I'm a nerd re: productivity systems, so here's a thread of some books and things that helped me this year, and might be helpful for some of you making New Year's resolutions:

I like books that use behavioral science and / or neuroscience to guide recommendations. To that end, @bjfogg 's Tiny Habits is really good. Maybe the best productivity book I read all year.

The best one I read last year was @jamesclear's Atomic Habits. It's a quick, easy read and it prompted me to start habit tracking, which has been really useful:

I don't have hyperactivity issues but I have big inattentive issues, so CBT strategies for adult ADHD have been very helpful for me. This one's a little pricey, but had some techniques that I hadn't seen before:

This one is about systematizing research and ideas using a methodology called Zettlekasten that was developed by a German sociologist.

I've been reflecting some on Anatolios' book and wanted to put some thoughts down about doctrinal development, specifically re the Trinity.

The first thing that we have to say is that all Christians, irrespective of which tradition we are from, have to reckon with doctrinal development. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, we need to understand that doctrines do historically develop as the church reflects on Scripture.

Crucially, as Protestants, what distinguishes our mode of development from others is that our development absolutely must be regulated by Scripture. We are captives to the word of God. Therefore, as we develop doctrine it is crucial that it is developed biblically.

Both of these things being the case, we need a model of explaining doctrinal development that can account for the fact of development and the fact that it must be truly biblical development. Though Anatolios is a Malkite, I think the model he presents is workable.

By which, I mean that his model, which is original to the French Catholic Gabriel Marcel, explains doctrinal development in ways that 1) account for how development actually occurs historically, and 2) leaves the conclusion of development open to analysis on Scriptural terms.

Now that the year is actually at the end and I have seen almost all the movies (haha not even close), I will list my favorites in no particular order in a thread no one will care about but me. But first, @letterboxd says there are 22,519 films released in the 2020s. Yikes. 1/?

#1 @MinariMovie by @A24 which is genuinely a movie I have thought about regularly since I saw it in January. Wider release in 2021 and do not sleep on this one. Gorgeous Korean American Arkansas farmer story of building a new future and generational gap. 😍🥰

#2 @nomadlandfilm by Chloe Zhao which is a sweeping hybrid film of the new American west and the death of the American dream. @Criterion needs to go ahead and collect. 3/?

#3 @americanutopia by Spike Lee brought us the reminder of music, theater, audiences, joy at a time when we needed it most. Oh David Byrne. Thank you.

#4 David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet reminds us that Earth is a gorgeous place we are screwing up pretty royally. Cinematography alone worth a watch.

It is with a glad heart that I welcome everyone to the New Year, 2021.

The out-gone year was quite dramatic and it is only by the grace of the Almighty God that we survived to witness the succeeding year.

It is cheering that we are entering the New Year with refreshing news of a handful of certified vaccines against the dreaded Covid-19 virus. And better still is news of commencement of vaccination in some parts of the world.

I am expectant that the vaccine(s) would soon be available for vaccination in Nigeria. It is also hoped that very soon life would return to normal.

As a country, we have taken our share of the blow that Covid-19 dealt to the globe. And worst still, we suffered a multi-facet downcast on account of lazy and uninspiring leadership from the government at the centre - most especially.

Ok. Here goes.

I track all my books at https://t.co/WLPKFEPoYK. I am going to go through the list and talk about the books I read in 2020 that struck me. Hopefully this won’t be 55 tweets long.

The first book I read in 2020 was this book about punk rock I think recommended by @dansinker

I love books about music and especially music that I enjoy. I learned a lot reading this book and it introduced me to a number of bands. Was fun.

I will read anything by Ken Liu. This collections is wonderful. The story “The Paper Menagerie” broke my heart. I loved it so so much.

A friend recommended Infinite Detail and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I often think about the techno utopian world that we have build and what will happen in the future. This book details a very bizarre and weird future building on a lot of those ideals.

I loved reading this book. I didn’t really know anything about Jessica Simpson before - but really enjoyed her autobiography. Who knew!

Today’s the 8 year anniversary of the release of A Memory of Light, the 14th and concluding volume in The Wheel of Time.

8 years since it ended. Wow. Although we all know there are no endings to the turning of the WoT!

(Thread)

Info:
https://t.co/QEdSOyTapw

#twitteroftime

The title to this book was one RobertJordan thought of when he was finishing up edits on Knife of Dreams. He never explained the exact meaning although @BrandSanderson would later offer his version of it.

The closing epigraph of the book is one of my favorites:

“He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.”

There’s a story behind that quote.

