Vanity reading list 2024

Kindle

• Yellow Face by R. F Kuang

  I wonder if this topic, authenticity and who is allowed to speak about what, will be still a concern in 10-20 years. I presume, once more and more identity becomes more blurry, (like mentioned in the book), the unwritten rules need to be replaced. Gradually, then suddenly.

• Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

  We are slowly and collectively ruining our kids’ future by spending more money and attention, hoping to one-up each other, making mediocre services rich along the way. Book should have been an article, but I will add this to my echo-chamber about education. Design the environment.

Hardcover

• Choke Point by Rebecca Giblin

  I am still amazed by the idea of passive protest days against Amazon (or any big tech) for that matter. Why hasn’t this
  been done before, or has it? How to build more democratic platforms for creators is a wonderful problem. Choke points are bad.

• Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Hudson

  A rare book, where one does not mystically and subtly boost his success while pretending to give world-shattering advice, but instead give re-usable/adaptable tactics with the context. I understand a lot of it came from the internal stripe blog post, makes me wonder how I would have done in such place.

• How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg

  Plan a lot, iterate and learn from the mistakes. What is the name of the phenomenon where, by the time it takes one to figure out how to manage/achieve difficult, one is never again in an easy position to do them again.

• Time to think by Hannah Barnes

  The gender topic is an endless well, where one can find himself on the ‘wrong’ side of the argument, since the sides of the same dargument are wide. One thing I am not surprised, how large organisations and system fails. This is very straight forward, I guess. What I really wanted to learn is the surge of the natal females who are referred to the clinic after 2013. I only found one link where it says NHS will investigate. Some of my wtf’s from the book:

  • Some parents prefer their kids to be trans than gay.
  • Being trans might considered as another way to hurt their body when they are in distress.
  • Talking about this topic withouc vindicated as transphobic is not possible, even for the professionals.
  • Blockers do not have long term studies and do not provide time to think. They don’t.
  • gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, but it is treated with mental health professionals.
  • gender non-comforming kids do not necessarily have gender dysphoria.

• 37Thigs One Architect Knoes About IT Transformation by Gregor Hohpe

  This book was supposed to help me navigate a tech disaster and apprach anew to the topic, hopefuly equiped with insights. I should not critize the book on its content (shallow) since it only offers a glimpse into his journey, which I found depressing and very unmotivational. It definitely contributed to my discontent, since a lot of the stories where very similar to what I have seen and the way out of them where as blurry as twitter threads offerintg wealth in 10 steps.

  I will took away one picture though, which I tried to explain with words to many engineers why static service architectures are not usefull, how they could become more usefulcon. I believe this image explains it, better.

  Also avoid authority without responsability or accountability.

• The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

  This dude has a dream resume on everything related to AI. Yet, apart from the hidden-but-not-hidden doomsday calling, many of the containment ideas/suggestions are suffering from the first-order-thinking in his narrative. While it is intriguing to pose these questions, it is a bit mental-cowardness not to pursue any of the multiple scenarios (deadly virus, political manipulation, financial chaos..) a bit further. I also fear that an AI-designed and SB-engineered super-virus could wipe out half of the humanity but how could an AI-monitored health system fails to detect it and AI/SB powered scientific community is unable provide a cure. I am not optimist on that matters but reading someone thinking deeply about this would have been really wonderful.

• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

  Fuck me if I understand any of this but I love reading it.

  If I see a man, armed only with a sword, attack a group of of machine guns, I shall consider his act to be absurd.

  We are the ones with the sword, I guess and the act of living is absurd, but we should chill..

• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

  I am late to the game, and in a way, I am glad to read this very late. My worst nightmare is private-city-states, and being trapped in the RedZone. And reading the book reminded me how close it is. Unlikely but possible..

• Buying a small Business by buch of rich guys

  We are not there yet…

• The Bee String by Paul Murray

  I have surprised myself by finishing such a long book, following a family drama. Am I losing my cynical edge? The father losing his job, that he never wanted, working for his dad, slowly getting out of touch with his kids. He cannot just be there, instead builds a bunker. Oh, this is I think the first time I read 100-or-so pages without any punctution, which described nicely the hental state of the narator.

• Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa

  Growing bilingual does not make your kid smarter, though it helps. There is no concerete evidence in either direction.

  We believe someone who sounds like a native speaker more than someone who speaks with a accent.

  It would seem that inviduals take language use as A MORE indicative sign and not so much the colour of a person’s skin

  Emotional values of the words in second language seems to be smaller and grabs our attention less, and it does not interfere much .

  The cost of language change is greater when one must switch into the dominant language. The cost of switching is asymmetrical. The paradox, therefore, is that switching into what is easier for us is actually more costly then switchign into what is more difficult.

  First language attrition is a fascinating topic. Also alos, the expriments on this book on babies about languages/learning were fascinating…

• How the world _REALlY_ Works by Vaclav Smnil

  It starts with the queston I love: “Why do most people in modern societies have such a superficial knowledge about how the world really works?”. Anyone who dooes explain big, complex stuff by reconstructing it with basic parts will have my unconditioned love. yes, love.

• Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish

  This dude is a scammer, but hey, he is MY scammer. He is bascically hashing the same wisdom, over and over again in different forms and I keep following. Sorry but not sorry.

  What would you advise yourself (Assuming I could tolerate myself to have a civilized conversation)

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

  Ok, this was a big one, because I have learned the actual names of many ideas/problems I had in mind, and people thinkinng/writing about those. The premise of the book is simple, and data backed: Social media is bad for the kids, even worst for girls. The suggestions at the end are shallow and too generic (except the kid phone toggle). It is going to be hard…

  Also, there is a duded called Frank Furedi, who, among other smart things, pointed out the breakdown of adult solidarity. Should you trust the adult in the street to do the right thing with your kid?

