Design

What are the fastest iOS apps to navigate — easy to use while walking or driving?

Flighty is a great example. Anyone have others they love for inspiration?

What are the fastest iOS apps to navigate — easy to use while walking or driving?

Flighty is a great example. Anyone have others they love for inspiration?

https://flighty.com/

Books

Day five: The Masks of God

You cannot go wrong with Joseph Campbell. If you liked any of his other stuff, you’ll like this. 

Reading this is like being on vacation to a far distant time. 

Primitive Mythology and Occidental Mythology were stronger than Oriental Mythology and Creative Mythology. The last verges on literary criticism, and a lot of it is just singing the praises of Joyce and Mann. 

These aren’t as pithy as Hero with a Thousand Faces or The Power of Myth, and they’re not quite as magical as The Golden Bough, but they’re very good nonetheless.

The division of religious traditions into shamanic (hunting cultures) and priestly (planting cultures) was intellectually interesting, but these books are more about feeling than thinking. And they certainly succeed in giving you a visceral sense of how god archetypes echo each other across time and place.

Four stars for their type, and it’s one of my favorite types. Firmly but not aggressively recommended. Prioritize The Golden Bough instead.

Day six: War by Sebastian Junger

My favorite war book of all time. 

I’ve never been in a war or anywhere near one, so take it with a grain of salt. But you can’t talk about this book without praising its realism. At the very least, any civilian should be able to recognize a believably complicated picture of humanity’s relationship with war. 

Yeah, war’s bad and miserable of course. But for the young men standing behind the weapons and hoping the enemy bullets miss them, it’s also peerlessly exciting. 

The book is full of great characters, memorable scenes, captivating detail, excellent writing, and a surprising amount of comic relief. Fans of Sebastian Junger will recognize his familiar role of narrator/character taken to its pinnacle. 

There’s also a pair of great documentaries to go with it. 

If you only ever read one book about war, read this one. 

5/5 no notes

She had some amazing news to share but nobody to share it with.

She used her own hair in the soup to give it more flavor.

Day two: Cod 

It’s hard to credibly convey how compelling Kurlansky’s books are, given the seemingly dull subject matter. The prose is merely fair, but the research is  impeccable and he mixes colorful illustrative anecdotes in at the perfect pace.

My then 5yo never lost interest, which is strong testimony. Four stars for its type. 

His books on salt and onions are also worth reading. For the sake of calibration, I’d cite At Home and The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson as five star examples of the class.

Day three: Basic Economics 

Ok, banger. 

I read this on the strength of its appearance at the top of https://danromero.org/books/ and I loved it. 

Its North Star is “Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.”

Even the genuinely basic parts felt refreshing and instructive. 

But the application of the fundamental principles to real life cases like rent control had me going “yeah… yeah!”

It’s strongly pro-market, and part of why I liked it is that it deftly confirmed my priors. 

But I think even a flag waving socialist would have to concede that it’s well crafted (even if they believe that it’s ultimately misguided). 

I gave copies as gifts last year to friends and family. I’d recommend it over Wealth of Nations by a mile (reading Adam Smith didn’t change my life lol). 

5 stars, strong recommendation

He knew it was going to be a bad day when he saw mountain lions roaming the streets.

Howardas

@howardas