JUburton wrote:

Youseff wrote:reading Think Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman. it's a pretty well known book about cognitive science, and the different "systems" we have for thinking. our intuitive/impulsive side as "System 1" and the more analytical side of "System 2." a lot of it is about how System 1 will take short cuts to quickly solve problems because we're inherently lazy, and how we use what they call heuristics to solve easier an easier, somewhat associated question when faced with a difficult question. it's quite hard to read big chunks at a time because it engages System 2 quite frequently, but I really like it so far.

I liked it but holy hell did it take me forever.

yeah, I'm a fairly fast reader and this is going to take me at least a month and a half. somedays I'm just not up for reading it too.

I had trouble with the intro, even, but may give it another shot

Totally agree with JUb on The Devil in the White City -- I started out wanting him to skip to the Holmes stuff, but by about halfway through that flipped. So well written too

The Kahneman is really good--he's trying to basically present an entire career's worth of academic research (or really two careers if you count all the work he did with Tversky) in a single book intended for a general audience. It shouldn't be all surprising that it's heavy sledding at times.

drsmooth wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Is it still a right of passage for a certain kind of person to read On the Road as a teenager? I definitely went through that phase, and while I didn't like Kerouac enough to read Dharma Bums or anything else, I liked and still think fondly of Howl and probably read more Burroughs than anyone should. (Though I never did read Junky, and probably won't ever do it.)

I thought this was interesting as far as it goes.

http://adequateman.deadspin.com/the-bea ... eadspin%29

My son read it in his mid-20s. Followed up with one of Corso's books, I forget which. That was about it.

I read "On the Road" a long time ago. Also the Wolfe tome "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test." Also read the one by Kerourac's wife which was kinda interesting.

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100882060

Youseff wrote:reading Think Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman. it's a pretty well known book about cognitive science, and the different "systems" we have for thinking. our intuitive/impulsive side as "System 1" and the more analytical side of "System 2." a lot of it is about how System 1 will take short cuts to quickly solve problems because we're inherently lazy, and how we use what they call heuristics to solve easier an easier, somewhat associated question when faced with a difficult question. it's quite hard to read big chunks at a time because it engages System 2 quite frequently, but I really like it so far.

Loved that book. If I read it in college, I'm sure the early course of my career would have been a lot different.

Reading Bill James' crime book. Pretty good. As always, he's definitely got a unique way of looking at things.

A definitely interesting-sounding book I'm pretty confident I'll never get around to reading:

The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous and Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel

Excerpts from NYTimes' brief review:

"....profiles the familiar face of “America’s Venus” that appears at more than a dozen monuments in New York and more around the nation....Discovered by a discerning photographer while window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, Ms. Munson embodied Miss Manhattan in the raucous decades between the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties. And who better to have done so than a pioneering adult-film star who figured as the other woman in a love-triangle murder, tried to have herself declared dead, attempted suicide, was committed on her 40th birthday to a lunatic asylum, where she lived to be 104, and was then buried in an unmarked grave.

Wikipedia has thumbnail, with pics of some of the statues she modeled for
A bit hippy for my taste, but well

I'm not sure if the ASOIAF thread crossed into TV spoilers or not, so I don't want to open it, but apparently Winds of Winter is coming January 2017.

slugsrbad wrote:I'm not sure if the ASOIAF thread crossed into TV spoilers or not, so I don't want to open it, but apparently Winds of Winter is coming January 2017.

where are you seeing this? if true this would be the #1 item on like 100 different subreddits but I can't find anything WHY DO YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS slugs

I saw it on Facebook with a link I didn't feel like clicking. All the top Google hits are for weird ass sites like parentherald.com.

So yea, I may have been duped.

drsmooth wrote:A definitely interesting-sounding book I'm pretty confident I'll never get around to reading:

The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous and Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel

Excerpts from NYTimes' brief review:

"....profiles the familiar face of “America’s Venus” that appears at more than a dozen monuments in New York and more around the nation....Discovered by a discerning photographer while window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, Ms. Munson embodied Miss Manhattan in the raucous decades between the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties. And who better to have done so than a pioneering adult-film star who figured as the other woman in a love-triangle murder, tried to have herself declared dead, attempted suicide, was committed on her 40th birthday to a lunatic asylum, where she lived to be 104, and was then buried in an unmarked grave.

Wikipedia has thumbnail, with pics of some of the statues she modeled for
A bit hippy for my taste, but well

She drank Mercury and it didn't kill her?!?!

