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A book about volition, equal significance, and excellence. Easily my favorite book I’ve read recently, and a shoe-in for my top books list.

The concept of the book is that the goddess Athene attempts, as an experiment, to create Plato’s Just City according to Plato’s republic. She and Apollo choose to participate in the city. The book is about what happens next.

The internet describes it as a science fiction book, which isn’t wrong, but also isn’t how I would introduce it because I think it over emphasizes specific aspects of the book at the expense of others. Sort of like saying Hamlet is a play about the Danish Monarchy. It’s not wrong but it’s also not exactly right.

I won’t spoil the plot any further, but I will say that I have fallen deeply in love with several of the characters in this book (agape, not eros).

This book gave me the sensation all my favorite books have given me: a relentless need to finish them and a panging sense of loss, knowing that I will never be able to read them for the first time again. For me, if reading is about anything, it’s about finding a book that makes me feel this way again.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the book that reminds me of what I want to remember most from it:

On my temple in Delphi there are two words written: Know Thyself. It’s good advice. Know yourself. You are worth knowing. Examine your life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Be aware that other people have equal significance. Give them space to make their own choices, and let their choices count as you want them to let your choices count. Remember that excellence has no stopping point and keep pursuing it. Make art that can last and that says something nobody else can say. Live the best life you can and become the best self you can. You cannot know which of your actions is the lever that will move worlds. Not even Necessity knows all ends. Know yourself.

Special thanks to Uri for introducing this book to me. I loved this book!

My column for State Affairs about why Georgia should implement open primary, ranked choice voting.

The current system, where any election goes to a runoff when a candidate doesn’t clear 50% of the vote, is a burden on voters, the State, and the candidates for office. 

The state legislature should act now to fix this by implementing open primary, ranked choice voting statewide for a fairer, more responsive, and more efficient electoral system.

This might sound complicated at first, but really it’s quite simple. An open primary means all candidates, regardless of party, compete on equal footing to be included in the general election. Ranked choice means that in the general election, voters rank their candidates in order of preference. Instant runoff means that if a winner doesn’t emerge in the first count, then a runoff is held instantly to determine the winner, rather than holding an additional election. 

Structural changes like this are an underway to improve the quality of our democracy. I do not mean this in the sense of “put the finger on the scales for a particular party I like right now” but in the sense of “make sure that the parties we have 10 years from now are the best version they can be.”

I’m late to link to this, but here are my Book Thoughts on Liftoff by Eric Berger, which is about the early years of SpaceX:

I picked up this book to better understand how big leaps forward in hard tech innovation happen, but as I got to the end, including the annecdote above, all I could think about is whether or not history is contingent.

I didn’t put this in the Book Thoughts post because it somehow felt out of place, but here are the factors that seemed most essential to SpaceX’s success (not necessarily in order):

• Have a big mission. This helps to pull in talent in a way that smaller projects don’t

• Be as iterative as possible in taking on technical challenges. Your speed of failure is inversely correlated to your speed of learning. In a way, the culture of tight deadlines at SpaceX helped with this because it forced the organization to learn from reality rather than debate.

• Either buy things off the shelf or make them yourself. If you try and find a middle ground between off the shelf and fully customized, you risk getting neither of the benefits.

• Early customers are in many ways investors. They need to be treated as such, since they’re likely to not get the full benefit of your company existing.

One third of Gen Z and Millenials consider themselves lonely or extremely lonely. For men, this figure rises to 41%.

This comes via Dan Frommer at the New Consumer. I think this is an underrated problem that our society doesn’t really prepare people for. We talk about having good eating or financial habits, but almost never about having good social habits.

Somewhat related: my thoughts from reading Bowling Alone.