Review: A Brief History of Intelligence

 A Brief History of Intelligence is a surprisingly good book, given that its title purported to also be about AI. Rather than being even a little bit about AI, the book is actually an evolutionary approach to 

intelligence, and it covers its topic really well, even innovatively. The approach is to discuss the rise of human-like intelligence by following the taxonomy and evolutionary history, and the approach is particularly good.

For instance, the rise of brains is tied to an organism's ability to steer and move:

The first brain and the bilaterian body share the same initial evolutionary purpose: They enable animals to navigate by steering. (kindle loc 1046)

Surprisingly, he notes modern ailments of depression can be observed even in relatively primitive intelligences such as a nematode:

 If a nematode is exposed to thirty minutes of a negative stimulus (such as dangerous heat, freezing cold, or toxic chemicals), at first it will exhibit the hallmarks of the acute stress response—it will try to escape, and stress hormones will pause bodily functions. But after just two minutes of no relief from this inescapable stressor, nematodes do something surprising: they give up. The worm stops moving; it stops trying to escape and just lies there. This surprising behavior is, in fact, quite clever: spending energy escaping is worth the cost only if the stimulus is in fact escapable. Otherwise, the worm is more likely to survive if it conserves energy by waiting. Evolution embedded an ancient biochemical failsafe to ensure that an organism did not waste energy trying to escape something that was inescapable; this failsafe was the early seed of chronic stress and depression. (kindle loc 1046)

Then there's the rise of reinforcement learning, and the problem of temporal credit assignment when it comes to learning. When something succeeds, how do you know which of the things you did in the past was what gave rise to the success! It turns out that reinforcement learning, where you co-evolve both an actor and a critic, is what allows temporal credit assignment to make learning possible in animals:

 Dopamine is not a signal for reward but for reinforcement. As Sutton found, reinforcement and reward must be decoupled for reinforcement learning to work. To solve the temporal credit assignment problem, brains must reinforce behaviors based on changes in predicted future rewards, not actual rewards. This is why animals get addicted to dopamine-releasing behaviors despite it not being pleasurable, and this is why dopamine responses quickly shift their activations to the moments when animals predict upcoming reward and away from rewards themselves. (kindle loc 1619)

 Then the author (Max Bennett) explores how memory evolved as part of being able to simulate the world as a brain develop, and why human memory is so famously unreliable. In effect, when you're remembering something, you're projecting into the past and recreating the environment you remember you were in. The problem is that you're using generative algorithms to re-create those memories, and the same hallucinations you might have encountered in AI systems are also responsible for creating those false memories. Your memories of the past and your ability to project into the future and create plans are both sides of the same coin, and in many ways equally unreliable!

Once you have a memory system and a way to simulate the world, then you're able to spatially map the world and gain useful data. In an open ended environment (Benett points to a paper using Montezuma's Revenge as an example), it turns out that you need to evolve a new instinct in order to solve extremely complicated problems:

 The approach is to make AI systems explicitly curious, to reward them for exploring new places and doing new things, to make surprise itself reinforcing. The greater the novelty, the larger the compulsion to explore it. When AI systems playing Montezuma’s Revenge were given this intrinsic motivation to explore new things, they behaved very differently—indeed, more like a human player. They became motivated to explore areas, go to new rooms, and expand throughout the map. But instead of exploring through random actions, they explored deliberately; they specifically wanted to go to new places and to do new things...The importance of curiosity in reinforcement learning algorithms suggests that a brain designed to learn through reinforcement, such as the brain of early vertebrates, should also exhibit curiosity. And indeed, evidence suggests that it was early vertebrates who first became curious. Curiosity is seen across all vertebrates, from fish to mice to monkeys to human infants. In vertebrates, surprise itself triggers the release of dopamine, even if there is no “real” reward. And yet, most invertebrates do not exhibit curiosity; only the most advanced invertebrates, such as insects and cephalopods, show curiosity, a trick that evolved independently and wasn’t present in early bilaterians. (kindle loc 2058-2065)

One interesting thing is that the way learning works is that both actor and critic reinforce each other, but must ultimately be guided by real senses and real world results. When you no longer get real input, the entire system is capable of hallucinating:

 People whose eyes stop sending signals to their neocortex, whether due to optic-nerve damage or retinal damage, often get something called Charles Bonnet syndrome. You would think that when someone’s eyes are disconnected from their brain, they would no longer see. But the opposite happens—for several months after going blind, people start seeing a lot. They begin to hallucinate. This phenomenon is consistent with a generative model: cutting off sensory input to the neocortex makes it unstable. It gets stuck in a drifting generative process in which visual scenes are simulated without being constrained to actual sensory input—thus you hallucinate. (kindle loc 2545)

 Similarly, this explains also the presence of activities such as dreaming. The evolution of imagination is also important, and points to the fact that both generation and recognition occupy the same circuits in brains and cannot be done simultaneously:

The most obvious feature of imagination is that you cannot imagine things and recognize things simultaneously. You cannot read a book and imagine yourself having breakfast at the same time—the process of imagining is inherently at odds with the process of experiencing actual sensory data. In fact, you can tell when someone is imagining something by looking at that person’s pupils—when people are imagining things, their pupils dilate as their brains stop processing actual visual data. People become pseudo-blind. As in a generative model, generation and recognition cannot be performed simultaneously. (kindle loc 2569)

 The book goes on to explain autism and human social behavior and language. There's too much going on there in order to quickly summarize in a review, but essentially, one more layer of the cortex can be devoted to monitoring the brain itself. This might not seem to be useful, but is in fact, what's necessary in highly social primate groups in order to develop theory of mind to maintain social status. This need then gives rise to consciousness and self-awareness (you need all that to simulate the perspective of other brains), and the need to do so also gives rise to language.

The book contains lots of interesting ideas and is well worth reading. I highly recommend it!

