Pretty had my flight the whole day. The experience in general was pretty strange—the flights more empty than not, which made for a really relaxing, chill flight experience. After I landed in SF, there was a CDC procedure thing, which was pretty surreal. After I got home, I showered, talked with parents for a bit, and just slept.
I was able to be somewhat productive on the flight—I finished this book called “How to Argue with a Racist”, which was this blend of discussion on race and genetics and basically argued why scientifically, racism doesn’t make sense (in case you didn’t know that already). In general throughout the book, there was very much a vibe of shutting down broad proclamations that people (racist extremists, for example) were making using genetics, with the author arguing throughout that the information we get from genetics isn’t enough to say pretty much anything definitive. In a narrow sense it’s a pretty boring argument, but it was perspective-widening in that it helped me learn about the trends that genetics is taking in the 21st century, and how much we simply do not know or understand. There is a world out there of stuff to learn, which makes me happy.
The second book I read (haven’t finished, probably will today) is called “The Shortest History of Germany”. It is what it sounds, a history of Germany, but I didn’t realize how poorly the history of Germany was taught in world history. It’s like European history for me a was a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, and as I kept reading the book, one by one, each of the jigsaw pieces got filled. I haven’t finished reading all of it yet—I’ve only got through 0-1500AD, but most of the book (70%) talks about 16th-century Germany and onwards. I’m excited to read it!
uid: 202003190000 tags: #journal #edinburgh