Currently Reading 2020
Last updated on 2020-12-28.
Books Finished in 2020
In Order Read:
- Stross, Chris. Accelerando.
- Yasunari, Kawabata. The Old Capital.
- Tolkien, JRR. The Fellowship of the Ring.
- Vance, Jack. The Dying Earth.
- Bulgakov, Mikail. The Master and the Margarita.
- Warner, Brad. Hardcore Zen.
- Cicero, Noah. Blood-Soaked Buddha/Hard Earth Pascal.
- Anderson, Jon Lee. Che: A Revolutionary Life.
- Knapp, Jake. Sprint.
- Newport, Cal. So Good They Can't Ignore You.
- Coleman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy.
- Menn, Joseph. Cult of the Dead Cow.
- Matsumoto, Leiji. Space Battleship Yamato.
- Asano, Inio. Dead Dead Demon's DeDeDeDe Destruction.
- Asano, Inio. Downfall.
- Hemmingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises.
- Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread.
- Tolkien, JRR. The Two Towers.
- Yasunari, Kawabata. Snow Country.
- Mishima, Yukio. Spring Snow.
- Mishima, Yukio. Runaway Horses.
In Order of Most-to-Least Recommended:
- Tolkien, JRR. The Fellowship of the Ring.
- Tolkien, JRR. The Two Towers.
- Cicero, Noah. Blood-Soaked Buddha/Hard Earth Pascal.
- Yasunari, Kawabata. Snow Country.
- Vance, Jack. The Dying Earth.
- Anderson, Jon Lee. Che: A Revolutionary Life.
- Mishima, Yukio. Runaway Horses.
- Mishima, Yukio. Spring Snow.
- Yasunari, Kawabata. The Old Capital.
- Asano, Inio. Dead Dead Demon's DeDeDeDe Destruction.
- Coleman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy.
- Asano, Inio. Downfall.
- Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread.
- Warner, Brad. Hardcore Zen.
- Hemmingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises.
- Stross, Chris. Accelerando.
- Bulgakov, Mikail. The Master and the Margarita.
- Matsumoto, Leiji. Space Battleship Yamato.
- Menn, Joseph. Cult of the Dead Cow.
- Newport, Cal. So Good They Can't Ignore You. (Don't recommend)
- Knapp, Jake. Sprint. (Don't recommend)
Films Watched
(R) - Recommend/Must Watch/Buy
Films
- Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker
- Knives Out
- ExistenZ
- Blade Runner (R)
- Blade Runner 2049 (R)
- The Castle of Cagliostro (R)
- Midsommer
- Beat the Devil (R)
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (R)
- The Angry Red Planet
- Sahara
- 10 Cloverfield Lane
- Zardoz (R)
- Full Metal Jacket
- Barbarella (R)
- Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome
- Kizumonogatari
- House
- Pomare
- Driveway
- Overlord
- Le Casa de Fin de los Tiempos (R)
- Vivarium
- Come to Daddy
- The Naked City (R)
- The Lady Vanishes
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (R)
- Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer (R)
- Witches
Shows/TV
- Rick & Morty Season 4
- Bojack Horseman Season 6
- Serial Experiments Lain (R)
- Carole & Tuesday
- FLCL Progressive/Alternative
- Mr. Robot Seasons 1-4
- Lupin the 3rd Season 4
Games Played
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch Remake)
- The Legend of Zelda: The Breathe of the Wild
- Minecraft
Articles Read (Sprint 18 - 26)
Sprint 26, 2020
Career & Softskills
- Willems, Adam. Bad Metaphors Startup “Cults”.
- Malinagalina. I Took FSFE to Court.
Current Affairs
- Steinmetz-Jenkins, Daniel. What We Call Freedom Has Never Been About Being Free.
- Mattheiji, Jacques. My Friends the Complot Theory Believers.
- Haque, Umair. Are Americans Psychopaths?.
- Fioretti, Marco. Not all Covid Related State Interventions are the Same.
- Carnegie, Andrew. Wealth.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. That Dothraki Horde, Part III: Horse Fiddles.
