Links, April 2022

April has been busy and changeable – mirroring the weather, I suppose – I began a new role at Fei Labs and am getting settled. I wrote three pieces on this blog: something technical on HD wallets and network switching, something equally technical about Safari iOS extensions, and the aforementioned notes on the t11s episode of Solidity Fridays.

Notwithstanding my own contributions, this was a good month for interesting reading. The Star Builders is a very accessible and fast read on the why and how of nuclear fusion. It’s a contribution to the – I think underrated – genre of “here’s a plausible pathway to some major scientific discovery, and a set of good reasons to be optimistic we’re on that pathway” science writing. One for the techno-optimists’ bookshelves.

Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, Sea of Tranquility, is out, and is splendid. I found some of the science fiction elements a little bit hamfisted, and this is definitely Mandel finding her voice and her groove. But it’s worth reading, especially if you’ve read Station Eleven (one of the best novels I’ve read in the last few years) and The Glass Hotel.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics was enjoyable, too. Best supplemented by something more technical, I think.

Finally, I just finished London Under by Peter Ackroyd. I loved Ackroyd’s biography of Sir Thomas More, but hadn’t read any of his other books. He’s an excellent writer. There were a handful of places where I thought he made non-sequiturs – the sort of non-sequiturs quite common in a certain style of proto-academic culture writing – but I’m being really picky.

The excellent Noah Smith did an interview with the excellent David Roberts on climate change, climate tech, climate activism, writing in public. Both combative and thoughtful throughout.

A challenging post on child abuse videos and a global coordinated effort to bust a specific site and its clients. A long and difficult read but very worthwhile.

Something to keep an eye on – an economics lab imaginging systems through science-fiction.

In case you’ve woken in a sweat, panicked that you’re not subscribed to enough substacks (subsstack?), here’s a list of good, subject-specific newsletters.

Very very good and comprehensive and thorough guide to direct carbon renewal. We need to do more here; Stripe and others have launched an advanced market commitment to help.

Stripe have also launched crypto payments.

The beginning of the conversation, not the end of it, but some reflections on SpaceX’s technologies and warfare.

Really enjoyed this article on the urban history and development of London’s planned and, blisfully, abandoned Ringways, the persistence of political structures and the perversity of political incentives, and the pitfalls of top-down urban planning. Works in Progress is putting out a lot of excellent stuff.

On top of my normal reading, I listened to three audiobooks this month, all spacey or science-related content. Another for the techno-optimist bookshelf, The Case for Space by Zubrin was good fun, opinionated, rigorous and rather inspiring.

Forces of Nature, from the same authorship of The Planets (mentioned last month), was also splendid. The narrator is truly excellent.

Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965 by French and Burgess is part of a broader series of histories on various topics in spaceflight. The whole series is pretty good, with only a few exceptions, and this isn’t one of them. Meticulous and narrative-driven, I learnt a lot about Gagarin, Leonov, the Mercury Seven, and the politics that made it all happen. I’ll be continuing this series.

I also finally got a Calendly set up, so if you’d like to chat, feel free to book in a call.