I became aware of Red Roulette after watching Desmond Shum on a panel with Civic Future. I was fascinated by his story and immediately purchased the book on Audible. This is a man who was inside the inner circles of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Red Roulette is a biographical account of Desmond’s life. Desmond describes his rise to the inner circles of power in China and how he turned away from his home and now lives in the West....
I read the [[Pragmatic Programmer]] in 2021 while I was doing some fieldwork in Kenya. There were many findings from that book that I have sought to apply to daily life. One of those was using a notebook to jot down what you’re working on, your thoughts on the work and how you’d solved X problem. I was pretty dedicated to these daybooks, they had a contents page and everything. I would use them daily to remind myself of answers to thorny questions I had worked out and since relegated to “the book”, an external cache to save memory in-capite....
I shocked my friend when I stated to a dinner table full of our friends: “I am deliberately trying to avoid the news cycle right now (during the UK General Election). It’s full of noise and I don’t believe that it’s improving my ability to choose between candidates” To which my friend responded “Why are you proud of being ill informed?” This is a reasonable question. I used to be a news junkie....
“The game taught me the game. And it didn’t spare me the rod while teaching.” Jesse Livermore (the character that inspired Reminisces of a Stock Operator) Having previously worked in finance as an analyst, one of the roles that was most interesting to me was trading. I interacted on a daily basis with the traders, producing analytics (read: pictures created in matplotlib) that helped them come to a decision. I also produced data that was fed into more automated strategies, but even then I was producing a dashboard of charts and graphs to ensure that the processes were running correctly....
“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J.R.R. Tolkien “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.” Benjamin Franklin I am in dire need of flexing my writing muscles and bringing some coherence to the things I am reading and doing. The pages that follow will contain a selection of thoughts, essays and book reviews reflecting what I’m thinking about, what I’ve been reading and what I intend to do next....