2016 Q4

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a book/play about Harry's son.  In case you're confused, it says "parts one and two" because it's two plays.

The characters are angsty and melodramatic.  The book/play adaptation is a bit awkward.  The plot doesn't make any sense.  The writing leaves something to be desired.  So, it's not a masterpiece.

At one point in Americanah, the protagonist criticizes someone for asking what a book was about because that question oversimplifies complicated narratives and people's interactions with those narratives.  In the protagonist's mind, books are about a lot of things.

I get a lot of postal spam.  Some of it is grocery ads.  Some of it is Comcast or Verizon ads.  In general, though, I don't want it, and it makes me feel bad about the environment, so I try to unsubscribe when I get something.

Careers with Code is a publication aiming to get more high school students interested in computer science by showing them some of the cool things you can do with a career in CS.  They interviewed me for an article on computer science and social change.  If you want to see it, you can check it out on their website or download a copy of the PDF.

Glasses are a racket.  Luxottica owns a lot of the market and does anticompetitive things (CBS, Snopes).  Most glasses seem to be priced with the assumption that people have vision insurance, so prices are artificially inflated like a fashion accessory rather than being tread more or less like the commodity that they should be.

Udacity mentioned Code the Change on their career blog.  An exceprt:

Does this sound like you?

Many students are turned off of computer science because they think that it means working on excessively technical problems, and they can’t see the social impact of their work. Often, they don’t know who could use their help.