Sarah Schumacher

A must-read for every parent, and honestly, every human. This was a library copy I got 1/3 into before I bought it for my personal library. There are exercises for all kid age ranges that I will be referring back to, and it's definitely a book worth a second reading.

This book is on my ‘Every Human Should Read List' for a reason. It feels like the kind of emotionally intelligent conversations we should have been taught but never heard. It's not easy, but it's eye-opening.

A short read on the gift economy; an expansion of an essay, and an always-welcome reminder of how backwards American society is when it comes to human flourishing.

Fascinating journey of a journalist trying to find the smoking gun of the crypto stablecoin Tether. He reveals a lot about the industry as a whole: crypto bros, NFTs, lost savings, scammers, and the real-world harms caused by crypto (evidently Tether is the money dispenser of choice for scammers in Cambodia who entrap then enslave people… if you get one of those “accidental” texts turned crypto-scam, it could be someone being held against their will). You also learn about a crypto-earning phone game that went viral in the Philippines and made money for people… for a while, many of whom lost their savings when it crashed.

Well-written, with quite a few satisfying turns of phrase. There’s a nagging feeling the narrative wasn’t tight enough, and I think that’s because he began with a friend bragging about money he’d made, while the author’s hunch was SCAM ALERT… and yet people are making money. He set it out to prove the hunch right. The collapse might have done that for him, except that it had little impact on the primary target of his investigation: Tether. So there isn’t any closure about what they’re actually doing. Time will tell, but I became invested in his search for transparency.

A good read for anyone curious/uninformed about crypto brotopia as it touches on so many different aspects of it.

While I'm a very experienced cook, I'm not one of those people who's into cookbooks. However, I am into learning and improving on everything I know, and Samin will definitely make you a better cook. The first half of the book is a crash course into why good food tastes good. It's approachable, enjoyable, and as a designer I was familiar with Wendy MacNaughton's fantastic illustrations, so that was a big plus. Samin's reasoning for using illustrations, vs the ubiquitous mouth-watering food photos, is so you don't get a preconceived idea of what “perfect” looks like. I think that really captures the spirit of why she wrote this book.

There are illustrated pull out charts with regional ingredient groupings and such. If you've ever wanted to learn how to cook without memorizing a recipe, this (cook)book is definitely where you should start.

The second half consists of actual recipes, which I'm sure will be great once I get around to trying them. Several of the techniques are already in my repertoire so I can vouch — everyone should learn how to dry brine and spatchcock poultry, stat.