Miscellaneous
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My legal name is John, but everyone’s always called me Jack. (This confuses enough people that I thought it worth mentioning here.)
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In a past life, I was an avid geocacher, and want to eventually find a geocache in all 50 US states. Over the summer of 2023, I drove across the country twice and managed to snag geocaches in quite a few of the more obscure states.
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I have a lot of interests outside of research. I enjoy practicing different forms of exercise (running, weightlifting, playing basketball, occasional yoga) and making (mediocre) music. I also spend a lot of time with my wonderful group of friends, who I am very grateful for. :)
Books
I’m a pretty avid reader. Here’s a list of books that I enjoyed or moved me in some significant way:
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Barbarian Days (William Finnegan)
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All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)
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The Brief And Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)
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The Elephant Vanishes (Haruki Murakami)
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Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)
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Moonwalking With Einstein (Joshua Foer)
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As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)
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Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey)
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A Murder Is Announced (Agatha Christie)
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt)
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The Happiness Hypothesis (Jonathan Haidt)
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin)
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Consider the Lobster (David Foster Wallace)
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Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)