How to Live

Posted on June 24, 2026 by twsobey

Title: How to Live

Author: Derek Sivers

Completed: May 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: A quick read that explores many different (often contradictory) philosophies of life. I read the first one or two and disagreed with them so much, I started to wonder if I had misunderstood the messages I’d heard from Derek before. I decided to read a few more and saw these more as thought experiments he wrote down to better understand his own thinking. Don’t read this expecting to agree with everything. Instead read this to have it push your thinking about how to live.

Highlights:

  • You think you want more choice and more options. But when you have unlimited choice, you feel worse. When you keep all options open, you’re conflicted and miserable.
  • If you need money, be an investor. It’s the only career where you profit the most by doing the least. It should take no more than an hour per month. The stock market takes money from the active traders and gives it to the patient.
  • The actions are obvious. Put money in an investment account and never withdraw. Eat mostly vegetables. Exercise always. Get preventative health checkups. Make time for your relationships.
  • We’re all cousins. Everybody on Earth, no matter how far apart, has a surprisingly recent common ancestor. Go meet your family in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, and in Europe. Understand that there is no “them”. It’s just “us”. Feel those connections.
  • In Icelandic, the word for “idiot” means “one who has never left home to journey abroad”. Only idiots think they’re always right.
  • Ignore all marketing and advertising. Nobody is pushing what really matters. Friendships, nature, family, learning, community. The best things in life aren’t things.
  • To communicate clearly, you have to think clearly. Writing is refined thinking. Public speaking tests your writing on a real audience. Great public speaking comes from great private thinking.
  • Rules must be absolutely unbreakable. If you try to decide, each time, whether it’s OK to break the rule or not, then you’ve missed the whole point of rules. Rules are to save you from deciding. That’s why hard rules are easier to keep.
  • we admire a quick wit. It shows you quickly looked at something from many angles, found the one that amused you the most, and considerately expressed it to someone else. Observation, creativity, and empathy, all in an instant. What could be a better sign of a healthy mind?
  • No matter what you need to do, there’s a playful, creative way to do it. Playing gives you personal autonomy and power.
  • Practice being uncomfortable, even in small ways. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Skip eating for a day, or sugar for a month. Go light-weight camping for a week. Befriend discomfort so that you’ll never fear it.
  • Never say, “Not my problem.” We’re all in this together. What’s good for your community is good for you. Whatever affects others affects you. The quality of your life is tied to the quality of your community, neighborhood, and country. You can’t be healthy in a sick society.
  • Don’t convince yourself your home is an asset. Your home is an expense, not an investment, because it doesn’t put money in your pocket each month.
  • Imitate your heroes. It’s not copying because it won’t be the same. Your imitation of anything will be unrecognizably warped by your own twisted perspective. Most creations are new combinations of existing ideas. Originality just means hiding your sources.
  • Learn by hands-on experience. The more mistakes you make, the faster you learn. Once you’ve made all the mistakes in a field, you’re considered an expert.
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War Is A Racket

Posted on May 25, 2026 by twsobey

Title: War Is A Racket

Author: Smedley D. Butler

Completed: May 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: After finishing Gangsters of Capitalism about Smedley Butler, I decided to read through his anti-war book as well. It’s short and easy to read, clearly designed to spread his message rather than engage in philosophical thinking but he does a good job showing how so many companies make lot of money off war without the owners or major shareholders ever being negatively impacted by it. I assume this book helped shape our cultural understanding since these ideas don’t seem shocking now but appear to have been revolutionary when he wrote them. Either way, we’re 100 years later and companies are still making a killing off of war.

Highlights:

  • The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit.
  • they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought — and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
  • Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn’t bargain for their labor. Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn’t. Napoleon once said, “All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them.” So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier.
  • An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group: “There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won’t. So … “
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Gangsters of Capitalism

Posted on May 16, 2026 by twsobey

Title: Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire

Author: Jonathan M. Katz

Completed: May 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: The story of the pacifist Quaker who joined the Marines and rose to the rank of Major General only to become one a the loudest anti-war voices in the run up to World War 2 was long and winding. I remembered many of the entanglements the US was involved in at the turn of the twentieth century in Central America and Asia but was a bit surprised that one man happened to be in almost all of them. His insight from all those battles was that much of the US fighting was based on what was best for monied/corporate interests. A century later, despite so many protests against this fact, it seems little has changed as we invade Venezuela and Iran mainly for their oil.

Highlights:

