My Favourite Things From 2021 (With Links!)

Happy New Year!

2021 was a rough year, not just for me personally, but for pretty much everybody. If you’re like me, you’re probably anxious about what is to come in 2022–humans are naturally intolerant of uncertainty, and the new omicron variant of COVID-19 has given us a lot of uncertainty.

But, I’m hopeful for 2022. There is increasing reason to believe that omicron is milder than the delta variant that ravaged the globe in the middle of 2021, and it appears that vaccines still provide pretty good protection against severe disease from COVID-19. Only in uncertainty is there room for hope, and we have some reason to be hopeful for the New Year.

As depressing as 2021 was, there were many things that brought me joy which I’d like to share with you. I’m going to share some of these things with you so that you can take joy in them too.

Note: I made a Twitter thread earlier with my 10 favourite things from2021. This list, however, goes into far more detail with 25 more of my favourite things! (36 total) Family members, friends, etc., are not included in this list. I’m very fortunate that if they were, this list would be nearly endless.

Contents

• Books
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Psychology Papers
• COVID-info Twitter Users
• non-COVID Twitter Users
• YouTube Channels
• Albums
• Booze (19+ in Canada; IDK elsewhere)
• Coffee Shops
• Local Bookstores
• Local Businesses

Books

1. Luke Russell, Being Evil (2020): This is a very short book, coming in at 160 small pages. But for a short book, this book packs a lot of punch. It’s an introduction to the philosophy of evil. I read it this summer on a rainy weekend camping on a mountain in Nova Scotia. Summary–Russell’s basic argument is this: All humans have the capacity for evil. The term ‘evil’ is an assessment of the quantitative amount of badness present in a given action or intention. As such, there are no ‘evil people’, because evil is merely a matter of degree, not of quality. There are people who act or intend various degrees of evil, but there are no qualitatively evil people. There are some other really cool points in this book. For example, Russell shows that Hannah Arendt’s assessment of Adolf Eichmann in Eichmann in Jerusalem is incorrect. Arendt thought that Eichmann was merely a man acting out his orders–afterall, that’s what he claimed when he was put on trial. But as Russell demonstrates, Eichmann actually had some very dark motives and he was extremely antisemetic long before Nazism. Arendt’s claim about the banality of evil still stands, but Eichmann might not paint the picture of the banal evil-doer as well as Arendt thought. Perhaps Captain Julius Wohlauf or Major Wilhelm Trapp, both of whom were part of the SS, would be better examples of the archetypal banal evil-doer.

2. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (2012): Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been studying psychology for almost four years and I’ve never read this book. Summary–Haidt’s basic argument is this: Moral judgments are not fundamentally rational. Rather, they are intuitive, and they’re based on a set of moral emotions. There are six moral foundations from which we provide an intuitive judgment of an action or intention, everyone differs along each of them, and they are primarily modified by our responses to others’ assessments of our judgments–Haidt calls this the social intuitionist model of morality. The six moral foundations are as follows: (i) Care/harm; (ii) fairness/cheating; (iii) loyalty/betrayal; (iv) authority/subversion; (v) sanctity/degradation; and (vi) liberty/oppression. Liberals have what Haidt calls a three-factor morality: They’re high in liberty/oppression and care/harm, but low in fairness/cheating. From this three-factor morality, liberals (and leftwingers more broadly) form a political identity based around a kind of heroic-liberater narrative, where their goal is to be a liberator who frees the oppressed and the hurting from the grips of tyrants. Conservatives have a six-factor morality, but they’re slightly lower than liberals on care/harm. Conservatives appreciate authority and group loyalty more than liberals, and they form their political identity based on a kind of heroic-defender narrative, where their goal is to defend the traditions and ways of life of their forbears from the chaotic brutes that threaten to destroy it. Conservatives also tend to be pro-free market, because they believe in a kind of proportional, meritocratic notion of fairness that corresponds well with the norms of free market capitalism. Libertarians are different from both conservatives and liberals: They are very high on liberty/oppression, so they tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The six moral foundations are the bedrock of our political identities. Furthermore, humans are groupish–we function well in groups and form moral identities within them. For people across political, religious, and cultural divides to get along, we must acknowledge the psychological bedrock of our moral and political differences and try to overcome our groupishness with calm and free discussion. Otherwise, we will be overtaken by our emotions and we will either destroy each other and/or ourselves, or we will segregate into rigid ideogical/religious/cultural groups that hate and fear each other. There are some things in the book I disagree with. For example, I am much more critical of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) than Haidt. I think there is good reason to doubt the validity of the IAT, and there’s certainly good reason to doubt the test-retest reliability of it. If you want to know more about problems with the IAT, Michael Shermer wrote a good article about it in Scientific American.

3. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783): I finally took the time to seriously read Kant, and man, has my mind been blown. This book is too complicated to give a good summary, but here’s the best I can do: Imagine nothing. You can’t. You’re left with a mental image of an empty black void. From this, we can recognize two things: First, within this empty black void, there is still 3D space. Second, time is still passing. Since you cannot have a representation that lacks space and time, space and time must be fundamental parts of your mind rather than things that present themselves to the senses. They are intuitions. Kant thinks we also have some built-in concepts, like that of quantity. From our innate concepts (categories), we can derive truths about what is possible within the realm of experience. Those truths are synthetic a priori truths. Is all of this confusing? Yes. Is it profound? Also yes. It reminds me of Anne Treisman’s feature integration theory. Imagine a blue letter O. That blue letter O is made up of two ‘features’: The shape of the letter O, and the colour blue. When the blue letter O presents itself to your visual faculties, the two features are separate, and attention comes in to bind/glue the features together into a coherent perceptual whole–the blue letter O. Notice that the features present themselves in space, and they exist there pre-attentively. Space is what Treisman calls a dimension, and it exists in the Kantian sense in that we have an innate representation of space that is not bound together from features in sensory experience. Rather, space is like a canvas upon which visual features are painted upon. So, feature integration theory takes a Kantian view of space. Feature integration theory isn’t committed to space being strictly ideal–instead, space is ideal, and it may also be real. Kant would say that we just can’t know whether space is real in the external sense. I don’t know whether Treisman is an idealist or a realist about space, but her theory implies that there is some form of space that is ideal. It’s an open question as to whether there is an argument that can demonstrate the external reality of space.

Blogs

1. Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten: Scott is a psychiatrist and a member of a community that has been referred to as the ‘Silicon Valley rationalists’. His first blog was called Slate Star Codex, where he wrote about everything from effective altruism to meta-analytical statistics to the neoreactionary politics of Curtis Yarvin (AKA Mencius Moldbug) et al.. Scott transferred over to Substack after some controversy following an article on his work by the New York Times. He still blogs about all of the above topics, but I mainly follow him for his writing on scientific methods and statistics, which he writes about beautifully, like in his piece on the misleading nature of the term ‘no evidence’, and like in his recent meta-analysis on the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19 (Spoiler alert: ivermectin probably doesn’t work as a treatment for COVID-19, but fluvoxamine does, and Scott wants doctors to step up and start prescribing fluvoxamine for COVID-19 patients).
2. Rob Henderson, newsletter on human nature: Rob is an American airforce veteran and PhD candidate at Cambridge University. He writes one of the most popular psychology email newsletters, which has been praised by people like Scott Barry Kaufman and Jordan B. Peterson. Rob is constantly reading cool books and posting interesting quotes on his Twitter. He coined the term ‘luxury belief’, which, if you spend any time on Twitter these days, you’ve probably come across. Rob is an awesome writer. I know you’ll love his newsletter.
3. Erik Hoel, The Intrinstic Perspective: I cannot get over how incredible Hoel’s essays are. Hoel is a neuroscientist at Tufts University, and he recently released a neuroscience murder-mystery novel called The Revelations. On his Substack, he writes about everything from science fiction to the ethics of artificial general intelligence (the latter piece got me hooked on his writing). Hoel says that one of the advantages of writing cool essays on the internet is that people will read them “Right away, right with their head still on the pillow“. Funny enough, a subscriber told him that they were reading the essay that quote comes from while laying in bed. When I was reading the essay where he reflects on that subscriber’s comment, I too was laying in bed, with my head still on the pillow! There simply is no other way to state how awesome Hoel’s blog is. You must subscribe.

