Behemoth B-Max && Behemoth Seppuku: Rifters Behemoth by Peter Watts

I love the author's biology babble because it is well-grounded in hard science. But the Internet stuff (Maelstrom) is poorly researched.  The characters continue into new character arcs as they grow in their hero's journeys.  I was a little confused at the end.  Very thrilling and enjoyable read, 4/5 Stars.

Wayward Galaxy 5 by Jason Anspach & J N Chaney

Disappointing.  The dialog, especially by the Brody character, is flat and no longer funny.  The story and love interest was ok and I liked the ending 3/5 Stars.

The Man Who Solved the Market by Gary Zuckerman

I became curious about Jim Simons when I heard Brian Keating talk about him recently so I read this book.  The last few chapters are very good and extremely worthwhile.  I learned a lot about what Finance Quants have been doing since 2018 as well as the bizarre politics and polarization during the Trump presidency. I appreciate the author's balanced and objective approach to telling each person's story.  However, everyone in the book without exception is a terrible human being, even Jim Simons.  And it seems all of the leaders involved in the ecosystem of trading stocks, bonds, and derivatives are terrible. 3/5 Stars.

Swann's War by Michael Oren

I am a big fan of Dr. Oren's history books so when I saw this one in the library I grabbed it.  The story is interesting and good; the mystery is ok, not that great.  I love the historical context and setting. 3/5 Stars.

Roadkill by Dennis E Taylor (Audio book)

The Bobiverse author has a few new books out since he wrote The Singularity Trap and I was not keeping up.  This short audiobook was fun and the voice acting was great.  The snarky, sarcastic "Marvin" trope character was well done. Aside: I have been reading a lot of books with this trope recently.  The magic system had lots of rough edges and the ending appeared condensed and rushed.  But it was still fun.  Good voice acting makes a big difference. 4/5 Stars.

Which Cognitive Bias is this one?

https://smbc-comic.com/  

https://smbc.comic-com

The list of 150 Cognitive biases has several that cover this common tendency.  I am curious which of the bias best describes this issue and what approaches academics are taking to mitigate the issues.

Will the ESG descend into insignificance?

Will the Evil Search Giant (ESG) descend into insignificance?

If you have time, read Praveen's analysis. Here is my own personal experience using G's consumer products:

I can no longer find anything in Google Search and I have changed my default search engine. I still use google scholar but may switch to specialty sites for scholarly articles as scholar, too, decays into uselessness..

Youtube's ads, censorship, and recommendations have made the platform unusable. I spend 75% less time on youtube and consume more video content from other sources. 

I started using proton.me more and Gmail less. I shall almost certainly switch web site hosting.

Alternatives to the Chrome browser, especially FireFox & Brave are becoming much better every day. I am using Brave more. I already use Firefox on mobile.

I still use  Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. but I am getting better at Word, Excel, PowerPoint all the time and may switch my personal consumer office apps.

None of Google's video or text chat apps (Buzz? Friend-Connect? Orkut? G+? Hangouts? Jabber? Wave? GVoice? Duo? Meet? GChat?) has never worked. My personal favorite was GrandCentral because it had fax.   Google Meet in particular limits free-tier video calls to a short time and does not work for some folks. Signal is unlimited and works for everyone all the time on all devices. My family and friends have all switched to Signal or Zoom for personal video conferences.  Ten years ago, I lamented the fall of Skype and wrote great things about Hangouts (which was awesome at that time). Now, Skype is making another comeback and will (easily) eclipse  Meet unless the mouse can find its way out of the maze.

Iran: A Modern History by Abbas Amanat

I frequently lament my choices in books to read, especially history books. This thousand-page detailed account of the last 350 years of Iran's history falls squarely into that category.  Most of the last third of the book (mid 20th century to present) is interesting and valuable to understand the current politics and social dynamics of the region today.  The detailed history of poetry, literature, film, art, and culture surrounding the secular, religious, social, and political dynamics is just too much and I do *not* recommend the book for light reading.  I did learn a lot, though. The political and religious dynamics of the Khomeni reign of terror was particularly interesting and the 21st century (contemporary) details are fantastic background to understand the current revolution and why it will succeed. 2/5 Stars.

Best Places to Work in 2023

GlassDoor has published their Best Places to Work report.   As many of the usual winners, including LinkedIn, Meta, Salesforce, DocuSign, & Intuitive have fallen off the "winners" list, CrowdStrike has quietly crept up the list and is now recognized among the top employers.

The Global-5000 businesses have realized they must "buy from the best or be breached like the rest," CrowdStrike's share price has also started quietly to move up.

Moon Dust as an earth cooling Parasol?

(cumulative attenuation from a monodisperse cloud of particles with total mass Mcloud = 109 kg at

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000133

Some of my fellow Gerry's Kids have published a study of how we can cool down the earth with moon dust.  The idea is based on the High Frontier. Throw some construction robots and bulldozers at the moon; the bots set up and maintain solar collectors, mass drivers (magnetic rail guns) and dust factories.  Once deployed, the rail guns shoot 10^10 kg of very fine (100 nm) dust particles at L1  or into an orbit that lingers near L1. The dust reduces sunlight by 1.8%.  Cool the earth.  In the future, we will vacuum up the dust for space habitat construction.

Almost all of the geoengineering methods I have seen (Termination Shock is a fun book!) do not solve the critical problem of reaching zero CO2 emission and then going negative (sequestering CO2) to mitigate ocean acidification, and other deleterious effects of too much CO2.  Humans put almost 3.6% of all new CO2 into the atmosphere and when volcanism has some quiet times, our contribution can go up to almost 4%.