Book completed (yesterday)

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, by C. Thi Nyugen. The author is a philosopher who studies both games and data metrics, and here he brings them both together in a very readable book. He explains why games – or any sort of recreational activity with rules and expectations that limit your choices – are great, but whenever we create systems for combining a whole lot of information using rules, etc., it also ends up limiting our choices. There are many times when we want our choices to be limited, like if we’re trying to diagnose a sick kid quickly and optimize our treatment for them. However, as a society we don’t want our choices narrowed in these ways – always prioritizing things that can be easily measured over quality and values. Lots to think about! He does an excellent job of writing for the general public, and although I can tell that he’s more interested in drinking to excess than I am, I also get the impression that he’d be a very fun person to know.

Very full

At this rate I’m going to gain weight! I had the Thai dinner last night, and tonight we celebrated DG’s birthday (a big one!) by joining him and AA for dinner at Placido’s, an Italian restaurant downtown near Skinner’s Butte. I hadn’t been there before, but J had been there once, and it’s one of DG’s favorites. I was a little apprehensive, as my digestion still wasn’t sure about yesterday’s meal, but everything went great and I was so happy.

That was at 7:30 pm, and J had also gone out to dinner at 5 pm – a retired coworker likes to organize gatherings from their work group, and he joined them at the North Bank, where he just had brownies, saving “dinner” for the later event. I hope he’s able to sleep okay with all that food in there.

As for me, I very happily did cozy things all afternoon and on into the evening. It’s been raining steadily, and I made good progress on some work. I’m hoping for more of that tomorrow.