Podcasts

1. Lex Fridman’s podcast: Lex is a computer scientist and former researcher at MIT. His podcast became so popular that he now pursues that project as his primary work. Lex interviews all the coolest people, like David Chalmers, Elon Musk, David Sinclair, Andrew Huberman, Matthew Walker, and many more. If you want to know what all the youngsters are talking about in science these days, you’ve gotta listen to Lex’s podcast.
2. Scott Barry Kaufman, The Psychology Podcast: Kaufman is a very well-published and well-respected humanistic psychologist. He interviews a ton of people on the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience. My personal favourite podcast of his is with Richard Ryan, one of the founders of the self-determination theory of motivation. (Note: I’m actually writing a piece about human nature and self-determination theory for the Canadian Positive Psychology Association student branch right now, so Kaufman’s podcast with Richard Ryan has been a great resource–subscribe to the CPPA blog and stay tuned!).
3. Andrew Huberman, The Huberman Lab Podcast: Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. His podcast focuses on neuroscience, psychology, and biology, with a particular interest in the practical applications of hardcore empirical research. He’s also a skateboarder. Huberman is tightly knit with Lex Fridman, David Sinclair, Matthew Walker, and others, but my personal favourite podcast of his is the one he did with the evolutionary psychologist David Buss. I’ve taken a lot of neuroscience classes during my psychology degree, and I’m always surprised how things just seem to ‘click’ for me when I listen to Huberman’s podcasts in a way that they don’t for me when I’m in class. It makes me wonder what it would be like to take one of his classes at Stanford!

Psychology Papers

1. Kevin Briand (1998), “Feature integration and spatial attention: More evidence of a dissociation between endogenous and exogenous orienting”: This paper is a replication and extension of Briand & Klein’s (1987) paper titled “Is Posner’s ‘beam’ the same as Treisman’s ‘glue’?” These papers demonstrated that when you combine Michael Posner’s cuing paradigm with Anne Treisman’s illusory conjunction experiments, endogenous cuing is additive whereas exogenous cuing is interactive with opportunities for illusory conjunctions. I.e., exogenous mechanisms of attention are responsible for feature integration. These papers have been critical for my honours project, where I’m trying to find out whether gaze-cuing invokves endogenous or exogenous mechanisms of visual orienting. Half of my project is swapping out the cues Briand used for gaze-cues and seeing whether the results look more like endogenous or exogenous cuing.
2. Swasti Arora, Michael Lawerence, and Raymond Klein (2020), “The Attention Network Test Database: ADHD and Cross-Cultural Applications”: In this paper, Arora, Lawerence, & Klein meta-analyze the attention network scores of children with ADHD, and they also show cross-cultural differences in attention between Chinese, European, and American participants. This paper is a shining example of clarity in scientific writing. I’m very lucky to know Swasti and Ray personally (I’ve met Mike Lawerence but I don’t know him well and haven’t worked directly with him yet). I’ve learned an incredible amount from them in the Klein Lab at Dalhousie. This paper is what inspired me to write my recent meta-analysis on the Attention Network Test in schizophrenia patients.
3. Colin DeYoung, Lena Quilty, and Jordan Peterson, “Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five.”: This paper breaks the Big Five personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) down into 10 different aspects (i.e., sub-dimensions; 2 sub-dimensions per trait). It’s an important paper for understanding the factor analytical methods for deriving the Big Five, and it inspired me to write a paper in a personality class where I argued that people have been misinterpreting the personality differences between men and women by comparing them only along single dimensions rather than along 5 dimensions, or, even better, 10 aspects.

