I think one of the best ways to get to know someone is through their interests. So here are some of mine.
I am extremely competitive. As a result, growing up I loved all sports. After school, my friends and I would play backyard football, wiffleball, basketball, street hockey, or any other game we could invent. The organized sports I was best at were always hockey and golf, which I played throughout high school and still play to this day. Every winter I play in multiple men’s leagues and every summer I play golf multiple times a week. Billiards (pool) is something I became obsessed with in my 20s during university. Something about its deterministic nature, physics, and strategy just perfectly appeals to me. I think 9-ball is my favorite billiard game type.
Recently, I have been getting into Tennis, Pickleball, and Padel (due to some friends I met in university). I think Padel is my favorite out of the racket sport variants. However, I don’t play them enough to yet consider them hobbies.
I love learning new skills and I love games and puzzles. Typically, my hobbies consist of these things. One day I hope to add woodworking to this list, but I don’t yet have the income to fund such a hobby.
Caddyshack will always be #1 for me just because I’ve watched it so many times as a kid, and it was a movie that my dad and I bonded over. At one point we could quote the entire movie. Shawshank Redemption is just a perfect film. The message of Fight Club is a bit dated, but I think it’s one of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt’s best performances, and the twist at the end is one of the best twists ever in cinema. Get Out is still Jordan Peele’s best movie in my opinion. I wish more horror movies were like this where the suspense slowly builds up, rather than cheap jump scares. Kung Fu Panda is my favorite kids movie. It is the best version of the classic chosen one trope I’ve seen.
I don’t think I need to defend any of these TV shows because anyone who has watched them knows how great they are. Severance may move up in the list in the future, but since it only has one season I can’t yet put it higher. South Park and Rick and Morty may be past their prime (only time will tell), but they both have some absolutely hilarious episodes. Black Mirror has some hits and misses, but some episodes are truly genius. I think Playtest (S3E2) is my favorite.
Portal is the perfect combination of puzzle and platforming. In order to complete each chamber, you need to figure out the solution as well as properly execute it. Baba is You is such a brilliant concept and the game is extremely well executed. The puzzles quickly become extremely difficult, but the solutions are always satisfying. I have mixed feelings about The Witness (I find it pretentious at times and some of the puzzles are just stupid). However, the “holy $#@%” moment alone (and if you’ve played the game you know what I’m talking about) forces it on the list. Finally, _Mario Kart _was just THE game everyone in my generation played as a kid, either on DS or on the Wii. It will always be a special part of my childhood.
I’m not huge on fiction. Typically, I like books that attempt to convey a particular philosophy or worldview and take them to their logical conclusion. This is why Animal Farm and 1984 are at the top of the list. I think George Orwell is an incredible writer. While I may not entirely agree with the messages of the books, the world-building and characters are just so perfectly written and the narratives are so clever. I just love everything about them. Ender’s Game is the closest thing to true fiction on this list, but it contains so much wisdom. Logiccomix is a classic for someone like me who loves math and its history. Brave New World is like the anti-1984, and I think is actually a better prediction of the direction society is heading. It’s lower on the list because I personally didn’t enjoy the writing style, but the narrative was still fantastic. Putting Out of Your Mind is a must-read if you want to improve at putting in golf. I read it once a year in the spring before the golf season starts. Finally, Guns, Germs and Steel is a really interesting book that gives a “theory of history”. It attempts to explain why, at one point, Britain conquered the entire known world. While there have been several rebuttals to the book, I wish more historical research was dedicated to topics like this.
I would like to add an honorable mention: The Fourth Turning. This book outlines the Strauss–Howe generational theory of history. While I think it’s a really interesting book and again I want to encourage this type of research, I wasn’t entirely convinced by its arguments. It seems to me a bit like Freudian psychology where the same mechanism can explain any outcome. In other words, it seems like you can just cherry-pick the data in order to fit with the narrative. Also, I found the book way longer than it needed to be. After the first few chapters, you pretty much get the gist of the book.
These are my favorite textbooks both due to the subject matter, but also due to the thoughtfulness and execution of the presentation.
CLRS is #1 because during my Master’s degree I was the head TA of an algorithms course that used this textbook. It will always have a special place in my heart. Griffiths’s E&M textbook is a national treasure. Honestly, I often refer to his first chapter of vector calculus because the presentation is THAT good. It’s as close to a perfect textbook as you can get. Sipser’s textbook gives an amazingly simple presentation of an extremely complex topic. I really admire how much work was put into the examples, visuals, proofs, and explanations. Terence Tao is one of the leading mathematicians. While his textbook may not be the standard for real analysis, it is brilliant in its logical progression and simplicity. Finally, Euclid’s Elements in Color is just so beautiful it has to be on the list.