Dear Anyone #2 - October 5, 2018

Book I'm Reading: Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. Normally I avoid anything that looks like a business or self-help book. This book was recommended to me by a colleague at a different university, so I felt obligated to at least read it. I did so thinking I would give it the yeoman's effort and then give it up about 1/2 way through. It's been more interesting than I expected. The folksy writing gives it the air of a transcribed podcast (not too surprising, I think). But, I was also looking for justification (to myself) for less "phone time." It turns out, in the grand scheme of things, I'm actually not that bad with my phone; I thought I was a "heavy user" but it turns out I'm barely on the heavy side of average.

Best Thing I Read This Week: The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase - Dani Grant and Nick Grossman. A great article about blockchain protocol development. This feeds into my theories on blockchain governance that we (software developers) typically think of things like governance as being an application-level issue. But recent problems with security, and with building robust usability in blockchains themselves, have many experts thinking security and governance need to be built into the protocol itself.

Best Music I Listened to This Week: I went to the We Were Promised Jetpacks show at The Majestic Theater in Madison last week. The opener was a lady/band called Jenn Champion. Openers can be really hit or miss; she was a grand slam.