- Tafkar. A Song of Ice and Fire has a rape problem.
Media & Culture
- Gramuglia, Anthony. Misato Katsuragi lives an existential millennial nightmare.
- Harris, Cliff. Hollywood and Gaming is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
- Mcgrogan, David. Pathfinder and the Appeal of Crunch.
- sdshamshel. Christmas, Nostoliga, and Shinkalion.
- Wah. Future Blues 2020 -- Session 6: The Motion Picture.
- Yates, David. Review: In the Night Wood.
Japanese
- Spaeth, Ryu. How The New Yorker Fell Into the “Weird Japan” Trap.
- Akira, Koayashi. When Sushi Became a New Fast Food in Edo.
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Betz, Zachary Wade. Use a CentOS Docker Image to Build and Deploy a Hugo (Modules) Site to GitLab Pages.
- Brian, Krebs. Solarwinds Hack Could Affect 18k Customers.
- Koch, Peter-Paul. User-scalable=no and supressing zoom supression.
- Owen, Charlie. A Day without Javascript.
- Rue, Martin. My Engineering Axioms.
Sprint 25, 2020
Career & Softskills
- Ard, Adam. Little Tasks, Little Trust.
- Caines, Autumm. The Zoom Gaze.
- Church, Michael O. Paul Graham is not a Public Intellectual.
- Tellman, Zach. Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers.
Current Affairs
- Cooper, Ryan. America's Narrrow Idea of Freedom is Literally Killing Us.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. The Dothraki Horde, Part I: Barbarian Couture.
- Devereaux, Bret. That Dothraki Horde Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof.
- Devereaux, Bret.The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilization.
- Devereaux, Bret. The Fremen Mirage, Part II: Water Spilled on the Sand.
- Devereaux, Bret. The Fremen Mirage Part IIIa: ...by the Princess Irulan.
- La Belle Epoque: The Twilight of the 19th Century.
Japanese
- Dooley, Ben and Ueno Hisako. This Japanese Shop is 1,020 Years Old. It knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.
- Horn, Christopher. What are Japanese Onsen and Ryokan like? What's onsen travel?.
- Kanji, Hirota. John Lennon at 80.
- The Four Types of Kanji.
Media & Culture
- Andrea, Blake. 'Karen: An Outrage Simulator' is the Most 2020 Game You'll Play This Year.
- Blondeau, Bella. Call of Duty Shouldn't Get Away With Its Revisionist Politics in 2020.
- Hero, Stephen. No Utopias: Gerard O'Neill, Gundam and the Illusion of Space Colonization.
- Maher, Jimmy. Ethics in Strategy Gaming, Part 2: Colonization.
- Smolensk, Alexis. The Bullshit Delivery Company.
- Smolensk, Alexis. The Dungeon Master.
- Smolensk, Alexis. Minefields.
- Stater, John M. Dragon by Dragon - May 198 (61).
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Brennen. On software.
- K, Phillip. Comments on the Modern Web.
- Paul, Jeffrey. On Trusting Macintosh Hardware.
- Rachev, Preslav. The Myth of Code Coverage.
- Zech, Oleg. Stored Procedures as a Backend.
Zen
- Warner, Brad. Gummy Bears for Dinner and LARPing Zen.
- Warner, Brad. The Origin of Greeed Hate and Delusion
Sprint 24, 2020
Career & Softskills
- Bicking, Ian. Firefox Was Always Enough.
- Buritica, Juan Pablo. The future of work is written.
- Buritica, Juan Pablo. 6 Lessons I learned while implementing technical RFCs as a decision making tool.
- Devault, Drew. We can do better than DuckDuckGo.
- Larson, Will. My skepticism towards current developer meta-productivty tools.
- Uritis, Jon Paul. Why Aren't Developers Paid More?.
Current Affairs
- Danco, Alex. Progress, Postmodernism and the Tech Backlash.
- Hale, Amy. John Michell, Radical Traditionalism, and the Emerging Politics of the Pagen New Right.