  • “Imperialism,” on the other hand, is a foreign-sounding word. It brings up images, if it brings any at all, of redcoats terrorizing Boston, or perhaps British officials in linen suits sipping gin and tonics in Bombay. The idea that the United States, a country founded in rebellion against empire, could have colonized and conquered other peoples seems anathema to everything we are taught America stands for.
  • “Imperialism,” on the other hand, is a foreign-sounding word. It brings up images, if it brings any at all, of redcoats terrorizing Boston, or perhaps British officials in linen suits sipping gin and tonics in Bombay. The idea that the United States, a country founded in rebellion against empire, could have colonized and conquered other peoples seems anathema to everything we are taught America stands for.
  • As a candidate and then as president, Donald Trump preyed on American anxieties by combining the worst excesses of those early-twentieth-century imperial chestnuts—militarism, white supremacy, and the cult of manhood—with a newer fantasy: that Americans could reclaim our sense of safety and supremacy by disengaging from the world we made; by literally building walls along our border and making the countries we conquered pay for them.
  • In 1741, the British vice admiral Edward Vernon captured the bay and renamed it Cumberland Harbour. Vernon’s crew was full of sailors from Britain’s North American colonies who wrote home encouraging their friends and relatives to rush down to the bay—“now or never for a plantation on the island of Cuba.” Disease and local resistance ended the brief occupation. But one of Vernon’s crewmen, Lawrence Washington, was so inspired by the voyage that he named his new Virginia plantation after its commander. Washington died soon after; the plantation—Mount Vernon—ended up in the hands of his half brother George.
  • American society was becoming particularly obsessed with manhood. The United States was transforming from a country of manual laborers into one where people rode machines to office jobs. Electricity and plumbing would soon mean less chopping and hauling at home. The Civil War generation was retiring, taking tales of courage and honor with them. Women were campaigning for, and in a few states had already won, the right to vote. As the historian Kristin L. Hoganson has argued, male leaders feared that all these trends portended national feminization and ruin. “War, they believed, would return the nation to a political order in which strong men governed and homebound women proved their patriotism by raising heroic sons.”
  • Clouds of steam were evaporating off the lights. It was like the empire in which we’d trapped ourselves and millions of others in places like that a century before: Too dangerous to turn off. Too dangerous to keep on.
  • Knowing Congress was unlikely to approve a third overseas war in two years, McKinley made a fateful decision: he became the first president in U.S. history to order the full-scale invasion of a sovereign country without seeking legislative approval.10 Congress did not challenge him.
  • Before going to war, Butler had dreamed of getting shot—“not too seriously, but sufficient to leave a scar.”30 He hadn’t expected it to hurt this much.
  • American soldiers chasing these guerrillas were pulled ever deeper into the hinterlands. Along the way, they picked up local words. Bundók—Tagalog for “mountain”—was given an American twang and made into slang for any wild and remote place. It was only by going to the “boondocks,” the soldiers learned, that you could get the measure of a country.2
  • To finance the insurgency, the soldiers on Luzon seized the supply of the islands’ most valuable export: a strong, flexible fiber harvested from a cousin of the banana plant known as abacá. Americans called it “Manila hemp,” and before synthetics came along, it drove the global economy. Shipbuilders used its fibers to weave ropes and sails. Electric companies ran abacá belts through their city-powering generators. The oil boom minting millionaires in Texas and California depended on miles of “Manila drilling cable” pulsing through the derricks. Even the people counting the money needed abacá to make their office supplies: they’re called “manila envelopes” for a reason.
  • The U.S. government formally recognized Panama the next afternoon. It took longer than that for most on the isthmus to learn they were living in a new country.
  • They called themselves Sandinistas, in honor of their anti-imperialist hero. The name was itself an act of rebellion, Baltodano told me, because the dictator had tried not only to bury Sandino’s body but “to make his story disappear as well.” The story of Sandino’s resistance had been rediscovered by Carlos Fonseca, a radical librarian who became a leader of the anti-Somoza uprising.
  • the number ultimately needed for construction was equivalent to more than one-eighth the new republic’s entire population. That left the U.S. government to rely, as the French had, on workers from the Caribbean. Their stories are mostly absent from the better-funded museums, which focus on celebrating the technological feats and leaders involved. But in the humid basement of the Afro-Antillean Museum, at a table covered with a vinyl cloth, the librarian handed me a bound blue volume. The faded gold embossing on the cover read: Letters from Isthmian Canal Construction Workers.
  • They tried to pressure the Canal Zone’s governor, Maj. Gen. Robert J. Fleming, U.S. Army, into rescinding the order. But Fleming had neither the power nor inclination to do so. He had come to resent the chauvinism of the Americans he oversaw. “They’ve been isolated so long they’ve developed a reactionary mentality,” Fleming told the Saturday Evening Post. “It’s the perfect place for the guy who’s 150 percent American and 50 percent whiskey.”
  • The future president lied profligately about the history of the canal, claiming falsely that “our Navy did not intervene to bring about the secession of Panama,” that the Panamanians “knew what they were doing” when they let Bunau-Varilla give away their rights in the Zone, and implied that Americans—as opposed to Caribbean conscripts—had done the actual digging.47 (Conservative Republican Senate candidate S. I. Hayakawa said, more cheekily: “I think we should keep it. We stole it fair and square.”
  • On the other side of the water stood the skyscrapers of the Panama City financial district. The banking system housed in those towers—the system first set up in Panama by financiers such as Ramón Arias and their American friends—ultimately eclipsed the value of the canal itself. The bankers who occupy those buildings have outdone Noriega, not to mention the gangs of El Chorrillo, in brazenness: much of an estimated $7.6 trillion in worldwide hidden offshore holdings—8 percent of the world’s wealth—flows across the isthmus under the cover of generous bank secrecy laws.
  • In an attempt to build a stable coalition, the victorious Madero appointed some of Díaz’s technocrats to be his advisers and ordered his revolutionary army to lay down its arms. The commanders who had helped Madero oust Díaz in the name of land reform and redistribution felt betrayed. The most radical—Francisco “Pancho” Villa in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the south—declared the revolution would continue against him. But just as the rebels were preparing to move against Madero in February 1913, he was overthrown by someone else—the belligerent conservative Gen. Victoriano Huerta.
  • But, as Huerta would not be the last to learn, the trouble with doing business with the United States was that, while Americans subverted democracy abroad, they still practiced a limited form of it at home.
  • But concern had risen over the high numbers of opium addicts among the U.S. soldiers occupying the Philippines. Lawmakers were also looking for ways to criminalize new behaviors to feed an increasingly profitable system of underpaid prison labor, which had arisen in part to replace the free labor provided by enslaved African Americans. In that atmosphere, rumors spread freely that drugs such as cocaine would lead some, especially Black people in the South, to “disregard the barriers that society had established between different races,” as the Mexican historian Gabriela Recio has written.
  • Butler would tell a radio audience around 1935. “But I feel it more to the point, in these times, to look for the oil deposits when you are trying to get at the bottom of deep international intrigue.”
  • Throughout late 1914, the Navy Department drew up detailed plans for an invasion and occupation of Haiti, down to where to build the baseball fields that off-duty Marines would use and where to buy rum. Taking over foreign cities had become so old hat for the U.S. military that it was developing an actual template: some of the plans were simply repurposed from the recent invasion of Mexico, with instructions reading: “REWRITE LETTER INSERTING PORT AU PRINCE FOR VERA CRUZ, MEXICO WHEREVER IT APPEARS.”
  • Butler’s insights became the key to securing America’s imperial foothold in Haiti. Though Butler did not realize it at the time, he was helping invent a new approach to warfare. It would eventually be dubbed counterinsurgency: the combination of military, political, and psychological methods employed by an occupying power with the goal of holistically defeating an armed resistance.
  • Most of the carnival-goers were understandably not happy to see the invaders. Someone offered them food; another warned, too late, that the bread had been poisoned. Over the next few days, as Marines fell ill, the flying column temporarily decamped to the nearby plantation of the American-owned Central Ansonia Sugar Company. All recovered. But for the rest of the trip, Butler wrote, “my stomach was absolutely no use to me.”
  • The border on Hispaniola is proof of the political philosopher Frantz Fanon’s dictum that “the colonial world is a compartmentalized world.”36 It was drawn at the behest of an imperial power, formalized in the interests of foreigners, and consecrated in blood by a dictator empowered and trained by the Marines. Those officials knew, as do their successors today, that for capital and elites to flow freely, subject peoples cannot. Fears of uncontrolled movement are why, a century after Butler complained about the lack of a clear border on Hispaniola, the U.S. government still helps fund, train, and equip border patrols across the world, from Jordan to Kenya to Peru.
  • covering his tracks, Butler ensured there would be no accountability for the occupation’s actions from either the Haitian or American publics, and that the story would be pushed to the margin of both countries’ histories for generations to come. With the legislature now abolished, the U.S.-written constitution was placed before a popular plebiscite in the summer of 1918. Polling places were overseen by Butler’s rifle-toting Gendarmes, who were encouraged to actively campaign for the constitution’s passage.27 Less than 5 percent of Haiti’s population voted. It passed overwhelmingly. In addition to the key clause permitting foreigners to own land, the final draft vested the legislative powers of the dissolved parliament in a “Council of State” appointed by the puppet president. It also contained a special article declaring: “All the acts of the Government of the United States during its military occupation of Haiti are ratified and legal.”
  • But in 1990, the first free election since the occupation was held. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, an anti-Duvalierist Catholic priest who promised land and economic redistribution, won—only to be overthrown by the army nine months later. Several of the putschists had been on the CIA’s payroll. At least two of the coup’s leaders were trained by the U.S. Army.
  • Butler could not see the irony: that the imperialism he had helped foster was a direct catalyst of the World War.4 The conflict erupted in 1914 as a fight between empires: Germany and Austria-Hungary on one side; Britain, France, and Russia on the other. All had spent decades in a complex global struggle for colonies, resources, and prestige—a struggle that the Americans (and Butler personally) had been parties to. The older empires, especially the British, were filled with anxiety over new competitors to their global supremacy. The Germans, as the United States’ fellow latecomers to global expansion, were reading Alfred Thayer Mahan’s tracts on sea power and empire when they declared: “We demand a place for ourselves in the sun.”
  • The brass was so pleased with Butler’s administrative skill that they awarded him both the Army and Navy Distinguished Service Medals—the former pinned on him personally by General Pershing.
  • Philadelphia’s police department was founded in 1854, making it one of the oldest in the United States. Until then, the streets of William Penn’s city, like most in the North, had been patrolled by ad hoc committees of night watchmen and private guards, charged at first with keeping Native Americans from venturing into town. (In the South the first organized law enforcement patrols were built on similarly racist grounds: hunters tracking Black people trying to escape slavery.)
  • As residents of MOVE’s new middle-class neighborhood accused the group of harassing and beating them, the mayor called the commune “terrorists” and promised to take action.43 A renewed standoff ensued. On the late afternoon of May 13, 1985, Police Lt. Frank Powell dropped a bomb of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex out of a helicopter. It exploded on impact, igniting drums of gasoline the commune stored on the roof. Police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor—a former Army Reserve major who had risen to power under Rizzo—gave the order: “Let the bunker burn.” Veterans compared the inferno to scenes they had witnessed in Korea and Vietnam. By morning, two city blocks were destroyed. Six adults and five children were found charred to death in the wreckage of the home.
  • Furious and betrayed, Sun wrote an open letter in which he asked the question that had reverberated through Havana and Manila decades before: “When we first started our revolution … the United States was our model and inspiration. Now we wonder … has the nation of Washington and Lincoln abandoned the ideal of liberty and regressed from a liberator to an oppressor?”
  • As the months wore on, the U.S. envoy in Beijing, MacMurray, insisted the Marines be ready to fight their way in and evacuate his staff if the old imperial capital fell to the Nationalists. Butler publicly demurred. “I shall consider our expedition to have been entirely successful only if we finally withdraw from China without the spilling of any blood, either American or Chinese,” he told a New York Times correspondent. “This country belongs to the Chinese, and I tolerate no clashes between my men and the Chinese people. If a man so much as slaps a rickshaw coolie or lays a hand upon a servant, he gets a general court-martial.”
  • The lack of action left his younger Marines confused. “We didn’t know what the mission was,” David M. Shoup, a future Marine commandant, later recalled thinking as a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant in China. “But we landed at the Standard Oil docks and lived in Standard Oil compounds and were ready to protect Standard Oil’s investment. I wondered at the time if our government would put all these Marines in a position of danger, where they might sacrifice their lives in defense of Standard Oil. Later I discovered that of course it would, and did.
  • Why do we expend so much time and money preserving the memory of the short-duration wars in which European powers were involved; and so little, relatively speaking, remembering the kind of wars Butler fought—protracted, decades-long conflicts in the Americas, Asia, and Africa that have been the most common mode of warfare throughout U.S. history? And why does America celebrate its generals who oversaw death and destruction on a massive scale, while forgeting the exceptional few who spent their later years trying to stop them?
  • The story he told was essentially a parable: the bankers and the industrialists were among the racketeers. The American people—the “lads in the trenches,” the loved ones worried sick at home—were the dupes and victims. The racket could only be smashed, Butler concluded, “by taking the profit out of war.”
  • A year later, in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt imposed an oil embargo on the Japanese in retaliation for their invasion of the French colonies in Indochina. That gave Emperor Hirohito two choices: give up on his dreams of becoming the dominant empire in East Asia and the Pacific, or seize the oil reserves in the Dutch East Indies, risking war with the United States and Britain. His war cabinet decided to strike first, simultaneously bombing Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and the British garrisons in Malaya, Hong Kong, and Singapore on December 7 and 8, 1941.
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Bike Disco & Trapeze

