Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts, Alexander Langlands| www.thepsmiths.com
Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, 3rd Ed., Mark Rippetoe (The Aasgaard Company, 2011).| www.thepsmiths.com
This Gradient Updates issue goes over the major changes that went into DeepSeek’s most recent model.| Epoch AI
We are launching the AI Benchmarking Hub: a platform presenting our evaluations of leading models on challenging benchmarks, with analysis of trends in AI capabilities.| Epoch AI
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village, Ronald Blythe (1969; NYRB Classics, 2015).| www.thepsmiths.com
Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony, Robert B.| www.thepsmiths.com
After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations, Eric H.| www.thepsmiths.com
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World, Charles C. Mann (Picador, 2018). There used to be famines. Poor harvests and crop failures have been with us since the development of agriculture. Archaeological evidence makes it clear that farmers have always lived on the knife’s edge of subsistence, often hungry or malnourished, and it doesn’t take much to push them over the edge into famine: too much rain or not enough, volcani...| www.thepsmiths.com
How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves, Tristan Gooley (The Experiment, 2023). Okay, I admit it: I read this book because I wanted to know more about the trees in my yard. I’m afraid that’s not how Tristan Gooley means it to be used. He’s an expert in what he terms “| www.thepsmiths.com
How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life, Ruth Goodman (Liveright, 2016). Ruth Goodman is a reënactor, costume drama and museum consultant, and historian of Tudor England “as it was lived”: not names and dates, nor tables of agricultural production by county, but the practical concerns of daily life from clothing to cooking to ploughing. We’ve already met her in| www.thepsmiths.com
The Longing for Total Revolution: Philosophic Sources of Social Discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche, Bernard Yack (Princeton University Press, 1986). This is a book by Bernard Yack. Who is Bernard Yack? Yack is fun, because for a mild-mannered liberal Canadian political theorist he’s dropped some dank truth-bombs over the years. For example, check out his short and punchy 2001 journal article “| www.thepsmiths.com