Damn.

smitty wrote:

drsmooth wrote:A definitely interesting-sounding book I'm pretty confident I'll never get around to reading:

The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous and Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel

Excerpts from NYTimes' brief review:

"....profiles the familiar face of “America’s Venus” that appears at more than a dozen monuments in New York and more around the nation....Discovered by a discerning photographer while window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, Ms. Munson embodied Miss Manhattan in the raucous decades between the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties. And who better to have done so than a pioneering adult-film star who figured as the other woman in a love-triangle murder, tried to have herself declared dead, attempted suicide, was committed on her 40th birthday to a lunatic asylum, where she lived to be 104, and was then buried in an unmarked grave.

Wikipedia has thumbnail, with pics of some of the statues she modeled for
A bit hippy for my taste, but well

She drank Mercury and it didn't kill her?!?!

Damn.

There's a 99% invisible podcast about this lady. she started posing nude at 15 i think?

She started modeling at 15. Not sure when she went nudie.

drsmooth wrote:Gonna read Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War eventually, but not until a) my library has it b) I get some kind of AMZN gift card to cut its $20+ kindle price

Was so looking forward to reading this book, and so disappointed in it. I anticipated a sort of American response to Piketty; a contemplation, in addition to an accounting exercise. It's not that.

Gordon devoted 700+ pages to chronicling America's great productivity/wealth ascendance from 1870-1970, and its subsequent stall, carefully documenting the minutia of technical changes in The Stuff We Live With, the transformation of consumer economics, if you will. He does convincingly make the case that the dramatic, real (rather than contrived by Chinese bookkeeping) productivity surge of that 100 years was entirely anomalous in human history, and not likely at all to resume any time soon.

However, his account implies, intentionally or not, that that Stuff just happened to all of us, that our potable water and electricity and improved roadways and freezers and washing machines just showed up, transforming how we spend our time and value our wellbeing without, presumably, altering how we perceive our collective or individual existence much, if at all.

He spends little time conveying his views about the implications of a slow/no growth future, perhaps reckoning that since we're soaking in it, we all have more than enough of our own ideas about that.

Many reviewers have focused on Gordon's "pure" economics assessment, and registered ambivalence or disagreement (The Economist calls the book "magnificent", but stubbornly retains its faith in the "IT revolution"; Tyler Cowan cattily points out Gordon predicted 2 decades of 2.5%+ GDP growth in 2003, which of course has been woefully incorrect - so why, presumably, put faith in his newfound pessimism ; Krugman asks "Is he right? My answer is a definite maybe"). My feeling is that that's because they've focused too closely on "stuff", and their skepticism about ANYone's predictions about what new stuff may come along.

And they're right in that. Predictions about technology stuff are seldom very accurate. But that's kind of beside the point. My feeling is that economics ought not really, essentially, be principally about stuff ("in the long run we're all dead", etc etc); but when the relative importance of "stuff" recedes, the importance of the "non-stuff" - the "politics" in political economy - gains prominence. It's that part that Gordon barely acknowledges in his book.

Reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and DFW was just a stupidly talented writer. It's entertaining seeing him write about tennis and seeing that he just couldn't exist on the same court as a top 200 player even though he was a pretty good player himself. Wonder if he knew he was in the Agassi echelon of writers as he was writing that.

Youseff wrote:

JUburton wrote:

Youseff wrote:reading Think Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman. it's a pretty well known book about cognitive science, and the different "systems" we have for thinking. our intuitive/impulsive side as "System 1" and the more analytical side of "System 2." a lot of it is about how System 1 will take short cuts to quickly solve problems because we're inherently lazy, and how we use what they call heuristics to solve easier an easier, somewhat associated question when faced with a difficult question. it's quite hard to read big chunks at a time because it engages System 2 quite frequently, but I really like it so far.

I liked it but holy hell did it take me forever.

yeah, I'm a fairly fast reader and this is going to take me at least a month and a half. somedays I'm just not up for reading it too.

I've made it through another 100 pages. Still a while to go. Love it but it's a toughie to get through.

JUburton wrote:Reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and DFW was just a stupidly talented writer. It's entertaining seeing him write about tennis and seeing that he just couldn't exist on the same court as a top 200 player even though he was a pretty good player himself. Wonder if he knew he was in the Agassi echelon of writers as he was writing that.

The word "despair" is overused and banalized now, but it's a serious word, and I'm using it seriously. It's close to what people call dread or angst, but it's not these things, quite. It's more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable sadness of knowing I'm small and weak and selfish and going, without doubt, to die. It's wanting to jump overboard.

Pretty crushing/horrible thing to read from someone who killed himself. You see a lot of that/himself in Infinite Jest too.

All the Light We Cannot See is amazing. I'm reading it 10 pages at a time to string it out

Grotewold wrote:All the Light We Cannot See is amazing. I'm reading it 10 pages at a time to string it out

good looking out. Think I'll pick this one up next.

The Stephen Hyden book sounds pretty interesting. If anyone reads it lemme know.