Notes on The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz

Along with Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, this was one of the books that individuals I respect recommended during Trump’s presidency. I finally got around to reading it.

Milosz, a Polish poet and writer, wrote this in 1950, and he draws on his experience living in a Soviet controlled country. I came into this wanting to learn about authoritarianism and the way individuals psychologically accept or even embrace this. The book does address this by profiling four writers, describing the (mostly psychological) path they took to work for the Soviet-controlled government.

But their journey’s didn’t stand out to me. What stood out more is what I learned about Soviet-style Marxism, which I guess could be described as Stalinism? (Or Leninism?) While I don’t know enough about Marx, Communism, or Socialism to make precise distinctions between them, some differences did come to light, and this interested me the most.

I want to use this thread as a way to crystallize my thoughts and absorb the book.

A Critique of Bonhoeffer’s Notion of Stupidity and How This Relates to America in 2021

I saw a video on a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison. If you don’t know, Bonhoeffer was a German Christian, who was sent to prison after an attempt to kill Hitler. The passage in the video makes the claim that a stupid person is worse than an evil person. While watching the video, and later reading the passage, I found myself disagreeing at several remarks. I want to explore and explain the remarks I disagreed with. (Note: I haven’t read Bonhoeffer’s letters, so it’s possible that I’m missing important information regarding his ideas on this matter. Indeed, I’m not entirely clear what he means in some sections of the passage. Also, I’m unfamiliar with the youtube channel that posted this, “Sprouts,” so I don’t know their agenda or reliability.)

Here is the video I watched:

Neutrinos and Other Matters Involving Particle Physics

I’m current reading Project Hail Mary, written by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian, which was made into a movie I enjoyed quite a bit. Like The Martian, real science is at the heart of Project Hail Mary–specifically, science used to solve problems the protagonist must solve. Overall, I’m enjoying the book, but there are moments when I don’t understand the science or scientific terms. One example of this involved neutrinos.

To gain a better understanding of neutrinos, I just watched a NOVA episode (“Unknown Particles”) on it, as well as Standard Model in general. I’m going to use thread to write some thoughts, “thinking out loud” as it were. Oh, I also watched this TED-Ed video clip that was helpful. (Hopefully, TED Ed is a reliable resource; for what it’s worth, It seems consistent with what I learned in the NOVA episode.)

Notes on The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski

Joe Posnanski, who is one of the best writers about baseball I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a ton), serialized a countdown of his 100 greatest baseball players in The Athletic this past spring. I’ve been meaning to share here the great Phil Niekro story he tells about Niekro’s 300th victory but boiling it down to a reasonable length was a challenge I wasn’t up for.

Here is the whole thing in one book, released yesterday. The publisher describes it as “Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious.” Of course I preordered it. The only hesitation was whether I wanted the physical book (I did) or would settle for the ebook for practical reasons (I did; practicality won out this time, which is an odd thing for me to say about myself).

Notes to come. I especially encourage you to wait for #83. Phil Niekro. 🙂