melloplatypus
Hello people of the future!
Thomas Nagle is an engineer and blogger based in Texas.
On this page I’ve collected:
YouTube
Melloplatypus - my main YouTube channel. I mostly make things that interest me and there is no rhyme or reason for what may come next.
Writing
The ones with asterisks (*) are the most popular. The ones with carrots (^) are a few of my favorites.
Poetry
Newsletter (Nagle Notes)
A newsletter with an interesting link or two to help you learn something new. I've included a few of my favorites below.
Time - Everyone has a sense of time, but do we ever mess with it?
Critics - Critics can help us form an opinion about art, but do we always need them?
IT Rule - What's the first rule of IT?
Everyday Words - Noon is midday but what does it actually mean?
Doors - Why do bathroom doors open in?
Equal Sign - Balance in life and in mathematics
Blog (melloplatypus.com/blog)
Sports stadiums and architecture: A case study for Camden Yards
Personal Lexicon - Here’s the location of all the 10$ words I have learned and want to remember.
Books
This is a list of the books I’ve read since about the start of college, mostly arranged in the order I’ve read them. It’s to jog my memory and as a way to share what I’ve loved.
Check out my profile on Goodreads!
Life of Pi, Yann Martel.
Ranger's Apprentice (series), John Flanagan.
Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K Dick.
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Legend Series, Marie Lu.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde.
Getting Things Done, David Allen.
• This book is always my go-to for anyone who wants to be “more productive”. If you can empty your mind of the background loops, you can think and plan clearer.
The Young Elites Series, Marie Lu.
Experiencing Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen.
Thermal Delight in Architecture, Lisa Heschong.
The Place of Houses, Charles Moore et al.
The New Way Things Work, David Macaulay.
The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams.
Start with Why, Simon Sinek.
• The Golden Circle is all you need to get started.
Weaver on Strategy, Earl Weaver and Terry Pluto.
The Magicians, Lev Grossman.
The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells.
The Alchemists: The INEOS Story, James Ratcliffe.
The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin.
Warcross, Marie Lu.
I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, Tim Kreider.
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Walter Isaacson.
How to Talk to Anyone, Leil Lowndes.
The Magician King, Lev Grossman.
The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman.
So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson.
Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss.
The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less, Richard Koch
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson.
Win Bigly, Scott Adams.
Gridiron Genius, Michael Lombardi.
Chess Fundamentals, Jose Raul Casablanca.
I’m OK — You’re OK, Thomas A. Harris.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac.
• One of the best books ever written. It makes you want to be free and travel, experiencing life.
Watership Down, Richard Adams.
The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff.
12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson.
Hungarian Uprising, Louis Archard.
The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis.
The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America, Mae Ngai.
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry.
The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason.
The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier.
The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty, Sam L. Savage et al.
Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine, George Dohrmann.
Another Country, James Baldwin.
• This might have been the most difficult book to read. Not from a technical sense but how the characters are struggling with real issues and bring you along their perspective.
Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths, Venkatesh Rao.
The Dead, James Joyce.
Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynne.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini
The Last American Hero, Tom Wolfe.
Representative Men, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde.
No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Presentation for Engineers and Industrialist: A Group of Letter to an Industrial Organization, Carl F. Braun.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master, Hafiz and Daniel Ladinsky.
We’re All A Mess, It’s OK, Amy Lyle,
The Place of the Lion, Charles Williams.
Charisma on Command, Kevin Gartner.
Pan Tadeusz, Adam Mickiewicz.
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, Marshall B. Rosenberg.
• Knowing how to communicate is the most important skill. Reading books can help with the new knowledge but Rosenberg helps you express yourself.
• Observation, Feeling, Needs, Requests (OFNR). And here’s a great reference guide.
Ambition without Boundaries: How Julius Caesar’s Thirst for Conquest Shaped the Ancient World, and Impacted the Modern One, Jack Johnson.
Rhinoceros Success, Scott Alexander.
Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty.
Charlemagne, Derek Wilson.
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran.
Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.
Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll.
