Kindle
- What is our problem by Tim Urban
Audible
Project Hail Marry by Andy Weir
They should make a movie out of this. Oh wait, probably they do. yes.. nice.
Hardcover
- Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Setiya Kieran
- Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present by Yanis Varoufakis
Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle
It Falls oddly somewhere between an academic paper and a very long reddit posts, where a lot of repetition made me lose the author’s points. The Fordism or Taylorism in the software/technology industry is a fascinating and maybe under-scrutinized topic, but this book merely accepts it exists.
Talking to my Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
The book I wish I’d read in my 20’s, so I do not struggle with the simple concepts of economics in my 30’s. Most of the time, simple looking things are, indeed, simple. And, The Matrix is my favorite movie. If not, Groundhog Day.
- A society with market into market society -> Polanyi?
- Oedipus’ interpretation: it is about the prophecy.
- Faust vs. Scrooge
- eudaimonia
- Luddites
I moved your Cheese by Deepak Malhota
Wow…I’ve never seen one clever sentence trying to become a full book and fail this miserably. I heard about the book/fable somewhere before and when it crossed my path again, I thought I would give it a try.. It does not even have enough content to be a tweet… man, this is a best seller.
*The Great Mental Models *
How to Stop Fascism by Paul Mason
Truth by H. Macdonald
Which story you pick to tell: Burning Platform vs. Golden Opportunity.
A mindset is a set of beliefs, ideas and opinions that we hold about ourselves and the world around us. Our mindset determines how we think about things and how we chose to act.
Why this is so hard to explain? Why people who seem to understand this, confuse mindset with reality, 5min later? Why are people priding themselves for naming baises bad at entertaining the idea that they are acting on a bias?
A good story that makes complex stuff coherent and clear -> 1. A process of change 2. Selective Casual Relationships 3. Trigger (bu kismi cokemelli). Simple but difficult.
Find good ways to say the same thing with different words. How to master this?
You can be angry about capitalism by Bernie Sanders
The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato
It is gratifying to see someone else also thinks the same way about the current state of consulting business. How inevitable it is to have the business itself, yet how much it hurts overall.
When We Cease to UUnderstan the World by Benjamin Labatut
The mathematician who goes mad, because he saw the end of the world: Grothenieck. The only way I can visualize Heisenberg confronting Schrödinger in his conference is an instagram video shot by someone from the audience. I wonder if I can remember these names when I need them. The comparison between the discovery of the quantum to the tennis rules is brilliant. I will definitely steel that.
Trouble in the Paradise by Slovaj Zižek
I need to put a Zizek here every other year to show how intellectually versatile I am. And reading the book with his voice in my head is funny. No idea what the book is about. I also finally found my polical stance: cynical indifferent.
Empowered by Cagan Jones
Another wonderful example of a map vs terrain topic, which I will one day write a great blog post on my imaginary and wildly popular blog. I re-read this one to understand a dear colleague’s point of view, left with the depressing idea of people walking around with simple treasure maps with a single tree and a giant X, on an island with thick fog, dense forest and a lot of wild animals. A full generation of professionals get their initial learning through these books and blogs, following ‘guru’s. Don’t get me wrong, there is a treasure on the island, and the map is accurate, but the terrain is very much real. Which many people cannot hadnle. (Here, imagine a Jack Nicholson screaming, terrain, you can’t handle the terrain!)
Don’t Trust Your Gut by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
School matters less than you think, the people you choose to expose your kids to matter more. Let that sink in… Looking competent is as important as being competent, so wear that hoodie from time to time, and do the hacker shit. Some are lucky, some capilize that luck better. There is a funnel, you are in the middle somewhere.
Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis
How come there is no Netflix series about this? This is succession on the country level. Also, it is ok to dream about being a narcissistic technocrat with very strong opionions. This is where the right sized problems to think about born. Also also, ‘Yunan cok ucuz yeaa’ is actually a tragedy.
Debt by David Graeber
Why do we have to repay debt? And Nasretting hoca’s ‘dying pot’ is a financial tale. Who knew?
