#091

Work

This week the team gained a frontend dev, which will help a lot with implementing our MVP. So I had a kickoff meeting with them talking through what we’re working on and, a couple of days later, a chat with our interaction designer to work out exactly what designs we need.

A lot of meetings in general this week. They seem to come with the territory of tech leading. I think they were all useful, though.

Books

This week I read a bunch of Penguin Little Black Classics:

• The Constitution of the United States, which also includes the amendments and the declaration of independence.

  I like how the constitution enumerates the things which Congress can legislate on… which means almost every amendment ends with:

  Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  I also found it funny that King George didn’t appreciate the “manly firmness” of the Americans:

  He [King George III] has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

• Only Dull People Are Brilliant At Breakfast, by Oscar Wilde. He’s got some good quotes, a few favourites were:

  The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

  Which was immediately followed by:

  I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

• Why I Am so Clever, by Friedrich Nietzsche. He really doesn’t like Germans or German culture.

• How Much Land Does A Man Need?, by Leo Tolstoy. This was a joy to read compared to Nietzsche, Tolstoy is definitely better at this writing business.

• The Life of a Stupid Man, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Not much to say about this one.

• Socrates’ Defence, by Plato. He’s witty, but it’s pretty easy to see why everyone hated Socrates. He gets accused of being an atheist, and so he asks if there is anyone who “believes in the things of men, but not in men”, or “in horsey things, but not in horses”.

Link Roundup

• Britain goes coal free as renewables edge out fossil fuels
• The Impending Doom of Expiring Root CAs and Legacy Clients
• Breaking Into Tabletop Gaming
• Why Tacit Knowledge is More Important Than Deliberate Practice
• Trump & Obama Head Towards Inevitable, Rain-Lashed Knife Fight On White House Lawn
• This Week in Rust 342
• Issue 215 :: Haskell Weekly
• The Utilitarian Pleasures of Playing Board Games By Yourself
• Problem-Solving Combat: Breaking the Cage of “Roll Initiative”
• Phased Real-Time Combat - The Solution You Didn’t Know You Needed
• Interview: Emmy Allen On Engineering Esoteric Enterprises
• Fixing Religion: Augury, Blasphemy, and Oaths
• Just-In-Time Compilation
• The Five Goals of a D&D Campaign’s First Session
• Modern History TV