Posted on April 4, 2026 by twsobey

It was a busy week. Along with all the normal weekly activity, I led a Bike Disco on Wednesday. This rolling party was a fundraiser for SESSFA’s Move-a-thon. Last year, the event came together very last minute but still got about 25-30 people out on bikes. This year, with a bit more planning, we had over 100. Below is a video from Seattle Public Schools from the event. My March Mustache features prominently.

Saturday was the opening of the Crosslake Light Rail which we’ve been waiting for since we moved here about a decade ago. We met my parents and 205,000 of our closest friends to ride it on opening day. It was a massive party with lines hundreds deep to get on the trains.

Sunday morning we were back on the light rail headed to SoDo for a trapeze class at Emerald City Trapeze. Over the course of an hour, we each got to swing several times. Below is a video of me turning over to hang from my knees before turning back over and doing a back flip into the net. The one hour class went by quickly so we signed up for two more classes… Before realizing how sore we would be the next day.

Overall, it was a fun few days and we’re looking forward to the next few adventures we have planned

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Humble Pi

Posted on March 10, 2026 by twsobey

Title: Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

Author: Matt Parker

Completed: March 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: A few years ago, my friend and favorite math buddy recommended this book to me. It took a while to get to it but was enjoyable. A few of the stories in here were familiar to me but he does a good job connecting them while dropping amusing enough asides in that even non-math-nerds would laugh at the jokes. Thanks, Betsy for the recommendation.

Highlights:

  • If you ask someone what number is halfway between one and nine, they will say five – but only because they have been taught to. Wake up, sheeple! Humans instinctively perceive numbers logarithmically, not linearly. A young child or someone who has not been indoctrinated by education will place three halfway between one and nine. Three is a different kind of middle. It’s the logarithmic middle, which means it’s a middle with respect to multiplication rather than addition. 1 × 3 = 3. 3 × 3 = 9. You can go from one to nine either by adding equal steps of four or multiplying by equal steps of three. So the ‘multiplication middle’ is three, and that is what humans do by default, until we are taught otherwise.
  • But astronomy does give Julius Caesar the last laugh. The unit of a light-year, that is, the distance travelled by light in a year (in a vacuum) is specified using the Julian year of 365.25 days. So we measure our current cosmos using a unit in part defined by an ancient Roman.
  • Resonance can affect buildings as well. In July 2011 a thirty-nine-storey shopping centre in South Korea had to be evacuated because resonance was vibrating the building. People at the top of the building felt it start to shake, as if someone had banged the bass and turned up the treble. Which was exactly the problem. After the official investigation had ruled out an earthquake, they found the culprit was an exercise class on the twelfth floor. On 5 July 2011 they had decided to work out to Snap’s ‘The Power’, and everyone jumped around harder than they usually did.
  • On the Millennium Bridge, people did start to walk in step, because the movement of the bridge affected the rhythm at which they were walking. This formed a feedback loop: people stepping in synch caused the bridge to move more, and the bridge moving caused more people to step in synch. Video footage from June 2000 seems to show over 20 per cent of pedestrians walking in step – more than enough to get the resonant frequency ringing and the middle of the bridge swaying about 7.5 centimetres in each direction. Fixing it was a costly two-year retrofit, during which the bridge was completely closed. Removing the wobble cost £5 million, on top of the original £18 million build. Part of the difficulty was breaking the pedestrian-bridge feedback loop without changing the aesthetics of the bridge. Hidden beneath the footpath and around the structure are thirty-seven ‘linear viscous dampers’ (tanks with a viscous liquid that a piston moves through) and around fifty ‘tuned mass vibration absorbers’ (pendulums in a box).
  • One of the first bridges to be destroyed by synchronized pedestrians was a suspension bridge just outside Manchester (in what is now the city of Salford). I believe that this Broughton Suspension Bridge was the earliest bridge destroyed when people walked over it at the resonant frequency.
  • This is a common theme in human progress. We make things beyond what we understand, and we always have done. Steam engines worked before we had a theory of thermodynamics; vaccines were developed before we knew how the immune system works; aircraft continue to fly to this day, despite the many gaps in our understanding of aerodynamics. When theory lags behind application, there will always be mathematical surprises lying in wait. The important thing is that we learn from these inevitable mistakes and don’t repeat them.
  • players noticed that Gandhi was a bit of a jerk. Once he developed atomic technology, he would start dropping nuclear bombs on other nations. This was because of a mistake in the computer code. The game designers had deliberately given Gandhi the lowest non-zero aggression rating possible: a score of 1. Classic Gandhi. But later in the game, when all the civilizations were becoming more, well, civilized, every leader had their aggression rating dropped by two. For Gandhi, starting from 1, this calculation played out as 1 − 2 = 255, suddenly setting him to maximum aggression. Even though this error has since been fixed, later versions of the game have kept Gandhi as the most nuke-happy leader as a tradition.
  • the only quote from me that has been made into a poster by teachers and put up in their classrooms is: ‘Mathematicians aren’t people who find maths easy; they’re people who enjoy how hard it is.’
  • Because of the Quebec Bridge disaster, starting in 1925 any student graduating from an engineering degree in Canada can attend a voluntary Ceremony of the Calling of an Engineer, where they are given a steel ring to remind them of the humility and fallibility of engineers. It can be a tragedy when a mathematician makes a mistake which causes a disaster, but that does not mean we can do without mathematics. We need engineers designing bridges, despite the pressure that comes with it.
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Life After Cars

