“I think this is scarier than the Cuban missile crisis,” said my mom, as we recently chatted on the phone about the current events in Europe and the lack of response by the West due to the threat of nuclear war.

That seemed a bit extraordinary  — but then again, I realized how little I knew of the Cuban missile crisis. Sure, President Kennedy seemingly went “eyeball-to-eyeball” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 and the world was this close (*makes pinching motion*) to nuclear armageddon. The Soviet Union eventually blinked and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

I’m always one to dig into history, and given the relevancy to current events, I decided to find the best book I could about this topic.

Oh, wow. This was a doozy.

It’s an hour-by-hour account of those stressful 13 days in October of 1962, switching between Washington DC, Moscow, and everywhere in between.

It’s surprising how close we actually were to war.

Kennedy agonized over whether to invade Cuba to remove the missiles, knowing that Russia would probably respond in kind in Europe. He had to balance the more hawkish elements of his cabinet (those who favored immediate airstrikes) with more diplomatic suggestions (remove nuclear missiles from Turkey and seemingly backstab a NATO ally).

A number of mistakes and miscommunication along the way didn’t help:

• A U2 on a reconnoissance mission over Cuba was shot down by a Russian SAM site and the American pilot was killed. A highly ranked supervisor was off duty, so subordinates took it upon themselves to shoot down the plane, believing it to be part of an imminent attack on Cuba.
• At the same time, a U2 on a high-altitude air sampling mission over the North Pole got lost, due to the aurora borealis (and being unable to properly sight stars for navigation), and ended up over Russia. Miraculously, the U2 made it back to Alaska (just barely). Russian fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the plane. American fighter jets were also scrambled to escort the plane and defend it, if needed. The kicker: the fighter jets were armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles and the pilots had ultimate authority on whether or not to use them. Fortunately, the Soviet fighter jets had returned to base by the time the American planes met up.
• A Russian submarine that was being chased and harassed by American naval forces (who were dropping practice depth charges and grenades into the water) couldn’t surface at appropriate times to get the latest communications from Moscow. The captain of the sub feared that World War 3 could have already begun and they didn’t know it. The kicker: the sub was equipped with a nuclear-tipped torpedo that the captain had authority to fire if they felt they were in mortal danger.
• NORAD reported an (erroneous) missile launch reading from Cuba that was headed toward Florida. By the time military officials realized it was a false alarm due to a configuration issue, the “missile” would have already landed.

Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamarama, was later asked how we managed to survive and avoid a nuclear war:

Luck. Luck was a factor. I think, in hindsight, it was the best-managed geopolitical crisis of the post-World War II period, beyond any question. But we were also lucky. And in the end, I think two political leaders, Khrushchev and Kennedy, were wise. Each of them moved in ways that reduced the risk of confrontation. But events were slipping out of their control, and it was just luck that they finally acted before they lost control, and before East and West were involved in nuclear war that would have led to destruction of nations. It was that close.

May we always be as lucky.

I’ve been trying to fix a particularly tricky bug lately that only ever manifests itself in our production environments. So, I’m unable to reproduce it on my local machine. It’s been fun. Let me tell you…

I’ve been stuck somewhere between stage 4 and stage 6 for weeks now.

Our town does something roughly once a month called Covidchella. Tons of musicians jamming in front of houses on every block.

Walking out the front door, you just hear a cacophony of music drifting through the air. It is awesome. ❤️

It’s been awhile. It feels good. And weird. Good and weird.

Edit: I wrote this on the morning of March 25th. Later that day, we find out news that Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died while on tour with the band in Colombia.

An excerpt from the book on the fast friendship between Taylor and Dave:

“Taylor and I had become practically inseparable since he had joined the band the year before, becoming devious partners in crime from day one. During his stint as Alanis Morissette’s drummer, long before he became a Foo Fighter, we would bump into each other backstage at festivals all over the world, and our chemistry was so obvious that even Alanis herself once asked him, “What are you going to do when Dave asks you to be his drummer?” Part Beavis and Butthead, part Dumb and Dumber, we were a hyperactive blur of Parliament Lights and air drumming wherever we went…”

One way to know I’m getting old is that I’m reading (and enjoying!) all sorts of biographies. Some of the more recent ones I’ve read are about Bad Religion and Kurt Cobain. There’s something especially fascinating about sitting down and learning about the people who shaped the soundtrack to my adolescent life.

Anyway, The Storyteller by Dave Grohl has been on my to-read list for a bit now. He’s always seemed like such a character and though I don’t consider them one of my favorites, I’ve definitely enjoyed listening to the Foo Fighters over the years.

His story seems so improbable. (Interestingly, I said the same thing after reading Heavier than Heaven: “Also, after reading this, I think it’s incredible and seemingly improbable that Nirvana actually happened.”)

How did this guy go from a scrawny, goofy high school dropout who was just bashing on the drums for Scream (and then onto Nirvana) to fronting a mega rock band, collaborating with some of the biggest names in music, appearing / performing at countless awards shows, the White House and appearing on Saturday Night Live more than any other musician?

Luck, being in the right place at the right time, and raw tenacity. Plus, being open to whatever the universe throws at him and always up for going along for the ride.