  Across cultures and throughout history, parents acted on the assumption that if their children got into trouble, other adults –often strangers– woudl help out. In many societies adults feel duty-bound to reprimand other people’s children who mishebahve in public.

  My best quote from the book :

  When a woman became depressed, it increased the odds of depression in her close friends (male or female). When a man became depressed, it had no measurable effect on his friends.

• Algorithms to live by by Brian Christian

  Meh.. Makes great cocktail conversation and fun to geek out on sorting algorithms..

• Numbers Don’t Lie by Vaclav Smil

  Remember how, once you discover a great song, you try to find and listen everything from the band/singer, and eventually you realize you only liked the first song. This me and Vaclav. I guess he felt the need to make even more simplistic and shorter explanation, to get his point accross. This one was too -light- and mostly felt like scrolling reddit.

• Does Capitalism Have a Future?

  Reading Varoufakis lead me here, since he left me with the annoying question of why we are unable to even imagine a future near/long after capitalism. These poeple 1 2 makes an analysis of what capitalism is, how it might (or even should) end. Not easy to follow, and populated with new concepts (world systems?), but depressing much. I do like long, well constructive narrative that ends up with convincing strong statement:

  When unemployment reaches 40% of the work-capable population, the capitalist system must come under such a pressure that it cannot survive.

  Financialisation enchances the dynamism of capitalism. It cafilitates the constructive descrtuction of existing structures of capital and spurs teh development of new tech., products, production processes. When extreme, it drives investments toward even more short-term profits and undercuts lon-term and deeper growth. ..

  Not a happy read…

• Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism

  How this will all end and What comes after capitalims lead me to this more depressing read about this joyous fellas.

  • The inevitable raise of the neo-liberalism, which makes gouverments/states less and less powerful against corporations, forcing the political rethoric to focus on identity politics instead and small financial improvements instead of state-wide economics.
  • There is no easy way to get the power back
  • The almost identical two solidly organised mass parties (big left, big right) that has been established almost everywhere. The gouvernements everywhere shifted from one to another, without much change in the course to globoalisation.
  • This will lead more to find the enemy within the system, whithout looking into the system
  • The states between democracy and Gloablisation become more and more trapped, with very little options (Spit upwords, there is the mustache; downwards is the barbe).

  Economically speaking, there wont be much difference who is elected, the levers they could manipulate, without causing an uproar, is very limited.

• STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World

  As the title says, not talking has been proved to be more effective almost on any situation. Listening is a superpower.

• The Fabric of Reality

  wtf! Why I have not discovered this dude, who invented and explained in such simple terms the multiverse MUST exist? Very hard to follow, and impossible to explain. This is one of them books, where I think I understand but I cannot explain.

• Amusing Ourselves to Death

  Everything, that can be said about social media, he said about television ages ago. The whole book is filled with arguments and foresight about how things will turn out. Best book, must reread later.

  America is founded by Intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a communication revolution to recover. (not only the founding dudes, the litteracy and the habit of reading was crazy high )

  The television does not teach anything, study after study failed to prove that any information presented has been retained by the viewers. (netflix documentary intellectuls of 20225 : ))

  There can be no liberty for a community, which lacks means by which they detect a lie (X, Instagram, OpenAI..)

  We americans (and now everybody with Instagram) know everything about the last 24 hours but very little about the last sixty centuries or last sixty years. (Are you not entertined?)

• Of Boys and Men

  Richard Reeves goes around, talks about the male suffering, which is hard to take seriously at first. But the sort of hegelian dialectic means foccusing too little on men, (which is not necesserialy caused by focusing on others) creates a meaningless existence for themn in the new world. This is interesting for me in the context of the end of the capitalism. We have almost proven that men (overgeneralization incomming) can be content with video games, sports and porn.

  not the best crafted arguments, and definitely wil be used as argument for Zucks ‘bringing masculanity back’ type of nonesense.

• Clear Thinking

  meh..

• Too Late to Awaken by Zizek

  Another brithening book, describibg in details the nonesensical world that has been created and presented as a normal place. There is not much hope, we have passed the time world could have been better, it will get worse before it gets maybe better. And not better, for sure, for everyone.

  In western Europe, we are effectively, witnessing a growing incapability of the ruling elite - they know less and less how to rule! …. In Europe, the blind are leading the blind.

  the pain of the concrete knowledge (Snowden)

  simply put: when in 2008, financial breakdown big banks become insolvent, it was OK for the state to cover their losses by spending billons of tax-payer money, but when a WHOLE people finds itself in misery the debt SHOULD be paid.

• Don’t ruest your Gut

  Yes, there is bacteria in your gut, they are connected to your brian. No, they are not smart.

  Role models works:

  Little girls who see a lot of successful female inventors around them try - and often succeed - to emulate these women. If you want your daughter to become an inventor, one of the best things you can do is get her in the vicinity, when she is young, of women who have become successful investors themselves.

  how we look, massively influences how far we advance in life, (depressing) but we can greatly improve it (hopeful) In short, pay attention to small facial cues to guide the influence you want to have.

  Thiking about models, which read all of these research and insights about us, about how it is insanely easy to trick our brain… uff

• Baumgartner by Paul Auster

  Auster kesfettigimde, olecegini hic hayal bile etmemistim.

• Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans

  This is so simple yet everyone gets it wrong. This is one of them books, where I think I understand but I cannot explain.