Re-read: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance

 I last read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance in 2013, and this might turn out to be a book I should re-read every 10 years or so, as the meaning of the book keeps changing for me over the decades. On this re-read, I found myself rediscovering how much the book influenced me. For instance, on this time around, I highlighted the argument about a degreeless, gradeless college:

he would come back to our degreeless and gradeless school, but with a difference. He’d no longer be a grade-motivated person. He’d be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He’d be a free man. He wouldn’t need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He’d be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they’d better come up with it. Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldn’t stop with rote engineering information. Physics and mathematics were going to come within his sphere of interest because he’d see he needed them. Metallurgy and electrical engineering would come up for attention. And, in the process of intellectual maturing that these abstract studies gave him, he would be likely to branch out into other theoretical areas that weren’t directly related to machines but had become a part of a newer larger goal. This larger goal wouldn’t be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing. (pg 189)

I realized now that I was that student in college. I was the guy working two jobs while going to school full time, and I was intentional about learning, as opposed to being there for the degree. I had another student once asking me why I was working so hard on a class I was taking Pass/Fail (where grades didn't count). My reply at the time is that I'm taking the class because I was actually interested in the topic, and taking it pass fail so that I really could concentrated on learning instead of grades. That answer completely mystified the other student. I did get pissed when classes were moving slower and covering less material than I'd hoped. It also led to a total lack of empathy with other students --- when your parents are paying for college you might have a different attitude from the guy living on ramen and trying to scrape by. And by the way, this is why I got so pissed at Republicans claiming that those of us on Pell grants and financial aid were there looking for a handout and less deserving than those who were living on what us poverty-line types called "F&M scholarships" --- father and mother scholarships.

Recently, Vermont was telling me about asking one of the other engineers to slow down, and pay more attention to detail and care rather than rushing through trying to close jira tickets as quickly as possible. This book has such a strong echo with Vermont's exhortations:

Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques; by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning; and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do. Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility, and the value shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, but it’s a sacrifice that must be made. It’s nothing like the loss of gumption that will occur if a Big Mistake caused by impatience occurs.

It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together. (pg. 309, 316)

This is such a great book. All engineering managers should have to read this book, and probably should recommend it to their direct reports. And if you need motivation to become a better mechanic:

A person who knows how to fix motorcycles—with Quality—is less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn’t. And they aren’t going to see him as some kind of object either. (pg. 349)

I bought this book 11 years ago. It's still worth reading, and I get new stuff out of it every time I read it. You can't get more highly recommended than that. 

Kirby Cove Campground Trip

Whenever I visit recreation.gov, I always find that there's one campground that looks super-appealing, and that's Kirby Cove Campground. Of course, every time I tried to book it, it was booked up, especially since those of us who are working stiffs with kids in school can't afford to do anything other than a weekend trip. Then during the New Year's Eve Wildcat Campground trip, Daniel told me the secret trick to booking the site.  Armed with that secret trick, it took me only 2 weeks to book campsite #1 at Kirby Cove for the first weekend of April.

Booking that far out is always risky, but fortunately, the rain that was supposed to land on both Thursday and Friday got revised out to only Thursday night, so we were assured of dry weather during the weekend. Both kids and Xiaoqin had caught some sort of viral infection but we decided to do the trip anyway, given how hard it had been to book it.

When you book 2 nights at the campground, surprisingly few people will come for both nights. Each campsite can hold 10 people, so we invited friends, including Stephan, his dad, and his son Otto and some neighbors for Friday, and Mickey and Kevin's families for Saturday. I had a full weekend of hikes planned as well.

Arriving at 4:00pm at the campground we followed the instructions to unlock the gate and drove down to the campground, stunned by how nice it was. Campsite #1 was amazing, with 2 tent pads with views of the golden gate, and its own private swing! We pitched a tent and then went out to eat --- in retrospect we should have bought take out just to enjoy how nice the campground was! It was windy when we arrived, but the campground itself was sheltered so putting up the tent was much easier than expected.

Stephan and Allan's family showed up much later but they were no less impressed. The cold made sleep difficult, but the view in the morning was more than worth ti.

Breakfast with a view of the golden gate is amazing. 

We then convoyed up to Trojan point to start the classic hike on Matt Davis trail and then return on Steep Ravine.

The views and greenery was amazing, with flowers starting to bloom. The forest flowers were by far the highlight, since they'd gotten so much water that the growth was verdant.

We visited Stintson beach and had lunch there, and with some difficulty peeled the kids away from the beach for the hike back up to the Pantoll Ranger Station.

Steep Ravine was nothing short of amazing, with the creek sounding like jet engines roaring, and the stream demonstrating multiple cascades, including some which we hadn't seen before because the recent rains had been so heavy.

We finished the hike in great spirits, returning to the campground to find Kevin already there. We got a chance to explore the beach, including the tunnel, the caves, and then Mickey showed up with a portable grill and made burgers for everyone!

Saturday at Kirby Cove was much different than Sunday, with lots of day trippers and visitors who would walk down the dirt road for access and take pictures, sit on the beach, or just explore.

When dinner was over we'd sit and watch the sunset and watched the city lights turned on slowly. It was magical.

On Sunday morning, we packed everything up slowly after breakfast and then went for my second day's plan. I was going to go for a bigger hike but most people looked pretty tired so opted to start everyone at the morning sun trailhead.

The SCA trail + morning sun combination is the easiest hike with most scenery for the buck you can get in the Bay Area. The views are stunning, and best of all, the non-enthusiastic hikers can treat it as a one way hike to the parking area while those who can't get enough can double back and fetch the car and pick them up.

Wildflowers were blooming and we stopped to take photos so often people asked us why it was taking us so long to walk back to the car!

When the hike and pick up was over, all the other families were done but it was just 12:30pm which was perfect timing for visiting Point Bonitas Lighthouse while it was still open, something I've never achieved because of the narrow 3 hour opening window. So we went down to Sausalito and bought take out Mexican food and then drove through the tunnel again to the lighthouse parking area and ate lunch.

The lighthouse access tunnel was great, and nicely sheltered from the prevailing wind, which was blowing much harder than I expected given what we experienced in the morning. Despite all the signs telling us that access was restricted to 49 people at the lighthouse at a time, it must have been a light traffic day because the rangers and docent who were tasked with counting people never stopped anyone from crossing the suspension bridge and exploring the lighthouse. I noted that there's a guided tour available at sunset for people who want to see the lighthouse turn on.

At the end of the trip I asked Boen if he thought Wildcat Campground was better or Kirby Cove and he said: "Kirby Cove, no contest!" The campground is restricted to 3 nights a year a person so I guess we'll have to return next year if he likes it so much!

