Dave

This book has a range of topics held together loosely by how positivity can be harmful in the face of actual adversity. A broad exploration of how various pop psychology movements do more harm than good, and how it's in a way a distinct flavor of American hucksterism.

That was kinda silly. Sometimes I can ignore silliness if they are trying to talk about a human problem but this was just being weird.

This is a little practical advice wrapped in some made up nonsense supposedly from antiquity. The advice is sound enough I guess. Save 10% of your money, and invest it in less risky endeavors.

This story supposes that an earth ship runs into a long lost colony that has adopted a bartering style and obstinacy as economics and principles of society. Shenanigans ensue.

Fairly short and sweet, didn't have a lot of exposition that I get from someone like Heinlein when explaining how awesome a society organized around radically new principles would be.

This is like a hard sci-fi detective novel or something. With a lot of optimism of human nature, kind of like the star trek kind of optimism or something.

I don't want to spoil anything about the story because the twists and turns as theories are taken up and then discarded. But this kind of story is just my cup of tea.

I've read several books criticizing the excesses of the left but this one is the first that comes from a liberal position. Usually the author can not disguise their open “conservative” views even though they announce themselves as a centrist. These authors openly call themselves liberals and give detailed reasons of how we have found ourselves dealing with so much identity politics and why it hurts discourse. I listened to this in audiobook form, and I'm looking for the physical book so I can check some of the references and continue to read more about the thinking presented here.

In some places it dragged a bit with historical background and setup, but for the most part I was very engaged with this thoughtful argument. And I feel like the lengthy setup actually does pay off in the end as it ties together.

It is interesting to hear what libertarians were dreaming about before the internet bubble burst. Lots of VC in the air, cyber-(whatever) was on everyone's lips and evidently people wanted to write a manifesto about tax evasion while grossly misunderstanding how technology works. This is a manifesto of sorts of an adolescent multi-millionaire's son, the inspiration for Bioshock's Andrew Ryan.

There are some glimmers of accurate prediction here. People that think the book predicted cryptocurrency evidently don't remember the virtual currencies that were circulating around in the 90s. The description in the book seems to be hanging on these, rather than a decentralized virtual currency. I think this distinction is more than a quibble and won't award points for thinking about this. The description in the book seems more like what was used in the US pre-civil war where every bank had it's own currency and people had to trust these various notes depending on a variety of factors.

Most of the broad sweeps of the book's predictions were counting on the rise of cheap and easy computing to make assessing the true state or trustworthiness of things trivial or basically free or both. We have instead traded our vast computing power for likes and thirst traps. The few attempts I've seen where people have tried to liberate themselves from the parasite government have ended in fraud and theft. One might argue that I am viewing the world through a loser's lens, and that there are people that are already operating as sovereign individuals but I'm too loser to know about it. Certainly I know of people that have changed citizenship to avoid taxes when living abroad, but that's a far cry from what the authors describe.

Towards the middle and definitely in the end there is some pretty blatantly racist shit being said. And the viewpoint the authors' espouse certainly makes them the most contemptible of human beings in my eyes. I can't really think of a reason to read this book, I'm sorry I broke my recommendation rule (I wait for 2 people to recommend a book before reading) it was a big waste of time.

I went in thinking this would be kind of similar to other time management books with some pragmatic choices given the title. Something not so rigid, but still practical advice on how to manage your time well.

This is a philosophy book in this disguise. I think I can summarize the overall theme in this way “No matter what you do you will never get all the things, even all the important things, done in your lifetime. This is a gift, not a curse because of a few reasons that are to be expounded on. This gift could drive you into a nihilistic fugue or maybe it will just lead to a stoic embrace of the now.”

Actually the author did not seem to consider that understanding that nothing we do matters could lead to nihilism. That is just my viewpoint I guess.

This is pretty wild. For probably like the first half, I thought this book was something like “The Secret” but with a whole bunch of old-timey name dropping. But every once in a while some serious capitalist fellating would happen for a few pages and then it would go back to telling you how to will yourself to success.

