An Alternative 'About Me'
The quick About Me is that I am a Ph.D. student studying a) what makes people different, and b) how they change over time. These subjects are traditionally called "Personality Psychology." (For details, see either my CV or the other pages of this website.) I've also spent time being a data scientist for companies of various sizes, including doing consulting work. Writing, music (choral singing in particular), and partner dancing are some of my hobbies.
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But words only get one so far. So below you'll find music, books, essays, etc. that I'm in love with, which I hope communicate just as much if not more about who I am.
Music
I come from a musical family. I was in the CA all-state honor band a few times. I also was a member of my high school and college marching band / wind ensemble / choir. I was also a member of the San Francisco's International Orange Chorale for a while back when I lived there, which is to say I have a soft spot for choral music
(A representative sample in a typographically pleasing (?) semi-order.)
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Fred Again..'s Tiny Desk Concert
No Love Dying - Gregory Porter
Buenos Hermanos - Ibrahim Ferrer
Canción de la Tarde - Maximo Pujol
Color and Light: Sketches on Sondheim
On The Nature of Daylight - Max Richter
Beleza Tropical - Compiled by David Byrne
Spiritual? (From Symphony 5.5) - Don Gillis
Partita - Caroline Shaw / Roomful of Teeth
All The Beauty In This Whole Life - Brother Ali
Soul Food to Go -The Manhattan Transfer / Djavan
The Creator Has A Master Plan - Pharaoh Sanders
Symphony 3, Movement 1 - Aaron Copland
La Organito De La Tarde - Quinteto Real
Cantata Criolla - Antonio Estevez
Sügismaastikud - Veljo Tormis​
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Some Essays and Longform Journalism
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The Anxiety of Influencers - Swanson Barrett (Harper's)
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Letter from a Region in my Mind - James Baldwin (The New Yorker, Excerpt)​
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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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One of 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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