Review: Bryton Gardia R300 Radar

 I use my Garmin radars so much that the batteries on them that their batteries start wearing out after about 3-5 years of use. When the batteries wear out you can call Garmin and they'll give you a 20% discount on a replacement unit (there's no way to replace the battery in them). In February, there was an Amazon lightning sale on the Bryton Gardia R300 Radar where the price was $85 pre-tax, so I bought one at that price to test.

The biggest feature of the Bryton is that it charges using USB-C. That means one less cable tip to have to carry while touring. It also purportedly has better battery life. Pairing with my Garmin Edge 840 was no problem, but the ANT+ light profile doesn't really work --- the light will not turn on or off properly, nor can you set the light mode to flashing or solid from the Edge.

In use, the radar works fine --- I haven't found any false negatives or false positives that wouldn't have happened to the Garmin unit. What does happen is that on occasion the Bryton will disconnect from the head unit and immediately reconnect. That's not a big deal --- the reconnection was so fast that it wouldn't make me concerned about the safety. The fact that the head unit can't control the light mode is a bigger deal to me. Obviously the Bryton also wouldn't get firmware updates via the head unit. You have to manually connect it to your phone and then use the phone app to update it.

At $85 this unit is a steal, with the lower price and USB-C charging more than offsetting the inconvenience of manually having to turn the light on and off.  I wouldn't pay full price for the unit, but even the discounted price of the Garmin is $160, which is still more than the $110 street price the unit typically sells for at Amazon.

Garmin's acquisition of the radar unit and subsequent launch and rollout has been very successful --- that Wahoo didn't support the radar for 2 years caused me to switch head units back to Garmin. That they are only now getting serious competition for the radar light itself means that Garmin has had the time to refine and improve the unit and capture majority market share. If you don't already have a radar unit I would have no hesitation in recommending the Bryton.

Reread: Among Others

 After reflecting upon Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, I went back and re-read Among Others. Most books are worth reading once, but Among Others strikes me as being particularly brilliant (or "brill") upon a second reading. Written as a diary, the book narrates Morwenna Phelps' experience as an alienated mid-teen in a boarding school after surviving an adventure in which she loses a twin, runs away from home, and meets her father for the first time.

Like many nerdy kids, her primary refuge was in books. The book references come early and often, and the nice thing about the kindle edition of the book is that you get direct links to various books in the kindle store. One of the books referenced didn't have a link and I looked it up and to my horror discovered it was Zelazny's The Dream Master, which was selling used for $77.34, and not to be found at the library anywhere.

The book has many elements of an autobiography. Having met Jo Walton, she walks with a limp and of course, her repertoire of science fiction novels and knowledge is unparalleled. But anyone who grew up loving books and science fiction will enjoy the depiction of a reader's first discovery of Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside.

Reading this book made me remember how ephemeral meetings and friendships were in the 1980s and 1990s. People would move and change phone numbers and you'd never see them again. There were no smartphones or location sharing apps, so if someone was late or couldn't make it you wouldn't know if it was because they were in an accident or if they decided to stand you up. And if you wrote someone a letter and they lost your address or just never wrote back you had no idea why.

Most of all, the book is about the need for a social connection. Even the nerdiest of book lovers (like Morwenna Phelps) feels the need to discuss the books they read with like-minded individuals, and back in those days there was no internet (and nowadays maybe there's no internet either, as many online forums have turned into toxic waste dumps). The book reminded me of meeting a classmate for the last time when the semester was over. She saw the book I was reading (Lord of Light) and exclaimed, "You're reading the classics!" We chatted about the books we'd read in class, our lives after graduation, exchanged addresses, and despite exchanging a letter or two, never saw each other again.

Among Others deserves both its Hugo and Nebular awards. I should buy my own copy instead of checking it out from the library every time!

“You’re so lucky,” Wim said, surprisingly. “Lucky? Why?” I blinked. I am not in the habit of thinking I am lucky, even when my leg isn’t strapped to a rack. “Having a rich father who reads SF. Mine thinks it’s childish. He was okay with it when I was twelve, but he thinks reading at all is sissy and reading kid stuff is babyish. He roars at me whenever he catches me reading. My mother reads what she calls nice romances, sometimes, Catherine Cookson and that sort of thing, but only when he isn’t in the house. She doesn’t understand at all. There are no books in our house. I’d give anything for parents who read.” (kindle loc 3501)

 

Review: Sweet Bean Paste

 After reading Days at the Morisaki Bookstore, Amazon recommended that I read Sweet Bean Paste next. The book looked short and Hoopla had it available so I checked it out and read it.

At first, the book read like the typical sensei teaching student mastery novel. You had a guy who was lackadaisical about his job, when a master shows up to teach him how to make really good bean paste, and how to pay attention to every detail in order to master the process.

Then midway through the book we get a sudden change as we realize the identity of the sensei isn't what we think it is, and the book suddenly goes into a history of Hansen's disease and its stigmatization in Japanese society. This in itself is not bad.

What annoyed me, however, is that the book ends in a place that leaves all plotlines dangling. That does'n't mean that there's no closure. The closure is all about one of the main characters, but I'm wasn't very satisfied by it. That makes it hard for me to recommend the book.

Review: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

 I shouldn't like Days at the Morisaki Bookshop as much as I do. It has a lot of cliches in the "bookshop" genre that seem to get repeated:

• A non-reader would suddenly start reading books just because she's surrounded by them. (I'm sure something like this has happened in real life, I've just never observed it)
• A romance is started by accidentally (or deliberately) sharing a book. (I'm sure it's happened in real life, I've just never observed it)
• A mysterious crazy uncle helps the protagonist, and somehow his backstory makes his behavior somewhat more understandable.

Set against that is that the prose (despite being translated) is transparent and direct. The book is also short, and therefore never overstays its welcome, and finally, the protagonist is uncharacteristically surprised by the behavior of other people, breaking with the stereotype of the empathic female character. Events move quickly, and you're never stuck wondering what is the point of the story.

I enjoyed the references to Japanese literature (some of which has never been translated into English and therefore difficult to find or reads for non-Japanese audiences), the used bookstore district in Tokyo (sounds like a wonderful place, but again, if you're not Japanese what incentive do you have to visit?), and the character development that takes place with the protagonist, who does discover the power of stories to heal and empower.

It's an easy book to like and enjoy. Of course, it nowhere comes close to Among Others. If you haven't read Among Others, and you like Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, you owe it to yourself to grab Jo Walton's superior novel.