Robert Jordan came up with that wind quote. He and Harriet were traveling to New York to meet with their publisher @torbooks. He shared the quote with Harriet, who was struck by it & really loved it.

The quote referred to Rand, of course, but after RJ died, it spoke more to Harriet about her husband than it did about the character. The quote was included in RJ’s prayer card from his funeral. I still have one.

happy new year, all. i’ve barely had time to absorb new music or artists in 2020, because mostly i’ve been listening with ash, and all he wants is the Grease soundtrack over and over (and over. and over). but here’s a little list of my top ten. ready?

1. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters
In Three Words: homespun percussive truth-bangers
For Fans Of: feminism, confessional lyrics
Note: not background listening

2. Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
In Three Words: scream of consciousness
For Fans Of: kimya dawson, courtney barnett
Note: kills you softly

3. Laura Jane Grace - Stay Alive
In Three Words: laura spills survival
For Fans of: against me, punk, confessional songwriting
Note: listen to our podcast dammit

4. Reb Fountain - Reb Fountain
In Three Words: soft dark-soul dive
For Fans of: kathleen edwards, mazzy star
Note: she’s a new kiwi friend. and i just found out red is my COUSIN.

How about a New Year's Eve thread about Gordon Parks & the photo world's deeply entrenched culture of white supremacy? Ok? Let's go.

We celebrate Gordon Parks as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. Rightfully so. His photos were more than exquisite aesthetic objects. They also profoundly shaped the way that white people saw & understood poverty & race. BUT...

But we rarely talk about *why* Parks was able to achieve so much in the photo world.

The answer is simple & clear: He -- alone among Black photographers of his & earlier generations -- received the same kind of mentoring & opportunities that as promising white photographers.

During most of photography's history, the single most important predictor of mainstream professional success was the possession of a white skin.

My wife and I led a very successful Zoom party for New Year's Eve. I thought I'd share details and tips in case it helps others. We had about 15 squares worth of people on the screen. The two main activities were charades and singing songs related to time. 1/14

An issue we were worried about was tech support during the event, since not everybody was familiar with all Zoom features. We were planning to use a breakout room or two in case people got bored with an activity and wanted to talk, but never needed it. 2/

To aid in tech support, we used BOTH a laptop (with external monitor) & a separate iPad. That way, I could ensure that my instructions on what to tap worked, see what the others were seeing, etc. The iPad had audio off & we shared a good external mike connected to the laptop. 3/

Since I needed to work closely with the laptop, I had to sit right in front. The second device let my wife also sit right in front of a camera. The external mike cut down on room echoes since she was closer to it than the laptop's mike and made our voices equal. 4/

We asked everybody to rename themselves to be the names of who we were seeing (e.g., "Joe and Jane Smith" instead of "JSmith iPad"). That required tech support for most people. (It's different on iPad and laptop.) We introduced everybody, telling how we met them. 5/

THREAD: 1) Hollywood Celebrities and the "Elites" (of DC & the Media) tell you it's an oppressive system because they not only preside over that system of YOUR oppression, they financially benefit from that illusion as they cash the check from their owner.

What a year 2020 has been...

Earthquakes
Tsunamis
Cyclones
Floods
Volcanic eruptions
Massive forest fires
Unprecedented pandemic
Economic crisis
Social disharmony
Terrorist attacks
Armed conflicts and hostilities

A truly abysmal year, but thankfully, we survived...

We have also been spared much worse eventualities (so far), such as:
Solar storm
Nuclear war
Asteroid impact
Blazar

This has made me realise that our humble existence is an underappreciated facility.

This year seems to be a massive experiment in social engineering.

While coping with a sudden disruption in commercial activity leading to a brief spell of global socialism, we saw hijacked, outsourced and sponsored protests fuelled by social divisions and insecurities.

Personally, I experienced a complete collapse of my reward mechanism throughout this year, resulting in low motivation levels for prolonged periods. I couldn't even find the motivation to post much on social media.

It made me realise the incompetence of reward-oriented work.

Happiness (being home after 5 years) was in stark contrast of sorrow (loss of friends and family), effectively flattening any emotional upheaval.

From the yogic perspective (सुख-दुःखे समे कृत्वा), this was certainly an educational year but was devoid of satisfaction.

The following puts everything in a nice neat package. Lets do this! 🔥🔥🔥

Joyce's great story, "The Dead" takes place today 6 January, feast of the Epiphany. I look forward to discussing it this evening @IrlEmbRome. An endlessly rich story for our times, it turns the comforting Christmas tale of new life into a meditation on death, memory, loss. Thread

It corrects or seems to correct some of the bleakness of the earlier stories. Joyce wrote that he had "been unnecessarily harsh" in not reproducing any Dublin's "ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. The latter 'virtue' so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe".

