Hello, hello -

It's beautiful here in Indianapolis, and I am unfortunately homebound with COVID. For the first time! Feeling much better the last few days, but living in quarantine for a touch longer. I've been meaning to "hit the list" with an update, anyway, so figured I'd make the most of my captivity 🙂.

No galaxy-brain essay from me this time around; just wanted to share some of what's going on in my head and life.

I. Book Reviews
First off: here's a list (and links to reviews) for books I've read so far this year. I used to send out these reviews as I wrote them, and I stopped doing that. So here they all are! You can also find them (and past years book reviews) at thombehrens.com/bookshelf/. The ✨ means I really liked the book, although every book on the list is one I enjoyed to some degree. There are books that I do not finish and those get no air time, at all. 

II. Fraud in Academic Research
This New Yorker piece from last fall, They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work A Lie? and this two part series from Freakonomics Radio, Why Is There So Much Fraud in Academia and Can Academic Fraud Be Stopped? is the reporting that has changed my worldview the most in the last twelve months. The journalists do a great job hitting the important beats about the endemic issue of academic fraud: why academics are motivated to produce interesting results, how that motivation can lead to bias and fraud, and how this explosion of scientific findings should really all be suspect. In a world where an interesting paper can get you a consulting contract with Google or a high-profile podcast, it becomes extremely difficult to bring yourself to publish boring papers.
 
I think there's also something to be said here for the life hack/bro science culture that creates the demand for these interesting (fake) papers. There are lots of people out there, who work in tech or business or finance, who work on computers all day and think in terms of cause-and-effect models. I am one of these people. And we're looking for technological/scientific additions to whatever system we see ourselves in, in order to fix our problems. I don't want to beat up on Andrew Huberman specifically, but the name of his forthcoming book is Protocols, which is also a term we use in software engineering to talk about instructions given to a computer.


III. Reading Things That Aren't Books
First, a quick follow up: At the end of 2022 I made a big pronouncement about my experiment to try to read everything on my iPad and see if it helped me read more; that ended up falling apart in April 2023 when I met with a sleep specialist and had to adopt a stricter "no screens in bed" policy. My recent rhythm has been to read nonfiction books digitally and fiction in paperback, which fits my style. For non-fiction, I often skim and want to keep track of my highlighted passages, which is better suited for the iPad. For fiction, I want to be immersed! And to feel my way working through a story. Which fits paperback better. 

For all the thinking I did how much I'm reading, and what my comprehension level is, I basically read the same number of books every year. I read 28 books in 2021, 27 books in 2022... 2023 clocked in at 24 books but one of them was a trilogy, so that's 27 again. But I've kept up this pace (accidentally) while also reading lots of things besides books. For about the past 12 months I've been reading at least some portion of the weekly the New Yorker (and Liz and I have been doing the crosswords together); I've started reading some journals here and there... my favorite being The Hedgehog Review, which I discovered after Liz got me an issue for Christmas.

And I'm consuming absolute loads of comic books. This has been a big surprise to me, and to everyone around me. I wrote about it when I first stumbled into the medium; but it's taken over a lot of my free time since then. I'm reading 4-6 comic books periodicals as they hit the shelves each month, and also doing some searching for back issues in specialty shops and such (Captain America still being my favorite). Comics have taken a central part in how I anchor myself; I bought my first comics as a celebration of hitting 100 days sober (I'm now over 2 years sober), and they've continued to be an important part of my stress management. 

the result of all this is that reading has become more multi-dimensional to me. It doesn't just mean going back to whatever novel I'm working through; it can also mean investigative journalism, social criticism, or looking at drawings. And short stories! I think I've finally started to "get" short stories now. This might sound mundane to the truly pro readers out there, but it's been a fun and interesting journey to have more and more of my free time just be different kinds of reading.

IV. Yoga
And I really can't talk about my free time or stress management without an honorable mention to how much I've enjoyed getting into yoga this past year. We had my parents stay with us the other week, and my dad came in while I was doing my morning yoga and said "wow, you're doing some real yoga moves."

I've always struggled with joint and back pain. Not quite constant, but always just below the surface My joint weakness held me back in high school sports, has led to injury doing everyday things, and is often a consideration when Liz and I think about traveling long distances by plane or car. There are some genetic and structural sources behind this pain; we don't need to get into it.

The point is: with my yoga practice this past year, I've become stronger and more resilient than I ever thought was possible. I can lift heavy things without worrying about hurting myself; I can bend over; I can run 5ks and 10ks. It's awesome. I can also attest to the stress reduction and mind-body connection elements of yoga; I feel more relaxed, more centered, more confident when I practice.

--

Thanks for enduring the change of tone! For anyone who was hoping to hear technological criticism, I can recommend this episode of Decoder Ring with Kyle Chayka. 

As always, I'm happy to hear from you! Just hit reply.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer,
Thom