Re-read: The Last Wish

 Back to my reading duties with Boen, I decided to read him The Last Wish, the first book in The Witcher series. There's a lot to like about this book, chiefest of them is Sapkowski's penchant for twisting fairy tale classics and turning them into a plausible story set in his grim n' gritty setting. The classic story of The Witcher encountering Snow White and then eventually killing her sets the tone for the rest of the book. You also see encounters with the monster in the Beauty and the Beast, as well as the titular story, setting up the classic relationship between Geralt and the sorceress Yennefer. I love the twists in the story and I will happily say that Boen never saw them coming. The action is also intense enough that Boen didn't fall asleep as easily from this book as from say, a typical Neil Gaiman story (which shows that when picking bed time reading you probably shouldn't pick action packed novels).

Reading it a second time, however, I'm constantly reminded of how bad a writer Sapkowski is. His conversations drag on overlong, constantly bringing up irrelevancies. The prose is stilted and he has a penchant for trying to let you view important action from a distance or from the point of view of an irrelevant or ancillary character. So for instance, the terms of The Last Wish are never disclosed to the reader. In some sense you can understand this --- the author wishes to maintain control and authorial discretion over the long term. But it feels like a nasty cheat upon second reading.

I remember that by the third book this technique becomes overwhelmingly frustrating and I gave up on the series. This is one of the few book series where the video game is way better than the book. I'll probably keep reading the next book to Boen but stop after that.

My Chain Waxing Experiment

 I've always been skeptical about chain waxing despite in my early cycling career reading a book about an 80-year-old bicycle tourist who would cook her chain religiously every night. That seemed excessive and not worth the effort. The inimitable Pamela Blayley, however, posted a pictures of her bicycle tour in Ireland last year on Facebook featuring an incredibly clean chain and declaring that she was now convinced it was the way to go. Unlike many chain waxing advocates, Pamela doesn't stop riding when the pavement stops, neither does she stop riding in the rain, so with her experience (along with an appropriately timed Silca sale), I ordered some chain waxing equipment for experimentation.

This included a mini slow cooker, Silca Hot Melt Wax, Silca Chain Stripper (now superseded by Silca strip chip), and Silca Super Secret Lube. The process is far more involved than I'd like, using the chain stripper, then rinsing it off, and then dropping the chain into the melted wax. (Using the strip chip makes it easier --- you no longer need to strip the chain) The irony is that winter is when you might have the most time to do this involved process, but winter is when it's going to rain and quickly wash away the wax.

My experience in winter is that you pretty much have to either rewax or use the Super Secret Lube every time you ride in wet conditions, even if it didn't rain and you're just getting road splash from a wet road. The wax might do a good job protecting the chain from dirt, but it disappears immediately upon encountering any sort of moisture. Silca's claim that each waxing is good for 100 miles is too optimistic.

Having said that, once waxed, the chain stays very clean and the drivetrain on my bikes with the waxed chain is the cleanest I've seen in years. While I do clean the drivetrain every time I replace a chain, I don't do a perfect job, and the chain wax does a good job of picking up the dirt and preventing it from working its way into the chain rollers.

Having said that, it only took 3 months of fairly rainy weather before I worked through a 4oz bottle of Silca Super Secret Lube, making this much more expensive than the oil-based Silca Synergetic Lube. The oil-based lubes only need to be reapplied at most every 400 miles, and don't need relubing even after it rains, at the penalty of being much more dirty than the wax.

Silca and other chain waxing advocates claim that by keeping the chain so clean waxing increases the life of your chain and drivetrain components significantly. My oil-based chains don't last more than 2500 miles and on the triplet I don't get more than 2000 miles. My gravel bike/roadini probably won't get more than 2000 miles either. Having said that, I get my chains for $10/pop, which means that the effort of waxing and re-waxing simply doesn't pay for itself in drivetrain longevity.

So what's the use case for waxing? First, if you don't ride enough to require rewaxing every ride (I have friends who ride enough that 100 mile intervals is essentially every ride or more often than every week), then maybe it's OK. Secondly, on tour where I have to manhandle the timing chain every time I take apart the triplet it's useful to have a very clean drivetrain, though the penalty of essentially having to wax the chain every night seems kinda off-putting.

Ultimately, I don't consider chain waxing to be worth the effort, but in the summer where the intervals between waxing might be worth it (using the wax lube to touch up between waxing efforts). In winter you should just use oil and forget about keeping the drivetrain clean.

Review: Ass Saver Win Wing Gravel

 

I found a batch of Ass Savers Win Wing Gravel on eBay for about $10 each (plus shipping). At that price I bought a whole bunch of the gravel model and installed them on all my bikes and even a couple of my kids' bikes. The contraption looks flimsy and not worth $28 Amazon charges for them, but the installation is a cinch, and to my surprise it had sufficient clearance even with 700x40 Continental Terraspeed tires! A friend took the above pictured Roadini off pavement on the Montebello traverse and I didn't hear any scritch-scritch sounds coming from the fender, which is one of the most annoying things about riding off pavement with fenders.

Ok, does it work? I've been using them on various rainy commutes and I have to say it works as well as my previous, heavier fenders, and I definitely don't get a nasty stripe up my back. The fender does seem to direct a steady stream of water and dirt at the sidepull caliper brakes, but my brakes don't work any less well and it's California so I don't expect the Win Wing to stay on the bike all year.

At full price of $28, it feels like a rip-off. It's just a bunch of plastic and a rubber strap. But for $10 each I think it's good value. I probably should have bought more and given them to friends, etc (I'll grant that most of my friends, being Californians are hard to talk into riding in the rain), or to have as spares, but my kids definitely bike to school every day and it's worth it to keep their backs and pants clear of dirt if not dry, since I have a hard time getting them to wear rain pants.

Recommended if you can get a good deal on them. Though I guess to be honest the SKS clip-on fenders cost about the same but have the distinctive problem that they don't work well with the Garmin Radar, while these work great with the radar.

Review: Ours Was The Shining Future

 Ours Was The Shining Future is an indictment of the "Brahmin Left" approach to politics. It doesn't brand itself that way, touting itself as a history of the story of the American dream, but it reads to me that way, since it was published pretty recently.