- Lewandowsky, Stephan, et al. The 'Alice in Wonderland' mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.
- Kowal, Mary Robinette. #DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster.
- Krebs, Brian. Trump Fires Security Chief Christopher Krebs.
- Spike, Paul. Citizenship.
- Welsh, Ian. American Can Have A Boom Economy six Months From Whenever it Gets Serious.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. Fireside Friday, November 27, 2020.
- Some Prefer Noodles: Soba and Udon in the Edo Period
Japanese
- Horn, Christian. A week of autumn food in Japan.
Media & Culture
- Carter, Nicolas. How to Know You’re Not Insane (And how a Cards Against Humanity Staff Writer was fired.).
- Cole, Yussef. Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Vietnam Syndrome.
- Flores, Natalie. The Mainstream FPS Only Knows One Kind of Latina.
- Kimimi. A grandia old adventure.
- Maher, Jimmy. Ethics in Strategy Gaming, Part 1: Panzer General.
- Nussbaum, Abigail. One More Adventure: Thoughts on Star Trek: Picard.
- Rose. The Last of Us Made Me Hate the Post-Apocalypse.
Software Engineering & Infosec
- North, Dan. Introducing BDD.
- Verou, Lea. The case for Weak Dependencies in JS.
Zen
- Warner, Brad. What Makes Someone a Zen Buddhist.
Sprint 23, 2020
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Galvan, Alain. A comparison of Modern Graphics APIs.
- Galvan, Alain. Switching between JavaScript, C++, and Rust.
- Khushi. Test Pyramid Antipatterns.
- Myrvold, Alan. Fixing a Test Hourglass.
- Wacker, Mike. Just Say No to More End-to-End Tests.
Career & Softskills
- Basu, Tanya. Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet.
- Betz, Zachary Wade. Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer.
- Grimett, Chuck. What are digital gardens?.
- Kuhn, Bradley M. A Modest Proposal In the New Age of DMCA Takedown Aggression.
- Mrbalihai. A Productive Productivity System.
- Paul, Jeffrey. Your Computer Isn't Yours.
- Perovic, Petar. On Productivity.
- P2PF Wiki. CopyfarLeft.
- Schnieier, Bruce. IT for Opression.
- Stallman, Richard. Right to Read.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, How Did They Make It, Addendum: Crucible Steel and Cast Iron.s
- Devereaux, Bret. Why Military History?.
- Lakhani, Nina. The lost river.
Current Affairs
- Drew, Elizabeth. The Lost Cause of the Trumpocracy.
- Hanson, Robin. Prestige as Mob-Enforced Dominance.
- Hanson, Robin. Prestige in US Today.
- Hanson, Robin. The Real Problem.
- Hesse, Monica. The fantasy of repudiating Trumpism is dead.
- Freedland, Jonathan. This is no conventional coup. Trump is paving the way for a 'virtual Confederacy'.
- Paul, Jeffrey. The Problem with Police in America.
- Salibra, Larry. Goodbye USA.
- Yoshimitsu, Taniguchi. COVID-19 and a Better Model for Society: How Globalization and Urbanization Created the Perfect Storm.
- Bustillos, Maria. When Truth Falls Apart.
Media & Culture
- Butler, Madison. The Last of Us Part II's Conservative Politics Show How Far Games Have to Go.
- Hartley, Emma. Developing Horizons: What Animal Crossing: New Horizons Reveals About Global Development.
- Kimimi. Gotta catch'em all! (again).
- Maiberg, Emanuel. The not so hidden Israeli politics of the Last of Us Part II.
- McGrogan, David. We Need Long Campaigns.
- Wah. Future Blues 2020 — Session 5: The Players.
Zen
- Warner, Brad. The Colors of the Mind.
Sprint 22, 2020
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Butler, Tom. OOP: The courier antipattern.
- Butler, Tom. Constructor Injection vs Setter Injection.
- Butler, Tom. Empty Interfaces are Bad Practices.
- Butler, Tom. PHP: Annotations are an Abomination.
