problem-solving and software development. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Pirijan Ketheswaran, creator of the delightful Kinopio.
  • Hackers Incorporated | Building the HEY Calendar with Jason Fried: Fantastic introduction to new product development. Jason was involved in the beginning to add as much whimsy and weirdness. The beginning is the best time to them because when you get to the end, there is no time and you just have to ship the product.
  • Episode 80, Metamuse podcast — Muse: As in most episodes, this feels like a master class in whatever topic they’re covering. In this case, it is planning from a team of two to a large company, from the original whiteboard process to a really good respective process.
  • Readying for Launch | REWORK: Design on people’s behalf, not at their request. The number of people who request something is not a measure of importance.

Music

My music listening took a hit this year. I mostly listen to music while working, and well, I worked a lot less than usual because of the baby! Yay! My 2024 “to listen” folder gives me the heebie-jeebies. It has 191 albums in it right now (2023 still has 145…).

Here’s my 2024 playlist of favorite tracks, and favorite albums.

I’ve been posting nearly-weekly playlists of the best tracks I listened to that week. Follow that if you prefer small doses to this yearly glut of recommendations. :D

So here we go. Here’s a mishmash of great albums, tracks, and videos I listened to this year.