The book explains that we had one shining moment in time in the US where government policy, economic trends, and immigration came together to create momentum for a highly progressive future. He points out that the New Deal was outrageously unlikely:

The historian Jefferson Cowie has pointed out that the New Deal depended on an outrageously unlikely series of events—a depression that gripped the country for more than three years before a reform-minded president took office; an unsustainable coalition of northern liberals and southern segregationists; a reactionary Supreme Court that yielded only after the president won a landslide reelection; and, finally, a world war that unified the country and solidified the creation of mass prosperity. (kindle loc 6424)

Between the Eisenhower administration and the 1980s, the conservatives engineered ways to undo the New Deal whenever it was possible, publishing papers, drawing up list of politicians who were amenable to persuasion, and creating "supply-side economics" as a smoke screen to provide cover for administrations to lower taxes on the wealthy.

Leonhardt points out the similarities between Britain and the USA, in contrast to countries like Japan and Germany, who had much more progressive government policies:

Britain, as a victor in World War II and an economic leviathan for more than two centuries prior, had accumulated one of history’s great collections of interest groups. These interest groups—financial traders, farmers, miners, and others—had caused sclerosis in Britain’s economy. Germany and Japan, by contrast, had been devastated during the war. “We wiped the institutional slate clean for them,” Olson said. As they rebuilt their economies and political systems, they could prioritize the national interest over special interests because their special interests were so weak. Germany and Japan did not rise in spite of their defeat. They rose in part because of it. The parallels between Britain and the United States, though not exact, are plain enough. This country’s postwar period of preeminence produced a set of interest groups that were strong enough to block change. Farmers lobbied for policies that kept food prices high, as Olson had witnessed while growing up in North Dakota. Large corporations and Wall Street firms pushed for tax breaks. Some labor unions negotiated contracts that maximized wages even at the expense of a company’s long-term success. (kindle loc 6138)

 Most of the book is a history of US government policy and the machinations that got to where we are today. The big thing I learned was about immigration:

When immigration is a salient issue, it serves to remind many working-class voters that they agree with conservative parties on questions of patriotism, nationhood, and security. When immigration fades as an issue, voters think less about these questions and more about a society’s economic divisions. Those class divisions, in turn, remind workers that they generally agree with progressive parties on economic policies, such as tax rates and government benefits. Alesina also did pioneering research showing how immigration can undermine support for a generous welfare state. Societies are more likely to sustain such a welfare state, and the high taxes to fund it, when people view their fellow citizens as similar to themselves. Large amounts of immigration make a society feel more turbulent and less like a tight-knit community, at least in the short term. The contemporary United States fits this pattern. About one of every six workers is an immigrant, up from fewer than one in twenty in 1970, and roughly one-quarter of the population is either an immigrant or the descendant of a recent immigrant. The modern immigration wave has transformed the country in myriad ways, and communalists are often uncomfortable with rapid change, even when it has no economic downsides. They value tradition and stability. This is another reason that high levels of immigration tend to make a country more conservative. (kindle 5765)

Leonhardt's argument is that communalists (most working class people) are very different from universalists, who make statements like: "When donating to philanthropy why should we weight the lives of Americans more highly than lives of people in other countries? For the same amount of money we can save more lives outside the USA."  Communalists are more likely to agree with statements like: "Charity begins at home." No prizes for guessing which group of people think are less likely to have college degrees or having working class incomes.

The net net is that recent Democratic policies on immigration, social issues, and others that help working class folks can't over-ride the important issue of immigration. Not only is this true in the USA, but it's also true in the rest of the world, explaining the rise of the popularity of right-wing parties all over the developed world:

“For those who believe in a multicultural America, this question can be uncomfortable to confront, because any system short of open borders invariably requires drawing distinctions that declare some people worthy of entry and others unworthy,” wrote Jia Lynn Yang, a journalist, in her history of immigration law. Because of this discomfort, the modern Democratic Party has struggled to articulate an immigration policy beyond what might be summarized as: More is better, and less is racist. The party has cast aside the legacies of Jordan, Randolph, and other progressives who made finer distinctions. In response, many working-class voters have decided that the Democratic Party does not share their values. Notably, some of these voters are not White and are themselves the descendants of recent immigrants. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the Republican Party made gains among Latino voters, especially in Texas and Florida, as well as Asian American voters. Polls showed that a sizable chunk of both Latino and Black voters who otherwise leaned toward the Democratic Party preferred the Republican position on illegal immigration. “Immigration,” says Haidt, the psychologist, “is one of the top few blind spots of the left, which causes right-wing parties to win all over the Western world.” (kindle loc 5754)

By the way, I will note that just being an immigrant by itself doesn't make you pro-immigrant. Most legal immigrants I've met also detest illegal immigrants, viewing them as grabbing spots from law-abiding folks who are better deserving. The book also debunks claims such as immigrants doing jobs local born Americans won't do.

Other topics the book talks about include globalization, lowering of trade barriers, and other policies that neo-liberals adopted from the conservatives. Most of them had a deleterious effect on working-class Americans, leading to resentment of the Democratic party once again.

 All in all, the book was worth reading, and brought up salient points as to why immigration will continue to be an incredibly difficult challenge for center-left parties all over the developed world to deal with. Recommended.

Review: Clover Collector's Edition

 I saw Clover's Collector's Edition at the library and the cover said it was a most daring science-fiction work. The art seemed nice so I checked it out.

It's not science fiction. It's fantasy dystopia --- and a not very good one. For instance, the main character's supposed to be a four-leaf clover, the most power kind of sorcerer there is, uncontrollable and therefore forced to be alone. This makes no sense, because anyone that powerful can do whatever she wants, so why would she submit to forced isolation. We never see much demonstration of her powers.

There's a sort of romantic relationship, and references to the past, but we never see resolution of the major event, the death of Kazuhiko's lover/partner. I only found out later through a web-search that the series is indeed incomplete.

The narration revolves around a song with elusively written and vague lyrics. That's OK, but the same song is repeated in bits and pieces throughout the book as well as reproduced frequently in full length. Again, this works in movies or TV but not in comics.

About the best thing about this book is that it's short and therefore I didn't waste much time reading it.