- Dr. Who. Migrating to Restic for offsite backups.
- Kent, Beck. Programmer Test Principles.
- Ruty, Francios. Why I Stopped Using ORMs to Get the Job Done.
Career & Softskills
- Brooker, Marc. Getting Big Things Done.
- Iregbulem, Nnamdi. Why We Will Never Have Enough Developers
- Hughes, Karl. The Danger in Listening to Experts.
- Smith, Stephen. Is Internet Time a Good Thing?.
- Welch, Peter. Programming Sucks
- Koch, Peter-Paul. Monetization models and user hostility.
Japanese
- Takashi, Uezeto. Okinawa: The Unique Culture of the Ryūkyū Islands.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. Things you might have missed October 21, 2020.
- Devereaux, Bret. Fireside Friday, October 30, 2020.
Current Affairs
- Evans, Benedict. The end of the American internet.
- Gingerich, Denver. Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over youtube-dl takedown demand.
- Higgins, Parker. Music industry forces widely used journalist tool offline.
- James, Robin. "Individual Responsibility" and the Visual Rhetoric of Covid-19.
- James, Robin. Perfect Harmony.
Media & Culture
- Howard, David R. Don’t Leave Luck to Heaven: The Small Secret Feature that Altered the Spirit of Animal Crossing
- Smolensk, Alexis. Why I Stopped Reading Sci-Fi.
Zen
- Warner, Brad. Can You Do What is Right Without Belief?.
- Warner, Brad. Responding ot Fear.
Sprint 21, 2020
Software Engineering & Infosec
- El-Haijar, Ahmed. Bidding Farewell to Software Engineering.
- Flathers, Ronnie. How to Store Session Tokens in a Browser (and the impacts of each).
- Goloub, Alexey. Prefer Fakes Over Mocks.
- Lynch, Michael. Building a Homelab VM Server (2020 Edition).
- Hague, James. Admitting that Functional Programming Can Be Awkward.
- Hague, James. Functional Programming Doesn't Work (and what to do about it).
- Hague, James. Let's Take a Trivial Problem and Make it Hard.
- Hague, James. Turning Your Code Inside Out.
- Hague, James. A Worst Case for Functional Programming?.
- Hague, James. Messy Structs/Classes in a Functional Style.
- Hague, James. Reconsidering Functional Programming.
- Hague, James. Functional Programming Archaeology.
- Hague, James. Starting in the Middle.
- Hague, James. You, Too, Can Be on the Cutting Edge of Functional Programming Research.
- Hague, James. Retiring Python as a Teaching Language.
- Hague, James. Computer Science Courses that Don't Exist, But Should.
- Hague, James. Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology.
- Hague, James. Write Code Like You Just Learned How to Program.
- Hague, James. Learning to Ignore Superficially Ugly Code.
- Sanglard, Fabien. But Can It Run NYTimes.com?.
Career & Softskills
- Flowers, Stargirl. We Need to Talk About Github.
- Raemon. The Hamming Question.
- Yanis. Knowledge Management.
Japanese
- Benpro. One Year in Japan Finding Where to Stay.
- Croes, Jaered Koichi. Learn Hiragana: The Ultimate Guide .
- Croes, Jaered Koichi et al. Coworking Spaces in Japan: Nomad Cafes and Places To Get Work Done .
- Dexter, Kristen. On'yomi And Kun'yomi in Kanji: What's the Difference?.
- Dexter, Kristen. A Guide to Japanese Pronunciation: Sounds, Words, and Sentences .
- Dexter, Kristen. What to Do with One Day in Kyoto.
- Eryk. How the Japanese Government is Killing Yatai Food Carts.
- Horn, Christian. Interactions with technology in Japan.
- Horn, Christian. To San or Not to San in Japan.
- Horn, Christian. Japan life observations.
- Horn, Christian. Who deals better with Corona, Japan or Germany?.
- Anonymous. I Want to Learn Japanese.
- Kōichi, Yumoto. One Hundred Tales: Stories of Japan’s Cute and Creepy “Yōkai”.
