This is a social media post to force myself to wrap-up all these books that I am half-way through. Complete by the year end: the 99% invisible city; seven nights; elemental magic; trees, maps, and theorems. https://t.co/0tK1mnrJz6
— Li-Yi Wei (@liyiwei) December 26, 2020
December 25, 2020
Need to finish what I started
May 21, 2020
Book challenge
A Facebook friend nominated me to a 7-day book challenge.
I took it but without nominating the next person so that I would not offend or spam anyone.
I am glad that I could include a diverse set of topics (computer science, finance, sci-fi, physics, history, math, art) without any serious technical/textbooks.
April 12, 2020
Scaffolding knowledge
Every information is a piece of an entire knowledge, so instead of treating what we learn as separate fragments, it is more effective to memorize and understand them as a whole.
This is possible because knowledge often repeats in different forms, such as through history or books.
In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it.
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
– Funes the Memorious
September 18, 2018
If you are willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly. – Edward Albee
This quote describes me quite well, at least the first part. 🙂
June 11, 2018
Principles by Ray Dalio
Highly recommend; whether you like his methodology can reflect what kind of person you are. I suspect his people are either very rational or have tools to help control emotions.
May 6, 2018
Anon
As an interesting coincidence, after finishing a privacy training I watched this movie.
“I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.” – Robert Browning
August 17, 2016
Dreamers
“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” – Lawrence of Arabia
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” – Edgar Allan Poe
So how about those who act on their dreams from the night with open eyes in the day?
🙂
July 16, 2016
The art of war
In the standard of Chinese classics, the art of war is crisp, even with repeating the core ideas.
During my first reading as a kid, I focused mainly on the languages.
After my second reading, the core ideas become very clear, even with my now rusty Chinese.
I can probably summarize the book in just a few sentences. But it is still better to read the original Chinese; no translation can do justice to the beautiful writing, and the repetition helps hammer the messages home.
I examined several English versions, all contain very obvious mistakes.
The best version I have seen so far is 孫子兵法論正, 朔雪寒.
February 23, 2015
Don’t join them if you can beat them
I guess this is the opposite of “if you can’t beat them, join them”.
🙂