Debt: The First 5,000 Years

This languished on my reading list for a long time, thinking it was a orthodox capitalist history. Exceeded expectations by being a reframing of financial history through the lens of anthropology, yet still not as good as Dawn of Everything. Maybe I have more priors in this space. I would read as a supplement to Dawn of Everything to understand Graeber’s evidence of societies that might have been, and why capitalism alone is not the single correct answer to the interaction of large groups of humans. ...

2022.04.17 · 1 min · David Graeber

Dawn (Legend of the Galactic Heroes, #1)

character development is for western novels. this plot, tactics, and wikipedia style info dumps 100% of the time. And I like it.

2022.04.15 · 1 min · Yoshiki Tanaka

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

less about the nuances of checklists, more about how awfully unsafe medicine is compared to airlines

2022.04.10 · 1 min · Atul Gawande

Memory's Legion

like their short stories better than they or novels. better than chiangs stores. i think it’s the characters

2022.04.05 · 1 min · James S.A. Corey

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Seems like there is a high correlation between marxist or anarchist authors and good books. Must be some weird form of selection / filtering bias.

2022.04.02 · 1 min · David Graeber

Applied Hayek: The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company

Applied Hayek Something in here clearly works, as evidenced by the success of Koch enterprises. But the guidelines are repetitions of basic economics, maidenly vague, or republican talking points many times two out of three. I think Koch has good ideas around using market pricing internal to a company and how to help use compensation as a motivation tool, but those ideas are really just left to the readers imagination.

2022.03.31 · 1 min · Charles G. Koch

Flying Blinded by Indignation: Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing

** Flying Blinded by Indignation ** For the same reason my 16 month old loves to point out every plane in the sky, I’m fascinated by the aviation industry. Skunkworks was the first book I read, and after reading Freedom’s Forge and Losing the Signal, Flying Blind felt like a perfect fit. However, the narrative ends up becoming just another superficial journalist book. Specifically, it suffers from a lack of norming and indignation at satisficing. ...

2022.03.27 · 2 min · Peter Robison

She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

surprisingly good, game of thrones + mulan + traitor baru thrown into one. Good setting.

2022.03.23 · 1 min · Shelley Parker-Chan

Long Walk to Freedom

Took a bit to get started, but a worthwhile long walk of a book in the end.

2022.03.14 · 1 min · Nelson Mandela

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

4.5 stars – first time I feel like I understand the modern European perspective distinctly from America’s.

2022.03.12 · 1 min · Tony Judt