In the end though, I found it contradictory and a bit too much like pro-capital propaganda. In one passage, the author predicts that the future will be moving towards a place where people are working in a partnership and there everyone shares in the profits of business. In other passages, he chastises organized labor for grasping for more than an honest wage for honest work. Still in other places, he like spent a chapter going over the mythology of the American revolution and how a group of people organized to not just take the scraps they were given but to strive for more.

Maybe I didn't grasp the overall message of the book. The author did warn me that unless I was ready to receive the divine message of how to gain wealth it would be hidden from me. But honestly, he said a lot of stuff.

I give it more than the minimum because there are some good ideas, some even radical ideas in there. I can't give it more though, it is way too in the pocket of robber barons.

There are a couple of assumptions made in this book that make it hard for me to give it full marks.

a) In the beginning, the author asserts that the moderate progressive issues we've fought over since the 60s are settled and progressive causes won. He points at abortion, gay rights, and racial injustices as basically being settled in a moderate manner and that now the progressive left, the new puritans are just going into moral panic mode because they have nothing substantial to fight for anymore. Given recent Supreme Court decisions and the presumptive GOP front-runner's crusades in Florida, this strikes me as ignorant and ill-founded. It is the basis of the argument that things are going to far and people should just be happy with their moderate victories, and it is not true.

b) The author points at very real flaws in the actions and rhetoric of people in the progressive movement. I fully agree so much that is being held up for ridicule and I agree with the idea that it is gone too far in some ways. However, the author repeatedly links the idea that the progressive left going overboard to correct social behavior to the stated goal (e.g. racial justice, LGBTQ justice) as being overboard or overreaching on the part of the people with these goals. I do not agree with this chain of reasoning and find it disingenuous.

Those problems aside, the author does raise many points of basically mob justice gone wrong. Almost all of the things pointed at are some BS found on social media, by people that have no real power without a mob whipped up, but still. I found the connection between social coercion today and in New England during the heights of puritanism to be very interesting.

I wrote a long review of this book, and goodreads threw it away. I'm not typing it all up again. TL;DR - This book outlines many, many terrible things white dudes have done to not white dudes. It offers no way for people, especially white dudes, to not participate or work to correct the crappiness of society to not white dudes. If you are looking for a way to engage in a non-white dude way this book isn't for you. If you think that white dudes really aren't doing anything to terrible past or present, this book will provide a way for you to enlighten yourself.

JD's meemaw has a seriously filthy mouth.

This book seems to be mostly a tirade against far-left pushing on boundaries around norms particularly in the space of racial justice. In short, it is a guy complaining about people complaining. This is as compelling a read as that might suggest.

It asserted so, so many things about the goals of the thinkers in this space. It never addressed the concept that I was taught as a kid that makes sense as I move through life. In order for something to be unjustly racist, there has to be a power imbalance. I'm sorry if a bunch of people protesting racist institutions or demanding that the college education they pay for teaches them things in a more diverse way but they have no power. The fact that they are out yelling about change tells you they are at a disadvantage. Don't punch down, try and understand where people are coming from and see if you can find common ground.

I give this 2 stars not 1 because while the whining of some dude about how it sucks people won't just take oppression anymore like the good old days is pretty much bullshit, the critique that we should watch out that the pendulum doesn't swing to far the other way is fair.

I might be wearing out on mysteries, this one was long and was fairly meandering.

It was fine, especially when read to me. However there are several books in this time period that have people lying and acting like guilty people to protect someone else's honor in ways that are hard for me to deeply comprehend. It makes all the nonsense people go through to ferret out the truth just fall flat for me.

This one had a massive side story that I thought was quite fun, or I would have marked it down even more.

Thanks to Phoebe reading me a mystery, I have ‘read' this one.

I liked this story better than I like most Agatha Christie books I have read. It's very interesting to see cutting edge tech of yesteryear applied to the solving of mysteries.

Heinlein gets quite preachy often, and this one is no exception. I get bored with the benevolent rich guy that seems to know everything and has the moral philosophy that gets libertarians happy in the pants area. It is beyond reasonable for me to believe that a human left with aliens for 20 years could develop the crazy powers described in the book. It was difficult to suspend disbelief and get on with the story. There was pretty sexist and misogynist talk throughout and overall it was just hard to slog through.