Boen's First Pigeon Point trip

 

Boen has ambitious goals for the summer tour, and I wanted a gauge for how things would go. There was a forecast for good weather on both days that weekend of Feb 10th, so I booked spots for us at Pigeon Point Lighthouse Youth Hostel packed our panniers on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day and Eva chose to meet us at Altamont and Page Mill, and escorted us at a good pace up Page Mill road.

At the top of Page Mill road, Stephan Ellner joined us, having ridden from Woodside, and I had the pleasure of introducing the two of them to each other. At the summit of West Alpine road who did we meet but Bob and Betty from the Western Wheelers! From there we could see all the way to the coast, an unsual sight in the summer but common in winter on days like this.

Eva would go down a bit on West Alpine and then turn around, but Stephan was planning to join us all the way until lunch. We zipped down West Alpine as only a tandem could. It was cold in the redwoods but so pretty. Climbing Haskins Hill was a bit warm as there was no good place to stop and shed clothing, so when were rolled over the top we didn't stop but just zipped down the other side. Well, zipped was a strong word as we were overtaken by the sports car club and a fast pair of motorcyclists. 

In Pescadero we stopped at Norm's market and had their usual delicious artichoke garlic bread fresh out of the oven, still warm to the touch when we bought the loaf. We tore through this using prosciutto and cheese brought from home and a pack of salami Stephan shelled out for. We then stocked up for dinner, bought some partially bake artichoke garlic bread to bring home and parted ways, with him stopping by a coffee shop and Boen and I riding on Cloverdale Road towards Gazos Creek road. Not having been there in years the scenery was fresh and even the potholes weren't as bad as I remembered. Gazos creek was babbling.

At the Highway 1 intersection we turrned right and immediately spotted Pigeon Point Lighthouse, against a 10mph headwind. Thus motivated, Boen made short work of the 3 mile and we were at the hostel at 2:30pm. To our surprise, the hostel manager was flexible and checked us in. We even grabbed the sunset spot for the hot tub!

The park system had upgraded many aspects of the area since we'd last visited, including a new exhibit with the fresnel lens, models of the various shipwrecks at Pigeon Point, a cutaway model of the lighthouse, and even outside there was now a viewing platform where you could get a picture with prisoner rock, and stairs that went down to the beach!

It was low tide, so there were also tidepools to explore. We were glad that we arrived early enough to do whatever we could. With an hour left to our hot tub time we went back to the hostel, made hot water for decaf and for hot chocolate (I should have brought more hot chocolate) and then called the rest of the family before the hot tub.

After a bike ride, the hot tub is well worth the price. We'd looked up the sunset time and had time to watch the sunset at the end of our hot tub session. After that it was dinner time. While the spaghetti and alfredo sauce went down well, Boen didn't like the artichoke pork sausage we'd bought. Fortunately, the Filipino family who were having dinner at the same time had plenty of food and offered to share.It turned out that the mother's name was Bon, a homonym for Boen, and they even brought a Fondue set and gave Boen and I chocolate Fondue with strawberries. It was so good!

Sleep for me was fitful. I guess it was the change of environment, but usually a lot of cycling makes it easier to sleep.

In the morning, someone at the hostel started smoking Marijuana in the living room. Fortunately, we were all done with breakfast by the time I noticed and we just packed up and left in a hurry. Riding North into cloudy skies, it was chilly enough to put on all our layers but by the time we started climbing Bean Hollow road I was getting pretty warm. Once into Pescadero and onto Stager Road, I stopped and took off most of my layers, figuring it was better to be chilly downhill than to overheat uphill.

Stage Road was gorgeous as always, and as we approached Highway 1 we were greeted with a stunning view to the east, with low fog lifting over the hills as the sun warmed the water vapor.

The descent on Highway 1 onto Tunitas Creek was fast and furious, and we stopped by the Bike Hut for a quick break and get rid of garbage and eat more food. The climb up Tunitas was gorgeous, dappled light shining through the redwood trees that made for difficult to photograph scenery that can only be appreciated when you're there in person. The steep part is a 16% grade. It's not a long pitch but it wore us out, so we had to stop to eat and rest.

Past the Purissima Creek Park entrance the grade evens out a bit and past Star Hill Road the grade evens out even more! Inspired, I recalled a song from my high school days:

Just around the bend, is the journey's end, and the sky's singing our song, 'cos it's just a stone's throw from the people I know, whoa, I'm coming back to where I belong.

 At the summit, who did we run into but fellow Western Wheelers Steve and Cheryl Prothero and their group who'd just climbed Kings Mountain Road. The terms of the song were fulfilled! We took pictures, ate the rest of my cliff bar, and went down the road gingerly. The road surface looked treacherous, with debris in corners, water all over the road, and at one point our rear wheel kicked out a rock down a steep hairpin. Fortunately big fat tires and long wheel bases are very stable and we made it down with no problem. I gave Boen a choice between high traffic Foothill Expressway or the lower traffic Arastedero and he had enough energy to give the more climbing option a chance.

We made it home by 1:30pm, and now I'm confident that we're going to have a good time in the Alps!

Review: The Sandman (Season 1)

 I don't have a Netflix subscription so I didn't watch The Sandman when it debuted on Netflix. Between when it debuted and when I was about to cave and subscribe just to watch it, the local library flagged it as being ready for pickup by me!

I thought Tom Sturridge made for a great Morpheus, getting the expressions right, especially the glare he had when he was trapped in the prison. I enjoyed the recasting of Lucifer as Gwendoline Christie. I enjoyed the rewriting of John Constantine as Johanna Constantine. I thought Kirby Howell Baptiste wasn't perky enough for a depiction of the best representation of Grandmother Death in literature.

So the cast was great. The look was good, but given the amount of money spent on the series ($15M per episode) I found myself wondering whether various people were lining their pockets unduely. I expected jaw dropping visuals and those were far and few between. It didn't look like a $15M per episode series.

In general, I liked the story changes such as making Lyta and Hector no longer being former super-heroes. I thought that rather than "A Dream of A Thousand Cats" they should have depicted the story of Nada instead, but those are rather minor. For instance, I thought the Hob Gadling episode didn't add much back when it was a comic book series and don't think much of it now.

I'm very glad that the showrunner chose to do the series at a fairly brisk pace, approximately 2-3 issues per episode. Would I pay for a Netflix subscription to watch it? Sure. Would I go out of my way to watch it? Probably not, despite being a massive Sandman fan. What the show did tell me though is that while reading the books, I thought that the short stories (A Dream of A Thousand Cats, for instance) were much better than the longer story arcs, in a TV show the longer story arcs made for much better depiction.

