What I Just Read

I can see why this book sits high up in the Bitcoin canon . It's about much more than a dispute over how large bitcoin blocks should be, which turned out to be a heated, multiyear war with all kinds of twists and turns. But it's also about how things aren't always as they seem, about how people foolishly stake their reputations and credibility on the wrong things, and about the importance of thinking long term--really, really long term--about what this "Bitcoin thing" really is and why we shouldn't muck around with it too much. So many aspects of this debate were absolutely fascinating:  * One side (the big blockers) routinely failed to see second-order consequences, while the other side (the small blockers) rarely failed  not  to see them. Frankly, the big blockers were outclassed on nearly every front, as the small blockers had a far more sophisticated understanding of both the technical and economic implications of Bitcoin. Also the small blockers brillian

A collection of essays written by formerly fervent Communists who realized the lie and deconverted. Includes a heartfelt essay from Arthur Koestler, author of the excellent Darkness at Noon ,  and a wonderful essay by Andre Gide, someone who I've never read and need to read more of.  Note that this collection of essays was published in 1949 (and these authors' "deconversions" happened in some cases many years earlier). This book was widely-read and well-known in its day. And yet there were (seemingly) intelligent people still totally fooled by the Soviet "system" as late as the late 1980s ( I'm looking right at you, John Kenneth Galbraith ). There are none so blind as those who will not see.  Back to Andre Gide for a moment: Gide saw through the ruse the quickest; he saw it all for the Potemkin village it was the moment he was wined and dined, fetted and fluffed by officials all across Russia--he saw it as a clear contraindicator and it disgusted him: &