
Evan A. Warfel
data scientist & writer
Music
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On The Nature of Daylight - Max Richter
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God is Love + What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
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Canción de la Tarde - Maximo Pujol
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The Creator Has A Master Plan, Colors - Pharoah Sanders
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Buenos Hermanos - Ibrahim Ferrer
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Symphony 3, Movement 1 - Aaron Copland
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Symphony of Sorrowful Songs - Henryk Gorecki
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En Ny Himmel - Sven David Sandstrom
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The Band's Visit (Musical)
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Letter from a Region in my Mind - James Baldwin (The New Yorker, Excerpt)
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On race relations, life, death, and the secular-spiritual problems facing America, to name a few. The best essay I've read.
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Love and Ruin - James Verini (The Atavist)
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The history of Afghanistan through the lives of the Duprees, an ex-pat couple who lived to see plenty.
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Justin Timberlake has a Cold - David Samuels, (n+1)
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How the music industry lost its soul
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All Politics is Local - Daniel Alarcón (Harper's)
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Election night in one block of Peru's most notorious prison, which has had democratic elections for longer than the country of Peru itself.
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A Prayer's Chance - Brian Goldstone (Harper's)
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On the mental health infrastructure of Ghana.
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The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial (RibbonFarm)
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More or less what you'd get if Eric Fromm grew up watching The Office and had a tech job in his early 20's.
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The Lost City of Z - David Grann (The New Yorker)
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The story of the machete-buckling Percy Fawcett and the actual quest to find (the equivalent of) El Dorado in the last great unmapped region of the world.
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Inside Quebec's Great, Multi-Million-Dollar Maple-Syrup Heist - Rich Cohen (Vanity Fair)
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"In a world covered in plastic and going to hell, nothing's more honest than sap."
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What is Code - Paul Ford (Bloomberg)
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What the culture of coding is like and why.
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How Heritability Misleads About Race - Ned Block
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Perhaps the best example of analytical writing I've come across.
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Mother Earth Mother Board - Neal Stephenson (Wired)
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On the laying of the then-longest fiber-optic cable in the world, and the dawn of the new information age.
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52 Blue - Leslie Jamison (The Atavist)
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Leslie Jamison (who's written many incredible things) on "the world's loneliest whale."
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Book of Lamentations (The New Inquiry)
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A review of the DSM-V as a piece of dystopian literature.
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In Lagos, Space for my Thoughts to fly - Allyn Gaestel (Guernica)
Essays and Longform Journalism
(Some of) My Favorite Things:
I currently work as a consulting data scientist, and I'm a big-picture person with a lot of passion(s). I've just started teaching myself how to compose for choir.
Click here for my resume.
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To contact me, email hello [at] evanwarfel [dot] com.
Other links: Stack Overflow, Instagram.
Books
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The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin
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Story of a Secret State - Jan Karski
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The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel - Maciej Cegłowski (Short story?)
Quotes
"Are you telling me it's wrong to anthropomorphize people?"
Sydney Morgenbesser to B.F. Skinner
"Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
Kurt Vonnegut
"You do you, and I'll be me. If we connect, great; and if not, well, it probably can't be helped."
Adapted from Fritz Perls and Damon Stone
"It is urgent that we nourish and develop the buds of sanity and humanness that are emerging. What we have going for us is a fantastic know-how of technical development and proven intellectual ability. We know how to probe and investigate practically everything. Our challenge now is to develop human beings with values -- moral, ethical, and humanistic -- that can effectively utilize this development. When we achieve that, we will be able to enjoy this most wonderful planet and the life that inhabits it.
WE ARE ON THE WAY"
Virgina Satir
"The wiser men are, the more humbly will they submit to learn from others; they do not disdain the simplicity of those who teach them; they are willing to lower themselves to the level of husbandmen, of poor women, of children. Many things are known to the simple and unlearned which escape notice of the wise. I have learned more important truth beyond comparison from men of humble station, who are not named in the schools, than from famous doctors. Let no man therefore boast of his wisdom, or look down upon the lowly, who have knowledge of many secret things which God has not shown the wise."
Roger Bacon, Opus Majus