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Takes

A running catalog of opinions: things worth experiencing, worth skipping, and everything in between.

Book Essential
Designing Data-Intensive Applications

A practical lens on reliable systems, data, and engineering tradeoffs.

Book Good
The Pragmatic Programmer

A classic on software craft, taste, and building with care.

Book Good
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

A good reminder that open-ended search often beats over-specified objectives.

Paper Essential
The Bitter Lesson

Rich Sutton's short essay on scale, search, learning, and what keeps winning.

Paper Good
Reward is Enough

A compact argument for reward maximization as a path toward general intelligence.

Paper Essential
Attention Is All You Need

The transformer paper that reshaped modern machine learning systems.

Film Essential
AlphaGo

A documentary about Go, deep reinforcement learning, and the feeling of a field changing.

Series Essential
Chernobyl

A series about systems, incentives, responsibility, and truth under pressure.

Podcast Good
The Joy of Why

A podcast for math, science, and the pleasure of asking precise questions.

Place Essential
The Sierras

John Muir Trail, high passes, granite and clear water. Go in August.

Place Essential
Patagonia

Torres del Paine is one of the best multi-day treks on earth.

Activity Essential
Backpacking

Multi-day routes with a full pack. Best with good maps and no agenda.

Activity Essential
Banya

Russian steam sauna ritual. Best with a cold plunge and good company.

Activity Good
Tennis

The thinking person's sport. A good match is half tactics, half improvisation.

Coming later.

Coming later.