COVID-info Twitter Users

1. Tim Bousquet, editor of the Halifax Examiner: I first followed Tim on Twitter after hearing him ask the most serious and well-formulated questions out of all of the reporters at the Nova Scotia government’s COVID-briefings. Tim also tweets the NS government’s COVID numbers out in great detail everytime they come out, and he summarizes the government briefings in real time for those of us who are sitting in class trying to pretend that we’re listening when we’re actually following the last buzz on COVID. I ran into Tim in Halifax one day and all I could muster was a nervous thank you for posting so much info on Twitter about COVID hahaha.
2. Angry Cardiologist: Over the summer, my brother and I were hospitalized 3-days following our second shot of an mRNA vaccine. Both of us had heart inflammation–my brother had myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and I had myopericarditis (inflammation of the heart and the sac around it). Ever since we got out of hospital, we’ve been keeping up with the data on this side effect. We came across the Twitter profile of an anonymous angry cardiologist. This person (presumably a male, given the profile picture of an angry man) is extremely funny, but also honest in his interpretation of the science. I’ll probably keep following him after COVID is over just for a good laugh.
3. Walid Gellad: Dr. Gellad is a physician and professor of medicine. I appreciate his takes on COVID, whether it be on vaccine side-effects, disease severity, or whatever. I don’t always agree with him, but Gellad is a cautious thinker, so he keeps those of us who are too quick to make big sweeping conclusions based on limited data in check.

non-COVID Twitter Users

1. Peter Cowan, CBC: I’m originally from St. John’s Newfoundland, where Peter is based, so Peter’s tweets keep me up-to-date on the stuff happening in Newfoundland. Recently he tried to take a vacation, but still kept tweeting a lot of news. Some Twitter users protested that he deserves a raise for his efforts–I think they’re right!
2. Alice Evans: Evans is a highly prestigious researcher studying gender divergence in a variety of settings, such as the pay-gap and cross-cultural differences in gender roles. I’ve only recently come across her on Twitter. I haven’t read enough of her blog to make a statement on it, but she writes some really interesting threads.
3. Lauren Mills: Lauren tweets about all things public relations in Halifax. I originally followed her for her info on COVID rapid-testing, but I’ve stuck around because she tweets a wide variety of interesting and helpful articles that help keep me updated on what’s happening in Halifax. Her dog is also really cute.

YouTube Channels

1. Dr. John Campbell: Dr. Campbell is a retired nurse and teacher in the UK. He has kept me sane throughout the pandemic and I’ve learned a lot about statistics from watching his COVID-updates. I often disagree with him, but I always learn something from him because he provides extensive references and very strong arguments to support his interpretations of the available COVID-data.
2. Medlife Crisis: Dr. Francis is a cardiologist in the UK. He makes really informative and funny video-essays about all things cardiology, but also about popular topics in medicine like the ketogenic diet and the Wim Hof breathing method. He’s an awesome science communicator and a pretty good stand-up comedian too.
3. Lofi Girl: For all your chill hip hop beats to relax/study to. I’ve spent countless hours over the years listening to this livestream, many while stuck studying at home during lockdown.

Albums

1. Great Big Sea, XX: Man, the nostalgia I’ve been feeling for Newfoundland has been growing exponentially as the pandemic goes on. Listening to Great Big Sea’s greatest hits has both comforted me and made the nostalgia grow stronger. I saw Alan Doyle et. al live in Halifax in November and it was seriously the best show I’ve ever been to. Best tracks on the album: Heart of Hearts; Boston and St. John’s; Sea of No Cares; and Good People.
2. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans: I’ve spent a lot of time being sad during the pandemic. I first listened to Death Cab as a child growing up in the 2000s, and when COVID started, I rediscovered them. It’s been a cathartic experience. I’ve even tried to teach myself to sing (somewhat successfully) by learning songs like I Will Follow You Into the Dark. Ben Gibbard’s voice just seems to be similar to mine. Best tracks on the album: Marching Bands of Manhattan; What Sarah Said; Brothers on a Hotel Bed; and I Will Follow You Into the Dark.
3. Better Oblivion Community Center, Better Oblivion Community Center: I’m going to be honest, I’d never listened to Phoebe Bridgers nor Conor Oberst before one of my coworker’s boyfriend came to Nova Scotia from British Columbia to visit her. He’s a killer jazz musician, and he told me about this project band that Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst formed. This album is awesome. It captures all the melancholy and sad/disappointed but also hopeful feelings I’ve felt during the pandemic. Best tracks on the album: Sleepwalkin’; and Dylan Thomas.