Posted on February 14, 2026 by twsobey

Title: Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile

Author: Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek

Completed: Feb 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: For years, I’ve listened to their podcast and really enjoyed the content. Much of it I agree with, but even when I don’t, it helps me refine my ideas about why I feel cars destroy communities. This book clearly lays out the explanation for the many ways in which cars harm people, cities, the environment, and even drivers. This book should be read by everyone who likes living in vibrant places but feels like it could be better. If you want to vacation in places with fewer cars (Paris, Amsterdam, Disney) but think home could NEVER be like that, you should read this book.

Highlights:

  • Automobiles have produced far more collective damage to the world, in terms of death, illness, and environmental destruction, than nearly any other invention in human history.
  • In 1969, 42 percent of American children walked or biked to school. In 2017, that number was 11 percent.
  • In the first panel of Action Comics number 12, published in May 1939, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent is outside the offices of the Daily Star, a precursor to the more famous Daily Planet. A small crowd has gathered, and when Kent asks someone what has happened, he is shocked to learn that a friend of his has been hit and killed by a reckless driver. Enraged, Kent calls the city’s mayor and asks why Metropolis has “one of the worst traffic situations in the country.” The mayor’s response will likely be familiar to anyone who has tried to get an elected official to take traffic violence seriously. “It’s really too bad,” the mayor says. “But—what can anyone do about it?” Kent vows to do something about it himself.
  • What is most shocking is that the biggest threat to the citizens of Metropolis in 1939 was not a monster or alien invader nor even Superman’s famous archenemy Lex Luthor, who wouldn’t appear in print until a year later. It was the car.
  • At least twenty-five more people would be killed in auto-related fatalities in the United States through the end of 1899, a high number given that only around 2,500 motor vehicles were produced in the country that year.
  • an editorial cartoonist for The St. Louis Star depicted a man kneeling before an automobile, the car’s headlights appearing like eyes and its grille illustrated to look like a gaping maw. The man, wearing a jacket labeled “reckless and vicious drivers,” offers a plate of children’s bodies as a ritual sacrifice to what is labeled as the “Modern Moloch.”
  • A pedestrian struck by a driver at sixteen miles per hour has only a 10 percent chance of being severely injured or killed, while a pedestrian struck at thirty-one miles per hour has a 50 percent chance. That jumps to a 75 percent chance of severe injury or death at thirty-nine miles per hour, and a 90 percent chance at forty-six miles per hour. Which means that being hit by a driver just doing the legal speed limit on most roads in the US equals almost certain death. And the increasing mass of modern vehicles means the equation is only getting less favorable for people outside the car.
  • Even the famous expression “America’s love affair with cars” was a car industry creation, not some folksy saying that arose spontaneously. Peter Norton discovered that the phrase appeared in a 1957 Chevrolet ad before being popularized in a television special that aired on October 21, 1961, on NBC. Called Merrily We Roll Along and starring comedian Groucho Marx, the special was sponsored by DuPont, which at the time owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors. In the special, Groucho says that “our love affair with the automobile” started long ago, and that “it was a real love affair, one that changed our whole way of life.”
  • According to some residents, the bike lanes were unnecessary, because so few cyclists used them. Other residents insisted the lanes were dangerous because there were so many cyclists using them.
  • According to a study conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida, cyclists are just about as law-abiding as drivers. The researchers recruited one hundred bike riders from the Tampa region and equipped their bicycles with sensors, cameras, and GPS trackers. After recording the cyclists’ movements for two thousand hours and analyzing the data, the study found that the cyclists obeyed traffic laws 88 percent of the time, while similar observations of drivers showed that they obeyed the law 85 percent of the time.
  • After surveying nearly eighteen thousand people in seventy-three countries, they found that 100 percent of respondents admitted to breaking the law while driving, walking, or cycling. Where things differed was in the reasons various road users gave for flouting the rules. Drivers and pedestrians said they typically broke laws to save time. Cyclists, however, said they typically broke laws to stay safe, doing things like riding on the sidewalk to avoid mixing it up on a dangerous road with cars and trucks. Cyclists also said they broke laws to save energy—rolling through a stop sign, for instance, to avoid having to start pedaling again from a dead standstill. The researchers said that while such behavior was technically illegal, “most bicyclists can generally be described as rational individuals trying to function safely and efficiently given the context and norms of where they live and the transportation system put in front of them.”
  • When Sean Kenney, an artist, moved from the US to Amsterdam with his wife and two children in 2020, he was aware of this history. The ease of getting around by foot and by bike was part of the appeal. What he was not prepared for was the culture shock that came with moving from a place where kids are uniquely at risk of being harmed by cars to a place that had spent decades making its streets safe for even the youngest pedestrians and cyclists. After signing a lease on an apartment, Sean received what, to him, seemed like a strange apology from his new landlord. The landlord handed over a few sets of keys: one for Sean, one for his wife, and one for their nine-year-old daughter. The landlord motioned to Sean’s six-year-old son and said, “I’m sorry that I only have three sets of keys for the four of you, but you can get another made at the shop around the corner.” Sean looked at his young son and then at the landlord. “A key for the six-year-old?” he asked incredulously. She gave him a quizzical stare, as if the two of them were speaking totally different languages.
  • It took years of methodical inquiry along with the occasional epiphany, but finally the researchers isolated a chemical compound that they believed was to blame for killing half of the coho salmon that try to make it to spawning grounds each year. It comes from the tires of our cars.
  • In Traffication, Paul Donald writes extensively about the way noise affects a wide range of animals: “When exposed to prolonged traffic noise, zebra finches become less good at finding food, roosting bats become more susceptible to disease, great tits suffer severe sleep disruption and frogs become unable to produce antimicrobial proteins to fight infection,” he writes. “Mice develop problems with motor coordination and their brains shrink.” Donald cites research showing that prolonged exposure to the stress hormone cortisol, which is released when animals are exposed to even low levels of traffic noise, is shortening the lives of at least some species by breaking down the telomeres on their chromosomes: “Birds raised in the presence of traffic noise are prematurely aged, and their future lifespans already curtailed, before they have even left the nest.”
  • In 2022, 46,027 people died in vehicle crashes in the US—and 9,188 of those were pedestrians, a worrying development that researchers believe may be due to the ballooning size of American cars and SUVs, as well as the proliferation of screens and other distractions.
  • in 1965, the same year that Nader published his book, The New York Times reported that physicians were picketing the New York Auto Show demanding a reduction in tailpipe emissions, among other measures to protect human health from the scourge of the automobile.
  • It’s worth noting, too, that eliminating tailpipes altogether, as electric cars do, doesn’t get rid of pollution that harms human health, because electric cars don’t eliminate the spread of microplastics and other toxic chemicals. Scientists in California looking at plastic particles in ocean water believe that tire dust and fragments probably are the largest source of this pollution. Particles from brake wear contribute to high levels of magnetite in the environment that have been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease, one of the leading causes of death among older people globally.
  • giving people transit as an option can substantively improve their health. Japanese researchers took the opportunity to look at the data from a natural experiment that occurred when planners added a transit station to a line that passed through a rural area. Annual health care costs for people in the area affected by the change went down by more than US$600 per year in just four years. “This study’s results are consistent with previous studies suggesting that increased access to transit may increase physical activity among transit users and may lead to decreased healthcare expenditures,” the researchers wrote.
  • This at a time when Americans were being told that urban decline was an inevitable scourge that could be solved only by “slum clearance” to replace dwellings and business districts, often belonging to Black and brown people, and that “crime” was driving people away from urban life. (Appleyard and his team found that in fact more people cited concerns about traffic degrading their neighborhoods than about crime.)
  • Using data from Germany, where more than 50 percent of trips are taken by car, they concluded that “cycling rather than driving was positively associated with orientation towards the common good in all models…. These findings are significant for policy and planning because the benefits of cycling over driving are more profound and sustainable than previously thought.” In other words, cyclists make better neighbors. Why, then, do we make it so hard to choose biking and walking?
  • Stanford Open Policing Project showed that Black drivers were 20 percent more likely than white ones to be stopped, and that after a traffic stop, they were 1.5 to 2 times more likely to undergo a search for contraband and weapons—even though “[B]lack and Hispanic drivers were searched on the basis of less evidence than white drivers.” This is why we, and many other advocates, call for automated camera enforcement of moving violations like speed limits and red-light running (as well as passive controls on reckless driving, such as speed governors). Cameras don’t discriminate. Too often, cops do.
  • According to a police report, the young driver in this case “failed to control speed as he accelerated to intentionally blow black diesel smoke in the path of several bicyclists.” He hit six of them, leaving their bodies and bikes strewn across the roadway. All six miraculously survived, although several sustained life-altering injuries. The local district attorney closed the case without charging the kid, who graduated from high school a couple of years after the crash. Funny, who faces consequences and who doesn’t.
  • “I think there’s this real fear to give up that mobility access and to talk about life without driving,” said Anna Zivarts, an organizer and videographer who wrote a book called When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency
  • After a century of building more and more spots in the hopes of finding a place to put our cars wherever we stop driving them, we are left with anywhere from a billion to two billion parking spaces in the United States. No one is really sure how many; at the same time, everyone also seems to be sure that there could never be enough. Because while we’ve been striping all those parking spaces, we have also been building up an enormous sense of entitlement among drivers, who expect to be able to bring their vehicles up to the front door of whatever their destination might be.
  • a nine-mile (fourteen-kilometer) section of one of the most important highways in the United States was completely shut down. (Had 2,500 gallons of fuel spilled in the ocean, it would have been seen as an environmental disaster, but 2,500 gallons of fuel spilling in a major American city, lighting on fire, and choking the air with poisonous smoke was seen primarily as a major headache for drivers.)
  • Pandemic-era outdoor dining programs saved jobs, provided a COVID-weary populace with an opportunity to forget their worries at least for a moment, and had the knock-on effect of creating an entirely new constituency for better and higher uses of public space. Almost overnight, the people who supported rethinking how cities and towns manage parking weren’t just fanatical anti-car advocates or Brooklyn-based podcast hosts. They were conservative mayors applying their market-oriented philosophy to help the local economy. They were small business owners of all political stripes, many of whom would have previously scoffed at losing so much as a single parking space in front of or behind their establishments. Perhaps best of all, they were the countless restaurant patrons in cities and suburbs alike who suddenly understood that in the space it takes to store one or two cars, a dozen or more people can enjoy a meal.
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Inside