- Lombardo, Cameron et al. New Japanese Learning Resources: Fall 2020 .
- Richey, Michael et al. Here are Your Options for Getting Internet in Japan.
- Richey, Michael. What to Do with One Day in Tokyo.
- Mascetti, Julia. How to Live (And Sometimes Work) in Japan on Working Holiday: The Ultimate Guide.
- Nakamine, Kanae. Aoi Ike Pond: Literally, "Blue Pond" .
- Nakamine, Kanae. Dezuka Suisan: Deep-Fried Fish Cakes, Hot and Fresh.
- Nakamine, Kanae. Ezura Farm: A Place You Can Be a Hokkaido Farmer.
- Nakamine, Kanae. What to Do with One Day in Tokyo.
- Sakamoto, Sunya. Kono to remove ‘hanko’ seal requirement for 785 procedures.
- Shaeron, Ben. Moving, Retiring, and Living Out Your Life in Japan.
- Suzuki, Mami. Bar Lupin: Literary Greatness and Old-fashioned Cocktails.
- Suzuki, Mami. Fūtendō Cave at Iwatoyama Kanzeonji.
Zen
- Jack. Wabi-Sabi and Understanding Japan.
- Warner, Brad Freedom, Equality, & Justice.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, How Did they Make It, Part IVa, Steel Yourself.
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, How did They Make It Part IVb Hardly Working.
- McGrogan, David. What did Medieval Battles Look Like.
Current Affairs
- Anonymous. Stalin's shit smelled like roses.
- Hanson, Robinson. Socialist Manifesto.
- Hanson, Robin. Socialism, A Gift You'd Exchange.
- Smith, Stephens. Brainwashing by Social Media.
- Smith, Stephens. Technology and Covid-19.
- Smith, Stephens. How Social Media Divides Us.
Philosophy
- Awet. The Herd and the Great Thinker.
- Awet. Some comments on Nietzschean Politics in light of liberal thought.
- Awet. On the Genealogy of Deicide.
- Awet. Sometimes a spade is not a spade.
- Awet. The tragic fate of Tragedy….
- Awet. The tragic fate of Tragedy Part II.
Media & Culture
- Noism. The Books You Liked Best, 2000-2020.
- Sdshamshell. Smash Bros and the Concept of Restrictive Consequences.
- Smolensk, Alexis. When It Happens to You, It's Just a Bummer.
- Smolensk, Alexis. Haruchai.
- Smolensk, Alexis. Ogre.
- Stremlin, Boris. The races of Markwald/combining racial and background adjustments.
New (or Returning) Webcomics
- Farley, Patric Sean. The Jain's Death.
- Mae, Dean. Real Life Comics.
Sprint 20, 2020
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Anonymous. HTTP API Design.
- El, Ceda. Ideas from My Development: Always Tmux.
- Jones, Lawrence. Why you need a service registry.
- Jones, Simon R. On not choosing wordpress for the W3C redesign project.
- Kyrcho, Chris. Things I Was Wrong About: Types.
- Prab, Rajiv. When Feature Flags Do and Don't Make Sense.
- Vaner, Michal. Throw Away Code.
- Verou, Lea. The Failed Promise of Web Components.
Career & Softskills
- Anonymous. The Coinbase post was 100% right. Here's what you can do about it.
- Cain, David. Make the Power Move.
- Verou, Lea. Developer Priorities Throughout Their Career.
Current Affairs
- Cab, Officer A. Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop.
- Davis, Aaron. The Social Dilemma Fails to Tackle the Real Issues in Tech.
- Farrell, Maria. The Prodigal Techbro.
- Hanson, Robin. The World Forager Elite.
- Justie, Brian. Bot or Not.
- Mattheij, Jacques. Covid 19 Round 2 is Here.
- Yasushi, Watanabe. The Tribalization of America.
Media & Culture
- Bigley, James II. How the Legend of Zelda Prepared Us to Play the Princess.
- Henges, Elizabeth. In Memoriam.
- Hildalgo, Taylor. Wanderlust -- Rolling Green.