He reflects on his life as he’s gotten older:

“Sometimes I forget that I’ve aged. My head and my heart seem to play this cruel trick on me, deceiving me with the false illusion of youth by greeting the world every day through the idealistic, mischievous eyes of a rebellious child finding happiness and appreciation in the most basic, simple things.”

Aye, I hear that!

He writes about how much music affected and shaped his life and it’s so true. How he spent countless hours practicing guitar and drums by playing along to his favorite bands. I can relate — I remember looping songs over and over again so I could try to nail certain guitar riffs and trying to imagine the slightest bit of what it would be like to be a rock star.

The book is a quick read and I found myself wanting more details about every aspect of his life. But I found myself laughing out loud at a number of parts, and nodding my head in agreement in others (the passages he writes on being a dad and how much his daughters mean to him got me good).

Anyway, if you appreciate Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters, or rock music in general, you’ll probably dig this.

Nine years young! He probably won’t let me live this photo down.

(Definitely a lot more gray on him as the years go by. I feel you, Benson.)

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, I found myself glued to Twitter, reading updates and reactions. As the war ground on and Russia increasingly attacked and destroyed civilian infrastructure and lives, I saw various people mention an informative book that details some of the struggles Ukrainians (and Poles and Belarusians) have endured over the last 100 years due to murderous policies of both Germany and Russia and the geographical location between these two countries.

How do you realistically review a book like this? You really can’t. It’s an insightful and depressing look at humans at our worst. When discussing the horrors of World War II, we often think about the raw numbers of dead — 14 million people explicitly murdered between 1933 and 1945.

It’s a number that is so huge that it makes no sense and it’s impossible to understand. How could something like that happen?

This book explains how. In excruciating detail, it dives into the famines induced by Stalin’s collectivization of farms, which caused the starvation of 3 million Ukrainians.

It examines Stalin’s Great Terror (700,000 victims in 1937 and 1938, many of Polish ancestry) and the killing quotas Moscow imposed.

The killing and imprisonment quotas were officially called “limits,” though everyone involved knew that they were meant to be exceeded. Local NKVD officers had to explain why they could not meet a “limit,” and were encouraged to exceed them. No NKVD officer wished to be seen as lacking élan when confronting “counter-revolution,” especially when Yezhov’s line was “better too far than not far enough.” Not 79,950 but five times as many people would be shot in the kulak action. By the end of 1938, the NKVD had executed some 386,798 Soviet citizens in fulfillment of Order 00447.

It explains how German armies marched through towns, rounding up Jews to murder.

…then they lined up the prisoners against a wall at the bank of the Vistula River and shot them. Those who tried to escape by jumping into the river were shot—as the one survivor remembered, like ducks. Some three hundred people died.

…in one case a hundred civilians were assembled to be shot because someone had fired a gun. It turned out that the gun had been fired by a German soldier.

…in Dynów, some two hundred Jews were machine-gunned one night in mid-September.

…then they drove several hundred more Jews into the synagogue and set it on fire, shooting those who tried to escape.

And on, and on, and on.

From front to back, this book is just a sea of destruction and despair. But it’s important history to know and remember.

A salient point this book makes that equally applies to current events as we see endless news of Ukrainians being murdered, and cities and homes destroyed:

“Jewish resistance in Warsaw was not only about the dignity of the Jews but about the dignity of humanity as such, including those of the Poles, the British, the Americans, the Soviets: of everyone who could have done more, and instead did less.”

Slava Ukraini.

I’ve been writing some particularly detailed comments in my code lately and stumbled upon an Reddit post asking about some of the best comments people have come across.

This particular method is absolutely genius.

The pandemic forced a change in the way many knowledge workers work. Many of us have shifted to working from home — some roles are permanent.

I’m fortunate to be in such a position, but it’s been both a blessing and difficult to adjust to.

Distractions are frequent. From regular Zoom meetings, Slack messages and various alert notifications, to email. I think a number of people (myself included) are over compensating in our communication styles.

For software engineers, this causes a lot of context switching. And that’s generally a bad thing.

Context switching can lower productivity, increase fatigue, and, ultimately, lead to developer burnout. Switching tasks requires energy and each switch depletes mental focus needed for high cognitive performance. Over an entire workday, too many context switches can leave developers feeling exhausted and drained.

The impact of context switching lingers even after switching tasks. Cognitive function declines when the mind remains fixated on previous tasks, a phenomenon known as attention residue.

I’ve recently felt myself feeling drained and less productive that usual. While browsing a thread on Hacker News, a comment on Hacker News suggested that someone should read Deep Work by Cal Newport for ideas on how to regain focus and minimize distractions. It was the first I’d heard of that book.

It was pretty enlightening and I was pretty hooked!

It has a number of self-help style steps (that are somewhat obvious, in hindsight) that you can take to improve your situation and increase productivity (e.g., carve out set times when no one can bother you, like early in the morning or late at night, keep consistent times, set reasonable expectations and have a plan, don’t wing it).

But it also had shared some interesting research on how our brains have been rewired to have shorter attention spans, thanks to all our fancy pants technology.

“Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.”

Yeah… guilty.

Anyway, definitely want to put some of these ideas into practice. It was a quick read and had some concrete steps on how to improve attention and focus that I can start using immediately. Excited to try it!

Deep Work by Cal Newport