Review

** AI Winter is Coming ** AI is a technological revolution. We take for granted that such revolutions occur. Yet understanding their economic and societal consequences remains elusive. Looking backward is the only reliable compass, and today’s pattern is familiar: a new general-purpose technology appears, spreads unevenly, and begins the long, messy process of reorganizing everything around it. * “When general purpose technologies exist, they are a model that can be followed by all, but [whose] configuration takes time, about a decade or more.” * ...

** Middle Book Syndrome ** It doesn’t feel like that much happens. Characters grow, but I also want some plot! Glokta starts and ends in the capital city. Logen Ninefingers and his crew start and end without the Seed. The Northmen and the Union start and end the book on the front foot. To quote the Navigator, it’s the journey that counts. ** 22nd book of 2025 **

I should be reading in Chinese or about stoic philosophy, but The Blade Itself is… distractingly enjoyable.

** Down, out, and liberal in the 2010s ** I didn’t know it was possible to write a period piece about the last decade, but here we are. I’m still not sure what really compelled me, but I couldn’t put it book down. On this flight I forgot I was even in the air, where I’m coming from or going to, what year I’m in, I was just living inside the story. Maybe it’s because the story gradually felt familiar. Raising kids, even if you’re not climbing the same kind of corporate ladder as the characters, hits familiar notes. It’s grimdark, yet full of both overt and subtle moralizing, and every chapter ends with a life lesson like Grey’s Anatomy in space. ...

Daring to be Different Completed: March 19, 2025 Last edited time: February 9, 2026 1:39 PM Status: OBE Type: Book

This isn’t Robert Caro, but it’s still pretty good. Truman is probably the most relatable president I’ve read about. And as we enter into the twilight of Pax Americana, it’s poignant to read about the person who laid the cornerstones of it.

**Decohere ** * Ubik—the only book that reads you as you read it. Side effects include narrative dissonance and ontological vertigo. * Do books need to make sense? Ubik certainly doesn’t. Supposedly that’s the meta point - a dream, or constructed reality always has seams the reader can pick at, Ubik just makes it more obvious. The core narrative is about surviving in half-life, and different minds collide and cannibalize. Yet, if the narrative is not even an attempt at coherence, what are we left with? Art? A dream? Why do we even read? Maybe Ubik is the diving board from which the reader should jump into more profound thoughts. I just fell into the abyss. ...

** Wired for Thought ** The stamina required to endure the AI winter and emerge into the present era makes me grateful I didn’t choose academia. Worlds I See offers a reasonable introduction to the modern history of artificial intelligence and neural networks, though its publication date means it omits recent advancements. One intriguing idea Li introduces, though without deep defense, is her version of Dunbar’s number: how many concepts is the human brain aware of? She suggests 30,000—what could be called ‘Fei-Fei’s number’—as a probable natural limit to human cognition and labeling, aligning with dictionary entries and her goal for ImageNet. ...

Diversity over Diagnosis All members of my immediate family are neurodiverse, and I certainly never felt the same as those around me. Yet, much of the medical literature on neurodiversity either talks about those within one standard deviation of the norm, or deviants themselves. Such language is inherently belittling, and uninteresting. Rather than discussing traits, it focuses on disorders. I have been watched my mother diagnosed with a parade of DSM classifications, giving me firsthand experience of academia’s ineptitude in addressing neurodiversity. A far more insightful way to learn about this topic is through personal stories. ...

** Murder, Magic, Malaise ** If Romantasy is court intrigue with a swooning heartbeat, this is its jaded sibling: Mysterantasy—suspicious deaths, arcane trickery, and protagonists too tired to care. Din, a detective who’d rather not chase another corpse, moves through a world where power, like rot, is ambient. His weariness isn’t melodramatic. It’s the flat exhaustion of someone who’s seen too many patterns repeat. Solving murders feels increasingly pointless. The system remains: “And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist.” ...