- Flour Tortilla. Egoless Platforming. Level Design in Super Mario Sunshine.
- Kaida, Naoi. “Hanzawa Naoki”: Portraying a Fantasy World in Which Good Always Prevails.
- Kimimi. Can't say godbye to yesterday.
- Petit, Carolyn. The Pilgrimage, A Breathe of the Wild Post.
- Smolenks, Alexis. Helhound.
- Smolenks, Alexis. Beware the Nawdae.
History
- Amano, Hisaki. Tokiwa-sō, Legendary Manga Incubator, Restored for Fans.
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, how did they make it, part II, trees for blooms.
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, how did they make it, part III, Hammer-time.
Zen
- Warner, Brad. Prayer in Zen.
Sprint 19, 2020
Software Engineering & Infosec
- Alan and Colston. Thinking About Programming.
- Alex. When you Browse Instagram and Find Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Passport Number.
- GReAT. An Overview of Targeted Attacks and APTs on Linux.
- Hague, James. The Recovering Programmer.
- Khare, Mohit. Using Logrotate to Manage Logs.
- Krebs, Brian. Chinese Antivirus Firm was Part of APT41 Supply Chain Attack.
- Lim, Michelle. Stop Using Frontend or Backend to Describe Engineering You Like.
- Luu, Dan. Files are Fraught with Peril.
- Revoredo, Francisco J. Is there Any Place for Monoliths in 2020.
Career & Softskills
- Adeyemi, Daniel. How to Consume Information.
- Anonymous. How to Read Fewer Books.
- Fioretti, Marco. What is Heterarchy and Why You Want It.
- Kuhn, Ben. What happened to all the non-programmers?.
- Mull, Amanda. Career Costs, Working from Home.
- Riverlong, Jay. For the Future Of Work, Look to Gaming.
Current Affairs
- Gershgorn, Dave. Companies are on the hook if their hiring algorithms are biased.
- Hanson, Robin. Our Brave New Merged World.
- Newton, Heuy P. The Correct Handling of a Revolution.
- Peterson, Anne Helen. Habituation to Horror.
- Peterson, Anne Helen. Welcome the Covid Influencer.
- Simson, Joseph. Senior Biden Campaign Cybersecurity Expert Participated in Racist Internet Troll Group.
- Sullivan, Laura. How Big Oil Misled the Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled.
- Thalen, Mikael. Biden cybersecurity adviser outed for alleged past ties to infamous white nationalist.
- Watson, Jon. Much Ado About TikTok.
- Yong, Ed. America is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral.:
Media & Culture
- Devereux, Bret. Miscellanea: My Thoughts on Crusader King' III.
- Gregory, Ian. Towards a Historiography of Gundam's One Year War.
- Higgins, Chris. Hunter S. Thompson's Daily Routine.
- Larson, Zeb. Chasing the Anti-Colonial Video Game.
- NerdyBoliviane. Discordant Tones: Oversimplifying Music as Resistence in Carole and Tuesday.
- Molensk, Alexiss. Hobgoblin.
- Molensk, Alexiss. The Minds of Little Hobgoblins.
- Wah. Future Blues 2020, Session 4: The Craft Behind the Jam Session.
History
- Devereaux, Bret. Iron, How Did They Make it? Part I, Mining.
Sprint 18, 2020
- 0xADADA. The US is a Failed Experiment.
- Graeber, David. Of Flying Cars and Declining Rates of Profit.
- Graeber, David. What's the Point if We Can't Have Fun.
Linked References
- currently-reading-2021
You can also see my previous [[Reading List for 2020]].
- currently-reading-2022
You can also see my previous [[Reading List for 2020]], and [[Reading List for 2021]].
- currently-reading-2023
You can also see my previous [[Reading List for 2020]], [[Reading List for 2021]], and [[Reading List for 2022]].
- currently-reading-2024
You can also see my previous [[Reading List for 2020]], [[Reading List for 2021]], [[Reading List for 2022]], and [[Reading List for 2023]].