Posts - dominik.net

Terra Ignota Quartet (Too Like the Lightning, Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle, Perhaps the Stars) — A fascinating unlike-anything-else romp through a sci-fi 25th century well-seasoned with 18th-century philosophy tied together with a page-turning plot set in a compelling and meticulously built world. One of those series that sticks with you long after you finish.

Eversion — “A ship is a dream of whispers.” A beautifully crafted tale that unfolds, bit by bit, and reveals more and more as it continues until everything comes together satisfyingly at the end.

Favorite Books Read in 2021

My favorite books out of the 54 books (~23,000 pages) that I read in 2021:

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Project Hail Mary — A fun sci-fi romp much in the style of the author’s earlier work, The Martian, but nonetheless enjoyable.

Fall or, Dodge in Hell — A sequel of sorts to the author’s earlier work, REAMDE, this book is a fascinating exploration of what it means to create a world, inspired at least partly by Milton’s Paradise Lost, but enjoyable and thought-provoking on its own merits.

Favorite Books Read in 2020

My favorite books out of the 43 books (~17,000 pages) that I read in 2020:

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

The Ministry for the Future — This is a challenging, and, at times, bleak book, but ultimately an incredibly thought-provoking look at a potential future of the world as climate change continues to accelerate. One of those books that sticks with you long after you finish reading it.

Fiction and Classics

Wolf Hall Trilogy (The Mirror & the Light) — A satisfying conclusion to the Wolf Hall trilogy (we all knew how it was going to end, after all, such is the curse and joy of historical fiction). The prose continues to be beyond amazing. It was more than a little surreal reading this soon after it came out, as the COVID-19 pandemic world spread across the world, only to have the book open with Thomas Cromwell grappling with a plague, way back in 1485.

Favorite Books Read in 2019

My favorite books out of the 70 books (~31,000 pages) that I read in 2019:

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Exhalation — Another collection of wonderfully crafted sci-fi short stories from a master of the genre.

Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) — I remember trying to read Red Mars as a kid when I was 10 or 11 years old. Needless to say it sailed entirely over my head and abandoned it unfinished. Returning now some decades later, the series as a whole is an incredible exploration of the human aspects of space colonization. The trilogy begins with a narrow focus on the initial set of colonists and their initial travails and then gradually widens the lens to ultimately encompass the entire planet, its transformation, and relationship with Earth.

Reviving Ye Olde Personal Home Page

Before TikTok, before Snapchat, before Instagram, before YouTube, before Facebook, before even blogs, there lived a different breed of social media: The personal home page.

Your virtual homestead on the world wide web. A pit stop all of your own on the ever-under-construction information superhighway. A place to hang up your shingle as you made your way through the wilds of an untamed, untrammeled cyberspace. (Barlow’s Declaration accurately captures the spirit of that age).

Favorite Books Read in 2018

My favorite books out of the 103 books (~35,000 pages) that I read in 2018:

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction

The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World) — Rich, resplendent, and towering, this series of three (or eight, depending on how you count) books soars from the Glorious Revolution to the Court of the Sun King to rambunctious adventures around the globe. Filled with scientific references, historical tidbits, and cameos (as well as larger parts played) by historical figures, this series is a delight.

Favorite Tech Blogs

The blogs below are some of my favorites to read to follow the tech industry.

I like reading about things I find interesting. For me, that’s AI/ML, law/privacy, and the business aspect of tech, with a particular focus on leadership. I prefer less frequent but in-depth posts, so the selections below skew toward that style of posting.

I’m old-school so still use an RSS Reader (Reeder via Feedly); longer articles go to Instapaper for a batch weekend read. There are a few email newsletters in the list below, but thankfully almost all of them also have RSS feeds.

Favorite Books Read in 2017

My favorite books out of the 102 books (~38,000 pages) that I read in 2017:

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction

Revelation Space series (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) — Hard scifi space opera. Greatly enjoyable, with memorable characters, backstory, science, history, and of course the requisite galactic-scale threats.

House of Suns — Set outside the Revelation Space universe, Alastair Reynolds manages to craft a compelling tale that spans galaxies and offers new mysteries of its own.