Posted on January 10, 2026 by twsobey

Title: Inside: One Woman’s Journey Through the Inside Passage

Author: Susan Marie Conrad

Completed: January 2026 (Full list of books)

Overview: My dad was at an Explorer’s Club meeting where the author was discussing this book. After, he asked her if she knows my father-in-law who is also in the local kayaking community. She paused for a moment before replying, “Yeah. Your son helped me break into my car.”

A few years ago, we were coming home from camping and stopped at the co-op in Mount Vernon. As we were getting ready to go, I noticed to women trying to get into a car with kayaks strapped to the top. I went over and talked with them for a bit. We quickly realized we knew some of the same people including my father-in-law. When they told us they were waiting for a locksmith to come open their car after locking their keys inside. Since the locksmith couldn’t give a clear ETA, I offered to help. We got the car open just as the locksmith pulled into the parking lot. They congratulated us and seemed genuinely happy that they didn’t have to open it.

When I hear Susan had written a book about paddling the Inside Passage, something I’ve wanted to do for years, I decided I had to read it. I’m still just as interested and might start looking at doing chunks of it before tackling the whole thing.

Highlights:

  • Within ten minutes, my body started to relax and my hands loosened their grip on the paddle shaft. Soon my hips settled deeper in the cockpit and the boat sat quiet and steady beneath me. “Hah!” I yelled across the water toward Bobbie. “She senses my fears—just like a horse. I stop fighting, she stops bucking!”
  • Common paddling wisdom asserts that it takes about 1,000 strokes to travel one mile in a sea kayak, in average conditions, without the assistance or impedance of wind or current. With this math, I would take approximately 1,200,000 strokes.
  • STUDYING THE CHARTS and reading everything related to the Inside Passage revealed what I considered four “rites of passage,” or crux areas I would encounter—four chunks of open water that I would paddle through that had the potential to be dangerous and that, quite frankly, scared the hell out of me. The first was Boundary Pass, which divides the San Juan Islands from their Canadian cousins, the Gulf Islands. The US-Canadian border runs through the middle of this four-mile, open-water crossing, which is smack in the center of a major shipping lane.
  • My second crux area, the Strait of Georgia, carves a gaping hole between Vancouver Island and the mainland, encompassing over a hundred miles of open water.
  • The third crux was Cape Caution, an ominous headland perched above the northern reaches of Vancouver Island that faced an uninterrupted sea horizon—all the way to Japan. Just uttering the place name conjured up images of scenes from The Perfect Storm. Appropriately named, the cape is exposed to everything the Pacific can and will dish out.
  • The fourth crux was where two large bodies of water collided at the Alaskan border: Dixon Entrance and Hecate Strait. Why they were referred to as “the punching bag of the Pacific Ocean” became apparent when I studied their immensity on my chart.
  • My awareness lifted higher to Washington state’s Mount Baker, standing proud and stark white on the mainland in its 10,781 feet of grandeur. The Great White Watcher, or Komo Kulshan, as the Salish call it, is one of the snowiest places in the world.
  • There are simply some places where oil tankers should never go—the Great Bear Rainforest is one of them.
  • The numbers scattered on top of the beige contours, indicating the height of the mountains less than one mile offshore, made me take notice as well: 2,730, 2,605, 2,765, 3,345 feet. At the point where I would enter it from the south, Grenville Channel was about a mile wide, with low-lying forested hills. Within ten miles, the channel would be contained between steep walls rising more than two thousand feet. Twenty miles further, the fjord narrowed considerably, squeezing more tightly in with vertiginous walls. Peaks over three thousand feet would tower above me, and sheer cliffs would plunge below me: my chart showed depths of nearly 1,200 feet in some areas. I was paddling through what had once been a river of ice, the obvious handiwork of the deepest Pleistocene glaciers.
  • I would stash my kayak as far away as possible from my camp, and stow my food bags and garbage inside the hatches at night, along with a triple-bagged handful of mothballs. A fellow kayak-adventurer had shared the tip of using the strong odor of mothballs to mask the odor of food, emphasizing they not touch the food, to avoid contamination. I figured he was still alive to write about it, so I dutifully shoved them in the hatch each night, hoping he knew what he was talking about.
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Practical Lock Picking