If you've never read the Sandman the show is definitely worth watching. In this case, the TV show is almost (if not quite) as good as the book.

Review: Machine Vendetta

 Machine Vendetta is the recently released Alastair Reynolds novel feature Prefect Dreyfus. As far as I can tell it's the last book in the trilogy featuring the Panoply and the Glitter Band in the Revelation Space universe. It's the first book in recent years that no longer has a jacked up kindle price since before Apple got involved in price fixing with various publishers, and at $9.99 I used some of my kindle credits and didn't bother with waiting for the library.

The plot revolves around the murder of two prefects, both previously exemplary, performing what seems to be suicidal acts. One of them is Ingvar Tench, a close friend of Tom Dreyfus, and she turns out to have a previously unknown daughter! This is by far the weakest part of the plot, requiring the rest of the police force to believe that she had a daughter at an improbable time while devoting unlimited time to her career.

The rest of the plot is great. We have battling AIs vying for dominance over humanity, a final resolution to the plot of the first novel in the series, lots of police procedural work in addition to the exciting action-filled betrayals and crisis. This book could be turned into a high budget science fiction movie and it would be fun to watch.

Alastair Reynolds is in my auto-buy list. The science in his science fiction is great, his characters are much more 3-dimensional than you would expect from science fiction, and while he has plot weaknesses if you can get over them the reading is just compelling. I finished this book over 3-4 days and it was fun!

Recommended!

Review: Road Holland Utrecht Wool Jersey

 I'm a cheapskate about clothing, and usually pick up cheap cycling jerseys for about $20/pop whenever they go on sale. People rave about Wool Jerseys, but I never found them practical: you can't toss them in the dryer, they take forever to dry when you're touring and have no access to a laundry machine, and obviously, in California they're not useful for about 3 seasons out of the year.

Someone on an internet mailing list put up his Utrecht Wool Jerseys that were in my size for $50 and threw in a Walz cycling cap as well. For that price I couldn't resist. I figured I'd wear them in winter, and save my $20 summer jerseys for summer touring. When they arrived I was impressed by how nice they were. Online research show that they're not 100% wool, but a 39/61 merino/poly blend. The jerseys fit well and aren't scratchy, though the pockets show a disturbing tendency to unfurl when you take something out of them.

For washing, I throw them into the washing machine on "delicate" and put in some Eucalan. Then I air dry them. It's unlikely this will work when touring but I have no intention of using these jerseys while touring, when days might hit 100F. I discovered that these jerseys work well around 40-70F. I've had days on top of black mountain when people who're all bundled up with gear ask me how the heck I'm possibly warm wearing a short sleeve. About 70F they start to feel a bit too warm, and no way am I wearing these in 80F.

They do make me look fat, but that's only because as my kids will tell you, that I am fat!

So far, they've shown no signs of shrinking, and are nice enough that when I wear them in the office nobody immediately points out that they're cycling jerseys, not office wear. No way am I paying their original full price (which must have been $100 or more), but at $25 they were well worth it for California winters. I can definitely see how the company went out of business but if you see them in good condition they're worth a look.

Review: Narrative Economics

 I'm a huge Robert Shiller fan, but somehow missed that he had a new book called Narrative Economics. When someone at work mentioned it, I checked it out from the library right away and read it. The book's thesis is that economists spend too much time analyzing models like interest rates but should consider ideas and stories going viral and thus causing economic events.

To back this up, the book actually goes out and proposes several different narratives/stories that could have created/prolonged the great depression. The stories all seem rather plausible but there's no proof whatsoever that these stories had massive impact. Even worse, there's no guidance as to how you could have used the stories to predict what had happened.

This book more than anything else, proved to me that if you actually want to do investing, numbers are the way to go. What a surprising waste of time.

Review: The Fund

 The Fund is Rob Copeland's take down of Ray Dalio.  Ray Dalio is the founder/owner of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund that purportedly had a phenomenal track record of beating the market, and Dalio himself became a celebrity, writing Principles, which was actually quite a good book, and follow on books that I thought was awfully fawning of a Chinese authoritarian system that was probably more about talking up Dalio's Chinese corporate/personal investment portfolio than based on reality.

I expected an account of Ray Dalio's rise and perhaps some expose of the secret sauce behind Bridgewater Associates, but to be honest the entire book was expose. There's an early section on Ray Dalio's background and how he got rich (hint: marry a wealthy person!), but the sections on how he managed to get pension funds to give him money to manage were given short shrift, as was the heuristics/algorithms he used to become successful early on.

Most of the book focuses on post-success, where the principles he espoused actually got turned into a horrible nightmarish social-network based pile-on app used inside the company. This mechanism was made worse by Dalio rejecting any criticism of it and taking on the form of the final arbiter. What really astonished me was that Dalio was selling pieces of Bridgewater to his own employees through an employer-financed loan. His second in command therefore was living a hand-to-mouth lifestyle:

Over just three years, 2011, 2012, and 2013, industry researcher Alpha reported that he made $815 million in total. While just a fraction of Dalio’s compensation, it was also enough to vault Jensen onto the industry lists of the highest-paid hedge fund managers—he made more than most of those who ran their own firms. Only a handful of people knew, however, another reason for him to stay. The Bridgewater founder had concocted a complicated arrangement in which the more money that Jensen seemed to make, the more he actually owed. Dalio had challenged Jensen, as a condition of the younger man’s employment, to slowly buy out the Bridgewater founder’s ownership. Jensen didn’t have nearly enough money, so Bridgewater lent it to him—essentially transferring slivers of his ownership each year, building up a gigantic IOU to the hedge fund’s majority shareholder, who just so happened to be Dalio. Jensen’s debt skyrocketed as the value of Bridgewater rose. When Dalio sold a piece of the firm to the Texas teachers’ pension fund, not only his own stake was impacted. Since Bridgewater was now worth more, it made Jensen’s own tithe that year even more expensive as well. (kindle loc 2926)

This seems like a particularly bad deal, and poorly negotiated for his employees while enriching himself, hardly the "principled" man Dalio like to style himself. The various shenanigans surrounding sexual harassment was just as bad though perhaps all too common in the age of "me-too" revelations to raise too many eyebrows.