Booze (19+ in Canada; IDK elsewhere)

1. Quidi Vidi Brewery: Quidi Vidi is a small historical fishing village in St. John’s Newfoundland. It’s also home to the best damn brewery on the planet. My favourite two beers are the 1892 and the Iceberg. I don’t know shit about beer other than it tastes good, and all I know about these two is that they’re the best beers I have ever consumed. The mainlanders and their hoppy beer are no match for the Quidi Vidi Brewery.
2. Bulleit Bourbon: I haven’t been able to drink much since I got the heart inflammation, but before then I was really loving this whiskey. My favourite cocktail is a whiskey sour, and there is no whiskey better to make it with than Bulleit. I come from a long line of whiskey loving Newfoundland fisherman and tradesmen. A love of whiskey is in my blood as much as the salt air is forever stuck in my nose.
3. Captain Morgan White Rum: It’s pretty easy to go overboard with whiskey, and if I drink too much (I mean like 4 drinks–I have a low tolerance) it makes me feel lousy. White rum, on the other hand, doesn’t do this. I never drink more than 4 drinks (rarely more than 2), and it doesn’t make me feel so bad. Goes best with Coke or Pepsi, obviously.

Local Coffee Shops

Note: I’ve ommitted one coffee shop from this list because I used to work there, so maybe it would be a bit too much of a conflict of interest to list it as a favourite.

1. Chicken Little Cafe, Bedford NS: This is an offshoot of the Chickenburger restaurant on the Bedford highway. The coffee is dirt cheap and it’s really good. Not overly acidic. Mostly medium roasts. Their iced coffee is my favourite.
2. Cortado Tasting Room, Bedford NS: I don’t go to Cortado very often because it’s a bit out of the way for me. However, they bring in a lot of great coffee like Monogram, Phil & Sebastien, and Sine (which is owned by the same owners). The owners, Joe and Alex, are also really cool. Favourite drink here is an iced Mocha made with oat milk.
3. Tart & Soul Cafe, Halifax NS: Full disclosure, I know the owners, Lisa and Saf. They’re awesome people running an incredible local business. I’ve spent tons of mornings waking up over a cappucino and a bacon bialy (or sometimes a ginger-cookie sandwich with espresso cream on exam days) in this cafe. Coolest cafe in the city for sure. Favourite drink here is the cold brew.

Local Bookstores

1. Bookmark, Halifax NS: Best new book store in the city. I’ve been shopping here ever since I started at Dal almost four years ago. The staff are extremely kind and the selection for philosophy, science, classics, etc. is incredible. It was the first store I went to everytime lockdown ended in Nova Scotia.
2. The Odd Book, Wolfville NS: Coolest used book store ever. The owner, Jim, and the former owner (also Jim) are kind and interesting people, and their selection for historical texts in psychology, philosophy, and science is second-to-none. I stumbled across it a few years back when there was construction on Main street and I had to park in the Independent parking lot across from it. I’ve been buying stacks of books there ever since.
3. King’s Co-op Bookstore, Halifax NS: This bookstore is a hidden gem, located in the Academic Building on the University of King’s College campus. The owner, Paul, is a great guy with an awesome beard and a talent for jazz guitar. I love chatting with him and he’s always super helpful in finding weird books in psychology and philosophy that I blow too much money on.

Local Businesses

1. Halifax Folklore Centre, Halifax NS: When I got out of hospital over the summer, I went and bought a Godin acoustic guitar from this shop. This shop is a guitar player’s paradise. They recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. Here’s to many more years of killer deals and local music.
2. Maritime Tartan Company, Halifax NS: Sherrie Kearney makes incredibly high quality tartan products for awesome prices. She’s become a local celebrity for supplying Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang with most of his cool ties he wears to the COVID-briefings. I bought a two-tartan scarf from Sherrie recently and I absolutely love it. On one side it has the Newfoundland tartan (for the province I was born in) and on the other side it has the Nova Scotia tartan (for the province I live in). Sherrie makes a ton of cool products, and if you’re in the market for a tartan face mask, she’s the one to contact.
3. Your Father’s Moustache, Halifax NS: My favourite pub in Halifax. Great selection of booze and food, and good live entertainment. Can’t go wrong with the Moustache.

That’s all I’ve got for my favourite things of 2021. I wish you and your loved ones happiness and good health in 2022 and thank you for reading the ramblings of an undergraduate.

Nicholas Murray