Posted on December 22, 2025 by twsobey

Title: Practical Lock Picking, A Physical Penetration Tester’s Training Guide

Author: Deviant Ollam

Completed: December 2025 (Full list of books)

Overview: I’ve been into lock picking for years. I don’t remember when I got started but it was probably around 2010. Back in 2016, I challenged students at One Stone to pick a lock in my Maker Space to win the prize inside the locker. Then in 2024 I gave a presentation to Washington CTE teachers about using lock picking to teach engineering.

Despite picking scores of locks over more than a decade, I still feel there’s a lot to learn. This book reviewed a lot of what I’ve learned already and helped me learn a few new things. If you’re just getting started picking locks, this book will give you the basics, but there are so many other resources available to do that in a shorter format. That said, this goes over the basics and dives a lot deeper than the shorter ones. If you know you want to get into this hobby, this book provides everything you need to get from knowing nothing to knowing how to pick fairly advanced locks.

Highlights:

  • Remember, it’s not a lock’s job to hold something shut. You can easily prevent someone from, say, accessing a particular room of your house by applying brick and mortar to the doorway. That will surely keep unwanted people out, right? What’s the problem with such a solution? The answer, of course, is that such a solid wall of stone isn’t the best thing to have if you’re also concerned with allowing authorized people in. That is what locks attempt to do for us…they assist in giving otherwise robust security a means of quickly, easily, and reliably opening when necessary.
  • our deadbolts, our padlock shackles, and other similar hardware that actually provide the means by which things remain shut. Our locks are mechanisms that simply trigger the release of said deadbolts and shackles at (we hope) the appropriate time.
  • It is a common misconception that pins (particularly the key pins) within a lock can come from the manufacturer in a wide array of varying sizes. In fact, the key pin sizes (and the corresponding depths of the bitting cuts on the blade of the key) only appear in regular, evenly-spaced intervals. I have never encountered a manufacturer who utilized more than nine or ten distinct sizes of key pin in this simple design of lock (and thus, their keys only featured nine possible distinct depths of cut). Many manufacturers fabricate their whole line of lock products with as little as five or six possible bitting depths.
  • consider for a moment the small points of metal that protrude upward from the blade in between the flat lands of each bitting cut. These are a natural result of the size and shape of the cutting wheel and the distances by which each bitting cut are separated from one another. The resultant “points” that remain in between the cuts on the blade of a key can provide a satisfying series of perceived “clicks” as the blade rides into the keyway (as each pin stack passes across the ridges), but the points themselves are not a crucial element of the lock’s easy and successful operation.
  • Most locks, if you look closely, will exhibit at least a few signs of such imperfection. Many products, in fact, will be glaringly deficient in their quality control.
  • If you are starting to learn lockpicking and it isn’t going well, the odds are overwhelming that the problem has to do with your use of the tension tool… specifically, too much pressure being applied to it.
  • Occasionally, the terms “edge of the plug” and “center of the plug” will be substituted for “standard” and “flat”, respectively. Such terms refer to where in the plug the tools are inserted, as you will soon see. (As always, I’ll point out here that I greatly prefer these terms over any designations that are region-specific. Some people will make reference to “top of the keyway” and “bottom of the keyway” but, for reasons that I have discussed in Chapter 1, I try to break people out of the habit of using those sorts of names.)
  • see how high you can comfortably lift it in the direction of the pin stacks. You may be able to observe that at certain positions you are rather limited in your lifting range (Figure 3.14), while other times you can reach very far up beyond the keyway (Figure 3.15). You are feeling the pin chambers and the flat spaces between them. Bear in mind, you should never concern yourself with lifting the pins beyond the “top height” that you can reach in-between pin stacks (the height felt in Figure 3.14), since a normal operating key in a typical pin tumbler lock would never need (or indeed, be able to) lift up beyond the height of the keyway.
  • Two exceedingly different-length pins cannot usually occupy chambers directly next to one another. This is because cuts on the blade of a key must be made at specific, gently-sloping angles.
  • Many times, it’s far more efficient and a great deal easier to bypass locks instead of picking them. The term bypassing does not refer to the act of, say, finding a particular door to be locked and then going through a window instead. No, bypassing is the act of triggering the release of a locking mechanism without manipulating the pins or combination mechanism in the traditional “picking” sense.
  • Interestingly, homemade shims fabricated from thin metals like beverage can aluminum are often the best tool for the job on dual-latching padlocks. Factory-made metal shims are often much thicker, which can result in difficulty during insertion and twisting. Some locks simply don’t have enough “wiggle room” in between the shackle and the lock body to accommodate two thick steel shims. The thin aluminum shims often fit into these sorts of crevices with ease, however.
  • Often, it is possible to lock a doorknob or handle, but this merely prevents the knob itself from turning, it does nothing to secure the latch itself. As anyone who has watched old spy-themed TV shows knows, slipping thin material (on television and in films a credit card is a popular device for this purpose) into the crack near the doorjamb can often result in the latch becoming disengaged temporarily. This is known as “loiding” and many times it works just as quickly as viewers are led to believe.
  • One of the most common modifications (one which I perform upon every new tubular lockpicking tool that I acquire) is the removal of a “reset washer” which is often installed by default.
  • I am often asked exactly what the best setting is for this adjustable collar component on a tubular pick tool. Like many aspects of lockpicking, there is no single hard-and-fast rule upon which you can rely… but I have found what I believe to be a decent “average” standard that you can at least use as a benchmark. Try the following… unscrew the adjustable ring somewhat on your tubular pick. Now, using just a single finger, spin it back in the “tightening” direction until it stops. From this point of slight friction, turn the ring an additional quarter-turn tighter. That is a healthy baseline..
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Hell Yeah or No

Posted on November 23, 2025 by twsobey

Title: Hell Yeah or No what’s worth doing

Author: Derek Sivers

Completed: November 2025 (Full list of books)

Overview: For many years, I’ve been interested in the writings of Derek Sivers. It goes back far enough I don’t have any idea where I first heard about him, but the idea of sharing all my book notes came from him. I’ve had several of his books on my to read list for a while and when he announced they were free for a week on his website I decided now was the time. (I was going to get it from the library for free already but this was just the prompt I needed to get to it).