Favorite Books Read in 2016

My favorite books out of the 61 books (~24,000 pages) that I read in 2016:

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction

Culture series — I read the entire ten book series over the course of 2016. The Culture series is set in the distant future where enlightened AIs run society and humans, freed from a life of labor, have to deal with the rest of the galaxy. What is life like when material want is eradicated? What about encounters with less enlightened aliens? Or perhaps backward planets lagging in development? All this and more is thoughtfully and philosophically dealt with in this amazing series. My favorite out of the ten books was the brilliant Matter, but I’d recommend starting with Player of Games.

The Side Effect Principle

Sometimes to get what you want, you can’t focus on getting what you want. You have to do something else, and then what you want happens all on its own as a side effect of your actual efforts.

If you want to lose weight, don’t focus on losing weight: focus on eating healthy and exercising well; weight loss will happen as a side effect.

If you want to find a spouse, don’t focus on finding a spouse: focus on becoming the best version of yourself; your future spouse will fall in love with you as a side effect.

And again: Hope

Every day we choose hope or despair.

If we choose hope, even if the world has seemingly arrayed itself against us, we see the possibility of a new arrangement, of a path forward, of a solution, of a way of making things better, of making them how they are meant to be, of a hope for a better world.

If we choose despair, all becomes silence and shadow. The world is at war with us and we are at war with the world. Even if there seems to be sunlight, we turn away, preferring the darkness of our despair, lamenting and wailing and grinding our teeth at the insurmountable injustice of it all and how powerless we are and how nothing is ever going to get better and why bother anyway.

The First Step to Learning

“What’s the NP in NP-Hard stand for?”

April 2001, Orlando, Florida; the final round of a science fair for high school seniors. I had just finished my presentation about my research and gone into Q&A. One of the judges had asked me this question and was now awaiting my response, growing increasingly impatient as I didn’t answer.

My mind raced. I knew what an NP-Hard problem was —my research dealt with one example of a NP-Hard problem: vehicle routing (think FedEx deliveries) — and, in the course of my presentation, I had explained what the NP-Hard class of problems involved.

On Human-to-Human Communication Protocols

People are amazing. Magical, even. I’m a science nerd, and I remember from my AI research days — back when we were looking to what the brain does so as to derive insights into how to make computers think — it was shocking to realize that we know so very little about what the brain does and how it does it. We’ve made enormous strides in the past half-century, but we’re still at the very beginning of human knowledge about human cognition.

Farewell to London

This week marks the end of my study abroad at the London School of Economics.

London is the largest city that I’ve ever lived in. Public transportation here is, compared to my American experiences, a dream. The Tube, though pricey, runs (mostly) on time and is remarkably clean and quiet. It’s bit crowded during rush hour, but that’s to be expected.

The cultural and historical experience of London is breathtaking. After visiting the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Westminster Abbey, the Churchill War Rooms, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern, the Natural History Museum, the Sherlock Holmes Museum (at 221b Baker Street, naturally), Greenwich, … Many of these attractions are free to enter, requesting only an optional donation, and the depth of history and culture available to explore is a treasure.

A Theory of Recruitment

As an MBA2, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from MBA1s about “how can I get hired at company X?” or “how can I tailor my resume to improve my chances of getting a job at company Y?”

These are the wrong questions.

What do you want to do with your life and why?

That’s the question to ask. Answer that question and all the other questions find answers too. But that’s a hard question, and one whose answer is different for each person. Yet the difficulty is worth the effort. Instead of contorting yourself to try to fit some preconceived notion of a cookie-cutter of what company Z wants, be true to yourself and find your vocation, not just a job.

The happiest people I know are those who serve

The happiest people I know are those who serve. Who put others before themselves. Who see their mission in life, not as a quest of endless self-aggrandizement, but as a journey of service to those they meet along the way.

There is something different about living life through the lens of service. Those I know who live lives of service have a lightness — a joy — alive within them. It is there even when the service they perform is arduous. The struggle does not extinguish the flame of joy; it feeds it.

Strive to be true to yourself

The best professors I’ve had are those who are not afraid to be themselves.

They are unabashedly themselves. Rather than conform to some supposed vision of what it is to be a professor, they are authentically themselves. They are still professors — they still teach — but they do it in a way that is theirs. No one else could teach the way they do because the way they teach is inextricably bound up with who they are.