It also ends halfway through but then keeps on going for no good reason at all.

I've been reading this over the past couple of weeks. Reading reviews from others as well as thinking about how I have internalized the information here I think the book has some very good points and a few different data backed conclusions that I would like to be explored more. Particularly striking is the claim that open markets do not benefit the nation being opened up if it is developing, I felt like there was some information given to back this claim but not enough to make me feel like it was proven. And I'm rather center-left pro-regulated capitalism. Also striking was the exercise around describing countries without naming the time frame being looked at and guessing what the country was. This was very telling in my opinion.

In some cases the author was preaching to the choir, at least with me. I think I align with the author's views quite a bit. Overall, I liked the book but I do not think it works well to convince people that are dogmatically pro-market without nuance.

I felt it was a bit long, but I believe it was to back the arguments (of which there are many) with facts and anecdotal evidence as much as possible. I think when I finished the book there was about 20% left of footnotes and citing.

The basic idea here is that there are lots of jobs that are bullshit, and the book takes you through:
a) What the strict definition of a bullshit job is
b) Giving an estimate of what jobs fit this description and refute counter-arguments to the idea that capitalism can produce pointless jobs.
c) categories of BS jobs and some nominal explanation for their existence
d) the effects that these jobs have on the humans that occupy them
e) what might be done about it

I don't want to spoil much of anything, so I'll just say I found the arguments about the existence and categorization of BS jobs much more persuasive than the possible outlined solution. He does give a caveat of how he doesn't want to offer a solution, because that would be the focus of the book so I can't tell if it's self-fulfilling prophecy or it's just hard to propose solutions to big problems.

I found the concept frankly fascinating and I really loved the thinking being laid out on how this could come to be and what it's effect on people is. The humanity in capitalism, how we ignore it or mold it to suit the raw purposes of capitalism is something I haven't seen spelled out quite like this before.

This one I have mixed feelings on. It felt a bit like propaganda, but I know soldiers like the narrator so maybe I'm just jaded. It was very much snapshots of a soldiers life deployed to Afghanistan, without a lot of analysis in my opinion. It was a quick read

This book has several things going against it in my opinion. I don't like erotic fiction too much, I think people have a lot of trouble describing sex without it sounding weird. This one did alright there, that's fine. The real trouble I had with it is it's a slog. These stories are on the longer side and then there's some pretty explicit sex descriptions and then it's back to a talking frog or whimsical grass cutter or whatever.

Anyways, I didn't read to the end, I bailed after the fourth story. I thought the grass cutter one was really fun and should be a staple (maybe without the magic dildo though).

This is sprawling tale of how the WPA came to be describing precursor programs and the elections that confirmed the popularity of New Deal programs. It goes into great detail about larger WPA projects, who was in charge, the kind of character they were, and how the press dealt with them.

I'll be honest, I like to think I like history and I read this because I feel like we could use a jobs program in the country and wanted to figure out how people were persuaded it was a good idea to try. I felt like this was more rambling and a coherent narrative didn't exist other than “Jobs were wanted and only Roosevelt had the foresight to give the people government jobs”

I thought the premise and the overall story was very interesting and original. I'm a sucker for end of the world/post-apocalyptic stories and I don't think I've read one that's alternate history.

Pros:
- Interesting premise about germ warfare coming in the final days of WWII and changing the world.
- A scrappy dog is probably the best person in the story.

Cons:
- I hated the protagonist/teller of the story. He's a jackass and having to be told the story from his wretched point of view sucked.
- There was a lot of action sequences that were described, the story in fact opens in a long drawn out action sequence where people you don't know for reasons you don't understand are chasing someone telling you a story from their point of view. Imagine reading “Fury Road” instead of watching it.

Methodically goes through how profit being squeezed through financing is not leaving anything for growing the economy. A thoroughly depressing read.

This is pretty vapid, I know I'm not the target audience but the ratio of actual things that happen compared to designer stuff being ticked off like a gaudy rich checklist is way too low for me to enjoy.

I hope this isn't what teenagers are reading and modeling their life on. Puh-leez. Grassy.

Reading this made me rethink my random book reading strategy.