Reading through this book, there were many ideas that I completely agreed with and several that I disagreed with, but each idea was conveyed clearly and succinctly which encouraged me deeply think about my views and understand why I felt that way. Knowing what I do about Derek, I suspect he would be much happier knowing that he made me consider my own views far more than he would be if I just accepted his which is somewhat uncommon these days. Either way, this was a quick read and I’d recommend reading it when you have time to ponder.

Highlights:

  • And then if you stopped doing all these things you’re doing just for the money or the attention, what would be left? Who would you be if you didn’t do these things? If you were completely satiated, then what? After an understandable period of relaxing, what would you pursue? Don’t say “sit around and do nothing,” because that’s still just relaxing. I mean after that, when you’re ready to be useful to others again.
  • No matter what you tell the world or tell yourself, your actions reveal your real values. Your actions show you what you actually want. There are two smart reactions to this: Stop lying to yourself, and admit your real priorities. Start doing what you say you want to do, and see if it’s really true.
  • Stop fooling yourself. Be honest about what’s past and what’s present. Retiring outdated titles lets you admit what you’re really doing now. And if you don’t like the idea of losing your title, then do something about it! This goes for titles like “leader,” “risk-taker,” and “good friend,” too.
  • If you’re not feeling “hell yeah!” then say no. Most of us have lives filled with mediocrity. We said yes to things that we felt half-hearted about.
  • Though it’s good to say yes when you’re starting out, wanting any opportunity, or needing variety, it’s bad to say yes when you’re overwhelmed, over-committed, or need to focus.
  • I rebel against anything that feels like addiction. When I hear myself saying “I need this,” I want to challenge that dependency and prove my independence.
  • Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me that “the standard pace is for chumps” — that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school.
  • During my last unmotivated funk, I realized that because nothing is exciting me, that means nothing is exciting me more than this boring necessary stuff. And since I don’t want to waste my inspired times on brainless work, this is a perfect time to do those dull tasks.
  • Imagine what it’s like to be the silver medalist. If you’d been just one second faster, you could have won the gold! Damn! So close! Damn damn damn! Full of envy, you’d keep comparing yourself to the gold winner. Now imagine what it’s like to be the bronze medalist. If you’d been just one second slower, you wouldn’t have won anything! Awesome! You’d be thrilled that you’re officially an Olympic medalist and get to stand on the winner’s podium. Comparing up versus comparing down: Your happiness depends on where you’re focusing.
  • The problem is taking any one person’s advice too seriously. Ideally, asking advice should be like echolocation. Bounce ideas off of all of your surroundings, and listen to all the echoes to get the whole picture.
  • Don’t be a donkey. You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience. If you’re thirty now and have six different directions you want to pursue, then you can do each one for ten years, and have done all of them by the time you’re ninety. It seems ridiculous to plan to age ninety when you’re thirty, right? But it’s probably coming, so you might as well take advantage of it.
  • Ninety-three percent of drivers say they are safer-than-average drivers. When I learned this, it shook my soul. At first, like almost everybody, I thought, “Yes, but I really am above average!” Then I realized I was doing it again. So I decided to gamble on the opposite. Now I just assume I’m below average. It serves me well. I listen more. I ask a lot of questions. I’ve stopped thinking others are stupid. I assume most people are smarter than me. To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning.
  • I had collected 232 unbroken sand dollar shells. I put them all out in the sun to dry, amazed at my good luck. I bragged to my family. I tried to think of all the things I could do with 232 sand dollars. After two days the excitement wore off. I realized I was never going to do anything with them. Now it was just stupid for me to keep all of these sand dollars sitting there doing nothing. The excitement was in finding them, not keeping them.
  • What do you hate not doing? What makes you feel depressed, annoyed, or like your life has gone astray if you don’t do it enough? Answers to this double-negative question seem to be better indicators of what’s really worth doing.
  • I felt ready to do something new, so I started to learn. But the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew and how dumb-lucky I had been. I continued learning until I felt like an absolute idiot.
  • Learning without doing is wasted. If I don’t use what I learn, then it was pointless! How horrible to waste those hundreds of hours I spent learning, and not turn it into action.
  • Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
  • Many people learn only in their first third of life, so schools don’t teach unlearning.
  • the differences among men, and the differences among women, are much bigger than the differences between men and women. So instead, to compensate for your tendency to exaggerate those differences, just assume that men and women are the same. They’re not the same, but if you follow this rule, your thinking will be closer to correct than not.
  • You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives. With effort, you could do this from the comfort of home. But the most effective way to shake things up is to move across the world. Pick a place that’s most unlike what you know, and go. This keeps you in a learning mindset. Previously mindless habits, like buying groceries, now keep your mind open, alert, and noticing new things.
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The 99% Invisible City

Posted on November 16, 2025 by twsobey

Title: The 99% Invisible City A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

Author: Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

Completed: November 2025 (Full list of books)

Overview: I’ve been listening to the 99% Invisible podcast for over a decade and when they released this book, I had to read it. When I got it, hardcover was the only option and my system for taking notes works best with ebooks so when they announced that we’ve hit the fifth anniversary of its release, I decided it was time to revisit it. Much of it I remembered but several of the stories felt new again.

The podcast helped me realize that everything can be interesting if you dig deep enough into it. This book dives into several topics that were more difficult to cover without visuals and gives insights into what’s happening just below the surface of the city. Since reading it, I’ve noticed several Thomassons and started paying attention to the different colors of paint on the roads while running and biking.

Highlights:

