The Importance of the Originals

tummy 🥺

🐈‍⬛ Life

Hi friend! How’s the week going for you?

I’m really glad that I took last week off. I went to LA for a week and it was super fun! I was mostly around Santa Monica and it was such a nice change of scenery.

(๑*ᗜ*) Anime

I actually haven’t watched that much anime for the past couple weeks! 😲 ikr wut!?!!

I continued to watch Space Brothers, which I talked about in the last newsletter. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s 100 episodes long and I’m almost finished so I did still watch a significant amount of anime lol.

how do y’all feel about pugs?

Anyways, I’m sad that I’m almost finished. It’s a really good anime and is both funny and realistic - highly recommend!

📖 Books

I read a lot! I honestly can’t choose which to feature because they are all so good and I recommend all of them. So here’s a brief summary of each:

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Anthropocene Reviewed

John Green really has a way with words.

The Anthropocene is a very interesting book. As its name suggests, it’s a collection of reviews of the Anthropocene: the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. He reviews things out of 5 stars, including Diet Dr. Pepper, Halley’s Comet, Sunsets, Penguins of Madagascar, CNN, and the Plague.

On the surface, it’s like lol wut. But each review deeply examines the human condition, with John’s own experiences wolven in. I was deeply moved. 🥺

🤔 The Almanack of Naval Raikant

It’s not hackneyed advice!

I don’t use Twitter, but if you do, you probably know of Naval Raikant’s famous tweets. As Tim Ferriss explains, what makes him special is that he’s very successful AND very happy.

This book is an organized collection of his tweets, which spans the domains that most people are interested in: wealth, judgment/how to think, happiness, saving yourself, and philosophy. Even though it’s very expansive, it’s not a shallow dip into each topic.

Btw, the book is free!

🧒 How to Overcome Your Childhood

It’s a concise book but leaves plenty to introspect about.

I don’t think I can describe the book better than the one-liner summary provided: A guide to breaking free from the enduring, and sometimes damaging, behavioural patterns we learned in childhood. 

If you haven’t checked out The School of Life’s youtube channel, I highly recommend it. Their slogan is “How to Live” and it really does give insight into how to do that. Among other things, Alain de Bottom is an advocate of psychotherapy. His blend of psychotherapy, philosophy, and science offers a very interesting perspective on how we should go about living our lives.

🛣️ The Tao of Seneca (currently reading)

Unrelated but I wonder why disasters, mystical beings, and the unknown are female. My first thought is that people didn’t understand child-birth? Somebody enlighten me!

A collection of letters from Seneca, an ancient Roman philosopher. It’s a good introduction to stoic philosophy.

🧘 Meditations (currently reading)

It’s really interesting that he reminds himself over and over again to stick with his values.

A series of personal writings from the Roman Emperor 161 - 180 CE: Marcus Aurelius. The writings were never meant to be published and presents his ideas on Stoic philosophy.

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🌻 Learning & Productivity

From The Almanack of Naval Raikant, one of my biggest takeaways is to go to the source as opposed to relying on other people’s interpretations of the subject. I definitely often fall into the trap of only reading interpretations since the originals are a lot harder to get through.

I’ve been a fan of stoic philosophy (at least some of it) for a while now, but I must admit I didn’t go to the source to learn about it. I especially like watching videos from Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic since it’s easier to digest. But I took Naval’s recommendation to heart and am now finally reading the originals, starting with The Tao of Seneca and Meditations.

People have been pondering the same problems for a while long time.

ngl it’s definitely harder to get through. I’m listening to the Tao of Seneca and had to slow it down to around 1.5x when I usually do 2 - 2.5x, which even then I’m going to have to relisten/sit down and actually read it at some point. Meditations is just impossible to get through in audiobook format so I’m reading it on kindle every night before I go to bed.

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👨‍💻 What I’m Learning

I LEARNED TO PROPERLY CHILL. An important lesson. 👍

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💻 Today’s coding challenge (SQL/Python)

Data engineering is all the rage these days. Seriously, lots of companies think they need data scientists, but they actually need data engineers to make the shitshow of data into something usable.

Here’s a quick guide to what companies are looking for in a data engineer. There’s also a coding question at the end of the article.

Coding Question

Find the total cost of each customer's orders. Output customer's id, first name, and the total order cost. Order records by customer's first name alphabetically.

customers

orders

If you just want to answer the question, head on over here!

*Btw if you’re prepping for data science interviews or just want to keep yourself sharp, Stratascratch is a great platform with 10k+ real interview questions on SQL and python coding, probability, product sense etc. You can use my code ‘tinahuang’ at checkout for 20% off ❤️

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PS: Reply to this email about what you’d like to see in future editions of Boop’s Keyboard! I’m super new to writing a newsletter and I know there’s a lot for me to learn. ALL constructive feedback is greatly appreciated :)

-Tina