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger.
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card.
• Perfect for learning military tactics and how to be a leader. It is Julius Caesar in space.
Depression & Other Magic Tricks, Sabrina Benaim.
• This book is great, but I would also recommend watching her reading many of these. Here’s First Date
Let’s Go Exploring: Calvin and Hobbes, Michael Hingston.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe.
• A great display of man’s challenge finding the individual in a society, and the transformation of society destroying the past.
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis.
• Really reminded me of Randy J. Paterson’s How to Be Miserable (or CGP Grey’s video 7 Ways to Maximize Misery).
• It’s not always about doing right but avoiding obvious wrongs.
Cubed, Erno Rubik.
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson.
Si-cology 101, Si Robertson.
Dracula, Bram Stoker.
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch.
The Library Book, Susan Orlean.
Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson.
Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson.
Wojtek the Bear, Alieen Orr.
The Holy Qur’an, translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden.
Warrior of the Light, Paulo Coelho.
Primeval and Other Times, Olga Tokarczuk.
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens.
Answers in the Form of Questions, Claire McNear.
The Fade Out, Ed Brubaker.
• The first graphic novel I’ve read. The story of a movie star’s murder during The Red Scare.
Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• A great dissection of words and their meanings. There is only an amorphous cloud around understanding that we can only really pin down an “ostensive definition”
The Republic, Plato.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace.
Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion.
Creative Interviewing, Ken Metzler.
The Political Thought of American Statesmen, Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens.
Upstream, Mary Oliver.
Diderot: A Critical Biography, P.N. Furbank.
• One of the underrated philosophers/enlightened thinkers. I see a lot of my own tendencies in his character, mainly the ebullient attitude towards knowledge and discovery.
• My biggest insight was the need to write or create more. It’s only through the feedback loop of creation and analysis we can grow in our thinking.
Intangibles, Joan Ryan.
Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin.
The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh.
Resisting Happiness, Matthew Kelly.
The Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset.
Blessed Contradictions, Michael Anderson.
The Making of an American Thinking Class, Darren Staloff.
Confessions, Saint Augustine.
Proslogion, Anselm.
The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson.
Steve McQueen: The Cooler King, Richard Sydenham.
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle.
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
The Metamorphosis, Frank Kafka.
Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth.
Washington’s General, Terry Golway.
The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller.
The Symposium, Plato.
Dune, Frank Hurbert.
The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis.
• Storge or affection, Philia or friendship, Eros or romantic, and Agape or unconditional charity.
Fundamentals of the Petroleum Industry, Robert O. Anderson.
LeadeReliability, Jeff Dudley.
She and Her Cat, Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa.
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn.
The LEGO Story, Jens Andersen.
The Miser, Molière.
The Road to Charleston, John Buchanan.
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Sean Carroll.
Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, translated by Ralph McInerny.
Adopted: The Sacrament of Belonging in a Fractured World, Kelley Nikondeha.
101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged, Wright H. Norman.
Story Driven, Bernadette Jiwa.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway.
The Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset.
• Reread and noticed the similarities between the problems he describes and the world of today. The prevalence of demoralization and the loss of obligation to be better.
The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt.
Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel.
Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger.
The Forgers, Roger Moorhouse.
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper.
Brighton Rock, Graham Greene.
Capital, Karl Marx.
Envelope Poems, Emily Dickinson.
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.
Is There God after Prince?, Peter Coviello.
The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis.
Midsummer’s Night Dream, William Shakespeare.
A Theory of Justice, John Rawls.
Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur.
Opium, John H. Halpern and David Blistein.
The Aeneid, Virgil.
The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, Dante.
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry.
• One of the best books I’ve read, a western Don Quixote.
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris.
A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver.
Macbeth, William Shakespeare.
The Rise of the Meritocracy, Michael Young.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers.
The Stranger, Albert Camus.
Emma, Jane Austen.
American Gods, Neil Gaiman.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou.
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin.
• A great read about how to relate to others. The love and loss and conflict you can feel inside your soul but never articulate until it hurts another. A must-read