Hi friends,

It's been an overcast and wet week here in supposedly sunny California. While it's been the tiniest inconvenience to wipe my damp seat or carry my raincoat, it's been absolutely refreshing to experience some rain. Not just refreshing for me but for the state — in case you didn't know, California has been in a long drought. Speaking of California, I had a phone conversation with a manager at the California Air Resources Board this week, and it was awesome. I often hear (and I've witnessed a bit) about the struggles of working in a public agency but hearing the potential work I could do with this agency was fantastic. Whenever I have these fun informational interviews, I can never tell if I'm swayed by the work I'm learning about or if it's the person selling the work! People who enjoy their work can project that energy, and I find it so infectious. I feel like I walk away from all those conversations, thinking, "I've found the perfect place to work." As exciting as it is, I am still searching and applying for jobs that bring me joy and engage me on a technical front while having an impact on people. How do you discern between jobs and people? If you ever want to talk about jobs, career, and their role in our lives, hit me up!

Book Talk📚

This week, I finally finished Tara Westover's Educated, and wow, it was such a moving and emotional story. I reflected on Goodreads, so you can find my thoughts here or below:

Educated was a truly beautiful and heartbreaking story. Tara continually asks what family means and what love looks like towards your kin and to yourself. It was really sad to watch Tara struggle through everything -- so many points in the story I wanted to believe her parents, especially her mom, would change. I understand that Tara's father had bipolar disorder and illusions of grandeur; however, I could not help but relate these experiences to misinformation spread today. With everyone able to get news tailored for them, we form these microcosms of information, making it feel impossible to discern fact from fiction.

Another aspect of this book I enjoyed was Westover's commentary/reflections on privilege. Today, privilege is used to discuss racial and financial privilege, whereas Westover describes another perspective/ or a different type of privilege -- educational privilege or lack thereof. It was hard to hear Westover say she couldn't focus on learning when she had to work so she could live.

Overall, this was an incredible story, and I'm glad Tara Westover was able to write it!

I am still making my way through Thinking in Systems — learning about ideas such as self-organization, hierarchy, and suboptimization. One thing I'm grateful for in this book and my class on Urban Systems is the language and framework it allows me to describe the world around me.

Lastly, I finally started Three-Body Problem #3: Death's End. For those who've been following for a few months now will know I've been reading this incredible series and I'm now on the last book. It will take a while to get through it, but I'm excited because I've heard only great reviews about this book so far.

Intentional Content Consumption📰

Video — BBC News Reporting Countries Lobbying Against Climate Change

• You'd think that with all the research out about climate change, we, as world citizens, would do anything to fight against it. Instead, we have countries lobbying against the IPCC. My immediate reactions include frustration, especially when arguments like "well, at least I'm not as bad as..." dominate.
• When I explore these behaviors beyond their apparent surface-level ignorance, I wonder what challenges or barriers exist for countries to make the shift. India is building even more coal power plants today despite how terrible they are for the environment. One reason for this is because it is cheap, and when you need to provide power to over a billion people, making the sustainable (and often expensive) choice is difficult.

This Week's Video 📹

We're inching towards a video — progress this week looked like organizing clips I have taken however that was the extent. So send positive energy my way! I'd appreciate that.

Thanks for reading and reflecting this week! If you aren't subscribed to get this in your inbox weekly, you can here!

Best,
Awoe ✌🏾