  • On city streets today, you can see the spectrum of safety colors that have been formalized and revised over the decades by the American National Standards Institute: RED: electric power lines, cables, and conduit ORANGE: telecommunications, alarm and signal lines YELLOW: gaseous or combustive materials including natural gas, oil, petroleum, and steam GREEN: sewers and drain lines BLUE: potable water PURPLE: reclaimed water, irrigation, or slurry lines PINK: temporary markings, unidentified facilities, or known unknowns WHITE: proposed excavation areas, limits, or routes
  • Even though they are generally positioned at eye level directly adjacent to entryways and are adorned with reflective red stripes, Knox Boxes are easy to overlook. Like Kleenex, Dumpster, or the once-trademarked escalator, Knox Box is the common brand name associated with a generic thing: in this case, the rapid entry access boxes affixed to all kinds of urban architecture. When disaster strikes, these urban safes go from being functionally invisible to highly essential in an instant. Seconds count in an emergency, so getting inside a building quickly and safely is critical. Knox Boxes offer a simple solution: when emergency personnel respond to a call and arrive on site, they use a master key or code to unlock a rapid entry access box and retrieve its contents. Inside a typical box is another key or code for accessing that specific building.
  • Genpei Akasegawa noticed an oddly useless staircase alongside a building. A few steps led up to a landing, but there was no door at the top where he would have reasonably expected to see one. What struck him as particularly curious, though, was that the railing running along these stairs to nowhere had been recently repaired. Despite serving no function, the stairs were apparently being kept in working order.
  • Thomassons are also delightful to find, so one could argue that the association isn’t as negative as it might seem at first. Thomassons are treasures waiting to be discovered and analyzed—whether or not they are art, they are an intriguing lens through which to look at and understand change over time.
  • Meanwhile, fake metal trees were put up next to a popular bridge in Moscow to give people an alternative place to attach locks. Approaches like this echo the treatment of graffiti in some cities where special mural-making walls are presented as alternatives to illegal vandalism. Like kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland or sticking a wad of gum on a rather gross wall in Seattle, putting up a lock may seem like a novel lark, but when a lot of people line up to do the same thing, such traditions can lose their romantic appeal.
  • Converted cannons can still be found sticking out of streets and sidewalks around Britain, often serving as traffic barriers or survey markers. Around the world, people pass by cannon bollards all the time—these stalwart remnants can be found shielding building corners in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and protecting pedestrians from cars along the sidewalks of Havana, Cuba.
  • There are five key principles of good flag design according to Kaye, many of which can also be applied to all kinds of other designs: (1) keep it simple, (2) use meaningful symbolism, (3) use two or three basic colors, (4) no lettering or seals, and (5) be distinctive or be related. In other words, a good city flag should be simple but memorable, easy to recall, and usable at different scales.
  • “if you had a good city flag you would have a banner for people to rally under to face those more important things.” Bad city flags go unused, ceding visual branding territory to sports teams and corporate interests, which come and go. When city flags are done well, they are remixable, adaptable, and powerful long-term tools for civic engagement as well as sources of local pride.
  • Marr explained that he had read it on a plaque prominently placed right outside the building where he was speaking and that his motto is to “always read the plaque.” It’s a mantra that has an obvious literal meaning, but it’s also another way of reminding ourselves to constantly be on the lookout for stories embedded in our built environments.
  • In James Loewen’s book Lies Across America, the author points out that historical markers often say as much or more about the era they were dedicated in as they do about the specific times, places, and people they are ostensibly there to commemorate. Many markers in the American South that whitewash slavery are very much products of the turn of the twentieth century when the backlash against progressive Reconstruction was in full force.
  • The vast majority of the graphic designs crowding your visual field are advertisements. It’s probably okay to ignore most of them.
  • business leaders with vested interests in their ad space fought back. Corporate lobbyists argued the ban would be bad for the economy and compromise real estate values. They also tried to appeal directly to everyday citizens whose taxes might have to pay for removing old posts that would no longer be supporting billboards. There was even an argument that illuminated ads helped people to safely navigate the city streets at night. Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world’s biggest outdoor-advertising companies, went so far as to sue the city, claiming the ban was unconstitutional.
  • The Civil War’s unprecedented death toll also helped inspire another great innovation of the US Postal Service: home delivery. It was too painful and personal for mothers and wives to receive news of the death of a loved one in public post offices, so mail carriers started delivering letters directly to families so they could read the bad news in the privacy of their own homes.
  • Presented with wide open spaces, drivers will go faster. Intentionally closing off space by adding trees and other landscaping along the side of the road may make a driver a little more anxious but also more cautious, which can in turn make roadways that much safer for everyone.
  • Peter Norton recounts in his book Fighting Traffic, cars began to be viewed as harbingers of death. One newspaper cartoon of the era depicted a car as a toothed monster being worshiped on a pedestal, framing it as a modern Moloch—a polemical automotive-age resurrection of an ancient biblical deity associated with child sacrifice.
  • There are many variants of traffic-calming designs out there, including pinch points, chicanes, gateways, and various other kinds of raised pavements and curb extensions. Suffice it to say that urban designers have tried a lot of tricks to slow drivers down.
  • When it comes down to it, the trust that people put in the security of most entryways is now once again less about the lock itself and more about faith in a broader social order that respects the division between public space and private property.
  • Following Otis’s death in 1861, his sons iterated on their father’s invention and began marketing it more aggressively to the public. They targeted hotels, convincing them that with a fancy elevator in place, rich guests could quickly ascend to the top floors and escape the noise and bustle on the first level. Historically, the ground floor was the most accessible and thus the most desirable, but it didn’t have to be, they argued.
  • London has used a roundabout and statue at Charing Cross as a central point of reference to measure certain distances. Metropolitan police initially served only neighborhoods within a radius of twelve miles from Charing Cross, and hansom cab drivers were obliged to take fares only up to a fixed distance from that central point. Today, London cab drivers are still tested on their knowledge of an area six miles in any direction from Charing Cross.
  • Some of these places are clearly designed, like gores or berms, but they are often overlooked. Most of these spaces, though, are leftovers in planned areas that were created incidentally through the process of car-centric urban development.
  • For the markers left behind in San Francisco, though, this wasn’t the end of the story. Many individual headstones from old graveyards ended up being reused as building material around the city. Intact headstones and fragments of them can be found all over San Francisco. Some wound up at Ocean Beach, arrayed to reduce coastal erosion, while others ended up in Buena Vista Park, lining trails and gutters.
  • There are numerous design strategies and technologies aimed at keeping these feathered nonfriends from occupying urban spaces and outdoor surfaces, including spikes, wires, netting, and even miniature electrified fences. Such innovations largely fail to do what they are designed to do, though. They mostly just move pigeons around, pushing the birds to adjacent structures.
  • It was Modernists like Le Corbusier who favored rectilinear steel, glass, and concrete forms that in turn made cities perfect places to skateboard. “Modernists were the ones that reinterpreted a bench in a park as a slab of granite,” Bracali notes, adding that this design paradigm involved a turn away from “flowing landscapes [with] grassy areas” toward “paved open plaza spaces,” which produced great surfaces, ledges, and edges for skateboarders.
  • Given the long history and modern prevalence of defensive designs, the outrage and days of protests against Tesco’s spikes took the company by surprise. Subsequent criticism of anti-homeless spikes around London reached a crescendo when then-mayor Boris Johnson called them “ugly, self-defeating and stupid,” which arguably also describes certain British prime ministers.
  • In the 1700s and 1800s, revolutionaries would smash them in order to move around more freely in the shadows. During the French Revolution, the tables were turned and some lampposts were used as gallows for hanging officials and aristocrats, leading to the French phrase “À la lanterne!” (“To the lamppost”), a call to execution akin to “String ’em up” in English.
  • When the sweeping Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was hung up in the House of Representatives, disabled demonstrators left their wheelchairs and crawled up the marble steps of the Capitol building to make sure the bill was passed by physically demonstrating the challenges they faced in a built environment that excluded them.
  • Mariño came to see bicycle rights as civil rights. For him, cycling embodied individuality as well as “women’s rights, urban mobility, simplicity, the new urbanism, and, of course, environmental consciousness.” Having also been exposed to protest culture in the United States, Mariño organized local cyclists to put up signs and get permission to temporarily close two major streets, leaving them open for cyclists and pedestrians. Thus, the first Ciclovía was born, and from there, its influence spread. Four decades later, on Sundays and public holidays, a vast interconnected network of Bogotá’s streets is shut down to automotive traffic, creating an extensive “paved park” for runners, skaters, and cyclists.
  • These weekly Ciclovía events draw as many as two million people out into the streets—about a third of the city’s population—to enjoy the seventy-plus miles of repurposed road space.
  • The problem, as he sees it, is that citizens are used to cities being car-centric. “People have internalized that that is how cities look and so assume that’s normal . . . that the streets are dedicated to cars.”
  • “We must first remember that all cities were car-free little more than a century ago,” writes Carfree Cities author J. H. Crawford. “Cars were never necessary in cities and in many respects they worked against the fundamental purpose of cities: to bring many people together in a space where social, cultural and economic synergies could develop. Because cars require so much space for movement and parking, they work against this objective [by causing] cities to expand in order to provide the land cars need.”
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