What is your problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
Reading about things that I think are mind numbingly obvious but that so many people seem fascinated by is my happy place. I am gonna steal this one, a lot.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
This is a longer version of the famous article on Strike by the same author. I loved the idea and the fact that it has now a name and a credible origin why we have them. I have seen, first hand, how they have been created, carried over and defended by the very systems that are supposed to be efficient because they compete on the markets. Think of how capitalism is supposed to work without these
If you are on the clock, don’t be too efficient. You will be punished
If there is a system, there is always someone trying to figure out how to game it.
European Universities send roughly 1.4 billion a year on failed grant applications. : )
The fact that you have to force your imagination to come up with a world where these shitty jobs do not exist, is a good indicator why they are here to stay, and how
the systemis failing me. This is very similar to what I read with Zizek, on how TINA works against you in the very simple thought processes like this one.The Dawn of Everything by David Graber and Davir Wengrow
As usual, I followed my latest beloved author to the bitter end, and I guess this is where we parted ways. In many ways, this book is a counter-argument I don’t know I needed for all those Jared Diamonds believers. No, there is a huge amount of proof that contradicts that hierchical societies are the only way to go, and they are the direct result of agriculture. Yes, there were societes with agriculture, with economics as we know it (borrowing and virtual money) and they did ok. Not everything leads to inevitable capitalism. I need to come back to this one, and read fully, hashtag reminder.
Decisive by Chip & Dan Heath
How I decide, and how this is utterly boring and predictable will never be boring. The premise is so simple, and uninspiring yet I am sure I will discover this again and again:
- Widen your options
- Reality test your assumptions
- Attain distance before deciding
- Prepare to be wrong
what a bore…
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
Why would I invest time on such useless books that I know I will be only disappointed at the end, and I will be only satisfying myself here by complaining about them in a snarky, shallow way? I guess the alternative is my eating a bigmac and watching a netflix series, so I will take this.
- what’s on your mind?
- ..and what else
- what’s the real challenge here for you?
- what do you want?
- how can I help?
- if you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
- what was most useful for you?
how does these questions work on different context, with people who really struggle with self-reflection? How do you teach self-reflection as a manager? do they even realize I ask the same question every other week?
Technofeudalism by Yannis Varoufakis
That is the forth book I am reading from this dude. The whole idea of writing to a specific person, from your life, who has an imaginary but good question is a good idea, and I appreciate the effort to water-down all the financial kakaphonie to a level that I can understand, though it would be nicer if I know where to go from here. I also like the idea of forcing one’s self to imagine an alternative to the current state of things, what comes next? (my favorite question for the agile people). What I would remember:
- cloud mobilisation: boycot amazon (minimize the risk, maximize the gain)
- the idea of a global minimum wage with the central bank as everyone’s main bank
- “death of something bad would not necessarily deliver something better”
*A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger
Asking questions is good; asking good is better. Never settle for the first good answer. Ask why, how, what if, why not, what else. You will be fine. Right Question Institute is a thing, with a process: pick a theme, produce questions, improve questions, prioritize questions, take action on the prio ones. eh
What do you think the new CTO would do?
How to avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
Bill was the first billionaire I loathed (that is why we are on a first name basis). He was pure evil, trying to destroy linux. For that, I have mixed feelings about the books he authored. For once, I quite liked to level of a book. Giving context to numbers (mid-sized city gigawatt, small town megawatt, your home kilowatt) is a simple and effective tool. 51billion is a large number. Making things (31%) creates double the greenhouse than getting around (16%). I am fantastically ok with well written propaganda.
Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil
One of the preferred council of the bellowed Bill Gates (see above). The cliche is, the surprise I had on how fucked-up things were and how no-one did anything except a bunch of people will be dwarfed compared to what Nil will have in 10-15 years from now.
- from welcome to undesirable: Lead Gasoline, DDT, and Chlorofluorocarbons (stuff that makes other stuff cold)
- were to dominate and do not: Airships, nuclear fissions and supersonic flights
- keep waiting for: vacuum travel (middle finger to Elon), nitrogen-fixing cereals and controlled nuclear fusion It is hard not to see another list like this for other technology domains (looking at frontend technologies)