Some stuff I enjoy(ed)! This page will always be a work in progress.
Writing
Blogs
- Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten: Excellent writing on a wide range of topics, and some delightful short stories.
- Bits About Money: Deep dives into the workings of financial infrastructure.
- A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: History made accessible, often through the lens of analysing TV and videogames.
- Bayes Shammai: My friend Ricki’s blog about “markets, incentives, and human dynamics”.
- Putanumonit: Mathy life wisdom.
Short Stories
- Exhalation: Of many excellent short stories I’ve read by Ted Chiang, this one stuck with me the most.
- Second Person, Present Tense: A thought-provoking exploration of personal identity.
Books
- Being You: An enlightening summary of the science of consciousness. Reviewed on Putanumonit.
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: A book that teaches principles of good cooking, rather than just a book of recipes.
Web Serials
Books published chapter-by-chapter on the internet. Often very long when completed.
- Worm: Complete. Spoiled me across all media for superhero fiction, it’s that good.
- Unsong: Complete. Thrilling story filled with clever wordplay and other witty humor.
- Ra: Complete. Magic is discovered in the 1970s as a field of engineering.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Complete. An alternate-universe Harry Potter where Harry was raised by scientists. Lessons in rationality taught through scheme-filled plot.
- Planecrash (aka Project Lawful): Complete. A wild ride where the protagonist’s lectures educate readers as well as characters.
- A Practical Guide to Evil: Complete. An epic medieval-fantasy tale with unusually genre-savvy characters.
- Pale Lights: Ongoing. Tricky to describe, by the same author as A Practical Guide to Evil.
- Magic is Programming: Ongoing. A software engineer is dropped into a medieval-fantasy world and learns to exploit the system of magic.
Games
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering: I’ve been playing Magic for most of my life and consider it to be the best tabletop game humanity has created. The online version, MTG Arena, makes it easier than ever to learn how to play.
Videogames
Roguelike Deckbuilders
Procedurally generated gameplay keeps things fresh, and meshes well with my Magic-driven fondness for deckbuilding. Consistently my favorite genre of videogame.
- Slay the Spire: The OG roguelike deckbuilder. My most-played game on Steam, I can’t recommend it enough.
- Inscryption: A horror-themed roguelike deckbuilder with some twists.
- Balatro: A roguelike deckbuilder where your starting deck is an ordinary deck of playing cards.
Puzzle Shooters
A nice mix of strategy and reflexes.
- Hotline Miami: Top-down 2D gameplay reminiscent of 80s arcade games. Gratuitously violent.
- Superhot: First-person gameplay where time slows down when you do. The most innovative shooter I’ve played in years!