It offers a wonderful evocation of hospitality and a luscious description of the laden Christmas table "A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin ...

Joyce wrote this extraordinarily mature story when he was just 25 years of age. Part of its inspiration came from a tough Christmas he and Nora spent in Rome in 1906. Christmas dinner, he complained, was just an uninspiring plate of pasta.

The Dead is also a fitting story for #NollaignamBan as Gabriel is made aware of his failure to see and properly hear the three women who challenge him: Lily, the caretaker's daughter, Miss Ivors, and of course his wife, Gretta.

A few notes on @TheProspect article on "The China Hack"

In general, it presents a critique of American political economy as overly dominated by corporations (including non-profits, that is, universities) that sell out US national interests (principally considered in the national security sense) for profit.

Much of the argument is based on US military contractors seeking profits in China and pushing the US government to allow transfers of what should have been obvious dual-use (commercial but also military) technologies.

The tone of the piece is harshly critical of prior engagement, but the policy recommendations are mostly limited interventions pushing for more engagement on better terms.

What the piece did not have as much on but made me think about were counterfactuals, especially in geopolitics.

What I Read In 2020 (A Thread) [ Let me know if you read any of these because I want someone to talk to about these books or if you want my full thoughts on anything ]

So overall I read about 28 books and 11408 pages. I had an initial goal of 24 but lockdown kicked in and I also had some big boy books too. Here's as much as I can get into a single thread:

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris: The first Hannibal Lecter book. I've always been a fan of the Hannibal franchise so I enjoyed this book. I thoroughly enjoyed Francis Dollarhyde as a tragic villain. Very cool crime thriller.

Animal Farm by George Orwell: As much as I shitpost about 1984 and George Orwell, I do enjoy what works of his I have read. Very short endearing book about a bunch of animals that get into some wacky shenanigans.

Dune by Frank Herbert: This is the first Sci-Fi book I read of the year and what sparked that book club I set up early this year. I went on a bit of a Sci-Fi binge. Dune is a very well written book, the world building is really well done and I liked the big worms a lot.

💞𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐲𝐚'𝐬 𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 2020💞

I didn’t read as much as I normally do because I was writing my own books in The Mogul Series which you can find here: https://t.co/0sODsY2S21
🥰

There are a ton of books I just did not get a chance to read that are on

my TBR which is why this is a FAVORITE list and not a BEST of list; bc I mainly read for pleasure. I was introduced to some new authors who blew my fcking mind.

Many of these books challenged or comforted me in some way; so I want to thank these incredible authors for putting their heart on the line and sharing their words with us and making this tumultuous year a little bit brighter. 💖

🌟𝐓𝐇𝐄 2020 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓🌟
1. Queen Move — Kennedy Ryan
2. Our Reckless Hope — Love Belvin
3. Villian — LJ Shen
4. Shu — Alexandria House
5. The Duke the Lady and a Baby — Vanessa Riley
6. Daring and the Duke -- Sarah MacLean
7. Charming the Scottish Bastard— Melissa Blue

8. Andre - Jayce Ellis
9. Rock the Curves— Twyla Turner-Author
10. Truly— Carmel Rhodes
11. Jaded by Love — AJ Alexander
12. Cry of Metal and Bone— Leslye Penelope
13. The Jezebel— Dylan Allen
14. Black Out— Lynn Raye Harris
15. In Fury Lies Mischief — Amo Jones

Music can certainly transform destinies, it has certainly given myself and my family a chance of a better life. I have never forgotten my roots, nor the deep gratitude to all who participated in nurturing me over the years. Here is a true story ⤵️

early 1950’s. My father was. 12 year old boy whose family just arrived to Beijing. They lost everything during the war, and came to the capital to start a new life. It was a big family KF many children, my father was 2nd of three brothers with a few little sisters behind⤵️

They were very poor in those days, the Beijing looked down on their country accents and bad clothes. The older kids used fo to the market and collected thrown away vegetable pieces to bring home. My grandparents were educated, but 1 salary was not enough to support everyone. ⤵️

There was a old neighbor who lived alone, he had a radio, and often listens to music on it. My father would sit under his window to listen, eventually the neighbor invited him in, seeing how he loved music. ⤵️

One day when my father was about 12, the neighbor said he heard of a new school that just opened, where they will teach music. The school is free, and offered full room and board.
My father liked the idea, especially because it would mean one mouth less for his parents to feed.⤵️