What I Just Read

Just like 90% of drivers consider themselves above average, nearly all intelligent people fall into the sticky trap of "knowing" they're too smart and sophisticated to be persuaded (and much less fooled) by modern media. This book  must  be read in order to understand the informational water in which we all swim. Strongly recommend reading The Image along with Walter Lippmann's excellent 1922 book Public Opinion  and Errol Morris's wonderful book Believing Is Seeing . All three books will deepen a humble reader's understanding of what really goes on in our media-driven society; all three will help you see propaganda to the point where you can no longer unsee it; and all three will help you better navigate an increasingly propagandized world where all things made to seem real actually aren't real at all, and most "news" is mere ersatz information, unworthy of your or my attention.  Again: once you see it, you cannot unsee it.  In The Image , Dan...

Interesting on a few levels. It's always fun to read a thriller/spy novel from a completely different era (this book dates from the early years of WW1), because while you're reading something fun you also get a window into a different historical period, exposure to different slang and expressions, and direct context on social norms of that period. Good fiction reads well regardless of era, but the extra context adds to the satisfaction.  Also interesting to think of protagonist Richard Hannay and what is it about him that's compelling. Not suave and elegant like James Bond, not huge and muscular like Jack Reacher, Hannay is sort of an everyman--admittedly with some unusual skills the author needs to make up from time to time to move the plot along!  The Thirty-Nine Steps was popular right from publication, and it essentially made John Buchan's career as a writer.   Finally, this edition, The Oxford World's Classics edition, contains quite a bit of useful biographic...

Not recommended for brand new beginners to Bitcoin; you'll want some foundation in order to really get value from this book. I'd first recommend completing a brief and easy reading list of 1) Saifedean Ammous' The Bitcoin Standard , 2) Ben Mezrich's Bitcoin Billionaires , and 3) Nathaniel Popper's Digital Gold .  Then, I recommend listening to at least a few long-form podcasts on Bitcoin (for example  Robert Breedlove on Lex Fridman's podcast , or a few episodes of Robert Breedlove's extensive podcast series with Michael Saylor ). After that, then tackle this book. And if you don't have the attention span to dedicate the necessary time to do these things, Bitcoin probably isn't for you. Yet.  This book is a generous gift from quite an original thinker, and I strongly encourage spending as much time as you can eavesdropping on Gigi on literally any podcast where you can find him (he's done a lot; start by searching "Gigi Bitcoin" on Y...

Workmanlike book about the early Usenet message boards that made up much of the internet's landscape in the early- to mid-1990s. While it offers helpful analogies for certain internet controversies today, I'd only recommend it to serious internet history geeks. It's not interesting enough of a read for the casual reader. However, books on technology ( and investing ) from past periods can offer surprisingly useful insights for current-day readers. The flame wars of the early days of Usenet rhyme with today's malevolently sarcastic social media arguments. Censorship battles of the 1990s give us a tiny hint of what they look like now. Spam, surveillance--we are grappling with the same problems today, just in far more extensive forms.  And then again, there are some issues that seemed like a really big deal to everyone back then that, once enough time passes, end up hardly mattering at all. I wonder what things we think matter today that don't, and what things we think...