What surprised me in the book was that Dalio was perpetually pessimistic about the US economy. We know that over the last 50 years, the US stock market has been on an incredible bull run, and anyone betting consistently against it should have been wiped out, but apparently his algorithms worked even when he was pessimistic his funds were still doing well. His pessimistic outlook also meant that he loved autocrats:

Since the late 1980s, Dalio had been convinced that the United States was in an inextricable fall, not merely economically, but culturally. He saw U.S. politics as on a slow descent into unproductive squabbling, a journey that could end in nothing less than another civil war. At times, he called himself “an economic doctor,” with the prescription to fix all that. In place of U.S. hegemony, Dalio looked for a better blueprint abroad. He seemed particularly smitten with societies ruled by powerful autocrats. Thanks to Bridgewater’s long history of managing money for Singapore’s government-run funds, Dalio became friends with Lee Kuan Yew. The elder man, who served as Singapore’s prime minister for a staggering thirty-one years, was a controversial figure whose long tenure achieved stability for his nation at the cost of freedom. Lee governed through what was essentially one-party rule, restricting freedom of speech and dismissing the value of democracy...Over dinner at Dalio’s New York apartment shortly before the Singaporean leader’s death, the men discussed the best models among world leaders. Lee gave an unlikely answer in a posh Manhattan setting: Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader, Lee said, had stabilized Russia after the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union. To Dalio, the analogy would have been seamless. He, too, had stabilized Bridgewater after a tumultuous stretch. (kindle loc 3476-3487)

 The book also covered the gross mismanagement of top talent that Dalio had hired for Bridgewater, including Jon Rubinstein and David Ferruci, both of which wanted nothing to do with Dalio's "Dot Connect" app but were roped into doing them anyway. Rubinstein in particular complained about Dalio's Principles, which wasn't the clean version he espoused in his book but an unwieldy, constantly changing giant ass book:

Once Dalio caught word that his new prized hire had struggled in boot camp, he asked for some time to chat. Rubinstein, cognizant of everything he’d learned about the Bridgewater founder’s love of raw honesty, decided to tell Dalio what was on his mind: “You’ve got three hundred and seventy-five Principles. Those aren’t principles. Toyota has fourteen principles. Amazon has fourteen principles. The Bible has ten. Three hundred and seventy-five can’t possibly be principles. They are an instruction manual.” (kindle loc 3723)

 The book covers the years of Bridgewater's underperformance perfunctorily --- there's an offhand suggestion that once computers became powerful enough and the rest of wall street started hiring up quants and computer scientists to do stock market analysis, Dalio's heuristics no longer offered a competitive edge and instead started to underperform the market. At this point apparently a lot of the money being managed is coming out of new rubes in totalitarian countries where Dalio has managed to cultivate sufficient contacts to have an information advantage with which to make investments, and even those aren't sufficient.

Take downs are fun to read, and this one was compelling. While Principles was good reading in theory, as usual in practice the implementation is more than a little tricky, and Dalio's success had nothing to do with his principles but a matter of being early enough and lucky enough to have money fall into his lap in big chunks (marry rich and be a good salesman). I'm much reminded of Google's promotion committees and how despite the high sounding principles only succeeded in making Google's promotion system even more political than the traditional manager-led promotion system. It's worth reading this book after reading Principles. It also explains why Dalio is such a China-supporter and all I can say is that the business/popular press loving to lionize businessman billionaires from Steve Jobs to Rockefeller to Elon Musk has a lot to do with the worst things happening to society today.

Recommended.

Review: The Walking Dead Compendium Four

 The Walking Dead Compendium Four is the last volume in the series. In this volume, the story has Rick Grimes' collection of 4 communities link up with a much larger one called The Commonwealth. The contrast between a class-based hierarchy and the much more egalitarian society that Grimes had established also parallels the much wealthier and larger commonwealth.

This contrast doesn't make a lot of sense. For instance, the commonwealth is depicted as having body armor, and specialists (including having lawyers as professions that they're in dire need of), but yet seems lacking in innovation, as Eugene, one of Rick's friends from way back in volume one is able to make locomotives work with relative ease.

In addition, we never get much of a backstory of the Commonwealth's formation and rise, which again makes zero sense --- so a couple of high class aristocrats take control once they get involved and everybody else goes along?

OK, so the story behind the series never made much sense anyway. But the action and characters? They're mostly good. We get a colorful loner who somehow managed to survive on her own and yet happily encounters Rick Grimes' group to meet the commonwealth. And for whatever reason the much larger Commonwealth never has had to deal with a huge herd before? The setup felt fake and quite rushed.

Nevertheless, Kirkman redeems himself by giving Rick Grimes a fitting sendoff and a beautiful epilogue that's got surprises, interesting twists (though again, not very believable --- it's hard to imagine a single generation being able to restore safety to the point where few people have seen a Zombie, especially since early on in the series Kirkman makes a point out of noting that even dying of natural causes would turn you into a zombie, and in any reasonably sized city at least one person would die every day), and fine resolutions for many of the characters we've gotten to know.

In any case it was compelling reading and made me put other books on whole while I zipped through it. Recommended.

Review: The Walking Dead Compendium Three

 The Walking Dead Compendium Three continues Rick Gimes' story of post apocalyptic survival.  This volume features a conflict with a "protection racket" governance regime along with the "whisperer" gang. The former forces Rick to build an alliance to overthrow the tyrant Negan, but at the last minute he uncharacteristically lets Negan lives. What I can say is that some of the characters do grow and develop and we see constant action as well as the humans starting to learn how to cope with the zombies in an intelligent way (though again, I'm just surprised that nobody learns how to drive a tank or even mount automatic weapons on SUVs or jeeps).

The whisperer gang seems much less plausible to me. Living amongst the zombies by wearing their skins on your face seems like a recipe for getting all sorts of skin infection and/or other diseases (dead human bodies are toxic/poisonous to living humans, which is one reason we bury our dead or burn them), so it seems unlikely that any group adopting that survival tactic would survive long enough to pose a threat to the living.

The art is good, and the action never stops. It's quite clear that the series is turning into an exploration of various crisis governance regimes, and Kirkman is always happy to put all his characters into the wringer. I can see why the TV show based on the book would be incredibly popular. Recommended.