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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3592 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

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Here's what I have read during my digital Lent. The list is shorter than I wanted, because around week 3 I had to jump in and spend my evenings saving one of my teams, which left me too tired and wired to enjoy reading.

  • Where the Water Goes : Life and Death Along the Colorado River, by David Owen, +2, but the Colorado is my favorite river, so I am biased. The book traces the river from its source to its former delta, exploring the history of how its water has been used since the first settlers appeared in its basin. One recurring theme that is relevant to rationalism is that efficiency should never be the only goal: when you have X consumers (acres of farmland or suburban lots) consuming Y water each, if you simply teach/force them to consume Y/2 water, the number of consumers will double. You'll still have X*Y total consumption, but now your system has no slack: you used to be able to force your consumers to scale back their consumption temporarily, but now they use as little water as possible already.
  • True Names, by later Vernor Vinge, +2. The news of his death defined my immediate reading list. I had already read the Zones of Thought books (I recommend A Deepness in the Sky) and Rainbows End a decade ago, so I decided to read the rest of his most popular books. True Names is a novella, so you can easily finish it in an evening. It's one of these sci-fi classics that are truly timeless, I didn't feel it was written in 1980 at all.
  • The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge, 0. It starts a bit like a Philip K. Dick's novel, but it's mostly the setting. Then it becomes The Book of the Long Sun: sufficiently entertaining that you don't feel like you've wasted your time and want to see how the story ends, but not something that stands out. The biggest science-fiction concept is treated more like a magic spell, and the characters are cardboard-like. Lots of mystery boxes, some of which are opened by the narrator between the scenes.
  • Across Realtime, by Vernor Vinge, 1. It's the sequel to the previous book, but a different one, The Book of the Short Sun to the Long predecessor: a smaller-scale and more personal story. Not very much so, Vinge loves thinking about planet-sized issues too much to write one. At one point I felt like I've read the same story beats somewhere before, and turns out I was right, it was actually Vinge's Children of the Sky.
  • Creatures of Thought, the Age of Steam, +2. An ongoing series of blog posts that explores the history of steam power, from Newcomen's pump to, presumably, the phasing out of everything except power stations after the WWII. It's not the only one online. I remember reading a different one that went deeper into the steelmaking aspect of the industrial revolution as well (no link, sorry), but this is one more extensive and good. The author still hasn't convinced me that Isambard Kingdom Brunel is worthy of the attention he's usually given. The only thing I would want from this series is more maps. It's not a big hassle to switch to another tab and find where Featherstone-upon-Hawthing (pronounced "fisting") is, but it gets old quickly.
  • Bits about Money. +2 I followed a link to the article about how credit card rewards work and ended up reading a dozen more. It's not super technical (at least to a person with 15 years of banking experience), but still full of insights. I laughed a bit at the recurring "they bought a bank" quips in the payments in Japan article. Is buying a bank for internal purposes so unusual in the US? It's completely normal for a large Russian company or more often a conglomerate to own a pocket bank to simplify the management of its finances.
  • Materialized View. +1 A blog about data engineering written by an industry veteran. A good way to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest happenings in the data engineering world.

I had a very similar opinion about The Peace War, and am absolutely psyched to check out your last 3 links when I'm not working (especially steam engines since I've been talking a lot with kids about trains recently). Thanks for sharing.

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