| Title |
What |
When |
Gist |
| House of Huawei |
Technology, History |
2 March 2025 |
TLDR: A timeline overview of Huawei. Talks *a lot* about hard work and
the grind. One interesting tidbit were the "voluntary resignations"
(not really voluntary) where employees were told to write their own
resignation letters if they felt like they could not "grind" for the
company anymore.
|
| A Very Short Introduction: The Brain |
Science |
September 2024 |
-
I will omit words like "short" and "brief." It's a short book with
short chapters after all
-
History, from "heart is center of thought" to Galen's humors and
cell theory
- Neurons and synapses
- Evolution, from simple cells
- Perception
- Memory
-
Robotics, AI (if you can call it that; the book is from 2005),
electronic interfaces with neurons
-
E.g., I did not know that cochlear implants directly interface
with the ear nerves
|
| Muder on the Orient Express |
Detective Mystery Fiction |
8 June 2024 |
- No summary for this one (:
-
I liked it though! Enough to finish reading in one waking day!
|
| Guns, Germs, and Steel |
Anthropology |
June 2024 |
-
Why are some civilization seemingly more dominant over others?
-
Weapons, written (better*? Easier to learn/use/reproduce/more
widespread?) language, and political organization
-
Weapons is the "obvious" one. Easier to win when you have
guns.
-
Language allows better coordination across long distances.
Interesting example is that colonists could write home and end
up encouraging/inspiring more people to come
-
Political organization allows for better combat organization
and administration of new land. An interesting example of this
was "being proud to die for your country."
-
How did Europeans (and Asians in general, as evidenced by
expansion in Austronesian) acquire these advantages?
-
Larger landmass and population of Eurasia lead to more chances
for things to develop One big example is agriculture and animal
husbandry.
-
Places like the Americas and Africa didn't have that much
"starting" plant and animals that could be domesticated. Even
in modern times with the efforts of modern day science, many
haven't been domesticated. (Proof* that they weren't easily
domesticated)
-
Agriculture then leads to population, which leads to disease and
general technology.
-
Lots of disease developed from domesticated animals being in
close proximity to humans. Interesting example is certain
seasonal diseases that could only survive in large enough
populations without killing everyone.
-
The same applies to technology. Not much elaboration necessary
here.
- East west vs north south axis
-
Moving east west keeps the same climate, so spreading
agriculture is easier (and by extension, civilization)
-
Places like sub Saharan Africa and the America's have a north
south axis. The climate changes, which makes it hard to spread
crops because you couldn't gradually expand inch by inch;
instead, it would need to be a major relocation.
-
This is a pretty old book. The afterword section was written in
2003
|
| Opening Up by Writing It Down |
self help |
May 2024 |
-
Writing about (traumatic) events can help with getting over them
-
This wasn't too surprising to me, given that therapy is supposed
to work
-
What was surprising was that it can also lead to health benefits.
-
In hindsight, maybe this was logical but it was just "another
step away"
- If:
-
writing about traumatic events can help you get over them
- and traumatic events can be bad for your health
-
then writing about traumatic events can be good for your health
- The main example was a traumatic event
-
but this can apply to other things that aren't traumatic but are
still stressfull
-
The direct reason(s) for this effect aren't clear, but some
possibilities are:
-
Writing it down brings closure, which can make you focus on
other things better
-
Better focus on other events, such as work and relationships
- Better sleep (kind of related to the last one)
-
Writing also makes you re-analyze those memories, potentially
bringing new insights
- However, it's not always beneficial
-
This was only brought up at the end of the book, interestingly
-
In short, if you've already forgot about an event, then writing
about it may cause you to re-remember, which may be bad in this
context
|
| Take a Nap! Change Your Life. |
Sleep |
2024 |
- Taking a midday nap helps restore brain functioning
-
While it's not a replacement for a good sleep schedule, a nap can
temporarily stave off the effets of sleep deprivation
- A longer nap is not necessarily better
- It depends on what sleep cycles are missing
- Not sure if this is from this book:
- It's not always better to pay off sleep debt
-
Sometimes, it's better to keep a consistent schedule, even if
that means getting less sleep
|
Since this is the internet, I'll also add non-book but reading/adjacent
content here as well.